Prices Collars Traps Snares Capture Parts Home     The Man Behind the World's Most Famous Collar Ranch Magazine, Februay 1984   click here to return to publicity page The Man Behind the World’s Most Famous Collar Roy McBride, inventor of the Toxic collar, expresses his thoughts and tells of the collar’s crude beginning. Roy McBride has spent a good part of his life hunting coyotes and it is ironic that he has so much in common with his foe. Both McBride and the coyote are crafty and successful at what they do.             McBride doesn’t have any personal grudge against coyotes or other predators, it’s just that he feels ranchers should have the right to protect their livestock.             “I think people having a problem with coyotes have the right to do something about it,” said McBride. The West Texas predator hunter who lives in Alpine is the inventor of the famed toxic collar.             “I don’t think ranchers should be imposed upon by someone else’s will who lives way off in a city or somewhere else,” he said. “At the same time, it is not the duty of the taxpayer to kill the rancher’s coyotes. It is the problem of the man and he should take care of it but he shouldn’t be interfered with. That’s how I see it—it’s real simple. Ranching is not mandatory. It is something you do by choice and there are just certain problems related to the business.”             McBride has found the people who do the best in the sheep business are the ones who take care of their own problems. He said most sheepmen are good predator hunters and most can take care of their own problems without any help.             “It would help them a lot to have whatever tools they need and not be interfered with,” he said.             McBride grew up trapping for furs and the valuable knowledge he gained as a youngster led him early in life into a job with the Fish and Wildlife Service as a government trapper and later as a government lion hunter. He now operates his own predator control business with the help of his sons Rowdy and Rocky, and his wife Jerry and daughter Randy manufacture collars in the family’s shop near their home. The collars are used by ranchers in several foreign countries and for experimental use in the U.S. He expects them to be marketed commercially here as soon as the government gives the okay.             “The future here in the United States for the collar is terrific,” he said. “It is inevitable that it will be used and I can’t see anything but a good future. It has taken a long time to get where we are with the collar and it has been opposed by the very groups that I thought would have supported it.”             McBride said legally, the collar is approved and there are no restrictions on it—the restrictions are on the toxicant.             “I could sell collars all over the U.S. if I wanted to. But 1080 is now in the registration proceedings and I don’t know what the delay is. All of the legal obstacles have been overcome,” he said.             “The collar had a rather crude beginning, McBride explained. It originated back in the ‘60s when he was having trouble trapping a particular coyote on a West Texas ranch. All of the conventional methods were not working and he figured that if he could cover the area on the sheep where the coyote usually bit, he could get him.             “So I began to try to develop or hold a toxicant in place in the area where the coyote was biting the sheep. Of course the first ones (collars) were crude, but we got the coyote,” he said.             He originally developed the collar to sell commercially and shortly after that—in 1972—President Nixon signed an executive order banning the use of 1080.             “We tried other toxicants but found they were hazardous to humans or has secondary effects on other types of animals,” he said. “1080 was the only thing that really worked well.”             McBride’s experience using 1080 dates back to his days working with the Fish and Wildlife Service when the toxicant was used in bait stations. He has also worked with ranchers in Mexico who were using 1080 on their own. He knows it was very selective.             “It is the logical thing to use in the collar because it is odorless and tasteless and has no warning effects,” he said. “In other words the coyote won’t turn loose of the collar because he can feel himself being poisoned.”             McBride has worked in the predator control business professionally for almost 30 years and many of those years have involved working with 1080 in some fashion. He has seen 1080 used successfully in Mexico to a broad extent and has never seen anyone hurt by using it.             “My experience is that it is a lot more selective than traps and if used correctly is very selective on coyotes. The fact is when you use it in the collar, you are only after the coyote that is causing the problem,” he said.             The collars McBride manufactures now are going mostly to South Africa, Canada, and Mexico. In Canada and Mexico, 1080 is used as a toxicant in the collar. In South Africa, ranchers started using 1080 but have switched to a common insecticide which will often kill the jackal before he can kill the lamb. McBride has worked for several years with South African ranchers who have serious problems with jackals. Jackals, he said, are very similar to coyotes in most ways but are slightly smaller.             Mexican and Canadian ranchers have problems with coyotes much the same as those in the U.S. McBride has found problems in those foreign countries are much like ours but laws in those countries are more sensitive. Laws in some other countries McBride has dealt with do not allow traps or snares in areas because in South Africa, for example, there is a danger of hurting antelope. Small antelope sometimes cross fences through the same holes as jackals. McBride said officials in those countries are generally objective and are trying to solve problems while not wanting to create new problems by using tools that are not selective. The collar has an immediate appeal to them because it was something anybody could use, he said. “You don’t have to be trained to use the collar. We talk about training programs here but farmers in South Africa can buy collars directly through the mail and use them without any kind of training,” McBride said. It is not only ranch people that contract McBride’s services. Some environmental groups have employed his assistance when doing work on endangered species. He participated in a survey on the ocelot in Texas and last year his son Rocky caught some lions for the Guadalupe and Carlsbad National Parks. Radios were put on the lions as part of a government study. At the time this interview was conducted the McBrides were hunting mountain lions as part of a study for Texas Tech University. After completing that job, Roy was leaving for Florida where he was contracted by the Game and Fish Commission to catch panthers in the Everglades for a team of biologists who planned to monitor radios attached to the animals. Asked about the current population trends of some of the animals he hunts, McBride said coyotes are expanding their range. “They occur in states east of the Mississippi and are now in North Florida. They are very abundant animals and are adaptable,” he said. McBride said coyotes have been transplanted to some extent by people who have taken them as pets and then released them. Hound men have turned them loose to run with dogs and they do very well anywhere you put them, he said. As for mountain lions, back in the 50s and the 60s they were very low in number because of an intensive control financed by wool growers. Most of the sheep have left the better lion habitat, so lions have really come back, he said. For several years there wasn’t a financial incentive to kill them, he explained, so now they are very common in Texas.           click here to return to publicity page

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