EP 427. Washington Sea Duck Hunting Pioneers
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Way back before trophy sea duck hunting went mainstream due to the internet and North American species contests–and in a region where the almighty mallard reigned supreme among local duck hunters–the Otto brothers began plying Washington State’s Puget Sound for the beautiful waterfowl species that most duck hunters had only seen in bird books and largely ignored. Their youthful obsession spawned lifelong passion where continuously upping their own game, sharing their world with new friends, traveling throughout the United States, carving their own decoys, mounting their own birds, better learning their own backyards and refining their techniques became a lifestyle. Today, they recall many adventures then and now, and their sea duck hunting approach to life.
Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. Today, I’m in Washington, in western Washington, but not on the peninsula. Got a couple of great guests today. They’re pioneers in sea duck hunting. You all heard a state biologist say only 3 or 4% of Washington duck hunters identify as sea duck hunters, probably because of these 2 guys. They weren’t influencers. They weren’t on Instagram. They weren’t trying to make it happen. They did it by doing what they love. Of course, I’m talking about John and Jason Otto, the world famous Otto brothers. Thank you all for having me.
Jason Otto: World famous.
Ramsey Russell: World famous. Thank you all for having me. Today was a rare treat for me. I was telling you last night, going to dinner John, that it’s not so much the species and certainly not the duck numbers anymore. What I value most are just the people and the experiences. I got to really get a great look at what I’ve seen and heard about you 2 brothers doing for 20 some odd years. It was a real treat. Today, we go out, we shoot the Barrow’s, you really built it up good, but it may not be there.
John Otto: Well, you did come out a little early. It’s usually the Barrow’s starts showing up at the end of October, early November. We were just hoping for a couple opportunities today, and we got a little more than that. It was nice.
Ramsey Russell: How did they rate Jason? was it in terms of the duck numbers? You wanted to see the duck numbers that were out there?
Jason Otto: Well it’s midseason. Later in the season, it definitely kind of what they do. They come in like that, but this early in the year, you just never know. We always don’t start chasing them until after Halloween and 31 October. Once that comes, you kind of start tiptoeing out there and checking them out and scouting, and you see some here and there, but they were in full flux today. It was great. They were a lot of numbers.
Ramsey Russell: It took longer to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks than it did to shoot a limit, which is 2 Barrow’s goldeneyes. Then we got to enjoy the show, and it was spectacular.
Jason Otto: It really was. They’re one of my favorite, if not my favorite bird to hunt.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, they really
Jason Otto: Really are.
Washington Duck Species
Ramsey Russell: We’re going to get into a lot of the species you all have here Jason, and the Barrow’s are your favorite?
Jason Otto: They are. I just love the way they commit to the decoys, the way they just come in and you, you hear them coming. We didn’t hear much whistling this morning, but, boy-
John Otto: It was pretty windy.
Jason Otto: When you get a high-pressure sun out, you can hear them for quite a ways out. You’ll definitely hear them before you see them.
Ramsey Russell: What’s your favorite duck John?
John Otto: Wow. I think it changes by the week since we just hunted-
Ramsey Russell: Which one?
John Otto: Well, yeah, exactly. But we hunted Barrow’s this morning. So, locally, I’d have to say, if it’s just ducks, Barrow’s, or Canvasbacks. Me and Jason hunt canvasbacks a lot, and there’s something about holding the big silverback-
Ramsey Russell: There’s no canvasbacks in western Washington.
John Otto: Well, that’s the-
Ramsey Russell: I’ve heard you got to go to eastern Washington to get on the canvasback.
John Otto: You’re right. Actually, everybody go to eastern Washington. There’s none in western Washington. No, I think Barrow’s. You saw them today when they come in as high as they do and pitch down like that and just fully commit to the decoys, you’re looking for the crescent moon to get that nice Drake, and people don’t understand how big and solid they are, especially compared to a common goldeneye. So when you’re sitting there holding the Barrow’s Drake, you’ve got a really substantial trophy that’s pretty rare. The funny thing is that you described canvasback and Barrow’s basically the same way they both come in.
Jason Otto: Exactly.
John Otto: They really do commit to the decoys the same way. And you’re looking for a silver back versus a yellow crescent so-
Ramsey Russell: Those Barrow’s Goldeneyes today were coming off big water, I presume, and they were high. But when they saw those decoys, it’s like they pitched off that you climb up that roller coaster and you pitch off in that big dive. That’s exactly what they did. I was amazed at how quickly they could get down and how tightly they spun just down-wind to get into those decoys.
John Otto: Yeah, they’re unlike a mallard. They’re not going to circle 3 or 4 times if they’re committed, and we were hunting the X today, if you noticed that below us when the tide was out, when we got there, when the tide was coming in, it started to cover it, but we were hunting a mussel bed and that’s where they want to be. So when they saw, Jason’s amazing decoys and thought it was the-
Jason Otto: That’s what I thought it was the decoys.
John Otto: It was the decoys, they seem like, but when you’re on the X and, we even actually decoyed birds over the real thing because when we were done, they started rafting up to the left there. We were still getting them in the decoys that it looked like two simple strings, but we actually had it configured with the wind to get them. It’s one thing to see that we always say, but it’s another thing to put them within 10 yards of where you want them.
Ramsey Russell: Well that’s what we did.
John Otto: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: It was cheap shots.
John Otto: Yeah. You had your 28 gauge, so we knew we had to get them in close.
Ramsey Russell: No. Then we kind of went ‘scouting’ and looked around at some other places and there were some gathered up kind of on that point by that boat ramp. I could see I’m walking behind this log and I did not know I was going to be 10ft from them. They began to swim out and it was just amazing to be that close to 150, 200 Barrow’s?
John Otto: There was. Yeah, I didn’t think there’d be that many because some of them are hidden on the beach there.
Jason Otto: Exactly. That many birds down so soon. I was surprised to see those ones that we saw after the hunt, too. That was crazy. There was a lot of birds there.
John Otto: You could tell they were fresh too, because as the season goes on, you don’t see them all balled up like that. We were seeing groups of 10, 15-
Ramsey Russell: Those were like migratory flocks.
John Otto: Yes. After they don’t get banged around too much. But, me and J harass them a little bit through the season. But by about a month from now, you’ll start to see 2s and 3s. Then you’ll start seeing the lone single Drakes. They kind of break off from the groups, but they never get more than 8, 9 in a little group, and you’ll see them laced down the beach that way. So the fact that we got to see them like this is pretty rare. It only happens when they get here, and maybe the first couple weeks.
A Duck’s Paradise
Every little species got its own favorite little gravel bar, its favorite little something.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I enjoyed the pace today just because we picked Drake’s and we kind of took turns, there was no chance whatsoever. Nobody knew who killed what. I just appreciate that. It’s just a nice approach to duck hunting. Something I noticed today is we did have a few buffleheads come in later, as we drove around, looked around, it’s like there were the Barrow’s. Way over yonder were the Scoters. Somewhere else was something else. They’re very nuanced, very niche. Every little species got its own favorite little gravel bar, its favorite little something. What’s going on there?
Jason Otto: That’s a good question. You asked me about, have you seen Harlequin here? and it’s like, we don’t where we hunted today, but down the way, we see them all over. They’re basically the same feed in the same areas and stuff. So, yeah, there definitely are nuances. They have their own little spots they go to and they like to do. So, we’ll have definitely spots where we’ll go and be able to shoot Barrow’s and shoot Scoters and, shoot Harlequin or, some Mergansers that come through if we want to shoot a Hooded(Merganser) or something along those lines. So we have areas where you can definitely shoot different species in the same spot, but we also have spots that are, like, today that was pretty much all Barrow’s and we saw the Scoters trading, but they weren’t going to come in, which, every now and then they will, but regularly they don’t.
Ramsey Russell: What was your setup for Scoters? You’re in deeper water. They’re diving, those rafts are popping up and down and going and feeding. You might see a Harlequin come fly through or something, but you don’t expect to hunt them there. They’re not actively feeding. They’re up against the shoreline. So when I was there and we walked up and there was all those barnacles and all those little clams, and, you lift a rock, a little tiny crab goes running, I think, those Harlequins could be in here, but they’re not. Something just subtly different.
Jason Otto: Yeah, exactly.
Ramsey Russell: I know you can’t hunt them right now, but it’d be kind of cool to see them out there swimming around and I like to see one-
John Otto: Particular area, I can think of a handful of harlequins that have swam through the years-
Jason Otto: I told Ramsey, I think it was just that one time when we-
John Otto: With those goose guys-
Jason Otto: It was.
John Otto: Yeah, that’s right. I remember that.
Jason Otto: So it was the only time we ever saw them out there. It was kind of a freak deal because we took the guys out and he, we won’t mention names, but he missed a Harlequin the day before, and we’re like, sorry, we’re going to be out in Barrow’s, and next thing Harlequin came through and he missed that one, too.
John Otto: He did. Good memories. It is funny because Jason alluded to it. When you’re up in Canada, you look for a field. You got snows in one field, there are Specks in the other, or ducks, and you really try to scout hard for those combo fields. There are areas that we’ve found that you can get some combos. We’ve got spots now. You’re seeing stuff when it’s pretty early season. We still got a lot of birds that come in. It’s not much. Barrow’s are only in finite areas. But we’ll try to seek out where you can get your Scoots and your Barrow’s in the same spot. Just takes a little extra scouting. I don’t know if there’s an inch of our area around, around the western Puget Sound that we haven’t scouted or kind of know of, but it gets difficult to do that because they are niche like that.
Ramsey Russell: Do you see many Common Goldeneyes? If the common golden eyes were down, would they have been in the same area using the same habitats?
Jason Otto: Kind of goes back to what we were just talking about. We definitely have spots where the common goldeneye go to, but-
Ramsey Russell: They’re different.
Jason Otto: They are a little bit different. We’ve shot common goldeneye where we were today. We’ve done that numerous times, but is that a common goldeneye spot? No, definitely not. A couple of those spots we took you that we were pointing at some Scoters in the distance. You hunt along those, you’ll definitely see more common goldeneye. If you came out, said I want to shoot a common goldeneye, we would have gone there, because that’s where you’re going to get common goldeneye.
A Duck’s Favorite Habitat
I call it the Barrow’s beach because it was almost entirely Barrow’s coming in just right there, that little stretch.
John Otto: For example, we were hunting, I’ll just call it an island today. If you go directly on the opposite side of the island, the terrain is different. The beaches are a little more sandy and a little bit different. It’s full of common goldeneyes. We’ve never seen a Barrow’s on the other side. Never. When things are in full swing with the goldeneyes, we’ll see maybe for every 15, 20 Barrow’s, we’ll see a common. If you look on the map, it’s such a finite area. Anywhere else in Washington, or pretty much anywhere else, it’s going to be 99% commons, obviously just based on population dynamics. The area that you saw today, we will get a couple commons, but it’s 15 to 1.
Ramsey Russell: I use that hunt proof app, and I log who I’m hunting with. Where Washington, the Otto brothers. Even though I know the bay name, you know what I put for today’s hyper description? The Barrow’s sand bar. The Barrow’s gravel bar. That’s what I call it.
John Otto: Nice.
Ramsey Russell: No, Barrow’s Beach. I call it the Barrow’s beach because it was almost entirely Barrow’s coming in just right there, that little stretch. Let’s talk about the Otto brothers. Who the heck are the Otto brothers? Where’d you grow up? How’d you grow up?
Jason Otto: Our dad definitely did a lot of hunting, pheasant hunting and stuff, and that kind of set that foundation for that hunt, drive that we have. As we started going out and I think it’d be a good time to tell, my first duck I ever shot was when we were out pheasant hunting. Yeah, it was great. We’re out there in a little fruit stand, we called it, and there’s a pond back there and I made this just amazing shot on this green winged teal. It was such a good shot and I got it. So that’s my first duck ever. When I shot that duck is like, that was cool. Something about it was different than shooting pheasants. And so it just kind of ingrained. We always loved waterfowl and, we had a book of waterfowl of the world that we’d always look at and, kind of dream about.
Ramsey Russell: Which book was it about the waterfowl? Was it the Badge and burns.
John Otto: Oh man. Yeah. It was the one that had the color plates in the middle.
Jason Otto: Yeah.
John Otto: With the eclipse and-
Ramsey Russell: All the ducks of the world. I still got that book.
John Otto: Yes.
Ramsey Russell: I got it in my truck right now.
John Otto: Yeah, we’ve got that. First off, I got to call a little bit of BS on my brother here, his first duck. I think it was like 1981, I think I was 11 and he had a BB gun or something. I don’t know, just kidding, but it was definitely the early 80s and my memory is the same. We knew there was a duck in this pond and we were trying to hunt pheasants. Our dad is a die hard. His name is John Otto as well. We grew up when we pheasant hunted. You hunt pheasants, if a quail gets up or a Hun(Grey Partridge), you’re not allowed. It’s pheasants or nothing. So he was getting a little annoyed because we saw that duck out there and we’d never shot a duck before. So when we finally got there, it got up and I shot it.
Jason Otto: The funny thing is after I shot, I turned around and saw you-
Ramsey Russell: So your first duck was his duck
John Otto: A little hand green-winged teal that probably should have mounted because it was my first duck.
Jason Otto: I just remember looking at it. Ducks falling. I turn around and say, hey John. I don’t even know where you’re aiming at. You’re looking somewhere else.
John Otto: If it wasn’t my first duck, I would have given you the charity, but I got to keep that one so.
Jason Otto: Anyway, that’ll always be a debate till we die. But I do know I got it.
Ramsey Russell: So you were telling me, your dad’s a big dog man too. A serious dog guy.
Hooked on Hunting
There was no regulations back then. There was nothing. The first time we did it, we shot 14 surf scoters.
John Otto: He is. Yep. We grew up. My first words, I think, were, Mark, Mark, Mark. Really throwing dummies. He was an outstanding dog trainer, still is. Our childhood was pheasant hunting. That was a big thing, and he was a huge salmon fisherman, which actually led to what we do. We can talk about that.
Ramsey Russell: Talk about it.
John Otto: We love our dad. Very proud of him. He instilled that in us, just that innate. We’re not duck hunters. It’s a lifestyle. Let’s face it. That’s what we grew up with and that’s what we’ve perpetuated. We were very fortunate to grow up with a dad that took us hunting and taught us the ins and outs and he didn’t do much duck hunting. We did that a little bit on our own. I think he went like Thanksgiving Day after Thanksgiving every year but nothing serious. We got drawn to the diversity of duck hunting versus just going after pheasants, and he was pretty well-
Jason Otto: Plus, we like to shoot our gun.
John Otto: We like to shoot our gun. A box a day or 3 shells. That’s why we don’t deer hunt. So, he was deep into labs and we were bordering dogs and training dogs and that was his world was field trialing. We never really caught on for us. Jason did a little bit of it, but probably because it was literally everyday job for us as kids going out and working with him. I love it because we’ve had lab. We’re kind of currently dogless, but we’ve had labs through the years and draw on that experience so we can look in on them or train them. Yep.
Ramsey Russell: Well, how did the fishing dovetail into you all’s duck hunting lifestyle?
Jason Otto: So this is a good story because again, I alluded to our dad big time. Back in the day, Puget Sound was a destination spot for salmon fishing. It’s still some good fishing out there, but it’s nothing like it was in the 80s where people would literally fly to Washington and fish Puget Sound. It was in its Heyday, and we grew up on, on the boat fishing and driving and keeping the downrigger balls and getting yelled at for steer. Yeah, that downrigger ball’s got to be at 90ft no matter what. Sorry, dad. Yeah, I know we got a little PTSD on that. We would be out there, and we were the nuts who, as kids, we would look at all the ducks out on the salt water. Where most people see a bunch of, as they call it, crap ducks, whatever they want to call it. We were looking at, wow, what’s that? That duck with toucan looking bill? Why does that duck only have a black or a yellow thing? Is that really a Harlequin? What is that? So we’d go back to our book and we’d look it up, and I remember we both went to dad and said, we’re going to hunt these someday. He’s like, what? You’re crazy, and then it morphed. We literally started on our own, just getting into the duck hunting and figuring that out. We were just like any punk kids. We went to the public ground on our boots. We couldn’t afford a boat. We had some cheap decoys, and we booted it with all the public crowds and did the best we could. We’d scratch out that brown limit every once in a while, and think we were the king of the world.
John Otto: We were back then.
Jason Otto: Yeah. So it was exciting and just. We’re also very competitive guys. I think when you’re out there, the competition of it, the lifestyle of it, it just kind of created monsters in it. Then as we started western Washington, we’d get into eastern Washington and puddle ducking, and it just wasn’t enough to go to. We wanted to branch out and so, the minute that we could afford to get our own boat, we were in our early 20s, and the minute we could figure this out. It was pre internet, pre everything. We never heard of the term long lines or anything like that. We did our own system just based on trying to figure it out. I kind of think of back now as a little archaic, but we were out there, punk kids and 16-foot boat, trying to-
Jason Otto: Our first boat, remember, was yellow.
John Otto: We don’t have to tell everything here, Jay, but it was a little different world back then. Our first Scoter hunt, I couldn’t even imagine sitting up there now, because things change, obviously, like any duck hunting situation. You put out 12-scoter decoys, we’d get our Mallard flambeaus that we painted all black and whatever. Every Surf Scoter in the county would suck into these decoys. There was no regulations back then. There was nothing. The first time we did it, we shot 14 surf scoters.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
John Otto: We were shocked and amazed, and then we showing people, and they were like, gross, what are you doing?
Jason Otto: And I’d say it’s safe to say we were hooked, right then.
John Otto: Hooked.
Ramsey Russell: Were they saying gross because it was a sea duck or gross because it was a duck at all?
John Otto: Gross because it wasn’t a mallard.
Ramsey Russell: Okay.
John Otto: Let’s face it.
Ramsey Russell: Let’s talk about that, because Washington duck hunting culture is primarily greenheads. We were talking about that at dinner last night about, the old timers don’t shoot anything if the Mallards are flying, let alone a sea duck that smells like a mollusc.
John Otto: Our buddy Shawn Carr is going to be laughing when we start talking about this, because he’s a tri city guy and he’s a Mallard guy. We’ve trained him to be a little more diverse. But growing up, there’s Washington hunters that even disparage a widgeon and disparage-
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
John Otto: Yeah. It’s crazy because they’re just so spoiled out here, especially in eastern Washington, where a lot of plentiful mallards, a lot of great hunting over there. To them, that’s the level of success. You shoot 7 greenheads, that’s the success. On western Washington, it’s a little bit different terrain. We grew up most duck hunting for western Washington folks was to go to eastern Washington. That was the big thing. There’s no pheasants on our side. You go to pheasant hunting over. There’s mallards here, but not, like over there. So you go over there. We grew up with a mallard only culture out here and off, you have to lower yourself to get some widgeon. Pintail always held high. Why would you shoot teal, that attitude? So we dealt with a lot of that when we first got into it, and quite frankly, we didn’t care. We knew what we were doing and we loved it. You think of some of the bodies of water we hunt now and what it looked like in 1993, 1994, it’s shocking. Just, things have moved around. Everything is different. They were definitely not as decoy shy as they are now.
Ramsey Russell: What was it about those sea ducks that so captivated you all’s interest?
Jason Otto: The uniqueness of them, really. The beauty of them. Just that, it took us a long time because when we started, getting into hunting, we were shooting Mallards and Teal and Widgeon and anything that flew in front of us. Thinking back when we were young and having those birds ingrained in our memory as a kid, and we always talked about, we got to get out there and do that. I got to get out there and do that. So to finally, I’ll never forget when John did it and came knocking on my door holding up a Surf Scoter. I’m like, it’s actually doable.
John Otto: I skipped that. What I did was, it’s kind of funny and silly, but I borrowed a friend. It was during the hunting season, and I saw a raft of scoters out and I borrowed his rowboat. I rode out. Now Scoters would never know. I parted the flock and I was 10ft away and a surf got up and I shot it killed it.
Jason Otto: Because the surf is looking at you like, what are you doing?
John Otto: Exactly. I literally, I couldn’t wait to get in my car and drive all the way back to Jason house. I knocked on the door and showed him this Drake Surf Scoter because it’s one thing to see them in the pictures and on the water, but holding it as, completely different thing.
Jason Otto: So guess what we did the next day?
John Otto: Yep, that’s the way when I did it. So, I skipped that part but I did show him, I’m like, Jay, I literally said, this is our future, and Jay goes, holy.
Jason Otto: Yes, it is.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Jason Otto: Yeah, I forgot-
John Otto: Like, that was the end of the 1993, 1992 season, 1991 season, something like that. 1992. So I was at the very end of the season. I did it on the last day of the season.
Jason Otto: Well, no because I did it the last day of the season. You did it night-
John Otto: Yeah.
Jason Otto: Anyway, it doesn’t matter, but going to the next season, when we set up for them, and we were setting up like, okay, here we go. I will never forget that because we were, hooked up to a big old buoy in a yellow boat, and we had some just God awful looking decoys out there.
John Otto: Hey no-
Jason Otto: I mean-
John Otto: Though they were God awful.
Jason Otto: Yes. To watch, I can see those Scoters, like, just, going through the main flyaway-
John Otto: Like a tractor beam.
Jason Otto: Yeah. Sucked them right in. Every single bird. It was crazy. You go fast forward to now, you can barely scout out there because those birds see a boat coming, 300 yards away, and they’re flying up, taking off.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Jason Otto: Totally changed out there. That’s just natural progression. The culture on the east coast, they’ve been shooting Scoters, like you said, bay men and everything for a long time. Just the fact that they’d never been really harassed. We knew of no one and still know no one that was doing it. Compared to where it’s evolved to now.
Ramsey Russell: What about the Harlequins? When did you all start chasing them?
John Otto: It’s funny because we-
Ramsey Russell: Was the first one an accident. How did you begin to come. Look, we’re in your shop. I see some Harlequin decoys you both have in your garages. When did that become a deal?
John Otto: Well, I’ll tell the first Harlequin. Cause it’s kind of a funny story. And the guy that I’m going to tell, he’s probably not going to listen to this, so it’s okay. So-
Ramsey Russell: He might.
John Otto: Yeah, he will. Yeah.
Jason Otto: You never know.
Harlequin Decoys
We were out in the Monstrosity. It was a disaster. We set up and we didn’t decoy.
John Otto: You never know. But this is a true story. So we went out and we had our painted up Harlequin decoys. We went scout and we found a spot. This is not too long after. We invited a guy because he had a bigger boat than ours, which is hilarious, to think. What we nicknamed it.
Jason Otto: The Monstrosity.
John Otto: The Monstrosity. We were out in the Monstrosity. It was a disaster. We set up and we didn’t decoy. Now I think about it was actually a terrible spot, but we didn’t over do it. So, we set up, now mind you, the bird limit I believe at the time was 4 ducks. Yeah, because there was no limit, it was whatever the limit was. So telling the story now. Might freak people out a little bit. We had 2 drakes, and a hen come in and-
Ramsey Russell: The limit was 4 Harlequins.
John Otto: The limit was, 4 per person. So limits really didn’t play a factor in this. Oh, it was 7 for a while. So, they came in and Jason shot and dropped one. I shot and killed one. Jason’s hit the water and dove. Mine was dead. It popped back up, and it flew a little bit. Just off the water, a crippled bird, and our buddy cleaned it up, and I was like, hey, nice shot. Thanks. I don’t say his name. We’ll just call him Rex. Thanks, Rex, for cleaning it up, and he goes, I killed it. We’re like, and this is our first one. So it, you see one there. They’re unbelievable birds.
Jason Otto: So went from jubilation to dead silence.
John Otto: Dead silence.
Ramsey Russell: Oh boy.
John Otto: I knew mine was dead, and now I know it was me and Jason got him, and he’s an invited guest, and so anyhow-
Jason Otto: Pick it up and guess what.
John Otto: Guess what?
Jason Otto: Double banded.
John Otto: Double banded.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, my Gosh.
John Otto: Both of them were.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
John Otto: Both of them were double banded?
Jason Otto: Yes.
Ramsey Russell: Your first Harlequin that belongs to Rex was double banded, too.
John Otto: So here’s what we did. It was dead silent forever. He just went, scooped it up and threw it right in his spot. Didn’t even say anything. He knew it wasn’t his bird. That tension cut with a knife, and we’re just sitting there looking. We can’t even enjoy this moment because it’s freaking us out. So I just give Jason my bird. I’m like, you take that one, and I’ll just, whatever. Like, an hour later, a pair came in, and I doubled and got the pair, and I was just starting in a taxidermy. We both were doing taxidermy. So I felt good. I had my skin. I always say I need a skin to hunt. We ended the day, I wouldn’t say on a high note, but I knew Jason should have got a banded bird, so he got a banded bird, and that guy, he did taxidermy, and he mounted it.
Jason Otto: Well, I will say that I did get my original bird back-
John Otto: He did
Jason Otto: I gave him, because, like-
John Otto: I should’ve said we. [makes sounds] We did that.
Jason Otto: Oh Yeah.
John Otto: So, Jason got his bird. So, we just kind of channeled it. A sea band. I remember that. I forgot to detail. So the next time we went out, me and Jason went, obviously by ourselves.
Ramsey Russell: Aha.
John Otto: The very first bird that.
Ramsey Russell: The yellow boat.
John Otto: We’re still in the yellow boat. Thank you. First Harley that came in, I shot. Guess what? Double banded.
Ramsey Russell: Good.
John Otto: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Karma.
John Otto: Karma. We got our karma. Technically, my first Harlequin wasn’t banded. I count that other one as my first banded harlequin, which was exciting. So you can imagine how thrilling that would be for a couple 20 year old punks.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
John Otto: Yeah, it was quite thrilling.
Ramsey Russell: This back in the 80s?
John Otto: Early 90s.
Ramsey Russell: Early 90s. Wow. Sounds like a good old day. Talk about some of your favorite memories back during those early days when nobody was really sea duck hunting. It wasn’t a sea duck hunting culture, and it still really isn’t. Talk about some of your earlier days, some of your foibles, some of your favorite memories. Let’s call it.
Jason Otto: Kind of goes back to just the first Surf Scoter or the first harlequin, then all of a sudden, you’re seeing Barrow’s out there. These are really in our waters, and we can actually go out there and hunt them. Just never forget those, feelings of picking up your first bird. You saw the Barrow’s today, just how beautiful they are. They’re just spectacular. Pictures don’t do them justice, so you’re just looking at them just in awe. Yeah, I can think back on a lot of those first, it was exciting.
Hunting Black Scoters
Some years there’s a good amount of them. Some years there’s some stragglers. Some years you don’t see any at all, and it’s because we’re on the very southern tip of their migration.
John Otto: I remember one of our first really stands out to me. This is, like our second year, and Black Scoters are actually really rare in Washington. Some years there’s a good amount of them. Some years there’s some stragglers. Some years you don’t see any at all, and it’s because we’re on the very southern tip of their migration. We were set up, and we still hadn’t even seen a Black Scoter before, and we both got surfs and whites and everything, and we weren’t set out that day to do it. 2 birds came in together, and we both pulled up and they split. It was like, I can totally remember this. It was like a ducks unlimited picture split. One side, one side, and we both. One shot killed them. We knew they were Black Scoters and that was our first Black Scoters. I just remember that day. I don’t remember nothing else about that except for we were so pumped to get the Black Scoters.
Ramsey Russell: How long have you two been hunting together now?
John Otto: Since we shot that green wing teal.
Jason Otto: Well, when I shot that green wing teal.
John Otto: Well, it’s funny. Our dad took us early. I mentioned the BB gun. He didn’t have a BB gun that day, I’ll give him that. He took me when I was like, 6 or 7 pheasant hunting with a BB gun. Then I got to go up to a 20 gauge, and then he started with a BB gun at 6. So I think 8 or 6. Technically, we were hunting together, so it’s been couple years.
Jason Otto: We won’t do the math.
John Otto: Yeah, we’re getting old.
Ramsey Russell: A long time. Lifetime.
Jason Otto: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: You said this morning that other than, I guess, this first duck that you all killed-
Jason Otto: No, no.
Ramsey Russell: You all funny together a lot, but there’s never been any confusion on who shot what.
Jason Otto: That’s one of those things that, it doesn’t matter who we take. That’s our rules. I despise the, jumping up. Everybody shoots all at once and, you know. Oh, I think I got that. That’s not what you’re about. It’s not only about killing a bird. That’s definitely the farthest thing we want to do. It’s about having a good time and get out there and enjoying and, we’ve all had great conversations today and all that stuff. You’re up, take your turn, John, you’re next. All these things. So that’s kind of the beauty of it. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a 2-bird limit or 7-bird limit. We do that, but especially on 2-bird limit, there’s no sense, Ramsey you shoot your 2 and we all go up and we all shoot at the same one. No, that’s not fun.
John Otto: Yeah.
Jason Otto: It’s the beauty of it. The fun of it and that’s just the whole experience.
Ramsey Russell: You bring up a great point because there’s plenty of opportunity. The limit’s only 2 and even if it were 4, 5, 6 or 7 today, we could have still done the same thing. There were plenty of birds out there but, I really did and I enjoy just watching the other people shoot sometimes. We shot a pair, then I shot one, I’m done. Next flock comes in, you all pull one apiece out of it and then you wrapped up the end with one out of a flock, and it was just relax and it was just nice. You get to kind of enjoy all the experience, not just looking down a gun barrel.
John Otto: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Shooting like an Oakland, California drive by.
John Otto: Jason’s right. We’ve hosted a lot of people through the years, and they’ll be like, are you going to help me out? Nope. When we people come out, we actually are probably 80% puddle duck hunters, but when people come out, they don’t want to hunt Mallards with us, they want to hunt sea ducks. We get that, but that’s your trophy. We believe you got to earn that. So that’s that. For me and Jay, we’ve been hunting together so long, it’s kind of innate, and I kind of alluded to that earlier in our conversation, that I know what bird he’s going to shoot. I know what quadrant he’s in. We call it a buddy bird. It’s just never happened to us because I know, first off, if a pair comes in, I know he’s going to go for the Drake, so I won’t even pull the trigger on that. Especially on greenheads. It comes with a lot of years hunting together. We get a lot of compliments, like in the morning in the boat, when we set decoys, we just do it so long together for those folks out there that diver hunt and long line, there’s a rhythm to it, and we can put out and pick up a rig the way we set long lines because there’s a bunch of different ways to do it, and I enjoy that. You don’t really think about it until people come out with us and they’re like, wow, that was kind of fun to watch you guys do that. It’s just years of being together and doing it. I know his left is right. We just know what’s going to happen.
Jason Otto: Yes. When you asked us this morning, what can I do? Our honest answer, nothing. Stay all the way.
Ramsey Russell: When you fall in with somebody putting out a set like we do today, I’m all hands. As an outsider, it’s you all’s guest. You tend to be in the way more than help. Unless there’s obviously something to do, like carry a few things to the truck or something like that.
John Otto: And I’ve been on hunts where I’m the same way. I don’t like to sit, and I totally get that. I just want to help too. So we understand that because, you want to be part of it. We were a little under the gun this morning, right? because somebody misjudged the ferry schedule, and so we got there right at first light, and we don’t want to miss any opportunities. Had I known, we probably would have been a little more chill but maybe involved you a little bit. Probably not.
Ramsey Russell: When you’re young and dumb and bulletproof and the learning curve. Were there ever any scary or dangerous moments? Maybe you’re 80% puddle duck hunters. That’s easy enough. Everybody can relate to it, but this is some big ass water you all are hunting out here, and deep and cold and currents and dangerous type stuff.
John Otto: Yep.
Jason Otto: We’ve definitely had a few. I look back on, they’re like, that was dumb. Why do we do that?
John Otto: Yes.
Jason Otto: I will tell, I guess, we alluded to where we showed you where we used to launch and going across kind of thing, and this was before GPS, and this scared the pants out of me. I’ll tell the story, and I think you know where I’m going-
John Otto: I know exactly where you’re going.
Jason Otto: We went across. Beautiful, clear morning, dead calm water. Things were great. So we cruised off, had a great hunt. Fog rolled in. We’re like, oh, crap, there comes the fog and it was thick, and I was like, okay, John, I’m going to put the motor. I’m going to hold it. We’re going to go straight across. Yep, let’s do it. So we’re going, and we’re going and we’re going. I’m thinking, we should hit that land by now, and we’re going. I’m like, John, I see land, Thank God we see land. So we’re going and this is probably an hour or what. It should have been about a 15 minutes boat ride
John Otto: I’m looking like 5 hours.
Jason Otto: Ramsay, I kid you not, it’s exactly where we started. We made a big circle.
Ramsey Russell: You are kidding.
Jason Otto: No. That scared us-
John Otto: Exactly
Jason Otto: Like, oh, geez. So we waited on the beach till the fog lifted, and thank God it did, and we went across, and that was our aha moment of like, we ain’t doing that again. That was silly.
John Otto: Well, our dad used to get mad at us for doing it. You said, young and dumb. We were like, we got this. We’re experienced. It was that time. I can still remember old captain Dave Drewry, who you just hunted with. He literally said, you know what? I forbid you guys to cross that water anymore. He’s listening, he’s going to laugh because he literally said that.
Jason Otto: I think he’s the one that got the GPS.
John Otto: He did. He bought us our first GPS and then said, I forbid you. Okay, Dave, we quit doing that now. We showed you that today. You probably could see how stupid that was.
Jason Otto: Yeah, that’s big water. That’s a lot of water.
John Otto: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: It doesn’t take much wind for a lot of chop stuff to get up.
John Otto: Tidal change can kick up that ways. I told you that one story, we were crossing that body of water and it was actually flat calm. We thought we were king of the world. What we do, it sounds silly now, but I would sit up front and watch for logs because the tide brings in out logs. That’s what people don’t realize.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Trees
John Otto: Yeah. So I’m on the log watch, because he can’t see very well in the dark. That’s how stupid it is. I shouldn’t be telling, but I go, Jay, log. I saw a big one out there. So he killed it down a little bit. And all of a sudden a gray whale went and sprayed.
Ramsey Russell: How far away was it?
Jason Otto: It wasn’t very far.
John Otto: About 5ft.
Ramsey Russell: Because 5ft of gray whale.
John Otto: It was right there. I think we scared it. It scared us. I sat there for a little bit like, oh, gosh, all right, next time. We crossed again. So not the brightest, but, you know-
Ramsey Russell: Really not many duck hunters had been sprayed by a gray whale.
John Otto: Yeah, that will go down as pretty cool memory, but probably super stupid too, at the same time. Yeah.
A Trophy Collector’s Paradise
We can just talk sea ducks. You get the Barrow’s and the common Goldeneyes, you get the Scoter trifecta. You got the Harlequin. Talk about a little bit about all of them, because it’s a lot of tremendous amount of opportunities, not to mention the puddle duck, Eurasian wigeon.
Ramsey Russell: Talk about a lot of the unique species that you all have out here in Washington. Because this waterway out here, there’s sea duck hunting on all the 3 coasts. But this is very unique in terms of the enormous amount of species diversity you get. We can just talk sea ducks. You get the Barrow’s and the common Goldeneyes, you get the Scoter trifecta. You got the Harlequin. Talk about a little bit about all of them, because it’s a lot of tremendous amount of opportunities, not to mention the puddle duck, Eurasian wigeon. You got a couple mounted back here behind me. There’s a lot of stuff going on out here. It’s a trophy collector’s paradise.
Jason Otto: Absolutely. Longtail, Brant.
Ramsey Russell: Brant. Yeah.
John Otto: Yep. It’s funny. Just in the duck species, we used to set a goal every year to shoot 26, and we would-
Ramsey Russell: Species?
John Otto: Species. We would do it. We don’t really do it as much, but we would literally tailor our hunts to make sure we got our 26 every year. That took a lot of doing, but it was that challenge, that chase to do it. We’re just collectors by nature. So you talk about diversity. Not many states you can even think about-
Ramsey Russell: 26.
John Otto: 26, and then, of course, the geese, we’d have our Snows, our Brant and we would go after them as well. If we didn’t get our 26 for the season, we’d be disappointed. We’ve set up on ruddy ducks before.
Jason Otto: Yeah, we did.
John Otto: We did. That was actually really cool. Everything was frozen except these Ruddys kept it open, and we had a couple Ruddy decoys and we got them up. They only had one place to come back, so we literally got them on the wing setting and not many people can do that, but we shot 14 ruddy ducks that day. So, there’s a lot of diversity out here. We’ve done days where we’ve chased to get all drakes of all 3 of the Mergansers, for example, which is really tough to do because they’re not all in the same area, but you scout enough, you can find that magical spot to get it done. Little challenges like that, we just seek that out.
Jason Otto: They poach our slam. We’ve done that-
John Otto: Canvasback, Redhead, Greater-
Jason Otto: Ring neck-
John Otto: Ring neck and lesser. We go out and we’ll do that one time. I actually told this story in my book, was we did a brothers challenge. Dave Drewry had his brother out and me and Jason and we split up. This kind of shows you the diversity. Our goal was that who could get the most species on the hunt? Not to get too much into the story. They didn’t even try this. Went out and shot their ducks and had a good time and kind of laughing and teasing us, and Jason ended up shooting-
Ramsey Russell: You all took it serious.
John Otto: We took it seriously. Jay shot 7 drakes in the same spot. I think it was a gadwall, greater scaup, Hooded Merganser, Surf Scoter, Mallard. Gosh, I’m going to miss one.
Jason Otto: Green wing teal.
John Otto: Green wing teal.
Jason Otto: I think it was a Black Scoter.
John Otto: It was a black, and it had to be all Drakes.
Jason Otto: Yeah.
John Otto: Then I was sitting on five, and I scotch doubled on Hooded Merganser Drakes, so I blew it. We came back, and we were like and they just laughed because they didn’t even care.
Jason Otto: I think they got a Surf Scoter.
Chasing Duck Species in Washington
It makes great memories, for sure, chasing species.
John Otto: Yeah, it was a great day. Those are the kind of things you can do in Washington. It makes great memories, for sure, chasing species.
Jason Otto: That’s the cool part about it too, is you can actually be like, let’s go hunt. What do you want to do? Well, let’s go for a long tail. Oh, yeah, let’s do that. That’d be fun. So depending on what we feel like going after or what will kind of cater our hunt to it. So it’s kind of neat to be able to do that. We do that quite often. That’s kind of our thing is we’ll have spots we love to hunt and shoot whatever comes in, but there’ll be times like, we haven’t shot a long tail in a while. Let’s go do that. Or hey, haven’t shot a Greater Scaup. Let’s go get one of those. Oh, that’s kind of fun.
John Otto: One thing we do that people don’t realize, too is we will set up on conditions. We host people. Like I said, nobody wants to come out, shoot a mallard with the Otto brothers. That’s when we get stressed on the weather, because the weather can blow out a sea duck hunt, but if it’s nasty out there, we’ll go puddle duck hunting. If it’s going to be beautiful, we’ll go sea duck hunting because it’s better. So that’s something that we have the luxury because we’re not and never will be guides. We can also do conditions too. Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right
John Otto: People don’t realize that we have that freedom to do that, but pretty much every condition there’s an option, and that’s what the diversity also allows us to have.
Jason Otto: The beauty is, when we’re laying a bed is pouring down rain.
John Otto: Hey, let’s not go today.
Jason Otto: Yeah, we may do that time, or two.
John Otto: Yeah, we’re getting old.
Ramsey Russell: Well, you’ve got a very long season out here. We do have that luxury.
John Otto: 107 days. Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: For how long did you have it to yourself? It sounds like a lot of the time you all had it to yourselves. Who were your contemporaries? Who else was this passionate or chasing at all? Especially sea ducks and divers besides you all.
John Otto: The first couple years, we laughed, we never heard a shot. Never. Then one day, we heard a couple shots in this area, and we went out and we could see him from a distance, and it was a boat with some decoys. We’re like, what the heck’s going on here? So that’s how we met Ben Wilton. Ben Wilton was the first guy that started Sea duck hunting out here.
Ramsey Russell: Was he from around here?
John Otto: He was, yeah.
Jason Otto: I don’t know originally.
John Otto: Not originally, but he lived out here, and he was another puddle duck hunter or whatever and realized there’s a resource out there and then he took it a step further and said, I can make a living doing this, and he did.
Ramsey Russell: Did he?
Jason Otto: He was like, you guys boys want any help, I’ll be happy to show you spots. We’re like, no, we’d rather not. We’d rather find it, figure out on our own. He’s like, oh, I respect that, but he was gracious and open armed wanted to help us out kind of thing, especially being a couple young kids. He was very giving in that regard, and we just didn’t want to take it.
John Otto: As Ben retired and got older, we took him on some hunts. We took him on his first canvasback hunt, believe it or not. When we had pit boss out and did some videos, we made sure to get him on the video and just pay back respect, to be pretty much the first guide out here. So you talk about contemporaries, and then not really, till the Internet hit, did we see hardly anybody out there.
A New Era for Hunters
In the same time, the Internet, and I’m talking pre social media back in the chat room days, the dark ages of chatroom days, that really put a lot of people on a lot of people’s radar, a lot of places, a lot of people, a lot of personalities.
Ramsey Russell: The Internet changed everything. In the same time, the Internet, and I’m talking pre social media back in the chat room days, the dark ages of chatroom days, that really put a lot of people on a lot of people’s radar, a lot of places, a lot of people, a lot of personalities. Who was pitballs? But I know pitballs since I’ve known you all since way back since 20, 30 years I’ve known of him. So many people I met way back when, grew up, and evolved since those days. The Internet really changed everything. I can just remember looking in a community, an online community like that, and interacting with reading you all’s post and his post and the interactive nature of it all. Like you all realized all those birds were in your water. I realized all those birds are just a plane ticket away or a long drive away. Made the world a lot smaller and more accessible in a way. It seemed like it became more obtainable for a regular guy to do that.
Jason Otto: Yeah, double edged sword. A lot more people got into sea duck hunting because of the Internet, us putting up pictures, this, that, and the other. At the same time, we’ve met so many people through the Internet. I remember the early days telling my wife, met this guy from the Internet’s coming out with us, like, what?
John Otto: I just told about first time. That’s how I met Dave Drewry. He sent me an email, who the hell are you? I had first joined taxidermy.net. I think it’s still going. Haven’t been there in a while, but I put up a couple back then, there was a couple people that were like, I got the shoveler schedule or skin. I want to gift because you can’t sell anything obviously, it’s just gifting. Taxidermists will share skins every once in a while. I can remember I put up a couple sea ducks. I got a couple extra sea ducks and all of a sudden, I made a lot of friends really quick. It was like what the heck? And then we joined the fuge, refuge. That was-
Ramsey Russell: The fuge-
John Otto: The fuge days. We first started putting some pictures up when we first got there, it freaked people out in this state because so many people didn’t know the resource we had. There’s still a lot of people, why the heck would you go after those?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, a lot of people.
John Otto: Yeah. There’s still people like that. Yeah, it’s your hobby. You can enjoy it however you want it. It kind of went from there. Like Jason said, we met so many people, and so many opportunities came our way, too-
Jason Otto: For sure.
John Otto: Whatever you have in your backyard, there’s always something cooler somewhere else. I guess we went to the east coast before the Internet and did Eiders, but we started to branch out and travel and do different things because not everything’s here. We actually chase all birds, not just ducks and geese. It’s changed quite a bit, hasn’t it, since.
Ramsey Russell: We were talking today, though. It’s like this human nature to collect.
Jason Otto: Yes.
Ramsey Russell: We hunters collect. Some people collect a lot of stuff. I’m looking at a couple of cards. I’ve seen baseball cards around here, but human nature is to collect. Even the non-hunters or anti-hunters collect stuff. I mean, to collect goofy things like figurines or whatever, but people collect. We hunters are just like you were talking about picking up that first green-winged after being a pheasant hunter, and I was just wondering how it felt, it’s something about picking up that first new species, that first something. I don’t know, I can’t articulate it, but it’s just a feeling, or putting your hands on a set of antlers. It’s a feeling that I can’t articulate. It just speaks to my human nature to collect something, collect experiences. Nowadays, I run out of wall space, but it’s a collection nonetheless.
Jason Otto: Yeah. That’s the beauty of the opening day every year, it’s like you get to hold of that bird for the first time again. Yeah, it’s been a while.
Ramsey Russell: Rekindle that relationship.
Jason Otto: Yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about. That’s half the beauty of it is just looking at that after you collect, let’s do this again.
John Otto: We actually feed off. We host people. We’ve hosted a lot of people through the years. When we see people get their first off and we’ve helped take them to it or whatever, that’s exciting for us still too.
Jason Otto: Absolutely.
John Otto: Yeah. Especially when someone gets their first Harlequin or Barrow’s goldeneyes. Those seem to be the big ones or a long tail duck or something.
Jason Otto: We have so many memories of that, people like getting their first bird and the excitement of that. I remember Tom made us coming out and, it’s pretty rough out here, and let me get in the boat with you. He’s on the bottom. He still brags on. He’s on the floor of the boat, choppy water, and we’re like, normal day, we would not be going out here, but went out there, and he was game, and we had a great hunt and, just all those fun things. There’s a lot of different stories that we can think of through the years of their people that we’ve taken on first bird. We’ve met some great people. We’ve met you.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, likewise. Putting your hands on those first is always kind of special. With sea ducks, I think, and I don’t. I don’t really identify as a sea duck hunter, per se. I like the muck and the marsh and the trees and stuff like that. Take a Harlequin duck, which is an absolutely beautiful bird, or even something as dainty as, like, a bufflehead or these golden eyes, besides being spectacularly beautiful and hunting in an incredible environment, it’s when you pick them up that heft, that weight that they carry. Every time I’ve picked up a bufflehead, he’s surprisingly heavy. A Ruddy duck. How’s something so dense? Dainty little Harlequin is so dense. When you pick him up, it’s like extra special, don’t you think?
John Otto: Oh, absolutely.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
John Otto: Even today, as this is our first Barrow’s hunt of the year, and we’ve held a few Barrow’s through the years. Just holding that again today reminded me of that girth. I don’t know, I got all excited again today, it was like opening day.
Jason Otto: Can’t wait to do it again.
John Otto: Can’t wait to do it again. Yeah.
Spearheading the Western Washington Sea Duck Experience
It’s everybody’s resource, but I think us putting up pictures and getting it going, it slowly started to pick up steam.
Ramsey Russell: When did you all realize you all were pioneers? Was it the Internet age? When did it dawn on you that you all spearheaded this western Washington sea duck thing?
Jason Otto: I think big part of it was the Internet. Putting up pictures and all sudden your, I think was a DM’s back. Is that what they call like that? But your mailbox is full. We had a lot of friends pretty quick. We had a lot of that, but I even think before that was the way Ben welcomed us, you could tell he was beaming with pride, like, you boys are figuring this out. We knew how special it was, and he knew how special it was and for him to embrace us and be like, man, that’s pretty cool. Then he took us under his wing, even though we didn’t really ask for spots or whatever, but he was always checking in on us and every time we saw any kind of DU event, he was there and he’d come up to us and that was kind of like a wow. Eventually we saw him in, what was the magazine he did an article in? Oh, gosh, I can’t remember.
John Otto: Wildfowl I think.
Jason Otto: Maybe it was wildfowl. He did an article in there. Then he’s coming and approaching us. We’re like, wow, there’s celebrity there. Weld come over to us. So that was kind of, I remember being pretty proud and pretty boastful when he was accepting and talking to us.
John Otto: Then on the flip side of it, when all of a sudden, we’d never heard gunshots, all of a sudden we’d started hearing a few here and we’d hear a few there, and then when you get to digging into it, it’s people that we know, we were kind of our own worst enemy. Not that we own the birds. We’ve never been like that. It’s everybody’s resource, but I think us putting up pictures and getting it going, it slowly started to pick up steam.
Ramsey Russell: You lit a fire.
John Otto: I think we did, and then before you knew it, there was guides popping up, and then it got crazy. That led us to when it was just a small community, like the Harlequin, for example. You could shoot 7 for a while there. We first were in our 20s. There’s probably some pictures that we put up that we shouldn’t put up, right? As we got matured and we realized that the resource was what it was. And people started getting into it. We decided to start spreading the word. Just shoot one a trip. You don’t need to. This isn’t a mallard. Don’t shoot, don’t stack them up and then that led to, and we had people self-doing that, which is great. We kind of influenced them, and we knew who was out there, as they started to come into the fold, because they’d all come to us and ask us a bunch of questions. So we tried to influence them on that and then they got it to one a day, and then we realized, there’s even more people. It started getting crazy. So, we had a little bit of a group put together. Me, Jason, Dave Drury, Ben Welton. We actually spoke to the commission, and we had heard that there wasn’t enough knowledge out there of it, so they were just going to shut it down. So we took it upon ourselves, went in front of the commission, and lobbied for the one a year. Make it that trophy and when we got that done, we took a little heat from some of the locals, because the people that don’t hunt sea ducks or don’t care. You can’t go self-regulate, you guys are nuts and we did take heat on that, but the people that understood what we were trying to accomplish, it was either have one a year or have none at all. That’s what I always said, I hope my son one day gets to shoot a harlequin. He wasn’t born when we did this. Fast forward. When he was 9 years old, his first duck was a Harlequin on the youth hunt. I specifically did that because I had specifically said that to the commission, that I hope one day I have a son and he can shoot a Harlequin and keeping that one a year gave me that opportunity, so that’s pretty exciting.
Taking on the North American Grand Slam
Me and Jay, it’s been a long time since we’ve shot anything new.
Ramsey Russell: Species are important to the Otto brothers. Have you all killed the ‘41?’
John Otto: You want to take that, Jay or.
Jason Otto: No, working on it. I think there’s a few that eventually get to. That’s definitely a goal of mine.
Ramsey Russell: What do you like?
Jason Otto: King Eider for me, the 2 tree ducks, the mottled duck and swan.
John Otto: Yeah, I’m missing a swan, the mottled duck and a fulvous. Me and Jay, it’s been a long time since we’ve shot anything new. When I was in Mexico, thanks to one of your trips, I got to hold my first black bellied tree duck.
Ramsey Russell: That’s kind of a cool bird.
John Otto: It’s super cool, and it came in just so unique, and I hadn’t had a new or a first of in a very long time. I did get an Aleutian Green-winged teal up in Alaska, and that was cool. But it didn’t feel because, it’s kind of lumped in. Right. I’m a splitter. There’s lumper splitters. Right?
Ramsey Russell: Lumper splitters.
John Otto: Yeah. I got to hold that and just that thrill of doing that. So I’m not really in a hurry to close that out because having a couple kind of keeps, I’d like to just chip away. I don’t know how Jay feels about that. Yeah, we’ve never really gone after Swans. There’s no hunting culture in Washington for swans. The more I think about it, the more of maybe we’ll do that someday, but I’m not in a hurry to finish it out.
Ramsey Russell: Then you get down into the subspecies if you want to.
John Otto: We already do. We’re both really fortunate. I don’t know how many people have shot all the subs of Canada geese, and we have because we’ve been blessed with dusky and way back in the day and Vancouver opportunities, so things like that. We used to get teased by the bios that we used to work with. We’re called splitters, and we enjoy that.
A Black Duck in City Limits
So we get out, we start sneaking low, crawling on these black ducks. Our hearts pound. What’s going to happen.
Ramsey Russell: The year was 1998. You all went to the eastern seaboard on a sea duck hunt, and you came back with your first black duck. Incredible story.
John Otto: Yes.
Ramsey Russell: Let’s hear it.
John Otto: All right, I’ll take this one Jay. We won’t name the guide in the guide service. This is pre-internet, by the way. There was a wildfowl magazine article. Reuben Perez wrote an article. He had gone on a trip. Hey, we’ll put names. Ruben would laugh because he digs that. We looked it up in the back of the magazine, and we called and we booked a trip. So we kind of went out. There was not a lot of references or whatever, but he’d been doing it a long time. We had a great first day. We shot our first Eiders. That was outstanding, actually.
Jason Otto: Great. Yeah, the first day was great.
John Otto: Yeah. Because the water was calm. Second day, I won’t get into too much details, but we got rescued by the coast guard, and it all fell apart, and it was something about being gurneyed up onto a-
Ramsey Russell: You could go into a few more details than that now. Cause that was pretty exciting fall.
John Otto: First off, we had paid extra, even though we were in our mid 20s.
Jason Otto: And work couldn’t have two nickels rubbed together. But somehow we did it.
John Otto: We did it. We wanted to just be. We don’t hunt-
Ramsey Russell: Because you want to shoot your own ducks.
John Otto: We want to shoot our own ducks on our own terms, and so we show up on the second day, and there’s these 4 guys from New Jersey.
Jason Otto: Let’s back up, though, because day one was not all great, because we did get riders but remember, we were going to go after black ducks. So we were going down this channel, and we could see often, this is a lower tide, and we could see a bunch of black ducks in this marsh. So John and I were like, we can come around here, sneak up on there, is like, oh, this is great. So we get out, we start sneaking low, crawling on these black ducks. Our hearts pound. What’s going to happen.
John Otto: It’s going to happen.
Jason Otto: All of a sudden, the distance, Boom, boom. We turn around, and the nameless guide is shooting a hen mallard out of his boat.
Ramsey Russell: Oh my God.
John Otto: Swear to God. Yeah, I saw those ducks.
Jason Otto: The black ducks flew off, and he was seeing red. I’m over there. Calm down, we got 3 more days with this guy. Calm down.
John Otto: Forgot about that.
Ramsey Russell: That could be good or bad.
Jason Otto: It wasn’t all peaches and cream-
Ramsey Russell: Wow
John Otto: He got that head Mallard, too.
Jason Otto: Well, we had to go find it.
John Otto: We had to go find it because it was a cripple.
Jason Otto: He’s like, I need help finding this thing.
John Otto: For half an hour looking for this mallard. He puts it on the bow of the boat.
Jason Otto: Anyway go ahead.
John Otto: We should have that as a red flag. Day 2, we were out there, got these four guys from Connecticut. We show up, he’s got an 18 foot jumbo. We were in Boston harbor. It’s a beautiful place. I tell this story to people, you hunted Boston harbor?-
Ramsey Russell: Oh, it’s incredible.
John Otto: It’s incredible. There’s a jetty out there. That wave break. All cities pretty much on the coast have them where it stops the waves from crashing. We didn’t know what we were in for. First off, he had this 18 foot John boat, basically, and he had a plywood sides and plywood sided dock that he was towing on a piece of rope. We were really upset about the other 4 guys, and they were really upset about us.
Ramsey Russell: They were on the dock he’s pulling.
John Otto: So we get to the boat launch, and he goes, you guys get in the docks. They’re in the dock and the last picture we have, if you just see these guys with their hands on the plywood looking at us like, and they have no motor, no radio, nothing.
Ramsey Russell: They’re just along for the ride.
John Otto: If you can imagine him towing. It was kind of calm when we left, and all of a sudden, it started getting a little snotty-
Jason Otto: And it got bumpy-
John Otto: And then it got bumpier and bumper.
Ramsey Russell: Now, like I say, not Gilligan’s island.
John Otto: Yeah, not Gilligan’s island. Now we’re bobbing up and down in 3-4 footers. We look back, and you can tell the New Jersey guys are screaming, but you can’t hear them. Yeah. You just see their mouth going. I’m like, I’m glad I’m not that, and then the motor, go ahead
Jason Otto: I was going to say, but one of the things that, he threw an anchor out for the dock, and he had an eider decoy as the buoy for the anchor. So that was one of, kind of as we’re going, we see this eider come setting on that, and they shoot, and we couldn’t even hear the sound, the wind and everything like that. All of a sudden, this eider goes down and floating away. So they’re like, you can tell, like come get out, a bird.
John Otto: That was about the same time they did that, because he anchored them in this chop, and then he pointed at the rock jetty and said, I’m putting you boys on that. It was slimy green. I’m thinking, first off, how are we going to even board up to it? I look at him, I’m like, we’re not going on that. There’s no way. I didn’t know till later we found out it’s totally illegal to do this. So we’re like, no, and about that exact same time, the 3 or 4 foot chop, his motor went out.
Jason Otto: And do you remember what he said when the motor went out?
John Otto: Ah, crap. I knew I should have looked at that.
Jason Otto: Yes.
John Otto: Like, what?
Jason Otto: Swear to God he said that?
John Otto: He’s like, yeah. He goes, always been acting up on me like-
Jason Otto: Holy Crap, okay, we got your kicker and his kicker motor was under a tarp.
John Otto: Yep.
Jason Otto: Right next to him. All taken apart.
Ramsey Russell: It don’t work.
John Otto: It don’t work either. So I’m like, instantly we’re like, oh what are we going to do-
Jason Otto: To be honest, not making this up. He’s hands, his buckets were like, and at this point, because the waves are coming over the side, and he’s like, when they start bailing out the water, my bilge don’t work.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy.
Jason Otto: Oh, yeah. So we’re bilging water. We’re looking at the guys over there with an eider floating off, and they’re like, what’s going on? They’re worried about their bird. We’re worried about our lives.
John Otto: So we’re bailing. We start getting close to the rock jetty. The guy goes into the fetal position on the ground because he did finally start calling out a mayday, and his radio wasn’t working because-
Jason Otto: We were adamant about that.
John Otto: We’re like, call somebody.
Jason Otto: I think he was like, it’s going to cost me money. We’re like-
John Otto: We don’t care if I call. And I’m at one point, then we kind of threatened him a little to call, and he called. Then he got in the fetal position. He was on the bottom of the boat. We got our oars and we’re pushing off. What we found out later was his radio worked out, but it wasn’t receiving.
Ramsey Russell: Oh.
John Otto: So the coast guard all of a sudden started to crackle through, and they said they were on their way, and it’s going to take like 20 minutes. So for the longest 20 minutes of my life, I’m big brother here just thinking, okay, how am I going to save my little brother and save our lives? We’re pushing ourselves off this rock jetty. Finally we clear it because we kind of went down. The poor dock had floated out.
Ramsey Russell: It was gone.
John Otto: It was gone. It was gone.
Ramsey Russell: Drag an anchor just gone.
John Otto: We thought they were dead. So the coast Guard boat came up. We told them about that. They sent another boat to go get them, which they rescued those guys. They put us on gurneys and lifted us up into the coast Guard cutter. At first, they weren’t going to let us take any of our gear, and we were like, we’re clients. So they let us grab our guns.
Ramsey Russell: The captain wanted to go first.
John Otto: The captain wanted to go first. We didn’t say anything. The coast Guard people, they don’t mess around.
Ramsey Russell: Captain goes down with the ship.
John Otto: Captain goes down with the ship. So Jason went first, I think.
Jason Otto: I don’t remember.
John Otto: Yeah, and then I, whatever. Then they brought him and then as soon as he got on the boat, he’s like, my boat. They’re like, your boat’s toast. No, you said your boat’s going to be in Scotland. That’s what he told him.
Ramsey Russell: Golly.
John Otto: We finally get with the New Jersey guys on the boat, and they were clearly really upset. So we were shocked. We all were just hazed. The coast guard brings us up to the big dock. There’s news crews, there’s ambulances, police, everything-
Jason Otto: Game warden.
John Otto: Game warden, because that’s where your black ducks are-
Jason Otto: I remember the game warden. This is where he became real with me. He used to ask me question. I said, well, we’re going to get on the breakwater.
Ramsey Russell: Was he a game warden or a cop?
John Otto: It was a cop that this second day game warden is about the-
Jason Otto: So he’s like, what we’re going to do? Well, we’re going to get up on the breakwater, and we’re going to hunt from there. He was going to go get lunch and come back, and he’s like, what time and stuff? I don’t remember the times buddies, it’s 11:00 or something like that. The game warden was like, mother[bleep sound]. He was mad. I’m like, oh, shoot. What’s wrong? He’s like, that would have been underwater, you guys would have been underwater at that time.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
John Otto: Yeah.
Jason Otto: Oh, that’s when it hit me. Like, oh my gosh, this is serious. Not only we shouldn’t have been out there with all that water, all that stuff, but the fact that he was going to try to put us up on there. Tide coming in, we would have been hosed.
John Otto: So we get to talking. A police officer comes up. Boston Police officer. Awesome. Shout out to him. We love police and veterans, but this guy was awesome. He’s like, what the heck you all doing out here out in the boat, anyhow? We’re from Washington, and we’re duck hunting. Like, duck hunting, it just blew them away.
Ramsey Russell: Boston Harbour?
John Otto: Boston harbor. What are you duck hunting Boston harbor for? and you’re from Washington. You ain’t got ducks back there? And we tried to explain it to them, and we told them that there’s a duck on the east coast that looks like a mallard that, we wanted to come out and get a black duck, and we wanted to get an Eider. We got our Eiders yesterday, but now our hunt’s done, and we have no black duck. He goes, I’m going to take care of you boys. Meet me at this place in the morning, and he gave us the directions. I’m going to take care of you boys. You’re not going to go all the way from Seattle to Boston and Boston, we’re going to. We take care of people. That’s what he kept saying. He threw a couple f-bombs in there too, and he was adamant. We were like, okay. So we had no idea what to expect. So we met him in the morning, and he’s like, follow me. So we literally-
Ramsey Russell: Did he have his uniform on.
John Otto: Oh, yeah, and we followed his cop car all the way, and we have no idea where we’re at. We don’t know what’s going on. So we follow him out, and we come to this neighborhood, and there’s, like an end cul de sac, and there’s some trees, and there’s a trail through the trees, and you can see up on the hillside, more houses. We didn’t know where we were at, but it didn’t look like anywhere we should be hunting. We get out and he goes, okay, this is the deal. Go through that trail. You come, and there’s going to be a couple of little slough ditches. There should be your black ducks in there. You go shoot your black ducks. We take care of you. I’ll talk to the neighbors. We’ll get this all straightened out. We’re like, talk to the what?
Ramsey Russell: Gave you a business card.
John Otto: Gave me a business card and said, if you have any problems, you call this number, but you guys go in there and you take care of business, and we take care of people in Boston. You come out here, we take care of you. Don’t forget that. F-ing forget that. So we’re like, okay. So me and Jay, it was dark a little, so we waited till the sun came up, and we just kind of walked down the trail and sure enough, here was this slough, and it was full of black ducks. We jumped them. They get up, boom, boom. You only get one. We each got one tagged out as soon as we shot, some Canada geese. Flew over. Boom. Shot some Canada geese. We’re tickled pink. This all took about, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. So we had to walk around, like, we get it and we’re walking out and there’s a little crowd of people outside by our rental car. We’re coming out and the first guy goes, we took care of you. What? He goes, hey, in Boston, we take care of people. The cop had gone to the neighbors and told them our story and said, you don’t harass those boys. They’re going to go in there and they’re going to get this black duck and we take care of people. The neighborhood had this pride that they took care of these guys from Seattle. It’s totally Boston to dropping the, Yeah, Boston, we f-ing took care of you. Then this one guy comes up and he goes, well that was pretty cool of what that cop did there. We’re like, why? And he goes, because you’re in the city limits.
Ramsey Russell: I took care of them
John Otto: Whoa, and then he looked at me and goes, we take care of you guys. So we got our rental car. We’re like, what the heck just happened?
Ramsey Russell: Great story.
John Otto: Yeah, our first black duck story jump shot in the Boston city limits. So I think the term of his expired. That was in the 90s. So I think we’re okay to tell that story.
Jason Otto: For sure and we end up not having any more hunting days because we didn’t have a guide anymore. So we went to all the way upstate New York and went to the baseball hall of Fame.
John Otto: Yes, we did. Ate some lemonade out there.
Jason Otto: Yeah, yeah. It was great, though.
Ramsey Russell: You talked about painting those flambeaus and getting started, the yellow boat. When did you evolve into, and apparently you all both started taxidermy, back when you had this, you had this thing going on with taxidermy. I know that Jason is an incredible photographer. I’ve seen your Instagram page. When did the carving come? To me, if you’re a carver, that’s one thing, but if you’re a hunter that carves decoys, that just elevates it to some another level. When did that come into play and how?
Jason Otto: As you mentioned evolving. Now we are killing these sea ducks, at that time, we had wigeon painted as Harlequin. We had Mallards with the Scoters. We had all these different species. Pintails were long tails. So we’re like, okay, what can we do different? and we had a guy that we used to kind of hunt with a little bit. He started, he used hand carved decoys and, like, that’s pretty cool, man. We love to do that. So kind of had that, so let’s do that. Let’s get into that.
John Otto: I’ll give Captain Dave a little shout out here, too, because he was using the e allens[01:19:22**] and.
Jason Otto: And he had more glass.
John Otto: When we met him, he was just getting his decoy or his guide service going. By the time we met, is way back in the day, and he was already that little bit. I think he looked at our rig and kind of shook his head a little bit. He wasn’t using hand Carver at the time, but his decoys were definitely elevated.
Jason Otto: Absolutely.
John Otto: Yeah. So his influence and the other guy. Yeah, I remember that guy.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, but he told you to step it up a little.
Jason Otto: He did. He said, anybody can kill a duck. It’s killing with styles.
Ramsey Russell: Kill them with style-
Jason Otto: That kind of hit home, like this is pretty neat. At that time, just kind of seeing Tom Matus is one that, come to mind where I see his work and it’s like, that guy’s phenomenal. I think he reached out to you, John, and he said, would you like to come. I’d love to come out and shoot Harlequin. At the time, I don’t know about him. I told John, let’s get a decoy.
Jason Otto: I love to have get a decoy from him to do it. So he gave you a greater scaup, and he gave me that Harlequin, I showed you. And-
Ramsey Russell: Beautiful, too.
Jason Otto: Yeah, and he came out and he actually brought his world rig out with him. We hunted behind these hand carved, you know-
Ramsey Russell: world champions.
Jason Otto: World champion rig that-
Ramsey Russell: What species?
Jason Otto: Harlequin.
John Otto: Harlequin.
Jason Otto: Wow. They were phenomenal. Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: So no ground swat that day.
Jason Otto: No. So anyway, so long story short. I wanted to do more. We saw our original decoys where we had the two by fours and the cork that we just, we started making our own. That was pretty neat. We really love that.
Jason Otto: And so we just kind of started doing others and, evolving a little bit, but definitely not to the class of, like, a Tom Matu’s not even close. My wife, actually, for father’s day one year, sent me out to Boise, and Tom was gracious enough to take me under his wing and give me some lessons on carving.
Ramsey Russell: We were looking at the Barrow’s line today, and you could see the progression from right to left. You could see the progression.
John Otto: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: In your carving skills as it went.
Jason Otto: All due to Tom going out there and, busting me and just saying, he was a drill sergeant when I came out there. You’ll laugh at that. I loved it, and I wanted to get better at it, and to be honest with that’s where my photography started coming in, is that I wanted to take reference pictures and see, better shots of birds for carving in John’s taxidermy and stuff like that. I still carve and I still love carving, but then I just kind of started like, I really like this photography thing, too, because that extends my hunting season. Now, after the hunting season comes spring, I’m out there when these birds are full plume, and they’re pretty, relaxed and kind of getting into it. I just really enjoy being one and taking pictures and stuff.
John Otto: Early on, we both decided we wanted to do taxidermy, and that was a thing, and we got videos, and I had a couple. Taxidermy is hard because not every taxidermist wants to show a young taxidermist how to do it because they’re always worried that they’re going to-
Ramsey Russell: Cut it out of business.
John Otto: I’ve never been in the business, but me and Jay did taxidermy to begin, and he just didn’t like this.
Jason Otto: I couldn’t get past this.
John Otto: He couldn’t get past the smells. He didn’t like the degreasing and all that kind of stuff. I love it. When it came to the carving, we both jumped in at first, he said he went off and got some great lessons from Tom, but I was scared of my bandsaw, and we just made a decision. Hey, you carve and I do taxidermy. I consider myself an average taxidermist. I don’t do it for money, nothing. I’ll do free ones for people I host and my family and friends.
Ramsey Russell: But that’s what’s so awesome, is taxidermy, decoy carving, photography. You all both got jobs. You’ve both got this passion around ducks, and you’ve both embraced these things that a lot of people try to make a living out of. You all do it to just enhance and elevate your connection to the resource. That’s what I appreciate so much about you.
John Otto: We always said we got jobs, and I’m not beseeching anybody. Obviously taxidermists-
Ramsey Russell: No by all means.
John Otto: They’re all underpaid. I know people say, Taxidermy is expensive. No, it’s not. It should be twice as much. Taxidermists don’t get enough for their-
Ramsey Russell: Especially the good ones.
John Otto: Yeah. I feel the same about carving. So I consider myself, like I said, just an average taxidermist, nothing special. Jason, on the other hand, I consider him an above average carver. I’m sorry-
Jason Otto: I’m just going to say awesome.
John Otto: And so I know he could sell them, but I remember one time we had this guy out, and he tried to get Jason to carve a bird of every species, and he just didn’t want to mix money and all that kind of stuff, and he could do that, but we just choose not to because of the enhancement. Yeah, it’s part of what we like to do. I haven’t carved a bird, and I think my last one I signed was 2004, and I let him do the carving, and I just trade and get carvings out of him now. I still would like to get back into it, maybe just knock a few out. I love that process, but, that’s a skill that I just can’t get.
Responding to Duck Hunting Pressure, Habitat Changes, and More
Ramsey Russell: You all experienced a lot of changes in the last 20 years. The limits of change. We’ve talked about that. It’s been 7 Harlequins. It’s been 4 Harlequins, it’s been 1 Harlequins. It’s been no Harlequin. It’s been 7 goldeneyes. Now it’s 2, and that fluctuates because of the management strategies, habitat changes, got to be because all the humanity competition. How’s that affected who you are and your approach and your relationship to duck hunting?
Jason Otto: Well, I think it’s obviously affected the way we do. We hunt and stuff like that, and I don’t want to get too into the weeds on my thoughts and feelings on some of these limits and stuff like that, but I just think it makes us a little more selfishly rounded in our hunting, never that we, didn’t get lazy and just went after Scoters because it was easy but I think it’s definitely, made us do get back into puddle ducking, what cut our teeth on, because we definitely did a lot more sea ducking when the numbers are bigger. Then when they started cutting them down, like everybody, we just decided, let’s go shoot more puddle ducks and stuff like that. So I think it kept us, going forward in our puddle duck hunting as well, and kept that, passion there too, I guess.
John Otto: Yeah. We talked about earlier, I think Washington is probably one of the most regulated states out there. With our diversity, I think it’s justified, because when you hear, let’s tell the old time stories and we were just getting into it and you could shoot, when it was 4, 5, then 7 and all that we were a spec on the spec of harvest. As it started to pick up with the Internet, the world get all these changes, all these people got into it. As a sound management, you’ve got to make reactions to that, and the resource cannot sustain itself if you do nothing. So there’s been a lot of really positive reactions to it. It’s funny because when everyone first got into it, there was an explosion of sea duck interest out here. Like I said, all the guides popped up. Everybody wanted to go out and shoot all their trophies and everything. Then when the limits started happening, you could separate the ones that were in it for the passion or the ones that were going to just go out and kill a bunch of birds, and those people faded out. We went out today, we shot 2 Barrow’s. I know we shot a few other ducks, but we went out knowing there was a 2 bird limit.
Jason Otto: Yeah.
John Otto: That was still exciting and gratifying, and it’s where it should be. We could have shot 21 Barrow’s, goldeneyes and, in the past when there was hardly anybody doing it, we would go out and do those things. You can’t do that with the amount of people that are doing it now because it’s changed so much in the last 25, 30 years in Washington state anyhow, with this amazing resource we have out there. So we look at it as a blessing. Now today we decoyed how many drakes, and swimming around the decoys would have been fun to go do that. We’re long past the 25 year old.
Jason Otto: I want to stack them.
John Otto: Stack them and whack them. That’s great, but we still want, we’re not out there. We’re still hunting patty cakes. We’re still hunters, and we want success, but it comes with sound management and everything, so that’s kind of a long answer to that. It really did taper down the amount of interest in our state with the limits went down and then, the traveling guy can go up to Alaska now and obviously has their 4 bird limit for a non resident is a little bit more appealing and a little more accessible. Alaska I wouldn’t even dream about how to even get up there now with the Internet and with knowledge and with the amount of guides and everything.
Ramsey Russell: Just a plane ticket.
John Otto: Just a plane ticket anymore. It never was like that before. I think that was another reason why Washington exploded, because people are like, I can get to Washington. That doesn’t sound as scary as out in the middle of nowhere Alaska so anyhow.
What Makes Washington Duck Hunting Unique?
This is all ducks and all hunting, for that matter, where it’s like we have this great tradition of hunting in this neck of the woods, and then people move out from the urban areas to get out into nature and all that and then they get offended when they hear a rifle go off or a gun go off.
Ramsey Russell: Surely 20 years ago, when you all were getting your feet under you and embracing all this stuff, surely Washington wasn’t as far left as it seems right now? Your dad was a field trailer. You hunted, you pheasant hunted, and probably a lot of people did back 20 years ago, and what I’m thinking of is how we’re urban sprawling and everything else. I left Olympic peninsula, and it seemed like I’d never left the city. I drove 20 minutes out of Port Townsend and hit a city, and I was in city for the next 2 hours, it seemed like. Like today I saw a sign that said, the following items are prohibited and it was a list of ten things to include, hunting, shooting, fireworks, noise disturbance, dogs off-leashes, blah, blah, blah. You said, well, that’s not a city ordinance. It’s a neighborhood and they just put hunting in there and noise and shooting guns because you’ve talked to some people and done some stuff. It’s got to be daunting. How has that affected hunting around here? That’s kind of a long, rambling question, but I’m saying it’s different hunting here with so much humanity and so many diverse ideologies than just the hook and bullet stuff like we connect with nature.
John Otto: Yeah, Washington’s unique because, you can draw this in some other states, especially the coastal states, but it is very liberal out here, but the liberalness comes from the cities. 90% of the geography is not liberal. It’s conservative. So just the amount of people, the sheer volume of people in the cities outweighs all the other. So it gives our state this whole liberal across the state. If you’re from eastern Washington, you’re listening to us, you’re like, King County, Snohomish County, but how we see it, some of the changes we see and how it reflects in the hunting is there’s a lot of sprawling out of the cities right now. So people are moving into the rural areas from the cities, and they want to get out in nature, and then they want to treat it like the city.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
John Otto: So it’s really frustrating that we’ll have a historical place that’s been hunted for, and this isn’t just sea ducks. This is all ducks and all hunting, for that matter, where it’s like we have this great tradition of hunting in this neck of the woods, and then people move out from the urban areas to get out into nature and all that and then they get offended when they hear a rifle go off or a gun go off. So Washington, especially western Washington and parts of eastern Washington, are really feeling that we’re being compressed by people trying to take the rural areas and make them into their urban lifestyle. It’s really been affecting us because we’ve only been hunting, I say only 25, 30 years, but really in the scheme of things, that’s a pretty short amount of time in reality. I think back the places we used to hunt 25 years ago around here, there’s neighborhoods now. One of our best spots is now a soccer field complex. So things have really changed as the urban areas have expanded. Like you said, one thing about the I-5 corridor in Washington, when people come and visit me, you’re in the midwest, you go from a city and you’re in the country, and you’re in the city and you’re in a country, you go from city to city. Here you feel like you’ve never left a city.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
John Otto: It’s the I-5 corridor is really one long, big city that expands out. So it really makes it challenging for a western Washington hunter. That’s why the old thing is, oh, I just go to eastern Washington and hunt, and they just love the two. They call us tourist sixers over there. Yeah, 2 are sixers, stay on your side. Me and Jason feel that and have felt that a little bit more every year. Yeah.
Jason Otto: Especially with us educating, the population back in the day, too because nobody saw hunters where we were doing things, too, and so started off with like, oh, that’s really cool. This is really neat to go away. Too much noise. We felt it in the 25, 30 years we’ve been doing this where it’s like, your house wasn’t here when we started. This is like John said, one of our favorite hunt spots. We’ve been hunting this thing well, way before you got there. Well, you guys need to quit hunting here anymore. This is kind of one of those things that we had to educate a lot of people back then too.
John Otto: Not every law is caught up to certain things that, if you remember where we hunted today, if you look down about half a mile, you could see those beach homes. A lot of those beach homes are just beach summer homes and whatever, but it is still legal in Washington to go right in front of those homes, and as long as you’re 100 foot from the structure, you could duck hunt literally in their front yard. Now, that’s not wise, and that’s not fun.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I was hunting. That reminds me-
John Otto: You can do that.
Ramsey Russell: I was hunting the finger lakes from New York one time with some guys whose duck blind was right on the shoreline of one of those finger lakes. You could throw a baseball through the window and across the house behind us, and here comes a neighbor, and I’m like, here we go and he goes, nah he’s cool. His wife cooked something for us.
John Otto: Oh, nice. Yeah, we don’t get that in Washington.
Ramsey Russell: Every now and again, they would bring ducks. That the neighbors wanted the wife just to kind of egg along, send a pan of cinnamon rolls or something out to the blind.
Jason Otto: So if somebody sent us a pan of cinnamon rolls, you throw them overboard. Yeah, you don’t want to eat those.
Jason Otto: I made you some cinnamon rolls.
John Otto: Yeah, I bet you did.
Ramsey Russell: Maybe some brownies.
John Otto: We don’t have that culture out here.
Jason Otto: No.
Ramsey Russell: I guess this is a question for each of you all. Why is it personally important to elevate the sport like you’ve done, besides just going out, and whether it’s group shooting like we alluded to earlier, or carving and doing some of this stuff, and you’re still diverse, with all the different species. Why is it important to each of you all to elevate the sport beyond just going out and shooting 6 or 7 ducks and calling it a day?
Jason Otto: There’s a lot of tradition to duck hunting, and we want to keep that tradition going. I think it’s one of those things where, think back in our childhood when I shot that first green winged teal, that was a memory that I will never forget, and John tries to steal from me, but-
John Otto: Oh no.
Instilling Traditions: The Early Days of Hunting
Instilled in John at a very young age. So those are those traditions that I would love to pass on. I’ve taken my daughter, I can’t believe Natalie’s hunted.
Jason Otto: The reality of it is that it’s definitely something that was instilled in a me at a very young age. Instilled in John at a very young age. So those are those traditions that I would love to pass on. I’ve taken my daughter, I can’t believe Natalie’s hunted. Been hunting a few times, but she wanted to go and experience and try it out, and so she would, got up in the mornings and would go. That’s something that I would want to keep that tradition going. Now that she doesn’t, grown up and didn’t want to follow my footsteps and be a hunter, but I’ve had the chance of taking friends and their kids out and teach them about the sport of hunting, and I’ve seen a lot of that stick, and they love it. It’s funny, I was just out with a friend of mine a couple weeks ago, and his son, who’s now grown up, and he got into hunting at a later life, and so I want to go out hunting with him. I’ve known him since he was a little baby, so it’s just kind of one of those things that keep those traditions going. It’s very important, and there’s so much it’s given me. I’ve learned so much in just about becoming a man and my work balance and my hobbies and stuff. There’s just a lot of things that you learn not only about pulling the trigger and killing a duck, but incorporating that in your life too.
Ramsey Russell: Well, beyond that, what does it mean to you to go out and hunt over your decoys? You’ve got plenty of reference photos. Why are you still taking them?
Jason Otto: Because I love it. It’s instilled in me. It’s ingrained. I’ll be-
Ramsey Russell: It keeps you in constant contact with that resource.
Jason Otto: Absolutely. Yeah.
John Otto: It’s a lifestyle, right?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
John Otto: I could list a bunch of people that I respect and admire and watch, and watching their journey and their lifestyle, and every hobby has its lifestyle. You see the cars-
Ramsey Russell: It is a journey. That’s a good word for that evolution.
John Otto: It is.
Ramsey Russell: As a human, as a hunter.
John Otto: Yeah. Everybody has their own journey and, and what they want to get out of it, and I love the uniqueness of that and, and everything Jason said. I also will say self preservation, too. I know our numbers are dwindling, and that means a lot to me. One because, I don’t understand why everybody our age doesn’t go out and do this because we have lots of friends that don’t hunt, and they’re just like, why do you do that? I’m like, why don’t you do that? and I get it, but it’s so ingrained in me. Then you hear about, you’re telling some of the stories Ramsey, about some of these countries that the numbers have dwindled so much, they’ve lost their –
Ramsey Russell: Australia.
John Otto: Australia. There’s people like us over there that might be forced to lose their lifestyle.
Ramsey Russell: Very likely.
John Otto: Yeah. So it’s scary. I don’t want to be the doom and gloom guy, but if our numbers keep dwindling, you look at western Washington, for example, there is the majority of the people here, if they could, they’d just shut it down. They don’t understand why we’re out there. You can go the safe way. You don’t need to do this. They don’t understand that it’s part of who we are, and we’re ingrained, and it’s what we are. I don’t expect them to understand it, but I expect them to respect me, but they generally don’t. So, a little bit of self preservation too. That’s a loaded question for us because obviously we hunt from Canada to Mexico. We look for experiences. We chase everything. I know we’re known for the sea ducks, but we hunt everything, love everything. It’s just a big part of who we are. Those that know me personally know that we’ve had a family tragedy, and I lost my son, and my son was, well, he was 16 years, just about 16 years old, and he’d already shot 27 species. What it means in my connection to him, I can’t even explain it.
Ramsey Russell: In that context, it’s become a way for you to keep that relationship with your son alive through the sport of duck hunting and what you all shared together.
John Otto: Yeah. I know you just shot a Barrow’s Goldeneye with a 28 gauge, and you were pretty proud of it. I had to remind you that my, my son, at 10 years old, shot a banded Barrow’s Goldeneye with a 410. It’s little things like that. I mean-
Ramsey Russell: Fantastic.
John Otto: A hunt doesn’t go by where I don’t think about my son because we experienced so much in such a short amount of time, and it’s that my connection to that. There’s a lot that goes into that. He wanted to be a carver, he wanted to do taxidermy. He wanted to do all those things, and he accomplished a lot in his short life. A lot of what I did before was to help build up for what I wanted him to enjoy, his choice, but he chose, and then now that I don’t have that opportunity, a lot of it is done. Those that know me know that pretty much everything that I do, and I know Jason does as well as we try to channel him into it. He gets brought up pretty much every hunt. I’ve probably said his name a few times on our hunt. He’s still there with us, pulling the trigger and spotting birds.
Ramsey Russell: What’s next for the Otto brothers? Where from here? More species, get those species, see more world, dig a little deeper into this landscape here. What’s next?
John Otto: Well, I can tell you we’ve been bitten by the Canada bug.
Jason Otto: Yeah.
John Otto: I say bitten because that’s another thing we do with Sean Carr, and we brought up another guy up with us here, and we’ve kind of built something this year that we want to take that and just keep developing it. When you go do those kinds of hunts, there’s a little, as you called it earlier, there’s a little bit of a capital involved and-
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, capital expand. I can see them. I can see a mountain of decoys over there.
John Otto: Yeah. So in that vein, I think we want to go up there. We just came off. We went up there twice this year and just had amazing hunts and amazing experiences and looking for those next challenges, and-
Ramsey Russell: New frontiers.
John Otto: New frontiers, in the next 5 years maybe there’s something else that I can think of a few things.
Jason Otto: We definitely have a burning desire to get back to the east coast.
John Otto: We definitely do.
Jason Otto: We got to get an idea.
John Otto: Yes.
Jason Otto: We got to go back and get some.
Ramsey Russell: Bring your own walkie talkie, outboard boat.
Swan Hunting Culture
John Otto: We’ve been to eiders twice, and the second one was, it was okay. It was a bummer. So we’d like to get there and do it right. How’s that?
Ramsey Russell: I think you should go. There’s 9 states you can shoot swans up. Upward North Carolina, I can see you all doing that. I haven’t spent some time with you, gotten to know you. I think you all would enjoy and appreciate swan hunting. I really do.
John Otto: Yeah. It’s funny, because tomorrow, where I’m going to take you, there’s a bunch of swans that go there every day, and so we’ll have swans over our shoulders.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
John Otto: I just said we never really had a desire, but we know the excitement of a bird that big coming in. We’ve decoyed them a lot. Of course, there’ll never be a hunting culture in Washington state. That’s just never going to happen. We’ve accepted that. I think you’re right. For years, we were like, ah, but that’s changed. So there’s a challenge coming.
Ramsey Russell: Swan hunting culture, even among waterfowlers, is controversial. I found out.
Jason Otto: Yeah, I’ve read-
Ramsey Russell: Guys that have hunted a lot are like, why are you shooting that?
John Otto: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Because it’s a waterfowl. It’s legal, it eats good, it’s beautiful. It decoys, it’s North America’s largest waterfowl species. Why wouldn’t I? So, anyway, thank you all very much for your hospitality. Thank you all for taking the time to come on to the podcast. I really enjoyed this morning. It was a beautiful hunt at a lot of different levels. It was the perfect Otto experience, which was on my bucket list, an Otto brothers experience. So thank you very much for that.
Jason Otto: Absolutely.
John Otto: Pleasure having you, Ramsey, we enjoyed having you. I remember when we were sitting there, the style of how we’re doing it. You looked at me like, this ain’t going to work.
Ramsey Russell: I didn’t say it wasn’t going to work.
John Otto: I love that because we get that a lot.
Ramsey Russell: I didn’t say it wasn’t going to work. We were kind of sitting in the wide ass open, I’m like, really?
John Otto: Yeah. Well, like I told you, we were sitting in chairs, just far from the edge, only because the tide was out. If it was in, we obviously approach it different. If you were to walk back in the decoys and look back, as long as you’re dark, that beach is so dark, you disappear. In fact, I think you noticed it when your dog had a hard time picking you up off the beach.
Ramsey Russell: She sure did.
John Otto: It’s amazing. You go out and I’ll go out in the boat or whatever, and you look back and you just flat out disappear. Clearly, the birds couldn’t see us, so.
Ramsey Russell: Clearly they couldn’t.
John Otto: Yeah. What they can see is if you’re running up and down the beach, of course that’s going to flare them.
Ramsey Russell: Thank you all again. It was the perfect Otto brothers experience and folks, thank you all for listening this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast from Washington estate with the world-famous Otto brothers. See you next time.
