The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 399: The Kingpin Antler Dealer
Episode Date: December 26, 2022Steven Rinella talks with Tony Schaufler, Jamie Schaufler, Janis Putelis, Brody Henderson, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics include: Steve's Instagram picture of a shipping container full of... antlers; PA antler restrictions; did mountain men bait?; expropriation of land and being a good neighbor; the potential medicinal value of consuming paper thin antler slices; making a living picking antlers; the dog chew market; fake antler chandeliers; a Texan named Mike; profit margins; "trophy" sheds; antler poaching sting ops; how to reach Tony; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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Alright, we're joined today by an extraordinarily controversial guest.
Thanks.
By his own admission.
Who's left open
the idea that he might be a bad guy.
Who's here only
under duress.
Who
wasn't going to do the show until he until he got to read an instagram comments
you're the first you're the first and only guest we've ever had it came on um inspired by instagram
comments well i wasn't my wife was inspired by it she read the comments and she goes you have to do
it because i'm a non-controversial kind of a guy.
I don't like controversy.
Yeah, I can picture that.
Because you didn't even have Instagram.
No.
I did, but I just didn't ever use it.
That's a good way to avoid controversy.
But I did figure out how to get on it.
You did?
And I did follow you.
Oh, awesome.
I think I follow you and Joe Rogan.
You don't follow Yanni? Not yet i will what's your handle what's that oh like yeah how do people find on instagram i think it's
tony.schoffler okay corinne explain what happened on instagram people are so titillated now i don't
know if we can keep leading them along without them knowing what's going on.
You know what I mean?
Like people are on,
they're like on the edge of their seat.
Well,
what date was this?
Probably.
Pull that mic down, Corinne.
Two,
over two months ago,
Steve put up a post,
45,300 pounds of elk antlers
loaded up by a buyer.
Whoa.
What?
Listen, explain what's in thelers loaded up by a buyer. Whoa. What? Listen.
Explain what's in the picture.
And then read the caption.
It's an image of a ginormous shipping container on a huge truck.
And the doors are open.
And the only thing you see kind of packed from left to right to from ground to ceiling is just antlers.
And a couple of guys unpacking.
Like hand-packed.
Hand-packed sheds.
Hand-packed into a shipping container.
Like you wouldn't fit a mouse in that shipping container.
Yeah, uh-uh.
Packed to the gills.
Full of elk antler. Full of elk antler.
45,300 pounds to be exact. And then now read the caption. And I put this up
at Steven Rinella, if you're curious. S-T-E-V-E-N
Rinella. Yep. 45,300 pounds of elk
antler is loaded up by a buyer and headed to overseas markets.
This year, shed hunters were getting around $20 a pound for the fresh brown elk antlers.
This buyer told me that the average weight of an antler he buys is five pounds, but they get up to 20 pounds a piece.
So do the math.
Did I say 20?
No, but I did some. I was 20? No, but I did some,
I was curious about it, and I did
some research, and I bet you the ones you're
holding in that Bozeman Chronicle picture are 20
pounders. No, they weren't.
What? They were
probably... 19.5?
No, they were probably in the 15
pound range. Really?
I think the largest single
shed we've ever bought off
a wild elk was about
21 pounds. There you go. See, I underwent.
Out of millions and millions
of pounds. $400.
And then
also the price was
up to, I said,
up to $20. Okay.
Listen, man, I was
consulting with you
while crafting my caption,
but I apparently left off when
I threw out the poundage thing.
Alright, so
you know, minor
inaccuracies notwithstanding,
I put that
on Instagram because I met
our guest here, Tony,
from Rocky Mountain Antler. Is that it? Just Rocky, Tony, from Rocky Mountain Antler.
Is that it?
Just Rocky Mountain Antler?
Rocky Mountain Antler Company, LLC.
Okay.
I met Tony Shoffler from Rocky Mountain Antler Company, LLC, up in Alaska.
We had a brief meeting, a brief running into each other, in which I found out what his
business was.
And I said, man, you ought to come on the podcast.
And eventually, in our conversation about him coming on the podcast,
he sent me this picture.
And I thought, well, that's interesting as hell.
And I put the picture up on Instagram.
And in the comments section, holy cow.
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.
Hundreds. Just people. and hundreds. Hundreds.
Or 400.
Just people.
Comments.
Just.
How would you typify the comments?
I mean, the range from people being interested, people being amazed at the number of antlers people criticizing uh the chinese antler market people people talking about the you know
just what they're used for and how it's nuts i mean i i would i don't think there was any one
kind of overwhelming drawing drawing parallels between that and the commercial slaughter of animals from the early 20th century.
Just a whole range of things.
I don't get it.
I thought the normal comment would be, damn, that's a lot of antlers.
Yeah, like this one guy wrote, so you're saying that that's just under a million dollars in antlers?
Holy F, I'm in the wrong business.
So you had plenty of those comments.
That's what I thought.
Please let me explain. That shipment was
nowhere near a million dollars.
That was the lowest grade
antler that you can
buy and it's only worth a couple of dollars
a pound. Okay, we're going to get it all out.
I just wanted to set the scene.
Oh, okay. Sorry.
Oh, no, no, no. You're doing great.
Jamie, are you here to talk or not here to talk?
No, she's here for the BS filter for me so I don't get too carried away with my story.
How long have you guys been married?
29 almost.
29.
Years.
Oh.
Yeah.
Not months.
I know quite a bit.
You guys have been married 29 years.
Yeah.
That's fantastic.
Can each of you hit us with what's the secret to 29 years of marriage?
Yeah.
Mine is you get up in the morning and you look at your wife and you go, honey, I'm sorry.
Because sooner or later during the day, it's going gonna happen and just get it out of the way right
off the bat just honey i'm sorry no i'm trying that tomorrow morning i'm a little overdue on
that right now what uh what do you got you got anything hot you got any hot even though you're
not here to you're not here to talk you, your wife would probably say the same thing.
Patience and a strong backbone.
Hmm.
I don't know if that's what she'd say.
I'll have to ask her.
Well, if you're... 29 years is great, man.
Yeah.
But it's also, she puts up with a lot of me not being around.
You're on the road a lot.
You know, if you do this full time,
you know, so.
Yeah, the antler business came between us.
But it didn't.
How long have you been married, Brody?
What year is it?
16?
Yeah, 16.
Well, you got a good shot at making it.
Oh, I've made it, man.
It's like that 12-year itch.
If you can get past that, I think you're on the right track.
I got no worries.
You get itchy at 12?
All right, we got to move along.
Here's something real.
Okay.
I'm going to go down to the thing i think is most interesting check this out a guy writes in a guy writes in oh hold on oh this didn't happen to him it happened
to his friend still damn it now you get into the whole like right exactly there's a hearsay element damn it
like unreliable I noticed that before I thought it happened to him but you must have been really
excited about this titillating story that you're about to tell us this story is a great story
okay so everyone bear in mind this is something that happened to a friend of his.
So, you know,
who knows?
Okay.
Pennsylvania. Set the scene.
We're in Pennsylvania.
Do you want me to set the scene?
No, I'm just saying that we're in Pennsylvania.
Oh my god.
How did I not notice this?
It's his friend's brother. This is like when you go to a thing and some guy comes up he's like look at this buck that my neighbor's
cousin's brother's brother-in-law's neighbor got that's why i'm not i'm not like there's an
unreliable narrator element to this like i don't know i Well, don't, because it still is
interesting. It is. Okay, so
listen. I'm just going to act like it happened to me.
I was just hunting in Pennsylvania
and here's what happened to me.
This is great.
They're in a... Okay.
Whoever the hell it was,
it's an antler... I believe every
word of it. Because it's
like, who would make it up?
They're in an antler restriction area in Pennsylvania.
Well, the whole state's antlers.
It used to be not that way, and it switched to antler restrictions, I don't know, 10 years ago.
The whole state.
No.
Yes.
When I was a kid, you could shoot spike bucks.
The whole state's antler restriction.
Yeah.
The whole state's.
That's not true.
Listen, it is.
I was just hunting there with my musket.
Yeah.
And most of the state is three points.
No.
Okay.
Listen.
Steve's wrong.
No, I'm not.
Most of the state is three points.
It could be brow tine and a fork.
The northwestern part of the state where I grew up has to be three up,
meaning a brow time would, like, it doesn't have to have a brow time,
but it's got to have three up.
So main beam, G1, or it would be G2, G3.
Steve, who are you calling?
Seth.
Oh, he's like on his way to South Dakota.
So I was buying this pile of antlers off this guy.
Uh-huh.
Which guy?
Oh, hang tight.
Prior to 2002, antler restriction was two points.
It had to be a spike.
So that's when they went to statewide antler restrictions.
That's not accurate.
Bear with me a minute, Phil.
Why aren't all these people answering their phone?
If you had shot a spike with your musket, you'd been breaking the law.
Rick.
Yeah, hey Steve. Hey.
Is the entire state
of Pennsylvania an antler
restriction unit?
Yeah, yeah, so like
the entire state. Oh, I can't hear you.
Alright, hold on, say it again?
Rick, you're on the air.
The entire state, Seth, correct me if I say this wrong.
Oh, you're with Seth.
I'm with him. He was trying to answer, but the entire state of Pennsylvania is a, for people 16 and older, is a three-point on one side restriction.
But there used to be at least a certain part up near Warren County near Erie.
Where I grew up.
The entire state, if you're over 16,
you cannot shoot. It has to have
three legal points on one side.
Yes.
That's also verifying and agreeing with that.
Okay, but why when we were hunting did no one mention
this to me?
Man, I wish this
would have been a trivia question.
I don't have information that we did it.
I feel like we did, maybe.
I could have shouted Forky.
He'd be in the pokey right
now.
Seth, did you
tell Steve about the three-point
rule before he did the slumlock?
Yeah, Seth's saying he's
telling him they're on
the podcast right now.
I gotta go. You guys definitely didn't mention
that shit and you put me in like legal jeopardy.
So, listen.
Anyway, that sets this whole thing up.
Okay, but it does set this whole thing up.
This guy's hunting in Pennsylvania.
He's in,'s in there is a
rule that you have
the buck has to have three
points on one side
where they're hunting. It has to have three points
on one side
not
counting the brow time.
They call that three up in Pennsylvania.
Not counting the brow time.
You hear? So, since wh. Not counting the brow time. You hear?
So, since whitetails throw a brow time, like 99.99, this is the ball part, of whitetails throw a brow time.
So, he's saying, to be legal, it's by an eastern count, needs to be an 8-point, right?
So when you remove the brow tines, he's got three on each side.
He's got to have three on one side, not counting the brow tine.
Now this guy shoots a buck with no brow tine.
Missing its brow tine.
But has three tines.
He gets sighted by an officer.
The officer's view on it
is that since there is no brow tine,
his definition is the next up antler
becomes a brow tine.
Like imagine you have a line of people
and the first person in the line
the person in front of the line is eliminated then number two is all of a sudden number one
that's his claim i took this to heffelfinger heffelfinger is like a brow time is a brow time
the absence of a brow time does not promote the next antler to a brow time like a brow time is a
very definitional point.
If it doesn't have it, it doesn't have it.
But that doesn't mean his buddy down the line becomes him.
But if you were scoring it, it's not like if he doesn't have a brow time,
then all of a sudden the G2 would become the G1.
That wouldn't happen.
Right.
But under the law, it doesn't matter.
If it's got three points up, it's a legal buck.
Allow me to, allow me to, Heffelfinger dissected the law.
Okay.
Assuming this is all described accurately.
See, that's classic Heffelfinger.
Like, he already knows, right?
He already knows the layout, assuming it's described accurately.
That sounds like a mess.
So to quote, I'm reading something.
Assuming this is all described accurately, that sounds like a mess, but I'm not sure this email is describing it correctly.
Or the LEO is wrong, law enforcement officer. The law, linked below, says that
it has to be three points on a side
not including the brow tine in a few
units. And just
three or more points anywhere
on the antler in the rest of the state.
That's correct. Okay.
The deer this person describes would be legal
everywhere. So I don't
understand the issue. The law below
doesn't classify a G2 as a browtine.
It just helps people understand what a browtine is by saying it's the one right above the burr.
I would not read that to mean that if it doesn't have a browtine, then you count the G2 as a
browtine. It just means that you can't count the brow tine as one of your three points in those few counties where it is more restricted.
That's correct.
If an officer is counting this deer's G2 as the brow tine and then saying the deer is illegal because it only has two more,
then that is clearly a misinterpretation of the law, in my opinion, as an Arizona guy with no law enforcement experience.
There are a few scientific papers out there that define terms for the tines of all servants
that I would trot out in a court case to show that is an incorrect interpretation. A G2 is
never a brow tine. If the brow tine is missing, then the deer just doesn't have a brow tine.
And the G2 is still the G2.
So they need to go get that guy out of jail.
I have a hard, I'm not saying this guy's a liar.
I have a hard time believing that a Pennsylvania game warden would not have a good understanding of this law.
It's been around for a while.
Like, I have a hard time buying it.
That is, like, because it would be happening all the time.
Like, every six-pointer that got shot that didn't have a brow time would be, like.
But they all got brow times.
Not those little basket rat sixes.
A lot of them don't.
I got a hard time.
Another guy wrote in.
Another guy wrote in.
And it was a guy.
His name was Joe.
Tony, if you have anything to weigh in on any of these, please.
Do.
Thank you.
Okay.
You're welcome.
There's a lot of talk about antlers.
Well, I think that's why, you know,
I think that, you know,
old Corinne over there,
I think that's why I should probably
threw that in there.
I should have probably brushed up
on my Pennsylvania game laws.
Here's this one.
It has nothing to do with antlers.
Guy wrote in,
and he's got an interesting point.
Your coverage of lead pollution issues so our coverage of the lead the lead debate which that's how i'd describe the coverage um has been great he says but i wish you would also mention a less
serious but still annoying ammo pollution issue plastic shotgun wads i am a san francisco based hunter he there's a parenthetical he puts in says yes we
exist and fishermen i love up this is him i love upland and waterfowl shotgun hunting as well as
surf fishing the ocean many times while fishing the beach i have come across plastic shotgun wads
including some marked six which is mostly used for
upland hunting in California. It disturbs me that shotgun hunting involves littering plastic in the
form of a wad with every shot. Nobody is seriously expecting to retrieve their wads. On principle,
we should oppose this littering, especially given all of the new research on microplastics.
Additionally, the concern about giving hunters a bad name is especially salient
here in California. Surf fishermen have allied
with groups like the Surfrider Foundation to fight important battles for public access
to beaches. Surfrider is also, in my opinion rightly,
concerned about plastic pollution at beaches and successfully
pushed through a plastic straw ban as a result.
I'd believe hunters would be well served by understanding the wad problem
and proactively working with potential partners to try to solve it rather than risking becoming their next target.
Shotguns worked well with cardboard wads before plastic was even
invented and modern biodegradable materials offer even more options
there's no reason today why shotgun hunters need to live right to litter
every time they pull the trigger great point huh it is but ammo makers gotta
decide whether they can afford to do well paper why i mean wads do a lot more now
wads do a lot more now than what they like originally a wad was just a barrier between
the shot and a barrier between the powder and the shot the wadding in a musket would be, it would help form a grip in the rifling, right?
With
shotgun, if you didn't have
wadding there, I think that you would
every time you tip the gun, your powder would
go filter into the
your powder would filter into the shot
and also nothing would really carry the shot out.
But now wadding
grips the shot.
Controls the pattern.
Carries, like actually carries it a little ways before the fins, as the fins open up, it slows down.
But like, like contains the shot.
But I don't know.
If someone told me that in 10 years someone was going to be making some of that shit out of cornstarch that like that you throw in your composter and and it rains a couple times and vanishes i wouldn't be surprised by that yeah yeah i mean i think obviously it's
a litter problem but a bigger litter problem might be the jerks that don't pick up their
shells off the ground yeah but that's easy yeah well that's avoidable yeah and this is
hard you like you can't find them that's good it's a good point it's an interesting point to think about i do now and then look and be like damn a lot of wads
laying around everywhere do you ever get your hands on any uh cardboard shells back when they
you know the old shotgun shells i remember those yeah yeah coating wax back yeah i was reading
about the guy that killed uh i was reading about the guy that killed Jesse James.
He took a bunch of pipe and cut the pipe in, I think this is true.
I read it.
Might not be true.
He took a bunch of pipe and cut the pipe in little short chunks and then took a chisel and knocked those chunks into little like picture that you had a wedding
ring okay and then you took and laid that wedding ring flat on the ground and took a chisel and
started busting it to pieces straight down anyways filled a big double barrel coach gun full of that
that'll do the trick cut them in half pretty much i don't think that's true
did mountain man bait here's a question that came in
from long island a lot of emails from low representation um emails from very low
representation states hunter hunter representation did you know the answer did you have to uh look
look into this a little bit i know the answer you did you have to look into this a little bit? I know the answer.
You did.
I'm not interested in the question.
I'm not interested in the particulars. I'm not interested in the actual answer.
I'm just interested in the mentality of the question.
Oh, I'm interested in the answer.
Did mountain men bait hay-meater to crew?
My name's Paul, and I'm from Long Island.
I'm a longtime fan, and I had an interesting question for the meat eater gang to discuss on the podcast. I was reading a comment section on baiting for wild
game, deer, bear, etc. And I was wondering what the meat eater crew knows about how the mountain
men hunted and trapped and whether or not it ever involved baiting on a large scale.
This came to mind because a lot of hunters question the integrity legitimacy of
harvests that are a result of baiting however praise the methods or ways
used by mountain men of decades centuries ago
i think this is an interesting and potentially divisive subject.
Okay, let me set the great question.
First off, I'm going to establish, I want to establish, when people say a mountain man, what are they saying?
You, okay, a mountain man means a very specific thing.
You could watch a show called The Mountain Man and that's not mountain men.
That's a contemporary
thing called mountain men. But when we talk about mountain men
historically, we're talking about a very specific thing from a
very specific time frame.
These were
probably the most well
traveled
individuals of their time.
Probably the least xenophobic individuals of their time and
the greatest risk takers of their time if you wanted to do something like today like the
mountain men did then you would go like during the Afghanistan war you would have gone to the mountain ranges that separate Afghanistan and Pakistan
and gone in that atmosphere and try to go become a professional hunter in those mountains at that time.
The Mountain Man era began the minute the Lewis and Clark expedition ended.
So it sort of begins with John Coulter's return out to the west trapping beaver and it
ends about 1832 when the beaver market collapsed so we're talking about a mountain man we're
talking about like professional beaver trappers who operated in the inner mountain west between
about i mean really like it heated up like 1810 to 1832.
Did they bait? Yep.
The only...
The way
they trapped, they didn't use
conner bears, they only used footholds,
and it seems like they almost
exclusively used caster sets.
Caster mound sets using
foothold traps. So every...
All the beavers, all the mountain men caught were probably caught with bait.
Lure.
Not bait. And I'm sure they were savvy enough
to put some fresh peeled
willow or aspen to supplement
their sets in the fall season.
But they were using lure.
For hunting big game, no, I can't picture it.
They didn't do
side hustles with other kind of fur?
Not during that period. No fur not during that period no not
during that period now when the beaver market collapsed those guys many of those guys then
got into very serious baiting like a lot of them became wolfers like the wolfers followed the beaver
market well the wolfers kind of came like the real serious wolfers came the beaver market collapsed
in 32 then you had the hide hunting era the buffalo hide hunting area that kind of came on
its heels what came on the heels of that was the wolfer market and they baited where they would
kill an animal kill a buffalo whatever gash it all over pour strychnine on it, wait a couple days, come back to your strychnine
carcass, and pick up poisoned wolves.
So that was bait.
They would take another way that guys would, for doing grizzlies, either for bounty money
later on, or otherwise, you'd take a mule out to a good spot, shoot the mule, hunt the
mule, and shoot the can of the mule. So yeah, big time baiting.
A lot of the guys that were commercial bear guys trapped.
And they're baiting with traps.
I don't know that that's where I would look to find
if I was going to defend baiting today,
I don't know that that's where I would look.
Any thoughts?
Here's a good one.
You guys good?
There's just not enough
to compare, I don't think.
It's just not the type of hunting
that we do today.
Like commercial market hunting.
This is a good one.
I don't think we're going to be done. This is the last one
that we're going to get into the antler market.
Corinne?
This guy writes in from Nova Scotia.
I live in Mahone Bay,
Nova Scotia.
This is a real...
You thought the antler thing in Pennsylvania was interesting, Phil.
Wait till you hear this.
I really hope it involves you being embarrassed live on the air.
I live in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia.
You following?
You tracking, Phil?
Got it.
I bought a six to seven acre it's weird he doesn't
know how big his parcel is he bought a six to seven acre piece of land in 2015
moving back to my hometown of london england what's that mean from london england oh from
oh okay so he was living in london england oh from oh okay so he was living in london
okay feller from london this is someone this is like really far out for us i thought i thought
long island was like so here's a guy from london of all places big hunting town moves yeah you want to talk about
low representation moves to nova scotia buys six to seven acres piece of land in 2015
the appeal of the land he goes down to say it was a dock on the ocean sidewalk into town, house to raise kids,
and land to hunt whitetails out back.
There's only about a one-acre piece at the back
where I can discharge a crossbow.
Okay?
Buys a land.
He's got a legal place. He can discharge his crossbow on an acre of land
now they're coming to do eminent domain across his property
in order here's where the rub is in order to put in a power corridor to serve a new solar plant
so he's in the admittedly awkward position of being a nimby about alternative energy
like it's better if it's like a real villain right like but it'd have to be a solar energy
like a thing that everyone's supposed to support because because it's green energy, and now he's got to be a NIMBY.
I'd like to know why he can only
discharge on an acre. Like, is the rest
within town limits or something?
You know, have you gone to his
website, solarsham.ca?
No, I have not. Did you go,
Corinne?
Why are you not, I think you need to
research the piss out of this, Corinne. You didn't call him?
No, I didn't call him.
Why didn't you call him?
So let me get to the rub.
So expropriation is their Canadian version of eminent domain.
He's going on to say, we have a concept of injurious affection,
which are personal damages and the reduction in value of the rest of my
residential property do
he's claiming okay let me back up here's what he's claiming they're claiming here's the land value
for us running our power experience of hunting he's like well no no you're not you're not value
you're not valuing it right because what you've just done is destroyed my ability to like hunt deer on my place
how are we gonna draw how are we gonna value that you're not valuing that i had a little mini chunk
of hunting ground and you're destroying it and then you're telling me its value is one thing
when the value is exponentially greater because of the circumstance my sidebar question would be if he discharges his crossbow and his little one acre piece
and that said deer runs off that one acre piece and dies yeah
what then what oh that's that this is the thing i've been arguing about with not arguing about
texting about with my buddy doug durin where they have some of these public access programs
and he was pointing out to me that some of these public access pro like public access
and private land programs are making deals on on like 10 acre parcels
and guys are bow hunting it and the amount of conflict that arises
it's like how are you anticipating that you're going to bow hunt whitetails
on that size piece of ground and have it be that it's dead on the ground
like you're asking yeah and then you've got all those that urban deer hunting that's happening
now too yeah but i feel like back you you know, anything east of the Mississippi,
hunting whitetails on a 10-acre chunk is very normal.
I know.
10 acres.
It's tight.
The right 10 acres, like in Indiana.
Sure.
There's a lot going on in 10 acres.
No, no, no.
You're not listening to what I'm saying.
No, I am.
I'm not talking about what's going on or not going on.
I'm saying there is a high flight risk.
There's a high risk.
100%.
Okay.
For instance, Carl, I'm not going to say his last name, but Carl has a very small parcel.
You know what Carl did before he ever put a tree stand up?
Went and talked to his neighbors.
Every single one of them said, I'm not planning on, I'm not hoping this happens, but I'm laying
the groundwork for the fact that I might have to come pay you a visit and here's why.
And he secured an okay under those circumstances ahead of time from everyone around him.
Good neighbors.
That was Duren's point.
Duren's point wasn't not to do it.
Duren's point was so many problems could be taken care of if people were just a little more neighborly. That was his point. Dern's point wasn't not to do it. Dern's point was so many problems could be taken care of if
people were just a little more neighborly.
That was his point.
Agreed. Be a good neighbor.
He told me about someone that got a deer this year
that was literally
hung up
in the neighbor's fence.
Okay.
Ready?
Yeah.
How,
like,
okay.
How,
how'd you get into,
how'd you get into antler picking?
What do you,
what do you like to call it?
Shed hunting?
Antler picking the antler market?
Yeah.
Shed hunting.
Cause you're a third,
you're a second generation shed hunter.
Second generation,
um,
working on possibly third with Sam coming up.
That's your boy.
Yeah.
Well, my dad was probably the first, I'd say, large-scale commercial buyer in the United States way before it was cool.
Hmm.
How did that come about?
Like, what years was that going on?
Mid-70s?
Late 70s?
He started buying antlers.
Yeah.
Well, he used to pick them up back then.
And he'd only pick up the big brown ones.
And he was selling them to...
There was a...
I don't know how to say this, like an Asian buyer, middleman in the States were buying antlers.
How would you say that, Corinne?
That was quite fine.
You like that?
The reason I say that is, is I can't remember if it was a Chinese or Korean at the time.
Sure.
And there are different Asian folks who believe that antlers have medicinal value.
So, yeah, that was totally appropriate.
So anyways, he was selling them to these buyers and he was tired of them taking advantage.
They were. taking advantage they were he i mean he felt he so presumably he felt he was selling them for a
lot less than their actual value yeah and then the there would be two or three of them there and
that one would be throwing the antlers over the truck into the bushes before they weighed them
you know they just weren't scrupulous, yeah. What state was this going on in?
I think, I don't know where the buyers were, but it was in the Montana area.
Okay.
And he got tired of that.
So he went and convinced the local bank to bankroll them and so he started buying and going around the middleman straight to
the overseas market and it kind of just snowballed from there who was who was he who did he go to to
find a direct market for his antlers and what were they using them for back then they were using them
for medicinal purposes i guess uh they grind them
right no they were slicing them and wafer thin and simmering them in a tea and i'm sure they
were probably mixing ginseng and some other herbs in there and drinking the broth really
yeah have you done this corinne no never. But there's a picture of that, the like really paper thin slices that I put into the document
just for you to see.
You know, there's some serious, serious.
I just did some screen grabs from Amazon, right?
So I went down the rabbit hole looking at all the different forms that you can consume.
But that's velvet.
It could be velvet and below is just the slices. down the rabbit hole looking at all the different forms that you can consume. But that's velvet. That's velvet.
It could be velvet, and below is just the slices.
Okay, so there's two products here that Corinne pulled off Amazon.
One of them has four ratings.
Five-star review, four ratings.
Elk Velvet Antler.
But I think that's from Farm Raised.
Yeah, and they're calling it. It is. that's from like farm raised. Yeah, they're calling it.
It is.
It's from elk farm.
They're calling it velvet antler for dogs.
Glucosamine supplement, hip and joint health.
Glucosamine.
Yeah, I was going to say I'm not real.
Oh, really?
Learned it on certain, but I'm pretty sure it's glucosamine.
Jamie just said that Tony knows. It's Luron. Well, no, I don't. I'm certain, but I'm pretty sure it's glucosamine. Jamie just said that Tony knows.
It's LuRum.
Well, no, I'm not seeing.
I obviously can't.
Oh, here.
Sorry, Tony.
So, yeah, she'll pass over.
Another product that Corinne pulled up, two ratings, three-star review.
Oh, that little bottle is, that little bottle, how many ounces is that bottle, Corinne?
Oh, I can't see right now.
So, they're touting it.
I don't know. Is it like a four ounce bottle?
I don't know how big that bottle is.
They're touting it as a joint health
anti-inflammatory, increased energy
and a healthy coat for your pet.
And then there's another product
that she has here that Corinne pulled up
from Ginseng
Store and More Deer Antler Slices. Premium whole that she has here that crim pulled up from ginseng store and more deer antler slices
premium whole seca deer antler slices energy hormones here's the description this is a this
is from a esa this is from an english as a second language individual, I believe. That's exactly right. Deer, antler slices, antler velvet, hole slices,
seek a deer antler, loo wrong.
Energy, hormones, sex.
Health for men and women.
I got a question for you.
Back then.
Are we in the middle of a question?
Well, we already talked.
I think that's pretty self.
I want to go back to his dad.
Also, a beautiful place.
Oh, no, I'm not even...
Yeah, go ahead.
I'm not even scratching the surface on his old name.
Remind me, though, I've got a story about that for you.
Okay.
Can't wait.
Back then, that was the only market.
He wasn't perhaps selling big antlers to taxidermists or none of that stuff that's going on now. There was always a market for a few belt buckles and some knife handles,
but no, the majority of it was going straight over suits.
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Was your old man, was he always looking for ways to make money outdoors?
Like, was he a fur trapper or like a mushroom hunter? He trapped he originally moved to the madison valley to for
the lion hunting okay so yeah and he trapped he processed wild game yeah just so he just pulled
it together from the outdoors so it's natural for him to be like hey there's money to be made in
antlers or i could find a way to make money antlers and get into antlers yeah when did he establish your guy's company he went and he incorporated probably in the early 80s
okay and when you were when were you born before then
i was born yeah anyways i moved up to mont to Montana from San Diego when I was 15,
and that's when I got kind of.
What were you doing in San Diego?
Living with my mom.
Oh.
Yeah, so I came up here.
So your mom and dad, I don't want to open old wounds here.
Well, no, I mean, no, they divorced when I was young.
And your mom hauled you off to San Diego? Well, no, my dad was down there and then he moved up oh i see and then uh anyways
i came up to visit and saw that you could carry guns in the truck and get away with it uh-huh
you know and i'm like i'm in yeah so and then I got started. He was already buying and selling then, and I just kind of started helping out after school and on the weekends and then started doing it full time probably.
17 years old.
85-ish is when I started actually traveling on the road buying.
And back then, it wasn't like it is now uh a lot of people brought their stuff in and i
just buy antlers all day long at the shop and people just stop by all day long with piles of
antlers uh-huh but then i did start traveling and meeting buyers so was it like very seasonal, like all in the spring?
It used to be very seasonal.
Basically, it started in early April,
and then by July you were done with the buying.
But now with the antler market being so competitive
and so many people involved, now it, it's a year round thing.
So talk to,
talk to me about when you got started,
what was,
you had a shop in the Madison Valley.
Yeah.
And you had a sign out that said,
I buy antlers,
we buy antlers or some such.
Yeah,
probably.
Yeah.
And people are bringing in what all kind of antlers?
Mainly deer and elk.
Okay.
And how are you valuing, before the antler market exploded and there became all these
multiple competing things like dog chews and all this other aphrodisiacs, all this shit.
Yeah, there's no aphrodisiacs involved.
I'll say that.
That's a myth.
That's a myth.
If it was an aphrodisiac,
I'd be in prison
because I snored enough
of this dust
during the course of a day
to kill the average mortal.
But what are they harvesting?
Yanni, in New Zealand,
what are they harvesting
all that velvet for?
Supplements.
Oh, it is.
Well, this ad right here
says it helps sex.
Energy, hormones, sex.
The velvet thing's, hormones, sex.
The velvet thing's like different, man.
It was like all over the news a couple years ago.
Like that's the set.
I think the hormone thing is tied to the velvet.
There is testosterone in there to a certain degree, but it's not a sexual enhancement that I'm aware of.
And you'd know?
Well, you would think, right?
Yeah, like you'd get done with a day of antler cutting.
But look, I did some research. Honey, here I come.
There's some scientific journal articles out there that are testing the antler Core beyond just the the velvet as well. So I mean
from
from a
from an a single article
From science direct there some conclusions that the deer antler base has emerged as a good source of traditional medicine
Oh
Sorry, let me back up antler base has emerged as a good source of traditional medicine. Oh, sorry.
Let me back up.
Key findings, both in vitro and in vivo pharmacological studies
have demonstrated that deer antler base possess immunodulatory,
anti-cancer, anti-fatigue, anti-osteoporosis, anti-inflammatory,
analgesic, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-stress, antioxidant.
You get the picture.
There are like 12 more antis.
And although the mechanism of action is still not clear,
the pharmacological activities could be mainly attributed to the major bioactive compounds amino acids polypeptides and proteins uh based on animal studies and clinical trials
deer antler base causes no severe side effects so this is just one uh research studies key findings
uh do you know you do you know um when you're talking about the early buyers do
you know this you must notice because this is a quote from you this fella johnny wang
as being uh an early like godfather of antler shipping basically yeah yeah so you eventually
got to go you eventually went into competition with him, I'm assuming.
Kind of.
He was, I met him when I first got going and he was going down to that antler auction, but he was buying antlers.
But then he kind of faded away.
And my dad kind of took over that godfather role.
When you guys. He was, my dad was the buyer for years.
And most of the people that compete against him were actually buyers for us at that time.
So he created his own competition, which is human nature.
How would you guys, how would you guys get, how would you guys create a buyer mark, a buyer network around the country?
You just touch base with people and they find you, they find me.
And you got to establish a relationship with them and deem them trustworthy because there's a lot of money involved.
And we have been stung before.
Do you bankroll your buyers?
Most of them.
You do?
Yeah.
So you got to be, you know, real careful.
How many buyers work for you buying antlers?
I'd say a good, at least 10.
Okay.
And in what, what geographical area?
Mostly the Rocky Mountains.
And I do have some buyers out in the Midwest.
I'm establishing some contacts out there.
For whitetail antlers?
Yeah.
What are those being used for?
The same.
So it goes for the same stuff?
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a heck of a lot more whitetail deer.
And although their antlers are smaller than elk, I would think that overall there would be generally a more mass of whitetail antlers in this country
than there are elk antlers, right?
There are, uh, probably pounds and pieces.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Whitetails are almost coast to coast now, I
think.
Mm-hmm.
You know, when I first started hunting in
Montana, back when you were in diapers, probably, maybe, you
didn't see whitetails hardly at all on the river bottoms.
First deer I ever shot with a bow was a mule deer buck on the river.
Mm-hmm.
And now, you know.
Yeah.
They're taking over the world, man.
Yeah.
When you say you've been stung before, is that like you've ended up with antlers from someone that got them?
No.
Meaning you send money to buyers and they don't give you antlers back.
Yeah.
Or they sell them to your competition.
Yeah.
I was wondering if you ended up with antlers that that person shouldn't have had in the first place.
No.
Tell me what's antler worth right now.
Right now the market's down.
It's soft.
Relative to what?
Relative to when, I guess.
To the springtime, the shed season.
It usually strengthens up then.
Oh, so it's on a seasonal slump right now
yeah right basically you know everybody's pretty well i guess you got to go out in
three months and you got to buy your whole year's inventory in three months
and when most people get full up then they back off so are you when you when you set out to buy antler in the
spring are you trying to fill up you're trying to fill a specific order are you just trying to buy
as much as no you got a night yeah basically now you're trying to buy all you can because
there is a lot of competition now there's buyers everywhere you know i'll go in states and
literally see three different antler buyers sitting on a street in three different towns in a 30 mile radius.
So, yeah, you got to really hustle now.
You see ads for it in the paper all the time, like in classifieds.
Yeah.
Craigslist.
Billboards.
Billboards.
Have you ever done one of those billboards?
No.
Oh, really?
I don't advertise very much.
I run under the radar.
I don't drive with trailers.
Don't have big brands on it.
My name and phone number.
People find you.
They know who you are.
They'll find you.
Word of mouth.
So what is Antler going for?
Tell me like white tails, mule deer, elk, moose.
Like what are we talking about?
What could a seller.
Right now.
Right now. No, no, no, no.
Okay.
Whenever the hell.
When's peak?
Well, it depends.
Let's go to March.
Last March.
March 2022.
Or April 2022.
Whatever the hell month makes the most sense.
Well, last year, the price went down in the winter and then late winter, early, early spring, people start running out and then they'll go out and buy and then that'll bring the price up.
Because what happens is rather than just going out and hustling and buying the antlers people try to outbid you
by 50 cents a pound and all that does is bring the market up you know you can go out and pay
you can go out on the street and buy antlers and pay less than the going rate and you're still
going to buy antlers just by being there but you know that's what happens and when the demand like
right now in the last couple of years the demand exceeds the supply and that drives the price up.
Okay.
To?
Right now, right now, it's probably $17, $18 a pound.
For any kind of antler?
No, just for the egg, the brown, fresh elk.
Okay.
And what's a whitetail deer antler?
It's running 12 maybe right now for the brown stuff.
Is it like elk and whitetail deer and mule deer are all different and each one is graded A, B, and C?
And how do you classify what A, B, and C is?
Yeah, there's basically three grades.
I have four grades, actually. You know, you got what A, B, and C is? Yeah, there's basically three grades. There's, I have four grades actually.
You know, you got the A, which is the fresh quality, natural brown color.
And then there's the B grade, number two grade, which is stuff that's laid out for a year.
It's got hairline cracks in it, you know, and it's faded.
And then you have the C or number three grade, which is the chalk.
It's been laying out for several years.
And then we have what we call the number, I have a number four, I call it caca grade
where it's stuff just falling apart, nasty.
That's just going to go to powder.
So, but caca grade is still sellable and viable.
I tell people it's all worth something.
And I encourage anybody that's out there picking antlers, if you see an old rotten chunk, pick it up.
Because if somebody goes in behind you and finds that chunk, they might go back.
But if somebody goes into an area and you pick even the little chunks up,
they might not go back.
Pick your area clean.
Well, I mean, yeah.
But there's no secrets anymore.
I mean, people are everywhere now.
Every year I say, man, there's more now than ever.
And the next year there's even more now than ever
more what pickers or pickers or antlers shed hunters i'm gonna call them yeah sure you know
i i used to buy a lot of antlers off of a few people now i buy a few antlers off of a lot of
people basically do you think like are the majority of shed hunters out there doing it for money or just recreation?
They're doing it.
It's basically like catch and release hunting, I guess.
Yeah.
I mean, I used to, I was serious about it for a while in Colorado and it got crowded out there.
Yeah.
What we used to shed hunt, you know, in the 80s when not a lot of people did it.
And it was nice because we could shed hunt one area.
What you do is you watch the elk, see where they're feeding.
You get their daylight, let them go in the timber, and you go up every other day to their feeding areas, pick up a few antlers, and the elk never left.
And then when they're done shedding, then you go into the beds and pick up the rest of the antlers.
Now, when one elk loses one antler,
there's four guys up there running around
looking for it, pushing the elk around.
And, you know, it's just, it's very competitive.
Especially if there's a big one
everyone knows about.
Oh, yeah.
They got them named and.
Well, and that brings up the shed hunting seasons now.
Right. That's. That have been put into place because. I think that has a lot to do with it. Yeah. Well, and that brings up the shed hunting seasons now, right?
That's.
That have been put into place because.
I think that has a lot to do with it.
Yeah.
Especially like in the migration corridors down in, what is it, southwestern Wyoming, the big mule deer, that area.
People are going in there and running the deer around, you know, and you stop and think in that early spring, that's when the animals at their lowest levels and they're hungry and, you know, and pushing them around is very stressful on them.
Right.
So, but yeah, I, yeah, like Colorado, I think anything West of 25 is shut down to the 1st of May.
We've had game ranges around here that are shut down to the 1st of May.
That's been forever.
But Nevada, Wyoming is west of the divide.
I don't know if they've gone statewide yet.
For picking seasons.
Yeah.
Are there guys
right now um i got two let me ask another question first do you do elk ranch antlers follow the same
market path or is that its own market guys that are raising elk and ranches yeah i don't know i
don't i don't buy a lot of that stuff. Okay, so you buy mostly wild antlers.
Yeah, that stuff, if they cut it in August, you know, just when they're peeling velvet, they're white and real sharp.
And there's that blood.
There's a lot of blood in there, but it just seems like the wild antlers that are out in the sun, the wind, the weather, that blood and the wild stuff stays good the stuff in the ranch
because they cut them and they throw them in sheds or barns and they get hot anyways that blood
spoils and it when you cut them it smells like oh really rotten protein and they're they're just
cutting them so they're not beating each other up yeah when they're in a, when they're in a finched in area, you have to do that
because when the rut hits.
Do you know,
are there guys right now
that,
you know,
even though it's gotten crowded,
how many guys are out there
that you deal with
that are able to,
that are able to at least
make a seasonal living
picking antlers?
Quite a few.
Yeah.
Quite a few.
There's people that
literally go on vacation quite a few there's people that literally
go on vacation
just to do that
there's a lot of people
that are hunting
guides in the fall
and they don't have
a lot to do in the spring that's all they do is
pick there's a few
pickers out there or shed hunters
i should say excuse me that find a lot of antlers a lot but they don't have anything else going on
i tell people if you're going to start shed hunting don't do it don't depend on the money
you're going to be greatly disappointed you know know, there were some comments in that picture.
You know, I've never, that's why I can't find an antler.
Well, no, that's not true.
The reason you can't find the antler is you got to go
where they are in the wintertime.
You can't just go walking around the hills
and expect to find an antler.
It doesn't work.
You know, you got to go to their winter grounds,
you know, or where they live yeah at
that time of the year to find the antlers you can't just go wandering around yeah so what are the uh
talk about how the dog chew market came in like when it came in and how it changed the business
i mean i was blown away um i'm sure it was going on long before I was aware of it but I was
blown away when I started hearing from people that are paying seven bucks ten
bucks for a six inch chunk antler dinky little half piece well what happened was
way back when like I said we'll go back to the beginning. It was mainly export.
And then there for a while that went kaput, that flattened out.
They stopped importing antlers overseas.
Because of why?
Something got a different market?
No, just something happened. Something went wrong over there, and a lot of it has to do with the strength of the dollar against the yen or won or whatever.
Yep.
And anyways, so then that, there was always export, but that was just it.
And then there was the chandelier furniture market.
Oh, that predated the chew toy?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was in the 90s.
There was a butcher, a baker, and a chandelier maker in every town now there's a butcher a baker and a dog chew
maker in every town okay so before we do dog chew let's do the let's do the chandelier market okay
that would have only affected premium grade shit though. Yeah, basically.
So then the stuff that wouldn't work for that,
then you just send it overseas.
So you were buying, at that period,
you were buying with an eye toward chandelier market.
During that time, yeah.
The four-point mule deer sheds,
the nice big brown ones, those brought the big money.
What was that?
What was big money?
It was up to 18 bucks a pound, I think.
Wow.
And then there for a while-
So even for the chandelier market, you were still buying them by the pound and not by
the piece.
Yeah, by the pound.
And there was-
And how many of those might go into a big chandelier back in those days?
Well, there's, we had some that were three tiers.
There'd be 60 antlers in them see man I thought about
getting it now I didn't want to get into the supply business but I looked at my
head a nice pile antlers for quite a while and I kept thinking about how I was
gonna run wire through all that shit make some crazy thing out of it you know
I never got around to it you know how many people we're gonna do that and then
they sell you antlers with screwed upup drill holes and broken-off screws in them?
I even went so far as to talking to buddies of mine who were showing me how to go about it and little kits and stuff.
How you get that drill to drill around the corners.
Yeah, like directional drilling or whatever.
Yeah.
It really took off.
Is that market dead now? No. It's still there. The really took off. Is that market dead now?
No.
That's still there.
The chandelier.
But now you look at them.
Sometimes you'll be sitting there in some New West faux lodge, and you'd be like, every
one of them antlers is exactly the same.
Yeah.
Fakeys.
Because they make a fakey now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We, back in the day, when was that?
In mid-90s? We were, we had a Cabela's. We were selling in the day, when was that? In mid-90s?
We had a Cabela's.
We were selling, we made this small chandelier that was on a metal fixture, and it was small, and we were selling them through Cabela's, and we were selling hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them.
How many antlers were on those?
Eight.
Okay.
So eight mule deer antlers.
We called it the boulder. Yeah, or white-tailed. There was white-tailed and mule deer antlers we called it the boulder yeah white tails there was white tail and mule deer anyways what do you mean why'd you call it the boulder it was just a brand
it was the name the name that you gave it we had a red lodge we had a madison you know you just
come up with the quirky names but so you were making them. You were in the business.
Personally, I wasn't.
I don't have the self-discipline to build one.
Okay, but you were using your antler and having to build. Yeah, we had people working for us that were making them full-time.
Got it.
And anyways, so then Cabela's bought this fake antler company where they were casting fake antlers.
And then they started doing their own.
That to me, that just feels like, I mean, how could you get into that?
Who would want a fake antler chandelier?
A lot of people wouldn't know the difference.
Numbers.
A lot of people wouldn't know the difference between a real one and a fake one.
And then the cost is a third.
That's the thing that blows my mind, too, is how could it be cheaper to make a fake antler chandelier?
Pour some plastic into a mold.
Well, I know.
Yeah, but the other shit's just laying around out in the woods, dude.
Yeah. Finite quality, though. Well, I know. Yeah, but the other shit's just laying around out in the woods, dude. Yeah.
Finite quality, though.
Supply and demand.
Okay, I got to interrupt our timeline for a minute because I'm going to forget to ask you this.
Do you buy it on, will you buy deadheads just to get the antlers off the skull?
Or do you say to the guy, cut them off, then I'll buy it?
No, a lot of times I'll buy them.
We've got the big commercial saws and it makes pretty quick work of it.
So just same thing pot you cut the
skull off and weigh it yeah okay weigh the antlers yeah there's no there's no prohibition to get
selling a dead head no no as long as it's legal yeah in the state that you're in in wyoming you
have to get them tagged got it for the fishing game and and um i think new me, that's taboo without a tag.
You know what I like about the system in New Mexico is when you find something out in the woods like that, like a deadhead.
We found Ibex deadhead.
And a game warden comes out and he puts a value on it.
And you buy it from the state.
So we found Ibex deadhead.
And it wasn't in great condition.
It could get more, but it was just like a young deadhead.
And he came out, and I can't remember what he told us.
He said, I don't know, $10.
So he spent $10 in gas to come and tell you $10.
Well, no, because what's funny about it is he was real curious about our hunting license and all that, too.
He got a twofer.
We called. We got a twofer. We called.
We had a deadhead.
He came out, told us $10.
It was me and Kevin Murphy.
I think we each paid $5.
While I'm here.
Split it in half.
And then basically while I'm here, and he got down to brass tacks and our legality and stuff.
So the chandelier market.
Okay.
You got into that.
You're Antler Company.
Yeah, my dad's Antler Company, yeah.
Got it.
And what were the years that that was hot?
Mid to late 90s.
Yeah.
Maybe into the early 2000s.
Okay.
Then it kind of petered off.
Fell out of fashion.
Well, yeah, but it was still going.
It just wasn't as strong as it was.
Yeah, yeah.
Saw a lot of that where Giannis and I were at that time.
The ski towns.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's a weird thing about ski people and ski towns. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a weird thing about ski people in ski towns.
That was when the lodge decor was big.
But why are they not always into that?
Like,
why don't they decorate it like they're skiing?
If you go to,
I had to go,
they do,
but I had to go to big sky one night.
That's mixed up right in there.
And the,
I had to go to big sky one night and at the hotel,
you know what they dress up like at the hotel?
Like cattle ranchers.
It's like,
why are you guys dressed like cattle ranchers? They wear
dusters? It's like,
why are you dressed like ski people?
Like, you're like the, this is not,
this is like the opposite of cattle ranching.
Let's get back to it. This is the end of,
it's like, why in the world
are you dressed like cattle ranchers?
Do you really want an explanation?
Yes, yes, yes.
You don't understand?
And why would a ski place have elk antlers when it's the antithesis of elk?
Do you know what I mean?
They don't think all that through.
Oh.
Anyways.
Chandelier market.
Chandelier market.
Right.
So then, tell me how the chew to like how like
where'd the chew toy thing come from
you know everybody not everybody but a lot of people said oh i was the first to do it before
anybody else but but you were the first no no but i mean you, a lot of times in the antler business, the first liar don't stand a chance, you know.
But when it comes to my piles and how much I buy and, you know, it's always a one-upmanship.
But there was a guy down in Texas, I think, Mike, who started it.
A Texan named Mike?
Yeah.
And what did he do um basically i guess he saw one of his friend's
dogs chewing on an antler and then the light went off yeah i mean ranch dogs my dog i can't i can't
verify he was the actual first but if he he wasn't, it was a close tie.
And around what year was that that someone had the light bulb go off?
I have no idea.
I think the dog chew business has been going on pretty strong for 15-ish years.
Okay.
In that New Yorker article, it said 2004.
I mean, at some point, the pet health food market latched on to antlers.
And that's got to have an effect on it.
There was a big scare that came from China where there was a bunch of dog food and dog treats that had, like, cardboard in it.
And there was a big deal.
And people started, I think they started going organic and stuff.
Like all natural.
Yeah.
People spend a lot of money
on their dogs.
Yeah.
More so than their kids.
I was telling Corinne,
no, it's a better return
on your investment.
With a dog,
you get unconditional love.
What do you get with a kid?
Well, dog,
I keep telling my kids,
that dog you got,
I tell them,
I was telling them this yesterday,
the dog you got
that's only good
for another 10 years
is going to be dead.
But I'll be around
a lot longer than that.
Doesn't matter, does it?
No, they think
they still like that dog better.
You're right.
So how do you buy
for the dog?
Like, when you're looking at a pile of antlers in your head, are you like, that looks perfect for the dog like when you're when you're looking at a pile of antlers
in your head are you like that looks perfect for the dog chew business
it's all pretty much perfect for the dog chew business even the chalky ones
i don't sell chalky ones i know people that do but i don't sell the chalky ones but you just
told me you tell your guys to pick up everything.
Yeah.
There's a market for all of it.
Okay.
But you said you don't sell chalky ones.
For dog chews.
Oh, I see.
Two and two together equals slow boat overseas.
Got it.
Well, I don't get it.
What's that mean?
Containers.
Okay.
Overseas to Asian markets.
Export.
Got it.
So they get separated out.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
You grade them.
Got it.
You grade them out.
So who comes to you to buy?
You're not bagging up and going around and banging on the door to sell dog shoes.
Who do you see? Who's your end consumer? And you're just bagging up and going around and banging on the door to sell dog chews. Who orders dog chew bones from you?
Most of them are the distributors that distribute to the pet chains.
Okay.
And I sell mostly bulk.
They take and brand it.
They package it.
And then they send it off to the pet stores. And you buy it and cut it. They package it. And then they send it off to the pet stores.
And you buy it and cut it.
Right.
Where are you doing all that?
In Ennis.
Okay.
And what volume of stuff are you cutting up for dogs?
Volume as total pounds?
Yeah, like how many pounds are going out there in the world?
How many pounds of antlers are going out there in the world?
From just me?
Or everybody.
Yeah, however you put your grip
around the size of the dog chew industry.
It's hard to say
because like I said,
if you ask a lot of the buyers
how much they buy
and how much they sell,
they're not going to give you
an accurate answer.
You don't say.
Wait, do you?
No.
I wouldn't tell you even if I knew.
I really don't know my exact poundage.
It's always coming and going.
You know, you buy a trailer load, you sell half a trailer load.
It's always coming and going so what's walk me through why not
um walk me through the reasons to not share that because it'd be like you're because you don't want
to um you don't want to expose the magnitude and impact of the industry because you don't want to
inform competitors yeah i just want to protect my little slice of the pie and you feel that by giving me
concrete numbers every time i ask how much of this or how much of that would impact your slice
of the pie possibly because people know where i go and that's why i fly under the radar
there's other buyers arrive in the middle of the night i stopped and this is no kidding i
stopped in this unnamed town and stayed the night and i got a phone call from a friend of mine in
another state and says so-and-so just called me what are you doing in this town what town was it
it was over there it was in in Grants, New Mexico.
Oh, okay.
But this other buyer.
Thank you for the specificity.
This other buyer had people watching out for my vehicle.
And he knew I was there.
And I just stayed the night and left the next morning.
So you see what I'm saying?
So it's just, I like to, I just like to be kind of secretive.
I like to sneak around and get in and get my stuff and get out.
And if people find that you're buying a lot of antlers in an area, they might come in and try to help you take some of those from you.
I got you now.
So what's the hottest buying?
What do you feel is the hottest town?
Like the least exploited hottest buying town in
america bozeman monday yeah i'm sure all right that's it'd be hard to
it's hard to say earlier oh sorry go ahead brody what's the hottest state like what do you where
do you get the most from color Colorado's got the most elk.
They do.
Colorado's a really good state.
Colorado treats me well.
That's a good antler buying state.
It is.
After the 1st of May, of course.
You know earlier how we talked about the mountain men?
Mm-hmm.
Are you familiar with a fellow named John Coulter?
Are you familiar with the fact that many people think he was the first white man to see Yellowstone National Park?
I'm not familiar with that.
Wouldn't surprise me.
So then you probably aren't aware of the fact that for a long time they referred to Yellowstone as Coulter's Hell and people didn't believe him?
No.
What he saw there?
You know what he was doing when he went there?
Hunting sheds.
Nope. Oh. He was. This when he went there? Hunting sheds. Nope.
Oh.
He was.
This is very early in the beaver trade.
Coulter was going around trying to make contact with tribes to see if he couldn't get them interested in the beaver market, in the beaver trade.
Was there a period in antler buying when you had to do something similar?
Mm-hmm. Tell me about that.
Like,
Oh,
like going into an area and trying to establish.
Pickers.
Pickers.
Shed hunters.
Shed hunters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You go in and what I do,
if I go into a new area,
you take a sign and sit on a street corner empty lot they'll sign
out there and people will stop ask you a question so you're a few antlers and you just end up what
i like to do is uh if you don't end up getting a buyer there i uh it takes a year or two to figure
out who the players are in the area as far as shed hunters.
And then you just concentrate on taking care of them.
I can't afford to sit all day on a street corner usually.
You got to keep moving.
Well, you got to, when you're traveling, you got to buy X amount a day just to cover your overhead.
What's a big haul of antlers for an individual you can tell me this is not you
a shed hunter yeah a shed hunter what would be if i let's say i call you in the middle of an
annual haul you're asking by calling the middle of the night and i say uh i'm not a buyer i'm just a
shed hunter and i have blank pounds what would be the number that you'd say
that would perk your ears up?
Nowadays?
Sure.
500 pounds.
So if he says, I got 500 pounds,
I picked myself, your ears perk up.
Yeah, nowadays.
Well, tell me about 30 years ago.
Oh, there's guys that find 2,000 pounds.
Truck loads used to be average 300 pounds.
The pickup load.
When they say I got a pickup load, it used to be 300 pounds.
Now it's 75.
Seriously?
No, no, I swear.
Cause they're all dealing with so much competition.
Because there's so many people doing it.
Okay.
I used to go into towns.
I wouldn't even have to put up a sign.
They'd see my rig there.
And if I had a few antlers, we used to, used to have a flatbed car hauler and it put wire racks up so high and you just throw a hundred pounds in there.
And I'd pull into a gas station and people just start, you sit there for 30 minutes, people just start showing up and you could buy 2,000 pounds as fast as you could.
You could buy 2,000 pounds in a few hours from people.
Nowadays you can sit there all day and you might not buy 200 pounds.
Because there is a buyer in that town the day before you and there was another buyer two days before you.
But literally you mean like someone seeing your sign at a gas station,
calling, you know, Johnny calls Bill, hey, it looks like this guy's a buyer.
So everybody's just calling everybody who's accumulated sheds and just shows up. Yeah, they just show up.
It's like old-fashioned marketing.
You'd have 10, 12 people in line to sell your sheds.
You know, and it's not like that anymore.
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Are you familiar with role-playing?
You and me are going to
role-play. That's the secret to 29 years,
bud.
I'll be a guy named
Bert. Okay, we're role-playing. You're you.
You're you. You're in your hotel
down in New Mexico. Steve, you're Bert.
You're you. You're in your hotel down in New Mexico. You're you. You're in your hotel down in New Mexico.
You're sitting there in your underwear in your hotel room
and I call. Okay. And I say,
hey, I have 500 pounds
of, um,
I picked it myself. I have 500 pounds of
this year's brown elk
antler. Okay.
A bunch of 5 point, 6 point bulls
like good stuff. Okay i say uh what are you
paying that's gotta be how it goes right oh yeah yeah okay and you say what well whatever the price
is at the time okay well throw me one out okay if i if you were a picker, I'd say $17 a pound.
Okay.
Then I go, well, Bert said that he'd give me $18.
We're role-playing.
Sure.
That's what you tell him.
So you've got to answer, Tony.
He says Bert said $18. We're role-playing.
I'd say you sell him to Bert.
Because I know Bert's 18. Oh, I'd say I'd sell them to Bert because I know Bert's lying because when I go into an area, I know what the scoop is.
So it's like a set price that everyone's playing like the same.
Yeah, they don't do it that way.
No.
A lot of guys will quote, let's say this is an example and these numbers aren't set in
concrete.
The guy will come into a town, I'll pay $18 a pound for brown elk.
Okay.
And you get there.
Oh, wait, but they got to be five points without broken points and they got to be a certain
size and a certain shape.
And then the rest of it's $15 a pound.
Yeah. So you net $'s $15 a pound. Yeah.
So you net $15.10 a pound.
But to these guys, they got $18 a pound.
But I don't grade like that.
And if it's chewed on, it's worth,
even if it's brown, it'd be worth B grade price.
And, you know, everybody's got their smoke and mirrors
and I don't buy like that. I got a question for you know everybody's got their smoking mirrors and i don't
buy like that i got a question for you broken chewed it's all the same brown is brown i got
a question for you might not answer but less is less is sometimes more got it if if the if you're
by if you're giving me 15 bucks a pound you're making money somehow hopefully this is where he's gonna this is where you're
gonna find he's gonna be totally transparent is it just lay out the whole market for you is it
is it hot in here like are you are you getting 60 in a pound or are you getting 30 a pound why
are we talking percentages you may margins yeah yeah um no i'm not making 30 a pound. Why don't we talk in percentages? Margins. Yeah, margins. No, I'm not making $30 a pound.
It's somewhere in between.
Okay, you tell me.
Let's play it.
Let's play it.
What's that game?
High, low, or whatever?
Yeah, yeah.
You're getting warmer.
No, you try.
I mean, you try to, when it's all said and done, if you could make 20%.
Okay, that's fair.
Because you got overhead into it.
Overhead?
I could buy a very nice, I could make a very nice mortgage payment on a very nice house
just with my fuel bills every month.
I got one for you.
We don't need to role play it.
Thank you.
You go into a town.
Okay.
All right.
No, let me say this first.
Like you, you're one of the, um, you're one of the biggest elk antler buyers in the West.
Not the biggest.
No, but I'm up there.
I, well, okay.
Let's put it this way.
I'm in the top.
So many.
10, let's say.
I've downsized my business quite a bit.
Oh, okay.
We'll get to that.
I want to know why.
I can answer it in one word.
Oh, great.
Go ahead.
Well, two.
Three.
Too much work.
Okay.
That's fine.
But anyways.
You go into a town.
You go down to New Mexico to buy antler.
Okay, time out. Why New Mexico?
Because you mentioned
you mentioned New Mexico
earlier. Okay. What state do you want to do?
Colorado. Okay, you go to
Colorado. Colorado treats me really well.
Eagle Colorado. You go to
Colorado to buy antler.
Been there.
And someone's like, oh shit, some guy was just in town buying antler.
Are you probably going to wind up seeing that pile of antler as a buyer?
Possibly.
Okay.
So here's where I feel like the price is, that you're deceiving me and the price isn't fixed.
Word goes around that it's 18 bucks a pound.
Some guy goes down with a sign in a van and sits there all day on the corner and buys a bunch of antler for 18 a pound.
When he comes to you now, he's got it.
Are you really not going to up it a little bit to get that big pile of antler?
Possibly.
But the number 18 is just a fictitious number.
I mean, it could be usually the street-level buyers, we'll call them, that sit there all day.
They usually pay less than a kingpin. Well, I'm not a kingpin. No, I thought you were
doing, it sounded like drug vernacular. But you know what I'm saying is, you know, there's tonnage
buyers. There's different levels of buyers. There's upper tier and lower tier. I'm probably
mid upper. I'm not going to claim I'm the biggest, baddest guy in the world.
I know I'm not.
Yep.
I just do what I can do myself.
But basically, yeah.
But I stay out of areas where I have people that buy for me working.
So I don't create competition against myself if somebody
calls me from eagle colorado and says hey i got 50 pounds or 100 pounds when are you coming i says
well i i but here's a guy i'll have a guy get a hold of you he'll just come and get him and he'll
treat you good and and they're like oh okay no No. I got a question about a part of the market that may not fall under the poundage price.
And that's like, do you have a completely little separate part of your business that's for like big, giant antlers?
That was exactly my next question, Brody.
Where does the crazy shit go?
Because I imagine those, like, obviously the poundage thing doesn't work for that market.
No.
There is, and I'm quoting air quotes for those who can't see, a trophy shed market where things are usually bought, like shed sets are bought by the set.
Yeah, you can, down at the Western Honey Expo there in Salt Lake, there's usually some booths set up.
And you'll see a set of, you know, 380s, and they're asking five, six, seven grand for them.
And good luck.
You don't think they ever sell them?
Maybe one.
Maybe one.
You can put whatever price you want on them.
Sure, yeah. you can put whatever price you want on them yeah but you can't go you can't put 1500 on them
and try to negotiate negotiate up to 2500 so you put eight grand yeah and come down yes you know
uh but no that's that's that's a lot of money for a 380 set of elk sheds sure i just made that up i
don't know if that's i mean it's been a
long time since i was there i just remember looking at a set of sheds going geez really
that's a lot of money for a set of sheds right right right what was the craziest thing or the
biggest thing or whatever you ever seen just thrown into a pile of sheds that came into the market
biggest and craziest yeah just whatever like oddball like i mean if you looked
at so many thousands and thousands of antlers what kind of stuff flows through that catches
you by surprise every once in a while you'll get a big boon and crocket shed
of some species that gets into the pile by accident. They didn't know what they were looking at.
Yeah, and a lot of times when I'm buying,
you're throwing 100 pounds around at a time,
you're not paying much attention.
When you're unloading the trailer, you go, oh, wow.
And that gets thrown into another pile.
Well, you throw it aside,
and I've got a pile of trinkets, I call them.
That was my next question.
And I've had some of these trinkets for three or four years and yeah because they can't be
like it's got to be a match set to really like or yeah or a very unique single shed did you bring
us like a real crazy present like a crazy ass but but but it's not out of the question, but I'd have to bring it from Ennis.
I couldn't fit it on the airplane.
Got it.
No, I do a lot.
I don't have a, quote, trophy market where I sell a lot.
I do a lot of trading with people.
Okay.
Like if I find, if I know Bert in Eagle, Colorado or wherever, looking for non-typical mule deer sheds.
And if I get one, I'll trade him some poundage.
I see.
You know, that's, I do, it's about 96% how I do it.
Got it.
You're after the poundage.
Well, yeah, but I mean, it's just, it's easier to market it and sell it that way.
If you go down to the auction in Jackson, you can see people sitting on the square and
they get their parking spots where they sell their trinkets and they've got a lot of very
nice sheds that are very expensive and they don't sell them.
So, you know, to me, I'm looking at it like i can take that shed
okay and turn it into something that i can move instead of that money sitting there
you know money costs money right yeah so why not keep it moving i took us i bought no here's
a story i bought a set of chalky elk sheds and they
were really nice they weren't giant but it was like an eight by nine okay and i i don't know
i traded a guy an antler what'd you pay for him well i traded okay a moose paddle for them. Got it. So I had probably 80, 90 bucks in it.
Okay.
Then I took it and I drove it across the state, and this was in Colorado, and I traded for 260 pounds of assorted grades of deer antlers.
So I ended up getting a lot of money for that moose paddle.
I turned a moose paddle into a
a fairly decent pile of deer antlers yeah home run for everybody yeah you know so but stuff like that
and it wasn't it wasn't two thousand dollars worth of deer antlers i mean there was a lot
of chalk in there and stuff but i mean it worked out good do you everybody do you notice um on sort of on a meta scale on a large
scale when you're when you're handling thousands of these antlers do you notice years where you're
like man there was great antler growth or poppy elk populations are down or up or you you definitely see that
what what give me some examples of how how that might play out in a specific area let's say okay
well i'll start with the northern yellowstone elk herd that comes out of the park and migrates up
paradise valley it used to be 16 000 elk roughly or take. Now it's down to, I don't even know, less than 7,000.
Yeah.
Still shooting all kinds of cows.
You know, and I attribute a lot of that to the
introduction of the wolves.
Sure, yeah.
You know.
And some areas where you have dry years, it seems
like the antlers are brittle.
Okay.
Not a lot of mass.
And wet years, you seem like you get good antler growth, good mass.
A lot of down south in various states, they don't get their rains until July.
So things don't green up until later in the year.
So that next year brings the antler growth.
It depends on what kind of feed they're carrying in.
Got it.
So you can tell in some areas that are dry that the antler growth just isn't, you know, it's good.
Do you see certain, like maybe that, I don't know if you'd see this or not, but like certain tendencies in like the elk antlers in one part of the country
versus and like they grow a certain way oh there's characteristics yeah there's genetics yeah of
course like for instance certain areas in arizona new mexico you get those i don't know what people
call them they call them the devil points that come off the brow tines they stick
up like this or some areas have three brow tines you know or forked brow tines um and then there's
other areas where they got tops that come out different you know yeah certain areas
that yellowstone heard for years you could tell what areas they
came from because they had really short g3s that was just the genetics for the
time no you still hear people talk about that all the time yeah are there more
deer antlers sold than elk antlers just due to the prevalence of, for example,
whitetail nationally, you know, in terms of like what you're buying?
What I'm buying personally?
No, I buy more elk than deer.
Okay, and then maybe in the market.
But I choose to do that.
Okay, so then maybe in the market generally, nationally for buyers.
That's a hard one to answer.
You know, because I don't know what other buyers do.
Sure, sure.
But realistically speaking, it would make sense because I think there are a lot more deer in the United States than there are elk.
And I mean, I think when, you know, I bought an antler chew for my dog a couple years ago.
He showed absolutely no interest, so I never bought one again.
But it was a deer antler, not an elk antler.
So I can't remember seeing elk antlers being used as dog chews.
But I, you know, I think it's been more deer antlers used as dog chews.
Possibly, it depends on, I guess, where you go. But I think it's been more deer antlers used as dog chews. Yeah, possibly.
It depends on, I guess, where you go.
But I sell mostly elk.
Mm-hmm.
And in terms of your, like, based on the grade of the antler, deer or elk, what grade of which antler becomes what end product? Well, the A or the number one grade and the number two grade
usually go for the dog chews.
And then the number three grade, I know people that sell them,
but I don't like it.
It's just they're so dried out they could be brittle.
But it's not so like grade A for you is going to dog choose and not someone's chandelier, for example.
No.
Okay.
I mean, you always pull out, I've got piles of nice sheds, you know, that I keep out.
Chandelier quality.
Yeah, chandelier quality in case somebody's looking for some.
I got a big pile of deer where when we get back, we're going to start building our Christmas tree.
Make Christmas tree out of antlers.
So you've been saving for that?
Yeah, I just, yeah.
And then, you know, and if nobody wants to buy this furniture quality, we'll say, then yeah, you know, you can always sell them as dog chews later that does really
sound like the
dog chew market
is dominant
at least based
on how you're
choosing to sell
I think it's a
controlling force
right now
without a doubt
without a doubt
how would you
rate the
in your experience
like how would
you rate the
seediness level
of the antler
market
oh man
like I would it brings out you know it brings out the worst in a lot of people How would you rate the seediness level of the antler market? Oh, man.
It brings out the worst in a lot of people.
Because in the late 70s, early 80s, the fur trade, when it was crazy hot, it developed a seediness. Yeah, and we've talked to game wardens where a lot of people who are poaching are tied to some other type of criminal activity, drug dealing or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I get, whenever I'm in towns, police stop me all the time.
Say, hey, did you buy any antlers off of so-and-so?
And I said, I look through my receipts.
I keep accurate receipts on who I deal with.
And I say, no.
And they said, well, keep your eyes out.
This is a vehicle.
Here's a license plate number.
Here's my card.
Please call me.
Sure, no problem.
Because they're stealing antlers.
And usually they're doing that to fund other vices, we'll say, possibly.
And it seems that's where it gravitates towards the illicit stuff.
Dude, that tree is incredible.
Yeah.
It's pretty cool.
Did you guys make that tree?
Yeah.
How many antlers total?
Oh, no clue.
You can't move it.
No clue.
Holy shit.
It's got to be several hundred, right?
Oh, it's probably 150 minimum okay of deer and elk mix but yeah
it took us about three evenings farting around you know when the one of the times on the antler
market blew up i guess it was kind of like i don't know i don't know what year it was and it probably
because you've been in it so long something the beginning of things don't seem like the beginning
to you because you were in it like
from the infancy of various things okay but i don't know when i became aware of like just like
the antler market the antler market uh i had a friend well my brother in alaska danny he would
take all the shed antlers and all the shit he killed and he'd make like a cylinder that climbed
this big spruce tree.
Yeah. And just wrap a tree in it.
One day he comes home and it's just gone.
Right.
A buddy of mine had a, I was actually in on this bull we killed.
Another friend of mine up in Alaska.
We killed a nice bull one time and I was there with him when he got it.
And we were talking about that and he's like gone.
Hung in my garage for years and they come home and it's just gone.
And that was right around the
same time my brother's tree got picked clean yeah somebody went through and made a few stops
you know but as a buyer um obviously like well i don't know man like you know if you
for instance in some stuff in some stuff in wildlife a buyer is under like quite a bit of
they're under quite a bit of they're under
quite a bit of pressure to vet what's coming like you go to a taxidermist right they you can't just
walk in with crazy shit new taxidermist he's like i need your tag i need your license right whatever
if you go to a tannery right it's like whatever state you're coming from what are the regulations
of that state is it supposed to be sealed do you have records and all that but when you're talking about antlers um that you don't there's no
regulatory structure in place on tagging the shit right so how you know to what degree are you held
responsible for where something came from when you have no real way of vetting it you're really not you're not you you've got your
gut like you know you can deal with some people and you go this isn't right i'm writing the license
plate down got it so you've had you'll have a guy approach and you're like you didn't find those
antlers like you got them somehow besides that well sometimes, sometimes, yeah. No, you can't go out and say that, but you get a gut feeling, especially when somebody shows up with a pile of chalky stuff that's nice and clean and it's got some grass and flower leaves stuck to it.
Like they just took it out of somebody's flower garden.
Yeah.
Usually if they show up with a couple of browns and maybe a number two grade and then some chalky ones. Yeah, they're probably okay.
But when they show up with a pile of chalk, like they stole it from somebody's yard.
Might you then turn them away?
No.
I mean, because if you're not knowingly doing anything, but that's when you take extra notations.
Yeah, because it could have been his flower bed.
Sooner or later, the police are going to probably stop and ask you questions.
Here you go.
I mean, I'm not a hush-hush guy.
I mean, you know, if a game warden or somebody came up, hey, here's my, it happened down in the auction three, four years ago.
Bought some antlers off a guy.
He goes, you going to be here for a while? I said, sure. And he brought some antlers in a guy he goes you're gonna be here for a while
sure and he brought some antlers in bottom threw him in the trailer and i left the auction and
went to the motel room and i'm sitting in bed talking to jamie on the phone and my phone rings
and i look call waiting and it's a 307 it was a jackson hole number and i says oh i gotta go somebody's
wanting to sell me antlers probably and they said oh this is so-and-so from the
wyoming game and fish um can we talk to you sure he goes did you buy some antlers off of so-and-so
matter of fact we did he goes where you at right And I said, I'm at my motel.
And he goes, can we come by?
And I said, sure.
He goes, I'll be there in one minute.
So they knew where I was at because the antler had a GPS tracker in it.
Oh.
So, but we didn't know.
And then, so opened up the trailer and he pulled the antler out and here it is.
And he goes, he goes, he sold you some more?
And I go, yeah.
He goes, where are the rest of his antlers?
And I go, there's 8,000 pounds in the trailer.
You know, pick them.
I don't know.
You know, because they were all mixed.
Yeah, yeah.
And I go, I don't know.
But anyways, he picked it up off the game range
before it opened down there, one of the feedlots.
And he took it to his house, and they knew he had it.
And as soon as he moved it, it started signaling.
And we bought the antlers and left, and the fishing game were there two minutes after we left.
So they plugged that one antler just to do a sting.
Not a sting, but to catch people yeah and then they'll go in on may 1st or right before may 1st and they'll take it out but
i go here here's my receipt here's my receipts this is the check number i paid him uh and they
copied that and they said hey thanks for your cooperation. And the guy that was with me that ended up having the antler says, hey, wait a minute.
You're taking this.
I'm losing money.
And they says, well, we'll give you a slip.
You can write it off as a loss.
Or if the guy gets busted.
His restitution.
Restitution.
And ended up getting the restitution back
years ago i was working on an article about livestock theft and i was hanging out with
some guys from the rural rural crime task force in bakersfield california and it was in scrap
prices were high they were running around putting transmitters inside irrigation pipe and shit like that.
He goes, you could put a stack of irrigation pipe out by the road, put a transmitter on it, and just wait until the next morning.
Gone.
He said it wasn't hard.
You know how many, during that issue, how many times electricians had to rewire houses because they go in and strip all
the copper out it's horrible you mentioned um you mentioned two things you mentioned calling it
slowing down on the business but you mentioned that there's a third generation coming up so
which is it slowing down or is it no no no just, no, no, no. Just downsized a little bit. I mean, you can only handle so much.
Uh-huh.
So, no, I just thinned out some accounts, downsized a little bit to a more manageable level.
It kept growing and growing and growing.
Is your business the kind of business that you could sell the business or does it die with you?
What's it worth?
I don't know enough about the business.
It's blue sky. I mean't know enough about the business.
I mean, you know, the people I deal with, there's no contractual agreements.
Yeah.
So, I mean, there's no monetary value on it.
Yeah.
Uh, and most of my contacts that I buy antlers from other people know, I mean,
with the advent of the social media, everybody knows everybody, so they're,
you know, so, and I'm not a big social
media guy. If you were to predict, you know, you talked about your son potentially being third
generation, where would you predict the market? Where would you say it could be going in five
years, 10 years? Is there going to be a new thing?
Are people going to get tired of giving their dogs antler chews?
No, I don't think.
I predict regulation.
That's what I was going to ask.
No, I was going to say what's going to happen is,
I think it's going to be regulated.
It's going to be like hunting licenses.
I think you'll always be able to sell antler dog chews. it's going to be like hunting licenses.
I think you'll always be able to sell antler dog chews.
Where it's going to go in five years, I have no idea.
I wish I knew then what I know now.
So I don't know. And maybe possibly there won't be a big commercial market in five or ten years.
I thought the dog chew market would have already played out.
It'll play out.
It will.
Well, I'm the guy that thought microbrews.
I'm the guy that predicted in 1996 that microbrews were over.
I don't know.
I was like, how many of these things could there be?
I don't know if that pet market's going anywhere.
I think that one.
Remind me not to take any stock tips from
you no i would not shit like that though anything outside of my i don't because they're i mean and
it's not just the antler dog chews just the single ingredient organic other things that are that the
dogs are chewing on and and eating uh um it's's like Jamie cooks for our dogs now.
We don't give them any dry food.
Sam shot that buck and that doe, the lungs, kidneys, the heart, everything.
We're not heart eaters.
So the kidneys, lungs.
Got it.
All the internal organs and the dogs just Eat it
That's a good idea
I do a lot of that for my dog
But I haven't done the lungs
That's a good idea
God they love that stuff
I just boil it man
I mince it up and boil it
She goes nuts
I do tongue
I do
I do 90%
90% raw
Don't even boil it.
No.
No.
You got to...
I flash fry it and throw it in there.
Slowly transition them over so you don't have intestinal distress.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Do you guys...
Has CWD affected your business at all?
No.
No.
Like moving stuff around?
Well, in certain areas of Colorado or certain areas, you got to, you can't transport a head
out of the county. It has to be boiled in county for you to transport.
So you got to saw the antlers on a dead head for you to transport?
Well, I do that most of the time anyways. They take up so much space.
But no, the CWD, other than that, no. Right. for your trans well i do that most of the time anyways they take up so much space
but no the the cwd other than that no right it's it's not there's there hasn't been any case that i'm aware of that dogs have actually no i i was just referring to like in general has that disease
affected how your business yeah like the regulation around interstate transport antlers probably
it's a very small percentage of deadheads that you end up dealing with yeah yeah very small
um oh my last i had another question i was gonna ask you
or the ones i do buy are already sawed off,
so you just end up with the antlers.
So it's not a big deal.
Well, I know what I was going to ask.
Cut out my nightmare when I was going to ask.
Okay.
If you're a seller, is there anything to gain?
Role play?
Role play again?
No, no, we don't need to role play.
Is there ever a pitch about why a
seller should go to you like do you feel like plugging do you feel like saying hey man if you
got elk antler call me honesty yeah he's honest yeah i mean i'm pretty straightforward track
record i when i when i like i just started buying antlers off a guy in the Midwest,
buys deer, and I go, look, here's my deal, okay?
I said, I'm going to be brutally honest with you one way or the other,
either way.
Like it could work for your favor or against your favor.
And I said, I expect the same treatment in return.
And I said, don't hide anything.
Don't pull any punches.
I mean, if you got a problem, call me, you know, and if I have a problem with you, I'm going to tell you.
And, you know, that's how we get along.
So transparency, honesty, you know, and yeah, the new people, they try you out
and if you treat them right,
they'll come back. So how do people
find you if they want to sell you a pile of antlers?
You gotta care. I do
care. They just, word
of mouth, my number's out there.
People know.
Tony Schoffler.
Well, I'm just, you know, like one guy I know that I buy from.
So you don't want to say your number right now.
Billy, you got antlers to sell?
Call me.
406-570-3371 i repeat 406-570-3371 i need to check if you're lying
you know what you know what three of the biggest lies are in the world was that a lie i love you
checks in the mail and i'm an honest antler buyer.
What was the number he just gave?
406-570-3371.
Oh, that's his number.
Yeah, it's on your phone.
That's really his number.
Yeah, no, I got your number.
Please no hate mail.
Yeah.
No, I think you're a salesman antler, man.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, I think you're a sales mantler, man. Yeah. Yeah.
If your kid takes over, he can adopt some of the new ways like social media and stuff like that.
Definitely.
He's, they're 14-year-old twins now.
I go to them.
My phone's not working and they fix it in 10 seconds.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I appreciate you coming on, man. Thanks for having me. I fix it in 10 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you coming on, man.
Thanks for having me.
It's, I guess it's an honor.
Like I said, I was telling Corinne, you guys are celebrities in some circles, I guess.
No, I'm just kidding.
No, you know, I watched your show since you
started and I kind of liked the way you do it.
Oh, thank you.
Appreciate it.
You know, it's not just going out there and shooting a big animal and i get a couple big ones no you do but you know
what it is it's not like you go to a private place and they know where this deer is and you set up
and you shoot it no you're out there doing the whole philosophical thing and thank you appreciate
it and get some ideas on cooking i like to do that for sure one thing
i'll never try is that boiled tongue that you and cal ate one time deer hunting in idaho
you don't know what you're talking about man i just did me and listen let me tell you i want
to give you a hot tip next time you get out when someone comes with some antlers say how about you sell me that tongue you get the tongue listen listen what i'm saying okay
put that tongue in a pot of water and barely simmer it the elk tongue deer tongue whatever
elk tongue's nicer okay barely simmer it until you notice it around where you cut it off that you notice the outer skin is
starting to peel away okay all right now put it in cold water plunge it in cold water so you don't
burn your fingers and see can i peel all the outer skin off if you can't let it boil longer
eventually you'll get all the outer skin peeled off the tongue okay it's white when
you peel it off now put a dry rub all over that some put in a smoker really then you slice
it up and eat that and tell me there's a problem with that okay everybody that eats it says the
same thing holy that's good some variation on that that. You know, I'm telling you, dude.
It's good.
Tacos, too.
So fatty and good.
Lingua.
I guess after a couple of beers, I'd
probably try just about anything. If I gave it to you
right now, if I gave it to you right now,
you'd know what it was.
You wouldn't know what it was, but you'd think it was
pretty damn good.
Our Great Dane loves tongue.
That's how it was the first time I ate mountain lion.
I didn't know what I was eating.
And you liked it.
Yeah.
Sure.
It looked like kind of, it was pork chop.
It looked like a pork chop.
It was gravy and rice, and I ate a bunch of it before I figured out what it was.
Yeah, I don't mind that stuff.
No.
What I like about that, the fat's pretty good on it.
You don't see many with fat.
I'll take your word for it.
I've had a mountain lion backstrap that was capped in fat, and the fat was good.
Really?
Like pork fat.
Yeah, legitimately good.
Surprising.
You've got to cook it, though.
I expect it to not be good.
Oh, yeah, you can get the old trichinosis off that shit.
You know a little bit of something about that, don't you?
You know the saying, you can't eat the antlers?
That's bullshit.
Tony's whole business
is based on dogs and people
eating antlers.
I was going to tell you
the story and you got me
sidetracked,
but I know a professional
athlete that tore
his rotator cuff.
He was playing
professional baseball.
Do we have time?
Oh yeah, lay it on us.
Well anyways,
he tore his rotator cuff
and he got surgery
and the doctor goes,
here, take these pills and I'll help you. And he goes, what are they? He goes, they're antler powder us. Well, anyways, he tore his rotator cuff, and he got surgery, and the doctor goes, here, take these pills, and I'll help you.
And he goes, what are they?
He goes, they're antler powder pills.
So he started taking them, and the pain went away.
And he goes, nah.
So he quit taking them, and the pain came back.
So he started taking them, and the pain went away.
And he actually started a company and was making those pills so athletes take them.
I took it, and yeah, a lot of aches and pains went away.
So there's something to it, just like the Asian culture.
How old is that?
It's way older than ours, and I bet you they know a lot more than we do about stuff.
Yeah.
Corinne does.
Yeah.
She's only half Asian.
Just ask her.
She'll tell you.
No.
She knows a lot more.
She'd know twice as much.
She'll tell you.
I definitely haven't tried any of that, then. Maybe I'll, you know No, she knows a lot more. She'd know twice as much. She'll tell you. I definitely haven't tried any of that.
Then maybe I'll, you know, make myself a human guinea pig.
I do it to people and they go, is this good for your dogs?
And I'll lick an elk antler split in half.
I'll lick it.
It doesn't do anything.
Oh, no, I imagine not.
Oh, you know, what about making like antler toothpicks that you'd start chewing on?
Maybe that's the new fad.
There you go.
Possibly. Thank you. It was a pleasure meeting you. start chewing on. Maybe that's the new fad. There you go. Possibly.
Thank you. It was a pleasure meeting you. Yeah, thanks
for coming. Yeah, man, appreciate it.
Hopefully I'll see you again
sometime. Oh, I think so. Hopefully people
call you up and sell you some sweet antlers.
Here's the one deal, man. Or the hate man.
If someone calls you and sells
you some antlers and they say like,
oh, hey, I heard your number on the show.
You pick me out the coolest one there.
Not out of every batch, but like whatever.
Send me a cool one out of there.
Okay.
Well, I'll tell you what I'll do.
I'll do a trade with you.
I'll give you a couple of good cool sheds, but I need some autograph swag from you.
That's a deal.
From my friends.
That's a deal.
Like I said, they think you're some sort of a celebrity.
No, we're not going to spoil that for them.
We're going to sign some stuff.
We're going to sign some stuff.
Yeah.
And we're going to watch the mailbox for a sweet antler.
No, I won't mailbox.
I'll bring it and let you pick them out.
Oh, there you go.
Stop by one of these times.
It's getting better and better.
All right.
Tell everybody your name and the name of yourony shoffler rocky mountain antler company
there you have it call him up some big pile he's waiting for you in his underwear in a hotel room
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