Mink Man Hunts Farms With Extraordinary Rat-Killing Reaper

“I can only describe this type of hunting as exhilarating, organized chaos,” says Joseph Carter. “It’s a hunt hardly known by anyone.”

Four-hundred dead rats form a pattern of parallel lines on the ground of a farmyard, trophies taken in a single day of hunting by a pack of highly honed and heralded hounds. However, the key player who turns the lock on rodent mayhem is a killing machine named Boon—a tamed and trained American mink.

Meet Joseph “The Mink Man” Carter, the engineer behind Boon and a band of rat killing canines. Carter operates the most unique farm pest control service on the planet, ridding agriculture operations of rats by deploying the sleek Boon and several other mink—rodent slayers extraordinaire.

According to convention, mink are untamable creatures, cutthroat to the core, with a penchant to bite a hunk from anyone, anywhere, anytime. However, Carter and Boon are an inseparable pair, bonded through an insatiable desire to hunt.

On any given farm trip, dust flies, adrenaline rages, and rat populations plummet. “It gets crazy,” Carter says. “I can only describe this type of hunting as exhilarating, organized chaos. It’s a hunt hardly known by anyone.”

Welcome to the realm of The Mink Man.

Along Came Boon

Surrounded by the beauty of Salt Lake County, Utah, Carter, 37, recalls the origins of a surreal menagerie as he sits behind the wheel of a camper-shell pickup truck, with several caged mink in the bed, three dogs bouncing on the back seat of the cab, and Boon nestled in his lap.

Born to city life in the Midwest, Carter spent summers in Idaho and Utah beginning at age 12, in the shadow of his grandfather, Gene Hintze, who trained cutting horses and cattle dogs. By 15, Carter’s summer vacations in the West became fixed—he lived permanently with Hintze. Unbounded by urban constrictions, Carter unleashed a fascination for critters of all stripes by catching ground squirrels, muskrats, and raccoons, and taking up the sport of falconry.

In 2003, during his senior year of high school, while living outside Lehi, Utah, Carter encountered mink farms, and inevitably, escaped mink. The American mink is a member of the weasel family characterized by dark fur, stubby ears, a bushy tail, and partially webbed feet (semiaquatic).

Boon the mink has a snack — “Boon is truly special,” says Carter. “He is a marvelous mink and my buddy. When Boon is on a hunt, it’s over. There’s no place the rats can hide.” (Photo courtesy of Joseph Carter)

Casting aside the mink’s reputation as a vicious, irascible varmint anxious to sink its chompers into any being with breath, Carter trapped a mink farm escapee, determined to handle the creature.

Nervy as a cat under a rocking chair, Carter layered his body with three shirts, four pair of pants, cowboy boots, and three pairs of gloves, including an outer pair of welders—and picked up his first mink. Almost 20 years later, although Carter has enough mink bites and scars to fill a medical journal, he carries an abiding love for a most fascinating animal.

“I brought the first one home and got it used to my touch and tried not to make it too mad. That worked. I got another mink and it responded well to my calls and handling. I could get the mink tamed down and pick most of them up barehanded.”

A chain of mink responded reasonably well to Carter’s coaxing and care—and then along came Boon.

The Fast and Furious

“When a mink imprints on someone, it’s unbelievable, Carter says. “They bond with one, single person.”

Bottle-fed as a baby—or kit—Boon was initially handled by Carter’s wife, Maggie, but Boon proved a shade too rambunctious. “Even when a mink is nice, they play rough,” Carter explains. “It was odd, but Boon switched over to liking me and I started devoting a lot of time to him and everything clicked.”

Joseph Carter and Boon the mink — “It’s all about hunting efficiently, but if you’re in a spot where you can’t move the rats, the mink is the king,” says Carter. (Photo courtesy of Joseph Carter)

“Typically, mink pick one human to love and they’ll be your best friend in the world, but there is a downside—everyone other human around needs to get bit. They’ll go out of their way to get hold of anyone but their imprint. For whatever reason, they decide the person who raised them is a friend, but everyone else is an enemy.”

Boon follows suit. He loves Carter; everybody else gets the incisors.

“Give Boon a chance and he’ll take a nip of anyone, except for me. That’s just mink. I can have him in my coat or under my shirt, and he’s a sweet little kitten. Anyone else just exists as potential flesh to bite.”

Lean as Lent, Boon is solid muscle, weighing in at the midpoint between typical wild mink versus ranch mink at roughly 3 lb. He is a ripper in the realm of rodents, and an ideal complement to Carter’s pack of rat dogs. (For more, see: Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs)

“Training a mink to hunt is similar to a dog; it’s in their nature, but the experience and the exposure you provide increases the animal's ability and skill in doing what comes natural,” Carter says.

“Boon was raised around dogs and gets along good with them, but not all my mink do. Most of the mink will get a hold of a dog any chance they get, because they are just as mean or meaner to a dog than to us, but the dogs have been taught that they're not allowed to retaliate.”

“When a hunt starts, the dogs stay out of the mink’s way and wait,” Carter continues. “Dogs are amazing and wonderful creatures, like nothing else on this planet, and they quickly learn that Boon, or whatever mink is working, is going to make rats go on the run. When a really strong hunt starts and rats are popping out of holes all over the place, it gets fast and furious like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

Mayhem.

And in the middle of the cauldron, or more accurately, just below the surface, Boon stirs the pot. The minkery is on.

Dirt and Death

On arrival at a given farm, Carter is typically dressed in muck boots and strapped with rat tongs and a shovel. Boon’s gear is significantly more extravagant. The wily mink wears a GPS tracker and a telemetry unit, along with a depth detector (ferret finder). Combined, the three devices allow Carter to monitor Boon’s every move.

Carter and his mammalian wrecking crew hunt farms of all sizes, from small chicken coops to vast commercial operations. “It might be a barn, a back yard, a dairy or beef operation, or a giant pheasant farm.”

Boon underground — There is no place left to hide when Boon enters the underground realm of barn rats. (Photo courtesy of Joseph Carter)

Any farm site with limited canine access to rats merits reliance on Boon’s muscle. “I have to judge each farm beforehand as to whether to use mink,” Carter explains. “If my mink goes in a rat hole, I know roughly where he’s coming out. But if he goes in a haystack, he might come out with a coon. If he goes in a giant junk pile, I’ve got no clue where he’s coming out. It’s all about hunting efficiently, but if you’re in a spot where you can’t move the rats, the mink is the king.”

The dogs know the drill and maintain a muscle-twitching vigil in or around a barn, anticipating the coming rush when rats inevitably break cover. As Carter releases Boon, the mink slips effortlessly into a nook or crevice and descends into the realm of brown rats. In piecemeal fashion, a portion of the rat colony flees from Boon, ascending to the farmyard with screeches and squeals, essentially trading one predator (mink) for another (canine). Rats scurry with the madness of blind men escaping a fire, as the dogs snatch the individual rodents and deliver a spine-shattering shake.

The dogs are a motley pack of team players, each bringing a particular skill or characteristic to the hunt. Boss is a 65 lb. athletic mix of whippet, greyhound, and pit bull. Leia, 21 lb., is an equal split of Patterdale terrier and whippet. Bindi is a pit bull pup in training, projected to reach 30 lb. In a nutshell, the trio rarely misses a rat in open ground—death before a fleeing rat finds the next hole.

Below the canine scrum, Boon kills rats in smaller numbers, tactically moving from one pocket to another, constantly flushing others toward the reactionary dogs. The appearance of rats on the surface is comparable to a steady drip, rather than a flood—a pace crucial for efficient pest control, Carter explains.

“The last thing you want is to lift a big slab of cement and allow 50 rats to come out at once, because many of those will get away. Instead, I send in Boon and he will push them out one or a few at a time for the dogs. That’s the most effective way to help someone on a farm and kill big numbers of rats.”

And “big numbers” is often a shocking total. In 2021, Carter killed 1,087 rats across five visits to an expansive pheasant operation, including 412 rats killed in a single day’s five-hour hunt.

“Every farm is different and sometimes ratting doesn’t work due to inaccessibility for the mink and dogs,” Carter notes. “But I’ve been in many situations where owners spent their entire lives trying poison, trapping, shooting, all with no long-term effect. I’ve gone in over a half-dozen visits and my dogs killed them all. Sometimes people don’t recognize the damage caused long-term on farms by rats.”

Precisely. The agriculture industry is a rat’s buffet.

Rat Math

Rodents make up almost half (43%) of all mammals on earth, and in the mammalian kingdom, brown rats have a spot at the head of the survival table. And, unquestionably, agriculture provides easy pickings for rats. (For more, see Rat Bomb: Farming’s Death of a Thousand Bites)

All told, rats rack up to $20 billion in damages to the U.S. economy each year, according to some estimates. Agriculture pays a hunk of the bill, covering damage to field crops, stored grain, equipment, building structures, and much more. Coast to coast, rat presence is near-ubiquitous at some level on agriculture operations of all types, and rats possess a stunning capacity for reproduction, with a single female potentially capable of setting off a chain of 15,000 offspring in a single year, dependent on food resources.

Rat Haul — Joseph Carter (third from the right) and his rat-reaping wrecking crew with a day’s bounty. (Photo courtesy of Joseph Carter)

Females can copulate hours after giving birth, ovulate once every four days, and produce litters throughout their entire lives. (Life span in the wild is roughly 7-10 months.) Brown rats can start breeding at 8 weeks of age (roughly 12 weeks with limited food)—10-12 pups with plenty of food, and 4-5 pups with less food.

The rat math is sobering and highlights a vital service provided by Carter and his 3-lb. predator. Hat tip to Boon the reaper.

The Mink Man

Carter’s unique brand of pest control (rats and muskrats) has opened income opportunity beyond farm clients or canal companies, through “The Mink Man” on YouTube. “I film the hunts or it might not even be a hunting job, but just me out fishing with a mink or training a mink.”

However, Carter also has multiple backup channels beyond YouTube. “I’ve got videos that YouTube won’t allow because their ideology that doesn’t match what sometimes goes on at a farm or in nature. I now have a couple of subscription channels on other platforms, and a website.”

Rats beware, Carter and Boon are on the trail: “Boon is truly special. He is a marvelous mink and my buddy,” Carter adds. “When Boon is on a hunt, it’s over. There’s no place the rats can hide.”

To read more stories from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com — 662-592-1106), see:

Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market

Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.

Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man

How a Texas Farmer Killed Agriculture’s Debt Dragon

While America Slept, China Stole the Farm

Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years

The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland

Where's the Beef: Con Artist Turns Texas Cattle Industry Into $100M Playground

Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam

Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History

US Farming Loses the King of Combines