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Probably ladies and gentlemen. We're joined by our our,

0:42

our friend and colleague and uh, I don't know,

0:45

beloved, uh ark and Arkinson?

0:47

What is? How do you say that?

0:50

Ar Kanson?

0:51

Ar Kanson Clay Newcomb, who's

0:53

recently back from a trip where he accompanied

0:55

a wolf trapper in Alaska and

0:58

made a uh made

1:00

a video about hanging out with this Alaska

1:03

wolf trapper and video

1:07

has gotten quite a lot of views and generated

1:09

a lot of conversation. And I wanted to check in

1:11

with Clay about it. And first thing I want to know Clay

1:14

is tell me what you wanted to name it

1:16

and what they ended up naming it and why.

1:20

Well I wanted to I wanted to

1:22

just come out and say what the film was

1:24

about in the title, and I wanted to call it

1:27

trapping wolves in Alaska or

1:29

Alaskan or Alaskan

1:31

wolf trapping, and we

1:33

were we were advised

1:36

not to do that because of the

1:38

potential for YouTube to flag

1:41

something that had the word trapping in the

1:43

title, and so we ended up

1:45

calling it Alaskan wolf management

1:48

with Clay Nukem, and

1:50

that that kind of opens up a can of worms from the very

1:52

beginning.

1:53

Really sets you know, Yeah,

1:56

I think it sets uh uh.

2:00

It just sets an expectation

2:02

and delivers a certain dialogue. Meaning

2:05

if you made a squirrel hunting video, which

2:07

you like to do and which I like to do, and

2:09

then you had to call it squirrel management

2:11

in Michigan, it

2:13

feel kind of weird, right,

2:16

Raccoon managed.

2:19

It feels a whole lot

2:21

more like it's this mission

2:23

driven experience,

2:26

as if I felt like, by me going

2:28

up there and trapping a couple of

2:30

wolves, four wolves, actually

2:33

that it was gonna, you know, change

2:35

something, And no doubt

2:38

that it's a statement in today's world if

2:40

you go wolf trapping, But really

2:43

I wanted to. I wanted to experience

2:45

it. I've known David Bennett's for about ten

2:48

years.

2:48

That's what I wanted to get into because well, I don't

2:50

understand. I was a little hurt because I

2:53

don't know why it didn't come. It's why the article

2:56

wasn't beaver trapping with Steve.

3:00

Beaver Management with Steve Vanilla.

3:03

Yeah, so what what? What headed the whole thing

3:05

off? Or what started?

3:07

So I met David Bennett's about ten

3:09

years ago through Bear Hunting magazine.

3:12

David's an outfitter. David's a professional

3:14

crabber. That's his main livelihood

3:17

is crabbing for three months

3:19

during the summer.

3:20

For Dungeon Crab. Yeah.

3:23

Oh man, his

3:25

stories and and and and his

3:28

learning about that was incredible. But

3:30

he's just like the classic Alaskan

3:33

man.

3:33

He's he's whenever

3:35

those guys come through our area, crab and gets

3:38

bad on. Yeah.

3:40

Yeah.

3:42

David is also an

3:45

outfitter, so he guides for you

3:47

know, Alaskan big game. I would say his

3:49

primary thing is is black

3:52

bear and goats. But then lastly

3:54

in the wintertime he traps and

3:56

he's traped since he was ten years old.

3:58

You know.

3:59

David's fifty seven

4:01

or so. Just an

4:03

incredible guy, you know, and he

4:07

at times he's made a lot of money trapping

4:09

back in the day and this,

4:11

but to this day he still traps just

4:13

as hard as he's ever trapped, just out

4:15

of principle.

4:16

Yeah, if he's sixty seven and he started

4:18

trapping when he was ten, he was cranking

4:21

through the big fur

4:23

boom. I mean he was young, but

4:25

he was selling fur during like the

4:28

the big fur boom with a capital FB.

4:33

I think it's hard for the l late seventies,

4:35

early eighties. You know, my friend Stu

4:37

Miller said to me, every generation has its own

4:39

fur boom, and uh

4:43

his game early.

4:46

Man, I think those old guys have a hard time

4:48

letting go of that. I mean, so

4:50

much of what we do, I think is

4:52

is fueled by more than just

4:55

economics and the

4:58

buzz that somebody would have gotten back

5:00

in the day to have made a legitimate

5:02

amount of money trapping furs.

5:05

That association with sustenance

5:07

for your family, you know, going out

5:10

and taking first off the landscape would just almost

5:12

be hard to erase. It feels to me like, you

5:14

know, you keep doing it even when the prices are

5:17

cheap. But man, the beaver, the beaver

5:19

markets back though, because of these dang felt

5:21

hats.

5:22

Oh I know, Uh, it

5:24

is cranky. I'm obsessed with I don't want to talk about

5:26

fur prices, but I don't sell fur. I'm obsessed

5:28

with the fur market. I follow the fur market

5:30

more closely than I follow like the stock market.

5:33

Do you have one of those? Do you have like a

5:36

graph on your phone that you just can

5:38

of It doesn't work the clip on and see

5:40

like that, ups and down, it's like a stock

5:42

exchange.

5:43

No, it doesn't work that way. So

5:46

you reached out to him, and I bet there's

5:48

no way that he wasn't at first

5:51

thinking to himself, Man,

5:53

I don't want you

5:56

and some camera dudes coming

5:59

into this thing, which is just going to cause

6:01

me hassle. Guys

6:03

are going to know where I trap, Guys are going

6:05

to know how I trap. I'm gonna

6:08

have animal rights people coming after

6:10

me. How

6:12

did you ever get him to say, yeah, come on out

6:15

trapping with a camera.

6:17

You know, I

6:19

was very conscious of that when

6:22

I reached out to him, And

6:26

I honestly feel like David

6:29

believes that the

6:31

the authenticity and legitimacy

6:34

of what he's doing is able

6:36

to withstand any criticism that he's taken.

6:40

And he also just isn't

6:42

concerned about giving

6:45

away secrets. I mean sometimes guys

6:47

are like that. David is willing

6:50

to help anybody can that's wanting

6:52

to do it, but it's so difficult. I

6:54

mean what the film didn't portray

6:56

and we tried to portray. And

6:58

you know this because you do so like this all the time,

7:00

Steve is that.

7:04

It.

7:05

You gotta have something driving you

7:07

that's almost clinically

7:09

insane to do what he does. I

7:11

mean being out on the water, the distance

7:14

of these the distance he's

7:16

traveling, the amount of money that he spends

7:19

on even just his trap sets.

7:22

It's a very very few people

7:25

are going to see that video and move to Alaska and

7:27

be a wolf trapper. Yeah, and he knows

7:29

that.

7:29

And uh.

7:32

And I told him that we were gonna

7:34

handle it in a responsible

7:37

way, and I think he just

7:40

he just took us for our at our word

7:42

for that.

7:42

You know. So, how did you guys

7:44

pick the season you were going to go? Was

7:48

he trying to line it up with with

7:51

peak conditions, with when he doesn't

7:53

have anything else going on with when

7:55

he felt that it was the biggest

7:57

chance of getting like real prime wolf

8:00

else that weren't rubbed out

8:02

right, what was he shooting for when you guys

8:05

went so.

8:06

His his year is very regimented

8:08

down to the week. You know, he can tell

8:10

you what he's going to be doing any given week

8:12

of the year. And that first week

8:14

of December he was going to be trapping wolves, whether

8:17

I was with him or not. That's what he told me.

8:19

And yeah, it's

8:21

it's peak for it's

8:24

but it's also you

8:26

know, tough travel conditions that time of

8:28

year.

8:28

No daylight, you can oh,

8:30

that was.

8:31

The biggest challenge of the whole trip, Steve, And

8:33

you would know it as much as anybody

8:36

is. It gets daylight at

8:38

about seven thirty

8:40

AM, maybe

8:42

even closer to eight, and

8:45

it's dark by four thirty. I

8:47

mean it's like dark dark And

8:50

so what was wild so dirt

8:52

myth was my cameraman on this deal,

8:55

you know, Garrett Smith and he we

8:59

would get back to the boat

9:01

four thirty and

9:04

not be needing to be in the boat till

9:07

eight o'clock the next day. Setting

9:10

in that little cabin on the on

9:12

the Sandpiper, which we became very

9:14

familiar with. We'd set around for

9:16

six hours and I don't

9:19

know what we did read, eat.

9:22

Pack a big old pack a big dip.

9:24

Probably right, dirt was running

9:26

through some dip, buddy, you better believe

9:29

it. I was like, man, what if we run

9:31

out? And he was like, Clay, I got so much dip

9:33

in my bag. He's like, I got enough for

9:35

all of us. And I'm like, I don't dip. I'm

9:37

out, but appreciate it.

9:40

So what are the days goal? Like? He

9:42

runs a big like he's running a big well.

9:46

First, I think, guess before we say what the day's goal

9:48

like, you should explain this is a marine based

9:51

deal. He's not running off snowmobiles,

9:54

trucks. It's it's marine

9:56

based.

9:56

It's boats completely

9:58

two boats, water based, completely

10:01

water based. Trap line.

10:02

Yeah.

10:02

So if you saw the film, you saw that he has a

10:05

forty eight foot crabbing boat

10:08

with a cab, a kitchen, you know, fully equipped.

10:11

We we put that

10:13

in a small narrow inlet

10:16

to get it out of big water in waves,

10:18

and then we took a skiff out to check the traps.

10:20

And what is amazing to me what I would

10:22

have thought if you would have just said, Clay, you're gonna have to go

10:24

trap wolves in a in Alaska,

10:27

how are you going to do it? Coastal Alaska. I

10:30

would have thought you couldn't

10:32

trap these wolves on the beach just because

10:34

they wouldn't have any reason to be there. But

10:37

he's literally catching wolves on

10:39

the beach in the sand a lot of times.

10:42

Yeah, you know, you only salmon.

10:45

They like, it's a peculiar

10:47

kind of wolf that like salmon dead.

10:49

I've watched them eating rotten salmon off

10:51

the beach. Yeah,

10:54

well yeah there, so there.

10:57

He feels like they're actually attracted

11:00

to these points, these

11:02

sandy points. He feels like they just

11:04

kind of loaf there, you know, like a Mallard

11:07

duck and the timber in the midday, you know, just

11:09

like loafing.

11:10

Huh okay.

11:11

But but what's

11:15

what it was interesting to me is he said he learned

11:18

how to catch wolves by watching his Labrador

11:20

retriever. He would pull

11:23

up on a pull up on the bank and

11:25

let his dog jump out of the boat, and he would

11:28

watch what his dog would is a male dog,

11:30

and he said that dog would pick the most

11:33

prominent visual thing that it could see,

11:36

whether it was a stump, whether it was a

11:40

clump of grass that set out from

11:42

the rest of the grass, whether it

11:44

was a big rock, and he'd go over and

11:46

he'd mark it, you know, lift his leg and pee

11:48

on it. And he just started

11:51

watching that dog and he started setting traps

11:54

where he saw his dog mark and

11:57

started catching wolves and

12:00

he so he started

12:02

doing That's

12:04

exactly that's what he called him. And we didn't

12:06

have time, you know, the video wasn't

12:09

like how to trap wolves, so we didn't really

12:11

get into the technical side.

12:12

But what he.

12:13

Uses is wolf here in a

12:16

big, big bottle of wolf here, and he'll

12:19

make an artificial scent post.

12:21

So he'll go to a beat to a

12:23

point that he wants to trap on, and he'll go gather

12:26

up a couple of logs.

12:28

He's doing this above above

12:31

the high tide marker, right in where it's getting

12:33

submerged at high tide.

12:35

Now, most of it's above the

12:37

high tide mark, even though that is

12:40

a strategy, you know, to set

12:42

it below the tide mark and it's it's like

12:44

a drown set, you know.

12:47

But most of these he's just catching above

12:50

the.

12:51

The grass or be

12:53

grass. Yeah, Okay, so

12:56

he drags out whatever,

12:59

drags out some object to make some visual

13:01

appeal, I assume.

13:03

Yeah, and then he and then he puts sin all

13:05

over it. You know, he puts his he he

13:07

had multiple commercial

13:09

wolf lures, but also this

13:12

this wolf you'reine and

13:14

uh,

13:16

the biggest thing that I

13:19

think is different for those

13:21

guys in Southeast Alaska that are trapping

13:23

is they don't have to worry about human

13:25

scent. We were not worried

13:27

about human scent at all.

13:31

Because everything gets wet, just everything gets washed

13:33

out.

13:34

It rains. When you're setting

13:36

a wolf trap, you're,

13:39

yeah, you're it's gonna rain and

13:41

it's gonna wash away the scent. And so

13:44

when the guys in the lower forty eighth that do some

13:46

trapping, that's a big

13:49

concern is how do you

13:52

pretty much keep the set scent

13:54

free. So you know, they're wearing gloves, they're

13:57

really concerned about what you're touching, and

14:00

and up there he's not

14:02

at all, which is makes it

14:04

makes it convenient.

14:05

But his traps, his footholdser

14:08

dyed and waxed. Correct. Yeah,

14:10

okay, so go through making

14:12

this like scent post set. So he drags out

14:16

an object for some visual appeal and places

14:18

it out on a point that's.

14:21

Right, how big of another? And so

14:24

we showed it. We showed a set in the

14:27

film. There was

14:29

probably a stump that was eighteen

14:32

inches long, or just a piece of log that was eighteen

14:34

inches long, kind of had a big oblong rootball

14:37

on one side that set up eighteen

14:39

inches tall, and we set

14:41

it out right out out from the grass

14:44

in the sand where everything would see it, and

14:46

maybe even put another little smaller four

14:48

or five inch log on it. And then

14:51

you know, you put that scent post

14:54

in an area where you can dig easily. That's not

14:56

rocky, that's sandy. Yeah, And then

14:59

we dig down and set just a standard

15:01

trap set. I'm not an expert

15:04

trapper. I've spent a little

15:06

bit of time trap and I know how to make dirt

15:08

hole sets and catch foxes and coyotes

15:11

and all this, and I mean, you know, setting

15:13

these big traps is just identical

15:15

to that. You know, you're you're trying to well,

15:19

he uses a drag for his equipment.

15:21

He's he's using a.

15:23

Drag instead of trying trying.

15:26

Yeah, and so you have to dig a deep,

15:29

a pretty deep hole to bury that big

15:31

drag. And it is a big drag. And

15:34

then you know you're setting that trap

15:36

down into a bed where it doesn't wiggle

15:38

around and the top of the trap has to

15:40

be even almost even with the surface

15:42

of the ground.

15:43

How many inches off the explain

15:46

how it goes, like how many inches off the post,

15:48

because you gotta you're trying

15:50

to cut. One of the ways to describe

15:52

it is you got the whole world. You

15:54

know, the animal has the whole

15:56

world, the whole am island whatever to

15:58

walk around on, and you're trying to get it to put

16:00

its foot on a

16:02

well. In this case, you're trying to get it put its foot

16:04

on a two inch circle. Right,

16:08

So if something walks up, if

16:10

you picture that, Let's take something that people

16:12

are more familiar with, like a coyote. Okay, a

16:14

kyote's walking down a

16:17

dirt lane, walking

16:19

down a farm trail, whatever, and

16:21

there's an object that it wants to piss on. Its

16:24

feet are gonna fall in a specific spot. They're

16:26

not gonna be two inches off the thing. They're

16:29

not gonna be thirty inches off the thing. He's

16:32

not gonna dance there, he's gonna come

16:34

through, raise his leg and leave. What

16:36

are the odds that you've put that trappan

16:39

where it's gonna put its foot. Yeah,

16:42

so you're David, You're You're like, you're

16:45

you're thinking about foot placement and anatomy

16:48

when you place it, because if

16:50

not you place it wrong, you could have eight wolves

16:52

run by. None's gonna put their foot there.

16:55

Yeah, you know, I was kind

16:57

of surprised at how non

17:00

technical David's explanation to

17:02

me of you know, where to

17:04

put the trap.

17:05

So he's thinking, he's thinking it, but he's

17:07

not saying it.

17:08

Probably well, I think he's just done

17:10

it so many times it's

17:12

just instinctive. But

17:15

I was expecting them to have a tape measure and

17:17

be like the average big

17:19

Southeast Alaskan wolf has

17:21

a stride that's, you know, fourteen

17:24

inches long. So if he's sitting here and he's peeing

17:26

on that log, he's going to be sixteen

17:28

inches out and slightly back because

17:31

you know he's peeing from the

17:33

third, you know, the back third. Yeah, what

17:35

you know, this technical nothing. I

17:37

mean, he's just but probably

17:40

he was eighteen inches off of the

17:42

trap, And I don't think he was

17:45

targeting a specific foot. I

17:47

think he's catching a lot of them in the front feet

17:50

when they come up to sniff the post before

17:52

they market. You know, just

17:54

just an animal just walking up and putting

17:56

his nose on that on that little

17:59

scent log that we I

18:01

don't think he's trying to catch

18:03

it with a back leg, you know. So

18:06

he is not as technical

18:08

as I thought it would be. And what you guys,

18:11

before he came out, he went out and made a bunch of sets.

18:14

Yeah, correct, So he has some sets out working

18:17

and then you guys punched in some sets and did some

18:19

remakes and stuff like that.

18:20

But how many during your time there?

18:23

And explain the number of days you spent there?

18:26

And uh,

18:29

tell folks how many

18:31

traps you checked? Okay?

18:34

Over what? Over what distance?

18:38

We were there for six full

18:40

days, and in

18:43

that time, David was

18:46

concerned that we might

18:48

not catch a wolf. You know, that's

18:50

how this trapping goes. You

18:53

might be there for six days and not catch a wolf.

18:56

So by him setting the traps, you

18:59

know, the day

19:01

before we got there, you know, we kind of got an

19:03

extra day. And

19:07

he has fifty five sets

19:11

over a two hundred We

19:13

mapped it out on on x a two hundred

19:16

mile trap line boat

19:18

by water. But

19:21

each of those sets might have multiple traps.

19:23

So he had two kind of sets. He had p post

19:26

sets and what he called bait

19:28

sets which were set in tide

19:30

pools, and basically

19:33

he would have a chunk of beaver that

19:36

was elevated above the low

19:39

tideline covered in

19:41

rocks, and then he would have four

19:43

traps set under the water, just

19:46

set on the ground, not buried even

19:48

at under that low tide, there underwater, at

19:51

low tide, there underwater, but

19:54

at low tide or mid tide whatever, the meats

19:56

out of the water, but the traps just buried in a tide

19:58

pool or submerged. Correct,

20:01

that's correct. And so

20:05

we had fifty five sets, but each

20:07

of those sets, most

20:09

sets had uh, well, if there were baits that

20:11

they had four traps. So it

20:13

would be easy to say he had

20:15

one hundred traps out. Yep, I

20:18

would say he had one hundred traps

20:20

out.

20:21

How many had how many out ahead of your arrival?

20:26

He had all of them out. He

20:29

had all of them out before we got there. And

20:33

we actually caught four wolves

20:35

on the trip. And you know, it's just

20:39

showbiz stuff like we just couldn't

20:42

we couldn't fit

20:44

in the other two. But

20:48

we caught We caught one

20:51

jet black wolf, which was cool,

20:54

and and caught another kind

20:56

of juvenile gray wolf. So

20:58

we caught four wolves in a week, which I

21:00

think that's about what he expected. But

21:03

you can go you can go a week and not

21:05

even catch a single animal.

21:07

Yeah, you know. Now, A lot of states

21:09

have checklaws

21:13

twenty four hour check laws, forty eight hour

21:15

checklaws. Some states

21:17

have checklaws. I

21:21

should clarify when I'm talking about

21:23

a check law meanings like a maximum

21:25

amount of time that you can go without

21:27

visually inspecting a set, And

21:31

some states just have a flat out check

21:33

law twenty four hours, forty eight

21:35

hours. Some states have

21:37

no mention of a check law, and

21:39

some states have slightly more nuanced

21:42

check laws where certain sets

21:45

don't have a check law, meaning you might be able to

21:47

set under the ice or underwater

21:50

with kill sets and not

21:52

have a check law. But if you're

21:54

making sets with footholds dry

21:57

ground sets with footholds, then

21:59

there is a check law, meaning

22:02

that one, if something goes wrong

22:04

at your set and you catch something

22:06

that you're not supposed to catch, you're not leaving

22:08

it there too long and you're

22:10

able to release it. Two

22:13

being that when you do make a target catch that

22:15

you're not leaving it in the trap so long

22:18

that it might be regarded

22:21

by some as being inhumane to

22:23

leave something caught in a trap for an extended

22:25

period of time. So to minimize stress,

22:29

minimize suffering, you

22:32

enforce this check limit. They

22:37

don't have a check law, and

22:40

he's making somecessities leaving for quite

22:42

some time. What was his perspective on this, that he

22:45

would leave a foothold

22:47

set for a week

22:49

and could potentially have a catch for a week,

22:51

because there's two things. One there's

22:54

a consideration of the animals well being,

22:57

and two there's a consideration of

23:00

you might not hold it forever. It's

23:03

gonna get out, right, the longer it has more,

23:05

it's gonna get out. What was his thinking about this?

23:07

Is it just is it a matter of logistically

23:10

it's just impossible to do it any other way? How

23:14

did he think about that?

23:16

That's a good question, and that was one of the first

23:18

things we talked about. And

23:21

he when he's trapping, that's all

23:23

he does. Like when he

23:25

starts trapping, he

23:28

is a twenty four

23:30

hour a day, seven day a week

23:32

trapper, and in

23:35

his mind, he had

23:37

he believes he has an ethical responsibility

23:39

to check those traps. Is

23:41

absolutely as much

23:43

as he can. But if you were there and

23:45

saw what we were up against with weather,

23:48

like there are days when you can't get

23:50

on the water. So that's

23:53

primarily the reason in Alaska that they

23:55

don't have the check laws is because you're setting

23:58

you're setting traps in places that some times

24:00

you just can't physically get to. And

24:03

so and and he also,

24:06

I think just believes his job is to

24:08

to catch wolves and uh

24:11

and and he's tracked. He's he's checking

24:14

him as absolutely as much as he can, you

24:16

know, avoid and we I mean, if he thinks he's not going to

24:18

be able to get to traps, he won't

24:20

reset him. I Mean, it's

24:22

kind of one of these deals where you

24:24

know your own conscience is your god,

24:27

you know, and it works good for it

24:29

works good for him. I don't think he sees any

24:31

kind of pushback

24:34

from that, you know. And that's just the way it is in Alaska.

24:37

That I heard something. I

24:39

don't know any trappers who love the checklaws.

24:42

I can tell you that.

24:44

Yeah, yeah,

24:46

well man, it's uh,

24:49

that's definitely something that some people

24:51

didn't understand that

24:54

that watched the film. And if

24:56

you're up there and you're in that boat and

24:59

you met David, you you'd get it.

25:01

You know, what

25:11

was your feeling when when when

25:13

all of a sudden, like there's a wolf.

25:15

You know, when I asked us, I'm asking from the

25:18

perspective of there's

25:22

certain creatures that occupy a lot of

25:24

mind space, you know, like you think about

25:26

them a lot, but you don't get to look at them as much as you

25:28

think about them. And I remember, after

25:31

always catching glimpses of mountain lions,

25:33

you know, out out in the wild, I remember the first

25:35

time I came up on a treed

25:38

mountain lion. Where there it is you could actually like

25:40

really look at it

25:42

as long as you wanted, you know, those

25:45

stunning to be just

25:47

to have it be like right there, dogs

25:50

blow it. It's in the tree. And this

25:52

thing that you just you only get glimpses of

25:54

also is just there in its

25:56

larger than life kind of way. When

26:00

you come

26:03

around the bend or whatever and there's one standing there,

26:05

what are your you

26:07

know, what were your thoughts about it? Were you like, man,

26:09

I hope he gets away, or

26:12

that guy we got one, or you know, what

26:14

are the different things you're feeling?

26:17

You know, I haven't I

26:19

haven't interacted with wolves a

26:21

whole lot being from Arkansas. You

26:24

know, when you and I were in Alaska

26:26

two years ago, we saw a pack

26:29

of I think fourteen wolves

26:31

that we watched a couple of evenings. Once in

26:33

Idaho, I saw one across the road.

26:37

I haven't I haven't spent a ton or time around

26:39

wolves. This was definitely the closest

26:41

I've ever been to one, and it was

26:44

I. If I didn't say it was slightly conflicted,

26:47

I'd probably be lying.

26:48

I think.

26:51

It was just a magnificent beast. I

26:53

mean, yeah, to be able to walk up to it look

26:56

at it. But what

26:58

I said in the film I'm is that

27:00

my confliction was completely fabricated

27:04

by the confusing

27:07

messaging of planet Earth and

27:09

humans about wolves. I mean I was

27:11

aware of that, like if I

27:13

was, you know, I said

27:15

that, you know, to sacrelize

27:18

something really is a man made feature.

27:20

It's not in the natural realm. I mean that that

27:22

wolf. I've killed a lot of deer, a

27:25

lot of white tailed deer, and

27:27

on the ethical spectrum of human existence,

27:30

me shooting a white tailed deer is

27:33

no less different than us dispatching

27:35

that wolf on the end of a trap. I believe

27:38

that. But at the same time, this

27:40

is a very

27:43

unique animal in a unique place, a

27:46

unique predator. You know, they're less predators

27:48

than there are prey animals. I mean, so,

27:52

I mean I was just fascinated by it. I'm always fascinated

27:54

by predators, probably in

27:57

just a generic sense like anybody else

27:59

would have been just kind of like a little kid. I mean

28:01

when after we dispatched it, shot

28:03

it with a twenty two mag I

28:06

mean, I just walked up to it. The dang

28:08

thing smelled like a dirty, wet

28:10

German shepherd, and I looked

28:12

at his claws and just

28:15

inspected every part of him. Man,

28:17

And you know you can't.

28:19

You got to have respect for him, I mean,

28:21

just absolute respect for them and their

28:24

job what they do making a living

28:26

out on that landscape. But

28:30

at the same time, and I said this in the film,

28:34

honestly, there was little ecological consequence

28:37

to us taking those two wolves

28:39

out of that bay. I mean. The

28:42

one thing that David says

28:45

he and he has, you know,

28:48

thirty five years a wolf traffing experience

28:51

to say to know it is that you can

28:53

trap. You can trap half

28:55

the pack, you can trap three

28:58

quarters of a pack out of a bay, and

29:01

within two years that pack will be back up

29:04

to the same numbers, Like you just

29:06

can't stomp them down

29:08

that hard, especially on this

29:11

coastal trapping. And what he said to

29:13

me made a lot of sense. And

29:15

the reason I'm saying all this is it

29:18

didn't really help the deer that much and it didn't

29:20

really hurt the wolves that much. It

29:22

was just a unique experience

29:25

where we could extract resource from the land

29:28

and kind of nobody loses

29:30

and everybody wins. That's the way I look

29:32

at it. Yeah, and it undoubtedly

29:37

did it save a couple of deer moose

29:39

calves in that cove this year, yep.

29:41

Because those two wolves, they were

29:44

probably ninety pound males. They're

29:46

going to eat something, and they would have been eating

29:49

five to seven pounds of meat

29:51

since that day that we took them

29:53

out. And because

29:56

you know, going back to our original conversation about

29:58

what we titled this wolf management, as

30:00

if I'm trying to make some ecological

30:03

statement, man, my biggest statement is

30:06

just let us manage them as

30:08

a as a natural renewable resource.

30:11

And you

30:13

know, like David said, man, you can't overtrap

30:16

these wolves on the coast because a

30:19

lot.

30:19

Of that because you're touching

30:22

the edge.

30:24

Oh man, you're not laying a finger

30:26

on on the on the

30:29

wolf population now,

30:31

but it but it makes some sense. There's some pragmatism

30:34

in it for these guys that are sick of black tail

30:36

deer hunting and moose hunting because

30:38

they're only hunting the coasts, Like when

30:40

they go in there to deer hunt, they're

30:42

just hunting the edges. And

30:44

so if they can thin wolf populations

30:46

out along the edges, it helps

30:49

on a very micro scale.

30:50

They truly believe that.

30:53

Yeah, the conversation around wolf

30:56

hunting, wolf trapping, any kind of predator stuff,

30:59

it gets it

31:01

gets really confused because a lot of people

31:03

start throwing away their own realities

31:06

and then putting in these things they half

31:08

know or suspect to

31:10

be true, or things they've picked up from social

31:13

media or media in general. For

31:16

a while, everybody fell in love with this idea

31:19

that one up not being true. But this the

31:21

trophic cascade, right, this

31:24

this ted talk level idea

31:29

that by you know, wolves being on the landscape,

31:32

they caused

31:34

the Riparian areas to bloom

31:37

and paradise returned

31:40

to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and

31:43

the landscape of fear, which drove the

31:45

elk, you know, which were inflated numbers

31:47

of elk, and it pushed them into the mountains. And so

31:49

the willows came back and

31:51

Eden returned, and that

31:54

idea was proven

31:56

to not be true in the greater Yellowstone

31:59

ecosystem. But the refuting

32:03

that idea didn't get nearly

32:05

the press as advancing that

32:07

idea did. Another

32:09

thing that you know that everyone

32:12

on the planet feels like or

32:14

like, you know, everyone in Montana seems

32:16

to be a born grizzly expert.

32:19

You know, half of Alaska seems to

32:21

be born a wolf expert. And

32:23

they all know this idea of disrupting herd

32:25

dynamic or disrupting pack dynamics.

32:28

They don't know it from living, they just know it

32:30

from having heard about it, and so it becomes

32:33

this idea they put forth. On

32:35

the other side of it, people that

32:37

like to hunt lions or people

32:40

that trap wolves or hunt wolves

32:43

will lay in a lot of things like, oh, if I don't

32:45

do this, they'll be coming

32:47

to get your pets. Or

32:49

if I don't do this, there will be no

32:52

big game left, which begs the obvious

32:54

question, if there's no big game, left, How would there be

32:56

predators anyways, because

32:58

they rely on big game being so

33:01

I don't believe that they would be

33:03

able to completely eliminate

33:06

their food source because that would lead to

33:08

their own destruction. Then

33:12

you'll have people in the Rockies

33:15

who are just so upset about wolves

33:17

being on the landscape because of course that

33:20

means there's no game. But then

33:22

they like to go hunt in Alaska,

33:24

where wolves occupy about one

33:26

hundred percent of their historic range.

33:29

And so if you hate wolves so

33:31

much and wolves mean there's no game, why

33:34

would you go to Alaska? They

33:36

must not have any game because they

33:38

have wolves. So

33:41

everyone winds up being on all

33:43

sides of it. You hear so many people being just

33:45

intellectually dishonest because

33:49

they're like I someone's saying, I hate

33:51

to see a predator

33:54

get killed because I

33:58

view them as being special. But

34:01

I don't want to say that, so I'm gonna try to throw

34:03

you some bogus ecological stuff

34:05

that I don't really understand. Conversely,

34:10

someone would say I believe that

34:13

if there's a renewable resource, a renewable

34:15

sustainable resource on the landscape, and

34:18

that we can extract some harvestable surplus

34:21

off that renewable resource without damaging

34:23

the resource. I believe that we should have

34:25

the right to do that. But instead

34:27

I'm gonna frame it around ideas of the

34:29

safety of my neighbor's

34:32

pets, or I'm gonna frame it around ideas

34:34

of saving

34:38

big game from extirpation. It

34:42

invites all this intellectual dishonesty.

34:46

Yeah, I'm ardently, ardently,

34:52

unapologetically pro trapping

34:55

and pro hunting of sustainable

34:57

resources because they're

35:00

on the landscape. If we protect the habitat,

35:02

we'll have surpluses of animals, and

35:04

we can harvest animals responsibly

35:08

and not have a long term

35:10

negative impact. Yeah,

35:14

that's a long way of setting up The question is why

35:17

do you feel people always need to dress this

35:19

up, to dress this dialogue

35:21

up and things where they wind up us,

35:24

they wind up role

35:26

playing, Yeah,

35:28

with what their actual motivations are.

35:31

Yeah, man, you say that so well.

35:34

You probably say that better than anybody

35:36

I've ever heard say it, you

35:38

know, with kind of an intellectual dishonesty.

35:41

And I tried to. I

35:45

hope this film portrayed

35:47

that. I don't know if I was fully

35:49

effective at that or not, because

35:52

I didn't go interview a biologist. Like

35:54

some people criticized the film and said,

35:56

well, it was just this backyard

35:58

biology by David Bennett's,

36:01

you know, just saying well, there's more deer when

36:03

we trap out wolves. And so

36:07

you know, I did not go interview biologist.

36:10

We didn't get into the deep technical,

36:12

technical research

36:15

of wolves in that area. And I did that

36:17

on purpose. I wanted

36:19

to present it like what like

36:22

what what you said? That we

36:25

ought to just be able to go and extract a resource

36:28

and not be hurt by it. And honestly,

36:32

golly, if anybody knows wolves

36:34

up there, it's David and he can tell you they're

36:37

not hurting the wolf population. What

36:40

was your original question, Steve, I gotta

36:43

I got the I got sidetracked on my thought

36:45

there.

36:45

Oh, wasn't so much a question as

36:48

an observation about

36:50

people's need to on

36:53

both sides of this issue, people's

36:55

need to be a little bit or

37:01

be a little bit like assume

37:04

rhetoric that they don't maybe

37:06

feel. And I'm and I'm pointing to both

37:08

sides. It's like I've I've laid I've laid

37:10

back, like I've really laid out my personal perspective

37:13

on it, which I said is unwavering,

37:16

right. But when I

37:18

hear someone, if someone gets a mountain lion

37:20

and an ay and then they get called out

37:22

on it, and they want to put position

37:25

that they were doing it out of the best

37:27

interest of unknown strangers

37:30

pets. I

37:34

don't know. I don't think that they

37:36

were out there because of their neighbor's pets.

37:39

Yeah. Yeah. Likewise, the thing I've observed

37:41

in the past,

37:44

people like to hunt prairie dogs

37:46

or ground squirrels, and they'll be like, well, I

37:48

do it for the rancher. And I'll be like, if you wanted

37:50

to help that rancher, if you went to that rancher's

37:52

house and you said,

37:55

man, I'm here to help. What

37:57

is the number one most effective thing I

37:59

can do to help you as a rancher. I

38:02

don't think it's gonna be prairie dogs. I

38:05

think it's gonna be fixing fence.

38:10

Mm hmm.

38:13

Look at what he does when he wakes up in the morning.

38:16

He didn't go grab his two twenty three.

38:18

He's like, by god, I gotta get up

38:20

early tomorrow for prairie dogs. No, it's

38:22

like I gotta get up, I gotta feed Coyle's check Kyle's

38:25

fixed fence, do chores, and

38:28

that's like the thing most top of mind.

38:31

So yeah, I just I get a little I

38:35

just end up getting a little tired of I end

38:37

up getting a little tired of the bs. But

38:39

but on management though,

38:42

it's the

38:45

eight seven pounds of me to day. Right,

38:49

something's dying if they're living, sure,

38:52

And it's been proven time again

38:54

that that predator management, if done

38:56

in a way that's precise spatially

38:59

and precise temporarily, it's

39:01

effective. As

39:03

you're pointing out, you

39:05

were involved in a kind of non event, right,

39:09

No doubt during the following weeks,

39:12

some fewer number of deer

39:14

and moose died because

39:16

they're going to make a kill it, you know, a

39:18

killer two a week, whatever it is up there, No

39:21

doubt some fewer prey animals

39:23

died. No doubt those

39:25

wolves will be replaced by the wolves who fill

39:27

in the vacancy and the habitat. And

39:31

you participated in you participated

39:33

in an ecological non event, right,

39:38

yeah, you know, I think, go

39:41

ahead, go ahead, No, no, that's all.

39:44

I said something

39:46

that probably confused some people

39:48

at the end, because I think, really, what on

39:52

one side of the story,

39:54

we're talking about making something

39:57

sacred. And our

39:59

society since the reintroduction

40:02

into Yellowstone, and you

40:04

know, we have sacralized wolves

40:07

as this animal that is above other

40:10

animals. And in

40:12

some ways that's a positive thing. That's a celebration

40:15

of this great beast, which humans love

40:17

to do. That every culture that's ever lived

40:20

has sacralized some animal.

40:23

And I said in my closing statements

40:25

on this film, I said, I

40:27

said, I think as a society we can sacralize

40:30

the wolf, but we also need to

40:33

responsibly be able to

40:35

trap them and hunt them. I think we

40:37

can have our cake and eat it too, And I think that's what

40:40

hunters can do that. It's hard for someone

40:43

to understand. It's like, well, shoot, if you think a wolf's

40:45

sacred, you don't need to be abut trapping them. And

40:48

man, I think we can do it all. I mean, I like

40:50

to see a wolf and have a sense

40:53

of awe and have a sense of wow,

40:55

this is a special moment, this

40:57

is a special beast. Like I

40:59

think that, Like I don't walk up to it and

41:01

think this is a non just

41:04

a another day of my life, just gonna

41:06

dispatch this wolf.

41:08

I don't know.

41:09

I think we can kind of have our cake and eat it too.

41:11

I really do.

41:12

Oh, well, that's at this

41:14

point, that's proven. It's

41:17

empirically true. Idaho,

41:23

Wyoming, Montana, Alaska

41:29

have wolves on the ground,

41:32

and they have hunting and trapping seasons for wolves,

41:36

and they're going to continue to have wolves

41:38

on the ground.

41:42

I do some I do some kyote hunting.

41:44

I do some kyote trapping. In fact, I'm sitting

41:46

by a little stringer of kyote pelts

41:48

hanging on the wall of our studio. I get

41:50

excited and happy when

41:53

I see a kyot track. I

41:56

like running into them. I set out

41:58

trail cameras specific defeckly to catch

42:01

images of coyotes. I

42:03

also like to get some Those

42:08

two things are not incompatible. Yeah,

42:11

and having recovered populations

42:13

of wolves on the ground and having some extraction

42:16

of the resource, these are not incompatible ideas.

42:18

We do it all of the time.

42:21

Yeah.

42:25

Let me can I ask you a question, how

42:27

do you do

42:29

you think us talking about

42:32

and showing this is

42:34

beneficial for our cause?

42:43

Man, I would

42:45

say I would say yes,

42:50

and I'll position it. I'll

42:52

explain the two perspectives on this stuff. One

42:56

perspective is that hunters

42:58

and trappers ought

43:04

to try to hide in plain sight, the

43:07

idea being that if you carry

43:09

on your activities and you just hide and

43:13

keep it secret, the broader

43:15

world will not realize

43:18

you're there and they

43:20

will never mess with you.

43:27

Also, this kind of notion that

43:30

if you don't, if you're off of So if

43:33

hunters and trappers stay off social media,

43:36

the broader world won't know you're there and

43:38

they won't come mess with you. But I

43:40

invite that perspective, but I would invite

43:43

them to look at a timeline and

43:46

look at the timeline of the loss

43:48

of hunting and trapping rights and

43:51

pace that over a timeline

43:54

of the introduction of social media. There's

43:57

no correlation Colorado

44:03

lost trap Like, look

44:05

at places losing spring,

44:08

bear hunts, places losing

44:10

lion hunting, places losing trapping.

44:14

That's pre social media. It's

44:17

pre Internet for the most part. Colorado

44:20

lost trapping back in the late eighties,

44:22

early nineties. Yeah,

44:29

pre Internet. There's

44:32

no like. You can't look and say that

44:34

the ability to discuss hunting

44:36

and trapping has somehow is

44:38

somehow correlated to a loss of rights.

44:42

But that's this idea that you should go hide and

44:45

if you go hide, no one will ever notice

44:47

you're there. But you know what, you'll

44:49

get noticed. You'll get noticed

44:51

because you have animal rights people that

44:53

are going to find out about it. You know how

44:55

I know that because they find out about it, and they

44:57

found out about it way before the Internet, and

45:00

they're gonna come after you.

45:03

Hey, before you say your second

45:06

thing to

45:08

me, we have

45:10

to be the people that tell our story. Yes,

45:14

that's my body. That's the bottom

45:16

line. If somebody's gonna talk and talk

45:18

about trapping wolves in Alaska, I

45:21

want it to be one of us that's

45:23

doing it. You know, not necessarily me, but

45:26

I want it to be. I want the narrative

45:29

to be not a spun narrative, but

45:31

the narrative the way we see it. When I first

45:33

got into the national bear scene about

45:35

ten years ago, I

45:38

was confronted by some of the baarhound

45:40

guys that were like, hey, we should You're

45:43

making a mistake by talking about

45:45

this, and basically I was

45:47

like, I think you're wrong. I think we have to be the

45:49

ones that tell the story. And

45:52

I think in a world of social media,

45:55

it's all the more impetus for us to

45:57

be the storytellers because if

45:59

we just went silent, radio, silent,

46:01

media silent, like some people are

46:03

saying we should do these days.

46:06

Then not.

46:07

We don't have this governing body that can

46:09

tell all hunters to never post something

46:11

on the internet, you know, or or somebody's

46:14

going to do it, and so the worst of us

46:16

are going to be the storytellers of why

46:18

something's going to happen. So in a world

46:20

that now communicates through social media,

46:23

I mean, I feel like it's

46:25

all the more important for us

46:29

to stand up and tell our story in a reasonable

46:31

way.

46:32

Yeah, I think it's kind of an absurd request.

46:34

I mean, I'm a writer

46:36

and a creator, and I'm going to talk about the things

46:39

I care about. The oldest representational

46:41

art in the world is

46:45

people drawing pictures of their hunts. That's

46:51

not good. I've never heard that said before.

46:53

That's good.

46:55

The the idea that

46:58

that somehow these

47:02

act that somehow hunting and

47:05

trapping should

47:07

be removed from any sort of artistic

47:09

expression or

47:12

any sort of expository expression

47:15

to to to to tell people

47:18

how you view things, what you think about

47:20

them, because it somehow

47:22

sits outside of what's polite to discuss.

47:25

It's absurd. Yeah,

47:28

Like I'm going to talk about

47:32

the things that I love. I'm

47:35

gonna advance my perspective

47:37

on things. I'm

47:40

gonna defend the things

47:42

that matter to me. How and like, how

47:44

do I imagine defending the things that matter

47:47

to me? Do I do it by obfuscating

47:49

them or

47:51

do I do it by elucidating them by

47:54

bringing them to lie. I'm

47:57

like, there's nothing I'm gonna take that I'm gonna love and I'm

47:59

gonna like, ob fuse, skate it out of my love

48:01

for it, right, I'm

48:03

going to illuminate it out of my love for it.

48:08

And you know, by us not talking

48:10

about this stuff, it might work

48:13

for a generation, but

48:15

the very nature of it, I mean, today the

48:17

world communicates with social media, bicyclist,

48:21

guitarist, sports

48:23

athletes, like this is the medium

48:26

of the world to communicate with our generation.

48:30

And so if we were exempt from that, it

48:32

would work for one generation, but

48:35

the second generation it would it

48:37

would fail. Like it's not a long term

48:39

strategy, Like we have to be relevant. The way for hunters

48:41

to be less relevant to planet

48:44

Earth would be for us to be less relevant

48:46

in the communication of the times.

48:49

Yeah, I mean, well, like I said, you've

48:51

already seen it happen. I mean, there

48:53

was a dramatic erosion

48:59

of the rights of outdoorsmen

49:02

in the eighties and nineties. This

49:06

is not a it's not an Internet phenomena.

49:11

Yeah. Yeah,

49:14

well, Clay, I'm glad you joined us for a talk about wolf

49:16

trapping in Alaska Wolf.

49:17

Management, Wolf

49:19

management, Alaska wolf

49:21

Management.

49:23

What's next? Beaver's

49:25

no doubt, it's beaver trapping with Steve Beaver

49:29

trap man. Okay, here's what we do, and

49:32

we do Mark Beaver Martin longlining

49:34

in the mountains.

49:35

Man, Well, we

49:37

could do that on mules or we

49:40

beaver trap and follow followed

49:43

the fur all the way to making a sweet

49:46

cowboy hat for both of us, a

49:48

Paris sweet cowboy hats.

49:50

No, I'm not going I'm going to floppy

49:52

brim Daniel Boone hat man. Yeah,

49:56

well he.

49:56

Wore beaver felt. Sure, that's what I'm saying.

49:58

I mean, I just mean like a beaver felt.

50:00

Yeah, all right, Well thanks for coming me go.

50:02

Ahead, Yeah, man, thanks to appreciate

50:04

it.

50:05

I appreciate you coming on. Quai. Thanks a lot, man,