EP 416. A Radical Sabbatical Lifestyle

 

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojos Duck Season Somewhere podcast. Today in the remote studio, I got my buddy, Isaiah Bateel. Did I say your last name right? Isaiah?

Isaiah Bateel: Yes, you did.

Ramsey Russell: Last time I saw my buddy Isaiah, we were down in Obregon, Mexico, and he was checking off species and collecting birds, and not only did he get a blue wing and a cinnamon teal, he got a blue wing cinnamon teal hybrid, I believe. You got that bird mounted, didn’t you, Isaiah?

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah, I did. He’s actually between a mature blue wing Drake and a mature cinnamon drake, kind of in a flying pose. It turned out pretty good.

Pass Shooting a Unicorn

Cinnamon blue wing teal hybrid.

Ramsey Russell: You know what I remember most about that bird is they had a little old Mexican labrador, one of their bird boys, and we were pass shooting to get those cinnamon teal, and I don’t know. I can’t remember who. Me and you and somebody else, and a lot of them came by, Bam! They ran the gauntlet and I want to say we dropped a half dozen or so birds, and one or two of them fell kind of on the top bank across over there up in some cacti. After five or ten minutes of some of the boys beating the bushes. They couldn’t find one of the ducks that fell, and we knew it was in there, and so we kind of drove ahead, and the one youngster said no. He waited. He was determined to find that bird and we had gone to the next stop to jump some more birds when he come running up, panting, and held that bird up, and I bout swallowed my dip. It was both beautiful, and it wasn’t just a hybrid. It was a spectacular, adult, beautiful hybrid. Cinnamon blue wing teal hybrid.

Isaiah Bateel: I remember he looked at that bird with amazement. I remember the one english word he said to me was unicorn.

Ramsey Russell: Unicorn. That’s right, and the bad thing is, there was zero doubt who had shot that bird. So it ain’t like a band where you say, well, I shot at him, too. Let’s flip for it, no. I knew for a fact I had not shot at that bird. It just because of the way they fail but that was a heck of it, really was a unicorn bird of a lifetime, wasn’t it? Are you still a waterfowl collector? Because, the group that was there then, that time, that place, and to this day, that hunt attracts a lot of guys that want to come to Mexico and get their hands on beautiful, mountable North American species for their collection. Are you still collecting?

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah, I think probably I’ve transitioned more into collecting rich life experiences as I’ve grown and matured as a person and as an outdoorsman. I grew up in Michigan, and back in 2015, I was living in Michigan still, and, boy, what a blessing and privilege to be from Michigan. I’ve since moved to Alaska, and it’s amazing people that haven’t been to Michigan, just how under sold Michigan is as a place to be a sportsman. I think the biggest difference I’ve noticed between Michigan and anywhere else I’ve been, I’ve been all 50 states and I’ve traveled the world quite a bit, is there is something to do for a sportsman 365 days a year. January through December, we have world class something. Well, to me, it was world class just every month of the year. So when I was growing up, the group in a farming community I went to school, and actually, my love and my passion for the outdoors really actually shaped my decision to pursue nursing as a degree, and honestly, I’m a pretty decent people person. I always thought medicine was interesting. I struggled to know what I wanted to do for the next 30 years of my life. I didn’t have a TV growing up, so I was always outdoors. I was always reading books and there were so many things that appealed to me. In terms of maybe two or three years, I could go be a commercial fisherman for a couple years. I could go be a cowboy for a couple years. I could go be a railroad engineer for a couple years, but I don’t know, what of those good options would I want to lock myself into for 30 years because that’s a long time to be in a classroom teaching different groups of kids for the rest of my life. I wasn’t all about that life. There was a milkman who came to me when I was working a Sunday afternoon milking cows, and he told me something I never forgot. He said, you want to get a job? That’s an interruption to your life, and I said, what good advice that is because once I realized that nursing, you could do so many things with nursing, 3-12 hours shifts sounded like the best deal since sliced bread with butter on it. That’d be perfect. I could get my shifts together, and then I could spend my other four days a week pursuing my passions, hunting, fishing, trapping, et cetera. I did that for quite a while, until, I think, I was staff for 4 years or 5 years, and I started travel nursing because I was like, well, if I could do really well as a travel nurse now, I could work 3 days a week for 6 months out of the year, and then I could international travel and take all hunting season off and immerse myself into my passions, and that’s exactly what I did. So that’s how I ended up going to Europe 3 times for extended periods of time and went and backpacked New Zealand for a month and a half. Live fishing and it was incredible. I’m just so thankful to be from a family that supported my passions, and I’ve always been an aesthetically pleasing type of a guy, and I think that’s how I got onto, fishing, especially the trout fishing and, the collecting fowl kind of thing. There’s something about holding a beautiful trout in my hand or holding a beautiful bird in my hand, and I can’t help but, glory the creator that made it, because it’s just incredibly beautiful. Some of these birds that you and I have shot, Ramsey, or some of these fish that we’ve caught too, they’re wild things, and wild places has always just greatly pulled at something deep within me. I think I’m probably truly wild at heart and that’s how I ended up moving to Alaska 4 years ago, and I never left. It’s made me unfit to live anywhere else.

Ramsey Russell: You talk about Michigan being a sportsman’s paradise of sorts, and it really doesn’t jump out as one, except for the fact now that after 20 years of answering the phone to a lot of duck hunters, there are a lot of waterfowl hunters up there in Michigan. I’ve got a buddy up there, Connor Golf.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah, I know Connor.

Ramsey Russell: That has got some of the most amazing Canada goose hunting I’ve ever seen.

Isaiah Bateel: And that.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a part of the world that kids cut their teeth on, Canada goose calls. There is some duck hunting up there. What are some of the other hunting? A lot of hardcore duck hunters I know are in Michigan, man. There must be a lot of ducks and waterfowl up there.

A Land for Outdoorsmen 

We got the best woodcock hunting in the country, second and ruffle grouse mouth years for harvest. Those would probably be the two big.

Isaiah Bateel: It was explained to me once, is this, Michigan was one of the states that really appealed to people that were trying to sell hunts. I think how Michigan came to be such a prominent producer of outdoorsmen; it’d make you laugh. There’s a direct pipeline from Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, up here to Alaska. So Michigan was really made by the big three- GM, Ford, Chrysler. Because people like maybe my parents age, or perhaps your age, Ramsey, back then, they could come out of high school for high school diploma. They could go right to one of the big three and they can make very, very competitive salaries.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Isaiah Bateel: Michigan people that haven’t been there don’t realize how big the Great Lakes are. The Great Lakes are, for all extensive purposes, like miniature oceans. They’re massive and that’s what’s really established Michigan as just such an amazing sportsman’s paradise, is the amount of Great Lakes. We’re second only Minnesota for 10,000 plus inland lakes as well. Blue ribbon trout streams got the 9s. We got the best woodcock hunting in the country, second and ruffle grouse mouth years for harvest. Those would probably be the two big.

Ramsey Russell: What would be the top for rough?

Isaiah Bateel: I think we trade with Maine or Minnesota. I forget which one.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s mostly up in the-

Isaiah Bateel: Northern, lower up, and then I actually ended up finding good hunting even where I grew up in the thumb. But that’s kind of where I got in the water fountain, is the saginaw base can considered the Chesapeake Bay of the Midwest. Fantastic duck hunting there. I am excited. I’m going back in November to kill red lakers out of Canada. Those November mallards, that second big, right on the ice line, pusher Mallards, that’s my game. We shoot so many black ducks in Michigan, like we get tons of blacks. I couldn’t tell you how many mallard black hybrids I’ve encountered over the years. I don’t even know. I got a stud mounted and then I never mounted another one. It’s not really all that rare, but as far as, speaking to your question, yeah phenomenal ice fishing opportunities. Saginaw Bay was real close, 25, 30 minutes away. Great walleye fishing. Caught some huge northern pike perch fishing, world class smallmouth bass fishing, world class muskie fishing, great trout fishing up north. I grinded my teeth steelhead fishing, salmon fishing in the northwest, lower, some of those rivers over there. Betsy River, Boardman River, big Manistee, pure Marquette. Just fantastic and I think as our love as sportsmen grow for the salmon and the steelhead and in different trout species, there’s a natural progression for a lot of us to yearn to go to Alaska to see where they came from, because none of those fish are native to the Great Lakes. They’ve all been brought in from the Pacific Northwest, and they’ve acclimated really well. A lot of people don’t realize that when the state of Michigan decided to bring in salmon, it was to combat an Alewife problem, which was an evasive species that was basically dying and getting washed up on our beautiful white sand beaches that are comparable to Florida as far as swimming and just white table sand, nice granular sand, just beautiful water. They had contemplated bringing in stripers or bringing in salmon, and they elected to bring in salmon, and it turned into a multi billion dollar fishing industry. They’ve really done really well.

Ramsey Russell: So where in Michigan did you grow up?

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What your hunting, fishing background entail?

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah, I grew up in the thumb of Michigan. I shot my first goose, I could take you to the field, when I was 13 years old, or was I 15. I started hunting fish when I was 13. Shot my first deer when I was 13. Shot my first goose when I was 15. The same guys that took me out goose hunting, they took me that opening day to a little swamp and I saw so many wood ducks in those first 20 minutes, I think we were limited out in no time at all. I was hooked. I had deer hunted for a couple years, but I was hooked line and sinker, like this is the coolest thing I think I’ve ever done and from there I think I tried to do it all. It was really hard to balance white tail hunting with good duck hunting with – we have decent pheasant hunting too. I actually turned into a conservation list, probably started in my high school years. My aunt just sent me a picture of an apple tree I planted years ago. She sent me a picture today fully loaded with fruit. I was so proud. I was like, I planted that tree. It’s a snow apple tree. Just loaded load of fruit. I got to think, sit down and remember what year I planted that thing. It’s been years ago. I plant so many trees now. I love the conservation side. I’m going to have a pheasant band, mom and dads that I’ve spent the last ten years. It’s been in CRP the last ten years, but I developed it about a decade ago and there’s a viable ringneck pheasant population back there. We have fantastic deer hunting back there. I see fox, coyote back there and it used to be an agricultural field. I’ve planted shrubs and planted different warm season grasses and I’ve got mallards nesting the creek now. I think I love that every bit as much as hunting. I like wild things and wild places.

Ramsey Russell: Sure.

Isaiah Bateel: Kind of what drives me.

Ramsey Russell: It’s getting hard to find truly wild places. It really truly is. Where all have you lived? You’ve been in Alaska for four years, but you’ve jumped around quite a bit. When you were a travel nurse, where are some of the places you went and why did you go there?

Isaiah Bateel: Sure, I spent a summer in Boston, travel nursing, fantastic striper fishing that summer. I got a good friend lives out there. He’s an avid angler. He didn’t really get into the hunting. He just focused on fishing and he’s collected far more species than I have fishing wise. But that was kind of his thing. He was in the collecting species. He’d go to Florida multiple times a year and we caught some amazing stripers. That was a fun summer. We ate good seafood, caught some blue fish, caught some false albacore in September. That was a lot of fun. I went to Nevada one winter and worked, and that was cool because that was so centrally located to just so much. I think there’s like 14 or 15 national parks within like 8 hours of Las Vegas, and I did not spend any more time in Vegas than I had to, but I checked off just about every national park and state park up in driving distance there. I’ve hiked them all, seen southern Utah and just done a lot there. I did some duck hunting in California one winter when I was working out that way. That was pretty cool. Got some nice pintails and some specs and just typical of, Central Valley, Cali. Where else have I worked? Worked in Michigan a bit, and then I came up to Alaska and I worked all over Alaska for two or three years. I’ve been to the southeast Alaska, up and down to the Kenai peninsula. I’ve been here in Anchorage working before. I’ve traveled all 50 states, hunted and fished through Canada. I remember one time I drove up to Alaska just to check it out. I took a radical sabbatical. I think I spent a radical sabbatical. I highly recommend it. I spent three weeks driving through the US and two weeks to come back to Canada. I was harvesting beans with some friends I made in Manitoba. We did some elk hunting in British Columbia. I don’t know, I did it all, it was great. It was awesome. I highly recommend, because I think, you and I would both agree at this point in our lives, time is our most valuable asset that we have. Money will continually compound. Time always will become less and less and when we work, we’re literally exchanging today for tomorrow, and nobody’s promised tomorrow. So there has to be a little bit of balance there as far as this work life balance, because I’ve met people that have worked their whole life looking forward to retirement, and they’re a year off from retiring and they get a cancer diagnosis and it just makes you sick, right? So there’s got to be a healthy balance of work life. Finding that balance can be hard sometimes, because obviously, guys like you ride, we tend to stray more towards the 60 day duck season means you hunt all 60.

A Serious Duck Collector

Ramsey Russell: Well, life short, get ducks. I told somebody last year, I was up in Saskatchewan and somebody said, tell him where are you going after this? Well, I’m going here and here and doing this. Just ran on like I do, and he said, are you dying of cancer? I said, kind of. I’m not promised tomorrow, but I’m going to strike while the iron’s hot. Guess what? It gets good. There’s a lot of world out there. There’s a lot of stuff in the United States I still want to do. There’s a lot of stuff in Canada and around the world I still want to do that doesn’t involve just duck hunting, but a lot of it does involve duck hunting. Speaking of ducks, you were in that serious collector mode last time I saw you. How many of the 41 or whatever have you collected?

Isaiah Bateel: I think I’m just missing a couple. I know I’m missing a swan, and I think I’m missing a couple from Florida. I think I’m missing the fulvous and the Florida Mottled because we got those Mexican mallards in 15 and Obregon with you, but, yeah, I’ve never got a Florida Mottled.

Ramsey Russell: You were telling me one time that you’re missing some of the 41, but you have a lot of the 58, I count-

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah. I got some gorgeous Pacific eiders out in Adak, I got my emperor when I become a resident, obviously. What else have I got that’s been interesting. Because there’s so many different subclasses, like the thing the 41 is, it doesn’t break down the difference between, like, a common Atlantic eider as opposed to a Pacific eider. Are they Borealis? Is that what I’m thinking of up, in Greenland?

Ramsey Russell: Well, and another thing about just the standard up 41, I think the 41, and I certainly can’t come up with a better, more concise list than that. Except for the fact, the thing that irks me is when you put blue goose on there, because a blue goose is not a standalone species. It’s a color morph of a snow goose, but there is a greater snow goose on the Atlantic flyway that is 30% bigger and totally different. On the one hand, you’ve got the color phases, the black Brant, the Atlantic Brant, gray-bellied and dark-bellied, got that backwards, but at the same time, they are species they’re subspecies and I don’t understand collecting color morphs. I’ve seen list of 41 that put a sandhill crane on there. Well, God damn, if I’m going to shoot a sandhill crane, why not shoot a coot? Why not throw a coot on there? Or a clapper rail? I don’t understand it.

Isaiah Bateel: I think I first realized it in college. I was backpacking through Europe a couple summers on trains and just living out of my bag. I think that’s where I first realized that initially, I had been traveling the places to see them and I realized that it was the people that I was missing when I left, and it was the people I remembered, and it was the people that I was actually most wanting to go back and visit. I think it was a valuable lesson to learn at a fairly young age, because even speaking to what we’re talking about right now, at some point, I think I’ve transitioned over from, oh, I got to collect these different species to no, I would just assume share a duck blind with good people that I care about and watch good dog and, you had once said it best, and I never forgot it. Hey, Ramsey, what’s your favorite duck? You had said the next one that comes in the decoys. I definitely could echo that because it’s actually been about the people the whole time, and I didn’t realize it right away.

Ramsey Russell: That’s why I’m so excited.

Isaiah Bateel: To go back to Michigan. It’s the guys I’m hunting with more than the birds. The birds don’t even have to fly. We’re pretty decent hunters, so I fully anticipate heavy straps. I don’t really have any concerns. But it’s the guys. It’s the brotherhood. It’s the guys spend time in the blind of them and just know that every year is one year less that we’ll have to do that going forward. It’s a bit of joy with sadness. I was even texting a buddy of mine earlier today, and we were just sharing how you never really realize you’re in the good old days until you’re not maybe in them. Just how much less we hunt and fish now, having grown and, I have a little daughter and there was times there when I was single in my 20s, and I was hunting or fishing 3 to 4 days a week, hands down. That’s what I did year-round. It was just nonstop pursuit, wore my waiters out in two years. It’s pretty much like a guide, but for myself.

Ramsey Russell: So do you mount a lot of your birds?

Isaiah Bateel: I used to. I think I’m starting to go more towards getting good photos on metal and maybe I’m like a collage on a wall or something.

A Collector’s Favorite Place to Duck Hunt

I really enjoy crawling off into a duck blind with new and interesting people and seeing their take on duck hunting. 

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I still mount a few. I’ve got a lot of stuff, ducks but, I realized one day just walking around, because, for example, nothing in the universe collects dust like a stuffed duck. So it takes a little maintenance, I’m saying it takes a little work to dust a lot of birds and clean a lot of birds, but people come in and just say, what is that? Or, where’d you get that? Or what about this? What about that? Pointing stuff on the wall sometimes. It’s funny how when I start telling stories about those ducks, it always ends up being about the people I was with or the foreigners. It’s almost always like that. If that bird represents a ‘trophy’ for an experience, a placeholder, a token holder, it’s more about the people than the ducks. I get asked another question, where’s your favorite place to hunt? It’s the next one and it doesn’t necessarily have to be some far flung country out in the middle of nowhere. It can be the next stop in Canada or Mississippi or anywhere. I really enjoy crawling off into a duck blind with new and interesting people and seeing their take on duck hunting. Just that a lot of us don’t see. I just really appreciate that.

Isaiah Bateel: I think that’s why I like duck hunting and fishing so much. There’s that social aspect to it, which I really like. I think I get so much more out of it and then maybe a little bit to the sense of like, obviously big game takes a lot of patience and discipline. Maybe you’re hunting ten days straight really hard for, one really good shot of dopamine, one really good high, whereas fishing and duck hunting, I feel like you’re getting those shots right through the entire experience again and again. Maybe I’m a junkie, I don’t know, but at least that’s my drug of choice, watching birds work over decoys or hooking big fish on the end of my fly line.

Ramsey Russell: I’m taking an intermission from Canada right now to record. While we’re recording, I’m home for a week. Came home for an emergency, but a lot of snow geese up in Canada this time of year, and I like shooting giant canadas. I love shooting ducks in the dry fields, but I’ve just really got this thing for snow geese. I find myself when it’s good, and when its good it’s really good. I find myself about every other player to not even reaching for my gun but holding up my iphone. It’s when those birds are peeling off and coming at you or coming through the decoys and dumping air, rolling on their backs and just dropping and strafe the decoy and you can kill them that first time, but you dare not because they’re going to loop around, work back in and bring more buddies with them a lot of times. It’s just the spectacle. There may be greater bag limits elsewhere on earth, but there’s so few places on earth you can sit under 10 or 20 or 30,000 birds fly by tonight like Canada snow geese. Don’t get me wrong, I pull the trigger plenty, but I enjoy the sheer spectacle. I called a snow goose noble one time, and the lady said, what do you mean, noble? I said, well, I just don’t think any other species on earth really embodies that wildness that we talk about all the time. They come clear off the arctic, they get shot for 9½, 10 months a year, and yet they persist, they prevail.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: They’re just an amazing bird to hunt. They’ll screw you in a heartbeat, and they’ll, throw a monkey wrench in your plans, if they can. When it comes together and you get to pull the trigger and see it, even when it comes together, even in the best, most fast and furious. , the hunters wind, today, I find myself picking up my phone, or sometimes just watching-

Isaiah Bateel: I think I would dream about those vortexes and tornadoes too. I just recently lost my British Labrador. He was 12. He had aggressive bone cancer and I lost him on my 34th birthday this past July, and we had the good fortune. We made 5, if not 6 trips hunting birds in north and South Dakota. I’ll never forget the one trip it was just him and I and we were literally sleeping in the back of my Subaru outback, and we had 3 or 4 days, which is fantastic, hunting. Then overnight, it went from fall to winter. We lost all of our open water. Woke up, there was snow on the ground. It was crazy, and we had a couple ice hole hunts. I’ll never forget, just him and I had to work to get to them. I got one picture. I could share it with you. You would love it. It should be a metal. There was a ringneck pheasant, and then just different species, a big Drake mallard, Drake Pintail, Drake Green-winged Teal, Drake blue bill, I forget what else. You couldn’t draw it up any better, and I’ll never forget my dog, Samson, retrieving those birds, bringing them back to me. Another time we were out there and we had a farmer who had the field. I’d met him, actually, on a plane ride to Israel, found out he’s from North Dakota. You happen to know any farmers out there that would let me duck hunt? He’s like, sure, you want my number? I’m like, of course you farm like you have no oil. What else are you doing? Of course you farm. Kept in contact with him, went back a few times on his farms. He had the cornfield. I’m convinced every mallard within 15 miles was using that cornfield. They were in line waiting to get in there. It shot limits for, I don’t know, it must have been, I think he told us, 17 or 18 days in a row it shot limits. It was a pillow factory. Obviously, we didn’t get for that many hunts. I think we had 3 or 4 just bangers. There was a band, Mallards pintails, just everything, but what I remember most is this afternoon when there was just light snow flurries coming down and it’s just a continual vortex of mallards from the heavens, and we would shoot into them and they would just lift up and then they would just try to descend again.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Isaiah Bateel: I’ll never forget it. It was almost spiritual. I don’t even care about the birds at the ground. We shoot all drake everything, day after day. That’s not what I remember. I remember being in that vortex. I remember just the snow coming down of two good friends and just, I can’t believe this is happening right now. This is what dreams are made of, right.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. What did-

Isaiah Bateel: To give a little background to that, he had lost all of his crop, so he went to harvest it and they got dumped on the snow, and then the next spring he tried to get in there and harvest it and it rained a ton and it blew. So, he ended up calling insurance on it, so he ended up tilling into the ground 200 bushels an acre corn.

Ramsey Russell: Golly

Isaiah Bateel: Give you an idea why it was the x. That was why it was the X.

Ramsey Russell: Plenty of feed.

Isaiah Bateel: Oh, so much feed. A baited field. Obviously it was legit because the COs were hunting it after we were done with it. I’ll never see that again. Like a baited feed, 200-bushel acre corn and every duck in that whole region knew that was the feed.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve come to know you a lot as a fisherman. You’ve talked a little bit about fishing so far, but where are some of the places you’ve traveled to fish? Specifically to fish?

Isaiah Bateel: I think that probably plays into, that Michigan boy and me. We probably had better opportunities overall throughout the year, angling over hunting, and I got a couple friends that are really fishy guys and we’ve kind of reached that conclusion. If we had to pick one or the other, we probably would be anglers that love to hunt, mainly from the fact that it would give us something to do for a greater duration throughout the year as opposed to just, the fall months. I fished all over Michigan, probably caught just about every fish in Michigan there is and that’s a lot because there’s a place in Michigan called Traverse City. I was once told within 30 miles of traverse city, you can catch every species of freshwater fish that would live anywhere in the entire Midwest region, if not the US. I want to be reluctant to say that, because obviously there’s going to be some trout this year in Nevada’s and stuff they won’t have. So I think it was mainly like east of the Mississippi, you could say, but very diverse fishery. So with that being said, I fished in Canada multiple occasions, big, small mouth. I did a trip for brook trout once up on the Sutton river. That was really cool. That was a 100 mile float trip over, was it 12 days we did. We rented canoes from some natives up there. They were carrying AK 47s for polar bear protection and then we flew in even further with the canoe and floated and ended up on the shores of the Hudson Bay. It was really cool. I saw a polar bear. We caught 600 and something brook trout. Most of them were on top, water dries, fish and mice imitations. I got some massive world class brook trout. It was neat too, as a waterfowler, like, you could see where a lot of our canvas that you had mentioned we get in Michigan, they’re totally raised up there. They’re born and raised, and it made sense why when we get the migrators or we get the molts, they’re not scared like the locals are. They’ll decoy right into a fence line, or they’ll decoy right into to like a wood lot, because that’s kind of what it is up there. They’re on a river and there’s trees that go right to the river and a wolf grabs them. Like, the Michigan birds are all in golf course ponds, gravel pits, they can kind of see what’s going on. Up there they don’t have that luxury. It’s way different. That was really cool to see just the amount of birds up there. These are our birds, like when we shoot bands from anywhere up in the Hudson Bay area, we always call them apa wapa skechers because they’re typically native village places that we can’t pronounce the name for. Yeah, so that’s been the default term.

Banded Geese in Surprising Places

 I was up there where he was banded, and he just came to my backyard.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of boys I know call them Churchills, because they come up from Churchill, Manitoba, up in that part of the world

Isaiah Bateel: I just thought of this. This is a really cool story. So that year that I went up and fished those big brook trail in September, there was a little village up there, Pawanik. It was an indian community where some of the natives that helped orchestrate our trip and kind of make the logistics of our trip possible. They were from this village Pawanik. I came back to Michigan and I hunted that fall extensively. November 12 of that year, we had a cornfield that year behind my mom and dad’s and we put out decoys. There’s birds using it and called in a bunch of buddies. There’s 5 or 6 of us, and we put out decoys. We’re talking 150 yards from our house, maybe set up and spread right in my backyard, right where I grew up, probably as a kid, was playing in that mud hole in that field in whitey tighties. Obviously, it was a great hunt. It was perfect November. A little bit of wind, a little bit snow. The geese just read the script in our face. Shot a band, punched in the numbers, Pawanika, Ontario. What’s the chance I saw that goose two months ago up there. It could have happened. I was up there where he was banded, and he just came to my backyard. I thought that was crazy.

Ramsey Russell: He might have just followed you home.

Isaiah Bateel: He followed me home.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Isn’t that something?

Isaiah Bateel: It was incredible. That was so neat. I just thought of that. That was really cool. Duncan, fishing in Mexico. Rooster fish on top water. We were throwing poppers. We were using air tackle. So we were throwing conventional tackle. That was not Veracruz, but it was Tehuantepec, almost to Central America. Like, just above Guatemala. Way south, Old Mexico. You would have loved it. Little pangas, we caught sailfish as big as our boats. I remember one time, real distinctly, we’re out there and literally, I saw four or five sailfish, their dorsal fins corralling bait fish, just breaking. It was so calm. There’s no wind, and they’re just kind of swimming, doing sailfish stuff. Rounding up bait fish to feed on. Caught some Dorado. That was an incredible trip. That was really cool. Did some fishing in the UK, Scotland. Did some fishing in the highlands.

Ramsey Russell: What did you catch over there? Trout?

Isaiah Bateel: Yep. Caught some trout there. I think there was some version of cod in Northern Ireland. Took a little rowboat out on my 23rd birthday, actually, of all things, Northern Ireland.

Ramsey Russell: Don’t a lot of people go over there to catch salmon, some kind of salmon.

Isaiah Bateel: Perhaps. Atlantic salmon is pretty popular on that side. They’re pretty cool. I caught those in Michigan, in the Sioux. Yeah, on little flies and stuff. But that was neat. Did some, did a lot of fly fish in New Zealand, both South and North Islands. That was cool. I just was over there for like a month and a half and, I’ve caught some massive trout and just have some great memories of just world class browns. And I lost a massive rainbow over there, too, on the North island. But I remember one time-

Ramsey Russell: There’s always the one that got away.

Isaiah Bateel: It always is. Fortunately, I caught that fish. I shared that picture with you a couple weeks ago, my daughter. I finally caught up to my rainbow, and it’d be a 17 pound, 29 by 22 inch mammoth Mondo.

Ramsey Russell: What’d you catch him on?

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah, September. Typical fish and beads behind spawning sockeyes in the middle river, huge fish. I’ve been after that fish a long time. It was perfect. Couldn’t draw up any better. But I remember one time I was in New Zealand, and I’ve been chasing trout really hard by myself, solo trip. I’ll never forget it. I wasn’t keeping track of time because I was camping in my car, camping in my tent, had some food, like no cares in the world and I had had a tough morning finding trout in this one stretch of river , and I was walking back up to this big pasture. There might have been some cows in there, I think, maybe some sheep. Probably more than likely sheep. I was like, what a beautiful, sunny midday to take a nap. I think I’m just going to, like, lay down in this green grass here and take a nap. And I did just that. And I remember a pair of paradise shell ducks came in. They landed not too far from me. It was like utopia or something, it was like a place that I didn’t think existed in real life. It was so neat. It’s hard to put that in the words, what that felt. No cares in the world, no stress. Just like, wonder where I’m going to catch my next trout at. Well, I’ll just take a nap first and enjoy the sunshine. Not even sure where in New Zealand I am right now, but that doesn’t matter. I know where my vehicle is.

Ramsey Russell: When I think of serious trout fishing, that sounds like what you are. A lot of the fish you’ve chased around the world are trout with, I’m assuming, a fly rod.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: When I think of serious fly fishermen, and it’s like this art of the cast ethos. I can remember being in Montana, we were actually bicycling. We stopped one morning, I was drinking a cup of coffee and watching, it was a big resort upon across the river, and people walking down and getting into water fishing and it’s just watching how serious they were. I wonder if they even going to catch anything. I watched them for 15 or 20 minutes, and I finished my coffee, and I didn’t see a fish get caught at all, but I sensed that it didn’t really matter. They were just, stripping line and loading up. You can see that line just arcing gracefully behind in front of them, and then they let it go and zip out, and they’d watch it and they’d mend it a little bit, kind of flip the line ahead of itself or behind itself, whichever, and then pull it in and start again. I had a couple of serious fly fishermen down in Argentina this year. We were out catching, because, heads up, I like to fish, first and foremost, to make grease pop. I like to eat fish. We were out there catching golden dorado, and we were using live bait and bait catchers and whatnot, and these two fly fishermen that joined us brought their gear and brought their streamers. They had made some and bought some and figured it out, and they didn’t care. They weren’t after a lot of fish. They wanted one fish-

Isaiah Bateel: The right way.

All About the Catch

When you’re out there, how much of that experience is about fishing and how much of that experience is about catching?

Ramsey Russell: They wanted one fish, and after they caught that fish, they wanted the next fish. And they would sit there and cast and mend and swap baits and do things. They were using streamers, and so as I watched them, they finally get it out to where they wanted it and then start pulling the line and pulling the streamer with it and when they fell one on, wham! It was so interesting just watching them fish, this process, this art of the cast mentality. I find myself, and I think I’m not the only one. I think a lot of old geezerdom type duck hunters that have, whether it’s 4 or 7 or 8 or 10 phases and stages people, sportsmen go through. However you number it, there really is a gradient, a progression, and I find myself, really, the art of the hunt. Don’t get me wrong, I like to pull the trigger, but shooting and shooting well and making shots, is part of that art, and I really appreciate that part of it. What is it for you when you go out fishing and you’re knee deep in remote stream with paradise shell ducks landing nearby or bears walking up ahead? What part of world you’re in? When you’re out there, how much of that experience is about fishing and how much of that experience is about catching?

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah. Great question. There’s a progression, for sure. I would say, first and foremost, I’m not a purist. I like catching fish. I’m like you, but I do care how I catch fish. We might jokingly call them dry fly snobs. They literally only fish dry. That’s not me. I don’t mind dredging the bottom of a midge. I want to catch fish. I have fun when I catch fish. Even up here a lot of times, if it’s tough fishing, I’m going to fish the most effective way possible because, I have a hard time frowning when I’m fighting a trophy steelhead. I’m smiling like I just won the lottery, but to your point, for me it was a bit of that progression where I think it got a little bit too easy to catch them conventionally because I knew I could go with, like, my spin rod and throw Rapala and, catch tons and tons of trout. No issues, no question. So I think to your point exactly, there’s something about fly fishing where whether or not the fish cooperate, there’s a great sense of accomplishment, and it feels really good to perfectly execute a cast and then to go from perfectly executing a cast to perfectly executing a drift. When you do that every time, it’s just a wonderful feeling. You’re like, got that, well, look at that cast, well done. I even learned, a new technique. I’m trying to learn how to spade fish. I got some friends that are spade fishermen, so they’re throwing-

Ramsey Russell: What is a spade fisherman?

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah. It was born on the west coast. We don’t really have big enough rivers in Michigan to do spade, but they call it two handed rods. They’re bigger rods, and generally they have longer, different types of fly line. It’s an art form even different than fly fishing, but you have the ability to cast a fly, typically a bigger fly. You’re thinking like a big, gaudy streamer for salmon or steelhead. Pretty popular up here, too. You might be able to throw that 70, 80 yards if you’re proficient, which is incredible, like the distance. So those big rivers, like in the Skeena, BC and some of the bigger up here, those guys, I want to learn how to do that because I’m fascinated with that. I think that’s so cool, and then the progression even of, I’m not afraid the fish beads for trout in September. I love catching fish, but I see the progression when I’ve been able to fish streamers and then I feel the grab. I can see how people progress from not wanting to fish beads again. So it’s like, I’m tired of watching striking the caters get dunked. I want to fish them when I can swing from in October or I can swing from in March, April, and actually feel that fish grab. I could take it back to my Michigan days where basically, if I was going to bass fish, I wanted to catch them on top water. If I’m going to fish for cohos of a fly right up here, I want to catch them on top water. So that’s to your point of that progression of, it’s more important to me maybe how I catch the fish than catching a bunch of fish, because I got so many memories and so many pictures of piles of fish. I don’t need to catch more fish unless my freezer is empty. Then I’m going to, catch a bunch of salmon. We fish for trout. We eat salmon. But if I’m going to do something fun with guys that are passionate about fishing, then let’s fly out west and let’s go target silver salmon, throwing pink polly logs, stripping surface flies, because that’s how I want to catch that fish. That’s the way.

Ramsey Russell: I get it. I guess the only real trout fishing I ever did was back in college days. I’d go out to Colorado and hike and climb up a few 14 or just me and my dogs.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Just get off. It don’t take long, especially when it’s not hunting season to get into wilderness, so to speak. Off you go, and I would skimp on weight by packing a little bit of dry food, but mostly had this little ultralight and had a little bubble that had a little selection of flies and woolly boogers. I never forget one time up on this one particular place I was fishing, which wasn’t really wilderness. It wasn’t a 5 or 6-mile hike off the road. It was just a quarter mile off the road. I was fishing because it was getting dark. I needed to catch supper, and a couple of Orvis models walked by, older Orvis models. They looked like they stepped right off the pages of the catalog with their fancy rods and reels, and I didn’t see them catch anything, and they walked by when I was putting one of my fish on, I’d cut a little willow fork and put them on there, kind of run them through the gills and leave them in the water, stay cool and they said, us real fishermen, it’s catch and release, son. It’s a catch and release sport. I said, yes sir, I get that, but I’m hungry, and my dog gets too. So I’m catching enough for me to eat, and I’m going to fry some up, and I don’t like store bought trout. I don’t like trout, really, at all. The only time I like to eat trout and will eat trout is when you take them out of the water, gut them, put them in a pan, boom, peel the skin. Fresh, right out of the water into the pan, peel the skin off lemon and butter, and there you go. That’s how I like to eat them. I would feed myself on those and live on those fish and loved it. We’re talking tiny fish now. We’re talking about the size of a cohiba cigar, maybe two or three fingers wide, a little brook trout. That was my crowd experience.

Isaiah Bateel: Trout live in beautiful places. I think that’s part of the appeal. I’ve been-

Ramsey Russell: They do live in beauty places.

Isaiah Bateel: Wild things and wild places are always been really near and dear to my heart. If you’re going to pursue trout, you’re going to go to some beautiful places, and I think that’s really special. In addition to what we mentioned about just, recognizing what hatch is going on, the understanding of the different bugs or different caddisflies. It’s almost a little bit in line with, effective trappers. They really get it. They understand. They can read, sign, and similarly to a good trout, which I don’t profess to be one, and concerns of, reading different hatches and stuff as far as bugs, but that’s really an art form in and of itself. This, this kind of type of caddice is going off right now or this type of mayflies going off right now and matching that hatch, that’s really cool, too. That’s kind of neat. So there’s a whole lot of different aspects of fly fishing for trout that really appeal to people. I generally don’t eat trout no more, but, I’m spoiled living in Alaska. We did a fish wheel in the copper river a couple summers ago, and in a single day, we’ve got 87 sockeyes and 19 kings. Don’t even like to flip and rip for reds at that point. You got more than you can use. You’re giving away their friends, family, neighbors.

Ramsey Russell: Then some of those sockeyes, Mississippi, if you got too many.

Isaiah Bateel: Oh, man. Yeah. You pay postage.

Ramsey Russell: I’m a sockeye guy, man. I like that dark red salmon.

Isaiah Bateel: I don’t kill trout up here. I say eat salmon, fish for trout, but that’s just luxury we have. We eat lots of seafood and we enjoy fishing for trout. I’ve ate trout before. I was in southeast fishing for steelhead and because those little sea run, coastal cutthroats, I think they’re called one of the subspecies of the cutthroat trout, they were great in the pan. They were fantastic, little cutthroats. I enjoy eating fish, I do. Definitely, though, I’ve turned into a conservation list as well. Just different management, caring for the sustainability of things and really trying to genuinely give back more than I take because I’ve taken a lot. The outdoors has really been a huge blessing to me, and I want to make sure that we treat it right because we’re stewards at the end of the day. We’re here for 70, 80 years, and then it’s somebody else’s turn. So we really got to try to take care and be good stewards of what we’ve been so blessed with, you know?

Close Encounters in Nature

 Just DIY, solo hunt, shot a black bear. 

Ramsey Russell: You ever had any close encounters out in those beautiful places?

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah, I’ve seen some bears. I’ve got some pretty cool iphone videos of bears rolling by.

Ramsey Russell: You start talking to a lot of people that fish and spend time are fishing in Alaska. There’s always bear storage.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah, they’re generally not too interested in us. They’re generally too busy, trying to get their next salmon dinner, but it’s pretty cool. I was hunting blacktails last November on Kodiak, and that was a little interesting. I’m really glad we were going down that mountain. I don’t think we shot a buck that morning, but I remember, like, maybe it felt like 30 yards. I think we paced off 30 paces. There was, two cubs in a sow looking at us, and I’m kind of thankful that the cubs were in front of her, not the sow, the other way around, because I don’t know if she would have got the defensive because we kind of startled each other. I remember, the one cub got up on his hind legs and was looking like this. We saw seven brown bears that morning, that was real hair raising on the back of my neck, for sure. That was a little close for comfort when I wasn’t expecting to see him right there. But, yeah, those bears are big. Like, there’s really only a couple places that a guy could shoot a ten foot brown bear. Alaska Peninsula or Kodiak island, and it’s probably going to take you 15 to 30 days at least to get a ten footer. I’m not really into, like, the trophy thing. I’m more about the experience, collecting the experience of good people. I saw a bear that morning, biggest bear I’ve ever seen, and I’ve looked at a lot of them up here. He must have been 200, 300 yards away on the side of a mountain. Huge cowboy walk, doing the waddle in chops. Look like frickin King Kong. I got a cell phone photo of that thing from 200 yards away, and it’s just a massive block of sheer fierceness. Incredible animal. Just huge.

Ramsey Russell: Do you bear hunt?

Isaiah Bateel: He was on that side of the mountain and not on my side of the mountain.

Ramsey Russell: Do you bear hunt while you’re out there in Alaska?

Isaiah Bateel: I got a black bear this year. Just DIY, solo hunt, shot a black bear. I’ll show the grooves the bear at some point, just for the novelty of having one, but I’ve definitely more appeal. I think that sheep hunting, goat hunting, deer hunting kind of caribou that more appeals to me than bear hunting. I don’t know if it’s necessarily. Got the bear bug really bad, but they’re cool to watch. I like watching.

Ramsey Russell: I like black bears.

Isaiah Bateel: There was that same morning, there was a sow, she was digging a den for her and her cubs. Different sow than we saw, but I was watching. It was cool. I was like, she’s getting ready to go to den for the winter. Like south facing mountain, make sense, up higher in the alpine, she’s totally preparing to den up for the winter. That was pretty cool. Watched her for a long time.

Ramsey Russell: I like black bears. I like to eat them. I think they make good venison, and I like everything about it. I told some guys this, if I live somewhere you hunted bears, we don’t here in Mississippi and nearby. I think I’d probably carpet a room in my house with them or maybe I do like the Elvis green room. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Graceland, but back in the 70s, he’s got this solid room that is all the walls and ceiling and floors covered with green shag carpet. Maybe I would do that with black bears.

Isaiah Bateel: Interesting.

Ramsey Russell: I just think it’s a neat hunt. And, get some good venison, I think better than white tailed deer. Don’t hate on me, but I think they are.

Isaiah Bateel: They’re a good roast beef quality almost, if they’re prepared that way.

Ramsey Russell: They got that fat and marbling and stuff like that. Where are some places, Isaiah, that you want to go? You’ve seen 50 states. You’ve fished a lot of different places, but you’re still a young man. What’s on your radar? Where are some places you want to go see and experience and why?

Passing on a Passion for the Hunt

 I think I would have more interest in showing my daughter my passion for hunting and fishing than I do for collecting more trophies.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah, I’m missing Africa and Antarctica continent wise. Hopefully we’ll check Africa off next year, but other than that, definitely there’s, like, about five rivers up here that I still want to fish. They’re destinations, it’s the type of fish, it’s the experience. They’re fly ins. They’re like ten day float kind of trips. So just an overall wilderness adventure with good people and then obviously some decent fishing opportunities, too. I think, duck hunting wise, I’d like to get to Argentina at some point. I’d like to go over and fish in Tanzania, Africa at another juncture. Other than that, it just kind of depends. Tourist was always interesting. The hike down in South America just to see how similar it is to Alaska, but different. The Azores look really interesting. They look like Hawaiian steroids. They’re islands off the coast of Portugal that looks like a cool destination to hit up. Iceland looked interesting. I don’t know. It’s not so much where you go, it’s who I’m with these days, really like going with the right people. So I’m kind of open to, spontaneity and suggestions if somebody that was worth spending time with, wanted to see somewhere. I feel pretty accomplished. I think I would have more interest in showing my daughter my passion for hunting and fishing than I do for collecting more trophies.

Ramsey Russell: How old is she?

Isaiah Bateel: She’s 20 months. She seems to take a liking for it. We walk like 5, 6 miles every day, and if she sees moose or dogs, she’ll be pointing. She loves animals. She’s seen lots of fish at this point, so she points fish out, too and stuff. I’m hoping we’re heading in the right direction where she’ll maybe be a little companion for me to take on my trips.

Ramsey Russell: The best hunting and fishing buddies are the ones you raise. I think they are. You’re talking about the people. There’s no better time to spend quality time than with family, than hunting and fishing. I don’t think-

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah, I think you’re right. I’ve met some incredible people on trout streams, salmon streams, met some incredible people that, in the Marsh Duck hunting night. I think I’ve been really blessed with meeting some just really decent and kind and good human beings, and it was really our love of the outdoors that kind of had our paths crossed in the first place. That’s kind of neat, and having that shared passion, obviously, that common interest, and then staying in touch with them and, watching sometimes from afar, their successes or just, calling and checking in with them and I even have a good friend in North Dakota. I’m in a Taco bell on one of those hunts out there. We started talking. I talked to him the other day for probably an hour and 10, 15. Stayed good friends and stayed in touch and it wasn’t even really duck hunting. It was a duck hunting trip. We were in Taco Bell getting some food.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of our hunts lend themselves to individuals and small groups, and if they don’t, we’ll host a hunt so we can take up the lodge, like, when you were there in Obregon, you didn’t know everybody else, but they all booked through me. So I had a relationship with it, and we all kind of got along, and countless are the times I’ve seen friendships like, you’re talking about form, because it’s like I said, was it okay to come by myself? Like, yeah, you’ll meet some people like yourself there. You all have got something major in common, and that’s going here, being willing and able to do a trip like this. I’ve seen a lot of friendships and a lot of groups and a lot of hunting partnerships form on trip.

Isaiah Bateel: I met a fellow in St. Paul. He was super accomplished, pretty well to do. He’d collected 1.75 sheep slams. It was darn close to two sheep slams, which obviously is a financial accomplishment every much, as, everything else accomplishment. We were coming back from North Dakota one year, and he invited us over to his house. His house looks like a cabela’s, northern Wisconsin. He prepared dinner for us. We looked at his trophy room, massive trophy room. I literally met him duck hunting king eiders in St. Paul, and he invited us into home. We spent the night. It’s pretty cool, pretty neat. Pretty cool guy. Yeah, that was neat.

Ramsey Russell: I find that a lot of my own personal bucket list trips, are really not waterfowl anymore as much as they are something different. I want to go fish the Zambezi river for tiger fish. I want to go back and catch, back to the Amazon and catch more of those peacock bass, but I want to catch some of those other big fish they’ve got down there. I fished for golden Dorado. I’ve done a lot of that, and we’ll continue to do that, but the trip, you’re talking about going to Mexico and fishing for marlin and sailfish. Sailfish especially, I would enjoy maybe down in Guatemala, rooster fish, things of that nature.

Isaiah Bateel: Roosters are cool. I like roosters. That’s a cool fish. I really enjoy catching rooster fish.

Ramsey Russell: We talked about taxidermy before we started recording. One thing I really do like about the kind of fishing that I see you do, going to these beautiful places, catching these beautiful fish, holding it in this beautiful environment, taking a beautiful picture, and then letting it go.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: At this point in my life, that the thing that would make duck hunting most perfect would be the option. Not that I don’t want to keep some of these ducks and geese to eat, because I do, but would be to have the option to put them on a strap, shoot them, hunt them, call them, put them on a strap, the dog, fetch them, and hold up everything, take a beautiful picture, then unstrap them and pitch them up in the air and let them go back.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That would make duck hunting about as perfect as it gets.

Isaiah Bateel: I could relate to that sentiment. That’s just the same thing I would feel. If I can fool those birds over my decoy spread, I would just assume shoot them with a camera because I’ve got what I’ve came for. They got their slippers down. They’re completely convinced that what I’m selling is the real deal. Mission accomplished.

Ramsey Russell: Unfortunately, hunting is not catch and release, but you brought up a good point too, about fly fishing like you do. You know the life cycle of those bugs and the insects and the environment where the fish are hanging out within those kinds of environments and the same could be said about deer hunting, moose hunting, bear hunting, other kinds of fish. We had Bill Dance on here recently, and, golly, what that man knows about the bottom of a lake and fish behavior is unbelievable after all those years of doing it at duck hunting. It requires intimate knowledge of habitat and nature and animal behaviors that I just can’t imagine a non-hunter or anti-hunter having that relationship and knowing. If you don’t know as much, if you don’t know all that about these animals, how can you really love them like we do?

Isaiah Bateel: Let me add another dimension to that. I think that’s a great point you bring up. We have very limited trophy upside potential in Michigan. Our whitetail herd kind of plays to what I said earlier. Everybody made good money at the big three. They were able to buy 40 acres of land. So if you look at Michigan, we’re nothing like the rest of the midwest. There’s a different landowner, 40 acres, 80 acres, 40 acres, 20 acres, 100 acres, very broken up. Whereas other states that have truly large, mature whitetails, these two brothers own 2 sq. miles, or this landowner owns 700 miles, and there’s one or two guys that hunt that. So it’s way different. So for us, where I grew up, like, a 3½ year old whitetail is a good deer. That’s just the way it is. What I’ve began to realize, I go back and try to hunt with friends and family in November leading into Thanksgiving. So ducks and bucks, big mallards from northern Canada and our whitetail gun season commences on the 15th. I have far more satisfaction in killing a 3½ year old, 120 inch whitetail with my dad and with my brother, and when it’s on land that I’ve been actively trying to manage for the last 20 years of my life, through planting fruit trees, through developing habitat, through planting conifers, through researching different berry producing shrubs and planting warm season grasses, and to experience that with people I care about and love, and to know that in some sense, that my actions through conservation and my work in trying to maximize the wildlife potential of the habitat that our family is fortunate enough to own, my actions directly led to in some respects, the success of, me getting my hands on this mature Michigan Whitetail. That’s more special to me than me going to Saskatchewan or Iowa and Thwack in a 150, 160 world class 5½, 6½ year old stud. Yeah, sure, I would love to get a white tail that big someday, but I think that 120 inch is every bit of special to me. It’s not about the inches of antlers. It’s about the experience. It’s not about the interest in the other.

Ramsey Russell: I’m not a trophy hunter. I don’t particularly enjoy shooting dinks anymore, but I do like to shoot deer. Somebody asked me one time, how can you not be a trophy hunter? You went halfway across the world to shoot this bird, and I’m like, well, for example, two upcoming bucket list hunts I’m doing this year are magpie geese and Cape Barren geese down in New Zealand. The first Cape Berren Goose shoot, that’s a trophy. I’ve checked the box. I’ve killed them. The next 10, 15, 20 or 50 are to be the same as the first. I do like to hunt whitetail, and what I really like to shoot are just mature bucks. You don’t have to be a trophy. I’ve always said that the only way I’ll ever shoot a Boon and Crockett buck is if he steps out first because.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Let another shooter step out first and-

Isaiah Bateel: It’s important to define mature by your area. Like, we can’t compare. We got to compare apples to apples. So, for you in Mississippi, for me in Michigan, I’m a true animal in our area as far as a buck’s concerned, and these high pressured states is going to be different than a mature animal in Canada. So, if we’re trying to target, like, the upper echelon, there’s a couple 4½ s probably in that section. I suspect there is. I’ve got multiple 3½ on camera right now, but I know there’s probably a couple 4, maybe a 5½. I feel like if I can get one of those top 3 or 4 animals in the area and obviously not time, not now like I used to. I mean, one season, I shot a monster, and it was my 28th sit. I hunted so hard for whitetails that year. I just really wanted to get a really big marquee signature buck, and it worked out, fortunately, 01:12 pm in the afternoon. I think my priorities have changed a little bit. We’re going to go back. We’re going to work that warm season grass plot behind my mom and dad’s with some dogs with some good friends, and I don’t really care if we shoot a pheasant or not. I’m going to be so stoked seeing seven, eight, nine, ten birds move out of there, knowing that they’re kind of my birds.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Isaiah Bateel: They weren’t there 10 years ago, it was an agricultural field, and now it’s a thriving, viable ecosystem for whitetails and ringnecks. That feels really good.

Ramsey Russell: I understand. It does feel good, doesn’t it? I appreciate you joining us this evening. I knew this was going to be a great conversation. I enjoy keeping up with you. How can the listener keep up with you in Instagram?

Isaiah Bateel: I’m not really much on social media.

Ramsey Russell: I see you sometime, that’s how I know you caught that big fish.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah. I use Facebook a little bit for work. Just my first and last name. But I kind of got away from Instagram. It wasn’t overly healthy for me, I think. I was just looking at people putting the best, living the dream. We all do that, right? We all put the very best of life, and I think I found myself not really living in the moment, and maybe at times I was a little jealous of somebody’s accomplishments and not really enjoying, my time with my daughter that day in my home. So I thought, well, I think maybe I’d be best maybe just to kind of take a break from Instagram and get away from it and kind of focus more on being thankful of what I have.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great point you make there, because there’s times, I just wish I could flip it off and forget about it. It’s a very perverse distortion of reality.

Isaiah Bateel: It really is, and then I know for a fact I’d actually speak to this, where there was a sense in which I used to really try hard to get good photos, and then I would feel so good when I watched those photos get 200, 250 likes. It was kind of like just this pat on the back as to, hey, man, look, like these people all think you’re so cool. I was like, yeah, I’m looking in the wrong places for affirmation.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Isaiah Bateel: Because that’s not as healthy as I could be. So it’s tricky. I like social media. I stay in touch with people, as there’s pros to social media, for sure, but I think all things in moderation. For me personally, I need to be disciplined in how I use social media and not excessively waste time on there, just mindlessly scrolling as a means to escape reality and leave the moment, because, I don’t want to be present. So I’ve learned a lot the last year or two, but I think there’s something we said about being present in the moment with people you care about. Those are the things that I think we’ll take to our grave of us. It’s not the stuff. It’s not the birds that collect dust in the trophy room, but it’s sharing rich life experiences with people that you love and care about. That’s really what it comes down to. That’s the good stuff right there.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to end on that note. Being present in a moment with people you care about. That’s kind of what it’s all about, hunting and fishing, isn’t it? That’s what it’s ultimately about, I’m learning.

Isaiah Bateel: Yeah. It took me decades to actually realize, but, what it’s really about.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Isaiah and folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, we’ll see you next time.