EP 515. Texas Duck Hunting Desert Paradise with Speck Ops

 

Big Fans of Ducks, Doves, and Quail

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where we’re going way down the Mexican border in Texas today. Now, here’s what’s so interesting about this, is I can remember being in college wanting to be a whitetail deer biologist, I took a job way down in South Texas on these massive low fence whitetail deer ranches back in the day, shooting deer and planting food plots and all that good stuff was part of the job description and a lot of quail, lot of doves and every time the wind blew from the north, November, December, here come the ducks. And I kind of reconnected with my roots in bird hunting and it became a thing, as you all know and today’s guest, Luke and Jillian Bledsoe with Speck Ops Waterfowling, are now working in that same part of the world and here’s the craziest thing, man, we’re talking ginormous ranches, brush land right up against the Chihuahua desert and big trophy whitetails and since I was down there, exotics have become kind of a big deal. Nobody cares about ducks and doves and quail to speak of and Speck Ops have got it all to themselves. Guys, how you all doing today?

Luke Bledsoe: We’re blessed, Ramsey, first and foremost, man, we’re giddy to be on this podcast with you, man, what a true blessing and all glory to God, man, this thing would not have been possible, it wasn’t even supposed to be anything and here we are today, talking to you. So we’re good, man, we’re excited to discuss all this with you.

Ramsey Russell: The honor is all mine, Luke. I’ve been a huge follower of you, I’ve watched Speck Ops and keep up with you and it meant something to me that there is that 30 year connection back then, man, when I was down in You all’s neck of the woods, I was all over the white-tailed deer biology, that’s what I wanted to be, was the next Dr. Deer and I came home from working down there with a passion for waterfowl, but you all have been in business now for about 8 or 9 years in what I consider one of the best kept secrets in North American Waterfowl and how did all that come to pass?

Luke Bledsoe: So me and my family, I worked for an oil field company and oil field sales for man, I ran roads for about 7 years, hard. When I say hard, I left the house and ran about 400 to 500 miles every day, Monday through Friday, chasing oil rigs, chasing frac sites and superintendents, company man, there’s some company man I absolutely love, I call them great friends to this day, but your average company man is not the – they’re not real happy to see you. So that’s where I’ve kind of built up some really tough sales skin, I took the word no to the chin every day at this, that was during, it was in a downturn of the oil field, I feel like the oil field almost stays in a downturn nowadays. But anyways, they threw me into the wolves and said go get it and so basically I’m running across these ranches that nobody has any business being on 100,000 acre ranch, unless you’re there in the wintertime to kill a deer or you’re working or you’re there for work and man, the no oil field traffic signs that say do not trespass, man, if I got my binos out, look down those senderos and I saw an old boy with a nice flatbed, I’m going to go shake his hand and I just started shaking as many hands as I could and one thing led to the next. Everybody started knowing everybody and man, in a nutshell, that is how we got started, it really became a thing for guiding when I locked down it was a 90,000 acres at the time, I think they’re over 100 now. But went in there and it’s cartel looking gates since it’s 60 foot palm trees going all the way down to the hacienda and it’s like, dude, what are you doing? Don’t get shot. But you go in there talking, see the first person and he and I, oh, Alex Holzmeier, man, he and I are still really good friends to this day, went up and met Alex Holzmeier, dude shook hands and I said, hey man, do you all get a lot of birds out here? He smiled at me, he goes, dude, we were just in a meeting yesterday talking about all the waterfowl out here. I got to go teach 4-H, but call me tomorrow and let’s have lunch and we did, we had lunch and that’s when I realized this is past the point of going buddy hunt and shooting a few birds. There’s something out here that’s special because 100,000 acres, that’s a big place, but in the big footprint of south Texas, man, that’s just a tiny little toenail. There’s a whole lot more land out there than just that and a lot of untapped resources and it just took a lot of persistence and perseverance with that also and just running hard and taking the same routes every day just because all these ranches are – most of them are electric high fence, so you’re not just going to go catch the gate open to go talk to someone and I know you can get people’s phone numbers and all that too, man, but I try, the last thing I do is call people, I love shaking hands that’s where the magic’s at my percentage, the guys laugh all the time and my percentage of shaking hands and having a good relationship with the landowners, pretty dang good in person, you don’t know who people are over the phone. Not that you know who somebody is in person either these days, but you get at least, a nice, presentable person, shirt tail tucked in, smiling more than, why are you smiling? Talking about ducks so big, son, yeah, hop in the side by side, let’s go look around. So I think more than anything, these guys that couldn’t care any less about ducks, geese and cranes, they really, they could just – I sold my passion to him, Ramsey. It was like, dude, this guy, he really cares about ducks.

Ramsey Russell: But what they think, now, Luke, look, what did them boys in a flatbed with a bunch of fence post, T post set down on the back and all that Briar country would, fooling with cattle, what did they think the first time you come up and said, you all got any ducks? Now, there are doves and quail down there, but do you got ducks? Seriously? I mean, how many people look at you like you crazy or lost?

Luke Bledsoe: Oh, plenty, but you know what? There’s plenty of guys that are also like, hey, man, I know I met you 30 seconds ago, but literally jump in my truck, let’s go look at some tanks, that sounds fun and it’s like, dude, I look up straight to the sky and I’m like, thank you, Lord I should have got a bullet whizzing by me pulling in these gates, but 10 minutes later, here I am sitting in his truck, he’s, hey man, want a beer? Let’s go look at ducks, like, oh okay. I can do this, like, some of the coolest relationships, man.

A Go at Life with the Old Oil Man

Jillian Bledsoe: There’s been numerous occasions where Luke’s come home and he’s like, here’s the key to the ranch that I just stepped foot on for the first time today. Oh, I have the gate codes to their whole property, thousands of acres in my phone, they said, come out whenever I want to and go check ponds after meeting them for an hour, if that, like, people just fall in love with Luke because he’s just that genuine guy that I feel like these days, people try to be and you meet Luke and you just know that’s who he is to his core.

Ramsey Russell: Jillian, you’re his life and business partner with Speck Ops and he had a job as an oil and gas guy, the old oil man, he called it out there in South Texas, you all got a growing family. What were your thoughts when he came home and said, I’m going to start a guide business?

Jillian Bledsoe: I was excited, it’s been his passion his whole life of waterfowl hunting and we lived in Louisiana, South Louisiana and he moved over to Texas for me because my family moved from Houston area up to the Hill country and he said, I’ll never hunt another day in my life out in the Hill country, but I’ll do it because I love you and I love your family.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Jillian Bledsoe: And little did he know how, what is it? 15 years later, we’re here and he has a waterfowl outfit over here, so the Lord knew what he was doing, he was aligning all the steps for sure because if we stayed south, Houston or Louisiana, none of this would be what it is right now.

Ramsey Russell: It’s funny how you just – you take a fork in the road and it just works out, come to a fork in the road and take it, just have faith and keep going and it usually works out like itself. Now, you all didn’t grow up in the part of the world you all are now around, Uvalde, you all grew up east of there, you all grew up in Louisiana? You grew up in Texas?

Luke Bledsoe: Yes. So a longer story for another day, but Jillian and I used to – We grew up in the same neighborhood in Alvin, Texas. Her brother and I grew up 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, playing soccer and baseball, All Stars together and all that and Jillian was always around but we have, there’s a 3 year age gap. So I’m 8, she’s 5 kind of deal and she was always just around, we’d all play together and all that and yeah, so we grew up in Alvin and then when I turned 11, we moved to another suburb southwest of Houston, like south of the Sugar Land area, Richmond, Rosenberg, down through there and we never really kept in touch all the way through high school and then I ended up in Louisiana and then that’s when we reconnected and it’s a neat deal, but yes –

Ramsey Russell: How did you all reconnect?

Luke Bledsoe: All right, since you asked, I was playing Halo 3 online with my brother and some of his buddies and there was a guy on there from Alvin and I was like, dude, I used to live in Alvin, do you know so and so and so and so and I said, do you know Hunter Burks? He said, yeah man, I know Hunter, he goes, man, have you seen his sister lately? I said, are you talking about Jillian? He said, yeah man. So I had to look her up and that is, that’s all she wrote, Ramsey, I reached out to her and that was it, that ship sailed and here we are, 4 kids later doing what we do, man.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great story.

Luke Bledsoe: It’s wild.

Waterfowl Hunting as a Youngster

It’s funny, we have all these beautiful birds down here that we kill and the only 2 mounted birds that I have in my house today are 2 green headed mallards…

Ramsey Russell: Luke, did you, I’ll ask you first and did you grow up hunting and fishing? If so, what was it like growing up? What was your hunting background growing up?

Luke Bledsoe: Hunting background, like all kids, they get introduced to squirrel hunting and deer hunting and the whole 9. The only time that I got shaky was when ducks flew around, really and growing up in Alvin, it was more, I guess after I was 11, things got more on the serious side of hunting with dad and we hunted a lot in the Eagle Lake rice prairie area, man. That’s when Eagle Lake still had their sign up when you enter town that said goose hunt capital of the world, now it’s like small town, big heart, something like that, unfortunately, there’s just no more rice and just not a whole lot of birds there anymore. But anyways, grew up hunting around there and my dad through business, they had a huge corporate hunting lease outside of Navasota, Texas at night you could see the lights of cow field and man, it had some Navasota river bottom to it, oh Lord have mercy, it was greenheads and woodies and just to be 12, 13 with a 20 gauge, just sniping green heads, man and there’s nothing like it. It’s funny, we have all these beautiful birds down here that we kill and the only 2 mounted birds that I have in my house today are 2 green headed mallards and it’s like, dude, we might shoot one green head down here a year and that’s it, like where are my wigeons at? Where are my gadwalls at, my cinnamons, oh lord. But hopefully going to be adding to that soon, I need to be better about that, it’s just milliseason, it’s crazy and oh gosh, you’re worried about everything else other than yourself.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Luke Bledsoe: And we need to take a moment to just kind of recalibrate and think about ourselves from time to time and stay mentally and physically healthy through the season, man, because it will take a toll on you as you know. But yeah man, just grew up hunting, the rice prairie in that Navasota river bottom and probably my favorite memories, my grandpa, he just passed a couple years ago, but he had for, I don’t know, 30 years, he had 4,000 acres in the Kisatchie National Forest in Natchitoches, Louisiana and when they got rain, you already know what those bottoms look like. So just man, sitting in waist deep water, shooting almost like you’re hunting wood ducks like turkeys you’re standing up against a tree, you can hear them land 200 yards up and you’re waiting on them to swim up next to you, kind of a deal and the sights and sounds of hunting woodies in timber. I know those east coast guys get tired of it, but I’m like, man, there is something special about that setting right there.

Ramsey Russell: That’s similar to how I grew up myself shooting wood ducks, that’s very familiar to a lot of folks listening, Luke. What about you? Jillian? I’m looking over your shoulder, you got a blue wildebeest on the wall and you were telling me a story before we started recording. You grew up hunting and fishing too, huh?

Jillian Bledsoe: I grew up – My dad was a big fisherman, we would always, me and my brother and him would load up in those cold mornings and go stop at the gas station, get a snack and then go out on the bay or the bayou for the whole day and do fishing, but hunting, we weren’t super involved in, he’d do dove hunting every now and then and take us a couple times a year just to go and get his birds and have fun out there, but the bird hunting was never something that we were involved in until honestly, I met Luke and he took me on my first duck hunt and it was in the timbers of Natchitoches and got my first wood duck, that was my first duck ever. So that was really cool that he was – that was the memory of the first wood duck was with him.

Ramsey Russell: What did you do for your high school senior trip?

Jillian Bledsoe: So yeah, my dad, my grandpa had been going to South Africa and Africa for years, hunting with different outfits over there and so he, my dad asked one day, he was like, would that ever be something you’re interested in? And I was like, well yeah, of course, but that’s insane to do that. So he was like, if you’re in it, I’m in it too, so they sold off his boat because he kind of got in a seasonal life where he hadn’t been fishing so much, so he sold off his boat to pay for my hunting trip to Africa and took me over there and me and him and my mom went to South Africa for I think, 2 and a half weeks, right? Over 2 and a half weeks or almost 3 weeks and stayed over there and it was incredible.

Ramsey Russell: And what all did you hunt?

Jillian Bledsoe: I got a blue wildebeest, gemsbok, oryx, impala, zebra, zebra was the one that I was really after, we had that one made into a rug that is stored away in the attic until we don’t have 4 kids trampling it, one day it’ll make its reappearance into our home. But yeah, that was memories that will be hard to beat forever.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely will last lifetime, absolutely. And so you form this Speck Ops, Luke, you go out to West Texas, you figure you’re not going to ever hunt again, you end up finding some hunting and parlay it into this. What exactly did you parlay it into it? What are we looking at in terms of scale of your operation? Because it’s massive. It’s a big country out there now, but you got some massive landholders, when you add it all up, so big, I’m going to say it’s so big you have to run 3 lodges to cover it off, that’s unbelievable.

A Big Scale Texas Outfitting Operation

400 acre farm in Riviera on Baffin Bay and it’s got a few awesome sloughs on, it’s shallow water tanks, man, if you look at Riviera, Texas on a map, golly, you think you’d be looking at north, the prairie pothole almost, it’s incredible, when it rains, that’s the thing too.

Luke Bledsoe: Yes, sir and honestly, you could fit a few more really, so that’s how our Charlotte Camp popped up. We’ve had access to some land in that area which, most of that stuff is an hour and 45 from the 501 camp, so it wasn’t really logical to just bring guys over there and then return back, that’s a pretty long haul. So we gained some spots that we’ve had there for years and I just kept telling the guys, like man, we need to plant a hub right here because within 30 minutes of this dot right here, we can get to a lot of honey holes, so that’s how that started, the Charlotte Camp, we started the Riviera Camp, that’s way down there south of – It’s this down there near the King Ranch south of Kingsville and that blossomed from Drew Garcia, our main man and his cousin Finner, their family has like a 400 acre farm in Riviera on Baffin Bay and it’s got a few awesome sloughs on, it’s shallow water tanks, man, if you look at Riviera, Texas on a map, golly, you think you’d be looking at north, the prairie pothole almost, it’s incredible, when it rains, that’s the thing too. Golly, when it rains down there, it is unreal. So, the first year we launched the camp, we got blessed with rain and hell broke loose, it was wonderful, we were killing ducks and cranes all the time, it was awesome. So that’s how that camp got started and of course with that being said and us being the guys that we are, we just hustled around that area and it was pretty simple to grow that camp into what it is today and I think this is going to be year 3 or year 4 on Riviera. But this whole 501 Uvalde thing was the Southwest Camp, it’s the bread and butter, it’s the OG, it’s where things really started forming together, but like I said, we just started getting further and further away and said, man, there’s too much good stuff over here for us to touch it a couple times a year when we need it, like when we get in pinches, let’s go an hour and 45, like there’s too much gold over there, baby, let’s put a camp right here and we, it’s funny, Jillian and this farmer’s wife went to ministry school together and so there was a connection there and I’ve heard his name around, he was a big peanut farmer over there, so we’re like peas and carrots, man and he’s got a nice renovated ranch home. It’s super comfy, just South Texas ranch home air hockey table in it, he’s a big pastor at the church, so his living room is one big pew that goes across the whole room. It’s a sweet setup, man, but guys love it there and we kill a lot of speckle bellies and a lot of ducks out of that camp. But that’s it, that’s the 3 main camps. We’re kind of far west over here, kind of centralized outside where we can’t reach this one and then all the way down there along the coast and it’s just –

Ramsey Russell: I mean, the area is so big you need 3 camps to possibly cover it all, but it’s so ecologically diverse that you’ve got, if you do an accounting of waterfowl or wing shooting opportunities, you’ve got practically every, you got every single Central Flyway puddle duck, most divers that possible and then you’ve got to include some pretty unique species we’ll talk about in a minute and then you’ve got a lot of speckle bellies, you’ve got a few snow geese and you’ve got one heck of a lot of cranes. I mean, for a species guy, let alone let’s go get after him and hunt kind of guy, but just from a species guy, it’s so ecologically diverse and if you kind of get a 50,000 foot view looking down to that part of the world you’ve got – towards the west you’ve got the Chihuahua desert, which is a totally unique landform crowding up into parts of Texas, then it comes up into massive Brush country, which is kind of where I was working down there on the Piloncillo Ranch, it’s just a land cover type of mesquite and huisache and prickly pears and rattlesnakes and big bucks and javelinas and things of that nature, but golly man, to run those cows you got to have stock tanks and so there’s a lot of water down there, they’ve got windmills, they’ve got all kinds of stuff putting water out on the landscape in different places and then kind of close up to where you’re at around Uvalde, you’ve got kind of the garden area with all the winter vegetables and seeds and grains, it’s a massive irrigated agricultural landscape, you’ve got this perfect mix of all these different landforms coming together and just north of that part, you’ve got a lot of clear water rivers that run through Texas and mountains. It’s a pretty ecologically diverse area that just happened to be almost completely absent of a waterfowl hunting culture because everybody’s keyed around those big movie grandes running around. Yeah I mean, that’s crazy.

Luke Bledsoe: It is bad. You want to hear something funny too? We’ve been in the blind several times and we’d have a client just, we’re sitting there just having a heck of a time killing birds and you’ll just hear a guy saying, man, my folks have a deer lease out here, like or man, I’ve got a deer lease down the road, I had no idea we could do this out here, it’s like, man, you just got to know where to look, bro and check the right hands and there’s pockets, they’re here and because we’ve been killing ourselves for so long to accumulate, because it’s no secret, if you’re looking for them, you can find them, especially with the top of a truck and a pair of binoculars, you can – the big birds, the ducks, though, I mean, these ranches are too big to scout, scouting ducks is crazy here, but the big birds, you can see those suckers 10 miles off and if you’re a guy like me, you can find them pretty easy, if you know where to look and know how to read maps and you know where they’re roosting and that list goes on. But yeah, man, the big birds, it’s like we keep the – And I tell the guys there’s a reason there’s so many birds here and it’s because they don’t get messed with, so I’ve said for years if it rained like it just rained this year, if it rained like this every year, we could run 2 groups simultaneously, splitting off every single week of season here and we could probably do that this year. But Ramsey as you know, man, it’s sure it’s about the dollar, but golly, I love posting bangers more than anything else in my life and if we can just make sure that we take care of that one group a week per camp that it’s, because the rain is going to fluctuate year to year, you know what happens if it, I mean, it will, it never rains over here and Ramsey, some of these places, they get 6 to 10 inches of rainfall a year.

Ramsey Russell: A year, yeah.

Luke Bledsoe: And we just got blessed with 7 or 8, amen. But yeah, man, you never know if your pond is going to be a one acre mud hole, literally or if you get a hard 5 inch rain north of that creek because all these tanks, it’s typically being fed by a dry creek or all these tanks are typically fed by a dry creek. You get a 4 or 5 inch rain in the right spot and that 1 acre mud hole is going to a tiny hole of several acres, shallow water, knee deep across wedge and butt up all day feeding, it’s nasty, man. So that’s the goal is to pray for rain around here, we got our rain dance down pretty good. But it’s fun because we do have so much country, it’s like, I mean, I stay up, I watch the radar a lot, Jillian actually has an album of meteorologist Luke and its pictures of me on my phone looking at the radar downstairs.

Ramsey Russell: You talk about you talk about hunting pressure and that is one of the one of the biggest factors in duck hunting in North America, right now. We kill more ducks in North America than all the world combined, but there’s a tremendous amount of hunting pressure across the landscape, I’ll pick on the state of Arkansas just for a minute because I love them, but they kill year in, year out, they kill about half the ducks, the entire Mississippi Flyway, but you hear a lot of grumbling increasingly in recent years, that’s really, the birds going nocturnal, the birds doing this, the birds doing that, the birds bouncing around because of all that hunting pressure, that’s a real classic example, but then you come into a part of the world like yours where it’s a deer hunting culture and these massive ranches that, I mean, the ranch I worked on 107,000 acres and there was 5 ranch hands and 3 or 4 of us college kids, that’s it, on 107,000 acres and we’re doing just work, we’re not chasing these things into the world. So a little bit of the duck hunting I did, Luke, I’d just be driving around 17 miles from the camp house one day looking for something and stumbled across a stock tank full of ducks and it probably never had been hunted or maybe hunted once since the ranch was formed and then comes ranch that shoots ducks one time and then go do something else for the next, for the remainder, you see what I’m saying? It’s so little hunting pressure relative to what anybody listening can even conceive, it’s got to be good.

Luke Bledsoe: Yes, sir and that’s the thing too, there’s so many huge ranches with these huge, big beautiful bass lakes that just sit, they’re all big like they’re all refuges, that’s all they are, it’s one big oasis down here and we just try to pick up as many as we can and respect as many as we can, some of these lakes, they’re so big and bad, Ramsey, you treat it like a public lake almost, I mean, some of these suckers are 60, 80 acres, I know that doesn’t sound big to folks, not in this area, but trust me, a 60 acre lake in the middle of this desert is, it’s something, they’re hard to hunt too, those big ones are pretty hard to hunt because you’re competing, typically you’re competing with 500 coots too and I mean, there’s strategies around all that. But anyways, my point is there’s so many, when it rains, so many big lakes out here that these birds just sit and they are untouched, year after year, they have the same routine, even, I said this last year, I truly feel like the first good little cold front in November, I could be completely wrong, but I would like to say that we have 75% of our ducks by mid to late November and then after that point, those 75% just kind of bounces around, it feels like the number every year is the same that time of the year and yeah, you’ll get a cold front, but heck, down here, sometimes we’ll get a big cold front and we’ll lose – Those birds will be down at your other, at your camp in Mazatlan or something. So we’ve hunted on a good cold front, killed a bunch of birds on like a Sunday and then we would scout that same slough on a Tuesday after a heat wave and it would load back up with twice as many ducks as we just hunted with it and it’s just like, what is going on? So they’re here, they get here early and they just bounce around food sources and we just manage the pressure and go round and round, we’ll go hunt big birds and cranes, of course and then go back to ducks.

Hunting Waterfowl Over Irrigated Agriculture

Ramsey Russell: I assume you’re hunting most of the swan, most of these, I said swans, most of the cranes and the geese you all are hunting on irrigated agriculture, is that right?

Luke Bledsoe: Oh yeah, 100%, summer cornfields. When they do decide to do some fall corn around here, you already know what happens there, but winter wheat is a big one here for the sandhills, the geese, man, there’s a lot of people in West Texas and the Panhandle, they kill a lot of geese over wheat. We don’t do that here, they don’t, I don’t know, they’d rather hit some old nasty summer corn than some fresh wheat sprouts, it’s really strange. And you know what else is always just blown my mind is you take the West Texas red dirt, peanut country, dude, you’ll see 8,000 sandhill cranes in those fields, you come down here to where our Charlotte Camp is, that’s nothing but red dirt and peanuts and it’s like there’s a bunch of specks, but the cranes would rat, it’s like you go to that area and you’ll see all these beautiful red fields full of peanuts and you see a bunch of geese in it and you look across the field, like a buffelgrass pasture, 25 acre cattle pasture or goat pen and it’s got 75 cranes sitting in it and I’m like, hang on, why aren’t there 900 cranes in these peanuts? And they’re sitting over here hanging out with these cows when they got the same roosting style habitat, same food, like infrastructure here as you do West Texas, same kind of layout and there’s cranes just 20 miles outside there, but they don’t get in that red dirt and that’s when people ask me for a crane hunt at the Charlotte Camp, I’m like, dude, they’re not there, if you want to kill cranes, go to Riviera or this 501 camp, but that red dirt country there, you’re kill some wigeons and some speckled bellies though, I promise you that.

Ramsey Russell: They’re doing something else, it’s just, they’re going down there to satisfy some different life cycle or something, some need is being fulfilled there that I guess, you ever get into a crane’s head, Luke? Might be smarter than selling duck hunts, I mean, who knows why these birds do what they do?

Luke Bledsoe: That’s right. Cranes are a very weird animal, I mean, we –

Ramsey Russell: Go ahead.

Luke Bledsoe: Just the places that we have seen a sandhill crane, it’ll make you want to pick their brand out and put under a microscope for sure.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’ve seen them up in the breeding areas like up in the mountains of Montana and it’ll be, just imagine you’re on a mountainside and there’s a little brook or stream running down, there’s a bunch of willows and a bunch of cover and it’s just thick and gnarly and you see 2 cranes walking out there with their young and it doesn’t fit, I mean, you can just see their head above the grass. And then they walk into a bush and walk out the other side and it’s like, I’m used to seeing them in wide open, harvested landscapes, not something like that, it’s crazy.

Luke Bledsoe: Yes sir. We tell clients who aren’t familiar with it, I’m like, man, it’s kind of like, hey, have you hunted deer before? Hell yeah, man, we deer hunt all the time, like dude, it’s like shooting flying deer, really and especially when you see him in the middle of the woods like that, it’s really, it’s literally like hunting fly whitetail, man, it’s crazy, a lot of fun.

Ramsey Russell: I love to shoot cranes and have done it and several different places, I love to shoot sandhill cranes when they’re really giving it up, it’s over. I mean, it’s just over, the limits 3, it’s bam, it’s like shooting flat screen TVs once they pitch into the decoys but the most exciting part is when you see them on the horizon and they’re coming your way, I mean then you can go ahead and break out a breakfast burrito and start eating it and eat a little breakfast, watching them come in, they just seem be flying slow motion. I can often times hear them before I see them even and it’s amazing how that little trilling sound they make just pierces and penetrates space and travels so far and they’re very good to eat, the first time I’ve ever eaten them was down in your neck of the woods. The head biologist, whatever down there had some sandhill cranes and I’d never even heard of it. It’s not a Mississippi thing but they’re great to eat and they’re good sport. Do a lot of your clients, is that why they’re coming to hunt with Speck Ops or for that opportunity to shoot sandhill cranes? Is that a big priority species for you all?

Hunting Limits of Cranes, Specks, and Puddle Ducks

It gives us a huge variety, I mean we’ve had several clients come in over a 3 day period, 4 days, 3 nights and they’re leaving with limits of cranes, limits of specks.

Luke Bledsoe: I’m going to say 80 to 85%, they at least want one crane hunt in their package and which is perfect because again, it takes pressure off the ducks, it gives us a huge variety, I mean we’ve had several clients come in over a 3 day period, 4 days, 3 nights and they’re leaving with limits of cranes, limits of specks, I mean, Mexican ducks, wigeon, pintail, it’s just like, man, it’s really, it’s one of the – let me tell you this too because I was going to, when we were talking about those ranches, there’s some of these places out here, the species, the wildlife in general, so there’s one place in particular, it’s on that hundred thousand acre ranch, there’s a big lake there and it’s one of the only places in the world, correct me if I’m wrong, that you can kill a sandhill crane, a snow goose, a speckle belly, a every single puddle duck I don’t need to sit here and name them all, include diver ducks, Mexican duck, mottled everything on that Central Flyway, plus bobwhite, wild quail, mourning dove, you won’t get any white wing there, catch a 10 pound bass, shoot a turkey and a trophy low fence 180 whitetail, literally standing in the same spot, the same footprint. To me, that is just, it’s crazy, but when you put it on paper, that’s a true fact.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s incredible. What did – the first communication I ever had with you, Luke, I’m going to say 4 or 5 years ago maybe, you reached out to me, obviously you’ve heard Duck Season Somewhere podcast, because we had Phil Lavretsky on and he was soliciting help from around Texas, he was working on a project with Texas Parks & Wildlife about the mottled duck shift and Mexican duck encroachment kind of coming in there, man, there weren’t any Mexican mallards that I remember when I was down, of course, I didn’t duck hunt like I do now and you reached out to me and reached out to him and touched base with him, said, hey, we got them over here, tell me about that because I really want to talk about the Mexican ducks and the mottled ducks to start with the species range, but tell me about your involvement with Dr. Phil Lavretsky coming down and doing some work on you all’s properties.

Luke Bledsoe: So, first of all, what a guy, what a world of knowledge he is and golly, I owe him a phone call. Phil, I’ll get back to you soon. He came down and what an honor that was because he said, man, I had 10 guys that said they might be able to help me and you guys actually came through, so it was so much fun and so knowledgeable and just what an honor to be a part of that whole trip, but he came down and we hunted on some of our tanks that we hunt in the wintertime and this is this is in the middle of May. And he had the permits pulled and all that, we had to keep all that stuff on us, of course and he had already called the local game wardens and all that, but anyways, man, just to be down here with him in flip flops, in a swimsuit, sitting on a bank next to a cactus, helping him put Mexican ducks on a stringer was just a very out of body experience, like is this real? This does not feel correct at all but I’m here for it, Phil. So we’re out there and he’s whipping out his little, his weight scale and he’s measuring the beak, measuring the feet and everything in between and we logged all this information, Ramsey, I think out of the 3 days, I think we put 19, I think we killed 19 Mexican ducks that he was able to return home with and some bags on ice and I was honestly hoping for half of that. So he went back with more data than he could ask for and what a cool deal that was, one of the coolest moments, we were close to Eagle Pass on this one. There were 2 dusky ducks on a tank and when we got them back, one of them was – And this is in the middle of May, one of these birds was a full plumed out North Dakota greenhead mallard.

Ramsey Russell: Golly.

Luke Bledsoe: And he was with a Mexican duck hen and now how crazy cool is that?

Ramsey Russell: That is cool, for the record, Texas classifies any brown duck hen mallard, I guess a molting drake mallard, a black duck, a mottled duck or a Mexican duck as a dusky duck, the limits one a day, I believe that’s right, but you all also, so you all do have a lot of Mexican ducks in your neck of the woods, if a guy wanted to come down to check the box, collect the 48 or 58 or whatever he’s collecting, that’s a reasonable place to come to get a good shot at a Mexican duck without having to cross over an international border.

Checking Off the North American 41

I can’t wait to fill the books, hopefully we can book 6 days a week, 7 days a week for ducks, just ducks, for those first 2 weeks in November and we are going to hammer a lot of Mexican ducks, there’s going to be teal, there’s going to be gadwall, wigeon, shovelers, pintail…

Luke Bledsoe: Ramsey, I can tell you right now they are everywhere and when I say everywhere, there’s half a dozen to a dozen most of our spots right now, which is a lot, I mean for Mexican ducks you’re not going to see a 100 of them or 200 of them on a tank, you see them like that. But the thing is when you’re here in November, you’re killing a whole strap full of other beautiful puddle ducks with a kicker Mexican duck, so I mean you get to cross it off your list and take a picture with a bunch of other beautiful birds, but the state has, I think the first 5 days of season you cannot kill a dusky duck, which is pretty weird rule, I’d love to hear the explanation behind that one, but anyways, you can’t shoot a dusky duck down here for the first 5 days of season, so I would say somebody that wants to come kill one of those, our early November is actually pretty open, our January is getting jam packed, December starting to fill, but November, there’s some good dates for ducks and with all this rain, we have been just driving around giggling with all of this water, it’s such a blessing, man, there’s duck – We’ve probably have the best, it’s probably the best duck habitat that we have had since we started, man and I’m serious. No, I’m serious. There’s a lot of flats, there’s a lot of hydrilla that’s about to start growing in these tanks because right now there’s not a whole lot of food, but give it another month and there’s already Mexican ducks tucked in the ratometries and swimming in between cactus and all that so as soon as that water drops just a little bit and that vegetation comes up, it’s going to get rowdy coming November. I typically and the guys know this too, it’s hard for me to typically have confidence in booking a solid November for this camp because we don’t have any big birds yet and it’s like –

Ramsey Russell: You mean cranes and geese?

Luke Bledsoe: That’s right. The cranes and geese don’t really get here until after the 2nd week, they get here not in the huntable numbers that we would like. So the 2nd week in November, any time after that, those crazy geese, they really start showing up thick enough for us to go get after them and have a good time, but the first 2 weeks of November, it’s ducks and this year we have so much habitat. I can’t wait to fill the books, hopefully we can book 6 days a week, 7 days a week for ducks, just ducks, for those first 2 weeks in November and we are going to hammer a lot of Mexican ducks, there’s going to be teal, there’s going to be gadwall, wigeon, shovelers, pintail, I don’t know if your pintail are going to be sprigged out, but man, your Mexican ducks and your wigeon are going to be looking real good, it’s just a cool time of the year, man. The early Novembers –

Ramsey Russell: What about mottled ducks? You all do have mottled ducks, are they located at all 3 camps or just the South Camp?

Luke Bledsoe: Yes sir, we’ve killed them in all 3 camps. If you’re really trying to get that mottled, I would recommend the Charlotte or the Riviera camp, just because your odds of getting a Mexican duck are so much greater over here at the 501 Camp, just because you’re further west is all it is, because we’ve killed Mexican ducks over there in our Charlotte Camp too –

Ramsey Russell: I am sure.

Luke Bledsoe: And that was the whole reason Lavretsky was here, like, hey man, the mottled ducks are moving too far west, Mexican ducks are moving too far east, we got to figure this out. Give me a place to sleep and let’s go get after them so that’s what we did. But yeah, no, we kill a lot of hybrids too, man, we’ve killed some – Ramsey, we’ve killed some Mexican ducks that have like white patches on the sides of their head, all kinds of crazy and people are like oh, they came from the park, I’m like, dude, there’s no parks here, they did not come from the golf course here, they just got some weird crazy genetic deficiency or something. But there’s some rowdy looking Mexican duck hybrids out here and some of them look just like a green head but without the white collar on the neck, we’ve killed quite a few like that, just super cool stuff, man, half curls on the butt kind of deal that they don’t go all the way around, they kind of go up halfway and yeah, it’s a blast, November is going to get ducky, we cannot wait for that big first cold front this year. It’s going to be a really good time, we’re going to have a lot of options.

Ramsey Russell: What about the whistling ducks? Fulvous and black bellied whistlers, have you all ever killed any? Do you kill them regularly? When would be a good time of year to come hunt those?

Luke Bledsoe: Would highly recommend the Riviera camp the 1st week in November, maybe up to the 2nd weekend, anything after the 2nd weekend, they’re hightailing out to Mexico, as you get a little front and those suckers are out of there. But if it’s 2, 3 weeks out and it’s like, man, they’re gone or we got a big front, it’s obvious, we’re going to call you and tell you, hey man, I know you’re – that species you’re trying to check that box, he rolled out, we’ve named him Frank, he’s been sitting at this tank for 3 months and he got a little too, his bridges got too cold and he rolled out so, we’re always honest with people and up front and I think that’s how we’ve gotten to where we are today is because we treat people the way that we want to be treated and heck, that’s what’s wrong with the world I think, if the world wasn’t so dang selfish, I think I feel like it go around a little bit better. But anyways, we we’re going to be honest with you and put you where you want to be. But yeah, those Mexican, the squealers and the fulvous, we’ve killed them early November down there in Riviera, that I highly recommend them there.

Ramsey Russell: I know you told me one time that it’s not uncommon, you’ve all got a place at times down around Rivera I believe it was that while you’re set up for cranes or geese in the fields, that some of them mottled duck or Mexican ducks come in and dry feed, will the whistlers ever come in and dry feed early too, or?

Luke Bledsoe: So here’s the kicker with that, the reason they don’t, the reason that isn’t really an option is because that Riviera crane season, Ramsey, is in a zone – I think that’s zone B and it doesn’t open until mid December.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, I see, they’re gone normally.

Luke Bledsoe: They are gone for a while. And that’s because of – I think the reason they do that is because that’s the big whooping crane kind of stomping grounds and they just, they keep that season for cranes in that zone real sacred, the limit is, it’s 2 instead of 3 over here at the 501 Camp, but that camp gets really, actually my grand ammo they changed it up this year, they’re going to Riviera, I’m going to meet them down there this year they want to do a crane hut in the morning and then about 02:00 pm you jump in the in the bay boat with the boys and we go out at 02:00 o’clock in the evening and go kill redheads and pintail on the bay. So that is a very fun and productive package right there.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that Riviera’s got a lot of different options. I mean, I can do a crane and duck combo or I can do a waterfowl fishing combo, I mean, it’s the skies wide open, it’s real coastal down there, isn’t it?

Luke Bledsoe: It really is. I mean, it sits on Baffin Bay, it’s all the King Ranch surrounds, that’s all King Ranch shoreline where you’re hunting and all that, it’s a very unique spot and Christian and skinny water Chris, man, those boys are, they’re trophy trout guides for Baffin Bay Rod & Gun, so they know where some big trout are too, if you all want to do that, we can literally put together any package.

Ramsey Russell: Is the trout fishing good all season long?

Luke Bledsoe: So what we tell guys is instead of trying to squeeze that stuff into one day, it’s like either the fish is going to be pretty good in the morning or the hunting is going to be pretty good in the morning, it’s hard to do the cast and blast in one day, now we could do like a 3 or 4 day trip and designate like we’ll look at the weather and say, hey –

Ramsey Russell: Well, I get that, Luke, but like, could I catch fish from November, December and January? Can I fish out there, is the fishing productive all season long? Could I put together a cast and blast if I wanted to? Seemed like maybe even January, there might be some big ones.

Luke Bledsoe: Yeah, they get real more consistent, I think the little later you go, for sure and the weather got to be right, but they’re out there, man, it’s a fun addition to the package too, especially after you’ve already had a successful crane and duck hunt, it’s like, hey man, let’s change it up, let’s go for a boat ride and catch some big trout. So yeah, we can line all that up, we’ve got a few connections in the area too, if they wanted to stay an extra week and we can connect them with some guys to shoot a free range nail guy, down there. Oh yeah, man, there’s phone calls we can make and get that set up, if they wanted to make a – depends on how long they want to be away from the house, but we could put together anything over there at that camp, that’d be cool.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s all good to hear. I asked you the other day, I mean, I know that this time of year you all have got blue wings passing through, it’s amazing to me that so many of the continental population of blue wings, even the ones flying down the Mississippi Flyway, they get down to that Gulf Coast of marsh, take a 900 right turn, head towards El Campo, I think somebody told me one time 10% or 15% will hop straight across the Gulf of Mexico, but a lot of them get into that marsh area, head towards down to Garwood Prairie, keep going west around the Gulf, bringing right through you all’s area and it’s so crazy for a species that’s so absent from the Pacific Flyway that once they get into Mexico, they will go all the way down the Pacific Flyway, forget all that. What I’m asking you is you all shoot a lot of blue wings this time of year. What about during the regular duck season or late duck season? Do some of those big blue wings with the moon crest hop back over you all neck of the woods?

Luke Bledsoe: I’m going to be honest with you and tell you they are, most of them are still not around, heck, you see more in the month of May than you do during regulars.

Ramsey Russell: I believe that too.

Luke Bledsoe: Yeah. So man, no, it’s a big green wing, like I think I told you this the other day and this is a true statement, we have probably put almost if not more cinnamons on a strap than blue wings during regular season.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what you said the other day, you said you all shoot as many cinnamon teal as blue wings. So how many would that be over the course of a season? Is it a flip a coin, heads I do, tells I don’t? Is it a fairly good chance of shooting a cinnamon in you all’s neck of the woods in December, January?

Luke Bledsoe: A year like this, when we have a lot of rain, if we know a guy is coming in and really wanting to shoot a cinnamon, we’re going to scout extra hard and look at all X number of duck spots we have. But man, typically, let’s scratch that, on an average year, yeah, it’s flip of – we’ll kill 2 to 3 some years, maybe 4 to 5, I think there was a year we didn’t kill one or maybe we killed one, but it’s not like, hey man, we’re about to hammer them, it’s not California, but –

Ramsey Russell: Or Mexico, but it’s so interesting, it’s an ecologically diverse area, but you’ve got your bread and butter species that you’ll shoot, maybe any of the places you go, any of the camps you go, but then you’re going to have species that are going to gravitate towards one habitat type or another and cinnamon teal are pretty, they’re marsh birds, man. They like rank, muddy, nasty bottoms, generally where I see them, that’s where they’re going to hang out, they’re a shoveler’s crazy cousin, Eddie.

Luke Bledsoe: Yeah, they are, they hang out together a lot. It’s like, hey, here comes a group, there’s a flock of spoonies and a cinnamon mix in there, don’t shoot that shoveler hand, you got to get that –

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. What are the principal duck species? What would be some of the most common duck species that you all are going to bag?

Luke Bledsoe: Yeah. So you’re going to shoot gadwall, wigeon, pintail and green wings.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Luke Bledsoe: All, I mean, most hunts those 4 right there, the later it gets, we get some stud shovelers, which I know, you know all about, those I don’t care who you are, I’ve been saying this for a few years.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t think he met that as a compliment.

Luke Bledsoe: I’m telling you, look, I said this a couple years ago, but if a shoveler drake had a regular bill on his poor little face, he would probably be the most sought after duck in North America, they just look like a goofball, man and they get bad rap. I mean, dude, if I cooked you a spoony and a teal, I mean, would you really know with a blind test? I mean –

Ramsey Russell: You would not and I really wonder how they got such a bad rap in North America, where if you go over to any other country in the world in the Northern hemisphere that has shovels and a lot of them do, they’re not an odd bird, if you go to Australia where they can’t shoot them, that’s their trophy prize bird is that Australasian shovel. I mean, you go down to Argentina, it’s just another duck, I mean, it’s just anywhere shovelers exist, go to Africa, it’s just another duck but only here is it a funny with a whole bunch of nicknames that aren’t flattering. That’s crazy, but you all do shoot a lot of shovelers, I’m sure.

Wigeon, Gadwall, and Pintail

So there’s definitely areas where just, we’ll just hold shovelers and then there’s other we’ll look across the fence and it’s nothing but un-trash birds you’re wigeon, gadwall, pintail and all that, it’s like these boys stay on their side of the tracks and it’s hilarious, man.

Luke Bledsoe: Yeah, we will and there’s, it’s funny. We’ll have tanks that only hold shovelers Ramsey and we get some old boys that come from New Jersey, like hey, man, we’re looking for spoonies, brother, I got a spot for you, let’s roll with it. Oh, yeah. So they like that nasty, stinky mud, they’re in there eating those little water bugs and invertebrates and they just, I think they eat mud too, Ramsey, I’m convinced they eat just straight up mud, they’re crazy over here. So there’s definitely areas where just, we’ll just hold shovelers and then there’s other we’ll look across the fence and it’s nothing but un-trash birds you’re wigeon, gadwall, pintail and all that, it’s like these boys stay on their side of the tracks and it’s hilarious, man. But, the most important thing with us is before you all get in, we’re having conversations, hey, guys, these are our options, here’s our birds, what are you guys most interested in doing? The cranes look good, we got a cold front coming in, we’re going to have a good north wind this day, let’s go kill some geese and cranes, the next day it’s going to be dead calm, let’s go shoot some wigeon, pintail, gadwall and mottled and Mexican ducks over this one acre slough in the middle of this hundred thousand acre ranch on the calm day that’s the place you go for that and we lay out the whole experience and make sure that it’s what people want to do or as close to it as we possibly can and just go have a good time, man. We hunt like we’re all family in the blind, we cut up, have a good time and just treat everybody like family and friends, man. And that’s where we are today and it’s a whole lot of fun and man, I’ve had a few guys even tell me, like, dude, I’d hunt with you, I’d sit next to you just in a blind with no birds in the air, just to hang out, bring a barbecue pit and just chill and look over these ponds and watch sun go down, just cut up and tell jokes, whatever so we’ve got a heck of a team, Ramsey. The guys on our team are every one of them, I’m telling you, I’m not just saying this, they’re irreplaceable, all of them.

Ramsey Russell: Who are they? Can you say their names? Where they’re from? Who are they? How long they’ve been with you?

Luke Bledsoe: Drew Garcia, he is our new operations manager, he’s Earned that spot, he’s been kicking butt, working his tail off, this is his 5th year and for 5 years I’ve had everything from blue collar guys to white collar guys, pull me aside after the experience and they will tell me, this is when he was 19 years old Ramsey and they’d be like man do not lose that guy, so whatever you got to do to keep him around. What a blessing it’s been to be in his presence, just the way he carries himself and I mean dude, I can go on, look, he’s probably grinning ear right now listening to this but I’m telling you right now, he truly is –

Ramsey Russell: He probably wants a raise.

Luke Bledsoe: He got one.

Jillian Bledsoe: He got one.

Luke Bledsoe: Yeah man, we got him on salary this year and it’s a good deal, he deserves every bit of that and he’s just a hard worker and keeps everybody happy, everybody’s safe. That’s another big thing, he’s safety driven, he makes executive calls, list goes on, there’s a young man, I say young man, heck Peyton, 20, 23-24, Peyton Prukop, he and Drew have worked on several duck farms together on the prairie before, they grew up doing a lot of hunting together down there and have worked together as a team for a while. Man, we are lucky to have him on the team this year, he’s going to join us in the 501 camp, down in the Charlotte Camp, we’ve got 2 guys there, Zach Montalvo and Aaron Swetish and those 2 old boys, they live right there in that area, absolute just if I tell them to jump they are going to say what shoes do you recommend we wear and how high would you like us to jump? I mean it is incredible and down on the coast Skinny Water Chris and Christian Schneider, dude, these guys just across the board, everyone, when we are able to get the whole squad together and when we got our big groups like Migra come down and we had Justin Martin come down a few years back and it’s like these are dates that we like to, like when maybe when you come down here it’s like hey let’s get the whole squad together for these dates and I get a phone call the week later like dude, your whole team is just so enjoyable to be around as a person, as a guide. They’re all just kick ass people man, can’t really ask for anything more and it’s like any business, the guys that you have working with you, not for you, but with you, it makes everything it, you grow together and it just makes it fun, it ignites that passion, it keeps everything stabilized to have a heck of a team and we are beyond blessed for that and couldn’t ask for anything more –

Ramsey Russell: Jillian – Go ahead.

Luke Bledsoe: No. And with that being said, just the 501 Ranch here, Colton and Kennedy Hubble, they run this place as, 27 years old run a place like this, if people like, oh, they’re so lucky, man, they have so much on their plate that people don’t realize they not only like I said, I tried to run around this place to try to find, I don’t know if I’m echoey at all, but I was, it’s hard to find a building out here that’s not the size of a football stadium and there’s so much going on structure wise, on top of that, they have 12,000 acres to manage and it’s like God almighty, just the bowling alley and the skeet range and all the cool stuff, we can talk about that later, but as a young couple, they are just, they’re killing it for themselves out here. They’re just, they’re doing a heck of a job doing what they’re doing here at the 501 ranch. So I had to throw them in the mix to what they’re doing out here on this ranch, it’s admirable, man, they’re doing a heck of a job, so we all come together as a big team and I know I’m missing some guys, man, Zach Barrera is one of my Ogs, Zach has seen me pick up all of most of this land before we even had a logo, Zach Barrera knows all about these spots and he’s been on the phone with me like, hey Zach, hang on, dude, I mean that there’s a landowner driving up to my truck, like just hang on the phone, 60 seconds later, just got permission, oh, we’re all getting rowdy in the truck together over the phone and there’s some other guys I’m missing, man. But everybody knows how much we, Jillian and I both love them as brothers and sisters and make this whole thing go around for us, so we’re lucky, Ramsey.

The Magic Team Behind the Outfitting Operation

…they don’t realize is that it’s not just one person, the entire family, once you bite off this kind of responsibility, the whole family’s on board with something like this, it takes, the whole family is neck deep into this business, aren’t they?

Ramsey Russell: Jillian, where do you factor into all this because I know behind every successful man is somebody holding, he’d say a good woman, I mean, I tell everybody my wife’s brains of the operations, I’m just a good looks, truth matter is she is both. But seriously, how are you involved with this operation?

Jillian Bledsoe: So I somehow after 8 years, I’m still helping run the whole back end of it, every year we’re learning something new, it’s always a new a new path that we’re figuring out and the more we grow, the more responsibility we have and the more streamlined we have to make things and so we’re constantly figuring out new things. But yeah, Luke and I have continued to work really well as a team and it’s been a real honor being able to be a part of all of this.

Ramsey Russell: You know what a lot of people on the outside that aren’t involved in the hunting and fishing industry like the guide service is, they don’t realize is that it’s not just one person, the entire family, once you bite off this kind of responsibility, the whole family’s on board with something like this, it takes, the whole family is neck deep into this business, aren’t they?

Jillian Bledsoe: Absolutely. We are invested, our kids are invested, Luke and I are invested. We are, everything that we’re doing is to grow this to be passed down generation after generation, like it started with Luke having a passion and wanting to do it and then we’re like, okay, well we’re going to turn this into something and then we had our 1st kid and our 2nd and then our 3rd and our 4th and hopefully that is probably the highest that number is going to get, but –

Ramsey Russell: You need one more.

Jillian Bledsoe: But we talk about all the time that this is for them, like we’re growing it right now and we’re having a blast, but this is to be able to pass down to them and then hopefully they get married one day and their spouses want to work for us and inherit different camps and it become a thing that it’s not just right here, right now, but we’re looking way down into the future for our family and also for our guides family, we were talking to Drew the other day and I was like, we have like the rest of your life in our view right now, like we know one day you want to get married, you want to have kids, like we want Speck Ops to be able to support that, so we’re looking at the big picture here, not just in the small hunting season scramble that we’re in, we’re always trying to figure out how to push it and make it into something that generations will be able to be blessed from.

Ramsey Russell: Darn good answers. Let’s talk about the amenities because you all have got something else in the 501 Ranch, you all have got something else that I can’t even describe, it is the 501 Ranch and Resort, it is massive. It is the most Disneyland like experience of any hunting lodge I’ve ever seen, tell me about the 501 because that is you all’s core, right now you all’s staple of where a lot of the clients and packages run from, you all tell me about what somebody can expect. What are the amenities and what’s the food like? What’s the lodging like?

Luke Bledsoe: Oh food, man. Oh, Ben Lewis, he called me last year, Chef Ben Lewis, he called me last year to introduce himself and we were in a bind, long story short, we were in a bind looking for a chef and out of nowhere, Ben Lewis calls me and here we go again, look up at the sky, praise the Lord, dude, we got blessed by Ben Lewis last year and this guy, hey, he’s from Mississippi, Ramsey.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Luke Bledsoe: Yeah man, I could go back in my phone and look, I forgot what town, but man, this guy can cook some food and he’s humble and say, yeah, it’s all right, like, dude, I’m on my 3rd or 4th plate, I can’t even move, like, what do you mean, it’s all right?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it looks pretty good.

All-Inclusive Waterfowl Hunting Packages in Texas

So yeah, so basically your luxury cottages, this is more of like a dove season thing, to get the swimming pools, you have to go luxury cottage and I can explain why later, but let’s just focus on waterfowl for now, so you’re going to come in and enjoy the bunkhouse and with the bunk house, it’s an all-inclusive package, you’re going to have, all your meals are going to be included, it’s going to be 3 hunts, we’ve got some 2 hunt packages also for November if somebody wants to do that.

Luke Bledsoe: It’s good stuff, man. So as far as what to expect, I mean, I could talk for 3 hours about this ranch, you’re going to pull up to the gates, hit the code and watching those, that front gate open, you’re going to say, oh, my gosh, let me do that again so I can record how this gate is opening. So once you get through the gate, everything else follows as suit. You drive on a paved road about 3 miles back and there’s lodging options, Ramsey, that I actually forgot to tell you about the Spartan trailer that looked over the crystal clear Nueces River, it’s like a honeymoon suite, it’s a Spartan trailer, it’s kind of like an Airstream, they’ve got it all decked out, it’s won like, Airbnb awards and all that, dude, it sits over here looking over this huge deck over the beautiful Nueces river with a hot tub and oh, my gosh, we got to add that to the package, I forgot to tell you about that. But yeah, besides that, there’s 3 main most popular lodging options, so you’ve got your bunk house, your hunters cabins, slash, like log cabins and then you’ve got the luxury cottages, so let’s start at the bunk house, that’s where most guys are going to go to book because you get all the amenities, the only amenity that you don’t have exclusive access to are the swimming pools and hang on, I need to, my phone’s not taking a connection, let me make sure. So yeah, so basically your luxury cottages, this is more of like a dove season thing, to get the swimming pools, you have to go luxury cottage and I can explain why later, but let’s just focus on waterfowl for now, so you’re going to come in and enjoy the bunkhouse and with the bunk house, it’s an all-inclusive package, you’re going to have, all your meals are going to be included, it’s going to be 3 hunts, we’ve got some 2 hunt packages also for November if somebody wants to do that. But it’s an all-inclusive deal, man all your meals, your Migra ammo is also included, the bunk house itself has, it’s got 30 mattresses in it, they’re extra-long twins and don’t sleep like an army cot. These sucker, you will sleep almost as good as those beds as you do in the King’s luxury suites, every little bed’s got a wall outlet and a personal fan, there’s 2 chandeliers in this dang bunk house, it’s like, what in the world, like, it’s not your typical bunk house, you walk out, there’s a flat screen and a big eating area with a refrigerator and an outdoor pool table, little patio area, cornhole boards and shuffle boards, no, not shuffle, washer boards and 2 fire pits, it’s a really neat spot to hang out. It’s everything you need, if it’s a tight group of guys and they don’t mind getting dressed in front of one another, whatever, if you want a little bit more privacy, you can go from the bunk house and go into the log cabins and the log cabins, there’s 8 of those 2 of the 8 are queen beds, the other 6 are double folds, for just a little bit more privacy, you could pay a little bit more and stay in those, again, same amenities across the board and we haven’t even gotten to many yet, but then you get to the luxury cottages and those are the cream of the crop, they’re real upscale and elegant, I guess I could say and they don’t look like a hunter’s cabin, they’re just nice, like you’re at a resort in Cancun kind of nice and when you stay here, you would be staying at the swimming pools and there’s one in particular that we always heat up for the gentleman or the ladies in the wintertime or fall, it’s called the spool and I’m actually looking at it right now. It’s a spa pool, it heats up like a hot tub, it’s like a small, it’s like a big hot tub, small pool kind of deal and even if you get the bunk house or the log cabins, chances are you can still use it, so here’s why you get the exclusive amenity of the pools with the luxury cottages because this place is a resort, if Joe and Susan are down here enjoying their 50th wedding anniversary and in the luxury cottages and they’re enjoying the pool for their anniversary and you’ve got 20 guys doing a bachelor party over there in the bunk house, showing up with 8 turtle boxes out here, it kind of just defeats that elegance to the area, not that 20 dudes and 6 turtle boxes isn’t elegant, but just so people can come out and have that exclusivity of being, to having their escape. But in the wintertime, man, there’s not too many people out here most of the time, if you book the bunk house or the log cabins, typically we can still bring you guys out here to warm up at night or in the afternoons and enjoy the school because we’re going to be eating right here in the eatery, which is, I mean, it’s 12 steps away from the spool. So we have –

Ramsey Russell: You all got shooting ranges, wildlife viewing, there’s all kinds of stuff on this ranch, I mean, a bowling alley, a freaking little train, something going around, it’s crazy.

Luke Bledsoe: Yes. Unfortunately, they just sold the train tracks to the San Antonio Zoo, yeah. So that amenity is no longer valid, but there they just did buy a brand new, beautiful, ultimate top drive, we can do top drive tours, there is a private, state of the art bowling alley on this ranch, there is a carousel, Ramsay, on this ranch.

Ramsey Russell: I saw that.

Luke Bledsoe: Don’t ask questions, I don’t know, it’s like, I always tell people like, dude, imagine being an illegal alien and popping through the brush and just coming up on this carousel and you’re like, hey man, welcome to America, like, what is going on in America?

Ramsey Russell: Look, 6 guys drinking beer with turtle boxes go bail out, here’s what you do, first you go cannonball into that spool pool with that couple celebrating their 50th anniversary, then you go ride the carousel and drive –

Jillian Bledsoe: They can’t resist the carousel, they’re all on there

Ramsey Russell: I guarantee you, tell me, Luke, back to your chef over there, what are some of his specialties? What are some of your favorite meals that he’s cooking? Jillian, I’ll ask you, what are some of your favorite meals? What do you see that the clients really like that he’s turning out on these, I’ve looked at the – it’s pretty incredible. What are some of his –

Jillian Bledsoe: Everything that he cooks, like, I want to go back for more and more, his appetizers all the way to his desserts, one of the things that I love, that I’ve never been a huge fan of were his mustard greens, he won everybody over at the table with his mustard greens, it’s the things that, he takes like the simplicity of food and he puts all these different spins on it that you would never have ever thought about yourself and he throws it all together and you’re like, how did you even come up with this? I think that meal was pork chops and mustard greens and the table kept going back over and over again just for those mustard greens. So I don’t think I’ve ever had a meal where I left and I was like, that was okay, it was, he kills it, he’s amazing. 

Ramsey Russell: We talked about this at Delta Waterfowl Expo about the amenity level, especially at a place like 501. It’s great because, okay, I’m going to go do a bachelor party, I’m going to go with a family group or something like that and we want to hunt and we want to be out, we want to recreate, but then we come back. Now we got so much more to do than just hang around in a recliner watching football. I mean, there’s a lot to do and socialize and I’ve already pitched, had several conversations, I should say, with some other couples, some husbands that are like, I think I want to they’re wanting to try getting a couple’s trip down here. Jillian, what do you think? Would my 75 year old An have a good time down here –

Jillian Bledsoe: She’ll love it.

Ramsey Russell: Drinking wine and shells food while I’m out duck hunting?

Jillian Bledsoe: Oh, yeah, like, Luke was mentioning the spool is there, it’s heated during the winter and it’s the perfect temperature during summer, they have a beautiful spa facility that they finished a couple years ago, you can hire facials, massages, pedicures, manicures out to the ranch, so whatever the ladies have in mind, we can make work.

Ramsey Russell: Is there any – I’m just curious, when I mentioned my 75 year old aunt, is there any shopping nearby? I mean – Yeah.

Jillian Bledsoe: Uvalde is one of those cute little Texas towns where they have the little boutiques, the little restaurants, coffee shops, little things like that, so it’s definitely a perfect town to be able to head out in and spend the afternoon or the morning while the guys are out hunting, you go out there and do a little shopping and then head back for lunch by the time they get back.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, fantastic. I’m definitely going to see you all soon, I’m supposed to come down there and meet you all in January and no agenda, just want to come down there and hunt. But I really think, what would be a good time if I wanted to put together a couple’s trip? What would be an ideal time of year to try to do that, Luke?

Luke Bledsoe: Man, it depends on what you want to do, Ramsey. I mean our dove hunts down here are, I mean a lot of times it’s like Argentina style, I mean you can’t load your gun fast enough, most of the time down here the dove hunts are incredible. So the thing is with that is you have the – we forgot about the lazy river, there’s a huge lazy river and a whole beach, shallow shore style pool that connects and runs into the lazy river. If I’m a, I don’t know, Jillian would have the answer, but if I wanted to take a trip with the boys, it’d be, I don’t know, October dove hunt or something like that too, but then again in the wintertime there’s so much for them to do as well and they can go waterfowl hunt. It depends on if they want to do like the warm weather or the cold weather or somewhere in between.

Jillian Bledsoe: It’s so beautiful just sitting out there in the courtyards, I’d say before it gets too cold, frigid temps to be able, for the women to be able sit outside bundled up nicely during winter, if the guys are wanting to do waterfowl, late November, early December to be able to hang out outside and not feel like you’re having to be bunkered in, but dove is also amazing to be able to spend time in the pool and float around in the lazy river with a margarita in your hand.

Ramsey Russell: Do you all still shoot doves that late in the year, in December, 1st week of December? Is the dove season still open or they change yet?

Luke Bledsoe: Not only is it open, Ramsey, it is, I’m telling you, most people in South Texas would probably agree, the winter dove hunts are just as productive, if not crazier than September and I mean that man, it’s unbelievable how many mourning dove get down here because you just, you have all the front and they stop here and as long as it’s relatively dry and you’ve got some small seeds on the ground, the winter dove hunts are insane over here, so we could do waterfowl in the morning, go melt your barrel in the evenings. So yeah, there’s that package too, the 501 camp, we could put together whatever you want. There’s beautiful exotics out here, there’s insane native genetic whitetail guys can do, there’s the wild quail on this ranch are very impressive, heck, every time I come to the gate right here, I’m flushing up 3 coveys –

Ramsey Russell: Are there still a lot of scaled quail in that part of Texas?

Luke Bledsoe: Man, it’s hit and miss that you, the further west you go, the more you see. But there are a few here, but it’s mainly predominantly, probably bobwhite right here at the ranch. Yeah, there’s so much you can do, Ramsey. But yes, the winter dove, the dove are still here and they’re here thick. Come winter time, we’ve had some insane dove hunts, probably the most, the craziest dove on I can remember was this January, it was like January 20th, like the 3rd, 2 or 3 days before the winter season ends. You could be wearing a construction vest with a strobe light on your head, it don’t matter, they were coming into your Mojo and I’ll never forget that day. So back to the weather and amenities here, I’m just, I’m thinking back to 2 years ago when we first got our feet wet with the ranch. So this not only everything else, this place sits on the 2nd most beautiful river in the state of Texas. I call it aquarium clear, you can take a paddle board and go look at 15ft beneath your paddle board, you can see spotted gar at the bottom and there’s bass all over, if you like the fly fish, the fly fishing is insane, just because how clear the water is and you can see everything, it’s unreal. Anyways, there’s 2 sets of waterfalls that they have access to as well and not going to lie, we definitely need some more rain for that. But last year we had it, the year before we had it, we need some more rain north of here in the Hill country to kind of drain down. But anyhow, I’ve got a video 2 years ago of a bachelor party came down and we had hammered sandhill cranes, it was December 15th, we hammered cranes and we got back and I was like, what do you all want to do? I said, you know what? I’ve got a special treat. It was probably high of 700, 800 to where the water is cool, but it’s still so hot that it’s refreshing to jump in the water and man, we went down to the waterfall and these guys are in their swimsuits, December 15th, jumping in off of the waterfall into the beautiful swimming hole in the river, like, it’s just so dang unique, everything here across the board is just so bizarre, it’s just too cool.

Ramsey Russell: I appreciate you all coming on board and telling us all about this, I look forward to coming down myself in January and I’m locking in and I’m rolling out, invite anybody listening, contact me if you think you might be interested, you and your spouse joining us down here at the 501 ranch, I don’t know, after Thanksgiving through the 1st week so of December 2025, I think it’d be a lot of fun to go and visit with Jillian and Luke and the boys and have a good time, something that both, we could go off and hunt and the wives would have something to do without us having to go across an international border all the way down to Argentina or Mexico. Luke, Jillian, tell everybody how the listeners can contact you.

Luke Bledsoe: So our emails are pretty simple. Luke and Jillian@speckopswaterfowl.com and even my dad, best friends forget the K in Speck Ops, so don’t forget to put K for speckle belly, that’s kind of how all that got started. But anyway, Speck Ops with a K, Speckopswaterfowl.com that’s the email. Man, we are so active on Instagram, this whole thing, as much crap as you can talk about because I can do it too, man. The Internet and these apps and all this goofy stuff but man, Instagram has built this business, it truly has, so we’re very active on Instagram, you’ll see a lot of cool stuff, you can follow Jillian, she started thespeckopsgirls Instagram page, which is now, we have 3 girls, but we just had our boys so we’re going to have to reroute that – But that’s going to be kind of like a behind the scenes look, she’s going to video us cleaning birds and joking around and Chef Ben prepping meals and just the cool stuff that people I think would be very interested in seeing. So Instagram, we’re really active, you can shoot us a message on there or by God, call me, I love talking on the phone and we can put together whatever package you want, man. I mean, the 501 camp is great and it always books first, but I could promise you we have had some absolutely insane hunts in the Charlotte Camp and the Riviera Camp as well, so not to discredit them or put them on a lower pedestal as a 501, 501’s crazy because of the amenities and yeah, the hunting is, we have, this is where we started, so we by default have more access here. But man, that Charlotte Camp gets nasty, I mean, just some of the most liked photos on Instagram have come from the Charlotte Camp and Riviera.

Ramsey Russell: Sign me up.

Luke Bledsoe: So, yeah. Hey, so back to the mottled ducks and cranes, Ramsey, yes and we’re seeing there’s going to be some, that happened in a dry pea field and along the, near the King Ranch down there by Baffin, they were killing crane and shooting mottled ducks over, they were shooting mottled ducks over Mojo’s, over full body crane decoys, dude, if that didn’t get you fired up, go see the doctor, man. That’s crazy, dude.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all very much, thank you all both. Folks, thank you all for this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, you all been listening to my friends Luke and Jillian Bledsoe, Speck Ops Waterfowling. Speck like speckle belly, Speck Ops Waterfowling, go to ushuntList.com look for Texas Waterfowl Hunt Desert Paradise because it is their name, their numbers on there, give them a shout, thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’ll see you next time.