Latest / Ducks Unlimited Podcast / Ep. 361 - DUTV 25th Anniversary feat. Eric Keszler (1 of 5)

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Ep. 361 - DUTV 25th Anniversary feat. Eric Keszler (1 of 5) · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 0:03
  VO: Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, the only podcast about all things waterfowl. From hunting insights to science based discussions about ducks, geese, and issues affecting waterfowl and wetlands conservation in North America, we bring the resource to you. The DU podcast.
• 0:27
  John Gordon: Hello, everybody, and welcome again to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. This is another special edition celebrating the twenty five years of Ducks Unlimited television. My name is John Gordon. I'm a senior communications specialist here at DU and production coordinator for DU TV. My special guest this podcast episode is Eric Kessler.
• 0:46
  He is a long time DU employee and works on the magazine staff now and was here in the fledgling days of DUTV when it was first thought about in the halls of NHQ and really came to fruition. Eric, welcome to the show.
• 1:02
  Eric Keszler: Thanks. It's great to be here. It's pretty cool to think back on the history of of this show. It's hard to believe it's been twenty five years already, but it's it's a pretty neat anniversary, pretty neat milestone.
• 1:13
  John Gordon: Let's go back in time, you know, back to the mid nineties. The world was a very different place than it is now, and I imagine DU was a very different place. Tell us a little bit about what the organization was like then.
• 1:24
  Eric Keszler: Yeah. I mean, DU has grown a lot in the past twenty five years. It's kind of amazing to think about and to look back. And the way that we communicate with our members and with the world at large has changed a lot over the past twenty five years. In 1995, 1996, our main form of communicating with our members was our magazine, and is still probably one of our most important ways of communicating with our members.
• 1:49
  But we didn't have a lot of things that we have today. Obviously the internet was just a fledgling kind of communications tool back then. It was just started. We were just creating our first website and it was just a bare bones thing at that time. And a lot of people didn't have the vision to kind of see where that might go.
• 2:07
  And at that time we started thinking about ways that we could branch out and do some different things. And the TV show was one, and we also started a weekly radio program at that time and something else called the DU Expo, or it was called the Great Outdoors Festival actually, that was here in Memphis. We really started branching out and doing some new and different things. And the TV show is just one of those ones that really stuck. You know, it really kinda was very popular with our members.
• 2:32
  It was very popular with our sponsors and our partners, and it's something that's kind of stuck around through the years. So that's kind of where it came from. We had a communications chief at that time who was really kind of visionary and was looking out there and and kinda had a charge to see how we could do some things different. Get some more people interested in DU, bring some more people into the fold, and these are the kind of things that that we did, and I think they've been very successful.
• 2:57
  John Gordon: Agreed. Agreed. You were talking about the communications chief at that time, and it was a gentleman named Chris Dorsey. Am I correct? A lot of folks know Chris from his work on television.
• 3:07
  You know, he's been a host on the world of Beretta and now I think Sporting Classics TV. He's been highly involved with film and television for years. Folks probably don't know that he was a DU employee at one time and really was pushing the DU Communications path at that time and really that was his idea to expand the footprint of DU, correct? DUTV put a television show together that would really highlight what we do as a conservation organization, and then hunting as well along the way, and Jameson Parker was the first host. If you go back and look, you know, there was a a historical Ducks Unlimited film that was produced in the early nineties that Jameson hosted, and I'm assuming that's where Chris' relationship with Jameson came about.
• 3:51
  As Jameson was an actor, of course, you know, most famous for the Simon and Simon TV show, and then he came on as the first host at that point. So take us back a little again, Eric, to that first season, and how did y'all decide where you were gonna go and what you were gonna do? And it was on the Nashville network, correct?
• 4:09
  Eric Keszler: It was on the Nashville network at that time, which we called TNN, which is a network that's not around anymore. It actually went through several different guises and was called some different things over the years, but TNN at that time was actually a very large network. And if you think about the difference between TV back then and TV now, there was I mean, we had cable, but there wasn't near as many networks as there are today. And there wasn't there's no YouTube or anything like that. You couldn't go to your computer and watch
• 4:37
  John Gordon: Right. Right.
• 4:38
  Eric Keszler: Videos like you can now. So our audience numbers that we used to get on TNA were just, you know, 10 to 20 times what we get now. You know, we'd get a million viewers for a show on Saturday mornings.
• 4:47
  John Gordon: Oh, used to watch them. I really I look forward to that that show every week and it was great. And, you know, and there were no dedicated, you know, sporting channels then either. Right? Right.
• 4:57
  So you didn't have outdoor channel and sportsman channel, pursuit network, where, you know, now they've got shows twenty four seven going out there. This was a different landscape. I mean, can remember that, you know, before that, the only time I really ever saw hunting on television was the American Sportsman on ABC
• 5:14
  Eric Keszler: Mhmm. With
• 5:15
  John Gordon: Kurt Gowdy. He would do, you know, shows from all over, fishing and hunting. But this was really breaking new ground, and and it had to have been a, you know, a big deal for for DU to go forward with a television show.
• 5:26
  Eric Keszler: Yeah. Back in those days, there was a there was a few networks that had outdoor blocks. So ESPN used to have outdoor blocks on Saturday mornings where they'd have five or six hours of outdoor programming. TNN did the same thing. I think it was Sunday mornings, if I remember correctly.
• 5:43
  But there was no outdoor channel twenty fourseven outdoors. There was nothing like that back at that time. So an unlimited number of outdoor programs, of course, because there wasn't that much time allotted for them. So we were one of the first, I mean, and we're definitely the first show that was devoted strictly to waterfowl hunting. So that's been pretty cool, and it's pretty cool now to say that we've been the longest running waterfowl show in TV history.
• 6:06
  John Gordon: And that's the truth by it's by a long margin as far as I know. There's some other shows that are closed, but I think we still got them by seven or eight years, you know, before that, before they premiered. So when you were looking at, okay, where are we gonna go? What are we gonna do in that first season? How did who and and how did it really come about and where what y'all were gonna do?
• 6:28
  Eric Keszler: Well, the cool thing about about DU is DU is a bunch of duck hunters, but they're duck hunters who are united by their mission and purpose of conservation. And we kind of modeled our TV show after the direction that the magazine has always taken, which is a unique direction of having information and entertainment about hunting side by side with information about our conservation mission. That's been a formula that the magazine has used for many, many years. It's been very successful. Our readers tell us they love the hunting information.
• 7:04
  They're interested in the conservation information. So we've kind of blend those two things together in the magazine. And our decision was to take the same approach with a TV show. So a TV show is gonna have hunting action. It's gonna have destinations.
• 7:16
  It's gonna have tips about how to be a better hunter. It's gonna have profiles of people who are involved in DU, people who are involved in hunting. It's also gonna have conservation mission that talks about DU's mission to conserve wetlands and waterfowl habitats across North America and make sure people are educated about that, understand how important that is, and obviously urge people to get involved with DU at the same time. So that's been that was the thinking when we got it started. Pretty much been the direction the show has gone for the past twenty five years, and it's been a very successful formula.
• 7:46
  John Gordon: Yeah. And it's it's exactly the same formula I'm using today to put together shows. I rely a lot on a lot of our staff members on the ground, both on the biology and the development side, to really help me on the ground to put the shows together. Because that's one thing a lot of people don't know, it's not just a straight up punting show, there's always been the conservation element to it. This is a conservation organization first and foremost.
• 8:09
  We've always wanted to put that message out there of how we are improving, you know, not just wetlands habitat, but water quality now, and and it just carries over into not just ducks, but, you know, wildlife in general and and people too. So that's something that Formula's really carried forward for the entire length of the show and, of course, will carry forward into the future of it as well. So you I know at one point, you had left EU and you went out and then you came back. The first time I ever met you was 2013, I believe, you had come back and Mike Checkett had moved to a different role and you had taken over production of the TV show. Correct?
• 8:45
  Eric Keszler: That's correct. And that was right at the time when we were leaving the outdoor channel and looking for a new home for the show. And so I came in in the middle of that where we were looking for where where's the show gonna be now? Things didn't work out at the outdoor channel for various reasons at that time. And we actually at that time went to the pursuit channel.
• 9:05
  That became our new home. And as we did that, we also looked for some ways that we could update the show, kind of make it a little more interesting, look for some different personalities to be involved, some different kind of themes, some different formats. And we actually came out with a show that first year, which was 2013, 2014, a show that looked very different than the shows of the past. It still had the basic themes that we just talked about, you know, conservation mixed with hunting, but it had a faster pace, what we call a magazine format where there were specific sections of each show, including a section on dog training, section on shooting, section on conservation. And the show just really rolled really quick between those sections and main hunting sections that we had.
• 9:53
  So it was exciting time to be involved with the show. There was a lot of changes going on. We had a whole new lineup of hosts that we had. We had some young people, we had some women involved, which was really new for us, but it really gave the show a fresh look and it was exciting to be involved in that.
• 10:10
  John Gordon: Yeah. You said that was a different definitely a different direction. You can really watch the episodes before that and tell where that that change in format, which we're still using the same format today. We've still got, you know, DuckDog with Mike Stewart, we've got the Insights conservation segments still. And exciting thing for this year, we Karen Walderp, our chief conservation officer, is doing all the conservation minded segments of that, and then Adam Putnam, CEO, is still there for more of the membership style of insights, and we've got duck talk and guns and gear.
• 10:44
  We're trying to change that format a little bit from strictly shotgunning to, you know, really include products to really help the hunter all the way across the board. Phil Borgierle is still hosting that deal. So it's really carrying forward that same format. That's interesting. I I didn't I didn't know that for sure that you were were the guy that was really behind the changes on that end when we went to Pursuit channel.
• 11:03
  Eric Keszler: Yeah. And it wasn't just me. Obviously, there's a whole team of people involved, and one of the major players in that updating of the show, which doesn't seem so new anymore, seems a while back, was Moose Media, who's the production arm of Moss Yoke. Moose stands for Moss Yoke Outdoor Sports and Entertainment. So they came on board as our production partner, actually produced the show and brought a lot of those new ideas and new thinking to how we did the show.
• 11:30
  And they're still producing the show today, doing a great job of it. So I gotta get a lot of credit to those guys for for helping us update the show at that time.
• 11:39
  John Gordon: And I still you give those guys a lot of credit. You know, one of the podcast episodes celebrating this twenty five years is with Guy Shepherd and Richie Davenport of Moose and talking we talked about the early days of that, how the show came together from their standpoint, and just some really fun bloopers and some of their favorite episodes along the way. So that's that's a really good podcast as well that everybody will enjoy. Talk about for a second what it really takes to build a good show from production standpoint. I know people don't realize that you see the end product, and you don't see all the challenges that went into it along the way.
• 12:16
  And a big challenge, of course, is the fact that all of these ideas are percolated and brought to fruition in the spring and summer with no idea what the weather's gonna be like or if the birds are even gonna be around or what's happening because of all the moving parts. Talk a little bit about that and the challenges facing our side of things trying to put together a good show.
• 12:37
  Eric Keszler: Yeah. That's it's so challenging. It's such a hard thing to do as you're as you're well aware because that's what you do right
• 12:43
  John Gordon: Exactly.
• 12:43
  Eric Keszler: But, yeah, you're talking about these things in the spring, you know, where do we wanna go next season? What are the stories that we want to tell? Who are the people we want involved with the show? And then you spend a lot of your time, you know, making those phone calls, getting those things scheduled, and you don't have the luxury of saying, okay, you know, waiting till November, December and saying, okay, the ducks are here, we're gonna go now. You know, you gotta set this thing up.
• 13:06
  You're shooting at least 13 different locations. You gotta set these things up beforehand. So you run into a lot of situations where you're lucky and the time that you schedule to be there is a time when the ducks are there and you have a great shoot, but you have a lot of times too where the weather doesn't cooperate, something happens and the ducks just aren't there and you've got to react. It's just it's it can be very stressful at times. Jimmy, I know you're laughing right now, so you know how that goes.
• 13:32
  John Gordon: Man, I know it. You know, you just you keep your fingers crossed, man, that everything is gonna go together well. And it it was surprisingly not really surprisingly because you put a lot of planning and time into it, but it works out more often than not.
• 13:44
  Eric Keszler: It does. It does. And it helps having the format that we do because we always wanna have good hunting on the show, but the hunting part of the show is just part of the show. And you've got these other segments that we talked about, the shooting and the dog training and cooking. We used have cooking, we don't need more.
• 14:00
  Those kinds of things that help build the whole show out, so it works out pretty good. And you're just at the mercy of nature. That's just the nature of hunting. Working on the magazine like I do now, when I go out and cover a story, we didn't necessarily have to shoot a whole bunch of ducks. You know, you can find a story and you can make a good story for the magazine without having to do that.
• 14:22
  But for the TV show, no ducks showing up makes it really tough.
• 14:26
  John Gordon: I tell you there's a little behind the scenes with with myself and Eric. I was actually in the blind at at Beaver Dam when we when you did you were working with the show at that point, and it was a ladies episode with Ainsley Beaman was the host, and we had Jan Young and Christine Thomas
• 14:50
  Eric Keszler: Carrie Lingo was the other one, yeah.
• 14:52
  John Gordon: That were involved in that, and the stars just aligned for the weather because at a place like Beaver Dam down in Mississippi, Tunica area, you're relying on weather anyway to get a big migration and the temperature hit single digits. So the water all the shallow water's locked up around the surrounding area. The boys were able to keep a hole open at their spot, and I think we had every duck in Tunica County on top of us at that point, and that's just complete luck because I'm sure that show was put together back in the summer.
• 15:21
  Eric Keszler: That's right. And you just don't know. You take your best guess and you try to go there when the ducks are traditionally there, and then so, like I said, sometimes you get lucky. That was such a cool show too with those women. Oh, I can remember.
• 15:34
  John Gordon: They had a blast, you know, especially Mike and Lamar who were real aficionados of the great American classic double shotguns, they started bringing them out, the gals really, you know, shot some of them and really embraced that. That was really cool. Beaver Dam's got such a history to it.
• 15:51
  Eric Keszler: It does. It does. And and, you know, getting the flavor of that history and the girls, women being able to shoot those old guns, that was a really cool show, a really special show. We got such good material out of that, we ended up making a show and a half out of it.
• 16:04
  John Gordon: That's right.
• 16:04
  Eric Keszler: And you can still find those on the DU website. That's right. Can go back and see those things.
• 16:09
  John Gordon: Can go see it.
• 16:09
  Eric Keszler: Pretty cool.
• 16:11
  John Gordon: The was that the 2015 year? Might have been. I believe it was. It was 2015 or 2016.
• 16:16
  Eric Keszler: Sounds about right.
• 16:17
  John Gordon: So if you go to ducks.org and to the to the media section on the top of the homepage, the drop down box that shows DUTV, just click on that and it'll take you down the road of episodes going back to the early you know, the late nineties through today, and so you can really see all of that. And we also have them on a lot of the episodes on our YouTube channel, the Ducks Unlimited YouTube channel, and you can watch it all the time. So those things live in a different space for a long time. I mean, if you didn't catch it on the network, you know, when it came out, you didn't see it. Mhmm.
• 16:48
  And now things have changed so much where you can see this content and it still lives, you know, to this day in in that space, and that's pretty cool because, yeah, I can remember very well just thinking, man, I've gotta go do this. I'm gonna miss my show, you know, and and things have changed so much in this landscape. And so it it it's pretty cool that DUTV has lasted this long. I can't imagine that back in 1995 or '96 that anybody would think that this show would still be on the air in 2022. I know.
• 17:14
  Eric Keszler: It's pretty cool. And it's cool to go to that website and and start you can spend a lot of hours there going through old historic episodes. And if you like kind of the history of duck hunting and how things have changed, it's a neat place to go and see some of that. Just the variety of places the show has been over the years, and the different people that we've hunted with, it's quite the history.
• 17:38
  John Gordon: It is. It is. You really get a flavor for North American waterfowl management on the show. Anywhere from Mexico to Canada, everywhere in between. There's probably not a state that DUTV hasn't been to over the last twenty five years.
• 17:51
  There might be a handful, but there's not many.
• 17:53
  Eric Keszler: And I think another cool thing about DUTV, and this is another change we started making about back around 2000 02/13, 2014, is a lot of the shows that you watch, for the most part, they're going with outfitters in different parts of the and waterfowl hunting, which is great. They're usually doing really well, you know? And we made the decision to start focusing more on DU people. So we tend to do more setting up hunts with people that are DU volunteers around the country because we're very interested in the stories that those people have to tell. Number one, hardcore waterfowlers.
• 18:31
  I mean, we're going with people who hunt where they hunt, all season long. They know what they're doing. They can get us into birds, but they have really interesting stories about their background in hunting, how they got involved, how they hunt today, why they're involved with DU. And these are usually really passionate people, you know, who are They're passionate hunters, but they're passionate about DU too. And it's just ended up being such a unique thing that other TV shows really can't do.
• 19:00
  You know, the show is about the ducks and it's about the hunting, but it's about some really amazing people too, and I think that's made our show really special.
• 19:07
  John Gordon: It really has, and that really just brought back a memory to me of the first shoot I ever went on on location. I had started with DU in October 2018, so the schedule was pretty well set by the time I ever arrived. And you had gone to the magazine staff at that point, and I was just looking through the schedule and going, you know, where would I like to go and just check out one of the production and see some behind the scenes kind of stuff for it? And there was a hunt in Oklahoma with a with a DU volunteer gang, Joe Ready. And Joe is one of those characters, you know, a guy who's been so passionate about DU, lives in a very small town in Oklahoma, not too far from Tulsa, and he's taken that chapter to different heights where he's got people from all over the state of Oklahoma coming to his event because he's just the greatest emcee you've ever seen.
• 19:58
  Mean, the guy has got a following. And so it was it was gonna be a show at Joe's place, and Joe has got a really cool spot that's his own that's his that he's really spent twenty plus years cultivating right there where it's got it's moist soil grasses and he's really controlled the water and all this. So he's really built some great habitat. So and Doug Larson was hosting that show, and the first time I ever met Doug, I came in and my production guys came in and we we went out and hunted, and man, the hunting was fantastic. And the hunting was fantastic the next day and the next, and it was just like, man, this is pretty good.
• 20:33
  I mean, I and I'm thinking, well, I've just jinxed myself in a big way that this will never happen again where it was so easy, and it was so much fun. We made two full episodes out of that trip because it was so great. I was just, you know, I think I had a feeling in the back of my mind that, man, maybe I, you know, it's just too good, the first episode that I go on. But that just shows you, like, I like Joe Reddy and his friends, all passionate DE volunteers. Like you said, it really makes this show special where you showcase not just the hunting side of it, which was great, but the fact that the passion and the commitment that these folks have for our organization is just really something great to see.
• 21:11
  Eric Keszler: And character thing too. I mean, we've come across really interesting characters over the years that, you know, you just, they just, you remember those people for forever, you know, and you get to be friends forever. You stay in contact for forever. We did a show with a guy named Cal Kingsmill from down in New Orleans.
• 21:29
  John Gordon: I know that decoy carver.
• 21:30
  Eric Keszler: He's one of the old time, one of the last of the old time Cajun decoy carvers. You know, one of his hand carved decoys goes for thousands of dollars, you know, I know. He's one of those guys. But the most humble down to earth guy that you'll ever meet, We went down to hunt with him, and he hunts over all his hand carved decoys. You know, it's the coolest spread you've ever seen in your life.
• 21:54
  But he's the most humble down to earth guy. His actual business is he runs a wrecker crew and he specializes in big jobs. So he's got these huge tow trucks and things like that. You know, if a semi goes over, you know, into a ditch, you know, he's the ones they call because he's got So the he's got a big shop with all these wreckers and stuff in it. Then just at the very back of the shop, he's got a little area where he carves his decoys.
• 22:17
  And he uses all hand tools to carve those decoys. And they're just works of art. And he's just a great guy. He's an older guy, Vietnam vet, very soft spoken, but a true artist and somebody with a great story to tell about growing up in that area, learning how to carve, learning from the master carvers, you know, a lot of them that still aren't around. It was just, it was one of the coolest shows that we ever did.
• 22:45
  And then going out with him, and we went with one of our DE volunteers named Mike Benge. He's from New Orleans. We went out with him to hunt. And Cal goes out in traditional pea row and he's got all his handmade decoys and peach baskets and throws them out. And man, we just had a great hunt and getting to know him and thinking about hunting over these works of art.
• 23:06
  It was just, it was one of the coolest hunts we've ever been on, and a great show. I can't remember what year that's from either. I wanna see that. But it's out there, you can go see it.
• 23:13
  John Gordon: Yeah. Once again, folks, ducks.org, or I think it's on YouTube as well, that And, episode with yeah, I remember it very well, and I remember the one thing that really stuck out to my mind, think about, you know, decoys, duck calls, things people have handmade over the years in the history of waterfowling is some of these, like you said, they're works of art and they're not just just a decoy or a call. And I really like the style of cows call decoys because they looked a little different. They had upswept tails on them, remember, like that. But they look in the water.
• 23:46
  They look, you know, really, really good. Another guy that, you know, the DU has worked with a lot on the decoy side over the years, I got to hunt with for a DU film, Charles Jobes. That's And the Jobes decoys too, what fascinated me is they were we we put out a small spread of Jobes decoys with the traditional plastic decoys that everybody uses now, and how different those decoys looked in the water, and how they rode in the water, and how more realistic they were when if you hold them in your hand and you hold that plastic decoy, which is basically just a life size rendering of a duck that looks so incredible in your hand, you put them together on the water and it takes a whole different life. And so that really showed me that, wow, these guys really knew what they were doing with those decoys and how they were carving them. They were really paying attention to what the birds looked like on the water
• 24:39
  Eric Keszler: Yep.
• 24:39
  John Gordon: And how they and how they moved and and creating decoys that really are truly a lot more realistic to a duck than the the really modern stuff that we have now. Another you're talking about Louisiana and some characters. Another great episode, I thought, in the history of the show was the episode and this guy's name is escaping me too, you might could help me with that. He had the collections of all the DU dinner guns, the guns of the year. Tony Palermo.
• 25:05
  Tony Palermo. Yeah. Another great Louisiana character, and Louisiana's full of
• 25:08
  Eric Keszler: them.
• 25:09
  John Gordon: Right? Mean, there's these guys are just they love waterfowl hunting and they love conservation, And Tony Palermo had three full collections of DU guns of the year and nobody even knew that they existed because we didn't have one. Yep. And so you can go up front here at DU Headquarters to into the lobby, kind of our little museum area, and there's there's one of Tony's, you know, collections, you know, hanging in in the corner over there, and it's truly something to see.
• 25:35
  Eric Keszler: It's an amazing collection of guns, and he donated that to DU to be on display here in our lobby, and it's it's one of the main attractions when people come here to look. And man, he was so much fun to hunt with. He's just one of those characters you'll never forget. I mean, he talks the whole time and he gives you, you know, if you miss, you know, you're going to hear about it from Tony. And if you don't miss, you're going hear about it from Tony.
• 25:58
  You know, you're probably going to miss, you know, that sort of thing. He was so much fun and he treated us so well when we were down there. You know, I love going down there to hunt, but I almost love going down there as much to eat, you know, and he had spreads laid out for us. He brought in a professional chef to cook for us while we're there. He was so excited.
• 26:16
  DUTV was there. Man, that that was a great trip with Tony.
• 26:19
  John Gordon: And that's the thing too. A lot of a lot of our volunteers over the years, they they really have embraced the show and really brought us into their worlds and opened up to us and really showed us the inside workings of a DU volunteer. And once again, that's just a very unique thing with our show that the other shows don't have.
• 26:38
  Eric Keszler: That's right.
• 26:39
  John Gordon: Mean, they're just focused on the hunting aspect of it and they really don't get inside the real stories behind the people. And and I actually, I'm proud of that part of our show for sure that it that it it's it's just different from a it's a real storytelling element to it as well.
• 26:52
  Eric Keszler: It is. And over the years we've And I know that you're trying to do it today is really try to do more than just show people hunting ducks. Know, we're trying to tell stories and that's part of the challenge in your job now is finding those stories. Fortunately, there's a lot of them out there. A lot of
• 27:10
  John Gordon: those stories out there with guys and gals that we've worked with over the years and the great history of the sport and just their real commitment to conservation is really an incredible thing.
• 27:23
  Eric Keszler: Yeah. Those stories are there's a lot of them out there and they're usually stories about people doing good things, you know, for the habitat and for the resource. And so that's man, what a cool thing to do a show about.
• 27:32
  John Gordon: It's the truth. It makes it it makes it really easy to to to to work on it hard and really trying to tell the best possible story you can for the show every It's a lot of fun for me, and I know it was for you as well. Yep. We're both a couple of really fortunate guys to get do what we have done.
• 27:49
  Eric Keszler: That's right.
• 27:49
  John Gordon: You know, and a lot of folks ask me like, well, how did you, you know, how did you end up doing this? And I well, you know, I can't really point to any kind of career path that you could take that'll put you in this position other than just my I've spent my lifetime, you know, really in the sport of duck hunting and as a DU member and DU volunteer, and it just kind of all came around full circle and led me in this direction. So I feel really blessed about that.
• 28:15
  Eric Keszler: Absolutely. Absolutely. Just working for Ducks Unlimited. Yeah. Dream come true for somebody like me.
• 28:20
  John Gordon: Yeah. For me as well to to say that I get to come to DU headquarters, which is basically a shrine to waterfowl every day to work is you have to kinda wrap your head around it, and it's just like you have to pinch yourself and say, wow. That's a it's pretty pretty incredible deal. Yeah. But, anyway, Eric, thank you so much for being with us and and giving some insight into how the show really got started and, some of your experiences with the show.
• 28:46
  It's, like you said, twenty five years is a lot of history with a television show.
• 28:51
  Eric Keszler: It is.
• 28:51
  John Gordon: And very few shows can can have that kind of background. So, you know, folks like you along the way have made it have made it great and, you know, hopefully, another twenty five years to come.
• 29:00
  Eric Keszler: I hope so. I hope we'll be around to see it at that time. I mean Exactly. You guys are doing a great show with with great job with the show right now. I look forward to seeing it every week when it comes out in the fall.
• 29:10
  And, thanks for all the work that you're doing on it.
• 29:13
  John Gordon: Appreciate it, Eric. And thanks for everybody listening to the DU podcast. Once again, if you wanna see old episodes of the show, go to ducks.org, go to the media tab at the top, pull it down. DUTV is right there, and you can go down a a rabbit hole of of old episodes and watch the thing for hours. So, anyway, folks, thanks for listening to the Ducks Unlimited podcast and supporting Ducks Unlimited, North America's leader in wetlands conservation.
• 29:36
  And as the late great Wade Bourne used to say, more habitat on the ground means more ducks in the sky. I'm John Gordon, and thanks for listening to the DU podcast.
• 29:47
  VO: Thank you for listening to this episode of the DU podcast. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show, and visit www.ducks.org/dupodcast for resources based on today's topics as well as access to more episodes. Opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited. Until next time, stay tuned to the ducks.