00:00:08
Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening past, you can’t predict anything brought to you by first Light. When I’m hunting, I need gear that won’t quit. First Light builds, no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer, no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at first light dot com. That’s f I R S T L I t E dot com. A lot of talk these days about the death of late night television. Oh yeah, you probably don’t know where I’m going with this.
00:00:49
Speaker 2: I don’t know where you’re going with it, but I’ve been paying attention to the top.
00:00:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. Someone even said it’s a it’s a by the Colbert losing his show as a it’s bad for the it’s against the constitution. You aware of this.
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Speaker 3: I was not aware of that.
00:01:08
Speaker 1: I read it today. But uh, I’m going somewhere with this real quick. But I mean, the dude makes you know, he makes twenty million a year, twenty million dollars a year, and the show loses forty million dollars a year. The reason I bring this up is, you know, and those kind of shows their eyes go great show for you tonight, ladies and gentlemen.
00:01:26
Speaker 3: Are you going to start doing that?
00:01:28
Speaker 1: No, because they’re not. They’re not gonna be able to do it for long.
00:01:30
Speaker 4: Someone’s got to carry got to.
00:01:32
Speaker 1: Say it show today, ladies and gentlemen. Good thing we recorded in the morning. That’s what I said today.
00:01:40
Speaker 2: We should just try to have this air late night and you can be the new late night shtick thing.
00:01:45
Speaker 1: Yeah or yeah, or we do like a deal where we do some analytics and find out when people mostly listen to the show and just cater to that group.
00:01:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, ten am we do a traffic report.
00:01:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I want to steal the late night group. Wait till we get a band in here. I mean one of those late night shows had their budget. They had to get rid of their.
00:02:13
Speaker 2: Talented individuals like I’ve seen Phil on all kinds of instruments.
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Speaker 3: For the kids, flute, who plays the drums in here? You can bang on drums now.
00:02:24
Speaker 1: And then I got to get a suit and time because those guys, for some weird ass reason, wear suits and ties. I’ll never understand nighttime guys. Nighttime show guys were a suit and tie. Sports guys wear suit and ties. Which seems why are not just like you’re doing sports?
00:02:40
Speaker 2: What’s that we could have first, like make you a special suit for the show?
00:02:44
Speaker 1: Great show for you this morning, ladies and gentlemen. We have on this is great, This is like, this is this is mega producing on Krin’s Park. To bring this whole thing together, we have on the co owners of pardon me, Bishoffs, Yeah, the co owners of Bischoff’s The Animal Kingdom, a tax dermy shop in Hollywood, California, Ace and Ray. Okay, the shop here, I’m this is Krin’s intro. It’s great. The shop is three hundred years old this.
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Speaker 3: Year, one hundred and three.
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Speaker 1: What did I say? Yeah, history by that number, I’ve been married seventy one years.
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Speaker 4: Goes back to Spanish California.
00:03:35
Speaker 1: I’ve been married seventy one years and uh yeah, and I’m fifteen years old. Uh. The shop is one hundred and three years old this year. It’s known for creating prop animals for movies and films, but more recently they become famous as the go to spot for pet owners who want to preserve dogs, cats, birds, you name it, guys. Now the reason one of the reasons you boys are here, Ason ray Is because we have a sort of this is a little bit of a problem here because we have a like official tax dermist, John Hayes from Hayes tax Dermy Studio. Don’t you for a minute think.
00:04:21
Speaker 5: You’re jump out.
00:04:22
Speaker 1: Don’t you for a minute think you’re here to steal John Hayes’s thunder. But Karinn put it to John Hayes, do you do pets, to which John Hayes said, no, right, I’m not gonna get into why, but he’s he doesn’t do pets, and so therefore we had to bring you Fellers in to fill our pet niche but also just a totally different world. But I just don’t want you to start thinking that you’re like, oh John Hayes.
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Speaker 3: Now yeah, but like if you want, he’s.
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Speaker 1: Gonna get a hat that says he’s gonna get it. Hayes tax Dermy hat says better than I mean, you did bring.
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Speaker 5: A hot out.
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Speaker 1: So yeah, something to do with John Hayes. Listen, I don’t want to confuse. Yeah, we’re gonna show him a bunch of Hayes texts Dremy work and say like, how could you improve upon it? So from we caught Wendy we caught wend of h we caught Wendy guys because you were recently. Uh, there was a recent article in the La Times which which uh caught our fancy. Here’s a passage from the article. Ace Alexander, raise your hand.
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Speaker 4: For those of you listening.
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Speaker 1: The guy in the middle, who I like how they point out the article, who is forty years old? Are you still forty?
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Speaker 5: I’m still forty?
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Speaker 1: Okay?
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Speaker 6: Yeah?
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Speaker 5: Yeah?
00:05:43
Speaker 1: And Ray Masius am I saying that? Rightsius? Who is fifty five?
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Speaker 7: Can that one up?
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Speaker 1: The four still fifty five? Okay? Good, that’s show us how freshest article is right. The or the fourth owners in Bischoff’s long history have steered the company to meet the new demand, meaning pet stuffing, well not stuffing. We’ll cover details, describing each other as good friends. The two men dressed similarly. This is such like weird things that wouldn’t cover. The two men dressed similarly. Okay. They like to wear black T shirts and black pants, which one of you is not doing. That checks out, though. Let me see your pants. We’ll call your pants darkwashed. Why do they care about that?
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Speaker 5: I have no idea.
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Speaker 8: Yeah, if someone featured this place they’d say the same thing. It’s a lot of guys between the ages of twenty five and forty five wearing tallive and tan colored clothing.
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Speaker 9: It reads like a like a GQ feature, Like the first sentence is George Clooney takes a bite of his flying Yeah, we know who.
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Speaker 1: They usually do that too in the media, and I guess it pisses women off. But like even women politicians, they’re always as commentary about what they’re wearing, always like what are they wearing? What are they wearing?
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Speaker 3: So superficial, but.
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Speaker 1: This being the La times, I guess it’s important for them to point out that you guys wear you’d like to wear black clothes because that way the blood doesn’t show. Probably, it says you guys are so in sync, and we’re gonna have ninety minutes to find out if this is true. The article says, you’re so in sync you sometimes finish each other’s thoughts.
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Speaker 5: Damn okay.
00:07:32
Speaker 1: You start a thought, what are you thinking right now? You say right now, I’m saying right now, I’m thinking right now.
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Speaker 10: I think it’s uh okay.
00:07:42
Speaker 1: And then tell what he’s thinking.
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Speaker 5: That’s pretty well to be here.
00:07:45
Speaker 1: Is that what you’re thinking about that right now. Since taking over the business, both have transitioned to primarily vegan diets. Is it like the ice cream person that doesn’t eat ice cream anymore?
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Speaker 5: No?
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Speaker 11: No, no, See, for me, I just like eating I eat meat. I just eat clean meat. Be So it just means I like my grains and I like my meats. I don’t.
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Speaker 5: It’s not, you know, sound like vegetables.
00:08:21
Speaker 11: I I eat healthy, you know what I mean, like to my standards of what everybody has around idea of what healthy is depending on what you read.
00:08:28
Speaker 1: Okay, we’re just checking out the other time.
00:08:30
Speaker 2: Yea, was that inaccurate reporting because.
00:08:33
Speaker 1: Primarily you eat mostly vegetables.
00:08:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, he needs more towards the vegan die.
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Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:08:39
Speaker 10: Sure, once in a while. Weekends, I you know, I eat whatever I want so, but during the week I kind of keep it, try to keep it as clean as possible and for.
00:08:51
Speaker 6: My own you know.
00:08:52
Speaker 1: And I’m not here to tell you what to eat.
00:08:53
Speaker 4: No, of course, we’re just fact checking.
00:08:57
Speaker 1: Bishoffs used to be the tax dermist to the stars in the trophy area, but now we’re taxed dermis in the pet pet preservation area. Then you got to quote that I don’t agree with, but it’s probably true for your clientele. He says, people no longer hunt now they just love their pets, which I would mostly agree with.
00:09:20
Speaker 2: California, Los Angeles.
00:09:24
Speaker 1: So we asked them to come on and talk about their their unique the history of bishops and their unique niche. And assuming you guys are still in the movie business, Yeah, okay, cool, So we’re gonna we’re gonna talk about all that like an aspect of tax deurmy that you’re that our listeners are probably unaware of. But first in the news, Seth’s wife in the news. No, okay, let me find what we’re gonna talk about with Seth’s wife. Everyone knows Sess’s wife, should know. Sess’s wife is a Kelsey Morris.
00:09:56
Speaker 7: I was gonna say, does she have a name.
00:09:59
Speaker 1: Her name is Kel’s Morris. If you need to know, where’s my picture? So we’re right now Randon and I are recording our third volume of me Eater’s American History. We did The Long Hunters seventeen sixty three to seventeen seventy five, and that’s about Daniel Boone and the deerskin trade. Then we did The Mountain Men, eighteen oh six to eighteen forty, which is about folks like Jim Bridger and the beaver skin trade. And now we’re recording The Hide Hunters, which is about the buffalo skin trade, and that goes from eighteen sixty five, the close of the Civil War to eighteen eighty three, which was the last big kill. Kelsey Morris, the artist, has done all of our covers. She did a skull, she did it. We had for long Hunters, should be in here, somewhere, the original till I happened to it. Oh, it’s in the kitchen. For the long Hunters, she did us a white tailed deer skull with a bullet hole punched in his head. For the mountain men, she did us a rocky mountain beaver trapper, a mountain man. Where’s the where’s the thing we had a minute ago that was showing you.
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Speaker 4: In your email? It’s an email from hunter.
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Speaker 1: Oh that’s the problem, he said it to me. I can’t find it. Uh huh, must have deleted or something. Oh no, got it, got it, got it, got it? Where was I For.
00:11:44
Speaker 4: The listeners at home? There’s now an image on Steve’s computer.
00:11:47
Speaker 1: Well, I’m gonna show it. To the camera if you give me a second.
00:11:49
Speaker 8: No, no, but I’m just I’m doing the thing for the people that are driving right now.
00:11:53
Speaker 1: Oh oh that’s good. Yeah. For the mountain men, she did a rocky mountain, beaver trapper mountain. For the hide hunters. We did the thing that was most logical to us, because we want all the when there, when it’s all said and done, it’ll look like a collection. It looks like a collection. You’ll you’ll go on to eat apple books or whatever the hell, and you’ll be like, oh, this is like a thing like these all go together and they track through time. Well, we had her do a buffalo skull with bullet bullethole punched in his head, but that’s not where the hide hunters shot him.
00:12:32
Speaker 4: That’s a great point.
00:12:33
Speaker 1: So it’s a factual problem. They didn’t shoot him there. And we describe in great detail shot hide hunter shot placement, which includes some horrifying shot placement.
00:12:47
Speaker 4: Deliberate, deliberately horrified.
00:12:49
Speaker 1: What’s it was an example, I’ll give you an example. For the most part, they shot for the lights, meaning the lungs. However, we explained in great detail what a stand was like, how they manage their shooting. The objective was that you get forty to fifty of them in a pile. You didn’t want them scattered all over hell because it’s hard for the skinners. You’d want them in a pile. So they do a thing called a stand. When doing a stand, you had to be careful about the first one you hit. If you hit in the heart, it might run one hundred yards and that causes too much chaos. So they wanted to anchor them. No, oh, it’s just it’s terrible.
00:13:33
Speaker 4: They wanted them to wobble around.
00:13:35
Speaker 1: They wanted to, as they put it, make them sick. They shoot the wound, they would call it making them sick. So the first one or two they’d like to hit them right in front of the hips. Oh, Gutcha the only And we’re teasing Reeve because Reeve has been engineering for us and the first woman that made it’s a it’s a it’s a male heavy story, the story of the Hide Hunters. Imagine it tends to be for whatever reason, tends to be a lot of guys running around of the high Hunters. But we’re laughing with Riva because the first woman that we quote, the first woman that we quote in the whole project is saying it was so fun to watch Daddy and the guys shoot. They would shoot and make them sick.
00:14:22
Speaker 8: It’s like the most disturbing line of text in the whole thing.
00:14:26
Speaker 1: Then, so we’re like, reave a perk right up when a woman came in. But that was immediately disappointed. So they but they rejected our They rejected the publisher not rejected like it’s not a good word for it.
00:14:38
Speaker 4: They asked for alternatives.
00:14:39
Speaker 1: They didn’t like the skull because it looked too much like the other skull.
00:14:43
Speaker 4: With the hole in it, which is fair.
00:14:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and then these kind of things you can pitch a fit, but you’re burning uh what are you burning capital? Capital? Yeah, you’re burning capital.
00:14:56
Speaker 4: Do you want to spend it on that or on something else that really?
00:14:59
Speaker 5: Yeah?
00:15:00
Speaker 1: Or would you rather fight about if they come back and they’re like, hey, how come there’s only one woman and she’s crazy? Right, then you can then you can right fight about that. But so we don’t want to fight about the cover, So seth we we’re gonna settle up on the original picture. Yeah, so it’s not a hit to your family finances. Good, That’s what I like to hear. And now we’re gonna do this. Where do I aim at? Phil?
00:15:26
Speaker 7: I just directly in front of you.
00:15:29
Speaker 1: Can that camera zoom in though it cannot?
00:15:31
Speaker 9: But if I don’t know, if you can slack this to be random, I can put it on the screen on the TV.
00:15:35
Speaker 7: That’s even worse.
00:15:38
Speaker 1: Maybe hold this over there, Maybe hold this over there.
00:15:41
Speaker 7: Now it’s a it’s going to be out of focus.
00:15:43
Speaker 9: All these cameras are on manual focus, so they if you hold it right up to the camera, it’s gonna be fuzzy.
00:15:47
Speaker 1: How about that.
00:15:49
Speaker 7: I’ll put it on on the TV and on the screen.
00:15:53
Speaker 1: That’s one way to do it.
00:15:54
Speaker 8: Yeah, you’re surrounded by a bunch of barbarians, Phil, I’m sorry, Phil.
00:16:02
Speaker 1: That’s good news. It’s good news for Seth. Yeah, it’s kind of bad news for Kelsey because she was explaining to me that she’s a little bit in vacation mode right now. She is, but.
00:16:14
Speaker 12: She can really be in vacation mode when she’s actually on vacation to Ben keep her busy.
00:16:21
Speaker 1: And we’re working on that right now, right here in this all all damn day long. Here’s a little tidbit that we’re here’s just one little tidbit from Yeah, here’s one little tidbit from Hide Hunters. This is one of my favorite little tidbits, and it’s just packed full of freakish stuff. There’s a guy that there’s a hide hunter what was his name? Shoots a shoots a buffalo, goes up to skin it or shoots it, and it stands up and goes to attack them.
00:16:50
Speaker 4: No, no, is it Kelly Shoot?
00:16:52
Speaker 5: Yeah?
00:16:53
Speaker 1: I think it’s Kelly shoot. Shoots boll by Fort Betton, Montana. Shoots a buffalo, realize it’s not dead, gets his pistol out to try to finish it off. It stands up and comes at him. He’s in such a hurry to get on his horse and get out of there that as he’s jumping on his horse, accidentally shoots his horse in the neck. So now the wounded buffalo is chasing the wounded horse and they both die.
00:17:19
Speaker 4: And he walks away and Kelly walks away unscathed.
00:17:22
Speaker 7: Geez.
00:17:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, there’s a lot of seventy thousand words of this stuff.
00:17:27
Speaker 4: Rough for a horse man a buffalo.
00:17:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, seventy thousand words of this stuff, and it also explains a great detail, not just that, but sciencey stuff, a lot of sciencey stuff, like you never knew so much about mills, production, steam engines, industrial belting, history of guns as you will when you have this.
00:17:55
Speaker 7: Does this do you cover a bunch of different states?
00:17:57
Speaker 1: Where does this mostly take place? The main action we get into occurs. I mean it’s all over because there’s like, you know, one minute, you’re out in New England because of hemlocks and tanning, like how tanning worked. But the main action Western Kansas, North Texas. Oh, really, eastern Montana, the real big like I would have thought, like the Dakota’s now, No, I mean that’s in there. It’s real big. Shoot. Oh go ahead.
00:18:32
Speaker 8: I was gonna say, it’s like eastern Montana bleeding into the western part of the Dakotas and northern Wyoming.
00:18:37
Speaker 4: But like the heart of it.
00:18:38
Speaker 8: Is along the train tracks, and I mean because it all falls the railroad.
00:18:44
Speaker 1: The way to think about it too is that like we begin to start the hide hunt. The big final hide hunt didn’t kick in until the mid seventies, eighteen seventeen seventies, so at that point the population was kind of reduced down to these real core pieces of habitat, like the fringes. All the fringe was gone, do you know what I’m saying. It was just like you had these sort of like main population kind of like down like down the center of the Great Plains gotchah. By that point people thought of it. There was the Northern Herd and the Southern Herd, because all the transcontinental railroads and the Oregon Trail and stuff had kind of by that point cleared the middle out and pushed everything away. So people would talk about it distinctly like north of the Platte and south of the Platte. Yeah, I mean even in that era, there was the North Herd and the South Herd, and it was kind of that main those sort of like main population centers. And so the hide hunt occurs in two stages, like the Southern Herd, whose if you imagine, like the core of the Southern Herd would be the top of the Texas Panhandle, the Oklahoma Panhandle and then up into Kansas. From there it was sort of like that’s where you could still go and see a million animals. Oh really, yeah, like you could still go in lay eyes on a million animals in a group.
00:20:17
Speaker 7: And Northern Herd was smaller at that point, that’s a good question.
00:20:21
Speaker 4: Probably I believe it was.
00:20:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably a little smaller. Yeah, but you could still go to Miles City, Montana and and maybe not look at a million, but look at a lot. Yeah, look at hundreds of thousands.
00:20:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there.
00:20:36
Speaker 8: I mean in the early eighteen eighties, they’re they’re killing hundreds of thousands.
00:20:41
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:20:42
Speaker 1: Cool.
00:20:42
Speaker 12: Uh.
00:20:43
Speaker 1: Speaking of buffalo, here’s the thing we’ve been to it working on. I’m guessing Phil can’t see this. So our cookbooks, our wild game cookbooks, we always have jerky recipes in our wild game cookbooks were coming out with uh, buffalo jerky, bison jerky, whatever the hell you want to call it. We call it American buffalo. But then, just to this is the first thing we talk about in our hide Hunter series. The first thing we talk about is why the words bison and why the word’s buffalo, and which one is right. I’m a buffalo man myself. Randall Ten’s toward bison, but I’ve bullied him into being a buffalo man. I buffaloed him.
00:21:19
Speaker 4: It’s better for storytelling.
00:21:21
Speaker 1: I buffaloed him into being a buffalo man. There’s a whole long story here, Like there’s the fashionable number. One time we had thirty two million, forty million buffalo in our country. Now we got a half million. Of those ninety four percent are privately owned. We don’t get into this in our story really, but there’s a part of this, like private producers, private ranchers save the animal from extinction, and today they’re the ones that keep it like ecologically viable. Yeah, genetically viable and present on the landscape. Like when you’re driving down the road and you see a buffalo, nine out of ten, it’s because a guy owns it.
00:22:05
Speaker 4: It’s livestock.
00:22:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which is like I’d rather have. I’d rather have tons of wild ones. Politically, I believe in maneuvering for more wild ones on the landscape, Like we need to recover the species. But right now, it’s its strength comes from its popularity as a game meet, right as a wild meat, a farm raised wild meat. So we’re doing these jerky packs where we take the recipes from our cookbooks and cook them into American buffalo jerky. A lot of buffalo stuff going on right now around here. You guys have stuff with buffalo.
00:22:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, really, when’s that available? Oh, we’re teasing it.
00:22:52
Speaker 1: August eleven, twenty twenty five. I’ll be fighting a big o’ hallib it that day. August eleven, twenty twenty five is a launch date. We’re just launching in classic pepper more flavors to come.
00:23:10
Speaker 2: Stay tuned at a new site meet it or snacks dot com, Meet.
00:23:14
Speaker 1: It snacks dot com. Now is this is the is the next thing? Are we just into the show? Now?
00:23:24
Speaker 3: Yes? We can skip the stolen valor stuff.
00:23:27
Speaker 1: If you talk about it’s we’re talking about see because you guys, you guys occupy it like a unique niche and tax dermy. But we were talking about a guy saying like, like, at what point is taxidermy stolen valor? Meaning like if you if you hunt deer and you have a hunting cabin and you go buy a giant buck, a giant stuffed buck and put it in the tax in your cabin to a way that people visiting your cabin might logically be like, he got that buck, Yeah, but you didn’t you bought it? Is that stolen valor? And so we’re trying to weigh out like how this whole thing works. But you you don’t need to weigh in on that, because I don’t want you to alienate your clientele.
00:24:10
Speaker 11: No, no, no, I mean it feels it just depends. If they actually hunt and then they go purchase, they go purchase something huge from us, then it seems a little bit like stolen that. But if they’re just like stylists or house decorators, yes, for people who just you know, they’re not in the hunting world, then it might not be stole that.
00:24:31
Speaker 1: That’s where we landed. That’s where I landed. I landed. Is like, are you using it in the way that could be deceptive?
00:24:38
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that’s one thing? Yeah, right?
00:24:41
Speaker 4: Or is it?
00:24:41
Speaker 8: I mean I think like if it’s if it’s someone you know, if it’s like a friend’s animal or something like, you have a sentimental connection to it, like it has meaning to you.
00:24:51
Speaker 1: Other than I just took possession of all my dad’s texts for me, well four pieces.
00:24:54
Speaker 8: Yeah, I’ve got a buddies I’ve got a buddy’s fish in my garage that’s stolen valor.
00:25:01
Speaker 1: Your dad, like everybodys good passed away. I’m sorry, my condolences. What kind of fish? Is it? Huge?
00:25:10
Speaker 4: It’s a big it’s a giant snook.
00:25:13
Speaker 6: Dad?
00:25:13
Speaker 1: Actually is there?
00:25:14
Speaker 5: Okay?
00:25:14
Speaker 1: If no, no, no, if I walked into your garage and you weren’t home, what I think holy ship, Randa caught a big what was it?
00:25:24
Speaker 4: Snook?
00:25:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s stolen valor, but I didn’t catch.
00:25:29
Speaker 8: If I’m not home though, if you’re in my garage when I’m not home, but stole ship.
00:25:37
Speaker 1: I didn’t know Randall was a snook fisherman.
00:25:40
Speaker 8: Yeah, I guess. I guess in the absence of any context, you could jump to that conclusion. But most people walk in they say, oh, that that’s a like, where’d you get that?
00:25:49
Speaker 4: That’s a big snook? And I’ll go it’s it was my buddies.
00:25:53
Speaker 2: Does it look old like it’s it’s a it’s not a partritional it’s the original.
00:25:59
Speaker 12: I think, like if there’s been multiple times where you have given stuff away after a trip, like I always regret it, Like you’re your bear from the spring you gave I think he gave the chili.
00:26:12
Speaker 1: The skull, Yeah, I gave.
00:26:14
Speaker 4: I give him my shoulder mount to Chili.
00:26:16
Speaker 12: And Jili is going to office boil that up and put it on a shelf and be like, that’s from the hunt I was on with Steve.
00:26:21
Speaker 1: Steve got that or else it stolen ballant.
00:26:23
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think that is just like he’s gonna display that as.
00:26:28
Speaker 1: That man was so small that he stolen embarrassment. I wasn’t gonna bring it up. But you want to claim that, you can go ahead.
00:26:36
Speaker 6: Well.
00:26:36
Speaker 8: The funny thing about that snook, too, is when I walked into my buddy’s office one time and I was like, holy shit, that’s a big snook.
00:26:42
Speaker 4: Where’d you get that?
00:26:43
Speaker 8: And he goes, oh, he spread this out because my dad caught it, and then I got it when he died. And now I have that fish and I do the same thing all the way.
00:26:53
Speaker 1: Oh, here’s a tax to me question. Yeah, so this this I got this bear well over twenty years ago.
00:27:01
Speaker 7: Did you shoot all them holes in there?
00:27:05
Speaker 10: No?
00:27:05
Speaker 1: I only shot him one time? It was actually maybe that’s no, no, no, no, this has been This has been employed as a half dozen Halloween costumes. I mean, this has been through heavy is this? Uh? Here’s the thing I worry about. There’s nothing you can do to save this now?
00:27:23
Speaker 5: Right?
00:27:23
Speaker 1: Or how would you save it?
00:27:24
Speaker 7: For the audio listeners? What are we doing here?
00:27:26
Speaker 1: Oh? Sorry? Sorry? Phil. Up until this point it looks like a polar bear, but it’s a black bear and I and it’s it’s sun bleached. I keep I keep it out. We have at like an outdoor patio that’s kind of covered, and I keep it over the couch. And so over the years it bleached to like a polar bear. It’s my favorite thing. Really not my favorite thing, one of my favorite, uh specimens. I feel like it’s gotten wiry. It’s it needs a good shampoo.
00:27:55
Speaker 4: So I was saying, among other things, yes, uh.
00:28:01
Speaker 1: I want to give it a good shampooing. But I’m afraid if it gets wet, it’s just gonna fall apart.
00:28:05
Speaker 11: It’s gonna get stiff and fall apart on you. You agree, yeah.
00:28:09
Speaker 1: You can? What could I do? What could I? Is there anything I could do?
00:28:13
Speaker 5: You could oil it?
00:28:14
Speaker 1: I did, maybe maybe a little longer than what would you put on there in your professional opinion.
00:28:24
Speaker 11: You know, even Mackenzie oils is you know, there’s plenty of tacks from your companies that have oils. Just a leather oil, baseball glove oil, you know, any kind of old to just kind of seep into there a little bit, brush it on and then honestly ad lay a mesh and then latex it just because you see these tears over time you wear that thing, you pull it together. You need something to hold it together. Otherwise it’s gonna it’s gonna end up breaking on you eventually.
00:28:47
Speaker 1: So if I shampoo it, I’m screwed.
00:28:49
Speaker 11: Oh yeah, it’s gonna be stiff as a rock. I mean it’s it’s yeah, you can’t because you’re rehydrating it. So unless you’re gonna mount it, no, it’s it’s gonna inania meant it’s not gonna work.
00:28:59
Speaker 1: But I gotta say fundamental value.
00:29:01
Speaker 5: I could latex it, well, you’d have to.
00:29:04
Speaker 11: You’d have to lay like a little layer of mesh over it with adhesive, like flexible adhesive, got it, because that’ll create a bomb pretty much. It’ll be like a skin on the skin, just kind of holding it. So if you’re going to tear this, that holds it together, and then you can like to latex over that or back it with something else, whether it’s felt.
00:29:21
Speaker 6: Like a.
00:29:23
Speaker 4: Yeah, flexible.
00:29:28
Speaker 1: Do people ever bring you stuff like this in your shop all the time? Do you turn them away?
00:29:31
Speaker 7: Usually?
00:29:32
Speaker 10: If it’s like most of the time, we we really it’s not because we don’t want this, because we’re so basic with all other things that you know, we don’t really have the time.
00:29:40
Speaker 6: And then our guy like he mentioned.
00:29:42
Speaker 1: He passed, or your rug guy.
00:29:44
Speaker 10: Yeah, it’s like, unfortunately we haven’t found anyone yet, you know, so we we mostly.
00:29:52
Speaker 6: Turn them away.
00:29:54
Speaker 1: So if I came in and I was like, please you turn me away?
00:30:01
Speaker 4: How much capital you have?
00:30:04
Speaker 11: It sounds but then it just it pulls us away from bigger, more important projects, sometimes more important.
00:30:15
Speaker 4: This looks like, this looks like a passion project. Does it looks like.
00:30:20
Speaker 1: I wasn’t planning on getting this out. But and when you guys came in, we got to talking about just obviously you taxed there. I mean, it brought to my my main problem in life right now. But I’m going to pursue. You might think it’s crazy because it’s probably like a lot of money for what I’m sitting here with, But I’m going to pursue this mesh adhesive solution. Absolutely, what am I looking at? How much? How much money am I looking at to fix that up?
00:30:46
Speaker 5: I mean it’s not it’s just time, honestly. I mean for US.
00:30:52
Speaker 1: Four fifty oh oh, it’s worth to me. It’s my first pair, first pair. Yeah, how you wouldn’t guess it from looking at it. It was a huge bear. I couldn’t roll that sucker over.
00:31:07
Speaker 4: Should have seen this thing when it started.
00:31:11
Speaker 1: So did you guys go to taxi army school? How’d you how’d you you know?
00:31:15
Speaker 5: How do you get in just the old timers at Bishops? Yeah?
00:31:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you started out working there?
00:31:21
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure.
00:31:22
Speaker 11: So it was old an Larry, it was like my mentor, and he was part of the some of the original Bishops. He was there maybe the forties fifties, and he’s passed on. But yeah, I just came in and I was doing just music before that, and I friend of mine I was like, hey, Gary’s going out of town blah blah blah. He watched the shop and then I met Larry and he was mounting a crow in the back and he’s like.
00:31:46
Speaker 5: Hey, grumb here, yeah, show him out a crow. And I was like, it’s kind of.
00:31:54
Speaker 11: This is kind of interesting, you know what I mean. And it just kind of went from there.
00:31:58
Speaker 1: But you were working there though, I was.
00:32:00
Speaker 11: Yeah, I’ve been working there for like yeah, yeah, four or five months, and then Larry came in and then it just it’s just you know, I started picking things up working there, and it all started coming together.
00:32:12
Speaker 1: H ray, what about you?
00:32:14
Speaker 10: Well, a little bit later on, he mentioned that Gary wanted to retire and they wanted to sell out, so we just jokingly said, well, let’s jump in, let’s buy it, you know, because he knew the numbers, he was running the shop.
00:32:30
Speaker 1: So oh, but how long had you been there at that point?
00:32:33
Speaker 5: Well?
00:32:33
Speaker 6: I hadn’t.
00:32:34
Speaker 10: I had just been there once or twice to.
00:32:38
Speaker 1: So you guys were buddies. Yeah, what how were you guys? Buddies? Well?
00:32:43
Speaker 10: We met through music.
00:32:46
Speaker 5: What kind of music? Just rock?
00:32:48
Speaker 1: Like you guys like to play?
00:32:50
Speaker 10: Yeah?
00:32:51
Speaker 11: Yeah, we had different projects and then he had some songs and then I was gonna do some vocals on the songs. And then just through the years we became friends. And I think for whatever reason, we were driving by the shop one day and I was just like, dude, you got to check out the shop, and then he checked it. I was like like, wow, this is impressive. It’s like a natural history museum that you can be up close with.
00:33:09
Speaker 1: But you didn’t know anything about tax dermy.
00:33:10
Speaker 10: I mean, I knew about it, but I really, you know, it never crossed my mind like to you know, get into it. Oh my god, you know, like I want to learn or anything like that. I just thought it was so cool, like to see the specimen, you know, all these pieces out there and beautiful and uh it’s like he said, like stepping into a museum.
00:33:30
Speaker 6: So it was, you know, just so impressive.
00:33:34
Speaker 10: But uh, I never really thought about how is it done, you know, why is it done? Or ah, to really go deep into it until he mentioned that, you know, they wanted to retire and he said the numbers look good.
00:33:52
Speaker 1: So oh so he says to you, yeah, you’re aware that tax deurmy is a thing, right, and you’re like looking at it, and then A says, do you want to buy a text to what? You’re like, yeah, yeah, let’s do it.
00:34:10
Speaker 10: Let’s jump on it.
00:34:10
Speaker 6: You know a.
00:34:12
Speaker 8: Classic, it’s the classic rock music to textrmy pipe.
00:34:16
Speaker 10: Slippers Love.
00:34:21
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:34:22
Speaker 10: So you know, we just jumped in and we got into it and uh, just roll with the punches, you know. So one time we were about to close the deal, right and he said, hey, I’m staying late because you know I wasn’t really there yet. I’m staying late. I’m skinning a coyote and I said, hold on, I’m going there and let me do it. So I got just show up in the evening and started skinning a coyote. You know, he was kind of showing me around. So that’s kind of my first tryad. Actually, Yeah, do you know people.
00:35:00
Speaker 1: How many like what what what is this? Like bischofs at the time, what was the scale of the business? I mean employee wise, yeah, or just whatever you’re you’re cranking out? What kind of work?
00:35:10
Speaker 11: And I mean it’s hard to say because it just depends on the size of the project. So sometimes it’ll be like a big movie project and they want like an animatoric cow that’s laying outside with a lot of servos and stuff going on.
00:35:22
Speaker 5: So that’s what servos and just electronic.
00:35:25
Speaker 11: Yeah, so it’ll be like a you know, RV whatever those little letters and then so that project takes a lot more time, you know what I mean. So it just depends, and we’re doing a lot of things at the same time. So you’ll see amount being done, pet being finished, You’ll see.
00:35:45
Speaker 1: Like a hunting a mount being done, Yeah, pet.
00:35:47
Speaker 11: Being finished, a fake life sized bear that’s ten foot you know, being fabricated for something where they don’t want to use real fur whatever is you know, So, like we have a bunch of different projects going on at the same time.
00:36:00
Speaker 1: In a studio.
00:36:01
Speaker 11: In studio, yeah, yeah, exactly, but how many people were working there depends on project. Normally bring them in depending on what’s going on. Yeah, so on average, like six six is kind of like the are straightforward number, but then we bring in subcontractors. On electronics, there’s phenomenal sculptors Jesse.
00:36:19
Speaker 5: We got a lot of people who are just.
00:36:21
Speaker 6: Great makers and things.
00:36:22
Speaker 10: It depends on how big the project and how our time frame. So sometimes you know, the studios the movies are always like can you do you know, can you have it by Friday?
00:36:35
Speaker 1: And it’s like sure, his wife bar.
00:36:41
Speaker 8: Did you guys have like other than music? Did you did you work in like another? I mean did you were you in like a physical did you sculptor or painting or drawing or did you have a mechanical background.
00:36:54
Speaker 10: I have a mechanical background, Okay, yeah, yeah, So I used to I used to have a smoke check station in California. We do, you know, emission inspections for vehicles so they don’t pollute. So I had a license I was a technician, you know, so I was handy and I did I did go to school for the electronics you know, like low voltage stuff, so that kind of came in handy when it came down to U servos and mechanical stuff and electronics stuff.
00:37:24
Speaker 12: So the average day, you guys could be mounting a buck from some joe blow that brought a buck in that killed one hunting to like making stuff for movies.
00:37:35
Speaker 10: Yeah, sometimes he’s working on a on a you know, on that or a taxi in peace, and I’ll be working on a on a structure for a for a dead dog or something that they’re going to need, you know, like like so and then we do uh he does the final details. I’ll get it ready for you know, just for the final painting and rushing and details.
00:37:59
Speaker 6: So we kind of like switch over.
00:38:01
Speaker 5: It like yeah, so we got to see I mean like he could.
00:38:05
Speaker 11: Well, he does all the other stuff, you know, a lot of the that kind of stuff I do more than I do, like the finish worth, the airbrush and all that kind of stuff.
00:38:11
Speaker 1: But I don’t want to get a job down there man.
00:38:15
Speaker 4: Internship for a while.
00:38:17
Speaker 10: Yeah, it’s interesting, I mean it’s it’s challenging because every time, you know, you gotta we start from scratch and we gotta figure out you know, every time it’s a little different because they always want some different you know. It’s sure, it’s rare when we do like the same thing, you know, like the same uh kind of prop So they always want something.
00:38:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, let’s back up to music for one sec. So the Blizzard of Oz just died, you guys, Yes, Like, so if I just give me thumbs up, thumbs down, war Pigs, yeah good, Crazy Train.
00:38:59
Speaker 10: Yeah really good.
00:39:01
Speaker 8: Let the record show that to both of those questions they responded to.
00:39:05
Speaker 1: The affirmative with war Pigs was like a tentative. It was like they thought about it. But Crazy Train was like, yeah, that was a no brainer. Yeah, war Pisa, let me hate with this one. Him doing all them stupid reality shows. They didn’t thumb It felt like a thumb down.
00:39:22
Speaker 5: Yeah, I’ll go between.
00:39:24
Speaker 1: You don’t want to speak.
00:39:27
Speaker 6: Somewhat entertaining, but.
00:39:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, Osborne’s is very entertaining.
00:39:30
Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure.
00:39:31
Speaker 1: I never watched it. I could tell you a long fifteen minute story about Crazy Train that involved me and Craig Kemp from high school, but I’m not gonna just want more. It’ll be like an appendix, can we do? We should start doing appendixes on the.
00:39:49
Speaker 7: Show post credits scenes.
00:39:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, like an appendix to the show. You do the parts you couldn’t fit in it? Yeah? How does the how does the movie trust me? I want I want to get to like just the emotional aspects of the pet trade, but or the pet business. But like, how does movie business come to you? Do you? I mean, like like who who comes to you? Is it an agent? Is it a director? Like like how do they explain their vision?
00:40:18
Speaker 11: I mean it’s they just everybody reaches out, whether it’s prop master, whether it’s product. You know, anybody in the production will reach out. I mean at this point, I think it’s established enough. I mean even long before we were there, well Gary, Mary were, they’re the previous owners that they just give us a call. Literally, it’s just we pick up the phone, Bishops and they’ll be like, hey, we’re working on the show. We need a fake pig. Someone’s got to stab it. There’s got to be blood coming out the other side. We gotta drag it, make it flexible, make it heavy.
00:40:48
Speaker 5: The actor, does you know what I mean?
00:40:49
Speaker 11: And then and then they’ll be like, but we need it in two weeks, and then you gotta you know, you gotta figure it out.
00:40:58
Speaker 10: And then we tell them, yeah, we need at least two weeks, and then they’re they’re still working on it. And then five days go by and they give us a green light. So for the same day, Well, they go back and forth and figuring things out.
00:41:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you able to like, can you name some films that people might have seen some of your stuff in?
00:41:18
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure. We did West Road, We worked on land Man.
00:41:21
Speaker 11: Yeah, let’s let’s done a lot of Yellowstone stuff, The Night, all the nineteen twenty three, A lot of the Tailers and stuff we definitely worked on.
00:41:29
Speaker 5: I was just in what the snakes for? I forgot.
00:41:33
Speaker 11: I was just I mean, the thing is, by the time the shows come out, I don’t even know what it was for.
00:41:37
Speaker 10: Yeah. Sometimes we don’t even know they showed. We just have the production company name and we don’t know.
00:41:45
Speaker 1: You never you don’t like follow along? No, I mean out of your life? Are you never watching the show and you’re like.
00:41:50
Speaker 10: Oh, yeah, that’s what we find out. We be watching some Netflix and oh, ship, that’s that’s you know, that’s.
00:41:57
Speaker 4: All blood comes out of that pig going left to right.
00:42:01
Speaker 5: That’s it.
00:42:03
Speaker 1: So do you often because of the because of the rules in filmmaking. And I know it’s not a hard and fast rule, but there’s like there are way you know, when you started seeing once upon a time, you start seeing like no animals are harmed in the making the movie. Does that really? Like how does that fit into your work? Meaning if you have an old specimen it was already dead for another reason, are you able to use it or does everything have to be synthetic? No?
00:42:34
Speaker 5: No, So yeah, it’s just pretty much you didn’t kill it for the purpose of the film.
00:42:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
00:42:39
Speaker 11: So if we had an old hide for example, like even we’ve had donated highs from like the World Conservation Center, say for example, when they naturally pass, they’ll you know, they’ll like you guys can process because otherwise we’re just gonna do a commute vibration. Ye, So we’ll say the hide and we can use that hide. And it’s not you know, we didn’t kill it for the purpose in the film. We just had the hide.
00:42:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like in a movie when they’re eat a steak, right exactly, they didn’t go out and yeah, that.
00:43:08
Speaker 5: Same.
00:43:13
Speaker 1: So you guys don’t like go get the go, get the rifles and what’s gonna happen? Hit me with the hit me with the pig. One. Okay, so they want there’s a pig they need to pick. They want to pick. Oh, I was just watching the other It was a It was a Corsican movie. I can’t remember the name of it. Anyways, in it, they got a pig hanging there.
00:43:34
Speaker 3: Okay, I saw that.
00:43:36
Speaker 2: Is it like a gangster like it’s like the Fathers. The father is involved in like like local mafia and then it’s like.
00:43:44
Speaker 1: The corse Can Mob.
00:43:46
Speaker 3: I forget the name of that film.
00:43:48
Speaker 1: Either way, In it, they got to pick. They show up, there’s a pig in the truck. Pretty soon the pig’s hanging there. So you get a call about a pig, like, let me just let me give you a fake exam because you already brought up the pig. Let me bring up one. Like I say, I’m doing a movie. A guy the protagonist hits a deer at night with his car and it’s a key part of the movie that he hits a deer at night. So when you a deer. We need a he needs to hit it. It needs to be that there it is on the road. There’s gonna be quite a bit of focus on the deer because of the plot. How would you where do you start? Like, how would you think about that problem?
00:44:30
Speaker 11: I mean that’s probably an easier one because there’s a lot of deer hides we have. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean it just truthfully, I mean, it’s not something super exotic that you’re looking for, you know, and then we just see the hide, see what they want if they needed to move or be flexible.
00:44:44
Speaker 10: So we’ll probably start with two of them for for the for the purpose of you know, you’re gonna shoot it, you get a frame when when he’s gonna get hit by the car.
00:44:54
Speaker 12: Right, That’s what I was gonna ask, Like in a scene like that where there’s like a standing deer, a deer like flying through deer, and then like a dead deer.
00:45:01
Speaker 1: So that we would probably multiple deer.
00:45:03
Speaker 6: Yeah, there’s there’s multiple deer.
00:45:05
Speaker 10: See if you’re going to get out of the car and then drag it somewhere, and obviously it has to be flappy, kind of freshly dead killed, you know whatever, So you need a flappy one, so you would need a couple of them, at least two of them.
00:45:17
Speaker 1: And when you’re making it look like obviously you got to make it look banged up.
00:45:21
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure, you got to do that. Blood, the guts, the whole.
00:45:24
Speaker 11: We do like silicone, so we’ll make MOLDI wile scold pieces and then lay silicone paint that up. Then you can put blood over that and then it just looks gruesome when you when you go up to it, you know.
00:45:36
Speaker 2: When it’s floppy, what are you stuffing it with? Well, so we is that a trade secret.
00:45:42
Speaker 10: It’s kind of a secret, but we try to keep it, you know, the structure or the anatomy as close as possible. So that’s kind of we learned that, yeah, you know through a lot of the ones that weren’t so good. So we learn that we we need to have the anatomy kind of you know, certain parts need to be like really more structure, structure firm than than Yeah, it’s interesting.
00:46:11
Speaker 5: It’s kind of dips in the shoulders.
00:46:13
Speaker 6: Yeah, and they head obviously hot.
00:46:15
Speaker 2: Like a new kind of a new kind of mount I know. John Hayes does like soft coyotes, and we have a soft mom can.
00:46:23
Speaker 7: But you want right he does.
00:46:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I’m just wondering, like, you know, who knows?
00:46:30
Speaker 2: Maybe you want a different kind of you want to floppy floppy. I don’t know Roan at home that you’ve just gotten Tanzania.
00:46:38
Speaker 5: Sure.
00:46:39
Speaker 12: Yeah.
00:46:40
Speaker 1: Oh, by the way, I know a guy. I know a guy that has a full sable and a full rone hide. Okay, so if you get a movie call, oh, definitely you get a movie call, come.
00:46:52
Speaker 4: Talks, and he might be willing to trade them for a mesh backer.
00:46:57
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, I mean like for ationally done, fleshed and salted everything down to the nut sack. Wow, ready to go, No salt, just keep me in mind. So let’s say we do this deer that we’re gonna do this deer thing as I described, And I don’t want to pry, but I’m like, hey, what, uh what should I budget for this? Now? Don’t don’t just like like, are we talking? I don’t want to pry. Let’s put this way.
00:47:36
Speaker 3: Let’s put this one talk about in the number of figures.
00:47:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, let’s put this way. Yeah, I go and say, hey, I just killed a nice buck. I want a full body a mount of my buck to display in my house, and I wanted to look like the second before I shot it live and well beautiful. And then I come with the same deer and I say, hey, I want to look like I just ran it over? But bad? Which of these projects is more expensive?
00:48:07
Speaker 11: As long as you bring it and you give us a good amount of time, they would both be you know, I mean, it’d be cheaper to get you a busted up looking thing.
00:48:14
Speaker 1: It is you got to make all the latex.
00:48:19
Speaker 11: But we already have all the molds and everything for it, so we youat know, I mean, and we do it so often that it’s just like.
00:48:26
Speaker 8: Yeah, and you’re probably not doing a ton of detail work with something like that.
00:48:32
Speaker 5: We just throw dirt on it. If you want it really much.
00:48:38
Speaker 1: Then you built when they read their does it item for dirt?
00:48:45
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:48:46
Speaker 1: So uh, there’s that business which is very different. You had traditional taxidermy, which people can’t understand that how in the world, like in Bischoff’s history, how did how did the pet?
00:49:05
Speaker 3: You can continue?
00:49:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, in company history?
00:49:08
Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
00:49:11
Speaker 1: What was the moment that someone said, like we’re laughing about Cranny asked John Hayes, did you pet John Hayes says, no, what was the moment in Bischoff history? What Okay, tell me the name of the animal.
00:49:23
Speaker 5: It’s not called it’s Bishops.
00:49:25
Speaker 11: Yeahs is the name of the company and the animal kingdom is just like the slogan that goes with I got.
00:49:30
Speaker 1: At what point in Bischoff history was it? The answer is yes.
00:49:36
Speaker 11: Well I think Roy Rogers trigger was was done at our shop?
00:49:42
Speaker 5: Really yeah, I mean that was a pet and.
00:49:45
Speaker 1: Roy Rogers horse.
00:49:46
Speaker 11: Yeah, Everett mounted it. Yeah, at our shop many years ago.
00:49:52
Speaker 1: My god, that is incredible.
00:49:58
Speaker 5: And also a buck on the yeah as well.
00:50:04
Speaker 4: I mean if you walked up on that, I’d kick it. You’d have no, it’s like wake you would have.
00:50:11
Speaker 8: Let let the record show that there’s now a dog, a stuffed dog?
00:50:16
Speaker 1: Is that?
00:50:17
Speaker 10: Aug, it’s a frenchie.
00:50:19
Speaker 8: There’s a there’s a stuffed frenchie on the table that is uh sleeping.
00:50:26
Speaker 1: And it looks and very real.
00:50:27
Speaker 8: Yeah, it’s got wrinkles. And you got a picture of me sitting here, Randal. Yeah, who’s hard?
00:50:34
Speaker 1: Is this?
00:50:35
Speaker 5: That’s a client center? Actually?
00:50:38
Speaker 7: Do that’s that?
00:50:38
Speaker 1: Dog’s hard? He wanted his dog’s heart.
00:50:41
Speaker 11: Yeah, smile, you’re saying that so how do you how do you do that is a freeze drivers.
00:50:50
Speaker 4: I had a question about that.
00:50:51
Speaker 1: I had a lot of questions drying that up and eat.
00:50:53
Speaker 5: It technically, I mean, not what we injected with.
00:51:00
Speaker 8: The strange part about the heart to me is like if I took my dog to you and said I want my heart, and obviously we can’t.
00:51:08
Speaker 4: You know, these are your clients that we don’t. But like when they get it back to like, oh, I’ve never seen that before.
00:51:14
Speaker 1: You know, I’ve seen my heart. You ever think about that? You never get a good look at your own heart.
00:51:20
Speaker 10: Yeah, well they’ve seen it done. You know, they’ve seen the sample, so they get a good idea of how what they’re getting.
00:51:28
Speaker 4: So yeah, that.
00:51:30
Speaker 7: Is I could see Tracker, oh yeah, getting done like that.
00:51:33
Speaker 1: And it wouldn’t be that different than the way it is now. Yeah, it just kind of later.
00:51:37
Speaker 8: I mean, yeah, I was gonna say, I spend when I’m at home, I spend ninety five percent of my time around sleeping dogs, and.
00:51:46
Speaker 1: You can spend and I.
00:51:50
Speaker 8: Could never tell you that that wasn’t a live dog. Is there’s nothing bit of.
00:51:54
Speaker 1: Work that’s freeze dried.
00:51:57
Speaker 11: Yeah, it’s a it’s a hybrid. It’s a yeah, yeah, we do a little bit of everything. It’s like it’s like a weird yeah.
00:52:07
Speaker 1: So what wow?
00:52:10
Speaker 8: What is the freeze like? Could you explain the freeze drying process? I mean, I think most people are familiar with like standard tax dermoy. You’re you’re tanning the hide, you’re putting it over a mold. Then you’re you know, molding and painting and.
00:52:25
Speaker 4: Stuff like that. But what is the freeze dry product? Like, you start with a dead dog, what do you do?
00:52:31
Speaker 6: So we prep it?
00:52:32
Speaker 10: Obviously we got to do some skinning in our case, you know, all the organs and fatty teach who has to be removed because those things don’t freeze right well except you know obviously if you do it simply. But so we prep him. We we actually cast mold out of their body so we.
00:52:56
Speaker 6: Have the same the perfect same body.
00:53:00
Speaker 1: So that’s how you get to so you know where to end up.
00:53:04
Speaker 10: Yeah, so, uh, but the head, the skull is still it’s all there is intact, you know, the legs, all the skeleton structure.
00:53:14
Speaker 1: Like that leg or freeze dry good because there’s just nothing to.
00:53:17
Speaker 11: It, right, It’s just fats and oils is what makes it difficult in the freeze dryer, so you got to get rid of it pretty much. Fats and oils just don’t freeze dry. Okay, Yeah, that’s the biggest thing. And then we sometimes we’ll three D scan and then digitally print, you know what I mean, some of the body portions and stuff like that, because we were big on three D printers and scanners, because we’ve got quite a field them just for the film industry.
00:53:37
Speaker 1: Huh.
00:53:38
Speaker 11: If they want like a quick paw that matches something, we can three.
00:53:42
Speaker 5: D printed, you know what I mean and then figure that out.
00:53:45
Speaker 11: So we’ve messed a lot of different you know, I mean industries into the pets. Yeah, who’s uh, whose dog is this? This is? This is I don’t know if he wants to be named, but it’s a it’s a class you know it’s here.
00:53:59
Speaker 5: Yeah, yea, yeah, that’s incredible.
00:54:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really, it really is.
00:54:07
Speaker 1: Dude. That dog looks like it’s laying there sleeping.
00:54:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I’m getting all emotion.
00:54:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, think of all the moments.
00:54:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, think about your own.
00:54:15
Speaker 1: Time, thinking about when he’s alive. Doesn’t look like that? How big of a dog?
00:54:20
Speaker 2: Like?
00:54:20
Speaker 1: Does the size matter?
00:54:22
Speaker 10: That’s obviously bigger dogs hits a lot more work and it takes a lot lower in the the actual freeze Riyo.
00:54:27
Speaker 1: You should see in dogs.
00:54:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, got it?
00:54:29
Speaker 2: Ye, great, great Dane and my new Finland is upstairs.
00:54:33
Speaker 5: So how how many pounds?
00:54:35
Speaker 2: But one, one, twenty and one thirty something, so.
00:54:40
Speaker 4: He’s calculating how much times.
00:54:44
Speaker 5: We just got one working up an invoice.
00:54:46
Speaker 11: Yeah, someone came in from the East coast and it was about one hundred and sixty pounds.
00:54:51
Speaker 10: Yeah, so that’s the biggest so far.
00:54:55
Speaker 1: You want frozen probably, yeah, for sure.
00:54:58
Speaker 11: Yeah, Yeah, And that’s the biggest thing is people sometimes yeah, I mean they’re not It’s not like a hunter who knows what they’re doing the prep work for, so they don’t know to freeze. So you know there’s times where like they’ve you know, your morning.
00:55:11
Speaker 10: Morning and they have them out for twenty four hours.
00:55:16
Speaker 1: Or hair starts to slip, yeah late.
00:55:19
Speaker 11: Text Yeah, and age, you know, honestly, age, sometimes they lose a lot of weight.
00:55:24
Speaker 5: And we got to be honest with you.
00:55:26
Speaker 11: If you bring in a seventeen year old dog who lost X amount of pounds and you’re like, and you show me a photograph of when they were three four years old. We can add a bit of weight, but we got to be realistic about that.
00:55:38
Speaker 1: Goes in Hollywood, that goes on all the time. Get it.
00:55:42
Speaker 10: Try to make them look good.
00:55:44
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean if we had a band, this is where they’re.
00:55:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, huh, all right, I don’t even know where to begin.
00:55:57
Speaker 3: That’s just yeah, it’s wild.
00:56:01
Speaker 1: It looks great.
00:56:03
Speaker 6: Ye.
00:56:04
Speaker 1: Back when I was I don’t know where. I don’t know where things stand in text durmy now. But when I was younger, it would be like you just order all these molds. I mean like let’s say you let’s sa let’s say you do white tail deer. Right, you just order a mold right right. For the most part, I mean, like for most work. Be that you go on to tax dermy dot com and it’s like head to you know, shoulder mount looking right. But in your guys, there’s no.
00:56:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, that’s why you.
00:56:37
Speaker 10: Get into it.
00:56:39
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:56:39
Speaker 12: So there’s no forms, no bulldog, no French bulldog, no French bulldog, pounds sleeping.
00:56:50
Speaker 4: The cute little used to do.
00:56:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:56:54
Speaker 10: So that’s where I think that’s where the big difference is. There’s nothing pre made or or there’s nothing we can order that.
00:57:02
Speaker 1: It’s all from scratch.
00:57:03
Speaker 6: It’s all from scratch.
00:57:05
Speaker 2: There’s little heads on his little paw with a little like it’s like yeah, like.
00:57:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it’s the first is the first step. So he he never got you never sent this to get tanned.
00:57:20
Speaker 10: No, No, that’s where the freeze dryer kind of takes over. You know, the freeze drying kind of it’s like the tanning process, but it’s it’s uh, it’s done by the removing the moisture off and kind of it’s pretty much the same result. Yeah, I mean, obviously this is brittle, you know, it’s it’s it’s I mean, it’s stiff.
00:57:44
Speaker 1: Ye would you would you expect that this is this is this will last?
00:57:49
Speaker 11: Yeah, because we do a little bit of a weird hybrid thing. We make sure that if you just put this in a freeze dryer without doing kind of like the hybrid thing that we do with it, it wouldn’t last. Yeah, because fats and oils just there, they’re not going to freeze dry.
00:58:05
Speaker 5: It’s in edeman. You’ll two three years, you’ll have slippage, you’ll have yeah.
00:58:12
Speaker 2: But when you here’s are those like the actual ears?
00:58:16
Speaker 6: Yes?
00:58:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, No, inserting there. Yeah, okay, so when you thaw, when you thaw an animal out, is it is the clock? Like the clock’s ticking.
00:58:27
Speaker 5: Now right right? Yeah? Yep, mm hmmm.
00:58:30
Speaker 1: That’s so I’m just curious, like, without it, how are you hustling so much to wind up with something so realistic with like the proper folds in its neck and all that. Like once you thought out, you got to start working on it. I mean, yeah, so we you have how many how many hours days till it’s got to be kind of like done.
00:58:49
Speaker 10: So we probably we start working on let’s say, start on it today, and you get to a certain point and then you put it back in the refrigerator. So next day we pull it out, okay, and you continue until probably two days.
00:59:02
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean you got to you gotta keep it cool, you got to keep it frozen. So I mean, it’s not like you got to get it all done.
00:59:08
Speaker 6: Now, not at one.
00:59:10
Speaker 11: Yeah, like I could start on it, you know, have it pretty much ready to go. Maybe I got the mold and then I’m like, okay, wait, it’s Friday, you know, I want to go have a good week and whatever it is popping in the freezer. Then maybe Sunday night, come out, pull it over to the fridge by tomorrow morning, Monday mornings, you know, thought out and then we can go to the next step.
00:59:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, how distraught are people when they bring you their pets?
00:59:35
Speaker 10: Well, we get a variety of people. Some people are just normal, you know, not too emotional. Some people are really emotional. Sometimes even when they call we we you know, we understand. So we try to be in and you know, empathetic to their situation. And so that’s kind of a different Uh, it’s like we’re talking about going back from year to a.
01:00:01
Speaker 6: Pad to a fake.
01:00:03
Speaker 10: So yeah, yeah, so you’re on the phone with someone that wants a snake for a show, and then the next call is someone crying over the dog, you know.
01:00:15
Speaker 1: So it’s it’s a range of emotions.
01:00:17
Speaker 10: It’s a range of emotions. And also when they come in, you know, we have people from the studios come in checking hey and want when I look at your crows and they’re going and then we got someone bringing on you know, their pets. It’s it’s it’s a very contrasting.
01:00:31
Speaker 4: You know, different energy.
01:00:33
Speaker 6: Different energy with different clients.
01:00:35
Speaker 11: Yeah, so we made a little like there’s like a little side pet room, like almost like morning when you bring pet in, you go to this private room and you kind of you know, you can sit there and take your time, just so it doesn’t take away from your experience. You know, I don’t want a studio person to come in and just like, hey man, how’s you going?
01:00:50
Speaker 5: Yeah?
01:00:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah?
01:00:56
Speaker 7: Do you do you wash the hides on those dogs thorough?
01:00:59
Speaker 12: A lot of If I did my dog, I’d want to smell like my dog, like kind of half rocken.
01:01:13
Speaker 1: Uh what this is? This is gonna be a tricky one, Like I don’t want you guys to damage your business or anything. There’s got to be right, Like people are gonna have expectations and then they’re gonna come in, you know, and you gotta be like here it is, yeah, and then they’re gonna respond that seems to me.
01:01:37
Speaker 5: Fraud.
01:01:38
Speaker 1: That seems to me. That’s got to be a tricky moment. You gotta be having your fingers crossed. Well, they’re gonna be like, oh perfect and not some other emotion because they’re because again it’s emotional.
01:01:52
Speaker 5: It is it’s different.
01:01:53
Speaker 10: Well, so far we haven’t had a experience, so we’re pretty confident. So now when people come in and pick up their pets pretty confident, there be happy.
01:02:02
Speaker 1: Oh dude, violin this dog, I’d be thrilled. Yes, I don’t know some bit slept like that, but I’d still.
01:02:08
Speaker 5: Well, you take your if your pet sleeps a different way, you you know, we just.
01:02:14
Speaker 1: Because people got pictures that are dogs.
01:02:16
Speaker 11: Yeah, and I always say like one to three pictures. Sometimes they’ll send me like an album one thousand, So which one do you want? YEA one for the body poss Yeah, oneion if.
01:02:31
Speaker 12: You guys did my dog would be super easy because when my dog sleeps just looks dead anyway.
01:02:38
Speaker 1: So just be like, just make it look like a dead dog.
01:02:41
Speaker 7: Can we get it between As and Ray? Just for like a really nice clean shot of it. We’ve gotten some good shots, but not not the whole body or anything like that.
01:02:47
Speaker 1: Just for the audience. It’s okay to slide it. I don’t know if yeah one handles and yeah yeah oh even the bottom show the bottom of that thing.
01:02:57
Speaker 5: Yeah, wow, wow, wow damn because you can’t run.
01:03:03
Speaker 1: How that dog looks great.
01:03:06
Speaker 4: It’s great, It’s it’s really kind of spooky.
01:03:10
Speaker 1: How that makes me want to get our dog stuff?
01:03:12
Speaker 4: Yeah?
01:03:13
Speaker 10: See that’s the thing with people.
01:03:19
Speaker 3: Killed.
01:03:20
Speaker 4: Difference is you want to get them stuff today.
01:03:26
Speaker 10: Yeah, so people, it’s not for everyone. You know, some people of course, you know, like they have a negative reaction to the actual aspect.
01:03:35
Speaker 1: Of you’re dealing with the fraction.
01:03:41
Speaker 6: Yes, and but people don’t realize like when they see.
01:03:44
Speaker 10: The final product, when the final outcome, it kind of change their perspective on how to look at the actual you know, ah process or the or the or the just the thought of you know.
01:04:00
Speaker 11: And then also we do have that we have a bunch of other options, so like a common person will come in. We have an acclamation machine for example, so you can just do the ashes, and we have an artist that can get you a custom portrait.
01:04:12
Speaker 5: We can do the podcast.
01:04:13
Speaker 11: So a lot of people go for like the generic normal kind of preservations, and then some people do like a partial preservice.
01:04:19
Speaker 5: Some people just want to scull bronze.
01:04:20
Speaker 1: Did you just say a podcast?
01:04:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that’s a podcast.
01:04:27
Speaker 1: Thought that’s why. Yeah, yeah, oh, just like an imprint for him exactly.
01:04:32
Speaker 11: We do it like bronze, you know, podcasts or I mean, and then some people want to scull, you know, they want like a bronze skull. So we’ll do that as well. Really everybody has. I mean that’s the way the heart came about. One person asked for.
01:04:46
Speaker 1: Like vincent price or something wanted that, like I.
01:04:49
Speaker 11: Can’t even remember who the first person, yeah it was, but then it’s it like somehow other people start to know about it, and then we just said, well we might as well.
01:04:56
Speaker 6: Same thing with that what the pond remember someone?
01:04:59
Speaker 10: Yeah, just you know, oh my god, I would just love to get his spot, Like okay, well we’ll do it.
01:05:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, but unless it has that yeasty smell. Yes, I mean for me dogs.
01:05:13
Speaker 8: Yeah, I’m wondering about like me, because there are there are certain animals I feel like out there, like wild animals, game animals that when you taxidermy them, they don’t ever really have like the full magic. You know, they’re dead, yeah I know, but like this, like like if you saw a mountain lion like that, or I’m sort of wondering about like the bleed over between this freeze dry technique and what we think of as traditional taxidermy.
01:05:43
Speaker 1: Like why are people not doing well? I guess they do because I remember I used to sell otters to a guy that would freeze, dry them, and sell them a long time ago.
01:05:50
Speaker 4: That would be wild.
01:05:54
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean you can do can be I think the biggest thing out. Yeah, some of the chambers, a lot of the free drive chambers just aren’t too huge, so you got a size issue. And then also like the amount of space that you do. You know, we could fit fifteen of these these guys in one chamber. If we fit in the mountain line, We’re gonna charge you a lot of money for that mountain line to sit there four months in the freeze.
01:06:16
Speaker 5: Driver could have done four of these guys, four of these guys.
01:06:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, what takes this film up your real estate yet? Squirrel?
01:06:24
Speaker 4: Yeah? Cool?
01:06:24
Speaker 5: Yeah, we free drives.
01:06:25
Speaker 11: I mean I think it would great, like if you have like a carical cat or whatever, you know, like I think, because you’d have the skeletal structure in there, and I think that’s what messes up those mounts a lot of times.
01:06:34
Speaker 1: I got you.
01:06:35
Speaker 5: So the forms are great, but not as good as nat.
01:06:37
Speaker 10: So when you order the forums, they have no no detail. They’re just playing you know, from forms with no detail. So that’s why you don’t you don’t get the you know, the ring called the expression on the that’s.
01:06:51
Speaker 1: A really good point that like the the native structure, mean the skull, like the native structure is there, yes, and the pause like the structures there.
01:07:01
Speaker 11: Yeah, exactly, you got all the skeletal structure, and same thing with the faces.
01:07:04
Speaker 5: I mean, the face is the core of the mount.
01:07:07
Speaker 11: So if you were to do any kind of wildcat, I mean, it’s just it would make more sense to have the natural skull and everything, the natural ears. I mean I’ve done them traditionally, but it’s just your sculpt and now it’s up to the sculptors, up to the artists, and it’s not up to the way he really was naturally.
01:07:24
Speaker 7: So that dog’s skull is in this mount right here, right yes?
01:07:28
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:07:28
Speaker 5: Yeah. Wow.
01:07:29
Speaker 1: Did you guys married? Yeah, we’re both yeah married.
01:07:33
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:07:33
Speaker 1: What do they think about your line of work?
01:07:35
Speaker 10: Well, they love it. I mean they’re okay with it. I mean it’s it’s it’s it’s for us. For it’s interesting, you know, it’s it’s it’s fascinating. It’s fascinating. It’s not like even when people ask, oh, so what do you guys do? What is you know, it’s just interesting to spark a conversation just on the fact that, yeah, it’s so random, you know, a lot out there.
01:08:04
Speaker 2: I’m still fascinated by how you guys took over the business and even got into doing this at this level. You know, I mean, this is this, you know, this looks incredible, amazing, and it seems like all the techniques that you’ve developed to apply to this work is just you know, it’s not like you were, you know, apprenticing for decades, you know.
01:08:30
Speaker 5: And yeah, I think mind blow.
01:08:32
Speaker 11: I think it’s a lot of the just the random stuff, like we’re talking about that every day. And I think the studio has pushed us a lot. Yeah, because we’ve we’ve had to come up with so many ways like how I mean there’s times where we’ve sold a job and like now, how.
01:08:44
Speaker 5: Are we going to do it? Yeah?
01:08:47
Speaker 11: They were on an elephant needed in this, you know what I mean, Like whatever it is, I’m like, Okay, it’s going to take this long and make the mold.
01:08:54
Speaker 5: We got to do the fiberglass.
01:08:55
Speaker 10: We got it.
01:08:56
Speaker 11: So I think all those freak out moments, let us like piece it all together to be able to do something.
01:09:02
Speaker 1: Do you ever do work on on like time and material? Because you don’t know what you’re getting into.
01:09:10
Speaker 5: We do, but we yeah, I mean we do time.
01:09:13
Speaker 11: I mean we definitely we priced a lot of course material time also just what we’re getting out of the way because a lot of the students, like I said, there, it’s all last minute stuff. So it’s not it’s not like a hundred just drops off. Hey man, I’ll pick it up in six months, No big deal if you go seven months. Just make sure it looks great. Whereas the studio is like, hey, can I get progress pictures?
01:09:34
Speaker 5: Yeah?
01:09:35
Speaker 11: I get it, but like right now, I don’t want to send you a photograph of a phone form.
01:09:40
Speaker 5: Yeah, nothing like that it’s supposed to be.
01:09:43
Speaker 10: And then they’re going to try to change the you know, the oh my god I wanted you know, and they’re gonna kind of make changes while winning that we’re in the middle of the process.
01:09:53
Speaker 1: And then what I meant by time materials like in the trades, like when I work for my buddy Ronnie, we do jobs that we’re a bid, right, You’re like, it’ll it’ll be this and if we lose money or make money, that’s the price. Or some things that were more open ended, it’d be like we’re gonna work on the project at blank dollars an hour plus our materials, because we don’t know what we’re getting into, so you normally come back with a it’ll be this yes, and then you lose money or make money on how well you can fulfill. Yeah.
01:10:27
Speaker 11: I mean, at this point, I think we got a good idea of where it’s going to land. So if we say, oh, it’s gonna be whatever, sixty hundred, they’ll be like, okay, well yeah, and we kind of know we’re you know, what we’re making on it with how much the latex is, the phone is the whether we’re using natural hide or fil furs or whatever.
01:10:45
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:10:47
Speaker 7: I was gonna ask what other pets of you guys done other than dogs.
01:10:52
Speaker 6: Well, we do cats, hamstairs, rabbits. Rabbits beat goldfish, dragons.
01:11:04
Speaker 5: We didn’t do a goldfish once it was in the article. I remember that.
01:11:09
Speaker 11: Hamsters, Yeah, hamsters, little rats, little baby rats like there’s you know, sometimes the kid will have rat on naturally pass and then be like, oh my god, I love this and it will come in and we’ll do it if that’s what you want.
01:11:22
Speaker 3: I mean, Hollywood families, keep keep you.
01:11:27
Speaker 5: Pet Wallaby pat horses.
01:11:30
Speaker 11: We’ve done horses of course, Yeah, but now horses are done traditionally because it’s just you don’t want to freeze drive.
01:11:38
Speaker 10: Yeah, there’s no, there’s no.
01:11:40
Speaker 1: You guys did Roy Rot Your company did Everett.
01:11:45
Speaker 5: He was a tax rooms at the time he did it.
01:11:47
Speaker 1: You guys weren’t even born yet.
01:11:49
Speaker 5: He was amazing.
01:11:50
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, I think still out of you seum somewhere right.
01:11:53
Speaker 11: They sold in an auction. It’s I think somewhere in the Midwest now. I think it’s sold for like a quarter of a million.
01:11:59
Speaker 5: I don’t know.
01:11:59
Speaker 1: Something. Have you ever done a pet cow?
01:12:02
Speaker 5: We did it. Yeah, we do that every once in a while. We do the headed cat.
01:12:07
Speaker 11: Yeah, that’s a two headed cat that was natural, that was still born or whatever it was.
01:12:10
Speaker 5: We did that for somebody as well.
01:12:12
Speaker 11: A lot of longhorn, you know what I mean, and just your natural like you know, they’ll keep the hide and then we’ll just do the head mount.
01:12:18
Speaker 1: Well. How many pieces are coming out of your.
01:12:20
Speaker 5: Studio every year? I don’t know.
01:12:23
Speaker 1: Is there something out the door every day?
01:12:25
Speaker 6: Yeah?
01:12:26
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
01:12:27
Speaker 11: Pets, oh my pets. And I think we have rentals too, so we have. So that’s another weird thing. Yeah, so somebody will come in and then we have a big short showroom with everything you can think of. So we have a bunch of fake stuff, we have a bunch of real stuff. So you can come in and you’ll find like a line pole that’s hinged where it’s I’ll swipe. So if you’re working on a commercial for whatever and you need that, it’ll just be like, oh, perfect, that’s what I want. Boom, pick it up. We’ll ring you up, you’ll bring it back. It’s a weak rental back off, that’s all it is.
01:13:00
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:13:01
Speaker 1: How many employees you got now it’s like six seven seven okay, yeah.
01:13:07
Speaker 4: And then a list of subcontractors.
01:13:09
Speaker 3: Yes, that just seems incredible.
01:13:13
Speaker 1: Explain the subcontractor thing. There’s like guys out there to have these particular skill sets, and what are they doing when they’re not doing the work for you?
01:13:20
Speaker 10: Well, they work for other studios, so they’re like constantly either you know, one studio to another.
01:13:29
Speaker 1: And that doesn’t cause problems for you.
01:13:32
Speaker 6: Well no, not really, because we have you know what, we have a.
01:13:39
Speaker 10: List of many so if one’s not available, we go to the next one and eventually things will work out.
01:13:45
Speaker 1: Give give me an example, of give me, give me example, give me example of a guy that’s not on pay, not on staff, who you call yeah for special assignments, like well, I don’t understand.
01:13:58
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:13:58
Speaker 11: So like David Gross, phenomenal sculptor. Okay, right, so he he will. I think he was the one who sculpted I think the snakes for Yeah, I think it was yeah for what for Landman? So he digitally sculpted the snake, like the whole snake was digitally sculpted. He sent us the file, so he worked from home on that thing on the computer. He digital sculpt the whole thing. To our measurements, to everything. We went back and forth. He sent us a file. We three D printed the file, made a mold out of it, silicone casted the snakes that they’re flexible, but wiring or whatever they wanted to do in them. And he’ll float around. So then he’ll just he’ll do projects for another studio. But these are fect studios that he mostly works with, Okay, so it’s like Hollywood studios where they’ll call him and now he’s got a sculpt for the new whatever film that’s coming out, you know. So he just floats around. So for us it’s not like, oh, they’re taking our sculptor.
01:14:50
Speaker 5: It’s no. I mean, everybody can do what you do. You know, that’s cool.
01:14:54
Speaker 2: I didn’t get to that episode yet and land Man, I just started watching it.
01:14:57
Speaker 3: So Philly Bob Thornton.
01:14:59
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I remember those snakes.
01:15:03
Speaker 1: I watched that one. You guys ever do a black mamba?
01:15:08
Speaker 5: Black mom?
01:15:09
Speaker 1: Here’s and kill Bill. There’s a black mamba in there, but it’s alive. But then there’s like, obviously some of you guys work is not your work, but someone’s work is in there.
01:15:18
Speaker 11: Might have been Gary at the time. Yeah, yeah, I’m not sure.
01:15:22
Speaker 2: I have to ask you about cloning, which I saw on your website it says inquire about cloning.
01:15:31
Speaker 6: Yeah, so.
01:15:33
Speaker 10: We don’t obviously we don’t do that in house. But there there’s that company in Texas. It’s called vi Agen.
01:15:39
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, so this company in Texas called ViaGen.
01:15:42
Speaker 1: We we take them.
01:15:43
Speaker 11: They’re amazing, I mean, they did great work, So we take the samples. We’re just affiliates with them. We help them out and they help us out. So Cline will come in. The most important thing that is, you can’t freeze the pet. So the pet will say your pet naturally passes away and you wanted to clone them. You can refrigerate them, but you can’t freeze freeze the pet because it’ll crystallize a sample and then won’t be able to.
01:16:03
Speaker 5: Get the DNA.
01:16:04
Speaker 11: So that’s that’s one step that sometimes people kind of skip up on and then they won’t be able to do the cloning. But we just take five samples, so it’ll be channellly a couple from the ear, you know what I mean, small little samples and put them a little vials and we overn ad them to them. But because if we’re doing the full preservation, we need to take those from specific hidden spots. So sometimes when the vet does it, they do it from like the top back, and then we get the you know, and then they want.
01:16:30
Speaker 1: To preserve their pets dimple, Yeah, it’s like.
01:16:33
Speaker 11: And then they take huge samples when you only need like tiny little samples because they’re not thinking about the preservation. They’re just thinking about getting a good sample. So we take them from like the like for example, if I was to take from here, I had to go from like the inner hip.
01:16:45
Speaker 5: You can’t see it.
01:16:45
Speaker 11: It’s already tucked the inside of the ear really deep in the ear canal what you can’t see it, you know, areas like that.
01:16:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, have you ever done a pig getting suckled? Bal it’s a little piglets.
01:16:58
Speaker 5: We do do the little peg within.
01:17:03
Speaker 1: I’d like that. Hey, you know, we have a big old pig getting suck but we have.
01:17:07
Speaker 2: Two fetuses in the freezer.
01:17:09
Speaker 1: You should give them to those guys there you go.
01:17:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, Steve killed a pregnant sow in Texas a few years ago and then we vac sealed a couple of the Yeah we still.
01:17:26
Speaker 5: Do you people come.
01:17:27
Speaker 4: In just to gawk.
01:17:30
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:17:31
Speaker 11: Yeah, it’s tough because you’re in the middle, you know.
01:17:36
Speaker 5: I mean, it’s working, but it’s you know, it’s nice.
01:17:38
Speaker 11: It’s a compliment because people just want to Some people go into town and be like I heard about this place, and I’ll just run around. The thing is nothing’s roped off at our shop. So you can actually walk up to the polar bears, to the tigers, to the lions, and you know, just hang out with them, take a photograph with them whatever. It’s not like a natural history museum where you’re roped off with a scene in the background. Like now you can actually come in and feel what a bowler bear feels like.
01:18:03
Speaker 1: I’m surprised you guys can pull this off with only six or seven people. I mean, who answers the phone?
01:18:09
Speaker 10: It’s between him.
01:18:11
Speaker 1: You guys are like, yeah, well, we’re.
01:18:13
Speaker 6: Working on everything.
01:18:15
Speaker 11: So it’s I mean, we’ve had we’ve had some front desk people, but it’s difficult because they go into their spiels so fast sometimes that there’s a lot of there was a lot of relay, you know what I mean between like everything where especially when when they wanted a customs say, for example, and it just takes so long to get somebody trained up to really take on that position of knowing how to because you’ve got to be creative on the spot. They’re gonna be like, hey, this deer’s got to get hit, but he’s got to have a hinge and his arms got a twitch at the end, and we need it like by Friday.
01:18:46
Speaker 5: So what do you got?
01:18:48
Speaker 11: And then you know, the front desk is just gonna be like my first day.
01:18:54
Speaker 1: You know, I’m new here. Let you go get as.
01:18:58
Speaker 4: Anyway ordering a pizza?
01:19:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see that.
01:19:04
Speaker 11: So because of that, I’m like, you know what, just I’d rather just picking up be like, hey, yeah, we’ll have it by Friday. It’s this much, we’ll do it with this whatever, servo will make a little clamp thing for it.
01:19:13
Speaker 5: Whatever. Yeah.
01:19:16
Speaker 10: Yeah, So it’s kind of it’s it’s we need to train someone, but it’s gonna it’s gonna take months. You know, we tried, I mean, and it’s it’s it’s very difficult.
01:19:27
Speaker 1: So at this point, if you had to, like if you had to pursue one path, the film business or the pet business, like which what are you more in love with?
01:19:42
Speaker 10: Well?
01:19:43
Speaker 5: I love what the studios consistency of.
01:19:46
Speaker 1: But what’s consistent Well, it used to.
01:19:49
Speaker 11: Be the studios, but then the strike starting to happen, then COVID started happening, so that that kind of made the industry go up and down, and then you got CGI, you got a I.
01:19:58
Speaker 5: Yeah, I see.
01:20:00
Speaker 11: I think at this point the smart move would be leaning towards this the you know here, towards this here, towards the studios, because it’s.
01:20:07
Speaker 5: Fine and you’re just doing cool projects.
01:20:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I can see that.
01:20:10
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:20:11
Speaker 1: Do you feel that the pet getting pets stuffed or tax dermy or what tax dermy? What do you what word do you guys use, Like, what is the sort of line the graph line on pet preservation? Well, it’s not, there’s no way it’s stable.
01:20:32
Speaker 10: No, well, I mean it’s actually pretty, it’s consistent and ground outside.
01:20:38
Speaker 1: And the last it’s a graduate.
01:20:41
Speaker 10: It’s last five years, it’s been significantly Okay, Okay, Yeah.
01:20:47
Speaker 11: I mean I think people think of the old ways of doing it because we got I mean we have mounts at the shop that were done dogs, I mean from the thirties and forties, these bad plaster just.
01:20:57
Speaker 1: Like newspapers coming out of the you.
01:21:00
Speaker 11: Can see Selthier just kind of like wire poking out the side and stuff. And I think people think of that. So I think until it gets ingrained in their mind that like you actually are going to get your pets to look like your pet, it’s going to take time for people to see. And I think it’s slowly starting to come out with social media and everybody being like, oh wait, actually that does look good.
01:21:19
Speaker 5: Yeah.
01:21:19
Speaker 1: Well yeah, And also people now like more and more and more not that you get your relative stuffed, but people now more and more act like pets are are people. Yeah, exactly, you know what I’m saying it’s like a much more of a trend right now to have a dog and pretend it’s like a person. But that’s but that does that falls apart because you don’t get people stuffed preserved.
01:21:42
Speaker 5: Some people do.
01:21:43
Speaker 1: Is that legal?
01:21:44
Speaker 5: I think I’ve seen it done a couple of times. Not in the US. Now we get calls for it.
01:21:48
Speaker 10: I mean, you know, we don’t know if someone’s called it, if it’s real or they just missing.
01:21:54
Speaker 6: With us, but they dust.
01:21:55
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, what do you say, just not our business?
01:21:58
Speaker 10: Not.
01:22:01
Speaker 11: I think there was a story of a girl who she cold, and I think she got it done. She was she had to get an arm amputable and she wanted to get a skeletal articulation of the arm.
01:22:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, people send us those pictures of their arm skeletons done. There was a guy had his finger.
01:22:19
Speaker 2: Done and his finger done and it was like the Michigan Hello, or it.
01:22:22
Speaker 1: Was he just had his finger on a pedestal. Okay, he had the stuffed preserved. But you don’t want to do that work.
01:22:29
Speaker 11: That’s not that way down. It’s just you know, we just having this is not in our radar yet.
01:22:35
Speaker 8: Well you think it’s you think it’s stressful to have someone come in and look at the pet for the first time and be like.
01:22:41
Speaker 1: Nailed it, dude, your finger, you know what, damn or your uncle if you had your uncle done. You’re like, I want him to look like he did when he was reading.
01:22:53
Speaker 8: And you’re like, just so you know, we’ve never done this before.
01:23:00
Speaker 1: Tell you though, I’m blown away by the quality of that dog. I mean all like I know, we’ve been like having a couple of laughs about stuff. I mean just from a from a I mean from a technical like a technical standpoint, that dog is incredible.
01:23:14
Speaker 8: The minute I the minute I saw it, it changed my entire perspective on the idea of stuffing.
01:23:20
Speaker 10: A pet, right, Yeah, that’s that’s like instant.
01:23:23
Speaker 1: What you don’t I guess what you don’t have And it’s and it’s probably it’s a it’s a trade off. It’s because it’s so perfect. You can’t get the soft you can’t get the feeling of having stuffed it. No, yeah, because then it’s not gonna you know what I mean. It’s like it’s either like is it gonna be soft and squishy or is it gonna look like absolutely like a like a dog.
01:23:50
Speaker 11: Yeah, sometimes people want to do like a soft version of their pet things. We’ll do it for television and film, but with a pet, it just won’t last. So I see we get requests for it all the time, and I’m just like, you can’t get the structure.
01:24:01
Speaker 10: Yeah, And I guess people kind of love the thought of, you know, having their kind of like coddly pet. Like you’re saying, floppy floppy. You know, it sounds good in theory, but yeah, when it comes down to the technicals and the durability and and and also looks, it’s not gonna look bad, you know what I’m saying.
01:24:25
Speaker 11: I think it’s these hips, like for example, like you got this with these hips that those ten highs that are sitting in this room right now, you’d have to soak them to get a good stretch to be able to get full hips right, to get a soft hand. You can’t soak them, So you’re never gonna get that stretch to get to what to get a like if you have those soft hands to keep it soft and pliable, you can’t get it wet.
01:24:47
Speaker 5: You know.
01:24:47
Speaker 1: Now you can see that bobcat back I wetted him and stretching back out. Rand or grab that bobcat.
01:24:52
Speaker 5: He’s pretty stiff now.
01:24:53
Speaker 1: Or it’s like it’s a trade off either you either want to get them back like I put them back on the stretcher boar. Yeah, but feel it you can tell oh yeah, oh yeah yeah bummer.
01:25:05
Speaker 5: So that’s the thing. It’s like, yeah, it looks like a too. There’s no structure. If you just stuff this for cotton mounting, you’re just like, oh, here’s a little look like.
01:25:13
Speaker 1: You got the wrong way, Randall, belly out, buddy, No show them spots. Yeah, it looks incredible. I would I would definitely see that. Like I get the point you’re saying. If someone knew that they could have and I never I’ve never seen them alive. But I mean I look at enough dogs over the years. If someone knew that they could have a dog look that good, that they’d be more inclined to do it because they’re probably picturing their mind, Like when you go into a pawn shop and there’s like crazy looking we did a whole calendar called fucked Up Old taxidermy, Right, they’re like picturing that I don’t have my dog. Bug Eye.
01:25:54
Speaker 8: Sydney used to always talk about getting her our first dog stuffed.
01:25:59
Speaker 1: Preserved, preserved.
01:26:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, well he’s he’s ashes now.
01:26:05
Speaker 8: But I always I would always say to her, you’re gonna walk in there and you’re gonna look at his lip, and it’s just gonna be like, you’re never gonna get that dog lip right, And you know you spent twelve years like messing with his lips and face and like, you know it, so intimately it’s got to look like that or else it’s just alienating.
01:26:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, my kid got a bear to spring, a nice bear, and I call him. Why did I call him about this? Oh? I know I was out of town, but I was talking to text terms and I’m like, here’s the deal. Everybody always gets them growling like a rug. It’s always that he’s got his mouth wide open. And I’m like, I’ve come to a p I’ve done the same thing, but I’ve come to appreciate the closed mouth rug because when you see bears, and I’ve watched great many bears, they’re generally not running around with their mouth. Okay, yeah that’s true. And I’m like, so you could have it look like all the teeth and everything, or you could take my recommendation and we could get him with his mouth closed. How do you want it? What do you think? He said, he’s fifteen.
01:27:19
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, of course.
01:27:23
Speaker 1: Have you ever done a pet in a in an aggressive posture?
01:27:30
Speaker 5: We got it.
01:27:31
Speaker 11: We got a request. And I can’t name his name. He’s a famous person, you know what I’m talking about.
01:27:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, he wanted his dog and it’s aggressive.
01:27:40
Speaker 11: He has a cat, but it’s somewhat of a wildcat, so I kind of understand it a little bit.
01:27:46
Speaker 5: It’s a domestic look.
01:27:47
Speaker 11: It’s like a Savannah cat mixed with I forgot savan of something else.
01:27:51
Speaker 5: And he wanted cat.
01:27:53
Speaker 11: Yeah, and he wanted it on a branch, but kind of aggressive, almost like it’s gonna pounce on something.
01:27:57
Speaker 1: Are you gonna do it?
01:27:58
Speaker 6: Yeah?
01:27:59
Speaker 5: Definitely? Yeah?
01:28:00
Speaker 1: Who was it? Well? Tell me what tell me the tell me the initials. I’ll tell you my initials are.
01:28:12
Speaker 8: I mean some of the charming pet cats is that they don’t like you, right, like some of the pet.
01:28:17
Speaker 4: Cats that they come in and run away. So I get it.
01:28:22
Speaker 1: But I would also picture just from a business standpoint, unless it’s cost prohibitive, Like I’m guessing people are going to be people that are emotionally attached their pet are going to have a looser wallet than someone that’s getting five or six things a year because they’re a big hunter, right, They’re gonna look at it differently. But I would picture that if someone wanted, like, like, I like river otters a lot, so I catch an otter. I would I could picture world in which I’m like, no, man, I want some bitch like that an otter. Are you doing that kind of stuff too?
01:28:58
Speaker 5: Yeah?
01:28:58
Speaker 11: Absolutely, I think we’re doing we’re doing I mean, it’s just a pelt, but a seal pelt, right now, that seal, that seal pelt. We’re doing a couple of seal pelts for the Mammal Care Center. So we get calls too from nature centers and.
01:29:11
Speaker 1: What are you doing with seal pelts.
01:29:13
Speaker 5: They just wanted to preserve it as in an exhibit a high yeah, yeah, like.
01:29:17
Speaker 1: A height like what’s hanging around in here?
01:29:18
Speaker 10: Right, But it’s going to be obviously freeze dry, so it’s going to be stiffing on a board, you know, like on a nice board.
01:29:24
Speaker 1: Freeze drud, yeah, yeah, freeze dried hide.
01:29:28
Speaker 11: You know why that because we wanted to keep the the fins beautifully intact. You know, I didn’t want to have to like recreate them in a poor matter where it’s not keeping the structure the integrity of it, so that we kept the fins the bottom fins aside fit you, I mean, and then we laid it out flat. So now when you go to see it, you get the real anatomy of the actual fin and it’s not just my version of it having not hung out with the seals.
01:29:56
Speaker 1: Can you hand that cat back over your mint rental? Yep? Sorry, Let’s say I had a cat and I, uh, like, I have a cat, and I just skin it and flesh it, okay, and I send it to you, and I don’t want to get it tanned. I just want to get it freeze dried. Is it all the same? Like, I just get it back and it’s freeze dried, and I can hang it up for the rest of my life on the wall, pretty much.
01:30:26
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you’d have to flesh it still, you know what I mean.
01:30:28
Speaker 1: I’m gonna send it to you flesh and dried.
01:30:30
Speaker 5: Yeah, it’s flesh and dried.
01:30:31
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, but you don’t want to salt it because we don’t we don’t know, Okay.
01:30:37
Speaker 1: No, everything we do we flesh it goes on a wooden board. Well needs a flip, but no, it’s like it’s just beam. Yeah, yeah, it’s like flesh and beam and then it goes to the tannery like that. Yeah, so does the world in which, like I said to you and I wouldn’t have any shrinkage.
01:30:53
Speaker 11: No, you wouldn’t have shrinkags. But it would be stiff. It wouldn’t be nice and flopping like this.
01:30:56
Speaker 1: Stiff are stiff now maybe stiff? Still? Yeah, stiff was a board.
01:31:01
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, you’d lose all the it’d be like these ears.
01:31:04
Speaker 1: So that’s not a good replacement.
01:31:06
Speaker 11: No, no, now you want to do it just a commercial tanner And yeah.
01:31:11
Speaker 1: All right, I was thinking about get excited for a minute there.
01:31:15
Speaker 8: I was thinking about different animals you get freeze dried, and I thought a big old.
01:31:20
Speaker 1: Beaver sitting there. That’s what I think. The tails haze right now is doing a big fifty pounder. Yeah he’s from the bust and with the bust, and really they want that big beaver done in a three point football stance. But it’s a hefty beaver.
01:31:39
Speaker 8: But I’m just trying to picture freeze drying the tail because there’s so much fat.
01:31:45
Speaker 5: But yeah, get rid of all that fat. You have to skin that tail out, tail out, get it all out.
01:31:51
Speaker 11: Take as much as you can, just leave, leave the best structure you can while still keeping the you know, removing all the making sure the integrity is still there.
01:31:59
Speaker 1: Is gonna laugh. Yeah. Now, I don’t want to pry, but but I’m gonna help me out. But not like other than the prime. I want to pry, but I don’t want to. I just like I’m sensitive of getting into it, like getting into big you know, Like someone’s saying to me, like, so, what do you how much do you sell a book for? Yeah, it’s like I don’t know, man, dude, it’s complicate question. I don’t know if they’re telling you, help me understand what I’m looking at here with.
01:32:24
Speaker 6: This dog, probably around the range of.
01:32:29
Speaker 1: That’s it. Yeah, No, yeah, it’s you kids told me eight and I would have been like it makes sense.
01:32:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought my mind went to ten.
01:32:38
Speaker 11: Yeah, three grand No, So it’s we that’s a lot of work, it is, but we we.
01:32:44
Speaker 10: Really know.
01:32:48
Speaker 3: Their prices.
01:32:49
Speaker 1: Oh, I don’t know all around, like, yeah, do you have competitors?
01:32:54
Speaker 11: Not necessarily, I mean there’s a guy on the East coast. He’s great as a friend of ours.
01:32:58
Speaker 1: You send businesses a way.
01:33:00
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, we’ve worked together.
01:33:01
Speaker 11: He’s freezed out some stuff for us as well before yeah before, you know, years ago he used to freeze that stuff for us as well. He’s the only other guy that really I think is really in the in the business, but he’s way out east. So it’s I mean, there’s there’s a lot of people everywhere. There’s business for everybody.
01:33:16
Speaker 1: That’s what That’s kind of what I was getting at with why I thought the price be more is because I thought the price be more because it’s there’s a little bit of a scarcity, yeah, or a special circumstance or whatever, you know.
01:33:31
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, definitely, I think, well, yeah, that’s.
01:33:35
Speaker 1: A very reasonable it’s very economical, economical dog.
01:33:39
Speaker 10: That’s why I think that’s why we have a high volume of pets, because it’s it’s pretty reasonable.
01:33:44
Speaker 1: You know, you’re not gouging, you’re not gouging.
01:33:46
Speaker 4: What about a hamster? What are we looking at?
01:33:50
Speaker 1: What?
01:33:50
Speaker 6: Twelve hundred, twelve nine hundred and twelve hundred bucks?
01:33:53
Speaker 4: Way more value in the dog?
01:33:55
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean the hamster is just it’s more such, just because you’ve got to be slip easy.
01:34:01
Speaker 1: Here on a hamster slips easy.
01:34:03
Speaker 11: Well because they thought so quickly, you know. I mean, you know, you got your son and whoever that was mooring this little hamster or whatever it is, he’s gonna he’s.
01:34:11
Speaker 5: Gonna be crying for a while you’re consoling them.
01:34:13
Speaker 11: And then by the time you bring the hamster in, if you didn’t freeze right away, then we gotta do the skin, and we gotta do everything. And sometimes is you know, you gotta be careful with the slip it. You gotta do it fast.
01:34:22
Speaker 1: Now some party, you some party when a parent comes in with a hamster and they’re like, little Jimmy’s so upset about his hamster. Some party you has to be thinking, uh, well, little Jimmy is just gonna have to get over it. But that’s bad for business. So you’re just like, sure, bring it in.
01:34:42
Speaker 4: You don’t have to say anything.
01:34:43
Speaker 5: It’s fun, no, but it’s you know, we get it.
01:34:47
Speaker 10: We get the attachment. Sure, you know, I have a dog.
01:34:51
Speaker 6: I’m attached and.
01:34:52
Speaker 1: You can do your own dog.
01:34:54
Speaker 10: Uh, probably something, you know, I’m not sure what, but I will definitely do something.
01:34:59
Speaker 6: You know, create some memorial for him.
01:35:02
Speaker 11: Really yeah, how about you yep, pets? Yeah, well I had a cat. It was eighteen years oldly he passed away. He passed away Memorial Day, just know yeah yeah.
01:35:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, but did you freeze it well.
01:35:12
Speaker 11: When he passed Yeah, yeah, it’s you know, and we have the acclamation machine. Thing is he was already eighteen, He lost a little weight, he wasn’t in his prime. So it’s not like even if I wanted to preserve him, like you know, and I will advise people of that as well, Like if you come in and you got an old boy who’s you know, not in the best shape, I’ll tell you know, maybe that preservation might not be the best.
01:35:32
Speaker 5: Thing for you.
01:35:33
Speaker 1: And hunting, we’ll say that would have been a nice buck next.
01:35:35
Speaker 5: Year, right, yeah, year years ago.
01:35:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.
01:35:42
Speaker 8: Do you ever have people who want to fix things on their dog? Like when I’ve got labs, so by the time they’re eight or ten, they’re covered in lumps and you can usually see them. The people come in and like, could you just smooth that big fatty bulge.
01:35:57
Speaker 5: On the side of his ribs the tumors?
01:36:00
Speaker 11: Yeah, you know, these are pets, So there’s a lot of that.
01:36:03
Speaker 5: There’s a lot of hair loss sometimes.
01:36:05
Speaker 1: You know.
01:36:05
Speaker 11: The hardest thing is actually because we make the studio side with the f first stuff, they you know, iv e marks from the vet because when they do surgeries and stuff, they shave. Yeah, so we got to do a lot of the hair transfer work for flock and work that we do for the studio fake stuff, and we bring that over to the.
01:36:23
Speaker 1: You can make it if a dog had a shave surgery, Yeah, you could try to get it back to where it looked right.
01:36:28
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:36:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that’s where we create the furd. He do that.
01:36:33
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, so we do you.
01:36:36
Speaker 1: How do you dye the fur? Like you got to take some hair and get it the right color.
01:36:41
Speaker 5: We having a ray of like a lot of fur and im it’s short hair.
01:36:44
Speaker 11: We do this flocking method with longer fibers, like like this dog for example, say that ear was slippage, there was some slippage, we’d use long fibers.
01:36:53
Speaker 10: We’d just flock it block it. It’s kind of electromagnetic.
01:36:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, feel like there’s would be so much information your guys heads that if all the people that worked there died, no one’s gonna walk back in there. And fired his business back up.
01:37:12
Speaker 10: Yeah, that’s what.
01:37:13
Speaker 1: I’m saying, Like a groad, like, if you’re a mechanic, everybody could die, you’re gonna find you know, other guys could come in and write, But on this I feel like the institutional knowledge.
01:37:23
Speaker 10: Yeah, it’s just like just all that junk.
01:37:27
Speaker 11: And that’s what’s difficult too, even for us to find the right hands when we want to bring somebody else on is you know, because sometimes like I don’t want to you know, we don’t want to be doing everything all the time, you know what I mean. But there’s times where I’m like, but it’s got but it needs to look a certain way. So until I could find that hand that can do and we have some great hands, but until I can find all the pieces to make sure like that the quality quality controls everything, it’s got to go out looking perfect every time, you know. So that’s you know, so yeah, there’s a fear of like we step away, who’s gonna if you did?
01:37:59
Speaker 1: Right now? I’m sorry ahead, So.
01:38:01
Speaker 10: That’s another kind of like a problem for expansion because we want to expand you know, we are expanding, we get whether we want or not.
01:38:09
Speaker 6: But the problem is sometimes.
01:38:11
Speaker 10: We’re so overwhelmed with so much you know, work, that it’s kind of we try to find, you know, like he says, the hands. But it’s very difficult, you know, to to to find that person that’s gonna you know, get it or or it’s in stay you know and like it obviously, because you kind of have to, like you know what you’re doing.
01:38:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you can’t.
01:38:35
Speaker 8: You can’t just tell them to go watch a couple of YouTube videos to learn no, some techniques.
01:38:41
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean it helps if they watch a video, but it’s all it’s all handsome.
01:38:45
Speaker 4: Very specialized.
01:38:47
Speaker 1: Where where do you look, like, I bet you’ll get from coming on here. You’ll get resumes from people do but you probably get resumes all the time. And but but if you had to go look like if you had to find a higher I mean, I would assume you’re going to look in the traditional tax Deurmy pathway, right.
01:39:04
Speaker 11: Yeah, Joe, I think, Yeah, I mean Joseph was a great hire. He just came in out he was moving from Arkansas to California, and he walked in one day with a photograph of all his mounts. Good guy, straight up, stand up dude, and he just he’s like look, check it out. Just moving out here. I’m gonna be out here soon. I think he was sad and he wanted to be a pastor. And now he’s in a I hope he’s a pastor in Iah. So he was there, He’s talking me, I’m gonna be here for four years if it’s okay with you. Here, here are my mounts. He was phenomenal, so talented.
01:39:33
Speaker 1: Great four years out of Arkansas.
01:39:36
Speaker 11: At Arkansas, stayed in Los Angeles, went to the Master Seminary or whatever it was, and then put in great work. And then we kind of taught him the studio side of it because he was he was more from the traditional tax tomy side of it. So it was like, but we got to rush this, you know what I mean, Like these are all you know, we do little tricks to kind of skip a lot of you know, because sometimes you gotta cut corners to make things happen for film that you wouldn’t do with like a Honting mount.
01:39:58
Speaker 1: Because of the deadline.
01:40:00
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:40:00
Speaker 11: So, but he was great, you know, but it’s difficult to come across people like that who have that talent, natural skill, integrity, interineity. Just you don’t even have to you just turn over and he’s already doing the right thing.
01:40:11
Speaker 8: And there probably aren’t that many people coming from taxidermy school that are like Hollywood.
01:40:16
Speaker 1: Right, that’s where Yeah, that’s the other thing is, you know, I’m sure there’s a lot of at least in our world, a lot of guys that are into taxi ermy, you know, are want to want to live in rural areas because they like to hunt. Frank that’s where a lot of their clients are because they’re doing hunting moons, you know, like like their bread and butter is white tailed. Do your shoulder mounts.
01:40:35
Speaker 11: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, well we’ll get our mounts, but we get a lot out of state. You know, people still ring stuff in a like Colorado, New Mexico Brooks. Yeah, but just you know, all around California, we’ll get some. It was a bit decent last year just because there was good rainfall, so it was a little bit better. But it’s just a little four keys for the most part.
01:40:57
Speaker 1: You’re not gonna but you’ll do you’ll do those too, yeah.
01:41:00
Speaker 5: Y yeah, yeah, yeah as well.
01:41:02
Speaker 11: Yeah, huh, how many hours you work a week depends well.
01:41:07
Speaker 6: Surprisingly it’s pretty pretty normal schedule.
01:41:10
Speaker 10: You know. It’s well, only when we have a certain project that is due and it’s it’s it’s going to require you know, weekend or maybe.
01:41:19
Speaker 6: Long days nights.
01:41:21
Speaker 10: It happens, but we try to keep it as normal as we can.
01:41:26
Speaker 11: Yeah, our hours are pretty much NIGHTE to form and Friday, which are short hours. But if there’s a big project that comes in, if it’s worth it to stay, it’s worth it to stay.
01:41:39
Speaker 1: And it’s really never.
01:41:40
Speaker 10: A night to four, you know, we say four, but you’re still there after, be there at five thirty, you know.
01:41:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you’re still able to keep some normal Yeah, with all that movie work, you’re still to keep a normal life.
01:41:53
Speaker 6: Yeah we tried.
01:41:54
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:41:56
Speaker 1: All right, man, what am I forgetting to ask you about you SHO would have asked you about trying to think.
01:42:05
Speaker 5: Freeze round fish? Now we don’t know the fish.
01:42:07
Speaker 6: That fish, no fish, I thank you pretty much.
01:42:10
Speaker 10: Got it.
01:42:13
Speaker 1: Has won’t touch fish either. Yeah, stuck on that.
01:42:20
Speaker 5: You know, they just you know what.
01:42:22
Speaker 1: He’s got, what he you know, what he does, he’s got what he does that he likes doing. And I think he was telling us. I think he was saying he’s not a fish man and fish text him is weird now because there’s no part of the fish.
01:42:33
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean.
01:42:34
Speaker 1: It’s just like like you could there’s there’s no part of the fish.
01:42:38
Speaker 5: Now.
01:42:38
Speaker 11: We have this guy, Robert, he was Roberts fish Mounts for years. I think he retired now, but we bought his whole old collection. So we have like a thousand molds. I mean you’re talking about.
01:42:51
Speaker 1: Keeping all this stuff.
01:42:52
Speaker 11: Yeah, we have a little warehouse up north, I mean outside of the super expensive area, sway up north out of Los Angeles, and there’s a sixteen foot whale mold. Yeah, like shark molds, you know, shark molds, I mean leather bag turtle like.
01:43:08
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:43:08
Speaker 1: Does she just walk into your warehouse? No? Non, just dig around looking for something you swear must be in there.
01:43:13
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, we have them all marks. So everything’s long.
01:43:15
Speaker 10: So everything it’s kind of a twelve is.
01:43:17
Speaker 5: Going to be silicone.
01:43:20
Speaker 11: Whatever the salmon you know section you know, so it’s that’s all marked up.
01:43:24
Speaker 8: One question I had earlier was what is your store look like? Is it in like in an industrial park? Is it on a street that people walk up and down? Like where’s the I’m just trying to picture in Hollywood. The text dermy shop, like do you get foot traffic?
01:43:43
Speaker 10: Do you? So it’s kind of it’s kind of are next to you. It’s kinda mostly industrial area, but then we have a pathway for bikes and people walk there to right in front of the shop. So yeah, some people. Sometimes we have the you know, the roll up door open. They could see from across the street and they just look and come in like spars you know, their attention, you know, so they like just walk in and check it out. So we do get some foot foot traffic. People don’t really walk out on the on the sidewalk, right there’s really nobody walking on the sidewalk, but they have that pathway to walk, so that’s where they.
01:44:25
Speaker 6: Yes, And there’s a we’re.
01:44:27
Speaker 10: Next to a city yard, La city yard, you know, one of those big yards where they keep the trucks.
01:44:34
Speaker 6: And and and then some other studios right there.
01:44:37
Speaker 11: Yeah, there’s there’s a lot of studios kind of around there. It is kind of like an artsy somewhit artsy area, but it’s not in the business.
01:44:42
Speaker 5: It’s not like in Hollywood.
01:44:43
Speaker 11: It’s Northalk, so you have a little bit more open in the more industrial space. And then and my buddy’s next door mary door gym, So it is like it’s like an m M A gym, which is easy because then I can go from here and I can go work out there.
01:44:57
Speaker 1: Absolutely, dude, I get over there every couple of years on to come in and say, yeah.
01:45:00
Speaker 5: Man, I would love to come check it out.
01:45:03
Speaker 1: We should have done this there.
01:45:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, we thought.
01:45:07
Speaker 1: We know, we kicked around trying to come to your place, but just like scheduling was kind of hard, just a lot of a lot of we’ said, a lot of travel this summer and stuff going on, but our original intension was to record in your place.
01:45:19
Speaker 6: Well, next time.
01:45:20
Speaker 2: We’re there, we’ll just we’ll tack it on to a schedule and we’ll do another episode.
01:45:25
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, that’d be great. We’ll come out there and do a thirty minutes. Yeah, man, I’ll tell you though, I can’t bring it up enough. That dog is unbelievable, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, that’s cool. It’s a really nice I mean, like I said, you guys are good sports about having some you know, about having a couple of laughs. The Holy ship Man. The dog speaks for itself that’s why it’s it’s incredible looking.
01:45:52
Speaker 8: Yeah, We’ve had a lot of strange objects and things passed through the studio, and this is like there’s like a power to that.
01:46:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, dog, I wish you could leave that dog here, but probably not a good idea.
01:46:05
Speaker 10: It could work something out.
01:46:09
Speaker 3: Rental.
01:46:10
Speaker 1: Oh do you guys have uh do you guys have cats and dogs in your rental area?
01:46:16
Speaker 6: Yeah?
01:46:16
Speaker 11: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. Sometimes they’ll down and hide or whatever it is if they just.
01:46:21
Speaker 10: Yeah, the neighbors. You know, I got a neighbor’s cat that you know, died and he said, you know, take it. Maybe I’ll see it in a movie some someway, you know. Sometimes perfect it.
01:46:35
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:46:35
Speaker 1: Do you guys ever grab stuff from the side of the road that looks interesting?
01:46:38
Speaker 2: Uh?
01:46:39
Speaker 10: No, No, but usually it’s it’s really uh beat up, you know, it’s like run over and it’s guts everywhere, So it’s not Yeah.
01:46:49
Speaker 4: You just go to those inspiration movie work exactly.
01:46:53
Speaker 5: Photographing. Yeah, that’s gonna be this. It’s actually I think it’s illegal in California.
01:47:00
Speaker 1: It is, well, I don’t know, because a lot of states have been making it that you can there’s been an odd trend there’s there’s two trends that sort of surprise me and cultural hunting. Cult hunting, culture trends, that’s not the right word, hunting legal trends. One trend is to let kids hunt younger and younger and younger. Right, that seems that seems like counter than what would actually happen. You could picture that they would make it that they had to be older and older and older, like make it more strict. But there’s a tendency that let kids to let it be a family decision. There’s also a surprising tendency to loosen roadkill salvage laws rather than make them more strict. Interesting, you know what I’m saying, Like if you if you said to someone who didn’t follow this, like, do you imagine over the years it became more strict or less strict to pick up roadkill? They would go absolutely more strict because everything’s more strict. Sure always Yeah, so they like like our state where we’re at right now, used to I mean I would do it anyways. My friends are doing it anyways as civil like civil disobedience. I don’t know what to bring up, like rolls of parks, but like civil disobedience to like pick up deer and eat them, because you’d be like guilty as charged like a dead deer. The guy in front of.
01:48:22
Speaker 4: Me him, you know what’s the problem with Thatways, now.
01:48:25
Speaker 1: You can right, yeah, we’re our said, remember that whole area. I don’t know what it was a couple of years ago. It was like state after state Oregon. I think maybe state after state after state said Okay, if someone hits it and you want to put it to use, you just got a call, and which makes total sense, makes sense.
01:48:42
Speaker 5: I agree, because anybody, you think, anybody tries.
01:48:44
Speaker 1: To purposely truck it, that’s what you know, what they thought of here because here you have here, you have we have a lot of large like a lot of somewhat rare large mammals. And so there’s some that are exempt, meaning like take like a big horn sheep, a bighorn sheep, like a big mature big horn sheep ram is going to have a lot of value, would have a lot of black market value. And so they’re they’re they’re not part of the roadkill rule. It’s just the more common stuff, dear elk moose, like you know, more sort of like so you know, common animals, high food value, but they’ve pulled out some of the stuff that they don’t want to give people a reason to act like they got in their truck, meaning like, oh, I road killed a mountain.
01:49:35
Speaker 5: Go.
01:49:35
Speaker 1: They’re like, you road killed a mountain, go, So you can’t there’s no excuse to have certain animals. I think I’m guessing, but it’s like they don’t want to create a pathway for you to have certain rare animals in your possession by claiming that whatever happened to them. There’s probably some part of the thinking on it. The other part of it which is interesting here. I’m not sure if it’s true in other states. Take the whole thing. You can’t pick and choose. So our buddy Yanni, he had a road killed moose, big critter. You can’t gut it on the side of the road like when you take it, you take it. So you got that whole son of a bitch has to be loaded onto a trailer. You can’t just go get the parts you want. You can’t just get like the good meat and leave it laying there. They’re like, nope, holding moose, which de incentivizes some you know, you got to go get a flat bed trailer.
01:50:27
Speaker 10: Yeah, and a lot of help.
01:50:29
Speaker 6: You know.
01:50:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, they make it a little bit hard, but picture if not, you just jump out of your truck and pull the gourmet cuts and then you get like a butcher moose on the side of the Yeah, that’d make for an interesting drive. You know, you’re like watching dudes on the side of the road, watching dudes on the side of the road.
01:50:52
Speaker 5: Do that road chefs.
01:50:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, man, I’m glad you guys came. Man, it’s a lot of fun.
01:50:58
Speaker 10: Respect for all that.
01:50:59
Speaker 1: It’s such a cool business, so unique appreciate it. How often do TV shows call you guys wanted to do like a reality show about your shop?
01:51:07
Speaker 5: All the time?
01:51:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you say?
01:51:09
Speaker 2: No?
01:51:10
Speaker 1: Yeah?
01:51:10
Speaker 4: At the point, yeah, they just finish each other’s thought there.
01:51:15
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, good job, there was no you finished.
01:51:19
Speaker 5: She was right.
01:51:21
Speaker 1: So you get calls and they’re like, hey, we want to do a reality show and blah blah blah, people crying about their pets.
01:51:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, just about the shop and the whole thing.
01:51:30
Speaker 11: And it’s just the reality world is a is a wild world where they just infiltrate on your personal life so much. And I like to keep my personal life personal.
01:51:39
Speaker 6: Yeah, And also I think it’ll inhibit a lot of our you know, every day.
01:51:45
Speaker 1: You think.
01:51:47
Speaker 5: For sure it would.
01:51:50
Speaker 10: Kind of slow down our you know, production or process everything.
01:51:54
Speaker 11: So and then trade secrets like it’s been. The shop has been around since nineteenth too. There’s a lot of stuff that stays within those walls. So I don’t want to be the guy that exposes everything after over one hundred years of the company. But hey, guys, I want to make a little bit of money and show my face off so that, you know, and ruin the whole business.
01:52:14
Speaker 5: You know, it’s bigger than.
01:52:15
Speaker 4: Us on the pet side of things. It’s so sensitive it is. It’s like if you had a funeral home and something approach to.
01:52:25
Speaker 8: The other funeral home would probably get stricking a lot more clients.
01:52:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, you go get waivers for everybody. Yeah, you know, your your uncle’s part of a reality TV show. Can you shine your camera crew just sitting there for the paper. It’s just yeah, yeah, I could totally picture it. I’m not at all shocked that you guys get That’s got to be half your phone calls as people wanted to picture.
01:52:47
Speaker 6: Yeah.
01:52:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, well thanks for coming in again, man, I love it. We’re gonna come visit your shop.
01:52:52
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
01:52:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, I appreciate it anytime.
01:52:55
Speaker 1: Thank you, Krim.
01:52:56
Speaker 5: Yeah, we appreciate you.
01:52:58
Speaker 1: I mean, Krim books, all the guests, but this one, this.
01:53:00
Speaker 2: One was, this was it wasn’t my idea. I didn’t see that article first. That was Berkman.
01:53:05
Speaker 3: This is I’m really glad it happened.
01:53:08
Speaker 4: Trophy guests.
01:53:10
Speaker 1: That’s the way to the trophy.
01:53:12
Speaker 4: Yeah.
01:53:13
Speaker 1: And shouldn’t you ever wind up with a cat or dog that doesn’t have a home, we would be happy to take it off your hands.
01:53:19
Speaker 5: I’ll send you something.
01:53:23
Speaker 1: And I think maybe are you gonna send your dog down when it passes? I mean, I would be cool, but I don’t know. You got a couple of years to figure it out.
01:53:35
Speaker 7: Yeah, I got a couple of years figured out hopefully.
01:53:37
Speaker 5: All right.
01:53:37
Speaker 1: Man, Uh, if you get a box from Seth, keep it cold, all right. Thank you, Thank you,
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