Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless,
Speaker 1: severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to podcast,
Speaker 1: you can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought
Speaker 1: to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams,
Speaker 1: hanging deer stands, or scouting for ELP. First Light has
Speaker 1: performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check
Speaker 1: it out at first light dot com. F I R
Speaker 1: S T L I T E dot com. All Right,
Speaker 1: Dave Smith this year from DSD. Dave Smith decoys hates
Speaker 1: doing podcasts.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to be here. I thanks so much for.
Speaker 3: Guy knows a lot about hunting.
Speaker 1: He knows a lot about hunting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, every time I talk to him, I've learned something
Speaker 4: new that I've never learned in the whatever thirty one
Speaker 4: almost thirty two years i've.
Speaker 1: Been Yeah, he's an artist. Yeah, an artist, decoy designer,
Speaker 1: built a great business. Dave Smith Decoy's likes.
Speaker 3: To hunt comfortably.
Speaker 1: Likes to hunt comfortably, self deprecating, funny, well more could
Speaker 1: you ask? You're already married though? Right?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I'm just jealous of all you guys
Speaker 2: that can actually move around the mountains and everything like
Speaker 2: that and are physically fit and everything. So I just
Speaker 2: hunt the way that I have to. And also I've
Speaker 2: noticed that I'm old. I'm like easily the oldest person
Speaker 2: in this entire organization.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you might have beat Brody.
Speaker 2: Whoever he is, I'd call him a kid.
Speaker 1: How old you?
Speaker 2: I just turned sixty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might be the oldest person.
Speaker 2: That's right. So you guys, I expect to be treated
Speaker 2: as such exactly.
Speaker 1: We also got Jason Phelps joined to remotely. He's gonna
Speaker 1: tell you with with the Elk bugle coming up, Elk's
Speaker 1: Heason't coming up, Elk Archie Phelps is going to share
Speaker 1: with you our esteemed listeners. Three I I asked him
Speaker 1: three things that people are to keep in mind, and
Speaker 1: he's going to share three things that people ought to
Speaker 1: keep in mind. We got a chaster here, Uncle Chastey
Speaker 1: seth Krin's wearing her headphones today. Mm hmm, fills over
Speaker 1: in his little corner. Everything's great. We got a couple announcements.
Speaker 1: Make up top. We are re kicking off playing on
Speaker 1: his phone, trying to plug stuff.
Speaker 5: Me too.
Speaker 1: Listen, We're re kicking off the auction House of Oddities,
Speaker 1: which comes and goes, as you know. But holy smokes,
Speaker 1: the lineup this year? So, uh, when when's it start?
Speaker 1: Krinn this week?
Speaker 5: Oh it does this week?
Speaker 1: How's that possible? Oh? Yeah, this week? I'm with you.
Speaker 1: We have I'm holding a couple lels for one of
Speaker 1: thing I'm not holding. I don't know if Sunday it
Speaker 1: might wind up on the auctionsvanities? Is we finally after forever?
Speaker 1: So we bought a punt gun at an antique auction
Speaker 1: for way more money than I'd care to admit. But
Speaker 1: the barrel, I'm only holding the action. The barrel takes
Speaker 1: a couple of people to hold. Yeah, if you watch
Speaker 1: it on if you're listening on YouTube, you can see
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: You.
Speaker 1: It takes two people to pick the barrel up. It's
Speaker 1: a one hundred pound barrel. Yeah, it's seven feet it's seven
Speaker 1: feet long.
Speaker 5: Is there going to be a raffle for who gets
Speaker 5: to hold the barrel when we shoot it?
Speaker 1: No, because I think the liability You don't hold the
Speaker 1: barrel when you shoot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, two people don't hold it.
Speaker 1: The way a punt gun works. You had a little vessel.
Speaker 1: You had a little boat picture like a little canoe
Speaker 1: that just basically accommodates the punt gun. It's well, no,
Speaker 1: it's on a frame and it's on a slide. It's
Speaker 1: on a frame. You don't move the punt gun, you
Speaker 1: move the boat. It's on a sliding block filled with
Speaker 1: bags of sand. Or they would use sea oats to
Speaker 1: absorb some of the recoil because that boat when you
Speaker 1: pull the trigger, that boat's going backwards. The shell. I'm
Speaker 1: holding the shell right now, this shell, so it's a
Speaker 1: two gage shotgun, but this is the shell is nine
Speaker 1: inches long. This thing throws over a pound.
Speaker 2: Let made forgetting things.
Speaker 1: And you would go up often at night. You would
Speaker 1: go up on rafted ducks, aim your boat at them,
Speaker 1: cock it and pull the rope. So well, you're safe
Speaker 1: right now. So almost had an accident this morning. So we
Speaker 1: had to go to an engineering firm to get AMMO made.
Speaker 1: I'm holding an original casing. It's a two gage shotgun,
Speaker 1: gauge being inverse like wire and whatnot. They don't sell
Speaker 1: it as such, but it's basically a two gage shotgun.
Speaker 1: We went to an engineering.
Speaker 5: Meaning that if you took a pound of lead and
Speaker 5: split it into two balls, one of the balls will fit.
Speaker 5: Is that how it goes?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well the way yeah, I shouldn't say yeah. So what
Speaker 1: we did is, yes, gauge traditionally comes from A twelve
Speaker 1: gage shotgun means twelve It takes twelve leads spheres that
Speaker 1: diameter to comprise a pound. A twenty gage shotgun takes
Speaker 1: twenty lead spheres that diameter to comprise a pound. A
Speaker 1: four to ten is obviously a measurement four tenths of
Speaker 1: what does it hold true for the two gauge? So
Speaker 1: this is just extra affilated up on board diameter. But
Speaker 1: I haven't correlated it to lead spheres. But I'm assuming,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming, so they didn't sell them as such. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and it also the other thing about it is the
Speaker 1: casing is I'll do that. I'll make a lead sphere
Speaker 1: with my micrometer. Perhaps we sent it to an engineering
Speaker 1: firm and they made us a partial shell with a primer.
Speaker 1: And I needed to test the punt gun. So I
Speaker 1: have here, I'm cocking it. You can hear that's the cocking.
Speaker 1: Here's the rope pull. Now when you hit it on
Speaker 1: your finger, you could feel the firing pin. But we didn't.
Speaker 1: We wanted to make sure before we went through all
Speaker 1: this hassle, we wanted to make sure that the mechanism
Speaker 1: was still good in it. So these guys loaded up
Speaker 1: a primed practice shell today in demonstrating how a shotgun
Speaker 1: shell normally worked, I wasn't really thinking clear. First off,
Speaker 1: I cut the shit I'll open, poured the shot off,
Speaker 1: pulled the wad out, dumped the powder out on my
Speaker 1: work bench, and I wanted to knock the primer out
Speaker 1: of there, but I had it upside down and I
Speaker 1: was trying to push out and couldn't get it. So
Speaker 1: I eventually took a Phillip screwdriver and put it through
Speaker 1: the shell against the primer and was trying to push
Speaker 1: it out, but wouldn't come. So I picked up a
Speaker 1: pair of bullnose plyers travers plyers and whapped the end
Speaker 1: of that thing going the wrong direction, but it's still activated.
Speaker 1: That summer bitch scared the ship out of me that
Speaker 1: primer off with all that powder land there. Man, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, man, I could have hurt my eyeballs. That
Speaker 1: would have been the thing is. It would have really
Speaker 1: hurt your eyeballs because it was right in my face.
Speaker 1: It's probably and that was even the moment I took
Speaker 1: At the moment I took those bullnose plyers and was
Speaker 1: kind of coming down on that handle that screwdriver. I
Speaker 1: was second, does it work in reverse? That powder was
Speaker 1: like what eighteen inches away? But it could have just
Speaker 1: as well. I would not have done anything different if
Speaker 1: that powder was like right in a pile below.
Speaker 5: The But you think that it would have been the
Speaker 5: flash that would hurt your eyes or just a debris.
Speaker 1: Can we just a oh yeah, just a debris from
Speaker 1: that primer hurt my eyes. Yeah, it was loud. That
Speaker 1: Spencer's like I need some hearing protection. Yeah, you need
Speaker 1: some eye protection. So we screwed it in. You see
Speaker 1: it like this thing, So this punt gun action threads
Speaker 1: in right the like you know, you'd kill twenty ducks
Speaker 1: with a shot with this thing, and a good that'd
Speaker 1: be good. I we have a whole book. We have
Speaker 1: a book called The Outlaw Gunner. It's about punt gunners.
Speaker 1: And he was like, people get the wrong idea. Twenty
Speaker 1: is a good pole, nine is a good poll. It's
Speaker 1: people weren't killing whole flocks of ducks with a single
Speaker 1: shot from a punt gun. But mile Man, who was
Speaker 1: old when he had me. Mile Man remembers seeing punt gunners,
Speaker 1: legal punk gunners that had three punk guns stacked one
Speaker 1: off the water. Then you pull the next rope and
Speaker 1: it hits them as they're get taken flight, and the
Speaker 1: third shot hits them a little higher. He said, they
Speaker 1: had three of them stacked at different angles. I don't
Speaker 1: know where the hell he was when he saw that.
Speaker 6: How wide does the spread?
Speaker 1: I don't know yet. So you remember Gallagher, the comedian Gallagher? Okay, wow,
Speaker 1: I'm out. Do you know about Gallagher?
Speaker 5: What about you?
Speaker 2: Two?
Speaker 5: Too young for Gallagher? I know Gallaer's young.
Speaker 4: Striped shirt and the.
Speaker 1: Husky. Remember when you were a kid and if the
Speaker 1: word husky if you were like a chunky kid pants pants, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you like and it met It was meant for like
Speaker 1: kind of chunky kids.
Speaker 4: I remember my mom brought me home a pair of
Speaker 4: husky pants one time by accidentally, and I thought she
Speaker 4: was saying I was like fat.
Speaker 1: Kind of tore me up a bit. But so Gallagher
Speaker 1: there is Gallagher. Imagine weird al if he was husky
Speaker 1: and bald but still had all the long hair, so
Speaker 1: like it's the kind of long hair, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of a sweet look when you go bald on top
Speaker 1: of you grow real long that little half moon toilet
Speaker 1: seat deal, but you grow that out long. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it and slick it back.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: Anyways, Gallagher had two Gallagher had two groups. He had
Speaker 1: two lines of comedy and they were very different, but
Speaker 1: he'd combine them into one set. One of his things
Speaker 1: was how ridiculous in the English language was, so he
Speaker 1: get a lot of mileage. How could there be like
Speaker 1: there th h e r e, you know, but then
Speaker 1: there's there th h e i r And he got
Speaker 1: tremendo amount of mileage out of the idiosyncrasies of the
Speaker 1: English language how things spell. And then he started to
Speaker 1: lose people or whatever, and he'd get out in huge
Speaker 1: sledgehammer and fruit and he would proceed to smash fruit
Speaker 1: with a sledgehammer. And people in the know would buy
Speaker 1: tickets to Gallagher and they would wear raincoats and get
Speaker 1: viscueen and whatnot to protect themselves. And Gallagher would set
Speaker 1: up a watermelon or whatever and hit it with a hammer,
Speaker 1: point being that's what this punt gun is for.
Speaker 2: So when you were saying you were asking me if
Speaker 2: I knew of Gallagher. I was just sitting there thinking,
Speaker 2: like the first thing that came to my mind was
Speaker 2: that dumb comedian. And I was sitting there trying to well,
Speaker 2: that can't be it, Like, who's this person knows all
Speaker 2: about waterfowl lore? You know, I'm trying to think, who's Gallagher?
Speaker 2: Who's Gallagher?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 1: We want to shoot stuff like watermelons and whatnot with
Speaker 1: this punk gun.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I want to do is
Speaker 1: just put out a couple of sheets of plywood at
Speaker 1: fifty sixty yards whatever and see what kind of pattern
Speaker 1: you get out of those.
Speaker 4: We can put out a whole flock of Dave Smith Decoy's.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to round up I'm going to round
Speaker 1: up people that have old faded out like I have
Speaker 1: some in my collection. I have some old faded out,
Speaker 1: you knows. I get old flambos or like they like
Speaker 1: they paint the beak and the wrong spot on them
Speaker 1: and whatnot. Get some of those and line them out
Speaker 1: and maybe shoot at them. When we do want to
Speaker 1: put a pound of let out into a pond, is
Speaker 1: the problem?
Speaker 5: Yeah, when we do that, we should paint the decoys
Speaker 5: in such a way that the shot would really read well.
Speaker 1: Or fill them with that stuff that people fill decoy
Speaker 1: targets with nowadays.
Speaker 2: Then you know with the ones that blow up, you
Speaker 2: know that they got hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 2: I know the perfect guy that you got to talk
Speaker 2: to Worth Matthewson.
Speaker 1: Is he a punt gun man?
Speaker 2: Well, he knows all about him, and he does. He
Speaker 2: still hunts with an eight age. It goes to Scotland
Speaker 2: every year and hunts. And he's he's a heck of
Speaker 2: a great guy and just a water fell and mentor
Speaker 2: of mine. And he's been around a long time.
Speaker 1: So really and he knows about he'd be able to
Speaker 1: share with us some info about punt.
Speaker 2: Gun absolutely punk gun. He he might. I'll check with him,
Speaker 2: I'll send it, I'll call him up. He might. He
Speaker 2: talks about him all the time.
Speaker 1: You see how this is it Holland and Holland h
Speaker 1: and h punk uh huh. And the barrel you couldn't
Speaker 1: see it. I mean, the the this part's beautiful, it's
Speaker 1: very ornate, it's all inscribed, but the barrel just looks
Speaker 1: like a cannon off of warship and someone had painted
Speaker 1: a gunship gray and I drembled off the I drembled
Speaker 1: off some of the paint. You can see the old
Speaker 1: address that London street, the address for H and H
Speaker 1: in London. It's cool man, but that's that. Well, I
Speaker 1: talk about auction House of Oddities. That's not in it.
Speaker 1: But sorry, if you got your hopes, yeah, you got
Speaker 1: your hopes up well, point being, it might someday be
Speaker 1: there Auction House of Adities. This year you could do
Speaker 1: an opening weekend deer hunt at Doug Dirt at the
Speaker 1: Duran family farm. Or you can go on a turkey
Speaker 1: hunt at the Durham family farm and get a tour
Speaker 1: of the Duran family farm. And when you're there, ask
Speaker 1: Doug if you will take you to the spring House
Speaker 1: and depending on your age, ask for the spring House story.
Speaker 3: M hmmm. Is that the odd part about it?
Speaker 1: Because I'll make a house of odd Yeah, Doug's a
Speaker 1: odd guy. Okay, He'll probably take you down to get kurds.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you'll definitely go for a over the Carr.
Speaker 7: Valley you'll take You'll take Duran Road and Doug will
Speaker 7: drive around real slow and tell you like stories about
Speaker 7: murdering mayhem and cousins and who owned what and what
Speaker 7: that guy this and that right and that tree one time,
Speaker 7: and you know one time he urinated all over the
Speaker 7: top of that stop sign, but his friend tried to
Speaker 7: do the same and shat his.
Speaker 3: Pants, Like, I don't know, that's pretty odd.
Speaker 1: And then you'll get to do You'll get to do
Speaker 1: a hunt on the Durham farm where we filmed hunts
Speaker 1: and have done hunts, and I take my kids there
Speaker 1: every year for spring turkey or a deer hunt in
Speaker 1: the Durham farmers for three hundreds. So that's in the
Speaker 1: auction house of Hoonities. You you bid, win the package,
Speaker 1: and then pick what you want and you get a
Speaker 1: tour of the Durham family farm. The oddity part, I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: It's what you just said, Oh that spring house.
Speaker 1: Go to the spring House and depending on age and everything,
Speaker 1: Doug might tell you the spring house tail.
Speaker 3: I don't think i've heard that one.
Speaker 1: Well I have not, kids have not. Maybe you should
Speaker 1: have bid on that chester a handmade log home from
Speaker 1: Naughty log Homes. Real, really, I'm not kidding you. Twelve
Speaker 1: by twenty trappers cabin they're donating they have donated to
Speaker 1: our Land Access Initiative. A log home, a twelve by
Speaker 1: twenty two hundred and forty foot square trappers cabin, four
Speaker 1: foot overhang off the front, shipped anywhere?
Speaker 4: Wow, what do you mean anywhere when you auction?
Speaker 1: When you buy it at auction, you'll have to pay
Speaker 1: to have it shipped. Oh, but they're in Idaho.
Speaker 2: Say I could use one of those up at the shack.
Speaker 1: Better dig Yeah, factor that in better dig D.
Speaker 5: I think you're meant to say, because I need one
Speaker 5: of those in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: You need to talk to someone with a Chinook helicopter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and get it dropped in where you want it. Twelve
Speaker 1: by twenty. I wish I had that damn thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of art so people might have seen can
Speaker 1: we can we put? We don't have? I wish I
Speaker 1: had this in here from Jamie Wild Art. She did
Speaker 1: the commission to painting of mine of the wolves disemboweling
Speaker 1: device and eating it alive. She also does a lot
Speaker 1: of canine art. So we have a print of my
Speaker 1: commission to painting, which hangs just outside our studio door,
Speaker 1: of the wolves eating a bison alive while still staying
Speaker 1: there and disemboweling it, a print of that that Jamie
Speaker 1: and I will both sign, and then a piece of
Speaker 1: custom work from Jamie. We have custom artwork from Kelsey Morris,
Speaker 1: Seth Morris's wife, Kelsey Morris of Studio Gallery. What's it called? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Studio Studio Gallery and three Forks Montana. Dinner for
Speaker 1: four at my house. That's an auction item. You three
Speaker 1: friends come to my house and we will serve you
Speaker 1: many courses of phenomenal food at my house. Yannie's going
Speaker 1: to join in, I believe, I don't know if he
Speaker 1: knows it yet, there to serve.
Speaker 5: This is separate from a big giveaway dinner at your
Speaker 5: different dinner.
Speaker 2: Is there.
Speaker 1: That one? Yeah, if you want it to be vegan,
Speaker 1: I'll make it vegan. If you win the auction, that
Speaker 1: you win the auction, it's up to you. No, we
Speaker 1: have another giveaway dinner that we're doing here at the office.
Speaker 1: This is a dinner at my house. You and three
Speaker 1: friends come to my house. I will cook you dinner.
Speaker 1: Yani will be there to help serve. We'll get a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of our crew down there to help with
Speaker 1: the meal. A fob Harness an f O b f
Speaker 1: HF harness called the Fur Trappers Edition, where we're gonna
Speaker 1: Paul Lewis from f HF is going to face one
Speaker 1: of his fob inyl harnesses in furs that I caught sweet.
Speaker 1: If you want it done and mink, will do it
Speaker 1: in mink. If you want don Martin, will do it
Speaker 1: in Martin. If you want done in Beaver, will do
Speaker 1: it in Beaver. So you get a fur fob harness
Speaker 1: one of a kind that's up for auction. The elk
Speaker 1: Bugle tube that Phelps used on the hunt where he
Speaker 1: and I hunted in New Mexico signed scrolling down. I'm
Speaker 1: holding right now. If you're watching, you can see this.
Speaker 1: I'm holding an arrow that says Ted Nugent ninety one.
Speaker 1: Now check this out. I gotta put my spectacles on,
Speaker 1: gearing up ready. We had a while ago, long time ago,
Speaker 1: Uncle Teddy Teddy Nuggets, as Cal calls him. We called
Speaker 1: him Uncle Ted growing up. We had him on the
Speaker 1: show and he talked about doing a show and rock.
Speaker 1: He talked about doing a show in northern Michigan where
Speaker 1: he missed a target. A guy wrote it in and said,
Speaker 1: I had to be working backstage security for that concert
Speaker 1: up at the Castle in Charlolavoyle, Charlavoy. After the shot
Speaker 1: and subsequent missed, Ted's assistant came back and set Ted's
Speaker 1: bow and arrow down on a table that was just backstage.
Speaker 1: Long story short, they asked the security guy to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on the bow until they come back and
Speaker 1: retrieve it after the show. Just left it on a table,
Speaker 1: Bye and bye. Here comes the guy that comes and
Speaker 1: grabs the bow and goes to walk off with it.
Speaker 1: Teds like, or the guy the scary guys like, tell
Speaker 1: you doing? He goes, they told me to grab the bow.
Speaker 1: He said, no, no, no, no U. Someone told me to
Speaker 1: wash the bow till Ted comes gets it. You ain't him.
Speaker 1: I'm holding the bow. Another guy comes up and says,
Speaker 1: what's going on? He said. This guy says he's supposed
Speaker 1: to pick up the bow? Why not being the guy
Speaker 1: who was trying to steal the boat. Now the arrow
Speaker 1: that Ted had missed with was broken. When Ted found
Speaker 1: out that the guy saved his bow from getting stolen,
Speaker 1: he said, let me know if there's ever anything I
Speaker 1: can do for you. The guy said, yeah, you could.
Speaker 1: I would like to have that arrow. Uncle Ted then
Speaker 1: signed the arrow. We have the full in art. This
Speaker 1: is called the provenance. The provenance, we have the provenence
Speaker 1: of the arrow. I then emailed Uncle Ted and said,
Speaker 1: check this story out. His reply was, damn cool. Huh,
Speaker 1: this will be in the auction House of Audities a
Speaker 1: lunum shaft Ted Nugent ninety one. That's cool checks out.
Speaker 1: And the one freaking story.
Speaker 5: You might have already said this, but he missed the target?
Speaker 5: Is that the one where he missed a target and
Speaker 5: then he decided to get down on his hands and knees.
Speaker 1: And no I shared that story with him. That was
Speaker 1: at a whiplash bash. He missed a target and then
Speaker 1: got down on his knees and he missed the target
Speaker 1: of a white buffalo before doing great white buffalo got
Speaker 1: down on his knees and bowed before the white buffalo target.
Speaker 1: Me and my late friend Eric Kern. We didn't catch
Speaker 1: that one. But me and my late friend Eric Kern
Speaker 1: went to the whiplash bash and Uncle Ted threw out
Speaker 1: jerky and me and Eric picked up some jerky off
Speaker 1: florin ate it.
Speaker 3: Rock and roll Nice Times has some rock and roll
Speaker 3: right there.
Speaker 1: That's in the auction House of aodities, my personal weather
Speaker 1: be Mark five chambered and three hundred win mag Left Handed,
Speaker 1: which we fillmed a bunch of media episodes is in
Speaker 1: the Auction House of Oddities. And also if you've if
Speaker 1: you watched the show, you've seen a hundred times the
Speaker 1: singer a moose gets up and charges me, and I
Speaker 1: go something like that that gun. Now, if you watch
Speaker 1: that episode, you'll see that the gun appears to misfire.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people have asked about the misfire.
Speaker 1: It didn't. I shot at the moose that ran off,
Speaker 1: and I changed. I immediately instinctively chambered around, ran after
Speaker 1: the moose and forgot that I had chambered the round
Speaker 1: because I had hit in the brisket and it went
Speaker 1: down and got up, and I knew it was probably
Speaker 1: not mortally wounded, so it wasn't like, oh well, wait,
Speaker 1: let him run off and die. So I ran after
Speaker 1: him to try to get another one in him the
Speaker 1: minute I started running. Later, reviewing the footage, the minute
Speaker 1: I started running, I rechambered, so I had three in
Speaker 1: the I had three in the magazine, none in the chamber,
Speaker 1: chambered shot the bowl, two shots left spit the empty out,
Speaker 1: put a live in started running forgot spit the live out.
Speaker 1: Put live in shot at the moose again as it
Speaker 1: ran through the brush, chambered again. Now I'm empty. I
Speaker 1: walk up to the moos to dispatch it and click.
Speaker 1: So people are like, oh, gun miss fired. The gun
Speaker 1: didn't miss fire. That gun's fine. I still own it today.
Speaker 1: It is a Carolina custom rifle chambered in three hundred short.
Speaker 1: Make that gun from that moose charge and those episodes
Speaker 1: will be in the auction house of Aodities.
Speaker 2: I have a quick question. You just said, you just
Speaker 2: referred to that moose as charging, Like I just watched
Speaker 2: an episode not too long ago of a six hundred
Speaker 2: pound grizzly bear running at you and cal as fast
Speaker 2: as American run and you called it false charging, And
Speaker 2: I'm just kind of curious what does charging look like?
Speaker 1: And if he made contact with me?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 2: So I was like, it was like you come home,
Speaker 2: you know, from somewhere, and your your truck is riddled
Speaker 2: and bullets and stuff, and what do you say to
Speaker 2: your wife, like, oh, I got false shot at Like
Speaker 2: none of the bullets actually hit me, So I got
Speaker 2: false shot at like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Krin, I'm holding up another item from the auction as
Speaker 1: about it. These come from these are from some a pair.
Speaker 6: Of Steve caught Martin's is past year.
Speaker 1: Had a hat made for my wife. We had the
Speaker 1: tails left over. Wow, Krina is fashioned. He's into gorgeous earrings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: describing Grin.
Speaker 6: So there Herkimer quartz diamonds from a podcast listener, Herkimer
Speaker 6: her herk diamonds and uh the mink this oops, pardoned
Speaker 6: me the Martin tails from Steve's Martin's and then a
Speaker 6: sterling silver wire wrap. So it's all sterling silver stone.
Speaker 5: I did, but I think it might have closed up.
Speaker 6: This is this is like an adorning costume for the
Speaker 6: Latvian eagle. Martin tails.
Speaker 5: So sweet.
Speaker 1: So the Auction House of Oodities back better than ever.
Speaker 1: All of the money raised in the Auction House of
Speaker 1: Oodities goes to our own land access initiative. With the
Speaker 1: land access initiative, we've done so we contributed on a
Speaker 1: land access a public land purchase in Maine. We participated
Speaker 1: on a public land access purchase in northwest Montana cala Is,
Speaker 1: eyeballing one along the Yellowstone River right now. And plus
Speaker 1: we will use some of the items. Another item I
Speaker 1: should throw this in. You know the Missouri corner crossers.
Speaker 1: This is kind of freshest morning. Yeah, the famous Missouri
Speaker 1: corner crossers. They have donated their ladder. So you can
Speaker 1: buy a piece of American history at the media or
Speaker 1: auctional sdvice. You can buy the device that has now
Speaker 1: been covered by every news agency on the planet, still
Speaker 1: working its way through the courts. You can buy the
Speaker 1: ladder used in the Wyoming corner crossing case. The stipulation
Speaker 1: there is the revenue from that, and this is part
Speaker 1: of land access. The revenue for that will go in
Speaker 1: illegal defense fund, which has been mighty successful thus far,
Speaker 1: a legal defense fund for the corner crossers who have
Speaker 1: been putting a Regardless of how you feel about whether
Speaker 1: corner crossing should be legal or not, these guys have
Speaker 1: been placed in an extremely unfortunate position after getting very
Speaker 1: mixed signals from multiple law enforcement and land management agencies,
Speaker 1: and they are at this point they have come victims
Speaker 1: of a system that is whacked.
Speaker 6: And there's many more items than that, many more items.
Speaker 2: I have something I could donate, but it's really there's
Speaker 2: nothing compared to those things. But I just thought of something.
Speaker 2: I have an owl coughing and one of the and
Speaker 2: there's an exposed bone and it has a leg band
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 6: That taxidermy coughing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, out pellet. So it ate a bird that was
Speaker 2: banded and it coughed up all the feathers and bones,
Speaker 2: and right on the outside of all of.
Speaker 5: It is let me get it clear, for an owl pellet,
Speaker 5: is is a coughing. So an owl eats.
Speaker 1: In our in our book Catching Crayfish Count the Stars,
Speaker 1: we have a thing about We have an instructional about
Speaker 1: how to dissolve and dissemble owl pellets in order to
Speaker 1: see what all they've been up to. So when owl
Speaker 1: will eat its food whole and then digest food and
Speaker 1: regurgitates the bones in these little balls. And you'll look
Speaker 1: at these little balls and like a standard thing to
Speaker 1: see in these little balls is mouse jaws. They stand
Speaker 1: out real good mouse molers.
Speaker 5: But you'll answer my question, is another word for an
Speaker 5: owl pellet and owl coughing?
Speaker 1: I've never heard him. I never heard that word.
Speaker 2: So the reason why that we've used that term before
Speaker 2: us a lot of people know that it's it's that
Speaker 2: they're not pooping. It it's not.
Speaker 1: Because they might think it's gross.
Speaker 2: If you shat it out, it wouldn't be quiet, as
Speaker 2: the auction value would definitely go down, will shift. It
Speaker 2: wasn't Yeah, if it was a piece of owl shit.
Speaker 1: Man, We've had some see we've had some auction House
Speaker 1: of Oddities donations that we've had lawyers prevent us from selling.
Speaker 1: This is one of those things.
Speaker 3: It's like me showing up at his house with Luke
Speaker 3: Comb's guitar and like playing him a song on one
Speaker 3: of them that they.
Speaker 1: Next, Yeah, that brought up liability problems. You could be
Speaker 1: lured into his sorted, some kind of sorted.
Speaker 3: Put the lotion on the skin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was gonna be we had one of those.
Speaker 1: Chester is gonna show up like you could have them.
Speaker 1: He'll wear whatever you want, right down to right down
Speaker 1: to his his thong.
Speaker 3: Said that I never agreed to that, even.
Speaker 1: Like I'm on there at midnight. The thong.
Speaker 4: One got nixed with Spencer and I getting tattooed.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that got mixed. You were gonna be able
Speaker 1: to pick whatever tattoo you wanted on Seth and Spencer.
Speaker 1: That got mixed. A lot of things get mixed, so
Speaker 1: he just gets better, just like do you remember when I
Speaker 1: was a little boy, they would do a fundraiser. Jerry Lewis,
Speaker 1: the actor Jerry Lewis would do fundraiser for ms. Remember
Speaker 1: Jerry's kids. He would do a fundraiser and he would
Speaker 1: do it for forty eight hours, just get delirious at
Speaker 1: the end. I feel like that right now. You can't
Speaker 1: even tell what he's saying at the end of it
Speaker 1: was a whole part of the event that he would
Speaker 1: stay up that long.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: But this is like that because it just keeps getting
Speaker 1: better and better. Dave Smith has now donated and I
Speaker 1: will pell it with a banded bird foot sticking out
Speaker 1: of it. Did you lacker it to hold it together?
Speaker 1: Is it pretty good?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: It's it holds together really well. It's just in a
Speaker 2: little plexa glass case. I might have to come up
Speaker 2: with a more decorative case or something to put it in.
Speaker 2: But it's just sitting, you know, it's just sitting at
Speaker 2: my house. It's it'll be there till the next glacial
Speaker 2: period if I don't do something, you know, with it.
Speaker 3: So do you know what kind of bird it is?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think it was a pigeon.
Speaker 3: Pigeon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, that makes sense, all right. The auction's
Speaker 1: about it. He's coming soon, better than ever. All the
Speaker 1: money goes to land Access your initiative. We will be
Speaker 1: using the funds primarily for land access purchases, enhancing and
Speaker 1: improving public access. One other little money thing. This is
Speaker 1: kind of a convoluted story. There's these animal rights activists
Speaker 1: that in Nevada the target bear biologists. Oddly, they target
Speaker 1: Nevada state agency bear biologists. One of these animal rights
Speaker 1: activists actually had a restraining order against her for harassing
Speaker 1: and targeting a female biologist with a Nevada State wildlife agency.
Speaker 5: There are Facebook pages to give a little more context
Speaker 5: around them. Says that this page is dedicated to monitoring
Speaker 5: and publicizing the actions Nevada Department of Wildlife and the
Speaker 5: why is it cut off? Sorry, I guess they just
Speaker 5: fail to write a full sentence, but gives you an idea.
Speaker 5: They're like they're watching everybody animals there.
Speaker 1: At a state agency at bear biologists could be engaged
Speaker 1: in a ton of different things. They could be doing
Speaker 1: and monitoring. They could be doing disease research, they could
Speaker 1: be doing population demographics distribution. But inevitably they're going to
Speaker 1: get rolled into dealing with problem bears as well, and
Speaker 1: oftentimes in states that have really high black bear populations.
Speaker 1: I'm not even saying this is going on here. I'm
Speaker 1: just clarifying for people in states that have really high
Speaker 1: black bear populations, it is so expensive in all times,
Speaker 1: oftentimes futile to relocate black bears. Oftentimes problem black bears
Speaker 1: will get euthanized because you could spend you could send
Speaker 1: someone on an eight hour drive in some direction to
Speaker 1: drop off the bear, but the once the bear is
Speaker 1: habituated and tuned into human food sources, there's nowhere you're
Speaker 1: going to put it where you're taking it out of action.
Speaker 1: It's also very expensive, consumes tons of time. You have
Speaker 1: very stable bear populations, so a lot of times someone
Speaker 1: has to make the calm the bears get euthanized. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not work that anybody likes to do, but a
Speaker 1: bear biologist can get They're doing a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: to help enhance improve bear populations. They're also sometimes involved
Speaker 1: in lethal control. I'm not even that sits outside of
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about now, but this guy, Carl Lackey,
Speaker 1: So these guys start this Facebook page and targeting this individual,
Speaker 1: Carl Lackey. He sues him for defamation. The animal rights
Speaker 1: activists spend one hundred and fifty grand defending themselves on
Speaker 1: free speech grounds, okay, meaning that they host a Facebook
Speaker 1: page and people are making threatening remarks on this page,
Speaker 1: but ultimately, because of free speech issues, they can't be
Speaker 1: held responsible for what other people are saying. I'm not
Speaker 1: weighing in on, you know, I'm a free speech advocate.
Speaker 1: I'm not weighing in on that it was a right decision,
Speaker 1: wrong decision. What I'm weighing in on is that here
Speaker 1: you have a state bare biologist doing his job, okay,
Speaker 1: getting threatened and harassed by animal rights activists. And the
Speaker 1: long and short of it is they won their free
Speaker 1: speech case. Okay, they won it, that's fine, But now
Speaker 1: this biologist is personally liable for the one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty k that has been found liable for the one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty k that the people he was suing
Speaker 1: for defamation and harassment had to spend in their legal bills.
Speaker 1: Does it GoFundMe for the guy? If you can help out,
Speaker 1: he needs to make up this one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: grand that he owes these people and again not weighing
Speaker 1: like I understand a platform isn't responsible for comments to
Speaker 1: get posted on their platform. Okay, who cares so much
Speaker 1: to help this guy out in his line of work
Speaker 1: and trying to defend him and his family from online
Speaker 1: harassment has incurred a massive bill.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's that's shitty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, and doing state wildlife work, Yeah, doing
Speaker 1: your job. It's insane that he's just supposed to suck
Speaker 1: it up and have these people start like trying to
Speaker 1: broadcast as whereabouts his image calling on people to do
Speaker 1: acts against him.
Speaker 3: I wonder if people like that feel good about themselves
Speaker 3: after giving this dude threats or whatever they did, and
Speaker 3: then making them pay him, you know, back one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand dollars. I wonder if they're like, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably because they've already arrived at some kind of
Speaker 1: mental calculus that an individual bear's life is more valuable
Speaker 1: than an individual human's life, or an individual not even that,
Speaker 1: and that a bear, the individual bears life is more
Speaker 1: valuable than the life of a public servant working on
Speaker 1: behalf of wildlife. So yeah, I imagine they've gotten their mentally,
Speaker 1: the o fund me is uh www dot go fund me,
Speaker 1: dot com. Here's where it gets complicated, sorry, dot com,
Speaker 1: slash f slash, Carl dash, lackey dash, bear dash, biologists
Speaker 1: type some.
Speaker 6: Version of that, go fund me and google his name.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and one thing we got to remember is we
Speaker 2: need good people in the world to become biologists. And
Speaker 2: you know, this will de incentivize people to become biologists
Speaker 2: who would want to become a biologist. It'll be the
Speaker 2: situation we are with politicians, like, oh, the good people
Speaker 2: of the world don't want to be politicians. We need
Speaker 2: good biologists.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and have yeah, and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in our neighborhood right now, we're dealing with a bear
Speaker 1: that is really pushing people's tolerance. Like our whole neighborhood.
Speaker 1: We've got this whole tax exchange going and he's now
Speaker 1: in people's garages, you know, and like the bear is
Speaker 1: pushing people's tolerance. And at a point that bear is
Speaker 1: gonna wind up not alive. If someone from the state
Speaker 1: agency needs to come out and trap that bear. It's
Speaker 1: not like they're like, yippie, I get to go, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like they're like they've tried with
Speaker 1: this bear. They have tried their hardest to button up
Speaker 1: the situation and make the bear not a problem. They've
Speaker 1: at this point, they've got months into the into trying
Speaker 1: to help people help this bear by stop the cause.
Speaker 1: But at a point, probably maybe the way it's looking,
Speaker 1: something's gonna need something's gonna happen. And the fact that
Speaker 1: that person would become like an online target because they
Speaker 1: get sent out to do a thing a public safety issue,
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. But again I'm not speaking to the particulars
Speaker 1: of why this guy got targeted. Go ahead and read
Speaker 1: up on that on your own. I'm just pointing out
Speaker 1: the complex and he's a whole thing.
Speaker 8: Phelps you ready, Yeah, yep, Okay. So I was asked
Speaker 8: to come on talk about since September's right around the
Speaker 8: corner Archie, ELK kind of consumes September, at least in
Speaker 8: my life. So we're gonna talk about ELK bugles and
Speaker 8: kind of what they are, when to use them, and
Speaker 8: what I think about when we're trying to make those.
Speaker 8: So the first up is location bugles. This is a
Speaker 8: call when we're out in the woods. We're gonna use
Speaker 8: that ninety percent of the time while we're hunting and
Speaker 8: we're just looking to get a response from another bowl.
Speaker 8: I like to think of it as kind of that
Speaker 8: that game of Marco Polo. Right, I'm going to make
Speaker 8: a sound, It's it's non threatening. I'm just trying to
Speaker 8: get a response. So after my morning lasting session throughout
Speaker 8: the day, as I'm walking ridgelines trails, when i get
Speaker 8: to a new spot that I feel bul can hear me,
Speaker 8: I'll bugle.
Speaker 1: I in my.
Speaker 8: Opinion, it can't do much harm. And a lot of
Speaker 8: times people say you bogle too much, and and a
Speaker 8: lot of times I'll get six to eight hundred yards
Speaker 8: away when I was just two or three hundred yards
Speaker 8: away from a bull, and I'll finally get him to respond.
Speaker 8: So there's sometimes not any rhyme or reason when a
Speaker 8: bull here is here whin he'll elect to respond? And
Speaker 8: so what is a location bugle? And do the people
Speaker 8: that say you call too much? Do they kill more
Speaker 8: bulls than you?
Speaker 6: Not?
Speaker 8: Usually I don't want to. I don't want to be
Speaker 8: that guy. But you try not to not to talk
Speaker 8: about that, And like there are times, there are times
Speaker 8: where you don't bigle a lot, but that's kind of
Speaker 8: our our go to so a location bugle, and some
Speaker 8: people we've in my opinion, we've coined terms that that
Speaker 8: we use to describe and Elk's vocals, you know, and
Speaker 8: so location bugle might be one thing here. This is
Speaker 8: kind of what we call it. So it's a a
Speaker 8: two to three note high pitched bugle that you're just
Speaker 8: trying to elicit that response. And so being high pitched,
Speaker 8: we're gonna apply a little bit of pressure if you're
Speaker 8: using a diaphragm, if you're using like our Easy Bugler system,
Speaker 8: you're gonna start with more pressure than you would on
Speaker 8: say a challenge bugle or a moan or you know,
Speaker 8: a deeper tone, and you're gonna just kind of blow
Speaker 8: into it very shortly two to three seconds. I want
Speaker 8: to be able to listen. A lot of times a
Speaker 8: bull is very quick to respond or and you may
Speaker 8: not hear it, you may not be able to tell
Speaker 8: what direction is, or you may miss it all together. So,
Speaker 8: in my opinion, a two to three note high pitched
Speaker 8: bugle lasting three seconds maximum. It's a clean bugle, non threatening.
Speaker 8: You don't add any groul, you don't add any resonance
Speaker 8: into it's just a high note looking to get a response.
Speaker 8: And you know you're doing a location bugle right when
Speaker 8: the volume and the tone and the resonance kind of
Speaker 8: rings your own ears, you don't. You know a lot
Speaker 8: of guys are like, I'm not getting as many responses.
Speaker 8: I like to be as loud as possible. I want
Speaker 8: that bugle to reach as many elk as possible, high
Speaker 8: pitched and short. And that's really the extent of it.
Speaker 8: And as much out calling as we do, and all
Speaker 8: these different types of bugles, grunch chuckles, challenge vehicles, you know,
Speaker 8: all the cow calling. I would say that once again,
Speaker 8: ninety percent of the time. This is the call I
Speaker 8: do all year long until we locate able. You want
Speaker 8: to rip one out for us, yeah, I'll turn away
Speaker 8: from the mic so I don't blow it out.
Speaker 9: But this is where our location beagle sounds like, tell
Speaker 9: us what you're using.
Speaker 1: This? That was a bad Uh.
Speaker 8: This is actually a new call that we're we're bringing
Speaker 8: out in twenty three, So it's going to be in
Speaker 8: a in our freedom pack. So I'll just I'll leave
Speaker 8: it there. But I had it sitting on my desk,
Speaker 8: so it's a brand new it's it's our amp diaphragm.
Speaker 8: It'd be really similar to like the Maverick in our lineup.
Speaker 1: And then you got what in your hand.
Speaker 9: So this is our metal Beagle tube. It's the one
Speaker 9: I've been using the last couple of years.
Speaker 8: We do have our new unleashed V tube, but this
Speaker 8: one had a cover on it and I didn't have
Speaker 8: to run downstairs and grab one.
Speaker 1: That's a well thought.
Speaker 8: Yeah, as you can tell, I'm a little I was
Speaker 8: a little bit lazy.
Speaker 9: I had a diaphragm on my desk and I had
Speaker 9: a tube on my.
Speaker 8: Dead nice and quick, just yep, just real quick. There
Speaker 8: were times like I've got examples like in the Bob
Speaker 8: Marshall and in some places where I would get a
Speaker 8: response like I couldn't figure out how the bull could
Speaker 8: hear me that quick decide to make a call and
Speaker 8: then end it almost at the same time I was.
Speaker 8: And there's there's lots of examples where if I hadn't
Speaker 8: have been like a short bugle, I would have missed
Speaker 8: it all together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a similar, dude, just trying to
Speaker 1: locate turkeys where you want something so fast and abrupt
Speaker 1: that you can go from making the noise to listening
Speaker 1: mode real quick.
Speaker 8: Yep, yep, missing it all together or a lot of times,
Speaker 8: and I talk about this a lot of like not
Speaker 8: buggling too much at them. There are times where if
Speaker 8: I can't tell the direction off of that first bigle,
Speaker 8: I'm like, dang it, now I got to call again,
Speaker 8: you know, so I know which direction to go or
Speaker 8: get the wind right. So I really want to try
Speaker 8: to get as much information out of that first bigle,
Speaker 8: like it back as I can without screwing it all up.
Speaker 1: So that's the next thing to keep mine. Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 9: And then this next bugle, which actually challenge.
Speaker 5: Ask a quick question, Jason, what do you hear uh
Speaker 5: bull elk doing location bugles?
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, if you if you go out in the morning,
Speaker 8: don't make a peep and you're in a good spot
Speaker 8: with you know, the bowl of Cali ratio is high,
Speaker 8: or there's multiple herds that have joined into you know,
Speaker 8: an overnight feed zone or whatever it is. You know,
Speaker 8: we kind of call them those little bit of retfests.
Speaker 8: They may be challenged back and forth, but you will
Speaker 8: have bulls just locating. We've been in and It usually
Speaker 8: happens at better units just because you're getting more action.
Speaker 8: But we've heard bulls like running up and down ridgelines
Speaker 8: obviously just looking for cows. When we've called them in.
Speaker 8: It's been probably your semi mature bulls, not quite big
Speaker 8: enough to have a heard, but but definitely you know,
Speaker 8: five and a half years or older, and they'll just
Speaker 8: run around looking for cows, locate bugleing, and they're very
Speaker 8: very talkative, and they locate a lot and so that
Speaker 8: that's really kind of what I relate that to, is well,
Speaker 8: real elker out there doing the same thing we've heard
Speaker 8: him do it. We've we've been across the canyon and
Speaker 8: literally heard a bull walk up a ridge or out
Speaker 8: a ridge line and beagle its way down. I'm just
Speaker 8: trying to pick up cows.
Speaker 5: You feel like he's listening for bulls to respond or
Speaker 5: cows to respond.
Speaker 8: So cows to respond or cows to come to him.
Speaker 8: Like a lot of times when I've been able to
Speaker 8: observe like an openings or across the canyon. You know,
Speaker 8: the way that that nature works is that buwll of
Speaker 8: bugle and then any cow that's looking, you know, because
Speaker 8: the cow will choose the bull that she wants to
Speaker 8: reproduce with. That cow will just walk to that bowl
Speaker 8: and go check him out and see if he's you know,
Speaker 8: if he's the one so so in nature, that's how
Speaker 8: it's working. That bowl is running up and down ridges
Speaker 8: or outridges, and those cows are going towards him.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yep.
Speaker 8: So this next bugle, once we've located a bowl, now
Speaker 8: we're going to go into challenge beagles. And this is
Speaker 8: where it gets a little bit fuzzy on like what
Speaker 8: people consider a challenge bugle. You there's screams, there's you know,
Speaker 8: there's chuckles, there's bark, screams, there's all of this stuff.
Speaker 8: Elk will do to kind of show aggression. But what
Speaker 8: I look at in the challenge bugles, when I get
Speaker 8: in close, I've got the wind right I have. You
Speaker 8: have to get within that that threat zone. Especially if
Speaker 8: you're hunting herd bulls a satellite bowl, you've got a
Speaker 8: little more leniency on how close you have to get.
Speaker 8: But if you're gonna steal a bull or get him
Speaker 8: to peel away from his cows, you have to get close.
Speaker 8: So we're talking getting in within a hundred you know,
Speaker 8: even closer if possible, wherever the train and the and
Speaker 8: the vegetation allows. But then we're gonna switch the challenge, Bugles.
Speaker 8: And and when I switch to a challenge, Bugle.
Speaker 1: Just I want to comment, have time I spent hunting
Speaker 1: with you? Is your location? Bugles. I don't want to
Speaker 1: say you're flipping about them, but you're just kind of
Speaker 1: looking for a good spot where you can hear, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe see you around a little bit and do them.
Speaker 1: But when you go into the mode of preparing to
Speaker 1: do that challenge, Bule, Bugle, you do not take that lightly. No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean you are like extremely thoughtful about the wind,
Speaker 1: where you're gonna want to be, the topography probably where
Speaker 1: exactly is that thing? How might it approach? Yeah? What shot?
Speaker 1: What shot avenues do you have? How are you going
Speaker 1: to be how are you going to move to cover
Speaker 1: or utilize cover like plan B I mean you are
Speaker 1: doing a lot of chess by that point. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I mean to you know something that everybody's maybe seen
Speaker 8: our season ten episode in New Mexico. Both are bulls.
Speaker 8: We got very very tight. We kind of pushed into
Speaker 8: a spot on yours where we couldn't shoot, but we
Speaker 8: needed to be that tight and we kind of readjusted,
Speaker 8: you know, my bawl. We locate him and then we
Speaker 8: really would we walk for an hour without making a peep,
Speaker 8: like we put a spot on on X. We went
Speaker 8: all the way around him to get the wind right
Speaker 8: and then we literally didn't beagle at him or talk
Speaker 8: to him again. He didn't make a peep either. We
Speaker 8: just had to go on our gut. But we didn't
Speaker 8: make a biegle until he was eighty yards away. And
Speaker 8: I think you be agled a couple of times. I'd
Speaker 8: be agle a couple times, and and that bowl literally
Speaker 8: had to get up out of his bed and walk
Speaker 8: thirty yards for me to get a shot. And so
Speaker 8: it's very calculated before we go use these challenge beagles.
Speaker 8: And like you said, I don't hold anything back. If
Speaker 8: I did all of these other calculations right and did
Speaker 8: what I and I feel like I've got a bowl
Speaker 8: with that right temperament. Yeah, we we're gonna kind of
Speaker 8: unleash everything we've got. And that's really what I'm going
Speaker 8: with on this challenge Bagle, is I'm gonna have a
Speaker 8: little more growl In the beginning of my my Bugle,
Speaker 8: I'm gonna kind of open up my vocal cords and
Speaker 8: really kind of get some rasp in the middle. I'm
Speaker 8: gonna end and and kind of kind of scream at him,
Speaker 8: and I usually add some grunts to the end of
Speaker 8: my Challenge Beagle. It's really just kind of throwing the
Speaker 8: entire kitchen scenk at them to let him know that
Speaker 8: I'm here to kind of take over your area or
Speaker 8: I'm in your zone and you're either gonna lose your
Speaker 8: cows or you're gonna come check me out and see
Speaker 8: if we're gonna, you know, if we're at.
Speaker 1: Lockhorns, or we're gonna breed him.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So that's really what we're going after
Speaker 8: on the Challenge Bugle. And a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 8: we could shock in awe whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 8: A lot of times if you get close enough and
Speaker 8: you you haven't made another call until you get there,
Speaker 8: you really give that bowl no other chance besides coming
Speaker 8: and you know, dealing with you. You've got too close
Speaker 8: to his cows, he can't take him and run. And
Speaker 8: that's what we typically will do when we go to
Speaker 8: Challenge Bugle, and so I can I can demonstrate kind
Speaker 8: of what my initial challenge bugle is, and a lot
Speaker 8: of times this bull will answer right back. Or we've
Speaker 8: painted the picture where we may let a cow call
Speaker 8: out right prior to our challenge bugle to kind of
Speaker 8: paint the scene that there's a cow that may be
Speaker 8: one of his or a cow that came to his bugle,
Speaker 8: but now there's this other bowl very close willing.
Speaker 9: To take care of her. So this is what my
Speaker 9: typical challenge, bugle.
Speaker 8: Sound like, little bit more to it, a little bit
Speaker 8: or ask and you're really not holding anything back. You know,
Speaker 8: a lot of guys ask me, you know when when
Speaker 8: we're at shows or when they're talking to me, like, hey,
Speaker 8: I really want to a bull call that isn't as
Speaker 8: threatening or it's a smaller bowl. And I've been around
Speaker 8: a lot of great callers that are just as loud
Speaker 8: as me. And when you're in the woods, the comparison
Speaker 8: of somebody that's loud on an elk call that we
Speaker 8: think versus a real bowl, like it's the the real
Speaker 8: elk is always exponentially louder. So in my opinion, you
Speaker 8: can't overblow these calls. You can't be too loud, So
Speaker 8: we we just give it everything we've got. Where we're loud,
Speaker 8: we're in their face, we're pointing the bugle tubes at them,
Speaker 8: and that's kind of what I think is as a
Speaker 8: challenge bugle. And those are the two that I probably
Speaker 8: use ninety five percent of the time when we're out
Speaker 8: there hunting. And then there's those what I would consider
Speaker 8: kind of the third category, uh, which the first one
Speaker 8: that I'm going to say is accessory bugles or accessory noises.
Speaker 8: And raking is one of those sounds that isn't what
Speaker 8: necessarily in you know, coming from a call, but it's
Speaker 8: something that we can all do. And there's some great
Speaker 8: elk hunters out there that rake more than they call,
Speaker 8: and so we typically always add that in to our
Speaker 8: calling scenarios. It adds a ton of realism and elk
Speaker 8: just you know it. I feel it turns our temperature
Speaker 8: up a little bit, adds some some of that aggressiveness,
Speaker 8: and it's a sign of the bulls mark in his territory.
Speaker 8: You know, he's put in his scent and marking those trees.
Speaker 8: And so I think raking is something that should be
Speaker 8: included in almost every call in and then you've got
Speaker 8: all these other sounds that elk will make. You know,
Speaker 8: and I'm not gonna get into the to the intricacies
Speaker 8: of whether what I consider a chuckle is different than
Speaker 8: a grunt. So you got like chuckles, which you usually
Speaker 8: typically like very quick and almost ape like sounds. You've
Speaker 8: got grunts, which what I just did it's more elk sound,
Speaker 8: more of a of a slower paced, more elky. You've
Speaker 8: got screams, so there's a lot of times where bulls
Speaker 8: will get madder and like a screaming match, it's very
Speaker 8: short burst to you know, two seconds max. Where it's
Speaker 8: very raspy and just kind of a scream. Bulls a
Speaker 8: lot of times if you do make a sound and
Speaker 8: they'll see you, they'll bark at you, and then you've
Speaker 8: got all those moans that that they'll make as there
Speaker 8: is there following cows or even like glunking is those
Speaker 8: bulls are right on a hot cow as they're pushing
Speaker 8: the cal around, and usually if you can hear glunky,
Speaker 8: you know you're within eighty two hundred yards. And those
Speaker 8: are kind of those accessory sounds that we always throw
Speaker 8: in the situations to add more realism.
Speaker 3: Would you say, like, uh, I didn't hear you say
Speaker 3: like a lip ball in there? Would you say, like,
Speaker 3: that's like the most aggressive, like because I've heard that before.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, Like, is that like the
Speaker 3: the high end of all this most being most suggressive
Speaker 3: for calling.
Speaker 8: That's a that's a great question, And a lot of
Speaker 8: times lip balls, I'd use a lot of mimicry. So
Speaker 8: if the bull I'm calling at me is gonna lip
Speaker 8: ball in this challenge bugle, I'm gonna do that. If
Speaker 8: the bull that I'm calling in wants to, you know,
Speaker 8: do a three second challenge bugle with four runts, I'm
Speaker 8: gonna mimic him exactly. And one thing I really love
Speaker 8: to do that really seems to get them more fired
Speaker 8: up is if I start my bugle about halfway through
Speaker 8: theirs and I don't let them finish their bugle. It
Speaker 8: seems to be a way to just like, you know,
Speaker 8: piss them off a little bit more. And so we
Speaker 8: use a lot of mimicry. But yeah, lipball is a
Speaker 8: great way to add to the challenge bugle. You know,
Speaker 8: one thing I've noticed is the further south you go,
Speaker 8: the higher percentage of lip bowling type bulls there are
Speaker 8: the further north you are, it doesn't you know, there
Speaker 8: may be more chuckles or grunts, Like can you crank
Speaker 8: out a couple of these noises real quick?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I want to I want to tell you something
Speaker 1: to that I don't know if I told you about yet. Uh,
Speaker 1: you're talking about thrash and brush right, yep. One. I
Speaker 1: was haunting Moose with Clay last year in Alaska. We
Speaker 1: were going down a hill on the last day of
Speaker 1: the season. We were going down a hill to go
Speaker 1: to a bowl that was about a mile away that
Speaker 1: we just saw, and we were going down the hill fast.
Speaker 1: It was like evening on the last day. We're running
Speaker 1: down the hill trying to get to a place, hoping
Speaker 1: to hit an opening where we might be able to
Speaker 1: call from. But it was just dense thicket, just like
Speaker 1: just never ending aspen. As we ran down that hill,
Speaker 1: We're making so much noise because it was just like
Speaker 1: there's nothing to lose at that point. We ran down
Speaker 1: that hill and stopped and realized that bowl we never
Speaker 1: called that bowl was coming. Two bulls were coming up
Speaker 1: that hill and met us dead on just because of
Speaker 1: the noise we're making coming down that hill, yep, And
Speaker 1: we were making a tell of a lot of noise
Speaker 1: climbing over all this burned down junk, all this burned
Speaker 1: down spruced it was growing back as an aspen. Just smash, crash, bam.
Speaker 1: It probably sounded like a hell of a fight. And
Speaker 1: we stopped to call and realized that they're standing there
Speaker 1: like they're looking for us based off that noise. Yep.
Speaker 8: You know, when we were in New Mexico out at
Speaker 8: a couple of days prior, and one day I was
Speaker 8: trying to get through an area I knew there were
Speaker 8: elk and just walking through the grass, I had to
Speaker 8: hang out behind a tree for about fifteen minutes because
Speaker 8: that bold chased me down the hill just hearing my
Speaker 8: feet walk through the grass. And so my dad always
Speaker 8: kind of joked with me. And we grew up in
Speaker 8: a rifle hunting elk family, where you know, they go
Speaker 8: out and hunting their white new balances so they can
Speaker 8: be absolutely silent. You know, that's the type of elk
Speaker 8: hunting I grew up with. My Dad's like, you know what, Jason,
Speaker 8: you're not real quiet. You're meant to be an archvl hunter.
Speaker 8: And it really did kind of play to my favorite
Speaker 8: because I'm I'm stepping on sticks and cracking brush and
Speaker 8: it just kind of works for an archvl hunter, you know,
Speaker 8: cause an eight hundred pound animal in the landscape, they
Speaker 8: can be whispered quiet at times, but for the majority
Speaker 8: of the time they're gonna make noise, which you just
Speaker 8: add that realism into it. And elk Elk definitely take
Speaker 8: note on the noises that they're hearing.
Speaker 1: Is yes, especially when if you've ever listened to a
Speaker 1: half dozen of them playing grab ass on a steep slope,
Speaker 1: it's loud.
Speaker 3: Oh that's one of my favorite things ever. You're sitting
Speaker 3: there eating lunch or something and you hear that, you
Speaker 3: can I can just picture it that that downfall branch
Speaker 3: go pop and you know, and you're like that was
Speaker 3: a big animal, you know.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, so raking.
Speaker 1: I can't make that sound in here.
Speaker 8: But you know, I always recommend you get a big stick,
Speaker 8: and everybody wants to grab a little twig, Like, get
Speaker 8: something that's robust, not going to break on you through it.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is like yeah before he sets
Speaker 1: to it, Yeah yeah, I mean.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you're your knuckles and fingers aren't bloody. You're
Speaker 5: not making enough noise and trying.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and I like to I like to be as
Speaker 8: realistic as possible. So I try to find a couple
Speaker 8: of limbs, you know, from two feet up the tree
Speaker 8: to four feet and you just kind of rattle back
Speaker 8: and forth, you know, you hit the brush and you
Speaker 8: hit the top limb, hit the bottom limb. I don't
Speaker 8: know if it matters that much, MAYI There are times
Speaker 8: where I want to break a bunch of small, small
Speaker 8: limbs just.
Speaker 1: To add to it.
Speaker 8: You know, you can kick the ground, but you know raking,
Speaker 8: that's that's it's easy. But yeah, like you really need
Speaker 8: to get into it and and picking up a bigger
Speaker 8: stick make sure that you can get through that. Chuckles,
Speaker 8: like I said, are a little more ape like, So
Speaker 8: a lot of times you'll get these on the end
Speaker 8: of a bugle around here where I've got roosevelts in
Speaker 8: my backyard. I grew up with a lot of our
Speaker 8: bulls chuckling and grunting more so than like the high
Speaker 8: notes that we're talking about. But here's what a chuckle er.
Speaker 8: In my opinion, a chuckle sounds like so a little
Speaker 8: less elk sound a little more ape like, where the
Speaker 8: grunts are a little more drawn out. They get a
Speaker 8: little bit more of that high pitch from from the bowl.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, and his belly gets into it. Yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: his belly is like bouncing, you know, not his belly
Speaker 1: might be bouncing. I know that's between him and his wife.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about they have the bull.
Speaker 8: So so here's what I would consider a grunt. It's
Speaker 8: a little more that elkie sound. Scream like I say,
Speaker 8: two two and a half second, real raspy, real short.
Speaker 1: And usually when you get a bowld.
Speaker 8: To scream back at you, his temper is very high
Speaker 8: and we usually have real good success with calling them
Speaker 8: in and if they scream, I'll typically scream m So
Speaker 8: it's a scream and then you got your barks, and
Speaker 8: a lot of times you'll when you do hear a bark,
Speaker 8: it's it's about my second least favorite sound to hear
Speaker 8: in the elk wood, aside from wolves howling. But barks
Speaker 8: usually they have seen seen something they don't like or
Speaker 8: heard something they don't like, but they can't necessarily get
Speaker 8: wind on you. So a bark's really a come show
Speaker 8: me your you know, come show yourself or I'm out
Speaker 8: of here, I'm on alert. But and then what we
Speaker 8: will do in response is will bark back at him,
Speaker 8: because you're basically saying, well, I seen and heard something
Speaker 8: I don't like. You show yourself. And in twenty nineteen
Speaker 8: when I was in Wyoming, I have a bowl bark
Speaker 8: at me, and I bark back at him and he
Speaker 8: kind of comes trotting out in the middle of open
Speaker 8: and I was able to get a shot. So always
Speaker 8: be if you get bark at, bark right back at him.
Speaker 8: But it's just a quick blast of you know, it's
Speaker 8: it's a come show yourself sound.
Speaker 1: So you get like he's nervous, and you might set
Speaker 1: him at ease by by doing it back like oh
Speaker 1: there's another help. Yeah, yeah, there's you can hold him
Speaker 1: for a long time with their warning cry is you
Speaker 1: can turn the tide on antelope big time on prong
Speaker 1: horns with their own warning call back at.
Speaker 9: Him, get him to hang out.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll start coming more if you start. If you
Speaker 1: hide and start doing it back at him, it just
Speaker 1: really gets their curiosity.
Speaker 3: Can you do that? And that's a weird Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: like a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I'm not good at it, but man,
Speaker 1: you can you can take one. It's gonna be out
Speaker 1: and and he'll start coming. He'll be he'll like turn
Speaker 1: around and start going back your direction. I don't think
Speaker 1: they hear it a lot from people, for sure.
Speaker 2: All that out phil idea, Yeah.
Speaker 8: Right, and then uh, you like the mones and stuff,
Speaker 8: you know, but if they bark, usually what happens. If
Speaker 8: they don't see what they like, they're gonna run out
Speaker 8: the ridge and scare every elkre let, every elk in
Speaker 8: the whole entire country know that they and they bark
Speaker 8: for you know, until you can't see them anymore. So
Speaker 8: it's best to get them calm back down. And then
Speaker 8: mones are just those sounds as he's running his herd
Speaker 8: as we get in tight, you know, you'll hear him
Speaker 8: making little sounds that you can't hear from very far away,
Speaker 8: and we just add those in for for realism. This
Speaker 8: is kind of what a moan just real light on
Speaker 8: the latex. So as they're pushing cows around, they're just
Speaker 8: making small little noises that just at like I say,
Speaker 8: just you're just adding to the realism. They're more accessory sounds.
Speaker 8: But there are times when we'll throw those in just
Speaker 8: to be part.
Speaker 3: I feel like I kind of hear that too sometimes, Jason,
Speaker 3: when they're they're sleeping, when they're or they're just in
Speaker 3: their beds right like almost like a moan. It's like
Speaker 3: a real quiet like little yep.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 8: One thing that they do. It takes a fairly trained ear.
Speaker 8: But location bugles. We talked about him being high pitch
Speaker 8: and sharp and to the point, like a betted bull.
Speaker 8: To a trained ear, we can we can pick out
Speaker 8: usually when it's a bedded boil. Yeah, the time of
Speaker 8: day usually helps us do that as well. But you'll
Speaker 8: know if a bull's on his feet versus betted, especially
Speaker 8: if you fold that same bowl all morning, his his
Speaker 8: bugle cuts to about half intensity. It's a real lazy bugle.
Speaker 8: And so you can, you know, start to tell when
Speaker 8: that bull's betted. Everything gets a little bit softer and
Speaker 8: quieter and deeper.
Speaker 1: All right, Phelps you good man? Yeah, yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me on. Yeah man, So everybody as gearing up.
Speaker 1: Check out Phelps game calls. Uh, just a true Elk
Speaker 1: call and mastermind elk great elk call maker, great communicator.
Speaker 1: He'll give you all of his hot spots. Just hit
Speaker 1: him up. Off Jason, we're gonna have Auction Off Phelps
Speaker 1: is on x password at the Auction House Bodies.
Speaker 5: If you want to listen to like full I don't
Speaker 5: know how long the show is usually Jason forty five
Speaker 5: minutes an hour. Cutting the Distance Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you can go. Yeah, we're we're just getting ready.
Speaker 8: Dirk's gonna jump on as a as a co host
Speaker 8: here by time this drop, So we're gonna for the
Speaker 8: next couple of months. You're gonna get as much elk
Speaker 8: hunting information as you you want to do.
Speaker 4: That.
Speaker 1: That's that's a great heads up. So thanks for the reminder, Yahni,
Speaker 1: go listen to Cutting the Distance so hosted by Jason Phelps,
Speaker 1: Dirt Durham. There that that used to be bi weekly,
Speaker 1: it's not weekly. And when these boys going to elk
Speaker 1: mode this time of year, it's just gonna be all
Speaker 1: elk all the time. So you'll you'll you'll learn more
Speaker 1: than you can remember by checking that out. And again,
Speaker 1: man like just lifelong elk hunter, grew up hunting the
Speaker 1: hardest elk on the planet in the Pacific Northwest. Phenomenal calls.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot Phelps.
Speaker 9: Thanks, thanks guys.
Speaker 1: All right, Dave Smith, Yes, why uh give me the
Speaker 1: crash course on how DSD came into existence.
Speaker 2: The short, not not so boring version. It's all boring.
Speaker 2: The crash course is I was massively into goose hunting
Speaker 2: and I didn't have any decoys. I couldn't find any
Speaker 2: decoys that were working the way that I thought that they.
Speaker 1: Should back up way more than that, Okay, I mean
Speaker 1: I feel like I was born, I was an anemic child.
Speaker 2: I was born. I was born in Cottonwood, Idaho, and okay,
Speaker 2: born in Idaho. Well, so yeah, I was born in Idaho. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean my I had an older brother. I say
Speaker 2: had because he did pass away when I was nineteen.
Speaker 2: When he was nineteen, I was seventeen, and he and
Speaker 2: I we dreamed about goose hunting our entire lives, Like
Speaker 2: we used to literally like drop you know, pictures of
Speaker 2: goose hunting with crayons.
Speaker 1: So when most kids have drawn army tanks and monster tracks,
Speaker 1: you guys are growing goose hunting.
Speaker 2: Pretty much, and it's it's kind of a weird thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, like our dad hunted, but then he was
Speaker 2: a great, great archer, but he hunted mostly before we
Speaker 2: were born. But my brother and I, we both had
Speaker 2: the hunting gene, you know, for sure, we could just tell.
Speaker 2: And for some reason we were just obsessed with geeese,
Speaker 2: even though we didn't we didn't really have any exposure
Speaker 2: to goose hunting, and we didn't even have any geeese around,
Speaker 2: and so all of a sudden we started getting geese.
Speaker 1: Because you're you're old enough that goose numbers weren't what
Speaker 1: they are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So where I live in the Willammett Valley of Oregon,
Speaker 2: there's they really the only goose was the dusky Canada goose,
Speaker 2: so and those and so in the sixties, there was
Speaker 2: an earthquake in Alaska that uplifted the delta where they
Speaker 2: where they nest, and then all of a sudden, mammalion
Speaker 2: predators could access it. So the numbers of Dusky Canada geese,
Speaker 2: you know, really crashed.
Speaker 1: So there was hunt a spot. I have haunted a spot.
Speaker 1: Haunt I have haunted a spot in Alaska that was
Speaker 1: hay Fields and it recessed and became marsh in the
Speaker 1: same earthquake.
Speaker 2: That's oh, that's good to hear. It became a wetland
Speaker 2: in the earthquake. Yeah, so what happened.
Speaker 1: We're still equipment laying out there. Yeah, that things sunk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, That's that's what I think with all this stuff,
Speaker 2: there should be there should be an upside. That can't
Speaker 2: always be a downside only you know, like and that
Speaker 2: probably that probably helped cacklers, you know.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 2: So so we had we did have geese in the
Speaker 2: valley and we couldn't hunt them, and and there was
Speaker 2: a while where we could. And when I was very young,
Speaker 2: I I went to you know, quite a quite an
Speaker 2: effort to hunt, to hunt them, and that's all we
Speaker 2: could hunt is dusky Kennedy's I mean I built, I would.
Speaker 2: I would dig pits with a shovel, big huge pits,
Speaker 2: pits with a shovel, and build these really elaborate wooden
Speaker 2: pits with like trap doors that you know, sprang open
Speaker 2: and swivel chairs and everything, and going to off them
Speaker 2: into those those holes. And I made homemade decoys out
Speaker 2: of you know, I mean, it was dirt poor, So
Speaker 2: I made decoys out of like, you know, canvas, bags
Speaker 2: and anything I possibly could.
Speaker 1: And you know, uh, the first I have pictures of
Speaker 1: me and my brother Danny in high school hunting geese
Speaker 1: when they first opened the early goose season in Michigan.
Speaker 1: And our decoys. We took five gallon buckets, cut them
Speaker 1: in half length wise and then made plywood heads and
Speaker 1: laid out all those five gallon buckets with plywood heads on,
Speaker 1: and then sat smoking making corn cob pipes because the
Speaker 1: corn was still standing, making corn cob pipes and smoking
Speaker 1: corn silks. And they're trying to get a goose to
Speaker 1: land in those buckets. Yeah, I mean, like for us
Speaker 1: to get a goose to even fly by and range
Speaker 1: was a big deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and it's like, yeah, all those decoys were
Speaker 2: working reasonably well, and then somebody had to come along
Speaker 2: and make like an ultra realistic it's arms race, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's exactly. And and and then it kind of had
Speaker 2: affected the whole industry, you know, so and then everybody
Speaker 2: had to make realistic decoys. So but in my in
Speaker 2: my case, I got to the point where more and
Speaker 2: more geese we were were wintering in our in our valley,
Speaker 2: So they has numbers improved, Oh, they were just they
Speaker 2: just kept coming up and up and up, and so.
Speaker 1: There was it was it changing agriculture practices or was
Speaker 1: just geese numbers were increasing.
Speaker 2: It was neither, honestly neither. So what was happening is
Speaker 2: all the geese. So the dusky dusky numbers never really
Speaker 2: came came up to levels that are like they're not
Speaker 2: they're not huntable or anything like that. What happened was
Speaker 2: all the geese that were wintering in the Central Valley
Speaker 2: of California or northern California. It's just started just started
Speaker 2: wintering in the Willhammette Valley.
Speaker 1: Because of drought patterns or it's not well understood.
Speaker 2: I don't know, because that that changes, that that goes
Speaker 2: in cycles, you know, every ten or twenty years, and
Speaker 2: we're starting to get snows where we never had snows before.
Speaker 2: Things like that has changed, and I don't really know
Speaker 2: the answer, so that only the geese snow. But so
Speaker 2: so now we had all these these geese and nobody
Speaker 2: really knew how to hunt them, and they were trying
Speaker 2: to work out a way that you could hunt them
Speaker 2: because the farmers were, you know, kind of alarmed by this,
Speaker 2: so they worked out a way where you could hunt.
Speaker 2: You could hunt Canada geese. We had seven subspecies of
Speaker 2: Canada geese in the valley.
Speaker 1: And but that was before they shrank, didn't it didn't
Speaker 1: we go just because of lumpers and splitters in taxonomy.
Speaker 1: Didn't we go from twenty eight geese down to three
Speaker 1: or four? Well, because the Ornithological Society one day to said,
Speaker 1: just scrap all that. It's just it's we're splitting hairs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's definitely there's definitely some of that.
Speaker 2: It went from twenty eight down to maybe eleven and
Speaker 2: one that's extinct. But people still argue about that, you know,
Speaker 2: like so there's isolating breeding, there's isolated breeding groups, especially
Speaker 2: of lessers, and some people will say that is a
Speaker 2: separate subspecies, and some people will say it's the same.
Speaker 2: And that part is so confusing. I mean, nobody knows
Speaker 2: the real, the real answer.
Speaker 1: But yeah, maybe because it's all definitional and just varies
Speaker 1: on the person. It's just it's it's highly subjective, right yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what what we were most concerned I was
Speaker 2: concerned about is just like from a legal standpoint, what
Speaker 2: we could shoot and what we couldn't and everything. So
Speaker 2: you had to take a course and pass the course
Speaker 2: that proves that you would know how to hunt without
Speaker 2: shooting a dusky Canada goose and tell me more.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've ever laid eyes on a
Speaker 1: dusky Okay, so tell me what, like, walk me through this.
Speaker 2: They're they're really pretty, they're really neat birds. They're they're
Speaker 2: and they're sort of cool because they're sort of like
Speaker 2: our are our original goose. They're kind of like like
Speaker 2: co hosts am and our cutthroat trout or you know,
Speaker 2: black tailed deer where I live. So they're medium large
Speaker 2: goose and they're very, very very dark. So thank god
Speaker 2: they're really dark, because otherwise, you know, in flight, there
Speaker 2: wouldn't be any great way to are there.
Speaker 1: Do they still have a white cheek or is that
Speaker 1: white cheek as duskier too, so that white cheek is white?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yep. All Canada geese have a white cheek
Speaker 2: and some people call them in a white cheek geese
Speaker 2: and everything. So yeah, they still have that, and it's
Speaker 2: that believe it or not. Probably illusions have the lowest
Speaker 2: amount of white on their cheeks, just mostly because it
Speaker 2: usually doesn't cover the bottom of the throat. But but
Speaker 2: dusky kenadedies have a pretty prominent white cheek patch and stuff.
Speaker 2: But they're just really really really dark, and they have
Speaker 2: they sound different, they act different, they they're in, they're
Speaker 2: in certain sized groups. They fly around fairly low, and
Speaker 2: they kind of keep to themselves. They don't they don't
Speaker 2: mingle too much with other Canada geese. So you take
Speaker 2: this test and then you get a a goose card
Speaker 2: that's your permit to hunt, and you can only hunt
Speaker 2: This is how it was originally. You could only hunt
Speaker 2: between the hours of eight and.
Speaker 1: Four, ok.
Speaker 2: And you had to check all your geese in at
Speaker 2: a check station when you were done, and they would
Speaker 2: carefully measure the Coleman length, which is the measurement of
Speaker 2: the top of the bill. That was one of the
Speaker 2: things that they would use, and then like the length
Speaker 2: of the legs and the color of the breast. And
Speaker 2: if you shot a dusky Canada goose, your card was
Speaker 2: punched and you're done for the season. Really yeah, and
Speaker 2: what year was this, Well, I don't know. This was
Speaker 2: back in the Yeah, I'm terrible about dates. I mean,
Speaker 2: this was all up until about eight years ago. So
Speaker 2: then eight years ago what they did is a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is all new to me. Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: never heard this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was kind of cool because it just kept
Speaker 2: out a lot of you know, the pilgrims, Like you
Speaker 2: had to be pretty dedicated to this, and and you
Speaker 2: had to you learned a ton about geese because we
Speaker 2: would get set up before it would get light. Like
Speaker 2: some people would go out and they'd start setting up
Speaker 2: at seven and they'd be set up by eight. Well,
Speaker 2: the geese are trying to get in, you know, they're
Speaker 2: trying to get in, uh before that. So what we
Speaker 2: would always do.
Speaker 1: Is the is the eight am restriction because they want
Speaker 1: good daylight exactly.
Speaker 2: Yep. They won't you to be able to see to
Speaker 2: see him. So but it was it worked for us
Speaker 2: because we just learned so much about geese by being
Speaker 2: set up and having to watch them for the first
Speaker 2: hour hour and a half and having them come and
Speaker 2: land in the decoys and seeing what, you know, what
Speaker 2: works and what doesn't work.
Speaker 1: And do you ever get your card evoked?
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: Did you ever get your card punched?
Speaker 2: I never did? I never did so one time. Brad,
Speaker 2: you know my partner, Brad, he's a phenomenal goose hunter.
Speaker 2: He's honestly, he's one of the best goose hunters on
Speaker 2: the planet. One time he and and one of our
Speaker 2: one of the other guys that we work with, they
Speaker 2: got their cards punch because there there's there's also this
Speaker 2: flock of lessers that hang out around was still like
Speaker 2: our anchorage, and those birds were fairly dark and fairly large,
Speaker 2: and so it was close. But we felt like we
Speaker 2: knew those birds really really well, so we didn't have
Speaker 2: any problem hunting those. And one time Brad and and
Speaker 2: I think it was Brian Stone got their cards punched
Speaker 2: because they shot They shot banded anchorage lessers and we've
Speaker 2: done that several times, but usually so they have a
Speaker 2: smaller band than the than the duskies do, so we
Speaker 2: shoot those with confidence. And most of the checkers at
Speaker 2: the chech station just know and they also have a
Speaker 2: reference of band numbers, and so you're supposed to be
Speaker 2: able to go into the tech station and they'll see
Speaker 2: that it's a smaller band or they'll check the number
Speaker 2: and they'll say, okay, you're fine, it's on a dusky. Well,
Speaker 2: in one case they got their cards punched, and it
Speaker 2: worked out great for me because they called me and
Speaker 2: told me and they're like, yeah, we're getting bombed in
Speaker 2: by all these lessers, and a bunch of them have
Speaker 2: net collars and you know, radar transmitters and tarsus bands
Speaker 2: and leg bands, and so I went and sat in
Speaker 2: their blind. I got to hunt. The next day. They
Speaker 2: just left all their decoys out and I got it.
Speaker 2: I got some nice birds. And then they sort of
Speaker 2: went to a review panel and found out that yeah,
Speaker 2: they were Anchorage lessers, so they got their cards vindication
Speaker 2: man and twice for me. Hunting on Willop a Bay,
Speaker 2: I got to the check station and the checker was gone,
Speaker 2: and assumed that everyone was done for the day, but
Speaker 2: I was. I had such a good relationship with the
Speaker 2: biologists and the state state Policies was in the state
Speaker 2: of Washington, that they both times they said, okay, Dave,
Speaker 2: well tell us what you got, you know, tell us
Speaker 2: what your birds are. And I told him, They're like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll send you a new card. In the sent me
Speaker 2: a new card right away, so that you know, I
Speaker 2: was lucky in that respect. But I never got my
Speaker 2: card punched luckily, Like not for real. I've come dang close.
Speaker 2: I mean, I you know, I've had I've had some
Speaker 2: checkers that you know, there's a big turnover of checkers,
Speaker 2: and some of them really didn't know what they were doing,
Speaker 2: and some of them did. And you know, I've had
Speaker 2: some scary situations, but it's fine. I I survived it,
Speaker 2: you know. And now it's to the point where there's
Speaker 2: no more check stations. Now it's illegal to shoot a
Speaker 2: dusky Canada goose. And the problem with that. It's good
Speaker 2: and bad. But the problem with that is now everybody
Speaker 2: goose hunts, every duck hunter shoots, you know, a geese
Speaker 2: flying over and stuff, and so it's just changed the
Speaker 2: goose hunting dramatically. Like I mean, I had some just beautiful,
Speaker 2: you know, periods of time, several seasons in a row
Speaker 2: where I just had just fabulous goose hunting, and a
Speaker 2: lot of it was because of the difficulties and the
Speaker 2: check stations. Almost I mean, the funnest hunting of my
Speaker 2: life was six seasons on Willipa Bay. There were several
Speaker 2: birds that were they were actually across between a well
Speaker 2: western and a dusky. They called them whiskies, and the
Speaker 2: bile just really wanted them gone, and so they would
Speaker 2: put white neck colors on them, and so none of
Speaker 2: the locals would bother hunting those birds, because I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, you go down a tide flat and you're
Speaker 2: hunting in this huge, this huge area, and it's a
Speaker 2: pain in the ass to get out there, and you
Speaker 2: got to figure out how you're going to hide once
Speaker 2: you get out there, and decoys, getting decoys out there
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. It was all difficult. And then
Speaker 2: you get some birds to come in and there's a
Speaker 2: very good chance that it's going to be a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of big, dark birds, and none of them have
Speaker 2: a white collar, so you can't shoot unless it has
Speaker 2: a white collar. And so now the locals were bothering,
Speaker 2: and to me, it was just paradise, Like I absolutely
Speaker 2: loved that. It was just so much fun. And uh,
Speaker 2: I love shooting you know, those collared birds, and everyone
Speaker 2: of them had a leg band and I just started,
Speaker 2: you know, accumulating those, and I it was just super exciting,
Speaker 2: like every time I shot one, and that was that
Speaker 2: was the funnest goose hunting I've ever had.
Speaker 1: Do you got land you're pretty loaded up with bands?
Speaker 2: I do, yeah, yeah, And I have over one hundred
Speaker 2: net collars really yeah, really, and from from a lot
Speaker 2: of different subspecies, so I can blame Brad Cochrane, I
Speaker 2: think for that. So I tried to stick with mostly
Speaker 2: mostly white collars, which doesn't disrupt anything any studies or
Speaker 2: anything like that. But man, once you once you learned
Speaker 2: how to spot a collar in the air, and you
Speaker 2: would think that it'd be like you'd see the color
Speaker 2: of it or something like that, and it's not it
Speaker 2: at all. It just it just looks like a little
Speaker 2: kink in the neck. It just looks kind of like
Speaker 2: a broken neck. And once you get that down, you
Speaker 2: can't help yourself but to shoot them. Like when you're
Speaker 2: hunting cacklers or something like that, that's just the funnest
Speaker 2: thing ever too. It's just you get a big grind
Speaker 2: of cacklers going and just keep watching them, keep watching them,
Speaker 2: and you maybe look at a block of four or
Speaker 2: five at once and make sure that they're on a
Speaker 2: line where you have that second that it takes to
Speaker 2: sit up and shoot. And you know, I mean I
Speaker 2: went like dozens of days where it didn't fire, shot
Speaker 2: all day, just watch birds all day long. You wouldn't
Speaker 2: see one, and once in a while.
Speaker 1: You'd see it was just looking for collared birds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was fun. It was just something, I mean,
Speaker 2: something that we wanted to do, and we've also so
Speaker 2: you know, always felt like that's how we learned a
Speaker 2: lot about geese. It is just well, for one, we
Speaker 2: never wanted to shoot into big flocks. So like when
Speaker 2: I was hunting those whiskies, I mean, there was only
Speaker 2: so many of them and they were mixed in with
Speaker 2: other birds, and I just could not shoot into big
Speaker 2: flocks or I would have had it ruined, you know,
Speaker 2: in one season. I wanted it to last and last,
Speaker 2: and so I was pretty pretty patient. But I would definitely,
Speaker 2: like on cacklers, I would definitely make that exception because well,
Speaker 2: one thing about cacklers is they're so gregarious and they're
Speaker 2: so loud, and they're in such large flocks that if
Speaker 2: you have a giant grind of cacklers going and you
Speaker 2: sit up and make one shot and drop a collared
Speaker 2: bird and get back in your blind instead of getting
Speaker 2: out and whooping it up and all that stuff whatever,
Speaker 2: you back in your blind. Most of the time the
Speaker 2: grind will keep coming because the birds that saw you
Speaker 2: and saw the boogey man, they kind of freak out.
Speaker 2: But the birds on the far side of this giant grind.
Speaker 2: They haven't, they don't know what it is. And what
Speaker 2: would you keep going?
Speaker 3: What would you consider a in your mind? What's like
Speaker 3: a giant grind?
Speaker 5: Like how many birds grind? I've never heard that.
Speaker 1: I've never heard that. I know, the grind from just
Speaker 1: being the daily grind of like getting up so early
Speaker 1: and setting out decoys and pulling into decoys and just
Speaker 1: like it's a frequently waterfoul. People will talk about the
Speaker 1: grind of just how the drudgery of hunting hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's a that's the real grind for sure.
Speaker 2: And that's a grind too. Yeah, I mean like a
Speaker 2: tornado or you know whatever. We've a lot of people
Speaker 2: have different names for it, but I mean it. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like we would still probably call it a grind
Speaker 2: if it was two hundred birds, but but it could
Speaker 2: be ten thousand, yeah, you know, and and a lot
Speaker 2: of times it's a thousand.
Speaker 1: You know, you're talking about just like an aggregation of
Speaker 1: birds that is kind of on the same schedule and
Speaker 1: they're coming through in a group. Uh there, they might
Speaker 1: be spread apart by many minutes.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, I'm talking about a flock. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a big, a big giant flock. Sometimes other flocks are
Speaker 2: joining at the same time.
Speaker 1: But so they didn't like it's a grouping that you
Speaker 1: can like put your eyes on it one time.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Tornado, it's like a snow goose tornado.
Speaker 2: Yeah Tonado, Yeah, yep, exactly, yep.
Speaker 1: All right, get me too, because I asked you a
Speaker 1: bunch of questions got us off. So at a point
Speaker 1: you you got into guiding, and then I want to
Speaker 1: get to how you got into how you thought to
Speaker 1: make your own decoy, which doesn't occur to everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean the the decoys came first, and
Speaker 2: then the decoys worked so well that that's what got
Speaker 2: us into guiding. So I was buying every every brand
Speaker 2: of decoy that that was available, and and I was
Speaker 2: I was just the birds just weren't landing in them.
Speaker 2: And I just and I had everybody tell me like,
Speaker 2: oh god, you know you're they're not going to land
Speaker 2: in them. And I was reading like Dennis Hunt books
Speaker 2: and stuff, and they were saying things like like, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, decoys are you need them? But at the
Speaker 2: same time, geese hate them. They're just used to lure
Speaker 2: birds into gun range, and I just called yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I watched real birds land with
Speaker 2: real birds all the time, and I just felt really
Speaker 2: confident that that there just has to be a better way,
Speaker 2: and that this that the whole industry was just really complacent.
Speaker 2: And I heard people say things like, oh, geese have
Speaker 2: a you know, a pie sized brain and everything, and
Speaker 2: I just had way more respect for him than that.
Speaker 2: So so I set out to sculpt. I did a
Speaker 2: I do clay sculptures. I don't carve anything. I do
Speaker 2: everything as a clay sculpture. And I set out to
Speaker 2: sculpt the most accurate decoy I possibly could. And it
Speaker 2: was a Taverner's Canada goose. That was my number one
Speaker 2: goose that I hunted and loved to hunt and everything.
Speaker 2: And now we call it a lesser because it's that's
Speaker 2: way more common and people are more familiar with that term,
Speaker 2: but that's really what the first one was.
Speaker 1: So if you look, when you say way more realistic,
Speaker 1: I would think that you can correct me on this one.
Speaker 1: I would think that there's a mad there's an issue
Speaker 1: of size, there's an issue of contours, shape, say, and
Speaker 1: there's an issue of coloration. Yep, what what is it
Speaker 1: for real?
Speaker 2: Well, and one more thing is the finish, And the
Speaker 2: finish is the biggest one of those of those four.
Speaker 2: So yeah, the sculpture needs to be you know, anatomically
Speaker 2: correct and in a pleasing pose. The pose has to
Speaker 2: be I guess that's a fifth element, right there is
Speaker 2: the pose. It's really important with turkeys. The pose has
Speaker 2: to tell what you want. What you want the decoy.
Speaker 1: You don't want to decoy of a scared ass turkey exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But the finish, it turns out, the finish is
Speaker 2: probably more important than anything, and that is it just
Speaker 2: can't have the wrong reflections. I mean, you know, birds
Speaker 2: can see colors that we can't see, and a lot
Speaker 2: of decoys have you know, some reflection to them, and
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. And and in some ways we
Speaker 2: probably luckily stumbled on the right paint. But that that's
Speaker 2: a big one. That helps a lot. But you know,
Speaker 2: at the time, the decoys, the decoys that were working
Speaker 2: the best for me before I made a decoy we're
Speaker 2: bigfoots and carry light full bodies, and bigfoots were neat
Speaker 2: because they were they really were.
Speaker 1: What's the funn about that?
Speaker 6: No, it's it's it's funny because Pat Dirkins sent me
Speaker 6: a report from somebody, well because I mean it's not
Speaker 6: a real report if you actually read its high substantiated,
Speaker 6: but about bigfoot behavior of jumping into trees.
Speaker 2: So I just had that.
Speaker 1: Also, I'm talking about the brand Bigfoot decoys, which had
Speaker 1: like a little pedestal to look like their feet. You
Speaker 1: were thinking about bigfoots bigfoots. Yeah, sorry, pologies on behalf
Speaker 1: of grint. I did see.
Speaker 2: We can edit that out, no problem that. Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I had a ton of respect for Bigfoot
Speaker 2: decoys because they were they were made in America, and
Speaker 2: they really were really goosey. But the problem is they
Speaker 2: were they were a a large race Canada goose. They
Speaker 2: were a honker. They were a big, long neck and
Speaker 2: most of our geese were really small, short necked, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's why the carry lights looked a little more
Speaker 2: like our gaze. But we I just needed to make
Speaker 2: something that was more acculate, and the very first eco
Speaker 2: that I made it actually had the tail was a
Speaker 2: separate piece, and the wings were separate. The wing the
Speaker 2: primary feathers, they were separate pieces that glued on separately.
Speaker 2: So I had full separation in there. It was like,
Speaker 2: probably way more than it really needed to be. We
Speaker 2: made those and they worked so well. It was just unbelievable.
Speaker 1: How many did you make? Well?
Speaker 2: I mean I started out with one pose, just arresting one,
Speaker 2: and then I finally before I even hunted with that,
Speaker 2: I realized I needed to make a feeder. And so
Speaker 2: I had two poses and I went out with and
Speaker 2: hunted with those, and I would make like eighteen total
Speaker 2: decoys for my own hunting, and then I kind of
Speaker 2: realized I need an upright, but that came along later.
Speaker 2: But they were just they looked like the real birds.
Speaker 2: So what I figured, what I learned. The biggest epiphany
Speaker 2: I guess I had was when I was hunting and
Speaker 2: I had I could have. I mean, I put out
Speaker 2: twenty four dozen decoys before and if if if six
Speaker 2: real birds came and landed one hundred and fifty yards away,
Speaker 2: I any other birds that came would go land with
Speaker 2: those six. So I realized right away, Yet it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not a number thing. The numbers thing is. What's
Speaker 2: most important is that they're convinced that those are real birds.
Speaker 2: And so the beauty of our decoy right now is
Speaker 2: the way that people have so much damn fun with
Speaker 2: them is in places where you have normally had to
Speaker 2: use you know, five dozen, you can use eighteen. And
Speaker 2: even like on some of the places like the front
Speaker 2: Range Colorado, where people feel like they have to use
Speaker 2: twenty dozen, they can use six dozen, and so that
Speaker 2: that really helps. It just makes it more enjoyable because
Speaker 2: it's just not as much work.
Speaker 5: Less of a grind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not out there and two of them more's
Speaker 2: of a grind. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I can sleep in
Speaker 2: and I love I love sleep.
Speaker 5: Can you take us through you just sort of casually say, oh,
Speaker 5: I whipped up eight teen decoys, but what what does
Speaker 5: that look like?
Speaker 6: And can we also get into like your carving or
Speaker 6: the materials that you're using, and you know you're kind of.
Speaker 5: Giving away too much?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what were you when you say make them? You
Speaker 1: had that you made a mold obviously.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so I mean in your garage yep, you had
Speaker 10: to buy a lot of equipment, right, I had Uh Yeah,
Speaker 10: I did. I had a I had a shop already
Speaker 10: just because I've I've made fish replicas like my entire life.
Speaker 10: My artistic was Ron Petter Is is the greatest fish
Speaker 10: replica artists that ever lived, by far, and I just
Speaker 10: was a complete I just bugged the hell out of
Speaker 10: him for thirty years.
Speaker 3: Do you still do it the fish?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I do, you know, a few. I do just
Speaker 2: a few, like maybe maybe one a year.
Speaker 6: That's but yeah, that's maybe auction house, don't it.
Speaker 3: I mean they're sounding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna do because of fish people caught.
Speaker 1: What's that look you do a little like like whatever
Speaker 1: the hell they fish tax drmy is these days, because
Speaker 1: there's no tax dermy, it's just replicas.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So I do a lot of steelhead and
Speaker 2: and I have a lot of molds of steelheads, so
Speaker 2: and wild steelhead. You know, there's only a few places
Speaker 2: where you can still keep wild steelhead, but I don't
Speaker 2: encourage that at all. Wild steelhead are really low in
Speaker 2: numbers and everything like that. So I have all these
Speaker 2: molds of fish, you know, up to thirty pounds, and
Speaker 2: you may I made or I inherited from Ron Pittard
Speaker 2: either one. So and I've got like I'll be I'm
Speaker 2: I'm finishing up three point twenty six pounds white crappie
Speaker 2: for John Brown John, if you're watching, I'm I'm getting
Speaker 2: it done. I'll have it done, and then I'm doing
Speaker 2: a big thirty pound steelhead for a guide who's been
Speaker 2: waiting eight years. He's been he's been really, really, really patient.
Speaker 2: He's going to be really mad when he sees that
Speaker 2: he did the Crappie. But so so I and then
Speaker 2: I have lots of experience in sculpture, in industrial sculpture.
Speaker 2: So I worked for Nike for seven years. I did
Speaker 2: clay sculptures of footwear as part of the design process.
Speaker 6: You're like the guy in that movie Air My goodness
Speaker 6: was at.
Speaker 1: A bad movie. I liked it, dude. We have to
Speaker 1: talk about that sometime.
Speaker 9: I'll talk you fine, Okay, Oh there you go.
Speaker 1: That had about every problem movie. We'll talk about a
Speaker 1: You had a job there it did. What did you
Speaker 1: carve shoes?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Clay sculptures? Yep, seriously, Yeah, I did five. Now
Speaker 2: I only did the midsol Altsoul, so I didn't have
Speaker 2: anything to do with the upper. But I did get
Speaker 2: to do five seasons of Air. Jordan's working with Tinker
Speaker 2: Hatfield and that was a and my time when Nike
Speaker 2: was really I'm super thankful for it, like it was
Speaker 2: really good people. And I learned a ton about molding
Speaker 2: and casting and and all that stuff. So that was
Speaker 2: hard I got. I got headhunted from Nike to go
Speaker 2: to FILA and I worked for And also I'm sorry
Speaker 2: for any of my friends that work at Nike. And
Speaker 2: I told you that I didn't get headhunted, that I quit,
Speaker 2: and now you're just now finding this out, So I apologize.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry I had to lie to you. And I
Speaker 2: went to FILA and I was the manager of the
Speaker 2: model shop there and did more clay sculptures and everything.
Speaker 2: And before all this, I did class sculptures of taxidermy mannequins.
Speaker 2: So I worked for research mannequins and did class sculptures
Speaker 2: animal so so I had the clay experience. I didn't
Speaker 2: have any training, I but I just winged it and
Speaker 2: just you know, muscled through it or whatever. Like I'm
Speaker 2: not I can't do it class sculpture like really well,
Speaker 2: like really fast or anything like that. And I'm not
Speaker 2: like a naturally talented at it or anything like that.
Speaker 2: But I'm pretty good at looking at two things and
Speaker 2: figuring out what the differences between those.
Speaker 1: Well can tell you one of my favorite writing quotes.
Speaker 1: I think it was RW You R W Apple. He
Speaker 1: once said, I can write better than anyone that can
Speaker 1: write faster than me, and I can write faster than
Speaker 1: anyone that can write better than me.
Speaker 2: It's perfect.
Speaker 1: Or you have to think of something like that for yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well it sounds like it's already been done.
Speaker 2: Somebody beat me too it or whatever. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm slow, and there are some people that are
Speaker 2: super talented and can do these things super super fast.
Speaker 2: And and what I mostly have to do is I
Speaker 2: have to assemble, you know, a blob of clay roughly
Speaker 2: in the shape before I can. I mean, I more
Speaker 2: or less have to build something wrong and then start
Speaker 2: picking it apart. Rather than building something right the first time,
Speaker 2: I usually just have to get it. I have to
Speaker 2: get something going and then I can then I can
Speaker 2: start to see what the difference is. So I got
Speaker 2: to have really really good reference material I got to have.
Speaker 2: I got to have that thing to compare it to,
Speaker 2: so that could be amount or a bunch of photographs
Speaker 2: or something like that.
Speaker 3: It's great way to go about building something. You just
Speaker 3: gotta gotta start it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: My dad was a wood carving and he said his
Speaker 1: strategy was if he was making like an otter, he said,
Speaker 1: I would just start taking away everything that doesn't look
Speaker 1: like an otter.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's another thing is I have a lot
Speaker 2: of respect for wood carvers because you can only subtract material.
Speaker 2: So in my case, I mean, you put it back
Speaker 2: when you made a mistake all the time. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so so yeah, then I made I made molds of
Speaker 2: those first decoys, and I finally had to buy a
Speaker 2: rotational casting machine, which was a pretty big, pretty big investment.
Speaker 1: And now but at this point, are you're like, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm gonna start selling these No, No.
Speaker 5: Hold on, We're get too far ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Before it, when you just whipped up the eighteen that
Speaker 5: you first started with, Yeah, how do you whip up eighteen?
Speaker 2: You made the clay sculpture, Okay, made the class sculpture,
Speaker 2: and then made a still cone rubber mold with a
Speaker 2: fiberglass shell mold over the top of that to hold
Speaker 2: it to shape. And then since I didn't have a
Speaker 2: rotational casting machine, I had to rotate it by hand.
Speaker 2: That was the workout portion of my of my life
Speaker 2: and is amazing.
Speaker 1: Man, oh, thank you.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that.
Speaker 5: And the and the rotational part comes because once you spray,
Speaker 5: so you've got your mold, and then what material would
Speaker 5: you spray in there?
Speaker 2: So it's liquid, You're a thane, So it's like two parts.
Speaker 2: You mix A and B together, stir it up and
Speaker 2: pour it in the mold and then close the mold,
Speaker 2: and then you rotate it, keep it, keep it.
Speaker 3: Moving, griped to one side or the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and coat the whole inside. And then you have
Speaker 2: to keep rotating it until that stuff is hard, and
Speaker 2: then you may have to do a second, a second
Speaker 2: pore so and then I was like, screw this, this
Speaker 2: is a lot of work. Like you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: exactly Charles Atlas, and I guess I would have been
Speaker 2: if I just would have never bought a rotational casting machine.
Speaker 1: D I like, it's like more than a way out
Speaker 1: of date reference.
Speaker 2: So so I bought a rotational casting machine. And at
Speaker 2: the time, I when I was working for FILA, like
Speaker 2: everything that we would make for Fila, everything that we
Speaker 2: would design for them, they would send it back to
Speaker 2: the to the group in Italy and the ownership group
Speaker 2: would say no, no, no, that's not what the Americans want,
Speaker 2: you know, And and we were just pulling our hair
Speaker 2: out of They were just turning down everything that we made.
Speaker 2: And we were sure that we were making really, really
Speaker 2: really good shoes, and most of the time they wouldn't
Speaker 2: even make them. And we just I just watched our stock,
Speaker 2: you know, go from seventy six dollars a share down
Speaker 2: to five dollars a share over a course of a
Speaker 2: very short amount of time. So then they finally said, hey,
Speaker 2: we're going to close the Portland office. Your choices are
Speaker 2: to move to New York City or Italy. And there
Speaker 2: was about forty people in the off every single one
Speaker 2: of us said where we take neither. So now I
Speaker 2: was out of work, and I was tempted to go
Speaker 2: back to Nike and stuff like that, but I just
Speaker 2: I was so into goose hunting, and I as much
Speaker 2: as I loved, you know, working at Nike and with
Speaker 2: the people at least at FeelA, it wasn't related to
Speaker 2: hunting and nature and stuff. So so I was out
Speaker 2: of a job. In my sweet wife, Elda Smith, I
Speaker 2: love her so much. Here we are we're just getting
Speaker 2: married and right at that point, I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: lose this high paying job, and I'm just fully expecting
Speaker 2: her to just, you know, ditch my ass. And she's
Speaker 2: just like, she's just like, we'll be fine. Whatever you
Speaker 2: got to do, you know. And I'm like working on
Speaker 2: this sculpture for six months and I'm having a cash
Speaker 2: in my four oh one k you know, a little
Speaker 2: bit out of time to keep you know, keep the
Speaker 2: roof over our head and stuff like that. And she's
Speaker 2: just such a sweetheart. She was just like, I believe
Speaker 2: in you and this will turn into something. And uh
Speaker 2: and you know, you know, God bless her, but so
Speaker 2: I did. So then I bought this rotational casting machine
Speaker 2: and that made it way easier to make these decoys
Speaker 2: and stuff. And then Brad Cochran and I we were
Speaker 2: just like we were hunting a lot together. Brad is
Speaker 2: a phenomenal, phenomenal goose hunter. He really is. He's one
Speaker 2: of five people in the world that I would actually
Speaker 2: hunt with these days.
Speaker 5: What makes a phenomenal goose hunter so.
Speaker 1: Brad.
Speaker 2: So Brad is super super hardcore. He is. He is
Speaker 2: so freaking into it, it's unbelievable. He just absolutely lives
Speaker 2: for it. After all these years, he is just as
Speaker 2: passionate about it today as he ever was so and
Speaker 2: I can't match that because I need to go on.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm spade fishing for steelhead, I'm I'm archery
Speaker 2: black tail hunting. I need to I need these tenure
Speaker 2: at a time things, and I need new challenges and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. He is absolutely stuck with it the
Speaker 2: whole time. And he's just he's just accumulated so much knowledge,
Speaker 2: and he has great instincts. He like, I rely on
Speaker 2: my instincts one hundred percent when I'm setting up in
Speaker 2: the morning, and he has instincts. Plus it's just an
Speaker 2: incredible knowledge base. So and then he's a great shot.
Speaker 2: That's important and that and he he can spot callers
Speaker 2: really well too, and and so like so when you're
Speaker 2: when you're collar hunting, you can only hunt with somebody
Speaker 2: who's on the same page as you. You can't go
Speaker 2: hunting with a bunch of guys. I I've done it.
Speaker 2: I've shot collars when I've gotten invites, But it's usually
Speaker 2: people you sit up and shoot, and it's usually everybody's
Speaker 2: like what you know? And but if you're hunting with
Speaker 2: someone else who's on the same page, and you're looking
Speaker 2: at all the birds on the on the right, and
Speaker 2: he's looking at all the birds on the left, and
Speaker 2: you know that nobody's gonna shoot until he spot a collar.
Speaker 2: It's just way better than than than you know, Like,
Speaker 2: I knew so many people that were hunting big groups,
Speaker 2: and they were sending me texts saying like done by eight,
Speaker 2: done by eight, fifteen, done by nine, And then they
Speaker 2: would say, man, I sure wish I could get a collar,
Speaker 2: And I'm just like, okay, well I sat out there
Speaker 2: all day long and I didn't shoot anything, But you know,
Speaker 2: three or four days of that and you're gonna have
Speaker 2: a caller, Like you can't you can't be dying to
Speaker 2: get your limit as quick as possible and then complain
Speaker 2: that you didn't get a caller because you got it.
Speaker 2: That's how you get a caller, Why not shooting.
Speaker 3: It is kind of funny the the Waterfall hunters. You
Speaker 3: hear that a lot done by yeah, done by this.
Speaker 2: That's like, yeah, is it so miserable? You really want
Speaker 2: to be done so fast?
Speaker 5: Like oh yeah, you want to be at the cracker
Speaker 5: barrel by nine or whatever. Chat your biscuits and gravy.
Speaker 5: Yeah right, two questions like one. You can answer this
Speaker 5: one quickly. If you guys gotten good enough to where
Speaker 5: you can spot the leg.
Speaker 2: Bands, yeah, yeah, yeah, so you set up for the lighting.
Speaker 2: We had to that, especially on anchorage lessers, because there
Speaker 2: was a lot of them that only had a leg band.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, it's the lighting is everything. So in
Speaker 2: Oregon we don't have a lot of sunshine, and on
Speaker 2: a cloudy day it's it's incredibly difficult. So I don't
Speaker 2: think I have ever gotten a band that didn't bling,
Speaker 2: that didn't sparkle. I think some people have, and I've tried.
Speaker 2: I mean I've I've got a giant grind of pintails,
Speaker 2: and pintails they corkscrew down like swans do, where you
Speaker 2: can see every one of their legs one after another
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. I've never gotten, never gotten one
Speaker 2: that way. And I have gotten several leg band only
Speaker 2: geese by spotting the leg band and at least one
Speaker 2: where I spotted the shape like while it's quartering away.
Speaker 2: But I've gotten several that were the lighting was really
Speaker 2: really good and as the birds are coming and landing
Speaker 2: one at a time, you know they're dropping their feet.
Speaker 2: You set up quick, you don't. You never let them land,
Speaker 2: Like if a bird lands, our general rule is that
Speaker 2: they're safe. Like and everybody assumes if we're shooting a
Speaker 2: lot of bands and colors there. We hear people say
Speaker 2: all the time, like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna shoot
Speaker 2: bands and collars. We just we just let them land
Speaker 2: and we get out the buy notes. It's like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, you can't do that because you would shoot
Speaker 2: twenty five geese, you know, Like so you pretty much
Speaker 2: have to shoot them out of there. Otherwise, you know,
Speaker 2: you're just gonna have just too much, too many other.
Speaker 5: What is it with the waterfowlers and the collars?
Speaker 1: In the bands?
Speaker 2: There's no antlers, there's no there's no there's no age
Speaker 2: group or anything like that.
Speaker 5: Like so that's how you guys found like the next
Speaker 5: like the next level of difficulty where some guy might
Speaker 5: say I only hunt four and a half year old
Speaker 5: bucks year older. Yeah, you're like, well to get this
Speaker 5: with geese, what are we gonna do? So shoot the collar.
Speaker 2: Everybody looks at a different like Brad. Brad made a
Speaker 2: comment a month ago, and I was just kind of
Speaker 2: appalled by it. Honestly, he was like saying, like a
Speaker 2: collar is equivalent to like a three forty ball, and
Speaker 2: I was like, this is a this is coming. This
Speaker 2: is definitely a guy who hasn't shot at three forty
Speaker 2: bull so like, But in his defense, I think what
Speaker 2: he means is.
Speaker 1: A thing of nature. A collar is a thing made
Speaker 1: a human factory, exactly exactly. It's like you're handling a
Speaker 1: bird that's been handled.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: I've always had a real like, I recognize it's cool,
Speaker 1: and I have a couple of my little box of
Speaker 1: like special things, but it's been You're not the first
Speaker 1: person to lay a hand on that bird. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: some of the magic's going. In fact, it was birds man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was one of the number ones. Because I
Speaker 2: got caught, right, I can't speak to that. Well, what
Speaker 2: what Brad was getting at, what he was meaning is
Speaker 2: waterfowlers want a collar as as bad as as big
Speaker 2: game hunters want a three or fording bowl.
Speaker 1: All right, So at what point did you say to yourself,
Speaker 1: this has all been great, Johnnie, but we got to
Speaker 1: move along.
Speaker 2: I understand.
Speaker 1: When you started making them, and here you gotta be honest.
Speaker 1: You start making decoys for yourself and your garage. You
Speaker 1: have to in your head, unless you're gonna lie to me,
Speaker 1: you have to in your head be thinking. I could
Speaker 1: see going into business making these and selling them.
Speaker 2: I mean that that came about fairly quickly once I
Speaker 2: realized how expensive the like the materials were and the
Speaker 2: moles were, and I had I was I really didn't
Speaker 2: want to because I just wanted for myself because they
Speaker 2: were working really good. And I am like super super
Speaker 2: secretive with with so much of my hunting and fishing,
Speaker 2: and I don't post a lot or anything. I don't
Speaker 2: have any stickers on my truck and I once in
Speaker 2: a while I'll take my wife's car so that nobody
Speaker 2: knows where I'm at or what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: How secretive though, you did just give us a ton
Speaker 3: of antelope information.
Speaker 2: But we're family, right, you know, Like yeah, and I
Speaker 2: and he doesn't know this, but I held back some
Speaker 2: pretty important I mean, just the reality set in that
Speaker 2: I've got a lot of money in these molds and
Speaker 2: everything like that, and then and so many people we
Speaker 2: were asking for them. And then when we started guiding,
Speaker 2: I was like, well, that's how make the money that's how.
Speaker 1: Make the money back being a successful guide.
Speaker 2: But when you're guiding, more more people than ever asked
Speaker 2: wanted to buy decoys. So and we were having fun guiding.
Speaker 2: Brad and I were guiding together, and we were remembering
Speaker 2: the other day. On one season, we limited out with
Speaker 2: our clients every single day of the entire season except
Speaker 2: for two days, but we still killed fifty six geese
Speaker 2: and the two days. So we were we were doing
Speaker 2: really well and we were having a lot of fun,
Speaker 2: and life was good, and gas prices were fairly low
Speaker 2: and everything like that. But more people ask for for decoys.
Speaker 2: Gas prices started getting high, more people started hunting. Some
Speaker 2: of the places that we that we hunted were getting
Speaker 2: leased out from under us, even by clients and stuff.
Speaker 2: And Brad, you know, Bradd with an accounting major. The
Speaker 2: last thing in the world that he wanted to do
Speaker 2: is go become an accountant. And he was just like,
Speaker 2: let's let's start making decoys, and and I was all
Speaker 2: for it. So that's that's what we did. And and
Speaker 2: it's it's not a super lucrative business, that's for sure,
Speaker 2: but it's a super fun business. The people, all the clients,
Speaker 2: all the customers are are great, and everybody that you
Speaker 2: work with are all super super fun, really really cool people.
Speaker 2: So I I mean, I could have done a lot
Speaker 2: better if I'd just stayed at Nike and kept, you know,
Speaker 2: hammering on my four to one K, I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: here right now, and i'd be retired, retired. But I
Speaker 2: have no regrets whatsoever. And I mean, I would just
Speaker 2: encourage anybody that is just thinking about you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't want you to quit your job necessarily, but
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, it's it's very doable. If an
Speaker 2: idiot like me can, can you know, scratch out a
Speaker 2: living and doing something that you just absolutely love. I
Speaker 2: just encourage people to just go for it.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: So at what point did you go from like the
Speaker 4: Goose decoys to like Turkey decoys or the Buck decoy.
Speaker 1: Yeah? I got turned on you guys years ago because
Speaker 1: of Turkey decoys. And that was through Yanni. Yeah, Yanni
Speaker 1: got turned on to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I know, and I feel so bad because
Speaker 2: you know, my hearing is so bad. In one of
Speaker 2: our first conversations, you mentioned that, but I didn't hear
Speaker 2: what you said. You were telling me that it was Yanni,
Speaker 2: and and I didn't. I didn't hear what you said,
Speaker 2: and I feel feel really bad, so I apologize, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I I do. I do kind of recall that and
Speaker 2: everything like that. But yeah, we so we made Goosey
Speaker 2: coys for and the the years of all this stuff
Speaker 2: is kind of hard for me to keep track. I
Speaker 2: think I started the first Goosey coy in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: eight and I finished it in nineteen ninety nine. And
Speaker 2: uh then Turkey's didn't start until, like I roughly ten
Speaker 2: years later.
Speaker 1: And how did you get turned down to me? Yannie?
Speaker 2: Jay Scott? Oh yeah, Jay Scott. We love Jay Scott. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's a great guy.
Speaker 1: I got a turkey shooting No, he's a watching people
Speaker 1: shoot turkey son of a gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He likes turkey hunting man.
Speaker 2: Yeah he does. He likes he loves turkey, and he
Speaker 2: loves here.
Speaker 1: He has got you know, he likes being you know,
Speaker 1: he doesn't surprisingly small amount of hunting himself, I mean
Speaker 1: as a guide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's in on.
Speaker 1: An extraordinary amount of turkey hunts. Yeah, not behind the
Speaker 1: trigger on the calls, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's funny. He has these incredible opportunities for
Speaker 2: Elk and cous Dere and you talk to him and
Speaker 2: he's just so passionate about turkeys, you know, more so
Speaker 2: than almost anything. But yeah, and so Turkey's it was
Speaker 2: just we had a lot of our customers talking to
Speaker 2: us and just saying, my gosh, like, if you guys
Speaker 2: can make a goose decoy like this, the turkey, the
Speaker 2: Turkey market, the turkey hunting is ready for an ultra
Speaker 2: realistic turkey decoy. And there were so many people that
Speaker 2: didn't like to use Turkey decoys, but a lot of
Speaker 2: the reasons because most of the turkey decoys were just terrible.
Speaker 2: And so we you know, I did I did the
Speaker 2: sculpture of an upright hend and Brad took it to
Speaker 2: the NWTF show and the I mean, it was just
Speaker 2: overwhelming support and demand for that. Like we were like
Speaker 2: kind of like scared if we if we would have
Speaker 2: had the product, we could have sold so many thousands
Speaker 2: upon thousands of turkey days over the next five years
Speaker 2: after that, because it took five years before other companies
Speaker 2: kind of caught on, like crap dsd is selling the
Speaker 2: ship out of Turkey decoys. We got to make one,
Speaker 2: and so we had, you know, we had five or
Speaker 2: six years of before the rest of the industry caught up,
Speaker 2: and we were making them as fast as we could
Speaker 2: make them, but you know, we couldn't catch up. And
Speaker 2: now now everybody has an ultra realistic turkey decoy and
Speaker 2: some of them actually looking an awful lot like ours,
Speaker 2: and that you know that happens, it's a great compliment.
Speaker 2: And then the Dirty okoy was kind of the same way,
Speaker 2: though Dirty cooy was kind of a weird thing. So
Speaker 2: this guy, Randy bird Song how I've actually never met,
Speaker 2: but he hunted a lot with Lee and Tiffany. He
Speaker 2: was kind of sending messages through our you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know, through through through phone calls or our website
Speaker 2: or email or whatever, saying you got to make a
Speaker 2: buck decoy. It's got to be in this posturing position.
Speaker 2: So so I make it. I agreed to one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: I think he was dead on and I agreed one
Speaker 2: hundred percent, and I just started on it right away.
Speaker 2: And I love deer, love deer hunting.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to watch what you let video
Speaker 1: you show me of bucks working over your buck decoys?
Speaker 1: Where is that video? Live.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have a whole bunch of them.
Speaker 1: I just down one day a bunch of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to. Okay, but you guys had a montage
Speaker 1: put together.
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, so that was that was just all
Speaker 2: our customers. You know. Melissa Bachman, she's she's she's very good,
Speaker 2: very good hunter, and she's very good at decoying. And
Speaker 2: you know, decoying is a little different, you know the key.
Speaker 2: It's like, if you're just a really really good white
Speaker 2: tail hunter, you're not necessarily a really good decoy hunter.
Speaker 2: Like it's it's just a little bit of a learning
Speaker 2: learning curve to it. But she's very good, she's very
Speaker 2: very good, totally knows what she's doing, and she provides
Speaker 2: a lot of footage for us.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I always remember seeing the art Lambeau Hunter guys
Speaker 4: have like wicked footage of using that decoy.
Speaker 2: Those guys are great.
Speaker 5: But is that montage available on your website maybe or
Speaker 5: or somewhere. No, you just made it the montage.
Speaker 1: No no, No, it's like branded DSD in them. But
Speaker 1: it's all those bucks doing that same head motion, yeah,
Speaker 1: smashing a decoy, and they all do that little tip
Speaker 1: of the head. It's so wild, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they rolling their eyes, Their eyes are rolling around
Speaker 2: in their head, and they lick, They licked their nose.
Speaker 1: They cocked their head. They're always cocked their head at
Speaker 1: that weird angle. Man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when you see that there's an explosion getting ready
Speaker 5: to happen, you're lucky enough to see two mule the
Speaker 5: or do it. I was just like kind of in
Speaker 5: and out of Bino's. But my daughter got to watch
Speaker 5: it through a spotting scope and my brother in law
Speaker 5: through another spotting scope. But just came in, you know,
Speaker 5: two big herds of does behind them each and heads
Speaker 5: almost upside down, and like you're saying, you can see
Speaker 5: the eyes just doing these weird things. And I mean
Speaker 5: seconds later, it's like the dog.
Speaker 1: It is like someone putting their hand on their pistol. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on your pistol.
Speaker 3: When he cocks his head, their blood is just starting
Speaker 3: to boil and boil.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's amazing watching deer interact with that thing. Well,
Speaker 1: some ways, this guy comes what's his name bird Song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Randy Birdsong, And I just feel like it's really
Speaker 2: important to point that out because I could not get
Speaker 2: a hold of him. I wanted to give him a
Speaker 2: decoy afterwards, and I wanted to tell him thank you
Speaker 2: and and and all this stuff or whatever, and he
Speaker 2: just disappeared off the face of the earth. And it's
Speaker 2: just like no, I mean, he's around somewhere and he
Speaker 2: just deserves credit for that, and and I want to
Speaker 2: give him a decoy.
Speaker 1: Well, hopefully someone could pass this along to him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I remember, I remember watching that guy's hunting
Speaker 4: stuff back in the day, Randy Bird song. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: he was on TV shows and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he seemed like a great hunter, and obviously he knows,
Speaker 2: you know, about white tael behavior and.
Speaker 1: Everything like that. So, so describe the deer's in Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, first of all, all their you know,
Speaker 2: all their hair is bristled. It's it's raised in the
Speaker 2: same way that an animal would do for heating and cooling,
Speaker 2: and it's just to look big, just to look as
Speaker 2: large as possible. And then what happens with the deer
Speaker 2: is when that happens, there's not this this perfect division
Speaker 2: of hair, so it ended up it'll end up with
Speaker 2: a bunch of vertical cracks along the side and then
Speaker 2: vertical cracks along the neck and that's kind of important.
Speaker 2: And that's on the decoy and everything, and the ears
Speaker 2: are pinned back as far as they go, and that
Speaker 2: I think is to make the the the the neck
Speaker 2: look big and the antlers look big. And so, you
Speaker 2: know I first made that pose. It's like like with
Speaker 2: a lot of poses, we had a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: people saying like, that is the goofiest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: You'll never sell. It looks like a donkey, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: And then people do just a little bit of research
Speaker 2: and next thing, you know, they find out that we're
Speaker 2: not so far off. And then the back is just
Speaker 2: slightly arched, you know, in the head is raised a
Speaker 2: certain amount, and uh, that's really all it takes.
Speaker 5: Did you choose a specific age class of of buck
Speaker 5: to mimic?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So all these decoys, because I love blacktail hunting
Speaker 2: so much, I cheat them just a little bit and
Speaker 2: I'm I'll make the I'll make the the snout, the
Speaker 2: muzzle just a little bit shorter and and lean them.
Speaker 2: This is a terrible thing to admit to all heart.
Speaker 1: You change the decoy for your own blacktail hunting, your
Speaker 1: own esoteric.
Speaker 2: Well not as specific like like for the actual production decoy,
Speaker 2: like so every and we sell them all over the Midwest,
Speaker 2: like that's where they get used like crazy, and and
Speaker 2: so all you Midwesterners that are using, you know, a
Speaker 2: DSc pastoring book, I'm sorry that it looks a little
Speaker 2: bit like a black tail, but that's just what I did.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's but the but there is some c
Speaker 2: things that it doesn't look. It has to look old
Speaker 2: enough and mature enough to be a threat without being
Speaker 2: too much of a threat. So it's not going to
Speaker 2: work in every region. I mean you you know, there
Speaker 2: are certain parts of the country where that buck would
Speaker 2: be way too big.
Speaker 1: It's some three hundred and fifty pound one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty inch buck. A lot of bucks might be like,
Speaker 1: yeah he can, I'll let him handle this situation, and.
Speaker 2: They and it brings him down off the bluffs and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, like in broad daylight.
Speaker 1: Like I.
Speaker 2: My friend Paul Minew He's got five hundred acres in
Speaker 2: Buffalo County, Wisconsin, and this is a magical place and
Speaker 2: it's super fun to go and and that decoy has
Speaker 2: brought big bucks out, you know, in the daylight that
Speaker 2: I don't think would have otherwise otherwise come out, and
Speaker 2: we get reports of that all the time. So I'd
Speaker 2: say the hardest thing is knowing when to shoot, and
Speaker 2: you don't always get a perfect shot with that. With
Speaker 2: that buck, you know, like like if you can get
Speaker 2: him to to be coming and he'll be walking slow,
Speaker 2: and if you can get him to quarter, you know,
Speaker 2: a quarter away or a broadside like that. Honestly, is
Speaker 2: is usually the time to shoot. If the buck crashes
Speaker 2: the decoy, there's no guarantee you that you're gonna get
Speaker 2: a shot and at what distance because he'll jump away.
Speaker 2: Sometimes he keeps running and never stops, and sometimes he
Speaker 2: jumps away twenty yards and all of a sudden, if
Speaker 2: you have the decoy at twenty yards, now you got
Speaker 2: a forty yard shot and you don't know what angle
Speaker 2: he's gonna So.
Speaker 1: In that video, it's amazing how many of those deer
Speaker 1: eat it because they're expecting resistance. Yeah that's not there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they're like running into this thing so hard, and
Speaker 1: you know, they're assuming that there's something that's gonna stop them.
Speaker 1: But then that thing goes and then they go ass
Speaker 1: over tea kettle and just get like this totally like
Speaker 1: but not like if views their toylet like take that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the then they look back at it like what
Speaker 2: did I just do?
Speaker 5: Like a level that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm good at that. But that's also why we
Speaker 2: encourage people to use the stand instead of the steak,
Speaker 2: because the deer can actually hurt hurt himself on the steak,
Speaker 2: you know, as they crashed the deco. So the stand
Speaker 2: breaks away, everything breaks away, and that's that's the best system.
Speaker 2: And I thought that's all we were selling, is the stand,
Speaker 2: and those were mine wishes and my instructions. And then
Speaker 2: I just found out at the GTM that like, no,
Speaker 2: it comes with a steak, and I'm like, ah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: like i'd really hold now the steak is fiberglass. But
Speaker 2: you know the problem is is that they they could
Speaker 2: hurt their you know, they can hurt their stroke. Crote
Speaker 2: them on it, and then then you have one heard
Speaker 2: it scroll them. Yeah yeah I did. That's kind of
Speaker 2: he became my own fault. Yeah. Well that one was
Speaker 2: a that was a big four point, like a one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty inch four point And then what did
Speaker 2: he do? He grew the next year he grews. I
Speaker 2: can't remember exactly the the timing of all that, because
Speaker 2: he crashed the gear in the fall. And then it's
Speaker 2: like he grew antlers the next year, and they were
Speaker 2: in velvet and then they that was it. That's that's
Speaker 2: that's the uh. They never he never came out of
Speaker 2: velvet ever again. He had his antlers year round and
Speaker 2: they and over the years they crumbled. They got shorter
Speaker 2: and shorter and shorter. And he just got gigantic because
Speaker 2: he didn't go through the rigors of the rut. He
Speaker 2: just ate all the time and he had didn't have
Speaker 2: to put, you know, any of his eating into dealing
Speaker 2: with the rut, you know, So he just got gigantic
Speaker 2: and and he never came out.
Speaker 5: But his antlers didn't get gigantic, only his body did.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, Well, his antlers never grew again, and they actually
Speaker 2: got shorter every day because they got so brittle that
Speaker 2: they would just crumble, the tops of them would crumble down.
Speaker 4: So he hit that decoing. God is nuts caught on
Speaker 4: the steak.
Speaker 2: Well, we are assuming that I've got some videos. I've
Speaker 2: got lots of videos of blacktail bucks crashing the decoy.
Speaker 2: But it happened so fast that I can't tell for sure,
Speaker 2: but it could have been a barb bar fence or something.
Speaker 2: We don't know for sure. It was just one of
Speaker 2: the things that we sort of assume may have happened.
Speaker 2: We don't unless anybody knows of any I don't know
Speaker 2: for sure of anything real bad happening, but it looks
Speaker 2: like for sure something could.
Speaker 1: And then you're working on a female and you're talking
Speaker 1: about her posture, but you kind of you don't want
Speaker 1: to make it that her posture is like too much
Speaker 1: of a good thing, because then a buck might not
Speaker 1: buy it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So.
Speaker 1: Like herd is standing on the open like just ready
Speaker 1: to roll, it's not what you're after.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. So and the same thing we had to
Speaker 2: worry about age too, because if we made her, you know,
Speaker 2: a big giant mature dough, then you know, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of does would would you know, blow out
Speaker 2: her and and that could cause a lot of problems
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. So so she's she's also supposed
Speaker 2: to be she's supposed to look like she's just of
Speaker 2: breeding age, like just old enough to to breed without
Speaker 2: being like a big old, you know horse face like
Speaker 2: you know, dominant dough and then yeah, her body posture,
Speaker 2: she's mostly standing and relax and stuff. But but yeah,
Speaker 2: just a little hint she's dropped down in the rear
Speaker 2: a little bit kind of look you know, kind of
Speaker 2: look like it could happen here. Yeah, and maybe yeah
Speaker 2: it's where the and you know those bucks like they
Speaker 2: like blacktail bucks. I can't wait to use on blacktails
Speaker 2: because blacktails if I mean one of the primary areas
Speaker 2: that I had blacktails that I think last year there
Speaker 2: was like twenty twenty two bucks and two dos. So
Speaker 2: if you if you use a but a you know,
Speaker 2: a buck decoy hasn't been very effective there, but a
Speaker 2: dough decoy, like any blacktail buck will just come running
Speaker 2: right up to it, because if they see a dough,
Speaker 2: I mean, they just come running up up to it
Speaker 2: right away. Like there. You know, it's like we've all
Speaker 2: been there. You know, it's like you get desperate.
Speaker 3: So it's like Bosman twelve years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she you know, I've had some some people
Speaker 2: tell me that I've seen her like like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: you should have had her in the full squatting position,
Speaker 2: you know, like and I don't one hundred percent agree
Speaker 2: with that. Just because you know, the dough stands. He
Speaker 2: the dough stands to be bred really only when the
Speaker 2: buck is right right on her. So so for her
Speaker 2: to be standing, you know, standing to be bred, it
Speaker 2: might not look so much standing almost squatting. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's a little low. It's lower than our than our decoy.
Speaker 2: And you know, like what we were saying is it
Speaker 2: could end up looking like she's just like taking a
Speaker 2: ship or whatever. And so if she's out in the
Speaker 2: middle and like, oh, there's a dope, Oh she's taking
Speaker 2: a ship, It's like, I don't know, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: might not be the most appealing thing or whatever, but
Speaker 2: I know a black seal buck would charge heright in there.
Speaker 2: You sell what you're doing.
Speaker 4: You sell the pelletsers on.
Speaker 2: She can't ship, she can't ship forever.
Speaker 5: Two questions earlier, you said in Buffalo County, it would
Speaker 5: make these bucks come out that otherwise would not have
Speaker 5: come out in daylight. Yeah, can you explain that a
Speaker 5: little bit more because I'm trying to figure out, like
Speaker 5: how do they get the like did they place them
Speaker 5: where the buck could see the.
Speaker 3: Bluff?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's bluff country and in Buffalo county. So
Speaker 2: it's a lot of there's ag and then there's you know,
Speaker 2: rocky rocky bluffs all around it, and that the deer
Speaker 2: all we don't go up into the and we don't
Speaker 2: go up really, we don't go more than fifty yards
Speaker 2: into that ever. I mean, not even for chad hunting
Speaker 2: or anything like. Like literally there's so munch of that
Speaker 2: that know human that's a sanctuary. Yeah, that's a sanctuary, yep.
Speaker 5: And so their cruise along that edge, they look down
Speaker 5: in the field, they see the decoy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, those those cruising bucks don't look.
Speaker 2: They are just they just do not know. Look. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: they'll yeah, they're all scent checking areas and stuff. And
Speaker 2: sometimes they will literally be on the other side of
Speaker 2: the top of the bluff then that the way that
Speaker 2: the wind comes up the bluff and it curls and stuff.
Speaker 2: It's it's kind of kind of crazy what they do,
Speaker 2: but but they are betted, and they do get up
Speaker 2: occasionally because they know they're in such a sanctuary that
Speaker 2: they know that they're safe and everything like that. They
Speaker 2: get up and feed a little bit, and they're betted
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, and they might watch you set
Speaker 2: up the decoy and then like I mean, and some
Speaker 2: of that is assuming because you know you can't you
Speaker 2: can't really see them up there. And then but you
Speaker 2: are in a big, wide open field. Yeah. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: drove up in a bad boy buggy and you get
Speaker 2: get the decoy out and everything, and you do it
Speaker 2: early enough in the in the afternoon, you know, And
Speaker 2: then that's at the times and when they would be
Speaker 2: able to see you. But otherwise it would be in
Speaker 2: the in the mornings when it's dark. And but there's
Speaker 2: times when we don't really want to do that either too,
Speaker 2: because in the mornings, in the dark, those bucks are
Speaker 2: moving or moving around and they're down on the bottom.
Speaker 2: Just like with blacktail hunting, I don't even hunt mornings.
Speaker 2: I give them the mornings. I don't. I do not
Speaker 2: like going in my tree stand or ground blind and
Speaker 2: bumping deer out or anything like that. I go in
Speaker 2: in the middle of the day and sit till dark,
Speaker 2: because I can get out of a stand with deer
Speaker 2: around at dark, but I can't get into a stand
Speaker 2: in the mornings with the dark. And I think that's
Speaker 2: one of the biggest problems that people have with blacktails
Speaker 2: and that's.
Speaker 1: How I've I want to come out and hunt blacktails
Speaker 1: with you, man, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, come on out, Like there's the the way that
Speaker 2: I've finally cracked it the code is by getting permission
Speaker 2: on good private properties, because some of the public stuff
Speaker 2: is just kind of horrible or burnt to the ground.
Speaker 2: But I spent six six years writing over one hundred
Speaker 2: letters a year in the spring and ended up with
Speaker 2: some with some pretty good properties. I just have to
Speaker 2: kind of get the okay, the okay from the landowners
Speaker 2: and stuff. But I mean, some of them are just
Speaker 2: super great, great people. And yeah, blacktails are super fun.
Speaker 2: They're not They're not as smart and cagy and difficult
Speaker 2: as white tails, so they're not nearly as like those
Speaker 2: Midwest white tails are crazy when it comes to human
Speaker 2: scent and encroachment and pressure and all that stuff. And
Speaker 2: they are just super super smart. And everybody that hunt
Speaker 2: blacktails assumes and it always wants to believe that blacktails
Speaker 2: are the smartest, most cage just thing. The thing about
Speaker 2: blacktails is they're hearing is really really good. So the clothing,
Speaker 2: you know, has to be unbelievably quiet to get your
Speaker 2: get your bow drawn. And then the other thing is
Speaker 2: that they just don't come out in the daytime, know,
Speaker 2: like white tails do. But other than that they are
Speaker 2: very forgiving, like I could like and I can't hunt
Speaker 2: the same tree stand in the Midwest, you know, more
Speaker 2: than two times probably for white tails and it's done,
Speaker 2: you've burned it probably for the season. But with blacktails,
Speaker 2: I've I've hunted the same tree stand like seven seven
Speaker 2: days in a row. So you can get away with
Speaker 2: murder with with blacktails, you just need you just need
Speaker 2: them to come out during the day. That's the hardest.
Speaker 2: That's the lot, that's really the difficult part about them.
Speaker 5: How do you deal with the scent issue around running
Speaker 5: a deer decoy?
Speaker 2: Well, so the most important thing is that it's it's
Speaker 2: been manufactured long long enough and it's aired out long
Speaker 2: enough since it's been manufactured. So that's that's the biggest thing.
Speaker 2: And then you don't touch it with your hands. So
Speaker 2: your dear decoy will work. It'll work reasonably good. If
Speaker 2: you buy one in July and then air it out
Speaker 2: and everything, it's gonna work good. But it will work.
Speaker 2: It's like a like a mink box or something. It'll
Speaker 2: work better every year as it gets older, more earthy, yeah,
Speaker 2: more earthy and and and scent free and everything with that,
Speaker 2: and you just don't touch it with uh, don't touch
Speaker 2: it with your bare hands, and you know, don't don't
Speaker 2: don't breathe on it, and then don't you don't ever
Speaker 2: put scent on it. You know, if you want to
Speaker 2: use any kind of scent, you put it, you know,
Speaker 2: under the decoy or near the decoy or something like that.
Speaker 2: But you keep the decoy sent free because if you
Speaker 2: put scent on it, you know that that'll get kind
Speaker 2: of rancid over time and stuff. But you also don't
Speaker 2: put scent all over the ground or anything like that,
Speaker 2: because then then you can't pull that scent with you
Speaker 2: when you leave. I mean that That's what's worked for me,
Speaker 2: is I'll put scent you know, like in a in
Speaker 2: a bottle or with you know, with cotton or whatever
Speaker 2: you got to do, and just open it underneath the decoy.
Speaker 2: That's when I do use scent. It doesn't matter that much,
Speaker 2: I mean, Or I'll put tarsus, you know, tarsus glands,
Speaker 2: tarsal glands from a from a buck. That does work
Speaker 2: at times pretty pretty pretty darn well with black tails.
Speaker 1: If you were listened to Clay's Bear Grease podcast. No,
Speaker 1: he had an episode called Deer Stories, and there's a
Speaker 1: guy that tells a story about shooting the buck and
Speaker 1: taking the glands off and tying the glands to his ankles,
Speaker 1: and he gets his ass kicked by a buck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Realize this buck is coming down his trail and is
Speaker 1: coming for him. Oh geez, it's a funny story.
Speaker 2: Well it could have. That could have been way worse,
Speaker 2: because that could have been like dough dough in heat scent.
Speaker 2: You know, like, as long as it the buck just wanted.
Speaker 1: To kill him, that's not as humiliating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he can he can.
Speaker 4: Live, So David, when you're sitting like say, I'm sitting
Speaker 4: in a tree stand facing a field and I want
Speaker 4: to put decoy out, how do I place that decoy
Speaker 4: for the best.
Speaker 2: Shot, I mean like maybe quartering away and but that
Speaker 2: just that just depends like a quartering quartering away would
Speaker 2: be with a dough and and and then possibly quartering
Speaker 2: two with a buck.
Speaker 3: But I'll tell you what, right, wind dependent?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wind dependent. Yeah, they'll they'll try to they'll
Speaker 2: try to get down window, try to get down wind
Speaker 2: of it and stuff, and so with a buck, you know,
Speaker 2: quartering two works pretty good, but there is no guarantee whatsoever,
Speaker 2: Like anytime you think that you know how they're going
Speaker 2: to approach it. Like people, the the idea of quartering
Speaker 2: two is the idea of behind behind that is that
Speaker 2: they'll come and come head on. They just don't do that.
Speaker 2: I mean they don't. They definitely don't do that with
Speaker 2: any major consistency because the the the way to do
Speaker 2: damage is to ram one like completely on the on
Speaker 2: the side in the root cage, and so there's just
Speaker 2: a lot of deer Decoying is just super fun because
Speaker 2: it's not a guaranteed thing. There's there's certain things that
Speaker 2: it does for you, like you can get your bodrawn
Speaker 2: so easily, like when you're using a buck decoy because
Speaker 2: they're just so distracted. But there's also the downsides and
Speaker 2: that is like you're not sure you're gonna gonna get
Speaker 2: a good shot or whatever. But I think quartering two
Speaker 2: is probably the best. And that's assuming that you have
Speaker 2: the wind more or less in your face.
Speaker 1: Gotcha?
Speaker 5: Will you hunt them in like woodland, forested terrain or
Speaker 5: you always sticking to more of an open fuel type
Speaker 5: place where deer can see it as from far away
Speaker 5: as possible.
Speaker 2: So I have I've set up for blacktails in old
Speaker 2: growth timber, but not successful, not success. I've tried it
Speaker 2: in the in the woods, but the best successes that
Speaker 2: I've that I've had and I'm not majorly into deer decoying.
Speaker 2: I will be now that now that we have a dough,
Speaker 2: But the best successes that I have have been on
Speaker 2: the edge of a where ag meets meets timber. And
Speaker 2: that's the same with blacktails too. Meadowee Meadowee areas and stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm old old a man and orchard that I hunt.
Speaker 2: I've had success with the blacktail decoy there. But with
Speaker 2: white tails, I mean I've had it to where they're
Speaker 2: coming along through the woods and all of a sudden
Speaker 2: they see it and they kind of it kind of
Speaker 2: kind of startles them a little bit, because yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just I mean, it's it's just like we were
Speaker 2: talking about with the antelope blind and stuff. It's just
Speaker 2: better if they can see it from a distance away.
Speaker 1: But have you used it in conjunction with rattling where
Speaker 1: they're expecting to find something standing there. That's what I
Speaker 1: feel like the real value would be is he's coming in,
Speaker 1: but then all of a sudden like oh there it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I have but like my gosh, one
Speaker 2: of my hunting partners justin Kasmar, he gets so mad
Speaker 2: at me because I'll go sometimes the whole season without rattling.
Speaker 2: Rattling is super fun. And I've rattled in some nice
Speaker 2: bucks and shot some with my bow in the in
Speaker 2: the upper Clackamus and that's public land blacktails. But I
Speaker 2: like now that I'm hunting more down in the valley,
Speaker 2: I treat all my goose hunting has taught me that everything,
Speaker 2: everything about goose hunting is not educating animals. That's what
Speaker 2: goose hunting. That's still that's the trick of the whole thing.
Speaker 2: And so so now that's affected all my other hunting.
Speaker 2: So that's why I mean, I've like on elk hunting,
Speaker 2: I've shot some big bulls and I've even got some
Speaker 2: you know, by by calling and stuff. But I've got
Speaker 2: more auditory stand on ground, bline and everything like that,
Speaker 2: like all, and I would be a way better elk
Speaker 2: hunter if I was willing to move into those those
Speaker 2: areas and move where I need to. But I'm just
Speaker 2: so about staying on the perimeter, staying out of those
Speaker 2: creepy you know Heidi holes, out of those bedrooms, and
Speaker 2: giving them all kinds of space and all kinds of refuge.
Speaker 2: Give him the mornings, give him, give them tons of
Speaker 2: space and the the It bites me in the ass
Speaker 2: at times, for sure. But what what I love about
Speaker 2: it is if you don't if you don't kill one,
Speaker 2: you have the next day and the next day and
Speaker 2: the next day and the next day.
Speaker 1: You should write a hunting book like Dunk and Gil
Speaker 1: Chris book Hunt High.
Speaker 2: I've never knowing that.
Speaker 1: Well I shouldn't say that, but anyway, what.
Speaker 6: Would it be called?
Speaker 2: Hunt the Perimeter?
Speaker 1: Well, see, the thing about Hunt High is just so
Speaker 1: it's a lifelong hunter and it's just all these like
Speaker 1: really just general pieces of information. One minute he's talking
Speaker 1: about is can't how he likes there's that up as
Speaker 1: camp stove next to me. He's talking about the way
Speaker 1: mountain goats act. But just it's just gold all through
Speaker 1: the whole thing, just random. He kind of accidentally writes,
Speaker 1: like hemingway, it just it's just a page upon page
Speaker 1: of just gold ruminations from a fairy seasoned hunter and
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. You're like, I haven't thought about
Speaker 1: that that way before. I haven't thought about that way before.
Speaker 1: You know, you got a lot of that stuff laid
Speaker 1: up in you.
Speaker 2: I want to read it. I want to read that.
Speaker 1: What was funny? Man is?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Good?
Speaker 1: He's dead, So check this out. He's dead and he's
Speaker 1: self published these books. And and when I started talking
Speaker 1: about and I always put him on like favorite book
Speaker 1: lists and all that huh high. And it got to
Speaker 1: me where if you wanted to buy one, it was
Speaker 1: hundreds of dollars because we'd driven a lot of interest.
Speaker 1: One day I lent mine to someone and someone took
Speaker 1: it and never gave it back. So I went online
Speaker 1: and bought one for one hundred bucks from some dude
Speaker 1: in Texas. And I just buy it on Amazon unused books,
Speaker 1: and it comes with a sticky note on it that says, dude,
Speaker 1: you're the reason I bought this book.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's cool. Yeah that worth worth. Matthewsons has lent
Speaker 2: me a couple of books about the early Martin Trappers
Speaker 2: and Wayne Nigs and Pouli Rossboro and Martin I have
Speaker 2: known is one of them. And it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: You go to try to find those books like Worth
Speaker 2: lent me one of them and gave me he gave
Speaker 2: me the other. But yeah, trying to find those books
Speaker 2: on Amazon U this is next time possible. But I
Speaker 2: sure would like to get more and more copies. Those
Speaker 2: books are incredible.
Speaker 1: Let me hit you with one last one before we end.
Speaker 1: If you not place in Turkey decoys properly, do you
Speaker 1: think you'd be doing more damage than than good? Meaning
Speaker 1: you got a gobbler, he's coming in right, Can you
Speaker 1: ever have it be that it'd be just better not
Speaker 1: even to use the damn thing than to have it
Speaker 1: set the way you have it set.
Speaker 2: You mean because because he's going to be searching and covering.
Speaker 5: Do you know, because you would put your decoy out
Speaker 5: in such a manner or in such a pose and
Speaker 5: position that when he sees it, he's like, what that's
Speaker 5: not what that ends supposed to be doing. I'm out
Speaker 5: of here.
Speaker 2: Oh, let me let me.
Speaker 1: Phrase it a different way. How important is placement over
Speaker 1: just having the presence be there?
Speaker 2: Well, I've only ever done it the right way, so no,
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't know. I mean, I just you know,
Speaker 2: you can. You can screw up goose decoys really bad,
Speaker 2: really bad because yeah placement. Yeah, you can have them
Speaker 2: all face into the wind. You can have them crooked
Speaker 2: on their steaks, you can have them spread way too
Speaker 2: far apart. And people do all of those things all
Speaker 2: the time, and it can make a huge, huge, huge difference.
Speaker 2: On turkeys. I mean, I haven't really found a really
Speaker 2: wrong way. I I haven't seen any spreads from our
Speaker 2: from our customers where I looked at it and just went,
Speaker 2: you know, like I I think you know, because turkeys
Speaker 2: are they're they're a little different than geese, and I
Speaker 2: I'm sure there is a wrong way to do it, but.
Speaker 1: There's not as sensitive safe to say just basically what
Speaker 1: you're telling me. It's not as sensitive as waterfoul placement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean you think it's as an end, But you
Speaker 1: wouldn't say the same thing about deer. You think there
Speaker 1: is a you found that there is like the wrong
Speaker 1: place and wrong way to set deer decoys. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean you don't like them in timber.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like them in timber, but I probably
Speaker 2: need to experiment more on that and stuff. So I
Speaker 2: wouldn't consider myself to be an authority on that. And
Speaker 2: I like to experiment a lot. And and the animals
Speaker 2: always surprise me. You know. Every time I think that
Speaker 2: there's a rule, they the animals show me otherwise.
Speaker 6: I know that.
Speaker 2: You know, there's times there's times when using a strutter
Speaker 2: like a like let's see, i'd say there's times when
Speaker 2: using hens only has helped me make some good shots
Speaker 2: with my bow because the birds came in strutting. And
Speaker 2: then there's times when when using uh, you know, a
Speaker 2: gobbler decoys has made me miss some pretty important birds
Speaker 2: like that would have really meant a lot to me.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't get my boat my bow drawn, or
Speaker 2: I couldn't came hot on it came into hot. They'll
Speaker 2: also come in and just put off, and you're thinking
Speaker 2: what I do wrong? And after a while, I didn't
Speaker 2: do anything wrong. He saw that thing and didn't like it.
Speaker 1: You know, idea that happens, man, I know it does.
Speaker 3: I know I surprised him before. Where they come over,
Speaker 3: you have your decoy up, They come over a little
Speaker 3: knoll or something too close. They see that they don't
Speaker 3: feel like duking it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, totally. Well. And I've had I've had
Speaker 2: blacktail bucksty that where they stepped out one hundred yards
Speaker 2: away and saw the decoy and I was just like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, it's it's happening. And I'm getting back,
Speaker 2: putting my release on and everything, and I'm all excited,
Speaker 2: and I'm just waiting and waiting and waiting, and I
Speaker 2: look and I look and expecting him to be, you know,
Speaker 2: real close, and now he's high high tailing it away. Definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see a lot of them plow in
Speaker 1: to beat that thing to death. But it does happen
Speaker 1: where they put off and they, like I used to
Speaker 1: think in Neville Ice, think that we spooked that bird.
Speaker 1: Someone moves, someone spooked that bird. But the turkey bile
Speaker 1: just Robert Abernathy, who's a very experienced decoy, yeah, has
Speaker 1: been decoying for a long time.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: He's convinced too. He says, I think sometimes those birds
Speaker 1: come in, they see that, they see that gobbler, and
Speaker 1: they don't like it well, and they're putting off. They're
Speaker 1: putting off or just ghosting out because of that presence.
Speaker 1: He still uses it, but he says that's the thing
Speaker 1: that happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree one hundred percent. And also you just
Speaker 2: never know what what that decoy represents. It could be
Speaker 2: could represent a bird that he's already familiar with and
Speaker 2: is already you know, uh lower lower on the hierarchy level.
Speaker 1: Then like he hears a hen, he comes in and
Speaker 1: be like, daw damn it, Gobbler's already here, Billy's here.
Speaker 1: Last week.
Speaker 2: My answer to that is went in doubt. Well, for one,
Speaker 2: you know, you use a lot of hens and a
Speaker 2: lot of like praining hens and feeding hens. That always
Speaker 2: looks makes everything look you know, relaxed and stuff. And
Speaker 2: even if there's a gobbler there. And then also you know,
Speaker 2: like our three quarter strut jake, which is actually a
Speaker 2: half strut jake and somehow it got named a three
Speaker 2: quarter shrut jake. But that's for another day. But but
Speaker 2: that's a good decoy to use with a bunch of
Speaker 2: hens because it looks a little less intimidating and and
Speaker 2: it just looks like, well, I mean, I've had so
Speaker 2: many times when uh gobblers will come in that I
Speaker 2: know are even a mature tom that I know is
Speaker 2: not really a dominant bird. And even with even with
Speaker 2: the jake there, they just come in slow enough and
Speaker 2: then before I know, they're mounting one of the one
Speaker 2: of the decoys. And you can also put a submissive
Speaker 2: Hannah distance away, like so he's not necessarily standing over
Speaker 2: her and stuff. So it feels like there's always a
Speaker 2: combination that will give you the best chance. But there's
Speaker 2: always going to be situations for just you've slat and I'm.
Speaker 1: Glad our body guys Uck's who's very seasoned turkey hunter.
Speaker 1: He has a little rule. He like, he's not the
Speaker 1: kind of guy that believes that everything is, you know,
Speaker 1: one way or the other. But he has a little
Speaker 1: rule for himself. He don't set a male decoy in
Speaker 1: the evening because he's like, they're just not in that mood.
Speaker 1: I don't think. Yeah, he goes, you're just less like
Speaker 1: he finds in the evening. You're less likely to get
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna kick that thing's ass response in the
Speaker 1: evening and you're more likely to push him off. And
Speaker 1: he likes hens in the evening because they're just more mingly.
Speaker 1: You know, he might want to find them to the
Speaker 1: roost whatever. But they're not wanting to deal with the
Speaker 1: big old strutter at night. Yeah, that's just his take
Speaker 1: on it. Right.
Speaker 2: So I have killed some some big mature toms, like
Speaker 2: where it was like literally in the last five minutes
Speaker 2: of shooting time, and and I've had them go one
Speaker 2: hundred yards out of their way to come up to
Speaker 2: the decoys. But the lesson that I've learned, and I've
Speaker 2: got burned multiple times doing it, is they'll come up
Speaker 2: and they'll jump on They'll they'll jump at the decoy
Speaker 2: one time and then I'm like thinking, Okay, here we go.
Speaker 2: It's gonna it's just gonna thrash the decoy for the
Speaker 2: longest time and I'm gonna have this perfect shot. They'll
Speaker 2: jump on the decoy one time and they're about done.
Speaker 2: That's it. Like, it's just I agree with without one
Speaker 2: hundred percent. And that's if they even jump at the decoy.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they'll come up, but I mean there's in the evening, Yeah,
Speaker 2: in the evenings, late at night, it's just and that's
Speaker 2: only when it's a if there is a if there's
Speaker 2: a tom that is the absolute boss and he's got
Speaker 2: lots of hens and he's gonna go up to roost
Speaker 2: and he sees uh, he sees a strutter with hens.
Speaker 2: A lot of times they will come and check it out,
Speaker 2: but they're not gonna be aggressive. And I've I've killed
Speaker 2: some nice ones with my bow at real close range
Speaker 2: that that way. But I've learned the hard way that
Speaker 2: you don't have much time, you better shoot. You better shoot,
Speaker 2: like as he's approaching the decoy, because you're not gonna
Speaker 2: get get him. I've never had one just thrash the
Speaker 2: decoy like crazy, like they do and like midmorn.
Speaker 1: I can't get in your head that like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have a big show and then sometime later shoot him. Yeah, yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: that's the thing I still do hunting turkeys is now
Speaker 1: and then maybe not. But I usually when I get
Speaker 1: a shot, I take it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, even though you will see where you know,
Speaker 1: they come in and interact with the decoy for a
Speaker 1: long time. Like if there's the one I want and
Speaker 1: I get a shot, I'm shooting.
Speaker 2: Yeah you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just rather than expecting that it's gonna be
Speaker 1: this crazy you know, fight and breeding decoys and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and some of that. It's just it's
Speaker 2: just so weird. Like I mean, and Brad and I
Speaker 2: have joked about like what what if humans did exactly
Speaker 2: the things that turkeys has done, because we've had we've
Speaker 2: had times when this this, this whole flock comes in
Speaker 2: and there will be I mean, they're like humping the
Speaker 2: decoys and they're fighting the decoys, and they're fighting each other,
Speaker 2: and they're humping each other and and it's like some
Speaker 2: of this stuff. And then we'll shoot one and sometimes
Speaker 2: we'll use like a Magnus bullhead or and it just
Speaker 2: shoots there to decapitates them instantly, and we feel like
Speaker 2: sometimes that's a good way to get a quick, clean kill.
Speaker 2: And then like this this turkey's laying there with no
Speaker 2: head and it's flopping around and other ones are coming
Speaker 2: in and jumping on top of it and trying to
Speaker 2: fight it, and and it's just like it's just so bizarre.
Speaker 1: I got some bars I could remember that that might
Speaker 1: have been a little bit of the groove, but that's
Speaker 1: about it. Man. Yeah, it is way way different than folks.
Speaker 1: And they can fly.
Speaker 2: I had a blacktail buck a few years ago that
Speaker 2: came in and gave me a really good shot, and
Speaker 2: I double belonged him and he went short distance and
Speaker 2: betted down, and five minutes later a nice big blacktail
Speaker 2: buck came in and and just went right over to that.
Speaker 2: He just went he just knew right where that buck was,
Speaker 2: just by scent really and kicked him up out of
Speaker 2: his bed and what Yeah, kicked him up out of
Speaker 2: his bed, and then he went and bedded down it
Speaker 2: down again, and he went and kicked him up out
Speaker 2: of his bed again, and I was like, I don't
Speaker 2: know what to do. And so yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 2: lot of strange things that happened in nature, and yeah,
Speaker 2: I agree like that show. You know, it's like some
Speaker 2: shows are better than others, Like a big grind of geese.
Speaker 2: That's a really pretty show and it's really really neat
Speaker 2: thing and it's worthwhile and if you don't shoot at all,
Speaker 2: like that's just super fun and it's a totally successful day.
Speaker 2: But you know, when turkeys come in, I agree, if
Speaker 2: you get a good, quick, clean kill, you know that's
Speaker 2: and you're there to kill one, and you know it's
Speaker 2: like you take take take the shot. You don't have
Speaker 2: to necessarily see him, like beating up a decoy for
Speaker 2: an hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know our buddy Parker Hall. He thinks that
Speaker 1: if you kill a turkey over a decoy, you go
Speaker 1: to Hell, which makes me wonder, where's the guy that
Speaker 1: makes turkey decoys end up?
Speaker 2: Park Special Place?
Speaker 1: They got a real hot corner in the basement.
Speaker 2: Now it's I've had say that too.
Speaker 1: They that would be maybe that's Dave's book of hunting
Speaker 1: tidbits called Hell's Basement in the old days. In the
Speaker 1: old days, we would have named this episode Hell's Basement.
Speaker 5: Jay Scott's ripping what little Harry has left out here,
Speaker 5: and you say you just let him, you know, shoot
Speaker 5: him as you as soon as you can, because he
Speaker 5: likes to him he likes to sit there and watch
Speaker 5: the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he likes to get him with me.
Speaker 5: He enjoys the show.
Speaker 1: I like to get him coming, all right, Dave Smith,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming on, man, thanks for having me. I
Speaker 1: know who told me you don't do you don't do podcasts,
Speaker 1: may be really eager to have you on. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the guys that really want to do them to make
Speaker 1: me leary.
Speaker 2: Now, the people that I work with are probably surprise
Speaker 2: that I even you know, agreed to it, but I
Speaker 2: just you know, things have changed now and I just
Speaker 2: want to be as cooperative and helpful as possible.
Speaker 5: So well, listen, you did such a good job. I've
Speaker 5: already told Karin and put you back on the put
Speaker 5: you on the returning guest.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you got to join the all timers, man.
Speaker 2: You know, bring them, Bring Brad Brad Cochran and Mike Callian,
Speaker 2: Greg Hogan, Scott Sprucker, those guys. I'm not kidding they
Speaker 2: they have a lot of information. They're super fun, fun guys.
Speaker 1: And next time we next time you guys, I want
Speaker 1: you to bring your whole team. Okay, we're just gonna
Speaker 1: do where they got to think. We used to do
Speaker 1: these things called hot tip offs, where it was like
Speaker 1: a showdown of hot tips. We should revitalize hot tip off.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was watching something the other day. I was
Speaker 5: watching yesterday vitalizing him right now on the website.
Speaker 1: That's great, So hot tip off, you have a competition
Speaker 1: who's got the hottest tip. You bring all your crew
Speaker 1: in and you guys could have an hour long hot
Speaker 1: tip off or just goes around the table and then
Speaker 1: we'll score it and we'll wind up with a winner out.
Speaker 2: Of the hole just goes round and round and round
Speaker 2: and round.
Speaker 1: And then we'll score the whole performance.
Speaker 5: How good are you in the kitchen?
Speaker 1: GSD? Hot tip off?
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 5: How good are you in the kitchen?
Speaker 2: Terrible?
Speaker 1: You're married? Right?
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: You're married or not?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, Luckily you.
Speaker 5: Guys will still be fun to play.
Speaker 1: Been married a long time? Yeah, yeah, I think you'd
Speaker 1: be good at trivia man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but if you're not, if you if you say
Speaker 5: you're terrible in the kitchen, boy, that really that's twenty
Speaker 5: five percent of the questions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I bet you he's got some hot tips
Speaker 3: about it being in the kitchen, like get a frozen peat.
Speaker 2: It'll be twenty twenty five years of spring. And my
Speaker 2: wife is of Mexican descent. She's a great cook. She
Speaker 2: doesn't think that she is, but uh she Everything she
Speaker 2: makes is amazing.
Speaker 1: So was your wife born in Mexico?
Speaker 2: No, No, she wasn't born. She's like think three generations
Speaker 2: as Yeah, but twenty five years. Got the whole She's
Speaker 2: got all the traditions down and everything, and that her
Speaker 2: grandma didn't speak any English at all, and and where
Speaker 2: her parents live in eastern Washington. It's just you know,
Speaker 2: we go over there and make to Molly's and and
Speaker 2: it's a lot of culture, Mexican culture.
Speaker 1: I once traded someone a bunch of a woman from
Speaker 1: damn it Comish. I can remember where she's from. She's
Speaker 1: from Central America. Either way. They make to Mollies slightly
Speaker 1: different than Mexican Tomali's, I know, because they would put
Speaker 1: like a dried fruit in them.
Speaker 5: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Where was she from? Man? Maybe Columbia? Okay, So so
Speaker 1: I gave her a bunch of muskox meat, the deal
Speaker 1: being that she made Tomali's with that muskox meat, but
Speaker 1: I got half of the yield, which she thought was
Speaker 1: a screaming deal. I thought it was a screaming deal.
Speaker 1: So whatever, she made like twenty pounds worth of muskox
Speaker 1: meat Tomali's, which is a shitload of Tmali's, and then
Speaker 1: I got half of the take.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: No, it was a phenomenal deal. I had them all
Speaker 1: lined up like bars of gold in my freezer. Man,
Speaker 1: but we went through them pretty quick. But they had
Speaker 1: like dried fruit, which I thought was interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have to find out what that is.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they our family doesn't do it like that,
Speaker 2: just traditional with pork meat and all that.
Speaker 1: Give me your hottest piece of marriage advice. Give me
Speaker 1: a hot tip off on marriage advice.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just I don't know. I just feel
Speaker 2: like I just got so lucky and I'm just so
Speaker 2: blessed and everything like that. I don't, I don't know what.
Speaker 2: I just I think my wife is just the rock
Speaker 2: of our of our family, and she's just a total
Speaker 2: sweetheart and and you know, it's like she's the reason
Speaker 2: though I guess why I don't do very many trips,
Speaker 2: Like I feel like I found her sort of late
Speaker 2: in life, even though we've been married twenty five years
Speaker 2: or whatever. And so I love my home life so
Speaker 2: much so it's turned me into a homebody like steelhead
Speaker 2: steelhead fishing and bass fishing and you know some you
Speaker 2: know a lot of stuff that I do or stuff
Speaker 2: that's close close to home, because.
Speaker 1: I like you home, Yeah, eating them to Molly's and you.
Speaker 2: Never know how much time you'll how much time you'll have,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: I got some marriage advice, find the right to buy.
Speaker 1: Tony had this little tidbit one time. He said he
Speaker 1: and I were both got in trouble with our wives
Speaker 1: one time, which we didn't even deserve because we had
Speaker 1: taken all of our kids claim digging. So you think,
Speaker 1: how could you be in any trouble, Like normally, if
Speaker 1: I take my kids to do something, my wife's very
Speaker 1: very happy with me. Right if they're all gone, there's
Speaker 1: nothing complain about. Anyways, on this trip, he Tony had
Speaker 1: his kid in one of those kid carriers on your
Speaker 1: back clam digging, but he didn't tire in there, and
Speaker 1: he's out in the water and leans over comes right
Speaker 1: out of that back back carrier because he was like
Speaker 1: leaning over fishing around in the water for something. He's
Speaker 1: on the way home, we got pulled over by post
Speaker 1: like next thing. You know, it's like one in the morning.
Speaker 1: It's just a whole late deal. Anyways, he said to me, Steve,
Speaker 1: and I got yelled at, but my wife on speakerphone.
Speaker 1: He got yelled at but his wife. He said to me, Steve,
Speaker 1: if we were the way they wanted us to be,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't like us. My wife she said, yeah, I would.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's marriage advice. That's just funny, all right.
Speaker 1: Maybe like a meat eater's guy, do marriage advice.
Speaker 3: I come up with a couple of tips.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, Chester. I heard of Chester
Speaker 1: get yelled at eastbound and westbound on the same highway.
Speaker 6: Man, But then he's just got to sing that beautiful
Speaker 6: song that he wrote, and then he'll make everyone weep.
Speaker 6: Just be forgiven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been driving down roll of Chester. He's in
Speaker 1: all kinds of trouble because he's late from getting home
Speaker 1: from fishing. And I said, well, here you supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing when you get home? He said, going fishing.
Speaker 1: He was late for his second fishing trip because he'd
Speaker 1: been going too long on his first fishing trip of
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, it's always bad. You tell you, you tell
Speaker 2: your wife are going, you're going for a half a day,
Speaker 2: and you come home she's like, I thought you were
Speaker 2: going for half a day, and you're like, well, twelve
Speaker 2: hours is half a day.
Speaker 1: In Chester's defense, he was supposed to take his white
Speaker 1: fish and she was pissed that he was at home
Speaker 1: from his other fishing to do that fishing. All right,
Speaker 1: Thanks coming on, Dave, Did you like it?
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me? I appreciate it. I was like
Speaker 2: it or hate it.
Speaker 1: I liked it.
Speaker 2: I was kind of stressing it a little bit. I
Speaker 2: didn't sleep much last night.
Speaker 1: Don't go on all kinds of other podcasts, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Don't become one of them guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, no, keep it tight, man, We'll keep it, yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure, keep it tight.
Speaker 6: And everyone can find uh Dave's decoys at Dave smith
Speaker 6: decoys dot com.
Speaker 2: We haven't.
Speaker 6: We'll merged that into the meat Eater site at some
Speaker 6: point soon. But right now, it's he.
Speaker 1: Prefers DSD because he's he's so modest. He doesn't like
Speaker 1: being such a showboat. That's why he always goes to DSD.
Speaker 6: I'm just I'm just giving the audience the u r L.
Speaker 6: Well see the decoys are.
Speaker 1: To prefer DSD. I get, yeah, because he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to detract from his co workers' efforts by Dave's Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's the thing is like we and that's that's one
Speaker 2: of the things that's we're having a hard time with
Speaker 2: that adjustment of and everyone's having a hard time with
Speaker 2: that adjustment. Is at d SC we've always operated as
Speaker 2: a group, you know, and made all our decisions as
Speaker 2: a group. And and a consensus and you know, discussing everything,
Speaker 2: and so there's definitely not one person that is sort
Speaker 2: of the you know, the north star of DSD a.
Speaker 1: Lot of muscle.
Speaker 6: You're so self deprecating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I don't know. I mean, I've just been
Speaker 2: I've just been real like like like I I definitely
Speaker 2: you know, I didn't do anything. I mostly just work
Speaker 2: in my in my shop a distance away from the
Speaker 2: from the decoy shop and do clay sculptures and everything,
Speaker 2: and so you know, I just surrounded myself with people
Speaker 2: that are really good at at all those other all
Speaker 2: those other things, and I never wanted to be super
Speaker 2: involved with the you know, with all the headaches of
Speaker 2: the business side of it and stuff like that, and
Speaker 2: so you know, we're just definitely we're definitely a team
Speaker 2: and operate operate that way and stuff, and so you know,
Speaker 2: that's take some adjustment for everyone to realize that I'm
Speaker 2: I am not you know, I am not the the
Speaker 2: the decision maker representative and you know of D of DSD.
Speaker 1: Well Decoys doesn't lend someone to think that that, Like
Speaker 1: when you're talking to Dave Smith, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, I get that, I get that and again
Speaker 2: I tried, you're.
Speaker 1: Willing to see that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, well you guys do make some really really
Speaker 3: good realistic decoys. Like the other day when I saw
Speaker 3: more of that full spread, I was very impressed.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks, Jess, I say that.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't even get into we got to
Speaker 1: wrap up, we didn't get into fur trapping.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you just have to come back.
Speaker 1: Maybe make a Martin decoy who for trapping.
Speaker 2: Is one of the things that helps me set up
Speaker 2: ground blinds and tree stands. Like I think if like
Speaker 2: if you, if you don't have that, I think you're you're,
Speaker 2: you know, sadly missing out a tiny little bit unsetting.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's very educational. We'll save that for the next
Speaker 1: time you're on.
Speaker 2: Sounds good, you'll come on.
Speaker 1: We'll do a hot tip off with you and your guys.
Speaker 1: Then you'll come on, we'll talk for trapping.
Speaker 3: Sounds great, and then you win trivia.
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna still beat them, maybe beat them
Speaker 1: horribly bad. All right, man, don't go doing a bunch
Speaker 1: of podcasts.
Speaker 2: Now, don't worry.
Speaker 1: Seal Gray Shine like Suit in the sun.
Speaker 2: Ride, Ride, Ride on along, sweetheart.
Speaker 3: We're done.
Speaker 1: Beat this damp horse to death, taking a new one
Speaker 1: and ride away.
Speaker 6: We're done beat this damn horse today, so take a
Speaker 6: new one and ride on.