EP 397. Who is Ramsey Russell?

 

A Path in Waterfowling

 I’m in the hot seat today. Fire away, Wayne.

Wayne Capooth: Hello, waterfowlers. This is the Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’re coming to you from a little different venue, setting smack dab on the Mississippi river in Downtown Memphis. And we have a special guest for you today. And I just want to get started here. So sit back, listen and see who you think this is, when I give you a few words? Your son is going to die. The doctors told his parents if he lives, which he won’t, he’ll lose both legs and one arm. The parents talked to the funeral director. They bought a casket. But God had a plan for this young man and he is following with it. So this podcast is about a man that has duck hunted on 6 continents and spends almost 225 days a year pursuing his passion of duck hunting. Plus, he’s a biologist. This is a man that is living his dream. How many of us can say that? So, Ramsey Russell, take it from there and tell us about your horrendous accident and what followed, and take us to the present day.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Wayne. First, let me say, for anybody listening, came to interview my buddy Wayne Capooth. I don’t know, last year and we were eating barbecue. Cause let me tell you what, Memphis, Tennessee, is the barbecue capital of the deep south. Man, I mean, every corner’s got a good barbecue joint. We was eating barbecue and we were talking about doing a podcast with him. He said, well, I want to interview you. I said, what you got a podcast? Cause no, I want to interview you on your podcast. I laughed. He laughed. He wasn’t kidding. And I thought about it for a little bit. I said, okay, I’ll go with this. Now, I know a lot of you all know a lot about me. But not, maybe some of you all listening don’t know a lot about me. And I’m happy to share it. I’m out there for the world to see. But anyway, somebody told me one time, one of my favorite podcasters told me one time, he said, Ramsey, you don’t need to interview people. You got the stories. People want to hear you talk. I said, well, me interviewing people that I meet around the world, the interesting personalities I meet in the stories, that is my story. That is who I am. But anyway, thank you all for listening this episode of Duck Season Somewhere it’s going to be a little bit different. I’m in the hot seat today. Fire away, Wayne.

Wayne Capooth: Yeah. Just let me say that we just came back from lunch. We got our bellies full with gut widening and we washed that down with a gut washer. So we may fall asleep during this podcast, but –

Ramsey Russell: I ain’t going to fall asleep.

Wayne Capooth: Let me just say, Ramsey called me about, I don’t know, 4 or 5 months ago, out of the blue, I didn’t know him from Jesus and said he wanted to do a podcast with me. And I said, yeah, I’ll do a podcast. And he said, well, I can come up there and set up and do it. And so after he got off the phone, I searched him on the Internet and found out a little bit about this gentleman. I’m going to tell you, he is a unique person. A man, as he tells his story here in just a few minutes, is a special person. And if you’re out there suffering for whatever reason, financially, medical problems, marriage problems, you’re going to see just what this gentleman has gone through to get through his life. So whatever you’re going through, struggling with, you can get through life. Put your hands in God and put your faith in what this gentleman has done. So, Russell, take it away.

Never Miss Opening Day

And you know what, I feel like God gave me a second chance that most people don’t get at a very young age.

Ramsey Russell: Well, Wayne, the story you asked me, was it okay to talk about this subject? And it is. It’s one of those topics I really did not talk about a lot. 41 years ago, I was involved in a home explosion. And I guess this story kind of starts like this. I just want to say, this is, it was 41 years ago, this May 17th. I was cleaning paint brushes with gasoline. A pilot light cut on it ignited the gasoline fumes. There was a horrific explosion. I did die that night, I later learned, talking to my mother, it seemed like a dream. I was trying to explain to her and I looked up and she had tears dripping off her chin. She said, well, that’s the night they brought you in. You died. I can remember the paddles hitting my chest, me bucking on the thing. They didn’t know what to do with me. I was supposed to lose my right arm and both my legs. It was 72% 2nd, 3rd degree burn, 8% probability for mortality. And they flew me down to Galveston, Texas. I’ve been a huge supporter of the Shriners ever since. It did save my life. But I remember as I come out of the fog, sitting there watching television in this little hospital room I’d been in for 6 or 7 months. And I became aware that it was Labor Day. And for the first time since I’d been a small child, I was not on a dove field with my grandfather. I was in a burn unit. And I just vowed that if I ever got my feet back under me, get back out. I was never going to miss another opening day of dove season and I have not. And you know what I feel like God gave me a second chance that most people don’t get at a very young age. It was a lot of emotional trauma. It was a lot of stuff I had to deal with. I still sometimes deal with post traumatic stress disorder all these years later. But it was, knowing I had that second chance, knowing how ephemeral life can be. That’s a lot to know at age 15, 16 years old. Kids aren’t supposed to know that kind of stuff. I just had this lust for life. I wanted to see and experience and do as much as I humanly could. Cause there ain’t no guarantee I’m going to live to be an old man, Wayne. There’s no guarantees in life. I just know I’ve got a second chance. I need to live it. And so that’s in a nutshell of how I am and why Life’s Short GetDucks became my mantra. I don’t care if a man hunts ducks or plays golf or is an avid football fan. At the end of the day, whatever you’re passionate about, do it, because there’s no guarantees you’re going to be able to do it forever. I’ll touch on another subject. Scars. There’s not a 41 years, there’s not a time I’ve looked in the mirror or a time I’ve washed my hands that I’m not reminded of who I am and where I’ve been. And maybe this is just something guys like myself said for 40 years to make yourself feel better about life, but I don’t think so. I do believe that scars are a reminder that all wounds heal through our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. I do believe that. And so I am reminded. But a small part of me is thankful. When I look back to my high school, when I look back to my youth, when I look at what became of a lot of my classmates that didn’t go through some of the stuff I did, now at my age, I’m often thankful that I was among the lucky ones. I feel like in many ways, it put my life in an orbit and it pulled me out of some bad places. It pulled me out of a bad path that I was heading and it put me on the right direction. And I don’t believe that even though my scars are conspicuous, clearly visible to anybody looking. I know at my age now that everybody, scars are a part of the human experience. There’s heartbreaks. There’s all kinds of ways that people get scarred. Their souls get ripped out, their hearts get broken, they may cut themselves or be in an explosion, but we’ve all got scars and it’s just an unfortunate circumstance of the human experience and we’ve just got – All you can do is pull yourself up by your bootstraps, move forward and move on. And my path has been waterfowl.

Wayne Capooth: So, Ramsey, let me just say, folks, I call myself the old timer. I call myself on the old timer on my podcast, which is Historic Duck Hunting Stories podcast. But I’m an ER doctor, was ER doctor for 30 years. And obviously, I dealt with a lot of burns during that time, severe burns. But you got a gentleman in front of me who was burned 72% and not expected to live, had a near death experience, and he overcomed it. Whatever’s in the problems are in your life, you can overcome it. Just put your trust in God and go forward. Now, Ramsey, whoever worked on him surgically, I think he had something like, I don’t know. How many did you have, 70?

Ramsey Russell: I lost count in the 70s. Yep.

Wayne Capooth: Had 70 something surgeries. I’m going to tell you, the surgeons, whoever did his skin grafting and stuff, folks, they just did a marvelous job. So why do I respect this guy? First of all, he’s not only does he have the anecdotal experience of going to all of these different places, which I’m going to ask him here in just a minute, but he also was a biologist, so he’s got some scientific background to put together with his anecdotal evidence. And so he’s very educated and smart wise. Not only how the ducks respond and everything, but what’s happening in our duck seasons now and how the weather has changing things, how other things are changing. So if we have time, we’re going to get into that. So, Ramsey, just tell us from your injury how you sort of got into guiding, really, folks, really all over the world for guiding services.

How Terrible Hunting Experiences Led to GetDucks.com

Booked through another agency, a terrible hunt. Came back and did some due diligence and found out there were better outfitters and I could find them.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a hobby that got out of hand. That’s just a long – when I was in college, started dating the woman that became my wife, now a beautiful human being. We’ve been married for 29 years, this August. She would go on trips with me. And one of the first trips I ever took outside of Mississippi was down to south Texas to shoot snow geese. The limit was 5. And laying out in those muddy fields around Katy, Texas, I realized that there were great waterfowl experiences beyond my backyard. Later, I went to Canada. That was a terrible hunt. Booked through another agency, a terrible hunt. Came back and did some due diligence and found out there were better outfitters and I could find them. And that first outfitter was up in Alberta. Not the bad hunt, the first good hunt I went to was about 3 years later, having a great time bringing more people, he asked me to be a be as booking agent. And I go, what the hell is a booking agent? I’m a forester. At the time, I was a forester, US department of agriculture. I had no idea what this industry was about, but he explained it to me and I said, well, I can probably bring a few more people up here to Alberta. And I just built a little website and I was doing some habitat consulting at the time. And I built a little website called getducks.com. And there were 2 products, my habitat consultant and Alberta. And at that time, I mean, I was just a 3rd way in through a government career. I had no idea it would turn into something, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger. And I knew this, too. The industry is plagued with people that aren’t genuine about what this business really is. It’s a people business. It’s a service industry. It’s not about me going to shooting a bunch of ducks. It’s about the customer going to shooting a bunch of ducks and having a great experience. Not a guaranteed experience, but even in the odds on a good experience and taking care of all the little nooks and crannies and dark alleys and blind corners that happen when you start traveling around the world, I had some dealings with some of nefarious types. I tell you a funny story. Just recently, I sent a guy down to Argentina on a combo hunt, one of our landmark combo hunts down in Argentina. We’ve been with these folks for 15 years now. Incredible event. In 2017, I booked a guy from up north down there and as recently as 2 weeks ago and we’re talking 6 years ago, Wayne. As recently as 2 weeks ago, another client that was on that trip sent me something off of Facebook. This guy took pictures from his hunting experience, booked through getducks.com and posted them up. He’s now a booking agent, selling guess what? An Argentina duck hunt. Not my Argentina duck hunt, but another one. But he’s using my pictures. Now, what does that tell you? It tells me, rough about he ain’t never been to wherever he’s got people going. Do you have any idea what those folks could have paid for? They bought a pig and a poke. And money’s too hard. Money and time are too hard to come by this day and age. My wife has been in this thing with me for 20 years. She is the brains of the operation. I’m the good looks. I do the fieldwork. 225 to 300 days at times, by the time I encompass the United States and do a lot of our travel. I may be gone 300 days. I spent 9 weeks down in Argentina last year. I might spend 6 or 7 weeks, 8 weeks this year. And it’s just what you got to do to keep your fingers on the pulse, because things are dynamic. Outfitters change, habitats change, people change. I’ve seen the simplest things is a divorce. An outfitter gets divorced and his business goes belly up. He fired, I saw one guy fired to cook. His business went belly up. Littlest things can upset the apple cart. What was a great hunt may not be a great hunt. So we’re constantly down there talking to our clients that are down there, constantly visiting, making sure it’s what we represent it to be. It’s a truth and advertising kind of thing. There were a lot of people that said, no, you can’t focus in waterfowl and do this. I was just hard headed enough to try it anyway and it succeeded because we took care of people. We’ve had people come into the fold to help. I won’t call them employees, but helpers, let’s call them over the years that we just had to cut loose because they did not understand that this is a service industry. This is not about you going to get the best blind, the most duck, the most bands, first shot, the first this, first that. This is about you going down and taking care of the client. This is about the customer experience. This is about – Somebody told me 15 years ago, well, you’re long enough in this business now. You ought to hire somebody to answer the phone at 11:00 at night. And I said, no, sir, I can’t hire anybody to answer the phone at 11:00 at night. Because guess what, Wayne? If I know you’re traveling and you’re calling me at 11:00 at night, never zero chance. I mean, never, are you calling to tell me you found the coldest beer, the best piece in Atlanta airport? Something has come off the rails. And my wife and I take it as our personal responsibility to do what we can to put it back on. But that, in a nutshell, is kind of went on a really bad hunt that I booked from somebody else. I have been on some other hunts or exposed to some other hunts that are really bad. And I don’t think it’s as simple as going to this outfit and saying, hope that they’re good. I don’t know how many outfitters down in Argentina I have visited over the past 20 years. A bunch. Most of them, if I don’t know of an outfitter, if I don’t personally know that outfitter or know of that outfitter, he probably ain’t worth knowing at this point. There’s a lot of them I know and have visited that I just, I passed on that they just weren’t the experience I wanted. There’s a lot of them I never even went and visited because their reputation precedes them. And we found the outfitters that we think represents real duck hunts for real duck hunters. And that’s where we built our brand, is in real duck hunting experiences.

Creating Worldwide Waterfowl Hunting Experiences

And by exotic, I mean not only the food, but the culture, the people and the duck hunting.

Wayne Capooth: So that’s folks, waterfowlers. That’s what you’re dealing with here a gentleman that has gone to 6 continents and that’s mind boggling in itself. I’m going to get in – and listen, if you’re thinking about booking a hunt, this is the gentleman. Okay. I’m going to get in a little bit to some exotic places he’s been, exotic foods that it’s been and then hopefully, we’ll get into maybe some changes that are happening in the duck hunting world and going forward from there. So, Ramsey, what’s the most exotic place you’ve been? And by exotic, I mean not only the food, but the culture, the people and the duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Pakistan.

Wayne Capooth: Pakistan. And why?

Ramsey Russell: Well, there was an older gentleman that was also a booking agent back in the day. He was from Birmingham, Alabama, Mr. Charles Arendt. And even though, as our business developed, he was the competition, I adored the guy. I liked him, I respected him and we just kindly sort of hit it off.

Wayne Capooth: Now, he was American.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, he was American for Birmingham, Alabama. And he was really, in my mind, he did what we do well before we even thought about – I mean, when I was in high school or something, he was way back when doing this stuff, the Internet eclipsed him. It eclipsed him. The Internet completely eclipsed him. He was a very old gentleman. But I loved and adored him and we developed a rapport. And as he got older and started to let things go a little bit, he called me one time, he said, I’m going to put something up on your radar. I said, what? He goes, Pakistan. I go, get out of here. Pakistan. Come on I think of Pakistan, I think of the mountains of Afghanistan.

Wayne Capooth: You’re going to hunt on camels.

Ramsey Russell: If you look at a map. It is right down through the center of that country is the Indus river valley. It is a fertile, wet river valley surrounded by desert. And I said, well, that does kind of catch my attention. Of course, it’s Pakistan, since 911, that’s kind of a scary place, right?

Wayne Capooth: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And it just so happens, it just right around that same period of time I had just left federal government, I was just getting this thing going good. And by good, I left a 40 hours week job working for the federal government. And I finally remember those part time work weeks, all those years. I mean, I went from working 40 hours a week to working 120 hours or more a week. My wife right there beside me, working. We had 240 hours a week to dedicate to this project of ours called getducks.com at the time. And one day, a gentleman called and booked a trip to Argentina, later went to Mexico. And as we got to talking, he talked about volume of ducks in a very informed way. He had obviously shot high volume birds before. And as we talked, it became apparent. I said, so what do you know about high volume duck hunting if you’ve never been to Argentina? He says, well, sir, I’m from Pakistan, the highest volume duck hunt on earth. And that got my attention. He began to tell me an elaborate story about hunting bar headed geese on the political boundary between Pakistan and India. That’s where they winner. Can’t nobody go there. It’s a very dangerous area. And because it’s on that political boundary.

Wayne Capooth: Between the two, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: He had the connections, for reasons I’ll explain, to contact India. And he described as they were shooting 100s of these geese. The Indian military would be sitting 200 yards away under a tent wearing their white uniforms and pith helmets and drinking their tea and observing because they were right there on the border and with firearms, shooting stuff. And it turns out this gentleman who was living in the United States, he was in exile. He was a part of President Musharraf’s cabinet. And President Musharraf was an American figurehead. One of those kind of folks had been put into power in Pakistan for whatever strategic reason they did. And when the new leadership took over, he and all his cabinet left to safer parts of the world. And this guy ended up in the United States. So with Mr. Arndt and now this gentleman here describing Pakistan to me, I kind of sort of started putting my ear to the ground and looking for it. And it was truly one of the most unique hunts. And the fact that it’s just what you would expect a very dry climate like Pakistan to be. It was hot, it was very different food, very different customs, very different. It was very different. But the people could not have been more hospitable and more generous and more friendly and more accommodating than they were. And it was very memorable in that respect.

Wayne Capooth: So other than geese, what kind of ducks were you shooting?

Ramsey Russell: We shot all ducks. It was a duck hunt.

Wayne Capooth: Oh, duck hunt.

Ramsey Russell: This gentleman manages for duck hunts. It’s baited, it’s high volume. He’s a feudal lord and he puts on 1 or 2 shoots per month for 1 or 2 days only. And then lets the ducks rest on his wetlands. It goes back out after.

Wayne Capooth: So what kind are they?

Ramsey Russell: Well, we shot memorable species I shot were pintail. You’re raising green wings. You’re raising wigeons. I shot a lot of tufted ducks, shot a marbled teal, shot a few poachers, common poachers, red crested poachers, shot a mallard, shot a eastern spot bill duck. But mostly green winged teal, wigeons, pintails and shovelers, mostly those species. And you know what the cultural differences is what I remember most is, for example, they put us up in this apartment, in the compound there. And when we got the cars, there were men in all the vehicles and a truck to themselves and the truck behind us, an armed guard detail with us. And I asked my host one time, was it necessary? Was I safe? And he says, you’re probably safer here than you would be at your own home. I said, then why the security? He says, he basically explained to me that, man, look, in that part of the world, they take words like honor very seriously. Very seriously. And he is a very powerful person, but because of political climate and everything else, he just was not willing to accept any risk whatsoever.

Wayne Capooth: All right, so is it like here? Do you put out decoys? Do you duck call?

Ramsey Russell: They put out decoys. Except, there was 120 servants when we showed up to the pond.

Wayne Capooth: 120 what?

Ramsey Russell: 120 of his staff. And 7 or 8 of them. I’d fallen behind them. I carried my shotgun down the levee. It was as easy bringing my shotgun into Pakistan as it was bringing it into Canada. It was nothing. Could we had the paperwork right and they carried everything else. They carried shells and drinks and I mean, it was a whole, like a Nepalese entourage heading down that levee carrying stuff. And, boy, we shot a lot of ducks. Then boys would put an entire feed bag or 2 worth of wet ducks, put them on their head and balance them all the way back. But the interesting thing about my staff that was attended to being a blind. One of them was about 7 or 8 years old and one of them was about. I don’t know, he could have been 70, he could have been 100. It’s hard to tell. He was old. And then it was stepped down, age wise, little age brackets, all the way to that 7 year old. And one day we were up in our little apartment where we stayed. There’s 4 bedrooms, and constantly, they’re bringing in food. I mean, all day. There’s no way humanly possible I could eat that much food. Anybody could eat. But they’re constantly bringing in food and just covering up a table with food, covering up that table with food all day long. And for supper, it’d be a massive table just loaded with food. For lunch, same thing. And of course, all the staff is wearing. I don’t know what you call that. It just looks like medical scrubs of different colors, that kind of clothing of all different colors on a rainbow. And they come in and out. And one day, I’m in the – It’s hotter than hay day outside. One day, I’m taking a shower. Boom, the door’s open. Here comes a guy with a platter food. I’m like, I wrapped up this house. I’ll be out in a minute. And I just kind of walked him out and shut the door behind him. One day, I’m sitting on the toilet. Boom, here comes the door and the guy’s holding me a platter food. I’m like, I don’t want no food right now. So I finally say something to my translator. I’m like, what is up with these people and this food? I mean, what do you mean? I go in and out, in and out. I’m naked. I’m here. I’m on the toilet. It’s uncomfortable. And he said, oh, no, no, they don’t matter. Well, he and I had been in an argument of sorts, a discussion, let’s call it, about poverty in Pakistan. And blatantly, there is a lot of poverty in Pakistan. And I’m talking about unlike anything you don’t see here in Memphis, Tennessee. People living in 4 foot tall little mud huts. No doors, no roofs, no furniture, no nothing. It’s that part of the world, you don’t shake hands because certain of those people, especially the servants, they eat with one hand and do business with the other. And I see people washing their clothes. Villagers, not my host, those people, but the regular folks out in the country, washing clothes and squatting little ditches. Potable water is a big deal. It’s hard to get there. And I said, well, apparently my interpretation of poverty and yours is totally two different things. But here’s why there’s no poverty in Pakistan. It’s so disturbance coming in and out, in and out. And finally, I’m having this discussion. I said, what do you mean it doesn’t matter? Of course it matters. And he said, no, it doesn’t matter, Ramsey, They’re servants. I go, I don’t care who they are. Tell them to knock and I’ll say something if I want them to come in and I’m in a shower or on the toilet, I ain’t going to say, come in and bring me a platter of food. I can tell you that. And he got this real puzzle look, Wayne. And he’s like, but they’re servants. I said, I go, so what? He goes, Ramsey, they’re carpet. I go, sir. He goes, they’re carpet. They’re servants. They don’t exist. They’re not there. They’re like carpet. And the next day, when I went out duck hunting, I saw my staff in a different light, because that came the realization that one day, that little boy is going to be that old man and there’s going to be another little boy down the food chain and another little boy, and they’ve lived in servitude their whole life. Now, that’s not for me to judge. That is their culture and their way. I talked to a 3 star general down in Louisiana one time, told this story, and he explained to me that there’s as much slavery as there’s ever been on earth and half of slavery on earth today is Pakistani. I’m not judging that those people were happy as they could possibly be. They’re living a great life. They’re fed, they do good. But that was a real cultural chasm that was hard for me to put together.

Wayne Capooth: Well, folks, Ramsey, just gave us something that tells us what’s so great about America in this period of time we’re going through right now. In this country, you can come from the lowest level of the financial runs on the ladder and you can climb that ladder. You can’t do that in places like Pakistan. So anybody out there has got the ability to rise up and make a decent living. So that was a great story to tell. What was the most common, I take it, wasn’t much greenhead mallards there, right?

The Rock Star Duck of the Universe

That mallard is a prized duck.

Ramsey Russell: We shot a few. And do you know, everywhere I’ve been in the northern hemisphere, from Russia to Pakistan, Romania, Netherlands, anywhere, Azerbaijan. That mallard is a prized duck. That mallard is truly the rock star of the universe, in the northern hemisphere, especially.

Wayne Capooth: The mallard is a northern hemisphere duck. I don’t believe there’s any in South America, are there?

Ramsey Russell: Only the Old World genetics in New Zealand.

Wayne Capooth: Okay, so it’s a northern hemisphere duck. And as he just said, it’s all across the northern hemisphere and it is a special duck. Just imagine, folks, these animals, these birds have been around for millions of years and they know their way around and can get around. Now, tell me, Ramsay, of the places you haven’t been, what would be the number one place you would want to go for a hunting trip?

Ramsey Russell: I’m a little bit of an oddball in that regard. I’m as much about the National Geographic like experience as anything and I like the notion of a – it’s hard to imagine in the year 2023 with 8 and a half billion people on earth. But I like the notion that maybe there’s still somewhere that because of cultural differences or something, there’s just somewhere, there’s got to be some ducks and crannies on earth that ducks are unfettered. They haven’t been pressured, they haven’t been hunted in the way that all of us know ducks to be pressured here in the United States or in Canada. So I’m always looking and different places that have come up on my radar that I may never be able to put together. I’m really starting to give up on Southeast Asia. Too many people, too many gun laws, too many ammo laws. I don’t know. But I would love to find myself somewhere in North or South Korea – 

Wayne Capooth: North Korea.

Ramsey Russell: Or Thailand. I would go to North Korea with the right invite. And it would have to be somebody politically connected, no differently than Pakistan. I would go to Pakistan tomorrow as long as I could hunt with my host last time. He was a wonderful human being. Our differences of politics or religion can be assumed, but we didn’t talk about that. We talked about duck hunting. We talked about hunting. We talked about his culture. We talked about Pakistan history and I loved it. But, yeah, I would like to get down into Southeast Asia. There’s a spot I would like to get into and I almost had this hemmed up about 7 or 8 years ago and then they just vanished. I would like to get into Sudan, up in the north western corner, thereabouts, south of Egypt. I’d love to go to Egypt. Just to go to Egypt. And I’d love to duck hunt in Egypt. Just to say I duck hunted in Egypt right before I went and toured the valley of the kings. But that now river runs north and its headwaters is comprised of the Blue Nile and White Nile forks, which there’s about 100,000 some odd acres of Delta down in Sudan. And in that part of the world, you’ve got this real overlap of African and Eurasian species. So I may could shoot a mallard or a Eurasian wigeon or a garganey. But at the same time, I’m allowed to shoot a pygmy goose or a whistling duck or a yellow bill. And I think that’d be kind of a cool experience. The human antiquity, the humanity has existed in that part of the world way before Egypt. And I just think it’d be a cool hunt to go on. And those are really kind of my 2 primary areas. I’m going to check a couple of bucket lists off this year. Australia, which I know people are sick of hearing me talk about, but they’re fixing to close their duck hunting and for politics. And I’m going to go over there in November and I’m going to go back over there in January just to scratch a couple of experiences off in different parts of Australia than what I’ve been. Assuming they’re going to be opening that long. I plan on being over there in November and January to hunt a couple of goose species. But that’s really kind of sort of it. I can’t think off the top of my head worldwide of some more places I’d really like to go. Other parts of Africa, I think you still got some opportunities. Other provinces, we’ve been down to kind of the southern half, South Africa. I think there’s some opportunities possibly up in the San Francisco African Republic, not sure about that. Certainly Mozambique, Chad. I think there’s some other areas, parts of the world that could offer some opportunities for some high quality duck hunting experiences. I’ve just got to get over there and check them out.

Wayne Capooth: You mentioned Iran. Have you? I can’t remember where you said you’ve been there. You hadn’t been there?

Ramsey Russell: Man, I would go to Iran. Do you know this is craziest thing in the world? Instagram. When I look at the metrics of our following, Tehran is one of the top cities.

Wayne Capooth: The folks go figure that.

Ramsey Russell: Iran is one of the top countries that follow us. There are a lot of duck hunters. And you get off into some talking to my folks over Azerbaijan. You can get off into some very conservative, scary, by western standards, conservative parts of Iran. But most of Iran seem to be fairly moderate, like us. And I have a lot of conversations on Instagram chat. I have a lot of conversations with Iranians that reach out to us and we start developing a conversation that they seem to be, as opposed to the ultra conservatism as maybe you and I are, they want a little more freedom. They don’t like that stringent form of religion.

Wayne Capooth: I’m trying to think, there’s 2 sections. Sunni and Shiite. And Shiites are the most liberal, like you’re talking about and the Sunnis are more openness of –

Ramsey Russell: That I don’t know.

Wayne Capooth: Yeah. So when, like, let’s say, the mallards that you’ve hunted over in Pakistan and those places, do they react to a call like our mallards?

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely.

Wayne Capooth: The same way.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely. I got a funny story the first time. I had just left federal government. Money was tight. And I got a phone call inviting me to come to Russia. And, boy, I ran a budget. My wife like, no, hell, no, you ain’t going there. I went and it worked out –

Wayne Capooth: In the marriage.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah, the marriage worked out, buddy. But it was a good call. The first time I went we, as I was talking to the guy inviting me, he wanted me to join a team from Malta. I had to look it up on a map. It’s a tiny little island, 24 miles by 7 miles wide in the middle of the Mediterranean Ocean. And they’re avid bird hunting –

Wayne Capooth: That’s Spain, isn’t it?

Ramsey Russell: It’s kind of right out in the middle. Everybody around the Mediterranean Ocean is occupied one time.

Wayne Capooth: I think it’s off the west coast of Spain.

Ramsey Russell: And so anyway, it’s south of Italy, south of all that down in there. But south of Greece. But anyway, I joined these guys and they were doing an upland bird and shorebird and it’s total bird collecting adventure. Gosh, I’m so thankful I fell in with them. That was such an – It was one of my favorite trips of all time I’ve ever done. Everything was new. Everything was different. They were amazing people. The conversational value was just astounding. And for example, I tell you, one day we went, it was raining, it was cold. They had this little old bitty bobtail truck that we kind of rode in like a jeep and had this tiny little shoebox size wood burning stove. And I decided I didn’t want to go shoot shorebirds. So the Malton got out and with electronic calls, curlews and plovers, they were the best birders I’d ever seen. Cause they could see a little dicky bird fly 200 yards away. They go right to the song and try to call them in. And it was interesting, I kind of wished I had gone with them now because one of them shot a golden plover with a band coming from Belgium and I was sitting in that little bobtail by the fire, watching curlews come off the river, just locked up for 500 yards going right into that call.

Wayne Capooth: You missed one there.

Ramsey Russell: I missed one. But I shot woodcock. I shot capercaillie. But one day we were hunting, maybe the first day we were hunting waterfowl and I brought some – One of the last trips I ever brought hip boots. Cause you bring hip boots. I don’t care if you bring waders. There’s always a circumstance you wish for, just one more inch. And so I was sitting there.

Wayne Capooth: You talk about hip boots.

Ramsey Russell: Hip boots and everything. I was sitting there just absolutely freezing my tail off, wet as could be and shot a smews that morning. And that’s what we were kind of hunting smews and different species. And about that time, what a lot of duck. We had one single coot decoy for 2 of us sitting out there, sitting out in front of us. That’s all they had. We threw it out and about 09:00 in the morning, a single greenhead flew over. I reached in my coat pocket real quick. It was a sorry no to have blown it months. And I think I had a piece of something down in the reed, but still, that duck heard that note and it looked like he hit the end of a chain, like a dog hitting the end of a chain, because he, boom, his head snatched and he turned and he never flapped again. He glided right into that single decoy and I killed him. Ended up shooting 4 or 5 that morning and it was a prize. It was amazing. One of my favorite hunts in Mongolia, we were over there. We shot bar headed geese. We shot swan geese. We shot ruddy shelducks, common shelducks. But one of the most memorable hunts is we were way the hell off the beaten path. And it was too cold. We’d gone 6 hours north to scout. It was too much winter that far north, yet. One thing we hadn’t seen is we were decided we were going to leave the next morning at the break of dawn. We come around this area and it’s like this low lying area that, where all the snow run off. It kind of accreted about a foot, a foot and a half, 2 foot water. Ephemeral, just totally ephemeral rain and it’s going to dry up eventually. Wasn’t a blade of grass. By time they grazed cows and camels and yaks and sheep and goats. There ain’t a blade of grass out there that time of year. And it was wall to wall mallards and pintails. And I’m like, we gotta do it. And we went and bought a couple of hay bales from a Mongolian herder. And to this day, I guarantee he’s wondering what those 2 guys with no cows and sheep bought that hay for $6 a bale. And we came back and next morning, covered up under it. And it was just so unreal to shoot mallards and pintails that I know had never heard a call or seen a decoy. And so you’re always kind of looking for that. And we stopped. We just shot a few. I think we shot about 10 birds and our host had been observing and he came down and says, that was so amazing. I’ve never seen anything like that. I said, seen anything like what Gala? He says, the birds would get right over you and come straight down. And I pulled up my call.

Wayne Capooth: They didn’t know that.

Ramsey Russell: He goes, wow. And then he looked at the duck, and he goes and what are the, just the statistical odds that all the birds you shoot would be boys? I go, that was intentional. That was completely intentional.

Wayne Capooth: All right, tell me this. Do they have Robo duck or Mojo, whatever you want to call it?

Ramsey Russell: I never leave home without one.

Wayne Capooth: So you take it with your trips wherever you’re going?

Ramsey Russell: I never –

Wayne Capooth: What do they think about that?

Ramsey Russell: Most of the world has got that figured out.

Wayne Capooth: Really?

Never Leave Home without a Mojo

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah. Buddy. We go to Azerbaijan and we’ve carried some over the years. They bought some from other people over the years. They’ve got a dozen of them waiting on us. And so I can use, I can take 2 of them out there. But going to places like Mongolia or pick a spot that I know I haven’t been, somewhere off the beaten path, I’m going to pack Mojo. I’m going to pack a Mojo and oftentimes I hope it don’t hurt nobody’s feet. I’ll pack dove Mojos because I can put 2 or 3 of them in a coat pocket and have 2 or 3 little motions out there instead of one big one. I can pack them simpler, they’re lighter. I can carry them out the field more. You should have seen I brought a pair of mourning doves out to Mongolia and swan geese, I mean, just nowhere else in the world to shoot them. And –

Wayne Capooth: And so you’re putting them out for waterfowl, not for the doves?

Ramsey Russell: No, I’m putting them out for waterfowl.

Wayne Capooth: So it’s the motion.

Ramsey Russell: And those swan geese would see those birds in that pond, those Mojos and they would backflip, start maple leaf and coming down on top of them.

Wayne Capooth: Beautiful.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. So I never leave home without Mojo.

Wayne Capooth: All right, folks, several times during this podcast you’ve heard him say ephemeral. Now you know, he’s getting a little above my intelligence level here. So you folks out there that went to public school like I did, you might want to get your Funk & Wagnalls out to see what ephemeral means.

Ramsey Russell: It’s temporary. It’s just a very temporary event. A lot of the wetlands that we hunt for ducks are ephemeral, it’s just you pump them up and then it only holds it seasonally or I’m looking at a swag out here across the place, over here, out in that field where it’s been raining.

Wayne Capooth: He’s talking about in Arkansas across the field.

Ramsey Russell: It’ll probably dry up. It’ll probably dry up this summer. It’s just temporary.

Waterfowl Hunting Changes

Tell us the effects it’s had on the Atlantic Flyway and how it may affect our flyway.

Wayne Capooth: Well, let me just say this time of year, usually the end of March and 1st April, there’s some puddles of water out there, moist ground and come through in here. Now this doesn’t happen in the fall, but in the spring we get a lot of shorebirds and we get a lot of black neck stilts, greater and lesser yellowlegs and snipes. But they opened the greenway out there on that side of the river, which I can see from where we’re sitting on the 12th floor here to a greenway. So it’s getting pedestrian and bicycle traffic and a lot more car traffic up through the fields and the shorebirds have quit coming. So, folks, that tells you a little bit what pressure does to the waterfowl. Obviously, I can’t cover all the topics which are so unique in the different areas that you’ve been to. So I’m going to jump a little bit to the changes that we’re seeing now as far as waterfowl hunting in this country. And we may have some answers and we may not, but we’re going to address a few. Some of them may even be new to you. They’re sort of new to me, which I’ve been racking my brain on studying about. So we’re going to get into that just a little bit. Ramsey, can you tell me, I don’t know how many of our listeners out there know about a game farm raised mallard. Tell us the effects it’s had on the Atlantic Flyway and how it may affect our flyway.

Ramsey Russell: If they’ve been listening to this podcast very long, they’ve heard Phil Lavretsky on here 2 or 3 times. He’s a geneticist out of University of Texas, El Paso and he’s the one that threw it up on my radar. I’ve done some work with him and boy, has he sent me down a mental rabbit hole because every mallard I put my hands on now around the world, I wish I had a genetic sample from to see what their genetic origins are, how they’re related to my mallards versus European mallards. But, it’s a very worrisome problem we’ve got now. Break, break. Let me start with this. I go to Sweden one time. And the estate we hunted, it was kind of a jump shoot and it was amazing. I shot 65 mallards one afternoon, most of them were put and take farm mountains. And the guy that owned the castle would go out and buy these 1 month old mallards and put a lot of his tanks, put them out on his tanks and feed them. I’m talking a dump truck load worth of grain. And then he and his guys would go out and he was a duke, which is like a boss hog, dukes of Hazzard. And he would go out and they would jump shoot those matters and shoot him for sport. And I’m going to tell you what, when a flurry of mallards is coming off, the first 1st clap of the hands, the guy coming in the other side, a few birds got up and shot one. And it’s a shot, holy cow, did the pond erupt? And I’m talking as fast as I could load a single shot at a time for a box of bullets. Me and the other two guys were just, bam, bam, bam, bam. Gunning matters. I don’t care what their genetic origins are. That was fun. There were some wild birds in that, with all those ducks and all that feed that close to the Atlantic Ocean, a little line, that migratory corridor. It did attract wild birds. I’ve shot them down in New Zealand, didn’t matter. They had funny looking blue bills. They came in, they decoyed. They were kind of fun. So I’m not discounting that I’ve done it. But when you start looking at the long term sustainability of a natural resource, there’s a real profound problem. And I don’t think we can put the genie back in the bottle. I was privy to an email conversation, a listserv conversation, regards last year’s be pop counts, the counts of North American ducks and the wetlands and all that good stuff. This big conversation was going on about mallards and their populations relative to the past and everything else. And I’m trying to hang on because it’s a bunch of real smart people having this discussion. I don’t say a word. I just read and try to absorb and learn. And one person, an old mentor of mine, one person threw the question out, but what about the genetic variation? And what he’s saying is mallards matters pretty much drive, adaptive harvest management, their count, their health, their availability. Somehow or other – my words, not a smart biologist, somehow or another, they’re able to extrapolate daily that the season length and the bag limit for all these other species from mostly a matter duck harvest. But what do you do when in Phil Oreskes words, one of them is a wolf, a true wolf, and one of them is a husky dog or a basset hound? So we got mallard, they kind of sort of look like a mallard. They quack like a mallard, they’re greenhead like a mallard, but they ain’t. They don’t – Genetically, they’re not the same. And if all those are being counted and lumped together into account under which the management of our continental resources and hunting seasons are predicated, I think we got a problem. But what do you do? Nobody knows what to do, comes the question, and nobody’s saying this but me beg the question that since they were stocked so heavily on the Atlantic Flyway, since such a preponderance of Atlantic Flyway mallards are farm origin, maybe that accounts for the fact that 20 years ago, there was 1.2 million matters in Atlantic Flyway, and a couple of years ago, there’s 400,000. Now they’ve rebounded to 500,000. That’s still a long way from 1.2 million. That’s got a lot. And the fact that that genetic is drifting west, the fact that they have identified that 70 or 80% of matters harvested around Michigan are farm ducks, it makes you wonder, what does it bode for the future? I don’t know.

Selective Breeding: Farm Ducks vs. Wild Ducks

And let me just tell you, if you’re on Atlantic Flyway and you kill a mallard now, you know what your chances are to kill them, wild mallard? About 10%.

Wayne Capooth: Well, folks, just to expound on that a little bit, Europe started this, I don’t know, 150 years ago or so. So they selectively what they have done is –

Ramsey Russell: 400 years ago.

Wayne Capooth: 400 years ago, they have selectively breeded out these game farm mallards. And there’s a big difference between a game farm mallard and a wild mallard. So what they selected was these are smaller ducks, they’re longer ducks, but they got a smaller wing. Their bill is wider, taller, but shorter. And what they’ve done in the game farm is they fed them the kernel of corn, so the bill has lost its filaments. So, when these game farms go to the wild to get seeds, they can’t really filter out the food because everything passes through the wider filaments because they’ve been eating the grain kernels.

Ramsey Russell: They’re matter looking chickens, essentially. They’re not wild birds.

Wayne Capooth: They’re not wild birds. And the other thing is, when they’re breeding and they lay their eggs, they’re much more prone to leave those eggs and lose the hatch than the wild mallard and their survivability, because they have to feed in the wild, they have to feed 2 times more than the wild mallard. So their survivability is in question. So we’re really worried. And let me just tell you, if you’re on Atlantic Flyway and you kill a mallard now, you know what your chances are to kill them, wild mallard? About 10%.

Ramsey Russell: Pretty slim.

Wayne Capooth: 92% of the mallards on the Pacific Flyway have some game farm genetic material in them. So now the question has been for the last 5 or 6 years. Okay, are they going to cross over and come into the Mississippi Flyway?

Ramsey Russell: They have.

Wayne Capooth: Well, yes, they have. Into Michigan, which Ramsey just mentioned. And what has happened there? The same thing has happened in the Pacific or the Atlantic Flyway. The percentage of the mallard population as a whole, including the wild and the game farm and the hybrids of those two, that population has decreased almost 50%. So now they’ve crossed into Michigan for a number of years and the population there of the mallards is going down. So, there’s a great big deal of worry of what to do with all of this.

Ramsey Russell: And I’m real concerned, because maybe the reason nobody is jumping all over this topic and I’m thinking federal agencies, is because they know there’s nothing we can do. I don’t know.

Wayne Capooth: Well, the train has left the station. They know tha, the scientists know that.

Ramsey Russell: The genie is out of the bottle.

Wayne Capooth: Yeah.

Impact on Habitat Loss Despite Conservation Efforts

Ducks Unlimited, Delta Waterfowl, US Fish & Wildlife Service, state agencies, universities, all being underpinned by a passionate, huge following of committed duck hunters and still we’re losing habitat.

Ramsey Russell: Somebody asked me one time, my favorite place to hunt. That’s a question I get at. What’s your favorite place to hunt? You know what my answer was? It wasn’t geographically. It was wild marsh. It was just a wild natural marsh. That’s my favorite environment, I think to hunt. Worldwide, it’s the common denominator. Flooded timber. I love to hunt flooded timber, flooded cypress, flooded oaks. I love it, love it. But it’s a very few places in the world you can really get off into some flooded, true flooded timber. Oklahoma, maybe, up to Missouri, Illinois, down to Mississippi flat. But it’s very few places you’re really going to get into true green timber. But wild marsh is what I see worldwide. And one of the interesting issues to me, just from 20, 30 years of chasing these ducks like I have been, it’s a sense of perspective. You go hunt ducks on 6 continents and you see all these similarities and differences, and I’m really concerned, Wayne. That’s why I like meeting with people older than myself. They can talk about the good old days, what the changes have been. But I look back to just when I was in grad school 25 years ago versus now at the monumental amount of habitat loss we’ve experienced just in the United States, where we have a North American conservation model, where we have Ducks Unlimited, Delta Waterfowl, US Fish & Wildlife Service, state agencies, universities, all being underpinned by a passionate, huge following of committed duck hunters and still we’re losing habitat.

Wayne Capooth: All right, you told me, I guess, on our conversation when we were hooking this podcast up about, as people know ducks are not going to come south until they absolutely have to are driven out of the north.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of your big ducks, a lot of your ducks are going to hang back as long as they can. But blue winged teal are a prime example. Pintail shovelers, some gadwalls are prime example of birds that are going to migrate regardless.

Wayne Capooth: You told me about and as people know, corn has spread out of our Prairie Pothole Region, up into Alberta in Saskatchewan. And you told me about a farmer that’s converting a hundred thousand acres or more into farmland. Tell us about that.

Ramsey Russell: A biologist told me about that. It’s one of North America’s largest landowners, one of the top 2 or 3 landowners that somebody sent me a report the other day of an advertisement he’s got for a quarter million acre tract of farmland they’ve gone in Canada, the prairies and they have removed all the vegetation, all the clumps of trees, all the rocks, all the fence rows and they’ve dirt panned in the wetlands to make it just a quarter million acres of absolute row crop agriculture that is not good for ducks. That’s just one farm.

Wayne Capooth: That’s in Saskatchewan.

Ramsey Russell: I believe it’s in Saskatchewan. One farm.

Wayne Capooth: That’s detrimental big time.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a quarter million acres that ducks no longer have to nest on. It’s scary, but it’s all the way down to Louisiana, down to coastal Texas, parts of California. It’s leaps and bounds. I mean, we were talking recently, Wayne, you and I about, just look back at New York when the colonists got here. They were duck hunting what’s downtown –

Wayne Capooth: Manhattan.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And I’ve seen the same story in Toronto, down around Houston, Texas. It’s everywhere. Civilization needs somewhere to go and waterfront is desirable for transportation, for quality of living, for a lot of different reasons, but that’s all duck habitat too. And one of the scariest thoughts to me, we are fighting 6% of Americans duck hunt. But if it weren’t for us raising hell about wetlands and waterfowl, who would be?

Wayne Capooth: Nobody.

Ramsey Russell: Nobody. And even with the time, the money that we hunters are collectively putting through organizations named into conservation we’re still walking down the stairwell instead of up. We’re losing ground instead of gaining it. It’s because it’s a bigger problem than 6% of civilization can tackle. We need everybody on the hook. Everybody needs to be concerned. Hell, yeah, I’m being selfish. I want wetlands so I can shoot more ducks. But wetlands benefit all kinds of wildlife and it benefits humanity.

Wayne Capooth: Yeah, more than ducks.

Ramsey Russell: I heard a report the other day that by the year 2050, half of humanity would not have access to potable water. Half the world is not going to have access to drinking water by the year – At the end of my lifetime, 2050. That’s pretty scary stuff.

Wayne Capooth: That’s big stuff. I want to get just a little bit – We’re talking about changes and we’ve covered some pretty good topics during that warming stuff. I want to get a little bit because of the warming, how the tundra is changing and how that is affecting waterfowl. Can you expound on that in any way?

Ramsey Russell: I hate the word global warming because Al Gore made it a bad word. Politicians have made it a bad word. You’re living under a rock if you don’t see environmental change. The average temperature, at least in North America and the northern hemisphere is warming. Interviewed a biologist from University of Saskatoon not too long ago, back this fall, talking about decline of snow geese. Back in 1998, there was an estimated 18 million mid continent snow geese. Now there’s an estimated 8 million. It wasn’t because of conservation order that we lost a decrease in 10 million birds and snow geese. It’s because the temperature has raised 1 or 2 centigrade on their nesting grounds. And what they think is happening is that that minute change up in the Arctic, the grass, the geese have not yet synchronized with the vegetational changes. Historically, right about the time them little fuzz balls climb out from under mom and start walking around, pecking grass coincides with when the grass is sprouting on the tundra and the nitrogen is flushing, well, now they’re about 2 weeks behind that event. They’re 2 weeks behind the nitrogen and it’s affecting their survivability. There’s just no doubt that we’re going through warming trends. I mean, heck yeah, man. Christmas in Mississippi this year was around single digits. A week later, it was almost 80, and those ducks were gone. Those mallards were gone back north.

Wayne Capooth: Well, to expound upon that too, from my point, we’re in the ice age and for 10,000 years now, we’ve been in a warm warming period, what’s called an interglacial period, which is between ice ages. And with that, the tundra, especially now, the tundra is warming 2 times what it’s warming down here where we are. So, it’s warming faster. And what happened is the tundra, the southern part of the tundra, is thawing out and that’s going to keep expanding northward into the Arctic. And as it thaws out, then that creates vegetation. So now we’re getting reports of pintails and even some mallards breeding up in that thawed out area of the tundra. So the flyway is changing. So the ducks have got to adapt to that because they –

Ramsey Russell: But that’s good. It’s good that as agriculture is hitting a lot of that prey, they go further north. But, just wonder out aloud what happens in 50 years when it’s warm enough that now they can farm that ground too.

Wayne Capooth: Well, they’ll –

Ramsey Russell: Or log it.

Wayne Capooth: Yeah, they’ll reach a point where hopefully we’ll reach to the point where we’re not freezing or we start freezing again, getting cold. But when that is, I don’t know, because an interglacial period, which is the warming period between glacial lasts anywhere from about 20 to 40,000 years. So we’re about, I don’t know what we are in this period, but what I’m getting at, it tells me that the ducks are going to shift more northward to get into the breeding ground, which is where there’s less predators also at that point. And they’ve got to arrive earlier because the spring comes earlier up there now and the fall is lasting a little bit longer. So they have to get up there at the right time. So anyway, that’s going on. It’s quite interesting how that’s going to affect the southern tiers of states down here. Obviously, if the mallards and the pintails are breeding in the lower part of the arctic area, they’re not going to come as farther south as they have to. So that’s, to me, that raises the boundary line a little bit more northward. Is my making sense with that?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, I’ve seen reports or heard rumors that they predict in the next 50 years. Right now, the continental ice line falls right across the middle of South Dakota. That’s kind of where the hard ice line stops and they predict that in another 50 or 60 years it will have receded up into about Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Wayne Capooth: Now see, though, those ducks are going to shift, they’re going to follow –

Ramsey Russell: That’s what you think.

Wayne Capooth: Fresh vegetation and less predators as it keeps thawing. So that shifts the southern boundary of what we get down here in Mississippi and even Tennessee and Arkansas to me.

Adaptable Creatures

Ramsey Russell: Well, let me change subject. This is all doom and gloom and there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop that. Nothing. We’re powerless. That’s just the universe in play. The universe always changes. It has since God clapped his hands and made earth. But going back to where we started this podcast, I like to duck hunt and I’m going to duck hunt. I’m going to duck hunt in Mississippi. I’m going to duck hunt around and I’m going to adapt just like the ducks do. The truth matter is, boy, we all love to see them big cold fronts and the skies get black with ducks down here in the deep south. But truth matter is, I enjoy just going out and shooting ducks anyway. You know what I’m saying? It ain’t got to be like that all the time and maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe if it happened all the time, there wouldn’t be no ducks left to shoot anyhow, Wayne. We American hunters are real good at killing duck given opportunity.

Wayne Capooth: I guess another good point is, as far as the ducks are concerned up there, where I’m talking about in the tundra where it’s thawing out, it’s creating new wetlands and stuff for them. So, there’s some good things. We just are in an uncharted territory here. Even the scientists on that delve into all of this waterfowl stuff, they got some concerns. They don’t know where we’re quite going, but they’re – and I mentioned Michigan a minute ago, as far as the mallard population decreasing in numbers that breed winter or summer up there, they don’t know whether that’s because the game farm raised mallards are moving in there and changing the genetics and the habits of the mallard or whether those ducks, those mallards, wild mallards, are moving with the warming to spend their summer more up towards in Canada or not. They don’t know that yet.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve heard one theory, that a lot of the ducks are going up into the boreal forest and that’s because in the absence of trapping, there’s more beavers, more beavers are building more dams and pounding more water. So there’s a lot more wetland habitat up in the boreal forest than there may have been during the Hudson Bay days, you know what I’m saying? When fur trapping was a big deal. A lot of truth to that. Ducks are adaptable creatures. I think we hunters have to be also. You got any more questions?

Wayne Capooth: I got one more. This is a little different, the hybridization of black ducks. I think we have or at least I do have the theory that, is there any really black ducks left? Are they all coming on the habit back then?

Ramsey Russell: I sent you a link today to one of the initial podcasts we did with Dr. Phil Lavretsky, who stumbled into the Old World versus New World genetics by exploring just that question and what he determined by going back to the Smithsonian and going back to 150 year old tissues and checking what the black duck genetic was at the baseline 150 years ago. He found out that 75% of American black ducks are exactly back like they were 150 years ago, because they won’t necessarily always breed with hybrids. They will if they got to, but they choose not to. And that’s what you’d have to do to breed them in extinct. So they’re in good shape, man. They’re in good shape.

Wayne Capooth: It’s a beautiful bird, I’ve killed. I’ve hunted for 60 years and down here in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas, I guess I hadn’t killed probably, I don’t know, maybe 50 black ducks, because we don’t get that many. And it really has to get cold up north, especially the Ohio region on Lake Erie, because those, when Lake Erie and those in the widest point marshes freezes up, that drives some of the black ducks down here. But Alfred Bird, my good hunting buddy down in Charleston, Mississippi, we got into – it was cold as all get out, but we wasn’t frozen up down there, and we got in a spot of woods there I’d scouted out the previous morning and we got out there and it was just ducks in there. We were hunting on some green timber, but we were on the timber line with an open field and it was flooded. And I’m going to tell you, I have never seen cemented black ducks in my life, is in that wad of ducks that day. They’re just a beautiful bird. And to me, they’re a little bit more warily than the greenhead duck. I don’t know if that’s your impression or not.

Ramsey Russell: I think they’re very wary. Very skittish.

Wayne Capooth: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: The times I’ve hunted them up under salt marshes around New Jersey and up in that part of the world where it’s tidal influence, that’s what they really like is those tidal marshes. The thing I noticed is when the tide’s too low and the tide’s too high, you can’t hardly beg one into the decoys. But when that tide hits that sweet spot, whatever it is they like about that certain tide level, bam, bam, you’re done on your 2 black ducks. I love to shoot them.

Wayne Capooth: Folks, I don’t know how long we’ve spent some time here, but I think we’ve got to know Ramsey a lot better. And as I said when I started this deal, God had a plan for this man and he’s living his dream, and God bless him and many long years of doing what you’re doing.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Duck Season Somewhere. I know it’s a little bit different. I really don’t like talking about myself. I know it don’t seem like it, but I don’t. I’d rather interview you. Thank you all for listening to this episode. Thank you all for listening to Duck Season Somewhere. Thank you all for sending the emails, sending the messages that kind of steer us along on what you all would like to hear. Keep it coming and thank you Wayne Capooth.

Wayne Capooth: Yeah. Listen to my podcast, Historic Duck Hunting Stories podcast. That’s all you have to type in Google and you’ll pick up all of my podcasts. You can pick up my previous podcast with Ramsey about 4 months ago and you can pick up my DU podcast also, along with my own podcast.

Ramsey Russell: And there you go. Thank you all for listening to the episode of Duck Season Somewhere from Memphis, Tennessee. See you next time.