Theo sits down with mid-sized animal control man, Marty Voiers, to learn what a day in the life of a wild animal wrangler is like. Marty tells us insane stories of being face-to-face with bobcats, just how sneaky these raccoons truly are and his thoughts on being the middle man between man and beast.
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Today's guest is an outdoorsman and indoorsman in hell if the animals have gotten indoors.
And he is well he's a mid-sized animal control man.
And he can handle anything from, you know, I'm going to go on from mouse to bobcat style.
That includes woodpecker, flying squirrel, deer, hornet beaver, coyote, skunk, bats, and more.
That's this man.
His company is titled Hawk Predator and Wildlife Control.
He has been in the game for a while since he was a child and animals were bothering him.
And now he bothers them.
He's the dog, the bounty hunter of mid-sized animal animals.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Marty Voyeers.
Shine that light on me.
I'll spin and tell you my stories.
Shine on me.
If I were you, find no song.
I've been singing just so.
If you're hunting, um, if you're hunting like vermin, do you need energy drink?
I drink a lot of coffee.
Do you?
Well, I drink Mountain Dew.
Diet Mountain Dew.
Okay, yeah.
I'm on a no-card kick.
I've lost.
I went from 260 down to 238 two days ago, so I'm trying to get some weight back off.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And what are you leaning up for, to hunt animals?
Oh, just so I don't get rid of that.
It's kind of hard to get through a crawl space and through an attic door if you're big as hell.
Well, every space is a damn crawl space when you're big, I guess.
Do we, is this, I mean, are you cussing?
I don't know.
Oh, yeah, you can say whatever you want.
Okay, no, I just don't want to.
No, I appreciate it, man.
I don't want to say something I shouldn't say.
Oh, yeah.
The only things I don't say in here usually are, I don't say, I guess I don't say the N-word.
I don't say like F-A-G-G-O-T.
I don't say that.
And I don't say, I don't say like a lot of British curse words, like C-U-N-T.
I don't say that.
I don't say P-U-S-S-Y.
I don't say like laby.
I don't say stuff like that.
I don't say none of that anyway.
Okay, yeah.
But anything else is good.
Or it's fine.
You know, it's not good, but it is whatever you want it to be.
I've watched some of your podcasts.
I've tried to study and watch some of your podcasts.
Well, I don't know if that's good or not, man.
I mean, all of it's a little bit different.
You know, I think, you know, first of all, I appreciate you coming in.
How do you say your name so I know what I'm saying?
Marty.
Okay.
Voyeur's.
Voyeers.
Think of, this is more than one peeping Tom.
Oh, yeah.
Voyeers.
You have a Voyeer or you have a Voyeers.
Oh, yeah.
We had Voyeers usually where I'm from.
We had, I remember we had to, if you wanted to peep, if you wanted to go out time and or peep time, and they called it, you had to get a ladder from a guy because nobody around us had a ladder.
So he'd go over there and say, look, Wednesday, you know, about 4.35 p.m., we want that ladder, you know?
And we'd get out there and peep in time.
And I actually, I enjoy, I mean, as a kid, it was, you know what?
Where is that?
You're doing this?
For Louisiana.
Louisiana.
Okay.
So it reminded me of, we didn't have cable for a while.
So I know you'd go over to some people's house and it was like watching, it was like watching television almost.
You know, the windows even shaped like a dang television.
So I remember sitting out there and just, you know, the show isn't that good.
It's just a family eating damn, you know, TV dinners and stuff.
But it was still local programming, I guess.
But that's just a way to, I mean, I don't like to say that my dad cringes when I do that.
But for somebody that doesn't know how to pronounce my name, it's.
Voyeers.
Voyeurs.
Yeah.
It's French.
There you go.
Yeah.
That's the only thing I just, I mean, on the youth, I mean, I just don't like, because some people don't want to talk about it.
I say, oh, yeah.
If they're like, you're going to relocate him, like, well, I'm going to take care of him.
That's it.
No, I make the customer feel good.
Well, some animals.
You got to have to.
You relocate them to the Lord.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, that's how I kind of see it.
You know, some of them, that's life, you know.
Well, I mean, look, it's an interesting job you have.
So your name is French, I guess.
And the French are notorious fur trappers, aren't they?
Is that true or not?
I guess they're fur trappers there.
Do you feel that in your genetics ever?
I'm a fur.
I mean, I trap.
Oh, you do?
Oh, yeah.
I sent them guys a ton of pics.
I run a winter trap line, predator trap line.
This year, I ended up with 66 coyotes and four bobcats and a lot of other miscellaneous animals, foxes and raccoons.
But I do that every year in the wintertime, starting in November to February 28th.
I'm slow.
My business is slow in the winter, and my farming is none in the winter, just the fact of feeding cattle.
And I fur trap.
And that helps my business.
In the wintertime, I'll do it for free.
I tell, if you've got coyote problems, I'll come take care of your coyotes, and I'll do it for free.
Okay.
So when you're dealing with a coyote, take me through that process.
So somebody calls you and says, hey, Bucco, we got a coyote out here.
got something.
What's the usual complaint if they don't know that it's a coyote, that it's Okay.
Which more than likely, it's usually something the calf dies and the coyote is seen eating on it or tracks and he gets to blame.
Oh, damn.
But I mean, they'll get a newborn.
They'll get a calf while cow's having it.
She's defenseless.
She's defenseless when it's coming out of her.
And sometimes they'll grab it then.
She can't fight, defend them.
And they'll eat the afterbirth.
But they'll come after a sick, you know, nature.
They'll come after something sick.
You know, if it's injured or sick, they'll come after it.
But, you know, I get a lot of calls for that, raiding chicken houses, chicken coops, or their ducks missing.
Oh, yeah, that's just like on that cartoon.
Remember that?
Wasn't that cartoon where it was always in the hen house?
I'm trying to think of what it was.
That one with the big rooster.
Oh, you know what I'm talking about a little bit?
Yeah, the big, had the little drink.
He had the bit the little running around, a little itty-bitty chicken.
These fellas right here.
Yeah.
Foghorn Leghorn, dude.
And Foghorn Leghorn, I think that's Dutch, that name.
But yeah, he was into, yeah, he always had some issue.
Yeah, with something breaking in.
So for coyote, so that's fascinating.
So we're talking to Mr. Voyeers here, and you deal with all types of basically animalia that are problems, right?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
And so I want to get immediately back into that coyote question because that's just, so is it kind of crazy to think that they'll attack during the birth, huh?
Yeah, they'll go after a cow or an animal, deer, cow, they're having, they're young, they're defenseless, and they'll try to go after them then in cases.
Deer, the fawn, that's one of their main predators, his coyote.
For the mortality rate for a baby deer, it's a fawn, is coyotes.
They'll get the animals when they're weak, sick, and just kind of Mother Nature help them clean up, and they'll get one when it's sick, take it out.
And do you see that as like, it's almost like that's like Mother Nature doing, or do you feel like that that's like, damn, it's kind of cheating, or do you feel like that's kind of just the way that Mother Nature works?
I mean, you have something that's like not going to make it through the winter.
It's going to starve to death.
Mother Nature's taking out something to feed the other, and it's not going to suffer.
It's Mother Nature.
Yeah.
But I mean, sometimes Mother Nature's cruel.
She's very cruel sometimes.
She is.
She's really stepmother nature almost sometimes, you know?
There you go.
I feel like, you know, I mean, I'm not.
I love my stepbobs.
I got a great stepbob.
I've got a great mother and a great stepbob.
Oh, you do?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you do.
Oh, your dad picked some good ones, huh?
Oh, yeah.
I love my parents.
They're the best.
They raised me up good, and they're the best.
So now, did you, were you into dealing with animals at a young age?
Because if you're a real animal man, then you, I'm guessing you really got into animalia pretty young, huh?
My grandfather got me into trapping when I grew up going over to the farm every weekend when I was a youngster, and he got me into trapping groundhogs, getting rid of the groundhogs.
Started trapping there and just worked my way up over the years.
And he bought me my first traps at the feed store, and it just worked up over time.
And what kind of traps were those, those first traps?
My first traps were one and a half leg holds, like foot traps.
Spring that up, Sean?
I just want to see what that looks like so we got an idea of it.
So now tell me how this thing works here.
How does this kind of trap work?
It's a spring trap.
You compress the sides of it, whichever one we're looking at, you compress the sides of it and it's got a latch and a pan.
And when you latch the pan, and then you'll cover it up.
You bed the trap down, cover it up.
Sometimes I make a bait hole, sometimes I don't.
Or it's a walkthrough set.
Or if it's groundhog, I'll place it down in the den for the groundhog.
I don't use that method in my business, but growing up trapping, that's how I got rid of the groundhog.
And now, why would you do?
So when you say bedding, you put like a leaves and stuff over it, some kind of camo?
In essence, I bed the trap down to where they don't see it.
You kind of dig out a hole and you place the trap down covered up to where they walk in, they don't see it, but they step on it.
And they're going after, like if it's a coyote or a predator, I use a bait hole, which I'll dig a little hole in the ground and put a lure, commercial lure, a bait in it.
So the coyote's concentrating on that and will dig it out and then get the trap while he's working the set, going after the bait.
Okay, so what kind of bait do you use?
So for groundhog, you won't use a bait.
You'll kind of just wait for their weight to hit it?
Well, I mean, if you loot now, I don't, in my younger, when I was a kid, I'd use a leg hold trap, but if I'm at a customer's house, can't really use a foothold trap in somebody's front yard.
I have a, we use a good cage as I use as a Comstock cage, a double door cage, and I'll set it in front of the hole and make a deposit to where when the groundhog comes out, he has to go in that trap.
He has no option but to go in there to get outside.
So that way I can, say I catch three groundhogs and we don't catch anything for a week.
I can say there's no more groundhogs in that hole, and then we can seal the hole up and we're done.
So this trap right here, this is a single door trap, you said?
Yes, sir.
It's double door, single-door to Comstock.
That's one of my favorite traps, one of the most popular traps with the Nuisance Wildlife Operator.
So that's just pretty basic.
It looks like it has like kind of this like almost a teeter-totter door where once you go through it, it just closes back and you face it.
It's spring-loaded door on it, and it's got the triggers in the middle.
So when raccoon, groundhog comes through, he hits those triggers in the middle, and it's a spring-loaded door.
And it's not like a tractor supply cage trap.
It's spring-loaded.
It goes down.
It goes down hard enough to where if one gets caught in it, it could kill it underneath of it.
It could get it.
Wow.
Okay.
And so what animal, honestly, when you see an animal that and you trap one, which one does seem like the happiest to get trapped?
Is there any that's like, thank God for getting me out of this danger?
Well, none of them are very happy.
Really?
No.
Because I wonder sometimes if there's animals out there that are ready to be domesticated and they're just like, praise God, come and somebody take me out of this damn food chain, you know, because I'm sure for some animals, it is just, it's a dirty world out there.
Probably the most laid-back creature that we trap that I trap is probably opossum-wise.
I mean, it'll, you come up to it.
If it's in a cage, it'll be curled up asleep usually playing possum.
Or if it's in a, I'll have them get into my trap when I'm predator trap and you can catch anything in these traps.
You know, anything.
A possum's a scavenger.
Okay.
I call them ground buzzards, what I call them.
They'll eat anything dead or whatever on the ground.
Oh, yeah.
Forest shrimp, they call them sometimes.
Yeah, and they'll, I mean, I've had them, I mean, it sounds nasty.
The dead cow, I'll set sometimes around it.
I've seen them cut, they'll go in, they'll eat their way inside of a cow.
And how do they get in?
Through like the butt, really?
Yeah, through the rear end.
They eat their way right in.
I mean, it's kind of gross, but when you deal with the, I mean, do it, it doesn't really bother you.
But that's, I raise cattle too.
I've been around cattle all my life.
That's just part of Mother Nature.
The old way we did it, you know, you drag the cow to the holler and let Mother Nature consume it.
Give back to her, let her consume it.
Now you should take it, you know, really to the landfill.
But we usually have a holler or dig a hole with the loader, maybe tractor and loader and bury it, covered up.
Wow.
But they're one back to opossum.
You know, to get them, they're the most docile.
I mean, you can catch them.
I can pick them up and hold them.
Their main defense is they snarl, which they show those teeth, don't they?
Yeah.
a lot of them call them grinners.
So right before you hit them, right before they get run over, they grin real big at you because that's their main defense is they just grin and hiss at you to scare you away.
Oh, damn.
You can't fight or do it.
But they can't defend themselves anyway.
And they are actually marsupial.
I mean, they're rather cool.
They had the pouch like a kangaroo.
I mean, they're a really neat animal.
Wow.
So, so they have the pouch.
Can you bring up that pouch, Sean?
So they have the pouch.
I didn't know that they had that.
Yeah.
Yes, sir.
Yep, they carry their young in a pouch.
And now, can you get, like, is there, like, do you know how many they could fit in there?
No, I mean, I'd a litter, probably five or six, about an average litter.
Okay.
But, I mean, they'll stay in there till they get so big and it's obviously too big, then they'll stay with her, ride on her back, like you got in the pictures.
Okay.
But they're, I mean, they're the most, they're a pretty gentle creature other than, you know, raccoons not happy to see you.
Coyote's not very happy.
Even a groundhog's not happy to, you know, they'll chatter their teeth.
They'll bite their teeth at you and just make a little noise tried to scare you.
That's their defense.
It's everything, the skunk sprays.
Raccoon's just mean.
They'll just come after you.
Tell me this, sir.
What is a vermin?
How do you get upgraded to vermin?
You know what I'm saying?
Is there like a, you know, some rural kind of courtroom where they're like, you're a damn vermin now, bucket.
Like, do they, if something causes enough problems, is it then a vermin?
When does it go from pest to vermin to your house?
When, you know, raccoons are, I mean, they don't bother you in nature.
You know, you, you see raccoons all the time in the road or running around.
They're not a pest until they make their way in your house.
They get in your attic to go through your soffit or chimney or whatever and get into your attic, your house, have their babies.
They, you know, the feces everywhere.
Raccoons use a toy, use a toilet.
They use the bathroom like a cat in the same place.
Oh, really?
So if you've got raccoons that have been in there for quite a while, you have quite a mess.
So if you see a bunch of coon duty somewhere, that's really, that's a giveaway, real sign.
Yeah, oh, yeah.
Oh, I'll open up attic.
I've opened up attic doors and had it dumped right on me before where the doors swing down.
You're always opening your duck like real easy to make sure there's not going to be, because that's usually, you know, the back guano or raccoon feast is going to be right there on top of the attic door also.
Like a surprise party.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Definitely be a surprise.
You get that dumped onto you.
Not what you want to do.
I had a bat attack me.
I was trying to make out with a girl.
I was about 14 in an attic.
And I don't know if this bat knew her or what, but that thing fucking came after me, boy.
That bat might have been her, you know, I don't know if her dad had passed and this was, it was a spirit or something.
Come back as a damn bat, boy.
But this thing did not want me putting my fangs in her neck, that's for sure.
You were just in his house.
You were invading his area.
I probably was.
You know, we wandered up into an attic of a semi-not abandoned house, but a house that hadn't even been built yet.
So pre-abandonment.
Now, raccoons, though, get the, they really, I feel like, kind of get the, they get looked at, I feel like, as Mother Nature's kind of hit, man a little bit.
They really have come into their own as being just burglars.
I think every time you see them, they look so guilty.
They look like they...
They have that kind of a mask on them.
I mean, when they see our houses or your house, they just see a tree.
They see, you know, every, you know, the neighborhoods and subdivisions are tearing down more woods and more environment to build the houses.
So they're running out of places.
And they don't have really, their main predator is man.
Wow.
And so when they look at your house, just like any of these animals, they just see a, they just see a big tree, a funny looking tree.
You know, they can climb right up the siding, right up the downspout, and they'll find a way in.
And they'll make your home their home.
So they just see your house as a tree, really.
That's it.
I mean, that's what they see it as.
You know, just a different type of structure.
They want to be the female raccoons, they want to be up high.
They want, you know, if they're not in like a cavity of a tree, it's where they would be in the nature because they want to be up high so that when they have their young, they're away from predators.
They're away from things that could hurt their babies.
One of their main concerns when they're having their babies is male raccoons.
Another one of Mother Nature's things is a male raccoon will search out the female and kill those babies to make her come into heat again, which is just Mother Nature, another cruel way of Mother Nature.
It's just a cycle, it's just Mother Nature.
And so the mama raccoons or sow raccoons that we come, they'll go, they get hide up in the attics and they'll make their dens trying to keep away from everything else.
And the male raccoons.
So even there, could it even be the own male that knocked them up?
I mean, it could be.
I don't know.
God, dude.
You sound like a damn John Grisham.
I mean, it is possible.
Some of the one technique that we use, eviction fluid, which is mainly raccoon piss.
And you can take it.
I'm not a big fan of it because I like to catch the raccoon and remove it.
No, I've removed it out of your house.
But you can take eviction fluid and put it around their entry hole and in the attic.
And the female raccoon will think there's a male present and take her babies and shag out of there.
Okay, so you mean if you want to get her out of that?
Yeah, some places if you use like all humane, you know, no trapping, they can use eviction fluid and that can make the female think there's a male present and she'll get her babies and get out.
But you still have, there's a raccoon there.
It's going to go somewhere else.
It's going to be somebody else's problem.
I mean, I like to trap them and get rid of it.
That way I can tell the customer, hey, I've got mama.
I got five kits out of your attic and sealed up and we're good to go.
And we got, yeah, we got the problem solved.
Otherwise, you just, once you put that piss down, they're just looking, you just, you're scaring them off.
You don't know where you're scaring them to.
Yeah, you haven't really solved the problem.
they'll either leave or they'll just go even deeper.
You just carry in the one.
Yeah, you haven't really solved the problem.
Now, what about this?
I want to get back a little bit to this.
I mean, it's almost like a Shakespeare story that the so the female can have children, have babies, raccoon can have babies, and a man raccoon will come and kill the babies while they're being born.
Well, after she has them.
After she has them.
Will the male raccoon eat them or just kill them?
He usually just kills them.
Okay, kill them.
And then kill them just so the female will go back in the heat so then he can get laid, basically.
Yeah.
I mean.
Yeah, you can put it that.
I mean, it's not the only.
A lot of animals do it.
Lions, you know, they'll kill the cubs.
You know, other animals, like it'll kill their offspring or the offspring.
It just hurts me, man.
To make them come back in the heat.
It just hurts my feelings.
I mean, I don't come across it very often, but I mean, I've found it where I'll come do an attic inspection and just find a bloodbath, you know, just little young, I mean, little kitchen, size of the pop can and just be ripped open, just, you know, horrible where the male raccoons come in and killed them all.
I mean, it happens.
You don't see it very often, which I don't see it very often.
Some people may.
It's like the first forest eight, kind of.
Yeah.
You know?
Like I said, Mother Nature's cool sometimes.
You know, the little man is who you want.
You want that little man.
If you want a baby, if you want something coming out of your body, you want it to be the little man.
Hell, if you want something going into your body, you almost want it to be the little man or, you know, not too big of a man.
And that's what I'm talking about.
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Now, here's a question that came in from some fella right here.
He's probably out of work, but also seemed like a decent fella right here.
Here we go.
Hey, Theo.
I'm Noah.
Come at you from London, England.
Huge fan.
I've got a question for the real life wildlife control man, which is a question that Theo actually brought up on one of the Joe Rogan episodes, which is that, how are these raccoons not a bigger problem?
I mean, you must deal with it.
You're on the front line of this stuff.
So tell us, what's going on with these raccoons?
Gang gang.
Gang, brother.
Yeah, how are they not a bigger problem?
It seemed like they're after sex.
You're saying they're doing sex in the attic and they're, you know, they're willing to kill children to get sex.
And they're, you know, they're obviously breaking into people's homes.
Like, I see them in the recycling band constantly.
Or I see music in the trash.
And I'll see you.
You ever see that one weird recommend that's in the recycling band?
It's like, what is he?
He's like, he's reading in there or something, you know?
But I'll see the ones in, you know, it's like, you'll go out at night.
Here's what I find fascinating.
You'll go out in a rate.
You'll drive to a neighborhood.
And it's a peaceful, regular-looking neighborhood.
Everything seems normal.
And there's only three or four trees in the dang neighborhood.
It wouldn't, if you, if you asked everybody all day, is there any raccoons in this neighborhood?
People put zero on the form.
And you come by at about, dang, 12.40, I feel like, or 11.15 p.m.
And you'll see them in little groups of three just cruising along, man.
It's like they can hide so, I mean, they hide right before your damn eyes, it seems like.
So how are they not a bigger problem?
And what kind of problem are they, these raccoons?
And you can be honest with me.
I mean, my raccoons every year through my business, it's getting bigger and bigger.
I mean, it's getting to be more and more of a problem.
I knew it.
Like the more we build and go into the farmland, we're taking out their habitat.
Like I said, the only natural real predator is man, is a car and disease, which they get overcrowded like anything.
They'll get disease, they'll get in them, distemper, or they'll get rabies and they'll kill some of them off.
But they are, I mean, a lot of people have them and don't know they have them.
Really?
You know, you might, if you're in a house, you might hear something every once in a while and they're like, Well, that's just raccoon, no big deal.
They don't come in here and bother me in my living room because I'll be in houses in attics.
Oh, we just started hearing it last week, and it's obvious they've had it for years.
Wow.
Just some people just don't know it.
I mean, they're sneaky.
They're sometimes quiet.
You got the insulation in your attic, and they don't make a whole lot of noise, you know, or you overlook it as something else or just don't want to know what, just don't want to know what it is.
And are they flame-retardant raccoons?
Are they flammable animals?
You know what I'm saying?
Like, their skin is so thick, it seems like they wouldn't be in an attic.
It just seemed like a good place for fire, you know, or something like bad.
I mean, they're actually, they're very tough creatures.
I've had, I had one particular job this spring, early spring or late winter, and it took us a month and three days for that caught four raccoons out of an attic.
In a month and three days, the final raccoon came out.
And what was he doing?
Just hands up and deny?
No, they were juvenile, young raccoons, last year's raccoons, just denning, and just they're trap shy and won't, you know, they won't come out.
I mean, in the summertime, it's not unusual to have a raccoon go a week, maybe two weeks in the summer in an attic would be 140 degrees.
I mean, they're a tough creature.
Stay in there with no food or water.
You know, sometimes they can get water.
Your air conditioning will have a condensation pan.
They'll sip off that bastard.
They can get a little bit of water off there.
They're just sneaky, man.
They're just so damn sneaky.
That's what gets me.
You know, they're just the damn, they're the real Andy Dufranes of the damn animal kingdom.
You know what I'm saying?
They're wild, man.
Is there any animal as sneaky as a raccoon?
I mean, let's put the crown on the prince, brother.
Is there any animal as sneaky as a dang raccoon?
I got to say bobcats, man.
There you go.
I mean, I don't get the calls, you know, for, you know, like they don't invade your homes like a raccoon does, but they got to be pretty sneaky.
I mean, they're pretty sneaky.
Rats, I do a lot of rat work.
They can be pretty sneaky.
So do I, brother.
They're hard to get, and sometimes they're a pretty big challenge to get the rats.
They're pretty sneaky.
They don't like change, and you mess with them.
They'll change the routes and where they come in.
They're a sneaky animal.
They're all kind of sneaky.
But those come to mind as being the most sneaky to me.
Do you look at it as a competition when you wake up in the morning?
Do you kind of look at it as like you like, I kind of wonder how you envision your position in the world?
I mean, do you look at it as like you're kind of like the like that you're help that you're against the animals?
Is you against them?
Do you look at it as you're just helping people?
Like just kind of, what's the vibe that you have to take on each day to really get out there and solve some of these animal issues that are in the world?
I love animals.
Oh, you love them?
I mean, I love my work.
I love animals.
You know, I love working with them, getting to handle them.
I've got lots of pets.
I mean, I'm an animal lover, but I like helping people and satisfaction.
You know, somebody has a house and they have a large colony of bats.
And when I can go in and seal that house up and evict those bats, get rid of them and clean up their attic like it was brand new.
I mean, that's some satisfaction.
Yeah, I can see it back and say, hey, I took care of this.
I mean, it's different than saying like, well, you know, you sold a new album or you sold a new car or signed a new deal.
Yeah, I got rid of those bats.
I mean, it's satisfaction.
It's kind of a different, it's each his own.
It's kind of a different satisfaction, but I mean, it's very satisfying.
If I didn't love it, I wouldn't do it.
Yeah.
I mean, I love them.
I love getting every morning that's something different.
It's something new.
It may be the same thing, but it's something, no raccoon job, no bat job, nothing is the same.
It's always a little bit different, a little bit different scenario or how you have to set up on it or what happens.
It's all a little bit different.
It's all a challenge.
Sometimes it's very challenging.
Tell me about it.
Take me on a call for something where you like, I just had a vision of you like walking through the zoo, just kind of looking at the animals being like, I could do all of this, you know, kind of, that's kind of Clint Eastwood, if you would.
We go through the Cincinnati zoo a couple years back, and I was, you know, like the raccoons or something.
I'm like, oh, yeah.
Like the river otters.
I'm like, yeah, I've done, I like otter jobs.
You know, those are, those are, everybody sees them as loving creature.
I mean, they are loving creatures.
They're very neat and pretty, but they'll come into, if they can find your pond or lake, they'll wipe out your fish.
No way.
Come on.
But they do the tricks.
They do the tricks that make you think they're being good.
Oh, yeah, they're cute, but they're just there for your fish.
I mean, they can be, that's what they're cute until they start taking away something, and then they're a pest.
Like you said, then they're cute.
Oh, they're cute and cuddly.
Then they start.
Until the tuna's gone, then they're a cute.
Yeah, then the tuna's gone, and then they got to go.
You know, then they're, then they're a pest.
Then the people don't like them.
They got to go.
Now, why does an otter look so cute, you think, to us?
Because they do those tricks.
I've seen them do the tricks in the zoo.
You know, you get by the zoo cage or the water zoo, and you'll see them do those tricks, and it makes me feel like, oh, man, they're lovely.
They're this and that.
But you don't notice the two otters in the back beating the fuck out of a carp.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you know what I'm saying?
You don't notice the hit, you know what I'm saying?
You don't notice the other side of the aluminum, you know?
I mean, they look cute.
They're grooming themselves.
Yeah, they look cute.
They groom themselves.
Oh, they do.
And when they do that, you know, it looks cute.
Oh, look at, you know, if he's, they're grooming themselves and they're always where their hair, they're oily to where it helps them shed the water.
Oh, yeah.
They just make them look so cute.
Oh, yeah.
They got this summer.
They look like they got their hair dyed for the summer.
They're ready to kind of, you know, like they're going to the beach, like they're going to be in damn destined all summer.
I mean, it's like a baby raccoon.
I mean, I handle lots of babies, and they're so cute and cuddly, but they grow up to be big raccoons.
And then they can be very destructive.
Same way as a little baby groundhog's cute and cuddly looking, but they're going to grow up to dig underneath your house and, you know, dig underneath your foundation, cause it to settle and crack.
I mean, they're all cute until they destroy something and then they're a pest.
I got it.
And then there's guys like me that got to come in and take care of them.
Okay, so now that's it.
So now we're seeing kind of the evolution from them just being an animal to them becoming a pest.
They become a pest when they are bothering you.
Yeah.
When they're bothering something, when they're causing some disruption in our world.
Now, is it kind of weird?
Because we're really causing a disruption in their world.
We're the one invading their territory.
Yeah, like you buy a piece of land, it's like, you know, it's not like you get to go to the courthouse and nine groundhogs get to show up and be like, hey, what's the deal?
I mean, you buy a farm and they level it out and build subdivisions.
Those groundhogs are still there.
Right.
And they're going to come up to your front porch under your bushes, up against your barns or your garage, and they're going to dig their holes because you're in their world.
That's their area.
And then that, and then they're cute and cuddly and not really a big harm when they're out in nature, other than the cow or horse, you know, stepping in the hole, maybe breaking their leg, or something like that.
But then when they invade your house, then they're a pest and then they got to go.
Most people don't ever encounter something like that until they become a pest.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, because you don't notice it really.
Yeah, they're neat.
Oh, look at the groundhog in the neighbor's yard over there.
And then next summer, when that groundhog had babies and some of their babies come to your house or grown, start digging, then it's not cute anymore.
Then they call us.
It is interesting how animals go from that.
There's a real fine line from cute to pest, isn't there?
Yeah.
There's that real fine line.
Baby raccoons, they're adorable.
I mean, they're so cute.
My grandmother didn't really like me, and whenever she died, she was still alive, but we didn't get along well.
But the lady, I remember this lady told me one time, my grandma didn't like me.
This was her friend.
Her friend told me that, and her friend had a raccoon on her, when she told me, her friend kept a raccoon as a pet.
Do you see a lot of people keeping animals?
And I remember thinking, well, anyway, I don't know why I told you that, but I remember just thinking, well, what in the hell?
Why does my grandmother even have this lady as a friend who has a damn raccoon?
Why is this lady her friend, but she doesn't like me?
That's what I'm thinking.
But anyway, you see people starting to take on animals where it seems a little bit like it's more about them than it is about the animal.
You know, it's a little bit more.
Yeah, there's something going on sometimes.
They're trying to have a little bootleg-ass Noah's Ark in their bathtub or something.
Have you run into some stuff like that where somebody calls you is like, hey, look, buddy, you know, like I had a small, you know, like I had a small dream of doing a little bit of Dr. Doo little shit in the garage.
I've had a lot of people.
And suddenly things have gotten out of control.
Had a couple.
It mainly happens on like a rental property where somebody's had a pet raccoon.
Okay, so it starts with right.
So it's usually raccoons.
Yeah, it's usually a raccoon.
Sometimes squirrels, they, you know, somebody finds a young raccoon.
Oh, yeah.
You know, kit, something happens.
They find a little young raccoon, not scared of humans, and they take it and they try to make it a pet, which, I mean, is.
What do they do?
I don't know about Tennessee's laws because I'm not licensed here, but in Kentucky, it's against the law to keep, to have a pet.
Any animal that's indigenous to the state, deer, raccoon, turk, dope.
Okay, so take me back home and slow that down for me and for our listeners.
So what does that mean?
Any animal that's indigenous to the state?
Well, I mean, any animal that's a common animal in the state, raccoon, possum, fox, squirrel.
You cannot have those as pets.
Yeah, you're not allowed to keep the wildlife as a pet.
Even like rebilitate, even if you think you're doing it, you're not supposed to.
Not saying they're going to come get you.
Right.
But there's some laws.
I mean, they do.
I have some conservation officer friends, and they do receive calls and complaints about people pet deer, pet raccoons.
And they're still a wild animal.
Ma'am.
The raccoons, they can be, I mean, you can have a raccoon, and if you Google it, they'll turn.
You know, a raccoon might be fine for a couple years, and then they've turned and attacked children, toddlers, babies in their sleep.
I mean, they're still a wild animal.
So what usually, like, how do people, first, let me get into what people have a raccoon, what do they try to do to have it really be part of their little life?
Like, I see sometimes they'll put a little diaper on it, or they'll put a damn little necklace on it or something.
You see them maybe get a little bit of a, you know, I've seen one had a little even, somebody made it a little damn amulet thing for its wrist.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you see people really try and make them human in some way.
Have you come into somebody, have you ever, you know, have you had to go and you find something that's wearing a damn, you know, Izod shirt or something?
Have you ever found anything like that where somebody's got a damn homemade outfit, you know, got some, you know, little baby Birkenstocks on a damn on a raccoon or anything like that?
No, I mean, I've run across people who pet raccoons.
And that's cool.
I mean, that's their prerogative.
They got them dressed up or not?
No, I mean, I've seen them with collars on them, you know, little decorative collars, but not dressed.
I mean, if you put something on a raccoon, it's going to pull it off.
I mean, they're very smart animals.
They're going to pull it off.
I mean, I've seen people pet squirrels.
You get them as a baby.
I mean, but they're still a wild animal.
So is there something you can do to keep it domesticated so it doesn't turn wild again?
I mean, everything can turn.
I mean, I don't personally know.
I've raised a few deer up for a little bit of time.
I had one that got out of the job and I kept it for a while.
And then it turned.
Well, I took it to the rehabilitator.
And I get fawn calls.
Baby deer get abandoned.
I mean, like on a deer, we're getting off the subject here.
The worst thing you do, like if people say, I found a baby deer, is mama, when she has her baby, she'll place it away from her to keep, she keeps away from it as much as she can, not to put any scent on it.
That way the predator won't find it.
So when she beds a baby deer down, she'll put it down and she'll leave and go away from it.
I mean, she's just a couple hundred yards away, but that way, if something comes, it don't get her baby.
People, oh, here's an abandoned deer.
Oh, I'm going to help it.
I'm going to send it.
And once you touch it, it's done.
She's not going to take that baby back because it's got your human scent on it.
And then they'll try to raise it themselves or they'll call me or call a game warden.
And then we take them, you know, I've kept them for several weeks, you know, just getting them back on their feet, bottle feeding them, and then take them to a rehabber, in which they're a licensed rehabber, and they raise them up.
They'll raise them up to where they can survive on their own and release them back in the wild.
Okay.
And they do that with all, I mean, they do that with all animals.
I mean, baby raccoons, we can take them to a rehabber and they'll bottle feed them, raise them up, and release them back into the wild.
Okay.
Okay.
Let's get a question that came in from one of our listeners here.
We've got a lot of great listeners on this podcast and real grateful for that.
And here's a man right here that had a question about something.
Decent man.
What up, Theo?
What up, Nick?
What up, Animal Police Man?
I got a question for you guys.
What's harder to catch in the streets?
One of these young cats or one of them dog dogs out there?
What's harder to catch out in the streets when you're working?
By the way, Theo, thank you for that gang merch just came in.
Oh, man.
Official.
That new edition with the hit her in the front, baby.
People make a lot of bootleg merchandise and sell it, and that's bootleg, brother.
Sorry, that's unbelievably bootleg.
Dear God.
Oh, no.
So that's a good question, man.
That's a good question.
A lot of wildlife operators will not touch a cat.
Okay.
We don't normally ever fall with a canine because you have dog pound, dog warden, but there's no cat warden.
Oh, okay.
And I myself, I do cat work.
I do feral cat work.
Oh, you do cat work?
Oh, you do cat work?
Be honest.
You do cat work.
Yeah, I do feral cat work.
Okay, I'm just saying.
Now, hold on.
Who's feral cat?
Not a domesticate.
It's just a cat that's running wild, that you can't get close to.
I'm sure if you drive around, I mean, most towns and cities, you drive and you'll see cats running everywhere.
Oh, yeah.
Those are cats that just, they just scavenge off whatever they can find.
You can't touch them.
They're just wild.
Oh, dude, I grew up in the Stray Animal Belt, man.
We had cats everywhere.
We had animals passing through town.
We had damn parakeets.
I mean, everything came through town.
Groups of them.
I remember one summer seeing about 40 cats out there.
Well, that's, I mean, you get a, oh, for instance, like a townhome community, and they'll go from one or two cats and, you know, little old ladies feeding them.
Does you feel sorry for them?
To 60, 70 cats, and they attack her while she's sleeping.
Well, a couple of female cats, they get bred.
They have kittens.
Within, you know, less than a year, those kittens will breed.
And then another year, those kittens from those kittens will breed.
So see how it can go really.
Then you've got all these cats that are living.
They're going to get disease because there's so many of them.
They get all over your cars.
They crap all and pee all around your bushes.
It stinks.
But you can't get close to them.
So that's when they get up.
I'll do fair.
I'm not going to turn down work.
I try to help my community.
Sometimes it's hard trying to find homes for them.
I have to struggle sometimes to find shelters.
It'll take the cat.
And when you pick them up, you put them in the back seat or front seat?
Where do you put them?
They're in the back of the truck.
Oh, really?
Oh, yeah.
A feral cat can be very mean because they'll reach right through that category.
If it's big enough, they'll try to reach through there.
A scratch from a cat can get very, I mean, can get infected because all that dirt and stuff on their nails, when they scratch you, some of them call it cats, cats, fever.
We used to play that at the library.
I've had scratch and been scratched by cats trying to handle them with my big gloves on, and they'll get real infected.
I mean, they'll get, you gotta.
That was a song, too.
Whose song was that?
Bring that up.
Yeah, play a little bit of that, man.
That's Ted Nuggin.
So when you hear this, I bet this, you should play this.
This should be your dang alarm when you wake up in the morning.
You got a little bit of going in.
Yeah, huh?
They can.
I mean, I could go to a job like that and maybe capture 30 cats.
I mean, scratch me.
That's good, man.
With any wildlife, you got to be careful, wear proper PPE.
Right.
You know, when I fool with the cats, I'll wear bite-proof gloves that come up to about my elbows.
That way they can't scratch me.
I don't, you know, I don't want to get full of getting affected and have to nurse a wound.
You know, it's hard enough doing my work anyway.
But we don't do any dogs.
No, just that's getting too, I'll do cats.
You know, if I do a cat job, you know, it has to be a certain, you know, I won't like if you just pissed at the neighbor's cat, I'm not going to come do that.
Oh, I wouldn't do that.
I used to piss around my bed when I was growing up, though, dude.
I'll tell you this.
This is a true story.
So when I was growing up, I was real scared, right?
We grew up in a pretty scary area.
And I remember hearing when I was young, and I've talked about this a bunch on this podcast, but I remember hearing when I was young, if animals smell urine, they won't come by.
You know, that's what I remember hearing.
So I was so scared that I would pee or I would stand on my bed at night and pee around it in like a semicircle so that no animals came to get me because I was so scared of like, huh?
Yeah, I never got attacked by anything, you know, or anything indoors.
But yeah, it's just crazy to think that as a kid, you know, that you have, you know, just that you hear stuff like that and how to heart you can take it as a child.
When you say that there's no dog police, I start to see that there's probably some jurisdiction issues.
Do you ever run into jurisdiction issues where the dog catcher has got issues with you because you're trying to, you know, you're I don't do any dogs.
And why not?
You can be honest with me.
I mean, I just, because I mean, it's somebody's pet.
I mean, there's not that many.
So there's more emotion involved with that.
I mean, I'm just, you're getting too much, even with the cats, you know, I'll do a job and I'm like, no, this is going to be the neighbor's cats.
Yeah, I can't, no.
Usually a cat problem is at like a shopping or a restaurant.
You know, the employees are getting bombarded by all these stray cats that are around the dumpsters.
Oh, I'll tell you.
Stuff like that.
Now, I don't go into, you know, Betty in the neighborhood's got a cat and she wants you to get rid of it because she's pissed at the neighbor and it's her cat now.
I mean, there's too much legal issue there and bad publicity.
Now, that's a good point, too.
That's why you don't want to get near it.
I mean, a lot of my friends, they won't touch a cat job just for that fact.
I'm picky about my, I get a lot like factories, power plants.
cats will come in.
People dump cats off.
They ride in your vehicles up in the engine compartment when it's cold, and then they multiply and they got to go.
I mean, they're healthy.
It's a health risk.
Usually, you drop them at the power plant, they're going to go somehow.
You know what I'm saying?
I feel like that's kind of that, you know, a lot of people used to do that.
They drop them off at the power plant and let, you know, and let, you know, let it happen.
You know, let it kind of work out.
That cat scratch fever right there, bro.
But how about this?
So what I'm trying to figure out is, so when it comes to the domestic animals, that's not really your line of work.
No.
How did you get from your grandfather gives you the trap and you're trapping stuff around the way?
How do you then get into the echelon where you stay in that vein for most of your youth and childhood?
And then you just get into it as a profession.
When did that start?
Well, I grew up hunting, fishing, trapping.
My grandfather taught me everything.
And then I get into the job world, work a couple jobs, and then I work for, my last one was for a rock mine close to where I live, underground mine.
And I still trapped, you know, on this, you know, just little stuff.
And somebody would call me, hey, I've got groundhogs in my barn.
Can you come get rid of them?
Like, yeah, I could probably do that.
And I come over and trap them.
They're like, well, here's 20 bucks or here's a six pack or, you know, be nice, you know, give me a little bit of something.
Oh, yeah.
And oh, I've got this raccoon.
I heard you trap.
Can you come get rid of it?
And then I started looking, thinking, no, I can make money at this.
I could do this for real.
You know, I started reaching out, looking on Facebook, finding other wildlife guys.
One of them taught me a lot of stuff, my mentor, Ronnie Vincent, which is about 150 miles away from me.
And he kind of took me under, told me how, you know, get me started, just kind of get tips.
We're new guys getting into the business.
And just evolved from there.
Went from trapping, loving to trap.
You got to be a trapper to do this.
I mean, you can't just go buy traps.
You could go buy traps and do it, but you got to know how to lure the animal in, what baits work best, what areas they're going to use to come, you know, runways or travel way.
You got to have a little bit of background in it where it really helps to do that.
So it just evolved from trapping as a kid, loving animals, to wanting to change a career.
So I quit my other job as a miner and was already farming.
So farming full-time, and then I started my wildlife business.
And so Ronnie was, you kind of worked as an apprentice in some way under, you know, Ronnie just giving you a lot of guide, like just guidance.
If I had a problem, I'd call him.
I was on the phone with him every day.
He knew what was going on.
And it's like, man, I've got this.
What's the best way?
No, I can catch a squirrel outside somewhere.
What's the best way to catch it on a house?
And I had to study and take my tests at the state, Fish and Wildlife, to be a nuisance control operator and had to study a guide.
And I bought NUCOA, which is an organization for the wildlife operators and some of their online courses and some of their books and literature to just get more from animal trapping in the wild to adapting to your house trapping.
Okay, right on.
The difference from trapping a raccoon in somebody's barn to making a positive set on a house and it's in your soffit and you're 25, 30 feet off the ground with a trap upside down under the soffit with trying to screw it down and attach it to your side of your house.
Do you ever have to like finger print or dust for prints or do any kind of like track?
Like is there any detective type style work, you know?
Yeah.
One thing that we use a lot now is cameras.
I use Spy Point cell cameras that go sends the pictures through your cell phone.
There's other ones, RLO cameras that do video.
And we use that.
I've got three going on jobs now.
I mean, we all use that to monitor, say, are they coming and going here?
So I'll put that camera up and now it'll send an alert to my phone.
I know when that raccoon's coming and going.
When they're motion sensitive?
Well, yeah, it's motion sensitive.
Another trick that we use that I've used, if I suspect something's coming and going, don't really know what it is, I'll take flour.
Put some flour down on a piece of cardboard and when they step through that, they'll leave their tracks.
We do that.
We used to do that for Santa, you know?
Yeah, to see a Santa come through.
Yeah.
And one time it was my damn brother.
He'd been drinking and he damn came through.
And he actually, speaking of urinating on stuff, he urinated on something.
What type of animal has the most sex out there, I wonder?
When people think, because a lot of animals, you see a lot of animals and you'll see them with their children, but you don't hear about the sex a lot of times.
Is there a lot of animals where animal, the actual mating becomes a problem for a homeowner where that is the issue a lot of times?
I mean, I don't think that's really an issue.
I mean, I've never had somebody call and say, well, these raccoons keep having sex.
Can you come get rid of them?
I've never really had that.
But, I mean, could you see it happening possibly?
Well, it's all under cover of dark.
I mean, they're nocturnal animals.
They only come out at night, and that's something they're probably not going to do in your front yard for you.
But no, yeah, yeah, that's true.
But, I mean, I guess would they get into the house to mate?
I guess would do people.
Well, they'll be mating.
A raccoon will mate.
They'll mate.
They won't go in the house to mate.
Are they mate outdoors?
They'll mate somewhere when she comes in the heat and she finds a suitor and she accepts him and they mate.
And then she'll seek out a den, place to have her babies, which would be your attic or under your house.
Okay.
Yeah, they don't go in your house to mate.
They're going to mate.
She's going in her house to keep away from that guy.
She don't want him back.
She wants to keep away from him and anything else that could hurt her babies.
Right.
It's like Planned Parenthood almost a little bit, kind of.
Or something you get a pamphlet for there.
Let's get another question that came in right here.
What do we have showing that really some people are inquiring?
Man, do you feel okay?
I want to make sure you feel comfortable.
Do you?
Yeah.
Okay, good.
I'm loving it now.
Okay, good.
Good, good, good, man.
Yeah, no, this is all really cool information, man.
Just little pieces of it are just so fascinating.
It's just like things you just wouldn't think about.
So let's keep going.
What do we got here?
We got a young fella right here who's got an animal.
What's up, Theo?
What's up, Animal Wrangler?
This is Cody from Arkansas.
I was just calling to ask what is like the biggest injury or anything that you've got from trying to wrangle an animal.
Anyways, thanks guys.
Gang, gang.
Yeah, how violent is the game?
Is it an ACL?
What happens out there?
Is it carpal tunnel?
What happens when you're dealing with these animals?
My biggest injury is I've had two ladders break on me.
That's my biggest injury-wise.
It's put me in a hospital for a little bit.
No, nothing broke, just I've had two ladders fail.
When I go up and down ladders, I mean, might be 30 times a day for me.
And I'm small time.
You know, you're going to have something happen.
Actual animals, had one happen last summer for this nice lady as a church parsonage in area where I work at and had raccoons coming in her house into the attic, normal spots in this office.
So I catched her out.
She calls me, hey, you've got a raccoon.
So I come over and she's out back and she's, it's the parsonage.
I guess it would have been been the pastor's wife or family.
And so I'm talking to her and she's asking me this question.
So I'm telling her, we're going to put another trap back up there, ma'am.
And I have my assistant, Tim, my one employee, he was already putting another trap back up over the hole.
And as I was talking to her, I kind of let my guard down.
I reached down and grabbed the trap.
I picked it up from the top.
I had it sitting horizontally up and straight up and down.
And I grabbed the end of it and stuck my finger into the cage where she could find it.
And she grabbed a halt of me.
And needless to say, I let out a pretty good scream and a few words I shouldn't have in front of you.
I felt kind of bad, really bad.
Apologized for it.
I mean, bled all over, everywhere.
I mean, it was a pretty good wound.
But I've been vaccinated for rabies.
Oh, you have?
Yeah.
Well, now, so in that instance, you had already a raccoon in the cage, and you just put your hand too close to it?
Well, I stuck my hand, so the cage is straight up and down.
And I'll put my hands through the end of it where the door is.
There's nothing there.
So I'll just put my fingers through the cage and pick it up.
Well, I was talking to her and looked the way as I was reaching for the cage and just wasn't looking, just stupid mistake.
Stuck my fingers in where she could get them.
She went right after them and didn't want to let go.
Was to grab and trying to get my finger.
They rip his finger off.
Really?
They're pretty strong.
I've been coon hunting and I've talked to coon hunters before.
No, have coon kill a dog.
A big boar coon kill a dog.
They're a bad animal now.
Are they?
You definitely don't want them biting your finger.
I mean, it bit right through my finger now.
I mean, it was pretty painful.
You don't want that.
You don't want to do it at the preacher's house.
Yeah.
That's the wrong place.
Well, at least there they can pray for you, baby boy.
She was sympathetic.
She understood.
She went and got me some water to wash it off.
And she's really nice.
She understood.
Let's see what that animal looks like.
You can get him 25, 30 pounds.
Wow.
Oh, look at him right there attacking a hole, gone.
Look at them fighting.
Go back.
My God, look at them fighting.
Now, have you witnessed some good animal fights and be honest there?
I've had my dog.
I've been out before my dog get attacked by a raccoon.
And they're pretty, I mean, they're vicious.
They won't let a raccoon, a bad raccoon, will, instead of running, he'll just lay up, rear up on his back, lay down his back, and fight.
Oh, yeah.
But that way he's got his back covered on the ground and fight.
It's almost like they teach an MMA to kind of do that.
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All right, now back to the show.
When I was growing up, rabies was a big deal.
You know, I mean, it was just popular.
You would constantly hear about it, the fear of it, what was going on.
And then I get a text from somebody maybe a year ago, and they said rabies is kind of making a comeback.
Have you heard of this?
Yeah, rabies in Kentucky, in my area of the state, it's gotten worse over the last couple of years.
As in not, I don't know if people cases, but animals getting tested and getting the rabies that the fox, raccoon, skunk, and coyotes are all in the rabies vector area, and we have to euthanize those now because there's such a high number of rabies cases with them.
Now, you roll up on one of these, right?
One of these, you know, something that's rabid.
How do you know out of the gate?
I got a call last week from a car dealership at home.
Hey, we got this raccoon.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
It's skunk.
We're getting animals mixed up.
It was a skunk.
Oh, look, if a skunk gets its nails done, it's almost a damn raccoon.
I'll tell you.
No, it's in the middle of the parking lot at 12 o'clock in the afternoon at lunchtime.
Yeah.
And it's walking around in circles.
It's falling down.
It's stumbling.
It's stomping, which what's something they do when they're threatened?
They'll rear up and take their feet and stomp the ground.
It's basically like seeing somebody that's cracked out on drugs.
And it's spraying.
It is spraying some scent.
Oh, hello.
It's spraying its essence, which I call it skunk spray.
And it's doing that.
And I thought, well, it's showing signs.
It's either got distemper or rabid.
Damn.
And so I come out and I end up, I put my gloves on.
I brought a cage, put a cage down over next to it, and I took some six-foot tongs, which is like just big grabbers, and just kind of forced it into the, pushed it into the trap, shut the lid, and done deal.
But that, I mean, you don't know if it's showing signs of either being distemper or rabid.
Now, a rabid animal has to be euthanized or taken control.
Like, you can't, because there's no cure for rabies.
In my part of the state, I have to euthanize the skunks because there's so many of them have been found with rabies that if I capture one, you know, one in the wild is one thing, but once I capture one, we have it.
They want me to euthanize it.
Right, because then it could really infect a person at that point.
Yeah, I mean, it's not afraid of people.
It's coming around your house.
You don't want to let that one go.
You don't want to relocate it because it could have rabies, it could have another disease, and then you would transmit that to the rest of the population in that area.
Yeah.
If it's out there stomping its feet in a parking lot at noon, I mean, it'll be washing your damn windows at fucking 4 p.m.
on Main Street.
Nocturnal animal.
A raccoon.
You see a raccoon out in the middle of the daytime.
Something's wrong.
That's a big sign.
Now, so once you get that animal, now to euthanize, you guys have, you take it to a certain place.
Is there kind of like a bag and gas kind of vibe?
Or is it?
I mean, we have the state lets us do different types of euthanasia.
Understood.
Gas chambers are most popular, which is the CO and, you know, and it just paint, you know, puts them to sleep.
Oh, yeah.
We used to have a carbon monoxide leak over at my buddy Jeff's house, dude.
And so his, nobody knew, right?
This was in 945, maybe, you know.
And we just started smoking weed.
We didn't even know about humping gas, you know.
And next thing you know, man, we go over there, we fall asleep on Friday, wake up on Sunday, baby boy.
You know what I'm saying, bro?
I mean, dude, I woke up.
I felt damn nine months old, dude.
I felt so good, man, because he had a gas leak in there, you know.
So every now and then a little bit isn't – it's not horrible, but it's – Yeah, a lot will kill you.
Now, if you have, so that's a raccoon being rabid.
Well, how do you know some of these other animals are rabid?
Well, I mean, a raccoon will act the same way.
What?
Oh, you said it.
Well, we already said raccoon.
What are we talking about skunk?
Oh, that was a skunk.
Yeah, the skunk's the one I captured in the parking lot.
Oh, that was that it's showing signs of being sick, either distemper or rabies.
You know, I kind of treat them all like they got something.
Just like in the fire, in my EMF fire department setting, like on a rec, you treat everybody like they got something.
That way you're always covered.
You always wear PPE.
You always wear your gloves.
You don't say, well, he don't have it.
Don't need him.
You treat everything like it's got it.
So whenever I handle the animals, I always got my gloves on.
You treat all of them like they would have rabies, just so you don't take the chance.
Now, when you're going on these house calls and stuff, well, how about this?
What's the love life like?
Is it hard to meet a woman when you're in the animal world?
Do you ever meet a woman on a call that you ended up taking on a date sometime?
I'm married so I can't take too many on dates.
Oh, you're married now, huh?
Oh, yeah.
I've been married for 23 years.
Did you meet your wife through animals?
No, no, no.
No.
I met her, oddly enough, cruising the parking lot back in the good old days, back in the 90s.
Oh, yeah.
We all used to cruise.
Do y'all cruise Sonic?
What'd they have?
Kmart's.
Oh, dang, really?
Kmart's, yeah.
Dude, we used to meet up at a Michael.
They had like Michael's craft store, and we'd always meet up over by Michael's out in front of Michael's on like a Friday or Saturday.
She don't like Teonette, so I mean, we met cruising in a parking lot, and it went from, I told her that night I was going to marry her, and she just laughed at me.
And here we are, been married 23 years, and we were together for about two years before that.
So she likes it.
Some of my animals aren't her favorite.
She doesn't like go on call.
She'll go maybe with me to check a trap.
She won't get out of the truck.
I'll tell you a quick little story.
I had a bunch of, when we were allowed to relocate still, we got a 500-acre farm.
And I would let...
Does that mean you're allowed to take animals that you can't?
Yeah, like if I had some raccoons, I could relocate them on an approved area.
They had to be 100-plus acres, and it had to be landowner's permission, and I could release them.
And so that was something that was allowed by the state for your job, in your area.
It's no longer allowed.
No, not on those certain animals or raby vector animals.
Okay.
So, I mean, if I catch a groundhog, I can release it.
If I catch a squirrel, I can release it.
But some animals you cannot.
Raccoon, skunk, I can't release them.
Not anymore.
So, anyway, so I had about six or seven raccoons.
And I had my wife with me.
I said, well, you video this and make a good video.
So I said, you video it, and I'm going to let him go.
And so she's, oh, here.
He is sitting this, and I get the trap out and I set it down and it runs off.
And she's videoing, oh, it runs off in the woods.
And I do two or three like that.
And then I get one up.
I said, This one's for you, baby.
I turn around, let it go, and it went right after, went right next to her feet.
Scared her to death scream.
That was the last time she went with me when we let animals go.
She was a little bit upset over that.
She just scared.
Now, my daughter will be right there.
I'll bring in kit raccoons, and my daughter, you know, she'll play with them and hold them, and she's all into animals.
But I liked letting them go.
I mean, that was the better alternative.
Yeah.
I had to do what the state requires me to do.
Right.
So some of it's not always good.
What's an animal?
And look, you can also, you don't have to.
Have you ever seen somebody that had an animal they're not supposed to have and you let it slide?
That's their business.
That's their deal.
Yeah, I don't enforce.
I don't care what.
I mean, I've been to people's houses and they've had pet deer and pet raccoons.
I mean, it's what about something bigger than that?
I mean.
Something bigger than that I'm talking about.
Have you ever seen anything, somebody gots a damn, and you could just blink at me if you have.
You mean animals or other stuff?
Animals or other stuff.
Well, I've seen a lot of other stuff.
Oh, yeah, I have too.
I've seen full-fledged meth labs.
Oh, hell yeah.
I mean, I go into...
Actually, I did in a town.
I don't want to name the town.
I was doing a bat inspection on an apartment complex.
It was a low-income housing apartment.
It was just a government-run.
Look, if I'm on meth, dude, I promise y'all, I definitely think there's bats around, baby.
Let's go.
So I go into this place and I'm looking.
He says, well, they had to bat call.
And so I'm certain they had like 18 buildings, two-story buildings.
So I'm going through the attics of all.
It took all day long to inspect all the attics.
So I go this one house and I was like, nobody's here in this apartment.
He said, oh, yeah, we hadn't got this cleared to rent back out yet.
And I was like, okay.
And the guy, the maintenance guy is downstairs, and I'm walking through the structure, and I get up to the attic, and I get my ladder, open the door up.
And I said, well, what's with the white paint and all these little cards hanging?
And he said, oh, that's where we had a meth lab up here, and they came in and decontaminated it.
And they spray, I really don't know.
They seal everything up with type of paint that if something's in the wood from that meth lab, it seals it up to where it can't harm anybody anymore.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
And so I go up and do this adding, and it's all like this, just bright white in here.
And it's got all these little, these little cards hanging that's supposed to detect any type of chemicals if something's still lingering.
Interesting.
So, and I was like, okay.
Like a leafless paper almost of sorts.
Yeah, it's just like a, it had this indicator.
If it something detected something, it changed colors or had a little gate meter on it.
So that was, a meth lab had been cleaned up, and that was a different one.
But I've found full-fledged ones before.
I mean, I go into million-dollar homes, and I go into places that ought to be burnt to the ground.
But it's everybody's house.
And if people's doing meth, that's their business.
You don't deal with that.
I'm there for that.
People, oh, I'm sorry, man.
Here, I'm like, no, I don't.
I mean, I've seen, you name it, I've seen it.
Really?
And I just, you know, you know, when I go into the house and I'm looking for a bat, you know, I'm not in your kitchen.
I'm going underneath your bed.
Right.
I'm going in your closets.
I'm looking into places that usually people don't look in your house.
So you probably see some wild stuff.
Horror stuff.
Yeah.
A lot of drug paraphernalia?
A little bit of everything.
Yeah.
I mean, you see everything.
Some stuff, you know, they're like, oh, they'll get, they'll be like, oh, my God, here.
I'm sorry.
I didn't always go look here.
And I'm like, dude, I don't care.
You ever seen anybody hiding in that person's house or something like that?
No, but I see where they've hid stuff.
Stuff that they don't want people to know.
I go up in the attics and I find, you know, you'll find Stock's old nudie books up in the attics from years ago.
Old beer cans, sex toys.
Oh, yeah.
See those hidden up in that.
I mean, everything over.
I mean, you do it long enough, you find every, I mean, I'm underneath the houses.
I'm in the attics.
I'm crawling through the closets looking for stuff.
You're going to run into stuff.
You're in the nooks and crannies, baby.
And some of it's kind of nasty, you know, when you're in there.
I mean, if I'm at a place doing a rat job, you know, good houses, clean places can get rats.
I mean, they're there for the food source.
But if you have a dirtier environment, it's going to attract more bugs, rats, mice, and it just gets nastier.
Have you been in some places that it gets pretty bad?
Take me on a tail.
Oh, I did a single-wide trailer several years ago, way out in the country, rural setting, and the complaint was rats.
I said, okay, and I got my stuff, so I'll come out and do an inspection.
And so I come out, and they got chickens, chicken coop, right in the backyard.
Chickens running around right next to the trailer, piles of cracked corn feeding their chickens.
They got multiple dogs outside, great big bowls full of dog food.
This could be my sister, honestly.
So I know where the rats are going to be there.
Oh, you know already where they're going to be there?
Well, I know they're there because of food source.
Okay, right.
So all that cracked corn.
Dog food, crack.
They got to have a food source.
Got it.
And so I go inside, and as soon as I open the door up, I seen a rat run through.
Bam.
And so here's this man and woman in the house and had two children, an older child and a younger child.
And it wasn't the cleanest of conditions, but I mean, I can't judge.
I'm not there to judge how anybody is, you know, and I'm just there to do my job.
And so I talked to her and started investigating.
It was so bad in one room that I went in the room and there was a my generation, though, when you used to have to take top off a soup lid.
Soup.
Now they're just peeled up.
You pull the thing out.
You pull the top off the top.
Yeah, you had to cut the top off.
When I said, why are there soup lids nailed all around the walls at the baseboard?
Oh, that's where the rats chew through.
And each time they chew a new hole, we nail a soup can lid over top of that hole.
So I knew it was going to be a bad job.
I mean, it was such a bad infestation that I'd catch a rat and it would get eaten before I got there.
Like she'd get up in the morning and check all the traps and say, okay, we got some rats.
And so I'd schedule it to come over there.
When I would get there, I'd found just like the bike legs left bones.
The rats are, they'll cannibalize each other.
Now, will they only cannibalize each other once they've been caught?
So they don't like give any information.
Well, the other one's not going to sit still long enough unless it dies.
But no, what I'm saying is, like, do the rats realize, okay, you know, Henry or whatever got caught, we got to kill him so he doesn't tell anybody else.
Or if he's already dead or here, here, Henry, he's food.
We're going to eat him now.
So I don't know.
I mean, like I said, Mother Nature's cruel.
Once again, you know, it's cannibalize each other, the rats, but I mean, it's, and they're there for the food source and left uncontrolled.
They'll get in your walls and ceilings.
And, you know, I think we end up catching 30, 40 rats out of there and got rid of all of them.
Now, have you ever had anybody, I'll tell you this.
I was at, this is in New York City.
I'm in New York City.
And I met a man from Iowa who used to, his friend sold the penis.
He sold raccoon penis necklaces.
This is what the man told me right in the street.
And I thought that first man was crazy and then I got his phone number, you know, because it sounded interesting.
And I haven't even looked at my phone in years, but I bet it's in there.
And is that a, have you ever had anybody call you and say, hey, you know, Mr. Vogels, will you help me collect some of the, you know, I'm trying to do something or I'm going into a business, you know, rabbits feed or something.
Will you help me collect an item along the way?
I could have brought some for you.
I got a whole box of coon penises.
Deborah records, yeah.
I save them every time.
The fur value is so bad now.
The market's just nil.
And how much fur is on a raccoon penis?
Well, I mean, for the animal.
Like in the wintertime, like for fur trapping, I catch a raccoon and I'll skin it out and keep the fur and sell it in an auction, fur auction.
Okay.
This getting outside the wildlife bit.
This is back to the just trapping part.
And you skin it out, dry it out, and sell it at auction.
Well, they used to, back in the 70s, you might have got $30, $40 for a raccoon pelt.
Oh, just the pelt.
Yeah, just the pelt.
Now you might, last year's auction I went to, they were 50 cents up to $5.
Dang.
Yeah, so that's not worth my, I don't spend the time to do it.
I don't go out and specifically trap for them.
But when I did do it, and when I do, if I catch one, I'll take it back, skin it out.
And if it's a bore, I'll keep the pecker.
I mean, they're worth, I mean, you can, there's guys that buy them, they make toothpicks out of them.
Really?
Yep.
They can make toothpicks out of them.
Can you pull up a picture of that, Sean?
Raccoon penis toothpick.
And so is it, how much bone is on that penis, brother?
Be honest with me.
I like a pencil.
I wish we talked about that.
I'd have brought you one.
So that's raccoon penis right there.
Damn, it's hardy.
Yep.
Coon dick toothpick.
Damn.
That baculum, brother.
I mean, you can sell about every part of the animal.
The skull's worth, you know, the guys that do it, the skull's worth something.
The glands are worth something.
You know, actually some places, I thought, think of Louisiana, I thought they sell raccoon meat.
A lot of people eat raccoon.
I haven't had it.
I've never tried.
I've eaten groundhog.
I've eaten bobcat back straps, but I've never tried a raccoon.
How's bobcat?
I've had pelican and I've had dove.
I mean, it just tastes like meat.
I mean, you could, I mean, I know guys in trapping groups I'm on Facebook.
They've tried coyote back straps.
Wow.
But, I mean, a bike strap's a bike strap.
I mean, it's all meat once you get the hide off of it.
It's meat.
But two of each of their own.
We tried bobcat just for the hay.
We tried it.
But that's something I wouldn't eat anymore.
We eat every day.
My grandparents, I used to hear my grandparents talk about eating groundhogs all the time.
Oh, get that young groundhog.
Oh, eat that.
Now, I've actually had groundhog years ago.
It's all right.
And now I've eaten beaver, but the animal before we go anywhere.
Oh, I feel you.
And it's a good dark red meat.
It's really good.
You make beaver stew, make roast.
Yeah, it's a really good meat.
Out of anything that you would trap outside, I mean, we do noosis trapping for beavers, too.
Okay.
But in the winter, you know, in fur trapping, well, no, I like beaver trapping.
It's a good meat.
It's a good red meat.
It's a really good meat.
I haven't had that.
And I'm sure I could probably get into it in this area, you know, because I spent about half the year out here now, it looks like.
I'm sure I'll be able to get into, you know, just more option for that meat.
You know, the further west you get, they don't want you having any meat.
I mean, you can't go to the grocery store and buy it, but you can buy it out at, you know, I'm sure, select places or track.
No, it's, I mean, it's not USDA inspected stuff.
No, dude, I don't want it to be.
You know what I mean?
It's good.
I want that bootleg stuff.
I want the guy who's got a cooler on his passenger seat.
Bootleg beaver, baby.
There you go.
I've had some, brother.
That's for sure.
So tell me about this, though.
When you get the bone of the raccoon, the penis, do they...
I'm sure they have.
I mean, I haven't.
I mean, but I'm sure there's people out there have.
It's amazing to have that much penis on them.
They make a lot of teeth, like coyote teeth.
They'll make necklaces out of them, bear teeth.
Yeah, I mean, there's a necklace, not a one.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
God, it's beautiful.
I mean, once you polish it and clean it up, it's just bone.
Yeah.
Just knowing where it come from or what it is.
I mean, if I'd laid that out there, you would never know what it was.
I mean, unless you've studied that or looked at it, you'd never know what that was.
Oh, hell no.
I'd have stirred, dude.
You can get on eBay and buy.
Oh, I'd stir preserves with that thing, brother.
Yeah.
You can get right on there and you can buy.
I mean, you can look on eBay and buy coonpeckers.
What is the largest animal penis you've seen that's out there?
And I won't tell anybody.
Oh, yeah, okay.
I mean, probably a coyote.
Wow.
We don't skin them.
I mean, I don't take those out, but when you skin them, you got a skin around it.
I mean, it's bigger than the raccoon.
The bone part is bigger than the raccoon.
So some animals have bone in Their penis, huh?
Yeah.
But we don't have it.
I mean, that's the animals.
I don't know what all animals I'm not that.
And here you go right here.
Now, let's zoom in on that, brother.
Yeah, there's the coyote.
Let's go down this penis bone chart.
Just let's get a look at it here.
Let me see what we got here.
Damn, now Otter's got that heater on him, huh?
Otter's got that dang rudder.
Yeah.
Wow.
Badger got that interesting piece on him.
That red fox don't have much on him, dude, R.I.P.
For the weasel.
Yeah, that weasel ain't got nothing, boy.
I'll tell you, look, I'll be real honest about where I am on this chart.
I'm probably about a badger.
I'm in between Badger and Otter.
I'm not going to say it.
Don't call me.
Okay, okay.
No worries, man.
No worries.
I'm just trying to be, you know, maybe I'm a little more Badger.
Okay, I'll be honest with you, bro.
I'm a little more Badger, bro.
We got another question that came in from one of our listeners, man.
We had so many questions that came in for you.
We won't get to all of them, but some of them we do have here.
Yo, TPW.
Hi, how's everyone doing?
My name is BK, originally from East Africa.
I've got two questions for the Wildlife Control Fellow.
The first one is, have you been on a call where somebody decided to keep a wild animal as a pet and then changed their mind?
Something like a monkey or maybe something crazier?
And if so, what was that experience like?
My second question is, what are your thoughts on people keeping birds as pets?
You know, things like pirates.
Yeah, what do you think about that?
My stepdad, his first wife, she was really, I don't know what was wrong with her, but she had countless birds and then he left her.
But what do you see a lot of that?
Who has birds?
Who has birds?
That's a good question.
Who has birds?
I have five birds.
Okay.
My daughter, we all have them.
We're family friends.
How big are these and how loud are they?
We have two parrots.
They're, she'll kill me if I say this wrong, Indian ringnecks.
Okay.
Parrots.
We have two of those.
One of them's talking.
The other one's young.
They've been talking yet.
Echo, he's quite talkative.
We don't discuss talked about bringing a pet, bringing something with me, and they said the hotel probably wouldn't like that.
And I asked my daughter, she said, only if I can come.
She wasn't sending the bird.
Well, maybe next time we'll have her coming too, man.
Oh, that's a beautiful bird.
Yeah, we have a blue one and a green one.
Yeah.
Oh, they're beautiful.
And so now do you rescue these out of people's homes?
No, these weren't rescues.
Okay.
Now, she does have a, she's got a couple parakeets, different types of parakeets.
And we have a love bird, which came from an animal rescue.
There came from a, oh, it's a bird rescue.
And it had been, I think it had been abused.
It mishandled, wasn't handled properly.
And it's like seven years old.
Love is a battlefield, brother.
And she got it.
I mean, there's all, there's animal rescues where parrots weren't taken care of.
You know, big McCall, just animals aren't taken, just like dogs and cats can get abused where animals aren't taken care of, mistreated, and they're giving up.
Now, what about show animals?
Anybody, you know, sometime you see, like, I know they had a cat show for a while out there near Fresno.
They got busted and they shut down and had to disband and get rid of a lot of the cats and a lot of the, you know, there's people you see.
I know you mentioned earlier they got squirrels.
I remember about it.
I don't know if it was Dollywood or someplace in Arkansas.
They used to have that little, you know, the squirrel on the water skis, a little deal they put out there at recess or whatever, lunch, you know, and you could throw a little barbecue chips at them or whatever.
But have you had any animals that have, have you had any shows that have shut down in your area?
Any met magicians and you had to go rescue the dove or anything like that or reach into a hat to, you know, like anything you've had to do like where the performance animals?
Well, I did get a call about white rats, and they were obviously domesticated rats that somebody had let go.
And there's quite a few of them in this kind of a neighborhood, but they were coming to one house.
Okay.
And I mean, I caught all them just like I do any other rats, but they were all white.
So what did that mean?
They had a domesticated rat that somebody couldn't care for, and they just released it.
Okay.
But you don't know if they were in shows or anything.
Oh, no, no, they weren't in a show.
No, I don't.
Not where they were at.
They weren't in a show.
I've never had to get anything that somebody had in a show or something that was released.
Now, we, I think in Ohio a couple years ago, a guy let something, don't know what he was unhappy about, but he had a lot of exotic cats and he let them all, everything go.
I think they ended up having to euthanize most of them.
They were just, you know, you let a cougar go, you got, you know, or a lion, you escape.
You know, they're going to get somebody that I think they euthanize most of it.
But that was somebody that just let pets go that they shouldn't have had to start with.
Okay.
So tell me, take me into the big cat game.
What's that like when you get some of these big cat calls?
And what kind of cats do you deal with?
I mean, the only cats I deal with are bobcats.
Now, are they violent?
Oh, they're out of all the, and it goes into the trapping part of it.
I catch a coyote, they try to get away from you.
I mean, if they're caught, they're going to be as far, if they have three foot of chain or cable attached to that trap or a snare, they're going to be as far away as they can get from you.
Coward away from you.
Bobcat comes after you.
And Bobcat, they'll flat come after you.
Here's a question right here that came in about one.
Oh, is it video you right here dealing with one?
Okay.
Wow.
Wow.
Thank you.
And is it chained down to the ground right now?
It's caught in a foot trap.
Okay.
And I like the red fox.
I don't like the.
So this is a red fox.
This isn't a bobcat.
Yeah, that's a red fox.
I like the red fox.
They are on the euthanasia list in the nuisance part.
Now, this is fur trapping.
I'm trapping under my trapper's license.
And I'll release all them when possible because they just don't see as many of them.
And I just use a choke pole.
And so I let him loose.
And bam, he's off.
off to live another day.
There was a girl, I ran into a girl a couple of months ago in Los Angeles, and she had a fox fur coat, and she was kind of wearing it laid out.
She didn't want to tell everybody.
She told everybody it was fake, but then I felt like it wasn't fake.
You know, I touched it, and I felt like I said, I don't know, I felt some fake stuff before, and it felt like real stuff.
Oh, they're very nice.
So she admitted to me secretly she'd been doing drugs, but she told me secretly that it was real.
So there's, I mean, there's a lot of the fur industry's really gone.
You'll see more actors, singers, sporting fur, sporting bobcat.
That's the biggest thing.
I have several bobcats that I've held on to that I want to have made into a vest or a coat.
And I have some black coats that I've trapped over the years.
Wow.
And I want to have kind of like a black coat, backing, and bobcat front.
I'd buy something like that from you if you're a little bit more.
Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, you can, I mean, the fur coat, like the bobcats that sell, all the fur goes for the fur industry.
Most of it ships to like China and Russia for, you know, liners for fur coats or jackets.
But like the Bobcat, there's a guy that used to buy mine in Alexander, Kentucky that makes custom furs, coats and stuff, and he buys the bobcats for that.
Yeah, I don't know if it's secretly still a pretty big business or not.
I mean, a lot of people are down on it.
But a lot of people like it, too.
And a lot of people are down on what we do.
People don't like the trapping.
Yeah, I mean, it injures them sometimes.
You know, it catches them by the foot.
You know, it does hurt.
You know, it does do more.
The more they fight, the more they might hurt themselves.
But I've actually got in places to trap before farms to trap in the winter by taking a trap and sticking my hand in it.
And just usually like a number two, when it's not real hard, powerful, it don't break the bones, it don't feel good, but that lets somebody know, okay, well, if a dog does get caught in, it's not going to break its foot off.
And if I'm willing to stick my hand in it, they're willing to let me trap because they don't fear what the cat gets in.
It's not going to kill the cat.
It just won't like it very well, but it'll be able to be released unharmed.
I mean, it's kind of strange that, you know, I do that, but some people do that.
You do.
Trapping is getting harder and harder to find places to trap.
Well, it's weird that we're part of nature, but we sometimes act like we're this, but we're this more conscious part of nature, I guess.
Because it's not like you probably have some raccoons that won't come in and kill the babies to get the mother to go back in it.
You know what I'm saying?
It's not like you don't have these other dirty parts of nature that run its course.
You know, I have a friend who does some big game hunting, and he talks about how a lot of times the conservation, the place you go to hunt whatever it is, you have to pay like half a million dollars to do it.
And the money you pay, it's usually a sick animal that you're killing or an old animal that's not procreating.
Older one out of the group.
Yes.
And so the money you're going to pay is going to take care of 500 other animals.
You know, like it's just interesting sometimes like how one news article, you know, sometimes just won't give you all the facts so at least you can make have a little bit more information.
They'll feed like they'll take that animal too and they'll feed the whole village.
Right.
Oh, totally.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they won't even, they might take a, they might get some part of the animal tax at Ermeat or get a photo or something like that for their relic.
But they're going to, yeah, but that the food from that could feed the entire village.
And also, but the money for the conservation group is going to, it's going to bring, it's going to help so many more animals live.
It's almost unbelievable, you know?
I mean, the hunters help me.
That money goes for the preservation, to keep the poachers away.
Totally.
You know, the fence or whatever.
And you need it.
Look, I'll tell you this.
I was in South Africa.
This is probably maybe eight years ago, seven years ago, doing comedy shows over there.
And we met a man one day, and he was rich.
This man was rich, man.
Him and his wife had run a diamond mine or mine.
And they, or hell, maybe it was a damn diamond mine.
Maybe it was damn Indiana Jones.
But they had run something where they had made a ton of money, but they owned a nature preserve, their own.
I mean, and this dude took us in a helicopter, and I actually ended up hooking up with his girlfriend one time.
I still feel pretty bad about that.
But anyway, this man took us over to their nature preserve and he took us around to, I mean, the biggest animals that he might have had damn dinosaurs.
I don't remember what he had.
But I mean, he had rhinoceros, everything, you know, giraffe.
I mean, just we pulled right up next to him and they were his in his damn yard.
I mean, his yard, I'll admit, was probably 50,000 acres or something, but it was a yard.
Fast forward two weeks, he sends me a picture.
The two rhinoceros we'd seen, somebody had broken in and sawed their horns off with a chainsaw and just left the bodies right there to rot.
And he said poachers had gotten in and gotten them.
So you're trying to protect them and get the people there or poach them just to sell that little bit of ivory off of them.
Right.
So it's just interesting.
It's like one thing's going to happen.
It's just nature.
It's like this part of nature is going to happen.
Sometimes you have to do another part.
You have to just make it's about managing nature.
Yeah.
See, that's what my, I mean, it's got to get in away from the noose, the wildlife part, like by trapping.
My daughter doesn't, she doesn't like me getting all the animals.
But she loves animals.
Right.
But we keep them in check.
You know, this year I trapped 66 coyotes.
Wow.
And over the course of the four-month trapping season, you know, think how many coyotes I took out of the population, all those females, which over half of them were females.
You're going to have all those young, you know, all the baby deer that I saved, all the young turkeys that I saved.
I do a lot of work for sheep farms and all the baby sheep.
Oh, sheep will get attacked.
Sheep is just a damn fucking throw pillow full of dinner, dog.
They'll get them bitches immediately.
So I just immediately.
We got to keep it in check.
You know, everything's got to be kept in check, or if not, it'll, like the deer.
I mean, that's why they have deer seasons and they keep upping the quota.
If they didn't have a deer, if you weren't allowed to kill A deer, I mean, your insurance, that's what makes your insurance cost so much now is all the wrecks.
I mean, where I live at deer, deer collisions are horrible.
I mean, I've got friends that have hit 10 different deer in their life, total cars.
I mean, it's they're there, and if we didn't have these seasons to keep them in check, there'd be just that much more of them on the roads, crossing the roads, just like all the other animals.
But it's all in a balance.
Like the groundhogs are starting to come make a comeback.
And why are they doing it?
What's going on?
Their main predator was the coyote.
Oh, somebody killing coyotes.
So if you take too many, it messes up the cycle.
You take too many coyotes out, and then the groundhogs are going to get overpopulated.
Damn.
So, I mean, everything's got a spot.
Everything's got a little spot in that food chain.
But, I mean, they have to be kept in check.
I mean, you know, it's part of it.
Mother Nature does it herself with disease and stuff.
You know, we're just giving her a little helping hand.
No, look, I think it makes perfect sense.
Like you're saying, if you don't take those coyotes out, then how many more turkeys do they get into?
How many more baby deer do they kill?
How many more chicken houses?
Just different things.
How many more different circles will they mess up?
I mean, bobcats.
A bobcat take down a full-grown deer.
Damn.
I mean, a bobcat goes for the neck.
Well, a cat goes for the neck.
Canine usually go for the rear.
They bite, no, they attack from the rear.
But, you know, a bobcat, they'll take down, and pets, both of them will take down.
Coyotes are big pet killers.
Because cats, if you, we got cats that are around dogs.
They have a little healer.
The cat's not scared of the dog.
So a coyote could walk right up to a cat and just chomp and just take it with it because the cat not scared of it.
Oh, because they're the same species?
Well, I mean, whether they're used to, my cat's used to dog.
No, most cats are used to, cats that are outside are used to, I'm not talking about bobcats.
Now, I'm like a domesticated house cat or used to dogs.
And so if a coyote walks through your yard and the cat's there, the cat's like, hey, what's up?
Oh, you see just a dog.
Yeah, and thinks it's just a dog and bang, no, coyotes are starting to come into our neighborhoods and eating the pets because they're easy meals.
Wow.
And they'll eat small dogs.
They'll eat that.
Bobcats don't know if they'll real, they'll eat another cat if it's out in the wood, you know, if they can get to it.
They're a hunter.
They'll eat whatever they can come across.
My God.
But they kill.
I mean, I've seen videos on cameras where coyotes were attacking deer, bobcats were attacking deer.
Do you feel sometimes like we're kind of ruining the world and that it's like kind of a bummer that we're in it?
Not in a bad way, but just do you ever have that moment where you're like, man, nature would be so much better.
We're in their world.
We're asking them to live in their area.
That's your jury.
Look, I think you have a good, you got a unique position because you're that, you know, you're kind of that middleman.
You're that middleman where it's like, hey, man, whenever, you know, somebody starts, you know, stepping on when it's, you know, Red Rover, Red Rover, a coyote came over, you know what I'm saying?
You're the guy they call.
You know, like you're that freaking, you're the, you're the referee kind of.
So I think getting your perception is interesting that, yeah, we're kind of, so you would say it feels like we're on their turf in the world.
Yeah, I mean, it's, we're bats.
We'll go into bats.
You know, they mainly, they'll live in trees.
I mean, bats are everywhere, and they'll live in trees.
Are they really?
And the more trees and structures that we remove to build houses and whatnot, they're going to come live in your house.
Right.
Once again, it's just a big tree to them.
Here's a question we got that came out of this in video right here.
Are you dealing with one?
That's a photo.
Yeah, that's one I removed from a house.
Wow.
I mean, they have canines.
If you see their teeth, I mean, they have canine just like a dog.
I mean, they got the big canine teeth.
I mean, they can inflict a pretty good bite on you.
So, I mean, don't ever, you see a bat, don't.
Just call the professionals and let them.
I've got on protective gloves.
You get bit by him and he flies off.
You're getting rabies shots, and you don't want to have to go do that.
That's pretty nasty shots.
Have you seen someone die of rabies?
No, I haven't.
I know several people personally have had rabies.
I've done a couple of jobs where the people had such a bad bat problem, they've gotten bit and already had to get rabies vaccinated or rabies shots and still haven't gotten rid of the bats.
Damn.
So just some people just, I don't know, just don't understand, aren't educated, or slow learners.
If I got rabies shots, I'd probably be getting rid of the bats if I had them that bad.
Yeah, I think.
But I mean, they can bite you if you have one in your living space.
I mean, they could bite you and you not know it when you're asleep.
Damn, they sleep.
Enough to, you know, just a little prick and you not notice it, and there you go.
Have you had any senior citizens living with animals they didn't know they were living with?
Like any crazy instances like that?
I had an elderly lady that she kept hearing something and there was a possum in her house.
It had come in through one of the vents in the bedroom that she hadn't used for a while, pushed the vent up, and it was running around the house.
She actually thought it was a cat.
She just caught glimpses of it.
But I mean, other people, I mean, that was actually living in the house with her.
Others would be under the house.
I've had a customer sent me a, they sent me a message, texting me, said, we got a raccoon problem.
Can you help?
And I said, yeah.
And I said, well, you know it's a raccoon.
And they sent me a picture.
The raccoon had come through the ductwork into the ceiling in the kitchen, knocked the register out.
And when you screw all that ductwork together, you see these big metal screws, sheet metal screws.
And it got itself wedged up in them screws and was hanging there in just a bloody mess, where it had been trying to get out all over the ceiling, dripped all over the floor.
And she sent me a picture, said, we're pretty sure it's a raccoon.
I mean, picture of the damn thing still alive, bleeding all over the place.
So I went over as quick as I could and was able to put somebody on the bottom when it took the duck work off and captured it and got it out of there.
Unbelievable.
But they'll get in some pretty predicaments, bad spots.
Now, what's animals you won't deal with?
I'm guessing probably for surely, you know, big, large aquatic, I'm sure, isn't your deal.
And what else you think isn't?
Under my license, we can't mess with it.
We can't deal.
In Kentucky, we can't deal with deer, turkey, black bear, elk.
We're not allowed to, unless.
Who's at the police you call?
One of the Fish and Wildlife.
Unless they give us, unless the commissioner of Fish and Wildlife says, okay, we'll give you permission to take care of this animal.
But normally, those are certain type of animals that I can't, like somebody's got a black bear that can't help you.
So you're that middleman kind of.
And now, what's something you won't go down and handle either?
I mean, you're not handling pests, really.
You're not handling, you know, roaches or even large roaches.
I don't like, but I'm scared of spiders.
Okay.
I'd rather go wrestle a bobcat underneath the house than get a spider.
I hate spiders.
I mean, I hate spiders.
Yeah, okay.
My wife thinks it's funny.
I mean, I'll grab a raccoon with my bare hands and gloves on, but I won't get a spider.
I don't like spiders.
Wow.
Each his own.
I don't.
So you don't do pets, so you don't do so.
No, I don't do insects.
I'm not licensed, but I'm licensed wildlife.
I don't do the bug work.
I mean, it's more licensing because you're spraying a chemical inside the house with people.
Do you look down on those people at all?
Like, they kind of eat.
I don't know.
I mean, bug guys, they call me animal guys, but they're, I mean, we get a lot of work from the pest control because they get pests.
Somebody gets a raccoon, they look up in the phone book and they call pest control.
Exterminator.
And so then that exterminator calls me and says, hey, Marty, we got customers got raccoons.
Take care of it.
Or then I'll go to a house and I'll be doing a job where I find termite damage when I'm in crawl space or something like that.
And hey, I recommend this guy.
And then we help each other out.
Now we pass it back and forth.
Right.
And we just being professional courtesy and help each other.
I scratch your badger, you scratch mine.
Yeah, and I do.
There you go.
And then some guys do both.
A lot of guys have their pest control license and wildlife license.
Okay.
But I just had the one.
But I mean, the bigger, just bigger company.
Pest control is a big, big business.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a business.
It's a lot of business.
Yeah.
It seems like it.
Do you get calls every day?
Yeah, I get, I mean, I'm not big, you know, hundreds of calls a week, but I get quite, you know, it varies.
You get slow.
I might get a bunch of calls and it might not phone, might not ring for a day or two.
But I always got jobs going on.
So I'm staying.
Right.
Because some of them take a couple days, couple of weeks.
Well, some of them take a while.
Bat jobs.
I've got several bat jobs scheduled already for this spring.
You know, I keep, I'd like to be, I don't want to be busy.
I've got one guy.
I don't want to be busier than that.
I don't want to grow too big.
I mean, it'd be good to grow, but then you have more people.
You have more responsibility.
More responsibility, more vehicles, more insurance, more liability.
It's a lot.
Yeah.
And then I'll be home at Laying Awake worrying about I got jobs, work for this guy and this guy.
I'm going to make this payment.
I'm happy with what I'm doing, me and one guy.
I mean, that's keeping me happy.
Tim, you said his name is.
Yeah, Timmy Cooper.
He's my farmhand.
He's my wildlife man.
He's home right now putting an engine in one of our race cars.
Oh, really?
Yeah, we're getting ready for race season.
So he's working on that right now.
Okay, so the summertime is rate.
So what kind of racing you guys do?
Compacts.
It's Cavaliers, Hondas.
I race a Cavalier.
Okay, so you get out there and so how often do you guys do that?
Every weekend.
Because there's a dirt track right over here.
Oh, there is?
Yeah, literally.
Yeah, that was last year's car.
Hawk Racing right there.
Hawk Wildlife Control, and that's your car right there.
Yep, that's my car.
And that's your company.
Yep, that's my company.
Hawk Wildlife Control.
Yes, sir.
And I'm the driver.
Amen, baby.
And I've got another car this year, two of them this year, and Timmy's going to drive it.
Who is?
Timmy, the guy that works for him.
He's going to drive the second car.
Okay.
And is he, and so now let me see what kind of cage.
Zoom in on that, please.
What kind of cage you got?
You know what that is?
That is a, I bought that car already built.
That is a front of a shopping cart.
Look at that.
Now, after I said that, and you look at that, that's a front of a shopping cart.
It is upside down.
I love it.
Now, my new car that...
The new car that I've, you got, you got pictures of it too.
And it's got a custom-built roll cage.
I mean, it's top-notch.
A good friend of mine, Corey Lewis from 1107 Motorworks at home where I live at, he built me a custom cage.
Yeah, that car.
He built me a custom cage.
And now, how fast this thing goes?
We'll go 70 mile an hour, 60, 70 miles.
So what are the rules in this, what is this branch of racing called again?
This is compacts.
So in compornets, compacts, four-cylinder class.
It's a four-cylinder motor.
So only a four-cylinder motor.
Yeah, there's front-wheel drive.
There's four-cylinder rear-wheel drives and front-wheel drives.
So these things, you can't even get them going that fast anyway if you wanted to.
No, no, you can spend a lot of money on them.
I spent way too much this year.
I mean, you can go out and spend $4,000 or $5,000 if you want on having a motor built.
Wow.
Just Ecotech.
Just wants to run around.
They're in Cavaliers or in Malibu's.
They're in a bunch of different Chevrolet engine.
But it's a cheaper class.
I mean, you get the Cavalier.
It's affordable.
Yeah, it's affordable class.
You go up late model or modified or sport model and you're getting bigger motors.
So what years and types of cars can be in this class of racing?
Our track rules, it's got to be front-wheel drive and four-cylinder.
That's it.
Yeah.
Anything else?
Okay, take me to a race of that on YouTube, Sean, real quick.
I just want to see something.
We have a local dirt track right there in my home county.
Wow.
There's several around us.
How often will you guys race?
I mean, we could race.
I mean, we race every Saturday night when the season starts.
And then they have other tracks that race on Friday nights and some race on a Sunday.
So we could go all over.
There we go.
Go forward.
Wow.
So that's dirt track, huh?
It's fun.
Is it?
Yeah.
Is it pretty dangerous or not really?
Yeah, it can.
I mean, we wear full fire suit and helmet.
I mean, it can, I've never got, I mean, I've never wrecked.
Other than hitting cars, I've never had a rollover or gone off.
I went off the bank once last year, but they would drive right back on.
But I've watched a lot of guys get hurt in it.
You can get hurt in it.
How much does it cost to be in it?
What, to have the car or just to race?
Yeah, just to take me through the costs.
I mean, to race, $30 pit pass, and I'm racing that night.
Wow.
Just interest fee.
And usually we get like if we if we run the feature, you get a $20 start money.
You get $20 back.
If you win.
No, just to start, just to be in the feature.
Everybody gets, say, there's 15 to feature.
You get that start money back, even though you don't win.
And then I think our clients.
What does feature mean?
You get in the top 15?
The big race.
You got hot laps.
You got your hot laps.
Then you hot lap.
Qualify.
Yeah, and you're qualifying, and then you go up to get your feature lap.
Then you're featured.
And sometimes you get, depends on how many cars you have.
You have one feature, two features.
But our particular track, I think they're paying out this year, $800 for first.
Wow.
$500 for second.
That's a lot of money for a little compact.
Yeah, it is, man.
And how long is the race?
Ours is 15 laps.
Wow.
So what does that take?
Maybe 12 minutes?
I mean, you're moving on.
Ours is a longer track and some tracks are shorter.
I mean, it seems like it's forever when you're out there.
And you have a lot of cautions, and you got to sit and wait, or somebody wrecks, and they got to clean up all the, drive it off the track, and you'll be waiting.
I mean, sometimes you might be out there 20 minutes.
But there's no pit stops or anything.
No, you can't.
In ours, there's no pitting.
There's no, if you go, I've run races with flat tires and just kept on going till they tell me to stop.
They'll black flag me, get off the track, then I'm done.
So anybody with a four-cylinder car could go get a pit pass and get in that race?
Yeah, as long as it's got an approved, you know, roll cage approved and you've got your safety gear, they'll get in.
And some of them inspect them pretty close.
But, I mean, you got to have a helmet and you got to have safety, your clothes, tires, tingers.
But I mean, it's a fun dirt track has been in my area for years and years.
Yeah, my favorite.
They had bombers and stock cars, bombers, and now we're getting, it's just an affordable class.
It's just one that my first car, I paid $1,200 for it rated race.
It borrowed a helmet and was racing.
Yeah.
And this year I built a new, bought a car, bought an old car, motor blowed up and had it all fixed up and repainted and new body panels put on it and then putting it a built, you know, had the motor built put in it and all new cage built and new racing seat.
And it's just a fun way.
Now you're getting into it.
I mean, I'm advertising.
It's business.
It's a write-off for my business.
I like it.
I like it.
Wife likes that.
It's a write-off.
It's fun.
Flow off some steam.
It's fun.
Honey, I got to go do some advertising tonight.
Yeah.
There's quite a few wildlife guys, actually, that knows.
Now, you know what would be cool, man.
And I'm just going to give you a free idea here.
And this is, you put a cage in the back, you throw a couple animals in that bitch while you're driving.
They probably frown on that.
Well, I don't know, would they?
But you want to talk about horsepower?
Talk about raccoon power.
Yeah, there you go.
Put a bunch of mean, pissed off raccoons.
Yeah, dude.
Be like, damn, that's got eight raccoon.
It's got 280 horsepower.
It also has eight raccoon power in it, baby.
It's not a bad idea, really.
Would they pay for the car, really?
Catching raccoons and animals help pay for that car.
Let them enjoy it, brother.
Let them enjoy the ride.
Some people do different things for internet, you know, go out clubbing.
We go racing.
Well, then the kids will want to come by and see your car before the race.
You know what I'm saying?
Oh, they come down in the pits and they look at the cars and take pictures.
I love the kids.
There's a thing they call running the track in before the race where they're getting the track ready and a little bit too wet where they water and we go run it in, just dry it out.
And we just go slow.
We don't go real fast.
And we'll take kids.
We can have somebody go with us.
Oh, that's cool.
You're talking about making a little 10-year-old day, him riding that car.
I bet.
Oh, man, they love it.
Get to ride in a race car.
I mean, we're not NASCAR.
No, but to them you are.
Yeah.
I mean, for where I'm at, it's kind of like, you know, we're a NASCAR.
We're still a race car.
To a 10-year-old being on a trackmate out of dirt, which is one of their favorite things.
We have a, he's, I guess, 11 now.
Last year, he was racing a compact, and he had a sport mod.
Wow.
And he's 10 years old.
I race against a lot of kids that are 10, 12, 14 years old.
Here I'm 48, and I'm racing against 10-year-olds.
Oh, look, man.
That's the world today, man.
We got to compete with the young, bro, the competition.
And those are the ones that will make race car drivers when it started out young.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah, maybe we can leave out if there's a story that you want to tell of something, maybe like a wild experience that's happened over the years.
One of the one we were discussed, get a call from, I do a lot of local work, but sheriff's departments, police department will give me calls.
They get a deer stuck in a fence.
Now, will they sometimes call you when they just don't want to deal with something?
Well, they're just not their field.
I'll get a call like, we got this raccoon and somebody's got a pet raccoon.
Or they'll call me.
Or police, this happens a lot.
Old, I don't have, you know, a person at home, residence, and they hear something and think somebody's breaking in.
It's a raccoon in their attic.
They think it's a person up there.
Oh, of course.
And so then the cops are, you know, they'll be like, well, we know Marty.
Let's, you know, here's his number.
And they'll call me, and then I'll come out and try to take care of it for them.
But I get a call one night, and it was real, it was, I don't know, one or two o'clock in the morning.
I get a call from a sheriff's department a couple counties away from their dispatch.
So we need your help.
They're on a traffic stop, and they have an unusual occupant in the vehicle.
And I said, well, what?
And they said, well, they said it might be a deer.
I said, okay.
So I grab a big dog crate and my daughter wanted to go.
She was still up.
We're night owls.
And so she goes with me.
And so I go, we travel there.
It took us about an hour to get there.
And I get there and there's all the cops are all on the side of the road.
And they got the guy out there and they're still doing a sobriety test on him where he was drunk.
And I get up to the car and there's baby deer In the front seat.
And what was he doing?
Just sitting there?
Well, the guy had a pet deer.
I mean, the guy's driving around drunk with pet deer in his car.
Oh, hell yeah.
In the front seat.
And I think actually they tried, I think they got him for wanting endangerment, maybe, with like a passenger for, because there's an occupant.
Oh.
Endangering that animal.
I guess that's, and it was tame.
I mean, it had been bottle fed.
And so we get the deer out, put it in my truck.
And he's got pictures of that.
They had it in my truck, bottle-feeding it on the way home.
Was it in the front seat or back seat?
It was in the front seat of the car.
Hell yeah.
They were right in the front seat.
I didn't even have a seatbelt.
He said, it could have been a damn date, dude, honestly.
Well, but I mean, he had, like you talked about, the bling, it had a big fancy collar on it.
He had a collar, a little pretty dog collar on it.
Look, it's hard to meet somebody, man, in some areas.
You know, no judgment, it is.
What it found out, the guy had, just like I talked to you before, he'd found it on abandoned, said it was orphaned.
Wow.
Picked it up, you know, and kept it because he didn't think mommy's around.
But we kept it for a week or so.
My daughter, she bottle-fed it, and then we took it to a rehabber.
I didn't check by me.
They'll bottle feed him, raise them up, and they turn them loose.
Take him out in the wild.
Any wild horses or anything ever been called or anything that just anything like that?
Any wild horses?
No.
Trying to think of any other animals that really are.
It's nice to know where this middle ground is.
I get turtle calls.
I've done some, you know, people just get snapping turtles in their ponds.
Just don't want snapping turtles in the pond.
You have to go.
And you get in there?
Oh, I don't do turtle man.
I don't go in and wrestle the turtles.
And who does that?
Well, the turtle man guy.
I don't do the Yeah, he had a show on.
He's from Kentucky called Turtle Man.
Oh, I never saw it.
Yeah, you used to have a TV show on.
Did he?
Yeah.
It's not on anymore.
He would go into ponds and actually grab them.
Yeah, there you go.
He is actually a good friend of my good friend, Ronnie Vincent, who helped me get started in the wildlife business.
And he actually is a turtle wrangler.
That's what he was known for.
Damn.
He goes in there, feels for them, and grabs them by the tail and pulls them out.
Wow.
I just use a jug and a hook and catch them and get rid of them for them.
But it's interesting that the whole field, it seems like, you know, your grandfather kind of got you into dealing with animals.
And it's just interesting that, like, in the same way that there's kind of the food chain and Mother Nature, that the way that we learn things from each other and a lot of it is by another human showing us something.
You know, it's like anybody could give you a book or send you a link to a video, but unless you really have somebody kind of showing you a lot of times, it's really how you get into things.
Well, it's like the trapping park to dine thing.
Yeah.
I've had a buddy, he didn't know him at the time several years ago.
He messages me.
Hey, man, I post all my catch pictures in the wintertime on my Facebook page.
Everybody wants to see my all my pictures.
Everybody's fascinated with it and loves to see all the pictures.
We'll put a link to that.
What is it?
It's just on my Facebook page, Marty Voyers.
All right, we'll put a link to that.
Then I have a business page, Hawk Wildlife Controls, on Facebook also.
So he messaged me and said, I like your stuff.
Can I get in?
Will you help me?
Yeah.
And so for about the next two years, he went trapping.
We became real good friends.
We trapped.
I showed him he didn't know a thing.
I mean, his name was Josh Bryan.
Maybe you'll get to see this.
And we became good friends, and I taught him all about trapping, everything that I've learned over the years, and went out and trapped together for a couple of years.
And then he went on his own.
Now he traps.
And hopefully he'll pass.
He's got two daughters, and hopefully maybe he'll pass that down to one of them or get to pass it on to.
I've helped several kids.
No, well, he's not a kid, but I've helped several people like that pass that tradition on.
Right.
Which is a dying tradition.
Is it?
Yeah.
I mean, you just don't see it any, I mean, who do you know that goes out and traps coats in the winter?
It's just a dying tradition.
Nobody, I mean, it's kind of a, you know, one year, my wife let me grow a beard.
I mean, I had a mountain man, a pretty big, there you go.
Big, full beard, fun, can't do it no more.
She won't let me.
She won't?
Nope.
Why?
What happens?
She just don't like the beards.
Yeah.
Oh, I can have a beard if it's neat and trimmed.
Yeah.
And she's going to kill me for talking about her.
But if it's all neat and trimmed, I can have it.
Rules is rules.
We need rules, man.
We need rules.
Happy wife, happy life.
There you go.
That's what they say.
I believe that, man.
Now, but tell me this.
So a trapper, what does a trapper do?
I just want to finish there so I know exactly clearly what a trapper is and what it does.
You mean trapper versus wildlife, nuisance wildlife?
Right.
So when you say like you go trapping coyotes, like what do you like?
So when I'm trapping, I'm fur trapping.
There.
Let me put it fur.
Nuisance wildlife, getting rid of animals.
I don't keep those first.
If I catch a raccoon, it's out of season.
Right.
I don't keep those animals.
Right.
And fur trapping is in the winter months from November to into February is furbear season when I can go out and trap, you can go out and trap ground or go out and trap coats, raccoons, fox, beavers, bobcats.
So it's just the same as hunting season, but it's fur bearing.
Yeah, it's furbear season, fur trapping season.
And, you know, it's a lot of the young kids, you know, a lot of people do it, the old-timers and pass it on and just people learn it.
I mean, there's a million YouTube videos about it.
I mean, I'm still learning stuff every day.
I watch new techniques and new methods.
Everybody's got their own method on how they trap or baits they use.
Bait and lure business is a huge business.
Trapping.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, they all make the similar baits, but everybody's got their best bait.
What's that top bait?
Use a lure?
What do you use?
Chicken liver?
No, it's like on my predator trapping.
One of my favorite lures is Jeff Dunlop lures.
He's just a big hardcore trapper and has developed his own baits and lures.
And now what kind of meat, if you use a meat or something, you use a lures are made with, baits are made with like muskrat meat, tainted muskrat meat that's aged and got preserved in with it.
Or beaver meat that's tainted a little bit to give off the smell for that predator.
Oh, yeah.
So like bobcat, you know, the muskrat meat base base they like that scrat pardon they like that scrat meat yeah i mean it's one of the things they eat right you know i mean they're um beavers bobcats love beavers so let me name something you tell me what eats it all right uh groundhog coyote okay coyote a car damn i mean that's
their they don't have a name i mean man cut man's the coyote spread okay so the food chain it should have a damn volvo in it huh i think that's kind of good man sean what do you feel like any questions today i feel like we covered a lot of good stuff man do you feel like you gave out a lot of good information i mean i had more i mean but we we kind of got off on other i didn't think about i didn't know we were going to talk about predator or fur trap under race but
that's that's all good you know it's all well it's all interesting stuff you know some of that is i i think myself and even a lot of our listeners i would love i think one day i didn't know that there was access to be able to go race cars if i wanted to like that so you know to know that if i were to put together you know you said it's about a five five thousand dollar automobile gets put together i mean it's that you can go out say you i mean we get them i get on my i'm always looking for cavaliers that's what i race you get on facebook marketplace i'll find
a cavalier 800 runs good boom i'm gonna snatch that sucker up strip you know you strip the whole interior out throw your roll cage in it you know you can use the stock tires or put racing wheels and tires on it bead locks you can zoop up the motor add some modifications to it and you got to take all the glass all the glass taillights out of it bam go racing slap you as some guys just take a spray paint can paint a number on them some guys put i've got several sponsors so i'm lucky to i mean i don't have a lot but
i got enough to where i can get some graph some real graphics done yeah but i mean it's a if anybody can get into it i mean you got a little bit of money go out get a car i don't know every track's different they all have their rules but this is country down home country dirt track racing yeah i mean saturday night yeah i mean just about every weekend you're going to see a good fight usually fights break out people one guy's pissed at the other guy you hit me and you did this and get into fights i mean it it's pretty it's fun you know it's all for
all there's babies running around there to people in wheelchairs it's fun for all it's a good my daughter's gonna go work at our racetrack this year she's gonna help work the gate so i mean everybody get everybody in the family be involved in it kind of so i'll race she'll be helping with the gate so it's it's fun it's a good way blow off steam yeah we don't i don't club and party do all that scene so we go saturday nights we go racetrack i love that i love that man no look man i think it's really fascinating stuff you know i appreciate
you uh so much mr voyage for joining us today honored to be here yeah man it's really really cool and uh and we'll put links to where people can check you out or hire you and you're mostly in the in the kentucky area yeah i do in ohio too okay across the river river in ohio okay so yeah man if you guys want to meet the magic man he somebody's got to work somebody's got to work the middle ground of the animal kingdom huh that's who he is the middle man himself thank you so much mr voice all right thank you very much now i'm just floating on the breeze and
i feel i'm falling like these leaves i must be cornerstone oh but when i reach that ground i'll share this peace of mind i found i can feel it in my bones but it's gonna take a little time for me to set that parking break and let myself on mine shine
tell you a story too fast on the runaway train with a heavy load of past and
