Ep. 599: The Fur King

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast, you can't
predict anything.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.
Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every
hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light
dot com. F I R S T l I t
E dot com. Join today by a man who's understood

(00:42):
to be named Guy Groenwald, but who is actually Guy Grownawald.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
I guess so something like that.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
That's how your folks would have said it. Yea, that's
how they would have said, where do you hail from?

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Uh, we're from northern Germany. So my family is right
by how in a place called Friesland.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
And tell me how how how they would have sai
your last name Grumbld. They got americanized, They got americanized.
You guys are in the Midwest now we're in.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, about one hundred miles from Chicago.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, and you are a your family been long involved
in the fur business, a little over one hundred years.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
Yeah, yep, man, So.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
You guys picked right up whe Hudson Bay Company left off.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Well, really, Hudson Bay didn't leave off till three years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
But really, yeah, you have to explain that. Yeah, sure,
did you know that, Randall? I can't say that I did,
stumped Old Randall.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Yeah. Yeah, the oldest corporation.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Hudson Bay Company, was around in some fashion until three
years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Absolutely, they all happened.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Three years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
NAFA went out of business.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
I thought something, dude, Biden, No, go on, you know,
it's in the spirit of blame and everything, right.

Speaker 5 (01:50):
Right, timeline sixteen seventy to one, like three hundred and
fifty years Yeah, is that right?

Speaker 6 (01:57):
Yeah, they're still dealing with fur Oh that one is
that one?

Speaker 7 (02:01):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (02:01):
NAFA went out of business North American for auctions. Yeah,
but they were the there. Originally they were the arm
of Hudson's Bay Company and like twenty some years ago
and I'm sure I'm wrong, but 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 oh way, yeah,

(02:24):
they only ceased having auctions in New York during I
think during the Sars outbreak. That's when they stopped having
auctions there. So like two thousand, I don't know when
when was the First Stars two thousand and eight or
something like that, maybe they stopped in New York. So, Yeah,
Hutson's Bay was around and really in some form until

(02:44):
just a few years ago.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Damn.

Speaker 8 (02:46):
But isn't it still around just as like a department store.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah, that's the Yeah, it's still a department store in Canada. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, owned by the actual people, like owned.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
By the actual No, it was not owned by the
well 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 the United States,

(03:20):
and then it became you know, owned by the uh
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. So, yeah, we
bought a lot of the skins out of it when
they went bankrupt. No, I'm not. We bought a lot. Yeah,

(03:42):
one of the biggest deals they ever did. Yeah, I
was buying up the residue from Hudson Bay fers. I
remember where I was, exact place where I did it.
I was Indu Buku 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
a long time time, and you know, they had asked

(04:02):
we were a you know, what was the date. I
don't know what the date was, but it was that
first it was, uh would be about July of twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
I thought maybe it was when Seth was getting married.
I was going to ask you if your person's officiated
a good job, because I tore it up right here.

Speaker 8 (04:21):
You who else was buying their furs that day when
we were going out of business.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Nobody just you That's why.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Uh, you know, they they had contacted everybody in the
fur trade and it was you know, it was during
COVID and it was bad and uh, you know, nobody
was buying.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
And so, uh, do you had a good deal?

Speaker 3 (04:39):
I did, all right.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah. Was your wife annoyed that you were doing that
at the shodding?

Speaker 3 (04:44):
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 spruits of it.

Speaker 5 (04:52):
So said, Hudson's Bay Company doesn't go under very enough. No,
it's a pretty rare People have been waiting on hundreds
of yes, oportunity.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
This is a once in a millennium opportunity. Sweet heart,
let me know all the wedding goes.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
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. And I was I was
actually in China when I was with someone and that
was financing him, and I overheard a conversation where they
had they were gonna they had lent some money privately
to him, and I heard him say it, and he

(05:28):
probably 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 when we got to
cover some stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
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 we're going to you know,
we should start our conversation when.

Speaker 4 (05:50):
We come back.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Can you can you be prepared to talk about what
happened with the COVID pandemic and ranchment?

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Sure I can. I can tell that story. Sure, that'd
be great.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Okay, since here, howdy, how are you liking that little scarf?
It's warm. It's not as nice as my wife's new
sea otter scarf.

Speaker 6 (06:10):
No, that thing is pretty sweet. But this thing's pretty
sweet too.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Doctor Randall's here, uh Krinn And then Brent Reeves always
from Arkansas prison, and uh Spencer Newhart's here. We're gonna
be Oh so is media radio live live?

Speaker 9 (06:33):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Okay? Two different media media to radio live on the
Mediator podcast network. It's out on YouTube. What's the media
cross red puzzle? Oh? I know about that, but that's
already out. That's out too.

Speaker 8 (06:49):
Both of these things have been out for a month.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
I get a little I get a little confusing timeline.
I've been working just like a bad science fiction book.
If people have been noticing that there's a lot of
weird off with release dates. I've been working on this
new show thing and 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 caddywampus like you're hearing news and news
item anymore. That's because of that reason. But you know

(07:13):
when that's not yeah, it means it means off kilter
like that before.

Speaker 8 (07:21):
We also got korein the other day with a joke
and it looks like it smells like updog and then
she goes, what's up dog? She just walked right into it.
It was very earnest.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
What's up dog? Yeah?

Speaker 8 (07:35):
And then you respond to say, not much dog, what's
up with you?

Speaker 4 (07:38):
That's good?

Speaker 8 (07:38):
And uh, we got you think tell him you invented it.

Speaker 7 (07:45):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
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 Eater Radio Live
is uh, I want to do segments on tattoos you regret,
so if you've got a hunting fishing tattoo that you regret, now,
it's gotta be a hunting fishing tattoo. Like I wanted
to get my wild Turkey super Slam on my arm.

(08:10):
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 got like tattoos like that, 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 it.

Speaker 10 (08:30):
Right, Like, you know, I know that we've talked about
Chester's tattoo.

Speaker 6 (08:36):
Oh, his Chesterly tattoo looks like his scrolling tattoo.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
We should do the first Yeah, we could do the
first episode with Chester with his fly fishing scrolling tattoo.

Speaker 10 (08:50):
But maybe just like going to you know for twenty
seconds what it is. I know hopefully people have already
been watching and listening by now.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
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 we're not on like blank, Megahurts,
we're not broadcasting from ninety nine point seven Mega.

Speaker 10 (09:08):
Hurts broadcasting on the YouTube media.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
It's a classic radio show. It's a classic morning radio
show in the afternoons on Thursdays on.

Speaker 10 (09:16):
The internet eleven am, mst.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Oh, classic morning radio show on the internet.

Speaker 8 (09:21):
We got the prime window somehow.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah. Yeah, it's not quite drive time, it's not lunchtime.

Speaker 10 (09:27):
It's kind of lunch time untime.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Lunchtime in New York time. And it's a it's a
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 gonna do,
and we're gonna cover tattoos people regret.

Speaker 8 (09:44):
And Steve was complaining about how by time some of
these podcasts comes out, the news is out of fashion.
That won't be the case with media radio.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
So now we can do.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
Now you can do.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
We can do real things when they're happening good. 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.

Speaker 8 (10:06):
Is that a compromise?

Speaker 2 (10:07):
What am I saying? I do it once a year.
I go to yoga like about once a year. 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 an adult at a when an

(10:28):
adult comes to like a children's playground without a kid.
Like I'm like, I met yoga. I'm with my wife.
Why are you down here? You know what I mean? Like,
I'm not here with my wife for restorative yoga. I'm
here like I don't want to be here. I'm here
because my wife wanted to.

Speaker 8 (10:43):
Come once a year in negotiation.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, and then like some guy comes in by himself,
Like what are you doing down here?

Speaker 9 (10:49):
Did he get a good stretch?

Speaker 5 (10:51):
If once a year? If once year was meeting in
the middle, where did you start on that?

Speaker 4 (10:57):
I thought you were saying he was in front of
me and you were liketed.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Second, No, I just like the 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 psychologist.

Speaker 6 (11:09):
I don't blame you.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
And it was called restorative yoga, which means you don't
do much. You don't do much.

Speaker 8 (11:18):
Was once a year in negotiation, Steve, did you have
to Uh, how'd you arrive at that number?

Speaker 4 (11:25):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (11:27):
I'd gone the longest had ever gone without seeing my
wife because I was gone for two weeks for work.
Now I was with my kids for two weeks fishing,
and so I had seen my wife in a whole month.
So we're just trying to capitalize on opportunities to hang
out together. And so that involved me going to yoga.
So if you see I look very stretched out, that's
what's going on.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
You restored.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yep, here's some good news. So we reported during the
Trump administration, we reported heavily on their efforts to increase
recreational access on the refuge system. So a deal with
the refuge systems is how can I explain this? Help

(12:10):
me explain this? Randall National Force. Let's say you're doing
this on 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 National Forest Service, which is an arm

(12:32):
of the USDA. Like, they don't make regulatory overlays on
top of state regulations.

Speaker 5 (12:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
No. No, but they don't have regulatory overlays. You wouldn't go
and be like a forest. I see what you're you can't.

Speaker 5 (13:05):
Not a different limit?

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well the refuge system, the National Wildlife
Refuge System caused 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

(13:26):
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 regul 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 quitt

(13:47):
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
shore birds, 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

(14:09):
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 Biden Biden Harris administration just announced fifty three new

(14:35):
hunting and fishing opportunities on approximately two hundred and eleven
thousand acres nationwide on the National Wildlife Refuge System. This
came into place we had on Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart
used to Martha Stewart watching too with some shopping. I've
been shopping for plate wear for lighters or CBD. I

(15:00):
means Martha Williams. Martha Williams the former head of Montana
Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks or which we call
fishing parks for short. So Martha Williams used to run
Montana's state fishing Game Agency. She now runs the US

(15:23):
Fish and Wildlife Service. So under her leadership at US
Fishing Wildlife Service, we're seeing a continuation of expansions on refuges.
So if you got a refuge down the road and
it always kind of burns your ass about what you
can and can't do, you should go revisit what's going
on there.

Speaker 8 (15:42):
And that's in nine states. I feel like this sort
of news sometimes just applies to like far away in Alaska,
but this is, you know, very close to home for
a lot of folks. Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Washington,
West Virginia, Wisconsin.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Good job, Spencer. You should come out to show more off.

Speaker 8 (15:59):
Another thing, Steve, is he still going? There was a
note in here for you to plug media crosswords.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Do you know you didn't do it?

Speaker 8 (16:05):
Okay, here's my opportunity, Steve said, Oh, and there's MEDIAA Crosswords.
What's that? Oh, no, I know what that is. And
then and then we just uh.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
We'll get into it.

Speaker 8 (16:12):
Okay, you want to know it looks like a new
thing when it's not a new thing. Well, Media Radio Live,
just like media Crossword Puzzles came out about a month ago.
Every Wednesday morning, we have a crossword puzzle that you
can get at the medieater dot com backslash games. There's
twenty clues. It's all specific to the med eater universe,
sort of like Media to Trivia. If you like that podcast,

(16:33):
you'll like the Mediata Crossword Puzzles.

Speaker 9 (16:35):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (16:35):
The first one we have coming out is outdoor theme,
the second one National Parks, the third one hunting. So
if you enjoy this podcast or MEDIAA Trivia, you'll like
that the Mediata Crossword Puzzles.

Speaker 5 (16:46):
And we're a month in and I've been doing tremendously.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
I will say, sure, Karin put a letter in here,
I mean.

Speaker 9 (16:59):
Scratch it up out.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah. If it wasn't his grandpa, it'd be a great story.
It goes like this, there's a guy who hunts his
grand Now it feels just as Stranger's land. I almost
want to tell it not true to make it better.

Speaker 5 (17:17):
Well, it's his grandpa's neighbor.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Oh, hold on, there you.

Speaker 10 (17:21):
Go, grandparents neighbor's place. I just put it in yellow.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Oh, it is a good story. Does this guy that
has to hunt permission on his grandpa's neighbor's place. Yeah,
I got confused there from minute. I read it one way,
then I read it another way. 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
having the attitude of is someone lets you hunt or

(17:47):
fish or trap on the land, you'd like bring him stuff.
You get some sausage made up from your deer and
bring him that, and bring him a gift card to
to Murdoch's or or you know, like do little things
like that. Go a fifty dollars gift card to Murdocks
so he can buy some whatever. I don't know, Just
do stuff like that. Show that landowner that you realize

(18:12):
that you know, 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, his neighbor's place. The guy gave him
two rules. No rifles, he wanted a shotgun only, and

(18:35):
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 and includes in it that is law, and includes

(18:58):
in his deal that I'll sell you this land on
the agreement that these two people can keep hunting there.

Speaker 5 (19:07):
I mean, that's yeah, pretty solid, that's cool.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yep, follow the rules.

Speaker 9 (19:13):
Some good people right there on both sides.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Now, this is the most this is the most here's
the most thought provoking thing that's ever ben on this podcast.
You ready for this? This is the most thought provoking
thing I've ever ever been uttered here, m I was

(19:36):
just listening to episode five seventy five 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.

Speaker 6 (19:54):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 9 (19:57):
That's all.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
Except for try to refute that.

Speaker 8 (20:01):
Okay, I think our top our top tomato producers are
California and Florida, who are not known for their big
old white.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
They're not known for good tomatoes. They're known for bad
tomatoes and transport. Well, yeah, foy, it doesn't make good tomatoes.
They make tomatoes that you could throw against the wall
and not hurt.

Speaker 4 (20:20):
Good tomatoes come from where I grew up.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Good tomatoes come from where I grew up.

Speaker 5 (20:26):
They also come from New Jersey tomatoes, they.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Don't come from Bozeman, Montana.

Speaker 8 (20:31):
Tell you that A more simple adage to this would
just be like, if it grows good corn, I think
that New Jersey got corn than five miles, you'll grow
big white tail bucks.

Speaker 9 (20:42):
How about that for the why?

Speaker 10 (20:45):
Because people are probably wondering why you stop short Like
by one sentence.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
I was told this is because some soils lack minerals
like calcium that are required for both antler growth and
tomato development. Hmmm, I'm just gonna have be that think
that's true.

Speaker 5 (21:02):
Let's I think it's more thought provoking if you leave
out his hypothesis there.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Like not get into it. Yeah, let the listeners. That's
why I didn't do it.

Speaker 8 (21:14):
I think maybe you should think about it the other
way that if there's a place that's known for big
white tail bucks that will grow really good tomatoes, that's first, yes, 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, uh you find bobcats turkey?

Speaker 4 (21:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, when you're scouting for turkeys, you actually just go
out and look for bobcats, that's right, or some bobcat
tracks at a cross and sit there and.

Speaker 8 (21:44):
Call looking for good white tail bucks. You go plant
some tomatoes.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
See how they do. So then you gotta get permission
and be like, hey, can I get permission hunt? And
they're like oh yeah, sure, Like well, listen, I'm gonna
be over in May and you'll notice me out could
bait and a little tomato. It's all part of the plant.
It's all part of the plan. I'm not gonna get

(22:09):
into more stuff about Larry the Muskie Man struck a
chord with people.

Speaker 9 (22:17):
He absolutely did.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
A guy wrote in taking half a Finger to task
for saying that, uh, we had colossal biosciences on and
talked about the science and ethics of cloning mammoths. Half
a Finger wrote in talking about how mamos or losers,
but he'd like to see one. This guy wrote in

(22:44):
being like half a Finger'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.

Speaker 5 (23:01):
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.

Speaker 9 (23:11):
B A in English and then an.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, Like I have an associates degree too. I'm not
gonna because I went to community college. I'm not going
to go like associates, bachelors Masters.

Speaker 8 (23:22):
You should English. What was the associates in?

Speaker 4 (23:26):
I don't know what they call it.

Speaker 6 (23:28):
Oh, yeah, I got I got one of them too.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, you don't put down all of them. He put
down B A and M A and anthropologies get to
the end, do you know what I mean? Like when
he turned fifty, you don't list all the years you've.

Speaker 10 (23:40):
Been I guess, but just trying to say that. For
two years or three years he studied at master's.

Speaker 9 (23:48):
Level anthrow and then for four years.

Speaker 5 (23:51):
He studied six years of fire read and in.

Speaker 10 (23:55):
That single subject, I like it.

Speaker 9 (23:59):
I ever sign my emails.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
No, yeah, I think he should cut one of them out.
Whatever one he likes most, he should leave in and
cut that one out. Half a figures working on something.
Are you guys familiar with the ideas of the Miriam's elk? Yes,
so we have check me if I'm wrong live today
we have there's three American elk Rocky Mountain, Roosevelt, two Lee,

(24:30):
and the two leads are in California. And it's assumed
that the Miriams, the Miriams elk is extinct and Eastern. Yeah, oh,
because yeah, they read You're right, the Eastern is extinct.
So the ones that are in the East now are

(24:51):
Rocky Mountain.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (24:54):
I think there was a span of like thirty some
years between the last Eastern Pennsylvania until they got reintroduced
with Rocky Mountain. Just a little tidpit.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
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 like places like
the Smithsonian and whatnot. Heffelfinger in two thousand and six
he found in Miriam's elk, and he found two in

(25:28):
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

(25:49):
should be able to detect if any survived from the
last report in Arizona around nineteen hundred to the first
translocations from Yellowstone Nastal Park in nineteen thirteen, meaning Arizona
had Miriam's elk when they were extrapated from Arizona. It's
hard to picture elk were extirpated from Arizona and when

(26:10):
they brought when they reintroduced elk, as is often happens
when you have a like an endemic variety goes extinct
and then later you want to reintroduce it. You got
to pull from a new source. So Arizona had Miriam's elk,
and when they were extrapated, they were replaced by Rocky
Mountain Elk. In nineteen thirteen, Hefflefinger got ten thousand bucks

(26:33):
from Dallas Safari Club as part of the Conservation trail
Blazer Award, which is funding his collection of samples. He says,
I just think that, He says, I just think it's
cool as shit and had to share it. So he's
out there scourring around to find out is it true?

(26:54):
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.
We would discuss for that. Why there's no record book Havelina.
You can't shoot a record book Calina, like Boone and

(27:16):
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 this guy, like why does
this dude sleep? Half a finger puts together a big
proposal which he then takes to like the board or
whatever at Boone and Crockett, laying out his case, you know,

(27:42):
like laying out a presentation about why there, why they
should be, why there should be you should be able
to shoot a Boon and Crocket packery or you know
collared peckery have alena and and steps are being taken.
It's not done yet, but he is soliciting them to

(28:02):
create a Heaveleena category in the Boone and Crocket record club.

Speaker 4 (28:08):
I have one that I.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
Feel will be in there because who does have it?

Speaker 7 (28:15):
S C?

Speaker 8 (28:15):
I probably them, and I don't know.

Speaker 4 (28:19):
Yeah, was there a reason why they're never there? Hadn't been.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
They're just not regarded that they haven't traditionally been regarded
as a big game animal. They're not a small game.

Speaker 8 (28:30):
Yeah, you're like bridging a gap to it feels like
coyotes and fox start doing.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
You gotta draw tag, You draw tag. Okay, now you
got draw tag for cranes. In some places there should
be a Boone and Crocket crane. You talk me into it.
What are you gonna measure?

Speaker 8 (28:47):
It's beak wingspan. I suppose that.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
Because that doesn't last. It's gotta be bone. Okay, I
got a record.

Speaker 8 (28:59):
But there's there's one more subspecies of elk that some
people recognize, including like the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Tell me, I tell you if I agree.

Speaker 8 (29:10):
The Manitobin Elk, which is like Upper Great Plains and
uh Southern Canada, and they say that one is still around.

Speaker 4 (29:18):
I don't know if I disagree with that or not.

Speaker 8 (29:20):
You could have dealer's choice and if you you want
to recognize that one or not, you.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Got any tattoos, you're gonna submit to our tattoos.

Speaker 8 (29:26):
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.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, because when you get old wrinkly, that's gonna come.
You're not gonna be tell what's going on.

Speaker 4 (29:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
So no, none that I regret.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
Yet it is a form of regret you were talking about.
Is that batman?

Speaker 2 (29:47):
What was that? Like a heavy metal symbol?

Speaker 4 (29:49):
When I was working undercover.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
I got you got that, say the Batman in the middle.
That's yeah. Yeah. I used to work with a guy
that liked Bacardi so much. You got the Boccardi bat
tattooed on him.

Speaker 8 (30:07):
I have the hands bear tattooed on me.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
He said to me, you know, when you're drinking Bocardi's
so fast and you get the red splotches all over
your neck.

Speaker 8 (30:18):
Did you say yes or no?

Speaker 2 (30:21):
I was like, why no? Tell me more. We were
actually having a Bocardi yet the time, with this little
known beverage called coke Coca Cola. All right, guy, you
ready you got any tattoos?

Speaker 3 (30:40):
I don't have any tattoos.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
You do you regret it?

Speaker 3 (30:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
You know, all the men have, you know, heavily tattoos
or heavily tattoos in you know, in mathsine they're not.

Speaker 7 (31:01):
So.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
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, like when our little kids are
doing Halloween, Like when my kids are in they're in
the colle in college and they're goofing on the twenty
twenties like now, like they might dress like we're dressing

(31:25):
like the eighties. We're dressing like the seventies. We're dressing
like the sixties. When they're dressing like the twenty twenties,
will they put a bunch of fake tattoos on?

Speaker 3 (31:33):
Yeah, I'd say so, yeah, especially if they live out here.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
And people be like, oh, the twenty twenties, I don't know. Uh, Okay,
tell me what happened with uh? Why didn't tell how
mink made international news during the COVID pandemic.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Okay, So in early to twenty twenty during the pandemic,
I remember it very specific, and I was I actually
had to go to a wool conference cause 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 a hair on a Saturday night. I
had a hotel room with my wife and we were

(32:13):
going to go to a play the next morning with
some friends.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
But you had to interrupt the play to buy wool.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
And so she picked me up. We had this great dinner,
and I communicate with my customers in China on we Chat,
and typically you know every day that I get one
or two messages when I wake up in the morning.
You know, almost never on a Sunday, and you know,
seldom on a Saturday. And so I woke up on
Sunday morning and I remember the Hampton Inn that I

(32:39):
was in, you know, downtown Chicago. And I woke up
and I looked at my phone. I had thirteen 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,

(33:00):
we are so screwed that we are you know, they
are shutting this whole thing down. And at the very
beginning of COVID, a 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,

(33:21):
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 met causing he was kitting kaboodle.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
You ever heard that?

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah, she just heard it this morning but anyway, uh, yeah,
it was it. It came out that and then 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. It makes a skin raw if it's not

(33:53):
tan it's just just dried where you know, where you
ship it, where you can ship it. You know, it's
it's not going to putrefy you know, while it's being
ship because it's dried, 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.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
In China said no raw mink.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
They said no raw anything. You couldn't import anything raw,
but just over overnight.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Kind of a little late for that because i mean
they the pandemic is coming up China.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, but 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 you know, everybody thought it was kind of over
and we were dressing some stuff in Cambodia already because

(34:39):
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 it's impossible.
But yeah, my uh, I ended up going to the
music all that day, and it was, you know, my

(35:00):
stomach was just you know, I couldn't hardly take it. It was, uh, gosh,
maybe mean girls, I don't know, but it was. I
don't really remember it. It was it was it was
a rough, rough day.

Speaker 8 (35:11):
I mean I went to me girls. It wasn't that good, right,
So yeah, makes sense.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
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, you know, things
are gonna 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
any more of it. You know, it's really gonna get bad.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Here, well, walk me into how they killed millions of Okays.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
So so that so right away it got linked to mink,
and then that sort of died off. Okay, but you know,
and there's and there's the the largest uh producer of
mink outside of China, you know, was Denmark.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Okay, can you can you be another favorite and clarify
there's wild mink and rant.

Speaker 3 (35:55):
There's there's wild mink. I mean, percentage wise of what's
produced in the world, wild mink is you know, probably
under ten thousand at this point. And at one point
there was definitely over one hundred million mink produced commercially.
Maybe there was even one hundred and sixty million there
was there was definitely over one hundred million. Though if
you take what was produced in China and what was

(36:16):
produced outside of China. So you know, Copenhagen sold thirty
million mink a year on their sale they produced in
their country, you know, I don't know, maybe fifteen to
twenty million. You know, they got mink from Poland and
wherever else. But anyway, some of the mink were susceptible
to getting the disease. Okay, So early on the Danish

(36:38):
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 the end the production of mink in
in Denmark and it was just the government didn't like it.
And it was a huge industry for him. I mean,
they sold thirty million mink, you know at the peak,

(36:59):
thirty million times, you know, probably getting very close to
one hundred dollars apiece that you know, they they exported
out of out of Copenhagen. You know, it was definitely
the biggest exchange in the world 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

(37:20):
fur business for the last thirty years or so, and
you know, now 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 the
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

(37:41):
mink that they killed, you know, they they didn't keep
those mink they killed. They destroyed them, They burned them, buried.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
Them, whatever. And it didn't pelt them.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
They didn't pelt them out.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Some bum information.

Speaker 7 (37:50):
No.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
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 reason for that was is the market,
you know, 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,
and there was people that you know, they got got

(38:11):
COVID here in their mink as well. You know, are
they rebuilding, No, they're they're not rebuilding. 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 for the ranchers. If they get it all paid
I don't know they've paid out some of it. But
there's a lot of controversy because it was you know,
the numbers were staggering of what they got because they

(38:33):
were paid to you know, never produce again, and so
they didn't just get the value of those mink, they
got the value of those mink plus. So it really
decimated the fur business. It really decimated the ranch for
a business, which you know is difficult on the trade
because you know, like the money for marketing and sort
of promoting for you know, the biggest entity we had,

(38:55):
you know, was Coconhating because they handled so many skins
with so many dollars that you know, if they did
a one percent levy to promote fur around the world
that 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. There is

(39:17):
a small auction you know, in American American Mink Exchange.
They still collect some of the American mink, but you
know it's much smaller than Saga. But yeah, it's uh,
we went from having you know NAFA Seattle for exchange, uh, Saga,
Copenhagen and uh, you know down to basically you know,
just Saga now. But yeah, that was a major hit,

(39:39):
and it was because of really because of COVID, but
you know, really maybe not because of COVID. Maybe they
the government just wanted it to be done.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Will that eventually cause 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.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Well, we hope. So so last year, I don't have
exact numbers, but let's just say the auction sold around
fifteen sixteen million skins and there was still only around
seven produced seven million, and yet they sold that many,
so that many 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

(40:20):
couple three months, and you know the production in the
West will be you know six seven million. Well, you're
not going to have Copenhagen selling you know, ten 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 you know, eight or
ten or so million makes killed or you know, sold
at auction this year. So you know, what was fifteen

(40:42):
million or seventeen million last year will be you know,
nine or ten 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, at last year's price, yes, which was
a you know, a price that was rising but still

(41:03):
not crazy high. There was a demand for fifteen, sixteen,
seventeen million mink. And this year, if there's only going
to be you know, say seven or eight million mink,
does that price have to go up because that mini
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 consumer

(41:26):
still buy buy the coat in China or in Russia
or wherever. And you know, you know, certainly nobody knows
that answer. I mean, you know, i'd say in the
United States, you know, we raised the prices of a
lot of things. I mean, the price of a hotel
room here in this town. You know, from five years
ago is much much higher, maybe three times higher. And
you know, I still got one. But we don't know

(41:48):
what the Chinese consumer is going to do and you know,
the or the worldwide consumer.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Of you know, ranch mik is going to do.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
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 twelve months
has has certainly helped our industry. You know, we were
at certainly historical lows and we've come off those historical lows,
and yeah, it's it's certainly helped.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
So what people in the world buy for codes.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
I would say, you know, Chinese are obviously big consumers.
They manufacture and they actually consume at the retail level.
You know, Russia is still a big, you know player.
They don't have the money they had, you know, five
years ago, of course because of the war, but they're
still you know, they still fur as in their culture.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Is there any kind of animal rights anti fur movement
in China?

Speaker 3 (42:43):
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 first Yeah, yeah, sure there is. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Can you tell the story of We've talked about this
a bunch of times. Is the company Canada Goose was
selling parkas with Kyle Trim and they quit. Now they
have made it a big announcement from now i'm're only
using recycled fur. I took that to be I took
that to be that they were bowing to pressure from

(43:26):
anti fur people, or they were looking at how are
we going to achieve growth while courting the controversy of fur,
and decided 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

(43:47):
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.

Speaker 4 (43:57):
And I thought that.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
I thought that that would be why they were doing that.
Do you feel that that's true or not true?

Speaker 3 (44:04):
Okay? I certainly cannot speak for them, Okay, but I
have my own idea to take a stab I have.
I have my own ideas and I see it in
a little different light. And I because I have seen
this happen so many time.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Let me tell you you're far more credential to have
an opinion than I am.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Well, I don't know about that, but you are. And
I'm sure that 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 as a greater problem is.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Can you touch on their exp I mean, like they
went from being a specialty item like cold weather stuff
for out you know, sled dogg ers whatever, to being
New York subway where right?

Speaker 3 (44:55):
I mean, they exploded, right, And you know I would
I would like to think that, you know, it was
that the fur is what differentiated them. I mean, I
think it made their their garment look cool, you know.
And I think, what, in my opinion, what's what I've
seen in other areas where people have quit using fur,
is this when they started using that trim, the coyote

(45:19):
was really out of favor, and the trim was very
very cheap. You know, maybe they could have put it
on their coat for ten bucks. And by the time that,
you know, craze was over, and you know, you guys
have probably talked about kyote prices, you know they had,
you know, maybe some coyotes had gone up by certainly
a factor of ten, you know. I mean, you couldn't

(45:39):
give a coyote away to being worth over one 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, 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
thirty eight dollars trim on it, it's a big number.

(46:01):
And if you think that you can sell that coat
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,

(46:21):
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 twenty five
cents a pound for petroleum, and that price really doesn't

(46:44):
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 price of of of the
input of polyester. And I just I think that a
lot of it was a cost saving thing. You know,
maybe they made I had 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

(47:05):
sell it to them for retail. And you know, if
thirty five dollars of that was going to the trim boy,
you know, the equation changes a lot for their profitability.
And 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 themselves if they're a big enough company, and

(47:27):
Canada Goose they did. They ended up having the effect
of literally you know, dominating the coyote market and changing
the price to a factor of ten. Can you imagine that,
you know, you start out at one price and by
the time you're done, you know, ten years later, you know,
it's a factor of ten that you've affected the price.
You know, no matter how many coats they sell, they're
never going to affect the price a polyester.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
So, uh, is it?

Speaker 3 (47:51):
I was gonna that was, but I don't But I
don't speak for them, but I've seen it so many
times that you know, time and time again that.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
It's it's difficult on this is gonna 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, that demand of that that that fashion explosion.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Of a coyote for Actually, there's no question really, oh
my god. Absolutely they dominated.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
They were.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
I mean you know that you have to realize that
in China. You know, there was copycatters that probably sold
three times as many coats as they did, maybe ten
times as many coats. People that you know, copy their
coat and sold it in China, Well they all put
a coyote trim on it, so you know, Canada, Goose.
So the people copying them just absolutely dominated the market.
I mean, you could buy a fake in China that

(48:47):
you know, you couldn't tell the difference. And uh, but
they certainly they didn't fake the coyote trim. You know
that was still on there.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, Seth, can you hold out that fox? Re meant?
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 park of
when you rough a parka, that you're Someone told me
that you're actually cutting a circle here, hold that up, Seth,

(49:17):
and you're you're cutting it like this. Let me see
that some bitch from it. Someone told me that you
take the kyo and you're you're kind of like snipping
here and snipping here, and that's the rough.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Is that true or not true?

Speaker 3 (49:30):
That's not that's sort of true. Okay. If you want
to show me that, I'll I'll show you. Okay. So, typically,
on a coyote, which is a little bit similar to
a fox, 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

(49:51):
really easy.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
I'm just reminding you to criticize that, right, So, I mean,
the easy way to do this, because especially for the
trim is to go like this, Okay, if you can,
but if you so, you're gonna burn a whole one up.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
You're oh, you're gonna bork you. You'll, well, with a coyote,
you maybe get three, maybe four, maybe even five five trims. Yeah,
I mean these guys one out of one.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Sure, Oh, these guys are professionals.

Speaker 6 (50:17):
You should one of coyotes right there.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
So yeah, you could grab one of those coyotes.

Speaker 6 (50:22):
So when you put a show them, show us with
the real thing.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
So these are actually pretty nice coyotes, and and that
shows the those are good. And you could 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 you'll and the problem is you have
to join them.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Well something looks as similar, Well, you have to.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
You have to join them, the two together. So then
so then the problem that you have if you join
if you've got a bad neck, which is what happens
on a lot of coyotes. This one's got a little
bit of 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.

(51:05):
So that's a problem. There is actually even ways you
can let this out or lengthen make it wider and
then lengthen it out. You can make some what they
call drops in it, but it's not as simple to
make a really nice strip of just going around it.
I mean you could go around it like this, and
then you would also have that joining problem because your

(51:25):
joinery would be sort of towards the belly because it's
not long enough to go or go around. So what
you'd have is this kind of you know, shorter you know,
getting towards the belly you know, right here, and that
would not look good. You wouldn't want that on your trim.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
People shouldn't be allowed to tell people's soulf it's not correct.

Speaker 6 (51:45):
Like news.

Speaker 10 (51:51):
Guy, you had a note to me when we chatted
on the phone about the price of coyotes about twenty
or so years before Can and a goose cup.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Yeah. Popular, I remember going like to Hong Kong when
the center of the fur business was in Hong Kong
and maybe nineteen late nineties maybe, and you know, you
could you could almost touch the whole business in China
just by going around to places 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,

(52:22):
and you know, we'd have our sample bag and you know,
we were trying to get him interested in wild for
because they were all using ranch for 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 they would have cheap for coats made there,
and they actually manufactured them in Hong Kong. And then

(52:43):
the you know, they they stayed there. And then as
they started to become exporters, those people were still there
and they accessed the Chinese labor market and that's why
the center of it was there. And then it gradually
moved all into China, and we moved into China, but
we would bring kyotes along. You know, even though we
knew we would not sell them, you know, and we

(53:03):
would literally just beg people, 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 they could. It was
cheap enough. They could use it, you know, for an
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

(53:24):
just something they couldn't use. They couldn't figure out how
to use it. And then you know.

Speaker 10 (53:28):
Canada that time you said what it was like ten
to fifteen.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Yeah, ten to fifteen dollars 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 then
just in the early two thousands it just kind of started.
Canada Goose started and yeah, they they it was amazing
what they did for the business.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Yeah, okay, now what's wrong with that beaver?

Speaker 3 (53:51):
Well, 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.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Yeah, and that that should have been used for that.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
That should have been used to do that because 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 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 here and you have a
sheared beaver, they get dirty very quickly. And if you
have a long haired one, they get a bit dishoveled

(54:23):
like this one is. Their hair goes kind of every
other way. They're they're they're a beaver. It's uh, it
really looks unless you really can take care of it
and don't use it very much. It really is. The
best use is in a hat or trade.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Oh okay, I thought you're going to criticize something. It's fine,
you should talk.

Speaker 5 (54:43):
No, it's a it's a It was just when he
walked in and he said, he said, it's a real
shame to see that beaver just sitting on the back
of the chair. It should be a hat.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
It should be a hat somewhere.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
Do you have a hat or not? Do you have
a beaver hat. Okay, good, not a cowboy. Oh that's
what I mean. A cowboy yet, dudelet's we can probably
fix you up.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Okay, this this, it's out of control around here. The
other day I saw I'm not kidding you there to
as see a guy in the airport. I'm not joking.
There's a guy in the Bosman airport that has spurs on.

Speaker 5 (55:16):
Gotten through TSA.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
He's in the baggage area wearing spur Yeah no, no,
he did. He did gone through TSA spurs on like
he's like just plane needs a 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.

Speaker 6 (55:37):
Like fake cowboy.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Oh my god, he probably had tattoos just you know
the other night when we landed, when we landed there night, Yeah,
some kids stand there, looks like howardy 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 terists. Oh yeah yeah, and he's like
a shuttle driver, like a shuttle driver for a dude ranch.

(55:58):
But it looks like he just got his ass kick
at a 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 wolfelt yeah, cow and cowboy hats.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Yeah, well it's it's the.

Speaker 6 (56:16):
Flat brim hats, hats that all the gals wear these days.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Oh yeah, like the Saturday Live my big dumb hat
Bozeman hats.

Speaker 6 (56:22):
I haven't seen that, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
They did any thing about those hats called my big
dumb hat. Oh, it's about girls and those huge hats.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Yeah. So the I mean, the cowboy hat craze is
you know, uh, it's you know, it's it's huge for
the business.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
I mean, beaver I'm not knocking on it.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
I mean 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.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
And that's all going like, how do you make that stuff?
Do they shed? Do they shred the whole thing?

Speaker 3 (56:57):
No, what they do is they eliminate the leather. That's
the first thing that happens. They turned the leather into spaghetti.
So it's just you know, they make they bite it
off with this machine, and 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. Okay, then it and and
but before that happens, while it's still on the animal,

(57:20):
acid is dripped on it.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Okay, not while it's on the animal, you know.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
Well I'm sorry, Well it's still 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.
Used to be mercury, right, you know the mad Hatter was. Yeah,
that's why they called it. That's why that's where the
mad Head is from. Yeah, from they used to use
mercury carroting. Yeah, yeah, exactly, this guy he's talking about. Yeah,
because it turns it orange a little bit, and it

(57:45):
still turns it orange a little bit.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
When you the old days, like let's say the Mountain
Man era. Yeah, they would take that beaver hide and
put mercury on it.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yeah, but it wouldn't have been done out here. You know.
They took the beaver's you know, to Saint Louis or wherever,
and they were shipped to Europe and then it was
you know car had.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
That was making abe Lincoln heads.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
Even even back in the day, they would have had
they would have had 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 it
used to be mercury, is they actually injure, injure the
hair and give it split ends, it breaks down the
carratin give it gives it a very good The only
reason he knows why am I on this show.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
He knows this because me and him are We work
on this thing called me Eater's American History. The next
volume is on the beaver trade.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
Oh really, it just.

Speaker 5 (58:31):
Blew my cover. I was a really impressing guy here.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
So like in the nineteen forties, they they developed formulas
for using acid, and then now they use acid. Then
then this all of this hair goes through a big
machine where it's blown. They call it blowing, and all
the heavy stuff falls out, maybe little pieces of leather
or the guard hair. So all the guard hair falls out.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
They don't want the guard hair.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
The guard hair is worthless. It it's it's thrown away,
and then so and then this stuff. So wow, I'll
be in a factory next month. You can come with me, Okay,
I'd love to do that. So then so then once
once it's blown, once you're reduced to just that underwall,

(59:17):
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 is people felting. They would just
Indians or whoever, would just rub you know, hair together
until it felt it. And when you take that stuff,

(59:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
All right. You know what's that kind of school that
it's like, you know, people send their kids a certain
kind of schools that they don't want them going to
public school, opposite kind of the opposite kind of person
that would send their kid to military school sends them.
Is it Monassory?

Speaker 4 (01:00:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (01:00:06):
Yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Aren't they real big into felting? They give kids felting projects.

Speaker 5 (01:00:12):
I think that's like making thing like arts and crafts
with colored felt. Yeah, but they're not like making felt.
They're making things with felt. I think, oh, I've spent a.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Lot of time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
So then that so then the hat is they they
take that that all that fur, that's that cut fur,
and they pour it over a conic form that's maybe
a foot and a half twenty four inches tall.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Okay, literally just a big cone.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Okay, it's it's it's just and the 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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
Okay dry or what.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
Uh, 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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
And that's the start of a cowboy hat. It's just
what it's just a massive cone, that's all it is.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
So they don't start by making a big sheet of felt.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Absolutely not. It's in a it's in a cone form
and it's and it's it's felt, and you can grab that.
And then they start they put it on and they
start pressing it together and going like that and they
turn it so it doesn't get a fold that stays
in it, you know, because they want to keep turning
it so that it stays like that, and it just
keeps getting you know, uh more. I don't know what

(01:01:28):
the word would be. You know that it kind of
locked together, you know. And then they and then they start,
depending on you know, the order that they have or
whatever they you know, put it into a form, right,
and sometimes that the the they're called bodies once they're
made into those cones. And sometimes they just sell the body.
So there's three there's three primary deals in the hat business.

(01:01:50):
It's it's for cutting, okay, So those that would be
a separate factory. You cut the fur, you tree, you
carried 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 you have to send that on to
another factory, and that's called a finishing factory. And that's

(01:02:11):
like you know, stets and resist all, you know, all
the the hat companies here in the States, they would
buy a lot of times hat bodies, you know, and
then they they have all these these forms you know
for cowboy hats are it could be easily one hundred
years old that they use to form form the finished
hats out.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
Fur, handfuls of beaver fur.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
That will only ever belong to that hat.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
Which will only belong to that hat. Well, I mean,
if it's if it's a poorer quality one, it's mixed
with more hair or rabbit.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
But if it's say, yeah, you when you take that fur,
you're forming a hat. You're not forming a fabric.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
No, you're you're forming a fabric that's in a cone
shape for that hat.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
It's not it's not a flat fabric. Did you know that, Randall?

Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
I did.

Speaker 5 (01:03:08):
And before you get to the coney you make bats.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
I believe, no, the.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
This was so validing to me.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
Yeah, so just now, no, No, it's it's it's usually
it's the fur is sort of uh uh rained over
this this form that has air 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 you know, bleach beaver,

(01:03:39):
it looks like it looks like snow. We bleach beaver
at our place for it. So if you see it,
bleach beaver has pretty well it's come from our place.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
Yeah, from now on, when I see a hat cowboy
hat at the airport or whatever, as you think to myself,
are you sure? Are you sure you're cowboy? No, I'm
gonna start thinking that's a will have processed to form
that hat.

Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
Ask him how many X it is, and you'll find
it's it's not totally industry wide. So some some places,
you know, one hundred X maybe one hundred percent beaver
kind of originally maybe it was, but some people, you know,
they kind of there was a little bit of X
inflation and uh, some companies they have a thousand X.

(01:04:22):
Maybe that's there one hundred percent. You know, it's just
different companies use different standards, so you can't always be sure,
but you know, you can.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
Feel it walk through like we're idiots. What the xes mean?

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
That's the X means? I'm sorry, it's uh, it's it's
what percentage. You know, your your hat is beaver, so
you know, uh yeah, so a poorer quality one would
be maybe a ten x and it would be mostly
hair or mostly rabbit, no kid, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
What's the most common other fur that's supplemented in there?

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
I would I would say wool is the most common.
And if you if you feel a wool hat, okay,
they use like a lamb's wool about it. I don't know,
maybe sixteen to seventeen micron that they use. And you know,
you 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

(01:05:16):
believe how much better it is. You think that wool
hat is just unbelievable characteristic. Does it get 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 just feels so incredible. The difference between and you know,
some beaver is right around twelve microns and you know

(01:05:37):
the wool they're using it's around seventeen, so it's only
five microns difference, maybe six microns difference, but it's it's
just one hundred percent beaver hat. It's just an unbelievable
you know, you when you have one that's one hundred
percent beaver, ninety percent beaver, it's you know it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
I mean it's so that's a one hundred X hat.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Well, it's it's different companies used different you know, there's
a little bit of inflation over the years with the X.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
What do you can you lay out the price difference?
I mean it's probably hard brands, but yeah, to buy
one hundred percent beaver, you're looking at how like what
sort of percent increase over a boat?

Speaker 3 (01:06:13):
I would say, you know, you could be at ten times.
You know, you could be at eighteen hundred dollars hat
versus one hundred and eighty for maybe a ten X.
But I don't even know if you can really buy
a ten X for one hundred and eighty, So maybe
it's less difference, you know. I think, like a really
good hat, you know, is fifteen to two, but you
could you know, you can spend more than that, so

(01:06:33):
somewhere between five and ten times, you know, But then
you know, then you have wool hats, then you have
one hundred percent you know, hair hats or rabbit hats,
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 a rabbit fur.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
Yeah, it's not ears.

Speaker 3 (01:06:53):
But it's a nice you know, it's got a nice
it's got a nice feel as well.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
You know. Yeah, Hey, I notice you got a you
got yourself a blaze orange wedding ring.

Speaker 4 (01:07:02):
I do.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
He's letting the world know.

Speaker 4 (01:07:04):
I'm trying to keep them away.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Yeah, the cameras will pick up.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
I'm taking he's having problems. He's got he's like, I
need to get a shiney your wedding ring.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
No problem.

Speaker 8 (01:07:16):
I notice I noticed on your website you list seventeen
different pelts here that you offer, and they're all on brand.
Like it all it's to be expected, except for one
of them, ringtail. What do you do with ringtails?

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
Ah, it's it's a lot of novelty, you know, it's
not a it's such a.

Speaker 8 (01:07:35):
Small and like what does that get turned into?

Speaker 4 (01:07:37):
Though?

Speaker 5 (01:07:37):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):
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, And and a ringtail
is really blue. You know, the fur underneath is really
a color of blue, like a like a muskrat belly
is blue. That's always here, like you know, like a raccoon.

(01:08:00):
When it's a good color, it has sort of a
shade of blue to a good fur buyer, even even
a really good kayak, you know, you you know, we
see like kind of blue in that because it's got
that that clear, clear look to it. But that's a
ringtails does have a beautiful color.

Speaker 8 (01:08:14):
And those come in from trappers or hunters.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
Or trappers trappers. I mean, it's it's a small item
in the Southwest.

Speaker 4 (01:08:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:08:21):
What what are like the other most exotic furs that
you deal with?

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
I mean, I mean price wise. You know, Western bobcats
are certainly, you know, the most exotic, you know, I mean,
I mean I'm a fur buyer, so to us, exotic
means price. You know, that would be by far. You know,
Western bobcat could be one thousand dollars right now.

Speaker 9 (01:08:42):
Kirks up. He's like, I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
I don't sell anything about interest in that, right, right?
What do possums go?

Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
For?

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
Possums?

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
What are they used for?

Speaker 3 (01:08:53):
You know?

Speaker 7 (01:08:54):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
They they make innerliners in China out of them, They
make trims out of them. You know, we die crazy color.
But when you have a mank at that you can
buy a ranch mank for you know, twenty five dollars,
it's tough to get you know, eight bucks for a possum.
And the problem there is, you know, we send it
to Cambodia and spend you know, a couple of bucks
on shipping and you know three four dollars on dressing.

(01:09:17):
You know, you just you can't. It's not a real
viable you know item.

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
And the skunk trade is novelty it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
Is the tails are used in you know, the acidics
use them some and uh what for hats tails? Yeah?

Speaker 10 (01:09:36):
Scroll down on your talking points document. I put a
photo in there of a strim, is that right, guy?

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:09:49):
How do you throw skunk into that?

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
You know that's there's some magic to do with that.
I you know, that's that's a real secret of trade.

Speaker 4 (01:09:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
Yeah, so a Hasidic Jews hat might have.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
It might Yeah, surprised you didn't know that, Steve, They
use a lot of tails.

Speaker 8 (01:10:05):
Say well, I mean you're subject matter expert in multiple
things going on there.

Speaker 6 (01:10:11):
What reason of the country has the best coyotes?

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
Uh, you know, like like here is a is a
great coyote, you 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 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.

(01:10:35):
You know, just this big the big circle, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming,
you know, Manitoba.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
That circle is by far the best.

Speaker 6 (01:10:42):
Now, if someone sells like a black coyote, yeah, it's it's.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
Just it's just novelty, which is not you know, we're
not big novelty people. You know, we're we're the fur
trade and we do sell some novelty stuff, but that's
not really what we're we're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
Gotcha, why is a bobcat Let's I'm a guy in
Texas and you say, bobcast are a thousand bucks, And
I'm down in Texas where it's bobcast 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

(01:11:18):
gonna be a nice Christmas around my house? Why should
I not get excited?

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
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 like a coyout from you know,
it's like a it's like a kyout from Bozemans versus
a kyout from you know, Georgia.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
But put it like like explain it like radiots. Okay,
they got spots.

Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
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, a tenth of the length of
at least a fifth of the length of the for

(01:12:04):
they're twenty percent. You know. 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 has
just sold off as scrap, you know what, and sure
sure is not using the garment, and so they when
you when you have.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
Oh, I think you're talking about Kyle bobka Boby.

Speaker 3 (01:12:23):
Yeah, I got lost. Yeah, So when you go when
you have a cat, which we don't have one here,
it's so important, you know, the width of the belly,
and around here, the width of the belly is typically
very big. You know, a Texas belly could be three inches,
you know. But in some of the areas, in the
high countries of Texas, though, they you know, they still
get a pretty u a pretty nice cat, so they

(01:12:44):
have the I mean, I would say in Texas, you
could get the stuff over by Louisiana could be worth
you know, thirty bucks, and you could get something in
the high country in the western part of uh Texas
that could be worth five hundred in the same state. Yeah,
I mean, of course, Texas is very big state. You know,
Montana would not be like that because uh, it's it's

(01:13:04):
a it's a pretty mymnduenous bobcat this whole area.

Speaker 4 (01:13:07):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
What's the current state of the white tailed deer skin trade.

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
It's a little better than it was. I would say
it's actually a little healthy. The tail business is is
very good and the high business, you know tail business. Yeah,
they use the fly tying and for uh Hasidic hats too,
they yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
Can I can? I Uh? I want to walk you
back to a memory I have and then you maybe
you can comment on that memory. I used to sell
for at the Ravan of Fur Auction in Michigan.

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):
Oh really, no, kidd, Yeah, I buy Michigan. I bought
for years. It's my area.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
That was our local. Yeah sure so, uh, Michigan Travers Association,
we're put on this fur auction at Ravan Michigan stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:13:51):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
And and they would when you're when you're doing it,
just to give you, I'm not I'm gonna tell you
something you already know about, gonna tell the list. There's like,
let's say you have muskrats. Okay, you're gonna break your
muskrats out into four or five categories. Kits Medium's large,
you know three damage. Okay, so four categories maybe yeah, yeah,

(01:14:15):
I mean large, medium, kits and smalls maybe kits, smalls damages.
But either way 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

(01:14:36):
that are similar to each other every time it comes through.
Deer hides would be that how they ran it in
the eighties and early nineties. Deer hides be the first
deer hide that went on the table. They would bid
on that white tailed.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
Deer skin, and that's what all of them would bring.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
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. Yeah, guys would be out in the
parking lot. I saw it with my own eyes. Guys
would be out in the parking lot taking large deer skins,

(01:15:14):
cutting them across the waist, rolling them up and selling
them as too. Because the guys weren't able to grade it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:20):
Yeah, that's I mean, that's not really the way it is.
I mean, you know that way it was. Yeah, that's
I mean the guy you're trying to call me a liar. No,
I'm just saying that, But I mean that's that's the
guys getting hose. Then you know that felt, I mean I.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
Felt it was a disservice to white tailed deer skins.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
But you know, a pretty much an adult deer. Okay, fine,
you get the occasional buck that's much bigger, but you know,
adult deer 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, best deer eyes
because they aren't affected by they don't must not have

(01:15:56):
much multiple rose air, and they don't have scratch. So
it's it's a really right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
I didn't grow up around a lot of that.

Speaker 4 (01:16:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
It all lives at a place called Doug Durrance Farm.

Speaker 3 (01:16:07):
Okay, so you're kind of a Nick, you're kind of
a modern day Nick Adams lives there.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
Yeah, we didn't have a lot of that growing up.

Speaker 3 (01:16:16):
Right, So that. Yeah, they're deer hides, degrades of deer skins. Yeah, yeah,
Scratches are the biggest thing on a deer. Southern deer,
you know, even though some places in the in the South,
the deer hiyes are you know, decent size, they've got
a lot more scratches.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Yeah, scratches on the leather, scratches on the hair, like
the hair is damaged.

Speaker 3 (01:16:32):
No, the hair is all, you know, disregarded, it's all
taken off. You know, hair doesn't mean anything. But they
have less hair as well, on those southerns so they
have less protection. And but yeah, Michigan hide is like
if Wisconsin is you know, you know, seven bucks, Michigan
is nine. You know, it's like, what do.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
They I want to ask you what they're doing with it?
What what deer skins go for? Now? What they used
white tailed deerskins for today? But this girl who went
to high school with she later married this dude who
was from Argentina. That's not true. Whereada hell he's from

(01:17:15):
He bought cattle in Patagonia. 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.

Speaker 3 (01:17:37):
See, that's that's the same thing.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
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 barberarre because
I'm trying to find perfect But you know.

Speaker 3 (01:18:00):
I mean like the deer skin business. I mean, you
brought it up and you want to know about the leather.
I mean the thing that's hurt the deer skin business.
I mean, really, we're at below prices of ten years ago,
when we were much below just a few years ago.
I mean, overall, dear skin prices are down there. They're
they're up a bit from where they were maybe a
couple of years ago, but overall, certainly adjusted for inflation

(01:18:21):
from twenty years ago, they're much cheaper. And you know,
the overall reason is something I touched on before, and like,
you know, even twenty years ago, all tennis shoes were
made of leather, and today you can't hardly find a
pair of tennis shoes just made a leather. And so
the cowskin business is horrible.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
The cowskin business is terrible.

Speaker 3 (01:18:39):
Yeah, because the sneakers, it's sure, and that's that's a deal.
We're 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, you know,
five bucks a pair of shoes or whatever. And you know,
the price of you know, petroleum to go into their
shoe just doesn't change. So we're going to use that
no matter how fashionable they get. So yeah, when the

(01:19:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):
Take the price with it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:12):
You know. We saw in the early two thousands, we
saw all those commodities go crazy. You know, leather, cotton,
you know, wool, everything went nuts. 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 what's what's
being you know, what the consumer can actually buy.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
So what would like what products? If you're a dude
out wand and around, what products might you look at?
And you might be looking at a white tailed deer
skin killed by an American?

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
I would say mostly glove business. You know, it's mostly gloves, and.

Speaker 8 (01:19:45):
A lot of places offer that trade, like you can
trade in you know, ranch gloves. You get ranch gloves for.

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):
Yeah, one deer, we do it. We do it.

Speaker 4 (01:19:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:19:53):
When I yeah, when I was a kid, they would
do it. And it was the kind where the scene
was on the outside, so you didn't have good dexterity
and when you when your hand got wet and you
pulled out, most insulation was stuck to your.

Speaker 4 (01:20:04):
Hands, right right.

Speaker 3 (01:20:05):
Well, we tried to have a little better glove now,
but but yeah, it was. It was to the point
you couldn't even trade a pair of gloves a couple
of years ago. It was so cheap.

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):
So who are you selling deer skins to?

Speaker 3 (01:20:14):
We sell it all to Asia, Yeah, tanned or just no, no, no,
everything's just salted. Do you send it with the hair
on it? We sent it with the hair on it.
As a matter of fact. You know that ship that
got well, okay, so we had we had a load
delivered to that ship like a day before the cutoff day.

(01:20:35):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
Oh that ship, that ship hides on it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:44):
Yeah, Well, the next day somebody sends me a picture
of a TikTok with deer hides floating around with Baltimore.
Had my brother lives in Baltimore, and you like went
down there and you know, and we were and he
was my brother is the one that got the deer
heides booked on that load. And we were sure that
it was ours because we thought, hey, they only lost
two two containers actually fell off the boat and they

(01:21:06):
lost the stuff and we have 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 that ship.

Speaker 2 (01:21:17):
White deer skins.

Speaker 3 (01:21:18):
They were Canadian. I think.

Speaker 8 (01:21:21):
Did your ship make it? It is, it's still city.

Speaker 3 (01:21:23):
It got it got re routed and it's going right now.
So good luck. Yeah, hopefully they're still they're still fresh enough.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
Yeah, you do. I highly recommend to you.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
What do you highly recommend?

Speaker 2 (01:21:33):
There's a thing called me Eater's American History, The Long Hunters. Okay,
hear me out, Okay, The Long Hunters. It covers Colonial
America from seventeen sixty three to seventeen seventy five, and
it's the story of the white tailed deer skin trade.

Speaker 3 (01:21:48):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
At a point in that audio original, which features the
impeccable research of doctor I'm impressed.

Speaker 5 (01:21:58):
I will say that I'm serious. We have we have
turned up an air today on the bats thing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
So yeah, we get into not just deer skins being sold,
American deer skins being sold in England. We covered 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.

Speaker 5 (01:22:23):
Wow, and those deer skins were covered three years later.

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
Yeah, there's like still the recording. There's reporting in the
seventeen hundreds, there's reporting of a shipwreck. Tell the story, Ranel.

Speaker 5 (01:22:33):
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 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 twenty two hundred

(01:22:56):
or so damn badly damaged deer skins recovery from the
containership XYZ that had sunk in the mouth of the
whatever river three years prior. So, I mean just almost
straight out of the headlines. And fifty years later.

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
Do you know you ever heard of what you know
what a privateer is? No, it's a state sanctioned pirate. Okay,
So picture like, let's say we hate who do we
hate the most? I ran Okay Iron North Dakota. Right now,
I'm not like, this isn't like earth breaking, this isn't
like news show material. But we're a little you know,

(01:23:35):
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

(01:23:58):
state sanctioned pirates. There's state sanctions that they sort of
operate as a criminal enterprise under the flag of Iran,
under the support and ban of Iran, armed by Iran.
So these privateers, English privateer England would send out these
pirates to seize white tailed deer skins leaving where South Carolina.

Speaker 5 (01:24:23):
Uh, the English would be seizing skins coming typically out
of New Orleans.

Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
Yeah, they wouldn't want to seize their own whether.

Speaker 5 (01:24:30):
It 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 ships coming out of Florida.
But yeah, wece ver And then you'd read that, uh,
an English privateer had seized several thousand deer skins from
a French privateer that had previously seized them from an

(01:24:52):
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 dock.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
I'm gonna tell you one last thing about this thing.
You got to read listen to. Uh, you've attended many
for auctions. Yeah, I have.

Speaker 4 (01:25:12):
Yeah, they had this habit of not a habit.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):
They had a thing like you'd light a candle at
a auction. You'd light a candle and bidding added when
the candle went out, which leaves a certain level of uncertainty.
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

(01:25:37):
get to the point.

Speaker 8 (01:25:38):
Right, you've seen this done?

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
No, no, no, it's in. It's in media's American history, the
long Hunters.

Speaker 4 (01:25:44):
We should light one of them in here.

Speaker 8 (01:25:52):
How how easily can you tell the difference between a
wild mink and a ranch mink?

Speaker 3 (01:25:57):
Great question, it's not even it's it's just natural. I
mean you could see.

Speaker 8 (01:26:02):
If I was holding it right here, could you tell
the difference between absolutely?

Speaker 3 (01:26:05):
Yeah, And then would.

Speaker 9 (01:26:06):
It be something that we could easily tell it?

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
Just that within within ten minutes I could show show
you the difference. First thing is that wild mink is
going to be get Oh, it's going to be half
as big. So that's that's one thing that's going to
tell you and that and the fur is going to
be twice as long on a on a wild mink. Okay,
you know, h ranch make have been bred over the
years to get shorter and shorter to look real velvety.
You know, they don't like, for instance, this beaver. The

(01:26:30):
reason a lot of the reason why it looks kind
of dishoveled is because you know, it's just its hair is,
you know, two inches long. But if you have a
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

(01:26:52):
identical to the back, whereas a wild mink it gets
a little shorter. On the belly, it gets noticeably shorter.
And yeah, just in a course, colors, you know, ranch
mak are probably thirty colors. You know, you can have purples,
you know what.

Speaker 2 (01:27:05):
Really surely sure 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're
like they look like small otters, right, yeah, you know
he feels that he was catching escapees.

Speaker 3 (01:27:24):
Yeah, if there was a ranch around there, it had
you know, we buy we buy a lot of them
on the trucks that have been escapees because you know
Wisconsin and oh yeah, yeah, immediately you can tell yeah
that is big. Yeah, yeah, you'd be able to tell.
I mean, every once in a while you have a
ranch mank and you know, you handle you know, thousands
and thousands, and you're like, you know, it's just a

(01:27:45):
it's just a wild maker is it's a ranch mak.
But basically it's just very easy to tell the difference.
So I mean, like 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 coyot wow,
oh yeah, yeah bigger.

Speaker 4 (01:28:01):
Than Why what?

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):
Why?

Speaker 8 (01:28:04):
Like why do they want them that big?

Speaker 3 (01:28:06):
Just because it's you know, easier to work with. You know,
they're making trims out of most of the foxes, and
you know it's you know, if you're gonna 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 it's much cheaper.

Speaker 8 (01:28:19):
So fox and mink. What else do you buy that
comes from a rancher?

Speaker 3 (01:28:24):
Oh there's uh Chinese or fin raccoon, but it's 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.

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
They're raising raccoons.

Speaker 6 (01:28:37):
Yeah, sure, head there's no ranch coyotes.

Speaker 3 (01:28:44):
Uh no, no ranch that would.

Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
This is a huge ranchers, your ranch and what it's a.

Speaker 5 (01:28:54):
Big change in direction here. But so this is a
family business. Yes, Uh when 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. I like it, did you ever just
learn to trap so that you knew that part of
the business.

Speaker 3 (01:29:14):
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 think
I was either fourteen or fifteen when I first went
out a truck, out out.

Speaker 2 (01:29:32):
Buying to buy for at fourteen.

Speaker 3 (01:29:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had my own I had my
own route I had, I had had a driver and
we go around to the trappers and and buy fur.
And then I bought fur until my first couple of
years of college. And then you know, it was kind
of eighty seven and the kind of big crash then
kind of the European crash, and then I finished my
degree and came back in like ninety one.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
What all degrees did you get?

Speaker 3 (01:29:56):
I don't want to. I don't want to say, because
we were, you know, knocking.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
The but.

Speaker 3 (01:30:03):
I thought we Yeah, I have a degree in economics.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
Yeah, Randall's got a PhD Oh, yeah, they can.

Speaker 3 (01:30:11):
Tell I don't need one.

Speaker 5 (01:30:15):
No one really does.

Speaker 2 (01:30:19):
What was going on?

Speaker 4 (01:30:21):
What year were you born?

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
I was born in sixty six. My friend Stu Miller,
who's a trapper, he uh, he said, every generation has
its own fur boom, meaning he calls his fur boom,
which is the twenty thirteen fur boom.

Speaker 4 (01:30:36):
H he calls it the mini fur boom.

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
And when he says the mini fur boom, he's referring
to like the big fur boom, which was seventy eight
to eighty two, and then there was another big fur
boom in the roaring twenties or you know, you probably
know them all. I'm curious about, like what causes that
to happen, But let's focus on Let's focus on the two,
like what happened in nineteen seven and what happened in

(01:31:01):
twenty thirteen.

Speaker 3 (01:31:02):
Well, I guess in seventy eight, you know, it was
kind of the European fur boom, and 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 you know, our factory went from just
a few workers to seventy, like you know, overnight. It
was just unbelievable. Raccoon prices went from a few bucks

(01:31:23):
to thirty dollars, you know, overnight, and you know, everybody
was a trapper, and you know, it was very fashionable
and for you know, for and then that that kind
of boom kind of lasted a while because you know,
it kind of moved around. It went from you know,
started in Germany, went to Italy, Spain, you know, and
even ended up you know, in America. We were wearing
you know, beaver coats in the in the eighties and

(01:31:44):
and raccoon coats, and it was a great thing for
that generation because you know, my parents' generation was raised,
you know, in the depression, and you know, 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 parents' generation they love that,
you know, and so that was the that was the

(01:32:07):
fur boom of the seventies. It was it was high fashion,
and then it was ended, not because it went out
of fashion, but because the animal rights activists, mostly in Europe,
you know, they really really killed it in Europe, and
then you know, kind of lost lost fashion ability, and
you know my generation kind of you know, rejected it

(01:32:27):
for the opposite reason, or 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 first thing that a
retailer would say to my generation was, hey, you know,

(01:32:49):
I'll store that coade for you for the next twenty years,
you know, and charge one hundred and fifty bucks every year.
Retailer was more interested in storing the coat than he
was selling it. And so the retailer in the first
business all over the western world did the exact opposite
of what they should have done to sell, you know.
Fer to my generation that I think that has a
lot to do. You know what ended it? They didn't

(01:33:10):
keep it going because 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 you know, and it's a perfect thing
to throw away, you know, it you know, goes in
a landfill, 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

(01:33:31):
her granddaughter, but it was. It was an amazing times.
And you know for the next you know, fifteen 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
ninety dollars and you know, and 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,

(01:33:52):
in thirteen or twelve, ten eleven, uh, was you know,
a mini fur boom. I mean it was a massive
fur boom and it consumed a lot more mink. You know,
mink production I think peaked in eighty seven, maybe thirty
million mink or something like that, you know, and uh,
you know, and in the second peak, you know, the

(01:34:12):
ranch mink peaked at you know, maybe one hundred and
thirty million.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
Who was buying it then?

Speaker 3 (01:34:16):
Who was wearing it in in the first boom or
the second second In the second boom, it was a
lot of Chinese and Russia, Ukraine, but yeah, a lot
of a lot of Chinese, a lot of Russians. Russia
was you know, huge in the in the in that boom.

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:34:35):
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 rank and file people,
and 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

(01:34:56):
one hundred. So it makes it really difficult. You know,
it's u almost ten 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 ten times as much just because
their currency is 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

(01:35:17):
think at one point he on the black market. He
traded him at like one sixty or one seventy. You know,
I mean it's just worthless, you know. So but it's
kind of settled out around one hundred or so.

Speaker 2 (01:35:28):
Does your family still go out as grown wald for
and buy for from people in parking lots and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:35:34):
Absolutely, I still do it myself. I go all I
do mostly Wisconsin. I've done Michigan most of my life.
I did it this year up, I do Illinois. Yeah,
I go in a truck. My brother does it. Bryce,
the guy that I work with, does it. Terry does it.
We we have my brother goes. He lives in Baltimore.

(01:35:55):
He does the hole east coast New York state. Yeah,
he used to live in Berlin. Used to sell a
lot to Russia for US. But yeah, Gary buys all
of the southeast and northeast and we go through Missouri.
And then we have an office in Winnipeg too, And Bryce,
guy that I work with, he runs that office and

(01:36:15):
he buys all through Canada.

Speaker 8 (01:36:17):
How have.

Speaker 5 (01:36:19):
Like, how has the American trapper changed in your lifetime
the guys that you were selling or buying from years
ago versus like today and maybe what changes have you seen.

Speaker 3 (01:36:30):
Yeah, So we had a guy in our town, Forrest,
and 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 five hundred muskrat guy,
you know, which was kind of big back in the day.

(01:36:52):
And you know, my dad told me that, you know,
he 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 when he would
go to the creeks and trap the muscles competition. Because
of competition, he didn't want anybody to know. And they
were very silly, big money. It was big money, and
you know they could make you know, in the forties.

(01:37:13):
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,
they were you know, mink were like forty bucks back
in the forties. So so yeah, and even the dealer side,

(01:37:34):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:37:40):
Give me an example of what you wouldn't have said, like.

Speaker 3 (01:37:44):
Even what we used some of the tales for, you
know where that I sell direct in China, where I
sell I mean I would broadcast you know, the guys
I'm partners with in China. I don't care. You know.
Back then, Oh, you wouldn't tell one customer to anybody else.
You hid tags if you had customers come to your place.
You were so secretive. You would like if you went

(01:38:05):
to you know, to to a big auction, you know,
like one of NAFA'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 know. We don't
even care.

Speaker 8 (01:38:17):
You know, did you like that era or not?

Speaker 3 (01:38:19):
It was It was definitely a more romantic era, you know,
like you bought the skins. It was dominated by people
that you know had uh, they had nerves of steale.
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.

(01:38:41):
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 that was. It was definitely
a wild and uh tumble business dominated by you know,

(01:39:05):
really smart individuals.

Speaker 6 (01:39:07):
So you used to buy it math auctions, Yeah, we sure,
sure we did.

Speaker 2 (01:39:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:39:12):
Wonder if you bought any of my stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:39:15):
I had a couple of top top lot first.

Speaker 11 (01:39:17):
Wow, oh boy there, and that sure made a big
deal out of it right in his place.

Speaker 8 (01:39:32):
Have you knowingly produced any famous firs that were worn
by like a first lady or to a red carpet
or anything.

Speaker 3 (01:39:39):
Yeah, we have. I mean, you know, the guy that
made Joe Namas coat when he was on the Super Bowl,
that was that was on my customers. I sold in
those kyots.

Speaker 2 (01:39:46):
Seriously. Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 3 (01:39:48):
Yeah, and you know, it's hard to think of something
right now. But you know, I mean back in the day,
I've had Paris Hilton order from us. Uh what else. 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
you know, some of them don't use for anymore.

Speaker 8 (01:40:08):
But yeah, you know you should get that photo of
name it in that coat, get like a badge in
your office.

Speaker 3 (01:40:15):
Right well, I think it's up somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:40:17):
We could use to promote this podcast, right yeah, the
man who sold the man who.

Speaker 8 (01:40:27):
Uh, this morning, the Dow Jones was down nine hundred points.
Is that as far reaching as like changing your raccoon
prices this week?

Speaker 3 (01:40:35):
Or No, It's not gonna change my prices today. Obviously
I'm not buying any right now, but it is definitely
something we watch. You know, the economy in China right
now is rough. It's it's it's very poor. And you know,
the stock market, you know, going up or down five
percent in China is not really gonna make the economy

(01:40:56):
that much worse. I mean, there are days where I
have been you know a lot more upset when I
saw the doal go down, you know, a thousand points,
but you know they're not. You know, it's it's not
like we're selling one hundred million mank in China. We
need to because the economy is just rocket because that
was what was going on. I mean, the economy was
on fire. You know, people bought a condo in in China.

(01:41:18):
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, seventy eight
thousand bucks. You know, it was worth three hundred thousand bucks.
A couple years later they bought their next one. You know,
the next one was you know the five hundred, the million,
the million two, the million eight, and you know everybody
was doing that in China, and you know, everybody there
was the wealth effect. Everybody was rich. Everybody was buying

(01:41:39):
for coats and yeah, it was it was. It was huge.
So you know it's really not probably gonna have a
ton of effect. But you know, we watch it if
we have, you know, too much problems. You know, you know,
the cats don't go there, the beaver don't go there.
You know that the beaver is an American item kind
of as far as the hats, you know, that would
be something that you know, we worry about. You know,

(01:42:01):
so if demand starts to deteriorate, 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, you know, every morning
we wake up with our we chats and you know,
we go over them and we talk to our customers.
They give us a rundown of what they sold the

(01:42:21):
night before from each each store, and then we go
from there.

Speaker 2 (01:42:24):
No kid, Yeah, so, uh is fur gonna shine again?
As they say in the Charltte has the movie The Mountain, Then.

Speaker 3 (01:42:33):
Yeah, I think 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, I mean this maink thing, yeah,
it'll it'll probably help us. But we've got a new

(01:42:53):
generation of people that are not you know, they're they're
conscious consumers, and uh, I think they're 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
gonna say, you know, how environmentally friendly is that? And uh,
I really do think they they will look at it.
I mean, I I mentioned that I live part time
in Madison, you know, and it's a very liberal city,

(01:43:14):
you know. But I tell you, when you talk to
you know, people in 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 it's not going to last
for five hundred years in a landfill? You know, why
don't you buy something that's not going to produce you know,

(01:43:34):
any uh, you know any you know, residual effect after
just a few years. And uh, those those they're they're
really open.

Speaker 2 (01:43:41):
To that, like it's a renewable material.

Speaker 3 (01:43:44):
Sure. Sure, So I think, uh, I think we do
have a chance with this generation. Cause, like I said,
you know, it's we're we're we're selling a coat right
now that that has a rough on it, and we're
not taking that tach 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.

(01:44:06):
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 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 uh, you know, as as consumers become
more conscientious, they'll uh you know, we're you know, they'll

(01:44:27):
they'll they'll 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 yeah, we'll see what happens. I think the fur
business has to realize that you know that animal rights
people and environmental people are are you know, different people.
You know, it's not the same. Sure it's not. They're

(01:44:48):
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, you know, we're
you know, I think I think that's the cell that
we have.

Speaker 2 (01:45:05):
So and you guys will be out the grown walls,
the grown balds, sure, grown walls, grown walls will be
out buying furthest fall. We certainly will out of people, Uh,
out of people find you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:45:17):
Yeah, that's that's interesting. Last week I was actually with
the conservation officer and uh, I actually had a fish
kill on my property that because of a environmental deal,
but big cattle shit ended up being that. Yeah. But anyway,
uh yeah big Yeah, we're sitting next to the creek.

Speaker 4 (01:45:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:45:40):
The conservation officer was asking me my name and I said,
you know, he lives fourteen miles from where where our
factory is. And I said to him, I said, but
you know, you know who I am, right, you know?
And uh he said no, you know And I said, well,
he said, you know, we buy fer and he said yeah,
he said, I thought.

Speaker 2 (01:45:56):
I thought I heard about.

Speaker 3 (01:45:57):
Something like that down in forest and you know, which
is fourteen was 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 burbuyer in the world, you know,
and you don't know, but that is a little bit
of a problem.

Speaker 2 (01:46:14):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:46:14):
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, you know, 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

(01:46:35):
but I've got skins hanging all over the garage. You know,
my wife's sick of them. And you know, I finally,
you know, found you guys. But it is really it's
really kind of a 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, you tell them, hey,
I'll trap the raccoons or I'll trap the coyotes. You know,

(01:46:55):
that's a way to get on their property, you know,
to trap white tails. And that's what a lot of
these guys do. And you know what to do with
your skins. Well, there's there's there's a market for him.

Speaker 4 (01:47:03):
Yeah, give them sold man.

Speaker 3 (01:47:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:47:05):
His website has the routes listed, I'm gonna find you
this fall. Okay, traded a deer hide for some gloves,
all right, all right, sounds good.

Speaker 2 (01:47:14):
Thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker 3 (01:47:15):
All right, all right, thank you very much. Gfw co
o dot com. Do it real slow, g f w
co dot com and people can go there to find
your routes. Yeah. 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 you know all of Wisconsin,

(01:47:37):
you know, Illinois, Indiana, New York, uh, Nebraska, Missouri, all
the whole South, the whole all the states in the southeast,
North Carolina, South Carolina. You know, we cover the whole
Midwest and the East coast. So so all you.

Speaker 2 (01:47:54):
Guys doing raccoon control on your place because you're trying
to help turkey numbers or would duck numbers. Yeah, do
it in the winter, right during the winter, and call up,
call the Gronwald family and.

Speaker 4 (01:48:03):
Get down the route.

Speaker 9 (01:48:04):
You're gonna get bombarded.

Speaker 3 (01:48:06):
Now, right, I hope. So thanks for having me on
the show too, man.

Speaker 2 (01:48:10):
I appreciate that's great, very educational.

Speaker 4 (01:48:12):
Thanks man, I appreciate it.

Speaker 12 (01:48:19):
Run the rabbit stuff, rum num rabbits, then.

Speaker 13 (01:48:28):
Buster's and lead.

Speaker 7 (01:48:30):
He showing off that speed. Run the rabbit stuff.

Speaker 13 (01:48:40):
Through the thorns, through the thorns, and Ma, she's close behind.

Speaker 7 (01:48:51):
Now with one thing on.

Speaker 13 (01:48:53):
Through the thorns.

Speaker 14 (01:49:01):
Run and rabstann run rabbits down Skeeter's and packed new.
There ain't no turn back.

Speaker 7 (01:49:14):
Brown the rabbit stown.

Speaker 13 (01:49:24):
Crawls the chili m h crawls, chili creep.

Speaker 14 (01:49:33):
Spanky's in the ear, that old rabbit strawn everything crawls chili.

Speaker 7 (01:49:44):
So run the rabbit.

Speaker 14 (01:49:47):
Style, run the rabbits down shot down to the shorer Niles.

Speaker 7 (01:49:56):
Race on the rabbit starn.

Speaker 12 (01:50:12):
Choorley's looking Choorley's looking home. He ran his last races home.

Speaker 7 (01:50:26):
To a better places, and he says, run and rabbit

Speaker 3 (01:50:37):
Down h

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Steven Rinella

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