00:00:02 Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about where our hunting opportunities are going and why we should all think about planning a bird hunting trip with our pups before it's too late. It was an attempt to buy turkey tags that spawned the idea for this podcast, although if I'm being totally honest, this is a topic I think about all of the time, not just in the bird hunting world, but in the big game world as well. Taking a hunting trip with your dogs to experience something you can't get at home. Think about it all the time, and it seems so simple and quite honestly, something that a lot of us have taken for granted. But that's a bad move in my opinion. I'm going to tell you why right now, and tell you why this should be your year to do something out of your comfort zone with your four legged hunting partner for it's too late. It was during one of those rand him off season phone calls with a hunting buddy where we got on a topic of spring turkeys. That conversation prompted me to look up when the deadline to buy a tag for Nebraska was going to be this year because I love hunting turkeys down there. In fact, I love hunting a lot of stuff in the corn Husker State, which is something I'm going to get into later on this episode any Huski. When I looked up when the window would open to buy one of the ten thousand tags that's offered up to non residence in a first come, first serve format, I saw, to my surprise that it was that very day, an hour and a half from the moment I looked it up. Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it was something in my reptile brain that reminded me to look it up after doing pretty much the same thing. I don't know. Ever, since they went from over the counter licenses to limited license, it doesn't matter because I knew that i'd get a tag since I had remembered in time, and when I logged in a few minutes before the window opened, the virtual queue showed that I was nine hundred and ninety eighth in line. I ended up getting my tag and then had a work, so it slipped from my mind. But after that meeting ended, I texted two of my good buddies who liked to hunt turkeys as well, to remind them not to miss their chance if they want to go to Nebraska. One of them got back to me almost instantly with a screenshot showing that the tags were sold out. It was less than four hours later. Now that might not mean much to you, guys, but only a few years ago you could buy three tags in Nebraska over the counter. And now, if you're not quick enough to get into the virtual line, you won't have the option to spend one hundred and sixty bucks on a turkey tag. What does that have to do with going on an upland hunting trip. Probably a lot more than you might think. The trend in non resident opportunities is not your friend unless the only thing you're concerned about is reducing non resident pressure in your home state. That's a thing, and it's understandable, but that mentality is contributing to something that will reduce opportunities for all of us eventually. Now, while I started hunting out of state when I was in high school, you know, those rooster trips to i Iowa or turkey trips to Missouri were just close to home affairs that didn't cost hardly anything and opened up a world of possibility to somebody like me who never really even considered traveling hunting as an option as a kid. People just didn't do it that much, or at least the people who I grew up with didn't. It lit a spark, though, and eventually I started doing budget bow hunts to as many places as I could afford. They involved analope hunts, elk hunts, mule deer hunts, and white tail hunts. Those trips brought me to a lot of places where I found, kind of accidentally, a hell of a lot of upland opportunities, and that spawned a whole nother reason to travel for hunting adventure. Those experiences shape me as a hunter and largely as a person, because I think the antidote to a lot of our societal issues is spending time with new people in unfamiliar places. Most of those hunting opportunities happened on over the countertags, and nearly every one of them is gone now. Some were removed because of resource issues like declining antelope populations, for example. Others were removed from social pressure by residents looking to protect what they view as rightly theirs, but the end result is the same and it doesn't bode well for us in the long run. It's also just the direction we are headed. The thing that scares me the most about it is that it's kind of trend you might really not care about, or you might cheer for, until it affects something you care about, and by then you realize that you didn't even notice the paper cuts adding up to a thousand and resulting in a surprised death of an opportunity you assumed would be there forever. It started with high dollar, super rare hunting opportunities like big horned sheep and shyris moves and critters that most of us will never lay eyes on in the wild, let alone actually hunt for, and most of us didn't care because most of us weren't willing or able to fork over forty thousand dollars to hunt sheep. But that also put in place. It's a template for how to manage game in a new way. Instead of just thinking about overall healthy animal populations, which state game agencies actually do. They also realize that a state's resource can be very lucrative cash cow, simply because enough people will pay a lot of money to try to mix it up with them that trickled down through more available animals like western big game and whitetails and now turkeys, and guess what it's happening with upland birds and waterfowl too. It just hasn't happened at the magnitude of those higher demand big game animals yet. But the trend is here, and there is a saying in investing that goes the trend is your friend. In this case, the trend is not to your friend. The truth is that it's not going to get easier to find opportunities unless you live in a place where the bird hunting opportunities allow you to be fully content. This should at least be a little bit of a concern. And even then, even if you do live in a place where you have tons of bird hunting opportunities, the truth is that populations fluctuate, habitat can change quickly, and what you might assume is a feathered fixture on the landscape in your neighborhood now might be far more fleeting than it appears at the moment. In my life, I've watched native brook trout populations totally disappear from the streams I grew up fishing in most of southern Minnesota. We used to run into Hungarian partridge pretty regularly too, and now if I see one, it's almost always when I'm in Montana for work, and never when I'm ount peasant hunting. I shot a lot of grouse and pheasants where I grew up, and now I can hardly find either. You know these are anecdotal, of course, but you don't have to talk to any bird hunter with too many years under his or her belt to hear stories about what once was. If you don't believe that, figure out a way to talk to a southern quail hunter ask about how many covees their pointers run into in any given season compared to what used to be standard now. I don't want this to be all doom and gloom, because it shouldn't be. We are constantly exposed to negativity because it's an amazing way to divide us and keep our attention on our phones, where we are fed NonStop advertisements, which is a big part of the whole equation and a huge driver behind developing more and more addictive platforms. I hate that, and I'm sure you do too, and one of the ways that I force myself to stay away from that shit is by loading up my lab and going someplace where upland birds live. And even though you're going to hear this after the trip is over, while I'm writing this, I'm excited because That's what I'm going to do next week and I can't wait. I have a very rough plan laid out to hit the eastern part of Nebraska for pheasants and maybe a few quail first before I drive down into the left throughout the state to see what we can do about finding some bob whites, prairie chickens, and maybe some sharp tails. I know we will find some birds throughout the week, but I'm not sooner concerned with filling up my game bag. I just want to walk behind my dog on her first hunt for all those birds except for roosters, and just to see how it unfolds. And I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity. I mean that truly. Here in Minnesota and cross the river in Wisconsin, our bird seasons are all closed. January here is the official start of the off season, which really sucks because January here in Canada South is a special kind of low grade torture. If you love to hunt the opportunity to drive three hundred miles and then start hunting public land all across a different state in search of some flushes is real important to me. I did this a handful of times with my older lab Luna, and every trip, even the ones where the birds were hard to come by, just became a core memory that I wouldn't trade for anything. And it's not because of the birds I get to kill either, but because it's an excuse to do something cool with my dogs. That's it. I think. One of the most amazing things about owning a bird dog is that they are a ticket to adventure, and to what extent that's true is entirely up to us. If we use them as a reason to plan and pack and strategize and then get out there on some unfamiliar ground for a few days, there is a high likelihood that we will get to watch them figure out some new things on the fly, as well as watch them enjoy the shit out of life, which is honestly one of the best parts about good dogs. They show up to the party and they want nothing more than to run through some tall grass with you. Think about that, because it's true, and it's also true that we all want our dogs to be better behaved, better at bird hunting, and well just generally a little more badass than they already are. How do you get them there? Well, one way is to travel with them, put them in situations that are fair but new and challenging, and then give them some grace, you know, the same grace you'd give yourself the first time you did something new. Get them those bird contacts, watch them learn real time, celebrate the crap out of their winds, and celebrate yours. Now. I know this sounds like raw raw bullshit, but think about life. How often do you do something you're truly excited about? How often do you immerse yourself into the world where the prairie chickens or the rough grouse or whatever live. How often do you think about when you used to go to South Dakota to hunt pheasants, or your dad used to hunt bob whites every day after work. There are still a lot of good opportunities out there, opportunities on public land even, that are waiting for you and your dog. And like I said before, they won't be there forever. Now they aren't cheap compared to at least you know, staying in state and hunting, I guess, but they don't have to be super expensive. You don't have to go to an outfitter to kill a limit of roosters. Trust me, you don't need to know some old timers secret spot in the northwoods of Michigan to go kill some grouse would cock in October. Either. You don't need to believe most folks when they say there are no quail left, because there are plenty of quail left in certain places. They just might not be where you can hunt them close to home. And look, I get it. Not everyone can afford and over the road trip, even when it involves public land and cheap motels in the middle of nowhere, But a lot of out of state bird hunting can be had for really reasonable In fact, most of the bird trips I take that involve a few days of hunting and motels costs less than my average tags for an out of state bow hunt for big game. Now, and it's all relative. But using cost as an excuse before you know the cost of an actual trip is kind of a bad idea. It might be out of reach, but doing a little research to see if that's true before you write off an opportunity might surprise you, and that part's free. It's one of my favorite pastimes during the off season because it turns up some cool opportunities and gives me something to think about and look forward to. This time of the year sucks for a lot of us, but conducting some due diligence on potential hunts for this fall is better than just doom scrolling Instagram or TikTok. It's also a good way to motivate ourselves to get in a little better shape, and certainly to think about how well our dogs are trained. This is because when you actually decide it's time to take that rooster road trip, or to drive half of a day to see what the north Woods is all about, your commit it. No one wants to do a trip like that and come home with an empty cooler and a sad dog. Humans do well with goals as long as they are the kind of goals we can actually stick to and try to achieve. You know. While that varies by the individual, the one common theme here is the dogs. If you decide this is the year, then you'll be far more likely to put in whatever you think you need to in order to make a hunt happen and in such a way that it's just not a total bust. And you know what, if it is a total bust, you'll fall into one of two camps. Either you'll swear off traveling hunts forever because they're stupid and dumb and you hate them, or you'll step up your game for the next one. I don't feel that way again. I think fear of failure is the biggest driver for a lot of folks to not take a doable trip. That's understandable, but the alternative is just failure in a different way, a way that causes us to fail a lot and focus on the wrong stuff instead of thinking about what it would be like to drive seven hundred miles, spend some decent money and mostly blank on birds. Think about what it would be like to watch your dog point a prairie chicken for the first time, or maybe a covey of quail. Think about what it would be like to leave the suburbs and spend every day for five days walking two tracks and swamp edges in a county where black bears out number people ten to one. There's more to this than dead birds, and every trip will change not only you as a hunter and as a person, but your dog as well, and it'll change your relationship with your dog. Now I've given you the pep talk. I've made the case for why this time of year is the best time to at least do some harmless research. What does it hurt to google how much a non resident small game tag is in some random place, or what you really need to buy in order to drive up to Maine for some grouse hunting this year. Maybe you find that the license cost isn't a big impediment, and you pull up on X you know, just take a look around, and you see all those national forests or national grasslands or state WMAs or private properties that are open to the public, and you realize the whole thing starts to look a hell of a lot more doable. Maybe your motivation is the same as mine when you realize you know that your home state is going to end at some point, but you're just not going to be ready to pack up the shotgun and let the dog lay around and get lazy when just a few hours away, the whole thing just keeps rolling along for another month, an extra long weekend or two spent somewhere New might be just what the doctor ordered to not go totally nuts from cabin fever. Now I've given you the pep talk, the sad story about how you really should do it for your dog. But I'm going to go full circle here to say what I really want to say about it. Life moves fast. I read a quote by Charlie Munger the other day Warren Buffett's you know right hand man, former right hand man at Berkshire Hathaway. He said something to the effect of, you know, the biggest mistake most people make is thinking they have time. Life does move fast. Our whole timeline lately seems to have shifted in recent years to where the whole thing's just zipping past us. We actually aren't getting any younger, and we really aren't working too hard to make a whole lot of habitat that will bring back bird populations in some areas that are just gone we're not going to return. We aren't working to lower license costs or generally increase hunting opportunities for non residents in most places either in fact residents either for that matter. The clock is truly ticking on this thing. And while it might seem like your favorite opportunities are here to stay, they probably aren't built on as solid as a foundation as you think. Change is coming. Change is always coming, and change rarely results in less expensive hunts or game populations with such sudden abundance that states lay out the welcome matt and beg us to come. You know, throw some six shot in the air doesn't work that way, and it's never going to use that as motivation to consider what you could do this year with your dog and then dig in a little, do some research. Understand that if you go to a forum and ask, you know, random strangers for advice, you'll probably get terrible advice. Just plan it yourself, take the plunge if it's possible, if not for yourself, for your dog, because you know that even if it's expensive or scarier, just seems like a huge headache. Their only vote on whether to do it is a resounding hell yes, and you know what, they're right. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been The Houndation's podcast. Thank you so much for all of your support here at Meat Eater. We got a lot of really cool stuff planned for this year, some really neat coming out, a lot of stuff I think you're gonna absolutely enjoy. But I want to say thank you to you first, because without you, none of that stuff would matter. 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