00:00:04 Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife, wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to get serving both. Big shout out to ONEX Hunt for their support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle, and in this episode we've got some big and exciting news. There is a new hunting season, like brand new getting opened up to the public and that doesn't happen every day. The state of Louisiana is opening a special black bellied whistling duck season this October. I mean, how cool is that? New hunting opportunities is something to celebrate, But as always, there's a much bigger story to be told, like what is this duck? Where did it come from? What are the implications of it? Setting up shop and several of the southern coastal states. There is a whole lot to learn. And also, if you have not noticed, I happen to be wearing my bear Grease bibbs. My good friend Clay new who y'all already know in First Light, have been working on these BIPs for quite some time and frankly they are fantastic. Y'all should check them out. But anyway, let's get into it. The year was twenty twelve. I was working and Drew, Mississippi, which is right in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, for a property that I helped guide duck hunting on during the winter months. In the summer, however, they held a boy's summer camp that took kids out shooting, archery, clay shooting, bow fishing at night, all kinds of crazy stuff. I distinctly remember one day I was walking back from the clay range towards the lodge in the middle of the day, paralleling along the side of a big sloop. I happened to look up into a tree and saw a bird perched on a limb that I did not recognize. I'd never seen anything like it before. I got my friend's attention, who was working out there with me, and asked him what he thought it was. His response was, Oh, that's one of those black belly whistling ducks. And although I don't remember my exact response, I'm most sure it was something along the lines of what in the world did you just say? I had never even heard of such. I even took the time to stop and whip out my iPhone three and try to get a sweet picture of this rare avian species. I was so keyed up about the entire incident in the event of getting to see one. I went home and told all my friends and family about it. I couldn't believe that I had laid eyes on this rare kind of duck, which at the time was rare. You just didn't see many of them around. You'd hear stories, you talk to people that said they saw them, and you'd hear reports that apparently there was more of them down in South Louisiana and South Texas, And if you were lucky, like I was, you laid eyes on one. And all I knew about their origin at the time is that they apparently weren't originally from here, and that they had come from South America, Central America, something along those lines. But like I said, that was the year twenty twelve. In the year twenty twenty six, things have changed quite a bit. 00:03:10 Speaker 2: Maria just had our second warmest fall on record, and experts think the warm weather maybe affecting birds and their behavior. In fact, one neighborhood in Saint John the Baptist Parish is seeing an influx of black bellied whistling ducks In their backyard. 00:03:27 Speaker 3: They are totally confused by whatever's going on. 00:03:30 Speaker 4: You know. 00:03:31 Speaker 2: They're called black bellied whistling ducks, and here at the Riverlands subdivision in Laplace, the ducks have taken over. Kim Hernandez has been living here for decades and says she's never seen so many of them all at once. 00:03:44 Speaker 3: The noise goes on all day long, even at nighttime. If you don't have something to black noise, you will hear that all night long. 00:03:52 Speaker 1: She says. 00:03:53 Speaker 2: They usually leave around September, but this year they're hanging out a bit longer. She thinks it's climate change, but bird experts say there could be more to it. There's something that is propping these birds to wander much more widely, as well as expanding their core range. Kim Hernandez just wants to enjoy her backyard again, she says. The ducks, however beautiful they may be, have overstayed their welcome. 00:04:18 Speaker 3: This has become where you can no longer come out to the bulkhead and enjoy that any longer. 00:04:28 Speaker 1: Like I said, things have changed a lot since my first personal encounter with these birds back in twenty twelve. Now they're becoming a public nuisance to some people in South Louisiana apparently, and their numbers have grown so much that they're getting their own special hunting season, which we're going to dive into in great detail. But first we've got to get a little bit more context. For most of recorded natural history, this bird, the black bellied whistling duck, has been in the tropic, a resident of coastal Mexico, Central America, and down through South America as far as Argentina and Brazil. A handful pushed up into deep South Texas, but that was about as far north as you would ever find. And the interesting thing is they're not known for migrating much where it doesn't have to across most of its range, it really just stays put. So the question is, how does a non migratory tropical duck end up in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, even wandering into the Midwest. Somewhere in the late nineteen seventies, something changed. Nobody flipped a switch or anything. There's not a single event that you can point to, but the range simply started moving north and east, and it hasn't really stopped since by the year twenty twenty, the range had swallowed most of the eastern half of the Lower forty eight and it's tapping on the door of southeast Canada. However, the highest concentrations of them now can be found in places like South Texas, Florida, and of course South Louisiana, which is why these ducks are now getting their own special season, and it's about time we learn about it. To do that, we've got a genuine subject expert. 00:06:16 Speaker 4: My name is Jason Olzak. I'm the Waterfowl Program Manager for the Louisiana Department of Wilac and Fisheries. I've been in this role for about five years now. However, I've been doing waterfowl work since I've left undergrad, so back in the early two thousands, late nineties, nineteen nineties, actually been working with ducks and waterfowl in some fashion or another across the country. Gotcha Department. I've been with the Louisiana Department WiLAN and Fisheries for twenty years now. 00:06:47 Speaker 1: Because of Jason's position as Louisiana Waterfowl Program Coordinator and his multiple years of experience, he is both uniquely and perfectly suited to inform us on the topic of black bellied whistling ducks and how it led to them getting their own special hunting season. The first thing he's going to tackle is getting us all a little bit more familiar with the bird itself. 00:07:08 Speaker 4: It's really unique, actually an odd for a duck, you know, looking at him phylogenetically, they're not quite a duck, not quite a goose. They're in the family and that today, but they're in a separate subfamily from both the regular ducks as we know them and the geese. So a few unique things about them is, like geese, they're not sexually dimorphic, so the males and the females look exactly the same. The males stick around and help raise the brood, so brude survival seems to be pretty high because they've got five parental care throughout the growth period. Unique amongst whistling ducks is that the male will actually incubate the eggs too. You will not be uncommon to find a male in a wood duck box, you know, sitting on eggs, so perhaps that increases you know, hatchability of eggs and a nest as well. 00:08:03 Speaker 1: So they're not quite a duck. But they're also not quite a goose. They're fully their own thing, which I find kind of cool. Along with the rest of the facts that we just learned, what I'm interested in now is how they established themselves so firmly in the state of Louisiana. 00:08:20 Speaker 4: There's been vagrant sightings in southern states going back to the eighties, maybe even into the late seventies, you know, Texas, Louisiana, maybe Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida as well as another one of them. But yeah, as far as making a permanent push into this state, that started around the late nineties, early two thousands. The first actual breeding observations you know bi biologists, that was done in the early two thousands in southwest Louisiana. Again, in the early two thousands, Louisiana did a breeding bird at list enlisted black belly whistling ducks as pretty much confined as far as breeding anyway, is confined to the southwestern portion of the state. Fast forward another ten twenty years now and we've got them in every parish of the state, breeding obviously year round residents, mostly in the southern parishes of Louisiana along the Gulf Coast. But as far as kind of annual occurrences, they're across the entire eastern half of the US. Now, you know summer observations, breeding records up into Minnesota and Ohio, you know that far north. So this is a species that's been growing in abundance and expanding their range for about twenty thirty years. Now. 00:09:45 Speaker 1: Forgive me for interrupting, but I do feel the need to interject the timeline that he just laid out. It feels rapid to me. In just around twenty to thirty years time, this bird that is ecologically not migratory, has managed to expand its range not only in the Southern States, but across the eastern half of the country. 00:10:04 Speaker 4: That is wild, yeah, for sure, and I think they You know, one thing about this species is there as we see it anyway, they're real tolerant to human disturbance. So one of the places where we have issues with them here in Louisiana is at the ports on the Mississippi River where they're loading grain. Obviously, there's a lot of spillage there that's that's duck feed, so they take advantage of that. And because they can tolerate all the activity going on there, even the the hazing you know, by the by the workers there to try to dissuade them from being in those locations there that they're they don't have a lot of fear, so that with the ad labetum feed that they've got there, their fecundities probably really high. And so they're doing well throughout Louisiana for sure, and and the Gulf South in total. 00:10:58 Speaker 1: So we have a water file species that has expanded and established itself in the southern US, especially in southern Louisiana. We have a waterfowl species that has grown rapidly in numbers, and we have a waterfowl species that is apparently very tolerant of human disturbance. The reasoning behind opening a special hunting season is becoming more clear by the sentence. But you can't just haphazardly start a hunting season. Well, I suppose you could, but the outcome is likely not to be great. To be done properly, these kind of things require a fair amount of thought as far as season structure, bag limits, and a lot of other factors that come into play. 00:11:38 Speaker 4: That being said, you know, as we kind of go into this hunting season and kind of think about where where success is going to be highest and where these birds are most likely found. It's usually around areas with some substantial wetland complexes. So typically outside of the breeding season, you're not going to find them in an isolated you know, a little land out away from you know, the big complexes that we have here in Louisiana. They're breeding phenology is a little bit different, you know. One of the first things we were worried about when black bellies, you know, started coming into the state with the knowledge that they use cavities just like wood ducks and our hooded mergansers, is that there might be some competition there for nest sites, nest spaces. We've done some research on that. Yeah, there's some competition. There's some nests parasitism. They're just like wood ducks and hoodi mergansers. They'll dump them, they'll dump an egg and a wood duck nests of wood duck will do the same. But wood ducks seem to start a little bit earlier as far as nesting, and they're peak nesting is a little bit earlier than black bellies. We're seeing black belly peak nesting about June, so that's that's quite a bit later than wood ducks, and with that too, we'll see we'll see nesting activity all the way through August, probably some of it even bleeds into September. So little puffball ducklings to be on the water in September is not uncommon at all, and even October I've seen them. So that's one of the things too about you know, structuring a hunting season for this species. Is the model of wildlife management North America anyways, is we don't shoot vulnerable animals with young that are still you know, being being brought up. So that's one of those things you know that we were considering as the public's kind of been clamoring for a tip for adding black bellies in the September teal season, Well we knew at the time, you know, there's a lot of young ducks still on the water if if we were to start this season and say mid September. So yeah, we're kind of going into this a little bit cautiously, a little bit conservatively with an October season, but yeah, we'll see what happens. 00:13:51 Speaker 1: That's a very interesting and important bit of information there. I know, anecdotally I've heard for several years now as There's been a lot of clamoring for a special season for these black bellied Whistling ducks. A lot of folks have asked why we couldn't just somehow put it in September, maybe intertwine it with till season. Well, now we know part of the reason why it doesn't really line up correctly with their breeding calendar, and with this being a brand new season. I fully understand them being cautious as they tread into this new territory. I imagine with kind of this rapid you know, just you know, growth in their distribution, people are seeing them more often talking about figuring out this season. How to your knowledge, how long have people been wanting there to be some sort of special season for these ducks. I imagine it's been for a while. 00:14:47 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, for sure, you know, and you know, historically people would see them during the tell season. We had opportunities, We've had opportunities in Louisiana to shoot them, you know, early in the regular season, which in our case doesn't open until about mid November in the coastal zone. But yeah, hunters have noted that, you know that that opportunity at Black Belly was the nuts as fleeting. You get maybe opening weekend, a week or two into the season, and then they're just not seeing them anymore. 00:15:18 Speaker 1: You know. 00:15:19 Speaker 4: Historically that thought was, well, they're going back to Texas, they're going back to Mexico. That's why we don't have those opportunities. Some additional research we've done here recently has shown that that's not the case. These these birds are sticking around in Louisiana throughout the year, certainly all the way through the through the winter. In some specific areas, they're not. It's just that they are, again alluding back to their tolerance of human disturbance. They're they're just going to those places where hunting can't take place, you know, neighborhoods, parks, zoos, these these elevators along the river. So yeah, they're just they're real good at identifying the safe place and holding out through the winter there. 00:16:03 Speaker 1: Talk to me about what all went into making the season, everything from the dates to the bag limits, all of it. 00:16:09 Speaker 4: Yeah, looking up records going back to two thousand and eight, when the Louisiana Department while and Fisheries first made a request of the Fishing Wildlife Service to add black bellied whistling ducks to the September teal season, you kind of identifying that as a potential increase in their harvest vulnerability For us. However, the federal government has been adamant about maintaining teal only in that season. You know that some of your listeners will certainly be aware. There's some states that have a telen A wood duck season though, but that comes with a penalty of days. So you know, states like Kentucky and Tennessee have a telen A wood duck but during the years that we have a sixteen day teal season, they only get nine days. Here's like like this year where we got a nine day teal season, they're only getting five. So Louisiana annually harvest is about one hundred and thirty thousand blue wings during that September teal season. So cutting back on days is just that's a no go for this day. We'd be stupid to sacrifice almost half of a teal season just to add black bellies to it. So yeah, that was you know, it's always been a no So we came into it this time with a different ask. It's a different season, it's separate from the September teal season. 00:17:37 Speaker 1: Another important bit of information there. It gives us even more context and understanding as to why they decided not to combine till season with this new black bellied whistling duck season. Basically, if they were to combine the two, they would have fewer days to hunt overall. Till season is very popular in Louisiana, so they opted not to do that, which I think is a good all on their part and a popular one. 00:18:03 Speaker 4: You know, we set up this the bag limits pretty conservatively, I think, you know, to four bird bag limit, you know, twelve possession. It's only a nine day season, but yeah, for three or four years, you know, it's an experimental season. We're going to evaluate what can we what can we achieve as far as total harvest and harvest rates on this species. I don't think we're gonna come anywhere close to an objective harvest rate. Kind of what we've got in the proposal that we put together was a fifteen percent aspirational harvest rate on this species to kind of maintain the population where it is so it's not continuing to grow. But yeah, with a nine day season, four bird bag limit, I'm not sure that we can we can achieve that. But again, coming to it conservatively, you know, we're not asking too much here. It's separate from the teal season, and we finally get a yes. Misissippi Flyway Council approved it. We got buy in from the other flyways as well, so with all four flyways in support, it goes to the Service Regulations Committee of the Fish and Wildlife Service and it was approved there last December. So here we are, we finally got this experimental season. 00:19:19 Speaker 1: Tell you what I think. I think it's good for all of us to know a little bit more about what all goes into establishing a hunting season, or a bag limit or anything else that goes into this. I know Jason covered all that pretty quick and efficiently for us, but just think a little bit about all the work, research, and time that he and a lot of other folks put in to finally get this experimental nine day season. That's some real effort, and frankly, it ought to be applauded. Another thing I find pretty cool is that now in Louisiana you have two hunting in September, black bellied whistling duck hunting in October, and then regular duck hunting in November. That's some pretty consistent hunting opportunity, which is a good thing, right well, but obviously. 00:20:01 Speaker 4: There's some pros and cons to that too, you know. So you know, some of the cons might be that these birds have already experienced a teal season, so they know the shotguns have been been firing. They may be a little bit more wary. They may have already sought out some some urban refugea so that that there'd be a potential con And then also you know that that break between teal season and the regular duck season kind of let migrants start settling in, you know, leave the Marshall loan for a little bit let birds build up. There might be some impacts to that too, but yeah, yeah, and that's one of the reasons too, we really wanted to frontload this at the beginning of October and not go into into sure ye. 00:20:45 Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, So that's a good that that raises a good question. So like as I imagine like. 00:20:53 Speaker 4: Like a lot of your like public. 00:20:55 Speaker 1: Land and and nwrs and stuff like, will those will will those be opened up for people to hunt during this black wealthy season at this time, all. 00:21:04 Speaker 4: Of our WMA's will be open We are waiting to hear back from the FEDS as to whether the National Wildlife Refugees will be open. I've heard positive things about that. It was kind of late them getting it into their brochures, but yeah, you'll hunters will definitely want to check in with the individual National Waldlife refuge to make sure that that's open for that October season. Within Louisiana. As far as licensing goes, you have to have all the licenses that you would for a normal duck season, whether it be teal or the regular duck season. In addition, though for this October black Billy season only, you do have to have it and it'll be a free permit. A black belly was a duck hunting permit. You can obtain this where you buy your regular Louisiana licenses online. Again, it's a free permit, and that comes with a mandatory postseason reporting, so by the end of the season you've got fifteen days to report harvest and hunter effort. That's just one of those you know it'd be in a new season. We want to get as good a data as possible to kind of evaluate number one hunter interest. People have clamored for it for years but are they going into partake in and that's another question, and then also getting better harvest estimates for this season. In addition to that, the shooting hours are a little bit different for the black bellies too. It's sunrise shooting time, not half hour before sunrise. This gives up hunters an opportunity to you know, with a little bit better like conditions to identify their targets again because it's black bellies only. And again the bag limit for per day, so that was That's one of the things still we get a lot of questions about, and yeah, just trying to try to get the word. 00:22:52 Speaker 1: Out again, we are continuing to learn how much thought goes into this. A new hunting season fantastic. However, in the name of not allowing it to degrade another hunting season, they moved it to early October so there would be no overlap. And it also sounds like there will be a good bit of access available to hunt and hopefully more as well as some easy to follow regulations. I would imagine there's a lot of happy Louisiana waterfowl hunters right now. 00:23:20 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, almost across the board. There's always a few naysayers, you know, but across the board, it's you know, a long time coming. We've kind of been interested in some type of an early season structure for this species for a while and finally we've got something to something to evaluate and see how effective it can be. 00:23:42 Speaker 1: How will y'all measure success? Like, you know, I mean, obviously it'd be it be hard to judge something off of one season, But like you said, after you do two three seasons, like what are you looking for in terms of like, yes, this is working, We're happy with this. 00:24:00 Speaker 4: Yeah, So kind of the main measures of success will be, you know, obviously increase harvest on this species. This is a very lightly harvested species as it is, so increase in harvest and harvest rates. You know, you can shoot six black bellies, you know, in the past, you can shoot six black billies during the regular season per day. Some folks have done it. Some folks have done it even into January in the past. But you know, harvest estimates, total harvest estimates for Louisiana have only averaged about four thousand per year. That's super low, you knows, It's not even in the top ten as far as harvest goes in within Louisiana. So so increase in the harvest of this species is a measure would be a measure to success. Stabilizing population growth, you know, to something that's more socially a social carrying capacity. You know, where conflicts within suburban neighborhoods are or parks. They have gotten to the point where they're as much, if not more of a nuisance than like Canada geese resident east and some aria. Oh yeah, for. 00:25:10 Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, no kidding, yeah, because that's when you were talking about that. That's or my head when I was like that here it's if there's a waterfol causing a nuisance, it's a Canada goose. Uh. And i'd heard, you know, I've heard stories about apparently just how overrun you would think that there are black billy whistland ducks everywhere in Louisiana, But I didn't know there was actual like nuisance. 00:25:32 Speaker 4: Sure you should take a trip down here and see some up for yourself, because it's, uh, yeah, it's pretty incredible. So yeah, stabilizing that population growth, heck, even negative population growth would be would be acceptable. I think for for a time period, I want. 00:25:49 Speaker 1: To highlight something that I think is really cool here. As hunters, anglers, outdoors men and women, we have heard for the majority of our lives that hunting is a conservation tool, a management tool, and what we're seeing here is a perfect example in the formation of this new hunting season. Of course, it's a great new and exciting opportunity for hunters. However, according to Jason, it's also a means of managing a population that frankly is getting a little bit out of control. There's not too many situations these days where you will hear a biologists say that negative population growth is acceptable. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. It definitely does. I'm just saying it's more rare than common, and right now in Louisiana they're trying to get a handle on this growing population of black bellied whistling ducks. I don't know about y'all, but I hope this hunting season turns out to be a success and turns out to be the perfect management tool that they're looking for. 00:26:44 Speaker 4: You know with this season too. This is a hemispheric species. It's you know right now. The range is from say, you know, Tennessee on down through Mexico and Central America into Argentina. So we're going to have a hemispheric population estimate for this species obviously, but we can perhaps get an estimate for Louisiana alone. Some of our banding data shows that most of these birds, most birds that are banded in Louisiana are encountered again in Louisiana. So through banning data we can get a population estimate for our banded cohort that are our banded population here in Louisiana. So so that's another another thing that'll that'll that'll is a measure of success, but that it will increase our ability to manage this species as well, and then reducing conflict like I like I said earlier, you know, both for residents, uh and then industry. Not only are they an issue at grainloading ports along the river, but also rice farmers in the spring during planting, they can they can do some considerable damage to to some of those fields as well. So yeah, that'll be kind of hard to quantify exactly, but yeah, any kind of anecdotal reduction in the efforts that farmers have to take to keep birds out of their fields during kind of that vulnerable period would be a success as well. Man. 00:28:23 Speaker 1: That is interesting. There's always a it's so funny. There's always a bigger story than I even realized the more you start asking these questions. I didn't know that they were causing this much of a of an issue. The old black belly whistling duck. 00:28:37 Speaker 4: Well there's you know, not only has has you know, the state agent, State Wildlife Agency been requesting you know, harvests as a means to alleviate this problem, but industry has has been very vocal, specifically in recent years, for somebody to get involved to address this problem for them. So, you know, they've got some political pool as well, you know, agriculture across the across the country, so that they've been pushing those buttons for a while to say, we need some relief here. Somehow, maybe a hunting season can do that. We'll find out. 00:29:17 Speaker 1: I suppose time will tell, and the success of this season, both from a hunter satisfaction perspective and the perspective of population management and conflict reduction, this is going to be one to keep your eye on, no doubt. One thing I'm curious about now is that if we know this is an expanding population across a good chunk of the country, could we possibly see other seasons open up in different states if this one in Louisiana goes well. 00:29:42 Speaker 4: Yeah, so some of the some of the states within the Mississippi Flyaway have expressed interest, you know, with this new experimental season. There's a lot that we as an agency have to put into collecting data and evaluating the success of this season. And some of those states they don't have the population that we do yet anyway, so it's it's not as as urgent of a push for them, but they just kind of want to see how we do. And then if this opens up to something that's offered flyway wide, they would certainly join in on that. Texas would be one, and in addition, Florida in the Atlantic Flyway they've got they've got quite a quite a health population of black bellies to there as well. So it remains to be seen whether they'll they'll pursue that, and really once we're done, kind of as the guinea pigs here in Louisiana, whether this is still confined to an October season or whether we can bleed into September. I'm not making any promises or or forecasting this at all, but if we can demonstrate success, then then that might be an opportunity in the future. You know, in this species too, really, you know the way it's been included in the bag limit historically, it doesn't see it right like this, the black belly whistling duck, it's a tropical species. It breeds on the coasts for the most part, maybe a little bit inland from the Gulf. But bag limits here should not be tied to the breeding success of prairie nesting ducks like we do. So the regulatory alternatives. You know, the weather it be sixty days, forty days, thirty days in the Mississippi Flyway for prairie nesting ducks is based on how well they're doing and habitat conditions on the prairies. That doesn't affect black bellies at all, so they should be decoupled from that. It is what it is right now. We're hoping this experimental season we might demonstrate some differences there. But then also why should a black belly a September black belly slash teal season be coupled with the breeding population of blueing teal when they're entirely different as well, So if the breeding population bluing teals gets below three point three million, we don't have a September teal season anymore, and so if black belies was tied to the September teal season, we would have lost that black belly season for no justificating shitting, not at all. So again, I think these birds need to be treated a little differently nationally as far as how we set regulations for them. 00:32:18 Speaker 1: Again, more fascinating insight and honestly getting to watch nature change right in front of our eyes. A tropical duck overlapping in habitat use with the migratory prairie duck. Why would we couple their management strategies or bag limits. Jason makes a very good point here. Exciting, man, exciting, and just like it's one of those things that's just the implications of it all. Like I just I'm fascinated by the story of them, like showing up and now, like for folks that are dealing with, you know, flocks of them causing nuisance issues, they're probably they probably don't think they're as cool as I think they are because I'm not having to deal with them all the time. But I just, I don't know, I think it's exciting. I think it's fascinating. 00:33:00 Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I just sit around and wonder what's next. You know, black bellies have been making the move expanding further north. We've got crested caracara's fairly you know, really common in South Louisiana. Now, limpkens have moved in as permanent residents throughout throughout coastal Louisiana anyway. So yeah, it's just sitting around waiting for what southern species is going to make a move as a as a permanent resident in Louisiana in the future. 00:33:29 Speaker 1: For the record, the two birds he just listed off there, the crested caracarra and the limpkin. They're both tropical birds that historically occupied Central and South America and now have also set up shop in South Louisiana. Fascinating, you bet. And are there some significant implications there for why multiple tropical birds are expanding north now? Well, of course they are. But that's a whole other episode right there, my friends, But believe me, we'll get to it. I want to thank all of you for listening to Backwoods University as well as Bear Grease and this country life. It means a whole heck of a lot to all of us over here. If you liked this episode, share it with a friend this week, and stick around because there's a whole lot more on the way.