The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 407: California's War on Woodsmen

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Steven Rinella talks with Mercer Lawing, Janis Putelis, Seth Morris, and Phil Taylor. Topics include: How Theater Phil brought the roof down; the genetic mutation that creates a cinnamon black bear; how a poop snow cone would actually preserve microbes; the Blue Collar Scholar's poop bucket design; when you make a pair of earrings out of your foot bone spurs; hocking up a nock through your concha; a 33-year-old banded sandhill crane; how bobcat trapping was completely banned in California; the cage trap days; how California has just banned the sale of fur in the state; receiving death threats; the Johnny Stewart cassette tape; the war in Ukraine affecting fur prices today; knowing a good cat when you see one; a sable coat with bobcat trim as the fashion of Russian oligarchs; how the show, "Yellowstone" is driving the beaver market; designing camtrip cages; how to get the cat in the trap; skunk paste; quickly taking over the former territory of a dead bobcat; all the glands; 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.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Listen up. This is Giannis Patelis from MeatEater and I need your help. I'm going to be at the National Wild Turkey Federation's annual convention in Nashville, Tennessee this year and I'm looking for the best turkey storytellers alive. Now, I know we all have a good turkey story to tell, but I want you to think about who you know that tells an absolutely riveting turkey tale. A person that draws everyone in the room to their story. Bring them to me. I'm going to be at Ryman Studios in the same building as a convention, set up with recording equipment, and Phil the engineer is going to be there to make sure it sounds great. I have a goal of creating a national archive of hunters' stories and my first stop is the southeast because I know you all down there can spin a good story. This is our oral history. I believe there is immense historical value to these stories and

they should be preserved for future generations. Don't let your grandpa's stories die with him. Bring him to the convention and have him spin a yarn for me. The stories can be funny, sad, educational, exciting, but most importantly, they have to be engaging. This is where the good storyteller part comes in. All storytellers will get 20 minutes to tell their story, and I will be on hand to ask questions to fill in the blanks. We'll be recording at Ryman Studio C from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of the convention, which is February 16th, 17th, and 18th. There will be posters directing you to our location. To sign up for a time slot ahead of time, go to themeateater.com and search Turkey Story Sign Up. We will also have sign up available on location at the door of Ryman Studio C. Meat Eater will use these stories in a forthcoming audio project, most likely in podcast format, so they will be available to everyone as long as the internet is alive.

So please come to Nashville for the National Wild Turkey Federation Convention and bring me the best turkey storyteller you know. Our hunting legacy depends on it. All right, everybody, we're joined by Mercer Lawing, who Corinne, who's not here, described him as the last trapper in California. It may be. Bobcat expert.

Not even former. Bobcat fur harv, continued to do that, but also got involved in the research world of applying his skills at being able to catch animals that no one else can catch. Yeah, for sure. It's been a fun several years. I've been doing it for three years on the project in Arizona now. Yeah. And, you know, with the cage business, I end up, you know, I end up selling cage traps for research work for, you know, all over the country, really. Almost pretty much every state that's doing a population study or anything with bobcats. There are not too many of them that doesn't end up using, you know, my equipment.

And so I get feedback from them and I've been on a few different studies. And I was just telling you this morning, I was telling a Lynx researcher that she's going to need to connect with you. Yeah, that's great. They usually end up finding me. The research community, you know, they're, a lot of them, you know, they're all pretty well connected. So a lot of them people end up usually finding me. Another thing we're going to get into is the days and time you spent around California's Bobcat band where you told me some stories about that. Yeah, boy, that's a few years of my life I don't ever want to relive.

Yeah. We're going to get into that whole story. Oh, you know the thing we've got to talk about? Phil, you tore a new one in that play. You tore that play a new one. Oh, thanks. I appreciate it. Did you guys go see Phil?

I did. I did not. Sorry, Phil. That's fine, Seth. I got a couple of feedback points for you. Oh, let me hear it. I thought you did a phenomenal job. is this one of your famous compliment sandwiches no it's an insult sandwich great hold on i got a question where i have two compliments two compliments

with a insult in the middle great before he gets into that i got a question technical question are you guys amplified at all your voices or is Yeah, they're wearing Garth Brooks headpieces. You didn't notice that? That's right. I was sitting in the cheap seat, Steve, so no, I was too far away to see their little microphones. Yeah, yeah. We've got a little bit of juice coming through the speakers.

I had great seats. Middle. Phil literally brought the roof down. Are you aware of this? I'm very aware. A hunk of roof. It got to halftime, which my kids are very anxious.

They were told they could get a candy cane at halftime. So it got to halftime. The curtain comes down. A dude that's been sitting there for how long stands up and a hunk of the roof comes down and lands on his seat. Yeah, some of the molding on the ceiling fell during intermission.

Phil brought the roof down. They had to tape off like five rows and move these people around. Crazy to have in the halftime. Yeah. Wow. Did he get hurt? I don't think so. No, if you were listening carefully, you would have heard that he got up.

He got up and fell on his seat. He got up at halftime and it fell on his seat. Oh, I didn't catch the part that he got up first. Oh. Great job, Phil. Uh-huh. And the second part? I felt that the gentleman playing Scrooge wasn't sufficiently surprised at the arrival of the ghosts.

Okay. Yeah, I see where that's coming from. Because that'd be very surprising. Sure. Yeah, I think he was playing it a little loose and more on the humorous side than kind of seriously, deathly scared. Yeah. You know, it is a compliment sandwich

because, in fact, it's two criticisms. Oh, okay. That's fine. You did a phenomenal job. Thank you. I felt that he wasn't sufficiently surprised by the arrival of ghosts, which would elicit,

I imagine, quite a response. Sure. The second thing is, and this is from a colleague of ours, Maggie. She likes a good spooky,

she likes a spooky rendition of... Oh, yes. This was not that spooky. Yeah, it's a comedic. It was comedic. The only spooky part, I'd say, is the Christmas future gets a little spooky.

But everything else is very... It's a light touch. For sure. Yeah. Comedic. Yeah, and that's kind of the first time I've done a version of it that's a little bit on the lighter side. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I thought it was good for the kids.

It was that way. For sure. Kids are loving it. They kept their attention a little more, I think, than the spookier version. Yeah. You know how Scrooge is, like, he's looking in, he's looking in at that, and with the Christmas present, he's kind of, like, looking in on that party

and they're dogging on him at the party? Yeah. Well, toward the end, my daughter whispered to me, if he fixes everything, will they still say the mean things about him at the party? It's insightful. Yeah.

That's smart. Oh, I had one more. So that was kind of like a neither. It was a compliment. Criticism. Yeah. Observation. Yeah.

That's about it. Great. Well, thanks so much for coming. I really did not expect to we really enjoyed it good Phil is your theater career

just a Christmas thing or are you gonna do like shows throughout the year oh I don't know I did Sound of Music during the summer and then they asked me

to do this oh yeah and now I think I'm gonna take a long break because I am tired I'm tired and the family is tired

it's a lot of rehearsals yeah but I'm I'll probably do it again tired. It's a lot of rehearsals. Yeah. But I'll probably do it again. I like it a lot. It's fun. Cool. Have I ever told you what I think is the worst,

like the absolute worst rendition of Christmas Carol? Is it the Muppet one? Yeah. Yeah. Or Michael Caine? I've told you this. Yeah.

For long periods. It looks like he's not acting. Yeah, he's not acting. He's just kind of curious. He seems surprised that he's surrounded by puppets. The puppets start to sing, and he just zones out. It's like he's thinking about shit he needs to do after work. It's so horrible.

I think there's some moving moments in that movie, but I see, yeah. Yeah, I see where you're coming from. Here's something crazy, man. Check this out. I got a lot of opinions about this. A lot of things to say about this. So there's a paper just came out. A DNA, some DNA work being done on black bears.

They've identified a mutation. So they've identified a genetic mutation in black bears. You following this, Yanni? I hope you're doing a better job than the roof falling down story and following this. Something about black bears. Okay. Something about grizzlies. So they've identified a mutation known as

R153C in a gene called tyrosinase- protein one which causes an alteration in the coat's pigmentation that makes its fur the same color as a copper penny well they're talking about when people talk about getting a cinnamon bear a genetic mutation they've isolated what it is that creates the cinnamon variant of black bears and interestingly they've figured out when it came into being uh i'll put it this way i'll put it two ways one way i'll put it is that the clovis hunters probably were not seeing cinnamon bears because this mutation seems to have emerged around 9,360 years ago. Here's where I'm going to take a pause from this paper.

Oh, and it's spreading, okay? It's spreading. They feel that the range and distribution of cinnamon bears is growing, and it seems to have arisen in the Southwest. But I'll point this out one time uh if you look at the prevalence of color phase black bears on a map overlaid with precipitation you following phil yep take a color-coded map that shows precipitation levels in north america and then you take a map that shows prevalence of color phase bears there is an uh astonishing correlation now i'll point out to people that correlation is not causation but wet ass areas

the wetter higher precipitation areas tend to have more blackface or tend to not have color face bears. And one way you could look at it and be like, there's thick vegetation, lots of shadows, they blend in, thermal regulation stuff, right? Meaning how your fur and the sun cooperate and behave. The same reason in the North you run black Angus cattle, in the South, you know, where you're trying to keep them warm, in the South and,. Um, the same reason in the North, you run black Angus cattle in the South, you know, where you're trying to keep them warm and the South and the, and, you know, in the, in, in extreme environments, they don't run black cattle. They run cream cattle and red cattle and stuff that don't get as much solar radiation, um, that, that, that, that keeps them warm. So I always saw, Oh, there are different colors down in the southwest because um

different camouflaging requirements and also perhaps it's just not hotter and balls running around with black hair it makes sense well and i don't even know if this this undoes that here's a quote from the paper, geography definitely plays a part. Our demographic modeling identified that the most likely place where the mutation arose was somewhere in the western region, very likely the southwest. From there, it expanded through gene flow

through populations. But even that is a slow process with the majority of black bears on the East coast, still sporting jet black fur. And they're looking at the great Plains as being a barrier to this gene mutation spreading Eastward. Albinism. One thing that happens to albino animals is

they go blind and die early. Like they don't live that long um but this mutation doesn't seem to show any signs of visual problems look at all that so you're talking to a board uh a drawing instruction board no No, like an old board. Like a piece of OSB. A microbiologist wrote in.

This is good stuff to know. A microbiologist wrote in, and he had some things to say about our conversation. We're talking about the etiquette and safety of pooping on the ice. I've just been saving up all my things to say for this. I don't. Okay. Now, I've pointed out, I've never done this, but I was putting the question, like if people are talking about just sinking one, okay.

Going into the hole and then using your scoop or whatever to try to sink her down, sink the cake, like try to sink her down and then get her out of the way so that it's just floating up at the surface of the lake. Eventually it'll probably sink and then just, you know, you've got it taken care of in that people wouldn't know you did it, or you can lay her right on the ice, which is unsightly. And I was talking about what if you took your auger and drilled a half hole. So you got, let's say you have 12 inches of ice, you take your auger and you go down

eight inches. So you got a four inch buffer, scoop that ice slush out. Yep. Go, defecate, put that slush and snow back in and, and, and put it in a little vault. And I was talking about what, uh, maybe that maybe over there in that extreme environment, the microbes and the, the, the nasty things that would get into the

water wouldn't would, would die. Probably not. But anyways, the microbiologist wrote him, he he says i've decided to write in to correct you on your assumption that the microbes in your poop pile would be killed by making it into a shit slushy using a partially dug ice fishing hole in actuality your fecal matter snow cone which is packed with bacteria and other microbes would simply refrigerate, freeze, and probably preserve the microorganisms and still spring. Microbes tend to go into a dormant stage, sporulation during extreme conditions, and

are quite hardy in the environment. Much of the bacteria in feces is E. coli, most of of which is harmless but some strains can cause nasty sprayable diarrhea specifically he names one sprayable yeah i'm just picturing it in a can you buy rattle can there are other microbes and feces that can cause disease, but I think I have something more interesting for you. A condition known as C. diff caused by Clostridium difficile can be fatal.

Oh. Listen to this. He's knocking you down and now he's going to bring you back up a little bit. Listen to this. Well, no, because listen. This is fascinating. This is gnarly. A condition known as C. diff, that's an abbreviation, caused by Clostridium difficile can be fatal.

But, my emphasis on but, but it can be readily cured by ingesting the feces of a healthy person as an inoculation. That's, no, no thanks. I like that trip to the doctor where they're like, hey, eat this. Maybe you can get it in pill form.

Then he goes on to make a joke and he wrote back to clarify he felt bad after making the joke. He said, you could almost justify pooping into ice fishing holes as a means of inoculating the swimming population for C. diff,

which is far more dangerous than E. coli. Then a day later, an email comes in, hey, that was a joke. Please don't. That was a joke. Not sure if you understood it was a joke. That was a joke.

And don't do that. So still the best practice would be to bring a bucket that's lined with a plastic bag and poop in there and then pack it out. Yeah, the Blue Collar Scholar sent me an amazing design. pocket it's lined with a plastic bag and poop in there dude the blue collar yeah the blue collar scholar sent me an amazing design we were talking about buying i don't know who that is oh tommy edson the guy he's got an instagram page now called the blue collar scholar because he does so good at the trivia show he plays the trivia show and does so well he claims he does well he was on the show and did not. He sends me a scorecard.

No, he bombed here, but that's, I think there's a lot of people that think they do great at home, but they bomb, they would bomb in real life. Oh, sure. There's a lot of pressure in the room. They're like, they're kind of like, I think they're like, oh, I kind of had that. Right?

Or like, well, that was my first gas. You know what I mean? They they're not like no one's really putting the screws to them to like actually you know i mean it's in their head it's in their head so he's like god you know i guess it'd be illinois maybe indiana yeah in indiana then they're like illinois i knew it oh i think a lot of that goes on. Definitely. Yeah. Yep. So we bought, like you can buy these things. You go to any, like you go to Sportsman's Warehouse or wherever the hell. And you buy, it's like a light gauge five gallon pail with a snap on.

The seat's compatible with any five gallon bucket. It's a flip top toilet seat. And you can get those bags that have that. I don't know what the hell it is, odor killer in it. Mm-hmm. And you, you drop one in there and then you, it's like a big heavy duty Ziploc with a trash bag joined to it.

So you go into the trash bag, close the trash bag up. It goes into the Ziploc. Ziploc it, shake it to get the crystal stuff, if you so please. And then it's pretty much archival. It's like one of those diaper

genies, you know? Yeah, but then you get back to the boat launch or whatever, and you got one of those bags. Anyways, Tommy sends me a thing. He's like, and these things are not expensive, but Tommy's like, you don't need to buy one of those bags anyways tommy sends me a thing he's like you don't need and these things are not expensive but tommy's like you don't need to buy one of them expensive ass buckets they he's got a bucket it's picture you got a five gallon bucket laying there put a garbage bag in it hang it over the edge like a trash can then take a pool noodle

and just cut an incision down the length of the pool noodle. So you now have a piece of pipe insulation. Mm-hmm. Or take a piece of pipe insulation that's pre-cut. Mm-hmm. And you make a little rim, a little sitting

rim. Ah, I was wondering where this was going. Make a little sitting rim. This is just for comfort. With that pipe insulation. I've seen this before. You have? Yeah.

When I was in the landscaping industry You'd have to get You know, you'd have to put some thought Into how you were going some days And a lot of guys carried Like a bucket with a pool noodle You didn't want to vault it in their landscaping Yeah, well you're like working In someone's front yard

You can't just You can't just jump in the bushes But if you're gonna be laying some sod down who's gonna know well just like just everybody walking by the lady the lady watching you out of out of her front window is gonna know that's a good point you're curing all the c diff But yeah I knew of guys that carried around a 5 gallon bucket That had that Pool noodle See I feel like a sucker for buying that thing I bought now man So in that

When you were in the landscaping business Where would they deploy Said bucket Well you'd either deploy it in the enclosed trailer Or in the back of the dump Like we all had dump trucks. And you'd just get in the back of the dump truck, yeah. But, yeah.

How would people know you're in there? You'd just tell your crew that. Don't throw any big logs in there for five minutes. Yeah. You're going to take care of some work. Or you'd go right into the tool crib. Yeah, in the trailer yeah guy wrote in this is pretty good this makes me jealous this passes the jealousy test so was it uh why was it that trump didn't why did he not fight in vietnam was it bone spurs right this guy that's what i thought so he this guy had bone spurs? This guy, that's what I thought So

This guy had bone spurs He got them cut out And then sent us pictures He had his wife earrings made Out of his bone spurs Hmm He made the earrings with his daughter Oh his daughter had a jewelry kit

And he made a little box That says a piece of me for you He made the earrings with his daughter. Oh, his daughter had a jewelry kit. And he made a little box that says, a piece of me for you. And it's these crazy little bone spur earrings made out of the bone spurs cut out of his feet. Man, I wish I'd have known about that. I had bone spur surgery a year ago. Did you? Yeah. I could have had something to remember it by besides just pain. What'd you do with them?

Pain with every step I take still a year later. Really? Oh, God. What'd you do with your spurs? Apparently, they just ground them. You didn do with them? Pain with every step I take, still a year later. Really? Oh, God. What'd you do with your spurs? Apparently, they just ground them. I didn't realize they'd take them off in one piece. Yeah, he got his back. He had to clean them up a little bit.

No? He asked for them. Everybody that writes in, this is a common thing on this show. Everybody that writes in will say, like, I want my stuff back. And they kind of like, it's like your property. They can't not give it to you. Never even thought of that. I think it was a thing.

This fella, this fella says that, uh, his wife says it's the greatest present she's ever received. I like her, man. I'd like to marry her. She'd probably like some, uh, turkey spur earrings. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, here's the, here's the tricky one for me oh Yanni did you have something to add about the ice

stuff you were saying you were saving up for that oh no I just found it fascinating a guy wrote in about this is a crazy story that came in recently and I called I was like skeptical were any of you guys here

for this no a guy ran out of he ran out of gas I called. I was skeptical. Were any of you guys here for this? No. Okay. A guy ran out of gas, and he had a gas can, but his gas can nozzle wasn't compatible with the port on his truck. You know how they are now. Like, dude, now vehicles come with special funnel adapters to get through the security stuff so people can't siphon your gas off anyways he jams an arrow down in there takes the arrow out of his quiver jams it down there to hold the spring flap and then he's like basically pouring gas out of a can in the dark down the arrow into the gas can and winds up jabbing his face, jabbing his eye on the knock,

on the end of the arrow. Impales his face on the end of the arrow. Goes on to have all these future problems. Never realizing that the knock came off in his eye. No. Yikes. And eventually hocks up a loogie.

This is like a year and a half later. Yeah. That was him spitting it out. Hocks out the knock. So it gets up in his sinuses? I said, I don't know if I'm buying that. I said I didn't believe it, but buying that I said I didn't believe it but then I was I kind of changed my mind about it Dr. Alan Lazaro wrote in

He buys it 99% Only reason it's not 100% is he doesn't know the guy Personally Wow The arrow knock entered his Ethmoid sinus Goes on to say that I rest in a Bony box i.e. orbit, with thin bones making up the walls.

The airfield spaces of the anterior face, a.k.a. the sinuses, lie in close proximity to your orbit. These sinuses, as well as the natocrymal duct. That's right, folks. You have one. Nasolacrymal duct. All have... This is making me feel like I got to hock up a... Hock up a knock.

I got to knock somewhere down in there. Maybe a pellet BB or something. These sinuses as well as the nasal lacrimal duct all have drainage into the nasal cavity, which is anatomically complex. In particular, the ethmoid sinus lies medial, i.e.

midline to the orbit and drains into the paranasal sinuses, which in turn empty into the nasal cavity through the three concha. That's a word. That's pretty incredible. Concha. I mean, the body That's pretty incredible. Concha. I mean, the body does wild stuff to force things

out of itself. Yeah, sure, go ahead. You'll be extra surprised when I'm done. I'm titillated. The nasal cavity and passage are connected

to the oropharyngeal space in the back of the throat. That's how loogies happen. Now, on to the arrow. I'm not sure what kind of size knock the gentleman was using, says the doctor,

or if just a piece of the knock entered his medial paraorbital space and the rest fell on the ground. Either way, most common size knocks are sharp, narrow, and small enough to penetrate that space and the ethmoid sinus. I believe the knock penetrated his ethmoid sinus. The immune system reacted and covered the thing in white blood cells. Over time, it eroded under the guise of perceived repeat sinus infections and made its way into the nasal passage.

And then he hocked a colorful loogie wow instead of an x-ray they should have given him a maxillofacial ct but he doesn't want a dog on the facility because he's not sure what kind of equipment they had geez what a story. Now, what do you think about that, Phil? I'd like to formally apologize to the gentleman. Yeah. I wonder what his eyes would have looked like at night if it would have been one of those like glow-in-the-dark knocks or something.

Maybe look like a Terminator or something. I just can't imagine going on that long not knowing that something's in there. So he was having sinus infections for about a year. And they still couldn't figure it out, though. Let's say you, let me walk you through this. Okay. You're driving down the road and you run out of gas that night, coming home from hunting.

I can picture this. Okay. You can't get the gas down. You put an arrow down and you're pouring gas and all of a sudden, you impale your face on the arrow. Yeah. You're running around, oh my god! Excruciating pain.

Later, I don't know, you have an arrow and the knock's missing. Are you going to think, I wonder if that knock is in my head, or if you'd think in all the excitement the knock fell off. Yeah, but I think what Seth is saying is that he just can't believe that there'd be a knock stuck in there

and you wouldn't say, oh my goodness, there's a chunk, a foreign chunk of plastic in my head. You remember that dude that got shot by a nail gun and carried the nail around until they found it in there? Yeah. I guess this probably happens more often than what we think. How do you not know he got shot by a nail gun? Well, I think Lazaro also says is that the dude is tough as nails. And I think that that probably points to how some

people just don't have a way different pain threshold. And that something like a nail or a knot could be inside their body and they're kind of like, eh, I'll keep about my day. That's just, it's a little tickle. If he was feeling any sort of pressure back there, he was probably like, oh, it's just the wound

healing. It's some sort of scar I have. Yeah. I don't like any kind of injury, man. I feel like I would have gotten all those kind of exams. I'm always worried about being out of commission. Check this out. This is good. You hanging in there?

Yeah, that story was just reminding me when I was a kid, I had a Mexican jumping bean up my nose for about a year. Oh. it up there i must have yeah i don't know i went to the hospital a bunch of times bloody noses and eventually a big old sneeze it come out it's a story my mom tells me anyways i buy it she otherwise your mom otherwise honest yeah yeah she's a good gal good yanni do you remember we got that 14-year-old Sandhill crane? Sure do. Minimum of 14 years. We got a Sandhill crane and Texas panhandle that had been banded.

So we're in the Texas panhandle. It had been banded as an adult 14 years earlier in Fairbanks, Alaska. At least 14. Well, some mug in Tennessee. That was cool that it was banded in Fairbanks. And I'll never forget either how you and Ronnie Bame and Ed Arnett, three grown men sat there and argued. Over who got it.

About who shot it to the point that we had to get one band recognition form with three names on it. Yeah, we all got a form. It was real cute. I need to find my form. There's a quote I like. Success has many fathers, but failure is a bastard's child.

That's a good one. This guy just got one. Banned it in 1989. He just killed it in Tennessee. Yeah. That's only 11 years younger than me. He got it on public land. There's a refuge, and then there's some crop fields,

and outfitters lease the crop fields, and they got it on a little public wedge between the refuge and the crop fields. Wow. I can't even do the math. What do you mean before you? You're older than 33 I'm saying the bird's only 11 years younger than me

Oh I'm sorry 33 year old sandhill crane It's older than me How many spreads has that thing seen man Oh spreads and coyotes And What I was thinking about is Is there anything else that we hunt

That even gets close to living that long? Well, bears get 20 years, you know. Yeah. That's only two birds. That's an old. It's not. I can't. They can't.

If it is, it's some kind of waterfowl. Or like, like gators or something down in Florida. Oh, I wasn't thinking about that. I wasn't thinking about that. I bet there's some old ass gators. Snapping turtles on the hot. I've been wanting to get like a really, really good alligator expert on the show. Like a really good alligator expert.

Yeah. I bet Parker could find that for us since he's down there in that neck of the woods now. If you're extremely good, send an email to us that says the subject line would be extremely good alligator expert. And then we'll know and Corinne will call you. This is funny. This is from when there was a bobcat on the loose in long island and of all okay let's say you heard they're very they're nervous about the bobcat being on on the loose in long island and none other than martha stewart has a none other than martha stewart has a a thing about how to save yourself in the event you were to encounter this bobcat which they're

frantically trying to find oh it's is this like an article in a magazine? The more distance between you and the cat, the better, reads the website. Bobcats in particular usually do not attack humans. However, if one does attack you, your best chance of survival is to defend yourself and call for emergency medical care as the animal may have rabies.

Thanks, Martha. The more distance between you, the better. Great. The first person that saw it was convinced they were looking at a lynx. It was huge. It looked very exotic. Wow. What else?

That's about it. That's about it. There's a lot of questions about that one like where it came from how it got there it's good stuff all right mercy you ready to dig in man yeah sure let's go okay how first off why did you stay why are are you still in California? Yeah. Right. If your whole life has been trapping and Bobcat work and then California

out, right, flat out, you know, let me, let me digress from it. Anyone who doesn't believe in the slippery slope, uh,

needs to believe in the slippery slope. Oh, no doubt. Um, if you look at like nine, you know, in the early 90s, they took away steel jaw traps, made us use rubber padded jaws. And then in 98, they took away foothold traps altogether. And then I think it was 2013,

the dust up over the cage trapping incident that got the ban started and the legislative action, you know, was the next nail over the cage trapping incident that got the ban started in the legislative action, uh, you know, was the next nail in the coffin and they, they ended up banning Bobcat, uh, trapping altogether, you know, even with cage traps. And then just a couple of years after that, then they went after trapping altogether, you know, and then they, they said, you know, if you read the legislation, it was like, you know, well, there's barely any trappers anyways. And, uh, you know, their, uh, their numbers don't justify, you know, what it costs a department to, you know, maintain, you know, aable nature, you know? Um, and so then they got trapped in completely. And at the same time, uh, they went after bobcat hunting, which was all that was left. You know, we could still hunt bobcats right up until, uh, I think it was December 31st. I wanted to be one

of the last people to ever hunt a California bobcat legally because, uh, the legislation they passed required a five-year population study to be done in the state. And starting January 1st, 2019, I believe it was, they, you're supposed to start that five-year study to justify, you know, the harvest of bobcats, right? And once they take something away, they never give it back. So we're in the five-year study right now? We're in the five years, yeah. What's going to happen during the five-year study? Oh, and were you the last guy to get one?

You know, I might have been. I went out. I shot one about- Put that on Facebook. I shot one about 1030 at night. You know, who knows? I don't know. You probably were.

I might have been. If not, send an email that says Mercer is wrong. Got mine at 1101. And then, yeah, so they're supposedly doing some sort of camera trap work statewide. And they bought some cage traps for me as well. I drove them up to Sacramento, dropped them off. And I don't know, the dude that I dropped them off with, he was like a fisheries guy. And he was going to be in charge of the population study.

I didn't leave there with a whole lot of faith. You're not going to get it back. You'll never get it back. Even if they come back and say, oh yeah, you know, because they estimate the population of California between 70 and 100,000 bobcats, right? Yeah. And so when you tell them that, you know,

all through all those legislative actions, they, you know, when you tell them that, you know, we're harvesting like anywhere from 300 to 1200 bobcats a year, right. In the entire state. Right. You know, back, back during the fur boom, you know, the highest years were around 8,000 bobcats, but on average 4,500 or so during those, the fur boom years. And then what fur boom are you talking about? You know, the mid seventies to 87, whatever. The fur boom with a capital F and B. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, and then all through the nineties in that, you know, the harvest was, you know, two, 300 bobcats. And so. Out of an estimated population of a hundred thousand. Yeah.

If you look, if you go all the way back. What is it? 70 to a hundred? 70 to a hundred thousand is what Game of Fish saying now. But if you look back when all the states had to come up with a estimated population for their state for the sighties when when bobcats got listed on sighties all the states had to come

up with some estimated number either just using habitat you know modeling and stuff like that i think the number at that time was like 78 000 or something like that for california um and so just so people i want to explain two things sighties is like an international like it's a international wildlife regular regulatory thing, which monitors moving, moving wildlife species from one country to the next. And there's a treaty, the CITES treaty. So for instance, if you go down and hunt, which me and Yanni always get screwed on. If you were to go down and hunt oscillated turkeys in Mexico Mexico And you went to bring parts of that turkey back home with you You would need to do the CITES work

Phil what in Sam Hill is that behind you? What? Oh I have no idea It was in the podcast studio It was on the table here And it was just getting in our way So we set it over there on the desk

It's a Oh Nevermind It's cool... Oh. Never mind. It's cool. Yeah. Oh, no. I do need to see that. Where was that? It was sitting right here. What is that? Obsidian or glass? Looks like obsidian.

Give that to me. Although it looks like glass too. We're looking at an arrow for the people listening. Well, I'm waiting on my Clovis thrusting spear. Oh, gotcha was i talking about sideys oh it's glass uh that was wrong then you had another you had oh modeling just so just real quick snapshot how modeling works like let's say you know let's say you wanted to count up deer in a county or a state or a country, whatever. You might go like, okay, in good habitat. So in like usable habitat, we tend to see 10 deer per square mile.

And you go like, well, how many square miles of good suitable habitat do we have? Okay. Well, times that by that and that's like in a very like an actual modeler would be annoyed by my my quick summation but that's basically what that is um when you talk about modeling so they're probably looking at some like habitat density and space and you work it all out and that's what you got yeah for sure it's it's pretty uh it's pretty detailed from visiting with biologists still i got i mean they even got they even got people with a job title called like a biometrician. Have you ever heard one of those? No.

Yeah, they're like a combination between a biologist and a mathematician, a statistician. And they're the ones that really get deep into the numbers. Yeah. And they can take a small amount of data and turn it into a lot of data. So you were saying that California came in with a prediction of 78,000 bobcats. And harvest was at what? So during the 80s, the average harvest, the fur boom was somewhere in the 4,500 neighborhood. If you take about a dozen years there in a row, high of in the 8,000s. California was a destination during those times. take about a dozen years there in a row, a high of in the eight thousands. You know, California was a destination during those times. It was where a lot of state hoppers ended their season. You know, they, they trapped the colder country and, and end up in the,

you know, basin and range stuff of, oh, never Nevada really. Cause I don't think they've ever allowed non-resident bobcat trap and I could be wrong, but, uh, you know, they'd work their way through Arizona and finish up in the Mojave desert of california where i live huh yeah um when you're talking about it never coming back the reason it'll never come back is because people will all you'll always be able to do the trick in litigation where people will sue and they'll say but you haven't accounted for now now the magical thing is you haven't accounted for. Now, now the magical thing is you haven't accounted for climate change. Oh, they'll move the goalposts.

Yeah. Yeah. You'll never see it again. The, the big argument, the thing they push all the time is, oh, well, we know there's plenty of bobcats in California. We're not arguing that. What we're arguing is that there's no way to

control all the trappers from working in one area and depleting a resource. In an isolated location. Yeah, yeah. And then of course, when you say all trappers, you're talking about a total of anywhere from 600 to 1200 bobcats during, you know, the, what I call the cage trap days, right?

So we lost our foot traps in 98 and by about 2000, 2002 guys were experimenting with using cage traps to catch bobcats. In Washington State, Arizona, Colorado, I believe all three lost their footholds before us. So they were already further down the road using cage traps for bobcats than California was. That was kind of an amazing era for, it was sort of like in those early 90s, that period, late 80s, early 90s, it's surprising looking back how many hits hunters and trappers took in those years. As I think it was like PETA was beginning to take shape. It was kind of amazing that you'd think that stuff like that happens now, but people took a lot of hits, legislative hits back then.

Yeah, between ballot initiatives, which are just a horrible thing. Ballot initiatives and legislative actions to manage wildlife is just horrible. The truth is the first victim when you get into those situations. The truth doesn't matter hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there,

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I want to go back to the beginning with you, but how would you not just be like, okay, nevermind, I'm leaving. So, uh, so along the course of losing everything, right. Losing the cage traps. Then the next thing we lost was the bobcat hunting and the, um, uh, trapping completely. And, and then now, uh, I believe it's January 1st. So in a week or two, the statewide ban on fur, the sale of any fur garments, unless it's used old fur, any new fur garments statewide, I believe goes into effect this January. And so you were, originally you were talking about, you know, I think you were saying death by a thousand cuts type of thing, you know.

Slippery slope. Slippery slope. Slippery slope. I mean, it's. Yeah, I was encouraging people to believe in slippery slopes. Oh yeah. That's, when you have a state like California that's totally controlled by one party, you

don't have a chance, you know. I saw some ugly stuff when I was fighting the first, first bobcat trapping. Yeah. You became, you were a public figure in that fight. You know, I kind of got it from both sides a little bit. I had trappers that didn't like me, wanted to blame me for losing it, you know, because I was promoting cage trapping and selling cage trapping products and getting people

started. And then, of course, I got it from the antis cause I was the only, you know, I was the public figure. They couldn't, a trapper got into some trouble trapping around. He was a Marine that was stationed at a base down there and I sold him equipment and I got him started and he started trapping between home and work. And, and what was in between there was Joshua Tree National Monument and which, you know, is surrounded by, you know, a lot of people that don't, that wouldn't agree with the way we live our lives, you know. And he got a, he got a trap found that was on a piece of private property that, that, you know, California laws, you got to post your land or be told to stay off, you know, so private property law. He wasn't doing anything wrong.

Oh, he wasn't? No, it was just a piece of, it was just people, open desert that happened to be private. Some guy found it, took it to the local newspaper office. And a year later, there's billboards up in California to ban bobcat trapping, you know. Was something in the cage? No, it was just an empty cage trap. But, you know, at the same time, we're, you know, on the internet posting pictures and Facebook

and all that sort of stuff and trapping forums that, you know, I guess the argument can be made, you know, don't do that stuff, I guess. That's what the guys that, you know, were kind of blaming me for it all, you know, for, you know, making it public. Got it.

You know, and because, so yeah, I was the public figure. How much do you buy that? That it would have continued if someone hadn't made it public. No, so I don't buy at all that it would have continued, right? They were going to get it no matter what. It was just a matter of time. But those actions at that time was the catalyst to what ended up happening. But if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else.

And you wound up with death threats through this whole thing. Oh, yeah. You weren't getting that from the trappers. No, no. There was one particular trapper that I was just a little bit fearful of, but he had, he had been in trouble many times with Game of Fish.

He wasn't, he wasn't a very good dude. Uh, but, uh, yeah, yeah. I got a few letters in the mailbox saying somebody's going to come kill me. I had the, uh, uh, those, those people down at Joshua Tree, they're, they're, they're whack jobs, man. I mean, they're, they're whack jobs, man. I mean, they're whack jobs.

Scary kind of like whack jobs. Like Manson type hippies. Just like some guy made a compilation video and put it on YouTube of my vehicles and me and my kids. Oh. Like pictures of us, you know, and saying, hey, if you see this guy. They were, I wasn't even the trapper that started all this. I was just the guy that sold this other dude some, some traps, but somehow they, you know, just picked me out. And yeah, I, uh, I think I called the FBI at one point saying, Hey, I'm getting these letters saying

somebody's going to come kill me. And, uh, uh, they told me, well, does it say a specific time and place? I said, no, it just says they're going to come kill me. He said, well, we can't do nothing about it. That's what he told me. That's horseshit, man. Because I had to say, I had a, I called the FBI about a guy one time. He didn't give a specific thing. He made a, he made a reference to my kids. They went through the guy's garbage for a while, surveilled him. This is a, he, the guy lived in Ohio, went through his trash. One day called me to say he ordered a pepperoni pizza. He's not vegetarian.

And eventually visited him at work. Is that right? Scared the living shit out of him. I'd love to get some of that kind of attention. They came and said, you won't be hearing from him again. Yeah, I'd love to get some of that kind of attention back then. They took it real serious. It wasn't like, hey, on Monday at noon,

I'm going to kill you out front of your house. That's what they're saying you have to have? Yeah, that's what they said. Come on. Specific time and place. Posting a bunch of videos about your cars and stuff isn't sufficient? Yeah, right?

I don't believe that, man. I mean, not that I don't think you're lying. I think someone blew you off. They probably hate bobcat trappers. Yeah, well, it's pretty easy to find those type of people in California. But as far as why I never moved. But what did you wind up doing? Yeah, we're going to get to why you never moved.

But when you had these threats on you, what were you doing? I didn't take them too terribly serious. I did sit out in the bushes a few nights. Watching your house. Yeah. Yeah. But it wasn't, it wasn't too awful bad. It was just, it was just an ugly time, man.

Those, those people are ugly. I mean, they can, they can hate Bobcat Trapping all they want, but man, they're just nasty people. Not, not very good quality people, you know. Yeah. You have a right, all the right in the world to, to not like what I do, but don't go quality people you know yeah you have a right all the right in the world to to not like what i do but don't go there you know i tell my kids all the time you know you can be frustrated you can be angry but you're not allowed to be nasty yeah yeah yeah the moral high ground sometimes though especially in politics doesn't get you anywhere right so why did you why didn't you just be like okay i, I'm out of here?

Ah, shoot. You know, your home's your home. Uh, I got all my family there. My wife has all her family there. Now my daughter's going to college in California. So, uh, you know, I think I'll be there at least three more years. I've been all over the West, you know, I've been a lot of cool places like right here where you're at now um but i don't know i just i never found a place that i just was dying to go live um and you know i i ended up in in the mojave desert back in high school and uh you know we didn't have rivers we didn't fish and we have no no turkeys no real good deer hunting you know there's nothing it was just coyote and bobcat hunting. And so I've just pretty much spent the last almost 40 years now. There isn't a winter that goes by that I don't pursue bobcats with every ounce of passion that I have. It's already filled an itch. How did you get into it?

What year was it? Did you get into it because the fur market was so high uh bobcats in particular just trapping yeah and trapping and hunting you know yeah um i was a hunter for many years before i i didn't even set a trap until we were already into the rubber jaw in the early 90s oh you didn't so you didn't grow up trapping? No, no. You know, I was in high school in 84, I graduated. I think that year, me and a buddy, so I found a Johnny Stewart cassette tape

in the China hutch that was my dad's from when he used to coyote hunt. And I asked my dad, what's this, you know? So that's for coyote hunting. So me and my buddy went and, uh, temporarily borrowed, uh, one of those little tape players from the library at the high school, you know, the little, the little jack with the little buttons, you know? What, like a little carry strap on it?

Yeah, yeah, like a little keyboard thing. And, uh, we went out to the desert that afternoon and, and 30 mile an hour winds and turned on that Johnny Stewart cassette and hiked up the top of a hill and waited for a coyote. Did one come? No. And, uh, there hasn't been a winner ever since that I haven't, you know, gone after coyotes and bobcats with everything I had.

What was the main years when you were, when you really got into like the, the production bobcat work though? So, um, you know, I was killing a lot of bobcats at night cause we had a, we had a pretty good Bobcat hunting season that we could hunt at night in California and in that Mojave desert is, you know, it could be pretty productive. You know, I could shoot, I think my highest year, I almost broke 70 Bobcats just hunting at night.

And they're good Bobcats. You were talking earlier about the, about the, the color phase bears and, and I think you were saying the darker ones are more where it's more humid, more rain and everything, more thicker cover. Well, yeah. And, and so with bobcats, when you're looking for good bobcat country, you tend to look for open country, you know, the color of the soil, nice and brown. When you get up in a country like this, where you got your, uh, your timber and stuff, darker stuff, then you end up with a bobcat that's got a lot

darker fur on the back and stuff. And so when you're in like the basin and range country of, of Nevada and the Mojave desert, California, you have a lot of, a lot of sunlight hits the ground, a lot of Brown ground, you know, not a lot of ground cover. And so you end up with a much more pale bobcat, which is where the money is. So I lived somewhere where there was, you know, some pretty darn nice bobcats. And they still have the big, uh, like lynx grade bellies on them too. The big white spotted bellies. Are you talking about my bobcats where I live? Yeah. Oh yeah. Pure white, pure white with well-defined little tiny black spots. Yeah, they're not heavy enough fur because it's not cold enough to rate among the best in the country. You know, like a Wyoming bobcat or some of the Idaho cats or the high desert of, say, Oregon, let's say. They just don't have the heft to the fur.

But as far as a white fur with well-defined spots, yeah, they're a pretty good quality cat. It's a real shame losing Eastern California. We've texted a fair bit about the market, like what that fur market has looked like at times. Can you talk through some of the highs you've seen? Like you mentioned, when we were talking yesterday, you mentioned some pretty sizable catches you had in terms of financial value. But what were

these, it always surprises people to hear what bobcats have been valued at. Because there's no other thing that even approaches the value of a bobcat in the fur trade. You were talking about Cyties being a listed species and that's, that's only because it's, I

believe what it is referred to as a lookalike species. So it's the only spotted cat that can be sold in the fur industry. Got it. And because there's other spotted cats that are protected, they end up putting the bobcat on the CITES.

Got it. I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah. And so there's, there's been desire and attempts over the years to get it taken off that list, but you'll never see that, but. So that's why, I didn't know that's why I was on there. That's interesting. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I'm accurate on that. That's how that works.

But, um, yeah, you know, the high cats always get all the attention, you know, um, you know, you hear about a $1,600 Bobcat, you know, that got sold at a fur sale or a, you know, whatever the high cat of each sale is, you know, that got sold at a fur sale or a, you know, whatever the high cat of each sale is, you know, the guys do that for advertisement, the fur buyers and stuff. But really what you have to look at is the, is the average price of, of fur sales, you know, like what's the average bobcat. And, um, yeah, some of those averages, uh, uh, you know, like the Fallon Nevada fur sale is always a good one to look at. Uh, it's a real long running fur sale where a lot of the best fur in the nation end up, you know, stuff that doesn't get bought in the country and, or shipped to the Canadian

auctions. A lot of the best stuff ends up at that Fallon fur sale and they keep a historical record there. You can look at it every year when you're at the sale. I think I sent you a picture a while back. Yeah, you did, you did, yep. Um, yeah. And you can look at it every year when you're at the sale. I think I sent you a picture a while back. Yeah, you did. You did. Yep. Yeah. And you can look at years. I don't know, all the years kind of blend together, but it was 08 and I think 12, 13. I think 2012, 13 was a real high year if I remember. You know,

I don't know, $450 averages, you know, like they sell like 2000 cats at that sale and average price is, you know, 350, 380, something like that, you know, 450. But, but what makes the news is the, the, the one cat that sold is 1600 bucks or something. Yeah. You were saying they do that to kind of, they do that to generate hype. Yeah. They want their name. To get business. Yeah.

You always, you always, if you have the high cat of the sale, you always take a picture with the, with the buyer that bought it and, and he gets his name. But it gets people excited. Oh, definitely. Yeah. You're like, did you hear the Bobcats are going for 1600 bucks? Yeah. That's all you hear. You know, um, I think, I think last year, uh, there was just a little bit of good news last year in the fur market. And this year is expected to be, at least there's no bad news. You know, I was just talking to a guy this morning, a fur buyer, and he said, well, initially they were saying prices might tick up just a little bit because they're opening up some markets and they're figuring out how to get around the whole Russia thing, you know. Yeah.

They're expecting a little bit of a tick up this year, but it may or may not happen. Who knows? You've got to take everything a fur buyer tells you with a grain of salt, you know? There's always a little bit of a, more of a story to what they're telling you, what they're wanting you to believe, you know? And with me, they kind of want me to repeat

something, you know? Like they'll, they'll make sure they, they tell me something they want repeated, you know? Oh. Yeah. Cause I, I don't know, there's three or four main fur buyers in the whole in the west and i talk to them all pretty regular and you're a trapping influence a lot of times

well a lot of times i'll get a little bit of a plant with me you know that they're one for buyers hoping i repeat to another for a buyer you know i think that goes on i don't i understand but i don't understand like what would they be pushing to have out there? Give me the for instance. Oh, you know, like for instance, one guy might report that he's at a certain number on a certain grade cat. That's what he's planning on buying at, you

know, and hoping maybe that gets to another fur buyer. To what end? They're always playing games. No, but what would he be after? I would assume he'd be after that that buyer... I don't understand.

What would he be hoping the other buyer would do? It could influence his buying maybe. Meaning that he's going to pay less and that makes more available for him? Yeah, maybe he's going to pay less and then the other guy has a better shot at other cats. Getting the business.

I got you. Yeah, they're always gossiping and talking about each other and stuff. It's, yeah, it can get kind of fun sometimes. Have you ever gotten into that business? Very briefly. Very briefly. The one guy here in Montana, uh, he had me, he was going to have me buy for him at a, at a fur sale that, uh, in Arizona that I was helping put on. Um, and at the last minute, his daughter ended up showing up. Who's she pretty, she pretty bad-ass woman. You need to meet her someday. Her name's Liberty Cordham. She's, she pretty cool, but she's a fur buyer. She flew out to, to help me buy. Yeah, I was a nervous wreck. Oh really? Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. He gives me a bunch of checks and tells me to buy the best cats that are there, you know? Do you know a good cat when you see one? I know a good cat when I see one. I don't know it like

they see it, but at the same time, I've, I've carried the clipboard for a lot of them fur buyers, you know, like stand next to them at a fur sale and write down the numbers that they're telling me for, you know, the, the cats are all laying on tables and lots, you know, little groups for each trapper and stuff. And they're going through grading them, measuring them, looking them over and they'll come up with a price and they'll whisper it to me. I'll write it on the clipboards, you know, and more than once with more than one fur buyer, I've, I've gone down two or three, you know, lots on the table and, and say, Hey, you know, I missed, I missed that number on lot, you know, 198. And so we'd back up five feet and go over there and I'll be darned if you didn't come up with a completely different price. Yeah. It's very, it's very much, you would like to think that there's this, you know, like rules and there is a technique that they look at, you know, measuring the width of it, the length of it, you know, the color of the fur, the definition of the spots, all that stuff. But there's also very much a human component to it.

You know, they either just, they can fall in love with a cat, just emotionally like it and, or not like it. Um, you know, some fur buyers, you'll see them painstakingly measuring every single cat, you know, and just really being precise with their grading. Um, and other guys have handled, you know, hundreds of thousands of furs. They'll just grab it, flip it over once, flip it over again, look it up and down. They might brush the fur with their hand one time to see how it's going to lay when it's on a garment.

And they tell you a number to write down. You might not know, but you're sitting in the presence of a top lot. Yeah, I think I remember that. Top lot fur dresser. Yeah. Seth Morris. Yeah.

Good stuff. Top lots for people over the years. Yeah. Right on. What makes a $1,600 cap for these? So all the money in a bobcat is in the belly, right? Good. The width of the belly, the whiteness of the

belly. And there's money in that color line from the side fur to the white. So where the side fur comes down and blends into the white fur, the more pale it is there, the, the, it doesn't really make the belly any wider, but it's more usable fur, right? Because you can use a little bit of that side fur. You know, if you're talking about a belly coat, you know, an $80,000 all belly bobcat coat, you know, that's going to be all white fur.

And so the wider the width of that white belly, the further it's going to go on a coat square inches. So if you just happen to be out and about in downtown Bozeman and you see a coat that is pretty much stark white with small black spots. That's not where you go to see that coat. You could. I saw something similar to that in Bozeman. I think it's when you're seeing someone from Houston who's at a ski resort in Colorado. That could be. Or Big Sky.

Or Big Sky, yeah, for sure. But either way, that's what you're seeing. If it's a white coat with black spots, that's a belly bobcat coat. Depends on if it's a full-length coat or a jacket, you know. Jacket's going to be cheaper, right? No, but I'm saying that's the fur that you're looking at. There's not another animal that would produce a similar fur coat. Not available to the fur market, no.

What was that souped-up coat the Russians were real interested in you were telling me about? Yeah, I think it was around 2008. There was pretty good cap prices. And one of the fur buyers told me that there was a, a sable coat that was trimmed in Bobcat. That was the oligarch special. All the, all the Russians had to have. What I remember the story was only about a

$7,500 coat in U.S. money. But that's been a long time since I had to repeat that story, but. So it was Martin fur, sable, lined with Bobcat. Sable with Bobcat trim, you know, around the cuffs and the collar and I don't know, maybe the lapel. I don't know.

I didn't actually see one, but that was what was driving the fur industry that year, the Bobcat market. Oh, you know what? Tell these boys about this. Tell them what you were telling me about what the rough on a coyote, when you have your hood. Yeah.

A coyote trim hood. Yeah. I had no idea. Yeah. So what they sell in coyote fur, what they call a rough, is not lengthways on the coyote fur. It's around the coyote fur. Oh. So like going from the head towards the, like it reminds me of looking at a, like the

diagram of butchering a cow from, it's always from the side and it shows, you know, the different cuts going. So picture a coyote like that and what they're selling is, is roughs and a good, you know, big Montana Highline coyote I've heard can have as many as five roughs, you know? And so if you were to picture that rough on the hood of your coat, like those Canadian goose coats,

they were making for a while. So at the top of, if you had your hood on, the top of your hood would be the back fur. And as you go around left to right, left and right down to your throat, it would go side fur towards belly fur. That's belly fur. Huh, I did not know that. Dude, so my daughter got a little winter coat that has a fake coyote thing on it. I'm going to do it in a real coyote. And I'm thinking about taking my first light Chamberlain. Oh, yeah.

You can't do it on Chamberlain. I already tried. I just told you that, remember? No, I wasn't listening. I sent it to it to samai oh you were telling me about oh yeah you didn't tell me about this i sent it i sent a chamberlain to samai with a with a nice coyote and oh you did tell me she tried to put it together and she said that just the hood opening is too small and if you were to attach that caught that rough to it it would get so tight that you you know you'd be like just looking out of a teeny tiny hole so the opening of the hood has to be bigger to make the rough work

sounds like you need a coyote from lower country with less fur short fur yeah so anyways they cut it that way did you know that did not know that i hope i don't get you a bunch of emails on that but i'm i'm 99 sure that's how that works probably like everything is probably like sometimes it's that way and sometimes it's different but when i do it that's how i'm doing it yeah yeah that makes sense how much is that five rough uh montana coyote worth i think the five, I think that's probably an anomaly. I think you're looking at more three or four roughs, but, um, you know, when Canada goose was building all those coats before they

switched over to plastic for, um, them Montana coyotes, them Highline coyotes for, you know, a hundred, $130. That drove, it's crazy. That drove the market. Well, right now that darn Yellowstone movie is, is, or TV show is driving the beaver market like crazy. Orders for 40 and 50,000, uh, beaver pel, right now, that darn Yellowstone movie is, or TV show is driving the beaver market like crazy.

Orders for 40 and 50,000 beaver pelts right now. To make all that wool felt for all those stats. To make all those felt hats, yeah. That's something. Yeah. I don't know if the people in Hollywood

realize what they're doing. We better hit it in the spring. Yeah, but the hatter market still, it's like not much money. It's probably still 10 bucks. Oh, for the for the beaver yeah yeah so walk me through how in california what happened that got you into designing and like creating cam trip cages well so ever since high school i worked at a sheet metal shop, which I ended up owning at some point. Um, which sheet metal is what you would call dry side heating and air. So

not the plumbing side, but you know, heating and air contractor. And so I was, I've been a fabricator forever. Uh, and so, uh, I was trapping coyotes and a few bobcats in the late nineties and early two thousands. And I was going to that, um, Nevada fur sale all the time. Um, and I met, I met a dude named Reed Aiton, who is, you know, I guess I'd call him my cage trapping mentor, you know, he was a California guy and him and his, his buddy at the time had, uh, you know, following the 98, uh, trap ban, they started experimenting with, uh, cage traps and, and cage traps that they could somehow put a lot of them in the back of their truck, you know, and come down. Cause they were in Northern California. They come down to my desert to trap.

And so if you think about a single cage trap, that's all completely built, you can't fit very many of them in a pickup truck, right? So they started experimenting with getting bobcats to go into narrower cages because up until then, it was, your guys were mostly using like raccoon traps, you know, like 18 by 18 cage traps, right? There wasn't, there was a, there was an outfit in Nebraska who was starting to design and build specific Bobcat cage traps, you know. But mostly guys were just using what was ever available. And these two guys were trying to figure out how to build, how to come up with something that they could fit a bunch of them in a truck. And they come up with a collapsible design initially. And then from that, they went to a design where they nest one inside the other. And one is, you know, slightly smaller than the other one. You can slide them inside. Um, and so when I met him, uh, they were starting to become successful in about 2002 with successfully cage trapping bobcats in those narrow cages, right? So like

10 inch wide cage, nine inch wide cage, eight inch wide cages, um, which I don't think anybody else was doing at the time. I could be wrong, but, uh, so after meeting him, I know I bought one of his cages and I, and I bought some of the cages from the guy in Nebraska and, you know, immediately the fabricator in me was like, well, I can build stuff better than this. And so of course I did, uh, started building them myself just for my own personal use because Reed, uh, had what was called the California cage trap company and he was selling cage traps. But, uh, eventually I told him I'll never sell a cage until, you know, until you're done with it, whatever.

And it wasn't very long that he couldn't keep up. He was an older guy, uh, and he didn't like build them and shipping them. He couldn't keep up. So he started telling people to call me. And at the same time, a trapper made a video on cage trapping bobcats. And Fox is a buddy of mine in Nevada. And he put me in his video. Not me personally, but he. But he was doing it where he didn't even need to be doing it. Right.

Yeah. He's, he was using them mostly for foxes okay and then uh there was a guy in california and we and him weren't too close of friends at that point there was a guy in california that did the actual bobcat cage trapping part for that dvd um but he at the end of his dvd he put my name and number on there and so i just fell into it i never never did it. I had well-paying, I had good paying jobs all those years. I wasn't doing it for the money. I just was getting so much enjoyment out of, well, I mean, what really tickles me floats my boat is trying to build something better, trying to make it better and better and better and trying to develop ways to get the bobcat into the cage, you know, cause that's, that's always such a challenge. You know, those, the bobcats don't want to go in there. Yeah. Can we get into that a little bit? Is that a good time?

Cause yeah, I'm wondering how you get, uh, I mean, could you fit a 25 pounder into an eight inch by eight inch cage or is that too big? Well, you're, if you're saying eight by eight, you mean eight inches tall, I would say no. Is it width? Yeah. Right? And then it's long? Eight inches wide. Yeah.

So like if I, if I say my 10 inch trap. Oh, sorry. So like my, the traps I build is, the big one is 11 inches wide and 20 inches tall. Okay. And what goes inside that one, which was the big challenge for me and accomplishment, was to make a cage that would fit inside there that

only had a one inch size break. So from 11, it goes to 10 by 19. So 11 by 20, 11 inches wide, 20 inches tall, and then 10 inches wide, 19 inches tall fits inside there. And inside that one is a nine by 18. And inside that one is eight by 17. So you have four cages that only have four inch

difference in the, in the size. So do you sell those as a kit then? Like a. Yeah. The most common thing is a set of three. Okay. Yeah. I don't, that smallest cage is not always the

most popular. It's popular in the desert. And the goal is like you're saying is just so that a trapper can carry more. Yeah. I mean, I run a little tiny Toyota with a crossbed toolbox and I can still fit 15 cages in there, you know? Yeah. That's the only way that you can be productive in the field.

So how do you get that bobcat to go in there? You don't want to go in there. No, I may know less now than I did 20 years ago when I started this. That's the challenge with those bobcats. You know, they're always, you just can't figure them out. You never will. And I used to say, you know, a bobcat's a bobcat,

no matter, you know, like wherever you go. But I have enough customers in different states and I've trapped enough different states now that that's not true. You know, they're influenced by their environment, availability of prey, you know, the temperatures. I was trapping in the Mojave desert and there's just something about cage trapping bobcats down there. It's just easy.

You're exposed to a lot of bobcats, first of all, right? So there's higher densities depending on, you know, how your drought's going and whatnot. You know, there's always, the drought's really hard on them, but so you're exposed, you have more opportunities to catch bobcats, so you catch more, but they're just more likely to go in. And then, you know, that I had dinner with that local trapper last night. He uses my cage traps right here in Montana.

Um, and he said, man, he's really having a rash of walk-bys, you know, where they just walk by in front of the cage. I mean, don't even pause, just literally walk past it. Why is he using a cage? Uh, you know, um, I don't know exactly. They're, they're very, uh, they're, they're

easier to keep operating in, in the snow than digging out your foot traps or, you know, if you got two feet of snow, you can set a cage. And so long as like the country you guys live in, it's just frigging cold all the time. Um, so the doors don't freeze up. But where the cage trap doesn't work is when you get, you know, freezing snow, you know, or it warms up during the day, 40 degrees. And then you got that water on the door that freezes at night and then your cage froze.

So it's not a perfect system, but you can keep them working in the snow. Explain baiting and luring one. So he goes into a cage. Yeah. I think what the biggest mistake that, that trappers young and old make is they think too much like a human being, uh, with a cage trap in it, not to disrespect the animal. I, I love and respect, you know, all sorts of wildlife, especially the bobcat. They're a fascinating creature, but they're just an animal.

You know, they're only capable, they've never had an original thought in their life, right? They're only capable of reacting like a wild animal would, right? So you see guys on the internet talk about, you know, sprinkling feathers out in front of their cage and putting misting urine on the front of their cage to hide their human scent and hanging a flag up in the tree. Those are all things that the bobcat's going to react to. And none of those reactions are going to cause the bobcat to become interested what's inside the cage trap. They think, oh, I put a bunch of feathers from a feather pillow in front of the cage to get them excited, you know. Well, what does that cause him to do? That causes him to smell a bunch of, you know, sanitized, sterile feathers that came out of a pillow in front of your cage. He smells a couple of them, maybe one of them flitters in the wind and he goes

over there and puts his paw on it, smells it and it didn't trigger anything naturally, right? So, compare that to, let's say, within your cage trap, you have feathers from whatever legal where you're living, you know, say pheasant feathers, you know? So like one of the things I do after I bed the cage and put soil in the trap, I'll take whatever bait I'm using, let's say it's beaver or a pheasant carcass, and I'll scrub the soil just inside the door opening of the cage, like scrub that bait into there. Now I'm imparting those natural odors into the floor of the trap before I hang the bait in the back. Okay. So now the bobcat comes and visit this cage

because most of them will walk over to and visit this thing that wasn't there last time they come through. And it's this weird rectangular square thing, you know? So their curiosity, their curious nature is just going to cause them to come start smelling it. And then they smell the ground and now they're like, oh, a pheasant, you know, I haven't had a pheasant in a while, you know? And they maybe take one step in because there's a few feathers in there that cause them to trigger naturally to it, you know?

I think of it as like, you know, like a storefront window, right? You have the mannequin there on the, with the dress on it and you're walking down the street with your, with your wife. She's not even thinking about a dress, but then she sees the dress in the window and now she's, all she can think about is a dress, right?

It's like, I'm trying to trigger them to want to investigate inside the cage. So I'm trying to use natural odors within the trap that cause that. You know, stuff that I do out of the cage, some of it has values like a flag. Some guys think, oh, all I got to do, you know, I'm making a bobcat set.

So therefore I need a flag, right? A feather hanging in the tree or whatever, a CD, let's say. Well, no, a flag has a job. The job of the flag is to, is to try to pull a cat over to your set that you don't expect to already be there. Right? So like where we were at. He's going to see that feather blown in the wind from way off and go over there and see what's going on. Yeah. So like where we were at yesterday in those thick trees, you know, a flag wouldn't have a whole lot of value, right? You're going to want

to put your, your set right where that bobcat is going to walk anyways. But if you have, you know, a flag wouldn't have a whole lot of value, right? You're going to want to put your, your set right where that bobcat is going to walk anyways. But if you have, you know, some fairly open country out in front of your cage, you have a big hill next to where you're setting and you, you expect maybe a bobcat would be up there on that hill and the rocks or what have you. Uh, and you can't necessarily get the cage where you want, where you expect the bobcat to be. Well, then you'd use a flag, you know, um, and then cause him to come over to see the flag and then becomes interested in the cage. Um, so everything you do outside the cage has a potential to distract the cat. You know, um, I remember when I was filming for one of my DVDs, uh, I had a trail camera on a set and I caught a big tom bobcat in this cage trap and the next day

i set up my tripod and my movie camera you know and i was i took the bobcat out of the cage and i was laying it down in front of me and you know i was filming myself you know talking to the camera you know yeah i'm the greatest trapper in the world you know i just caught this big bobcat and this is how you do it and uh i left the trail camera on there and a few days go by i never caught anything else and so i i picked it all up and took the trail camera on there and a few days go by, I never caught anything else. And so I, I picked it all up and took the trail camera home and, and I ended up with a video of this. What, what I was guessing was a female bobcat come to that set location and she spent like three and a half minutes smelling every square inch of soil where that tom had been laying in front of that cage. Oh, really?

Yeah. Never even looked at the cage trap. So you end up with enough stuff like that happening. You know, one thing I always tell trappers, like never pull the cage trap out of the trap bed to dispatch your animal, right? Figure out a way not to do that. I stand my cage traps up in the, and we don't

need to talk about dispatch, but what you do when you drag that cage out, you know, everybody wants to drag it out, turn it sideways, take a picture, you know, you're just dragging all that wonderful odors out of the cage bed onto the ground in front of the trap, you know. If you, let's say you dispatch your bobcat in the cage and you pull it out, lay it in front of your trap and take a picture, you know, you're just causing, you know, confusion for that next cat or a distraction. So when you ask about how you get a cat into a cage,

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Hit me with the do's. I'm a big proponent of skunk paste. So you can either put, if you're going to push your cage up against a tree trunk, let's say, you can smear some skunk paste on that trunk before you push your cage up against it. Uh, I live in desert. So I always just dig a little hole with my hand where the, where the very back of the cage would be like just beyond the pan. And I put my skunk paste in there because I think skunk for, for almost all the stuff that we trap on the land. Um, and even people it's, it's like, you know, Hey, something happened over there. I better go check it out.

That's what skunk smell is to, to all that, you know, coyotes, bobcats and everything, you know, I mean, you guys spent so much time in the field. I'm sure you smell, smell the skunk. You, you might've walked towards it just to see, you know, what happened over there, you know, some got killed or whatever. And it does the same thing for, for predators.

So, you know, I'm a big proponent of that. You know, having natural odors inside the cage to cause them to want to, you know, enter the trap, investigating those odors. You're trying to change their mind, right? They come up to the cage, maybe they, you know, hopefully they smelt it. So another one that I do and I, you know, some of this stuff I learned from different people. I don't need to mention all their names, give them credit. But, you know, a guy in Colorado taught me about thermals, you know, because you guys know all about thermals.

You're elk hunters and all that. I'm from the desert. I don't really know a whole lot about thermals. But the time of day when the bobcat's most active is going to be, you know, the twilight hours, late afternoon, all night and early in the morning when the thermals are going downhill. And so I can't tell you how many cage traps I've seen that were pointed up a wash and I'll go up past them and set my cage pointed down the wash. So then when the bobcat gets there during the time of day, when he's most active,

which is the low light conditions, the thermal is going to be going down that wash. So when he approaches the front of the cage, the odors hit him right in the face. So now he triggers on those odors and he knows to follow them, right? So a lot of these guys that send me pictures of bobcat tracks in the snow and stuff on the side of their trap, you know, the bobcat's trying to get to the source of the odors or the bait from the side. Well, chances are that's where he's smelling it coming from. You follow me?

Yep. I'm with you. Yeah. So he's standing, he's standing at the front of the cage and nothing triggers him naturally. Are you brushing in your, your cages? Yeah. I mean.

What's, what's a set look like? Like when you, when you set one? So, you know, in the desert you could spend 10 minutes breaking brush and it looks like you threw toothpicks on your cage, you know, in the desert, you could spend 10 minutes breaking brush and it looks like you threw toothpicks on your cage, you know, there's no leaves. So that's a very different set than the majority of people.

Majority of trappers are trapping, you know, heavier country. So, and a lot of guys have to deal with snow, right? So up here, you guys would have to be putting plastic bags over the top of your trap or even put your cage in a plastic bag. Uh, maybe finding ledges that are south facing

that have dirt. Yep. So that you can be under the ledge to keep the snow off. Um, so you, you really have no choice. There's a, the guys in the Northwest kind of use a, a dark hole mentality to their cage trapping.

So like, you know, throw a paper bag on the floor and your house cat just goes in it for whatever, why the hell it does, I don't know. Yeah. Just goes in the dark hole. So those guys kind of think of, you know, trapping like that. That is not at all how I, I mean,

that's just where I lived. We couldn't do that. We didn't need to. The bobcats just go right in. So there was a period of time when I thought, you know, maybe the difference of, you know, as I go to Colorado and I have terrible luck, I have a lot of visits with no, no cats going in, you know, and, uh, I started using more bait cause I think they're more calorie

driven in, in the colder country. Um, in the desert, you can't really use bait because it's just too warm. It just, just, you know, it's just nasty. Yeah. And, uh, so you use all lure and your cages are barely covered up. Um, so I, there was a period of time I thought, you know, maybe that's the difference. You know, maybe it's not the cat. Maybe it's, maybe it's the country, you know? Yeah.

And, uh, but I, I, I really can't say how I, I don't know why it's so more difficult to catch these bobcats in cages in the mountain country. I just don't know. I just don't know. You were so more difficult to catch these bobcats in cages in the mountain country i just don't know i just don't know you were telling me something yesterday uh about their power of smell that i was thinking about after we talked and you're mentioning that when you when you're working on research projects how quickly a bobcat will come in and occupy the vacated area left by the death of another bobcat. And, like, how do they know what it was? And how do they know that the person, the cat is gone?

How do they know what it was? Like, you were talking about spots where you can look at tracking data. Yeah. And you'll know that a cat will go in and just take over the territory of another cat oh yeah it's amazing how fast sometimes and i think the the the cat that died the better his country is the faster the neighboring cats will take it over right like as soon as a few weeks like it's pretty impressive like if you picture like a umerboard with the squares and picture

three squares, a black one on the left, a red one in the middle, and a black one on the right. We had a situation with three cats that had radio collars on them. And they all three had their own, there was a female on the right, a male in the middle, and a male on the left. And the one in the middle was a big dominant the left. And, uh, the, the one in the middle, uh, was a big dominant Tom. So you would suspect that he was occupying the best little piece of country there. Right. And they, they all three had fairly small home ranges. Um, my estimate from, you know, and I don't, I don't have access to the GPS data. I just, I just kind of get the, get whatever I can from the biologists I'm working for down there in Arizona.

But just looking at the screenshots and stuff, let's say each one of those bobcats had roughly a three mile by three mile square piece of country that they occupied. Fairly small home range compared to what I would expect up here in Montana, let's say. Meaning they had everything they needed right there, right? Three sections. Three square miles. Yeah, food, shelter, escape, you know, everything they wanted, right? Resources. The one in the middle died.

The other two, I showed you that. How did it die? It was wearing a collar? Yeah, it was wearing a collar, yeah. You don't want to tell me how it died? Uh, it got caught in a foothold trap and a lion came and ate it. Oh. Yeah.

Yeah. Lion ate it before noon that morning. Yeah. Just hollowed the whole belly out. You can, you can tell the difference, um, between lion kills and coyote kills and stuff. Yeah. It's pretty easy. So a trapper got it, but a lion got it.

Yeah, yeah. It got killed in a trap. Well, just within a few weeks, the two cats on the other two checkerboard squares just immediately started venturing into his country. And then within just a few months, they absorbed it and just took it over. And now they have, each one of those two cats

has a bigger home range and they spend more time in his country than they do in their own from what I've seen so far. And I- You always hear that stuff, like an animal having its territory, but it's just amazing.

We have another cat right now that the biologist was sending me some screenshots on. He was a young male that we collared last December. And he lived in one spot, had a nice little home range, looked like he was making a good life for himself. And then one day in June, he just took off. And he took off and went, oh, I would have to estimate some 40 miles or so north, just almost on a straight line, spent a day or two up there, turned around and came all the way back down along that same line,

and then turned west and went across a bunch of juniper country, come down into a valley, went up and behind a town and then took off, headed west again and was hanging out over there for a month or two. And then now the latest little screenshot that the biologist shared with me, he is now occupying a piece of country that we had a male that was collared that got shot that we knew his home range pretty well. And it looks to me like he's setting up to take over that Tom's entire piece of country now that he's gone. So he went on a big wander and found like a sweet spot that you know had been vacated. That I know for sure is vacated, yeah. It's pretty cool stuff. It's pretty cool stuff.

It's pretty neat stuff. How did that transition go for you where you're doing bobcats as a fur harvester, so you really learn how to catch them. What was the first time a researcher called you up? I think it was probably just a slow thing. I started selling the products to all sorts of researchers all over the place. Um, I guess the first project I worked on was when I

was with USDA, I did some seasonal work for a few years doing coyote work. And, uh, they sent me down to help a grad student catch, uh, some gray squirrels and put collars on them. And then I went out on a couple private researchers projects just to help them out. Oh, California. California, at one point, there was a local biologist on the Eastern part of the state that was trying to, he was actually trying to get ahead of what he saw coming down the road. Like this would have been in about 2009 or 10-ish before we lost everything. He was trying to get ahead of it and he was trying to be proactive and actually do a population study in the Eastern part of the state. And, um, uh, he was, you know, getting callers put out and stuff like that. He, I think he probably got PR money for it and was doing a study. Um,

he's since moved on, but, uh, I, I got to go up there and I kind of like did a school for their trapper and then they were struggling, of course, and I went out and helped them a little bit. It was just kind of slowly. And then, you know, I mean, I had a pretty good reputation in Arizona. Everybody knew who I was. I pretty much was the only one selling all the stuff. And so when the biologists, I think it was like 2018, uh, some of the animal welfare

groups started talking about pushing for a ban on lion and bobcat hunting and trapping in Arizona. And, uh, like, I don't know, it was a director, one of the higher ups at Game and Fish said to the furbearer biologist, large carnivore lady that I worked for, uh, say, Hey, what are we going to do about this? You know, do we got enough data to, to fight these people off? And she said, well, you know, there's never enough data. She said, I got this idea for this population study and laid on me, you know, and, and here, uh, what, two and a half years later, it's, I think it's the number one thing that Game and

Fish is doing right now in Arizona. They're radio calling bobcats and lions all over the state. But when she, you know, started getting, you know, it's all PR money, right? And when she started putting that all together, she knew right away. She said, there's only two guys that I want to work with as the trappers. That's what I really respect the most with her because so many of these other agencies, they, they try to do with volunteer help, volunteer trappers, or they try to do it in house, you know, cause these biologists, they

spend, you know, so many years in college, right? They want to work with wildlife and they find that they're in the office all the time. Right? So they have a hard time giving up their field work. So then they try to do, uh, you know, the trapping and stuff themselves, but that's why I have so much respect for the way Arizona's doing it. Cause they hired two, you know, the trapping and stuff themselves. But that's why I have so much respect for the way Arizona's doing it.

Cause they hired two, you know, two competent trappers to go out and do the catching, you know, and let them do the science stuff. So, uh, so, so when they, when they put that all together a couple of years ago, she called me and said, well, Hey, you know, what are you doing this winter? And so that's, I think we just had our third

capture season right now. How many have you gotten collars on? So I was lucky enough to be there to catch number 100 for the state of Arizona. Oh, seriously? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then. Damn. So 100 deployments. There's been, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 mortalities.

Yeah, what do you find is killing them besides people? You know, the biggest one, so I think the biggest category and, and I, so understand I'm not talking for Arizona Game and Fish. No, I understand. I'm just repeating some of the things that I see and, uh, some of what I know, you know. Um, so predation I think is probably the biggest

one so far for mortalities. And of that, the lions are really killing the heck out of them things. I don't know. There's been maybe, I don't know, about a dozen or so. Don't quote me on that. There's been around a dozen or so predation mortalities. And a lot of those are lions.

I had two lions up on this one ranch I collared. And three months later they were both dead from what i would expect be the same lion yeah two lions excuse me did i two bobcats yeah are the lions killing them to to eat them or is it a competition thing yeah i think it's uh all the above i think lions just lions just wander around the country wanting to kill stuff yeah that's just how they are. Tell them what you found, Ronnie. Yeah, we saw a little bit of that the other day.

A friend of ours, another sound engineer that works here, had found a lion track when he was checking his martin traps. So he called me and another friend of ours with hounds. We went up there and run the cat. And as we're working, sorting out through the tracks, first, we found some kills, a couple of carcasses of the lions, which had on top of it laying there fresh, not even rigor mortis yet, was a bobcat with no head. Is that right? Yeah. Caught that bobcat eating his kill.

Yeah. And so we threw that in the truck thinking like, oh, sweet, bonus bobcat with no head. Is that right? Yeah. Caught that bobcat eating his kill. Yeah. And so we threw that in the truck thinking like, oh, sweet, bonus bobcat. Right. And a couple hundred yards down the trail, we like see where this lion's been dragging something, see the blood trail, and cash underneath the tree is a whole coyote.

Is that right? Serious? Jeez. I didn't hear about that part. See, that's something I didn't even know. Like three years ago, a buddy of mine told me, hey, my brother just shot a lion. He was driving down the road and seen a lion looking at him over the bushes. He got out and shot it and went over there.

It was eating a coyote. And I said to my buddy, what do you mean he's eating a coyote? And I had to call a couple of houndsman buddies of mine, like lion expert guys. Like, lions eat coyotes? So, yeah, they chase the hell out of them. Things eat them. We were on a track and saw where it got a red fox one time. And a friend of mine said he saw where it got a Floyd

found where they've killed tortoises. Oh, really? Jeez. So, they're just killing everything they come across. He said they got it. He said when he sees it, he sees it on occasion. They pull the, I think it was Floyd telling me this, they pull the bottom shell right off.

It's similar to how they kill a porcupine. If you've ever run across a porcupine that was killed by a lion, it reminds me, it gives me an image in my mind of like a cartoon about, of like that lion with one single claw, you know, like a scalpel and zipping the belly, but that's what it looks like. They like, like from the belly side, they cut it open, I assume with their claw and then

spread it apart and just hollowed out. You know, their tongues have those little hooks on their tongues. Yeah. They can just lick meat right off the bone and everything, but that's three things happen, or I've seen three different things when we investigate the little bit I've gotten to do, investigate the mortality locations. A bobcat will either just

bite a, or excuse me, a lion will either just bite a bobcat's head and just leave it there dead. Or they'll crunch his head and then eat his guts out. But it's all very clinical. You know, when a coyote kills a bobcat, we, I got to go on one of those. We had a mortality one morning we were trapping this year and I hiked across this little valley and with a, with a GPS location when it went into mortality, found the bobcat there. And it was, what I read in the ground was that this bobcat had gotten caught a little bit in the open, had gotten chased towards a tree. Why it didn't go up the juniper tree, I do not know, but I was picturing it just kind of backing up against the tree. Like if you chased it with hounds and you just kind of,

you know, shelved up there. But he like decided that's where he was going to make his stand is what I suspected. And there's a pile of fur right there where the coyotes got him. And then there's, you know, a 30 yard trail where the coyotes are pulling on him and pulling, ripping fur off and just left his carcass laying there. But when a bobcat, when a lion eats the bobcat, uh, most of the time there's just this skin, uh, laying there with bone fragments from the head. Um, and like, like clinically, like reminds me

of that Hannibal Lecter movie or something. Like how did that lion eat everything but the skin and fur, you know? Like how are you so good at eating stuff? And there's just a, there's just a collar laying there and it's all, it's all in a little three or four foot circle. And sometimes it's right underneath of a tree. And if you examine the tree close enough, you can see where the lion got up in there and ripped the bobcat out. Because, you know, that bobcat that got killed here a couple weeks ago, he was at the base of a tree, you know.

Why didn't he just go up the tree and just hang out there until the coyotes were gone, you know. I don't know. Same question I have with the bobcat I went and picked up off the railroad tracks. Got cut clean too. I run over by a train. One of the collared ones. Yeah, with a collar on it. Like, how do you not get out of the way of that train, you know.

I don't know. It was a bobcat. Yeah, with a collar on it. Like, how do you not get out of the way of that train? You know, I don't know. It was a bobcat. Yeah, the train's not swerving. Just take a couple steps. I have no idea. Left or right. I have no idea. The railroad people were working, found him laying there dead on the tracks.

And I went out there to pick it up and it was just cut square in two. I'm surprised to hear that a bobcat can't, I guess at least just mano a mano, take on a coyote. It might've been more than one. Yeah, I would say it was definitely probably more than one.

Yeah. Who would win in a one-on-one tussle? A big tom or a coyote? Yanni's big old 25-pounder and a coyote. Well, if the bobcat had one foot in a trap, you'd have a dead bobcat. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sure they, you have to imagine they run into single, single tyrants from time to time. And probably that's, that's the one thing, you know, the, the big toms, if you look at the little bit of tracking data that I get to look at, you know, the toms, the toms definitely spend way more time in open country. You know, they'll move, they're, they're still a structure related animal. They always want to be by structure, but they'll move from one piece of structure across some opening, uh, whereas the females and the younger cats are just, just almost always stay in structure. They always, you know, be safe, you know? And that's how, so later in the season, um, you know, those big toms show up,

you know, like, cause you're trapping foothills and stuff like that a lot of times, well, then you start catching them big toms show up and like, cause you're trapping foothills and stuff like that a lot of times. Well, then you start catching them big toms in January and February. It's because they were, they were down running with the coyotes, uh, and then they they'll come up into the trees to find, find a woman, you know, but you were talking about like how fast they discover that their neighbor is gone. Uh, that's, that's like my most recent thing that's keeping me engaged and interested in trying to learn about bobcats more and more is, is how they figure that out, how they establish those territories. Like what are all the different ways that they're leaving scent down that create such, you know, like defined barriers between one cat and another, you know, and, uh, and some of

those odors that are present in, you know, that come from their glands, you know, and, uh, and some of those odors that are present in, you know, that come from their glands, you know, they're just a big giant gland. They got gland on their forehead, behind their ears and their arms and their, you know, their anal glands, their feet pads, you know, they just, they, they can make smell like bobcat smell out of all their whole body. But, uh, you know, when they're making them scratches, they'll scratch their back feet or their front feet. They're, they're putting odor down, uh, when they're making them scratches, they'll scratch their back feet or their front feet. They're putting odor down. When they're peeing, they're putting odor down.

When they're scratching a post, they're putting odor down. And some of those odors I'm starting to learn last a pretty short amount of time, you know. Undetectable to us as humans, but, you know, bobcats, you know, bobcats, if, you know, old trappers, you know, a, but you know, bobcats, you know, uh, bobcats, if you know, old, old, old trappers, you know, uh, you know, there was a rap on bobcats.

They got a cold nose. They call them a cold nose. You know, they don't compare to a coyote, you know, but the longer I do this, the more I respect and admire the, the ability of a bobcat to smell, especially watching them on trail camera. When they, they come to your cage trap. They, they literally put their nose on every single thing. Yeah.

And, and they can smell so much better than I, you know, ever, ever really thought. If you hadn't got interested in bobcats, what do you think you would have done with your life? Golly, I don't know. You think you'd have got all obsessed

with something different? That's a toughie i mean i mean i imagine by by nature i would have but like you were destined to get obsessed with something that's what i always wonder about people yeah you know i mean like if if you spend your whole energy on one thing and that thing was an absence would you have been just some like slack-jawed tv watcher or would you have been all obsessed with some the next like plan b yeah i don't know i always i always uh i know as a construction worker all those years you know it's it's one of those if uh if you don't pick your future your future picks you kind of thing you know and uh you know i started making good money in high school and and in construction, you know, lended itself to the talents I already had, you know. And I wasn't, you know, I always wished that I was good at school.

I always wanted to go to college and stuff like that, but just never, I just couldn't stay. I couldn't do it. How far did you get in college? Oh, gosh, I didn't. I just took, you know, community college courses and stuff. The only ones I ever did any good in were the ones that I, stuff I cared about, like geology and stuff, you know, or electrical classes and stuff. But yeah, I always, I remember, you know, my stepdad was a, was a cop, chief of police

and stuff. And he would always come home in a suit and, and nice shoes and stuff. And he would put his work boots on when he got home. Couldn't get it out of his blood. Well, he'd put his work boots on to do work. And I always thought all those years doing construction, I was like, I'm the exact opposite. You know, I wouldn't mind going to work in nice clothes, you know. And the work clothes are for when you get home.

Uh-huh. I don't know. I don't know what I would have done if I wasn't into this. I don't know. How long have you been married? 19 years. Yeah. Well,

I mean, there was one brief couple year marriage when I was younger. Um, I remember leaving that gal. Was she a bobcat trapper? No,

no, no, no. I remember leaving that gal on the apartment couch on Christmas Eve to go out bobcat hunting at night with my buddy. I don't know what's wrong with that woman.

I don't know why she didn't understand. But we were only married a couple of years and moved on. No kids, luckily. And that might have had something to do with it. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, she didn't, she had nothing. She wasn't against it, but, you know, I just. She thought you had your priorities crooked. The way it ended up working out for me, getting older, getting married older in life, having kids older in life,

it was, to me, so much better than my younger friends that got married early and had kids. Because they were still, they were constantly fighting, you know, every day wanting to have their own personal life you know fun life you know being tied down with these kids and being married and when i got married older in life i think it was in early 40s uh i was just i was ready oh yeah i was ready for that to be the thing i was going to do have kids and be married yeah i was pretty much sick of having fun by the time i had kids yeah yeah well i don't know seems like you have quite a bit of fun no no i don't mean that kind of fun i mean like having whatever nightlife and shit like that yeah i was well i was never a partier i mean not that kind of fun the nighttime fun yeah i was never a partier me heck me and jay

would ditch school and uh we'd go out in the desert shooting stuff you know we go out on weekend we go on the desert night hunting you know camping out in the desert shooting stuff, you know, we go out on a weekend, we go out in the desert night hunting, you know, camping out in the desert. Yeah. Just going out doing stuff. That's, yeah, that's what we wanted to do. Even though you can't hunt it and trap it, is that Mojave desert stuff still cool to hang out in? Is it pretty wild? Uh, no, so much of it, uh, has been closed to wilderness, you know, close all the roads anywhere that the topography out there in that desert changed from flat to hills, years ago, they turned it into wilderness. They drew a line around it, closed all the roads.

You get out hiking it much? I've never been a big hiker. Then a big portion of it, 3 million acres, got turned into the Mojave National Preserve. And their goal was to turn it to its pre-colonial days. Right. Yeah. So if it wasn't here when, you know, colonization, they, they didn't want it. So they, you know, started working with private groups to buy out all the cattle ranchers and chase them out of there.

And then all those, you know, the only reason that desert was worth anything was because of cattlemen and, and miners and stuff, you know, that's the only, that's how that desert got developed, you know, because there's no water. So them guys were out there developing springs, natural springs, you know, and stretching cattle waters out across the desert and providing water for wildlife, you know. And so, you know, over a period of quite a few years, they pretty much got rid of all the cattlemen. There's only one left out there. Most all them cattle waters died. If you do hike into one of those old cattle waters or springs that the cattle rancher used to maintain, it's just overgrown now. There's no water above surface and it's just a, it's just death valley. And it used to be teeming with wildlife, you know, but they did all that, you know, in the interest of, they, you know, say retaining it for future generations type stuff. Sure, yeah.

So, yeah, they actually did that Mojave Preserve with support of hunters. Like they, they were told it was going to be a pretty, pretty neat deal to turn it into a preserve. You'd get federal money and all this sort of stuff. And, and then over the period of time, different directors with the, with the, that'd be the park service, uh, you know, they, they even attempt to do stuff like, uh, ban nighttime coyote hunting out there for the sake of the dark skies.

Like people that want to go out and look at stars. Like they don't want varmint hunters out there at night running a spotlight. You know, it's just a constant. It's California, man. Yeah. So do you leave California every year then to chase bobcats somewhere else? Yeah, Arizona's my playground these days.

And I'm only two hours from there. But I just almost, I almost, you know, satisfy that itch between, so for the last several years, you know, I was working for USDA doing, you know, trapping, doing coyote worksheet protection. And then they, we had contracts with, you know, Game and Fish, stuff like that. We go into units and do fawn protection, you know, in the spring kill, you know, remove coyotes to try to help the fawns. But, you know, I left that and then I, I found out about these different contracts with different States and stuff like that. And I was like, huh, you know, what's that all about? Why

is the USDA getting to do all that? So then I started working my way into some of that stuff. And so between, you know, building the cage traps and, uh, in the springtime, I'll do, I'll do coyote work for about two and a half months somewhere or another, you know, different, different contracts. And then winter time, I'm got to do this radio caller stuff the last three years. And so, yeah, I'm hoping to get back home, get caught up on cage traps and everything and get at least get to trap,

you know, recreationally in February, you know, for myself. It kind of like your business, the way it's evolved over time kind of reminds me of a little bit like being a writer where um the the mediums change all the time right like i was i was into talking about a certain set of ideas and at a time it was like oh it was in magazine articles and then it was in books then it's in podcasts then it's an audio original shit and it's in tv right it's in youtube whatever it is it feels like you've been doing the same thing but like everything's changed around it for sure like for years to get yeah that you just been like wherever bobcats take me no absolutely because for for quite a few years i

just was into selling their pelts you know that's what i was about and then the cage trapping thing started so now i've got like you know a little side gig going on with the cage traps plus i'm trapping and then and when as we lost everything in california that was almost hand in hand the same time where i started doing seasonal work for usda and then working for you you know, Arizona Game of Fish stuff. Yeah. It's just like, like, yeah, every few years I figure out a new way to make money off of bobcats. And the research stuff is proving to be really fulfilling.

Yeah. Very fun. Sometimes people will write in and ask how to get a job, like an outdoor job. Yeah. Or a job in the outdoors. It's kind of like take your pick. I don know every way in no way you know yeah no two people have the same story uh i would say no like you've carved this whole crazy existence like that man uh and you wouldn't be like well here's how you do it and it doesn't make any sense no i would love to tell you i had a plan

i would love to tell you how to plan plan and figured it all out ahead of time. But it was like every year brings something new. Yeah, it's just not replicable. No. The USDA Wildlife Services route is not too bad. You know, a lot of guys get there, get started doing that. You know, you can spend an entire career working for USDA Wildlife Services, you know, as a wildlife specialist.

Yeah, we've had some of those guys on the show. Yeah, they get kind of a bad, everybody likes to make fun of the government trapper, you know? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, they all like to tease it, you know, he's not any good or whatever. Oh, really?

Yeah, but then at the same time, you have trappers telling you, oh yeah, you know, the government trapper in my town taught me how to trap. So, like, the old government trappers, they get credit for being great. And, you know, USDA guys nowadays, they get knocked on a lot, you know? Oh, no. Like, oh, yeah, we had the government guy out. He couldn't kill the guy out, you know?

So, you know, like, me and a bunch of boys from the bar went and killed it, you know? Well, man, I appreciate you coming out and hanging out. Oh, shoot, man. I got the invite. There's no doubt I was coming up. Tell people how to find your business. Oh, yeah. Camp Trip Cages on Facebook is where I'm most active, believe it or not, Facebook.

But your website says you're going to make a website. Yeah, the website, the certificates and everything ran out like a year ago. And so we just kind of put like a placeholder site, you know, on there, cagingbobcats.com. And it's been a year now. I've been promising that website guy that I'd work on it for him. And I haven't done it yet. I'm supposed to send him a bunch of pictures and stuff. But heck, I'm so darn busy right now, just word of mouth that, you know.

And it's kind of cool because when people look you up word of mouth, like they're, they're looking for you cause they want your product. Like you get that phone call, you're making a sale. Oh. When you, when I almost dread putting social media posts out because you get, you know,

every, you make one social media post. You're tire kickers. Yeah. You get one social media post, you get all kinds of guys wanting free advice and asking a million questions and don't, don't even read your post. They ask you questions about the post you just made. Sons of bitches.

No. You don't say. All right, man. I appreciate it. Ah, shoot. I appreciate it. So find you there. Um, and if you're not there, you're out in the desert somewhere learning about bobcats.

Yeah, for sure. All right. Appreciate you coming on, man. Thank you. Thanks the desert somewhere learning about bobcats. Yeah, for sure. All right. Appreciate you coming on, man. Thank you. Thanks, buddy. Good meeting all you guys. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this.

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