Ducks Unlimited Podcast

00:00 Mike Brasher Hey everybody, welcome back. We have today an episode that can be viewed a bit as a companion podcast to a recently released episode of Ducks Unlimited TV, where we were over in Arkansas at Bill Byers Hunter Club, participating, taking advantage of the early spec season there. And so this episode is going to kind of cover a bit of a recap of that, what we experienced there on the hunt. I have here in studio with me, Kason Short, the owner, operator of Bill Byers Hunter Club. Kason, great to have you here. Thanks for having me. And the other thing that I'll kind of do is just put a timestamp on this. You and I are recording this on November 11th of 2022. I guess it just kind of gives you an idea of the amount of time it takes to get a DUTV filming like in the field to actual production and then release. So it will take almost a year. Right. So you had the idea when we were over there, I guess, two weeks ago, that, hey, it'd be a good idea to get in the studio and do a recap of this or some things that we want to talk about, but we need to do it before too much time passes because we'll forget about it. So appreciate you having that suggestion. Appreciate you stopping by here today. I do want to cover a bit of background for people that may not have heard the podcast episode that you were on last year. You and Chris Jennings sat down and talked about the history of your property there. That was episode 415, history of family resources and conservation at Bill Byers Hunter Club. I encourage people to go back and listen to that episode. It talks about, well, those things, the history of that property there. And I'll say that I listened to it before going over to participate in that DUTV filming. And it answered a lot of the questions that I would have had whenever I walked in about the chainsaws and some of the other parts of sort of the history and how long it had been in existence. So it's a great story. I encourage people to go listen to that episode 415 from, I guess it would have been October of 2022. For people that may not have listened to that and are tuning in here, I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself again and talk a little about the club that you have there, the property that you own. And so let's just introduce yourself and your

02:10 Cason Short property again to our people. Yeah. So I'm, case in short, as you stated, I'm the grandson of Bill Byers. As this comes to air, we'll be on our way to entering our 70th anniversary at that farm. We started in 1953, guiding waterfowl hunts. It's kind of, I guess, a family tradition at this point. It's the only thing I've ever really known consistently. Grew up around it and watched it kind of evolve from the early days of the point system and lead shot to what it is today. So I've seen a lot of trends come and go in waterfowl over that timeframe and was really lucky to have two mentors who also spent a lifetime in the waterfowl world and taught me from an early age, that conservation is paramount to our success, that we have a resource we have to take care of. And above all, if we don't take care of that resource, we want to have a sport to pass on. So always been conservation minded, always cared about the land and the resource and try to daily put those

03:06 Mike Brasher practices to work. And so in terms of the operation that you have there, it's fair to call it an outfitter operation. You sell hunts to clients that come in and from all across the US, you have

03:20 Cason Short folks that come in from far and wide. Yeah, certainly some hotbed areas. We had a lot of folks in the East Coast pretty routinely, but people from all across the country and have had for years. Like I said, we started in 53. So I remember my grandfather in the early 50s would hunt a hundred people a day through what at that point was the one room portion of our club house. If you remember that, we showed you that guy in the dining room. We still have that portion of the building. So it is, it's a guide service. It has been since its start and it kind of at times will ebb and flow a little bit. It's a young man's game. I think I mentioned that to Chris when I was talking to him. So we have, even our business has kind of gone through cycles up and down over the timeframe. And maybe that's one thing that I really learned from my father and grandfather, that you have to be a little reserved about how you go about it because you can burn out, you can get too much of it. And it also having that mindset, I think also lends itself to managing gun pressure. So we manage gun pressure and it takes a little pressure off of us. And it

04:20 Mike Brasher allows me to keep doing it and take care of it. And you talked about that on the previous episode, the episode from last year about how important managing that pressure is. And there's numerous different ways that you implement that management. Like when we were out there, you, there was sort of a time limit on how long we stay out. It's nine or nine 30. Nine 30 is pushing it. And it's only under certain circumstances where you said that, that you would stay at you and your clients would stay out that long. And I know all of that is designed to, to, to give the bird some rest, right? To, to let them give them a safe place because that's something that we know ducks and geese need places to get away from that pressure. And that's something that y'all have clearly done a fabulous job with. You do it on the, from a time perspective, you do it from a space perspective, certain parts of the farm you talked about that y'all don't go there. And during, or you minimize the amount of time that you spend there, you close off some roads and all types of stuff. So I think y'all have certainly figured that out from an early, from the early days of, of the work that the operation that you have there. And I think other people are picking up on that

05:29 Cason Short as well. Do you hear that a lot in Arkansas nowadays? You're starting to hear it a lot more. And oddly enough, you know, one of the things we talk about is early water too. That's kind of the reason that the, we have that resource there with the white fronts, but I had a drone in the air yesterday and I was amazed at how much water I could see off in the distance around us. And 10 or 15 years ago, most people would wait until a few days before the season to start pumping. So I think a lot of that people are starting to hear the message, you know, early water, limit pressure, you're hearing more of it, you're seeing more of it. And I think it's going to start having a

06:00 Mike Brasher pretty good impact. There are probably, probably a few things that I'll want to come back to and talk with you about in terms of the management on the area and, and particularly as it relates to what we saw during our time there as part of the DUTV film shoot. But I want to go there now and just kind of do a recap of that. What were we, what was the, the theme of that particular episode was, was obviously exposing people, our viewers to the early white front season in Arkansas. And we had with us a fantastic group of people. I mean, I was, I was honored to be part of that group and I guess, you know, John Gordon here who manages and produces the show, at least from, from within Ducks Unlimited and helps identify the places where these episodes will be recorded and filmed. He asked me if I wanted to participate in it. I guess they wanted somebody to talk about white fronts and kind of be there to answer a few questions. And so, but it was really cool for me to be part of that group, be part of it with you and your staff there, along with folks like Doug Larson, a host of the, of DUTV for a number of years. Jim Ronquist, a great friend and partner in conservation from Drake Waterfowl. Brooke Richard, Higdon Outdoors, and I'm sure we'll talk about how good of a spec caller Brooke is here for too long. And then other folks like Andrew Jones from Yeti. And then who else? I feel like I'm forgetting a few. Well, all the crew from, from Moose Media, from Mossy Oak, Ed Wall, the photographer. I mean, it was, it was a fantastic group and I just, I was honored to be part of it. It was a great group of people. I guess the dates on that when we were there, what did I, I wrote that down here somewhere, October 29th through the 31st, opening weekend of the early spec season there in Arkansas. And you and others had worked on kind of lining up where we were going to hunt. And we, we actually ended up doing three mornings of hunts. The second day was, was way more challenging. And we ended up sticking around for a third day to ensure that as kind of part of what you have to be aware of in the, in the TV business is you got to make sure you get the right, you get enough shots, quality shots, because it's, there is no guarantee that when you go on one of these hunts, that you're going to get the birds and that you're going to get the birds that work the way you want them to, to produce the shots that you need to make a good, attractive episode. So we ended up doing three days. So I want you to talk about sort of that first morning. And again, I encourage people to watch the DUTV episode. This, we're trying to provide a little additional context of what we saw in the sort of the setup, where we were and why we went to that particular location on that

08:40 Cason Short first day. So take us through that on day one. So we were, we were hunting in a field that we call black mound. Typically you almost have to have a north wind to hunt there. And if you look at it in the episode, you can see that with the north wind, you've got the wind to your back and you're shooting birds in the field in front of you. Behind you, if you can see it in the footage, we've got an inside ditch that we call it, and then another grass road in the field behind us. So wind is paramount to your success there. And we had the north wind that morning. We're down there close to our respawn, very close proximity to it. So we're really close to the roost. And we'll see if it makes the cut. But one of the things that we talked about there, and one of the toughest decisions I made that day was the very first shot that we didn't call. And we had a bunch of birds in the air. They were working. And at any moment, I thought we'd get that entire spin down on us. And we passed the chance at one or two individual shots there, and just ended up not calling it. They kind of figured it out and they left. And we ended up having a great hunt as they worked their way back to us. But being that close to the roost and that close to that many birds that are used to being there, the last thing that I wanted to do was educate all of them to kill one. So that's kind of a, as a guide, there's usually any of 10 or 20 different scenarios playing out in your head while you're trying to make a split second decision on what's best for TV and all these other huge personalities that you've got in the blind. But so it's a lot of fun, both in the white front and duck hunting to hunt down there like we did on the first day, because you're close to that 230 acre field that never gets hunted. When the birds get up and move off of it, you've got a lot of good stuff going on. You're seeing a lot of birds moving and it's really exciting. Now there's some drawbacks to it too, as well. And even Brooke commented about that. You're calling out a bird who's looking 400 yards past you at 10,000 real birds. And you've got to be a really good caller to have any impact in that situation. But it's always, I'd rather go and see birds than go and not. So most of the time we'll take our chances being that close to it. But it's different in a sense that you've got a lot of birds looking at you, but you need that really high volume to have success too. And we'll see that as we move on to day three, when the scenario changed, we were hunting on a feed, it's a really

10:43 Mike Brasher totally different setup than where we were the first day. I also found it interesting. You mentioned the number of well-known personalities that we had in the blind that are very accomplished waterfowl hunters. I don't consider myself one of those in either of the cases, but it was the first time that I had ever been part of a TV filming production. And it was also pretty obvious to me that it was the first time that most of us had hunted together outside of your crew. We were in a pit and I think we were all trying to figure out who was calling the shot, who was, we had Jimbo down on the far end with his dog and dog is a tiny, tiny man. It was a fantastic dog. That will be great footage alone. But it felt to me like early on that morning, we were trying to get our bearings sort of as a group, who was going to, because we were standing up, most of us were standing up and looking up way too much. And then finally we're like, Hey, let's just let the people that are calling be the ones to look up. And the rest of us got down in the blind and stayed there. And then things started to come together, I think a little bit better. Were you sensing that? You've hunted with a lot of people and I'm sure in your mind, you're constantly critiquing what the group

11:59 Cason Short is doing. Oh, for sure. And it's that's again, that's kind of part of being down there next to that roost like that. Like it's a big show. And that's one of the reasons we wanted to go there and be that close because it's awesome to see that site when they get up, but it also paralyzes people a little bit, you know, and I fall victim to it. We'll stay in there and you're standing up, you're not even trying to hide and you're like, man, we're not doing very good. They're not finishing. Well, no kidding. Like we had to even attempt to sit down, you know, and that's another interesting thing. And you mentioned that's your first time, you know, with a film crew. It is not for me, even, even knowing what to expect going out with the film crew. It's so much more challenging than people will ever understand. I'm sure people will watch an episode and say, well, you know, they didn't kill that many or you may really critique some of the footage that you see, but nobody in their right mind would ever go out and take two humans and set them out on a levy with a giant black camera in their hand and expect to have the same success that if you and I went and were in a layout, you know, so there's a lot of hurdles to overcome that you don't see when you're watching a show and it, it has an impact. And then when you've got all of us standing there staring

13:02 Mike Brasher too, that, that doesn't help. Yeah, for sure. So we had, had three cameramen. One was outside and the amount of coordination and planning that went into that. And they're all connected on their headsets. They've got in-ear microphones or in-ear earpieces and several of us were miked up. And one of the things that I found interesting is that, you know, the cameraman outside the blind, that earpiece is really critical for him, for him, because he needs to know where the birds are that you're calling, because you got to kind of coordinate the birds that he's filming with the birds that you're calling and trying to get that are likely to be, to be shot. And so those types of sort of the behind the scenes aspect of a film crew and kind of TV production were pretty interesting for me to, to observe. And, and yeah, it was, it was a lot of different parts of that were pretty cool having the, I guess at one time we had both, so we had two of the film, two of the camera guys in the blind with us, which was interesting in terms of space on the second day. That was more challenging in the same, in the, from a wind perspective, it basically meant that the shots were kind of concentrated on one end of the blind. And one of the, Guy Shepherd, one of the cameramen was trying to get some shots to the people that were shooting. So I found myself just having to sit down most of that morning. I said, look, Guy, you getting shot to the people that are shooting is more important than me getting a shot. So you just go ahead and do your thing. So that kind of stuff kind of came into it as well. But that's what you have to do with a,

14:36 Cason Short with a film crew on that type of situation, right? Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's different than, than if you and your buddy went to go hunting and you're trying to kill birds. Obviously that's, that's the goal is you want to kill birds, but you have to kill them the right way where the cameraman can get the shot that he wants while, while you're doing your part too. And it's a lot to orchestrate that. And you mentioned that there on the second day, we had the wrong wind. We had a south wind that day. So the birds were setting up in the wrong direction. Now that's not to say that that can't be done with that blind. We went back the next weekend. I took my sons and we had a great hunt with the wrong wind, but we weren't trying to film it. We didn't have cameraman outside the blind. I mean, you know, so there's a lot of hurdles, but it's still, it's a lot of fun. And then to the size of our group, we had a great group of people, but we kind of had a huge group of people too. So we were really handicapped to where we could go by the third day. Some folks had to leave. We scaled back a little bit and we, we had some more options and got on a really good

15:33 Mike Brasher hunt that third day. And that first day was good too, but it took a while for us to get there. We had that big, the, the, the big group of birds got up off of the refuge and then they circled. And you talked about how we passed on the shot, but then it was quiet for about an hour and a half. We picked off a few here and there, but we didn't get, we didn't get any large concentrations or steady, you know, one group right after the other group of birds working until what, after the eight o'clock hour, and maybe as the birds started to work back, I think we ended up finishing around 840, something like that. And that's a great hunt, make no mistake, but there was a lull there for an hour or so. And I think we were, there was part of us that were kind of wondering, is this, is it going to do it today? But it did. And so kind of talk about that whenever you saw those birds kind of where they did our improved success there later in the morning, reflect the birds kind of coming

16:27 Cason Short back and working their way back to the refuge. Is that what you think was happening? I do, I think so. Cause I remember I looked at my watch at 730 and we may be, we may have been like halfway there. I thought, okay, that's kind of tough. We might not get there today. Typically being that closer, our respond, it's really quick and it's really fast or it's not. If it takes a long time, especially with ducks, it's a lot, lot slower if you miss kind of that early, early morning movement. And I think with the white fronts, because they kind of wake up in mass and exit to go feed, we didn't take advantage of a lot of that. That morning we were standing up, we were all kind of figuring it out. As you said, as the hunt went on, you kind of reach that lull in between, they've left the roost, now they're out feeding. And as we approached the eight o'clock hour, now you're getting them coming back to us. And that's when it kind of picked up. And we had some really good groups that finished and we finished our hunt there about 840. Yeah.

17:19 Mike Brasher Should be some good footage from that, from the close, well, from throughout the morning and ended up with, I guess our nine man limit of specs. I believe we had nine guns in the pit there. Great hunt, got back and then the breakfast was fantastic as well. And then we went, I guess that would have been a Saturday. So we watched some football and so forth. We missed the rain. I think there was a threat of rain that morning, opening morning that didn't materialize, but then it rained overnight. And then the North wind came through. Was it a North wind that we were dealing with the next day? It was a South wind. South wind, which was a bit odd, I guess. Maybe it was a truck that is not remembering correctly the way that front came through or what kind of system we were dealing with there. But anyway, it changed. It rained overnight, which was the first rain y'all had had in weeks or months. Right? Yeah. First rain of any significance. And so then we went back out the next day. And so just kind of talk briefly about what we were dealing with there. I don't know how much footage people were going to see of day two, because I think we had

18:20 Cason Short maybe ended up with 11 birds that next day, something like that, 11 or 13. Yeah, somewhere right there, you know, halfway to a limit of the people we had. And they might not see much or even recognize that they're seeing it. You know, it may be a lot of in-blind stuff that they're going to see kind of B roll type stuff. Cause I know just from working with TV before, like they don't really like it's cut, right? They don't really want to see them getting shot at 30 yards, you know, kind of passing shots and, but it just the wrong wind direction. So think about anytime you set up, if you have the wind in your face and the birds are coming from behind, you're having to turn 180 degrees to get that shot. So as they set up, they're trying to land out in front of us, but you've got to get your decoys out away from the levy far enough that they're not tucked in tight the wrong way to a levy. So it's just an awkward setup altogether. And then it doesn't make for, for great TV ultimately. Now, I think the first morning we were forecasted like a 10 mile an hour North wind and we had like three to four. So going into day two, we kind of know we have to go there based on the group size, right? But they're talking a four mile an hour South wind. Like, all right, well, if they're wrong again and it's calm, then we'll be okay. And this will work. But it was ended up, it was, you know, about a 10 mile an hour South wind. So the weatherman is never right when

19:33 Mike Brasher you need them to be. Yeah. And the other thing on that on day two, and I kind of referenced this earlier, sort of in blind safety became an issue or, I mean, it's always an issue. It's always something to be aware of, but the birds were mostly, they were high shots, as you talked about, and most of them were coming off of one end of the blind. And so it's a situation where not everyone can turn and fire at them. So we had like two or three hunters at the far end of the blind that for the most part did most of the shooting. And that was, I think Doug and Jimbo and they were, they, they got their birds. And so then we had a few others from the other side, I guess. But yeah, it was, it was a lot of that that we saw happening. And so got out of the field by what, nine, nine 30. We might've stayed till nine 30 on that day. I think we did. Yeah. Trying to get a few more that day. And it just didn't never really materialize the way the camera crew, camera crews would like for it to. So then I guess throughout the day on Sunday, we had some conversations about sticking around and you were gracious enough to say, yeah, we can, we could probably do another, another hunt in the morning. Actually, I'm probably not giving you enough credit. He's like, guys, just tell me if you need more footage, we'll make it happen. You know? And so thank you for that. And so I want to get into that, to that hunt. It was a different situation. We had a smaller group, several people, as you said, had to leave. And so that allowed us to go to a different site before we talk about that. Let's take a break and then we'll come back and we'll wrap up the hunt. But then there's a few other things we'll talk about as well. So, so hang with us folks. Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast sponsored by Purina Pro Plan. After these messages. Welcome back everyone. I'm here with Kason Short of Bill Byers Hunter Club, and we are recapping a Ducks Unlimited TV episode that aired recently. It was a hunt from fall of 2022, taking advantage of the early spec season in Arkansas. And we're moving on now to day three. So talk with us about the difference there. We had six hunters on that day. That's a big difference,

21:48 Cason Short but what did that allow us to do and what are people going to be seeing? So that's a really, a really interesting spot that we hunted on day three. And it's really one of my favorite places on the farm. So we reforested about half of that with a partner's program, the US Fish and Wildlife in 2013. So those trees, if you see them to our back, are about nine years old when we shot that. I grew up, obviously that was a field when I was a kid. I remember it as such, there's still an old pit that's in the ground back there in those trees. So every time I walk through there, it's really amazing to look at it and see the evolution that's going on year to year with it. It's a really good testament to what we have the power to change if we want to, if we want to restore habitat to what it was. And obviously when my grandfather bought that, it was all bottomland hardwoods, just beautiful piece of property. And it still is. I love agriculture and that's, you know, we make a living doing that, but there's something special about kind of an untouched piece of land. So I say all that to say, I guess a lot of times when you think about WRE or reforesting, you think just about ducks and so forth. So it was interesting to go out there on that line of those trees like that and still harvest white fronts out in front of it. And we hunted out of a, I mean, more of a timber blind than what you would expect to hunt geese out of. So it was much more comfortable, fewer people. The wind, we had a west wind, you know, Brooke and I talked about it that afternoon, or Saturday, excuse me, Sunday afternoon, when we went and scouted it, we looked at kind of the way that the trees are designed there through a draw. So when we planted it, we knew we wanted the trees to kind of bow outward up the draw. And it was kind of almost by design, like you would design a golf course. Well, with the west wind, we knew they would enter the field to our right, follow the wind, come right around that point and landing the decoys crossing right to left. Luckily the weatherman got that forecast right. The wind was right and they did exactly what we thought they would do. And we worked several big groups, really, really nice. And we talked about that a little bit on Sunday. I tried to explain the difference, like, okay, we're on this other end of the farm, we're further away from the respawn. It's not gonna, you're not gonna see a ton of birds. It's a totally different situation. It's the other side of the coin. But when those birds came, came around that corner, they wanted to be right there. We were hunting on the feed and they'd been there, you know, all that week, they'd been feeding and eating right there. So it's just, it's as opposite as you can get from day one, but it was really a lot of fun to go do and go show everyone that had been there. This is the

24:15 Mike Brasher other side of what we can do too. Yeah, that was really cool, a really cool hunt for me. So it was a harvested rice field out in front. That's where the decoys were set. That's where the birds wanted to be. It's where they had been feeding as you talked about. And then the timber was behind us. And the blind is a, I mean, it's obvious that y'all flood that area later on, right? Because it has a boat shed on the back of that blind. I mean, this was a, it was more of a duck hunting blind than a goose hunting blind. How often do you hunt geese out of that? I'm kind of

24:45 Cason Short curious of that. On purpose, that was the first time. Really? Yeah. It might change your thinking. Yeah, it worked. It was good. And you have another option now. Sure. Yeah. It was nice to see it work that way. And as we looked, you know, as we looked at it that day, we walked out there, they'd been using it. You could see where they had been in the low spots, tracks everywhere, like, all right, this is going to work, you know, but you wouldn't, myself wouldn't, that wouldn't necessarily be my first choice. You know, you just kind of thought outside the box, like, let's go somewhere else and let's get where they want to be, which is the, look, that's the number

25:15 Mike Brasher one game of duck hunting, right? Go where they want to be. Well, and it was great from a filming perspective as well, because there was better cover around the blind. We had two guys outside the blind and they were, I don't know if one of them had on their ghillie suit. It might have, I think one of them had on the ghillie suit that day. And I mean, they just, they just disappeared right into that brush line. And the other thing that was really cool for me and others in the blind, especially if you're not calling, is that the overhead cover in that blind seemed to be a bit thicker than what we had in the pit blind. So I was able to look up without fear of them seeing my face or flaring the birds and able to witness the spectacle that was unfolding as these birds came around and they were kind of doing their maple leafing or slip sliding or whatever people, however many different terms people have for it. But it was an incredible site, fantastic footage of that. The birds were working exactly as you described they would. They had positioned the cameraman outside exactly where they needed to be so that they're getting the birds as they're committing. And then as we're taking the shots, had one guy in the blind filming. And so it was, that was pretty cool. And so I remember at the end of that, I mean, so there were six of us, got our six man limit in pretty short order. Was it under an hour? It was going to be close to it. Close to an hour. I think, yeah. I think I want to say shooting light that morning was six 59 and we were done before eight or right at eight. So yeah. And I remember you and Guy, Guy coming up to you, you asking Guy afterwards, was that, is that good

26:54 Cason Short enough to get your, to get your shots? Like, yeah, we got, we got what we needed. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it's interesting. We're talking to Joe afterwards and we had two big groups, one really big group that finished just phenomenal. And you mentioned the overhead cover in the blind. So it was a lot easier to hide. I never felt like they saw us, you know, compared to a pit where you're having to use grass and other brush, you know, you have to blend to your environment. So the, the woods and the brush there worked a lot better, but it handicapped us a little bit too. When that group was working right to left, I would lose them kind of my sight line under the blind in front of us. I knew we had birds that had committed and gotten low on us, but I couldn't, I never turned my head and watched to see if they left. So you're watching the whole spin and the birds continue to stack up and you're thinking, all right, you know, do we, do we have enough to call this shot? Is this time to do it? And there's still birds that are coming in. But Joe said he was starting to freak out. He said that we had put 25 or so in the decoys and he was like, how these

27:45 Mike Brasher guys ever going to shoot? And that's one of the other things that I noticed you as a, as a guide, someone who's done that for a long time, we got to a point where we only needed a couple of additional birds. And so we're like, okay, we decided, you know, who's going to be shooting. And it was just a couple of us that were going to shoot depending on the situation that we, we had, we had a lot of birds come in. Only one or two people needed birds were going to shoot. But maybe if we had just one bird, multiple people shoot to make sure we get that bird. And so the one thing that I've found interesting is that, so I, I was one of the two people that was shooting there towards the end. And as I raised up, you were, you weren't shooting, you were calling the birds and calling the shot. I raised up to shoot and all of a sudden I hear you say left. And so, and so that told me there are closer birds to the left to shoot at. And so, cause you saw me pointing to the ones that were kind of out a little bit farther. And so I think the two that you're talking about that were to the left might have, I don't know if they were on the ground, but they had come into an area where I couldn't see because of the blind. And so I suspect you have to do that a lot as a guide to kind of help people see where the birds are and to pick the ones that are in the best location for an

28:51 Cason Short effective shot. Yeah. And I try to, you know, in the name of safety, you have to be a little bit careful. Like you don't want to just turn everyone loose and say, shoot whenever you feel like it, because that's obviously not safe. But I also try to explain to people, I don't see everything either. You know, like I've got an idea of which one I'm calling to and what I think is working, but inevitably you'll have one that slips in lower, quicker gets in closer. I'm like, oh man, I had no idea that was here. Like if that happens, you know, feel free to tell me or you can act on your own. But yeah, it happens a lot. There's a lot going on and it's hard for everyone to see

29:22 Mike Brasher the exact same thing. And of course all your sight angles are different too. Well, that was a great hunt, a great way to cap off that, that, that filming and a great way to cap off the opening weekend as best spec spec hunt, three spec hunts I'd ever been on. I'm not a, I haven't been on a lot of those. I really appreciate the opportunity to do that. Talk about Jimbo's dog and the great

29:44 Cason Short retriever work that we got from, from tiny man. What was it? Someone said, I know they were quoting another celebrity in duck hunting, but what does it, he has two, three speeds here, there and gone. I forget what that was. Yeah. Hey, Tiny doesn't walk anywhere. He is full speed going and coming. And I love and respect that about a dog. I mean, and you see it, you know, we saw it with white fronts, it's even more concerned when you're shooting teal down there. So a dog that, that works like tiny, that will get the birds picked up quick. Sometimes we'll save a hunt, you know,

30:16 Mike Brasher you spend less time out chasing them. So he's a phenomenal dog to get a hunt with. Well, even with a dog and accomplished dog like tiny, I noticed a couple of times when we had multiple birds down and if there were some cripples out there, you or Kyle or others in your team were immediately either out there to help the dog or to, if the dog was, was busy picking up other birds, you were on your way to, to get any kind of cripples that were farther out. That happened one time. Now Tiny ended up catching up, catching up with you and passing you as you were out there, that one bird, but that's the type of stuff that you have to do. You know, nobody wants to see a crippled bird. Certainly get away. Nobody wants any bird ever to get away and dogs are a tremendous asset in helping, helping to reduce the chance of that happening. But there are other times where you can't solely leave it up to the dog. You got to make sure that you're out there. Cause you knew that one bird that I'm talking about that have in mind was making its way to maybe a creek or a

31:12 Cason Short ditch down there. Certainly some heavy vegetation, right? Yeah. I think he was headed to our little pond there behind the lodge, you know, 40 acres, deeper water, big water. And it, you and I talked about that, about the instinct of that bird. When he got his feet on him and stuck his head up, he knew exactly where he needed to go to be safe. And I mean, they make a living surviving, you know, we try not to ever lose one. And if we do, it's not because of lack of effort and, you know, no fault of the dog, he's got other cripples and other birds that he's picking up. We knocked down, I don't know, four or five in that group and it's the furthest one away. So unless you can make your dog forget everything that's right there in his immediate eyesight and go further, it's just, it's tough. And I knew the situation that we had in front of us. I'd seen it there

31:52 Mike Brasher before. So yeah, try to get out there and stop. Well, that all ended well and a fantastic hunt. And then that was sort of the end of our, of our, of our film session over there. Well, I guess we came back and did some other little interviews in front of the camera, interviews type stuff, but great weekend. And so I appreciate you being part of that. Appreciate you offering Bill Byers Hunter Club as the, the, an option for DUTV episode there. So I'm, I'm excited. Like I said, we're recording this in November of 2022. I'm really excited to see how that episode comes out by the time this, this podcast episode releases, it will be out, but you know, it's kind of a weirdness in our timing of things right here. I did want to talk to you, talk to you briefly, I guess you've, you'd hunted with Jim Ronquist before. Yes. Had you ever hunted with Brooke Richard? No, I had not. But you knew he was, he came into that as a,

32:46 Cason Short um, a highly touted spec caller, right? Sure. I'd heard a little bit about Brooke. So how did he do? I mean, I was pretty impressed. And that's coming from someone who makes his own spec calls.

32:56 Mike Brasher That guy can run a spec call. I was impressed. I'm not a spec caller. I mean, I have one, but I've not used it a whole lot. But yeah, it was, that was cool to be in a blind with so many people that are so accomplished there. Jim Ronquist is starting to get into spec calling a little bit. He's pretty darn good himself, right? Yeah. We may make a spec hunter out of him yet. I know he loves shooting mallards in the woods, but he had a good time. It was, it was hilarious that we had a hen mallard that was working the decoys at one day and all of a sudden I hear Jim break out his mallard call and he just couldn't help himself. And he ended up landing the bird in the decoys.

33:32 Cason Short Of course the duck season wasn't open then so the bird flew off, but he quit having fun. Yeah. He quit goose hunting. Brooke and I are trying to call in geese. Like, what, Jim, what are you doing

33:41 Mike Brasher down there? And he's laughing, having a good time. He said, I saw mallard. I went into mallard hunting mode. So no, that was great. The other thing I wanted to do is just, you know, so we were, the club, the property that y'all have there is, is still a working farm, a working rice farm primarily, right? You, but you rotate with soybeans. And, and so I asked you if you had any, you know, the, the craze all over the country right now. And I get this a lot whenever people call saying they're going to come into possession or they're going to acquire some property and they want to manage it for waterfowl, waterfowl habitat. The first question is typically, what do I need to plant? And my response, I asked him questions about it and like, well, I mean, have you tried just seeing what's in the seed bank itself through just some manipulation of the soil and proper water management? And let's just see what kind of natural vegetation gets up there. There was a time where waterfowl didn't have agricultural grains to feed on and they evolved in the absence of that, you know, over, over millennia. So they'll eat those weed seeds, right? And so you don't have any hot crops. You don't have any unharvested standing crops on, on the place there. You do have some moist soil, right? Or, or are you planning to do that? Talk with me about that. Kind of what goes into your thought process of the, the way you manage that

35:00 Cason Short property. So we do have a few acres. It can be more soil depending on climate conditions during the summer. We will occasionally go in and plant some Japanese millet if need be, but it's minimal number of acres compared to the 3000 that we have that's in ag. Just don't really, I maybe don't have the luxury of going in and committing that many acres to leave standing. And then two, not that I disagree with it because I don't, you know, anything that's left for the birds is a bonus. You know, if you're able to leave some grain for them, that's fantastic. We try harder to manage what is more natural to us in the terms of normal agricultural practices. And that comes into fall tillage, what we do with residue management. So we try not to roll any of our rice double down until basically this time of year, a little bit earlier. Now we did some earlier this year. You and I talked about that when we were out there because of the drought, because of the severe low soil contact, soil moisture, wasn't really worried about rice germinating. Usually we leave a rice double standing for that reason. If you don't have sunlight to the soil and you don't have soil contact moisture, you remove any one of those ingredients, then you preserve that grain a little bit longer. And we feel like yes, we could go out and leave standing grain. It comes at a cost to us. It is much easier, kind of like moist soil, it is much easier to manage what's there than to spend money to have something else. And a lot of times it's better anyway, much like you mentioned waterfowl survived without corn and rice before. They also adapted to normal agricultural practices before anyone hot cropped. So I guess to relate it to anything, it's kind of similar to moist soil. We just try to manage what's there and leave as

36:42 Mike Brasher much on the ground as possible. Yeah, I found that to be pretty cool. And I like some of those weedy areas that I saw around the edges of some of your field. I have to imagine those are incredibly attractive to waterfowl. There was one area back in there amongst some of the timber that I saw that it looks like it's managed as moist soil. And I made the comment like, I bet you there'll be some ducks in here once it gets flooded. And there is something to be said ecologically, biologically, for offering something different from a lot of the other things that they may encounter on their landscape. They need a diverse diet, a nutritionally rich diet. And so that they have to find additional food resources from some place. And so I think y'all do a great job of trying to provide some of that, especially within this other massive agricultural landscape where they find themselves. And so that's, it's pretty cool to see some of that and kudos to you and your crew for all the work that y'all have done there. Another question that I wanted to ask you about is, or that I wanted to mention, and something that I asked you as soon as we walked in, or pretty soon after I got there, I said, how many, about how many birds do y'all harvest here annually? And your answer was

37:55 Cason Short interesting to me. So tell me about that. So we do not keep track. I do not count. I made the mistake of doing that a couple of times as we talked about. And it really, you start setting, or me personally, I won't say that for everyone, because not everyone's like me. I'm extremely competitive. I end up setting a bar that I want to get to. And if you reach that number, then it becomes about the next number and the next number. And I realized in a period of a year or two there that that was not healthy and was not good for me. I try to measure success based on the experience. And that's kind of what we try to provide to our clients and our clientele and understands the experience. And that's what they want. They want to come to Arkansas and have the experience. It's not about how many ducks did we kill while we were there. I can look back and tell you years that were good and years that were bad. I've got a very good barometer for that, but actually counting and

38:49 Mike Brasher keeping track is not something that I do. Well, I found that unique and I found it commendable. It's almost as though you're valuing quality over the quantity. Like you said, if you start measuring something, that becomes what you think more about. But if it's quality, and quality is, I guess you would say, more of a subjective outcome anyway. And so if you start focusing on that and the experience, I thought that was pretty cool to learn. And I certainly couldn't argue with the approach that you're taking because the results, I think, as I experienced them, certainly bore out that you're doing good in that regard. The final question that I guess I wanted to ask you here relates to your view over the years of this early spec season. We talk, I think, a little bit on the, people will see on the DTV episode about how white fronts have changed their distribution through time from the Texas coast, Louisiana coast, now into the Mississippi alluvial valley in the greatest concentrations, and in other parts of the Mississippi and central flyway. And that has brought with it new opportunities for harvest. And in Arkansas, and I don't know how many other states do this, but at least in Arkansas, there is now this early spec season. And so you've seen that, you've been there in Arkansas before that came on the landscape and as it's now on the landscape. What are your views on that? And do you think it's changed anything with the birds or with the way you manage things or with anything else about the hunting and

40:21 Cason Short waterfowl landscape? So it's been really interesting to have a front row seat to the white front evolution over the last 30 plus years. We went from in the early 90s, you know, 91, 92, we would have 10 to 15,000 white fronts in the same time period of October that we just hunted. Before the early spec season, as we approach the first week of November, we would winter 100 to 150,000. We've seen that number trail off in recent years, and I can really only attribute that to this new found pressure that they're experiencing. And through some of the telemetry data that we've got, we know that they're picking up from Saskatchewan, they're flying, you know, nonstop flights, they're landing in Northeast Arkansas, and they're doing it right around the timeframe of this early season. So now you've got a bird who has replenished fat reserves to get here, and immediately they're being shot at. And pressures obviously has a negative impact on waterfowl. We know that. So I do think it's having a negative impact on the resource. Hunting does in general. I mean, I don't think anybody can deny that. But our numbers are decreasing a little bit every year. We kind of sat on the sideline for the first couple years of this early season and kind of like, no, we're not going to do that, which we were also banding birds and we had a lot of other things going on that really prohibited us from doing it. We started to participate in it. It's a great opportunity to go and without opportunities, we don't have hunters, we don't have new hunters, and we don't have a sport. So it's a delicate balance between managing for opportunities and managing to maximize the resource. I guess in a perfect world, I would maybe rather see it just maybe a couple of weekends, not just a full-fledged 14-day stretch where they're getting hammered on by everybody. I think it might be time to look and see if maybe it's too much pressure than what we originally intended because I don't think anyone really had the foresight to see some of the images that we saw that weekend that we talked about from different places and numbers of people and things that were going on. It's, as one of my friends calls it, it's become the wild west of hunting now. It's a little different, I think, than what anybody imagined and it's a lot of pressure. Now we had a great time and I enjoyed it and I'm all for hunter opportunity because that's an important thing. But I just from our small window looking at it, I think it's having a negative impact on the number of birds that

42:42 Mike Brasher we're holding. I listened to you talk about that and your perspective on it and your thoughtful your thoughtful offering of ideas. And I can't help but think back to the people that we always refer to as the pioneer thought leaders in our history of waterfowl hunting clubs dating all the way back to the 1800s, the early 1900s, how waterfowl hunting clubs were some of the first to implement restrictions, voluntary restrictions on hunting on their properties because they cared for the resource. They saw what was happening to the resource. They saw how their actions affected the resource and they wanted to take action to put in some safeguards. That holds true to this day and you're a great example of that. You and all the other waterfowl habitat managers and club managers and that think about this and that see those birds that use their habitats, use their property year after year and you have this relationship with the birds that I think the people that aren't in your shoes, me included, don't fully appreciate because it's they're part of the landscape. You know people think about the if you own a farm then that land and the products that you produce from it are part of what you own. And so the birds that you support, I suspect you feel like they are part of what that landscape is to you, that property is to you. And it just you couldn't imagine one without the other, right? And so that's what I think I'm hearing from you and you're not alone in this and that's a great thing and it is one of the things that keeps waterfowl management, waterfowl hunters, I guess as some of the best examples of conservationists that they're always thinking about this resource because they are providing for the resource, they're taking from the resource but they're also recognizing what it takes to support it. And so I guess I'm just trying to make a link between people like you, modern day people that are thinking about this resource through a very personal lens and then trying to imagine is this good, is this bad, what kind of decision should we be making? And then even by extension, maybe that spills over into the decisions that federal

45:04 Cason Short state managers take at some level. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's a question we have to ask ourselves a lot or maybe about everything. Is it good for the resource or is it bad? And I go back to one of the most fundamental things that my father and grandfather taught me and is that you have to put more back than you take away. I mean, it's no different than a bank account or anything else. We have to take care of it.

45:29 Mike Brasher Otherwise, it won't be there to enjoy anymore. Kason, I appreciate your time here today. Thank you again for hosting Ducks Unlimited TV show over on your property. I'll also thank our partners there on that show, Higdon Outdoors, Drake Waterfowl, Mossio, Moose Media, whoever else, Ed Wall and all the others that were involved in that. Yeti had somebody there. So appreciate everyone being part of that. I encourage y'all, if you haven't, go check out that episode on Ducks Unlimited TV and yeah, catch them all. And Kason, look forward to catching up with you again sometime in the future. Thank you, man. Thank you, Higdon. A very special thanks to our guest on today's episode, Kason Short, owner-operator of Bill Byers Hunter Club over just north of Brinkley, Arkansas. As always, we thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for the great job he does with these episodes, getting them out to you and to you, the listener. We thank you for your time and for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation.