EP 437. Pennsylvania Duck Hunting

 

Best Waterfowl Footage

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere Podcast, where today I scratched the bucket list. I killed a duck. Actually, I killed two up here in Pennsylvania. I’m on a mission for Duck Season Somewhere; I’m on a mission to kill waterfowl in each 50 states at least once. Some places I circle back. Last time I was in Pennsylvania helping with some boys, one morning I come up with a goose egg. So I’m back. And thanks to today’s guest, I did scratch my list. Thanks to Nate Metcalf, thanks to Jason Cramer. We’re in the mid-season doldrums. But after driving 13 hours, I was hoping for the best. Thank you all, glad to be here.

Jason Cramer: I wish it was more than two, Ramsey.

Ramsey Russell: You showed me a picture today of all these mallards out in front of this magnificent insulated blind you’ve got. I’m like, where’s that picture from? When was that picture taken? Not today.

Jason Cramer: Last week. But, I wish we could have done a little bit better. You showed me some pretty cool stuff over the years.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you talk about that Nate, I’ve been trying to think, and I can’t remember how long we’ve known each other. Back during Mike Morgan’s day, you came on Mojo outdoors, Mojo TV, as their producer.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: And we’ve seen a lot of world together.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir, we have.

Ramsey Russell: How long? Ten years? Maybe longer.

Jason Cramer: It’s got to be longer.

Ramsey Russell: Got to be longer.

Jason Cramer: My daughter’s nine. That wasn’t the first Argentina trip. I’m positive.

Ramsey Russell: No, it was not.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So we figured up, we’ve been to Peru, we’ve been to Argentina, we’ve been to Uruguay, which I had totally forgotten about. We’ve been in different parts of the United States. We’re going to see each other a short while, right before Christmas, to hunt together in Wyoming again. We’ll start with ten years ago, which wasn’t our first Argentina trip. But I was there and could hear through the wall when breaking news in your life, when you started writing a whole new chapter of your life.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir. Well, it wasn’t necessarily hearing through the walls. It was the only place we could get reception.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jason Cramer: And I had walked past an area and got a text message, and it was just a positive pregnancy test. So, of course.

Ramsey Russell: What were your thoughts? You’d already had a beer, too.

Jason Cramer: Heck, yeah. It was a time, man. And your better half, Martha, she had asked Kyle Winterstein and I, when are you guys going to have kids? Not us have kids, but, when’s the time to have kids? I said, I think right now, because I’d been fixed in that producer stage for well over a year at that point. So, I was like, I think now is the time. And it was a couple days later and got the text message, and you heard everything else, which ended up being like a $600 bill.

Ramsey Russell: You had to stand, Jason wasn’t there yet. It’s like there was 1 sqft on that whole remote Mars, you could get a bar, and it was standing on a cinder block right outside the window of the bedroom I was staying in, facing the wall. So I heard every word. What do you mean you’re pregnant? And that’s a long time ago. And just this trip right here, I meet your daughter. She’s nine, right? You’ve got a growing family, you’ve got another daughter, and you got two hellacious dogs and an old cat, kind of a big family here now, Nate,

Jason Cramer: No vacancy at this house.

Ramsey Russell: No vacancy. But what a crazy experience. And so you celebrated that night. You want us to celebrate? We all went to bed.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, I don’t drink liquor. But there was no beer, and someone had left a bottle of Jack Daniel, you said gentleman Jack?

Ramsey Russell: Gentleman Jack. Yeah, I did, with brand.

Jason Cramer: I tried to drink it, and I ended up buckled up. Over a fence.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, over split rail fence.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: But you got the time lapse you were after.

Jason Cramer: I did. It was a good time lapse. And I’d like to think it was tears of joy, but it was just tears that came out because I was projectile vomiting.

Ramsey Russell: How did you get into videography? How did you go from growing up in Pennsylvania and I’m here on your family farm, but how did you go from growing up on a dairy farm to being in videography. And not only that, and I’ll say this respectfully, I think it’s the best footage in the waterfowl space. How did that come about, Nate? I’ve never heard this story.

Jason Cramer: I would say there was never like a moment. It’s what I always did. So I would take my family’s camcorders that we would do family vacations and stuff like that. We’d film, play and war with BB guns and film skateboarding and film just making firecrackers and blowing stuff up. And I just kind of film everything. And when I went in the military, I always had a 35 millimeter camera, and I bought a video camera and just kind of always filmed stuff.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jason Cramer: Yeah. And it kind of found me. And then when I went to college, I was a psychology major.

Ramsey Russell: You’re a kid.

Jason Cramer: And I went through that, and I was like this is nonsense.

Ramsey Russell: This is crazy.

Jason Cramer: And my sophomore year, I had no idea what I wanted to do. And one of my buddies, who’s a great friend of mine, Joel Smithson, he took some production classes, and he was talking about. It seemed interesting. So I took those, and I wanted to be on the radio. I wanted to play music and do all that kind of stuff. So I took some-

Ramsey Russell: You got a face for radio. I’ll say that.

Jason Cramer: I told my mom that the other day, and she was like, you know what? I think you’re right. And I was like, that was a joke, man. Says you’re ugly. But I did the radio stuff, and I hated it because I had to play music. I hate it. And I’d come back on the air as live show and I’d apologize to the audience because I had to play those songs.

Ramsey Russell: It’s like people have paid you to play them and you didn’t like them.

Jason Cramer: No. The professor said, you will play these songs.

Ramsey Russell: Oh.

Jason Cramer: So I got to play a couple songs, but it wasn’t my discretion. So I thought, this isn’t for me. And then I got into video production. I loved it.

Ramsey Russell: Freedom.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, big time.

Ramsey Russell: To tell a story.

Jason Cramer: And I had a really hard professor that no one liked, doctor Legge. No one liked him, but him and I got along good. He was brutal. He’d just rip out the SD cards out of the projector, throw them when people screwed up.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jason Cramer: Yeah. You’ve watched 20 year old kids cry. And I loved it. But I’ve learned so much from him. He was a cool dude.

Creating an Outdoor Story

Ramsey Russell: I’ve noticed I’ve known you for so long, and I’m free streaming here, but it’s like, you never just went out. Outdoor television, not just filming and putting it together in chronological order. You approach it as a story.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir. Going back to doctor Legge, I needed an independent study real bad. I needed 18 semester hours to graduate with my GI Bill. So, I was already in debt with the GI Bill, the way it was structured then. And I asked for an independent study, they said, what are you going to do? I said, I was going to film fishing because I grew up on this yellow beaches here. I knew a lot about fishing, so I was going to film some of that, and I thought I could really do a good job. And ended up going to Venice, Louisiana, on spring break, and I made a fishing show, and I turned it in, and he gave me an “A”. And that’s what I wanted to do. I was going to film fishing.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, so that was how you started.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What was it like growing up here in Pennsylvania? Because you got a beautiful house and a heck of a view and you got a creek running right through your front yard.

Jason Cramer: I feel that we were very fortunate. Jason can tag on this and we graduated with like 110 people, 115 people or so, I’m not going to say it was slow, but we had all the opportunities for the outdoors and kind of grew up. Deer hunting and turkey hunting and of course, fishing. And I just thought that was normal.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. What’s so special about this stream in your front yard?

Jason Cramer: It’s a stream where fish can populate by themselves. And you have wild trout, on native trout.

Ramsey Russell: Not even two wild trout in America.

Jason Cramer: You don’t have native trout because there’s the brook trout’s not native here either. So you have wild trout that if you catch or release enough, and that’s what we have right here. And Jason does it.

Ramsey Russell: You all grow up Fishing, Jason, you too?

Nate Metcalf: I’ve never fly fish, but we’ve done a lot of fishing in the area here over the years. And on our Creek property, it’s really good. You leave enough trout in there, they produce really good. And it’s a big draw in this area for people to come for the wild brown trout, the fly fishermen. It’s huge in this area.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jason Cramer: Yeah and Jason just made a really good point. You’ll see some wild brooks, but you’re going to see those wild brown. They’re more hardy trout. So, when you’re buying fish, I never bought any Fish whatsoever, ever, until I had my daughters. And it’s kind of silly to buy anything else other than browns, because those are the ones that are going to reproduce for you.

Ramsey Russell: Really? When you say buy them, you don’t mean buy them for the oven, you mean buy them to stock?

Jason Cramer: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Looks almost like a propane truck.

Ramsey Russell: So do you turn them loose right here in your front yard?

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: And they stay nearby? They don’t just go for miles?

Jason Cramer: Nah, they run. There’s floods.

Ramsey Russell: Really? Very interesting.

Jason Cramer: Both of our families have dealt with people that are like, this is just for older people or handicapped people or kids. They don’t care. Put them on the stringer, $7, $6, $4, they’re sold by the inch. They don’t care.

Ramsey Russell: But what did you all hunt growing up? I’m assuming you all met in High school.

Jason Cramer: We knew each other. Jason’s two years older than I am. We had known each other, but we didn’t really become really good friends until four or five years ago. And it was because of waterfowl.

Ramsey Russell: Waterfowl hunting.

Jason Cramer: Absolutely, 100%.

Nate Metcalf: Met through mutual friends and waterfowl hunting. And turkey hunting is our big to do now.

Ramsey Russell: Jason, did you grow up waterfowl hunting in Pennsylvania?

Nate Metcalf: I started when I was twelve. It was a lot different hunting. My dad wasn’t a big waterfowl hunter. It was kind of past time between deer hunting seasons and stuff like that. Did a lot of jump shooting and stuff like that. Now it’s an art to me, calling them in, watching my dogs work and all that. But back then, if we shot 20 geese a season, I was really happy. And over the years, the population around here got really good. And I think to me, it was learning how to blow a duck call and a goose call and learning how to call them in. And that was the biggest thrill for me. Not even shooting them, is just getting them to work where I want them to.

Ramsey Russell: I think the art of duck hunting becomes more important as you get older, get further into it. You get over just the trigger pull, and then the reward for practicing the art becomes the trigger pull.

Nate Metcalf: Yeah.

 Ramsey Russell: But the art itself is as important as the trigger pull. At least to me. It is.

Nate Metcalf: Yep. Setting decoys right. Learning what you’re hunting and tricking them because the birds here are high pressure birds. We’re hunting the same geese from September to February. We get migrators pass through here, but not as much as we used to because these mild winters and stuff, they stage way north of us. We still get ducks every year, but not like we used to. But we take our time and wait for the right weather and the perfect conditions and everything, work on them that way. And that’s, some of the harshest conditions. It could be 20 miles an hour, wind blowing, and 20 degrees outside. That’s my favorite time to be out there.

Ramsey Russell: How big is deer hunting to the state of Pennsylvania?

Jason Cramer: Huge.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve heard stories, Nate. How big? They still let school out?

Nate Metcalf: Yep.

Jason Cramer: There’s no school on the first day of hunting season.

Ramsey Russell: No schools. And it’s a state holiday.

Jason Cramer: Absolutely no school.

Ramsey Russell: No school?

Jason Cramer: Well, I don’t know about a state holiday. I mean, they could have. In downtown, Philadelphia, I can’t answer that, but around here, there’s no school.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Everybody goes deer hunting. I came by way of West Virginia. When I crossed into Pennsylvania, it’s like every little field had a deer stand.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: There was deer stand, I lost count. Deer stands everywhere. More than Mississippi. Way more than Mississippi.

Jason Cramer:  And you weren’t looking at public hunting?

Ramsey Russell: No, but you were telling me you went deer hunting and had a lot of hunters just within talking distance of you.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir, I hunted in my family cabin, which is not huge. I should know this off top of my head, but some 40 acres.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Jason Cramer: And I know a spot where they allow public hunting only during rifle season for the first up until Thursday. So it’d be the first five days, and I know where they come in from, and I know how they’re going to push the deer. So, i was on our property, but it doesn’t matter, and these people don’t know. It’s dark, and it’s not worth running them out of there or anything like that. But when I shot the doe, we’re not big buck hunting the doe, because I want to meet for the freezer. I had three people within 100 yards and one guy within 50 yards, and I had to move, and I actually gave up my wind. I was hunting downwind when I shot that doe.

Ramsey Russell: You’re a kid.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: How did somebody within 50 yards not see the deer first?

Jason Cramer: It came from the side that I moved to. The downwind side. I was on the right side, and they came from the upwind side.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a lot of deer hunters.

Jason Cramer: There’s a lot of deer hunters here.

Ramsey Russell: And how long is the deer season in Pennsylvania?

Jason Cramer: Two weeks.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Jason Cramer: For rifle.

Ramsey Russell: All hands on deck.

Jason Cramer: Oh, it’s serious. Yeah. One thing that I liked is it wasn’t always like this, you know? And Jason will tell you too, is there was no real private land back in the day. Everyone hunted everything.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir. There was no running people off. That’s just the way it was.

Nate Metcalf: Everybody got along, you run into somebody on the public state land, like, hey, how you making out? I’m going to make a big walk. I’m a loop around here, see if I can push deer to you, someone you never met or may never even see you again. Now, you walk up on somebody, you just run the biggest buck of their life off and this and that. It’s a lot different now than 30 years ago, whenever I started hunting and ever since everything got televised is when a lot of things started changing.

Ramsey Russell: This kind of horn porn generation.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, I totally agree with that. And here’s the deal. We have so many hunters, you’re not going to get those. We have the area. We have the means, but you’re not going to get $160. I guess you could, but, you’re just lucky. I think there’s got to be a pen that’s opened up on a Mennonite farm.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, really?

Jason Cramer: And one of those genetically enhanced dear show up

Ramsey Russell: Is that a big deal around here?

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir. Big time.

Ramsey Russell: When we met 10-15 years ago, you were not a duck hunter.

Jason Cramer: Not at all.

A Peruvian Duck Hunt to Remember 

Largest density of cinnamon teal on planet Earth.

Ramsey Russell: And one of the most memorable hunts I remember us going on Nate, was Peru.

Jason Cramer: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Went down there to shoot cinnamon teal. Cinnamon teal only.

Jason Cramer: Largest concentration on planet Earth.

Ramsey Russell: Largest density of cinnamon teal on planet Earth. Coastal areas between the Pacific Ocean and the Atacama Desert. Somehow talk mojo into coming down there with me. We had an incredible hunt.

Jason Cramer: Not to cut you off. I got the job offer to produce mojo show full time on that hunt.

Ramsey Russell: That hunt?

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Was that before or after your famous discovery? Because that was freaking epic.

Jason Cramer: Yeah. We were leaving.

Ramsey Russell: I had already been to the area once before we went back, and I knew we had stopped to look, it’s like a cave that they had explained was an Alcoa. It’s where they stored the seed, back in the ancient days, pre Incan civilization days; I had seen human remains, bones.

Jason Cramer: That’s what they said. They said that there were humans.

Ramsey Russell: But we were going to do some cutaways, just some interviews overlooking the valley. And Michael sitting there talking, and I don’t know what you were doing. You went up the freak of sand dune a half mile away to the top to get a better view, and you came running down, And I just expected a bunch of wild Indians to be chasing you. You were running like raiders of the Lost Ark, running down, hollering, screaming. I’m like, what in the world? You said, you got to come see this. It was April fool’s day.

Jason Cramer: It was April 1.

Recording More Than the Hunt

What was the response to that, because that was one of the first episodes, I remembered that we didn’t just go deep into the hunt itself. It was cultural, and there was a lot of stuff like that going on. I thought it was fascinating. It’s like National Geographic.

Ramsey Russell: And halfway up, walking through all that sand, Dimmon said something like, this better not be an April fool’s joke. Cause it was hot and hard walking up that top of that sand.

Jason Cramer: Are you allowed to cuss at all? Yeah, he said, I’ll fire your ass, if you’re messing with me. And I was like, no, sir.

Ramsey Russell: But we get to the top, and it was one of the most spectacle of what unfolded in all directions. Talk about that.

Jason Cramer: Really, when it comes down to when we learned what that was, it was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Ramsey Russell: It really was.

Jason Cramer: It was a graveyard that had been raided.

Ramsey Russell: Massive graveyard.

Jason Cramer: Massive.

Ramsey Russell: A mile wide graveyard.

Jason Cramer: When I first broke that top of that mountain, I looked down in there, in that valley. I thought it was broken up PVC furniture, like, some kids went out, and it was a campsite that was all broken up. That’s just too much PVC, especially down here, because they didn’t have any money. We were picking up the bird boys from huts.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, huts. Remember, their hunting clothes were they’d strip out of their wife beating t shirts and shorts and walk around their tighty whitey, swim out to put the decoys out.

Jason Cramer: 100%. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And for a little tigray, he had some Scooby Doo.

Jason Cramer: I don’t remember that. But when I got down into the base of that valley and there was skulls, human skull, because when we were in that cave deal, and Kathy was her name. Right? Yeah. Kathy said that these are human remains. I’m not necessarily a skeptical person, but I didn’t believe that. It’s a cave, animals die there all the time. Go in my family farm, you’ll see some human remains, bones everywhere. I didn’t really believe that. And then I thought if I went up there, and I wasn’t looking for human remains necessarily, but when there were skulls with teeth and remember the human hair everywhere.

Ramsey Russell: We go walking through it, and it’s like you’re walking around because all of the skulls and bones and clothing, like burlap type clothing and hair, because it’s so dry, which is everywhere. So you kind of gingerly walking around looking at it, and like, who would have dug all this up? Every grave was upturned. And we happened upon one, it’s like somebody had taken a bunch of random bones and laid out. Like, a skull at the top, and then there were arms and legs and rib, but it may not be the articulate bones. And then right between what was formed out of skeleton legs was a big old femur sticking up like a big old hard on. I’m like, who would do this? High school kids? And she goes, no, that could have happened hundreds of years ago, Hundreds. It could have been Spanish conquistadors. This did not happen recently. This happened hundreds of years ago. And what they were looking for is, she told us, was because these were very poor people, and they still are, largely. But the chief of those tribes would have a coat made of feathers. And if you found it, it was worth a fortune.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It was the only thing of value they had on the black market. And that’s what people were looking for back then. Well, probably the conquistadors were looking for gold, not knowing these people are too poor to have it.

Jason Cramer: Well, they’re one of their gods. He had an extremely large package.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. That’s why you see all them toys and stuff around her like that.

Jason Cramer: And the priest came in, or maybe I’m screwing that up. But I believe she said priest, because she was the only trans. She was the only one who spoke English. And it was a priest that came in and to try to bless all those tombs that were robbed.

Ramsey Russell: Thousands.

Jason Cramer: Thousands, there were so many bones, you couldn’t walk over it.

Ramsey Russell: That became a two part mojo episode.

Jason Cramer: Oh, yeah. Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: What was the response to that, because that was one of the first episodes, I remembered that we didn’t just go deep into the hunt itself. It was cultural, and there was a lot of stuff like that going on. I thought it was fascinating. It’s like National Geographic.

Jason Cramer: Going back to the skeptical thing, I don’t know if some people maybe thought that we staged that or something, but I remember at one point, we wanted to get a photo of that, and all of us were afraid to touch any of it because it was religious.

Ramsey Russell: It was serious. I didn’t want to touch any of it. I didn’t want to touch nothing, I didn’t want to step on nothing. I didn’t want to touch nothing.

Jason Cramer: I remember either you or Mike saying, this is some of the stuff that belongs in the Smithsonian. There was baskets, half baskets, pottery. We didn’t touch anything.

Ramsey Russell: I didn’t want to touch nothing. To me, it’s just respect. It’s not my place to touch stuff like that, but it was very fascinating seeing it, and it had been there for thousands of years.

Jason Cramer: When I walked down off that hill, it was really cool to get that footage. And being a new producer at that time, well, I wasn’t producer, I was a freelancer. But I knew I got good footage, and I was editing the shows at the time, so I was kind of like a part time producer. When I walked down off that dune mountain, I felt good about what I filmed and everything, but, man, I felt horrible, just sad.

Ramsey Russell: What can you do about that kind of stuff?

Jason Cramer: I wasn’t there to stop them. Imagine that you go into your family cemetery where your grandma’s buried, and all the bones are mixed together.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jason Cramer: It’s terrible.

Ramsey Russell: We went to Uruguay. I don’t remember much about that hunt, but we were hunting up against Brazilian border, and it turned out to be a really good hunt.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, it was.

Ramsey Russell: It was a good hunt. Made a great show.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, made a great show. That was a really good hunt.

Ramsey Russell: One of my favorite episodes we did was actually down in Texas, Mike and I, we were hunting with the late J.J Kent, and one day we went out and shot green heads and teal. It’s like we had to come halfway down a cliff to go put them in the decoy. Then we come around and got on a bluff, and we’re shooting down on the decoy ducks. The next day, we went to a cornfield, and there were mallards and pintails. It had rained a little slash water, mallards and pintails mostly. And then I just remember one day, JJ saying, man, I’ve got a really, really great place. Lots and lots of ducks. But they’re all shovels, Mike, that’s fine, we’ll go. We were cutting up during the interviews about big girls and mopeds and eager Trunk’s pretty and we had a good time with that. And then we fell into the Boone and Crockett mode. We get up some big hen shelter with a gnarly spotted or model bill. I’m like, that is bonafide Boone and Crockett. And Dakota Stowers was there, myself, you, J.J Kent, and had my dog Cooper at the time.

Jason Cramer: Cooper was there.

Ramsey Russell: And this pond, Jason, was pea soup green. And we shot six limits of ducks. There were six shooters besides six limits of ducks. One green winged and the rest were all shovelers. Mike and I laid them up on his trailer and sent a picture of us with all them shovelers to Denmon. I told this at Mike’s wake, it was my morning. And Denmon wrote back, I’ll never let you two film again without adult supervision. And I laughed and Nate laughed and JJ laughed and Mike laughed. He wasn’t kidding.

Jason Cramer: That was it. That was the last one. I think it maybe had something to do with your guys face. You guys looked so happy.

Ramsey Russell: I remember happy.

Jason Cramer: Mike’s eyes were closed. He was so happy. He was smiling so big.

Ramsey Russell: The other hunts were like hunts we had to hunt till 11 or 12:00. But that hunt was just wham, bam, thank you, man. We were done in an hour.

Jason Cramer: And it was awesome footage too.

Ramsey Russell: It was good footage. And of course, the time we all hunted Steve down for blue winged-

Memorable Moments on the Hunt

Jason Cramer: Sure.

Ramsey Russell: Now, you were well into the career then at that point.

Jason Cramer: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And most memorable part of that for me was, at a high school football game. And we didn’t leave Brannon, Mississippi, or actually P. Lahatchee, Mississippi, till ten at night. We had a long way to go. We had like a couple of gas stops and 30 minutes to spare before shooting time. And I was flying down at one or two in the morning, doing 97 miles an hour. And about this time, this car headlight comes sweeping up on me and I said, that’s somebody in a whole lot bigger hurry than me, and the blue lights came on. I said, cop. And he approached. I rolled down all my windows, turned up the cab lights because its pitch black dark, we broke one log and I didn’t want him to be freaking out and holding a gun on us. So Forrest kind of woke up when the cop come to his side and said, what the hell are you doing? 97 miles an hour down my interstate four. And I looked at him dead, and I said, I’ve got to be in El Campo, Texas, at shooting time. He spit and looked at me go, are you serious? I go, yes, sir. We got to be there shooting times at whatever time, we got to be there, and we ain’t got time to spare. He looked at me and looked at my son and looked at me again and said, there’s construction ahead. You need to slow down to about 75. Good luck. Forrest, I can’t believe he let you go.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: He must be a duck hunter.

Jason Cramer: Texas. I remember from that hunt? I remember Forrest ran out of ammo.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy.

Jason Cramer: And he did. He asked his dad for some ammo, and you told him that, he should have planned better.

Ramsey Russell: He should have planned better with some different words. There was a whole case sitting in the floorboard of the truck. He should have grabbed another box or grabbed more ammo, whatever the case may be.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, I think you gave him a couple shells. I think you gave him, like, two or three.

Ramsey Russell: Like Barney Fife.

Jason Cramer: One at a time.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jason Cramer: Terry got the biggest kick out of that, I thought that was funny.

Ramsey Russell: There was a time we went to Argentina, and all this time, we know we’ve been to Peru, we’ve been to Texas, and all these different places we’ve been. And I think it was the last time we hunted together in Argentina, I think. And we’d hunt, doubtless flocks. It was a great hunt, as usual. And I just became cognizant that you had never even killed a duck. How can you be producing that kind of footage? I mean, the slow mo, the capturing and getting the kind of footage you get. You’ve hunted so many times with us, and you really get the shot. I’m like, you have never killed a duck? So I handed you my shotgun.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And you, surprisingly hit a bunch.

Jason Cramer: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You shot quite a few rosy-billed

Jason Cramer: Well, it was a perfect win, and they were coming right down the pipe.

Ramsey Russell: What were your thoughts? How did it feel? You’ve grown up fly fishing, you’ve grown up fishing. You’ve grown up turkey hunting, which we hadn’t even talked about. You’re a deer hunter, got out of high school on opening day, your whole life. How did it feel to shoot a duck?

Jason Cramer: It felt awesome. And I loved it. It felt just like killing a turkey I guess, or killing a nice duck. It felt real good, Ramsey. But that really was just the beginning of the snowball. That was the compacting, the first little, small snowball. And then that’s what got it rolling down the hill, I thought.

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah because the next time I talked to you, you identified as a duck hunter.

Jason Cramer: Oh, man. It got way out of hand real quick.

Ramsey Russell: Figured you better call your buddy Jason, repatch that friendship.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, well with Jason I didn’t hang out at all. That was way back. But it wasn’t until I was in Texas with Mike and Chuck, Terrible hunt. And we killed like two or three. There’s no way we’re going to make an episode. And Chuck was like, hey man, no problem. I’m going to make some duck poppers. And he made the classic duck popper.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Jason Cramer: And I ate it. I was like, oh, my gosh. I was like, it’s pretty fun shooting them, but this is delicious. And that’s kind of what started it. And I had a couple decoys, like the real basic decoys that you see at yard sales for fifty cents and stuff like that. I had a couple out. I had Mason line attached. I’m serious. Attached to bricks.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You went all out.

Jason Cramer: Yeah. And that’s what I was using in the creek. I had about six to eight, nine maybe. Decoys. Terrible. And for whatever reason, we always had them at the farm, but we’d put them in rain barrels just for being fun, I collected them in the barn and what not. And then Mason line and then rate the bricks. And that’s what I was using.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what you’re using?

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Did it work?

Jason Cramer: Yeah, we killed a couple and we weren’t allowed to use mojos in Pennsylvania then.

Ramsey Russell: When did that start?

Jason Cramer: Four or five?

Nate Metcalf: Yeah, four or five years ago.

Ramsey Russell: So that’s a recent thing that you all could use?

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Spinning wing decoys, battery operated.

Jason Cramer: So I’m working with one of the best.

Ramsey Russell: The best. The top spinning wing decoy on earth.

Jason Cramer: Yeah. I can’t use it. And I was getting into it and just kind of looking at different stuff, and it was just like you guys were talking about before we started. It’s almost the best part is figuring it all out.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jason Cramer: And that’s what I got into and it became. I’ve hunted three times for rifle this year. I don’t care. It doesn’t mean anything to me. Ramsey kept on, well, how many deer are here? I’m like, a lot of deer, Ramsey. Well, you must be killing. Yeah, shoot some deer. There’s some decent bucks down there. I don’t care. I’d rather sit in a duck blind and not kill any ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Then I saw that.

Jason Cramer: You did. I showed you. I was serious.

Jason Cramer: But it is serious. And like I said, it got to the point. Now, turkey’s probably my main jam, but it got that point. And then hunting with Jason, our thoughts kind of align, and we kind of kicked it off, actually. I was watching a dog, someone’s dog. And that’s how we really became friends, because we were at the vet with this guy’s dog, and we just start talking about hunting. I was like, oh, man.

Ramsey Russell: Because you all both have great labs out of the same breeding. Just a repeat breeding.

Jason Cramer: Well, It’s his labs.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, really?

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I missed that part of conversation.

Jason Cramer: He’s got the, mama and the papa.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, I see. Gunner.

Nate Metcalf: Yep.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Sire.

Nate Metcalf: Yep.

Jason Cramer: That’s blue’s dad.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, okay.

Jason Cramer: And then rogue and then Stormy was the first litter. So I didn’t want a lab. I wanted anything other than a lab. I was thinking about Chesapeake. I was thinking about one of those griffin dogs. Yeah, anything other than the lab. And Jason was like, all right, man. You saw the first litter? The first litter here. Stormy, she’s awesome. And I’m having one more litter, and I’ll let you pick and choose which one you want and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, yeah, I’m getting a lab.

Hunting Around the World

Ramsey Russell: So you go to Argentina, you kill the first duck. That’s pretty fun.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: A new chapter starting to be written. You’re hunting with Chuck and Mike. You eat some basic duck poppers. This is organic meat. I need to get into this. What was it like when you hunt with decoys and pieces of brick tied on mason line? When did you kill your first duck? When did you put it together yourself, and how did that feel? Talk about that first duck.

Jason Cramer: I would say it was probably no joke. Two years after I’d killed that Rosy Bill with your Benelli. And I don’t know. I can do this. This is cool. And then I just, I know. Mark. I know it, Terry, and I’m just obsessed about trying to learn some biggers. Trying to learn stuff of just some techniques and tips.

Ramsey Russell: And then you kind of just kind of snap. You figured it out, but you always learn, and I’m always learning.

Jason Cramer: Sure. Yeah. I was a very fortunate student because not to suck up or anything, but I had really good teachers that people have done it, that I trusted for years, and Mike Morgan and I talked every single day, not necessarily about duck hunting. I made it into that when it didn’t work right. Or I’d be blowing a duck call. Does this sound okay? No, sounds terrible. You know, do this. Maybe try this call. Maybe there’s too many reads for you.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it’s changing gear just subtly. It’s real different habitat up here than what I’m familiar with. Like, we hunted your pond right here behind the house, and it’s literally just a pond. Why would a duck go there? Yesterday we hunted a cornfield over at Jason’s, and the ducks were a mile off, maybe in one pond. And he said, well, they’re going to come off, they’re going to hit a drinking pond, then they’re going to come in. Hopefully there’ll still be shooting time. And I think we saw that first pair of mallards ten minutes before shooting time. Then another flock slid in, and then it was over. And as we left, there’s just clouds up coming in. But it’s real different hunting, I think, than some of the other places I’ve hunted.

Jason Cramer: I don’t know. I think the benefit of the pond that’s here on the family farm is that it runs along the creek, and they use those creeks for roadways and navigation, and it’s just right there. It was never hunted for 20 years, probably. Maybe more.

Ramsey Russell: But it’s literally within two minutes walking distance of this home. And there’s another home or a dairy farm right behind. It’s a lot of houses around.

Jason Cramer: But they were never messed with, ever.

Ramsey Russell: Because nobody hunts them there.

Jason Cramer: That changed.

Goose Hunting in Pennsylvania

We goose hunt from September to February, and we shot a lot of geese over the years, and I love it.

Ramsey Russell: What’s the goose hunting like here in Pennsylvania, best part of Pennsylvania?

Jason Cramer: I don’t think I ever killed a goose until hunting with Jason.

Ramsey Russell: Are you a goose hunter or duck hunter Jason?

Nate Metcalf: As I get older, we chase a lot more ducks, but up until about the past four or five years, we mainly goose hunted. We goose hunt from September to February, and we shot a lot of geese over the years, and I love it. I live for it, and that’s my thing. Listen to Turkey’s gobble in the spring and listen to geese double cluck coming into the decoys in the wintertime.

Ramsey Russell: Of course I show up. The geese were the first things off coming into the cornfield. And of course I show up. Just duck season only. There’s a big goose split, and they circled. We had a mojo going, but they circled. They worked the wagons, but turned the mojo off and talked to them a little bit. They wanted in there. They’d have come right in.

Nate Metcalf: It wouldn’t have took much. We would have had them in there.

Ramsey Russell: But you said something. We were back at the barn at beer 30 visiting. You said, how you play the goose game? When those birds were circling, we could have shot them in front. They weren’t decoying, but they just low path to the side behind us. You said, no, that’s not how I play.

Nate Metcalf: Yeah, I like them finished. A lot of times the first shot is them flushing up out of the decoys. And that way we’re not educating big wads of them because you don’t always finish all of them. We finish enough that’s worth shooting in the decoys. Now, there has been times where we’ve finished 150 birds into decoys. Late in the season, I don’t mind it, but, we shoot into them big flocks, get as many as we can because the season short after that, but early in the season, I will run a dog out, flush them out, and we’ll just work them back in again.

Ramsey Russell: Wait till the little family flocks come in?

Nate Metcalf: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Because those are your geese forever the whole season.

Nate Metcalf: And that’s why we play the weather, too. I’ll scout ten times more than I actually hunt. So we wait for the right weather where it’s cold, rainy, and they’re coming off in small groups. And we’re not educating here. A lot of times, not all the time, but a good bit of the time. We can have a limit and be packed up and out of there before the rest of the birds even come.

Ramsey Russell: Which yesterday a pretty typical setup, that many decoys, a sack of silhouettes?

Nate Metcalf: If we were shooting geese, we would have run probably two or three more bags and did a little bit more concentration. Family groups like these local birds, like in family groups, and the Canada geese, like to land inside of other decoys unless there’s a lot of wind, and then they’ll land downwind and work and walk up into them or whatever.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Nate Metcalf: Yeah. These local birds are a lot different than migrators. They play hardball a lot with us.

Ramsey Russell: What about you, Nate? Are you a duck hunter or a goose hunter? Cause here you shoot them both. Next time I come here, I want to be here when they’re both open.

Jason Cramer: I think I’m a duck hunter. But on the same token, this year, up at Rob’s ranch land, those geese came in. Man, I was so excited.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Jason Cramer: Just hammering it. It’s so fun.

Ramsey Russell: I shoot a lot of ducks. I’m blessed to hunt a lot of ducks in a lot of places. But what we don’t really have back home, we thought Big water might score a field for some early resident Canada. There’s no goose hunting culture, to be able to come up here with here anywhere up north where there’s a goose hunting culture, I just, I love it. Well, they don’t go to Toronto tomorrow to shoot Canada geese, right?

Jason Cramer: I think, the only thing I did there for a while was, lack of funds and all that kind of stuff was duck hunting. But, goose hunting is as fun as it gets, and also working for Mojo and getting them play with all the new products and seeing it actually work and then trying it out for yourself and have it work here, now that we can. It’s pretty awesome as far as the duck hunting goes. But, man, that’s a tough question, because I really enjoy both. I’ve had a lot of good times goose hunting with. With the Cramer family.

Do You Have a Favorite Duck to Hunt?

First one that we’ve ever killed in our group. Now we shoot green wing here. They finally shifted the season a little bit a week earlier because a lot of times we get a weird cold front and a lot of our wood ducks here and the teal are right on through.

Ramsey Russell: Do you have a favorite duck? Cause you all shoot a lot of mallards here. And yesterday, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, and it was four pintail. That was kind of wild. And what was so confusing is there were four pintail, but there was also four mallards kind of buzzing around at the same time. So it’s like the first pass was pintail. Kind of hit us low but faded, and the next thing was four mallards. I’m like, was that pintail? I thought that was pintail. And then I saw him again. Saw the mallard. We ended up getting into the mallards. I think we shot several of them.

Jason Cramer: Yeah. I love Mallard, blue winged teal, has a special place because that’s what I started with.

Ramsey Russell: You shoot a lot here?

Jason Cramer: No, sir. I’ve never shot a blue winged teal. Ever, never.

Ramsey Russell: They don’t pass through this part of the world, really.

Jason Cramer: Jason killed one this year, Michael did.

Nate Metcalf: First one that we’ve ever killed in our group. Now we shoot green wing here. They finally shifted the season a little bit a week earlier because a lot of times we get a weird cold front and a lot of our wood ducks here and the teal are right on through. And we’re getting what wood ducks are here. Some will hang over, but a lot of them are ones that are already migrating through in that early split. But this year was the first, in my group of guys that we hunt with have ever killed a blue wing. It was pretty neat. We only got three ducks that morning. Three, four ducks or whatever. But it was my daughter’s first year of year of hunting, She’s twelve. And she’s like addicted to the sport about as much as I am right now. And it’s just nice seeing everybody wanting to go hunting and stuff now. But for the ducks in this area, it’s mostly mallards. But we always, we joke around. We call them the exotics, the pintails, the wigeons.

Jason Cramer: Black ducks.

Nate Metcalf: Black ducks, Greenwood.

Ramsey Russell: Are black ducks really exotic to this part of Pennsylvania?

Nate Metcalf: They pass through here every year, but they don’t like, stay here.

Ramsey Russell: I expect more of them. I’ve never seen one in some of the places we’ve hunted.

Nate Metcalf: Now, normally when we’re come, December into January, like I told you, that cold snap will get from Christmas to Jan or New year’s, that field will have a bunch of black ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Nate Metcalf: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Note to sell. That’s when I need to show up.

Nate Metcalf: Right around that time is some of our prime duck hunting. When we’re watching these fields all the time. And we know when they show up, because the migrators hit that field regularly over there. It’s like it’s imprinted on them. Every year the fresh ducks show up and they hit them fields over there.

Jason Cramer: You were asking about, a favorite duck and I’m saying a blue winged teal might be one of my favorite ducks. I’ve never even shot one. But what it was, is going to Louisiana and it’s like the night before Christmas.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, it is.

Jason Cramer: It is just so exciting. You can feel it. I was excited for the guys. I’m just there documenting. But it was the food that was made, the excitement, everyone’s up. Everyone’s having drinks. Everyone’s telling stories. They’re hoping they get to go to bed early enough to be able to go out the next day. It was just so exciting to be there. And they’re very challenging to film.

Ramsey Russell: Why?

Jason Cramer: They’re so fast, they’re so agile. I don’t know if they’re fast or just agile.

Ramsey Russell: I come in hard and fast and in any direction.

Jason Cramer: When you see slow motion, it’s a one minute long deal. But in reality, it was like a six, six to eight second deal. And if you nail it, you’re doing great. It’s such a hard thing. But then I say mallard, and I like them all. But blue wing teal holds a special, that was the first hunt that I did with Mojo, as far as waterfowl goes, was blue winged teal.

One Good Looking Duck

I don’t know what’s a better looking duck than a wood duck drake

Ramsey Russell: You all shoot a lot of wood ducks up here looking at some pictures.

Jason Cramer: Wood ducks are some of the coolest ducks, period. I don’t know what’s a better looking duck than a wood duck drake.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you were showing me around your big blind you’ve got here at your little pond behind your house. You’ve got a lot of pin oaks. And said that, boy, the wood ducks just really hit it hard when those pin oaks start driving.

Jason Cramer: They love it. It’s the x.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jason Cramer: Absolutely. It’s the x.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve been in some big blinds before Nate, but that’s big and insulated. Like, today was 33 degrees. It was 43 degrees inside that blind with no heat and all the windows open. Why all the insulation? Were you comfortable?

Jason Cramer: Yeah, I was gone.

Ramsey Russell: How cold does it get here?

Jason Cramer: It gets super cold. There’s times where, you know. What’s your opinion on running ice heater while you’re duck hunting?

Ramsey Russell: Open water. Yeah. Makes a decoy.

Jason Cramer: Can you use it while you’re duck hunting?

Ramsey Russell: I don’t know. I’d have to check state rigs, I would certainly run it.

Jason Cramer: I’m pretty certain it’s legal. But, you get those mixed reviews, whether-

Ramsey Russell: No, I would run it.

Jason Cramer: It flares them or not. Just the sound. But if it’s a constant drone, people are saying it doesn’t matter.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t think it does. I would see what the ducks did.

Jason Cramer: I was super paranoid about running them. And you can’t keep the holes open. It’s so cold here. You’re talking single digits lower than zero.

Ramsey Russell: You don’t run them, you lose your duck.

Jason Cramer: Exactly.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jason Cramer: And it doesn’t matter. I showed you that little deal that me and my buddies made, and that doesn’t work. That doesn’t keep it open. It provides ripple, but it won’t keep it open. They’ll freeze, motion decoys will freeze in the water. There’s nothing you can do. So that’s why that we have that blind there.

Ramsey Russell: Put some heaters. It gets that cold.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you said that pond had already been frozen this year. And I’m like, what?

Jason Cramer: Oh, yeah. The whole thing, completely frozen.

Ramsey Russell: Crazy.

Jason Cramer: That’s killed all those carp.

Ramsey Russell: Crazy.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Speaking of which, you tell me this morning, you came back from the military, was trying to catch a fish in your family pond. You couldn’t talk about what all you did get. This is what, a half acre pond right now with the water down maybe-

Jason Cramer: A little bit bigger than that.

Ramsey Russell: It’s not an acre.

Jason Cramer: Right, it’s an odd shape. But, regardless, I came back and I spent a lot of time with my brother on that pond. We did a lot of bass fishing, and we mainly catch or release, but we camped out on that peninsula there.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jason Cramer: And, I wanted to go fishing. Came back, I was gone for essentially nine years with the military in college and all that kind of stuff. And my first cast, I guess I had worms, I’m thinking, I wish I could said something cooler, but I think I cast a worm in there, and I caught a snapping turtle. And then-

Ramsey Russell: How big?

Jason Cramer: Like the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket, something like that. And then two or three pounds.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jason Cramer: I was like, well, that was random. I cast in again and caught another one. So then I realized I had to go back to old school and start trapping these things. And I wasn’t catching a fish. I was just catching snapping turtles and just destroyed them. We caught like, 28 or 29.

Ramsey Russell: 28. That’d be like 56 or 60 out of per acre in this little pond right here.

Jason Cramer: Oh, it’s polluted.

Ramsey Russell: I wonder if there weren’t any fish.

Jason Cramer: We started with a gallon jug, as me and my one buddy. And he’s not much of a hunter.

Ramsey Russell: If you’re telling me about an old guy that did-

Jason Cramer: Jack Peters. Yeah. I took a couple of snapping turtles over there because he wanted to process them and put them in the creek. You got to let them purify, because that pond is nasty. You saw me walking around that?

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Jason Cramer: And anyway, he gave me a good old fashioned trap. Looked like a gigantic minnow trap, essentially these going into the middle with a big bait box hanging –

Ramsey Russell: What you bait it with?

Jason Cramer: A rotten chicken. Wow. And we caught, in less than a week, we caught 28 or 29, and they were all male.

Ramsey Russell: That’s crazy.

Jason Cramer: Every single one.

Ramsey Russell: What a doe man do with them?

Jason Cramer: Oh, well, is what we did.

Ramsey Russell: Purged them.

Jason Cramer: He showed us how to do it.

Ramsey Russell: How do you clean the snapping turtle?

Jason Cramer: It’s awful. You purge them out. He already had all this set up. He had a couple tea posts in the creek with some chicken wire around it. You put them in there, and then I think he had chicken wire on the bottom as well, and it was all safety wired up. And then you purge them out, and then you want me to tell you?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah

Jason Cramer: You get a hatchet, and you take the back of the hatchet, and you hit them in the face with it, and their head kind of flops out, and their eyes, you can see them spinning. And then you hatch their heads off

Ramsey Russell: Like a chicken.

Jason Cramer: And then you hang them up by their tails. We had a line that we hung them up by their tails, and they just bled out for quite a while.

Ramsey Russell: I love turtle soup, but I’ve never cleaned a turtle.

Jason Cramer: It’s horribly smelly, and it’s a lot of work. And really, the best meat is. So then we threw them in some boiling water for just a couple minutes, and then we. pulled them out, and then you pull that shell off. You separate the two shells, on the backside of that shell, It’s almost like an old school ice cube tray.

Ramsey Russell: Really.

Jason Cramer: And that’s where all the good meat is. And you take a knife, and you carefully carve all that out, and pull all that good meat out, and the neck, and then all the legs, you pull that out. You skin it, you take it out.

Ramsey Russell: How did he cook them? Like a soup?

Jason Cramer: I can’t remember exactly who. One of my buddies made a white. My mom made the white. It was like a New England clam chowder. Then my other buddy made a red. We made two clam chowders. And then the meat that I’m telling you, that looked like an ice cube tray on the backside, you know, right up the spine. We put those on skewers. We just grilled it.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy.

Jason Cramer: And it tastes like chicken.

Ramsey Russell: James, are you a turtle cooker, too?

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Nate Metcalf: Whenever I was young, my uncles used to do it. The big pond over on Zion Road, we trap them in there, and then we caught big ones out of there. And same thing with my uncles. We knock the heads off, let them bleed out, and then do a quick scald on them. Separate everything. And it’s a lot of work. But they said, it’s really good. It was so long ago, I can’t even remember what it would taste like. But we used to do it.

Ramsey Russell: Well, there’s restaurants up north you go to, that got turtles. I’ve been in Ohio, and you go to a local seafood restaurant. They got turtle soup, wild caught snappers, and it’s delicious.

Jason Cramer: As a kid. It’s funny you said that as a kid. Me and my brother would always talk about, we’re going to make a lot of money. There’s so many snappers in here, and we’re going to make a lot of money, and we’ll sell, you know, we didn’t know.

Ramsey Russell: When I was in grade school, I found a shopping basket and pushed it up and down a sidewalk and had found a net in somebody’s trash, like a bass dipping net, and would run down that ditch and scoop them up. When I’d see them crawling along the bottom, they’d be just about the size of a bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. And I’d turn them loose in my backyard, and on Saturday morning, I’d round them up, put them in mama’s trunk. She’d take me to the fish market. I got whatever it was. I come back about $20 or $30. But my family didn’t cook them or know what to do with them, but I sold them to the local fish market. And, here I am in fourth grade, making $20 a week off turtles.

Jason Cramer: You did what I thought was possible, that’s cool.

Ramsey Russell: But I never learned how to do something like it. I just know I like it.

Jason Cramer: Now that you say that, I kind of remember that you talked about that on the End of The Line podcast.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that was my childhood. The real money was into babies, the little green ones. Little snappers.

Jason Cramer: Really?

Ramsey Russell: And the snappers are ugly. The little green was. Boy, you could give it. I could sell them for $0.50 readymade. I’d load my pockets up, go to school and, on the playground, I’d pull them out and show them to people. I’d get all that lunch.

Jason Cramer: Would they bite you?

Ramsey Russell: Well, the little snappers, they weren’t big enough to. But you take them out and nobody wanted the ugly little snappers. And till you taught them the trick, it did. And you put them on their back and they had that long neck and it flipped over. Oh, I taught them to flip over. They wanted a turtle that could do tricks because a green turtle couldn’t do no trick. So I thought I’d get $0.50 for them, too.

Jason Cramer: No kidding.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah. My childhood was turtles.

Jason Cramer: Little baby snappers. They wouldn’t even try to bite.

Ramsey Russell: They’re the size of not even of a half dollar, maybe a half dollar, no, bigger. I put four or five in each pocket, go to school. Come back with money in one pocket.

Jason Cramer: I thought they were a horrible being. It didn’t matter how small.

Ramsey Russell: No, they’re nasty.

Jason Cramer: It bit my brother’s finger.

Ramsey Russell: They do, they are musky. Your brother got his finger bit off?

Jason Cramer: Absolutely. Yeah. My snapper turned.

Ramsey Russell: That ended your turtle ceiling.

Jason Cramer: Just the tip. Oh, no, that’s when we really started. We start getting ruthless then we really start. Every single one. I remember my brother being like; this is the one that bit my finger off. Then we’d kill it. And then he’d be like, nah, it wasn’t him. And then the next one. Oh, that’s the one that bit my finger off. That wasn’t him.

Ramsey Russell: One time I had about a one or two pounder, and I was fooling with him, and he caught my finger, and all I did was sit down and try not to scream and be perfectly still until he let go, and it just barely broke the skin. He was small, and he got ahold of me good. But I just sat down and gripped my teeth, till he relaxed and let up, I got my finger out, and then I threw him as far into the ditch as I could throw him.

Jason Cramer: You didn’t even bleed or anything?

Ramsey Russell: Just barely.

Jason Cramer: That was a nice snapping turtle.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, just barely. Well, my childhood hero was a man that caught the big ones out in the oxbows. He’d go out at dusk and dawn. They moved just like a White tailed deer, and he would push it along and see the bubbles, could judge by the bubbles if they were worth catching. And he had like, a conduit with a piece of hook, and he’d start tapping them, and then he could get it right under that little skinny piece of bone under the tail. And bring them up. And I’m talking big ones, croker sack big. And he actually lost his thumb and put his thumb in his pocket because he had fishing left to do. By the time he got back, they couldn’t sew it on. Man, that was my childhood hero.

Jason Cramer: What did he do with his finger, that they couldn’t attach it?

Ramsey Russell: I have no idea. I just know he showed me there at the muffler shop. He didn’t have a thumb, and told me the story. And I thought that was the coolest thing. I didn’t want to lose a finger. But that was my hero. Now he caught big turtles. I had to catch little turtles. I thought that was pretty cool, you know, changing the subject entirely from turtles. On the drive up to your house, I just saw a sign that said Gettysburg, 20 miles away. The Civil War ain’t a big deal up here at all, is it?

Jason Cramer: It wasn’t kind of a big deal, it was an unfortunate deal.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It’s still talked about. It’s crazy just being 20 miles from one of the most historic Civil War battles. I’m sure there were many more up here.

Pennsylvania’s Long History

And one of the cool things that I think that you really enjoyed was kind of showing you the farmhouse that I grew up.

Jason Cramer: The way we look at it, it’s a very respectful, very somber place.

Ramsey Russell: Sure, it just goes to show, that was in the 1800s. But Pennsylvania has a long standing history. It’s one of the original colonies.

Jason Cramer: Sure.

Ramsey Russell: Philadelphia. I’ve walked past and seen the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. That’s crazy to see that kind of history.

Jason Cramer: It’s cool. I wish I could have got Mike up here. And we talked about it a million times of having Mike come up and, some of these people that I’ve hunted with that became great friends with, I’ve always wanted to come up here and kind of share my life with them. And so I’m very glad that you’re up here, Ramsey. And one of the cool things that I think that you really enjoyed was kind of showing you the farmhouse that I grew up.

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah, talk about that. That’s just crazy.

Jason Cramer: I tell that story, and a lot of times, I don’t know, people believe me or anything, but the house that I grew up in is older than the United States. And I found that date stone as a little kind of summertime job that I had.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of the interior in that house that your mom lives in, that you grew up in.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Is limestone.

Jason Cramer: Yeah

Ramsey Russell: And the basement, you walk down the, you said when you were a little boy, it was a crawl space, but now it’s like a basement. You can stand up in it, and it’s like a lot of flagstone. And here on that wall, behind some of your mama’s flowers and stuff, you keep in the basement is a date stone.

Jason Cramer: Sure yeah. It was roughly a foot not far, a foot below. As a kid, we could walk around down in there, but as an adult, you would have to bend over, so I’m assuming it was, back then. Four and a half feet, maybe four foot, and pull the tractor up and have the bucket right there. And it was just shovelers into five gallon buckets and dump them into the bucket and we need to drop enough space. What would you say that was? Six foot now?

Ramsey Russell: 6ft, yeah.

Jason Cramer: And it was one of the first places I start digging. I just saw the very tops of the numbers and then just kind of hand dug around that. Then just dust it all off. And I bet you I was like, twelve at the time.

Ramsey Russell: What does the date read?

Jason Cramer: 1765

Ramsey Russell: 1765. That house was built. That’s crazy.

Jason Cramer: But the 12 year old, 1765 and 1905 are really not that much different.

Ramsey Russell: No.

Jason Cramer: So when my parents came home, I can’t remember, I think my mom came home first and I showed her. She was all excited. So then I was excited, then I showed my dad and he was all excited. So when I first did, I was going, there’s the date stone. Because it was always kind of a mystery of when that, where’s the date stone? No one knew where the date stone of that house was.

Ramsey Russell: And talk about you were roughhousing in your house one time, and a hamster got loose or something.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, there was an old green carpet, I don’t know, probably from like the forties or fifties or something like that, that was in this room that we had completely isolated because it was so cold. And we just put heavy blankets up. But there was a big dining room table around in there. The weird thing about that is, there was a sliding glass door that went to nothing there, where my mom’s window is. Went to nothing. So I don’t know, whatever reason I was allowed to play in there and I always play football in there, and the ball would dent the register. There was a steam register there with a screen on it. And every time the ball would hit, it’d be a little small dent. It would kind of back towards the register. And I had a teddy bear hamster. I wanted it really bad for some reason, and I’d play with him in there, and he got away from my grip and he jumped up and there was enough of gap for him to get back there. And I reached and reach and I had him by the back of his back legs. And he finally squirmed away. And then my hand came down on something wood, and then I felt something metal, and then I felt a trigger, and I eased up off the trigger, and I feel the stock, and I pulled the whole thing out, and it was like a 1901 Remington 22 shot.

Ramsey Russell: How did it end up behind that metal in that house?

Jason Cramer: So First off, can I have this gun? I asked my parents if I could have the gun. Well, you need to ask your pap. He was the owner of the farm and everything. So I asked my papa, can I have this gun? He said, yeah, you can have the gun. I was super excited. Took it to Jack Peters. Jack Peters was a Remington gunsmith, a well known Remington gunsmith. Made the left handed parts for Remington.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jason Cramer: Yeah, and he was super impressed. Had some cool tiger stripe on it. I should have got that gun when we were up there. Really pretty gun. Shot 22 shorts and 22 longs. But, yeah, it was a cool deal.

Ramsey Russell: How did it get there in a wall?

Jason Cramer: The farmer, before his wife didn’t like guns, and he had guns all over the house.

Ramsey Russell: One of those. Yeah, I just hit it.

Jason Cramer: I found one.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, there’s probably more hidden in the walls.

Jason Cramer: Let’s go.

Ramsey Russell: Have you looked?

Jason Cramer: We need to go up there now. Let’s go look.

Ramsey Russell: The Appalachian Trail comes through here. That’s kind of a crazy thing. And people hike it. And your mom was here last night telling Appalachian Trail story. She’s a trail angel.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, trail angel. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Did you grow up kind of doing that stuff, too?

Jason Cramer: No.

Ramsey Russell: But you hike.

Jason Cramer: We had that family cabin up there, that we still have in Appalachian Trail runs from a mile away from it, maybe. And growing up, I wasn’t really into Appalachian trail or anything like that. Clearly it was there. But, long story short, my mom got way into it. She’s in two different hiking groups. And so on her spare time, she’s retired now. She’ll go up there and just sit, hang out.

Ramsey Russell: Like, how long a hike is it from her car to go up there? And, she says she hands out beer and stuff that hikers can’t walk with, that they just enjoy.

Jason Cramer: Yep, beer.

Ramsey Russell: Just to meet a lot of cool people.

Jason Cramer: Yeah. Fresh fruit.

Ramsey Russell: How long was she hiking to go up there just to do that?

Jason Cramer: I don’t know, 30 minutes. What she’s saying like, a 40lbs pack?

Ramsey Russell: Golly. That’ll keep you in shape.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, she’s all but 70.

Ramsey Russell: How long has she been collecting arrowheads and pottery and things of that nature?

Jason Cramer: Here we go.

Ramsey Russell: You knew I was going; it’s your most famous story, Nate.

Jason Cramer: Unreal. She’s always been a collector. One of my earliest memories, Ramsay, is just going around here, and I’m going to butcher this. They were Indian paint rocks.

Ramsey Russell: Paint rock?

Jason Cramer: Yeah. And you crack them open. Instead of like a geo, where the crystals are inside, you crack them open. There is a fine dust powder in the middle of these things. And then you’d add water to it, and then you could paint with them.

Ramsey Russell: You’re a kid.

Jason Cramer: Yeah. And she knew exactly where to go for them. And the Indians used to do it and use it for –

Ramsey Russell: That’s how they used to dye stuff, was with these paint rocks.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, they paint.

Ramsey Russell: Well, she was showing us airheads. And who found that really cool farm axe? My grandpa found that stone. Farm axe?

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s crazy.

Jason Cramer: I thought the story went that he was kicking around back in the fields, but apparently that, he was in a corn crib, and he got one of his discs hung up on something, and he just kind of dug around down there. I mean, it’s cool, man. It looks like tomahawk. But I think it’s something more for farming, But it’s awesome. It’s perfect.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve been in a million museums. Not all of them.  And from now on, I’m going to start asking and looking, because your mother also found a stone that I’ve never seen in a museum.

Jason Cramer: Me neither.

Ramsey Russell: And it looks just like one. Talk about that, how she found it.

Jason Cramer: Here we go, folks. I wish I would have never told this story, but she found a squall pleaser.

Ramsey Russell: A Squall player.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir. And it’s exactly what you’re thinking of. And about nine inches long, unfortunately, to quote my mother. She said to Ramsey yesterday, she goes, sex toys have been around a lot longer than what you think.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I guarantee you never thought about that.

Jason Cramer: Yeah. So apparently-

Ramsey Russell: She said something about, she was near the water, and it washed up on shore.

Jason Cramer: Yeah

Ramsey Russell: But it’s a rock.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: It’s like a stone.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And it’s smooth.

Jason Cramer: It was worked.

Ramsey Russell: And she had showed me all these different grinding stones.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And like how you put them in your hand. They fit your hand.

Jason Cramer: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And when you hold that thing, it fits your hand.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It had been made to fit somebody’s hand.

Jason Cramer: This is kind of a weird thing to think about, but that was probably passed down from generation to generation.

Ramsey Russell: That is kind of weird, isn’t it?

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: But it kind of looks like one.

Jason Cramer: No, it looks exactly like it

Ramsey Russell: when she picked it up, what was her thoughts?

Jason Cramer:  She didn’t think of that initially, but she was with a guy that’s super knowledgeable cable, who is really into artifacts and all that kind of stuff. He knew exactly what it was right away.

Ramsey Russell: But she didn’t believe him.

Jason Cramer: Nope.

Ramsey Russell: So she took it to a university.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And what the university experts say?

Jason Cramer: 100% squat pleaser.

Ramsey Russell: He said, it’s exactly what you think it is.

Jason Cramer: Oh, that’s what it is. He’s a great specimen right there. Perfect. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I’m shocked. I don’t know why but I’m just shocked. I had no idea. That’s how they’re long winters. The men were napping their heads and the women were making something else.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And winter night for long in a TP.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir. I wish I never told that story because it’s brought up all the time.

Ramsey Russell: You’re the only person I know that’s ever told a story like that, and I’m proud that it’s finally on my podcast.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And it might be the only one in existence. There may be a lot of museum curiosity raiders wanting it right now for their collection.

Jason Cramer: Maybe I’m sure there’s others out there.

Ramsey Russell: Smithsonian has one.

Jason Cramer: That’s got to be a good specimen right there.

Ramsey Russell: A Stone sex toy.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: How old might it be? We’re not talking, like, planes. American planes, Indians. This thing could be thousands of years old

Jason Cramer: BC.

Ramsey Russell: Before Christ. Thousands of years old, has to be primitive. That’s just bizarre.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You wonder if they packed that heavy thing and carried it, if they had to migrate or something.

Jason Cramer: How long would it take to make something like that? It’s perfect. You saw it’s perfect. There’s no way someone’s just changed it

Ramsey Russell: I wonder if it were an old maid.

Jason Cramer: I think it was probably passed down and it was smooth, man. Smooth.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Worn smooth.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir. Let’s talk about anything else.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about how you graduated. Where’d you graduate College?

Jason Cramer: University? Tennessee, baby.

Ramsey Russell: Are they a 4 year degree?

Jason Cramer: Oh, stealing Terry’s lines. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And you told me this morning you graduated with a celebrity.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, I graduated Dolly Parton. We’re in the same class.

Ramsey Russell: Literally in the same class.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Or the same graduate class.

Jason Cramer: Same graduating class.

Ramsey Russell: Sorry graduating class. You didn’t talk to her, pass her notes across the aisle or nothing?

Jason Cramer: She was trying, she’s a little bit old for me, but she got an honorary doctorate.

Ramsey Russell: That’s pretty cool.

Jason Cramer: Very cool.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What is your time to history stuff? Jason, I know you can’t top that, but you’re bound to have something historical, I don’t want to put you on a map, but, your son Mike was telling me yesterday, right next to you all shop, you’ve got a very historical house. And I said, what’s the significance of that? And it’s like, that’s the family that founded the whole area, right?

Jason Cramer: Everything.

Nate Metcalf: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And he said that as far as you can literally see that they farmed it at one time. It must have been a heck of a family.

Nate Metcalf: Yeah. It’s pretty historic houses there. One house was a house they lived in. The other one was one that was kind of like a summer home. Other family and stuff would come into the area and stuff during the summer along the creek there and everything. So I don’t know how far they date back, but those are very old houses. They’re old enough, where the one house caught on fire about 1015 years ago. And the Cumberland County Historic Society paid to actually have it rebuilt for them and make everything original. Everything was handcrafted, everything put back together.

Ramsey Russell: That’s not cheap.

Nate Metcalf: No.

Jason Cramer: Was that on the other side of the road?

Nate Metcalf: Yeah, I remember that.

Ramsey Russell: That’s pretty dang important. That must be pretty important.

Nate Metcalf: Yeah.

Pennsylvania Duck and Goose Season

A lot of your geese are resident birds, but you do get migrators. 

Ramsey Russell: So what is the remainder? When does Pennsylvania duck and Goose season go out? And what is the remainder of your season going to look like? Cause I’m here in the mid season doldrums that happens everywhere. And I driven 13 hours, pulled up in the driveway, stepped out, hugged Nate. Cause I ain’t seen him in a while. And he said, well, the hunt’s going to suck. Here we are, and we made the best of it.

Nate Metcalf: The January 20th ducks will go out. Geese come back in next Monday, the 11th. And they’ll run till January 20th also. Then they’ll both go out the same time. But then geese come back in the first week of February and run to the end of February.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of your geese are resident birds, but you do get migrators. And, of course, do you see that a lot of your mallards, like, for example, you were saying a lot of your black ducks going to show up between Christmas and New Years. Is that necessarily tied into extremely cold weather and snow, or is it more calendar oriented?

Nate Metcalf: I think it’s the weather push. We already had a push of black ducks come through and stuff because we were hunting a couple weeks ago on the river and seen plenty of black ducks out there. We had a north wind and a cold snap. Most of them have pushed through already. We had some divers out there that we were chasing around. But everything depends on the cold weather north of us, so we’re just waiting for the north wind and the right weather to move through the lake areas and the finger lake areas in New York and all that. So once they start getting some cold weather, we’ll start seeing some ducks.

Ramsey Russell: It never ceases to amaze me. No matter how far north you go from Mississippi, everybody’s waiting on the push. That’s just an aspect. I’m going to be in Toronto while we’re waiting on the push. I guarantee they’re waiting on weather.

Jason Cramer: It gives you hope.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it gives you hope. There’s got to be more coming, and talking to Rob Reynolds this year, there’s a lot of mallards in Canada, geese that never fly south of Alberta. They stay in Alberta the entire winter.

Jason Cramer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So maybe there’s something to that.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, absolutely. I had this thought. You’ve duck hunted and you’ve killed a couple. What’s the craziest thing that you’ve ever seen on a duck or a goose that didn’t belong on it?

Ramsey Russell: A band or a collar or something along those lines?

Jason Cramer: Yeah, nothing like a balloon tire? Nothing? Just crazy.

Ramsey Russell: Not that I can recall. Like a zip tie?

Jason Cramer: Maybe a zip tie.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve seen, somebody sent me a picture yesterday of a duck with a zip tie, and I’m telling you, that’s somebody’s pet duck that flew off at the wild ones.

Jason Cramer: Yeah. Two years ago, right?

Ramsey Russell: Yup

Jason Cramer: Jason and I were hunting one of his fields, and was he bandit, too? Yeah. So, this is goose comes down, and we’re both on the far left side of the blind, and Jason’s like, go ahead and shoot him, but all kinds of brush and everything. I was like, no, you shoot him. You saw how he hunts. he didn’t even load his gun when we were hunting. He’s more concerned of getting birds worked in and working his dog and all that. Jason, you shoot. I’ve already shot some geese, and you shoot. He’s like, no, go ahead and shoot. Anyway. Shoots at the goose is bandit. But when we actually brought it in and actually looked at it, of course, the first thing you see is the band. This goose was banned in its bill.

Ramsey Russell: What?

Jason Cramer: Yeah, he had a band on his foot.

Ramsey Russell: What kind of, a rubber band?

Nate Metcalf: No, what I think, it was-

Ramsey Russell: Like the ring of a condom?

Nate Metcalf: Well, it was a ring off a, like a baby bottle. The rubber part that they would suck on a bottle was gone, but the plastic ring was wedged around its beak on the top.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve seen stuff like that. I’ve seen pictures of stuff like that.

Jason Cramer: Perfectly.

Ramsey Russell: No, they’re out there feeding or something, and litter gets on them.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, but he was legitimately banned too.

Nate Metcalf: And It was during a snowstorm, so that bird came in and landed, and we’re working the other 40 or so that were still working and working, and I’m watching them and just seems to be acting different over there. And then ended up. All those birds did, for some reason, they didn’t want to come in. They wanted to go on the pond behind us, and we were hunting the field because of weather front moving in. They want to feed, and then they’ll go on the pond, but they wanted on that pond. So these birds left and, talked about shooting it, and I’m like, okay, I’ll shoot it. Bang. And the dog went out and got it. I’m like, wow, I’ve never seen anything like that. I’ve seen different stuff, like people’s trash and stuff. That’s what that was, a piece of trash. It was left somewhere, and somehow he scooped it up and got it was wedged tight on there. It was perfect. It was kind of crazy.

Ramsey Russell: That’s nice, isn’t it?

Jason Cramer: Yeah. And it had been long time.

Nate Metcalf: Its beak grew like that. It was wedged on there, and it had grooves in the beak where it’s been on there for. I’m surprised he survived it. I guess he just scooped the water up or corn or whatever he was eating. He scooped it up and sent her back to gullet.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, it was a perfect half circle on the bottom, like, custom fit.

Ramsey Russell: I appreciate you all helped me scratch that bucket list and scratch Pennsylvania off the list.

Nate Metcalf: Thank you man.

Ramsey Russell: I really do. And I lack Virginia and West Virginia and, like Forrest Gump going to end of the driveway. Might as well keep on going. So I’m sure I’ll pass back through here next year. I’m just going, and what’s so crazy about Virginia? West Virginia, they’ve got kind of a weird split. So when I do my Thanksgiving to Christmas, they’re closed. When I make this run. So I’m going to have to come after Christmas to catch them. They’re third push now. I guess I’ll come back up here.

Jason Cramer: Good. Yeah. I’m glad you came. Everyone’s glad you came. My daughter got home from school. I went, picked her up the school bus. She came back. She goes, where’s Ramsey at?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, I’m glad to meet her. Glad to meet you all. And it goes to prove, duck hunters the world over are just pretty much the same. You fall in with a group of duck hunters; you’re bond with your own people. But thank you all for your hospitality. I couldn’t be happier with having met you all. You sure fed me. We ate. We ate good.

Jason Cramer: Even two hunts on the pond with not even seeing a duck?

Ramsey Russell: Well it’s like I tell people, Nate, it’s not my first, not my worst. Not going to be my best, just God willing to creek don’t rise. It ain’t my last.

Jason Cramer: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: You know what I’m saying? There’s plenty of hunts. The more you hunt, the more times you’re going to have. Like that. And I’ve seen the videos. I’ve seen the pictures. I know you got the birds there. Nobody would build that. You’re blind. Is as big as some household dens and insulated and comfortable and lit. I mean, that’s a lot of commitment for no ducks, you know what I’m saying? So I know you get them. We hit the timing wrong. I wish we could have hunted that little creek, a little stretchy creek below your mama’s house. That is gorgeous.

Jason Cramer: It is.

Ramsey Russell: That’s the kind of place I’d like to shoot a duck. It’s narrow, it’s tight, and once they get in, they ain’t got nowhere to go, man.

Jason Cramer: Yeah, Jason’s got some areas like that, too.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jason Cramer: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Well, thank you all. Thank you all very much. Thank you for coming, and I’ll see you next year.

Jason Cramer: Good.

Nate Metcalf: Hopefully.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast from Pennsylvania. We’ll see you next time.