Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Mike Brasher: Everybody, welcome back. Thanks for joining us again. I'm Dr. Mike Brazier. I'm going to be one of the hosts today. I'm also joined here. We're sitting in around some sofas. I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Burke. Katie, welcome. Hi, Mike. And to my right, we have, this is quite an honor to have our producer, Chris Isaac, actually on the mic. Welcome, Chris.
Chris Isaac: Hey, Mike.

Mike Brasher: Good to be here. And we have a guest, a return guest, and we're actually on location down here in Mississippi. We're joined by Dr. Ronald Robertson. Ronald, it's great to have you back as well. Glad to be back. You know, this is something that we started doing, I guess this is probably the third time we've done this, sort of a little monthly roundup. And during the hunting season, which we're here January 12th, of 2024, there's a lot happening within our organization. Personally, we're all out hunting. And so, these kind of sort of round table discussions are useful just to catch up on a variety of things that are happening with us. And so, we're down here in… What's the name of the place here? What do we call this? Tipo? Tipo, Mississippi?

Katie Burke: We're in the town of Tipo, Mississippi, but we call the camp Distal.

Mike Brasher: Okay, so we're here on location. We took a day and came down to do a little bit of hunting. We did go hunting this morning. It was a rather interesting weather experience, I would say. And so we'll talk a little bit about that. We've got a few other things that we'll discuss, some coming in from some of our listeners. And so yeah, we'll just have a good time with this conversation here. And I guess the first thing that I would do is, we'll get to the hunt here in a moment, but we wanted to kind of lead off with one of the a little discussion point that was brought up to us, I guess, by a listener, Carson Blaylock, if I get the name here right. He had a question and so he wrote in to our email, the dupodcast at ducks.org, and he was asking if we could talk about the origin of the reference to bull when we're talking about like bull can, bull sprig, and I don't I don't know that I have a great explanation for that, other than I think it just refers to like a… I mean, maybe it's in reference to cattle or something.

Katie Burke: That's my guess, yeah. That it's a male.

Mike Brasher: A big, male, dominant male. I mean, obviously, I know when we say a bull can or a bull sprig or even a bull red, as in a bull redfish, we're talking about a big adult. And typically, it's an adult male. Ronald, do you have any insight on that? Don't have a clue.

Ronal Roberson: We never, we always called it just a sprig or a canvas bag. We have so few canvas bags down here. I never really got into that term very often.

Katie Burke: We say like mature. I always say like we say mature a lot.

Ronal Roberson: Talk about a big one. Some of my words don't appropriately apply to podcasts.

Katie Burke: But yeah, I don't really have a good answer.

Mike Brasher: I don't think there's like a biological explanation for it. Except a male. Except a male, you know, a bull as in cattle. So that's best we can do on that. But appreciate the question there. Any other questions like that, feel free to send them in and we'll see what we can do with these. We don't yet have a real Haven't yet committed to a lot of question and answer type thing, but we'll take a few of those as we get them.

Katie Burke: Also, if anyone else has a better answer.

Mike Brasher: Well, that's right. We certainly hear that.

Katie Burke: Let us know.

Mike Brasher: So, you know, the other thing that occurred to me, Ronald, what I failed to do here at the outset is give you an opportunity to reintroduce yourself. You've been a longtime volunteer for Ducks Unlimited. But yeah, just for folks that may be listening in here and didn't catch that earlier episode, give a little bit of an introduction.

Ronal Roberson: Well, I first joined Ducks Unlimited in 1977. And then I was a committee person and then a chairperson in 82. So I've been around a little while. Been on the board of directors for several years and just recently went off the board. But, you know, I grew up in the Mississippi Delta. Duck hunting my whole life. All my kids basically enjoy it. And this camp was built to keep family close. Because a lot of times people say they can't get back. When you have a nice place for them to come, They tend to get back more often.

Mike Brasher: That's right. And the other thing that you didn't include in kind of introducing who you are, you're Katie's dad.

Ronal Roberson: Well, you know, people may not want to know that.

Mike Brasher: You probably just assumed everybody knew that. Family connection there. And we did talk with you previously on an episode about that family connection and all that you've done for Ducks Unlimited on the youth side of things, education and introducing youth to to hunting and conservation. It's been a long time, continues to be a passion of yours, and so personal thanks to you for all that.

Ronal Roberson: The first Mississippi youth hunt was, the camp was used for the first hunt. Yeah. And it was a lot of fun. State of Mississippi's doing a good job with that right now, so glad to see that continuing, but first one was held here.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, appreciate your leadership on that, Ronald. Let's talk about the hunt this morning. Then we'll get into a couple of these other topics. And I'm going to put our producer Chris Isaac on the spot here.

Katie Burke: Well, give us one word to describe this hunt today. Wet.

Mike Brasher: That's a good one. To sort of set the stage there, this is, as I said, January 12th. This is the day that the front is moving through. It's this massive Arctic blast that's coming down the mid-continent. And we're here, I guess there's a low pressure system that was kind of working in from the west and pulling a lot of moisture up from the gulf. And so we, whenever we woke up this morning, we looked at the radar and you do the little advance forecasting, you know, however, hour or so that it goes into the future and it didn't look that bad. But as we're riding out there, lightning striking all around us in the distance and we get out there. It was awesome. It was quite the experience. Shooting time came and went, and it was still dark. You could really only get good vision whenever the lightning struck, and so we had questioned our judgment sometimes, holding a shotgun, standing out there. Now, lightning wasn't right around us, but it wasn't super near. What did we say? Maybe a mile, two mile? That was the closest it got?

Ronal Roberson: It was all cloud to cloud. It was nothing cloud to ground. Yeah, okay.

Katie Burke: You made a comment at one point about the tree striking where your bullets were. They would go off and I had mine strapped to my chest and I was like, maybe I'll just move them. Put them on the tree.

Mike Brasher: But we did have, had a really good hunt. It was a short hunt for most of us. Ronald, you stayed out there a little bit longer, but the rest of us came back. partly because we had to get ready to do this. But I think we came back with 10 birds. Katie, it was you, me, Chris Isaac, Clay Barrett, Ronald, and then John Gordon. And we, I think we got, what was it? Maybe eight mallards, two gadwall. And we didn't see a ton of birds. You know, it's not like the skies were full, but it was the birds that did come in, they wanted to work. So it was really good.

Katie Burke: I mean, and we also shot for like, what? 30, 40 minutes, it's like, it wasn't much, we didn't, it was quick, because I wish, this is a podcast, you can't see, but you took that great picture of the, we were in that little pocket, yeah, we were like in a pocket of no rain, and that's when we shot the majority of the birds.

Mike Brasher: That's right, we got that little break there early on, and yeah, the birds started flying, and Chris, this is your second hunt, how does this one compare?

Chris Isaac: Oh, this one, the last one was fun. This one was just different. I mean, it was faster, more exciting from a just weather standpoint. The last one was warm and, you know, we were in t-shirts and waders and it's pretty slow. The ducks didn't get close enough a lot. So, um, this one, it just felt like they were in that pocket you're talking about. They just came and we hit them and then the downpour began again. I didn't think we were going to see any. I just thought, I was like, there's no way. I just don't see ducks flying in like this torrential downpour. But the minute it kind of let up, they, they came in and we got them.

Katie Burke: Yeah. So you had, how was it at the last one? So you were in like a pit blonde last time. So how was, what was your preferred in the blind or standing along the tree line?

Chris Isaac: I enjoyed sitting, but, um, I was, I was fortunate enough to have a nice coat, raincoat, some nice waders, a hood, so I was clothed appropriately. Unlike everybody. Unlike a few of us. So I stayed super dry and warm and I like being outside. I didn't mind that. As long as I'm dry, I'm okay.

Katie Burke: Did you think shooting was a bit easier, being out from the blind? I'm just curious.

Chris Isaac: Not necessarily. I'm still getting used to a gun. I don't shoot a lot, so I had to get reacquainted with a shotgun again. It had been two years since the last one. But it came back pretty quick? Yeah. I thought the gun was acting weird, but again, I don't know anything about it.

Mike Brasher: Is that because you don't think you hit every bird you shot at, or is that just…

Chris Isaac: The next round wouldn't come into the Okay, so John told me it cuz it's hanging up on you cuz I didn't have it firmly planted and the recoil moved back too far, so it couldn't, I don't know. I don't know. I know nothing about guns, so I just knew that when I went to pull the trigger again, it was locked up.

Katie Burke: That's probably, I bet that gun's new. I bet it's not greased up enough.

Mike Brasher: That happens sometimes, too.

Katie Burke: Yeah. That gun looked pretty new. It looked like it had been shot very many times.

Mike Brasher: Still stiff. One of the other things that really helped us today with regard to the bird work, in terms of how readily they they committed and kind of came down below those trees was the wind. We had had really good wind this morning. And you also got to experience, Chris, a pretty unique thing where I guess the wind was out of the South, Southwest, when we first got out there. But then when, when that front came through, the wind shifted noticeably. I mean, this was the, this is the weather system where there were like wind advisories out. They were warning of 75 mile per hour wind gusts in some locations. I don't think we got 75 mile per hour, but I bet we got 30, 35 mile per hour gusts there. And so, but then yes, the, the wind changed, went completely the opposite direction out of the North Northwest. And so it was a fun hunt, short hunt. Ronald, you stayed out there and I think you shot a pintail and a snow goose as well. That's correct.

Katie Burke: How high up was that snow goose?

Ronal Roberson: High enough. If you've never experienced it before, when they fly into a strong north wind like that, they really get down a lot lower. And that's one reason when the pintails came over, everything was fighting that north wind and they were down, I'd say 60 yards or so. It happens all the time, and it's kind of a fun thing to do.

Katie Burke: They come right over your head.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, and they're not going very fast into that wind like that. You were also saying, Ronald, that this was the second, really only the second good hunt y'all have had, and that also relates to one of the things that we wanted to talk about. previous episode, I guess it would have gone out last week, but by the time you're listening to this, where we talked with Dr. Scott Stevens about low bird numbers that people are talking about here in the Southern U.S. and all the different things that are kind of contributing to that, one of which Ronald, y'all have experienced here is just how absolutely dry it has been for a real long period of time, like even dating back into the summer. I mean, this area has been in drought for months.

Ronal Roberson: Talk about that from your perspective. It really affected habitat negatively. One reason is because all the farmers could stay in the field and they got all the fields were ready for next spring. I mean, no seed really left exposed. I mean, everything, all the ground was prepared and gotten ready for next year. And then all of our- And by prepared, you mean disked up and you got all that stubble- A lot of it's been rowed. I mean, especially the old corn ground, there's nothing left in the cornfields. What it really affected was the late summer, fall planting of millet, because we never got enough water to get a stand. And what did come up, it was so dry, it died. So, I mean, very little duck hole food was successful this year. And I pumped this year, we pumped for 63 days. What day did you start? Not early enough. And we still only had about 60% of the water we usually have. And my pump budget was three times as much as it usually is in a regular year. So, yeah, it was 300% of what I usually do. And we still didn't have enough water.

Mike Brasher: Now, that place where we hunted this morning, it was kind of in between some WRP, maybe it may have been reforested WRP. We can talk about that a little bit later on. But the vegetation, the water that we were hunting over, that looked like natural vegetation, just grasses and sedges. Was there rice in there?

Ronal Roberson: Well, not much because it didn't make it. And we went back in later and put millet out. And some of that made it, but most of it was just barnyard grass, basically that type. The hard part about years like this, if you have much vegetation at all, your water level never gets high enough for the birds to have a place to you know, to land, to put your decoys down, to put a spread out to work. And it's been a tough year. I mean, the oxbows were all just almost completely dry this year. I showed you the picture of the cypress tree out there. First time I've ever been able to walk out there and take that picture in 20 years. It's always been wet. But I mean, you could walk across that oxbow out there a month ago.

Mike Brasher: Yeah. I was in my hometown last weekend. And we hunted in a little field with spring fed area and the beavers have dammed it up. And so we got a little bit of water in this field where I hardly ever see ducks, but there was a couple dozen mallards had been using it. And so I took Kai Victor, one of our interns, our conservation science assistants down there, and he got his first duck. We shot a wood duck there, we shot a mallard, but then I took him over to where I normally hunt in some of those rivers there in north central Mississippi. Typically those areas have quite a bit of backwater sloughs, beaver dams have kind of stopped the water up. But this year, we went in there, all of that, just last weekend, completely dry. The person that leases that land, farms that land, had taken advantage of how dry it was this year to go in there and bust out all those beaver dams. And so, some of the places for the past few years, I have consistently killed mallards this time of the year. You can still see the cracked, the one, two-inch cracks in the soil there. And there's no ducks around, you know, so that's not a surprise. You know, as Scott Stevens was saying, that water and waterfowl, it's important.

Ronal Roberson: They got to have it. Look how it goes with the name, but this year, we don't have, the field next to me is usually flooded and it just got water this week. We've had three and a half inches of rain this week and that's as much rain as we had for three months. Yeah. And the water's still not where it should be, but at least there is some habitat. But there's just nothing out there to eat though.

Mike Brasher: Yeah. Well, and it's going to be interesting here over the next few days because we do have a very, very frigid weather coming down. All this shallow water is going to be froze here by Monday, Tuesday. And people all across Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, I mean, everybody's saying the same thing. Unless you got deep water, it's all going to be locked up. So, I'm really curious to hear how people do and where they find success over the next few days. I'm going to try my, I'm going to try to go out tomorrow and try to find a few places that haven't yet, that are still open. But then by the time Sunday, Monday roll around, I don't know if I'm going to have an opportunity to get out and do anything. I might just be deer hunting.

Ronal Roberson: This year, your mentality changes. If you find a hundred birds using an area, it's like, I'd found that place yesterday, I watched them come in. It was nice, it lasted 30 minutes or so, but it's only about a hundred birds using that whole slough. And I mean, I've seen that thing completely full from, it is a three-quarter mile long. And I mean, I am hunting a hundred birds, basically, and I think, okay, I think we can have a fair hunt. But you don't… I don't see any ducks in the middle of the day. I don't see flight ducks.

Mike Brasher: I don't… There's just not around here. There's not enough water to attract them in large numbers. I mean, it's… That's the one thing that a lot of these studies, we've… States like Mississippi and Arkansas and others conduct these surveys, aerial surveys during the fall and winter months, and they… Folks have gone back and intersected some of that data with land cover, land water classifications. And one of the things that they consistently find is that it takes a lot of water. I mean, ducks are attracted to the amount of water on the landscape. And so if you've got just a little isolated pocket of water here and there, you might get a few ducks, but you're not going to get a large number of ducks. And that's kind of what you see in places like this. There's not a whole lot of other water around you right now, is it?

Ronal Roberson: Well, what's interesting about this, it was so dry this year The two rains we've gotten this week are the first time we've actually had any runoff out of a field. And did you see a duck? I did, I saw a duck go down in that oxbow right there. But this is the first time we've actually had runoff out of the agricultural fields. It's been so dry, everything's just been soaking up. All that water that I pumped, we were so dry in December, we were losing five or six inches of water every two weeks. and just wasn't getting replaced, and I just refused to pump anymore. I don't know what a duck cost me this year, but I'm pretty sure it was pretty expensive.

Mike Brasher: You've been doing this long enough to know that you're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to assign a dollar value to the ducks that you harvest. My wife does. So yeah, I guess by the time this episode goes out and folks are listening to this, we will be past the arrival of that strong front. But I guess I will just say, we are hopeful that this is going to move some new birds into these more southern latitudes. It's getting late. It's one of the things we've told other people is like, it's getting late. Those ducks are already thinking about the breeding season. So they're not going to move any farther south, certainly this time of year, than they absolutely have to. There are a lot of places that are going to lock up, freeze up. But just as an example of how late the migration has been for some species, I saw some messages this morning of people still hearing snow geese flying overhead in North Dakota and Idaho and Montana in January, like mid-January, just to give you an idea of how late, how warm it's been. We're obviously seeing the change now, and so hopefully folks are going to have experienced some success, and also you'll get to hunt the thaw as well. And so that brings with it other opportunities.

Katie Burke: You know, the one thing we did mention, and this morning you couldn't have tell because of the rain, it was storming so hard, but normal mornings you can't, when we're out here, there's lots of property around us and people that hunt, and you don't hear, we don't hear shots this year at all. So this morning, of course, was not a very good example of that because we couldn't hear 50 yards away. But you would normally, you would like, we always in past years have heard other people shooting and this year it's not been the case.

Ronal Roberson: I think of a pintail as a sheet water bird. He likes big open landscape and shallow water and everything. We just haven't had any. Yesterday were the first pintails that I've seen all season. And in this part of the world down here, it's pumped water. It's not really pintail habitat. This was the first that was, you know, saw some flights of high pintails today. I got lucky and got one of them, but it's, I mean, the amount of birds, I don't know. I know our harvest is down 80% here, and a lot of people are comparative to that.

Mike Brasher: Oh, yeah, yeah. It will be real interesting to see. Of course, you know what the numbers are going to be whenever the harvest statistics come out. next fall, or I guess later this year. Oh, it's gonna be down big time in a lot of these states. So, we'll move on here. I guess one example of how slow some of the duck hunting has been is the fact that I've had a couple of opportunities to do some snipe hunting. Now, I'll hunt snipe, and I grew up and would do this occasionally, would hunt snipe, and I really enjoy them. We cooked some up last night, Chris Isaac, your first time to ever eat snipe? It was. And? It was good. Of all the things you've eaten, what would you compare it to?

Chris Isaac: I don't know. I was trying to think about that last night. It was… I don't know. Nothing. I mean, maybe the duck we had.

Mike Brasher: But you haven't tried dove? Most people will compare it to dove. You've never had dove. I'm glad you didn't say lesser yellowleg. What? I didn't know what that is. Or eagle, or owl.

Chris Isaac: I guess snipe are small? Yeah. Because those pieces you were serving were… Oh yeah, so… Minutes ago I asked, I asked like… What's the stick on there? What's the stick on there? Ronald's like, that's the leg. Oh, okay.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, I did pull the thigh and the leg off of these. And it was like two inches.

Katie Burke: I've never eaten snipe before. Have you eaten snipe before?

Ronal Roberson: I've had snipe before.

Katie Burke: When was the last time you ate snipe?

Ronal Roberson: About 35 years ago.

Katie Burke: Really? Yeah.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, so I've tried Woodcock, I've tried Snipe, I've eaten Soras. I don't know about like Virginia Rail or Clapper Rail. I don't have a whole lot of experience with those, but I'm assuming, I would assume they'd taste very similar. I mean, it's all dark meat. It's all very similar to duck or dove. So, but yeah, as I've talked about… When did you shoot that Snipe? It would have been last Saturday.

Chris Isaac: Did you do anything to the meat in terms of… No, it's a very simple preparation.

Mike Brasher: Kai and I kind of cleaned those birds, I guess, a couple days ago, and I did it the same way I do duck. My favorite recipe for duck now, it's a real easy recipe, leave the skin on. Of course, there's not a whole lot of fat on the snipe. There's a little layer of fat there, but it doesn't do a whole lot for you. But I just kind of pulled the breast muscles off, pulled the the thigh and leg off and coated them in olive oil. And then for this one, actually, the seasoning was different. I used Cavendish and then put them in the skillet. Same way we did them whenever we were down in Louisiana. I think there's a video out there on the DU, on one of the DU social media accounts on Instagram, where we prepared some snipe. So we talked about the snipe on a couple of those episodes.

Chris Isaac: I found it a lot better than The freshly harvested geese We did after the last podcast.

Mike Brasher: Well, that's interesting.

Chris Isaac: I just Maybe it was so fresh. It just tasted like Blood to me really after is cooked. Yeah.

Katie Burke: Well, maybe we didn't do something right Yeah, do something right. Can I soak it in salt water?

Mike Brasher: No, we didn't I don't ever Brian, my birds. I have been talking to some folks about that, and I'm probably going to try that occasionally, but I know there's different ways of doing it.

Katie Burke: With Brian, all of ours. Yeah. Gets rid of that gamey taste.

Mike Brasher: Yeah. You know, but just a reminder to folks, if you do want to go out and attempt to hunt snipe, make sure you're good with species identification. You know, so we don't want people shooting at random sluggers. They have a distinct call when they get up. They do, and that's one of the ways that I've told people, that's the best way to kind of learn what a snipe is, you walk out into these shallowly flooded ag fields or other grassy areas and you flush a bird, listen, it'll do this, or something similar to that. That's not quite how it goes, but then you can kind of watch them in flight and get a search image for them.

Chris Isaac: So snipe are hard to identify?

Mike Brasher: There are other birds that you could confuse for snipe that are not harvestable.

Chris Isaac: So I wonder if that's how the myth of snipe hunting got started.

Mike Brasher: No, I don't know. Ronald, do you have any ideas about the origin of that?

Ronal Roberson: You start to show my age when you talk about people going snipe hunting. I mean, that used to be something that you did to people like you that didn't know what was going on. You know, we're going to go snipe hunting tonight.

Mike Brasher: We should have done that.

Ronal Roberson: Yeah, we're going snipe hunting. Ready to go, Chris?

Chris Isaac: Running around with flashlights.

Ronal Roberson: Here's a bag. Here's your flashlight. Walk that way about six miles.

Chris Isaac: You'll know it when you see it.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, and we're going to run them to you.

Ronal Roberson: But we hunted snipe, a lot of times we'd duck hunt around rice fields and things like that. And when we were going in and out, we'd see a lot of snipe. And you don't have to have a dog. I mean, you can just walk them up. But they are not the easiest thing in the world to shoot. Their flight patterns are, and they come off the ground fast.

Katie Burke: Yeah. So what are the other birds you get up when you're getting up snipe?

Mike Brasher: Around here, Not much. So whenever Kai and I were out in that field last week, I think snipe were the only, well, killdeer, I'm sorry. Killdeer would be the one that you're most likely to see right now down here. I can't speak for other geographies and regions, and I'm not familiar with the kind of the common birds that they would see in those fields right now, but definitely around here, it's killdeer. Now, killdeer are pretty easy to differentiate from snipe once you kind of get an idea for them. They also have a distinct call that you will hear. It's a more higher pitch type whistle type thing. Not really a whistle, but it's a higher pitch call. They're a bigger bird. They're a bigger bird, have a slower wing beat. Much slower wing beat. Yeah, and they're not legal to harvest. Woodcock and Snipe are the only two shorebirds in North America that are legal to hunt. What's the reason? I don't know. That's a great question. I don't know the you know the origin of why those two, why Woodcock and Snipe, unless at the time when those regulations around migratory birds was first put into place, that maybe they were the two most commonly hunted shorebirds, and that would be my guess, but I really don't know.

Katie Burke: Nicole Lotto, J.D. : Or is it because of the way they kind of come up in… They don't come up in big flocks, like they can't really… David Willis, J.D. : They can.

Chris Isaac: Nicole Lotto, J.D.

Katie Burke: : Well, I was thinking of woodcock, they don't. David Willis, J.D.

Chris Isaac: : Right, they don't.

Katie Burke: Nicole Lotto, J.D. : Yeah, I don't think that's why they aren't. They're harder to… It's harder to kill a mass numbers of them.

Mike Brasher: The simplest answer, the most honest answer right now is I don't know, but I've had that question and that would be something worth kind of looking into.

Chris Isaac: So this past week I've spent doing my, getting my Tennessee hunters safety course done and I decided to take the cheaper course, which turns out to be the much longer course. So for any of you about to do that, spend a few extra dollars and get the shortened course. Mine took days. But this is a question I remember, and it was about pertaining to why birds are considered legal, and the answer was if they have proven to be beneficial for human… Consumption? Yeah, basically something like that, saying they have proven to be a good source of food and we, you know, rely on them.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. You kind of have to go back to 1913, 1918 when the Migratory Bird Treaty was put into place and they identified which species they wanted to allow harvest of, and I don't know. I honestly don't know if snipe and woodcock were included at that very time or if something happened. Yeah, I just have to say I don't know, but it's worthy of a little bit of research.

Ronal Roberson: Chris, don't take up snipe hunting. It'd take about 40 to feed you. That's right. Don't worry.

Mike Brasher: That's right. We had four last night, and I think I had to cut them to make sure everybody got some, but they're pretty tasty there. So, yeah. I've been on a little bit of a snipe hunting bent here lately.

Chris Isaac: I think one of the breast pieces was like the size of my thumb.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, but they are tasty. I encourage folks to try that if you get into it. So, how about we take a break right here and then we'll come back. We're gonna talk about a few other things. We got another sort of, I guess, discussion that emerged on a social media post and we're gonna take that up and then we're gonna talk to Ronald about some of the work that he's doing around here on his property. So, stay with us folks. We'll be right back. Welcome back, everybody. We're here on location in Tippo, Mississippi. Katie Burke is joining me, Chris Isaac, our producer, as well as Dr. Ronald Robertson, and we've got two guest hosts here as well. We've got Sam and Nell, a couple of little canines that have joined us here on the sofa. So, great to have them here with us. So, in one of those, I guess, video posts that we put out here in December, I think we were down on a hunt in in Louisiana and we were talking about, I had a green wing in my hand, was talking about how to age a green-winged teal, you know, based on the presence of a notched tail feathers and all that kind of stuff. And so in my description of kind of that story, I guess I mentioned something about waiting until this bird, the bird had landed on the water and we were going to, trying to get it to flush. And so immediately, it was amazing how quickly people queued in on that. In the comments, they're like, what's the, What's the opposition to water swatting, you know, shoot it on the water, all that type of stuff. Skillet shot. Skillet shot. Now what I didn't say is I think for that bird, one of the reasons why we were wanting to, trying to get it to flush, because it was kind of in amongst the decoys and didn't want to sort of waylay the decoys at that time, but it did kind of make us realize that That's a topic that's sort of… Taboo? Well, it's interesting. There are different takes on that. And we kind of had the idea, let's talk about that. Let's share our personal thoughts on that. And some people will say, and I don't know if it's for the, quote, sportsmanship of it, or if it's… I think some people have a rule of if it makes it to the water, then it gets a pass. Other people will say if it makes it to the water, I've done my job, I'm going to shoot the bird. So, I have my take on it, but I wanted to hear from the rest of the folks here. So, Katie, I'm going to start with you. What's your take on the acceptability of shooting a bird on the water?

Katie Burke: Well, it's probably the same as my dad's, considering he taught me to hunt. I don't think it matters. How often does a bird make it to the water? It's pretty rare. So, if you're going with percentages, like, yeah, I don't think it matters. I'm fine with it. Especially when you got kids around. Let them shoot off the water.

Mike Brasher: Absolutely. I agree with that.

Ronal Roberson: Ronald? I don't. I don't really. I just like to shoot a decoying bird. And if I'm going to have the possibility of shooting decoying birds, I'm going to take that option. But if today, One hit the water, one was gonna die on the water. I told y'all a little joke from some of the old guys I used to hunt with. We were in a blind, it was called the Ring of Fire at York Woods. And big old Drake came in and hit the water and one of my old buddies stood up to shoot it. And his friend says, you gonna shoot that duck on the water? He's swimming on the water. He said, no, I'm gonna wait till he stops. But no, we, it's a, it depends.

Katie Burke: I think the answer is it depends, right? Like if you're having a good day and you're shooting ducks, keep shooting them coming in. But if you have a day where got, it's been pretty slow and one lands on the water, you got one duck left.

Ronal Roberson: When I was a kid in the timber with my dad, a lot of ducks start to work and they're coming in, they're starting to hit. You let the last few ducks that are going to finish, then you shoot the ones coming down finishing, then you shoot the others going out when they're coming off the water. And that's all

Katie Burke: Yeah, that does bring up a good point though. I do not recommend someone, if there's a big different group of ducks working and one lands on the water and you shoot that one for the rest of those birds come in. Yeah, that's probably not a good move. You're gonna make some people mad. They won't come back.

Mike Brasher: They won't come back. So my take, I don't have a problem with it and I always kind of go to the, I guess, probability. side of things. Look, you're there, you're hunting, right? One of the outcomes of a hunt is to kill birds. And if you have a stationary bird on the water within killable distance, that's a really high probability shot, right? And so if one of your goals is to minimize the probability of crippling a bird and losing that bird, then what better opportunity than when you have a bird on the water? So I don't have a problem with it for that reason alone. I do I think, Katie, you make a good point. Depending on how the hunt is going, it sometimes feels more sporting and more challenging, especially if the birds are… I shouldn't say challenging, but more rewarding if you've got birds decoying incredibly well. I mean, there are a few hunters that enjoy anything more than a bird that is backpedaling right over the decoys kind of coming in to you, you know, and so you want to experience that as much as possible. That would be a situation in which you might say, yeah, I'm not going to shoot that bird that made it to the water. I'm just going to let it go. But I think there are other people that have their own take on it in that they're not going to shoot it because it's not as sporting and the bird made it to the water and you're going to let it go.

Ronal Roberson: That's fine too. Well, if you're going to shoot them on the water, there's a few tricks. You always want to little clap, make a little noise, then raise his head. You don't want him to be flat. I mean, go ahead and you want to shoot him on the water? Make him pull up a little alert.

Mike Brasher: Yeah. A lot easier shot. Yeah, well, that's a good point that someone made is that also when they're on the water, their vitals aren't as exposed as when they're flying in and you're shooting from below. So, that's to your point. You want to make sure that head is up and you get a good shot on that.

Katie Burke: I always shoot a little under him on the water, yeah.

Ronal Roberson: Well, there's that too. Like shooting a strutting turkey. You want his head to be nice and tall.

Mike Brasher: Yeah.

Ronal Roberson: What was it? Any other tips? Well, the main thing about it is don't shoot it swimming away from you. Yeah. I mean, if you want to cripple a bird, a swimming bird away from you is not a good shot. Profile is a better shot. You want it to be alert. And actually, if it springs right when you clap, then it's really a good shot. But no, I don't see a problem with it. I think… Your duck was flying.

Katie Burke: My first duck was flying, but Christopher's wasn't.

Ronal Roberson: Christopher's was a wood duck, it was on water. And when you're a father trying to get your kid's first duck, you'll take it any way it comes. Just get the pressure off of you.

Katie Burke: And once you get that one duck down when you're a kid, it makes it a little easier, yeah. You're not just so worried about it all the time.

Mike Brasher: Yeah. Well, so that's our personal take on… I'm such a bad shot.

Chris Isaac: Either way, I'm gonna miss. I don't know about that. I don't know if you remember the last podcast, Hunt. I couldn't even hit a cripple. I was asked to hey, you know, you got one came down still Kind of alive so that I think Chris Jennings is it Chris, you know finish it off and I went through Three I still couldn't hit I couldn't hit it.

Katie Burke: Most people shoot over him on the water. I

Mike Brasher: Clay can hit one. Clay did. I think that was today. So we downed a Drake Mallard and it was crippled. So head was up. I shot. It was still swimming. Katie, then you shot. And whenever you shot, I mean, its head was fully in the pattern both times, but the time that you shot it, it was like, okay, that got it. And so then it goes into the death throws. And I think Clay thought it was about to fly off. Another shot and we're like, oh, it's good.

Katie Burke: It's dead dead now.

Mike Brasher: That was, that was good. So, but you were paying attention. I mean, you're on it and not want to lose that cripple.

Katie Burke: And that's a good thing. Yeah. I appreciate that. We don't want to be running after birds.

Mike Brasher: No. So yeah, we had a great hunt today. Ronald, thanks for offering. Katie, thanks for kind of helping set this up and having us be part of this. For this year, ten birds with that kind of decoying work, I mean, that was an awesome hunt.

Katie Burke: It's shooting them through pouring rain.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, even with all that. It's another element to add to that day. So, Ronald, I think we'll talk a little bit now kind of about you as a private landowner, as a hunter. Every opportunity we have to talk about the important role that hunters play, we'll always talk about the revenue that comes from license sales, duck stamp sales, philanthropic contributions to conservation organizations like Ducks Unlimited, But the other thing that we don't talk about enough is the habitat that private landowners provide. Yes, you do it because you love to hunt these birds, and it's a social and it's a family affair, but the contributions of private landowners in managing these habitats, investing your own resources into this property is nothing short of amazing, and it's what differentiates a lot of the hunting and the contributions of people, of hunters, from other conservationists, I would say, and other people that support conservation.

Ronal Roberson: Well, this year in particular, because there was so little habitat, and if it wasn't for individuals that like to hunt, that spent the time, the money, and the effort to pump the water onto the land. I mean, just in this area right here, It was just nothing if it hadn't been for pumped water from people that hunt and people that manage their property. And it was not an inexpensive, as I said earlier, thing to do. But that hunt, most of that water this morning was pumped water we were on. We probably wouldn't have had enough. Just relying on rain, it wouldn't have been there. Still, the numbers are just not there, but they have so few places to go. You watch them for a few days, you can go in and have a halfway decent hunt. But it's not like in years past where you can go in and hunt multiple times over and over again. But you take care. It's kind of hard to put into words. It's something that you enjoy as much as a lot of us do being out, like the waterfowl hunt. It's part of you. I mean, you can't put it into words. It's like this morning, I enjoyed watching, I know we got soaking wet and it was a terrible front and lightning. An inch and a half of rain fell in about an hour, but we got to experience a front come through and the wind change, not in a matter of 40, 50 minutes, in a matter of four or five minutes. I mean, it went calm, boom, the other direction, just like that. And that kind of ended our hunt when the wind changed, but it just being out there and experiencing things like that. And when y'all left and you came back here to get ready for this, I said, well, I don't have anything to do. I'll stay. And it was kind of neat. But I go, yesterday I went in and watched those birds that we hunted today. And I get as much out of that you know, as I do on a hunt now. I mean, just to know that what you've done is a reason that they're there. And if you hadn't have done that, there's really not many more places this year that they could go. And it's, you know, it's hard. I've grown up with it my entire life, and so I don't know. It's just part of me.

Mike Brasher: Yeah. And I'm sure that you enjoy introducing other people to hunting as much as, and probably more so now, than hunting itself. And that's one of the things that seems to be universally true among seasoned hunters, hunters of any kind. I'm certainly in that category, and I've had the opportunity here recently to introduce a few people to waterfowl hunting, to be part of the introduction of people to waterfowl hunting for the first time, and one of which was with Kai Victor, our conservation science assistant. The other was some work we did with Barstool Outdoors, and a couple of their folks came in and never hunted before, and seeing there and hearing their appreciation, their experience, kind of how they were in awe, how much they enjoyed it. One of the guys was talking about how when we were actually in the timber, he was texting his dad and brother and saying, we got to go do this. I mean, that's pretty special stuff.

Ronal Roberson: One of my favorite things is I've taken so many kids hunting. I can't even imagine how many I've taken hunting. Uh, this year alone, uh, two, two young people, one of them, uh, uh, one of our, uh, director of fundraisers, uh, is, uh, his son killed his first deer here. And then a young, young man that came in from Dallas with my son, he killed his first deer. And then two years ago, I had some men in their forties, uh, because we kind of do a little of everything around here, but, uh, it's no, I cannot remember. I can't even count the number of kids I've taken hunting.

Mike Brasher: You know, the other thing that I'll say, I can't let this opportunity go, is Katie, your mom, Patty, is over here in the kitchen. She walked in a few minutes ago, and she doesn't hunt, right? Doesn't go, but, and I told my mom this not too long ago. It's like, you know, a lot of times, whenever I'm telling the story about how I was introduced to hunting, I'll talk about my dad. My dad used to hunt. And he was the one that introduced me to it. But I want to be very clear. You played just as an important role in that, in allowing that to happen. The same with your mom, Katie. I mean, because they let us do it, right? They tolerate all of our absences.

Ronal Roberson: I knew I could always go as long as I drug one of them with me.

Katie Burke: Who had to deal with the tears when we woke up and realized we didn't go? The one thing though, not just introducing people to hunting here, that I want you to talk about a little bit, Dad, and you've kind of changed some things here recently, but Mike and y'all don't really know this, but when we purchased this land when I was in high school, the first time, it looked drastically different. And I guess I want you to talk a bit, Dad, on what it means that you've changed this landscape and put a stamp that it's going to be like this. It's not going anywhere.

Ronal Roberson: Well, you know, I talked to Some people that do you about putting an easement on some property out here in front of the clubhouse? Because I just don't want to ever see it change. There's some cypress trees out there that are probably eight ten feet across I showed him a picture of four kids standing in front of one of the tree trunks and that in the tree is still wider than they are you just don't want that to ever not be there and It's one of the coolest things is to watch a bean field turn into oak trees that are dropping acres. And you go from, it looks like just a grown-up mess to, and we had quail habitat when that happened. I don't know where they came from or how they got here. We had several coveys of quail there, and that was kind of cool to hear the birds calling. And then you go, the trees get up, And then all of a sudden, they start dropping acorns. Then you have squirrels and the deer population. And all of a sudden, the wood ducks are hitting the woods with water in them and feeding on acorns. I mean, that was a bean field 20 years ago. Now all of a sudden, it's a managed forest and wetlands area. It can be done. You might not get this. I would imagine, I'll be 70 pretty soon. I don't know that, I'll be too damn old to climb a tree by then, but I don't know if we'll ever, I'll ever see any of my grandkids actually bow hunt out of one of the trees I planted. Maybe if I doctor it up a little bit, they can, but I mean, things like that, I mean, that just, I mean, that was just a bean field 20 years ago. The fish ponds, this is a, we're in an area where some of the first commercial fish ponds in the United States were, I know in Mississippi, were developed. And the fish pond area down there, below us to the south is, That's going to be some interesting habitat now that we can kind of control what we do down there. And I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with that. But in the way the land is changing around here, when I was growing up, there was just bean fields all the way around. And probably within 20 years, It's probably going to be 6 or 7,000 acres of forest here that you wouldn't have thought would ever have been here.

Mike Brasher: And that's through mostly wetland reserve program, WRP?

Ronal Roberson: CRP, WRP, and like I said, some carbon banking being done, and it's just… It's just an interwoven kind of process down here where as ways to mitigate and offset other things, they're going into reforestation. And so a lot of that's being done. So just in this area down here, you know, one day when Katie's my age and she's sitting in this clubhouse, it's going to be forest all the way around her. And it's just going to be kind of a unique transformation of cropland down here. It's really cool though. I've been fortunate. I've been real lucky. But you don't wind up with a lot of the assets that you gain by creating habitat like this are much more valuable than monetary assets that you give.

Mike Brasher: What were some of your primary sources of assistance, whether we're talking about the programs themselves or people to advise you on that? Obviously, you have a connection to Ducks Unlimited and we have some association with some of those programs, but I know you've also relied on your local NRCS office. And so for people that may be listening to this and wondering, well, how do you know how to proceed? How do you know what the path is and what options are available to you? How do you navigate all that?

Ronal Roberson: Well, you know, I was lucky that I did, for the last 40 years, been involved with the EU a great deal. And we have the Southern Regional Office in Jackson with all the resources there. I mean, it's just when that WRP was designed up there, one of our biologists and engineers were right there with me designing that project up there. So, you know, they taught me things and showed me things that we could and couldn't do because of restrictions. But if you develop, you know, I grew up in this small town, and so I know almost everybody that's worked at the conservation offices around here. But when they understand what you kind of have as a goal, they'll go out of their way to help you. I mean, I've never had a problem with getting assistance from FSA or NRCS. And when we had a forestry department here, your local forester is a great asset. I mean, I've got some hill land that he's been instrumental in. because it's just so many resources and they have, okay, I'm a dentist. He asked me something about the mouth. I probably going to be a little bit more. You're going to have an answer. I'm going to have, I'll make up one if I don't have one. But I probably have a little bit more information about that area. And it's just like, it's like them and the forestry programs and the EQIP programs and the WRE as it's called now, and your CRP. I mean, that's what they do. And if you want to find out how to, what you can do, just, they're more than happy to sit down and talk to you and help you out. I've always had a great relationship with them.

Mike Brasher: And Katie, what's it been like for you to see that transformation, especially kind of considering that you're, I mean, who you work for now?

Katie Burke: It's interesting. I don't know if I've ever really thought about it. Um, I was just thinking when he was talking like about what it would be like when I'm 70. And like my grandkids will probably hunt timber. Yeah. Which is crazy to think about. I can't really even imagine that being like a timber hole. But this place has probably been the most special transformation. When I was a kid, we hunted York Woods and we had a lease there, but that was an established property, like York Woods is York Woods. Then Bailey was similar. Bailey Break was another camp we were part of. But this one, I mean, we used to, There's a ditch that ran all the way down to the road that you came in on. And we'd put a boat in, and the water would have to be really deep. And we'd put a boat in, drive all the way across that field in that boat. And we would, there was like not that many trees, and we'd hunt these little side parts of the tree. And when I'm out there, I have a hard time remembering where we even came in, and what that was like, because it's transformed so much. But, and especially now, You know, I take my kids. They kind of are awful to take because they're so little, but we've deer hunted out here, and it's pretty special to kind of—this will be something that they'll have for their whole lives.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, and that's—that was one of the questions that I asked you. I think, I guess last night is whether this was an area where you grew up hunting, because I think in my mind, I was thinking about that, whether this is a place that helped define your childhood. And it wasn't. We've had this, you've had this for only what, 12 years, 10?

Ronal Roberson: The clubhouse has been here 15. We've owned the property, parts of the property over 25.

Mike Brasher: Okay. But this, it wasn't necessarily a place.

Katie Burke: No, and when they first bought it, dad first bought in, we didn't really hunt it. We may be hunting once, twice a year.

Ronal Roberson: I backed into this thing with some friends that needed another partner. I was still hunting York and I had Bailey. I never hunted Bailey until I lost York. It's a fantastic club. Now that we've developed this, This is kind of where I spend my time.

Katie Burke: Yeah, and the only reason we even left Bailey is because, I mean, there's 15 of us. All of us hunt now in our immediate family. But you only allowed three guns at Bailey. So we were always having to negotiate or talk to another member and see if they had an extra gun, especially now that the grandkids are hunting and the next generation is starting to hunt. It just got to be really difficult to hunt there. So here we don't have that problem because it's just us and we can kind of hunt it the way we want to.

Mike Brasher: And it will be really neat for your kids to be able to tell that story. Oh yeah, this is where I grew up. I have childhood memories here and it will be even more special in that respect, for them to be able to… I have a question.

Katie Burke: Did Ronald, my nephew, did either of my nephews hunt? They did hunt at Bailey a few times.

Ronal Roberson: Very few times.

Katie Burke: Very few times. But my kids have never hunted anywhere else.

Ronal Roberson: No. Well, you know, my grandson shot his first deer off the porch. We have a green field out here. Nice little lay point. I mean, that's what's happening down here. This used to just be a big wide open area and now the habitat is being created all the way around this place. They're just, you know, it's kind of neat to sit here. That is going to be something kind of cool to think that after I'm dead and gone that somebody's actually going to hunt. hunted flooded timber, because I grew up hunting flooded timber, and doesn't much else beat that. I can promise you that.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, we're having this conversation here with the two of you, father-daughter, and there are tens of thousands of other people, or more than that, that this story kind of represents and resonates with because this type of experience, this type of sort of, it's sort of the fabric of your family. It's what you've done. It's something that has helped grow you together. There are other people just like this. And so I hope they'll be imagining the same stories in their life as they hear you talk about the ones that are yours. So it's pretty cool. I kind of think about that. We didn't, I didn't grow up I grew up just hunting public land and other private land here, there, as it was maybe available. But my dad and I and my brother were always part of that. And so it's neat to kind of think about how those same experiences in places all across North America are unique and to those individuals that experience them, those families.

Ronal Roberson: Well, you know, one of the greatest things you can do is share something that you have too. I mean, sharing this place is probably one of my biggest pleasures I get out of it because you kind of want to be proud of something to share it. and have other people down that may not get to do something like this. It's kind of cool. I had four guys in from Mobile last weekend, and we had a pretty fair hunt last Friday morning, but they never really hunted the Mississippi Dale. One of them had, but the rest of them had hunted beaver ponds, off Mobile Bay and those kinds of things, but they'd never really been in the Mississippi Delta. And take them through the Delta and show them, drive them around York Woods and through the fields and everything and took them up to Bailey. And there's only, out of 17 people, there's only three charter members left in Bailey. Wow, I didn't even know that. Yeah, I was a charter when I got a couple years ago. And they're into the third generation in that club now. And you don't think about that too much, because you just take so much for granted. And then all of a sudden, we're into the third generation of people hunting at Bailey now. And you know it's always going to be there, but everything changes. And that's one reason I want to put easements on these pieces of property, so after I'm dead and gone, they'll still be here. I just can't imagine it not being here.

Mike Brasher: Well, thanks to your efforts, it will be. Yeah. So, Katie, we'll need to start wrapping up here. Anything else that you wanted to kind of touch on in this conversation?

Katie Burke: I think we did most of it. Um, yeah, I just, and dad did that. I wouldn't kind of walk through cause I didn't, that's something we didn't really talk about. This has completely changed in 20 years. It's a completely new piece of property. And, um, yeah, it's crazy that we used to come in here and it was flat. Nothing was here. And which is when you're here now and you look around like all those bean fields, I mean, that's exactly what this looked like.

Chris Isaac: And,

Katie Burke: And the Delta, we talked about this earlier, but about this year being dry and I think it's important to kind of… Me and my brother think about this a lot from back when we were kids and we would hunt this spot and we'd have so many more backslashes of water in this country and there'd be so much more water on the landscape. And because of land forming and it being drier, that water's not coming anymore. So, it's so important for things like this just to come back, to keep ducks in the country.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, well, again, Dr. Ronald, Katie, thanks for having us here, for allowing us to experience your little, the place that you're providing. It's an important means a lot to your family and for us to be able to join in this, it's special to us as well. Here as we go through the rest of the season, obviously we want to wish folks well, hope this little change in the weather produces a lot of beneficial outings for folks that have maybe struggled thus far in the season. I've got Got a few things coming up. One of the biggest things that early February is going to be the North American Duck Symposium. It's, it was actually, what was it, four years ago, where when we, after we had just started the podcast, I did a, like, I called in remote to talk about what all I was seeing and hearing at the North American Duck Symposium when it was held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, back in 2019, fall of 2019. That was the first year we started doing this. And so, this year, it's gonna be in Portland, Oregon, early February. I'll be going up there along with several hundred waterfowl scientists, habitat managers, graduate students, university professors, a lot of people geeking out on the latest duck science and habitat science. So, I'm excited about it. I'll have something to report on. From there, Katie, anything coming up for you?

Katie Burke: Nope. Nothing. Well, I did put in a new exhibit in December. We have a new call exhibit. So please come to the museum and see it. It's kind of a few years we've done just like states, like we did Tennessee calls. This one's more a little bit of everything. It's a great exhibit.

Chris Isaac: So just really quick for those listening who don't know, she's talking about the Bass Pro Pyramid in Memphis. They gave us space to do a water fouling. Yeah, Waterfowl Heritage.

Katie Burke: Yeah, so there's a new exhibit there, and there's a podcast with the collector coming out with Rick Milligan, so look out for that. And then I might have some stuff, I really don't have, February's pretty quiet, which is good, so I'll get a lot of work done. And then I got stuff coming up in March and April, but… I did have one experience I thought I'd never have this year.

Ronal Roberson: Okay. I got to hunt beaver down with Bo Whoop.

Katie Burke: Nash Buckingham's gun.

Mike Brasher: That was… Bo Whoop is the famous… Nash Buckingham gun.

Katie Burke: Legend of Bo Whoop.

Ronal Roberson: One shot, one duck. That's all I want. Mallard? No, Gadwall. Gadwall Drake? It was a hell of a shot, though.

Mike Brasher: I'm sure it was. Sure it was.

Katie Burke: Wait, wait. Did it make the sound Bo Whoop?

Ronal Roberson: In that duck bun, everything makes it sound bull whoop. I mean, it's pretty loud in that bun. That was a lot of fun. But that's the experience I thought I'd never have.

Mike Brasher: Mr. Producer, anything else? Anything from your perspective? Second ever duck hunt. It was a great morning. Had a lot of fun. Always great having, and it's great to have you on as a participant in these podcasts too. We need to do more of this.

Katie Burke: Okay.

Mike Brasher: I wasn't very convinced.

Chris Isaac: I love the experience of the hunt. You know, the hunt itself is fun, but just the whole thing of going to camp and being outside, being in the wilderness is great. Thanks to Katie for cooking dinner and Clay for making a breakfast.

Mike Brasher: I did my part in eating. Yeah, me too. For sure. Always happy to do that. But yeah, folks, that's going to wrap it up here for us today. I appreciate y'all joining us and so best of luck the rest of the season. Hope this change of weather produces some good success for you. Special thanks to my guest and co-host on this episode, Katie, Katie Burke, our guest, Dr. Ronna Robertson, and our producer, Chris Isaac. It was great to have him on as well. As always, we thank you, the listener, for your time, for supporting the podcast, and we thank you for your support and commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation.