Latest / DuckFellas Podcast / From Scorching Openers to Coot Competitions! DuckFellas Ep. 40

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From Scorching Openers to Coot Competitions! DuckFellas Ep. 40 · DuckFellas Podcast

0:00
Welcome back to the Duckfellas podcast, episode 40.
0:05
What is up, my guys? What is up, my guy? Chilling.
0:11
Like a villain? A villain. Whoa, Jinx, you owe me a Coke. Shut up.
0:15
If that was the case, it would just be sweating. That's it.
0:20
It's hotter than hell outside. It is ridiculous.
0:24
Uh-huh. The end is near, though, on that, it looks like, hopefully. I hope.
0:28
Fingers crossed. I'll just bounce right back.
0:31
What we're coming into is false fall.
0:35
I think we've already had that. Well, maybe. I hope so.
0:39
I think we all hope so. Didn't we have a cold front, like, before opener?
0:42
Like, a week before opener or something like that?
0:44
Yeah. A week or two. Not a major one. No. No, it was still down until,
0:49
like, the 60s, though. Yeah. Yeah. I was wearing a flannel.
0:53
I say, I think there was one day I was working, and I'm pretty sure I could
0:57
see my breath when I was getting the crane scoped out for the day.
1:00
It's because you're a mouth breather.
1:03
Right. coming from the office guy that does nothing but stay in his PJs all day on his couch.
1:09
Don't hate me because you hate me that I'm in the heat and the AC.
1:13
Anywho, central opener this past week. Well, still open, right? But open Saturday.
1:20
Just a bear on Saturday. What a grind it was on Saturday. I'm so glad that I
1:28
got zero hours of sleep to go hunt that hunt. Yeah.
1:32
Yeah. You know, if we could have gone out at the ass crack of dawn to get the
1:39
spot we wanted, we probably would have done a little better.
1:41
I guarantee we'd have done better, but we couldn't. I didn't get back till,
1:45
what, 1.30 in the morning from work? Yeah.
1:49
You can't hardly do much worse.
1:53
No, I mean, we were technically an hour and a half late because,
1:55
what is it, 12 o'clock? Yeah.
1:58
We didn't put decoys out here. And I'm kind of curious in that law.
2:01
We talked about that a little bit the other day, I think, Austin, wasn't it?
2:06
About, it just says no blinds or decoys out.
2:10
I know, me and you talked a little bit about it. It's no blinds or decoys,
2:14
right? So where's the line on that with if your boat is your blind?
2:21
You can't keep fishermen out there, so you just got to bring a couple fishing
2:23
poles with you and just hang out? Exactly. We could have ran diddy poles.
2:28
Yeah, dude. We had better luck. Guarantee you that. For sure would have put
2:31
more meat in the freezer.
2:35
From general consensus, though, it looks like a pretty good amount of people had a good opener.
2:40
From what I've kind of heard and seen, we just drew a short straw,
2:44
and we really didn't get a lot of good scouting in.
2:46
We got some, but it was, from what I kind of seen, if you weren't in a flooded
2:51
field or something like that, a flooded crop field, you were kind of missing out.
2:56
Yeah, it was still, I mean, it's always a gamble, right? That's why it's called
3:00
hunting, not killing. But it was still good to get out, get the boat out.
3:03
It was kind of get back to the groove of things.
3:06
I had a good time. Was it? Because you were kind of bitchy for the first part
3:11
of the morning. I had a blast.
3:13
Was that, like, how would you know? Weren't you like snoring and sounding like
3:16
a turbo go blowing off most of the time in the morning after we got the boat
3:20
set? I'm talking about more than don't worry. I got a video of the snooze fest.
3:25
We had. Oh, thank God. Yeah.
3:28
Well, everybody was sleeping. We all took it like an hour and a half.
3:31
No, no, we didn't. I think I took 20 or 30 minutes and then Austin was still
3:35
awake when I woke up and but everybody else was still sleeping.
3:39
Austin stayed awake probably the longest.
3:42
I don't know. I don't know what Trevor got for sleep but he got a lot more than
3:46
we did four out of the five people in that boat slept zero hours between dark
3:51
and shooting time well until we got to the water right.
3:56
It was a good time. Great time. It kind of sucked hunting in eight-foot deep
4:00
water whenever there's only wood ducks and teal around.
4:03
Ah, you can't say that. We did see quite a few pintails. I was going to say,
4:07
we saw some pennies. We saw a couple of Milardos. Yeah.
4:10
Yeah. Hopefully, everybody else had a good hunt. You know, it was not ideal weather for that.
4:16
But you got to take what you can get. You only get 60 days to do it in Iowa, so you got to go. Yep.
4:23
Wood duck tastes the same as mallards. Yeah.
4:26
Yeah, not super accustomed to duck hunting in a t-shirt, if I do say so myself.
4:32
Oh, my God. Yeah, that was, I had that hoodie on, and Tyler was already in a
4:37
t-shirt, and it was an hour after she lied, and I'm like, oh, my God.
4:41
I'm like, I want to take this hoodie off. Yeah.
4:44
I brought a hoodie and never put it on. It stayed on the shelf.
4:48
I brought my vest, and I was like, oh, it might be chilly out there in the water.
4:52
Wrong. Wrong. I wanted to get you in the water.
4:59
I wish you would have to pick up decoys that would have been way easier.
5:02
I legitimately thought about it, but then my pants would be wet,
5:05
my shirt would be wet, and I was just like...
5:07
Not worth it. Yeah. I thought you said you were wet the whole time.
5:10
Well, that's because my balls were sweaty.
5:14
Oh, yeah. That's it. There's that. Sorry. Aaron, I'm out.
5:19
So, but what about the second day though? The second day was a little bit more on the up and up for us.
5:24
It was, it was second day. Like obviously I had fun the first day or Saturday,
5:29
you know, but Sunday was, was a blast.
5:31
Just a little change up from how we, how we're used to hunting, you know?
5:36
So a little change up, saw some more birds flying, worked some more birds. Me and Tyler.
5:43
We did not see more birds. Well, let me rephrase that. We had a lot of pintails
5:48
flying high on Saturday. We did.
5:50
I should have phrased that as we saw more shootable birds. Yes. Yes.
5:55
Yeah. Me and Tyler. Oh, my God. He's just ripping it. Sorry.
6:00
Squirrel. Me and Tyler. The goose was probably my favorite bird of the day.
6:04
Yeah, that was pretty sick.
6:06
Yeah. Unfortunately, we didn't get to shoot at it. No. No, we didn't.
6:11
But it was cool. Leaned up against the willows.
6:13
Or willows. the cattails, me and Tyler were just ripping that call trying to get that thing in turn.
6:19
Yeah, and that was the other cool thing. We got snacks while we hunted because
6:23
we were in that wild corndog patch.
6:26
Yes. Some of them a little overdone, but some of them still perfect for this
6:31
time of year. Pretty solid, yeah. Yeah, it was great.
6:35
Yeah. That was entertaining to say the least.
6:40
We also had a coot that hung out with us for most of the day.
6:45
Oh my God. I think he scared the shit out of me like twice.
6:49
I know it was pissed in all y'all because she was having a whole panic attack about it. She was.
6:53
She wanted us to shoot that bird. And if it would have been next week, probably would have.
6:58
Very possible. Gotta say.
7:01
There's no probably. It would have died. Yeah.
7:04
Gotta get those numbers, right? Oh, yeah. Speaking of that, let's go into a
7:09
little bit of details here on the whole Coop Wars thing that's coming up.
7:14
What is that? In a week and a half from now? Next weekend? Yeah.
7:16
Weekend after next? Yeah.
7:18
Yeah, a little over a week and a half. On the 24th. Yes.
7:24
Spare no coot, Trenton says. I know, but I figured if he got comfortable where
7:28
he was at, we could go back and kill him next week, Trenton.
7:31
Yeah, no, we got to save him. Because you don't know how many coots they've been through.
7:36
I'm even thinking about taking some food down there and just feeding for a couple
7:40
days just to keep him comfortable. So you're thinking about baiting.
7:48
Is zach still with us i am i was gonna ask you is that yours or mine,
7:55
internet. Probably yours. I'm going to say that it's yours. Yep.
8:00
Oh, yeah. Network unstable.
8:03
Starlink, you suck. I don't have any problems with it.
8:07
I even upgraded. It really pissed me off. Upgraded?
8:11
Oh, did you go to the next tier or whatever? I think that's what I'm at.
8:17
What do we got right now? Eight teams? Including us?
8:22
I think, well, that's not including Trenton either. Mm-hmm. Nine teams.
8:27
Nine teams, but I know of, like, two more that are for sure in.
8:32
You have until, I'm going to put the deadline as, like, the morning of the 23rd
8:37
to get signed up, or, like, that afternoon.
8:40
Because we're going to start a group text with all the captains for the teams.
8:43
Yep. So, everybody, every team's going to have a captain just to be involved
8:48
in a group chat. And that's how you will submit entries, like,
8:51
through photos. And they need to be, like, a time-stamped photo.
8:55
I can send a link or I will send a link whenever we send out the group text,
9:00
of an app you can download and you take the photo of the coots with that app
9:05
and it will have the date, time, and it'll have the city and state on it.
9:10
That way it's less likely of cheating.
9:14
It's not foolproof, but it's the best we can do since we're not limiting people just to Iowa.
9:21
Right. another thing we do is we are going to probably ask for some,
9:25
depending on what kind of birds you shoot, we might ask for a pin location on
9:28
OnX just to verify that's where you killed the birds.
9:34
Yeah that's not happening speak for yourself, I'll text them yeah,
9:41
so the way it's going to work I believe we're doing I think it was three points,
9:47
was it three points for every day that you kill a coot, your group does let
9:51
me go back to our text here.
9:56
I get to have this pulled up,
9:58
I even looked at it before we started, and I forgot already. Yeah. Dun-dun-dun.
10:07
So... Don't worry. We're just waiting. Yeah, no big deal.
10:12
Yeah, so it's three points for every day you kill a coot, and then it's five
10:17
points for every 50 coots your group kills. So once you hit 50,
10:23
you get five points, and then for every 50 more after that, you get five more.
10:27
And every banded coot you kill is five points. So, if you can kill a band, that's big.
10:33
You're in it. That's big.
10:36
Yeah, banded coots are the way to go and I guarantee, like I said last week,
10:40
you know, or a few weeks ago we made that prediction on there's going to be
10:43
a banded duck in the boat and it's going to be a damn coot. Guarantee it.
10:46
Probably. We should have specified.
10:49
Yeah. I'm mounting it. No.
10:53
Yes. Yes.
10:56
Yes. Oh my God. and then we're going to sneak it into Tyler's house.
11:00
Yes. No, absolutely not.
11:03
But that...
11:06
Curtis asked here, how many bandicoots have you guys seen? I have seen one.
11:11
I've never seen any because I've never killed a coot.
11:15
Well, it wasn't one I killed, but it was like still... We had an impoundment
11:19
area back home where I grew up, and people would always walk the impoundment
11:23
at the end of the year, and you'd see dead birds from obviously cripples that got away,
11:27
and people would find bands and some people found abandoned coots.
11:31
I've seen people kill abandoned coot before and I've heard they banned quite
11:35
a few of them. So I don't know.
11:37
Holy AJ. 100% mount the band. You heard it here, Tyler. I'm telling you.
11:41
And he's going to be in a Captain Morgan pose with his foot on a bush like in. Oh my god.
11:46
That alone is mount worthy right there.
11:49
That would be kind of cool. That would be kind of cool. Just something that's
11:53
completely dumb to hang on the wall, but.
11:58
There's not a better fitting bird. Yeah, it would have to be a dumb mount for a coot.
12:03
Yeah. Yeah. No, I wasn't doing like work banking, you know, like my just having
12:08
banked up against the wall next to my mallards. I like robots.
12:13
Robots? What is going on? Yeah, what's what you're talking about?
12:18
I don't know. It might have been on my end there. You guys cut out? Oh.
12:23
Yeah, I don't know. I think I mean, I've already seen a few cutes die,
12:29
so I think this cute wars might get a little rowdy. It might do some cool shit.
12:34
Well, Trenton's got some high
12:35
expectations for himself. He's going for gold. He's looking to win it.
12:39
It was his idea to put this on, and we're just going to go with it.
12:43
It's gotten some backlash because of the competition thing over a migratory
12:48
bird, which I understand to a point, but when we're talking about coots, it's like,
12:55
they're not an invasive species, but they kind of are to duck's nesting habitat.
13:00
And that it's like we're not holding a hen mallard killing competition I mean Jesus chill out yeah.
13:07
But if we were... If we were, we'd win. The Suzy Slayers, number one.
13:12
We would win. Oh my god.
13:17
But yeah, so we're looking at... I had somebody hit me up the other day and
13:23
they're supposed to be scrounging up some stuff. They asked if we wanted some
13:25
stuff to give away for some of the contestants that enter the teams-wise.
13:31
So we're kind of hoping to have some stuff to give away to not just the first
13:35
place team, but maybe first or third or depending on who all gets involved maybe,
13:41
you know maybe if we get enough stuff everybody could get something to a point,
13:46
and it just goes on a tier level by what place you get we'll see how that goes
13:50
as we get close as we get closer and get through the year because this is going to start,
13:55
october 24th and it's going to end november 30th november 30th is the last day to submit a photo.
14:03
Yep. No, I think, yeah, when they, whatever, they reached out,
14:07
it was kind of exciting, right?
14:09
Be able to throw a little more skin in the game, if you will,
14:11
see what we can't get mustered up here. But I am, you know, besides actual competition,
14:17
I'm super stoked to see all the team names.
14:20
Because there's obviously a couple good ones already.
14:25
Yeah, there is a couple solid ones in there. There's one or two that are the
14:29
same, but we'll have some good ones. I know there's been quite a few people
14:35
interested in it. The post we put up got a lot of interest.
14:39
We'll see how it goes here. And we'll keep probably sharing it twice a week,
14:44
out again to make sure it stays in the feed to get more teams in it.
14:50
Because the more teams we get in it, it's just the bigger it's going to go,
14:53
the more fun it's going to be, more of a competition it becomes, blah, blah, blah.
14:58
Yeah, I think we should definitely post a leaderboard every week too.
15:03
Oh, yeah. No, that's going to happen.
15:05
Yeah, like every Monday, Monday that week.
15:08
After the weekend, see, see where everybody's still standing.
15:11
Guys can make up their mind if they really want to go hunt the mallard hole
15:14
or go to the cooter slough, you know, and kind of decide from there. Yeah.
15:19
Well, I figured we would probably do it on the live stream every week that we
15:24
do and we'd pull up the leaderboard and talk about it.
15:28
Yeah, no, that'd be good. And we could post it outside of that too,
15:30
but we'd do it first on the, on the stream here and then share it after the
15:35
stream's over. Mm-hmm. Yep.
15:38
That'll work. I'm really excited. I'm excited to see this and a couple other
15:43
things that are coming down the chute that I'm excited for. So hopefully all
15:48
that's done before the competition kicks off. Right.
15:54
Yeah. Let's not hold our breath on that, but we'll see what happens. There.
16:00
Curtis has a question for us. He asked, what do you guys think are the most
16:05
effective motion decoys?
16:08
And that's crazy. He asked that after we just tried out two new motion decoys this weekend.
16:12
I know. Yeah. It's kind of crazy to get that question on this week after trying
16:18
two things that we've only ever seen on video.
16:22
Right. but so what do you like talk let's talk about your swimmer you know i
16:28
don't know what brand it is or what anything about it tell us about your swimmer that we use,
16:32
yeah so i have a lucky duck swimmer that i i really like using and the only downfall is is that.
16:41
Essentially i need to just make like a homemade lead for it so it can get more
16:48
or so it has more range of motion and it probably make a little heavier weight,
16:53
to go on the bottom of it but that thing will run for like a solid five hours
16:58
straight and just not care at all but if if you're not careful,
17:03
really the downfall to it is it can get wrapped up into your other decoys,
17:09
so then all of a sudden you got decoys dragging themselves like backwards behind
17:14
your swimmer but as far as motion wise like i I mean, it looks super realistic, lasts a long time.
17:21
But yeah, I mean, I've talked to the other guys about obviously making a homemade
17:24
lead on it and setting it like maybe off on the end or somewhere where it has
17:30
plenty of space. But I enjoy it for what it is.
17:35
Yeah, it's not bad. I mean, Griffin said here, Lucky Duck is absolutely terrible, which,
17:40
your swimmer you've had good luck with, but I would agree with him to that for
17:44
the most part because other than spinners, spinners by far are Lucky Duck for
17:48
me, but I've never had good luck with them things lasting for the motion decoys,
17:54
like the swimmers, but yours is still going just fine.
17:57
I just have – I cannot get one to last a season when it comes to that stuff.
18:03
Do you see Curtis's next comment? Yeah, and I was going to say that too with
18:08
the whole lead thing. I think that's kind of a game changer with what we just
18:13
tried Sunday. Or first time having it out.
18:18
Right, so we have the quick hoys thing, which is I believe what you're talking about, Curtis.
18:23
And we used it this weekend for the first time, and it was five green wing teal on it.
18:30
And it works really well. It makes a lot of motion, and it really puts some ripples on the water.
18:36
I would say I would use mallards or bigger.
18:41
Mallard decoys or even a gadwall widgeon decoy would work way better than the
18:44
teal because the center teal kind of sinks a little bit with the weight.
18:48
He was definitely drowning.
18:50
He was feeding all the time. Yeah, so frontside he's drowning.
18:55
Backside clip, he's taken off like a rocket.
19:00
It worked great, though. So it lasted, I mean, we hunted, what,
19:03
till like 10 o'clock, basically.
19:05
So I mean, it was three hours in, still running strong.
19:09
Don't be able to test it how long it actually lasts yet. We'll figure that out here soon.
19:14
But it's just the weight of the whole system that pulls that center decoy down.
19:18
Because the center decoy holds the bulk of the weight for the propeller and motor there.
19:25
Yeah, that teal just doesn't quite have enough surface area to float that centerpiece.
19:30
I mean, you could obviously run teal on the outsides, right?
19:33
But yeah, I think a little bigger decoy would really make that thing.
19:39
Not that it didn't perform well. I think it's a killer addition to anybody's spread, honestly.
19:46
Because you have the swimmer that Austin's running, or the Lucky Duck swimmer,
19:49
where your lead's a little long and you're trying not to tingle it up,
19:52
whereas at least this, you have five decoys, so you're not leaving a big hole in your spread for one.
19:59
You can kind of leave a hole in itself, five decoys that have motion.
20:04
I've seen one or two people in here talk about the AvianX Power Kicker.
20:10
I would love to try that I was planning on buying one this year but then I kind
20:14
of got the other two things I got the animator and the quick toys,
20:18
and I just didn't buy one but after that like the first year I wanted one then
20:24
too but then they were having all the problems so I never bought one,
20:27
we'll see if that switch fixes all the problems this year but I heard,
20:31
hands down it's the best motion there is I've heard from numerous people yeah,
20:38
Back when I was just a broke boy, broker boy.
20:42
I had those quiver, the pucks.
20:44
Dude, them things actually worked pretty good for, I mean, the spread I was
20:48
running at that time, right?
20:49
Two dozen decoys, and you threw one every half dozen. It actually put some ripples
20:55
in the water and gave the decoys a little motion.
20:58
But they lasted a year before they shit out.
21:01
You know, one thing I want to say real quick is Griffin's in the chat throwing
21:05
comments out, But he's just a fucking negative Nancy tonight.
21:07
Like, everything he's saying just sucks. Like, I don't know who pissed in his
21:10
Cheerios today, but hopefully, I really hope he has a good day tomorrow.
21:17
Just waiting for him to tell us to start counting carpet threads. No kidding, Jesus.
21:22
Kind of ridiculous, but yeah. I think, and those animators, I think, are cool. Yeah.
21:29
I was just saying he just brought up the animator, the bluebird waterfowl stuff. Yeah.
21:37
I think they're good. The only thing, like if you had to complain about something,
21:42
which is hard, you're running off the spinner itself.
21:47
A little bigger area of ripple, I guess, if that's the right way to word that.
21:52
Other than that, we're still adding some ripples in the water,
21:55
and I don't think they're a bad attachment.
21:57
I mean, it did put out pretty good ripples at first, and then the water dropped out.
22:02
Yeah, well, yeah, that was...
22:05
We were losing water, and I was like, man, is that thing sliding up the pole?
22:09
And then we realized that when it was doing to both of them,
22:11
and it did to them both twice, I'm like, all right, no.
22:14
Water's just dropping. Yeah, right, yeah.
22:17
But I mean, it does sound kind of good, like ducks messing around in the water.
22:22
You know, it makes that right sound.
22:24
And then it does do a decent ripple.
22:27
On the water. It's not anything crazy, by the way. It's not throwing a fucking
22:30
tidal wave out there and going to move your whole spread, but it's going to
22:33
throw some motion out there without adding another motorized equipment to your spread.
22:38
Right. What's the... Is it the Mallard machine? What's the one that Kate has?
22:44
The Mallard machine. The Mojo Outdoors Mallard machine. Dude, that thing and...
22:52
Honestly, after watching his, I was like, dude, I might just buy one or two of these.
22:58
Especially as it got colder last year, that thing always.
23:04
Kept the hole from freezing back over or anything. I was like,
23:08
yeah, dude, this thing's sweet.
23:11
We should have four of these. Yeah, no, we talked about it. We were going to
23:15
buy a few of those this year, but we talked about buying a lot of stuff.
23:18
And then when it comes down to it, we don't buy anything.
23:21
Right. true or it's like last minute we're like oh fuck we never bought that,
23:26
yeah we got a couple new things this year but nothing crazy jesus come after me,
23:34
yeah just coming at you now i didn't think she was listening i didn't expect
23:38
her to comment dude they're both watching us from opposite sides of the couch
23:42
right now just frowning at each other yeah what'd you what'd you fucking tell Zach, Griff?
23:49
My God. He didn't. Just my assumption that you asked him to do something that
23:52
he should be doing anyway and it pissed him off.
23:55
Sorry, Camille. So, are you going to go hunt tomorrow with me tomorrow? Or not, Zach?
24:01
I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? You were dropping this on me
24:04
last minute. I don't know.
24:05
Yeah, no, it's not last minute. It's been planned the entire time that I was
24:09
going Tuesday. I did tell you about it Saturday.
24:12
You did, and I was like, I don't know. I'd probably be down.
24:14
Let me think. And now I have to think about it, and I don't know.
24:17
Well, don't hurt yourself, little buddy. I just... That's a lot of work. I do want to.
24:24
Yeah. You want to talk about somebody hunting during the week and who doesn't hunt?
24:29
Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. I didn't even know that we actually decided to hunt.
24:36
Like, I slept for a solid 12 hours. You told me you were hunting.
24:39
No, I told you I was thinking about it.
24:42
Brother. Oh, no. Dude. He's lucky it wasn't with us.
24:48
Yeah, Griffin snapped me an hour later, and he was still in bed.
24:51
So I don't even want to hear it.
24:52
Because you hurt his feelings. Yeah, he woke up in a door. That's why he's in a bad mood.
24:58
Yes. Yes. Speaking, I'm glad you brought up tallies because I do believe we
25:04
get to add one to Tyler. We do.
25:07
Why is that? Because you woke up when I came into your bed. Did you wake me up?
25:14
I personally think that should count because I was trying to click on lights
25:19
and you looked over at me.
25:22
Essentially, me walking through the door is what woke you up.
25:25
You didn't call me and wake me up. Add it to the tally. It does not count as a tally.
25:31
I'm going to have to get some comments here to see if, I mean,
25:34
our over-under was two and a half on waking Tyler up.
25:37
Tyler was not awake until I walked in the front door.
25:40
But did you say anything to me? Did you say anything to me to wake me up?
25:43
I was looking at the door.
25:45
Why don't your light switches work? I was going to. They do.
25:48
You're just turning the light switches on to the front door.
25:49
And then I was concerned that either Ellie was going to bite me or you were
25:52
going to shoot me, so I don't want to make too much noise and come across as a stranger. Yeah.
25:57
Ellie's not going to bite you. I know. She didn't hear me walking. She's fucking deaf.
26:03
Hey, real quick, too. Curtis said that he can't tell if we hunt or just talk about it.
26:08
Yeah. Like, I mean, the flood killed all of our food. Like, we don't hunt.
26:12
It's over. Yeah, there's no. And honestly. It killed everything.
26:15
Zach's already giving up on it.
26:17
We should just pack it up and never go. I plan on going tomorrow,
26:20
but Zach's probably not going to go because he's a little bitch.
26:24
I would go but I have to get back to work yeah I had to do that today too,
26:31
sucks what's Zach's excuse he doesn't work I worked this morning okay okay I was present at a meeting.
26:43
How he wasn't even present I was on the team's call listen I still get a paycheck
26:49
so I was at work alright your salary,
26:54
So? You don't have to be there. You don't have to go anywhere.
27:00
These guys from Living Legends in our comment section asked us if we're deer
27:05
hunters, except I saw Gunner playing in more water than I think we were this
27:10
weekend walking through a creek with his pants rolled up past his knee.
27:14
True. He was.
27:17
Well, they just want to be waterfowl hunters because it's a lot cooler to be
27:20
a waterfowl hunter. So they're just trying everything they can.
27:24
It's understandable. I get it. Yeah. I mean, Zach tries it. It's not working
27:28
out for him, but it's not really.
27:31
Absolutely. Just that's why in the boat, they just call me little buddy.
27:38
Just like little Debbie.
27:42
We just don't let him touch anything. Just you sit in the corner and just be
27:48
quiet. He doesn't be quiet.
27:51
He snores really loudly.
27:53
I'm actually terrible at being quiet if you guys haven't figured that out we
27:56
have yeah which fun fact I do love deer hunting but that is a fun aspect of
28:02
duck hunting for me is to kind of be able to talk and not have to be as,
28:06
stealthy I mean I can be stealthy if I'm sitting still but my fat ass walks
28:09
through the timber is not that stealthy,
28:15
would not make a good ninja. Tell you that right now. Oh my God.
28:21
No, I definitely don't mind deer hunting either. It's just, yeah, it is.
28:26
I like, I enjoy, I enjoy hunting all birds more. Like I do a bunch of pheasant
28:30
hunting too. I just, I like it better.
28:34
I don't like it better. I just, whenever other people ask me,
28:37
you know, which one would you like better? I'm like, I can't put one better.
28:41
That's a completely different type of high, right? Like hanging out.
28:45
Yeah, they are two different, totally different things.
28:47
Yeah, like, I love them both equally. I mean, if she told me to give one up,
28:51
I'd probably just hang myself on the tree.
28:55
Good lord. Yeah, I'm not giving one up, so, like.
29:00
Oh, I mean, I hate deer hunting. It's so fucking boring. Like,
29:06
I've gone deer hunting, like, five times in my life, and I've seen deer every time.
29:11
I've shot two deer, and it's like, ooh, look, a deer.
29:15
Oh I shot it oh it's dead now I gotta drag it the fuck out of here that part does suck yeah fuck that,
29:23
I'm fat um I was gonna make comment about like you put a little more meat in
29:26
the freezer but I wanted to loop this back Griffin made some duck sticks today
29:31
and they were fucking killer,
29:33
really hmm that's crazy I definitely don't remember my phone ringing yeah nope
29:39
it's probably because he's mad at you you slept in on his hunt today yeah that's
29:43
a good reason like why he wouldn't call you you fucking slept in on him.
29:47
You'll have that, I guess. I even went and looked at the boat. He had the decoys ready.
29:52
He had the dildos in the boat for you. He was ready to roll.
29:55
Yeah, that's good. I'll make it up to him. Don't worry.
29:59
No, you won't. All right, shift gears. Get off making fun of Pookie.
30:03
Curtis asked if we were hunting Arkansas.
30:05
I have not. I'm going to my first North Dakota hunt this fall,
30:08
but Tyler's had a little more worldly travels than myself.
30:13
Years ago. It used to be really good, but it's really cool. It's something that
30:18
everybody should go experience. The timber down there and hunting that kind of style.
30:23
But it's not what it was. It's not what it was. Everywhere's different now. There's just not.
30:31
We don't have any of the birds. I mean, I've seen some numbers the other day.
30:34
This is the, we're down to like early 90s numbers right now.
30:39
And I think that was back when we were in a 30-day season. And then we went
30:43
to a 45-day season. And then we hit our 60-day season.
30:46
Somewhere in like the late 90s or something like that.
30:49
But obviously when you have low numbers like this, the hunting is going to be
30:52
very, very hit and miss compared to what it was in 2000.
30:57
I think 16 was when we peaked last pretty high.
31:02
That was 10 years ago now. So we've been on a decline for the past 10 years.
31:07
Nope. It's cool to hunt it. I've done a lot of snow goose hunting down there
31:11
before guiding and outfitting became big and popular and whatnot. It was really cool.
31:18
But traveling for waterfowl hunting, just like every kind of hunting nowadays,
31:22
has gotten way more difficult when you try and freelance and do it.
31:26
The public on our way it ain't what it was it was hard it north dakota last
31:32
year like it was a lot of door knocking a lot of talking to people a lot of,
31:37
finding birds but not being able to get on them there so,
31:41
like checking every other field around it to try to to try to traffic them before
31:46
like i mean it's just a different game and i don't know how many fields that
31:50
we looked at and like We would call the number associated with it, and,
31:55
no answer, but the voicemail was a guide service.
31:58
I don't know. You're right. Good stuff.
32:01
That was the biggest problem. I used to live up there 10, 12 years ago, something like that.
32:07
Back then, it was obviously North Dakota's laws.
32:11
You don't have to have permission to hunt if it's not posted,
32:13
which I've always tried to talk to the landowner beforehand, at least.
32:18
If I couldn't get a hold of them, then it wasn't posted, and I just hunted it
32:20
because you legally can't.
32:23
But now, pretty much everything's posted, and that's the most annoying part.
32:28
When you do find a good pile of duck or geese, a guide will answer the phone
32:33
or a guide will meet you at the entrance of the field and run,
32:35
like, oh, yeah, I got, this is my field. I pay X amount of dollars for this
32:38
every year. Like, get out of here. Oh, okay. Yeah.
32:42
Like, obviously, I mean, the timber hunt is one I would like to experience.
32:46
You know, AJ's, I know AJ goes to Arkansas and hunts, like, every year.
32:51
But I would like to get on a good timber hunt. but it's one of those deals where,
32:55
i don't know if i i probably would right go to a guide but like my first choice would almost be,
33:01
either permission or if you could just pay like a trespass fee type deal just
33:06
to you know what i mean like.
33:11
Yeah it's just the way that you say it i know you hunt your land yeah yeah that's
33:17
and you know like out west like trespass fees are big with like you know antelope
33:21
and what in and mule deer and stuff so if you could do like a chest phosphorus
33:25
like yeah you can go hunt that flooded timber,
33:26
it's gonna cost you 150 bucks or whatever it is,
33:30
but everything else is on you like i would be down for that but it is a flooded
33:34
timber hunts definitely on my bucket list i think it'd be cool,
33:36
well you missed out like eight years ago we had the big flood in 2018 2019,
33:41
because there was plenty of flooded timber then,
33:44
i know i wasn't there so i don't know what to tell you i'm looking sorry do better,
33:52
we're asking you to go hunting tomorrow but you still can't fucking decide on that,
33:57
I'm not asking you Zach don't make me out to be the bad guy I'm not hunting
34:02
I'll be at work and I'm not hunting tomorrow unless you guys beat them down
34:08
and then I'll hunt after work,
34:11
God see just knowing that I could really drive a nail into Austin's coffin really
34:15
makes me want to hunt yeah that would hurt me and you know it.
34:21
Interesting. But outfitters are, they're getting expensive.
34:25
So like Curtis said here, outfitters for a day is $700, $800 with six people. But I can't.
34:35
I have so much money invested in this stuff between boats and trailers and decoys
34:41
and all that stuff. I don't want to go pay a guide. No, thanks, Austin.
34:46
Oh, yeah. Thanks, Larry. I felt like it needed to be said.
34:52
Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. We'll just leave it there for a little bit.
34:58
Bring it on back. Yeah. We're running back. Ah.
35:02
No, and I do agree with Zach. Like, I mean, that is a bucket list thing,
35:06
and I'm sure that we will make it down there at some point as well, too. But I don't know.
35:13
Like, you know where I want to go next?
35:15
We got it all right up here. We do.
35:18
We need to plan this, and we need to do this.
35:21
Canada. I hope you're gonna oh okay, that's not what I thought you were gonna
35:24
say you were gonna say Alaska or something?
35:27
I do, I would like to go up there to that strawberry lodge, I think it'd be a cool hunt.
35:31
Yeah, well that would be fun, that's something we could still set up pretty
35:35
easily, but I really, really want to go back to Canada that's something that you just don't forget,
35:43
hard to beat a good Canada hunt. I'll have to fly in.
35:52
Might not make it back out. We don't know. Guaranteed not being able to let
35:57
through the border though.
35:58
Well, how many years now? Three.
36:03
You have a chance of getting in.
36:06
They say last I looked was five. That's to no problem get in.
36:12
But you can I don't know what they call them if they're like prime ministers
36:16
or what do they call their,
36:20
you can get a written letter from them signed and stamped and you can usually get in no problem,
36:25
yeah I don't know I mean I'm down to plan one I should do a little more research
36:28
on how to get there right that's somewhere I've been wanting to go back to and
36:33
now that we're getting the trailer closer to being what we wanted it'd be way
36:38
easier and way nicer to do something like that,
36:40
I like AJ's comment I didn't know a guy if we're ready to go to Arkansas.
36:45
So, Arkansas next year, or?
36:49
If they ever get the birds like they used to always get them,
36:52
whenever you can go down there and do it yourself, I would go down there,
36:56
but they just don't. Dude, this is the year. They're getting the El Nino.
37:00
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't even know what we're going to do hunting up here after,
37:04
like, November 1st when we froze out. Mm-hmm.
37:07
We're going to have three feet of snow on the ground by November 1st.
37:10
We're gonna shoot geese in a field yep anywhere outside my house yes preferably
37:16
we're gonna have to put a blade on their side by side or put a snowblower in
37:21
the trailer so we can clear a spot in the field now we'll just send it out there.
37:27
Just make a snow fort. I say we don't have to brush the blinds that much.
37:30
The layouts, we just shove money into the snow. Just build an igloo.
37:35
Yes. Sick. Yeah.
37:38
But now, yeah, I'm also down for a Canada trip as well, too.
37:44
That's where I prefer to. If we're going to spend the money on a trip,
37:46
like plan one, other than like North Dakota, because North Dakota is relatively inexpensive,
37:52
other than fuel, which right now would cost $10,000 to go up there and back. Literally. And scout.
38:00
But in the grand scheme of things, North Dakota's not that bad usually to go. Right, yeah.
38:09
It wasn't that bad up there. But no, I'd be super, super down for a Dakota trip.
38:17
I mean, obviously, I'm going.
38:18
It's actually a guided trip here. But yeah, going here next month.
38:22
We had Gerber decoy rigs in the chat here. They said good luck this season.
38:27
Best decoy rigs. I love mine. Yeah.
38:32
We were going to tag you guys in posts. Was it this week? I think we talked
38:35
about for using their rigs.
38:39
Picked up a dozen other rigs for myself this year. And I know Zach said he has
38:44
some. And we know plenty of people that have them.
38:47
If you don't know Gerber decoy rigs, go check them out. They make some good
38:49
quality rigs here in Iowa.
38:51
And they're really good dudes. They'll treat you right. Make sure you're squared away.
38:56
And they're honestly reasonably priced. I think I bought five dozen when I bought
39:00
mine. And it was not bad at all.
39:02
Oh, yeah. They're super reasonably priced. I need to get with them.
39:05
Because I've talked to them about coming on the podcast. and I'm just been terrible
39:10
at scheduling. Yeah, something like that.
39:13
Thanks, Zach. You're kind of the piece of shit too for not wanting to go hunt
39:16
tomorrow. No, he's going now. Literally bullied him into it. Yeah.
39:22
That's a bad deal when your dad calls you out and says you're a bitch.
39:26
But you are. All right.
39:32
Me and Pookie went scouting tonight and risked our lives to go see if there's
39:36
any birds around. Yeah, risk your life. You didn't fill up the boat. There's a difference.
39:41
There's a difference. Would you have Swim out there to get us?
39:45
Absolutely. I would have called Griffin's Towing Recovery Service. You can't even swim.
39:49
Yes, I can float. I'm buoyant.
39:53
Floaties and all. Here he comes, saving the day. Could you imagine seeing him
39:59
floating across the lake to us? Just doing the backstroke towards us.
40:03
Can of corn. Can of corn, I'll be fine.
40:09
No, we definitely got cut a little short tonight and after filling up the boat,
40:15
we knew exactly how short we were. 0.1 gallons.
40:20
That's what you had left. Yeah, a 10th. We had a 10th.
40:24
Yeah, that would have been honestly not very fun. Probably would have ruined
40:28
my night. I definitely would have been pretty pissed off. Yeah.
40:34
Whenever we pulled out of the first spot we went to and it started sputtering
40:37
a little bit, I'm like, hmm, that's weird.
40:39
And then I got on it again. What's wrong with my mother? And I was like,
40:43
I pulled up my app for VesselView for Mercury's and I'm like...
40:47
Have any codes here so that's that's a bonus like no problems with the motor,
40:52
i was like oh fuck we're running out of gas so he looks at me he looks at me and he says,
40:59
when's the last time we filled this up i'm like i don't know i wasn't with you
41:03
guys like i have no idea turns out fun i was wrong with it,
41:10
fun fact the last time i filled it up was with you zach i know i know the last
41:14
time he filled it up because me and Austin took it out and Austin called and you're like,
41:19
oh yeah, there's plenty of gas in it to go scout. I'm like, I don't know how
41:22
much you put in it, but alright.
41:23
Well, there was not plenty of gas in it tonight to go scout. Properly.
41:27
No, there wasn't even, there wasn't even hardly enough gas to get it off the
41:33
boat trailer and put it back on.
41:35
We were lucky. I was in fear for my life.
41:38
It's a little dramatic. I mean, that would have been bad because one of you
41:42
would have had to overpower the other so the other could eat.
41:45
Or we should have just...
41:47
Yeah, because there's no land anywhere near. We were out like 25 miles off the
41:52
coast and we probably would have died. That was my thoughts exactly.
41:57
The wind was ripping. We had white caps and everything.
42:01
You guys had to catch wild animals to eat them. Stayed out there for a week.
42:05
It wasn't far off of catching a group of teal that buzzed in front of the boat
42:09
actually. That's no joke.
42:12
God, them things. Saturday or Sunday when I was, I remember looking at Austin,
42:17
that group of teal, we had buzz in front of us. I looked over and I was like,
42:21
oh, please go slower next time.
42:24
Do not go that fast. Yeah, that was, when I saw him bank, I was like, oh, thank God.
42:33
Yeah, I know. They start coming back. I'm like, oh, all right.
42:36
Oh, they're still not stopping. Okay. But they're slowing down.
42:41
And we ran into some electrical issues this weekend in the little boat and big boat.
42:47
Yeah, both. Yeah. After I thought I fixed that, well, the little boat.
42:51
I didn't do anything on the big boat.
42:52
But big boat's easy fix. Just a switch went bad. That's no problem.
42:57
That's just going to happen.
42:58
Well, I'm just going to start putting in all of our social media posts a disclaimer
43:01
at the bottom like we are not electricians because that's all we've had.
43:07
It seems this year is lighting issues on something.
43:10
That's just anything though I mean when you're talking about a John boat you're
43:14
gonna have problems no matter what and honestly I would take the electrical
43:19
issues over like something more detrimental like a motor issue because you can
43:23
manage an electrical issue,
43:25
yeah no shit I can't believe that came out of your mouth,
43:30
leave.
43:34
Now and the little boats issues were easy i mean it took,
43:40
what five minutes to fix uh,
43:43
yeah we like i pulled the one marker or the running light out and realized it
43:49
wasn't up there and then we checked the stern light and there was just a bad
43:53
ground wire it was exposed wire and the plug was bad.
43:55
So I realized that marker wire that we actually did do very well and we did
44:00
wrap it up very well and it is nice and protected.
44:04
Yeah, yeah. So that's all good to go. Little boat's fixed.
44:07
I got to get in the big boat yet and pull two switches out and put two switches
44:12
in and hook them back up. It's probably a 10-minute fix max.
44:15
It should be another 10-minute fix. So it's good. We'll take it for what it is.
44:20
I'd rather have those problems early in the year, get them fixed out of the
44:24
way, That way, hopefully, when we get going here and it gets cold,
44:28
we get mallards around, hunting becomes more fucking enjoyable, we go rolling. Yeah.
44:35
Yeah, I will say, at least for me,
44:38
going back to hunting this weekend on Saturday, that was the first time I believe,
44:44
I've hunted with you that I couldn't get out of the boat because there was so much water, too.
44:51
So, definitely a change of pace there. Was not the biggest fan of having to
44:57
set up the boat with multiple other dudes in it.
44:59
Like, I honestly just think it takes, like, twice as long to do when,
45:04
like, guys are all standing in the way and you just can't get shit situated.
45:08
Yeah, Zach's just always in the way, though.
45:11
Actually, Zach was a big help. I know he's not used to hearing that, but Zach was a big help.
45:16
Oh, right. Why are we trying to kiss this guy's ass?
45:19
Dude, I'm trying to get him to go hunting with you. We need,
45:22
we need, I thought we were going to get a tally from him this weekend. We didn't.
45:26
We need, we need to start these tallies for him early in the season.
45:32
He won't commit to going tomorrow. Oh, he will. He'll either do it on the podcast
45:37
or we'll bully him so hard after it. He'll commit.
45:41
I don't know. He's got that stupid look on his face like he's just not going
45:44
to do it. It's just my face.
45:51
But the fuck? I was going to say something. Oh, those band members I sent you
45:57
this week. I thought that was kind of cool.
45:59
For state. Like I was one of the top 10 states. Oh, yeah, yeah,
46:03
yeah. I'm trying to pull that up.
46:05
I knew they were supposed to bring it up. I was honestly very surprised to see
46:10
those numbers as well. Yes. I did not expect that.
46:14
California Waterfowl shared a post with, it's the top 10 waterfowl banders in North America.
46:21
And obviously Canada is on top. We got Manitoba and Quebec and Ontario, which is kind of crazy.
46:29
They banded, this is over a 26-year
46:32
span, but like 372,000-plus birds in Manitoba alone in those 26 years.
46:42
But out of the top 10, you got Manitoba, Quebec, Ontario, Wisconsin, DNR. They get after it.
46:49
Whatever that fifth one is. I don't even know where the hell that was.
46:54
Ray, I don't even know how to say that last part. Yeah.
46:59
You got California in sixth with 226,000 plus Minnesota, Michigan,
47:07
Iowa in ninth, and then Pennsylvania.
47:10
Pennsylvania really shocked me that they're in the top 10 and North Dakota and
47:13
South Dakota aren't. Right. Yeah. Like that kind of threw me off there.
47:18
But I mean, we're in ninth and we banded 177,000, almost 500 birds in a 26-year span, 25,000.
47:29
Year span so i thought that was pretty pretty solid and it's kind of neat to see that we're,
47:34
in that list for top 10 most banded birds yeah i know for sure like shout out
47:39
to the dnr and everybody else that bands them too like that's cool keep it up,
47:45
hopefully we can start shooting more,
47:47
that's something i'd like to be involved with a couple times like to like volunteer
47:51
to go band birds i think that'd be fun to do i think that would be cool where
47:56
they they net them and then just pick them up and ban them.
47:59
I think it'd be cool. Yeah, but the whole process of catching them and then
48:02
watching them, like whether they're, like mainly geese, watching them just be
48:06
pissed off at the world that you caught them and putting this metal ban on their leg. Yeah.
48:12
I think that would be cool. Have to see when they're going to be at Crystal Lake again.
48:18
I was going to say, did they ban them this year? They do that every year?
48:21
Is that just every few years?
48:23
I don't know. The only reason I honestly didn't even know they did it there
48:26
until the band I shot was banded seven miles from where I shot it. And I'm like, all right.
48:34
I know they banned a shitload of geese and Pella too. So I've never killed a Pella band.
48:40
I know they do a pile of bans down by Promise City.
48:44
Yes. Yeah, I knew that. I mean, that's not that far for us. So we could go down
48:48
there and see if that's something we can do. Yeah, I'd be trying to go see that.
48:52
I would bet out of our banded birds that they have reported on there,
48:56
I bet you 90% of them are fucking geese.
48:59
Very, very. Oh, at least. Yeah, I would say that's on the low end for sure. Yeah, yeah.
49:06
Yeah, so hopefully, if you're hunting this week, hopefully you guys have some
49:11
luck with this little cold front coming in before Central closes.
49:14
I mean, I'd be curious to see what shows up by the weekend, if anything shows up.
49:19
It's not a major cold front, but it's way better than 90 degrees. No, 100%. Yeah.
49:26
Side note, obviously, Gerber said they do it up there in Clear Lake.
49:29
If you guys have a contact for somebody that we could come up and do it, I would be down for that.
49:35
If you guys know how to get involved with that a little better, it'll be cool.
49:39
I could email Todd, see if he knows anything about it. Yeah, for sure.
49:45
But I think that about sums up most of it. Do you want to just give a quick
49:50
summary, Zach, on Coot Wars?
49:53
Before we close this out? Do we decide a time? Noon? Noon on next Friday,
49:57
make sure... The 23rd, yep. Yep, 23rd.
50:01
Make sure your teams are signed up. Three-man teams. again three you can do it solo,
50:05
yep yeah george the three-man teams are up to three-man teams right so,
50:11
if you're a solo hunter go for it three points every day you kill a cute five for a band,
50:16
and then five for every 50 that you shoot like i said we're working on some
50:19
prizes and trophies winner trophy loser trophy something like that something cool
50:24
maybe some some merch or something you know a hoodie or something to kind of
50:27
come out and keep your eyes open but yeah we're looking forward to it seeing uh,
50:32
maybe we get the losers a picture of you in your birthday suit.
50:37
I do i could order a coot speedo.
50:41
And do a whole calendar of poses for a loser that's a lot of work a whole calendar
50:46
dude that thing would not be allowed in somebody's house that would end up being
50:50
a shop calendar that's it,
50:52
oh yeah that's where all the best ones are in the shop yeah absolutely so,
50:58
get your team signed up let's see what we can do to help some nests and have a little fun fuck yeah,
51:08
that'll wrap up this episode of the duck fellows podcast. Uh,
51:13
we appreciate you guys tuning in to episode 40 and make sure you,
51:17
uh, follow along and keep, uh, see how the season goes for everybody.
51:21
Anyways, we hope everybody has a great week of hunting and a whole season of
51:27
good hunting until next time.
51:29
Good luck. Have great nerds time hunting without Zach.