EP 500. Best Argentina Duck Hunt?!

 

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast from Argentina, down south of Buenos Aires. It’s one heck of a hunt. I’d say it’s one of the top duck hunts on earth. It is very high volume, ducks in the morning, ducks in the evening. But who the heck cares what Ramsey Russell has to say about it? I want you to meet some of my clients that are down here enjoying the Las Flores operation, starting off with Mr. Brian Bath from Cincinnati, Ohio, home of WKRP. What brings you down here? Are you a big-time duck hunter? Why Las Flores? What brings you down here?

Brian: Yep, I love duck hunting. I’ve been hunting in North America, mainly the Mississippi Flyway, for 25 years, and I’ve always heard about Argentina being great for wing shooting. So, that was one of the destinations I always wanted to go to, to try. And so, yeah, kind of got a good opportunity, and this is where I’m at.

Ramsey Russell: And what are some of the areas you hunt in the Mississippi Flyway? You were at Real Foot Lake?

Brian: Yep, mainly Real Foot and then Missouri—Bootheel Missouri, and Kentucky.

Ramsey Russell: And how does this compare?

Brian: Oh, this is amazing. I mean, we can shoot more ducks here in the morning than I can shoot in a couple of years. I mean, you know, lately the hunting in those areas has been very sketchy.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a lot of competition, a lot of pressure, a lot of distribution change, and a lot of migration change. There’s a lot of different things going on with duck hunting in North America. Nonetheless, we kill more ducks than everybody else on earth, including Argentina. But in the absence of all that pressure, with a lot of good habitat and a good management program, you show up here, and even in an off week or off season, it’s pretty amazing duck hunting compared to back home, isn’t it?

Brian: Oh, yeah, it is. And it’s great watching the ducks come right into the decoys. I mean, like, these guys know what to do.

Ramsey Russell: Like they’re supposed to do.

Brian: Yep, exactly. So you ain’t doing pass shooting, trying to pick up a couple here or there. I mean, this is good duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Were you telling me a story? Because you and I have been hunting together all week. You were telling me a story the other morning about learning to pass shoot Canada geese somewhere?

Brian: Real Foot Lake. Because that was the only opportunity.

Ramsey Russell: That’s how they hunting pass shooting. So how tall a shot are we looking at here?

Brian: Oh, some of them.

Ramsey Russell: Three-and-a-half-inch Triple Bs?

Brian: No, you got to do three-and-a-half-inch Triple Bs. And, I mean, you can shoot them up to 50, 70 yards out. Some of those guys that have been doing it forever, I’ve seen them, I swear, it seemed like it was 100 yards up.

Ramsey Russell: Would you say that wherever you were hunting like that, that was kind of the program?

Brian: Oh, no, definitely. There were sections of Real Foot Lake there were, that was pretty much what everybody was doing to get any ducks or geese. I mean, that’s what he had to do.

Ramsey Russell: That’s hard hunting.

Brian: Yes, it is.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to start this morning because I’ve been coming to this destination, hours south of Buenos Aires City, where it is today 20 degrees warmer. But this morning, as we were driving out to the blind, I looked at the weather, and I think it called for like 23, 24, but feels like 21. We get there, and sure enough, it’s hard water to hold bottom. And I’m thinking, man, it felt cold. I’m thinking, I don’t know, man, I don’t know how this is going to go. But it turned out okay. We caught a break. I got in the blind with you, got Char Dog out of the ice, and we got there, kind of moved some of the bigger sheets of ice they stomped out. We had a little open water, and I was surprised. It’s one of those mornings I was really thankful we were facing east.

Brian: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: We had the wind kind of at our back because the wind was out of the west, but, wow, those ducks started coming in early, I surprising them out. And we could see them backlit by the sunrise.

Brian: Exactly. No, that was great. Yeah and they would just drop right in. I mean, we were getting small groups coming in that just dropped right in. And yeah, like you said, you could see them setting up and take your shots.

Ramsey Russell: This morning we shot yellow-billed pintail, white-cheeked pintail, speckled teal, lots of ringed teal, no rosy-billed, a few wigeons, and I can’t think of anything else we shot this morning, but it was kind of action-packed there for a minute. It was a good, fun hour.

Brian: Yes. Yeah. For an hour, it was great fun. Yep.

Memories of a First Argentina Duck Hunt

Going out, you know, out in waders up to our hips or whatever. And, I mean, the ducks funneling in there was absolutely amazing.

Ramsey Russell: What was it like your first hunt? Although it seemed like a month ago, but it was just a few days ago. That one morning, it was brisk. It was fresh because we had a good wind. We set up out there in that pond. And that was your first experience, your first Argentina duck hunt. What do you remember about that? Or how do you remember it?

Brian: This was the standing in deep water, right? That was amazing.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy. That was a hunt now.

Brian: Yes, exactly.

Ramsey Russell: Now, that was the second morning we hunted.

Brian: Yeah, that’s the one, I guess, that sticks most in my mind so far.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about that.

Brian: That was just amazing. Going out, you know, out in waders up to our hips or whatever. And, I mean, the ducks funneling in there was absolutely amazing.

Ramsey Russell: That was actually pack. We were done with a limit, a big limit compared to Mississippi, before the sun even got over the Horizon.

Brian: It was hard to keep the gun loaded.

Ramsey Russell: Hard to keep the gun loaded. Well, that’s why they put those buckets in front of you and dump all the shells, so you can just grab them.

Brian: Grab them and go. But, yeah, no, it was absolutely amazing. Watching those birds work in there and just standing there. It was great.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve shot a good diversity of species. Do you have a favorite?

Brian: The rosies, I think, are the most impressive. When they set up with those big feet out and kind of start to cup their wings, just like a mallard. I mean, so that’s beautiful to watch down here.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Do you wish you could go back to pass shooting?

Brian: No, especially I stay away from that anymore. No more three-and-a-half inches for me. It’s just rough shooting. I mean, you’re lucky if you get a couple of birds a day.

Ramsey Russell: You were telling me the other morning you do travel. This is not your first international trip. You’ve been around mostly for big game, though.

Brian: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of the big game hunts you’ve been on?

Brian: Lake Benda, Namibia, for plains game; Greenland for muskox; Alaska for bear.

Ramsey Russell: Really? Black bear or grizzly?

Brian: Black bear.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. How does this program, in terms of food, lodging, and organization, compare to some of your other travel experiences?

Waterfowl Hunting: A Focus on Relationships, Not Just Trophies

Everybody’s very focused on going after a head or whatever they’re looking for. Here, there’s a lot more camaraderie. The experience is a lot richer, and that’s one of the main reasons I hunt.

Brian: It’s great. A lot of times with big game hunting, it’s all about getting one animal, right? Everybody’s very focused on going after a head or whatever they’re looking for. Here, there’s a lot more camaraderie. The experience is a lot richer, and that’s one of the main reasons I hunt. I like meeting the people you’re hunting with, being able to have conversations, and understanding the land a little bit. So I’m more interested in that than necessarily getting whatever head I’m chasing. It’s the whole experience I’m looking for, and this place is very rich. It’s great to be here.

Ramsey Russell: The food is up to standard.

Brian: Food is great. The lodging’s great. It’s a great group of guys.

Ramsey Russell: You keep coming back to the people. So I’m going to ask you, because we’ve got 14 people in camp. Of course, I’m single because I’m the agent. You were the single hunter. Everybody else was in twos, threes, and fours. How did it feel, or how were you made to feel coming into this environment as a single hunter?

Brian: Oh, everybody’s been very welcoming.

Ramsey Russell: There’s no feather flock to go.

Brian: Exactly.

Ramsey Russell: No drama.

Brian: No drama, no bravado, you know, all that kind of stuff. So everybody’s been easy to talk with, and I think even all the guides and stuff, like very impressed with them. You know, there’s a language barrier, right. But they’re all great. They’re trying to get you to the best experience they can.

Ramsey Russell: Hard-working.

Brian: Hard-working. You know, moving the blind multiple times as the wind shifts. You know, they really want to make sure everybody has a great experience, gets the birds, always willing to help out. It’s great, every one of them. We’ve hunted with at least a half-dozen different guides now, and they’re all just great here.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely. We got two more hunts, an afternoon hunt, and I’m hoping this ice will thaw out. Tomorrow morning is going to be another tough morning, I’m afraid. And one thing we learned, you and I learned this morning, we sat in the truck while he went out there and stomped the ice. And I just was reminded they don’t deal with ice down here. They just went and stomped it into a million pieces. And we went out, you and I did, and stomped some bigger pieces and slid them out of the way. So we did have, according to some of these boys coming, swapping notes after the hunt this morning, more open water later in the morning. And that, I think, really helped. A lot of birds keyed in on that, I think.

Brian: Oh, no, I mean, it’s natural for us, right, coming from North America. You learn that pretty much your first year hunting, how you got to stomp it out and push it under to keep it open for as long as you can, yeah and I guess this is really rare for it to be this cold.

Ramsey Russell: When you go back home, talking to your buddies, talking to your wife, who doesn’t travel much, how would you describe this hunt in a sentence or two? What’s the take-home message so far?

Brian: I mean, I think it’s a lot like hunting. When I came into hunting in 1999 or 2000, the old-timers at that time were telling stories that I’ve now lived through. I think that’s the amazing part of it. I always thought they were kind of full of it. Because here I am, you know, eking out my four birds a day or something like that.

Ramsey Russell: All the good days.

Brian: Exactly. Yes. And now I can say yes, that is how it can be, right?

Ramsey Russell: It is kind of like going through a time warp coming down here, isn’t it?

Brian: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Yes. Thank you, Brian. I appreciate you.

A Louisiana Boy in Argentina

Ramsey Russell: Mr. Mark Saulnier, Senior down here in Las Flores for the second time. You came down here back in 2019, right before all that crazy stuff shut the world down. That was a crazy time, wasn’t it?

Mark Saulnier: It was.

Ramsey Russell: Do you know where that was when you were down here in 2019? That’s not but about 30 minutes east of here.

Mark Saulnier: That’s what Diego told me.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Mark Saulnier: Said it’s not far.

Ramsey Russell: That was a great place. And you wanted to come back this time with your four kids.

Mark Saulnier: Four boys.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What was that like, having four sons, keeping up and getting them all into hunting and stuff back in a day?

Mark Saulnier: It was a chore between hunting, fishing, football, and baseball.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s a lot. But you all had time to hunt?

Mark Saulnier: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Now, here’s the deal. Are you from Louisiana or Texas?

Mark Saulnier: I grew up in Louisiana and then moved to Texas in the 1980s when the economy went bad.

Ramsey Russell: But you’re in East Texas?

Mark Saulnier: Yeah, I’m in East Texas.

Ramsey Russell: Way East Texas?

Mark Saulnier: Yeah, with a bunch of Cajuns.

Ramsey Russell: So, is that Louisiana or Texas? I’ve always been confused. I know some Texans who claim Texas origin down around Orchard Bayou and stuff like that, but, man, I’ve always felt like I’m kind of in Louisiana.

Mark Saulnier: Oh, it feels like you’re in Louisiana. I did have my Louisiana passport to go across the Sabine.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I’m going to ask you this question. One thing I like, I think you and your sons identify as Louisiana as much as Texas. And Diego said it best the other day when he said, “Man, I always trust a coon ass when he shows up with something to cook.” And I knew immediately I was going to like this guy when you brought your own barbecue sauce. I tasted it, and before we’d even had what we were cooking, boom, I ordered half a case of it. Tell me about this barbecue sauce.

Mark Saulnier: Yeah. It’s called Jack Miller’s. I grew up eating Pig Stand, which is made in Ville Platte. Then when we moved to Texas, they had Jack Miller, which is also made in Ville Platte. I just love it, especially on a duck wrap.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s something else, too. We cook those duck poppers.

Mark Saulnier: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about your recipe for duck poppers. That’s kind of a standard thing for you to cook. It wasn’t much different from some I’ve had, except you put a twist on it.

Mark Saulnier: Well, I take the duck breast, slice them, and then marinate them for 24 hours in Italian dressing. Then we try to use a big, heavy piece of bacon. Put the bacon down, then put the duck. On top of the duck, we put cream cheese, a piece of red onion, and a jalapeño. Then wrap it up and cook it that way. And when it gets close to being done, that’s when you put the Jack Miller on there.

Ramsey Russell: That Jack Miller changed my life, son, and I’ve since had it on every single thing they’ve served at the table. I don’t care what’s on it, by God, where’s the Jack Miller at, until it’s gone.

Mark Saulnier: Yeah, well, the last of it’s being put on the chicken right now for lunch.

Ramsey Russell: Hey, you told the story the other day. You’ve been eating this Jack Miller and this Pig Stand forever. Tell that story about your daddy cooking it back in the day.

Mark Saulnier: Well, back when I was growing up, we didn’t have a lot, so we ate a lot of chicken with barbecue on it. We would take the Jack Miller, or actually it was Pig Stand, put it in a small pot, and Daddy would add about half a beer, stir it up, then put it on the fire to heat it up. While he was cooking the chicken, we were outside playing, and there was a loaf of bread next to the barbecue pit. You’d run by, grab a piece of bread, put some Jack Miller or Pig Stand on it, make a fold-over, then take off running to play some more.

How Does Duck Hunting in Argentina Compare to the United States?

Ramsey Russell: Makes me wonder what the poor people were eating. So, you came down here in 2019. How did Las Flores duck hunting, or how does it now, compare to duck hunting like you did growing up? Some of your other duck hunting experiences, say, back in North America?

Mark Saulnier: Well, the limits are a lot more liberal.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy.

Mark Saulnier: And there’s a lot of ducks. Kind of like when I was growing up, you know, when we used to have the point system. You’d shoot 100 points, then you’d shoot nine teal, and then a mallard.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, and you all had mallards down there back in those days?

Mark Saulnier: Yeah. It’s a lot different now. I mean, we usually have to go to North Texas to duck hunt to shoot any kind of ducks. And I’ve got a couple of my sons that’ll go up to Canada hunt.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. We’re going to talk to some of them in a little bit. What do you like most about this? Is it just the trigger pulling? Or are there other things you like about this Las Flores hunt?

Mark Saulnier: Well, they take care of you, and I mean, the people are good. It is definitely about shooting the numbers of ducks, but it’s fun because I brought my kids down here, and I like doing stuff with my boys.

Ramsey Russell: I can tell that you all are a tight group. I mean, to have four kids, four grown sons and yourself, I wouldn’t even know you all were family if I didn’t know, you know what I’m saying?

Mark Saulnier: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Because you get along like buddies, which tells me you all have grown up working and hunting and everything else together.

Mark Saulnier: Yep.

The Joys of Peacock Ownership

And while I was in Canada bear hunting, a peacock showed up at our house—a male—and it started attacking the women and small girls, and it only attacked one guy, which was my niece’s husband. 

Ramsey Russell: What do you do? You were telling me you’ve raised some critters. You ever had a peacock? Tell me about this peacock.

Mark Saulnier: I don’t know if I need to tell the whole story on the peacock. I don’t have my phone with me, but I just got a picture. It’s finished. They sent it to me yesterday, told me to come pick it up. We used to raise peacocks, but we lost all ours. And while I was in Canada bear hunting, a peacock showed up at our house—a male—and it started attacking the women and small girls, and it only attacked one guy, which was my niece’s husband. So, that kind of tells you a lot about him. No, he’s a good guy. But it started attacking, and they wanted to kill it. I told them, “No, let me get home, and I’ll see what I can do.” When I got home, a storm had come through, and a limb or tree from my neighbor fell on my high fence. I have axis and fallow and black buck at my house, and they got out. So, I was there by myself trying to keep the gate open and get the deer back in. My wife drove up, and I hollered at her to get on the four-wheeler and come help me. She got on the four-wheeler with that peacock around. She took off, and the peacock ran after her, got in front of her, and she ran over it. She’s like, “Yes, I got you!” And that thing just jumped back up and took off chasing her. She went right by me on the four-wheeler. I had to holler at her to come back around so I could catch the peacock. I finally caught it and put it in my barn, in one of my stalls. I didn’t think it could get out, but it did. It got to her before I could get back over there and started chasing her again.

Ramsey Russell: What did she do to make this peacock so mad?

Mark Saulnier: It just did not like women, I guess, or little girls. I mean, it attacked women and girls and one nephew.

Ramsey Russell: Whatever happened to this peacock?

Mark Saulnier: Well, when I got back and it attacked her again, I put it in my feed room. My wife said, “We got a lodge and a high fence hunting ranch in Buna, Texas. That would make a pretty mount.” So, I said well, let me go take care of it.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Mark Saulnier: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You all got the fan all fanned out like a turkey or like a long sweep.

Mark Saulnier: Yeah, it’s a long sweep. I just got the picture. My phone’s in the room, but they just sent it to me yesterday, old Steve German in Westlake, and told me it was ready to pick up. It looks pretty.

What’s Your Favorite Waterfowl Hunt of the Week?

Yeah, because I got to hunt with my boys.

Ramsey Russell: What was your favorite hunt this week?

Mark Saulnier: Hmm, I’d say all of them.

Ramsey Russell: All of them. The next one?

Mark Saulnier: Yeah, because I got to hunt with my boys.

Ramsey Russell: You all just kind of rotate around, so you got to hunt with each one of them?

Mark Saulnier: Yeah, that was my deal.

Ramsey Russell: Which one’s the best shot?

Mark Saulnier: Probably Ethan.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I can see that.

Mark Saulnier: He’s all about hunting. Zach, the third son, is a good shot, too, but he loves to fish. Him and I go fishing.

Ramsey Russell: He was telling me you all do a lot of fishing down in Mexico.

Mark Saulnier: Yeah, we’re planning on going.

Ramsey Russell: Are you more of a fisherman or a hunter?

Mark Saulnier: I’m both. If it walks, flies, or swims, I’m after it.

Ramsey Russell: Mark, it was great sharing camp with you. I have enjoyed four or five nights of great stories and good eating, and I’ve got me some Jack Miller barbecue sauce coming meet me. I hope I get to share camp with you all again sometime. I may end up down in that part of Texas and give you a shout.

Mark Saulnier: Come on down.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Mark.

Mark Saulnier: Thank you.

First – But Not Last – Hunting Trip in Argentina

Massive numbers of birds.

Ramsey Russell: Ethan Sonja, down here in Las Flores with your daddy. How come you’re so quiet that this is the quietest you’ve been the whole week. I’ve never seen you this quiet.

Ethan Sonja: Well, business started.

Ramsey Russell: Pull your mic up closer. There you go.

Ethan Sonja: Business started a little bit, and I had to deal with that this morning.

Ramsey Russell: Business started, you had to deal with that this morning. But wait a minute, last time I saw you, business was probably going on because you never leave the office, but you were heading to go fox hunting last night. You said, “Oh, come on.” I’ve been on Diego’s fox hunts before—they don’t end until way after midnight.

Ethan Sonja: Yeah, they ran on quite a while. “Five more minutes” is all I heard. Five more minutes. About ten times.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, yeah. Last time I went with him, which was the last time I’ll go with him, I had my two kids. They were, oh gosh, 12 and 14, and we got in at four in the morning. They woke up at five, both of them falling asleep. Duncan’s little head went smack into a plate of scrambled eggs. He was so worn out. So yeah, tell me, tell me about this being your first trip to Argentina?

Ethan Sonja: First trip to Argentina. Hopefully coming back in July.

Ramsey Russell: Good. You all come on. Why do you think it was important to your daddy to bring you all down here? How did he describe this hunt? He came down here in 2019, how did he describe the hunt then?

Ethan Sonja: We haven’t been able to all hunt together in over a decade.

Ramsey Russell: Really.

Ethan Sonja: Everybody’s got life. I’ve got a wife and kids. My brothers are married now. One of my older brothers has kids now, my youngest brother lives a little further off from us. So every once in a while, we get a chance to come together and do a hunt, deer hunt or something like that. But to do a travel hunt, none of them have bird hunted. Mark hasn’t shot ducks in 15 years. Connor hasn’t shot them in ten. So, the massive numbers of birds.

Ramsey Russell: Massive numbers of birds.

Ethan Sonja: Hunting is going to make it fun.

Ramsey Russell: How would you describe this hunt as compared to hunting back home? Hunting in Texas or Louisiana? And I’m going to get you to tell the story by comparison here in just a minute. It’s a lot more numbers, for starters.

Ethan Sonja: It’s a lot more numbers. The difference in the birds. So we shot all sorts of birds that you see the name, you hear the name, you know the bird, but then you look at the bird and say, “That ain’t the same damn bird I shoot in Texas.”  You know, they got pintail, they got wigeon, they got teal, but every one of them got shovelers, which we got. Yeah, got shovelers. Can’t see any of them rosy bills. We didn’t have any of them.

Extended Breeding Seasons: A Key to Duck Population Growth

Here we are well into the season, and these birds are still producing clutches. And, you know, like, here’s something interesting you may find out is, they don’t change colors down here like they do back home. Back home, we got a bright green head part of the year and a brown duck the rest of the time. Down here, their breeding season is so long, nine months, they don’t ever change colors.

Ramsey Russell: You know, they’ve got a tremendous amount of habitat. This morning, me and Diego were riding back, stopped to look at a little old swag full of ducks. And I was sitting there just videoing some ducks off in this pond. And about this time, these ducks swam from, you know, we couldn’t see them from behind the grass, and they swam out, and it was a pair of ring teal with some babies. Here we are well into the season, and these birds are still producing clutches. And, you know, like, here’s something interesting you may find out is, they don’t change colors down here like they do back home. Back home, we got a bright green head part of the year and a brown duck the rest of the time. Down here, their breeding season is so long, nine months, they don’t ever change colors. And Diego said, and who am I to disagree, but he said that was probably that pair of ducks’ third clutch this year. So add that with a lack of local hunters and abundant habitat, you get a lot of ducks. The limits are way more generous by comparison, and I just want you to tell this story without saying old names. You told a story at the dinner table the other day. Because you all do hunt public. You all hunt public down there on that Texas-Louisiana state line, and you told a story about somebody thinking they could outfox the system and how many ducks they killed on what was going on.

Ethan Sonja: They thought that they were going to be able to go out on public land, bring a bag of corn with them in their boat, and corn public property.

Ramsey Russell: Bad idea.

Ethan Sonja: 121 ducks.

Ramsey Russell: 121 ducks?

Ethan Sonja: 121 ducks in one hunt.

Ramsey Russell: What do you think happened to them boys when they got caught?

Ethan Sonja: Oh, they got caught. So the refuge specifically they were hunting on has four entrances to it. But you check in one entrance, you’re supposed to check out the same entrance. They thought they were going to be smart, check in one, do illegal hunting, check out of another. Well, if they checked out of another, questions are going to come up. Why are you not going back out the same way? Because the entrance that they tried to go out of was almost 8 miles from where the other one is. So they had to travel all through the levee roads just to get back over there to get out that gate. Well, when they did, they called a federal in. When the federal showed up.

Ramsey Russell: Life got bad.

Ethan Sonja: It got real bad. They started searching. The first thing they found was a couple corn kernels in the bottom of that boat. It was a little V-rib boat, didn’t have a solid bottom in it, and they found them stuck right underneath the swell ribs. And when they found that, they went to digging.

Ramsey Russell: It’s like old comedian Ron White would say, “Here’s your sign.” Because here’s the deal. Even if you’re shooting 50%, which I would say is a dang good shot, that’s 320 shots going off on a refuge, you probably got a shell limit.

Ethan Sonja: And when you only have four people and you’re only supposed to pick up six birds per person, and you’re not supposed to have more than 50%.

Ramsey Russell: Ain’t nobody that bad a shot.

Ethan Sonja: Exactly. Yeah and you’re allowed 50 shots with you when you enter. But when you come back out, if they have any suspicion, they will check your shell count, check your originals, and they’ll check your empties.

Ramsey Russell: See, my whole point of bringing that subject up is why? I mean, for the fine, they got the loss of hunting privileges, the loss of dignity, I should say embarrassment. Man, it could have come a week down here and shot way more ducks.

Ethan Sonja: That’s correct.

Ramsey Russell: In five days for way less money and hassle and everything else. And that’s what it’s for. And it’s perfectly legal, and it’s perfectly fine down here. And, you know, when I heard that story the other day, what got me is I really would have said those bad old days in North America were over. There was nobody going out corning duck holes on public and trying to shoot that number of birds. I just, I’d swore that that didn’t exist no more.

Ethan Sonja: You don’t see it very often. That’s the first case I’ve heard of it that bad in a long time. We’ve seen a couple guys, every once in a while, they’ll stuff an extra teal in their waders just because they went one or two over the limit. And they don’t want to leave it lying and waste the bird. And I can understand that if it was a mistake.

Ramsey Russell: Like baseball back home, duck hunting can be a game of errors. I’m sitting on five ducks. A flock of green wings comes in. I pick a drake. Boom. And three of them fall. Shit happens.

Ethan Sonja: But if you tell the warden, it’s pretty likely you’re not going to get in any trouble over it.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. Long as there was no intent.

Ethan Sonja: Exactly. You know, but you can’t fix stupid.

Ramsey Russell: Here’s your sign. What was your favourite hunt down here this week? You all had some good hunts. The moon got us a little bit a few times. But how would you describe your favourite hunt this week?

Ethan Sonja: I think the best one we had was actually my first morning. It was before the moon got too bright on us, and we had 100 and a couple birds, but it was two here, two here, two here. So we weren’t shooting at just groups of 50. We weren’t firing one shot, popping ten of them at a time. You had to pick and choose with the second hunter. I’m going to take this one. I’m going to take this one. And we spent all morning picking out two and three at a time until we got our birds.

Ramsey Russell: Who was it that killed seven out of a volley?

Ethan Sonja: That was my brother Zach. Okay, one shot. They come in, and they must have balled up, son. They were balled up. He fired one shot. Seven hit the ground. And when they hit, every one of them was dead. It’s like the magic happened. Perfect BB placement for each and every one of them, ‘cause they didn’t flop, they didn’t flip, they didn’t try to crawl off. It was seven dead birds.

Ramsey Russell: Boom. And it didn’t matter, ‘cause we was down here in Argentina, not in Mississippi or Louisiana or Texas. I might ask you this. Your daddy was telling me, I forgot to ask him, have you ever been up to Nova Scotia with him?

Ethan Sonja: I have.

Ramsey Russell: What’s that about?

Ethan Sonja: It’s a good time.

Ramsey Russell: Like a family reunion.

Ethan Sonja: Well, we do the family reunion up there. We’re actually going back in August of this year, but we’ve been back quite a few times. He goes every year. I’ve been back two or three times. And we do black bear hunting up there, and we went to Newfoundland one time. So the first time we went up there, went to Nova Scotia, and then we went to Newfoundland, took a ferry from Nova Scotia, God knows how many hours, four or six hours, got over there, and did backcountry hunting. And we were young. Hell, I was only 15, and it was actually my younger brother Zach that got seven. We got to go fishing, do trout fishing down there. None of us killed a bear, but we caught fish, and we had a good time. And then every time I’ve been back since then, we’ve been able to kill good bears. He’s taken quite a few family, friends, and different people over the years that have got to go, cousins of ours that never, you know, never thought they were going to experience a bear hunt, nonetheless go up there and shoot a 300 to 400-pound black bear. 3420

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Ethan Sonja: So it’s a blast.

Ramsey Russell: First, let me say this. Do you identify as a Texan or Louisianan?

Ethan Sonja: I identify as a Texan, but that’s because I was born there.

Ramsey Russell: So, he was born in Louisiana. What he was telling me is – and I had forgotten his story until he started telling me about this big thing, you all go to this function in Nova Scotia. That’s where all the Cajun as originated. It was Nova Scotia. At some point in history, they got booted out, sent down south, and flourished down in Louisiana like they do. And so, I thought that was just real. He was telling me – gosh, I wish I’d asked him about this topic – he said he was drinking beer, doing something, and bumped into a seventh cousin once removed. And it’s like that for you, kind of that family aspect.

Ethan Sonja: Well, that was 2004. We went up there just to be a part of it. I was 13 or 14 years old at the time, and we went up there for two weeks. We took a minivan and drove across the entire area of Nova Scotia.

Ramsey Russell: Tough.

Ethan Sonja: And it was the next-to-last or second-to-last day. We ran into these people at one of these reunions in 2004, and he’s been every year outside of a COVID year since, on a bear hunt. I actually picked Nova Scotia for my senior trip when I graduated high school

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Ethan Sonja: For him to take me up there on a bear hunt. ‘Cause previously I’d gone up there and hadn’t been lucky. We went to Newfoundland and didn’t get a chance, and then went back. Ended up getting to kill two bears while I was there. And I still have the mount of that first bear sitting in my office at work.

Ramsey Russell: You know, even though they, back in the day, Cajuns may have originated from that part of the world, they don’t cook like we do in the Deep South. You said the other day out by the barbecue you were going to cook a gumbo?

Ethan Sonja: That’s correct.

Ramsey Russell: What do you think they’re going to think of that gumbo? Does a Texan know how to cook a gumbo?

Ethan Sonja: I know how to cook gumbo.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Ethan Sonja: I still got enough of them Louisiana roots that it works out. That’s good.

Ramsey Russell: How did coming to Argentina reconcile with your expectations? Like, everybody hears about coming down here, but then you come here. How was it – the same, better, different, or what?

Ethan Sonja: It was a lot of what I expected, but I’m a purist when it comes to hunting. I could care less if I killed 10 or 200. A lot of times, it’s the camaraderie of being able to go to the hunt and have fun outside of just the hunt, the camp, the house, the involvement in every bit of it. That’s why I do it.

Ramsey Russell: The total package.

Ethan Sonja: The total package.

Ramsey Russell: What about the food? You know, we talk about going up to Canada food is just Canadian food. What do you think about coming down here?

Ethan Sonja: The food down here was phenomenal.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Ethan Sonja: They have a cook here that, if I could, I might pack him in a suitcase and take him home.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely. And what about the lady that does nothing but cook desserts? I mean, she’s like a dope peddler just trying to get you to eat more dessert every night.

Ethan Sonja: It is the best soufflé I’ve ever had in my life.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I know you had two or three of them one night now, yeah.

Ethan Sonja: They were phenomenal. And it’s the first time I ever had them cold.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Ethan Sonja: Typically, I get them, they’re a little bit hot, and honestly, I think I liked it better cold.

Ramsey Russell: What would you tell anybody considering coming down here to Argentina? And what would you tell anybody considering a hunt like this as a family trip? That’s why I wanted you all on here, I walked in and told your daddy, I said, you know, if I didn’t know you five guys were related, I’d have just assumed you all were buddies at work together, the way you all got along. But you all are family. So, how does this rank as a family trip? How does it rank as just a hunt in general?

Ethan Sonja: Well, as a family trip, this is the first time ever. I’m 33, Mark, my older brother, is 36, Zach’s 31, Connor’s 26. It’s the first time ever we have all travelled out of the country together and done a hunt by ourselves, no wife, no kid, no mom, nothing else. It’s the first time.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. It’s pretty good. And I noticed you all swapped up, hunt to hunt.

Ethan Sonja: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I’m a hunt with this brother, I’m a hunt with that brother, somebody get stuck hunting with Dad.

Ethan Sonja: Yep. Well, somebody’s always got to get stuck hunting with him. Somebody’s got to do the clean-up for him.

Ramsey Russell: You were telling me last night before you all went out, you said, the bad thing about inviting him is you stay up too late, get a sore head, and he’s still knocking on your door. Did he knock on your door this morning?

Ethan Sonja: You got dang right he did. It’s a miracle that the man can function in the manner that he does at his age. We all want to say, no, go to bed, and sleep in. And he will knock on that door no matter what.

Ramsey Russell: He’s getting up and going.

Ethan Sonja: If there’s something to be killed, he is going to wake up for it.

Ramsey Russell: You know, I was just shocked at breakfast this morning. He was the first one in here.

Ethan Sonja: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And I figured he might be the last one, ’cause he is my age, not you all’s. And I figured he’d have faded after midnight first, but I heard it was you.

Ethan Sonja: He beats us to breakfast every morning when we go out drinking like that. Every morning.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I finally figured out – you know, when you wear a pair of waders, you got, like, this kangaroo pocket in front? I wondered what it was always for. And then I walked past him yesterday and heard all them cans rattling. I’m like, oh, so that’s what that’s for, all those Bud heavies?

Ethan Sonja: Yeah, pork chop in a can. We’re making sure that we don’t go hungry.

Ramsey Russell: Hey, I appreciate you all letting me hunt with you all this week. I have had a great time getting to know you all. Thank you very much, Ethan.

Ethan Sonja: It was phenomenal. I appreciate it.

A Born and Raised North Carolina Duck Hunter 

It wasn’t fast and furious, but it was just steady, and it was beautiful birds, coloration like I’ve never seen. 

Ramsey Russell: Mr. Jim Broswell from North Carolina, here at Las Flores. Jim, I’ve heard some great stories in North Carolina. Born and raised duck hunting there. You’ve been to Mexico several times. Now we’re all the way south of the equator down here at Las Flores. How’s the week going?

Jim Broswell: It’s just unbelievable, Ramsey. The quality is just exceptional of the outfitters, the guides, the facilities. It’s just surpassed all my expectations, to be honest with you.
Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jim Broswell: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: What has been your favorite hunt so far?

Jim Broswell: Oh, gosh.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, what about the first hunt? Because that, to me, is like, like the first kiss. You never forget it. You know, you’ve seen some ducks, you think you know what you’re going to expect, and you show up, and all hell breaks loose.

Jim Broswell: Well, what really fascinated me about the first hunt is that we arrived, got our stuff situated, and went out in the afternoon, and I didn’t know what to expect. We were on a little pothole. It was beautiful, just beautiful. The guide was real meticulous about the blind setup, the wind direction, and the decoys. And then, like I said, I didn’t know what to expect. And all of a sudden, birds started coming. They did what ducks were supposed to do, what I’d hoped they’d do. They just decoyed beautifully, and we just had a very exciting afternoon. It wasn’t fast and furious, but it was just steady, and it was beautiful birds, coloration like I’ve never seen. We killed a wide variety, but I just think the way the birds came in, decoyed, and reacted so well, and how positive the setup was, just made it just so much fun.

Ramsey Russell: You bring up a good point. There were times in my life when I wanted the fast and furious—bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And I’ve had that boy, I’ve had that right here where we’re sitting, I’ve had those kinds of hunts. But it’s sometimes, whether you’re hunting spring snow geese or ducks, and you’re in the right place at the right time, or you’re down in a foreign country like this. Sometimes it’s chaotic. And I don’t like the chaos anymore. I want to have just a volley and a reset. A volley and a reset, and a volley and a reset. And I bring Char, and really and truly her tempo kind of paces me. I don’t want to shoot while she’s out picking up. And so I like that rhythm where it’s just a nice, even simmer, not a hard boil, so to speak.

Jim Broswell: But in the morning hunts, though, it was the volume has just been incredible to me—how many birds we’ve seen, how many birds we’ve been able to shoot.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve been duck hunting a long time in North Carolina. Can you recall hunting around Madame Mesquite, having seen that many birds in the morning coming in the duck hole? I mean, was there a time, 20–30 years ago maybe, that you would see that many back in the day?

Jim Broswell: Well, I’ve had some really, really good hunts there, especially when it snows there, it can be exceptional. But the total number of birds we’ve seen every morning.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jim Broswell: I mean, the consistency of the volume is what’s unique to me here.

Ramsey Russell: Have you and John taken turns shooting, like, on singles or pairs?

Jim Broswell: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: And that’s what gets me, is, like, if you and I were hunting at my camp, Mississippi and $4, it’s every man—everybody’s got a shooting shell out. That might be the only play or one of the few plays, it’s like you just know any given minute, it’s going to end. And down here, up until about 10:00, the ducks are steadily, they’re trickling in, they’re coming in.

Jim Broswell: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And so we got time to, like, I’ll watch you shoot, you watch me shoot, we watch him shoot, you know, and I really appreciate that.

Jim Broswell: And I really like that, too.

Ramsey Russell: I do, too.

Jim Broswell: It’s just added to the enjoyment of the experience here. And the experience has really been exceptional.

Ramsey Russell: What about the people at camp? Because you and John, you all booked two spots. There are 14 people in camp. Because I really enjoy the dynamic around the big supper table and then later in the den in front of the fireplace, or right when we come in from the hunt where all the appetizers are laid out, man, that’s one of my favourite parts of the day, just sitting in there B.S with everybody.

Jim Broswell: It’s been one of my favourite parts of the hunt here. Yeah, I mean, this has been probably one of my most favourite hunts of all time. And I’ve done hundreds of hunts. But the group here has just been exceptional. There are a lot of people with very common interests, very common backgrounds.

Ramsey Russell: Because we’re all duck hunters.

Jim Broswell: We’re all duck hunters. And the shared experiences from different parts of the country have been really neat to me.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely. You know what, one thing, I knew John Turner had been down to Obregon with us. I knew that you had been down to Obregon with us. But, you know, dealing with a lot of clients, I didn’t know, I didn’t put two and two together till recently that you all weren’t together. He’s from Georgia, you’re from North Carolina. But you all met on a hunt like this, and now you all travel together.

Jim Broswell: That’s correct. And I’ve done quite a few hunts with people I met on hunts, I booked with you because I’ve developed some real good friendships, and I like that. And we stay in touch.

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah. You know, I have seen in the last 20 to some odd years of fooling around with this stuff is, I think a lot of people are individuals that have the time, have the money, have the interest in doing hunts like this, but they don’t have a buddy or they don’t have a crowd to run with. And I’ve had people call up and say, yeah, I want to come down there. And by the time he passes through all his circle, nobody else wants to go or can go or whatever, and he never goes. And I would just tell anybody, and I’m asking, not saying, but, you know, wouldn’t you tell anybody, hey, it’s okay, come down, you can go by yourself, and you’re going to meet your tribe down here at these lodges?

Jim Broswell: Well, the first time I ever booked with you, Ramsey, I wanted to go to Mexico so bad, to Obregon. I tried to find somebody to go with me, and I couldn’t. I said, well, life is passing me by, and I’m not going to let it. So I booked a hunt in Obregon by myself, went down. They paired me with a great guy. We had a wonderful hunt. I met a lot of people. Two guys I met there, drew for swan tags, and came swan.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jim Broswell: Swan hunting with me at Lake Madame Skiedden. So I developed some friendships, you know, in all the hunts I’ve booked with you. And it’s just been a wonderful experience.

The Duck Hunting World is Much Bigger Than Our Backyard

And to me, so far, that’s been probably the prettiest duck I’ve ever seen in my life. It just appeals to me.

Ramsey Russell: The world’s a whole lot bigger than our backyard, isn’t it? And the friend pool among the duck hunting community can be.

Jim Broswell: And you can’t have enough friends, can you?

Ramsey Russell: No. Heck no. You can never have enough friends. Would you say, in the four days, five days we’ve been here. Do you have a favorite species that you’ve put your hands on or that you’ve hunted or reacted to? I mean, is there anything about these different species that you go, wow, this really sticks out?

Jim Broswell: Well, there were three ducks I really wanted to get down here. I looked for years at the pictures of what you guys take, and I said, and I came down, and on the very first hunt, the very first bird I shot was one of those three. It was an exceptional white-cheeked pintail. Top of Form. Bottom of Form.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy. One of the most gorgeous birds on earth. Hands down.

Jim Broswell: Yeah. And then a little later that hunt, I got the second one, which was a Chiloe wigeon.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Jim Broswell: And to me, so far, that’s been probably the prettiest duck I’ve ever seen in my life. It just appeals to me.

Ramsey Russell: When you’ve shot wigeons, but I know you all shoot a lot of wigeons around the lake. But did you notice how much bigger this one was?

Jim Broswell: Yeah. It is, and good gosh, it’s just a beautiful big bird that decoys well, and I just get excited thinking about them.

Ramsey Russell: You told me the other day you really hoped to get a rosy-billed pochard. Have you killed one?

Jim Broswell: Yeah, killed three this morning.

Ramsey Russell: Okay, good. Did they behave any differently than the other ones? I think they do. I would come to South America strictly to shoot nothing but rosy-billed pochards. That is my favourite duck. I ain’t going to say I like them better than a mallard, but it’s damn close. I like a rosy-billed pochard because they’re big, normally in bigger flocks, and they’re just hard-charging and come in like they own the place.

Jim Broswell: Yeah, they do.

Ramsey Russell: And I love to shoot rosies. It’s something about my heart skips a beat when they come decoying. And I can’t say the same about the pintails or the teal.

Jim Broswell: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: But that freak and one thing I do like about those Chiloe wigeons is them boys can whistle to them.

Jim Broswell: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And they love it. They really decoy to that whistle.

Jim Broswell: And they do respond extremely well to that.

Ramsey Russell: Being over in North Carolina, have you ever blown that Blivens whistle?

Jim Broswell: Have several of them. I think Alan makes the best little wigeon tail and wigeon whistle there is.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. How does this hunt compare to Mexico?

Jim Broswell: I like it.

Ramsey Russell: Mexico is more volume than North Carolina can be.

Jim Broswell: Yeah. What’s impressed me the most about this hunt, to be honest with you, are the guides. Every guide is just so professional. They pay attention to every detail that I would pay attention to myself when I’m in a duck hunt at home. They make sure the setup’s right, they make sure the wind direction’s right. They’re really good at calling, they’re really good at staying hidden. And actually, I’ve hunted everywhere. And outside of one guy I’ve met in Canada, I’ve never seen anybody who was so good at putting you on the X, and doing it right.

Ramsey Russell: I would echo what you just said with the fact that most of Latin America, invariably, outside of this particular lodge, I’m going to be placed in a setup where the wind is in my face. They just don’t get it. There’s such an abundance of birds, they just don’t understand the nuance. And I’ve tried to explain that we Americans, we have to play at the top game. We have to play a certain way to kill our birds back home, and it’s conditioned us to it. I mean, I’m as much about the presentation as the trigger pull. I want that bird to present himself. He don’t present himself with the wind at his back like he does with the wind in his face.

Jim Broswell: Amen. That’s so true. And that’s what I have enjoyed the most from the hunting aspect of this is how I’m shooting decoying birds, coming into decoys with the wind at my back.

Ramsey Russell: Amen. Has there been a favourite meal? I’ve been noticing you’ve been shopping to desserts.

Jim Broswell: Oh, good.

Ramsey Russell: This ain’t the time to go on a diet, Jim.

Jim Broswell: No, no. When I talked to you about this hunt, you told me about the meals and everything, but every meal has just been spectacular. I mean, the steaks, the chicken, and the desserts.

Ramsey Russell: Do you have a favourite meal or a favourite dessert so far?

Jim Broswell: Yeah, the steak that we had, I think maybe on the.

Ramsey Russell: With the cream sauce.

Jim Broswell: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy.

Jim Broswell: That was good. And then when we come in from the hunts, I call them chicken-fried duck breast.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah milanesa, duck milanesa. What about those chicken wings? Have you tried those?

Jim Broswell: I’m not a spicy foodie.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy. You’ve been missing out, Jim.

Jim Broswell: I’ve eaten a couple, but I’m so addicted to those duck breasts that, it’s hard for me to keep from not overloading on those.

Ramsey Russell: I do understand. So you said leading off this hunt exceeded your expectations. How would you describe it to your buddies back home, to your wife when you get home, to your duck club? But, like, you’re sitting in a duck blind, “Man, down in Argentina,” fill in the blank. What’s going to be the real takeaway of this whole week down here in Argentina?

Jim Broswell: I’ve got a lot of guys waiting to hear what my experience is.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. What are you going to tell them?

Jim Broswell: I’m going to say, dude, you have got to go. It’s just plain and simple, go. You will never go anywhere where you have such good duck hunting every time out. They’re so good at putting you on the X. Diego runs such professional shop, that you’re going to have the experience of your life duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Dude, you have got to go. I couldn’t have said it better myself, Jim. Thank you very much.

Jim Broswell: Sure.

Ramsey Russell: Mister Danny Twitchell from Monroe, Louisiana. Danny, I met you in 2019 down here on your first trip. First trip to Argentina at Las Flores.

Danny: Absolutely.

Identifying South American Ducks

Ramsey Russell: And we shared a hunt one afternoon. I never, ever will forget this, because you’re a doctor, and you doctors are kind of precise about things, and we get to where we’re going, and you break out some flashcards you had made. Like, it reminded me of being in forestry and wildlife school, where I’d make identifiers, you know, and you had drawn you out a sketch card for all the different ducks down there. Do you still carry that?

Danny: I have it laminated to bring to, when I come back down here. And I’ve actually there’s a picture of it.

Ramsey Russell: There it is, right? That’s it right there. The different bills, the different characteristics, key identifiers for all these different species down here.

Danny: I know what I’m shooting.

Ramsey Russell: You know, one thing I remember about the first time we hunted together in 2019, which is only about 30, 40 miles from here, was you shot a leucistic speckle-tail. Do you remember that?

Danny: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: How the heck of an eye of bird.

Danny: I only knew I shot it because you told me it was.

Ramsey Russell: Yes. Oh, well, I saw it a mile off. Yeah. Really nice bird. How did you end up finding Get Ducks and Las Flores and all that good stuff?

Danny: Well, I’ve been duck hunting since… heck, about when I was 16. We used to kind of hunt in a shallow lake about seven feet deep. So we got a lot of diving ducks and that kind of stuff. But I grew up doing that. And when I moved to Monroe after medical school, I got into rice field. That’s the first time I ever hunted in rice fields.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Danny: And I still do it. I mean, I’ve been doing it ever since.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Have you got a favourite duck down here in Argentina? Because you got that note card with all them different species. But after three or four trips down here, do you have a favourite species?

Danny: Cinnamon teal.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Danny: In there… rosy-billed pochard.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, the rosy-bill. Yeah.

Danny: And the Brazilian teal.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. Have you shot all these ducks now?

Danny: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. We’ve been here long enough.

Danny: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What do you notice about? Cause, like, we’re sharing camp with you boys from Monroe. We’ve been here three or four times, and we got some guys that have never been here before. What do you notice the difference in, and kind of your approach, or how familiar you are with the hunt and the newness of it all? You notice that, like, man, their eyes are wide when they come back from these hunts. We’ve done it several times before.

What’s the Best Duck Hunt of My Life?

Danny: I’ve had probably, if you took the best duck hunts of my life, have been here, right here. Probably the top five or six, ten hunts. I’m talking about, like, an afternoon or a morning.

Ramsey Russell: Tell me about it. What was amazing about it?

Danny: Well, it was a beautiful morning, and the ducks were working. They responded to the call, and they were just coming on in, wave after wave. I mean, it was just like, we were shot out before the sun came over the horizon.

Ramsey Russell: That’s typical Las Flores isn’t it? There’s been a lot of times I’ve done that.

Danny: And that afternoon hunt yesterday was as good as it gets, too.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You know, afternoon hunts back home, maybe, maybe not. But down here, that’s really some of my favourite hunts, because when the ducks are really hooked up down here at Las Flores, the mornings are somewhere between borderline and absolute chaos. It’s just too much. But the afternoons are a little more relaxed. You know, the dog can catch up.

Grayson: Right.

Ramsey Russell: And I just enjoyed. I enjoy the sunshine. I’m not a huge fan. I’m going to be honest with you. Somebody that duck hunts a whole lot, I am “not a huge fan of hard water hunts”. I am not that guy.

Danny: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You know, I’ve been down here enough and elsewhere enough to know that ducks can be killed in 50, 60, 70 degree weather.

Danny: Oh, yeah. You know, the thing about coming down here with you, and it’s like hunting with your best friends that you don’t see maybe once a year, every other year. But in the hospitality and the people are friendly, the cooks and guides, everybody’s.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you always got a team of four or five when you all come down here, and I know it changed a little bit. You and Raymond been coming since forever, and Raymond’s brother’s been coming, but then you share camp with a lot of other different people.

Danny: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And it really is like kind of coming home to a family reunion and meeting relatives you never met before, I mean, nobody really has a place at the table. We kind of float around, and everywhere we sit, it’s just some different conversation with different people.

Danny: Every person that’s in camp right now, I’ve had a good in-depth, I feel like, I know, and I hope they come back next year, same time I do.

Ramsey Russell: Heck, yeah. Do you think you’ll come back?

Danny: Oh, yeah. Raymond and I were talking the other day, and he says, “Well, you know, I’m going to keep going down here to Argentina as long as I’m physically able to come.”

Ramsey Russell: Well, I tell you what. It is an easy hunt. That’s one thing. I will say that the mobility requirements to hunt here are not like back home all the time. They don’t use ATVs, they can avoid it, but they can take you right up to it. You got to walk, you got to maybe walk 10–15 yards, get into a blind.

Danny: I’m 70 years old.

Ramsey Russell: Golly, I never would have guessed.

Danny: I don’t feel 70, but, you know, Diego takes care of, I mean, you know, he came and brought me a glove because I said, “I left my light pair of gloves.” I had a warm pair on my left hand.

Ramsey Russell: This morning he put you in a pair of warm waders.

Danny: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: And you needed them this morning, son. Ooh, I’d hate to have been out there with them Simms fishing waders you brought down.

Danny: I brought them because they’re lightweight.

Ramsey Russell: But normally it’s enough.

Danny: Yeah, it is enough.

Ramsey Russell: Which brings up a point we were talking about, we got back to the camp. That is the one blind spot these boys down here south of the equator have. We grew up dealing with ice.

Danny: Right, right.

Ramsey Russell: They walk up to a pond full of ice. They don’t know what to do. You know, this morning, man, they, Rafael was out there stomping and stomping and stomping it. Too late before I could get out there to, he shredded it to nothing. It was just glass pieces. And I told him, “In the morning, I’m going to be out here with you, and we’re going to stomp out a big piece of ice and slide it out of the way.”

Danny: That’s right. Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: ‘Cause, you know, you don’t need much water.

Danny: If decoys are bobbling, that’s enough. They look like a live spread coming in.

Ramsey Russell: Yep. Well, how would you describe, if I said, “Your most memorable hunt at Las Flores,” what would it have been about that hunt? Can you remember it? Does something stick out? Does a story stick out?

Danny: Mike Hayward, good buddy of mine, and he’s hunted with me the last two times I was here. And on his first hunt, the first hunt was the afternoon hunt. And he said, “Danny, that was one of the best hunts of my life.” I said, “It was good.” he said, “What do you think’s going to be tomorrow?” I said, “It’s going to be better.”

Ramsey Russell: Oh, hell’s going to break loose.

Danny: And it did. I looked over at Mike. We were in about waist-deep water, and it was cold, but it wasn’t freezing. And I looked over, and he’s sweating. And I said, “Mike, are you all right? How can you be hot?” He says, “Oh, it’s pure adrenaline.”

Ramsey Russell: Pure adrenaline. I saw that this morning. It felt like 21 degrees, according to the thermometer, but it was action-packed enough at the crack of dawn that my hands weren’t cold. I wasn’t cold. Nothing was cold. We were going good.

Danny: We had a fabulous hunt. The birds came in right, they responded to the call. I mean, back in Louisiana, the birds you’re shooting at have been shot at from the Canadian border all the way down.

Ramsey Russell: They got a PhD and then some.

Danny: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: An internship.

Danny: And these ducks down here just don’t have the pressure that they have back in the States.

Ramsey Russell: Do you still duck hunt back home?

Danny: Oh, yeah, every year.

Ramsey Russell: People ask me, “How do you go down there and hunt an abundance of naive ducks, and then come back up and grind it out?” I’m like, “Because I duck hunt. It’s what I do.”

Danny: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: And you got to keep everything in context.

Besides the Trigger Pull…

You know, a lot of people are so tied up in the numbers, but sometimes you’re just awed by the beauty of nature and the birds flying and dipping and diving.

Danny: And I’m hunting with different friends and, you know, the camaraderie in the blind.

Ramsey Russell: I think that’s important. Everybody around this table down here, everybody keeps talking about the people. And I’ll be honest with you, Danny, I’ve been duck hunting a long time. And when I look back at the past, I’m not out there to watch a sunrise in the morning, especially when it feels like 21. I’m out there to shoot stuff, first and foremost. But in hindsight, 20/20, when I look back at all the years, last season, or this hunt, it’s never the trigger pulls I remember.

Danny: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: It’s always the people, the meals, the laughs, the dog work. Something. It’s something besides the trigger pull.

Danny: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: You know, the trigger pull just falls off the radar. It’s everything else.

Danny: You know, a lot of people are so tied up in the numbers, but sometimes you’re just awed by the beauty of nature and the birds flying and dipping and diving.

Ramsey Russell: Even this morning, the bags really varied this morning because everybody went out to a little pond, and it was hard water, son, and it was tough. And it’s like I was telling Brian, I said, there’s zero chance we’d have shot this many ducks in my camp in Mississippi this morning. In fact—and here’s the crazy part—we shot, as a group, 1,400 this morning on a tough morning with ice. We shot more ducks than my camp killed the entire last season. Isn’t that crazy? That puts it in context.

Danny: Without a doubt, in one day or in one trip here, it’ll be several seasons for me back home duck hunting hard. And a bad day here would have been a great day at home.

Ramsey Russell: One thing I notice when I travel around and look at different outfits, I’m always looking at outfits. I’m always hunting with different outfits, and one thing I appreciate about this particular place and several other places we hunt is that here, I have come to know a lot, if not all, of the staff.

Danny: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: The cook’s been here three years now. The girls taking care around the house have been here for years now, since I met you. Some of the guides, the guy I hunt with, has been here for 15 years.

Danny: Oh, all of them have been seven, eight, ten years, and they’re all friendly and accommodating.

Ramsey Russell: Do they recognize you when you come back?

Danny: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You all fall right in, don’t you?

Danny: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And you know what else I like about this hunt? Oftentimes, when you go to a lodge, all right, Danny, you go hunt with so-and-so. But I like the fact that I get up in the morning, put on my waders, and come out here to the fire, and boom, a different guide comes up. I’m going with him. And so I kind of make the rounds with those guys.

Jim Broswell: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: It’s all good.

Danny: You get to know them, know their personalities. Some of them can speak fluent English, and some of them, it’s broken, but it’s enough that you can communicate.

Ramsey Russell: Especially on a cold morning like this morning when you know them boys are cold. Three or four trucks go to a farm, and no one truck leaves without the others.

Danny: Right.

Ramsey Russell: If this truck gets done first, they pull over to another truck that’s wrapping up. And then the guide staff keeps building to the last guy, and they work as a team for all the blinds out there. I just think that says a lot about the people. I think it says a lot about the operation.

Danny: Oh, Diego is amazing. He’s fun to be with, and he’s still enthusiastic about duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: It almost wigs me out to hunt with him. It’s fun, but he’s so dynamic in the morning, it almost attracts attention. He was enthusiastic. 

Danny: Oh, my gosh. He still loves it like a kid.

Ramsey Russell: He does. And I got to say this too, I’ve always said this about him that I cannot say about all my other operations or supervisors I’ve worked with or anything else. He’s the general.

Grayson: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: This is his camp. He’s the general, but he does not bark orders. He picks up the weight and leads his people by doing the work. He guides, he does every aspect.

Danny: When he guides you, he’s your guide. He puts out, he gets the mojo ready, he gets everything prepared.

Ramsey Russell: But I’ve even seen him stop on the way to our blind. I’ve seen him stop and help out another guide. “No, no, no, I want, you know, to win this way, the sun this way.” He’s hands-on. They follow him because he’s leading into battle.

Danny: He’s not telling them what to do. He says, “Follow me.”

Ramsey Russell: He ain’t saying, “Charge.” He’s saying, “Follow me.” That’s a huge difference. I think it’s why this program works.

Danny: Like he was opening the gates and was the last one to come through.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. I think that’s the way I wish all supervisors were.

Danny: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Do you have a favourite meal down here, Danny? I won’t say asado, but that’s my favourite of the week.

Danny: Well, you know, we always have a really good steak one night. But the appetizers, when you come in from the hunt, I don’t even have to eat dinner. I know they’ve got the empanadas, the fried pies.

Ramsey Russell: The chicken wings, Milanesa.

Danny: And the onion rings.

Ramsey Russell: Onion rings. Last night, I sat down and picked up my plate. I said, no, I’m full. When I went up there to that fire and all those chicken wings and Milanesas were there, I just, I laid into them, son.

Danny: I did almost the exact same thing.

Ramsey Russell: I tell people it’s three meals and two appetizers, but the truth is, it’s five meals. They feed you five meals a day. I have a client coming down here, Mr. Jim Cruz, in a couple weeks. I sent him a picture yesterday. He said, “Well, by my recollection, you all are getting ready for meal three, made in lunch.” So anyway, Danny, I’ve enjoyed it. I was really looking forward to coming down here and sharing a week with you all. Catching up with you here

Danny: Me too. I was glad to hear you were coming, too.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, we’ve had a good time. This afternoon, I think that ice is going to thin out, and those ducks are going to come in. That’s what I think’s going to happen.

Danny: I think it will, too.

Ramsey Russell: Tomorrow morning? I don’t know, son, but I know this. No matter how cold or windy it is, I’m going to be out there breaking ice so I can slide those big sheets over.

Danny: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to lead tomorrow.

Danny: Okay.

From Mississippi to Argentina – All in the Name of a Hunt

What is duck hunting like at Las Flores compared to Natchez, Mississippi, where you hunt?

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Danny. Jerry Skates, Natchez, Mississippi, what brings you to Argentina, man?

Jerry Skates: This is our third trip down, and I don’t know what brings us. It’s the duck hunting, for sure, for sure, the shooting. This is as close as the old days you get, I reckon.

Ramsey Russell: Well, how does this hunt stack up to the other hunts you’ve been on?

Jerry Skates: The guides, they’re all hunters.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely.

Jerry Skates: I mean, the other place makes a difference, doesn’t it? Absolutely. I mean, like the other places we went to, you know, they’d set you up with the wind in the face, and you’d be staring at the phone. Worst-case scenario here, it’s nothing to move a blind. If we need to move a blind, they going to do it. They’re all duck hunters, as far as I can tell.

Ramsey Russell: What is duck hunting like at Las Flores compared to Natchez, Mississippi, where you hunt?

Jerry Skates: I don’t even know where to start.

Ramsey Russell: A lot more ducks.

Jerry Skates: There’s a lot more ducks.

Ramsey Russell: A lot different species.

Jerry Skates: Different species. You know what I’ve always found amazing, like the teal, the North American teal, you shoot into them, you know what they do? They go straight up.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jerry Skates: That was the first thing when I came down here, we shot in the first group of teal.  You’re waiting for them to go up. They don’t go up.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jerry Skates: You know, and you think all the teal sound alike, and they don’t.

Ramsey Russell: They put on afterburners, keep going forward.

Jerry Skates: They just keep going forward. They do a lot of bobbing and weaving, too, when you ought to be weaving and bobbing.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What was your favourite hunt down here this week?

Jerry Skates: The last one I went on every time.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. All right. All right. What was this morning like? It was cold. We got dealt a cold hand, twice I’ve been down here to Argentina that it was ice, and this was the second time.

Jerry Skates: I think we finished up, I think, in about, you know, time goes by, but, I mean, it was like, I don’t know, I’m say, an hour and a half.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Yeah.

Jerry Skates: Yeah, we shot really well.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, there was some debate before we got here on Grayson shooting your birds, you shooting Grayson’s birds. What happened there?

Jerry Skates: Me and Grayson hunt together a lot.

Ramsey Russell: That makes a difference, doesn’t it?

Jerry Skates: Yes. And I don’t know, we pretty well were dialled in the past couple, three days on who needs to shoot what. You know, you don’t get that in America.

Ramsey Russell: You know, we’ve had that conversation previously with some other folks down here. That’s the luxury of having a lot of birds and a lot of traffic is, you know, like, if me, you, and Grayson are all hunting together back home, everybody volleys.

Jerry Skates: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: But down here, you can split sides, you can do stuff, because you know there’s going to be more ducks coming.

Jerry Skates: Right.

Jerry Skates: Or don’t even stand up. I’ll just say, “Shoot him, Grayson.”

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What do you think about the afternoon hunts down here?

Jerry Skates: Oh, they’re phenomenal. It’s crazy.

Ramsey Russell: Every once in a blue moon, we have a good afternoon hunt back home. But anymore, it seems like most people take the afternoons off, let the ducks have the place.

Jerry Skates: Right. Yeah, I mean, it’s been nonstop. Like, I don’t know where five days went.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, there was one particular hunt sometime this week. I don’t remember when, back at the trucks, you and Grayson had gotten big-time into the Rosie bills.

Jerry Skates: Yeah, that was great.

Ramsey Russell: How can that not be your favourite hunt? I like the pintails, I like the teal, I like the widgeons, I like the next duck to come to the decoys, but, son, I flip-flop over Rosie bills. This morning, we shot three. And the thing I like about him is, you shoot the one bird, and the other bird stays on that even trajectory. He don’t start barrel rolling and bobbing and weaving and doing stuff like those pintails and teals do. It’s easy to pick him up.

Jerry Skates: Well, you know, this morning, we shot Rosie bill, white cheek, yellow bill pintails. We shot several cinnamon teal across the board on all of your teal that you could kill. Grayson keeps up with this stuff. And then we shot some spoon bills.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jerry Skates: Yeah. And that’s crazy down here, like, you know, spoon bills. Who wants to use a spoon bill?

Ramsey Russell: You shoot spoon bills back home?

Jerry Skates: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Only if they come in. No Mississippi shovel killer like myself.

Jerry Skates: So my dog likes them. My male dog, he can’t hear anymore, but he can hear them, the shovelers when they come through.

Ramsey Russell: We had a real good group of folks here. There’s 14 people in the lodge. Talk about the lodge dynamic. Okay you get back from your hunt, everybody’s gone off, hunted two to a blind, had a great hunt. What happens when you get back? What’s it like falling into a lodge with this many people from around the country?

Enjoying the Hunt with Any Person Around the Table

I sit there quietly a lot of times and just hear the most interesting stories.

Jerry Skates: That’s a good question. Out of all hunts I’ve been on, from Canada to down here, this is the first time I’ve ever had to share a lodge with somebody else. It wasn’t just our group. And, you know, this is gets hard.

Ramsey Russell: They can be.

Jerry Skates: Can be getting hard, you know, to get people to go. And the dynamics, I mean, I met 14 people today that I could call up anytime and go hunting with.

Ramsey Russell: You go duck hunt with anybody during the table.

Jerry Skates: Any one of them.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I noticed you kind of gravitate sometimes you’d be on one far end of the table, sometimes on my end. You were just kind of grazing around. Is that going with the conversation?

Jerry Skates: That kind of goes with the conversation. We talk more on the north end in the afternoons and a little less talking in the mornings on the south end. But I enjoyed everybody here. Every person here, I’ve enjoyed.

Ramsey Russell: You know, you hear some real stories around the campfire. Outside, we got a campfire, and inside, we got a fireplace. Got real cold, so we moved inside to the fireplace. But you just hear, that’s what I like. I sit there quietly a lot of times and just hear the most interesting stories.

Jerry Skates: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And it may not be duck hunting, it may be deer hunting, or it might not even be hunting. It may be something else. It’s always good stories.

Jerry Skates: That’s why an old man told me one time, he said, “You know, if you ever quit telling stories, quit.”

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you know, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? You know, we’re all here for.

Jerry Skates: Yeah, ’cause he’s like, “That’s what you do it for.” He said, “If you don’t do nothing, you ain’t got nothing to talk about.” And I said, “That’s right.” And I tell off on myself a lot of times. I can be by myself and, you know, talk about the stupidest thing I did that day. But, you know, you got to have something to talk about.

Ramsey Russell: What’s it like coming down to this part of the world and hitting upper twenties and lower thirties, knowing when you get back home what it’s going to be like? How long is it going to be before you’re gasping for air like a carp?

Jerry Skates: My wife has said something to me before when I got back. She’s like, why are you kind of grumpy? She just got back from vacation, and I’m like, you know, it’s hot. But, yeah, I love coming down here. I mean, I will come back again.

Ramsey Russell: Down to La Floria.

Jerry Skates: Yes, yes.

Ramsey Russell: Last question. Tell me about the food. We talked about the people. We talked about the hunt. Tell me your impression of the food down here. Did you get enough to eat?

Jerry Skates: Yeah, my zipper has, like, kind of flared open at the top.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, it stretched out a little bit.

Jerry Skates: We’re stretching. So, yeah, the food is, that’s one thing that brings me down here is the food.

Ramsey Russell: It’s the total package.

Jerry Skates: It’s the total package.

Ramsey Russell: The experience is the total package. You know, I’ve always said, I don’t sell dead ducks. I sell experiences. But dead ducks are part of the experience. When you come down on this kind of hunt, you get it all. You get to have your cake and you get to eat it, too.

Jerry Skates: You know, that’s something else I enjoyed coming down here versus, you know, I mean, I like going with my wife to where we go to Mexico or wherever we go where you’re stuck at a resort here. I mean, you know, you’re going to go, you’re going to travel, not far, but you’ll travel and you get to see how other people live.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jerry Skates: And that amazes me. How they farm.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jerry Skates: I mean, how much different their farming is than ours.

Ramsey Russell: Everything’s different.

Jerry Skates: You know, I mean, this is about as natural as you can get.

Ramsey Russell: I guarantee you.

Jerry Skates: And, you know, no dirt scrapers have come through this part of the country.

Ramsey Russell: World. Now, they haven’t, you know, and I talked about that earlier this summer—how, you know, we’ve lost so many wetlands in North America to “progress,” but they still have it intact right here. And it’s not just that they don’t have many hunters. They’ve got a whole lot of habitat down here.

Jerry Skates: Absolutely. I mean, it’s the habitat is unbelievable. I mean, we could take a lesson or two from these folks on habitat.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to on that note, thank you very much, Gary. See you next time.

Jerry Skates: All right. Bye-bye.

Do You Shoot Better When You Shoot at the Same Duck?

He shot much better than usual, I’ll give him that.

Ramsey Russell: Wrapping up the episode with Grayson Chesser, also from Natchez, Mississippi. Grayson, Jerry said you shoot a lot better when you all shoot at the same duck. Is there any truth to that?

Grayson: Yeah, it makes him look a lot better, for sure.

Ramsey Russell: Does it?

Grayson: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: He said you all had it worked out here by the very end of the trip, so that’s good.

Grayson: He shot much better than usual, I’ll give him that.

Ramsey Russell: You know, he brought up an interesting topic right after we got done talking. I’m going to ask you about this. I wish I’d gotten him to talk about it on his part, but he wouldn’t bring it up till later. He talked about how you all ain’t getting any younger no more than all of us. You all in your forties now, and he can remember his dad and some of the old guys who have now aged out. And he said, man, people I hunted with for 20-30 years, and bam, they died of cancer. They died. They got sick. They got, you know, whatever. They can’t do this no more. And it seemed to be real important to him for why—what makes him want to come do these trips right now, while he has his powers of enjoyment. Have you all ever talked about that, or do you share that sentiment?

Grayson: Oh, absolutely. You know, you got to do it while you can. While you can do it. When you get older, you might not have the ability. You may not be able to do it for a variety of reasons.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, you know, because it seems like we’re all conditioned to work hard, take a day’s vacation, and wait till we retire, and then go try to live our lives. But like, you know, to his point, one of my very best friends on earth did some trips and had a good time. But he retired last January, came down here last summer, died last fall, and didn’t get to enjoy those golden years. So, I mean, I think you got to strike while the iron’s hot and get on down there while it’s good. Get it while it’s good, so to speak.

Grayson: I agree 100%. And who knows, you know, there may not be a season next year. They do it while you can, for sure.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you were asking. Speaking of that, you were asking me just the other night about, you know, why there seemed to be some caution or about taking all these pictures of all these ducks and doing all this stuff. They’ve got anti-hunters down here. I mean, like we can’t imagine back home. They’ve got anti-hunters. Like, they ain’t got a million other things to worry about like 2000% inflation or whatever it is, but the anti-hunters are running, running amok down here. And so they’re all just a little more guarded. A little more protective about what they let people post up on the Internet anymore and a lot of people. And it may not be forever. I mean, you know, I’m saying? It wasn’t since COVID ended and I started coming down here, Grayson, it just dawned on me. Holy cow. The greatest duck con on earth may be over any day. Any day now.

Grayson: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: This is you all’s third trip down here. Tell me how it compared to the other two trips.

Grayson: First trip we had was just doves and decoying pigeons. So that’s a great experience as well. Second trip was supposed to be duck and dove, but due to a limitation on shells, it was primarily duck. And it was a good trip as well. This one has been wonderful. I mean, it’s a great volume of ducks. We had some options for doves and Perdiz, which was nice to experience.

Ramsey Russell: You did go Perdiz hunting, didn’t you?

Grayson: Yeah, right. So that was nice. And what I really like about this one is most of the trips we have trouble finding six or eight people who can go.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Grayson: The beauty of this trip is I reached out to you and said, do you have any availability this year? I have room for two. That’s perfect. I don’t have to go hunting for six to eight people. You know, there’s 14 people here, but there may be four different groups. That’s a wonderful opportunity because you may not be able to go if you have to put together six or eight.

Ramsey Russell: You bring up a good point because there’s a lot of just one or two guys, and nobody’s going to open a lodge for one or two guys. But we bundle people together. This is a scalable lodge. We’ve got ten bedrooms right here with private en suite facilities, and we can put people together. And you two guys are going to hunt together. It’s two to three to a blind. So there’s two of you, three of you, you all going to hunt together. There’s one guy. We’ll find another spire for you, don’t worry. But what’s it like for two guys from Mississippi to walk into a lodge with twelve other people from around the country?

Grayson: You know, at first, you’re going to be a little skeptical, but as time goes by, everybody else that’s here is just like you. They enjoy hunting, they enjoy the outdoors. They’re here to get away when it’s 100 degrees back home, when it’s frozen water here. So it’s like being at a hunting camp with new people that are guests in that hunting club, you know? It’s a good experience.

Ramsey Russell: I describe Los Flores as our Disneyland-like duck hunt. In my personal and professional opinion, 20-something years of coming down here to Argentina and scouting around and looking at all the other outfitters, like some of those other places you’ve hunted up north. I’ve never found as consistent or as good or professional a duck hunt. Duck-only hunt is right here. Am I too far off in that judgment?

Grayson: No, absolutely. This is wonderful. It’s a very well put together duck–hunting outfit.

Ramsey Russell: Kind of hunt you’d come back on.

Grayson: Absolutely. Yeah. Duck is not the exception here. Duck is the primary focus.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah. They’re not mad at them already?

Grayson: No, not at all.

Ramsey Russell: Have you learned any tricks of the trade you would wish you could do back home? ‘Cause they do things a little differently down here at times.

Grayson: I don’t know. You know, it seems we have to work a little harder to get a duck back home. Ducks are a little more educated back home than they are here. So you’ve got the decoys, you’ve got the mojo, but back home, we got to have a pull string. We got to to have some other things.

Rosy-Bills: A Memorable Hunt

This year, it’s been a different year, especially for this hunt, because nobody, but nobody, owns rosy-bill poachers like this outfitter. 

Ramsey Russell: Did you have a favorite hunt?

Grayson: Oh, one day was 80-something percent rosies. That was pretty special.

Ramsey Russell: That’d be a memorable hunt to make.

Grayson: Yeah, that was pretty special. But a good mixed bag. A lot of different species. I think we shot at least eight different species today.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Grayson: I enjoy that. I like seeing the different kinds of ducks.

Ramsey Russell: This year, it’s been a different year, especially for this hunt, because nobody, but nobody, owns rosy-bill poachers like this outfitter. Nobody in the country owns rose-bill poachers like this outfitter, and they didn’t show up this year. So it’s been high diversity, high speed. The volume has still been amazing, but the rose-bill’s been far and few between. And, you know, if you laid them all out on a table, Grayson, and looked at all the pretty species and the wing colors and the beak colors and everything, rose-bill doesn’t just, he ain’t the sexiest bird out there, but he is the duck for which I would travel overnight right here just to hunt. If I could only shoot one South American duck for the rest of my life, it’d be a rose-bill poacher. You know, he’s my favorite. He gives it up. He comes in strong. It’s like John Wayne just bailing into the bar, “I own this place,” and here he comes, you know, and I love it.

Grayson: And they’re a tough bird. That’s the hardest one to kill, for sure. The pintails, the teal, the wigeon, they give it up a little easier as far as when you hit them. But that rose-bill’s a tough bird.

Ramsey Russell: Would you say they’re your favorite bird too, or which one do you like best?

Grayson: I don’t know.

Ramsey Russell: Are you a mallard purist back home?

Grayson: No, I like the mixed bag back home too. I grew up hunting fields where it was, “Let’s see how many different species we can get today.” I don’t know, maybe if I had to pick one, maybe the wigeon.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I hear that a lot.

Grayson: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: They’re much bigger than ours. They’re louder. And they decoy really, really well.

Grayson: They’re coming in.

Ramsey Russell: How would you compare the hunting here to back home? I mean, ’cause, you know, when we drive down you look out to one and you go, man, good to me, it just reminds me of the Mississippi delta. Different trees, different species, but a lot of soil, beans, a lot of corn, a lot of milo, but it is flat. You can see the horizon. It just reminds me somewhat of the Mississippi delta.

Grayson: Yeah, just like a lot of agricultural areas on the drive up here. I was looking at an aerial map, and a lot of this looks like the prairie pothole region.

Ramsey Russell: It does.

Grayson: It’s very similar to a North Dakota hunt in that regard. Not dry field hunting, but your potholes.

Ramsey Russell: I know you’re real active in Ducks Unlimited back home, as am I. And, you know, their singular mission in conservation is wetlands. And when I look at Buenos Aires province or any province down here in Argentina versus anywhere in the modern-day United States, now on the one hand, we kill more ducks than the rest of the world combined, but on the other hand, what might we kill if we still had the habitat intact? These places, do you kind of get a sense when you’re down here of, “Oh my gosh, this is why I need to be committed to Ducks Unlimited. This is why we need more wetlands back home.” Do you gain that sense down here?

Grayson: Oh, absolutely. You don’t see the wetlands drained here as much as you do in the States.

Ramsey Russell: They just farm around them, deal with it.

Grayson: That’s where their cows are going to drink from or whatever, It’s not this large-scale farming as you see in the United States. So there’s a lot of preserved wetlands. Here it’s been dry for a few years, you can tell, but they’re not trying to drain the wetlands or plow up the wetlands.

Ramsey Russell: Around, even with this outfitter in the past 15 years, we loop back over to this little area. You might go an hour over there, an hour over yonder. And what I’ve seen is, you know, this area may be dry next year, and that area may be wet, and the farmers may get in and disk some of these swags and plant some of these swags. But then when it starts laying in wet again, you’ll start seeing all these tule start coming back, and it’ll become marsh again because they don’t drain it, they don’t tile it. They just let it be and farm around it, live with it. And, gosh, what a best of both worlds if you’re a duck hunter.

Grayson: It is. It’s great. A lot of area.

Ramsey Russell: Any favorite meals? Anything stand out? Because we ate. I mean, I was just thinking after eating, I was not going to eat lunch till I looked at it and realized that matambre is not matombreze. Basilio is one of my favorite things to eat down here. So, okay, I’m going to eat this, but I’m not going to eat tonight. Probably not going to eat tomorrow. You know? I mean, was there any meal that stood out? Anything unique, anything you said, “Man, I’d kind of like to do that at home”? I know I meant to ask Jerry how to cook. He went back in the back and learned how to make that milanesa rosy-bill, the other day.

Grayson: Yeah. You know, lots of good beef here. Of course, I can’t even tell you what some of it was. I liked, there was one piece of meat that had the cheese and the tomato cooked on top of it. I don’t know what that was.

Ramsey Russell: That was called, I do that. That was pork matambre, and they call it a ala pizza because it had cheese and tomato on it. Absolutely. It’s kind of like eating pizza if you had a pork belly crust.

Grayson: That’s it.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what it is. And I had my fill of that last night.

Grayson: That was wonderful.

Ramsey Russell: Would this be the kind of hunt you would want to come back to, or do you feel like you need to go see more of Argentina?

Grayson: I don’t know why you need to go anywhere else. It’s a great lodge. It really is. It’s always good to see different areas. Don’t get me wrong.

Ramsey Russell: Duck hunters duck hunt.

Grayson: That’s right. It was consistent. The only day it was not, yesterday was only one that numbers were down a little bit, and that’s because everything was frozen solid.

Ramsey Russell: Frozen solid. Have you talked to anybody back home about what the temps may be like in Natchez, Mississippi, right now? If I had to guess, it’s mid-July. We’re recording this thing. Probably 113-degree heat index. It feels like it.

Grayson: That’s it. Jared sent a picture of the ice. He was throwing ice on top of ice, making it skate across. And he sent that to a buddy of his at 9:00 in the morning. It was already a heat advisory in Mississippi at nine in the morning.

The Bond Between Duck Hunters Across Countries

Hey, I’ve enjoyed it. I really have enjoyed hunting with you, Grayson. It’s been great to know you, great to see you, great to share camp with you, because we have talked about this with some of the other guests. You know, get a collection of 14 people from around the United States, and everybody’s got stories.

Ramsey Russell: Nine in the morning. Whereas I was looking at my phone, and it was 27 degrees. Feels like 21 down here. It felt like 21 degrees out there when I was sliding that ice. Yeah, I guarantee you. Hey, I’ve enjoyed it. I really have enjoyed hunting with you, Grayson. It’s been great to know you, great to see you, great to share camp with you, because we have talked about this with some of the other guests. You know, get a collection of 14 people from around the United States, and everybody’s got stories. And it’s funny about, we break off in the morning, our own little duck blinds, and we come back. They’ve got food going out here around the campfire, out in the front yard, or they’ve got food going around the fireplace, and wine, whatever else we’re drinking. And boy, the stories just turn on, and people become people. Birds of a feather fly together. Duck hunters anywhere you put them together, we’re all just duck hunters. And that’s become one of my favorite aspects of it.

Grayson: It has, just to listen to everybody else and the different stories and the different trips they’ve taken, it gives you a good perspective of what’s out there.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Thank you very much, Grayson.

Grayson: Thank you for letting us come.

Ramsey Russell: And folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. Just a short drive from Buenos Aires, which is just an overnight flight during regular sleeping hours. Just a short drive later, you step off in the wintertime when it’s scalding hot back home, and you melt a gun barrel on ducks, which is just like the good old days. See you next time.