EP 405. Farming Rice and Ducks in the Garwood Prairie–But for How Much Longer?

 

Exploring the Past, Present & Future of Duck Hunting

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere from Texas, down here in El Campo, Texas, with today’s guest, Slade Schiurring. I think today is going to be a great podcast about the past, present and future of Texas, and duck hunting. Slade, how the heck are you, man?

Slade Schiurring: I’m doing good, Ramsey. Good to see you.

Ramsey Russell: First time I met you, you were 19 years old, man. I guess you go into A & M, you was a young man. I couldn’t hardly tell the difference in you and Forrest, who was still in high school. You all were just kids. It was the first time I ever met Steve Biggers and we were out there hunting on you all’s property and to this day, I was telling Steve yesterday, to this day, it remains one of the top 3 spectacles in the wild duck world. I’ve ever seen that rice field come alive and from horizon to horizon, top and forward, back. The whole sky was alive with blue winged teal and I’d never seen anything like it.

Slade Schiurring: I remember it, too. That was a epic hunt.

Ramsey Russell: Is that pretty normal for you all?

Slade Schiurring: It is. It’s pretty normal. We hold a lot of blue wings. We load them up in the rice field. We flood a lot of water, a lot of moist soil, wetland units and so we hold a bunch of teal. So it’s pretty well standard for us to load them up and hold those big concentrations of blue wings in here during early teal season.

Ramsey Russell: And the property is the Schiurring Ranch. The 3S Ranch.

Slade Schiurring: Yes sir.

Ramsey Russell: Down in Colorado and Wharton Counties.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a pretty sizable property.

Slade Schiurring: Yes sir.

Ramsey Russell: Rice. Has it always been in rice?

Slade Schiurring: Always been in rice since the beginning.

Ramsey Russell: Texas is one of only 6 or 7 states in America that grows rice.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: Pull your mic back just a little bit to the side, like it? Perfect. There you go. Give me a check.

Slade Schiurring: Check.

Ramsey Russell: There you go. We’re still cording, but it’s good. It sounds good now.

Slade Schiurring: All right.

Ramsey Russell: Tell me now. I want to hear the history. Steve was telling me a little bit about the history of that property and your family. You are now the 4th generation. 

Slade Schiurring: That’s right. Yes sir, 4th generation.

Ramsey Russell: Do you know the stories of your great granddaddy coming to – a great granddaddy started that thing back in early 1900s.

Slade Schiurring: He did.

Ramsey Russell: As rice farmer.

Slade Schiurring: As a rice farmer. He was a banker too and we used to actually own a John Deere dealership. And he did some stuff with some railroad and other avenues in the early days.

Ramsey Russell: Some railroad was brand new, that was cutting technology still back in 1910. That’s pre Migratory Bird Treaty Act days, man.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Do you ever get a sense of what Texas was like, what this part of Texas was like, what this prairie was like back in 1910?

Slade Schiurring: It was – what I’ve been told and what I know, it was still pretty wild. It was still –

Ramsey Russell: Wild, how?

Slade Schiurring: Just pretty undeveloped and just very extremely rural and undeveloped.

Ramsey Russell: I’m just imagining them driving Model T’s and horse drawn wagons out there back in those days.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right. It was. They were hauling the rice. Whenever they shuck it by hand, they were hauling the rice in on wagon still.

Ramsey Russell: What was his – What brought him to Texas? Or did, was he the first generation to come to Texas back then?

Slade Schiurring: He was. When they landed and they came in, actually settled in south of El Campo. El Campo was just getting started as well.

Ramsey Russell: God. It is hard to believe.

Slade Schiurring: He settled south of town and started buying some property and stuff and met up with a – met a friend on the way and they said, hey, there’s cheap land north of El Campo and north and northwest of El Campo towards this little town of Garwood. And he said, Garwood? I’ve never heard of that –

Ramsey Russell: Probably just cropping up.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah, we were like, we were told to come to El Campo and El Campo Gar was 15 minutes away or so and so he said, okay, well, I’ll go to Garwood. So my great grandfather moved to Garwood and started a bank there and just started farming rice. And he was doing some other stuff with some family friends with the Lair family from Garwood as well and helped him do the canal system that is now the LCRA owns out of the Garwood district.

Ramsey Russell: What’s that acronym stand for?

Slade Schiurring: Lower Colorado River Authority.

Ramsey Russell: Oh. Now, where did your great granddaddy reckon come from? What country? You said when he landed –

Slade Schiurring: Denmark.

Ramsey Russell: Denmark?

Slade Schiurring: Denmark.

Ramsey Russell: Isn’t that something?

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: And he comes down to Texas and I’ve always wondered how folks come to a foreign country, especially back in those days when there ain’t no Internet and just say, put a spot on a map and say, I’m going there.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That just blows my mind. Yeah, I see these folks with hotels or quick stops and I’m like, how did they find this hole in the wall place to open a donut shop or a quick stop or something or a hotel? How do they find that stuff?

Slade Schiurring: I don’t know that story. But when he came in and he settled in Garwood and started buying land and started farming rice. Cause, he was like, what are you going to farm down here? And the ground was – There was already some rice starting to get grown and he said, well, I’m going to farm some rice.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about the canal a little bit. What’s the history of that canal? Cause that’s really since I was about your age, a little bit younger than you, actually. I used to come down here and snow goose hunt and goose hunt back in the day, my first trips away from Mississippi. And since then, water has become a big deal. There’s a lot of civilization not too far from here in Houston, Texas. And it’s sprawling and it’s really the water consumption, water use and that now Lower Colorado River Authority. Things have changed in the last 25, 30 years. What was the purpose of setting that thing up? What was it doing? What was involved in general terms of setting up that Lower Colorado River canal?

Slade Schiurring: Well, Ramsey, it was all built back in the day for all agriculture, all those highland lakes, everything was all for irrigation and it was all for rice farmer and –

Ramsey Russell: It comes out of Colorado somehow.

Slade Schiurring: Colorado river. There’s pumping plants, that each division – So LCRA has 4 different divisions. They have got Garwood lakeside, which that’s Eagle Lake. You have the Pierce Ranch and the Gulf Coast. The Gulf Coast consists of Matagorda County. We’re on the Garwood system, the very end of the Garwood division. But all those canal systems, all those pumping plants in the river, we’re getting our water from the Highland Lakes, Lake Travis, Lake Buchanan, those were all built for agriculture back in the early 30s and 1920s, 1930s –

Ramsey Russell: Back in rice there are other stuff, too.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Slade Schiurring: And but now over time, agriculture is fading away. Commodity prices, we have population on the rise, all that and we’re basically getting priced out. That’s a sad deal –

Ramsey Russell: Of a global market.

Slade Schiurring: Global market. But also on our water. I mean, they’re making more money selling water to the cities and to everything else and it’s a tough way of – But it’s life. I mean, that’s what happens and that’s what’s happening overall.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of property developers call that progress.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah, they do and we hate it. Duck hunters hate it and farmers hate it, but everyone else loves it.

How Does Farming Affect Duck Hunting?

Rice is a high input, low return crop. Costs a lot of money to grow an acre of rice, not a lot of return in it and revenue

Ramsey Russell: What happened in relation, because at the same time, you’d have been talking about, let’s just say between your great granddaddy’s time in the 1970s, you had East Texas. I mean, that thin line down around Chambers County, there was a lot of rice. Is that why it faded out, because of water issues?

Slade Schiurring: Some of it. I mean, the water issue has been coming slowly over time in the last 10 years, it’s really progressing and getting worse and worse, but back then, not so much. It was just due to higher input costs over time. Rice is a high input, low return crop. Costs a lot of money to grow an acre of rice, not a lot of return in it and revenue. And so that just –

Ramsey Russell: Very thin margin.

Slade Schiurring: Very thin margin.

Ramsey Russell: That goes a lot of agriculture, doesn’t it?

Slade Schiurring: It does, but especially rice, because you look at the price that we’re having to pay for fertilizer, to fuel, to the seed cost to everything on rice compared to growing an acre of corn or cotton or anything else, it’s just we’re caught. It’s spending so much more an acre to put that crop in growing rice. And when you throw in a water issue and the another thing about life is my generation and it’s sad to say how many younger kids want to come back and farm when there’s not as much money to make unless your family has been set up and has been doing it for generations and decades, which I’m very fortunate that we have been. If you’re not doing that, it is, I don’t want to say impossible, but it’s almost impossible to keep going with the cost of everything nowadays.

Ramsey Russell: Between the banks and the competition and the rising cost and global market and everything else.

Slade Schiurring: Everything, you know-

Ramsey Russell: You might have 2 mews and a plow and be a side buster.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah. And that’s the sad part of it. I mean, I graduated El Campo High School and in my graduating class, I think there’s 6 or 7 of us that are continuing to farm out of our whole graduating class of 212 people or whatever it was. It’s sad to think of that, but –

Ramsey Russell: And they probably all cause that’s a major farming community. I mean, all of them originated out of farm?

Slade Schiurring: Oh, yes, sir. El Campo, we’re all Ag. I mean, we got oil field business and all that as well. But it’s majority, it’s all agriculture based.

Ramsey Russell: It is pretty much. Now, this prairie right up in here around Biggers operation, is that pretty much the hub of rice in Texas now? Is this just the nexus of it?

Slade Schiurring: It is this year.

Ramsey Russell: How many acres of rice would you guess are farmed in the state of Texas?

Slade Schiurring: I think this year, in 2023, USDA just came out, I think was 145,000 acres. And that’s pretty low. Last year, I think that’s all time low. Last year, I think, planted acres in Texas was 180,000. But since last year to this year, these other water districts have been cut off from the Highland Lakes, Wharton County, we have lost about 20,000 acres of planted rice county alone. And so you start adding all that up. You mean you take 20,000 out of this acre, you take another 5 over here and a 10 over here. That adds up real quick. And we used to be 300,000, 400,000 acres of planted rice in Texas. I mean, we were still a small player to Arkansas and to Louisiana –

Ramsey Russell: California.

Slade Schiurring: And California. But we were, we had a good foot in the door. We had 100s of 1000s of acres and now 145,000, let’s just go with that. That’s getting scary. You’re looking at that for a whole industry as a whole. And it’s sad, but it’s life, too, how everything is changing so quickly down here.

Ramsey Russell: It’s changing very quickly, which is why I beat up the first 10, 15 minutes talking about rice in Texas, because my buddy Rob Sawyer, historian, Texas waterfowl historian.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Described to me one time about how a lot historically, 150 years ago, 200 years ago, a lot of these migratory birds came down to coastal Texas and Louisiana for the marsh.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: And then the rice industry kicked up in the late 1800s. And, well, rice is a surrogate for marsh. You got vegetation, you got invertebrates, you got feed, you got water. Boom. The geese started coming over, the ducks started coming over. And now it’s during the heyday when you go back and you talk to folks out here in this prairie, Blue Goose Duck Club, all the old timers, man, there was a time that, believe it or not, Texas wasn’t really cowboys and Indians and cattle drives. There was a lot of duck hunting down here, man. Folks were coming from Chicago and up north on trains to hunt ducks.

Slade Schiurring: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Market hunting was booming down in coastal Texas.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Then the rice industry come in, the sport air come in and now here we are. Not too long ago, let’s say since the 70s, 80s, the boom of rice. Now it’s starting to really start to shrink up.

Slade Schiurring: It is. And it’s going down, Ramsey. Every year, it’s the rice industry in Texas getting worse and worse.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Slade Schiurring: And that’s due to everything like we just talked about. It’s due to our drought 2 years in a row, causing water issues to population growth. I mean, look at the Katy Prairie. And now they’re knocking on the door of East Menard coming just marching west.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, they are. Boy, are they?

Slade Schiurring: And then the same direction on the east side of town going towards Winnie. Look at everything that’s developing that way as well. I mean, everyone thinks about the Katy Prairie and all that, but it’s really everywhere.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of Katy Prairie is gone.

Slade Schiurring: It is.

Ramsey Russell: When I described coming down here in the early 90s, late 80s in snow goose hunting while I was in college, a friend of a friend kind of dealed over in Katy, Texas, man, we were just going 30 minutes outside of Katy and now a lot of those properties we hunted are subdivisions, strip malls. I don’t even recognize it when I come through. I’ve looked a million times like, where was that outfitter at? And I’ve probably passed. He’s probably been dozed over and there’s a shopping mall or apartment complex or something there. It’s unbelievable.

Slade Schiurring: It is.

Ramsey Russell: Millions of people more.

Slade Schiurring: And like you said, some people call it growth and progress and duck hunting and farming. We don’t like it, we hate it.

Ramsey Russell: Did your daddy and granddaddy or even do you know back great granddaddy, were they waterfowl hunters themselves?

Slade Schiurring: Oh, yes, sir. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Your great granddaddy what do you think, you got any pictures of him?

Slade Schiurring: I don’t have any of my great grandfather, but of my grandfather and of course, of my dad and everything. So what I really know is after my grandfather got out of the – he got out of the navy in World War II, he came back, started farming rice and he started building duck ponds.

Building the First Duck Ponds

So my grandfather and his brothers and along with the Lair family up in Garwood, they were putting in the first duck ponds, the first roost ponds for geese that were and buying water and spending money to pump up water on the western rice belt. 

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah. He bought a bulldozer and he started pushing up levees and stuff like that.

Ramsey Russell: When you say building duck ponds. I think of a rice farm as a duck pond.

Slade Schiurring: Building levee structures, like backing up water well.

Ramsey Russell: Permanent?

Slade Schiurring: Permanent. Yes, sir. So my grandfather and his brothers and along with the Lair family up in Garwood, they were putting in the first duck ponds, the first roost ponds for geese that were and buying water and spending money to pump up water on the western rice belt. And some of these ponds we still flood up to today, they’ve been flooded every year since the late 1940s, early 1950s, through the drought, through everything. They’ve been flooded up every single year.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you’ve always got a lot of habitat. I know you’re talking about the cost of getting money out of the Lower Colorado River Authority canal. Is it just a function of money? I mean, if I got money, I’m willing to pump. Is it just a matter of money or they got limits on that stuff to where I may or may not be able to get any water.

Slade Schiurring: There’s limits. I mean, we have trigger levels, all that as well. But it basically goes down to money. If they’re selling, if there’s water available to buy, it’s just, who’s got the money to buy it and that’s everything. The cost of running the wells, either your diesel, natural gas, electric, whatever, it’s just your fuel source for your wells. How much do you want to spend to pump up? How much habitat do you want to create? That goes back to each individual and that’s kind of the same thing with the canal system as well. I mean, they do a good job, our local Garwood office, they do good trying to get us some water for the rice, but also for the ducks. And it’s – on years like this, it’s tough with the drought, but they’ve worked hard to try to get us as much water as possible. And it’s just matter of how much do you want? But we do have our allotments.

Ramsey Russell: It’s dry here, but it’s dry everywhere. I mean, a lot of the United States to include where this water is coming from is in dry drought, too.

Slade Schiurring: It is. I was looking at the lake levels today with Steve when we were eating lunch. And Lake Travis and Buchanan, they’re still going down. I mean, we had this rain and we were blessed with it, but we didn’t get that rain up north. Those lakes have a long way to go. I think they’re at 42% full right now, capacity. They’re way down. Especially Travis. Travis is real low.

Ramsey Russell: Okay, so your granddaddy gets out of World War II, starts building duck ponds. Did you know your granddaddy, did you get to hunt with him?

Slade Schiurring: Oh, yeah. Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: What kind of stories would he tell? Is he still around?

Slade Schiurring: No, sir. He passed away about, I don’t know 10, 12 years ago.

Ramsey Russell: What kind of stories would he tell about then? Towards the tail end of duck hunting versus back when he started pushing him. Cause I cannot imagine, in the 40s and 50s down here when rice was king and water was cheap and everybody had it and there were ducks galore.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir. They were goose hunters.

Ramsey Russell: Really? Heck yeah.

Slade Schiurring: We had ducks and all that, but that’s back when, Texas had a million, million and a half geese.

Ramsey Russell: John Wayne, Andy Griffin, all the celebrities, all the people came from around the world to shoot the speckled bellies and light geese down here in Texas.

Slade Schiurring: Oh, that’s right. I mean, we were teamed up with Blue Goose Hunting Club, Mike Lanier with Red Bluff and all. Absolutely. So with John Phils and Marvin Tyler and all them, they leased our ranch for a while.

Ramsey Russell: Blue Goose levee –

Slade Schiurring: Forever, actually, till –

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Slade Schiurring: Yes, until John Phil’s retired and then he passed away soon after. I think that was in 2009 is when that closed down, don’t quote me exactly, but I think it was 2008 or 2009. And then, I mean, we were with Blue Goose from day 1 till 2009, every single year. And Andy Griffin, all them, they were coming hunting. We have pictures of them –

Ramsey Russell: They sure were.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah. And we got pictures of my dad. I mean, this is way before me, but my dad and my grandfather standing there with him, taking the pictures and stuff. My dad was a little kid, a little kid in my grandpa’s –

Ramsey Russell: Like old me.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir. But it was all, it was goose hunting. He had ducks, they duck hunted a little bit, but you were goose hunting, shooting the ducks out of goose spread. And that’s what, all of our big water, we were putting in and the Lair family as well, right there beside us. We were putting that water in for respawns, for holding areas for the geese and for the ducks as well. But that’s what it was. And then slowly over time, as rice started, you had to make that transition to ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Slade Schiurring: And it’s just slowly –

Ramsey Russell: Because of the geese.

Slade Schiurring: The geese is getting. It’s going downhill worse and worse every year.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. There’s just more habitat for geese. Well, I should say there’s so much habitat for geese up in Arkansas, Missouri, further Louisiana, that they don’t have to fly down here.

Slade Schiurring: Absolutely. And it’s sad to say but yeah –

Ramsey Russell: Once this transition from marsh to agriculture, well, now there’s more agriculture up and yonder, they can just stop and they did the full adaptation.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah. And we can’t compete to that, whenever we’re dealing with water, population, green energy. That’s another big thing that’s happening right now.

Ramsey Russell: We’ll get to that in a minute.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah, that’s coming. It’s coming about as fast as you can at all angles everywhere here on the Gulf Coast. And that’s another big driving factor.

Ramsey Russell: It’s habitat loss is what we’re kind of talking about from the heyday to then. Talk about when you were back in high school, you said a couple 100 people there in that high school you went to on the prairie. A lot of farming communities, a lot of farming families you went to school with. How many duck hunters were there in your class?

Slade Schiurring: Oh, a bunch. We all duck hunted. We all ran around. We all duck and goose hunted. I don’t know how many exactly, but man –

Ramsey Russell: Do you remember your first duck hunt? How were you when you went duck hunt?

Slade Schiurring: Maybe 3 or 4. I don’t know. I was –

Ramsey Russell: Your dad grabbed you up, put you in the blind.

Slade Schiurring: Mom said I was swimming out there trying to get the ducks and stuff like that. They would let me run out there to go pick up the ducks and I would be like, half swimming, half trying to run and all that. And I was probably around 3 or 4 or something. Like I was young, real young.

The Lure of the Blue Winged Teal

Blue wings is – that’s my favorite species to hunt.

Ramsey Russell: Do you remember your first duck, still?

Slade Schiurring: I do. I still remember the first duck that I shot. And I –

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

Slade Schiurring: No, it wasn’t. It was a blue winged teal.

Ramsey Russell: Blue winged teal, Wow.

Slade Schiurring: Blue winged teal hunt, Yeah, it was.

Ramsey Russell: So you’re young, man. Much younger than myself. But did you grow up blue winged teal hunt during the special season?

Slade Schiurring: Oh, yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Since you can remember.

Slade Schiurring: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Your people, blue winged teal hunted down in the prairie.

Slade Schiurring: We had the water –

Ramsey Russell: And the big ducks came in and you big duck hunted.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right. We had the water put in, we had the rice and I grew up hunting. I remember when it was a 4 man limit. It was 9 days. That’s before they took it to 16 day season and to a 6 man limit.

Ramsey Russell: 4 duck limit, 9 days.

Slade Schiurring: 9 days. 4 duck limit. That’s where I grew up, all the way through high school, too. That was our limit and then they switched it and they upped it up. And so I remember that clear as clear as day.

Ramsey Russell: Have you still got a soft spot for blue wings?

Slade Schiurring: I do. Blue wings is – that’s why my favorite species to hunt.

Ramsey Russell: Cause they going to come down regardless of the migration.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right. They’re on a calendar. They’re coming.

Ramsey Russell: What was it like duck hunting out here in this prairie, going to high school?

Slade Schiurring: It was –

Ramsey Russell: Do you still hunting a lot of these same high school buddies.

Decrease in Goose Populations Over Time

Go out to the farm and on a way out, 15, 20 minutes drive, you would see 6, 7 different concentrations of geese and see ducks everywhere.

Slade Schiurring: I still do. We still hunted with them last week and we still hang out. We still run around and we still hunt. Hunting was good back then. The geese or man, the geese, I still remember, we used to drive, we’d get out of high school, get out of football practice or whatever early and we’d go out west, go out to the farm and on a way out, 15, 20 minutes drive, you would see 6, 7 different concentrations of geese and see ducks everywhere. Well, nowadays you see the ducks still, but you see 1 or 2 concentrations of geese.

Ramsey Russell: You don’t sleep. But you all still kill a few geese, don’t you?

Slade Schiurring: We do.

Ramsey Russell: Specs?

Slade Schiurring: Specs we do good on and we’re still killing some snow geese. But it’s nothing like it used to be. I mean, now you’re seeing 20,000, 25,000 geese in 2 groups combined. That’s some big numbers nowadays and it used to be 20,000 geese per group and it used to be 3 or 4 groups on our farm everywhere.

Ramsey Russell: Slade, is your dad still around?

Slade Schiurring: He is.

Ramsey Russell: Does he still hunt?

Slade Schiurring: He still hunts. He hunted this weekend with us.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: He must have caught the tail end when goose hunting was really good.

Slade Schiurring: He did. I mean –

Ramsey Russell: Did he target white birds? Was that their thing?

Slade Schiurring: That was their thing. He killed them white birds.

Ramsey Russell: I heard just as recently and I hate this description, so if you use it, don’t be offended I said that. But truth matter is I heard just the other day, Sky Carp, I’m like, no, that’s one of my favorite geese in the world. And maybe it could have started because my first trip, my first goose hunting ever in my life was shooting snow geese down here on this prairie.

Slade Schiurring: Right.

Ramsey Russell: And I still, this time next week, I’m going to be up north chasing, man, we’re going to target them. I go after the snows up in Canada. I try to go back in the spring and target them. And anytime I can get on snow geese, I just, I love them and I love to eat them. Did your folks eat them? Did they say, yeah, this is good stuff?

Slade Schiurring: Oh yeah, absolutely, Ramsey.

Ramsey Russell: They targeted them.

Slade Schiurring: We grew up, I mean, I grew up eating basically everything we killed.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Slade Schiurring: It didn’t matter if it was a Gadwall, Blue winged teal or Speckle belly. We ate them.

Ramsey Russell: What is 3S? I know the signs say 3S Ranch.

Slade Schiurring: So that stands for – That was my grandfather and his brothers. That was our cattle brand back in the day. And then over the years and all that, we kind of kept the brand on our side after our family divided up back in the late 70s and stuff and we kept the brand. And some people say it’s for my father and my mom and I, because my dad’s the only child. I’m the only child. We have a small family, so they’re like, oh, it’s for you all 3. But really, it goes back to my grandfather and his 2 brothers that farmed with him. And that’s what it was. Back then, it was assuring brothers is what it was, and it was with them. And over time, we’ve kind of kept the brand on our side and we kept it going. And now some of the other family members are still farming and we kept our side going as well.

Ramsey Russell: I interviewed Steve and several of his staff members yesterday and we talked about blue wing hunting and what goes into a great hunt and how they hunt and all that good stuff. But every one of them mentioned they gave your ranch, your property and you and your daddy credit for their success and it had to do with habitat. As rice has started dwindling. You mentioned previously moist soil.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: And a lot of rice farms. I’ve been around. That’s a dirty word. They don’t want those weeds out there. They spend a lot of money on chemicals, get rid of them. Managing the water to get rid of anything that ain’t rice.

Slade Schiurring: No. Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: But the palm that we hunted today must have been 50 acres. There was rice out there, but, boy there was a lot of moist soil. There was a lot of duck potato. There was a lot of good stuff on them low ends against, I guess, some of them levees your granddaddy built.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir. Yeah. We believe in moist soil. I mean, you got to have the rice, but you need the moist soil, too. Cause you have such a diverse food source. When you get into that moist soil, you’re getting everything from the barnyard, a sprinkle top, the Pennsylvania smartweed. You got the duck salad. You have everything that’s going to grow in there.

Ramsey Russell: So you are a rice farmer or a duck farmer?

Slade Schiurring: I’m both. I’m a rice farmer, but I’m a duck farmer, too.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you can have a little bit of corners tucked away and do it both.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir. That’s what we do, we have it. Our ranch is on 2 year rice rotation, year in, year out and we’re farming all long grain, commercial conventional rice.

Ramsey Russell: Double cropping. That I noticed.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir. Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Double crop.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah. We’re doing a good job.

Ramsey Russell: And I never even heard that word until I hunted with you the first time. And you were explaining, I said, why does this rice so green. And he said, that’s our second crop.

Slade Schiurring: That’s our second crop, yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Can you talk a little bit about that for us guys that aren’t farmers that don’t know about double crop and rice?

Slade Schiurring: Well, it’s just basically, it’s just after we harvest the first crop, we shred it. We shred it down to a height of about 8 to 9, 10 inches. And that’s just to help it stool out from the base of the plant and it just put water on it, fertilize it up.

Ramsey Russell: How good would the yield be on it Second?

Slade Schiurring: Oh, it’s about a third is what you’re going to – We’re hoping to get about a third is what we’re cutting on the first crop.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Why not? You got time. Plenty of growing season left.

Slade Schiurring: We do and we’re fortunate to have it down here and it’s typically warm enough to get it coming. And it’s good, it’s good for the birds. We need the extra habitat. And here in Texas, we have high inputs for the rice compared to Arkansas and everywhere else. Our input, with our water costs and everything. So to try to get another crop in helps us financially. But then also for the birds, the birds dramatically need it.

Creating a Waterfowl Habitat

So waterfowl and leases and that recreational opportunity, that is a kind of part of you all’s business model now.

Ramsey Russell: How much of your land base do you dedicate to moist soil, habitat?

Slade Schiurring: So we probably have about a 1000 acres altogether, I would say divided up between all the projects and some of them can range between 100 acres to 7, 8 acre little timber ponds back in the brush. But I would say it’s close to about a 1000 acres, maybe –

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Slade Schiurring: Maybe a little under is almost –

Ramsey Russell: How would that be a percentage of your total land?

Slade Schiurring: Probably about a 6th.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, 15%.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir. Something like that is what I would say maybe a 6 to, yeah, 15, 12. 15% of it.

Ramsey Russell: And how do you think your duck hunting compares to some of your neighbors that go straight up rice?

Slade Schiurring: Well, Ramsey, actually, we’re pretty fortunate, all of our neighbors around us, they all, we’re all doing the same thing. We all got moist soil.

Ramsey Russell: So waterfowl and leases and that recreational opportunity, that is a kind of part of you all’s business model now.

Slade Schiurring: It is, absolutely. And my dad is the one who really took that moist soil to another level.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Slade Schiurring: Because back in the 50s and 60s, there was rice and then you were rice and cattle and which we’ve always had cattle, too. We don’t have any cattle right now, but we’ve had cattle forever as well. But my dad, he kind of took that when he got out of college. I think he graduated college in 75 or 76. When he got out of college and he started helping guide and doing stuff like that, he saw the need and he was like, you need another food source. So my dad kind of took that moist soil. And then over the years, he started out, I think, with the first palm called the north roost and it was a 75 acre moist soil wetland. And after that, we’ve kind of grown, built one over here. And over time, we’ve taken rice acres away and dedicated, hey, this 50 acre rice field, we’re going to build a big permanent infrastructure. We’ve came into a lot of dirt work with Ducks Unlimited and stuff like that and NRCS. But, hey, this project here, we’re going to take the cows off of it, we’re not going to farm it, it’s out of the rice rotation, it’s a moist soil every year. And we started designating that in certain areas of the ranch. But I would say altogether, Ramsey, probably close to about 1000 acres of that.

Ramsey Russell: It’s just such an interesting discussion. Man, I have never had this with a producer like yourself because, between your granddaddy’s era where farm and technology just allowed for a lot of weeds to grow out there, to ducks.

Slade Schiurring: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: And your daddy getting out of college, technology advanced so much that you kind of started, had to make a conscientious effort to keep those foods on the habitat. I know when you’re farming, you’ve always got water out there, saturated soils.

Slade Schiurring: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: But you all also have areas that just stay, like in permanent pools, just deep water emerge habitat type stuff.

Slade Schiurring: We do. And that’s more back on, like maybe some of our lower ends of the moist soil and stuff like that, not really in the rice fields or anything like that, because most all the rice fields that we have, they’re all been bench leveled on 2 tents in between each cut. They’ve been laser leveled. So we’re not having that in the rice fields, but some of these deeper, moist soils that were backing the water up and stuff like that, we have that deeper water where some emergence and everything, like you told.

Ramsey Russell: How did you – your daddy took what his granddaddy and then his daddy had began to develop. He started building on it. Now here comes the 4th generation. How are you building on what those three prior generations have done? In which direction are you trying to go?

Slade Schiurring: I’m trying to just keep it all together and keep it all as a whole and keep the industry alive as big as my biggest thing, Ramsay, I’m area chairman of our local Ducks Unlimited rice belt chapter. I’ve been chairman for 2 years, but I’ve been involved for 15 years and I’ve gone.

Ramsey Russell: Steve said it was a big chapter, too.

Slade Schiurring: It was. We just had our banquet last week and we had a great turnout. We had a 750 banger.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Ducks Unlimited Collaborations – It’s Working!

He was our past state chair and we were just trying to push the Senate House community, just, hey, keep these programs, keep the funding alive because it’s working down here in Texas, which it’s working all across and it’s working in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, California, everywhere.

Slade Schiurring: We raise a lot of money for the ducks and but Ducks Unlimited does, I can’t even start to describe. That can be a whole session on its own. What DU does for rice –

Ramsey Russell: Let’s talk about it now, because I’m a huge supporter of Ducks Unlimited.

Slade Schiurring: Okay. Well, Ramsey, duck DU, especially down here, as a what they’re doing not only with the wetland projects, helping fund, levees and water control structures and all that. But there are other volunteer incentive based conservation programs to producers, as in, like the Rice Stewardship, that’s a CSP and that’s DUs putting up money. And then it’s also government money, NRCS. And you’re putting that money up for commitments for a 5 year commitment to do these enhancements to help waterfowl, but then also help the environment. And what Ducks Unlimited is doing to help fight that and get the funding and control these programs that work in different areas of the nation. That is key. That’s key to our producers, not only for the money wise, but for the bird hunting. Because what we’re doing some of these enhancements, like shredding the rice, creating early habitat for the blue winged teal, like I talked about earlier, we’re going in after we cut the first crop. Normally, we used to not shred it, we used to come in, just cut the rice and all that. Well, now we’re coming in, we’re shredding it down. Yes. That helps us now on these newer hybrid rices. They are coming in and it’s helping us on the yield. But then also that’s creating that extra habitat, which we’re losing here on the Gulf Coast. We’re losing, that’s helping create it. And that’s part of that Rice Stewardship Program that DU and NRCS is back behind. And so I’ve gone to Austin and Waco and I try to do everything I can for DU. I’ve testified at the farm bill hearing with Kirby Brown and –

Ramsey Russell: Regard what?

Slade Schiurring: Just these programs, trying to keep the funding –

Ramsey Russell: Keep the funding going.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah. So right now, we’re in the middle of a farm bill, trying to get a farm bill passed by the end of the month, which is, I don’t think it’s going to happen, but we’re looking towards an extension. But I was in Waco this past March with Kirby Brown and Brad Hempkins. He was our past state chair and we were just trying to push the Senate House community, just, hey, keep these programs, keep the funding alive because it’s working down here in Texas, which it’s working all across and it’s working in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, California, everywhere.

Ramsey Russell: The farm bill is keeping farmers alive.

Slade Schiurring: It’s keeping farmers alive.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of cost inputs and everything you talking about now.

Slade Schiurring: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: But it’s also incentivizing you all to keep the habitat alive.

Slade Schiurring: Keep the habitat alive.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a very dwindling landscape.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right. We need to up, up the habitat more than ever right now because we have the habitat loss down here. And going back to everything, you got drought, you got population, grain, energy, everything, all the worst factors you can think of is all hitting together here on the Gulf Coast of Texas all at the same time. And so we have to do everything we can as a producer or as a landowner or anybody or as a hunter as well. We have to create, how do we create more habitat when you can’t make more land? And so that’s what we’re trying to do right now. And I’m doing everything in my part, I’m not much. But I’ve –

Ramsey Russell: But see, everybody does what they can. They do their part and that’s how this thing works. I think and I’m as guilty of it as anybody else that too many people think of Ducks Unlimited, Delta Waterfowl, whomever is being just a dinner. So I go and I get me a nice print, I get me a stamp. I get me some raffle tickets, I might win a gun, I go home and it’s what that organization is doing with that money. It is leveraging it with federal funding that they can find it. I can’t find it, but they can find it.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: And then they can go and be that thin green line on a landscape when so much it’s like, man, since I was your age. And now I look back, think, the world can’t take that much habitat loss again, duck hunters can’t take the habitat loss and the loss of access and the loss of habitat I’ve seen since I was your age. There ain’t going to be nothing.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: Nothing at all.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: How else are you active in conservation?

Slade Schiurring: I sit on the board for our local Wharton County Soil and Water Conservation district for NRCS. I’m a secretary treasurer for it. I’ve been on the board for 4 or 5 years now, but I’ve been the treasurer for 2 years. And so, I mean, I just, I’ve been involved, that’s all. Back to DU. Going back when I was a freshman in high school, I got on our committee here in town and I started, just started out selling tables and raffle tickets. And I kind of worked my way up, I guess you can say. But I’ve met some great people along the way and DU is a big family. And what they’re doing for right here in Wharton County and for El Campo, for producers and for landowners and for the whole community, because that’s the thing, people don’t look at it. They’re like, oh, well, that landowner, that farmer, they’re getting money or whatever. But I’m like, that’s going back into that community because that farmer is spending money, he’s creating jobs, the Ag sales, seed, fertilizer, fuel, the co-ops, all that part houses. That money is all tied in together. And DU, I like to say, yes, it’s not only for duck hunters, but it’s for agriculture. DU is behind agriculture, especially in a small town USA like El Campo. And I’m just trying to do my part and raise money and do as much as I can.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of us old duck hunters over here in America, we seem to be the only ones that give two nickels about wetlands. And if I could, if you could just get this PBS crowd on board with the fact that wetlands are some of the biggest carbon sinks in the world, they are. We don’t need all this green energy. We just need more wetlands to sequester all this carbon. And it would take care of itself and it’d be good for the ducks, it’d be good for wildlife. It’d be good for humanity.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: And it’s very daunting to me, just this massive amount of habitat loss we’re now losing.

Slade Schiurring: It is.

Ramsey Russell: I didn’t ever think it.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah. Who would ever thought that you were going to be seeing wind turbines and solar panels taking over 10s and 10s and 10s of 1000s of acres?

Ramsey Russell: Talk about that. Because every time I come to Texas, I see more and more of these green energy initiatives. Why Texas? And what’s going on in Texas about green energy?

Slade Schiurring: Well, what I’ve been told from various solar companies and stuff like that, down here, this is the wild west. It’s the wild west for green energy. It was an untapped resource. And when you have a –

Ramsey Russell: Texas always Been the wild west for energy, hadn’t it?

Slade Schiurring: I know. And when you’re looking at, some of the biggest growing cities in the nation right here and need power, well, let’s just start taking land and let’s start. And it goes back to, you look at families and if, like, if my dad, if I didn’t want a farm and I didn’t want nothing to do with it and didn’t want to come back and want anything to do with it, my dad, it would be different. It might be a different story. My dad might say, he might be on board for, I don’t think he would because my dad’s against all that kind of stuff and I’m very grateful for that. But, whenever families don’t want to come back and farm and stuff like that and the older generation and no one’s wanting to farm, that changes things. And then money talks and the rest walks. And so –

Ramsey Russell: Somebody told me, do you have any idea, I’m going to ask you this question, statistic. How many acres of wind farms, how many acres of solar farms are there in the state of Texas?

Slade Schiurring: I don’t know that off the top of my head.

Ramsey Russell: Millions. Because I’m guessing there’s got to be a goal somewhere for millions of acres of solar farms.

Slade Schiurring: I’m sure there is right now in just Wharton County alone in the last 2 years, I think we’ve lost 35 to 40,000 acres in solar farms.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Slade Schiurring: We are trying to get to 80,000.

Ramsey Russell: 80,000?

Slade Schiurring: Yes, 80,000 right here.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a barren wasteland. There’s no wildlife in a solar farm.

Slade Schiurring: It’s gone. It’s all gone. They want 80,000 in our region. So that would be, Jackson, Colorado, Wharton County, all that. And right here in the rice, in the western rice belt. And I think we’re right now about 35,000, 40,000 acres is what’s being built or what’s on the books to get built. Wind farms. I don’t know that they, we just – The wind farms just started up this year. They’re putting up the first batch of them. I think it’s like 48 or 50 or something like that. I don’t know what their really plans are for stuff as long as wind, but I know the solar is. It’s marching and when, there’s nothing left on it, no habitat, no farming, anything on it.

Ramsey Russell: They go in and spray something that just gets rid of all the vegetation, set them things up. I wonder even how long them things last when they got to redo them.

Slade Schiurring: I don’t know.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t know anything about green energy except it just seems farcical to me.

Slade Schiurring: It does.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve never seen the numbers like, I’ve heard the big wind farms, that there’s more petroleum energy necessary to manufacture and operate just one of those turbines than it’ll ever produce in its functional lifetime. That don’t make sense. That just seems like a politician’s pipe dream to make.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah. You got that right. And so –

People Who Care: Duck Hunters and Landowners

As long as we get to see some birds, get to enjoy it, have some fun, get to see a good sunrise. That’s what I care about.

Ramsey Russell: We need more duck hunters, up here on Congress, on Capitol Hill, don’t we?

Slade Schiurring: We do. We need more people, we need more duck hunters, we need more Ag producers, landowners, stuff like that that cares about agriculture and duck hunting. Yes, sir. You got it.

Ramsey Russell: Slade. Do you ever worry? Because you’re a young man and when you’re young like it, you’re full of ambition and forward thinking and clawing and doing, but do you ever worry. I mean, do you ever worry that after 4 generations, something may happen to change it completely?

Slade Schiurring: I do. And that’s what, like, dad and I were talking about, like, a week ago or so. We were talking about the water. What’s going to happen, with our water supply from the Highland Lakes and stuff like that. And I don’t know. Is it going to get to a price where farming rice isn’t going to, you can’t make money growing at any, can’t make a living doing it anymore? I don’t know, but it’s getting close to it, but, I mean, we’re still fighting along and we’re going to do it to the very end. We’re going to be the last one holding out. There might be solar farms and wind turbines all around us and maybe not much rice, but we’re going to have the last rice farms and the last farm that’s untapped on green.

Ramsey Russell: Dedicated.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah, we are.

Ramsey Russell: Is that just got to do with – that’s what you know, that’s what you love or the waterfowl play a part in that.

Slade Schiurring: Waterfowl plays a large part in that and I love the sport of waterfowl. I love waking up early, everything about it, watching the birds work. It’s not even about the killing, going out, shooting limits. I can go have a 4 bird hunt or I can go kill 48 with all my buddies. It doesn’t matter. As long as we get to see some birds, get to enjoy it, have some fun, get to see a good sunrise. That’s what I care about.

Ramsey Russell: The late Sidney Bo Weevil Law from Mississippi, Washington County, Mississippi, said that I interviewed him last year and he commented, he grew up back in the bad old days and was a hell of a duck hunter. And he said, Ramsey, it’s just, these days, it’s just about going.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Just about being there and times have changed and everything, but it’s just about getting out there with my friends and going and doing it.

Slade Schiurring: Yes sir.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a big part. Slade, I appreciate you, man. I sure do love hunting out there on your property. It’s an amazing place. The habitat work is crazy good. The teal love it. I’ve never been there that we don’t – Sometimes we see more than others, but I’ve never been out there and seen empty skies. It’s just a tremendous amount of teal. How’s it going to progress? Like, we’re already starting to see pintail coming down. How’s it going to progress from here through the rest of the season?

Slade Schiurring: Well, it’s just going to come on. We’re going to get more and more big ducks and then them spec bellies going to come in, spec bellies always come in right at 1 October. So we get that first front year, start hearing those first speckle bellies and those pintails showing up. And then we always harvest our second crop around Halloween. And after, as soon as we finished harvesting second crop, we pump up all that rice as well. We flood up more rice stubble and load it up even more for the big duck season and for the geese and whatnot. And so it’s just, we’re slowly, just going to slowly go get better and better. It’s going to go get the pintails in here and the speckled bellies and load on up.

Ramsey Russell: Farming rice. Farming for ducks.

Slade Schiurring: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s just what you all do, isn’t it? 4 generations into it.

Slade Schiurring: That’s right. That’s what I’ve always told Kirby Brown and all the guys with DU, I said, what’s good for rice is good for ducks and vice versa. So we go hand in hand.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, you all been listening to my buddy Slade Schiurring down here at 3S ranch in Horton and Colorado Counties, Texas. Thank you Slade. Folks, thank you all for listening to the episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere, we’ll see you next time.