Major L. Boddicker

Boddicker grew up in the hills and river breaks of Benton County, Iowa, during the 1950s. Hunting, fishing, and trapping were the major focuses of life from his earliest boyhood. By age ten, he was trapping gophers and red fox for bounties. By age 16, he had the third highest duck bag in the county. Between hunting trips, he was an all-state football player, heavyweight-wrestling champion of the WAMAC conference, and president of his class. He gave up football at St. Johns University, Collegeville, Minnesota, because the ruffed grouse and duck hunting were more important.

Boddicker chose to get three college degrees focusing on wildlife: a Bachelor of Science in biology, a Masters of Science in zoology/wildlife, and a Ph.D., studying diseases of sharp-tailed grouse. During summers, he fought forest fires for the U.S. Forest Service Smokejumpers in the Western U.S. and in Alaska in 1963-64 and 1968-69.

The basic concept and design of Crit’R•Call Standard was developed while he was in graduate school at South Dakota State University in 1968.

Boddicker has worked as an outdoor-education specialist in South Dakota, for the Kansas 4-H program, and served as an Extension Wildlife Pest Control Specialist at Colorado State University for ten years.

He has operated his own company, Rocky Mountain Wildlife Enterprises, since 1985.

He sold the Crit'R•Call brand of wildlife calls to another couple in 2019 and no longer sells call products. Jan and Major still sell a selection of books on trapping, predator calling, adventure, and wildlife pest control. If you need to know how to call, trap, or snare a predator, check their website.

Boddicker is a columnist for several magazines, writing about old guns, varmint calling, trapping, hunting, predator control, and his various adventures around the world.

He has worked for the Smithsonian Institution, surveying large mammal populations in the Peruvian and Gabon rainforests.

In his spare time, he enjoys gun shows and collecting and shooting anything that shoots. Coyote hunting is his favorite pastime. Major continues to trap and collect fur pelts when the opportunity arises.

Hunting and trapping was a family tradition for the Boddicker and Noeller clans. Early influences and teachers about varmint hunting were his uncle Cato Noeller, cousin Paul Noeller, and friends F. Robert Henderson, Murry Burnham, and Claude McCready.

Boddicker is one of those rare guys that makes his opportunities for an exciting outdoor life and does it all. He writes it as he sees it and does it, no veneer in his stuff to try to make everyone happy or to be “politically correct.”