What’s it like growing up a young, avid waterfowler in the north-of-the-border Land of Plenty? How’s it similar to the USA–and how’s it different? What might you wish be different, and for what might you be most thankful? In a random turn of events, Ramsey falls in with 3 die-hard, young-gun Manitoba hunters who show him what it’s like growing up a goose hunter these days in Canada and share some interesting and downright surprising insights. And to think it all started with a shiny new moped in a gravel parking lot! Really good stuff.
Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where I’m still in the Interlake Manitoba and here’s why I thought I’d get up this morning and haul bud over to Saskatchewan and catch up with some folks and got a phone call saying, hey, you want to come out with us this morning? It happened to be a guy I hunted with last year over here. He joined us with Manor Lake buddies and I fall in with some Manitoba young guns and boy did we have a great hunt this morning, a great experience, in a country that, believe it or not, is going through a massive decline of young hunters in a sport continentally that is going through a decline of young hunters, all of a sudden I fall in with 3 guys, my kids age or younger, they let an old geezer come with them today and we had a great hunt, the geese threw us a curved ball, but I wanted to introduce you all to my buddies, Evan, Logan and Matt. How the heck are you all?
Evan: We’re good, buddy.
Logan: We’re good, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, thank you all very much. Let’s talk about this morning because we get there, we set up and what did the scout report look like yesterday, Evan?
Evan: The scouting was good, I got word from a buddy that you were hanging around maybe for one more morning and was looking to get out, so I hit the road last night, tried to make something happen and found a field that was loaded with mostly little Canadas, the odd duck and some snows and got permission on it and it was looking real good for this morning.
Ramsey Russell: I’m glad you did. I had intended just to hunt with Troy and Dustin and Company and a couple of years ago and I didn’t take it personal, I didn’t say it was pointed at me, but I made 2 passes through Manitoba, talked about it, podcasts and social media, next thing I know, Manitoba goes to a draw for non-resident Canadians myself and I’m sure it wasn’t directed at me, but boy, it sure hurt my feelings because I had come by here twice, man, I had been in Manitoba a good long time, jumping all around you all’s beautiful province hunting. And now not only do I have to draw, I can only hunt for 7 days and they’ve got to be consecutive days, so if I hunt over here for 2 days, I can’t go somewhere else and hunt and then come back? No, I’ve got to run a stretch and man, it’s hard when you only get 7 days for a place that you really like to hunt, it’s hard to walk away with a day not punched and so I’m really glad to have got to join you all. And it was a real different hunt, when I come up here, we normally target the big boys, those Churchills coming down, but this morning it was –
Evan: It was all little geese.
Ramsey Russell: I just thought I’d seen a lot of cacklers till this morning, there was a lot of cacklers here this morning.
Evan: Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And typical of cacklers, they right off the freaking bat threw us 2 big old middle fingers.
Evan: Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: We parked halfway across the section and it seemed like we’re hustling. We had plenty of time –
Evan: Oh, we were plenty, really.
Ramsey Russell: 10, 15 minutes before shooting time and all of a sudden, every cackler goose and snow goose on God’s earth decided they wanted to land in the decoys and that’s what made, then what happened there Evan?
Evan: Of all days that the birds showed up early, it had to be today and then they were not a little bit early, they were very early, like the 2nd they could see or we could see, they were landing in the decoys, it was nowhere near shooting light, flocks of a couple hundred each time were dumping in there and there’s just nothing you can do but sit there helpless, right? And you’re walking back to the spread and you bump them out into the field and they all just pile in there and then all the other geese see the live birds and you’re never going to be able to compete with live birds.
Ramsey Russell: That’s it. It’s like you were in and out, going and running, coming back, panting like Char dog after a long retreat, trying to pull them out.
Evan: Had to bust them up or they just pull every bird. Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: In fact, we had a couple of good bodies, then we boys while you were out and they’d be trying to leave where you busted them up and then some of those little flocks would peel off into us and they’re –
Evan: That’s just little geese.
Ramsey Russell: F8 and F0’d I called it. They messed around and found out what they did, but that was a really good hunt. Do you normally target cacklers like that?
Evan: No, usually we’re all about the heavies here, me and Logan all year long basically start to finish, mostly targeting the big Canadas, the odd time late in the year when the ducks are down, it’ll be straight ducks but pretty much the big guys, today was just one of those one off hunts and it turned out well, all things considered, just little geese being little geese and kind of had to do what we had to do to make it work.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What’s so odd is that the mallards and the biggies didn’t come off until later and the first mallards I saw were dumping right in eyeball level as we’re in layout blinds coming right the heck in. But they just beat – They were 10 yards ahead of a flock of Canada geese and I’m like screw a duck, man, I’m waiting on you –
Evan: That’s what you came here for.
Ramsey Russell: Set up, it’s interesting because so many southerners come up here to shoot ducks and I don’t care anything about a duck when I’m in Canada. I’ll shoot them if they come in, we shot a few this morning but man, I’m all about the geese up here in Canada.
Evan: Yeah, we got a handful of green this morning. But you definitely don’t get big goose hunting anywhere else in that I know of like you do here, that’s for sure.
Ramsey Russell: Well, catch me up on you all’s season. When did you all season open and what did you all season been like? Where are you with the migration? How’s it going this year?
Logan: It started September 1st for Canada’s and then we’ve been out pretty much every weekend, try to get out 3 times a week and then plus the weekend.
Ramsey Russell: 3 times a week you go out.
Evan: During the weekdays.
Logan: During the weekdays.
Ramsey Russell: During the weekdays
Logan: 2 more on the weekend.
Ramsey Russell: So you go out 3 or 4 times a week at least?
Evan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Since September 1st?
Evan: Since, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: How old are you, Logan?
Logan: I’m 17 this year.
Ramsey Russell: Are you in high school?
Logan: Yep, grade 12.
Ramsey Russell: How the heck did you get miss so much school?
Logan: I don’t start school till one every day.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Logan: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: How does that work?
Logan: I just got –
Ramsey Russell: You talk to your counselor and get your schedule set up right?
Logan: Yeah.
Matt: It’s duck season.
Logan: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: Are you serious?
Evan: Oh, that’s right. Whatever we got to do to make it work, Ramsey, we make it do.
Ramsey Russell: They let you do that up here? Hey, I got a duck hunt, well, 2 of you guys are – you were telling me last night, Matt that, where do you work and you’ve got a boss that loves to waterfowl hunt and that’s one of the perks of the job.
Matt: Yeah, we work at an Ambassador Mechanical and our boss goes out just as much as we do. No troubles at all for taking time off for hunting, as long as it’s for hunting.
Evan: Really appreciate that. Yeah, it’s really hard to find that.
Ramsey Russell: What do you do up at this job that you can come in at late morning during goose hunting, 3 or 4 times a week.
Matt: Service guys for HVAC, so anything heating, cooling.
Ramsey Russell: Boy, does that keep you all busy up here?
Matt: Oh, absolutely, yep.
Ramsey Russell: Is the air conditioning is important as the heat in this part of the world?
Matt: Everybody likes to be comfortable, right?
Ramsey Russell: Right.
Evan: We have really short hot summers here.
Ramsey Russell: But they are hot and muggy, aren’t they?
Evan: Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: They’re not like Western Canada, where you still have humidity.
Matt: It’s that humidity that gets you.
Ramsey Russell: You’ve got humidity, right? Because we’re right in between 2 big lakes, lots of stuff going on here. Let me ask you all this question, how’s the season been? You all been at it since September 1st, you all been at it for over a month by the time we’re recording, how’s it been?
Evan: It’s been really good. Logan and I were out hunting together, main hunting buddy and we’re out a lot and we put a lot of time in scouting, a lot of effort and hide is everything, finding the birds is everything, you can have the best decoys in the world, you go where there’s not birds and you’re not hidden, they’re not going to work.
Ramsey Russell: You said this morning you had a top rule, rule number 1 in your spread was being hidden.
Evan: Hidden, that’s everything that I don’t enjoy – I wouldn’t even think about hunting a field with a million birds, if I can’t get a decent hide.
Ramsey Russell: That means everything, doesn’t it?
Evan: Oh, they work so much better. You get such better shooting, a lot more ethical clean shots, less passing birds, you’re not educating as many birds because when they’re in, they’re toast, it’s just hide is everything to me and our group, so it goes a long way.
Matt: Yeah. This is actually my 1st season of goose or duck hunting, thanks to Evan here and it’s been a pretty dang good season.
Evan: Oh yeah.
Ramsey Russell: How did he rope you into it?
Matt: Convincing me to buy that franchise shotgun and it’s been all over since –
Ramsey Russell: All she rode.
Matt: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: That you get to miss a little bit of work.
Matt: That’s always the nice part, right?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Evan: Just getting to do what you love. We work 12 months of the year doing that every day and hunting season is not that long.
Ramsey Russell: How long can you all normally hunt? I know that there’s been some warm winters lately, but you all start September 1st. How long can you normally hunt?
Evan: I can, like me and Logan here, we can usually find birds till the last few winter, most winters till like the end of November, whether that’s any amount of them is unsure, but we’re always usually able to get into them all well into November.
Ramsey Russell: Manitoba’s now got a season that runs in the spring.
Evan: You bet, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Do you all get out from them then when sure enough cold?
Evan: Yeah. March usually the – it starts March 1st goes to April 10th now and usually we get out quite a bit for them in the spring, trudging through waist deep snow and trying to bust the odd 1st goose off a farmer’s pasture and usually get quite a few like that in the spring. Not so much decoying action, more just spot and stock, but we enjoy it.
Ramsey Russell: Those birds are in a different life cycle and harder to hem up then, aren’t they?
Evan: Yeah, they’re a different working bird in the spring for sure. They’re more focused on breeding and mating and those first few birds that show up in the spring are the breeding pairs.
Ramsey Russell: Just pay her, they don’t want to be in flock.
Evan: They don’t want to be in flocks and when the flocks do start rolling in, it’s usually the younger birds or whatever, but they don’t show up till later in the spring.
Ramsey Russell: Wow. Logan, how you stay warm when it’s like that up here?
Logan: A lot of clothes.
Ramsey Russell: A lot of clothes.
Logan: A lot of clothes.
Ramsey Russell: You put on a little weight.
Logan: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: You’re a typical 17 year old. I bet you look twice as big hunting them then, don’t you?
Logan: I wear a lot, yep.
Ramsey Russell: Unbelievable. Logan, you’re 17. Matt, how old are you? Evan, how old are you?
Evan: I’m 21 this year.
Ramsey Russell: 21.
Matt: I’m 32.
Ramsey Russell: 32, you’re the old guy.
Matt: I’m not that much of a young guy anymore.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you’re the old guy. Well, but you’re young gun in terms of just getting started, thanks to these kids dragging the old guy out there, heck yeah. How did – I’ll start with you, Evan, how did you get into goose hunting up here? Was that a rite of passage here in the Interlake?
Evan: Yeah. So, when I was young, like, I’ve been hunting, we’re going along with my dad since before I could walk, he’s huge into hunting and kind of learned a lot and really took an interest in it, tried to learn as much as I could all throughout the years and once I got old enough, I could start going out my – like more, we did so and we’d always make trips quite as many as we could in the fall. And just the older I got, got my driver’s license, I really got even harder into it and because I was just able to get out more and just have basically been out as much as I humanly can be ever since.
Matt: Literally.
Evan: Yeah, literally.
Ramsey Russell: Literally. What about you? How’d you get into it?
Logan: I started from him, Evan there, we are family friends for a while and then one day he took me out and then ever since then, we’ve been going out ever since.
Evan: Creating an addict, yeah.
Matt: Evan’s got a way to do that.
Ramsey Russell: Evan, you recruited both these guys in there? So, here’s what I’m sitting here thinking is how popular is waterfowl hunting in the local communities here?
Evan: There’s the –
Ramsey Russell: A lot of kids in your high school or in your high school, Logan, that hunt at all?
Logan: Not really, just me and 2 other buddies.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Logan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: How many people are in your school?
Logan: 300.
Ramsey Russell: And 3 people, waterfowl hunt?
Logan: Pretty much.
Ramsey Russell: Why do you think they don’t waterfowl hunt up here?
Logan: No opportunities, I guess like it’s hard to find people to take out and if they’re young, they can’t drive, they can’t go, it’s hard.
Ramsey Russell: Their parents don’t hunt?
Logan: Yeah, no.
Ramsey Russell: How hard is it to find somewhere to hunt?
Logan: Yeah, it’s pretty hard, yeah. Around here they like to stick to the lake, so they can’t, if they’re in Toulon, it’s hard to get over there.
Ramsey Russell: So, the property, are the properties hemmed up, is that what you’re saying or they’re just spread out? You can’t get to them if you don’t have a driver’s license.
Logan: Yeah.
Evan: That’s scouting, if you can’t get around, how are you going to find the birds? If you can’t get around, who’s going to get you to the field? It’s tough.
Ramsey Russell: No just showing up to a field, you got to go to the X.
Evan: That’s right.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a big landscape, but the geese are not everywhere. They’re kind of everywhere, but they’re concentrated in certain feeds.
Evan: They frequent certain areas more than others as well, like you can have a field with just as much food next to one other and they’ll pick that one field 10 times over the one time they’ll pick the other one. That’s what kind of –
Ramsey Russell: What do you think they’re looking for? What do you see in common with the fields that you choose to hunt versus the ones that you do not hunt? I know, obviously a lot of feed, but what is it about that?
Understanding Bird Behavior: Why Geese Shortstop.
So we try to strategically hunt the fields that they see first off the roosts because lots of the time you’ll pull traffic in, even if those geese were going to go to that other field, it’s all about kind of knowing where your birds are coming from, where they’re going and kind of why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Evan: Honestly, roost location is huge. If we have a field that they have to skip over multiple fields to get to and I saw a handful of birds in one that they will have to fly over directly over the morning of on the way to our field, there’s a very good chance that those birds are going to shortstop you, even if you didn’t see them in there the night before, that’s just how birds work, they see birds, they’re going to go to birds. So we try to strategically hunt the fields that they see first off the roosts because lots of the time you’ll pull traffic in, even if those geese were going to go to that other field, it’s all about kind of knowing where your birds are coming from, where they’re going and kind of why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit more about this morning because that was a different setup, slightly different than the typical setup, first off, we put out – How many decoys did we put out?
Evan: 20 dozen skinnies this morning.
Ramsey Russell: 20 dozen profiles, dive bombs and everybody up here seems to like those dive bomb decoys, I see some boys using big owls, they’re an affordable option, but you all had all dive bombs. Why do you all choose those? Is it a price point? Is it the silhouette? What is it about you all setup? How did you all put that together?
Evan: It’s more so something that we just bought at first a few years ago because they were the popular thing out at the time and then we kind of just wanted everything to match. Logan found a really good deal on some brand new ones there this summer, so him and I both picked up, what was it, 10 dozen there?
Logan: Yeah.
Evan: So, yeah, just kind of trying to keep this spread looking the same, sort of –
Logan: Nice and easy.
Evan: Nice and easy.
Ramsey Russell: Putting them out and picking them up is very easy when you’re hunting all silhouettes.
Logan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Very, skinnies, as you all call it, very easy to pick up and put out. What about the – If we were setting it up, I just assumed the way the wind was blowing, we’re going to run the arms like this, put a body like this, put something behind us, put some around the blind, you said, no, I want to do something different. What was that you all did today, Evan?
Evan: Lots of guys up here and like, even myself included, Logan and I, we’ll run our blinds in the decoys a lot of the time, but I find when you’re hunting big groups of birds, big volleys of birds, birds that have been hunted hard, it’s always best to try and pull yourself out of the decoys or make yourself more hidden. So if you’re laying in this middle of the pocket where you want the birds to land, well, the birds are going to be looking at those blinds the whole time. If you pull them out 5 yards out of the decoys, put them in a little bit of more hidden area, they won’t be seeing you as much and it’s like I said, hide is kind of everything to us anyways and it really seems to help with smarter, more educated wary birds.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, there were 4 of us this morning, half of us, 2 of us put out decoys.
Evan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And 2 of us brushed blinds and those blinds were brushed, they were brushed and we set up, it was like, for whatever reason you said it was a low spot, it wasn’t like a real clean, low cut, there was just a little line of taller grass and we were able to spread them out and put some grass in between it so it wasn’t a gap and I thought we were just invisible, it was unbelievable, that worked good, didn’t it?
Evan: You bet, man. It’s like hide is imperative.
Ramsey Russell: So talk about how you put the decoys out with the different arms and the different formation and mostly away from us. We weren’t in the decoys, we were away from it, just a tad.
Evan: Just a tad, yeah. Like, we, Logan and I, we like to run depending on where the birds are coming from with the wind direction and arm to stop the birds. So, if they’re coming in from, let’s say, the south and they’re going to be coming into the southeast, we’ll run that north arm a little bit longer or the vice versa, which with the wind directions, one longer to kind of have them come in, 2, instead of more, so of them having to jump over an arm of decoys, one will be short, spread will be long and one arm will be more to stop them, that’s kind of the standard of what we found works best for us.
Ramsey Russell: It was kind of like a fish hook today, but you didn’t want to take that hook part too far out because you didn’t want them as they come into the field, they were going to have to come into the field, pass the decoys, turn into the wind and you felt like they wouldn’t fly over that arm, that hook, so you just wanted to have it a short, they spin around, grab the shank, so to speak of the hook and then fall and that’s what they did, they kind of ran that pretty playbook this morning.
Evan: Yeah. No, it’s definitely seems to help the birds here, they don’t like to skip over arms of decoys and like, I don’t think that’s probably a pretty common thing, at least for us, lots of the time, especially when they get a little spookier, they don’t want to fly over decoys, they want to more so just come into it and have it a wide open landing strip.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You talk about a lot of people set up differently, how much competition do you all have up here?
Evan: There’s the local groups of guys in every community.
Ramsey Russell: How many, like Logan, Matt, Evan. How many people are we talking about? I mean, somebody behind every field, because I see a group here, a group there. But man, compared to your favorite WMA south of the border, it’s like you all ain’t got no competition at all.
Evan: Yeah, that’s the thing.
Ramsey Russell: Can you imagine, for example, young lady Maggie Williams was telling me recently, there are times and one of her favorite places to hunt, there are times there may be 60 or 70 guns trying to get into this spot.
Evan: Nothing like that here.
Ramsey Russell: Can you imagine?
Evan: No, I don’t want to.
Ramsey Russell: Can you imagine, 12 in the morning having to share it with 50 or 60 strangers.
Evan: No, thank you.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, it’s a circus. So what is competition here? I mean –
Matt: Nothing like that.
Ramsey Russell: 1 or 2 or 5 or 10 or 50 other groups.
Evan: Yeah, it depends. Like, you got the outfitters by Oak Hammock, they kind of lock everything down around there, so it’s pretty tough to get anything around the marsh, pretty world renowned. Lots of guys come up here to hunt that, lots of guys, good outfitters out there, good guys outfitting for them, I know lots of guys personally. Pretty much everything around there is locked down pretty solid, that’s pretty tough, but then you get out to more of the rural towns here, like Toulon area like whatever, Gimli, Arborg, there’s a group of guys, there’s usually one or 2 groups of guys per town.
Ramsey Russell: Local boys.
Evan: Local boys, that’s it, yeah and lots of them don’t even hunt as hard. So especially when it gets later in the year, lots of people focus more for deer, not as many dedicated straight bird hunters here and it gets elite easier as the season progresses.
Ramsey Russell: That makes it pretty easy.
Evan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: If you got the inclination, if you got a driver’s license, a little gas money to burn and a couple of sacks of skinnies, you’re set.
Evan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: That sure beats going out 70 folks. I just can’t, I personally, I’m going to learn to play golf if I ever have to share a duck hole with 70 strands, that’s just me personally. Have you all seen when Manitoba came up with the non-resident draw a few years ago, presumably it was to preserve opportunities for the future generation, for locals and I respect that greatly, have you all seen a change? Did you all see anything let off? Did it become easier? Because every now and again I am driving around scouting with the boys and we see license plates from the United States or we see license plates from other parts of Canada, did you all see a difference? Could you all perceive a difference? Could you perceive that it opened up opportunities for you all?
Evan: Yes and no. Like there’s been times in the past, not specifically since this draw has happened, where I would be looking for a field and there’d be some good old American boys up here, they like to come shoot birds too and honestly, I like hunting with them, you guys are – good groups of guys that come up here, guys have been doing it forever, but there have been times in the past where it’s like, man, there’s this field looks good, it’s held by a group of Americans that are up here or this one looks good, same thing, there has been times in the past where that has happened, but with the draw system now, I wouldn’t say I’ve really noticed much of a difference in this area or personally, but I do know that when it opened up for the boys south of the border there this year, it seemed like they almost all came at once this year. Like, I saw non stop and I think Logan did too, like, trucks everywhere and it was almost like, it was a little bit different –
Ramsey Russell: Where were those trucks from?
Evan: I think it was like Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, just –
Ramsey Russell: They like to come to opener type area.
Evan: Yeah. Like you guys, I think the Americans get access, what is it, the 24th?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, something like that.
Evan: Something like that, yeah. And right around there, like 2 days before, I noticed quite a few trucks show up.
Ramsey Russell: I didn’t see many this time, I did see one, I was staying up in Gimli and saw a few plates from Minnesota and recognized some Americans there at the restaurant, figured they must be out freelancing, but I didn’t see them out in the field anywhere. Like I say, it’s a big area.
Evan: It is a big area, for sure.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a big area. Like, I’ve never been, I was thinking to myself, if 3 years in a row, I’ve been chasing geese all around where we hunted today, I’ve never been down these roads.
Evan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And it’s 10 minutes from where I stay.
Evan: And it’s so close to you, for sure.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. But I’ve never been down in these areas. Are you all able to build relationships with landowners or farmers and lock stuff up? Not lock it up, but, yeah, lock it up for yourself and keep other on –
Logan: My cousin, he’s a big grain farmer, so we get all of his and then I work for a farmer in the summer and we get all of his, we hunted in one of his today, so it’s pretty easy and my grandparents have lived here, so they know most of the people, so it’s pretty easy.
Ramsey Russell: With all these big bucks and moose and if you travel a little bit north, elk running around. Why don’t you all hunt big game? What is it about waterfowl hunting that you all so like, is it the social aspects or what?
Evan: The camaraderie, for sure. Definitely just, something about those whistling wings, watching those big B52 bombers, as you’d call them, coming into the decoys there, cupping up, it just never gets old, like deer hunting, like, I’ll go out later in the year, but that’s when 99% of the birds are gone. Like, if I don’t have to touch a rifle for deer until end of November, I won’t touch it until the end of November. It’s just –
Ramsey Russell: But you will go deer hunt?
Evan: I will go deer hunt.
Ramsey Russell: You all got some big old bucks up here.
Evan: We do, yeah.
Matt: Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Do you deer hunt?
Evan: That’s more deer hunting.
Ramsey Russell: Like what be a big buck to you or do you hunt antlers or do you just hunt big body size?
Matt: I used to hunt just big body size and then now I’m looking for more, some bigger antlers, so biggest I’ve got is a 5 by 5 so far, but could put some more time into it too.
Ramsey Russell: It’s crazy out there scouting in the evenings when those deer will come out of the woodlands. I mean, for a Mississippi boy where a big deer will be 239 pounds, I mean, that’s a big deer.
Evan: The body’s up here a little bigger.
Ramsey Russell: Holy cow. It’s like, I’ll see something step out and it’s like, I’m always shocked it’s a doe.
Matt: Those are fun to drag out of the bush.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I’m like, God, these are some big body deer up here. What would you consider big antlers up here?
Matt: If they go wider than the ears, they go down.
Ramsey Russell: They’re going down. Have you killed some big bucks?
Matt: Couple, 2 or 3 now.
Ramsey Russell: Is it archery or rifle?
Matt: Rifle. I haven’t started the archery kick yet, but maybe next –
Ramsey Russell: It’s coming. Yeah, it’s coming.
Matt: Oh, for sure.
Ramsey Russell: Now look, I got to tell everybody how this whole thing started, there I am buying them business, I got a day on my tag, I can still go try to fish around and Dan comes up, we’re drinking Bud Heavies and Matt comes up, we meet and we go around, we go outside where we’re going, he says he just got something, I can hear what he just got. And so we go out the bar like everybody parked up front backed in and then we go to the side and there’s nothing there and we keep going all the way to the back of the building where nobody can see it unless you’re looking for and there’s this brand new shiny, I got to say it’s cute, I won’t say super cute.
Evan: You get it, cute.
Logan: Super cute.
Ramsey Russell: It’s about the size of a child’s bike, but it’s a moped.
Evan: Moped Matt.
Ramsey Russell: Moped Matt, Matt –
Matt: That’s what they call it.
Ramsey Russell: I ain’t judging you, man. I think it takes stones to ride a moped in Winnipeg.
Matt: Oh, does it ever.
Ramsey Russell: How cold will it be before you don’t ride that thing?
Matt: I’m going to use it for goose hunting.
Ramsey Russell: I told you people –
Evan: We don’t have a Char dog so that’s the moped now.
Ramsey Russell: What? Oh, I see what you’re going to do, you’re going to grass it up when a goose sells out there, crank her up, off you go.
Evan: That’s right, hit it with a little mossy oak paint or something on there.
Matt: You heard how quiet that thing was, they’ll never see me coming.
Ramsey Russell: Dad jumped on and took it for a spin. I didn’t need it about 2 or 3 more beers to get on it. I mean, I can understand a guy getting a Harley or a motorbike, a dirt, but no, a moped. I’m not judging, I’m just asking, you’re the first dude I’ve ever goose hunted with or known that’s North American, I’ve seen plenty of folks down in Peru and other countries drive mopeds or something like it. But why? And it wasn’t just a moped, it’s a shiny, cute moped.
Matt: Extra cute. So my buddies and I were having a few beers one night and we –
Ramsey Russell: Always started with beers too.
Matt: Started with beers, yeah, buddy. So we planned a trip to Calgary, I’ve got a good buddy that lives there, so we’re going to try and make it there in summertime on these things.
Ramsey Russell: Come on.
Evan: Mopeds in Cross Canada.
Ramsey Russell: Have you ever seen this movie Dumber and dumb? Have you ever seen that?
Matt: That’s what we’re going for.
Ramsey Russell: So Evan will be on the back or he’ll be –
Evan: I won’t go anywhere near that moped.
Matt: I’ve got a little sidecar for Evan.
Evan: No way. I’ll pass on that one.
Ramsey Russell: How fast will that thing go?
Matt: About 65km an hour with the wind pushing.
Ramsey Russell: 65km. Do you wear a helmet so nobody can tell who you are?
Evan: Yeah. Hot pink.
Matt: Hot pink.
Ramsey Russell: Forget your hot pink do rag to Matt.
Matt: Absolutely.
Ramsey Russell: What about you, Logan? You going to join the moped crowd? Is it going to be the moped Manitoba group?
Logan: I think I’m going to pass. I mean, I’ll pass on that one but it seems like a riot.
Evan: It seems like he has a good time on a ride moped.
Ramsey Russell: What’d your wife think when you come easy up on this moped?
Matt: She thought it was extra cute.
Ramsey Russell: Extra cute? Yeah. Does she borrow it and take it to work?
Matt: We just got it there yesterday, so that’s the first day, the first maiden voyage was to the bar there.
Ramsey Russell: I’ll be honest with you, having a few beers and sitting around after we saw the moped, having a few beers, getting to know you, I said, all right, I’ll go try goose hunt with them this morning because I’ll be honest with you, it was almost like a red flag, that moped, I’m like, I don’t know about hunting, its moped –
Evan: Yeah. Don’t worry, you didn’t have a little pin boy finding the field.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I mean, I came up in my truck and I kept looking for a little old bitty moped light coming up, coming down the road, but instead I saw 2 big high lift trucks that Evan and Logan were driving more, that’s more my tribe.
Evan: Matt should have come around the corner and unloaded the moped this morning.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Do you all ever hunt out of layout blinds up here?
Evan: Yeah. Depends on the hide, like if we can get a better height out of an A frame, we’ll do an A frame, but we like to keep it layouts.
Ramsey Russell: You all like A frame and just whichever works –
Evan: Whichever works best.
Ramsey Russell: I like the layout, too. I don’t know why I feel better hidden, I feel more comfortable when the wind’s blowing and it’s cold, I’m certainly warmer.
Evan: Oh, for sure.
Matt: How often do you hunt a frame compared to layouts?
Evan: It all depends on the year and kind of where we’re hunting, but honestly, probably, what would you say, Logan? 5 to 1 layout hunts to an A frame hunt?
Logan: Depends on the year, like last year we used an A frame way more.
Evan: Yeah, it depends on the year and the hide, kind of where the birds are.
Matt: I’ve been on 4 hunts with you now and that’s about right because we’ve only used the A frame once.
Evan: Yeah. First hunt, Matt’s first ever goose hunt, we went out by town here shooting them golf course geese, they were coming just off the golf course, big old bombers there and we couldn’t drive in the field, so we got a couple carts and I’m not one to walk into a field unless I absolutely have to, but this one, it was going to be worth it and we got good old Matt here.
Matt: That’s what I got to called for them.
Evan: We called them, I called up Matt, I was like, what do you want your first goose hunt to be, buddy? Tomorrow? He’s like, yep. I didn’t tell him we died to walk in yet until he said, yep.
Ramsey Russell: What were you thinking halfway during that walk?
Evan: Oh, it was ridiculous.
Ramsey Russell: It wasn’t too bad when you started thinking, man, I need a moped.
Matt: Oh, yeah, that’s where it would have came in handy.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Matt: The trip in wasn’t too bad, it was the hauling all the 5 man limit of geese of heavies –
Evan: Big heavies –
Matt: 400 pounds of geese hauling out of there in a trailer that got me sweating.
Evan: Yeah, he walked it out, I have a video of it like a full, like almost a 5 man limit in one trailer walking it out by hand, halfway across the field, up and down hills.
Ramsey Russell: That’s when it gets to be work.
Matt: I was wet.
Evan: Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Skin in Canada geese is not like, I love to hunt snow geese, I just got to think for them, I love to hunt them, I love to hunt these big B52s, but I’m going to tell you, when you start skinning B52s, it’s like skinning a deer.
Evan: Oh, it’s ridiculous.
Ramsey Russell: Little snow geese just, it’s like pulling off a pair of socks, just boom, rip the skin off, you go, you can make time, not those Canada geese, man. Speaking of which, how do you all cook those Canada geese? Do you all have a favorite recipe or a local recipe? How do you like them, Logan?
Logan: Jerky, usually and jerkier sausage I use.
Ramsey Russell: Jerkier sausage.
Logan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Well, you’re kind of 17 year olds aren’t known for their culinary art skills.
Evan: Cheese smokies are really good.
Ramsey Russell: Does your grandmother ever cook them any kind of way or do something?
Logan: Sometimes usually, but usually just throw them in a pan in the morning after hunting with some butter and some salt and pepper.
Ramsey Russell: Just pan fry them, pan saute them. Do you have a recipe yet?
Matt: Me? No. I’ve made a few in the jerky now, so yeah, that’s pretty enjoyable for me.
Evan: Slow cook them.
Matt: I really like the ducks, though. The ducks are where it’s at.
Slow Cooking Canada Geese: A Delicious Approach.
One of my favorite ways to cook them, since you mentioned the slow cooking, is put them in a crock pot and I will put beef broth, but you can put coffee and believe it or not and beef broth and put some pepperoncini peppers and potatoes and carrots and onions, if that’s what you want.
Ramsey Russell: I like, boy, for Canada geese now, I’m going to tell you all, there’s a lot of different ways to cook them, one of my favorite ways to cook them, since you mentioned the slow cooking, is put them in a crock pot and I will put beef broth, but you can put coffee and believe it or not and beef broth and put some pepperoncini peppers and potatoes and carrots and onions, if that’s what you want, 2 packs of ranch dressing and just forget about it, just put it on a crock pot when you come home, it’s good for what you want and I’ve even taken it to where you cannot put the veggies I mentioned and then just shred it apart and make it like a big old hoagie sandwich. It’d be like a roast beef sandwich. I’ve got a lot of friends down in Ohio and places like that, I’m thinking of my buddy Ranch that makes amazing pastrami.
Matt: When are you going to start your cookbook?
Evan: Yeah, when’s that coming?
Ramsey Russell: But I do like to Eat waterfowl, I really do.
Matt: Oh, delicious.
Ramsey Russell: I really do like to eat waterfowl, the problem with these big Canadas is –
Evan: So much meat.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a lot of meat and I like a whole plucked bird and they’re just – I don’t have the hands and the patience and the time to hold pluck a limit of Canada.
Evan: It’s like putting a turkey in your oven like, it’s ridiculous, they’re huge.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it’s big. Some of the – one time I was in college and a buddy of mine read a cookbook and the guy, the author of that cookbook, Billy Joe Cross, Mississippi, described Canada goose is best cook rare, he described, it’s almost like you walk so slowly through a hot room that when you get to the end, it’s ready to eat and he had a recipe, you put it in the oven low and slow and when we cut it open, it was rare and the girls and my buddies said, oh, it’s too rare for me. I mean, it’s like, rare, it was like, not medium rare, rare.
Matt: You can still see the heartbeat.
Ramsey Russell: I said, I just wanted, he cooked it, he cooked it right verbatim, by the book, so I sliced off a couple before they put it back in the oven, it was amazing, it tasted like roast beef. And I think a lot of the times when we cook ducks and especially geese, we tend to overcook it, that’s what I think.
Evan: For sure, people are scared to eat it with a little bit of red in there, but that’s when it’s the best, just like a steak.
Ramsey Russell: Yep. I agree and some of my favorite ways to cook is you can cut it thin little strips and kind of like Logan talked about, you can saute it real quick, put a Italian spin on it if you want to go that way, put a Asian spin on it if you want to go that way. One thing you all got up here in Canada, an abundance of is you all got butchers like real butchers, lots and lots of butchers that know how to cook lots of different sausages and stuff like that, but I dare you all to try this with those big Canada geese as much as it makes is, take it to your butcher and have them just grind it like hamburger, like you make your elk or moose or venison, but put some bacon ends in it or put a little pork, but grind it up and then pat it up, put some crushed cheese if you want to, some seasoning, I love again, that ranch, dry ranch dressing and making burgers, it’s amazing, it’s a lot of good meat and I personally think that waterfowl makes a better summer sausage or something like that than deer does, I don’t know what it’s got, it’s just a little something different.
Evan: Nothing makes a better goose cheese smokey than a cheese smoky than a good old goose, it definitely, something about the meat, anything else you use, it won’t be the same.
Ramsey Russell: No, I think the number one fault of any waterfowl hunter this day and age is we tend to overcook the meat and it’s just, it lends itself to – You can cook it a million different ways, but just a little bit of sweet, a little bit of fruit, a little bit of heat, that’s kind of my go between on something like that for cooking if I’m just going to pan fry it, a mallard breast, boy that’s one of my favorites.
Evan: Skin on top, fat on –
Ramsey Russell: Snow goose is my favorite. For the record, snow goose in Canada is my favorite, whether it’s the fall or the spring, I want snow geese because they’re very fat up here, you can tell how much fat’s in that meat because they’re gorging on these carbohydrates so they can fly south, but the meat is so much lighter colored than it will be in the spring, the spring is dark red and up here it’s more pink and that’s just an indication of more fat, but anyway, I digress. Hey, this morning we got in a pretty interesting conversation, I thought I was enjoying it right there around the truck, we got set up, we got back to the truck, we didn’t know we were going to follow Evan 13 and a half miles across the field to go –
Evan: You got to keep the trucks far away from geese and –
Ramsey Russell: Oh, they were far away, I need a binocular to see mine.
Evan: Hey, I gave you a ride back.
Ramsey Russell: You did, thank you very much.
Evan: You bet.
Ramsey Russell: I was huffing and puffing, this old man trying to keep up with the young guns hoofing it back to the field. But anyway, we’ve got a talk around there about, like, hunting equipment, hunting supplies and some of the different stuff like that. How do you compare US hunting or hunters or the hunting industry versus Canada? What do you all see now that the Internet has connected the world, what do you all see here versus there in your world?
Evan: See a lot better hunting here, like hunting opportunities in places like in amounts to like the amount of people, I guess you could say, but in terms of like hunting, that’s part of that huge is too, is like just the less amount of people here, that’s the biggest thing, birds are able to be comfy, sit on fields, stay in the area instead of having 15 groups like you were talking about ready to bust them out of town.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Matt: I couldn’t imagine that.
Evan: But like in terms of hunting equipment and everything, it’s in Canada, it’s pretty poor, it’s pretty weak. Our selection of shells is nothing compared to America, it’s nothing compared to your guys like gun selection, anything, its weak.
Ramsey Russell: It really is like, I think you hit a good point though, Evan, it is a function of total available market, it’s so much bigger that a company can develop a new line of skinny decoys or wind socks or shotgun shells or ammo or gun or camo, knowing that if it’s popular, there’s enough market demand to support it and make it profitable versus here in Canada, I get it now. That’s why you all don’t have the selection, there are just not as many hunters.
Evan: Not even close, no.
Ramsey Russell: Wow. Talk about the ammo, what ammo were you all shooting this morning and what ammo, if the sky was a limit, where do you think you’d like to shoot?
Evan: I’m usually running heavy steels, I think Logan’s pretty much the same.
Ramsey Russell: And you all can buy those in Canada?
Evan: Yeah, heavy steel, like they’re just the regular 3 inch number 2s is kind of our staple here. If I could see more selection of shells it’d be nice to see some boss here, some of the bigger, just names that are huge down there and we don’t have any opportunity to get any up here, really.
Ramsey Russell: The market is proliferating with ammo selection back home, we’ve got long standing big, major corporation companies and there’s a lot of smaller, my word out there boutique that have developed and to fill a niche that didn’t exist. I mean, what did you all think, for example, when old Mississippi boy shows up with a 28 gauge?
Evan: It’s just something we don’t have an opportunity to hunt with.
Ramsey Russell: I saw you all picking them up and passing them around this morning, Logan, what you think of that tiny little shell? It’s smaller than your fingers.
Logan: Yeah, it’s cool. That’s like shooting my 410 at the geese but that –
Ramsey Russell: It kind of is, it’s not much bigger. I don’t think you could pull that off with steel shot.
Logan: No.
Ramsey Russell: Zero chance, I would never have gotten a 28 gauge had it not been for ball shot shoots, coming up with a nice copper plated bismuth that will do, it’s unbelievable, I’ll post up some of them shotcam footages on social media and I get people say, was that 28 gauge? I thought you were shooting a 28 gauge, yeah, that’s 28 gauge. They’re like, it’s unbelievable.
Matt: No, watching you knock them down, that was eye opening.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I mean, because the number 4 pellets, number 4 pellet, you just got a pattern good, you got a whole lot more going with a 12 gauge, but you’ll see as you get older guys, recall ain’t no fun. You all don’t shoot 3 and a half up here, do you?
Evan: No, I won’t touch them, I refuse to. No need for them, absolutely not and personally, in my experience, like and Logan’s and Matt’s seen as well and whatever, like, you don’t need a 3 and a half to kill geese, you can kill geese just as well with a 2 and 3 quarter inch shell and that’s where Boss, honestly, I think is, has made their name from themselves is those short stubbies like they’re famous for those for sure.
Ramsey Russell: They really are and what’s so funny is when you get – I’ve been to Australia, I’ve been to most notably Europe where 3 inch shells are prohibited and so you’re shooting, I can think of a game board brand or I can think of a Winchester brand that this particular load is made only in Australia, but they’re 2 and 3 quarter inch loads of steel shot that are, man, they pattern wicked and you can shoot them as far as you need to be shooting and I’ve come back and tried to find, back in the day before balls, tried to find a 2 and 3 quarter inch shell, steel shot and it doesn’t exist. In fact, Boss will tell you there’s so many people that have shot 3 inch shells in the past 30 years, they’re dubious of a 2 and 3 quarter inch shell.
Evan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: But I say go out and try it, I don’t shoot 3 and a half at nothing, I don’t shoot a 3 inch Boss unless it’s a 28 gauge, because then I get a few more pellets in there, but for 12 gauge, 2 and 3 quarter inch all day, every day.
Evan: Exactly. People don’t think about how many more pellets are in a 12 gauge and then you look at that 2 and 3, quarter to a 3 inch, what difference is there when you look at the empty? Hardly anything.
Ramsey Russell: Right. What about some of the other products we talk about ammo and what are some of the other products that you all see advertised or used or promoted in the United States versus here in Canada? If you point to Logan, what do you see that you wish you had a better selection of here in Canada?
Evan: Decoys, probably.
Logan: Decoys, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Decoys. Like, how would it compare buying decoys, bringing them out of the United States versus here?
Logan: You got to pay a lot at the border to bring them over.
Ramsey Russell: I heard you talk about that this morning, to get those decoys across through customs, you had to pay for it.
Logan: Yeah, it was almost half of what I paid for the decoys.
Evan: Yeah, it’s sickening.
Logan: I paid $700 for the decoys and it was 400 at the border.
Ramsey Russell: Oh my gosh. Why didn’t you buy some local then?
Logan: Because that’s what we wanted at the time and there was – We didn’t really have anything else.
Evan: There’s no opportunity to.
Logan: We had nothing else, just that.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. That’s very interesting, any camo products or insulation or gear or jackets or stuff like that that you all wish, I mean, I can guarantee you they make some warm coats up here in Canada or you all be living in Mississippi, I guarantee you that’s a fact, there’s no way you all are going to tell me, oh, you get used to it. You’ll never convince me, you get used to -400, -500, there’s no way.
Evan: Well, yeah, I don’t know. We’re like, for Matt and I, when we’re working on a rooftop -350 with the wind chill or cold or changing a gas valley with our bare hands on a rooftop unit, you kind of have to get used to it or you’re not going to make it.
Matt: You climatize pretty quick.
Evan: You climatize pretty quick.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Evan: And then it’ll be -10, -20 in the spring, when spring finally comes and you’re out there in a T shirt when right now, we’re climatized to the summer fall, we’d be out there right now, -20 and a T shirt, we’d be freezing, whereas in the winter time, it feels normal.
Ramsey Russell: That’s tough. If there’s any product you all wish, if there were some product or products plural, that you all wish were being distributed, you mentioned ball shot shells, we talked about some of the American brands of decoys, what else would you all want sold up here that you all could get your hands on without having to pay that ridiculous price at the border?
Matt: A wider range of shotguns would be nice as well.
Ramsey Russell: Shotguns. Did you get your gun, did you get your shotgun from United States? Can you even do that?
Matt: I’m not too sure.
Ramsey Russell: I don’t know.
Evan: I’m not sure.
Matt: I bought mine from Cabela’s in Canada.
Evan: Anything related to that just becomes a headache, though, anything involving the border, anything involving –
Matt: Would rather not even try it.
Evan: And it’s only getting worse by the day and that’s honestly part of the reason why we’re losing so many hunters is just this government.
Ramsey Russell: I was just fixing to ask you Evan, if the cost of product, whether you’re paying duty to come across from American product or the duty of just – I mean, everything’s expensive, heck, a pound of bacon is expensive at the grocery store, a liter of gas is expensive to go burn and look for geese, but do you all see the price of everything in America? Unless you got a moped, everybody looks at the moped –
Matt: That’s where little moped comes in handy.
Ramsey Russell: But do you think the price is a limitation on young people getting into hunting up here anymore?
Evan: Oh, for sure.
Logan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: So, access is a problem.
Evan: Priced out.
Ramsey Russell: Getting that is a problem, getting priced out.
Evan: Yeah, that’s like just in any aspect that’s just the cost of living up here is honestly ridiculous and we’ve just the government’s kind of lately just ran this country into the ground, the one we have.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy. I saw the sticker on the back of a truck –
Evan: Logan’s truck.
Ramsey Russell: F Trudeau, that’s kind of universal and you know what’s so crazy? I mentioned this in the last Manitoba podcast, I’ve been here, been in Canada for just a little bit and I’m astounded at how many Trump flags and Trump stickers, you all don’t even vote although I wish you could.
Evan: Oh, we wish we could, honestly, that guy gives us a lot more hope than what we’re able to kind of have here. Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Do you all Keep up with American politics like that. I mean, I know none of us are just political, we don’t make a political career, but how can you flip on the TV without becoming aware of politics?
Matt: Social media as well, Instagram nowadays, you see lots.
Ramsey Russell: So they’re feeding you all a lot of American politics up here.
Evan: Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: You all would vote for Trump?
Logan: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Evan: Wouldn’t even have to look twice at the ballot there, Ramsey, I’m telling you.
Ramsey Russell: How come you all don’t vote for somebody to get Trudeau out?
Evan: We’ve tried, I voted against him since I’ve been able to vote, I think twice now and he’s lost by the common vote a lot, but it’s just our old riding system here is just ridiculous, like the east controls everything.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Evan: Even though there’s so many more people –
Ramsey Russell: The big cities.
Evan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And that’s the problem in the United States is really and truly, if you look at the demographic at a map, it’s big cities versus 90% of America, that’s really, truly – it don’t make sense at all to me.
Evan: No, it’s just where the seats are –
Evan: The big cities get to run this.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, we’re talking Toronto and Quebec and basically was Vancouver. Oh, well, I tell you what, now everybody talks about the west coast in America, it goes on up into Canada and I tried to get a hunting license last year in British Columbia and I got it, but not without some heartburn and aggravation, can you all believe they denied, I submitted my hunter safety that I got in 9th grade, it was a mandatory half credit in Mississippi that I get a hunter safety and I’ve used it all over the world and I submitted it and they denied it and I called them up, said, why? And they go, it doesn’t meet British Columbia. I’m like, you have got to. I said –
Evan: That’s west coast for you.
Ramsey Russell: So I put it in writing and I said, would you please describe to me in writing why Mississippi’s hunter safety does not satisfy British Columbias lofty hunter approval? And because I need to go to my congressional delegation and to my DNR and explain to them that we need to raise the standards and I can’t believe they had the audacity, but typical left leaning arrogance to call my DNR and then I oh, you’re approved, we talked to him, yeah, you’re approved. Well, yeah.
Matt: Can you imagine that?
Ramsey Russell: Can you believe that?
Matt: That’s ridiculous.
Ramsey Russell: Oh boy. Here’s a question I’ve got for you guys who are young or young to hunting and still, even at 32 years old, you’re young.
Matt: Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, if I could pick an age to be for the rest of my life –
Matt: 40.
Ramsey Russell: It’d be in my 40s, not my 30s.
Matt: I still know nothing.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, but do you all worry about the future of hunting? Do you worry about what your kids are going to do? Logan, Evan, you, Matt, you all worry about that kind of stuff for Canada?
Evan: Oh, for sure. That’s I honestly just what’s kind of been going on here for the last while and then it’s just ridiculous, it’s sickening to see and honestly, it’s just – They’re trying to stop hunting.
Ramsey Russell: Who’s trying to stop? The Trudeau administration?
Evan: Just the – not so much the Trudeau administration, just like the way the world has been turning and just both the states and here –
Ramsey Russell: In Canada too
Evan: And in the States and here, I feel like –
Ramsey Russell: Everywhere worldwide.
Evan: People have been trying to frown on hunting and too much and who knows, maybe it’ll come back around. But it’s just – It’s kind of a, especially waterfowl hunting, you see lots of people getting into deer hunting, big game hunting, but waterfowl hunting is kind of a dying, it’s a dying breed.
Ramsey Russell: It is dying.
Evan: And any opportunity I get where I can take a young kid hunting, like, I started taking Logan, like, 4 years ago, got him into it and it’s awesome to see how much he loves it, how good of a shot he’s become, just stuff like that.
Ramsey Russell: Speaking of which, Logan, that was a hell of a triple off your end today –
Matt: Sniper.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, I was impressed, I ain’t going to lie to you, I congratulated you.
Logan: Thank you.
Ramsey Russell: I figured he might knock one down. No, he killed all 3.
Evan: I taught the kid the best I could. Like, you remember when he used to ask me questions where whereabouts would you put your bead on these birds when they’re out there at that speed and he just I gave him some pointers and over the years, he’s figured it out and now, it’s just anytime I get an opportunity to take a younger kid hunting or even someone that doesn’t have the opportunity to go out and like, get the decoys, find the fields –
Matt: I’m very thankful for you.
Evan: Yeah, I try to take people like that out, because it’s dying –
Ramsey Russell: You had such a small pool of people to hunt with, is that why it was important to you to start recruiting people into this thing?
Evan: Yeah, it’s just you don’t see many, like I said, there’s the local boys around here that do it, like you hunting with a few of them here when you’re on your trip, like Dustin Dolan, Cole Kilpatrick, Troy Bennett, like there’s guys like that around here, they kill them, they’ve been doing it a while, but there’s just not – Besides the main groups of guys that are going out, the ones that the small towns have one or 2 groups of, there’s not many people that are able to get into it, it’s very cliquey and it’s just kind of the way it rolls around here.
Ramsey Russell: Logan, do you see going to high school 2 days a week during hunting season and recruiting some of your buddies into it or do they or have you tried them, just say nah?
Logan: Yeah, they’re lazy.
Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s a typical, no offense, that’s a typical teenager.
Logan: Yeah, I try. We have one, we try and bring, then he complains we don’t invite him, then we invite him, doesn’t show up, he’s sleeping.
Evan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: How much is ammo up here? How much would you say you pay for box?
Matt: For the heavy metals? 59 bucks, 60 bucks a box.
Ramsey Russell: 60 bucks Canadian –
Evan: And it’s gone up a lot.
Ramsey Russell: Just 60 bucks Canadian is about $40 US. I’m just trying to make the math for somebody about 75%, I know there you got challenge here, I’ve shot some of the brands up here back in the day that will kill a bird, are they still running in that range? $50, $60 Canadian a box.
Logan: I used them this morning, yeah. And it was, they’re 25 bucks a box.
Ramsey Russell: 25 Canadian.
Evan: But they used to be 15.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, right.
Matt: Some of the cheaper stuff goes on sale for about 20 bucks a box after tax, but then you’re getting 2, 3 duds a box where it’s launching wet powder into your face.
Ramsey Russell: And how big of a limitation is that for getting young people into hunting in Canada? I mean, because that’s, I mean, let’s just say a guy like yourself, Logan, is going to need a flat or 2 or more.
Logan: I’ve already been through 4 this year.
Evan: Yeah, you have been through few cases.
Ramsey Russell: But just for a regular guy, just goes on weekends for a couple of months, he needs a flat.
Logan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: So now that’s 500, 600 bucks, just in ammo.
Matt: You have kids, that makes it almost unaffordable with throwing gas, your time it’s – if you have to take time off work, you’re losing money there.
Evan: Well, I burned through 150 bucks in fuel every 4 days scouting.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Evan: I put on the miles and it’s just stuff like that alone, if you want to have the good shoots, you want to crush them, like, it’s just, you got to open up the wallet.
Matt: Got to pay to play.
Pay to Play: The Reality of Modern Hunting.
Yeah, you got to pay to play. But it is a limiting factor for all.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you got to pay to play. But it is a limiting factor for all. I talked to some old timers, an old timer around here one time who described to me and I’ve been trying to get him on a podcast, he ain’t going to do it, I bet he’s never, I think it’s because I might as well be saying, hey, come crawl into this flying saucer I’ve got, I want to take it for a test band, he ain’t going there but anyway, he was describing to me, I asked him one time how long he had been goose hunting up here, how he got started, stuff like that and he described going, he remembered his first goose hunt, which would have been 40, 50 years ago, went out of the snow, there was a pile like these piles over here to burn in, a few fields down there was a pile of rocks and whatnot and he climbed up in it with his buddy and all they did for decoys was they pitched tar paper shingles out, as quick as they could, all these geese started coming in.
Evan: Really?
Ramsey Russell: And you all think you all could go, could you do that, now? You don’t think you could go out? Well, I mean, what about some of these skinny decoys they make? They didn’t invent it, but it’s existed forever, just going out with a black silhouette.
Evan: Yeah. I mean, I guess it depends how goose like it look. But I remember, like, mentioning decoys that aren’t really decoys, like manufactured decoys, my dad and people used to go with, they used to put shopping bags on sticks for like, snows or paint a white 5 gallon pail and I used to wear it and it just doesn’t seemed, I can’t imagine just seeing how smart the birds have become, how hard you have to hide and everything, I can’t imagine them decoying into something like that.
Ramsey Russell: But have you ever tried it?
Evan: I’ve never tried it, nothing like that.
Ramsey Russell: Some of your dad’s old clunky decoys from 20 years ago, they still hidden around the house?
Logan: No.
Evan: He’s got some old shells that you put on the stakes, the shells on stakes, but that’s about the oldest, most retro decoys I’ve seen, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Have you ever just tried to do a retro hunt?
Evan: No.
Ramsey Russell: Dude, you got to –
Matt: Deal them too much.
Evan: The old goose chairs, I’ve hunted out of those, those big giant goose chairs, those work.
Ramsey Russell: I tried to tell this old timer because I told him, I said, what I want to do with you is I want to come up here and hunt with you one day and he’s so busy taking care of clients and whatnot this time of year, but I said, I want just me and you and you break out some of them old decoys and mole goose chairs and I’m going to bring my decoys up from Mississippi, because what I did was too broke to buy any, I could afford a dozen and I went and took some old real geese decoys and laid them, they were redoing a greenhouse on campus and had a bunch of tin metal, sheet metal. I went and scrapped it and my buddy’s like, what the heck you going to do with all that? I’m going to make goose decoys and that’s exactly what I did and I just kind of traced them out, oversized, big, ginormous, went to Sherwin Williams, bought some brown and tan and black white paint, 30 years later. And I wouldn’t hesitate to use, if I was going goose hunting in Mississippi tomorrow, I’d take them out.
Matt: Really?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And they work, although I have been thinking they might be due, I went and bought some 20 year paint, it lasted 30 years.
Evan: You might be 10 years old to be like okay –
Ramsey Russell: I have been thinking I might would do better because they’re not grayscale, they’re tan. And I have been thinking and I’ve killed a lot of birds over them, but I’ve been thinking I might need to go and just touch them up, maybe just make them all black with the white cheeks and the white butt rump. I think they might even stick out better, I think mine blend in, I think they’re too tan to really pop contrast in a lot of pastures that we’re going to end up hunting resident birds back home.
Matt: That being said, you would use those over some new, like newer.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I mean like –
Matt: Something for guy to think about.
Ramsey Russell: There are parts of the world I go to that, that just – if you all think Canada ain’t got product on the store shelves, go to somewhere like Azerbaijan or Peru.
Evan: I ain’t even heard of that in first place.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, there are parts of the world, there is nothing and one time I found some decoy, I saw them kind of brushed up in the grass, this is way over, we were hunting 8 miles from the uranium border and I saw some – And the guy just waved me off like, no and when I got back to ramp, had a translator, I started talking to him about it, he’s like, well, those just my homemade decoys and they’re trash, they’re literally trash, you’re not interested in that. I go, yes, I am. So we went back out and I gathered them up and it’s like he had just gotten up like some those sheets of foam insulation, he had stacked it, it was perfect square, he had wrapped it in black plastic and you could tell they’d kill birds on it because there were BB holes in it, kind of like some of them decoys I picked up this morning, Logan’s and so I know some birds have been killed over it and back when I was in college about you all’s age, I couldn’t afford as many decoys as I needed for, I saw some big open water, like a reservoir type stuff and I felt like I needed way more decoys than I could afford and I painted, I was down in Louisiana, where they had massive spreads of mostly black pot bottles and I used them and that’s what that Azerbaijan reminded me of and the following year, I was sitting in a blind, it got quiet, one many ducks flying, I started glassing around. I thought I saw rafted ducks and as I kept an eye on them throughout the morning, they hadn’t moved. They were all kind of stationary, I said, that might be some more of them cool decoys. So I walked down there about half a mile and I’m coming up to the decoys, I’m in a little brush blind and it is over your ankle deep, solid shotgun shells because they’ve been doing some shooting and as I walked out to them decoys, I realized what it was, it’s just all kinds of various and sundry water bottles with blue and brown and black and green and whatever wool socks they rounded up and pulled over them and they had killed the firebomb out of ducks on things. I think everybody, I mean, I’ll ask you Evan and I’ll ask Logan, I’ll ask all of you all, as young guns, since we’re having this discussion, don’t you think that so much of how you approach goose hunting with your spread, with your concealment, do you think it has to be as technical or is it still a fundamental sport? The approach is fundamental, so why can’t the decoys and everything be as fundamental?
Evan: It’s yeah, it’s just kind of –
Ramsey Russell: Because in Azerbaijan, let me add this, they’re market hunting.
Evan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And you want to talk about hunting pressure. When a man is feeding his family, killing ducks, there is hunting pressure.
Evan: Oh, for sure.
Ramsey Russell: And they’re still used, because that’s all they got, I mean, I’m just saying that, man, wouldn’t it be kind of cool to go out and pick up those old decoys and hose them off and brush them off and clean them with a little bit of something and maybe you take your old dad out and just go on a big old retro hunt?
Evan: No, that would be awesome, it’d be super cool to see how the birds will react to that.
Ramsey Russell: You probably hurt my feeling is my shot a low goose over those.
Evan: No, I’d love to see it. Honestly, I just, I heard the stories and just kind of seeing how smart the birds are nowadays and how hidden you have to be, just in my mind, from what I’ve seen, just thinking of them decoying over that, it’s just mind boggling it’d be really cool to see.
Matt: I feel like you like to give yourself the best chance too, yeah.
Evan: Yeah, want the best spin, want them in the decoys, want them landing comfortable.
Ramsey Russell: That’s a good point. That’s the other side is I think that’s we duck hunters that are sick for it like we are willing to spend so much money, the most we can spend on guns and ammo and product to give ourselves any marginal advantage over it that we have.
Matt: That’s just it. You got to be passionate about something.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Have you ever considered this and I’m going to change subject, but have you ever considered as many geese as you all shoot? Have you ever seen stuffers?
Evan: Stuffers?
Ramsey Russell: Stuffers, there are parts of the country, parts of the world, there’s a kid down and I think he’s from Kentucky, bowling decoys, that is making a living, he’s making these forms and what he does is you go out and shoot some beautiful greenhead mallards and you skin them and place them over these forms and float these real skins and I’ve hunted over decoys, it doesn’t have to be taxidermied, like, fully taxidermied, you’re going to hang it in this room right here, it’s just stuffers and if they last a season, big deal, I got more coming, I’ll take them out and put them back over the farm and man, I’m going to tell you, birds don’t decoy to nothing else like they decoy to real birds.
Matt: I bet.
Evan: No, that would be huge, actually.
Ramsey Russell: Can you imagine? You got to take a little more care of them.
Evan: Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: You can’t hunt them in the rain, you can’t hunt them in the snow. But you don’t need as many either, it’s like almost we could have just taken a couple of dozen stuffers.
Evan: 10 times more power –
Ramsey Russell: It’s best when you’re hunting these big boys over here. You all had a big band shoot this year, I saw a picture last night, do you all shoot many bands up here?
Evan: Yeah, Logan and I went out there. What was that, about a week and a half ago now? Yeah, actually, what is today? Wednesday? It was a week ago today and yeah, I knew the Churchill birds, lots of them get banned, I knew that usually around October, that first cold snap beginning October, the Churchill birds kind of show up, they follow the big lakes down. And I had a feeling we’d get into them and Logan and I were out there, this is the start of the morning now, we’re getting some little geese in, like what we were messing with this morning and about 100 yards away, I noticed this lead bird has something different with his leg and I didn’t know if it was a band, I just kind of had it in the back of my mind. So he comes in, he’s the lead bird in the flock, I pop up and I just wing him and I run out there and sure enough, he was banded from Iqaluit, so Nunavut. So I knew the migration was on and then the next flock or a flock or 2 later, we have a flock of like 15, 20 big B52s cupping in, feet down in the decoys and you would think after I just picked out a little cackler band, I would have seen if all of these Canadas were banded or not. No, I didn’t have a clue, so Logan triples and then throws another shell in, gets 4. I triple on the left side, his 4 on the right and I started running out, walking the line of where our birds fell and sure enough, I picked up one that, my first one I shot banded, head to the next one, banded, tripled on bands, while Logan’s picking up his 4 birds, nothing, same flock and –
Matt: I think your voice went a little higher in that video.
Evan: I was stoked, it was unreal to just have something like that happen, so I’m up to 4 bands on the hunt now, Logan’s at zero and so it’s just a 2 man shoot, I’m starting to feel for the kid.
Ramsey Russell: Got your whole life, kid.
Evan: I know. Yeah, we crush him. So he’s got lots of time, that’s the thing and anyways, we’re packing up and he got so discouraged, he quit checking goose legs for the rest of the hunt and then we’re packing up, picking up birds out of the pile behind the blinds and I’m like, my 4 are here, we just found an extra one and sure enough, it was his, he just quit checking legs, so he did get one.
Ramsey Russell: You didn’t look at it close enough
Evan: No. So 5 bands out of a 16 bird, well, a few ducks so –
Ramsey Russell: Good on you
Evan: It was unreal.
Ramsey Russell: How many bands have you killed, Logan?
Logan: 3.
Ramsey Russell: 3?
Logan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: You got your whole life ahead.
Logan: Oh, yeah, exactly.
Ramsey Russell: You got to start watching a little hard. The way you shoot, I don’t have any doubt you’re going to pick up some bands in your career.
Logan: That’s right, yep.
Ramsey Russell: The more you shoot, the more bands you’re going to get, especially up here, I think they do band a lot of those Churchill birds.
Evan: Lots yeah. You experienced actually, I’m pretty sure, this your trip up here.
Ramsey Russell: Every year I’ve been up here, I pick up a band or more.
Evan: From Churchill, doesn’t it usually –
Ramsey Russell: All from up there.
Evan: Then you’re usually here, what, the 1st week of October?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Evan: Yeah. And that’s usually right when they show up.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s about right. I’ve been noticing the last 5 or 6 days, they seem to be coming in earnest, there’s been a few days with north northwest winds and they seem to be – Everyone just seem to be more and more showing up.
Evan: Yeah, definitely, probably in the next week and a half, we get a good cold snap, we’ll probably be close to peak migration numbers, I’d say.
Ramsey Russell: You talk about you all shoot and get up and run out there and grab your birds, get them out of the decoy before the next ones come in.
Evan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: How come you ain’t got a dog?
Evan: Ah, I’d love to have a dog, I just haven’t put the time aside to train one as good as Char dog is so I just haven’t had the opportunity or time to fully – and learn, I haven’t, there’s lots to learn with a dog like that so I’d love to have one, it’s nice to see your work.
Matt: I got a few years left with my dog and I’ll be buying a bird dog.
Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah.
Matt: Oh yeah.
Ramsey Russell: She saved you a haul today, you walk out there, about 250 yards to go get that bag out and I’m like, what are you doing? We’ll just send the dog.
Matt: I didn’t know it goes that far.
Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah, she’ll go as far as I can handle her, I mean and I just to me anymore, I love to pull the trigger, but I love to see the dogs work.
Matt: That was my first time hunting over a dog, that was amazing.
Ramsey Russell: And she know if you saw her right, like if she were laying here right now, you wouldn’t think you’d look at her and go, that dog don’t hunt, that dog just lays there, she’s a house pet. But ma’am, when you get there in the morning, I don’t know if you all heard her but the whole, from the time I got off the pavement and drove dirt road she was barking and then she got quiet for a minute when I was talking to him. Then we started driving again, she started barking and then the whole way across that field where we lived, Nico, she’s barking
Matt: Excited.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And I let her off, she looked like a little old Tasmanian devil on bug bunny.
Evan: That dog is a bullet, that dog is fast.
Ramsey Russell: She loves what she does.
Evan: Oh yeah, I’ve never seen probably, I’ve hunted over quite a few dogs, lots of really good dogs strong, big frame, big dogs. But I honestly can say I don’t think I’ve seen a dog that gets to the birds faster than sharks.
Ramsey Russell: If I were here, 6 and a half year old dog, she still got it, but if I lived up here like Dustin’s got an amazing dog, Canadian line and it’s got the same frame, it’s got the same configuration long tail, long legs, long body. But it’s a bigger, I mean it outweighs char by 20 pounds and it’s just as athletic but it’s a big male with a massive head and picking up those Canadas, he can pick it up mid breast and come running with it, that’d be kind of dog I’d be looking for.
Evan: For something for the big geese we killed here –
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I still want an athletic, it goes quick, but yeah, I’d have to have one up here, I think it just adds so much more to it, so what does the rest of you all season look like up here in Manitoba?
Evan: Well, from the rest, from this point on, it’ll be like in the next week and a half, 2 weeks, like towards the end of October all those big or those – Sorry, all those little geese that were giving us trouble this morning, they kind of leave and then it’s kind of back to what we started with at the beginning of the season, most the snows are gone, the little Canadas are gone and then it’s kind of back to just those big northern mallards and big northern geese, that’s kind of what we end the season on this year.
Ramsey Russell: Don’t throw me in that briar patch. I mean, that’s what I live for, that’s really, man, this part of the world, just the mallards and the Canada –
Matt: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: What else could you ask for?
Matt: You had me at mallard.
Evan: Yeah.
Logan: Yeah.
Evan: No, it’ll be unreal, actually, from where we are right now, just a field, just to the south of us, it’s a corn, buddy we ran through a combine and probably into November permitted, we don’t get too much snow, that’ll be holding ducks, that’s like crazy, it’ll be unreal. Deer, ducks, you name it, they’ll all be out there.
Ramsey Russell: You were talking about social media, politics, product, different – social media has made the world a very small place, you all are living in the land of milk and honey up here in the Interlakes and because of the decline of hunting in Canada, it just opened up opportunities for guys like yourself. Is there anywhere outside of here you all would want to go? If you thought to yourself, man, I’d like to go there, I’d like to go here, is there any other places? Logan, you’re not, in your head, where are some places you’ve seen that you might like to go and experience some species or something?
Logan: I think they go for some speckle bellies.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Logan: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And you can stay in Canada, go west of here, man, there’s some good speckle belly goose hunting up here. You like the idea of specs?
Logan: Yeah.
Evan: Neither of us.
Ramsey Russell: You more of a goose guy or duck guy?
Logan: Goose, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: What about you, Matt?
Matt: After talking to you yesterday, I’d like to go to Argentina and take down some ducks.
Ramsey Russell: Come on. I know a guy, that’ll spoil you, you got to – when you start traveling to big places like that, you have to take a deep breath and just keep it all in context, when in Rome, but because you go down and shoot the volume like that, you got to just say, well, it’s okay coming up here and shooting this volume.
Matt: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Because duck hunting is duck hunting. What about yourself?
Evan: Like Logan said, like, neither – we’ve killed 1000s of birds together now already and in my lifetime, there’s tons, but I can honestly say I’ve never shot a spec before, so it’d be pretty unreal to get on some of the big snow shows, I see you posting about there out west and some specs.
Ramsey Russell: We’ll talk about that after we get dunk. I’m going to – I’ll scratch a map, show you all where because you all ain’t got across the border to go do that.
Evan: No, other than that, I don’t know. Like, I see some good Mexico duck hunts, you were talking about Argentina, pretty cool hunts out there, it’d be cool to experience stuff like that.
Ramsey Russell: That stuff’s expensive. If you think some of the stuff up here in Canada we’ve talked about expensive, why do you start buying big ticket items, going to other countries like that? But, man to be up here, whenever you all are on the roof, you’re talking about 20 or -20 or -500, doing something on a roof in Manitoba –
Evan: I guess that’s Celsius, you guys are used to Fahrenheit.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Evan: So that would be –
Ramsey Russell: I can do the math.
Evan: Yeah, it’s cold.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, -300 is cold.
Matt: It’s cold no matter what the –
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And it’s like below zero, it doesn’t matter. But just next time you all are doing that, just consider that in February when it’s that cold, just imagine going to Mexico and it’s 800 Fahrenheit –
Evan: We’ll be thinking of you watching your Instagram when you’re down there.
Ramsey Russell: You sit in the shade so you don’t sweat, get a suntan, go swimming, go shoot a bunch of ducks, but anyway, guys, I’ve really enjoyed it. Now, look, I’m just going to warn you, if you don’t know this about me, but it’s like I told Dustin and Troy, I come over here and hone with him, I said you ain’t never going to get rid of me, right? You all probably hear from me next year when I come back through.
Evan: You bet buddy.
Ramsey Russell: I do love, this is one of my favorite stops of the year, I love to come to the Interlake and I’m glad to really sit down and get to meet with the younger generation, the new blood, the future of duck hunting in Canada and I appreciate you all, I enjoyed the hunt, but I appreciate you all coming on to talk about hunting up here.
Evan: Enjoyed it, man.
Matt: It was good having you.
Logan: Very good.
Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast from the Interlake of Manitoba. See you next time.
[End of Audio]
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