Speaker 1: This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast.
Speaker 2: You can't predict anything.
Speaker 1: The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by first Light.
Speaker 1: Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
Speaker 1: for ELK. First Light has performance apparel to support every
Speaker 1: hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light
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Speaker 1: e dot com. Joined today by Karen waldrip Am I
Speaker 1: saying that right, you are chief conservation officer with ducts
Speaker 1: unlimited and more important than me.
Speaker 2: I'm joking about that big.
Speaker 1: Time squirrel dog. I am squirrel hunting dog hunter. Yes,
Speaker 1: how do you say that?
Speaker 3: So squirrel hunter with dogs?
Speaker 2: Squirrel hundred with dogs? I like, that's clean, clean. How'd
Speaker 2: you get into that?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Goodness? It was in college and I was I went
Speaker 3: out with a buddy one time and felt absolutely just
Speaker 3: fell in love with it.
Speaker 1: And it's was the buddy a guy or girl.
Speaker 3: It was a guy, okay, and it was. What I
Speaker 3: love about it is you can go out. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: after deer season and everything else is over, duck season,
Speaker 3: you can still go out until the end of February
Speaker 3: in most states, And yeah, how'd.
Speaker 1: You get a shirt? And says it's usually squirrel season.
Speaker 3: It's oh my gosh, it's always squirrel season. Somewhere. You
Speaker 3: can get a spring, squirrel season, fall winter.
Speaker 1: It's all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can get normally go squirrel hunting.
Speaker 3: You can normally go squirrel hunting.
Speaker 2: So you got turned onto it. But that's like a
Speaker 2: whole commitment to get the dog.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so I got into it right away. Got
Speaker 3: my first dog and tring feightt in college and had
Speaker 3: her for seventeen years, and she hunted hard.
Speaker 1: For about ten she was that's who's on your phone?
Speaker 3: And that's who's on my phone. Still it's terrible. Not
Speaker 3: my kid, not my other dog.
Speaker 1: A dog's the dog.
Speaker 3: A dead dog is on my phone.
Speaker 2: Where'd you go to college?
Speaker 3: Well, that's a long story, and I don't I'm.
Speaker 1: Just curious, like where where you were at the made?
Speaker 3: I was at University of Georgia at the time, but
Speaker 3: I started at Florida State. I went to University of Georgia,
Speaker 3: got my bachelor's and my master's there, and then went
Speaker 3: to Clemson University for my pH d and then University
Speaker 3: of Kentucky for my post doc.
Speaker 5: See, oddly enough, your reaction was the same as a
Speaker 5: friend of mine who was asked not to return to college.
Speaker 3: So I did not.
Speaker 2: Really said we preferred you didn't come back to college.
Speaker 3: Yep. I didn't want to get a job anto the
Speaker 3: real world to stay in school.
Speaker 2: But you were brought up in Kentucky.
Speaker 3: Actually I was brought up in Florida, but Kentucky's where
Speaker 3: we raised our family and was there for a long time.
Speaker 3: So but I was born in Mississippi. Yep, born in Mississippi,
Speaker 3: raised mostly in Florida, I understand, or central Florida.
Speaker 1: But then you spent a lot of your career in Kentucky.
Speaker 3: Yes, So, actually, when I was working on my PhD
Speaker 3: at Clemson University, I was working on the Elk Restoration
Speaker 3: Project Act for Kentucky. So we came out west, grabbed
Speaker 3: fifteen hundred ELK from a bunch of western states, and
Speaker 3: started a restoration program. And that's why I actually went
Speaker 3: to Clemson, was to study the elk restoration work in Kentucky.
Speaker 3: And so I went to Clemson for the professor and
Speaker 3: then was did all my field work up there.
Speaker 1: You know, I later killed one year elk?
Speaker 3: Did you really what year did you come out? I
Speaker 3: had to have still been there. I actually I remember
Speaker 3: it now.
Speaker 2: A long time ago. Was fun, Matt.
Speaker 3: That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: It's not elk in the hardwoods seems so weird there
Speaker 1: to see elk standing in hardwoods.
Speaker 3: And let me tell you, it's steep like it's not
Speaker 3: it's not forgiving country yet. I mean, you're used to
Speaker 3: this out here, but it's East Kentucky can be pretty
Speaker 3: rough to hunt an elkin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're hunting elk in hardwoods and we were fine
Speaker 1: and hand of the woods, mushrooms pretty fun.
Speaker 2: Super fun.
Speaker 1: So the reason I was asked about where to call it,
Speaker 1: so you would, as a college student move around with
Speaker 1: that little squirrel I did?
Speaker 3: She actually was we would camp out on reclaimed coal mines.
Speaker 3: So the elk came into East Kentucky because there's a
Speaker 3: lot of coal mining. So the the reclaimed coal practices
Speaker 3: actually makes it really conducive for elk and elk habitat.
Speaker 3: So that's where the elk came into. Plus it's out
Speaker 3: of horse country, cattle and everything else. So she would
Speaker 3: when I was doing all my field work. I camped
Speaker 3: lived lived in a tent for about three years, and
Speaker 3: my dog was me and my dog camping out my
Speaker 3: tent for three years. And so since it's almost always
Speaker 3: squirrel season, you just I just squirrel hunted her ass up.
Speaker 3: We ate a lot of squirels. She and I both
Speaker 3: You got new ones to replace the dead, of course
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: How many got now?
Speaker 3: Well, I have two right now, But I've had I've
Speaker 3: had quite a few at any one time. But but
Speaker 3: she was still probably the one that you knows the
Speaker 3: bar right, and all the others have to have to
Speaker 3: match up to it. I've got one right now. His
Speaker 3: name is Oakley. He's about four or five years old,
Speaker 3: and he had a good season last year and this
Speaker 3: year is going to be it's gonna be knockout. He's
Speaker 3: he's a he's a killer.
Speaker 2: That's exciting.
Speaker 1: Good. Uh uh, you'll appreciate this. This is a listener feedback.
Speaker 1: But it has to do with Kentucky, right, So you
Speaker 1: have some subject matter expertise. This guy in Kentucky rights
Speaker 1: in and he was kind of underwhelmed. I can't tell
Speaker 1: I would think he'd be happy, but he seems like
Speaker 1: he's not happy.
Speaker 2: I can't tell.
Speaker 4: I think he gets happy at the end. He's just
Speaker 4: kind of.
Speaker 2: Like happy at the end.
Speaker 1: He took hunter safety, which in Kentucky there's a field
Speaker 1: day requirement. Yes, it seems like like do you speak
Speaker 1: not that, And then it kind of got a lot
Speaker 1: of field days, and then COVID happened, and it kind
Speaker 1: of got a like.
Speaker 2: A lot less field days. But he had a field
Speaker 2: day in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: And he goes down there to do the field day
Speaker 1: and in the end, what it amounts to is him
Speaker 1: waiting in line, and he goes forty miles, starts at
Speaker 1: nine am.
Speaker 2: He thought he'd be there till noon.
Speaker 1: When he gets there, to tell him to get in line,
Speaker 1: they give him some earplugs and some eye protection. They
Speaker 1: hand him a twenty two. He calls it a little
Speaker 1: pea shooter. They give him a single twenty two long
Speaker 1: rifle round and a pea shooter and he's supposed to
Speaker 1: put that round in the pea shooter, flip the safety
Speaker 1: and shoot a target at ten yards down range, rack.
Speaker 2: The bolt and he's passed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he's wondering, is the reason is it more?
Speaker 1: Is there more to it? Out West or less to it.
Speaker 1: It's not a West past thing, not at all.
Speaker 3: No, it is the state by state. Some states have
Speaker 3: made a state law where you don't have to have
Speaker 3: the field portion of it, and in Kentucky they've they've
Speaker 3: kept that. And it really depends on your instructor that
Speaker 3: you get, so you're, you know, hunter ed instructor. Some
Speaker 3: of them they'll bring out every different type of weapon
Speaker 3: and let you shoot them in muzzleloaders and shoot multiple times.
Speaker 3: But then others it's the requirement can they safely shoot
Speaker 3: a pea shooter? Can they safely shoot a twenty two
Speaker 3: racket not pointed at anybody? Put it back up safely?
Speaker 3: Meet that check, you know. So it just really depends
Speaker 3: on the instructor that you get.
Speaker 1: I feel that they could safely do away with that
Speaker 1: safety part.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the field day.
Speaker 3: The field day, well, if you think about it, a
Speaker 3: lot of them that most people, not all, but most
Speaker 3: of them are either somebody that's a kid that's been
Speaker 3: hunting with mom and dad, uncle, grandparents, somebody for a
Speaker 3: long time before they come there, or it's you know,
Speaker 3: an adult that's getting into hunting, a young adult or
Speaker 3: older adult and they've been going with their friends for
Speaker 3: several years, because you have in Kentucky and several other
Speaker 3: states where you can hunt if you're like an apprenticeship,
Speaker 3: So if you're hunting with somebody else, you know you
Speaker 3: can go out. So they that's where they're getting their
Speaker 3: hunter safety exactly. They can probably pass that field part.
Speaker 1: Uh So to answer your question, no, it has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with West East, he wondered, if it has
Speaker 1: to do with that. Kentucky's more flat and it's not
Speaker 1: like difficult to traverse. But no, because in Idaho it's
Speaker 1: all online. Yep.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, there's a there's a big stir amongst the
Speaker 5: hunter is education instructors because this lasts like ten years,
Speaker 5: has seen a lot of importance put on hunter's education
Speaker 5: and then out of convenience and starting with a lot
Speaker 5: of the COVID protocols, just you can just bypass hunter's
Speaker 5: ed basically entirely. Like Montana is a great example. We
Speaker 5: require hunter's education. We don't require Montana hunter education. So
Speaker 5: I don't want to I don't want to get my
Speaker 5: kid down to a classuse I don't want to take
Speaker 5: that time.
Speaker 4: Let's just hop online.
Speaker 6: In Montana have to take it and they have to
Speaker 6: take it.
Speaker 1: They don't know not education.
Speaker 2: No you can do you don't you do it.
Speaker 6: I'm saying, if your if you live in Montana and
Speaker 6: your kid takes hunter ed here.
Speaker 2: In Monteo field.
Speaker 1: Day, Yes, but they could bypass it by doing I
Speaker 1: don't want to give dirty seat. Bypass it by having
Speaker 1: your kid do a different state online in Montana ex episode.
Speaker 5: Online Texas twenty minutes versus all that hassle.
Speaker 3: Well, but also they say it's a barrier, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like they say it's a barrier to get people into
Speaker 3: hunting and so making it easy where you don't have
Speaker 3: that field day.
Speaker 1: But if your kid does the two year mentor program,
Speaker 1: like that's two years of field time if.
Speaker 6: Mentor's got a good mentor, right, Okay, but.
Speaker 1: The mentor has to be someone twenty one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, or is it twenty one or eighteen eighteen?
Speaker 2: Is it eighteen?
Speaker 1: So the mentor's got to be of good standing licensed
Speaker 1: in eighteen. I'm saying, yeah, they can never go out.
Speaker 1: But if you go out and do a lot of
Speaker 1: field time and it's a lot of exposure, that's gonna
Speaker 1: like supersede what.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know it's very it's.
Speaker 2: Very I get very impassionate about the subject.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is not specifically saying Steven Ronelli, you don't
Speaker 5: know how to teach.
Speaker 1: Your kids in the way that right.
Speaker 5: But every year we also have this big other to
Speaker 5: do of like, oh my gosh, the people who misbehave
Speaker 5: while hunting are jeopardizing all these awesome programs that provide
Speaker 5: opportunity for hunting. It must be our hunter's education program
Speaker 5: that is failing. And it's like, well, don't nobody asked
Speaker 5: to take the hunter's education program, So why are we going.
Speaker 6: To get out of field days? Like it's like getting
Speaker 6: a driver's license without taking a driving test.
Speaker 7: Come on a burn mind, And you shouldn't be able
Speaker 7: to get a driver's license if you just drive with
Speaker 7: someone who's eighteen in the car for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: He's been watching his dad.
Speaker 5: I did a hunter's education in Missoula, and you know,
Speaker 5: like the Missoula Hunters or the Fishing Game Facility out
Speaker 5: there's big out on Spurgeon Road, and so that's where
Speaker 5: they did the field course out there, and they had.
Speaker 4: All sorts.
Speaker 5: I failed one portion of it because they had adults
Speaker 5: that would come up to you and be like hey,
Speaker 5: can I see your gun?
Speaker 4: Oh little and you're like, yeah, secret shopper.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they're like, well, you know, you shouldn't just
Speaker 5: let anybody come up.
Speaker 4: And it was.
Speaker 5: Brutal, but yeah, they had, you know, because there's like
Speaker 5: it's relatively hilly, you know, so they're like, do you
Speaker 5: carry your how do you carry your gun in this situation?
Speaker 5: Stuff like that, and it's like absolutely not mistakes that
Speaker 5: I don't see adults making, and I don't every single
Speaker 5: season say hey, yeah, point it this way, you know,
Speaker 5: to adults.
Speaker 7: I did my Hunter's ed in Ohio and it was
Speaker 7: actually like a very substantive class. We had to drive
Speaker 7: a long way to do it. But then at the
Speaker 7: end of it, I got the card and it was
Speaker 7: written on like in penn you know, just on like
Speaker 7: the card it said Randall Williams and whatever date. And
Speaker 7: probably a year after I did that, the date and
Speaker 7: my name had rubbed off the card and I don't
Speaker 7: know if there's any other record of it. So I
Speaker 7: rewrote my name and tried to remember. And so now
Speaker 7: whenever I buy a license online, like in Idaho or something,
Speaker 7: and it's like enter your the state where you took it,
Speaker 7: and what dates and if you have an ID number,
Speaker 7: And I'm like, oh, I hope they don't catch me
Speaker 7: because I'm just sort of making this up based on
Speaker 7: my my, my clearest recollection of being seventeen years old.
Speaker 5: Well, if you want to have more dirty secrets out there,
Speaker 5: there's no standardization for Hunter's education. So if you type
Speaker 5: in one, two, three, four five.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, right, well that's what I feel like I'm doing.
Speaker 2: The point man, that's a great point because the numbers
Speaker 2: are silly.
Speaker 4: What right, because like Montana's numbers.
Speaker 5: Right, it starts with like a letter and then and
Speaker 5: then the date.
Speaker 1: It's not like a social Security number if.
Speaker 5: You go to California, completely different.
Speaker 1: It's odd that col with no children has such an
Speaker 1: in depth knowledge of yeah, not just knowledge, but opinions
Speaker 1: about Hunter's safety program.
Speaker 5: Well, because you know, just a concerns I participate in
Speaker 5: the program people wanted because he's like, it's.
Speaker 1: One of these people that's going to shoot me something.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 5: Or you know, it's like the giant pile of human
Speaker 5: feces and toilet paper next to the sign inbox at
Speaker 5: block management, right, It's like.
Speaker 7: That's just someone on their way to work, right, you
Speaker 7: have no proof that's a hunter.
Speaker 4: You know, like my big chip on my shoulders.
Speaker 5: I feel if you're an hunter's education instructor out there,
Speaker 5: you are doing the Lord's work.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: You're taking a lot of time for those children who
Speaker 5: have parents that are willing to get them to those classes, uh,
Speaker 5: to make better first time hunters out there, and I
Speaker 5: think it's incredibly important. Unfortunately, I think a lot of
Speaker 5: the people out there making mistakes are ones that are
Speaker 5: just you know, they're not paying attention to the Fishing
Speaker 5: Game website, they're not reading the regulations, they're not you know.
Speaker 5: It's like we need to find out completely different mechanism
Speaker 5: to reach out and educate these people because they're not
Speaker 5: tapped into the traditional information lines.
Speaker 3: But I think if you like take those hunter safety
Speaker 3: courses and you maybe have left fewer of them, and
Speaker 3: you take those best instructors, and you make it where Okay.
Speaker 3: So if you're not somebody, you know, a twelve year
Speaker 3: old that's thirteen year old's been hunting with dad a
Speaker 3: whole bunch and knows everything really well, then maybe you
Speaker 3: can kind of opt out by taking a test or
Speaker 3: different things, but make it to where it's more than
Speaker 3: just going out driving, you know, for a couple hours
Speaker 3: and shooting at twenty two. Like, make it fun, make
Speaker 3: it interactive, make it educational, to where somebody doesn't feel
Speaker 3: like they just wasted their time.
Speaker 5: If there's a driving portion, there should be a deer
Speaker 5: on the side of the road right in your instructured
Speaker 5: jams on the brakes, skids sideways on the dirt road
Speaker 5: and goes, what do you do?
Speaker 3: See? Interactive and fun? Yes? I like it.
Speaker 1: Oh, you know what was making me nervous yesterday is
Speaker 1: speaking of gun handling, and they didn't. I had no problems,
Speaker 1: but I took to my kid who's freshman in high school,
Speaker 1: and his high school body.
Speaker 2: We went out and layout blinds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we had a guy in the podcast one
Speaker 1: time that blew the middle toes out of his foot
Speaker 1: in the layout blind.
Speaker 3: I had a guy not long ago that was hunting
Speaker 3: with us that shot the end of somebody else's barrel
Speaker 3: in the layout. Because they didn't they didn't keep with that,
Speaker 3: you know, Yeah, it's shot the end of the barrel.
Speaker 2: That was stressing me out. Man.
Speaker 1: No one did anything dumb, but it's just a lot
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, you're like, okay, like you're gonna burst
Speaker 1: out of this box. Well, yeah, we had I have
Speaker 1: no idea where anything is, and burst out of this
Speaker 1: box and start shooting.
Speaker 3: But don't and don't shoot the dogs, don't.
Speaker 5: Yeah, layout blinds are yeah, they're they're stressful for sure.
Speaker 5: But you know, we just hunted with a group, big
Speaker 5: group of folks and on day three one of them
Speaker 5: finally spoke up and was like, no, what do you
Speaker 5: mean by shooting lanes?
Speaker 4: Right? And it just it man, a doun't.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 5: It takes time to like be like, okay, this is
Speaker 5: a safe group to ask questions. He's like, so let's
Speaker 5: say there's duck all the way down here, you don't shoot.
Speaker 5: I'm like, there's five other hunters down there. It's like
Speaker 5: that arresting how you people do this.
Speaker 1: I've been working on that trait, that trait of men,
Speaker 1: where now when someone tells me something and they go
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, I'll say I don't know
Speaker 1: what you mean. Or they'll use like a technical term
Speaker 1: about something like with a vehicle that maybe I'm not
Speaker 1: and you know, I'll say like uh, I'll be like,
Speaker 1: explain the turbo and you're actually I know what that means, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, right on, I'll just say I don't understand,
Speaker 1: but that's fine. I don't.
Speaker 2: I'm not putting it on you. I'm not going understand it.
Speaker 3: But it's people do that, but I can.
Speaker 7: It's a very male thing to do, especially talking about vehicles.
Speaker 3: I just lack of knowledge.
Speaker 7: Yeah, although I I got over it when I working
Speaker 7: construction and working like with a finished carpenter and he
Speaker 7: would just ask me something. He'd be like, get me this,
Speaker 7: and it was like the first week I would do
Speaker 7: three trips and get him the wrong thing the first
Speaker 7: two times, and then the third time and bring him
Speaker 7: what he wants, you know. And then all of a
Speaker 7: sudden it was just like if I I'm gonna save
Speaker 7: myself and save him a lot of frustration and anxiety
Speaker 7: if I just clarify things right off the bat.
Speaker 2: Sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'll say this about hunting with kids and layout blinds,
Speaker 1: like at that age, the reflexes are so freaking fast, man,
Speaker 1: they'd shoot the geese forere. I could get my box
Speaker 1: up so fast, and I'm like getting so slow many
Speaker 1: fast they're just like wired fast. Uh, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: one more bit of feedback, oh plus or this randall
Speaker 1: this morning?
Speaker 2: He comes in.
Speaker 1: All we've we found over the weekend, the greatest free
Speaker 1: range Christmas tree ever found by man.
Speaker 7: And by we he means his.
Speaker 2: Family family, the greatest free range tree. Mine did not.
Speaker 1: And Ramon has judgement. He's like talking about, Oh, I
Speaker 1: got a real booner. Tell me all about where he went,
Speaker 1: how snowy it was, and how rugged it was, and like.
Speaker 1: And he shows me a tree and he tries to
Speaker 1: sell me on the fact that only like half the
Speaker 1: trees there because that's it was nestled up to his neighbor.
Speaker 1: I think, so it didn't groany limbs on that side.
Speaker 1: And look, you just put it right against the wall.
Speaker 1: It comes with a flat side. It comes.
Speaker 7: You know what I don't like doing is is decorating
Speaker 7: the backside of a tree.
Speaker 3: Well, you don't have to.
Speaker 1: I want to look at all my ornaments.
Speaker 7: I like my trees to have sort of.
Speaker 2: A flat wall a week left side.
Speaker 7: It doesn't it doesn't stick out into the room as far.
Speaker 7: It goes right up against the wall. And you don't
Speaker 7: have to waste your precious ornaments on the back end.
Speaker 2: On your way up? Were you telling your wife like
Speaker 2: what we're looking for is what have you do?
Speaker 7: You rotate your tree every few days.
Speaker 1: You can appreciate all side trim that I flushed that
Speaker 1: backside up with a sheer. But I don't look for one. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't look for one.
Speaker 8: Mind.
Speaker 6: Well, Randall's permit was for a management tree.
Speaker 1: Mine mine didn't need require modification.
Speaker 3: I think he's onto something. I think it's going to
Speaker 3: be like the new thing. Everyone's going to be trying
Speaker 3: to grow these flat trees to.
Speaker 7: Especially you know, if we had a smaller house, I'd
Speaker 7: want one that fits into a corner. Just two just
Speaker 7: a right angle, two flat sides, just slide right in there.
Speaker 3: If you think about the ornaments you put on the back,
Speaker 3: or all the ones that you know the kids might
Speaker 3: have made or that, well, actually those for me go
Speaker 3: on the front. Sorry kids, other people's kids, just like
Speaker 3: the really old crappy ones. You put this on the back.
Speaker 7: So you see all the night, we haven't accumulated yet
Speaker 7: enough ornaments as a family to you.
Speaker 1: Can have some art castaway? Yeah, I know, way to
Speaker 1: fix that and hurry and all you got to do
Speaker 1: is stop trying to make it not happen, which is
Speaker 1: have having children.
Speaker 2: Last piece of list of feedback. This is a good one.
Speaker 1: This fellow says this his name's logan. I recently ran
Speaker 1: into an issue with a new neighbor hunting the property
Speaker 1: next to the one I have permission to hunt. Says
Speaker 1: everything around here is privately owned land. He's clarifying that. Well.
Speaker 1: I generally try to stay on good terms with the
Speaker 1: folks around me. This new neighbor decided to place a
Speaker 1: trail camera on the fence line facing the property I hunt.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that the only reason for doing so is
Speaker 1: to monitor the deer activity on my side.
Speaker 2: Of the fence.
Speaker 1: Well, remember that Robert Frost, he was the poet laureate.
Speaker 1: He had that fences about the two neighbors that get
Speaker 1: together every year to like to reinforce the fence between
Speaker 1: their properties. Good fences make good neighbors.
Speaker 2: But he's kind of dogging on them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyhow, I normally wouldn't care who puts cameras where,
Speaker 1: but the fact that it's placed less than five yards
Speaker 1: from the fence and pointed directly on the trail I
Speaker 1: used to get in and out of my boast and
Speaker 1: really bothers me. He's wondering should he moon the camera,
Speaker 1: should he give it the camera the finger? Or should
Speaker 1: he get a big taxi during me deer and start
Speaker 1: jutting it out in front of the camera now and
Speaker 1: then to create the illusion of a giant buck in
Speaker 1: the area that isn't actually there.
Speaker 3: I personally like option three, but it's fun kind.
Speaker 2: Or he might grab his own camera and point it
Speaker 2: back at that camera.
Speaker 8: That's what I'd do.
Speaker 2: I would do. I would do.
Speaker 1: I would hold all those and I would say to
Speaker 1: the guy, maybe say to the neighbor, do you mind
Speaker 1: not aim in your camera? Do you mind not aiming
Speaker 1: your camera like deliberately onto my place?
Speaker 2: Because I walked through there and it bothers me.
Speaker 1: I remember Dug during they had a place out there,
Speaker 1: and there's a neighbor had this wood lot and there's
Speaker 1: this huge sign painted on plywood that said do not
Speaker 1: shoot into these woods. And Doug wand to put one
Speaker 1: on his side and said, do not shoot out of
Speaker 1: these woods.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 4: Doug's place is.
Speaker 5: Man, if you climb up just about any tree stand
Speaker 5: and look hard enough, you can find a little bit
Speaker 5: of orange sticking out a Yeah, you're like, whoa, it's
Speaker 5: crazy crazy. And some stone faced people out there too,
Speaker 5: they don't even They're like, nope, you don't exist. I'm
Speaker 5: just looking at the twenty five yards between me and you,
Speaker 5: and that's yeah wild.
Speaker 1: Another thing this guy could do is put a tarp up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, build privacy, like a privacy screen. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would bug the hell out of me, to be honest
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would definitely call for sure, But you know,
Speaker 5: there's always something good that you're going to get out
Speaker 5: of a conversation with the neighbor. But yeah, all the
Speaker 5: funny things that you could do would be awesome. Just
Speaker 5: have a little screen that you put up there and
Speaker 5: have like a deer.
Speaker 1: You know, have something that'll trigger the camera every five seconds,
Speaker 1: gives so much noise that he'll never get through it
Speaker 1: to find you walking around, kills the battery. So when
Speaker 1: he pulls his card, it's like you have three thousand images,
Speaker 1: you know, just a CD spinning out of the job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's what we're not going to talk about, because people
Speaker 1: do this all the time, some hosers and where Netherlands
Speaker 1: where this is at?
Speaker 4: Sorry? What they that buddy of mine that we were
Speaker 4: talking about the other day.
Speaker 5: He's got all the grizzly bears and wolves and stuff
Speaker 5: on his camera, you know, things that just set cameras off.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: This is an observation that I made.
Speaker 5: He's like, yeah, this camera, this squirrel keeps setting it off,
Speaker 5: and he starts like going through and through and through.
Speaker 4: See him there there there, see him there, see him there.
Speaker 4: And eventually it dawned on me. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 4: this squirrel is given this guy a lot of enjoyment.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Uh, Netherlands, sorry, are from Germany.
Speaker 7: I don't care where they're from, the Netherlands and the.
Speaker 3: Editors from Colombia. The research is based in Germany.
Speaker 1: Okay, So these holders in Germany have determined they've they've
Speaker 1: done a map where they look at the more wolf
Speaker 1: attacks there are an area, the more the area is
Speaker 1: prone to vote right wing.
Speaker 2: All right, aren't you kind of saying.
Speaker 1: Rural people tend to vote fire right because Ian Fraser
Speaker 1: did the same thing in the US, where he's like,
Speaker 1: the more wild hogs are in the area, the more
Speaker 1: you're likely to vote Republican. But every election you prove
Speaker 1: this over and over again that generally, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: many many exceptions, but generally, rural areas generally vote right.
Speaker 1: Urban areas is generally true. Urban areas generally vote left.
Speaker 1: So I feel like you're just finding new ways to
Speaker 1: say the same thing. You'd be like, the further of
Speaker 1: part houses are, the more pickup trucks there are in
Speaker 1: an area.
Speaker 6: Based on livestock attacks too, right, not.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, but I'm just saying it's like another way
Speaker 1: of our It's another way of expressing like I might. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that wolves attacking livestock is happening in rural
Speaker 1: agricultural areas in Germany and those people are voting different
Speaker 1: than people that are in Munich.
Speaker 2: So great work, guys.
Speaker 7: Well, maybe they're having trouble identifying rural areas, so they found.
Speaker 1: A new indicator. What would be the epitome of ruralness?
Speaker 1: And some guys like, I guess it'd be like a
Speaker 1: fucking wolf attacking a cow. That feels a rural to me.
Speaker 1: All right, Karen, How are ducks doing in general in
Speaker 1: the United States? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so our North American waterfowl population is so I
Speaker 3: don't know, if you guys follow, you know, when US
Speaker 3: Fish and Wildlife Service at ducks unlimited. It's a big
Speaker 3: day when the breeding population survey and habitat survey comes out.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's always a fun day to see about. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a big day, right, you look for that every year.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like Christmas. But so what we saw
Speaker 3: for this this year, I mean, numbers are still down,
Speaker 3: but they came up. So for the first time in
Speaker 3: ten years, waterfowl populations went up about five percent. So
Speaker 3: of course that's going to be a lot of that's
Speaker 3: going to be dependent on the pond surveys too, And
Speaker 3: there was a lot of difference in pond surveys in
Speaker 3: the prairie pothole region. And I'm sure all the listeners
Speaker 3: know that are understand that waterfowl. You know, for for waterfowl,
Speaker 3: for breeding, the prairie potholes is like sixty percent of
Speaker 3: waterfowl nests there and then a lot twenty five thirty
Speaker 3: percent or so in the boreal and in wet years
Speaker 3: you have a lot more in the in the prairies
Speaker 3: and the prairies of US and Canada. And so the
Speaker 3: surveys tell.
Speaker 1: People basically what you're talking about when you talk about
Speaker 1: the prairie poth holes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the prairie potholes are going to be you know,
Speaker 3: in southern Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and then into the US
Speaker 3: prairies of North Dakota, Montana, the eastern part north of Montana,
Speaker 3: the northern and eastern part of North Dakota, eastern part
Speaker 3: of South Dakota, and goes down into Minnesota and a
Speaker 3: little bit into Iowa. But most of the wetlands are
Speaker 3: gone there. But that's the prairie pothole region and it
Speaker 3: is a critical landscape for waterfound for Ducks Unlimited and
Speaker 3: another waterfound enthusiast. It's like the priority landscape for federal
Speaker 3: and state partners as well. But so what we're seeing
Speaker 3: this past year with the pond counts is it's a
Speaker 3: pretty diverse and dynamic landscape. So the US prairie potholes
Speaker 3: were wetter than they've been in the last ten years,
Speaker 3: so they actually had a big increase, like a fifty
Speaker 3: percent increase from last year. But then the prairies in
Speaker 3: Canada were the driest they've been in thirty years, and
Speaker 3: so just shows that dynamic landscape and they were down.
Speaker 3: So overall, the pond counts was like four percent higher
Speaker 3: than last year, right around the long term average for
Speaker 3: pond counts. And so you take those two things and
Speaker 3: that's how the seasons are determined as far as how
Speaker 3: the population's doing well. For the central Mississippi flyways, you
Speaker 3: look at the pond counts and then the population and
Speaker 3: that determines what the seasons are going to be. So
Speaker 3: we look at that every year to look at what
Speaker 3: the seasons are going to be for the following year.
Speaker 3: So waterfowl populations, you know, there's a little bit of
Speaker 3: good news. Mother nature has been helping us out a
Speaker 3: little bit. It's still we've been in a long term drought.
Speaker 3: It's going to take years of good weather at the
Speaker 3: right time, right amount of moisture, you know, cold up north,
Speaker 3: get a lot of snow cover, and then some good
Speaker 3: rains to keep that to keep that going. But you know, potholes,
Speaker 3: it's it's a normal cycle like we have you know
Speaker 3: every however many years, thirty years, whatever it might be.
Speaker 3: Remember the eighties were really bad. But you know, we're
Speaker 3: droughts are important for wetlands to recharge themselves. So while
Speaker 3: we don't like it as waterfowl hunters and it makes
Speaker 3: us nervous. You know, we should be coming out of
Speaker 3: that drought cycle and hopefully seeing some increased populations. But
Speaker 3: we'll see. You know, the problem with the only problem
Speaker 3: with when the water came and the prairies in the US,
Speaker 3: it was after a lot of the those early migrants
Speaker 3: came through, so a lot of your mallards and everything,
Speaker 3: so they flew over because it was dry and they
Speaker 3: went the boreal, which it's great. The boil landscape is
Speaker 3: kind of like, it is good to have that because
Speaker 3: it does provide a lot of nesting and production opportunities,
Speaker 3: but typically waterfowl don't produce as well up there, so
Speaker 3: the reproduction's not as well because the habitat's not as
Speaker 3: rich and invertebrates and everything that they need for laying
Speaker 3: eggs and that. It's just not as productive of a
Speaker 3: habitat for waterfowl. But it's pretty darn good and it's vast,
Speaker 3: so it's good to have. But typically what we see
Speaker 3: a lot when waterfowl fly over the prairies is not
Speaker 3: as many young birds in the bag as far as
Speaker 3: the ratio of juveniles to adults in the serv in
Speaker 3: the in the harvest information reports and everything else that
Speaker 3: it's not usually that ratio is not as many young birds.
Speaker 3: But we were seeing from biologists. We're saying that those
Speaker 3: birds that did stay in the prairies or that came later, man,
Speaker 3: they had great habitat, so we should have really good production.
Speaker 3: And they were actually seeing that a lot of young
Speaker 3: birds coming out of the coming out of the US
Speaker 3: prairie podles. So it's a mixed bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is it that if a duck's coming from me, he
Speaker 1: goes south for the winter and he's flying up, he's
Speaker 1: not like a salmon where he doesn't know exactly where
Speaker 1: he's going.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. They it's they have done studies.
Speaker 3: She had transmitters and showing birds coming back like so
Speaker 3: close to where they had been previous years.
Speaker 1: Right, you said they would shoot past.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's no water, they'll shoot past, yes, and
Speaker 3: find another place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, got it. So they want to kind of they.
Speaker 3: Want to go where they come from. So yeah, it's
Speaker 3: pretty neat. Is there's actually just to do a plug
Speaker 3: for it. The movie Wings over Water. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you've heard of it yet. Yeah, it's been out
Speaker 3: a couple of years. It's an imax. It's really geared
Speaker 3: towards kids. So but not just kids, but it's talking
Speaker 3: about the prairie potholes. And it's not just waterfowl. Follows
Speaker 3: a duck, fills a sand hill crane and a yellow
Speaker 3: warbler and shows their migration from south all the way
Speaker 3: up to the prairies and the importance of prairies and
Speaker 3: all the landowners there and farmers and ranchers, and and
Speaker 3: why the prairie pothole region is so important for all
Speaker 3: sorts of species of birds.
Speaker 1: What's the major thing besides that water level, what's the
Speaker 1: major thing that drives duck up and down? Drives duck
Speaker 1: numbers up and down in the United States?
Speaker 3: So I mean habitat, right, So it's all tied to habitat.
Speaker 3: And you know, pond count is a is a good
Speaker 3: way of course. It's been going on since the mid
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties and it's the longest running waterfowl population survey
Speaker 3: missed two years because of COVID, but other than that
Speaker 3: longest year, longest survey, and so you know, it's a
Speaker 3: good indicator the more wetlands that are on a landscape,
Speaker 3: which is what waterfowl need for the grassland surrounding grasslands,
Speaker 3: so for you know, for nesting and everything as well,
Speaker 3: and then for brood production and brood rearing. But the
Speaker 3: more wetlands and smaller shallow wetlands are preferred over you know,
Speaker 3: I'd rather have one hundred you know, one acre wetlands
Speaker 3: than one one hundred acre wetland because they're very territorial
Speaker 3: as well. So the more water you have on the
Speaker 3: landscape from wetlands, the better production you're going to have
Speaker 3: for waterfowl. And it follows it pretty pretty closely. You
Speaker 3: can see waterfowl populations up and down, up and down
Speaker 3: in it being with you know, the previous year's wetland production, got.
Speaker 2: It, got it.
Speaker 3: So wetland conservation, ducks and limited that's what's all about.
Speaker 3: And you know, our priority landscape, of course is the prairies.
Speaker 3: That's our number one priority landscape. We work all throughout
Speaker 3: North America. We have a lot of landscape conservation priority
Speaker 3: areas that are important for waterfowl because wintering habitat is
Speaker 3: really important for waterfowl too. I have to get those
Speaker 3: you have to have enough energy and the carbo high
Speaker 3: raids and everything that they need for fat storage and
Speaker 3: everything else to make it through those cold winters and
Speaker 3: be able to come back up north.
Speaker 2: But not that you hear about.
Speaker 1: People say, like changing agricultural practices will really impact.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I'm like. So there was a study we
Speaker 3: actually just finished using band band return. So from the
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties until twenty nineteen, one of our biologists, Dr
Speaker 3: Mike Brasier, along with doctor Webb with the Missouri co
Speaker 3: Op Unit and then also US Fish and Wildlife Service
Speaker 3: looked at bands from nineteen sixty to twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 3: we looked at three different species of birds, mallard pintail
Speaker 3: and blue wing teal, and then looked at different subpopulations
Speaker 3: of where they came from, whether it was Canada and
Speaker 3: the Boreal Canada, Canadian prairies and the Boreal Us prairies,
Speaker 3: and then the Great Lakes and Eastern Canada, and then
Speaker 3: looked at different months October, November, December, January. So getting
Speaker 3: to your point, so pintails, if you looked in nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: pintails were all along the coast, and the winter rice
Speaker 3: in Texas was big, so all those pintails in January
Speaker 3: and the nineteen sixties and seventies were all there. Now
Speaker 3: in twenty nineteen and tens to nineteen that that population shifted.
Speaker 3: You could see in January bird Band returns to Arkansas
Speaker 3: the Missippi Alluvia Valley where the rice is so yeah,
Speaker 3: it's really cool. It's all you can check it out.
Speaker 3: We've got a it's on our website. But part of
Speaker 3: that state was actually in the last magazine too. It's
Speaker 3: really neat.
Speaker 1: So looking at those they just found the rice production
Speaker 1: and now that all that rice is down in Texas.
Speaker 5: And yeah, Californians are super happy because they can shootin
Speaker 5: two pintails a day.
Speaker 3: No no, no, right, no, no, no, it's one right now.
Speaker 3: But next year switch next year it will be three.
Speaker 3: Oh and both the Mississippi, Central Atlanta all four flyways
Speaker 3: will be at three next year, not this current year.
Speaker 3: I have to be really careful.
Speaker 2: What happens that, lady? Why is it going up?
Speaker 3: So US Fish and Wildlife Service again, Okay, there's adaptive
Speaker 3: harvest management models for all sorts of different species, and
Speaker 3: we could spend a lot of time going into it.
Speaker 3: It's really cool. We could geek out in the science
Speaker 3: of it. But you know, pintails like you said Pacific flyway,
Speaker 3: they're seeing so many pintails. Well, the thing is they
Speaker 3: get their pintails not only from Alaska, but also from
Speaker 3: the Canadian prairies and US prairies, and where those pintails
Speaker 3: aren't doing as well.
Speaker 4: We have a lot of pintails in Montana in the spring.
Speaker 1: It's super cool.
Speaker 3: Okay, you do, you should, And so what it is
Speaker 3: they mix whereas mallards they have, you know, the mid
Speaker 3: continent mallards, the western mallards, Eastern mallads, they don't really
Speaker 3: they stay in their flyways. Pintails, it's a little bit different.
Speaker 3: So they've been restricted to one. But the reason for
Speaker 3: looking at it is trying the it's an experimental three
Speaker 3: I don't know if they're calling it quote unquote experimental season,
Speaker 3: but it's a three year trial and if the numbers
Speaker 3: don't drop below I make this a little wrong. Let's
Speaker 3: say I think it's one point two million that will
Speaker 3: be open for three birds. If it gets below that,
Speaker 3: it'll drop to two to one or close season, depending
Speaker 3: on where that population is. And so this year from
Speaker 3: the breeding population survey, it's over the one point two
Speaker 3: million mark or whatever that is. It's around there. But
Speaker 3: the reason they're doing this is they're trying to really
Speaker 3: see what are the effects. Is there an effect of
Speaker 3: shooting three pentels on the population. We try to set
Speaker 3: our populations. We US Fish and Wildlife Service ducks unlimited
Speaker 3: is not part of it. I should make that clear.
Speaker 3: But US Fish and Wildlife Service and scientists try to
Speaker 3: make sure that you're not having the additive impact of
Speaker 3: mortality in hunting. So what they want to see is
Speaker 3: is there an impact from harvesting three birds on that
Speaker 3: population or is it not additive? Is it compensatory that
Speaker 3: hunter harvest?
Speaker 2: Do you mind walking people through what that means?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Jobs, just people, Yeah, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 3: So if it's additive mortality, those birds would have made
Speaker 3: it back to nesting and had a had a had
Speaker 3: a successful nesting and had more more production the following year.
Speaker 3: If it's additive from that harvest, and if it's compensatory,
Speaker 3: then it's those birds wouldn't have made it anyway to
Speaker 3: a certain number of birds aren't going to make it
Speaker 3: back to breed because of their their life cycle.
Speaker 5: God, And that's like when I go love hunting in
Speaker 5: California and you do see. It seems very consistent that
Speaker 5: you see more pintails than anything else, and so of
Speaker 5: course you get more complaints about only being able to
Speaker 5: kill one pin tail.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, per day.
Speaker 3: There's flying over you, just sitting there, flying over you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're myth because what's going on is that
Speaker 1: that all those Sacramento rice field pintails are all hanging
Speaker 1: out in Arkansas.
Speaker 4: Now no, no, no, no, no, no no no, this
Speaker 4: is different flyway.
Speaker 1: So all I thought you're saying they shifted over to help.
Speaker 3: What the hell are you talking about, lady? So no,
Speaker 3: So the birds coming from the Canadian US prairies, some
Speaker 3: of them will go down to Arkansas, some of them
Speaker 3: will head over to California, and so it's not distinct
Speaker 3: where they come from. So, in other words, the birds,
Speaker 3: the pintails in the US and the Canadian prairies aren't
Speaker 3: doing as well. The ones up in Alaska are doing well,
Speaker 3: but they might they all come down into California, but
Speaker 3: some of these from Canada.
Speaker 1: So the Alaska ones aren't going to Arkansas, correct, I understand?
Speaker 5: Now, okay, but you always have to tell those California folks,
Speaker 5: it's like, well, they're not California pintails. They're kind of
Speaker 5: everybody's in Montana. I can shoot one day and we're
Speaker 5: growing them.
Speaker 1: They just end up here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing about waterfowl. It's I mean, it's
Speaker 3: pretty impressive to understand how US Fish and Wildlife Service
Speaker 3: and the states because they have part of that through
Speaker 3: the flyway councils and when I was in Kentucky, I
Speaker 3: was on the Mississippi Flyway Council and manage waterfowl populations
Speaker 3: for everybody because they are a migratory species, and you
Speaker 3: know the amount of time and effort to that it
Speaker 3: takes to determine the models that are going to be
Speaker 3: best for those waterfowl populations to sustain them and do
Speaker 3: not cause harm to those populations. It's a pretty important
Speaker 3: job that the Service does, and that survey is is
Speaker 3: critical and the reason one of the reasons why we
Speaker 3: can make it happen. And also hunters right with with
Speaker 3: your harvest information program, doing the hip survey every year,
Speaker 3: answering the US Fish and Wildlife surveys, all of those
Speaker 3: things are critical to help manage that that population of birds.
Speaker 2: Have you ever done an honesty check on the hip
Speaker 2: survey has done that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually, yes, So here's what I give.
Speaker 2: It straight on mine.
Speaker 3: Right, here's wow got forty Yeah, like, you know, do
Speaker 3: you want to like you've got some hunters that well,
Speaker 3: I don't want to tell everybody that I'm killing a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of birds.
Speaker 2: You know, guys want to look like they get more
Speaker 2: than they're getting.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing about it. If we don't have
Speaker 3: the correct survey information, then you know we're we're we're
Speaker 3: not doing our part as hunters, right. That that's science
Speaker 3: part of it. So what was happening in Kentucky, I'll
Speaker 3: give this example. We had some of the worst hip
Speaker 3: survey data results because what was happening if we think
Speaker 3: is everyone was going to the Walmart to do their
Speaker 3: hip to buy their license, right, I'm just saying Walmart, sorry,
Speaker 3: any hunting store to go buy their license and and
Speaker 3: then there right, Well, well I didn't want to pick
Speaker 3: on Walmart, right, it could be.
Speaker 1: A great place to buy a license.
Speaker 3: So it is a great place. Walmart's great.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but slice Deli meat, your wa batteries, deodorant.
Speaker 3: I just didn't want to I didn't want to say
Speaker 3: it was Walmart. Employees, we're not doing a good job.
Speaker 3: So but you know, I got the eighteen year old
Speaker 3: behind the counter that's selling the license, and they get
Speaker 3: to the hip survey and they just go zero zero
Speaker 3: zero zero zero, here's your license right right, And they
Speaker 3: don't ask them are you a waterfowl hunter? Are you
Speaker 3: a migrant? Are you a dove hunter? Are you this?
Speaker 3: Are you that? They don't ask them, They just go
Speaker 3: about and and so then you don't know is the
Speaker 3: hunter that you're not complying with the law and you're
Speaker 3: not doing it right. You're thinking, you know, everything's fine,
Speaker 3: you get your license. Well, so our data in Kentucky
Speaker 3: was terrible. So what they what we did is we
Speaker 3: instituted it was a law that you had to go online.
Speaker 3: You could no longer at point of sale, even if
Speaker 3: you bought your license point of sale, you had to
Speaker 3: go online and do your hip survey. And so then
Speaker 3: our data went from one of the worst in the
Speaker 3: country to one of the best. That we were providing
Speaker 3: the service.
Speaker 1: Stuff hard, you know what's good or bad.
Speaker 3: So there are there are ways you can you can
Speaker 3: fact check year after year after year of like certain hunters,
Speaker 3: you know, to see if it's pretty normal. Oh they
Speaker 3: killed you know, twenty twenty birds here and zero here
Speaker 3: and twenty there so.
Speaker 7: You can see still birds.
Speaker 3: Well, that poor random line. It's real hard though, doesn't
Speaker 3: he a.
Speaker 2: Goof on Randall? Let's all have a laugh.
Speaker 5: I got a question on the hip surveys. So last
Speaker 5: year would be a good example, I guess, or still
Speaker 5: this year, I guess. But hunting Missouri, hunt in California.
Speaker 3: Gotta do it twice.
Speaker 4: You gotta do it twice.
Speaker 3: And that's another thing people don't know. It's an education is.
Speaker 5: The expectation that it doesn't matter where you are, you're
Speaker 5: filling out the number of birds that you got.
Speaker 3: In aggregate in that location, in that in that state.
Speaker 4: State. Yeah, if you need a.
Speaker 7: Takeaway, you might have to attract that statement earlier about
Speaker 7: always filling out your hip survey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well was my intentions were when you buy it, well,
Speaker 3: so it should be if you buy it, going to say,
Speaker 3: they should ask you about year.
Speaker 2: But you know what, I don't know off a goal somewhere.
Speaker 1: I just never I didn't know that, Like I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're if you go to Alaska and and
Speaker 1: hunt for day every time you buy like you all
Speaker 1: all in whatever you've been.
Speaker 3: Up, Yeah, collectively, right, Yeah, it's not all in, no,
Speaker 3: because they'll do they'll take it state by state and roll.
Speaker 2: It all up.
Speaker 6: That's not clear. They should fix that.
Speaker 2: They should definitely.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we are trying to stand for anyway.
Speaker 3: Harvest Information Program and so we're actually we're actually trying
Speaker 3: to help state Fish and Wildlife agencies and trying to
Speaker 3: collect the most accurate data, working with US Fish and
Speaker 3: Wildlife Service to in order to do that.
Speaker 1: But huh interesting, what was your question about it?
Speaker 5: Oh that it's like, are you filling it out for
Speaker 5: your harvest information in that specific state or are you saying.
Speaker 4: This is me, this is what I did last year.
Speaker 1: Later today, you might send an email to the higher
Speaker 1: up uh in the HIP program and tell them that
Speaker 1: they they should clarify that point.
Speaker 5: And it would create incredible efficiency. Did you hunt Missouri
Speaker 5: last year?
Speaker 4: Nope?
Speaker 3: Okay, zero, yep, And so then of course, you know,
Speaker 3: if you just go there one year and hunt, you
Speaker 3: don't go back for a couple of years, right, So
Speaker 3: then you're not collecting whatever. But they have they've got
Speaker 3: all sorts of data management behind the scenes to figure
Speaker 3: out things like that. So they work through those things.
Speaker 3: They it's it's a pretty good system. But they are
Speaker 3: working on improvements to the harvest information program so we
Speaker 3: can collect the best survey data possible.
Speaker 1: What let's say you're a hunter.
Speaker 2: We can move on from the hip surveys.
Speaker 4: I don't think I want to know who kills the
Speaker 4: most snipe because.
Speaker 1: When I lived out in Seattle, I was hitting big
Speaker 1: snipe numbers, those good pintails.
Speaker 2: A good snipe.
Speaker 1: Now for those years I really liked because I could
Speaker 1: get in there because normally you got to just skip
Speaker 1: through all the coots and rails and snipes.
Speaker 2: Really just got to go zero zero zero zero.
Speaker 1: But I got to hit some snipes. That's pretty felt good.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the kid at Walmart was duly impressive.
Speaker 1: Back fast.
Speaker 3: And then oh, I should also mention, so when you
Speaker 3: do that hip stuff, so that just puts you in
Speaker 3: a category. So that puts randall will be in the
Speaker 3: zero to whatever zero category, you would be in the
Speaker 3: max category, right, I was pointing to steep by the way,
Speaker 3: everybody Brownie points. But so once they do that, then
Speaker 3: they select a certain number of people from that from
Speaker 3: that that grouping and then they send out the more
Speaker 3: into it survey. So that's so the individual one doesn't
Speaker 3: really matters much. That puts you in a group. And
Speaker 3: then that's when you get that big survey. And they
Speaker 3: made it online last year for years.
Speaker 2: I got roped into that all the wings and.
Speaker 3: Ye, and so then that's when they asked you, I
Speaker 3: can't resent those people.
Speaker 1: I was into it for a year or two, but
Speaker 1: I was like, good lord man, yep.
Speaker 3: And so they'll figure out, like they'll ask you which
Speaker 3: states did you hunt in? So you'll get get how
Speaker 3: do you get picked for that?
Speaker 2: That got to be a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a it's a random It should be
Speaker 3: a random generated in each of those categories. But they
Speaker 3: don't have as many in that top end category that
Speaker 3: you find yourself in.
Speaker 2: So I was, I mean.
Speaker 1: With you, I do a lot of like, you know,
Speaker 1: my geese numbers, I'm using the zero to tenor right,
Speaker 1: you know, ducks. I guess I'll climb up into the
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty now and then I'm not a big
Speaker 1: waterfowl guy. Yeah, it's I appreciate it, But here's a
Speaker 1: waterfowl management question. To move away from hip surveys. Uh,
Speaker 1: people will point out, like I think it's widely understood
Speaker 1: that there's some kind of arrangement between states and federal Right,
Speaker 1: you can be duck hunting, you can get checked by
Speaker 1: a FED, but Feds don't check you on your deer hunting.
Speaker 2: But there's also like this, there's like an international component.
Speaker 1: That's right, but does that have any teeth or first
Speaker 1: can you explain, like what is the international component and
Speaker 1: it doesn't have any teeth? Like meaning, would Mexico ever
Speaker 1: be like, damn it, we're not getting any ducks down here.
Speaker 1: You need to change your bag limits or would we
Speaker 1: just be like mind your own business?
Speaker 3: Like yeah, So the North American Waterfowl Management Plan and
Speaker 3: it takes Canada, the US, and Mexico. Now, this is
Speaker 3: from a habitat standpoint right the north the NAYWARP or
Speaker 3: North American Waterfowl Management Plan and try to identify what
Speaker 3: are those most important places for habitat and structuring it
Speaker 3: that way. But then from an enforcement so you all
Speaker 3: three have their own regulations and laws and how they
Speaker 3: set that up.
Speaker 1: And they don't cooperate on those laws now, and so.
Speaker 3: If you think about it in Canada, everyone's like, man,
Speaker 3: how come you can shoot so many up in Canada
Speaker 3: but when they cross that line and into the United
Speaker 3: States you can't.
Speaker 2: How many can you shoot in Canada?
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of what the like, is there
Speaker 1: anything like we're at seven right now in Montana?
Speaker 2: Is there anything more than seven in Canada?
Speaker 3: Yes? Yes, absolutely one, So it's eight I think in
Speaker 3: like Saskatchewan.
Speaker 2: Do they have the three day possession limit.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think of what their possession limits are
Speaker 3: in Canada. I'm not sure. We need to look it up.
Speaker 2: But there's an eight bird limit there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an eight bird limit. No, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: think of what it is. But you can harvest more
Speaker 3: birds in Canada, but there aren't as many hunters up there,
Speaker 3: so you have a lot more waterfowl hunters in the
Speaker 3: United States, so we're going to have a much higher impact.
Speaker 3: Same with Mexico. Not nearly as many waterfowl hunters in Mexico,
Speaker 3: so their daily bag limits can be higher in Canada
Speaker 3: and Mexico, the.
Speaker 2: Pie is not getting cut up into as many So
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 4: The AI overview.
Speaker 5: I I'm sure, I'm not sure if that's right, but
Speaker 5: eight per day, as it does with four being pintails.
Speaker 5: Take that California dark geese eight per day with no
Speaker 5: more than five being white fronted.
Speaker 2: Wow, so that's double our geese.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a lot white geese twenty per day, not
Speaker 5: as much pressures fairly close and a much shorter amount
Speaker 5: of time too. You know, five sandhill cranes per day.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of me is white geese.
Speaker 4: Snows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, normally they when people say they're moving to Cannon,
Speaker 1: they're making some kind of bitchy comment about the election.
Speaker 2: But you'd be like, no, I mean because ducks.
Speaker 7: Well this is gonna say, this might make some of
Speaker 7: those Californians make good on their promises.
Speaker 4: Giant mule deer and ducks, come on, can't go wrong.
Speaker 2: Uh how is it that?
Speaker 1: Uh? How does it come to be that different states
Speaker 1: have different rags? Okay, like like like how do they
Speaker 1: weigh that out? Like I said, right here, I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is in other places right right now?
Speaker 1: I mean for years it's been like there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of restrictions, but like you're allowed seven ducks, and then
Speaker 1: we have all of those like or no more than
Speaker 1: bland so yeah, seven duck, but no more than two
Speaker 1: can be a hen mallard, no more than on a pintail.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, there can be huge discrepancies. I remember a
Speaker 5: season or two where you could kill seven ducks in Montana,
Speaker 5: but if you were in Stuttgart, Arkansas, waterfowl capital of
Speaker 5: the world, you.
Speaker 4: Could shoot a duck.
Speaker 2: A duck, A duck, a duck.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's how like I can't remember the exact situations,
Speaker 5: but it was like very duck, very Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, how's that all? How's that all divided?
Speaker 3: So I mentioned briefly earlier the flyway councils, and so
Speaker 3: because they are migratory and international and everything, you have
Speaker 3: the federal regulations, and then you also can have state regulations.
Speaker 3: So whatever the Feds come up with with, you know,
Speaker 3: you can have like next year, three pintails and you're
Speaker 3: in the liberal season. States can be more restrictive than
Speaker 3: the federal rule, but not less restrictive. So a state
Speaker 3: like Arkansas can make the decision because they have a
Speaker 3: ton of hunters, they're putting a lot of pressure, they
Speaker 3: can be they can be more restrictive trying to keep
Speaker 3: more ducks in that area. But then there's also packages
Speaker 3: that come with the Liberal package, and you can have
Speaker 3: a certain number of zones and splits in your season
Speaker 3: and everything, but there are federal regulations of if you
Speaker 3: have you know, one split and two zones, it can
Speaker 3: only be this and that. So they're in each in
Speaker 3: each area, in each flyway is different and I don't
Speaker 3: know them all, but so it is a state and
Speaker 3: federal and that fly The Flyway Council has one state
Speaker 3: representative from or one representative from each state on the
Speaker 3: Mississippi Flyway, Atlantic, all the flyways, and they serve as
Speaker 3: a vote for you know, we as a flyway, do
Speaker 3: we agree with these particular regulations for our flyway. And
Speaker 3: then that goes up and goes back to the Feds
Speaker 3: and it finishes that system. But then a state can
Speaker 3: take what was in the federal register and then they
Speaker 3: can make the decision to you know, take their packages
Speaker 3: however they want to and be more restrictive.
Speaker 1: So Arkansas could come home from that meeting and they
Speaker 1: were pushing for greater restrictions, didn't get them, But they
Speaker 1: can come home and just impose greater restrictions at home.
Speaker 3: It's their commissioners or their board however they're set up,
Speaker 3: that vote on their regulations. Each state, again is different
Speaker 3: how the regulations are set. Some might be from a
Speaker 3: legislative set, some it might be from a Fish and
Speaker 3: Wildlife commission, and so they vote. They take. Typically, which
Speaker 3: you want system to work correctly? Is the biologist, the
Speaker 3: waterfowl biologist will give the recommendation to that board and say, look,
Speaker 3: this is what we think because our green tree reservoirs
Speaker 3: aren't doing well or this or whatever reason they might
Speaker 3: have had. I don't know that situation, but and we
Speaker 3: think this is our recommendation. But sometimes the commission will
Speaker 3: make their own decision and it'll be contrary sometimes to
Speaker 3: what the bile just think to air in the side
Speaker 3: of caution or something.
Speaker 1: Man, what were the conversations in Arkansas when it got
Speaker 1: as bad as one ducky year?
Speaker 2: People had to been like just complain.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because you know it's a big duck.
Speaker 5: Hunting is very social compared to a lot of other
Speaker 5: hunting activities, right, so a lot of folks getting together
Speaker 5: in blinds and and yeah.
Speaker 4: You can only shoot duck camps. Yeah, I think that was.
Speaker 5: Where you really saw the rise of you know, like
Speaker 5: cooking and accoutrement in fancy duck blinds because he had
Speaker 5: to make more of a day out of it because
Speaker 5: it wasn't just all shooting anymore, right, Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 5: then yeah, so then and then we saw you know,
Speaker 5: then you see like your duck hunters that really want
Speaker 5: to keep hunting ducks, see them traveling a lot more
Speaker 5: when their their home water restrictions get get tighter and
Speaker 5: they're searching out those liberal regulations.
Speaker 3: Right, and then you're putting a lot of pressure in
Speaker 3: that area. And you do you have enough uh you
Speaker 3: know nutrition duck energy day, it's enough habitat to support
Speaker 3: duck energy.
Speaker 5: I really want to get into because I was trying
Speaker 5: to explain that because that's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 2: But that's how much energy you get from eating to duck.
Speaker 4: It is super food, man, it is. Yeah. A big fan.
Speaker 4: We cooked up a cup.
Speaker 5: We were hiking our butts off over the Thanksgiving weekend
Speaker 5: and I took big rice field ducks and cooked them
Speaker 5: up in the camper and yeah.
Speaker 3: Good stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh so good.
Speaker 3: That's what duck energy is.
Speaker 2: No big.
Speaker 5: But like state like South Dakota, right, that's where it's
Speaker 5: a it's a major recreational uh traveling tourism economy for hunting,
Speaker 5: and in order to try to balance out that pressure, right,
Speaker 5: they you have to draw for a specific week as
Speaker 5: a non resident to go, which we've we've done in
Speaker 5: the past and it's well worth doing. Super fun. But yeah,
Speaker 5: waterfowl complicated. Your waterfowl regulations can get pretty darn complicated.
Speaker 5: And it's like, okay, you can only shoot five we
Speaker 5: were just in Kansas. It's like, you can shoot five
Speaker 5: mallards and an odd duck. You're like, okay, well, what
Speaker 5: do you consider odd?
Speaker 4: That one had one?
Speaker 1: So I interpret that as it's a six duck limit.
Speaker 1: No more than five can be mallards.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, yeah, and then and then uh, I think
Speaker 5: it was two hens as well, so or mixed in there.
Speaker 3: And then if you're hunting public land, it could even
Speaker 3: get more you know, complicated, because they might have specific
Speaker 3: regulations for that wildlife management area or something too. So
Speaker 3: it's it Unfortunately, I think sometimes people get really nervous
Speaker 3: if they're new to waterfowl hunting. There's a lot that
Speaker 3: could maybe try to keep you from waterfowl hunting. So
Speaker 3: that's where apprentice and going with friends is so important
Speaker 3: because they're going to know the rules.
Speaker 5: And there's a w m A in Arkansas that we
Speaker 5: were right next to, and I want to say, you
Speaker 5: could only have was it twelve shells in your possession?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they'll limit however many.
Speaker 5: I love because it's like an anti skybusting type of regulation.
Speaker 2: Sure, man, you got every every shot, dude, you shoot
Speaker 2: a lot different than.
Speaker 6: Bring a single shot. That'd be a good program that
Speaker 6: you don't want.
Speaker 3: You don't want all your ducks leave in that area.
Speaker 2: Right shells?
Speaker 3: Yep?
Speaker 4: I loved it.
Speaker 3: A lot of them do it.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't.
Speaker 5: After my Wyoming hunting experience, I thought that would be
Speaker 5: a good regulation to have for rifle hunting too.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Had a traffer recently tell me that when he the
Speaker 1: guy that taught him to try, he said, the most
Speaker 1: valuable lesson he ever gave me is he says, I
Speaker 1: treat every trap like it's my only trap. If you
Speaker 1: treated every shell like it was your shell.
Speaker 2: Dude, shoot, it would be a lot different experience.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I want to know what the psychological impact
Speaker 5: would be even on a on a somebody who's a
Speaker 5: fantastic shot.
Speaker 4: If it's like okay, here's your five. Yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 4: just like how that would change?
Speaker 1: That Actually a fun game to do, man, it would.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everyone will start yelling at each other why didn't
Speaker 3: you shoot? What don't know?
Speaker 7: Why didn't you?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know, it's too far out. If you
Speaker 3: waited too long in all these ducks would be fine
Speaker 3: by and everyone'd be mad.
Speaker 1: That'd be weird to have conversations like why didn't you shoot?
Speaker 2: Rather than why did you.
Speaker 1: Because that's the normal conversation you're doing.
Speaker 5: Shot end of the season around here, especially right and
Speaker 5: like my goal, one of my recurring hunting goals is
Speaker 5: always to like end the season with my maximum possession
Speaker 5: limit of ducks so I can carry it.
Speaker 3: Through feel good about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so your freezer's got twenty one ducks in it, and.
Speaker 5: I want to want them all to be fat, you know,
Speaker 5: like that that would be like the way to hit
Speaker 5: it perfect. But and you typically are like, okay, cold weather,
Speaker 5: the ducks are going to be putting the feedback on
Speaker 5: and and but you can time your timing matters to
Speaker 5: where it's like, Okay, all of a sudden, there's a
Speaker 5: ton of birds in, but they just got there and
Speaker 5: they're really skinny.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Versus if the birds have been there for a few days,
Speaker 5: you want to get them right before they head out
Speaker 5: because that's when they're at maximum duck energy, maximum fat.
Speaker 3: Ye you have fed them, well yes, yeah yeah, And.
Speaker 5: Then so can you go into that because that's super fascinated,
Speaker 5: like how fast they burn?
Speaker 4: Oh, those calories definitely do.
Speaker 3: And and like again I was talking about that North
Speaker 3: American Waterfowl mansion plan. There's different plans that that waterfowl
Speaker 3: managers use, and they have a lot of state and
Speaker 3: regional requirements for like I don't know, it might be
Speaker 3: four hundred million duck energy days in the Mississippi Alluvia Valley.
Speaker 3: Is what's needed to sustain those ducks with duck energy
Speaker 3: days the amount of energy that one duck needs for
Speaker 3: for one day, right, and so a duck energy day
Speaker 3: and how much like an acre is by like the acre,
Speaker 3: so it's like how many duck energy days are on
Speaker 3: this acre of land and providing how much energy. So
Speaker 3: if you had a thousand ducks and you wanted them
Speaker 3: there for one one day, you need one thousand duck
Speaker 3: energy days and that one acre.
Speaker 2: So different the form of what in the form of whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the high well and each and they'll do it
Speaker 3: by groups of species, by dabblers or different different industries.
Speaker 1: It's not you're not talking about like spreading food out.
Speaker 4: Or soybeans or but it's the caloric.
Speaker 3: It's the CLOrk, yes, exactly, some kind of food.
Speaker 2: That provides really like regionally available food.
Speaker 3: That's right, yep. And so how much and so they
Speaker 3: have targets. So one hundred and ten days, I think
Speaker 3: is what they typically keep for what they want to
Speaker 3: provide the food for ducks, you know, in the Mississippi
Speaker 3: Allubis Valley for example, And so then you have to
Speaker 3: have in that whole area four hundred million duck energy
Speaker 3: days to be able to support the waterfowl population that
Speaker 3: you're expecting to come into the Mississippi Alluvia Valley or
Speaker 3: a lot of states will do it as smaller regional
Speaker 3: areas too, and they might do it for wildlife management
Speaker 3: areas different things like that. For what are the duck
Speaker 3: energy what's the requirement of the duck energy days to
Speaker 3: make sure those animals have and you know, lots of carbs,
Speaker 3: lots of other things to store that fat for their
Speaker 3: you know, migratory journey north as well.
Speaker 7: So it's it's analogous basically like a grazing unit if
Speaker 7: you're thinking in.
Speaker 2: Terms of like no cattle KYLCAF unit.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's like an aum basically, like what is this?
Speaker 7: What can this landscape sustain?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: What can it sustain? What can that by the acre?
Speaker 3: So what can that one acre? How many ducks can
Speaker 3: it support for that that time period.
Speaker 7: I was curious about this when you're talking about the
Speaker 7: variability in migration routes earlier and talking about if there's
Speaker 7: no water in the potholes, they go up to the
Speaker 7: boreal right, And when I think about animal migration, I
Speaker 7: think about the like caloric tax on the animal, especially
Speaker 7: when we talk about big game or thing about like salmon.
Speaker 7: You know, like it's something that I hadn't really considered
Speaker 7: in the waterfowl realm. But considering that their migration route
Speaker 7: could vary by hundreds of miles's season to season's imagine
Speaker 7: of striking.
Speaker 3: And then of course you know what kind of condition
Speaker 3: are they in when they get there. Now they are
Speaker 3: feeding along the way obviously, and depending on the species,
Speaker 3: you know, they'll start switching over maybe to invertebrates right
Speaker 3: before they get there to the you know, the nesting
Speaker 3: areas and to the prairies or whatnot. So they'll shift
Speaker 3: their diets and everything based on the type of food
Speaker 3: they need. But you want them to have in some
Speaker 3: of those southern states that high energy food carbohydrates to
Speaker 3: get them to get them there. But yeah, so it
Speaker 3: puts a tax on them when they're not when there's
Speaker 3: not water in the prairies, when wetlands are gone. You know,
Speaker 3: I think in the prairies, I mean depending on certain areas,
Speaker 3: it could be as high as ninety percent of the
Speaker 3: potholes or the wetlands have been lost. But in a
Speaker 3: lot of the prairies, you know, over fifty percent, fifty
Speaker 3: percent of the by the mid nineteen eighties, you know,
Speaker 3: fifty percent were lost, which is why the North American
Speaker 3: Waterfowl one of the reasons the North American Waterfowl Management
Speaker 3: Plan started was it was in nineteen eighty four, but
Speaker 3: in the mid nineteen eighties, you know, like half of
Speaker 3: all the wetlands had been lost. Of course, the United
Speaker 3: States and the lower forty eight.
Speaker 6: How much does like agricultural food sources offset that, Like.
Speaker 8: Is there it's important, Like is it possible there's more
Speaker 8: ducks now because of agriculture than there was, say two
Speaker 8: hundred years ago when the middle of the country wasn't
Speaker 8: covered in corn, And so being like, well, I can't.
Speaker 3: Go back nine.
Speaker 1: Years ago, but pick a number, like pick a known number,
Speaker 1: because that's a good question, right, Like there's more Like
Speaker 1: when grain prices are high and everybody's producing grain and
Speaker 1: all these farmers are switching to grain, Yeah, that doesn't
Speaker 1: make up for all that lost ground.
Speaker 3: No, No, because waterfould need and if the wetlands are gone, yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know, we have all the grain in the world.
Speaker 3: That time of year, they're feeding a lot on invertebrates,
Speaker 3: right because they're trying to eggshells and everything else and
Speaker 3: that protein. So they're really moving to protein that time
Speaker 3: of year. And that's what wetlands are just they are
Speaker 3: just wonderful. They'll soup.
Speaker 6: Just so there's not like around tier, like there used
Speaker 6: to be a lot of wheat production around here, and
Speaker 6: it's a lot of those fields are getting covered up
Speaker 6: in condo Like yeah.
Speaker 3: Now that's absolutely and so we work a lot, you know,
Speaker 3: because we want agriculture on the landscape. And because we
Speaker 3: don't want it to turn into condos and this and that,
Speaker 3: and so we work with and r CS, USDA and
Speaker 3: r CS, and we work with landowners and farmers and
Speaker 3: ranchers to develop programs both with federal partners, state partners,
Speaker 3: and then we have our own programs because we want
Speaker 3: to keep ranching and farming on the landscape and then
Speaker 3: working to keep wetlands and important grasslands in that landscape
Speaker 3: on there right, whether it's through incentives, through education, because
Speaker 3: soil health practices, a lot of soil health practices and
Speaker 3: other things that we can work with landowners and farmers
Speaker 3: to improve. It's going to be better for them economically,
Speaker 3: they're going to have a better crop, it's going to
Speaker 3: help with you know, sedimentation, run off, all of that.
Speaker 3: And then it's also you know, putting in cover crops
Speaker 3: and other things for waterfowl is beneficial again for them
Speaker 3: and then also for wildlife. So there's a lot of
Speaker 3: practices that we can work on with farmers and ranchers.
Speaker 3: So we want them on that landscape and they're critical,
Speaker 3: critical partners for us.
Speaker 7: There's not a lot of duck energy and condos.
Speaker 3: Not a lot of duck energy and condos.
Speaker 2: Now, when you talk about losing half of our wetlands.
Speaker 1: Can you can you being drained?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Put some numbers around that.
Speaker 1: Like start, what's the start? Like what's the starting point?
Speaker 1: You're not talking about European arrival in the New World,
Speaker 1: like there's like one.
Speaker 3: No no since like a lot of development in the US, right,
Speaker 3: and so like the Mississippi, you know, Mississippi River basin,
Speaker 3: I think it's estimates of almost eighty percent been lost
Speaker 3: of wetlands. And if you think about it, you know,
Speaker 3: flooding along the Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Over the last what does ballpark it?
Speaker 3: I'd say, what would be the year mark? I mean last.
Speaker 1: Like post World War?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know nineteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, say so,
Speaker 3: like in the Mississippi River basin, like eighty percent. But
Speaker 3: what I think a number I read, you know, by
Speaker 3: the mid nineteen eighties, I believe a number of bread
Speaker 3: is that like fifty percent in the lower forty eight
Speaker 3: were lost. And think about it, you know, draining a
Speaker 3: lot of wetlands to for building for it can be
Speaker 3: for farm ground, it can be for you name it.
Speaker 4: I mean it's reclamation districts.
Speaker 3: Right, everything so they're constantly under attack and people don't
Speaker 3: understand the not everyone understands the importance of a wetland
Speaker 3: and that they can provide so many other things other
Speaker 3: than just waterfowl habitat and habitat for lots of other
Speaker 3: you know, fish, bird species, everything. But also it helps
Speaker 3: with you know, flood attenuation if you're talking along the
Speaker 3: Mississippi River. It helps with a storm resiliency on on shorelines.
Speaker 3: It helps with clean water filtration. I mean there are
Speaker 3: they are nature's kidneys, their nature's uh sponges. They filter
Speaker 3: out phosphorus, nitrogen, all these you know. And then they
Speaker 3: also helped store water during heavy rain events to keep
Speaker 3: from flooding issues. So wetlands are really important to people
Speaker 3: and wildlife.
Speaker 5: And that's what when I started hunting Saskatchewan and Alberta
Speaker 5: a long long time ago. I haven't been up there
Speaker 5: in years for waterfowl, but the amount.
Speaker 2: Of DU work.
Speaker 5: North of the border, which was interesting too because also
Speaker 5: you would hear from people like, oh, I don't don't
Speaker 5: contribute to DU because they just spend all my money
Speaker 5: in Canada.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, but that's where.
Speaker 1: They spend all my money, right where all my ducks
Speaker 1: come from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So until the mid nineteen eighties, we did not
Speaker 3: do work in the US. We did only work in
Speaker 3: the Canadian and the prairies in Canada seriously, because that's
Speaker 3: where the majority of waterfowl were. And it was in
Speaker 3: the mid eighties again that waterfowl management plan that I
Speaker 3: was talking about started looking at Okay, we need to
Speaker 3: start not just ducks are limited, but federal, state, provincial partners,
Speaker 3: everybody coming together and saying we need to look at
Speaker 3: all of these important landscapes. And there's a lot in
Speaker 3: the US as well. So we started working the US
Speaker 3: prairies and the mid nineteen eighties, and then of course
Speaker 3: other priority landscapes from there and also down into Mexico.
Speaker 3: So that really didn't start until the mid nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: But like you said, putting the most money we can
Speaker 3: into those highest priority landscapes, which is going to be
Speaker 3: your Canadian prairies, US prairies, the boreal. But there's other
Speaker 3: critical landscapes as well that we just were talking about,
Speaker 3: as far as the importance of wintering habitat as well.
Speaker 3: So it's a lot of great programs out there, and
Speaker 3: I should go ahead and make a plug for hunters
Speaker 3: that every time you buy that duck stamp, that duck
Speaker 3: stamp goes to protecting permanent protection of wetlands in the
Speaker 3: United States. And there's a major portion of those dollars
Speaker 3: that go into the US prairies. And so that twenty
Speaker 3: five dollars stamp you're protecting putting a permanent easement on
Speaker 3: a piece of property on land that is held by
Speaker 3: the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It's part of actual
Speaker 3: the refuge system. But we have now through this program,
Speaker 3: the US Fish and Wildlife Service JV, the Joint venture
Speaker 3: Partners and others have secured protection of thirty percent of
Speaker 3: the breeding pair habitat that's necessary. So that's pretty impressive
Speaker 3: thirty percent of that nesting important critical habitat through duck stamp.
Speaker 3: So hunters are doing their part. We always say hunters
Speaker 3: pay for conservation. I mean, this is a very clear
Speaker 3: point A to point B. Ninety eight percent of the
Speaker 3: duck stamp sales go right into on the ground conservation easements.
Speaker 3: And so anybody, any enthusiast that buys a duck stamp
Speaker 3: for art or other purposes just because they like them,
Speaker 3: they are putting that money towards conservation on the ground,
Speaker 3: and it's made. I can't think another group of species
Speaker 3: or species of that size where we have been able
Speaker 3: to protect that large amount of through something through an
Speaker 3: effort like that.
Speaker 1: The guy that painted this year's duck stamp was sitting
Speaker 1: right in that seat. You're sitting in no way.
Speaker 3: So I judge. I was the judge for last year's
Speaker 3: duck stamp. Yeah, yeah, there's five judges, so I was
Speaker 3: one of them. But yeah, cool.
Speaker 1: How does Ducks Unlimited preserve save protect wetlands?
Speaker 2: I mean, do you guys? Is there a lot?
Speaker 1: Do you have a lobbying arm that does policy?
Speaker 3: Definitely?
Speaker 1: And then you also have like on the ground, like
Speaker 1: on the ground money like money spent. What will explain
Speaker 1: those different?
Speaker 4: Sorry jump in, but you also say like.
Speaker 5: The public ground and private ground, Like what the kind
Speaker 5: of the split is almost like a wh where the
Speaker 5: money goes type thing?
Speaker 4: Lobbying public private.
Speaker 1: So so we.
Speaker 3: Get a lot of public dollars that we apply for
Speaker 3: whether it's the North American Wetlands Conservation dollars, those are
Speaker 3: wetland dollars that it was enacted in nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 3: to help support that Waterfowl Management Plan, so we get
Speaker 3: a lot of money through that, But we also work
Speaker 3: a lot with NRCS, but a US Fishion Wildlife Service
Speaker 3: to work on refuges. US Fish and Wildlife Service. We
Speaker 3: work a lot with state agencies on public land. But
Speaker 3: we now have about four hundred conservation staff, so inducks unlimited,
Speaker 3: about four hundred staff are our biologists, scientists, gis. I've
Speaker 3: got a lot of engineers, engineer techs all doing this
Speaker 3: work on the ground, so on the ground habitat work
Speaker 3: on private and public land. From a public land perspective,
Speaker 3: In the last several years, we've probably had conservation practices
Speaker 3: over maybe close to six hundred thousand, yeah, about six
Speaker 3: hundred thousand acres on public land, so on National Wildlife refuges,
Speaker 3: state agencies, and a lot of those are more intensive.
Speaker 3: Projects are going to be your water, wetland enhancement, wetland creation,
Speaker 3: a lot rehabilitation, rehabilitation, a lot of that, or you know, building,
Speaker 3: you know some of that infrastructure and so you can
Speaker 3: have manipulate water levels and everything else. So there's a
Speaker 3: lot more work that goes into it. A lot of
Speaker 3: the work that we do on private land is going
Speaker 3: to be more your technical assistance or the money with
Speaker 3: that we apply for with USDA and r CS to
Speaker 3: do farm practices that benefit you know, conservation practices on
Speaker 3: farm and things like that. So it's a lot more
Speaker 3: on the private land. It's a lot more of working
Speaker 3: with farmers and ranchers and things like that. Is more
Speaker 3: that those those types of acres. And the first part
Speaker 3: of your question though I was trying to go back
Speaker 3: to real quick. You were talking about lobbying lobby Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: So what are the different.
Speaker 1: How do we influence how do you influence the loss
Speaker 1: of wetlands?
Speaker 3: So a lot of that we have a group of
Speaker 3: folks that are are policy specialists. We have some in
Speaker 3: DC and then we also have some regionally because they're
Speaker 3: going to be regional instance instances as well that we're
Speaker 3: going to have these policy experts. But we work a
Speaker 3: lot with policy makers on farm bill is a big
Speaker 3: one that we work when we work on to make
Speaker 3: sure that there's conservation practices in there. Another one is
Speaker 3: to ensure that we have complete full funding for NAKA,
Speaker 3: the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. It's enacted and it's
Speaker 3: about fifty million dollars a year for that, so they
Speaker 3: they work really hard to ensure that we have those
Speaker 3: types of dollars available to put on the ground for conservation.
Speaker 3: So they spend a lot of time working on that,
Speaker 3: and then our teams in the field, they are constantly
Speaker 3: looking for new funding sources or new partners to work with,
Speaker 3: because the more partners that you work with, the better
Speaker 3: are Like with NAKA, they've now north through North American
Speaker 3: Wetlands Conservation Act, though I think it's thirty two million
Speaker 3: acres have been conserved not just by duckson limited, but
Speaker 3: thirty two million acres have been conserved through that program.
Speaker 3: And it has spent two billion dollars. But it's a
Speaker 3: one to one matching program, so it requires for every
Speaker 3: dollar spent of federal dollars, that requires a non federal
Speaker 3: dollar and so there have been over five billion dollars
Speaker 3: raised to match that two billion dollars to put those
Speaker 3: thirty two million acres on the ground, and it takes
Speaker 3: a lot of partners. I think through that program there's
Speaker 3: over six thousand partners that have participated in that program.
Speaker 3: So every our teams are constantly looking for federal non
Speaker 3: federal nonprofit, you know, local organizations to partner with to
Speaker 3: get that habitat on the ground. It is. It is
Speaker 3: a daunting ask to.
Speaker 1: What's what's a way that it might happen. Meaning let's
Speaker 1: say I'm a farmer, okay, and I have a thousand
Speaker 1: acres and I have some wetlands, and I'm like man,
Speaker 1: I also love to hunt docs and I like to
Speaker 1: make money on my farm. And I come and and
Speaker 1: I come and say to du how can how can
Speaker 1: I be of assistance or what can I do?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: So, what measures are of disposal?
Speaker 3: Lots of things, everything from permanent protection, putting a conservation
Speaker 3: easement on that property so that it's you know, always
Speaker 3: in whatever that is as far as the number percentage
Speaker 3: of wetlands and.
Speaker 1: Grass and you guys help with that process and.
Speaker 3: We help with that process. And those easements are held
Speaker 3: by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, And those were
Speaker 3: some of the duckstamp dollars I was talking about earlier.
Speaker 3: Other things might be, well, you know, they might be
Speaker 3: interested in a conservation reserve program where they take out
Speaker 3: and that's through nrcs, and so they take out a
Speaker 3: certain percentage of their production and they put it in
Speaker 3: they plant it in grass or in something else, and
Speaker 3: so they might do that or so it's like a
Speaker 3: rental payment, or they might do equip eqip equip, and
Speaker 3: they might do rental payments for not rental payments. They
Speaker 3: might do different cost share to try to improve their
Speaker 3: property for the conservation values on there. So there's all
Speaker 3: sorts of different farm bill programs that they could be
Speaker 3: interested in, and so our team will walk through all
Speaker 3: these different programs that they have, and again Ducks Unlimited
Speaker 3: has a lot is a lot of programs as well
Speaker 3: that as long as they're doing these activities and we're
Speaker 3: cost sharing for those conservation activities, as long as they
Speaker 3: continue to do those, we're in that annual year to
Speaker 3: year contract. But that permanent protection is the best thing
Speaker 3: we can do. In our director of Operations in the
Speaker 3: Prairie Pothole Region, Johann Walker, he's always saying, all right,
Speaker 3: we've got to slow down the pace of conversion and
Speaker 3: increase the pace of protection. But there's lots of other
Speaker 3: tool rules, you know, in between that we can use
Speaker 3: that that benefit farmers and ranchers and help improve their
Speaker 3: what they're getting out of it. But then also for
Speaker 3: for wildlife and waterfowl as well.
Speaker 1: It is currently the number one risk to wetlands crop
Speaker 1: land conversion.
Speaker 3: In the Prairie Poole region.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, it's a land owner, a farmer is incentivized
Speaker 1: by prices whatever to convert to increase and convert land
Speaker 1: to egg. And so that's why I have a way
Speaker 1: to try to soften absolutely be.
Speaker 4: The same thing like.
Speaker 5: Sorry ducks, unlimited farm bill programs, nrcs, uh, they are
Speaker 5: going to also try to make sure that that farmer
Speaker 5: knows the available incentives. Yeah, not produce crops on intermint wetlands.
Speaker 5: So it doesn't need to just cost yeah, sequays to
Speaker 5: make of that. It doesn't just cost the land.
Speaker 7: You can do the right time for wildlife without affecting
Speaker 7: the bottom line.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because a lot of times the wetlands, even though
Speaker 3: it might be dry, it might look dry that year
Speaker 3: kind of thing that that's not going to be your
Speaker 3: most productive soil for for crop. It is going to
Speaker 3: be your most productive for wildlife, but not necessarily for crop.
Speaker 3: Those are usually not the same thing. And so the
Speaker 3: education and working with them and a lot of our
Speaker 3: farmers they love seeing the ducks on the landscape and
Speaker 3: they love being able to help and it's like.
Speaker 5: Help my bottom number that as much as driving in
Speaker 5: a straight line, pain in the butt to go.
Speaker 3: Around that wetland. You're driving this big equipment and everything,
Speaker 3: and it's a pain in the butt to go around
Speaker 3: those wetlands. So yeah, we have to find ways to
Speaker 3: incentivize landowners to want to keep wetlands in certain grasslands intact.
Speaker 3: And there's there's lots of ways to do that, and
Speaker 3: it's it's through these great partnerships, our federal and state
Speaker 3: partnerships and partnerships with the owners that make it happen.
Speaker 4: Do you what do you think about.
Speaker 5: North American Grasslands Conservation Act. I think that's getting towards
Speaker 5: a workable state something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's interesting because it's it's gone back
Speaker 3: and forth, back and forth, and I know there's a
Speaker 3: lot of it's being modeled off of well, yeah, off
Speaker 3: of NAKA and what works necessarily in this program will
Speaker 3: it work here? And so I think it's it's definitely
Speaker 3: evolving and becoming something that I mean, it's critical. There's
Speaker 3: lots of grassland species that need protection and you can see,
Speaker 3: I mean the three billion Bird Report. Right, you have
Speaker 3: a lot of species that have been declining, you know,
Speaker 3: since the nineteen seventies, and a lot of them are
Speaker 3: grassland species. Now NAKA there's a lot that goes into
Speaker 3: grasslands as well through through NAKA funding. And when we
Speaker 3: look at some of those priority landscapes that we want
Speaker 3: to protect, a lot of them we look at duck pairs, right,
Speaker 3: how many breeding how many pairs of breeding ducks are
Speaker 3: going to be in that landscape, and we want to
Speaker 3: target the highest numbers, you know, the highest the one
Speaker 3: hundred duct pays. But with that come like fifteen to
Speaker 3: twenty different other grassland bird species that use that same landscape.
Speaker 3: So it's not just one thing that we're looking at
Speaker 3: or the other. Any any kind of conservation funding opportunities
Speaker 3: that we can provide that have these great public private
Speaker 3: partnerships associated with them for conservation. The more of that
Speaker 3: that we can get, I think, the better off we're
Speaker 3: going to have.
Speaker 5: And that's where like some of the social cost of
Speaker 5: using wetland comes in, because most people are like, well,
Speaker 5: wetland is only a wetland if it's wet, Yes. And
Speaker 5: then also that fringe area around the wetland with the
Speaker 5: grass like, there's a lot of waterfowl species that that
Speaker 5: nest in that. That's right, right, and so far are
Speaker 5: they going to go yeah, yep, But it's like, well
Speaker 5: it's not wet.
Speaker 3: Conservation is not a simple it's not a simple thing
Speaker 3: and it it really takes a large group of people
Speaker 3: kind of pulling in the harness together to make it happen.
Speaker 1: You know who I think deserves a little credit I
Speaker 1: make I make a lot of jokes about.
Speaker 2: Golf. Well, very famous golfer.
Speaker 1: Sat in that seat, which one my husband, the butcher Brian,
Speaker 1: the butcher hermit. Anyways, you know who deserves some credit?
Speaker 1: Is there golf course by my house? It's a duck factory. Really,
Speaker 1: all those little ponds they made, yea, every one of
Speaker 1: those ponds and they have like some great nesting success,
Speaker 1: every one of those ponds full of chicks. Also, do
Speaker 1: they fake ponds?
Speaker 3: Do they put a lot of like edge around that pond?
Speaker 3: Do they are they shallow? Did they did they do
Speaker 3: that specifically?
Speaker 6: Especially a wetland before it was a golf course?
Speaker 1: Are like there's a bunch of spring fat ponds and
Speaker 1: they do they kick off a lot of ducks.
Speaker 4: But when you see that little.
Speaker 1: There, did you guys weigh in on the ducks unlimited
Speaker 1: way in on this the sort of political ping pong
Speaker 1: ball of woatas waters.
Speaker 2: The United States?
Speaker 1: The states, So can I take try to can we
Speaker 1: test my ability to explain this?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: The United States, the federal government declares like sovereignty over
Speaker 1: certain waterways, meaning like like for instance, if a private
Speaker 1: landowner owns both sides of the Mississippi, they can't say
Speaker 1: no more shipping up and down my river, right because
Speaker 1: the US has jurisdiction over the waterway. And there's a
Speaker 1: political ping pong about how far up river into non
Speaker 1: navigable or barely navigable.
Speaker 2: Water does the US have jurisdiction?
Speaker 1: And could there be a thing where US jurisdiction extends
Speaker 1: all way up into the headwaters in the wetlands, and
Speaker 1: they could exert the federal the federal government could exercise
Speaker 1: some management rights over marshes and wetlands that form the rivers.
Speaker 1: So extending up the Mississippi beyond navigation, put up into
Speaker 1: the sources of the Mississippi and use that as a
Speaker 1: way to preserve wetlands. And when I say a political
Speaker 1: ping pong ball. It seems to like always be in
Speaker 1: the news of a new administration interpreting it differently. One
Speaker 1: administration be like, oh, no, it goes all the way
Speaker 1: to the marsh, and the other next administration, no, it
Speaker 1: ends at navigability, and it seems to be always in
Speaker 1: the news. It's never quite resolved. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: political hot this is a hot issue. What's been your guys'
Speaker 1: attitude about this conversation?
Speaker 3: So, what we've been trying to do is working with
Speaker 3: the states on what their wetland regulations and laws and
Speaker 3: rules will be, because that's really where it the end
Speaker 3: of the day, because you're right, it's gonna it's this
Speaker 3: ping pong back and forth, back and forth. But if
Speaker 3: you're working with the states and working with the you know,
Speaker 3: the landowners and those rules in those states, that's probably
Speaker 3: how we're going to be able to to kind of
Speaker 3: get through this as far as so you can take.
Speaker 1: Action now that doesn't get done or undone, right every
Speaker 1: time the political winds change, that's right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yep, because states have their own you know, regulations now,
Speaker 3: especially with the latest change.
Speaker 1: So you, uh, when I was talk about lobbying earlier
Speaker 1: ducks unlimited will will at times try to influence regulation
Speaker 1: about wetland development.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we work a lot more, i'd say, on the
Speaker 3: funding for wetlands conservation and from that standpoint, and.
Speaker 2: So so you spend more time with the carrot than
Speaker 2: the stick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot more time with the carrot than the stick,
Speaker 3: because it gets gets you a lot long, gets you
Speaker 3: a lot further. We've you know, in the last five years,
Speaker 3: developed an e strategic plan if you look at everywhere
Speaker 3: that is important for waterfowl. If you take our landscape
Speaker 3: conservation priorities and I put that map down in front
Speaker 3: of you, and then you took an AG map in
Speaker 3: the United States and you laid that over it, it's
Speaker 3: almost exactly the same. Yeah, you're talking about earlier exactly
Speaker 3: more rural people.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So so it's it is critical that we have strong
Speaker 3: relationships and partnerships with with with the AG and ranching.
Speaker 1: So metro Chicago doesn't pop up now, not too much.
Speaker 1: You're important for duck zone.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's a strong DU chapter there.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of strong du chapters.
Speaker 1: That's a good point about it's an interesting point about
Speaker 1: the need to.
Speaker 2: The need to.
Speaker 1: Have the build of work with agricultural interests. When if
Speaker 1: you if you you're right, if you look at like
Speaker 1: where birds are coming from, it's agricultural landscapes.
Speaker 2: So I may edgine if an organization was.
Speaker 1: Just sort of uh perceived as being vehemently anti egg,
Speaker 1: you might wind up having a hard time to work.
Speaker 3: In egg country, might be hard to work in a country.
Speaker 3: So you know, there are there are disincentives that I
Speaker 3: think are important to keep, you know, and incentives that
Speaker 3: are important to keep. And I think it's a balance
Speaker 3: of those two things to ensure we get that right.
Speaker 2: I'll come.
Speaker 3: So there are there aren't disincentives in place, but like
Speaker 3: swampbuster and everything else that are important. But what that
Speaker 3: is is it's you know, keeping if if you're a
Speaker 3: farmer and you're in farm build programs, right and you're
Speaker 3: getting something from a farm build program, you can't plow
Speaker 3: under a wetland or drain a wetland. So that's type
Speaker 3: a type of a disincentive, but then incentives for some
Speaker 3: of the things I was talking about with conservation reserve
Speaker 3: program or equip or wetland reserve easement where you're putting
Speaker 3: your land permanently in an easement protection or you know.
Speaker 5: Well, it's like there's not a necessarily like a one
Speaker 5: size fits all never deal too, because between like the
Speaker 5: state and the federal programs, you could have the ability
Speaker 5: to leave that intermittent wetland alone most of the time,
Speaker 5: but you could you could take hay off of it,
Speaker 5: you could graze it, but at certain times a year
Speaker 5: that that fit in God with the breeding nesting program.
Speaker 3: Glad you brought that up. And it's not a one
Speaker 3: size fits all. I mean, that's a really good point.
Speaker 3: And so each state is going to be different. So
Speaker 3: North Dakota, South Dakota, what programs are available, what's allowed
Speaker 3: not allowed.
Speaker 5: And sometimes it's your flyway too, right Like if you're
Speaker 5: in an area that's trying to bring back sandhill crane, yep,
Speaker 5: certain properties along that flyway are going to pay more
Speaker 5: for all these programs.
Speaker 3: And the great thing about these programs and even an easement,
Speaker 3: you know, if they're voluntary, of course, but if you
Speaker 3: put an easeman on your property, the landowner can still
Speaker 3: use the land and it's but then it's that being
Speaker 3: able to be there for habitat, for waterfound other species,
Speaker 3: for generations.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a buddy of mine, big farmer in South Dakota.
Speaker 5: He like, it's the most awesome, feel good story ever.
Speaker 5: He started just getting into these programs because it made
Speaker 5: more financial sense than trying to farm this stuff. And
Speaker 5: he's like, yeah, we remove the diesel fuel, removed the
Speaker 5: seed costs, the nitrogen costs, all these costs to farm
Speaker 5: something marginal to not get a return. But we also
Speaker 5: don't have to turn our steering wheel start picking up
Speaker 5: a couple of bucks for different things. Saw some good improvement,
Speaker 5: saw crazy stuff happen, Like all of a sudden, they
Speaker 5: had prairie chickens on the ranch, and it's like it's
Speaker 5: because we were in this state program. Oh, super cool
Speaker 5: that you know, incentivized native grasses.
Speaker 4: So you saw it good.
Speaker 5: Drought tolerants increase, fire tolerants increase. And then the other
Speaker 5: cool thing that they saw increase was just family interest
Speaker 5: in the farm because it's like, well, twenty years ago,
Speaker 5: there was nothing else to look at other than the
Speaker 5: row you were hoing, basically, and now there's like deer
Speaker 5: running around, there's lots of birds, there's raptors, all sorts
Speaker 5: of wildlife increase, and the interest level from you know,
Speaker 5: the the small family members who don't really care about
Speaker 5: the financial part of things.
Speaker 4: They're like, oh, this is a cool.
Speaker 2: Place to be, yep.
Speaker 1: But then you get one of those guys drives round,
Speaker 1: pissed off all the time.
Speaker 3: Farm Yeah, well it's it's the farm. Farm the best
Speaker 3: and leave the rest right. But I love coming to
Speaker 3: the prairies and listening to the stories. You know, so
Speaker 3: cattle and ducks go really well together, and they both
Speaker 3: need grass and everything, and so I come. I love
Speaker 3: coming to the prairies and listening to the testimonials of
Speaker 3: some of these folks that you know, drained a wetland
Speaker 3: years ago with their great grandfather, but then are putting
Speaker 3: it back and they love the family interest and the
Speaker 3: kids are enjoying it. But then, you know, or some
Speaker 3: of them that decide, I'm gonna we're going to into ranching,
Speaker 3: and they convert, you know, from farming from crop to
Speaker 3: to ranching, and takes a ton of money for them
Speaker 3: to do it, and they're probably losing money and not
Speaker 3: always in the best spot. But then there's programs that
Speaker 3: are available to help them out or putting in practices
Speaker 3: on that working farm that are going to protect wetlands,
Speaker 3: and so it's pretty fun to listen to the testimonials,
Speaker 3: just like you were just saying to your buddy that
Speaker 3: of of what happens too when they joined some of
Speaker 3: these programs.
Speaker 1: I got too quick ducks, unlimited banquet stories for you.
Speaker 3: I love these. I can't wait.
Speaker 2: One time I was in the market for.
Speaker 1: A new fish finder, yeah, and I was able to
Speaker 1: buy a I was buying it anyway, buying it anyway,
Speaker 1: but I was able to buy a thousand dollars gift
Speaker 1: card to bass Pro shops for seven hundred dollars. It
Speaker 1: was like I basically bought one thousand dollars for seven
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. My other story bottomless beer for ten dollars.
Speaker 2: My other story is just my buddy Ryan.
Speaker 1: He was at one of those and he was drunk
Speaker 1: and he was bidden on something, but he was in
Speaker 1: his mind he was buying what was up next?
Speaker 2: Oh no, so he's looking at what's up next.
Speaker 4: It's like, I can't believe nobody else is going on.
Speaker 1: I was like bidden and bidden, and he wins, and
Speaker 1: his buddy's like, what the hell you want that? Because
Speaker 1: they're like in another state.
Speaker 2: He's like, what do you want that picnic table for bad?
Speaker 3: Oh my god? Whatever was yep, He's like, I.
Speaker 1: Was bidding on that.
Speaker 2: That'll happen. That'll happen.
Speaker 3: I love our banquets and really get so many support
Speaker 3: through them. And people come in, well they come for
Speaker 3: the party, but then they stayed for the ducks.
Speaker 2: A carnival for adults.
Speaker 1: It is. It's a lot of fun. Is that still
Speaker 1: functioning good? Like, oh yeah, because COVID probably killed it
Speaker 1: for a while, right, You would have.
Speaker 3: Thought, man, are that team? They are absolutely incredible. David Schustler,
Speaker 3: he's the chief of that that team. They pivoted so fast.
Speaker 3: We're like, okay, guys, we're going to be shut down.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking I will be shut down for a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks. It all come back. He had different ideas.
Speaker 3: So they went to all this online stuff almost immediately
Speaker 3: and the like and everyone's sitting at home look up
Speaker 3: for something to do. And we had all sorts of
Speaker 3: different interactive ways for people to join online. And then
Speaker 3: as soon as we could go back outside, they were
Speaker 3: setting up big tents and you know, going state by state.
Speaker 3: They I don't know if they slept much during during
Speaker 3: that time, but they were actually able to keep our
Speaker 3: events system rolling. And then we had our major donors.
Speaker 3: I cannot tell you how important our volunteers and our
Speaker 3: major donors are. Like I was talking about all the
Speaker 3: match for all these programs. I think we had one
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy six million dollars in public dollars last
Speaker 3: year our team brought in. But that takes a bunch
Speaker 3: of match. And our donors are incredible, and how our
Speaker 3: philanthropists that give. But then also everybody that goes to
Speaker 3: an event and the money that that first dollar comes
Speaker 3: in an event and the dollars that they spend there,
Speaker 3: how that goes to conservation. It's a pretty incredible organization.
Speaker 3: It's been a lot of fun the last five years
Speaker 3: and looking for many more. But I didn't realize before
Speaker 3: I came to work for Ducks Unlimited, that passion that
Speaker 3: is with all of those volunteers, with the staff, with
Speaker 3: our major donors, And they really came through in COVID.
Speaker 3: Our major donors stepped up like they never had before
Speaker 3: to make sure that Ducks Unlimited was going to be
Speaker 3: able to make it through it.
Speaker 1: So my friend Mark here in town, he made a
Speaker 1: rule a couple of years ago that he let a
Speaker 1: lot of people hunt on his place, but you can't
Speaker 1: hunt his place unless you're a Do you remember I
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: That's great, he's got some there.
Speaker 2: No, I no, which reminds me I took.
Speaker 1: I got to make sure my kids are still up
Speaker 1: because I kind of extended it to my kids. But
Speaker 1: I got to make sure I didn't violate his rules.
Speaker 1: Went out there for the check a couple.
Speaker 4: That's why you just got to get that lifetime membership.
Speaker 3: Right to have a membership for him right here.
Speaker 7: You'll never have to worry about it again.
Speaker 1: I did like I did lifetime at Turkey Federation. I
Speaker 1: did lifetime at Rocky Mount Elk Foundation. But I should
Speaker 1: do my lifetime at DU. My next lifetime should be
Speaker 1: DU lifetime.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, or you can just annually, you know support.
Speaker 5: That's the covey of the lifetime membership. Yeah, because a
Speaker 5: lot of people think they're done.
Speaker 3: No, No, there's no lifetime membership. It's you're never done.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: How much do you guys get? How much public money
Speaker 1: from all you guys efforts?
Speaker 3: That's it was around one hundred and seventy five seventy
Speaker 3: six million. Our team spends a lot of time writing
Speaker 3: a lot of grants and it's like I said, it's diverse.
Speaker 3: We don't just one type of funding. And that's that's
Speaker 3: something that we all need to be thinking about. Are
Speaker 3: what are those funding opportunities, like all the other benefits
Speaker 3: that wetlands provide, what types of funding opportunities and streams
Speaker 3: can come from that as well, because we need to
Speaker 3: be able to diversify. Unfortunately, we probably aren't going to
Speaker 3: have as many hunters sitting around the table and however
Speaker 3: many years I hope I'm wrong, But how do we
Speaker 3: get other people to understand the importance of the conservation
Speaker 3: work because I do think you know, sportsmen are our
Speaker 3: first conservationists, and so how do we encourage other people
Speaker 3: to have that same interest in the like whether it's
Speaker 3: turkeys or mule deer or National Deer Association, whoever it is.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of interest. Because there's only a million
Speaker 1: dock hunters, right, I did one hundred and seventy five
Speaker 1: million public dollars, But yeah, what's that?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean as far as duck hunters, you know,
Speaker 3: and how many members we have, there's probably more duck
Speaker 3: hunters but you're right, it's like.
Speaker 2: A lot of it's a lot of per like because
Speaker 2: you know how many duck stamps get bought.
Speaker 7: I was going to say, like you always hear people
Speaker 7: talk about, Oh, anybody can buy a duck stamp. I'm
Speaker 7: curious how many.
Speaker 2: It's five people.
Speaker 7: Well, that's my suspicion, but I'm wondering.
Speaker 1: If you have any insight in Well, Max Barta buys
Speaker 1: one for his dog.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well there's people that buy.
Speaker 3: I buy several, Yeah, because I want one to keep,
Speaker 3: and then I want one that i've got.
Speaker 7: I buy multiples because I forgot I already.
Speaker 1: Bought one, I lose them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: But I think it's probably I mean, there are exceptions.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a probably a pretty clean.
Speaker 3: I don't know, because there I was really surprised when
Speaker 3: I did the duck stamp judging last year, which I
Speaker 3: thought was like the coolest thing ever. By the way,
Speaker 3: I didn't realize how cool it was, but there were
Speaker 3: a lot of art enthusiasts that we're kind of like
Speaker 3: chiming in on that online thing. I went and looked
Speaker 3: at it later that nothun or that are not hunters
Speaker 3: now I don't know it's them well count all ten
Speaker 3: of them, but it is, I mean it is. The
Speaker 3: majority is going to be hunters and have been doing it,
Speaker 3: you know, for since what the first one ding Darling
Speaker 3: and nineteen thirty four. I should have that off the
Speaker 3: top of my head. But it's mostly going to be
Speaker 3: your duck hunters.
Speaker 2: You know what Cal and I are going to do.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know this yet, but when we retire, I
Speaker 1: got a couple of things on my list that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do with my retirement project.
Speaker 4: But we're going to give you a dog.
Speaker 1: No, I'm going to try to establish a I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to establish a universal Blaze orange requirement of a
Speaker 1: hat no more than a hat, A hat, hat orange hat.
Speaker 7: I've seen quite a few Montana hunters out there already
Speaker 7: are on board with that.
Speaker 1: Not because because when you're wearing a vest and you're
Speaker 1: trying to change your clothes, it's just too much.
Speaker 2: Just a hat. A hat's great, see that hat orange.
Speaker 4: I know the hat's got the same issue though, It's
Speaker 4: like every time I'm always to.
Speaker 3: Ye putting something else on.
Speaker 1: I write a book about how it's okay to hate
Speaker 1: Shakespeare and then I wanna Then then I want to
Speaker 1: work on cal and I want to work on a
Speaker 1: public service thing to get the water fouling community to
Speaker 1: take field care.
Speaker 2: Of their ducks more.
Speaker 1: Seriously spread As you demonstrated today, they are exceptionally generous
Speaker 1: with their conservation dollars. But I think that as a group,
Speaker 1: I have like as a group, I can't think of
Speaker 1: a more egregious and I'm like, I like the hundred
Speaker 1: ducks yesterday, geese and ducks. I can't think of a
Speaker 1: more egregious group of people when it comes to utilization
Speaker 1: of the resource.
Speaker 4: Really, you remember the dinner.
Speaker 1: I can't think of a more egregious group, a more
Speaker 1: generous but egregious group of.
Speaker 5: People, the dinner that we had when we when we
Speaker 5: came out for the h the survey of release two
Speaker 5: years ago. Like, if there's just more of that going on,
Speaker 5: Like people are like, oh, here's my recipe, here's what
Speaker 5: I do, more of that type of sharing that's pretty
Speaker 5: dark limited in.
Speaker 3: The field, saying once they.
Speaker 1: Utilization of you gotta explain, okay, come on, well okay,
Speaker 1: for instance, well not for instance, here here's the thing.
Speaker 4: That I look at ways to use the Dutch.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe that our state did this. Our state
Speaker 1: used to have salvage that we have salvage requirements in
Speaker 1: the state. Okay, many states of salvage requirements. They actually
Speaker 1: lowered the salvage requirement, meaning on a mallard sized bird,
Speaker 1: you were required to keep the thighs. You're required to
Speaker 1: keep the breast meat in the thighs. And one day
Speaker 1: they also said, like you know, you know, like now
Speaker 1: it's okay just to throw that in the garbage.
Speaker 4: Got to keep the brass, don't have to retain what.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like like among I think it's it's triggered
Speaker 1: by a bunch of things. There's the there's the strictly
Speaker 1: enforced and I'm not saying you should get away with it,
Speaker 1: the strictly enforced possession limit thing where people like if
Speaker 1: you're out hunting ducks for a week, but you can
Speaker 1: only have three days of possession. I think it inspires
Speaker 1: a lot of people to try to find ways to
Speaker 1: offload ducks. And there's just so many stories of guys
Speaker 1: looking off bridges and there's hundreds of snow geese carcasses,
Speaker 1: Like it's just like it's just like as a community,
Speaker 1: I think the waterfowl community as a community is very
Speaker 1: poor about utilizing the meat from the birds. And I
Speaker 1: have not not wanting to do, like, not wanting to
Speaker 1: do any kind of work.
Speaker 7: You shouldn't feel compelled to uh to agree with him?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, I'm not going to know. I
Speaker 3: have not seen that. However, what I no, I haven't.
Speaker 5: Honestly, you should read the comments I'll pluck a duck
Speaker 5: and put it on Instagram, and you should read the
Speaker 5: hateful comments about how much time that takes the fans
Speaker 5: that that someone would take the time to pluck a duck.
Speaker 3: Why do they care if you pluck it's the internet. Yes,
Speaker 3: that doesn't make it. But you know, there are things
Speaker 3: that I think to your point of recipes, and we
Speaker 3: do a lot of stuff in the magazine and online.
Speaker 3: We could do it. We could do it probably with
Speaker 3: our podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm not blaming I'm not blaming du For some someday
Speaker 1: I want to do like a public service thing about
Speaker 1: like how darks taste is gonna be called darks taste
Speaker 1: really good?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, there useduld be the old joke of
Speaker 3: you know, the best way to cook a goose. You know,
Speaker 3: you put it on this more and then and then
Speaker 3: you keep them board right yep, So which is totally
Speaker 3: not true. I have eaten some damn good uh geese
Speaker 3: and some damn good ducks over the last however many
Speaker 3: years of my life, and it is in the preparation
Speaker 3: of it and everything else, just like I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: I hear a lot of you know, even deer hunters. Well,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of stuff they got to cut through
Speaker 3: on the on the shoulder, so I don't keep the
Speaker 3: shoulder meat. Now, hold on a second, so you could
Speaker 3: do this, you could grind it up. So there's all
Speaker 3: sorts of things that we could all learn from each
Speaker 3: other if maybe we had that better community of here
Speaker 3: are things that you can do. I mean, squirrel hunters,
Speaker 3: a lot of squirrel hunters are like, oh, it's a
Speaker 3: lot of work to to you know, clean a fox squirrel.
Speaker 3: There's so much harder than gray squirrels. I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: then don't shoot the damn fox squirrel. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: if you don't want to clean, don't shoot it.
Speaker 5: Run out of the butcher shop, spend sixty dollars on
Speaker 5: the nicest rear by a steak you can fine and then.
Speaker 4: Cover it and hair and bile.
Speaker 2: And let.
Speaker 4: Yuh and then tell me what you think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you know what, I regret. I regret.
Speaker 2: I regret.
Speaker 1: Bring that up and act like that's your problem. I
Speaker 1: think the whole show. But I want to reapproach it.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying it, you know, but.
Speaker 2: I want to reapproach it. I want to say this.
Speaker 2: I want to have Phil remove all that and it'll
Speaker 2: just be me saying that, man, a well handled.
Speaker 1: Duck is damn good. It is just really good. It
Speaker 1: is really good.
Speaker 3: It is. It is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: And when you take geese breasts and make pastrami, it's
Speaker 1: really really good.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 4: Take all that out, Phil Reuben Sandwich.
Speaker 2: It seems like I kind of ruined the whole show,
Speaker 2: didn't it.
Speaker 3: No, No, no, no, no, just picking on duck hunters,
Speaker 3: that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1: No, but I was praising duck hunters, but I was
Speaker 1: praising them about the how how generous and dedicated they are.
Speaker 4: My litmus test is.
Speaker 5: Though, like when somebody's like, oh, yeah, you like to
Speaker 5: hunt ducks, we should come hume, I'm like, cool, how do.
Speaker 2: You cook them?
Speaker 5: Seriously, and to this day, one of the best duck
Speaker 5: hunting connections I've ever made was from that exact conversation,
Speaker 5: being like, well, this is what we do, and I
Speaker 5: was like, Okay, we can talk more.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, so is really good.
Speaker 1: Far be it from me to stereotype, but I'll tell
Speaker 1: you you want to see some the ones. I know.
Speaker 1: The cages are some duck eating, yes, duck prepared man, Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean they eat the beak. Yeah, that's that. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to go positive. I'm trying to be like du
Speaker 1: and go care it not the stick trying to go positive?
Speaker 1: Ruined the whole show?
Speaker 2: Was that bad? Phil? When I brought it up, it
Speaker 2: seemed like a like kind of deflated everything.
Speaker 4: Well, there have been occurrences in the past that I
Speaker 4: think you probably should have had that reaction to. I
Speaker 4: don't think this is I actually.
Speaker 7: Think I actually think saying that this this was the
Speaker 7: line calling this for the time, saying that you've ruined
Speaker 7: the show, I think is doing more.
Speaker 1: Smith is coming up at the hole deeper. As we
Speaker 1: were on the way down here, Cal and I were
Speaker 1: talking about this issue. Yes, yeah, that was they's I
Speaker 1: came in the room with it on the mind. You know,
Speaker 1: there's just like someone had shared an anecdote.
Speaker 3: I care if it's a local thing that you're seeing here.
Speaker 3: I think it's a local thing, like I promise you.
Speaker 3: I hunt mostly in the South, but I've hunted other
Speaker 3: places as well, and I don't see that. I see
Speaker 3: it as like everyone comes back to the duck camp
Speaker 3: and what are we going to have? It's gonna be duck.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know that's it's cooked.
Speaker 5: But I think it's regional cultures, right, and there's you know,
Speaker 5: like you know, it's like people who don't have the
Speaker 5: experience or they're trying to get into it, and they
Speaker 5: don't already even do what a lot of us would would.
Speaker 5: You know, they're they're preparing things out of the box
Speaker 5: versus cooking something. You know, they're they're very instruction based,
Speaker 5: Like they have a very hard time grasping any sort
Speaker 5: of bird.
Speaker 3: Right last time I checked, everybody wants to be like
Speaker 3: meat eater and they want to you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm joking aside, you guys do a really good job
Speaker 3: of bringing that to the table, right literally to the table,
Speaker 3: as far as you know, the the that importance and
Speaker 3: that full cycle in what you do. I think you
Speaker 3: know you ducks unlimited. Other people like that. Whatever the
Speaker 3: game species is talking about, that that importance of being
Speaker 3: off the landscape and and it providing that that wonderful
Speaker 3: protein that we all crave so much.
Speaker 2: Excellent. That's good.
Speaker 3: See how I.
Speaker 2: No, it's good. We were talking about the other day
Speaker 2: what someone needs to make an invention of is.
Speaker 3: That, besides the flat tree I already invented.
Speaker 1: That is a machine if you could come up with
Speaker 1: this is a machine that you put docs into. Okay,
Speaker 1: and you turn the machine out in the morning, you
Speaker 1: got duck sausage sticks waiting for you on the other end.
Speaker 7: Good luck with that.
Speaker 1: I like it. I'm trying to, just like you, wake
Speaker 1: up in the morning and just let machines shut down
Speaker 1: and it's just just pepperoni sticks.
Speaker 3: Man. Let me tell you, I am the most popular
Speaker 3: person at Christmas right now because I have a lot
Speaker 3: of duck sausage.
Speaker 1: And it is so freaking good. When Cow and I
Speaker 1: were talking, we were talking about this very thing, and
Speaker 1: I was saying, like, it doesn't matter any idea about
Speaker 1: whether you like ducks or not.
Speaker 2: Everybody likes pepperoni. Sticks.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So if you go duck hunting, get all your duck breasts,
Speaker 1: put them in a pile and make a bunch of
Speaker 1: pepperoni sticks. No damn good because like everybody likes those.
Speaker 3: Put a bunch of you know, honey in there. Make them.
Speaker 1: See So then at the end of the duck seas
Speaker 1: you got, you got twenty pounds of pepperoni sticks. You
Speaker 1: drive around, eat do that.
Speaker 3: There you go. They make great Chris gifts. Everybody wants.
Speaker 2: There you go, pepperoni stick.
Speaker 4: Get crazy pickling Brian afterwards, Oh I.
Speaker 2: Never heard really. Oh yeah, pickle, pepperoni sticks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pickle, pickle, the sausage ext your.
Speaker 1: Salt, get right, because like in the old days, you
Speaker 1: go and do a bar and you'd have the sausage
Speaker 1: and the pickle jar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good stuff.
Speaker 2: Since I quit drinking, I forgot about that. And the
Speaker 2: really good bar would have eggs and a pickle jar.
Speaker 1: They'd have sausages and.
Speaker 4: The pi wizzards.
Speaker 3: You not have chicken feet and stuff like.
Speaker 1: That where I grew No, no, we had a lot
Speaker 1: of smoke stuff, but pickling wasn't huge in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: No great, And what else is there anything? I didn't
Speaker 1: ask you about. I don't know.
Speaker 3: There's all sorts of things. We could play this game
Speaker 3: all day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, probably a lot of things that didn't ask you about.
Speaker 1: But is there any like super pressing thing that I
Speaker 1: should I should have brought up?
Speaker 3: No, I think we covered a lot of great stuffy,
Speaker 3: been fun.
Speaker 1: It's been educational because man, I hate any kind of
Speaker 1: story about you know, wildlife going downhill over the years,
Speaker 1: and it's distressing to think of all that wetlands loss.
Speaker 3: It is, it is very distressing, and so I think
Speaker 3: it's it's obviously what we do at Ducks Unlimited. We
Speaker 3: think about it every day because it is we you know,
Speaker 3: part of our mission and our vision is to make
Speaker 3: sure that it's here for that waterfowl, here for many
Speaker 3: generations to enjoy.
Speaker 1: When you crystal ball it, do you think, what's your prediction,
Speaker 1: you know, like in a hundred years, if people going
Speaker 1: to hunt ducks?
Speaker 3: Yeah, ducks one hundred years, absolutely, and we're going to
Speaker 3: have waterfowl filling this guys too. And it's because of hunters,
Speaker 3: it's because of you know, conservation enthusiasts. A lot of reasons.
Speaker 3: Organizations like Ducks Unlimited and many other conservation organizations. We're
Speaker 3: going to have it.
Speaker 1: So in one hundred years they'll be driving around eating
Speaker 1: duck pepperoni stacks.
Speaker 2: You are.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a great article. This came out a long time.
Speaker 4: You've probably read it, but.
Speaker 5: There's this guy's talking about his lamenting living in a
Speaker 5: big city and he's missing waterfowl season. But you know,
Speaker 5: life has him working in a big city and he
Speaker 5: steps out onto the subway platform and there's a via
Speaker 5: geese going over and he's looking up at this via geese.
Speaker 5: Then he, for whatever reasons, kind of scans the crowd
Speaker 5: out there and finds the.
Speaker 4: One other person going like this. He's like that, that
Speaker 4: was my waterfowl hunter. But you know, we need folks
Speaker 4: in the in the big cities to clue in on
Speaker 4: stuff like this too.
Speaker 1: So so let's do let's do a checklist. Like if
Speaker 1: you're going if you're a duck hunter, you got to
Speaker 1: buy your duck stamp. You gotta buy you so you
Speaker 1: got to do that anyways, and that's like that, that's a.
Speaker 2: Lot of funding for wetlands.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, if your duck hunters probably joined Ducks Unlimited, because
Speaker 1: if you go on duck hunting.
Speaker 2: You want to get ducks.
Speaker 1: If you want to get ducks, you need wetlands and
Speaker 1: Ducks Unlimited does wetlands work?
Speaker 3: You got it?
Speaker 2: So there's that. If you like to have fun, go
Speaker 2: to the banquets.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Like I said, it's a carnival for grown ups.
Speaker 3: And you can win a picnic table.
Speaker 2: See, you can win like a truck.
Speaker 1: I mean, how many guys you know have been hunting
Speaker 1: their whole lives don't have guns from the du banquet?
Speaker 3: Yeah, or prints or whatever. My silverware is Ducks Unlimited silverware.
Speaker 1: Sure, for peep's sake. My old man had an ithaca.
Speaker 1: He had an ithaca father twenty gage and guess where
Speaker 1: that came from.
Speaker 2: Uh So do that.
Speaker 1: Go to the banquets and hang out, and then if
Speaker 1: you got it, if you can swing some extra jingle
Speaker 1: in your duck hunter, like make some donations up above
Speaker 1: and beyond your membership, because the membership is pretty inexpensive.
Speaker 1: Yes it is.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like a.
Speaker 3: Foot in the door, but the door and it's critically
Speaker 3: it's very import sure, but you know, and it's we
Speaker 3: leverage those dollars three, four or five times to try
Speaker 3: to get as much conservation on the ground. So our
Speaker 3: our leverage rate on donor dollars is very high.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And as you mentioned, like for a lot of these programs,
Speaker 1: it's good to have private money because it helps you,
Speaker 1: it helps you activate great public dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, without those private funds, we can't go after knock
Speaker 3: a dollars or any farm bill, any of those other
Speaker 3: dollars because it takes that private match as well. And
Speaker 3: one thing I'll tell you we didn't talk about that
Speaker 3: I know it is really important to you, is you know,
Speaker 3: from the land conservation standpoint, we do our lands program
Speaker 3: is very robust. So we do hold conservation easements most
Speaker 3: of them and a lot of them go to the
Speaker 3: US Fish and Wildlife Service, But we do hold easements
Speaker 3: as well. But then we'll also buy land and sometimes
Speaker 3: it's too you know, conserve it as far as from
Speaker 3: a standpoint of restoration efforts and everything, but then a
Speaker 3: lot of it is for facilitated acquisition for public hunting.
Speaker 3: And so just in the last five years, just shy
Speaker 3: of fifty thousand acres that we purchased and then are
Speaker 3: conveying to state, and we conveyed the state.
Speaker 1: Agency wildlife management areas.
Speaker 3: For wild management areas, or to US Fish and Wildlife
Speaker 3: Service for refuge for hunting. So a lot of public
Speaker 3: access opportunities.
Speaker 2: I know that one's and that's like that's willing seller,
Speaker 2: willing buyer. That's right, buying lands for sale, yep.
Speaker 3: And it's a facilitated acquisition because a lot of times
Speaker 3: states if they want to add it to there's a
Speaker 3: piece of property for sale and they want to add
Speaker 3: it to their wildlife management area, the refuge, they can't
Speaker 3: necessarily moves as quickly as we can in the sellers
Speaker 3: and wants to get it sold, so we'll hope we'll
Speaker 3: buy it, hold it and then convey it to the
Speaker 3: public agency.
Speaker 1: That's a really great thing because I've been over the years,
Speaker 1: I've been made aware a number of times of like
Speaker 1: calis send me something like really great strategic conservation purchases.
Speaker 1: But it's hard to be that nimble it is, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like for sale, and then you're trying to get
Speaker 1: some agency to figure it out and then you know
Speaker 1: they got a value it in a way that isn't
Speaker 1: realistic or whatever. And then and then to have people
Speaker 1: that can identify like a real hot conservation hot spot
Speaker 1: and boom, get in there and know how to make
Speaker 1: deals and then have the time to then facilitate and because.
Speaker 3: You know, we've got great donors, a lot of them
Speaker 3: are interested in that land conservation and getting it into
Speaker 3: public hunting access, and so while we're holding it, they'll
Speaker 3: help with the costs of holding that property before we
Speaker 3: can convey it. So there's it's a it's a really
Speaker 3: it's a great service that we can make sure.
Speaker 5: That's kind of a sticky thing too sometimes with membership, right,
Speaker 5: because we were looking at a really cool project do
Speaker 5: you as doing in Iowa and it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 5: we're buying the land and then eventually we're going to
Speaker 5: turn it over into I think it was a w
Speaker 5: m A. But first we're gonna pull out this drain tile,
Speaker 5: we're going to do some noxious weed work, we're gonna really.
Speaker 3: Like get it up to good quality.
Speaker 5: Yeah, good quality, And so you're always kind of like
Speaker 5: balancing out like yep, we did it. But land management
Speaker 5: takes time, and you know, sometimes membership or just the
Speaker 5: public's like, well, where's the public access which has bought it?
Speaker 2: Where is it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Or like for example, with Canisnia, it's been a refuge
Speaker 3: in or it's going to the Red River National Wildlife
Speaker 3: Refuge in Louisiana. There's a piece of property. I think
Speaker 3: it's a little over three thousand acres and we've had
Speaker 3: it for several years, but we haven't been able to
Speaker 3: convey it to the US Fish and Wildlife Service because
Speaker 3: they had to get an expansion of the refuge in
Speaker 3: order to then take it. So that's like a federal thing.
Speaker 4: You have to go through that.
Speaker 3: So we've had to hold it for several years before
Speaker 3: we can can vieim not that place. And yeah, and
Speaker 3: so it is it's not just an overnight sort of thing.
Speaker 3: And so to have that patience for people to realize that, hey,
Speaker 3: we might have to have it for a little bit
Speaker 3: before we're able to convey it is an important note.
Speaker 3: But it's a I think it's a it's an important program,
Speaker 3: and I think it's something that's really good to be
Speaker 3: able to do for for public hunting access.
Speaker 1: I got one last question for you. If God came
Speaker 1: down and he said you can either hunt only squirrels, boy,
Speaker 1: or only.
Speaker 2: Ducks for the rest of your life, what would you.
Speaker 3: Pick I'm going to pick ducks. I'm I'm just saying that.
Speaker 3: I'm saying that, all right, My CEO, Adam Putnam, I
Speaker 3: loves no I absolutely love squirrel hunting. It's uh, you know,
Speaker 3: and I know it sounds funny, like how can you
Speaker 3: be that passionate about squirrel honey, But in the world
Speaker 3: it is a blast. And with dogs, man, you're out
Speaker 3: there with you with your dog. But als you can
Speaker 3: take kids. And that's my son.
Speaker 1: The first thing.
Speaker 3: Ill, yeah, squirrel, I mean, you get to talk, can
Speaker 3: make as much noise as you want. No one's yelling
Speaker 3: at you, you know, blowing their duck call just so
Speaker 3: you'll quit talking, you know that sort of thing. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's a I don't know, it's just so enjoyable.
Speaker 3: It's a big you know.
Speaker 1: Uh we we kind of introduced the technology into squirrel
Speaker 1: hunting that a couple of our friends that do it
Speaker 1: with dogs, but they were slow to adopt the binocular
Speaker 1: Do you bring the binoculars?
Speaker 3: I bring the binoculars. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were like what I'm like, man, for finding the
Speaker 1: squirrel in the tree.
Speaker 3: Man, they are so good. So I'll train my dogs
Speaker 3: to go to the other side of the tree from me,
Speaker 3: so they'll push them around because they will hug on
Speaker 3: that tree, and then you're trying to go around, and
Speaker 3: it's going around the tree with you, you know, staying
Speaker 3: out of sight. We'll get my dog chased it to
Speaker 3: the other send it to the other side to chase
Speaker 3: the squirrel around.
Speaker 1: So I met a hunted blue grouse spring blue grouse
Speaker 1: with a woman that it's kind of very simple. We
Speaker 1: got their way up in the tree and trying to
Speaker 1: find them in the spring, and she would lay down
Speaker 1: on her back in the woods. She would kind of
Speaker 1: like it was mostly on hills, like steep country, so
Speaker 1: she'd go up a little way so she's more like
Speaker 1: eye level with the canopy and she would just lay
Speaker 1: on her back with binos and she'd lay there ten
Speaker 1: minutes and also be.
Speaker 2: Like got it. And so when we go out our
Speaker 2: friends that had.
Speaker 3: Squirrel dogs, yeah, it wouldn't take a well no, but.
Speaker 1: I would bring binos and now we would just lay
Speaker 1: there and after a while, because my buddy Kevin, he
Speaker 1: dog just looked through his scope, and after a while
Speaker 1: we got a couple of them to to like give
Speaker 1: in to the point that binos are not yep, that
Speaker 1: binos are helpful for fining those suckers. But what I
Speaker 1: was getting at was there's no better feeling, yeah than
Speaker 1: when you're just getting ready to walk away and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden someone's like, got it. Yep, is that
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 2: Ale hair glowing and you know, growing on top of
Speaker 2: the branch or something.
Speaker 3: Got is one man moved his zar just enough for
Speaker 3: somebody to care.
Speaker 1: That's a good time doing that stuff. So you you
Speaker 1: twenty two are a shotgun.
Speaker 3: So a lot most of the time I'll take a shotgun.
Speaker 3: I do bring a you know, a twenty two as well,
Speaker 3: but a lot of the places that I might go
Speaker 3: on hunt or smaller properties, and so I'm usually taking
Speaker 3: a taking a shotgun. But if I can get a
Speaker 3: nice clean shot with a twenty two, it makes it
Speaker 3: a lot easier getting that getting the shot out of him.
Speaker 1: I got who kept my buddy Kevin Murphy to go
Speaker 1: out with him? He's a squirrel dog.
Speaker 3: Yeah he's in Kentucky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ut like he.
Speaker 1: Calls out, he's got what he calls a war horse
Speaker 1: when he rides out if he's hunting squirrels for real, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when he rides out. He's got a twenty two, a shotgun,
Speaker 1: a baseball bat and axe.
Speaker 3: Damn too right, So you know Kevin Murphy, Kevin Murphy,
Speaker 3: West Kentucky.
Speaker 2: Ye, small is awesome.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that's what I'm talking about with the biny
Speaker 1: and stuff. He's a he's a woodsman, yeah, him and
Speaker 1: we had a swamp rabbit going to a hole in
Speaker 1: a tree. Yeah, he goes over and cuts a sawbrier.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding you. I watches my own two eyes,
Speaker 1: cuts a sawbrier and snakes it up that hole and
Speaker 1: he starts twirling.
Speaker 2: It, pulls that lot, pulls that rabbit back out of
Speaker 2: the hole.
Speaker 1: But what he uses that bat for is now that
Speaker 1: if there's a squirrel in a hollow, he'll just come up.
Speaker 1: He'll get He'll get the bat off his war horse
Speaker 1: and go over there and just wallow that tree with a.
Speaker 3: Bat, chases it out, and then the axes if all
Speaker 3: those fails just cut down the tree, he just.
Speaker 1: Hands it with him. You know, he's but yeah, he
Speaker 1: would get He gets real serious and he got into
Speaker 1: riding those horses because he says one time he was
Speaker 1: just hunting on foot like an idiot.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: And he sees some guys coming up the road on
Speaker 1: horses and he said their saddle bags were just stuffed.
Speaker 2: He says, just squirrel tails hanging out of the saddle bags.
Speaker 2: And he thought himself, I need to get one.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you, you know, you're those dogs. They'll
Speaker 3: go up one one mountain, like up one hill, down
Speaker 3: the other, up another, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 3: they're striking and they're like, get here and get here now,
Speaker 3: and you're, you know, hooping it up and down, up
Speaker 3: and down. So the horse shouts, I'm one of the
Speaker 3: idiots on foot.
Speaker 1: But you know, man, you got a home Kevin, because
Speaker 1: you guys would have it. You guys be like two
Speaker 1: peas in a pot.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Kevin and I go way back, way back. Okay,
Speaker 3: so oh I know Kevin, Oh yeah, own him for years.
Speaker 1: Butchy bad Toe, he's got all those famous dogs.
Speaker 3: And he's got some he has some good squirrel dogs,
Speaker 3: really good squirrel dogs.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, well, thanks for coming down the show.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Everybody. Thank you, no, thanks so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you.