Aromatic Smell Crude Operate Quantities Treasure Havoc

Unique Disposed Urine Economics Critical Scent Strong

Recent Chance Marketing Client Hunter Predator Clothing
Describe States Sensors Enlisted Orders Customers Deer
Ultimate Trade Communications Detect Entry Wandering
Moment Wild Developments Inflicted Risk Landscaping Desperate
Market Retailers 33 16 Controls Impressive Collections

On a (1)......................Monday morning, I found myself comparing

(2)......................notes with a true connoisseur of sorts.
JOHNSON: When you’re in this business, you know, you have a lot of opportunities
to smell things. They each have a very (3)......................aroma. I’ve often thought to
(4)......................it the way wine is described. Mountain Lion is my favorite. It has a
very unique burnt umber (5)....................... The wolf has the darkest color. The smell
is rich. And it has, I would say, notes of earth. 
CROCKETT: You make it sound so great. 
JOHNSON: Well, I can’t help it but, you know, in a (6)......................way, to me, it’s
the smell of money.
This expert smeller — his name is Ken Johnson. But in certain circles, he goes by a
different moniker.
JOHNSON: Well, I’m known as the pee man. I started and
(7)......................PredatorPee.com.
Johnson sells a product that is generated every day in huge (8)....................... Most of
us think of it as waste. But where one man sees animal urine, another man sees
(9).......................
JOHNSON: It’s really the (10)......................recycling. You take something that would
normally be just (11)......................of and put it to work in a way that’s natural.
For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is The (12)......................of Everyday
Things. I’m Zachary Crockett. Today: animal (13).......................
*      *      *
As a kid in New Jersey, Ken Johnson loved the outdoors. The first
(14)......................he got, he moved to one of America’s most rugged
(15)......................to study forestry at the University of Maine. After school, he stayed
up there. He found his way into the ad business, and eventually started his own
(16)......................firm. But in the mid-1980s, he took on a (17)......................closer to
his interests. It was a little company called Foggy Mountain Hunting Scents and
Lures. Foggy Mountain was run by a local (18)......................named Wayne Bosowicz.
JOHNSON: He was everything you would expect in a bear hunting guide, alright? He
was big. He was rugged. 
Bosowicz’s company filled a (19)......................need.
JOHNSON: In the hunting world, you want to get close to the game animal you’re
hunting. The way you do that is you either attract the animal, or you camouflage your
human (20).......................
A whitetail deer has around 300 million olfactory (21)....................... Its sense of smell
is 60 times stronger than ours. That means the deer can usually smell you before
you’ve seen it. To solve that problem, Bosowicz (22)......................an age-old hunting
trick: he doused himself with animal pee. And not just any animal pee — it had to be
something that didn’t scare the deer away.
JOHNSON: Foxes are naturally occurring animals in the same territory as a deer. But
they’re not a (23)......................of a deer. So deer, when they smell a fox, there’s no
concern. Hunters use fox urine on their (24)......................, and they can get closer to
the deer. Now, the more inventive hunters will use something as (25)......................as
skunk essence.
Bosowicz started bottling animal pee in mayonnaise jars and selling it at
(26)......................shows. When he eventually decided to sell the company in 1986,
Johnson saw an opportunity to expand. And, with a little financial backing, he took
over. At first, the business catered to hunters. Then, Johnson began to notice
something strange: he was getting a ton of (27)......................outside of hunting
season. He called one of his (28)......................and asked what was up.
JOHNSON: He said, “Oh, yeah, everybody around here uses it to keep rabbits out of
their garden.” That’s a light bulb (28)....................... I realized that urine is a
(29)......................player in the (30)....................... It’s how wild animals find a mate.
It’s how they protect their territory. And it’s how they (31)......................the predator.
As it turned out, Johnson’s (32)......................into the animal pee business was well-
timed.
JOHNSON: The wilder areas were being developed — homes, suburbs, that sort of
thing. Deer were (33)......................everywhere. And when they were looking for food,
the shrubs, the garden, were easy pickings.
Between 1900 and 2020, the (34)......................population in the U.S. grew from
around 300,000 to 32 million. All those deer were wreaking (35)......................on
newly-created suburbs and rural (36)....................... A Clemson University report
pegged the total damage that deer (37)......................on gardens and
(38)......................at $250 million dollars per year. And that study only looked at 13
states. Homeowners were in (39)......................need of a solution. And Johnson had
just the thing: coyote urine.
JOHNSON: Think about deer: they come onto your yard, and there it is, this scent of
a coyote. So there’s a decision that a deer has to make: is it going to
(40)......................the coyote to get the food, or not?
These days, the market for animal urine has never been hotter. You can find
an(41) ......................array of pee products on the shelves at big-box retailers like
Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowes. On eBay, small outfits sell artisanal batches of
“private stock” urine from their personal (42)....................... Companies with names
like “The Pee Mart” and “Just Scentsational” move the stuff by the gallon. According
to JungleScout, a tool used to track e-commerce sales, (43)......................sell around
$200,000 dollars’ worth of coyote and wolf urine each month on Amazon alone. And
Johnson’s company (44)......................a substantial share of that (45)....................... On
his website — PredatorPee.com — a (46)......................ounce. spray bottle of coyote
urine goes for $(47)......................bucks. It’s one of his two best-sellers.