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The MeatEater Podcast
Ep. 319: Stuffed
Play Episode
2h34m
Steven Rinella talks with John Hayes, Ryan Callaghan, Brody Henderson, Seth Morris, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.
Topics discussed: An interest in falconry spurred by sorcery and Dungeons & Dragons; the artist vs. the shady taxidermist who takes your money, doesn't make your mount, then disappears; eagles and lead; Missoula as the Paris of West-Central Montana; when dogs attack wild game and Brody catches a bunch of shit about it; Southerners from southern Illinois give Steve shit; spearfishing in parts of southern Michigan that aren't great; what to do with over 150 mounts; Harry Potter taxidermy; bear rugs with closed mounts; patenting a filler vacuum; pioneering the squishy coyote pillow mount; how fish taxidermy is basically a painting; how to properly skin out deer and bears for mounting; Cal's scalpel kit; how it's gotta be clean before salting; the full sneak and the semi-sneak; the taxidermist's catalog; when your taxidermist turns you in for poaching; when your Ma tags a lot of deer; the funkification inside horns; bad rugs for bad people; and more.
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00:00:08
Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer, turn the machine on, Phil, I'll say a bold statement, machines. You wanna hear bold statement. Let's start show out. YEA, most people I know this to be true because of anecdotal evidence, So it must be true. It must be true because Andal Evan's most people, like a majority of people who are into falconry, came to it not through an interest in hunting. They came to it through an interest in dungeons and dragons. I listen, this is a true thing. I've got, like probably my left big toe kind of dipped into that world, Steve, And that's absolutely true. Yeah, my brother Danny used to live up in Alaska. There was some falconers and they had gotten into huge snakes. They were way into D and D that's what they called dungeon dragons all in high school and and then got into falconry all out of like Sorcerer stuff. These are people that like to dress up like it's Shakespeare and go to the park and joust. It's called ling action role playing. What about what about your buddy, the world's greatest small game hunter? Didn't he engage in some He did, yes, but he's an exception to the rule. I said a majority, meaning if you had a hundred fifty one him came through D and D. I know some exceptions to Phil just say, you know, when I go hunting and don't successfully kill anything, I just tell people I have been a lart ping go creeping around, and they just feel bad for you and kind of nod. That's all. That's great, right exactly. John Hayes from Hayes Taxidermy Studio, what do you think about that. You've got these strong opinions. You don't want to alienate potential customers. See, he's gonna start dogging on D and D people. And then some guy was like, gonna send over his rabbit or whatever. It's all full of talent holes and he's like, I'm not sending it to him now because he dogged on D and D. You gotta stay on top, You gotta stay in good graces with everybody. Don't try to keep everybody happy as a tax ERNs. You can't afford to alienate people. Man, I, me and Seth know about a taxi nervous here in town that has really alienated some people. Just talk to him this morning and beat up other tax nervous and get people stuff, get people stuff back, and then he's the business for yourself. It's amazing how much stuff I've had brought to me from other shops over the years. It's surprised I didn't like know that was really like a thing I've had it? Why would Why would they bring it? Because it's like I just can't. Guy just pisces them off finally to the point where they just don't want to deal with anymore, dodging their calls. Takes payment, and Full doesn't complete it in a timely manner, and then they go get it and bring it. Yeah, and it's just sitting in a freezer for two years or something, or tanned or in a freezer or Yeah, we're ruined back in the stuff. Oh dude, I'm fully accepted the fact that it's ruined. Yeah, not just him, man, other friends of mine. I feel horrible about it. Paid and Full too, a couple of friends of mine we had we had a tax nervous that we worked with for years and was and you know, very very good, very reliable, and then uh, and we referred all of our clients to this this guy too. And you know, so I have like an unbelievable amount of store credit to a store that doesn't exist anymore, because one day, where do I take this credit out? One day? Right? It was just like a guy just up and left the whole business, the whole deal just walked away. Yeah yeah, but like no no offense, dude. But people in your business, like, I don't know where they find him? Oh my god. Yeah yeah. I'm always like yeah, I'm a taxiderm as and I'm always waiting for some sort of response or the stories start coming out. I knew this guy, and I'm like, gosh, yeah, we need to establish John as like an upstanding member of the taxidermy community. He's got a whole he's got a whole box, he's got a whole box of my stuff. He's got my boys mule here. He's got my bear, which looks beautiful. Well, my bear skull already got my bare road back. The bear skull looks beautiful. That'll be another question for you later is um, ah, why sometimes? But I'm I'm not saying it's not on a laziness. But a great question that you think people have for tax nervous is um, what is the hold up? Sometimes? Well you can think about you can answer now if you want, Okay, I can tell you what the hold up has been the last year is the tanneries with COVID. I actually just received four goats back that brought into me in a fallow up twenty just got them back. So not even your fault, No, No, it's just we're just we have stuff that's been out for a year and a half and it's still there. It's being processed and everything's coming back fine. But yeah, I'm definitely starting to get the phone calls. We're like, are you sure it's okay. I'm like, I'm sure it's okay. It's just there's nobody there to man the tannery for their short staff, very short staff. We finally split it up between four tanneries this year just to try to not overwhelm one place and so we can get our turnaround times a little better. Do you ever have tanneries lose your stuff. No, thank god, knock knock on. There haven't had that happen yet. I've had that happened before. It's hard for them to lose stuff these days, you know, like you'll we'll have a seal put in it that's got our name and our code on it. Then it's punched with our invoice number um and he distinguishing marks. We always document so if they sent me the wrong thing back, it would be pretty obvious. Then I want to be one of the top crisis season the tax during the world. Right, is cape condition yes? And and making sure it's my cape yes, yep. And so the punches and the seals that that helps make sure that that's accurate. I remember a long time ago, we did one and mounted it up for a guy and he came in and he was like, oh, it looks great. Comes back the next day and he's like, this isn't my dear, and we're like, that's your dear, and he brought a picture out and yeah, the cape's got switched around. He's like different haircut. Yeah, it's totally different. So at that shop I was working at that time, that's when we started implementing the seals, not just a punch already. This guy's reputable. I want time, despite his occupation, despite his calling. I sent a coyote that was like super red one time to the tannery. Looked like a red fox, was kyote and uh. A couple of months later, I get my kio back in the mail and open it up, and it's freaking gray as grey can be. You gotta wonder, like how much when you bring meat to a processor because you got no way of no one. Yeah, like there with with a cape or a bear or something, you'd be like, look, man, the bear I shot had a big white spots on his chest and this bear is red, right, but like how much meat? They're like, I don't know this. Help just give him an help. Yeah, it's from that person whatever, like that out rotted. He'll probably never come back for it. That guy. Give that guy that OK and that guy that open probably happens a whole time. And tell the guy who's calling right now that we're really backed up because COVID. Oh when people here, just I'll be a thou and dollars richer. Why is that? Steve? Well, I'll tell you why, because'm gonna win that Derby tomorrow Duck's on ice. Oh yeah, you could be richer if you catch the biggest fish of the whole. Damn, there's a side thing if you if you have if you're fishing, No, no, it's between it's between bourbon, walleye and perch. If you happen to catch the biggest fish out of the entire derby, you win. Well why would we not just spend tomorrow tip up and for bourbon and win all that money? Well, I mean that could be a your strategy could be this the time, like the the timing for it's not good for. It's not good for. You can't start until eight while I tried that last I tried that on my birthday. And let me tell you how that went. It was a long day. We were running what nineteen tip ups twenty something like that salmon belly, the salmon fins that I brought back from Alaska, like the little uh what do you call him? A little pectoral finn we had I don't know why, acres covered and tip and you lord at the end and just oil comes off it. Soccer strips that I bought off my kid, not a not a flag. Well, no one falls trip. Probably some trout at the time of year when it supposed to be on fire a year ago, a year earlier. Yep, we went from twenty four to zero man Canyan Ferry. In my opinion, I don't know what's different this year, but different. The water is super low. I should just blow the damn drain the whole thing. Now it's useless. Yeah, like I was gonna be the worst day in the world. I think they I think they should manage it for everything other than trout. Yeah. Man, like, it's so weird. They're like, if you catch a perch, it's gonna be bigger than a walley that you catch more than likely. So strange. My daughter yesterday said, I rememorized that. She said, would you stop talking about that? No one even knows what a derby is. Now I should go to it's how Daddy's gonna make it. You couldn't go. I thought it was Sunday, not Saturday. No, you can still go buy the thing. It's forty bucks to get in this for ducks unlimited fifty bucks at the door. Yeah, I might join, Well, I just I'm not. I don't mean to moral I'll shoot you morally. But I also included a five dollar donation everybody. Every I was trying. I'm just a modest little you know, nod. I was so shocked that I did wasn't buying it at the door that I was actually I was like, I'm gonna give him at the door like it was normal, which normally I would do this at the last minute. Yeah, yeah, I might join. Oh, I hit us real quick with UM. I know it's like early and you haven't read everything yet, but the eagle study that's you're making its round right now? Man, what's your take? Half of all eagles? So if if you haven't read the study, but you're only reading headlines, you would it would seem that there's a bunch of anti hunters out there that came out with the study that the hunters are killing all the eagles in the US half of them. Um. And as with studies, they can be applied in certain ways. And what this was was they did a study in the US of eagle health. And can I interrupt you for saying this is bald and golden, bald and golden yea, both of them, and um, you know I think they were like eagles captured um or or or analyzed in the study and and then that right is like and then if you applied that to the entire United States, that's this is what you could get. Um for I guess like the dose of reality is, uh, do not pay attention to things that that's Compare the effects of lead on people to the effects of lead on birds. It turns out we're very different aside from the flying and the the highly acidic stomach. So the feathers throw me off to you know, Um, I've seen some people eat in similar ways. But uh, you know, lead does have a fast and and oftentimes deadly effect on birds that eat carrion, and you know that that is the truth. So um, you know. The other thing to look at here, though, is ego populations in much of the country are are actually expanding and growing. And so it comes down to this conversation that you'll hear many many times, like the individual versus the population? Are we having population level effects? And where those things are overlapping would be like the case like the California condor right, where if you were to kill an individual, that individual's death could then have an overall effect on the population. So um, I'm gonna do more of an in depth go through this thing, um on the weekend review. This is like broad strokes. With Cal's we can review, ladies and gentlemen, Cal's we can review. I feel like anymore, you can't drive like ten miles without seeing a bald eagle. They're everywhere. No, they're pr person screwed up. You just get all excited seeing one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um so yeah. Some of these headlines are very misleading, as per usual UM, and as per usual good you know, good science should be applauded UM, and lots of people can take that good science and apply it in ways where He's like, but if and that's why you gotta read this stuff. Thanks Cal. We'll be following this one. Listen, I'm gonna crystal ball it for a minute. This is gonna make everybody, oh man, this issue is here's my crystal ball. This ain't going away and stop. This discussion is not about to end. It is not about that's my crystal ball prediction. And you know I always say, like you have a choice as a hunter to uh purchase non toxic ammunition and and you know non toxic ammunition the variety that's on the shelf right now. Uh is way broader and way better than it's ever been. And if you choose to hunt with that stuff, you're not gonna have these secondary effects, right, You're you're gonna kill the thing that you're shooting and not the things that are eating the leftovers. Yeah. I don't want to equate it to like spanking little kids, but it's just fading out sort of its own way, you know. Um Like when I was a little good, every kid got spanked all the time. Now that's not that many kids get spanked anymore. And I feel like a lot of people are just and annoying made a law about it, right, But I just like more and more people I know, regardless of whether they're thinking about raptors or whatever, are for big game at least shooting model copper bullets. Did you see the article a couple of weeks ago on the phasing out of whaling due to the market, right, Like the market dictates, oh like people are buying less than whale ol yeah, or whale products right, and or the industries that still use whale oil for stuff. Uh, And you think about you know, the crazy, screaming, bloody murder on on the whale topics and you know, like there's alternatives hitting the market every day type of thing, and that's what is ending whale industries in in certain areas. A Karan, why did you Why did you decide it's not is it? Because it has nothing to do with our subject matter on this podcast that you removed the COVID Yankee candle review. That's a funny article, which is the funniest thing. Yeah, so everybody knows that Yankee candles are sort of like like if your grandma has a candle in her house, it's probably a Yankee candle. People like them because they have a very potent, potent candles, No, nothing subtle about them. And someone I have totally explored it, but someone tracked COVID outbreaks with reviews of bad reviews of yanky whatever smell. Whenever there's a big spike in a COVID outbreak, there's a big spike and Yankee candle reviews that it doesn't have any smells candles, So damn really the graphic tracks like you just lay both charts on like this could be a rough week, bro. Customer service cases are spike and people are not smelling their cans. Uh oh, so Brody got, I don't want to say it was not like a PR crisis, because it's like a not very widely viewed thing. But Brody has now developed the track record of being something about his tonality when discussing dogs. Dogs. Yeah, Brody gets to talking about dogs, Corey gets to getting emails of people that are mad at him, and I'll you know, I'm a dog owner. I love dogs. You've always had Yeah, yeah, dogs, yep, yep, the first one, you think he's like a bad dog Personce people got madder than the Golden retriever. Eventually this will get the peta I feel like. So, Brody observed, did you catch what they called you? Did they call you a jack wagon or an ass hat or something like that. It was along those lines a category of insult um, Brody said. Brody observed, Yeah, we were talking about just passionately observed. Yes, going back, we were talking. A gentleman wrote us about he had an injured deer in his yard that his dog went out and injured it. Further yadi yadi an insult to injury. Yes, and we're chatting about it and I made a comment that I made the comment that this is on the skip the flip in. In certain states, if you see a dog chasing deer, harassing big game, attacking big game, it is legal to shoot the dog. That got extrapolated out to me condoning the killing of domestic It is reported this is on a thing called UH, a Facebook group called Army of Orange, which I liked the UH. It is reported that this jack wagon this being bro to you Henderson. It is reported that this jack wagon spouts off encouraging the shooting of domestic dogs. Yeah. Yeah, let him and his sponsors and his publishers know how you feel. What's funny is the guy making the post hasn't listened obviously, because he just says it is reported. Yeah, he's and he provides a link, and he's already calling for a boycott. Yeah. And basically what I was doing was making the case that you should train your dog not to chase a deer, right because bad things happen when dogs chase an attack deer. There and and a lot of places, uh, pet dogs kill a lot of deer. A grade school biology teacher here in Missoula, Montana who was like, I see a dog chasing a deer, I kill it that's right. That was like fifth grade growing up in Missoula, Montana, which for those of you unfamiliar with Montana would be seen as the liberal it's the Paris of West central Montana. Yeah, that would be the other thing. That's what I was thinking, especially from folks and those French cheese from Missoula came up. His concern is legitimate. Sure, his concern is, hey man, there's a lot of states were allowed to legally use dogs to hunt deer, which I support where that's legal. I think it should stay where it's legal and has been legal. I think it should stay legal. And he points out that a lot of hound hunters um are very reluctant to let their dogs work on public land during deer season for fear that vigilante UH people such as Brody going down. I don't actually hunt deer. I hunt dogs. But every every dog an incidental dear, regardless of if you've trained your dog to run deer, every dog owner has a long list of serious concerns for different times of year. I'm like, where you're gonna take your dog? Right, like the tangled up in a snare? And so his point was good, But then what's funny is he gets riled up and he's like, if that's true, I want you to post the law. Right Probably someone post law yeah from Brody State. Read how they word you want the general rule Like someone's like this from someone pointed out some points. I was like, he's just say he didn't say you should. He's just saying it is. They're like, well that's not and then someone's like, well no, it's statute, blah blah blah. I was saying, if you don't want that to happen, teach your dog not to chase deer. And in Pennsylvania, the law says a dog declared a public nuisance pursuant to Section four relating to declaring dogs public nuisances may be killed by any commission officer at any time or by any person when the dog is found to be in the act of attacking a big game animal, and you're then supposed to report it. Yes, didn't get a call in uh. Any person who kills a license this is this is crazy. That's if you kill a license dog, if you you kill a non licensed dog, and nothing to happen. In Pennsylvania, if you kill a licensed dog, you shall notify the owner or a commission officer within forty eight hours after the dog was killed. Now, I really do want to point out that I'm in favor of this law and probably not. You're coming out on record he wasn't even he didn't even pass. He didn't pass for the reason that you're thinking, I'm in favor of this law because there are so many shitty dog owners outside and oftentimes I have been able to say, uh, you know, you should really teach your dog not to run deer or go under the three strand barbed buire fans and chase that guy's cattle around because they can legally kill your dog. And I also have to say, like I would be like the most crushed individual you have ever seen if somebody were to shoot my dog. That is why, which is what I still think people should be able to shoot your dog. It's up to you responsibilities. Bold statement. Kel. I want people to know that that was not brody because Cal said it. No one's gonna care but Brody. They're like that Brodian dogs here, girls, that spouting off dogs was real bad. The Golden Retrievers, the dumbest dog. I still stand by that we're launching a new series where he's got a train of golden retriever. Next year it'll just be a show. We should drop like every Friday night and be like Brody with ten new things about ten new opinions about dogs. You have the picture over. Don't like that? Remember like Letterman's like listening, it's outing dogs. Needs to be a Formalian segment, the weekend up day segments. Uh so does that? Uh? Moving down? Oh? If you do in Pennsylvania, you kill a dog who's attacking a big game animal, the owner, if the dog was licensed, the owner is allowed to get the information about the time, place, and circumstances relating to the death of the dog, and they're allowed to learn the location. Well, that's kind of included in place. Also angry listeners, No, no, not angry listeners. I explained why when you're from southern Illinois you are not southern and and some people got mad about that, he said. One guy writes in I promise you that is the most inaccurate thing you've ever said. That's a bold, bold statement. He invites me to come down and hunt deer, squirrel or turkey in Pope County, Illinois, and then comes see for myself. If the people there are Southern or not, I think you'd be amazed. He says. We are the furthest possible from the people who ice fish up in Chicago. Steve, I was on your side until I actually looked at a map, because I did not realize how south Illinois South Illinois, bro, you can't be from the same place. Lincoln was from Michael and from the south, and we had an actual Southerner. Michael Wadell greed, if you can ice fish, you're not from the south. In Georgia, he said, I've never laid eyes on a man ice fishing in Georgia. It's on, it's on the same You know, latitude is as Virginia's south of St. Louis. It's not far from Nashville. It's it's pretty south the right. You got a draw line somewhere. But if you notice, if you go back in your history book, the Mason Dixon line did not follow a a latitude borders right. It was like cock eyed kind of line. Do we still use that too? I feel like that's that's not a good way to gonna make ice. I'm gonna make a line. What we should just draw it up someone could draw it up if you ice fish in that state and then you draw a line at the bottom of the state and it'll zigzag and then you'll know the south from the north. So we'll work on that. Put it on a T shirt. I'm looking at a picture here that shows the Mason Dixon Line being south of the Illinois border, because you can ice fish in Illinois. But it's funny because that's how it's funny, because it includes Missouri, which the line shoots up. Oh, you're a half the distance of you probably think you probably think of Missouri compromise as a bullet, but the Missouri Compromise was actually about that very issue. I would love love nothing more than to go into a barbershop some and see the Missouri compromise as like you point to the picture, Oh you want Ah, here's the big news I've been following. And that was actually, you know, I actually wanted to do. I wanted to do, like do the public comment thing, but it was really hard to do the public comment thing. That it was time to do it, like in person public comment is they've opened up spear fishing for a number of game fish in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, which is great for me in Michigan. But they've drawn it in like a weird way. Um, the areas they've opened up, it's almost like they thought to themselves, what would be the area that someone would be would be least likely to enjoy success, and that will be the Walleye Northern Pike spear fishing area, meaning what it's like south of the Southern Pier in Grand Haven for Lake Michigan and Lake here you're talking about like the distribution of the species does They didn't open up any inland, see like everything in the Great Lakes are inland, but like a term would be sort of like inland being not the great They didn't open up any non Great lake waters Great Lakes proper, right, And then they drew a line where like they opened up Lake Michigan and Michigan water south of the Southern Pier where the Grand River flows into Lake Michigan. If someone said like, hey, you can now spearfish for Northern and Walleye in Michigan, that would be the last place I would that would ding in my head is where I'm headed to. Is that something to do with the muskie populations? No, I don't think so. I think it just has to do with the people. People the Roding Real crowd of which I'm a member. Most of them are real fired up about this. They're like, oh, they're gonna kill them all. So I know they're gonna kill like five of them. But um uh tribes didn't want it. Uh. A lot of the rod and Real crowd didn't want it. Spear fishermen have been put in so they did like this experimental spear fishing season in places that seemed not great. Now hopefully there's some guy in Michigan thinking like, no, you got it all wrong, and he'll right in and tell me how I'm all wrong. But then we'll go check it out and bite you to come out there. And there's one guy who's been sending me emails about this, and he's been following it and he did testify on it, and he's still views it as a win. Oh you also you gotta like fill out like a report about what you did and didn't do. He used it as a win because it's it's expanding areas for spear fishing. It's because the first time, it's the first time in michiganan spear what would be called the game fish. So they've and what what my guess is, what will happen if if the good if the goodwill on the part of the fisheries managers extends like well, let's see. My feeling is that the way they've done it, they are not going to find that all of a sudden there's an overwhelming harvest by spear fishing. If you were if your goal was to kill a shipload of walleye, like, to get a shipload of walleye spear fishing is probably not no you know, or lake trout for that matter. I'll tell you to change the physique of a lot of walleye. Fishermen need a heavy dive. Lead prices are gonna go way up trying to sink all that. But it is weird because because you know, in salt water you can spear all kinds of game fish. Yeah, freshwater, it's just never been a thing. Freshwater spear fishing, I think is the new frontier man and it's like good. But I just feel like it's great that they did it. Um being from there, I was excited and then I saw what they're opening and I was like, I was ready to make a special trip right then I saw what their opening. I mean I might go there to see my mom anyways, and that this border is very near my mom hour drive my mom's place. Um, but when I saw what they opened, I was like, oh wait, I don't know. So maybe someone will right in and they'll be like, no, you got it all wrong, dude. But you think it's more of a like is there purse, it's just a poor spot for the fish to be or it was there like a water clarity issue, uh, seasonal clarity issue. But in the spring you have good In the spring you have great clarity. It's just a matter of like where they're gonna be concentrated and when they're gonna be there, and that you're it's just like a basin, you know. I mean it's like an open sandy basin. And a lot of those big bays did have more sort of identifiable structure in places you'd go like be like this would be a great place to look for walleye. A lot of that stuff lies north there. There might be stuffing I'm not thinking of is it deep south there? You know what's funny is it's it's like it's super predictively deep, like if you go six miles out, it's two deep, you know. I mean, it's just like it's so gradual the way it was carved out. It might be yeah, shallow again, I don't, I don't know what, but it greatly behooves you to stack the deck in your favor as much as pop. So if you're going to a spot where, yeah, there's a few fish around, um, that's gonna be a tough day of spear fishing. The upside is, at least this year, when you show up down on the bottom, the last thing on his mind is gonna be that you're gonna shoot him, you know what I mean. There's no marine mammals. It's just like a big wally, just nothing ever happens to him. There's no reason to run from anything. Yeah, and then all of a sudden, there's no catching release with spear fishing, and I mean, my goodness, like the rotten real angler. You gotta accept the fact that once you let that fish go, there's a lot happening below the surface that you just have no idea about. Whereas it somebody with a spear, you kind of live it personally. You're very familiar with the fate of that fish man. I don't even know this. I wanted to talk about this one. Don't even know. It's like I can't tell. Do you wanna talk about the organ thing? It's sad or I'll get out. It's like I don't even know if it's like if it's if it fits. So a guy in Oregon, are you deadline? Oregon man accidentally shoots brother while fending off bear, then kills himself. So fending fending being as a verb, right, um no, yeah, is it a bird? I know, but when it's got an I m g is a still over? Yeah, of course it is. So it seems like I don't really know. But looking at it seems more like they saw a bear out in the yard on their property. One of them runs and gets the gun, and then in the loading manages to kill his brother. So I don't know, like how whether they're fending off a bear or just fix them to go get a bear, or just getting excited with a gun because there's a bear out in the yard. The tragic thing is then the guy was so distraught shot himself moving on any more to stay there. One of those will never really know. Yeah, oh oh no, Cal would love to know if if O d F G Oregon Department of Fishing game has been called previously regard your property destroying or threatening bear question like was it a black was it like a black bear threat? Just a weird story. I'm sure more details like were they super on edge because it's like, oh, the crazy marauding bear is coming back? Or you know, it's just there's some context there that would make this um a little more relatable. I guess. I mean, it's just just sad. But I got to uh removing into tax during me. Now, John, were you getting bored? I want to talk about our calendar, and you know, I want to ask your peinbot a counter, but first I want to heat with a listener question. Okay, A listener wrote in with a pressing question, what do you me eater folks expect from their mounts when they die or pass them on? My grandfather had over one hundred and fifty mounts in his basement. I was wish I could do that small museum. It's been a nightmare for our family. He goes on to say his basement, all of his stories made up or not. We're the highlights of holidays and the grandchildren's dreams. Now that he has passed, it seems to be a nightmare to be rid of them. In context, before he passed, he told me personally, I really enjoy looking at all these animals I've collected in my basement. But when I die, good luck, it's not my problem anymore. Does he want to see what the problem is? Holy cow, he's got a lot of crazy stuff. Yeah, well, the problem is that they gotta get rid of this stuff because I imagine, you know, they want to sell the house or Yeah, but how's that a nightmare? It's a gold mine? But is it? Though? That's the question? Not not necessarily? Yeah, see what they have? What are they sitting on here? There's a nice walleme out there. You can send that to me. John is gonna give you a very accurate estimate of its value right now. I mean, it's stuff does and look all rot and falling apart? Is that a great horned owl? And that picture? Yeah, I might be part of the explain that part of the problem, you know, Uh, get go get closer your mic there. The biggest thing I see when I look at these pictures like this, um a lot of personal trophies, but for highly resellable. You're basically looking at something that has Boot and Crockett value. If if if granddadded shot you know five there, those would be really easy to move. Uh. Just your average little stuff that just meant something to him, it's very difficult to move. And then as they get older. Yeah, a lot of I get this. A lot people call me constantly asking Hey, how can I get rid of this stuff? Where do I sell this stuff? At? Certain things require permitting that the permits don't exist. You have to go back through and refile for stuff. You know, it can be a nightmare. I would imagine, Um, did you notice the bobcat lounging on the TV in the lower left hand corner. No, I just got all messed up and I lost my place on things like moved or I don't know. I didn't do it. I didn't do anything. I mean it looks to me like, you know, you could just send this picture around to like every controls get magically over here. Any kitchen, you know, restaurant, bar, you know whatever, that's always an easy place to try to unload a lot of that stuff. He's got a beaver now and on a stick. I want to see I want to see a bigger version of the axis dear where it's got? Why can I get a big rest of the hide over the top? Is the like that thing belongs in some crappy bar in a SKII in front of the fireplace. It looks like that access to here says to me expensive cocktails could find better elsewhere. And as the looks changed so much that you know, I mean like stuff I did when I was in high school compared to now, I mean, I couldn't give that ship away. Do you know he has an airplane hanging from the ceiling to airplane that really throws the whole thing off. Unless he was a bush pilot. He's got a couple of them. Yeah, so he does have the family does have a problem. They'll have to definitely search around and try to find places to just give a lot of that away. Really. Yeah, we got a letter from a guy one time that took his grandpa's stuff and made a pire p y a E and torched it all because he's like, it just seemed like I didn't we didn't know what to do with it. It just seemed like a way to just send it along, Send it along. Man, do people come to you to try and offload. Yeah, and usually unless I'm buying antlers off something I don't, or like a sheep if it's pinned and I know it's legal, something like that. I think the big question here is not what happens to the taxidermy items, but what happens to the taxidermist when somebody likes this, Like this dies, that's a cash cow, all right, Yeah, like his business is drying up. Yeah, that's not my client. But about the rogue taxidermist who will come in and put one head on another thing and attach something. We're gonna next Harry Potter type, Harry Potter type tax Yes, she was explaining that, making like Harry Potter animals. That's it's quite She's like, she's she doesn't know it. She's tiptoeing in that direction. Hey, well, it seems like John's gotta little vein of that in him too. You need to pay this guy a visit. Crane, you'd have endless opportunity. You can make a beaver fish. Get your hands on is it an our wall that has the horns? And oh yeah, Crean, you could go. You could go ape ship with all this stuff. You make a lion with like steel head for legs. I don't know. Uh, that's too bad. I want to see. I thought all that stuff was valuable, And in fact, I'm faced with a similar situation my father had. My father had the first uh fawn, first year he ever got, which was a white tail fawn that looks like it was mounted seven years ago. Um uh, he's got another white tail buck. He's got like a shoulder amount of a black bear, right, And I'm like trying to figure out what I'm gonna do with it. Like when I wanted my grandfather's white tail, his best white tail. Um, I just took the antlers off and redid it. The cape, new cape, new form, new style, you know. So just keep it in the family. You know, the grandkids all know the story from their parents and the uncles that were there stuff. So just refurbish it, you know, take it, take it back down, and put a brand new look back on it. That is the thing that's hard to get across on tax dury. Have you know, known a lot of old Cogers over the years, and they can look at them out and know the entire story and recount the whole like, oh yeah, this is this time of day, we were right here. Yeah, even if they're pretty fuzzy on just about everything. All right, So let's let's do one last for instance, Uh, is that a sailfish? What is that thing? Yeah, some sort of a Yeah, that billfish. That's a sailfish. Guy walks into your studio. No, that's a bad example. Well no, let's do this one. Let's check out his black bear. They're the one standing up black bear, standing up, beautiful white throat patch, gorgeous black beard. Guy walks into Hayes tax during studio on Libby Montana says, hey, uh, what's your best offer? You would literally say zero dollar. It's not my work, most importantly, and I don't sell anybody's work but my own, especially like the bears. I've been working a long time. We kind of have our own look good, bad or otherwise. It's becoming more recognizable to my studio. And I just don't don't have anything to do with other people's stuff because your bears look like a live bears. We're trying to get what we could have. We could open up, we can open ourselves up to some taxidermy donations, and then we can put those in the Menater House of Oddities. Well, that's something I was going to say. Next is especially if it's fucked up old Taxidermy, because then we could have like a companion calendar that Seth curates the photos for with an actual live in the fake flesh version of the I'm going to say, find out where uh, let's find out where he is, because maybe we just have to send someone there over there and fly over there, get a rental U haul and bring it all back, or if they really want to get rid of it, package it up. But I don't want crane root around in there cutting stuff of blue and all that ship back together. Yeah, we should get it. Maybe. I'm telling you guys, I got a spot in Idaho that we're gonna drive down too, because everybody needs to see the whole company. We'll get all of our messed up old taxider any photos that we need, and everybody will be done with it in absolute awe of everything else in this spot from one location. Is it a bar? It's unreal, It is unreal. We're doing last year we did a calendar I guess it was last year. We did a calendar for this year called fund Up Old Deer stands. Yes, I saw that. Great all sources from our community, our listeners. Um, that's been overwhelmed by the by next year's calendar submissions, which is fucked up old taxidermy. How many have you got now? Seth oh look two thousand and nine. Its slowed down because we haven't talked about it lately. Yeah. So now is this like novelty tax, durmy or tax or just poorly executed traditional tax? For me, I prefer it to be Yeah, no Harry Potter garbage at all, though in Crin's honor on the last page of the calendar, we might have a bunch of thumbnails, Like we might have a collection of Harry Potter stuff in the back, but it's not gonna be tied. We won't be tied to a month. It's it's preferably it's just yeah, nothing like that. What is that? I don't know. It just says taxidermy from hell. Yeah, nothing like we're looking for Grandpa's the perfect piece of old fund up tax, then we would be that. Um, it's stuff from hunters, stuff from trappers that just hasn't like aged well might have not been done the best in the first place was once loved now it's neglected. Yeah, like with the newspaper coming out of their eye and stuff like that. Like yeah, just like great old bad text nrmon, great old bad text Nrman, but not Harry Potter stuff. Sorry. I just so John, if you're sumbing through that calendar next year and you find your own stuff, now, you're gonna know you're like, that's like, just silence the conversation. Pep, we'll get a cease and desist. Wait, hold on, I really anyone who just really isn't a shitty mood right now, or just isn't a great mood but like wants to laugh, just google Old Bad Taxidermy and some real crazy ship will pop up and you will not be able to stop cracking up. No, I think it's gonna be good. I think, well, we like really scour it. We're gonna find some great months now. Funked up Old Taxidermy was seasonal, so it feels wintertime. There's an old deer stay in during the wintertime. Fils spring, there was up old deer staying in the spring. This is gonna not be a seasonal Maybe we can find a seasonal element. Nah, No, probably not. We need a good representation of different species. Though, why did you become a tax nerm me John tax der missed. My family always had tax drm me growing up and got it done, had it done. Um. And then one day I finally was old enough to go pick up a deer head with my dad and I was about eight years old and I went over to one of the local shops my dad pick it up, and I was just blown away. It was just amazing that just was absolutely enamored by the whole thing. And just the smell, yeah, everything, you know, just like like a little bit of rot, a little bit some bondo fumes in there. Yeah. Walking out the door, I was like, I'm gonna be a tax numerus some My dad was like, oh cool, you know whatever. So on and so forth it went. And first job I got was a tax for me in the shop, and really yeah, as soon as I got a driver's license I was fifteen, I just kept pestering the guy until he finally gave me a job. What was the job he gave you, shot bitch, basically sweeping the floor, cleaning the blood up. And finally I worked up the skin and and prepping hides and prepping forms and stuff. What when you were skinning, you were just skinning like cape and deer. He started on the bad stuff. First. We did a lot of lions back then, like they were really avid lion hunting back up in the b At that time. It wasn't a special drawing, so anybody that wanted to shoot one get attacked just over the counter. So it wasn't uncommon to skin thirty forty mountain lions in season. Yeah, so lots of lion skin in, um, lots of bears for springtime up there, um, and then a lots of deer guys bringing the whole line. It's Yeah, most of the time when I get a line brought it in, it is the whole line. Wow. I'm always just hoping that they didn't ride around with it on the dog box for two days to show everybody what it was, and then it shows up and it's bloated. How do you how do you skin a lot of road dirt? Right? How do you skin a lion if you're if you're gonna do a full body on it un down the back any so, yes, you can, depending on the pose you want, but ultimately on a life size anything you're skinning patterns not as critical as say a rug, because you're just sowing the two pieces back together. So like that cemetery you're looking for on a rug, where you want to be your splits, your legs aren't wonky, and you have equal amounts of belly on each side. Um that's critical for a rug size mounts. If if the artists prefers the dorsal cut, um, like if a cat was standing like that bear you know, or the show side is the belly. Um A dorsal cuts okay, um, But I don't really do dorsal cuts on anything anymore. You still have to cut everybody. I think at some point thinks you just make an incision down the back and then slatted on the form. But the form is completely rigid, so if it's like this, you still have to cut every leg and cut completely down the back of it and sew it all up. So I just I just prefer a belly incision. And most of the time the pose isn't just the belly. Would you prefer like if you blue Sky World it, uh? Would you prefer people show up with whole animals? If we're doing a life size I don't charge any extra to skin it out at the shop because it saves you a little. Uh when when me and Clay brought you my bear which turned out beautifully, were you happy or not happy with our skin and job? Oh? That was great, that was great. Yeah, it was just so you had a guy you worked for it got in a little trouble. Yeah, the first guy that I worked for. Did he get in like taxidermist type trouble, I know, but he had before he got in taxidermist type trouble. He got into like selling fully automatic weapons to the A T, F and FBI that he ended up had a client of his and did a middleman make a couple of thousand bucks quick, and the agent showed up undercover and bottom. And then when we were kids, it was a widely held belief that any semi automatic, including our Marlin semials and he saw semi automatic, was a few file strokes away from being full from being fully automatic. There was like some secret thing that if you just knew what needed to be filed, that was all that separated you from having a fully automatic two Marlin tube bad. Yeah, he filed the pin on it and like, no, this is fully automatic. It's just like but just no one every would show us what exactly one needed to file? Uh do you agree that? I don't. You know, We're not gonna talk all too much on this, but like in your opinion, why do people have sort of oh tax nervous I mean I do, even having any involvement or affiliation with other taxiderms, I'm really standoffish until I know him, because I'm just like a lot of a lot of people just do stupid shit. I mean, like them taking your money and not doing your work, or just slapping poor workout or you know, I lost it, you know, I mean just I don't know how that many in our industry are like that. It's just mind boggling. I think it's it's got to be transition because I think at a time it was like so many people kind of working out of their basement stuff. Right now you sort of seems like I don't really know, but it seems now you have like big taxidermy studio, Like you guys use like studio Like it's like a business when you go, you know what I mean, it's like a full on business with like paperwork and stuff. And I've heard you used the word artist a few times too. At one point does a taxider must become an artist? Honestly, that probably is individually based. I would say, Um, early on, I definitely wasn't an artist. I was just mechanically trying to put stuff together. Um. But like the more you learn, the more you learn, right, and it starts opening up like a little door or of creativity where you're like, oh, maybe I'll try that this time. And so I think it's a progression. At least it was a progression for me. I mean, I know a couple of guys are just like they were just natural. I was not you. Weren't you here to work for it? Ground still grinding. Yeah, I started to really appreciate John when we're talking. I can't ember how it came up. Oh Yanni. Yeah, He's like, man, if I ever get a bear mounted, I'm gonna get it mounted where it's not growling, because he's like every bear I look at, he's never growling, right, But then every bear amount they're growling, and so were I was pointing out John, like why are they always growling? And it's just easier to make them growling. It is there's a lot more product materials available to make that look and I said, can we do one where he just looks like a normal bear walking through the woods, which is his mouth is closed. Yes, And you're saying when you go into your supply catalog, that's not in there. There's only just a handful of clothes mouth and there. I would never use one for any of my work. I know that. So we just make our own look amazing. And that's how we like when you were saying about the guy walking with the bear, That's why I wouldn't take his bear, because I'm really particular in what I'm using to get that look, trying to try to be repeatable, so it's not like a snowflake like, oh my bear look great, and you're like, how my bear sucked. Trying to keep that repeatable performance out there. Uh, you know they want to ask you. You got into helicopter logging for a while. Yeah. That was kind of the path where the fork was like go to prison or go somewhere else. So I went helicopter logging when he left make our fortune and that was up. That was that was up when that was still some some timber business happening up. Could yeah you're on a Libby Montana, Yeah, yeah, that's that's dried up right. Oh yeah, completely, it is the loggers. You're in like a former logging community. Yeah, yep, very well. That was the whole basis of the community. Originally was basically logging and then a little bit of mining, but logging was the staple. And you guys are doing like you're doing, like select cut helicopter stuff. And for the helicopter mostly we traveled, so we'd log in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Montana, anywhere where the train warranted using an aircraft. What was your role in that? That was a hooker, so a choker, ceter hooker. I was like John didn't make much money. That's why to get back into taxi here. I knew those logs and towns were off. So what's the hooker do. You're the external load person, So when the helicopter fly over, they lower a lion down to you and you would select a weight of logs, so you'd look at him and guess about how much that would weigh, and then put those together on chokers and attach it to the load beam on the hook and then the helicopter flat off. That was near our fish shack. They were doing a helicopter logging for a couple of summers, and I pictured it being that. I mean these are this is like old growth cedar, western red cedar, hemlock. I mean, these trees are no joke. They were probably running big aircraft up there, weren't they twin like big twin. But I thought they'd like lift the tree out right. I couldn't believe in it'd come up out of those trees with a bundle. Yeah, of trees you can't put your arm brown right, and then lay them onto a barge when they when they picked them up, those things never touched land again. Man, it was amazing lay them on a barge. The infrastructure they would build for logging, like one area around your shack roads and like not a town, but like a big gass camp for all the people to stay at. That's when they're that's when they're doing like the logging, like where they actually do a beach landing. But the helicopter stuff is very like discreet relatively. But I tell you what, man, it's hard to go through the woods. When they get done. Yes, yeah, it looks like, oh I just greased through there real quick. All the tops and slash are all just piled everywhere. Oh god man there, Oh my goodness. Yeah, I mean it is. I think it's it's twice as hard because your mental picture of like helicopter log game is they just plucked a few trees out of the ground and it should be easier because yeah, yeah, uh, while you're doing that, you always want to get back into Yeah. I would still you know, fart around a little bit on my own, um remedial tanning projects. And what's that mean, just like trying to do hometans like tan muskrat or something beaver hide or coyote hide or something like that. But that's not even part of text room anymore, right, Like you don't do any tanning. I don't do any tanning in the house unless it's like emergent and we have to get something small tan like a deer cape or something. Oh so you can do it, We can do it, yeah, I just we just don't have time anymore. I didn't realize you could. So there's no like as if you have a taxidermy studio that's doing like a ton of business. Is there a weight Like I don't want to like dig too deep. I don't want to ask you like a question like how much land you have and how many cattle run on it? But how many thinks like like just give sort of like a ballpark of how many pieces flow through your hands annually. Well, we just got a confirmation yesterday that our hundred ninth black barrel becoming in since April of last year. Just coming back to you, just getting brought through the studio. So yeah, we'll have a hundred nine under a year's time. Just your studio will do a hundred nine black bears. And that's just one species. Yep, that's just bears. Percent get lost or sold for profit. Yeah, that's what you're not selling our stuff, right, I'm like, I didn't know. Did you see there's no money in that? You know how there was like way more hunting and fishing activity due to COVID. Did you get a lot more? Did your just see like an uptick in business requests or anything? Are you just like for uh, one of the big things that COVID killed for us was as they shut down Spring Bear for non residence. And we have tons of non residents that come up there up in your area. We have tons. I mean, we've got guys that have been coming up from Utah's we got we got a large following in Utah that come up to Libby and bears Heart special drawing versus over the counter. And uh so one guy they've been coming up. They missed one year since Mountain Saint Helen's erupted. They were there. Yeah, that's the only year they had missed since the year before erupted to that and or twenty and so that was there. That was a huge dip for US. Canada was closed down, so all the outfit, well, like you weren't getting local guys for you bringing bears. They killed in Canada. We've we've saturated the bear rug market for the local guys. You know, they only want so many of them, you know, so a lot of times most of the works from out of town. So do you are you? Do you imagine yourself now? Is like a bear specialist? Like, what's your specialty? I know your bears are called. I really like doing bears. Um that has always been whether it was a rugg or a life size or anything in between. I always really enjoyed working on bears, but I enjoyed doing every thing squashy pillows you do pillows? Oh that rug. Yeah, that's what Yanni's bringing a big bobcat. Explain that, explain that piece the pillow. Yeah, so that's not the right word for it though, Yeah, right, there's gotta be a better term for it. We Uh we had a guy come in and talk Dennis and I into doing a soft mounted coyote and we were like, no way. Anatomically, you just don't have the form. You can't make everything exact. So he finally wanted into a Teddy Bear like, just so it's pliable, soft head, like a full body mount, but soft. Yeah, so so I'll be like a Teddy Bear kind of kind of Okay, So we ended up doing it for this guy and then he never showed up and we were like, oh man, well he never came back to it, never came back to get us. Now he got how much? How much you charge him? Honestly, I don't even know. Back then Dennis would have been in charge of what's industry standard for deposit Uh, well, it depends this case to case sometimes, just like for us right now, we're usually do a third. That's because vanish on you, though not so much anymore. Back in the day, we had more people like Americans are getting better. More people are committed to getting it, especially if they do put a deposit on it. That helped, so a third. I want to get back to this teddy bear thing about it, but like, but the deposit thing. Now that I know that it's such a thing that people will abandon you, um, I guess if you said it's full price, then you might send business to competitors. A third will get them common back maybe and then usually, uh, what we started implementing is you put a third down. Once we receive your high back from the tannery, and we're getting ready to start your your product, than you time to either paying full or put at least another third down. Now you're gonna start putting manual time into it. Yeah, that's a good system. It helps. And then at least the guy that calls you up and he's like, hey, I really want to get that done. I want to get that done, and how fast can you do it? And you're like, okay, I'll do it right away, and he's like, you know it's Christmas time, man. Yeah, oh yeah, that's not like okay, so now we have to make sure they're paying along in the way with you. Okay, So back to the coyote teddy bear. I imagine it's a soft tan and then you stitch it up like a balloon and then uh, you pick an orifice and shooting doctor get one of those things that blows in insulations. Exactly what I'm thinking. We never thought of that one that like to out the door. So we ended up with this, and I mean it could end up in the fun up old taxi to me calendar. I'm sure I don't have any pictures of it. I don't keep that sht try to he's trying to stay out of the town. There. We had a car show coming to Libby. It was a hot August nice is what it was called, and so there were some people coming through town. I'm very interested, but I'm trying to understand how did you get from the So this is how the pillow. Oh, the guy vanished. The guy vanished, But then you have the things sitting there. So we got sitting in the shop and now now I'm not into the car show. The car show people stopped by and this guy is like, wow, I love that thing, and we're like really, He's like, can I borrow it and take it down to the car shows. I don't want to put it in my car. We're like, yeah, go ahead, you know whatever. So he took it down there and then we had about a half a dozen people come back from the car show and they're like, we want once for our hot I saw the most amazing kind and it was sleeping on the front seat of a Chevy, you know, in a way that was kind of laying down, curled up like a dog would be on a dog bed. Yep, I found any pictures of this. I found the video that A knew posting about it. But this, this was kayo one. This is suddenly amazing. It's a big difference. Suddenly you had a tax. This is unbelievable. This is not the one. No God, no, no, no, that's what that is amazing right now. But wait, let him hope. Those Ronella kids aren't listening. They're going to ruin their Christmas. That's unbelievable. And he pioneered back so we and I know other people do it now, um, but that was just something we came up at the time. There might have been other people doing the same thing somewhere else, but as far as we know, we just totally made that ship up. Go to at Steven Ronnella on Instagram and see what we're talking about. Okay, hot rods, hot rights. So we end up selling about a half a dozen more of us to hot riders, to hot rodders for car shows. Well, one of the one of the car show people owned storefront from the parody shops, and they owned storefront engine most of the major airports around the country. What does that mean parody shops. It was just the name of a business. You know, when you like their gift shops and the airport, you probably but the word is like parody, like like mocking parodies. And so they called up and asked we'd ship one to Spokane, but it didn't spoke Ane International, so I'm not sure someone there, and then that it was sold just like instantly. So they ended up ordering a few of them, and they sent me, sent them to Texas, and we sent them to New York, and we sent him to Arizona and for years and they went. They just went like crazy, and then started getting a little bit of a negative feedback, like I can't believe you guys have these animals on displaying the stores and stuff. So they finally just pulled back about about eight nine years ago. That's what I was going to guess. It'd be like that company that was making the park Is with the Coyote rofan, they never had a ship fit. Texas was the last holdout. They finally they finally were like, yeah, they're gonna make us. Corporate was like, no, you guys have to pull the pan. So but Texas loved him. I'm surprised you haven't picked up. Like I'm surprised someone hasn't assumed all that hasn't gotten back into it. Well after Clay posted that video that was I think we got two million views on that thing on TikTok in like a week. It was getting more requests. We had eight hundred emails. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was unbelievable. So actually, uh, I got a silver Fox shipped in this week. I got two great Fox that we'll be leaving Monday morning from California, and I got a Kyote coming in from I think it was Ohio. So what we're just in case you don't go, no, just go look at the Instagram. But it's a I mean it looks like a damn Kyle landing there, curled up sleeping. They did not look like it originally? Can you guys pass like that? I don't think so. I don't know how I would patent that. You probably could with like the materials that you use on the inside secret fill vacuum though the attachment. The heads have specific at that right, the heads for our pillows, whether we're doing the fox or the coyote of the wolf pillows are my own sculptings. So doing that that nobody else has the same look on theirs got trade secrets, if not necessarily better looking than somebody else's, but our our our look. How are those things going to hold up when your seven year old kids starts carrying around like they're quite durable? Um, that's a we get a really good tan on. It's a garment tan. It's like a fur coat. You wouldn't want to get it wet. Um. You know, dog and shreds no matter of moments. So it's fairly fragile. But my dog will be scared of that for five years before she realized, she's like, you know what, that thing never does ship ever? I have beaver would be cool? Have you done a soft little beaver? Well? There, we did a lot of different things. Now it's pretty much just canine family. It's hard to do other stuff, you know, the like a beaver curled up. Yeah, I don't picture of curling up like that with a big fuzzy table over their nose. Yeah. And I did a badger and it looked you know Canada. I'm like, I did a John just for your listeners at home. John just made uncomfortable stance. He looks uncomfortable. I pictured like a badger. Uh in like August laying along the road. They got hit. It's like, but its eyes were all open and clean, but it looked a lot like that. Hey, what do you mess her? All? Fish? I used to do fish? Now I I outsourced my fish to another tax fromers that I know. Um, I feel like it's like like fish tax to me, in my view, has ceased to be a thing. There's a lot of skin mounts. There's no part of the fish. If you like, I can still get a skin mountain down through my my friend Bill. Um, he stilled as skin mounts. You still can do it for real? Yep. Can I tell you funny story about a buddy mine buddy mind his tax dermis. He had a guy bring him. He's in he's over in Miles City. He's not in the business anymore, but he was. Uh. He had a guy snaggle paddlefish out on the Yellowstone and wraps in a wet sleep bag okay, and brings it to him. He didn't want to lose any weight, so it's wraps and a wet sleep bag, brings it to him, wanting to get it mounted. He takes a bunch of pictures, a bunch of measurements, and takes it down and lets it go in the river. That paddlefish swam away. Honestly, on a fish like that, I would definitely do a reproduction to difficult work on something that size and keep it stable, and yeah, I know I would definitely. I feel like that's why I say like it ceased to be a thing. Is I don't really get it. There's still you catch a bass. I can see like you're commemorating it by getting a replica. But if a client called you, Let's say a client called you and said, hey, man, um, I want a tampon large mouth mhmm, yeah, you'd just be like, okay, here, We've done that a lot. So it's it's like there's no is there what is it is? It is basically a painting. Um. We did a seeing a guy for it was out of Hamilton's he wanted to have it was a brick trout, brown trout, rainbow cutthroat, and a bull trout. No mountain whitefish, no mountain whitefish that he wanted those trout all on artificial like a button the river bottom. Is there a reason like that's different? Well, is there like an actual reason where a skin mount would look better than one of those reproductions? No? No, no, they're the casting technology. The the injection molding for casting has come a long way, so the scale, detail and everything's just spot on. And when you're painting those things from a picture, you're like paying attention to little details and do you paint them? I used to paint fish. Yeah, who doesn't know one of my he's a colleague on Bill. He he was the guy that kind of pioneered the cast at head for fish. So like when you're when they're first phasing towards more of the reproduction, the head on a lot of fish taxs dur Me is like you look at old fish, it starts to get where the paint you see, like the bleed in the paint where the oils are popping the finishes coming off. You can't you can't really clean parts of the guilt plates out getting there. You just can't clean all the organic material out of the head. So over time those oils can leach back through and pop the paint off. Oh, when you say clean, you don't mean dust it off from the original to get it prepared like the actual tissue. And so he started doing he'd just take your fish and cast its own head. Well, he had done so many of them he started having tons of mold. So yeah, he was He was pretty much the guy that started the whole cast at head m and that that was that was a huge step in itself. Yeah, you know this, See this opens up weird, Like there's nothing I want to say. It's not like an ethical thing. It's just like a sort of like what is the thing and what is not the thing? But talk about casting of horns and nailers. There's no way to prevent uh, just making up a fish. Whereas if you bring right, yes, not not a a mish, which would like that, but that'd be a mouse. But right, it's like I'm just providing you with the species a picture and here are my measurements, right, or a lot of times so you get it. Like I think it was about like twelve to fifteen pounds. Okay. Has anyone come in and introduced the idea of there being a um, I don't know, man like a like a certification of some sort. Now that there's no part of a fish in a fish that there is like a yes, this fish was a thing like legitimizes fishing tails, right, so like fish tax I just now I look at it, like when I look at the stuffed white tail, right, first thing in my mind is I gotta know more, Like I don't know, right, So you just go by big dead white by big white tails and little pastures and shoot them. You know, you see a big gass moves You're like, that's cool because only one place that which is out in the woods, you know. And when I see a fish, I'm like, I have no idea, dude, Yeah there's And it's like I said, it totally legitimizes all fishing tails. Whatever you want. Is there a thing in taxidermy like making synthetic antlers? Like just um like maybe making a mold of and said a mule deer antlers. Yeah, make that's the one I want the same. Yeah. Um. Usually like it only happens on like that, right, like it's some state record or world record or just some repre deficit. And then then there's well for the deer tour, we only use real deer, like that's they're all what the tour, the meal deer tour that travels aroun the country. Eastman's used to put it on a lot. That's all real dear. That is all real dear. And if they don't know where it came from and who harvested it, doesn't make the tour. So they it's like, yeah, it's more of a historical you know, taking out of old collections or people find them. You know, Granddad had it thrown in the barn and they take it off and I still have a tag on it and a little when it was harvested, who harvested where it came from? And then we put brand new mounts underneath them and take them on tour around the country. M hm. And you're involved in that. I do all the deer for that tour. Dan Woodbridge is the owner of it, and then I'm the tax fromis that does all the mountains that travel around. You've done all the mounts. Yeah, what's the biggest mule do you ever mounted around? I can't even imagine, man. And at that point everything's custom right because like there's not a lot of mule you're walking around, so you're building your own forms and stuff. We can still get forms that are close with a minor alteration. Um so in reality, yeah, that that form does not match up to what that deer was originally. But you're not going to find a cape that was of that size to worry about getting on that forum anyway. So you just start with the absolute biggest primused mulder cape you can. We get a lot of amount of Canada and then just go from there. What's wrong with the cave that was on it? Most of them are deteriorated or just antlers. Like in the tour I got you, you're you're recreating, not recreating. You're putting new caves on old antlers. Yet what's the And I was I was gonna ask you, what's the biggest most common mistake people make when they're bringing stuff to the taxi? Germist? But just like, what are the mistakes people make when they're bringing stuff, and they're like, I want to get this mounted. Like uh like to say like deer rise, yeah, any whatever. I don't know, that's common one. Most people that hundle get a deer and probably one amount of at some point. I would say common mistakes would be dragging it, like dragging it around and wear all the hair off on one side of it, um cutting its throat after you shoot it and then want us to amount it, and it's hard to get it right. Again. It's very difficult to hide to cut throat because you kept through all the hair. I mean, if you poked in and went under and cut out, it wouldn't be as bad. But when he just they lay the knife across it and cut all the hair off and you have to jump up to get past that. So it creates a pinch point. Yeah, I want to let me, let me. I want to dwell on that for a second. Just explain me talk about the people. Is that if you take a like let's say you want to cut into a deer. Um, if you cut from the leather up right, yep, the knife passes through all the hair parts out of the way. But sometimes take a knife and try to make an incision in a deer coming down through it, hair everywhere a little Yeah, you cut through all the hair and create like shaving stuffing. Yeah, it's interesting to me that the throat cut is still around. That was like something that was prominent youth did. Oh it was a lot of guys were just like they yeah that you bleed it. Yeah, never mind, you just like put a thirty calber bull through its lungungs, right, there's like a cord of blood laying in their loose. It's just you then go bleed it to Yeah, well finishing it off, that's another one. Bring it in, shoot it through the face after it's been to dispatch it, and then want us to mount it. And it looks like that, you know, he's just going into a bar and it's missing half of his Can I open us up? Sorry? Whose bears that? It was a guy that used to work for me. Yeah, shot it and I was just, I don't know, morbidly curious on what the skull looked like, so I had it cleaned. Jeez, inter resting. That's cool though, right, So what are we looking at? We got a black beard. It's missing the back of his head. A black beard skull. They got shot ultramega. Was he trying to hit it there peeking up over a log? Oh I see, Oh yeah, that brain is he didn't go far short short blood trail. One of the kind of mistakes cutting through it, cutting throat, cutting a cape too short, old older style like in the like. I'm sure a lot of the ones that you guys get seen sent in for the old text. For me, it's a neck mount, not a shoulder mount, and so people end up cutting it really high up on the shoulder, like no brisket left on it, and so then you just don't have enough cape to ask you want them to, like if they're going to keepe it like way back on the start, start basically at the sternum and go all the way around. Is it right that it's hard to get when someone messes up the arm pits. It's hard to get it back right again. If it's there, No, if they cut up and then that piece is missing, then yes. But if they just make an incorrect cut but the hide is there, a lot of times will end up on the side and then you pull it back in and sew the leg back together and split the leg down the side. Hey, Steve, you know what we should do. We should come up with new bandanas that show how you should properly skin and cape certain critters if you want to take them to who I think you're putting the artist category. They do a lot of Africa stuff and for a lot of people who want like full He's like, I spend a lot of my time reconstructing penis sheaths, genitals like on full bodies, because folks, are you used to just cutting them out? M hmm, And especially on African stuff where it's very short hair. I mean it looks like kindall you'd be something that you would notice, you know, it would be very obvious. So yeah, trying to reconstruct all that, you're like something I can't quite figure out what it is, but something's missing. What Why does have you done much of Africa stuff? Why does uh? Like why do elephants and hippos always look so phony? They look like theybe like a poxyed? A lot of them are phony. So it's like whole fishing rightly? What do you got there? This will be this is a supply catalog. Let me see if I can find African in here. Yeah, it's like if you looking at a text every collection in some big game room and you see that and you're like, yea, look, look looks like like you got it from a plastic injection molding place. Yeah, the rhinos, the hippos, elephants, a lot of them are. Really they're on the same. I don't know what's in here somewhere like a tannery. I wouldn't imagine would have a hard time doing that though, Like where's your vat to treat? There's elephant. There's a there's a lot of tanneries that will do it. You can see full life size reproduction elephant. Oh Jesus, yeah, there you are. You just buy the whole damn elephant and then you just screw those tusks in there and put their tusks in it. You gotta have a special house for that thing. Parkman doesn't say how much it costs. Oh there it is. Have you ever done an elephant? Just elephant foot footstools? Guess what you pay if you want an elephant e l P five zero zero slash five before shipping that sucker is ten grand. Yeah, that's a good guess. Ten thousand two bucks and YouTube can have gotten an elephant. And is that what's the material for that body mold. It's kind of like a fiberglass. Oh look at this. You just buy a whole damn elephant. Mm hmm. The whole fake elephant is eight thollars eighty seven thousand dollars and fifty cents. And it's just an elephant. And they don't even compu shipping, just an elephant, and then you have to put it together. Yeah, for nine bucks, you could have a not real elephant standing in your house. Be a fun thing to do with the kids. Like, it's like a giant lego. I could cut my entire house and it still won't fit. That's incredible. That's why it looks so bad. Yeah, Like so that's becoming more more normal normalized now. A lot of reproduction stuff you do take that business. You know, I have yet to have to order one of those, um, but it definitely could come up. I'm thinking pent up front, paid in full and we order it. Yeah. So when you let's walk through a deer so dear, how dear? What happens to a dear? So guy shoots deer? Um, Let's say he guts it up to the sternum, drags in his truck, brings it over and says, I want to get my dear a shoulder mountain. Walk me through. What happens? What do you do? We'll have one of the guys go out there and skin the cape off for him at that point. I'm just to make sure that makes our life easier at that point. And you prefer it that way, because now you know what you're dealing with. Yes, you know, it's the cuts usually, uh, one of the other mistakes I see a lot of time, and it's it's not really that big of an issue on most deer mounts, but guys will start at the middle of the back and cut up to the base of the skull. That's what I thought you're supposed to do, and he kept from the base of the skull down. So you go with the hair so that parts out of the way, and if you're going up sometimes it'll still catch the hair and cut one side off. I had. What is So you prefer starting at the forehead and go back, start right at the base of the skull and go down to where you're circumfortence where you make the cut all the way around the body and then like and like to beating them out. I mean unless you're so that's a good question to ask your artists at that time if they prefer a short wine decision or if they do the full dorsal cut down the back. So you guys really like this artist Norman Clature. Well, it's it's more applicable nowadays. What do you what do you recommend? What do you recommend for antelope in the field? So their hair falls out so easy, it falls out really easy, and they blood stain. So that's one of the most common things we see with antalope is the blood staining around the face. Um, if you get your antelope and you know you're going to mount it, take some paper towels or toilet paper. You cut a bit of your band an up and get it plugged. Take your canteen and get the blood off as quick as you can because it goes inside the hair. When you say plugg what do you mean like fill the nose up, fill them out out so he's not out into the hair. Yeah, you can carry some of that quick clots up with you. Man, you can't wash it out once. If it sits there long enough, it actually draws into the hair follicle, so it's inside the hair showing through the hair. Yeah, so there's no no getting it out, and it'll do it like you see like on the shoulder mount you see the darker spots by the shoulder, that's another spot. You know. Just you can't just like peroxide it out because you can get so many other colors next to it, and it would you'd have to fry the hair's like you said, proxy would lighten the outside of the hair. But the bloods on the inside showing through because it's like that, like this is like kind of particular to antelope and like sheep, doll, sheep, that's the one that we see a lot. You know, guys just don't know they're coded in blood. It's too late. Yeah, yeah, and then it has soaks in like that quarter inch you had that halo and if you just part the hair bag is beautiful white, but it's got that frosted brown on the outside. Is it okay? Just like go down to a cold as creak and throw it in the air and try to just get it all out right away and then just get it hung up and get the water off of it, get it drying back out again. But yeah, so if you got to anlopeate that blood and it you can just turn a hose it. Just that's better than leaving it. That's better than leaving it bloody. Yeah, you just gotta make sure you get it back to dry. You know, you wouldn't want to do that then throw it in a bag because it's still gonna be leaching out more blood from a tissue at that point. So you want to rinse the hair off and get it hanging to where the water runs off. Finally, yeah, if if you leave the skull in it, Yeah, what do you what do you what's a good way to plug it with? What? Paper? Towels? Toilet paper? About like vasiline? You know, like when you have like UFC fights and then it gets his his uh you know, something in his face split and they pack it with some I wouldn't put that on an antelope just because it would probably soak that oil up into the hair. Also, you mentioned leaving the skull, and I'm assuming you on any big game animal if someone doesn't know what they're doing, like just leave the head like the head unskinned. Yeah, I mean that ideally, Yeah, um, for our benefit, but I understand, you know, when you shoot an elk four miles from the truck and you're gonna mount it and not do a European You're like, should I carry the twenty five pound block? Is all out with me or not? So it you know that you don't have to make that call yourself at some point on what you want to do. I carry it actual scalpel. I mean I used to, and now I don't walk around anything. But yeah, I had like a separate little kit inside my other kit for doing faces and ye pause and stuff for bears and stuff. But that was it was a good way to kind of get some of your your own alone time too, because yeah, antelope is my number one uh mounted animal. Like there, it's a really pretty mountain. They're pretty animals. They're small, so you can fit them in a lot of different places and if they fall off the wall, they're not gonna kill anybody, right, I think there's a lot of pros and the Antelope mountain. Yeah, that's why. That's why I asked, because that's like the one thing that I want to get. Shoulder mounts. Yeah, I have like us probably over half a dozen floating around Massoula. I've given away over there. Yeah, because I was like living out of my truck. You have to clients. Yeah, yeah, did you did you write your name on the back of him? Well, a buddy mine just called me. He's like, hey, come over and do some framing for me and get these fucking Antiope, so I might do that mcmig donation. That should be an upcoming Yeah, all right, So the guy shows up, you have one of your folks go out, one of your artists keeps it. Then there you are. You gotta keeped out, dear and bring it back in the shop and then we'll actually take the skull out of it at that point and turn the ears inside out, turn your lips, your nostrils, your eyelids, remove all the excess flesh from it fat and then bury it in salt. And you're doing that over a fleshing beam um on a deer a lot of times. Yeah, but if I skin myself a lot of time, there's really not much to clean skin, which if you get enough practice at it, it's it's very legit, very viable way to do it. But when you're first started as a pretty high risk way of cutting a lot of holes in your deer, it's here, it's Okay to leave a little fat meat on there. If you're starting to, like I'm getting kind of close to cutting, just leave it on there. It's not a big deal. Someone will get it off later. You prefer to do them clean. Salting is a weird deal. There's a lot of misconception. Yeah, I remember it. Well. Here's the thing I don't get is I used to sell for for bear for at the um this thing called Ravanna for auction, and there every lot gets bit on, right, but deer when you brought deer, you could also sell deer at the Ravana for our auction. And the first deer that came up, they bid on it, and that was the price for every deer that came through the door. And these are just deer hides of people pulled off, and I mean the bulk of them. People open it up and dump a I don't think of moreton table salt on. But then I just thought it was like normal practice. So I later learned that doesn't do anybody any good. No, no, Like, it's gotta be clean. It's got to be clean. Like you could have a quarter inch piece of meat on a deer hide and salt of work, right, through it, but an eighth of an inch of fat and it creates that oil barrier and it never gets to this the actual epidermal layer to pull that moisture out and set the hair, and the hair will slip anyway. Got you? So do you get a lot of stuff like some guy skins bear. It's got fat meat all over and he poured salt all over the head and at the feet and it's still They pour a bag of rock salt on it, roll it up and send it. Yeah, does it make your job harder? Yes? Yes, you really don't want people salt and stuff. You can trying to keep an edge on a knife fleshing through salt. You know you're like that was that? Stroke a bag up? Make a couple of cats stroke it back up? What do you use for a knife? A lot of times when refleshing bears, I use a shaving wheel? Um, actual bench mounted shaving wheel. UM. I can't picture you're talking about. Is that a Is that a skinning tool or like a work to it? It's actually just for removing flesh and shaving like a shaving a tan tide down? Is it on an angle grinder? No, it's it's a different beast, you know what you're talking about? That. Yeah, it's like one of those you know. It's like I'm I'm picturing like a like a big gas meat slicer wheel. Oh yeah, okay, No, that's not what I was picturing. I was picturing like a like a wheel, like one of those things you like a grinder you mount on your on your work bench that has like the grinding wheels on mane flushing table. Probably gotta figure out how to use that thing before you get started. Oh yeah, that there's there's a curve on that one. I can't really picture. Always the new guys they like if they shoot their own deer, you know, I'm like, you can practice on that because you will make a hole like that big. Just yeah. People can picture like a deli like a deli slicer. It's the blade of a deli slicer mountain on top of a workbench and you walk up that some bit and tried to cut your hand off and like keep the blade between the Yeah you got yeah, because there's there's a guard on it, but it's still exposed, so you just the only real guards and you're just running it down there and like guiding it through the Wow. Have you ever done a beaver hide with one of those or something? Oh? Yeah? For me it is a couple of my guys like it. A couple of them don't. How fast could you do a beaver with that thing? Like a freshwa still kind of fatty a couple of minutes. I think we need I think we need a beaver pillow. We know, oh you know said he doesn't like pillows. It's not but maybe it's not curled up. Maybe it's like I don't know, this bird flasher, that's what I was picturing. Yep, it was like the wire wire wire wheel. I think we're doing a I think we're doing a live show coming up in buildings. This is there'll be special for Cal like a homecoming for Ocal. We're gonna do a live show come up for Billings. What my vision of it is, it's a lot of comp ticuts over there. It's a whole thing. Uh. When the curtain opens, I want the curtain open will be like a play and there's gonna be Seth at his fleshing beam, and there's gonna be like our normal scene. And off in the corner is one of those theater spotlights. And the whole time. So it's gonna be fleshing on a flesh and beam with a spotlight on. It's gonna be so beautiful. Canna be great? What about the flesh A mini flesher, it's it's basically a die grinder and has got that little blade on there. This is I gotta play with one of them once. I was terrifying. Yeah, I'll tell you that one. I could ruin so much ship with that so fast. They got a blaster and master blaster dryers. Reminds of this reminds me very much of like when you're like, why why would I ever pay somebody to mount the bindings to my skis? And then the first thing you do is you drill through the ski and you're like it'll be fine. Uh so what knights you use skinning? Like? Do you use replaceable razors? Are you sitting there with a strap like in the old days? I pretty much just sit with a strap like the old days and keep a steel right next to me. Um the Victor Knox. So you like those commercial you know they're inexpensive, and uh, you're sharpening constantly like on a in the spring bear. I mean you'll use pretty much one knife from brand new to garbage in a week, just sharpening, sharping, and you put a hell of an edge on those things. But it just doesn't stay for long. But if you're doing a strap anyways, you know what you're doing. We can get I can I can skin out a whole bear with one without having to go actually back to a stone on it. If you just keep working it on them, deal or straw whatever. Stay away from you know, scraping it on the bones and stuff like that. Just stay to the flesh. Acts pretty doable. I want to get back to our following our theoretical deer through the process. But I want to ask you a bearer question. When a guy brings you a whole bear, um what like you get the hide, but then he's got to come right back over and bring his meat down and process it or pick it up or whatever? Right yes? Or does he does he? You just have him staying there while you do it. A lot of times you all just have them wait if they're going to take because you want and everything. We have a list of people they'll contact us from around the Liby area that want bear meat. I do like, if you have anybody that doesn't want their bear meat, give us a call. So then if I know somebody, yeah, I bet I donated probably to thirty of them last spring. That's awesome. Yeah, how they come, they just come, get the whole thing on the carcass yep. And if they're going to come, you know, it is very nice for them to provide that service for us to act like show up when they say they're going to show up. So if I get somebody that I know is gonna actually do what they said they're going to, I'll just quarter it out, pull the backstraps out of it and stuff, get it all bagged up. So and then all they all right. So our dear you said throwing a bucket of salt, not sprinkle the jar of Morton's table salt on there. No, I use a fairly coarse ground salt. It's not rock salt, but it's a mixed mixing salt for hey, um yeah, as we just lay it out on the mixing salt for hay, for livestock. It's just a course kill. Yeah, I see. And you just get it laid out on the floor flat, make sure there's no folds in it, so it's like it's amazing how many guys when you're first teaching them to salt that actually make a mistake. It's like, you just have to get salt on all of it. That's it. There's like no technique, just salt on all of it. And they'll be like they'll forget to fold the face back and so the face will be stuck down. My kids arguing about what a clean plate looks like. I'm no, no, you'll know you're done because there'll be nothing like that, right, it'll be very obvious, the opposite of the way. You're getting closer. I see assault on everything, on everything. You can't overdo it. Nope, you can't overdo it. So I leave I usually leave it in the salt twenty four hours. Then i'll take it out for using a salty table. It'll drain, is that of incline, so it's interesting. It'll run if we if we don't like big items were doing on the floor, because there's a lot of good coming off there, a lot of moisture. Yeah, you'll you'll see it, like when we're doing the bears and you get like four or five six bears stacked up in salt, you'll see the trail of water running off the pile towards the floor drains. I got interrupted from it. This conversation just reminami is something the time, very time since theive issue. Did you apply for the Idaho spring Bragger spressure special draw? No, that's a good one. Jimmy's giant trout was in the smoker. Hey, can you run out and uh grab that those fish flames out of that smoker real quick. I left him in there and it's been probably too long. Grab a hot grab a hot pad, and just open that cabinet. It looks like a cabinet. It's next to the grill. Just open the door and it's all on one wire rack. So you just pull the wire rack out and then just set it on top of the grill or something because it'll be it'll be it'll be uh smell like smoke fish for a few minutes. But just lay it outside to cool. Sorry about that. Yeah, the salting table. How made me think it will smoke fish? Good? Uh? Where were we salting table? Oh? So when it's done salting um, it's wet, yes, so can it. So when we've taken we have racks that we assemble and assemble throughout the seasons, and you just put a new rung on the rack and then he drape him over the rack and then let him start drying out like at night, will turn the heat up and put fans out. Next morning you should be able to fold it and then eventually you have it folded up into a nice little package like rock hard dry because you know, at that point is it like pretty much archival. Remember guys showing me a text Romans I used to know had a zebra that he had killed. I feel like he told me that he had killed it seven years earlier. But I mean this thing was like rock hard. Yeah, just salt crusted in rock hard. And he was not worried about it. He's like, you got soaked the piss out of that thing to get it back to life. And as long as it's in a spot where nothing like mice insects don't get to it, um, it'd lasting. Definitely, really keep it dry, man, don't let anything eat it mid last, definitely. So if deer season is running hot and heavy, that's what you guys are doing. Oh yeah, your skin in salting drying. And this spring bear season is historically the busiest season for my studio because you guys are in like bear central. Yeah. Do you guys get more bears than dear? Oh yeah, yeah definitely. Um. This year we were after everything started taking back off, we were really shorthanded. UM had one gad family stuff come up, so he was gone, and then we got outfitter where like one day I got thirteen bears in there's nobody there but size myself like I did. I did fifty one days straight. Might just have one daughter and she's she'll be sixteen one her skin a knife Christmas. She's thinking more like law school. That's probably It's like this, this is the family business year. Could be have be the only lawyer with the popeye four arms or somebody who's yeah, tell her like if as long as we stay honest and get the hides back, we don't need law protection right just to skin skin, to just stay clear the law. Hey John, what about it? I'm still dreaming about these squishy pills. What about a black bear pillow? That would be kind of like you could It would be like in someone's living room you could just lean again sleeping. We did do a small black bear UM, and the way we did it, it wasn't. Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't say it was a success um for certain things. If you still want to do the soft mount, I would do like annealed wire frame inside of it, like when squirrel mounts when you'd make the you know, wood wool, and you put your wires through there. Then you can bend his legs and get him in position like old old squirrel talk like original stuffing. When you were actually stuffing it said I only get the deer stuff. People would still say when I was a kid, you get stuff with a piece of foam. Yeah, But then you can still do this soft mount and it's still be suppled, but you would be able to pose it because so it's not just like slumped over on the floor. So you got all these little dried out packets that are deer hides. At some point you pack them in a trucker crates and trucks and they go to the tannery start shipping him like this, just distributing him around so that we could actually get him back. When when I talked to my one tannery this spring and he's like, I was like, hey, you ready for a load. He's like, well, how many are we talking? I think I had a sixty eight or sixty nine of them put up at that time, and he's like, oh God, no, don't don't do that to me. Yeah, he's like, he's like, I'm still getting stuff from last year. He's like, don't. He's like, if you want it back, He's like, he can't send me that much at one time. So I was like, all right, So he started ship finding other places. Someone told me once that every mountain He might have been exaggerating slightly, but the gist was like, every mountain go in the country comes from the same tannery. You don't buy that absolutely, not that they're like mountain goats specialists. No, there's a mountain goats. The two ways that are most commonly done is you're just like a traditional tan whether it's wet or dry or bleached. And there's only that's only one place I know that there's like a real real bleaching on him. Um and I don't. We don't do bleaching. So you don't like them bleached. You you want to have its natural color variations. Yep. And bleaching is really hard on him. My ride almost it's like on the ragged edge of destruction by the time you get done with it, it's just cooked. That proxy had just it cooks the leather. That's too bad, man, Like the all the pigment color, like the black around the eyes and the nose and stuff, that's all gone when it comes back the leathers is I feel like the one I have getting done right now is getting bleached. But it was crazy because he had a lot of coloration. Man, he had a lot of gray, like, he had a lot of gray hairs blended into him. Was he near a burn at all? Yeah, in a burn probably from the burntwood. This guy. Look at a head on this guy. I got a couple from the martial that had gray. I was like, well, it's got gray hair in it. But it washed out no ship, Yeah, like it was the color of the hair, Yeah, I know for sure. It looked like it had just like gray charcoal hairs, the black scar In Alaska, we do we get a lot, we do a lot of work for guys in Alaska. A lot of guys stationed in the coast guard us. So they ship us goats and grizzly bears and all sheep and all over all the time. And the goats up there, they have a lot of when I first started seeing them, like they have black and so is that black sand from up there, but it all washes out like like on a goat, anything with for um like shoulder mountain wires. All the goats always get it full shampoo and condition And that master blaster that's just a huge commercial blow dry. It's atually for doing like car shows or bike shows. So you can blow dry your car not leave you know, marks on it from toweling it. And so between the shampooon and conditioning and then the blast you can get all the organic materials that you don't want in there out. You know, we recently had on We're gonna keep just so you know, we're gonna keep following this deer project. We'll speed it up in a minute. But we recently had a fur handler on, like a trapper fur handler on the show, and I realized, now what we didn't talk to him about, which I know that he does, is he has a washing machine in his first shed, just just dedicated to that and everything he skins, skins a raccoon before he flashes it, it goes into that washing machine. No soap yep agitated, And I was talking to a Bobcat trapper the other day that does all of his with brightening shampoo. Yeah, shampoo's him just for presentation. The white bellies whiter. Yeah, like the goats. We use him bright and shampoo, but not dyeing it. Nope, no, no, like actual peroxide whitening. It's just like you know for guys with gray hair, you can use it too. If you got that yellow gray hair, it helps brighten it up. Got uh, eventually get all these eventually get these um to grow my hair bag and brighten. Uh. You get them all back they're tanned, and then it just looks like you gotta tan for it, right, I mean, yeah, most of our deer capes and stuff come back to try tan. And meanwhile all those antlers are were hanging on our hook. Yeah. We have a series of racks upstairs so we can keep like you know, white tails and mule deer, then keep the elk and the moose separator, got cariboo. Then we have spots for like when the African Safaris show up, we can keep all the African safaris separate. Why you worried about keep it separate, You're not gonna like easier to find oh if you keep it, yeah, to try to keep it species specific. And then so like a guy comes in his like your name on it turned into orcs. My just trying to trying to be able to find stuff easy because you know, I imagine your clientele likes that because it's like, well, I'm gonna swing in and show off my rack. Yeah, and you're like, I don't know where it's at. You know, Yeah, it's a lot nicer, and like you just go upstairs and you go back or there and from white tail section, your tags on it, your names on it, your invoice numbers on it, and then uh, you guys got to soak them right yep. So usually what I do is all, if we're gonna do like a dozen deer heads, I'll soak up those twelve capes. Contact everybody, find out what pose they want, if they want like looking left or right, or somebody sneaks or full sneaks or what they want that that might depend on where they want to put it, yep, yep. And then you always when they ask you, it's if you were the deer on the wall, which way would you turn your head? Not my left? Because I'm like, well, I don't know, let your left his left his lips. So yeah, it's always what's the full sneak where the head is below the back, like when you see a trailer that I was, did semi sneak looking left or right, you know, Brody decentus of one. It was like it was a goofy, a little bit goofy, but that's not the right word for it. Beautifully done, but like a weird cod odd odd placement. It was a deer jump with a fence, but it was basically like the deer committing suicide off the guys off the balcony railing. Yeah, but unbelievable, unbelievably well executed, Mike, when a white tail in the middle of one of those giant bounds that they do, but he was gonna land down in the living room. We're actually, when I when I get back next week, we're ordering a jumping white tail for a one eight class white tail and then there'll be about a hundred It was about a hundred and seventy pound mountain lion jump into the air to catch the white tail. That's some diorama. How does that work? Like went for and when someone's gonna do like a like a custom kind of thing like that, and like it's kind of based on the architecture of their house, like it needs to be in a certain position in a certain place, Like do they gotta do all the measuring or like how does that well? This particular one there in Texas, and uh, they got they found found out about us, got ahold of me. And then they've had an architect and a contractor at their place for like three or four years, they said, working on it constantly. And so he went up and gave me photographs of the study layout in the wall, and it was like I was like, wow, that's nice. We can pretty much do anything we want. You can get in put blocking in, so yeah, yep. And he gave me all the dimensions for the it's like a triangle shaped piece between two rooms and so that we have twenty ft lay that thing out with all the habitat and junipers. And because you'll see like mountain lions curled up in a corner like that, I do like that. Yeah, I'd like to do that someday if I had a high spot, like a mountain lion laying up there there, like perched up on a log or something. Looking you guys to know what the balcony rail represents on that whitetail. Right, let's jump on offense the neighbor. That's an important that you'll notice that he's hitting the back end. Almost got out of the neighbor's place. Here's a question that we used to get all the time, was um, velvet, velvet bucks, what's your recommendation there. It's like how it's going to turn out really is affected by what phase the velvet growth is in. If it's super early, where the horns like you know, you can shake him in the horns are still rubbery, that's a really difficult one to stabilize. In the middle where it's still alive, but you're getting good set up. That's one of your prime ones to be able to like embalm the actual velvet um and then at a certain point it's just fallen off. You know, when it gets where you just grab in your hands bloody. That's late. That's not early. I'm thinking about caribe, like you grab in your hand, this is like soaked with blood. That's early. Wherein the antler is still soft. I guess it makes sense because still full blogs it's growing. That's a dumb question forgive a lot a lot of a lot of times, though, uh, you can just have it stripped and artificial put back on, right, And and that was always the question, is like should we scrape all this off like in the field scraped off? Right? Yeah? Don't. Yeah, if you're gonna revelvet it, just leave it as is and then when it gets in on either just power wash it off or peel it and then take it in and just have it actually revelveted. And can you can you preserve the actual velvet when it's in that in the right stay you know, like yeah, kind of, but you always run the risk of like, you know, not quite getting it and then so that it still has proteins left in it, which would promote bug life. I wanted to make my wife braw lined with that antler belt off, but it was like, you don't know the first thing about what people want in a bracause I was like, how about a muskrat line bra. She's like, no, no, you don't want a muskrat line, Bra. It's not it's not what's going on there when you wear bra. What about a like a cactus buck that you kill in October November. That's still full velvet. If it was how you guys doing those? Like if it's something really unique like a cactus buck said it didn't have a freeze, dried the whole thing. My fiance shot a couple of years ago and got it done. I didn't know how they did it, but it's yeah, it's still They don't think they stripped it or anything. Yeah, if you you can have them freeze dride and they'll be perfectly stable. How the hell do you have a spirit of sturgeon spearing hoodie? This? Someone sent these into Hayden, and Hayden gave me this one fish hoodie talked to Hayden about sturgeon spearing hoodie. Ye, Hayden never had a spear in his life. Never. I've never even rolla never get a complimentary fishing. Steve doesn't like when you have cool ship that he doesn't have saw it Like I checked the free table. This didn't go on a free table. No, I must have went directs. I've never spared spear sturgeon or have gone sturdon experience a bit of a poser, but I just liked sweatshirt. I thought about the poser angle. I just like he's got chains on everything. A little shanty. Um. Okay, back to our hypothetical deer. You're soaking what water? Yep, I just do room temperature water and then you go on into your handy andy cattle catalog there, so you would uh, you've already established what pose they want, and then you just soak it up and then you stretch it. And part part of the learning curve when you stretch it over the form. Now you stretch it on the bench and then you order the form that fits those measurements. So this is this is a form that I use very frequently. So by measurements are like and then you have three points on the neck. Yeah, you order six nine dash seven to one L. That's not like secret sauces, and that's not like that expensive. Okay, those are quite reasonable compared to buy an elephant. How much is it? But I imagine, like if you could lay out the the conversation you would like to have with everybody who walks in the door, right, because I imagine there's a lot of like, hey, I want this mountain, and you're like, well you're in the right spot, but yeah, trying to talk him off the ledge sometimes where you're like, okay, so this is what we can do. This is the way we need to go about do anything like that. I mean, yeah, and be like and and these are like the price ranges that you're gonna come in too if you just want something that that is your dear looking back to you. But you're not you're not going for the jumping white tail with the mountain lion. Yeah, that price range. Yeah, we're There's not a lot of like sliding scale on anything we do. It's pretty pretty set. The only time there's any like additional charges, Like you have a traditional shoulder mountain, but if they want habitat on it, then you have to pay for the habitat to go with it. But you're still basically just you're buying accessories at that point. You still have a base price of what your dear head costs. Ball park me a like a nice job on a standard white tail shoulder mountain. Yeah, so you don't you don't do a lot of haggling that gather. No, okay, how do you handle this? Every single taxidermy studio, any time you go in there, there's somebody bullshitting with somebody who obviously needs to be how do you handle them and they want to drop it off? Yeah, it's it's very difficult to handle that because you can't be like, you know, dude, it's time for you to go, because you know they're more likely a client. You can tell them, all right, your thing's gonna rot start, uh, you know. Just the secret is just to keep working and eventually a lot of times they're like, well, you know, I probably probably should let you go. That's the approach to, Yeah, just keep going. Do you get people trying to work you like if they bring in, you know, a little danker buck that their kids shot, and they're like, well it's smaller, you know, can you yeah? Yeah, all right, Yeah, it's the only working around the big old antler because he got in the standard. Right, this is only half the buck that that one was. Yeah, I know, there's it seems like it doesn't a job opportunity for like the old retired fish cop or somebody who just wants to have those conversations all day, right, right, and you put them up in front like a Walmart greater, where'd you get that? You like, you're a guy to bullshit up front like a caged off air. They could look at us, but they couldn't actually get to us. And then you hire an old feller to sit out there and be like you like talk there but run into but they can knock out the paperwork. Yeah yeah right, you know, yeah, you know how you talked everybody the grocery store come down to do it. Speaking of speaking of fishing game cops, how often are they popping in and out of your place? Oh man, I was going down that same path. Go go ahead, like uh sorry, no, no, right now. When COVID happened, trying to get all the bears tagged, and then like wolves tag you know, any of the first bears where you actually have to have that seal put in there, they had closed down like the public coming into like normal tagging areas there was. They waved it the first year and then last year they did it where we did a transfer possession for him, so like you would shoot a bear and bring it to my shop, and then we would fill out the paperwork like where you harvested it, when you harvested it in your courtings, you know a lot long um. Then we'd signed a couple of pieces of paper and then you leave and I would have present that that was my possession. So then the fishing game, they were coming every two to three days to my shop. Well, so you could call them and be like, yeah, I got a whole bull at a bulk deal for you. Yeah, so I try to accumulate a stack of them, because it took a while, you know, because then they have to go through all my paperwork and then register the state seal to it, and then I have to register that into my paper and they're pulling the tooth at your place. I ended up we They finally gave us the tooth puller, the elevator tool, because you can aunt pull a tooth when it's frozen, and I can't stacks of rotting heads laying around. So we just would pull the tooth and put it in the envelope and write their a LS number and with sex of it, then put it in their paperwork, and then they'd come and just grab everything and go. Have you had have you had situations where something didn't smell right? And see that's the question. I was dying like somebody somebody trying to forgot. Yeah. Guy walks and he's like, I want to get this eagle mounted. Oh I'm not I was going more like some big buck and you're like, man, something, just sayesn't I've turned I've turned people in that I know absolutely. I mean it's if if I was in Cahous at all, the state is who provides my business license, and that's go on. So you can't. You can't be like body, you better just go on your own way. You gotta be like, now you've made it my problem. Yeah. If if it comes to the shop and I know that you're like intentionally doing that, it's your problem. Seth and I were in that's gotta be I don't want to say awkward, but that's gonna be awkward. Issh like, you know, honestly most of the time, and they don't do that. People don't do that ship. It's not as common as one might. Yeah, I guess yeah, I've only ever seen it a couple of times where I like, you just absolutely know that they poasted that thing. You're like, m so, then well I got a for instance, right, Seth and I were in this cafe truck stop Baits store in Kansas Place. Was awesome opening day a deer season. We got done duck hunting. It's probably like ten thirty in the morning, and you can also get licenses and tags there right, You're talking about that certain spearing poser next to you. Yeah, we're sitting there having breakfast, talking about our next move. And I just can't help but notice. The oddest thing, if you've ever been in the hunting and angling community, was every person in line getting a deer tag in the morning. Am. It was female. And I was just like that or something about that, you know. And then and then you hear the questions like now, what do you need and you're like, well, I just like the what do you need to deer something? For an extra buck that's laying on a property. Man. Our mom I shouldn't say, because she's still alive and I'm still alive. Yeah, our mom had a few deer tags. It was just like we didn't even know. It was just so when I was little, it was like you would it was so not hidden. It's like you would go to show and tell at school and be like, my mom tagged it. It was just like it wasn't even if you didn't give me like a polygraph or something about breaking the rule, Like my heart rate wouldn't have gone up because I wouldn't have know. I didn't know you weren't supposed to do it? Like did you? In fact, I'd be like, I don't know, because I would have known. I wouldn't have known them to be nervous, right, you know, I know it needed a tag my mother. Anyway, in a very circular fashion, I could see how situations like that could come back to you, where it's like, here's the tag that goes with the rack, and then eventually somebody comes in and says, hey, did somebody turn in the rack? And what was their name? So, like, I've always been fortunate. We maintain a good rapport with our wardens um and we've had quite a few wardens circulate through our area because we were right in the corner there, so we have like three up to three wardens that come through, and all we've been very fortunate, very very nice, very professional wardens. And if they call call me up and ask me, you know, hey, you did so and so bring something in and having I'm like, yeah, it's in the shop. Oh yeah, could we come get it? Yeah, in the shop. Have you ever had any sort of strange things where everything looked up to speed but then some other guys in there, and he's like, where'd this buck come from? No, I haven't had the Hey wait a second, that came off my property yet that kind of stuff like never any kind of crazy stuff like that a lot. I mean, it'd be hard to like have much visual time with the deer where we live. They're always in the timber. So a couple of trail camp pictures floating around, I know, did you hear that crazy story? Um, someone actually got prosecuted off this and we talked about it, but it was it occurred between Tennessee and Kentucky, and I can't remember which direction it went. But there's like a Big Buck road show, right, and there's a buck there that was the state record of wherever the hell the state record or some it was honored by the state of Kentucky is being some such thing. And a guy it happens to be at the Big Buck show and he's like, that book was not killed in Kentucky. I have trail camp pictures of that book a couple hundred miles into Tennessee and I'd get it every day and then it vanished and that buck was not killed in the state. And the guy was prosecuted over it for receiving all the like award money or he even had that. He even had the what's the commedy move across state lines O Lacy act? And this guy, I mean, it was such an unusual buck and this guy is like, nope, it's on my place. There he is there, he is there, he is there, he is is the last we ever saw him. He gets some guy moved him, shot him and tagged them from another state and moved him over and started praying them around. Wow. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was covered and it was covered the press of it, you know, That's all I was kind of think about that. If you've ever been involved in any stories like that, No, nothing, nothing quite that exciting. A friend of mine was a l e O up in that neck of the woods a long long time ago, and and he's like he because of what you said, right, it's like big dark, timber country. He would volunteer for every game check station as he's like, you just never knew what was going to come out of the woods, like crazy white tails, you know, crazy mule deer um. And because you're not in country where you're like seeing this stuff, right, they're not getting profiled by a bunch of people. Yeah. I was in a taxi during the studio one time after e h D came through real bad in the September, and holy ship the bucks down there, man, because people just bringing them in. It was like bucks. You did not know existence he was bringing in deadheads, dead heads. Get him cleaned up and stuff, you know, but just incredible bucks man. And he's like, I don't know, during hunting season, they don't come in, but then here they all are because it's like August like there they are, like all the ones that no one's probably gonna look at during hunting season. Yeah, go nocturnal, stay stay out of the view. Uh. So back to our our deer. You stretch it and measure it. Then you order up your form. Put the hide in the freezer till the form arrives, and then the form comes in. Then we take the hide out of the freezer and thought out and then we can start mounting and you like drape it over it and I see, I said, come down. Sometimes catch you guys like mid stride and he's all pinned and ends holding the eyes and get all your adhesive on there. And depending on how they how you prefer to do your ears, whether you do like a bond o, your cartlete replacement, your liner. Um, get all that done, get all your eyes set on the form. If you're doing a change out nose or putting septums into the existing form, get all that done ahead of time. Um short wine in decision. There's no stitching on the back, so you set your antlers and then you take them out and have a clay clay edge around it. Then you pull the cape on and then just have just that ye incision open up on the top to take the antlers out and put it back on it, and you just have that small white and sew back up and you're sewing it by hand the needle and thread. Once he started on that, is it like once you start, you gotta finish it? Or can you walk away from once? When I start doing any amount, you're pretty much there until you're done. But how do you do how do you do the last stitch for like the tie off? Yeah, but like you don't see it? Well, do you take it back off and do the last stitch then pull it back on it again? No? Usually, like I do a full dorsal cut, so it's usually tight um. There's no taking it off once back on, you'd have to, but you still have to when it's all done, you still have some stitch you gotta make. It's uh so you're on like a shoulder mount. Your stitch dead ends over the back and is stapled onto the form, so when it's on the wall, you can't ever see the left stitch where it ends. I got you. You'll have one that you'll bring over from the first antler base there, and then the next one. You can just catch that one and then go back down, so you don't have a knot with a piece sticking up at the top, but you are sewing it on the form. YEP. I still understand how you could get like I want to see because I don't get how the hair lay back so nice. So like in the early days, you know, you got it on there and you sewed it on and brushed it all out and let it dry. And that was what we did. I mean, that was what we That was the standard. That was how you did it. And then I had an opportunity to have a guy that was actually he took He took a blue ribbon first place in the world show in the Master's division for white tail text for me, and which is a really hard division. I mean, everybody does white tails for the for the most part around the country, and there's a lot of guys that are really good at it. Where where is he from? Scott Brewer, He's in Washington right now, and so Scott, he is working for another artist in town. And in your town. There's there we have at one time when we had Scott and Phil and Daniel May was in town. All three of those guys have taken best in the world. You all get big fights at the bar. You know, there has been a lot of like historical bickering and pissing matches. But there was fourteen taxidermis and Liby at one time when I was a kid, and then there and like there's some really high end talent that is still there. There's some talent laden town. Small town of small town. A lot of tax and spat come from like you stole my technique or most of the time with those guys was like you stole my client. You know, I had done a deer for him and now he's at your place. You you've cool wurst him somehow or some ship like that. Yeah, right, there there there was a lot of a lot of bickering amongst a lot of the tax Germans in town for years. But so if Scott ends up in town and I'm trying to make connection with Scott, I wanted him to come out and look at my work that you know plateau. I really thought I had a pretty good rip on. You know, I've done by that point, I've probably done, you know, a few thousand deer heads. She should be fairly skilled at that point. So Scott's a certified judge for World on white Tail, and so they can't really get a much better critic than that. So I finally made him and I was like, would you come out and look at a deer head if I do one? And He's like okay, So I was like cool, So I do the absolute best white tail. It was like the cape was perfect. It was like pristine, good hair, length, good color. It was a nice buck you know. I was like, I was like, oh man, that's great. And so Scott is. He's a huge guy too. Like when I first met Scott, it was wasn't at all what I was expecting. Scott's like six three two d and fifty pounds. He was a Navy seal instructor. So he's intimidating, large guy, his hands just huge guy, very delicate touch. It's really amazing to watch him. Those giant myths and a little teeny breast, you know. So talk Scott into coming out to the shop and I've got it set up. You know, everything's cleaned out of the way, and the deer's on the mounting stand straight up right when you open the doors, like lights on it look good. Scott opens the door and he's like, is that the deer? And I was like, that's the deer and he's like that sucks. I was like really. I was like, do you need to get any closer to it? And he's like no, I can tell it sucks from here and it's like twenty ft away. Like I'm like wow. I was like, that is not at all what I was expected. I said. I was thinking, like you give me a gold star or something. He's like, here a long ways away from gold stars. What did you like about it? Which that was the thing, right, Like I had no idea what was wrong with it? Like, I had no idea. So when I finally time, like would you tell me what's wrong with it, and he's like, are you gonna get like all, well, I like doing it like that or that's the way I think it should look. And I was like no, I said I would really like to know. And he's like, if you really want to know, i'll help you. So he came out and worked with me for a few months, and uh, like the direction of hair, the way the hair grows like you look at a picture of a live deer, the way it grows around instead of just slicked back, the cow licks, your eyelash alignment, how big your bottom lip exposure is to the with your nose padman like a lot. How long your earbud is if your ears back is it actually rolled in the right position? You know, the anatomy of it. I had no idea about that. And that's what gives the good ones like that looks. You don't have to know why it looks like, what made it look like that? But you can look at the two anybody can and be like, wow, that's clean, it looks nice. It looks like a deer. Yeah, when I shot him, he didn't have newspaper coming out, right, So just just getting the opportunity to have those guys that like that next level up or five levels up, wherever you happen to be, come in and actually help you. That's that's been the key for any anything that I do, well, had some really good and help over the years. How many deer you done at this point? I have no idea A lot thousands, how many bears passed through your hands? I wouldn't have a guess. Really, yeah, I mean I bet we skin close to a hundred a year, you know, I mean thousands of bears. So what what would given all that experience, like, what would be the thing that gets your your creativity flowing? Like? What do you get excited about at this point? The thing that probably makes me the most excited at this point is if it's a really good conditioned specimen, not necessarily the size of it anything, but if it was like just really good condition and somebody wants to do a unique piece with it, that's that's great. But I still, I mean, I still love doing just a game head with nobody else. They're nice and quiet, just sitting there by myself. Oh yeah, like I can have my little spot. Everybody works over there that I work over here, enjoy it, oh very much. Yeah, that's still still my face. It is actually hands on, get to do it. What was it like with wolves? We're all, you know, one minute, there's no wolf hunting, you know, and all sudden there's wolf hunting and you're in the thick of it, and and all of a sudden, like there's wolves coming in. Locally, I I had always been known for kyot hunting, like that was my favorite thing to most of the time its kyotes. So everybody known we did a lot of kyotes. People in Laska, the Coastguard guys, they ship as wolves and stuff. So I had a lot of cane though you're getting wolves of all the place. And then when the wolf hunting started, I could already see that we were gonna have it was gonna be another viable piece to bring into the business, you know. It wasn't just going to be like, well, we might do a wolf. So like how we do have our own sculptings for the coyote heads I made. I made my own head for a pillow or a life size gun and used it for either way. And then I made a rugshell for an open mouth, like the relaxed open mouth, not the snarl. And at the place I got a ko like that you did. I think at one time, if it was an open mouth wolf, back back when the season first came out, they were always like heavy snarls, like way heavy snarls. Um, and I just I never liked that look. So I just went for a passive open mouth. And then I just actually redid that mold. Just about October or so, um that came out with a new mouth cup for it, So I redid the mold to accept the new mouth cup and just that nice clean pass. I think I posted that one, I think on my Instagram. Tell people what your instagram is. Hayes tax d me h a y ees, Hayes tax d me Studio. Yeah, that's a good page. I like looking at that stuff. Man, it just comes so far. Yes, I think the discipline has come a long ways. And then like you're like, uh, like an exemplary practitioner of a thing that's already like just so far beyond what it used to be. The the part where people are not just wanting to just just have my head stuck on a wall. You know, it's it's my antlers, and yes, it's got I think it's cape on there. And that's good enough because I'm never going to look at anything below the antlers anyways. People want to see better work. They want their animal to look life like, They want them to be clean. They don't want it to smell. You know that was people that they're walking out the door and I don't want it to smell. I've had I've had so many mounts come in. People bring them in and they're like, hey, it's kind of old, it's funky, and you start opening them up to take them apart, and that there had been a healthy population of things living inside the mountains in their house for years until they completely consumed everything. Like I've had schools that I found and you wondered why. I was like a little cone of sawdust underneath them all the time here like something one of those beatles, or there was the working at it, or the little bit of hair people like, I'm noticing some hair on the coffee table below the deer head. Do you know what that would be from? Like something's eating it. It's like i'd get it out of there forward at first light when uh he drew his at a whole mountain goat like most you know, first time nonresident applicants do in Idaho, like all the other first Light employees. Draw Um. It took him long time because to go back and he's like, yes, it's most a smell like this it had like He's like, you kept taking it back. There was a smell, and I was like, man, you know, not supposed to like that, supposed to go inside your house. Goats and antelope. Those are two of the ones that I've seen come in where people are like, stinks and most of the time they didn't sweat the horn off. Oh that though, don't you check on that if oh, when they're dropping it off it smells. Yes, they're like they bring a mountain and they're like, this thing smells. One of them. They were like, we put it out in the shed for six months and it still stinks. And but not that you didn't stuff it. No, no, no, we take the horns because you make to that. Yeah, so I noticed, I want to use to check and see if that if they did a shitty job, that's yeah, if they did a shitty job, because they might have bondled it back on there. But like it's a bunch of goog up in there. Horned. Most your horned and go ahead, explained horn sheath and horn. Yeah case and point point my massive antelope. Huh, I wonder about my analope. Let's well, I was going to bring up your antelope skull because your folks they sealed. I noticed they sealed around the bases of the horn sheath, which I'd never seen before. Most horned animals have a bone core and a horn sheet, not antlered, but horn horn. And there's a lot of There is a lot of those between those two. Man And if you don't get that off, you can do a couple different methods, but for most practical purposes, we call it sweating. You get it all skinned out, and then you just wrap it in plastic bags, like three or four bags and leave it in like room temperature area for three to five days. It's called that rotting them off. Yeah, you guys called right, And then you can just twist and pop them off and then on the inside just like just like goo in there, right, the gooey ist of goo is the sheep. That one's always that's impressive taking big horns and pop those off. But and then that you're saying, like that's what's kind of rotting inside? That would give because they will try in place if you left it out and like you know, if you brought it in, the guy just takes the skull cap off and left the horns on and underneath the horns. In a year's time hanging up in a building, it will dry on there and you would have to soak it in water get it to come off. Never, it's never gonna smell right. My brother Danny, he's got when he's doing doll sheet, he takes a cooler and takes a contractor bag, puts a sheep head in there, pours a cup of water in there, waits a long time, pulls it out, lays out a piece of plywood on the ground and hooks it down and pop, you know, also do you wiggle the horn? Pop right off. He's got his whole little system that's got a special piece of plywood for that purpose. Like a good what it is unbelievably foul though, like the beer mugs are making now out of horns, sing and drink out of it. I would never drink out of one. I've spent too much time. Like when I see him, I always like, huh, you just smell it looking at like a little vix vapor rub in a mask, you know, to help cut down on it. And I'm like, I'm not drinking out of that thing. How do if people wanted to bring something to your studio but they don't live around you, how do you how do they like make that decision? Not how do they make this that's not the right word what they like? You don't just like stick a deer in the mail. We get a lot of stuff shipped in through FedEx, FedEx and ups. We get stuff shipped in. They can skin their deer down to the base of the head, sever the head yep. Use most commonly like even like this tote here, that's just stuff that we get stacks of totes brought in there and you'll talk him through the process, yep. And that we usually recommend doing FedEx second day air um, not overnight because usually it should be frozen. And asked the thought out and they got to have the paperwork square and help with the paperwork, and they go down and get everything set up. And we had a deer show up on last night actually from Wisconsin, so he has wanted you to do it. That's not a problem. Nope, No, we get most of our work and you created and shipping back to him. Yeah, yep, we ship all over the country. She got a guy that just making crates m hm. And then we also this year there was another company with the the rise on like the materials for creating all the lumber prices. They started doing crate lists. So this company doesn't do anything besides ship taxidermy. They just travel around and so you don't have the cost of the crate factored in. And they have the same systems of plates that we mount all of our stuff to the stands when we're actually working on them, and so they'll just take it and put a plate on it and mount him in the trailer and then just travel around drop it off. There's a guy in Alaska. There's probably motile guys in Alaska do that. They like Their business is at the end of the year transporting hauling all that ship down to the lower forty eight. And then they got drop off points. Yep, we just had big moose and adul sheep dropped off at our tannery and then I'll go pick up the antlers at some point. But we got a long time until its stand and then uh like uh, I have to go over to John Edwards from standing is Um, they harvested a big Yukon moose and us so I'm gonna pick up the antlers from them today. And their cape got drop shipped right to one of our tanneries in Michigan. And then we just got confirmation yesterday that it'll be here next week. So we'll make that loop and pick that up and they're gonna do a half life size in the store. Really yeah, yeah, just the ass end my old man had, My old man had, my brothers stole the ass when you went in the bathroom. Inside the bathroom was the pig's ass, and outside the bathroom with the pig's head. But he did that thing the guys used to do in the old days, where like when they price still do when you glue the toss in you barely stick the tuscan and then glue it so it looks like it's got like huge like fives going out of it, you know. And now then you'll see old where they would like really exaggerate bear fangs. Dude, they let a lot of hang out, let a lot of it hang out to make it look more ferocious. That's not your scene, no, no, I honestly, I'm I'm more into just the details of trying to make it look alive again. Yeah, well, I'm Johnny Man the bear the barry did the close mouth bear rugg you did for me. I don't wait to see you. It's I'm still waiting for Chester. I supposed to be hanging at some pitch up. But these guys Seth and Chester actually have a little desk these Chester is not here, but they have a little desk next to each other, and they call their little area the bear Den. It's like in the Muppets. It's two old man. They have that little booth, you know. It's called the mediums the medium sketch. Yeah, it wasn't raring. It certainly wasn't done. But they're in kind of a recessed area. But my bear is hanging over the rail and the bear den right now, I'm gonna get a hung up as clay as going up there too. I don't know what we're gonna do with ex seed now. It's gonna take a while, but we Yeah, never mind that thing is there's a lot of stuff. Is I get moved to a new place at some point soon, meaning all of our ship, all of your ship. So it's just hard to get excited about hanging anything up right now? Right competitive delivery serve us? Were you factor in the cost of me listening to how you got the animal I delivered, not to show up to deliver. I will give you an hour of happened? How far did you go? Good? Hit on it? All the questions. Yeah, you can sell that you got all the retired Border Patrol guys and stuff for that stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, hanging out with the coffee shop. But they could a little more new faces to what's the ballistic coefficient on that? Alright, Hayes tax jermy studio, Libby Montana. Do you got more room for more business? Your business? And I got a hide in a freezer I told you about. You got to take that absolutely bring with him right now. Yep. Did you get Yanni's Bobcat yet? Not yet? Not yet? We just got actually when I was pulling up here this morning, we just got confirmation on the reproductions going there in the works for the sheep. Now that's gonna be cool. Yeah, should be pretty new. Big horn. That was the first bear ever skinned all and it was all by myself in the middle of the night. So hopefully I didn't does he miss an appendage? That's that's old stumpy. You can do a recreation on the appendage. Put a fish on it, you mean like head, is it black? You got a human arm? You can is it a black color phase? Yeah? Black? Yep, we could put another one on there. Kind of like the way it was, keep it the way it was, like Clays bear, yeah whatever, Like did you reconstruct that bear's face or did it stay the same? That looked like it been a hit about lawnmower, the opera kind of stuff. The face, Um, you can only do so much before you distort the shape of the face. We were able to take out as many of the shave outs. And my boys just watched that episode like a week ago there, like what's wrong with that bear's head? And then we uh, the ears were so far gone. We had to cut the ears off another stock bear we had and lay those onto you know, you guys talk about different bears. A you're talking about the bear Clays bear had gotten in a fight. He'd been in a fight and had his muzzle all bit up. He thought about Clay had, oh, like the biggest black the biggest black bear rug because not just a length but I mean it's huge, just like, yeah, did you do? It was all messed up? He had it was all destroyed, messed up, and he rejuvenated it. Got it was. It wasn't taken care of. He didn't know what he's gonna do with it. He had a hanging around his house as just like a rug that's like a tan hide. My bad. I thought we were talking about, Oh the bear that got bit up by a bear. I don't know what he did with that bear. Yeah, I think it turned out great. It was. It was lucky. We luckily we had the right bears in stock to us to take pieces after place parts and stuff. So it was definitely yeah, I got lucky on that. And my bear is beautiful. Man, my clothes mouth bear rug. I'm a real soccer for rugs. Man. I like those bear rugs. I like rugs. Always did a great job, enjoyed doing him. A lot of places to kind of look down on rug work. They're like, you know, maybe I have my my wife do that or something. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's not really not really likestigious thing. I got like I gave some away, but yeah, I mean I got like a mountain lion rug, Himalayan tar rug that gave my body. A lot of bear rugs, rugs the old. Yeah, yeah, I always like a lot. I think a well done rug is really beautiful. Bad rugs for bad you know I'm saying bad anything, you know, bad rugs for bad people? All right, Hayze Tax Durny Studio yourself. No, it does beautiful stuff. Go look at the crazy ass kyote squishy thing as Steve Hornella. Make sure to hit following you there on Instagram. Go to Hayes tax rest. Go and see for yourself beautiful work. I'll live in Montana and I'll send a box over there. We'll be there. Rough skin it so it's got a lot of fat meat on it. Throw a jar, assault on Aaron. Do they need to send you an email beforehand that like, hey, I'm sending a box or do you just get boxes from I strongly encourage before contact before Yeah, we actually had a amount of animal ship to us with no name, no times, act, no nothing. And I was like, well, you know, run it through the tanning process. And it was probably the most patient customer we ever had. It was about four years later this guy calls up and He's like, hey, man, where's my or whatever it was? And I'm like who are Like who are you? You know? And he gives me his name and I was like okay, So I go to the alphabetical file trying to find him. I was like, when did he send it? And he's like it's been a long time, all right. I'm rippling to there. I'm like, you're not even on file and I was like, wait a second, was it did you ship? He's like, yeah, that's me. I'm like, well, you gotta put your name in it. Before he ascended to me, there was nothing there and he's like, oh, you still got it. I was like, we still got it. We were doing yeah, able to get it down and get it to him. That's great, that's happy. End the story. Oh Everyboddy John Hayes, thanks a lot for joining. Thank you very much. Send send all your text and re ordered John who get you squared away? Those beautiful work. And I should point out the Freedom Mounts look amazing. I call him, You're I don't like remember how they had to rebrand French for during the Iraq invasion. Yes, I don't like calling the European Mounts freedom Mounts. Freedom mounts, whether that yeah, beautiful, less or more, it's called the freedom mount. Judge a little less, a little less just the skull, but the bear is beautiful. I think it's pinned this way. When your kids picking up to show their friend and the jaw doesn't fall off the floor break in half, you prevent all that from happening. I feel like there's two things around without the European mounts a little more expensive, and it's gonna smell like cigarette Freedom mount over here. All right, thanks a lot, everybody,
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