00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at You shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You Can't Predict Anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where you stand with on X. Uh, you're honest? How um you know, if you talk about what's written in your hand, you're gonna get it. You're gonna get an enormous amount of feedback. That's fine, a lot of like what you really ought to do, and what I would do and what he's doing wrong. There was a fello in town from Tennessee visiting my brother in law. He found out that I've got a blue tick that you know, I'm looking to do some training with. And uh, he just had to meet me to give me my give me his two cents about the whole situation, which I did, and it was great. It was informative. You know, he runs plots for bears there in Tennessee. But uh, you know I was I was glad to take it. So yeah, we can talk about it and uh, I'll read some emails what's written on his hand coon c O and meaning, here's all, here's all not a trapper. I have never and all my experience with trappers, I have never met a trapper who was at risk of forgetting to check his traps. Uh, that's all they think about. They'd be like writing, breathe, don't forget to breathe on your hand. But Yanni had to remind himself to go see if he's got a coon. Yeah. Well, mostly because right now we're very essentially located between my home and where this trap in your trap, and I don't want to get home. And then I had to turn around and drive an extra fifteen minutes the other direction to go hopefully get my raccoon in. Uh. And you need the raccoon for I'm gonna introduce Mangus the Blue t the blue Tike hound dog to a raccoon. If you want to give Yanni some valuable feedback, tell him that he named his dog all wrong. Mingus. We could have named it sounds like a disease. Did you like? Did you hear Yanni got Mingus real bad? That's what I could picture saying to somebody. Most of the world really likes that name. It's a musician right, Yeah, Charles Mingus plays jazz, used to play jazz? What happened to him? Died? That's a good name origin here in in our home state here. Uh, you raccoons are nine game. They're not listened as a fur bear. It's kind of gloves off on raccoons. Yeah, same with rabbits, squirrels, or at least the fox squirrels. And your goal here in the end is to have a versatile hunting dog, no hound dog, versatile hound dog. We'll see he's very birdie on the grouse, very and he's not ranging too far, which could be a problem because exactly he needs to be able to cut loose and go on a you know, tour and by himself for two, three or four hours sometimes. But I mean when we've been running trails, he's not ranging too far. You know, he's been doing good. But I can tell you when he gets on a hot deer track, he's got no problem ranging and going out of out of you know, uh, audible range. I'm curious about your level of bloodthirstiness here. Um, let's say that the dog is super good, isn't. Let's say he does like to run ount lions, he likes to run coons. Do you picture becoming a recreational runner? Are you gonna be killing everything at trees and you're just gonna have all kind of dead raccoons laying around. Oh, for the raccoons, it would just be like a little thing. You go out and that would be something in the in the in the middle, I imagine. I mean if someone's if someone wants to hide, as someone who wants to shoot the cone and wants to hide, then sure it, we'll shoot him. And how many lions? Because a lot of lions because a killing. I don't think Jake's got one in a decade, even though he treats some teen of him a year. Yeah, he put up I think close to thirty this winter. I never shot at one of them. The other day, I we're still eating it. I was down in New Mexican. We had a thing called Freedo Pie. You guys know what Friedo Pious going to introduce yourself, Tell people what Friedo Pious. This is our special guest. I've only seen him at Sonic back home. Freedo Pie with Freedo's and chili and cheap. So yeah, just a little bit, a little bit closer to the mic and sell your name Rampy Russell and say what you like to do killed duck. Yeah, that's what I mean. Where do you call freed o poe? Somehow I don't understand. I never knew it existed. Hold and tell me again. It's friedos with what corn chips, chili, cheese onion town pains. Yeah, so I was down to New Mexico and they made chili with he made like elk. But you know, people New Mexico get all hopped up about it, like yeah, it's like, oh my hats chili's and no, and they made very good New Mexican style chili in a pot and you bring that out hunting with you just in a tupperware, and then you got cheese onions, hallapeenos whatnot. And you take a bunch of fried o a corn chips and like cereal in a bowl, and instead of putting milk on it, you dump chili on it. Instead of putting sugar on that, you put hallapenos and cheese and whatnot on there, and scallions on. Like how I didn't know about that is embarrassing. But you certainly had just made it with mountain lions. Since I got home. You've certainly had chili with corn chips in it. I've put corn chips on it. That's not what this is. It's it's not like a sprint. It's like the relationship between the chili ratio. That's what you're trying to say. The ratio between the chili and the corn chips is that of cereal and milk, not that of between clam chowder and oyster crackers. So I made a giant batch that with the last Mountain lion I had that still said two thousand seventeen on the package. I braised it down. Yeah, I think I've got one left. No, I wasn't from the one. It was one of the Pete gave you know what, No, because mine's two thoev I had my last bag on my own and I had something that Pete gave me. God, this suffing is good, though, man. So I don't think i'd be letting those lions run. No, I don't plan on let I won't let them all go. I'm a long way from there. I mean, it's not it's not have a lot of work to do before we had to make those kind of decisions. Get a little ahead of you on that one. Although Mark George, if you're listening, Jake said, you know what you ought to do. You need to call your buddy over there in Washington, who's treating more lines than anybody I know because he's he's doing it for the government. You can't even run hounds anymore in Washington, but he's working for the government doing all kinds of research. And where most houndsmen, I think, you know you're doing really well if you're like Jake and you're putting up you know, um, twenty five or so. But this guy, he is putting up twenty in a month. He's like, you need to just take mangus out there, do some government work and just hang out with with him for a week, he says. Because what Jake keeps telling me, he's like, somewhere between seven and twelve I think those were the numbers. Somewhere in that range is where your your dog is gonna either get it and be like finished and ready to roll on his own or tree lions. Oh then years, No, no, no, it's like that's also where they die. Seven and twelve tread lions to where if he's gonna get it or she they've got it. And they can go on their own if they If they don't, then he's like, I'll probably start to get worried and start to think about moving that dog onto somebody that's not gonna hunt him. Um, he had a dog get killed by lion this year, bit it right in the head. Yeah, what's crazy is that after that those dogs, man, they have such a one track my when they're when they have that smell in their nose. After that, when he came up to the dog, he didn't know yet what had happened, and the dogs still going on the trail because after that the line had jumped and got intreated like a couple hundred yards down the rich or whatever by the other dog, and the one that had been bitten is still working the track. And then but then he kind of started looking a little closer and realized, you know, she wasn't quite quite right. But yeah, it doesn't happen often. But I've been really warned by my family, my girls that that goes down with me. Gus, I'm gonna have hell to pay. I don't know if you remember, but Floyd down in Arizona, those guys were telling us a story about tree in a lion that was in a tree on top of a rock spire, which you could picture down Arizona, right, like some juniper or whatever like with its roots like grown into the cracks of a rock. Anyways, it's in such a position, and the dogs somehow got up there, but they got out there in the dark, and they couldn't get up there with the dogs. And the dogs are on the rock spire with a lion in a tree. They came back in the morning in the middle of the night that dog had come down, or the lion had come down, killed both the dogs, ate one of them and went about its business making lemonade or you know, lemonade. You know what I'm trying to say. Uh, Karane got her ass handed to her. Kran went, Kran went spouting off at the mouth about GM strawberries. I never used that expression. And the more I think, I don't really know, Like I get it, but I don't really get it, like uh, implying that it was detached. I mean, like right, I think it means that maybe like you got it whooped? How would that? Where would that come from? Like we had this conversation yesterday, someone said a similar conversation yesterday where someone said we we had a small part of an idea and we were agreeing in a meeting to expand upon the idea, and someone said, well, let's flesh it out now. Okay. One thing you could be saying like, Okay, here's this skeleton of an idea and we will add flesh onto it, yeah, to make it grow. That's that doesn't seem like what they're getting at. When you flesh something, you're reducing. Okay, you're taking a hide and scraping it clean. I think that to say to flesh an idea out would be that you have this big, cumbersome, ill formed, over ideated idea you're scraping the grid. To flesh it out would mean that you're gonna reduce it down to like a crystalline clear idea. Handing asses to people I don't know. Um I got her ass hands to her about a off comment she made about GMO strawberries. Who's really got people riled up? And there's two that were shared with me, and they show that the breadth of you know, the breadth of personalities that we speak to on the show. Because one is very polite and he's like, sorry for the grant, but this is the most common fallacy, and on and on, and I always opened up. I always believe in sharing information and we can all grow together and healing and hearing. And then another guy, uh, where's the one that he writes in the other guys subject line stop your nonsense, dash strawberries and then talk about how stupid everybody is and how horrible Crim is. So you could you can pick it up Crim with whatever whichever these gentlemen, um, whichever these gentlemen, whatever approach you want to take. You could be like, listen to asshole, or you could say, um, yeah, in spirit of conversation, I will tell you what I was talking about. Yeah, definitely, I take I take the latter approach. Um yeah. If I stand to be corrected, then I stand to be corrected. You know. I think that in the spirit of not replicating and putting out information that is not backed up or that is not correct, that's our spirits, our spirit. Yeah, and um yeah, there's if it's like emphatically said with a little grumble and a little I what's his name? I won't share his name. I hear you, I hear the guy I am, I hear you, and I appreciate that you wrote in what I was referring to, and I I stand corrected. Um, oh you're not gonna double down? No, because I'm probably wrong. I mean, I, yeah, I haven't done all the extensive research because a lot of people wrote in you aren't alone. Um, a lot of folks wrote in. One thing that was interesting to me was I gotta set the scene a little bit better seen setting. We were talking about how is it that you can have such a giant bad like where does Costco get these gigantic strawberries that don't taste like anything? Why are they so big? Why do they look so good and taste so bad? And why is it that you can't grow a bad strawberry in your garden? Like you can't. I've never picked a strawberry in someone's garden. It wasn't like, no, that's a strawberry. And thank you to the I believe it was a PhD student who who wrote in and yeah, thanks Bob, and offer had some answers about that, and we can probably go into that later. Let we cover that while you're prepared to talk about the GMO Commentarin's response was something about how it's probably something to do with GM on right right, fish right. So there is a there is there is a two thousand article your two thousand from the New York Times. I've also seen some other things floating out there on the internet, and obviously we have to be very careful with what sources we pay attention to. UM. But I had not revisited this topic for years before I said what I said on the last podcast, and so the information that I had downloaded into my brain that I was walking around with was that one of the reasons why we have large strawberries that's remain frost resistant um or they I should say they stay fresh and beautiful and plump looking for so long that it seems unknap roll is because they are a strain. A part of this I might be using the incorrect terminology here, uh, A gene from or a protein from arctic char combine with the strawberry actually makes the strawberry frost resistant and helps to preserve it for longer. Tall you scientists out there, I hope that um, that was a kind of basic but and but apparently that's not true. What hopefully we get a lot more people writing in about this. What I have seen is that stuff like that does exist. I mean, there are scientists testing gene hybridization to make some fruits or vegetables taste a certain way or to extend the freshness of like. It's not that this doesn't exist. And so actually, maybe I should call up our listener who wrote in and have a conversation about this and get and kind of flesh flesh it out, flesh it down, and report. Yeah, I think that would be very helpful. But from the f d A dot gov site that he sent in the email, it says GMO crops animal food and beyond the question is what GMO crops are grown and sold in the United States? And they are corn, soybean, cotton, potato, papaya, summer squash. Hold on, let me just make sure that there aren't like fifty seven things alfalfa, apple, sugar beet, and that's it. And strawberry, GMO strawberry has been approved. What he does go on to say is people shop with their eyes and they don't shop with their taste. And he says that when you go into the store and see if some giant strawberry, all they're going for is they're going for it has a pop to your eye and it has to be rugged and handle well and lasts a long time. And so there's different ways that they control the nutrients availability and when you pick it and all this um that you get that that ruggedness and eye popping bigness and no one cares they taste. Like do you have any strawberries popping in your garden right now? Yeah? But they don't last. The kids eat them, stop buying, steal something. Well, if you stap by, you'll like get one. They check them real frequently. They're in there all the time, and they've taken eating the carrots, which are not like big long pinkies. UM. I have a very very very close person to me who I can't name because he works for an agency. UM, and he needs be tiptoey about when he's speaking for who and what. He was like, Oh, he goes, uh, you could get a rid of GMO stuff. You better plan on starving off about a third of the planet. But go ahead. UM. I have just at this me speaking personally, I have zero, like zero problem with GMO stuff. And I'll point out that there's never been anyone that could prove and any thing that would get scholarly consensus that there is a health implication from eating GMO foods. There's just not as up as off putting as that is the people because people want to hate them so bad. Um, there's nothing, there's nothing. It's a pretty robust dialogue, though, wouldn't you say please, HANSI I like earlier you introduce yourself, Hans, you've never been on the show before, Ramsey our guests said, HANSI like Fonzie. I never thought of that. That's an easy way to easy way to remember it. Okay, give me your take on the robust dialogue. I have meaning GMO not like what GMO does, two crop systems, how it affects irrigation, pesticide, use herbicide, like none of that crap. No, I think you're I mean, I think you're on the money with with saying there's no like verifiable way to say this is what it does. Right, But it's only been around so long, right, I mean we're talking we're not talking about like breeding like different crops and splicing different kind of crops together, like one kind of apple with another kind of apple. As the GMO it's a genetically modified it seems like the dialogue is more talking about like marker assisted selection or some of these like really specific ways of genetically modifying, which I mean, how long have those been around? Like, how do you do any multigenerational studies on that kind of thing? I don't know. I don't have the answer about it. Seems like that's a that's awesome question, meaning the assumption is there that someone will turn something bad up, like you're bad ahead of time? No. No, but the downstream consequences exist, right, we just don't know what they are yet, So how do we how do we even ask a good scientific question? You know, how do we do the scientific method if we can't ask a good question yet? Likewise, I think that it's you're in the same situation when you want to say that they're bad totally. I agree. I'm just saying that the dialogue is good. It's a good like good ethical debate going on here. I don't think it's as good of a debate is why why are the strawberries at Costco tastes like dogshit? That's a real questions. Uh, couple other quick things I need to give a if a Father's Days shout out to a guy named Dylan shrupka. This is for Father's Day, um, Happy Father's Day of Dylan Trupica. And also we have a thing we gotta talk about real quick. We've we've come on the radar of the ASSID movement, and the ASSID movement is uh. You can break down the ass movement for me as stands for anti surface shitting. And it's been a while since I've read this letter that we've gotten a lot of do you want one of these? Do you oppose people just going into the woods and and defecating on the surface and not digging a cat hole cover your ship? So there you remember you can find the anti surface shitting um that you can find what's their social media handle at the guy's in the last name is Booze. Interestingly, at the ASSID movement, So that's at the underscore A underscore s underscore s. Can you check this n underscore movement? Can you say that again? The asked movement, the anti surface shitting movement trying to instruct people, inspire people, um too, uh not defecate just out in the woods and leave their toilet paper blowing in the breeze. Yeah, that and and this fellas um I think He lives and recreates on the Kenai Peninsulas of Alaska, and he said it doesn't matter if the fire fighting fire or hunting or fishing. He just says it's out of control. He says he sees way too much of this shit in quotes. Um, it's a real problem and there needs to be awareness around it. And which is why we talked about it the other day on the podcast, about doing about what our proper protocol was. That's what inspired this. His last name is legitimately Booze. I just want to change my last name to Fever Steve her But now I'm jealous of Booze. That's that's real cute. And you don't like my dog's name of Mangus. Huh know if my name is Steve Fever by birth? So U Karrant, can you double check them getting this right? On Instagram? Yeah? It is? How many followers? Oh, hold on, I was gonna reach down the ass movement on Instagram? Well, they were just established in and uh they've got one thousand, one eighty three uh followers at the moment. So on their Instagram page, do you go and post pictures of poops that you found in the woods. Let's see. Uh, well, so far, I'm scrolling. I'm scrolling. I see a lot of stickers and Pooh emojis. But I wanted I wanted to point out. I want to point out I'm on the fire wild dot com and that's in the ASS movement? Is uh is part of this? Well, he's a photographer too, so I don't want him mixing business and pleasure here, Okay, is the ASS movement site for people to coalesce around the idea that you should not poop in the woods. So it's confusing because it's the ASS movement and it's the fire wild dot com. Who we are. Fire Wild is a wildland firefighter owned company and brand. Fire Wild owns and established the ASS movement in out of disgust and disappointment in seeing the tissue issue on fires, trails and all other public lands enjoyed in the great outdoors. I think that what he should morph. I think that he should morph his site into a place where you go to post you know what. We did our river clean up, our river access clean up. I brought latex gloves and I picked up discarded camp money. M hmmmm. With my latex gloves on and bagged up discarded camp money. That's real dedication. Uh. I think he should. It should be a place where you go post pictures of soiled wild lands when you come across evidence of surface scadding. There is some of that in here. Mhm. Only one thousand followers. Yeah, is there anybody that would like be counter to this? I mean it seems like such a no, I'm gonna go pop, but do like, okay, do do do meth heads? Um? Do o our meth heads pro meth or are they just meth heads? Yeah? I'm asking what do you think? I haven't met a methad yet who's like got his like pro meth t shirt. Like I'm like, I think surface ship ors like methods. They just they can't help it and thought about it. They got trapped up into the lifestyle. I think you're giving them too much credit if you're saying that. I seriously like the first time that it came to like at A, I mean we didn't we We're gonna quite fist fight over it, but there was no another another fellow down in Arizona. We're like a quiet hour long ride back to camp because I had seen other signs of surface shitting before we went out into the woods, and I'm talked and mentioned it. I was like, I can't believe that, you know, And then like we get back to the trucker. I don't forget. At some point whatever he runs off to supposedly go flip a rock, comes back and then it gets light and look over and I'm like, hold on, is that yours right there? If you talked about it, yeah, And he's like, oh yeah, like that's how we roll down here. And I don't know Arizona, I don't know that in the desert that like you're supposed to like smear it like kind of like to not like disrupt cryptobiotic soil. Yes, that is, but that does not involve that's bringing your TP, bringing your TP out, or depending on conditions, you could always tort your TP, though there have been I've been trying to get Spencer New Hearts to do an article about all the um crazy things have started forest fires. There was a TP burning situation that started a big forest fire. There's a situation where some guys are having a gender reveal party. When I thought when I heard this story, I in my head thought that it was someone changing their gender and that was the party, but it wasn't. It was someone who's yeah, and A and his buddies filled a tanner right thing with the appropriate colored powder so that he could shoot it with his rifle and it would blow up pink or blue and he would find out if he's had in a board. I'm not joking. That started a big forest fire. A woman burning love letters her job. She was like a forest service employee burning love letters and started a big forest fire. And yeah, and there was a tepee burning scenario, so be careful burning your TP however, Yeah, there are places where he's supposed to smear on rocks. One of my favorite stories about flipping rock. You know this happened to Mo fallon Ramsey. You're probably getting concerned that we're not even gonna get to you. Don't worry. Um, okay, this is a finny story. So we were filming in Hawaii years ago and one of our camera guys, Mo, he got there earlier or something cause he wanted to surf. He's got he's got a rental car, like rents a car, rents a surfboard, gets down to the beach. He doesn't know what to do with his keys, so he finds us like conspicuous, easily identified rock and lifts the rock up and throws the keys under the rock and then goes and surfs. So it gets done surfing, and he comes back up to the rock and flips the rock, but there's no keys. He's like, what's been another rock? So now he starts getting into a panic, running around flipping all these rocks. None of the rocks look like the same rock, goes back, lifts up the rock again no keys. Eventually he realizes that someone had taken a growler, had rolled the rock out, took a growler, put the rock back, but the growler stuck to the rock, so that when Mo put his keys in the the deuce trying to use captured the keys, and when he would lift the rock up, the keys would ride up with the rock. And only way later did he finally get around looking and realize the keys. And then he had to, you know, get them all cleaned up. So next time we run a car in Hawaii, don't lick the keys. Um Can I just circle back to one thing that you want to get back into your strawberry problems? Um Hans introduced herself. Yeah, I'm a video editor here, HANSI Deschermeyer, A lot of a lot of letters there, but it's fanatic and h a n z I Deshermeyer long one. You don't have to worry about that one. And this is your first it's my first podcast. Are you ready? Yeah, let's hear it. The reason Hans he's in here is he's an enthusiastic hunter of ducks fanatic, fanatic And what better conversation for you to participate in than one with our guest Ramsey Russell get ducks proud of? Here? Is that clapping for your sag or no flaving to introduced? The guests impressed with that? Actually, so you uh tell everybody what you're doing right now. Thirty years ago I had heard misinformation. It was misinformation. I wish I wasn't good enough. Shaped U pedal across the country again. But thirty years ago, I was twenty four, much younger, in a college roommate, and I rode bicycles from bar Harbor Main out to the Olympic Peninsula just because we were young. It was there thirty years later, there's a stick in our spokes. Nobody's traveling with his jobs interrupted. My job's interrupted. He calls up and says, hey, let's go spin around for a couple of weeks. Cant and bike. I said, let's do it. So you're doing kind of the same thing, but you're just interrupting the biking with driving. Yeah, driving and just meeting with people and doing things. It's more like a day trip. We we drive here, we stopped, we stayed for a few days, We spent around and bike ride like we're at home, and go the next destiny. So you stayed an enthusiastic bicyclist over the years, No, there's been. There was a long absence when I got busy and we're did some other things. But yeah, I tried to stay in shape, you know, so I like to ride bicycles. You know, think about ride a bicycle versus real working out. I feel like a kid who don't feel like a kid ride a bicycle. I agree, But it was a it was a heck of a summer Stephen that you know, it's it's uh. We were just riding a bicycle and rode across the country and had a great time. But I see, I see now we're seeing America at fifty miles a day versus eighty miles an hour. It just created this wanderlust. It became manifesting what came later down the road. Uh, what'state? Were you born in Mississippi? Was when born and raised? Yep? I heard I caught you saying earlier. I overheard you saying when you're out in the lobby there, that you appeared on a TV thing once and they subtitled you. Oh my gosh, yesh, it's way way back when, uh fIF twenty years ago. It was an outdoor television show and everybody had nice accents like yourselves. And they subtitled me and and I was trying to emulate and adopt, you know, the correct pronunciation of word. I've sents given up, but they actually subtitled me. So I'd asked, Hunty, how are y'all gonna subtitle me to? Well? Well, Sam? Also Sam, who we heard about you from or through? Yes, Sam's our talent. Yeah, said you had a really nice drawl. That's a good description. Got a face for radio, and I accent for Andy Griffith. Um tell people you do for a living? We we really we get ducks. And I love to say that. You know when you beat somebody and you say how are you and find? What do you do? I get ducks? Huh? But really we are we We sell international duck hunts. We sell duck hunts on six continents, duck hunting adventures. I should say, how come night on seven, I hadn't found any on antarcticle yet? Are there? I don't think so? Too cold? Yeah, I didn't know if I'm the edge of it somehow, at some point in time, some some plagic you know, Australia's about. Australia is about as close as I'm aware, maybe Tasmania. I don't know how much close you can get to Antarctica. If there are ducks on an article, somebody let me know I'm heading that way. Um so you you've personally hunted ducks on six continents? How many kinds of ducks I believe I believe I've shot to? You know when I include subspecies UM hundred and twelve subspecies of waterfowl plus um let's slay another nine of the North American Canada geese, so a hundred twenty three subspecies. Yeah, but the number of North American Canada geese tax on them is keep reducing it. It went from like twenty three to two. I think it's a well it's eleven. Now you've got you've got Canada geese which are the big ones, Cackler geese with the small ones. You've got seven subspecies. So they still accept that. I thought that they keep like you know, like j with genetics, everything either gets more complicated or less complicated, but nothing is stay of the same. I think I think they sub group amenda Canadas and cacklers more for a uh sportsman's list, But there really are if you look, there's no there's a lot of there's a lot of us subpopulation of Canada geese. When you get into it there they're they're breeding and their migrations are isolated. I mean, they're just are trying to think of one real quick. The dusky Canada goose come down the Pacific Flyaway, the interior start up and it's up in the Arctic and kind of come down to mid towards the Missipi fly Away through Ottawa Valley and peel over the James Bay. Population of the interiors come from a similar area, but there there they don't overlap. And you see that on band recoveries. So you've got you've got these little populations of Canada geese, and whether they're becoming hybridized, who knows. But but now I still accept I think they're still accepted to be eleven total subspecies of Canada geese. And you've got all those I need to I need. I need two of the Pacific ones that I'm aware I need the dusky probably have to go to Copper River, Alaska area to get on those good and I need what I believe I need is the the Vancouver which is endemic more or less in the breeding area to British Columbia. What uh, how did you get? I'm just curious, like, like, uh, how'd you even get into the path that would lead you to being like an international boy, a world traveling duck guide. I was working for the US federal government. I went to college want to be a wildlife biologist, became a forester, and I wanted, I really I left the Deep South to go up north in Canada. To go I wanted to shoot Canada geese, migreater Canada geese, real Canada geese, and experienced the prairies. And I went and brought some friends. The first trip we I booked to Canada was a just a disaster. And anybody's booked enough hunts knows they exist. It's just nothing like, nothing like it was represented to be, and just a complete nutter cluster. And again to do my due diligence and met another outfitter in Alberta and brought a few friends, and the following year a few more in to following you're a few morning to call him outside and said, hey, I'd like you to be my booking agent. I'm like, what the hell is a booking agent. I'm a government I'm a forcer for the US federal government. Pretty explained it to me. And I started off just okay, I'll help bring some hunters to this guy. Thanks. Bun out of hand. I mean it just one step, one one. It just it just bun out of hand, slowly, but surely I did. I did not start out say I'm gonna hunt six continents and sell hunts on six continents. It just happened. So are you still? Are you primarily a booking agent? Now? Are you you have your own guy? Now, I'm a booking agent. I'm a booking agent. You know, there's there's so many mental steps and what we do, and I hate that word booking agent, because there's a lot of nefarious ones out there in this business that don't do their due diligence, you know, And it's very important to me that that if I'm gonna represent to you that this hunt is better than some of the other ones down there, that I've been there myself, and but I've been to them all. So we go to them and we scout them, and we've gotten off in the bushes to where Argentina, for example, we know a lot of our outfitters down there. We found them, we developed them. They don't exist online, they don't exist. Purity set through us. And there's some really a pretty amazing hunts. And I say just in terms of in terms of the overall experience when we go hunting, we don't cater to five star if you want to five star hunt, take your wife to New York or Italy if you want to. You want a real hunting adventure, you know, And and and here's how here's how it differentiate, Steve is you can go to any of those contents in of those countries we've been to and stay at the Hilton, but it's not the Aderbaijan experience. If you stay at the Hilton. It's not the the Argentina experience, it's the health and experience. Now. I want to see real Argentina and that's where that's where we diverge and we we've just cultivated good long term relationships with a lot of outfitters um and built the program. My wife and I. It's very small company. My wife and I handle this side of it, explained to hunt the Legiti just getting me there, picking up the phone, the stations and stuff like that. Uh, this is off subject, Ducks, But do you have any hot leads on? What are you laughing about? Because I was the old time he's explained. I'm thinking Van Steve's gonna ask him where he can go get one of them? Uh turkeys, What a super Slam turkey holder is? You're looking at one, not towards honest when you say super when you say super slam. When you say super Slam, you're not talking to you, Sam. What is the sleeper Slam? Then a super Slam turkey holder such as myself? That means you've gotten all five varieties of the American wild turkey. Now where can one go from there? Oscillita and ghouls already did Goulds, you'd be looking at a mirror Grand Slam holder. You need the oscillity to become the pinnacle of a turkey man. That called what's it called when World Slam turkey holder, at which point I would get my World Sam Turkey holder tattoo. But meaning like we want to go down Oscillated Turkey's bad is what I'm getting at. But you're to find the right I want to I don't want to be shooting a field turkey coming out to some field. I want to be out in the jungle. You want to be in the jungle, And that's what I ficked to say. You don't want to stay at the Hilton, No, no, you wanna be You wanna be in a tent camp in the jungle, not just where. That's where you xactly want to be and how you hunting? You know, as a non turkey hunter, I've killed pen turkeys in my life and I need to marry him, just show you know, so I can be that guy and you're in your cry owd I love the oscillated turkey are sometimes you can't get him here? Well, well know, but that latest research that came out, didn't you read that email that Turkey's corrupted. Oh, they're saying that basically all the western United States because of the stocking efforts from thirty years ago. There ain't up here one left. There's Hodge Fige the turkeys. I didn't know that. I've got a lead for you on the perfect don't say experience. I won't, but I've got I've got the lead and you'll love it. And I love it, and you can't bump us at the front of the lines. We want to go to this winter. We want to go this winter, March, whatever you want to go. You want to go mid April next year's when you want to go. But when you need to start, I know, but you need to start getting the range in the jungle. And it's it's a dry you know, it's I don't think jungle like lush jungle thing, very dirty jungle, very dry John that ju jule, that's right. You stand jungle and you need a little precipitation that the cantor start to sing. But if you go too late, like in May, now you've got all the young birds, Jake's fighting and everything's torn up. You want to go mid late April and you can hunt them. Uh, of course, you know, a real true turkey hunter from the South doesn't want to. He wants to call all the men and interact with him and bring him in an isolated just he's more like a game bird than a turkey. Bush whack them well if you can. But but some yeah, you bush whack them, you know. And everybody said, well, you know, sneaking up on a turkey and shooting might have trade on sound like much sport. And I'm like, this is not like shooting in the eastern Turkey in a pine plantation after a rain, that kind of stuff, I know, but it it is, you know. I can remember crashing through the you know, my my guide was as quiet as a as a shadow. And I'm walking behind him, sound like a kid rock concert coming through the woods. And I walked the turkey up and he motioned to me to be still and cover up my watch of the reflection one showing the jungle. And then he vanished and it was pitch black dark, and I can't see him anywhere, but I can hear, and it's so silent, I can hear sweat coming off my nose and hitting the floor. Huh. And he was gone, and when he came back minutes later and appeared almost screamed. It scared me to death. I hadn't heard him where he had gone up ahead of the trail to get all the twigs and everything out of the way. That turkey your path. He manicured my past sidlent as a ghost. But we also hunt around fruit trees. There's like they got these bigs of pody trees and and uh, the native know where they are. Think of it like a fig and it grow occasionally out in the the jungling everything in the jungle easia. So the male birds will spin around. They know where they are too. They're looking for the hens and they're spending around looking. So sometimes you're in a in an elevated blind like a very comfortable little hammock wait waiting on those animals to come in. Or sometimes you're hunt the water to ambush them. Yep, and they will. Sometimes somebody's outfitters down here will turn on male calls that make that emulate the oscillated electronics that provokes them to start calling and become rivalry. Remember, they're like game, they're like game roosters. I don't know that the isolated turkeys ever assemble and male and female like the like the Easterns of the Mirriams. I don't think they do that. I think they still off to themselves and fight. And so sometimes they'll they'll get those uh calls, going to initiate them an electronic an electronic call or a mouth call electronic call. And I'll tell you one of my favorite, my favorite hunts ever in the world was hunting an isolated turkey. And back on the road on the you're saying, you've only killed ten turkeys, but one of them was one of these, two of them roscillateds. You got it all backwards. Just take it out to come. But you know, I think I just take it out it comes, you know. But I do like I like the hunt. That's what appealed to me. Now you know you're fixing to tell me another isolated story. Oh my gosh it it was. So the guy turns on the electronic call. The outfit are turned on the electronic call, and I'm following my guide through the wood for about a mine and we're stopping and now he's walking with the caller no no, no, electronic call, sitting on the run and set it up and the cantor. They call it the singing bird starts to sing back. The cantor is the turkey? Is the turkey? No? Not that, I just no cantour. That's interesting it So we get back here in the wood. You know the cantor is in um at a synagogue, No, HANSI Jewish? N No. But don't they like lead? They lead the prayer basically, Yeah, like a cancer comes up and opens the torah? You know what that is? I do you want me to explain? You know what the pentitutia is? I wait a second, just say no, because the thing that hangs on the door that you like the first five books in the Bible? Oh, my gosh, what's good? You know? Okay? Yeah, I think a cantor comes up and opens the torah the scrolls and start singing out of there. Yeah, so it's one that sings. Oh why am I asking, Hans Karin? This is right in your wheelhouse. You're kind of too much of a heathen. Go on the cantor bird once they use that electronic cow to get that bird in issue aided. I'm a mile in the woods, and my guys, I can see him. I can see but look, I can't hear the whistle, but I can see him whistling. And now he's making the hand call, and the bird starts getting closer, and we're walking kind of towards a bird, and about that time he lifts out that sound they make that gobble. We sit and we're liking a little hole in the jungle where a tree it fell at sunshine and heavy grass. I'm sitting down facing this way, and the turkey is so loud. Now it's making my ear drums rattling. Inside are vibrating, so I know he's cloaks. The guy had laid down onto belly all. He's got a cameo shirt. He pulled it up over his head. And by the time my ear drums are rattling, he starts pressing me on my back. And this bird's his hammering. This is hammering, and he's right here. Do me the noith. You can't invitate that. Come come on, it's you. I can't invitate you again. That's pretty good, okay. Asked me to do a noise, asked me to do an impossible notice. I know, but I can't do. I can't do an oscillated turkey, isn't it's a rattle, it's a it's it's a it's a out. It wasn't nothing like that, not like that. It's more prehistoric. So it just bird is Hammond right here and he's pressing on my back more like a machine gun. I'm countical machine gun. Yeah yeah, yeah, but he's right here and this guy's pressing on my back. I'm saying, you want me to shoot? I mean maybe if that turkey had kept coming, he'd have been right on the end of my gun barrel about this time. This just Jaguar roars no oh yeah from way off, and the bird shuts up and I can hear him deaf as I am walking away. Well, I don't speak I don't speak Spanish, you don't speak English. We get back the road and actually interpreted what was what was he saying? What was he doing? He said, from where you were, the turkey was eight feet away. He could he was down under the cover and could see his spurs and see his feet, and he was right there, and he was scared that you weren't gonna be ready. When he stepped out, he'd been right the end of your gun barrel. We didn't get him that day. We came back the next morning and ambushed man that was behind the memory. Yeah, you'll love it. That makes me want to go real bad. When we were kids we played World War two, I feel like we'd go like, right, I can't invitate that. So one of the benefits that haven't extremely um talented engineer named Phil is that Phil will now insert the noise so you can't hear it and you can't do it. And I don't know what it is, but Phil is playing it right now. It's perfect. Uh seduction, lodge sduction. Don't let it happen now. I think. I think on that particular isolated turkey hunt, you really want the tent camp experience and and and the guys with the lodge is no offense. But they'll say, oh, we're only ten miles from the jungle. That's a long wait. And just because it's ten miles to the jungle, it doesn't mean it's not another ten miles in the jungle. Go into the jungle, stay in the tent and and have the experience. It's it's just it's just to be immersed in that culture and that that environment is just monkey swinging through the trees in the afternoons and the maybe the jaguars roaring and walking along, and you see all kinds of Mayan antiquity everywhere. It's just it's just amazing. And I am in uh Cren was saying, you had a near death experience as a kid. We did. I would, I was. I was involved in a home explosion, pretty obvious when I was almost sixteen years old. Had a bird dog that had torn up the back doors and was painting it, cleaning the paint brush with some gasolane back up. I understand what the bird dog do. Scratched toring the doors up, scratched the pone and you you gotta sign to you folks want you to repair. Yeah, it was my dog and uh so so we went and went and painted the painted the doors and uh, gasoline with gasoline and the pilots as a thinner of course, and and uh and and a pilot light ignited the gas teams. And what's so crazy is I can remember it well. I can remember the door opening the garage and my neighbor coming in and my mom was shrieking, and I remember pacing up and down around the driveway waiting on the ambulance to get there. And I can remember the ambulance ride to the hospital and telling my mom to call my bust tables at showing these at the time. I remember, hey, better call Andy and tell him I'm not gonna make it today. And uh, but you were a mess apparently, and uh, but you don't see that. I just remember that. And and I can remember going getting being rolled into the e r and uh, can we go back to the explosion for a second. Sure, it was like it was like it was like to think of it, like, so the room is It's not that it caught the canon fire. It diffumesnited everything around. It was like like a combustion in a card writer phone. That's what it was. My neighbor crossed street thought me and my brother went to fight. He heard me holler and thought we were in a fight. He couldn't hurt my mother hollering, so he come over to break us up. It wasn't that, he well he we're brothers, of course we did, you know, don't all brothers. Yeah, and uh, but anyway, I can remember. I can remember roll into the er, cutting the clothes. I can remember him cutting my clothes off, and I remember his nurse putting a piece of ice in my mouth and how good that tasted. That's really the last coherent thought I had for six months. Six months. Yeah, I was out of it. But you know, um, it's not like uh some television show where they load you up with painkillers and no day, you just tough it out. Man, they date day. But those painkillers and all that stuff slows down growth, and where you aren't burned, they need the skin to cover up where you were. Uh. They flew me down to Galveson, Texas, to a shriner's unit. Um happened on May seventeenth, and I came home started back to school right after Thanksgiving, complete nutter mess. You know, I think, um, to cope with that, humanity has places down beneath consciousness, and I really kind of crawled into a hole. I think. It's like I kind of sort of knew what was going on, but I got into a place to where I needed to be for a long time. It's like, I know, I know from having revisited that burn unit that the lights were always on. It was twenty four hour surveillance and that little unit with whatever it was, a dozen rooms, but I just remember it being dark. You know. It's like I was in a dark room the whole time, and um, maybe a year after it happened. You know, you're sorting through those memories of what was real or what was a dream? What was going on? And I and I told my mother, I said, I just remember I remember, like like this, this hospital room and all the bright lights before it got dark, and people buzzing in and lights going off, and and and and I could and and I could see my body bucking when they put them paddles on it. Oh, you were that gone. And I looked up at her and she was crying. She says, how do you remember that? That's the night they brought you in? You died? Huh? And they they had told they had told my parents I spent six weeks and I see you spent a few weeks, and I see you in Jackson, Mississippi, while they were looking for somewhere to send this guy. And uh it was bad at seventy something percent, and UH hadn't died the night I was brought in eight percent chances revival. And they told my parents should lose his right arm in both his legs if he makes it. What was when that happens? Let's see you had died. What was the what would the autopsy say that you like, um taking a Uh? Was it just reaction to having seen much burned? It was just burned trauma. So it wasn't oregon damage it was it was just it was just burned trauma. I mean, you've got your body, I guess an open wound and it's just just trauma. It's just shocked trauma. And I'm sure, I'm sure it affects other other vital organs. I think if you have heart as easy to affects others other organs. And uh, I'm already still know medical expert. And all I tried to do is get back on my life when it was over. You know holder, you know fifty four your body? Yeah? Have you had a lot of plastic surgery? No? No, no, no reap. I don't know nothing. None of them make it look better. I want a good looking guy to start with. Just uh, I think she I think somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy some odd skin graphs then and a few a few functional, few functional surgeries, uh afterwards, just to get me back on my feet where I could have some mobility. And how was it? And that is, once I had the mobility, I was often going like the intergash your bunny, mhmm, you're married, Oh I am. I've been married for twenty six years dis August three kids started day started dating or nineteen ninety the year we had a little love letter contest going when I would biking across the country. Not really, Yeah, did that change your um career path? I'm guessing the girl of the you know what that does? Um, you know, I think I think it did. Like close to death, yes, I think I don't. I've never had anything like that happened to me. I've never even been like super sick. But UM, I know that when I meet people that had that, they have a better well. I guess I can lead both ways. I have been fortunate to meet a handful of individuals who have had very serious, like near death experiences, and then they wind up living life UM to the absolute fullest, very deliberately, exactly takes it for granted. Very good, very good word choice. And you know, I think it's like like a lot of fifteen and sixteen your old kids, I had no purpose, no sense of purpose in life. I mean, who fifteen year old kid? You got one thing on your mind, and uh, but yeah, you know it, it's after it happened. And that's what man. You know, lots going on with a young man at sixteen years old in terms of personal identity and where you're going and what you're thinking. And uh, I think it did change me. I know, I know having gone through that and having come from that place that I wanted, Um, I wanted to really live. I wanted and that I wanted to. I wanted to get the most of the second chance. And I knew that at that tender age, that that this is a second chance, this is barred time, and there's a lot I wouldn't have done had I died then that I'm announced it's done that, you know, since you don't fought him saying and I killed around, He say what he'd like to introduce stuff. I say, I killed ducks, and I do like shoot ducks. But but but what I think of is, you know, I don't call I shot the species. I don't collect them. I collect experiences. That's what I like. So I think I think it really I think it's probably the most life definding moment of my life. I think it's very definitive and having gone through some trauma like it. Were you already a duck hunter when that happened? Uh? No, I grew I grew up with duck hunters. My grandfather who was my mentor, who was a duck hunter, and um that was at that age. That generation didn't take children hunting. They didn't take five six years old all maybe carried the duck blind on a warm day, and but you weren't hunting, you know. It was his duck camp was a man place. And when you get up to be a thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old, then you started duck hunting. Gonna Right about the time I was getting into that phase, he retired and his health felt it, you know, and uh so I missed that part. I heard stories. I saw that it's cleaned, we ate duck, we did all that kind of stuff. But but I just missed it. And you know, uh getting through through Uh right after high school he died my senior year. Right after high school, I did duck hunt, but it was just jump shooting wood ducks or scouting for deer. And for you flush up some matters. You know they're gonna come back, so you run, gonna get your shot gun and wait on them. Went down to South Texas. I wanted to be a dear biologist and I wanted to be you know, Jim Crall or Harry Jakes. And that's why I went to miss c eb State University. And we show up on his hunter seventh thousand acre ranch, free range, uh, growing trophy whitetail deer. And the funny thing happened, you know, that became a job descript from shooting antlers deer and all this kind of stuff. But every time the wind blew out of the north from Thanksgiving on, the stock tank would fill up with ducks. And that began to that began to kind of reconnect me to my roots. And then when I was in college and got invited to go to Arkansas and duck hunt and flooded timber public, the limit was two mallards and that that was all she wrote. And there look back at it. Just something happened and I loved it. I remember those days and being very young when they had the point system mm hmm, and uh, you weren't allowed like five seven mallards? Like can you remember it well enough to explain the point system? Because it came down to them like game boardings, carrying thermometers around and putting through miters and ducks, anuses and whatnot. I don't know. I don't know about that. They may have because because you could tell this, there was a problem you get into about the sequence and what you shot in which you shot your ducks. How is how you count you had you you got a hundred points. It's a value system based on the the value of those ducks to the federal government, whoever is keeping counting. You go shoot till for ten points, pintails for ten points, mallards for drake for twenty five points. A hand was a hundred. So you know, accidentally shot a hundred hundred off the bat, you were done. So maybe i'll maybe I'll chance that he didn't see me and I didn't do this, but I heard about it, and you know, may maybe I would shoot her first. That's my points because you couldn't go You could go over as long as you didn't start over. Couldn't Yeah, you couldn't shoot. I could shoot three twenty five point birds and then shoot a hunter point bird and I was done. But if I started off with hunter point bird, I'm done. That's what it was, and so they would want to know, this is just the first couple of years I hunted ducks, right, they would want to know at least the pride. Pride wasn't I don't even know what year they did this. We could find out really easily when they switched to the point system. But it might have been that I was so little that I wasn't even hunting, just with my old man. Remember, there was always this fear of like, you couldn't don't risk if you got a hen mallard, don't risk because they'll put a thermometer in there and tell which those ducks have been dead longer? Right, And that's what kept everyone in check. And when I actually started duck hunting there in Arkansas, it was it was right after this adaptive harvest management had started, and it was restricted, restricted management regime, and the limit was two millards, the limit of two millards that year. And I couldn't I say, it's early nineties, didn't marry boy girl or what when you were doing the Texas work where that was so but you weren't for the Forest Service, but you also did Texas white tailway. Yeah, we got all our whack, no I was in college and I co opt down in South Texas, about sixty miles from the Mexican border. Fast ranch man, a couple of Texas old bearings on a hundred seven thousand acres. Is this like down in that? What's that famous county? Honey? Dim, South Webb County? No, we're thinking of, uh the one we know, the famous county we know about Maverick County that I don't know about. This was down around This was dem Webb County area, the brush country, and uh, just just a couple of old guys had had some land and they had hired a biologist who then turned around and hired some of us college kids to co op. Paid a whopping five hundred bucks a month. But it was paradise. It was great, best five hundred bucks a month every made. Man. Those oil guys own a lot of land, own a lot of land. Something about it do you blame? Are they interested in it before they become a oil guys? Or something about being an oil guy makes you want to buy it? Right? I don't know that. I couldn't tell you. I think, do you become an oil guy because you want to buy a ranch? Or does does you get what I'm saying. Yeah, I get what you're saying. I have no idea. If I could have every ranch every bought by oil guy, I'd have a hell of a property. Oh boy would yeah guy some land buying land buyers. Uh, you told me a little bit about this, but I'm still tracking how you got where you are today. That you did some hunt with the outfitter. I hunted with an outfitter. I got out of grad school and made a career in the federal gument. That that was it. I was a forced you went to graduate school. I did forestry State University and uh got an undergraduate wildlife which at the time of forestry because why life management is a biproduct of force of civil culture. Then then got a graduate degree in bottom land hardwood civil culture. Missisippi State University. Landed the job doing a lot of restoration work in the Missisippi Delta with US Fish and Wildlife Service. Was there for a period of time, went to U s d A. It was in that period of time early on that hey, all of a sudden had a job. But when I broke college kid anymore, I could afford to go to Canada. So a couple of buddies and I did and we got just it was real bad. And I know I can tell you the year of nineteen I went up there to hunt the year of n and I know that because that was the first year the you shoot twenty snow geess houl of you fitch for okay, yeah, I'm an old way in I can't tell. But anyway that even though we had a right break, so we we go, we go to saskatchewhen we just a hunt. We booked a hunt because we wanted to go to Canada hunt, you know, myself and a major professor. Um. Then we went to Albert and started hunting with another outfitter and uh, just like paying clients, paying clients, man, yeah, just paying clients. We had jobs and uh and that turned into something's like it's like I came up there and a few more people came, and a few more people came, and I remember the third year I was up there, twenty five clients came to that outfitter out of your word of mouth, out of my word of mouth, and and and he realized you're like the pied paper at duck hunters. That's for what he said when he he he just said, hey, come out here and drink a beer with us. And he comes out and all the staff is sitting there. He says, no ramedy. All these guys come up there and hunt with us from Mississippi and whoever you talk to, and man, they know how to hunt and how to shoot and how to tip the guide. There there put pleasure to be around. My boys are always cutting cards or flipping coins to who could take these guys not The guys are not in their heads. And he says, we wann't you be my booking agent? And I'm like, what that what the Mississippians? I have no idea what that is, but yeah, it sounds good and uh and and so you know, so how do you so? You were you just you were just socializing the fact that you had a good h That's that's all it was, was just you know, showing pictures and having a good time and socializing that we were having a good time. And people started going. We called an avid duck hunter by them back home. People knew, man, this guy likes to hunt a lot. And uh and I guess I guess they found some credibility and that and started going. And you were at that time, you weren't getting like a cut of the action. Now now, I just so when he when he first tells you, we'll go go round up some more guys and bring them up. At that point he's saying it, he said, yeah, let me gonna give you a kickback. Well, let me give you a commission. Let me give you a commission for doing this. And that inspired me, Well, how do I eat more people than I just personally know? Come up with a web page. And I was doing a little bit of waterfoul habitat consultation, little uh controvation easement work at the time of writing Baseline reports on as a side gig. I needed a good idea, needed some way to reach people. So I came up with this idea, get ducks dot com. And at the time it was there was two clicks. There was two clicks click go tow burn to click Carle Ramdy about habitat work. And that was it. Oh, get ducks was like go get ducks or make ducks. Yeah, that was it. That that was it was just man, it was a long time ago, almost twenty years ago. Now, Steve, it's uh, we we've been incorporated and it's two thousand three, and that's a long time ago when uh, you know, I don't, I don't. I'm not trying to ask that how much money made, but like in percentile points back, your first deal was the was the was the That's what they did. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. And now I'll tell you. I tell you I think part of the reason if we if we go go there, uh where to what we're talking about. It it just I want to make his point because I really, for some reason, I've been a quote booking agent for nearly two decades, but I despise that term. And because there's so many uh, I've got so many clients right now that had gotten in a bad way with a quote booking Asian unque. But they heard enough about us. They called and they booked a trip up and we took care of and everything was good, and they said, holy cow, man, I torewn him off to him at y'all. You know, if I don't know what else to call it but a booking agent. But but that's what we are. But I hate a good booking agent. I hate the standard. And I'll tell you a very like I don't even know enough to know this. I don't know that's a shoddy industry. I think it is. I think all guiding, like fishing, hunting, big game is a shoddy because like waterfowler shoddy. I had a guy tell me recently, a very big water fowler. He was, uh, that's his life's passion. He even studied ducks, big water fowler. He was saying that he feels that his segment of the hunting world is the most corrupt segment the hunting world when it comes to just killing and cheating and killing and cheating and wasting and not using your stuff. He's like, it's just he he has a very dim view as a water fowler, a career water fowler, has a very dim view of water fowlers, which I would sup was surprising to me. He's like, the things I see come out of my community are worse than things I see come out of any other community. I hope it's cleaning up. I like to think. I like to think it's cleaning up because I can remember, you know, Argentina is a very big destination for us, and I can remember fifteen years ago. Let's say one of the primary questions that somebody inquiring about Argentina would ask, and I mean one of the top questions, how many ducks do I kill? And all these years later it's one of they might ask, but it's not, it's not it's I think I have seen and perceived, uh, at least with a lot of people that I deal with a change in the hunter's heart. I think, I really think it's it's shifting more from a quantity to a quality. I believe that. I think I think there's um. I think there's probably a lot of issues any time any time. And I wouldn't say just duck hunting. I think that anytime you take up public resource, be at Elkord or waterfowl, and involve money, there there's room for corruptness. I wouldn't I wouldn't hang that on waterfowl though. I think one of the things that leads to is that it's hard. There's a lot of bad days, um and then now and then you get yourself into some situations that are just so good. I've heard it and saying it, it's so good, and you're like a mountain lion that gets into a pasture full of al packas man like you just can't you know, It's like a lot of kids turn it off. I understand, I understand it. But big game hunters, you know, a guy will dry from Mississippi or whatever out to Montana and camp and honey for ten days. If you don't get one, that's honey. But it seems like sometimes guys want to go duck hunting and they just expect and I ought to limit because they're not hunting in their backyard and that that's not reality. You know, ducks don't just fly on command. There's weather in migration and skill set's involved. U did you have like any kind of moral crisis where you said, like this guy comes in and you're young and you got a job, or you know, you're starting out in a as a federal employee. You know you're not making a presumable, you're not making like some obscene salary, and all of a sudden you can uh get a kickback, get a cut for bringing people in. Did you have to decide, like you know what I'm gonna do, I'm only gonna book people for really good trips. Or did you make a mistake or did you just have a moral compass and net's always have served you well? You know, I think that Um, I think it's about I would almost I almost slay a moral compass. I had no compunction about selling hunts or selling consulting services or doing something like that, and uh, none whatsoever. It's it's just it's just that, you know, even today, all these years later, my my first obligation is not to the outfitter. I've got a very good, incredible working relationship with an outfit or anywhere in this world, but he's not my first obligation. The client is. Yeah, I can see that being that's a good way to view it. Man, And I think I work for the client and they they're buttering everybody's bread and you know, uh you like that. I understand that viewpoint. Thank you, and and and it's uh but at the end of the day, it's that's why we're willing to And it's very difficult. Back when it was early, but especially back when I was still working for the federal government and doing this thing part time, it was very difficult to spend money out of my pocket and go on these destinations. And not every destination, you see, it's every destination we've been on. We've been on ten to one ratio. That just didn't work out that just this isn't where, this is not what we're looking for, it's not what we want to be a part of. Uh it it. But it took that commitment because I feel like, I feel like, if you're gonna trust me to go on a duck huntan I recommend that I need a bet speak personally to it. And you know, it's just like a retriever, just like a blue tick hound. Those relationships and that that working relationship builds over time. If you only get you know, I'm saying, okay, so I going home with your camp you Oh yeah, yeah, you're a goodhunting me sell at hunt. That's not near what it's like ten years, twelve years down the road working out outfitter. You know what this outfitter can do? And the good years and the bad years because because ducks don't there's weather, there's different conditions that ducks don't fly, you know. And I always say, man, uh, opening day, everybody's every guy in the world is as as a is a rock star on opening days. It's the tough days. It's those days that the ducks aren't doing what you wanted to do that climbs maybe a little disappointed that that the best of the outfitters dig hard. And what I say about the best waterfowl outfit and I think the same might could be said anywhere in hunting industry. Is the good outfitters when when you're killing half as much, they're working two or three times as hard, not half as much, they're working harder, and that you can build those relationships only over time. Tell me the story about the outfitter that you checked out and it didn't work out. Oh boy, Romania we went to that. That was that was That was just the first one. Yeah, give you an idea of what like the not custom what like what not? Cutting the mustard looks like, well, you know, we went two or three two or three months back and forth and email to Kepp want me to come over and hunt, and we finally got its sword and Steve, I've got up that expectation being clear the expectation. He's like, come check out my lives and and bring yes. But just getting to the initial visit point was, um, I don't know it awkward, tenuous, um, But we were going to Sweden that year. We would gonna swing through Amsterdam and check out Netherlands. Got Netherlands a great hunt. And I've got a group of clients that just have been on some of these regular hunts Argentina, Mexico, wherever, and now they want to go do real rampy ship wishes to say, I want to go somewhere you hadn't even been. Let's just figure it out together. And I like that because now it's not just what I see in this out, there's what the clients these tow and they're you know, they're up for everything. So we made a client show up. I want to make sure I'm serious saying they use you so much. And they get to a point they're like, I want to go with you to check something out. Actually it okay, I want to be on the third, the first, And then you make clear with them that like, well you know what that means, right, Like I haven't checked it out. But they're real hunters, Yeah, I mean, they're the clients that all guys want to hunt with, you know, because they're there for the advention, a good time and actually and that's that's that's that kind of client. So we we we were in We're in Sweden and the next morning we're gonna pick up fly to Romania and um, I get an email in Romanian that is not from my outfitter, and it's saying something I have to go Google translate, which is kind of imperfect, and I gathered that he's not gonna be there, but everything's everything is in place. I don't like this idea. Scott and I talked, we have a drink, we talked more and say let's go check it out. And so we go back and forth and all I can understand in Google translated this is the guy's brother or brother in law or somebody. So we we show up and we decide we're gonna check this guy out. We want to see who are ride looks like we'll just make a good instinct calling like if you if I if I said the word Romanian hit man, what would you think? Because that's exactly who met us. Some guy looks like Yanni. Yeah. Guy meets us and uh, we get to talking and we start indicating him we're we're stopping right here, and he hands us a phone. Now, now, this guy speaking a little broken English is the guy that wrote me the email. I'm the guy's brother in law, and I'm saying we'll wre the outfit I've been talking to for two months and he's like, well, he can't make it. Something's up. I said, he's he in the hospital? No, is he in Is he in prison? No? No, no, he's just at the He's just at the police station. So so long story short, we make way to the to the van and I realized the minute we get out to the van that this is like a legit rental transfer van. I said, okay, I still take a picture of the of the of the license plate to send him my wife and say, I'm getting in this truck right here. If you don't hear from me in twenty four hours, you know, called enter Paul whatever. But we found out he was just a real guy. He he drives us just down the road, introduced his brother, and it was just that was all an adventure. The reason it didn't work out. The food was great, the host was great, the guys were great. The duck hunting was just terrible. It was just terrible. I mean, we shot thirteen ducks in three days. There was no there's just nothing to it. It's just it's just an overshot resource. And and we've been you know, we've looked around in different places like that, and sometimes you run into places that just there's just too much hunting pressure. And you know, in parts of the world like that, there's nobody they hunt ducks. Brown bears there still that I believe they do, but they but they hunt ducks. Their Italian clients hunt ducks hard. There's no bag limit, you know, and and so they just in places they shoot too many for it to sustain quality. What are the ducks they have there, mallards, gad walls, shovelers, grant, Eurasian green wings, Urisian legions, you know a lot of the birds we hunt. One of my favorite places to go right now, it's a little country called Aderbaijan when the Caspian Sea in Turkey and how we how we how we founded it is there were some species kind of in that Eurasian area over there I just wanted to encounter. I kept hearing about the Volga River coming through Delta, through the Vulgar River coming through Russia, and as I began to explore it and talk to some resources over there, it was it was it's a fall hunt October. So even if you go over there, even if you time the ducks coming through right and that part of Russia, just dealing with brown ducks. Go shoot a bird of a lifetime, a red crested pochard. He's brown just because I mean because they haven't gotten there. They have they haven't hit that plumage yet. And uh. And it took me a while for it to kind of go through my knife drord and figure this out. But I finally got the one on one day. Where does the Volga River go? It goes to the Campian Sea. And so we began we began to research that area right there, and we found trying to cut the ducks. Later, where are they going to overwinter? Instead of going here, Let's catch them in the wintering grounds. And and about three or four years ago we began to put together a little tiny country called Azerbaijan, and it was a very amazing hunt. And I bring it up because to me, it's um. On the one hand, you think of, okay, I'm gonna fly from home. It's distance. But in some sometimes the thing I love about this job it's not just distance, it's time. It's almost like I'm stepping into a time machine and going back. Because because these guys are so fundamental duck hunters, you need. They still market hunt over there. A lot of my guides are feeding their families or their they're they're they're communities with the ducks we kill, and they are game on absolute great a duck hunters, the good ones are and they're hunting the delta of the Vulgar River. Well that that would still be in Russia. We're way for the south down in Azerbaijan. In fact, I can put you on the map. We're eight we're the wetlands we've been hunting the past few years. Is eight miles from Iran, Okay, you know. And and one of the one of the wetlands we scattered this year. Standing on this this lake Levy, I can look down and see, uh see the border crossing for I Ran and uh so it's just by coup if you look it up, beautiful. Uh we're hunting about we're hunting four or five hours from there. And what's it looks like where you're at. It looks like it looks strangely like the Mississippi Delta. You know. Uh, my family, I've got family in Greenwood, Mississippi, which is the long staple cotton capital of the world, self proclaimed and pulling into that little village and I can't remember the name of it. But pulling into that little town for the first time, when you come into Greenwood, mississipp Be, every entrance, every little four two lane highway coming into the city, there's a big bulletin board with cotton bowls on it. And going into that little town we're hunting there, there's a big banner over the over the entrance with two cotton bowls. It's to be so far from home, from home, it feels so much like home and just termed of the habitat. Then everything gets different. Similar in latitude. Similar. I'm so close to pulling up me a map of the world and take a look at it, man, because it's it's a I think, I think it's I think it's gonna be a little bit further north of our latitude. However, as are digging in here, man, digging in well. I had to look it up on the map the first time too. To help people out get more rat I'm trying to find that. I'm trying to steer people in from Lavia. So if you go to Turkey, if you go up to the confluence of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, and then shoot a little off over towards the northeast. That's azure Baijan on the Caspian Sea, which is not a salt water body of water, believe not. The Caspian, say, is the largest freshwater body. When you stand on the banks, it's like looking at the Gulf of Mexico. But it's the largest freshwater body on Earth. And that town by Coust is out on the little peninsula. Yeah, and it it It is such a such an incredible cities. Like you walk around town and you walk by a Ferrari dealership in a Lamborghini dealership. We don't have those in Mississippi, you know. Is it remote though, the parts where you hunt. Yeah, it's just a little little little farming communities. We hunt and there's it's like the basin we've been hunt in the past few years. Is I understand it and as I perceive it to be looking at it, it's like a hunter style nacred full capacity agricultural storage redivorce water. It catches a lot of watershed uh seasonally and uh and then they used to irrigate fields around and and you can just tell by the by the by the habitat you can tell by the cover type that it is. It's ephemeral at times, at least parts of it are. And uh, but it's just it's just amazing. And what made me think of talking about that when you start asking about species is you know, one of the most iconic waterfowl species in America the matter duck. But that duck's found everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. That there's ducks and and and every word is you hunt the Pakistan at everybody's jon sweet, there a trophy. They're the price, just like they are here. They're the big duck. Big duck tastes good, lots of them they do. But what do you think, Steve, what do you think the number one favorite duck in the Northern Hemisphere of all the countries I've been to that have them, what do you think that the favorite duck on table is green wing till? Every country I've ever been to that has green winged till, that's the one that's one you want, that's the one they want, And we weed a lot of them over there. But what I'm gonna say about Adabai John, I went there to find red crested pochards, tufted ducks, common shell ducks, uh, Friginus, poachards, things of that nature that you're just not gonna find anywhere else that that I found yet. And when you're saying poetrads, you mean like the family of h that's their common name, bluebills, canvas backs. Their genius would be a thea. But but their poetrage is what their name was. And they were just these really cool spacies. Don't ask me how it's not it's not okay because I know that word to be basically all your good tasting divers. Yeah, well, the diver duck, the poetard family, and uh, but we went over there looking for those specific species red crested potard with with just a real unicorn species for me, and uh but what what what I loved about it was we shot a lot of Eurasian visions. We shot a lot of Eurasian green wing tail. We shot a lot of mallards, gadwalls, Shelterer's pintails, and those mallards just like our mallards, just like ours. Oh, just you call them in I I don't leave home in the Northern Hemisphere or hardly anywhere without a matter call, matter calling, you know, I used it down in Argentina to call in Rosie Bill poetry, just by growling into it like a like a uh, just you growl into it like like it would call for scop or red heads or anything else. And it was so crazy because hunting the first time a hunter and at by John was just amazing. I didn't know what to expect right here in this blind as well built. I'm by myself and my my my little del my bird boy and uh and he's he's good eyes. And uh. The first time I saw those red crested pochards, I didn't see the orange is head. I just I saw the blackbird with the white wing bard that instinctively reminded me of Rosie bill poachers down in Argentina, same genus. And I grab my call and growled into it, and they heard the call and they just right into the decoys. I don't know to this day, I don't know what the adraba John word is for red crested postarge, because every time he sees one, he just he makes the sound a deal and grabbed, grabbing my call and call to him. We're in this tiny little p rod, looking you've got enough room to sit your decoys, your blind bag, you shot gun. He's standing in the back, push poland through the march, through the march. Those boats they use, I think of it like a twelve fourteen foot sized p row blind bag because everything we need in that in that little boat and off we go. And it's silent and it's stealthy, and you hear the ducks and the bird life around you when you go in. And uh, if you push it far enough in the weeds and get it in that can's right. It makes a great shooting platform. But the guides don't speak any English. And I've learned that Google translate. It's good for yes, no hungry. It don't work translating for us having a conversation. And this year one of my one of my clients was saying, man, I've just really disappointed this guy to speak English. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. I go, you're a duck hunter and he's a duck hunter, and you don't need that. You don't. We don't have a conversation like Steve. We just I mean you just you know what to do as a duck hunter. Man. You know, my life is a Crayola box of colors and cultures and creeds and races and religions. But the times I saw them, we're all just duck hunters. And that that's one of the most beautiful things about what we do to me, is just to meet a guy and and form A guy in Agriba John, a guy in Argentina and they're real hunters and this relationship forms and it's but no no spoken word, no common words, just hand signs and sick. We know what to do. And that's just a very rewarding aspect of it all. When you when you're traveling like that, um, how like when you're going into customs and stuff, Oh boy, and they're like, what are you doing? Like I'm here to hunt ducks? No, I mean, I mean no, heck, now what are you doing them? I'm a tourist. I'm a tourist. I mean do they do? They do? Have you done the ducks and countries that have no regulatory system, no hunting licenses? Uh? Not that I'm aware. Not, I'm aware everyone has some form of regulatory but but now, yes, yes they do. But but I do I do say and um, and I've talked about this before, you know, America, Canada, well, the North American model, Australia, New Zealand. There's a lot of parts of the world that are black and white. Man, We in America are blessed with black and white the laws, and they're they're sent out and they're published, and we all know. We all know, if we can read, we know what the laws are. But you get into other parts of the world, it can be gray. It can be gray. You know some of these some of the in fights I've been on. You know, I'm to a point right now. There's places in the world I'd like to go hunting down in Southeast Asia. I know, to go to North Korea, I'm probably gonna have to know somebody pretty high at the food chain to get into North Korea and feel comfortable about it. But I'd love to go. And now, then they got good duck hunt in North Korea. I bet they do. Yeah, I bet I bet they're somewhere. They got some good ducks and got some species we're not gonna find anywhere else, you know. But but you know, it's gotten to the point is I get invice, I get contacted by people. You know, I've I've just got you know, two or three fingers worth. A question I've got to ask, is hunting legal? It's the species's legal? Or is me holding a gun? Believes you can't hold a gun. You can't. You can't hold down. There's countries that that's a real big deal, you know. And and and so I started asking these questions. I've been invited, you know, come to Japan. I got invited to come to Japan. What is there's no legal hunting. I've been invited to go to Turkey. There there's big game hunting. There's not bird hunting. I've been invited to go to the Bahamas. The Cuban whistlers and the white chin pentels are protected. You can't go there, you know, you're talking about the grayness of laws. We would go, uh, spearfish in the Bahamas. My brother goes there for quite a bit, and uh, you can just use a sling. You can't use like a gun. You know. But he did a lot of work because he never could get the straight answer. So he works and works and works to get like the REGs right, Like what are the rules might not be any well, there are, but when you express them to the people down there, they're like there's no such thing as that rule. Right. It's like, dude, I'm telling you that, I'm looking at it right here, like here's the rule. Like, no, man, you fish where you want. Man, it's like it's your rule, dude, Like I'm tell you you cannot on these certain islands. You cannot spear fish within whatever two yards ashore or something like that. And they like almost act like hostile to the idea and like how big how big a spiny libs are supposed to be? Yeah, no, mine, you keep what you want. Nobody nobody's probably enforcing it down there. No, They're like, dude, don't even They're like they don't want to go down that path of talking about there being rules about this ship. You know, you guys gotta borrow a gun everywhere right now, I uh, someplace you have to. You know, Peru has some weird issues where you can't bring guns and we use their's. Uh but as you by John am I saying that right? Yeah, no, no, it usual it's easy bringing a gun into a or by John as it is Canada. Yeah it was. It was just easy bringing firearms into Pakistan. It wasn't your own m or your own gun into Pakistan. I cannot remember. We got the permit for AMO. Where you run into a problem bringing your own AMMO is weight restrictings and airline rules. If you can get a permit for the firearm, you can get a permit for the gammo. But where you run into problems is airlines allow eleven pounds and then they've got restrictings on just how much you grow poundies can be bringing bringing bags anyway, So that that and that gets a little iffy. But bringing guns was that you know, the craziest thing about going part that's why clarify Like the part that I wonderbout with guns is like that some countries. I could just picture countries having not enough demand from international travelers trying to bring in firearms that they ever bothered to set up a system by which it's done, like doing in Mexico. We dude every year. But it's a nightmare. I mean, they put together a system, but it's a very very clumsy system that takes How long do you have to start ahead of time? Honey? Uh? Well yeah, we just turned in our information for next January's hunt and it's it's uh, you know, and on a beercrat in June. Yeah, so in June, laying the groundwork to bring a gun into Mexico in January. I don't know how our client to do it in parts of Mexico where we're flying to hermu Cleo, but if you can give me that information within two weeks, three weeks, our outfitter to get to permit for you. The guy we the guy we go with like, he runs an extremely tight ship. He's very organized. It doesn't like surprises. Nobody likes surprises. When you're traveling hunting, nobody likes surprises. Yeah, speaking of I had a client one time that was one of those clients I wanted to go do real, real stuff. So we were on the Mongolia and uh, as I was talking to him, I said, well, you might just want to meet me over there. I think I'm gonna stop in China and they gotta send me to to our visa. I don't need to get a visa permit through the consulate, and um, I'm gonna stop there and go see the Wall of China, which was abilt to keep the Mongols out of Hina. Hey, I want to go do that too, and we're both fine with farms, so we were talking to uh, the gal over there to arrange this, and we've gone back and forth for months, like you said, to get this farm and all this kind of paperwork good, And um, I call him as I'm going to the airport that I'm fixing to leave to go to the airport, I don't have my farm permit for China. It's just it's just a little temporary passed through permit. And I calm up, say I need his per and this paperwork just to have it. Go. No, no, no, you don't need it. Mary Wayne's gonna meet you with it. I said, yeah, yeah, I get I get that she's gonna be our tour guy and she's gonna have my paperwork. But I I've been I've been through this this show before. I feel comfortable just having it on my person. And we went back and forth, and finally I said, you know, I'm not bored in the fly without my permit. Ding ding ding ding ding. It tumps over the factory seen and as we're coming in through if we were coming in through the temporary visa line. It took for ever three hours and the lady new to ask us do we have any paperwork? And I and I'm showing every piece of paperwork. I've got to include my farm permit, scoes. You're bringing guns, yes, ma'am, that was it. Yououl sent us on through and we get and there's our guns, and there's our luggage, and there's everything else, and I read my tech instead you're supposed to meet Mary Wang and baggage. So we just started proceeding towards the exit, and we've got all our luggage and I'm sitting there just looking at the the guard to whoever he is. The guy at customs looking at the computer monitor of everything coming through X ray. He may have been slump in his chair a little bit. In a minute he saw guns. Boy did he get straight. And he started talking loud, and everybody started talking loud, and I just got off. You know, we've been traveling for thirty hours, and I'm just kind of washing the situation unfold. And somebody comes out of the back, followed by a crowd of people coming out of back, all talking a lout of the nuts coming my way and looking at the picture on the screen, and I tell the guy, women said, I don't know how this is gonna go. So they very politely hurt us up and they're all talking, man, and they carries back this little tiny room's modeling this studio from modeling this little room here, and it's got to like school desk with a steal ball where they could put a still bar across your lap and lock you in. And I'm like, boy, don't sit down, you know what. Every and in the room they've got this little chair like a little jail chair, like a little jail chair. But they didn't ask us to sit it. But the room is getting more and more and more and more people and they're all trying to tapen their shouting. And he's sitting the chair. I'm not saying what I'm saying, but I'm trying to understand that you're doing anything but sitting in the sitting the chair if one were to and they swing a bar over and lock it and you're stuck in your chair they lock it and getting insane and I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm kind of I'm on the verge of cracking a sweat like this. This this ship is going down heal quick because these people are i mean, going at it and I'm I'm trying, but Nelly got my shotgun. We've got a rifle, uh, just a little rim fire rifle. And I'm trying to get over here to get my hands on my permit. It's like, see they got the gun case opening. Boy, they're getting agitated and I'm trying to get my permit. And I mean it's like they're breaking into kung fu dances and everything. You know, here's a guy with here's goying their country with a firearm, trying to get out of stuff. And finally I just make a dash. I grabbed my paperwork. I fairly open. I have it to the guy to yelling the loudest and and and he says something loud and it's just hush falls over the room and somebody comes up and what do you know? They speaking minutes ago? Do you have a translator? I go, yess or he said, call her on the phone. So I called Mary Waane and she comes back there. In the minute she walks in. It all starts again, and then everything gets calm, and she says, everything's fine. The lady that lets you in through the send me two hours. She was supposed to notify the police and notify t s A and she did not have said so what now, I said. He said, oh, she's going to elder she's fired. I said, no, I mean what about us? And he said, oh, we're gonna be here. We're gonna be here a while, so settling. You know, when we're there for four hours, we went up one of the time we landed in Beijing with those firearms. Over that, over that one misunderstanding until the time we exited to go to go to the hotel with nine or ten hours, and I asked the client, how you like this? Like this part of the job. So then you roll out into the streets of Beijing and you got a semi auto shotgun. Oh heck no, you leave them at the airport, and we we gave them. We put those in police custody. They locked them up under lock and came we signed for him. Now we're in the streets of Beijing. And you know, I was told you before going to China that I love Chinese food. I would have said, they know it, eg food, young and spring rolls. Night. I've been to China. I don't like. I like, I like Pee King Duck, like American Chinese. I must I do not like the real thing. I found out because of what. I don't know. I know, if we go to some restaurant and are he just clambers on and on and on and on about the about the pork something at this particular restaurant. So we all open it would say, both of us and her ordered this this dish, and I take a bite, taste it kind of like taste it kind of like the little brown stink bait smelled all fermented stuff something, and I drink a little cocolda and try it again. I'm like, boy, I don't like this. I found that and everything I tried over there was just but the pee king duck. I lived on peeking duck. We found a restaurant with peeking duck and we had it duck every night. Because you like ducks. I do like duck. And if wild duck tasted as good probably or had as much fat content as peeking duck, they like to be extinct. You know what you're saying that everybody go, you got like some of the same ducks keep popping up, like different versions of the same ducks. Do you ducks act like ducks? I mean it's like, yeah, people, the hunt ducks over the world over. The decoy spread deco, spread blind calls jeck old somewhere, and they don't hunt ducks where they have no that. They have a completely different way they hunt ducks. And you have to be like, you know what works good, you know, is to put out decoys and build a blind. Now it it's kind of the way the games played is with decoys. So people figure that out the world over. That's that's the way they figure out the world over. But I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you as somebody that's traveled the sane and hunted around the world. On the one hand, I believe that American hunters are the most passionate, the most dedicated. We have elevated every aspect of duck hunting. The art form, the camo, the guns, the m everything, everything is state of the line, technological art. And you really don't need that shoot a duck. You really don't need some of that shoot a duck. And I go back to at everybody on the fundamentals where they're hunting not with us, but for themselves to feed their family. They're literally hunting pop bottles over soda bottles, putting painted up black paint or I found I found the spread, this year, there was nothing but old rocks. Bought a different bottle with wool socks over them and just put out and they put them out in the right place and the right formation and hunt them at the right times, and they killed ducks and feed their families and they're they're, they're they're just very very traditional hunters. It's like honey, way back in time, and and that I really uh and it's like, uh, oh is you know, I've got a two year old son, my oldest, twenty year old son, my youngest. But they they're at a totally different stage of the game and I can remember, you know, they're they're really really at a different a different motivation at that age than I am at an older age now. And uh, to me, a lot of clients or a lot of duck hunters, the merit or the breakover point of whatever, the the metric of a good hunt and a lot of trigger pools. And to me, the more I get into it's like, the fewer trigger pools, if the limit is seven ducks out here in Montana, closer and get shooting seven times and killing no seven green heads, the better. That's how it did to make you know, so I'm slaying it and which which brings up a good point that duck hunting is so subjective. It's a very subjective expirit The four of us go jump in a duck line and we all want maybe something a little bit different out of it. Do you uh do you find that, like motivations the hunt are similar everywhere you go, Like meaning, I was struck at the cold times that I've been around, you know, you know, hunting with people from very different cultures and far away places where there's there's a palpable excitement, yeah, fishing whatever, like people get excited. Yeah, you know when it's good, it's good and people like it and there's like an enthusiast and someone catches a big one. That's as like you know, yeah, oh yeah, do you see that all? You always see that, like here comes a flight of ducks and people are like because an electric feeling yeah yeah, yeah, Especially when you're hunting with a crowd of folks, it's just you feel like, you know, how everybody's sitting there, were all talking and socializing. At the one time you really need to be still in a duck blind is when there's ducks flying and we're sitting here talking having this conversation that sure's ducks, and everybody starts breakdance and looking for the gun to getting ready. Yeah, this is excitement and that it's just it's an energy and I love it. It's it's just there's an energy that right there. Everybody's proud. I seem my think with older duck hunters, more way more experienced duck hunters and stuff like that, it settles into I'm quiet proud act say that you know, uh over and adverybody jo on this year and this this is this is the kind of hunt I like, just personally speaking, is when when the ducks are difficult, there aren't aren't the gang Busters full of ducks that you're expecting, and you're in a blind by yourself and this year an aderbay joan and um, maybe we're shooting a dozen fifteen birds apiece. But it took utter focus. It took absolutely keeping your head in the game the entire time, an ideal. He went back fifth or sixty yards from where I was hitting in this little blind by myself, and he would just he would whistle loud, I'm looking I'm looking down when and I'm as focused as I can humanly be. And when three ducks come in, it's not just okay's three ducks, let me shoot wanted how do you? How do you make the play to kill them? All? You're focusing you. I mean, the numbers are tunnling the whole time. These telling the first pass, not on a second pass. Now they're coming in. Now I'm gonna run the table on them. And that it's just that that focus. I'm slaying. He's playing a real what I call a real clean game. Call the ducks, get him in close, make ethical shots, knock them down, and and just really go all in. It's like Steve back when I was an archer. Let's say fly fish, because watching some guys on the river fly fish the other day, you know, and what I think about it is how fly feel. And it's really not about getting grease hot and eating. It's it's an art. It's a it's a ritual, it's a it's a process. And my right, I mean, those guys are really getting into it. Why else what you got here and whipped the water forever, You're not gonna eat a big dinner. But but seriously, it's it's it's something about that that hypnotic thing and that that art form and getting better and laying that, laying that fly better. And when when I did bow hunt way back in college in the days, but well, no compound bow it was it was never about uh whacking and stack as me and I could. I mean, it's like every time I drew back the dozen deer I shot in my life, every time I drew back that string increased a smile because I owned that deer. I played that game. He was right here, And it's just a matter of letting the air going white. And duck comes like that too, you know, And I know it to a lot of people, duck comes just a bunch of buddies out there just letting loose as much Amma as possible. But I think there's a ritual to it, you know, from from the decoys and the placement and getting the birds in and calling to him and speaking their language and having that negotiation to coax them into that range that you own them, and that there's something pure about that. To me, there's a big, big portion of my enjoyment from duck hunting that comes from and I'm not gonna put some arbitrary percentage on it but um anticipation, because it is just I mean everything from come June, like washing off my decoys from last year and like scrubbing them down and making them look nice, whether you know, not shiny, but nice, you know what I mean. Two being in that holding pattern and waiting is it the second past or the third pass? Is it the first? Am I am I screwing up by not going on the first? You know? That's the that's that those those split second moments of joy are instrumental in my satisfaction with the sport. That's that's what keep That's what keep that energy and that enthusiasm and that vibration coming on. You're watching that burden. I mean, like down the deep South where we hunt a lot of gad walls. Gad walls kind of work in in reverse order. Their core screw is getting further away. You better get him on the first path you be can because the second, third, and fourth path you're gonna be further away. They've talked theirselves, they've thought themselves out of coming in, you know, but sometimes they do and you and you're you're you're trying to find which duck do I watch? Which duck is bringing the flock in and focused on them and just but that's what keeps you great. So what if you don't killed every duck, that's okay? Do you ever uh, presumably you get a lot of clients you were wanting to take off lists. Yeah, what's your what's your relationship to that motivation? I mean, you gotta you know, you're in business. You gotta take the money. But do you ever feel like it's a like the motivations aren't quite quite what you wish they were. Someone just ticking off numbers now, you know, in this day and age and honey, because this is coming from a guy who just saying, I want to get a oscillated, oscillateated so I can become a you know the world? Why why somebody hunt? And for that matter, how somebody hunts? You know? The uh kicked off the episode talking about honey with hounds. There's people that are posed to it. There are peers that don't think we should hunt with hounds. I disagree. I think we should hunt. And so why why somebody hunter? How somebody hunts, or what motivates somebody into different parts of the world is really kind of thera bit as long as it's legal and ethical, let's go for it. But you know that that whole species things. Just like on the one hand, I did kind of I did kind of find myself wanting to shoot a different duck than I shot hunt a different bird. Because you're asking about duck hunting and duck hunting styles. You know, all of hunting, all the fundamentals of duck hunting is predicated kind of on hunting mallards, but not all ducks from hollards. Something they don't play by the matter of rule book. And then you have to figure it out. You have to adapt from your rule and figure out something a little bit different. Hunting divers is different than hunting birds that coming high, which is different than hunting geese, which is different than hunting some other species. Okay, and and so you but it's still still the fundamental game. But every species you start start having their they're different little rules. There's a lot of guys that want to collect as many duck species as they can. And uh, I see a lot of young guys now, you know, because there there's people out there that's they're chasing the North American slam. I don't believe it's forty one. I believe it's closer to sixty, probably around mid fifties, high fifties and forty one. But whatever you're chasing, chase it. Go I need to add up where I'm at now, Yeah, go for it. The chase never ends. But but seriously, uh, what we found out is is really and truly as we began to meet that kind of hunter that wanted to chase off the beaten path into different spaces, that that really kind of drove us. It wasn't that kind of the car before the horse, who's driving? Who here the clients coming in and having those conversations, what do you know about shooting bar headed geese? Well, I need to find a bar headed goose. You know what's led us to Mongolia? Now, I'll tell you I think that. Um, I think most collectors that I know, I think at some point in the line they're they're gonna they're gonna realize they're really not collecting a bird or a trophy or an animal. They're collecting the experiences. And no, no, that's just placeholders for that experience. I agree with that definitely. What uh so, I can't remember it was a hundred and eighty eight countries or something on the planet. I don't know, sub two hundred countries. How many countries have you hunting ducks in Morena dozen? Oh morna does not say twenty five or thirty thirty maybe more maybe thirty five? What? Uh? Who's got it right and wrong? Like like who's paying attention to ducks in a way that they're playing the long game? So they got ducks in a hundred years? A really? I think? I think so, you know, because because nowhere else on Earth that I'm aware, Uh, Australia is trying, and Australian doing a great job. But but nowhere else on the world in the world do we have um crunch the numbers like they do here. Do the surveys, do the breeding count through the pine counts? I mean America trying and maybe maybe it could be said that hardly anywhere else in the world do we have the pressure, the hunting pressure for ducks. And it's not just not maybe just the total number of people hunting. But you know, I think of my granddad who got me into this thing. Maybe a hundred a dozen days a year maybe, man, how many people as hunting twelve days a year? And now a lot of guys are hunting way more than that hunting going to Canada. Going to Kanada's going to miss going out about going where you know, chasing these duck think there's just passionates this obsession and when we're not only we're not only hunting them harder, but we're doing it with that that elevated art form worth of equipment that makes us more efficient hunters. So I would like to see, uh, i'd like I really do believe that here in the US we're playing the long game as best we can. We've got a lot of science and a lot of money behind the research and genetics and management and harvest. I don't see anybody else really doing it the advantage they have in places like Argentina, they've got just a miniscule demand for for hunting, the miniscule hunting pressure. I should say, you feel that we're making any big mistakes as a country round duck management. No, I don't. I would, I would um I believe the numbers i'd I'd like to see. No, I don't believe we're making any mistakes. How many clients do you have that run around tony? Ducks don't taste good a lot? How how many times do you hear that? It's just's such a widely held you know, and I hate that. I know, Steve, I saw you ever watch Andy Griffith, I do what you're talking about. There was an episode watch you know Don knights Man. Oh yeah, well I love him only getting out go out with one bullet. There was an episode, uh Opie with friends with somebody that was apparently wealthy and um he came over to play with Opie and Aunt b was putting on airs and Andy come in and goes, is that goose and to put on airs? Into impressed this this young rich kids she had cooked at Christmas goose. I'm thinking, man, that one. But back in the sixties and that was a big and that was regarded as like an opulent Well it's in in Christmas Carol and Christmas Carol exact Dickens like like when he wakes up and he's like in a better mood after the goals of past present future comes and sees him. He wakes up and sends the kid down to go get the goose. Now you'd be like, I don't know, tell you'd send him to get now? And yeah, well that's what we do. But I really do. I like, I like duck, and I wish That's one thing that excites me about y'all's program is y'all get people excited about eating and how to cook and how to prepare and how to do all this stuff with these birds. And you know, I think it's become a lost ark. That's that's really truely why I think more waterfowl aren't eating it. It's just a lost ark. People don't know what to do with it. If you ever had bad duck one time, that's gonna laugh after while I think that. I mean, I've had a lot of bad duck. But then it's not that hard. It's like pretty easy. Well, no, it took a long time, but once you just once you learn how to cook and you cook it really well for a decade or whatever, it just seems simple because you learned like a couple of basic rules, and then it's really good. And then you get annoyed with people who don't see that it's good, and you kind of forget the fact that you ate a lot of shitty duck over the years. Now, I just know, I like know what to do. I like, I know I can look at it. I know what kind of duck it is. I know what you can get away with that duck. I cooked that duck. It's always good. And now I'm like, people are so stupid. But I'm like, well wait a minute, because I've cooked some bad meaning typically like grossly overcooked. Yeah, that's the biggest stake is overcooking and unless you're over cooking it in the right way when it becomes okay, but not overcooking the wrong way. And you know, one of my favorite recipes, and I would tell everybody how many times you've heard, uh, cream cheese, halapeno wrapper, bacon, you probably put a dog turd. Like any tastes all right, you know, but but it gets old. And it's like, I'll tell you a simple recipe for cooking duck, and I think any would go over big time is uh duck bread. If you're gonna breast the duck, go ahead and breast the duck. Uh soaking an olive oil with copious amounts of cavender seasoning and seared on cavendars, just like a Greek seasoning that and just just hit it hit a couple of minutes when he has like some green lettering green and red letter on a white yeah. Yeah, and it's just Cavender's Greek seasoning and it's just it's but it's rare, you know. One of my favorite ways to really get silvel. Yeah. I just put it on the table and the ziplock bag with olive oil and and that, uh, that seasoning in there. And I think that I think something about the oil helps it penetrate that meat, you know. And um, but it's just great. It's just it's good and it's simple and it's easy. Just don't overcook it. Cook it rare. And I was telling somebody one of my favorite, uh, one of my favorite ways cook duck is chicken fried. I mean that if you want to get rid of a bunch of duck quick chicken fried, simple walk me through that breast. Take take your breast portions. Tend to rise it, beat it with a hammer. I used the back of yeah, or the back of a knife boom. Tend to ride it. Soak it in milk, uh, season at dredging and flour hot oil and uh. And I like to make a couple of dipping sauces. My favorite of what we call Jezebel sauce. I got it from somebody over in Arkansas, but it's vaguely Remember that band Jean Loves Jezebel. No, they had a song Jellrah, but no just could anyway, Jezebel sauce of dipping sauce had uh equal parts of orange marmalade, apple jelly and really good course ground horse radish. And say that against I got a brand new horse radish patch that is going insane. Equal parts equal parts of horse radish, orange marmalad, horse radish. I bite out of a job prepared horse radder prepared, but it's gotta be the good. Someone one of our guys that works with us buyer and he made me some prepared horse radish, and he gave me the roots and I planted them. And man, that stuff is like a jungle already. That's pretty cold, but but it's a very prolific plant. I'd like to have something that's just the way to get rid of a lot of duck quick. I think we owe it to the racehorse to learn how to cook one good dish anyway, don't you? Yeah, But tell me one more time, Mancuse I'm gonna hung up on the horse radish. So prepared horse radish, marmalade, orange marmalade, apple jelly. And so'll take take the jar to take the jellies and put them in your microwave, just to get them the word. They're liquefied enough if you can mix them. Yeah, put in your horse rad and shake it up. Maybe put in a big, big dollop of yellow mustard. Is this apple jelly or apple butter apple jelly? Not apple, but the yellow stuff apple jelly? And then do what with that again? Liquefied? Get it in the microwave. Get it one where you mix it, orange marmalade, same things you make him. Put him in a jar, put your horse radish and shake it up, and the next day's gonna be even better. That's when you're dipping sauce. You're not soaking the duck in there. Oh, no way soaked du So if you're gonna chicken fried ducks, soak them in meal. Oh that's your dipper sauce for chicken. Okay, I thought I thought that you were laying out a home that's good on anything, that dipping sauce would be good on anything. Yeah, ye should give you some of my roots. Man, sounds good, not quite yet. We're our garden is not ready for to accept plants right now. But we'll just why. I just don't have a garden ready to plan it. You've had a garden for years, Yeah, but it's every year he keeps moving and it's just not right. So this year we actually your garden got up moved. We don't have you're trying to find. Yeah, and so this year we're actually we're back in there with the miniacs and you're going it'll be ready, You're going next level. Yeah. But I brined and smoked a bunch of ducks the other day, and man, did those come out good? I had. At first, I did one hole next to a pheasant, and that was so good I decided to do more. So I pulled out. I had some what do they call it when we do it with the breasts and the thigh and the laid together airplane or something like that. Oh boy, I called the thing I stole from the University of Montana Wild Game. There's a name. If you get a chicken that way. No, okay, anyways, it doesn't matter. Um. And I had some mallard breasts um. And then there was two who's I don't know, god wall or something other ringnecks, maybe something random that had just you know come into the you know, spread that I ended up with at home. And there was two scolar breasts with the skin on. Where'd you get scolds North Carolina a couple of years ago? So they've been in my freezer for a while and they all got the same treatment. Brind throw on the smoker and the mallards are just eating just so good, just fantastic, you know. I gave him a little uh macedon like dust and masodon seasoning on there, and I get to the scolder and man, I'm feeling it and I'm like, man, it's just like it's like squishy or like softer, even though I cooked in the same amount of time. I cut it open and it's just beautiful like mid rare inside, but just tender and that nice that like there's like a nice fat cap and then the skins all crispy from the because I did a really hot scot fat scot fat, and I mean just touching the two, you'd be like, man, I'd rather eat that scolder because you can just tell you how you can touch me there? Man, Well, yeah, I don't think it wasn't just the skin. It was kind of like that bear that you had that one time that when you brian and smoked and it tasted like you're eating smoked fish. Same thing with that scolder. I mean, it just tasted like a fish. Um. I wasn't there, that's all. And I'm know Dr Duck, but I can tell you that a lot of that fish was laid up in that skin. And if you'd have been here, if you hadn't been playing hookie, you'd heard from the meat scientist about why that is, why that fishiness is in that fat, and what fat does and how it functions. But you don't know. I don't know. I haven't listened to that podcast, so cook, but yeah, tell me tell me. I'm asking. I'm asking. I'm not a scord expert, but if I had to like come and cook a scorterer, um, get the fan out. Oh, I would get the skin off there, any of those fish eating ducks, I'll get the skin off. Hansi says he. Uh, grant because I ran this by Hansi earlier two and uh, HANSI want you tell them what you told me. Oh, I tried to avoid smoking diving ducks. I feel like it just it makes it if it's already fishy to begin with, it's just gonna like enhance that. I feel like it just makes the smoke fishiness. Yeah, it just makes it like that much more nasty bad. I don't know. I like to skin. I like my diver ducks, like skin them, you know, putting into I love making meatballs out of diver ducks. I mean it's like, you know, mixed with some pork fat. You know, it's like a little guilty, but I think it goes great. We used to take some divers, the divers aren't that great and skin you know, pull the skin off them, cut them into very sit thin strips and put like for heat of seasoning on them. Yeah, do it likely like serum like that, and then you got your peppers and onions, sal su. It's just it's just it's just at that point, it's just stuff to eat. Yeah, it's just like it stuff. It's good, and you're like glad you got them. It's better buying some stupid junk from a grocery store. Yeah. Yeah, I just never look down at him. I'm not cheating scutters anymore. What about have you ever had you ever used waterfowl for hamburger? But making a burger you've had venison and baking burger. No, man, I've never made a duck burger. That's a good idea, is great? I was great, yeah, and and and get the bacon ends. So you're making like a baking burger. Put some cheese in there. Really always good. Absolutely, I'll do that absolutely any duck was not say ducks maybe, but but the other ducks. Yeah, uh you can. So you work all over the world. We've been talking about that, but I want to uh hit on something real quickness for people who might become interesting wanting to deal with you a little bit and associate with you. Is uh, you do you book? You you help people book trips here here in the US. You know, in the United States here what we do, Steve is uh. The short answers yes and no, because because what we do is with long term relationships, we just don't have the the time to book your hunt to say, Oklahoma, you know what I'm playing. And and really, truly that really does crowd me as a middleman. That really makes me kind of pushes my middleman boundaries. If you're calling me a book a trip to Oklahoma. But I've been to Oklahoma and some of these states on our US hunt List we call it Canada and the United States, and I've been to these guys just like I've been elsewhere, and I know they're gonna do what they say they're gonna do. No guarantee of duck limits every day, but they're gonna do what they say they're gonna do. And we put you in touch with them on our website, their name, their contact information. I really feel like you don't play anything out of that now. We just we we we some people can vet. Like if people hear you and they're like, oh, you know, I got a good thing about that guy. They and they want to vet a duck trip, they can call you and you'll give your two cents on what your experience or what the rumor is. That's right. We've got We've got the descriptions written up at us hunt List, just like we do it get ducks dot com. But still it's a website, US hunt less US hunt List, it's just a part of get ducks dot com. So people can get there by going to get ducks dot com right click on US hunt list and them and go take a look at it and see a huntry light and do that question about call me in bock me whatever like that. You know, we just look at it like a value added service and in a way of working too, I kind of look at like a gateway drugs. You know. You think the kids sitting out here in um middle of nowhere. Uh he shot his mallards and his pin tels and his gad walls or his wood ducks or whatever, and they come to us. It's like I want to I want to collect. I want to go do some stuff. Go to New England and you can get the scolders, the iters, the long tails, go knock some real exotic stuff off. And now they're heading down that slippery path. And uh, I want to collect and and and they should be collecting no different experiences and um. But yeah, so we we work with US hunters and Canadian US outfitters and Canadian outfitters just to put you together. What I want to see is if you want to go to a different place in the US or Canada, I want to put you in touch with them. Get in touch with them quickly, because it is a very subjection. Why are you going to Canada. What do you want to shoot in Oklahoma? Why are you going to New England? Do you want to shoot ee? If you want to shoot Scots, start working with that outfit or to get that get that thing right. You know, we start talking about foreign countries firearms and hunting, ligages and permits and language barriers and money wires and stuff like that. Now I'm coming in and bringing a whole whole different ball game to that that equation, then I would be just standing yet Oklahoma. Yeah, I'm with you. I got one follow up question. Have you have you hunted a duck in Latvia or any of the ball Baltic states? I have not yet. You haven't hounded Lavia and have not? I have not yet? Neither is your honest? Have not me? And you don't want to go there and hunt so bad? I'll put something together. Let's go, Oh can you can you work whatever magic you work around the world, but working Lavia for us? Well, here's deals. Yn't has been kicking it around for quite some time. But you know he he can't make it like a full time job is East East scouting Lavia? I feel like I just can't get a real solid commitment out of you as the host of the show that we're like, we're gonna do it because I need to have it laid out like you have it laid out. All right, We'll keep working at Yeah, do in just in a spare moment, run the get ducks dot Com process on lava will. I need to get over that part of the world anyway. It's bigger than just roam money that part of the world. I need to get over that part of the world. Take a little show me your ring, yehnie, it's Lavian power ring. It's called ance. Very good. Yeah, I got another question. Actually, all that's cool. I'm just curious about like mouth calling, boy, And I mean I know that there's like there's places that it's still practiced, right, I mean in the United States, not like not even going out of the borders, but explain what it is calling ducks and geese with your mouth like exactly, Like I'm gonna be that like an example of it, but like I want to I'm curious, like what your experience has been with that, you know, like what I know, uh boy, HOIDI you know, the first time I ever saw a mouth calling was in Tennessee on real foot Lake this many years ago, oh many years ago. And there they use these calls over there to the typical traditional real foot Lake called it has got a metal read and it's a real high pitch, you know. And when old ducks start getting in closed, getting in close, they start anchoring them, start shouting that that's how they finished those birds. It's very traditional, real foot Lake style. Cool. And I've seen the same thing in Netherlands where they'll they'll ank them. They don't, they don't call it anching. They just start anching. And were you saying this? That means that with their voices, they're saying the word and calling exactly there, just loud. And I've seen you take it to a whole another level now and here and here in the US. I know that the guys that are hunting swans, you swan, they're probably gonna call them with their mouth, especially especially the tun trunch swans. They're gonna call them with their mouth. I can't do that call, No, I can't do that. But you go over, you go over, you go over to uh Aderbaijan. Again, those guys call everything. Now, they'll use electronic calls at time, but it's not enough they're they're subsidizing it with their own call. In fact, we posted somewhere on our Instagram, we posted one of the one of the duck guys over there. They'll let you hear the electronic call faintly in the background, but he's running through all the species with his mouth and it's it's unbelievable, you know. So when you come back from Answerbayan, you know, you are hunting all over the world. Is there like a is there a any kind of specialness that comes with hunting where you first started? Yeah, I think I know what you're asking. And it's like the more you hunt, the more you see in the different stuff you do. It's like it's like this this uh, this thing for hunting it home, you know. It's it's like it's like it's so strange and different from home, but then at the same time, it's so much like home, and and it just it really, uh, it really gives me a fidelity for home hunting, just like I did traditionally at home. I think that's what you're asking. How how we hunt ducks here? It is way different than how they hunt ducks everywhere else, And I you can't famous how hunt those ostility turkeys. The way we started. You can't paint yourself in a corner. The world is a lot bigger than our backyards. I've shot ducks, uh. For example, here we are in Montana. I know y'all shoot water fowl up here, but just think about it, man, We're in the mountains, water runs downhill, and I feel like I spend most of my life in the lowest line places on our shooting ducks. But I have shot a pair of andy and geese sixteen thousand feet in Peru. Absolutely absolutely, I've shot him. I've shot him on the Barren Sea in January. I've shot him in the timber in this I've shot him at night by light. I've shot him at night by by moonlight, of shot him with naked eyes. It's a very You know how people hunt around the world, It's very different. One of the craziest things was in Russia. We were shooting eighters on the White Sea and they Russia has no basis, no concept for duck honey, none zil it killed it up. I said that very practical Russian hunt. So we're gonna go out of ider honey. And I brought him decoys. No, no, no, we don't need those. It was it was like a James Bond movie. We're in a metal speed boat. He's going as fast as you can and we're beside the iders and I've got my legs out on the boat so I don't fly out when we hit a wave and I'm holding on one arm or shooting with the other. You're throwing dynamite and no, no, it was just it was just you know, right by the time you think you've done it all, somebody shows, you know, Waite a shooter duck, and you know, I like, I like a spirit to the writer Ian Fraser, he told me a really good story. He spent years in Siberia writing a book about Siberia, and he just was telling me about he finally gets an invite to go out with these guys to hunt. They we want some kind of seal or seiland. I can't hear what they're going for, but they're like Siberian anyway, I can't what do they call that. There's a different name for the like Eskimo. Eskimo were Intuit people who live in Siberia. I believe they might have a different word. Either way, He's with them and they go out and they have a bullet. There's a bullet and they go on the most like hellacious motor boat ride, you know, going through the seas. They get there, they're just getting tossed around by waves. He's seasick the whole time. The whole time, there's like seals out in front of them, but they can't shoot because they got like a bullet and the event should get it where a guy gets just the right shot and shoots the bullet and kills the thing. And they started heading back and he's getting more seasick and he's soaking wet. He's like, I don't know how these people can, like how can they do this? Like how can they even stand this kind of thing? And he says, high up he sees this duck, Like this duck crosses over the boat and it starts losing altitude and drops down into this distant bay and he said, that boat turns to that D'rectly's like no. They went and spent the rest of the evening looking for a duck. I like to jump shoot ducks, pass shoot ducks, decoy ducks. But I found it with turkeys, man, Like I want to hunt turkeys in like leaning against a tree, trying to call a turkey like a called in turkey means a lot more to me right alone, own pressured called in turkey means a lot more to me than than bushwhacking a turkey, or ambush and the turkey, or getting turkeys that just run across the fields they have never seen a decoy in your life, and then they stand there for twenty minutes. Like I like that turkey that comes just in after like an excruciating amount of time and he doesn't want to do it and eventually does it. I like that. But a lot of stuff, I just take it as you get it. I agree, Yeah, No, I mean it's that, it's that relationship. You feel like you earned it that way. But sometimes birch just play different rules, you know. Oh yeah, I'll take a wallet. I mean, short of throwing dynamite in the water, I'll take the wall out. You know you're coming on bait. That's great, coming on bobers. I'll take it. You know. It's like I don't need it. I don't need it to be is. I don't need it to be that vertical jig. You know, I'll just take it. I unabashedly prefer hunting ducks over water. That's I don't know what it is, like decoys like but something about like a cornfield, cornfield alfalfa. I just it doesn't it doesn't get me in the same spot. I don't know. I don't know what that is. I agree, all right, Ramsey Russell, danks so much for coming in. How tell us how I know we talked a hundred times about get ducks dot com. But how how else can people find you? Check us out on social media at Ramsey Russell Get ducks. That's a great way to keep up spatially when the world's turning and we're trapping, to keep up with where we're at and what we're doing. Just all one word, Ramsey Russell. Get no like tons on a underscore s underscore s underscore, don't feed everybody get ducks and you're on Instagram? Whatnot? Actually all right, so go check them out on Instagram. Ramsey Russell, Get ducks, the great Ramsey Russell, thanks cunning. We we we came in with applause. We're gonna go out with an applause. Thank you all. I'm I'm I'm honored to be here. Thank you all very much. That's fun.