Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 399: The Kingpin Antler Dealer

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Ep. 399: The Kingpin Antler Dealer · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast, coming at you shirtless,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening un podcast.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: You can't protet anything presented by first, like creating proven
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: for every hunt first like go farther, stay longer. All right,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: we're joined today by an extraordinarily controversial guest. Thanks admission,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: who who's left open the idea that you might be
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: a bad guy, who's here only under duress, who wasn't
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: gonna do the show until he until he got to
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: read an Instagram comments. Do you're the first? You're the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: first and only guest we've ever had? It came on,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: um inspired by Instagram comments? Well, I wasn't. My wife
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: was inspired by it. She read the comments and she goes,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: you have to do it because I'm a non controversial
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: kind of a guy. I don't like controversy. Picture. Actually don't.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: You don't even have Instagram? No? I did, but I
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: just that's a good way to avoid I did. I
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: did figure out how to get on it. You did,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: and I did follow you. Awesome. I think I follow
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: you and Joe Rogan. You don't follow Yanni, not yet,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: but I will. What's your handle? What's that? Oh? Like? Yeah?
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: How do how do people find on Instagram? I think
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: it's Tony dot Shoffler. Okay, KRANI explain what happened on Instagram.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: People are so titilated now. I don't know if we
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: keep leading them along without them knowing what's going you
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like people are on there, like
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: on the edge of their seat. Well, what date was us?
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Probably pull that mike down crane two over two months ago?
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Step put up a post forty five thousand three pounds
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: of Elk antlers loaded up by a buyer. Listen, explain
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: what's in the picture, and then read the caption. It's
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: an image of a ginormous shipping container on a huge
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: truck and the doors are open, and the only thing
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: you see, kind of packed from left to right to
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: from ground to ceiling, is just antlers and a couple
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: of guys unpacking, like hand packed, hand packed, hand packed
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: into a shipping container like you wouldn't fit a mouse
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: in that shipping and tag packed to the gills. So
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: full elk candler, full of full of elk handler forty
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: thousand three and then now read the caption, and I
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: put this up at Stephen Ornella curious st e v
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: E n Rhinella yep. Three pounds of elk antlers loaded
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: up by a buyer and headed to overseas markets. This year,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: shed hunters were getting around twenty dollars a pound for
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: the fresh brown elk antlers. This buyer told me that
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the average weight of an of an antler he buyas
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: is five pounds, but they get up to twenty pounds apiece.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So do the math? Did? I say? No? But I
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: did some. I I was curious about it, and I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: did some research. And I bet you the ones you're
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: holding that Bowsman Chronicle picture of twenty pounders, No, they
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: weren't what they were. Probably they were probably in the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: fifteen pound rank. I think the largest, the largest single
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: shed we've ever bought off a wild elk was about
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: one pounds. There you go, underwent millions and million in
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the pound. Yeah, and then and then also the price
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: was up to I said up to okay, So but listen, man,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: I was consultant. I was consulting with you while crafting
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: my caption. But I apparently left off when I threw
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: out the poundage thing alright, So so you know, minor
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: minor inaccuracy is notwithstanding. I put that on Instagram because
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I met our guests here, Tony who from Rocky Mountain
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Antler Is that it just Rocky Mountain Antler, Rocky Mountain
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Antler Company LLCA. I met Tony Shoffler from Rocky Mountain
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Antler Company lllse up in Alaska. We had a brief meeting,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: a brief running into each other in which I found
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: out what his business was and I said, man, you
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: have to come on the podcast, and Uh, eventually, in
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: our conversation coming on the podcast, he sent me the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: picture and I thought, well, it's interesting as well, and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I put the picture up on Instagram. In in UH
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: in the comments section, Holy cow, hundreds and hundreds and
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: hundreds people comments. How would you typify the comments? I mean,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: it's the range from people being interested, people being amazed
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: at the number of antlers, people criticizing UH the China market.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: People people talking about the you know, just what they're
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: used for and how it's nuts. I mean, I would
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: I don't think there was any one kind of overwhelming
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: drawing drawing parallels between that and the commercial UH slaughter
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: of animals from the early twentieth century, just the whole
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: range of things. I thought. I thought the normal comment
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: would be, damn, that's a lot of antlers. Yeah, like this,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: one guy wrote, So you're saying that's just under a
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: million dollars and antlers. Holy f I'm in the wrong business.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: So you had that's that's what I thought. Please let
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: me explain that was that shipment was nowhere near a
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: million dollars. That was the lowest grade antler that you
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: can buy, and it's only worth a couple of dollars
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: a pound. Okay, we're gonna get it all that. I
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: just wanted to set the set the scene, okay. Sorry,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, you're doing great. You're doing great. Um, Jamie,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: are you here to talk or not here to talk? No,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: she's here for the BS filter for me, So I
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: don't get too carried away with my story. Oh, you
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: guys are married almost years. Yeah, I know you hasn't
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: married twenty nine years. Yeah, it's fantastic. Can each of
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: you can each of you hit us with um it
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: was a secret twenty nine years of married? Yeah. Mine.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: As you get up in the morning and you look
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: at your wife and you go, honey, I'm sorry, because
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: sooner or later during the day it's gonna happen, and
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: she just get it out of the way right off
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: the best, Honey, I'm sorry. I'm trying that tomorrow morning.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: I'm a little overdue on that. Right now. What what
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: do you got? You got anything hot? You an hot
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: even though you're not here to you're not here to talk.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: You know, your wife would probably say the same thing. Uh,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: patients and a strong backbone. M hm, because I know
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: that's what she'd say to her. Well, if you're man, yeah,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: but it's also she puts up with a lot of
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: me not being around. You're on the road a lot,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: you know, if you do this full time. You know, Yeah,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: the Antler business came between us, but it didn't. How
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: long you been married, Brodie? What year is it? Uh? Sixteen? Yeah, sixteen?
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Well you got a good shot at making it. Oh
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: I've made it, manka that twelve year. If you can
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: get past that, I got no worries yet, twelve All right,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: go along. Uh, here's something really okay. I'm gonna go
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: down to the thing I think is most interesting. Check
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: this out, A guy writes in The Guy writes in
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: oh Holmett, Oh, this didn't happen to him, I have
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: to his friend. Still, damn it. Now you get into
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the whole like right, exactly, there's a hearsay element. Damn,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: it's unreliable. Notice that, but for it? So I thought
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: it happened to him. But you mustn't been really excited
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: about this tilating story. Listen, this story is a great story. Okay,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: so everyone bear in mind. This is something to happen
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: to a friend of his, so you know who knows. Okay, Pennsylvania.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Set the scene. We're in Pennsylvania. Do you you want me
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: to set the scene. No, I'm just saying that we're
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania. Oh my god, it's it's how did I
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: not notice this? It's his friend's brother. Yeah. This is
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: like when you go to a thing and some guy
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: comes up, like look at this bucked at my neighbor's
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: cousins brother's brother in law's neighbor. Got That's why I'm
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: not I'm not like there's an unreliable narrator element to this,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: like I don't know, well know, because it's still it's
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: still is interesting, it is, Okay, so listen, I'm just
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: gonna Actually it happened to me. I was just Pensi
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Lane and here's what happened to me. This is great.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: They're in it. Okay, whoever the hell it was an antler.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: I believe every word of it because it's like, who
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: would make it up. They're in an antler restriction area
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania. Well, the whole state's antlers. It used to
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: be not that way, and it switched to antler restictions.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know ten years ago. The whole state. Yes,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid, you could shoot spike Bucks
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: the whole states restrict Yeah, the whole states. That's not true. Listen,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: it is. I was just hunting there with my musket. Yeah,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: and you it's most of the state is three points. No, okay,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Steve's wrong. Most of the state is three points. That
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: could be brow tein and a fork. The northwestern part
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: of the state where I grew up, has to be
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: three up, meaning a brow time would like it doesn't
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: have to have a brow time, but it's gotta have
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: three up. So main beam g one are would be
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: two three? Steve, who are you? Colin Seth on his
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: way to Southdakota. So I was buying this pilot antlers
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: off this guy? Which guy hang? Prior to two thousand two,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: antler restriction was two points what had to be a spike,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: So that's when they went to UH statewide antler restrictions.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: It's not that's not accurate. Bear with me, man, Phil.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Why don't these people answering their phone if you had
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: shot a spike with your musket, you've been breaking the law. Rick, Yeah, Hey,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: is the entire stay of Pennsylvania an antler restriction unit? Yeah? Yes,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: so like the entire state can't hear you? I want
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: to say it again right here on the air, the
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: entire state. And Seth correct me if I say I'm
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: with him? Was trying to answer. But the entire state
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania is a first people sixteen and older is
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: a three point on one side restriction. But there used
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: to be at least a served part up near Warren
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: County near Erie on one side. But correct, the entire state.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: If you're over sixteen, you cannot shoot through like it
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: has to have three legal points on one side. Yes,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: that's also verifying agreement. Day okay, but why when we
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: were hunting did no one mentioned this to me? Yeah?
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I wish this would have been a trivia question. I
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: don't have information that we didn't. I feel like we did.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: I could have shouted four game, didn't he'd be in
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the pokey right now, we would. Did you tell Steve
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: that like about the three point rule before we did?
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Then yes? On the podcast, right, I got I gotta go.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Jean didn't mention that ship and he put me in
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: like legal jeopardy. So listen anyway, that sets this whole
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: thing up. Okay, but does set the whole thing up.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: This guy's hunting in Pennsylvania. He's in Uh, there is
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: a rule you have the buck has to have three
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: points on one side. Where they're hunting, that has have
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: three points on one side, not counting the brow time.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: They call that three up in Pennsylvania, not counting the
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: brow time. You here. So since white tails throw a
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: brow time like nine nine on, this is a ball
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: part of white tails throw a brow time. So he's
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: saying to be illegal, it's it's by a by a
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: eastern count needs to be uh an eight point right,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: So when you remove the brow tins, he's got three
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: on each side, he's gonna have three on one side,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: not counting the brow tign. Now this guy shoots a
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: buck with no brow tign missing it's brow tign, but
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: has three times, he gets cited by an officer. The
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: officer's view on it is that since there is no
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: brow tign, his definition is the next up antler becomes
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: a brow tign. Like imagine you have a line of
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: people and the first person in the line, the person
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: in front of the line, is eliminated. Then number two is,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden number one. That's his claim. I
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: took this to hefflefinger helfl fingers like a brow time
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: is a brow time. The absence of a brow time
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: does not promote the next antler to a brow time.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Like a brow time is a very definitional point, but
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: it doesn't have it. It doesn't have it. But that
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean his his body down the line becomes him.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: But if you're scoring it, it's not like if he
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: doesn't have a brow time, then all of sudden, the
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: G two would become the G one. That wouldn't happen, right,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: But under the law, it doesn't matter. If it's got
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: three points up, it's a legal buck. Let me allow
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: me to allow me to half a finger dissected the law. Okay,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: assuming this is all described accurately, see see that that's
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: classic helf of finger like he already knows right, he
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: already knows the layout. Assuming is described accurately, that sounds
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: like a mess. To quote, I'm reading something. Assuming this
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: is all described accurately, that sounds like a mess. But
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure this email is describing it correctly or
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the l EO is wrong Law enforcement officer. Okay, the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: law linked below says that it has to be three
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: points on a side, not including the brow tyne in
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: a few units, and just three or more points anywhere
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: on the antler and the rest of the state. That's correct. Okay,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: The dear this person describes would be legal everywhere, so
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: I don't understand the issue. The law below doesn't classify
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: a G two as a brow tign. It just helps
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: people understand what a brow tyne is by saying it's
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: the one right above the burd. I would not read
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: that to mean that if it doesn't have a brow tin,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: then you count the G two as a brow tign.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: It just means you can't count the brow tin is
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: one of your three points, and those few counties where
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: it is more restricted, that's correct. If an officer is
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: counting this dear's G two as the brow time and
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: then saying the deer is illegal because it only has
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: two more, then that is clearly a misinterpretation of the law.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: In my opinion as an Arizona guy with no law
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: enforcement experience, there are a few scientific papers out there
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: that defined terms for the times of all servants that
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I would trot out in a court case to show
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: that is an incorrect interpretation. A G two is never
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: a brow time. If the brow tign is missing, then
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the deer just doesn't have a brow time and the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: G two is still the G two, So they need
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: to go get that guy out of jail. I have
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a heart. I'm not saying this guy's a liar. I
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: have a hard time believing that a Pennsylvania game warden
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: would not have a good understanding of this law. It's
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: been around for a while. Like, I have a hard
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: time buying it. That is, like, because it would be
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: happening all the time, Like every six pointer that got
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: shot that didn't have a brow time would be like,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: but not those little basket at six is a lot
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of them, don't guy, wrote in. Another guy wrote in,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: and it was a guy. His name is Joe Tony.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: If you have anything to weigh in on any of these,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: please do thank you. Okay, you awome. There's a lot
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: of talk about antlers. You know, well, I think that
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: that's why you know. That's I think that you know
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: o'caran over there. I think that's why she probably threw
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: that in there. I should have probably brushed up on
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: my Pennsylvania game loss. Here's this one. There's nothing to
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: do with the antlers. Guy wrote in, he's got he's
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: got interesting. He's got an interesting point. Your coverage of
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: lead pollution issues, so our coverage of the lead the
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: lead debate, that's how I described ride. The coverage UM
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: has been great, he says, but I wish you would
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: also mention a less serious but still annoying AMMO pollution issue,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: plastic shotgun wads. I am a San Francisco based hunter.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: He there's a parenthetical he puts in, says, yes we
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: exist in fisherman. I love up. This is him. I
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: love uppland and waterfowl shotgun hunting, as well as surf
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: fishing the ocean. Many times while fishing the beach I
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: have come across plastic shotgun wads, including some marked six,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: which is mostly used for upland hunting in California. It
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: disturbs me that shotgun hunting involves littering plastic in the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: form of a wad with every shot. Nobody is seriously
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: expecting to retrieve their wads. On principle, we should oppose
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: this littering, especially given all of the new research on microplastics. Additionally,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the concern about giving hunters a bad name is especially
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: salient here in California. Surf fishermen have all I had
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: with groups like the Surf Rider Foundation to fight important
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: battles for public access to beaches. Surf Riders also, in
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: my opinion, rightly concerned about plastic pollution at beaches and
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: successfully pushed through a plastic straw band. As a result,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I believe hunters would be well served by understanding the
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: WIDD problem and proactively working with potential partners to try
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: to solve it, rather than risking becoming their next target.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Shotguns worked well with cardboard wads before plastic was even invented.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: In modern biodegradable materials offer even more options. There's no
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: reason today why shotgun hunters need deliver to litter every
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: time they pull the trigger. Great point it is, but
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: ammo maker's gotta decide whether they can afford to do that. Well,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: paper will, I mean, wads do a lot more now.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Wads do a lot more now than what they like. Originally,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a wad was just the bear year between the shot
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: and a barrier between the powder and the shot. The
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: wadding in a in a musket would be it would
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: help form a grip in the rifling right um. With shotgun,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: if you if you didn't have wadding there, I think
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: that you would every time you tip the gun, your
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: powder would go filter into the um. Your powder would
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: filter into the shot. And also nothing would really carry
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the shot out. But now wadding like grips the shot,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: controls the pattern, carries like actually carries it a little
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: ways before the fins. As the fins open up, it
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: slows down, but like like contains the shot. But I
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: don't know if someone told me that in ten years
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: someone was gonna be making some of that ship out
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: of corn starts that like, uh that you're throwing your
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: compostor and it rains a couple of times and vanishes,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised by that. I mean, I think
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: obviously it's a litter problem, but a bigger litter problem
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: might be at the jerks that don't pick up their
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: shells off the ground. Yeah, but as easy, Yeah, well
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: that's avoidable. And this is heart like you can't find him.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: That's good. It's a good point. It's interesting point to
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: think about. I do now and then look and be like, bamn,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: a little wads laying around everywhere? Do you do you
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: ever get your hands on any cardboard shells back when
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: they you know, the old shotgun shells? Yea wax. I
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: was reading about the guy that killed uh. I was
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: reading about the guy that killed the guy that killed
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Jesse James. He took he took a bunch of pipe
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and cut the pipe in. I think this is true.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: I read it might not be true. He took a
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: bunch of pipe and cut the pipe and little short
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: chunks and it took a chisel and knocked those chunks
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: in a little like picture that you too had a
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: wedding ring, okay, and then you took and laid that
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: wedding ring flat on the ground and took a chisel
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: and start a busting it to pieces straight down anyways,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: filled the big double barrel coach gun full of that
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: cut him in a half pretty much. I don't that's true.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Did mountain men bait? Here's a question that came in
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: from Long Island, A lot of emails from low representation
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: UM emails, some very low representation states hunter hunter representation.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Did you know the answer? You have to look look
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: into this a little bit. I know the answer. I'm
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: not interesting the question. I'm not interested in the particulars.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I'm just I'm not interesting the actual answer, and it's
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: interested in the mentality of the question. Oh, I'm interested
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: in the answer. Did mountain men bait? Hey me died
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: to Crew. My name is Paul and I'm from Long Island.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I'm a longtime fan and I had an interesting question
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: for the Meat Eater Gang to discuss on the podcast.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I was reading a comments section on baiting for wild
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: game Dear barrat cetera, and I was wondering what the
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Meat Eater Crew knows about how the Mountain Men hunted
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: and trapped and whether or not it ever involved baiting
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: on a large scale. This came to mind because a
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: lot of hunters questioned the integrity legitimacy of harvests that
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: are a result of baiting. However, praise the methods are
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: ways used by mountain men of decades centuries ago. I
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: think this is an interesting and potentially divisive subject. Okay,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: let me say the great question. First off, I'm gonna establish, Uh.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: I want to establish when people say a mountain man,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: what are they saying? Um you Okay, A mountain man
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: means a very specific thing. You could watch a show
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: called the Mountain Men, and that's like not mountain men.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: That's uh, that's like a like a contemporary thing called
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: mountain But when we talk about mountain history, we're talking
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: about like a very specific thing from a very specific
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: time frame. Uh. These were the most probably the most
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: well traveled uh individuals of their time, probably the least
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: xenophobic individuals of their time, um, and the greatest risk
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: takers of their time. If you wanted to do something
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: like today, like the mountain en did, then you would go,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: like during the Afghanistan War, you would have gone to
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: the uh mountain ranges that separate Afghanistan and Pakistan and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: gone in that atmosphere and try to go become a
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: professional hunter in those mountains at that time. Uh, the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: mountain man era began the minute the Lewis and Clark
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: expedition ended. So it sort of begins with John Colter's
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: return out to the West trapping beaver and it ends
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: about two when the beaver market collapsed. So we're talking
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: about a mountain man. We're talking about like professional beaver
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: trappers who operated in the inner mountain west between about
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: I mean really like it heated up like um too,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: did they bait yep? Uh? The only the way they trapped.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: They didn't use connor bears. They only us footholds and
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: and and it seems like they almost exclusively used castor
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: sets castor mountain sets using foothold traps. So every all
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: the bea were the all the mountain men caught were
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: probably caught with bait lure not bait. And I'm sure
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: they were savvy enough to put some fresh peeled willow
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: or aspen to supplement their sets in the fall season.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: But they were using lure uh for hunting big game. Now,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I can't picture it. They didn't do like side hustles
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: with the other kind of fur, not during that period.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Not during that period. Now, when the beaver market collapsed.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Those many of those guys then got into very serious baiting,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Like a lot of them became wolfers. Like the wolfers
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: followed the beaver market. Well, the wolfers kind of came
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: like the real serious wolfers came the beaver market collapse
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: in thirty two. Then you had the hide hunting era,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the buffalo hide hunting area that kind of came on
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: its heels. What came on the heels of that was
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the wolfer market. And they bait it where they would
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: kill an animal, kill a buffalo, whatever, gash it all over,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: pour Strict nine on it. Wait a couple of days,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: come back to your Strict nine carcass and pick up
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: poisoned wolves. So that was bait. They would take another
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: way that guys would for doing grizzlies, either for bounty
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: money later on or otherwise. You take a mule out
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: to a good spot, shoot the mule, hunt the mule,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: and shoot shipped the can of the mule. So yeah,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: big time baiting. Um, A lot of the guys that
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: were commercial bear guys trapped and they had baited that.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: You know they're they're baiting with traps. I don't know
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: that I would. I don't know that that's where I
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: would look to find um if I was going to
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: defend baiting today, I don't know that that's where I
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: would look. Any thoughts, Here's a good one, you guys good. Yeah,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: it's just there's just not enough to to compare. I
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: don't think it's just not the type of hunting that
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: we do today, like a commercial market hunting. Yeah, this
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: is a good one that I think we're gonna be done.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: This is the last one that we're gonna get into
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: the antler market. This guy writes in from Nova Scotia.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I live in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. This is this
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: is a real this is you thought the antler thing
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania was interesting? Phil Way, do you hear this?
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I really hope it involves you being embarrassed on life
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: on the air. I live in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: You're following track and film, got it? I bought a
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: six to seven acre I sweaty doesn't know how big
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: his parcels. He bought a six to seven acre piece
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: of land in mm hmm. Moving back to my hometown
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: of London, England. What's that meaning? From from London, England.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Oh from Oh, okay, so he was living in London. Hmm, okay,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Feller from London. This is someone. This is like really
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: far out for us. I thought nutsought Long Island was like.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: So he's a guy from London. You wanna talk about
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: low representation? Moves the nova Scotia by six to seven
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: acres a piece of land, and twenty fifteen the appeal
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: of the land. He goes down to say it was
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: a dock on the ocean, sidewalk into town house to
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: raise kids, and land to hunt white tails out back.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: There's only about a one acre piece at the back
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: where I can discharge a crossboat. Okay, buys a land.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: He's got a legal place. He can discharge his crossbow
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: on an acre of land. Now they're coming to do
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: eminent domain across his property in order here's where the
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: rub is, in order to put in a power corridor
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: to serve a new solar plant. So he's in the
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: admittedly awkward position of being a nimbi about alternative energy.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Like it's better if it's like a real villain, right, Like,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: but it have to be a solar energy like a
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: thing that everyone's supposed to support because it's green energy,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: and now he's got to be a nimby. I'd like
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: to know why he can only discharge on an acre,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: like is the rest like within town limits or something?
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Or you know, have you gone to his website solar
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Sham dot c A. Have not? Did you go krint?
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Why are you not reason why? I think you can
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: research the piss out of this crint. You didn't call him.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: So let me get to the let me get to
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: the rub. So exppropriation is their Canadian version of eminent domain.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: We have an he's going on to say, we have
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: a concept of injurious affection, which are personal damages and
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: the reduction and value of the rest of my residential property.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Do he's claiming? Tell you back up, here's what he's claiming.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: They're claiming, here's the land value for us running. Well, no, no,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: you're not. You're not valuing You're not valuing it right,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: because what you've just done is destroyed my ability to
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: like hunt deer on my place. How are we gonna
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: draw how are we going to value that? You're not
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: valuing that I had a little mini chunk of hunting
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: ground and you're destroying it. And then you're telling me
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: it's value is one thing, when the value is exponentially
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: greater because of the circumstance. My sidebar question would be
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: if he discharges his crossbow and his little one acre
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: piece and that said dear runs off that one acre
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: piece and dies. Oh, that's that. This is the thing
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: that I've been arguing about with with not arguing about,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: texting about with my buddy dog during where they have
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: some of these public access programs and he was pointing
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: out to me that some of these public access pro
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: like public access and private land programs are making deals
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: on like ten acre parcels and guys are bow hunting it.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: In the amount of conflict that the rises. It's like,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: how are you anticipating that you're gonna bow hunt white
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: tails on that size piece of ground and have it
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: be that it's dead on the ground like you're asking. Yeah,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: and then you've got all those that urban deer hunting
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: that's happening now too. Yeah, But I feel like back,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: you know, any anything east of the Mississippi, hunting white
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: tails on a ten acre chunk is very normal. Ten
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: acres and acres like in Indiana. I'm not saying no,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: no, No No, you're not listening to what I'm saying. No,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not telling about what's going on or not going on.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: I'm saying there is a high flight risk. There's a
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: high risk. Okay, for instance, Carl, I'm not gonna say
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: his last Carl has a very small parcel. You know
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: what Carl did before he ever put a tree stand up,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: went and talked to his neighbors, every single one of them,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: and said, I don't I'm not planning on I'm not
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: hoping this happens, um, but I'm laying the groundwork for
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: the fact that I might have to come pay you
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: a visit. And here's why. And he secured an okay
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: under those circumstances ahead of time from everyone around him
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: good neighbors. That was Duran's point during this point wasn't
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: not to do it. During his point was so many
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: problems could be taken care of if people were just
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: a little more neighborly. That was his point. Yeah, I agreed,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: be a good neighbor. He talked about someone that got
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: a deer this year that was literally it was literally
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: hung up in the neighbor's fence. M hmm, Okay, ready,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: how like, okay, how did you get into how did
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: you get into antler picking? What do you what do
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: you like to call it shed hunting? Antler picking the
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: antler market? Yeah, jed hunting because you're a third you're
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: a second generation generation um working on possibly third Sam
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: coming up, that's your boy. Yeah. Well, my dad was
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: probably the first i'd say, large scale commercial buyer in
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: the United States, way before it was cool. And how
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: did that come about? Like what what years was that?
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Going on mid seventies seventies he started buying antlers? Yeah,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: well he was, he was. He used to pick him
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: up back then, I need only pick up the big
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: brown ones. And he was selling them to there was
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to say this, like an Asian
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: buyer middleman in the States where buying antlers. How would
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: you say that? Karin um that that was quite fine.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: The reason I say that is is I can't remember
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: if it was a Chinese or Korean at the time. Sure,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: and there are different you know, Asian Asian folks who
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: believe that antlers have medicinal value. So yeah, that was
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: totally appropriate. So anyways, he was selling them to these
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: buyers and he was tired of them taking advantage. They were,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: he mean, he felt he so presumably he felt he
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: was selling them for a lot less than their actual uh.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: And then there would be two or three of them there,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: and that one would be throwing the antlers over the
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: truck into the bushes before they weighed them. You know,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: they just weren't scrupulous buyers. Yeah, what state was this
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: going on in? I think I don't know where the
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: buyers were, but it was in the It was in
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the Montana area. And he got tired of that, so
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: he went and convinced the local bank two bankroll them.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: And so he started buying and going around the middleman
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: straight to the overseas market. And it kind of just
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: snowballed from there. Who was who was he? Who did
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: he go to to find a direct market for his antlers?
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: And what were they using them for? Back then? They
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: were using them for medicinal purposes. I guess they grind them.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Right now, they were slicing them in wafer thin and
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: simmering them in a tea and I'm sure they were
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: probably mixing gensng and some other herbs in there and
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: drinking the broth. Really, yeah, have you done this? Green? No,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: I never have. But there's a picture of that, the
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: like really paper thin slices that I put into the
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: document just for you to see. You know, there's some
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: serious serious the look at some screen grabs from Amazon, right,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: So I went down the rabbit hole looking at all
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: the different forms that you can consume. But that's that's velvet.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: It could be velvet. And below it's just is the slices. Okay.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: So there's two products here that that Crim pulled off Amazon.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: One of them, one of them has four ratings, five star,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: five star review, four ratings Elk Elk Velvet Antler. But
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: I think that's from like farm raised this, Yeah, and
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: they're calling it it is it's from Elk Farm. They're
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: calling it velvet antler for dogs. Gluco Samans supplement Hip
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: and Joint Health. Yeah. I was gonna say, I'm not
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: really learned it. I'm certain, but I'm pretty sure it's Glucosa.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Jamie just said that Tony knows the well, No I don't.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I'm not seeing I obviously can't prepared and then up
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: to so no, yeah, he sh'll pass over. Another product
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: that Krim pulled up two ratings, three star review. Oh
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: that that little bottle is uh that that little bottle?
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: How many ounces is that bottle? Krim? Oh? I can't
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: see right now. So they're they're touting it. Uh, I
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: don't know what's it like? A four ounce bottle? Find
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: out what the hell that humping that bottles. They're touting
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: it as a joint health, anti inflammatory, increased energy in
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: a healthy coat for your pet. And then there's another
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: product that she has here that krim pulled up from
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Jin Sang store and more dear Antler slices, Premium whole
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: seek a dear Antler sizes energy hormones. Here's the description.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: This is a this is from E s A. This
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: is from English as a second language individual. I believe
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: deer Antler slices, Antler velvet whole slices, seek a dear
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Antler lou wrong energy horm owns sex health for men
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: and women. I got a question back in the middle
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: of a question, were already talking like, I think that's
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: pretty so I want to go back to no, I'm
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not even scratching the certain Remind me, though, I've
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: got a story about that for you. Okay, um, Back
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: then that was the only market like he wasn't perhaps
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: selling big antlers to taxidermist or none of that stuff
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: that's going on. There was always a market for like
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: a few belt buckles and some knife handles, but no, uh,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: majority of it was going straight up. Was your was
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: your old man? Was he always looking for ways to
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: make money outdoors? Like? Was he a fur trapper? Like, uh,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: mushroom hunter? He trapped? He originally moved to the Madison
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Valley to for the lion hunting. Okay, so yeah, and
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: he trapped, he process wild game just so. He just
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: pulled it together from the outdoors. So it's natural for
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: him to be like, hey, there's money to be made
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: in antlers, or I could find a way to make
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: money handlers and getting antlers. When did he establish your
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Guys Company? He went and he incorporated probably in the
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: early eighties. And when you were when were you born
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: before then? I was born. Yeah. Anyways, I moved up
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: to Montana from San Diego when I was fifteen, and
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: that's when I got kind of what were you doing
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: in San Diego living with my mom? Oh? Yeah, so
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: I came up here. It's your mom and dad. I
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: don't want to open old wounds, No, I mean, no,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: they divorced when I was young, And you're I hauled
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: you off to San Diego. Well, no, they were. My
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: dad was down there and then he moved up. Oh
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: I see, and then uh, anyways, I came up the
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: visit and saw that you could carry guns in the
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: truck and get away with it, you know, And I'm
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: like yeah, so and then I got started. He was
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: already buying and selling then, and I just kind of
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: started helping out after school and on the weekends, and
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: then started doing it full time. Probably eighty five ish
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: is when I started actually traveling on the road buying.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: And back then it wasn't like it is now. A
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: lot of people brought their stuff in and I just
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: buy antlers all day long at the shop, and people
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: just stopped by all day long with piles of antlers.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: And then I did start traveling and meeting buyers. So
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: was it like very seasonal like used to be? You
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: suhould be very seasonal basically at starting early April and
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: then by July you were done with the buying. But
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: now with the antler market being so competitive and so
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: many people involved, now it's it's a year round thing.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: So talk to talk to me about when you got started.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: What was you had a shop in the Madison Valley
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: and yes, and you had a sign out that said
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: I buy antlers, we buy antlers or some such Yeah. Probably, yeah,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: And people are bringing in what all kind of antlers
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: mainly deer and elk. And how are you value how
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: are you valuing before the antler market exploded and they
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: became all these multiple competing things like dog chees and
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: all this other afrodisiacs, all this ship there's no afrodisiacs involved.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Say that that's a myth, that's a If it was
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: an aphrodisiac, I'd be in prison because I snored enough
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: of this dusk during the course of a day to
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: kill the average mortal. But what are they harvesting in
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: New Zealand? What are they harvesting all that velvet for supplements?
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Right here says it helps sex for energy, horse sex,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: the velvet things like different man like that. It was
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: like all over the news a couple of years ago,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Like that's the set. I think the hormone thing is
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: tied to the velvet. There is to stop sterone in
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: there to a certain degree, but it's not a it's
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: not a sexual enhancement that I'm aware of. M And
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: you know, well you would think, right, I mean, yeah,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: like you get done with the day of antler cutting.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: And but look I did some research and um there's
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: a there's a you know, some scientific journal articles out
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: there that are testing the antler core beyond just the
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: velvet as well. So I mean from from a from
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: a single article, uh, from science direct, there are some
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: conclusions that the deer antler base has emerged as a
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: good source of traditional medicine. Oh sorry, let me back up,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: um key. Findings both in vitro and in vivo pharmacological
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: studies have demonstrated that dear antler base possess immuno wow
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: im you know, dolatory, anti cancer, anti fatigue, anti osteoporosis,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: anti inflammatory, analgestic, antibacterial, anti viral, anti stress, antioxident you
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: get the picture. They're like twelve more antis um and
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: although the mechanism of action is still not clear, the
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: pharmacological activities could be mainly attributed to the may your
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: bioactive compounds amino acids, polypeptides, and proteins. Based on animal
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: studies and clinical trials, dear Antler Basse causes no severe
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: side effects. So this is just one uh research studies,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: key findings. Uh. Do you know do you know, um,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: when you're talking about the early buyers, do you know this?
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: You must notice because this is a quote from you,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: this fellow Johnny Wang as being uh an early like
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: godfather of antlership and basically yeah, so you eventually got
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: to go eventually went into competition with him. I'm assuming
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: kind of he was. I met him when I first
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: got going, and he was going down to that Antler auction,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: but he was blaying Antler's But then he kind of
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: faded away, and my dad kind of took over that
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: godfather role when you guys he was. My dad was
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: the buyer for years and most of the people that
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: compete against him, we're actually buyers for us at that time.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: So he created his own competition, which is human nature.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: You know, how would you guys, how would you guys
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: get How would you guys create a buyer mark a
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: buyer network around the country. You just touch base with
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: people and they find you, they find me, um, and
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: you've got to establish a relationship with him and deem
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: him trustworthy because there's a lot of money involved, and
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: you know you have been stung before. Do you bankroll
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: your buyers? Most of them? You do? Yeah, so you've
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: got to be real careful. How many buyers do you
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: how many buyers work for you buying nailers? Let's say
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: a good at least ten in what what geographical area?
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Mostly the Rocky Mountains? Uh, And I do have some
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: buyers out in the Midwest. I'm establishing some contacts out
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: there for white tail and anilers. Yeah, what are those
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: being used for the same So the goals were the
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: same stuff. Yeah, there's a heck of a lot more
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: white tailed deer, and although their antlers are smaller than elk,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: I would think that overall there would be generally a
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: more mass of white tail antlers in this country than
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: there are elk canlers. Right, there are probably pounds and pieces. Yeah,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: white tails are almost coast to coast. Now, I think
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: you know, when I first started hunting in Montana, when
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: you were in diapers, probably maybe, uh, you didn't see
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: white tails hardly at all on the river bottom. First
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: deer I ever shot with the bow was a mule
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: deer buck on the river. And now you know yeah,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: taking over the world. Man, When you say you've got
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: you've been stung before, is that like you've ended up
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: with antlers from someone that got them? And the meaning
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: you you send money to buyers and don't they don't
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: give you antlers back or they take you. I was
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: just wondering if you with your competition, Yeah, I was
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: wondering if you ended up with antlers that that person
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have had in the first place. No, tell me
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: what what what's antler worth? Right now? Right now? The
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: markets down soft relative to what relative to win to
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: the springtime, the shed season that usually strengthens up then also,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: so it's on a seasonal slump right now. Right basically, Yeah,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: everybody's pretty well. I guess you gotta go out and
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: three months and you've gotta buy your whole year's inventory
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: in three months. And when most people get full up
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: then they back off. So are when you when you
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: set out to buy antler in the spring, are you
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: trying to fill a you're trying to fill a specific order.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: You're just trying to buy as much as you know
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: you gotta night. Yeah, basically now you're trying to buy
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: all you can because there is a lot of competition.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: Now there's buyers everywhere, you know. I'll go in states
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: and literally see three different Antler buyers sitting on the
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: street in three different towns in a thirty mile radius. So, yeah,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: you gotta really hustle. Now. You see ads for it
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: in the paper all the time. Classified, Yeah, craigslist billboards, billboards.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Have you ever done one of those billboards? No? Oh really,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: I don't advertise very much. I've run under the radar.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I don't drive with trailers, don't have big brands on it.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: My name and phone number. People find you, they know
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: who you are, they'll find you m word of mouth.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: So what is Antler going for? Let me like tell
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: me like white tails, mule, deer, elk, moose, Like, like,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: what are we talking about? What could a seller? Right? No? No, no, no, okay,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: whenever the hell? What when one's peak? Well, it depends.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Let's go to March, last March, March or April, whatever
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: the hell monk makes most sense. Well, last year, the
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: price went down in the winter, and then late winter
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: early early spring people start running out, and then they'll
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: go out and buy, and then I'll bring the price up.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Because what happens is rather than just going out and
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: hustling and buying me olers, people try to outbid you
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: by fifty cents a pound, and all that does is
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: bring the market up. Yeah, you can go out and pay,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: you can go out on the street and buy antlers
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: and pay less than the going rate, and you're still
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: going to buy antlers just by being there. But you know,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: that's what happens. And when the demand, like right now
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: in the last couple of years, the demand exceeds a
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: supply and that drives the price up to right now,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: right now, it's probably a pound for any kind of antler, No,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: just for the egg, the brown fresh elk, okay, And
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: what's a white tailed deer antler that's running twelve maybe
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: right now for the brown stuff? Each is it like
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: elk and white tailed deer and mule deer are all different,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: and each one is graded A, B and C. And
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: how is three grades? There's I have four grades actually,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: you know, you got the A which is the fresh quality,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: natural brown color, and then there's the B grade, number
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: two grade, which is stuff that's laid out for a year. Um,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: it's got hairline cracks in it, you know, and it's faded.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: And then you have the c your number three grade,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: which the chalk it's been laying out for several years.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: And then we have what we call the number. I
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: have a number four. I call it coca grade, where
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: it's stuff just falling apart, nasty, that's just gonna go
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: to powder. So but coca grade is still sellable and viable.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: I tell people it's all worth something. And I encourage
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: anybody that's out there picking antlers. If you see an old,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: rotten chunk, pick it up, because if somebody goes in
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: behind you and finds that chunk, they might go back.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: But if somebody goes into an area and you've picked
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: even the little chunks up, they might not go back.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Pick your area clean. Well, I mean yeah,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: but so, but there's no secrets anymore. I mean people
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: are everywhere. Now there's every year I say, man, there's
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: more now than ever, And the next year there's even
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: more now than ever. More what pickers or pickers shed
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: hunters I'm gonna call them. Yeah, you know, I I
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: used to buy a lot of antlers off of a
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: few people. Now I buy a few antlers off of
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of people. Basically, do you think, like, are
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: the majority of shed hunters out there doing it for
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: money or just recreation? They're doing it. It's it's basically
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: like catch and release hunting. I guess yeah. I mean
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: I used to. I was serious about it for a
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: while in Colorado and it got crowded out. What we
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: used to shed hunt, you know, in the eighties when
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: not a lot of people did it, and it was
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: nice because we could shed hunt one area. What you
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: do is you watch the elk, see what they're feeding.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: You get their daylight, let them go in the timber,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: and you go up every other day to their feeding area,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: just pick up a few antlers, and the elk never left.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: And then when they're done shedding, then you go into
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: the beds and pick up the rest of the antlers. Now,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: when one elk loses one antler, there's four guys up
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: there running around looking for it, pushing the elk around
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: and m hm. You know, it's just it's very competitive,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: especially if there's a big one everyone knows about and
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: they got him named, and well that brings up the
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: shed hunting seasons now, right, Because I think that especially
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: like in the migration corridors down in uh, was it
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: southwestern Wyoming the big meal deer that area. Um, people
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: are going in there and running the deer round, you know,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: and you stop and think in that early spring, that's
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: when the animals at their lowest levels and they're hungry
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: and you know, and pushing them around is very stressful
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: on them. So m But yeah, yeah, like Colorado, I
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: think anything west of is shut down to the first
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: of May. We've had you know, game ranges around here
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: that are shut down to the first of May. That's
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: been for ever. But Nevada, you know, Wyoming is west
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: of the divide. I don't know if they've gone statewide yet,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: but for picking seasons. Yeah, are there guys right now? Um?
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: What about you? Let me let me ask the question first.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: Do elk ranch antlers follow the same market path is
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: at its own market guys that are raised the elk
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: and ranches? Yeah, I don't know. I don't. I don't
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: buy a lot of that stuff. So you buy multi
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: wild antlers? Yeah, that that that stuff if they cut
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: it in August, you know, just when they're peeling velvet.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: They're white and real sharp, and there's that blood. There's
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of blood in there. But it just seems
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: like the wild antlers that are out in the sun,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: the wind, the weather, that blood and the wild stuff
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: stays good. The stuff in the ranch because they cut
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: them and they throw them in sheds or barns and
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: they get hot anyways, that blood spoils and it when
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: you cut them, it smells like rotten proteins. They're just
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: cutting them. They're beating each other up. Yeah, when they're
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: in a and when they're in a finched in area.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: You have to do that because when the rudd hits.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: Do you know, are there guys right now that you know,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: even though it's gotten crowded, how many guys are all
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: there that you deal with it, are able to that
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: are able to at least make a seasonal living picking antlers?
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Quite a few. Yeah, there's people that literally go on
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: vacation just to do that. Um. There's a lot of
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: people that are hunting guides in the fall and they
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: don't have a lot to do in the spring. That's
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: all they do is pick. There's a few pickers out
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: there or shed hunters, I should say, excuse me, that
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: find a lot of antlers, a lot, but they don't
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: have anything else going on. Um, I tell people, if
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: you're gonna start shed hunting, don't do it. Don't depend
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: on the money. You're going to be greatly disappointed. You know,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: there were some comments in that picture. You know, I've
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: never that's why I can't find an antler. Well, no,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: that's not true. The reason you can't find the antler
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: is you got to go where they are in the wintertime.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: You can't just go walking around the hills and expect
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: to find an antler. It doesn't work. You know, you
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: got to go to their winter ground, you know, or
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: where they live at that time of the year to
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: find the antlers. You can't just go wandering around. So
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: what are the talk about how the dog to market
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: came in, Like when it came in and how it
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: changed the business? I mean I was blown away. Um,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: I'm sure it was going on long before I was
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: aware of it, but I was blown away when I
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: started hearing from people that are paying seven bucks ten
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: bucks for a six inch chunk antler, a little half piece.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Well what happened was way back when, like I said,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: we'll go back to the beginning. It was mainly export
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: and then there for a while that went could put
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: that flattened out. They stopped importing Antler's overseas because of
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: why something got a different market. Just something happened. There
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: was something went wrong over there, and a lot of
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: it has to do with the strength of the dollar
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: against the yen or wand or whatever and anyways. So
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: then that there was always export, but that was just it.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: And then then there was the chandelier furniture market that
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was in the nineties.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: There was a butcher, a baker, and a chandelier maker
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: in every town. Now there's a butcher, a baker, and
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: a dog chew maker in every town. Before we do dogs,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: let's do the let's do the chandelier market. Okay, that
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: would have only affected premium grade ship though, yeah, basically,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: so then then the stuff that wouldn't work for that,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: then you just sent it overseas. So you were buying
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: at that period, you were buying with an eye towards
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: chandelier market during that time. Yeah, the four point meal
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: deer sheds are nice, big brown ones. That was brought
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: the big money. What was that? What was big money?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: My god? It was up to eighteen bucks a pound,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: I think, wow. And then there even for the chandelier market,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: you were still buying them by the pound and not
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: by the piece. By the pound, and there was and
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: how many of those might go into a big chandelier.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: Back in those days, we had some that were three tears.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: There'd be sixty antlers in them. See, man, I like
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: I thought about getting it. No, I didn't want to
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: get into the supply business. But I looked at I
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: had a nice pile of antlers for quite a while,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: and I just kept thinking about how it's gonna run
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: wire through all that ship and make some crazy thing
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: out of it. You know, I never got around to it.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: You know how many people we're gonna do that? And
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: then they show you antlers with screwed up drill holes
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: and broken off screws. And I even went so far
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: as the talking to buddies of mine who were showing
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: me how to go about it, and little kits and stuff.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: How you get that drill to drill around the corners
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: like directional drilling. Yeah, they're really took off. Is that
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: market dead? Now? That's still there? But now you look
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: at them. Sometimes you'll be sitting there in some new
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: West Full lodge and you'd be like every one of
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: them antlers is exactly the same fake because they make
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: a fake you. Now, yeah, we back in the day,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: when was that in mid nineties, we were we had
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: a Cabella's we were selling we made this small chandelier
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: that was on a metal fixture and it was small
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: and we were selling them through Cabella's and we were
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: selling hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. How many
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: antlers around those? Eight? Okay, so eight mules your antlers? Yeah,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: white tailed, they were white tail and meal there. Anyways,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: j what do you call it? The boulder? It's just
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: a brand. The name that gave it. We had a
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: red Lodge. We had you just come up with the
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: quirky names. But so you were making you were in
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: the business personally, I wasn't. I don't have the self
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: discipline to build one, okay, but you were using your
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: antler and haven that we had we had people working
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: force that we're making them full time, got it? And anyways,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: so then Capella's bought this fake antler company where they
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: were casting fake antlers and then they started doing their own.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: But that to me, like that that that that that
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: just feels like, I mean, how could you get into that.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: Who do you want to fake Antler? Sandler? A lot
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: of people wouldn't know the difference. A lot of people
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: wouldn't know the difference between a real one and a
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: fake one. And then the cost is third. That's something
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: that blows my mind too, is how could it be
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: cheaper to make a fake antlers some plastic into Yeah,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: the other ships laying around on the woods, dude, Yeah,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: finite quality though. Okay, I gotta interrupt our timeline for
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: a minutes. I'm gonna forget to ask you this. Do
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: you buy it on? Will you buy deadheads just to
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: get the antlers off the school? Or do you say
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: to the guy cut them off, then I'll buy it. No,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of times I'll buy him. We've got the
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: big commercial saws, and it makes pretty quick work of it.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: So the same thing, you cut the skull off and
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: weigh it. Yeah, there's no there's no prohibition he gets
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: selling a deadhead as long as it's legal in the
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: state that you're in. And Wyoming you have to get
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: them tagged in the fishing game, and and um, I
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: think New Mexico that's taboo without a tag. You know
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: what I like about the system in New Mexico's when
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: you find something out in the woods like that, like
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: a deadhead. Um, we found h Ibeck's deadhead in a
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: game ward and comes out and he value and he
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: puts a value on it and you buy it from
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: the state. So we found a I Beg's deadhead and
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: it wasn't in a great condition like it could get more,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: but it was just like a young deadhead. And he
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: came out and I came already told us. He said
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: ten bucks. So he spent ten bucks in gas to
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: come and tell you. Because that's what's funny about it.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: What's funny about it is he was real curious about
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: our hunting license and all that too. You get he
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: got a two for he. Um, we called that we
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: had a dad head. He came out, gave us, told
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: us ten bucks. Does me and Kevin Murphy? I think
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: we each paid five while I'm here and and then
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: basically while I'm here, and he got down to brass
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: tacks and our legality and stuff. So the chandelier market, Okay, Um,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: you got into that. Your antler company, yeah, my dad's
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: antler company. Yeah, I got it. And uh, what were
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: the years of that was hot mid to late nineties. Yeah,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: maybe into the early two thousand's and then it kind
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: of peter fell out of fashion. Well yeah, but it
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: was still going, it just wasn't as strong as it was. Yeah,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: I saw a lot of that were you're honest and
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: I were at that time the ski towns. Oh yeah, yeah,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: that's that's a weird thing about ski people in ski towns.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: That was when the lodge decor was big. But why
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: are they always into that? Like, why don't they decorated
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: like their skiing if you go to I had to do.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: But I had to go to Big Sky one night
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: there and I had to go to Big Sky one
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: night and at the hotel, you know what they dress
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: up like at the hotel, like cattle ranchers. So why
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: are you guys dressed like cattle ranchers? They were dusters.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: It's like, why don you dressed like ski people? Like
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: you're like the this is the this is like the
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: opposite of cattle ranching. Lets, this is the end of it.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Why in the world are you dressed like cattle ranchers?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Do you really want to Why would a ski plays
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: have elk handlers when it's the antithesis of ELK. They
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: don't think all that through anyways. Chandelier marks, chandelier market, right,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: So then like tell me how that you to like
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: how like where did the chew toy thing come from?
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: M hm? You know, everybody, not everybody, but a lot
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: of people said, oh I was the first to do
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: it before anybody else. But but you were the first?
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I mean, you know, a lot
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: of times in the antler business, the first liar don't
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: stand a chance, you know. But um, when it comes
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: to my piles and how much I buy, and you know,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: it's always a one upmanship. But there's a guy down
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: in Texas, I think Mike who started it text and
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: name Mike. Yeah, and what did he do? Um? Basically,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: I guess he saw one of his friends dogs chewing
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: on an antler and and the light went off. Yeah,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: I mean ranch dogs. But I can't I can't verify
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: he was the actual first. But if he wasn't, it
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: was a close tie. And around what year was that
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: that someone had the light bulb go of? No idea?
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: I think the dog chew business has been going on
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: pretty strong for yeah, fifteen ish years. There's in that
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: New Yorker article, uh said two thousand and four. I
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: mean at some point, like the pet health food market
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: latched onto antlers, and that's that's got to have it.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: There was a big scare that came from China. There
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: was a bunch of dog food and dog trees that
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: had like cardboard in it, and there was a big
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: deal and people started, I think they started going organic
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: and stuff like all natural. Yeah, And I can spend
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of money on their dogs, more sohol than
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: their kids. I was telling Karan, No, it's a better
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: return on your investment. With a dog, you get unconditional love.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: What do you get with a kid? You know? Well? Dog,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: I keep telling my kids that dog you got, I
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: tell him, I sell him this yesterday. The dog you
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: got it's only good for in our ten years. Is
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: gonna be dead. But I'll be around a lot longer
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: than that. It doesn't matter, does it. No? They think
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: they still like that dog better. You're right, So how
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: do you buy for the dog? Like when you're when
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: you're looking at a pile of antlers in your head,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: are you like that looks perfect for the dog chew business.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: It's all pretty much perfect for the dog chew business,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: even the Chalky ones. I don't sell Chalky ones. I
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: know people that do, but I don't sell the Chalky ones.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: But you just told you tell your guys to pick
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: up everything. Yeah, there's there's a market for all of it. Okay,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: So but you said you don't sell Chalky ones for
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Oh I see two and two together equals slow boat overseas?
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: Got it? Well, I know, I don't get it. What's
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: that mean? Containers? Okay, overseas to Asian markets, export, got it?
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: So they get separated out? Yeah, oh yeah you great him?
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: Got it? Great them out? So who comes to you
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: to buy? You're not bagging up and going around and
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: banging on the door to sell dogs shoes? Who? Who
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: do you see? Who you? Who's your who's your end concern? Like?
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: Who you? Who orders dogs? Who bones from you? Most
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: of them are the distributors that distribute to the pet
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: change and I sell mostly bulk. They taken branded, they
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: package it and then they send it off to the
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: pet stores and you buy it and cut it. Right,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: what are you doing all that in this? And what
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: volume of stuff are you cutting up? For dogs? Volume
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: is total play? Yeah? Like how many pounds are going
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: out there in the world. How many pounds of antlers
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: are going out there in the world? From just me,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: from what how are you put? Yeah, how have you
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: put your grip around the size of the dog? To industry?
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: It's hard to say because, like I said, if you
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: ask a lot of the buyers and how much they
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: buy and how much they sell, they're not going to
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: give you an accurate answer. You don't say what do
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: you No, I wouldn't tell you even if I knew,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: I really don't know my exact pound ditch. It's always
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: coming and going. You know, you a trailer load, you
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: sell half a trailer load. It's always coming and going.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: So what's walked me through? Why not UM? Walk me
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: through the reasons to not share that because it'd be
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: like you're because you don't wanna UM, you don't want
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: to expose the magnitude and impact of the industry because
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: you don't want to inform competitors. Yeah, I just want
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: to protect my little slice of the pie, and you
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: feel that by giving me concrete numbers every time I
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: ask how much of this or how much of that
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: would impact your slice of the pie. Possibly because people
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: know where I go, and that's why I fly into
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: the radar. There's other buyers. In the middle of the night,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: I stopped and then this is no kidding. I stopped
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: in this unnamed town and stayed the night, and I
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: got a phone call from a friend of mine in
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: another state and says, so and so just called me,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: what are you doing in this town? What town was it?
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: It was over there. It was in Grants, New Mexico.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: But this other buy scificities, other buyer had people watching
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: out for my vehicle, and he knew I was there.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: And I just stayed the night and left the next morning.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: So you see what I'm saying. So it's just I
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: like to I just like to be kind of secretive.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: I like to sneak around and get in and get
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: my stuff and get out. And if people find that
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: you're buying a lot of antlers in an area, they
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: might come in and try to help you take some
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: of those from you. I got. You know, so's the
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: hottest buying what what do you feel is the hottest town,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: like the least exploited, hottest buy in town in America?
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: All Right, that's it'd be hard to It's hard to
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: say earlier. Sorry, what's the hottest state? Like, what do
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: you Coloradola? They do Colorado is a really good state,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Colorado tracing me, Well, that's a good antler buying state.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: It is after the first of May. Of course. You
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: know earlier how we talked about the mountain men. Are
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: you familiar with the fealler named John Coulter. Are you
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: familiar with the fact that, um many people think he
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: was the first, uh white man to see Yellowstone National Park.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with that, wouldn't surprise me. Um So
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: then you probably aren't aware of the fact that for
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: a long time they referred to to Yellowstone as Coulter's hell,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: and people didn't believe him know what he saw there?
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: You know what he was doing when he when he
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: went there hunting sheds? Nope, he was This is very
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: early in the beaver trade. Coulter was going around trying
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: to make contact with tribes to see if he couldn't
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: get them interested in the beaver market. In the beaver trade, Uh,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: was there a period in antler buying and you had
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: to do something similar? Tell me about that, like, oh,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: like going into an area and trying to establish pickers. Yeah,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: you're going. And what I do if I go into
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: a new areas just you take a sign and sit
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: on a street corner, empty lot. They'll sign out there
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: and people will stop ask you a question. So a
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: few antlers and you just end up. What I like
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: to do is uh if you don't end up getting
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: a buyer there, I it takes a year or two
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: to figure out who the players are in the area
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: as far as shed hunters, and then you just concentrate
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: on taking care of them. I can't afford to sit
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: all day on a street corner usually got to keep moving. Well,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: you gotta when you're traveling. You've got an x amount
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: of day just to cover your overhead. You know what's
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: a big haul? Antlers for an individual? You can tell
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: me this because is not you a hunter shed hunter?
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: What would be if I, let's say I call you
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: the middle of an annual hall. You're asked by calling
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: the middle of the night, and I say, I'm not
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: a buyer, I'm just a shed hunter and I have
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: blank pounds. What would be the number that you'd say
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: that would perk your ears up? Nowadays? Sure, five pounds.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: So if he says I got five hundred pounds. I
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: picked myself. Your ears perk up. Yeah. Nowadays, Well, tell
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: me about thirty years ago. There's guys should find two
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: thousand pounds UM. Truck loads used to be average three
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: hundred pounds pick up load. When they say I gotta
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: pick up load, it used to be three pounds. Now seriously,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: because they're all dealing with so much competition, because there's
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: so many people doing it. Okay, I supposed to go
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: into towns, I wouldn't even have to put up a sign.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: They'd see my rig there. And if I had a
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: few antlers, and we used to used to have a
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: flatbed car hauler and put wire racks up so high,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: and you just throw a hundred pounds in there, and
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: I pull into a gas station and people just start.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: We sit there for thirty minutes. People just start showing up.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: And you could buy two thousand pounds as fast as
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: you could. You could buy two thousand pounds in a
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: few hours from people. Just Nowadays, you can sit there
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: all day and you might not buy two hundred pounds
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: because there was a buyer in that town the day
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: before you, and there was another buyer two days before you.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: You know, literally you mean like someone seeing your sign
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: at a gas station calling, you know, Johnny calls Bill, Hey,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: it looks like this guy's a buyer. So everybody's just
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: calling everybody who's accumulated sheds and just just show up.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: You'd have ten twelve people in line to sell your ship,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: you know, just you know, and it's not like that anymore.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: Are you familiar with role playing? That's the secret years.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: But I'll be a guy named Burt. Okay, we're role playing.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: You're you, you're you. You're in your hotel down You're you.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: You're in your hotel down into Mexico. You're sitting there
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: and you're underwearing your hotel room. I call and I say, hey,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: I have five hundred pounds of um. I picked it
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: myself at five pounds of this year's brown elk candler. Okay,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: bunce of five point six point bulls like good stuff? Okay, um,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: I say, uh, what are you paying? That's gonna be
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: how it goes right, yeah, ok And you say what
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: whatever the prices at the time will throw me one out, Okay.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: If I if you were a picker, i'd say pund okay, yeah,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: then I go well, Bert said, he'd give me eighteen.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: We're role playing, that's your tell him, so you gotta
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: answer Tony. He says, said, okay, because I know I
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: know Bert's lying, because I'm not going to an area.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: I know what it's like. It's like a set price
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: that everyone's playing like the same. Yeah, they don't. They
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: don't do it that way. A lot of guys will quote,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: let's say this is an example, and these numbers aren't
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: set in concrete. The guy will come into a town.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: I'll pay teen dollars a pound for brown, elk you
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: get there. Oh wait, but they've got to be five
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: points without broken points, and they've got to be a
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: certain size and a certain shape, and then the rest
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: of it a pound. So you net fifteen dollars and
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: ten cents a pound. But to this guy's they got
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: eighteen dollars a pound. But I don't grade like that.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: And if it's chewed on, it's worth even if it's brown,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: it'd be worth B grade price. And you know everybody's
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: got their smoking mirrors, and I don't like that. I
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: got a question for you. Broken chewed it's all the
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: same brown as brown. I got a question for you
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: might not answer. So less is less is sometimes more?
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: If if the if you're by, if you're giving me
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: fifteen bucks a pound, you're making money somehow. I hope
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: that this is where he's gonna. This is where he's gonna.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: He's gonna be totally transparent. The whole market is it?
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: Is it hot in here? Like are you are you
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: getting sixty in a pound or are you getting thirty pound?
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: Why don't we talking percentages? Yeah? No, I'm not making
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: a pound. It's somewhere in between. Let's let's play what's
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: that game? High lower whatever? Yeah, you're getting warmer. No,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: you try, I mean you try to when it's all
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: said and done, if you could make okay, that's fair,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: because you got you got overheaded overhead. I could I
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: could buy a very nice I could make a very
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: nice mortgage payment on a very nice house just with
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: my fuel bills every month. I got one for you.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: We don't need to role play it, but thank you.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: You go into a town. Okay, all right, No, let
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: me say this first. Like you you're one of the
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: um you're one of the biggest elk Andler buyers in
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: West not the biggest. No, but I'm up there. Well, okay,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: let's put it this way. I'm in the top so
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: many tin Let's say I've downsized my business quite a bit. Okay,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: we'll get to that. I wonna know why, but I
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: can answer it in one word. Okay, go ahead, Well
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: too three, too much work? Okay, that's fine. But anyways, uh,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: you you go into a town, you go down to
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: New Mexico to buy Antler and get okay, time out
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: why new Mexico white? Because you mentioned you mentioned, uh,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: you mentioned New Mexico earlier. Well, state you want to
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: do Colorado? Okay? You go to Colorado? Colorado treached me? Really, well,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: you got to call Eagle Colorado. You go to Colorado
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: to buy Antler? Been there and someone's like, oh shoot,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: some guy was just in town by an ailer. Are
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: you probably gonna wind up seeing that pile of antler
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: as a buyer? Possibly? Okay? So when I so, here's
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: where I feel that the price. Here's where I feel
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: like the prices is that you're deceiving me in The
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: price isn't fixed. Word goes around that it's eighteen bucks
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: a pound. Some guy goes down with a sign in
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: a van and sits there all day in the corner
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: and buys a bunch of antler for eighteen a pound.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: When he comes to you, now he's got it. Are you?
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Are you really not gonna like up it a little
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: bit to get that big pile of antler? Possibly, But
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: the word the number eighteen is just a fictitious number.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: I mean it could be. Usually usually the street level
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: buyers will call him that sit there all day. They
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: usually pay less. Uh kingpins. Well, I'm not a kingpin. No,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: I thought you were doing it sounded like drug vernacular.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: But you know what I'm saying is that you know
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: there's tonnage buyers. There's different levels, and there's upper tier
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: and lower tier. I'm probably mid upper. I'm I'm not
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: gonna claim I'm the biggest baddest guy in the world.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: I know I'm not. Um. I just do what I
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: can do myself. And but basically, yeah, but I stay
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: out of areas where I have people that buy for
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: me working, so I don't create competition against myself. If
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: somebody calls me from Eagle, Colorado and says, hey, I
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: got fifty pounds or a hundred pounds, when are you coming?
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: And I says, well, but here's a guy. I'll have
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: a guy get ahold of you. He'll just come and
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: get him and he'll treat you good. And they're like, okay,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: all right. I got a question about a part of
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: the market that may not fall under the poundage price.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: And that's like, do you do you have a completely
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: little separate part of your busin this that's for like
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: big Giant. That was exactly my next question, where where
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: does the crazy ship go? Because I imagine those like
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: obviously the poundage thing doesn't work for that market. There
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: is and I'm quoting air quotes for those who can't
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: see a trophy shed market where things are usually bought
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: like shed sets are bought by the set. Yeah, you
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: can down the Western Honey Expo there and so late
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: there's usually some booth set up and you'll see a
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: set of you know, three eighties and they're asking five, six,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: seven grand form and good luck. But think they ever
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: sell them? Maybe one. You can put whatever price you
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: want on them, but you can't go you can't put
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: hundred on them and try to negotiate, negotiate up to
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: so you put eight grand and come down, yes, you know,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: but no, that's that's that's a lot of money for
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: a three I just made that up. I don't know
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: if that's I mean a long time since I was there.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: I just remember looking at a set of sheds, going, jeez, really,
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: that's a lot of money for a set of sheds.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: What was the craziest thing or the biggest thing or
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: whatever you've ever seen just thrown into a pile of
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: sheds that came into the market biggest and craziest, Yeah, whatever,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: like oddball, Like I mean, if you looked at so
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: many thousands and thousands of antlers, what kind of stuff
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: flows through that catches you by surprise? Every once in
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: a while you'll get a big boon and crockett shed,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: some species that gets into the pile by accident. They
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: didn't know what they're looking at. Yeah. And and a
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: lot of times when I'm buying, you know, you're throwing
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: hundred pounds around at a time. You're not paying much
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: attention when you're unloading the trailer, going oh wow, and
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: do another pile, Well, you just throw it aside, you know.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: And I've got a pile of trinkets, I call them.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: And that's what that was my next question. I've had
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: some of these trinkets for three or four years. And yeah,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: because they can't be like it's got to be a
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: match set to really like or a very unique single ship.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: Did you bring us like a real crazy present, like
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: a crazy as but but but that's not out of
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: the question. But i'd have to bring it from Inns.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: I couldn't fit it on the airplane. But um no,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: I do a lot. I don't have a quote trophy
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: market where I sell a lot. I do a lot
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: of trading with people like if I find if I
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: know Bert and Eagle, Colorado or wherever looking for non
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: typical mule deer sheds, and if I get one, I'll
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: trade hand some poundage. I see. You know that's I
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: do about nineties? How I do it? Got it? You're
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: after the poundage? Well yeah, but I mean it's just
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: it's easier to market it and sell it that way. Uh.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: If you go down to the auction in Jackson, you
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: can see people sitting on the square and they get
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: their parking spots where they sell their trinkets. And they've
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: got a lot of very nice sheds that are very
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: expensive and they don't sell them. So you know, to me,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at it like I can take that shed, okay,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: and turn it into something that I can move instead
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: of that money sitting there. Money costs money, right, so
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: why not keep it moving? I took us. I bought
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: here's the story. I bought a set of chalky elk sheds,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: and they were really nice. They weren't giant, but it
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: was like an eight by nine, okay, And I, I
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: don't know, I traded a guy an antler. Well, I
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: traded a moose paddle for him, so I had probably
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: bucks in it, Okay. Then I took it and I
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: drove it across the state and it was in Colorado,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: and I traded for two sixty pounds of assorted grades
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: of deerler. So I ended up getting a lot of
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: money for that. Is that a moose paddle? I turned
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: a moose paddle into a fairly decent pile of deer
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: antlers home run for everybody you know. So, but stuff
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: like that, And it wasn't. It wasn't two thousand dollars
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: worth of deer antlers. I mean there's a lot of
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: chalk in there and stuff, But I mean it worked
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: out good. Do you do you notice um on sort
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: of on on a meta scale, on a large scale,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: when you're when your hand link thousands of these antlers,
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: do you notice years or you're like, man, there was
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: great antler growth, or popular populations are down or up?
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: Or do you definitely see that? What give me some
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: examples of how how that might play out in a
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: specific area. Let's say, okay, well, I'll start with the
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: northern Yellowstone elk herd that comes out of the park
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: and migrates up the Paradise Valley because it used to
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: be sixteen thousand elk roughly give a take. Now it's
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: down due I don't even know less than seven thousand,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: still shooting all kinds of cows, you know when I
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: attribute a lot of that to the introduction of the wolves,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: you know, and some areas where you have dry years,
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: it seems like the antlers are brittle, okay, not a
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: lot of mass and wet ears. You seem like you
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: get good antler growth, good math. A lot of down
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: south and various states. They don't get their range until July,
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: so things don't green up till later in the year,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: so that next year brings the antler growth. That depends
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: on what kind of feed they're carrying in. So you
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: can tell in some areas that are dry that the
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: antler growth just doesn't you know, do you see certain
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: like maybe that that I don't know if you'd see
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: this or not, but like certain tendencies and like the
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: elk antlers in one part of the country versus and
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: like they grow a certain way. There's characteristics. There's genetics, yeah,
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: of course, Like for instance, certain areas in Arizona, New Mexico,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: you get those I don't know what people call the
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: come the devil points that come off the brow times
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: they stick up like this, or some areas have three
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: brow times you know, or forked brow times, um. And
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: then there's other areas where they got tops that come
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: out different. You know. Yeah, certain areas that Yellowstone heard
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: for years you could tell what areas they came from
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: because they had really short G three. That was just
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: the genetics for the time. You still hear people talk
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: about that all the time. Are there more deer antlers
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: sold than elk antlers just due to the prevalence of
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: for example, whitetail nationally? Um. You know, in terms of
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: like what you're what you're buying, what I'm buying personally, no,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I buy more more olk than do, okay, And then
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: maybe in the market I choose to do that, okay,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: So then maybe in the market generally nationally for buyers,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: that's that's a hard one to answer, you know, because
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know what other buyers do. But of course,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: realistically speaking, it would make sense because I think there
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: are a lot more Dear in the United States things, right,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: And I mean I think when you know, I've I
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: bought a Antler choo for my dog a couple of
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: years ago. He showed absolutely no interest, so I never
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: bought one again. But it was a Dear Antler, not
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: an elk Andler, So I can't remember seeing Elk antlers
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: being used as dog choose, but I you know, I
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: think it's been more Dear Antlers uses dog choose, but
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: I can possibly depends on I guess where you go,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: but I shall mostly mostly Elk and in terms of
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: your like based on the grade of the Antler, deer
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: or elk, what grade of which antler becomes what end product, Well,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: the A or the number one grade in the number
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: two grade usually go for the dog choose and then
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: the number three grade. I just I know people that
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: sell them. But I don't like it. It's just they're
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: they're so dried out. They could be riddle. But it's
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: not so like greade a for you is going to
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: dog choose and not someone's chandelier for example. No, I
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: mean you always pull out. I've got piles and nice sheds,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: you know that I keep out, Yeah, chandelier quality in
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: case somebody's looking for something. I got a big pile
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: of deer where when we get back and we're gonna
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: start building our Christmas tree, Christmas tree out of antlers.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: It's you've been saving for that. Yeah, I just yeah,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: so um and then you know, and if and if
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: nobody wants to buy this furniture quality, will say, then
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: then yeah, you know, you can always sell them. That
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: doesn't really sound like the dog chew market is dominant,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: at least based on on how you're I think it's
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: a controlling force right now, without a doubt, without a doubt,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: how would you rate the um in your experience? Like,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: how how would you rate the seediness level of the
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: antler market? Oh? Man, like I would things out. You know,
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: it brings out the worst than a lot of people
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: because like in the seventies, the late seventies, early eighties,
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: like the fur trade when when it was crazy hot,
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: it just it had, you know, it developed like a seediness. Yeah,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: and we've talked to game wardens where like it does
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who are poaching are tied to
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: some other type of criminal activity drug dealing or yeah. Yeah,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: I get. And whenever I'm in towns um please stop
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: me all the time, say hey, did you buy any
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: antler's office so and so? And I said I And
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: I looked through my receich I keep accurate re seats
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: or no I deal with And I say no, And
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: they said, well, keep your eyes out. This is a vehicle,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: here's the license plate number, here's my card. Please call me. Sure,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: no problems because they're stealing ant and usually there doing
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: that to fund other devices. Will say, possibly, it seems
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: that it seems that's where it gravitates too much towards
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: the illicit stuff. That tree is incredible. Yeah, could you
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: guys make that tree? How many? No? No clue, No,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: it's got to be several hundred, right, Oh, it's probably
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: it's probably a hundred and fifty minute of doing olk mixed.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it took us about three evenings parting around.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: You know, when the one of the times on the
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: antler market blew up, I guess it was kind of
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: like I don't know, I don't know what year it was,
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: And it probably because you've been in it so long.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: Something at the beginning of things don't seem like the
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: beginning to you because you were in it, like from
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: the infancy of various things. But I don't know when
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: I became aware of like just like the antler market,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: the antler market. I had a friend, my brother will
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: last day any he would take all the shed antlers
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: and all the ship he killed, and he'd make like
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: a cylinder that climbed this big spruce tree, just rap
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: a tree in it. One day comes so much is gone.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: A buddy of mine had I was actually in on
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: this this bowl we killed. Another friend of mine up
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: in Alaska. We killed a nice bowl one time, and
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: I was there with him when he got it, and
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: we were talking about that, and he's like gone, hung
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: on my garage for years and they come home and
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: just gone. And I was right around the same time
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: my brother's tree got picked clean. Somebody went through and
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: made a few stops, you know. But as a buyer,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: um obviously like, well I don't know, man, Like you know,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: if you, for instance, in some stuff, in some stuff
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: in wildlife, a buyer is under like quite a bit
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: of they're under quite a bit of pressure to vet
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: what's coming. Like you go to a tax and ermist, right,
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: they you can't just walking with crazy ship new attacks embers.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: He's like, I need your tag and whatever. If you
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: go to a tannery, right, it's like, whatever state you're
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: coming from, what are the regulations of that state? Is
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: it supposed to be sealed? Do you have records and
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: all that? But when you're talking about antlers, um that
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: you don't. There's no regulatory structure in place on tagging
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: the ship, right, So how you know to what degree
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: are you held responsible for where something came from when
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: you have no real way of vetting it. You're really not.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: You're not. You've got your gut, like you know you
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: can deal with some people and you go, this isn't right.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: I'm writing a license plate down it. So you've had
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: you'll have a guy approach and you're like, you didn't
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: find those antlers? Like you got them somehow. Besides that sometimes. Yeah,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: you know, you can't go out and say that, but
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: you get a gut feeling, especially when somebody shows up
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: with a pile of chalky stuff that's nice and clean
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: and it's got some grass and flower ly stuck to it.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: I took it out of somebody's flower garden. Yeah. Usually
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: if they show up with a couple of browns and
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: maybe a number two grade and then some chalky ones, yeah,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: they're probably okay. But when they show up at the
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: pilot chalk like they stole it from somebody's yard. M hm,
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: might you then turn them away? No, I mean because
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: if you're not knowingly doing anything, But that's when you
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: take extra notations because it could have been his flower. Better. Later,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: the police are going to probably stop and ask you questions.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: Here you go, I mean, I'm not a I'm not
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: a hush hush guy. I mean, you know, the game
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: warden or somebody came up. Hey, here's my It happened
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: down in the auction uh three or four years ago.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: I bought some antlers off a guy. He goes, you're
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: gonna be here for a while, I'm sure, and he
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: bought some antlers in bottom Foom and the trailer, and
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: I left the auction and went to the motel room
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: and I'm sitting in bed talking to Jamie on the
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: phone and my phone rings and I look cold waiting
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: and it's the three oh seven. It was Jackson hole number.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: And I said, oh, I gotta go. Somebody's wanting tell
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: me antlers probably And they said, oh, this is So
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: and so from the Wyoming game and Fish. Can we
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: talk to you? Sure? He goes, did you buy some
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: antler's office so and so? A matter of fact, we did.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: He goes, where are you at right now? And I said,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: I at my motel And he goes, can we come by?
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: And I said sure. He goes, I'll be there in
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: one minute. So they knew where I was at because
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: the antler had a GPS tracker in it. Oh so,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: but we didn't know. And then So opened up the
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: trailer and he pulled the antler out and here it
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: is and he goes, He goes, he sold you some morning.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: I go yeah. He goes, we're the rest of his
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: antlers and I go, here's eight thousand pounds in the trailer.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: You know, pick them. I don't know, you know, because
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: they were all mixed, and I go, I, I don't know.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: But anyways, he picked it up off the game range
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: before it opened down there one of the feedlots, and
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: he took it to his house and they knew he
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: had it, and as soon as he moved it, it
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: started signaling. And we bought the antlers and left, and
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: the the fishing game where there two minutes after we left,
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: so they they plugged that one antler just to just
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: to do a sting, not a sting, but to catch people.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: And then then they'll go in on May first, right
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: before May first, and I'll take it out. But I
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: go here, here's my receipt here's my receipts. This is
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: the check number I paid him. Uh, and they copied
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: that and they said, hey, thanks for your cooperation, and UH.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: The guy was with me that ended up having the
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: antler says, hey, wait a minute, you're taking this. I'm
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: losing money, and they says, well, we'll give you a
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: slip you can write off as a loss, or they
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: if the guy gets busted, restitution restitution, and ended up
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: getting the restitution back. Years ago, I was working on
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: an article about livestock theft and I was hanging out
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: with some guys from the Rural Rural Crime Task Force
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: in Bakersfield, California, and it was in scrap. Prices were high.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: They were running around putting transmitters inside irrigation pipe and
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: ship like that. He goes, you could put a stack
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: of irrigation pipe out by the road, put a transmitter
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: on it. Just wait until the next morning. Gone said,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: it wasn't hard. You know how many during that that issue,
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: how many times electricians had to rewire houses because they
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: went stripped all the copper you mentioned? Um, you mentioned
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: two things. You mentioned calling it slowing down on the business,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: but you mentioned that there's a third generation coming up,
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: So which is it? No, No, just downsized a little bit.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: I mean you can only handle so much. So No,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: I just pinned out some accounts, downsized a little bit
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: to a more manageable level. It's kept growing and growing
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: and growing. Is your business the kind of business that
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: you could sell the business? Or does it die with you?
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: What's it worth? But I don't know, sky, I mean,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: you know the people I deal with, there's no contractual agreements,
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: so I mean there's no monetary value on it. Uh,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: And most of my context that I buy antlers from
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: other people. Know. I mean, with the advent of the
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: social media, everybody knows everybody. So there you know so
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: And I'm not a big social media guy. If you
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: were to predict, you know, you talked about your son
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: um potentially being third generation. Where would you predict the market? Uh,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: where would you say it could be going in five years,
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: ten years? Is there going to be a new thing
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: or people are going to get tired of giving their
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: dogs antler? Choose? I predict regulation. That's what I was
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: gonna know. I was gonna say, what's going to happen?
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: Is I think it's going to be regulated. It's going
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: to be like hunting um. I think you'll always be
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: able to sell antler dog choose. Where it's going to
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: go in five years? I have no idea. I wish,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: I wish, I wish I knew then what I know now.
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: So I don't know. And maybe maybe possibly there won't
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: be a big commercial market in five or ten years.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: I thought the dog tew market would have already played out.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: It'll play out. Well, I'm the guy that's all Bruise,
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: I'm the guy that predicted that micro Bruce Roll, I
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know if that pet markets going anywhere.
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: Remind me not to take any stock tips from you
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: that though, anything outside of my don't because they're I mean,
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: and it's not just the antler dog JeOS, just the
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: single ingredient organic other things that are that the dogs
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: are chewing on and eating. Uh. It's like Jamie cooks
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: for our dogs. Now we don't give them any dry food.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: Sam shot that buck and that dope. The lungs, kidneys,
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: the heart everything. We're not heart eaters. So um, the kidneys, lungs,
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: got all the internal organs and the dogs just that's
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: a good idea. I do a lot of that for
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: my dog, but I haven't done the lungs. That's a
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: good idea. They love that stuff. I just boil it, man,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: I minced it up and boil it. She goes nuts.
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: I do raw mm hmm. Don't even boil it, no flash,
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: fry it and throw and there slowly transition them over
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: so you don't have intestinal distress, do you guys? Has
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: c w D affected your business at all? No? Like
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: moving stuff around, well, in certain areas of Colorado or
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: certain areas you gotta you can't transport ahead out of
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: the county. It has to be boiled in county for
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: you to transport the antlers on a deadhead for well,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: I do that most of the time anyways, they take
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: up so much space. But no, the c w D.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: Other than that, No, it's it's not there's There hasn't
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: been any case that I'm aware of that dogs have
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: Actually No, I was just referring to, like in general,
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: has that disease affected how the regulation around interstate transport?
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: Probably it's a very small percentage of deadheads that you
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: end up dealing with. Very small. Um. I lost another question.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: I was gonna ask you or the ones I do
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: buy are already selling off so you just get in
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: stand up with the mandlers. So it's not a big deal. Well,
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: I know what I was gonna ask. Cut out might
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: not member when I was gonna ask if you're a seller? Okay,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: is there anything to gain? Role play? Again? No, no,
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: we need to role play. Is there ever a pitch
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: about why a seller should go to you? Like, do
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: you feel like plugging? Do you feel like saying hey
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: man if you okay? Or call me honesty? Yeah, yeah,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty straight good. I when I when I like
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: I just started buying antlers off a guy in the
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: Midwest by his deer, and I go, look, here's my
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: here's my deal. Okay, I said, I'm going to be
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: brutally honest with you one way or the other. Either
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: either way it could work bad, work for your favorite.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: And I said, I expect the same treatment in return.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: I said, don't hide anything, don't pull any punches. I mean,
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: if you got a problem, call me, you know, and
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: if I have a problem with you, I'm gonna tell you.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: And you know, that's how we get along. So transparency, honesty, um,
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: you know. And yeah, the new people that try out
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: and if you treat them right, they'll come back. So
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: how do people find you if they want to sell
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: you pile anlers? You gotta care. I do care. They
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: just word of mouth. My numbers out there people know
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: Tony Shoffer. Well, I'm just you know, I'm um, like
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: one guy I know that I buy from. You don't know.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: You don't want to say your number right now? Bill,
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: you got antlers and cell? Call me four zero six
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: five seven zero three three seven one. I repeat four
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: zero six seven zero one. You know what? You know
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: what Three of the biggest lives are in the world.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: Was that a lie? I love you checks in the
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: mail and I'm an honest antler buyer. What was the
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: number he just gave four zero six seven zero one. Yeah,
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: it's that's really his number. Yeah, I got your number.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: Please please no hate mail? Yeah, no yourself mailer man. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: If your kid, uh, your kid takes over, he can
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: he can adopt some of the new ways like social
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: media and stuff like that. Definitely, he's there the our
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: fourteen year old twins. Now I go to them my
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: phone's not working and they fix it in ten seconds. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: appreciate you coming on man, thanks for having me. It's
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: I guess it's an honor. Like I said, I've some grin.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: You guys are celebrities in some circles. I guess. No,
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. No. You know, I watched your show
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: since you started, and I kind of like the way
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: you do it. They appreciate it. You know. It's not
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: just going out there and shooting a big animal and
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: I get a couple of big ones. No, you do,
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: but you know what it is. It's not like you
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: go to our private place and they know where this
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: deer is and you set up and shoot it. Now
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: you're out there doing the whole philosophical thing, and thank you,
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: appreciate it, and get some ideas on cooking. I like
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: to do that for sure. One thing I'll never try
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: is that boiled tongue that you and cal ate one
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: time deer hunting in. Dude, you don't know what you're
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: talking about. Man, Just to me and listen. Let me
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: tell you. I want to give you a hot tip.
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: Next time you get out when someone comes with some antlers,
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: say how about you selling me that tongue? You get
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: the tongue? Listen, what up? Listen to what I'm saying.
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: Put that tongue on pot of water and barely simmer it.
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: Elk tongue, de your tongue, whatever the elk tong is nicer, Okay,
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: barely simmer it until you notice it around where you
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: cut it off that you know it's the outer skin
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: is starting to peel away. Okay, all right, Now put
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: it in cold water. Plunge in cold water so you
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: don't in your fingers, and see can I peel all
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: the outer skin off? If you can't let it boil longer?
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: Eventually get all the outer skin peeled off. The tongue.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: It's white when you peel it off. Now, put a
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: dry rub all over that suthing bitch. Put in a smoker. Really,
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: then you slice it up and eat that and tell
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: me there's a problem that everybody that eats it says
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: the same thing. That's good, some variation on that. You know,
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm telling you, dude, after it's good.
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: Tacos too, oh so fatty and good lingua mm hmm. Yes,
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: after a couple of beers, I'd probably try just about it.
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: I gave it to you right now. If I gave
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: it to you right now, you you didn't know what
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: it was, you wouldn't know what it was, but you
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: think it was pretty damn good. Our great Dane loves time.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: That's how it was the first time I ate Mountain Lion.
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was eating, and you liked it. Yeah, Sure,
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: looked like kind of it was pork chop. Looks like
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: a pork chop. There's gravy and rice and a bunch
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: of it before I figured out what it was. And
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: I don't mind up what I like about that. The
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: fat is pretty good on it. You don't, but I had,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: I've had. I've had a mountain lion backstraft. It was
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: captain fat, and the fat was good like pork fat,
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: legitimately good. You got to cook it, though I expected
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: to not be good. Oh yeah, you can get the
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: old trick nosis off that. You know that a little
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: bit of something about that, don't you know they're saying
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: you can't eat the antlers Tony soul business And I'm
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: going to tell you the story, and you got me sidetracked.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: But a professional athlete that torres rotator cuffies playing professional baseball,
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: do we have time? And oh yeah, us. Well, anyways,
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: he tore his rotator cup and he got surgery and
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: the doctor goes, here, take these pills, I'll help you.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: And he goes, what are there? He goes there antler
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: powder pills. So I started taking them and the pain
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: went away, and he goes, so he quit taking him,
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: and the pain came back. So he started taking the
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: pain went away, and he actually started a company and
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: was making those pillsel athletes take them. I took it,
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: and yeah, a lot of Asian pains went away. So
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: there's there's something to it, just like the Asian culture.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: How old is that? It's way older than ours? And
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: I bet you they know a lot more than we
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: do about stuff. Cringe. Yeah, she's only half agent. Just
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: asked her. She'll tell you know, she knows a lot.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: She'll tell you I definitely haven't tried any of that.
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: Then maybe i'll you know, some people, it's just good
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: for your dogs, and I'll lick us a milk gittler
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: split in half. I'll lick it. Doesn't do anything. Oh no,
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: I imagine not. Oh you know what about making like
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: antler toothpicks that you that you'd start chewing on. Maybe
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: that's a new fan. There you go. Possibly, thank you,
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: it was a pleasure me. Yeah, thanks for coming and
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: I appreciate him. Thanks joy, Hopefully see you again. Sometimes,
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: Oh I think so. I hopefy people calling him and
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: sell you some sweet antlers. Here's the one deal man.
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: If someone calls you and sells you some antlers and
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: they say like, oh, hey, I heard your number on
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: the show. You picked me out the coolest one there,
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: not out of every batch, but like whatever, send me
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: a cool one out of there. Okay, Well I'll tell
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: you what I'll do. I'll do a trade with you.
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: So I'll give you a couple of good cool ships.
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: But I need some autographed swag from your friends. Like
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: I said, they think you're some sort of a celebrity.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: We're not gonna spoil that for him. Were signed some stuff,
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: We're signed some stuff. Yeah, and we're gonna watch the
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: mailbox for a sweet Antler. No, I won't mailbox. I'll
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: bring it and let you pick him out. I'll stop
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: by one of these times, better and better all right
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: to tell you about your name and name of your
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: company to Shaffler, Rocky Mountain Antler Company. There you haven't
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: call him up some big pile. He's waiting for you
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: in his underwearing the hotel room. Be maybe