EP 441. Hit-or-Miss Waterfowl Hunting in Wyoming

 

Plentiful Waterfowl

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere Podcast where today I’m in Southeast Wyoming. I ain’t going to say I’m sweating, but I’m going to tell you it’s hot for Wyoming, and I’ll tell you this too. Having traveled all over the northern tier and up into Canada, there’s no snow, there’s no cold weather, it’s like so far here we are a week or so before Christmas. And winter just decided to skip us I think. JJ, how the heck are you?

JJ Randolph: I’m doing fine, although I might be a little bit better if I had my golf clubs out today and was over at local course playing around to golf. It’s nice enough to do that, for sure Ramsey

Ramsey Russell: It’s more like golf weather than goose hunting weather, isn’t it?

JJ Randolph: Yeah, it is. It’s a lot like golf weather.

Ramsey Russell: A lack of birds you all have. There’s plenty of birds around.

JJ Randolph: Well, there’s plenty of ducks around, I would say. I don’t feel like there’s plenty of geese around.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

JJ Randolph: No, not at all. And the geese that you’re seeing are all lesser Canadas or cacklers.

Ramsey Russell: Cacklers

JJ Randolph: The small version, which have been here since about Halloween. We had a big arctic blast come down. That was October 22, and pushed a lot of these mallards down and a lot of these little geese down, and they’ve been here ever since. So they’re getting pretty smart. And our bread and butter here is the big Canada goose, not the little Canada goose. Those generally go through us and down in the front range of Colorado and wherever they go after that. And then when the big Canadas come down, that’s our real, bread and butter.

Ramsey Russell: That’s when the real show starts.

JJ Randolph: That’s when the real show starts for us.

Ramsey Russell: It probably won’t surprise you, but I talked to one of our US hunt list outfitters, Rob Reynolds, a couple of days ago. He’s on the southern end of Alberta. Not just shooting snow geese, but shooting snow goose limits. Now here we are recording this on about December 20th, a week before Christmas. Those birds should have been six weeks ago and down in the south.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, they should’ve been long gone.

Ramsey Russell: They’re still hanging up here. And one of your pit shots from snow geese today. Those birds shouldn’t be here.

JJ Randolph: No, they did get a couple snow geese today. I was pretty surprised by that. We get a few in November, but by now, yeah, they should be long gone. And I will say we do have a pretty good number of ducks around if we can get some weather. Today, we had some wind and we were able to kill them.

Ramsey Russell: So it’s almost a lost in translation. We’re up here in Wyoming. It’s not my first time to hunt with you. Yesterday morning, my truck thermometer read 18 degrees. Everything was frosted up. You had to turn on the ice eaters to push the ice out of the way. You’re like, well, it’s kind of unseasonably warm up here for right now. And I’m thinking, boy, it’s anything but warm. We had those heaters going in your blind and it felt good, man. And all you had to do was stand up and get a breath of cold air and get back down to that heat where you realize it’s kind of cool up here, but it really ain’t. It warmed up to about 45 degrees. And yesterday, in a complete and utter absence of wind to speak of, I don’t remember seeing it. I saw a couple of goldeneyes.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, we didn’t do very well yesterday.

Ramsey Russell: But we went back out yesterday evening and did good. There was a gazillion mallards flying over to a field that nobody could hunt, but we kind of ran traffic on them in the water. I thought it was a wonderful hunt. The birds that did it freaking gave it up, man. And just like a girl on prom night, just come in there pretty as you can be, and we scored on them. So I thought yesterday was a success. But what were you thinking this morning? I know what Denmon and I were thinking up here with Mojo, when we parked the truck to get out to the blind and it was 51 degrees. Seriously, you’re a duck guy. You’ve been doing this for how long? 20 some odd years.

JJ Randolph: I have been a waterfowl guide for 35 years now.

Ramsey Russell: 35 years. What were you thinking this morning at 06:15 when it was 51 degrees?

JJ Randolph: In all honesty, I was excited because I knew that wind was blowing

Ramsey Russell: Really?

JJ Randolph: Right when I hopped out of the car, that wind was blowing weak. We’re not getting any cold weather. So that isn’t really something right now I’m looking more at wind. I’ve got some ducks around. If I can get some wind, I can get them. And so when I hopped out of the car this morning and that wind was blowing 16, 17 miles an hour, and that pond that we were in, I know hunts well. The wind, you see how it’s kind of a little hole in there? Those trees block that wind behind you and they love it. On a windy day, they give it up. So that’s what I thought. I hopped out of the car and it was windy. I thought, boy, we’re going to get some ducks today.

Ramsey Russell: You felt good.

JJ Randolph: I did feel good.

Ramsey Russell: I tell you what, it’s a pretty sad dog that doesn’t wag his own tail. And likewise, it’s a pretty sad duck guide that don’t step out in 54° weather thinking today’s the day we’re going to kill him. Really, you got to have that kind of confidence, don’t you?

JJ Randolph: Well, yeah. Every day’s a new day. We are having a tough season. I call it hit and Miss hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Hit or Miss hunting.

JJ Randolph: Hit or miss. But guess what? We’re having some hits, just about every day. One group, two groups, couple groups do good out there. I’m running five, six groups a day, four to six groups a day. And, getting five groups a day to limit out, that’s a tough case, even when we do have a lot of birds. But right now with the lack of birds, we’re getting a few groups. And the thing is, I don’t know where that’s going to be every day right now. It’s so confusing. I got a hot spot and I go, God dang it, that spots hot. Let’s send somebody there tomorrow. And tomorrow it is not the hot spot. And some spot that I didn’t even expect to be hot becomes the hot spot. Every day is absolutely a new day. And so the only way to know is to go. You just got to go out.

Ramsey Russell: Don’t know, till you go. Hit or miss. Hero to zero. You just got to keep going,

JJ Randolph: Roll the dice baby.

Ramsey Russell: Take the punches and keep on rolling.

JJ Randolph: Get out there. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: How far were we today from that stretch of north Platte River? A half mile?

JJ Randolph: We were 340 yards.

Ramsey Russell: Okay

JJ Randolph: Something like that.

Ramsey Russell: Not far.

JJ Randolph: Not far. You’ve got to be 300 yards off of that refuge before you can legally hunt. And we are 340 yards, something like that.

Waterfowl Highway Sanctuary

And everybody along that piece of land said, no more hunting on the river. We’re going to make it a refuge.

Ramsey Russell: That line, they were flying. I say it’s about right, about 340 yards. And they were flying, trading up and down the river. The geese and the ducks were just, that was their highway. We’ve talked about this in the past, but I just think this is amazing because everybody listening knows about federal sanctuary, state sanctuaries, but this is a totally different type sanctuary. Talk about what that property is and why it’s so important.

JJ Randolph: Well, it’s a 7 mile section of the Platte river and it is reserved on both sides of the river. You have to be 300 yards off the river before you can hunt. And it is a landowner agreement that started in 1976. Yeah. And the landowners along that stretch of river, there was a guy, George Rakestraw, went and talked to him and had this idea that we could have great goose hunting here in Goshen county if we establish some refuges. And he went and talked to the landowners, and they said, yeah, I think you are on something there. We’ll agree to do that. And they agreed to do it. And everybody along that piece of land said, no more hunting on the river. We’re going to make it a refuge. And they did that in 1976. And you can see today, after imprinting for that many years. It is a major stop for the waterfowl in this region.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, it’s major. And, it’s little things I notice around here. There’s geese murals on places and on water tanks. And it’s a goose hunting culture. And it’s not just JJ and wild Braska. There’s a lot of folks here, and they’re proud of their geese, aren’t they?

JJ Randolph: Yeah. And it’s not just outfitters. Yeah, I don’t want to-

Ramsey Russell: No. Everybody, the whole community.

JJ Randolph: Everybody. This community is into goose hunting. We’ve had our two shot goose hunt for well over 30 years.

Ramsey Russell: What is that? What is a two shot goose hunt?

JJ Randolph: It’s a goose hunting competition that we have here every year, and all the money goes to charity, and benefits the community towards different charities that they pick every year. And everybody gets two shots. So if you and I are partners and it’s two man teams, you get two shots, I get two shots. That’s it. And whoever comes back with the four biggest geese, at the end of the day, they have a way off. Whoever gets the four biggest geese wins the competition. There’s 40 teams in it, so 80 guys shooting this thing every year. And it’s been going on for a long time. We usually have the governor, the governor comes, Senator Barrasso’s been here. Tim grounds used to come. Jimmy Houston hunted in at one here. We get all these kind of hunter celebrity guys. Heck, maybe you ought to come hunting it, Ramsey, but it’s a neat deal. And all that money goes back to the community.

Ramsey Russell: What are some different charities you all would contribute that to?

JJ Randolph: There’s a whole list. Every year they publish a list in the program, All the charities.

Ramsey Russell: Several charities.

JJ Randolph: Yeah. And it changes year to year.

Ramsey Russell: What is a winning goose weight? Like, what would be a contender? 40lbs?

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: 35lbs?

JJ Randolph: You get over 40lbs, you’re probably in the money. Our geese go, I would say 9 to 12lbs.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

JJ Randolph: That’s the westerns.

Ramsey Russell: These are west. These old big westerns, my moffats, for some people call it.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And I really haven’t seen that. You mentioned that today, and I’ve seen a lot of geese, but it’s all been cacklers.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: We shot this morning with a little, I guess they’re Richardson, something like that.

JJ Randolph: Can you believe that three pack just dumping out of the air like that?

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, lord.

JJ Randolph: I looked up at those. I thought, God, they’re not going to come. And I honked at them a couple times, and by God, they just let the flaps out. And they were in there.

Ramsey Russell: They never hit the brakes.

JJ Randolph: They never hit the brakes.

Ramsey Russell: They hit the water, but they didn’t hit the brakes.

JJ Randolph: That’s right.

Living in a Goose Hunting Culture

Now, I don’t know why, but I’m like, I want to do that. I want to get me a goose and skin it and eat it, and I don’t know why.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a real incident. You told a story yesterday morning in the goose blind, and I thought, so awesome. Talk about how you ended up here. Like, where were you born and raised?

JJ Randolph: I was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Ramsey Russell: South Dakota, boy.

JJ Randolph: But grew up in southeast Nebraska, just south of Omaha. Hunted ducks on the west of Omaha, on the Platte river.

Ramsey Russell: How’d you get started doing that?

JJ Randolph: Michael, my stepdad was a duck hunter, and my first recollection is him coming home with a Canada goose, and I watched him skin that goose. Now, I don’t know why, but I’m like, I want to do that. I want to get me a goose and skin it and eat it, and I don’t know why.

Ramsey Russell: How old were you?

JJ Randolph: 8.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. Little boy.

JJ Randolph: Yeah. Little boy. And so I asked him, he’d take me hunting, and he did. And so we grew up hunting with him and his buddies, west Omaha on the Platte river. And we did a lot of hunting on the Missouri river on the Nebraska, South Dakota border. And this was in the eighties.

Ramsey Russell: out of a boat?

JJ Randolph: Boat blind.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

JJ Randolph: You hunted in it yesterday.

Ramsey Russell: That was it, that was one of them.

JJ Randolph: Yeah. That blinds been around-

Ramsey Russell: That’s about as comfortable as it gets.

JJ Randolph: It’s pretty nice.

Ramsey Russell: If I didn’t know it was a boat, I’d have forgotten.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And thought I was in, like, a real comfortable pit blind of sorts.

JJ Randolph: Yeah. And I took some stuff out of there, like the stove and, things like that that we used to use, but that was great. But we hunted that Missouri river and made some real good friends up there. I was telling you about my dog breeder, that I get my dogs and met him up there and a slew of other great people, and so hunted there a lot, and that’s where I got my love for water fowling. I went to college for a little bit until I decided that duck hunting was more fun than going to class. I went to college in Kearney, Nebraska, so there was a lot of hunting around there. So we did a lot of hunting then and after college, I was a golf professional for just a little couple years there.

Ramsey Russell: Now you say that like a serious golf professional, or I play golf a lot professional?

JJ Randolph: No, I was an assistant golf professional at a couple different golf courses, gave lessons, ran the golf shop, ran golf tournaments at that club pro. So I did that for a couple years, and all I had ever wanted to do was be a duck hunter, and I drew up. I used to dress up at Halloween as a duck hunting guide. People didn’t even know what a duck hunting guide was in my area back then. What are you? I said, I’m a duck hunting guide. They said, is that a thing? So anyway, did that, and the time came, wondering what to do in life, and I knew I wanted to be a guide. I just did it. I applied for some jobs with some outfitters, and I got a job in North Dakota and kind of started out there and worked for some lodges in Utah, and I guided in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Iowa. Just kind of all over the place. And, I started out guiding. I guided for quite a few different outfitters, and some of us, we didn’t get along, and a couple guys might have drank a little more than I liked. A couple guys kind of outlaws, which I don’t like. And so one day I said, man, I don’t know why I’m not doing this on my own. I think I’m ready. And I came out here to western Nebraska and started looking for some property to hunt and couldn’t find anything in there at that point in time.

Ramsey Russell: Or it just wasn’t out there. There wasn’t habitat there was two plus competitions.

JJ Randolph: It wasn’t available. What I looked at was leased up or very expensive.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

JJ Randolph: Or mostly just not available. I knocked on a lot of doors. And they said, sorry, got it leased up, or sorry, the grandkids hunt, or sorry, we hunt here, or for whatever reason, I didn’t find anything. And I got in here to Torrington and said, man, there’s a lot of birds around here. Maybe I’ll just hang out here for a little bit. I got a hotel room and started going around and hunting and met a few people and finally got some property.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about it. This is a story you told, you were somewhere public land.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Recognizing a Goose Calling

I blew on the call a little bit for him. He said, darn, buddy. He said, you’re pretty good. 

Ramsey Russell: And you bumped into somebody. He said, and you had a duck. Had a goose calling.

JJ Randolph: Yeah

Ramsey Russell: Tell that story.

JJ Randolph: Well, I rolled into Torrington, took a drive around, said, man, this is a birdie area. Maybe I’d hang out here and look around for a little bit. Got a hotel room, asked people anywhere around here to hunt. Somebody told me about this public spot out south of town, which is still there. Bump Sullivan, you can go out there and go to the check station and sign up and pick a pit blind for the day and go out and hunt. So I said, well, I’ll go do that. So I went out there and went to the check in station. I had some goose calls hanging around my neck. This must have been 1996, 1997, somewhere.

Ramsey Russell: Tim ground goose calls.

JJ Randolph: Tim ground, Yes. Had a super magnum, and this guy looked up at me and he said, you going goose hunting today? He said, I see you got some calls. You know how to use that? I said, well, I’m working on it. He said, well, let me hear you. I blew on the call a little bit for him. He said, darn, buddy. He said, you’re pretty good. He says, I got a goose pit over here. He says, why don’t you just come hunting with me?

Ramsey Russell: Really?

JJ Randolph: Yeah. So I said, well, okay, that sounds good. So I went hunting with him the next day, and, well, we got along pretty well, and we called in some geese and shot some geese. He asked, what are you doing here? And I said, well, I actually looking to start an outfit business, be a guide and looking for some property. He said, well, I’m going pheasant hunting tomorrow with a buddy of mine over here. He’s got some farmland. And he said, do your dogs hunt pheasant? I said, man, my dogs are great pheasant hunting dogs. He said, well, come with us. We don’t have any dogs. So I got my goose call getting me in, and now my dogs are getting me in. So I said, great. Let’s go. So we pheasant hunt the next day, and end of the day, this farmer that I meet says, God, I like you and like your dogs, and we had a good time. I’ll lease you a piece of ground over here. He says, I got this field over here, the geese, I think you ought to put a pit in that one. And I said, great. And then I thought about it for a minute, and I realized I didn’t have any money.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah, that’s a problem.

JJ Randolph: I had my credit card maxed out. I think I’d borrowed money from grandma already. And here I got this lease, but I got nothing to pay for it with. So I kind of mentioned that to the guy, and he looked at me, and I was shooting this over and under at the time, which honest to God was Michaels, my stepdads.

Ramsey Russell: No money and a borrowed shotgun.

JJ Randolph: The farmer says, well, he said, I always wanted an over under shotgun. And I said, well, buddy, you just got one. So we traded shotgun, Michael’s shotgun.

Ramsey Russell: How’d you break a news to Michael?

JJ Randolph: I didn’t tell him for years. He might not have known for ten years or more. Anyway, so I get this. And so he says, all right, so deal is done. I go out, I put a pit blind in. And then my friend, my new farmer friend, Irv, says to me, well, he says, we got this two shot goose hunt coming up, and if you put your pit in the two shot, we get a free prime rib dinner at the banquet.

Ramsey Russell: There you go.

JJ Randolph: So I said, well, shoot, buddy, I have some prime rib. I’ll put that pit in there. And so I entered it in the competition, and I drew this man, Tom Harp Street. Tom was a local guy here in Torrington and a big time goose hunter. He was kind of mister Goose around here. And I drew him in my pit. We had a good day. We hit it off pretty good. At the end of the day, he looks at me, he says, buddy see you’re pretty good on that goose call. He says, I am not. What are you doing tomorrow? I said, well, I’m not doing anything. Shoot, I got no clients yet. I got one pit. Well, you want to go hunting? He says, I got another spot. I said, yeah, tom, I’ll go hunt with you. So next morning, we go hunting, and we just have a great day. And he says, that was fun. He says, well, what are you doing tomorrow? He says, I got another spot. I said, I’m going hunting with you. I think, He says, let’s go. So we go. Next day, we hunt another spot, and we have a great time. And he says, well, what are you doing tomorrow? And this went on for five days every day. Says, what are you doing tomorrow? I got another spot. And we went to five different spots, and every one of them was killer. And Tom knew what he was doing. He picked properties. He bought some farms around here that he just bought because the goose hunting was good, and he knew where to put the pits. And he had it all dialed in. But he had Parkinson’s disease, and he couldn’t do the work anymore. So after the fifth day, and we went to all his spots, he said, I tell you what. I like you. I’ll lease you this ground. You get the blinds ready, the decoys ready, the camel ready, so I can come hunt. And we’ll work out a deal.

Ramsey Russell: Run your business out of here, and if I want to show up, I’ll show up and join you. Wow. What a deal.

Arizona Hunting: A Warm Welcome and a Cold Hunt

I’m sweating so bad. I can’t. I got sweat. I’m like, you guys. Oh, no, we’re from Arizona. We like it hot like this, I said, okay, well, I got to take some clothes off, because this is ridiculous. But these geese start coming in, and we’re just on them, boy.

JJ Randolph: Yeah. And so the first couple years, it was pretty much just me and Tom going hunting every day. Finally, we started suckering in some clients here. And I’m going to tell you, Tom, he was about the best shot with a 20 gauge. He shot little Montefeltro Benelli 20 gauge. He shot that fast steel four shot, and the guy just never missed. And I’ll tell you a quick story. I had these three boys early on in career, Tom was still alive, and they came up from Arizona. You guys goose hunted before? Well, it’s been a while, but, yeah, we’ve goose hunted before. I said, okay, so we get out there in the pit and first of all, it’s probably 50°, like today. And these guys got all five heaters cranking in the blind. I’m sweating so bad. I can’t. I got sweat. I’m like, you guys. Oh, no, we’re from Arizona. We like it hot like this, I said, okay, well, I got to take some clothes off, because this is ridiculous. But these geese start coming in, and we’re just on them, boy. They are just coming in. I said, get them, boys. And boom, one comes down. Oh, man. Here comes the next flock. I say, get them, boys. Boom, one comes down, man. Guys, we got to do a little better than this. We got to start hitting some of these geese. Well, the morning goes on like this, and it gets to the point where I am, I’m about ready to say, guys, I’m sorry. We can’t shoot at any more geese. You’ve shot at enough. Every goose I got to save this field. I got more guys coming, and I’m just about to say that one of the guys says, Larry, how many bullets you got left? Larry says, I’m down to one. Well, Mike, how many you got? Mike says, I’m down to two. And the other guy, he’s only got one shot left. So I say, good. One more volley. So they come in and boom, they miss again. And, okay, I go home. Tom says, my buddy Tom, how was your day? I told him, I said, well, it was great, except these guys can’t hit anything. He says, oh, he says, you got room for me tomorrow? I said, yeah, there’s only 3 of them. I said, come along. So Tom comes the next day, first flock comes in, and I say, get them, boys. And boom, three geese go down. And, old Tom leans down there, he says, Larry, God dang, I saw you get that one over there on the end. That was a heck of a shot. And Mike, you sure did good getting one there. And next bunch comes in and boom, Three or four goes down, and Tom says, golly, what a great shot, Larry. Good job, Mike. Long story short, we shoot limited geese in, like an hour. The next day, old Tom’s gun is just smoking down there. But the last two of the day come around the backside of the blind, and they come over my left shoulder. I say, get ready, boys, get ready. Okay, get them. And Bob this fast, you hear? And both of them just hit the ground. And old Tom says, Larry, man, that was fine shooting. You got those so quick. And Larry says, well, I never shot. He says, well, Mike, you got both of those, Mike? Mike says, nope, I never fired a shot. He looks at Bob. He says, bob, well, that must have been you. Bob says, no. Tom looks at me. I said, Tom, I don’t even have a gun. How is it going to be me? I said, you are busted. But those boys have never got a limit so fast ever before. And that was a fun day. But that was Tom. And man, he turned out to be my goose hunting partner and buddy for long time.

Ramsey Russell: it’s funny how my really, really good friend, Mister Ian Munn, just passed. We hung together for 30 years, and I didn’t realize we were best friends until much towards the end of them, 30 years, because it’s just that kind of friendships about one hunt, one day, one story at a time, and then you look back and go, oh, my gosh, I’ve been hunting this guy for 30 years. He’s old.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And I am, too.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It’s funny how people come in your life like that, isn’t it?

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You talk about getting started all them years ago, just you and Tom, and mostly just you all hunting in your business for several years. How did you get started? Cause how did you get started? One pit to where now you’re running four or five teams a day, JJ and I heard you tell Barry yesterday, that way back when your goal was, if I could just book 100 days a year

JJ Randolph: Yeah

Ramsey Russell: If I could just book a hundred man days a year, I’d be set. Well, you way beyond that now.

JJ Randolph: Yeah. I don’t know. That was my goal when I started.

Ramsey Russell: How are you marketed? How are you and Michael kind of stirring the pot?

JJ Randolph: Michael didn’t come along till much later.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

JJ Randolph: Yeah, I started out and Michael and my mom didn’t come until my son was born in 2000.

Ramsey Russell: They moved out here for grandbaby. Yeah, I see.

Doug Miller Outdoors

And then those hunters that came hunting with me then went and told their buddies, and their buddies told their buddies.

JJ Randolph: They moved out for the grandbaby. So before that, it was just myself and Tom helped me out a lot, man. Back in those days, I started with a brochure, not a website, not an Internet thing or anything. I had a printed up brochure. While I was in Nebraska at the time, it was just JJ’s guide service. And I went around, put a couple brochures and hotels and things like that, and I’ve always guided fly fishing in the summertime. I started that when I was 20 also. So I tell a lot of my fly fishing customers. Hey, you guys hunters? Well, I got this hunting thing I’m going to get going. And I picked up a few of my fly fishing customers, and they told a few friends. And I had a guy from Salt Lake City who did an outdoor program. His name was Doug Miller, and every Saturday night at 10:30 in Salt Lake City, it was called Doug Miller outdoors. He had this big, booming voice, and if you go to Utah and ask somebody who’s been there a while, you remember Doug Miller outdoors. Every one of them was going to say, oh, man, yeah, that guy was great. This is Doug Miller. If you like big bucks and Dutch oven cooking, come with me for the adventure of a lifetime. That was him. And so he came out to do this film, that two shot Goose hunt. He asked the two shot committee, is there somebody I can’t go hunting with out here? And they all said, well, yeah, go with JJ. So I took him hunting, and he said, can we film a show? And I said, yeah, you can film a show. And so we went out. We just hunted one day. And he put together a little 10 minute thing that airs on the news on Saturday nights. And then Salt Lake, and boom, I picked up a few customers from that. Not a ton, but I got a few and those guys told their buddies. And some of those guys still coming today, and their buddies told their buddies, and the next thing I know, it took a few years. I got to the point I was doing a hundred days, just me, in a row. And then, those guys started saying, look, man, we want to bring some friends. You got to do two groups or we want to come back. I don’t want to just come once a year. I want to come three times a year. So what do you do about it? So I decided, well, I guess I’m going to get another guide and some more property, which I did. And that grew to the point where those guys were saying, look, we want to bring, we got to come back. And so, anyway, it just all kind of snowballed from there. But I didn’t have a lot of marketing in the beginning other than word of mouth from myself. And then those hunters that came hunting with me then went and told their buddies, and their buddies told their buddies.

Ramsey Russell: I’m a dinosaur, JJ, because I started a lot like that. Also, I think a lot of people our age started just one day at a time. Just do the best you can. And so many young people today, I guess, with social media and everything else, man, they’re not trying to make a gumbo, they’re trying to fry fish and serve everybody in five minutes, boom. Be the world’s biggest best. And I don’t know how you do it. Anita and I talk about it all the time. We could not have possibly scaled overnight. It took a little bit of learning curve, a little bit of wins and losses along the way to kind of figure this thing out and be right. Would you say the same thing? Can you imagine having blown up to five groups like you think you wanted back then?

JJ Randolph: No, I would not have been ready for it mentally, physically or anything at that point in time. It’s a lot going on when you get to be running five groups. That’s a lot of people to get around to and take care of and all that.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve got some real good guide staff. I’ve met a lot of them. Forrest asked me about coal today because he come out here in February last year and brought all his little buddies out there in the twenties, come out here and joined you all. A lot of those boys in the south had never shot Canada geese, like real geese, migrator geese, and they wanted to, Forrest got to tell them about it one day and he said, well, let’s drive out there. And they drove out with their little 20 gauges and all, played the game and had a wonderful time, they’re still talking about.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: But it’s a growing process to get this thing going, and you’ve got guides now that this morning I heard one way back behind us, working over the geese, back in one of your goose blinds. But at the same time, JJ’s still on the road from daylight to dark, meeting the clients in the morning, getting everybody sorted, making sure everybody knows where they’re going. How you doing? Good to see you. And then you make the round again at dinner time. I guess you sleep three or 4 hours a day.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, three or four. Yeah i think I do sometimes, anyway, so I go to bed about eleven and get up at 3:34 o’clock. That’s about right. Yeah, it’s a lot when you get that many people running. I don’t have a lodge. And whether that was a good thing or bad thing, I don’t know. The one thing I think about it as time goes on, and it’s something I didn’t do. The one thing is it would have been nice to have all my people in one room every night so I could go to one place and walk around and talk with everybody and shake hands and how was your day? And all that? And right now, I got Airbnb’s all over town. We’re sitting in one right now. And so every night, and some days I guide and I get done guiding, and then I run around. I’ll call up and say, hey, text me which restaurant you’re going to. One guy at the country club, and one guy’s sitting at the Bronco bar. I’ll stop in the country club, have a drink, and BS with them. I’ll run over to the Bronco bar and BS with that group, and then I’ll go, I got somebody new coming.

Ramsey Russell: All the waitresses and kitchen staff know you. Everywhere we go. They say hello when they come by. You’re here all the time.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, they see me daily, maybe a couple times.

Ramsey Russell: In a little community like this, it’s got to be really good for the local economy to have the Airbnb’s and the meals and the gas and it’s got to be.

JJ Randolph: I think it is. Yeah. I think this is what kind of our tourist attraction is here almost.

Ramsey Russell: It really is. What other tourist attractions would there be? Not the sugar plant down south of town.

JJ Randolph: I don’t think the feedlot is.

Ramsey Russell: No?

JJ Randolph: Maybe the sale barn.

Ramsey Russell: Maybe.

JJ Randolph: Yeah. But it does bring quite a few people in town. I’ve got, five or six groups. Four guys in a group that’s, 16 to 20 guys out to dinner every night and breakfast somewhere and lunch and all that. And so I do think it helps.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you do a lot of repeat business. You built up word of mouth. You kind of scale slowly. But, like, I talked to somebody just the other day up around Cody, and she was telling me that she’s tried to get in a couple times. She said, boy, they fill up so quick. You all fill up quick with a lot of repeat business, don’t you?

JJ Randolph: Yeah, a lot of repeat business. I don’t know what the percentages of repeat customers this year, but it’s always very high percentage. I got some groups have been, man, 25 years coming. I took the dad and his kids, and now I’m taking dad, the kids, and the grandkids and it’s not going to be too long before I get like, a great grandkid, I think, on my deal. So that’s kind of neat. I really appreciate those close relationships that have grown over the years with people who started out as customers who are now way above and beyond that.

Ramsey Russell: You bring up a good point because I believe that this is a duck hunting business. People show up, they won’t. They want service. It’s a service to industry. We want to go hunting. It’s a lot of work involved. Nothing happens backing it. Decoys and placement and all that. Water, ice heaters and fuel and da da. But it’s a people business, too, because you can’t just snap your finger, boom. The ducks just come flying. You were telling me this morning, said look, last time we really got into them good. They didn’t fly till about 9:30. And, well, we got lucky to come right in. By 9:30. We were almost done. Then we sat there around waiting on one last mallard. That’s what you do, isn’t it? But, how much of your business, the success of Nebraska is the people part? And how important is that to you?

JJ Randolph: Extremely. I have some wonderful relationships with people who are family now over the years. And what I see and waterfowling, from my standpoint, from my viewpoint, is the relationships are so powerful. The father, sons, the grandpa, grand-

The Meaningful Relationships Formed from Hunting

We’re all here together, having a great time, sharing stories, eating together, having this great time. Boom. And I look back, we were talking about Mister a little while ago and, man, I remember our first hunt together. But, oh, it was comical, him tearing a pair.

Ramsey Russell: Older Stores, how they’re doing. It just goes to show and that’s what I’m trying to say. And I hear you saying it. It’s beyond the birds. It’s like win, lose or draw. We’re all here together, having a great time, sharing stories, eating together, having this great time. Boom. And I look back, we were talking about Mister a little while ago and, man, I remember our first hunt together. But, oh, it was comical, him tearing a pair. He had a pair of world’s toughest waders sold by Cabela’s. At the time. I was a college kid. I couldn’t afford them. I dreamed of having them. He had to tear the tag off of him. He was a, quote, rich, unquote professor. We started hunting together and he put a hole in them right in the ball of his foot. He couldn’t have walked through a one inch mud puddle. And it wasn’t until a few weeks ago, preceding his memorial, I went and dug up that picture and I counted. Then I looked back and I counted. We killed five mallards that morning, three of us killed five mallards. It didn’t matter. It could have been a limit. It could have been a skunk. It didn’t matter. On that hunt was predicated a 30 year friendship, and numbers really don’t mind. We’re going to shoot our ducks if they come in, but it really don’t matter sometimes.

JJ Randolph: My return customers come back and start telling stories about the good times they’ve had in the past. It’s never, do you remember how many we killed?

Ramsey Russell: Remember how quick that limit was?

JJ Randolph: Yeah. Remember how fast we got them? It isn’t that, it’s remember you got the truck stuck over there? We had to get two trucks to pull you out, you remember that time you fell through the roof of the pit blind and, it’s always a story and something we all laugh about, but it isn’t. You remember we just piled them up. It’s never you.  Remember how hard it was to get to the blind? The snow was so gosh darn deep. It’s something like that. And I think the relationships built with waterfowl hunting are just absolutely unbelievable. And some of the best bonding people can do. And I see it with all those relationships, and that’s why I take it seriously and why the people are important, because I know whether they realize it or not, what they’re getting out of it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I’ve got a tiny little camp house, and down the hall is a bunch of eight by ten pictures. And it’s amazing. I didn’t intend it to be this way. It’s just like, oh, that’s a good picture of me and JJ and Terry or whatever. And I hung them up over the years, and over the years, some have been replaced as the kids grew older. Whatever you have it like that? But it’s crazy walking back and looking at pictures of friends that are no longer with me.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And our friends that had baggage, man. They’re just adults. And adulthood ain’t easy. Humanity, the human condition ain’t easy. Row to hoe sometimes.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: But I look at those pictures and think, man, I got to share some of the best times of life with this guy. And that’s what sticks back after all these years. It’s so far more than just the trigger pool, isn’t it?

JJ Randolph: It’s so far more. I can’t explain it either. But you see the relationships and the bonding and the things that are being shared out there and the memories. And I got these families that come with all their kids and go, man, it’s the best time we spend. Take a vacation. The kids are pumped. They can’t wait to go hunting. The parents, that can’t wait to go hunting, but they’re all hunting together, and it’s fantastic. It’s hard to get your kids and your families together to do things somebody’s always doing. I got this going on, and I don’t really like, playing baseball. I don’t like golf. Man, these kids get into hunting, they like it, and it’s just unbelievable family time.

Ramsey Russell: Change the subject.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Corn is King

I’ve got some great goose pits and alfalfa fields and the ducks, though, they like the corn.

Ramsey Russell: How much agriculture is in this hunting area right here on both sides, of Wyoming, Nebraska? How much agriculture is there? Because there’s something besides just the river holding these birds here. Like this morning, a lot of the mallards we shot had half a third crawl with corn in it.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And they were coming. Boy, they saw that water, like, oh, I think I’m going to go sit there and drink a little bit.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And lay up, but how much agriculture is it?

JJ Randolph: A lot. Corn is king here, too. You see there’s cornfields everywhere.

Ramsey Russell: Feed corn for the cattle industry.

JJ Randolph: That’s what it is. And alfalfa is a big crop here, too. The ducks don’t eat the hay, but the geese like sitting in that, loafing in it and resting in it. I’ve got some great goose pits and alfalfa fields and the ducks, though, they like the corn. And it’s north, south, east, west, both sides of the river, and it’s deep back. And I was telling Terry earlier about last year, a couple years ago, we had this pile of, man, we must have 50,000 ducks on the reserve. And I couldn’t find them. They were getting up and they were getting up high and going out somewhere. And I decided to follow them a couple nights, and I followed them all the way to north of Scott’s bluff at dark, and I lost sight of them and they were still going.

Ramsey Russell: Wow they’re coming from a long way.

JJ Randolph: There’s a cornfield right next to the refuge. They could jump in, but they were getting up and going. And I guess my point in that is that there is feed fields for these birds all over. And what holds them here? Is the reserves. The fact that the Platte river in this area doesn’t freeze, it’ll stay open. It may get some slush ice occasionally, but it doesn’t lock up. Now, you get down river towards Scott’s bluff and all the way down to Lake McConaughey, and it gets real cold. That river will lock up down there. But up here we always have open water. There’s corn and cows, and those cows help the ducks, too. If you got a cornfield and it snows out and your cornfield has cows in it, you’re probably going to get some ducks, because those cows kick up the snow so the birds can get at the food. They eat it, they crap it out, the ducks will eat it right out of their pile. And the cows and the corn and the ducks all kind of go together here in this part of the world.

Ramsey Russell: It all works.

JJ Randolph: It all works.

Ramsey Russell: Forrest came up here and hunted with his buddies. I swear, JJ, I think it was around Valentine’s. It was late.

JJ Randolph: It was late, I remember, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And that’s when you all really advertised, like your 28 gauge goose hunts.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, January, February

Ramsey Russell: They’re going to really get in here good. Are those geese coming down here and staying, or do they go down south and then come back that time of year?

JJ Randolph: Well, some of those geese are coming back that time of year. A lot of the geese get down. The big Canadas come here and stay. The little guys, they’ll go through and come back up. And some of the big Canada go.

Ramsey Russell: Down to the western front or Colorado.

Canada Goose Migration Patterns

Yeah, they get smart.

JJ Randolph: Colorado, yep. And some would just go down the river, too. They might go down to Lake McConaughey or North Platte, Nebraska, or wherever. But a lot of these big geese get here and they stay on this north Platte river here. They say there’s like a half a million roost on the, that’s from here to, say, north Platte, Nebraska. And they’ll stay here for the duration. But that late in the year, I would say about the end of January, if it’s a warm year, we’ll start getting reverse migration. And so those birds will start coming back up and coming through. So then they’ve been here before, but they haven’t been here for a while, and it’s fresh territory to them again. And we can get at them and get them in nice and close then, and it works well. So, yeah, we get the reverse migration there. But also you have the birds that are just staying here then, too. If they haven’t started to go back north, as soon as it starts warming up, up north of us, they’re jumping up there as well, that time of year.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of your stale goose tactics? Because if you’re hunting geese, then this is the southern terminus of their winter ground.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: They got to get smart.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, they get smart.

Ramsey Russell: Is it just playing the odds, like, I don’t know, like, go? Because it’s like you take a stale duck, stale goose, 60 degrees out here, four mile an hour wind, throw some snow, throw some heavy wind, throw something different at them, and they’ll get dumb a little bit, at least for that day.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Or do you change tactics for those birds that are here all the time?

JJ Randolph: Change tactics a little bit in that, like the big Canadas, that time of year, they get a little call shy, and a lot of callers, do what I call, throw the whole kitchen sink at them right off the bat, here come those birds up over the trees, off the refuge or coming down the river, and they just open up what starts screaming at them. A lot of times that time of the year, if they’re big ones, I might just wait and see if they say something first, and I might just give them one honk and see what happens there. And if they respond to the one honk, I might give them another. Some moans, some groans. But just lay off of the call a little bit. I’m not saying don’t call. When you have a conversation with a person, you and I are talking. Well, right now, you’re listening to what I am saying. Okay. When I’m done talking, then you got your turn to talk, and I’ll listen to what you have to say. I’m not going to just scream and yell at you the whole time and never listen to what you have to say. And if you’re a goose, you can be saying something to me in a couple different ways. You could be honking back, or your body actions can communicate with me. If your wings are cupping and you’re gliding in, we’re communicating. If you’re flapping away, that’s the kind of communication. So sometimes you got to listen to the other person talk and have a conversation and not just dominate. And I think later in the season like that, if you can learn to just ease up on that call and use the right honks and the right moans and the right groans and just kind of baby them in a little bit. It seems to work a little better to me on those call shy late season geese. The flag is another thing that late in the season, I’ll take that flag and maybe just raise a corner of it. The birds go wide and out here, instead of pick the whole thing up and flap it at it, maybe just give them a little corner or keep that flag, low to the ground and just barely raise it up and give it a couple flaps and put it back on. Don’t bring that whole thing up right in their face and wave it at them.

Ramsey Russell: They’ve seen it enough.

JJ Randolph: They’ve seen it enough by that time of year. So sometimes no flag, no call. Might work pretty good. You just sit there, and if that baby’s locked up and coming may, you might want to just leave them alone. So you got to read them a little bit better that late in the year, too. But I don’t have any special decoy placing techniques that time of the year or special decoys. I may upsize the spread. I may downsize the spread. I’m still going to set my pockets and try and make it look lifelike and those type of things.

Ramsey Russell: But yeah, you can tell there’s a lot of goose hunting, private and commercial in an area when there’s a goose plucker, when there’s a nearby goose plucker. It’s tough for a guy that’s traveling. We get up in the morning, we do here, we got to go eat dinner, blah, blah, blah. And now we got all these birds got to be processed correctly. We can’t just drive them back to Mississippi with just little meat breasts in a ziploc. We got to process them correctly breasted and clean a million of birds. But it’s always convenient when you’ve got a professional certified plucker nearby. They’ll do any kind of which ways you want. And if they do give you ziplocs or they don’t use ziploc. They use them,

JJ Randolph: Vacuum seals.

Ramsey Russell: Vacuum seal bags. They’ve got the permits. If they can do it, that’s kind of convenient.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, it’s convenient, and it’s great for me too. And some people don’t understand this, that I require all my customers to go through Natalie and have their birds cleaned by Natalie. And I’ve got reasons for that, and one of the reasons is legality. I want to make sure we’re perfectly legal in all reality. You mentioned it earlier. You come here and you’re on a trip out of state, and you come here and you just breast your birds out, and you drive over state lines and take off, and you don’t have that bird mark.

Ramsey Russell: Felony.

Promoting Legal and Ethical Hunting

Well, I don’t know if they’re doing that properly, if they’re doing that legally and leaving a head on or wing on or whatever. So I want to make sure everybody’s doing everything by the book here and we’re not wasting any birds. I don’t want anybody driving off, throwing birds in a ditch.

JJ Randolph: Felony, so my hunters come here and they go, well, we’re just going to clean our old own birds. Well, I don’t know if they’re doing that properly, if they’re doing that legally and leaving a head on or wing on or whatever. So I want to make sure everybody’s doing everything by the book here and we’re not wasting any birds. I don’t want anybody driving off, throwing birds in a ditch. That is not what we do. And so your birds, if you come hunt with me, are going through Natalie, who is a licensed processor, a licensed bird preservation facility, and once you go through her, she can take and breast the bird out for you. She can pluck it for you, she can turn it to jerky, to sausage, to Fajita mix, whatever you want done with it. And you got filled out her paperwork and you got her tag on the birds. Then we are 100% legal, and every game warden in the world is going to look at it and go, you’re great. So that ensures me that I know all my customers are following the law as well as hunting with me. We’re doing it the right way out here, too. And Natalie is on her game.

Ramsey Russell: Boy, you ain’t lying.

JJ Randolph: I’ll tell you what, she is really good at it. She’ll answer any question that you have. And her variety of summer sausage, jerky, pepperoni sticks, fajita mix, pastrami, pluck your bird, breast your bird, pluck it and skin it with the breast on whatever you want done. She can do it all.

Ramsey Russell: She’ll do it all, won’t she? Well, you said, I’ll take your birds, but we dropped some off yesterday. He said, I’ll take them by day. I said, well, I’d like to go see how she did in one last night, because I felt like maybe I wanted them plucked all the way down the tip of the wings. Come on, smoke them. And they look pretty. Ain’t a lot of meat on that last little stretch of wing right there, but they look pretty, and even if you’re going to like, I may take some of those whole pluck birds and fillet them off, debone them at the leg and wing, you got, and just, I may brown them in a skillet that way. And it just looks pretty. And I went there, boy, she was brushing them up and getting them just right. And I said, thank you. Yeah, I’ll bring. I’ll bring more tomorrow. Perfectly done.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Unbelievable. How convenient is that?

JJ Randolph: That’s way convenient.

Ramsey Russell: And it ain’t just your bird. She’s cleaning my bird, buddy, that she’s going to. She and her staff are going through some birds.

JJ Randolph: Wow. Yeah, some of our public hunters around here. Take them. Take her birds. There’s another outfitter to the taker birds. And so she’s a busy girl, for sure. She started, I don’t know, a few years back and came to me and approached me with her product, and I immediately looked at her and said, yeah, let’s go, girl. I said, I’ll tell you what, every one of my hunters is coming to you, so get ready. It’s not even going to be a choice. They’re coming. Get ready. And she is, and she handles it and does a fantastic job.

Ramsey Russell: Tags are a big deal, too, aren’t they?

JJ Randolph: Yeah, having everything-.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve had people say, why do you tag them? Like, well, because that’s the law. And the right guys going to ask you, and you better be tagged if he ask you.

JJ Randolph: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: I’m paranoid. This day and age when I see piles of birds that ain’t got tags, or I’m a little paranoid.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, me, too. I’ve got a business. And not only am I just an outdoorsman and I love wildlife and wouldn’t break any laws anyway. But I want to make sure if anybody ever questions me about the law, that we’re right in there. And so every bird gets tagged, and like I said, goes to Natalie. And so everything is done, 100% legal. And I tell you, especially both the ducks and goose, being able to like the geese. We shoot a lot of geese. You shoot four Canada geese a day for three days. That’s the possession limit. You got 12 geese. That’s a lot of goose meat.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a lot of goose meat, yeah.

JJ Randolph: For me, I don’t want to sit. I know some people do, but I’m not going to sit at home for two days making jerky, when I can have Natalie do it, and she makes the best jerky in the world and ships it right to my house when we’re done and everything’s legal. It sounds great.

Ramsey Russell: Too convenient.

JJ Randolph: Too convenient.

Ramsey Russell: Too convenient.

JJ Randolph: Wonderful.

Wyoming & Nebraska Waterfowl Hunting Seasons

And it’s just hard for me to believe, the duck season runs till January 23. And then you were telling me again your goose season runs until around February 20th.

Ramsey Russell: How long does you all season last? When does it start and how long does it last?

JJ Randolph: So I start hunters November 4. Duck season goes in Wyoming and Nebraska till every year till sometime late January.

Ramsey Russell: So you all got ducks that don’t leave either?

JJ Randolph: Nope.

Ramsey Russell: This far north, a lot of these mallards show up from Canada or Montana. Wherever they’re coming. This is their terminus of their wintering ground. This is where they are?

JJ Randolph: Yeah, absolutely, they stay here. Like I say, they may go up and down the river, they might go down to Lake McConaughey. I’ve got friends down there, my rock star buddy Steve Ferris down there. And he and I talk every few days and he says, man, I don’t know. My ducks were, I haven’t seen them for a few days. I go, because they’re all up here, and vice versa some days I’ll talk to him, man, we got ducks down here. I go, yeah, I think mine left and maybe came down to you.

Ramsey Russell: It’s kind of bad.

JJ Randolph: They’ll get them. Sometimes they’ll get a foot of snow or eight inches of snow down there and I get one inch and birds will come up here or vice versa. So I do think they go up and down the river and out south of town. When the big lakes are open, they’ll hit those. When it’s cold, they’re back to the river in the warm water. But there is a huge population that stay here all winter. Some of these early birds in November, the first part of November, that bunch that comes down, a lot of those go through and keep going. But these later birds, they’re sticking around. This is home. And last year, rams, you should have seen the snow. You weren’t here last year. We skipped a year, but by God, well, Forrest came out. The snow was a foot and a half deep. I can’t tell you how many times I woke up the next morning and the snow was so deep, I thought, oh my God, these birds are going to leave. And I go out there and they were still here, those Canadas. They stayed here last year in the deepest of snow. I couldn’t believe it. We were shooting limits in a foot of snow every day. It was just amazing. And they didn’t. I’m sure some of them, but there was a bunch of hardy ones, buddy, that just never, ever even left.

Ramsey Russell: I bet they color up good when it gets like that.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, they do. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Gorgeous. The ones we shot, they were just stood. They were all just absolutely beautiful.

JJ Randolph: Yeah. You’ll see these ducks, they figure it out. We get that much snow, they got warm water, creeks and feedlots, and they’ll go, that warm water creek, it’s wide open. Probably feels like a hot tub to them. They can fly a few miles away. And here’s a feedlot. They’ll land right in the bunks and eat some corn. Or they’ll go out in those fields like I told you, and they’ll follow right behind that cow where he’s kicking the snow up and they’ll find that corn. It’s impressive, but they’ll do it.

Ramsey Russell: And it’s just hard for me to believe, the duck season runs till January 23. And then you were telling me again your goose season runs until around February 20th.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, it’s usually around 15th February every year. This year’s the 18th of February. And we got goose hunters booked right up until the end. And this is actually the 18th. I remember it going to the 17th one year, but the 18th this month might be as late as it’s been. It’ll probably start going backwards.

Ramsey Russell: Well, if it’s 54°, Wyoming, we’re probably going to be swat mosquitoes on Christmas down in Mississippi, it’s warm, but it’s not always as warm. Last year it was zero degrees in Mississippi on Christmas Day. What was it like up here last year? What’s a normal December, January, February for you all, temperature wise?

JJ Randolph: It goes up and down. And as far as duck hunting is concerned, you probably agree with me. I like the roller coaster effect, if we get a cold snap and that lasts, four or five days a week, and then we come out of that cold snap and go into warm spell for a little bit and then back in the cold. As long as I can keep a warm cold, I can keep killing ducks when I get cold for three weeks. Man, those ducks get patterned, they get smart. They fall. If it’s warm for three weeks, they get patterned, they get smart. I can keep the temperatures, up and down. That’s good. And so normal year, December and January, You’re going to have your 40 degree days, 45, but you’re going to have a lot of days in the twenties that time of year, too. And we’ll get below zero at times, too. Snowfall most years, I would say, we get a few inches and a week later it either blows away or melts, and then we’ll get another storm with a couple inches. Last season we were getting snow storms of 10, 12 inches all the time. That not on a regular season, not we get. These two seasons are completely opposite. Last year was like the deepest snow and coldest I’ve ever seen, and this year’s the warmest I’ve ever seen. So I don’t know how that works out, but that’s just the way it is. But yeah, that’s kind of the weather here. It’s up and down and it can be below zero, but it can also be 40. And we just kind of like to keep it that way, moving around a little bit so they don’t get too stale on us.

Ramsey Russell: You don’t have any problem keeping your clients comfortable in your blinds. I’ll say that. I was telling denmon on the way up here, and I think he agrees. Today, like the blind we hunted in today, sometimes you take that blind on top like you did. Sometimes you sink in the ground. That is as comfortable pit as I’ve ever hunted. It’s lumber. It’s only about as tall as my head sitting in one of them chairs, but it keeps the heat in. You got the back wall loaded with propane heaters. And I really love how easily those blind lids slide back and forth where I can look and watch the show but they can’t see me.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, thank you. We all want to watch the show, and all I want is for you to see the show. That is what it’s about is the show. And seeing those birds work, seeing them go downwind and hit them with that hack hack hack and seeing them just break their neck backwards turning around. I want the customers to see that. I know some outfitters will have you in a dark hole completely covered over the top, and say, shoot. And you come up and go, where are the birds? And whatever? But the real joy of waterfowlers watching those birds respond to the call that is a real joy. So if you can’t see that, now, we all know birds can see you, too. And if you got a wide open top of your pit or whatever it is, and you’re looking right up at them, they’re not going to come in. So the beauty of my blinds is having that lid slides all the way over the top of you. You could still watch the birds work, but they can’t see you. And so everybody gets to see them and they come in close. When it’s time to shoot, you slide the lid back.

Ramsey Russell: Slide really quick. It’s not just like a piece of plyboard laid there with mud, dirt, and snow. It’ll slide right back.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, it’s got little rollers on the-

Ramsey Russell: Inside like a file cabinet drawer. Just goes right back.

JJ Randolph: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Last question. We’ve been up here hunting with Mojo, but you’re a huge mojo fan. You always have been. The spinners I’ve ever seen to use were always mojo.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What do you think about the new mojo?

JJ Randolph: I love that new mojo from the second they put it in my hand, I was like where has this been?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

JJ Randolph: It’s fantastic. The black and white wings. I’m a black and white guy through and I don’t care if its decoys, but one of my best goose spreads ever was I ran a spread here called the black hole. And it was all black and white silhouettes and a 200 big footstool that I painted black and white. And I had probably a thousand decoys and just a black blob.

Ramsey Russell: Why don’t you run that no more?

JJ Randolph: Well, I’m getting to it. We’re just about to put it out I save it for, like, tough times.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, I see.

JJ Randolph: I don’t want us to throw all the tricks at them right away, and because once I put that out, we’re probably going-

Ramsey Russell: To save that knuckle ball for the bottom in it.

JJ Randolph: Yep. I’m going to save it for a little bit, but we’re getting real close. About to put it out. But that black hole, you could see that thing from the strata, from space, and so the black and white wings, you just see so much flash and it really shows up better. The decoy itself so as an outfitter, durability is a big factor with me. I don’t want a hole. And, no offense to Terry, I love him, but I hate electronic, I hate gadgets. I hate that stuff. I got to tell you, I was a snow goose.

Ramsey Russell: One more thing to fool with.

JJ Randolph: I had a snow goose operation for so long, and I got so tired of vortex and jumpers and flyers and spinners and all things. I was sitting at home every night with screwdrivers fixing stuff, and you don’t have to.

Ramsey Russell: Man, I hate to hang Christmas lights. I know what you mean.

The Mojo Flash

 If you never seen a real duck landing before, well, you can just look at that mojo. It looks exactly the same thing with that flash.

JJ Randolph: You know what I’m saying? I hate that stuff. And so these mojos, I got 30, 40 of them right now. All my guides, every guide’s got issued five of them, or they want a couple more here, whatever. And they’re all out there running, and I don’t have one of them coming back broken. They’re all run like a champ all the time. So I really appreciate that.

Ramsey Russell: And that wind speed.

JJ Randolph: The wind speed.

Ramsey Russell: The black and white.

JJ Randolph: When you stand back, when I go park my car and I got those going out in the cornfield and I go park the car and turn around, if you don’t think. If you never seen a real duck landing before, well, you can just look at that mojo. It looks exactly the same thing with that flash.

Ramsey Russell: He told a story yesterday, and I was thinking about this back in the late 90s, early thousands, when these things came out, when spinners first hit the market, he was talking about how somebody in Louisiana raced cars for a living and had all this aluminum from little cars, that’s what they made them wings out of. And man, with those freaking wings, just look at them wrong. They’d bend and you couldn’t straighten them back up, and they’d get all wonky. And when he told me they were coming out with this new aluminum wing, I was like, I don’t know about that. They engineered it. I don’t know how they figured out to put that crimp down the middle. Now, I’m going to tell you this. Anybody listening? If you shoot it, it’s going to bend. I’m raising my hand. I can vouch for that. Put a straight bb in it. It will bend, and you won’t be able to get it out.

JJ Randolph: And trust me, Ramsay might shoot your mojo if the birds that close.

Ramsey Russell: So you talking about yesterday afternoon?

JJ Randolph: Well, damn, you didn’t get the mojo, but you were close.

Ramsey Russell: Because I was thinking while I was trying to watch that bird, because back in the day, he had that predator thing. And he would. If you could get a code to come in and you shot it on film, he’d give you a new one. So I was just thinking, well, he is sitting in a blind. If I shoot, is he going to give JJ a new one?

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I would have made some good footage if I shot the duck. Bam. And the mojo at the same time.

JJ Randolph: Right.

Ramsey Russell: Let’s admit it would have been good.

JJ Randolph: It would have been.

Ramsey Russell: But I didn’t trust him to give you a new one.

JJ Randolph: I want to say something about those mojos, too, because I hear this lot lately. Now I’m sure when you get down south, those birds have seen a lot of mojos, and maybe they start getting a little smart to them here. I turn those things. I turned them on today, Ramsay. When we got there, I never shut them off. We ran them all the way till I called the shot, finished the bird. They come right to them every time. I’m a fly fishing guide in the summertime, and I’m a duck hunting guide in the winter time. And I do this, if I find something that works, I’m just going to stick with it. And I believe if it works once, it’s going to work again and again. And if I got it working all the time, it’s going to work again and again and again. And so when I hear guys say, oh, mojo shy or whatever, are you sure that was it? Because I let mine run all the way to the birds hits the ground every time. And I have not had any trouble with that. And so I really like the mojo. And in my part of the country, it’s very effective for killing ducks. I wouldn’t leave the house without them. I wouldn’t go to a goose field without my flag or my goose call. And I would not go to the duck blind without my mojo or my duck call.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve been on the road since September 14th, and I’ve had them in backseat of my truck, because sometimes you show up and somebody ain’t got one or they got a broken, got old one or got some other brands. I say, no, you all ain’t seen this one yet.

JJ Randolph: Yeah

Ramsey Russell: It’s in my bag of tricks, and it’s going to be out at crack of dawn every single day. There’s a million different things that are tipping duck off. But I’ve got an outfitter down in Argentina that baits legal. He baits. Good Lord. I’m like, why do you need a spinner? He says, because I want the ducks looking at them instead of my sports that aren’t hiding. He said, and when the ducks come in, they’re coming in for the feed, but they’re looking at that mojo. He said, that is really my blind. Is that mojo distracting them? Cause they’re hypnotized by it thousands of times. So there’s a lot of different reasons, and I can tell you this. When the sun rises, I’m going to have mine. I do believe they work better on a crystal clear day. I believe the visibility is much better than on a heavy cloud day. But on a heavy cloud day, I’ve killed him. He’s got that motion going on. So I’m a fan. Do you have a strategy on how you put yours out, or do you just stick them out there? Like, I noticed today, yesterday you had one kind of pattern. We were hunting that little skinny water, but today you had another.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, yesterday we were hunting that little skinny water, and I put some up on land.

Ramsey Russell: Up on the heel.

Mojo Visibility for Field-Feeding Ducks

If I’m going to get their attention, I got to get them to see my mojos, and they weren’t going to see them down in that little creek, so I put them up on top there. That gets the ducks to you, and then they’ll see the water, and we can get them in, but I don’t have a real, I kind of do.

JJ Randolph: Yeah, up on the hill. And I’ve got some other creeks I do that in too. I’ll put it back from the blind a little bit. Like, we have those birds feeding in that field. If I’m going to get their attention, I got to get them to see my mojos, and they weren’t going to see them down in that little creek, so I put them up on top there. That gets the ducks to you, and then they’ll see the water, and we can get them in, but I don’t have a real, I kind of do. My strategy every morning is look at my spread and go. Okay, first of all, where do I want my ducks to land? I want them dead center in front of my shooters so that all four of my guys can shoot straight out. And the ducks aren’t to the right, they’re not too far to the left. So I’m going to put a couple of mojos right in front of me. Today I had two mojos dead nuts in front of the blind. Then I had two out on the point. The two out on the point are mainly for visibility to the birds coming up and down the river. Those are the ones that they stick out the most. And I don’t know if you notice, but I angle my wings a couple different directions. So I angle one wing because I know that these birds fly in this line over here. At this angle of the wings, they can see those wings. And then I took the other one and I angled it here because the wind was like this. Now, if we do break them off the river and I get them to come work the wind, now when they come around this way, they’re going to see these wings this way. And then the two in front of the blind, because when I’m going to finish them into the end of the blind there, I got the wings facing right at the blind. So those ducks coming into the wind are seeing those flashing the whole time. And I did put one back in that cove just to keep them coming a little further and keep them coming across.

Ramsey Russell: Pull them into decoy.

JJ Randolph: Pull them into the decoys down there so you can put those mojos and help direct where you want your shot to be. And that’s one of the greatest things about them is, that pocket. We all make a pocket with our decoys, a U shape of whatever a hole or whatever it’s going to be. Well, you can put your mojos right there, too, and get the ducks to come right to that spot. Oh, I try to make it look natural as best I can. When I watch ducks, landing into a pond or landing into the river, I watch them and watch how they’re going. There’ll be a couple sitting down here and a couple sitting down here. And it is that sometimes I see guys will have them just in like a nice little perfect U shape or something. Everybody facing the same way. I like to mix it up just a little bit. Holy.

Ramsey Russell: What you doing? Are you got a tally whore?

JJ Randolph: Yeah, I got a dang cramp.

Ramsey Russell: That’s all right. I only got one more question for you.

JJ Randolph: God darn it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I didn’t know why you stepping up quick?

JJ Randolph: Yeah, I got a Charley horse there.

Ramsey Russell: You’ll be all right. Walk it off.

JJ Randolph: So I’m walking it.

Ramsey Russell: Go ahead, walk it off. Last question, I’ve noticed here lately, every duck guide and outfitter out there is trying to do the very best they can for their clients with what they’ve got to work with. And I’ve noticed lately that a lot of good, reputable outfitters are no longer letting clients bring their retrievers. They got retrievers, their machines, they retrieve like they want to, to make the numbers. And what is your policy on clients bringing their dog? You got a bunch of dogs.

JJ Randolph: I got dogs. I’m a dog guy. I love my dogs. Part of my love of waterfowling is the dogs. It is a giant part of being out there. So if I feel that way about my dogs and I want to hunt with my dogs, and that’s why I go hunting, why wouldn’t I think the customer would want to do that? If I’m a customer and I go somewhere hunting, man, I love my – I want my dog there. And it doesn’t matter if your dog’s a field trial champion or if your dog is just a dog that you got and he can go out and make a retrieve. If you want to bring your dog and that makes you happy, it’s your trip, right?

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

JJ Randolph: You’re paying for it, you’re happy, I’m happy. And everybody loves their dog. And a dog. you hear it said it can make or break a trip. Well, if you’re the owner of the dog, it’s probably going to make your trip.

Ramsey Russell: Right?

JJ Randolph: And so if that’s just the way I feel about it, and if that dog, if it’s a 15 yard retrieves in a cornfield and that customer turns around and says, man, that just made my day. My dog got a retrieve.

Ramsey Russell: The whole point.

JJ Randolph: Well, that’s the business I’m in, is making your day. So if that makes your day, then I did my job. So, please, you want to bring your dog, you bring it. I just tell people, the only thing is, is now that makes you responsible for all the retrieves. That bird sails 300 yards out there into the cornfield.

Ramsey Russell: It happened today.

JJ Randolph: You got to go get it

Ramsey Russell: But the tuber trees I’m most proud of Char dog a day was, we had knocked down ducks that hit the water, and boom. She’s on. And she didn’t see this, the one that just. Mayday, mayday, mayday out there to. That’s some cactus stuff out there, boy, up on that hill.

JJ Randolph: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And we got there the first time, and she was hunting around. And I look back to you, and you were handling me kind of over to what would be my right as I’m facing you.

JJ Randolph: Right.

Ramsey Russell: And she had her nose ground like a bloodhound over to the left. And I’ve just learned. Just as long as she’s hunting, leave her be. And she went way back up in those woods and come back out with a very much alive mallard.

JJ Randolph: She was tracking.

Ramsey Russell: She was tracking like a coonhound.

JJ Randolph: A blood trail there.

Ramsey Russell: She was tracking it. JJ, I appreciate you as normal. Mojo and I have had a great time. As usual, always a good time. I’m glad I get to see your stepdaddy. Michael is very integral to your business. For anybody listening, if you call wild Nebraska, you’re going to talk to my buddy, Michael Collar, JJ, stepdaddy. But, JJ, I appreciate you. I know that these good hunt, win, lose, or draw, don’t happen by accident. Thank you very much for that and all you do. And, folks, for more information, you can go to UShuntlist.com and look up Wyoming wild Brassica outfitters, or you can get on social media, wild Brassica waterfowl on Instagram. Or you can just google them. But get in line. Don’t dawdle because if you call, you call him up next November, he sold out. Call him up next October, he probably is. Anyway, good hunt, great people, a lot of fun. And bring your hunting dog. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere Podcast. We’ll see you next time.