About Gene

“There’s a ringing in my ears… I think it’s the call of the wild.”

High! My name is Gene Check. Some of my friends call me Geno. I have made my living in the outdoors for most of my life. I like to say that “I was born ready, and I’ve been going downhill ever since”.

I’ve harvested a variety of wild fishing bait including minnows, leeches, mayflies, crayfish, etc. I have also harvested all types of specimens and plants for various uses.

At one point I invented my own turtle trap and commercially harvested turtles for 10 years in several states. Afterwards I wrote a book about turtle catching and commercially manufactured my trap for a few years. I published the second edition of “The Professional Turtle Harvest” in 2024.

The last 25 years have found me running my crayfish business, harvesting about 40,000 lbs a year of wild crayfish from the big lakes of Northern Wisconsin. Along the way, I wrote another book called “Commercial Crayfish Across America“. I published a new updated version called “How to Trap Crayfish for Pleasure or Profit” in 2024. In recent years, a parasite has destroyed all my crayfish waters, ending the crayfish business for me in Wisconsin. I am currently in the process of moving to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to restart my crayfish business there.

As a stoner and a cannabis activist in Wisconsin, it was a pleasure to write and publish my 2022 book, “The Stoner’s Travel Guide to Upper Michigan“. Stay tuned for the 2nd book in this series, coming in 2025!

Once I am settled into my new place in Michigan, I will be listing a variety of traps and other things for sale on this website. I hope you enjoy looking at the eclectic variety of things I will list for sale here.