Ducks Unlimited Podcast

SPEAKER05: What's up, guys? Welcome back to Barstool Outdoors Times, Ducks Unlimited. I'm Sydney Wells for everybody listening and not knowing who I am. I've been on Ducks Unlimited podcast before. This is new to 2024 at Barstool Outdoors, so we are doing more visual podcasts. I know I've put some out before with my friend Alex, so we'll for sure see more of Alex and I, but then we're also going to be doing podcasts after our hunts. And I'm really excited because I got my friends from Ducks Unlimited here, my friends from Barstool Sports who have came hunting for the very first time. So I'm going to go ahead and let everybody introduce themselves and we're going to get right into it. We were in Arkansas, north of Stuttgart and went duck hunting this morning and it was absolutely epic.
SPEAKER04: All right. So I'm Matt Harrison, communication specialist for Ducks Unlimited. Also handle PR side of things. So it's been an awesome time today. Looking forward to tomorrow as well.

SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I'm Mallory Murphy. I am DU's social media specialist and digital content editor.

SPEAKER_07: I'm John Feidelberg. I do stuff. He doesn't watch stuff.

SPEAKER_02: He does stuff. Co-host of KFC Radio. Yeah. I'm the Wantan Don, Barstool's foreign correspondent and resident Rangoon chef.

SPEAKER_00: And I'm Dr. Mike Brazier. I'm Senior Waterfowl Scientist for Ducks Unlimited out of our national headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, and co-host of the Ducks Unlimited podcast. And it is awesome to be here with y'all. Sydney, with you, this is like the third time that we've done some of this kind of stuff together. and this co-branded episode for us, super excited about it. There's like a story of how this came to be. We don't have to go all the way back like two or three years ago, but in terms of this particular hunt, this growing partnership between Barstool Outdoors and Ducks Unlimited, I want Matt and you to kind of talk about that, the importance of it to Ducks Unlimited, the importance of it to Barstool Outdoors. Take it away, Matt.

SPEAKER_04: All right, so like you said, this is a super long story, so I'm going to condense it. Long story short is, me and Sydney actually met each other in Oklahoma at Crash Landing Outdoors. I was doing some filming there. So we hit it off there, then I ran into her.

SPEAKER_05: Wait, that's the day that I also got hired at Barstool Sports, I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_01: Was it really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: So Dave and I… like talked via Zoom and I got the job. He's like, okay, we're going to hire you.

SPEAKER_04: So that was pretty much her first day at Barstool. I met her, I was working for myself at the time. But anyway, so we exchanged contacts, whatever. Then a couple, actually a couple months later, we ran into each other again at the NWTF convention in Nashville. And this is literally the craziest story ever. So I saw Sydney and I was walking around. I was thinking, I was like, you know what, I'm about to do some mic'd up videos with my wireless mic. I was like, I'm just going to walk around, interview people, do whatever. You were just organic, total social media stuff.

SPEAKER_00: at that point. Correct.

SPEAKER_04: I was working for myself. Literally, I was just like, well, I'm just gonna create some stuff. So I'm walking around with my mic and I see Sydney and I was like, I'm gonna go say hey to her. So I walked up and she like sees my mic and she's like, I'm about to do mic'd up stuff too. She's like, you wanna do it together? And I was like, let's do it. So we literally, we found a, what kind of foot was it? It was a crane foot. Somebody had harvested a crane. And we taped it up as a mic. Literally, we hooked the wireless mic on this crane foot and we ran around NWTF convention asking questions to people, just off-the-wall questions. And these videos, how many millions of views did they end up getting?

SPEAKER_05: Like, a lot.

SPEAKER_04: Tens of millions of views, like it just blew up. So anyway, We did some, of course, videos at the convention there, so blew up on social media. And then Mallory at the time, which, like she mentioned earlier, our social media manager, I had no connection to Ducks Unlimited whatsoever. She actually, Mallory just shot a shot, sent a DM to Barstool Outdoors, which is Sydney.

SPEAKER_06: I let my intrusive thought win at 10 a.m. this morning.

SPEAKER_03: She just said, I'm gonna shoot my shot.

SPEAKER_06: I was scrolling through and I saw the crane foot. Y'all were popping out of some blinds. Dang that looks so much fun exactly what Ducks Unlimited needs and I was like I let my intrusive thought win I didn't ask my manager I didn't ask anybody and I just slid into the DMs and Long story short, it worked out.

SPEAKER_04: It worked out. So she contacted Sidney. Sidney was like, let's do it. So Sidney calls me just off the cuff. She's like, Matt, Ducks Unlimited just reached out, wants us to come create the same type of videos at their expo in Fort Worth. What do you think? I was like, I'm down. So she's like, all right, here's the dates. Boom, we get in, go. And same thing there as well. Videos just went crazy viral. I was able to actually meet our CEO, Adam Putnam, our president at the time. as well. So I've gotten to meet Dr. Mike, I got to meet a lot of cool people and then weeks later I end up getting a direct message on Instagram from somebody who worked with Ducks Unlimited making it another connection there and they were like hey we would love for you to possibly come and interview for a job. So I did and Rest is history, so I'm what, Ducks Unlimited now.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well he accepted it. Oh no. And then this is year two that we've hunted together. So we were in Arkansas last year. It was my first time ever hunting in Arkansas with them. And ever. Last year, it was a lot of fun. Shout out to Chuck.

SPEAKER_01: Shout out to Karen. Dr. Karen.

SPEAKER_05: And Dr. Darren, we miss you. Matt didn't invite you. What the heck. So we're going to clip this. Put this on Ducks Unlimited. Cut! We're going squirrel hunting and I think the guys want to come, so we're gonna do that. But yeah, and then this year has been awesome. We hunted this morning. We have Fights and Donnie. I'm so excited because they both wanted a duck hunt. I was actually surprised Fights actually was man enough to come out and do it.

SPEAKER_07: Man enough? Oh, man enough. I caught a stray like that? No, it's a fair stray. Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest until like, until I was in the water this morning, I was still like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Like, I don't know if I'm gonna pull a trigger. I don't know if I have it in me. Turns out I did have it in me the second I saw it.

SPEAKER_00: I want to come back to that here a little bit, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_05: It was just awesome, though, because we're the Bill Byers Hunt Club, which is crazy in its own that we're able to hunt here. Very, very, very fortunate that they invited us. They invited Ducks Unlimited, Ducks Unlimited invited us. However that worked out, we got an invite and we're like, woo-hoo, we're going.

SPEAKER_07: Were you was there any part of you that's very nervous and not just on this video but other other videos we do to injury I kind of think of it as like introducing your high school friends to your college friends when you bring a non-hunter where you're like I hope they get along like I like both these people individually but like they might not mix they might not mix

SPEAKER_05: To be honest, like I didn't know the, you know, I didn't know the guys here at the club. So I was a little nervous about that. Not really nervous, but like I've done videos with you guys before. I knew your personalities and then I obviously knew these guys. So I was like, I feel comfortable and I knew they would definitely help. I mean, I preface like they know absolutely nothing. Like, we have to get- We had that clarified yesterday. Yes, I called them. I'm like, listen, we need safety top. They did their hunter safety courses. You guys knew what it was all about. You passed your test, so that's good. But I'm like, I'm just nervous. Like, they need rundowns. Yeah. And I knew after they're like, we'll take care of it. I was like, okay. But I was a little nervous just because it's, I mean, we're duck hunting. It's not like we're fishing.

SPEAKER_07: Well, yeah, and duck hunting, I'll say, I'll speak for myself, as I always do, that this morning, like, I didn't know, I didn't know anything about what was gonna happen. And, like, this morning when we got up at 5.30, 5 a.m., whatever time it was, I was, you know, we get in the truck, and we're driving in the bed of the truck. Totally dark, totally dark.

SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry?

SPEAKER_07: Completely dark, no headlights, no anything. I was, in my head, I don't know about you, I was like, we're going to kill Bin Laden. I was fully war mode, like, it's game on now. The second we were like, I was like, oh, there aren't headlights on, it was, I saw, like, the smoke rising off the fields, I'm like, what?

SPEAKER_02: I didn't even want to take out my phone, because I was like, is the phone light going to scare all the ducks away?

SPEAKER_05: I think you guys definitely were like, let's go, game on. And wait, I think it was you and I, Dr. Mike, that we talked, like, who do we think is going to say that they're cold first? And I never heard either one of us.

SPEAKER_04: Never. Never. We took a bet on that, too. And we never heard it.

SPEAKER_02: I actually I'm pretty good with cold. I I Ski, I'm pretty pretty solid cold.

SPEAKER_07: Yeah, actually dr. Mike tried to give me his hand warmers

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so even as late as this morning, you and I were talking about what about warm socks? Do they have warm socks? What about gloves? We were kind of scrounging up some gloves. Turned out you really didn't need the gloves. And of course, you know, shooting gloves on.

SPEAKER_04: It also helps, too, as a waterfowl hunter, when you got constant birds working, you're not really thinking about it. If it would have been a slow morning, we probably all would have been freezing cold.

SPEAKER_07: I mean, the moment we hit shooting time, there was gunfire right away, and then it didn't stop the entire time we were out.

SPEAKER_02: It was right off the bat, too. We probably arrived and were shooting ducks within 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_04: Literally. As soon as shooting time hit, boom.

SPEAKER_00: Kudos to you two because we went through the safety deal last night and the environment in which you walked into, like if you haven't shot a gun a lot, it is an intimidating thing, right? Let's not joke around about it. But to go into that situation, the first time you've ever gone hunting in the dark, in the water, that's a totally foreign environment. Y'all did a fabulous job with your safety. always being mindful of muzzle direction and all that. So great job guys.

SPEAKER_07: Well you guys made it easy for us to get into it quickly because you guys are very good at lying to us about how well we're doing.

SPEAKER_03: So I gotta tell a story so this morning this one duck comes in and a wine time Don he's just like And he goes did I really kill

SPEAKER_02: I was like, yeah, you did, you did.

SPEAKER_08: It seemed a little too easy. I was like, are you sure?

SPEAKER_07: I'm still not sure. Me and Donnie said, when we got to shoot and skeet later, we were like, if we don't hit it, I think Donnie said, if we don't hit anything today, I don't know about this. I don't know if we can climb down the skeet course.

SPEAKER_00: That was one of the funniest moments. I think it was after you had shot, maybe you had shot, and then you had shot, and both of you had missed. I think you turned around and said, yeah, Don, I don't think we hit any of those ducks.

SPEAKER_05: I was behind you guys with Matt and watching, and I'm like, oh my gosh, Feidelberg definitely smoked that bird. I'm like, you shot that. He's like, I don't think I did. I'm like, are you confident? And you're like.

SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it was not me.

SPEAKER_05: I'm like, okay.

SPEAKER_07: To be fair to me, I have, I have, it's weird. I have, according to doctors, fine eyes, but when I golf, I need someone with me to be like, tell me where that ball went. I got no idea where that ball went. I can't see things, but it turns out bullets or, or, uh, shells and golf balls are invisible to me. I can't, I have no idea where they go. Probably not a great thing to know. You want to know where both those things go. Yeah. Very important.

SPEAKER_05: No, it was so fun, like, just listening to you guys and then actually getting the terms. Like, you don't, you stopped saying clip.

SPEAKER_02: I stopped saying clip. I mean, it's still a cool thing to say when you're out hunting dogs. I'm about to empty the clip.

SPEAKER_04: Dogs would come in and he would only shoot once. And I'm like, you know, he's only shooting once over there. And he finally goes, I can shoot more than once. He said, I can empty my clip on these dogs.

SPEAKER_03: I was like, yeah, empty your clip.

SPEAKER_02: If at first you miss, try, try again.

SPEAKER_07: I was curious why Donnie was holding a shotgun cricket the whole time.

SPEAKER_00: So Fidelberg, I was standing beside you, and so whoever was standing by Don, I want to hear some of this, but you mentioned a minute ago you weren't sure if you were going to be able to pull the trigger, and that's, I don't think that's necessarily uncommon for people that haven't been associated with hunting, because let's be honest, you're trying to kill an animal, right? And so I don't know how you process that in your mind, but I think the energy around the morning made that a lot easier, because I don't think you really hesitated when it came to that moment.

SPEAKER_07: It was it really came down to like to you. You're right. It was 100 percent energy. And then I guess instinct.

SPEAKER_05: I guess I guess like you find brought or not broadheads. You find arrowheads like our ancestors in our blood. Like it's instinctive. Like we're a predator.

SPEAKER_07: You know, it's not something, obviously, that took up a ton of space in my mind, but there was occasionally, I've known I was gonna do this for a month, two months, something like that. There were occasionally where I'd bring it up to somebody, be a family member at Christmas or something like that. I'm like, well, hunting, like, none of my family hunts, obviously. So, like, you're gonna hunt? You're gonna kill hunting? I think so. I don't… I don't know. I don't know how I'm going to react until I'm in the moment. And yeah, no, it was pretty easy. It was not easy to, to hit him.

SPEAKER_05: I think it is. I think it is the whole like step. It's like the routine, like you guys were prepped before the safety. Like it's a lot more than just like, let's pick up a gun and go.

SPEAKER_07: Yeah, no, I actually genuinely I read to that point two things. I I thought we're gonna be no one thing I thought was gonna be a burden and when I was unsure about one I thought I thought the I thought I wasn't gonna enjoy the list I thought I was gonna go this Thanks, and I actually really enjoyed taking I learned learning the under safety exam and all that. Um, I liked being quizzed. I liked learning about sportsmanship and things like that. And then I think, I think shooting with Dr. Mike really helped as well. Like not, not helped, but I found it so interesting how knowledgeable and how, how smart you are about everything.

SPEAKER_00: Well, I think several of us made this comment to you guys, is that the only thing better than hunting for us is taking someone else hunting and watching them enjoy and experience that. And you said, well, that's a relief because I was worried that I was going to be a burden, an inconvenience. Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_07: That's my worry every time I step into a room. I'm about to be a burden. Seeing Donnie this morning,

SPEAKER_04: Seeing Donnie this morning, seriously, like, as soon as it got shooting light and all those ducks, we were just working so many groups of ducks and, like, just watching him and watching his eyes and watch… I don't know if he was shaking because it was so cold or he was that excited. I'm sure it was the cold, but just seeing, like, his excitement for that, like, I love… you know, shooting ducks, I love chasing ducks, but seeing somebody get excited about experiencing that for the first time, it's second to none. It's second to none.

SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've been trying to hunt ducks for the last four years, and this is my first chance. And it's kind of like, I've always loved eating duck, so I've been like, you know what, if I'm gonna eat so much duck, I should be able to go out and hunt one myself. And like, I had killed a chicken before, so I knew I'd be able to pull the trigger, Um, maybe if we were out hunting elk or something, I'd be like, I don't know. This is going to be crazy. That's a very large mammal. But I mean, I was, I was ready to kill some ducks today. And you did. I think I did.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah. How do you feel like you were like consciously ready to do that? And then you did it and you cooked, you cooked tonight for us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: I mean, life came full circle. Yeah. We cooked, uh,

SPEAKER_08: Keep that thing on.

SPEAKER_00: For those on the Ducks Unlimited podcast that are just listening to this, you can go see the video on Barstool's YouTube. Watch the video.

SPEAKER_03: Out of his shirt, basically, and he's now eating it.

SPEAKER_08: He's probably in the crutch.

SPEAKER_02: I have to say, wild duck tastes better than duck I've had it. any restaurant in the past. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_05: This man just pulled out a red goon out of his shirt.

SPEAKER_01: Out of his shirt pocket.

SPEAKER_08: I got that goon gut.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so you guys came full circle for the first time ever. Yeah. Ever, especially for you. I mean, you kill a chicken, so you've done a little bit of circle of life, but…

SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I yeah, no, I never have and I, I eat honestly, even more so than the hunt itself, which I love saying I love being saying the hunt I thought it's Oh, I guess I don't I don't play much golf either. But I know they kind of talk about that with a verb versus noun. Like you don't have to go golfing. Like you play golf. Yeah, you're on the hunt. I learned that in reading in the the safety guides and stuff like that. There was like on your hunt on your hunt. That's cooler than hunting. So I enjoyed very much being on the hunt today but even more so than that in my months-long processing of this whole thing I was thinking how and this was actually in the exam as well where I was like I was reading about field dressing and stuff like that and I was thinking I don't know man And there's they say so many times I got to cut around the anus in this exam. This is this is tough dude.

SPEAKER_00: I don't know. In Waterfowl it's a cloaca.

SPEAKER_07: Cloaca. And and and then today when I went out and I saw Dr. Mike field dressing Or is it field dressing still what we're doing?

SPEAKER_03: Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: You don't have to necessarily field dress waterfowl the way you do with deers, like eviscerating with large, big game, you eviscerate, you kind of leave the guts behind. Waterfowl, you just take the bird, entire bird, but dressing. You dress it, okay.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah, because in the field, you will gut them.

SPEAKER_07: Pull the esophagus, the entrails will fall out. I did my studying. I'm proud. But the, uh, I actually, I really, I found that very interesting as well, where, uh, just watching you kind of break it down scientifically was, uh, was pretty cool, which now that I say it out loud gives me pause because I don't know if anyone here ever watched the show Dahmer on Netflix, but there's a moment where he's fishing with his father and he's, he's cleaning the fish and he's got the flesh in his hand and you can tell he has a realization like this is going to be a problem for me. I guess I maybe wish I disliked a little more out there, but it was good. You remind me a little crazy, guys.

SPEAKER_00: I will say that was one of the most exciting moments I had leading up to this is when we were trying to figure out which of you were, who was going to be coming, because as I was talking about earlier, Barstool has so much content, so many people, and I was like, who are the people that are going to be coming with us? And so I went online and tried to learn a little bit more about you. And so then we got to talking about you wanting to do some duck rangoon, which meant that we would be cleaning some of the birds and Obviously, I got really excited about that. That's one of the things that I also enjoy so much is introducing folks to that aspect of it, because it's more than just the hunt, right? You hunt to harvest the birds, but then you take the birds back. You appreciate every aspect of it. And Don, you got right in there and got your hands dirty, and we were plucking those birds, and we actually have some fat rendering over there on the stove right now. That was an awesome experience to be able to share that with you guys and kind of talk about some of the biology of the birds as we did so.

SPEAKER_05: So this is a full circle, because you just made me think of something about when you asked, like, if I was nervous to bring you guys. I remember asking Matt, I was like, you want me to just bring some of my friends that are hunters and then come hang out with us and shoot and film content. I'll just film like a normal show. Um, and he's like, no, I think we really want to do like one of your out of offices, like with the new, with people who've never done it before. And I was like, okay, that makes me feel good because they're, they know I'm not the one being like, well, we got these two guys. They were very interested in doing that, which I love. That's why I love you guys at Ducks Unlimited because you're so into bringing new people in and a lot of people in our industry are, but, um, I think we're trying to like really prove that you don't really, we'll critique you guys in your own way, but we're not going to be very negative on you.

SPEAKER_04: And that's what we talked about this morning is like bringing people in to hunting in general, not just waterfowl hunting, but hunting in general. We want people to understand the importance hunters bring to conservation, right? And we want y'all to experience the camaraderie, the laughs that we had Not just hunting out there, but the last 24 hours we've been together. We've laughed, we've cooked, we've joked, we've shot skeet, we've hunted. All that's based around a duck hunt, right? And we want future generations to experience that. And if we don't do our part as conservationists and conserve and restore and manage wetlands and other habitat, One day this isn't gonna be available. It's not. And so we want people to understand like, hey, even if you're not a hunter's and like, I wanna go kill this elk, or I wanna go kill all these ducks, realize that you play a part in conservation. And getting people to understand that, that's what I'm passionate about. I want new people that have never pulled a trigger on anything. It's not about pulling the trigger. Like, yeah, I want you to harvest a duck whenever y'all come in. Yeah, I want us to have a good time, but I want y'all to realize the importance Ducks Unlimited is right at 20 million acres conserved. 20 million. Like think about that, that DU has had a hand in helping conserve for wildlife. And that is nuts. And I want people to understand that and realize why Dr. Mike does what he does, why Mallory does what she does. Why, right? And so bringing y'all in brand new, slate's clear, you have no idea what to expect. And what better way to do that with Ducks Unlimited to learn why hunters are so important to conservation.

SPEAKER_07: I think, I think all that speaks to why I've probably enjoyed it so much. If my, my knowledge of hunters started in it before this weekend started and ended with Elmer Fudd, like that's all kill, kill, kill, kill. And it had, we had, we've shown up and that had been the vibe. I probably been like, this is a little much. But having you guys explain and teach us, and you were speaking to the camaraderie and all that, where being from New England, I feel very much like this has been like a ski weekend, which is kind of… And that's… I love ski weekends. I don't know if it's the layering, or the cold, or the lodge, the wood, the whole weekend, the cooking. I've been like, this is… I'm just skiing. I've done this a million times, actually. It's just a different activity aside from skiing.

SPEAKER_02: It was so cool just being in a new environment as well. I had never been in flooded woods like that before. And me and Videlberg had never been to Arkansas, so it's cool to see a new landscape in the U.S. And a crazy thing about the hunt is that our first shot was at at some ducks. Like we didn't wake up in the morning and do some target practice. We didn't hit the rain. We just woke up and started shooting ducks.

SPEAKER_05: But you guys felt pretty calm.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: Like comfortable because both of them were next to you making sure you guys.

SPEAKER_02: And we had like perfect equipment and the shotguns we were using were pretty simple to figure out.

SPEAKER_04: Shout out to Benelli. Shout out to Benelli, Winchester, Drake for supplying the gear. This is the top notch gear in the industry that they either gave to y'all or loaned to us. So shout out to those brands. There's probably a reason we didn't get cold. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. But no, seriously, y'all did so good this morning, and I'm not just saying this because we're on a podcast or to make you feel better. I'm gonna give you one example of why I got comfortable and how I can prove to y'all I did is, I don't know if you noticed or not, but about middle way through the hunt, I left you. I went to another tree and I let you do it on your own. And you may not even notice that, but like, if I was like, he can't do it, then I would have been like, I'm no way, shape or form leaving you with the guns.

SPEAKER_05: I did tell Donnie too, I was like, hey, I'm right here just in case.

SPEAKER_04: Correct. And we let them kind of, you know, do it. And we came back to the tree and we check on you, give you shells or whatever. But like, I watched Donnie, like, he was like, I loaded his gun the first time or two, just cause I wanted him to shoot. Right. And then he shot. Then I was like, okay, you do it. Literally. First try, he's like, okay, here we go. Boom, threw one in the chamber, two in the mag, and he was ready to go. And I was like, you got it. So I stood there with him a little bit longer. Then I kind of let you on your own. I was able to take my gun off the tree and shoot a couple of times too. So I'm not just saying this to kind of make y'all feel good and say it on camera to be like, oh, it's such a good time. But seriously, like in the morning, I don't even have to wake up and be like, oh, okay, I've got to babysit them with the gun, right? Like y'all crushed it. Y'all really did. Loading the guns.

SPEAKER_05: You may not have hit something, but you definitely crushed it in general. Which is great. I mean, I'm a vibes guy. That's all. It was good vibes. You were safe. You put the safety on.

SPEAKER_02: And we never pointed the gun at each other. No. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: That was one.

SPEAKER_06: I never heard that early safety clip.

SPEAKER_05: Never heard any of it. No, I didn't hear it. It's good because we did the conversation the night before, we did the education, which is important for anybody. I think it's really important because the past two trips I've been on when we waterfowl hunt, I've been with a whole group of experts and we had a safety talk, which I think is important. We should all do that because we can forget, especially as people have done it so much, we forget and some people can get lazy. So just having those continuous talks and even if I feel like some people go on a hunt, It's important to just be like, hey, let's do a refresher really quick.

SPEAKER_04: I want to ask y'all one question each, okay? What was your favorite part about the morning hunt? Like what stuck out to you the most in general?

SPEAKER_07: the the the morning ride. I haven't felt adrenaline like that in the boat from the truck to the boat to to setting up the decoys which I didn't do but just like watching it all unfold. I was I was really in my head thinking we're locked in. Let's let's do this. Let's do this.

SPEAKER_02: My favorite moment was the first time I shot. I saw a duck drop. I don't know if it was my shot to drop it, but you came up and you were like, oh, you just dropped that dog. And then all of a sudden I forgot about the fact I couldn't feel my hands.

SPEAKER_07: They're definitely the first time I, maybe, maybe not. Who knows? I remember turning around and Sidney being like, you nailed that. And as adults, you don't really get moments of euphoria and excitement anymore, right? You do a good job at work. Someone says, hey, nice work. That's about it. There's no really, yeah!

SPEAKER_05: It's not a high. It's a high. And it's an adrenaline rush. It's an adrenaline rush of a high that you are going to consistently and constantly want to chase the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_07: I texted my dad and my brother. I didn't tell anyone while we're out there and I was like because where I'm from Massachusetts I'm from kind of the country ish and there's duck hunting out there and I texted them both I said Like that gives me almost chills That's I was said in the videos of us in the boat and they were they were both right away again non hunters whatsoever and they're like If you say it's in, we're in, let's do it.

SPEAKER_04: It's getting you involved, now you get others involved, and that's why we do it.

SPEAKER_05: And people are gonna listen to this, and I guarantee you're gonna get some DMs now, and be like, I wanna take you, I wanna take you, we need to go do this, go do that. Make sure these people are safe, make sure they're not gonna kill you, do your research. There's some people that are gonna be out there or in New York or Mass or wherever on the East Coast and they're gonna be like, hey, come hunt. And you're gonna be like, okay, make sure it's legal. Call your local DNR and be like, hey, what do I need if I'm gonna go do this? And they'll be like, hey, make sure you get this, this, and this, or you can look it up on the catalog. Just do that. You wanna be legal. and they'll take you. Seriously, like, that's gonna be great. I'm excited about that. I love this, like, series of Out of Office because it just makes me so happy. Like, I always say it, I say it all the time, so if you listen to me, you're like, okay, you said this, like, a hundredth time now, but when Dave killed that deer, like, watching you guys shoot those ducks, like, it literally makes me have, like, a euphoric moment, because I'm like, this is so great, they're having so much fun, and we've been doing it all since we were little.

SPEAKER_06: And I do want to say that my favorite part of the hunt was Me and you, for some reason, we were on the right tree. The wind was set up perfect right at shooting light. Ducks are coming straight towards us. We popped off our few first ones. And then they came over and was like, hey. Let's get, let's get him on this tree.

SPEAKER_05: No, no, no, no. Me and you were like, I said, Matt, let's go. Like, I was like, hey, you guys come over here because I'm like, okay. And then we just sat back and we just watched.

SPEAKER_07: You were like, yeah, let's go. It is, it's, it's hard for me to weirdly understand.

SPEAKER_06: So that was my favorite part was like, yeah, I just sat there and I just literally sat back on the tree and just watched y'all the entire time. I'm pretty sure I left my gun unloaded hanging on the tree that way I could sit back and watch everybody.

SPEAKER_07: Like watching people enjoy something you enjoy.

SPEAKER_06: And you forget, people have been doing this for so long, you forget sort of that first time feeling, you're like, wow, I'm 30 years old and this is so exciting.

SPEAKER_05: It'd be like maybe you teaching somebody how to like ski or like play hockey and it's like you teaching us how to wrap wontons. That was fun, yeah.

SPEAKER_06: And now we all know the song. It's nice to feel like that sort of rejuvenation. Like, okay, this is what it's all about. This is teaching the next person about all this.

SPEAKER_07: It's also confirmation to you where you're like, you're right, I'm not nuts.

SPEAKER_08: This is awesome.

SPEAKER_05: Well, I love it because you guys are going to go back to Chicago, you're going to go back to New York and you're like, this was awesome. And people that may have been like, uh, hunting, you're gonna be like, no, like this is, you're educating people now what you've gone through. And that means a lot to us because it's like, did you guys even know we needed a license before we came out here?

SPEAKER_07: I figured it was kind of like an 18 plus thing.

SPEAKER_02: Maybe they would just let anyone. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04: And that's a good point to talk about, Dr. Mike. Talk a little bit about like the Federal Duck Stamp.

SPEAKER_06: What their dollars go to.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great segue because I wanted to come back to that because we were talking about conservation earlier and there's a lot to unpack in the role of hunters and there's a lot to unpack there. We got one, two, we got seven of us around here. Am I doing the math? Six of us. Six of us that hunted. That's six licenses that were purchased, six federal duck stamps that were purchased, six state waterfowl stamps that were purchased, and a whole bunch of gear that was purchased, a whole bunch of activities that support local economies. Waterfowl hunters, hunters in general, contribute just by the purchasing of licenses and gear, contribute billions of dollars to conservation every year. We could talk about the Pittman-Robertson Act, which is an 11% excise tax on firearms, ammunition, archery. Same thing is sort of in play for fisheries, for fishing tackle and boat motor fuel through the Dingell-Johnson Act. Billions of dollars that go back to the states to help them manage these resources, conserve the habitats that provide, that support wildlife. and all sorts of recreational opportunities. So, just by hunting and purchasing those licenses, you have contributed to the conservation of acres and other activities that will support waterfowl and all sorts of other wildlife in the states. And the federal duck stamp is at the federal level, 98 cents, which is a $25 stamp. It's required for everyone over 16 years of age to purchase the friggin' hot waterfowl. 98 cents out of every dollar goes to habitat conservation. A significant portion of that goes to the prairie pothole region, which is probably where most of those ducks came from that we shot today. The most important breeding area for waterfowl in all of North America. It is Ducks Unlimited's number one priority is conserving wetlands and grasslands in that prairie pothole region, which is essentially the prairie states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and then the prairie provinces. That's where they go for the summers? That's where a significant portion of them will go during this, they'll migrate back in the spring, and that's where they will nest and breed, and they'll go on up into the boreal forest. I don't want to get too far down into an ecology biology lesson, because I will if you let me. But this is good for them, this is good. I had to stop my myself several times whenever we were talking because I'm like, okay, there's another little trail that we can go down. But it's, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: Talk about even just like the private land. Like we're at Bill Byers.

SPEAKER_00: That's right. That's the other thing that is involved in hunters. So we talked earlier about the state and federal agencies, they own land, they manage that land. It's public land. But then the other thing, we are here at Bill Byers Hunter Club. It is a working rice farm. We've talked about the importance earlier today of rice for wintering waterfowl. But beyond that, private landowners do… Most of the habitat for wildlife in North America is on private land. Some states, over 90% of the wildlife habitat is on private land. A lot of private landowners will invest their own resources, their own finances into enhancing that habitat. Yes, they do it to hunt, a lot of them, but it also provides, like after we left today, we saw those ducks that went back out there into that water, into those fields. They got food, they sought safety, they found mates to pair up with. That habitat, the same habitat that we hunted, they use after the hunt and it is what helps them do the things that they need to do whenever they go back north. So, private landowners are absolutely crucial and I don't know if we have fully quantified from an economic standpoint or from an ecological standpoint the contributions that private landowners make through their, in many ways, philanthropic investments through the management of their land. Then, there are also a lot of our Ducks Unlimited members and other conservation organizations that have huge supporters, philanthropic supporters, many of whom are hunters, that give $30, $35, $100, $10,000, and millions of dollars philanthropically to support the work that we and others do.

SPEAKER_05: And then this is a question that you guys don't also probably know the answer to. Do you even know like the migration of ducks? Like why we might be seeing a lot of ducks and why we might not be seeing very many?

SPEAKER_04: And also which flyway we're in.

SPEAKER_03: So there's flyways. I'll give you $100.

SPEAKER_04: But Dr. Mike, talk a little bit more about what, and you know, like Dr. Mike said, you can run down any of these holes, but so there's four major flyways, right? No, no, I want the more scientific answer with this. No, Dr. Mike, you got this. Seriously, I want you to dive into just a little bit about how… So, we hunted dabbling ducks, majority, right? Like, we didn't see… We got a canvas back here that I placed on.

SPEAKER_05: You gotta explain it. Like, think of that nobody… So, you've got…

SPEAKER_04: And I don't want to speak wrong terminology here, but you've got divers and you've got dabblers, okay? So, majority of your ducks around which flyway we're hunting are dabbling ducks. And I'm gonna let you talk about this in just a second because, look, he's grinning, he knows that if I say one thing, he's gonna pounce on me. So, We hunted dabbling ducks, right? So, Dr. Mike, I want you to talk a little bit about just the flyways, and you can just generally hit the topics, and kind of which species of ducks kind of like, you know, certain flyways.

SPEAKER_06: You got New York, you got Chicago. Correct.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah, make a little summary. Explain to these guys what they can hunt in Arkansas, Chicago, and in New York.

SPEAKER_00: Correct. Yeah. It's broad geographies within which certain populations of birds have a tendency to migrate, migrate along. Uh, it dates back probably close to a hundred years now. And it's, we scientists have been studying this for a long, long time. They would band birds. We didn't shoot a banded bird today.

SPEAKER_05: Do you know what a banded bird is?

SPEAKER_04: So look at all these cameras. You can't see it, but we've got some bands behind us.

SPEAKER_05: Do you know, do you guys know what that is? And we're going to pop it on the screen. So this is a banded bird if you've never seen one.

SPEAKER_03: A necklace.

SPEAKER_04: So that's a lanyard that you wear. A lot of hunters, like I don't know if y'all saw me, Casey, Dr. Mott, anybody that had a lanyard with a band. The little bitty silver band, that's a way for us to track in a certain standpoint of where a duck was banded, where it was harvested, and they can gather data to help. But there's also then there's transmitters that got…

SPEAKER_05: When you shoot a banded duck, you can go on a website, type in the numbers, and it's going to say when it hatched, where it was from, and then you'll type in your location, and you can get a certificate that you can have printed out. So it's really cool. That's why they have them also mounted.

SPEAKER_04: It's a trophy. It's a little trophy.

SPEAKER_03: It's data. It's data.

SPEAKER_04: When I say a trophy, a lot of hunters collect those. It's a keepsake. Of course, it's data. That's what we use to gather more information for waterfowl, but it's also like if we shot one or you guys shot one, like we would go nuts because like that's a really, really accomplishment. If you kill one, I've been hunting for 10, 15 years and I've probably seen 20, 30 killed and I hunt all the time, right? So it's not a very common thing, but back to our flag.

SPEAKER_00: Let me go back to the concept of migration. Most of the birds that we have in North America, most of the species of birds we have in North America are what we call migratory. They'll go somewhere during the summer months to breed in the northern hemisphere, they breed in the summer, and then they'll fly somewhere South, oftentimes, it's generally south. They'll go east-west a little bit during the fall and winter as weather conditions become inclement at northern latitude. So it's this seasonal migration to and from locations. And if you kind of put yourself mentally back a hundred years or so, if you're up in, let's say, Canada, and you've got all these birds in the summer, and then all of a sudden November, December rolls around, the birds are all gone, instinctively you're going to be like, where the heck did all these birds go, right? I mean, there's a whole lot more to it than that, but people were interested in studying the ecology of these species, and they began to ask the question, well, how can we figure out where these birds are going? And this was a long time ago before we had any modern technologies, so that's where the concept of these little bands came into play. Frederick Lincoln's famous biologist from way back in the day first started, well, actually, there's probably others that did, too, before him, but they started banding these birds, putting these little rings on the leg, and then they would, with a little inscription or something, And then when the bird is harvested or found dead in some other location, then they developed this system where people could report this banded bird that they recovered, let's say in Arkansas or Florida or Texas, and then you could see where it was banded. So you can figure out where it was recovered and where it was banded. So you get these two points and from an entire A long collection of a number of years of collecting that data, you began to learn about these four major migratory flyways here in North America. And there are flyways like this in other parts of the country as well. Just general pathways where birds tend to migrate through based on where they are during the breeding season. And so we have the Atlantic Flyway, the far east coast. We have the Mississippi Flyway, which encompasses states, let's say, from Ohio, west to Minnesota and south. And then we have the Central Flyway, which captures the Dakotas over to Montana, south down to Texas, and then the Pacific Flyway, basically everything west of the Continental Divide. So, those are the four major flyways. Now, it's not just waterfowl that migrate, and so here's another little interesting tidbit, and then we'll kind of move on. You can ask me other questions if you want. So, most of the waterfowl in North America are migratory. Some aren't. This bird right here, black-bellied whistling duck, is one that's kind of migratory. It's becoming resident in some locations. but a lot of the other songbirds, Robins, Blue Jays, Cardinals not so much, Meadowlarks, give me some other common birds, a lot of the sparrows, they're all hawks, raptors, what'd you say? Pigeons. Pigeons? Maybe not so much pigeons. Pigeons in New York. I know one bird, dude. Doves, blackbirds. Mockingbirds.

SPEAKER_01: Mockingbirds could be… Bird?

SPEAKER_00: A chickpea? I can throw some warbler names at you, but we may not know exactly what they are. It's a chickadee.

SPEAKER_01: It's a chickadee. He said a chickadee.

SPEAKER_05: That's a great example. Everybody, we can't be talking over each other either.

SPEAKER_00: So, like a Baltimore Oriole. So, those birds will breed in the North, but then some of those birds, songbirds, will migrate all the way to Central and South America. Most of the ducks that we're hunting right now will come down to the Southern U.S. Some will go into Mexico, blue-winged teals, smaller species we haven't really seen much of here or talked much about, but they'll go into Central America, South America a little bit, and into the Caribbean. There's a lot of different species of waterfowl in North America. And it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's interesting enough for people like me to make a career out of studying them. So it's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_05: What, I mean, as you can tell, he's really smart. Pretty much. Isn't that really cool? Four flyaways. You can do the different species of ducks. Like you guys can go back to Chicago and shoot ducks. It's out of season now, but in the East coast, probably out of season two, but next year you guys are certified. So you guys can hunt anywhere for the rest of your life now.

SPEAKER_04: Why do y'all for the rest of my life?

SPEAKER_05: For the rest of your life. You don't have to take that test anymore. You're certified. You just buy your license.

SPEAKER_08: You gotta buy your license every year.

SPEAKER_00: You gotta do the Harvest Information Program. We did the HIP certification. That's another little thing that you gotta do. Buy your license.

SPEAKER_04: You already know. I'm gonna quiz y'all here, okay? Why do y'all think it is called the Mississippi Flyway?

SPEAKER_02: Because it's centered around the Mississippi River.

SPEAKER_04: So we're on the Mississippi Flyway, Craig, so a lot of those birds will fly along the Mississippi River because of course there's water and a lot of that water is off into fields for ag purposes and whatnot and also the Mississippi Louisville Valley is a 24.7 million complex area of where a lot of, I'm right on that, I'm right, 24.7 million, yeah. So just imagine 24.7 million acres, right, that the Mississippi Little Valley, and a lot of that, the original flooding, So, the Mississippi River would come up, it would flood into the ag fields, it would flood into hardwoods, natural flooding, what God intended, right? Well, a lot of that has been diminished, whether it be from levies, whether it be people have came in, destroyed a lot of the timber, made ag fields for farming purposes, ag purposes, whatever that might be. I think it's changed a little bit, but at one point, 80% of that had been diminished, the original flooding. So, DU has gone back in, and I'm sure this has changed again, so this is not, we've restored a percentage of that back to natural flooding. So, it's really neat. I love hunting, I've hunted a bunch of the different flyways, but the Mississippi flyway is really cool, and that's what y'all have gotten to hunt. So, a lot of those birds will follow the Mississippi flyway down due to the Mississippi River. So, that was my question to y'all. nailed it. So great job on that. I was going to get it wrong. No, you were going to get it wrong. What were you going to say?

SPEAKER_07: I was going to say the state of Mississippi, which would have been a weird answer considering we're in Arkansas. Well, that's okay. That's okay.

SPEAKER_08: Mississippi's below Arkansas, right?

SPEAKER_06: That's fine. We're all three from Mississippi. That's what it was.

SPEAKER_07: That was on my brain.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. So the one thing I want to follow up on with Matt is that we talked about the conversion of the historical 24.7 million acre. Correct. Good job. Yeah, bottomland hardwoods, this would be alluvial valley. Matt's right, a significant portion of that was converted to agricultural uses. One of the things that we value in really all geographies is that, and this gets to the private land aspect of it, all of that agriculture is in some way or another, it's privately owned, right? And so, one of the major focuses of Ducks Unlimited is through our working land programs. You know, we work with private landowners, many of whom are farmers or ranchers. We talked, I think, earlier today about the three geographies where most of the rice is grown, Mississippi Alluvial Valley, the Gulf Coast of Texas, Louisiana, and the Central Valley of California. And we work closely with the agricultural producers in those areas to make sure that they, especially with rice, that they keep that agriculture on the ground because the good thing about rice, there's a lot of grain left out after harvest. The infrastructure is in place to make it easy to flood those rice fields because rice is a crop that's grown in flooded conditions, right? So, it's a very… it's a crop that is very… it's just awesome for waterfowl, to put it plainly. Ranchers throughout many of those prairie states, most waterfowl that we hunted, these dabblers, are ground nesters. That would have been a little quiz. Do you think they nest in the tree or they nest on the ground? Most waterfowl nest on the ground. There are some cavity nesters, nesting in cavities in trees, but most of them are ground nesters, they nest in grass. And so what's good for cattle is good for ducks. And so we work closely with ranchers in some of those landscapes. And so, you know, we think about the historical conversion of some of those native habitats for agricultural uses. We have to be honest, we all need food, fiber, fuel to live as a society, right? And so it is our… One of the things that we love doing as an organization is trying to find those mutually beneficial solutions for wildlife, waterfowl in our situation, and the farmers and ranchers that own those land and are stewards of those lands to ensure that their bottom line is as profitable as it can be while also enhancing the benefits of those lands for wildlife and waterfowl. And it is amazing how many it's that's one of the most rewarding parts of a conservation organization is when you can work productively with a private landowner who owns that land and has to earn a living on that land and that we can find those solutions that are beneficial all the way around.

SPEAKER_04: That's super rewarding. So, Cayston is a prime example of that. We passed, going to Skeet Shoot, I wish I would have pointed out to you all a little bit more, but we passed some trees and that was actually a CRP, which is a conservation reserve program that a lot of these landowners will They're not giving up their land, but they are to a standpoint to help come in and plant trees to better benefit wildlife. So a lot of the, and of course that's a program and the ranchers or the farmers, they'll receive benefits as well, but essentially they are giving up a part of that to help conserve wildlife. So there's all kinds of programs that these you know, conservationists will try to, you know, receive. And Kaysen's a prime example of that here at Bill Byers. So, like Dr. Mike, just to hit on that one more time, like Dr. Mike said, is without private landowners and also public land, I'm not saying just private, Ducks Unlimited, we can't do what we do. So, you know, kudos to those guys.

SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go check the rendering facts.

SPEAKER_05: There's something that's cool that I think we could do. I don't know when you're going to be in Chicago, but before springtime comes. So a lot of people, what they do is they make wood duck boxes. So wood duck boxes is you like hang on the trees or mostly the trees, or you make big stakes with, um, like metal underneath so raccoons can't climb up and eat the eggs. So you use like protectors pretty much because the raccoons and opossums or whatever or snakes will get up there and eat the eggs. So it declines the population. So you get a wood duck box plan. We can, my grandpa and I make wood duck boxes and a lot of people do that. They make homemade wood duck boxes or they buy wood duck boxes or whatnot. And then you put, um, straw on them. And then also help me, I'm, I'm blanking, but you know, when the hens take off their shed, When they preen. Preen. Yeah, and that's what they do for their eggs.

SPEAKER_04: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. They'll use feathers as well to help. But you know what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_05: So, um, they use their own, you know, like their feathers and stuff to make it warm, but we can do that in Chicago. Um, and there's like golf courses around where I live. I golf at contigny in Naperville or it's Warrenville and there's wood duck boxes. You can look for them on like, if you see ponds, some golf courses will put like wood duck boxes up for the ducks. Oh, nice. So that's what we're gonna do. So guys, Barstool Outdoors, I guess in Ducks Unlimited, maybe they'll fly out to Chicago. But we will make wood duck boxes and we should all go do that.

SPEAKER_02: I'll consider it. Consider it!

SPEAKER_08: Consider it, it'll be fun!

SPEAKER_07: Donnie draws a line. Construction project.

SPEAKER_04: No, I would consider it. But wood ducks are a really cool duck. I wish we could have shot one this morning. I don't even know if we saw one. I know that I didn't. Or if I did, I didn't recognize it. But a wood duck is a really cool bird. It's a bird that's popular around this area. Where do you think it lives?

SPEAKER_00: What habitat do you think it occupies?

SPEAKER_07: We're not even there yet. These wood duck boxes aren't made of wood. I thought we're saying we're making a wood box for a duck.

SPEAKER_03: No, this duck is called a wood duck. But that's the actual duck they call a wood duck?

SPEAKER_07: And the thing is the box is made out of wood.

SPEAKER_05: Because they'll find hollow holes in trees, but it's not that safe because like raccoons and predators will go up there and eat their eggs.

SPEAKER_07: I was thinking it was a wood duck box, not a wood duck box.

SPEAKER_03: But it is a wood duck box.

SPEAKER_05: You guys are learning a lot of things here. I know it's like a lot all at once but it's fun and I'm just really happy you guys are enjoying it.

SPEAKER_04: Back to Dr. Mike's point is how he said a minute ago most waterfowl are ground nesters but some are cavity nesters. Wood ducks are one of those species that do that. I'm about to show this crazy story one time I kid you not. So one time I was waterfowl hunting, we were, I was super young, I was with my dad and my brother, we walked back to the truck, we were hunting a small river in Mississippi. I kid you not, craziest thing, one of the craziest things I've ever seen duck hunting, no doubt. Okay, so we're back on the road, okay, like not in an area that we would just see a duck flying. So anyway, we get back to the truck, we're sitting there, and we look up, and we're like, hey, look at that duck. I kid you not, a duck's flying. This hen is going Mach 90, right? I'm just talking about just on a beeline. And I'm like, what is she doing? I was like, what's this hen doing? I kid you not, there's this tree and she just goes, I'm like, she's about to kill herself. She's committing suicide here. And she goes, just disappears straight into this hole of this tree. And I was like, Whoa. I didn't even know ducks would go in trees at this point. I was a kid and I'm just like, what in the world? Like, so it was the most bizarre, just imagine this, it was a dead tree. Okay. And it looked like a woodpecker hole. Like literally where a woodpecker just, I don't even know how the hole got there, but this hen duck, I'll never forget just 90 miles an hour, just right into this small hole. And I'm just like, no way this has happened. So. That was her nest.

SPEAKER_07: That sounds a lot like the, uh, the caves they use at Fast and Furious 9.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's it. That's it.

SPEAKER_07: So, I'm gonna quiz you.

SPEAKER_05: Okay, quiz you. I'm always just, like, really curious what your response is gonna be to all these knowledgeable, like, statements.

SPEAKER_07: It's usually fast and furious based. Fast and furious.

SPEAKER_05: I'm all for it.

SPEAKER_00: I love it. So, I was gonna quiz Matt. Name another species that's a cavity nester.

SPEAKER_04: A cavity nester. Can I phone a friend? No, not yet. Oh, okay. Uh… Uh, you know, I'm gonna for sure swallow my pride right here. And this is a prime example of we, I even still learn, right? So, I'm, I don't know. I don't know another cavity nester that… Just guess.

SPEAKER_05: Why don't you just guess? No, because… Pigeon.

SPEAKER_03: Wait, all right, so… That's not a waterfowl. Um, a prairie dog.

SPEAKER_00: That's not a duck. We got some work to do.

SPEAKER_02: A nest in a cavity. It's not a duck. It's not a duck.

SPEAKER_00: I know, but it's a cavity nest. Hooded McGanzer. So, what is it, Mallory? Hooded McGanzer. Mallory's got it. Hooded McGanzer. Really? Yes. Hooded McGanzer will nest in a cavity. Nice. Buffalo head? Buffalo heads will, golden eye will, arrows. There's about 42, 43.

SPEAKER_04: When you say a cavity, are you talking about cavity in the ground? Will they also get in boxes?

SPEAKER_00: No, no. Cavity, when I say cavity, I'm talking about on a tree, a dead tree or a duck box.

SPEAKER_03: Wow. Is that a common thing though with them?

SPEAKER_01: With what? Hootie McGanza? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_06: We're getting leg belly whistling ducks.

SPEAKER_05: That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: Leg belly whistling ducks.

SPEAKER_02: Are you going to eat your wonton? No, because it's going to make a really loud, annoying crunch.

SPEAKER_04: Do it.

SPEAKER_05: Let's see it.

SPEAKER_06: Well, can everyone… That sounded good.

SPEAKER_03: That is a satisfying crunch. Can I have a bite? Go on. Oh, man. There have been so many firsts on this show.

SPEAKER_05: And before we go, I just want to ask you. Yeah, go ahead. I was going to ask you this.

SPEAKER_02: One of the things I really loved, being able to work with a dog. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I went truffle hunting once. That was the only other experience I've had where you're kind of working. You're like you and a dog are on the same team and you have the same goal and you're working together to make it happen.

SPEAKER_00: And it's a cool experience. Absolutely. We hadn't even talked about the dog. The dog work yet. Rock is the dog's name. Ten months old. Ten months. Young. That's young. We haven't even really talked about how successful we were with the hunt. A wonderful hunt. The birds worked great. Weather was great. Had the wind perfect at our back. And you know the other thing that, I mean, the sun was out early on. But then the clouds rolled in, and we still had great bird work. And that's a little bit unusual.

SPEAKER_04: I want y'all two to tell the camera and the listeners what species we killed. Pigeon.

SPEAKER_03: We did not kill pigeons. Take it all back.

SPEAKER_01: Take it all back.

SPEAKER_03: What do y'all remember? Pigeons got a green head, dude.

SPEAKER_04: So we killed three species. Yep. Okay. You're correct. Ding, ding, ding.

SPEAKER_02: We almost got that like prize duck. A pintail. A pintail.

SPEAKER_04: So we're talking or whatever, it was towards the end of the hunt. I turn around, y'all, and there is this. This pintail was the biggest pintail I've ever seen. His sprig was this long. There was another pintail behind it. He almost poked that one's eye out with the sprig. It was so long. Just a monster of a pintail. And all of us, no guns in our hands. We're just, hey, look at that.

SPEAKER_02: I had a gun in my hand.

SPEAKER_03: I just couldn't get it. Didn't get the pintail. Okay.

SPEAKER_04: So you're right. One for one, Mallard.

SPEAKER_07: What's that?

SPEAKER_02: A brown nose. A brown nose.

SPEAKER_07: Brown nose.

SPEAKER_03: A brown nose. No, wrong. No? Dude, you set me up. Let's go a little assistance here from Sid. Spoonbill.

SPEAKER_02: Shoveler. Smiling mallard. Oh, so a smiling mallard and a mallard are not the same species.

SPEAKER_05: Mallard. Mallard.

SPEAKER_00: So, Smiling Mallard, Shoveler, ducks have a lot of nicknames, right? So, there's the official common name, there's an official scientific name, but then there's all sorts of, uh, all sorts of nicknames.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, right, we had a Hollywood.

SPEAKER_00: A Hollywood, Smiling Mallard Hollywood. Or, as our good friend Ed Wall likes to call them, Rams. Rams. A Rams. Shout out to Ed.

SPEAKER_04: Alright, so there's two. We lack one species that we, uh,

SPEAKER_05: I don't think they would know because I didn't even know we shot it.

SPEAKER_00: No, I don't even think we said it. I don't even think we pointed it out. It's a gavel.

SPEAKER_04: I think we shot one or two.

SPEAKER_05: So we had a really good day. We shot about 24 ducks, mixed bag, mostly mallards. The guys had a wonderful, amazing, fantastic, all the great adjectives? Yes. They're spoiled. That was my day. They're spoiled. But it's great though. I'm glad you guys are spoiled because you know this was awesome. You know it's going to be great to go out there and the next time you go you probably won't fire a gun.

SPEAKER_03: I'll resent all of you.

SPEAKER_02: We still have one more day tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00: One more day. One more day. And I mentioned a minute ago, there were so many firsts on this day alone, one of which I never thought I would see. Last night, you walked in with a tie on. I'm sure other people have come to a duck camp with a tie on before. I don't know of anyone that has worn a tie in the duck hole.

SPEAKER_05: Jack, that was awesome. Throw it on the screen.

SPEAKER_07: It was, it was, it was, uh, I came from, I want to be clear. It was something that was on my mind the entire time I was wearing a tie on the way here. Salmon colored tie at that. Salmon tie. Yeah. And it was, I was on the plane and I was like, I could get undressed right now. I could change. And then I thought, eh, let's just see what happens. Did you think that or you're just like, Yeah, I thought about it on the plane. I thought about it in the back of the car when you guys comment on a tie when I pulled up and I stuck to it. I was like, I'm just going to keep wearing the middle of Arkansas on the gas station.

SPEAKER_05: I'm like, look at this guy. Look at this girl. Now it's good to be fair.

SPEAKER_07: It looks like a Feidelberg. I did mention, um, that my knowledge of hunters started and ended with Elmer Fudd, and that's not quite true, because I've seen Peaky Blinders, and shout out Nick Hamilton, the producer of KFC Radio, he brought up the great point that that is how they dress when they hunt, in Peaky Blinders. So, I kinda was really like an original hunter. Like back in the day. I'm just, I'm just really about it.

SPEAKER_02: A British hunter. I'm just going to let you know that.

SPEAKER_07: I believe they're hunting foxes dressed like that.

SPEAKER_04: If you don't show up tomorrow, if you don't show up tomorrow with that town, you're not going. That's good luck. It's hanging on the side of the bed. Don't you worry.

SPEAKER_07: Next to all my camo, Sam and I. As long as we're clear on that.

SPEAKER_05: Shout out to Jack.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Jack can have the camera. The man with the plan. Jack can't see me. Yeah, Jack's waiting.

SPEAKER_05: Jack's behind the camera. Do a picture of Jack. Jack Rolande has been a part of Barstool Outdoors. He's actually just got full time, so… Yay!

SPEAKER_01: And he's a waterfowl hunter.

SPEAKER_05: He's a big waterfowl hunter. He's got a lot of experience, so it's a lot of fun to hunt with Jack. He knows more than me about waterfowl, and I teach him a thing or two about deer hunting, so it's fun.

SPEAKER_04: We kind of go back and forth. Also, shout out to Kaysen and Kyle and our fabulous cook, Faye.

SPEAKER_05: We're having a great time. So that being said, we're going to wrap this up. We are at an hour and we have an early morning tomorrow. So if you're watching, thanks for watching Barstool Outdoors. Make sure you like comment and subscribe. And if you're listening, thanks for watching the Ducks Unlimited podcast. Make sure if you want to listen, go to that. If you want to watch, come to us. We had a great time. We're so thankful you guys came out. I'm sure you guys are going to come.

SPEAKER_03: Want to do it again? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: Every time you ask, I'm in, dude. And there's only one way to end this. There's only one way to end this ride. How about you lead us in the song?

SPEAKER_08: There's no wrong way to wrap a wonton. There's no wrong way to wrap a coot-coot. There's no wrong way to wrap a wonton. There's no wrong way to wrap a coot-coot.

SPEAKER_02: Alright, there we go. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00: That is awesome. Thanks, y'all.