This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening 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 ELK. 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. Joined today by Karen waldrip Am I saying that right, you are chief conservation officer with ducts unlimited and more important than me.
I'm joking about that big.
Time squirrel dog. I am squirrel hunting dog hunter. Yes, how do you say that?
So squirrel hunter with dogs?
Squirrel hundred with dogs? I like, that's clean, clean. How'd you get into that?
Oh?
Goodness? It was in college and I was I went out with a buddy one time and felt absolutely just fell in love with it.
And it's was the buddy a guy or girl.
It was a guy, okay, and it was. What I love about it is you can go out. It's like, well, after deer season and everything else is over, duck season, you can still go out until the end of February in most states, And yeah, how'd.
You get a shirt? And says it's usually squirrel season.
It's oh my gosh, it's always squirrel season. Somewhere. You can get a spring, squirrel season, fall winter.
It's all right.
Yeah, so you can get normally go squirrel hunting.
You can normally go squirrel hunting.
So you got turned onto it. But that's like a whole commitment to get the dog.
Yes, yeah, so I got into it right away. Got my first dog and tring feightt in college and had her for seventeen years, and she hunted hard.
For about ten she was that's who's on your phone?
And that's who's on my phone. Still it's terrible. Not my kid, not my other dog.
A dog's the dog.
A dead dog is on my phone.
Where'd you go to college?
Well, that's a long story, and I don't I'm.
Just curious, like where where you were at the made?
I was at University of Georgia at the time, but I started at Florida State. I went to University of Georgia, got my bachelor's and my master's there, and then went to Clemson University for my pH d and then University of Kentucky for my post doc.
See, oddly enough, your reaction was the same as a friend of mine who was asked not to return to college.
So I did not.
Really said we preferred you didn't come back to college.
Yep. I didn't want to get a job anto the real world to stay in school.
But you were brought up in Kentucky.
Actually I was brought up in Florida, but Kentucky's where we raised our family and was there for a long time. So but I was born in Mississippi. Yep, born in Mississippi, raised mostly in Florida, I understand, or central Florida.
But then you spent a lot of your career in Kentucky.
Yes, So, actually, when I was working on my PhD at Clemson University, I was working on the Elk Restoration Project Act for Kentucky. So we came out west, grabbed fifteen hundred ELK from a bunch of western states, and started a restoration program. And that's why I actually went to Clemson, was to study the elk restoration work in Kentucky. And so I went to Clemson for the professor and then was did all my field work up there.
You know, I later killed one year elk?
Did you really what year did you come out? I had to have still been there. I actually I remember it now.
A long time ago. Was fun, Matt.
That was a lot of fun.
It's not elk in the hardwoods seems so weird there to see elk standing in hardwoods.
And let me tell you, it's steep like it's not it's not forgiving country yet. I mean, you're used to this out here, but it's East Kentucky can be pretty rough to hunt an elkin.
Yeah, you're hunting elk in hardwoods and we were fine and hand of the woods, mushrooms pretty fun.
Super fun.
So the reason I was asked about where to call it, so you would, as a college student move around with that little squirrel I did?
She actually was we would camp out on reclaimed coal mines. So the elk came into East Kentucky because there's a lot of coal mining. So the the reclaimed coal practices actually makes it really conducive for elk and elk habitat. So that's where the elk came into. Plus it's out of horse country, cattle and everything else. So she would when I was doing all my field work. I camped lived lived in a tent for about three years, and my dog was me and my dog camping out my
tent for three years. And so since it's almost always squirrel season, you just I just squirrel hunted her ass up. We ate a lot of squirels. She and I both You got new ones to replace the dead, of course I do.
How many got now?
Well, I have two right now, But I've had I've had quite a few at any one time. But but she was still probably the one that you knows the bar right, and all the others have to have to match up to it. I've got one right now. His name is Oakley. He's about four or five years old, and he had a good season last year and this year is going to be it's gonna be knockout. He's he's a he's a killer.
That's exciting.
Good. Uh uh, you'll appreciate this. This is a listener feedback. But it has to do with Kentucky, right, So you have some subject matter expertise. This guy in Kentucky rights in and he was kind of underwhelmed. I can't tell I would think he'd be happy, but he seems like he's not happy.
I can't tell.
I think he gets happy at the end. He's just kind of.
Like happy at the end.
He took hunter safety, which in Kentucky there's a field day requirement. Yes, it seems like like do you speak not that, And then it kind of got a lot of field days, and then COVID happened, and it kind of got a like.
A lot less field days. But he had a field day in Kentucky.
And he goes down there to do the field day and in the end, what it amounts to is him waiting in line, and he goes forty miles, starts at nine am.
He thought he'd be there till noon.
When he gets there, to tell him to get in line, they give him some earplugs and some eye protection. They hand him a twenty two. He calls it a little pea shooter. They give him a single twenty two long rifle round and a pea shooter and he's supposed to put that round in the pea shooter, flip the safety and shoot a target at ten yards down range, rack.
The bolt and he's passed.
Yeah, And he's wondering, is the reason is it more? Is there more to it? Out West or less to it. It's not a West past thing, not at all.
No, it is the state by state. Some states have made a state law where you don't have to have the field portion of it, and in Kentucky they've they've kept that. And it really depends on your instructor that you get, so you're, you know, hunter ed instructor. Some of them they'll bring out every different type of weapon and let you shoot them in muzzleloaders and shoot multiple times. But then others it's the requirement can they safely shoot a pea shooter? Can they safely shoot a twenty two
racket not pointed at anybody? Put it back up safely? Meet that check, you know. So it just really depends on the instructor that you get.
I feel that they could safely do away with that safety part.
Yeah. And the field day.
The field day, well, if you think about it, a lot of them that most people, not all, but most of them are either somebody that's a kid that's been hunting with mom and dad, uncle, grandparents, somebody for a long time before they come there, or it's you know, an adult that's getting into hunting, a young adult or older adult and they've been going with their friends for several years, because you have in Kentucky and several other states where you can hunt if you're like an apprenticeship,
So if you're hunting with somebody else, you know you can go out. So they that's where they're getting their hunter safety exactly. They can probably pass that field part.
Uh So to answer your question, no, it has nothing to do with West East, he wondered, if it has to do with that. Kentucky's more flat and it's not like difficult to traverse. But no, because in Idaho it's all online. Yep.
Well, yeah, there's a there's a big stir amongst the hunter is education instructors because this lasts like ten years, has seen a lot of importance put on hunter's education and then out of convenience and starting with a lot of the COVID protocols, just you can just bypass hunter's ed basically entirely. Like Montana is a great example. We
require hunter's education. We don't require Montana hunter education. So I don't want to I don't want to get my kid down to a classuse I don't want to take that time.
Let's just hop online.
In Montana have to take it and they have to take it.
They don't know not education.
No you can do you don't you do it.
I'm saying, if your if you live in Montana and your kid takes hunter ed here.
In Monteo field.
Day, Yes, but they could bypass it by doing I don't want to give dirty seat. Bypass it by having your kid do a different state online in Montana ex episode.
Online Texas twenty minutes versus all that hassle.
Well, but also they say it's a barrier, right, Yeah, Like they say it's a barrier to get people into hunting and so making it easy where you don't have that field day.
But if your kid does the two year mentor program, like that's two years of field time if.
Mentor's got a good mentor, right, Okay, but.
The mentor has to be someone twenty one.
Yeah, or is it twenty one or eighteen eighteen?
Is it eighteen?
So the mentor's got to be of good standing licensed in eighteen. I'm saying, yeah, they can never go out. But if you go out and do a lot of field time and it's a lot of exposure, that's gonna like supersede what.
Yeah, but you know it's very it's.
Very I get very impassionate about the subject.
Yeah, this is not specifically saying Steven Ronelli, you don't know how to teach.
Your kids in the way that right.
But every year we also have this big other to do of like, oh my gosh, the people who misbehave while hunting are jeopardizing all these awesome programs that provide opportunity for hunting. It must be our hunter's education program that is failing. And it's like, well, don't nobody asked to take the hunter's education program, So why are we going.
To get out of field days? Like it's like getting a driver's license without taking a driving test.
Come on a burn mind, And you shouldn't be able to get a driver's license if you just drive with someone who's eighteen in the car for a couple of years.
He's been watching his dad.
I did a hunter's education in Missoula, and you know, like the Missoula Hunters or the Fishing Game Facility out there's big out on Spurgeon Road, and so that's where they did the field course out there, and they had.
All sorts.
I failed one portion of it because they had adults that would come up to you and be like hey, can I see your gun?
Oh little and you're like, yeah, secret shopper.
Yeah, and they're like, well, you know, you shouldn't just let anybody come up.
And it was.
Brutal, but yeah, they had, you know, because there's like it's relatively hilly, you know, so they're like, do you carry your how do you carry your gun in this situation? Stuff like that, and it's like absolutely not mistakes that I don't see adults making, and I don't every single season say hey, yeah, point it this way, you know, to adults.
I did my Hunter's ed in Ohio and it was actually like a very substantive class. We had to drive a long way to do it. But then at the end of it, I got the card and it was written on like in penn you know, just on like the card it said Randall Williams and whatever date. And probably a year after I did that, the date and my name had rubbed off the card and I don't know if there's any other record of it. So I
rewrote my name and tried to remember. And so now whenever I buy a license online, like in Idaho or something, and it's like enter your the state where you took it, and what dates and if you have an ID number, And I'm like, oh, I hope they don't catch me because I'm just sort of making this up based on my my, my clearest recollection of being seventeen years old.
Well, if you want to have more dirty secrets out there, there's no standardization for Hunter's education. So if you type in one, two, three, four five.
Yeah, yeah, right, well that's what I feel like I'm doing.
The point man, that's a great point because the numbers are silly.
What right, because like Montana's numbers.
Right, it starts with like a letter and then and then the date.
It's not like a social Security number if.
You go to California, completely different.
It's odd that col with no children has such an in depth knowledge of yeah, not just knowledge, but opinions about Hunter's safety program.
Well, because you know, just a concerns I participate in the program people wanted because he's like, it's.
One of these people that's going to shoot me something.
Exactly.
Or you know, it's like the giant pile of human feces and toilet paper next to the sign inbox at block management, right, It's like.
That's just someone on their way to work, right, you have no proof that's a hunter.
You know, like my big chip on my shoulders.
I feel if you're an hunter's education instructor out there, you are doing the Lord's work.
Absolutely.
You're taking a lot of time for those children who have parents that are willing to get them to those classes, uh, to make better first time hunters out there, and I think it's incredibly important. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the people out there making mistakes are ones that are just you know, they're not paying attention to the Fishing Game website, they're not reading the regulations, they're not you know.
It's like we need to find out completely different mechanism to reach out and educate these people because they're not tapped into the traditional information lines.
But I think if you like take those hunter safety courses and you maybe have left fewer of them, and you take those best instructors, and you make it where Okay. So if you're not somebody, you know, a twelve year old that's thirteen year old's been hunting with dad a whole bunch and knows everything really well, then maybe you can kind of opt out by taking a test or different things, but make it to where it's more than just going out driving, you know, for a couple hours
and shooting at twenty two. Like, make it fun, make it interactive, make it educational, to where somebody doesn't feel like they just wasted their time.
If there's a driving portion, there should be a deer on the side of the road right in your instructured jams on the brakes, skids sideways on the dirt road and goes, what do you do?
See? Interactive and fun? Yes? I like it.
Oh, you know what was making me nervous yesterday is speaking of gun handling, and they didn't. I had no problems, but I took to my kid who's freshman in high school, and his high school body.
We went out and layout blinds.
Yeah, because we had a guy in the podcast one time that blew the middle toes out of his foot in the layout blind.
I had a guy not long ago that was hunting with us that shot the end of somebody else's barrel in the layout. Because they didn't they didn't keep with that, you know, Yeah, it's shot the end of the barrel.
That was stressing me out. Man.
No one did anything dumb, but it's just a lot going on. Yeah, you're like, okay, like you're gonna burst out of this box. Well, yeah, we had I have no idea where anything is, and burst out of this box and start shooting.
But don't and don't shoot the dogs, don't.
Yeah, layout blinds are yeah, they're they're stressful for sure. But you know, we just hunted with a group, big group of folks and on day three one of them finally spoke up and was like, no, what do you mean by shooting lanes?
Right? And it just it man, a doun't.
Man.
It takes time to like be like, okay, this is a safe group to ask questions. He's like, so let's say there's duck all the way down here, you don't shoot. I'm like, there's five other hunters down there. It's like that arresting how you people do this.
I've been working on that trait, that trait of men, where now when someone tells me something and they go you know what I mean, I'll say I don't know what you mean. Or they'll use like a technical term about something like with a vehicle that maybe I'm not and you know, I'll say like uh, I'll be like, explain the turbo and you're actually I know what that means, right, And I'm like, right on, I'll just say I don't understand, but that's fine. I don't.
I'm not putting it on you. I'm not going understand it.
But it's people do that, but I can.
It's a very male thing to do, especially talking about vehicles.
I just lack of knowledge.
Yeah, although I I got over it when I working construction and working like with a finished carpenter and he would just ask me something. He'd be like, get me this, and it was like the first week I would do three trips and get him the wrong thing the first two times, and then the third time and bring him what he wants, you know. And then all of a sudden it was just like if I I'm gonna save myself and save him a lot of frustration and anxiety if I just clarify things right off the bat.
Sure. Uh.
I'll say this about hunting with kids and layout blinds, like at that age, the reflexes are so freaking fast, man, they'd shoot the geese forere. I could get my box up so fast, and I'm like getting so slow many fast they're just like wired fast. Uh, we're gonna do one more bit of feedback, oh plus or this randall this morning?
He comes in.
All we've we found over the weekend, the greatest free range Christmas tree ever found by man.
And by we he means his.
Family family, the greatest free range tree. Mine did not.
And Ramon has judgement. He's like talking about, Oh, I got a real booner. Tell me all about where he went, how snowy it was, and how rugged it was, and like. And he shows me a tree and he tries to sell me on the fact that only like half the trees there because that's it was nestled up to his neighbor. I think, so it didn't groany limbs on that side. And look, you just put it right against the wall. It comes with a flat side. It comes.
You know what I don't like doing is is decorating the backside of a tree.
Well, you don't have to.
I want to look at all my ornaments.
I like my trees to have sort of.
A flat wall a week left side.
It doesn't it doesn't stick out into the room as far. It goes right up against the wall. And you don't have to waste your precious ornaments on the back end.
On your way up? Were you telling your wife like what we're looking for is what have you do?
You rotate your tree every few days.
You can appreciate all side trim that I flushed that backside up with a sheer. But I don't look for one. Oh, I don't look for one.
Mind.
Well, Randall's permit was for a management tree.
Mine mine didn't need require modification.
I think he's onto something. I think it's going to be like the new thing. Everyone's going to be trying to grow these flat trees to.
Especially you know, if we had a smaller house, I'd want one that fits into a corner. Just two just a right angle, two flat sides, just slide right in there.
If you think about the ornaments you put on the back, or all the ones that you know the kids might have made or that, well, actually those for me go on the front. Sorry kids, other people's kids, just like the really old crappy ones. You put this on the back.
So you see all the night, we haven't accumulated yet enough ornaments as a family to you.
Can have some art castaway? Yeah, I know, way to fix that and hurry and all you got to do is stop trying to make it not happen, which is have having children.
Last piece of list of feedback. This is a good one.
This fellow says this his name's logan. I recently ran into an issue with a new neighbor hunting the property next to the one I have permission to hunt. Says everything around here is privately owned land. He's clarifying that. Well. I generally try to stay on good terms with the folks around me. This new neighbor decided to place a trail camera on the fence line facing the property I hunt. I'm sure that the only reason for doing so is to monitor the deer activity on my side.
Of the fence.
Well, remember that Robert Frost, he was the poet laureate. He had that fences about the two neighbors that get together every year to like to reinforce the fence between their properties. Good fences make good neighbors.
But he's kind of dogging on them.
Yeah, anyhow, I normally wouldn't care who puts cameras where, but the fact that it's placed less than five yards from the fence and pointed directly on the trail I used to get in and out of my boast and really bothers me. He's wondering should he moon the camera, should he give it the camera the finger? Or should he get a big taxi during me deer and start jutting it out in front of the camera now and then to create the illusion of a giant buck in the area that isn't actually there.
I personally like option three, but it's fun kind.
Or he might grab his own camera and point it back at that camera.
That's what I'd do.
I would do. I would do.
I would hold all those and I would say to the guy, maybe say to the neighbor, do you mind not aim in your camera? Do you mind not aiming your camera like deliberately onto my place?
Because I walked through there and it bothers me.
I remember Dug during they had a place out there, and there's a neighbor had this wood lot and there's this huge sign painted on plywood that said do not shoot into these woods. And Doug wand to put one on his side and said, do not shoot out of these woods.
That's good.
Doug's place is.
Man, if you climb up just about any tree stand and look hard enough, you can find a little bit of orange sticking out a Yeah, you're like, whoa, it's crazy crazy. And some stone faced people out there too, they don't even They're like, nope, you don't exist. I'm just looking at the twenty five yards between me and you, and that's yeah wild.
Another thing this guy could do is put a tarp up. Oh yeah, build privacy, like a privacy screen. Yeah, that would bug the hell out of me, to be honest with you.
Yeah, I would definitely call for sure, But you know, there's always something good that you're going to get out of a conversation with the neighbor. But yeah, all the funny things that you could do would be awesome. Just have a little screen that you put up there and have like a deer.
You know, have something that'll trigger the camera every five seconds, gives so much noise that he'll never get through it to find you walking around, kills the battery. So when he pulls his card, it's like you have three thousand images, you know, just a CD spinning out of the job. Yeah, here's what we're not going to talk about, because people do this all the time, some hosers and where Netherlands where this is at?
Sorry? What they that buddy of mine that we were talking about the other day.
He's got all the grizzly bears and wolves and stuff on his camera, you know, things that just set cameras off.
Uh.
This is an observation that I made.
He's like, yeah, this camera, this squirrel keeps setting it off, and he starts like going through and through and through.
See him there there there, see him there, see him there. And eventually it dawned on me. I'm like, you know, this squirrel is given this guy a lot of enjoyment.
Yeah.
Uh, Netherlands, sorry, are from Germany.
I don't care where they're from, the Netherlands and the.
Editors from Colombia. The research is based in Germany.
Okay, So these holders in Germany have determined they've they've done a map where they look at the more wolf attacks there are an area, the more the area is prone to vote right wing.
All right, aren't you kind of saying.
Rural people tend to vote fire right because Ian Fraser did the same thing in the US, where he's like, the more wild hogs are in the area, the more you're likely to vote Republican. But every election you prove this over and over again that generally, I mean, there's many many exceptions, but generally, rural areas generally vote right. Urban areas is generally true. Urban areas generally vote left. So I feel like you're just finding new ways to
say the same thing. You'd be like, the further of part houses are, the more pickup trucks there are in an area.
Based on livestock attacks too, right, not.
No, yeah, but I'm just saying it's like another way of our It's another way of expressing like I might. Like, I'm guessing that wolves attacking livestock is happening in rural agricultural areas in Germany and those people are voting different than people that are in Munich.
So great work, guys.
Well, maybe they're having trouble identifying rural areas, so they found.
A new indicator. What would be the epitome of ruralness? And some guys like, I guess it'd be like a fucking wolf attacking a cow. That feels a rural to me. All right, Karen, How are ducks doing in general in the United States? Yeah?
Yeah, so our North American waterfowl population is so I don't know, if you guys follow, you know, when US Fish and Wildlife Service at ducks unlimited. It's a big day when the breeding population survey and habitat survey comes out. You know, it's it's always a fun day to see about. Yeah, it's a big day, right, you look for that every year. It's kind of like Christmas. But so what we saw for this this year, I mean, numbers are still down, but they came up. So for the first time in
ten years, waterfowl populations went up about five percent. So of course that's going to be a lot of that's going to be dependent on the pond surveys too, And there was a lot of difference in pond surveys in the prairie pothole region. And I'm sure all the listeners
know that are understand that waterfowl. You know, for for waterfowl, for breeding, the prairie potholes is like sixty percent of waterfowl nests there and then a lot twenty five thirty percent or so in the boreal and in wet years you have a lot more in the in the prairies and the prairies of US and Canada. And so the surveys tell.
People basically what you're talking about when you talk about the prairie poth holes.
Yeah, so the prairie potholes are going to be you know, in southern Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and then into the US prairies of North Dakota, Montana, the eastern part north of Montana, the northern and eastern part of North Dakota, eastern part of South Dakota, and goes down into Minnesota and a little bit into Iowa. But most of the wetlands are gone there. But that's the prairie pothole region and it is a critical landscape for waterfound for Ducks Unlimited and
another waterfound enthusiast. It's like the priority landscape for federal and state partners as well. But so what we're seeing this past year with the pond counts is it's a pretty diverse and dynamic landscape. So the US prairie potholes were wetter than they've been in the last ten years, so they actually had a big increase, like a fifty
percent increase from last year. But then the prairies in Canada were the driest they've been in thirty years, and so just shows that dynamic landscape and they were down. So overall, the pond counts was like four percent higher than last year, right around the long term average for pond counts. And so you take those two things and that's how the seasons are determined as far as how
the population's doing well. For the central Mississippi flyways, you look at the pond counts and then the population and that determines what the seasons are going to be. So we look at that every year to look at what the seasons are going to be for the following year. So waterfowl populations, you know, there's a little bit of good news. Mother nature has been helping us out a little bit. It's still we've been in a long term drought.
It's going to take years of good weather at the right time, right amount of moisture, you know, cold up north, get a lot of snow cover, and then some good rains to keep that to keep that going. But you know, potholes, it's it's a normal cycle like we have you know every however many years, thirty years, whatever it might be. Remember the eighties were really bad. But you know, we're
droughts are important for wetlands to recharge themselves. So while we don't like it as waterfowl hunters and it makes us nervous. You know, we should be coming out of that drought cycle and hopefully seeing some increased populations. But we'll see. You know, the problem with the only problem with when the water came and the prairies in the US, it was after a lot of the those early migrants came through, so a lot of your mallards and everything, so they flew over because it was dry and they
went the boreal, which it's great. The boil landscape is kind of like, it is good to have that because it does provide a lot of nesting and production opportunities, but typically waterfowl don't produce as well up there, so the reproduction's not as well because the habitat's not as rich and invertebrates and everything that they need for laying eggs and that. It's just not as productive of a habitat for waterfowl. But it's pretty darn good and it's vast,
so it's good to have. But typically what we see a lot when waterfowl fly over the prairies is not as many young birds in the bag as far as the ratio of juveniles to adults in the serv in the in the harvest information reports and everything else that it's not usually that ratio is not as many young birds. But we were seeing from biologists. We're saying that those birds that did stay in the prairies or that came later, man, they had great habitat, so we should have really good production.
And they were actually seeing that a lot of young birds coming out of the coming out of the US prairie podles. So it's a mixed bag.
Yeah.
Is it that if a duck's coming from me, he goes south for the winter and he's flying up, he's not like a salmon where he doesn't know exactly where he's going.
Well, I don't know. They it's they have done studies. She had transmitters and showing birds coming back like so close to where they had been previous years.
Right, you said they would shoot past.
Oh yeah, there's no water, they'll shoot past, yes, and find another place.
Yeah, got it. So they want to kind of they.
Want to go where they come from. So yeah, it's pretty neat. Is there's actually just to do a plug for it. The movie Wings over Water. I don't know if you've heard of it yet. Yeah, it's been out a couple of years. It's an imax. It's really geared towards kids. So but not just kids, but it's talking
about the prairie potholes. And it's not just waterfowl. Follows a duck, fills a sand hill crane and a yellow warbler and shows their migration from south all the way up to the prairies and the importance of prairies and all the landowners there and farmers and ranchers, and and why the prairie pothole region is so important for all sorts of species of birds.
What's the major thing besides that water level, what's the major thing that drives duck up and down? Drives duck numbers up and down in the United States?
So I mean habitat, right, So it's all tied to habitat. And you know, pond count is a is a good
way of course. It's been going on since the mid nineteen fifties and it's the longest running waterfowl population survey missed two years because of COVID, but other than that longest year, longest survey, and so you know, it's a good indicator the more wetlands that are on a landscape, which is what waterfowl need for the grassland surrounding grasslands, so for you know, for nesting and everything as well,
and then for brood production and brood rearing. But the more wetlands and smaller shallow wetlands are preferred over you know, I'd rather have one hundred you know, one acre wetlands than one one hundred acre wetland because they're very territorial as well. So the more water you have on the landscape from wetlands, the better production you're going to have
for waterfowl. And it follows it pretty pretty closely. You can see waterfowl populations up and down, up and down in it being with you know, the previous year's wetland production, got.
It, got it.
So wetland conservation, ducks and limited that's what's all about. And you know, our priority landscape, of course is the prairies. That's our number one priority landscape. We work all throughout North America. We have a lot of landscape conservation priority areas that are important for waterfowl because wintering habitat is
really important for waterfowl too. I have to get those you have to have enough energy and the carbo high raids and everything that they need for fat storage and everything else to make it through those cold winters and be able to come back up north.
But not that you hear about.
People say, like changing agricultural practices will really impact.
Sure, yeah, I'm like. So there was a study we
actually just finished using band band return. So from the nineteen sixties until twenty nineteen, one of our biologists, Dr Mike Brasier, along with doctor Webb with the Missouri co Op Unit and then also US Fish and Wildlife Service looked at bands from nineteen sixty to twenty nineteen, and we looked at three different species of birds, mallard pintail and blue wing teal, and then looked at different subpopulations of where they came from, whether it was Canada and
the Boreal Canada, Canadian prairies and the Boreal Us prairies, and then the Great Lakes and Eastern Canada, and then looked at different months October, November, December, January. So getting to your point, so pintails, if you looked in nineteen sixties, pintails were all along the coast, and the winter rice in Texas was big, so all those pintails in January and the nineteen sixties and seventies were all there. Now in twenty nineteen and tens to nineteen that that population shifted.
You could see in January bird Band returns to Arkansas the Missippi Alluvia Valley where the rice is so yeah, it's really cool. It's all you can check it out. We've got a it's on our website. But part of that state was actually in the last magazine too. It's really neat.
So looking at those they just found the rice production and now that all that rice is down in Texas.
And yeah, Californians are super happy because they can shootin two pintails a day.
No no, no, right, no, no, no, it's one right now. But next year switch next year it will be three. Oh and both the Mississippi, Central Atlanta all four flyways will be at three next year, not this current year. I have to be really careful.
What happens that, lady? Why is it going up?
So US Fish and Wildlife Service again, Okay, there's adaptive harvest management models for all sorts of different species, and we could spend a lot of time going into it. It's really cool. We could geek out in the science of it. But you know, pintails like you said Pacific flyway, they're seeing so many pintails. Well, the thing is they get their pintails not only from Alaska, but also from the Canadian prairies and US prairies, and where those pintails aren't doing as well.
We have a lot of pintails in Montana in the spring.
It's super cool.
Okay, you do, you should, And so what it is they mix whereas mallards they have, you know, the mid continent mallards, the western mallards, Eastern mallads, they don't really they stay in their flyways. Pintails, it's a little bit different. So they've been restricted to one. But the reason for looking at it is trying the it's an experimental three I don't know if they're calling it quote unquote experimental season, but it's a three year trial and if the numbers
don't drop below I make this a little wrong. Let's say I think it's one point two million that will be open for three birds. If it gets below that, it'll drop to two to one or close season, depending on where that population is. And so this year from the breeding population survey, it's over the one point two million mark or whatever that is. It's around there. But the reason they're doing this is they're trying to really see what are the effects. Is there an effect of
shooting three pentels on the population. We try to set our populations. We US Fish and Wildlife Service ducks unlimited is not part of it. I should make that clear. But US Fish and Wildlife Service and scientists try to make sure that you're not having the additive impact of mortality in hunting. So what they want to see is is there an impact from harvesting three birds on that population or is it not additive? Is it compensatory that hunter harvest?
Do you mind walking people through what that means?
Yeah?
Jobs, just people, Yeah, yep, yep, yep.
So if it's additive mortality, those birds would have made it back to nesting and had a had a had a successful nesting and had more more production the following year. If it's additive from that harvest, and if it's compensatory, then it's those birds wouldn't have made it anyway to a certain number of birds aren't going to make it back to breed because of their their life cycle.
God, And that's like when I go love hunting in California and you do see. It seems very consistent that you see more pintails than anything else, and so of course you get more complaints about only being able to kill one pin tail.
Oh yeah, per day.
There's flying over you, just sitting there, flying over you.
Yeah, and they're myth because what's going on is that that all those Sacramento rice field pintails are all hanging out in Arkansas.
Now no, no, no, no, no, no no no, this is different flyway.
So all I thought you're saying they shifted over to help.
What the hell are you talking about, lady? So no, So the birds coming from the Canadian US prairies, some of them will go down to Arkansas, some of them will head over to California, and so it's not distinct where they come from. So, in other words, the birds, the pintails in the US and the Canadian prairies aren't doing as well. The ones up in Alaska are doing well, but they might they all come down into California, but some of these from Canada.
So the Alaska ones aren't going to Arkansas, correct, I understand?
Now, okay, but you always have to tell those California folks, it's like, well, they're not California pintails. They're kind of everybody's in Montana. I can shoot one day and we're growing them.
They just end up here. Yeah.
Yeah, that's the thing about waterfowl. It's I mean, it's pretty impressive to understand how US Fish and Wildlife Service and the states because they have part of that through the flyway councils and when I was in Kentucky, I was on the Mississippi Flyway Council and manage waterfowl populations for everybody because they are a migratory species, and you know the amount of time and effort to that it takes to determine the models that are going to be
best for those waterfowl populations to sustain them and do not cause harm to those populations. It's a pretty important job that the Service does, and that survey is is critical and the reason one of the reasons why we can make it happen. And also hunters right with with your harvest information program, doing the hip survey every year, answering the US Fish and Wildlife surveys, all of those things are critical to help manage that that population of birds.
Have you ever done an honesty check on the hip survey has done that. Yeah.
Actually, yes, So here's what I give.
It straight on mine.
Right, here's wow got forty Yeah, like, you know, do you want to like you've got some hunters that well, I don't want to tell everybody that I'm killing a whole bunch of birds.
You know, guys want to look like they get more than they're getting.
But here's the thing about it. If we don't have the correct survey information, then you know we're we're we're not doing our part as hunters, right. That that's science part of it. So what was happening in Kentucky, I'll
give this example. We had some of the worst hip survey data results because what was happening if we think is everyone was going to the Walmart to do their hip to buy their license, right, I'm just saying Walmart, sorry, any hunting store to go buy their license and and then there right, Well, well I didn't want to pick on Walmart, right, it could be.
A great place to buy a license.
So it is a great place. Walmart's great.
Yeah, but slice Deli meat, your wa batteries, deodorant.
I just didn't want to I didn't want to say it was Walmart. Employees, we're not doing a good job. So but you know, I got the eighteen year old behind the counter that's selling the license, and they get to the hip survey and they just go zero zero zero zero zero, here's your license right right, And they don't ask them are you a waterfowl hunter? Are you a migrant? Are you a dove hunter? Are you this?
Are you that? They don't ask them, They just go about and and so then you don't know is the hunter that you're not complying with the law and you're not doing it right. You're thinking, you know, everything's fine, you get your license. Well, so our data in Kentucky was terrible. So what they what we did is we instituted it was a law that you had to go online. You could no longer at point of sale, even if you bought your license point of sale, you had to
go online and do your hip survey. And so then our data went from one of the worst in the country to one of the best. That we were providing the service.
Stuff hard, you know what's good or bad.
So there are there are ways you can you can fact check year after year after year of like certain hunters, you know, to see if it's pretty normal. Oh they killed you know, twenty twenty birds here and zero here and twenty there so.
You can see still birds.
Well, that poor random line. It's real hard though, doesn't he a.
Goof on Randall? Let's all have a laugh.
I got a question on the hip surveys. So last year would be a good example, I guess, or still this year, I guess. But hunting Missouri, hunt in California.
Gotta do it twice.
You gotta do it twice.
And that's another thing people don't know. It's an education is.
The expectation that it doesn't matter where you are, you're filling out the number of birds that you got.
In aggregate in that location, in that in that state.
State. Yeah, if you need a.
Takeaway, you might have to attract that statement earlier about always filling out your hip survey.
Yeah, well was my intentions were when you buy it, well, so it should be if you buy it, going to say, they should ask you about year.
But you know what, I don't know off a goal somewhere.
I just never I didn't know that, Like I don't know if you're if you go to Alaska and and hunt for day every time you buy like you all all in whatever you've been.
Up, Yeah, collectively, right, Yeah, it's not all in, no, because they'll do they'll take it state by state and roll.
It all up.
That's not clear. They should fix that.
They should definitely.
Well, you know, we are trying to stand for anyway.
Harvest Information Program and so we're actually we're actually trying to help state Fish and Wildlife agencies and trying to collect the most accurate data, working with US Fish and Wildlife Service to in order to do that.
But huh interesting, what was your question about it?
Oh that it's like, are you filling it out for your harvest information in that specific state or are you saying.
This is me, this is what I did last year.
Later today, you might send an email to the higher up uh in the HIP program and tell them that they they should clarify that point.
And it would create incredible efficiency. Did you hunt Missouri last year?
Nope?
Okay, zero, yep, And so then of course, you know, if you just go there one year and hunt, you don't go back for a couple of years, right, So then you're not collecting whatever. But they have they've got all sorts of data management behind the scenes to figure out things like that. So they work through those things. They it's it's a pretty good system. But they are working on improvements to the harvest information program so we can collect the best survey data possible.
What let's say you're a hunter.
We can move on from the hip surveys.
I don't think I want to know who kills the most snipe because.
When I lived out in Seattle, I was hitting big snipe numbers, those good pintails.
A good snipe.
Now for those years I really liked because I could get in there because normally you got to just skip through all the coots and rails and snipes.
Really just got to go zero zero zero zero.
But I got to hit some snipes. That's pretty felt good.
Man.
Yeah, the kid at Walmart was duly impressive.
Back fast.
And then oh, I should also mention, so when you do that hip stuff, so that just puts you in a category. So that puts randall will be in the zero to whatever zero category, you would be in the max category, right, I was pointing to steep by the way, everybody Brownie points. But so once they do that, then they select a certain number of people from that from that that grouping and then they send out the more into it survey. So that's so the individual one doesn't
really matters much. That puts you in a group. And then that's when you get that big survey. And they made it online last year for years.
I got roped into that all the wings and.
Ye, and so then that's when they asked you, I can't resent those people.
I was into it for a year or two, but I was like, good lord man, yep.
And so they'll figure out, like they'll ask you which states did you hunt in? So you'll get get how do you get picked for that?
That got to be a lot.
Yeah, so it's a it's a random It should be a random generated in each of those categories. But they don't have as many in that top end category that you find yourself in.
So I was, I mean.
With you, I do a lot of like, you know, my geese numbers, I'm using the zero to tenor right, you know, ducks. I guess I'll climb up into the twenty to thirty now and then I'm not a big waterfowl guy. Yeah, it's I appreciate it, But here's a
waterfowl management question. To move away from hip surveys. Uh, people will point out, like I think it's widely understood that there's some kind of arrangement between states and federal Right, you can be duck hunting, you can get checked by a FED, but Feds don't check you on your deer hunting.
But there's also like this, there's like an international component.
That's right, but does that have any teeth or first can you explain, like what is the international component and it doesn't have any teeth? Like meaning, would Mexico ever be like, damn it, we're not getting any ducks down here. You need to change your bag limits or would we just be like mind your own business?
Like yeah, So the North American Waterfowl Management Plan and it takes Canada, the US, and Mexico. Now, this is from a habitat standpoint right the north the NAYWARP or North American Waterfowl Management Plan and try to identify what are those most important places for habitat and structuring it that way. But then from an enforcement so you all three have their own regulations and laws and how they set that up.
And they don't cooperate on those laws now, and so.
If you think about it in Canada, everyone's like, man, how come you can shoot so many up in Canada but when they cross that line and into the United States you can't.
How many can you shoot in Canada?
I'm trying to think of what the like, is there anything like we're at seven right now in Montana?
Is there anything more than seven in Canada?
Yes? Yes, absolutely one, So it's eight I think in like Saskatchewan.
Do they have the three day possession limit.
I'm trying to think of what their possession limits are in Canada. I'm not sure. We need to look it up.
But there's an eight bird limit there.
Yeah, it's an eight bird limit. No, I'm trying to think of what it is. But you can harvest more birds in Canada, but there aren't as many hunters up there, so you have a lot more waterfowl hunters in the United States, so we're going to have a much higher impact. Same with Mexico. Not nearly as many waterfowl hunters in Mexico, so their daily bag limits can be higher in Canada and Mexico, the.
Pie is not getting cut up into as many So this is.
The AI overview.
I I'm sure, I'm not sure if that's right, but eight per day, as it does with four being pintails. Take that California dark geese eight per day with no more than five being white fronted.
Wow, so that's double our geese.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a lot white geese twenty per day, not as much pressures fairly close and a much shorter amount of time too. You know, five sandhill cranes per day.
That's a lot of me is white geese.
Snows.
Yeah, normally they when people say they're moving to Cannon, they're making some kind of bitchy comment about the election.
But you'd be like, no, I mean because ducks.
Well this is gonna say, this might make some of those Californians make good on their promises.
Giant mule deer and ducks, come on, can't go wrong.
Uh how is it that?
Uh? How does it come to be that different states have different rags? Okay, like like like how do they weigh that out? Like I said, right here, I don't know what it is in other places right right now? I mean for years it's been like there's all kinds of restrictions, but like you're allowed seven ducks, and then we have all of those like or no more than bland so yeah, seven duck, but no more than two can be a hen mallard, no more than on a pintail.
Yeah, well, there can be huge discrepancies. I remember a season or two where you could kill seven ducks in Montana, but if you were in Stuttgart, Arkansas, waterfowl capital of the world, you.
Could shoot a duck.
A duck, A duck, a duck.
Yeah, that's how like I can't remember the exact situations, but it was like very duck, very Yeah.
Okay, so yeah, how's that all? How's that all divided?
So I mentioned briefly earlier the flyway councils, and so because they are migratory and international and everything, you have the federal regulations, and then you also can have state regulations. So whatever the Feds come up with with, you know, you can have like next year, three pintails and you're in the liberal season. States can be more restrictive than
the federal rule, but not less restrictive. So a state like Arkansas can make the decision because they have a ton of hunters, they're putting a lot of pressure, they can be they can be more restrictive trying to keep more ducks in that area. But then there's also packages that come with the Liberal package, and you can have a certain number of zones and splits in your season and everything, but there are federal regulations of if you have you know, one split and two zones, it can
only be this and that. So they're in each in each area, in each flyway is different and I don't know them all, but so it is a state and federal and that fly The Flyway Council has one state representative from or one representative from each state on the Mississippi Flyway, Atlantic, all the flyways, and they serve as a vote for you know, we as a flyway, do we agree with these particular regulations for our flyway. And then that goes up and goes back to the Feds
and it finishes that system. But then a state can take what was in the federal register and then they can make the decision to you know, take their packages however they want to and be more restrictive.
So Arkansas could come home from that meeting and they were pushing for greater restrictions, didn't get them, But they can come home and just impose greater restrictions at home.
It's their commissioners or their board however they're set up, that vote on their regulations. Each state, again is different how the regulations are set. Some might be from a legislative set, some it might be from a Fish and Wildlife commission, and so they vote. They take. Typically, which
you want system to work correctly? Is the biologist, the waterfowl biologist will give the recommendation to that board and say, look, this is what we think because our green tree reservoirs aren't doing well or this or whatever reason they might have had. I don't know that situation, but and we think this is our recommendation. But sometimes the commission will make their own decision and it'll be contrary sometimes to what the bile just think to air in the side of caution or something.
Man, what were the conversations in Arkansas when it got as bad as one ducky year?
People had to been like just complain.
Yeah, because you know it's a big duck.
Hunting is very social compared to a lot of other hunting activities, right, so a lot of folks getting together in blinds and and yeah.
You can only shoot duck camps. Yeah, I think that was.
Where you really saw the rise of you know, like cooking and accoutrement in fancy duck blinds because he had to make more of a day out of it because it wasn't just all shooting anymore, right, Yeah, yeah, and then yeah, so then and then we saw you know, then you see like your duck hunters that really want to keep hunting ducks, see them traveling a lot more when their their home water restrictions get get tighter and they're searching out those liberal regulations.
Right, and then you're putting a lot of pressure in that area. And you do you have enough uh you know nutrition duck energy day, it's enough habitat to support duck energy.
I really want to get into because I was trying to explain that because that's fascinating stuff.
But that's how much energy you get from eating to duck.
It is super food, man, it is. Yeah. A big fan. We cooked up a cup.
We were hiking our butts off over the Thanksgiving weekend and I took big rice field ducks and cooked them up in the camper and yeah.
Good stuff.
Oh so good.
That's what duck energy is.
No big.
But like state like South Dakota, right, that's where it's a it's a major recreational uh traveling tourism economy for hunting, and in order to try to balance out that pressure, right, they you have to draw for a specific week as a non resident to go, which we've we've done in the past and it's well worth doing. Super fun. But yeah, waterfowl complicated. Your waterfowl regulations can get pretty darn complicated. And it's like, okay, you can only shoot five we
were just in Kansas. It's like, you can shoot five mallards and an odd duck. You're like, okay, well, what do you consider odd?
That one had one?
So I interpret that as it's a six duck limit. No more than five can be mallards.
Yes, yeah, yeah, and then and then uh, I think it was two hens as well, so or mixed in there.
And then if you're hunting public land, it could even get more you know, complicated, because they might have specific regulations for that wildlife management area or something too. So it's it Unfortunately, I think sometimes people get really nervous if they're new to waterfowl hunting. There's a lot that could maybe try to keep you from waterfowl hunting. So that's where apprentice and going with friends is so important because they're going to know the rules.
And there's a w m A in Arkansas that we were right next to, and I want to say, you could only have was it twelve shells in your possession?
Oh yeah, they'll limit however many.
I love because it's like an anti skybusting type of regulation.
Sure, man, you got every every shot, dude, you shoot a lot different than.
Bring a single shot. That'd be a good program that you don't want.
You don't want all your ducks leave in that area.
Right shells?
Yep?
I loved it.
A lot of them do it.
I wouldn't.
After my Wyoming hunting experience, I thought that would be a good regulation to have for rifle hunting too.
But yeah, I.
Had a traffer recently tell me that when he the guy that taught him to try, he said, the most valuable lesson he ever gave me is he says, I treat every trap like it's my only trap. If you treated every shell like it was your shell.
Dude, shoot, it would be a lot different experience.
Well, yeah, I want to know what the psychological impact would be even on a on a somebody who's a fantastic shot.
If it's like okay, here's your five. Yeah, yeah, right, just like how that would change?
That Actually a fun game to do, man, it would.
Yeah, everyone will start yelling at each other why didn't you shoot? What don't know?
Why didn't you?
Well, I don't know, it's too far out. If you waited too long in all these ducks would be fine by and everyone'd be mad.
That'd be weird to have conversations like why didn't you shoot?
Rather than why did you.
Because that's the normal conversation you're doing.
Shot end of the season around here, especially right and like my goal, one of my recurring hunting goals is always to like end the season with my maximum possession limit of ducks so I can carry it.
Through feel good about it.
Yeah, so your freezer's got twenty one ducks in it, and.
I want to want them all to be fat, you know, like that that would be like the way to hit it perfect. But and you typically are like, okay, cold weather, the ducks are going to be putting the feedback on and and but you can time your timing matters to where it's like, Okay, all of a sudden, there's a ton of birds in, but they just got there and they're really skinny.
Yeah.
Versus if the birds have been there for a few days, you want to get them right before they head out because that's when they're at maximum duck energy, maximum fat.
Ye you have fed them, well yes, yeah yeah, And.
Then so can you go into that because that's super fascinated, like how fast they burn?
Oh, those calories definitely do.
And and like again I was talking about that North American Waterfowl mansion plan. There's different plans that that waterfowl managers use, and they have a lot of state and regional requirements for like I don't know, it might be four hundred million duck energy days in the Mississippi Alluvia Valley.
Is what's needed to sustain those ducks with duck energy days the amount of energy that one duck needs for for one day, right, and so a duck energy day and how much like an acre is by like the acre, so it's like how many duck energy days are on this acre of land and providing how much energy. So if you had a thousand ducks and you wanted them there for one one day, you need one thousand duck energy days and that one acre.
So different the form of what in the form of whatever.
Yeah, the high well and each and they'll do it by groups of species, by dabblers or different different industries.
It's not you're not talking about like spreading food out.
Or soybeans or but it's the caloric.
It's the CLOrk, yes, exactly, some kind of food.
That provides really like regionally available food.
That's right, yep. And so how much and so they
have targets. So one hundred and ten days, I think is what they typically keep for what they want to provide the food for ducks, you know, in the Mississippi Allubis Valley for example, And so then you have to have in that whole area four hundred million duck energy days to be able to support the waterfowl population that you're expecting to come into the Mississippi Alluvia Valley or a lot of states will do it as smaller regional areas too, and they might do it for wildlife management
areas different things like that. For what are the duck energy what's the requirement of the duck energy days to make sure those animals have and you know, lots of carbs, lots of other things to store that fat for their you know, migratory journey north as well.
So it's it's analogous basically like a grazing unit if you're thinking in.
Terms of like no cattle KYLCAF unit.
Yeah, it's like an aum basically, like what is this? What can this landscape sustain?
Right?
What can it sustain? What can that by the acre? So what can that one acre? How many ducks can it support for that that time period.
I was curious about this when you're talking about the variability in migration routes earlier and talking about if there's no water in the potholes, they go up to the boreal right, And when I think about animal migration, I think about the like caloric tax on the animal, especially when we talk about big game or thing about like salmon. You know, like it's something that I hadn't really considered
in the waterfowl realm. But considering that their migration route could vary by hundreds of miles's season to season's imagine of striking.
And then of course you know what kind of condition are they in when they get there. Now they are feeding along the way obviously, and depending on the species, you know, they'll start switching over maybe to invertebrates right before they get there to the you know, the nesting areas and to the prairies or whatnot. So they'll shift their diets and everything based on the type of food they need. But you want them to have in some of those southern states that high energy food carbohydrates to
get them to get them there. But yeah, so it puts a tax on them when they're not when there's not water in the prairies, when wetlands are gone. You know, I think in the prairies, I mean depending on certain areas, it could be as high as ninety percent of the
potholes or the wetlands have been lost. But in a lot of the prairies, you know, over fifty percent, fifty percent of the by the mid nineteen eighties, you know, fifty percent were lost, which is why the North American Waterfowl one of the reasons the North American Waterfowl Management Plan started was it was in nineteen eighty four, but in the mid nineteen eighties, you know, like half of all the wetlands had been lost. Of course, the United States and the lower forty eight.
How much does like agricultural food sources offset that, Like.
Is there it's important, Like is it possible there's more ducks now because of agriculture than there was, say two hundred years ago when the middle of the country wasn't covered in corn, And so being like, well, I can't.
Go back nine.
Years ago, but pick a number, like pick a known number, because that's a good question, right, Like there's more Like when grain prices are high and everybody's producing grain and all these farmers are switching to grain, Yeah, that doesn't make up for all that lost ground.
No, No, because waterfould need and if the wetlands are gone, yeah.
And you know, we have all the grain in the world.
That time of year, they're feeding a lot on invertebrates, right because they're trying to eggshells and everything else and that protein. So they're really moving to protein that time of year. And that's what wetlands are just they are just wonderful. They'll soup.
Just so there's not like around tier, like there used to be a lot of wheat production around here, and it's a lot of those fields are getting covered up in condo Like yeah.
Now that's absolutely and so we work a lot, you know,
because we want agriculture on the landscape. And because we don't want it to turn into condos and this and that, and so we work with and r CS, USDA and r CS, and we work with landowners and farmers and ranchers to develop programs both with federal partners, state partners, and then we have our own programs because we want to keep ranching and farming on the landscape and then working to keep wetlands and important grasslands in that landscape
on there right, whether it's through incentives, through education, because soil health practices, a lot of soil health practices and other things that we can work with landowners and farmers to improve. It's going to be better for them economically, they're going to have a better crop, it's going to help with you know, sedimentation, run off, all of that. And then it's also you know, putting in cover crops and other things for waterfowl is beneficial again for them
and then also for wildlife. So there's a lot of practices that we can work on with farmers and ranchers. So we want them on that landscape and they're critical, critical partners for us.
There's not a lot of duck energy and condos.
Not a lot of duck energy and condos.
Now, when you talk about losing half of our wetlands.
Can you can you being drained?
Yeah? Put some numbers around that.
Like start, what's the start? Like what's the starting point? You're not talking about European arrival in the New World, like there's like one.
No no since like a lot of development in the US, right, and so like the Mississippi, you know, Mississippi River basin, I think it's estimates of almost eighty percent been lost of wetlands. And if you think about it, you know, flooding along the Mississippi.
Over the last what does ballpark it?
I'd say, what would be the year mark? I mean last.
Like post World War?
Yeah, yeah, you know nineteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, say so, like in the Mississippi River basin, like eighty percent. But what I think a number I read, you know, by the mid nineteen eighties, I believe a number of bread is that like fifty percent in the lower forty eight were lost. And think about it, you know, draining a lot of wetlands to for building for it can be for farm ground, it can be for you name it.
I mean it's reclamation districts.
Right, everything so they're constantly under attack and people don't understand the not everyone understands the importance of a wetland and that they can provide so many other things other than just waterfowl habitat and habitat for lots of other you know, fish, bird species, everything. But also it helps with you know, flood attenuation if you're talking along the Mississippi River. It helps with a storm resiliency on on shorelines. It helps with clean water filtration. I mean there are
they are nature's kidneys, their nature's uh sponges. They filter out phosphorus, nitrogen, all these you know. And then they also helped store water during heavy rain events to keep from flooding issues. So wetlands are really important to people and wildlife.
And that's what when I started hunting Saskatchewan and Alberta a long long time ago. I haven't been up there in years for waterfowl, but the amount.
Of DU work.
North of the border, which was interesting too because also you would hear from people like, oh, I don't don't contribute to DU because they just spend all my money in Canada.
Yeah, right, but that's where.
They spend all my money, right where all my ducks come from.
Yeah, So until the mid nineteen eighties, we did not do work in the US. We did only work in the Canadian and the prairies in Canada seriously, because that's where the majority of waterfowl were. And it was in the mid eighties again that waterfowl management plan that I was talking about started looking at Okay, we need to start not just ducks are limited, but federal, state, provincial partners, everybody coming together and saying we need to look at
all of these important landscapes. And there's a lot in the US as well. So we started working the US prairies and the mid nineteen eighties, and then of course other priority landscapes from there and also down into Mexico. So that really didn't start until the mid nineteen eighties. But like you said, putting the most money we can into those highest priority landscapes, which is going to be
your Canadian prairies, US prairies, the boreal. But there's other critical landscapes as well that we just were talking about, as far as the importance of wintering habitat as well. So it's a lot of great programs out there, and I should go ahead and make a plug for hunters that every time you buy that duck stamp, that duck stamp goes to protecting permanent protection of wetlands in the United States. And there's a major portion of those dollars
that go into the US prairies. And so that twenty five dollars stamp you're protecting putting a permanent easement on a piece of property on land that is held by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It's part of actual the refuge system. But we have now through this program, the US Fish and Wildlife Service JV, the Joint venture Partners and others have secured protection of thirty percent of
the breeding pair habitat that's necessary. So that's pretty impressive thirty percent of that nesting important critical habitat through duck stamp. So hunters are doing their part. We always say hunters pay for conservation. I mean, this is a very clear point A to point B. Ninety eight percent of the duck stamp sales go right into on the ground conservation easements.
And so anybody, any enthusiast that buys a duck stamp for art or other purposes just because they like them, they are putting that money towards conservation on the ground, and it's made. I can't think another group of species or species of that size where we have been able to protect that large amount of through something through an effort like that.
The guy that painted this year's duck stamp was sitting right in that seat. You're sitting in no way.
So I judge. I was the judge for last year's duck stamp. Yeah, yeah, there's five judges, so I was one of them. But yeah, cool.
How does Ducks Unlimited preserve save protect wetlands?
I mean, do you guys? Is there a lot?
Do you have a lobbying arm that does policy?
Definitely?
And then you also have like on the ground, like on the ground money like money spent. What will explain those different?
Sorry jump in, but you also say like.
The public ground and private ground, Like what the kind of the split is almost like a wh where the money goes type thing?
Lobbying public private.
So so we.
Get a lot of public dollars that we apply for whether it's the North American Wetlands Conservation dollars, those are wetland dollars that it was enacted in nineteen eighty nine to help support that Waterfowl Management Plan, so we get a lot of money through that, But we also work a lot with NRCS, but a US Fishion Wildlife Service to work on refuges. US Fish and Wildlife Service. We
work a lot with state agencies on public land. But we now have about four hundred conservation staff, so inducks unlimited, about four hundred staff are our biologists, scientists, gis. I've got a lot of engineers, engineer techs all doing this work on the ground, so on the ground habitat work
on private and public land. From a public land perspective, In the last several years, we've probably had conservation practices over maybe close to six hundred thousand, yeah, about six hundred thousand acres on public land, so on National Wildlife refuges, state agencies, and a lot of those are more intensive.
Projects are going to be your water, wetland enhancement, wetland creation, a lot rehabilitation, rehabilitation, a lot of that, or you know, building, you know some of that infrastructure and so you can have manipulate water levels and everything else. So there's a
lot more work that goes into it. A lot of the work that we do on private land is going to be more your technical assistance or the money with that we apply for with USDA and r CS to do farm practices that benefit you know, conservation practices on farm and things like that. So it's a lot more on the private land. It's a lot more of working with farmers and ranchers and things like that. Is more that those those types of acres. And the first part of your question though I was trying to go back
to real quick. You were talking about lobbying lobby Oh yeah, yeah, So what are the different.
How do we influence how do you influence the loss of wetlands?
So a lot of that we have a group of folks that are are policy specialists. We have some in DC and then we also have some regionally because they're going to be regional instance instances as well that we're going to have these policy experts. But we work a lot with policy makers on farm bill is a big one that we work when we work on to make sure that there's conservation practices in there. Another one is to ensure that we have complete full funding for NAKA,
the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. It's enacted and it's about fifty million dollars a year for that, so they they work really hard to ensure that we have those types of dollars available to put on the ground for conservation.
So they spend a lot of time working on that, and then our teams in the field, they are constantly looking for new funding sources or new partners to work with, because the more partners that you work with, the better are Like with NAKA, they've now north through North American Wetlands Conservation Act, though I think it's thirty two million acres have been conserved not just by duckson limited, but thirty two million acres have been conserved through that program.
And it has spent two billion dollars. But it's a one to one matching program, so it requires for every dollar spent of federal dollars, that requires a non federal dollar and so there have been over five billion dollars raised to match that two billion dollars to put those thirty two million acres on the ground, and it takes a lot of partners. I think through that program there's over six thousand partners that have participated in that program.
So every our teams are constantly looking for federal non federal nonprofit, you know, local organizations to partner with to get that habitat on the ground. It is. It is a daunting ask to.
What's what's a way that it might happen. Meaning let's say I'm a farmer, okay, and I have a thousand acres and I have some wetlands, and I'm like man, I also love to hunt docs and I like to make money on my farm. And I come and and I come and say to du how can how can I be of assistance or what can I do?
Like?
So, what measures are of disposal?
Lots of things, everything from permanent protection, putting a conservation easement on that property so that it's you know, always in whatever that is as far as the number percentage of wetlands and.
Grass and you guys help with that process and.
We help with that process. And those easements are held by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, And those were some of the duckstamp dollars I was talking about earlier.
Other things might be, well, you know, they might be interested in a conservation reserve program where they take out and that's through nrcs, and so they take out a certain percentage of their production and they put it in they plant it in grass or in something else, and so they might do that or so it's like a rental payment, or they might do equip eqip equip, and they might do rental payments for not rental payments. They might do different cost share to try to improve their
property for the conservation values on there. So there's all sorts of different farm bill programs that they could be interested in, and so our team will walk through all these different programs that they have, and again Ducks Unlimited has a lot is a lot of programs as well that as long as they're doing these activities and we're cost sharing for those conservation activities, as long as they continue to do those, we're in that annual year to
year contract. But that permanent protection is the best thing we can do. In our director of Operations in the Prairie Pothole Region, Johann Walker, he's always saying, all right, we've got to slow down the pace of conversion and increase the pace of protection. But there's lots of other tool rules, you know, in between that we can use that that benefit farmers and ranchers and help improve their what they're getting out of it. But then also for for wildlife and waterfowl as well.
It is currently the number one risk to wetlands crop land conversion.
In the Prairie Poole region.
Yeah. Absolutely, it's a land owner, a farmer is incentivized by prices whatever to convert to increase and convert land to egg. And so that's why I have a way to try to soften absolutely be.
The same thing like.
Sorry ducks, unlimited farm bill programs, nrcs, uh, they are going to also try to make sure that that farmer knows the available incentives. Yeah, not produce crops on intermint wetlands. So it doesn't need to just cost yeah, sequays to make of that. It doesn't just cost the land.
You can do the right time for wildlife without affecting the bottom line.
Yeah, because a lot of times the wetlands, even though it might be dry, it might look dry that year kind of thing that that's not going to be your most productive soil for for crop. It is going to be your most productive for wildlife, but not necessarily for crop. Those are usually not the same thing. And so the education and working with them and a lot of our farmers they love seeing the ducks on the landscape and they love being able to help and it's like.
Help my bottom number that as much as driving in a straight line, pain in the butt to go.
Around that wetland. You're driving this big equipment and everything, and it's a pain in the butt to go around those wetlands. So yeah, we have to find ways to incentivize landowners to want to keep wetlands in certain grasslands intact. And there's there's lots of ways to do that, and it's it's through these great partnerships, our federal and state partnerships and partnerships with the owners that make it happen.
Do you what do you think about.
North American Grasslands Conservation Act. I think that's getting towards a workable state something.
Yeah, it's it's it's interesting because it's it's gone back and forth, back and forth, and I know there's a lot of it's being modeled off of well, yeah, off of NAKA and what works necessarily in this program will it work here? And so I think it's it's definitely evolving and becoming something that I mean, it's critical. There's lots of grassland species that need protection and you can see,
I mean the three billion Bird Report. Right, you have a lot of species that have been declining, you know, since the nineteen seventies, and a lot of them are grassland species. Now NAKA there's a lot that goes into
grasslands as well through through NAKA funding. And when we look at some of those priority landscapes that we want to protect, a lot of them we look at duck pairs, right, how many breeding how many pairs of breeding ducks are going to be in that landscape, and we want to target the highest numbers, you know, the highest the one hundred duct pays. But with that come like fifteen to twenty different other grassland bird species that use that same landscape.
So it's not just one thing that we're looking at or the other. Any any kind of conservation funding opportunities that we can provide that have these great public private partnerships associated with them for conservation. The more of that that we can get, I think, the better off we're going to have.
And that's where like some of the social cost of using wetland comes in, because most people are like, well, wetland is only a wetland if it's wet, Yes. And then also that fringe area around the wetland with the grass like, there's a lot of waterfowl species that that nest in that. That's right, right, and so far are they going to go yeah, yep, But it's like, well it's not wet.
Conservation is not a simple it's not a simple thing and it it really takes a large group of people kind of pulling in the harness together to make it happen.
You know who I think deserves a little credit I make I make a lot of jokes about.
Golf. Well, very famous golfer.
Sat in that seat, which one my husband, the butcher Brian, the butcher hermit. Anyways, you know who deserves some credit? Is there golf course by my house? It's a duck factory. Really, all those little ponds they made, yea, every one of those ponds and they have like some great nesting success, every one of those ponds full of chicks. Also, do they fake ponds?
Do they put a lot of like edge around that pond? Do they are they shallow? Did they did they do that specifically?
Especially a wetland before it was a golf course?
Are like there's a bunch of spring fat ponds and they do they kick off a lot of ducks.
But when you see that little.
There, did you guys weigh in on the ducks unlimited way in on this the sort of political ping pong ball of woatas waters.
The United States?
The states, So can I take try to can we test my ability to explain this?
Okay?
The United States, the federal government declares like sovereignty over certain waterways, meaning like like for instance, if a private landowner owns both sides of the Mississippi, they can't say no more shipping up and down my river, right because the US has jurisdiction over the waterway. And there's a political ping pong about how far up river into non navigable or barely navigable.
Water does the US have jurisdiction?
And could there be a thing where US jurisdiction extends all way up into the headwaters in the wetlands, and they could exert the federal the federal government could exercise some management rights over marshes and wetlands that form the rivers. So extending up the Mississippi beyond navigation, put up into the sources of the Mississippi and use that as a way to preserve wetlands. And when I say a political ping pong ball. It seems to like always be in
the news of a new administration interpreting it differently. One administration be like, oh, no, it goes all the way to the marsh, and the other next administration, no, it ends at navigability, and it seems to be always in the news. It's never quite resolved. Yeah, this is a political hot this is a hot issue. What's been your guys' attitude about this conversation?
So, what we've been trying to do is working with the states on what their wetland regulations and laws and rules will be, because that's really where it the end of the day, because you're right, it's gonna it's this ping pong back and forth, back and forth. But if you're working with the states and working with the you know, the landowners and those rules in those states, that's probably how we're going to be able to to kind of get through this as far as so you can take.
Action now that doesn't get done or undone, right every time the political winds change, that's right, Yeah.
Yep, because states have their own you know, regulations now, especially with the latest change.
So you, uh, when I was talk about lobbying earlier ducks unlimited will will at times try to influence regulation about wetland development.
Yeah, we work a lot more, i'd say, on the funding for wetlands conservation and from that standpoint, and.
So so you spend more time with the carrot than the stick.
Yeah, a lot more time with the carrot than the stick, because it gets gets you a lot long, gets you a lot further. We've you know, in the last five years, developed an e strategic plan if you look at everywhere that is important for waterfowl. If you take our landscape conservation priorities and I put that map down in front of you, and then you took an AG map in the United States and you laid that over it, it's
almost exactly the same. Yeah, you're talking about earlier exactly more rural people.
Yeah.
So so it's it is critical that we have strong relationships and partnerships with with with the AG and ranching.
So metro Chicago doesn't pop up now, not too much. You're important for duck zone.
I'm sure there's a strong DU chapter there.
There's a lot of strong du chapters.
That's a good point about it's an interesting point about the need to.
The need to.
Have the build of work with agricultural interests. When if you if you you're right, if you look at like where birds are coming from, it's agricultural landscapes.
So I may edgine if an organization was.
Just sort of uh perceived as being vehemently anti egg, you might wind up having a hard time to work.
In egg country, might be hard to work in a country. So you know, there are there are disincentives that I think are important to keep, you know, and incentives that are important to keep. And I think it's a balance of those two things to ensure we get that right.
I'll come.
So there are there aren't disincentives in place, but like swampbuster and everything else that are important. But what that is is it's you know, keeping if if you're a farmer and you're in farm build programs, right and you're getting something from a farm build program, you can't plow
under a wetland or drain a wetland. So that's type a type of a disincentive, but then incentives for some of the things I was talking about with conservation reserve program or equip or wetland reserve easement where you're putting your land permanently in an easement protection or you know.
Well, it's like there's not a necessarily like a one size fits all never deal too, because between like the state and the federal programs, you could have the ability to leave that intermittent wetland alone most of the time, but you could you could take hay off of it, you could graze it, but at certain times a year that that fit in God with the breeding nesting program.
Glad you brought that up. And it's not a one size fits all. I mean, that's a really good point. And so each state is going to be different. So North Dakota, South Dakota, what programs are available, what's allowed not allowed.
And sometimes it's your flyway too, right Like if you're in an area that's trying to bring back sandhill crane, yep, certain properties along that flyway are going to pay more for all these programs.
And the great thing about these programs and even an easement, you know, if they're voluntary, of course, but if you put an easeman on your property, the landowner can still use the land and it's but then it's that being able to be there for habitat, for waterfound other species, for generations.
Yeah, a buddy of mine, big farmer in South Dakota. He like, it's the most awesome, feel good story ever. He started just getting into these programs because it made more financial sense than trying to farm this stuff. And he's like, yeah, we remove the diesel fuel, removed the seed costs, the nitrogen costs, all these costs to farm something marginal to not get a return. But we also don't have to turn our steering wheel start picking up
a couple of bucks for different things. Saw some good improvement, saw crazy stuff happen, Like all of a sudden, they had prairie chickens on the ranch, and it's like it's because we were in this state program. Oh, super cool that you know, incentivized native grasses.
So you saw it good.
Drought tolerants increase, fire tolerants increase. And then the other cool thing that they saw increase was just family interest in the farm because it's like, well, twenty years ago, there was nothing else to look at other than the row you were hoing, basically, and now there's like deer running around, there's lots of birds, there's raptors, all sorts of wildlife increase, and the interest level from you know, the the small family members who don't really care about
the financial part of things.
They're like, oh, this is a cool.
Place to be, yep.
But then you get one of those guys drives round, pissed off all the time.
Farm Yeah, well it's it's the farm. Farm the best and leave the rest right. But I love coming to the prairies and listening to the stories. You know, so cattle and ducks go really well together, and they both need grass and everything, and so I come. I love coming to the prairies and listening to the testimonials of some of these folks that you know, drained a wetland years ago with their great grandfather, but then are putting it back and they love the family interest and the
kids are enjoying it. But then, you know, or some of them that decide, I'm gonna we're going to into ranching, and they convert, you know, from farming from crop to to ranching, and takes a ton of money for them to do it, and they're probably losing money and not
always in the best spot. But then there's programs that are available to help them out or putting in practices on that working farm that are going to protect wetlands, and so it's pretty fun to listen to the testimonials, just like you were just saying to your buddy that of of what happens too when they joined some of these programs.
I got too quick ducks, unlimited banquet stories for you.
I love these. I can't wait.
One time I was in the market for.
A new fish finder, yeah, and I was able to buy a I was buying it anyway, buying it anyway, but I was able to buy a thousand dollars gift card to bass Pro shops for seven hundred dollars. It was like I basically bought one thousand dollars for seven hundred dollars. My other story bottomless beer for ten dollars.
My other story is just my buddy Ryan.
He was at one of those and he was drunk and he was bidden on something, but he was in his mind he was buying what was up next?
Oh no, so he's looking at what's up next.
It's like, I can't believe nobody else is going on.
I was like bidden and bidden, and he wins, and his buddy's like, what the hell you want that? Because they're like in another state.
He's like, what do you want that picnic table for bad?
Oh my god? Whatever was yep, He's like, I.
Was bidding on that.
That'll happen. That'll happen.
I love our banquets and really get so many support through them. And people come in, well they come for the party, but then they stayed for the ducks.
A carnival for adults.
It is. It's a lot of fun. Is that still functioning good? Like, oh yeah, because COVID probably killed it for a while, right, You would have.
Thought, man, are that team? They are absolutely incredible. David Schustler, he's the chief of that that team. They pivoted so fast. We're like, okay, guys, we're going to be shut down. I'm thinking I will be shut down for a couple of weeks. It all come back. He had different ideas. So they went to all this online stuff almost immediately and the like and everyone's sitting at home look up for something to do. And we had all sorts of
different interactive ways for people to join online. And then as soon as we could go back outside, they were setting up big tents and you know, going state by state. They I don't know if they slept much during during that time, but they were actually able to keep our events system rolling. And then we had our major donors. I cannot tell you how important our volunteers and our major donors are. Like I was talking about all the
match for all these programs. I think we had one hundred and seventy six million dollars in public dollars last year our team brought in. But that takes a bunch of match. And our donors are incredible, and how our philanthropists that give. But then also everybody that goes to an event and the money that that first dollar comes in an event and the dollars that they spend there, how that goes to conservation. It's a pretty incredible organization. It's been a lot of fun the last five years
and looking for many more. But I didn't realize before I came to work for Ducks Unlimited, that passion that is with all of those volunteers, with the staff, with our major donors, And they really came through in COVID. Our major donors stepped up like they never had before to make sure that Ducks Unlimited was going to be able to make it through it.
So my friend Mark here in town, he made a rule a couple of years ago that he let a lot of people hunt on his place, but you can't hunt his place unless you're a Do you remember I like that.
That's great, he's got some there.
No, I no, which reminds me I took.
I got to make sure my kids are still up because I kind of extended it to my kids. But I got to make sure I didn't violate his rules. Went out there for the check a couple.
That's why you just got to get that lifetime membership.
Right to have a membership for him right here.
You'll never have to worry about it again.
I did like I did lifetime at Turkey Federation. I did lifetime at Rocky Mount Elk Foundation. But I should do my lifetime at DU. My next lifetime should be DU lifetime.
Well, you know, or you can just annually, you know support.
That's the covey of the lifetime membership. Yeah, because a lot of people think they're done.
No, No, there's no lifetime membership. It's you're never done.
Yeah.
How much do you guys get? How much public money from all you guys efforts?
That's it was around one hundred and seventy five seventy six million. Our team spends a lot of time writing a lot of grants and it's like I said, it's diverse. We don't just one type of funding. And that's that's something that we all need to be thinking about. Are what are those funding opportunities, like all the other benefits that wetlands provide, what types of funding opportunities and streams can come from that as well, because we need to
be able to diversify. Unfortunately, we probably aren't going to have as many hunters sitting around the table and however many years I hope I'm wrong, But how do we get other people to understand the importance of the conservation work because I do think you know, sportsmen are our first conservationists, and so how do we encourage other people to have that same interest in the like whether it's turkeys or mule deer or National Deer Association, whoever it is.
That's a lot of interest. Because there's only a million dock hunters, right, I did one hundred and seventy five million public dollars, But yeah, what's that?
Well, I mean as far as duck hunters, you know, and how many members we have, there's probably more duck hunters but you're right, it's like.
A lot of it's a lot of per like because you know how many duck stamps get bought.
I was going to say, like you always hear people talk about, Oh, anybody can buy a duck stamp. I'm curious how many.
It's five people.
Well, that's my suspicion, but I'm wondering.
If you have any insight in Well, Max Barta buys one for his dog.
Yeah, well there's people that buy.
I buy several, Yeah, because I want one to keep, and then I want one that i've got.
I buy multiples because I forgot I already.
Bought one, I lose them.
Yeah, that's it.
But I think it's probably I mean, there are exceptions. I feel like it's a probably a pretty clean.
I don't know, because there I was really surprised when I did the duck stamp judging last year, which I thought was like the coolest thing ever. By the way, I didn't realize how cool it was, but there were a lot of art enthusiasts that we're kind of like chiming in on that online thing. I went and looked at it later that nothun or that are not hunters now I don't know it's them well count all ten
of them, but it is, I mean it is. The majority is going to be hunters and have been doing it, you know, for since what the first one ding Darling and nineteen thirty four. I should have that off the top of my head. But it's mostly going to be your duck hunters.
You know what Cal and I are going to do.
He doesn't know this yet, but when we retire, I got a couple of things on my list that I'm gonna do with my retirement project.
But we're going to give you a dog.
No, I'm going to try to establish a I'm gonna try to establish a universal Blaze orange requirement of a hat no more than a hat, A hat, hat orange hat.
I've seen quite a few Montana hunters out there already are on board with that.
Not because because when you're wearing a vest and you're trying to change your clothes, it's just too much.
Just a hat. A hat's great, see that hat orange.
I know the hat's got the same issue though, It's like every time I'm always to.
Ye putting something else on.
I write a book about how it's okay to hate Shakespeare and then I wanna Then then I want to work on cal and I want to work on a public service thing to get the water fouling community to take field care.
Of their ducks more.
Seriously spread As you demonstrated today, they are exceptionally generous with their conservation dollars. But I think that as a group, I have like as a group, I can't think of a more egregious and I'm like, I like the hundred ducks yesterday, geese and ducks. I can't think of a more egregious group of people when it comes to utilization of the resource.
Really, you remember the dinner.
I can't think of a more egregious group, a more generous but egregious group of.
People, the dinner that we had when we when we came out for the h the survey of release two years ago. Like, if there's just more of that going on, Like people are like, oh, here's my recipe, here's what I do, more of that type of sharing that's pretty dark limited in.
The field, saying once they.
Utilization of you gotta explain, okay, come on, well okay, for instance, well not for instance, here here's the thing.
That I look at ways to use the Dutch.
I couldn't believe that our state did this. Our state used to have salvage that we have salvage requirements in the state. Okay, many states of salvage requirements. They actually lowered the salvage requirement, meaning on a mallard sized bird, you were required to keep the thighs. You're required to keep the breast meat in the thighs. And one day they also said, like you know, you know, like now it's okay just to throw that in the garbage.
Got to keep the brass, don't have to retain what.
I'm saying, like like among I think it's it's triggered by a bunch of things. There's the there's the strictly enforced and I'm not saying you should get away with it, the strictly enforced possession limit thing where people like if you're out hunting ducks for a week, but you can only have three days of possession. I think it inspires a lot of people to try to find ways to
offload ducks. And there's just so many stories of guys looking off bridges and there's hundreds of snow geese carcasses, Like it's just like it's just like as a community, I think the waterfowl community as a community is very poor about utilizing the meat from the birds. And I have not not wanting to do, like, not wanting to do any kind of work.
You shouldn't feel compelled to uh to agree with him?
No, no, no, no, I'm not going to know. I have not seen that. However, what I no, I haven't.
Honestly, you should read the comments I'll pluck a duck and put it on Instagram, and you should read the hateful comments about how much time that takes the fans that that someone would take the time to pluck a duck.
Why do they care if you pluck it's the internet. Yes, that doesn't make it. But you know, there are things that I think to your point of recipes, and we do a lot of stuff in the magazine and online. We could do it. We could do it probably with our podcast.
I'm not blaming I'm not blaming du For some someday I want to do like a public service thing about like how darks taste is gonna be called darks taste really good?
Well, you know, there useduld be the old joke of you know, the best way to cook a goose. You know, you put it on this more and then and then you keep them board right yep, So which is totally not true. I have eaten some damn good uh geese and some damn good ducks over the last however many years of my life, and it is in the preparation of it and everything else, just like I mean, you know,
I hear a lot of you know, even deer hunters. Well, there's a lot of stuff they got to cut through on the on the shoulder, so I don't keep the shoulder meat. Now, hold on a second, so you could do this, you could grind it up. So there's all sorts of things that we could all learn from each other if maybe we had that better community of here are things that you can do. I mean, squirrel hunters, a lot of squirrel hunters are like, oh, it's a lot of work to to you know, clean a fox squirrel.
There's so much harder than gray squirrels. I'm like, well, then don't shoot the damn fox squirrel. Yeah, you know, if you don't want to clean, don't shoot it.
Run out of the butcher shop, spend sixty dollars on the nicest rear by a steak you can fine and then.
Cover it and hair and bile.
And let.
Yuh and then tell me what you think.
Yeah, I mean you know what, I regret. I regret.
I regret.
Bring that up and act like that's your problem. I think the whole show. But I want to reapproach it.
I'm just saying it, you know, but.
I want to reapproach it. I want to say this. I want to have Phil remove all that and it'll just be me saying that, man, a well handled.
Duck is damn good. It is just really good. It is really good.
It is. It is phenomenal.
And when you take geese breasts and make pastrami, it's really really good.
That's all.
Take all that out, Phil Reuben Sandwich.
It seems like I kind of ruined the whole show, didn't it.
No, No, no, no, no, just picking on duck hunters, that's all I'm saying.
No, but I was praising duck hunters, but I was praising them about the how how generous and dedicated they are.
My litmus test is.
Though, like when somebody's like, oh, yeah, you like to hunt ducks, we should come hume, I'm like, cool, how do.
You cook them?
Seriously, and to this day, one of the best duck hunting connections I've ever made was from that exact conversation, being like, well, this is what we do, and I was like, Okay, we can talk more.
Yep, yeah, so is really good.
Far be it from me to stereotype, but I'll tell you you want to see some the ones. I know. The cages are some duck eating, yes, duck prepared man, Yes, I mean they eat the beak. Yeah, that's that. I'm trying to go positive. I'm trying to be like du and go care it not the stick trying to go positive? Ruined the whole show?
Was that bad? Phil? When I brought it up, it seemed like a like kind of deflated everything.
Well, there have been occurrences in the past that I think you probably should have had that reaction to. I don't think this is I actually.
Think I actually think saying that this this was the line calling this for the time, saying that you've ruined the show, I think is doing more.
Smith is coming up at the hole deeper. As we were on the way down here, Cal and I were talking about this issue. Yes, yeah, that was they's I came in the room with it on the mind. You know, there's just like someone had shared an anecdote.
I care if it's a local thing that you're seeing here. I think it's a local thing, like I promise you. I hunt mostly in the South, but I've hunted other places as well, and I don't see that. I see it as like everyone comes back to the duck camp and what are we going to have? It's gonna be duck. I mean, you know that's it's cooked.
But I think it's regional cultures, right, and there's you know, like you know, it's like people who don't have the experience or they're trying to get into it, and they don't already even do what a lot of us would would. You know, they're they're preparing things out of the box versus cooking something. You know, they're they're very instruction based, Like they have a very hard time grasping any sort of bird.
Right last time I checked, everybody wants to be like meat eater and they want to you know, I mean, I'm joking aside, you guys do a really good job of bringing that to the table, right literally to the table, as far as you know, the the that importance and that full cycle in what you do. I think you
know you ducks unlimited. Other people like that. Whatever the game species is talking about, that that importance of being off the landscape and and it providing that that wonderful protein that we all crave so much.
Excellent. That's good.
See how I.
No, it's good. We were talking about the other day what someone needs to make an invention of is.
That, besides the flat tree I already invented.
That is a machine if you could come up with this is a machine that you put docs into. Okay, and you turn the machine out in the morning, you got duck sausage sticks waiting for you on the other end.
Good luck with that.
I like it. I'm trying to, just like you, wake up in the morning and just let machines shut down and it's just just pepperoni sticks.
Man. Let me tell you, I am the most popular person at Christmas right now because I have a lot of duck sausage.
And it is so freaking good. When Cow and I were talking, we were talking about this very thing, and I was saying, like, it doesn't matter any idea about whether you like ducks or not.
Everybody likes pepperoni. Sticks.
That's right.
So if you go duck hunting, get all your duck breasts, put them in a pile and make a bunch of pepperoni sticks. No damn good because like everybody likes those.
Put a bunch of you know, honey in there. Make them.
See So then at the end of the duck seas you got, you got twenty pounds of pepperoni sticks. You drive around, eat do that.
There you go. They make great Chris gifts. Everybody wants.
There you go, pepperoni stick.
Get crazy pickling Brian afterwards, Oh I.
Never heard really. Oh yeah, pickle, pepperoni sticks.
Yeah, pickle, pickle, the sausage ext your.
Salt, get right, because like in the old days, you go and do a bar and you'd have the sausage and the pickle jar.
Yeah, good stuff.
Since I quit drinking, I forgot about that. And the really good bar would have eggs and a pickle jar.
They'd have sausages and.
The pi wizzards.
You not have chicken feet and stuff like.
That where I grew No, no, we had a lot of smoke stuff, but pickling wasn't huge in the Midwest. No great, And what else is there anything? I didn't ask you about. I don't know.
There's all sorts of things. We could play this game all day.
Yeah, probably a lot of things that didn't ask you about. But is there any like super pressing thing that I should I should have brought up?
No, I think we covered a lot of great stuffy, been fun.
It's been educational because man, I hate any kind of story about you know, wildlife going downhill over the years, and it's distressing to think of all that wetlands loss.
It is, it is very distressing, and so I think it's it's obviously what we do at Ducks Unlimited. We think about it every day because it is we you know, part of our mission and our vision is to make sure that it's here for that waterfowl, here for many generations to enjoy.
When you crystal ball it, do you think, what's your prediction, you know, like in a hundred years, if people going to hunt ducks?
Yeah, ducks one hundred years, absolutely, and we're going to have waterfowl filling this guys too. And it's because of hunters, it's because of you know, conservation enthusiasts. A lot of reasons. Organizations like Ducks Unlimited and many other conservation organizations. We're going to have it.
So in one hundred years they'll be driving around eating duck pepperoni stacks.
You are.
Yeah, there's a great article. This came out a long time. You've probably read it, but.
There's this guy's talking about his lamenting living in a big city and he's missing waterfowl season. But you know, life has him working in a big city and he steps out onto the subway platform and there's a via geese going over and he's looking up at this via geese. Then he, for whatever reasons, kind of scans the crowd out there and finds the.
One other person going like this. He's like that, that was my waterfowl hunter. But you know, we need folks in the in the big cities to clue in on stuff like this too.
So so let's do let's do a checklist. Like if you're going if you're a duck hunter, you got to buy your duck stamp. You gotta buy you so you got to do that anyways, and that's like that, that's a.
Lot of funding for wetlands.
Absolutely, if your duck hunters probably joined Ducks Unlimited, because if you go on duck hunting.
You want to get ducks.
If you want to get ducks, you need wetlands and Ducks Unlimited does wetlands work?
You got it?
So there's that. If you like to have fun, go to the banquets.
There are a lot of fun.
Like I said, it's a carnival for grown ups.
And you can win a picnic table.
See, you can win like a truck.
I mean, how many guys you know have been hunting their whole lives don't have guns from the du banquet?
Yeah, or prints or whatever. My silverware is Ducks Unlimited silverware.
Sure, for peep's sake. My old man had an ithaca. He had an ithaca father twenty gage and guess where that came from.
Uh So do that.
Go to the banquets and hang out, and then if you got it, if you can swing some extra jingle in your duck hunter, like make some donations up above and beyond your membership, because the membership is pretty inexpensive. Yes it is.
It's like it's like a.
Foot in the door, but the door and it's critically it's very import sure, but you know, and it's we leverage those dollars three, four or five times to try to get as much conservation on the ground. So our our leverage rate on donor dollars is very high.
Yep.
And as you mentioned, like for a lot of these programs, it's good to have private money because it helps you, it helps you activate great public dollars.
Yeah, without those private funds, we can't go after knock a dollars or any farm bill, any of those other dollars because it takes that private match as well. And one thing I'll tell you we didn't talk about that I know it is really important to you, is you know, from the land conservation standpoint, we do our lands program is very robust. So we do hold conservation easements most of them and a lot of them go to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, But we do hold easements
as well. But then we'll also buy land and sometimes it's too you know, conserve it as far as from a standpoint of restoration efforts and everything, but then a lot of it is for facilitated acquisition for public hunting. And so just in the last five years, just shy of fifty thousand acres that we purchased and then are conveying to state, and we conveyed the state.
Agency wildlife management areas.
For wild management areas, or to US Fish and Wildlife Service for refuge for hunting. So a lot of public access opportunities.
I know that one's and that's like that's willing seller, willing buyer. That's right, buying lands for sale, yep.
And it's a facilitated acquisition because a lot of times states if they want to add it to there's a piece of property for sale and they want to add it to their wildlife management area, the refuge, they can't necessarily moves as quickly as we can in the sellers and wants to get it sold, so we'll hope we'll buy it, hold it and then convey it to the public agency.
That's a really great thing because I've been over the years, I've been made aware a number of times of like calis send me something like really great strategic conservation purchases. But it's hard to be that nimble it is, I mean, it's like for sale, and then you're trying to get some agency to figure it out and then you know they got a value it in a way that isn't
realistic or whatever. And then and then to have people that can identify like a real hot conservation hot spot and boom, get in there and know how to make deals and then have the time to then facilitate and because.
You know, we've got great donors, a lot of them are interested in that land conservation and getting it into public hunting access, and so while we're holding it, they'll help with the costs of holding that property before we can convey it. So there's it's a it's a really it's a great service that we can make sure.
That's kind of a sticky thing too sometimes with membership, right, because we were looking at a really cool project do you as doing in Iowa and it's like, well, yeah, we're buying the land and then eventually we're going to turn it over into I think it was a w m A. But first we're gonna pull out this drain tile, we're going to do some noxious weed work, we're gonna really.
Like get it up to good quality.
Yeah, good quality, And so you're always kind of like balancing out like yep, we did it. But land management takes time, and you know, sometimes membership or just the public's like, well, where's the public access which has bought it?
Where is it?
Yeah?
Or like for example, with Canisnia, it's been a refuge in or it's going to the Red River National Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana. There's a piece of property. I think it's a little over three thousand acres and we've had it for several years, but we haven't been able to convey it to the US Fish and Wildlife Service because they had to get an expansion of the refuge in order to then take it. So that's like a federal thing.
You have to go through that.
So we've had to hold it for several years before we can can vieim not that place. And yeah, and so it is it's not just an overnight sort of thing. And so to have that patience for people to realize that, hey, we might have to have it for a little bit before we're able to convey it is an important note. But it's a I think it's a it's an important program, and I think it's something that's really good to be able to do for for public hunting access.
I got one last question for you. If God came down and he said you can either hunt only squirrels, boy, or only.
Ducks for the rest of your life, what would you.
Pick I'm going to pick ducks. I'm I'm just saying that. I'm saying that, all right, My CEO, Adam Putnam, I loves no I absolutely love squirrel hunting. It's uh, you know, and I know it sounds funny, like how can you be that passionate about squirrel honey, But in the world it is a blast. And with dogs, man, you're out there with you with your dog. But als you can take kids. And that's my son.
The first thing.
Ill, yeah, squirrel, I mean, you get to talk, can make as much noise as you want. No one's yelling at you, you know, blowing their duck call just so you'll quit talking, you know that sort of thing. I mean, it's it's a I don't know, it's just so enjoyable. It's a big you know.
Uh we we kind of introduced the technology into squirrel hunting that a couple of our friends that do it with dogs, but they were slow to adopt the binocular Do you bring the binoculars?
I bring the binoculars. Absolutely.
Yeah.
They were like what I'm like, man, for finding the squirrel in the tree.
Man, they are so good. So I'll train my dogs to go to the other side of the tree from me, so they'll push them around because they will hug on that tree, and then you're trying to go around, and it's going around the tree with you, you know, staying out of sight. We'll get my dog chased it to the other send it to the other side to chase the squirrel around.
So I met a hunted blue grouse spring blue grouse with a woman that it's kind of very simple. We got their way up in the tree and trying to find them in the spring, and she would lay down on her back in the woods. She would kind of like it was mostly on hills, like steep country, so she'd go up a little way so she's more like eye level with the canopy and she would just lay on her back with binos and she'd lay there ten minutes and also be.
Like got it. And so when we go out our friends that had.
Squirrel dogs, yeah, it wouldn't take a well no, but.
I would bring binos and now we would just lay there and after a while, because my buddy Kevin, he dog just looked through his scope, and after a while we got a couple of them to to like give in to the point that binos are not yep, that binos are helpful for fining those suckers. But what I was getting at was there's no better feeling, yeah than when you're just getting ready to walk away and all of a sudden someone's like, got it. Yep, is that little bit.
Ale hair glowing and you know, growing on top of the branch or something.
Got is one man moved his zar just enough for somebody to care.
That's a good time doing that stuff. So you you twenty two are a shotgun.
So a lot most of the time I'll take a shotgun. I do bring a you know, a twenty two as well, but a lot of the places that I might go on hunt or smaller properties, and so I'm usually taking a taking a shotgun. But if I can get a nice clean shot with a twenty two, it makes it a lot easier getting that getting the shot out of him.
I got who kept my buddy Kevin Murphy to go out with him? He's a squirrel dog.
Yeah he's in Kentucky.
Yeah, ut like he.
Calls out, he's got what he calls a war horse when he rides out if he's hunting squirrels for real, Yeah, when he rides out. He's got a twenty two, a shotgun, a baseball bat and axe.
Damn too right, So you know Kevin Murphy, Kevin Murphy, West Kentucky.
Ye, small is awesome.
Oh no, that's what I'm talking about with the biny and stuff. He's a he's a woodsman, yeah, him and we had a swamp rabbit going to a hole in a tree. Yeah, he goes over and cuts a sawbrier. I'm not kidding you. I watches my own two eyes, cuts a sawbrier and snakes it up that hole and he starts twirling.
It, pulls that lot, pulls that rabbit back out of the hole.
But what he uses that bat for is now that if there's a squirrel in a hollow, he'll just come up. He'll get He'll get the bat off his war horse and go over there and just wallow that tree with a.
Bat, chases it out, and then the axes if all those fails just cut down the tree, he just.
Hands it with him. You know, he's but yeah, he would get He gets real serious and he got into riding those horses because he says one time he was just hunting on foot like an idiot.
You know.
And he sees some guys coming up the road on horses and he said their saddle bags were just stuffed.
He says, just squirrel tails hanging out of the saddle bags. And he thought himself, I need to get one.
Let me tell you, you know, you're those dogs. They'll go up one one mountain, like up one hill, down the other, up another, and then all of a sudden they're striking and they're like, get here and get here now, and you're, you know, hooping it up and down, up and down. So the horse shouts, I'm one of the idiots on foot.
But you know, man, you got a home Kevin, because you guys would have it. You guys be like two peas in a pot.
Yeah yeah, Kevin and I go way back, way back. Okay, so oh I know Kevin, Oh yeah, own him for years.
Butchy bad Toe, he's got all those famous dogs.
And he's got some he has some good squirrel dogs, really good squirrel dogs.
All right, all right, well, thanks for coming down the show.
It's a lot of fun.
Everybody. Thank you, no, thanks so much.
Thank you.