What about butter?

[cameron2]

Has anyone tried melting butter and adding it to a lure or bait to get a thicker, stickier lure that will "smear" real well?

Butter is just cream and salt, so I would think it would also be attractive to canines. Any experience with it?

[mostinterestingmanintheworld]

Wiley Carroll used cows cream in some of his lure recipes.

Don't know why butter would hurt anything but I'm not sure it would add much either?

Joel

[k9]

I miss Wiley Carroll's writings.

[cameron2]

Only met Wiley once.

I was living in Utah back in the day and went to the Ely fur sale to observe and learn how to start one for the Utah Trapper's Association.

It was a cold, windy miserable snowy day in Ely -- typical weather there from September to May. Anyway, when I came into the building, there was sort of a little entry way, and there was an old guy sitting there, hunched over against the cold and nursing a cup of coffee. When I walked in, I nodded at him, and he said, "Young man! This coffee is stouter than stud piss in summer time." That's all he said.

I went into the main part of the building and someone said, "Hey, have you ever met Wiley Carroll?" I said that I hadn't but that I had always wanted to. He steered me back out to the entrance door where Wiley sat drinking his coffee and staring out the door at the snow drifts.

[mostinterestingmanintheworld]

Wiley was quite the old wiley,

Talked just like he wrote.

One summer Bill Ilchik, Wiley, and I drove over to the NTA convention in Colorado and he made us pull over and pull the guard hairs out of every dead porcupine for a hundred miles.

Maybe billcat will tell some stories if he sees this.

Joel

[billcat]

The porky guard hairs Joel was talking about. Old Willey was talking about the $3 an oz. price at the start of the trip. After we went through Grand Junction, we saw a flattened out porky in the highway (very narrow, a lot of traffic and a long way to the bottom). Could see some guard hairs sticking up out of the mess. Willey says, "Pull over, we'll get them and split the money when I sell them at the rondy". Old Willey dodges out into traffic 2 or 3 times and grabs all he can. Well, this senario repeats itself every few miles the rest of the way up to the rondy at Tin Cup. Soon as we get to the rondy, Willey disappears for about a half-hour. After a bit he shows back and hands Joel and I a dollar each along with the old Willey chuckle. He'd gotten an oz. of guard hairs for his death defying efforts and true to his word, split even-steven with us. Depression raised people put a value on a buck us baby-boomers can't appreciate. Porky guard hairs sold for almost $16 at Klamath Falls last week, maybe I'll start plucking them.

Willey gave a good recommend for me to the government trapper boss before I was hired. I was only a butt-headed kid. Found out later he just wanted to get me hired to see if I knew anything (not as much as I thought I did). Learned a LOT from him. He wasn't afraid of sharing.

I lucked out and got assigned an area just south of Willey's. Used to stop by his camp (an old ranch house) every week and visit, sometimes till way late at night. At times it got too late to go back to my camp and Willey would have me stay the night. 'Course I never had my own bag and would use one of Willey's. It had a coarse wool liner. After I'd shuck down and get in, I'd roll around for hours on that scratchy thing before I'd get to sleep. When I'd finally get to sleep, I'd wake up after fifteen minutes drenched in sweat and have to put my clothes back on for the rest of the night. Never did get a good night's sleep at Willey's camp. Joel spent a few nights there, too; both of us learning at the master's foot. Willey always treated us as equals, even though it wasn't so.

Willey had a boy a little younger than me, Glen. Glen wasn't tall, but he was built like a tank. In late summer, Willey would have him carry five gallon buckets of water about a quarter-mile up to some natural tanks in the rocks, so he could keep on catching coyotes when they came to get a drink. Glennie liked rain. Glen had a hell of a sense of humor and once saved a guy's life by lifting an engine that had fallen on the guy out the hood opening. Like I said, he was a tank.

Willey was a great letter writer and wrote to everybody. Some said, if a guy (anybody, new or old to the game) caught a coyote or lion, Willey would know. They might get a letter asking about their trapping methods. Willey would then try out what was suggested to confirm to himself whether or not it was a good thing or not.

Didn't realize how much I miss the old boy, till now.

Joel, pick it up and tell some Willey tales. Too bad we can't get Sam Henroid on here, he knew Willey best.

Bill

[thebeav2]

Use Vaseline or lard It will work better then butter.Butter can turn rancid on you. Just make sure you keep stirring as your mixture cools or what you have added to the lard will separate.I would believe lanolin would be a better choice.
Yep the first NTA convention I ever attended was the one In Colorado I had the pleasure of meeting Wiley.

Gary

[cameron2]

Bill:

I understood Wiley trapped and hunted the Ely country. If you were south of him, you would have been somewhere in my old neighborhood.

I grew up reading Wiley Carrol as a trapper, which he obviously was, but he was also a heck of a houndsmen. Looking back at some of his old photos and such, people don't realize how impressive his catches were because of where he caught game. I look at the lions he caught in the dirt in that White Pine country and just shake my head. That has to be some of the most miserable country to chase lions in year round like he did. Rocky as all get out; hot as a match head in the summer; cold as a mother in law's kiss in the winter, and always dry.

No wonder guys are still trying to get some of Wiley's old blood in their dogs.

BTW, I've always heard that Jim Buhler was Wiley's son in law. Is that true?

[billcat]

cameron,

Buhler wasn't Willey's son-in-law. His daughter is married to a guy in CO.

I think Willey always prefered the dogs and lions over trapping, though he was VERY good at all things related to critters. He hunted with the famous Lee Brothers for a while before he started working for the government. Even went to Centeral and South America after Jaguars. Said they are a real dog killer. The gov't made him quit chasing lions after his first bout with cancer in the late '60s and put him after coyotes. Some of the old timers told me he would get the dogs on a track and take off after them on foot. Sometimes be out for three or four days, sleep with the dogs at night wherever darkness found them. Just a loaf of bread for eats. All the old timers said he was the toughest guy in the country, before the cancer. Even he said he was never the same after the chemo and radiation.

Willey would drag roads with a cut down tree, then check in the following days for lions crossing.

Virginia Eldridge said he came off the mountain one day to the ranch on a bitter cold, windy day. Had been after a lion on Moriah for 3-4 days and was near starved and frozen. She tried to get him inside to get him warmed up and fed. He wouldn't come in because Joe wasn't home. She fed him outside, I guess hot coffee was enough to warm him up. Off he went after the lion.

Willey hunted most of the state of Nevada at one time or another during his lion career with the gov't. Knew where every pot-hole spring was, he'd been to all of them.

Bill

[billcat]

Joel,

Post up one of those pictures of Willey you sent me last year.

Beav,

Lanolin has always seemed best to me. It is water soluible and will self-rejuvinate the smells with dew or rain/snow. Vaseline just releases the smells that are on the surface, you've got to stir it up to rejuvinate once the smell dies down. Both get rock hard and almost unuseable at low temperatures. About 1/3 glycerine will keep them soft enough to use.

Bill

[cameron2]

I know Joe Eldridge.

I spent a winter out in that country trapping cats. Moriah, out as far north as Callao. Wild country out there.

I've got Wiley's book about lion hunting, and it has pictures of some of his jags in it. I've also got a DVD of an interview Wiley gave just before he died, talking about how he got on the government program after the war and how he became a government hunter/trapper. That was a smart move on his part.

[cameron2]

Here's one of Wiley's old outfits, abandoned out in the desert. It had a dog box up front under the horse's head, and a couple boxes to store gear and so forth. The date of manufacture on the trailer tongue is 1934.

[billcat]

Got to thinking on the way to town today. Willey always liked the colestrum produced by the first milking, rather than just cream. He used it mostly in getter scent.

cameron,

Where can I get a copy of Willey's DVD? Bet it's interesting. Willey always had a collection of old trucks stashed around the country, some with plates from other states. So the trapper bosses couldn't keep tabs on where he was at.

Bill

[mostinterestingmanintheworld]

Cameron, where is that old rig located if you don't mind telling? I'd like to go take a look at it.

Wiley's wife Alta gave me some pictures from the old days and I think that is what he was using in the picture.

I've got an old pack saddle Wiley gave me in the 70's. I was packing horse for the Forest Service in those days and Wiley told me about taking a barrel and cutting one side out, inverting it, and welding it together.

The inverted part fit over the pack animals ribs. Being metal traps wouldn't poke the horse or mule in the ribs.

First time I met Wiley I hadn't killed but a coyote or two. At the first set he asked me to set a trap so he could see how it was done.

Here was the greenest pup kid around and the old master was trying to learn something. Actually he was probably trying to guage what I knew so he could help me out.

Him and Bill and me went to Colorado a couple of times. The time at tincup creek we stayed in the trailer they hauled the shithouses up in. About froze that night.

I believe I might have been the last guy to see his son before he disappeared into the mountains of central Nevada.

Bill do you still have porcupines over your way? They have gone extinct over here. I think the lions ate em. Seriously.

Joel

[billcat]

cameron,

The picture sure looks familiar. Down in the Yuccas. Bet I've seen it and didn't know what it was. Willey must have had a good reason to leave it there.

Joel,

Not many porkies here. Catch 0 to1 per year and they are always at one of two locations. Three years ago Willis found a dead porky up the creek from town by the wier. 50 yards above was a dead lion with a face full of quills. Dave Baker had a lion trying to get in through his front window last fall. Dogs we raising hell when it was getting light out, he opened the front door and got the surprise of his life. Paw prints on the glass. 100 yards from my place. Got to play Robert Ruark after the wounded "lepard" in the bush. I checked all the brush patches and willows around carrying the 12 ga. loaded with #4 buck hoping for the charge. Felt like a kid again, pretending I was one of my heros. Two months later at the south end of town, the owner opened the door to go to work and here's a lion in the front yard. Their kid is about two years old and would be a nice snack. Wheeler is clear full of lions, bobcats are rare. Good National Park protection policy.

Went and found the bighorns the F&G planted last winter a week ago while I was breaking in the new 4-wheeler. There is a fresh lion scratch in every canyon nearby. Not a single sign of a bobcat.

cameron,

The bounty is for area 114, not 115 like I told you in another post, so bring your dogs and a loaf of bread and have at them.

Bill

[mostinterestingmanintheworld]

When I first trapped Northern Washoe in the mid eigties I was catching 30-40 porkies for 30-40 cats.

Diebold told me he figured he had to set a trap for the cat and one for the porkie.

Now nobody sees one any more.

Didn't use to be any lions in that country now it's overrun.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

Remember that lion that walked past the bar we were drinking in and killed Betty Baker's dog under her window that night?

Cameron you ought to change the name of this thread, it's not about butter any more. lol!!

Joel

[cameron2]

What's in a name?

That rig of Wiley's is over on the Pahrump side of the Spring Mountains. There's a dead end canyon there with a cabin and a spring in the mouth of it. The info I have is that Wiley spent some time down in that country one winter.

So the bounty area is Moriah then? I've all around that area, but up in there. I'm rehabing a knee surgery right now, but when I get my other wheel under me, I'll come up there and give some long tails the chase of their life.

Bill, I'll send you this DVD of Wiley's interview.

[billcat]

cameron,

I'd sure appreciate the DVD. I'll return it after I've listened. If you do make it over this way, bring two good knees and an extra. It's a steep, ledgy, rocky nightmare. That's why it doesn't get hunted much.

Yhaa, I knew I'd seen that rig before. I used to catch cats, G. fox and coyotes around that spring and canyon. Somebody built a new shack there in the over 30 years since I trapped there. Camped there 11 years ago for a few days. I started calling it " The Mad Trappers Camp". Things were pretty much abandoned then. Who knows what could be there now. The spring was running great guns, last I was there. Probably a sub-division there now. Sure wish that place were mine.

Joel,

If you want to go down sometime, let me know and I'll meet you in Tono-Patch. It'd break my heart if there is a new $3,000,000 house there though. Lots of good cat country around there.

Bill

[cameron2]

No problem. I'll send the DVD out on Monday. There are a bunch of other hound guys on there, but you can skip right to Wiley's interview. I wish it would have been done before he got so sick, but it's still pretty interesting.

Don't worry about Mad Trapper's Spring. The road washed out real bad last year, and now you can't get a rig within a mile of that cabin. The spring is still running real well, and last time I was in there I saw quite a bit of grey fox sign, so there might be some cats higher up on the hill.

[mostinterestingmanintheworld]

Bill,

That would be a good trip. Someday huh?

Joel