Chicken Soup: Arkansas Specklebelly Goose Huntin‪g

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host, Ramsey Russell. Join me here to listen to those conversations. Welcome back to Duck Season Somewhere, on the North American tour, continued the Second Leg of the 2020 North American Waterfowl Tour. Now look, if I say Stuttgart, Arkansas, what do you think? I bet you think, green heads in the flooded timber? I bet you might even think, rice field duck hunting, Mack’s Prairie Wings, all that good stuff. World Champion duck calling contest. What about speckled bellies? White front? Decoying? Well, today’s guest, my buddy Aaron Carter. He and his buddies have been going to Stuttgart, Arkansas there about for years. And they got one thing in mind. And that’s, shooting those little giggle chickens called speckled bellies. How are you today, Aaron?

Aaron Carter: Doing well, Ramsey. How are you?

Ramsey Russell: I’m fine man. What a fantastic hunt Forest and I had with y’all. That was fun. That was really, really a good hunt. I enjoyed that a lot.

Aaron Carter: It was. The turnout was better than expected, I will say given the conditions we were thrown.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, it could have been worse. It could have been rained on hard.

Aaron Carter: That is true.

Ramsey Russell: What do you think about hunting in the rain?

Aaron Carter: Hunting in the rain is not my favorite but I will do it, if I have to.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I do not like hunting in the rain. And I’ve learned over the decades, I’m not going to melt in the brain. I just don’t like it. I don’t like. Especially when you’re on a road trip, everything just soaking, ass wet and everything. And just a little bit of rain, everything gets wet. The gun gets wet, shell gets wet, put it all into your bag, it gets wet, your bag gets wet, your clothes get wet, your boots get wet and muddy. And I thought, we hit that just right yesterday. You know we got there and it was misting and it wasn’t a hard hunt. I mean, we just we parked as y’all shot. We drove a little bit in a ranger. I noticed as we turned in towards that field you turned your head lamps off. And I couldn’t hear that, but the motor going. And you said, I didn’t want to wake on them, I didn’t want to disturb the birds. But, boy, we got on down at turn road, started putting out the blinds, I could hear them. I mean, just bazillions of them out there in the dark. They were right there. And how did that hunt come to be? How did you all decide to hunt right there?

Aaron Carter: So every night or every evening, give or take. I mean, anybody who hunts enough birds is going to learn that they’ve got to find their birds. They’ve got to learn their birds. Not only where they’re roosting, but where they’re feeding. So I’ve learned that, that particular evening I’d scout. We’d gone out and scouted for about an hour, hour and a half, and we found the field that we set up in their feeding that afternoon in that field. And I knew, the pattern was kind of a little bit off, because they’ve been hitting different fields morning and afternoon at any given time. It’s kind of with the heat going on down here in south. It’s been 70 degrees one day and then the next day it could be 40 degrees with a 10 mile an hour north wind like it was, for our hunt particularly. And I knew, if they were sitting there, that they were going to feed early because it was dropping. It was 20° difference from that afternoon to the morning we were hunting. So I knew they were going to be coming back to feed hard that morning before the front came through and the rain said it. So that led us to know, and when we rode by that field, there were several 100 birds sitting in that field. So I knew the odds of our chances were. We had at least a 75% chance of getting in there and getting out pretty quickly. As the day went on, that was where I was pretty setting stone at. So we had birds there other places, but that was our greatest chances from looking at that afternoon before scouting those birds around and kind of pattern from what we’ve seen the past few days we’ve hunted.

Ramsey Russell: How many birds had y’all seen there, even the afternoon prior?

Aaron Carter: You’re probably looking around 400-500 birds.

Ramsey Russell: And is that what you are looking for? That kind of concentration or we hunt less.

Aaron Carter: We will hunt less. That is ideal to find. But something that I’ve learned just through the years and it goes to learning my birds. I hunt small groups. I’m not a big group hunter. I like to socialize and enjoy the company I hunt with. Which is why I don’t guard hunts because I only want to hunt with. I want it to be like hunting, like in old times where you go hunt for fun with your buddies and hang out, have a good time. So it’s not large crowd, but it’s pretty intimate. So there’s some days that we can’t hunt a feed just because of when we blow our birds off of the farm, but also that we can get multiple hunts out of one big feed just by setting up and running traffic and hunting a little longer. So that’s my main goal there, is to keep birds around and not put as much pressure on them, but still be able to fulfill our limits.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s your work. One thing I got to wondering as we were sitting out there, waiting on the birds. You could hear them over, I guess, to the east getting restless. You could hear them kind of, rolled a little bit and start giggling and carrying on. But I got to wonder. I said, it’s possible these geese weren’t really feeding here. This is right next. I’d say we were a half mile from their roost. This is maybe, they were just coming in and kind of staging before they went inside on the water. You never can tell. I’ve noticed too, how a lot of times geese in particular, a lot of times go to one field and spend the day. They leave the roof, go to field, go back to the roof and to hang around, and go back to the same field, and feed, and go back. I mean, they may be bouncing around in several different fields. Kind of like, me and you would go ahead a place for breakfast, place for lunch, a place for dinner. If we were eating out all three meals, they might kind of be the same way. And I just got to wondering, how that was going to shake out. But it worked out good. It was a real flash in the pan type hunt. We were just there, got there that night, as soon as we could from Mississippi. Forest and I are on our way make a big old loop. And really wanted to meet with you and check it out. When I met you up there at the game fair last year and then, it’s not something, I mean, we’re practically neighbors. Both Mississippi boys. Didn’t know each other, didn’t meet and then, sit there and meet each other at a hunting show in Minnesota and hit it off. And boy, you were serious about speckled bellies. I mean, that’s all you wanted to talk about. Not ducks, not mallards, not pin tails, not Canada geese, snow geese, the next bird over the decoy is speckle bellies. Well, and that’s what kind of captured my interest. It really gave me like a whole new perspective on Arkansas hunting just that one morning with you. But when we think about Stuttgart, everybody, all the private jets and people that drive halfway across the country, and book trips, and hunt with buddies, and walk into public land, and the annual pilgrimage to Stuttgart. But they’re for ducks and y’all are for speckle bellies. And it just intrigued me is, like a whole new, fresh perspective on that part of the world. And I know some guys over there, hunt speckle bellies. But they normally set up in the afternoon. It’s just something to take clients out to do later. Man, y’all are don’t go afternoon.

Aaron Carter: Right. It’s an exception in most places.

Ramsey Russell: You go after him. And you know, I got a lot of inboxes showing those pictures of us. I got a lot of inboxes saying, was that an outfitter? Because I want to go shoot speckled bellies in Arkansas. That’s another buddy, sorry. He’s going to take all those clients and stuff. Well, Aaron, why speckled belly? How did you fall down this rabbit hole?

Aaron Carter: So I have always been and I’ll just go back to how I got into waterfowl hunting. I probably didn’t start hunting waterfowl until, I was probably a freshman in high school. And I’ve always, always wanted to go duck hunting. Well, I finally went duck hunting for the first time. It was just a local hunt in North Mississippi. We killed some Gadwall, we killed some mallards, killed few wood ducks. I mean, the whole mixed bag, the Mississippi mixed bag, is what we call it. Well, as I got older, I didn’t grow up in the waterfowl hunting family. I mean, it was strictly white tail hunting and that was it. But I always had the passion to shoot. I didn’t care what I shot. I shot a pistol rifle, shotgun. It did not matter. I wanted to shoot turkey hunted shot. I’ve always had a knack for, if I can’t do it myself, I don’t want to do it. Well, I know a lot of people are heart strong and this is my pure, this is my drive. And I know, it doesn’t work for everybody. But I’m a hunter. So I wanted to find something that I could do, that I could control, that I could have my own go and rest and go and rest. And somewhat of a, manage the birds that I hunt. So I’d gone over to Arkansas a few times with a few buddies and hunted. And it was just kind of hit and miss. But I kept seeing all these birds in the field that were not ducks. And everybody said, oh those are sky cart, snowbirds. But the more I started researching this, I started looking into it and then I finally hunted them. I killed a few and ate a few and I was like, no, no, no, these are not sky cart. So I looked for a way, that I could hunt the bird that nobody else wanted to hunt. And then, I found a way to make it happen. So through the years, throughout college, I made contacts and then, I met people like you and I met, and so I built it. I built a relationship out of camaraderie and got to where I could get over to hunt places that normally a college kid could not go afford. But I made the connections there as far as friendships. Eventually, that led to me finding my own place to where I found birds. And now that’s our place to hunt. And so by pursuing that, I got to hunt that bird that nobody else is hunting. There’s an abundance of them and there was a way to. There’s a will and a way to learn how to hunt them. And that was what led me to them. But then, the final product of, is they working vocally, and I’m going to say attractively, like a mallard. Except the whole response to me is a lot greater when they finish right there at your feet, sitting there yelling at you when you’re yelling back at them.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they sure do. I felt right at home with y’all. I guess because y’all are Mississippi boys. Sure, enjoyed showing up at eating pizza and drinking beer and right there in the sausage check. How do they pronounce that word over there?

Aaron Carter: That is called Kielbasa.

Ramsey Russell: Kielbasa.

Aaron Carter: Not kielbasa, Kielbasa. And that’s a local term that is used in that area. It’s homemade sausage that they make. A lot of those guys, the farmers there, that’s what they like to do, is sit around, drink beer, whiskey and make food. And it’s kind of, it’s very welcoming and they like to share as well with it. So I think our farmers sent some home with y’all. So hopefully you all get to try that out.

Ramsey Russell: He loaded us down. We had to take, drink water out and put it in the back of the truck. It wouldn’t fit in a little salt side. I suggest, we have it all the dog boxes. And he loaded down with sausage, so we’re going to share it with, until it runs out. We got a lot of stops along the way and we’re going to fire up the grill fireplace and eat some Kielbasa sausage, not Kielbasa. And I hope it’s good. Have you had some?

Aaron Carter: It’s very good. He actually makes it in like, the links like he gave you, and also an actual sausage patty. So he’s got various methods and ways he likes to eat it.

Ramsey Russell: You told me a story yesterday that I just found interesting and I’m not giving up names and GPS waypoints. We’re not talking about that. But I just find this very interesting that, how it is, that y’all came to have a place to stay and how it is y’all’s footprint of exclusive hunting area continues to grow and expand just by being good guys. I mean, could you kind of elaborate on that. What I’m trying to talk about here. I mean, can you elaborate on that?

Aaron Carter: Absolutely, absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: In this day and age? I find it just utterly amazing. I really do. I think it’s a great story.

Aaron Carter: And it’s actually a pretty funny story too. It’s actually a good one. So when we first started, I was in a club in north east Arkansas and we killed a good many of birds up there. And I told my buddy Jason there, I said, you know this, I like it, but I can’t hunt the bird I want to hunt. And I can’t. I don’t like being told when I can and cannot hunt because birds don’t always feed in the morning. They don’t always feed in the afternoon. But we were constrained to a certain time we could hunt. So that led me back to where I’d originally kind of been hunting for all along anyways. So we got down there and I found some birds and I talked to a farmer and it ended up a blessing of God that he said, you know what, I got a field you can hunt. And we became friends and we kind of settled on an agreement. And so we started with roughly, probably, couple 100 acres right there in that patch where we hunted, was the original grounds that we had come to terms with. That little plot right there, which is probably a four acre or 400-acre plot there, we came to terms with. And I figured out ways, how we could hunt. And a lot of days, that ended up just running traffic, when we didn’t kill many birds. But throughout the years, we became friends with everybody that was friends with our connections. So it was more like, we were becoming family and that was meeting new people and then going places with our connections and I’m going to say.

Ramsey Russell: You took one of them hunting one time.

Aaron Carter: That’s correct. So I started telling our main connection there, that I want you to come with us, A) We need some more guns. B) He’s a super great guy and he’s hilarious. I mean, he’s just a good guy. He said, all right, fine. And the whole reason he never wanted to go was, because he had never hunted out of a layout blind. And he knew, we tend to hunt out of those, from time to time depending on the hide. And he said, well, Aaron, all right I’ll go. Well, the first day he went, we were hunting on a different field. But birds came in, and they were probably 20 yards in front of us. Just a little chip shot is what Jason and I call them. And he said, okay shoot them. Well, we heard this flopping around like, if you had a chicken in a paper sack, just like flipping and flopping and going everywhere. We’re like, what the hell is going on? Well, we had learned. He said, how are you all seeing these birds? He said, how did you pop out of these blinds so quick to even shoot them? I didn’t even see what the hell you all are talking about. And he said, they were right there in the decoys right there. And he goes, oh well, I was actually looking up at the stars up there, no wonder I couldn’t see them. Well, come to find out. He had his gun in the blind and this is something, please nobody ever do. This is, if I can teach somebody here. Do not ever, put a gun in the block, in the actual foot bag of a layout lined with, there is a prop, there’s a bar there for a reason. He said, well, I was trying to get this G.D. Gun out of this blind without shooting my feet off. So that’s why I was flopping around in here. I said, okay, alright, time out. This is where I’m going to teach you. So we taught him and we ended up like 10 minutes later, we kill our birds and we got out. Well, after that hunt, we left for the weekend and we came back the next week. And that is when that story started popping up with him and all his friends. And we were out to dinner that one night at a local restaurant. It was he and I, and his family said, we’re eating supper with his family at this point in time. That’s where Jeffrey comes into play. Oh, y’all are the goose hunters over there. He goes, man, I’ve been wondering, what that’s all about. Because Jeffrey is always a big deer hunter. As you all saw in the lost back in his house, there’s just big deer heads everywhere, that’s his bread and butter there. He dreams about deer hunting.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of big deer.

Aaron Carter: Big deer. Years go on and we finally get Jeffrey out there hunting. And of course, he’s kind of like a dad to us. We’re the sons that he never did have. He’s got two daughters who are really great girls and they’re married and live off, away from the farm. But we’re the two sons that he never had. So we told him around hunting with us and he said, I just like coming out here, y’all got the dogs, y’all got set up, I just got to show up, y’all tell me where to shoot. Well, there’s one night, we had stopped by the farm to see him and we went on, unloaded. And then we’ve gone to the motel we’re staying at. And it was late. It’s probably about midnight on a Thursday night. So we retired. We had both, Jason and I had worked four days and gotten off and hit the road on the Thursday night. Kind of like how y’all drove up, just going, going, going, we pulled in there at the hotel. And I hadn’t been asleep an hour and the dreaded thing that nobody wants to hear about is, I woke up itching like I had something terrible on me. Well, I looked under my pillow and saw a bedbug crawling up my arm and then I looked down. There are some on my legs. And so I woke up in a panic and I rated that motel. And I woke Jason up and he had the bedbugs on his bed. So that was a nightmare speaking. It’s now 1:30 AM and we’re waking up to go hunting and we’re having this huge case of bedbugs in a hotel room that has apparently been under repair. So we wake up the next day and we were in another room at this point in time and that whole catastrophe. And we go along to the farm, and we go and hunt and scout, and come back and we’re eating dinner. And we were telling Jeffrey about the whole story. And I mean, this is probably, we’ve been going on. Really, really been good friends for about two years at this point in time. So I mean, it’s not like we just met him off the street and it happened. It was a building relationship there. I’ll tell you what he said, you boys, yeah, there ain’t no need of staying at a hotel, when I got two empty rooms up here at the house you can stay at, he said. I would tell you to come stay this weekend, but I don’t want to have some bedbugs in my house. So he said, next weekend, it’s the next weekend. And we said, no, no, we don’t want to spread them in there. So I developed pulling away after that. But next weekend, we came over and we’ve been fitting in at Jeffrey’s house like we were family from that day on. And that’s where it all started. So it’s probably been three years now. This is the third year that we’ve been staying at Jeffrey’s and he’s like a dad to us. We love him like a dad too. We try to take care of him, make sure he’s taken care of and take him hunting when he can. It’s the American dream.

Ramsey Russell: He was showing me an area. He was showing me a new addition to the home, he’s building, y’all, your own apartment, he’s added on to his home and this is yours.

Aaron Carter: It is. It’s not something we asked for. It’s not something that we’ve talked to him about doing for us. It was his idea, it’s kind of, we’re going to take him up on it and we’re going to help him pay for it and it’s going to be ours, so. He wants us to have a goose shack as he calls it, apartment. And that way, we don’t have to feel like we’re intruding, even though we don’t. But that’s just Jeffrey. That is 100% Jeffrey.

Ramsey Russell: It’s just, going over to his home briefly, as I was there. It’s just like little house on the prairie, real type America. I mean, you are a family. And honestly, I spent the night there, came in and drank a cup of coffee and left. And I felt like family. I mean, just the way they are. They’re just good, friendly people to me. I tell you what, you watch all this news on television last six months. It’s a very, very reassuring thought. I’m going to tell you to be in real America again. We’re just real people like it. It was very, very good experience. Just that part of it.

Aaron Carter: Well, good. And that’s why we call that our getaway. Our wives, they don’t worry about us when we go over there. My wife actually comes and hunts with us every now and then. She is a covid nurse. So she’s kind of, on and off every weekend. But whenever she gets a chance, she comes over there and chases them too. I got her into waterfowl hunting and it’s something she had never done. But she knew, why I was hooked on it. Well, it was not just an obsession, it’s a passion. So she understands, for three months what’s going to happen. And she tries to be a part of that as well. So, funny stories. We got married last November. So we’ve only been married about a year and a month now.

Ramsey Russell: I dint know that.

Aaron Carter: She wanted a fall wedding and we got married middle of November, which was last year before there was an early speck season. I said, well, if we get married here, we can’t go on a honeymoon, because the next weekend was opening season of speck season. She said, no, I’m fine with that. So the next weekend we were in Arkansas she eating speckle bellies.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. She’s a keeper Aaron, I’m going to tell you right now, that one was a keeper.

Aaron Carter: She is. There’s nobody else I’d traded for.

Ramsey Russell: I guarantee you, she is. All right. Tell me this. I was conspicuously the only person shooting a 12 gauge yesterday. And I’ve got a 20 gauge. I’ve got 28 gauge. I shooted the 12 gauge. Why? Because I ain’t about to ask you Forest of it all. I just shoot the bird. That’s just me, swing a big hammer, 12 gauge. I just shoot, shoot, shoot it everywhere. But y’all were all shooting 20 gauges. Have you always been just like a 20-gauge guy or?

Aaron Carter: So this is going to go back to kind of where I started, if there’s a will, there’s a way, I want to figure out. I like to make things interesting and a challenge at some point in time. And I know, I’m not the greatest shooter out there, but I can shoot a shotgun and I’ve got Bonilla’s Beretta’s, I’ve got them all. But I got tired of shooting just a big gun. It was like, there’s really no challenge to this for me. If they’re a decoying bird, why do I have to take a 3.5 inch low 12 gauge and punish them right there at 25-30 yards. Why do I have to do that? So always shot a lot of clays with my 20 gauge. So now the things were getting a little more, they were never getting slow or boring. But I wanted to bring a challenge to myself to say, okay, let’s bring this down to a finer, finer science here. And let’s try to make it more interesting. So I started shooting 20 gauge and everybody’s got the question of, how do you shoot that little thing? There’s no way that’s going to keep a bird. Well, I started testing the waters with that and I found that, if I do my part, that bird’s going to fall, that the 12 gauge was just it. Now shooting the 12 gauge feels like I’m cheating, I will say that. Which has led me to be. That was the whole rabbit hole that got me to boss. Because that was during the timeframe of where, I was looking for the load that matched, that I could perfect, that science of a pattern, of what I could shoot between 15-45 yards hunting without of my 20 gauge to be the most efficient load, to not just cripple a bird but actually kill a bird. So that’s where me and boss came into play and I did a lots and lots of researches and patterns and spent a lot of money on chokes, this testing shells, shooting shells, shooting shells in the field and going from there, I’ve now come to the three inch four in the boss 20 gauge, 1/8 ounce load is my bread and butter.

Ramsey Russell: What other loads along the way? Because boss hadn’t been around forever. They’re raging fire right now for good reason. But they haven’t always been around. How did you find your way to boss? Are you following what I’m saying, I mean, I know you shot started with steel shot, how did you bounce around?

Aaron Carter: So I started steel shot, which I was shooting expert, Winchester experts. I played around with chokes there. Well, considering that, I was working at Max one weekend, for fall fest with the code a decoy. And a lot of people know this guy, Lee Lucco’s was there. Well, I heard of and I met. That was the first time I ever met Lee and through a good buddy of mine in Barton. So I mean, as the water fowl industry is, it’s very small. So I met Lee there and then we kind of got hooked up with some shells there and we were talking about the boss there and I said, when this comes out, I want to try this stuff. So I got my hands on some loads. Well, that’s when I started talking to Brandon. Me and Brandon actually, started conversing back and forth on the makeup of these loads and the patterning and what I was seeing, what he was seeing. And it got very, very technical and Brandon and I have become very, very good friends through the past three years just through boss. And even if boss were to disappear tomorrow, Brandon would be one of my very good friends that I talk to almost every day. So through that, that helped him develop, that helped him get an idea because he was used to shooting 12 gauge. So to me doing research with the 20 gauge and what I’ve seen and what I’ve tested, and what I was shooting, we developed and came up or he developed, I tested and got that perfection of what I was seeing in the field, compared to what he was seeing, to where it’s an equal. It’s a happy medium there. And now, if I’m not mistaken, that is still what the recipe is today, of what we were shooting. Now that I’ve been shooting or I’ve been shooting a 20 gauge, Jason has picked up a 20 gauge and I’ve kind of encouraged my other buddies that I bring hunting is, especially now that we can only kill two birds in Arkansas limit, it’s not a rush, it’s not a race. Let’s make this a marathon. Let’s make this interesting. For me, it’s a thrill of calling the birds and getting them to decoy. But not only that, now we’ve got to get them in. I’m not going to say tighter, because I can reach out and kill one at 60 yards with my setup now as it is in a 20 gauge. But it brings more sport to it actually, than just killing. So that’s kind of what drives me behind shooting 20 gauge. And on top of that, it’s not pounding you all day every day, not that you feel a 12 gauge when you’re shooting at a bird. But I mean, it’s lighter. It’s got its advantages over 12 gauge to me. As Brady Davis says, if they made a four inch, I’d shoot it, but 3.5 is all I get.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, there’s a sub gauge revolution underfoot right now in America. When I was a young man, started off shooting 20 gauge and I won big enough “shooting 12 gauge”. And once on the 10 gauge. And then, I settled in on the 12. And I’ve got 20 gauge, got a 28, got those boards. But I just pick up that 12 gauge. I had a bunch of 12 gauge I like to duck hunt with. But I find it interesting and Boss Shot Shells started it. They did what no other ammo has done. They brought an ammo to the market that behave, that performs a lot like lead. And all of a sudden, the last two years, lots of folks are going from 12 to 20 or 28 to 40. Hey, Brandon’s got a duck hole now. You can’t shoot anything bigger than a 28 on. But what struck me is, my son, 22-23, years old. As a dad in his 50s with a 20 something year old son, it’s sometimes, we’re in a different stage and phase of hunter. And I remember being that age and what my goals were versus now. And I think, reading a lot of the reports and a lot of the buzz coming around boss shot shells fan page and stuff about the 20 gauge is the sub gauges, I call them. He wanted 20 gauge and he got a 20-gauge last year. Well, I bought him a box, case of boss shot shells and he’s done with it. I ain’t seen him shoot a 12 gauge since. And he’s not doing it for the sport. He’s doing it because he shoots better and his dead bird, the trigger pull ratio is much better than it was, growing up. That’s why he’s shooting a 20 gauge.

Aaron Carter: You’re saying that, is another topic that really hit me. Probably about, when I first started shooting, mine was a lot of people don’t realize the recoil at 12 gauge actually puts off, and they think, oh well, you’re not man enough to just that. I’m like, let the man card go beside you. The less felt recoil is, that much quicker of time you can get to the next target. So if you’re not expecting a lot of recoil, you’re taking your time, you’re putting a good squeeze on the trigger lining up where you need to be on that bird, pulling the trigger and it falls, and now you’re back. You’re back right there, where you need to be on the next bird opposed to saying, oh shit, where the next birds at?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And that’s how I ended up. That was one of the many reasons I ended up really being very, very happy with these two and three-quarter shells. I grew up shooting them. I’ve been through three, I’ve been through the three and a half. I’ve been to the G Wiz 17, 18, 19, 5000ft per second. Jill flirted. I’ve been through them phases. And you know, hunting in foreign countries when we shoot lead, a lot of other foreign countries, even when we shoot steel shot in a lot of other foreign countries, we’re shooting two and three-quarter inch shells and the recoil. I’m killing bird’s lots and lots and lots of birds with two and three-quarter inch shell. Now somebody makes one, that’s readily available, that does wicked good things, through the end of shotgun barrel of birds. Now I’m not going to say, listen. Anybody listening, I do shoot and I do like a lot of three-inch loads boss shot shell bakes. I mean, I really truly do. I buy some three-inch loads because I want to. But day in, day out like the other day, that is one thing we all had in common, out there in the speckle belly spread is, everybody was shooting. Forest was actually shooting fives. And J Bob gave him a handful of fours and said try these. But I was shooting, Forest, two and three-quarter inch fours. And I just did my part and I can tell you that I knew I would and almost, when the first flocks were giving us a real hard look, we were hidden, your farmer had left to turn road down between those fields, that was really nice and grassy and our blinds and mud huts were really grasped in. But when those first few flocks gave us a real hard look and I almost thought myself, I need to put in a tighter choke and it just crossed my mind. No, I’m just going to wait and see what happens. Okay. I always start with a modified choke until the birds or the day proves me wrong. And I don’t mind a little more course pattern because to me, 55% at 35 yards is a dead bird. So I waited and I’m glad I did. Because the flock that did it, gave it up. I was glad I had in that choke because they were right there where they needed to be in a sweet spot. But you know, that everybody was shooting those fours. There’s no four’s, not two’s, not BB’s, not one’s not three-inch 3.5-inch magnum. Everybody was shooting out in the quarter, I guess. I don’t know what was the 20-gauge load? You know it’s an ounce and a quarter?

Aaron Carter: We were shooting. So the 20 gauge load, the three inch, one of the eight ounce, one and eight number four’s. And that roughly has anywhere between 170 and 174 pellets in it. That is far more than what any three-inch steel too has. Any three-inch steel one, and a quarter ounce number two, would have in it. But you’re probably gaining maybe 25-30% more pellets. But also, you’re gaining far more density. You’re gaining more density on, as far as penetration goes as it is, just from the copper plated bullet to steal.

Ramsey Russell: Well, it worked. Everywhere I go now, people say, you like that Boss shells? Like yeah, that’s what I’m shooting. This morning we zeroed but we were targeting big Canada’s and it was just one in mornings. It just, the field is full of corn. There are tons of big Canada geese on all these little residential and city ponds around here. It was supposed to be snowing and it wasn’t. It was rain and freezing mix and it just the birds, they literally sat all day long. They did not come out and feed today. Or if they did, it is very briefly and I wasn’t there to see them. Could we left, not having fired a shot at the goose, we’re going to go right back in the morning. And the guy texted last night, we’re eating dinner often, said, y’all good on that months ago. Yeah, we got a good. He said, you got plenty to go? We got plenty. Never leave home without it, he said. Well, what are you shooting? I said, two- and three-quarter inch fours. He said, that boss stuff? I go, yeah, I’m happy to loan you some, because that’s I swear by it and a lot of guys just don’t, and I get it. If you’ve been spending your whole life shooting three inch. And if you have started duck hunting since the mid to late nineties, that’s all you’ve ever seen is, three-inch shells. And even when I wanted to buy two- and three-quarter inch steel loads, when I was shooting a lot of steel, I couldn’t find it. We shot it in Netherlands, Australia, you couldn’t find it in the US, you couldn’t go anywhere online and find or any sporting goods store buying two- and three-quarter inch and low. I shot three inch. And now let’s recall, better performance, I shoot the boss shot shells. Change the subject. Aaron, y’all been hunting together, you three guys. I mean, y’all are Tress amigos, you know what I’m saying, you’ve been hunting together. And when we pulled up, everybody knew the job. Somebody jumped out, start on the blind, somebody jumped out, start on something else. Aaron, grab a decoy, they started putting out decoys. And I thought, the way you carry around, you didn’t invite me to stick my own decoy. You want to stick those decoys. We’re using silhouettes and profiles and you were very, very exacting on how you wanted that set up to be. Can you articulate that a little bit?

Aaron Carter: So ever since me and old J bob started hunting, we would always, every night, and still to this day, we get a game plan. We look how, and it all comes from a scouting report. And a lot of people, when they go hunt, oh, I didn’t kill birds or we didn’t see that many. But I always ask, did you scout? Well, scouting is going to tell you exactly, what you need to know for the next day. So throughout scouting, throughout the years of scouting, and learning our birds, it became trial and error with how we set up. I was always the man behind how the decoys would set up. And Jason always would say, well, we need to be hidden here and we need to hide. We need to be more brush here, more brush there. So we kind of aimed at our own. Separate empathy is there. But when it was just the two of us before, we started bringing other people along. We’d set up the blinds first, we’d get them brushed in and then I would break off, once they were almost done. And I’d start setting up spread and Jason would come in to me and say, all right, what are we doing? And I’d tell him our profile of how we’re setting up. And from day one, that’s how we’ve been and that’s how we operate. Because the blinds, if you’re not hidden, your dad should not going to have a chance of killing birds. Because with a speckle belly itself, it’s almost like a turkey. It is triggered by the sound. So it’s going to look for sound and where it’s coming from, to come to it, before it looks at those decoys. So once it sees the decoys, it’s then going to look for where the sound is coming from. Now that’s when it starts coming into your setup of how you’re set up. I mean, like any kind of waterfowl setting up, you want to play the wind or play the cards with the wind as best as you can, with what you’re given. I know, we talked about somehow how Louisiana guy set up decoys. They don’t have a hide but their wind is, they’re going to have to hunt facing into the wind, setting up decoys behind them.

Ramsey Russell: Well, the times I’ve hunted on the speckled bellies, strict, straight up speckled bellies at some speckled belly clubs in Louisiana. At 08:00 AM, if you’re there that long, you can’t see your boots. It’s so dark in that blind, it’s so well brushed, it’s a pitch black, but the decoys are behind you. They want those birds coming over that little grassy levy into those decoys and to be just yards above the guns. It’s just a whole different set up versus having the decoys out in front of you.

Aaron Carter: That’s right. Because they’re going to be coming right over you, every time you make a cluck or you make it yodel, they’re looking down. Just through trial and error and messing up, I’m going to tell you, I messed up probably more than I get it right. I’m not even going to lie. And I’ll get up there and that’s why I’ve become O.C.D. about the spread. You saw me that morning. I’d go out there and I move a decoy and you said, Aaron, you think that one decoy is going to make a difference? I don’t know. But I’m going to be damn sure, tell myself it did.

Ramsey Russell: Well, throughout the course of the morning you said something to me about, what did you call those lines, where the profiles were facing all the same way or something? You didn’t want those? And I noticed your decoys, each profile was 5ft or 6ft apart, not close. And I mean, it was different.

Aaron Carter: That’s right. So when hunting skinnies, you’re playing the game of angles. Because you’ve got something that is paper thin, but you’ve got to make a profile as paper thin, look like it’s an actual object in the field from above. So on the ground you’re seeing a flat, you’re seeing a 2D object. But from up high you’re looking at a 2.5ft wide object. Whereas, up high, the birds are looking at a quarter inch object. So you’re playing the game of angles to where a bird can see part of your spread. So that leads into what we call raceways. If you get too many decoys turn the same way, they all disappear when they’re on top. There’s no angle to them, to where they can see something other than nothing. And it’s really easy to do with hunting skinnies, as you get out there and you’re setting up and you’re just setting decoys. But then you look out there and like we said, on the Instagram story, I said, see Ramsey, this is what I was talking about now, shining my light and it looked like there is a 5ft runway right there. That you could just run down, that we call a raceway. And up top, that bird’s going to see nothing, because they’re looking at a quarter inch. Whereas, we’re trying to look at 2.5ft of a decoy. But if you would have turned and moved those decoys, just a matter of a feet. So like, if you move 2ft one way, and the other 1ft the other way, you’ve now created density, is what I’m going to call it. You’ve created what they can see. Because you’re not casting shadows on another decoy or you’re moving from not seeing one, but you’re still seeing a decoy. And the raceways, once they all start lining up, they all look the same, so they disappear on them up top. All learned by trial and error. And it’s hard to correct that. But when you’re like running that amount spread that we did, which is, that’s a small spread. It’s really about position.

Ramsey Russell: And once we got out there, I listened to J. Bob tell Forest that, y’all running that name brand, The Skinnies yesterday. But y’all got a secret weapon. And sometimes you run-on old-school silhouette, mixed in with them or set up differently. And then sometimes you run full bodies, sometimes you run full bodies and skinnies and sometimes you run one of the other or both.

Aaron Carter: That’s right. So early season right now, I try not to throw the whole book at them because, I mean, I am having to compete with local guides roughly in the area, but not too many. Luckily, we’re kind of around a lot of clubs that are duck hunting clubs. So we’re lucky in that aspect. But if you throw it all out on it at first, they get smart to it. And I’ll be honest with you. We’ve been hunting since the end of October and it’s been a trial and error every year. It’s never the same. We’ve put out full bodies this year and they flared off of them. We’ve put out another brand of decoys, they flared off of them. So we’re just kind of going, I would say, flying by the seat of our pants. But I mean, it’s more so, we’re trying to figure out what works right now. And it might be in two weeks, it’ll be a whole different ball game.

Ramsey Russell: You just got it. You just got to read the birds don’t you?

Aaron Carter: That’s it. That’s where the whole learning your birds is what. That’s where that comes into play. That’s something, like I said, I’m no professional hunter and I’ll give myself some credit. Because it’s all self-learned. I taught myself how to blow a speck call, I taught myself how to blow a duck call. I’ve never had lessons. It’s just all been trial and error. But that’s what I give myself credit for the success that we have had, and that me and Jason have had, by killing our birds throughout the years of trial and error.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s the best part about, it’s not about the top of the mountain, it’s about to climb. You have to have to earn something like that, hunting over there the graylag birds, the graylag over in the Netherlands, especially. There’s no bag limits over Netherlands. They’re a big speck looking bird but they work straight down like snow geese and they’re in big flocks and they’ve got great eyesight. And there’s just days that you shoot a bunch of this days as goose hunting. But I’ve never left the blind with, I’m carrying making two trips to carry them out, or bringing just one out. That I didn’t feel like I earned it. I like earning stuff, I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. But I want to wrap up and talk about something else. You said I want to talk about this hunt yesterday because, Forest and I need to get on the road. We had about 8 or 9 hours ahead of us. And besides that, it was threatening rain. It was missed then and we were wet, but it was threatening real rain. Nobody’s weather app said the same thing about when it’s going to hit, but everybody said, always going to hit, the shit’s going to hit the fan this morning before lunch. So nobody seemed to agree win, but it was coming and you could tell it was coming. And those birds finally started moving around and coming off a little bit. The first couple of bunches ignored us, some other bunches stopped and give us high looks. And that one bunch, it’s a sizable bunch. I don’t know how many was in, I’m going to say 25-30.

Aaron Carter: Yeah, that’s probably about right.

Ramsey Russell: They passed out in front. They bent over to look and give us a high look. And of course, I’m looking straight ahead. I’m as low down that blind as I can get and I’m just cracking my eyes looking up on the bill of my cap, because they were disappearing out of my peripheral vision on the right-hand side, like they’re going to come back around us. And my eyes are hurting and stretching that farther right, when I saw them, all start flipping upside down like spectral dough dumping there. That’s when I reach for my gun and pulled that butt up into my shoulder pocket. I said, just fixing to happen. And then I’m now bending my eyes as far as the left I can, without moving my head. And when I see them this time, they are way lower and they’re still waffling maple leaf and just, pump, coming man. They are carrying on like a bunch of drunk coeds. I mean they are talking to each other and giggling and they get around, get in position and start. Now their eyeball level coming into the decoys from left to right. And they got right in front of the five of us, when you call the shots and buddy, they paid rent. They paid rent right quick. And those two little black labs, Stormy and Charles was busy. They got right in that sweet spot and paid for it dearly and that was. But you said something and I want to make sure I don’t misunderstand it. But you said Ramsey, that’s what we call chicken soup, how can we call?

Aaron Carter: Chicken soup. That’s correct

Ramsey Russell: Now how does that chicken soup come from?

Aaron Carter: So the first weekend of this season, me and J. Bob were hunting on our other farm, little bit west or a little bit east of where we were. And we’re always giving each other hell cutting back and forth and it’s just the good old nagging each other like buddies do. And it was slow. It was the second day and it was hot, it’s probably 75°. I told J. Bob, I said, man, we haven’t even had any chicken soup today even come take a look at us. You know, the chickens that come in there, which chickens, what we call a juvenile spec. There’s ones that just come in there and they’ll just usually give it up. They’re just loud and chattering like any kind of kid is. And they just give it up to you. They flip and flop in there next thing you know, they are feet down in the decoys, without you having to do a whole lot. And I said, we haven’t even had any chicken soup today. And he said, you know what? We hadn’t. And I said chicken soup. It’s like, when you’re sick and you don’t want to do anything or get off the couch or out of the bed and mama just serves it up to you. That way you don’t have to do anything, so you can feel better and it’s stuck. So any time the GV’s come into play its chicken soup. If they give it up, it’s chicken soup.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I mean, I like dumb birds. That’s my favorite bird, a dumb bird, young and dumb. We’re going to come in. He ain’t got a PhD yet. Just gives it up. Here I am, shoot me. I like that. Don’t we all?

Aaron Carter: That’s it. I’m not going to say that those birds we had to work too hard for it. But we had to give him a little bit, a few three merits, and quite a bit of clucking. But when they gave it up, they gave it up. And they paid for it.

Ramsey Russell: What’s the rest of your season looked like? What do you see happening? How to go, where you go from here to rest this season?

Aaron Carter: Rest the season here, hopefully we’re looking at a few more pushes of birds, to get more birds on the farm. It’s still bad early for us. We’re seeing a lot of birds. Hopefully, see more birds and start getting on.

Ramsey Russell: There’s more coming, I’m pretty sure of that. I would have said 10 years ago, all the specks were down. Here we are, practically December. I just said, the birds were down and I got a report today from Kankakee Marsh, Indiana. We’re up here Forest and I in Central Indiana right now and I got to report day from Indiana that we’ve been invited. There were birds, to no birds. So where else in Indiana, I got a note dated man. You should have seen the specs coming through this morning. Now they don’t shoot specs in a different habitat but they sometimes use specs but, wow, big wave of specs coming in with this front. Had a big wave of speck’s coming in this front.

Aaron Carter: The quarter of the birds we’ll see throughout the year. Kansas is holding a lot of specs, Northern Missouri is holding a lot of specs. I mean, just going off, kind of being since I’m the chairman of our Delta Waterfowl Chapter here in Tupelo, I talked to a few of those Delta guys up north and we kind of gauge off, they gauge off the numbers. But this year was a really good hatch for everybody or for every species of bird that would. Because they didn’t get frozen over, like they did last year.

Ramsey Russell: Canada geese had a good year.

Aaron Carter: So the hatch was a really good year, but there’s also not near as much pressure in Canada as times because of Covid. So there hasn’t been as much pressure to come south, as quick as they usually would. I had some buddy’s killing. They killed several limits suspects in North Dakota earlier this year, which usually, they don’t ever see. Specs have moved through before season even hits. So we’ve got higher hopes that, especially, come mid-December, is when we really see the big pushes down here, that we really start seeing bigger numbers. We’ve got good numbers now, as far as just regional. We’ve seen a lot of birds but we haven’t even seen half the snows that we’re going to see. There’s going to be a shit pile of snows this year as far as juveniles go. We don’t target, there’s a whole lot. But I mean, just for people who dig the snow goose hunting, it’s going to be a wild year as far as the goose season goes.

Ramsey Russell: Well, Aaron, I sure hope you all do good and I thank you very much for y’all hospitality. It was a wham bam, thank you ma’am visit. But we had a wonderful time. And you know that was our little char dogs all first specs too. That really, was her first specs to pick up. And she liked it, I liked it. We all had a great time.

Aaron Carter: I’m glad you’ll enjoyed it. It was a quick in and out, and I know that. And we didn’t get as much time as we’d like to socialize. But hey, I’m glad you all came up and enjoyed your visit. And hope to have you back soon. You’ll come back.

Ramsey Russell: We were there for Pollard’s wife, homemade cinnamon rolls. Now look, I wouldn’t let him come back, without a Pantone cinnamon rolls.

Aaron Carter: Well, fortunately I get to have those at work every now and then. So yeah, I told everybody, they’d be in for a treat whenever he came up. He gets to hunt maybe once or twice a year. And we gave him the name of trigger puller. For lack thereof, Saturday morning. So we gave him the name of trigger puller. He had a single come in the spread. I’m talking about 15 yards in front of him. He pops up out of his blind and he couldn’t pull the trigger.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, that hurts. Aaron, thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you all, for being here. And folks, thank you all for listening. Chicken soup. Man, it’s kind of like, when your mama brings something, you’re having a bad day. And if she brings, does it not make you feel better? Man, with him, young dumb birds coming to decoy, don’t we all feel better? And I hope, all being served up a lot of chicken soup this duck season. Thank you all for listening. We’ll see you next time. Duck Season Somewhere.