Ducks Unlimited Podcast

00:00 Chris Jennings Hey everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, Chris Jennings. Joining me today on the show is Rusty Creasy. Now he is the manager of the Coca-Cola Woods in Arkansas.

00:09 Rusty Creasy Rusty, welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. Man, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you giving me a break from this heat that we got outside.

00:17 Chris Jennings I would have come in for a little bit. Yeah, it has been hot. Now it hasn't been hot and dry though.

00:22 Rusty Creasy You've gotten some water though, haven't you? Oh man, the farmers and people like myself who have crops and stuff in the ground are absolutely tickled right now. It is as good of a start to the growing season and to the farm years as I have ever seen. I mean, in our area especially, nothing really flooded out, but yet nothing else is burning up. We've had just the right amount of rain

00:49 Chris Jennings and man, we are tickled to death so far. You better start knocking on wood now

00:54 Rusty Creasy if you're talking like that, that's scary. Absolutely, it's either gonna be a drought or a flood

00:59 Chris Jennings in the next couple of weeks, one of the ticks. That's right. Well, before we get into more in-depth kind of waterfowl habitat conversations here, I always like to let some new guests on the show just kind of introduce themselves, tell us what you do, where you're located, what you do on a day in, day out basis. So if you wanna go ahead and do that,

01:18 Rusty Creasy just kind of introduce yourself to our audience. Absolutely, absolutely. So we're located in Northeast Arkansas, is the area we're in, I'd say iron 15 west of Memphis and about the same Northeast to Little Rock and then our South of Jones. We're right around the McCrory area and the Coca-Cola Woods is just a privately owned club that has never been a commercial club, never sold hunts per se. It was actually developed the same year and you'll know this for sure, the same year Ducks Unlimited come out, which was I think 1937, is that correct? That is correct, 1937. So that's the same year that the Pigeon family who at the time owned the Coca-Cola bottling company in Memphis, they bought this piece of property and Mr. Pigeon and the family were big duck hunters. So they just kind of did some little levies and this was their little place that they would bring customers and family and friends and it's just, that's how it kind of got the name the Coca-Cola Woods and the Pigeon family owned it till the mid nineties and a gentleman from Alabama owned it and he owned it till 2010 when Mr. Dobbs bought it and who was another Memphis guy and he went right back, named it, went back to calling it the Coca-Cola Woods because as a kid growing up, that's what he always heard it called and heard all the stories about it and when the opportunity come up to buy it, man, he jumped on it and he has not regretted it since but we pride ourselves on just watching a really, really good duck show and I mean, I tell people if you can't have fun at our place, you need a new hobby. I mean, even if you're not a hunter, even if you're not a hunter, you know, you eat the sunsets, the sunrises, watching the ducks leave the woods. We've got a great staff that, I mean, we run it like a commercial operation, you know, as far as the way everything works but we've got a great staff and I mean, again, whether you're a hunter or not, you're gonna have a good time when you're over here with us and so we take care of Mr. Dobbs, his family and his close friends and business acquaintances so it's, the dynamic has really not changed in almost 90 years or whatever it is. It's still the same, you know, just friends and family and business acquaintances

03:51 Chris Jennings sharing a tree in the woods or sharing the blind. That's awesome. Now, during this season, you know, you are day to day, you know, you're guiding pretty much but, you know, one reason why I wanted to have you on the show here today was, you know, you post a lot of Instagram videos where you kind of talk about this summer work that you're doing and we've had, you know, Tony Vandamore on here where he talks about, you know, what he's doing up there in his neck of woods up in Northern Missouri during the summer where it's like, I think what some duck hunters kind of miss sometimes is that there's a lot of work that goes into some of these private clubs and even some of the public ground as well, which we'll also get into in another podcast but, you know, the work that you're doing during the summer is what's really making the fall and the hunts, you know, be successful. So, you know, let's kind of touch on that, kind of a day in the life of what you're doing right now. I mean, it's July and most people are not thinking about duck hunting, but I know you are. We typically are here around here at Ducks Unlimited and we're kind of stuck in that mode all the time but I know your mindset is definitely on the ducks but in a different kind of a different capacity as far as you're out there working crops and working little areas. So kind of bring us through kind of a day in the life

05:07 Rusty Creasy of what you're doing right now in July. Right, well, you said it best, you know, with what you do with Ducks Unlimited, you think about a duck every day of the year and so do I. You know, I just call it the process, you know, it starts all over again, basically the day season goes out and you know, you're putting gear up, then you drain the water and then once you get the water drained, if you follow my Instagram, you know how I fight the beavers, it's a weekly deal, you know, finally get the water drained and you know, anything that we can do as hunters or conservationists to improve the experience but more importantly, improve our habitat, it just pays huge dividends. And kind of what I'm trying to, the mindset I'm trying to get people to think like and to see is that it doesn't just happen like we're talking about, you know, it is a 365 day process of whether you're planning, whether you're planning, whether you're scouting, I mean, it all ties in together but you know, yeah, we take care of, I take care of a little over a thousand acres of property but the same techniques that I use day to day or throughout the year and that's what I try to show people through social media is what I'm doing, you can downscale that to just a single duck hole. So, you know, if somebody's listening to this and they've got a, they've got one duck hole, they've got an acre of ground or they've got just a little small track, there are things that you can do to improve that. And I tell people, you know, if it buys you one extra hunt, all right, well, will you go and you take your son or daughter and they kill their first duck or you take a buddy and they kill their first band. Who's to say that that work that you did this summer didn't or wasn't attributed, you know, that wasn't attributed to everything you did. So now all of a sudden the work that we do in the summer, it's worth it. And that's just the mindset I'm trying to get people to say, you know, or to catch on is to just, just anything you can do, make your property the best it can be. You know, we're all dealt a hand and it's how you play that hand and how you and what you put into it to see what happens at the end. But all that being said, you know, we start planting rice in the woods the last week of May. I let it warm up good. I used to try to get in there earlier, but with the cooler nights, a lot of times the rice just didn't come out growing like I wanted it to. So I wait till about the last week of May. And you know, I've got different techniques. You know, I'll water seed some rice. I do like a farmer would do and disc it and lightly cover it. You know, I have some spots that I mud in. I've got a little old Kubota tractor in the six foot disc and just get in there and mud it and slop it up and that rice will stick and sprout and come right up. And you know, once you get that rice to sprout and come up, well now we're off and running. Now you're spraying, you're fertilizing, you are putting water on it where you can. You know, so it's all just a process and but it's something that we all can do no matter what size of property we have or we're managing or we're leasing or whatever.

08:24 Chris Jennings Yeah. Now, do you have, the majority of your habitat is in rice or do you guys have any other like moist soil

08:32 Rusty Creasy or anything else? Okay, so in the woods, we've got 520 acres of timber that is levied up and flooded. It's all contiguous with one levy around it. Inside that 520 acres, we've got 19 food plots. I plant just rice inside the woods in those plots. Now, the southeast corner of the property, about a 40 acre little corner there is willows and buck brush and lots of smart weeds, lots of natural stuff. And that's something that I think another thing that's a good time to say is diversity is huge. You know, there's places in the woods that I could go in with a bulldozer and open up and make another huge rice food plot. But those ducks, they like it like it is, you know? And I tell people, if a duck's using something and he's in there year in and year out, day in and day out, don't change it. He's coming there for a reason. You know, when you come in there, all you can do is mess it up. You know, I've heard people, oh, well, this tree needs cut, this tree needs cut, we need to do this. Well, now all of a sudden, they change the hole and the way the little hole or whatever you wanna call it, shooting hole looks. Now it looks like a shooting hole or it doesn't look natural to them and it changed what they were coming in there for and you mess it up. So, you know, it's kind of like a duck coming in with his feet out and you're on a duck call. About all you can do is mess it up. So the best thing you can do is not to call. So if you've got ducks using an area and coming in, just leave it alone

10:09 Chris Jennings because they're coming there for a reason. Yeah, and it could be, you know, we have that conversation all the time. A lot of times that natural vegetation, those moist soil type, you mentioned smart weed, different types of vegetation like that, seed producing can be better than just about anything you can plant. So, you know, I think that's one thing for people to keep in mind is that pretty much how you kind of treat

10:29 Rusty Creasy that buck brush area or just like, man, that's it, it's done. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You've got different, and you know, later in the year you get those invertebrates and bugs. And I mean, a mallard duck will eat anything. I've found tree frogs, I've found snails, I've found, you name it, man. I've found it all as far as what a duck will eat. And so when they're hungry, they're not picky. But to go back to your question, inside the woods, that's kind of what we do there. And then we've got a hundred acres of crop fields that are just outside of the woods, broken into two 50 acre fields. And we try to do, it's usually a bean and rice rotation. One will be beans, one will be rice. And then the bottom of the bean field, I would plant some strips of corn, eight to 10 acres of corn. Well, this year my farmer planted the whole field in corn. So I got 50 acres of corn, but now he's gonna cut his part out. So we'll have 50 acres of, or I'd say 40 acres of cut corn with 10 acres of strips of corn standing. So I'm actually pretty excited about that. This will be the first year that that field's ever been in corn. And the other 50 acre field is rice. So what I like to do is the week before season, I'll flood one field or the other. This year, if the corn does well, I'll probably flood my rice field first. And that'll give them fresh food, fresh water. We'll leave 10 acres of standing rice and strips throughout the field. That way they can't just roll in and eat you out of house and home. And that's kind of our rest area outside the woods. So a lot of evenings, you'll watch the ducks, they'll jump up out of the woods, they'll fly, sit down in your rest field. Man, best case scenario there because you're able to hunt your ducks, but you also keep them on your property, which is huge, especially when you hunt every day. So that's kind of the way that works. But then last week or so in December, right there around Christmas, we'll keep the other rest field dry. We'll put the boards on and kick the wells on and we'll flood the other 50 acre field. Now all of a sudden you've got another 50 acres of fresh food, fresh water, that kind of feeds the woods and feeds our area the remainder of the season. It's like your first field gets you through the first 30 days of season, your second field gets you through the last 30. And man, since we've kind of gone on that rotation, it has been huge. We've got an area of the woods that we deem a rest area as well and don't hunt until the last week. And that's the area I was speaking of earlier about the buck brush, the smart weed and all that stuff. That is, we call it the Willas and we don't even drive a boat around it. We don't hunt it. We hunt within maybe 300 yards of where the ducks kind of start in there. So we attribute low pressure and rest areas. That's what we think a lot of our success is from. A lot of folks say that, well, they come in the woods to eat. No, they come in there because they know they're not gonna get shot. We hunt one group a day. We don't split up into two or three groups. So I mean, really, I mean, on 520 acres, you're hunting one whole. If you're on the north end, well, now you've got everything south of you that's rest if we're hunting on the south end. So low pressure is huge, I think, in any hunting area.

13:53 Chris Jennings Yeah, no, and I think, I was gonna ask you about hunting pressure and how you guys manage that. And we've kind of opened that door. But one thing, you mentioned the fresh water, obviously fresh food, but just hunting in Arkansas, the last 10, 15 years for me, has really been eye-opening when we do get a good rain and it floods fields that, there's so many fields that are flooded and hunted, obviously. But when you see how those ducks react to just that fresh water, a lot of times that water has been sitting in there since October, November. It's water's been in these fields for a long time. And seeing that fresh water hit some of these new habitats, man, those ducks can really respond to it. So having that second 50 acre plot probably even probably draws in more ducks

14:37 Rusty Creasy than what are already there. Absolutely, and yeah, like you're talking about, you catch a two or three inch rain and somebody's got some boards on and there's that sheet water out there. I mean, you see it immediately, those ducks hit that fresh water. And something I've also noticed, the fields that are flooded, let's just say you've got a 250 acre field and let's just say your water line is 300 yards from the woods. Now all of a sudden it rains two inches. Now the water lines 350 or 400 yards from the woods push more out into the field. It's like clockwork. Those ducks go out and follow that rise out to the edge of that water because they know, hey, this hasn't been flooded. Here's fresh food. Yeah, I mean, it's awesome to see. And we've actually leased a couple fields nearby that are real close to the woods just for rest areas and don't hunt them. We lease them, it's what's crazy. You lease them with the right not to hunt just so we can hold more ducks in the area. And a lot of private landowners or managers, I'm sure us and like Tony, me and Tony talk a good bit. He's been very handy to have and he's super sharp and does great. I've leaned on him some for advice and he's been good to me. But yeah, we hold ducks and yeah, we shoot some ducks. But everyone around us benefits from what we do. If you lease a pit nearby or if you're some public land nearby, we hold them in the area. And yeah, I'm sure it's a pain in the butt at times to watch them go into our rest field or to go into the woods and you're sitting there. But I mean, it's kind of one of those deals had you rather not have them close, not have them at all. Yeah. You know, so, but a lot of people don't quite see it

16:26 Chris Jennings that way and that's just the way it is. Yeah, that's just kind of the way it is. But yeah, no, I mean, it's very similar to like the refuge system. The idea is to get ducks in the area, staying in the area, venturing out on occasion to do different things. When additional habitat does pop up, they will leave, those habitats go there. It just provides more opportunities for everyone, I would imagine. So- Absolutely. Oh no, I was just gonna ask. I was watching a couple of your videos that you had and you'd walked into one of the rice stands in one of your holes and you had a bunch of weeds and you were, I think it was yesterday actually, and you had to go in and basically that was gonna be one of my questions. How are you managing these crops in the timber? I mean, what additional disadvantages do you have really by having crops in the timber as far as getting equipment in there

17:20 Rusty Creasy and some of the just headaches that you deal with? Oh, yes, yes. So, you know, this is my colleague, this is year 20, 19 or 20, that I've actually been planting rice in the woods. And so I'd be lying if I said the first three or four years that I didn't get stuck a lot. You know, learn it, I have, but over the years I've learned, all right, you gotta stay away from this spot, you gotta stay away from this. And I can tell you every, you know, every sinkhole, every stump that's on the property and all those three plots. So that intel has been huge, but you know, we've got a mile to get to the woods. And then like where I was spraying those coffee beans yesterday, that was another half a mile down just some muddy four-wheeler trails. So you've gotta use small equipment. Like I said, I've got a little old 38 horse Kubota four-wheel drive tractor and a six-foot disc. But now the particular hole where I showed yesterday, that was the big hole that I water seeded. You know, beavers had stopped it up, I plant with a four-wheeler and a little old seeder on the back.

18:28 Chris Jennings And that thing does a great job. When you say water seeded, just for our audience, cause you know, just so that they know, when you say water seeding versus another type of seeding,

18:39 Rusty Creasy kind of explain what that is too. Okay, I will, I will. So water seeding, if you've got, you know, heck, it could be probably as deep as you want it. But in our case, we had about a foot of water back up in one of our big food plots. And the reason it was backed up, the beavers had stopped a little old drain pipe up. And you know, the first couple of years they did that, I dig the pipe out. Then you got to wait on the hole to dry. Well, I learned just, I worked in ag for nine years and then I learned all these different techniques and ways just by talking to local farmers. They water seed rice and by doing that, you just broadcast that seed into the water, you know, two to three bushels. A lot of these farmers around here, some people will soak their rice in bags or in a grain buggy. They'll put a water hose over in it and they'll soak it and let it start sprouting and have it flown in by an airplane. But rather than trying to soak it like that, I just carry a few bags in on the full boiler and I'll drive through that water, putting two to three bushel to the acre would be about the rate. And you know, the water's about a foot deep and you just sow it, you know, you sow the entire hole, broadcast your seed. And then in this hole, I waited two days, 48 hours to go in and dig the beaver dam out and drain that hole. So within that timeframe, the seed has sank to the bottom, it's stuck good. And you can go out there before you drain it and you wanna grab one of those seeds and it'll have a little bitty white, I call it a tit, just a little bitty white dot coming off of it to where it's starting to swell and thinking about sprouting. You drain it at that point. So we've let our seed sit there for two days, we dig our pipe or we dig our beaver dam out, now the water comes off of it. At that point, that seed has sank and stuck to the bottom. When the water gets off, well now you've got good seed to soil contact, that seed's sitting on that mud. Well, the heat and the sun and the air hits it, well now it sprouts and it sticks that little tit down into the mud and shoots a leaf up. Well man, now you've got a standard ice without, I mean, you can do it with a hand seeder, you can do it with a five gallon bucket out there by hand slinging it. You don't have to have big equipment. Literally, you see what I use, it's not high dollar stuff, you know? But you utilize that water, which used to be a curse and now it's a blessing because that big hole used to take me about eight to 10 hours to work up and to plant. Now I can do it in an hour or less just by using that water to my advantage. And you know, at that point your rice comes up and you spray it and you fertilize it and try to maybe put some water back on it. But it's just a method that really catches on and honestly, during the summer, I try to upload that video every year showing me doing that and that is one of the most watched, probably generates more questions and follows than anything because people are really interested in that. Again, it's something that anyone can do. We all fight beavers. We've all, most people's duck holes are either dammed up or wet. Well, now they see that and they're like, well, hey man, I can go get a hand seeder and a backpack sprayer. And like one of my hashtags is sweat now, shoot later. We sweat all summer long so we can shoot a few in the winter time. And that's the way I water seed it right there.

22:13 Chris Jennings Yeah, and I think I saw another earlier in the year and you had kind of mentioned it earlier, which I thought was pretty interesting. You just had the seeder on the four wheeler

22:22 Rusty Creasy and you're just driving through slop basically. That's it. That's what I call mud.

22:27 Chris Jennings That's what I call mud knitting. Yeah, and that's always interesting. I saw you had a bunch of comments on that just in a sense that people didn't really think you could just drive a four wheeler out there and spread it around and kind of the mud just kind of slops around and next thing you know, next video show, you've got rice growing in there.

22:44 Rusty Creasy It's pretty interesting. That's right. That's right. I mean, I tell people it's not rocket science at all. And you know, that's another reason I wait. You know, farmers start planting rice around here and early April, mid April, late April, a lot of rice is planted and then the first of May, I'd say 90% of the rice is planted around here. But so I'm waiting three more weeks or so, just so those hot temperatures, so when that seed hits the mud, it's real quick to draw moisture and sprout, because if you're throwing it in the mud like that, you got coons, you got squirrels, you got birds and they're gonna get a lot of your seed if it was to lay there very long. So that's why you really wanna wait till it gets hot. And I mean, if it's for ducks, you really, you don't wanna run into a frost on the tail end. In other words, you don't want it to still be grown. You want it made well before it frosts. But you kind of want it to mature a little bit later anyway, because we are doing it for ducks. We don't have to have it mature the first of September to cut and harvest.

23:49 Chris Jennings We want it mid-October to be honest with you. Is there any specific variety of rice that you're using or something that you have found is a little more attractive or anything like that? You know, personally, I use a clear field, which is, it's a, I kinda would compare it to a,

24:27 Rusty Creasy you know, you've got conventional soybean, you've got roundup ready soybeans. So roundup ready, you can use glyphosate to spray and it doesn't kill the vein. Whereas, you know, you can use a clear field which is a, it's a, I kinda would compare it to a, you know, you've got conventional soybean, where it would kill a conventional vein. Well, and with rice, you've got conventional rice, but you've also got what's called clear field rice. So on clear field rice, rather than having where you would have roundup for beans, they use a chemical called nupath. And there's other chemicals that have nupath in it. And the advantage of that for me is, a lot of my holes, I can't get water to. So I'm depending on mother nature. I'm depending on that little bit of shade from the trees, keeping that rice alive. So I can't spray a chemical that's gonna kinda burn my rice and slow it up or dang it, because, you know, in a crop field, a lot of times these farmers will put a hot dose of chemical on it. And then the next day they'll have water going on it. Well, the water makes that rice really grow and it kinda grows out of that barn, where mine, I can't get water to it. So if I burn it real bad, it would either die or it just slows it way down. So this clear field rice, with this, the chemicals that I use has no burn on your rice at all. You can't even tell you sprayed it as far as giving the rice an off color, but it'll kill the weeds. So that's why I went to Clearfield. It's just because, you know, it doesn't ever slow my rice down. It does a great job of cleaning it up. And you know, talking about big equipment and sprayers, like we kinda went off topic a little bit there, but I've got a spray rig on my fork with it. You know, I can spray two acres. Breakaway booms that fold out, I can spray 20 foot wide. So it's really handy to fold those booms up, strap them to the front rack, go through those forwarder trails. You get to a hole of rice, kick your booms out, spray it, fold your booms back up, go down the trail a little further, get to another food plot. And so that's kind of the way I do my spraying. And then you can follow those same tracks with your seeder, you know, and if you wanna put some fertilizer on the top of your rice, which I use urea, just hit it with a shot of nitrogen, you can follow those same tracks with your little old four-wheeler and spreader, and you're normally running over one little spot. And it's something that I have learned just over the years, just trial and error. You know, rice suits me, it may not suit, you know, a guy five miles down the road. He may need to plant millets. Yeah. But rice is just what fits me. And I learned that the first year that I managed it. And I said, all right, I'm gonna plant as much food in all these holes that I can. I planted milo, I planted corn, I planted millet, I planted rice, and each crop was different, and rice just showed out unbelievably. And I'm like, all right, we're going wall-to-wall rice from now on. So it's just what fits me, but you know,

27:27 Chris Jennings it's not for everybody. Now, you mentioned you do do a shot of fertilizer. What time of the year do you do that?

27:34 Rusty Creasy How long do you wait for that rice to get up? You know, it's probably, I would say my rice is probably six inches tall. I don't know the leaf stage and stuff, the crop consultant would. But I'd say six, eight inches tall. You spray it for the weeds you want to kill, and then immediately upon spraying, you want to fertilize it. You want to spray it before you fertilize, for the simple fact that you don't want to hit it with fertilizer because your weeds will take the fertilizer into and cheats the rice, and then you're competing. Your weeds are competing against your rice. Some people like dirty rice. You know, in other words, they won't really spray it. They'll just throw the seed out there. It'll make, and it'll have barnyard grass, smart weed, and all these other coffee beans will come up, nut grass. And all that's good for the ducks, but a lot of times it gets so thick that it chokes your rice out, and all you're left with is the natural stuff. So I've seen people do strips. If they had like a, let's just say a five acre big plot, they'd do a tractor width of rice, skip over a tractor width, do another tractor width, and they would farm their rice, and they'd leave natural in between, which made for a really, really cool setup and a really diverse deal because you got rice, you've got natural, and then you've got rice, and it's kind of the best of both worlds

29:00 Chris Jennings when you do it that way. Now, you mentioned you've been doing this for 20 years, and a lot of what you've done and really learned probably is trial and error. You probably planted some rice that never came up. I'm sure it's happened. Absolutely. But was there one person or any guidebook or anything that you kind of looked at when you were testing all these different things, when you were going from Millet to maybe like a Milo, or trying to figure out what actually worked best for you? Was there a guidebook or someone that maybe you leaned on, anything that…

29:36 Rusty Creasy Yeah, go ahead. Not so much. My uncle, Harvey Shue, he was the manager for about a little over 40 years at the Coca-Cola Woods. He was a very well-known dog trainer and kind of just a local legend here at home, and these people just respect him and loved him, and he was like a second dad to me. So I mean, he was the manager from, let's just see here, the late 50s until 2002 when he passed. And so I was born in 78, so my entire life, I followed him around those woods and was around it. Now, he didn't do food plots like that, like I do, not anything like that, but I can remember him. He would get a five gallon bucket of rice and he'd go out there and find a mud hole or whatever and would throw it out there and it would come up and make some heads. So that kind of, I always remembered him doing that. And so that kind of stuck with me. When I was working in the seed and chemical business, I worked for Jimmy Sanders Incorporated for nine years and I can remember the federal government, some of the property that they owned, the farmers that bought from us, they farmed that property. Well, instead of collecting a rent check, the government would go out there and they would mark off, okay, you're leaving this section of crops. So basically you left your rent in the field, if that makes any sense. And I kind of could see where this deal was going with the refuges and the sanctuaries and stuff. And as all that's kind of happening, my uncle passes and I'm hired on as the manager and I'm immediately thinking, all right, how can I improve? How can I improve? So I'm like, well, this is what they're doing. I see the ducks, they have, come on with those deals if you can't beat them, join them. So I'm like, all right, all right, we need a designated rest area. We need to lease some crops. We need to back off as far as the way we hunt and don't get in the middle of the ducks. So it was kind of a combination of all those. And so like I said, the very first year I could remember planting corn, milo, millet, rice. The coons ate my corn as soon as it made. The deer ate my milo. The millet did okay. I knew I could always come back with millet and make something. But like I said, the rice just absolutely showed out. So yeah, it was trial and error the first year. But since those days, man, I've always, I've always tried to strive to be the best at what I do. I want to, that's just the way I'm made from little league, wanted to be the best little baseball player in basketball. And I've always tried to hold myself to a little bit higher standard and just be better. And I'm like, so when I took on the job as manager of the club, I'm like, all right, I want to get better every year. And throughout this deal, I've been blessed to meet some awesome people and kick ideas around and network with them. And Tony Van Amoor, he's helped me a ton because I've called him about those rest fields and he's obviously a pro when it comes to corn and stuff.

32:50 Chris Jennings Yeah, a little bit different habitat variance up there

32:54 Rusty Creasy than what you're dealing with. It is, it is. But something I learned the hard way, talking about this corn and trial and error, we left an entire, and I know when you say 10 acres, it doesn't sound like much, but we left 10 acres of a solid block of corn. And typically our ducks use our willows for their rest area. They don't, they'll go to the field and roost, but they don't necessarily sit there all day. Well, the year I left a 10 acre solid little block of corn in the bottom of our 50 acres field, instead of those ducks spending their days in the willows, which is in the woods, so to speak, they stayed in the field all day. And they made it really, they just would sit there, which again, a duck's DNA, he wants to survive to see another day. He makes it till the end of January, he's got it lit. So they're gonna adapt and they figured it out right quick. They can sit in that corn and be just fine. So I learned them, I'm like, all right, I gotta do something a little different. So the next year I would plant, I think I planted 16 rows and then I would leave about 30 or 40 yards. Then I would plant 16 rows and leave 30 or 40 yards. So what that did that they still had a little cover, they still had some food, but they did not, they didn't feel secure enough that they sat there all day long. So the very next year when I did that, they went right back to using the willows because when they're using that corner of the woods that we designate a rest area, you've got ducks buzzing around and they're flying over the woods. Well, you can steal some off of it and shoot some, but when they're flying over your field outside the woods, you don't even see them. So that was kind of a lesson I learned the hard way that year. I mean, we still had a decent year, but it was, you could definitely tell that we didn't see near the birds

34:42 Chris Jennings because they were huddled up in that field. Yeah, so obviously when that happened, you changed the plan of for sure.

34:48 Rusty Creasy Yes, yes, yes. I mean, and that's, you know, these ducks are changing. Everything's changing and you either change with them

34:56 Chris Jennings or you sit there and look at a blank sky. Yeah, now what do you think, you know, you say you've been doing this for 20 years and in the grand scheme of habitat management, 20 years is not really that long, but what have you seen that's changed over the last 20 years and maybe just even in your area or even maybe some of the things that people ask you about and talk to you about, what has really been one of the bigger changes

35:20 Rusty Creasy in that landscape of creating and managing that? Obviously, there's a lot more hunting pressure now, a lot more hunters, you know, and which, you know, I'm not saying it's a bad thing because we want more people in the sport. We want more kids in the sport, but there's gotta be a balance as far as pressure and I can say rest, you know. So, I mean, if there's a field in our area and you know, I don't blame a farmer at all. Any extra income he can make in the winter months is just, just, just great for him, you know. So any place that'll hold a duck in our area has pretty much got a pit in it, it's leached out or the landowner's hunting it. Yeah. You know, whereas you back up 20 years ago, not every field was leached. So when you got that sheet water, all of a sudden now you had some extra rest areas around. That's not the case anymore and that's why we lease a couple fields. That's why we rest, use our fields as rest areas, just because it just holds more ducks in the area. That's definitely one of the bigger things. Yeah. These ducks, I mean, I read it somewhere and the guy said it great, you know, that duck is his mate to live another day, you know. They're gonna adapt. They're gonna figure out how to live. And I mean, yes, we shoot some ducks, but we hold in winter a whole bunch of ducks that never are shot at. And so, I mean, that's kind of, you gotta shoot some, but you definitely doing a lot more good than bad.

37:00 Chris Jennings Yeah. We talk about that a lot where it's just, you know, ducks are really good at surviving, surprisingly, you know. Absolutely. It seems to be everybody, you know, it's very difficult for them from the egg all the way through their life cycle.

37:13 Rusty Creasy It's very difficult and they are very good at surviving. Yes, yes, they are. Thank goodness, thank goodness. Yeah, absolutely. You know, our ducks have at times will get, I don't really wanna call it nocturnal, but let's just say they'll get up from the rest areas and are from other people's fields that they go roost in. And, you know, they're gonna come in the bulk of them before shooting hours. And a lot of evenings, they're not gonna leave until after shooting hours. So, I mean, they figured it out, you know, if we fly up when it's dark, we can survive. And so there's definitely some of that going on. Those are, that's just two factors and those that come to mind first as far as kind of things that have changed in the last, you know, let's just say 20 years. But it's still, you know, it's still awesome 20 years later to see the rice come up when after I plant, to see it make its first head, to get water on it and to see those first mallards get here and be in the food plot and see that come full circle. 20 years of doing it,

38:17 Chris Jennings I still feel like I did 20 years ago when it happens. Yeah, I've seen some of those videos you shoot of just incredible numbers of mallards pouring into a hole. And it's always, you know, pretty early. And it's just amazing seeing some of them. It's just quite a show. I'd recommend to everybody, if you get a chance, check out, you know, Rusty's Instagram account. What's your handle again?

38:39 Rusty Creasy I didn't have it written down. It's just Rusty Creechy. And then, you know, we, yeah, it's pretty easy. You know, kind of the way my, I hate to say it, but the way the woods got known and my name kind of got out there, Mr. Pretty King and Rick Dunn, we were doing the old Echo DVDs. And then we shot some YouTube stuff and it really spread like wildfire, you know, obviously when YouTube started growing and everybody saw it. Yeah, man, the volume of ducks, as you've heard me say, you know, the show never gets old. The show never disappoints. And after you see a show like that at daylight and they're really, you can feel the wind off their wings or splashing water on you. At times you can touch them. After you see that, the limit really doesn't matter. The limit, I tell people, is just a number. You know, a lot of times I may have 12, the boss enjoys big groups of guys. We may have 13 or 14 guys in a hole. Well, there's definitely days we can go shoot 14, 15 limits of ducks, let's just say 16 hours. But what I like to do, all right, let's watch a show, let the bulk of those ducks sit down in the woods to where, you know, to where they're, once those ducks sit down in the woods, they sit there all day and they don't leave till dark. Those same ducks are coming back tomorrow. So if you shoot while all that big beehive over the woods is going on, if you shoot a couple of times, you're fixed to run a whole bunch of ducks off. And then you're gonna be looking at a blank sky. So we'll love to watch an epic show instead of shooting 16 minutes. All right, hey, let's just shoot us 10 limits, two or three ducks a man, shoot you 40 ducks, watch an epic show. That's a lot of ducks. Absolutely. I mean, I had a guy last year who said, hey, if you can just break double digits on a hunt, it's a good hunt. Oh yeah. I'm like a little better now. I'm like, well, I wanna shoot 20 anyway. But you know, all right, let's just say we shoot 40 ducks, watch an epic show, we're out of the woods by nine o'clock eating breakfast at 9.39.45. There ain't a dang thing wrong with that morning in my opinion. No, no, no. So I'll take 40 days of that any day of the week. But you know, talking about pressure and stuff and the ways that we like to hold ducks, that's probably one of my keys is don't shoot when the sky's full. You know, let those ducks sit down. And you know, we do what the boss calls a cocktail cruise every evening. And dude, it's so much fun because you've got people who live in the city who may have never seen the sunset over the woods or over the rice fields in the Delta. So you go, you take your adult beverage, a lot of times we'll have a fire. Right there at dark, all those ducks start getting up out of the woods, a lot of them coming right over you. But you can, as far as you can see, they're leaving the woods, they're going out to roost. The sun's setting, it is an epic show and it kind of sets the tone for the next day. But it also helps me from a scouting standpoint because I wanna see the ducks and I wanna be in the ducks, but I don't wanna be in the middle of them, if that makes any sense. So if you can bounce around and hunt the edges of your ducks, you know, if the ducks are mainly using the south end, all right, well we're gonna get just west of them and a little bit north and not get in that concentration of ducks and let them rest, you know, the next, if you can do that day to day, well now all of a sudden you've held your ducks, all right, you've made it through the first split. And you know, it's like you just, you get by until that next split, until that next little break. All right, well we held them till now, all right, we're gonna try to hold them till Christmas, all right, we held them till Christmas, all right, well we gotta hold them, blah, blah, blah, you know, so.

42:26 Chris Jennings Now how does the local rivers impact you guys? As far as, you know, when the white and the cash and all these rivers in Arkansas get out, I immediately hear everyone like, oh, you know, we lost all of our ducks, you know,

42:41 Rusty Creasy cause those ducks, they bounce. You definitely, oh absolutely, you definitely lose some for a little while because here's what you got, like you were talking about the fresh food, fresh water, all right, well man, a dry year for us is absolutely incredible because we've always got water, we've always got food, no matter if it rains or not, we're gonna be flooded come open day. And so those ducks, I mean, they get pounded and so every place that's got water is basically hunted in our area and all around. So the minute that they get some fresh food, some fresh water, well man, I've had my butt shot off the last week, we're going somewhere else. Now, they take some two or three days and a lot of them venture back. The White River is, it's a big draw, you know, when it gets out, that's a lot of water and a lot of spots that honestly, some people can't even hunt or get to. Yeah. So they do, that does affect us some, but I don't think it affects us as bad as it used to. Now that we kind of, we hold our concentration of ducks in the area, we're blessed to have really good neighbors north of us and south east of us who manage and have rest fields and rest areas. So it's almost like we share this little concentration of, I don't know, 70, 80, 100,000 ducks, whatever it is, we all share those ducks. And as long as nobody kind of breaks away and all right, we're gonna hunt from daylight till dark or we're gonna hunt in the evenings or I'm gonna go shoot my rest field, as long as nobody does nothing out of the ordinary, we pretty much hold our own little old nest egg of ducks. Yeah, now that's convenient. But yeah, you can definitely tell on a big rain or whatever when those ducks get a chance to go to fresh food

44:32 Chris Jennings and fresh water, you definitely lose them a couple of days. Yeah, I was just curious. I've got a couple more questions, I'm gonna let you get out of here. So, you know, we've dealt with a lot of young hunters, young waterfowlers who, you know, they're like, man, I wanna be a duck guide when I grow up. I wanna be a property manager. What would you say to a young person who is interested in kind of doing the same thing that you do? How would you even start that conversation

45:01 Rusty Creasy with someone like that? You know, that is one of the probably most popular questions that I get on social media. I bet, yeah. And my situation is really unique just because my grandmother used to pick ducks at the old Coca-Cola woods. My uncle was a manager slash caretaker slash cook. You know, I joke around and say, you gotta wear lots of hats. But, so my situation, yes, I could have messed it up and I could have chose to have done something different, but I feel like my situation is really unique. In other words, it was almost like it was there. You know, I just had to take it and run with it. But what I try to tell people, the key to somehow ending up in a position like that is network. And I had a gentleman tell me that years ago, don't burn any bridges, get to know as many people in this industry as there is in the waterfowl world, in the management world. And make your great first impression. Don't be afraid of any job as far as, you're not too good to do this or to that or whatever, but get to know as many people as you can and build up a good name. And, you know, if something comes around and it fits your area and fits, you know, what you're wanting to do, you'll hear about it through the grapevine. But it is a tough gig. Now, I would say this, you know, the guiding deal, you could, I'd say that's a pretty, definitely an easier role to get in. If you can, you know, practice your duck calling, practice your ghost calling, whatever it is you wanna do, get really good at it. And then you've networked, all of a sudden, you know, you've messaged Tony and you've told him, well, all of a sudden, he's got a guy that leaves or goes and does something else. He reaches out to you, well, man, now's your chance. You know, so you've really gotta prepare for when the time comes, you gotta be ready for it. And just hustle, man, just hustle and treat people good. That's something I try to stress is, you know, don't be that guy, don't be that guy. Just do what's right and work hard. And it's amazing how stuff just kinda always works out. It may take it a minute, it may not be on your time and it will be God's time, but it will work out if you keep doing, if you do what's right and just work hard, you know. My brother, and he's been huge and kinda, for one, getting me into the, getting me to eat up with hunting in the outdoors. He took me from the time I could bark, my uncle. And I've got, he helps me, one of my best friends helped me through the season, but I assure them that there's nothing that I'll ever ask them to do that I won't do myself or that I haven't already done. I always looked at Tony before I got to know him. I thought, well, hey, Tony, you know, he shows up, they got everything set up, he's the face, he shows up, shoes, sleeves, all right, you guys pick that up. He wishes. Boy, boy, boy, boy, was I wrong. He is. And like I said, that was way before I got to know him. Once I got to know him, I can look at his hands and tell, those are a working man's hands, you know, and I went and do something with him. And he's out there working his tail off with his guides and with his helpers and he's putting out decoys. He's doing everything, you know, there's no job that he's too good to do. And so I think that's something people gotta keep in mind. Hey, I pick up trash, I talk firewood, I cook. I mean, a toilet stopped up, I wear lots of hats. Now, if a toilet stops up these days, I'll probably call a guy, but I have one. You got a guy's number now. But I have done it all and don't be afraid to start at the bottom and work your way up. It's doable. You just, you gotta know the right people,

48:58 Chris Jennings catch the right break, and that's just network, it's huge. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, just from my experience networking and, you know, 90% of guiding and being around that many people is just kind of being a nice person.

49:15 Rusty Creasy Yeah, yeah, don't be that guy. Don't be that guy who's on social media. You know, if you can't learn at a young age, mom and dad, you know, if you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all, you know. And when you shake a man's hand, you look him in the eye and you grab a hold of him. Don't shake hands like some little sissy or like some little girl. It's amazing what a handshake will do as far as a first impression. When you shake someone's hand, look them in the eye. But now I'm old school. The world we live in today, it may not be as popular, but I'd say that more times than not, you're stand out from everybody else with good manners and a good handshake.

49:49 Chris Jennings That's right, that's right. Now my last question, this is one that popped up in my head as we're doing this and then we'll get you out of here. So what's that snake situation like in that wet, half muddy timber you got going on over there? Cause that's what I was thinking about when I was watching that video. I was like, man, there is a cotton mouth around every corner.

50:07 Rusty Creasy You know, they are thick. I don't, I watch again, man. I've been there in those words my whole life. So every step I'm watching, I'm looking, you know, but where I kind of worry about them more so than anything is tearing out baby dams and stuff when you're kind of down in the muck and whatnot or in the end of a pipe, you know, that's prime location for a cotton mouth. But yeah, we have got our fair of them. Yeah, but I'll say this, we don't have as many as we used to. Yeah, I bet. But yeah, man, they're thick. You know, I wear snake boots and honestly, you know, I worry more about them in like October than I do now, just because, you know, at that point, they've gone in the ground and they come back out and I think they're blind and they just kind of strike it. They're mad at the world at that point. So you definitely got to be careful in those months, brushing blind and stuff like that. But yeah, you just, man, you just got to be on your toes and be aware of your surroundings. Kind of like when you come over there to Memphis, you got to pay attention what's going on over there. Look over your shoulder.

51:24 Chris Jennings Well, that's cool. Well, Rusty, this has been great. We're going to have to get you back on here. You know, maybe sometime in the fall, we'll get you on, just kind of talk about how your water's looking and how, you know, maybe a pre-season outlook for that area. I mean, you probably, not only your property, you probably have a pretty good judge of what the area surrounding you looks like.

51:41 Rusty Creasy So we'll definitely have to bring you back on. We do bounce ideas and bounce, yeah, scouting reports and everybody kind of stays in contact and works together. So yeah, it's a great little area, but man, thank you so much for the opportunity to be on. It's a pleasure and a treat. I never would have thought of some old redneck from Morton, Arkansas would get to do it, but I am thankful.

52:04 Chris Jennings And if y'all listened this long, I sure do appreciate it. Awesome, I'm sure they did.

52:09 Rusty Creasy Man, thanks a lot. Thank you. Keep in touch.

52:11 Chris Jennings Hope to talk to you this fall. I will do. I'd like to thank my guest, Rusty Creasey, the manager at the Coca-Cola Club for coming on and talking to us about how he handles some of the off-season habitat stuff and just his day in the life of being the manager of the Coca-Cola Club. I'd like to thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for putting the show together and getting it out to you. And I'd like to thank you, the audience, for listening to the Ducks on the Podcast and supporting wetlands conservation.