Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 646: The Future of American Duck Hunting

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Ep. 646: The Future of American Duck Hunting · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: You can't predict anything.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by first Light.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
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  Speaker 1: dot com. F I R S T l I t
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  Speaker 1: e dot com. Joined today by Karen waldrip Am I
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: saying that right, you are chief conservation officer with ducts
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: unlimited and more important than me.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: I'm joking about that big.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Time squirrel dog. I am squirrel hunting dog hunter. Yes,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: how do you say that?
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  Speaker 3: So squirrel hunter with dogs?
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  Speaker 2: Squirrel hundred with dogs? I like, that's clean, clean. How'd
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: you get into that?
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  Speaker 4: Oh?
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  Speaker 3: Goodness? It was in college and I was I went
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: out with a buddy one time and felt absolutely just
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: fell in love with it.
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  Speaker 1: And it's was the buddy a guy or girl.
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  Speaker 3: It was a guy, okay, and it was. What I
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: love about it is you can go out. It's like, well,
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: after deer season and everything else is over, duck season,
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: you can still go out until the end of February
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: in most states, And yeah, how'd.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: You get a shirt? And says it's usually squirrel season.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: It's oh my gosh, it's always squirrel season. Somewhere. You
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: can get a spring, squirrel season, fall winter.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: It's all right.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can get normally go squirrel hunting.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: You can normally go squirrel hunting.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: So you got turned onto it. But that's like a
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: whole commitment to get the dog.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so I got into it right away. Got
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: my first dog and tring feightt in college and had
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: her for seventeen years, and she hunted hard.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: For about ten she was that's who's on your phone?
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: And that's who's on my phone. Still it's terrible. Not
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: my kid, not my other dog.
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  Speaker 1: A dog's the dog.
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  Speaker 3: A dead dog is on my phone.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Where'd you go to college?
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  Speaker 3: Well, that's a long story, and I don't I'm.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Just curious, like where where you were at the made?
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  Speaker 3: I was at University of Georgia at the time, but
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  Speaker 3: I started at Florida State. I went to University of Georgia,
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: got my bachelor's and my master's there, and then went
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: to Clemson University for my pH d and then University
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: of Kentucky for my post doc.
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  Speaker 5: See, oddly enough, your reaction was the same as a
• 2:22
  Speaker 5: friend of mine who was asked not to return to college.
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  Speaker 3: So I did not.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Really said we preferred you didn't come back to college.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Yep. I didn't want to get a job anto the
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: real world to stay in school.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: But you were brought up in Kentucky.
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  Speaker 3: Actually I was brought up in Florida, but Kentucky's where
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: we raised our family and was there for a long time.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: So but I was born in Mississippi. Yep, born in Mississippi,
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: raised mostly in Florida, I understand, or central Florida.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: But then you spent a lot of your career in Kentucky.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Yes, So, actually, when I was working on my PhD
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  Speaker 3: at Clemson University, I was working on the Elk Restoration
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: Project Act for Kentucky. So we came out west, grabbed
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: fifteen hundred ELK from a bunch of western states, and
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: started a restoration program. And that's why I actually went
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: to Clemson, was to study the elk restoration work in Kentucky.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: And so I went to Clemson for the professor and
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: then was did all my field work up there.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: You know, I later killed one year elk?
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  Speaker 3: Did you really what year did you come out? I
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: had to have still been there. I actually I remember
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: it now.
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  Speaker 2: A long time ago. Was fun, Matt.
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  Speaker 3: That was a lot of fun.
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  Speaker 1: It's not elk in the hardwoods seems so weird there
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: to see elk standing in hardwoods.
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  Speaker 3: And let me tell you, it's steep like it's not
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: it's not forgiving country yet. I mean, you're used to
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: this out here, but it's East Kentucky can be pretty
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  Speaker 3: rough to hunt an elkin.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're hunting elk in hardwoods and we were fine
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  Speaker 1: and hand of the woods, mushrooms pretty fun.
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  Speaker 2: Super fun.
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  Speaker 1: So the reason I was asked about where to call it,
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  Speaker 1: so you would, as a college student move around with
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  Speaker 1: that little squirrel I did?
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  Speaker 3: She actually was we would camp out on reclaimed coal mines.
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  Speaker 3: So the elk came into East Kentucky because there's a
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  Speaker 3: lot of coal mining. So the the reclaimed coal practices
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  Speaker 3: actually makes it really conducive for elk and elk habitat.
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  Speaker 3: So that's where the elk came into. Plus it's out
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: of horse country, cattle and everything else. So she would
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: when I was doing all my field work. I camped
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: lived lived in a tent for about three years, and
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: my dog was me and my dog camping out my
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: tent for three years. And so since it's almost always
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: squirrel season, you just I just squirrel hunted her ass up.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: We ate a lot of squirels. She and I both
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: You got new ones to replace the dead, of course
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  Speaker 3: I do.
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  Speaker 2: How many got now?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I have two right now, But I've had I've
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: had quite a few at any one time. But but
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: she was still probably the one that you knows the
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  Speaker 3: bar right, and all the others have to have to
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: match up to it. I've got one right now. His
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: name is Oakley. He's about four or five years old,
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  Speaker 3: and he had a good season last year and this
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  Speaker 3: year is going to be it's gonna be knockout. He's
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: he's a he's a killer.
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  Speaker 2: That's exciting.
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  Speaker 1: Good. Uh uh, you'll appreciate this. This is a listener feedback.
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  Speaker 1: But it has to do with Kentucky, right, So you
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: have some subject matter expertise. This guy in Kentucky rights
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: in and he was kind of underwhelmed. I can't tell
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  Speaker 1: I would think he'd be happy, but he seems like
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: he's not happy.
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  Speaker 2: I can't tell.
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  Speaker 4: I think he gets happy at the end. He's just
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: kind of.
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  Speaker 2: Like happy at the end.
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  Speaker 1: He took hunter safety, which in Kentucky there's a field
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: day requirement. Yes, it seems like like do you speak
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  Speaker 1: not that, And then it kind of got a lot
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: of field days, and then COVID happened, and it kind
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of got a like.
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  Speaker 2: A lot less field days. But he had a field
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  Speaker 2: day in Kentucky.
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  Speaker 1: And he goes down there to do the field day
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  Speaker 1: and in the end, what it amounts to is him
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  Speaker 1: waiting in line, and he goes forty miles, starts at
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  Speaker 1: nine am.
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  Speaker 2: He thought he'd be there till noon.
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  Speaker 1: When he gets there, to tell him to get in line,
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  Speaker 1: they give him some earplugs and some eye protection. They
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: hand him a twenty two. He calls it a little
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: pea shooter. They give him a single twenty two long
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: rifle round and a pea shooter and he's supposed to
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: put that round in the pea shooter, flip the safety
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  Speaker 1: and shoot a target at ten yards down range, rack.
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  Speaker 2: The bolt and he's passed.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And he's wondering, is the reason is it more?
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  Speaker 1: Is there more to it? Out West or less to it.
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  Speaker 1: It's not a West past thing, not at all.
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  Speaker 3: No, it is the state by state. Some states have
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  Speaker 3: made a state law where you don't have to have
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  Speaker 3: the field portion of it, and in Kentucky they've they've
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  Speaker 3: kept that. And it really depends on your instructor that
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: you get, so you're, you know, hunter ed instructor. Some
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  Speaker 3: of them they'll bring out every different type of weapon
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  Speaker 3: and let you shoot them in muzzleloaders and shoot multiple times.
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  Speaker 3: But then others it's the requirement can they safely shoot
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  Speaker 3: a pea shooter? Can they safely shoot a twenty two
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  Speaker 3: racket not pointed at anybody? Put it back up safely?
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  Speaker 3: Meet that check, you know. So it just really depends
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  Speaker 3: on the instructor that you get.
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  Speaker 1: I feel that they could safely do away with that
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  Speaker 1: safety part.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the field day.
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  Speaker 3: The field day, well, if you think about it, a
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  Speaker 3: lot of them that most people, not all, but most
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  Speaker 3: of them are either somebody that's a kid that's been
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  Speaker 3: hunting with mom and dad, uncle, grandparents, somebody for a
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  Speaker 3: long time before they come there, or it's you know,
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: an adult that's getting into hunting, a young adult or
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: older adult and they've been going with their friends for
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: several years, because you have in Kentucky and several other
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  Speaker 3: states where you can hunt if you're like an apprenticeship,
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  Speaker 3: So if you're hunting with somebody else, you know you
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  Speaker 3: can go out. So they that's where they're getting their
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: hunter safety exactly. They can probably pass that field part.
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  Speaker 1: Uh So to answer your question, no, it has nothing
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  Speaker 1: to do with West East, he wondered, if it has
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  Speaker 1: to do with that. Kentucky's more flat and it's not
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: like difficult to traverse. But no, because in Idaho it's
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: all online. Yep.
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: Well, yeah, there's a there's a big stir amongst the
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: hunter is education instructors because this lasts like ten years,
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  Speaker 5: has seen a lot of importance put on hunter's education
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  Speaker 5: and then out of convenience and starting with a lot
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  Speaker 5: of the COVID protocols, just you can just bypass hunter's
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  Speaker 5: ed basically entirely. Like Montana is a great example. We
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: require hunter's education. We don't require Montana hunter education. So
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  Speaker 5: I don't want to I don't want to get my
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: kid down to a classuse I don't want to take
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: that time.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: Let's just hop online.
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  Speaker 6: In Montana have to take it and they have to
• 9:04
  Speaker 6: take it.
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  Speaker 1: They don't know not education.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: No you can do you don't you do it.
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: I'm saying, if your if you live in Montana and
• 9:12
  Speaker 6: your kid takes hunter ed here.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: In Monteo field.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Day, Yes, but they could bypass it by doing I
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: don't want to give dirty seat. Bypass it by having
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: your kid do a different state online in Montana ex episode.
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: Online Texas twenty minutes versus all that hassle.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Well, but also they say it's a barrier, right, Yeah,
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Like they say it's a barrier to get people into
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: hunting and so making it easy where you don't have
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: that field day.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: But if your kid does the two year mentor program,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: like that's two years of field time if.
• 9:49
  Speaker 6: Mentor's got a good mentor, right, Okay, but.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: The mentor has to be someone twenty one.
• 9:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah, or is it twenty one or eighteen eighteen?
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Is it eighteen?
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: So the mentor's got to be of good standing licensed
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: in eighteen. I'm saying, yeah, they can never go out.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: But if you go out and do a lot of
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: field time and it's a lot of exposure, that's gonna
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: like supersede what.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know it's very it's.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Very I get very impassionate about the subject.
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this is not specifically saying Steven Ronelli, you don't
• 10:22
  Speaker 5: know how to teach.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Your kids in the way that right.
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: But every year we also have this big other to
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  Speaker 5: do of like, oh my gosh, the people who misbehave
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: while hunting are jeopardizing all these awesome programs that provide
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: opportunity for hunting. It must be our hunter's education program
• 10:46
  Speaker 5: that is failing. And it's like, well, don't nobody asked
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: to take the hunter's education program, So why are we going.
• 10:52
  Speaker 6: To get out of field days? Like it's like getting
• 10:56
  Speaker 6: a driver's license without taking a driving test.
• 10:59
  Speaker 7: Come on a burn mind, And you shouldn't be able
• 11:01
  Speaker 7: to get a driver's license if you just drive with
• 11:04
  Speaker 7: someone who's eighteen in the car for a couple of years.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: He's been watching his dad.
• 11:12
  Speaker 5: I did a hunter's education in Missoula, and you know,
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: like the Missoula Hunters or the Fishing Game Facility out
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: there's big out on Spurgeon Road, and so that's where
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: they did the field course out there, and they had.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: All sorts.
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: I failed one portion of it because they had adults
• 11:34
  Speaker 5: that would come up to you and be like hey,
• 11:36
  Speaker 5: can I see your gun?
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: Oh little and you're like, yeah, secret shopper.
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and they're like, well, you know, you shouldn't just
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: let anybody come up.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: And it was.
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: Brutal, but yeah, they had, you know, because there's like
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: it's relatively hilly, you know, so they're like, do you
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: carry your how do you carry your gun in this situation?
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: Stuff like that, and it's like absolutely not mistakes that
• 12:04
  Speaker 5: I don't see adults making, and I don't every single
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: season say hey, yeah, point it this way, you know,
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: to adults.
• 12:15
  Speaker 7: I did my Hunter's ed in Ohio and it was
• 12:18
  Speaker 7: actually like a very substantive class. We had to drive
• 12:22
  Speaker 7: a long way to do it. But then at the
• 12:26
  Speaker 7: end of it, I got the card and it was
• 12:29
  Speaker 7: written on like in penn you know, just on like
• 12:32
  Speaker 7: the card it said Randall Williams and whatever date. And
• 12:36
  Speaker 7: probably a year after I did that, the date and
• 12:39
  Speaker 7: my name had rubbed off the card and I don't
• 12:43
  Speaker 7: know if there's any other record of it. So I
• 12:44
  Speaker 7: rewrote my name and tried to remember. And so now
• 12:48
  Speaker 7: whenever I buy a license online, like in Idaho or something,
• 12:51
  Speaker 7: and it's like enter your the state where you took it,
• 12:54
  Speaker 7: and what dates and if you have an ID number,
• 12:56
  Speaker 7: And I'm like, oh, I hope they don't catch me
• 12:58
  Speaker 7: because I'm just sort of making this up based on
• 13:01
  Speaker 7: my my, my clearest recollection of being seventeen years old.
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: Well, if you want to have more dirty secrets out there,
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: there's no standardization for Hunter's education. So if you type
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: in one, two, three, four five.
• 13:14
  Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, right, well that's what I feel like I'm doing.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: The point man, that's a great point because the numbers
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: are silly.
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: What right, because like Montana's numbers.
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: Right, it starts with like a letter and then and
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: then the date.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: It's not like a social Security number if.
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: You go to California, completely different.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: It's odd that col with no children has such an
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: in depth knowledge of yeah, not just knowledge, but opinions
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: about Hunter's safety program.
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: Well, because you know, just a concerns I participate in
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: the program people wanted because he's like, it's.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: One of these people that's going to shoot me something.
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: Or you know, it's like the giant pile of human
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: feces and toilet paper next to the sign inbox at
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: block management, right, It's like.
• 14:03
  Speaker 7: That's just someone on their way to work, right, you
• 14:06
  Speaker 7: have no proof that's a hunter.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: You know, like my big chip on my shoulders.
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: I feel if you're an hunter's education instructor out there,
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: you are doing the Lord's work.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: You're taking a lot of time for those children who
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: have parents that are willing to get them to those classes, uh,
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: to make better first time hunters out there, and I
• 14:29
  Speaker 5: think it's incredibly important. Unfortunately, I think a lot of
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: the people out there making mistakes are ones that are
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: just you know, they're not paying attention to the Fishing
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: Game website, they're not reading the regulations, they're not you know.
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: It's like we need to find out completely different mechanism
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: to reach out and educate these people because they're not
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: tapped into the traditional information lines.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: But I think if you like take those hunter safety
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: courses and you maybe have left fewer of them, and
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: you take those best instructors, and you make it where Okay.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: So if you're not somebody, you know, a twelve year
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: old that's thirteen year old's been hunting with dad a
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: whole bunch and knows everything really well, then maybe you
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: can kind of opt out by taking a test or
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: different things, but make it to where it's more than
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: just going out driving, you know, for a couple hours
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: and shooting at twenty two. Like, make it fun, make
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: it interactive, make it educational, to where somebody doesn't feel
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: like they just wasted their time.
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: If there's a driving portion, there should be a deer
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: on the side of the road right in your instructured
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: jams on the brakes, skids sideways on the dirt road
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: and goes, what do you do?
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: See? Interactive and fun? Yes? I like it.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, you know what was making me nervous yesterday is
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: speaking of gun handling, and they didn't. I had no problems,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: but I took to my kid who's freshman in high school,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and his high school body.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: We went out and layout blinds.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because we had a guy in the podcast one
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: time that blew the middle toes out of his foot
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: in the layout blind.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: I had a guy not long ago that was hunting
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: with us that shot the end of somebody else's barrel
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: in the layout. Because they didn't they didn't keep with that,
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: you know, Yeah, it's shot the end of the barrel.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: That was stressing me out. Man.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: No one did anything dumb, but it's just a lot
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, you're like, okay, like you're gonna burst
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: out of this box. Well, yeah, we had I have
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: no idea where anything is, and burst out of this
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: box and start shooting.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: But don't and don't shoot the dogs, don't.
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, layout blinds are yeah, they're they're stressful for sure.
• 16:39
  Speaker 5: But you know, we just hunted with a group, big
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: group of folks and on day three one of them
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: finally spoke up and was like, no, what do you
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: mean by shooting lanes?
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: Right? And it just it man, a doun't.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: It takes time to like be like, okay, this is
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: a safe group to ask questions. He's like, so let's
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: say there's duck all the way down here, you don't shoot.
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: I'm like, there's five other hunters down there. It's like
• 17:09
  Speaker 5: that arresting how you people do this.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: I've been working on that trait, that trait of men,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: where now when someone tells me something and they go
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, I'll say I don't know
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: what you mean. Or they'll use like a technical term
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: about something like with a vehicle that maybe I'm not
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: and you know, I'll say like uh, I'll be like,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: explain the turbo and you're actually I know what that means, right,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, right on, I'll just say I don't understand,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: but that's fine. I don't.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: I'm not putting it on you. I'm not going understand it.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: But it's people do that, but I can.
• 17:55
  Speaker 7: It's a very male thing to do, especially talking about vehicles.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: I just lack of knowledge.
• 18:02
  Speaker 7: Yeah, although I I got over it when I working
• 18:06
  Speaker 7: construction and working like with a finished carpenter and he
• 18:09
  Speaker 7: would just ask me something. He'd be like, get me this,
• 18:13
  Speaker 7: and it was like the first week I would do
• 18:16
  Speaker 7: three trips and get him the wrong thing the first
• 18:18
  Speaker 7: two times, and then the third time and bring him
• 18:20
  Speaker 7: what he wants, you know. And then all of a
• 18:22
  Speaker 7: sudden it was just like if I I'm gonna save
• 18:24
  Speaker 7: myself and save him a lot of frustration and anxiety
• 18:27
  Speaker 7: if I just clarify things right off the bat.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Sure. Uh.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I'll say this about hunting with kids and layout blinds,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: like at that age, the reflexes are so freaking fast, man,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: they'd shoot the geese forere. I could get my box
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: up so fast, and I'm like getting so slow many
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: fast they're just like wired fast. Uh, we're gonna do
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: one more bit of feedback, oh plus or this randall
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: this morning?
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: He comes in.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: All we've we found over the weekend, the greatest free
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: range Christmas tree ever found by man.
• 19:04
  Speaker 7: And by we he means his.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Family family, the greatest free range tree. Mine did not.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: And Ramon has judgement. He's like talking about, Oh, I
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: got a real booner. Tell me all about where he went,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: how snowy it was, and how rugged it was, and like.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: And he shows me a tree and he tries to
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: sell me on the fact that only like half the
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: trees there because that's it was nestled up to his neighbor.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I think, so it didn't groany limbs on that side.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And look, you just put it right against the wall.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: It comes with a flat side. It comes.
• 19:37
  Speaker 7: You know what I don't like doing is is decorating
• 19:40
  Speaker 7: the backside of a tree.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Well, you don't have to.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: I want to look at all my ornaments.
• 19:44
  Speaker 7: I like my trees to have sort of.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: A flat wall a week left side.
• 19:54
  Speaker 7: It doesn't it doesn't stick out into the room as far.
• 19:57
  Speaker 7: It goes right up against the wall. And you don't
• 19:59
  Speaker 7: have to waste your precious ornaments on the back end.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: On your way up? Were you telling your wife like
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: what we're looking for is what have you do?
• 20:05
  Speaker 7: You rotate your tree every few days.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: You can appreciate all side trim that I flushed that
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: backside up with a sheer. But I don't look for one. Oh,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: I don't look for one.
• 20:17
  Speaker 8: Mind.
• 20:17
  Speaker 6: Well, Randall's permit was for a management tree.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Mine mine didn't need require modification.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: I think he's onto something. I think it's going to
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: be like the new thing. Everyone's going to be trying
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: to grow these flat trees to.
• 20:32
  Speaker 7: Especially you know, if we had a smaller house, I'd
• 20:34
  Speaker 7: want one that fits into a corner. Just two just
• 20:38
  Speaker 7: a right angle, two flat sides, just slide right in there.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: If you think about the ornaments you put on the back,
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: or all the ones that you know the kids might
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: have made or that, well, actually those for me go
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: on the front. Sorry kids, other people's kids, just like
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: the really old crappy ones. You put this on the back.
• 20:54
  Speaker 7: So you see all the night, we haven't accumulated yet
• 20:57
  Speaker 7: enough ornaments as a family to you.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Can have some art castaway? Yeah, I know, way to
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: fix that and hurry and all you got to do
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: is stop trying to make it not happen, which is
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: have having children.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Last piece of list of feedback. This is a good one.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: This fellow says this his name's logan. I recently ran
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: into an issue with a new neighbor hunting the property
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: next to the one I have permission to hunt. Says
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: everything around here is privately owned land. He's clarifying that. Well.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I generally try to stay on good terms with the
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: folks around me. This new neighbor decided to place a
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: trail camera on the fence line facing the property I hunt.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that the only reason for doing so is
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: to monitor the deer activity on my side.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Of the fence.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Well, remember that Robert Frost, he was the poet laureate.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: He had that fences about the two neighbors that get
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: together every year to like to reinforce the fence between
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: their properties. Good fences make good neighbors.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: But he's kind of dogging on them.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, anyhow, I normally wouldn't care who puts cameras where,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: but the fact that it's placed less than five yards
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: from the fence and pointed directly on the trail I
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: used to get in and out of my boast and
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: really bothers me. He's wondering should he moon the camera,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: should he give it the camera the finger? Or should
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: he get a big taxi during me deer and start
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: jutting it out in front of the camera now and
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: then to create the illusion of a giant buck in
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: the area that isn't actually there.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: I personally like option three, but it's fun kind.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Or he might grab his own camera and point it
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: back at that camera.
• 22:49
  Speaker 8: That's what I'd do.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: I would do. I would do.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I would hold all those and I would say to
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: the guy, maybe say to the neighbor, do you mind
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: not aim in your camera? Do you mind not aiming
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: your camera like deliberately onto my place?
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Because I walked through there and it bothers me.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: I remember Dug during they had a place out there,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and there's a neighbor had this wood lot and there's
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: this huge sign painted on plywood that said do not
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: shoot into these woods. And Doug wand to put one
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: on his side and said, do not shoot out of
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: these woods.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: That's good.
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: Doug's place is.
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: Man, if you climb up just about any tree stand
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: and look hard enough, you can find a little bit
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: of orange sticking out a Yeah, you're like, whoa, it's
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: crazy crazy. And some stone faced people out there too,
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: they don't even They're like, nope, you don't exist. I'm
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: just looking at the twenty five yards between me and you,
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: and that's yeah wild.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Another thing this guy could do is put a tarp up.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, build privacy, like a privacy screen. Yeah, that
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: would bug the hell out of me, to be honest
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: with you.
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I would definitely call for sure, But you know,
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: there's always something good that you're going to get out
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: of a conversation with the neighbor. But yeah, all the
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: funny things that you could do would be awesome. Just
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: have a little screen that you put up there and
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: have like a deer.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: You know, have something that'll trigger the camera every five seconds,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: gives so much noise that he'll never get through it
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: to find you walking around, kills the battery. So when
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: he pulls his card, it's like you have three thousand images,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: you know, just a CD spinning out of the job. Yeah,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: here's what we're not going to talk about, because people
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: do this all the time, some hosers and where Netherlands
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: where this is at?
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: Sorry? What they that buddy of mine that we were
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: talking about the other day.
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: He's got all the grizzly bears and wolves and stuff
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: on his camera, you know, things that just set cameras off.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: This is an observation that I made.
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: He's like, yeah, this camera, this squirrel keeps setting it off,
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: and he starts like going through and through and through.
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: See him there there there, see him there, see him there.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: And eventually it dawned on me. I'm like, you know,
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: this squirrel is given this guy a lot of enjoyment.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: Uh, Netherlands, sorry, are from Germany.
• 25:33
  Speaker 7: I don't care where they're from, the Netherlands and the.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: Editors from Colombia. The research is based in Germany.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, So these holders in Germany have determined they've they've
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: done a map where they look at the more wolf
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: attacks there are an area, the more the area is
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: prone to vote right wing.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: All right, aren't you kind of saying.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Rural people tend to vote fire right because Ian Fraser
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: did the same thing in the US, where he's like,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the more wild hogs are in the area, the more
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: you're likely to vote Republican. But every election you prove
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: this over and over again that generally, I mean, there's
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: many many exceptions, but generally, rural areas generally vote right.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Urban areas is generally true. Urban areas generally vote left.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: So I feel like you're just finding new ways to
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: say the same thing. You'd be like, the further of
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: part houses are, the more pickup trucks there are in
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: an area.
• 26:48
  Speaker 6: Based on livestock attacks too, right, not.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: No, yeah, but I'm just saying it's like another way
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: of our It's another way of expressing like I might. Like,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing that wolves attacking livestock is happening in rural
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: agricultural areas in Germany and those people are voting different
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: than people that are in Munich.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: So great work, guys.
• 27:12
  Speaker 7: Well, maybe they're having trouble identifying rural areas, so they found.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: A new indicator. What would be the epitome of ruralness?
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: And some guys like, I guess it'd be like a
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: fucking wolf attacking a cow. That feels a rural to me.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: All right, Karen, How are ducks doing in general in
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the United States? Yeah?
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so our North American waterfowl population is so I
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: don't know, if you guys follow, you know, when US
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Fish and Wildlife Service at ducks unlimited. It's a big
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: day when the breeding population survey and habitat survey comes out.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: You know, it's it's always a fun day to see about. Yeah,
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: it's a big day, right, you look for that every year.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like Christmas. But so what we saw
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: for this this year, I mean, numbers are still down,
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: but they came up. So for the first time in
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: ten years, waterfowl populations went up about five percent. So
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: of course that's going to be a lot of that's
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: going to be dependent on the pond surveys too, And
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: there was a lot of difference in pond surveys in
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: the prairie pothole region. And I'm sure all the listeners
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: know that are understand that waterfowl. You know, for for waterfowl,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: for breeding, the prairie potholes is like sixty percent of
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: waterfowl nests there and then a lot twenty five thirty
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: percent or so in the boreal and in wet years
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: you have a lot more in the in the prairies
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: and the prairies of US and Canada. And so the
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: surveys tell.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: People basically what you're talking about when you talk about
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the prairie poth holes.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the prairie potholes are going to be you know,
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: in southern Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and then into the US
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: prairies of North Dakota, Montana, the eastern part north of Montana,
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: the northern and eastern part of North Dakota, eastern part
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: of South Dakota, and goes down into Minnesota and a
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: little bit into Iowa. But most of the wetlands are
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: gone there. But that's the prairie pothole region and it
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: is a critical landscape for waterfound for Ducks Unlimited and
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: another waterfound enthusiast. It's like the priority landscape for federal
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: and state partners as well. But so what we're seeing
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: this past year with the pond counts is it's a
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: pretty diverse and dynamic landscape. So the US prairie potholes
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: were wetter than they've been in the last ten years,
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: so they actually had a big increase, like a fifty
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: percent increase from last year. But then the prairies in
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: Canada were the driest they've been in thirty years, and
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: so just shows that dynamic landscape and they were down.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: So overall, the pond counts was like four percent higher
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: than last year, right around the long term average for
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: pond counts. And so you take those two things and
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: that's how the seasons are determined as far as how
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: the population's doing well. For the central Mississippi flyways, you
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: look at the pond counts and then the population and
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: that determines what the seasons are going to be. So
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: we look at that every year to look at what
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: the seasons are going to be for the following year.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: So waterfowl populations, you know, there's a little bit of
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: good news. Mother nature has been helping us out a
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: little bit. It's still we've been in a long term drought.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: It's going to take years of good weather at the
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: right time, right amount of moisture, you know, cold up north,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: get a lot of snow cover, and then some good
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: rains to keep that to keep that going. But you know, potholes,
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: it's it's a normal cycle like we have you know
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: every however many years, thirty years, whatever it might be.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: Remember the eighties were really bad. But you know, we're
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: droughts are important for wetlands to recharge themselves. So while
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: we don't like it as waterfowl hunters and it makes
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: us nervous. You know, we should be coming out of
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: that drought cycle and hopefully seeing some increased populations. But
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: we'll see. You know, the problem with the only problem
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: with when the water came and the prairies in the US,
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: it was after a lot of the those early migrants
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: came through, so a lot of your mallards and everything,
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: so they flew over because it was dry and they
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: went the boreal, which it's great. The boil landscape is
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: kind of like, it is good to have that because
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: it does provide a lot of nesting and production opportunities,
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: but typically waterfowl don't produce as well up there, so
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: the reproduction's not as well because the habitat's not as
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: rich and invertebrates and everything that they need for laying
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: eggs and that. It's just not as productive of a
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: habitat for waterfowl. But it's pretty darn good and it's vast,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: so it's good to have. But typically what we see
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: a lot when waterfowl fly over the prairies is not
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: as many young birds in the bag as far as
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: the ratio of juveniles to adults in the serv in
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: the in the harvest information reports and everything else that
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: it's not usually that ratio is not as many young birds.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: But we were seeing from biologists. We're saying that those
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: birds that did stay in the prairies or that came later, man,
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: they had great habitat, so we should have really good production.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: And they were actually seeing that a lot of young
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: birds coming out of the coming out of the US
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: prairie podles. So it's a mixed bag.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Is it that if a duck's coming from me, he
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: goes south for the winter and he's flying up, he's
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: not like a salmon where he doesn't know exactly where
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: he's going.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. They it's they have done studies.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: She had transmitters and showing birds coming back like so
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: close to where they had been previous years.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Right, you said they would shoot past.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's no water, they'll shoot past, yes, and
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: find another place.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, got it. So they want to kind of they.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: Want to go where they come from. So yeah, it's
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: pretty neat. Is there's actually just to do a plug
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: for it. The movie Wings over Water. I don't know
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: if you've heard of it yet. Yeah, it's been out
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: a couple of years. It's an imax. It's really geared
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: towards kids. So but not just kids, but it's talking
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: about the prairie potholes. And it's not just waterfowl. Follows
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: a duck, fills a sand hill crane and a yellow
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: warbler and shows their migration from south all the way
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: up to the prairies and the importance of prairies and
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: all the landowners there and farmers and ranchers, and and
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: why the prairie pothole region is so important for all
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: sorts of species of birds.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: What's the major thing besides that water level, what's the
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: major thing that drives duck up and down? Drives duck
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: numbers up and down in the United States?
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: So I mean habitat, right, So it's all tied to habitat.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: And you know, pond count is a is a good
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: way of course. It's been going on since the mid
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: nineteen fifties and it's the longest running waterfowl population survey
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: missed two years because of COVID, but other than that
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: longest year, longest survey, and so you know, it's a
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: good indicator the more wetlands that are on a landscape,
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: which is what waterfowl need for the grassland surrounding grasslands,
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: so for you know, for nesting and everything as well,
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: and then for brood production and brood rearing. But the
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: more wetlands and smaller shallow wetlands are preferred over you know,
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: I'd rather have one hundred you know, one acre wetlands
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: than one one hundred acre wetland because they're very territorial
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: as well. So the more water you have on the
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: landscape from wetlands, the better production you're going to have
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: for waterfowl. And it follows it pretty pretty closely. You
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: can see waterfowl populations up and down, up and down
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: in it being with you know, the previous year's wetland production, got.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: It, got it.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: So wetland conservation, ducks and limited that's what's all about.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: And you know, our priority landscape, of course is the prairies.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: That's our number one priority landscape. We work all throughout
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: North America. We have a lot of landscape conservation priority
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: areas that are important for waterfowl because wintering habitat is
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: really important for waterfowl too. I have to get those
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: you have to have enough energy and the carbo high
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: raids and everything that they need for fat storage and
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: everything else to make it through those cold winters and
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: be able to come back up north.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: But not that you hear about.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: People say, like changing agricultural practices will really impact.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I'm like. So there was a study we
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: actually just finished using band band return. So from the
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: nineteen sixties until twenty nineteen, one of our biologists, Dr
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Mike Brasier, along with doctor Webb with the Missouri co
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: Op Unit and then also US Fish and Wildlife Service
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: looked at bands from nineteen sixty to twenty nineteen, and
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: we looked at three different species of birds, mallard pintail
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: and blue wing teal, and then looked at different subpopulations
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: of where they came from, whether it was Canada and
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: the Boreal Canada, Canadian prairies and the Boreal Us prairies,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: and then the Great Lakes and Eastern Canada, and then
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: looked at different months October, November, December, January. So getting
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: to your point, so pintails, if you looked in nineteen sixties,
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: pintails were all along the coast, and the winter rice
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: in Texas was big, so all those pintails in January
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: and the nineteen sixties and seventies were all there. Now
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen and tens to nineteen that that population shifted.
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: You could see in January bird Band returns to Arkansas
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: the Missippi Alluvia Valley where the rice is so yeah,
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: it's really cool. It's all you can check it out.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: We've got a it's on our website. But part of
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: that state was actually in the last magazine too. It's
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: really neat.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: So looking at those they just found the rice production
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: and now that all that rice is down in Texas.
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: And yeah, Californians are super happy because they can shootin
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: two pintails a day.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: No no, no, right, no, no, no, it's one right now.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: But next year switch next year it will be three.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: Oh and both the Mississippi, Central Atlanta all four flyways
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: will be at three next year, not this current year.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: I have to be really careful.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: What happens that, lady? Why is it going up?
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: So US Fish and Wildlife Service again, Okay, there's adaptive
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: harvest management models for all sorts of different species, and
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: we could spend a lot of time going into it.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: It's really cool. We could geek out in the science
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: of it. But you know, pintails like you said Pacific flyway,
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: they're seeing so many pintails. Well, the thing is they
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: get their pintails not only from Alaska, but also from
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: the Canadian prairies and US prairies, and where those pintails
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: aren't doing as well.
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: We have a lot of pintails in Montana in the spring.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: It's super cool.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: Okay, you do, you should, And so what it is
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: they mix whereas mallards they have, you know, the mid
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: continent mallards, the western mallards, Eastern mallads, they don't really
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: they stay in their flyways. Pintails, it's a little bit different.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: So they've been restricted to one. But the reason for
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: looking at it is trying the it's an experimental three
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: I don't know if they're calling it quote unquote experimental season,
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: but it's a three year trial and if the numbers
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: don't drop below I make this a little wrong. Let's
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: say I think it's one point two million that will
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: be open for three birds. If it gets below that,
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: it'll drop to two to one or close season, depending
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: on where that population is. And so this year from
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: the breeding population survey, it's over the one point two
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: million mark or whatever that is. It's around there. But
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: the reason they're doing this is they're trying to really
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: see what are the effects. Is there an effect of
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: shooting three pentels on the population. We try to set
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: our populations. We US Fish and Wildlife Service ducks unlimited
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: is not part of it. I should make that clear.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: But US Fish and Wildlife Service and scientists try to
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: make sure that you're not having the additive impact of
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: mortality in hunting. So what they want to see is
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: is there an impact from harvesting three birds on that
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: population or is it not additive? Is it compensatory that
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: hunter harvest?
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Do you mind walking people through what that means?
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Jobs, just people, Yeah, yep, yep, yep.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: So if it's additive mortality, those birds would have made
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: it back to nesting and had a had a had
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: a successful nesting and had more more production the following year.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: If it's additive from that harvest, and if it's compensatory,
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: then it's those birds wouldn't have made it anyway to
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: a certain number of birds aren't going to make it
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: back to breed because of their their life cycle.
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: God, And that's like when I go love hunting in
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: California and you do see. It seems very consistent that
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: you see more pintails than anything else, and so of
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: course you get more complaints about only being able to
• 39:43
  Speaker 5: kill one pin tail.
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, per day.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: There's flying over you, just sitting there, flying over you.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're myth because what's going on is that
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: that all those Sacramento rice field pintails are all hanging
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: out in Arkansas.
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: Now no, no, no, no, no, no no no, this
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: is different flyway.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: So all I thought you're saying they shifted over to help.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: What the hell are you talking about, lady? So no,
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: So the birds coming from the Canadian US prairies, some
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: of them will go down to Arkansas, some of them
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: will head over to California, and so it's not distinct
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: where they come from. So, in other words, the birds,
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: the pintails in the US and the Canadian prairies aren't
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: doing as well. The ones up in Alaska are doing well,
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: but they might they all come down into California, but
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: some of these from Canada.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: So the Alaska ones aren't going to Arkansas, correct, I understand?
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: Now, okay, but you always have to tell those California folks,
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: it's like, well, they're not California pintails. They're kind of
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: everybody's in Montana. I can shoot one day and we're
• 40:52
  Speaker 5: growing them.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: They just end up here. Yeah.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing about waterfowl. It's I mean, it's
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: pretty impressive to understand how US Fish and Wildlife Service
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: and the states because they have part of that through
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: the flyway councils and when I was in Kentucky, I
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: was on the Mississippi Flyway Council and manage waterfowl populations
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: for everybody because they are a migratory species, and you
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: know the amount of time and effort to that it
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: takes to determine the models that are going to be
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: best for those waterfowl populations to sustain them and do
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: not cause harm to those populations. It's a pretty important
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: job that the Service does, and that survey is is
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: critical and the reason one of the reasons why we
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: can make it happen. And also hunters right with with
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: your harvest information program, doing the hip survey every year,
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: answering the US Fish and Wildlife surveys, all of those
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: things are critical to help manage that that population of birds.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Have you ever done an honesty check on the hip
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: survey has done that. Yeah.
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: Actually, yes, So here's what I give.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: It straight on mine.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: Right, here's wow got forty Yeah, like, you know, do
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: you want to like you've got some hunters that well,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: I don't want to tell everybody that I'm killing a
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: whole bunch of birds.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: You know, guys want to look like they get more
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: than they're getting.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: But here's the thing about it. If we don't have
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: the correct survey information, then you know we're we're we're
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: not doing our part as hunters, right. That that's science
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: part of it. So what was happening in Kentucky, I'll
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: give this example. We had some of the worst hip
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: survey data results because what was happening if we think
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: is everyone was going to the Walmart to do their
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: hip to buy their license, right, I'm just saying Walmart, sorry,
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: any hunting store to go buy their license and and
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: then there right, Well, well I didn't want to pick
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: on Walmart, right, it could be.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: A great place to buy a license.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: So it is a great place. Walmart's great.
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but slice Deli meat, your wa batteries, deodorant.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: I just didn't want to I didn't want to say
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: it was Walmart. Employees, we're not doing a good job.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: So but you know, I got the eighteen year old
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: behind the counter that's selling the license, and they get
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: to the hip survey and they just go zero zero
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: zero zero zero, here's your license right right, And they
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: don't ask them are you a waterfowl hunter? Are you
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: a migrant? Are you a dove hunter? Are you this?
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: Are you that? They don't ask them, They just go
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: about and and so then you don't know is the
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: hunter that you're not complying with the law and you're
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: not doing it right. You're thinking, you know, everything's fine,
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: you get your license. Well, so our data in Kentucky
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: was terrible. So what they what we did is we
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: instituted it was a law that you had to go online.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: You could no longer at point of sale, even if
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: you bought your license point of sale, you had to
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: go online and do your hip survey. And so then
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: our data went from one of the worst in the
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: country to one of the best. That we were providing
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: the service.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Stuff hard, you know what's good or bad.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: So there are there are ways you can you can
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: fact check year after year after year of like certain hunters,
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: you know, to see if it's pretty normal. Oh they
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: killed you know, twenty twenty birds here and zero here
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: and twenty there so.
• 43:54
  Speaker 7: You can see still birds.
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: Well, that poor random line. It's real hard though, doesn't
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: he a.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: Goof on Randall? Let's all have a laugh.
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: I got a question on the hip surveys. So last
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: year would be a good example, I guess, or still
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: this year, I guess. But hunting Missouri, hunt in California.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: Gotta do it twice.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: You gotta do it twice.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: And that's another thing people don't know. It's an education is.
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: The expectation that it doesn't matter where you are, you're
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: filling out the number of birds that you got.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: In aggregate in that location, in that in that state.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: State. Yeah, if you need a.
• 44:44
  Speaker 7: Takeaway, you might have to attract that statement earlier about
• 44:48
  Speaker 7: always filling out your hip survey.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well was my intentions were when you buy it, well,
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: so it should be if you buy it, going to say,
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: they should ask you about year.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: But you know what, I don't know off a goal somewhere.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: I just never I didn't know that, Like I don't
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: know if you're if you go to Alaska and and
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: hunt for day every time you buy like you all
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: all in whatever you've been.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: Up, Yeah, collectively, right, Yeah, it's not all in, no,
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: because they'll do they'll take it state by state and roll.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: It all up.
• 45:20
  Speaker 6: That's not clear. They should fix that.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: They should definitely.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, we are trying to stand for anyway.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: Harvest Information Program and so we're actually we're actually trying
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: to help state Fish and Wildlife agencies and trying to
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: collect the most accurate data, working with US Fish and
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: Wildlife Service to in order to do that.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: But huh interesting, what was your question about it?
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: Oh that it's like, are you filling it out for
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: your harvest information in that specific state or are you saying.
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: This is me, this is what I did last year.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Later today, you might send an email to the higher
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: up uh in the HIP program and tell them that
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: they they should clarify that point.
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: And it would create incredible efficiency. Did you hunt Missouri
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: last year?
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: Nope?
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Okay, zero, yep, And so then of course, you know,
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: if you just go there one year and hunt, you
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: don't go back for a couple of years, right, So
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: then you're not collecting whatever. But they have they've got
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: all sorts of data management behind the scenes to figure
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: out things like that. So they work through those things.
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: They it's it's a pretty good system. But they are
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: working on improvements to the harvest information program so we
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: can collect the best survey data possible.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: What let's say you're a hunter.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: We can move on from the hip surveys.
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: I don't think I want to know who kills the
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: most snipe because.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: When I lived out in Seattle, I was hitting big
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: snipe numbers, those good pintails.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: A good snipe.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Now for those years I really liked because I could
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: get in there because normally you got to just skip
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: through all the coots and rails and snipes.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Really just got to go zero zero zero zero.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: But I got to hit some snipes. That's pretty felt good.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 47:03
  Speaker 7: Yeah, the kid at Walmart was duly impressive.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Back fast.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: And then oh, I should also mention, so when you
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: do that hip stuff, so that just puts you in
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: a category. So that puts randall will be in the
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: zero to whatever zero category, you would be in the
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: max category, right, I was pointing to steep by the way,
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: everybody Brownie points. But so once they do that, then
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: they select a certain number of people from that from
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: that that grouping and then they send out the more
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: into it survey. So that's so the individual one doesn't
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: really matters much. That puts you in a group. And
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: then that's when you get that big survey. And they
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: made it online last year for years.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: I got roped into that all the wings and.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: Ye, and so then that's when they asked you, I
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: can't resent those people.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I was into it for a year or two, but
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: I was like, good lord man, yep.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: And so they'll figure out, like they'll ask you which
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: states did you hunt in? So you'll get get how
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: do you get picked for that?
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: That got to be a lot.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a it's a random It should be
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: a random generated in each of those categories. But they
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: don't have as many in that top end category that
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: you find yourself in.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: So I was, I mean.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: With you, I do a lot of like, you know,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: my geese numbers, I'm using the zero to tenor right,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: you know, ducks. I guess I'll climb up into the
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: twenty to thirty now and then I'm not a big
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: waterfowl guy. Yeah, it's I appreciate it, But here's a
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: waterfowl management question. To move away from hip surveys. Uh,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: people will point out, like I think it's widely understood
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: that there's some kind of arrangement between states and federal Right,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: you can be duck hunting, you can get checked by
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: a FED, but Feds don't check you on your deer hunting.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: But there's also like this, there's like an international component.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: That's right, but does that have any teeth or first
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: can you explain, like what is the international component and
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: it doesn't have any teeth? Like meaning, would Mexico ever
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: be like, damn it, we're not getting any ducks down here.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: You need to change your bag limits or would we
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: just be like mind your own business?
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: Like yeah, So the North American Waterfowl Management Plan and
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: it takes Canada, the US, and Mexico. Now, this is
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: from a habitat standpoint right the north the NAYWARP or
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: North American Waterfowl Management Plan and try to identify what
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: are those most important places for habitat and structuring it
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: that way. But then from an enforcement so you all
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: three have their own regulations and laws and how they
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: set that up.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: And they don't cooperate on those laws now, and so.
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: If you think about it in Canada, everyone's like, man,
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: how come you can shoot so many up in Canada
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: but when they cross that line and into the United
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: States you can't.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: How many can you shoot in Canada?
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of what the like, is there
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: anything like we're at seven right now in Montana?
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: Is there anything more than seven in Canada?
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: Yes? Yes, absolutely one, So it's eight I think in
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: like Saskatchewan.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Do they have the three day possession limit.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of what their possession limits are
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: in Canada. I'm not sure. We need to look it up.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: But there's an eight bird limit there.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an eight bird limit. No, I'm trying to
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: think of what it is. But you can harvest more
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: birds in Canada, but there aren't as many hunters up there,
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: so you have a lot more waterfowl hunters in the
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: United States, so we're going to have a much higher impact.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Same with Mexico. Not nearly as many waterfowl hunters in Mexico,
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: so their daily bag limits can be higher in Canada
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: and Mexico, the.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Pie is not getting cut up into as many So
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: this is.
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: The AI overview.
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: I I'm sure, I'm not sure if that's right, but
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: eight per day, as it does with four being pintails.
• 50:59
  Speaker 5: Take that California dark geese eight per day with no
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: more than five being white fronted.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: Wow, so that's double our geese.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a lot white geese twenty per day, not
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: as much pressures fairly close and a much shorter amount
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: of time too. You know, five sandhill cranes per day.
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: That's a lot of me is white geese.
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: Snows.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, normally they when people say they're moving to Cannon,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: they're making some kind of bitchy comment about the election.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: But you'd be like, no, I mean because ducks.
• 51:28
  Speaker 7: Well this is gonna say, this might make some of
• 51:30
  Speaker 7: those Californians make good on their promises.
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: Giant mule deer and ducks, come on, can't go wrong.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: Uh how is it that?
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: Uh? How does it come to be that different states
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: have different rags? Okay, like like like how do they
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: weigh that out? Like I said, right here, I don't
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: know what it is in other places right right now?
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: I mean for years it's been like there's all kinds
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: of restrictions, but like you're allowed seven ducks, and then
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: we have all of those like or no more than
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: bland so yeah, seven duck, but no more than two
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: can be a hen mallard, no more than on a pintail.
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, there can be huge discrepancies. I remember a
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: season or two where you could kill seven ducks in Montana,
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: but if you were in Stuttgart, Arkansas, waterfowl capital of
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: the world, you.
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: Could shoot a duck.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: A duck, A duck, a duck.
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's how like I can't remember the exact situations,
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: but it was like very duck, very Yeah.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, how's that all? How's that all divided?
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: So I mentioned briefly earlier the flyway councils, and so
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: because they are migratory and international and everything, you have
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: the federal regulations, and then you also can have state regulations.
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: So whatever the Feds come up with with, you know,
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: you can have like next year, three pintails and you're
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: in the liberal season. States can be more restrictive than
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: the federal rule, but not less restrictive. So a state
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: like Arkansas can make the decision because they have a
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: ton of hunters, they're putting a lot of pressure, they
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: can be they can be more restrictive trying to keep
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: more ducks in that area. But then there's also packages
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: that come with the Liberal package, and you can have
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: a certain number of zones and splits in your season
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: and everything, but there are federal regulations of if you
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: have you know, one split and two zones, it can
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: only be this and that. So they're in each in
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: each area, in each flyway is different and I don't
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: know them all, but so it is a state and
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: federal and that fly The Flyway Council has one state
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: representative from or one representative from each state on the
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: Mississippi Flyway, Atlantic, all the flyways, and they serve as
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: a vote for you know, we as a flyway, do
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: we agree with these particular regulations for our flyway. And
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: then that goes up and goes back to the Feds
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: and it finishes that system. But then a state can
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: take what was in the federal register and then they
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: can make the decision to you know, take their packages
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: however they want to and be more restrictive.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: So Arkansas could come home from that meeting and they
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: were pushing for greater restrictions, didn't get them, But they
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: can come home and just impose greater restrictions at home.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: It's their commissioners or their board however they're set up,
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: that vote on their regulations. Each state, again is different
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: how the regulations are set. Some might be from a
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: legislative set, some it might be from a Fish and
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: Wildlife commission, and so they vote. They take. Typically, which
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: you want system to work correctly? Is the biologist, the
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: waterfowl biologist will give the recommendation to that board and say, look,
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: this is what we think because our green tree reservoirs
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: aren't doing well or this or whatever reason they might
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: have had. I don't know that situation, but and we
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: think this is our recommendation. But sometimes the commission will
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: make their own decision and it'll be contrary sometimes to
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: what the bile just think to air in the side
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: of caution or something.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Man, what were the conversations in Arkansas when it got
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: as bad as one ducky year?
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: People had to been like just complain.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because you know it's a big duck.
• 55:15
  Speaker 5: Hunting is very social compared to a lot of other
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: hunting activities, right, so a lot of folks getting together
• 55:23
  Speaker 5: in blinds and and yeah.
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: You can only shoot duck camps. Yeah, I think that was.
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: Where you really saw the rise of you know, like
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: cooking and accoutrement in fancy duck blinds because he had
• 55:37
  Speaker 5: to make more of a day out of it because
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: it wasn't just all shooting anymore, right, Yeah, yeah, and
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: then yeah, so then and then we saw you know,
• 55:47
  Speaker 5: then you see like your duck hunters that really want
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: to keep hunting ducks, see them traveling a lot more
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: when their their home water restrictions get get tighter and
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: they're searching out those liberal regulations.
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: Right, and then you're putting a lot of pressure in
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: that area. And you do you have enough uh you
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: know nutrition duck energy day, it's enough habitat to support
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: duck energy.
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: I really want to get into because I was trying
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: to explain that because that's fascinating stuff.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: But that's how much energy you get from eating to duck.
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: It is super food, man, it is. Yeah. A big fan.
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: We cooked up a cup.
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: We were hiking our butts off over the Thanksgiving weekend
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: and I took big rice field ducks and cooked them
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: up in the camper and yeah.
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: Good stuff.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: Oh so good.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: That's what duck energy is.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: No big.
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: But like state like South Dakota, right, that's where it's
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: a it's a major recreational uh traveling tourism economy for hunting,
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: and in order to try to balance out that pressure, right,
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: they you have to draw for a specific week as
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: a non resident to go, which we've we've done in
• 57:06
  Speaker 5: the past and it's well worth doing. Super fun. But yeah,
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: waterfowl complicated. Your waterfowl regulations can get pretty darn complicated.
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: And it's like, okay, you can only shoot five we
• 57:22
  Speaker 5: were just in Kansas. It's like, you can shoot five
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: mallards and an odd duck. You're like, okay, well, what
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: do you consider odd?
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: That one had one?
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: So I interpret that as it's a six duck limit.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: No more than five can be mallards.
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, yeah, and then and then uh, I think
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: it was two hens as well, so or mixed in there.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: And then if you're hunting public land, it could even
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: get more you know, complicated, because they might have specific
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: regulations for that wildlife management area or something too. So
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: it's it Unfortunately, I think sometimes people get really nervous
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: if they're new to waterfowl hunting. There's a lot that
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: could maybe try to keep you from waterfowl hunting. So
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: that's where apprentice and going with friends is so important
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: because they're going to know the rules.
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: And there's a w m A in Arkansas that we
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: were right next to, and I want to say, you
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: could only have was it twelve shells in your possession?
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they'll limit however many.
• 58:29
  Speaker 5: I love because it's like an anti skybusting type of regulation.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: Sure, man, you got every every shot, dude, you shoot
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: a lot different than.
• 58:38
  Speaker 6: Bring a single shot. That'd be a good program that
• 58:41
  Speaker 6: you don't want.
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: You don't want all your ducks leave in that area.
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: Right shells?
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: Yep?
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: I loved it.
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: A lot of them do it.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't.
• 58:48
  Speaker 5: After my Wyoming hunting experience, I thought that would be
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: a good regulation to have for rifle hunting too.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: Had a traffer recently tell me that when he the
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: guy that taught him to try, he said, the most
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: valuable lesson he ever gave me is he says, I
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: treat every trap like it's my only trap. If you
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: treated every shell like it was your shell.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: Dude, shoot, it would be a lot different experience.
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I want to know what the psychological impact
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: would be even on a on a somebody who's a
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: fantastic shot.
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: If it's like okay, here's your five. Yeah, yeah, right,
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: just like how that would change?
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: That Actually a fun game to do, man, it would.
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, everyone will start yelling at each other why didn't
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: you shoot? What don't know?
• 59:31
  Speaker 7: Why didn't you?
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't know, it's too far out. If you
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: waited too long in all these ducks would be fine
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: by and everyone'd be mad.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: That'd be weird to have conversations like why didn't you shoot?
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Rather than why did you.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Because that's the normal conversation you're doing.
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: Shot end of the season around here, especially right and
• 59:54
  Speaker 5: like my goal, one of my recurring hunting goals is
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: always to like end the season with my maximum possession
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: limit of ducks so I can carry it.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: Through feel good about it.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so your freezer's got twenty one ducks in it, and.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: I want to want them all to be fat, you know,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 5: like that that would be like the way to hit
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 5: it perfect. But and you typically are like, okay, cold weather,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: the ducks are going to be putting the feedback on
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: and and but you can time your timing matters to
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 5: where it's like, Okay, all of a sudden, there's a
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: ton of birds in, but they just got there and
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 5: they're really skinny.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: Versus if the birds have been there for a few days,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: you want to get them right before they head out
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 5: because that's when they're at maximum duck energy, maximum fat.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: Ye you have fed them, well yes, yeah yeah, And.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: Then so can you go into that because that's super fascinated,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: like how fast they burn?
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: Oh, those calories definitely do.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: And and like again I was talking about that North
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: American Waterfowl mansion plan. There's different plans that that waterfowl
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: managers use, and they have a lot of state and
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: regional requirements for like I don't know, it might be
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: four hundred million duck energy days in the Mississippi Alluvia Valley.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: Is what's needed to sustain those ducks with duck energy
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: days the amount of energy that one duck needs for
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: for one day, right, and so a duck energy day
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: and how much like an acre is by like the acre,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: so it's like how many duck energy days are on
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: this acre of land and providing how much energy. So
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: if you had a thousand ducks and you wanted them
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: there for one one day, you need one thousand duck
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: energy days and that one acre.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: So different the form of what in the form of whatever.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the high well and each and they'll do it
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: by groups of species, by dabblers or different different industries.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: It's not you're not talking about like spreading food out.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: Or soybeans or but it's the caloric.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: It's the CLOrk, yes, exactly, some kind of food.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: That provides really like regionally available food.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: That's right, yep. And so how much and so they
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: have targets. So one hundred and ten days, I think
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: is what they typically keep for what they want to
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: provide the food for ducks, you know, in the Mississippi
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: Allubis Valley for example, And so then you have to
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: have in that whole area four hundred million duck energy
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: days to be able to support the waterfowl population that
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: you're expecting to come into the Mississippi Alluvia Valley or
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: a lot of states will do it as smaller regional
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: areas too, and they might do it for wildlife management
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: areas different things like that. For what are the duck
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: energy what's the requirement of the duck energy days to
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: make sure those animals have and you know, lots of carbs,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: lots of other things to store that fat for their
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: you know, migratory journey north as well.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 7: So it's it's analogous basically like a grazing unit if
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 7: you're thinking in.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: Terms of like no cattle KYLCAF unit.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 7: Yeah, it's like an aum basically, like what is this?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 7: What can this landscape sustain?
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: What can it sustain? What can that by the acre?
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: So what can that one acre? How many ducks can
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: it support for that that time period.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 7: I was curious about this when you're talking about the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 7: variability in migration routes earlier and talking about if there's
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 7: no water in the potholes, they go up to the
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 7: boreal right, And when I think about animal migration, I
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 7: think about the like caloric tax on the animal, especially
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 7: when we talk about big game or thing about like salmon.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 7: You know, like it's something that I hadn't really considered
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 7: in the waterfowl realm. But considering that their migration route
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 7: could vary by hundreds of miles's season to season's imagine
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 7: of striking.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: And then of course you know what kind of condition
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: are they in when they get there. Now they are
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: feeding along the way obviously, and depending on the species,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: you know, they'll start switching over maybe to invertebrates right
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: before they get there to the you know, the nesting
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: areas and to the prairies or whatnot. So they'll shift
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: their diets and everything based on the type of food
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: they need. But you want them to have in some
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: of those southern states that high energy food carbohydrates to
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: get them to get them there. But yeah, so it
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: puts a tax on them when they're not when there's
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: not water in the prairies, when wetlands are gone. You know,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: I think in the prairies, I mean depending on certain areas,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: it could be as high as ninety percent of the
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: potholes or the wetlands have been lost. But in a
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: lot of the prairies, you know, over fifty percent, fifty
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: percent of the by the mid nineteen eighties, you know,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: fifty percent were lost, which is why the North American
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: Waterfowl one of the reasons the North American Waterfowl Management
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: Plan started was it was in nineteen eighty four, but
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: in the mid nineteen eighties, you know, like half of
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: all the wetlands had been lost. Of course, the United
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: States and the lower forty eight.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 6: How much does like agricultural food sources offset that, Like.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 8: Is there it's important, Like is it possible there's more
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 8: ducks now because of agriculture than there was, say two
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 8: hundred years ago when the middle of the country wasn't
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 8: covered in corn, And so being like, well, I can't.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: Go back nine.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Years ago, but pick a number, like pick a known number,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: because that's a good question, right, Like there's more Like
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: when grain prices are high and everybody's producing grain and
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: all these farmers are switching to grain, Yeah, that doesn't
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: make up for all that lost ground.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: No, No, because waterfould need and if the wetlands are gone, yeah.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: And you know, we have all the grain in the world.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: That time of year, they're feeding a lot on invertebrates,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: right because they're trying to eggshells and everything else and
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: that protein. So they're really moving to protein that time
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: of year. And that's what wetlands are just they are
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: just wonderful. They'll soup.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 6: Just so there's not like around tier, like there used
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 6: to be a lot of wheat production around here, and
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 6: it's a lot of those fields are getting covered up
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 6: in condo Like yeah.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: Now that's absolutely and so we work a lot, you know,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: because we want agriculture on the landscape. And because we
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: don't want it to turn into condos and this and that,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: and so we work with and r CS, USDA and
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: r CS, and we work with landowners and farmers and
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: ranchers to develop programs both with federal partners, state partners,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: and then we have our own programs because we want
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: to keep ranching and farming on the landscape and then
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: working to keep wetlands and important grasslands in that landscape
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: on there right, whether it's through incentives, through education, because
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: soil health practices, a lot of soil health practices and
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: other things that we can work with landowners and farmers
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: to improve. It's going to be better for them economically,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: they're going to have a better crop, it's going to
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: help with you know, sedimentation, run off, all of that.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: And then it's also you know, putting in cover crops
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: and other things for waterfowl is beneficial again for them
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: and then also for wildlife. So there's a lot of
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: practices that we can work on with farmers and ranchers.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: So we want them on that landscape and they're critical,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: critical partners for us.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 7: There's not a lot of duck energy and condos.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: Not a lot of duck energy and condos.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: Now, when you talk about losing half of our wetlands.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: Can you can you being drained?
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Put some numbers around that.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: Like start, what's the start? Like what's the starting point?
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: You're not talking about European arrival in the New World,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: like there's like one.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: No no since like a lot of development in the US, right,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: and so like the Mississippi, you know, Mississippi River basin,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: I think it's estimates of almost eighty percent been lost
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: of wetlands. And if you think about it, you know,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: flooding along the Mississippi.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: Over the last what does ballpark it?
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: I'd say, what would be the year mark? I mean last.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Like post World War?
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know nineteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, say so,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: like in the Mississippi River basin, like eighty percent. But
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: what I think a number I read, you know, by
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: the mid nineteen eighties, I believe a number of bread
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: is that like fifty percent in the lower forty eight
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: were lost. And think about it, you know, draining a
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: lot of wetlands to for building for it can be
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: for farm ground, it can be for you name it.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: I mean it's reclamation districts.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: Right, everything so they're constantly under attack and people don't
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: understand the not everyone understands the importance of a wetland
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: and that they can provide so many other things other
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: than just waterfowl habitat and habitat for lots of other
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: you know, fish, bird species, everything. But also it helps
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: with you know, flood attenuation if you're talking along the
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: Mississippi River. It helps with a storm resiliency on on shorelines.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: It helps with clean water filtration. I mean there are
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: they are nature's kidneys, their nature's uh sponges. They filter
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: out phosphorus, nitrogen, all these you know. And then they
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: also helped store water during heavy rain events to keep
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: from flooding issues. So wetlands are really important to people
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: and wildlife.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 5: And that's what when I started hunting Saskatchewan and Alberta
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: a long long time ago. I haven't been up there
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 5: in years for waterfowl, but the amount.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: Of DU work.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 5: North of the border, which was interesting too because also
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: you would hear from people like, oh, I don't don't
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 5: contribute to DU because they just spend all my money
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: in Canada.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right, but that's where.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: They spend all my money, right where all my ducks
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: come from.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So until the mid nineteen eighties, we did not
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: do work in the US. We did only work in
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: the Canadian and the prairies in Canada seriously, because that's
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: where the majority of waterfowl were. And it was in
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: the mid eighties again that waterfowl management plan that I
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: was talking about started looking at Okay, we need to
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: start not just ducks are limited, but federal, state, provincial partners,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: everybody coming together and saying we need to look at
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: all of these important landscapes. And there's a lot in
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: the US as well. So we started working the US
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: prairies and the mid nineteen eighties, and then of course
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: other priority landscapes from there and also down into Mexico.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: So that really didn't start until the mid nineteen eighties.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: But like you said, putting the most money we can
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: into those highest priority landscapes, which is going to be
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: your Canadian prairies, US prairies, the boreal. But there's other
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: critical landscapes as well that we just were talking about,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: as far as the importance of wintering habitat as well.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: So it's a lot of great programs out there, and
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: I should go ahead and make a plug for hunters
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: that every time you buy that duck stamp, that duck
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: stamp goes to protecting permanent protection of wetlands in the
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: United States. And there's a major portion of those dollars
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: that go into the US prairies. And so that twenty
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: five dollars stamp you're protecting putting a permanent easement on
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: a piece of property on land that is held by
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It's part of actual
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: the refuge system. But we have now through this program,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: the US Fish and Wildlife Service JV, the Joint venture
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: Partners and others have secured protection of thirty percent of
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: the breeding pair habitat that's necessary. So that's pretty impressive
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: thirty percent of that nesting important critical habitat through duck stamp.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: So hunters are doing their part. We always say hunters
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: pay for conservation. I mean, this is a very clear
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: point A to point B. Ninety eight percent of the
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: duck stamp sales go right into on the ground conservation easements.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: And so anybody, any enthusiast that buys a duck stamp
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: for art or other purposes just because they like them,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: they are putting that money towards conservation on the ground,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: and it's made. I can't think another group of species
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: or species of that size where we have been able
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: to protect that large amount of through something through an
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: effort like that.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: The guy that painted this year's duck stamp was sitting
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: right in that seat. You're sitting in no way.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: So I judge. I was the judge for last year's
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: duck stamp. Yeah, yeah, there's five judges, so I was
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: one of them. But yeah, cool.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: How does Ducks Unlimited preserve save protect wetlands?
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, do you guys? Is there a lot?
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: Do you have a lobbying arm that does policy?
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: Definitely?
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: And then you also have like on the ground, like
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: on the ground money like money spent. What will explain
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: those different?
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: Sorry jump in, but you also say like.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 5: The public ground and private ground, Like what the kind
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 5: of the split is almost like a wh where the
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 5: money goes type thing?
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: Lobbying public private.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: So so we.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: Get a lot of public dollars that we apply for
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: whether it's the North American Wetlands Conservation dollars, those are
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: wetland dollars that it was enacted in nineteen eighty nine
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: to help support that Waterfowl Management Plan, so we get
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: a lot of money through that, But we also work
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: a lot with NRCS, but a US Fishion Wildlife Service
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: to work on refuges. US Fish and Wildlife Service. We
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: work a lot with state agencies on public land. But
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: we now have about four hundred conservation staff, so inducks unlimited,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: about four hundred staff are our biologists, scientists, gis. I've
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: got a lot of engineers, engineer techs all doing this
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: work on the ground, so on the ground habitat work
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: on private and public land. From a public land perspective,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: In the last several years, we've probably had conservation practices
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: over maybe close to six hundred thousand, yeah, about six
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: hundred thousand acres on public land, so on National Wildlife refuges,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: state agencies, and a lot of those are more intensive.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: Projects are going to be your water, wetland enhancement, wetland creation,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: a lot rehabilitation, rehabilitation, a lot of that, or you know, building,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: you know some of that infrastructure and so you can
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: have manipulate water levels and everything else. So there's a
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: lot more work that goes into it. A lot of
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: the work that we do on private land is going
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: to be more your technical assistance or the money with
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: that we apply for with USDA and r CS to
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: do farm practices that benefit you know, conservation practices on
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: farm and things like that. So it's a lot more
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: on the private land. It's a lot more of working
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: with farmers and ranchers and things like that. Is more
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: that those those types of acres. And the first part
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: of your question though I was trying to go back
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: to real quick. You were talking about lobbying lobby Oh yeah, yeah,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: So what are the different.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: How do we influence how do you influence the loss
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: of wetlands?
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: So a lot of that we have a group of
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: folks that are are policy specialists. We have some in
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: DC and then we also have some regionally because they're
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: going to be regional instance instances as well that we're
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: going to have these policy experts. But we work a
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: lot with policy makers on farm bill is a big
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: one that we work when we work on to make
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: sure that there's conservation practices in there. Another one is
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: to ensure that we have complete full funding for NAKA,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. It's enacted and it's
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: about fifty million dollars a year for that, so they
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: they work really hard to ensure that we have those
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: types of dollars available to put on the ground for conservation.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: So they spend a lot of time working on that,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: and then our teams in the field, they are constantly
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: looking for new funding sources or new partners to work with,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: because the more partners that you work with, the better
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: are Like with NAKA, they've now north through North American
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: Wetlands Conservation Act, though I think it's thirty two million
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: acres have been conserved not just by duckson limited, but
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: thirty two million acres have been conserved through that program.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: And it has spent two billion dollars. But it's a
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: one to one matching program, so it requires for every
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: dollar spent of federal dollars, that requires a non federal
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: dollar and so there have been over five billion dollars
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: raised to match that two billion dollars to put those
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: thirty two million acres on the ground, and it takes
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: a lot of partners. I think through that program there's
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: over six thousand partners that have participated in that program.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: So every our teams are constantly looking for federal non
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: federal nonprofit, you know, local organizations to partner with to
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: get that habitat on the ground. It is. It is
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: a daunting ask to.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: What's what's a way that it might happen. Meaning let's
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: say I'm a farmer, okay, and I have a thousand
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: acres and I have some wetlands, and I'm like man,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: I also love to hunt docs and I like to
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: make money on my farm. And I come and and
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: I come and say to du how can how can
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: I be of assistance or what can I do?
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 5: Like?
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: So, what measures are of disposal?
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: Lots of things, everything from permanent protection, putting a conservation
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: easement on that property so that it's you know, always
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: in whatever that is as far as the number percentage
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: of wetlands and.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: Grass and you guys help with that process and.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: We help with that process. And those easements are held
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, And those were
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: some of the duckstamp dollars I was talking about earlier.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: Other things might be, well, you know, they might be
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: interested in a conservation reserve program where they take out
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: and that's through nrcs, and so they take out a
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: certain percentage of their production and they put it in
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: they plant it in grass or in something else, and
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: so they might do that or so it's like a
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: rental payment, or they might do equip eqip equip, and
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: they might do rental payments for not rental payments. They
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: might do different cost share to try to improve their
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: property for the conservation values on there. So there's all
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: sorts of different farm bill programs that they could be
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: interested in, and so our team will walk through all
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: these different programs that they have, and again Ducks Unlimited
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: has a lot is a lot of programs as well
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: that as long as they're doing these activities and we're
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: cost sharing for those conservation activities, as long as they
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: continue to do those, we're in that annual year to
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: year contract. But that permanent protection is the best thing
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: we can do. In our director of Operations in the
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: Prairie Pothole Region, Johann Walker, he's always saying, all right,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: we've got to slow down the pace of conversion and
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: increase the pace of protection. But there's lots of other
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: tool rules, you know, in between that we can use
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: that that benefit farmers and ranchers and help improve their
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: what they're getting out of it. But then also for
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: for wildlife and waterfowl as well.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: It is currently the number one risk to wetlands crop
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: land conversion.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: In the Prairie Poole region.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, it's a land owner, a farmer is incentivized
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: by prices whatever to convert to increase and convert land
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: to egg. And so that's why I have a way
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: to try to soften absolutely be.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: The same thing like.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 5: Sorry ducks, unlimited farm bill programs, nrcs, uh, they are
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 5: going to also try to make sure that that farmer
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 5: knows the available incentives. Yeah, not produce crops on intermint wetlands.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 5: So it doesn't need to just cost yeah, sequays to
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 5: make of that. It doesn't just cost the land.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 7: You can do the right time for wildlife without affecting
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 7: the bottom line.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because a lot of times the wetlands, even though
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: it might be dry, it might look dry that year
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: kind of thing that that's not going to be your
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: most productive soil for for crop. It is going to
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: be your most productive for wildlife, but not necessarily for crop.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: Those are usually not the same thing. And so the
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: education and working with them and a lot of our
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: farmers they love seeing the ducks on the landscape and
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: they love being able to help and it's like.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 5: Help my bottom number that as much as driving in
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 5: a straight line, pain in the butt to go.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: Around that wetland. You're driving this big equipment and everything,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: and it's a pain in the butt to go around
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: those wetlands. So yeah, we have to find ways to
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: incentivize landowners to want to keep wetlands in certain grasslands intact.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: And there's there's lots of ways to do that, and
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: it's it's through these great partnerships, our federal and state
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: partnerships and partnerships with the owners that make it happen.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: Do you what do you think about.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 5: North American Grasslands Conservation Act. I think that's getting towards
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 5: a workable state something.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's interesting because it's it's gone back
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: and forth, back and forth, and I know there's a
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: lot of it's being modeled off of well, yeah, off
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: of NAKA and what works necessarily in this program will
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: it work here? And so I think it's it's definitely
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: evolving and becoming something that I mean, it's critical. There's
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: lots of grassland species that need protection and you can see,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: I mean the three billion Bird Report. Right, you have
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: a lot of species that have been declining, you know,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: since the nineteen seventies, and a lot of them are
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: grassland species. Now NAKA there's a lot that goes into
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: grasslands as well through through NAKA funding. And when we
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: look at some of those priority landscapes that we want
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: to protect, a lot of them we look at duck pairs, right,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: how many breeding how many pairs of breeding ducks are
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: going to be in that landscape, and we want to
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 3: target the highest numbers, you know, the highest the one
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: hundred duct pays. But with that come like fifteen to
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 3: twenty different other grassland bird species that use that same landscape.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: So it's not just one thing that we're looking at
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: or the other. Any any kind of conservation funding opportunities
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: that we can provide that have these great public private
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: partnerships associated with them for conservation. The more of that
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: that we can get, I think, the better off we're
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: going to have.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 5: And that's where like some of the social cost of
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 5: using wetland comes in, because most people are like, well,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 5: wetland is only a wetland if it's wet, Yes. And
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 5: then also that fringe area around the wetland with the
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 5: grass like, there's a lot of waterfowl species that that
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 5: nest in that. That's right, right, and so far are
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 5: they going to go yeah, yep, But it's like, well
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 5: it's not wet.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: Conservation is not a simple it's not a simple thing
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: and it it really takes a large group of people
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: kind of pulling in the harness together to make it happen.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: You know who I think deserves a little credit I
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: make I make a lot of jokes about.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: Golf. Well, very famous golfer.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: Sat in that seat, which one my husband, the butcher Brian,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: the butcher hermit. Anyways, you know who deserves some credit?
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: Is there golf course by my house? It's a duck factory. Really,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: all those little ponds they made, yea, every one of
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: those ponds and they have like some great nesting success,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: every one of those ponds full of chicks. Also, do
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: they fake ponds?
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: Do they put a lot of like edge around that pond?
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: Do they are they shallow? Did they did they do
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: that specifically?
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 6: Especially a wetland before it was a golf course?
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: Are like there's a bunch of spring fat ponds and
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: they do they kick off a lot of ducks.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 4: But when you see that little.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: There, did you guys weigh in on the ducks unlimited
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: way in on this the sort of political ping pong
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: ball of woatas waters.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: The United States?
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: The states, So can I take try to can we
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: test my ability to explain this?
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: The United States, the federal government declares like sovereignty over
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: certain waterways, meaning like like for instance, if a private
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: landowner owns both sides of the Mississippi, they can't say
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: no more shipping up and down my river, right because
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: the US has jurisdiction over the waterway. And there's a
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: political ping pong about how far up river into non
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: navigable or barely navigable.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: Water does the US have jurisdiction?
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: And could there be a thing where US jurisdiction extends
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: all way up into the headwaters in the wetlands, and
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: they could exert the federal the federal government could exercise
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: some management rights over marshes and wetlands that form the rivers.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: So extending up the Mississippi beyond navigation, put up into
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: the sources of the Mississippi and use that as a
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: way to preserve wetlands. And when I say a political
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: ping pong ball. It seems to like always be in
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: the news of a new administration interpreting it differently. One
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: administration be like, oh, no, it goes all the way
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: to the marsh, and the other next administration, no, it
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: ends at navigability, and it seems to be always in
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: the news. It's never quite resolved. Yeah, this is a
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: political hot this is a hot issue. What's been your guys'
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: attitude about this conversation?
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: So, what we've been trying to do is working with
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: the states on what their wetland regulations and laws and
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: rules will be, because that's really where it the end
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: of the day, because you're right, it's gonna it's this
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 3: ping pong back and forth, back and forth. But if
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 3: you're working with the states and working with the you know,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: the landowners and those rules in those states, that's probably
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: how we're going to be able to to kind of
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: get through this as far as so you can take.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: Action now that doesn't get done or undone, right every
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: time the political winds change, that's right, Yeah.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: Yep, because states have their own you know, regulations now,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: especially with the latest change.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: So you, uh, when I was talk about lobbying earlier
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: ducks unlimited will will at times try to influence regulation
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: about wetland development.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we work a lot more, i'd say, on the
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 3: funding for wetlands conservation and from that standpoint, and.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: So so you spend more time with the carrot than
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: the stick.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot more time with the carrot than the stick,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: because it gets gets you a lot long, gets you
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: a lot further. We've you know, in the last five years,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: developed an e strategic plan if you look at everywhere
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: that is important for waterfowl. If you take our landscape
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: conservation priorities and I put that map down in front
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: of you, and then you took an AG map in
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: the United States and you laid that over it, it's
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: almost exactly the same. Yeah, you're talking about earlier exactly
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 3: more rural people.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: So so it's it is critical that we have strong
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: relationships and partnerships with with with the AG and ranching.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: So metro Chicago doesn't pop up now, not too much.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: You're important for duck zone.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 4: I'm sure there's a strong DU chapter there.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of strong du chapters.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: That's a good point about it's an interesting point about
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: the need to.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: The need to.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: Have the build of work with agricultural interests. When if
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: you if you you're right, if you look at like
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: where birds are coming from, it's agricultural landscapes.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: So I may edgine if an organization was.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: Just sort of uh perceived as being vehemently anti egg,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: you might wind up having a hard time to work.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: In egg country, might be hard to work in a country.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: So you know, there are there are disincentives that I
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: think are important to keep, you know, and incentives that
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: are important to keep. And I think it's a balance
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: of those two things to ensure we get that right.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: I'll come.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: So there are there aren't disincentives in place, but like
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: swampbuster and everything else that are important. But what that
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: is is it's you know, keeping if if you're a
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: farmer and you're in farm build programs, right and you're
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: getting something from a farm build program, you can't plow
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: under a wetland or drain a wetland. So that's type
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: a type of a disincentive, but then incentives for some
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: of the things I was talking about with conservation reserve
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: program or equip or wetland reserve easement where you're putting
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: your land permanently in an easement protection or you know.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 5: Well, it's like there's not a necessarily like a one
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 5: size fits all never deal too, because between like the
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 5: state and the federal programs, you could have the ability
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 5: to leave that intermittent wetland alone most of the time,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 5: but you could you could take hay off of it,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 5: you could graze it, but at certain times a year
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 5: that that fit in God with the breeding nesting program.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 3: Glad you brought that up. And it's not a one
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: size fits all. I mean, that's a really good point.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 3: And so each state is going to be different. So
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: North Dakota, South Dakota, what programs are available, what's allowed
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: not allowed.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 5: And sometimes it's your flyway too, right Like if you're
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 5: in an area that's trying to bring back sandhill crane, yep,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 5: certain properties along that flyway are going to pay more
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 5: for all these programs.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: And the great thing about these programs and even an easement,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: you know, if they're voluntary, of course, but if you
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 3: put an easeman on your property, the landowner can still
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: use the land and it's but then it's that being
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: able to be there for habitat, for waterfound other species,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: for generations.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah, a buddy of mine, big farmer in South Dakota.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 5: He like, it's the most awesome, feel good story ever.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 5: He started just getting into these programs because it made
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 5: more financial sense than trying to farm this stuff. And
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 5: he's like, yeah, we remove the diesel fuel, removed the
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 5: seed costs, the nitrogen costs, all these costs to farm
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 5: something marginal to not get a return. But we also
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 5: don't have to turn our steering wheel start picking up
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 5: a couple of bucks for different things. Saw some good improvement,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 5: saw crazy stuff happen, Like all of a sudden, they
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 5: had prairie chickens on the ranch, and it's like it's
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 5: because we were in this state program. Oh, super cool
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 5: that you know, incentivized native grasses.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 4: So you saw it good.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 5: Drought tolerants increase, fire tolerants increase. And then the other
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 5: cool thing that they saw increase was just family interest
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 5: in the farm because it's like, well, twenty years ago,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 5: there was nothing else to look at other than the
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 5: row you were hoing, basically, and now there's like deer
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 5: running around, there's lots of birds, there's raptors, all sorts
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 5: of wildlife increase, and the interest level from you know,
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 5: the the small family members who don't really care about
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 5: the financial part of things.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: They're like, oh, this is a cool.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: Place to be, yep.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: But then you get one of those guys drives round,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: pissed off all the time.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: Farm Yeah, well it's it's the farm. Farm the best
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: and leave the rest right. But I love coming to
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 3: the prairies and listening to the stories. You know, so
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: cattle and ducks go really well together, and they both
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 3: need grass and everything, and so I come. I love
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: coming to the prairies and listening to the testimonials of
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: some of these folks that you know, drained a wetland
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: years ago with their great grandfather, but then are putting
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: it back and they love the family interest and the
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 3: kids are enjoying it. But then, you know, or some
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: of them that decide, I'm gonna we're going to into ranching,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: and they convert, you know, from farming from crop to
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: to ranching, and takes a ton of money for them
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 3: to do it, and they're probably losing money and not
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: always in the best spot. But then there's programs that
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 3: are available to help them out or putting in practices
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: on that working farm that are going to protect wetlands,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: and so it's pretty fun to listen to the testimonials,
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: just like you were just saying to your buddy that
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: of of what happens too when they joined some of
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: these programs.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: I got too quick ducks, unlimited banquet stories for you.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 3: I love these. I can't wait.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: One time I was in the market for.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: A new fish finder, yeah, and I was able to
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: buy a I was buying it anyway, buying it anyway,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: but I was able to buy a thousand dollars gift
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: card to bass Pro shops for seven hundred dollars. It
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: was like I basically bought one thousand dollars for seven
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars. My other story bottomless beer for ten dollars.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: My other story is just my buddy Ryan.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: He was at one of those and he was drunk
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: and he was bidden on something, but he was in
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: his mind he was buying what was up next?
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: Oh no, so he's looking at what's up next.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 4: It's like, I can't believe nobody else is going on.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: I was like bidden and bidden, and he wins, and
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: his buddy's like, what the hell you want that? Because
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: they're like in another state.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: He's like, what do you want that picnic table for bad?
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 3: Oh my god? Whatever was yep, He's like, I.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: Was bidding on that.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: That'll happen. That'll happen.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 3: I love our banquets and really get so many support
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: through them. And people come in, well they come for
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: the party, but then they stayed for the ducks.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: A carnival for adults.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: It is. It's a lot of fun. Is that still
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: functioning good? Like, oh yeah, because COVID probably killed it
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: for a while, right, You would have.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: Thought, man, are that team? They are absolutely incredible. David Schustler,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: he's the chief of that that team. They pivoted so fast.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 3: We're like, okay, guys, we're going to be shut down.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking I will be shut down for a couple
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: of weeks. It all come back. He had different ideas.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 3: So they went to all this online stuff almost immediately
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 3: and the like and everyone's sitting at home look up
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: for something to do. And we had all sorts of
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 3: different interactive ways for people to join online. And then
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: as soon as we could go back outside, they were
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: setting up big tents and you know, going state by state.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 3: They I don't know if they slept much during during
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: that time, but they were actually able to keep our
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: events system rolling. And then we had our major donors.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 3: I cannot tell you how important our volunteers and our
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 3: major donors are. Like I was talking about all the
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: match for all these programs. I think we had one
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 3: hundred and seventy six million dollars in public dollars last
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 3: year our team brought in. But that takes a bunch
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: of match. And our donors are incredible, and how our
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 3: philanthropists that give. But then also everybody that goes to
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 3: an event and the money that that first dollar comes
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: in an event and the dollars that they spend there,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 3: how that goes to conservation. It's a pretty incredible organization.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: It's been a lot of fun the last five years
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 3: and looking for many more. But I didn't realize before
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: I came to work for Ducks Unlimited, that passion that
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 3: is with all of those volunteers, with the staff, with
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: our major donors, And they really came through in COVID.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: Our major donors stepped up like they never had before
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: to make sure that Ducks Unlimited was going to be
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 3: able to make it through it.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: So my friend Mark here in town, he made a
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: rule a couple of years ago that he let a
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: lot of people hunt on his place, but you can't
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: hunt his place unless you're a Do you remember I
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 3: That's great, he's got some there.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: No, I no, which reminds me I took.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: I got to make sure my kids are still up
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: because I kind of extended it to my kids. But
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: I got to make sure I didn't violate his rules.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: Went out there for the check a couple.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 4: That's why you just got to get that lifetime membership.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: Right to have a membership for him right here.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 7: You'll never have to worry about it again.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: I did like I did lifetime at Turkey Federation. I
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: did lifetime at Rocky Mount Elk Foundation. But I should
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: do my lifetime at DU. My next lifetime should be
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: DU lifetime.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, or you can just annually, you know support.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 5: That's the covey of the lifetime membership. Yeah, because a
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 5: lot of people think they're done.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 3: No, No, there's no lifetime membership. It's you're never done.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: How much do you guys get? How much public money
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: from all you guys efforts?
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 3: That's it was around one hundred and seventy five seventy
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 3: six million. Our team spends a lot of time writing
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: a lot of grants and it's like I said, it's diverse.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 3: We don't just one type of funding. And that's that's
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 3: something that we all need to be thinking about. Are
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: what are those funding opportunities, like all the other benefits
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: that wetlands provide, what types of funding opportunities and streams
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 3: can come from that as well, because we need to
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 3: be able to diversify. Unfortunately, we probably aren't going to
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 3: have as many hunters sitting around the table and however
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 3: many years I hope I'm wrong, But how do we
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 3: get other people to understand the importance of the conservation
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 3: work because I do think you know, sportsmen are our
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: first conservationists, and so how do we encourage other people
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: to have that same interest in the like whether it's
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 3: turkeys or mule deer or National Deer Association, whoever it is.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of interest. Because there's only a million
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: dock hunters, right, I did one hundred and seventy five
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: million public dollars, But yeah, what's that?
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean as far as duck hunters, you know,
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 3: and how many members we have, there's probably more duck
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 3: hunters but you're right, it's like.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: A lot of it's a lot of per like because
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: you know how many duck stamps get bought.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 7: I was going to say, like you always hear people
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 7: talk about, Oh, anybody can buy a duck stamp. I'm
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 7: curious how many.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: It's five people.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 7: Well, that's my suspicion, but I'm wondering.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: If you have any insight in Well, Max Barta buys
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: one for his dog.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 7: Yeah, well there's people that buy.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 3: I buy several, Yeah, because I want one to keep,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 3: and then I want one that i've got.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 7: I buy multiples because I forgot I already.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: Bought one, I lose them.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: But I think it's probably I mean, there are exceptions.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's a probably a pretty clean.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 3: I don't know, because there I was really surprised when
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: I did the duck stamp judging last year, which I
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 3: thought was like the coolest thing ever. By the way,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 3: I didn't realize how cool it was, but there were
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 3: a lot of art enthusiasts that we're kind of like
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 3: chiming in on that online thing. I went and looked
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 3: at it later that nothun or that are not hunters
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 3: now I don't know it's them well count all ten
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 3: of them, but it is, I mean it is. The
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: majority is going to be hunters and have been doing it,
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: you know, for since what the first one ding Darling
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: and nineteen thirty four. I should have that off the
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 3: top of my head. But it's mostly going to be
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: your duck hunters.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: You know what Cal and I are going to do.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: He doesn't know this yet, but when we retire, I
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: got a couple of things on my list that I'm
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: gonna do with my retirement project.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 4: But we're going to give you a dog.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: No, I'm going to try to establish a I'm gonna
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: try to establish a universal Blaze orange requirement of a
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: hat no more than a hat, A hat, hat orange hat.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 7: I've seen quite a few Montana hunters out there already
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 7: are on board with that.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: Not because because when you're wearing a vest and you're
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: trying to change your clothes, it's just too much.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: Just a hat. A hat's great, see that hat orange.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 4: I know the hat's got the same issue though, It's
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 4: like every time I'm always to.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 3: Ye putting something else on.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: I write a book about how it's okay to hate
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: Shakespeare and then I wanna Then then I want to
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: work on cal and I want to work on a
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: public service thing to get the water fouling community to
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: take field care.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: Of their ducks more.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: Seriously spread As you demonstrated today, they are exceptionally generous
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: with their conservation dollars. But I think that as a group,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: I have like as a group, I can't think of
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: a more egregious and I'm like, I like the hundred
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: ducks yesterday, geese and ducks. I can't think of a
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: more egregious group of people when it comes to utilization
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: of the resource.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 4: Really, you remember the dinner.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: I can't think of a more egregious group, a more
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: generous but egregious group of.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 5: People, the dinner that we had when we when we
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 5: came out for the h the survey of release two
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 5: years ago. Like, if there's just more of that going on,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 5: Like people are like, oh, here's my recipe, here's what
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 5: I do, more of that type of sharing that's pretty
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 5: dark limited in.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 3: The field, saying once they.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: Utilization of you gotta explain, okay, come on, well okay,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: for instance, well not for instance, here here's the thing.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 4: That I look at ways to use the Dutch.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: I couldn't believe that our state did this. Our state
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: used to have salvage that we have salvage requirements in
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: the state. Okay, many states of salvage requirements. They actually
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: lowered the salvage requirement, meaning on a mallard sized bird,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: you were required to keep the thighs. You're required to
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: keep the breast meat in the thighs. And one day
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: they also said, like you know, you know, like now
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: it's okay just to throw that in the garbage.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 4: Got to keep the brass, don't have to retain what.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: I'm saying, like like among I think it's it's triggered
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: by a bunch of things. There's the there's the strictly
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: enforced and I'm not saying you should get away with it,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: the strictly enforced possession limit thing where people like if
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: you're out hunting ducks for a week, but you can
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: only have three days of possession. I think it inspires
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of people to try to find ways to
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: offload ducks. And there's just so many stories of guys
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: looking off bridges and there's hundreds of snow geese carcasses,
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: Like it's just like it's just like as a community,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: I think the waterfowl community as a community is very
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: poor about utilizing the meat from the birds. And I
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: have not not wanting to do, like, not wanting to
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: do any kind of work.
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 7: You shouldn't feel compelled to uh to agree with him?
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, I'm not going to know. I
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 3: have not seen that. However, what I no, I haven't.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 5: Honestly, you should read the comments I'll pluck a duck
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 5: and put it on Instagram, and you should read the
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 5: hateful comments about how much time that takes the fans
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 5: that that someone would take the time to pluck a duck.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 3: Why do they care if you pluck it's the internet. Yes,
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 3: that doesn't make it. But you know, there are things
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 3: that I think to your point of recipes, and we
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 3: do a lot of stuff in the magazine and online.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 3: We could do it. We could do it probably with
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 3: our podcast.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not blaming I'm not blaming du For some someday
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: I want to do like a public service thing about
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: like how darks taste is gonna be called darks taste
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: really good?
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, there useduld be the old joke of
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 3: you know, the best way to cook a goose. You know,
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 3: you put it on this more and then and then
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 3: you keep them board right yep, So which is totally
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 3: not true. I have eaten some damn good uh geese
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 3: and some damn good ducks over the last however many
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 3: years of my life, and it is in the preparation
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 3: of it and everything else, just like I mean, you know,
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 3: I hear a lot of you know, even deer hunters. Well,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of stuff they got to cut through
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 3: on the on the shoulder, so I don't keep the
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 3: shoulder meat. Now, hold on a second, so you could
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 3: do this, you could grind it up. So there's all
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 3: sorts of things that we could all learn from each
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 3: other if maybe we had that better community of here
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 3: are things that you can do. I mean, squirrel hunters,
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 3: a lot of squirrel hunters are like, oh, it's a
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 3: lot of work to to you know, clean a fox squirrel.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 3: There's so much harder than gray squirrels. I'm like, well,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 3: then don't shoot the damn fox squirrel. Yeah, you know,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 3: if you don't want to clean, don't shoot it.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 5: Run out of the butcher shop, spend sixty dollars on
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 5: the nicest rear by a steak you can fine and then.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 4: Cover it and hair and bile.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: And let.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 4: Yuh and then tell me what you think.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you know what, I regret. I regret.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: I regret.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: Bring that up and act like that's your problem. I
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: think the whole show. But I want to reapproach it.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 3: I'm just saying it, you know, but.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: I want to reapproach it. I want to say this.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: I want to have Phil remove all that and it'll
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: just be me saying that, man, a well handled.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: Duck is damn good. It is just really good. It
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: is really good.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 3: It is. It is phenomenal.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: And when you take geese breasts and make pastrami, it's
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: really really good.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: That's all.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 4: Take all that out, Phil Reuben Sandwich.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: It seems like I kind of ruined the whole show,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: didn't it.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: No, No, no, no, no, just picking on duck hunters,
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 3: that's all I'm saying.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: No, but I was praising duck hunters, but I was
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: praising them about the how how generous and dedicated they are.
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 4: My litmus test is.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 5: Though, like when somebody's like, oh, yeah, you like to
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 5: hunt ducks, we should come hume, I'm like, cool, how do.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: You cook them?
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 5: Seriously, and to this day, one of the best duck
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 5: hunting connections I've ever made was from that exact conversation,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 5: being like, well, this is what we do, and I
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 5: was like, Okay, we can talk more.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, so is really good.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: Far be it from me to stereotype, but I'll tell
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: you you want to see some the ones. I know.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: The cages are some duck eating, yes, duck prepared man, Yes,
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: I mean they eat the beak. Yeah, that's that. I'm
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: trying to go positive. I'm trying to be like du
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: and go care it not the stick trying to go positive?
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: Ruined the whole show?
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: Was that bad? Phil? When I brought it up, it
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: seemed like a like kind of deflated everything.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 4: Well, there have been occurrences in the past that I
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 4: think you probably should have had that reaction to. I
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 4: don't think this is I actually.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 7: Think I actually think saying that this this was the
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 7: line calling this for the time, saying that you've ruined
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 7: the show, I think is doing more.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: Smith is coming up at the hole deeper. As we
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: were on the way down here, Cal and I were
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: talking about this issue. Yes, yeah, that was they's I
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: came in the room with it on the mind. You know,
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: there's just like someone had shared an anecdote.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 3: I care if it's a local thing that you're seeing here.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 3: I think it's a local thing, like I promise you.
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 3: I hunt mostly in the South, but I've hunted other
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 3: places as well, and I don't see that. I see
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 3: it as like everyone comes back to the duck camp
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 3: and what are we going to have? It's gonna be duck.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know that's it's cooked.
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 5: But I think it's regional cultures, right, and there's you know,
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 5: like you know, it's like people who don't have the
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 5: experience or they're trying to get into it, and they
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 5: don't already even do what a lot of us would would.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 5: You know, they're they're preparing things out of the box
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 5: versus cooking something. You know, they're they're very instruction based,
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 5: Like they have a very hard time grasping any sort
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 5: of bird.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 3: Right last time I checked, everybody wants to be like
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 3: meat eater and they want to you know, I mean,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 3: I'm joking aside, you guys do a really good job
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 3: of bringing that to the table, right literally to the table,
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 3: as far as you know, the the that importance and
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 3: that full cycle in what you do. I think you
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 3: know you ducks unlimited. Other people like that. Whatever the
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 3: game species is talking about, that that importance of being
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 3: off the landscape and and it providing that that wonderful
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 3: protein that we all crave so much.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: Excellent. That's good.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 3: See how I.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: No, it's good. We were talking about the other day
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: what someone needs to make an invention of is.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 3: That, besides the flat tree I already invented.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: That is a machine if you could come up with
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: this is a machine that you put docs into. Okay,
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: and you turn the machine out in the morning, you
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: got duck sausage sticks waiting for you on the other end.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 7: Good luck with that.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: I like it. I'm trying to, just like you, wake
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: up in the morning and just let machines shut down
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: and it's just just pepperoni sticks.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 3: Man. Let me tell you, I am the most popular
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 3: person at Christmas right now because I have a lot
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 3: of duck sausage.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: And it is so freaking good. When Cow and I
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: were talking, we were talking about this very thing, and
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: I was saying, like, it doesn't matter any idea about
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: whether you like ducks or not.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: Everybody likes pepperoni. Sticks.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: So if you go duck hunting, get all your duck breasts,
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: put them in a pile and make a bunch of
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: pepperoni sticks. No damn good because like everybody likes those.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 3: Put a bunch of you know, honey in there. Make them.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: See So then at the end of the duck seas
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: you got, you got twenty pounds of pepperoni sticks. You
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: drive around, eat do that.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 3: There you go. They make great Chris gifts. Everybody wants.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: There you go, pepperoni stick.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 4: Get crazy pickling Brian afterwards, Oh I.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 2: Never heard really. Oh yeah, pickle, pepperoni sticks.
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, pickle, pickle, the sausage ext your.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: Salt, get right, because like in the old days, you
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: go and do a bar and you'd have the sausage
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: and the pickle jar.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, good stuff.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: Since I quit drinking, I forgot about that. And the
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: really good bar would have eggs and a pickle jar.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: They'd have sausages and.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 4: The pi wizzards.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 3: You not have chicken feet and stuff like.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: That where I grew No, no, we had a lot
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: of smoke stuff, but pickling wasn't huge in the Midwest.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: No great, And what else is there anything? I didn't
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: ask you about. I don't know.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 3: There's all sorts of things. We could play this game
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 3: all day.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, probably a lot of things that didn't ask you about.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: But is there any like super pressing thing that I
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: should I should have brought up?
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 3: No, I think we covered a lot of great stuffy,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 3: been fun.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: It's been educational because man, I hate any kind of
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: story about you know, wildlife going downhill over the years,
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: and it's distressing to think of all that wetlands loss.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 3: It is, it is very distressing, and so I think
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: it's it's obviously what we do at Ducks Unlimited. We
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 3: think about it every day because it is we you know,
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 3: part of our mission and our vision is to make
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 3: sure that it's here for that waterfowl, here for many
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 3: generations to enjoy.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: When you crystal ball it, do you think, what's your prediction,
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: you know, like in a hundred years, if people going
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: to hunt ducks?
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, ducks one hundred years, absolutely, and we're going to
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 3: have waterfowl filling this guys too. And it's because of hunters,
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 3: it's because of you know, conservation enthusiasts. A lot of reasons.
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 3: Organizations like Ducks Unlimited and many other conservation organizations. We're
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 3: going to have it.
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: So in one hundred years they'll be driving around eating
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: duck pepperoni stacks.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: You are.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a great article. This came out a long time.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 4: You've probably read it, but.
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 5: There's this guy's talking about his lamenting living in a
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 5: big city and he's missing waterfowl season. But you know,
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 5: life has him working in a big city and he
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 5: steps out onto the subway platform and there's a via
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 5: geese going over and he's looking up at this via geese.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 5: Then he, for whatever reasons, kind of scans the crowd
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 5: out there and finds the.
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 4: One other person going like this. He's like that, that
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 4: was my waterfowl hunter. But you know, we need folks
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 4: in the in the big cities to clue in on
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 4: stuff like this too.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: So so let's do let's do a checklist. Like if
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: you're going if you're a duck hunter, you got to
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: buy your duck stamp. You gotta buy you so you
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: got to do that anyways, and that's like that, that's a.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: Lot of funding for wetlands.
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, if your duck hunters probably joined Ducks Unlimited, because
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: if you go on duck hunting.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: You want to get ducks.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: If you want to get ducks, you need wetlands and
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: Ducks Unlimited does wetlands work?
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 3: You got it?
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: So there's that. If you like to have fun, go
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: to the banquets.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 3: There are a lot of fun.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: Like I said, it's a carnival for grown ups.
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 3: And you can win a picnic table.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: See, you can win like a truck.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, how many guys you know have been hunting
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: their whole lives don't have guns from the du banquet?
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or prints or whatever. My silverware is Ducks Unlimited silverware.
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: Sure, for peep's sake. My old man had an ithaca.
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: He had an ithaca father twenty gage and guess where
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: that came from.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: Uh So do that.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: Go to the banquets and hang out, and then if
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: you got it, if you can swing some extra jingle
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: in your duck hunter, like make some donations up above
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: and beyond your membership, because the membership is pretty inexpensive.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: Yes it is.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: It's like it's like a.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 3: Foot in the door, but the door and it's critically
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 3: it's very import sure, but you know, and it's we
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 3: leverage those dollars three, four or five times to try
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 3: to get as much conservation on the ground. So our
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 3: our leverage rate on donor dollars is very high.
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: And as you mentioned, like for a lot of these programs,
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: it's good to have private money because it helps you,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: it helps you activate great public dollars.
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, without those private funds, we can't go after knock
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 3: a dollars or any farm bill, any of those other
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 3: dollars because it takes that private match as well. And
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 3: one thing I'll tell you we didn't talk about that
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 3: I know it is really important to you, is you know,
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 3: from the land conservation standpoint, we do our lands program
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 3: is very robust. So we do hold conservation easements most
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 3: of them and a lot of them go to the
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 3: US Fish and Wildlife Service, But we do hold easements
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 3: as well. But then we'll also buy land and sometimes
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 3: it's too you know, conserve it as far as from
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 3: a standpoint of restoration efforts and everything, but then a
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 3: lot of it is for facilitated acquisition for public hunting.
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 3: And so just in the last five years, just shy
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 3: of fifty thousand acres that we purchased and then are
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 3: conveying to state, and we conveyed the state.
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: Agency wildlife management areas.
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 3: For wild management areas, or to US Fish and Wildlife
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 3: Service for refuge for hunting. So a lot of public
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 3: access opportunities.
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: I know that one's and that's like that's willing seller,
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: willing buyer. That's right, buying lands for sale, yep.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 3: And it's a facilitated acquisition because a lot of times
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 3: states if they want to add it to there's a
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 3: piece of property for sale and they want to add
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 3: it to their wildlife management area, the refuge, they can't
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 3: necessarily moves as quickly as we can in the sellers
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 3: and wants to get it sold, so we'll hope we'll
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 3: buy it, hold it and then convey it to the
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 3: public agency.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: That's a really great thing because I've been over the years,
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: I've been made aware a number of times of like
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: calis send me something like really great strategic conservation purchases.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: But it's hard to be that nimble it is, I mean,
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: it's like for sale, and then you're trying to get
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: some agency to figure it out and then you know
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: they got a value it in a way that isn't
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: realistic or whatever. And then and then to have people
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: that can identify like a real hot conservation hot spot
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: and boom, get in there and know how to make
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: deals and then have the time to then facilitate and because.
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 3: You know, we've got great donors, a lot of them
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 3: are interested in that land conservation and getting it into
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 3: public hunting access, and so while we're holding it, they'll
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 3: help with the costs of holding that property before we
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 3: can convey it. So there's it's a it's a really
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 3: it's a great service that we can make sure.
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 5: That's kind of a sticky thing too sometimes with membership, right,
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 5: because we were looking at a really cool project do
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 5: you as doing in Iowa and it's like, well, yeah,
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 5: we're buying the land and then eventually we're going to
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 5: turn it over into I think it was a w
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 5: m A. But first we're gonna pull out this drain tile,
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 5: we're going to do some noxious weed work, we're gonna really.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 3: Like get it up to good quality.
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, good quality, And so you're always kind of like
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 5: balancing out like yep, we did it. But land management
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 5: takes time, and you know, sometimes membership or just the
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 5: public's like, well, where's the public access which has bought it?
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 2: Where is it?
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 3: Or like for example, with Canisnia, it's been a refuge
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 3: in or it's going to the Red River National Wildlife
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 3: Refuge in Louisiana. There's a piece of property. I think
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 3: it's a little over three thousand acres and we've had
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 3: it for several years, but we haven't been able to
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 3: convey it to the US Fish and Wildlife Service because
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 3: they had to get an expansion of the refuge in
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 3: order to then take it. So that's like a federal thing.
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 4: You have to go through that.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 3: So we've had to hold it for several years before
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 3: we can can vieim not that place. And yeah, and
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 3: so it is it's not just an overnight sort of thing.
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 3: And so to have that patience for people to realize that, hey,
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 3: we might have to have it for a little bit
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 3: before we're able to convey it is an important note.
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 3: But it's a I think it's a it's an important program,
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 3: and I think it's something that's really good to be
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 3: able to do for for public hunting access.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: I got one last question for you. If God came
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: down and he said you can either hunt only squirrels, boy,
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: or only.
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 2: Ducks for the rest of your life, what would you.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 3: Pick I'm going to pick ducks. I'm I'm just saying that.
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 3: I'm saying that, all right, My CEO, Adam Putnam, I
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 3: loves no I absolutely love squirrel hunting. It's uh, you know,
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 3: and I know it sounds funny, like how can you
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 3: be that passionate about squirrel honey, But in the world
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 3: it is a blast. And with dogs, man, you're out
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 3: there with you with your dog. But als you can
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 3: take kids. And that's my son.
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: The first thing.
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 3: Ill, yeah, squirrel, I mean, you get to talk, can
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 3: make as much noise as you want. No one's yelling
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 3: at you, you know, blowing their duck call just so
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 3: you'll quit talking, you know that sort of thing. I mean,
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 3: it's it's a I don't know, it's just so enjoyable.
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 3: It's a big you know.
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: Uh we we kind of introduced the technology into squirrel
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: hunting that a couple of our friends that do it
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: with dogs, but they were slow to adopt the binocular
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: Do you bring the binoculars?
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 3: I bring the binoculars. Absolutely.
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: They were like what I'm like, man, for finding the
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: squirrel in the tree.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 3: Man, they are so good. So I'll train my dogs
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 3: to go to the other side of the tree from me,
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 3: so they'll push them around because they will hug on
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 3: that tree, and then you're trying to go around, and
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 3: it's going around the tree with you, you know, staying
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 3: out of sight. We'll get my dog chased it to
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 3: the other send it to the other side to chase
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 3: the squirrel around.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: So I met a hunted blue grouse spring blue grouse
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: with a woman that it's kind of very simple. We
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: got their way up in the tree and trying to
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: find them in the spring, and she would lay down
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: on her back in the woods. She would kind of
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: like it was mostly on hills, like steep country, so
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: she'd go up a little way so she's more like
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: eye level with the canopy and she would just lay
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: on her back with binos and she'd lay there ten
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: minutes and also be.
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: Like got it. And so when we go out our
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: friends that had.
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 3: Squirrel dogs, yeah, it wouldn't take a well no, but.
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: I would bring binos and now we would just lay
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: there and after a while, because my buddy Kevin, he
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: dog just looked through his scope, and after a while
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: we got a couple of them to to like give
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: in to the point that binos are not yep, that
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: binos are helpful for fining those suckers. But what I
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: was getting at was there's no better feeling, yeah than
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: when you're just getting ready to walk away and all
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: of a sudden someone's like, got it. Yep, is that
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: little bit.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: Ale hair glowing and you know, growing on top of
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 2: the branch or something.
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 3: Got is one man moved his zar just enough for
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 3: somebody to care.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: That's a good time doing that stuff. So you you
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: twenty two are a shotgun.
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 3: So a lot most of the time I'll take a shotgun.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 3: I do bring a you know, a twenty two as well,
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 3: but a lot of the places that I might go
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 3: on hunt or smaller properties, and so I'm usually taking
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 3: a taking a shotgun. But if I can get a
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 3: nice clean shot with a twenty two, it makes it
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 3: a lot easier getting that getting the shot out of him.
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: I got who kept my buddy Kevin Murphy to go
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: out with him? He's a squirrel dog.
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah he's in Kentucky.
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, ut like he.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: Calls out, he's got what he calls a war horse
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: when he rides out if he's hunting squirrels for real, Yeah,
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: when he rides out. He's got a twenty two, a shotgun,
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: a baseball bat and axe.
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 3: Damn too right, So you know Kevin Murphy, Kevin Murphy,
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 3: West Kentucky.
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 2: Ye, small is awesome.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: Oh no, that's what I'm talking about with the biny
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: and stuff. He's a he's a woodsman, yeah, him and
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: we had a swamp rabbit going to a hole in
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: a tree. Yeah, he goes over and cuts a sawbrier.
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not kidding you. I watches my own two eyes,
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: cuts a sawbrier and snakes it up that hole and
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: he starts twirling.
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: It, pulls that lot, pulls that rabbit back out of
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: the hole.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: But what he uses that bat for is now that
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: if there's a squirrel in a hollow, he'll just come up.
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: He'll get He'll get the bat off his war horse
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: and go over there and just wallow that tree with a.
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 3: Bat, chases it out, and then the axes if all
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 3: those fails just cut down the tree, he just.
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: Hands it with him. You know, he's but yeah, he
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: would get He gets real serious and he got into
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: riding those horses because he says one time he was
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: just hunting on foot like an idiot.
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: And he sees some guys coming up the road on
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: horses and he said their saddle bags were just stuffed.
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: He says, just squirrel tails hanging out of the saddle bags.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: And he thought himself, I need to get one.
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 3: Let me tell you, you know, you're those dogs. They'll
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 3: go up one one mountain, like up one hill, down
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 3: the other, up another, and then all of a sudden
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 3: they're striking and they're like, get here and get here now,
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 3: and you're, you know, hooping it up and down, up
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 3: and down. So the horse shouts, I'm one of the
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 3: idiots on foot.
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: But you know, man, you got a home Kevin, because
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: you guys would have it. You guys be like two
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: peas in a pot.
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Kevin and I go way back, way back. Okay,
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 3: so oh I know Kevin, Oh yeah, own him for years.
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: Butchy bad Toe, he's got all those famous dogs.
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 3: And he's got some he has some good squirrel dogs,
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 3: really good squirrel dogs.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: All right, all right, well, thanks for coming down the show.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 3: It's a lot of fun.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: Everybody. Thank you, no, thanks so much.
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 3: Thank you.