The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 413: Split and Delivered

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Steve Rinella talks with Chris Carlson, Ken Carlson, Carmen Vanbianchi, Janis Putelis, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics include: Pre-eminent Youtubers and snowmobiles; how "pre" might be an unnecessary prefix; Operation Big Coon; following lynx tracks; how to donate to Carmen's "Trap a Cat" project; little explosions and collar spacers that release collars; why elm wood is satan wood; all the different grades of veneer; reading the wood and always cutting the wet, not the dry, stuff; ricks and cords; complicated role playing; comparing prices; 4th generation trapping; catching nightcrawlers at night; skinning muskrats in seconds; the world's greatest snowmobile hat; how Beyonce and the "Yellowstone" TV series made beaver hats cool again; 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

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel from merino base layers to technical outerwear for every hunt.

First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Hey folks, Giannis Patelis from MeatEater here. I'm going to Nashville, Tennessee here in a couple weeks, and I need your help. I'm going down there to record some turkey stories. I need your help to help me find the best turkey storytellers that you know. Okay, I'm going to be down there every day of the convention, February 16th, 17th, and 18th. We're going to be in door C of Ryman's studio.

There's going to be signage there directing you how to get there. So you can take your friend, your grandpa, or maybe yourself there to me and record a turkey story with me. Remember, it doesn't necessarily have to be about turkey hunting. It could be about the relationships that we get from turkey hunting, something that happened before a turkey hunt, wherever it might be. I just want to get it recorded. I think this is a great opportunity for us as hunters to record some of our oral history that is such a great part of hunting and get it recorded so we have it forever. Years down the line, we'll be able to

look at it and go, hey, remember what it was like back in 2023. So Nashville, Tennessee, February 16th, 17th, and 18th, we have room open for walk-ins. If you want to sign up ahead of time, go to themeateater.com forward slash turkey story sign up, and you can get a time slot there so you don't have to try to beat the rush when we're all down there hanging out at the turkey convention. Thanks in advance. Holy smokes, we got a lot to pack in right now.

We are joined by one repeat customer. Nope. Repeat guest. Quite possibly. A repeat guest. Quite possibly the most repeated guest. No. I think Half a Finger wins that. No. No, I don't even think it's Half a Finger. No? Carmen, how many times have you been on? This is her fourth.

Third. Fourth. You've been on four times. Twice in Seattle and twice here now. Yeah, she's old school, man. When we used to podcast in your garage. Yeah, man. When we used to hang the shipping, those shipping,

do we have the shipping blankets hung up everywhere? I don't remember that. I was more distracted by how immaculate your garage was. That ain't changed, man. That has not changed. So Carmen Van Bianchi is back.

And you have a proposal. You have a pitch. Yeah, I got a pitch today no uh just so i remember it just so everyone remembers carmen is a recreational hunter but a professional wildlife researcher yeah and her pitch to you all you got to dig deep this is gonna be like the jerry lew Lewis telethon. That's dated. Do you know what I'm talking about when I say Jerry Lewis telethon? No. We do because we're Jerry's kids. There's a

joke behind that but hopefully our dad doesn't listen to that. You got to keep that one in your pocket. Also, we're going to get to Carmen's pitch and you guys got to dig deep in their wallets and help her out. If you happen to own a snowmobile company, you'll want to pay particular attention. Because this wildlife research project needs your assistance.

Also joined by probably the preeminent YouTube stars. The preeminent youtubers on youtube like these are the guys that that like that mr beast found his inspiration from i was just about to say mr beast and then no no he was like he was like i'd like to be like that but i'm not i can't trap beavers like that yeah so i'm gonna throw money at people oddly exploitative stuff exactly and i don't want to do oddly exploitative stuff where i act like i'm being magnanimous but i'm kind of a little bit being exploitative under the guise of charity yes you know uh um you know you know i was talking about how a lot of like how people that like to hunt are always disappointed in disney movies you know because

there'd be like a hunter in there and he's where he's from the south you know he's like ignorant thick accent yeah yeah yeah uh um and i was saying that that i like to watch adventure time with my kids because in adventure time their house is full of taxidermy and they sleep under animal skins um it's just it's very like it's it's got all the they even have like skinned out ducks and stuff that they sleep under but they sleep under animal hides and i like that show they kind of did a goof on um they did a little bit of a goof on that genre of youtube video where they they have a large pile of treasure and they take some of their treasure and they go to these goji berries house and use their money

to get these goji berries to do they go exploit them with their money and the goji berries have a hard time saying no. Oh they're personified animated goji berries? Of course Corinne. I can explain. I'm talking, of course,

about Chris and Ken Carlson from both, dual channels. Both things that are very interesting to me. In the wood yard, which chronicles their wood chopping exploits, and out of the wood yard,

where they're not in the wood yard. You're easily entertained entertained aren't you everybody i showed you okay so we have a we have a we have a a person that uh well you know people have seen her just been on the show we have an employee tracy um who i'm yeah i want to say she could give a rat's ass about wood chopping and beaver trapping. But she did go and get real into rock picking and picked all the rocks. Like would go to a ranch, assuming they didn't want rocks, right? Impeding with the growth of their grass. Sounds like my wife.

She'd pick rocks. She personally picked enough rocks for a giant chimney and a giant patio and stuff so that might so i can't say that she wouldn't give a rat's ass about it but i was introduced i was like you have to watch these guys okay and she said it was she said the same thing corinne, where it's like, what's the thing where you listen to people play with beads and shit? ASMR. Auto-sensory motor stimulation. Is that right?

You could watch these guys for days. It's unbelievable. I never thought I would hours of my life go down the drain. No. Watching people plow snow with a skid steer. I was on the phone.

I was like, you have to watch this. And so I was like, just check it out. Just watch for a second. So she starts watching it and we're on the phone and we realize we've been

on the phone together and not saying anything for 10 minutes. To me, it's like the greatest thing in the world. Wow. Oh, I need to correct myself.

ASMR is Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. What did you say it was? Auto Sensory Motor Response. Is that where you get that tingly feeling in your head? Yes. Yeah. You can get it that way or you can get it with Corinne's pheasant foot. No, it's correct.

Yeah. Corinne's pheasant foot head tickler. So you can get it to you. It's like slow TV that we've talked a little bit about on this show, but I think it's kind of the same thing. The sounds, a lot of people like listening to the sounds. The doodling chainsaws go over well. Yeah.

Stuff like that. The sound of the spud hitting the ice. The splitter. The splitter, you know, when the wood cracks, you know, it's a cool sound. My daughter, who wants nothing to do with it, helped film one day for me and she said, that's really interesting, just listening to the

sound of the wood split. And she said, I could listen to that all day. Get a lot of that from a lot of people. It's weird. So we're going to dig in. We're going to do Carmen's big push where everybody's going to dig deep in their pockets.

And there's something in it for you. I'm talking to the listener. A gesture toward Carmen, but I meant the listener. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's going to lay it out. First, we've got to get into a couple of things.

Some feedback issues. Someone had an interesting point. I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this because I feel like they're being a little nitpicky. Jesse Griffiths on episode 405 of the podcast. Jesse Griffiths was bitching and moaning about the term dry brine

on the grounds that it was an inaccurate fad term for a process that already had multiple names, including dry rub and pre-seasoning. His words. But also that's like kind of an oxymoron, right? It's like dry. He's like, a brine is a liquid. A brine is a liquid. So he's like, when you're dry brining, why are you not putting a dry rub on it?

Why are you not pre-seasoning it? And someone wrote in to say, if you're really going to to be i'm putting words in this individual's mouth owen he says if you're really going to be like uh getting down to the gnat's ass on all this stuff he said that jesse should consider this pre is generally a totally unnecessary prefix when you preheat an oven, you're just heating it. If you submit a pre-proposal for a grant, it's a proposal.

Pre-seasoning would fall into the same category. You're just seasoning it. That's all. Good point. Unless, of course, there's more seasoning that happens later. I could shoot a thousand holes into what this guy's saying.

I don't even agree with this guy. But then it's like you're seasoning, you're seasoning again, and then you're seasoning again. I don't agree with him. I don't agree with him at all. We had this conversation the other day about refried beans. They're fried beans. And someone's like, no, because you keep reheating them and that's like refrying.

Like that's not what they mean. No, they're just fried ones. They're fried beans. So I think that preheating is that you're, it's like you're heating it pre-cook. Yeah. Pre-seasoning would be most people, like most of my life life you'd have cooked a steak

then put seasoning on it but nowadays you put it on there and let it sit there for an hour to integrate so you're like you know i get i get i get where he's coming from but i just want to share that another good bit of feedback. This guy was just pointing out a thing that's pretty interesting. I recently heard Steve recount a story about a $20,000 squirrel dog. By recently, he means he was listening to an old episode. But I remember what he's talking about. A squirrel dog sold for $20,000, and we thought that was worth mentioning. He says, it reminded me of an FBI sting operation called Operation, get this, Big Coon Dog.

You Google it and it checks out? Yep. Operation Big Coon Dog. He says, I used to live in a small coal town called Grundy, Virginia. Grundy is basically two extremely tight valleys with rivers running through it. It would be them. Due to topography, Grundy floods regularly, and sometimes it's biblical. One of these epic flood events happened about 20 years ago.

FEMA came in and declared the area a disaster, and the feds provided millions of dollars for cleanup. Somehow the local politicians got FEMA to allow elected officials to divvy up the money to local contractors for the cleanup. The problem was that the politicians took bribes for the contracts. No. That's never happened. First time that ever happened.

Hey, that's a, you know, what's funny about this is that the thing right now, Zelensky in Ukraine just dismissed a lot of senior officials for playing a similar game with all the aid flooding into Ukraine. I don't know if they're doing it for coon dogs, but. Maybe. Possibly. So here's how the FBI caught wind of it. A guy that didn't normally win coon hunting tournaments starts winning a lot of coon hunting tournaments.

He's a politician in this town. And he just comes out of the blue all of a sudden. He's got some sweet coon dogs and starts cleaning up on raccoons. Okay? They reported that it was suspicious the timing of him getting these high-test coon dogs, and it wound up that this individual

took as a bribe a $40,000 in coon dogs. The FBI wound up busting him and several other individuals for this graft. Then he goes on to say, Grundy has flooded several times since and FEMA has denied them relief based on the local government's antics during Operation Big Coon.

That doesn't seem fair to the people. Some people did prison time for this. I don't seem fair to the people. Some people did prison time for this. I don't know that I believe that part. Yeah. Like, I don't think that they would be like, you'd have a guy commit fraud, or commit, you know,

accept a bribe so bad that he goes to jail and your town floods again and FEMA's like, not this time, fool me once shame on you like i just i don't know i believe everything else he says wikipedia page says 16 people were convicted of uh criminal charges but what's messed up is that some of those people that it said well he says in his letter that after they went to prison, they were re-elected. Yeah, I believe that.

So the local community wasn't that mad at him. That feels very American. That feels American. The bribes feel American. Not distinctly American. It feels human. FEMA being like, next time you're on your own, buddy. I don't know. I don't know.

This one's interesting. But I'm not going to get into's interesting But I'm not going to get into it What I'm not going to get into is landowners We'll cover this more Can we circle back around to this? Landowners winning a suit about Trespassing deer dogs You can see where this is going Like guys go hunt with their deer dogs

Like a strategy. And this is always, if I was a deer dog hunter, I would be self-policing. Because this winds up being the number one grievance against people who hunt deer with dogs where it's legal. Is that you're basically, a lot, I'm not saying everybody. It's a common practice to be, well, I know that i can't run into that guy's property and chase the deer out but i'll wait on the edge and send my dogs in which is like you know that's like the number one point of contention about it they do that with coyotes too oh yeah and bears my friend doug talks about it yeah they're like well i can too. Oh yeah. And bears. My friend Doug talks about it.

Yeah. They're like, well, I can't go on. I can't go over there, but I mean, why not just, we'll stand on the edge. You can't stop your dogs. Yeah. Well. Oh, sorry it happened, sir.

Yeah. Well, illegally you're allowed to go retrieve your dogs once they've gone on to that property. Yeah. That's one of them gray areas. Kind of, kind of, but abused things. Yeah. So as we'll cover in a later episode with a lot of detail,

these landowners want a thing saying like, yeah, man, you can't use your dogs to spook, to send them in and spook the game off our property. It's kind of like you being there. But we'll cover that later. Carmen, you ready sure okay tell people what's going on uh do you want me to back up a little bit just talk about the project back all the way up all right well uh so tell what you do for a living i'm a wildlife biologist i've been

um working in the field for i, 15 or 20 years almost now. And about a year, a little over a year ago, a couple of colleagues of mine and I started our own wildlife research nonprofit. And one of our bigger projects that we're really diving into now is looking at lynx and wildfire in the North Cascades of Washington. So in the North Cascades of Washington, we've got what's an endangered population of lynx. They're listed as threatened elsewhere in the lower 48, but in Washington, they're listed as endangered. And that's in large part because of this just blow up of wildfires that we've had in the past 15 to 20 years. So during that time, because of about 100, 150 years of fire suppression all over in the West, but we're focusing on the North Cascades,

has allowed a buildup of fuels on the landscape, basically. And what used to be regulated just by nature was frequent, spotty, really pyrodiverse, meaning burns that burn with a lot of texture. so they're skipping little places. They're burning really hot in some places. They're reburning some other places. They're burning at a lower intensity in some places, meaning they're leaving behind trees with live crown, but they're consuming understory. So these more historic fires that would just sort of spot off every summer

and break up the landscape were really important for a couple reasons. One, they created this just incredible patchwork of really rich, diverse habitat out there in the North Cascades. But they also created a sort of a self-feedback loop, wherein the fires that were happening one year were sort of dampening the effects of future subsequent fires because they're sort of, by fire, creating natural fire breaks on the landscape. Got it. So you had more of a mosaic, a continuous mosaic of fire activity rather than like, whap! Exactly. Yes. That's the perfect noise to describe it. So, keep that in mind.

That's the historic fire regime that we used to have. That's also the historic landscape, this patchy mosaic that links in the North Cascades evolved in. Okay, so fast forward in time, now we've got 150 years of fire suppression. So, putting out all those fires that would have naturally started from lightning and things every summer.

And, you know, doing it with good intention, we're trying to save the forest, this sort of thing. That allowed our forest to basically even out into a monocrop of trees. And we lost that not only diversity, that mosaic of habitats, but we lost that self feedback loop. So all of a sudden, it's a continuous swath of tender ready to go. And so that landscape of high fuels and continuous fuels, then meets hotter, drier, longer summers. And in the early 2000s, we start to have what we're calling megafires, which are fires that burn over 100,000 acres. And we've had fires that are much bigger than that. And they're just ripping through those forests.

Cooking it right down to the dirt. Cooking it down to the dirt. Cooking it down to the dirt. So trending towards less pyrodiversity, so higher severity overall. And so they're leaving behind these giant burn scars of high severity burn. So we're losing not only texture because we're not just getting these smaller, spotty fires all over,

but we're losing texture because these giant fires that are coming through are doing so in a just more evenly high severity. We're losing those little fire skips. We're losing the sort of just the richness of a patchwork that would be left behind. Got it. And so where lynx come into this is that in the early 2000s, when we were starting to learn about lynx habitat, which just as a little sidebar is, in a nutshell, lynx eat snowshoe hares primarily. That's most of their diet.

Snowshoe hares live in forests that have a high stem density. And what I mean by that is they're living in thick forests with stems, branches that are low to the ground, offering them food and shelter from predators. Fresh growth. Yeah, fresh growth or old growth where you've got that sort of multi-layered forest and big branches that reach down to the ground. So when we start learning about lynx habitat in the early 2000s, we're doing so against this backdrop of what's been a really fire-excluded landscape for 100, 150 years. And so the palette of links of habitat that links have to choose from is mostly unburned, a couple little burns here and there. Now fast forward, you know, 15 years, and we've had these, these mega fires torching hundreds of thousands of acres a year. And all of a sudden, most of our, or a lot of our lynx habitat, most of our prime lynx habitat is mostly burned, very little unburned. And so we needed to

know yesterday, in my opinion, how lynx are reacting to this completely different menu of habitats out there. In 2016, that's when they were uplisted to endangered in the state because of these fires, because sort of the rule of thumb is that recent large burns aren't hair habitat, aren't lynx habitat. And so with the uptick in these fires, naturally there's a lot of concern. So our research is going to start picking apart and learning the ins and outs of how they're using this new really burned landscape. And they are using that. And we know that because we're the field biologists and we've been out there for long enough to see a change in the landscape in regenerating burns, seeing the links go, seeing them come back, and starting to notice patterns of, okay, within, say, this, you know,

15-year-old burn scar, there are places that they're starting to be able to use. Places meaning, well, different types of regenerating burnt habitat because it's regenerating with some texture that we would hope to see, like fire skips and places where whatever the growing conditions are allow thicker trees to be coming up. And that's really exciting to see. I was out there, I guess, six years ago now in the winter snowmobiling, just surveying for tracks with another local biologist, and we saw very few snowshoe hare tracks and no lynx tracks. Well, last year, well, let's say a couple years ago, I started to notice more lynx tracks in this burn scar. Last year, we went out five times just to do some pilot work, we marked i think 57 sets of lynx tracks within that same burn that years ago only had zero oh that's crazy so i'm that not that that's

57 links yeah no i'm with you that's a lot of activity and including we saw um tracks from you know a female with kittens females with kittens i knew mcdonald's was set up and people came to eat. Exactly. Yeah, the grocery store is coming back. Yeah. And so that's really exciting. And it tells me that we have this opportunity, this really golden opportunity to learn the burned habitats that they can use and sort of the arrangement of those habitats, we can start getting in there to do forest treatments that will reinstate that historic patchwork, reinstate that negative feedback loop, and try to wrangle in these megafires, which is a win-win for Lynx because if we know what the best of the burnt habitats they're using are, we can craft these forest treatment plans to not only be reducing

fuels, but also leaving the right arrangements and amounts of burned habitat for lynx that are there today. And we're saving habitat so that moving forward, we're lessening the risk of these huge megafires coming in. Got it. And I imagine that lynx aren't the only critters that benefit. That's right. That's, yeah, that's one of the things that really interests me in this research is that this isn't, lynx tell a really good story. They tell a story for a lot of the

other animals that live on that landscape and they tell the story of our local fire ecology. But this is more than just, you know, trying to save our lynx habitat and thus our lynx population, which that's important. But it's also just about reining in these megafires to the benefit of the landscape, to the benefit of our community, which has just been breathing pea soup for smoke in the summers. And so it's more than just trying to get a handle on lynx conservation, although that's very important. It's also just about restoring a more balanced fire ecology to our area. Okay. Yeah. So that is the research. research yeah 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 our Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. 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. That's right.

We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services hand-picked by the OnX Hunt

team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. to do all that research takes a lot and and it takes a lot of dedicated field uh work and um

that means time every day during our winter field seasons and our summer field seasons out in the backcountry um collecting data so that we can you you know, in a scientific framework, learn about their habitat selection. And so our two main data streams are, one, we're romping around on snowmobiles in the backcountry in the winter, deep snow environments, looking for tracks. When we find tracks from lynx, we jump off our sleds, put on our snowshoes, and we start following them. And we're documenting not only their behavior, whether they're hunting or making a kill, a snowshoe hair kill, but we're also documenting the habitats that they're selecting. Because you guys know cats from hunting and trapping, they're making a really fine scale selection.

You might see them opt to go, you know, between two trees rather than around them. You know, they like those little covery spots. And so they're making these really fine scale habitat selection choices as they're moving around to optimize their chance of finding food. And so we can, by backtracking them, document that really fine-scale habitat selection and start learning, like, okay, they like a little fire skip, and they like that fire skip, especially if it's surrounded by low-intensity burn and along a stream corridor. Do you guys always backtrack and not forward track? We backtrack because.

You don't want to bump them? Exactly. We don't want to be influencing their behavior because they don't. Good question. I was wondering about that. Yeah. They don't move all that far during the day. Estimates range from like, you know, one to maybe eight kilometers a day.

So it's, it's, if you're on a fresh track, you could easily be bumping them. Spook them out of where he wants to be. Yeah, exactly. And when you find one day where they've killed a snowshoe hare, is it just a little bit of blood on the snow? It's typically maybe a little bit of blood, a piece of the hide from their back,

and you can often see the hemorrhaging around the puncture wounds there, and then maybe a foot and some guts. I don't like the hemorrhaging around the puncture wounds there. And then maybe a foot and some guts. They don't like the guts. Oh, no. I mean, have you ever seen like a house cat and they'll bring in guts in the head of a mouse or whatever? They'll eat the head though. They'll eat the head.

Leave the guts. That's what I'd do. Nobody wants that like chewed up twigs. Yeah, I got you. So stomach contents. Stomach contents, yeah. But they'll chewed up twigs. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. So stomach contents. Stomach contents, yeah. But they'll eat the lungs and heart and everything.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the only thing left on a, you know, I used to feed the dogs a beaver. The only thing they don't eat is the contents of the guts. They'll even eat the gut if they get really hungry. But just that ball of chewed up sawdust, they don't want that. Yeah. But they'll eat everything else. Yeah, and cats are pretty particular about that.

If you go to a cougar kill or a bobcat kill, one of the first things they'll often do is pluck that, you know, the rumen contents, the rumen out and sort of set that aside. They don't want that. Do they go after internal organs right away? That's one of the first things. Yeah. Liver. Yeah. Liver, the heart, all of that.

And that's really nutritious. And so you can actually sort of age. Well, if you're doing like a kill site investigation, you can tell what I don't think there's any official name for it. But I call it an early carcass scat. And so it's the shit basically. I like that. Yeah, yeah. From their first

feeding. And when they're eating just pure organs and just a little, and muscle, um, their scat is like black and tarry. And, um, anyway, so you can tell that was an early carcass scat. So if I'm going to a kill site for work and I see an early carcass scat, I start to get excited because it means there might be a kill there. And then a late carcass,

I'm guessing, would be a lot more fur, skin. A lot more hair, a lot more just bone fragments. Yep, exactly. And with wolves, it's pretty cool because the breeder male and female, they'll get pick of the carcass. And so they're the ones eating those organs. And so you can somewhat tell if it's an early carcass scat, you've got a pretty good idea that if the whole pack was there, that that was probably one of the breeders. Just a little tracking info. That's great. So hit me with the second data stream. Okay.

The second data stream is. Catching them. Catching them. That's right. Yep. So the backtracking is really great. Fine scale habitat selection. You're learning cool things about your animal and their behavior. I think it's just a great way for biologists to stay grounded in what's happening out there in the field. You're learning your animal. You're seeing patterns. I just, yeah, I believe in it from that stance as well as it just being great data, but it's super labor intensive data. And so you're only gathering so much of it. So a wonderful way to compliment that is with GPS caller data. That's going to give us,

you know, provided we can catch cats, that's going to give us tons of data and be sort of the meat and potatoes of a lot of our analysis. You tell what they're doing in the summertime. Exactly. Yeah. And you're just getting thousands of data points. And the way we've got our callers programmed is that they'll be taking a location every 30 minutes. So it in itself is pretty fine scale data as well. We're going to be able to learn a lot. And so getting collars out, of course, means trapping cats. And so that's one of my favorite things to do is trapping.

So I'm pretty excited to start doing that, which we'll be opening traps in a couple days here. We're just waiting for our callers to arrive. But you guys need your nonprofit. You guys need snowmobiles. Yep. You need traps. We've got traps. You're going to utilize it.

Okay, you explain it. Okay. traps. You're going to utilize it. You explain it. All this work that I'm talking about, the backtracking and the trapping, takes place in winter. For us to get out there, Lynx Country is where we are. It's high in elevation. It's pretty rugged.

In fact, there's areas of Lynx Country where we are that's wilderness. We can't even get there in the winter. And so it's tough to access. It's just tough to be out there. And so really the crux and the weakest link of our research in getting it done is our snowmobiles. We have no way of collecting any of this data without snowmobiles.

You're riding some old-ass machines right now. We're riding some old-ass machines. riding some old ass machines and i am so grateful for these machines we've had four machines donated to us and that is awesome and that's made it possible um three of those machines are about 25 years old and so with us riding those every single day and um you know probably have more people on the sled than the sled would like. We're towing trailers, this sort of thing. Um, they have a rough life on top of the 25 years they've already lived.

And so, um. We got people that age that work here and they're useless. That's a low goal there. That was a joke. I didn't mean that. I think he did. It's not even actually true. That's always a funny joke. He's backing up now. I tried to buy that. I think he did. It's not even actually true. That's always a funny joke.

He's backing up now. I tried to buy that one back. I was joking. He's going to have a little chat with Phil later. Phil, remember that thing about the young people I said? I'm joking. I'm joking. So the gray machines.

They're gray machines. I'm so grateful. You hit the limit. Yeah. Yeah, they're not going to last us. And even one of them breaking down just puts a huge, you know, crank in our day. We can't get people out there. And so we are trying to hustle really hard to raise some money to be able to buy one or two. Used.

Used. But hopefully not 25-year-old machines. We're hoping we can find something in the 10 to 15-year-old range. So where you break down out in the middle of nowhere, someone could literally save your life by getting you a sled. Ooh, I like that, man. Yeah, let's put it that way.

This guy's a marketer, man. Yes, save our lives. Donate. Unless you want Carmen to die. Yep. Snowy death. Got her, partner. And never hear her again on the podcast.

No, the crew that we've got this year is an incredible group. They have got a lot of skill. They know what to do if they break out or if they break down out there, which is either, well, okay, we've got in reaches. So they can contact. Cut that part out. It needs to seem very desperate. Here's what it can mean if your in reach isn't working. It can mean that you're, you know, 30 miles out in the backcountry in freezing snowy weather party you're eating your work partners and yes formal hr issues yeah yeah i don't even want to think

about that so anyway the the point is is that this is i've got great people we've got great um opportunities for for gathering this data but it all comes back to the snowmobiles okay yeah so lay out how people can be of help this is where things get interesting yeah so here's what we've schemed up um so like i said we're trying to raise money to get snowmobiles so we can do this work and our plan is um a campaign we're calling Trap Cat. And if folks donate $100, they're basically sponsoring a trap set. So we've got 30 traps that we've built, and we've got another 12 that we're borrowing from another project. So we've got 42 traps. And the thing you got to keep in mind is that these traps

will be continuously resetting, rearranging. And every time you do that, it's a different set. And so if folks donate a hundred bucks, you get one of those sets basically in your name. And how long is a set going to, how long are you going to leave a set out? It depends. If it's a good set that we like, it could be out there all season, which our season's running now through March. So you could have a month's long set. Yeah, you could have a month's long set. Or you make a set and then all of a sudden some skier or something's dicking with it

and you got to move it and then that set's over. Yeah. Or a skunk is triggering it every day or a gray jay or whatever or we just decide we don't like it for whatever reason then we'll we'll move it and so then it becomes a new set it's just like trapping yep same thing yeah i mean that's yeah that's what we're doing yeah you got a dead one you move it yeah exactly you start catching possums you move it yep Yep. So we could have countless numbers of sets this season. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So if you donate, first of all, we'll be sending out season updates and just pictures and footage of what we're doing out there. So you'll get access to that. And then if your set catches a lynx, then you win. You are a winner. You're entered to win or you win? No, you win. That's a winning moment for you.

So do they get to name the cat? We thought about that. Well, this podcast has talked about naming animals quite a bit. And we decided to just avoid that. Yeah. You're going to give it some number. Well, I mean, it'll get an avoid that. Yeah. You're going to give it some number. Well, I mean, it'll get an ear tag. And so it'll have sort of its official ear tag number.

Often, internally, we'll have names for cats just because who's going to remember the number. And so if you've got the one. Anyway, it just makes it simpler you know to to have a name but the winner is not getting naming privileges no you don't know what is the winner getting the winner is going to get fame and glory um so we'll we'll announce you as a winner and steve has also offered to announce the winner on his social media i will announce the winner on my social media and how many winners might there be how many many cats trying to get? Well, we've got, so in our, I don't know how many cats we've got in our study area, but here's the thing about research trapping and especially for an endangered

species. There's not that many out there and it makes the trapping really, really tough. It's one thing to be, you know, trapping lynx in the core of their range and at a population peak where you've got multiple cats passing your traps and doing so very often, that gives you a lot of opportunities. Yeah. We might have an opportunity once a week,

once every two weeks, just because there's the density of cats is so low. There's not that many there. So fill, but fill in this for me. Yeah. I, Carmen Van Bianchi, would be disappointed. Yeah. If I got collars on less than.

On less, this year, if we got less than one, I would be disappointed. I'll be happy if we catch one. I'll be ecstatic if we catch four. Okay. That was the second one. I think I was going to have you like, and I would be surprised if we got more than four. Four.

Yeah. Okay. That is the mode density. It's very rapid. You're going to be working your asses off. Yeah. With the goal of getting a collar on maybe one to four. Yeah.

One, you'd count yourself like good to get one. Four would be great. Four would be great. We've got multiple years of this project. And as the first year, it's always more, you know, just you're figuring out logistics. You're, you know, you always learn a lot in your, in your first year. But just to give you an idea, I've, I've lynx trapped in the North Cascades before. It took us two seasons to catch five cats, five unique lynx.

Whereas I've trapped in, in Maine and we caught, I think, 11 new captures in two months. Got it. So much of that just depends on your density. So this is rough trapping. It is a slog. And you're going to use the money. Sorry. Sorry.

Go ahead, Yanni. Well, I just got to float it out there. There's trapping. There's another way to catch cats. Hounds. Yeah. Why don't you have Yanni hound dog them? Yeah. That could be, have, why don't you have Yanni hound dog them? Yeah.

That could be, well, a couple of things. We know how to trap. We, I don't know of any local hound hunters that go for lynx. I could give you a lot of reasons why you don't want to do this. There's also, lynx are. Because you're going to have, what if the dogs mix it up with the lynx? Exactly. The lynx that they don't, they're not as, my understanding, and I've never chased lynx with a dog, but

I've heard from people, they don't want to go into the tree. Well, and we're in a burned area, remember? So there's not a whole lot of trees that a lynx could get in. Yeah, so Mingus all of a sudden becomes the, you know, he makes like the FBI's most wanted list for having killed some lynx. Yeah, it's just, we've got a very high bar for what we're willing to put this endangered species through. Good idea though, Yanni. Yeah, and it's been floated.

It's, you know, but it's just. Well, just looking at, you know, versus putting out 42 traps. If you cut a track and you put dogs on that one track. And they kill it. That's the thing. No, but you're right. I mean, it would be more efficient. Yeah.

Keep in mind, Yanni will come out. Nobody raising money to send Yanni out there. There we go. But you're going to use the money from the program. You're going to use the sponsorship money to take care of the snowmobile problem. Exactly. So someone could either just take care of the snowmobile problem and then you can use the money for something else.

So do that. But the other thing is you got to do the sponsorship. Let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to sponsor a set for each of my three children. That's a good thing to do for people that have children. I'm going to sponsor a set for each of my three children but how will they know a good way that's a good thing to do for people to have children i'm gonna sponsor a set for each of my three children but how will they know when their

set's been made and how they know what happened yeah good question so we'll send a picture of the set we'll send you a picture of your set and then we'll also because we'll have your email and then like i said we'll be sending updates. Like if you're getting by catch that sort of thing and just, you know, videos and just footage of us out there being trappers. And you have the capacity to do all this additional reporting and work? Barely, but I mean, it's all, everything that we're doing, we are running ragged. We're just, yeah. How many, you got volunteers? So we've got, let are running ragged. We're just, yeah. You got volunteers? So we've got, let's see.

So there's three of us staff for Home Range Wildlife Research. That's our nonprofit. I've hired two field bios. And then we have some really great local trackers that are volunteering to help us with the backtracking portion. Are you looking for more volunteers or is that you filled up? We're filled up. It also takes quite a bit of training. So we did a big training all at once a couple weeks ago. So for this season, yeah, we need people to just be ready to go.

So how do people go sponsor the trap? Is this going on right? You're ready to roll right now. So we're opening traps on Friday. That's the day our callers are supposed to get there. So right now, there's a couple folks out in the field

getting traps out there. My strategy was, let's get traps out there and in place. No bait, no eye catch. In fact, I'm sort of hoping they're not going to be noticed until we open them. I don't want to lose

much of the element of surprise. Opening meaning you're going to set them. We're going to open the doors.'re not going to be noticed until we open them. I don't want to lose much of the element of surprise. Opening meaning you're going to set them. We're going to open the doors. We're going to bait them. We're going to put out feathers. You bait them with snowshoe hare? No, we're just using roadkill deer. Okay.

Yeah, and then some lures, some beaver caster and things like that. Got it. But how do people go do it? Website. Yeah, we've got a landing page. You do? Yeah. So it's homerange.org.

Homerange.org. Yep. Slash Trap-A-Cat. And you're ready to take business? We're ready. Yeah. When this drops, we will be. All right.

I'll do three of them. Awesome. Thanks, Steve. But listeners need to jump in and just send them some snowmobiles, man. Yeah, is there a way, too, that, let's just say you're not even interested in setting a set, that you can just go to the landing page and just send $100? Yeah. That's an option there?

Yeah, I mean, we've got donate buttons on our website. No, not a set. You're a trapper. I'm a trapper, not a giver. I want my set. But this is all to solve the snowmobile problem.

Yep, exactly. I feel like some, I feel like there's such a good chance that some snowmobile outfit is gonna, is gonna

help you out. I mean, that would be incredible. What's the dream machine? The dream machine, Giannis and I were just talking about, is a... There you go.

Cut that out, Phil. Listen. Like for real this time? For real. The dream machine is any machine. You can leave in us talking about cutting it to make it... The dream machine is any machine.

Leave us talking about how we cut it, but beep out what she said, because she is... it's like, don't do that, man. Yeah, I'm not going to turn down an Arctic Cat or a Polaris. Right. Yeah. Cut all that. Beep all that out. Yeah. Beep the words out. Listen, beggars

can't be choosers here. Exactly. You need snowmobiles. Yeah. If someone gives Carmen the snowmobiles, I will, the same way I'm going to announce the winners, if someone gives Carmen, if someone gives Home Range snowmobiles, then I'll

do the, we'll do the social media posts thanking them for the snowmobile. There we go. Yep. Okay. Beverage. Good. Tell the website again. HomeRange.org slash Trap-A-Cat and dashes trap dash a dash cat. HomeRange.

HomeRange. Like an animal's HomeRange. Yep. Dot org. Yep. Slash trap dash a dash cat. Yep. Not links.

Nope. Doesn't have the same range. Is it too late to adjust it? I don't know. Probably not now. Yep. Not Lynx. Nope. Doesn't have the same ring. Is it too late to adjust it? I don't know. Probably not now. Listen, let's not complicate things unnecessarily. All right. I hope people dig in and help.

Yeah. And I will be announcing the winners. Yep. Yeah. Oh, you know what we'll do? Can I sweeten the pot? Please. We'll send a great first light kit to the winners.

Ooh. I'll buy one. I'm going to need to buy a set. So if my set traps a Lynx, then I get a first light kit. We'll send a great cold weather accessory. We'll send cold weather, heavy duty, down, right? Because it's wintertime. We'll send a cold weather kit, like bibs, jacket, super hat, mitts.

That's better than the lottery. Oh, man. So I'll announce it, and then we'll send a cold weather kit to winners. That's amazing. You're going to make me get my wallet on. All right, good? Yeah, thank you. And to anybody that does donate, thank you.

Well, we'll stay on it, man. We're going to get it. I hope we can get this taken care of. Thank you. That'd be great. And then I got one last question for you the collars how long do they work for well that's the thing with collars is it's always uh you're trying to balance the the battery life the weight of the collar and your data collection so the more intensive the data collection the

faster the battery goes burning it out yeah so we've So we've rigged it up so that every other month they're collecting this 30 minute data every three days. And by doing that, we've made it so that our callers will last around the calendar year from when the caller was placed. So you get a year. Yeah. And does that thing fall off in the end? So there's a couple different mechanisms you can use, but yes, it does.

We want it to fall off because we don't want to saddle a lynx with, you know, a collar for the rest of its life. Can you go find it? Yeah. It's got a little death signal or whatever. Yep. It's got a death signal. We call it a mortality signal, but yeah. So if the cat dies, we'll know.

We can go out there and investigate what happens. Man, that would be a great giveaway item if you want to dig real into this. Picture this. That you get a mortality signal that someone can come along with you to go find out what happened to the thing. Or just get the collar. Yeah. Those are always fascinating field trips. Oh, I would be so excited if I woke up one day and we were going to check on a mortality

signal on a lynx. I'd be very excited. What kind of price are we talking on a collar? It's got to be not free. No. No. When it's all done, well, so the, so the, let me just explain how they fall off because that affects the price.

But basically you can get a, a cotton spacer that will eventually just sort of rot off. And that, anyway, so that's one option. And then you could also get a collar with a blow-off device. And so that's a programmable little piece of equipment. Like a little explosion. Exactly, a tiny explosion. Kills the cat. Yeah, that's the first thing I thought of.

Right in the juggler. Boom. We got him. No, yeah, it just makes the bolt separate, and so the collar falls off. So that's nice because you know when it's going to happen. You can plan for it. You know it's not going to happen too early before your data collection is done. I'm sure that's the expensive option.

That's the expensive option, yeah. So if you're getting a drop-off about, about, I want to say like 1600. So people could buy those for you too, couldn't they? Yeah. Oh man. The more call it. So we only have four callers right now. So that's why I'd be really happy if we got four.

So if you get like seven cats, you're going to go, well, now what? Oh man. If some miracle happened and you know, in three weeks we've almost, you know, caught two or three or something, I'm going to be pretty disappointed. We don't have more of it. We had some miracle days on the line last year. That's what I'm hoping for. That's what I'm hoping for.

And I also just need to point out that we're really grateful to our grantors, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Well, thanks for coming on and explaining it. Thanks for having me. This is, yeah. I told you, man, you for coming on and explaining it. Thanks for having me. I told you, man, you can come on anytime you want. Talk about what you need and what you want. It's great to have you. Hey, folks.

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All right, you guys ready to dig in? Out of the wood yard, in the wood yard. Let her happen. In the wood yard was the start. Yeah. Hold on, hold on.

I got a pre-question here. Okay. Take it away. Did you get that one? was the start. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. I got a pre-question here. Okay. Take it away. Did you get that? Did you get that one? You're going to season me alone? Come on. You didn't even giggle at me or smirk when I said pre-question.

Oh, that was good. Sorry about that. That was so damn long ago. How did you find out about in the woodyard? A beaver trapper. So you have An emerging threat To your whole enterprise

Competition Listen I'm going to tell you the dude's name We will bury him I'm not going to tell you his last name He's even pitched to me Guy named Jared I'm not going to tell you his last name He's in your state No he's not Or is he Pitched to me. Guy named Jared. I can tell you his last name.

He's in your state. No, he's not. Or is he? It's confusing because he works in one and lives in the other. Either way, his name's Jared. He turned me on to you guys. Long time ago. Year ago.

And he was recently pitching me on how he is going up to work your area. Oh, man. He doesn't stand a chance. Oh, I thought it was just like in the YouTube realm competition, but he's actually going to their turf. No, he's not into that scene. I told Chris, I said, you know, you just showed the guardrail, you showed the sign. I said, everybody knows this spot.

You know, like, come on. You've got to be a little more where you point that camera. I got people I know that live within a mile of me that they know half of the spots that we go. You were here and you were there and you'd made that set. And I'm like, yeah, yeah.

He's not like, I think it's fair to, it's, I think it's safe to say, and I haven't really explored this fully with him. I think it's safe to say that he was kind of throwing it to me, like coincidentally, it's i think it's safe to say and i haven't really explored this fully with him i think it's safe to say that he was kind of throwing it to me like coincidentally it's where the guys that he turned me on to go but that's how i found out about you guys that's what you wanted to ask pre-question so he turned me on and i was and i i wasn't even aware of i was wondering why the hell it's called Out of the Wood Yard because I didn't know about In the Wood Yard. Yeah, I just basically separated them because whenever I would do wildlife things on my wood yard channel, YouTube didn't know what to do with it because it's not firewood, it's not chainsaws, it's not the same thing. It's not the same audience.

You lose sponsorship. Well, not that. What happens is I would have a video say it gets 30,000 views in the first 24 hours on wood, something firewood related, whatever it is. The next day I would have a hunting or trapping or fishing and my views go right down to 12, 15, 17,000 because YouTube doesn't know who to show it to. So your base 17,000, whatever you're getting

is your true believers, the Kool-Aid drinkers. They're going to watch anything you do. Kool-Aid drinkers, awesome. That's what I call them, yeah. They'll watch anything you do. And by basically separating it, my numbers stay more consistent and YouTube knows my audience

and knows what to do with it. And there's a bigger audience for wood chopping. No, it's the audience I've developed. Yeah. So they know that audience. Yeah. So. Yeah, there's, there's way more people that do

firewood than trap. Oh yeah. Oh, sure. And then especially when you narrow it down to beaver trapping, which is even a smaller group. Yeah. Niching down your content is, is the way to success on YouTube or most social media, I think.

Hmm. If you really want to do really well and if you generalize you know there's going to be things that a lot of people won't be interested in so walk me through the give me the background on wood chopping well i got i was in the wood chopping business for a while. It's a living kind of sort of. Yeah. How'd you guys get into it? We grew up heating with wood. We've been cutting wood. Seven years old.

Since we could swing a mall. I think we couldn't even swing the mall. And our dad was a railroad worker. He was an engineer. He could spike railroad spikes. I mean, actually the first mall we had, he had a railroad. I don't know if you know what a railroad is. So the head is like that big.

It's a big long head for driving railroad spikes and it's only that big. And it's really. About an inch and a half. That's a hard thing to master. Why is it? I don't know this. Because he got it free from work. So he was too cheap to buy.

So they would drive railroad spikes with a long skinny mall? No, no. Yes. No, yes. Railroad spikes. The mall is a, well, railroad spikes or whatever kind of wedge he could find that was still in one piece. You know, cause you got to realize you're driving that spike in the next to that track. You don't want to hit the track because-

Oh, that's why you don't want to- The head's got to be just a little bit tiny, bigger than the- And if you can hit with that, you can hit anything. If you can hit, yeah. If you can master that, you can hit anything. Because it's probably a 10-pound head, right? Yeah, it was- And we were seven years old and dad would say, split the elm.

Which is Satan would. Satan doesn't split split it's like splitting cable yeah we grew up on the worst of the worst man it was elm brutal elm all the elm was dying from dutch elm back in them days back in the early 70s sure yeah you know so we're eight nine ten eleven twelve years or whatever you pick a year but they'll pretty much free wood. Because it was free because you're cutting it down because that tree's dying. We're cutting it. It's the worst twisted. Nasty.

Nasty. There's nothing that we have that even comes close to being that miserable. Do you, would you agree that the finest splitting wood ever made by, ever made by God is a beech? Eh, it splits good. There's a lot of good ones.

Oh my, it just makes you feel like. A man. It makes you feel like such a pro, dude. Well, I'll tell you what. It looks like planks of lumber. If you want to, well, the same thing goes for like. If you want to split some really gravy, it's like veneer red oak in the wintertime.

It's pop. That's gravy splitting? Oh God, yeah. Yeah. It's water dense, so in the wintertime you get below zero, and if it's clear, it just pops. It just explodes. Hold on. You guys are saying a lot of terms that

I'm not familiar with, so I'm sure most of the listeners are. I've heard clear. You're describing wood. Clear is not free. Clear is no knots. No knots. Oh, it's not free. Not free. Oh, I thought you meant like, you gotta pay for it.

Knot free. K-N-O-T. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Knot. And then you also said veneer. Well, veneer. Veneer grade lumber. Do you know what they make veneer out of? I don't know if you've got any veneer here.

No flaws whatsoever, no imperfections. When they make veneer. The best. Best, yeah. Yeah, it's usually your butt cut on a tree. And what they do is your sign is clear. What's a butt cut, Steve?

Do you know what a veneer is? Yeah. When they make veneer, they're taking a log and basically you're taking a... A guy gave me a business card one time. So picture a business card. It felt like a normal business card, thickness. That was like three veneer.

That was like a laminated piece of three walnut. It was laminated of the veneer. What am I trying to say? Well, plywood is a veneer, but it's thicker. Plywood is veneer. So three layers of walnut veneer laminated together was like a business card. And they take that thing and they just, you basically are cutting like a, like you're

flaying it so much around in circles. It's put on a lathe and it's spun into big knives. And they cook it. They cook it. It's, it's steamed cooked so it's soft and they peel it like you would sheets of paper. An apple, but it comes off like in sheets of

paper. Mm-hmm. And then they laminate it into your. They put it on tops of crappy particle board. Yeah, because so the grain of that tree, that wood's got to be like. Perfect. Cream of the cream of the cream. And you could have, when I learned this when me and Phelps were working on our, the line one calls.

Mm-hmm. Because another thing they do on the walnut, you boys might be familiar with this, steaming it to get the color to spread around, but then people can look and tell it's been steamed. But a good veneer walnut log, these dudes are telling us, like you might have one walnut tree that's worth a couple hundred bucks. The walnut tree next to it could be a $20,000 tree.

Right. There's a lot of different grades of veneer. I mean. Like no big, long trunk, no limbs. No branches. Straight as an tree. Right. There's, there's a lot of different grades of veneer. I mean. Like no big, long trunk, no limbs. No branches. Straight as an arrow. Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, that's, that's always the

best splitting wood on a tree. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not that you're going to purposely cut that up, but a lot of times I'll get cut off from a sawmill, like it was a veneer log. Okay. And the buyer comes in and says, well, let's say it's a number one saw log.

I mean, so now I'm talking maybe in terms you guys don't know. I don't know, but. High quality. High quality log. It's a number one. Okay. That's top dollar. And it's a 12 foot log.

Oh, there's one knot on that end. If we cut two feet off that log and now it's a 10 footer, the valley of that log just doubled because now it's veneer grade, not a number one grade. And there's many different grades of veneer. It's not just veneer. There's, there's over my head. I can't even tell you all that there's different

grades, but that's way removed from firewood. But I guess when I said veneered, I just really threw another wrench in. No, it's interesting. Yeah, no, I want to cover off one of your things. We're getting educated. I'll tell you the things I didn't know. I didn't know that you drove a railroad spike

with a real thin maul. But it makes sense because you can't be dinging the shit out of the rail. Well, nobody does that by hand anymore. It really is nobody. They'll drive some pneumatic driver. It's all hydraulics. So another thing that I'm catching on,

your old man became so precise with this maul. And we did too, or we didn't eat. Yeah. Then when you're looking at a log and you're like, man, if you could hit that log right there, that sucker would split. Well, we're driving. And you're an inch off.

You're driving a wedge though. Oh, so you guys use a wedge, yeah. Yeah, but still a small, you know, inch, two inches, whatever. I mean, like we got these newer hand mall axes i don't know what he called them back in the day not anymore so much but i mean a lot of you can hit the same crack crack every time every time and if you do a lot you can yeah develop it's practice everybody thinks it's strength too it's It's technique just like anything else. Like the guys that are the big power lifters,

there's a lot of technique in that. It's not all strength. I mean, strength is a big part of it, but technique is huge. Well, Yanni's way tougher than I am, but I could beat him in log splitting. There you go. Yeah, I've seen big guys try to split logs

and number one, they don't know how to read the wood. When you look at it, you have to see where the cracks are, where the knots are, what sections you want to they don't know how to read the wood. When you look at it, you have to see where the cracks are, where the knots are, what sections you want to take off when and how to work the round. Yes. You got to read the wood.

You can't just do all brute strength, but then your technique and your swing and how you can accelerate your swing and bending the knees and using your upper body to come down and it's a lot of technique. Yeah. And then, you know, you always, you always cut the fresh cut, not the dry cut.

Yep. And you always want to cut it right away. Yeah. And then, you know, you always, you always cut the fresh cut, not the dry cut. And you always want to cut it right away. Yeah. Okay. I seen guys that cut up wood and they leave it in their backyard for two years. Oh, I'm going to go split that down. Well, that happens.

That wood dries. Shrinks and tightens. Down to a molecular where like, now it's dry. It's like, why? Why waste your time beating on it? Oh, so it doesn't get more brittle when you like put the ax in and then smack it against the log. It would have could, but there's no moisture.

Gravy wood will still split, but if you've got any knots in it, it just. Well, the end will dry on you. And also as it gets real dry, the whole thing is going to shrink and tighten. So moisture is actually a good thing. And that's why we're talking about the oak in the middle of winter, because if it's below

zero, the moisture in that round or that log is going to be wet. And then it just wants to pop. It wants to pop. It's already got pressure. It's basically like it got split somewhere. You've heard trees pop in the winter. Oh, I've got some rounds in my house, Steve. I'm thinking right now I need to get chopped.

I don't like splitting those rounds. He's got some naughty ass spruce. Maybe we need to film a competition. Spruce. Oh, spruce. It's her. You know a good splitting log? Fatty ass spruce. Maybe we need to film a competition. Spruce. Oh, spruce with. It's her. You know what?

You know a good splitting log? You guys aren't probably familiar with it, but yellow cedar. That's a hell of a splitting log. That makes you feel like a champ. Cedar splits. Well, because you know the picture making cedar shakes out of it, right? Right. Yeah, you feel like the greatest man on the planet. Clear cedar splits nice.

Yes. So you grew up splitting wood. Grew up. For home use. But eventually you guys became, you guys became market wood choppers. Dad actually would hire us out to the neighbors to split their wood for them. Yeah.

Well, I never got money for that. Did you get paid? I got paid. You're tall, man. It wasn't much. And I'll tell you what, there was a lot of wood split for a very little money, but you know, his thing was like, this will make you so

tough, your shit will fight to get down a toilet. Right? Never heard that before. That's what he was saying. That's a good one. This will make you so tough, blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

So he would go to a neighbor who had a pile of unsplit wood and he'd say, my boys will come split it. Yep. Yep. And then we got roped in after that. Then it was baling hay all day long. From the neighbors.

We grew up, if you want to eat, you got to work. The John Smith principle. Yeah, I got you. Yeah, that's how we grew up. And at some point you started splitting it. You started cutting and splitting to sell. Well, he's always done a little bit, but then I had a buddy that had 90 acres of woods and he had oak wilt, which is, kills off the red oaks, the black oaks. And he wanted it cut.

And I'd always burned wood in my fireplace, maybe four or five face cords, so two full cords a year or so. Can you pause for a second? Yeah, we need a breakdown of that, I think. There's a lot of terminology. You guys don't know shit about wood. No, I got some terminology. You're a rich man, aren't you? I know some terminology you guys won't know.

Oh, I guess. Well, you just said Rick. Why are you guys talking about, no one talks about face cords. Like, you guys, okay, but I wanted to ask you this. You guys know the term Rick. Yeah. Yeah. Voice cord. Yeah, but why does no one know a Rick? It's a regional thing. Okay, where's the region? Because in Michigan. We have bubblers.

I don't know what that is. Water fountains. It's a water fountain. Yeah. And you have ricks and we have face cords. There you go. You guys use face cords. Regional. Where were we just talking about?

No, I knew face cord, but prior I knew rick. But do you have any idea what the etymology of the word rick is and how it's spelled? We don't know. R-I-C-K is the way I know. See, we spell it R-I-C. R-I-C, just a rick. Oh, yes. I've seen it spelled that way.

I have seen it. Yeah. And it's a 16-inch, it's a stack of 16-inch logs. Well, okay, let's- Eight feet. See, that's not a log. It's a piece or a chunk.

It's a piece, yeah. Okay. Well, a log is the full- 16-inch pieces. So let's start from the beginning. For sure. Four feet high, eight feet long. Yes, that's a face cord.

Same thing as a rick. It's the same thing. I can tell you what that thing weighs. Well, it depends on species. Depends on species. It depends on if it's dry or not. I actually can't remember. Is it dry or not?

I remember someone weighing one and telling me though. They told me what a cord of oak weighs. Was it like 5,000? Okay, 5,000. A full cord of green oak weighs five grand. Yes. Wow. I remember I took a threequarter ton truck and added enough leaf

springs to it well i built a box it was like that was the right volume i took a three-quarter ton truck and added enough leaf springs to it it's funny because it's like three-quarter ton used to mean like its capacity but i could put a cord of green oak in that truck yeah we didn't like it you were when you turn the wheel it was Yeah. Don't go on any ice. Like the power steering worked really good. Yeah. Yeah. So to go back to the cord thing.

So you start with your tree, you cut your trees down. We cut, in our era, we cut them to 100 inches, which is eight foot four inches. You do. It's a standard. Because of the paper mills, that's what they want from 100 years ago.

Well, that goes back to logging days. Where I, in our area, they would float the wood down a river, okay. That's how they got it out in the spring. And so you needed trim on the end of that log. If it was going to be lumber, you didn't cut it eight foot. It wasn't eight foot.

You left four inches. You got a couple inches of trim on each end damage for trim. So. Meaning that when it was getting floated, it would get dinged up. Hitting rocks. Yeah, they would get dinged up.

They would get dinged up on the end. Smashed ends. Actually, they never floated. I don't think hardwood. Hardwood doesn't float. They were floating basically pine. That was back in the day. That can't be true.

They didn't float hardwood? It doesn't float, man. Really? You're not going very far. It's on the bottom. Hmm. Never thought about that. It doesn't flow, man. It's, you're not going very far. It's on the bottom. Hmm. Never thought about

that. Very heavy dense wood, yeah. That always had to be, that always had to be like

wagging out. Probably. Like in the big lumber boom days and shit whenever. We weren't working that

long ago. Well, no, that was in the winter with horses. They would, they would skid

it out with horses. Oh, no kidding. I never thought about it. I assumed all that shit went

down the rivers. No, no, not hardwood. That was all pine, balsam. Maybe some spruce and balsam, but in our area with the big white pine was a big opener of our area where I live. So eight foot logs.

So yeah, eight foot logs and then they're loaded onto log trucks and they go to the paper mills and that's kind of a standard operating size and then they get shipped and turned into paper. In our area, that's the big thing. And then there's also lumber mills. So in other areas of the country, you're going to be on like the West Coast, they do whole trees.

They haul the whole tree out at one time. Not the whole tree, the log. So from the butt, that's the bottom of the tree, the butt where the root flare is. Butt cut. The butt cut all the way to the top where it gets too small where it's not worth anything anymore. They haul the whole tree out.

Yep. But in our area, because they want to be able to handle it, it's 100 inches. Lake States is set up for eight foot wood, which is 100 inch wood is, you know, standard. In the southeast, they do full trees or 16 footers, 20 footers. I mean, there's whatever. Yeah. And the mills were set up to handle that wood. We had a mill that I sent wood to not that many years ago.

They closed it down now. They used aspen was their big thing. And they had, the way they produced their pulp, they had pocket grinders. And they would manually lift the wood into the pocket grinder. It was on a big stone and there was steam pressure in there and the wood would go into the spinning stone at an angle like this. And that's how they got their finest pulp.

It was a real fine pulp from fine paper. And so they would take the eight foot logs and cut them in half. Of course, these are all peeled. There's no, the bark was always off. No, they debark them with a tumbler. No, yeah. Everything's way more mechanized.

But when I started with a company I retired from, they were still using pocket grinders. It was one of the last ones left in the country. You already retired? Well, from that thing, I'm back doing. We do stuff. You're never retired, man. Don't you know?

No. I got guys calling me, oh, come on, you can work for me. Come on, work for me. I'm like, oh, well, you know, the snow's getting deep. I don't want to do firewood right now. So I'm like, okay, I'll come back for a while.

We'll see where it goes. Mm-hmm. So. So we'll go back to the logs. You get your eight foot logs and if you stack them so they're four feet wide, four feet high, that's what's considered a pulp cord. That's a full log cord.

Full cord. A cord. Yeah. Say it again. It's a full. Eight foot log. Eight foot logs. Four feet high, four feet wide.

Four by four pile is a cord. Yep. That's a cord. 128 cubic feet. Yep. And that's how we buy it off the truck. But now everything is getting converted to tons. Now they're buying tons. For the paper industry.

For the paper industry. Yes. But for our purposes, what happens then is, so you get your full log cord. That's the way I refer to it. I don't know if everybody else does. When you process that wood into your 16 inch pieces, cutting it, splitting it, stacking it, you end up with

about two and a half, 2.5 face Face cords, or not quite a full cord, because you're reducing the size. Any space in there, the roundness of the logs, you're going to have voids in the pile of your logs. Back up. I'm getting it, but I'm confused. I would expect that it would.

Fluff up? Yeah, I was expecting that it would get bigger. I would expect it would fluff up because you're never going to put a log back together. You're also, your kerf is an eighth of an inch and you're cutting, that's your cut on your log. All that sawdust is gone. All that sawdust is gone.

And I get what you're saying where you don't have all those, you don't have all those spaces between the logs. Right. And a lot of bark comes off. So it reduces in volume. Yeah. Yeah.

You get 2.5. On really big wood, if you're cutting like stuff like I cut, you will get 3.4. We call it Abbey wood. Abbey normal. Yeah. Yeah, I'm the one. Abbey wood? That's who and us.

In Young Frankenstein, Gene Wilder. Yep, that's where I got that from. Young Frankenstein, Gene Wilder sends his lackey. What's his name? Igor? Igor, yeah. He sends Igor. He needs a brain.

So he sends Igor down to get a brain off a dead person, a new dead person. And he puts the brain in his monster, and the monster goes berserk. And he says, what was the name on whose brain did you get? He says, I think that her name was Abby. Abby, yes. And then he says, what was her last name? And it was, I think it was Abby Normal. Normal.

And he had gotten an abnormal specimen. Yeah, so that's the wood I cut is the Abbey wood because I could always get it for cheap or free. Nobody wants to work that fricking hard. We get that a lot to make big pieces of wood small. Yeah.

So, but I've been working hard my whole life. It's just normal for me. But we get a lot of people that will watch Kenny and I cut some of his big stuff. We cut the Abbey wood and they're like, you should be turning that into slabs. You should be turning that into lumber. That's ridiculous. You're going to burn it.

That's a waste. You mean to tell me that you put a video out and someone has a better idea? Oh, they all have better ideas. Every day. You can't do nothing right. The reason I'm bringing this up is the thing is that wood was rejected from the lumber mill. Because it was rotten. Flaws crooked.

We did what? Three loads. Well, I did three loads of that last. Semi-loads. These are semi-truck loads. Truck loads. Truck loads. Semi-loads.

So this wood was so big, I bought it from my, the last job I had, they had, I worked for a sawmill. So I made a deal with them. I bought all their reject wood like a year and a half ago. So all their stuff they had, they went through the metal detector, had nails and spikes and saw blades and whatever in it, all their, it was actually oversized wood. They could not run through their sawmill. It was too big for their mill.

And then people say, well, why did they buy it? It comes in. They buy sales. They buy, they buy say okay they bought you know a hundred acre sale we're logging this off and the tree is marked by the forester the tree's got to be cut and on the bottom cut that's a 50 inch butt cut they can't run it but they're paying their crew to cut it that crew's gonna get paid to cut it because they got to bring it out that tree's marked you don't leave it lay it's your problem to deal with. You bought the sale. So they end up with all these, you know, they might only get one or two of those on a job, but

over a couple of years, now there's truckloads up laying out in the back. We don't know what to do with them. So utilizing a resource. Call the dummy. I know a dummy. He'll buy them. There he is.

So, well, and I've been doing this for years. They said, but you got to take it all. So I bought like 12 or 15 truckloads last year of this stuff. Of the Abbey normal wood? Abbey wood. Well, it wasn't all. There was three loads of just Abbey wood, yes.

Well, on one truckload he got, how many logs did you have on one truckload? Normally you'll have hundreds. Well. Was he at five? No, there was, what the heck was like 21 pieces That's big wood What is

There's a video you can watch the video Just look it up But what are you paying What are you willing to pay Let me start off by When I sold firewood I was selling firewood Like 90 to 96.

You would get, you could sell, if you wanted to sell, if you were hurting for cash, you could sell green split hardwood for about 60 or 70 bucks a cord green. Your full cord you're talking? No, dude, I'm telling you what it was back then. Face cord.

So you're talking a rick or a full cord you're talking? No, dude, I'm telling you what it was back then. Face cord. So you're talking a Rick or a full cord? No. I would, I would stack mine up and then sell it. This is the nose years. I would sell maple, it was maple oak beach, split, dried, delivered $90 a cord. For a full cord.

Listen, I don't, yeah. Was it a pickup load or like your full cord? A measured 128 cubic feet of split, dried, delivered hardwood. You were tired for very little. You would maybe, depending on like the severity of the winter and shit and how long you were willing to hold it, you could maybe get 100, but that was the most I ever taught. But I knew guys that would build would build they would take a uh mobile

home trailers those big huge and they'd beef them out and they would drive wood to detroit and they would sell it for three times oh yeah oh yeah that goes on to this day where he sells his wood and where i sell his wood is night and day but what the, give me the economics on it now. Like, what are you willing to pay for an unsplit cord? I would pay from zero to $5, but I was never like big time about it. I just do like something to make money. I'd pay from zero to five for the stuff and I'd sell it for what I just said I'd sell it for. I get a lot of tree service wood for free. Okay.

Well, trees that are being taken down to neighborhoods that are dead, dying, dangerous. Right now, you've got the Emerald Ash Borer is killing all the ash in Wisconsin now, so them are all getting taken out. So I've probably got three truckloads, semi-loads of that this year, which is each truckload is going to have

13, 14 full cords on it. Okay. Free. So you're getting it free. Not only free, they bring it to me. Yeah, delivered. Delivered. And what do you sell, what's wood selling for

right now? Like just general average around the country for split hardwood. I'll mention that, but first I want to go. That's a big variable. Yeah, I want to go back, I'll go back to mentioning the wood that I do buy. The better wood quality, I talked about those

veneers. Like if you buy bolts, which is a very good straight log, I will pay anywhere from 1400 to $1,600 for a semi load. So I'm paying about 110, $120 per full cord of logs. Why? Because it's beautiful. That's what it costs.

That's what you got to pay. And I have a firewood processor now and it likes that kind of wood. Yes. And I can produce, I can, I can process that whole load in one day. Mm. Got it.

Oh, and then. Speed is everything. Time is everything. Got it. And then sell that for two, three plus. Cause it's easy to handle. Yeah, but you gotta get it. They want it, most people want it dry.

Yep. So, and a machine does most of the work, but the machine was donated to me by one of my people. That. Kool-Aid drinkers. No, no, no. No guy runs a business. It's Easton made. Kool-Aid drinkers. No, no. No. No guy runs a business.

It's Easton made. Andrew's a smart man. Yeah. It's Easton made wood processors and splitters. So he wanted people to see his shit in action. He knows. I asked him, I said, so what do you do for advertising? He says, you're it.

So he said, just make videos for me. Got it. So you're hauling ass through so much wood. Chris has sold a lot of stuff for this guy. Yeah. Lots. By having his YouTube channel. They're over a year behind on selling their machines from the time people order to the time they can produce it.

And they just keep growing. So we've done a lot of advertising for them. So anybody gives me stuff, they're going to sell a lot of stuff. It's just the way it works. You hear that, people? Because I got the eyeballs. It's what they want. Oh, you should talk about how you need a couple snowmobiles.

I don't need snowmobiles. Well, I mean, just come on now. I don't need snowmobiles. I'm a team player here, man. Somebody else needs a snowmobile. Well, you could get it and donate it. Yeah. So that's in the wood yard.

Yep, that's in the wood yard. And I started that. And when did you start in the wood yard? About two years ago. And it's because my son is uh, is an IT guy and he says, you know, dad, what you're doing is interesting to some people. And because I'm a, by, by trade, I'm, I'm, I've

been self-employed for 40 years. I'm a full-time professional photographer. That's what I do. So I had the skills there. I had a skill set I brought to the table there. He helped me set it all up. I know editing, I know how to do all, everything needs to be done for it. I'm not afraid of people. I'm not the table there. He helped me set it all up. I know editing. I know how to do all, everything that needs to be done for it.

I'm not afraid of people. I'm not afraid of talking. I mean, there's a lot of people that freeze up in front of a camera, as you know. It's hard to get them to relax and be themselves. I have no problem with it. Can I give you,

can I give you a, can I give you my take on that subject? There's three kinds of people. Not really, but there's three things that happen um i found that you can have someone that like you got a friend or whatever and they have like a great personality okay and you point a camera at them and it just stops it shuts down frozen turd you could know someone that has no personality you You put a camera on them and they make one up. And people see through that though.

Or you'd have a person, I'm talking to you, Kevin Murphy, who, Kevin Murphy, Doug Duren, they're the way they are and you love them and you put a camera on them, nothing changes. Nothing changes. That's gold. That's what you want. That's gold that's what you want that's gold that's kenny that's he's 100 real there's no filter actually it changes i'm the test dummy man they just keep going the way they were going he makes me do a lot of editing i've been the test dummy my whole life yeah what do you get what are you getting out of this whole thing nothing he's here no last year i had an invite from one of my viewers

to go to New Mexico elk hunting. I get to go along. Here I am. I get to go along. That's great, man. I give him free stuff. He gets a lot of free labor from me because I go help him out.

I'm waiting. I was promised that he was going to bring a processor up two years ago and process my wood for me. Yeah. It hasn't showed yet. But you guys have, your wood businesses are different. Yeah, totally. Why not combine your wood businesses?

He's 200 miles away from me. Yeah, it's too far. He's in Northern Wisconsin. I'm in Central. He lives where all the people are that want to buy expensive wood to burn in their backyard. I supply people that heat their homes. So people heating their homes want to save money. Right, right.

And I sell my wood. I sell my wood way cheap. Yeah. Way cheap. My people are literally burning money. They're sitting by the fireplace, drinking beer, watching sports. I was at a fundraiser one time in New York, and a guy told me that he was in finance,

so he was in Wall Street finance, but had found a side gig that he was, he was in finance, so he was in Wall Street finance, but had found a side gig that he was really passionate about. He described it as being in the designer firewood business where they were taking orchard, like when you would redo apple orchards. Yep.

Big money. Cuts a very uniform piece and he would kiln dry the firewood because people wanted to have a stack of firewood in their house as an ornament that they don't burn no bugs but they want that shit to be that you could bang it and no sawdust comes off right so he said it is like you don't even need to dust this shit once you stack it in your house birch is the thing that people want from white birch he said it was a designer firewood company he didn't even want to tell me what he gets for a stack of that i'm sure it's very good kiln dried all cut the same

and you design in your house next to your fireplace a little wood stack and he fills that stack with wood that oh you know what's funny i'll tell you something the other night uh phelps did you hear about phelps and the scorpion he sent me a picture of a scorpion in a bed. Oh, no. I think that we're burning oak down in Sonora, and every piece of oak is hollow. And it's just a huge dump of oak warming up inside this house next to this fireplace. And Phelps was right by the fireplace and right by the oak,

and he was the guy every night. He's throwing oak into this big fireplace. One night, night he wakes me up we're sleeping next to each other he's in his sleeping bag i'm in my sleeping bag and he wakes up just all worked up and he got bit a scorpion got him on the inside of his left thigh the inside of his right thigh he put his hand down there trying to figure out what was going on and got it right in the thumb. Oh. They don't bite. They sting, I believe.

Yeah, sting. He said he thought that he was getting an electrical shock from a cactus thorn is what he said it felt like. And then he was trying to figure out if he's going to wake up dead or not, you know, if he goes back to sleep. But he was still, he was hurting pretty good. Did he have any effects? Hurt him bad, but not. His thumb went numb down to the wrist. Yeah.

Whoa. And his legs, if he, whenever he'd walk, he'd get little. So of course, being a guy, if it's on either side of his groin, did it affect anything? Not that I've heard of. I called him this morning. I called him this morning. I called him this morning to check on him because then he fell back asleep and I woke him up to see if he was doing all right.

But yeah, he... Did you guys contact a doctor? No, but we detained the scorpion. That doesn't seem really helpful to Jason. I detained it live. If he started foaming at the moment, Because I wanted to be... It's it live. If you started phoning at the mall, Because I wanted to be, it's still detained.

Oh, okay. Because if something happens to him, we wanted to be like, here it is. Might be rabid. Smart. Yeah.

So we had it and then we were trying to move how we had it detained and it almost got loose in the truck. But it's securely detained. Was it a big scorpion?

It sits right now in a Tylenol bottle. Was it a big one? Biggest scorpion I've ever seen I'm not joking Because they say the little ones are the most dangerous Yeah, but that's all Is it?

Is it? Is he okay now? I tried to call him this morning Does anybody care about Jason? Now listen This scorpion This scorpion Is the size of your pinky finger

The size of my pinky finger Holy shit Huge That's terrible Back to What was I saying? I don't know We're going sideways my pinky finger. Holy shit. Huge. That's terrible. Back to, what was I saying? I don't know. We're going sideways here. Designer Firewood doesn't have Scorpions.

Oh, Designer Firewood doesn't carry Scorpions. Okay, so you want to know pricing. So in Kenny's area. Good job of bringing that back. That's great. He's on it. Great hosting. In Kenny's area.

You guys should do a podcast. I'll license it for you. Okay. Well, we could do that. No, I'll license it. We'll put it on our should do a podcast. I'll license it for you. Okay. Well, we could do that. No, I'll license it. We'll put it on our network. Okay. And I'll license it.

And we'll do a rev share. Is there any money involved in this, man? Oh, yeah, dude. Because I ain't making squat. Listen, man. Not if you go on your own. No. You're on your own.

Yeah. Not if you go on your own. But if you were to join a network, because there's like, I'm not going to get into it right now because it'd be doing me a disservice to explain it all on the air. But if you were to do this, it'd be in and out of the Woodyard podcast. I can't believe. You do the podcast. I license it. We do a rev share.

You're getting double money. You're getting money up front. You're getting rev share People would pay for this Oh yeah This just blows my mind I'm being entertained right now Listen man

I never thought I would be This interested in titillating We haven't covered like Zero point shit percent yet I mean Well I know We're never going to get to it all Let's get to it

But the beauty of it is People can just go watch Your stuff This is a teaser Yeah But I do want I want to get to the current i want i just out of personal curiosity i just want to know where the wood

market sits right now so kenny's area where like he said people are burning wood to save money and there's wood everywhere yeah i live in a very wood rich area and there's no everybody and their brother has wood there's a lot of wood everybody people the people that are there want to save money they all got chainsaws they all got a brother that's a lot of wood. No people. The people that are there want to save money. They all got chainsaws. They all got a brother that's a logger. I mean, I work with loggers and truckers. I've been in the wood business my whole life. But they either aren't capable of producing more wood because they're getting older or

they run out of wood or they underestimated their needs, that kind of stuff. So he will sell wood to people that just don't, they like wood heat and they want their wood heat. I heat my house with wood and if I don't have a fire going in the furnace, it's like my house is cold. It's, yeah, the thermostat says 70, but it's not 70 in every square inch of the house. It's like it's 70 over there, but it's like 60 over here. It's like with wood heat, it's everywhere. This is the most buried answer.

So I'm trying to dig it back out. Okay. Okay. So in his area, $70 to $90 per face cord or rick or third of a cord, whichever you prefer. Well, in our area, it's a face cord. Okay. Right. It's a face cord.

Everybody buys in face cords. Yes. So if I'm a normal person and I say, I need five chords for the winner, you have to then go like, Do you mean face chords or full chords? I didn't say face chords. He's going to ask you that when you say that.

I would have said, let's role play. I'm a customer. I'm not calling you. I'm calling Kenny because I'm in there. I'm up there where you're at. Yep. I'd like to buy five cords for the winter. Okay.

So are you talking full cords or phase cords? What did I say? You said five cords. I need to know. What is your definition of a cord? Because I'm going to ask you that. Because I do have customers that have cabins, so I sell a lot of people that got cabins. They buy wood for me like every other year because they come up to their cabin in winter,

they want to go snowmobiling. Them people actually pay pretty good because they, you know, they got their half million. And they want to rick. They got their half million dollar, you know, cabin, you know, that they come snowmobiling twice a year or two, and they want to have nice dry wood there. So I do have some of those customers. So I got to find out if they know what a cord is or not a cord.

And then. Okay. I'm coming from. Let's go back to the role play. Okay. Again, here we go sideways. I'd like five cords. No, we're going to get there fast.

This is straight, no commentary, straight role play. Hi, I would like to buy five cords of hardwood split and dried. And I'm going to say once again, is it a face cord is four foot by eight, four foot high, eight foot long, 16 inches. Is that what you call a cord?

No, sir. I'm talking about a full cord, 128 cubic feet. Okay, so that's three face cords. That's, you want 15 face cords. That's five. If that's how you need to think about it, sir. Yes. I'd like it to be split, dried, hardwood, delivered.

Yep. Okay. So where is your, where are you? How far are you from me? Next door. Oh, next door. That's easy. That's going to be a 240 bucks a load.

That's five loads. Do the math. Oh my God. God, the wood business got complicated. Well, um, again, five times, what did I say? So it's 15 times, 15 times, whatever you're going right. Let's approach it a different way.

Yup. Let's approach it a different way. I say to you, I'm coming to pick up a full cord of split and dried hardwood. How much is it? Your definition is going to be 240. Okay. That's all I want to know. Your definition is 240.

So it's increased by, it's increased 2.4X since I was a kid. And that's cheap wood. That's cheap wood. That's cheap wood. My area, it's different. If you go to Chicago, it's way different. kid. And that's cheap wood. That's cheap wood. That's cheap wood. My area, it's different. If you go to Chicago, it's way different. Okay. So that's what I'm going to explain.

He's 360 for that same load. Yeah. I get 360. I'm at 240. He's at 360. So it's 3.6X from when I was a kid. Right. I have more people, fewer trees.

I know a guy who has one of the biggest firewood businesses in the state of Wisconsin. It's called Frank's. He sends two to three semi-loads every single day to Chicago. $800 a quart. Holy shit. Man. Ken, why don't you just transport a little bit? Well, then I got to...

I mean, there's gas, but... Well, trucking is huge. Trucking is huge. I mean, I's gas, but. Well, trucking is huge. And trucking, yeah. Trucking is huge. I mean, I can't sell him wood for what I sell and him to come get it and sell it for what he does. It's all lost in transportation. Got it, yeah. You can't move it. It's freight.

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Once you got out of the wood yard going and sorry once you got in the wood yard going which is such a novel idea um are there other were there other people per like producing regular content on youtube that was about the wood business yes but not as niche as what i went with it not nearly not nearly i can see him doing like some fancy. Yes, but not as niche as what I went with it. Not nearly. Not nearly.

I could see him doing like some fancy pants wood stuff, but not stove wood. Yeah. That, that, and just a lot of lifestyle type reality show kind of things, or bringing in their everyday activities along with all of it. Like, but I, I myself, I just went with it the way I wanted to do it.

I wanted to do it where it was focused on one topic and what it took to do that. And beginning to end all the details. Because the magic's always in the details. People want to know the difference between a face cord and a full cord every day. You know how many conversations there's been about this? It's all the time. It's all the time. So I just, I really wanted a niche down because I did a lot of studying on YouTube

by watching people that are experts in the industry of education in YouTube, telling people how to do it right. And niching down and getting more specific is better because an audience is going to come to you for that particular topic. And if you start talking about your trip to the mall, you're losing. And you you start talking about your trip to the mall,

you're losing. And you're not talking M-A-U-L. Yeah, I'm talking that. M-A-L-L. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, it's, it's a big difference. And people, people are there in that particular audience. And yeah, they may have some common interests. A lot of firewood people are hunters.

They are fishermen. They are outdoors people, but not all of them. A lot of them. There's a lot of them. Yeah. Some of my people that watch me, and I've got people from 55 countries that watch that tell me, you know, I do firewood, but I'm not a hunter.

I'm a vegan. And I appreciate you doing that. And I'm okay with it because I like your content. Yeah. So, but if I start showing hunting stuff on there, it's going to turn them off right now. Oh yeah. This is not what they came for. Nope. Yeah. So, but if I start showing hunting stuff on there, it's going to turn them off right now. Oh yeah. And it's just not what they came for.

Nope. Exactly. Yeah. Like if I had like a thing where I put Lego shit together, I wouldn't start splitting firewood on it. My son has that channel. Yeah.

Really? Yes. Yeah. He's got a YouTube Lego channel. Yeah. Yeah. It's called Rick Studs. He just started it.

How old are you guys? I'm 60 and. 59. In two months. You guys married? Yeah. Yeah. We're 10 months and two days apart.

How long you guys been married? Me, I'm a second round, 12 years second round here. How much added up? 37. That's good. I got 38 in with one. 38. 38 with one. Three kids, same as you, boy, girl, boy. That's good. I got 38 in with one. 38. 38 with one.

Three kids, same as you, boy, girl, boy. That's great. I started out 25 years first round and I'm on 12 or 13 now. So you hit silver there. Yeah, whatever. I pointed out that my father hit silver with two different people. No. It's like a model of loyalty, right?

Yeah. Did it twice. We got seven kids so but they're all growing and growing thank god yeah so tell me uh after you got the the the in the wood yard how did it occur to you to start doing out of the wood yard well because that was my that was my introduction right yeah yeah i'm gonna back up just a little bit so you get the context of it so i when i would drop these videos that weren't wood related, I saw a big drop in viewers per video basis. Knowing that YouTube didn't know what to do with it because they didn't know what to do with the content.

And being that we're outdoors people, I thought, hey, I'll just separate it out. My son told me too, he was the IT guy, he said, yeah, if you keep it more pure, the algorithm will know what to do with it. And I wanted to do that content just to put it somewhere else. So I started doing the trapping and the noodling, catfish noodling. Oh, yeah. You want to go noodling? We know a guy. It's awesome.

Yeah. He watches your show. He's in love with you. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I want to go. He messaged me last night. It's awesome.

I haven't done it yet. I want to try it. I like fishing catfish, but yeah. It's a rush. It's awesome. I haven't done it yet. I want to try it. I like fishing catfish, but yeah. It's a rush. It's a rush. Yeah. And so we separated it out and I haven't done as much to it as I wanted to because I've been

so busy. And part of the reason why I haven't is in the last three months, I was basically evicted from where my wood yard was. I wasn't evicted, but I got noticed that it wasn't up to code and wasn't in covenants of what I could do. I'm in a commercial location and I assumed I was okay, but I wasn't evicted, but I got noticed that it wasn't up to code and wasn't in covenants of what I could do. I'm in a commercial location and I assumed I was okay, but I wasn't.

You knew you were a covenant. I kind of knew. Well, the developer was okay with it. He didn't have a problem. Nobody else said anything for 10 years, but it got bigger and bigger. And I got the big machinery and then the neighbor said, um, I just put a parking lot in and it cost me 180 grand. He said, I know you're not under covenants because you have to have hard surface, which is either blacktop or gravel underneath any materials outside. And fencing.

And fencing. And he said, I don't like the way it looks. No. Yeah. Oh, man. So luckily I have. He outgrew his britches. I outgrew my britches, yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know what? This guy you're talking about, he might love his family and be a great american but that's the thing i don't get man you know i don't understand he didn't want i would rather i like my shit tidy okay neat and tidy i would rather all of my neighbors had total shitholes so you you look good? No, because if I like, they're going to be less likely to care if my kids are messing around. I'm more likely to find something

I might need. There's more likely there's going to be a bunch of cottontail rabbits hanging out in all their junk. It's just like, there's nothing but like, I would rather that everyone around me had a junkyard. And then my stuff was in the middle. Perfect.

But I'm guessing that that's not the perspective that your neighbor had. No. No, he's jealous. It's an industrial park. I mean, it's not. Yeah, I mean, he didn't do it because he doesn't like the way your yard looks. Come on. No, no, he did.

Really? No, you don't think he did it because he was like, well, if I had to pay, he does too. Maybe. No, I think it's kind of a combination. It's an electrical engineering place, and they bring people in from all over the world for what they do, and they have government contracts. It's a big deal. Yeah, but think how great his place must look next to your place.

That's what I always thought. He'd be like, hey, you could be here. And how authentic it is. Welcome to Wisconsin. Oh, yeah. Everybody splits wood around here. Look at this guy. Yeah, that's what most people think.

Most people say that. All the people that watch my channel thought it was ridiculous. But I got a better deal now. Oh, that's good. It worked out. He's improved. It's improved tremendously. Once again, one more reason I don't have a processor in my place yet.

Yeah, so that's what slowed me down from doing more content on my Out of the Woodland. So back to your original question about the Out of the Woodland. Because you had to duke it out about your property. I had to move. Well, you got to move. You don't realize how much crap you accumulate. I had 10 years of firewood stuff to get out of there. It's a lot.

Yeah, it was a lot. So that slowed you down on your outdoor content. Three or four months. Yeah, it put me behind on production, everything. Yeah. So yeah, and then Kenny and I started doing the trapping thing since we were kids and I always thought it would be neat to have it where we would show

people what we do because I mean, I trapped when we were younger with Ken, our grandpa was a professional trap, actually our great grandpa was a professional. Yeah. We're fourth generation now. He was professional beaver trapper. No, trapper.

Everything trapper. Minnows trapper. Minnows in the summer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the summer. Yeah. I was reading about that, the minnow thing. Yeah. Yeah trapper. Minnows. Minnows in the summer. Fur bearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the summer. I was reading about that, the minnow thing. Yeah. He was a bait man.

Yes, I did that too. I grew up doing it. We worked for him. We did, we sold live bait in the summer. We worked for him every summer. Sailing in minnows. Sailing in minnows. Well, he sold minnows.

We just helped him catch them. Would he do like the leeches, wigglers, all that? No, no. Or just like just a minnow guy? We picked crawlers. That was our division. Every time it rained, we picked the leeches, wigglers, all that? Or just like, just a minnow guy? Night crawlers was where I was. We picked crawlers. That was our division. Every time it rained, we picked the crawlers, man. I tell you, they had a broken back when I was 10.

So you'd go out in the spring on a rainy night and pick crawlers. We'd pick crawlers until you couldn't move no more. Until my mom would find us and say, get home. You got school tomorrow. School starts in an hour. We're out there all night. We're making buck, you know. Two cents a night crawler, man.

25 cents a dozen, man. That was big money back then. You don't realize. So just out in the cornfield in the rain, paper crawlers. Norm and all, everybody's yard, everybody's front yards. You know, everybody had a yard. Just digging up their front yards. If they're right with it.

They come out at night. Night crawler. They crawl. They come out. You never pick night crawlers? Not at night. Oh, man. That's the only time. You get in May, early June, night night crawler they crawl they come out they come out night crawlers not at night oh man you get like if you get in may may early june and you get a real goalie washer or a rainstorm

you go out at night dude they're out to breathe okay but what do the two have to happen simultaneously or or can you have just any night better one no no no rainy night rainy nights the best it brings them out and they start making love. Yeah, yeah. And they're twisted up. That's a twofer. That's a double, man. You can grab them both at once. You've got two in one pick.

And they don't get away as good when they're making love. No, they're locked up. They can't separate. They're locked up like a couple dogs. Like dogs, yeah. Get them both. It's a night crawler, man. Yeah, it's a great business.

So he was a bait man. Yep, yep. And he contracted with bait stores. Yeah. He's a great business. Where were we? I mean. So he was a bait man. Yep. Yep. And he contracted with bait stores. Yeah. Well, he would. He had a route. Well, he had a route up actually where I live. See, okay, back in them days, people would go up

north and they'd stay at a resort, right? Yep. There's a lot of resorts on a lake or on a river or whatever. Well, the resort owner would have cabins and people would come stay there and they're going to go fishing. They'd have boat rentals, canoe rentals.

Well, they don't want to have to go someplace and catch bait to go fishing because back then it was all live bait. You know, people didn't have all these fancy things, you know. So they fished with minnows. He would sell to the resort owners. He would make a weekly run every Friday.

He would drive up north 150 miles and sell to all these resort owners. They would order ahead of time. Like hundreds of dozens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thousands.

Gallons by the gallon. Nowadays it's by the gallon, whatever. But yeah, he had a, he had a 500 gallon tank on the back of the truck and then. Was he just dealing in one, was he doing like chubs, fatheads, shiners? Yep. All of that.

All hand separated. Mud minnows was the big thing. Cause they lived long. I don't know if you know what a mud minnow is, but they live anywhere. They live like a pollywog in a mud puddle. They're tough. You can't hardly kill them.

I'd probably know it if I was looking at it, but I'd probably know it by a different name. They look like a miniature muskie. Oh, yeah. You know what we used to call those? We'd call them tiger minnows. Yeah, yeah. Well, them were in high demand and where he lived, know what we used to call those? Uh, we'd call them, uh, Tiger minnows. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, them were in high demand and where he lived, he caught lots of them and people really wanted them because they would last. You could buy them one week and two weeks later, they're still alive. So all your shiners, your suckers, your, all your fatheads and all that, he always called

them softbait because they had to be in a tank with an aerator. Whereas a mud minnow, you just throw it in a pail. It'd be alive a week later. Softbait, you got about a half hour, that thing's dead. So he was a bait trapper and a fur trapper.

Yes. He did minnows in the summer, trapped in the winter, mostly. And you were brought up around that. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So at eight years old and he was seven, we

started trapping muskrats. Yep. And you guys got heavy duty into muskrats. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We did. We went out West Dakotas, we went North Dakota, South Dakota, man.

We slayed them. We, we hit the, we hit it. I mean, when we were out there was, is like heaven, man. It was. They had high water. So high water and. High water.

High population. High population just boomed. And you could almost hop from rat house to rat house. I mean, it was unreal. I went out there one fall, or no, spring, spring. Went out there in the spring by myself and some buddies. They were all, we were all trapping together, but separately. You know, we were all, stayed at the same place and trapped the same area.

I went out there, well, for perspective, we used to trap in school. We would take our vacation, well, not vacation. When trapping season opened, our parents would let us take off at school, just go trapping. Because back in the 70s, in them days, a muskrat was like eight bucks. You adjust that for inflation, it's unbelievable. My dad was working in the paper mill making $2 an hour at that same time. So we'd go out in a week and catch a hundred, 150 muskrats. Holy. We'd have our money for the whole year in that week.

So, I mean, plus we were catching coon for 30 bucks a piece. I mean, the fur market was high in comparison. There was guys buying brand new pickups every year on their trapping money. Just a week or two a muskrat. So, okay. Then suddenly you got a big crash in the market for muskrats. Yeah. And then you got a big crash in the market for the fur market was high in comparison. There was guys buying brand new pickups every year on their trapping money. Just a week or two a month. So, okay.

Then you got a big crash in the market for many years. So now we're fast forward to 2010, 2009, I think it went up. That's what the trapper Stu Miller calls his generation's fur boom to separate it from the late seventies, early eighties. We hit two of them.

Hopefully we hit a third one. Hit two of them, yeah. So we got out in the Dak 70s, early 80s. We hit two of them. Hopefully we hit a third one. We hit two of them, yeah. So we got out into the quotas. We found out about these rats and this population boom. And I went out there in two weeks and I caught 2,000 muskrats by myself. I just about killed me. Just about killed me.

Was it just all like, were you just running like just wired up leg holds on feed beds or in? No, well. Different, different, different style. If spring, everything was flooded. I mean, there was, I was catching muskrats that had burrowed under the blacktop.

The roads were giving in. He was driving down roads for like a mile. You're driving through water for a mile. The roads are closed, but the town guys are like, kill them, muskrats, kill them all. Kill them all. Because they're undermining the roads. Like bank dens under the roads and stuff.

Yes, they were trapping. I set a trap for me to you off the road, and hundreds of them right down the ditch for miles and miles in the population. I never saw nothing like it. It was like an infestation. We talked to two kids when we were out there that went to a movie one night.

They came out of the movie theater. This is in a little town we were trapping by with golf clubs. The two of them killed 100 muskrats on Main Street. Okay. So now here on top of this. A market peaked right then.

It was, it was. And we didn't know it because we sent our fur to auction the first time I was out when I had that first 2000. And you put them all up. Yep. Well, I actually, I ended up selling some in the carcass because I could not keep up skinning.

I never, never come home with 200 muskrats in a day in my life. You know? Yeah. Unbelievable. So, so what I did bring home, I put up, we sent them off to auction and we thought, well, we're going to get, you know, maybe five bucks, maybe

six bucks. They went to 10. It was like. And then after that, they went to, I got 14, 15, 16. Yeah. A piece. When you're catching hundreds or thousands, that's a fast. It was real money. And it was fun. So then he found out, well, 16 a piece. When you're catching hundreds or thousands,

that's a fast. It was real money. And it was fun. So then he found out, well, he said, I'm going with you next time. So we did. We went out that next fall. And then we geared up big time.

And spent how much time at it? Well, I'll tell you what, before I went out the first time, I probably spent $3,000 scouting hotels, mileage, driving, finding the spots. Getting permission. Permission, knocking on doors. You gotta get permission. I mean, there was a lot of research that

didn't just show up, you know, but. Cause legally there, you gotta get permission. Yeah. So, and you have to have written permission because we got stopped by a couple of wardens and you have to have your paperwork and we had our paperwork, but they were like, pfft, we don't care.

Kill them all. We did all that for nothing, you know, but, but we were all legal beagled and, you know, we had a guy who stayed on his farm, you know, like, yeah, camp out, stay in the barn, there's a heated quantity, skin inside. This is how good it was. We stayed at a guy's place.

He let us, let us, well, first guy we stopped, he says, yeah, he says, we've got marshes all around here you can trap. You can stay right at my place. He said, we have duck hunters come and stay. And he said, you could use my shed for working. And we said, well, how much land do you have? He goes, oh, seven, maybe eight.

I said, what, a hundred acres? He said, no, sections. That's a small, that's a small farm. And he goes, but my neighbor down the road, he's got 20. He said, he'll let you trap two. And then my guys down the road the other way, he said, they have 30 sections.

This guy, this guy, everybody knew him. Yeah. And if all we had to do was say his name, kill them all. Kill them all. You guys had the golden ticket. We did. Oh, we had the golden ticket. We had the population and the price was there all at one time.

And that never happens. No. But it did. So then we went back the next spring and for three weeks and my son had just gotten out of school, he graduated in the December, So we went back out there in April and he skinned for us all day, every day. That's all he did was skin. So now skin a muskrat, you've probably skinned

one before. A pile of them, yeah. What time do you think for the skin one? Just to give you a reference. Not fast. I mean, not three minutes, but not, not like the people that are fast at it yeah so we weren't fast either until we went out there and we learned how to learn you have to learn to survive cut down your movements so i can skin one now in about 20 seconds kenny can get it on to about 15 i think

his son jed got it not anymore like 12 seconds oh yeah really oh it's incredible are you guys doing that crazy over the knee shit? You're not doing it where you're hanging it by the tail. Don't hang it. I do mine on my lap now. Yeah, yeah.

On my lap. Chester was showing me about that. It's so fast. It's basically like taking a sock off. It's fast. I mean, I don't have that speed. You got to get repetition. I can remember because your hands would get

so gnarled up from setting traps all day. You couldn't squeeze the water out of a wet sock. So his son was the skinner. I'm not kidding you. So it took 20 rats, cause we would have to skin in the morning to get ahead. Cause we knew we were going to come home a couple hundred more every day. So it's like, we got to finish up rest. You know, it took me 20, 20 every morning, my hands would limber up

so I could actually make time. But generally like at the end of the day, we'd sit down and we'd go, oh, there's a hundred left. We'd go like, right, nothing. Let's get them done. That's for three guys. That's like 30 minutes. It's done.

Yeah. But his son skinned for us because we were catching 350, 360, 380 a day. Oh, man. And so he would skin. That was the pain. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like when I said I had skinned a pile of them,

I've skinned a pile of them, but meaning I've skinned like a few days worth of you guys' catch. Well, there's other guys doing this. I mean, we were, we weren't the only ones, but I'll tell you what, with that area we were in, they were all from Wisconsin. Yeah. Wisconsin trapper for some reason knew how to compete. Kind of like when we go to South Dakota, I don't know, deer hunting, we see Wisconsin plates everywhere. Yeah. I don't, I don't know why people from Wisconsin have these certain weird, stupid skills or I don't know if they're skills or desires or I don't, training.

I don't know why that is. But they're good rat trappers. Well, we thought we were good until we went out there. Yeah. But now we're good. We're pretty good now. I mean, we developed, I mean, really quick.

Well. Really quick. The rules are a lot more lax there too, as far as what you can and can't do. Yeah, like in Wisconsin, everything that works really good is illegal. Oh, there it was, legal. It's like, oh my God.

Like colony traps. Like we're in heaven, man. Like a colony trap. You can do that here? I mean, it's like, wow. Like in Wisconsin, your colony trap, you can set it somewhere where it's in a run, but it can't be touching another colony trap. They have to be so many feet apart.

It can only be in a certain area, whereas in the Dakotas. And you can't move any vegetation. We would fill the culverts with colony traps. With colony traps. The rats would come through and every morning you'd check, you'd have 20, 25 every day. And you had to walk for like, for me to you off the road, you just pull them out and you

shake them out in a pile. It's just like, well, 14, 15, 20. And they'd be stacked up in there so tight, not another muskrat could get in the trap. There'd be like five, six, seven in each trap. You know how you'd set a 110 condiment or you got one. No, no. It was just, it was mind trap. You know how you'd set a 110 condom or you got one. No, no.

It was just, it was mind blowing. It was just mind blowing. And the people up there just hated them. Hated them because they're everywhere. And this is all that time when like people's half their silo was underwater and shit. Yes, yes. Oh yeah.

We trapped some farms. We trapped a lot of farms that were underwater. Just abandoned. Yeah, it was a rush. It was something. It was something. It was something. So what keeps you guys going now on trapping? Since there is no fur market.

Well, we're trapping beaver. I live in a pretty good spot for beaver. Oh, right. And we have heard that beaver now is coming back up. A little bit. Because of the Yellowstone. Yellowstone's a big part of it. I had two fur buyers call me this week.

I was at that airport in Denver yesterday. When that fur buyer calls you, something's up big part of it. I had two fur buyers call me this week. I was at the airport in Denver yesterday. When that fur buyer calls you. That's something. They're hungry. Something's up. He says, I think we can make some talking. He says, we're going to be talking. I said, you realize.

For the hatter trade. He says, I know you guys caught over 500 last spring. I said, yeah, we did. I said, there's no guarantee we're going to do that again, depending on weather and, you know, flood stage and freeze outs. And there's 10 things that can go wrong. I said, well, we're going to try like hell to

match that. And in past years we did okay. We're not getting any younger. We made the money on Castor in the past years. The Castor's where the money was. Per beaver, we were getting six to eight bucks per beaver for Castor. The beaver, the were getting six to eight bucks per beaver for caster. The beaver, the caster's... But that market went

down a little bit, right? A little bit. A little bit, but now the fur's coming up, so it's probably going to be a wash, I think. We don't know. We haven't been promised any numbers yet, but we've got to kill them first. And the thing is, is a lot of places we trap, I mean, they're flooding roads, whether it's, you know, public land, private land.

We've had people come to us and say, hey, you know, can't get, can't get through my driveway because it's flooded from beaver. And they're a cool animal and everything, but it gets to a point where you got to thin them out a little. When the market is low, which it's been for quite a while, the population explodes. Yeah, that's been great for beavers. I mean, the animals themselves, the low market has been phenomenal. Oh yeah. But all your problem beavers are generally flooding out any kind of public road. They get killed. The government kills them.

You're paying for it. Your federal tax dollars paying for it. They got trappers out there year round killing them. We do it for free. What's your t-shirt say? This one, I got this for Christmas. That's good.

Never underestimate an old man with a chainsaw. I got that for Christmas. What's it say? That's good. Never underestimate an old man with a chainsaw. I got that for Christmas. That's nice. Yeah. I got a beaver whisperer one too, but I couldn't decide which one to wear. My wife got me the beaver whisperer one. Are you guys sticking around for the trivia show? Well, yeah.

Sure. Dude, I love your channel, man. Oh, thanks. Thanks. It's fun. It's been a real wild ride i when i first got into it i thought you know i can make an extra 500 000 bucks a month that was my goal and i know people that were doing you're saying 500 to 500 to a thousand yeah yeah because it's not like you said 500 000 well i did no just for doing some videos it's something

i like to do. I thought, yeah, I'm doing it anyway, might as well. So I started recording it, and now it's turned into basically another job. But it's fun, and I like it, and it's just growing. Yeah, the trap under firewood is stuff we've done our whole lives. It's not a big deal. I always say to everybody, whatever your passion is, whatever you're really good at, whatever you're talented at, start a YouTube channel.

But put everything you got into it. You always say that to everybody. He does. You hear this, Carmen? There was a girl on the plane yesterday. Girl on the plane. She looked me up. She's, this is incredible.

She's a baker. She's a baker. She's here. She lives here. She lives here. I told her, I said, start a channel. I said, she does breads, stuff like that. I said, start a channel. I said, you do, she does breads, stuff like that. I said, start a channel.

I do have a loaf of bread in my duffel bag. My wife sent for you. She'd been making the sourdough. Oh, no shit. I got red flagged by the TSA. Did she get into it because of COVID? I don't know why, but she's been doing the sourdough stuff. That's great, man.

So they called an organic mass when they pulled you over? Well, she, it came through the scanner he was what do you got interested it's bread yeah because i got i one time had him say that there's an organic mass in your bag is that right what was it it was an elk tongue oh there you go yeah they can just tell when they zap it that they can tell that well i said them are the raisins in the raisin bag. I'm not kidding. You can see the raisins on that screen there.

I told my wife, I said, I got pulled over by the TSA because that loaf of fricking bread. You're going to give it to me? Yeah. She made it for you. We got something else for you, too. I got something else here, too. We got a couple of those. Let's dig in.

She said, that's no way. I said, yeah. I said, TSA got me at the airport over your bread. You know, I'm getting, tonight I'm taking possession of a sable hat that I had made for my wife. Nice. Because who sewed it is Yanni's friend, Yanni's friend, Sumai Justice. Sumai. Is that how it's said?

Sumai? So we've got two of them. Whichever one fits you better. And I know you got one. Oh, yeah fits you better. And I know you got one. Oh, yeah. Oops, sorry. I know you got one. Isn't that bread?

That's your bread. You can give it to whoever you want. We got two different sizes. That's a Wisconsin beer. It depends on variety. Heavy duty. That's not that janky Montana stuff. That's a different style than Steve has.

Yeah. You can only wear it if it's 40 below because you will be sweating. You'll be dying to see. They're so warm. Oh, that's a thick. What do you guys call that style of hat? That is so different. That's so different than the beavers we have.

That's called a trooper. Trooper. Trooper. I feel the fur on that compared to out here. Well, I don't. You'll know when you touch it. It's thicker, I guess. Our region does produce the best.

We got some of the best beaver in the world where we live, where I live. That's nice stuff. That's incredible, man. That's nice. Boy, that black like that? That's not best beaver in the world where we live, where I live. That's nice stuff. That's incredible, man. That's nice. Boy, that black like that? That's not even black. That's just dark. We get them black.

We do get blacks. Yeah. Well, that's beautiful, man. I love learning. Yeah. You need one for snowmobiling. Yeah, that's what I've been using mine for. It's great.

It's the world's greatest snowmobile hat. Oh, ice fishing hat. Everybody should have one. It's like a helmet, the world's greatest snowmobile hat. Oh, ice fishing hat. Everybody should have one. It's like a helmet, too. You ever watch the fur hat ice fishing tour? Yes, I have. I saw a couple of them. I saw where Steve went.

Damn. You look good in that. Dude, that is like, put that on. That is a warm. There's nothing warmer than that. Nothing. Well, have Carmen try it on because she needs one for her snowmobile. This one might be the one for you.

That's a big one. That's a 24 there. That's a 24. I got kind of a big head. Carmen, try that one. Are we allowed to, is Carmen allowed to take one for her snowmobile? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I don't deserve this.

You guys could send her one. Oh, that fits perfect. That's yours. That's adorable. That's yours. That's yours. That's hot. Oh, my God, that looks good.

That's yours. That's good. It looks really good. I got to get one for my gal With the flaps down You can't even hear with them on You know what, your goggles stay on there so nice That one's yours

No, no, no, you gotta take that one Take that one Yeah, yeah Well, it's good, I mean, speaking of not hearing though When I put my goggles on, you know, snowmobiles Not good for your ears. Right. So it kind of, you know, protects your ears a little bit.

Oh, yeah. My kids are always riding on the back, talking about something. I'm like, you have to understand, I have a fur hat on, and then I have my snowmobile goggles strapped over my ears. I don't know. And this machine is noisy. I don't know what you're talking about. And kids don't talk about it.

You look really good in it. You're sort of vaguely aware that someone's talking. I need to take a picture. Yeah, we got to get some videos. You look great, dude. God, that's nice. We'll do a group photo. These two can wear their new hats.

So, Carmen, when you start ripping around in the brand new snowmobiles that are coming your way already. There you go. We'll be doing it in style. No, I got to tell you that when we do catch a lynx, because I'm going to be positive. You're going to pelt them out? Yeah. No. Change your mind.

Change your mind. Yeah, I need going to be positive. You're going to pelt them out? Yeah. No. Change them out. Change them out. Yeah, I need a coat, so. No, you're standing there in the freezing cold for a long time. You start getting really cold, so this will be perfect for- And your head. I guess I'll do the little dealy up front. Oh, the panel? Well, the guy that makes them for me, that's the style he makes.

I mean, they make many different styles. But these two are different, aren't they? Different style? Same hat, same style. Different size. That's a 23 and that's a 24. You know what I'm getting made right now is I'm getting a, I sent in some muskrats right now to Don Clifford,

and he's doing me a muskrat one of these with a leather bill. Oh. Because you don't want the sun just killing you. You can get those two. I mean, these are just the ones that I've always gotten. Everybody in my family's got them. All my kids got them. All my kids.

He makes spouses have them. He makes mitts too. Yeah, he brings the mitts. Do you put plucked and sheared on the inside? Well, them aren't plucked and sheared. No, on the mittens, you put like a plucked and sheared

on the inside? No, it's just a felt. What's that? Just felt. Oh, felt on the inside. You guys all got all your fingers? Oh, yeah. That's good.

How many times have we been caught in a trap? All of them. No, no. Many. I thought maybe you ever lost a finger on your wood splitter or something. No, not yet. I've seen guys that have. Yeah, I know a couple people lost tips, yeah.

Dude, that hat looks so good on you, man. Yeah. Carmen looked great. I can barely hear you guys. But like legit, you'd wear it riding your snowmobile, right? Say what? She can't hear you. You'd wear it riding your snowmobile, right? Say what? She can't hear you. You'd wear it riding your snowmobile though.

Oh, this is going to be what I wear for the rest of my life. Looks great on you. This is incredible. Yeah, you look like a. The only bad thing about a fur hat is it's unfortunate it came from an animal. I mean, it'd be nice, but there's nothing like

a real fur. There just isn't. No. The good thing is they make them every day. There's more beaver being made right now. I don't know. It takes me a long time to get them made i gotta tell you a quick story i actually wrote about this one time but uh i had my first muskrat hat i had made yeah i was still growing and so it was just like every year got tighter and tighter and tighter it would like give me headaches man and at one point in time at one point in time i lose because i'm always taking

it off because it's not comfortable. I lose my fur hat. I can show you the exact spot. I lost my fur hat right where I caught my first otter. Not the same day. I lose my fur hat and it's just gone. I have no idea what happened to it. One day I'm going down the road with my friend Ed Barefoot.

We're driving along in his station wagon going out to a place called Cisco Bayou. And I see, melting out of the snowbank, a roadkill muskrat. I'm not shitting you. I see a roadkill muskrat melting out of the snowbank. And I tell him to stop. Was it your hat? It's my hat. Because it was a spot where I used to

jump out because there was a creek crossing right there. And I just thought, oh, a muskrat got hit by a car. I'm like, hey, stop! I go over there, pull it out of the bank. It's a creek crossing right there. And I just thought, oh, a muskrat got hit by a car. I'm like, hey, stop. I go over there, pull it out of the bank. It's my damn hat. Yeah. And then I don't know where it's at. I lost it. It didn't fit anymore anyways, right?

So to put a bow on the trapping thing, right now the beaver is going up in price because of Yellowstone, the show, and because some singers, Beyonce just did a bunch of videos, I guess, wearing the Stetson hat. And Stetson hats are made with the under fur of the felt part from the beaver. That's what they're made out of. This was so maddening, man.

Like you can wear leather and everybody's cool with it. Right. Because the fur is gone. And they like steak. And then now you can wear a beaver. Like if you have a Stetson hat, take a look on the inside of that son of a bitch, and it'll say something like 10X or whatever.

That is made from a beaver's fur. Yep. You're supporting trapping. Hypocrite bastards, man. Thank you. That's all right, as long as we're making some money off it, I don't care. We don't get paid very much for trapping beavers. It's a pretty low-income deal.

It's like going hunting and getting paid when you get homers. You know what it costs to go on a hunting trip? Yeah. Well, at the end of our trip, we made money on it. Right. We didn't make a lot, but we made some and we had a hell of a time doing it. Dude, the quality of this compared to the ones we have around here. Skanky ones.

Which are blonde and skanky. The quality of this is unbelievable. I only keep. I can't stop touching it. I only keep. Everybody likes to pet beaver, right? You know. This is, yeah, it's great, man.

So yeah, I only keep the very best for the hats. I sell the rest. I mean, I don't, not all of them. I mean, I only do like 20 a year. I don't do a lot. Do you sew? No, my wife. You have sew wife, my wife has a machine now. We're trying to figure it out.

I'm hoping she can learn how. Right now we're having them made. Yeah. But the slow part is getting them to the tannery and getting the fur back from a tannery. Sometimes it's six to eight months and then sending the hat maker and it might be another six to eight months.

So it's not like. Order today. They're all custom sized. And then does it fit you? You know, we got to carry three, four, five sizes.

I might have five hats. We're going to get into the, we're going to get into the fur hat and mitt and biz, man. There you go. Cause it's so great. It is.

It's awesome. So yeah, I figure you might like it. That's a nice design, man. Do I look good in this thing? Yeah. You do.

You look like you're like going down like a, like a fashion runway with your hat on. Yeah, she does. I don't know about that. I've never seen that hat on anybody that doesn't look good. I'm not kidding you.

The thing that's cool about it is I've had three or four different ones that I've sold because people say, I got to have it. What do you got to have? I know I can always get it. Okay, here's what they cost. There you go.

I'm just reading your lips. I got my hat on. I gave my hat on. Yeah. It's nice. It's muffling. I gave my hat away. I need another hat. Guess who he calls? Yeah.

Yeah, I'll get that splitter up to you. Yeah. Where's that processor? There you go. Nothing. All right, guys. We're going to wrap it up. How are we doing on time?

We're good. Yeah. We can hopefully wolf down some lunch. Appreciate you coming on, man. You guys are going to stay for the trivia show? Oh, yeah. You know what? I don't think that you're going to win.

I can't. Probably not. Because here's the deal. He's going to throw you one bone. If he knows. Does he know? That they're here? Yep.

He's going to throw you one bone. I think I'm going to beat you. Probably. I played along on one of them. I watched and I got five right. Oh, you played along on one and did five? I did five. You so oh you played along the one did five I did you know you'll beat the shit out of career I got the one we had the red snapper I got that I got he asked me that and I knew it and the one that was what the author what was his

name how many we're having away the son was a warden or something. I got that. Goes a good guess. Yeah, I think I got five on that one. Good. I just want to know how it works. I had a guy that plays at home. The blue collar scholar. He reached out to me about a problem he's having where he's like, he had to

admit, because he plays at home and sends me these great scores. Okay. Of his home score sheet we fly him into play and he bombs oh he got nerves well he told me he goes well there's one thing i he was texting me this one thing i didn't mention is i pause oh he hits pause he's researching nope to think thinks about it because it's a while. Because it's a high-stress environment because you're being heckled. Right. Right.

You're trying to make sure no one gives a hint, and it's high-stress. He can hit pause and just contemplate. Oh, there, that's cheating. And I have to deal with a lot of stress. Oh, and he can come back two hours later. He can think about the question for two hours if he wanted to. There's no time limit. After a recent game, we had a real problem with how a question was worded.

I did, and the winner that day, Randall, had a problem with how a question was worded. And so he and I later texted back and forth about how we felt the question should have been worded. And we sent the rewording to the host, Spencer Newhart. And then Randall made a joke that he says, I like to reword the questions until I get to a point where I feel as though

I would have guessed it. And that's what he had done is just reworded it until he felt like he would have gotten it. So even that, like the syntax, the wording can impact

the performance. Very stressful. Steve, I got to say, Brody's surpassing you in who can be the biggest grump complainer in the room. So I don't know if you want to reclaim your crown. Brody is grumpy. Do you know what I mean? Sure.

Like I get grumpy playing trivia, but Brody is grumpy. And you got a one point lead on him, I see. Yeah, no. That's victories. And that Corinne isn't Corinne. That's Hayden. Hayden Samick is now Corinne. He had to steal Corinne's little area.

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