Ep. 468: Bugling for Bulls and a Decoy Genius

This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to podcast, you can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for ELP. First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light dot com. F I R S T L I T E dot com. All Right,

I'm glad to be here. I thanks so much for.

Guy knows a lot about hunting.

He knows a lot about hunting.

Yeah, every time I talk to him, I've learned something new that I've never learned in the whatever thirty one almost thirty two years i've.

Been Yeah, he's an artist. Yeah, an artist, decoy designer, built a great business. Dave Smith Decoy's likes.

To hunt comfortably.

Likes to hunt comfortably, self deprecating, funny, well more could you ask? You're already married though? Right?

Well, I mean, I'm just jealous of all you guys that can actually move around the mountains and everything like that and are physically fit and everything. So I just hunt the way that I have to. And also I've noticed that I'm old. I'm like easily the oldest person in this entire organization.

Oh yeah, you might have beat Brody.

Whoever he is, I'd call him a kid.

How old you?

I just turned sixty.

Yeah, you might be the oldest person.

That's right. So you guys, I expect to be treated as such exactly.

We also got Jason Phelps joined to remotely. He's gonna tell you with with the Elk bugle coming up, Elk's Heason't coming up, Elk Archie Phelps is going to share with you our esteemed listeners. Three I I asked him three things that people are to keep in mind, and he's going to share three things that people ought to keep in mind. We got a chaster here, Uncle Chastey seth Krin's wearing her headphones today. Mm hmm, fills over

Me too.

Listen, We're re kicking off the auction House of Oddities, which comes and goes, as you know. But holy smokes, the lineup this year? So, uh, when when's it start? Krinn this week?

Oh it does this week?

How's that possible? Oh? Yeah, this week? I'm with you. We have I'm holding a couple lels for one of thing I'm not holding. I don't know if Sunday it might wind up on the auctionsvanities? Is we finally after forever? So we bought a punt gun at an antique auction for way more money than I'd care to admit. But the barrel, I'm only holding the action. The barrel takes a couple of people to hold. Yeah, if you watch it on if you're listening on YouTube, you can see what I'm talking about.

You.

It takes two people to pick the barrel up. It's a one hundred pound barrel. Yeah, it's seven feet it's seven feet long.

Is there going to be a raffle for who gets to hold the barrel when we shoot it?

No, because I think the liability You don't hold the barrel when you shoot.

Yeah, two people don't hold it.

The way a punt gun works. You had a little vessel. You had a little boat picture like a little canoe that just basically accommodates the punt gun. It's well, no, it's on a frame and it's on a slide. It's on a frame. You don't move the punt gun, you move the boat. It's on a sliding block filled with bags of sand. Or they would use sea oats to absorb some of the recoil because that boat when you

Let made forgetting things.

And you would go up often at night. You would go up on rafted ducks, aim your boat at them, cock it and pull the rope. So well, you're safe right now. So almost had an accident this morning. So we had to go to an engineering firm to get AMMO made. I'm holding an original casing. It's a two gage shotgun, gauge being inverse like wire and whatnot. They don't sell it as such, but it's basically a two gage shotgun. We went to an engineering.

Meaning that if you took a pound of lead and split it into two balls, one of the balls will fit. Is that how it goes?

Yeah?

Well the way yeah, I shouldn't say yeah. So what we did is, yes, gauge traditionally comes from A twelve gage shotgun means twelve It takes twelve leads spheres that diameter to comprise a pound. A twenty gage shotgun takes twenty lead spheres that diameter to comprise a pound. A four to ten is obviously a measurement four tenths of what does it hold true for the two gauge? So this is just extra affilated up on board diameter. But I haven't correlated it to lead spheres. But I'm assuming,

The But you think that it would have been the flash that would hurt your eyes or just a debris.

Can we just a oh yeah, just a debris from that primer hurt my eyes. Yeah, it was loud. That Spencer's like I need some hearing protection. Yeah, you need some eye protection. So we screwed it in. You see it like this thing, So this punt gun action threads in right the like you know, you'd kill twenty ducks with a shot with this thing, and a good that'd be good. I we have a whole book. We have a book called The Outlaw Gunner. It's about punt gunners.

How wide does the spread?

I don't know yet. So you remember Gallagher, the comedian Gallagher? Okay, wow, I'm out. Do you know about Gallagher?

What about you?

Two?

Too young for Gallagher? I know Gallaer's young.

Striped shirt and the.

Husky. Remember when you were a kid and if the word husky if you were like a chunky kid pants pants, Yeah, you like and it met It was meant for like kind of chunky kids.

I remember my mom brought me home a pair of husky pants one time by accidentally, and I thought she was saying I was like fat.

Kind of tore me up a bit. But so Gallagher there is Gallagher. Imagine weird al if he was husky and bald but still had all the long hair, so like it's the kind of long hair, and it's kind of a sweet look when you go bald on top of you grow real long that little half moon toilet seat deal, but you grow that out long. But I'm gonna do it and slick it back.

Man.

Anyways, Gallagher had two Gallagher had two groups. He had two lines of comedy and they were very different, but he'd combine them into one set. One of his things was how ridiculous in the English language was, so he get a lot of mileage. How could there be like there th h e r e, you know, but then there's there th h e i r And he got tremendo amount of mileage out of the idiosyncrasies of the

So when you were saying you were asking me if I knew of Gallagher. I was just sitting there thinking, like the first thing that came to my mind was that dumb comedian. And I was sitting there trying to well, that can't be it, Like, who's this person knows all about waterfowl lore? You know, I'm trying to think, who's Gallagher? Who's Gallagher?

You know?

We want to shoot stuff like watermelons and whatnot with this punk gun.

There you go.

But one of the things I want to do is just put out a couple of sheets of plywood at fifty sixty yards whatever and see what kind of pattern you get out of those.

We can put out a whole flock of Dave Smith Decoy's.

Well, I'm going to round up I'm going to round up people that have old faded out like I have some in my collection. I have some old faded out, you knows. I get old flambos or like they like they paint the beak and the wrong spot on them and whatnot. Get some of those and line them out and maybe shoot at them. When we do want to put a pound of let out into a pond, is the problem?

Yeah, when we do that, we should paint the decoys in such a way that the shot would really read well.

Or fill them with that stuff that people fill decoy targets with nowadays.

Then you know with the ones that blow up, you know that they got hit.

Yeah, we'll figure it out.

I know the perfect guy that you got to talk to Worth Matthewson.

Is he a punt gun man?

Well, he knows all about him, and he does. He still hunts with an eight age. It goes to Scotland every year and hunts. And he's he's a heck of a great guy and just a water fell and mentor of mine. And he's been around a long time.

So really and he knows about he'd be able to share with us some info about punt.

Gun absolutely punk gun. He he might. I'll check with him, I'll send it, I'll call him up. He might. He talks about him all the time.

You see how this is it Holland and Holland h and h punk uh huh. And the barrel you couldn't see it. I mean, the the this part's beautiful, it's very ornate, it's all inscribed, but the barrel just looks like a cannon off of warship and someone had painted a gunship gray and I drembled off the I drembled off some of the paint. You can see the old address that London street, the address for H and H in London. It's cool man, but that's that. Well, I

M hmmm. Is that the odd part about it?

Because I'll make a house of odd Yeah, Doug's a odd guy. Okay, He'll probably take you down to get kurds.

Yeah, you'll definitely go for a over the Carr.

Valley you'll take You'll take Duran Road and Doug will drive around real slow and tell you like stories about murdering mayhem and cousins and who owned what and what that guy this and that right and that tree one time, and you know one time he urinated all over the top of that stop sign, but his friend tried to do the same and shat his.

Pants, Like, I don't know, that's pretty odd.

And then you'll get to do You'll get to do a hunt on the Durham farm where we filmed hunts and have done hunts, and I take my kids there every year for spring turkey or a deer hunt in the Durham farmers for three hundreds. So that's in the auction house of Hoonities. You you bid, win the package, and then pick what you want and you get a tour of the Durham family farm. The oddity part, I don't know.

It's what you just said, Oh that spring house.

Go to the spring House and depending on age and everything, Doug might tell you the spring house tail.

I don't think i've heard that one.

Well I have not, kids have not. Maybe you should have bid on that chester a handmade log home from Naughty log Homes. Real, really, I'm not kidding you. Twelve by twenty trappers cabin they're donating they have donated to our Land Access Initiative. A log home, a twelve by twenty two hundred and forty foot square trappers cabin, four foot overhang off the front, shipped anywhere?

Wow, what do you mean anywhere when you auction?

When you buy it at auction, you'll have to pay to have it shipped. Oh, but they're in Idaho.

Say I could use one of those up at the shack.

Better dig Yeah, factor that in better dig D.

I think you're meant to say, because I need one of those in Wisconsin.

You need to talk to someone with a Chinook helicopter. Yeah, and get it dropped in where you want it. Twelve by twenty. I wish I had that damn thing. Yeah, a lot of art so people might have seen can we can we put? We don't have? I wish I had this in here from Jamie Wild Art. She did the commission to painting of mine of the wolves disemboweling device and eating it alive. She also does a lot

This is separate from a big giveaway dinner at your different dinner.

Is there.

That one? Yeah, if you want it to be vegan, I'll make it vegan. If you win the auction, that you win the auction, it's up to you. No, we have another giveaway dinner that we're doing here at the office. This is a dinner at my house. You and three friends come to my house. I will cook you dinner. Yani will be there to help serve. We'll get a whole bunch of our crew down there to help with

You might have already said this, but he missed the target? Is that the one where he missed a target and then he decided to get down on his hands and knees.

And no I shared that story with him. That was at a whiplash bash. He missed a target and then got down on his knees and he missed the target of a white buffalo before doing great white buffalo got down on his knees and bowed before the white buffalo target. Me and my late friend Eric Kern. We didn't catch that one. But me and my late friend Eric Kern went to the whiplash bash and Uncle Ted threw out jerky and me and Eric picked up some jerky off florin ate it.

Rock and roll Nice Times has some rock and roll right there.

That's in the auction House of aodities, my personal weather be Mark five chambered and three hundred win mag Left Handed, which we fillmed a bunch of media episodes is in the Auction House of Oddities. And also if you've if you watched the show, you've seen a hundred times the singer a moose gets up and charges me, and I go something like that that gun. Now, if you watch that episode, you'll see that the gun appears to misfire. So a lot of people have asked about the misfire.

I have a quick question. You just said, you just referred to that moose as charging, Like I just watched an episode not too long ago of a six hundred pound grizzly bear running at you and cal as fast as American run and you called it false charging, And I'm just kind of curious what does charging look like?

And if he made contact with me?

Okay?

So I was like, it was like you come home, you know, from somewhere, and your your truck is riddled and bullets and stuff, and what do you say to your wife, like, oh, I got false shot at Like none of the bullets actually hit me, So I got false shot at like, yeah.

Krin, I'm holding up another item from the auction as about it. These come from these are from some a pair.

Of Steve caught Martin's is past year.

Had a hat made for my wife. We had the tails left over. Wow, Krina is fashioned. He's into gorgeous earrings. Yeah, describing Grin.

So there Herkimer quartz diamonds from a podcast listener, Herkimer her herk diamonds and uh the mink this oops, pardoned me the Martin tails from Steve's Martin's and then a sterling silver wire wrap. So it's all sterling silver stone.

I did, but I think it might have closed up.

This is this is like an adorning costume for the Latvian eagle. Martin tails.

So sweet.

So the Auction House of Oodities back better than ever. All of the money raised in the Auction House of Oodities goes to our own land access initiative. With the land access initiative, we've done so we contributed on a land access a public land purchase in Maine. We participated on a public land access purchase in northwest Montana cala Is, eyeballing one along the Yellowstone River right now. And plus we will use some of the items. Another item I

And there's many more items than that, many more items.

I have something I could donate, but it's really there's nothing compared to those things. But I just thought of something. I have an owl coughing and one of the and there's an exposed bone and it has a leg band on it.

That taxidermy coughing.

Yeah, out pellet. So it ate a bird that was banded and it coughed up all the feathers and bones, and right on the outside of all of.

It is let me get it clear, for an owl pellet, is is a coughing. So an owl eats.

In our in our book Catching Crayfish Count the Stars, we have a thing about We have an instructional about how to dissolve and dissemble owl pellets in order to see what all they've been up to. So when owl will eat its food whole and then digest food and regurgitates the bones in these little balls. And you'll look at these little balls and like a standard thing to see in these little balls is mouse jaws. They stand out real good mouse molers.

But you'll answer my question, is another word for an owl pellet and owl coughing?

I've never heard him. I never heard that word.

So the reason why that we've used that term before us a lot of people know that it's it's that they're not pooping. It it's not.

Because they might think it's gross.

If you shat it out, it wouldn't be quiet, as the auction value would definitely go down, will shift. It wasn't Yeah, if it was a piece of owl shit.

Man, We've had some see we've had some auction House of Oddities donations that we've had lawyers prevent us from selling. This is one of those things.

It's like me showing up at his house with Luke Comb's guitar and like playing him a song on one of them that they.

Next, Yeah, that brought up liability problems. You could be lured into his sorted, some kind of sorted.

Put the lotion on the skin.

Yeah, it was gonna be we had one of those. Chester is gonna show up like you could have them. He'll wear whatever you want, right down to right down to his his thong.

Said that I never agreed to that, even.

Like I'm on there at midnight. The thong.

One got nixed with Spencer and I getting tattooed.

Oh yeah, that got mixed. You were gonna be able to pick whatever tattoo you wanted on Seth and Spencer. That got mixed. A lot of things get mixed, so he just gets better, just like do you remember when I was a little boy, they would do a fundraiser. Jerry Lewis, the actor Jerry Lewis would do fundraiser for ms. Remember Jerry's kids. He would do a fundraiser and he would do it for forty eight hours, just get delirious at

Wow.

But this is like that because it just keeps getting better and better. Dave Smith has now donated and I will pell it with a banded bird foot sticking out of it. Did you lacker it to hold it together? Is it pretty good?

No?

It's it holds together really well. It's just in a little plexa glass case. I might have to come up with a more decorative case or something to put it in. But it's just sitting, you know, it's just sitting at my house. It's it'll be there till the next glacial period if I don't do something, you know, with it.

So do you know what kind of bird it is?

Yeah?

I think it was a pigeon.

Pigeon.

Yeah, oh yeah, that makes sense, all right. The auction's about it. He's coming soon, better than ever. All the money goes to land Access your initiative. We will be using the funds primarily for land access purchases, enhancing and improving public access. One other little money thing. This is kind of a convoluted story. There's these animal rights activists that in Nevada the target bear biologists. Oddly, they target

There are Facebook pages to give a little more context around them. Says that this page is dedicated to monitoring and publicizing the actions Nevada Department of Wildlife and the why is it cut off? Sorry, I guess they just fail to write a full sentence, but gives you an idea. They're like they're watching everybody animals there.

At a state agency at bear biologists could be engaged in a ton of different things. They could be doing and monitoring. They could be doing disease research, they could be doing population demographics distribution. But inevitably they're going to get rolled into dealing with problem bears as well, and oftentimes in states that have really high black bear populations.

Yeah that's that's shitty.

Yeah, that's right, and doing state wildlife work, Yeah, doing your job. It's insane that he's just supposed to suck it up and have these people start like trying to broadcast as whereabouts his image calling on people to do acts against him.

I wonder if people like that feel good about themselves after giving this dude threats or whatever they did, and then making them pay him, you know, back one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I wonder if they're like, yes.

Yeah, probably because they've already arrived at some kind of mental calculus that an individual bear's life is more valuable than an individual human's life, or an individual not even that, and that a bear, the individual bears life is more valuable than the life of a public servant working on behalf of wildlife. So yeah, I imagine they've gotten their mentally, the o fund me is uh www dot go fund me,

Version of that, go fund me and google his name.

Yeah.

Well, and one thing we got to remember is we need good people in the world to become biologists. And you know, this will de incentivize people to become biologists who would want to become a biologist. It'll be the situation we are with politicians, like, oh, the good people of the world don't want to be politicians. We need good biologists.

Oh yeah, and have yeah, and and uh, you know, in our neighborhood right now, we're dealing with a bear that is really pushing people's tolerance. Like our whole neighborhood. We've got this whole tax exchange going and he's now in people's garages, you know, and like the bear is pushing people's tolerance. And at a point that bear is gonna wind up not alive. If someone from the state

Phelps you ready, Yeah, yep, Okay. So I was asked to come on talk about since September's right around the corner Archie, ELK kind of consumes September, at least in my life. So we're gonna talk about ELK bugles and kind of what they are, when to use them, and what I think about when we're trying to make those. So the first up is location bugles. This is a

I in my.

Opinion, it can't do much harm. And a lot of times people say you bogle too much, and and a lot of times I'll get six to eight hundred yards away when I was just two or three hundred yards away from a bull, and I'll finally get him to respond. So there's sometimes not any rhyme or reason when a bull here is here whin he'll elect to respond? And so what is a location bugle? And do the people that say you call too much? Do they kill more bulls than you?

Not?

Usually I don't want to. I don't want to be that guy. But you try not to not to talk about that, And like there are times, there are times where you don't bigle a lot, but that's kind of our our go to so a location bugle, and some people we've in my opinion, we've coined terms that that we use to describe and Elk's vocals, you know, and so location bugle might be one thing here. This is kind of what we call it. So it's a a two to three note high pitched bugle that you're just

But this is where our location beagle sounds like, tell us what you're using.

This? That was a bad Uh.

This is actually a new call that we're we're bringing out in twenty three, So it's going to be in a in our freedom pack. So I'll just I'll leave it there. But I had it sitting on my desk, so it's a brand new it's it's our amp diaphragm. It'd be really similar to like the Maverick in our lineup.

And then you got what in your hand.

So this is our metal Beagle tube. It's the one I've been using the last couple of years.

We do have our new unleashed V tube, but this one had a cover on it and I didn't have to run downstairs and grab one.

That's a well thought.

Yeah, as you can tell, I'm a little I was a little bit lazy.

I had a diaphragm on my desk and I had a tube on my.

Dead nice and quick, just yep, just real quick. There were times like I've got examples like in the Bob Marshall and in some places where I would get a response like I couldn't figure out how the bull could hear me that quick decide to make a call and then end it almost at the same time I was. And there's there's lots of examples where if I hadn't have been like a short bugle, I would have missed it all together.

Yeah, I think it's a similar, dude, just trying to locate turkeys where you want something so fast and abrupt that you can go from making the noise to listening mode real quick.

Yep, yep, missing it all together or a lot of times, and I talk about this a lot of like not buggling too much at them. There are times where if I can't tell the direction off of that first bigle, I'm like, dang it, now I got to call again, you know, so I know which direction to go or get the wind right. So I really want to try to get as much information out of that first bigle, like it back as I can without screwing it all up.

So that's the next thing to keep mine. Yep. Yeah.

And then this next bugle, which actually challenge.

Ask a quick question, Jason, what do you hear uh bull elk doing location bugles?

Yeah, yeah, if you if you go out in the morning, don't make a peep and you're in a good spot with you know, the bowl of Cali ratio is high, or there's multiple herds that have joined into you know, an overnight feed zone or whatever it is. You know, we kind of call them those little bit of retfests. They may be challenged back and forth, but you will have bulls just locating. We've been in and It usually happens at better units just because you're getting more action.

You feel like he's listening for bulls to respond or cows to respond.

So cows to respond or cows to come to him. Like a lot of times when I've been able to observe like an openings or across the canyon. You know, the way that that nature works is that buwll of bugle and then any cow that's looking, you know, because the cow will choose the bull that she wants to reproduce with. That cow will just walk to that bowl and go check him out and see if he's you know, if he's the one so so in nature, that's how

Thank you. Yep.

So this next bugle, once we've located a bowl, now we're going to go into challenge beagles. And this is where it gets a little bit fuzzy on like what people consider a challenge bugle. You there's screams, there's you know, there's chuckles, there's bark, screams, there's all of this stuff. Elk will do to kind of show aggression. But what I look at in the challenge bugles, when I get in close, I've got the wind right I have. You

Just I want to comment, have time I spent hunting with you? Is your location? Bugles. I don't want to say you're flipping about them, but you're just kind of looking for a good spot where you can hear, you know, maybe see you around a little bit and do them. But when you go into the mode of preparing to do that challenge, Bule, Bugle, you do not take that lightly. No, No, I mean you are like extremely thoughtful about the wind, where you're gonna want to be, the topography probably where

I mean to you know something that everybody's maybe seen our season ten episode in New Mexico. Both are bulls. We got very very tight. We kind of pushed into a spot on yours where we couldn't shoot, but we needed to be that tight and we kind of readjusted, you know, my bawl. We locate him and then we really would we walk for an hour without making a peep, like we put a spot on on X. We went all the way around him to get the wind right and then we literally didn't beagle at him or talk

Lockhorns, or we're gonna breed him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So that's really what we're going after on the Challenge Bugle. And a lot of times, you know, we could shock in awe whatever you want to call it. A lot of times if you get close enough and you you haven't made another call until you get there, you really give that bowl no other chance besides coming and you know, dealing with you. You've got too close

To take care of her. So this is what my typical challenge, bugle.

Sound like, little bit more to it, a little bit or ask and you're really not holding anything back. You know, a lot of guys ask me, you know when when we're at shows or when they're talking to me, like, hey, I really want to a bull call that isn't as threatening or it's a smaller bowl. And I've been around a lot of great callers that are just as loud as me. And when you're in the woods, the comparison of somebody that's loud on an elk call that we think versus a real bowl, like it's the the real

Would you say, like, uh, I didn't hear you say like a lip ball in there? Would you say, like, that's like the most aggressive, like because I've heard that before. You know what I'm saying, Like, is that like the the high end of all this most being most suggressive for calling.

That's a that's a great question, And a lot of times lip balls, I'd use a lot of mimicry. So if the bull I'm calling at me is gonna lip ball in this challenge bugle, I'm gonna do that. If the bull that I'm calling in wants to, you know, do a three second challenge bugle with four runts, I'm gonna mimic him exactly. And one thing I really love to do that really seems to get them more fired up is if I start my bugle about halfway through

Yeah?

So I want to I want to tell you something to that I don't know if I told you about yet. Uh, you're talking about thrash and brush right, yep. One. I was haunting Moose with Clay last year in Alaska. We were going down a hill on the last day of the season. We were going down a hill to go to a bowl that was about a mile away that we just saw, and we were going down the hill fast.

You know, when we were in New Mexico out at a couple of days prior, and one day I was trying to get through an area I knew there were elk and just walking through the grass, I had to hang out behind a tree for about fifteen minutes because that bold chased me down the hill just hearing my feet walk through the grass. And so my dad always kind of joked with me. And we grew up in a rifle hunting elk family, where you know, they go out and hunting their white new balances so they can

Is yes, especially when if you've ever listened to a half dozen of them playing grab ass on a steep slope, it's loud.

Oh that's one of my favorite things ever. You're sitting there eating lunch or something and you hear that, you can I can just picture it that that downfall branch go pop and you know, and you're like that was a big animal, you know.

Yeah, yeah, so raking.

I can't make that sound in here.

But you know, I always recommend you get a big stick, and everybody wants to grab a little twig, Like, get something that's robust, not going to break on you through it.

And the other thing is like yeah before he sets to it, Yeah yeah, I mean.

Yeah, if you're your knuckles and fingers aren't bloody. You're not making enough noise and trying.

Yeah, and I like to I like to be as realistic as possible. So I try to find a couple of limbs, you know, from two feet up the tree to four feet and you just kind of rattle back and forth, you know, you hit the brush and you hit the top limb, hit the bottom limb. I don't know if it matters that much, MAYI There are times where I want to break a bunch of small, small limbs just.

To add to it.

You know, you can kick the ground, but you know raking, that's that's it's easy. But yeah, like you really need to get into it and and picking up a bigger stick make sure that you can get through that. Chuckles, like I said, are a little more ape like, So a lot of times you'll get these on the end of a bugle around here where I've got roosevelts in my backyard. I grew up with a lot of our bulls chuckling and grunting more so than like the high

Yeah.

Man, and his belly gets into it. Yeah, yeah, like his belly is like bouncing, you know, not his belly might be bouncing. I know that's between him and his wife. I'm talking about they have the bull.

So so here's what I would consider a grunt. It's a little more that elkie sound. Scream like I say, two two and a half second, real raspy, real short.

And usually when you get a bowld.

To scream back at you, his temper is very high and we usually have real good success with calling them in and if they scream, I'll typically scream m So it's a scream and then you got your barks, and a lot of times you'll when you do hear a bark, it's it's about my second least favorite sound to hear in the elk wood, aside from wolves howling. But barks usually they have seen seen something they don't like or heard something they don't like, but they can't necessarily get

So you get like he's nervous, and you might set him at ease by by doing it back like oh there's another help. Yeah, yeah, there's you can hold him for a long time with their warning cry is you can turn the tide on antelope big time on prong horns with their own warning call back at.

Him, get him to hang out.

They'll they'll start coming more if you start. If you hide and start doing it back at him, it just really gets their curiosity.

Can you do that? And that's a weird Yeah, it's like a.

Yeah, I mean I'm not good at it, but man, you can you can take one. It's gonna be out and and he'll start coming. He'll be he'll like turn around and start going back your direction. I don't think they hear it a lot from people, for sure.

All that out phil idea, Yeah.

Right, and then uh, you like the mones and stuff, you know, but if they bark, usually what happens. If they don't see what they like, they're gonna run out the ridge and scare every elkre let, every elk in the whole entire country know that they and they bark for you know, until you can't see them anymore. So

I feel like I kind of hear that too sometimes, Jason, when they're they're sleeping, when they're or they're just in their beds right like almost like a moan. It's like a real quiet like little yep.

You know.

One thing that they do. It takes a fairly trained ear. But location bugles. We talked about him being high pitch and sharp and to the point, like a betted bull. To a trained ear, we can we can pick out usually when it's a bedded boil. Yeah, the time of day usually helps us do that as well. But you'll know if a bull's on his feet versus betted, especially if you fold that same bowl all morning, his his bugle cuts to about half intensity. It's a real lazy bugle.

All right, Phelps you good man? Yeah, yeah, thanks for having me on. Yeah man, So everybody as gearing up. Check out Phelps game calls. Uh, just a true Elk call and mastermind elk great elk call maker, great communicator. He'll give you all of his hot spots. Just hit him up. Off Jason, we're gonna have Auction Off Phelps is on x password at the Auction House Bodies.

If you want to listen to like full I don't know how long the show is usually Jason forty five minutes an hour. Cutting the Distance Yep.

Yeah, but you can go. Yeah, we're we're just getting ready.

Dirk's gonna jump on as a as a co host here by time this drop, So we're gonna for the next couple of months. You're gonna get as much elk hunting information as you you want to do.

That.

That's that's a great heads up. So thanks for the reminder, Yahni, go listen to Cutting the Distance so hosted by Jason Phelps, Dirt Durham. There that that used to be bi weekly, it's not weekly. And when these boys going to elk mode this time of year, it's just gonna be all elk all the time. So you'll you'll you'll learn more than you can remember by checking that out. And again, man like just lifelong elk hunter, grew up hunting the

Thanks, thanks guys.

All right, Dave Smith, Yes, why uh give me the crash course on how DSD came into existence.

The short, not not so boring version. It's all boring. The crash course is I was massively into goose hunting and I didn't have any decoys. I couldn't find any decoys that were working the way that I thought that they.

Should back up way more than that, Okay, I mean I feel like I was born, I was an anemic child.

I was born. I was born in Cottonwood, Idaho, and okay, born in Idaho. Well, so yeah, I was born in Idaho. Yeah, I mean my I had an older brother. I say had because he did pass away when I was nineteen. When he was nineteen, I was seventeen, and he and I we dreamed about goose hunting our entire lives, Like we used to literally like drop you know, pictures of goose hunting with crayons.

So when most kids have drawn army tanks and monster tracks, you guys are growing goose hunting.

Pretty much, and it's it's kind of a weird thing. I mean, like our dad hunted, but then he was a great, great archer, but he hunted mostly before we were born. But my brother and I, we both had the hunting gene, you know, for sure, we could just tell. And for some reason we were just obsessed with geeese, even though we didn't we didn't really have any exposure to goose hunting, and we didn't even have any geeese around, and so all of a sudden we started getting geese.

Because you're you're old enough that goose numbers weren't what they are.

Yeah, So where I live in the Willammett Valley of Oregon, there's they really the only goose was the dusky Canada goose, so and those and so in the sixties, there was an earthquake in Alaska that uplifted the delta where they where they nest, and then all of a sudden, mammalion predators could access it. So the numbers of Dusky Canada geese, you know, really crashed.

So there was hunt a spot. I have haunted a spot. Haunt I have haunted a spot in Alaska that was hay Fields and it recessed and became marsh in the same earthquake.

That's oh, that's good to hear. It became a wetland in the earthquake. Yeah, so what happened.

We're still equipment laying out there. Yeah, that things sunk.

Yeah, That's that's what I think with all this stuff, there should be there should be an upside. That can't always be a downside only you know, like and that probably that probably helped cacklers, you know.

Got it.

So so we had we did have geese in the valley and we couldn't hunt them, and and there was a while where we could. And when I was very young, I I went to you know, quite a quite an effort to hunt, to hunt them, and that's all we could hunt is dusky Kennedy's I mean I built, I would. I would dig pits with a shovel, big huge pits, pits with a shovel, and build these really elaborate wooden pits with like trap doors that you know, sprang open and swivel chairs and everything, and going to off them

And you know, uh, the first I have pictures of me and my brother Danny in high school hunting geese when they first opened the early goose season in Michigan. And our decoys. We took five gallon buckets, cut them in half length wise and then made plywood heads and laid out all those five gallon buckets with plywood heads on, and then sat smoking making corn cob pipes because the corn was still standing, making corn cob pipes and smoking corn silks. And they're trying to get a goose to

Yeah. Well, and it's like, yeah, all those decoys were working reasonably well, and then somebody had to come along and make like an ultra realistic it's arms race, right, yeah, it's exactly. And and and then it kind of had affected the whole industry, you know, so and then everybody

There was it was it changing agriculture practices or was just geese numbers were increasing.

It was neither, honestly neither. So what was happening is all the geese. So the dusky dusky numbers never really came came up to levels that are like they're not they're not huntable or anything like that. What happened was all the geese that were wintering in the Central Valley of California or northern California. It's just started just started wintering in the Willhammette Valley.

Because of drought patterns or it's not well understood.

I don't know, because that that changes, that that goes in cycles, you know, every ten or twenty years, and we're starting to get snows where we never had snows before. Things like that has changed, and I don't really know

And but that was before they shrank, didn't it didn't we go just because of lumpers and splitters in taxonomy. Didn't we go from twenty eight geese down to three or four? Well, because the Ornithological Society one day to said, just scrap all that. It's just it's we're splitting hairs.

Yeah, I mean there's definitely there's definitely some of that. It went from twenty eight down to maybe eleven and one that's extinct. But people still argue about that, you know, like so there's isolating breeding, there's isolated breeding groups, especially of lessers, and some people will say that is a separate subspecies, and some people will say it's the same. And that part is so confusing. I mean, nobody knows the real, the real answer.

But yeah, maybe because it's all definitional and just varies on the person. It's just it's it's highly subjective, right yeah.

Yeah, So what what we were most concerned I was concerned about is just like from a legal standpoint, what we could shoot and what we couldn't and everything. So you had to take a course and pass the course that proves that you would know how to hunt without shooting a dusky Canada goose and tell me more.

I don't know that I've ever laid eyes on a dusky Okay, so tell me what, like, walk me through this.

They're they're really pretty, they're really neat birds. They're they're and they're sort of cool because they're sort of like our are our original goose. They're kind of like like co hosts am and our cutthroat trout or you know, black tailed deer where I live. So they're medium large goose and they're very, very very dark. So thank god they're really dark, because otherwise, you know, in flight, there wouldn't be any great way to are there.

Do they still have a white cheek or is that white cheek as duskier too, so that white cheek is white?

Yeah, yeah, yep. All Canada geese have a white cheek and some people call them in a white cheek geese and everything. So yeah, they still have that, and it's that believe it or not. Probably illusions have the lowest amount of white on their cheeks, just mostly because it usually doesn't cover the bottom of the throat. But but dusky kenadedies have a pretty prominent white cheek patch and stuff.

Four, ok.

And you had to check all your geese in at a check station when you were done, and they would carefully measure the Coleman length, which is the measurement of the top of the bill. That was one of the things that they would use, and then like the length of the legs and the color of the breast. And if you shot a dusky Canada goose, your card was punched and you're done for the season. Really yeah, and what year was this, Well, I don't know. This was

Yeah, this is all new to me. Yeah, I had never heard this.

Yeah, it was kind of cool because it just kept out a lot of you know, the pilgrims, Like you had to be pretty dedicated to this, and and you had to you learned a ton about geese because we would get set up before it would get light. Like some people would go out and they'd start setting up at seven and they'd be set up by eight. Well, the geese are trying to get in, you know, they're trying to get in, uh before that. So what we would always do.

Is the is the eight am restriction because they want good daylight exactly.

Yep. They won't you to be able to see to see him. So but it was it worked for us because we just learned so much about geese by being set up and having to watch them for the first hour hour and a half and having them come and land in the decoys and seeing what, you know, what works and what doesn't work.

And do you ever get your card evoked?

What's that?

Did you ever get your card punched?

I never did? I never did so one time. Brad, you know my partner, Brad, he's a phenomenal goose hunter. He's honestly, he's one of the best goose hunters on the planet. One time he and and one of our one of the other guys that we work with, they got their cards punch because there there's there's also this flock of lessers that hang out around was still like our anchorage, and those birds were fairly dark and fairly large,

Do you got land you're pretty loaded up with bands?

I do, yeah, yeah, And I have over one hundred net collars really yeah, really, and from from a lot of different subspecies, so I can blame Brad Cochrane, I think for that. So I tried to stick with mostly mostly white collars, which doesn't disrupt anything any studies or anything like that. But man, once you once you learned how to spot a collar in the air, and you would think that it'd be like you'd see the color of it or something like that, and it's not it

You'd see it was just looking for collared birds.

Yeah, it was fun. It was just something, I mean, something that we wanted to do, and we've also so you know, always felt like that's how we learned a lot about geese. It is just well, for one, we never wanted to shoot into big flocks. So like when I was hunting those whiskies, I mean, there was only so many of them and they were mixed in with other birds, and I just could not shoot into big flocks or I would have had it ruined, you know, in one season. I wanted it to last and last,

What would you consider a in your mind? What's like a giant grind?

Like how many birds grind? I've never heard that.

I've never heard that. I know, the grind from just being the daily grind of like getting up so early and setting out decoys and pulling into decoys and just like it's a frequently waterfoul. People will talk about the grind of just how the drudgery of hunting hard.

Yeah, well that's a that's the real grind for sure. And that's a grind too. Yeah, I mean like a tornado or you know whatever. We've a lot of people have different names for it, but I mean it. You know, it's like we would still probably call it a grind if it was two hundred birds, but but it could be ten thousand, yeah, you know, and and a lot of times it's a thousand.

You know, you're talking about just like an aggregation of birds that is kind of on the same schedule and they're coming through in a group. Uh there, they might be spread apart by many minutes.

No, no, no, no, no, I'm talking about a flock. Yeah, a big, a big giant flock. Sometimes other flocks are joining at the same time.

But so they didn't like it's a grouping that you can like put your eyes on it one time.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

Tornado, it's like a snow goose tornado.

Yeah Tonado, Yeah, yep, exactly, yep.

All right, get me too, because I asked you a bunch of questions got us off. So at a point you you got into guiding, and then I want to get to how you got into how you thought to make your own decoy, which doesn't occur to everybody.

Yeah, So I mean the the decoys came first, and then the decoys worked so well that that's what got us into guiding. So I was buying every every brand of decoy that that was available, and and I was I was just the birds just weren't landing in them. And I just and I had everybody tell me like, oh god, you know you're they're not going to land in them. And I was reading like Dennis Hunt books and stuff, and they were saying things like like, uh, you know, decoys are you need them? But at the

So if you look, when you say way more realistic, I would think that you can correct me on this one. I would think that there's a mad there's an issue of size, there's an issue of contours, shape, say, and there's an issue of coloration. Yep, what what is it for real?

Well, and one more thing is the finish, And the finish is the biggest one of those of those four. So yeah, the sculpture needs to be you know, anatomically correct and in a pleasing pose. The pose has to be I guess that's a fifth element, right there is the pose. It's really important with turkeys. The pose has to tell what you want. What you want the decoy.

You don't want to decoy of a scared ass turkey exactly.

Yeah. But the finish, it turns out, the finish is probably more important than anything, and that is it just can't have the wrong reflections. I mean, you know, birds can see colors that we can't see, and a lot of decoys have you know, some reflection to them, and and all that stuff. And and in some ways we probably luckily stumbled on the right paint. But that that's

What's the funn about that?

No, it's it's it's funny because Pat Dirkins sent me a report from somebody, well because I mean it's not a real report if you actually read its high substantiated, but about bigfoot behavior of jumping into trees.

So I just had that.

Also, I'm talking about the brand Bigfoot decoys, which had like a little pedestal to look like their feet. You were thinking about bigfoots bigfoots. Yeah, sorry, pologies on behalf of grint. I did see.

We can edit that out, no problem that. Uh yeah, I mean I had a ton of respect for Bigfoot decoys because they were they were made in America, and they really were really goosey. But the problem is they were they were a a large race Canada goose. They were a honker. They were a big, long neck and most of our geese were really small, short necked, you know. So that's why the carry lights looked a little more

How many did you make? Well?

I mean I started out with one pose, just arresting one, and then I finally before I even hunted with that, I realized I needed to make a feeder. And so I had two poses and I went out with and hunted with those, and I would make like eighteen total decoys for my own hunting, and then I kind of realized I need an upright, but that came along later. But they were just they looked like the real birds. So what I figured, what I learned. The biggest epiphany I guess I had was when I was hunting and

Less of a grind.

Yeah, you're not out there and two of them more's of a grind. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I can sleep in and I love I love sleep.

Can you take us through you just sort of casually say, oh, I whipped up eight teen decoys, but what what does that look like?

And can we also get into like your carving or the materials that you're using, and you know you're kind of.

Giving away too much?

Yeah, what were you when you say make them? You had that you made a mold obviously.

Yeah, so I mean in your garage yep, you had to buy a lot of equipment, right, I had Uh Yeah, I did. I had a I had a shop already just because I've I've made fish replicas like my entire life. My artistic was Ron Petter Is is the greatest fish replica artists that ever lived, by far, and I just was a complete I just bugged the hell out of him for thirty years.

Do you still do it the fish?

Yeah? I do, you know, a few. I do just a few, like maybe maybe one a year.

That's but yeah, that's maybe auction house, don't it.

I mean they're sounding.

Yeah, I'm gonna do because of fish people caught.

What's that look you do a little like like whatever the hell they fish tax drmy is these days, because there's no tax dermy, it's just replicas.

Yeah. Yeah. So I do a lot of steelhead and and I have a lot of molds of steelheads, so and wild steelhead. You know, there's only a few places where you can still keep wild steelhead, but I don't encourage that at all. Wild steelhead are really low in numbers and everything like that. So I have all these molds of fish, you know, up to thirty pounds, and you may I made or I inherited from Ron Pittard

You're like the guy in that movie Air My goodness was at.

A bad movie. I liked it, dude. We have to talk about that sometime.

I'll talk you fine, Okay, Oh there you go.

That had about every problem movie. We'll talk about a You had a job there it did. What did you carve shoes?

Yeah? Clay sculptures? Yep, seriously, Yeah, I did five. Now I only did the midsol Altsoul, so I didn't have anything to do with the upper. But I did get to do five seasons of Air. Jordan's working with Tinker Hatfield and that was a and my time when Nike was really I'm super thankful for it, like it was really good people. And I learned a ton about molding and casting and and all that stuff. So that was hard I got. I got headhunted from Nike to go to FILA and I worked for And also I'm sorry

Well can tell you one of my favorite writing quotes. I think it was RW You R W Apple. He once said, I can write better than anyone that can write faster than me, and I can write faster than anyone that can write better than me.

It's perfect.

Or you have to think of something like that for yourself.

Yeah, yeah, well it sounds like it's already been done. Somebody beat me too it or whatever. But yeah, I mean, I'm I'm slow, and there are some people that are super talented and can do these things super super fast. And and what I mostly have to do is I have to assemble, you know, a blob of clay roughly in the shape before I can. I mean, I more or less have to build something wrong and then start picking it apart. Rather than building something right the first time,

It's great way to go about building something. You just gotta gotta start it.

Yeah.

My dad was a wood carving and he said his strategy was if he was making like an otter, he said, I would just start taking away everything that doesn't look like an otter.

Yeah.

Well, and that's another thing is I have a lot of respect for wood carvers because you can only subtract material. So in my case, I mean, you put it back when you made a mistake all the time. Yeah. Yeah, so so yeah, then I made I made molds of those first decoys, and I finally had to buy a rotational casting machine, which was a pretty big, pretty big investment.

And now but at this point, are you're like, you know what, I'm gonna start selling these No, No.

Hold on, We're get too far ahead of ourselves.

Yeah.

Before it, when you just whipped up the eighteen that you first started with, Yeah, how do you whip up eighteen?

You made the clay sculpture, Okay, made the class sculpture, and then made a still cone rubber mold with a fiberglass shell mold over the top of that to hold it to shape. And then since I didn't have a rotational casting machine, I had to rotate it by hand. That was the workout portion of my of my life and is amazing.

Man, oh, thank you.

I appreciate that.

And the and the rotational part comes because once you spray, so you've got your mold, and then what material would you spray in there?

So it's liquid, You're a thane, So it's like two parts. You mix A and B together, stir it up and pour it in the mold and then close the mold, and then you rotate it, keep it, keep it.

Moving, griped to one side or the other.

Yeah, and coat the whole inside. And then you have to keep rotating it until that stuff is hard, and then you may have to do a second, a second pore so and then I was like, screw this, this is a lot of work. Like you know, I'm not exactly Charles Atlas, and I guess I would have been if I just would have never bought a rotational casting machine.

D I like, it's like more than a way out of date reference.

So so I bought a rotational casting machine. And at the time, I when I was working for FILA, like everything that we would make for Fila, everything that we would design for them, they would send it back to the to the group in Italy and the ownership group would say no, no, no, that's not what the Americans want, you know, And and we were just pulling our hair out of They were just turning down everything that we made.

What makes a phenomenal goose hunter so.

Brad.

So Brad is super super hardcore. He is. He is so freaking into it, it's unbelievable. He just absolutely lives for it. After all these years, he is just as passionate about it today as he ever was so and I can't match that because I need to go on. I mean, I'm spade fishing for steelhead, I'm I'm archery black tail hunting. I need to I need these tenure at a time things, and I need new challenges and stuff like that. He is absolutely stuck with it the

It is kind of funny the the Waterfall hunters. You hear that a lot done by yeah, done by this.

That's like, yeah, is it so miserable? You really want to be done so fast?

Like oh yeah, you want to be at the cracker barrel by nine or whatever. Chat your biscuits and gravy. Yeah right, two questions like one. You can answer this one quickly. If you guys gotten good enough to where you can spot the leg.

Bands, yeah, yeah, yeah, so you set up for the lighting. We had to that, especially on anchorage lessers, because there was a lot of them that only had a leg band. And so yeah, it's the lighting is everything. So in Oregon we don't have a lot of sunshine, and on a cloudy day it's it's incredibly difficult. So I don't think I have ever gotten a band that didn't bling, that didn't sparkle. I think some people have, and I've tried.

What is it with the waterfowlers and the collars?

In the bands?

There's no antlers, there's no there's no there's no age group or anything like that.

Like so that's how you guys found like the next like the next level of difficulty where some guy might say I only hunt four and a half year old bucks year older. Yeah, you're like, well to get this with geese, what are we gonna do? So shoot the collar.

Everybody looks at a different like Brad. Brad made a comment a month ago, and I was just kind of appalled by it. Honestly, he was like saying, like a collar is equivalent to like a three forty ball, and I was like, this is a this is coming. This is definitely a guy who hasn't shot at three forty bull so like, But in his defense, I think what he means is.

A thing of nature. A collar is a thing made a human factory, exactly exactly. It's like you're handling a bird that's been handled.

Yep.

I've always had a real like, I recognize it's cool, and I have a couple of my little box of like special things, but it's been You're not the first person to lay a hand on that bird. Yeah, and some of the magic's going. In fact, it was birds man.

Yeah, it was one of the number ones. Because I got caught, right, I can't speak to that. Well, what what Brad was getting at, what he was meaning is waterfowlers want a collar as as bad as as big game hunters want a three or fording bowl.

All right, So at what point did you say to yourself, this has all been great, Johnnie, but we got to move along.

I understand.

When you started making them, and here you gotta be honest. You start making decoys for yourself and your garage. You have to in your head, unless you're gonna lie to me, you have to in your head be thinking. I could see going into business making these and selling them.

I mean that that came about fairly quickly once I realized how expensive the like the materials were and the moles were, and I had I was I really didn't want to because I just wanted for myself because they were working really good. And I am like super super secretive with with so much of my hunting and fishing, and I don't post a lot or anything. I don't have any stickers on my truck and I once in a while I'll take my wife's car so that nobody knows where I'm at or what I'm doing.

How secretive though, you did just give us a ton of antelope information.

But we're family, right, you know, Like yeah, and I and he doesn't know this, but I held back some pretty important I mean, just the reality set in that I've got a lot of money in these molds and everything like that, and then and so many people we were asking for them. And then when we started guiding, I was like, well, that's how make the money that's how.

Make the money back being a successful guide.

But when you're guiding, more more people than ever asked wanted to buy decoys. So and we were having fun guiding. Brad and I were guiding together, and we were remembering the other day. On one season, we limited out with our clients every single day of the entire season except for two days, but we still killed fifty six geese and the two days. So we were we were doing really well and we were having a lot of fun, and life was good, and gas prices were fairly low

You know.

So at what point did you go from like the Goose decoys to like Turkey decoys or the Buck decoy.

Yeah? I got turned on you guys years ago because of Turkey decoys. And that was through Yanni. Yeah, Yanni got turned on to them.

Yeah. And I know, and I feel so bad because you know, my hearing is so bad. In one of our first conversations, you mentioned that, but I didn't hear what you said. You were telling me that it was Yanni, and and I didn't. I didn't hear what you said, and I feel feel really bad, so I apologize, but yeah, I I do. I do kind of recall that and everything like that. But yeah, we so we made Goosey coys for and the the years of all this stuff

And how did you get turned down to me? Yannie?

Jay Scott? Oh yeah, Jay Scott. We love Jay Scott. Yeah, he's a great guy.

I got a turkey shooting No, he's a watching people shoot turkey son of a gun.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

He likes turkey hunting man.

Yeah he does. He likes he loves turkey, and he loves here.

He has got you know, he likes being you know, he doesn't surprisingly small amount of hunting himself, I mean as a guide.

Yeah, he's in on.

An extraordinary amount of turkey hunts. Yeah, not behind the trigger on the calls, you know.

Yeah, it's it's funny. He has these incredible opportunities for Elk and cous Dere and you talk to him and he's just so passionate about turkeys, you know, more so than almost anything. But yeah, and so Turkey's it was just we had a lot of our customers talking to us and just saying, my gosh, like, if you guys can make a goose decoy like this, the turkey, the Turkey market, the turkey hunting is ready for an ultra

Where can people go to watch what you let video you show me of bucks working over your buck decoys? Where is that video? Live.

Yeah, so I have a whole bunch of them.

I just down one day a bunch of them. Yeah, I want to. Okay, but you guys had a montage put together.

Oh oh yeah, so that was that was just all our customers. You know. Melissa Bachman, she's she's she's very good, very good hunter, and she's very good at decoying. And you know, decoying is a little different, you know the key. It's like, if you're just a really really good white tail hunter, you're not necessarily a really good decoy hunter. Like it's it's just a little bit of a learning

Got it.

Yeah, I always remember seeing the art Lambeau Hunter guys have like wicked footage of using that decoy.

Those guys are great.

But is that montage available on your website maybe or or somewhere. No, you just made it the montage.

No no, No, it's like branded DSD in them. But it's all those bucks doing that same head motion, yeah, smashing a decoy, and they all do that little tip of the head. It's so wild, man.

Yeah, they rolling their eyes, Their eyes are rolling around in their head, and they lick, They licked their nose.

They cocked their head. They're always cocked their head at that weird angle. Man.

Yeah, when you see that there's an explosion getting ready to happen, you're lucky enough to see two mule the or do it. I was just like kind of in and out of Bino's. But my daughter got to watch it through a spotting scope and my brother in law through another spotting scope. But just came in, you know, two big herds of does behind them each and heads almost upside down, and like you're saying, you can see the eyes just doing these weird things. And I mean seconds later, it's like the dog.

It is like someone putting their hand on their pistol. Yeah, on your pistol.

When he cocks his head, their blood is just starting to boil and boil.

And yeah, it's amazing watching deer interact with that thing. Well, some ways, this guy comes what's his name bird Song.

Yeah, Randy Birdsong, And I just feel like it's really important to point that out because I could not get a hold of him. I wanted to give him a decoy afterwards, and I wanted to tell him thank you and and and all this stuff or whatever, and he just disappeared off the face of the earth. And it's just like no, I mean, he's around somewhere and he just deserves credit for that, and and I want to give him a decoy.

Well, hopefully someone could pass this along to him.

Yeah, yeah, I remember, I remember watching that guy's hunting stuff back in the day, Randy Bird song. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he was on TV shows and stuff.

Yeah, he seemed like a great hunter, and obviously he knows, you know, about white tael behavior and.

Everything like that. So, so describe the deer's in Yeah.

So, I mean, first of all, all their you know, all their hair is bristled. It's it's raised in the same way that an animal would do for heating and cooling, and it's just to look big, just to look as large as possible. And then what happens with the deer is when that happens, there's not this this perfect division of hair, so it ended up it'll end up with a bunch of vertical cracks along the side and then vertical cracks along the neck and that's kind of important.

Did you choose a specific age class of of buck to mimic?

Yeah, So all these decoys, because I love blacktail hunting so much, I cheat them just a little bit and I'm I'll make the I'll make the the snout, the muzzle just a little bit shorter and and lean them. This is a terrible thing to admit to all heart.

You change the decoy for your own blacktail hunting, your own esoteric.

Well not as specific like like for the actual production decoy, like so every and we sell them all over the Midwest, like that's where they get used like crazy, and and so all you Midwesterners that are using, you know, a DSc pastoring book, I'm sorry that it looks a little bit like a black tail, but that's just what I did. But yeah, it's but the but there is some c things that it doesn't look. It has to look old enough and mature enough to be a threat without being

It's some three hundred and fifty pound one hundred and eighty inch buck. A lot of bucks might be like, yeah he can, I'll let him handle this situation, and.

They and it brings him down off the bluffs and stuff like that, like in broad daylight.

Like I.

My friend Paul Minew He's got five hundred acres in Buffalo County, Wisconsin, and this is a magical place and it's super fun to go and and that decoy has brought big bucks out, you know, in the daylight that I don't think would have otherwise otherwise come out, and we get reports of that all the time. So I'd say the hardest thing is knowing when to shoot, and

In that video, it's amazing how many of those deer eat it because they're expecting resistance. Yeah that's not there. Yeah, So they're like running into this thing so hard, and you know, they're assuming that there's something that's gonna stop them. But then that thing goes and then they go ass over tea kettle and just get like this totally like but not like if views their toylet like take that.

Yeah, the then they look back at it like what did I just do?

Like a level that.

Yeah, I'm good at that. But that's also why we encourage people to use the stand instead of the steak, because the deer can actually hurt hurt himself on the steak, you know, as they crashed the deco. So the stand breaks away, everything breaks away, and that's that's the best system. And I thought that's all we were selling, is the stand, and those were mine wishes and my instructions. And then I just found out at the GTM that like, no, it comes with a steak, and I'm like, ah, yeah, yeah,

But his antlers didn't get gigantic, only his body did.

Yeah.

No, Well, his antlers never grew again, and they actually got shorter every day because they got so brittle that they would just crumble, the tops of them would crumble down.

So he hit that decoing. God is nuts caught on the steak.

Well, we are assuming that I've got some videos. I've got lots of videos of blacktail bucks crashing the decoy. But it happened so fast that I can't tell for sure, but it could have been a barb bar fence or something. We don't know for sure. It was just one of the things that we sort of assume may have happened. We don't unless anybody knows of any I don't know for sure of anything real bad happening, but it looks like for sure something could.

And then you're working on a female and you're talking about her posture, but you kind of you don't want to make it that her posture is like too much of a good thing, because then a buck might not buy it.

Yeah yeah, So.

Like herd is standing on the open like just ready to roll, it's not what you're after.

Yeah yeah. So and the same thing we had to worry about age too, because if we made her, you know, a big giant mature dough, then you know, there are a lot of does would would you know, blow out her and and that could cause a lot of problems

So it's like Bosman twelve years ago.

Yeah, and she you know, I've had some some people tell me that I've seen her like like, oh my gosh, you should have had her in the full squatting position, you know, like and I don't one hundred percent agree with that. Just because you know, the dough stands. He the dough stands to be bred really only when the buck is right right on her. So so for her to be standing, you know, standing to be bred, it might not look so much standing almost squatting. Yeah, it's

You sell the pelletsers on.

She can't ship, she can't ship forever.

Two questions earlier, you said in Buffalo County, it would make these bucks come out that otherwise would not have come out in daylight. Yeah, can you explain that a little bit more because I'm trying to figure out, like how do they get the like did they place them where the buck could see the.

Bluff?

Yeah, so that's bluff country and in Buffalo county. So it's a lot of there's ag and then there's you know, rocky rocky bluffs all around it, and that the deer all we don't go up into the and we don't go up really, we don't go more than fifty yards into that ever. I mean, not even for chad hunting or anything like. Like literally there's so munch of that that know human that's a sanctuary. Yeah, that's a sanctuary, yep.

And so their cruise along that edge, they look down in the field, they see the decoy.

Yeah, but you know, those those cruising bucks don't look. They are just they just do not know. Look. Yeah, yeah, they'll yeah, they're all scent checking areas and stuff. And sometimes they will literally be on the other side of the top of the bluff then that the way that the wind comes up the bluff and it curls and stuff. It's it's kind of kind of crazy what they do, but but they are betted, and they do get up occasionally because they know they're in such a sanctuary that

How I've I want to come out and hunt blacktails with you, man, man.

Yeah, come on out, Like there's the the way that I've finally cracked it the code is by getting permission on good private properties, because some of the public stuff is just kind of horrible or burnt to the ground. But I spent six six years writing over one hundred letters a year in the spring and ended up with some with some pretty good properties. I just have to kind of get the okay, the okay from the landowners and stuff. But I mean, some of them are just

How do you deal with the scent issue around running a deer decoy?

Well, so the most important thing is that it's it's been manufactured long long enough and it's aired out long enough since it's been manufactured. So that's that's the biggest thing. And then you don't touch it with your hands. So your dear decoy will work. It'll work reasonably good. If you buy one in July and then air it out and everything, it's gonna work good. But it will work.

If you were listened to Clay's Bear Grease podcast. No, he had an episode called Deer Stories, and there's a guy that tells a story about shooting the buck and taking the glands off and tying the glands to his ankles, and he gets his ass kicked by a buck.

Yeah, I probably wouldn't.

Realize this buck is coming down his trail and is coming for him. Oh geez, it's a funny story.

Well it could have. That could have been way worse, because that could have been like dough dough in heat scent. You know, like, as long as it the buck just wanted.

To kill him, that's not as humiliating.

Yeah, he can he can.

Live, So David, when you're sitting like say, I'm sitting in a tree stand facing a field and I want to put decoy out, how do I place that decoy for the best.

Shot, I mean like maybe quartering away and but that just that just depends like a quartering quartering away would be with a dough and and and then possibly quartering two with a buck.

But I'll tell you what, right, wind dependent?

Yeah, it's wind dependent. Yeah, they'll they'll try to they'll try to get down window, try to get down wind of it and stuff, and so with a buck, you know, quartering two works pretty good, but there is no guarantee whatsoever, Like anytime you think that you know how they're going to approach it. Like people, the the idea of quartering two is the idea of behind behind that is that they'll come and come head on. They just don't do that.

Gotcha?

Will you hunt them in like woodland, forested terrain or you always sticking to more of an open fuel type place where deer can see it as from far away as possible.

So I have I've set up for blacktails in old growth timber, but not successful, not success. I've tried it in the in the woods, but the best successes that I've that I've had and I'm not majorly into deer decoying. I will be now that now that we have a dough, But the best successes that I have have been on the edge of a where ag meets meets timber. And that's the same with blacktails too. Meadowee Meadowee areas and stuff. I'm old old a man and orchard that I hunt.

But have you used it in conjunction with rattling where they're expecting to find something standing there. That's what I feel like the real value would be is he's coming in, but then all of a sudden like oh there it is.

Yeah, I mean I have but like my gosh, one of my hunting partners justin Kasmar, he gets so mad at me because I'll go sometimes the whole season without rattling. Rattling is super fun. And I've rattled in some nice bucks and shot some with my bow in the in the upper Clackamus and that's public land blacktails. But I like now that I'm hunting more down in the valley, I treat all my goose hunting has taught me that everything, everything about goose hunting is not educating animals. That's what

You should write a hunting book like Dunk and Gil Chris book Hunt High.

I've never knowing that.

Well I shouldn't say that, but anyway, what.

Would it be called?

Hunt the Perimeter?

Well, see, the thing about Hunt High is just so it's a lifelong hunter and it's just all these like really just general pieces of information. One minute he's talking about is can't how he likes there's that up as camp stove next to me. He's talking about the way mountain goats act. But just it's just gold all through the whole thing, just random. He kind of accidentally writes, like hemingway, it just it's just a page upon page of just gold ruminations from a fairy seasoned hunter and

I want to read it. I want to read that.

What was funny? Man is?

Yeah? Good?

He's dead, So check this out. He's dead and he's self published these books. And and when I started talking about and I always put him on like favorite book lists and all that huh high. And it got to me where if you wanted to buy one, it was hundreds of dollars because we'd driven a lot of interest. One day I lent mine to someone and someone took it and never gave it back. So I went online and bought one for one hundred bucks from some dude

Wow, that's cool. Yeah that worth worth. Matthewsons has lent me a couple of books about the early Martin Trappers and Wayne Nigs and Pouli Rossboro and Martin I have known is one of them. And it's the same thing. You go to try to find those books like Worth lent me one of them and gave me he gave me the other. But yeah, trying to find those books on Amazon U this is next time possible. But I sure would like to get more and more copies. Those books are incredible.

Let me hit you with one last one before we end. If you not place in Turkey decoys properly, do you think you'd be doing more damage than than good? Meaning you got a gobbler, he's coming in right, Can you ever have it be that it'd be just better not even to use the damn thing than to have it set the way you have it set.

You mean because because he's going to be searching and covering.

Do you know, because you would put your decoy out in such a manner or in such a pose and position that when he sees it, he's like, what that's not what that ends supposed to be doing. I'm out of here.

Oh, let me let me.

Phrase it a different way. How important is placement over just having the presence be there?

Well, I've only ever done it the right way, so no, I don't. I don't know. I mean, I just you know, you can. You can screw up goose decoys really bad, really bad because yeah placement. Yeah, you can have them all face into the wind. You can have them crooked on their steaks, you can have them spread way too far apart. And people do all of those things all the time, and it can make a huge, huge, huge difference. On turkeys. I mean, I haven't really found a really

There's not as sensitive safe to say just basically what you're telling me. It's not as sensitive as waterfoul placement.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

I mean you think it's as an end, But you wouldn't say the same thing about deer. You think there is a you found that there is like the wrong place and wrong way to set deer decoys. Well, I mean you don't like them in timber.

Yeah, I don't like them in timber, but I probably need to experiment more on that and stuff. So I wouldn't consider myself to be an authority on that. And I like to experiment a lot. And and the animals always surprise me. You know. Every time I think that there's a rule, they the animals show me otherwise.

I know that.

You know, there's times there's times when using a strutter like a like let's see, i'd say there's times when using hens only has helped me make some good shots with my bow because the birds came in strutting. And then there's times when when using uh, you know, a gobbler decoys has made me miss some pretty important birds like that would have really meant a lot to me. And I couldn't get my boat my bow drawn, or

You know, idea that happens, man, I know it does.

I know I surprised him before. Where they come over, you have your decoy up, They come over a little knoll or something too close. They see that they don't feel like duking it out.

Yeah, oh yeah, totally. Well. And I've had I've had blacktail bucksty that where they stepped out one hundred yards away and saw the decoy and I was just like, oh my god, it's it's happening. And I'm getting back, putting my release on and everything, and I'm all excited, and I'm just waiting and waiting and waiting, and I look and I look and expecting him to be, you know, real close, and now he's high high tailing it away. Definitely.

I mean, you see a lot of them plow in to beat that thing to death. But it does happen where they put off and they, like I used to think in Neville Ice, think that we spooked that bird. Someone moves, someone spooked that bird. But the turkey bile just Robert Abernathy, who's a very experienced decoy, yeah, has been decoying for a long time.

Yep.

He's convinced too. He says, I think sometimes those birds come in, they see that, they see that gobbler, and they don't like it well, and they're putting off. They're putting off or just ghosting out because of that presence. He still uses it, but he says that's the thing that happens.

Yeah, I agree one hundred percent. And also you just never know what what that decoy represents. It could be could represent a bird that he's already familiar with and is already you know, uh lower lower on the hierarchy level.

Then like he hears a hen, he comes in and be like, daw damn it, Gobbler's already here, Billy's here. Last week.

My answer to that is went in doubt. Well, for one, you know, you use a lot of hens and a lot of like praining hens and feeding hens. That always looks makes everything look you know, relaxed and stuff. And even if there's a gobbler there. And then also you know, like our three quarter strut jake, which is actually a half strut jake and somehow it got named a three

Glad our body guys Uck's who's very seasoned turkey hunter. He has a little rule. He like, he's not the kind of guy that believes that everything is, you know, one way or the other. But he has a little rule for himself. He don't set a male decoy in the evening because he's like, they're just not in that mood. I don't think. Yeah, he goes, you're just less like he finds in the evening. You're less likely to get that I'm gonna kick that thing's ass response in the

So I have killed some some big mature toms, like where it was like literally in the last five minutes of shooting time, and and I've had them go one hundred yards out of their way to come up to the decoys. But the lesson that I've learned, and I've got burned multiple times doing it, is they'll come up and they'll jump on They'll they'll jump at the decoy one time and then I'm like thinking, Okay, here we go. It's gonna it's just gonna thrash the decoy for the

I can't get in your head that like I'm gonna have a big show and then sometime later shoot him. Yeah, yeah, yep, that's the thing I still do hunting turkeys is now and then maybe not. But I usually when I get a shot, I take it.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, even though you will see where you know, they come in and interact with the decoy for a long time. Like if there's the one I want and I get a shot, I'm shooting.

Yeah you know what I mean.

Yeah, I just rather than expecting that it's gonna be this crazy you know, fight and breeding decoys and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I mean, and some of that. It's just it's just so weird. Like I mean, and Brad and I have joked about like what what if humans did exactly the things that turkeys has done, because we've had we've had times when this this, this whole flock comes in and there will be I mean, they're like humping the decoys and they're fighting the decoys, and they're fighting each other, and they're humping each other and and it's like some

I got some bars I could remember that that might have been a little bit of the groove, but that's about it. Man. Yeah, it is way way different than folks. And they can fly.

I had a blacktail buck a few years ago that came in and gave me a really good shot, and I double belonged him and he went short distance and betted down, and five minutes later a nice big blacktail buck came in and and just went right over to that.

Yeah, you know our buddy Parker Hall. He thinks that if you kill a turkey over a decoy, you go to Hell, which makes me wonder, where's the guy that makes turkey decoys end up?

Park Special Place?

They got a real hot corner in the basement.

Now it's I've had say that too.

They that would be maybe that's Dave's book of hunting tidbits called Hell's Basement in the old days. In the old days, we would have named this episode Hell's Basement.

Jay Scott's ripping what little Harry has left out here, and you say you just let him, you know, shoot him as you as soon as you can, because he likes to him he likes to sit there and watch the Yeah.

Yeah, he likes to get him with me.

He enjoys the show.

I like to get him coming, all right, Dave Smith, thanks for coming on, man, thanks for having me. I know who told me you don't do you don't do podcasts, may be really eager to have you on. Yeah, you know, the guys that really want to do them to make me leary.

Now, the people that I work with are probably surprise that I even you know, agreed to it, but I just you know, things have changed now and I just want to be as cooperative and helpful as possible.

So well, listen, you did such a good job. I've already told Karin and put you back on the put you on the returning guest.

Oh yeah, you got to join the all timers, man.

You know, bring them, Bring Brad Brad Cochran and Mike Callian, Greg Hogan, Scott Sprucker, those guys. I'm not kidding they they have a lot of information. They're super fun, fun guys.

And next time we next time you guys, I want you to bring your whole team. Okay, we're just gonna do where they got to think. We used to do these things called hot tip offs, where it was like a showdown of hot tips. We should revitalize hot tip off.

Yeah, I was watching something the other day. I was watching yesterday vitalizing him right now on the website.

That's great, So hot tip off, you have a competition who's got the hottest tip. You bring all your crew in and you guys could have an hour long hot tip off or just goes around the table and then we'll score it and we'll wind up with a winner out.

Of the hole just goes round and round and round and round.

And then we'll score the whole performance.

How good are you in the kitchen?

GSD? Hot tip off?

What's that?

How good are you in the kitchen?

Terrible?

You're married? Right?

What's that?

You're married or not?

Yeah?

Yeah? Yeah, Luckily you.

Guys will still be fun to play.

Been married a long time? Yeah, yeah, I think you'd be good at trivia man.

Yeah, but if you're not, if you if you say you're terrible in the kitchen, boy, that really that's twenty five percent of the questions.

Yeah, but I bet you he's got some hot tips about it being in the kitchen, like get a frozen peat.

It'll be twenty twenty five years of spring. And my wife is of Mexican descent. She's a great cook. She doesn't think that she is, but uh she Everything she makes is amazing.

So was your wife born in Mexico?

No, No, she wasn't born. She's like think three generations as Yeah, but twenty five years. Got the whole She's got all the traditions down and everything, and that her grandma didn't speak any English at all, and and where her parents live in eastern Washington. It's just you know, we go over there and make to Molly's and and it's a lot of culture, Mexican culture.

I once traded someone a bunch of a woman from damn it Comish. I can remember where she's from. She's from Central America. Either way. They make to Mollies slightly different than Mexican Tomali's, I know, because they would put like a dried fruit in them.

Uh huh.

Where was she from? Man? Maybe Columbia? Okay, So so I gave her a bunch of muskox meat, the deal being that she made Tomali's with that muskox meat, but I got half of the yield, which she thought was a screaming deal. I thought it was a screaming deal. So whatever, she made like twenty pounds worth of muskox meat Tomali's, which is a shitload of Tmali's, and then I got half of the take.

Nice.

No, it was a phenomenal deal. I had them all lined up like bars of gold in my freezer. Man, but we went through them pretty quick. But they had like dried fruit, which I thought was interesting.

Yeah, I don't have to find out what that is. But yeah, they our family doesn't do it like that, just traditional with pork meat and all that.

Give me your hottest piece of marriage advice. Give me a hot tip off on marriage advice.

I mean, I just I don't know. I just feel like I just got so lucky and I'm just so blessed and everything like that. I don't, I don't know what. I just I think my wife is just the rock of our of our family, and she's just a total sweetheart and and you know, it's like she's the reason though I guess why I don't do very many trips, Like I feel like I found her sort of late in life, even though we've been married twenty five years

I like you home, Yeah, eating them to Molly's and you.

Never know how much time you'll how much time you'll have, you know.

I got some marriage advice, find the right to buy. Tony had this little tidbit one time. He said he and I were both got in trouble with our wives one time, which we didn't even deserve because we had taken all of our kids claim digging. So you think, how could you be in any trouble, Like normally, if I take my kids to do something, my wife's very very happy with me. Right if they're all gone, there's

Yeah, I think that's true.

I don't think that's marriage advice. That's just funny, all right. Maybe like a meat eater's guy, do marriage advice.

I come up with a couple of tips.

I don't know about you, Chester. I heard of Chester get yelled at eastbound and westbound on the same highway.

Man, But then he's just got to sing that beautiful song that he wrote, and then he'll make everyone weep. Just be forgiven.

Yeah, I've been driving down roll of Chester. He's in all kinds of trouble because he's late from getting home from fishing. And I said, well, here you supposed to be doing when you get home? He said, going fishing. He was late for his second fishing trip because he'd been going too long on his first fishing trip of the day.

That's yeah, it's always bad. You tell you, you tell your wife are going, you're going for a half a day, and you come home she's like, I thought you were going for half a day, and you're like, well, twelve hours is half a day.

In Chester's defense, he was supposed to take his white fish and she was pissed that he was at home from his other fishing to do that fishing. All right, Thanks coming on, Dave, Did you like it?

Thanks for having me? I appreciate it. I was like it or hate it.

I liked it.

I was kind of stressing it a little bit. I didn't sleep much last night.

Don't go on all kinds of other podcasts, you know what I mean. Don't become one of them guys.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, keep it tight, man, We'll keep it, yeah, for sure, keep it tight.

And everyone can find uh Dave's decoys at Dave smith decoys dot com.

We haven't.

We'll merged that into the meat Eater site at some point soon. But right now, it's he.

Prefers DSD because he's he's so modest. He doesn't like being such a showboat. That's why he always goes to DSD.

I'm just I'm just giving the audience the u r L. Well see the decoys are.

To prefer DSD. I get, yeah, because he doesn't want to detract from his co workers' efforts by Dave's Yeah.

That's the thing is like we and that's that's one of the things that's we're having a hard time with that adjustment of and everyone's having a hard time with that adjustment. Is at d SC we've always operated as a group, you know, and made all our decisions as a group. And and a consensus and you know, discussing everything, and so there's definitely not one person that is sort of the you know, the north star of DSD a.

Lot of muscle.

You're so self deprecating.

Yeah, well, I don't know. I mean, I've just been I've just been real like like like I I definitely

Well Decoys doesn't lend someone to think that that, Like when you're talking to Dave Smith, you.

Know, yeah, I get that, I get that and again I tried, you're.

Willing to see that?

Yeah, okay, well you guys do make some really really good realistic decoys. Like the other day when I saw more of that full spread, I was very impressed.

Oh thanks, Jess, I say that.

You know, we didn't even get into we got to wrap up, we didn't get into fur trapping.

Oh yeah, you just have to come back.

Maybe make a Martin decoy who for trapping.

Is one of the things that helps me set up ground blinds and tree stands. Like I think if like if you, if you don't have that, I think you're you're, you know, sadly missing out a tiny little bit unsetting.

Oh, it's very educational. We'll save that for the next time you're on.

Sounds good, you'll come on.

We'll do a hot tip off with you and your guys. Then you'll come on, we'll talk for trapping.

Sounds great, and then you win trivia.

I think I'm gonna still beat them, maybe beat them horribly bad. All right, man, don't go doing a bunch of podcasts.

Now, don't worry.

Seal Gray Shine like Suit in the sun.

Ride, Ride, Ride on along, sweetheart.

We're done.

Beat this damp horse to death, taking a new one and ride away.

We're done beat this damn horse today, so take a new one and ride on.