Texas Fauna Project

TRANSCRIPT:

INTERVIEWEE: Roy McBride

INTERVIEWER: David Todd

DATE: October 12, 2022

LOCATION: Alpine, Texas

SOURCE MEDIA: WAV audio file

TRANSCRIPTION: Trint, David Todd

REEL: 4131

FILE: MountainLion_McBride_Roy_AlpineTX_12October2022_Reel4131.wav

 

David Todd [00:00:00] All right. Here we go. Okay.

 

David Todd [00:00:03] My name is David Todd. And with your permission, Mr. McBride, we plan on recording this interview for research and educational work on behalf of the Conservation History Association of Texas, for a book and a website for Texas A&M University Press, and finally, and most importantly, for an archive at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.

 

David Todd [00:00:30] And, I always want to stress that Mr. McBride would have all equal rights to use the recording. It is his story and his to use as he sees fit.

 

David Todd [00:00:40] And, I wanted to make sure that that’s okay with you.

 

Roy McBride [00:00:47] Yeah, well, fire away.

 

David Todd [00:00:48] Fire away! Okay. Well, let’s get started.

 

David Todd [00:00:50] It is Wednesday, October 12th, 2022. It’s about 10:35 Central Time, in the morning. My name, as I said, is David Todd. I’m representing the Conservation History Association of Texas, and we are fortunate to be conducting an on-site interview with Roy McBride at his home in Alpine, Texas.

 

David Todd [00:01:17] As a very brief introduction, Mr. McBride is a dog trainer and a predator trapper. He has focused on predator control and recovery for many years. He’s especially well known for capturing gray wolves in Mexico that have been the foundation for reintroduction to New Mexico and Arizona, as well as for trapping mountain lions in West Texas for interbreeding with and revitalizing panthers in Florida. That’s just a short summary of a lot of his work, but we’ll learn more in just a moment.

 

David Todd [00:01:54] Today, we’ll be talking about his life and career to-date and especially focus on his work in mountain lion and wolf control and recovery.

 

David Todd [00:02:06] I thought we might start with just a question about your childhood and if there might have been any influences that got you interested in wildlife and in predators at an early age.

 

David Todd [00:02:27] Were there, perhaps were there neighbors or friends or family members that got you interested in wildlife? Or is that just something that, you know, is hard to trace and you can’t say where it came from.

 

David Todd [00:02:41] You know, for instance, was there, like was your dad interested in animals or wildlife, predators. Trying to trace where this happened, where this started.

 

Roy McBride [00:03:06] There was skunks was killing our chickens.

 

David Todd [00:03:12] And where was this? Where did you live?

 

Roy McBride [00:03:16] Well, I lived in Texas. I never have lived elsewhere, except I travelled a lot.

 

David Todd [00:03:29] So, these skunks were getting into the chicken house, I guess. How did you manage to catch these skunks?

 

Roy McBride [00:03:38] We had a little pet dog caught skunk.

 

David Todd [00:03:42] And was the dog kind of self-trained or did you work with the dog to train him?

 

Roy McBride [00:03:48] No, the dog just did it on his own.

 

David Todd [00:03:55] And so, after your dog fixed this skunk problem, what was maybe the next chapter with predators?

 

Roy McBride [00:04:10] Well, we, with dogs, we would hunt coons and stuff and skin them and we got a little money for their skins.

 

David Todd [00:04:29] So, did you have dogs that were mostly about trailing the coons and others that treed them.

 

Roy McBride [00:04:37] Yes. We just gradually got better. We got to figuring out that one kind was better than the others and we’d train. You take them, they train their selves in a way. I mean you got to expose them too.

 

David Todd [00:05:03] And so were these coon hounds?

 

Roy McBride [00:05:06] Sir?

 

David Todd [00:05:06] So, were these coon hounds or black and tans?

 

Roy McBride [00:05:08] Just hounds, just mixed bred dog.

 

David Todd [00:05:14] And was there somebody …

 

Roy McBride [00:05:16] The one that caught the skunk was just a little cur dog.

 

David Todd [00:05:22] And was there somebody that you knew who raised dogs or trained dogs, or did you have a sibling or a cousin or a brother?

 

Roy McBride [00:05:32] I had a brother that was older than me.

 

David Todd [00:05:34] And was he interested in this too?

 

Roy McBride [00:05:36] Yeah, he liked to hunt and fish.

 

David Todd [00:05:46] And so was there a, you said that these coon hounds that you had, they would, they would catch these raccoons and then you would skin them and then sell the skins. So was there a whole kind of a market for those, or where would you take the coons?

 

Roy McBride [00:06:01] Yeah, so there’s a market for them. In some years, it’s really good, you know.

 

David Todd [00:06:13] And were these, the coonskins, were they sold for the fur or for the leather that they made? Did they tan them?

 

Roy McBride [00:06:20] The coonskins sometimes had a market, but there wasn’t, it wasn’t a very rich market. In Texas, you know, we’re getting, it’s not as cold here as it is in the states up north, where coons have a lot better fur.

 

David Todd [00:06:37] I see. So were you living in this part of the state? Were you out in West Texas or where you living?

 

Roy McBride [00:06:43] I was, I’ve always been in Texas. And, where I started hunting was, I mean, seriously, was, the coyotes was killing sheep. And I learned how to trap the coyote.

 

David Todd [00:07:06] Well, let’s talk about that. So how, how do you catch a coyote there? They’re intelligent animals, aren’t they?

 

Roy McBride [00:07:12] Yes.

 

David Todd [00:07:14] So I guess there’s a  … what kind of trap would you use and how would you decide where to put it?

 

Roy McBride [00:07:24] Yeah, you have to, you have to learn where the best places to set your trap. And you do that by just, you know, following their tracks and seeing what they’re doing. And, you don’t need a lot of traps. You just need them in the right place.

 

David Todd [00:07:47] And so, what’s a good clue? I mean, what sort of a typical … would you be looking for a site with water or with cover, or how would you kind of suspect that this is a good area to start looking for coons, I mean, for coyotes, rather? I’m sorry.

 

Roy McBride [00:08:04] Okay. Would you repeat that?

 

David Todd [00:08:06] So, I was wondering how you’d start narrowing down where to track a coyote. Where would you start looking?

 

Roy McBride [00:08:15] Yeah, well, you, you start following these animals around and you found out their own ways where they go and. So, that’s the places that you’re going to trap them.

 

David Todd [00:08:34] And so, what would, what would be a clue? I mean, say you just arrived at a ranch and they said, “We’ve got a coyote who’s killing our sheep”. Where would you go first to try to start looking for tracks?

 

Roy McBride [00:08:50] Yeah.

 

David Todd [00:08:51] Where would you start?

 

Roy McBride [00:08:53] Just start looking for tracks?

 

David Todd [00:08:55] Yeah.

 

Roy McBride [00:08:56] Get in a pasture where he’s been killing and try to figure out where he’s coming under the fence, that sort of thing.

 

David Todd [00:09:07] So, there might be a like a cow trail, sheep trail, they’d be using, and then there might be a low or an empty spot in the fence where he’d be tucking under.

 

Roy McBride [00:09:24] Mhmmm.

 

Roy McBride [00:09:24] Yeah, a lot of coyotes are caught under the fence. And, and you’d use snares a lot of times under the fence. You don’t need a trap.

 

David Todd [00:09:36] So, so maybe you could talk about that, like the traps you’d use and the snares you’d use. And you know what, how they’re made.

 

Roy McBride [00:09:46] Well, I make the traps nowadays. That trap right there, that’s mine. I made that. I’ve got rubber jaws in there that. That.

 

David Todd [00:09:59] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. Remember, you’re plugged in.

 

Roy McBride [00:10:02] Oh, excuse me.

 

Roy McBride [00:10:03] Well. It’s got rubber jaws and there’s different points. And on one side, there’s a point. On the other side, there’s a hollow one. And so when you get him by the foot, you’re not cutting off the circulation. And that was a big improvement on the traps.

 

David Todd [00:10:28] Oh, I see.

 

David Todd [00:10:28] So these, the hollow spots between the points, that would allow blood circulation.

 

Roy McBride [00:10:35] Yeah.

 

David Todd [00:10:36] I see. So, so you could, you could release the coyote later. It wouldn’t be damaged. Is that it?

 

Roy McBride [00:10:42] Yeah, well, that’s where I caught those wolves. I used that trap on their feet so the feet wouldn’t come off. You know, because you, you cut off the circulation long enough and it’s going to come off, the foot’s going to come off.

 

David Todd [00:10:56] So, so we talked a little bit about the coyotes that you’re catching and, and I was wonder if you could talk a little bit about the people you’d be working for. Were you usually working for ranchers, for the government?

 

Roy McBride [00:11:17] The guys who owned the sheep. And I worked for the government too, sometimes.

 

David Todd [00:11:34] And, was this mostly in West Texas or what?

 

Roy McBride [00:11:37] The coyotes in west Texas, yes. But when I was younger, just a kid, I caught these coyotes because they were eating people’s watermelons. And, I ate more watermelons than the coyotes did. You get hungry. Anyway.

 

David Todd [00:12:00] So, so these coyotes are are omnivores, I guess.

 

Roy McBride [00:12:05] Yes.

 

David Todd [00:12:06] They’ll eat all sorts of things.

 

Roy McBride [00:12:08] Yes.

 

David Todd [00:12:08] Sheep.

 

Roy McBride [00:12:09] They’d kill chickens.

 

David Todd [00:12:10] Chickens.

 

Roy McBride [00:12:10] Sheeps, goats.

 

David Todd [00:12:12] Well, so you mentioned working for people who owned sheep. Could you tell me any stories about working for folks who had goats?

 

Roy McBride [00:12:24] Yes. Coyotes kill sheep and goats.

 

David Todd [00:12:26] Well, so can you recall any times when a goat owner would say, “Hey, I’m losing members of my herd, would you please come in and help me out?”

 

Roy McBride [00:12:36] Oh, yeah.

 

David Todd [00:12:36] So, so tell me about that.

 

Roy McBride [00:12:41] Well, you’d go to places where they were having a problem, and those were the people that would pay you to do the work, so. And I worked, too, for the government, but not always.

 

Roy McBride [00:12:53] I’d go off on my own. When I went to Mexico I wasn’t working for the government, I was working for the Mexican ranchers, caballeros.

 

David Todd [00:13:08] Okay. And so tell me. Say you’re working for the government, would they, would they be paying you by the skin or the ear or …

 

Roy McBride [00:13:21] They just paid you by the month.

 

David Todd [00:13:22] Salary.

 

Roy McBride [00:13:23] Real low, you know, poor pay.

 

David Todd [00:13:32] So, did you ever work for bounties?

 

Roy McBride [00:13:35] Oh, no. No.

 

David Todd [00:13:45] Okay. Well, so, one of the things that, you know, we discussed coyotes just a little bit, but one of the things that you’re really well known for is tracking and trapping mountain lions. And I was hoping that you could start us at the beginning, like the first mountain lion that you encountered and how you managed to catch him. Can you kind of relive that?

 

Roy McBride [00:14:17] Well, I was working for a bunch of sheep ranchers, and some of them were in mountainous country where there was some mountain lions. And I had trained my hounds to catch bobcats. And when I got to where there were mountain lions, they caught them really easy.

 

David Todd [00:14:47] So is there a …

 

Roy McBride [00:14:48] A good bobcat dog will catch a panther by itself, yes.

 

David Todd [00:14:52] So is the behavior of a bobcat and a mountain lion similar, as far as the dog is concerned?

 

Roy McBride [00:14:59] Somewhat. I mean, the bobcat is smaller. And he has, he uses different habitat, but, but if you’ve got dogs that catch bobcats, a panther can’t get away.

 

David Todd [00:15:14] Tell me more about that.

 

Roy McBride [00:15:16] Well, they’re just, they’re not that hard to catch for a dog. A good dog can catch them really easy.

 

David Todd [00:15:27] So, what year was this when you were first tracking mountain lions?

 

Roy McBride [00:15:32] I’d say in the fifties, late fifties, early sixties.

 

Roy McBride [00:15:51] When the Endangered Species Act was passed, these universities, and game departments, and government agencies, they were, about mountain lions, they hired me to go see if I could find any in the Southeast.

 

David Todd [00:16:29] This is in the southeastern US?

 

Roy McBride [00:16:30] Because I had a reputation of catching lions. I could catch them. And so they asked me to come see if I could find them, because the Endangered Species Act was going to, you know, fund people, give them money, to go look for this stuff and all. These professors really wanted to find out, you know.

 

Roy McBride [00:16:50] And so I looked, I’d already was catching lions out here in west Texas and south Texas, but I never had been in Louisiana. So they hired me. And I was, I had, you know, funding to go look for them. And I looked in Louisiana all the way to the coast of Georgia and all. And as far north as the Smoky Mountain National Park.

 

Roy McBride [00:17:23] And all of these places had lions. But you couldn’t find them. They didn’t get run over. They didn’t kill sheep or goats. It’s bullshit. People say they hear them, and they see them, and they’re black, but they ain’t there. And they’re so easy to find. If you know what to look for, you’ll go find them right away.

 

David Todd [00:17:45] So you don’t think they were there in the southeastern United States?

 

Roy McBride [00:17:49] Yes, I looked in those states.

 

David Todd [00:17:51] But no luck.

 

David Todd [00:17:53] Oh, shit, no. I didn’t find anything.

 

Roy McBride [00:17:55] But all of these professors would say there’s at least four different areas where there’s. But no, no proof. They, they say that people hear them hollering, screaming, and, and a lot of them are black and all that. It was bullshit. And these professors went for it because they didn’t really get out and hunt panthers. Anyway.

 

David Todd [00:18:22] So this was …

 

Roy McBride [00:18:23] I didn’t find any, until I got to Florida.

 

Roy McBride [00:18:26] And there I found the sign, and finally found a female. And I just, I drugged her and got her out of the tree. And I could see that she’s a real old cat, and I could see that she’d never been, or she may have been nursed, but she never had kittens. She was, you know, looked like eight or ten years old. Anyway, I was just, that was the only one I found.

 

Roy McBride [00:18:52] But I found a track or two that wasn’t hers. And so, but that was it. That was over then.

 

Roy McBride [00:18:58] And, about ten years later, the government, no, the school kids in Florida were asked, “What animal did they want for the state animal?” And they could, it could be a bear, a crocodile, an alligator, (what do you call those sea cows?) manatees, a manatee. Let’s see, did I say bear, a black bear, and a panther. And the kids chose panthers.

 

Roy McBride [00:19:43] And, the game department didn’t know if they had any. They didn’t know where they were. They hadn’t found any.

 

Roy McBride [00:19:48] And so, they dug me up. I’d already left there. It’d been years since I’d been there. And they said, “Come back, and see if you can catch them. Because this is a, you know, the school kids have, they’ve chosen that as the state animal.

 

Roy McBride [00:20:04] So in 1980, or ’81, I went down there. And they had a biologist, and they had two or three biologists. They’d never seen a panther track or anything. But I went back to those places where I’d found them earlier. You know, the one of them, the female. And, and on the first day, I caught one. I caught a male, real old male.

 

Roy McBride [00:20:37] And, we had four biologists with us. And I don’t, I don’t go hunting with anybody. I always like to do that by myself. So I’d gone and caught the cat, but I had a radio and I couldn’t, I was so far away from them. They couldn’t hear me.

 

Roy McBride [00:20:55] So, I climbed a tree. But by God, if they didn’t hear me. I got way up in this tree. They heard me. I told them where I was, and come get me. I got a panther treed.

 

Roy McBride [00:21:03] So, they came up there and brought the dart gun and then all that stuff. And the drugs. And they’d never done any of this stuff. So they really didn’t know what to do. But it was easy. We had him treed. He couldn’t get away, so I darted him and we put a radio on him.

 

Roy McBride [00:21:24] And then, about six days later, I caught him again. But we just left him alone.

 

Roy McBride [00:21:31] And then, about another six days later, I caught a second one and it was a male, also. And both of them were really old, real old cats. Real poor and skinny.

 

Roy McBride [00:21:46] And, they didn’t have any more radios. They just had, they didn’t expect to get any, you know.

 

Roy McBride [00:21:54] But so, then, the next year I came back, and I don’t know, I caught six or seven. But they had the radios and, we were, so by, it wasn’t long till I had them caught. I mean, there wasn’t, there wasn’t very many.

 

Roy McBride [00:22:15] And, you know, and there was a turnover. You know, they’d die or get run over on the highway. And so we’d try to replace it.

 

Roy McBride [00:22:24] And oh, we had an airplane. This was neat. We had an airplane. I told them, I said, “You aren’t going to be able to find them. I mean, your radio just goes so far.” And I said, “They’re going to be way off; you know, they cover a lot of land.” I said, “You’re going to need to get an airplane to find them.” And they said, “No, we’ll find them.”

 

Roy McBride [00:22:44] They had to get an airplane. Because I’d already done that elsewhere.

 

Roy McBride [00:22:50] Anyway, all that worked out fine.

 

Roy McBride [00:22:56] But then we began to see that they were all old, and they had all kinds of injuries and what have you.

 

Roy McBride [00:23:06] And, so the next thing we did, and this really was a success, is I came home and I caught eight females – seven of them in West Texas and one of them in south Texas.

 

Roy McBride [00:23:23] And, what we were trying to accomplish is that we thought, we thought these cats were so old and inbred that that’s why they were, weren’t having kittens and stuff.

 

Roy McBride [00:23:34] So, I brought those females from Texas down there. And in a short time, we found 34 dead mountain lions on the highways. They had started having kittens, and the kittens were living. It’s just changed everything.

 

Roy McBride [00:23:56] And everybody was upset about it because they said, no, you’re getting rid of the Florida panther and now you’ve got the Texas cougar. It’s the same thing. It’s the same animal.

 

David Todd [00:24:10] Now, how would you get …

 

Roy McBride [00:24:12] Professors lead everybody astray on that, you know, and they want their name on it.

 

Roy McBride [00:24:17] Like a wolf, Canis lupus baileyi, and everything. Well, bullshit, there’s no such thing as a Mexican wolf. Where’s the barrier between the wolves in Texas and Mexico? There isn’t one, you know.

 

Roy McBride [00:24:30] These wolves I was catching way south in Mexico are the same ones that are in Canada. And I’ve caught them in both places, and they look the same, they are the same.

 

Roy McBride [00:24:45] There was thought to be 16 or something different subspecies of mountain lions in the United States. And they’ve got that now turned down now to three. They went from that, you know – they’re the same animal.

 

David Todd [00:25:03] And how did they reduce them? Was it that through genetic analysis?

 

Roy McBride [00:25:07] Yeah. Yeah.

 

David Todd [00:25:13] Well, so, I’m intrigued by this whole project of taking mountain lions from Texas and moving them to Florida. One thing I wanted to know is how do you get a mountain lion from Texas to Florida?

 

Roy McBride [00:25:30] Boy, it was hard. And I did it by myself. I’d get them. You know, my dogs would catch them. And then I’d shoot them with a dart gun, and I’d get them out of the tree and, or, they’d fall out of the tree. But, this, I didn’t kill any of them.

 

Roy McBride [00:25:45] And then, I’d, I didn’t get any males. I didn’t, I left them alone.

 

Roy McBride [00:25:49] But the females, and I’d hauled in mules and I would get them, get them up on my mule, and then I’d get them down to a road where I could leave them. And I’d go get my pickup, and come get them. It was, I did the whole thing by myself.

 

Roy McBride [00:26:06] And, now they got crews of people running around the West, professors and all that bullshit. Anyway.

 

Roy McBride [00:26:17] So, so let’s see if I’ve got this right. The dogs track and tree the lion. You dart it. You pack it out on a mule, put it in your truck. Then what happens?

 

Roy McBride [00:26:30] I carried it, put it in the seat with me and, well, but it’s drugged, drugged. They’ll start to wake up, but then I’d give them another shot. And of course, I couldn’t put them back there with the dogs. And the mules don’t like them. So I just had them in the seat.

 

Roy McBride [00:26:48] And, I got a pen out here I built, a cage. I’d go put them in there.

 

David Todd [00:26:57] And what would you feed them while they were here?

 

Roy McBride [00:27:00] I fed them lots of coyotes, and javelinas, and deer that were run over on the highway. Game wardens would tell me where dead deer were, and I’d go get them. And you know, they had plenty to eat.

 

David Todd [00:27:14] Okay. And so here they are in Fort Davis, in your pen, but they’ve got to go to Florida. How do they … take me, take me to Florida. How do you do that?

 

Roy McBride [00:27:24] Oh, we put them in, in cages. We built, we built … the airlines furnished us with the blueprints for an acceptable cage for them. It suited them and they couldn’t get out and they could get air and, you know, all that. So I just follow their instructions. And I made these pens, these cages. They were ventilated. We had holes drilled in them and everything. And then, over the holes we had mesh, you know, not window screen, but, you know, those square…

 

David Todd [00:28:11] Like hardware cloth?

 

Roy McBride [00:28:12] Hardware cloth. That was the word I was looking for. And it worked. I mean, I carried them all down there on the truck. I think I had a trailer behind me, my mule trailer behind me. I hauled them down there. And some of them I put on airplanes. But because the airlines gave us the dimensions and the strength and all that stuff, so they couldn’t get out. And I guess they hauled stuff for zoos and, you know, the airlines do. Anyway, they know what they wanted and they gave us the blueprint. And I follow their blueprints, me and some wetbacks – built them right out here in the back yard. And then we put the cats in there and then I hauled them down there.

 

David Todd [00:28:59] And so you take them to the airport and you show up and you’ve got wild cats in a cage. And what did they say?

 

Roy McBride [00:29:05] Oh, that was funny.

 

Roy McBride [00:29:07] The guy that had helped me, I mean, walked me through this, was over in the airport in Midland. And he told me how to, you know, he gave me the blueprints for the cages and he said, “You make them like this and we’ll put them on the plane.”

 

Roy McBride [00:29:23] So, when I got over there, he wasn’t there that day and they said, “You’re not going to put those things on the airplane.” I saw yeah, I’ve already got reservations and everything.” And that guy came to work later that day and he told them, “Yeah, I told the guy he could do it.” So they did it, put them on airplane.

 

Roy McBride [00:29:44] But they, they didn’t put them up there with people. They put them in the cargo section, you know. That’s the first time I’d ever shipped a panther anywhere. But it was, but they did, they got there.

 

David Todd [00:30:00] And so…

 

Roy McBride [00:30:01] None of them died or anything.

 

David Todd [00:30:04] Yeah.

 

Roy McBride [00:30:04] And, they had pens already built in Florida for them. And, and now what they fed them after they got there, I don’t know.

 

Roy McBride [00:30:11] But I fed them a lot of coyotes. And they like coyotes, they like to eat coyotes. People think they don’t, but I got pictures of them doing it.

 

David Todd [00:30:24] Well, so when they got, when they arrived in Florida, right, so tell me what happened there. They were put in pens?

 

Roy McBride [00:30:35] They had built pens and stuff at one of the offices. And it was an office with, you know, two or three acres around it. You know, and they had the pens already built. And maybe they had the pens already for something else that they’d done. I don’t know. But their pens were available and, and we put them all in those pens.

 

Roy McBride [00:31:01] And then, we took them to south Florida on turned them loose. And I had seven from west Texas and one from south Texas. And we were doing this to boost the genetics because the population was so small. They were really inbred.

 

David Todd [00:31:26] What were some of the signs that the Florida panthers were inbred?

 

Roy McBride [00:31:32] Well, they weren’t having any kittens. The kittens weren’t surviving, the ones that they did have. And we got the impression that they were really inbred. There were so few, you know. And they weren’t, they didn’t always raise their kittens. I mean, they’d have three and raise one or something like that.

 

Roy McBride [00:31:58] So, all of this, this just really changed things. It just really changed. It was, oh, it was in the dark. We’d never done it. We didn’t know that was the solution. But gosh, it would work better than we ever dreamed.

 

David Todd [00:32:18] Well, so I had heard once…

 

Roy McBride [00:32:20] And, I’m thinking of suggesting to them that we do it again, because it’s been a while since they’ve.

 

David Todd [00:32:30] So, somebody had told me that some of those Florida panthers, the inbred ones, had weird kinks to their tail.

 

Roy McBride [00:32:38] They did.

 

David Todd [00:32:38] And testicles that hadn’t dropped.

 

Roy McBride [00:32:41] That’s it.

 

David Todd [00:32:41] Could you talk about that?

 

Roy McBride [00:32:42] Yeah, yeah. Some of them just had one testicle descended. They had this weird kink in their tail, which that didn’t hurt anything, but showed you something going on. I mean, it’s being passed on. So it must not be very many of them there, and there wasn’t.

 

Roy McBride [00:33:07] Oh, and this really changed things. We caught one that weighed 165 pounds, and that’s one of our crosses, you know, a Florida / Texas cross. Oh, that’s big for a panther for those, especially.

 

David Todd [00:33:23] Well you said earlier that some of theuinbred lions when you first started going to Florida were poor and they were thin, what was going on? They couldn’t animals or?

 

Roy McBride [00:33:37] Well, the males had one testicle, just one that was descended. The females were, I don’t know, they just didn’t raise their kittens or didn’t have them. It was, it was easy to see that something was going on. I mean, they were dying out.

 

Roy McBride [00:33:55] People weren’t killing them. You know, they didn’t even know they had them. They never saw them. And very rare one would get run over on the highway. And that’s why we’ve, after we got them going, we had so many highway mortalities, but they could sustain it because they were having all these kittens.

 

Roy McBride [00:34:26] You know, it was always a real interesting project to me. All I’d ever done is kill them. And you get tired of that.

 

David Todd [00:34:34] Yeah, that just seems like a very different kind of project, from trapping them so they don’t attack livestock, to trapping them to reintroduce them. Is that right? I mean, how did you maneuver that?

 

Roy McBride [00:34:48] Well, Florida, you know, that was their state animal. That’s what the kids voted for. And just so, they don’t have any sheep down there. And so they do get some calves killed, but they get reimbursed, if they find them in time. It hadn’t been a big problem.

 

Roy McBride [00:35:05] And, if they used cows like mine, they wouldn’t have any trouble with them at all. I guess I don’t have any way to show you that. I use those corriente kind of cattle out of Mexico. And I don’t lose any calves to them, the panthers.

 

David Todd [00:35:24] So those are good momma cows then?

 

Roy McBride [00:35:26] Oh yeah.

 

David Todd [00:35:28] Do they have horns or no?

 

Roy McBride [00:35:30] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

 

Roy McBride [00:35:43] Is this Wednesday?

 

David Todd [00:35:45] It is? Yeah.

 

Roy McBride [00:35:51] Out here in west Texas, there were sheep and goats. And the panthers really killed those, in droves. I mean, killed 15 or 20 in a night.

 

Roy McBride [00:36:01] But, the sheep industry also died out. But not because of the panthers. Just they made material that would last better than wool and warmer easier to handle, and all that. They just got outmaneuvered.

 

Roy McBride [00:36:28] Thank God, man, those damn sheep are gone.

 

David Todd [00:36:31] Why is that?

 

Roy McBride [00:36:32] Oh, we had to kill the panthers and the bears and the coyotes and everything. And now, I mean, I got a ranch down there in the middle of the mountains where the panthers are. And I don’t know, I never have, I’ve never seen one killed. I got some bad-ass cows. But, but still, you know, I like that. I mean, I don’t bother those panthers. I see their tracks every time I go down there, but I don’t kill them anymore.

 

David Todd [00:37:01] So, do you have a different attitude about it now?

 

Roy McBride [00:37:03] Oh, shit yeah.

 

David Todd [00:37:04] Or is just the world is different?

 

Roy McBride [00:37:05] Well, I didn’t. Out of ignorance, I was following along with the, you know, “get rid of them”. Well, and to this day, most of these ranchers don’t like them. They like to get rid of them. But I don’t see that they’re, I just don’t see that they’re killing the calves and … Those lambs and sheep, yeah, they kill the shit out of them, you know, but not cattle. I mean, it’s unusual, at least in my experience.

 

David Todd [00:37:39] And why do you think landowners, you know, at least some of them, still persist in thinking that they don’t want lions around?

 

Roy McBride [00:37:48] I know. And I think that kind of bothers me. I mean, I don’t know what they’re mad at them. They’re not doing anything.

 

Roy McBride [00:37:54] You know what? Sometimes we do shit because of ignorance. And, you know, the idea that panthers kill all the deer. They’ve had thousands of years to do that and they haven’t got it done yet. They’ve been here a long time. So have the deer. So I don’t think they can kill them.

 

Roy McBride [00:38:20] Besides that, they eat everything, panthers do. Looky: there’s a feral hog. Those things are a plague. And the panthers get rid of them.  There’s a calf, killed by a panther. There’s another calf.

 

Roy McBride [00:38:37] Oh, there’s a armadillo. And the fact that she’s carrying that thing alive, she’s going to take that to her kittens. Let them practice killing stuff.

 

Roy McBride [00:38:50] They’re smart, they’re neat. They’re made to work, you know. It makes you believe in God.

 

Roy McBride [00:38:55] There’s an otter that one killed. They eat everything. There’s, there’s a deer. Oh, there’s a horse. Let’s see what else is in there.

 

Roy McBride [00:39:13] Oh, look, this is my prize. Killed an alligator. He was eating it. You know what, then I walked up to the tree, I saw his face was bloody. And I had somebody with me. I said, that cat’s killed a deer or something around here. So we just left him. He was one of our collared cats in Florida and we just took a picture of it. So I got the dogs and left, and I went back to where I heard the dogs jump it, and you know, was chasing it, and found that alligator. That dadgum panther’s eating that alligator. And, and I don’t know how he killed it. I mean, because he ate all of this.

 

Roy McBride [00:39:56] And usually they kill stuff by biting them in the crown is because that’s where the brains are. And it’s instant death. If he did it to this alligator, I couldn’t find it. I don’t know how he’d killed him.

 

Roy McBride [00:40:09] But you know what I found? I found a lot of them that they kill. And a lot of them are little: you know, they were alligators 18 inches long or something like that. But this dadgum alligator was eight feet, ten inches. I measured him.

 

Roy McBride [00:40:26] So, you know. Oh, well, there’s that dog that nearly got killed by a panther. Oh, looky there. These panthers kill each other all the time. There’s one. This kitten was killed by a panther, male panther. He beat it right there, in the crown of the skull, where the brain case is. And, boy, when they do that, it’s over. The fight’s over.

 

Roy McBride [00:40:53] There’s one there’s bitten at the top of the skull.

 

Roy McBride [00:40:56] We didn’t know they killed each other that often.

 

Roy McBride [00:40:58] Well, and here’s a horse got killed by a panther. They do like horses, colts.

 

Roy McBride [00:41:06] Here’s some geese, got their necks broke.

 

Roy McBride [00:41:12] Oh, that’s a goat, broke.

 

Roy McBride [00:41:15] And I was, somebody asked me, “Well, do they cut their throat, you know, cut off these big veins to the head?” No, he didn’t. He missed all that. But he did, did get it in the skull, you know. And then he ate the ribs and never did puncture that stomach.

 

David Todd [00:41:37] Huh? And why? So the stomach might have had gastric acids?

 

Roy McBride [00:41:42] Yeah, full of grass and stuff fermenting.

 

Roy McBride [00:41:46] Now, here. Boy, these donkeys are tough to kill. He usually takes two nights. They’ll work on one all night, and they’ll come back the next day and get it. Looks where he’s getting up on the donkey, you know, with his skull. Then he goes up here, and he can’t bite through that skull. It’s too thick. So they get down here on the nose and try to cut off that air. And the last one of these donkey things I examined, these, these people would call us, you know, and say, “Hey, I’ve got something killed my goat, or whatever.” We’d go out there and see what it was.

 

Roy McBride [00:42:20] Anyway, this donkey, I think, I’m pretty sure the cat would have come back the second night and tried again, you know, because he didn’t get it killed. But the donkey, he was just about to suffocate, because that panther had closed his nostrils right there. I mean, they know how to kill stuff.

 

Roy McBride [00:42:41] So, you know, but this is too big and too thick. He can’t get his canines in that. So he get in in the nose, down in here, cut it. And that poor donkey was having trouble breathing, you know, it was all that blood was coagulated in his air passages here.

 

Roy McBride [00:42:59] And so, the owner of the donkey, he’d read where environmentalists had said that if you’ll put a donkey with your calves, it’ll protect them from the panthers, but the panthers killed the donkey, didn’t get the calves. Okay. There’s a lot of bullshit out there floating around.

 

Roy McBride [00:43:17] Anyway, the guy that owned the donkey, he was a black guy, and he worked labor. He took Mexicans and picked oranges and all that kind of stuff. He was a labor contractor. But he had a little land leased, and he had some cows on it. And he’d heard from environmentalists that if you put donkeys with your calves, they won’t, the panthers won’t kill all the calves. The donkey will protect them. He can’t, I forget how many donkeys he’d already lost. This was his last donkey.

 

David Todd [00:43:52] Well, so when you think about mountain lions, it seems like you’re, you’re pretty impressed by the way they operate, the way they are so crafty about tracking and killing animals.

 

Roy McBride [00:44:07] Yeah. And all we learned was how to kill them. We didn’t learn what they were doing. We just learned how to kill them.

 

Roy McBride [00:44:13] Now, we found out, I mean, it’s fascinating what they do. And there’re never going to get to be too many, because, boy, they kill each other all the time. The males kill other males in fights over mating. They, they kill the females – for what reason, I don’t know. They kill the kittens of the females. Sometimes they eat the kittens.

 

Roy McBride [00:44:36] I mean, if we’d just leave them alone, they’ll self-regulate. That’s what I think.

 

Roy McBride [00:44:42] And, heck, the more you do this stuff, the more you learn about it, you know? And if you just, you get to where you don’t believe all these panthers stories, because they’re not true.

 

Roy McBride [00:44:54] There’s a, compare bite marks of a coyote versus a panther. And, you know, if people could look at their, what’s killed a lamb or something like that, they could figure out what it was, you know. Because these panthers get blamed for everything – lack of rain and everything.

 

David Todd [00:45:14] So …

 

Roy McBride [00:45:15] Look at their claws, how they’re developed. It’s just like a fish hook. And so the harder you struggle against it, the deeper impaled you get.

 

David Todd [00:45:32] Well, so, it sounds like there are legends and myths about mountain lions. Have you heard those over the years that, oh, a mountain lion took my animal. But you might come in after the kill and say, “No, it was another kind of animal.” Or it…

 

Roy McBride [00:45:46] Oh, no. You can tell what killed it.

 

David Todd [00:45:49] Right. But. But, but say, say you’re not an expert, like yourself, but you’re just a rancher.

 

Roy McBride [00:45:55] Boy, I’m no expert.

 

David Todd [00:45:55] You’re a goat raiser or you’re a sheep owner, and you come out and you think, a mountain lion did this. Are they sometimes wrong?

 

Roy McBride [00:46:04] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah.

 

Roy McBride [00:46:08] But there was one thing we did in Florida. They kept me there even after I was through I was getting all the panthers collared. I would go out and investigate these things. And I taught the biologists, you know, what’s killing them. And so they could go investigate.

 

Roy McBride [00:46:24] And then, we straighten with the people. You know, a lot of times, it was dogs, most cases it was dogs that was killing their animals. And so we’d, you know, look at that.

 

Roy McBride [00:46:37] And, and you could, you can tell. I mean, after a while, you learn just like you learn your friends by their face, you know.

 

David Todd [00:46:47] And did you have any luck persuading somebody?

 

Roy McBride [00:46:49] Oh, yeah.

 

David Todd [00:46:50] And, say that, “This, this was a dog kill. It wasn’t a mountain lion.”

 

Roy McBride [00:46:53] Yeah, yeah. See, a dog couldn’t do that. Get up there on that donkey’s head. A dog could bite him in the legs, but then he’s going to get the shit kicked out of it. But that’s a panther did that? Look at these claw marks where he’s getting up on the donkey so it can come down to it head, work on his head. They know how to kill stuff. They really do.

 

David Todd [00:47:20] So one of the things…

 

Roy McBride [00:47:21] And these claws, when you pull against them, you’re embedding them. You’re not getting away from them. These are just used to hang on until they get that bite.

 

David Todd [00:47:38] So, the jaws, the bite, is how they kill.

 

Roy McBride [00:47:42] That’s how they kill? And sometimes they asphyxiate them and sometimes they snap the neck?

 

Roy McBride [00:47:45] Yeah, but I think you’re just trying to get that donkey down. And so he was trying to asphyxiate. But a donkey is a big animal for a panther and I mean, you know.

 

David Todd [00:48:01] So, one of the things…

 

Roy McBride [00:48:03] All this stuff is so interesting, and we are so ignorant about it. Now, the more we learn, hopefully we’ll be able to manage things, right, right from wrong.

 

Roy McBride [00:48:17] Oh, I’m working on this one – how they communicate.

 

David Todd [00:48:21] Yeah. How do they? Do they have a language of a kind?

 

Roy McBride [00:48:25] You’d have to buy the book! Yeah.

 

Roy McBride [00:48:30] They can make noises. But they usually keep up with each other by these urine markers out there. You came on the right day. You getting your education here.

 

David Todd [00:48:50] Good.

 

Roy McBride [00:48:51] Well, see, they’ve urinated in that and they’re standing there. That female smelling all that. And there’s a, those are called, “scrapes”, but they’re not. They do that with their back feet.

 

Roy McBride [00:49:06] Oh, and you know what? These, these cameras, trail cameras – God, I mean, we didn’t ever get to see panthers do that, you know. But you can see the results of it when you get a pictures, you know. We got pictures of them doing that.

 

Roy McBride [00:49:24] Look – there’s one now? He’s visiting an old scrape. And so then he moves over a little bit and makes his. That’s a male panther. That’s in Everglades National Park. And there’s a, there’s a female making one.

 

David Todd [00:49:40] So, they’re marking their territory? Is that what’s going on or…?

 

Roy McBride [00:49:43] Well, I think it’s how they find each other, how they communicate. I don’t know about territory, because, gosh, they’ve got big territories. I mean, they really do cover a lot of country. And, you know, they don’t get to be real thick, because they kill each other all the time. We didn’t know that.

 

Roy McBride [00:50:03] You know, there’s a female. We’d find these little scratches on logs. So I set my camera up and I got a picture of her doing it.

 

Roy McBride [00:50:15] Oh, and they vocalize. Those females, when they’re in estrus, they’ll call and call.

 

Roy McBride [00:50:22] Here’s this, this is really interesting. And if you rubbed your face on that corner right there with your, you’d leave saliva from your mouth there. And if you could recover that, you’d get the DNA and we could tell it was you. Slobber around my desk, here. But so anyway, if we get to where we can collect this DNA, we can start identifying them. Like maybe there isn’t very many panthers out there, and it’s the same ones making these urine markers.

 

Roy McBride [00:51:04] I’ll tell you, I’ve tried different ways. See that guy: he’s putting his face on that log and leaving the saliva on there.

 

David Todd [00:51:13] Does he have glands or is this just spit that he’s putting down.

 

Roy McBride [00:51:16] That’s saliva, there right in the corner of your mouth. Now he’s doing it, too. Both these are male.

 

Roy McBride [00:51:22] Look at him. He’s doing it on that stalk of cane.

 

Roy McBride [00:51:27] See, and we never would have seen this. You’re not going to go out in the woods and see them doing this. These dadgum cameras have educated us a lot.

 

David Todd [00:51:37] And they operate at night?

 

Roy McBride [00:51:39] Oh, yeah. Yeah, they really, really like that.

 

Roy McBride [00:51:42] Look at him. He making right on that. See, you’d never see that. But, but I’d find those things with dogs. My dogs find it. They like to investigate that. They like to catch them too.

 

Roy McBride [00:51:54] Anyway, so I’ll go set up a camera there after I see the dog, you know. He found the saliva.

 

David Todd [00:52:04] And so, the dog might find these saliva markings and then you’d know where to set up your trail camera.

 

Roy McBride [00:52:11] Yes.

 

David Todd [00:52:12] So’d you get a picture of them coming back and marking.

 

Roy McBride [00:52:14] Yeah, yeah. So the dogs really help me.

 

Roy McBride [00:52:19] So …

 

Roy McBride [00:52:20] That panther’s phlegmon, in the roof of their mouth, they’ve got two little vents. And he’s drawing air over that and through those things. And it’s, he’s trying to figure out if this is a male or a female he’s, that he’s smelling.

 

Roy McBride [00:52:51] Okay. Okay. It’s the vomeronasal gland. It’s up here in the roof of his mouth. And see what he’s doing. He’s drawing air through that like, to those things.

 

David Todd [00:53:08] And so that exposes whatever the scent is to his.

 

Roy McBride [00:53:12] Yeah he can tell if there is a male or female made the urine marker. And if it’s a male, he’ll try to kill it. If it’s a female, he’ll try to find her, you know.

 

Roy McBride [00:53:21] There’s a mom who’s got her kittens. I’ve raised a bunch of kittens. I’ve orphaned them. My wife would raise them, you know, get them grown. And we’d give them away. And then we found out, you know, people were getting killed by pet panthers and so we quit giving them away.

 

David Todd [00:53:47] You know, one thing I am really curious about is that you have these radio collars and, you know, when you’re talking about tracking these guys and I guess you do it with scrapes, and you can do it with these urine markings, but I guess these radio collars were telling you a lot. Is that right?

 

Roy McBride [00:54:04] Well, now that we’ve got the radio collars, we really found out an additional treasure of information. The radio collars got a pulse rate. And so the plane flies. And he tells, “Well, the panthers down there near Roy’s house, you know.” And so then you’d go out there one day and the panther’s in mortality. It’s beeping real fast. He’s dead. So we’d go out there then and see, well, what the heck killed it.

 

Roy McBride [00:54:36] Hey, all this stuff is just new, you know, we’re finding out neat stuff.

 

Roy McBride [00:54:40] Okay, so we go out there where the pilot tells us the panther’s dead and we find out he’s killed by another panther or whatever, you know.

 

Roy McBride [00:54:55] You know, these things live where there’s wolves. Not, not in Florida and not here anymore. But in Mexico, there were wolves where the panthers were. And they were, they’re enemies, I think. I’m not sure, but I think I found a lion at one time I think the wolves had killed. But I just couldn’t be sure. So don’t. I don’t know. But I think it was. They’d kill it.

 

David Todd [00:55:23] Well, this might be a chance to talk a little about wolves and your, your trips down to Mexico to capture wolves. Would you like to visit about that?

 

Roy McBride [00:55:34] Well, yeah. I mean, they, they kill livestock. Everybody knows that. They kill cattle, kill donkeys, kill horses. Wolves are real destructive.

 

Roy McBride [00:55:49] But, you know, what, without them, in the days they were here, how would the buffalo? They’d over-populated and everything else but.

 

David Todd [00:55:59] Well, so where to start?

 

Roy McBride [00:56:04] Wolves, they operate as a family. These panthers are loners. And once the momma has them, gets her kittens to a certain size, well, she cuts them off. And then they got to go make it on their own. And then they run into a male, and kills them. Maybe it’s their dad. It’s a jungle out there. Oh.

 

David Todd [00:56:27] Well. So tell me a little bit about these wolves, because I think that you started going down to Mexico in the, in the sixties. Is that right? Trapping, trapping wolves. I think there was an animal called, “Las Margaritas”.

 

Roy McBride [00:56:43] The way I got into that, the, the Fish and Wildlife, who I was working for as a trapper, they had a conference in Mexico, where the Cattlemen’s Association, which met to try to do something about all the damage from wolves. You know, the buffaloes gone, and so the wolves were really eating on their cattle. And so I got drafted to go down there with the supervisor, because I could speak Spanish and he wanted to, you know, know what they were saying and everything. So I sat with him and told him what they were saying.

 

Roy McBride [00:57:28] And anyway, we got out there in the field where the wolves were. And I found their tracks. Oh, shit. I got to catch these things. So, we were there to show them how to use Compound 1080. And it’s a odorless, tasteless toxicant that’s just really, really hard on cows and more.

 

Roy McBride [00:58:00] And anyway, I saw all those wolf tracks, and, oh, shoot, I’d like catch some of them. And so the ranchers, they just didn’t have any kind of defense. They, they tried poison, but it was strychnine. And they got it from the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau. Gotten given to them. And so whenever they’d find a dead calf or cow, the cowboys would put strychnine in it.

 

Roy McBride [00:58:31] Well, when the wolves come back to eat on the kills, there’s dead eagles, there’re dead coyotes. And those wolves are dumb and they got to figuring out to avoid the strychnine.

 

Roy McBride [00:58:49] But we had odorless, tasteless poisons like sodium monofluoroacetate. And so we’re going to show them how to kill wolves. And all of this is going on. I mean, there’s nobody there to take up for the wolves. Everybody hates them, you know. And the 1080 was, had some degree of effect, but still there was wolves that didn’t eat on kills. They’d kill something else, but they wouldn’t come back to kill.

 

Roy McBride [00:59:23] So, I went, I saw their tracks. Golly. I could catch one of those things. So I went to work for one of those guys. And here’s what happened. They have a radio. They talked to each other by radio, but not telephones in those days. They didn’t have phones. These ranches are in the Sierra Madre, real rough country. So the radio was good for you, say, from 12:15 to 12:45. You got 30 minutes’ talk time.

 

Roy McBride [01:00:00] But everybody in Chihuahua could hear you. And, you know, the cook had a baby today. And was it a boy or a girl? Was it the helicopter driver or what who did that? Anyway, we did that. Anyway, so you get to hear all this. You don’t talk over them. Your turn come at, say, 12:15, and you can talk for 20 minutes. And that’s how the ranch owners would talk to the cowboys and find out what’s going on. Did the truck ever get there? You know how many wolves? How many calves got killed last night by wolves?

 

Roy McBride [01:00:38] And so everybody knew what was going on. When I started catching those wolves, they’d hear it on the radio, not my name or anything, but say, “Hey, that trapper, he caught two wolves already”, you know.

 

Roy McBride [01:00:52] And so they, all these people, “Where’s that trapper?” So, when I’d get in a place, I’d have four or five others lined up to go. I just had a great time. Went all over Chihuahua and Durango. I even caught some in Zacatecas.

 

Roy McBride [01:01:13] Aw, wolves are real interesting. They’re real smart.

 

David Todd [01:01:17] What do you mean by that? How do you mean that they’re intelligent?

 

Roy McBride [01:01:20] Oh, just their, their life, their history. I mean, the way they raise their pups. And figure this out, if you think they’re not intelligent. They can’t leave those puppies because bears will go and get those pups if they get a chance. So they’re, they always leave some guards there where the pups are. And who gets stuck with that duty, because everybody else is going off to kill food and eat? And you got to stay and watch the pups, you know?

 

Roy McBride [01:01:48] I mean, there’s all this stuff going on. You get to where you admire these things.

 

David Todd [01:01:53] Well, so part of it is the way they work as a, as a family,

 

Roy McBride [01:01:57] Yes.

 

David Todd [01:01:57] As a team, as a group.

 

Roy McBride [01:02:01] Yeah, they’re really intelligent.

 

Roy McBride [01:02:07] And, they keep talking about this is a Mexican wolf. Horseshit. It’s the same wolf that’s in Canada because I’ve caught them up there too. They speak the same language in both places.

 

David Todd [01:02:25] So…

 

Roy McBride [01:02:27] That’s been a big issue. They’re calling it now, “Mexican wolf”, and they’ve got to save it and all. It’s just the same wolf, that still remnants in, well now in the United States, they’ve really made a comeback. They put them out. I guess you knew that.

 

David Todd [01:02:43] Well, I had heard that that the foundation for those gray wolves that are out in New Mexico and Arizona, were wolves that you captured.

 

Roy McBride [01:02:52] Yeah, right.

 

David Todd [01:02:53] Is that right?

 

Roy McBride [01:02:53] Yeah. It’s the same animal.

 

David Todd [01:02:55] Well, tell us how you captured these wolves and the whole, you know, effort to reintroduce them to the Southwest. I think that’s an interesting story.

 

Roy McBride [01:03:04] Sorry, say again.

 

David Todd [01:03:05] No, I was just, I was curious about the wolves you captured in Mexico that I understood were later used to reintroduce into Arizona and New Mexico. Is that right?

 

Roy McBride [01:03:16] That’s correct.

 

David Todd [01:03:17] So, how did that happen?

 

Roy McBride [01:03:19] The government did it. I mean, it was all the environmentalists said we want wolves again and, and to say that those are Mexican wolves and they’re just gray wolves. It’s the same animal. How, where’s the barrier that kept them from being? Where’s the glacier they couldn’t go over, over something.

 

David Todd [01:03:47] Well. So how did you capture these wolves? I guess you had to do a live capture in Mexico. How did you do that?

 

Roy McBride [01:03:55] Well, I caught them with traps when I was working for the ranchers. And it was real primitive work. There’s no roads in a lot of the areas. And so you have to do it on a horse or a mule. And so you don’t cover much time, not much country.

 

Roy McBride [01:04:17] And so, I got to where I’d get a cowboy, show him where I’d put the troops. He was left to guard them or to check them. See what, when the wolf come back. Meanwhile, I’d go to another ranch and start, you know, finding the places that you … you look for places. There’s certain places. And if you do this long enough, you recognize when you get there that, “Oh, yeah, I got to put a trap here”, you know? I mean, you’ve done it before, you know, where they’re coming. And so, a travel way or something like that. And they leave sign, they make scratches and stuff.

 

Roy McBride [01:04:59] And so it’s where you put your traps is everything. You’re not going to catch them if you don’t put in the right place, you know. Anyway, so I’d have these cowboys go check them. And they’d kill the wolf if he was in there. Meanwhile, I’m 40 miles away on a mule to check and see some more traps. That way I could cover more country.

 

Roy McBride [01:05:28] The wolves were, oh, oh, they’re really intelligent. So they’re really fun, they’re a challenge to catch.

 

David Todd [01:05:36] And is their behavior different from coyotes and wild dogs, other canines?

 

Roy McBride [01:05:40] Oh, no, I guess, I guess there’s a lot of similarities. But those that have been trapped after before, they get smart, yeah.

 

David Todd [01:05:49] Oh, they do.

 

Roy McBride [01:05:50] They get their toes cut off and all. They get hard to catch, yes.

 

David Todd [01:06:00] Were there any wolves that were a real challenge to catch?

 

Roy McBride [01:06:04] What?

 

David Todd [01:06:05] Were there any wolves that turned out to be a real challenge to catch?

 

Roy McBride [01:06:08] Oh, yeah. Yeah. I had some. Took me eleven months to catch one. I’m embarrassed to say that, but. And he’s killing cattle every other night, yeah. Sometimes he’d kill four at a time, just eat on one of them.

 

David Todd [01:06:26] Is this La Margaritas?

 

Roy McBride [01:06:28] Yeah. Yeah.

 

David Todd [01:06:29] Tell me about Las Margaritas.

 

Roy McBride [01:06:31] He’d been caught before by somebody. I don’t know if it was me. I don’t think so. Anyway, in 11 months he killed, oh, he killed 96 head of cows, that had been found. And they, he was, killing replacement heifers. Like, when you gather your cows, you send them off to slaughter. But you got to have some replacements. Your old, your cows are getting old. So you’re going to want to get some young cows. So you pick your very best ones, and you put them out in a pasture by their selves. And so the wolves, they really like those, and they’ll find them in a minute.

 

Roy McBride [01:07:18] You won’t see a wolf track for months now, and all of sudden, you divide those cows and here they come.

 

Roy McBride [01:07:29] You know, I don’t know what we’re going to do. I mean, if we want to have these animals, we’re going to have to do things different.

 

David Todd [01:07:37] How do you mean?

 

Roy McBride [01:07:39] Well, I don’t know. But I mean, you’re not going to rise any cows in a country where there’re wolves. I mean, they’re going to be a big, big problem for you.

 

Roy McBride [01:07:54] I went to Canada to show the game wardens how to trap wolves. And that was a useless trip. I mean, those guys, they’re not trappers. They’re game wardens, you know. And so, I’d be showing them something. And look around, they’re all, smoking or something. You can’t teach game wardens how to trap. That’s what I learned.

 

David Todd [01:08:25] Well, what do you think, I remember you were telling me about this meet-up that you had near Nevada with maybe half a dozen or eight different trappers. What makes trappers trappers. I mean what, what is distinct about them. It’s a special skill…

 

Roy McBride [01:08:43] Oh, they’re not very smart. No, I mean this is like, you like to fish, or you like to take pictures or something. You like to trap.

 

David Todd [01:08:53] Well do you think…?

 

Roy McBride [01:08:56] You’d already talked to Glynn Riley?

 

David Todd [01:08:58] Yes, sir.

 

Roy McBride [01:08:58] He likes to trap.

 

David Todd [01:09:00] Right. Right. Yeah, but it takes a special skill. I mean, you have to be really observant, it seems.

 

Roy McBride [01:09:07] I don’t think it’s all that hard. But, yeah, but you, if you do it right, it’s easy. I mean, you really catch them. But if you don’t, you don’t, you don’t get anything. You catch a skunk or something.

 

David Todd [01:09:24] Well, tell me just a little bit more, if you would, about this, the wolves that you were catching. So you told me about when you were catching wolves that were killing cattle and you were destroying them. But then later on, you were catching wolves to re-release in the States. Can you talk about that?

 

David Todd [01:09:45] Okay, let’s just start again. I was just asking you about this escapade with catching wolves in Mexico and then bringing them up to the States to re-release into the Southwest. I guess, Arizona and New Mexico’s main place?

 

Roy McBride [01:10:05] They, they didn’t release them. They put, they put them in pens where they could have puppies.

 

David Todd [01:10:15] I see.

 

Roy McBride [01:10:15] So, I didn’t get in on any of that. I mean, after I go the wolves up here, you know, then I didn’t never see them again. They had different places there.

 

Roy McBride [01:10:26] And, what was spooky about it is there are some people had wolves in captivity, and some of them weren’t wolves, you know, they were part dog and all. And I kept telling them, “Y’all better depend on these ones that are the real thing or …” I don’t think they heard me. I don’t think they knew anything about it. I mean, the guys that were doing it, they were not, I don’t know how knowledgeable they were about wolves. I don’t think they purposely did something wrong.

 

Roy McBride [01:11:06] But I do know that some people had wolves that they wanted to be in that program. And I saw some of them. And they, they were hybrids. They had a lot of dog in them.

 

David Todd [01:11:18] Well so…

 

Roy McBride [01:11:20] So that was, maybe these wolves now are not pure wolf. But I did give them some real wolves.

 

David Todd [01:11:27] Well, so how did you capture these wolves? You live captured them in Mexico? How did you do that?

 

Roy McBride [01:11:32] I put, I made those jaws different. I already knew how to catch them. I just didn’t want to hurt their feet.

 

David Todd [01:11:40] So these are the rubber jaws with tines and openings.

 

Roy McBride [01:11:45] Yeah. It’s like …

 

David Todd [01:11:50] You’re connected. So just if you could just tell us about it. That’s fine.

 

Roy McBride [01:11:54] It’s just, it’s kind of, it’s got grooves on one side of the jaw and points on the other side. And they let blood keep flowing, permits blood flow.

 

David Todd [01:12:21] And where were you catching these animals?

 

Roy McBride [01:12:23] In Mexico.

 

David Todd [01:12:24] In Durango, Chihuahua?

 

Roy McBride [01:12:26] Wherever I could find any.

 

David Todd [01:12:28] Yeah.

 

Roy McBride [01:12:28] And this time I did it for nothing. I mean, I went caught the wolves. The ranchers didn’t pay me.

 

David Todd [01:12:38] Well. So what, what made you want to do it, if you weren’t being paid for it?

 

Roy McBride [01:12:42] Because they wanted them. They was going to try to save them and all that. And I thought well that’s a good thing, because they were becoming extinct down there.

 

David Todd [01:12:53] And so, why did you, why did that bother you that they were going extinct?

 

Roy McBride [01:12:59] I mean, I got a lot of pleasure out of them. I figured maybe somebody else could do.

 

David Todd [01:13:09] So …

 

Roy McBride [01:13:10] They’re real neat. I mean, they really operate differently. I mean, how could they get, who is it that they leave behind when they go hunting in the evening? Somebody’s got to stay there with the pups. Who gets that crummy job, you know?

 

David Todd [01:13:25] So you think there’s some kind of hierarchy in their gang?

 

Roy McBride [01:13:27] There must be, must be.

 

David Todd [01:13:30] Interesting. Yeah.

 

David Todd [01:13:32] So, you’re saying that these were captured, and then you somehow carted them up to the States and then they were put in pens to breed.

 

Roy McBride [01:13:42] Well, they were real good about that. In fact, there was a guy at the Sonoran-Arizona Desert Museum. And his name was Chuck Hansen. And he contacted me somehow. I don’t know how he ever heard about me or anything, but I was working in Durango and he got a hold of me and he asked me if I would save some of the wolves that I caught. And he wanted them for his zoo. It was called Sonora-Arizona Desert Museum. And he was the manager, I guess, or something.

 

Roy McBride [01:14:29] So, I caught a wolf, and I got word to him. And he flew down there and got it. Now, this is before the government got involved in it. And what had happened, he had been given a couple of wolves that weren’t pure wolves. And so he wanted to get rid of them and get some real ones. So I gave him some real ones and he came back here in a little Cessna and got the wolves. And on the way back, they got engine trouble, and the guy started losing oil and it was coming out on the windshield, and they were flying right down this Continental Divide. He’s in the roughest place in the world to try to land? So anyway, they made it back, but it was scary.

 

Roy McBride [01:15:26] And so, anyway, and then, in the other areas, the government was getting interested in saving the wolves. And so I think they got with him and maybe got some of his bloodlines or something. I don’t know.

 

Roy McBride [01:15:44] I do know that the San Diego Zoo got a couple of wolves I caught.

 

Roy McBride [01:15:52] And then the government built their own facility, you know, and they, they got some of these wolves. And by then, I could not find anymore. I didn’t know where to go to get anymore. So, by then I was working in Florida on panthers.

 

David Todd [01:16:14] Well. So while we’re talking about wolves, or animals that look like wolves, I understand that you spent some time in southeast Texas looking for wolves, you know, that were putative “red wolves”. But I think you had doubts about them. And I was wondering, can you tell me about your visits to southeast Texas looking for, you know, those canines of some kind?

 

Roy McBride [01:16:45] Yeah, the Fish and Wildlife hired me to go down there and catch some. And I went to the places they told me to and I caught the heck out of those things. They were real easy to catch. I think I caught thirteen the first week, versus, you know, taking months to catch two wolves. It was real easy.

 

Roy McBride [01:17:11] But they weren’t wolves. I mean, I’d caught wolves before. I could tell these things were not wolves. Or maybe they had wolf in them, or something like that.

 

Roy McBride [01:17:19] But, there was further to the north (I think I was in Harris County, was as far north as I got, or Liberty), anyway, there were some bigger ones over there, and that’s where Glynn was working. And he caught some. And he caught some that were real big. You know, they obviously weren’t coyotes.

 

David Todd [01:17:53] So, how would you distinguish a wolf, from a coyote, from a dog?

 

Roy McBride [01:18:02] Aw, I’d think it’d be just the easiest thing you ever did.

 

David Todd [01:18:05] Okay, well, what do you look for?

 

Roy McBride [01:18:08] Why I don’t know. A wolf’s just a distinct animal. I don’t know if I’ve got any pictures of any, but they’re, yeah, yeah, we saw some a while ago.

 

David Todd [01:18:23] Was it, is it the size of them, or their coloring?

 

Roy McBride [01:18:26] Big. They’re big rascals.

 

David Todd [01:18:32] So, what would be the typical size for a wolf?

 

Roy McBride [01:18:39] You know, sorry to say, and I regret all this. I wish I’d weighed them and stuff, but I didn’t have any scales. And, you know, I didn’t even have a truck. I mean I went everywhere on a horse or mule or something. You can’t carry all that stuff. Cameras and things. Boy, if I had to do over again, I’d got to get me some cameras and take with me.

 

Roy McBride [01:19:03] And these are these are dead wolves, you know.

 

David Todd [01:19:08] And these are in Mexico.

 

Roy McBride [01:19:09] No this one’s alive. We’ve got him tied up. That was to catch them for the government, that wolf there. “Sent to USA.” Yeah.

 

Roy McBride [01:19:27] God, that old guy told me a neat story. Them old cowboys were neat. That’s a big wolf. I’d say that wolf weighted about 80 or 90 pounds.

 

David Todd [01:19:41] Now, these are the gray wolves that you’re showing me, from Mexico. So the red wolf, if it exists, is a smaller animal, right, than the gray wolf.

 

Roy McBride [01:19:51] Yeah.

 

David Todd [01:19:54] But I think your understanding is they probably don’t exist anymore. Is that what you’ve told me before, that they got genetically swamped. Is that right?

 

Roy McBride [01:20:03] Yeah, they, they got somehow or another, coyote, got to breeding them, or they bred the coyotes. And from then from then on, it was over, you know? I mean, I, I didn’t stay there long enough to catch many of them. And the ones I caught, they weren’t wolves. They were part, they had wolf in them, maybe. But they weren’t, I mean, they weren’t real wolves, not the kind you catch in Mexico.

 

David Todd [01:20:33] When do you think this started happening, this, this interbreeding?

 

Roy McBride [01:20:40] I don’t know. And I’ve been thinking about this all week. And in Florida where I was catching panthers and stuff on really big ranches. And, they had names for the pastures like the, “Wolf Island Pasture”, like they were going to gather cows over there. Well so there, there were evidently were wolves there at one time. But, we don’t have any records of them, you know, and I don’t know of any remnant, or being a zoo, i mean, a museum or something. You hear very little about it. But there definitely was wolves there because just from the names of some of these pastures and stuff – you know, “Windmill Pasture”, “Truck Stuck Pasture”, or the Wolf Pasture, Wolf Island, they called it. Yeah, I don’t know what they were. I don’t what a red wolf is.

 

Roy McBride [01:21:45] And when they sent me over there, they sent me south, the counties south of where they thought they were. And Glynn was in north, and he did catch some. He got caught some real big animals. I don’t know whether they were inbred or not. But, but the further south I went, I just got into coyotes.

 

David Todd [01:22:08] Well, so there was some kind of dividing line there, I guess, shifting east and south between the coyotes, and the hybrids, and the wolves. Is that right?

 

Roy McBride [01:22:17] Yeah. Yeah.

 

David Todd [01:22:18] Gotcha.

 

Roy McBride [01:22:21] Yeah. I never caught a wolf over there. And, boy, they were easy to catch. It would have been fun.

 

David Todd [01:22:28] Why do you think they were more easy to catch?

 

Roy McBride [01:22:32] I don’t know. They lost their dumb when they bred those coyotes. Anyway, I don’t know. I don’t know what they were. People called them “red wolves”. But I don’t know what they were.

 

David Todd [01:22:44] Well, let me ask you something different.

 

Roy McBride [01:22:47] I really don’t know much about that subject, because I never really saw one that.

 

David Todd [01:22:51] That’s OK.

 

Roy McBride [01:22:52] That didn’t have coyote in them.

 

David Todd [01:22:55] Well, so before we went on recording you were telling me something really interesting. You said that for, at one point, you had ocelots. You had caught ocelots, and you kept them out here in a pen and fed them and so on. They lived a long time. Tell me how you caught those ocelots and where were they?

 

Roy McBride [01:23:18] Well, I was I was working for the government. I was a coyote trapper. And they made me a supervisor of a district. So I was going around to my trappers. Most of them had never really been showed how to trap. So I was helping them. And I went to that Laguna Atascosa Wildlife Refuge and they were, why we were catching coyotes over there,  I have no idea. But, anyway, that’s where the ocelots were.

 

Roy McBride [01:23:54] And in those days, they weren’t protected. And I caught two males and one was really a large he weighed 32 pounds. And the other one, I think, weighed 26 or something like that. They’re a small animal. And I don’t know how old they were, but I kept them for 19 years. They both died within a month of each other. And I had them out here where it gets cold and snows and everything and, heck, their fur just got longer.

 

Roy McBride [01:24:38] Oh, I’ve got a picture of one out there on the wall.

 

David Todd [01:24:42] I’d like to see that. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Roy McBride [01:24:44] There’s one. And right south of there, I caught a lot of them with my hounds, but not in the United States. Just right south in Mexico there.

 

Roy McBride [01:24:57] I’ve caught jaguars there and everything. It’s not very far south on the east coast that you go until you start getting into jungle and parrots and all kinds of trees that are not native to here. Yeah, it was really neat. It’s where the Santa Maria River runs into the ocean? And it’s real close, not very far from Brownsville, south though, south. There were ocelots there.

 

David Todd [01:25:33] Well, so now you’ve mentioned something else that piqued my interest. You said that you’ve seen jaguars before. Yeah. You’ve seen them. Caught them?

 

Roy McBride [01:25:45] Oh, I’ve caught a lot of them.

 

David Todd [01:25:46] Where did you catch jaguars?

 

Roy McBride [01:25:49] The first ones I caught were in Tamaulipas. And the jaguar had killed a mule. And so this rancher, he knew I had some panther dogs and everything. So he got me to come down there. And I got to where the mule was and it was nearly eaten up. Anyway, but the dogs started a trail and they followed it way south. And finally we caught up to it and didn’t tree it, just bayed up on the ground. And I had to hurry and shoot it. It was going to kill the dogs. They really will wipe you out.

 

Roy McBride [01:26:35] So anyway, we got back. So I gutted him to skin him. And he didn’t have no mule. This has taken place at a dead mule the jaguar had killed. But this jaguar had a coyote in his stomach. And so we go back to the mule, which was miles back there, and look around. And really there was two jaguars involved, and one of them had killed a mule. And then the other one come along and caught a coyote that was, you know, eating a mule. And so there was another jaguar, and they really wanted me to stay and catch it. And I said, “Oh God, no, I won’t kill any more of them.”

 

David Todd [01:27:19] And what are they like? I’ve never seen one in the wild of course.

 

Roy McBride [01:27:24] A jaguar?

 

David Todd [01:27:25] No, yeah, never.

 

Roy McBride [01:27:25] Of course. I’ve caught quite a few. Yeah.

 

David Todd [01:27:29] Are they pretty adaptable? Different kinds of habitats?

 

Roy McBride [01:27:33] Oh, yeah. They’re just kind of like a lion, a mountain lion. But they’re, uh, they get much bigger. And the ones I was catching up in northern Mexico weren’t much bigger than my mountain lions. They were about the same size.

 

Roy McBride [01:27:45] But the next two I caught were in Campeche, which is as far south as you can go and still be in Mexico. And I caught a male and a female. And they were about the size of mountain lions here. They weren’t any big ones.

 

Roy McBride [01:28:07] But in South America, they’ll get big. Now I caught a great big male in Venezuela. And a female. And I was catching them for a graduate student at the University of Florida. They hired me to help this kid get him some radios on these panthers, or jaguars. And I caught a lion and two jaguars and then the ranch owner got angry with the student about something and he made them get out.

 

Roy McBride [01:28:47] So, but he said, I could stay the rest of my life. And I said, “No.” I said, “Those guys are the ones who are paying me. I got to go.” So, I left.

 

David Todd [01:28:59] Great stories. Well, so it seems like there’s this kind of trend through your life where you’ve been interested in predators, everything from skunks to coyotes to mountain lions to ocelots, jaguars, gray wolves, red wolves. What, what ties all those together? What, is there something that interests you about predators?

 

Roy McBride [01:29:23] Well, I just liked them, to catch them. And, you know I invented that thing that goes on, a toxic collar.

 

David Todd [01:29:31] Yes.

 

Roy McBride [01:29:32] Oh, God. Then I went to Africa. I caught leopards. I also killed them with the collar.

 

David Todd [01:29:37] Will tell us about the, this is the 1080 collar that you put on a sheep. Is that right?

 

Roy McBride [01:29:44] Yeah.

 

David Todd [01:29:45] Well, how did you come up with that?

 

Roy McBride [01:29:47] I saw where they were biting them in the throat. And I thought if I had my trap there, I would’ve call them. And so I said, “Heck, I’ll put a trap there.” So I made me a little collar and it leaked. But it worked. But we couldn’t find the coyote. The killing stopped, but we couldn’t find the coyote. I looked and looked and looked for that coyote. And finally I found the pups, and they were about starved to death, because there wasn’t anybody feeding them. But I never found the coyote, and I wanted it as proof that I’d kill that coyote.

 

Roy McBride [01:30:22] So, another rancher not too far away was having trouble with another coyote. I went and killed his coyote, and they found it. It was a week or two before they found it. But they found it. This poison was real slow, but it was, boy, it was really accurate. I mean, it really got them. And I had dye in the poison. And so when they found this coyote, he’d been dead for some time, but he still had that red dye on his lips. So I had proof that that thing would work.

 

Roy McBride [01:30:57] That’s when I had all this trouble with the government.

 

David Todd [01:30:59] How so?

 

Roy McBride [01:30:59] I was a competitor, you know. They didn’t want anyone messing up their coyote program. Oh, it was a mess.

 

David Todd [01:31:10] So, they, they felt like your collar was more effective than hiring all these trappers. Is that right?

 

Roy McBride [01:31:17] The ranchers could kill them. Yeah. So they come up with every kind of rule in the world. And it made it so hard to use, that it wasn’t really worth it. But, I wasn’t restricted to stay in America with it either. And so I took it to South Africa and golly, really changed things. And the beautiful thing was we were killing the jackals that were killing the lambs. The other jackals weren’t bothering anything. So why go kill them?

 

Roy McBride [01:31:51] It worked on leopards, too. In fact, that that skull up there, next to that bigger one, that’s a leopard that I killed with a collar.

 

David Todd [01:32:04] But it’s very targeted. So I guess there’s some predators that have no interest in livestock. And so those, it would neglect. They would avoid those, this collar?

 

Roy McBride [01:32:15] Well, uh, like take coyotes, they kill sheep. They really do. But you know, in trying to kill the guilty coyote, you kill all kinds of other coyotes and other animals that aren’t really bothering the sheep at all. But this thing was just killing the coyote that was killing the sheep. It was a wonderful tool.

 

Roy McBride [01:32:41] And if I hadn’t have gone in other countries with it, I never would have got to use it, because it was a competitor to the government.

 

David Todd [01:32:52] Well, that’s interesting. So in a way, part of your work is sort of as an inventor, because not only did you develop this collar that had this poison in it for, you know, targeting livestock-killing predators. But then you also had these special traps that had teeth that wouldn’t constrict blood flow.

 

Roy McBride [01:33:13] I put a rubber nipple on the jaw too that had a toxic, I mean, a tranquilizer in it. So…

 

David Todd [01:33:22] And what was the point of the tranquilizer?

 

Roy McBride [01:33:25] To keep the animal from struggling and hurting his foot and… Worked real well. We made them with the collars. While we was making the collars, we made those. And boy, they’d bite it right away, that thing, it was a little nipple that come up on the jaw of the trap, and coyotes would instantly grab that thing.

 

Roy McBride [01:33:51] And I was using that, people were buying coyotes to put it in these pens, and they have guys going there with hounds and chases these coyotes. And, so I didn’t want to hurt those coyotes’ feet, so I made those little tranquilizer dealies to go on the jaw. And the coyote could be asleep in the trap. He hadn’t struggled. He’d just, or he’d be awake but he wouldn’t putting up much of an effort to hurt his foot.

 

David Todd [01:34:23] So, you’re talking about the coyotes in pens. I’ve heard that in recent years, there are these things called, “killing contests”. Have you heard anything about them?

 

Roy McBride [01:34:34] What?

 

David Todd [01:34:34] They’re called killing contests, where they’re wildlife killing contests.

 

Roy McBride [01:34:38] Yeah. They go call coyotes and.

 

David Todd [01:34:40] They call them in and they shoot them, then they count them and weigh and it’s …Are you familiar with that at all?

 

Roy McBride [01:34:46] Well, I know they do it, but I don’t, I never have gotten involved in it.

 

David Todd [01:34:53] Okay.

 

Roy McBride [01:34:53] I’ve called a lot of coyotes and it’s a kind of a sport, you know.

 

David Todd [01:34:58] How do you, how do you do that? Do you have a special tool?

 

Roy McBride [01:35:01] No, I make mine out of cow horn, just a little tip of a cow horn. I don’t know. I bet I’ve got one in here. Yeah, I made some good ones, and they worked too. Yeah. There’s one.

 

David Todd [01:35:19] Would you, would you make a sound with that?

 

Roy McBride [01:35:21] Huh?

 

David Todd [01:35:22] Can you. Can you call on that now?

 

Roy McBride [01:35:26] No. My thing, my trigger’s gone. It takes a little piece of clear plastic to go on there. It’s probably in there, but it wouldn’t work. I mean, I’d have to anchor it. I mean…

 

David Todd [01:35:52] So, you have like a territorial call or a mating call or something like that?

 

Roy McBride [01:35:55] No it sounds like a jackrabbit.

 

David Todd [01:35:58] A jackrabbit.

 

Roy McBride [01:35:59] Yeah. They go “ahhhhh, ahhhh”.

 

Roy McBride [01:36:04] That’s great.

 

Roy McBride [01:36:07] There’s panthers’ claw.

 

David Todd [01:36:13] Hmmm.

 

Roy McBride [01:36:13] That’s a wolf’s, too.

 

David Todd [01:36:14] Look at the size of those.

 

Roy McBride [01:36:25] Oh, there it is. I think. Yeah. Gosh. There it is. No. Here it is. Okay. That thing fits in there.

 

Roy McBride [01:36:59] Uh huh.

 

Roy McBride [01:37:00] And you have to anchor it, always. This one has come out of a different one. Anyway, when you blow on it that air gets under, and it goes “rayyyyyy, rayyyyyy”, like a rabbit, one that is getting hurt.

 

David Todd [01:37:18] Yeah, yeah. And that will draw in a coyote?

 

Roy McBride [01:37:22] Oh, heck, yeah. Yeah.

 

David Todd [01:37:24] Catnip. Catnip for coyotes.

 

Roy McBride [01:37:27] I can’t do it unless I get, anchor that. But that’s, that’s all it amounts to. I made them out of, generally out of cow horns. Made them…

 

David Todd [01:37:39] And whittled them down, making them the right shape?

 

Roy McBride [01:37:45] Mhhmm.

 

Roy McBride [01:37:46] My kids would go trapping with me, and I’d call them up, my coyotes. Oh, they had fun shooting at them.

 

David Todd [01:37:55] Well, that was the last thing I wanted to ask you about. So I understand that you’re, you have one son, at least, Rocky,

 

Roy McBride [01:38:04] Mhhmm.

 

David Todd [01:38:04] Who has carried on to do some of the same trapping work. How did he get interested and how did you teach him?

 

Roy McBride [01:38:11] Oh, when he was little, he liked to go with me and, and it wasn’t long until, like when he was in high school, he’d borrow some of my dogs and go on weekends, and go hunting panthers that were killing people’s sheep. And I was, you know, I was just by myself doing it, and I had plenty of business. And so he was good at it. He got good at it real quick. Of course, he, he took some good dogs with him, but.

 

Roy McBride [01:38:45] And then he, he went to South America, and he was taking people on jaguar hunts, and he ran into a real good deal on some land. And so he became a citizen and bought this ranch.

 

David Todd [01:39:06] And am I wrong, but I think you said that he, he’s been doing things sort of like you, where he’s been catching cats and then bringing them in for recovery efforts. Is that right?

 

Roy McBride [01:39:16] Well, he was taking people on jaguar hunts. It wasn’t illegal when he was doing it. But it is now. You can’t do it no more. Yeah. He took people on jaguar hunts.

 

David Todd [01:39:34] And, were you saying that he, this was a while ago, but I think you told me that he was capturing some of these jaguars and then they were being taken to Argentina. Is that right?

 

Roy McBride [01:39:47] Yeah, he got five – they were killing his cows – and he didn’t kill them. He just put them in a pen when he caught them and the government of Argentina. Oh, I think they’ve already took him. But he had to keep them for months and months. Finally, they come and got them. I think they’re, I don’t think they’ve turned them loose yet, but they’ve got them in a pen, on an area that is close to Buenos Aires, but it’s a very big swamp and they’re going to turn them loose in that swamp.

 

David Todd [01:40:27] Well, that’s…

 

Roy McBride [01:40:27] And there was three, three males and two females or something like that. There were five of them. I don’t, I don’t guess there’s any ranching in there. It’s a great big swarm. Maybe there’s no cows. He kept them, oh, he had to keep them for like a year. And, you know, boy, those things, they eat a lot. But he has a lot of carpinchos on his ranch. In English, that’s “capybara”. You know those big water rats?  That’s what he fed them. But they were killing his cows.

 

David Todd [01:41:17] Neat. Well, clearly you taught him a lot. You’ve taught me a lot today. I don’t want to take any more of your time, though. Is there anything you’d like to say that we haven’t talked about so far?

 

Roy McBride [01:41:30] Oh, well, me and Rocky went to Mongolia and caught snow leopards with our dogs. That’s something that really … everybody thinks you got to have snow to catch these panthers and stuff, but you don’t. Those guys there in that picture? They don’t hunt on the snow. They hunt year-round, catch lions. Those are, they’re really fun to go see those guys.

 

Roy McBride [01:42:00] Yeah.

 

David Todd [01:42:02] So, you went all the way to Mongolia?

 

Roy McBride [01:42:04] Yeah.

 

David Todd [01:42:05] And caught snow leopards, which I hear are extremely rare. How did you do that?

 

Roy McBride [01:42:09] We took our dogs.

 

David Todd [01:42:11] So, you put dogs on a plane and went over there?

 

Roy McBride [01:42:13] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

David Todd [01:42:16] And so these dogs, I guess, had trained on mountain lions and other kinds of species, but they were able to translate to snow leopards?

 

Roy McBride [01:42:27] I guess there is some similarity, because we didn’t chase any animals except that, those snow leopards. There’s no snow. It’s just barren as the Dickens. It’s the Gobi Desert and everybody bets you couldn’t catch something with a dog in there, but shoot, they did.

 

David Todd [01:42:50] That’s impressive.

 

Roy McBride [01:42:50] It’s not that hard for them.

 

David Todd [01:42:53] Well, this is great. You’ve told me so much. Thank you.

 

Roy McBride [01:42:57] Yeah, well, that was just fun stuff, going over there.

 

David Todd [01:43:01] Well, you make it sound really interesting.

 

Roy McBride [01:43:04] Oh, yeah.

 

David Todd [01:43:05] And fun to boot.

 

Roy McBride [01:43:07] Yeah.

 

David Todd [01:43:07] Well, I’m going to turn off this machine.

 

Roy McBride [01:43:10] Good.

 

David Todd [01:43:10] And let you go. You’ve been so patient.