EP 436. Mississippi River Diver Hunting

 

Diver Duck Hunting from a Boat Blind

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere Podcast. Sitting at a kitchen table about 400 yards away in the Mississippi river is a boat blind. You pull your boat up into it, you step out into a blind. It’s absolutely wrapped up in evergreens. It smells like a Christmas tree with so many evergreens. And surrounding it is about 300 mostly hand carved decoys on a long line. And we’re not out here shooting mallards and teal and things of that nature. We’re out here talking in bluebills, canvasback. We saw some redheads today. An amazing experience thanks to today’s guest, Doc Leonard and Mr Pat Gregory. We are in Illinois on the upper Mississippi river and apparently, judging by the miles long raft of divers, I hit it just right. Is that pretty right, doc?

Doc Leonard: That’s exactly right. There’s a lot of divers here, Compared to usual.

Ramsey Russell: It is a lot of divers, that’s right. How many divers do they say are here right now?

Doc Leonard: Well, they did the survey earlier this week, and they said 100,000, but I think there’s more than that personally.

Ramsey Russell: Is that 100,000 canvasbacks or 100,000 divers?

Doc Leonard: 100,000 divers, as I understand it. But, it seems like more than that to me.

Ramsey Russell: Well, your wife drove south going to town, probably to go Christmas shopping and for the grandkids, not you. And she estimated, because we could hear distant downriver. We could hear somebody. It was layout boat hunting, and she estimated a gazillion or whichever come first.

Doc Leonard: That’s exactly right, she said there’s a lot. And she has lived here her entire life, and she drives up and down this road all the time, and when she says there’s a gazillion, there’s a lot.

Ramsey Russell: I know today when the tugboat came through, it was a spectacle. It was one of those sites you can’t unseen, nor do you want to. Like smoke, it’s like the water downriver was on fire. And I’d say the river is probably a mile, a little over a mile wide right here. And the entire span of the river south of us looked like black smoke. And it was ducks.

Doc Leonard: Exactly.

Ramsey Russell: Diver ducks.

Doc Leonard: Exactly. That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: They get up and they move north and south, and it’s quite a spectacle to see. What are they in here feeding on? What is it about this pool right here? They’re hanging close to or staging on.

Doc Leonard: They’re feeding on fingernail clams. All the time, they just feed on them. And it’s been a long time since we’ve seen this many ducks, but we’re seeing them now, and it’s really good to see.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve been hunting this stretch river a long time yourself. And you were saying it’s been 40 years. How long has it been since you saw a gazillion, let’s say 100 to 200,000 divers in this treasure river? How long has it been?

Doc Leonard: Probably 10 years.

Ramsey Russell: Okay, what do your think’s going on with it? Big cold weather hitting because it wasn’t too terribly cold out there today.

Doc Leonard: No, I think it’s just food availability. Last year there was a lot of ducks, but they were farther north. This year they’re down here. And I think it’s just food availability. That’s all it is.

Ramsey Russell: Most people I know, maybe most people listening, myself included, I’d probably be targeting these green-winged teal and especially shovelers you got sitting at your back porch here. But you’re not a dabber hunter, you’re a middle diver.

Doc Leonard: No, I’ve been a diver hunter for a long, long time. My first duck I ever shot was a bufflehead hen.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Doc Leonard: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: How old were you?

Doc Leonard: I was, I think 8.

Ramsey Russell: 8 years old. A bufflehead hen?

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: Hooked you through the mouth hook line, and sinker, you’re a diver hunter for life on a bufflehead hen?

Doc Leonard: That’s right. And it was in an open water blind.

Ramsey Russell: Here in Illinois?

Doc Leonard: Yes. And we were hunting probably 6 miles north of here. And an open water blind, just like we hunted in today.

Ramsey Russell: Open water blind, who took you hunting?

Doc Leonard: My dad.

Ramsey Russell: He was a diver hunter?

Doc Leonard: Well, yes.

Ramsey Russell: Open water diver hunter?

Doc Leonard: He loved to hunt mallards, but he also realized that divers were, where it seemed like the future was. And so we had an open water blind, and that’s what we hunted.

A Hunting History on the Mississippi River

So your connection to this Mississippi river in Illinois goes all the way back to five years old?

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be darn. Talk about some of your earliest memories back in those days, hunting with your daddy.

Doc Leonard: Okay. The first time I went hunting, I was five years old. It was in Illinois. The opening was at noon on a Friday.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, really?

Doc Leonard: Yes. And they took us, me and a friend of mine and his duck hunting buddy, they took us and we went hunting, and we killed a mallard hen and a mallard Drake, the first time we ever went in the afternoon on a Friday. And that kind of hooked me. He took me a couple of times a year when I was six and seven, and then that was way back before hunter safety courses. You didn’t have to have that. And he got me a 410 single shot and when I was eight. Actually I remember it because I was sick laying on the couch, and he brought it in and gave it to me for my birthday.

Ramsey Russell: That made you feel better, did it?

Doc Leonard: That’s right. That’s exactly right. And that’s the gun I shot my first duck with was, like I said, a bufflehead in, and later on in that year, I shot a Mallard Drake.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be dang. Still got that shotgun?

Doc Leonard: Absolutely, I still have it. It’s right out there in the gun safe.

Ramsey Russell: Did your kids grow up hunting with that gun?

Doc Leonard: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Or your grandkids killed their first ducks with?

Doc Leonard: Yes, that’s right. My son, his first duck, he shot with that 410. And it was a mallard hen, and it was banded.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Doc Leonard: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Lucky him.

Doc Leonard: Lucky him, that’s exactly right. It was banded from the Ideal Hunting Club in Dallas City, Illinois. And I can’t believe that happened, but that’s the way it was.

Ramsey Russell: So your connection to this Mississippi river in Illinois goes all the way back to five years old?

Doc Leonard: Oh, absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Did you all ever hunt any of the other habitat, any of the other river systems?

Doc Leonard: I have hunted in northeast Arkansas quite a lot, down on a delta in flooded timber, and we’ve done that. But for the most part, I’ve been to the Illinois River a few times, but for the most part, it’s here in the Illinois river or the Mississippi river, pool 19.

Ramsey Russell: When I think of Illinois, I think of that Illinois river because from Hennepin, Illinois, clear down to St. Louis, it is just a lot of mallard ducks, pintails, green winged. It’s amazing. And it’s not too far from here.

Doc Leonard: Nope. A couple hours.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, the duck flies. He could be there pretty quick.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: But you all are on this Mississippi river and divers are the game.

Doc Leonard: That’s right, exactly. It used to be that there were a lot more mallards, and there’s a refuge right up here north of us about 2 miles. And there used to be a lot of mallards there, but not anymore. They went farther west, I think.

Puddle Duck vs Diver Duck Hunting

If my wife said to me tomorrow, pick one form of waterfowling, it’d be diver hunting. And hey, you saw today these birds are just fabulous acrobatics.

Ramsey Russell: We talk back in summer when we’re at the Delta Waterfowl expo, and I know you carve a lot of diver ducks, canvasbacks, scaup, bluebills and ruddy ducks. But I just, for some reason, visioned you more as a puddle duck hunter. What is your connection to diver duck hunting?

Pat Gregory: It’s almost kind of hard to explain because my granddad, my great granddad, he was a puddle duck hunter. He was primarily Mallard hunter, pintails. But I’ve just had this internal thing that I love shooting divers, specifically bluebills. And so I had to deal with this, and it’s like, okay. And so I found arguably one of the finest layout hunters of all time out in Pennsylvania, Jim Schmidlin. And I wrote him a letter back in the 1990s, and I said, hey, man, it’s going to sound strange, but I live in Mallard country. But I want a diver hunt. And we pen palled a little bit back and forth about 2, 3 years, and then finally he invited me out. And in 2004, I went out and hunted with him. And I’m telling you, it was over. If my wife said to me tomorrow, pick one form of waterfowling, it’d be diver hunting. And hey, you saw today these birds are just fabulous acrobatics. They’re very athletic. They’re a real challenge to shoot. They’re tough. They’re like big teal.

Ramsey Russell: And he just set it up on tea dude.

Doc Leonard: Nice shot, Mr. Pat.

Pat Gregory: Well, thank you. I love you guys. I love you guys. But I could sit there out in that blind and watch those bluebills come in all day. They are so pretty, and we chase them far and wide because the other thing is, I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out in the waterfowling world right now, just about everybody loves Mallard, and that’s okay.

Ramsey Russell: Mallard are the rock star. They are the universe

Pat Gregory: They are. But divers are an amazing duck to hunt, the accessibility to hunt divers, I think, is better, at least here in Illinois, everything’s private, and to get in a duck club, state areas are extremely competitive. And if a person understood, where and how you can hunt divers, and they’re good table fare. They’re overshadowed by the puddle duck hunting, the mallard. I’m not going to shoot those stinky river dogs. Okay, that’s fine. I shoot mallards and wood ducks. That’s all I shoot. Okay, but take the time to understand waterfowl, because these are fabulous creatures. Is there anything better than the canvasback coming through your decoys?

Doc Leonard: No. And what I’m telling you is that, I’m an opportunist and I live here on this pool. And if I was only a mallard hunter, which, I mean, honestly, when I was a child, that’s what we targeted. And there were a lot more then in this pool. But you have to adapt. You have to change. You have to go. And, you have to go after what there’s plenty of –

Pat Gregory: And we’ve had to do it here in Illinois, right? Because even I’m part of a duck club over on the Illinois river, and a lot of these guys, they love mallards, and that’s great. But, the migration has changed. Like here in Illinois, we don’t see the big groups of mallards until goose season. It’s a real tension here in Illinois about where to put the season because our season here in the central zone goes out about Christmas day. And, I hunt with some buddies. We go up and hunt honkers up near Braidwood. And let me tell you, that’s January. That’s when all the mallards are coming down. And so, one of the things we like shooting at our club is, we shoot a lot of teal, and, I love teal because they fly like divers. They’re just like little mini rockets, and they’re going to challenge you. They’re either going to make a shooter out of you. And, you got to hunt them. You really need to learn hunting to hunt these things. So I don’t know. I’m with Doc, I love to find resources that, where these birds are at, where you can chase them. There’s a lot of public hunting you can do with divers with puddle ducks, it’s more private access and you’re not going to get into-

Public River Hunting in Illinois

Well, first of all, the pressure on puddle luck hunting is significant compared to diver hunting.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a real good point, Pat. But now, when you talk about public hunting, we’re talking a river, and the river presents its own set of obstacles.

Pat Gregory: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: It’s almost like a barrier to access would be just to safely go out and hunt the river. Doc, how big is your boat? That is the biggest flat bottom boat I’ve ever ridden in.

Doc Leonard: It’s a 20 footer. I believe it’s 84 wide in the bottom.

Ramsey Russell: I could lay down flat. And if my feet were touching one good wall, my head wouldn’t be. I’m almost 6ft wide.

Doc Leonard: Like I said, I have grandkids and it’s safe for them. I can stand on any side of that boat and never cause a problem. And that’s where I got it.

Pat Gregory: But this is one sport. You don’t want to go in underpowered. You really need to have the equipment.

Ramsey Russell: How bad does this part of the river get? Because honestly, it’s as wide as it seems in Vicksburg, Mississippi, but it is not near as woolly. I know there’s a little current, but there ain’t the current we got down. I see the big trees that have been washed up, but it ain’t the river we got farther south of here. It really seemed tame. It almost seemed like an oxbow lake tame compared to what I’ve been on.

Doc Leonard: But I tell you, if you get a northwest wind or a southwest wind here, you get four or five foot waves, and it’s difficult to handle.

Pat Gregory: Yeah. You’ll see that on a windy day. It’ll make a believer out of you. It can swamp a big boat.

Ramsey Russell: Puddle duck hunting, I’m still staying in that diver versus puddle ducks, some of the barriers, I’ve got more public land access. If you find a stretch river, there are stretches of river still that are relatively unpressured. I heard three or four other people shooting, but we’re talking a mile stretch maybe, it surely wasn’t nobody doing anything but kind of helping move things along for the other folks. The tugboats helped. Whereas puddle duck hunting, I go out with a sack of decoys. I go out with a dozen or more hand carved or have you? I’m hunting with it, That ain’t the way with a diver duck hunt. I’ve got my decoys wrapped with a string anchor, and I drop them off the boat or throw them off the boat. That ain’t how you all are set up out here. That’s a whole another game.

Pat Gregory: No. Well, first of all, the pressure on puddle luck hunting is significant compared to diver hunting. It’s night and day, And I’ve used this with a lot of people, I’ve kind of brought into this style of hunting, and that is, I’ll run into people like that fish, like this young fellow I’m mentoring. He’s a 30 year old, and he goes walleye fishing all over the midwest with his dad, and they go up to lake Erie. They got a big v haul. I said, you go walleye? Yeah. I said, do you know that every place you take that fishing boat. You can go diver hunting. He said, Do I need permission? No, you need equipment. You don’t want. The thing is, one of the things you need to understand about diver hunting is hunting these big bodies of water, you got to go in with huge respect and huge safety. Safety is paramount. If I’m in a Cornfield, you know, big deal. But if you’re out on this big water, people’s lives are staked, I hate saying, we had a guy go overboard one time. That’ll wake you up. 26 degrees. He went overboard. And so you got to come to this game with a huge respect for the water. You got to know conditions big time. Like, you got to study weather. You got to know what winds are good. Where’s my range of winds that I can hunt? And so there’s trade offs. You got to understand that. I tell people all the time we’ve had Mallard hunters come in and want to try this, and I always tell them this. I said, think of everything you know about mallard hunting, and forget it. Because you got to totally relearn, what’s out there. These birds are going to work different. instead of coming up, They’re going to come in low, And so there’s just a lot of differences. But, hey, that’s part of the fun of learning this sport.

Doc Leonard: A different game.

Pat Gregory:  Absolutely. And there’s a lot of respect. There’s equipment differences, you were talking about single line decoys. We don’t use them. We use long lines, because the guy that trained me, when Schmidlin trained us, he always said this, we hunted the Great Lakes. We hunted Lake Erie with him. And let me tell you, Lake Erie, make a believer out of you. But here’s what he would say. He’d say, we need to be able to pick up and get off the water in 20 minutes.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Pat Gregory: Oh, absolutely. And so, one of the beauties of this, I just want to put this out there now, because one of the things we love about it, is the teamwork. When we’re layout hunting, pitching lines. It’s a team effort, and if you’re a team type person, that teamwork is a key, but with that teamwork comes efficiency. We’re going to put these lines out and you’re going to keep that time down because if you have a squall come in or a front come in and that wind kicks up, you got to get off the water.

Doc Leonard: Got to get out of there.

Pat Gregory: You bet you.

Doc Leonard: Because it’s dangerous. I was out there on Thanksgiving day, one day with my dad and my brother. My brother had had a lung transplant. My dad was 83 years old. We went, we picked up the wind decoy, which was a wind, and we picked it up, turned around, and a rogue wade came up and swamped the boat.

Ramsey Russell: My gosh.

Doc Leonard: My gosh, is right. The only time I’ve ever swamped a boat. And, we called the guy hunting downstream. He came up, he pulled us in. But, we were full to the gunwales with water, and everybody’s gun got wet, and everybody everything got wet. And I did. I had a couple of guys that were not in the best physical condition, and it was not a good thing, and it scared the heck out of me. And that’s why I have that 20ft boat that’s 84 wide down, and so that’s what you’re trying to do.

Ramsey Russell: If it over swamps you in trouble.

Pat Gregory: Yeah, absolutely. If it over swamps, you’re in trouble. And it’s happened to me in 60 years. It’s happened to me one time. And that was the time

Ramsey Russell: You were talking about your kids being safe, having fun, your grandkids in that boat. And I told you today, I said, if you fill this thing up with water in summertime, you’d have a half an Olympic swimming pool.

Doc Leonard: Yeah. It’s a large boat, but as I said, it’s safe. And I can take 6 or 8 grandkids in there, and everything’s fine. It’s not a problem.

Ramsey Russell: But it’s not as big as your buddy Mark’s boat. No, it’s parked out here in the driveway. Talk about that boat. That is a beast of a boat.

Pat Gregory: Yeah, well, so I don’t know where I wouldn’t go with that boat, So We’ve learned a lot in the years we’ve been doing this. So we were all puddle duck hunters. We were all field hunters. Mark comes from a goose mallard field background, right?

Ramsey Russell: And Illinois.

Pat Gregory: Yeah. And so does Jeff, his partner captains boat. And so we went through a couple Literations on boats, but what we learned is you’re never going to get one too big. And you want to be safe. And so we’ve got about five crews that do this. And, I’m really proud of them Ramsey, because I’ll tell you this, they’ve all got nice big 22 footers, and they’ve gone with the safety. Safety in mind, because here’s the thing. It’s a great sport. I love it.  We live for it. We’re passionate about it. But at the end of the day, you want to get home safe.

Doc Leonard: It can be dangerous if you don’t treat it right.

Ramsey Russell: You can’t have too big of a boat. I get it. But give me the dimensions of layout and make and model of this boat that’s out here in the driveway. That is a big boat. So, Mark is like a sea duck hunting boat.

Custom-Built River Boats for Hunting

And David Hamm, that owns AAD, he builds a great boat. 

Pat Gregory: It is, Mark. So, there’s a company in Peoria, Illinois, called AAD. They build river boats. They’re all plate boats or all aluminum built boats, and they build them custom. And so when Mark had this thing, he’s about a year and a half, two years out to get a boat built. But, the nice thing about it is, when you’re there, you can go there, you can custom all your boxes. You can work on all the configuration of the inside. But I’ll just say this, Mark and I, we had my son with us, Mark and I and his partner Jeff, we were in a walleye boat that Mark had. It was a Lund, and I am not for layout hunting, diver hunting. I am not a fan of fishing boats. There’s too much stuff on them. You trip and so on. And so not enough room. No. And so we had missed a step out here. And Jeff, who’s a trained firefighter and teaches water safety, he went overboard. And it woke us up to say, all right, guys, we’re going to do this. We’re going to do this right. And so when Mark had this boat, Bill, it’s 25ft long. It’s got a 250 horse on it. It’s a console. It’s a v hull, which is going to be your best boat on that big water. It’s got 34 inch gunnels. That’s huge. I mean, those gunnels. And so when you’re out on that river, doc drove it last week, and let me tell you, you feel safe. It is safe. It’s a very safe boat. It’s smooth. It takes these big waves good. And, hey, not everybody can afford a big boat like that, honestly. Most of our crews has AAD boats just because everybody says, hey, we’re going to do this. We’re going to go for safety, And David Hamm, that owns AAD, he builds a great boat. We highly recommend them. But if you’re going to do this, you want to go safe, so you’re looking at a safe boat there. You’re looking at a safe boat out there.

Doc Leonard: Yeah. Exactly. And it’s not always easy to run or manipulate that boat. But at times, you just have to. I’ve run a boat for a long time, and I run Mark’s boat, and it works pretty well.

Pat Gregory: Another dimension too, about diver hunt Ramsey. It’s pretty equipment, Intense. And so, like, we have a lot of bags of decoys. We use a lot of large bags of decoys and so on. And you got to have room for all that, and so, one of the things is, you don’t want to get in an undersized boat with all this equipment. You can’t even walk the floor. You know that boat, you saw the inside of that boat. Heck, we got six bags of decoys in there, and you can walk down to the center. He’s got a black stone council out their and cooks lunch out there for us and say, yeah, how about that? But are we going to do that in a blind tomorrow?

Doc Leonard: We can if you want. I’ve got a little, riddle we can do that.

Ramsey Russell: I’d rather miss Janet just come out there with breakfast. She’s proven exactly.

Pat Gregory: It’s just, takes equipment in and can you ever have too much room in a boat? I say not,

Ramsey Russell: You can’t have too much boat. Can you have too many decoys?

Pat Gregory: I think there’s a point in diminishing with diver hunting, I would say yes. I don’t know how you would compete with that raft, 2 mile long raft of birds to the south of us today.

River Decoy Spreads

For his blind layout hunting, we’re going to use about six dozen, we use decoy rigs. 

Pat Gregory: But you can, but what you were doing is your traffic hunting these birds, so you’re getting between two- Like, we had a big raft north of us today. We had a big raft south, and these birds are trafficking back and forth. And you’re just hoping they come through your decoys. Doc, what would you have? Six lane three?

Doc Leonard: Yeah, I have 2012, long lines. And then the 44 hand carve.

Pat Gregory: And in our basic long line, we Get our long-

Ramsey Russell: About 300 decoy.

Pat Gregory: About right. For his blind layout hunting, we’re going to use about six dozen, we use decoy rigs. We use biometrics lines. They’re 130ft long. They got 15 foot tails on the end. And then you got twelve decoys in the middle. And you’ve got two foot droppers. So let’s say you wanted to hunt, say deep water, and you wanted your dog to be able to swim through those lines, they can swim right through them because you got the dropper and that mother. That mother line drops down 2ft. So that dog can swim right through it. It’s safe for the dog.

Doc Leonard: Now, my long lines, I don’t have the droppers on them. And you just can’t hunt a dog out there like that. I’ve rescued my dad’s dog twice.

Ramsey Russell: How much work would it be for you to add two foot or three foot droppers? It looked like a lot of work to me, like a summer

Doc Leonard: You could probably get it done in a couple of weeks if that’s all you did. But it would take a lot of work. It would take a lot of work to put a 2ft dropper on every decoy.

Ramsey Russell: I noticed today when we were putting out those decoys, we did have some single line decoys we threw out. We’ll talk about that later. But, like, when you put out your line, Pat. After lunch, you had like, this big round bag and they were all strung together and you threw the weight and then just started feeding it off while doc backed up. And I guess that’s how you do it when you’re diver hunting with layout boats. You’ve got your rig out permanent. What do you got 5 gallons worth of concrete on each line to hold it with that river going?

Doc Leonard: I got a 40ft, 40lbs concrete block on each end of the line.

Ramsey Russell: 40lbs concrete.

Doc Leonard: That’s right. It’s a concrete block on each end to hold it. And it holds it pretty well.

Ramsey Russell: I guess it does, that’s 80 pounds of decoy line.

Doc Leonard: That’s right. Decoy weight. Yeah. And we have found that that works well if you use less than that, if you use a 30 or a 25. It doesn’t work as well. And if you get a big wind or a tree coming through the decoys or anything like that, it doesn’t hold nearly as well.

Pat Gregory: We were here two weeks ago and we were coming out of the blind. We wrapped up about 930, and there was about a 30ft log coming right for duck spread.

Pat Gregory: That’s a day wrecker, isn’t it? You saw the spread today, and that thing was literally going to go right through all the decoys. And so we had to get out there, and it was tough. Poor doc, he was wrestling that thing like an alligator, man. We throwing the anchor over it, we pulled it out enough where I think we only had, two lines that got kind of tangled.

Pat Gregory: You get tangles. But they diverted the log and diverted a disaster. The thing I’ll say about his set, anytime you’re going to put out a set permanently in these conditions, when you get big winds and all this debris, when they had that straight line winds come through this year and put all these down trees, you’ve got obstacles like trees going through your decoys. We’ve been on this pool before where you get ice coming through your decoys, and they’ll just take those decoys out. It’s just part of understanding diver hunting and hunting these big bodies of water.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Illinois Waterfowl Bag Limits

Ramsey Russell: What do you think about the bag limits? Here’s what I’m getting at about the bag limits is, doc said today, he don’t have a lot of competition because most folks want to chase mallards. And a matter limit in Illinois is four, and Central Flyway is five, and Pacific Flyway at seven. And I’m just wondering, canvasbacks, bluebills, redhead, they’ve all got a two bird limit. And we found out today, so we get our Drake, we target Drake, we get our bluebill limit. Picked up a pair of canvasbacks. And after we got our bluebill limit, we could have shot 50 more. They all just knew they were safe here to come. The canvasbacks were, they still knew they were fair game.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: Except for a few catch and release incidents we won’t discuss, for Pat’s benefit, the canvasbacks largely avoided us. But I’m just saying, you all’s approach, you’re all in as good and easy and professional and safe and fun as it can possibly be. I can see you blind from right here, but dead gum, on a great day might just pick up two bluebills or might just pick up a canvasback

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Splash Limits: Ideal for Beginning Waterfowl Hunters

Well, if I’m new coming to the sport and I can’t identify ducks, it’s the safest thing to do.

Ramsey Russell: That was a great day. And so, I wonder what kind of deterrent that is to the average American duck hunter that wants to go out and make piles and smiles and hero shots. I’m all into it because I think I really respect these birds. But what do you all think about that?

Pat Gregory: One of the conversations we’re having a lot amongst our group are, there’s some work going on right now where two states are actually piloting what we would call splash limits. Now they’re calling them tier one, tier two. Call them what you want, but essentially, a splash limit is if the state limit is 6 ducks, a splash limit, and you’ve got specific species, specific limitations. Like, you can kill four mallards. I can only kill two hens. I can only kill two cans, whatever. Well, the splash limit is three ducks. No matter what. We actually, as diver hunters, would be in favor of that, because here’s the thing. Based on where we hunt, like, we travel to different states, there would be certain states where we would absolutely take that splash limit in a heartbeat. Like you said today, if you could have shot three of any species today, we could have kept shooting bluebills and shot our three bluebills. But even bigger than that, we’re talking about bringing new people into duck hunting. We can identify divers on a wing. How many of these young kids, I mean, they can’t identify a redhead versus a bluebill versus a canvasback. Well, if you were to offer what we’ve heard is if they went with it in a state, they could offer like an option. When you get your license, maybe you pick a traditional limit, or you can pick a splash limit.

Ramsey Russell: I remember looking at one of those states online that was doing that and before you bought your license, you had to check the box, I want a splash limit, or I want a limit. And then you bought your license, and that was that. Actually, I can’t remember where it was. I actually chose the splash limit, but the opportunity of maybe shooting three pintails.

Pat Gregory: Well, if I’m new coming to the sport and I can’t identify ducks, it’s the safest thing to do.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Pat Gregory: I can go out and shoot 3 ducks. I’m done. I’m good. And, by the way, how many times you go out and shoot more than three ducks anyway? I mean, yeah, there’s days, and there’s times, probably in Illinois here, I’d probably go with the traditional limit. In some of the other states, we hunt. I’ll guarantee you we would choose a splash limit. We definitely would, because depending on where you’re hunting, we hunt a state to the south that it’s all bluebills. I can remember when I’d go out with Schmidlin and I drive 9 hours to shoot two bluebills. But then the feds went ahead and up the possession limit. So the possession limit used to be two days. Now it’s three. So I would drive 9 hours, Pennsylvania, shoot two bluebills, one day shoot two bluebills. Next and I’m done. Essentially. I got to go home. Well, now I get 3 days limit, and if you had a splash limit, that would be three days of nine ducks, it’s still better than two.

Doc Leonard: It’s a lot better.

Ramsey Russell: There’s not a splash limit right now.

Pat Gregory: No, no. They’re testing.

Ramsey Russell: You’re all in. Pat’s going and shooting two bluebills.

Pat Gregory: The thing is, I want to see these young folks come into this sport that they couldn’t have gone out there today and identified cans or bluebills or whatever.

The Importance of Duck Identification When Hunting

Because we have all this knowledge right now, us old timers, and we could pass it off to these young ones and bring them along and teach them. 

Ramsey Russell: That leads right into my next question, because duck identification is so integrated into waterfowl hunting, whether it’s mallards or teal or whatever. We got to know what we’re shooting at, in cloudy days or fool anybody. That’s tough. But with experience, the three of us in the blind, that’s bluebills, that’s canvasback. You don’t see at 80 or 90 yards. You don’t see the wedge shaped head, you don’t see a lot of features. You see when you’re looking at a sturdy skin or in a beautiful color portrait; you don’t see that out there on the water. It’s got more to do with their wing beaks, the neck length, the way they’re behaving over the water, the way they respond, the way they’re decoying. It comes with experience. And so since we’re talking about splash limit, I don’t know. On the one hand, I see it as a great opportunity for young people to get involved and get started, but Golly, we all had to learn it. And some things take time, and I can’t help that some people want instantaneous gratification and go out. No, you got to earn it.

Pat Gregory: Yeah. There’s no substitute.

Ramsey Russell: I’m proud that the three of us, we chose to shoot Drake, so we let the hens get through.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Pat Gregory: There’s no substitute for learning that you’re 100% right. And here’s what I would say. I’m 65 years old, so I would say to the experienced stuck hunters, take. somebody under your wing, because we have so much experience we could share with a young one right now to bring them along. And I would say to the young people, if you want to get in this sport, find somebody that’s in it and latch onto a man. If you got to go up to him and say, I really would love to duck hunt and I need a mentor. Could I go with you? Because we have all this knowledge right now, us old timers, and we could pass it off to these young ones and bring them along and teach them. And we’ve got a lot of good spots. We’ve got a lot of good access. We’ve learned, we’ve done all that studying, and it’s almost like doing a download, a brain dump on these young ones to just really say that was a canvasback. Well, what made it a canvasback? How did you know the difference between that and the bluebill? Well, you know when you see them bank and you need to tell them to identify those ducks, but they need that experience and they’ll get it. I mean, these kids are smart and forgive me, but you aren’t getting that off YouTube. It ain’t happening. You’re brushing shoulders with somebody next to you, you got to make them in a bind, and you’re going to help them learn that.

How to Become a Good Duck Hunter 

There are a lot of nuances and aspects that go to it to being a competent duck hunter. 

Doc Leonard: I’m talking to the young people that I take and they go, how can you tell that’s a bluebill or how can you tell that’s a canvasback? And I said, the only thing I can tell you is I have looked at these ducks since I was five years old. And that’s how you can tell. And that’s all there is to it. And you just need to look and look and look, and eventually you’ll learn.

Pat Gregory: Yeah. What I tell them, doc, when I’m carving decoys, I just tell them, you need to carve about a thousand.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Pat Gregory: And the point is, you just need to get in a bind and take some interest in what you’re doing, right? I mean, get online, look at some ducks, understand what you’re shooting. Just to go out and shoot ducks is pretty boring. But to understand what you’re doing, how do these ducks behave? Because they fly different, I’ll tell you.

Doc Leonard: And the other thing is, I just started carving less than two years ago, and carving is a wonderful, wonderful hobby for me, but I already had all the knowledge about what the anatomy was, what their actions were, and all of that stuff, and I was way ahead of the game on people that didn’t know how ducks act or how they are or what they are.

Pat Gregory: I’ve said all the time, you give me a duck hunter that knows ducks, I can teach you woodworking techniques, carved decoys. But if you don’t know ducks and I got to teach you ducks, that’s tougher.

Ramsey Russell: There’s just no shortcut for experience. And experience takes time.

Pat Gregory: It does. But when you do that, you build relationship. You have laughs. Like we talked about it earlier, we talked about shooting sports. We take young ones under our wing and take them out shooting, and we’ll go out, shoot 100 rounds of sporting clays. We’ll go have a nice lunch, and we’re hands on guys, man. We got guys that get right behind you. They’re telling you, you’re not leading enough. You’re bringing your head off, your stock, whatever. So you’re going to need all that if you’re going to do this, and where do you get it? You find some. If I was 20 years old and I know what I know now, and I was just getting into this, I’m going to find me an experienced duck hunter and I’m going to latch on to him, and it’s like, dude, either you’re going to hate me or you’re going to love me, because I really want to go with you, learn with you and all that. And for the crowd that’s our age, do it.

Doc Leonard: I’ve got three guys now. They helped me build my blind and my son in law, my son and one of their friends, and he comes over and I’m trying to teach these guys, what this is, what this is. This is a canvasback. How do you know that? You talk to them all this and then the other, and in the last three years, they’re getting it. They’re starting to understand. Do they have it like me? Absolutely not. But they can tell. I’d say, look at the rapid wing beak. Look at the way they turn, and its just experience. Just the way it is.

Pat Gregory: You know what’s wonderful about that too, doc is, you start them with the work piece. Like you’re going to come out and build a blind because you just don’t show up. And this is all like, no, there’s work that goes with this. Like, at our duck club. I bring those kids in, you’re going to learn how to brush a blind. You’re going to go out and help us cut brush. You’re going to help us go out and bundle. You’re going to sweat, and then the payoff of that is you’re going to get to go on a blind and shoot some ducks. And most of these young kids, they’re glad to do it. They just need the opportunity.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Pat Gregory:  And forgive me, that’s on us.

Ramsey Russell: Duck hunting, especially diver hunting, is a lot more dimensional than pitch the decoy, pull the trigger. There are a lot of nuances and aspects that go to it to being a competent duck hunter. Whether you’re hunting mallards or teal or divers or geese, there’s a lot more to it than just pull the trigger.

Pat Gregory: Big time. I mean, am I on a lake where I have no current? The first time when I hunted with Schmidlin, we hunted lakes. He would never hunt, he hated current. He would never hunt current. And when I came and I started hunting rivers, I’m like, the first time we came in, it was a balled up mess we had. We literally tried to lay those lines across. I’m telling you, man, my friends hated me because we put those lines across the current. I’m like, well, we got to send them this way. And for the first hour of our first layout hunt ever, we had all those long lines tangled up. It was a tangled up mess.

Ramsey Russell: With 80 pounds of weight per line. Could you run your lines cross current?

Doc Leonard: Probably not. I’ve never tried it, But no, probably not.

Pat Gregory: Wow, Current’s pretty strong.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Pat Gregory: I mean, it’s not. It’s like-.

Doc Leonard: The water is low now, and the current’s not very strong, but when you have normal current-.

Ramsey Russell: No, the river is low right now.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: Very low. So we talked about something over coffee this morning, and I’m going to make a point by going way out in left field and building my way to home plate here. Start like this, why they call you doc?

Doc Leonard: I’m a physician, retired.

Ramsey Russell: Small town physician

Doc Leonard: That’s right. I practiced in a town of 900 people for 36 and a half years.

Ramsey Russell: Were you the only doctor?

Doc Leonard: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: You knew all the town secrets. You knew everybody.

Doc Leonard: I knew more than I wanted to know.

Ramsey Russell: Some things you can’t unhear, And I told you the story last night. I was down in Argentina with a couple of ER docs and after a few glasses of wine, got to telling stuff about ER. They got to telling about those kind of stories when they hear, a cubicle over the patient going. No, I need to talk to a doctor. He didn’t want to talk to a female nurse. He wanted to talk to the doctor. And he said, and I knew that was going to be one of these stories. But you said something this morning Pat, that your group of diver hunters getting to the age, he’s one of the most important people. Cause he’s a diver.

Pat Gregory: Absolutely. We’re all either retired or close to it. We’re all the young guys in our group are fifties now and we’re sixties. And i think the good Lord blessed us with a good MD because, the conversations in our duck blinds are, what meds are you on? What surgery did you have this week? And how’s the prostate? So, it’s awful nice to have an MD on board.

Ramsey Russell: And the point I was getting to, pull your mic just a little bit closer. For me, the point I was getting to is the fact that older, talking about prostates and pharmaceuticals and, we’re all kind of getting at that age, I guess, to when somebody asks you how you are, you tell them. Cause you got a story there. But, my point being is, I wonder, is diver duck hunting, despite the enormous relative opportunity for public land, I wonder if it’s an old guy sport. I know I’ve met some young guys out there that do diver hunting, but I wonder, why? Let’s face it, most young people I see, are getting involved with mallards or Canada geese depending on where they’re from or both. But I want our snow geese because it’s tremendous trigger pull and opportunity. And still, in a lot of places in the United States, you can knock on doors and get access for spring snows. But I wonder why it’s an old guy deal.

Pat Gregory: Yeah, I don’t think it is, Ramsay. I don’t think it’s an either or. It’s a both. And what I mean by that is it’s an alternate. It’s another option. So I’ll give you an example. Hey man, we hunt puddle ducks at our club. We’re there six, eight weeks and we’re hunting puddle ducks. But here’s the thing, as soon as that water freezes up, we’re going to chase divers, and a lot of these mallard hunters, here in the Midwest, if all this skinny water freezes up, you’re done hunting. Not us, we’re going to the big water and we’re going to chase shovelers. So I don’t think it’s an either or I think it’s another option that we’ve learned how to do that we enjoy. And it ebbs and flows in terms of our season. For example, we usually start with teal season in September. So Doc comes over to our club and we hunt teal, for two weeks in September. And then we go north up into Wisconsin and hunt divers for a week. And then we come back and hunt puddle ducks, and then we’ll hunt divers. And then if this freezes up here, we’ll go chase geese and mallards in the field. So it’s not really either or, it’s both. And it’s just having other forms of waterfowling styles that you can go to, and it’s adapting the conditions, man, because when the skinny water freezes up, what? we’re going to stay home? No, man, we’re going hunting.

Doc Leonard: Most people don’t understand that there are other options. They just sit there and I’m here, done. That’s not it.

Best Ways to Hunt Mallards

Ramsey Russell: I still say that serious diver duck hunting on the rivers is a very small fraternity within overall water fowling. Point and case, just this morning, I mean, small world. We’ve got mutual friends out in North Dakota, Mr. Eric Smith and Jeff Pelayo. Jeff Pelayo is in puddle duck and goose heaven and has a home on a lake and soaks a couple of hundred wooden decoys from yourself and others. The whole season long, he committed to those bluebills and canvasback and its crazy hunting with him. And I wish you a few mounters of pintails would come in, but you’ll see across the lake over there. Just swarms of mallards working the field. It don’t even make his heart skip a beat. He is committed to those divers. We start talking about the mighty layout boys, it’s a small, serious diver hunting is a very relatively small waterfowl hunting fraternity.

Pat Gregory: Yeah, it is for a lot of reasons, I’d say. But understand too, that there’s a lot of stigmas in waterfowl, and we go back to the almighty mallard. I have nothing to get. I love shooting mallards, Not a field.

Ramsey Russell: Heck, yeah.

Pat Gregory: Oh, field shooting mallards is as good as it gets. But here’s the thing, there’s a lot of misconceptions about diver hunting, consequently, it makes for a small community. But the people that have gotten into it, their blood boils for it. Mine does. My blood boils to shoot. To shoot divers, to shoot bluebills. That’s my preference. My buddy Paul Wade from Delta came down last week just to shoot that. That was like the best week for him. He would drive 7 hours to come shoot divers. And I think part of it, Ramsey, is once you get into it, you got a taste of it today, and it’s pretty special. Hey, we had no wind today, and we still kill birds. And when that wind comes and that thing happens, it’s magic. And to be part of that experience and just to really, to have that experience, I think every water, there wouldn’t be a waterfowler out there that would turn it down. It’s just knowing how to do it, getting involved in understanding where you can do it. We hunt some really fine resources, and like I said earlier about a lot of times, I’ll run into people that are anglers. And they fish all these places. I say, when you’re fishing there, do you see ducks there? They said, yeah, tons of them. It’s like, Okay. I mean, that’s a great start, man. And I said, you got a boat? Yeah. You know how to run a boat? Yeah. I love bringing anglers in because they know all that. They can run a boat. They know how to. This young guy I’m mentoring, he’s been on Lake Erie when it’s rough. He comes with some skills to this sport that he’s going to need, and he knows some of these places. He’s like, why fish there? You can shoot ducks there? You can pull in the boat ramp, go out, and shoot ducks. Now? Always check the local rigs. Some places may or not are managed by the DNR, and you got to be off by 01:00 understand all that. But, you’re not going to. For the most part, you’re not going to run into lines, along lines at the boat ramps and all that. We were down here, down south last week, and we were on boat there, showed up. We had the whole place to ourself.

Doc Leonard: Miles and Miles.

Learning Duck Behavior for the Hunt

So you got to really, I think it takes the time to understand these birds. If you’re going to hunt them, it’s really worth knowing. 

Pat Gregory: Yeah. So to me, you’ve probably got some skills that you can bring to sport that you don’t even know if you’re an angler.

Ramsey Russell: That diver duck behavior is totally different. I mean, those canvasbacks, those bluebills are not going to put on the brakes and stop and then flutter like a moth in a headlight trying to find a landing spot. They come in hot, they put on the brakes, and they land hot. It’s all a little bit faster pace, different tempo than mallards or snow geese or Canada geese. They’re ripping, bud. The water was so steel, and the way those bluebills a lot of times would rip over the decoys out of range and leave, you could see the trail they were leaving on the water because they’re flapping wings. It was like a wake that they were creating with their wings when they come ripping over those decoys. I’d never noticed that before.

Pat Gregory: I’ll tell you a quick story. We had a put a guy in the layout boat down here, and he had hunted mallards before, and we didn’t cover everything with them, when he’s in the box, he was looking up tall, and he had all these ducks going underneath him, because these divers are running 2ft off the water. And we’re in the tender boat going, why is he not shooting these things? And nobody told him that these divers are going to come in low, and you need to look low, so don’t look high, so look low. That’s where I’ll go back to my point. Think about everything you know about mallards, forget it, and then just relearn because these divers do have different behavior. Not only do they feed different, another piece of the deal is they’re calendar driven. So divers are calendar driven birds. If you go all the way back, you read the old canvasback on the Prairie Marsh by Hookbaum. He talked. He studied canvasbacks, redheads and wrote a book about it. And it’s true today, these birds are calendar driven. They move according to dates and calendars.

Ramsey Russell: Photo period, daylight length.

Pat Gregory: They’re not really driven by-

Doc Leonard: Temperature and frozen water conditions.

Pat Gregory: Being able to get to a cornfield, maybe they had snow and they can’t get to feed. That’s all puddle duck stuff. So you got to really, I think it takes the time to understand these birds. If you’re going to hunt them, it’s really worth knowing. How do they behave? When are they going to move? When is your target migration? The other thing is use your resources. Give you an example, we’re fortunate here in Illinois, they fly a survey every week and we follow that survey and you see where the birds are at, you see where the numbers are at, your chances are going to be better then you’re going to look at weather condition. You’re going to look at wind. You’re going to know for this body of water, this is a good wind. if the wind’s too strong, maybe I can get, like in a lee, on an island somewhere and get protected because you’re going to need to know all that. I know doc, he monitors water temperature a lot. So there’s resources out there. I hunted out on the Columbia River several times, and they actually have to watch tide. Another factor that they’re on their phones watching tide. We live in a day and age where you can pull out your phone. I can get the aerial survey, I can get weather, I can get tide, I can get water temperature. I can get all that off my phone. And it’s necessary for good hunts. That’s a great start to put yourself in good circumstances, to have a good hunter.

Doc Leonard: In this particular area, you have to watch the water temperature very carefully because when the water temperature gets to 34, 33, you better be getting those decoys out or they’re going to be frozen in and you’re going to lose them. That’s all there is to it. I’ve lost them once and I’m not doing that again.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. How’d you all two meet?

Doc Leonard: Well, right in front of my house, here we do a lot of bluebill bending in March.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Doc Leonard: Yes. They trapped them, and we banned them. I’ve been a part of that since about the year 2000 or 2002, somewhere in there and Afton, he was from LSU.

Ramsey Russell: He was the blue Bill guy.

Doc Leonard: That’s right. He was here and I’ll never forget the first time I met him. I was in my little cabin here, and I was just sitting here, and some guy walked by the window, and he’s got these binoculars out and looking out here in the river. And I walked out and kindly said, sir, what in the hell are you doing? It turned out to be Al Afton.

Ramsey Russell: He was a duck hunter himself.

Doc Leonard: Yes, and he had a grant to study blue whales and do all that. And so they started capturing him here. And I suppose over the last 20 years, we’ve captured at least 20,000, maybe 25,000 bluebills out here and banned them. But he’s retired now, but I still have his phone number. I still contact him, and he’s a great guy.

Pat Gregory: Well, I found out about the banding effort, and I thought, how cool is that, one, being a decoy carver? It inspires me immensely. I’m just telling you, I go after I band, I go home, I cut out bluebills, and I carve them. I’m just telling you. I get so inspired by handling these amount of birds, it’s also helped me with respect in the birds, because if you’re waterfowler, let’s give back. Let’s do some conservation work. Let’s be part of the solution and not just complain about the problems. And so I heard about this and I thought, man, how cool would that be? And I contacted him, and he said, yeah, we take volunteer help, and we have a field station that we stay at. And I’m doing this. And then it turned out that, over the years, he met Doc, he got friends with Doc, and Doc used to let us band. We’d band right here at this little white house here.

Doc Leonard: Right?

Pat Gregory: We used to band outside, and then when Doc built his pole barn, now we band right in there. So I actually met Doc through Bluebill banding.

Ramsey Russell: I’d be darn. You were showing me some pictures today of some interesting hybrids and stuff. You all caught, too.

Doc Leonard: Just this year, we caught one bluebill, red dead hybrid that had been previously banded as a Drake bluebill.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Doc Leonard: Really.

Ramsey Russell: And did they change the band criteria on it?

Doc Leonard: No, they thought it was a Drake bluebill, but when we recalled it, I said, this doesn’t look right. The bill doesn’t look right. All this and that and the other. And as it turned out, it was a redhead bluebill hybrid. And we bended it again.

Pat Gregory: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: This time as a hybrid.

Doc Leonard: As a hybrid, yes, that’s right. The first time it was banded. It was banded in Havana at Forbes biological Station.

Ramsey Russell: That’s who kind of heading up to this Band program.

Doc Leonard: Heads it up here. Used to be western Illinois University, but now it’s Forbes down in University of Illinois. And that’s who heads up this banding here.

Pat Gregory: Yeah, it’s not just a banding, which is part of it, but they’ve done a lot of good research. For example, I know Eric Smith did some research on diet. They’re really trying to understand what’s going on with these bluebills and why their numbers are dwindling. Lauren Larson did her study on diet and the different changes in the pools. And then now Cheyenne, she’s doing her work on, there’s an invasive snail called crematode that is getting into these bluebills, and they’re finding them up on pool eight and pool nine. And there’s just hundreds of them dead

Doc Leonard: It’s up north.

Pat Gregory: It’s an invasive snail that they’re ingesting, and it just blows out their digestive.

Doc Leonard: They get a nematode.

Pat Gregory: Where’s it from?

Ramsey Russell: Terrible.

Pat Gregory: Don’t know where it came from, but it’s invasive. It’s a snail they eat and it just kills them on the way north.

Doc Leonard: They eat it and they go up there and they just find hundreds of them dead.

Pat Gregory: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s terrible.

Doc Leonard: Yeah.

Pat Gregory: But, the University of Illinois runs Forbes. They do a good job and are committed to this kind of duck research. And, unfortunately for our beloved bluebills, our beloved scaup, their numbers are dwindling and they’re really trying to put some signs to it and understand why.

Doc Leonard: Yeah. And we have to try and understand why that that’s the case.

Ramsey Russell: So put your mic up a little.

Doc Leonard: There you go. We have to try and understand why this is happening. It’s a very, very difficult thing. How much impact that this have on the population? I don’t know. I really don’t.

A Decline in Bluebills

I think it’s important to understand, being on the Mississippi flyway, the vast majority of lesser blue, you got lesser scaup, you got greater scaup, lesser bluebills, greater bluebills. 

Ramsey Russell: Have you seen a decline in bluebills in the 40 years you’ve been hunting?

Doc Leonard: Absolutely. Without a doubt there’s a decline.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Doc Leonard: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Half as many.

Doc Leonard: I would say-.

Ramsey Russell: Look like a decline. I mean, it didn’t look like a deficit of them today.

Doc Leonard: No, but for the most part, let’s look at it this way. They used to say that the first week of November was when a lot of the diver ducks showed up and a lot of the bluebills showed up. That is not the case anymore. It comes about Thanksgiving or maybe a little bit later but there used to be high numbers of bluebills here on this pool for a much longer period of time than there is now.

Pat Gregory: Yeah.

Doc Leonard: And that’s the situation that we’re dealing with now.

Pat Gregory: And it’s worth making the distinction, too. I think it’s important to understand, being on the Mississippi flyway, the vast majority of lesser blue, you got lesser scaup, you got greater scaup, lesser bluebills, greater bluebills. You get very few graders come through here. Graders come more through the Great Lakes, the east coast, the west coast.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Pat Gregory: But the Mississippi flyway here along the Mississippi river, this is a major funnel for lesser scaup. This is where the vast majority of the lesser bluebills come through. And so, it’s a great place to study them because you think you saw a lot today, but in the spring, there might be two or three times as many as what you see.

Doc Leonard: There’s a lot.

Pat Gregory: I asked Al one time, I said, doc, we just don’t seem to see that many bluebills that come through in the fall. He said, he estimated that there was only about 25% of that come through here in the fall. Let me see if I say this right. Only 25% of the total population that was coming through in the spring came back through in the fall.

Doc Leonard: They came someplace else.

Pat Gregory: So like a quarter is all you’re seeing out here, right? Yeah. So, this is a great place to study lesser scaup, because this is a major funnel for lessors in the United States,

Ramsey Russell: Especially in the spring.

Pat Gregory: Correct.

Ramsey Russell: Are you able to pick, if a greater scout would come, bank into the decoy tomorrow? Would you know it before you pull the trigger?

Pat Gregory: I wouldn’t.

Ramsey Russell: You don’t see that much more conspicuous white on their wings.

Pat Gregory: Not until you get them in hand, you know, and that’s another thing that’s worth noting. And this is for people who are going to do this. How do I recognize a lesser versus a greater? Okay, you’re looking at, first of all, overall size. It’s a greater to larger bird. When you get it in hand. If you get a lesser in hand, you’re going to see a big size difference. The other thing that’s notable is their bills are bigger, their heads are bigger.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: They’re broader. Some people call them broad bills.

Pat Gregory: Yeah. Right. And the other thing is, probably some field markings that are probably reliable. The difference, a lot of people think, well, graders have green heads, lessers have purple. That’s not the case. They do, but every lesser we shot today at a green head with some purple in it. One good indicator is their nail on their bill. If a greater scaup has a very wide nail on their bill, where lesser has a very small nail, another thing is their wing. On a greater scaup, they’re going to have white all the way down.

Ramsey Russell: That, to me is the telltale sign, that the inner it is, when they’ve got a lesser scaup has got white in the secondaries, and in a greater scope, it extends all the way out.

Doc Leonard: All the way out toward the end of the wing.

Pat Gregory: That’s correct.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. That’s the telltale sign to me. I just wondered if you could know when, especially a dark day like today is, the bluebills are coming through the white secondary is very conspicuous.

Doc Leonard: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: And I was just wondering, if I paid attention close enough, might I be able to see a greater then I just wondered if you ever had.

Pat Gregory: There’s two. I’ll say this, there’s two birds that I really can’t idea. And I’ll just say this, carving decoys for 40 years has helped me immensely with identifying birds, because here’s the deal. When you carve a decoy and you have to replicate that bird, I have to study that bird immensely. I have to know what their wings look like. Even though they’re not open on the decoy, I have to know what their head colors are. I have to know what their field markings are. Okay? So that helps me a lot. But I’ll say there’s two birds that I really couldn’t do that with. One would be a lesser versus a greater, the other is a ring neck versus a blue bird.

Difficult Ducks to Distinguish

But when they flock up here with big rafts, you can’t tell the difference.

Doc Leonard: Right.

Pat Gregory: Ring necks coming in. Yeah. Boy, good luck. And that’s why, like I said, go back to the whole splash limit conversation. Two weeks ago, we came out here. I think we shot like five graders. No, I’m sorry, back up. We shot, like, five ringers, five ring neck. And we were stoked because we hadn’t shot a bluebill yet.

Doc Leonard: Right.

Pat Gregory: Okay, but shoot five bluebills first, and then you try to shoot ringers, you might as well forget it. Yeah, because you couldn’t tell.

Pat Gregory: So very difficult.

Doc Leonard: Like I said, I’ve been doing this for 60 years, and I can’t tell the difference between a ringer and a scot. I can’t do it, It’s impossible.

Pat Gregory: They do fly. I’ll say this. I’ve hunted them in Florida. I’ve hunted in South K Ringers. I’ve hunted them in Florida. I’ve hunted them in South Carolina. They do fly a little different. You know, ringers are basically a marsh cop. I mean, they’re a marsh bluebill, and they tend to lean more toward a marsh. So they do fly a little different. But when they flock up here with big rafts, you can’t tell the difference.

Pat Gregory: And here’s a little tidbit. But one thing, like, you’re in a layout boat, okay? You go out there. I’ve had this happen several times. Guys in the box. Boom, boom. He shoots two bluebills, and he thinks he’s done, because what we’ll do is, we’ll pull them out of the box, of course, because we’re going to put somebody else in, because we’re primarily shooting bluebills. If all that’s working, like today, we’re going to put somebody else in that box. So when we pick them up, we pick up a Drake bluebill. Drake Ringer. You got one more bluebill, right? And so that’s why those little things are important, to know the difference, because it would be easyto get confused.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely.

Doc Leonard: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Pat, you’ve been carving for 40 years. Doc, you just started carving two years ago. Was that like a retirement hobby?

Doc Leonard: Yes, sir. I retired on January 1, 2022 and was about February 1, 2022, I started carbon.

Ramsey Russell: Pat, I was driving the other day when you called, you said something about a Cleveland decoy. Had I ever heard of Cleveland decoys? What is a Cleveland decoy? Pat?

Pat Gregory: So back when Grover Cleveland was president –

Ramsey Russell: He was a big duck hunter herd.

Pat Gregory: And he needed rigid decoys. And they don’t really, Doc, you can correct me on this, but they don’t really know who carved the Cleveland decoys. They don’t know the exact maker of who made them. But they are historic in that, they are unique to President Grover Cleveland. They’re very collectible for that reason, but not many have survived. Doc, what’s the numbers on?

Doc Leonard: I believe that there’s about 14 canvasbacks and one redhead of the all. But they keep finding them occasionally. They found one redhead about a year ago at the Easton show. They found one.

Ramsey Russell: And so I was walking along and sees a decoy and recognizes it as a Cleveland decoy.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Pat Gregory: I could. Yeah, I think I know enough. Their head is very unique, right? How they tilt that head and all that. But, they’ve been documented as early as the 1930s.

Doc Leonard: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So. And here’s what I’m getting at, is this morning, you were showing me some of your blank that haven’t been painted yet. And why did you choose Doc, to carve a Cleveland decoy? Like, for example Pat, you’ve got a very distinctive decoy. I can see your decoy a mile off. And no, that’s Pat Gregory.

Doc Leonard: Right.

The Craft of Carving Duck Decoys

What characterizes your decoys as Cleveland style?

Ramsey Russell: And you also carve a Ducharme decoy. And Ducharme had a very unique pattern. Why did you choose to carve Cleveland? Why didn’t you just start carving your own decoy? Why Cleveland Decoy?

Doc Leonard: Here’s a situation. I had somebody who was teaching me how to paint decoys. Mike Lashbrook, and he had a local. He’s an Illinois river painter.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Doc Leonard: In my opinion, the best Illinois river painter there is.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Pat Gregory: That’s great.

Doc Leonard: And he had gotten patterns from original decoys of people out east. A redhead and a canvasback. He had gotten. And he was going to make these decoys and send these decoys out to these guys, and he said, my health. I just can’t do it anymore. Would you do this for me? And I said, yeah, I’ll do it. And so I started. Cleave started carving these Cleveland decoys, and I’ve done, I think, about 75 of them now. And I’ve done various species. We only know that there’s one redhead, and I think there’s 14 canvasbacks. But I have done long tails, goldeneyes, bluebills, redheads, and canvasbacks. All the Cleveland style. Now, these are not counterfeit decoys. I don’t want to counter. That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: What characterizes your decoys as Cleveland style? What specifically about that decoy? Make it a Cleveland style decoy. Okay.

Doc Leonard: What it has, it has to do with the angle of the head. And you put that angle of the head,

Ramsey Russell: The angle that you put the head onto the decoy.

Doc Leonard: Onto the decoy, yes, sir. And you also have its rounded bottom with no keel, and you put the weight toward the front, and the decoy dips its bill with waves, and it looks like it’s feeding.

Ramsey Russell: We think whoever carved Cleveland decoys did that intentionally.

Doc Leonard: I don’t have any idea, but it sure makes sense to me.

Pat Gregory: You’ll see it tomorrow in the wind. Wait till you see it tomorrow. These decoys are busy, they’re moving, they’re dipping. They’re fussing it. I think there’s something to it. It. You’ll see it tomorrow with that wind tomorrow.

Doc Leonard: Right. You’ll see it tomorrow.

Pat Gregory: Yeah.

Doc Leonard: And I think that they did. They’re not sure. There’s been a lot of speculation that Cleveland decoys were carved by John Graham. Nobody’s ever proved it. They’re very similar to John Graham decoys, but they’re not exactly the same.

Pat Gregory: Yeah, when you get into duck hunting, as long as we have, it’s worth picking up some type of, okay, so when I get into this, what can I do to add to my experience? You have a dog, your dog. It riches Your experience, you take it out. It gives you joy. You enjoy seeing your dog do things. Some people make duck calls. Some people shoot vintage guns. We’re kind of history nerds. I’m a little bit of history nerd, so I like old decoys, and so you know, we like to make our own decoys. We like to see ducks land in them. Is it overkill? It really probably is. I mean, honestly, I always tell these young carvers, I said, hey, don’t flatter yourself, ducks will land in the Clorox bottle. So really, don’t flatter yourself, dude. I mean, really, you know? But, hey, I’ll just tell you this, I like looking at nice decoys when we’re on. Right? I do.

Doc Leonard: Exactly.

Pat Gregory: And so, you can pick up a hobby that’s going to help you stay involved in your duck hunting, dog training, I’m working. I got to work my dog now. I’m going to work on my calling. I’m spinning calls, I’m shooting clays in the summer, but for us, it’s carving decoys. We talked about this yesterday. The amount of people that we’ve met through decoys is unbelievable.

Doc Leonard: Exactly.

Pat Gregory: There’s so many people I would have never met had it not been for decoys. And so, we kind of enjoy the history of it. Doc, chose Cleveland canvasbacks.

Doc Leonard: Right.

Discovering Delta’s Carving Heritage

A big inspiration for me, of course, from my great granddad. I started with his patterns, and I carved his stuff, and then, in early 2000, I got interested in Delta, and so I started to learn about that region.

Pat Gregory: A big inspiration for me, of course, from my great granddad. I started with his patterns, and I carved his stuff, and then, in early 2000, I got interested in Delta, and so I started to learn about that region. And so what decoys did they carve and what did they look like? And so I finally bought a couple delta decoys. I made patterns off them, and I started to carve them. And for me, I wanted to see what they saw. So Duncan Ducharme carved, he’s the most notable carver, I’ll say, in the Delta Marsh. I wanted to see what Duncan Ducharme saw. I wanted to see what these old timers saw. So when they saw, when they had canvasbacks come into these spreads, I wanted to see what they saw. And everybody, I can only speak for the delta canvasbacks, but you said today on the blind, man those delta decoys, they just got a profile or something.

Ramsey Russell: So stoic about them and so contented. And Doc said the word regal, which I think fits a Ducharme decoy. And in hand, I wouldn’t say it’s the most realistic canvasback decoy I’ve ever laid my hands on. But on the water, I’m like, wow, look at that decoy.

Pat Gregory: It’s not, but I’ll tell you this. The other thing that kind of drives me in this, is studying the history of these guys. I’ve got video of guys carving. I got a video of Duncan Ducharme carving. I got pictures of Peter Ward painting. Here’s the thing. These guys were simple men. They weren’t over complicated. They grew up in tough times. They were extremely resourceful. They went out, and when it was time, when they needed decoys, their whole camp would get together. They’d go out and band out a bunch of decoys, and they’d come together and they’d make a bunch of decoys and get them ready for the fall. These men were simple. They were utilitarian, and they were extremely resourceful, and I got huge respect for that. They weren’t over complicated. And I’ll just say this. Your waterfowling experience doesn’t need to be overcomplicated. It doesn’t need to be. And it doesn’t need to be over commercial, either.

Doc Leonard:  They were making decoys, not for people. They were making decoys to kill ducks. Period. That’s it.

Ramsey Russell: Cheaply and effectively.

Pat Gregory: Period.

Doc Leonard: Exactly.

Pat Gregory: You know, they were putting food on the table.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Pat Gregory: You know, it was a sport.

Ramsey Russell: But if some of those old timers, especially from Illinois, had knew what their decoys, that they were selling for 2 or $3 a piece, were bringing at auction, they roll in their graves.

Pat Gregory: Oh, absolutely. I’ll say this-

Ramsey Russell: More money than they ever made in their lives.

Pat Gregory: I feel confident, I could speak for my great granddad. It would be laughable. He would say, you paid what for that decoy? You’re a fool, you know?

Doc Leonard: Well, you’re an idiot.

Pat Gregory: It’d be like, honestly, Ramsey, it’d be like paying a $1,000 for a hammer.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Pat Gregory: They were tools to them.

Ramsey Russell: Well, the US military paid a quarter million, so there’s that military intelligence, we go out this morning, and there’s 300 decoys, a lot of Cleveland style decoys, some other lines of decoys. Well, we don’t just jump in the blind. We put up a mojo.

Doc Leonard: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You like a mojo for these divers? I do a couple of them.

Doc Leonard: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What do you think of that new mojo mallard?

Doc Leonard: I think that is really, really good. It’s much better than the one I had.

Ramsey Russell: They’ve redesigned it.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: If they’ve engineered it. And I just believe that the new mojo mallard is the definitive spinning wing decoy. They are sponsored, but I use them because I believe in them. I’m going to tell you that right now.

Doc Leonard: I understand.

Ramsey Russell: But the last thing we did when we pulled up, ww set the two motion decoys up. And then you went through a special sack of decoys and we put out a couple of douche arms style decoys I bought from you. You put out a Tom Bowdoin golden eye, which was gorgeous. What else did you throw out? I know the last one.

Pat Gregory: The layer pair of my bluebills.

Ramsey Russell: Pair your bluebills.

Pat Gregory: Pair my bluebills.

Ramsey Russell: Pair your bluebills. And then you threw out my old coop dogs earned decoy.

Pat Gregory: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It was special, and you asked me yesterday, so I’m bringing. I said, well, I hope it’s Frigg. I’d like to hunt over all three of those decoys. Especially her. She was just a chicken dog, but she was a good retriever. She picked up a lot of birds in her life. You do a style where you put some of her ashes in there as a token. And my wife said, what are you going to do the rest of them? I said, I’m going to spread them on a lot of duck calls we hunted together. What I learned about cremation and ashes and stuff is you think about your best friend, you think about your favorite dog. Everything you know and love and everything else is them. The animation. And when they die, that stays as a memory and a legacy. The rest is just ashes. And it belongs. It belongs out in the lake, out in the river. My humble opinion.

Pat Gregory: I love what I love. And we got another guy that I got going carving. He’s making urns. Tom makes urns. We call it their urns. You know, it’s like when somebody gets cremated, you put them in an urn. And I had a lab, too. I loved her. She was best hunting partner I ever had. But you guys that have these dogs, you put your heart and soul in them, and they give their heart and soul for you man. I mean, they do this dog, your dog live for you. They sell out for you. They spend time. I mean, it brings tears to your eyes just talking about it. And you think of all the amazing memories and everything that that dog gave to you to put it in an urn and to take it out and float it. I think it’s an amazing way.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a tribute

Pat Gregory: To honor that dog. And it’s good for your soul, too, right? Because man, you’re looking out there and you’re thinking, man, I can remember when Coop and I did this, and so I love it. It’s a great connection for duck hunters to get with other duck hunters. And, I’ve even, I mean, I’ve put a few human remains in urns, too. I had a friend out on the west coast in Washington State. His dad was super dear to him. His dad started him duck hunting and he contacted me, said, hey, my dad passed. Would you put some of his ashes in a canvasback? And I did, but here’s the thing, to have a little memorial about that legacy that you can not only take out, enjoy in the water. I mean, that thing was floating in the Mississippi river this morning, and how many years did you and coop spend together? And that dog poured out her heart and soul for you, and then you take it home, you put it on the shelf and, those memories just keep going. And so I just love it because it’s another dimension to waterfowling that you can really enrich your experience, right? You know, just one more thing. And, hey, there’s going to come a day, and I’m not trying to risk a sound morbid here, but there’s going to come a day when it’s older, when it’s over for me and you. We’re going to be the old guys sitting there. But all you got are memories. You got memories of your buddies, you got memories of your trips, and you got memories of your dogs. We shoot a sporting clays course down in Oakland, Illinois. Guy by the name of Bill McQueen, he’s huge snow goose hunter. And on a sporting place course, he had this special spot set up for all his dogs where he buried them. And you could see all their names. And it’s just a memorial. It’s a memorial of his memories that he had with that dog. So, I don’t know, it’s just another way to enrich your waterfowling experience and savor those memories because, they’re precious. Your time in the marsh, your time on the big water is precious.

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: The best days of my life I spend with family and friends and retrievers in a duck blind. And so it was important to me to put that ring neck urn, to float it on its maiden voyage on a Mississippi river.

Doc Leonard: Right.

Why a Ring Necked Decoy?

Ramsey Russell: Hunt and it seems several people have asked me why. Why a ring neck decoy? I mean, the dog picked up a lot of retrieve for old yellow chicken dog. But why a ringneck? Well, we shoot a lot of ringnecks at my camp, and there were two ringnecks. I remember one morning when she was in her prime, actually had some friends from Malta over hunting with me. They had been King Eider hunting through us, and then they came down to Mississippi, because more than a king eider, they wanted to shoot a wood duck. And so we went wood duck hunting in Mississippi the last week of the season. And that particular morning, I’m thinking of with the ringneck, we shot ringnecks and gadwalls. That’s it. It was a tight little hole about 40 yards across, shrouded by willow trees, this little pothole that never dries up. And sometime during the morning, we wing down a ring deck that hit the far side and swam out into shallow water beyond the willows. And there, a few minutes later, boom, we hit another one that winged down kind of in that same direction. I said, well, let me go see if Coop can pick those ducks up and find them. Well, we walked over there, and I kind of got in that area and just cast her off, said hunted up, and she ran off into about a 20 year old hardwood plantation thicket full of buck finds and everything else. And what the dog lacked is, she lacked a lot. Bless her heart. She had zero filter for stop eating. She was just one of those labs. But for everything she lacked in a retriever, she made up for, if she thought there was a duck, she was going to root it out. And it been maybe 20 minutes since that first ringneck had swam off. And I sent her, and I could hear her splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash. Come back with a ringneck. But instead of just handing it to me, and me cast her off again, she come around the hill and stepped forward and was just looking towards that thicket again. So I said back. And She ran clear out of hearing distance. No, a dog’s flashing in the water. You could hear it, and I couldn’t hear it. And I just know better. After raising dogs, they got the nose in the hunt. Just don’t whistle, don’t do nothing. Let them be. And I sat there twirling my thongs for ten minutes when I heard the splash and come back. Here she come with a very, very much alive ringneck. So she found them both and that was great. But the most definitive retrieve she ever made was my son and I were hunting way downriver from here on the Mississippi river, across the mainline river from Venice, Louisiana, off in a marsh with some folks we hunt with down there. And it was a very, very foggy and rainy morning. And after the rain abated, the guy said, let’s roll. We jumped in a great big old boat to get across that river. He had sonar and he started kind of cussing and muttering and whatever. He don’t really cuss because he’s a preacher, but he started muttering and saying something along the way because two or three little mud motor type boats, small boats for that part of Mississippi river, now that’s a big, dangerous, gnarly part of Mississippi river, had followed us across, knowing he had sonar. And when we got across, he flagged him over to the boat. It was pea soup fog. He was going simply by his radar and he said, guys, you all need to tie up over here in the grass until it clears up. And now you’re on private property. They said, well, we didn’t know. Well, you followed me and owned a private property and that’s fine. You’re here. Anchor down, and when it gets light enough, you all skedaddle. Don’t fire shots on my property and we’ll be okay. And he got up into boats and he started dropping people off in blinds. And once you dropped off, you’re in about half the size of this kitchen table, a blind in the marsh. Boom, he’s gone. He dropped us off first and it was downpouring. And when it was downpouring, you’d better believe you didn’t see a duck. But when those little empty bands would come through, after that band would pass and it was dry for a minute, just frankly, here come the ducks. And Forrest and I stayed out there till about 11:00. And boy, did we have a motley limit. When we were done soaking wet, I was sloshing. My waders were sloshing on the inside. So much water rained down into my waders that day. But I mean, we had blue wing, green wing, pintail, wigeon. We might have had a model duck, blue bills, ringnecks. I mean, just out of twelve ducks, I bet we had eight species. And we were soaking wet when they picked us up. But here was the retrieve out of all those retrieves. We had to put her down last year at age twelve. And we’d known it was coming. She was at that age and just so feeble. The last year or two of her life was spent laying in a bed in the sun or laying in a sunspot in my backyard. And Mama feeds her around 05:00, and she don’t wear a watch. So maybe at 01:00, 02:00, 03:00, 04:00, she’d up and start barking. She ain’t moved for 20 hours till she sensed it was about time to eat. And she start barking and get the other two dogs in the backyard riled up, and they’d all start barking. No matter what time it is, you go and feed them to shut them up. And once she got done eating, quick as she could eat that bowl of food, she picked up her bowl, she carried it back to her bed, she laid down, and that’s where she was till next day she was reminded, oh, yeah, if I bark, not enough, it’s time for me to eat. That was the last year of her life. But on that particular morning down in Louisiana, we winged down a ring neck. We come off my side, bam, a shot. And you know how some of them birds, them divers, they sit there and they’re kind of, you say, all right, but then boom, after a few minutes, they get a bolt alive while it’s center. And she got a nose full of that bird. And that bird started swimming. About 200 yards, maybe, was the Mississippi river channel. And that’s right where that bird was going. And no whistling, no nothing was bringing that dog back. She had a nose full of duck, and off she goes. And I watched that beloved retriever swim through the rain and the mist and the fog, just out of sight till she vanished. And I’m whistling and hollering, she got a nose full of birds, buddy. She’s gone. And I’m going to be honest with you. 5-10 minutes. By 15 minutes, I’m like, my dog could be gone forever. She gets off on that channel, she’s gone. Because it ain’t this placid right here, son. This is high river, 10 miles from the Gulf of Mexico current. Tugboat, not tugboat. Shoot, freaking streamers. Steamers, oil boats coming through. And there’s not a dang thing I can do. Even if I could. Who knows how deep that water was? But even if I set off out of sunk to China, there was no boat, there was no cell phone signal, my dog was gone. And about 20 minutes later there was some roseau cane. She swam right down that line of roseau cane towards the channel. And about 20 minutes later, my son, who heard better than me, said, I think I hear her coming. And she was on the other side of that roseau cane coming back, jumping, bouncing through that sloshy mud, coming through that roseau cane She had that ringneck with her. And if she had not had it, we’d end up without a limit. She had that ringneck duck. And that’s why I chose a ringneck, urn, and to hunt on the Mississippi river in a diver spread boom was very apropos for that.

Pat Gregory: Yeah, well, exactly. And case in point, on the urn, right, I mean, you remembered every specific detail about that hunt, and that’s what those dogs do to you, man. They just, they’re part of your life, they give you everything and you never forget that. I won’t get into details, but Doc and I, we were at a teal hunt at our club this year and one of the local biologists, he had a female, she’s a rescue dog. And he brought, he called me, said Pat, he said, Abby’s got 1299 retries and I would like to, do you have room to come to the club? She’s twelve, soon to be thirteen years old. She’s blind in one eye. She’s very feeble, hard to move, she’s full of tumors. Could I bring Abby to get her 13 hundredth retrieve during blue winged teal season day? Well, I’m like, of course you can, and so me and Doc and, this biologist, another biologist, and we downed a teal and it was time. And he goes out there and rams, there wasn’t a dry eye in the whole blind. I mean, I’m telling you, man, every one of us were choked up to beat the band watching this dog. She’s wobbling, going out there. Jason is. And man, he could, and she did it. He got her out there. She can’t hear, so he’s yelling, and it was just one of those things we will never forget. It wasn’t even our dog.

Doc Leonard: No.

Pat Gregory: And he brought her back and we got pictures and man, these are Jason’s words. He goes, I bawled like a baby, because this dog is so much of his life, it’s just and that’s how they are, man. In some respects, they’re at least as close to as humans, maybe in certain terms, even more.

Ramsey Russell: Because dogs are selfless.

Pat Gregory: Totally.

Ramsey Russell: They’re totally selfless

Pat Gregory: Totally.

Ramsey Russell: I know why I duck hunt. They duck hunt, for you. right?

Doc Leonard: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what they live and die for, is for you.

Pat Gregory: They never have a bad day. They want to go when you don’t want to go.

Doc Leonard: Right.

Pat Gregory: They’ll put up with so much garbage. I mean, hey, I’m just telling you, I love the dog you got now in that truck. And because she wasn’t able to hunt, it’s breaking my heart to not see her go out there. But you know what?

Ramsey Russell: How you think I felt when we was out there after lunch and I heard barking? She knew.

Doc Leonard: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: She knew the jig was up. We were doing something. She’s supposed to be woman. I heard a bark. I’m like, oh, lord.

Pat Gregory: Yeah. Even that shit, you know, she tolerates that. She’ll forgive you for those.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, she will.

Pat Gregory: She’ll come out with her tail, and you guys will get down the road. She’ll get retriever ducks. But, there’s something special about that.

Ramsey Russell: You say that, and it reminds me of a joke I heard one time, but it’s the truth, is why it’s so funny. Lock your wife and your dog in a car trunk, come back an hour later, open it up, see who’s glad to see you.

Doc Leonard: That’s right. That’s exactly right.

Ramsey Russell: Your dog.

Pat Gregory: Got it.

Ramsey Russell: How you doing? Your wife may never talk to you again.

Pat Gregory: Yeah. Well, you’re not putting your wife in a decoy urine either.

Doc Leonard: No.

Ramsey Russell: But anyway, that dog was gone. I was in Argentina when she passed, and she was one of them bottomless pits. Much I love that dog. One of my favorite stories is, I did not leave her in the house unattended. Cause there’s no telling what she’s going to get into. I mean, she ate her freaking pad. I put in her kennel one time, and I was wondering where it went. And I started noticing she was kind of big. And for the next two days, she was like, hacking up, and she’d finally go poof. Out of her mouth would come just a cloud of confetti foam. And I’m like, God, this dog. But one time we were at camp, and, it was cold. And I brought her in. She laid in her place there on the doormat. And for two days, that dog curled up just so glad to be there. Didn’t move a muscle. I mean, if I got up to move, she just followed me with her eyes. She didn’t move a muscle. See, daddy, I’m being good. So on day three, I went deer hunting. Afternoon, ready to put her back in her kennel. I left. She’s fine. She’s grown up. She’s melted out. And when I came back, it looked like a bomb had gone off. First off, I saw something floating in the room. When I flipped on the lights, I’m like, what? And I walked down the hall. She’s on the kitchen counter, eating everything she get into to include that morning’s coffee grinds and had eaten three pieces of kind of that poor taxidermy that had grease stains. She’d eaten it completely. And it wasn’t her fault. It was mine, on an airplane cause she flew with me. She wouldn’t bother me a dang bit when meal service came. She would stare you down, son. I mean, she wouldn’t blink. I mean, her looking at you while you’re eating, it takes you 20 minutes to eat. She don’t blink the whole time. And I just tell the guy next to him if it bothered him, like, you better not take your eyes off your plate. Cause if you blink, she’s going to grab something. I can tell you that. The story of her passing was, it was hot and it was time, but about 2 hours for Anita, took her to the vet. She had gotten into some dog. Anita brought her inside to the air conditioning, took blink, took her eyes off of her. And the dog ate about 20 pounds of dog food. And so I know she died happy with a smile on her face, but doc, Pat, I have enjoyed it. I’m looking forward tomorrow we’re going to have some wind. Yes, sir. There’s an abundance of diver duck. As much as I’ve seen and done, I’ve hunted some divers. I’ve hunted some folks, but I have always wanted to hunt the upper Mississippi river for divers. And today I got to do it. Tomorrow I get to do it. And, shooting canvasbacks, shooting bluebills. I’m eternally indebted to you. I’ve had a great time telling stories with you and hunting over those decoys and learning a lot about you all’s history and those decoys history.

Pat Gregory: Sure. Well, glad to have you.

Doc Leonard: Yeah.

Pat Gregory: We’re honored to have you in our home. Safe to say you’re welcome anytime.

Doc Leonard: That’s right. Anytime.

Ramsey Russell: Way live back a U-Haul truck up. Say howdy, neighbor, anyway.

Doc Leonard: You’ll be more than welcome.

Pat Gregory: Perfect.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere Podcast from Illinois. Hunting tiger ducks on the upper Mississippi river. See you next time.