EP 387. Mountain View Mallards

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Duck Season Somewhere, where today I am in Saskatchewan chasing snow geese. It’s hotter than blazes, and it just a weird tough spring. By the time this thing airs, it’s gonna be time to start thinking about cooler weather and thinking about the fall and lining up your trip. Man, have I got a new US hunt list trip for you all, and here to tell me about it is Noah Miller from Mountain View Mallards. Where you all located Noah, in Wyoming?

Noah Miller: We are located in Cody, Wyoming, or 45 minutes east of there in a little town called Lovell, Wyoming.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve been there.

Noah Miller: Beautiful spot.

Ramsey Russell: Did you grow up there?

Noah Miller: No, sir. I grew up actually in Great Salt Lake of Utah.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, man, really?

Noah Miller: Yep. So I grew up hunting on the airboat with my dad, and my dad was actually a member of a duck club out there right by the Salt Lake airport.

Ramsey Russell: Which club?

Noah Miller: The Ambassador.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be dang.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: So I’ve seen a sign for it.

Noah Miller: Yep. So I grew up hunting that and then kind of cut my teeth with the airboat. And we also would go up to Idaho hunting up by, like, Twin Falls area. We’d go goose hunting up there when a couple of our farmers and buddies up there wanted us to come up and shoot some honkers. They’d come down and shoot swans and all the puddle ducks.

Ramsey Russell: What’s your earliest memory of duck hunting with your dad?

Noah Miller: I have a picture in my parents’ house. I was probably three years old, holding up a hen gadwall up in northern Utah, and some property my dad and my grandpa owned. And I remember getting drug. We’d go out to an island and everything on my dad’s duck club, and the water was so deep I couldn’t wade out there with my waders. So I’d get tossed on top of the sled with full of decoys and everything and get drug out there. And, yeah, I mean, five, six years old. I started shooting when I was eight.

Ramsey Russell: That sounds a lot like my kids’ upbringing, and probably like a lot of listeners can relate to going out with dad and being too short to walk in and having to be pulled in or piggybacked right in or something like that.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Did you all also big game hunt?

Noah Miller: We did a little bit. My dad was more of the waterfowl and everything. He grew up archery hunting with his family. And then as I got older, I started kind of getting into a little bit more big game because a bunch of my buddies were into the big game. And then now me and him, we usually archery hunt a couple days out of the year. With being up and guiding up in Canada in September and October, we don’t really get to archery hunt a whole lot anymore together, but we try and big game hunt as much as we can, and then obviously, waterfowl hunt a lot once I get back from Canada.

Ramsey Russell: When you were eight years old with your dad, do you still remember your first duck?

Noah Miller: I can’t remember the first duck, but I do remember my first goose. I shot it up in Idaho, sitting in a layout blind. And probably one of my favorite memories with him was when I shot my first banded goose up in Idaho.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Noah Miller: It was probably my third hunt up there. And all of a sudden, a single goose had come from behind and went and landed in the decoys. And I’m always the person, I mean, my dad and my dad’s buddy would always give the singles and stuff to me. Sure enough, it landed out there, and I ran out there and shot it, and it was actually double banded.

Ramsey Russell: Golly. So here’s a question I like to ask a guy like yourself, because obviously, you’re an avid goose hunter. Obviously, you’re a duck hunter. But if I put a pistol to your head and had to choose, are you a duck hunter or a goose hunter?

Noah Miller: Josh, that’s tough.

Ramsey Russell: It always is for you guys.

Noah Miller: That’s a tough one. Personally, I would probably pick geese.

Ramsey Russell: Big Canadas?

Noah Miller: Big Canadas. There’s just something about them. I can make Canada geese. Just been fortunate enough to be able to blow a goose call really well and learn how to do that. And the things you can make a Canada goose do with a goose call are just unbelievable.

Ramsey Russell: Where did you learn to call?

Noah Miller: I picked it up when I was about seven or eight years old. I just started blowing a goose call and it just kind of came very, very natural. And I actually started doing calling competitions in Utah.

Ramsey Russell: Goose calling competition.

Noah Miller: Duck and goose calling.

Ramsey Russell: : Duck and goose.

Noah Miller: Yep. So my first goose calling competition or duck calling competition was in 2007. It was a junior or is it a junior novice duck calling competition. I took second place.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Noah Miller: And then kind of just started going up from there. I was never really good at the main street duck calling competitions, but I was really good at the goose calling competitions. And I actually, what got me really into it was I actually called Butch Richenbach with RNT Calls. And I get home from school and I’d be on the phone with him every day running routines. And then I’d start calling with Sean Stahl for goose calling and everything. And, yeah, it just kind of took off from there. And then now I really don’t do it a whole lot anymore just because I’m so busy guiding. But, yeah, I loved it. And that’s kind of what got me to be a better duck and goose caller.

Ramsey Russell: Yep. And I tell you what, I’ve heard other people talk, other people been on here that reached out to people like Butch Richenbach. And it’s just crazy to me that a big successful duck call maker like himself back in the day would take the time to sit there in his recliner, wherever he was sitting, and listen to a kid from Wyoming or Utah, wherever, calling him up and running routines. That speaks a lot about who he was, doesn’t it?

Noah Miller: Oh, amazing man. Sadly, never got to meet him in person. But I, like I said, I got to talk to him on the phone for months or years at a time. But I mean, I remember when I first called him, he said, what’s your name, what’s your address and what size t-shirt are you? And he turned around and sent me a brand new RNT MVP and a brand new t-shirt.

Ramsey Russell: You still got that call, I guess.

Noah Miller: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You still blow it?

Noah Miller: Yep. It’s sitting on a shelf. And then I also have an RNT Original Coca Cola with his signature on it.

Ramsey Russell: Really? Wow.

Noah Miller: Those two will never get given away or sold.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. That’s a great story. Thank you for sharing that. Know what, you run your outfit, Mountain View Mallards, several years in business now in Wyoming, but you also guide a lot of different other places. Where all do you guide besides Wyoming?

Noah Miller: So I start up in Saskatchewan with Northern Skies and go September, October, and then we jump down to Wyoming end of November, December, January. Then we jump from there to Arkansas for the spring conservation, and then we start there for the whole month of February. Then we jump into Missouri, then South Dakota, and then we’re back up in Canada end of April and May.

Ramsey Russell: Basically, you’re a ten-month waterfowl outfitter.

Noah Miller: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Geese and ducks.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Continental-wide. Back with this question first, you’re growing up with your daddy. You’re that kid. Dad’s letting you out. You hunt with him and his buddies. You get it. When did you decide? Because you’re a young man, 26, 27 years old, I’m guessing.

Noah Miller: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: When did you say, yeah, I want to be a guide? Now, there’s a lot of guys listening, I know. And there’s a lot of people I meet that are in the waterfowl hunting outfitting, but their season is two or three months long. Ten months a year you’re doing this stuff. So when did you decide, yeah, I want to do this?

Noah Miller: It was probably end of elementary, junior high. I’ve just been eaten up by waterfowl hunting since day one. And I remember all my buddies in high school, since I kind of grew up in the suburbs of Salt Lake. And bunch of them, weren’t really big hunters and everything. And so I’d always tell them, I’m going to be a hunting guide or I’m going to own my own guide service. And they’re like, you’re nuts, like, that ain’t going to work. Like, you’re not going to make any money, nobody does that. Well, here I am.

Ramsey Russell: Here you are, killing it.

Noah Miller: And, I mean, it’s been a dream of mine since I was 10, 11 years old to, one, be a guide, and then two, have my own guide service. And, yeah, we’re running and rocking and rolling.

Ramsey Russell: You start in Canada in September, and you run through a lot here. Because I know coming to Canada for a long time over the years, like, when you all get here in September, a lot of your ducks are local birds, just birds from around here. Weather starts to change. Here come migrators that want to stage and feed and then start flying south. The weather’s changing. The birds are changing. Then you jump down to Wyoming, and you’re on the receiving end of some of those birds coming in. And some of those birds, I guess, stay through you all this whole season.

Noah Miller: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a wintering ground for a lot of birds.

Noah Miller: Yep. A lot of our birds never leave. And if they do, I mean, they go south a little bit. I mean, I’ve watched birds migrate from the south back up, and that’s when we’re like, our river, main rivers are frozen, and it’s just like, what the heck you guys doing migrating back up here. But it’s just, I think, none of them have gone further south, and so they don’t know any better. And we’ve got warm water ponds, we got warm water ditches, some of the sections of the river, they stay open and everything, even if the main river freezes and stuff. So, yeah, we winter a lot of ducks and geese around us.

Ramsey Russell: And then you go further south, further east, you make a big loop.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Bring us right back here to where you started, Northern Skies, ten months ago.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: How does that make you a better hunter? I mean, it’s gotta be, I know this, for anybody listening, a mallard in the deep south versus a mallard here versus a mallard there, they’re all mallards, same basic techniques, but they’re different. In the ten-month period, they’re in different, say, six months. We’re talking just mallards now, but they’re in different life cycles. They’re in a different stage. How did it make your job in Wyoming, when you run this business, how did it make you a better outfitter?

Scouting is the Key to Successful Hunting

“The best scouters are the best hunters. If you’re constantly out scouting, watching those birds, really looking at how they’re feeding and their habits, you’ll become a better hunter.” – Noah Miller

Noah Miller: Honestly, I’ve always kind of grown up and listening, like, I watched, like, Fred Zink’s videos and all that. And, I mean, they just constantly were scouting, scouting, scouting. And I tell a lot of people, the best scouters are the best hunters. And, I mean, if you’re constantly out scouting, watching those birds, really looking at how they’re feeding and their habitat that they’re in, and their habits and stuff like that, where they go if a snowstorm hits and stuff like that, just watching them.

Ramsey Russell: Learning a lot more about them by interacting with them for such a long period of time.

Noah Miller: Yep, I mean, there’s days like in Wyoming where if I don’t have a group of clients, I’ll go down on the river and in the general area of, like, where one of my blinds is at, and I’ll watch ducks. I’ll watch them, how they’re coming into the river, how they’re working in different wind conditions and stuff like that. That way when that scenario comes up again and I’m in my blind with clients, I know how to kind of set different decoy spreads, one for more educated birds, and then two, just so it’s more natural looking.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Here’s the question. Everybody likes duck hunting. Everybody likes to go duck hunting. There’s a big difference in going, being a duck hunter and being in your business. How challenging is that for a man your age dealing with clients? You’ve got a lot of experience now. So ten months a year, you’re working with ducks. Ten months a year, you’re working with clients. They’ve traveled from somewhere to go do something. And that, to me, that’s the work part of it. That’s the business side of it. That’s the professional, the hospitality side of it, not just the great duck hunting and calling. Now it’s a whole different level.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Has that changed the way you feel about duck hunting and goose hunting yourself?

The Unpredictable Nature of Duck Hunting

“Some days you’re going to get them. Some days…they’re just a wild animal, and they’re not going to be playful.” – Ramsey Russell

Noah Miller: Honestly, it’s upped my drive a little bit for it. I mean, I had a big drive in the beginning, but my favorite thing to do is take kids or new hunters who have never experienced it before. And to watch them, whether it’s a big flock of snow geese in Arkansas or, big flock of mallards or honkers in Canada in the fall, early fall and stuff, or even a flock on the river in Wyoming. The joy that those clients see and everything, I really don’t look at it as clients, I look at it as more buddies. And if I can make it to where everyone’s having a good time. I honestly think that kind of separates a good guide from a really, really good guide as, it’s hunting. Some days you’re going to get them. Some days just they’re a wild animal, they’re just not going to be playful. And if at the end of the day those clients are still happy, still having a good time, you did your job, I mean, you did really well.

The Joy of Sharing Hunting Experiences

“My favorite thing to do is take kids or new hunters who have never experienced it before and to watch them. The joy that those clients see and everything…that’s what makes it worthwhile.” – Noah Miller

Ramsey Russell: It’s a very interesting topic to me. It’s like the late Mike Morgan used to say, some days chicken salad and some days chicken shit.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: We all like chicken.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: And there’s so many things we can control in delivering a hunting experience. And it is an experience, not dead ducks, but dead ducks are a part of a paid hunting experience. Nobody’s coming out here just to watch the sunrise, right? They’re coming out to duck hunt somewhere new, somewhere scenic, something different species. And that we really have no control over. We can scout our butts off, but it doesn’t mean tomorrow’s not gonna be 70 degrees, no wind, something. And the ducks just say, meh, I’m just gonna sit here. Man, how frustrating must that be for a young guide to want to do that? How do you manage that with people? You deliver that A game, you say.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: You do the very best you can, but how do you not let clients get in their heads?

Noah Miller: I’ve been fortunate not to have a lot of clients that are kind of, I would say, a pain in the butt. I’ve definitely had them. And you kind of just got to emphasize, hey guys, it’s hunting. If I could guarantee a limit of ducks every day, I would. And you just kind of got to emphasize that it’s a wild animal. And, we’re trying our best. Honestly, I do a lot of extra things. I mean, obviously if the birds aren’t working, I’m constantly out in the river changing the decoys and changing stuff around, trying different things that way, the client just not, oh, well, it’s just one of those days, and he is just sitting back and relaxing. No, I’m up, and I’m moving around, trying different things, and at the end of the day, clients gonna be like man he worked his butt off to try and get us our five ducks that we got today, like, he worked hard, and it’s just a day.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve always felt that on opening day type experience, everybody’s a rock star. It’s easy to look good and feel like a duck God on opening day.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: It’s later in the year that it gets really tough. That when to me, being in my business for 20 years, that’s when you really get an idea of what that guy or that outfitter is made of.

Noah Miller: Yeah, absolutely.

Ramsey Russell:  Because you may only kill five mallards with three or four guys, but it could have been none on a tough day had that guy not gone all in and done the stuff. You know what I’m saying? My daddy used to say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. And I think, man, for a great outfitter, but beyond that too, Noah, I know you got a close association with Matt Schauer, Northern Sky’s Outfitters, who is absolute prime example of a guide that treats this as a business. This is not just, I’m gonna go out and make a little bit of money and have some beer money. It’s a business.

Noah Miller: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And it takes that. And I know the way he does it. And, boy, today these last couple of days up here in Saskatchewan have been a prime example of why you want to hunt with the right people. A lot of snow geese, but they’re not settled in yet. They’re just willy-nilly. It doesn’t help that it was 75 degrees yesterday afternoon.

Noah Miller: Right.

Ramsey Russell: You know what I’m saying? It didn’t help this morning. It was foggy. There are a lot of things we can’t control. But you come back, you got the food, you got the lodging, you got the detail, you got the organization, you got the schedule. Everything else that you can control runs like clockwork.

Noah Miller: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a lot to keep going for a young man like yourself, isn’t it?

Noah Miller: Yeah. I mean, it’s a process, and you kind of get in your routines. Once you get into a camp after the first year or so, or if you’re in the camp for a while, you get your routine going of what the daily chores are and how they run the system if you’re a newer guide to a well-run company. Once you get that down hey, when I go to Arkansas, this is how it’s going to run. We got to do this, this, and this. Once I go to Missouri, I got to do this, this, and this. A little different. And then boom, Saskatchewan, we got to do this, this, and this with paperwork and everything else since it requires a lot more paperwork and everything.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of details.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of details behind the scene. On one hand, guiding an outfitting business throughout North America I say this, what I run into a lot are young outfitters, very young like yourself, that just had a great idea. I’ve got decoys, I got this, I got an interest, I always want to be one. Social media makes it easy. I’m gonna be a duck guide. And then I run into the opposite spectrum. I run into these older guides, like way older than yourself, that have been doing it for 20-30 years. And they’re just worn out. They’re just running people through there. Ducks, no ducks. You know what I am saying?

Noah Miller: Yep.

Noah Miller: They’re ground down to a nub is where I look at it.

Noah Miller: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And they’ve lost that spark, they’ve lost their interest. What makes you stand out? Because you’re not in either one of those categories. You’re what I like to see in a young outfitter. To me, this is a young man’s game.

Noah Miller: Yeah, it is.

Ramsey Russell: This is a young man’s game. To really keep all them, it takes a lot of energy that I think you have more of in your late 20s to 40 than you do in your 50s and 60s. You got a lot more energy, a lot more desire.

Noah Miller: Right.

Ramsey Russell: So I guess that’s what makes you who you are. It’s just your age and accommodation. But do you give any credit to working with people like Matt to kind of coaching you along and mentoring you along, like Butch did with a duck call. Now you got a guy like Matt sharing real business sense and organization with you?

Noah Miller: Absolutely. Yep. I mean, working for Matt, I mean, growing up, when I first started guiding, the goal honestly was like, okay work for Northern Skies because they’re one of the best. I mean, they are one of the best in the country. And, you know, that was the goal is to work for Northern Skies. And then through some other guides and working hard in everything, putting in the time and the effort, here I am. And we’re working, and Matt and Jake took me under their wing, helping me out, showing me all these opportunities and everything. I mean, yeah, I give them a lot of credit.

Ramsey Russell: You grew up in Utah. You knew in elementary school, middle school, you wanted to be a duck guide for a living. What took you to Wyoming hunting from Utah? Because now I think of Wyoming, it’s like, we do a hunt down in Africa. People think of Africa, they think of spiral horns, elephants, leopards. Nobody thinks birds. When I think of Wyoming, I’m thinking elk. That’s what I’m thinking. I think Wyoming, I’m thinking elk and fly fishing.

Noah Miller: Right.

Ramsey Russell: So what took a savvy guy like yourself to Wyoming?

Noah Miller: So, kind of long story.

Ramsey Russell: Don’t tell me it was a girl.

Noah Miller: No, absolutely not. So, long story short is, I used to guide for a guy in Minnesota, and he was with a decoy company. There was an outfitter in Wyoming already started called Western Water fowlers. Those two were on the same decoy pro staff, in a sense. The Wyoming guy’s name was Nick. He offered up to the DOA decoy pro staff to hunt and said, pro staffers, come out and hunt. So a bunch of my buddies said, let’s go. And they’re like, ah, it’s right in your backyard. I love hunting rivers. We all got together and went out there, met Nick, and started hunting with him. I think it was about the second night we were out there. Nick is originally from Michigan, so he was just out there for the two months, running clients and a bunch of buddies and stuff. He kind of did it more as a hobby than he did a business. All of a sudden, he started talking about having somebody buy him out because his business back home was booming and he had to put more time and effort into that. Man, my ears perked up, and I started talking to him about it. My dad was there because we needed another extra person for a client. Next thing, I’m guiding for Nick, the rest to fall and rest to season.

Ramsey Russell: Kind of getting your feet wet.

Noah Miller: Yep. Introducing myself to all the farmers that we’re hunting on and seeing how everything’s run and stuff like that. Next thing you know, that summer, me and my dad are buying Nick out, and we started running it.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be darn. When you come to a fork in the road take it, I always say, and always keep your eyes peeled for opportunities. You never know. You just show up somewhere and there you are, minding your own business, and boom, opportunity.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: You gotta see it. You gotta know it when you see it.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: And you gotta be willing to seize it and go.

Noah Miller: Yeah. I mean, that’s how I got with Northern Skies. I was getting done with Wyoming. Our season ended a little short due to warm weather, and everything was kind of pushing back north and all of a sudden, one of my best friends, Sam, who works for Northern Skies and has worked for them for years, called me up and said, hey, we need another guide in Arkansas for spring snow geese for Northern Skies. You want it? I said, absolutely. Jumped on board and away I went. Drove down there, and man, it’s been history since.

Ramsey Russell: It’s somebody that has, especially for a young age, now you’ve seen a lot of North America, experienced a lot of ducks and geese throughout. How is Wyoming different than other places? Because it is very different.

Noah Miller: Oh, yeah

Ramsey Russell: How is it different? Describe it to the listener how Wyoming is so different in terms of waterfowl hunting.

Noah Miller: I mean, the biggest thing is the scenery.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy. Is that true.

The Beauty of Hunting in Wyoming’s Scenic Backdrop

“There’s really no other state where you can shoot ducks with the Bighorn Mountains, the Pryor Mountains, or even the Beartooth Mountains in the background.” – Noah Miller

Noah Miller: There’s really no other state, you can shoot ducks with the Bighorn Mountains background, the Pryor Mountains background, or even the Beartooth in the background. You have three mountain ranges within seeing distance just from the lodge. Just to hunt on the foothills of them or in the river bottoms, the Shoshone River goes from the Beartooth Mountains all the way to the Bighorns, and that whole valley is just full of ducks and geese.

Ramsey Russell: Where do you all hunt these ducks in Wyoming?

Noah Miller: Pretty much the duck hunting is mainly done on the Shoshone River and the little towns in between Cody and Lovell. We have a bunch of lease ground that we lease up. We got warm water ponds, warm water ditches, and the whole river to hunt. I mean, we got the whole thing.

Ramsey Russell: It gets cold in Wyoming.

Noah Miller: Yes, it does.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, for winter grounds, the terminus for a lot of these mountains, it gets cold in Wyoming.

Embracing the Tough Conditions of Winter Hunting

“When it’s negative 55 wind-chill, we’re still hunting ducks…the river almost gets unsafe to hunt for the dogs and decoys.” – Noah Miller

Noah Miller: Yeah. I mean, this year, right before Christmas, it was negative 55 wind-chill.

Ramsey Russell: Jeez, were you all killing ducks?

Noah Miller: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: On those hot water ponds?

Noah Miller: Yep. There were a couple of our ponds where we kicked four or five thousand ducks off a dinky little pocket.

Ramsey Russell: Golly, and I mean, you’re shooting them at 10 feet, 5 feet.

Noah Miller: Skinny water.

Ramsey Russell: Skinny water. Man, how exciting is that?

Noah Miller: The way a mallard reacts and decoys into those little skinny waters is unbelievable.

Ramsey Russell: Walk me through your season, like, how you start hunting when it’s in the fall and not as cold to how your tactics change when it gets cold. And how a southern boy like me, if I happen to show up in -55, I’m gonna survive.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: I’m gonna tell you what, you gotta really talk me into this park. I love a mallard duck, but I only go so far. -55, man’s gotta draw a line somewhere, that might be it for me.

Noah Miller: Oh, yeah. So early fall, we start running clients right after Thanksgiving. It’s usually getting a little cooler already, but not super cold. We’re still waiting for that big first cold snap. Most of our ducks are still going to be on the river. They’re not going to be on the small warm water ponds or little creeks because they just don’t need to be. A lot of the food sources are on that river system. In the afternoon, a lot of our ducks feed in the cornfields. We really don’t mess with the ducks in the afternoon because usually they show up 5-10 minutes before shooting time, so it’s just not worth it. But that slowly changes. We’ll find those birds in the fields and everything. But as the season goes on, when a big snowstorm hits, boom, we’re jumping into a cornfield where the ducks are because they’re going to come out 2-3 hours before a snowstorm or really cold front’s coming. As the season goes on, the ducks spread out on the river early in the fall, as it gets colder, they’re more congregated in more protected areas, backwater spots, or sandbars that aren’t pushing as much slush. I have a saying, when it hits about 12 or 13 degrees, that’s when that river starts pushing slush. Yep and so it’s weird, the slush comes from the bottom.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Noah Miller: It forms on the rocks and then it rolls off the top of the rocks.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Noah Miller: You’ll see, if you’re out in the river scouting and you wach ducks will swim through that ice and slush. What’s happening is that slush from the bottom is peeling up food, little green strips. It almost looks like little pieces of grass. It’s peeling that up from the bottom and they’re eating that as well as the Russian olives coming off the trees and everything.

Ramsey Russell: See, that’s one of my questions, was about the food sources. I’ve wondered what those ducks are eating to overwinter through there. When you start talking about the slime or something coming off from rocks, I wonder if there’s not some kind of invertebrate attached, embedded in that, or larvae or eggs or something.

Noah Miller: Could be.

Ramsey Russell: I can see them eating the vegetation, but I can also see them eating trout food that’s associated with that.

Noah Miller: Yep. I mean, a better way to describe that grass is like duckweed.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Noah Miller: It looks just like little pieces of duckweed floating in the ice and floating down the water and everything. And then the Russian olives.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a nasty, gnarly, almost worthless bush, except for the fact it’s—you see it on those river systems, and it gives them a lot of thermal barrier, a lot of protection from predators. And it’s a hell of a food source, isn’t it?

Noah Miller: Oh, everything loves it. Deer, pheasants, quail, ducks, geese. I mean, any wildlife loves Russian olives.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Noah Miller: I know it’s an invasive species, and I know a lot of areas are trying to get rid of it, but man, do the wildlife love it.

Ramsey Russell: They’re never going to get rid of it. They might just control it.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: They don’t take over the world.

Noah Miller: Right. And there are days when I’m scouting and I’ll watch ducks jump up onto the bank and be 20-30 yards on the ground, underneath the trees, feeding on those Russian olives.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Noah Miller: It’s just unreal.

Ramsey Russell: What species are you primarily targeting?

Noah Miller: Mainly mallards for our ducks. We can shoot five mallards, six ducks total. Usually, the odd duck is a goldeneye. As the season goes on, our goldeneyes start pushing in. Earlier in the year, you’re shooting Gadwall or wigeon or teal.

Ramsey Russell: Green wing.

Noah Miller: Yep, green wings.

Ramsey Russell: You ever seen a wood duck?

Noah Miller: We’ve shot a few wood ducks. If you get there mid-November or so, you’ll get a few more chances. We have shot a wood duck, I think, the latest was January 2nd or 3^rd, we shot a wood duck. That guy’s gotta be cold.

Ramsey Russell: You gotta be. What about the geese? The times I’ve shot geese on the river, they were big geese. I’d have said they were westerns. Is it different geese or just the big boys?

Noah Miller: Usually, when we get there in November, there’s a lot of EPP birds, eastern prairie population. They’re starting to move west, kind of like everything else with the flyways. We’ll get some smaller birds, a few cacklers or lessers, and then the EPP birds and some big geese. As it gets colder, the little geese will push south and the big geese replace them. Honestly, the better hunting is with the big geese. They’re just a lot more fun.

Ramsey Russell: You were saying earlier you like to mess with them.

Noah Miller: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Getting in their heads.

Noah Miller: Yeah. My favorite thing is running traffic. Like when I guided in Minnesota, we’d run September molt migrators. They’re flying high, rolling south, and you just set up on a random green pasture. The things you can make those geese do.

Ramsey Russell: You all bring heaters to the blind? Surely, surely to. Gosh, I’m thinking a big old shop heater with a propane tank throwing some real heat out there on me.

Noah Miller: Yep. In our river blinds, a lot of our blinds out there A-frames. We have some permanent blinds that are more insulated. We have a sunflower propane heater in front of everybody or at least in between each person. They can keep their hands and feet warm. Honestly, when it gets to negative 20, negative 30, or even around negative ten, the river almost gets unsafe to hunt for the dogs and for decoys. The slush grabs a hold of those decoys, builds up on them so much, and then you’re just chasing ducks.

Ramsey Russell: What do you do?

Noah Miller: Hunt the small creeks and warm water ponds hunts. Sometimes we’ll sleep in and go out midday when it’s warmed up a bit, and the slush isn’t as bad. Then we’ll start shooting because that’s when our birds are more mobile, moving up and down the river.

Ramsey Russell: When does your season start there about and when it is end?

Noah Miller: The season in Wyoming starts the first Saturday in October. We go for two weeks of duck and then a week of goose, then it shuts down for about, Wyoming’s so back and forth, sometimes they change stuff, sometimes they don’t. Usually it shut down for about two or three weeks. Then it opens back up around late October, beginning of November, and we just run from there.

Ramsey Russell: Till when?

Noah Miller: Duck season this last year was January 24.

Ramsey Russell: Golly. Holy cow. I had no idea you all ran that late.

Noah Miller: It was awesome to shoot ducks that late. And then honkers were February 12^th.

Ramsey Russell: End of February.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: End of February is what I’m trying—that’s amazing. What a long season that is.

Noah Miller: Yeah, it’s awesome. I mean, we had groups of hunters the last day in February, and they shot a six-man limit of honkers.

Ramsey Russell: You all have been placing clients for the last several years in, I guess, hotels and stuff. And now you’ve got a lodge under construction. Where’s your lodge going to be located relative to Cody?

Noah Miller: So, it’s pretty much just straight south of Lovell, which is 45 minutes east of Cody. We just bought a good-sized farm and everything with a big huge marsh complex in the back that we’re actually in the process of building ponds and stuff like that. So we can also do duck hunting, but also have where it’s kind of like a duck refuge.

Ramsey Russell: Sure.

Noah Miller: Just kind of like here at Northern Skies, we got that pond right below the lodge.

Ramsey Russell: What better to do than sit in front of a roaring fire at the lodge and watch ducks working nearby.

Noah Miller: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Or geese.

Noah Miller: Yep. And then also, if you’re watching the afternoon sunset, you got the priors, you got the bighorns right there. I mean, you can watch ducks land in the pond right behind the lodge and look at the mountains.

Ramsey Russell: There’s a lot of interesting history around Cody, besides the duck, besides the wild game, I mean, it’s the gateway to Yellowstone coming in from the east. And that’s kind of how, as I understood it, that’s how it built up, I guess. Buffalo Bill Cody was brought in and kind of paid by the city founders to be like the front man, be the showman, be the guy to attract people to that area. And I know that Cody’s a beautiful town. A lot of nice bars, a lot of nice restaurants. And there’s still that old Irma Hotel, which was named after his daughter. And I think—gosh, it’s been a while since I was there—but like the bar was donated by a queen of England or something. It’s crazy. The history and stuff like that is nuts.

Noah Miller: Yeah, I mean, it’s awesome. And then the museum, that Buffalo Bill gun museum. I mean, I’ve had my dad’s buddies, I haven’t been fortunate enough to go look at it, but my dad’s buddies have been in there and they say you could sit there for two or three days.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, I was just fixing to say it’s actually five museums in one.

Noah Miller: Okay.

Ramsey Russell: And I haven’t walked through it all. I just kind of, honestly, I was on a short schedule, and I walked in and looked around, read the pamphlet, said, I’ll come back another day when I got three or four days to walk through here.

Noah Miller: Right

Ramsey Russell: That’s like a real Indian museum, a real gun museum, a real Wild West museum of, like, Smithsonian proportions. In fact, I think they’re partnered with Smithsonian. That’s an amazing place to go. So I guess -55 and I don’t want to go out and finish my, get my fifth duck or we got our ducks in the morning. I go, I can go warm up in there for a little bit, can I?

Noah Miller: Absolutely. I mean, a lot of our clients—I mean, we get clients from North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky. Some of those clients, they’ve been here for three or four years, and they still can’t get enough of the scenery. As soon as they get here, they shoot their ducks and geese or whatever they’re hunting in the morning, and then they go for a drive. Within ten minutes, you can be in the Bighorn Mountains right on the foothills looking at mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep. And then within about 45 minutes, you can be driving up the canyon that accesses Yellowstone National Park. You’re not able to access it because they shut it down on that side, but you can drive up there and see herds of wintering elk—200-300 elk up in the valleys up there—and then bighorn sheep and stuff like that. I mean, the scenery is unbelievable.

Ramsey Russell: When would you describe prime time? Because the average guy like me that loves hunting places like Wyoming, I don’t want to go just on any regular day. Truth of the matter is I do want to go experience some of that real cold, with the ducks coming to that warm open water. I mean, that’s the enchantment, like, I’ve seen photos for years. I’ve never hunted there in that condition, but I’ve seen photos in magazines for years where the dog’s eyelashes are crystallized, breath coming out, and the big fat greenheads coming into that white landscape. When is the prime time? Is there a sweet spot, a three or four week sweet spot in you all’s season?

Noah Miller: Yeah. Usually it’s about the week right before Christmas and then the whole rest of the season of end of January, right after Christmas and then the rest of the season Januar,. Its prime time, I mean that’s, we’ve already got our first or second big cold snap. A lot of the birds from Montana are pushed down and, I mean, we’re covered up in ducks.

Ramsey Russell: I was asking, when I’ve been through there before, I was driving and I came down from Billings, hour and a half, let’s say, and beautiful ride, by the way. A lot of history along the way.

Noah Miller: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Is that the nearest commercial airport for the average guy that’s going to fly in? Is that probably where he’s going to fly in, to fly into Billings and drive down?

Noah Miller: Yes, sir. Yep. Billings is kind of the main airport. I would say 90% of our clients fly into there, rent a vehicle, and then come down.

Ramsey Russell: And there is a private airstrip in Cody’s got to be.

Noah Miller: Yep. And they do small airplanes but I think the tickets are a lot more expensive and everything, and I think they’re a lot harder to get than in Billings.

Ramsey Russell: I drove from northwest Wyoming down to southeast Wyoming, which has also got some amazing hunting over there near Torrington. And there’s a lot of patches along the way, especially when you get around Thermopolis down to southeast. It’s like pronghorn country.

Noah Miller: Yeah. There ain’t much there.

Ramsey Russell: There ain’t a drop of water as far as the human eye can see.

Noah Miller: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So for a big state, it’s a big state, and there are not many people. I think it’s one of the least populated states in America. But then again, you do have a lot of water concentrated in small areas. Do you all ever feel hunting pressure? You see what I’m saying? It’s not a big destination for out-of-state hunters, but I know from talking to folks there are some die-hard duck hunters around there.

Noah Miller: Yep. Every year, it’s getting more and more populated, a lot more out-of-staters coming. When I first started hunting, one of the places I went to was Montana from Utah.

Ramsey Russell: You want to talk about hunting pressure?

Noah Miller: Yeah. And, I mean, now it’s blown up. The hunting pressure up there is unbelievable. From the first year I started or bought out and started running Wyoming Western Water fowlers and now Mountain View Mallards to now, I would say it’s doubled or tripled. You get a lot of locals starting to hunt a lot more, putting a lot more pressure on them. Then you also get a lot of out-of-staters coming through. Even people from down south or a town two, three hours away coming up just to come duck and goose hunt because it’s a little bit better hunting than around their town.

Ramsey Russell: But you said earlier you got 10,000 acres under wraps.

Noah Miller: Yep. If not more.

Ramsey Russell: Would you describe that 10,000 acres more like a block or more like long, skinny rectangles up and down the river?

Noah Miller: I kind of go and lease through the farms, like a farmyard. Sometimes a farm section will just have one field and then a good section of river. Sometimes it’ll have five or six different fields and then a big, long section of river. I kind of just go feel for how the hunting is in that area. Since I’ve been there for so long, I can tell where a lot of birds stage. Then I pick and choose between those areas. Honestly, I’m trying to even double and triple it even more. I don’t do it just to be greedy or not to be greedy, I do it for more hunting pressure.

Ramsey Russell: You can manage your hunting pressure, have more places to spread out, have more options.

Noah Miller: Yep. And then also like another thing is I mean, I don’t do it to take away from the locals. I do it, so if I go in there and hunt and a local wants to go hunt it, they can wait two, three, or four days, let the birds get back in there, let them get comfortable, and then I’ll let them go hunt it.

Ramsey Russell: You work with the locals, not against them.

Noah Miller: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Pretty smart.

Noah Miller: Yep. Just because there’s another guide service, not really competition, but I’ve heard bad things where he leases up ground, doesn’t ever let anybody hunt it, and he never touches it. What good is that? I understand you got to have your refuge fields or your rest fields, but those locals need a place to hunt. If you can manage those birds and make the hunting better and give back to the locals by letting them hunt, you’re never going to have a bad name for yourself.

Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. Noah, everybody listening can go to Mountain View Mallards, Wyoming, on ushuntlist.com. We’re very proud to have you.

Noah Miller: Thank you.

Ramsey Russell: Where’s your webpage? How can people get in touch with you, connect with you, and kind of shop? You know what I say? The great thing about social media to me today is people can connect. It’s like when you go into a store, everybody’s nodding their head right now. You know what I’m talking about? You go in the store and a guy comes up to help you. No, I’m just looking.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Let me look, let me connect, let me walk up and down and try on the boots and coats. I’ll call you if I need you. That’s the great thing about social media. People can connect and follow you along in the seasons and say, hey, that is something I want to go do one day. But how can people get in touch with you?

Noah Miller: We have a website, www.mountainviewmallards.com. It has one of my partners’ phone numbers on there. We also have Facebook and Instagram. We post on there pretty much every day during the fall and a little bit during the spring and summer. If you need my number, it’s on the Facebook or Instagram page.

Ramsey Russell: All the details are also on ushuntlist. What’s the ideal group size for you all?

Noah Miller: I like six. Six is perfect. If you’re wanting to target ducks, I won’t hunt any more than six on the river just because the river is moving fast. I do run two dogs just for this reason. If you’re a good group of shooters and you shoot five or six ducks, I’m usually pretty much on top of it. But if you start getting eight guys and you shoot ten ducks out of the flox, you’re just asking to lose a duck or two.

Ramsey Russell: What’s the minimum group size?

Noah Miller: I’ll take two, but if you’re a group of two, I’m going to put you with another group of two or another group of four just to make it a group of six. But a private group is six.

Ramsey Russell: Can hunters bring their own dogs?

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell:  If they have their own group. You don’t mix parties, or do you?

Noah Miller: I’ll mix parties if I have a single guy, a group of two, and a group of three like  that makes six guys. That’s your group. You’ll hunt every day together. Once you get six guys, that’s your private group. You won’t hunt with anybody else, you won’t deal with anybody else, you get, your place to hunt every day by yourself.

Ramsey Russell: That’s the ideal situation, especially if you’re going to bring your dog. There are a lot of great dogs in America. I am gonna tell you right now, I am not going to break you off. When she retired, I just got another one. For a lot of habitats she hunted and especially the stuff we hunt back south, that’s the Shawnee River. You’re not lying about having two dogs.

Noah Miller: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: She would come, she would hit the water, she hit Mark right here by the blind, hit the water, and she might not come out for a hundred yards.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, I’d see a little black spot come out with a goose or a duck way to heck down there. And if she was lucky.

Noah Miller: Yeah. I mean, it’s a tough river. It’s fast. There are also some bad things about the river that we have to look for as guides, not only for our dogs or our clients’ dogs. It’s the deadfall. The river is constantly changing, which means we have to adapt on where we’re hunting and stuff like that. You get a deadfall on the other side of the river, and you shoot a duck in it, most of the time it’s going to land on the other side of the river. It’s not a big wide section of the river that we’re hunting, but it can get caught up in those trees. If that dog gets over there, it can get swept under that tree, and sometimes they don’t come back out. We try and stay away from that, but those are the bad things about that section or that area of the river. We stay away from those areas because we don’t want to lose our dog, let alone a client’s dog.

Ramsey Russell: And reminder, when is prime time skinny water. I want to shoot that narrow stuff that looks like a drainage ditch. That’s what I want to shoot.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Never done that before.

Noah Miller: I would say the last two or three weeks of January is usually good. Honestly, I have people who call me and say, “Oh, that’s all we want to hunt.” Well, if you come in January and it’s 40 degrees, those ducks aren’t going to be in the skinny water. They’re going to be on the river. I kind of tell everyone that. Honestly, my experience with the skinny water is two to four people is prime for skinny water, just because you have six guys there you’re going to kick a lot of the ducks off, and they’ll trickle back slowly during the whole day.

Ramsey Russell: How many decoys do you have to put for that?

Noah Miller: Gosh, sometimes I only put three or four.

Ramsey Russell: Really. We’re talking inches deep, feet wide?

Noah Miller: Muck boots.

Ramsey Russell: Don’t need waders?

Noah Miller: No. A couple of the spots, I can jump across it with hiking boots.

Ramsey Russell: Golly. Is that hot water coming out, kind of like we’re in Yellowstone where you got that hot water coming out of a spring and coming down here?

Noah Miller: Yep. My theory behind it, I haven’t really been proved wrong or right about it, is Yellowstone’s a volcano.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Noah Miller: I mean, you got all that hot, I mean, all that lava and everything underground.

Ramsey Russell: That’s why these guys have come up.

Noah Miller: When that water pops out of the ground where it’s a spring, it’s going to be warm. There’s one spot where we have a pipe. I’m sure it was a spring, and they shoved a big culvert in it. Here comes water. It’s not warm to the touch, but it definitely freeze.

Ramsey Russell: Doesn’t freeze. And it’s steamy at -55.

Noah Miller: Yep, I’ve got videos of thousands of mallards coming up through the fog in the steam and everything. You’ll be sitting there, and all you have is your decoys once shooting light comes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they can’t even see the decoys. They just see that steam, and they’re so keyed in and educated to where that warm water is, they just dump right in.

Ramsey Russell: Have you all started thinking about what your menu is going to be at your new lodge?

Noah Miller: Yep. We’re gonna have a lot of like ribs, brisket, steaks.

Ramsey Russell: You all got it made now, buddy. That’s beef country if I’ve ever been there.

Noah Miller: Yep. We’ve become good friends with one of the meat processors out there in a little town. All of our stuff is local and fresh, it’s just awesome. The food out there is going to be very wholesome, homemade food. It’s going to be some of the best.

Ramsey Russell: Gonna be like hunt camp.

Noah Miller: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. No, I appreciate you. Thank you very much. You can look to see me probably about mid-December this year. I’ll be out. I won’t make January. I won’t make that -55, but maybe.

Noah Miller: It doesn’t happen every year. We get that -55. I think this is the first year we had that cold. Our river usually freezes up once a year, so it usually gets negative 20 or 30, and that’s when the river completely freezes up.

Ramsey Russell: And you know what’s so interesting to that and I don’t know why but for years, I’ve heard that when you’re hunting skinny water and it’s that cold, it’s almost entirely drake mallards, very few hens, if any.

Noah Miller: I mean, even on the river, it’s almost, it seems like you go like down south., like I was fortunate enough to hunt timber down south this last year in Arkansas. It was like every single is a hen. It’s just like, what the heck? And then we go to, and then we hunt Wyoming and it’s every single or, I mean, there’s days where we’re shooting three packs of all drakes.

Ramsey Russell: Isn’t that crazy?

Noah Miller: This year, I saw something I’ve never seen before. You know how they do that courtship where there are six, seven, eight drakes and hen?

Ramsey Russell: Yep.

Noah Miller: We had that on the river in January. It was unbelievable. We decoyed them, and it’s almost impossible to shoot that hen. The one day, it was eight drakes and a hen, and we shot six drakes out of that flock on the rive

Ramsey Russell: Wyoming, I’m telling you, brand new to US hunt list is northwest Wyoming up around Cody, Mountain View Mallards in Wyoming. You can go to ushuntlist.com to check it out, or you can go to www.mountainviewmallards.com and hook up with Noah directly. Either way, hook up with them directly. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Duck Season Somewhere. Come join me in some -55 and let’s go hunt some skinny water. See you next time.