EP 425. A Pacific Paradise Duck Hunting Lifestyle

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere. Third installment, out here on the Olympic peninsula in western Washington. Many years ago, before social media, there used to be chat rooms. There’s one called refuge forms and buddy, let me tell you what. Every duck hunter on earth got together and talked about everything under the sun or nothing at all on this old chat room. You got to know people around the country. Never mind the magazines or the television shows that were prevalent back then, this chat room really broadened everybody’s horizons. There was no more letter writing and pen pals, and you were in direct contact and certain personalities emerged back in those days. I’m proud to say, not to put my man on the spot, that here I am in the Olympic peninsula all these years later, getting a personal guided tour of the Olympic peninsula culture to include sea duck hunting and seafood by somebody I revered as a personal hero back in the day. I ain’t going to lie to you, this guy was doing things that, I’d heard of Harlequin ducks, I’d heard of the Scoter trio, I’d heard of a lot of these critters. I’d seen them in books and always dreamed of hunting them, but here was a guy that they were just right here in his backyard. He was not only out there hunting them for a long time, he had a thriving outfitter business. And everybody back in the day, way before there was these 41 contests all over the world, there were serious duck hunters wanting to cherry pick and collect these species, and this was your go to guy for Barrow’s Goldeneye, and Harlequins. Especially short of going to Alaska, which is double your budget just on airfare. I’m of course, talking about Captain Dave Drewry, and show up to his house, pull up to his cabin nestled out here on the peninsula, which is a very distinct and different part of Washington, and meet his much better half, his wife Tiffany, who I learned was very instrumental. It’s like she was the oz behind the scene, pulling the strings and pulling the levers. All this time, I thought Captain Dave was the rock star of the show back in old refuge form days, but it wasn’t. It was a team effort. Thank you all for the last couple of days. Thank you all especially for the great food, the great hosting. I had a wonderful time, and I’m glad to finally have you all on the podcast. How are you doing?

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh, we’re doing great, thanks, Ramsey.

Tiffany: We’re good.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah. It’s been a fantastic few days hosting you and touring you around all over the Olympic peninsula, and we’ve been having some fun.

Ramsey Russell: I got the full nickel tour, didn’t I?

Captain Dave Drewry: Not the full one, but we got some in.

Ramsey Russell: We got a lot.

Captain Dave Drewry: We crammed some in for a few days here.

Ramsey Russell: You had to go take a couple of doses of Red Bull. You’ve been guiding sea duck hunts like this cause you work like a hebrew slave out there on the boat. You’ve been doing this for 25 years, and one old man wore you out.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, it happens.

Ramsey Russell: But we wore each other out. Yeah, we went long, we went deep. We covered a lot of ground in 72 hours, but especially 48 hours, we covered a lot of ground. It’s like I told you though, Dave, I did not have any objectives. There was nothing except to come and hunt with you and see your backyard and experience this stuff and meet some people and eat some oysters. Unlike a lot of people you’ve dealt with in the past 25 years, I had absolutely no species objectives. I’ve shot the 41 plus a lot of subspecies. I just wanted to see it and experience it and boy, did we.

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh, yeah. My favorite kind of guests. Ramsey, no expectations. You can play a little bit of oz and just slowly show what’s behind the curtain. We’ve got a lot to offer in this area, and we love to share it. It’s a beautiful part of the country and you really soaked it up.

Ramsey Russell: I really soaked it up. I told you this the other day, riding around, when you do these long road trips and you constantly are traveling and hunting places, and it’s like cooking a gumbo. The okra and the andouille and the duck and the holy Trinity, nothing really stands out. It’s just gumbo. The other day we went down to the pier to get my license, and we were looking around town, around Port Townsend and all, and I told you, if I didn’t know any better, I’m in Maine, and I’m as far from Maine as I can possibly get and still be in the United States. But it just reminds me, the environment reminds me a lot of that Northeastern US. Just the conifers, the rainfall, the smell always of salt water and vaguely like fish and cresote. It’s just this permeating smell in this part of the world. Anytime you get up in that cold water environment, like around Maine and New England, it’s the same thing. It’s crazy how far apart we are, but yet kind of how similar we are in terms of just environment. Have you ever been out there and hunted?

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, I had the Maine experience probably about 15 seasons ago. We hunted out of Rockland area, targeting Eiders and black ducks. I had a fantastic time, and I felt the same way. It felt like a little bit like we’re in our backyard. We’re historic old seaport, turn of the century old for west coast standards, and, lots of old brick buildings that are, stuff was partly abandoned for so long that it held its provenance. It’s authentic and small town. We’re only just a little under 10,000 people.

Ramsey Russell: How old is Port Townsend?

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh, I think over 1880s.

Ramsey Russell: 1880S and it’s so well kept to drive, like, down the main drag of Port Townsend, one of those stores. It’s like being on a Hollywood movie set. It’s so beautiful.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Its unbelievably nice.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Yet quaint and small-town feeling. I loved it. Man, what a nice place.

Captain Dave Drewry: We’ve got historic forts and state parks and, they filmed some pretty famous movies. Officer and gentleman was filmed here, and that’s a big calling card to the town, but it is. It’s a great backdrop, and the town is beautiful. And then we’re just surrounded by water. We’ve got multiple bays around us Port Townsend Bay, Discovery Bay, Strait of Juan de Fuca. We look out across to Canada and the San Juan Islands, and it’s a big launching point for people throughout the year to, have their boats big and small and head up either the north, up into the passage, up into Alaska, gunk hole around to British Columbia. It’s a big launching point for ships of all sizes, and it has been for over a hundred years. we’ve got old historic photos of tall ships and, it looks like a little San Francisco boom town out here. It had its own Chinatown and brothel district and its own colorful history, and you can feel it in your bones when you’re walking downtown and walking around. Before that, the tribes, the S’Klallam tribes have been here in this area for thousands of years, and you can feel that. We find relics here and there, and you can see evidence of native peoples in everything that we do here.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I guess it’s okay to talk about. You pointed out a point, something stick. I don’t know what you call that particular protuberance of land that comes out into it that the brand used to calculate on. You all used to hunt them up in there and were telling me about, the Indians were all up and down here. The Native America was all up and down here. There have been, people find human remains that were buried, that may have been buried, who knows, a mile or half mile inshore. But now theyre freaking in the beach, in the surf.

Captain Dave Drewry: Any point of land out here that was coastal had a fish camp on it or, a tribal longhouse. Living was good. They had deer and elk and the tide set the table with, the shellfish and fish resources. It was good living out here for the northwest tribes and it dates back besides this pioneer history. It goes back a long way.

Ramsey Russell: I’m no anthropologist, but even a blind man can see somebody that used to, pick up airheads down in Texas along the Mexican border has found stuff like that further south into Mexico and all points in between just hunting and fishing and doing stuff. This part of North America, it was so abundant in natural resources that the earliest forms of humanity lived a life of luxury or else they wouldn’t have had the time to go out and build ornate totem poles. They’d have been too busy scrounging and making a living. Even if you start looking at, like some of the obsidian, they had great material for making those arrowheads. But if you start looking at arrowheads, primitive areas, say 1000, 1500, 2000 years ago up here versus way down the Texas border, they become a lot cruder. They had less time to devote to the art. They had to make a living. They had to scratch out a living, versus up here. I was thinking this morning as we were out there duck hunting the salmon, just washing up on shore.

Captain Dave Drewry: Half alive.

Ramsey Russell: There’s been parts of America there were so many salmon, and historically they could just sit out in the stream and pitchfork them onto the bank. I’m sure that back in the day when these salmon runs were truly immense, and today they’re just. You told me in the dark, you said, hey, be careful. Don’t let your dog get in this, but don’t bust your ass and slip on it either. There were just goddamn salmon everywhere. Rotten salmon. Can you imagine if you were native american and your streams and your rivers and your oceans were so full of water, and when the tide goes down, you can pick up wicker baskets full of oysters and clams and then walk out in the woods. I don’t, I sound like kid rock concert, walking through the woods down south with all the dryness and stuff. Up here, I’m siding this hiawatha. You can walk up here, you had elk, you had deer, just a abundant natural resources in this part of the world. So many things we’ve seen, like walking to your boat on the pier the other day at a big old sea otter. It was just crazy. The whole time we’ve been hunting, there’s Sealions popping up and Harbor seals, and they’re in there eating the shellfish and the fish and stuff. It’s still an amazing resource for everything. We had the biologist on here, Kyle, the other day talking about all of the geese and the sea ducks and the puddle ducks. It’s just spectacular. Still to this day, how spectacular it is out here in this part of the world.

Captain Dave Drewry: Incredible diversity. Trees, everything. We even had a coyote cross at the top.

Ramsey Russell: Run right down your driveway. Didn’t scare you, did it?

Captain Dave Drewry: As we were unloading yesterday?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that was a long day.

Captain Dave Drewry: That was a big day.

Ramsey Russell: It just kept getting crazier and crazier.

Captain Dave Drewry: Very mild. We had some mild weather. We’ve seen a little bit all the weather, which is again, typical for this area.

Ramsey Russell: How typical was this morning when it’s windshield wipers are slapping as fast as they’ll go. We’re driving, and I’m telling you, I really don’t like to duck hunting the rain. You go, well Welcome to Washington state cause this is every day.

Captain Dave Drewry: We got a lot of microclimates around here. We can leave port towns and only gets around 15 inches of rain. And we’re kind of in the lee side of the Olympic mountains. A lot of rain gets soaked up on the, the coast side. They get 100s of inches of rain. But as we move south, it varies between, 30 to 60 inches of rain a year. You can see it with the trees and the foliage, more moss on there and it can get wet.

Ramsey Russell: When did you get into duck hunting? You didn’t grow up out here on the peninsula?

Captain Dave Drewry: No, I was. I was born and raised in coastal California, so I moved up here. Well, we did some surfing, a lot of fishing, a lot of boating. We were an outdoor family. My grandpa was a big game fisherman. He loved to shase Marlin and with very light line off of the California coast. I had another grandpa that was a cattle rancher in New Mexico and loved to hunt Elk and Pronghorn and that. My grandpa’s duck club, I was a third kid, a little young, so I never got the chance to go sit in the pits up there in the Sacramento valley. My dad and my brothers had come home and they’d have those red legged Mallards and I was just in awe of duck hunting without even having done it at that point. When I left California and finished up school here in Seattle, I just got into it headlong and, there’s no looking back.

Ramsey Russell: How old were you when you first got hooked into duck hunting, and do you still remember your first duck hunt after all these years?

Captain Dave Drewry: I like to do it the hard way. I did it on my own and my early and mid 20s, I had a couple mentors, but I really just like to get out there and get out in the marsh. I picked up at chesapeake, and she and I kind of learned the game together. Between western Washington and eastern Washington and northeastern Washington, I think the first bird flock that I really remember, I was set up somewhere in the carnation valley, which is a little east of us. I had this little tight blind that I’d put together and waiting, all these ducks flying around, and a nice flock of green winged teal came in, and I wasn’t an excellent shotgun shooter at that point and pulled up and just lucked into a triple on green winged teal. So those were my first real ducks in the northwest, but it quickly segued. I spent more than half the year fishing, and we ran a marina.

Ramsey Russell: Fishing for what? Salmon?

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah. In California, we always did bottom fish. I loved rock fish and fishing for white sea bass and yellowtail and mackerel and barracuda and all that stuff. So when I got up here, everybody’s into salmon. You troll all flipping day ther. The salmon seasons in the nineties were going through a transition, and the opportunities weren’t that great. So I love just getting out with light line and jigging for flounder and rockfish. I’m not a patient fisherman. I like to catch things lots.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I say that too. I’m not much of a sport fisherman. I like to catch fish to make grease pop.

Captain Dave Drewry: I expect a certain amount of success quickly and so I’m out in the water a lot. We’re working at a boathouse and, we’ve got these beautiful ducks that are feeding right on our bulkhead, downtown Seattle, downtown west Seattle. These goldeneye, I’ve never seen those in California. Big black and white, gorgeous looking birds. You can look right over the bulkhead and see them feeding and we’ve got these crazy, scoters flying around with toucan beaks and white wing patches and all this stuff. I was mesmerized by them. I ended up hooking up with an old timer, by the name of Warren Volrath. He was big with the Washington water fowlers here in state and was always at the booths and everyone kind of picked on him because he liked to shoot ducks. He didn’t care what kind. Didn’t have to be a mallard. This was a mallard state and he liked to shoot a few bufflehead and Mergansers came ripping by. He let it have it, and he had some health problems. So, we got together as a young guy and an old guy, and we’d drive up and hunt a couple places that he had permission on. We had a great time just knocking down some odd birds, and that was the inshore stuff. We’d get bufflehead and some goldeneye and Mergansers and maybe a Harlequin if it came in. We’re seeing more and more of these offshore birds flying that I used to see fishing, like the scoters and the old squad, it just hooked me. I went out and I rigged my salmon boat, my fishing boat. I bought big panels of canvas and PVC and, this is before any YouTube stuff. There was nothing on this stuff. The east coast tradition was there. I bought some old books that were probably printed in the 30s and 40s and 50s that had some types of archaic long line rigs and just figured out our own system and started there and really got into it. It was never a volume sport, but it was. We had it all to ourselves really, nobody out there. So it was as opposed to fighting for public land hunting even then, there was a lot of competition for puddle ducks.

Ramsey Russell: What was Seattle like back in the early to mid 90s?

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh, boy.

Ramsey Russell: Way different or crazy still or.

Captain Dave Drewry: I let my wife weigh in on this.

Ramsey Russell: What was it like Tiffany?

Tiffany: Oh my God, it was awesome. I grew up in Seattle, so I was a Seattle native girl, and I remember when Seattle hit the map on the news and they’re like, LA Weather, New York weather, Chicago weather, Seattle weather. I’m like, why are they talking about Seattle?

Ramsey Russell: Why were they talking about Seattle?

Tiffany: Well, the 90s was just an explosion of tech industry. We had a huge tech boom. We had a massive music scene. everybody knows Seattle’s kind of the capital of grunge.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Tiffany: We had very successful universities. We had a super thriving downtown. Things were always just up and coming. It was just a city that had been around for a long time, and all of a sudden just kind of hit the map and it hit it hard.

Captain Dave Drewry: Vibrant.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You didn’t grow up hunting and fishing in Seattle, did you?

Tiffany: No. My dad was a deer hunter. We grew up on a lake, so I’d trout fish every summer. I love the outdoors more for the camping, hiking aspect of life. I was never a big hunter or fisher. I go along. I would, if I got drug out, I’d go. That’s kind of the motto still, if I get drug out, I go. Just grew up in Seattle area, and Dave and I met. We were just neighbors in West Seattle. We were both in our twenties, and we were both finishing school. He had this crazy boat that he stored in my yard. He lived in the condo next door, and I lived in a little 1920s house a block off Alki beach. We had this whole community of 20 somethings that were running on that block, and it was a pretty, pretty good time, actually.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of fun to be 20 years old and see what it sounds like.

Tiffany: Yeah, it was.

Ramsey Russell: It was what brought you all to from Seattle, which sounded kind of fun to be in your 20s in Seattle back in the day, to way out here in BFA, Western Washington, out here on the peninsula? To this day, it’s kind of like stepping way back in time.

Tiffany: It was, Seattle was great. When Dave and I started dating in Seattle, we were neighbors to begin with and then started dating. I was 21, and we both worked down at Seacrest Boathouse. When Dave was talking about the boathouse, I ran the deli side. I did all the cooking in deli side, and Dave ran the other side, which was the tackle and the boat rentals. We had a fun boss and a fun crew and we were there every morning at 4 in the morning and done by noon. We liked it and then we actually bought our first house in Seattle, in west Seattle, we bought a little 1920s craftsman. All of our friends thought we were nuts cause we were investing our time in an asset when they were still partying on the weekends. I think we were kind of tired, and we wanted to start setting some roots down. I think we just looked around. We got married, had our first child, and we were both kind of hustling these jobs, and Dave at that point, was managing retail, big box retail, outdoor, still working at the boathouse. I was working sales and we just kind of started looking around and thought, this is going to be the life if we want to stay in the city. Yeah, a lot of hustle to stay in the city.

Ramsey Russell: Just a grind.

Tiffany: Yeah. We didn’t want that and so we just kind of came up with a plan to maybe start looking for some property that was just the ideals. Let’s start with property. We kind of explored when we decided that if we were going to look, if we were going to make a big jump, that we would look everywhere, which we did. So we did these big, long ass road trips to different places. So we go to Idaho, we go to Montana, we go to Oregon, we go to eastern Washington, we go to northern California. We just started narrowing down the spaces, and we decided we didn’t want to be away from the saltwater. So that narrowed it even more.

Captain Dave Drewry: And better Hunting and Fishing.

Tiffany: Yeah. That was the drive, was the outdoors. We wanted to be in the outdoors. Dave was driving, 4 to 8 hours to go hunt and fish. The fishing was right there, but, the hunting aspect, it was, we had this young family, and he was gone weekends or gone weeks, and it was kind of like.

Ramsey Russell: That’s tough on a young family.

Tiffany: Yeah, it was like, how can we make this closer? How can we make this more accessible for the lifestyle that we want? It was a lifestyle driven choice. It wasn’t a commodities choice or an opportunity choice. It was a lifestyle choice.

Ramsey Russell: I tell you what, that’s a pretty heavy statement because, to go off and do something. We’re all about the same age, kind of raised to go to school. Go to school so you can go to college. Go to college so you can get a job. Get a job so you can make a living. The human experience is more than about making a living. It’s about making a life, having a lifestyle. What’s the point in working and making money to play if you don’t have a life, you know? That’s, I guess, very similar to how I got down this path. Very similar to what you all did. You look down the road and say, I don’t want to just work a 9-5. I got to make a living, but I need to make a life. I got to make a life for myself. So what’d your friends and neighbors say when you all found this place and said, we’re going to move over there across the ferry, which could be 30 minutes, could be 2 hours, I found out. We’re going to move over there to the peninsula.

Captain Dave Drewry: Port Townsend, at that time, it’s the end of the road. you had-

Tiffany: Literally

Captain Dave Drewry: You go around the bottom of the Puget Sound, and you cross a couple bridges, and then you keep going. Port Townsend is actually a peninsula on the peninsula-

Ramsey Russell: It sure is.

Captain Dave Drewry: Could very well be an island. As Ramsey’s figured out. We have very weak cell signal, not much wi-fi. Yeah, we’re in the stone age out here.

Ramsey Russell: That blows my mind that We are literally in the shadow, 30 miles, 40 miles as a duck flies to Seattle, Tech Capital of the west coast. I have 1 bar that’s meaningless. It shows a bar of LTE, but nothing will come up.

Captain Dave Drewry: We go out to places now that we camped decades ago that, out in the Macaw nation and La Push and areas off the outside of the Olympic peninsula that you couldn’t think. There was maybe one payphone in the whole town, and we get full bars and everybody’s got Starlink and the rest of it –

Ramsey Russell: No cell phone signal, but I can charge my Tesla.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, you can charge your Tesla. Port town’s an old hippie town. The old days, it was just squatters and buildings and shed boys and all kinds of good stuff going on in town, but it’s in a transition. Everybody did, it’s not in my backyard. They don’t want cell towers. They don’t want things. It’s not the only community here in the northwest.

Ramsey Russell: So what did your friends say when you all told them we’re moving to the peninsula?

Tiffany: Well the funny this is they didn’t believe us, first of all, that we were going to move. They just thought we would buy property and kind of do the 5 year plan, which sounded so responsible and so adult, and I think we thought we would do that same thing. We thought, when our son’s in school, then we want to maybe build in a community. We’ve had this property in. So we started kind of casting our net, and we were on the ferry once, and I saw this little advertisement for the homes, and we knew we wanted to build a log home. There was this log home for sale on the Olympic peninsula, and I called, and it was this woman, and she’s like, that’s in Port Angeles, and I’m like, oh no, I don’t want to be in Port Angeles. She’s like, where are you looking? I’m like, closer, more like Port Townsend. She’s like, I have a friend who has a listing for a log home on property in Port Townsend. I’m like, really? And this is when you got things mailed to you.

Ramsey Russell: Back in the old days.

Tiffany: She mailed me the flyer, and I remember opening the flyer and calling Dave at work and going, I think I found our home. So then we came out, and we looked at it, and we put an offer in, and this is how quick it all happened. So we had a 6-month old baby. We had two full time jobs, a house. We sold our house, bought a house, and moved in under 30 days.

Captain Dave Drewry: And bugged out.

Tiffany: Bugged out.

Ramsey Russell: Did you all have-

Tiffany: A plan?

Ramsey Russell: Do you have a plan? That’s what I’m asking. like, you got jobs.

Captain Dave Drewry: We’re in our twenties right now.

Ramsey Russell: You got busy jobs. You’re grinding and if you want a third or fourth or fifth job to keep up. Yeah, it’s all over in Seattle. So you all move over here tohippie Central.

Captain Dave Drewry: The cost of living was, compared to Seattle. It was affordable then, and property was cheaper. We found this just fantastic custom Douglas Fir log home that somebody put a lot of passion into and just a real solid foundation for what we wanted in that period of our life and to build on. We had a new baby, and we were excited about the future. Our headquarters is where we just kind of launched it all. I won’t say that we just set it to the wind and let things happen-

Tiffany: No.

Captain Dave Drewry: But we had a plan. We always have a plan. We got a 5-year plan. We got a 6-month plan. We got a 10-year plan and our trajectory was to make what was our passions into our business.

Ramsey Russell: So you look at each other and say, how are we going to pay for this? We got to get jobs.

Captain Dave Drewry: We did it. I commuted for a little bit, and that didn’t last.

Ramsey Russell: I bet that was fun.

Captain Dave Drewry: I tried some other stuff. One thing about the peninsula at that point, we were a historic logging area, fishing, commercial fishing area-

Tiffany: Mills, pulp mills-

Captain Dave Drewry: Pulp mills, that kind of thing. At that point, post spotted Owl and, all the timber shutdowns, Port Angeles, these mill towns, it was a depressed economy. It still is in places. There’s small business owners in this town that you carve out a living and you’re not expecting to make millions. We knew we’re in a beautiful area. We knew we always considered doing, this was before Vrbo and Airbnb. We wanted to do some rentals. We wanted to host people. Of course, as we love hunting and fishing, we kind of segued into, I had some hunting friends up here that we got in, and I got in on a puddle duck lease and started doing some puddle duck hunting. One of these guys was booking trips, and I ended up booking puddle duck trips with him, and we got into cahoots, and I’d do the, the offshore sea duck hunting at that point, and he’d offer the puddle duck hunting. It’s just more and more interest started coming in on the saltwater sea duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: It was 25 or 30 years ago, and I told you the other day. None of us knew we were doing it no matter what we were doing 25, 30 years ago online in a chat room, but I really feel like you and the Otto brothers pioneered this area. You gave America a collective awareness of Harlequin duck and all these little gems swimming around this area.

Captain Dave Drewry: There weren’t many people doing it. There was a real small community of-

Ramsey Russell: When did it dawn on you? So you’re running a few guided hunts for Mallards and Wigeons and whatever, but when did it dawn on you?

Tiffany: The first year.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, that little blue duck nobody wants to eat and those scoters that eat all these clams and mussels and all these little ducks out here, that’s the glance pin, that’s the key. That’s what people will come all the way across America, fly in, rent a car, come see me. That’s what will bring him to here to get in my boat, and the sky’s the limit. When did that just dawn on you? There’s more of a future in this than-

Captain Dave Drewry: We had a mounted Harlequin, that was O’Warren’s Harlequin mount and a couple others. I think he had a Barrow’s and there was a traveling mounted bird display that the Washington water fowlers would tour around with. Most Washington duck hunters, they couldn’t recognize anything beyond maybe a Mallard and Teal and Wigeon and that kind of thing, and not-

Ramsey Russell: Kyle said the other day that a real small percentage of, to this day, Washington hunters identify as sea duck hunters.

Captain Dave Drewry: Right. Only 1%.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a lot of work.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, it is a lot of work. I’m losing my train of thought-

Tiffany: I just think that it was, we started wrapping our head around the interest and realizing that it was special and that it was unique. I think that when that lands in front of you and you are ignorant and energized enough to try something on, we just kind of thought maybe we could start marketing this. It definitely snowballed pretty quickly and-

Captain Dave Drewry: Our clients found us. Yeah, we started offering it.

Tiffany: It was very word of mouth, very-

Captain Dave Drewry: Washington residence.

Ramsey Russell: You did advertise in catalogs. You were telling me the other day.

Captain Dave Drewry: We had advertising in Wildfowl for a long time.

Ramsey Russell: Forever.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Then came the Internet, and you could talk about it in chat rooms.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah

Tiffany: We had a website.

Captain Dave Drewry: Collectors found us, and it was before any of the hunt 41 it was before any of the, these waterfowl organizations. Some of these guys were big game hunters. Some of them were African big game hunters and they were collecting, and before it had a label, they wanted to get these different species. Most waterfowlers at that time really thought that, you’re only going to get these particular species, Harlequin, the Scoters, the longtails, goldeneye. The majority of those are, you can only get a reasonable success rate if you go to Alaska.

Ramsey Russell: The thing about it is there’s a lot of old timers that have been collecting waterfowl species and experiences and subspecies and all that kind of stuff forever. But it really did start to boom, back in the 90s. That’s when it did, because the Internet made it. Oh, it’s exciting, there’s places I can go. The thing that stood out about coastal Washington, western Washington, was, I don’t have to go to Alaska to shoot Harlequin ducks. I can go there, bide my time, shoot one blue duck. Check. I got him. I got him in my game room without going way up to, up north to Alaska. I can go right here to Washington. You all cashed in on that?

Managing Liberal Limits and Conservative Sub Limits for Sea Ducks.

We’ve got a long waterfowl season here, over 100 days, liberal limit. Although, with the sea ducks and divers, of course, we got sub limits that are very conservative. Different management strategies for sea ducks. But great opportunities.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah. We have a very, as Kyle, was referencing. We’ve got a long waterfowl season here, over 100 days, liberal limit. Although, with the sea ducks and divers, of course, we got sub limits that are very conservative. Different management strategies for sea ducks. But great opportunities. I won’t say they called me a liar when we first started out, but there was a lot of, people call, what’s your success rate on Harlequin? and what’s, your success rate? and how many guys are really getting this? I never liked the guarantee word or success rate. That always just made me wince. But we had a good success rate on all those birds and as we, kept running clients and clients talked to other clients and their friends and people in those circles, it started cascading. Then, a year or two into it, I made a contact with a gentleman called Dave Gruber who was the host of Benelli’s American bird hunter.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about that. That was a great story.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, it was cool. I think I ended up contacting him on an email or, some refuge forums, chat or something.

Ramsey Russell: Back in the day, outdoor television-

Captain Dave Drewry: back in the day-

Ramsey Russell: Was big, and Benelli ruled.

Captain Dave Drewry: And, nobody ever answers you on that stuff. I think I had a silly question about what ear protection he wore or something like that, and wrote him an email and we had our header up underneath it, and he contacted me back a week or two later, he gave me my answer on the headphones we were talking about. He’s like, I see that you got this peninsula sportsman guy outfitting, and you run sea duck hunts and stuff. He’s big upland hunter and a great duck hunter, too. He was very interested in possibly coming out and doing some sea ducks. He’d done some sea duck hunting, but he’d never done anything west coast. So we booked him, and they came on out here and-

Ramsey Russell: Who all came?

Captain Dave Drewry: The first time It was just Dave.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Captain Dave Drewry: Dave and his cameraman, Nichols. They were with wolf Creek Productions. It was great. It was small. It wasn’t a team of, 5 cameras and a drone and sound people. It was just a real small crew, and we just hunted them. we ran a camera while we did it and it just so happened that that first hunt we took him out on, the stars were shining, and, oh, Dave got himself a double banded Harlequin on.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: TV and shot some nice long tails.

Ramsey Russell: Did your phone start ringing then?

Captain Dave Drewry: Well, Pacific paradise was the name of that episode. The phone started ringing after that hit the air, and that was on the outdoor channel.

Ramsey Russell: When did Tom Knapp come back?

Captain Dave Drewry: He came, but he wanted to come the next year. Imagine that, Mr. Knapp. Yeah. Heck of a guy. Character. So we hosted Tim Bradley from Beretta and Tom, we had good time with those guys. We ended up doing 3 episodes over a 3-year period.

Ramsey Russell: Mr. Tom Knapp, as everybody knows, was a legendary Benelli shot. Scoters are different, especially when it’s not slick like it was yesterday. They’re fast, they’re low, and you know where your pattern’s hitting because they’re fast and low because it’s right there behind him. Especially when the wind kicks up and now they’re going left or right, but you’re going up or down and he was a legendary trick shot. But talk about his experience shooting these super fast scoters and sea ducks coming in hot over the decoys.

Captain Dave Drewry: Scoters are a bread and butter bird out here, particularly Surf Scoters. That’s our sea duck. That’s the one that it’s our most prevalent waterfowl in these waters and, they’re a lot of fun. It’s a traditional hunt, long line hunt. I like to do it out in open water. You get out there and get set up, wait for them to come off their roost and work into these feeding areas. It can be hot and heavy at times. Sometimes you got to wait it out a little bit, depending on the weather and the conditions. Mr. Knapp was out there that day, and in fact, we had the Otto brothers with us that time and Jay and John were helping on that crew, and we had Tom in the boat, and those birds were just white wings and surfs were ripping through. Federal ammo was just. There were a lot of holes. I’m not going to put Mister Knapp down, but let’s just say every bird was not hit on the first shot-

Ramsey Russell: You quoted him saying something about scoters.

Captain Dave Drewry: I think that’s where if they were any harder to hit them, you couldn’t hit them.

Ramsey Russell: Don’t make an ass out of anybody.

Captain Dave Drewry: No, they will.

Ramsey Russell: Don’t go scoter hunting with a box of shells or a half a box of shells. You better go in heavy, baby.

Captain Dave Drewry: Even in a tight shot. Then they belittle you because you’re shooting and you see that pattern hit the water right behind them every time. You know exactly where you hit. A lot of duck hunts. You don’t know where your, where your pattern’s going, it’s just adding insult to injury on Scoters. But you catch up with them, you get them good. Got to get a headshot on them. The old steel shot and that. They can shake it off. They’ve got a leather tough skin, dense feathers, and their tanks.

Ramsey Russell: You’re a ball shot shell guy. You told me yesterday that you would greatly discourage your clients for as long as you could from bringing steel shot.

Captain Dave Drewry: We actually-

Ramsey Russell: Step up, shoot the good stuff

Tiffany: At one point-

Captain Dave Drewry: At one point, we actually required it for Harlequin hunting in particular, because the birds are so tough. we’re not taking long shots in these, but even at 20, 30 yards, they can take a few pellets.

Ramsey Russell: They can dive and get away from them. Chop. You can’t see them swimming.

Captain Dave Drewry: They’ve got the whole ocean to get away from you, and they can swim, hundreds of yards underwater without getting at them. Unless you’re on them real quick, especially weather conditions, chops, something like that. We did not want to lose a cripple factor on these birds, and I made a real effort to not lose cripples, and it can happen, especially with sea ducks. So we like to get all the birds that we shot at. Transitioning over initially to tungsten was great, heavy shot was awesome. In the last few years, since boss has come on the mainstream here, that bismuth, we use the old bismuth, back when it was the blue shells and it was good, this new stuff, copper plated. It’s just hits. It’s great.

Ramsey Russell: What about the war chief?

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh, the war chief’s tight.

Ramsey Russell: How many times did somebody show up, these trophy hunters for 25 years show up with a 28 gauge? And what did you think when I showed up with one? You told me out there in shop, said, if you got a 12 gauge, you might want to bring it. You literally said that.

Captain Dave Drewry: We actually had requirements back in the day. We said, no pit guns because we didn’t want to blow our ears out on the boat. We had a few 10-gauge guys show up, and we’re in these little tight bays and stuff, and you blow with everybody’s ears out and disturb the neighbors. It’s like, 3½ inch shot twos was real standard for sea ducks for a long time. This new ammo getting it down to 3-inches, 2 and 3-quarter, it works better. You got well patterning load that hits hard. You need a dense metal to get into the feather fiber of these birds.

Ramsey Russell: And you got to have the downrange energy.

The Challenge of Sea Duck Hunting with Steel Shot.

We get scoters that are shot with steel, and you may knock them down, you kill them, and you’re shaking that thing off on the deck, and you can hear those pellets hitting the metal deck.

Captain Dave Drewry: We get scoters that are shot with steel, and you may knock them down, you kill them, and you’re shaking that thing off on the deck, and you can hear those pellets hitting the metal deck. They are not getting penetration on that bird. Anybody can hit him with a head or neck shot, but we’re not all that good of shots, so you got to get something in there and that copper plate, it just slides just like the old lead. It just slides right through the feathers, gets some penetration, gets up in there and, you’re not chasing cripples across the bay, shooting a box of shells at them, which everybody knows with sea duck hunting the cripple factor and shooting all these damn shells at them ticks off the neighbors and just becomes a hassle and you lose half your hunt. You’re chasing a sea duck for half an hour. You could be in the rig.

Ramsey Russell: That’s when the ducks like to fly.

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh, we saw that. They like to fly when you’re off the rig. So we want to be in the rig. We’re lucky enough to have char dog out there launching off the front. So cool. I used to run my chessies out here and they’d do that and just having char out there, it was just awesome. Picking up scoters.

Ramsey Russell: I really didn’t know she would jump seven or eight foot off the bow of the boat.

Captain Dave Drewry: Awesome.

Ramsey Russell: She looked like a high diver swan diving.

Captain Dave Drewry: She went all the way under, back up again.

Ramsey Russell: All the way under, back up on line. Off she goes, through those big decoys.

Captain Dave Drewry: Chased down a crippled scoter.

Ramsey Russell: I noticed you did run dogs back in the day, and that’s why your drops are so deep that she had no problem swimming in and around and through those decoys. That makes a huge difference. I always worry about long lining because a lot of these guys running 1 or 2-foot or especially a thin mainline, a dog gets tangled up by the time we un-anchor and everything else, that dog’s in trouble, but she swam right through your decoys like nothing.

Captain Dave Drewry: Everybody’s got their own unique way of doing these rigs for divers and sea ducks, but we always with the dogs. I never had a real problem with anybody getting hung up, but it just used to scare the heck out of me because tides, currents, cold water, sometimes you can’t get on that. That rig fast enough. We use a 3-8 commercial crab line that’s got lead core that really sinks down and then the droppers are 3-8 nylon, good boat rope to a long line clip. I run those about 4ft. So it’s holding it down. My dogs can swim. Your dog can swim through it, and even if they touch the line, sheds right off their leg.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: I’ve never knock on wood. We’ve never had a problem with a dog getting hung up.

Ramsey Russell: The thing about sea duck hunting, anywhere from Alaska, to here, to the Atlantic seacoast to Gulf coast, it doesn’t matter if you’re hunting sea ducks. It’s not like going out to a rice pit blind and shooting all the cadre species that fly around a rice field or going to a big water setup and shooting the cans and the bluebills and this and that. when you get off into sea ducks, you start talking Harlequins and 3 different kinds of Scoters and all the little sea ducks out here, the goldeneyes. To me, sitting from the bank, it all looks the same, but they are extremely hyper specific to water depth and tide movement and structure underneath it and prey base underneath it. So you’re not just going out on one spot and shooting all the species. You’ve got to make a plan to hunt, to deliver all that we might shoot. Well, for this morning, prime example, you told me we’re going to shoot puddle duck. I have seen, it’s early for Barrow’s goldeneyes, but I saw 6, and I’m looking around me and I can see for miles. I’m thinking, there’s 6 Barrow’s out here. He said, they’d like to go over here, up the mouth of this river, and they’ll come right through here if they come by. You’re not going to see any Harlequins, but you’re always careful now that they’re protected, and the Scoters, we saw tons of scoters, about 200 yards away. They didn’t get any closer. It’s very nuanced and yesterday, same thing. You said, there’s a few Harlequins around, but I know that even if they’re Harlequins around, they’re not going to come into the middle of the bay. Normally, they’re going to be off on the fringes in the shadow of water hitting them little barnacles and eating their little food right up against the edges and the margins. The scoters going to be further off. Even yesterday, I observed the times I’ve sea duck hunted, but in your boat, it was constant nuance. It’s almost like mending a fly line. You’re having to mend and do something and change a little bit, more rope out to get us a little bit off those decoys, or closer to the decoys, let the lines apart so it creates a funnel or creates a bigger mass or a smaller mass to see what these birds are going to respond to. It’s a lot of work, a lot of moving pieces. But most importantly, you’ve got to go on this particular bay or that particular body of water. You’ve got to go to different spots within it to target certain species.

Captain Dave Drewry: One thing that people don’t realize, and I guess is we’ve got two tides rolling through during a hunt. This part of the northwest, we can get 10 to 12-foot tide flux, and that’s a lot of water. You saw that going through with char dogs swimming against that and the decoy lines. That in itself is a challenge. Some of these bays that we’d like to get access up into at first light when the birds are flying the best, they’re dry. They’re mud flats.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: Especially early in the season. We’re putting a lot together to get up into these areas. I used to advertise that, we’re hunting Harlequins. Where are you hunting? Where we get these birds? Where are we going to be? We were based here out of the Olympic peninsula, but we covered hundreds of miles of shoreline, and we always do. There’s plan a through z, like any good waterfowler’s got. And we’re focused on different birds, different species, and each one has their own unique set and hunt. There’s inshore birds like the goldeneye that are, working right off the shorelines and you’re not typically putting a boat right up on the beach for them. You’re tucked up in the driftwood and cobble for that type of thing, and then scoters, that’s an open water, traditional long line, typical sea duck hunt is what I call it. Like we did yesterday, we’re out in the middle of the bay where we’re canvassed up in a boat blind. It’s a big boat blind, 25 foot boat line. But it was-

Ramsey Russell: The way the birds were kind of rafted in feeding areas to the left and right, they were just catching traffic, them trading. We were hoping they’d come off the big water, go back to the mouth of the river and come right by us. Most of the action we caught was them trading between those two feeding flocks off those shoals. You were saying, now if I had clients, I’d have a layout boat over here with one and a layout boat over here, and I’d be tending from here and watching, scooping up birds, but they would bump them back and be a little more action for as quiet as it was and everything yesterday. So hunting from a boat, we kind of hamstrung ourselves. But to be honest with you, Dave, I just enjoyed the visit. In a big boat, you get to drink coffee and talk and carry on. We told a lot of great stories and just got to know each other a lot better, and I just enjoyed that a lot.

Captain Dave Drewry: Layout boats on a calm day, tepid type of day when there’s not a whole lot of movement. We had some of the first layout boats in the northwest, not here in the saltwater. We used to run the mighty layout boys.

Ramsey Russell: Mighty layout boy. That’s who I need to get on this podcast, mighty layout boys.

Captain Dave Drewry: Those guys were great crew. We bought some of their first boats and we had, we had them out here. We ran single layouts for a long time before everybody had layouts. They’re still very effective. But now we run a banks two man and the singles on occasion, and the height of a single small convex pocket of water versus the big 25-footer. We’ve had plenty of hunts when that wind and weather kicks up and the birds aren’t as hyper focused on any movement. Yeah, the big boat can hunt good. I enjoy the company. That’s why kind of when we went to the 2-man layout, because then you got a buddy with you. You can have a dog with you can have a little chatter. It was awesome just catching up on the boat, and that’s part of duck hunting, enjoying the company and learning about the birds. a big part of what we do out here is, I like my clients to understand how special these birds are. It’s not just winging at them every brown bird that goes ripping by. The Harlequin has always been special. These goldeneye are fantastic. We’re hunting over a dozen species of sea ducks and divers, the whole plethora of them and each one, from the scoters, even the bufflehead and mergansers, they’re just the coolest of waterfowl.

Ramsey Russell: One of the locals we met yesterday told us he had seen a Eurasian Wigeon out there where we were hunting, and I have no species objectives, but that would have been kind of cool immigrants. I’ve never shot a eurasian wig on the north american continent.

Captain Dave Drewry: I always joke that there’s some guys sitting over there in Europe that’s like, man, I’d like to get an american wigeon.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: God, I’d like to get one of those, pepper headed. Yeah right we get some big flocks of wigeon in this area. It’s one of our majority of our puddle ducks on the saltwater especially. You’ll be glass in a flock and, I’d say, one out of every 100 or 200 there’s. You’re going to see it. If you got a big flock, you’re going to see either a full eurasian in there or you’re going to see a hybrid eurasian in there. They’re part of the Pacific flyway now. They’re endemic here. So they’ve been here long enough.

Ramsey Russell: They always have been

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, I mean-

Ramsey Russell: We were talking to Kyle about the pintails and other birds coming over from Eurasia, from Japan and Russia. So these birds will, too.

Captain Dave Drewry: Every one of my crew, guys that I know, we’ve all shot at least one.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: I know some fantastic scullers that have stacked up a limit of them in a day.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Captain Dave Drewry: They’re good. You know who I’m talking about? Sculling is a real one. It’s an effective way of getting up on them.

Ramsey Russell: Is that a big thing out here, sculling?

Captain Dave Drewry: It’s not a big thing.

Ramsey Russell: Cause you got a Barnaby bay sneak boat.

Captain Dave Drewry: I got a sneak boat, and I have a domeyer Humboldt style two man skull as well. I don’t think anybody’s guiding for him. I tried rowing for some friends. It’s tough. I used to put my boys in front, and that was the best.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: Every once in a while, we’ll get out there for him. And there are some avid scullers, and the west coast has an incredible sculling tradition, from northern California up through Oregon into Washington. In fact, there were so many scullers up in this area that they actually shut it down for Brant hunting in the north end. So they’re not allowed to boat for Brant without having an anchor on the ground in a lot of places.

Ramsey Russell: So you’re out for 25 years, a long season. You’re out taking care of clients, hitting the nooks and crannies, knowing where the species are. Hey, wasn’t that kind of cool that we showed up? And I was kind of glad to have that open. I got here late, and I was really tired from having driven over from Saskatoon pretty quick. I needed to get a license. I needed an oil change and a tire rotate. Might have needed to wash a pair of underwear in the sink. I don’t know. Needed to get called up. Might needed a couple hours of sleep. But you said, we’re going to get all this done, we’re going to jump around and go look at some stuff, you know?

Captain Dave Drewry: Heck, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That was a great catch up day. Wasn’t that kind of cool, that right in here backyard, the very first pair of ducks, I laid eyes on are Harlequins.

Captain Dave Drewry: You spotted them.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: Saw a few pairs that morning.

Ramsey Russell: Saw 2 pairs.

Captain Dave Drewry: Good to see them coming back. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That was really kind of cool. Now all this time going on Tiffany, it wasn’t his business. It was you all’s business.

Tiffany: Yup

Ramsey Russell: What did, what did team Tiffany. What was her part of the equation?

Tiffany: Oh, God, I am. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Besides making a mean ass huckleberry mule that you spoiled me with since I’ve been here.

Tiffany: We were running the phones. We had a website and we had phones. So manning the phones, calling people back, getting people information, talking people information. Setting up times for Dave to talk to people, to get more information.

Captain Dave Drewry: Booking.

Tiffany: Booking. I was the booking agent. Dave was the nail in the coffin, book it. But I did all the logistics of that. The first year we ran clients, we actually had them stay in town, and we started wrapping our head around how we could kind of expand and create more of a package experience because we were feeding them. We would have people come back from hunts and we would have dinners and what not. So we kind of decided to expand the operation. We have 20 acres here. I had a brand new baby and a 3-year old, and we decided that we were going to put cabins on the property. So we were one of the first people to kind of fall into that tiny home lifestyle option of housing. So we have 2 small park mobiles up on the property, and we cleared the space and put all the infrastructure in for those. We would host clients, and we would create kind of a package experience. So that then expanded my workload. So I was the housekeeper, the cook, the booker, the tax man.

Ramsey Russell: You told a story the other day that your children-

Tiffany: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Liked following you to go clean the house.

Tiffany: They got to follow me to work. We’d walk up the road to the cabins, and they would get excited because they didn’t get a whole lot of TV when they were younger, so I’d put in a little deviation, or actually, it was possibly VHS. I think it was.

Captain Dave Drewry: It was.

Tiffany: They got to watch, cartoons and things, and they didn’t get that during the day in their normal life. They’d sit on the little couch, and I clean the cabins and do the laundry.

Ramsey Russell: Real mom and pop stuff here. Because somebody even asked you, why don’t you just hire somebody to clean the cabins?

Tiffany: Yeah. A lot of people kind of got baffled that we didn’t really expand our operation and have, the housekeeper, the cook, or the cleaner, even add more cabins to the experience, or even Dave always had, hands. He had help, definitely over the years, but when our boys got big enough, they became the help. It’s how you make money.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Tiffany: Right.

Ramsey Russell: Because you got to make that living even though you made your lifestyle.

Tiffany: We had the lifestyle, but you still got to pay the bills. I didn’t mind walking to work. I didn’t mind bringing my kids to work.

Ramsey Russell: Anita and I have talked about it, too. We’ve got some key people we’ve contracted out to, aspects of the technological side, the accounting side, the graphic art side. At the end of the day, our business, no differently than yours, is highly interpersonal.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a relationship, it’s an obligation, and we’ve just not ever felt, after 20 years, that we could hire somebody for a paycheck that would take as personal interest in guests as they need and deserve. It’s a big deal.

Tiffany: We really realized that the niche of Dave and I and our family and the property here was that we were offering an experience. That’s just what we did and we got quite good at it.

Captain Dave Drewry: Guide, lodging, therapist-

Ramsey Russell: You told me the other day when we were getting a license Dave, we were walking down the pier, and you said, a lot of the client feedback, they really liked Tiffany and her frozen pizzas.

Tiffany: I don’t do frozen pizzas.

Ramsey Russell: So for oven TV dinners. Where did you learn to cook? did you have, an easy bake oven or something when you.

Tiffany: No, they get gourmet meals. I love to cook. Cooking is kind of-

Ramsey Russell: I’ve learned that-

Tiffany: Yeah, cooking and baking-

Ramsey Russell: It’s second nature-

Tiffany: It’s my passion. I think that that was kind of part of the conversation is that whenever we would have people over or have, maybe we had a client that wasn’t staying, like we originally didn’t do these package experiences, but we would invite somebody to stay for dinner, that’s when the magic would happen. That’s when you’re sharing your life with someone, and they’re sharing their life with you, and it’s pretty awesome. It can be a very symbiotic, really rewarding relationship. Food, I think, is a huge part of that. We got to kind of, take our boathouse days, which was Dave managing the right side of the boathouse, me managing the left, and we just brought it here.

Ramsey Russell: Dave and I had a hell of a day yesterday. We got up early by Pacific standards, 04:00 left the shop at 05:00, drove, launched a boat, went out and hunted, went and had Hama hama oysters and drank one of them great ginger beers. Oh, my gosh, was that amazing? Somehow another blew a tire out. Had to find some Internet. Did this, did that come wagging it at 07:00 and it was amazing walking into this. Your clam chowder and going to bed. It was just the perfect day. When people are out in the water working with Dave, it’s great to come home to a clean cabin and a homemade meal. And especially your cooking. Your cooking is exceptional. It’s really good. I’m going to get the recipe for the steamed clams, is what Dave said we’re having. You took steamed clams to a whole other level with the chorizo and the broth and the herbs. Oh, my gosh.

Tiffany: That’s part of it, too. Like the northwest, we’re famous. We’re famous for seafood. We’re famous for really good, high quality food. We live in a region, the Olympic peninsula. We have Chimacum valley, which is just right up the road. It’s traditionally a very agrarian society. They have farms, dairies. We have at least a dozen organic farms here and we have a lot of seafood growers local, and a lot of, good growers of good food. We like to share that. it’s not just us. We’re sharing what the peninsula has to offer, this whole area.

Ramsey Russell: It’s the full experience.

Tiffany: Yeah, this whole area. The chorizo was from the farmer down the road, and the clams and mussels are from Hama hama, and the fennel and the herbs were from the CSA that I picked up last week. So it’s all local-

Ramsey Russell: Real local sourced

Tiffany: All home food. I like to do it justice, and so cooking over the years, we’ve kind of come up with what we love to share. I love talking food with people. People love food.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Tiffany: People, bring their own stories about food. Like, you and I just talking this morning about, how do you cook your cornbread? I’m like, I want to cook my cornbread like that.

Ramsey Russell: Bacon grease is the secret.

Tiffany: Not only do they get to share the hunting stories, but they get to share their even own grown experience of food, and I hope that they go back out and go, oh, my gosh, we had this great experience. We met these great people. I got to do something I love. I got to eat this great food. I got to sit around someone. Some of our favorite hunts, when we first started dating, we went to the Dakotas and did a pheasant hunt with this fabulous family. Every night they just pull us into their dining room table, and I honestly think that that probably was the foundation if I were to do this is how I’d do it because it felt so warm and welcoming and it was just lovely.

Ramsey Russell: It’s those aspects, the food, the camaraderie, the warmth, the familiarity that take duck hunting from a checkbox, I got my species, I’m going to stuff him and let him collect dust to an experience that you remember that becomes a part of you for the rest of your life. That really becomes my favorite aspect of the whole thing about duck hunting. It’s just how varied and how good and how fun it is and how your chili tastes different than their chili, and over here we’re eating that, and over here we’re eating that, and everybody’s putting their personal spin on it and sitting in a duck blind on good days and dry days and wet days and flat days and windy days and sharing this thing. It takes it to a whole other level. How did things change Dave? We talked about you getting started. We talked about how you did it. And then times changed in the last 25 years.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, Pacific paradise has changed. There’s just a lot of waterfowl hunters in the state and a lot of people living on the west side of Washington. Similar to how I started out, there’s a lot of pressure on public areas, and we’ve got less of them than we had 20 years ago, 30 years ago and as that pressure increases, a lot of people have boats in this area. We’re out fishing and crabbing and clamming and doing all the things during spring and summer, and we have a whole another. This is considered the off season.

Tiffany: Yeah this is our off season.

Captain Dave Drewry: We’re cranking. Olympic peninsula is tourist town, and boats are launching out of here all through the summer and spring. As social media blossomed, pictures got out there, it’s hard to not recognize the beauty of these birds. We’re all just butterfly collectors at heart and these things are, they’re just gorgeous. Every one of them have their own intricacies and people got interested and it wasn’t, there’s still plenty of people just want to shoot a mallard. Their taxidermy I think, became more mainstream and people wanted real, nice-mounted birds. These $500,000 art pieces that are taxidermy now, people saw him as his buddy got him. I want to get one of those that looked great in my office. The way you get those is hunt them.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: Word got out and we started seeing more and more people out there in the saltwater, and that’s great. I encourage, seeing other sportsmen out there acting responsibly and enjoying these incredible birds and this type of hunting. It’s not for the faint of heart. We got wind weather, you can have high pressure days like yesterday where, you could have be out there in a canoe.

Ramsey Russell: Well just know what the tide is going to do so that you aren’t beached for 8 hours to come back in and push off. That’s kind of a big deal.

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh yeah, you got to watch these tides. But no, it became a little more mainstream-

Ramsey Russell: That was really made for a long day yesterday.

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh yeah, we don’t do that. But you saw that tide come in when we went to the truck and the octopus-

Ramsey Russell: unbelievable.

Captain Dave Drewry: Floating within minutes. When we just dragged it up on the beach. That tide came in quick this morning.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, it did.

Captain Dave Drewry: We had 11ft of tide rolling. But yeah, it became more popular, Kyle, he was referencing the fact that there’s only 4000 Harlequin on an average year, down to 2500 other times, scoters, of course they’re in the, there’s tens of thousands. All these compared to mallard numbers or puddle duck numbers, they’re not prevalent birds. I mean the populations, they cannot withstand that type of pressure. Tiffany was talking about why we didn’t expand. We certainly could have expanded and had more guides and had more cabins. But anywhere these sea ducks occur you just can’t we got 107 day season here in Washington. You can hunt them the entire length of the season. They’d get worn out.

Ramsey Russell: Did you see a notable decline in Harlequin’s especially?

Captain Dave Drewry: Most certainly.

Ramsey Russell: So as it became more popular, as more people got into guiding and outfitting and freelancing, and that blue duck became not just a duck, it became something else. Did you see a decline? Like out here there’s normally 100, now there’s 2 or 3.

Captain Dave Drewry: In a 25 year career, in the old days, just Washington in general, harvested between 100 and 150 Harlequin per season out of a population of 4000. That was manageable. As the interest increased in that bird in particular, that number from fish and wildlife data doubled within a year or two. COVID didn’t help anything. It actually was increasing before COVID which is notable. We don’t have any protections on guide businesses in state. We had out of state services coming in and bringing clients and, the birds just couldn’t handle it.

Ramsey Russell: You saw a decline.

Captain Dave Drewry: I’m not going to.

Ramsey Russell: Well, Harlequins were your-

Tiffany: bread and butter.

Ramsey Russell: That was your livelihood. I can come out here and I can shoot Barrow’s and I can shoot commons and I can shoot three scoters. This morning we could have shot the north american trio of freaking mergansers.

Captain Dave Drewry: Heck yeah.

Ramsey Russell: But, that blue duck. I want my blue duck.

Captain Dave Drewry: Harlequin is awesome.

Ramsey Russell: Did anybody ever come out here to hunt with you that wanted, back during that heyday, that stretch of time that you all running this business, did anybody ever come back that could take or leave a Harlequin?

Tiffany: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, most certainly. The first year that clients would show up, they haven’t shot a Harlequin. Of course, that was number one on their list. We, we’d always run three day hunts and that was if the weather was cooperating. We always like to get on a Harlequin duck hunt that first day, focus on it, get the pressure off both for the client and for the guide, you know-

Ramsey Russell: But most people, especially first timers, they came out here. That was-

Captain Dave Drewry: That was number one.

Ramsey Russell: El numero uno.

Captain Dave Drewry: That was number one.

Ramsey Russell: No pressure, nothing, but I want my Harlequin.

Captain Dave Drewry: Maybe he’s got a spot on the wall. The next time they come out, they’re going to want a second one to put in that spot. With Washington with a single bird limit, that’s how it worked. We always shot drakes. We didn’t. We never shot hens. We did not promote shooting any hens for Harlequin. It was like shooting the cow. On these waters locally and the areas that these birds are prevalent, we started seeing a decline, and it was very obvious, and it was obvious that something needed to get done and actually, something needed to get done sooner.

Ramsey Russell: Did you? Because Kyle, as he kind of sort of stepped around the other day and alluded, it was not uncontroversial, the closing of Harlequins for reasons of biological data. It was controversial. Let’s face it, man. This is the rock star of my lineup. This is the hit, this is the free bird of my concert. This is it, this is what everybody’s coming to see. Where did you stand on issue of Harlequins?

Captain Dave Drewry: I’m going to back it up a little bit.

Tiffany: I was just going to say you should back it up about 15 years ago.

Captain Dave Drewry: This isn’t a new problem. Some of us sea duck hunters, Ben Welton and Ottos and Captain Dave and several others, we were seeing problems with the Harlequin duck. This is probably 2005, early 2000s. It had always been a single bird limit with us, with one bird possession limit.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Captain Dave Drewry: Anybody who reads the pamphlet and knows game laws means that you shoot your bird, you got your bird in hand. If it’s a traveling hunter, until you get home, that’s still your bird. You’re not your place of residence. You’re done with Harlequin for the year, but that’s a gray area. People started working around the system, and maybe or maybe not shipping birds home or, shooting a couple, we could see things starting to happen, and the game department did, too. In lieu of a threat of shutting that Harlequin season down 15 years ago, we supported that, let’s go to a single bird limit, 1 Harlequin for the year. That was unheard of. There was never any other bird in-

Ramsey Russell: Close that loophole.

Unique Management Strategy for Washington’s Harlequin Ducks.

This is as conservation thinking hunters, they also, at the same time, the game department came up with a separate management strategy for sea ducks, just like with mallards and adaptive harvest management, this and that.

Captain Dave Drewry: No other species was managed like that for waterfowl. That was actually pretty poignant. We went in front of the game commission at that time and lobbied for it, supported the department and their recommendations for it, and implemented not only a single Harlequin limit for the year. This is as conservation thinking hunters, they also, at the same time, the game department came up with a separate management strategy for sea ducks, just like with mallards and adaptive harvest management, this and that. They had thresholds. So scoters, if they were above this threshold, you could shoot 7 of them. If they were at this population level, you could shoot 4 of them, then 2, and then closed if it’s below this threshold. And each one of the sea ducks, scoters, old squaw, longtails, Harlequin and the goldeneye, each had these thresholds and were managing Washington above the federal regulations differently. We had our own focus on these unique birds and Harlequin, we’re now at 1 bird per season. That lasted for some time. It really held it all back and kept it controlled. It was only in recent years that it kind of went off the rails. As somebody living kind of in one of the hot spots where these birds are prevalent, we’ve got wildlife refuges here where hunting is not allowed, that the birds take refuge, but in those areas that they couldn’t take refuge, areas that we traditionally hunted for years and always had a steady supply of birds and never felt icky or dirty about, what we do as hunters, they were disappearing-

Ramsey Russell: You told me, I think yesterday, you met a young man that maybe was running some buddy hunter clients. I couldn’t remember which, but he came out and scouted around and couldn’t see any Harlequins. He didn’t find any Harlequins where he had seen a 100 last year.

Captain Dave Drewry: We had a guy that came in from out of state. There were several of them over a period of time. I ran into one of them, one of these bays. He had some hunters out in the layout boat, and we just had a casual conversation about things and, guide talk constituents and, he hadn’t been here. I think he took a year off or two during COVID and was back with his clients a couple years later. This was only a few years ago or a couple years ago, and was just shocked that these bays that he had hunted only 3 years before that were full of birds are now devoid.

Ramsey Russell: What did you tell him?

Captain Dave Drewry: It’s no surprise. I mean-

Ramsey Russell: They all got shot.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Or depleted.

Captain Dave Drewry:  They’re not there.

Ramsey Russell: We talked to Kyle the other day, these birds aren’t just going all over the shorelines everywhere. They’re clumped. So you probably had, over the 25 years, you probably had this stretch of bar, that point, that shoal, that you knew, I could sit in these 5 or 6 or 10 specific places in this bay and if we’re patient, the client’s going to get his Harlequin.

Captain Dave Drewry: We always-

Ramsey Russell: Very finite.

Captain Dave Drewry: We always focused on a wide area as to not whether it’s Harlequin or scoters or Goldeneye or this and that. We’d always spread it out as a guide service. You don’t want to shoot the cow. So we’d rotate around and make sure we didn’t hit these spots too hard and maybe take a bird or two out of this population. Harlequin in particular, they’ll winter. They spend their summer, spring and summer up on the rivers and breed and freestone rivers up in Montana and Alberta and places, Kyle alluded to that. Then they’re back down here in the saltwater. The Drakes come down to molt by August, September. They’re deadbeat dads. They skip out real quick.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: Come right back down here on the saltwater. They’re in wintering, molting flocks initially at the end of summer. They’ll live and die wintering on a, on a stretch of beach maybe only quarter mile long, so they’re focused on certain areas. A lot of people that, live in the inter Puget sound that never seen one. It’s very unique sighting, but we’re lucky enough to, below Canada here and other areas in the northern strait and that, they’re focused in certain habitats here, and we have them, it’s same as the Brant with the eelgrass beds. Each bird’s got its own unique habitat that it inhabits and, with shellfish and Scoters, that’s Harlequin. They’re, they’re probably the most focused on habitat of all of them.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, very interesting. Talk a little bit about how COVID affected, how COVID was such a epic changing proving ground for the hunting here as well as for your business here. Peninsula sportsmen.

Captain Dave Drewry: Well, I think COVID threw a wrench in everybody’s lives. Washington was one of the only states, if not the only state, that actually hunting and fishing was outlawed for a period of time, but once that blew over, everybody went out hunting and fishing. They were recreating the outdoors. They had more time on there.

Ramsey Russell: That was nationwide though, because all of a sudden you didn’t have to go to work.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, heck yeah.

Ramsey Russell: But you could get out of the house.

Captain Dave Drewry: Fantastic.

Ramsey Russell: And you had this ppv windfall.

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: you had a little boost-

Captain Dave Drewry: Whether you’re camping or fishing, it was great and it brought a lot of people in the outdoors, and that’s, we need that kind of thing. It was a good thing. But on resources, whether it’s deer, elk, waterfowl, fishing, crab, shrimp, the resources took a hit because a lot of people who previously hadn’t been out recreating on these resources, were now recreating on these resources, and it was difficult for the game department, too. They were really shuffling, trying to anticipate harvests on different resources and tricky time for everybody. So great for the guy to get out with his family and recreate but it definitely made challenges on things. From a personal standpoint with our business, we had a liability, especially at that time, that they really didn’t know what COVID was, what it was going to do. I had some clients booked. We just put them off a year, initially and everybody was fine with that, guaranteed spots. That progressed into another year, which we didn’t know how long it was going to last. From a business standpoint, there’s a liability to it. I didn’t want to get anybody sick. If we were a small business, we got one guide, Captain Dave, and if I go down, I couldn’t hunt the rest of the season and take care of the rest of my clients, so we were better to just shut down. That wasn’t the case for, for other guide services. I think that was probably responsible for the proliferation of some other pressures.

Ramsey Russell: You were telling me last night, Tiffany, about the insurance and stuff. you all are 25 years into business. You have assets, you have a reputation. You’re by the book. You’ve got-

Tiffany: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Insurance.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That combined with the COVID and the unknowing kind of put you all in a bind that maybe some of these guides don’t or-

Tiffany: Yeah. When you’re a mom and pop and you’ve put all of your eggs in one basket. We have it all here. We’ve invested and reinvested in ourselves numerous times. You’re paying for your insurance, you’re paying for your liability. You’re paying to make sure that you’re running your business successfully. We are a high risk business. We have water, we have boats, we have shotguns, we have all sorts of stuff. Dave’s a licensed captain, and there’s upkeep in that. I’m running people through my home and you got to have that insurance and that liability. They’re on your property. So for COVID, not knowing-

Ramsey Russell: Real business stuff-

Tiffany: Real business stuff, liability is a huge thing to consider every single year, every single client. Osha is the number one thing. Our kids laugh that they could be professional risk assessments because, we talk about it out loud all the time.

Captain Dave Drewry: We’ve been around for a long time. We rode through some pretty crazy things, like the rest of America.

Tiffany: Totally.

Captain Dave Drewry: We went through the recession. We went through. Actually, we had 9/11. I was telling you, Ramsey.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: We’re in the northwest. We’ve got military bases around us, and 9/11 happened right before the duck season. We had boat launches were all getting chained up. They weren’t letting people out on the water.

Tiffany: I forgot about that.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, I had clients booked, and we went on with our duck seasons, but we had to do some fandangling to get out on the saltwater. You can’t hunt sea ducks from land from the middle of the woods. We’ve had those challenges before the recession and people struggling. COVID was an odd one from a guide standpoint. Everybody kind of thinks, he’s hunting and fishing. Everyone’s hunting and fishing. So why aren’t we hunting and fishing?

Tiffany: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You all actually had some clients think of you all as left wingers or something, like Californians, the way you all dealt with it.

Tiffany: Oh Yeah. The funny thing is that regardless of your personal views on what you thought should or shouldn’t be happening, each state had its own rules. We’re calling people and putting them out, and they’re just like fuck it. Sorry. Well, they’re just kind of like big middle finger to Washington. Let me come up anyway.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah.

Tiffany: Then what happens if something happens and I’m running my business and I’m told I’m not supposed to, or we have these liabilities that the state is not handling properly, I don’t know. I can’t go out of those boundaries. We were probably one of the last states, Washington, to open. everybody else was opening. I mean the south-

Ramsey Russell: the West coast was way different.

Tiffany: The West Coast general and Washington in particular.

Captain Dave Drewry: The coast Guard, too. There were regulations for, for captaining and there was guidelines about how, not guidelines. They were telling us what we couldn’t do with clients for a while. How many people you could run charter boats, how many people you could have on board. we’re smaller. We only run 2-4 clients at a time. But, there were rules. It wasn’t just left field stuff.

Tiffany: I think for us, shutting down for that first year was the right call. We reopened for the second year with some things in place we felt comfortable with that. We kind of rode the wave, kind of knew what to expect. People knew what to expect. People weren’t blaming other people anymore for COVID.

Captain Dave Drewry: Guys came out and had a good time.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You reminded me about that, talking about the military bases, because we’ve seen some pretty cool stuff. The seals, the sea lions, the salmon, washing up on shore and things of that nature, but you told me some stuff the other day about some really cool stuff that you spend enough time out on the water watching decoys, hoping sea ducks come in. You talking about some other stuff that has popped up or floated in or driven in or done some stuff. Start first with the critters instead of the military. You are watching these beautiful little harbor seals flying around and everything going on and you said, you know what happened? I said, what?

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh, that’s a good one Ramsey.  Well, we were hunting a particular shallow estuary down on the Hood canal at one point. I had some guy, I had some Hawaiians a couple decades ago, some hawaiian guys out in those little single layouts which, you’re in a layout boat in the middle of the ocean. Even in shallow bay, you feel like you’re out in the middle of nowhere.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: In a little tiny thumbnail. it’s quite the experience.

Ramsey Russell: Feel like a little fish in a big pond.

Captain Dave Drewry: It’s awesome. My clients love it.

Ramsey Russell: Cause you were saying just right over here, you’ve seen gray whales and all kinds of stuff up in here.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, marine mammals are real common in our area. We’ve got two different types of sea lions. We’ve got harbor seals. As far as the fin whales, we get gray whales and humpback whales and orca whales and minke whales. There’s a lot in the salish sea and Strait of Juan de Fuca, there’s quite a few whales and all kinds of stuff to look at. We’re in this back bay and, I don’t know, a few hours into the hunt, there’s this mass exodus of harbor seals that are not going out to sea, but they’re coming from the sea and piling up this river mouth, the shallow river mouth, very strange. Like today we see some harbor seals popping up and looking at us, looking at Char dog, and they’re no threat, but they’re curious but these ones were panicking, which was interesting. Just a few minutes later, here comes some big black dorsal fins, making their way into shallow water and spouts. It was a pod of killer whales coming in, and they were feeding on these harbor seals. They’re salmon eaters, the Salish sea, j-pod, k-pod, but we get these transient Orcas that come in from the open ocean, and they feed on everything.

Ramsey Russell: They’re hungry,

Captain Dave Drewry: They’re hungry and they love harbor seals, like popcorn to them. To be honest, we need a little thinning of the harbor seals. They’re a marine protected mammal in here, and they’re overabundant in most places. So we welcomed them coming down, and they were feeding on a few seals that day and the guys that were in the layout boats, I think they screamed for me to come get them in the large tender boat and get them off the water because maybe they look like a seal.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: That was some sights. Being out here on the open water and-

Ramsey Russell: What are some other cool stuff? You find some of these areas around these military installations.

Captain Dave Drewry: Just like any other duck hunting, you want to get out there well before first light, and it takes them, you got some rigging, and you got some setup time. We’re running in the dark. I got radar. We’re running, normal captainy stuff and sometimes with just a couple miles or a few 100 yards. Like I was talking that first day, we run 10 or 20 miles some days out in the dark and you’re running with a spotlight and moonlight and navigation and we’ve had submarines out there.

Ramsey Russell: Submarines just pop up?

Captain Dave Drewry: Coast Guard cutter spotlight.

Ramsey Russell: Did you tell me one time your, your GPS system went down?

Captain Dave Drewry: Well, radar-

Ramsey Russell: They were able to block it?

Tiffany: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: We’ve had a few clients that are, that are high up in the government, and I’ve always asked them about it and, I don’t know exactly what-

Ramsey Russell: Maybe it’s like your GPS was closest something and it started pinging on the submarine or.

Captain Dave Drewry: Radar can be picked up by quite a few things, so, they don’t like active radar and real advanced navigation stuff near their bases, it pops off on occasion, and it just seems to happen in those particular bays.

Tiffany: You’ve had people come out and be like, it’s you.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, right.

Tiffany: After a while, they knew it was Dave.

Captain Dave Drewry: And we’ve got, there’s-

Ramsey Russell: You can tell me some frog man popped out of water once.

Captain Dave Drewry: Oh, they practice out here.

Ramsey Russell: Walk through your decoy.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: Put a decoy on their head. We’ve got naval air bases here. We’ve got ordnance bases. We’ve got nuclear submarine bases. It’s all within striking distance here so that you never know what you’re going to see. Out here in the strait, this is international water. The canadian border is an invisible line right there drawn between Vancouver island and us. Even while we’re fishing in that, you got to abide by borders and they’re being patrolled. Again, we went through 9/11 and all that, and border security when it was heightened. There was boats running out here keeping an eye on things all the time. We had Rasam tried to come through Port Angeles and one of the terrorists, and that’s a small town too, that made big news. So they put a clamp down on these waters off the peninsula, and they’re watching them carefully, and they should.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: All right. We’ve talked about you all specialty and collections and stuff like that, but you’re sort of a collector yourself. I walked in your shop the other day, and it reminded me of Captain Riley’s. You got a lot of stuff. Yeah, they have a lot of stuff.

Captain Dave Drewry: We’ll let Tiffany touch on that for a moment.

Tiffany: There is something about when you run your own business, you can buy some toys. When you’re doing something you love and you’re doing, and you’re expanding, we pivot a lot and not only do we run our duck season, that’s our kind of the big, all inclusive thing that we run. We have a summer season, too. We’re bringing families in. They’re doing packages. We’re taking them out on the water. We’re clamming, we’re crabbing, we’re fishing, we’re hosting, making bonfires, providing marshmallows, and the whole experience on the other side.

Captain Dave Drewry: A lot of fishing poles.

Tiffany: Yeah. So a lot of fish.

Ramsey Russell: You got a lot of fishing poles, a lot of decoys,

Tiffany: A lot of fishing poles, lot of boats.

Captain Dave Drewry: A lot of boat.

Tiffany: Dave loves boats.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah. Big and small.

Ramsey Russell: Got a few stuff-

Tiffany: Here’s the deal. I will say he puts his hands on all of it. It’s kind of like the Marie Kondo, you know. They say if you don’t put your hands on it within a year, then you’re supposed to get rid of it. I wish he would not have his hands on at all, but he does. He uses it and so I kind of feel like.

Captain Dave Drewry: Got to have decoys as a waterfowl hunter.

Tiffany: Even when we were looking at the house, he walked down the driveway and he saw the shop, and he was like, if you like the house, we’ll stay.

Captain Dave Drewry: These this type of hunting-

Ramsey Russell: One thing I noticed, Dave. Excuse me. You like to fill a wall like I do. It’s like if-

Captain Dave Drewry: Every little square inch.

Ramsey Russell: A deck of cards would fit there. So maybe I could squeeze that next duck if I do a dead mount.

Captain Dave Drewry: I like how you think, Ramsey. I like how you think.

Ramsey Russell: I’m looking around this cabin here thinking, man, you got room for a lot of stuff in here.

Tiffany: Okay, so there used to be. At one point, I came home and the boar’s head was above the couch. So whenever you’d sit on the couch, you look up and it’s just looking at you like it’s going to eat you. I think that lasted a couple months before I think I negotiated the boar’s head could go, but the whatever could come in.

Captain Dave Drewry: We have some select big game in the lodge.

Tiffany: There did come a point. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So you’re telling me there’s a chance open for negotiation?

Captain Dave Drewry: We’ve got a good collection of waterfowl down at the shop.

Tiffany: Yeah the shop is the space.

Captain Dave Drewry: Anywhere that I go, and I travel and I love to travel and hunt and see other people’s places. The best thing to do is walk into, when you first get there and boom, you got all these things to look at on the wall. I don’t know, we probably have 50 birds on the wall down there.

Ramsey Russell: Got a bunch more. Yeah.

Captain Dave Drewry: I carve myself. I’m not a celebrated carver. I carve a hunting decoy, and over the years, I always carve a few every year.

Ramsey Russell: Heavy decoy.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah. I like a big, heavy cedar decoy, local wood. I’ve got friends that carve, and I’ve got places that I’ve gone where I’ve picked up in decoy that reminds me of the hunt. I just love having that all displayed, and I’ll get a beer and walk out there and just-

Tiffany: Just stare at it.

Captain Dave Drewry: Relive hunts and memories and things that we’ve done, and I just love that.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all for your hospitality. I’ve had a wonderful time. I was thinking, if I come back, I think Anita would like to come out here, maybe not doing-

Tiffany: Oh God, please bring her. That’d be so fun.

Captain Dave Drewry: We’d love to have you, Ramsey. It’s been a great. It’s been a great time. You’re a fantastic client, friend. This has been a lot of fun.

Ramsey Russell: We’ve had a good time.

Captain Dave Drewry: We’ve had a-

Ramsey Russell: Solve some world problem.

Captain Dave Drewry: Had some good chats and got some good birds out of the deal. I feel that you’ve experienced at least a portion of our northwest weather. We’ve seen a little bit of everything in this 72 hours.

Ramsey Russell: Little bit of everything.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Except the snow, and I’m not-

Captain Dave Drewry: Come back in December.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Thank you all very much. Folks you all can connect with Captain Dave and Tiffany. Tell them your Instagram page and your website.

Captain Dave Drewry: Yeah, we’re peninsula sportsmen on Instagram, peninsula_sportsmen and its peninsulasportsman.com, based out of Port Townsend in Washington. Not only do we do this fantastic sea duck hunting, we’ve got Vrbo, Airbnb cabins that we do during the summer, and we host crabbing and fishing and family adventures in the off season.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast from the Olympic peninsula. See you next time.

[End of Audio]

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