The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 599: The Fur King

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Guy Groenewold, Randall Williams, Brent Reaves, Spencer Neuharth, Seth Morris, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: Buying all the furs off the Hudson Bay Company when it went under; watch our brand new “MeatEater Radio Live!” show on our Podcast Network YouTube channel live on Thursdays at 11am MT and listen as an audio drop here on Fridays; how Steve goes to yoga once a year with his wife; start your mornings off with the new MeatEater Crossword Puzzle; how following the simple rules of a landowner will earn you hunting permission for years to come; the link between big bucks and growing good tomatoes; the polyester threat; playing cowboy; mercury and The Mad Hatter; the number of Xs means the percent of beaver fur used; the tremendous difference in bobcat fur quality; deer tail used in hats; all about whitetail deer hides on MeatEater’s American History: The Long Hunters; the difference between wild mink and ranch mink; and more. Outro song: "Rabbit Chase" by Spencer Roberts  Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee 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. We hunt. The Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-t-l-i-t-e.com joined today by a man who's understood to be named guy grownwald but who is actually guy grownewald i guess so something like that that's how your folks would have said it yeah that's how they would have said where do you hail from uh We're from northern Germany, so my family is, right by Holland, a place called Friesland. And tell me how they would have said your last name.

Grunewald. And it got Americanized. It got Americanized. And you guys are in the Midwest now. We're in, yeah, about 100 miles from Chicago. And you are a, your family been long involved in the fur business. A little over a hundred years. Yeah.

Yep. Man. So you guys picked right up where Hudson Bay Company left off. Well, really Hudson Bay didn't leave off until three years ago, but. Oh, really? Yeah. You have to explain that. Yeah, sure.

Did you know that, Randall? I can't say that I did. Stumped old Randall. Yeah. Yeah. The oldest corporation in America. Hudson Bay Company was around in some fashion until three years ago? Yeah, absolutely.

What the hell happened three years ago? NAFA went out of business. I thought it was something to do with Biden. No. Go on. It's in the spirit of blame and everything. Right. Right timeline.

1670 to 2021? Like years yeah is that right yeah they're still dealing with fur oh is that one is that one uh nafta went out of business north american fur auctions yeah but they were the they're originally they were the arm of hudson's bay company and uh like 20 some years ago and i'm'm sure I'm wrong, but, um, they, they broke off and it separated, uh, the two companies. So that's still, you know, they held their auctions at the Hudson's Bay company where it was in Toronto. And, uh, yeah, they only ceased having auctions in New York, um, during, I think during the SARS outbreak, that's when they stopped, uh, having auctions there. So like 2000, I don't know when, when was the the SARS outbreak, that's when they stopped having auctions there.

So like 2000, I don't know when, when was the first SARS? 2008 or something like that, maybe they stopped in New York. So yeah, Hudson's Bay was around and really in some form until just a few years ago. Damn. But isn't it still around just as like a department store? Yeah, that's the, yeah, it is still a department store in that that's the yeah it is still a department store in canada yeah yeah owned by the actual people like owned by the actual entity no it was not owned by the actual name it was licensed off the the well the it was no longer no longer had they actually owned

it and stopped using the name at one point and then that company that they owned and didn't it was called north american fur auctions became owned by other people it was bought by the ranchers uh the mink ranchers and the fox ranchers of canada and united states and then it became you know owned by the uh um a few people that ran the company there they bought it and uh yeah three years ago it went bankrupt and uh you know a lot of a lot of trappers lost money in it when they had skins up there. Sure. When it actually went out of business. Yeah.

So yeah, we bought a lot of the skins out of it when they went bankrupt. You're kidding me. No, I'm not. We bought a lot. Yeah. It's one of the biggest deals I ever did. Yeah. Was buying up the residue from Hudson Bay Fair Company.

Yeah. I remember where I was, exact place where I did it. I was in Dubuque, Iowa going to a wedding with my wife on a saturday afternoon at five o'clock yeah i remember when they we worked on the deal for you know a long time and um you know they had asked we were up you know what was the date uh i don't know what the date was but it was uh that first it was uh would be about july of 2020 i thought maybe it was was when Seth was getting married. I was going to ask you if the person that officiated did a good job because I tore it up that day.

Right. Yeah, you did. Who else was buying their furs that day when they were going out of business? Nobody. Just you? Just you. That's why they had contacted everybody in the fur trade. And it was during COVID, and it was during covid and it was bad and uh you know nobody was buying and so uh did you get a good deal i i did

all right yeah was your wife annoyed you were doing that at that wedding um yeah she was probably a little annoyed yeah yeah but i did you know she was happy afterwards after you know she got to enjoy the fruits of the fruits of it so you said Hudson's Bay Company doesn't go under very very often no no it's pretty rare people have been waiting hundreds of years for this opportunity this is a once in a millennium opportunity sweetheart let me know how the wedding goes but it was a huge deal in the fur business when they went under you know they were they were in the ranch making business as well. So, you know, it affected the entire trade. Um, and I was, I was actually in China when I was with someone and, uh, that was financing

them. And I overheard a conversation where they had, they were going to, they had lent some money privately to him. And, uh, I heard him say it and he, he probably was regretted it that he said it in English, you know? And so I was very aware that they were having financial difficulties. And then, you know, it became apparent a couple months later to the trade. But I knew it.

I knew it before anybody else. We got to cover some stuff. And when we come back, I had in my head where we were going to start our conversation. But now you got me thinking about, you know, we should start our conversation when we come back can you um can you be prepared to talk about what happened with the covid pandemic and ranch mink uh sure i can i can tell that story sure that'd be great okay seth's here howdy how you liking that little scarf it's warm it's not as nice as my wife's new sea otter scarf. No. That thing's pretty sweet. But this thing's pretty sweet, too.

Dr. Randall's here. Corinne. And then Brent Reeves, all the way from Arkansas. Present. Yeah. And Spencer Newhart's here. We're going to be... Oh, so is Media Radio Live live?

Yes. Okay. Tune in for meteor meteor radio live um on the meteor podcast Network it's out on YouTube what's the meteor crossword puzzle oh I know about that but that's already out that's out too that's for Spencer later oh both of these things have been out for a month now by the time you hear this. I get a little confused in timeline. I've been working just so people know. It's like a bad science fiction book. If people have been noticing that there's a lot of weird stuff with release dates, I've been working on this new show thing and it's got

me gone all damn time. So we've been having a hell of time getting our shows recorded and put out on time. That's why they're all cattywampus. Like you'll hear a news item, they ain't a news item anymore. That's because of that reason. Did you just say cattywampus. Like you'll hear a news item, they ain't a news item anymore. That's because of that reason. Did you just say cattywampus? Yeah, that means off kilter. Oh, I like that.

Never heard that before. Oh, you never heard that? No. Gotta start using that. Yeah, cattywampus. We also got Corinne the other day with a joke. Oh my God. Man, Corinne, it looks like it smells like up dog.

And then she goes, what's up dog? She just walked right into it. It was very earnest. You'd be like, what's up dog? Yeah. Yep. And then you respond and say, not much dog. What's up dog she just walked right into it it was very earnest yeah what's up dog yeah and then you respond to say not much dog what's up with you that's good and yeah we got Korean tell him you invented it one of the things we're gonna be doing on maybe I'm the only one that knows this one of the things we're gonna be doing on me either radio live the only one that knows this one of the things we're gonna be doing on uh me eater radio live is uh i want to do segments on tattoos you regret so if you've got

a hunting and fishing tattoo that you regret now it's gotta be a hunting and fishing tattoo like i wanted to get the my wild turkey uh super slam on my arm you won't regret that it was a map of the continent with little turkey feet where i completed my super slam now at some point i would come on the show and talk about how i regret doing that once i get it so if you've got like tattoos like that or like we need to hear from you yeah but i don't want to hear about your ex-wife being tattooed on your arm i don't care about no but you're right like uh you know i know that we've talked about Chester's tattoo. Oh, his fly tattoo

looks like a scroll. His scroll tattoo. We should do the first, yeah, we could do the first episode with Chester with his fly fishing scroll tattoo. Love you, man. But maybe just like go into,

you know, for 20 seconds what it is I know hopefully people have already been watching and listening by yeah media to radio live is a live radio show that comes out on Thursdays on the internet so it's not like the old kind of like you're not unlike blank megahertz we're not broadcasting from 99.7 megahertz broadcasting on the YouTube it's a classic radio show it's a classic morning radio show in the afternoons on Thursdays on the internet 11 a.m. MST Oh classic morning radio show on the internet we got the prime window somehow yeah yeah it's not quite drive time it's not lunchtime it's kind of lunchtime no it's not

lunchtime oh lunchtime in New York New York. And it's a radio show. Live call-ins. We check in from people around the country. We got correspondence.

It's a lot of fun. Anything can happen. And we're going to do, and we're going to cover tattoos people regret.

And Steve was complaining about how by the time some of these podcasts comes out, the news is out of fashion. That won't be the

case with Media Radio Live. So now we can do, now you can do, we can do real things when they're happening good image like for instance i'm gonna say i'm gonna tell a story right now that isn't true because in my world last night i went to yoga with my wife which i do once a month is that a compromise what am i saying i do it once a year oh a year okay i go to yoga like about once a year i went there last night

and she asked me if i liked it and i'm like i didn't like it because a guy set up right in front of me and i said i was telling her she thinks this is indefensible i was like when i see a guy come to yoga by himself i view it like a an adult at a when an adult comes like a children's playground without a kid like I'm like I'm at yoga some with my wife why are you down here I mean like I'm not here my wife for restorative yoga I'm here like I don't want to be here I'm here because my wife wanted to come once a year in negotiation and then like some guy comes in by himself like what are you doing down here did you get a good stretch if

once a year if once here was meeting in the middle where did you start on that i thought you were saying he was in front of you and you were like the second dog in the pack no i just like a whole time i had to look at this guy stretching out it's like i couldn't stand it man that's a lot about my psychology i don't blame you. Oh, very self-aware. It was called restorative yoga, which means you don't do much. You don't do much. Was once a year a negotiation, Steve? Did you have to, how'd you arrive at that number? I'd gone the longest I'd ever gone without seeing my wife.

Because I was gone for two weeks for work, then I was with my kids for two weeks fishing and so I had seen my wife in the whole month mmm so we're just trying to capitalize on opportunities to hang out together and so that involved me going to yoga mm-hmm so if you see I look very stretched out that's what's going on mm-hmm you got restored yep here's some good news so we reported during the trump administration we reported heavily on their efforts to increase recreational access um on the refuge system so a deal with the refuge systems is how can i explain this help me explain this randall

national four let's say you're doing something a national forest a national forest lands the fish and game laws of the state are going to apply on national forest lands right yep it's like the national for the the the the national forest service which is an arm of the usda like they don't make regulatory overlays on top of state regulations why you why you look like well there are certain circumstances it's sort of like open unless otherwise posted right i mean like there's certain areas in national forests like where there might be a recreational site or wherever where there are boundaries where you can't hunt and fish no no but they don't have regulatory overlays you wouldn't go and be like on the national forest i see what you're saying

you can't i see what you're saying it's not a different limit yeah not yeah yeah well the refuge system the national wildlife refuge system causes a lot of confusion because they have a lot of regulatory overlays specific to the refuge areas. And so when you're going there, you can look at what's allowed in your state. And then you also got to go like, well, what about on the refuge? Because the refuge is going to have all kinds of extra things in place, right? Like extra regulations. And so it creates a lot of confusion under the trump administration they were trying to open up a lot of hunting and fishing things because some

of the some of the refuge regulations felt somewhat arbitrary meaning you know there's like refuges that you couldn't fish on and no one's quite clear on why you couldn't fish there now the refuges often have like a very specific purpose like you could have a refuge meant to be a nesting ground for shorebirds right and so you'll take regulatory measures to help it achieve that specific purpose and goal but what they were doing is they were looking at refuges and being where are we missing opportunities like where could we increase hunting and fishing access decrease regulatory confusion and open up opportunities to hunt and fish in ways that won't compromise the goal of the refuge system and that and the um biden and biden harris administration just announced 53 new

hunting and fishing opportunities on approximately 211,000 acres nationwide on the National Wildlife Refuge System. This came into place. We had Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart used to... Martha Stewart?

You've been watching too much Olympics. You've been watching her with some snooze at the Olympics, haven't you? I've been watching too much Olympics. You've been watching her with some snooze at the Olympics, haven't you? I've been shopping for plateware. Or lighters. Or CBD gummies. Martha Williams. Martha

Williams, the former head of Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, which we call Fish and Parks for short. So Martha Williams used to run Montana's state fish and game agency. She now runs the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. So under her leadership at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, we're seeing a continuation of expansions on refuges. So if you've got a refuge down the road,

it always kind of burns your ass about what you can and can't do. You should go revisit what's going on there. And that's in nine states. I feel like this sort of news sometimes just applies to far away in Alaska, but this is very close to home for a lot of folks. Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin. Good job, Spencer. You should come on the show more often.

Another thing, Steve. He's still going. There was a note in here for you to plug me, Dieter Crosswords. You didn't do it. Okay, here was my opportunity. Steve said, oh, and there's me, Dieter Crosswords. What's that? Oh, no, I know what that is.

And then we just. We'll get into it. Okay, you want to know? It looked like a new thing when it's not a new thing. Well, Mediator Radio Live, just like Mediator Crossword Puzzles came out about a month ago every Wednesday morning, we have a crossword puzzle that you can get at themedeater.com backslash games. There's 20 clues. It's all specific to the Mediator universe, sort of like Mediator Trivia like that podcast you'll like the me deeter crossword puzzles uh the first one we have coming out is outdoor themed the second one national parks the third one hunting uh so if you enjoy this podcast or me deeter trivia you'll like that the me deeter crossword puzzles and we're a month in

and i've been doing tremendously i will say sure corinne put a letter in here doing tremendously I will say sure Corinne put a letter in here I mean scratch it out yeah if it wasn't his grandpa it'd be a great story it goes like this there's a guy who hunts his grant not if it was just a stranger's land I almost want to tell it not true to make it better what's his grandpa's neighbor neighbor oh there you go grandparents neighbors place I just put it in yellow oh it is a good story there's this guy that has to hunt permission on his grandpa's neighbors place yeah i got

confused there for a minute i read it one way then i read another way got it it's a guy writing and like i was talking about uncle chesty was here and we were talking about being courteous to landowners and and having the attitude of is someone lets you hunt or fish or trap on your land um you'd like bring them stuff you get some sausage made up from your deer and bring them that and bring them a gift card to to murdoch's or or you know like do little things like that you know 50 gift card to murdoch's so you can buy some whatever i don't know just do stuff like that um show show that landowner that you realize that uh you know show that landowner that you realize that show that landowner your appreciation and follow their rules.

I was saying if they tell you not to drive past that windmill, stop short of the windmill. Right? And this guy writes in to say he's been hunting on his grandpa's neighbor's place. The guy gave him two rules. No rifles. He wanted shotgun only.

And he didn't want anyone driving four-wheelers unless they were retrieving a deer. And he said, other than just simple acts of common courtesy, I hunted that place for years, and I just followed those two rules, those two simple rules I paid attention to. That guy then sells the property it includes in it that is law and includes in his deal that i'll sell you this land on the agreement that these two people can keep hunting there

i mean that's yeah pretty solid that's cool yep follow the rules some good people right there on both sides now this is the most this is the most um here's the most thought-provoking thing that's ever been on this podcast you ready for this this is the most thought-provoking thing i've ever ever been uttered here i was just listening to episode 575 where you discuss larry the musky man's rebuttal of your anyways here's the part i have heard it said that you won't generally grow big bucks on ground that doesn't grow good tomatoes. That's all.

Except for... Try to refute that. Okay. I think our top tomato producers are California and Florida who are not known for their big old white tomatoes. They're not known for good tomatoes. They're known for bad tomatoes that transport well yeah i think in california doesn't make good tomatoes they make tomatoes that you could throw against the wall and not hurt good tomatoes come from where i grew up

good tomatoes come from where i grew up they also come from new jersey i'll tell you what they don't come from jersey tomatoes they don't come from bozeman montana i can tell you that a more simple adage to this would just be like, if it grows good corn, I think that. New Jersey. If you've got corn within five miles, you'll grow big white tail bucks. How about that? But you missed the point. Or the why.

Because people are probably wondering why. Oh. You stopped short like by one sentence. I was told this is because some soils lack minerals like calcium that are required for both antler growth and tomato development i'm just gonna have a b that i think that's true it's less i think it's more thought-provoking if you leave out his hypothesis there and you're like not get into it yeah you let the list that's why i didn't do it i think maybe you should think about it the other way that if there's a place that's known for big Oh, like not get into it. Yeah, you let the lister. No, no, no. That's why I didn't do it. They kind of blew it.

Mentally. I think maybe you should think about it the other way, that if there's a place that's known for big whitetail bucks, it'll grow really good tomatoes. Oh, make a buck first. Yes. Buck first. Yeah, that's like, I think my best turkey hunting spots I've ever found in my life were also had a lot of bobcats. So you wouldn't be like, well, the best place, like, you find

bobcats, you got good turkeys. Yeah. Yeah. When you're scouting for turkeys, you actually just go out and look for bobcat tracks. That's right. Or if you see some bobcat tracks at a crossing, sit there and call. Looking for good whitetail bucks, you go plant some tomatoes. See how they do. Yeah. So then

you gotta get permission and be like, hey, can I get permission to hunt this fall? And they're like, oh, yeah, sure. Like, well, listen, I'm going to be over in May. And you'll notice me out cultivating a little tomato. It's all part of the plan. It's all part of the plan. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, 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 MeatEater 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. I'm not going to get into more stuff about... Larry the Musky Man struck a chord with people.

Oh, he did. He absolutely did. A guy wrote in taking Heffelfinger to task he absolutely did a guy wrote in taking Heffelfinger to task for saying that we had colossal biosciences on and talked about the science and ethics of cloning

mammoths Heffelfinger wrote in talking about how mammoths are losers but he'd like to see one this guy wrote in being like Heffelfinger wrote in talking about how mammoths are losers but he'd like to see one um this guy wrote in being like heffelfinger's got it all wrong and he's got a ba and an ma in anthropology don't don't isn't it isn't it implied like you don't list all your degrees yeah unless you i mean i think that would be more common if you if your degrees aren't related to one another like if you have a if you have a ba in english and then an ma and yeah or like i have an associate's degree too i'm not gonna because

i went to community college i'm not gonna going to go like associates, bachelors, masters. You should. English. What was the associates in? I don't know what they call it. Oh, yeah. I got one of them too. Yeah.

You don't put down all of them. He put down BA and MA in anthropology. Just get to the end. Do you know what I mean? Like when you turn 50, you don't list all the years you've been. I guess by this he's trying to say that for two years or three years he studied at master's level anthro and then for four years he studied.

Six years of higher ed. Yeah, in that single subject. I don't like it. I mean, I wouldn't sign. I never sign my emails like that. I think you should cut one amount whatever one he likes most he should leave in and cut the other one out half of fingers working on something I guess from there the idea of the Miriam's elk yes so we

have check me from around alive today we have there's three American elk Rocky Mountain Roosevelt Thule and the Thules are in California and it's assumed that the Miriam's, the Miriam's elk is extinct. And Eastern. Yeah. Oh, because, yeah, they re, you're right, the Eastern is extinct. So the ones that are in the East now are Rocky Mountain. Yeah. I think there was a span of like 30-some years between the last Eastern

in Pennsylvania until they got reintroduced with Rocky Mountain. Just a little tidbit. Heffelfinger's been running all around getting old elk skeletons and pulling DNA from them. Because currently they only know

about four specimens of Miriam's elk from skeletons. Places like the Smithsonian and whatnot. Heffelfinger, in 2006, he found a Miriam's elk. He found two in New York that no one knew about at Smithsonian, I think. He found two there. He goes on to say, There's always been a lot of talk about whether the Miriam's elk

was really any different from those in southern Colorado at the time. If they were different, then we should be able to detect if any survived from the last report in Arizona around 1900 to the first translocations from Yellowstone National Park in 1913, meaning Arizona had Miriam's elk. When they were extirpated from Arizona, it's hard to picture, elk were extirpated from Arizona, and when they reintroduced elk, as often happens,

when you have an endemic variety goes extinct, and then later you want to reintroduce it, you've got to pull from a new source so arizona had miriam's elk and when they were extirpated they were replaced by rocky mountain elk in 1913 heffelfinger got 10 000 bucks from dallas safari club as part of the conservation trailblazer award which is funding his collection of samples. He says, I just think, he says,

I just think it's cool as shit and had to share it. So he's out there scouring around to find out, is it true? Was there like a different type of elk out there? Heffelfinger also reported on something here. I don't want to get into too much detail

because it's brewing right now um we've discussed for like why there's no record book javelina um you can't shoot a record book javelina like pope boone and crockett doesn't have a category and pope and young doesn't have a category mostly because boone and crockett won't accept it half a finger put together uh this guy like what does this dude sleep half a finger puts together a, a, a presentation about why they're, why they should be, why there should be, you should be able to shoot a Boone and Crockett peccary or, you know, collared peccary javelina and, and steps are being taken. It's not done yet, but, um, he is soliciting them to create a havelina category in the boone and crockett record club i have one that i feel will be in there because who does have

it sci probably them i don't know yeah yeah, is there a reason why they're never, there hadn't been, they're just not regarded that they, they haven't traditionally been regarded as a big game animal. They're not a small game. Yeah. You're like bridging a gap to, it feels like coyotes and Fox.

Uh, start doing heavily. You got to draw a tag. You got to draw a tag. Okay. Now you got to draw a tag for cranes in some places there shouldn't be a boon and crockett crane oh talk me into it what are you gonna measure it's beak uh wingspan i suppose that'd be a natural no because that doesn't last it's gotta be bone

okay i got a record book javelina there's there There's one more subspecies of elk that some people recognize, including the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Tell me, and I'll tell you if I agree. The Manitoban elk, which is like upper Great Plains and southern Canada. And they say that one is still around. I don't know if I disagree with that or not. You can have dealer's choice on if you want to recognize that one or not. Do you got any tattoos you're going to submit to our tattoos I regret? I was thinking about, I think my only regrets are like maybe making some bigger.

Like I got the dead man's hand here and that was my second ever tattoo. I wish I'd have gone bigger. Yeah, because when you get old and wrinkly, that's going to become, you're not going to be able to tell what's going on. Yeah, so none that I regret yet. Here it it is in the form of regret you're talking about oh is that batman what is that like a heavy metal symbol well i was undercover i got this oh you got that for working to make you look like a drug dealer batman in the middle that's what oh yeah yeah i used to work with a guy that liked bacardi so much he got the bat tattooed on him i have the hams bear tattooed on me he once said to me you know when you're

drinking bacardi so fast and you get the red splotches all over your neck did you say yes or no i was like why no tell me more we were actually having a bacardi at the time with this little known beverage called coke a whole coca-cola all right guy you ready you got any tattoos i don't have any tattoos no do you regret it no I don't regret it at all that's kind of funny I hang out in Madison you know and it's just like the men there aren't tough enough to have tattoos I don't know how that'll play here but I got to Bozeman yesterday and I noticed that you know all the men have you know heavily

tattooed heavily tattooed and you know in Madison they're not so yeah I'm really curious like when you if in the future if people will remember this as an era of tattoos yeah I would say so yeah like when our little kids are doing Halloween like when my kids are in there in in the car in college and they're goofing on the 2020s like not like they might dress like we're just like the 80s we're just like the 70s we're just like the 60s when they're dressing like the 2020s will they put a bunch of fake tattoos on yeah I'd say so yeah especially they live out here if you're like oh the 2020s I don't know uh okay tell me what happened with uh

how why didn't tell how mink made international news during the covid pandemic okay so um in early to uh 2020 during the pandemic uh i remember it very specifically. And I actually had to go to a wool conference. I'm also in the wool business. I was in Scottsdale for the wool conference, and I had this great time. And I flew back into O'Hare on a Saturday night. I had a hotel room with my wife, and we were going to go to a play the next morning with some friends. But you had to interrupt the play to buy wool. And so she picked me up. We had this great dinner. And I communicate with my customers in China on WeChat.

And typically, every day, I get one or two messages when I wake up in the morning, almost never on a Sunday. And seldom on a Saturday. And so I woke up on Sunday morning. And I remember the Hampton Inn that I was in, downtown Chicago. And I woke up, and I looked at my phone. I had 13 messages from my customers in China. And it was pictures of them going, trying to get back into Beijing after the Chinese New Year or whatever it was. And, you know, just miles of cars because they were checking everybody's temperature on the way back.

And other customers calling me up saying, we are so screwed that we are, you know, they are shutting this whole thing down. And at the very beginning of COVID, a, um, like days after, I would say days after this happened, okay. Not days after the outbreak early January, but in early February, a professor in China came out and said that it's, it's mink that's causing this. And so right away, even though the guy had no reason to it's, it's mink that's causing this. And so right away, even though the guy had no reason to say it, it was totally false. It was since proven false,

but he meant causing the whole kitten caboodle. You ever heard that correct? Yeah. She just heard it this morning. Um, but anyway, uh, yeah, it was, it, it, it came out that, and they were, they were like telling me, you know, Hey, they're, they're blaming our industry, you know, and immediately the Chinese government, you know, said no raw skins in to the country. And we were, you know, we were shipping a lot of stuff at the time. What makes the skin raw? If it's not tan, it's just, just dried where, you know, where you can ship it, where you can ship it, you know, it's, it's not going to put to putrefy you know while it's being shipped because it's dried um but it's not tanned where it has any long-term you know viability but you know most a lot of the tanning was done in china said no raw mink they said no raw anything you couldn't import anything raw but just over overnight kind of a little late for that because i mean they the pandemic was coming out of China. Yeah. But they, they were afraid that something would be, you know, contaminated because they, they literally held the disease out for two years out of their country besides my, you know, kind of minor outbreaks.

So they, they just ended it. So, um, you know, everybody thought it was kind of over and, um, we were addressing some stuff in Cambodia already because they have a free trade agreement. So it actually sort of benefited us in some ways because, you know, we were already, you know, shipping stuff to Cambodia. And then we, that's the route we still go that way. You still can't import raw skins into China. It's impossible. But yeah, my, I ended up going to the musical that day and it was, you know, my stomach was just, you know, I couldn't hardly take it. What musical? Gosh, maybe Mean Girls.

I don't know. But it was, I don't really remember it. It was a rough, rough day. I mean. I went to Mean Girls. It wasn't that good. Right. So yeah, it makes sense why you would.

I remember going for a ride. We got up at like, you know, five in the morning and went for a ride around, you know, Chicago. And there was nobody there. Me telling my wife, you know, hey, our, you know, things are going to have to change, you know. And my son still remembers me calling him up at college and saying, Christian, you know, you can't, you know, go out to eat anymore. You know, it's really going to get bad here. Well, walk me into how they killed millions of mink. So that, so right away it got linked to mink. And then that sort of died off

okay but um you know and there's and there's the the largest uh producer of mink outside of china you know was denmark okay can you can you do me another favor and clarify there's wild mink and ranch there's there's wild mink i mean percentage wise of what's produced in the world wild mink is you know probably under 10,000 at this point. And at one point, there was definitely over 100 million mink produced commercially. Maybe there was even 160 million. There was definitely over 100 million, though, if you take what was produced in China and what was produced outside of China. So, you know, Copenhagen sold 30 million mink a year on

their sale. They produced in their country, you know, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 million, you know, they got mink from Poland and wherever else. But anyway, um, some of the mink were susceptible to getting the disease. Okay. So early on the, uh, Danish government said, you know, we, you know, some of these farms are infected and we want you to kill everything. Some people think that it was completely politically motivated that they just wanted to end the production of mink in Denmark. And it was just the government didn't like it. And it was a huge industry for them. I mean, they sold 30 million mink, you know, at the peak, 30 million times you know, probably getting very close to a hundred dollars a piece that, you know, they,

they exported out of, out of, uh, Copenhagen, you know, it was definitely the biggest, uh, exchange in the world for, for mink. They had their last sale just two months ago and they had a huge party. It was, you know, a lot of people from the fur industry went because it was the last hurrah, you know, Copenhagen was the center of the fur business for the last 30 years or so. And, you know, now they, they were still selling mink from, you know, they had, they had had a lot of mink stored when this happened because the market was already in a downturn before this happened. So there was a lot of people that had bought mink at Copenhagen and Copenhagen hadn't sold some of the mink. And so there was, you know, millions of mink in storage at this time. And the mink that they killed, you know millions of mink in storage at this time and the mink that they killed you know they they didn't keep those mink they killed they destroyed

them they burned them buried them whatever and they didn't pelt them out they didn't pelt them out no i heard some bum information no no but there's the reason you probably heard that is because they said people are you know that copenhagen was still selling mink up until two months ago they had their last sale and the the reason for that was, is the market, you know, was, was poor and they, they had a lot in stock. So they ended up killing off, you know, every mink in the, in the country. And, uh, you know, um, and there was people that, you know, they got, got, uh, COVID here in their mink as well. Um, you know, are they rebuilding? No, they're, they're not rebuilding. They, the ranchers got a settlement. They haven't paid out all the settlement yet. It was a, it was really a fantastic settlement for the, rebuilding. The ranchers got a settlement. They haven't paid out all the settlement yet.

It was really a fantastic settlement for the ranchers if they get it all paid. I don't know. They paid out some of it, but there's a lot of controversy because the numbers were staggering of what they got because they were paid to never produce again. So they didn't just get the value of those mink. They got the value of those make plus. So it really decimated the fur business, or it really decimated the ranch fur business, which is difficult on the trade because like the money for marketing and sort of promoting fur, the biggest entity we had was Copenhagen because they handled so many skins with so many dollars that if they did a 1% levy to promote fur around the

world, you know, it meant something, you know, they could actually do something. So it was a, it was a tough loss for the fur industry. So, you know, now we're really left with, you know, Saga in Finland as the only major, you know, seller of mink. Uh, there is a small auction, you know, in America, American mink exchange. They still collect some of the American mink, but, you know, it's much smaller than Saga. But yeah, it's, we went from having, you know, Napa, Seattle Fur Exchange, Saga, Copenhagen, and, you know, down to basically, you know, just Saga now. But yeah, that was a major hit and it was because of, really because of but you know really maybe not because of covid maybe they the government just wanted it to be done well that eventually caused uh with the with all that production taken off well that eventually trickled down to wild caught stuff well gaining value because it's not competing

against all that well we hope so um so last year i don't have exact numbers but let's just say the auction sold around 15 16 million skins and there was still only around seven produced seven million and yet they sold that many so that many uh skins are going to be used to make coats and you know this this season you know they'll be pelting here in a couple months and a couple three months and, and the production in the West will be six, seven million. Well, you're not going to have Copenhagen selling 10 million old skins this year. You're not going to have even Saga. They're not going to have skins that are left over either.

You're going to have closer to eight or 10 or so million makes killed or, uh, you know, sold at auction this year. So, you know, what was 15 million or 17 million last year will be, you know, nine or 10 million this year. So definitely there will not be, you know, as many, as many skins available as what was demanded at the price of last year. And I think that's the important thing to look at is, you know, if at last year's price, yes, which was a, you know, a price that was rising, but still not crazy high, there was a demand for 15, 16, 17 million mink. And this year, if there's only going to be, you know, say 7 or 8 million mink, does that price have to go up because that many mink was demanded? Well, that many mink was demanded at a much lower price you know if we if we want to go and double the price you know will there be you know will will they will the consumers still buy buy the coat in china or in russia or wherever and you know you know certainly nobody knows that answer i mean um you know i'd

say in the united states you know we raise the the prices of a lot of things i mean the price of a hotel room here in this town you know know, from five years ago is much, much higher, maybe three times higher. And, you know, I still got one. Um, but we don't know what the Chinese consumer is going to do and, you know, the, or the worldwide consumer of, of, uh, you know, ranch make is going to do, but certainly if the price you would think if maybe it could double, it's not really that high right now, it would certainly have a huge impact. Just, just the, what the amount it's risen in the past 12 months has certainly helped our industry you know yeah we were at certainly historical lows and um we've come off those historical lows and yeah it's it's certainly helped so what people in the world buy fur coats um i would say you know chinese are

obviously big consumers um they, they, they manufacture and they actually consume at the retail level. Um, you know, Russia is still a big, you know, player. Um, they don't have the money they had, you know, five years ago, of course, because of the war. Um, but they're still, you know, they still fur is in, in their culture. Um, is there any kind of animal rights rights anti-fur movement in China and Russia? Yeah, sure there is. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Some of the, especially like, you know, some of the movie stars are against it in China and they, you know, they won't do some of the ads for the people selling online the furs. Yeah. Yeah, sure there is. Yeah. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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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. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Can you tell the story of, we've talked about this a bunch of times, is the company Canada Goose was selling parkas with coyote trim. And they quit. Now, they made a big announcement. From now on, we're only using recycled fur.

I took that to be that they were bowing to pressure from anti-fur people. Or they were looking at how are we going to achieve growth while courting the controversy of fur and decide that a good move into the future would be to eliminate that potential pr hazard of using fur like there's a big hunting apparel company in this town and they're like moving away from showing dead animals and firearms because they're like afraid about a future in which they're associated with those things. And I thought that, I thought that that would be why they were doing that. Do you feel that that's true or not true?

Okay. I certainly cannot speak for them. Okay. But I have my own idea. You can take a stab. I have, I have my own ideas and I, I see it speak for them, okay? But I have my own ideas. But you can take a stab. I have my own ideas. And I see it in a little different light because I have seen this happen so many times. Let me tell you, you're far more credentialed to have an opinion than I am.

Well, I don't know about that. Trust me. Unless you are. I'm sure that it you know, it entered into their mind, you know, supposedly, you know, I don't know, there was some people, you know, some animal rights people had bought shares. You know, I mean, I've heard all those stories, of course. But what I see as a greater problem is. Can you touch on their, I mean, like they went from being a specialty item, like cold weather stuff for out you know sled doggers whatever to being new york subway wear right i mean they exploded right and you know i i would i would like to

think that you know it was that the fur is what differentiated them i mean i i think it made their their garment look cool you know and um i think um, I think what, um, in, in my opinion, what I've seen in other areas where people have quit using fur is this, when they started using that trim, the coyote was really out of favor and the trim was very, very cheap. You know, maybe they could have put it on their coat for 10 bucks. And by the time that, you know, craze was over and, you know, you guys have probably talked about coyote prices, you know, they had, you know, maybe some coyotes had gone up by certainly a factor of 10, you know, I mean, you couldn't give a coyote away to being worth over a hundred dollars, you know, for a good one. And the trim became a rather expensive

element of the coat. And when you start talking about, you know, um, I do know kind of their numbers of what they sold, but, you know, hundreds of thousands of coats a year with, you know, a $38 trim on it, it's, it's a big number. And if you think that you can sell that coat, um, without that trim and, you know, everybody here can do the math, you know, boy, profitability is a lot better. And, you know, natural fibers are, that is the one limitation that they have. And that is that there is, you know, a maximum number of something that can be produced, you know, typically, and it always pushes the price. And I think it was, I think certainly cost savings had an effect on it. I see it in all natural fibers that people look to cost savings.

You know, they use a petroleum-based product. You know, it's 25 cents a pound for petroleum, and that price really doesn't go up much, really doesn't go down much. And no matter how successful your garment is, it never is going to have effect on the, on the price of, of, of the input of polyester. And I, I just, I think that, um, a lot of it was a cost saving thing. You know, maybe they made, I have no idea, but maybe they made a couple hundred bucks a garment, you know, especially if they sold it to a department store, they can't sell it to them for retail. And, uh, you know, if $35 of that was going to the trim boy, you know, the equation changes a lot for their profitability. And, uh, I think you can see it with all natural fibers, you know, big companies don't like to use it if

it's successful because it ends up pushing the price. You know, they, they, they themselves, if they're a big enough company and Canada goose, they did, they, they ended up having the effect of literally, you know, dominating the coyote market and changing the price to a factor of 10. Can you imagine that? You know, you start out at one price and by the time you're done, you know, 10 years later, you know, it's a factor of 10 that you've affected the price, you know, no matter how many coats they sell, they're never going to affect the price of polyester. So, uh, is it, I was going to, but I don't, but I don't speak they sell, they're never going to affect the price of polyester. So is it? I was going to. But I don't. But I don't speak for him.

But I've seen it so many times that, you know, time and time again that it's difficult. You touched on this. And it's going to be my next question is I've heard just guys saying that they that that company actually drove the price of coyotes. Oh, absolutely. Like that demand of that fashion explosion of a coyote fur actually. There's no question. Really? Oh my, absolutely.

They dominated. They were, I mean, you know, you have to realize that in China, you know, there was copycatters that probably sold three times as many coats as they did, maybe 10 times as many coats. People that, you know, copied their coat and sold it in China. Well, they all put a coyote trim on it. So, you know, Canada goose or the people copying them just absolutely dominated the market. I mean, you could buy a fake in China that, you know, you couldn't tell the difference. the difference and uh but they certainly you they didn't fake the coyote trim you know that was still on there yeah Seth can you hold out that Fox from it can you show me I heard a rumor once this is not a rumor that makes it sound saucy someone told me that when you make when you rough a parka

okay you could grab can can people see that parka when you rough a parka that you're someone told me that you're actually cutting a circle here hold that up seth and you're cutting it like this let me see that son of a bitch for a minute someone told me that you take the coyote and you're you're kind of like snipping here and snipping here and that's the rough okay is that true or not that's not that's sort of true okay um if you want to show me that i'll i'll show you okay so um typically on a coyote which is a little bit similar to a fox you that's why it's really important to look at the neck because you'd love to have the neck look a lot like the rump okay and uh typically a coyote gets bad in the neck first and it's, it's really

easy. Um, I just reminded you to criticize that. Right. Yeah. Um, so I mean the easy way to do this, because especially for this trim is, is to go like this. Okay. If you can, but if you're going to burn a whole one up, you're, Oh, you're going to bore you. You'll, you'll, you'll, well, with a coyote, you're, you maybe get three, maybe four, maybe even five, five trims. Yeah. Out of one? Out of one, sure.

Oh, these guys are professionals. You should grab one of them coyotes right there. So yeah, you could grab one of those coyotes. Yeah. So when you put a. Show us with the real thing. So these are actually pretty nice coyotes and that shows the.

That's great. Wow. Those are good. And you shows the... That's great. Wow. Those are good. And you could go down this whole strip and make a nice coyote strip. Which the problem is, like if you have a bad neck, you'll cut it in half here

and then you'll make two strips and the problem is you have to join them. Well, something that looks similar. Well, you have to join the two together. Oh, a stitch. So then the problem that you have if you join, if you've got a bad neck, which happens on a lot of coyotes, this one's got a little bit of some

problems right here, probably a little dick damage. And there would be a spot you'd have to correct there. But when you join them, you end up with a mohawk or you end up with a valley because it's right in the center of the trim. So that's a problem. There is actually even ways you can let this out or lengthen,

uh, uh, make it wider and then lengthen it out. You can make, make some, what they call drops in it, but it's, it's, it's not as simple to make a really nice strip of just going, going around it. I mean, you could go around it like this, and then you would also have that joining problem because your joinery would be sort of towards the belly because it's not long enough to go a lot or go around so what you'd have is this kind of you know shorter you know getting towards the the belly you know right here and that that would not look good you wouldn't want that on your trim people shouldn't be allowed to tell people stuff that's not correct like news. Um, guy,

you had a note to me when we chatted on the phone about the price of coyotes, about 20 or so years before Canada goose got. Yeah. I popular. I remember going like to Hong Kong when the center of the fur business was in Hong Kong and maybe 20 or 19 lateeties, maybe. And, you know, you could, you could almost touch the whole business in China just by going around to places in, in Hong Kong, you know, and I'd always, I had a kind of a partner there and we'd go from, you know, place to place and, you know, we'd have our sample bag and, you know, we were trying to

get them interested in wild fur because they were all using ranch fur at the time. The business in Hong Kong, it was centered there because, you know, during all the ships would stop there with sailors, they would have cheap fur coats made there and they actually manufactured them in Hong Kong. And then the, you know, they stayed there. And then as they started to become exporters, those people were still there and they accessed the Chinese labor market. And, uh, And that's why the center of it was there. And then it gradually moved all into China and we moved into China, but, um, we would bring coyotes along, you know, even though we knew we would not sell them, you know, and we, we would literally just beg people, you

know, to take it, try it, you know, you know, if you could possibly use, use these in any way and they just, you know, like a raccoon, you know, to take it, try it, you know, you know, if you could, you know, possibly use, use these in any way. And they just, you know, like a raccoon, you know, they could, it wasn't the longest haired item and, uh, they could, it was cheap enough. They could use it, you know, for a inner liner. They could use it for this. They just could figure out ways to use it. And it was just like the coyote. They just, you know, it was just something they couldn't use. They couldn't figure out how to use it. And then, you know, Canada. At that time you said what? It was like 10 to 15? Yeah.

10 to $15 was, yeah. If you could sell it, you know, you just, you couldn't, they couldn't even get them to comprehend it even hardly. And, uh, then just in the early two thousands, it just kind of started Canada goose started. And, uh, yeah, they, they, it was amazing what they did for the business. Yeah. Okay. Now what's wrong with that beaver?

Well, um, this beaver that you have in the back of your chair, you know, really most beaver are historically in the country have been used, you know, to make felt, yeah, that should have been used for that. That should have been used to, to, to do that. Because they, they know not necessarily, well, that's one reason, but because they just use the underwall and beavers, even though they last forever, they're a very strong animal. If you shear them, they don't stay clean.

So in other words, if you get rid of this guard hair and you have a sheared beaver, they get dirty very quickly. And if you have a long haired one, they get a bit disheveled like this one is. Their hair goes kind of every other way. They're, they're, they're a beaver. It's, uh, it beaver, it really looks,

unless you really can take care of it and don't use it very much, it really is the best use in a hatter trade. Oh, okay. I thought you were going to criticize something more personal. No, it's fine. You should talk to the beaver.

No, it's a... When he walked in, he said, it's a real shame to see that beaver just sitting on the back of a chair. Is that what he said? It should be a hat. It should be a hat somewhere. Do you have a hat or not?

Do you have a beaver hat? Yeah. Oh, okay, good. Not a cowboy hat. Oh, that's what I mean, a cowboy hat. Dude, listen. We can probably fix you up, okay? It's out of control around here.

The other day I saw, I'm not kidding you, the other day I see a guy in an airport. I'm not kidding you, the other day I see a guy in an airport. I'm not joking. There's a guy in the Bozeman airport that has spurs on. Got him through TSA? He's in the baggage area. Oh. Wearing spurs. Yeah.

No, no, he did. He did. Got him through TSA. Spurs on. Like, he's like, this plane needs to speed up. Start spurring his seat. Now that he's got his leather work gloves folded into his belt it's like the playing cowboy thing around here is out of yeah he's like fake cowboy oh my god he probably had tattoos just you know what's here tonight

when we landed when we landed there tonight yeah some kid standing looks like howdy duty he's got a big old cowboy hat tipped down the back of his head big old belt buckle and he's picking up a bunch of tourists oh yeah oh dusty looking yeah and he's like a shuttle driver for like a dude ranch shuttle driver for a dude ranch but it looks like he just got his ass kicked out of at a rodeo fight it's out of control but that's the thing i want to bring up is that's like driving beaver market right now. Can you talk about that? Like wool felt? Yeah.

And cowboy hats? Yeah. Or the flat brim hats that all the gals wear these days. Oh, yeah. Like that Saturday Night Live, my big dumb hat. Bozeman hats. I haven't seen that. Yeah, they do everything about those hats called my big dumb hat.

It's about girls and those huge hats yeah so the i mean the cowboy hat craze is you know uh is you know it's huge for the business i'm not knocking on it i mean and and once again that that same metric you know i mean beaver prices have probably quadrupled in the last, you know, five years because of it. But that's all going, like, how do you make that stuff? Do they shred the whole thing? No. What they do is they eliminate the leather.

That's the first thing that happens. They turn the leather into spaghetti. So it's just, you know, they bite it off with this machine. And you're left, the skin almost looks like it's still there. The fur is still there, and you could just put your hand right through it because the leather is gone. Got it. But before that happens, while it's still on the animal, acid is dripped on it. Not while it's on the animal.

I'm sorry. While it's still on the skin. Thanks for correcting me. I appreciate that. While it's still on the skin, acid is dripped on it. It used to be mercury, right? You know, the Mad Hatter. It was?

Yeah, that's why they call it. That's what the Mad Hatter's from? That's where the Mad Hatter's from. Oh, wow. Yeah, they used to use mercury. Carroting. Yeah, exactly. This guy knows what he's talking about.

Yeah, because it turns it orange a little bit, and it still turns it orange a little bit when you- Hold on a minute. In the old days, let's say the mountain man era, they would take that beaver hide and put mercury on it yeah but it wouldn't have been done out here you know they took the beavers you know to st louis or wherever and they were shipped to europe um and then it was you know carried so the ed byer that was making abe lincoln hats even even back in the day they would have had they would have had to to have

done it because because the beaver hair is actually too good it's too smooth so what they do by putting that acid or used to be mercury is they actually injure injure the hair and give it split ends or breaks down the keratin give it gives it a very good only reason he knows why am I on this show he knows this because me and him or we work on this thing called meat eaters American history next volume is on the beaver trade. Oh, really? He doesn't deserve to know. We did one on the deer skin trade. He just blew my cover. I was a really impressive guy here. He got a beaver tattoo.

That's why he knows that. So like in the 1940s, they developed formulas for using acid. And now they use acid. Then all of this hair goes through a big machine where it's blown. They call it blowing. Okay. And all the heavy stuff falls out, maybe little pieces of leather or the guard hair.

So all the guard hair falls out. They don't want the guard hair or the cowboy hat? The guard hair is worthless. Randall's done it. No, no, no. It's thrown away. And then knee deep in the stuff.

Wow. I'll be in a factory next month. You can come with me. Okay. Oh, I'd love to do that. So then, um, so then once, once it's blown, once you're reduced to just that under wall, um, it is, it's, you know, it's super clean, it's free of grease and you can take that material.

Okay. And this is the most primitive form of material that there is, you know, this was, that was the very first material ever used. Okay. As, as people felting, they would just, the Indians or whoever would just rub is you know this was that was the very first material ever used okay as is people felting they would just the indians or whoever would just rub you know hair together until it felt it and when you take that stuff it's such it's so done so precisely that within literally seconds if you take a chunk of it you can make felt it turns into a piece of felt all right you know what's that kind of school that it's like um you know people send their kids to certain kind of schools that

they don't want them going to public school or military school no no no opposite kind of people the opposite kind of person that would send their kid to military school sends them is it Montessori yeah aren't they real big into felting they give into felting? They give kids felting projects? I think that's like making things like arts and crafts with colored felt. Yeah, like little toys out of felt. Yeah.

But they're not like making felt. They're making things with felt, I think. Oh, I see. I haven't spent a lot of time. So then the hat is they take all that fur, that's that cut fur, and they pour it over a conic form that's maybe a foot and a half, 24 inches tall. Okay. Literally just a big cone. Okay. And the cone has a bunch of air holes in it so the air can suck out so that it goes uniformly all over this cone.

Dry or wet? Fairly dry. And then a ton of water just goes over it and starts that felting process. And that fur comes out of that. It just comes out in this big cone. And that's the start of a cowboy hat. It's just a massive cone. That's all it is.

So they don't start by making a big sheet of felt? Absolutely not. It's in a cone form. And it, and it's, it's felt and you can grab that. And then they start, they put it on and they start, uh, pressing it together and going like that and they turn it so it doesn't get a fold that stays in it, you know, cause they want to keep turning it so that it just stays like that. And, uh, it just keeps getting, you know, uh, more, uh, I don't know what the word would be, you know, that, kind of locked together.

And then they start, depending on the order that they have or whatever, they put it into a form. And sometimes they're called bodies once they're made into those cones. And sometimes they just sell the body. So there's three primary deals in the hat business. It's fur cutting. Okay. So that would be a separate factory. You cut the fur, you treat, you carrot it, and you cut it.

And you may sell that fur or you may send it on to your own factory, which would be the body making. So then you make a body, just this cone. Okay. And then that cone, you have to send that on to another factory and that's called a finishing factory and that's like you know stetson resist all um you know you know all the the hat companies here in the states they would buy um a lot of times hat bodies you know and then they they have all these these forms you know for cowboy hats or it could be easily 100 years old um that they they use to form form the finished hats out of i don't want

you to think i'm dense but i just want to make sure i understand this correctly each hat each cowboy hat each stats and hat is started out with handfuls of beaver fur handfuls of beaver fur that will only ever belong to that hat. Which will only belong to that hat. Well, I mean, if it's a poorer quality one, it's mixed with more hair or rabbit. But if it's a... But I'm saying when you take that fur, you're forming a hat.

You're not forming a fabric. No, you're forming a fabric that's in a cone shape for that hat. It's not a flat fabric. Did you know that, Randall? I did. And before you get to the cone, you make bats, I believe.

No. This was so validating to me until just now. No, no. It's usually the fur is sort of reined over this form that has air sucking, little tiny holes in it, and it's sucking all the time so that it gets covered just perfectly. I mean, it looks like snow. Like if they're using bleach beaver, it looks like snow. We bleach beaver at our place for it.

So if you see a bleach beaver hat, it's pretty well it's come from our place. From now on, when I see a hat, cowboy hat at the airport or whatever, I actually think to myself, are you sure? Are you a hundred percent sure you're a cowboy? Now I'm going to start thinking that's a cool process to form that hat. Ask him how many X it is. Yeah. That's what I want to know.

You'll find it's, it's not totally industry-wide. So some places, 100X, maybe 100% beaver. Kind of originally, maybe it was, but some people, there was a little bit of X inflation. And some companies, they have 1,000X. Maybe that's their 100%. It's just different companies use different standards. So you can't always be sure, but you know, you can feel it. Can you walk through like radiates, what the X's mean? That's the X means, I'm sorry. I, um, it's, uh, it's, it's what percentage, you know, your, your, uh, hat is beaver. So, you know, uh.

Oh, that's what that means? Yeah. So a poor quality one would be maybe a 10 X and it would be mostly hare or mostly rabbit. Um. No kidding. Yeah. What's the most common other fur that's supplemented in there? I would say wool is the most common.

And if you feel a wool hat, okay, they use like a lamb's wool, about a, I don't know, maybe 16 to 17 micron that they use. And, you know, you'd look at that hat and you're like, wow, that is the finest cowboy hat you've ever seen. And you take a beaver hat after that. It's, it's, you can't believe how much better it is. You think that wool hat is just unbelievable. What characteristic does it give?

Well, it's just a better hand. We use the word hand in the wool business, but it's just, it's smoother. It's just, it's just feels so incredible. Um, the difference between, um, and you know, some beavers right around 12 microns and, you know, the wool they're using, it's around 17. So it's only five microns difference, uh, maybe six microns difference, but it's, it's just a hundred percent beaver head. It's just an unbelievable, you know, um, you, you, when you have one that's a hundred percent beaver, 90 It's just an unbelievable, you know, um, you, you, when, when you have one that's a hundred percent beaver, 90% beaver, it's, you know, it, I mean, it's,

so that's a 100 X hat. Well, I, I it's, it's different companies use different, you know, there's a little bit of inflation over the years with the X. What, what do you, can you lay out the price difference? I mean, it's probably hard because brands, but yeah, to buy a hundred percent beaver, you're looking at how, like what sort of percent increase over a Joe Blow hat. I would say you could be at 10 times. You could be at $1,800 hat versus $180 for maybe a 10X. But I don't even know if you can really buy a 10X for $180. So maybe it's less difference.

I think a really good hat is $ is 15 to 2 but you could you know you can spend more than that so somewhere between five and ten times you know but then you know then you have wool hats then you have 100 you know hair hats or rabbit hats um and you know it's not my business so but i you know i know a little bit you know a rabbit hat but it's you know it's rabbit fur yeah that's not exciting ears give A rabbit hat. But it's, you know, it's rabbit fur. Yeah, that's not that exciting. It's in ears giving away every time. But it's a nice, you know, it's got a nice, it's got a nice feel as well, you know. Yeah.

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 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, 24 K topo maps, way points, and tracking. That's right.

You were always talking about, uh, we're always talking about on X here on the meat eater podcast. Now you, um, you guys in the great white North can, 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 handpicked 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. Hey, Brent, I noticed you got yourself a blaze orange wedding ring.

I do. He's letting the world know. I'm trying to keep them away. Yeah. He needs something that the cameras will pick up. I'm taking. He's having problems. He's like, I need to get a shinier wedding ring.

No problem. I noticed. Get a love mail to this country life email yeah i noticed on your website you list um 17 different pelts here that you offer and they're all on brand like it all uh it's to be expected except for one of them ringtail what do you do with ringtails uh it's it's a lot of novelty you know it's not it's such a small and, what does that get turned into though? Oh, people hanging on their wall mostly. That's it. But it is a, it is a beautiful item. I mean, it's a, it's, it's, it looks like a muskrat belly. It's, it's got that, you know, in the fur business, a good color is always blue. Okay. Um, and, and a ring tail is really blue.

You know, the, the fur underneath is, is really a color of blue. Like a, like a muskrat belly is blue. That's always your, like, you know, like a raccoon when it color of blue, like a muskrat belly is blue. It's always here, like a raccoon, when it's a good color, it has sort of a shade of blue to a good fur buyer. Even a really good coyote, you know, we see like kind of blue in that because it's got that clear, clear look to it. But that ringtail does have a beautiful color. And do those come in from trappers or hunters? Oh, trappers. I mean, it's a small a ringtail? Trappers.

I mean, it's a small item in the Southwest. Yeah. What are like the other most exotic furs that you deal with? Oh, I mean, price-wise, you know, Western Bobcats are certainly, you know, the most exotic. You know, I mean, I'm a fur buyer, so to us, exotic means price, you know. That would be by far um you know western bobcat could be a thousand dollars right now perks up he's like i'm gonna yeah i don't sell anything about it's interesting in that subject right right yeah what do possums go for possums what are they used for um you know uh they they make inner liners in china out of

them they make trims out of them. You know, we dye them crazy colors, but, um, when you have a mink at, uh, that you can buy a ranch mink for, you know, $25, it's tough to get, you know, eight bucks for a possum. And the problem there is, you know, we sent it to Cambodia and spend, you know, a couple bucks on shipping and, you know, three, $4 on dressing. You know, you just, you can't, it's not a real3, $4 on dressing. You can't. It's not a real viable item.

And the skunk trade is novelty. It is. The tails are used. The Hasidics use them some. For what? For hats. Tails. Yeah.

You should know that, Steve. Scroll down on your talking points document i put a photo in there of a strimal stream strimal is that right guy yeah oh yeah how do you throw a skunk into that yeah you know it's there's some magic to do with that i you know that's that's a real secretive trade yeah yeah so a hasidic jews hat yeah might have skunk hide in it it might yeah yeah surprised you didn't know that steve they use a lot of tails all kinds of stuff i didn't well i mean you're a subject matter expert in multiple things going on there what region of the country has the best coyotes uh you know like like here is a is a great coyote um know, and the other thing is like as a

fur buyer, you know, we always, we always look at quantity, you know, so we put quantity and quality together and, uh, you know, the Dakotas, you know, maybe have a few more trappers. That's, uh, and it's, it's a really good, good coyote, but yeah. And then, you know, across the border into Canada is a fantastic coyote, you know, just

this big, the big circle, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, you know, Manitoba, that circle is by far the best. Now, if someone sells like a black coyote, is that worth anything to you? It's just novelty, which is not, you know, we're not big novelty people. You know, we're the fur trade and we do sell some novelty stuff, but that's not really what we're doing. Gotcha. Why is a bobcatcat let's say i'm

a guy in texas and you say bobcats are a thousand bucks and i'm down in texas where it's bobcat season year round there's no bag limit and i go and my ears perk up and i'm in south south texas and my ears perk up and i'm like holy cow is it gonna be a nice christmas around my house why should i not get excited because it's it's it's it's almost to the point where it's not even the same animal as far as the fur trade goes it's it's like a a coyote from you know it's like a it's like a coyote from bozeman versus, versus a coyote from, you know, Georgia. But put it like, like explain it like we're idiots. Okay. Um.

They got spots. Yeah. First, first thing is, you know, when I talk about blue type, I mean, a cat is an item that you really want, you know, you want that white to be white. You want that black to be black and you want some fur quality, which, you know, we're far enough North here. We got some length of the fur. You get to, you know, you get to Texas and they are, you know,'re far enough north here we got some length of the fur you get to you know you get to texas and they are you know a tenth of the length of fur at least a fifth of

the length of the fur they're 20 you know um you know a cat from here is is darn near as heavy as this coyote you know and you know the belly on a cat you know is so important you know the back is just sold off as scrap you know what and sure sure it's not using the garment and so they when you when you have oh i thought you're talking about coyote or bobcat bobcat yeah i got lost yeah um so when you go when you have a a cat which we don't have one here um it's so important you know the width of the belly and around here the width of the belly is is typically very big you know a texas belly could be three inches you I see. But in some of the areas in the high countries of Texas, though, they, you know, they still get a pretty nice cat.

So they have, I mean, I would say in Texas, you could get the stuff over by Louisiana, could be worth, you know, 30 bucks. And you could get something in the high country in the Western part of Texas that could be worth 500. Okay. In the same state. I mean, of course, Texas is a very big state.

You know, Montana would not be like that because it's a pretty homogenous bobcat, this whole area. What's the current state of the whitetail deer skin trade? It's a little better than it was. I would say it's actually a little healthy. The tail business is very good. And the hide business, you know, tail business. Yeah. They use fly tying.

Uh, fly tying and for, uh, Hasidic hats too. What? Yeah. Can I, can I, uh, I want to walk you back to a memory I have, and then maybe you can comment on that memory. Um, I used to sell fur at the Ravanna fur auction in Michigan. Oh, really? Yeah.

No kidding. Yeah. I buy Michigan. I bought it for years. That's in Michigan. Oh, really? Yeah. No kidding. Yeah, I buy Michigan. I bought it for years. That's my area. That was our local. Yeah, sure. So Michigan Travellers Association would put on this fur auction at Ravanna, Michigan. Sure.

Every year we'd go out and sell stuff. And they would, when you're doing it, just give you i'm not i'm gonna tell you something you already know about tell the listeners like let's say you have muskrats okay you're gonna break your muskrats out into four or five categories okay kits mediums large you know three okay damage okay so four categories maybe yeah i mean normal yeah i mean large medium kits and smalls maybe kit kits, smalls, damages. Sure. But either way, when the buyer buys, the buyer is buying pretty specifically.

Okay. When you do mink, you might have like you sell large males together and then, right? And there's a lot of specificity. So they're buying like things that are similar to each other every time it comes through. Deer hides would be how they ran it in the 80s and early 90s. Deer hides would be the first deer hide that went on the table. They would bid on that white-tailed deer skin. And that's what all of them would bring.

And whatever that hide bought, they entered into a contract to buy all deer skins at that price. So they couldn't look at how full of holes it was, how big it was, whether the guy had taken care of it or not. Guys would be out in the parking lot. I saw this with my own eyes. Guys would be out in the parking lot taking large deer skins, cutting them across the waist, rolling them up and selling them as two. Because the guys weren't able to grade it. that's I mean that's not really the way it is I mean you know that's the way it was yeah that's I mean the guy you try to call me a liar no I'm just saying that but I mean that's that's uh the guy's getting hosed then you know that's not what

I always felt I mean I felt it was a disservice to whitetail deer skins but you know a pretty much an adult deer okay fine you get the occasional buck that's much bigger. But, you know, adult deers don't have a lot of variation in size. As long as it's not a fawn, you know, it's typically one price. Michigan happens to be probably the best deer hide in America. What? Yeah. Yeah.

Why? Because they aren't affected by, they must not have much multiple rows there. Are you kidding me? And they don't have scratches. So it's, it's a really. You're right. I didn't grow up around a lot of that. Yeah. It all lives at a place called, uh, Doug Duren's farm.

Okay. So you're kind of a Nick Adams. You're kind of a modern day Nick Adams. Lives there. Yeah. We didn't have a lot of that growing up. Right. So that, yeah, they're deer hides.

That degrades a deer skin. Yeah. Yeah. The scratches are the biggest thing on a deer. Southern deer, you know, even though some places in the, in the South, the deer hides are, you know, decent size. They've got a lot more scratches. Green briars.

Yeah. Scratches on the leather or scratches on the hair? Like the hair's damaged. No, the hair is all, you know, just disregarded. It's all taken off, you know. Oh, I see. So the hair doesn't mean anything, but they have less hair as well on those southerners. So they have less protection.

And, but yeah, Michigan hide is, like if a Wisconsin is, you know, you know, seven bucks, Michigan is nine, you know, it's like 20, 25% more. What do they, I want to ask you what they're doing with it. What, what deer skins go for now? What they use white-tailed deer skins for today. But this girl I went to high school with,

she later married this dude who was from Argentina. That's not true. Wherever the hell he's from. He bought cattle in patagonia um he was a buyer for like mercedes-benz and cadillac and shit he bought leather for leather interiors he went where he bought leather he would go to places where they did not use barbed wire yeah see that's that's the same thing that's why he was always buying he was always buying cattle hides cow hides down in

patagonia because they weren't because you couldn't get a big enough piece they wanted to use whole single pieces yeah barbed wires and brands on interiors and he would go to these places he's like i buy i basically go where there's no barbed wire because I'm trying to find perfect collars. But, you know, I mean, like the deerskin business, I mean, you brought it up and you want to know about the leather. I mean, the thing that's hurt the deerskin business, I mean, really we're at below prices of 10 years ago when we were much below just a few years ago.

I mean, overall. Deerskin prices are down. They're up a bit from where they were maybe a couple years ago, but overall certainly adjusted for inflation from 20 years ago. I mean, overall, you know, skin prices are down. They're, they're, they're up a bit from where they were maybe a couple of years ago, but overall certainly adjusted for inflation from 20 years ago, they're much cheaper. And you know, the overall reason is something I touched on before. And like, you know, even 20 years ago, all tennis shoes were made of leather. And today you can't hardly find a pair of tennis shoes that's made of leather. And so the cow skin business is, is horrible. The cow skin business. Yeah.

It's terrible. Yeah. Because, you know, sure. And that that's, that's a deal where large manufacturers, you know, people looked at it and Nike looked at it and said, Hey, you know, we want to send, we want to save, you know, uh, you know, five bucks a pair of shoes or whatever. And, you know, the price of, uh, you know, petroleum to go into their shoe, it just doesn't change.

So we're going to use that no matter how fashionable they get so yeah when the chinese consumer kind of came into the market on all these things it sort of changed the game because now we were you know if something became popular became popular with you know a billion and a half people well you know it's gonna take the price with it you know we saw in the early 2000s we saw all those commodities go crazy you know leather cotton you know wool everything went you know, when the Chinese consumer entered and then the reaction was to, Hey, let's, you know, let's just not use those products. So they've, so there's been a huge change in, in what's, what's being, you know, what the consumer can actually buy. So what would like, what products, if you're a dude out wandering around,

what products might you look at? And you might be looking at a white tail deer skin killed by an american i would say mostly glove business you know it's mostly gloves a lot of places offer that trade like you can trade in you know ranch gloves you you get ranch gloves for yeah we do it we do it yeah when i yeah when i was a kid they would do it and it was the kind where the seam was on the outside so you didn't have good dexterity. Right. And when your hand got wet and you pulled it out, most of the insulation was stuck to your hand. Right, right.

Well, we try to have a little better glove now. But yeah, it was to the point where you couldn't even trade a pair of gloves a couple years ago. It was so cheap, yeah. So who are you selling deer skins to? We sell it all to Asia, yeah. Tanned or just – No, just no no no everything's just salted do you send it with the hair on it we send it with the hair on it as a matter of fact you know that ship that got that's what that went down well okay so we had we had a load delivered to that

ship like a day before the cutoff date so we were like one of the last containers getting on that ship the day after that ship. I don't know. I don't know the story. The ship in Baltimore that hit the bridge. Oh, that ship. That ship. Yeah.

Deer hides on it? Yeah. Well, the next day, somebody sends me a picture of a TikTok with deer hides floating around the Baltimore hard world. My brother lives in Baltimore and he like went down there and, you know, and we were, and he was my brother was the one that uh got the deer hides booked on that low we were sure that it was ours because we thought hey they only lost two two containers actually fell off the boat and they lost the stuff and we thought for sure it was ours and we just found out like three weeks ago that it wasn't ours so our it was somebody else had deer hides that lost them on that on. What? Yes. Is that ship still sitting there? American white-tailed deerskins.

They were Canadian, I think. Did your ship make it yet, or is it still sitting there? It got rerouted, and it's going right now. Okay. Good luck. Yeah, hopefully they're still fresh enough. You know what I highly recommend to you? What do you highly recommend?

There's a thing called Meat Eaters American History, the Long Hunters. Okay, hear me out. Okay. The Long Hunters. It. Hear me out. Okay. The Long Hunters. It covers colonial America from 1763 to 1775. And it's the story of the white-tailed deerskin trade. Okay.

At a point in that audio original, which features the impeccable research of Dr. Randall. I'm impressed. I'll say that i'm serious we have we have uh turned up in error today on the bats thing so you know uh we get into not just deer skins being sold american deer skins being sold in england we cover just the ones that were seized by pirates and or privateers and sold as bounty as loot and we have a shipwreck and a shipwreck wow and those deer skins were recovered three years later yeah there's like still in the barrel there's reporting in the 1700s there's reporting of a shipwreck tell the story

randall it was a it was a ship going to liverpool that had stopped in Ireland and then wrecked in the mouth of a river. And, uh, you know, there's newspaper articles describing the cargo that was lost. And then three years later, if you're reading these auction announcements for cargoes come over, there's one that says, you know, there's 2,200 or so damp, badly damaged deer skins recovered from the container ship XYZ that had sunk in the mouth of the whatever river three years prior. So, I mean, just almost straight out of the headlines, uh, three, 250 years later. Do you know, you ever heard of what, you know, what a privateer is? No. It's a state sanctioned pirate. Okay. 250 years later. You ever heard of what a privateer is?

No. It's a state-sanctioned pirate. Okay. So picture, let's say we hate, who do we hate the most? Iran. Okay. Iran. North Dakota. North Dakota.

Say right now, this isn't like news show material, but things're a little, you know, things are a little hot right now between us and around. Let's say our government said to a pirate type person, we're like, hey, you can be a pirate basically under license from us. Well, the hooties state sanctioned. They're like state-sanctioned pirates they're state-sanctioned that they sort of operate as a criminal enterprise under the flag of iran under the support and banner of iran armed by iran so these privateers english privateer england would send out these pirates to seize white tail deer skins leaving where South Carolina? Uh, the English would be seizing skins coming typically out of new Orleans. Oh yeah.

They wouldn't want to seize their own. Yeah. Yeah. Like French, French and yeah. French and Spanish ships sort of coming out of new Orleans. And then there are also some spanish uh ships coming out of florida yeah but yeah vice versa and then you'd read that uh an english

privateer had seized several thousand deerskins from a french privateer that had previously seized them from an english merchant vessel and so there's this back and forth. And then it's like, you can view these goods next Sunday down at the docks. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, 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 Northern

brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sweepstakes law that makes it that they can't join 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. 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 handpicked 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. I'm going to tell you one last thing about this thing you ought to read listen to uh you've attended many fur auctions uh yeah i have yeah they had this habit of not a habit they had a thing like you'd light a candle at a fur auction okay you'd light a candle and bidding ended when

the candle went out which leaves a certain level of uncertainty right so if you're thinking like you're sitting on a good bid in your pocket right and you're like well i'm gonna wait for the last second there's like an uncertainty about when that candle flicker out and it makes you get to the point right you've seen this done no no it's in it's in okay media's american history the long hunters we should light one of them in here. How easily can you tell the difference between a wild mink and a ranch mink? Great question. It's not even, it's just natural. I mean, you can see in a second. If I was holding it right here, could you tell the difference between?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And then would it be something that we could easily tell just that you're trained up? Within 10 minutes, I could show you the difference. First thing is a wild mink is going to be half as big. So that's one thing that's going to tell you. And the fur is going to be twice as long on a wild mink. Ranch mink have been bred over the years to get shorter and shorter to look real velvety, you know.

Like, for instance, this beaver, a lot of the reason why it looks kind of disheveled is because, you know, its hair is, you know, two inches long. But if you have a mink that, you know, is really short, like a crew cut on a guy, you know, I mean, it's going to stick up all the time. So it looks, you know, really uniform and, uh, and, and, and the whole animal looks really uniform. Even the belly looks almost identical to the back. Whereas a wild mink, it gets a little shorter on the belly.

It gets noticeably shorter and yeah, just, uh, and, and of course colors, you know, ranch mink are probably 30 colors, you know, you can have purples, you know, really? Sure. Sure. You see that Turkey decoy purples. What? Really? Surely. Sure. You see that turkey decoy off your left shoulder? I see it, yeah. That was made by a guy named Dave Smith.

Dave Smith was showing me pictures of these mink he was catching in Oregon. I mean, they look like small otters. Right, yeah. And he feels that he was catching escapees. Yeah, if there was a ranch around there, we buy a lot of them on the trucks that have been escapees. Yeah. If there was a ranch around there, it'd have, you know, we buy, we buy a lot of them on the trucks that have been escapees. Cause you know, Wisconsin was. And you know that when you're looking at it.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Immediately you can tell. Yeah. That is big. Yeah. Huh. Yeah.

You'd be able to tell. I mean, every once in a while you have a ranch mink and you know, you handle, you know, thousands and thousands and you're like, you know, is this a, is this a wild mink or is this a ranch make? But basically it's just very easy to tell the difference. So, I mean, like a, like a ranch fox, you know, the difference you guys have that fox here, a ranch fox is, you know, three times the size of this. It is?

Oh yeah. It's bigger than a coyote. What? Oh yeah. Yeah. Bigger than a coyote. Why? Yeah.

What's that? Why? Like, why do they want them that big? Just because it's you know easier to work with you know um they're making trims out of most of the foxes and you know it's you know if you're gonna rate if you're gonna skin an animal if you're gonna scrape it you're gonna try it you're gonna tan it you'd much rather do one instead of two you know it's much cheaper so fox and mink what else do you buy that comes from a rancher uh oh there's uh chinese or finn raccoon um but really yeah sure

yeah it looks like it's a little bit like it's really got the fur of a coyote kind of a little darker um they're raising raccoons yeah sure there's no shaking his head what is going on there's no ranch coyotes? No, no. That would be a tough ranch. That would be a tough ranch. This is a huge. You'd be like, ranchers. You'd be like, you're ranching what? It's a big change in direction here.

So this is a family business? Yes. When you were growing up, I mean, were you trapping things? I mean, I'm sort of wondering like what parts of the process you've had your hands in? Did you ever just learn to trap so that you knew that part of the business? I trapped as a kid because muskrats were worth a lot of money. Yeah. You know, I mean, my dad couldn't help me because, you know, it was in the middle of

first season and, you know, it was craziness. Sure. And, but I bought fur. I think I went on a truck. I had to have a driver. I, I, I bought fur. I think I went on a truck. I had to have a driver. I think I was either 14 or 15 when I first went on a truck out, out buying. To buy fur at 14? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I had my own, I had my own route. I had, uh, I had a, had a driver and we'd go around to the trappers and, and, and buy fur. And then I bought fur until, um, my first couple of years of college. And then, you know, it was kind of 87 and the kind of big crash then, kind of the European crash. And then I finished my degree and came back in like 91.

What all degrees did you get? I don't want to say because we were, you know, knocking the degree thing. Not we. Yeah. I have a degree in economics. Randall's got a phd oh yeah they can tell i don't need one no one really does what was going on what year were you born i was born in 66 my friend stew miller who's a trapperpper, he said every generation has its own fur boom.

Meaning he calls his fur boom, which is the 2013 fur boom, he calls it the mini fur boom. And when he says the mini fur boom, he's referring to the big fur boom, which was 78 to 82. And then there was another big fur boom in the roaring 20s or you know you probably know them all um i'm curious about like what causes that to happen but let's focus on let's focus on the two like it's like what happened in 1978 and what happened in 2013 um well i guess in 78 you know it was kind of the European fur boom and, uh, you know, the Europeans, it was very fashionable to wear wild fur and, you know, you just, it was, it was, it was even unbelievable just to be in the business. You know, I mean, I, um, you know,

our factory went from just a few workers to 70, like, you know, overnight, it was just unbelievable. Raccoon prices went from a few bucks to $30 overnight, and everybody was a trapper. And it was very fashionable. And then that kind of boom kind of lasted a while because it kind of moved around. It started in Germany, went to Italy, Spain, and even ended up in America. We were wearing beaver coats in the eighties and raccoon coats. And it was a great, uh, thing for that generation because, you know, my parents' generation was raised, you know, in the depression and, you know, the, the retailers, you know, their first thing to sell a coat was, Hey, this won't last for two seasons. This will last for

two generations, you know, and my, my parents' generation, they, they loved that, you know? And so that was the, uh, that was the fur boom of the 70s. It was high fashion. And then it was ended, not because it went out of fashion, but because of animal rights activists, mostly in Europe. You know, they really, really killed it in Europe. And then, you know, kind of lost fashion ability. And, you know, my generation kind of, you know, rejected it for the opposite reason or if I, yeah, for the opposite reason. And that, you know, my generation

didn't grow up in the depression and we didn't want something that would last for, you know, two generations. You know, we wanted something that would last for, you know, a season. We want to buy a new car every year and, or every couple of years. And so the, the first thing that a retailer would say to my generation was, Hey, you know, I'll store that coat for you for the next 20 years, you know, and charge you 150 bucks every year. Retailer was more interested in storing the coat than he was selling it. And so, um, the, the retailer in the fur business all over the Western world did the exact opposite of what they should have done to sell, you know, fur to my generation. That, I think that is, it has a lot to do, you know, what ended it. They didn't keep it going because my, my generation wants to buy it at Kia. You know, we don't want to buy, you know, stuff that we have to, you know, have around for a while. So, um, you know, and it's, it's a perfect thing to throw away. You know, it, you know, goes in a landfill and it'll disappear, you know, but that's not the way my generation looked at it. We looked at it as something we had to keep like grandma did, you know, forever and then give it to her, give it to her granddaughter.

But it was, it was an amazing times. And, uh, you know, for the next, you know, 15 years or whatever, when you bought fur, you know, you listen to that. Let me tell you, I mean, every trapper, you know, would come to the truck and say, you know, you know, you remember when, you know, Red Fox were $90 and, you know, and, uh, you know, do you ever think it's going to be like that again? And, you know, I wouldn't say that the next boom, you know, in 13 or 12, uh, 10, 11, uh, was, you know, a mini fur boom. I mean, it was a massive fur boom. It consumed a lot more mink, you know, mink production, I think peaked in, um, 87, um, maybe 30 million mink or something like that. And the second peak, the ranch mink peaked at maybe 130 million. Who was buying it then?

Who was wearing it? In the first boom or the second boom? Second boom. In the second boom, it was a lot of Chinese and Russia, Ukraine. But yeah, a lot of Chinese, a lot of Russians. Russia was huge in the in the in that boom so all these tariffs and stuff that we got all this punitive stuff we have against russia right now has got to be hurting that whole business it it's certainly i mean just the fact

that i mean they can go through china to buy stuff you know it's not that big a deal but they just don't have any money you know the the rank and file people in, you know, the currency, you know, when we started really selling to the Russians, I think we were right at about eight or nine to one to the ruble. And, you know, I think right now we're right at a hundred. So it makes it really difficult. You know, it's almost 10 times the price because their currency is worth so much less, even if we had never changed the price of the fur. So it would be, it would cost them 10 times as much just because their currency has dropped that much. So, I mean, when they invaded, I think it, I think I had a customer that had some money in Russia, some dollars. I think at one point he, he, on the black market, he traded them

at like 160 or 170, you know, I mean, that's just worthless, you worthless you know so but it's kind of settled out at around 100 or so does your family still go out as grown walled fur and buy fur from people in parking lots and stuff absolutely i still do it myself i go all i i do mostly wisconsin i've done michigan most of my life i did it this year um up um i do ill, I do Illinois. Um, yeah, I, I go in a truck. My brother does it. Uh, Bryce, the guy that I work with does it. Terry does it. We, we have, uh, my brother goes, he lives in Baltimore.

He does the whole East coast, New York state. Um, yeah, he used to live in Berlin, used to sell a lot to Russia for us. But, uh, yeah, Gary buys all of the Southeast and Northeast and, uh, we go through Missouri and then we have an office in Winnipeg too. And, uh, Bryce, uh, guy that I work with, he runs that office and he buys all through Canada. How have, uh, like how has the American trapper changed in your lifetime? The guys that you were buying from years ago versus like today and maybe what changes have you seen in recent years? Yeah. So we had a guy in our town, Forreston, that trapped and he was one of the bigger trappers that we had caught probably. And back in the day,

guys that were big trappers didn't catch what big trappers do today. They just didn't have the stuff that people have developed over the years to really make a trapper super efficient. Maybe he was a 500 muskrat guy, you know, which was kind of big back in the day. And, you know, my dad told me that, you know, there was nobody in town besides my dad that knew that he even caught him. You know, he even hit his car, you know, when he would go to the creeks and trap the muskrats. Because of competition. Because of competition. He didn't want anybody to know yeah and they were very secret big money it was big money and you know they could make you know in the 40s you know i don't know exactly all the ratios and everything but you know you know trapping in a day they can make a month's

wages or you know trapping a week they could make a year's wages sometimes you know especially if they knew how to catch mink as well you know um they were you know mink were like 40 bucks back in the 40s um so isn't that wild man so yeah and and even the um the dealer side like going on a show like this and telling even some of the stuff i've said today you know like we would never have uttered that stuff give me an example of what you wouldn't have said um like even what we use some of the tales for you know where that i sell direct in china where i sell i mean i would i would broadcast you know the guys i'm partners with in china i don't care you know but back then oh you wouldn't tell one customer to anybody else

you uh hid tags if you had customers come to your place um you were so secretive you would like if you went to you know to to a big auction you know like uh one of naff's auctions or something you know you wouldn't talk to your customers they wouldn't talk to you you know you kept it all everything was secret now we are secretive with basically nothing we don't care you know did you like that era or not um it was it was definitely a more romantic era you know like um you, um, you bought the skins. It was dominated by people that, you know, had, uh, they, they had nerves of steel, I'll just say, okay. And they would buy, they would fight to buy, and then they would just use their sheer, you know, strength to try to get

the most money for it, you know, to make a buck on it. They had low expenses and they just, they were gamblers, you know, that's, that's who dominated the fur trade. My dad was a, you know, he was a, you know, math genius, you know, and that's just the type of guy that really was successful, you know, back in the day. And that's not how we run our business at all anymore. It's nothing like that. But it was, it was definitely a wild and tumble business dominated by, you know, really smart individuals. So you used to buy it Nath auctions uh yeah we sure we did yeah wonder if you bought any of my stuff yeah you

know Seth had a couple top lot top lot first wow oh oh boy oh man that hurts a lot there man Oh, man. That hurt. That hurt. Nut tap there, man. And Matt for sure made a big deal out of it. Right. Put Seth right in his place. Have you knowingly produced any famous furs that were worn by like a first lady or to a red carpet or anything like that? Yeah, we have. I mean, you know, the guy that made Joe Namath's coat when he was on the Super Bowl. Very famous.

That was one of my customers. I sold him those coyotes. Wow. that's great yeah um and you know it's hard to think of something right now but you know i mean um back in the day i've had paris hilton order from us um uh what else um yeah we've had uh we've had you know lots of you know we and we sell to the you know all the major brands you know use our stuff, or they have. Some of them don't use fur anymore, but yeah. You should get that photo of Namath in that coat. It should be like a badge in your office.

Right. I think it's up somewhere. We could use it to promote this podcast. Right. There you go. The man who sold the man who sold this coat of fur. This morning, the Dow Jones was down 900 points. Is that as far-reaching as changing your raccoon prices this week or not?

It's not going to change my prices today. Obviously, I'm not buying any right now, but it is definitely something we watch. The economy in China right now is rough. It's very poor. And the stock market going up or down 5% in China is not really going to make the economy that much worse. I mean, there are days where I have been a lot more upset when I saw the Dow go down 1,000 points. But it's know, they're not, you know, it's not like we're selling a hundred million mink in China. We need to, because the economy is just rocking. Cause that was what was going on. I mean, the economy was on fire. You know,

people bought a condo in, in China. I mean, I had lots of customers. Let me tell you, this is, you know, this is not untrue at all. They bought their first condo for, you know, 78,000 bucks. You know, it was worth 300,000 bucks. A couple of years later, they bought their next one. You know, the next one was, you know, the 500, the million, the million, two, the million, eight. And, you know, everybody was doing that in China and, uh, you know, everybody, it was the wealth effect. Everybody was rich. Everybody was buying fur coats. Um, and, uh, yeah, it was, it was, it was huge. So, you know, it's really not probably going to have a ton of effect. But, you know, we watch it if we have, you know, too much problems.

You know, the cats don't go there. The beaver don't go there. You know, the beaver is an American item kind of as far as the hats. You know, that would be something that, you know, we would worry about, you know. So if demand starts to deteriorate, um, it's, it's, it'll definitely affect the price. I mean, I'm on the, I'm on the phone with China or Bryce is, you know, every day, four or five times a day. Um, you know, every morning we wake up with our WeChats and, you know, we go over them and we talk to our customers. They give us a rundown of what they sold the night before from each, each store.

And then we go from there. No kidding. Yeah. the night before from each each store and then we go from there no kidding yeah so uh is fur going to shine again as they say in uh the charlton heston movie the mountain men i i think um i think the chance that we have is really with kind of this environmental consciousness that i really do i think if we can hold out, you know, for five years or something, um, I mean this mink thing, yeah, it'll, it'll probably help us. Um, but we've got a new generation of people that are not, you know, they're, they're conscious consumers. And, uh, I think they're going to, you know, look at what they're buying and they're not just going

to say, well, that's a, that's a dead animal. They're going to say, you know, how environmentally friendly is that? And, uh, I really do think animal. They're going to say, you know, how environmentally friendly is that? And I really do think they will look at it. I mean, I mentioned that I live part-time in Madison, you know, and it's a very liberal city, you know. But I tell you, when you talk to, you know, people in that sort of scenario, you know, they're very understanding. You know, it's not like it's a hard sell to say hey you know why don't you buy something that you know is not going to last for 500 years in a landfill you know why don't you buy something that's not going to produce you know any uh you

know any you know residual effect after just a few years and uh those those they're really open to that like it's a a renewable yeah natural material. Sure. Sure. I, so I, I think, uh, I think we do have a chance with, uh, this generation is like I said, you know, it's, um, we're, we're, we're selling a coat right now that, um, that has a rough on it and we're not taking that tack. You know, we're not trying to, to sell it to, you know, college girls that have really, you know, uh, you know, real liberal bents or anything but you know certainly I don't think that would be a hard sell to do if you if you really wanted to take that that task on you know you know with all natural fibers so

including obviously including fur so I think it has a chance I think all natural fibers do and you know as consumers become more conscientious they'll you know where you know they'll they'll they'll look at that you know, as consumers become more conscientious, they'll, you know, they'll look at that. You know, I mean, we all used to buy aerosols that depleted the ozone layer. And, you know, we all figured out a way to switch. So, you know, we'll see what happens. I think the fur business has to realize that, you know, that animal rights people and environmental people are, you know, different people. You know, it's not the same. it's not they're not the same and you know we have to think of ourselves as being

part of this sort of cottage industry that's no no different than somebody raising vegetables on their farm you know we're super sustainable um you know we're you know i think i think that's the the cell that we have so and you guys will be out the grown wolds, the grown balds. Sure. Grown wolds, grown wolds. We'll be out buying fur this fall. We certainly will. How do people, uh, how do people find you guys?

Um, yeah, that's, that's interesting. Um, last week I was actually with the conservation officer and, uh, I actually had a fish kill on my property that, uh, because of a environmental uh deal but um big pile of cattle shit it ended up being that yeah but um um but anyway uh i think they call it nerve yeah big pile sitting next to the creek yeah the uh conservation officer um was asking me my name and i said you know he lives 14 miles from where, where our factory is. And I said to him, I said, well, you know, you know who I am, right. You know? And he said, no, you know, and I said, well, I said, well, you know, we buy fur. And he said,

yeah. He said, I thought, I thought I heard about something like that down in Foreston, which is 14 miles away. And he said, I trap and I was looking for a place to sell my stuff, you know? And I'm like, are you kidding me? You know, we are the biggest fur buyer in the world, you know, and you don't know. But that is a little bit of a problem. You know, obviously we have a website. We have, you know, social media, and we are really big on social media. But you have trappers.

And, I mean, it is not just the odd guy. I mean, you have guys that come to the truck, and they're just like, wow,, I, I can't believe you guys exist. You know, I started trapping during COVID. I wanted something to do and, you know, I just haven't had any place to sell my stuff for the past three years. And I've been tanning some, but I I've got skins hanging all over the garage, you know, my wife's sick of them. And, you know, um, I finally, you know, found you guys, but it is really, um, it's, it's really kind of, uh, of, trapping is kind of popular. I mean, if you want to, you know, you guys are whitetail hunters. If you want to hunt on somebody's property in the Midwest, maybe not so much out here, you know, and you tell them, hey, I'll trap the raccoons or I'll trap the coyotes,

you know, that's a way to get on their property, you know, to trap whitetails. And that's what a lot of these guys do. And, you know, what to do with your skins. Well, there's a market for them. Yeah. Get them sold, man. Yeah. His website has the routes listed.

I'm going to find you this fall and get traded a deer hide for some gloves. All right. Sounds good. Thanks for coming on the show, man. All right. Thank you very much. Tell people your website. GFWCO.com. Do it real slow. GFWCO.com.

And people can go there to find your routes. Yeah. They'll be posted sometime beginning of October. So we'll post them. We buy, we don't really buy routes in the West. You know, there's not enough people to run routes out here, but,

um, you know, all of Wisconsin, you know, um, Illinois, Indiana, New York,

uh, Nebraska, um, Missouri, uh, all the whole South, the whole, all the states in the Southeast, North Carolina, South Carolina. We cover the whole Midwest and the East Coast.

So all you guys doing raccoon control on your place because you're trying to help turkey numbers or wood duck numbers? Yeah. Do it in the winter. Right. Do it in the winter and call up the Grunwald family and get on the route. You're going to get bombarded now. Right. I hope so. Thanks for having me on the show, too get on the route. You're going to get bombarded now.

Right. I hope so. Thanks for having me on the show, too, by the way. I appreciate it. This has been great. Very educational. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. down running rabbits down busters in the

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