THE gigs are irregular but, thanks in part to mostly lax regulations, good money can still be made by bounty-hunting, says Rob “Daddy Rat” Hoyt, a trucker in Post Falls, Idaho with an “icing on the cake” sideline snatching fugitives. All but four states allow private citizens to bounty hunt. Nearly a third, Idaho included, don’t bother licensing armed “fugitive-recovery agents”, as they are also known. Bondsmen typically pay bounty-hunters expenses plus 10% to 20% of the value of a bond on someone who fails to appear in court. Some bonds run into six figures.
It is not work for the faint of heart—plenty of fugitives try to fight off pursuers. So many bounty hunters lift weights and practise a martial art or wrestling, the better to snap on handcuffs and, on some fugitives, ankle cuffs, lest they try to kick out a backseat window on the drive to jail. Tools of the trade include ballistic vests, pepper spray, Tasers, handguns and, for some jobs, a shotgun loaded with a beanbag that “folds you up like a newspaper”, says Mike “Animal” Zook, an affable bounty-hunter in Spirit Lake, Idaho. Though built like a bear, he has been clubbed and, on four jobs, stabbed. The pain didn’t really kick in until the adrenalin wore off. It’s “definitely not easy money”, says Rex Taylor, a bounty-hunter in nearby Coeur d’Alene who also runs All Freedom Bail Bonds.
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