17

A. Varesano interviewing Steve Sikora -15- 7/19/72
Tape 22-1
465
SS: just make oil out of it.
AV: The whole thing? It would dissolve and all?
SS: Yup. The whole thing. All that would be left in there would be bones and
stuff, you know. But everything would turn to oil from the sun. That's how
powerful sun is, right? It would melt.
AV: How many days would that take?
SS: Oh, maybe about three, three good hot days, like now.
AV: How big was the jug, a quart jug?
SS: Well, we had little pints, like coffee and stuff. I'll show you how. I have
everything down here. Oh, I got more stuff! And we used to send for some
stuff to the fur companies, you know? Like Habaker and them, I don't
know if you ever heard of it. Trapping companies. You know what I
mean? They used to have that stuff, too, you know? We used to send once
in a while. For scent. Yeah, that's right, luring. They used to have all that
kind of stuff. And if we couldn't make it, then we'd send to the company
for it.
AV: The fish oil was made from trout?
SS: Trout. But I used to try everything. Even from catfish. But trout was the
best.
AV: How about bull-head?
SS: Huh?
AV: Bull-head.
SS: Yeah, that's catfish. You call them bull-head, I call them cattys, is all. But
trout was the best.
AV: They wre plentiful, too?
SS: Yeah, well not plentiful, trout? Well, we used to catch down the river, you
know, when I used to go fishing.
AV: You used to fish, too?
SS: Oh, yeah. I used to like it. I've got hundreds of dollars of fishin' stuff down
here. Lures and everything.
AV: Who taught you how to fish?
SS: I used to go with him.
AV: Connie?
SS: No, with the neighbor here. Me and him used to go, Mike.
AV: Gyurko.
SS: Four o'clock in the morning, we used to get up and go. That's when he was
in his pretty good days, you knnow. When I first moved up here.
AV: Ah, did you make any kind of scent from anything besides trout? How
about the male glands of some of the animals?
SS: Well, I'll tell you what we used to do. We used to, you know these
housecats. We used to kill 'em and we used to skin 'em! And the fox was
crazy for that meat. But we used to just chop it up. A fox will go crazy for
cat mean, because it has a bacon odor. It smells like bacon.
AV: What kind of cat- male, female?
SS: Well, housecat, I don't know! But anyhow, we'd skin 'em and butcher 'em
up. Just like a mean, you know? And chop it up, and a fox would go crazy
for that.
AV: How many traps could you get with one cat?
SS: What do you mean?
AV: Could you bait, with one cat?
SS: Oh, well, when we'd cut that cat up, I mean, we'd have, oh, for a long time,
you know?
AV: Yeah? How did you preserve that meat?
SS: What do you mean- we didn't preserve it. We just, soon as we cut it up we
used to use it up right away, you know? Take it out to the woods and start