00:00:30
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to a me Eater fwop episode. This is the second fop we’ve done out of Alaska. The first flop we talked to a bush pilot who claims he’s not a bush pilot, and those guys are all gone now, so but a pilot that one would call a bush pilot who says he’s not a bush pilot was fop one. Now we’re gonna talk to a genuine sea otter skinner, Heather Duvelle, a k mosy kind of the last of the dying breed, or not the last of a dying breed, the new specimen of an emerging breed of.
00:01:03
Speaker 2: Sea otter hunters.
00:01:05
Speaker 1: And before you have a heart attack, Heather will explain why it comes that she is allowed to hunt and skin sea otters and why say, me or my son James here are not.
00:01:20
Speaker 3: Okay? So this setter is legally harvested because by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Agency, I’m able to participate and hunt marine mammals and work with their furs.
00:01:35
Speaker 1: So so you can hunt it, you can skin it, you can make stuff out of it. You can’t sell the hide hole, but you can you make and sell products from seotter hide right, the DNSST fur.
00:01:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s a DNSST fur out of any any mammals. So if you look closely, you guys thisater. You know, I host it off. But when you part their fur, that undercoat stays dry. So I brought a little piece of tanned fur, and if you dunk it under the water, you know it’ll look wet. But when you part the fur, that undercoats always dry, and that’s what keeps sea otter warm. They don’t have a fat layer like seals do not really like seals have a thick blubber. Seaotter depend on their incredibly dense coat and these unique properties, and they’re extremely high metabolism, which is why they eat so much. So this one weighs eighty two pounds. We weigh it, so this one would consume like twenty pounds of shellfish per day. Wow, So they have extremely high metabolism.
00:02:48
Speaker 2: He’s good for twenty pounds of shellfish a day, per day.
00:02:52
Speaker 3: So they can decimate an area pretty quickly when a group of them, you know, move in and damn. I start by removing the pause and you could see it on its pause here that has some scars from digging.
00:03:10
Speaker 4: That’s a paw in the world right there.
00:03:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, got some a little retractable closet of cat. Then I just go around.
00:03:23
Speaker 1: Okay, so you moved the front feet, move the foot at the wrist joint, you’re taking the back feet all the way off.
00:03:29
Speaker 3: Nope, I just cut around.
00:03:32
Speaker 2: And up like this, cut up the vent.
00:03:38
Speaker 3: And then same thing on this side.
00:03:41
Speaker 2: How many otters are you skinning the year?
00:03:44
Speaker 3: Last year almost two hundred and this year I got about one hundred and twenty so far.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: And what do you what number are you shooting for?
00:03:56
Speaker 3: Uh, I’ve maxim will keep the take. I’ve maxed my personal budget for tanning.
00:04:03
Speaker 4: That’s the limiting factor.
00:04:05
Speaker 3: This is my last one, okay until I could sell so some items and sell them and try to read because.
00:04:13
Speaker 4: It’s so expensive to get them tanned.
00:04:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s about one hundred and eight dollars apiece. If you send a large volume, you get a price break, and the price break is about one hundred and eight.
00:04:22
Speaker 2: I know you don’t retain the tail, yeah.
00:04:24
Speaker 3: So I’m not saving the tail, and I also don’t save the face.
00:04:29
Speaker 1: So in that way, it’s a lot different than normal skinny. Normal fur bears, a normal fur bear. You want, you gotta the tail in the face, they’ll they’ll call.
00:04:36
Speaker 3: It damaged, right, And we can’t sell whole pelts yep, so.
00:04:41
Speaker 2: You just want to use usable to you.
00:04:43
Speaker 3: I used to skin the whole thing and keep the face and tail on the pelt. But since it’s illegal to sell whole pelts, and it’s illegal for anyone who is ineligible through the Marine Mammal Protection Active pain one, they’ve gone missing when I’ve sent them off to tanneries. They’ve gone missing offal from a tannery I had used. So if they’re not whole to begin with, they’re less likely to go missing. And I haven’t had one go missing, sex we’ve had boxes of them go missing.
00:05:23
Speaker 1: No kidding, whole high if you even if you didn’t sell it but gave it to me, I legally wouldn’t be able to retain.
00:05:29
Speaker 3: This right, not a whole pel It has to be converted to what is called the authentic native handicraft that this is a mail. Yeah, it has to be sewn into something where you can’t make it whole.
00:05:48
Speaker 1: And how is your limiting factor in how many products you make? Because you make scarves hats, mintons, pillows. Is your Are you limited more by how many you can sew? Like how much you can sew? Are you limited by how much you can hunt?
00:06:06
Speaker 3: Oh? We’ve go out and hunt every day if I could, as many as I can whenever I can, because they’re trying to hunt to achieve some sort of balance in our ecosystem because there’s just an overabundant population of sea otters and we’re not able to harvest, you know, the shellfish that we used to anymore. But I prefer to hunt. I like to be outside on this, you know. And yeah, and I reserve swing for those late fall and winter months where it’s pouring rain, blowing sixty dark.
00:06:47
Speaker 4: Land.
00:06:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, my dad sharpened this knife.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: It’s so sharp, he told me he did.
00:06:54
Speaker 4: It’s sharp.
00:06:55
Speaker 2: It’s ridiculously sharp, he said, pretty sharp.
00:06:57
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:06:58
Speaker 3: The only other person that sharp my knife and got it razor sharp like my dad does as you. You sharpened my knife one time, and I was like, so I took this first cut. I was like, oh, because I got close because I cannot get my knives this sharp. But you and my dad are pros now.
00:07:19
Speaker 1: Just for people that are are. This is on video if you want to go check it out on video, but good chance you’re just listening.
00:07:25
Speaker 2: So, oh, okay.
00:07:29
Speaker 1: Heather has gotten the otter, cut around the base, cut around all four legs, cut around the base of the tail, open it up from chin down to chin to groin.
00:07:38
Speaker 3: And we skin this on a table flat. Well, typically at home, i’d use my tailgate. Okay, so you don’t hang them hang it deep.
00:07:47
Speaker 2: Why a tailgate?
00:07:50
Speaker 3: It works better for us to just skin them flat and roll them, okay, same as a seal. So it’d skin a seal the same way. Two different knives. Not a drop point, girl, This is my skinning knife. Yeah, so I prefer a skinny knife that isn’t a drop point. And then I have this flat like a four and a half inch knife for roughing around the paws, you know, to remove them and going around those bony areas.
00:08:22
Speaker 2: Is the bruising on the hide from getting in a fight with another odd.
00:08:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes they have bruises, like there is one we saw here.
00:08:36
Speaker 2: Like they do get out with each other, they scrap.
00:08:39
Speaker 3: Especially these these big males are pretty aggressive and they.
00:08:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, this sucker is like I just would never guess that these that they’re as big as they are, like you you’ve gotten them close to one hundred pounds.
00:08:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, this one weighs, you know, like eighty two pounds. But the largest one I ever got was ninety nine pounds.
00:08:59
Speaker 1: Wo know, I got a question for you, like and just while we’re on it here, just interrupt you in uh, like cleaning normal fur bears, you never would want to skin them soaking wet like this, You’d always want to dry them first.
00:09:21
Speaker 2: How do you venture drop? How do you dry it?
00:09:24
Speaker 3: So I would.
00:09:28
Speaker 2: Flesh it.
00:09:28
Speaker 3: I flesh all these with the pressure washer. So as you can see, I’m skinning it and I’m just roughing it out. Because you can spend an hour skinning it real close, or I could spend ten minutes skinning it like this and ten minutes fleshing it with the pressure washer. So when working with large volumes, you want to be as efficient as possible.
00:09:49
Speaker 2: And you’re gonna get it wet when you flesh it anyways.
00:09:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so then I would salt it, you know, let it drip after I flesh it, salt it, fold it the hot dog way, you know, yeah, and roll it and let it cure for.
00:10:05
Speaker 2: Like three days and that’ll try to take it.
00:10:08
Speaker 3: Out, shake it out, and you have to hang it with a dehumidifire in my greenhouse which is now my fur drying shed, and they dry, they’re cured and dried. So here’s another bruise. See that on.
00:10:21
Speaker 2: It’s bad him duke it out with his bodies. Yea, their enemies.
00:10:26
Speaker 4: So what a man like this would be territorial over a certain area or did they move around?
00:10:31
Speaker 3: I think so the big males like this, they tend to be more like loners. This guy was alone, not with the pod. And usually when you see a single one like that, can I hease buy your Usually when you see one just single, it’s typically a bigger male.
00:10:56
Speaker 1: How long did it take you to skin your first one compared to where you’re at now?
00:11:00
Speaker 3: I just talked about this. Oh man, I remember my dad. When my dad teaches you, he shows you once, that’s how he learned. Then he gives you the knife. So so I’m out there by myself in the dark with the head lamp, you know it’s winter, and it took me like an hour and a half and I thought, oh man, I’ll never be able to do this.
00:11:22
Speaker 1: And he’s so good at it and oh see your dad is good as was good at skinning odters already.
00:11:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, like ten minutes. So after a lot of practice, you know, now I could skin one in about ten minutes too. But initially it took me like an hour and a half. I was pretty discouraged, but I didn’t want to give up. So I’m gonna turn the sky around actual and same thing on this side. So and sometimes this is called the UK.
00:12:03
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: Man, sometimes those are broke.
00:12:06
Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, huh so I always check.
00:12:12
Speaker 1: My dad had a term. Uh that would basically an Italian what was it that you were a dead dick?
00:12:22
Speaker 3: Oh, it was broke.
00:12:24
Speaker 2: That would well, that would he would qualify.
00:12:26
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes they’re broke because they’re pretty aggressive.
00:12:30
Speaker 2: But you’ve seen broken usics mm hm.
00:12:36
Speaker 3: Oh, actually I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the other kind of USIC, but yeah, sometimes they’re broken. Sometimes you find with bullets in them. And I have a tar every year I keep a jar and whatever I pull out of a bird shot twenty two bullets two twenty three I pulled out of their I keep them.
00:13:02
Speaker 1: Okay, So now the otter’s on his back. She’s skinning from the center line.
00:13:08
Speaker 2: Back the ard direction. He’s half done, right.
00:13:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, half done, and then just to we won’t see this part, but just as you’re doing this, so you’re gonna get this skin off, and like you said, you’re going fast, so.
00:13:22
Speaker 2: You leave on you’re leaving on a lot of leaving on a lot of muscle, some fat.
00:13:28
Speaker 1: We did a flop with some guys skinning in Africa and they clean skinned, so they didn’t go back and flesh anything.
00:13:34
Speaker 2: They would just take two guys take all the time in the world just to totally clean skin something. But you’re doing a rougher.
00:13:40
Speaker 3: Skin, kind of roughing it out because typically you’d hunt in larger volumes. So if you have fifteen to skin and they’re they’re incredibly dense furs, gonna hold that body, you get the help off.
00:13:54
Speaker 4: Got it, got it?
00:13:55
Speaker 3: You can’t wait till tomorrow. They’ll get a green belly and it will start to spoil.
00:13:59
Speaker 1: So and when you and you’ll flesh with, you’ll lay it out down by the beach so you don’t make a mess. And you flesh with the pressure washer. Yeah, I use it and that comes off just clean.
00:14:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s pretty incredible tool.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: And then from there so then you got a soaking, wet, but clean flesh hide. And then you’re laying it and really just packing it in salt, lay.
00:14:25
Speaker 3: It flat, let it drip, you know, and then rub salt on it, just like you would salt any hide.
00:14:30
Speaker 2: And then both sides.
00:14:32
Speaker 3: Nope, just the just the skin side. Sometimes I put just the salt from the table. It’s you know, there from previous hides.
00:14:42
Speaker 2: But I mean, but a hide like this is going to use a few pounds of salt, right.
00:14:46
Speaker 3: I think I can salt about ten pelts with a fifty pound bag of salt.
00:14:51
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:14:53
Speaker 3: I usually go through over one thousand pounds of salt a year.
00:14:56
Speaker 1: Okay, So you pack five pounds of salt on a hide like this, yeah, And it has to be said, there, how many days to cure?
00:15:03
Speaker 3: About three days? You want to at least three days. We live in, you know, a really wet climate, so you want to make sure it’s fully cured. Then you shake it out and hang it up to dry. I use a dehumidifier to aid in the drying process or else. I don’t think it ever would dry where we live. It’s just too rainy, too humid, and each tannery has a different preference in how you mail your pelts. So some some tanneries fors elf flesh them for you. Really, so you just skin them like this, rough them out, salt them and chip them. But the tannery I use want some skin fleshed, salted and dried.
00:15:49
Speaker 2: God, what do you think of this, Maddie Man?
00:15:52
Speaker 1: Really cool?
00:15:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you likes cam wrangle.
00:15:55
Speaker 3: Should we see what it’s been eating when we’re all done. My guess is clams hang tight for what’s been eating buddy, And hey, we know the clams aren’t hot. If it’s got clams, that’s.
00:16:06
Speaker 2: True that we just eat them straight out of it. Okay, now you’re on the finishing touches.
00:16:10
Speaker 1: You’ve skinned both sides back to the backbone, and now you’re just skinning down the backbone.
00:16:14
Speaker 3: So seatters on belly skinning and it does have a little fat on normally they’re this would be all purple, so no fat at all. Sea otters where I live on the other side of the island are pretty skinny actually.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: And it’s interesting about the sea otters too, is like you think of people that uh, people that first came when like euro Americans first showed up, well, not just zero Americas.
00:16:42
Speaker 2: People come from Mexico and all over the world.
00:16:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, showed up in like California, was like the gold Rush brought in outsiders in Southeast Alaska, it was sea otters brought in outsiders.
00:16:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were they were referred to their fur was referred to as soft.
00:17:03
Speaker 2: Gold, soft gold.
00:17:04
Speaker 3: And it took one hundred years for you know, Russians and the fur trade. It took one hundred years to wipe out the pod. Yeah, So in nineteen eleven with the Fur Seal Treaty was signed ended the fur trade. There’s zero sea otters in most of the day. I think there’s just a few left in the allusion chain.
00:17:28
Speaker 2: Took a century to do it, Yeah, one hundred. So I never thought about that. I never thought about the timeline on that.
00:17:36
Speaker 3: Yeah. And anyway, going around the face here, so I’m just sort of cutting around the nose because I don’t you know, I don’t save the face or the tail. And then we can take a look and see what it’s been eating. And I collect data on all the seaters that I get.
00:18:03
Speaker 2: That’s it hides off hold up for the game. Jimmy helped hold that up.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: That’s that’s not actually a table because it led.
00:18:15
Speaker 2: To some kind of box. No, there we go, holds off, No, holds off your vine.
00:18:25
Speaker 3: Here we go. I could rinse it.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: It looks better, about five feet tall.
00:18:32
Speaker 3: It weighed more than the alibit that was caught today.
00:18:35
Speaker 4: Weighed more than a big alibit.
00:18:39
Speaker 3: And we could see what it’s been eating.
00:18:41
Speaker 2: Oay, that’ll be the end of the that’ll be the end of our fought.
00:18:43
Speaker 4: Is the reveal?
00:18:44
Speaker 3: Can I set this right here? All right? Any guesses.
00:18:50
Speaker 4: Plans?
00:18:52
Speaker 3: I’m gonna guess, clan, how.
00:18:55
Speaker 4: Much weight will that hide pertaine compared to?
00:18:59
Speaker 2: Will this be a seventy pounds? Oh?
00:19:03
Speaker 3: That’s a good question, I mean because the hide has you know, some of them.
00:19:07
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:19:08
Speaker 1: Man, you can perch up on that table or whatever and stay and watch. But don’t get in front of that camera. Okay, don’t block the view. But you can perch up and watch what he guesses.
00:19:16
Speaker 3: On what it’s been eating. I’m gonna guess shrimp, shrimp. I’m gonna guess clams. Now. Sea otter guts is one of the worst smells I’ve ever smelled.
00:19:28
Speaker 2: Are you ready?
00:19:31
Speaker 4: What’s that?
00:19:31
Speaker 3: Sometimes I do sometimes I wretch. Seriously, Yes, it’s it’s I never know you.
00:19:40
Speaker 1: Gonna change your gas from shrimp? I like sounds of shrimp. Maybe what’s your gas?
00:19:44
Speaker 2: Body?
00:19:46
Speaker 4: What he’s been eating? Fish?
00:19:53
Speaker 2: We got shrimp?
00:19:54
Speaker 1: We got fish, Conny, urchins urchins, Conley, I guess cleans.
00:20:00
Speaker 2: You going clams? Shrimps? The clams?
00:20:03
Speaker 4: Conley? What are you guessing?
00:20:05
Speaker 3: Oh man? Who?
00:20:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, damn, it’s.
00:20:08
Speaker 2: The worst like that.
00:20:10
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that’s strong.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: Who thought of see Otter’s guts and smell so bad?
00:20:16
Speaker 3: So I noticed in the warmer on the warmer days, a lot of times their bellies empty.
00:20:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, like kids, look at that because they.
00:20:25
Speaker 3: Don’t need as much food to keep warm. Oh God, nothing, nothing?
00:20:35
Speaker 2: Who guessed nothing? No, Conley, you never made a guess.
00:20:39
Speaker 3: You could see what it’s been eating yesterday?
00:20:42
Speaker 2: What he meant to say? It was nothing when he held us, when he held his tongue, he meant nothing.
00:20:46
Speaker 3: What about yesterday?
00:20:48
Speaker 2: He hasn’t eaten yet today?
00:20:50
Speaker 3: Yesterday?
00:20:52
Speaker 4: Lord knows?
00:20:53
Speaker 3: Crab is it crab legs? Is that what I see in there?
00:20:57
Speaker 4: That one with a crab leg? You see a crab leg in there? Look here?
00:21:02
Speaker 3: This is I just this is such a strong smell. Is this a little crab?
00:21:11
Speaker 2: See the little there, Jimmy, get your nose in there and tell me what you see. Urchin who said everything?
00:21:20
Speaker 3: Maybe?
00:21:21
Speaker 2: Is that clan the shells right here?
00:21:26
Speaker 3: Uh see the needles. That’s an urchin which I’m shocked even found one taste that.
00:21:31
Speaker 2: Jimmy, are you do it all?
00:21:36
Speaker 4: Do strain goes or no?
00:21:39
Speaker 3: I think that. I tried to check, and I think there’s no provision. I don’t know. I shouldn’t say this because I don’t. I’m not from what I Yeah, I heard, I heard, but look it’s not They’re usually never intact because you shoot them in the head.
00:22:01
Speaker 2: Are there? You having, ladies and gentlemen? Uh? Meat or fop?
00:22:04
Speaker 1: Episode Sea Otter Hunter Skinner Heather Duville skin to how much eighty two pounder? Skin to eighty two pound The work has just begun. If you’re curious. He did not eat today. Yesterday he had.
00:22:17
Speaker 2: Quite a little variety hit a captain’s platter yesterday of seafood items.
00:22:24
Speaker 1: Found urch Yeah, and we had a kid named Conley who kind of made the right guess by not saying anything when I asked what it ate?
00:22:30
Speaker 3: Perfect nothing? Thank you?
00:22:32
Speaker 2: For joining,
Read the full article here