I know you guys probably get questions like this all the time, so i apologize in advance. How did you guys get started with ADC? Can you do part time ADC work and still make a profit?

Yes, I did it, but I don't know how. I worked 40 hours as a spray painter in a factory and another nearly forty hours for myself. I

went full time when I had more work than the factory had. I figured out how much money I would need in a year to pay my own health

insurance, holiday pay, vacations, vehicle expense, advertising, and equipment. I made it, with money to spare. It's amazing how hard

and how efficient you can work when it's for yourself and your family.

what kind of jobs did you start out with?? I feel like i could do things like beaver and coyote jobs as a side thing to help out landowners and get my feet wet

I'm close to Milwaukee so we do an amazing amount of raccoons and squirrels. We also do enough woodchucks, skunks, opossums, and

various other goofy stuff. This week we got paid to haul a dead cocker spaniel out of a customer's backyard. Don't worry; it had a

collar and we called the owner to let her know. She thanked us and said that the dog was 14 years old and had been missing since

November and she thanked us for the closure. Do dogs get Alzheimer's too?

oooh yikes....that is the sobering part of ADC i can imagine. I bet the tough jobs make it seem like work at times.

Of course. Wildlife control is a very good part time business. I'd bet there are more part timers in the business than full timers.

I've been doing it part time for five years now and have made money every year.

what kind of jobs do you do sgs? do you specialize in anything? or just do a little bit of everything?

I imagine it all depends on what other kind of work you do besides ADC work....myself I was a full time Stone Mason and did this part time..until my back made up my mind for me.....Now it's this full time !

Part-time is the way I started. Full time job was from 7:00pm till 3:00am. Went home for a few hours and then did the ADC thing for most of the day.

do you think you could get paid to do beaver and coyote jobs?? i feel like theres a need, but do people really pay bounties for coyotes and beaver??

You just have to figure out what services are in demand in your area. I wouldn't go into it thinking 'fur trapping'. Most ADC work is non-furbearer related, yet some overlap, i.e. squirrels, bats, birds, skunks, woodchucks, coons.
In my area, I get no canine and almost no beaver work. Yet, Don LaFountain has perfected his business nothing but beaver. Each area is different.

Dave Salys of Montana (who I haven't heard from in quite some time) was doing it on the side last I heard.
Wink is a wellspring of information...a surprising amount of it is good!
BTW, Wisconsin isn't very close to 'Bama: are you cloned?

Cloned...stationed...whatever. lol.

Most of my jobs are 'squirrel, skunk, raccoon, etc.' but beavers are a bigger percentage every year.

where did you guys learn how to trap ADC? or did you just kinda...figure it out as you went?

Bow Bender, this isn't directed at you in particular, just guys in general; If you're a fur trapper, most of the animals you've

already caught. And if you can't figure out how to catch stuff like squirrels, you're too dumb to be an ADC guy anyway and you should

look for something simple, like being the President.

Bow Bender

Please do not be offend by this, but if you have to ask this question I would suggest reading the following manuals. Best Practices for Nuisance Wildlife Control Operators. National Wildlife Control Training Program core Principles and Information. The Wildlife Damage Inspection Handbook. ADC work is much different that fur trapping. A lot of your time is spent selling your services and knowing how to take care of much different situation. ADC operators are problem solvers. When dealing with the public you have to really show compassion and respect for all the animal you have to deal with. You also have to always remember, they call you because this animal etc. is a real problem for them.
A lot of the State governing agency's want to have all ADC operators be tested and have some formal training. I am sure all of the book will shed a great deal of light on the subject.

Bahahaha Paul thats funny! I guess i should have typed this question out a little better. What i meant was did you do an apprenticeship with someone that was ADC already to learn the best methods? Thats how i learned to trap furbearers, i mean, i can only assume ADC would be similar. If someone wanted me to get rid of a bat in the house, my method would probably involve a tennis racket! i'd look like the Turtle Man out there.
I guess i want to know where you learned HOW to do what you do? Obviously you all must be talented at what you do because theres a reason people pay you big bucks rather than drop 30 bucks on a live trap and get rid of the problem themselves.

--Bender

Bow Bender, actually you asked a pretty good question. I caught all the native furbearers in foothold and Conibears and when I

decided to become an ADC trapper, I made up my mind to catch them all in cages. I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that I was

able to catch furbearers like fox, mink, and weasels in cages without going through many extra preparations. Everything for me was

reading and attending seminars. I'm not big on trial and error. ( Heck, I've been married to the same bride for 47 years )

Thanks Paul that helps. I hear you on the trial and error thing! seems silly to reinvent the wheel when it comes to trapping anything nowadays! I've never been to a trapping convention before. Are there specific ADC conventions or are they all part of other trapping conventions.

I got the WCT magazine, and went to conferences for a starter. I was a fur trapper so that helped. At the conferences, I learned more at lunch and at night talking to other operators. This site is one of the best places to learn a lot. Read all the back post that you can.

If I only did work within 20 miles, I would be working part time.

Going out on a limb here, but very few people do wildlife full time without pairing it with pest control or animal damage restoration.

Bow Bender, if you've never had a subscription to Wildlife Control Technologies magazine, send me your name, address, and E-mail

address and I will buy you your first years subscription. ( That goes for the rest of you too but you can't be a past subscriber )

B. Jansma is correct about the very few people making it on wildlife alone. After some of the phone calls we have received and some

of the customers we've had, we are thinking about a couple more add-ons to our ever growing list. Things like Basic English,

Psychiatry, and one of my favorites, Knowing Where You Live. ( Seriously, how can you live some place for several years and still get

it wrong? )

Live honey bee removal used to fill in the blanks for me in San Diego.

I went 11 years part time. very little sleep those last few years before going full time. I only did rodents as a add on back in the days when I first went full time. I dropped the pc lic many years ago. only do wildlife now. You need to Find what your areas needs are as far a service, be it moles , squirrels or hippos, what ever it is and market for that service. This is not a industry where we can choose what we want most of the time. I did not set out to be the squirrel man, it came to me. Marketing is your main got to get it done. you can be the best in the field and with no work you got nothing. For the first time here for me in many years, My marketing has changed because the way I have done it for 30 years stopped working. I had to go back to basics and figure out what is the new trends and is working. So for you I would say, work part time, market full time and price your jobs full time. you will be full time sooner than you think. or close shop because you don't like it LOL.

You got a point there Jonsie. I was only part time for 4 months. I didn't choose this line of work, It just happened by accident(Literally) I shattered my knee hanging Iron in Los Angeles, and my neighbor had raccoons. She was a looker so I did that first job for a bottle of wine, and a pizza on a blanket outside her house as we watched the mama coon carry her pups out. She had a morning show on the radio and everyone knew about her raccoon issue. The next day my phone was blowing up! I never knew there were so many raccoons and skunks in San Diego.

ttt

I would think most of us started out part time ADC and built our businesses from the ground. Particularly the old generation men like Paul W., myself, Mike Page, Ron Jones, Rob Erickson, Phil Nichols, Ron Frye to name a few and so many others who are of retirement age or getting ready for it.

There wasn't much info or training back in my early years in the late 60's early 70's. I had a day job that financed much of my early ADC equipment purchases, aided my learning curve time and provided finances to build my lure business. It went that way for many years until I had built a versatile skill set of services and acquired enough equipment to work with to handle all my service call needs and allowed me to fly solo doing fulltime ADC, Pest Control, Fur trapping and Lure formulation.

That is an act I still do currently with employees and part time help of course. You fellas think you are busy.

Things are much different now. Trade skills can be learned or bought thru training at a more aggressive manner then ever before. You do still need to pay your dues in learning and applying your skills over time to establish yourself and your abilities. There is no fast track for that.

Everyone wants that quick fix now a days, however it still requires considerable training or hands on experience or working with someone who is willing to mentor you along the way. You need to start with services that you can master one area at a time and continue to add on to your skill set to where you are well versed enough to get going.

The service end is just one part of a small business venture. The other components like developing your language skills to speak to customers, sell jobs, diagnose problems, get your needed paper work /accounting skills in order, establish business skills in billing, collection practices, terms and people skills all are a part of the total package.

Resolving the nuisance problem is only the tip of the ice burg and usually the easy part. Its the other areas that make or break you. Every one has to start somewhere if they have a sincere interest in a business venture. There are some folks on here that have been there and done that. Having a patient and supportive wife or family is a key component in allowing you to grow your business.

If you don't have that, or someone that can help to finance your venture while allowing you time to grow can be a make or break situation for many aspiring to build any kind of initial sole proprietor business.

Some have started on their own for a while and found that running a business was just not what they wanted to do or could do. So the options were working for another company as an employee or buying into a franchise or going another direction all together. Some have done all of these things and they certainly can give you their take and views from their perspective if they choose to chime in on this topic.

There has been a lot of info already discussed on this topic over the years in the archives. Most of the questions that you have will most likely be found with some research and reading under previous similar topic discussions.

Best of luck to you.

Bob's above post is right on the money. I enjoy reading all of the problems and successes that you all run across. There probably

aren't too many of these joys and failures that Bob and I and a host of others on here haven't experienced ourselves. Every time I

read about something not going just quite right, I have to chuckle. It was bad enough when it was just me, but now we have nine

full-time technicians. Just imagine taking a problem ( Like Throw-Backs collection problem ) and multiplying it by nine. If you don't

keep your sense of humor and enjoy all of your many successes, this wonderful job can become a nightmare. It is human nature for our

mind to concentrate on the bad and forget about the good. If I asked each of you to write a book about all the bad times you had in

this business, it would be a very short story. But if I asked you to write about all the good and the humorous things that happened

to you, you would have the makings of a hit TV program. Keep that in mind!