EP 459. 50 Ducks

 

It’s Not Always Where You Start But Where You Finish

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where it’s not always where you start, it’s where you finish, think about that. Not where you start, it’s where you finish and there’s something magical about waterfowl that captivate a lot of us. But have you ever thought about maybe making a living and not only just making a living in the, quote, duck hunting industry, but making it spinning around an awareness and a need, an increasing need for their conservation. Joining me today, all the way down from Macon, Georgia, is Mr. Greer Smith. Greer, how the heck are you?

Greer Smith: I’m doing good. It’s good to be on the show. I’ve been a longtime listener and a big fan so it’s an honor to be here.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I tell you what, it was great to meet you at Safari Club International this year. Was that your – you all were asking questions, the way I run my seminars, I like to do a question answer. I hate to just get up there and talk, and I like to answer questions that, because it’s what I do for, it’s what I do all day, every day. And you all asked me questions, you came up afterwards, you came by the booth, we got to know each other and you made me aware about a project and a venture that you and your dad have become involved with and so I’ll start with this, was that your first time to SCI?

Greer Smith: That was my first time. It was my first time and it won’t be my last time. We had a great time, we’re not as big into the big game hunting as we are into the DU events and the Delta Waterfowl. And me and my dad went up there to kind of network and next thing I know, I turn around, he was trying to book a polar bear hunt and go peacock bass fishing. So he certainly had a good time.

Ramsey Russell: Well, it sure opened up my world. I’m obviously a duck hunter and a wing shooter, but as I’ve become more involved in Safari Club International as an exhibitor and as a record book member and everything else, it’s drawn me in, I never will forget. There used to be a booth and I’m sure it’s still there, I just don’t get to walk the floor very much. But there used to be a booth there that specialized in elephant hunts, which I have never had a problem with anybody shooting elephants, just never has spoke to me as something I want to go off and do. But there used to be this booth and the elephant head was mounted, like at about as high as a full blown bull elephant would be mounted sitting up there and they had this massive television screams. And when the elephant fell and the ground shook, the camera shook. It’s almost like you could feel the ground under yourself shaking. And it was something to see. I still hadn’t shot an elephant, nor do I think I ever will, but it sure lured me in that, like, okay, I think I might would like to do something like this one day, but there’s so much to do. It was funny I say this, too, cause when you think about elephant hunting or leopards or tigers or whatever the case may be in the world of hunting. The first year I was at Dallas Safari Club, the booth right next to me, I had one across selling massive red stags, another one selling bear, another one selling sheep and the guy behind me had a line a mile long coming up to his booth. And you know what he was selling? He was selling rabbit hunts, literally –

Greer Smith: He’s trying to draw in, yeah.

Georgia Duck Hunting

I mean, it was a hunting hole. We hunt a little bit in Haneyville. 

Ramsey Russell: White-tailed deer and rabbit hunts. But it was unbelievable how many people, grown men that have traveled all over the world can so relate to running rabbits with a pack of beagles. You’re from Georgia, Greer, did you grow up duck hunting or did you grow up duck hunting?

Greer Smith: Yeah, it’s played a really huge part in my life. My dad started the second collegiate DU chapter in the country, so it was a big part in his life. My grandfather is still young, he’s 81. He came with us to Venice a couple years ago. We had a spot in, we called it I16, which was in downtown Macon, of all places. It was beaver ponds and it’s since gone dry. But we had great ducks, we had mallards, we had black ducks, a bunch of teal ringnecks, I mean, it was a hunting hole. We hunt a little bit in Haneyville. That’s your typical Georgia hunt, bunch of wood ducks. But, yeah, we love it. We try and go – This year we went to one of your spots, Neilsberg, Saskatchewan, Prairie Limits.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, Prairie Limits. Yeah, how’d that hunt go?

Greer Smith: We wore them out up there. I mean, it was, you got to go a lot to get good hunts and I’m sure you know that more than anybody and typically if we go and we hunt 4 or 5 days and we get one good hunt out of it, it was a great trip and the stars aligned for us there and the ducks were there and they were pretty colored up, too. And we killed a bunch of ducks, a bunch of dark geese, a bunch of b.

Ramsey Russell: What time of year did you all go and hunt with Prairie Limits?

Greer Smith: That was in September.

Ramsey Russell: September, yeah.

Greer Smith: I think so. Yes sir.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great time of year, I tell you. I love that. I love the Canadian Prairie. It’s so much different than hunting down here in the deep south. Was that the first time you all had ever been to Canada?

Greer Smith: That’s the first time I’d been, my dad, we always go to the same group. It’s 5 of us. It’s my dad, it’s a good friend of his, Rob Tuggle, his son Tom and his son in law Heath. And they’ve been, my dad and Mr. Tuggle have been up there a number of times and done a bunch of different ways. This was the first time I’d made it up there and so the great experience. I want to take, we were talking about it, we want to, I want to go back up there and take my dog. I mean, you could train a dog real quick up there.

Ramsey Russell: Well, dogs love to hunt dry fields, Char dog does. They can run, they can catch and it’s just a lot of fun. Actually, the seminar I gave that you and your dad attended, somebody asked about snow geese and that is one of my favorite goose species on earth and my favorite place to hunt them is Canada. I love to shoot light geese in the fall and spring up in Canada.

Greer Smith: You going up there this spring? I think I heard you say that.

Ramsey Russell: No, I thought I would, but I ran out of time. I just, last year I did, I love to go up there mid-April to mid-May and jump around and get up under those snow geese and but I won’t make it this year, I just ran completely out of time. I’m going to be a long time down in Mexico and I’ll have a lot of fire to put out the month of April this year and then I leave for Argentina. So that’s just going to put the caitus on me going. But bet your ass I’ll be back up there next fall.

Greer Smith: We might bump into each other in Mexico. I’m headed to Sonora in 2 weeks.

Ramsey Russell: Good. That’s good to hear. Well, did you, being from Georgia as a duck hunter, did you also do a lot of rabbit hunting, squirrel hunting, deer hunting, things of that nature?

Greer Smith: We did. My grandparents live in Monticello, Georgia and my great grandparents, I was fortunate enough to know my great grandmother, but my grandparents live in Monticello on a piece of land and we have a lot of fun growing sunflower and cornfields for the doves, we manage for the turkeys and the deer. Unfortunately, it’s a tough time in Georgia for turkeys right now, but we still do it. And yeah, we shoot doves about every weekend during the season. We got a pretty good spot over there and it’ll just be the 3 of us me and my dad, my grandfather, most weekends. But sometimes we got enough to invite people and so I spent a lot of time over there.

Ramsey Russell: I grew up as a mostly a deer hunter and small game hunter. And it wasn’t until later I got into duck hunting. In fact, I actually went and did a co op job while I was – I went to college to be a deer biologist, that was my heartbeat. That’s what I wanted to be and I actually did a co op job way down by the Mexican border and as a student technician on a white-tailed deer ranch, free range. Boone and Crockett deer galore, lots of management bucks, too many mouths to feed. So we shot a lot of antlerless deer. And that’s where I found my duck hunting religion and I got back to my bird hunting roots with all the doves and all the quail, and in the fall of the ducks on the stock tank. That’s really kind of what brought me around full circle. I never looked back. I came home, I went down there wanting to be a deer biologist and came home having forgot all about those white-tailed deer and I still deer hunt, don’t get me wrong, I like deer hunt, but I’m not a deer hunter. I’m a duck hunter.

Duck Hunting in Unique Places

It sounds to me like you’re starting to get the travel bug and realize there’s ducks in other places.

Greer Smith: I agree with you there. I like to go with my grandfather, he’s a big deer hunter.

Ramsey Russell: You were telling me about this program. You all have got 50 ducks.

Greer Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: And it’s not a side gig anymore. It’s something you all jump completely into.

Greer Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: What did you do before you got into this? I mean, what is your background like? You grew up hunting and fishing with your grandparents. You still and your daddy, you still do a lot of hunting and fishing in Georgia. You travel around, you’ve been to Saskatchewan, you told me before the show you’re going to Wyoming. It sounds to me like you’re starting to get the travel bug and realize there’s ducks in other places.

Greer Smith: That’s true and I’ve been fortunate. We’ve gotten to go to a lot of fun places, do a lot of fun things, mostly revolving around hunting and fishing. But before we started 50 ducks and before I jumped into it as a full time career, I worked for a company that did energy efficiency audits, I did a bunch of just computer work for them. What we did was we built an algorithm that tried to find large buildings, school systems, city buildings, hospitals, restaurants, industrial facilities, ways for them to save money on their power bills. So I worked with them right out of college for a couple of years. After that, I went to go work for a company that did CAR T, cancer, cell therapy, kind of doing the same thing, computer stuff for them. And I was by far and away the least intelligent person in any of those meetings. I had to Google –

Ramsey Russell: I know that feeling. Yeah, I know that feeling, pretty regular.

Greer Smith: I had to Google most of the terms in any of those Zoom calls and that’s when I knew that that wasn’t where my passion was or my heart was. And it’s the outdoors and its waterfowl and it’s played a huge part in my life. So we took out a huge loan, we put my house up as collateral. I quit my job and decided I’d get married, too. And what could go wrong?

Ramsey Russell: Nothing, as long as you pour yourself into it. It’s like I’ve said a million times, when you come to a fork in the road, take it, you’ll never regret it. Some forks in the road lead to a more scenic path, a more scenic walk of life than others and I like the scenic view. I think I really do, talk about a little bit, what is 50 ducks?

Greer Smith: Yeah. Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: What does it mean?

Studying Waterfowl Migration: Collaborations with Canada and Mexico

There are movements on our website with the hope that we can inspire students and kids to know more about birds, to make hunters more knowledgeable and to get more people to understand the magic that is waterfowl migration.

Greer Smith: Before I tell you that, I got to tell you what we’re trying to do. What you talk about so much on your show is a habitat problem, right? And it’s a problem with less and less wetlands. It’s a problem with fewer and fewer avian species across the country. And what my thesis really is, is that we have an awareness problem. We don’t have enough people that know they should care. We don’t have enough people who put their money into protecting the species and just saying I’m not a hunter isn’t enough to turn the tide and to help bird populations. So, 50 Ducks is created around this idea that me and you share, which is ducks are magic. And how do we get more people to see them that way and how do we raise money for conservation? So 50 ducks is an online platform, it’s a website. And what we have is we have a tremendous amount of historical data from GPS tag, waterfowl from across the world. We are also working with some great organizations, Jack Miner up in Canada and Davis down in Mexico to band our own birds and live streams with air quotes, with some protective measures there. There are movements on our website with the hope that we can inspire students and kids to know more about birds, to make hunters more knowledgeable and to get more people to understand the magic that is waterfowl migration.

Ramsey Russell: You talk about habitat loss and I’m just becoming convinced I said it in seminars. I’ll say it anywhere. Show me a problem in the world of modern waterfowl hunting. Tell me one, to give me one example of what’s wrong with duck, “what’s wrong with duck hunting”.

Greer Smith: Right.

Ramsey Russell: And I’ll argue tooth and nail, it goes back to habitat, crowded boat ramps, not enough ducks, too much hunting pressure, global warming, if you want to call it that. It all goes back to a massive loss of habitat.

Greer Smith: And a lot of that boils down to, I mean, there are millions of people that don’t know they should care, that are birdwatchers or they’re blissfully naive to the problem. And hunters raise all the money for, through DU, through Delta, through Pittman Robertson, they raise all the money. How do we get other people to get money into this problem? Because at the end of the day, that’s what it takes to protect habitat.

The Magic of Waterfowl Migration & Hunting

We’re losing it left and right and it’s, so if hunting is conservation and we are using our money to do habitat, it’s obvious it’s not enough, we’ve got to get everybody else on the hook for it. 

Ramsey Russell: If you add all the duck hunters in the United States and Canada, it amounts to 2 tenths of 1% the population of those 2 countries together that identify as duck hunters. And so where we can talk about all the money that we are raising for waterfowl, it’s obviously not enough. I mean, there’s absolutely no measure whatsoever. We can look back and say we’ve got more habitat in the United States and Canada, for that matter, today than we did 20 years ago. We’re losing it left and right and it’s, so if hunting is conservation and we are using our money to do habitat, it’s obvious it’s not enough, we’ve got to get everybody else on the hook for it. I mean, water quality is water quality, habitat is habitat. Carbon sequestration is carbon sequestration. It doesn’t benefit just duck hunters, it benefits everybody. And unfortunately, and we all have got to admit this is true. We hunting, hunters and hunting organizations and hunting magazines, we’re all preaching to the choir about it. We’re all talking about this topic to 2 tenths of 1% of the overall population that needs to be on board to fix these problems. So how do we fix it?

Greer Smith: 100%. And that goes back to what I was, an awareness problem. It’s not that me and you are unaware and your listeners are unaware. It’s that there are millions of people who don’t know what the problem they should be concerned about is.

Ramsey Russell: They’re only going to care if they know it. If they’re aware of it. They’ve got to have some form of interest. It’s got to be relatable to their life situation. And it’s beyond the United States. You go to parts of Europe now, 50% of migratory bird populations are in steep decline. Over half and in North America, a lot of our migratory birds are declining. The singular exceptions to a loss of migratory birds here in North America are the waterfowl and depending on who you talk to, I mean, we don’t have as many ducks as we did 20 years ago. They’re declining, too, just maybe not as much because of we hunter. So how do you propose that 50 Ducks can change that? What kind of awareness are we talking about? What specifically can you do to curb that?

Greer Smith: Yeah, it’s a great question and the way we’re going about it is we’re taking something that’s starting to get bigger and bigger and you’ve had some of these guys on your podcast talking about telemetry work using these GPS backpacks. Well, they’ve said it, that the information you get off of that stuff is fascinating. Altitudes, speed, what they’re doing when they’re moving and the stuff you can deduce from that is incredible. So we came up with this idea, we were stuck on a mud flat in Venice, Louisiana and we were sitting there looking up at the sky. And some years the ducks are there and some years they’re not. So we asked the question everybody asked, which is, where are the ducks? I went home, dug into it a little bit, found an article about Paul Link’s lab over there in Louisiana, doing some telemetry work, called him, went over there, helped him on a band the expedition, found out who else was doing this, called those guys, just started to learn about this world of telemetry and this world of GPS tracking and then found some partners who wanted to get into that, who are Jack Miner, which is the oldest birdbanding sanctuary in North America and Davis, which is a tremendous non-profit in Oaxaca, Mexico and trying to take this GPS information and show it to the world and not just hunters, but to kids in schools and to use a bunch of educational materials that tries to get them to understand how great ducks are, how magical it is, because so many of them will never have access to a duck blind. They just won’t. But if we can bring the sky to their screen, everybody has access to a computer or a phone these days. So we have to introduce – we have to use technology and it’s counterintuitive, but I feel like you have to use technology to help protect the natural world. That’s the way you get it in front of people.

Bringing the Sky to the Screen

…50 ducks.com map, which is incredibly interactive user friendly and super in depth as well. 

Ramsey Russell: Bring the sky to the screen.

Greer Smith: Sky to the screen, baby. I came up with that.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I like that. That tells the story right there. Talk about working with Jack Miner. I mean, so right now you’re banding ducks in Canada, Ontario with Jack Miner and you’re going down to Mexico and banding ducks or do you have any banding operations or anything going on in the United States or Canada or outside of Canada or in the United States.

Greer Smith: Well, let me backtrack a little bit there. We did our first banding operation. This whole thing has taken a tremendous amount of trial and error to even get it to the point it’s at now. We banded 2, one two with these GPS trackers last April to try and build this back end platform, which is our 50 ducks.com map, which is incredibly interactive user friendly and super in depth as well. We had to work all the bugs out before we started putting a bunch of these backpacks on. We went to La Paz, Mexico, which is in Baja, we did that in early December, banded a few teal. We’re going to Sonora to try and ban 20 or 30 pintails with these backpack units into February. And then in the fall, we going to roll it out with Jack Miner with between 50 and 100 birds a year, mallards, black ducks and Canada geese and they’re doing it on a scientific principle. Essex county, which is where Jack Miner is, is the world capital of greenhouse farming. They have 5000 acres under glass being farmed with greenhouses and they put off 3 times as much light as Detroit, which is their neighbor, with a population 20 times smaller.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. That’s crazy. I didn’t realize that.

Greer Smith: And so they want to use this telemetry work to see how light pollution affects migratory waterfowl in their area and so we’re trying to answer scientific questions and we’re trying to use it as an educational resource for the world.

Ramsey Russell: So walk me through a typical Jack Miner operation you all are doing, because they’re banding ducks themselves. But now you all are going in and marrying it up with the GPS trackers. Are these leg fans with geo trackers or they backpacks?

Greer Smith: Well, yeah. And you’ve met, the 3 guys up there at Jack Miner who are instrumental in this, are Tom Cook, Matt and Joe Vermeulen and you’ve had Joe on your show before.

Ramsey Russell: I have.

Greer Smith: And Joe, I mean, Joe bands 4000 or 5000 ducks and geese a year with Jack Miner and federal aluminum leg bands. So he’s the expert on that and they’ve been doing that since 1909. Jack Miner was the first organization, Jack Miner himself was the first person to band a duck in North America. And so they’re trying to advance into the next phase of waterfowl research, which is this, which is these telemetry works. And we use the same backpacks that all those researchers at the Osborne lab, Cohen lab, Paul Link, they’re the Ornatella backpack trackers, 10 and 15 grams units. And then on the geese, you use the neck collar. And so they are the Jack Miner is who’s doing it. We’re helping fund it and we’re helping spread awareness for it and so that’s kind of where we come in same thing in Mexico with Manuel and Davis.

How Can I Help Prevent Declining Duck Numbers?

What we do is on $50, we sell memberships and we use that money to fund this project, to grow this project and we have a give back program with all of our partners.

Ramsey Russell: How do you raise capital? Because I’ve heard those GPS units are not cheap at all.

Greer Smith: Man, they’re super expensive. This whole thing is incredibly expensive and we talked about it briefly off air. That in and of itself is a barrier to entry for so many researchers out there, I mean, all these labs, all these sanctuaries, they always have funding problems and the government only has so much to give. Like Davis in Mexico, that organization is run almost entirely out of Manuel’s pocket. And these telemetry projects are 5, 6, 7 figure undertakings, I mean, they’re incredibly expensive. What we do is on $50, we sell memberships and we use that money to fund this project, to grow this project and we have a give back program with all of our partners.

Ramsey Russell: You all have got a membership program. It’s a, that’s a volunteer donation to put these on here and bring it to the screen. Bring the waterfowl to, bring the world to the screen. But at the same time, how does a private group like 50 ducks translate to research data or to an overall banding data or geo data that might, could transition to where? Because like you say, a lot of researchers have funding problems. Well, you all have got some funding figured out, Mexico and Canada and how can other researchers toehold into you all’s, rather than just bring it for entertainment value to the public, how could the research community toehold into this project?

Greer Smith: I think 50 ducks can be a hosting platform for a number of researchers who want to expand their reach. I mean, I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m a foremost authority on any of – on waterfowl. I’m not a waterfowl biologist. But what I do know is that we have to find alternative ways to raise money for so many of these organizations. It’s just impossible for a bunch of these organizations to ever think that they’re going to do telemetry work in their area, but they’re incredibly qualified. This is open source data to any researcher or any school teacher in the country. You send me an email, you want to teach kids about ducks in your classroom, memberships free. You’re a researcher that wants to use this data for whatever your project is, great. We’ll promote it, membership’s free. We’re trying to remove barriers to entry into what’s a really expensive undertaking.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. How many birds have you all banded so far?

Greer Smith: Like I said, we’re just getting this whole thing roaming – Just getting things to goal end.

Ramsey Russell: Just getting this thing started. You’ve been, you did a couple to get the back end going and this is your first breakout year right now.

Greer Smith: This is it. Everything has been, we’ve been trying to get it. We’ve got a really good map that’s crashed a bunch of times and we’ve had to redo it, but it’s, we’re ready to roll it out and see if I get to keep this house or not.

Ramsey Russell: What are your long term goals? You’ve taken the fork in the road, you’ve committed yourself, you’re underway, going to Canada, going to Mexico soon. Then what? Where do you hope this thing goes in time?

Loving the Natural World Through Technology

And we hope that we’re able to raise money for not just Jack Miner and Davis, where we can grow our program, where they can do more to have scientific breakthroughs like some of these other organizations do, but to impact kids.

Greer Smith: I hope that this can be a full time career for me and that I can devote my life to something that I care deeply about and I can try and make a difference in something that’s had a really formative effect in my life and on my upbringing and so many people around me. And we hope that we’re able to raise money for not just Jack Miner and Davis, where we can grow our program, where they can do more to have scientific breakthroughs like some of these other organizations do, but to impact kids. That’s a huge goal here, is to keep this thing rolling and this is just the beginning. Get more people to fall in love with the natural world through technology, which you can only invite so many people to your sanctuary to see what you’re doing. But with Instagram, I mean, you can get in front of a tremendous amount of people right now and you can let a lot of people know that ducks are super cool and they do amazing things and so how do we protect them? How do we enhance that resource?

Ramsey Russell: There’s so much need for research, yet even in the waterfowl and habitat world and there’s so much limited funding for it. It could be what I see as a possibility is a privately funded program such as yours is possibly becoming a conduit for university, state and federal research projects, a way to begin to fund beyond 50 ducks, whatever the scope of you all’s are, to actually become a funding mechanism to do a lot of critical research. Have you considered that?

Greer Smith: A 100%, like I said a little while ago, just being a hosting platform for other researchers and if you’re a researcher out there and you’re looking for money give me a call, shoot me an email and we can figure out the logistics of it. But we want to get this in front of as many people as we can. I think this can be an untapped fundraising source that no one’s doing.

Name a Banded Duck in Every State

Now we have a couple of banning facilities that do it, we let the kids name a duck. And you make it a super tangible thing where they can see what their duck is doing today. 

Ramsey Russell: Do you see yourself as having to go through the process to become a federal bander in the United States? Do you see this, like I asked you before the show started? I said, what is 50 Ducks? He said, well, we hope to have a duck in every state. Well, to do that, you’re probably going to have to end up doing some activities in the United States. Do you see yourself as maybe running it independently and you all having your own banding stations similar to a lot of the biologists you’ve named or do you see yourself bringing in the funding, bringing in the backpacks, bringing in some of the cost and cost sharing with some of these existing programs?

Greer Smith: It would be easier to do it quickly to do the cost sharing. And again, I will never know as much about waterfowl as Bradley Cohen or Dr. Doug Osborne and that’s okay. But what I can help is some of these smaller places raise money for what they’re trying to do and answer scientific questions that are important in their area. I’m coming at this more from an academic standpoint, that’s where my love is. To answer your question, I would rather this become the hosting platform, something that you do in conjunction with your banding lab, as opposed to us having banding laboratory set up here, there and everywhere.

Ramsey Russell: I think there’s a real need, I think there’s a couple of real needs when you start talking about awareness, when you start talking about education and information. I grew up or my formal background was in forestry and wildlife, believe it or not, my real background, what I gained from all that stuff in college was technical writing ability but so much of the information that we were doing, whether it was writing papers, doing research, presenting the papers, was within that field. When you look at a lot of the mountain of information that’s out there in any form of research, it’s in technical papers written for technical people within the field, not the general people.

Greer Smith: 100%.

Ramsey Russell: That’s why I try to have so many biologists and so many habitat folks, so many experts in these fields. I look not only for the information, but I want the information to be relatable. I had a major professor at Mississippi State University that was a, gosh, he was a rocket scientist of bottomland hardwood silviculture and had me doing stuff that was way above my mental ability in terms of comprehension and understanding, but at the same time, he could go and talk to a high school group and convey some of the most technical information at the most relatable level that everybody, a 4th grader, could understand. And that was his gift.

Greer Smith: Of course, and that’s the –

Ramsey Russell: It’s a very daunting process that in the information age, there’s still a lack of understanding. And I feel like, Greer, that so many duck hunters want to understand more about these complex topics. We want to know and some form of scientifically based information that helps us reconcile what we’re seeing and experiencing with reality. We want to know more about this stuff.

Greer Smith: I couldn’t agree with you anymore and we got into this whole thing because I had a morbid curiosity to know where these ducks were going with these backpack units and that led me down a 2 year rabbit hole to where we are now and you talk about these academic papers that get written. We read the abstract and a lot of times you’re already lost and you have to reread it. Imagine as a 6th grader, they’re not going to read that, they’re in school when they’re reading that. But one thing we’re doing is we have a sponsor, a duck thing, we have a couple of teachers that do it. Now we have a couple of banning facilities that do it, we let the kids name a duck. And you make it a super tangible thing where they can see what their duck is doing today. What is their duck? What is Ms. Quack quack doing? And it makes it a super tangible, relatable thing that can get a 6th grader really into ducks and learning without them knowing that they’re learning.

What Does Duck Hunting Mean to People?

And the first thing you got to get them into is the ducks and then you can tackle things one thing at a time.

Ramsey Russell: How important will the hunting aspect of it be when you start reaching out to these schools, to these children, to the general public, to the big 80% agnostic base that neither hunts nor is anti hunting, just to the general public, the city dwellers, how important will it be to incorporate some form of hunter roll into this and how do you do that?

Greer Smith: It’s very important. One, I write a blog on there and a bunch of it is about my life hunting. A bunch of it’s got pictures of me as a little boy with ducks. And you have to convey that, first of all, hunter harvest of waterfowl plays such a low impact on duck numbers and you have to communicate that to people, of course. And you have to communicate the financials of it to people so that they understand where the money for duck hunting comes from, and where do hunters, where is their heart when they are duck hunting? And for the most part, it is from a place of admiration and love and being outside with your friends and your family. And the ducks are just a consequence of that. And so you have to relay that message to people. You have to get them to understand what hunting means to people.

Ramsey Russell: How do you do that?

Greer Smith: Yeah, that’s a tough question to ask. And the first thing you got to get them into is the ducks and then you can tackle things one thing at a time.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I was asked a question one time while filming for a PBS special. If you like ducks so much, if you love this so much, if you’re, why do you shoot them? That’s a hard question to answer, especially on the lot. It’s hard. How do you love something like this and shoot it? And that’s a difficult question to answer. We can shrug it off and say, well, cause I’m a hunter, but why do we choose to interact with nature that way? And it’s not important to me that all of these school children in all of America become duck hunters and I would worry where the heck they’re going to hunt, you know what I am saying? Cause we’re running out of space because of habitat loss. Where are they going to hunt? Where are we all going to fit in if we start recruiting, just ad libitum numbers of hunters? But it’s just so that they can understand that these aren’t a bunch of mean old guys out there just killing nature for the sake of it, that there’s a greater importance, a greater value to it. I say kind of off the cuff I feed my family, I feed my traditions, which is culture and I feed my soul. It’s just what I do, it’s just how I choose to interact with nature and trying to communicate that to a public that has no background, no understanding, probably doesn’t even own a gun in their house. It could be a very daunting explanation.

Greer Smith: Absolutely. If you haven’t done it, it’s tough to explain why it is what it is, which is what you’re hitting on here. And it’s just, to me, duck hunting is more than just killing ducks. I mean, that’s fun and that’s why you go to do it. But more so than that, I go to be with my dad and to be outside and to be away from everything and to be with my friends and like, there’s something just primal about it and primitive and you’re just really one with what you’re doing. And as we handle more and more of these live birds in hand, too, my connection with them, it gets stronger. It’s tough to explain. Like you say, it’s a hard thing to explain.

Ramsey Russell: So this year, how many, what’s your goal for birds banded this year down in Mexico? How many birds will you, I say banding, but how many birds will you all affix these GPS transmitters to in Mexico? And then how many is your goal to fix them to up at Jack Miner?

Greer Smith: The thing at, we’d like to have at least 50 to start this year in total, we hope to get – We went down to La Paz in December and as you, it was early December and the big ducks hadn’t made it too far down there yet. And there’s weight restrictions with these devices. I’m sure you’ve talked about that with some guys and so some of the bigger teal, we had some 10 gram units. We put some on them, put one on a shoveler that Rocky Point Bird Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia has sponsored and aptly named Rocky. But that was the only big duck we caught in 8 days. And so that’s just out of our control and we knew it was going to be early, but we’re going to Sonora, we got some locals down at Nova Placa. Krzy – Michael Krzywicki is a Boise State PhD researcher. He runs the Nova Placa field station down there with some local guys and so he called us and said, the pintails are there, we won’t get the spot set up and come on. So we don’t take 30 trackers down there and if we put 15 on, I’ll call that a win. If we catch 30, it’ll be a home run.

Ramsey Russell: I didn’t know that they were doing a lot of activities like that down in Mexico.

Greer Smith: And they’re not, they’re absolutely not. And so another thing 50 ducks are doing is bringing this studies to areas that are not being studied as much. I mean, in La Paz, these guys were super excited for us to be there and to band whatever we could band with these telemetry units. And Nova Placa, I mean, those guys like I said, barrier to entry, they are fired up for us to come down there and just to have a single duck, because they want to know where their ducks are coming from, where they’re going and so that’s just one of the things that I see that 50 ducks is doing that is such a positive effect on researchers who are underfunded. IBOC, which is the International Bird Observatory Conference, I mentioned Manuel, he hosted it this year, which is a pretty big deal and I flew down there and went to the conference with him. It’s kind of a tangent, but Manuel’s, English is Manuel’s 3rd language. He speaks, he’s a Frenchman. He learned to speak Spanish and he learned to speak English. I sound like what I sound like. Me and Manuel have a really hard time communicating over the phone. So we’ve been texting for a long time and he invited me to come down to IBOC and present this platform to a bunch of researchers all the way from Israel, Sweden, Latin America, South America. And it got a huge response with people there because –

Ramsey Russell: So you did go and present.

Greer Smith: I did, yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And it got a huge response worldwide.

Greer Smith: Huge response. And Dr. Tony, the head of the BBL, he was down there, sat and drank a beer with him. We had interacted via email over the last 2 years and just talked about some of the problems that waterfowl face in this world. So anybody out there, it’s not just for researchers. There’s a huge contingency, just people who go to IBOC. It’s kind of not as well known as some of these other conferences, but moves around, there’ll be another one in 2026, I believe that and pick where it’s going to be, but fascinating.

Duck Hunters Around the World Unite

We’re just coming at it – everyone’s coming at it from a different way.  And that’s fine, too.

Ramsey Russell: Did you actually talk to some of these people outside of North America about your program and about doing some of this research abroad? What were they thinking about stuff like this?

Greer Smith: Yeah, I mean, again, super positive response and we got to start somewhere. I mean we don’t have a million dollars to pour in this thing. And so you got to be really focused with how we start it and then can expand it from there. But, yeah, I mean, we talked with some guys from faster Borough. Carlson was the name, super nice guy, runs a banding station over there. Researchers, Venezuela, all over Latin America, just positive response and everyone has the same goal there, same as me and you, more birds in more places, how do we do that? We’re all working to the same end goal. We’re just coming at it – everyone’s coming at it from a different way. And that’s fine, too.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. How do you get people, how do you get your name out there? How do you try to get sponsors? I mean, are you all doing cold call mailing or telephone calls? What? I mean, how do you make, how do you kick a program like this off?

Greer Smith: If you got any great ideas, I’m all ears.

Sponsor a Duck! 

 I think they’re just a tremendous need from this, from a publicity standpoint, an awareness standpoint.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. How much does it cost to sponsor a duck?

Greer Smith: It’s free to sponsor duck. If you’re a school or a researcher, it’s completely free. You get to name the duck, you get to the hope is that you’ll spread it, too, on your social media, more people be aware about it. But we do that to get more people involved and invested in it. There’s no charge to sponsor a duck and a lot of that is there are no guarantees.

Ramsey Russell: Well, then how do you raise funds as an organization?

Greer Smith: Through our memberships. So the map is, some of the data is completely accessible. If you go to 50ducks.com right now, as I said, a researcher, a school teacher, the whole thing is free. But to get to the wealth of data, because we got over 500 historical birds on there that other people have banded, we’re getting our birds on there, too, on a separate map. To get to that, you have to be a member.

Ramsey Russell: I see.

Greer Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: I see. This year you’re going to Mexico. This fall, you’re going to Jack Miner. What next Greer, where then?

Greer Smith: Well, who knows where it takes us? We hope we meet more people in new places. I met Mike Krzywicki from Nova Placa, I met him at I’ll be at sea. The Jack Miner guys have gotten super in tight with Delta Waterfowl. You just never know on who’s going to reach out and say, I want to be a part of this.

Ramsey Russell: I think there’s a real need. I think they’re just a tremendous need from this, from a publicity standpoint, an awareness standpoint. I think there’s a huge need because we keep talking about Jack Miner and it’s hard to believe that in my dad’s lifetime, Jack Miner was the number one tourist attraction in Canada. And now the local little town of Kingsville names 10 things to do and it’s bar hopping and restaurants and shopping. Jack miner’s not even on the list and that just blows my mind. At one time, you could pull up to Jack Miner at feeding time in the afternoons and there’d be 150 cars on the road with people bringing their families out to watch this spectacle, and now I asked the lady at the hotel, how come Jack Miner’s not on here? And she literally goes, who is he? And I’m like, it’s right down the road here, 5 miles. It was at one time the largest tourist attraction on earth and she just was oblivious to it. Problem come in just so removed from what this world of ours is about and what these birds represent.

Greer Smith: Right. Couldn’t agree with you anymore and our hope is that 50 ducks can put places with a crusade that has been along for 115 years and can do more for waterfowl than I ever will. We hope we can put them back in the spotlight. And they’ve got a great executive team with Tom, Matt and Joe who understand the problems of the modern bird banding sanctuary and they understand what Jack Miner is, its story past and how to take it to the next level, which is this, which is spreading awareness about what they care deeply about, which is waterfowl.

Ramsey Russell: If you talk to anybody in waterfowl research, doing anything at any level in waterfowl research and the same could be said about any research, any topic, it all goes back to funding. And like you say, there’s only so much funding to go around. And so here comes a platform that says, let us try to monetize this publicity. Let us try to create an awareness and with awareness, maybe we can get more funding and maybe with more funding, we can begin to become a source, a vital source of funding for different research needs. I think that’s a very exciting opportunity for waterfowl management and waterfowl hunting in general.

Greer Smith: I’m glad it’s recorded because I’m going to use that sound bite.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. It’s very well needed. We need more funding and funding is terribly hard to come by. It’s terribly hard to come by today, especially for natural resource management, especially for something like waterfowl.

Greer Smith: And it goes back to what you said about hunters, just to talk about the hunters and the waterfowlers. Hunters want this data. The Facebook and the Instagram comments we all get is, this is awesome. I can’t believe it, didn’t know a shoveler could fly that fast. How do you get that high? There’s just this dearth of data that people want and so you’re providing a service that also is an educational tool.

Ramsey Russell: What have you learned? You don’t have a background in this field and, but what have you learned so far?

Greer Smith: Man, we have a dozen podcasts about that and I love it. I love what my life is turning into. We have all these birds and I’ve learned to do. I can work a computer with the best of them and we put a bird up on the instagram the other day. It was named by my fiance’s students 6th graders named it Sir Dabble.

Ramsey Russell: Sir Dabble. What kind of –

Greer Smith: Sir Dabble. I got Sir Dabble and Ms. Quack quack right now.

Ramsey Russell: And what kind of ducks were they?

Greer Smith: He’s a Drake northern shoveler.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Greer Smith: He banded just outside of Mexico City. That duck left outside of Mexico City flew at 96mph and it’s 17,000ft. And keep in mind, Mexico City is at about 7000 foot altitude, but it climbed 10,000 more feet and did not touch ground again until it got to Kansas, 1400 miles away.

Ramsey Russell: Golly.

Greer Smith: See, fascinating stuff like that and we got it for 100s of waterfowl. I got a tundra swan on there, we did a bird of the day with, flew 27,000 miles over 4 years. It flew from the northern tip of Alaska into North Carolina and then it nested within 500 yards of where it nested the first year for 4 consecutive years. Flew almost the same path every year.

Ramsey Russell: That’s amazing.

Greer Smith: Fascinating.

Start with Duck Hunters

Have you considered non waterfowl species? Why not just migratory birds in general? Because there’s a hell of a lot more people interested in titmice and Carolina wrens and cardinals and mockingbirds and other songbirds than there are in waterfowl. 

Ramsey Russell: Have you considered once you get this program going, even though it’s named 50 Ducks, have you considered taking this technology and taking this concept of awareness and bringing the world to the user screen? Have you considered non waterfowl species? Why not just migratory birds in general? Because there’s a hell of a lot more people interested in titmice and Carolina wrens and cardinals and mockingbirds and other songbirds than there are in waterfowl. When you take just a subsection of humanity, just birders in general that might would want to be watching all this kind of stuff.

Greer Smith: We don’t have to put you on the executive board with all these good ideas.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’ve got idea. I’m full of ideas, man. I mean, that’s, I’m full of ideas, Greer. I can tell you that. I’ve got ideas galore, but I’m just, how do we reach a wider audience?

Greer Smith: You’re right. You’re 100% right. And ducks are our Trojan horse, if you will, because there is this devout following that have funds to spend on this information that they love. So you start with the duck hunters, but there’s no reason you can’t do this with birds of prey. There’s absolutely no reason you can’t do this with eagles, there’s no reasons you can’t do it with hawks, there’s no reasons you can’t do it with songbirds and the hope is that you’re 100% right. We start with ducks, we’re super precise with where we got to spend our money now and there’s no telling what it can grow into, who wants to be a part of it and it doesn’t just have to be funding for waterfowl research. You couldn’t be more right again.

Ramsey Russell: Well, let me ask you this. Where are most of your memberships coming from right now? Are they mostly hunters?

Greer Smith: Yes sir, it is. And for the most part, it’s, you don’t know how the online platforms get to who is mostly in California. I mean there are tremendous number of hunters in California.

Ramsey Russell: You better believe it.

Greer Smith: Sacramento Valley, we got a bunch of data. And what you see on the map is we’re doing releases every month with more birds in more places. Got a bunch of west coast fun pintails, mallards, canvasbacks, all sorts of fun data that was previously banded by other folks that’s just out there and we’ve kind of made it more user friendly to put on our map. We had a ton of data that’s about to go on that map from the Pacific Flyway.

Ramsey Russell: One of the longest migratory arcs I’m aware of, I think, is called a ruddy turnstone. I think that’s the name of that Atlantic that’ll fly all the way from, say, Maryland or north over winters there in New England, all the way down to Tierra del Fuego. I mean it’s like if, as a funding mechanism for conservation, it’s like, well, I can appeal to duck hunters that are 2 tenths of 1% in the United States and Canada or maybe I can appeal to everybody and it may be songbirds and some of these shorebirds and some of these raptors and stuff would garner attention from a much wider audience.

Greer Smith: You’re right. And why not teach them about the magical waterfowl, which is what me and you are super passionate about while we do it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, be it a way –

Greer Smith: That’s one way you’re going –

Ramsey Russell: To introduce the otherwise anti hunting birding community to the concept that, hey, maybe all hunting is not bad, you know what I’m saying? Like, golly, this whole amazing program worldwide was started by a duck hunter from Georgia that got, that was duck hunting down in Venice, Louisiana and got stuck and got to thinking about this. But nonetheless, it was the gift of duck hunting that brought this whole public consciousness into being. But whether we’re talking habitat conservation or the funding of 50 ducks as a conduit to future research programs, we’ve got to get outside of the hunting community and get more people involved, more people funding and more people throwing money at this program.

Greer Smith: Right.

Ramsey Russell: Which is why I’ll say for the 50th time all this talk from our politicians about green energy, windmills and solar panels and battery operated cars are bullshit. You know what I’m saying? Let’s create more wetlands. Wetlands are massive carbon sinks. Let’s get more wetlands everywhere. It’s good for duck hunting. Heck, yeah, it is. But it’s good for society, too. And if we’re going to do that, it can’t be just 2 tenths of 1% of American, Canadians funding it. We need funding mechanisms, we need all of society realizing the benefits of wetlands conservation and of carbon sequestration and of the – an abundance of migratory birds, whether they’re hunted or not.

Greer Smith: Again, we’ve got an awareness problem and that’s the awareness that people don’t even know they should – Most people don’t know that wetlands sequester carbon. If you ask a person on the street, they didn’t know that. They don’t know that’s something that they could. They don’t know that’s an option.

Citizen Science: Involvement in Duck Banding

I’ve had scientists on here before, most notably Chris Nicolai, who does a lot of banding work for Delta Waterfowl.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, no. It’s an awareness problem. It’s an education problem and I’m excited to see stuff like this. I’m really excited to see just a duck hunter come out of nowhere and come up with this idea and become – I’ve had scientists on here before, most notably Chris Nicolai, who does a lot of banding work for Delta Waterfowl. And he describes citizen science, which is, it can be as simple as volunteering for banding, but really and truly, if you look at the purpose of leg banding in general, it’s now a way to scientifically estimate harvest of waterfowl. But the simple act of going out and hunting and then reporting these leg bands or if you get selected to do wing bees it’s a hands on way of citizen science. It’s the way that the ordinary people can become actively involved scientifically in the process and a program like 50 ducks can be a way to get more citizen scientists involved, either directly or indirectly.

Greer Smith: You couldn’t be more right. We got millions of pages of, millions of data points, millions of pages of excel data and that’s what you’re talking about, this is citizen science. Some people just love data. Here’s a way for you to be part of the science see what you can find. Who knows who’s going to stumble on what that we don’t even know we should be looking for.

Ramsey Russell: I’m asking, I’m going to make one more pass. Tell me one or two things that you know now about waterfowl that you did not know this time last year.

Greer Smith: We are, 2 teal with 2 blue wing teal that we banded or that Manuel of Davis banded with us to get this whole back end platform built. We banded them last April and we monitored them. 95% of their lifetime movement happened after the sunset before it rose again.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Greer Smith: 95%. A lot of that, you got to think about it too, is a lot of their lifetime movement comes on their migration. So the duck was banded outside Mexico City, went as far north as Hooker, Oklahoma, which will surprise you. Hooker, Oklahoma is as far from Mexico City as Saskatoon is from Hooker, Oklahoma, so it’s a long ways away. As far north as it went, 95% of its lifetime movement was done, sunset, sunrise. But most of those 5000 miles were on its migration. So if you take that out of there, its movements a little more at dawn and dusk. But for the most part, it wasn’t moving during the day.

Ramsey Russell: Is that where they ended up? Was back and they went to Saskatchewan?

Greer Smith: No, sir. It went to, this one did not. This one went to Hooker, Oklahoma. That’s as far north as it went. Turned around, came back and then we lost signal in Fort Stockton, Texas in October.

Ramsey Russell: That could have ended up in a deep freeze.

Greer Smith: So the trackers have my phone number on the side. Nobody called me. But you don’t know –

Ramsey Russell: That’s one thing I’ve become aware of about ducks is besides hunting, ducks have high mortality rates.

Greer Smith: Incredibly high.

Ramsey Russell: So how many ducks have you all actually done? You got a shoveler, a couple of blue wings? Is that it?

Greer Smith: No, sir. We put 20 bands on down in La Paz.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Greer Smith: This past year. And mortality is a real issue. I mean, you don’t know when avian influenza is going to run through down there. You don’t know how many are going to kill raccoon by a possum or a dog. Manuel’s been banded and using this telemetry data for years and he’s had 3 of them killed by dogs.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Greer Smith: Yeah. And that’s just part of it, some of them are going to, you’re going to lose a lot of them. If you talk to any of those any of those labs that are doing this telemetry, a lot of ducks die, that’s just the reality of the situation. And that’s what I was saying earlier about hunter harvest is a negligible number when you compare it to predation.

Ramsey Russell: It really is. And it all goes back to habitat loss. You know what I’m saying? I mean, I heard Dog Osborne recently talk about he bands this time of year. He bands one hens per 5 drakes, but the harvest rate in the fall is one hens per 15 drakes. So there’s a big black hole outside of hunting season that hens especially are being depredated or dying off of something. Me personally, I think it’s just a lack of habitat on the landscape.

Greer Smith: You did the podcast too, about pintail nesting success and how many of those birds never raise a clutch.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Greer Smith: It just die on the nest, all that.

Ramsey Russell: It’s tough to be a duck out there. That’s for sure. But anyway, Greer, I’m excited to see this. I’m going to watch closely, tell everybody how they can get in touch with you all.

Greer Smith: Absolutely. The website is 50ducks.com. 50ducks.com, our Instagram, 50ducksnorthamerica. Go follow our email list. My phone number and my email is on the website. If you want to talk to me, shoot me an email, give me a call, we can talk about it.

Ramsey Russell: How much are your memberships?

Greer Smith: Right now, they’re $14.99 a month. Big discount for an annual membership. And like I said, a lot of that is going to these nonprofit organizations.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. So it’s tax deductible.

Greer Smith: Oh, yeah. Write it off, baby. Corporate sponsorships

Ramsey Russell: Watch what you need. Recent, you talking about California or the West Coast? You need a Microsoft type to come in and throw some money at you really get this program going.

Greer Smith: Maybe Elon Musk listening to this and the whole thing will be called Musk Ducks tomorrow, you never know.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, be listening. Elon, this be a good program for you to get into. And anyway, Greer, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to come on and tell us about this 50ducks.com. I’m excited to see how people, not where you start, it’s where you finish, but how you become involved in how this conservation and duck hunting appeals to people. And people just regular ordinary citizens, find a way to become active in the future of waterfowl, that’s conservation. I mean, hunting is conservation, but throwing a $100 big bosomed ticket seller at a local banquet, that’s not really meaningful conservation. That’s just something we all fund to do.

Greer Smith: No, it’s not. And they got me at SCI with some of those.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, it happens to the best of us. I walk fast, act dumb, look stupid right by them. I don’t check up one dang beer to buy those tickets at that particular event, they try to catch me. But anyway, it’s all for a good cause, but I love to see a program like this emerge that’s got potential to create awareness about conservation and about migratory birds and about habitat. And my ambition for you all, Greer, is that 50 ducks become a mechanism for a lot more funding of from the middle ground into conservation, wildlife, game bird conservation.

Greer Smith: I hope so, too.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’ve been visiting with Greer Smith 50ducks.com, go check them out, see you next time.