EP 526. Delta Waterfowl Texas

A Successful Teal Season in Texas

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. I am sitting in Calgary, Alberta, today on the phone with my buddy Ryan Watson of Delta Waterfowl. Ryan, you’re down in the great state of Texas, aren’t you?
Ryan Watson: Yes, sir, sitting here in San Antonio, Texas.
Ramsey Russell: San Antonio, Texas. Boy, I tell you what, it couldn’t be any further from there to here. I’m going to tell you, what’s the weather like, and how did your teal season end up this year?
Ryan Watson: Man, the weather, talking about currently right now as it sits, we’re about 84 degrees. Haven’t seen a drop of rain in a couple of weeks. But you said something about teal season. We had a lot of late summer rains from those hurricanes that kind of came up through the Houston area and moved on over to Louisiana. So we had a lot of new water coming in September for teal season, and we had a lot of birds come down like we do every year. South Texas, historically, is a fantastic place to come and hunt blue-winged teal. We had a lot of really good hunts, had some slower hunts with birds having excess water and just finding where they are and needing to move around. But overall, we had a lot of really good reports of another successful teal season here in South Texas.

Experience the Teal Capital of North America

Ramsey Russell: Texas is one of the teal capitals of North America, there’s no doubt about it. I say south of I-10 all the way across Louisiana into Texas, at least as far out there as the Garwood Prairie, would be the core of it coming through south of Houston there and all that, what’s left of the rice and just the wetlands. Boy, I’ve never seen blue-winged teal. But I think this year was a little off. I think it had to do with the drought up north and possibly, possibly the later hatch. And I just say that because it seemed to be a late start on the teal season this year. You know, it just did. It just seemed to be later before the main migration hooked up. I know there were still birds quite up north when I got up here after I saw you down in South Texas. You know, you and I hunted together over at Steve Bigger’s place. And when I got up here, there were still blue-wings out on the potholes, and I just got this sneaky feeling it was a later hatch. That’s what I think.
Ryan Watson: No, I have to agree with you. And same thing with those late-season rains that the Prairie Pothole Region and southern Canada got. You know, we were down on the long-term average when it came to the breeding population this year, which is actually leading to a restrictive season next summer. And that’s all due to the adaptive harvest management system. But anyway, a lot of the teal numbers that we saw, a later migration, you know that they migrate in waves. They don’t all come down at once. You get the non-breeding males, then you’ll get the new hatch, and then, you know, you’ll get those females coming down a little bit later. But no, we definitely killed more last year. But as far as teal season goes, you know, South Texas still probably came in number one, I’d say, anywhere out of the country.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, there’s no doubt about it. It almost always does. Is it for sure next year Central Flyway is going to be a nine-day blue-winged teal season, or is that something they’re considering?
Ryan Watson: No. So that’s a for-sure thing as it stands, you know, today, October 23rd. So the way they set those seasons, they use the adaptive harvest management system, and that’s all the federal system. So they developed this system, I can’t give you an exact date on it, but basically what they do is they base the seasons for the following year off of the breeding population survey, you know, the May pond counts that we see every spring, and they come out in late summer. So when that BPOP survey got released this year, that set the harvest structure up for the 25-26 season.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. Anybody listening can go back. We’ve done some episodes with some migratory bird chiefs that have gone in-depth on adaptive harvest management. I do know this, I do know that. That system started back in the late 1990s, early 2000s. Historically, they’d go out and do the flowers, do the pond counts, do the counts, do everything, crunch together, and lay out the season. So they’d fly this past summer and set out this year’s season lickety-split on what they thought the numbers were. Then they started working a year ahead because, actually, by the time Congress approved it and everything, sometimes historically, there have been times since adaptive harvest management that states up north had actually opened September 1st, whatever, and Congress had not even authorized it yet. And that just opens up a whole can of worms. So now they started moving forward, but I just did not know whether or not they had set the season yet or not, if that was something they were considering. Boy, I tell you what, the blue-winged teal has kind of become the duck season to a lot of Southerners because those little birds are coming, plus or minus a little bit. They’re coming. And, you know, I heard a lot. I started getting a lot of pictures out of the Dakotas and from Canada and started hearing some reports that, you know, as dry as it was, there’d been a lot of late-season rains that may have bailed it out. And Ryan, I’ve been up here in Canada, which is to say Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, for a month, and I don’t see it. I don’t see it. Talking to the farmers, talking to the landowners and the locals, it was too little rain to do any good, too late to help the crops or, I think, the ducks. You know, I’ve never seen, well, let me put it this way, I’ve never seen Manitoba as dry as it was. And it’s been wet in the last couple of years. But Saskatchewan and parts of Alberta, the parts I hunted especially, were dry, dry, dry, dry, dry, just as dry as they were last year. The only thing that the real late rain did for us is, talking to a farmer one day because the snow geese were just jumping, I mean, you could not stick them. It was like trying, you know, you’re wrestling, trying to pin somebody to a mat. You couldn’t do it. We could not stick the snow geese great and consistently like we have in the past because there’d be 15 or 20,000 birds using this field all day. And you’d go set up on them, put them to bed at night, man, pitch black dark, leave the field and say, well, I know I’m gonna get them good and show up the next morning. They were a mile and a half away because they would just hit these fields. It was so little rain during the growing season, the yields were poor. Then, what waste grain there was, here comes a 3 1/2 inch rain and made all the grain sprout. And the snow geese are not up here. They are not looking for green protein right now. They want carbohydrate-rich grain. They want to build those fat supplies so they can fly south. And it was just a little discouraging being up here, to be honest with you. It just really is. It’s dry, dry, dry. I told one of the farmers the other day I was staying with, I said, man, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings to find out that you had snow clear up to your gutters. You know, I’d love to see this whole country just filled up to the gutters with, you know, meters of snow over the horizon. That’s what it’s going to take to really revitalize this prairie. And what’s so sad, Ryan, is I actually drove by an operation in Saskatchewan. They were putting tiles in, which means you can’t put tile in, which is a drainage device. You can’t put it in when there’s water in a wetland. When it’s dry, you can put it in. I stopped. Took me forever to get down the road one day because I was stopping and taking pictures of all the dry wetlands and the disc tracks going across it or where they’d gone in and burned it so they can put it into the crop rotation. There’s dirt pans moving, and once they move those dirt pans and once they tile those wetlands, they’re gone forever. They’re not coming back. When the snow comes, when the rain comes, when whatever it needs to get these wetlands wet again, they are not coming back. And there’s a paper, I still haven’t read it deeply, but I came across a paper on a listserv I’m part of recently, that said somewhere in just the last 20 years, Saskatchewan has lost nearly a fourth of its wetlands that they know of. Where the hell are the ducks? They’re gone. They ain’t coming back because they don’t have production grounds. I most recently hunted with a local in Alberta, and we go to his farm to clean all the snow geese. We’re targeting snow geese when we hunt together, and we’ll shoot ducks and we’ll shoot dark geese, but we’re after those snows normally when I’m there. And for miles, all the roads for miles and miles leading up to his farm, where we go to clean geese, are hen houses. I mean, I’m like, wow, look at all these freaking hen houses. And he actually contracts with Delta Waterfowl, and he’s a Delta Waterfowl, and he goes out and puts all these hen houses up and some other nest boxes and stuff all over the terrain. But he said, I guess you noticed that everywhere there’s hen houses there was water. And now they’re bone dry. They’re all bone dry. In fact, one of them I drove by, it was a big enough wetland. He had put three hen houses in it back in the past. And the farmer has come through and disced all around them because he’s getting ready to plant in case it doesn’t rain or to get water again. That’s scary, man. That is some kind of scary. If you’re a duck hunter and you want a sky full of birds coming through there, that’s scary. The future is scary. What’s happening up here in the breeding ground, it’s just, to me, it’s scary.

The Effects of Dry Wetlands on Waterfowl

And sure enough, on the way back, this big blue lake, according to the map, when we came back, was nothing but a dry field.

Ryan Watson: Yeah, I’ll take a second and go towards what you’re talking about with all the dry wetlands. So I actually took my first trip to Canada about two weeks ago. I was up in Alberta myself, and, you know, we had a great time. We had a group of guys, and we shot just under 400 birds in three days between snows, darks, and ducks. But yeah, I noticed a lot of places. I’ll never, I’ll never forget. We were on the ride in one morning, and we were driving, and I could see on the GPS, Apple Maps, you know, whatever you use, it had a picture, this big blue spot, you know, off the side of the road. And I said, dang, that’s a big body of water. Well, we drove by it in the dark on the way out to the field, and I kind of looked to my left and looked to my right out of the truck, and I said, it doesn’t look like there’s much water out there. And sure enough, on the way back, this big blue lake, according to the map, when we came back, was nothing but a dry field.

Ryan Watson: And that’s one of the things, you know, no one can make it rain. There’s water control habits that we can use to flood plains and flood ponds to create wetlands. But back to your point of the tiling and permanent wetland drainage, once a wetland has been permanently drained. You’re absolutely right. It’s about as close as you can get to impossible to restore that wetland without pouring a ton of money into it. And it’s just a very, very hard thing to do, not only physically but financially. But that’s where I wanted that you sparked my memory on a program that Delta has called the Working Wetlands Act. And essentially, what that says is to these farmers, instead of an easement where you put your property in there and, you know, you got to negotiate terms, and some of the times you kind of lose the right to, not only, you know, it may be a good thing, you can’t go in there and permanently drain it, but you get some restrictions put on the property that you own of what you can and cannot do with it. Well, what Delta Waterfowl is working Wetlands Act says, essentially, is go out there and you plant your crop or you do what you want to your property. If it rains and this pothole fills up, you leave that alone and you leave it for the ducks, because those ducks need those seasonal wetlands. And if it’s dry, you’re free to do what you need to do to get your yield from your harvest or whatever it may be. But the Working Wetlands Act is one of the best versions, essentially, of a conservation easement where these farmers have the power to still do what they want with their land, and it’s good for the ducks and it’s good for the farmers. So, whereas the conservation easement, some guys can get turned off from that or some farmers can get turned off from that because of the restrictions that are in place with it. Most of the time, the Working Wetlands Act simply says, hey, when it’s wet, you leave it for the ducks. When it’s dry, it’s your land. You do what you see as fit. Just please, you know, do not permanently drain that wetland. And it’s a program set up that way so that it benefits both the ducks and the farmers. And that’s the number one way that we’re going to be able to do restoration projects and fill these flyways is to work with the landowners. Over 90% of the prairie pothole region, southern Canada. This duck factor we call it is privately held, and we will never be able to buy up enough land through federal acquisition to restore the prairies. We’ve got to have the policy in effect and work with the landowners to make it the best situation for not only the ducks, but for them as well. So they are willing to and want to work with conservation groups.

Changes in Land = Changes in Waterfowl Migration Patterns 

And we had that realization when we started all these conservation efforts, specifically on the habitat side when we saw the landscape permanently changing. 

Ramsey Russell: Yep. And it’s a very daunting process. They don’t have a lot of the USDA offsets and benefits that we do south of the border. You know, it’s like a farmer told me one time it was up to him and God and the railroads on how much profit he could make. You know what I’m saying? And it’s just, It’s barley and wheat and canola, which is worthless for waterfowl all the way out to the horizons. And you know, it’s just they, and they don’t, they don’t farm that whole field. They farm that two, those two-inch furrows. That’s where they put the nutrients, that’s where they put the time. This GPS technology. And you know, I was cleaning birds, lots and lots of snow geese the last few days with a 62-year-old and had been a farmer in the past. And he said, you know, in the past I grew up and duck hunted. I’d go out, maybe shoot a few ducks or geese. But he said I had work to do, I was running a farm. And when he retired is when he started goose hunting a lot. And I asked him while we were skinning geese the other day, I said, you know what, how have things changed? He said, oh gosh. He talked about, they don’t really tile as much in Alberta as they do over in Saskatchewan and other provinces, but they do, they use dirt pans. He said, you better believe they put dirt pans out when they get a chance and they’ll farm over that ground like that Working Wetlands you’re talking about when they can. But you know, other things. He pointed out, like you said, you know Ramsey, back 20 years ago, if you remember, he said just the mechanized harvest of grain for what it offers these birds, the food supply. When these birds are flying from the Arctic and flying from further north and beginning to stage and beginning to build their physiological well-being for the migration. He said it doesn’t exist. And he pointed out how they used to historically harvest grain was swathing. So they just go and swath all these wheat fields and then they’d run a combine over that swath to get all the grain out. And it was not as efficient as modern-day combines. And one time in the last four years, I have hunted a swathed field and I was shocked. It was this year I was shocked to even see a swathed field. We beat the brakes off of speckle bellies. They were using it good. The only thing that made it better is it had been raining because farmers hate when it rains on the swathed field. Because here come all the birds and they walk down those swaths and they eat the grain and foul it, you know, with their waste and everything else. And it just makes it very tough. But it’s just, it’s a death by a thousand cuts. The habitat is changing, changing, changing. And it’s changing from here clear down to the Texas Gulf Coast. It’s not just in Canada. It’s the production grounds, It’s the staging grounds that it’s clear down to the wintering grounds and back. It’s just constantly changing, not for the best. I think if we want maximum productivity of waterfowl, and like I say, some things, we can’t control rain, but, you know, the things we can control are usually going the way for profit more than for waterfowl, which, you know, I guess that’s what a business exists for.
Ryan Watson: Yep. And you’re absolutely right. We see all the, all the change. And we had that realization when we started all these conservation efforts, specifically on the habitat side when we saw the landscape permanently changing. And we all said we got to do something if we want waterfowl hunting to be forever. And that’s where we started doing all this habitat restoration. I’m going to use this to lead into one of our next talking points. But we focused so hard on habitat for the longest time, and we started restoring and recreating the areas of the prairies that we could and putting time and effort and money into it. And the duck numbers were not really going up, and we were all kind of left there scratching our heads going, what is going on? Why isn’t the landscape producing the birds? We’re putting more grasslands out there for the breeding habitat. There’s more water on ag for food. We’re doing all these restoration efforts from where we were a couple years ago. Why are the duck numbers not going up? And it took a couple years until Delta Waterfowl ran a predator management project to realize we’re not protecting them on this new habitat that we’re creating. I’ve kind of come up with the analogy or the metaphor, whatever the right word is. You know, you and I wouldn’t go into a bad neighborhood and invest a ton of money in building a super nice cabin, fill it with a bunch of nice stuff, and then leave all the doors and windows unlocked and walk away from it and expect our stuff not to get stolen, right?
Ramsey Russell: Yep.

Ryan Watson: And that’s what we had been doing on the landscape for 30 plus years. And it goes even further back to westward expansion. You know, humans moved west and gold rush and everything going out that way. Well, what do we do when we get to that prairie landscape and there’s all the buffalo and deer and everything that we are using to survive as we expand to the West Coast? Well, you’ve got all these mountain lions, grizzly bears, wolves, anything like that, well, they’re competition. Not only are they eating the game that we’re also after to survive, they’re killing our livestock. They’re killing us. So we as humans they apex predator. We either kill or push all those apex predators out there to eliminate the competition that we need to survive on the landscape as we move west. Well, now you take it back up to all these conservation efforts that we’re doing nowadays, trying to restore this habitat specifically for waterfowl. We’ve killed or pushed out all these apex predators. So that left the raccoons, possums, and skunks to thrive. And on top of that, we’ve now built up the prairie pothole region with human structures, cars, houses, businesses, and everything like that. Now, those predators that eat the ducks are able to survive these harsh winters because they have structures to live in. So where I’m going with this is, we start putting all this money into habitat restoration, and we don’t think about the predators that eat the ducks. So, we start doing all this. All we’re doing is setting the buffet table up for these raccoons, possums, and skunks to come and eat these ducks now because we have pushed out all the apex predators.

Ramsey Russell: We’ll see. I did a deep dive on some North American history. We actually had Dan Flores on here one time talking about it. It’s very amazing that when European settlers showed up. That’s what you’re talking about. Europe showed up. It was a Garden of Eden, the biggest Garden of Eden ever to exist on Earth. Eons ago, there were 50 to 55 million Native Americans living in the Americas, South and North America. When the initial Spanish came in, smallpox hit. And by the time our European ancestors landed on Plymouth Rock, it had wiped out 90% of the Indian population. And so you ran kind of a global cold spell. You had all this habitat. You didn’t have a lot of humanity. Now there’s 330 million just Americans living on the landscape. And I hear all the time, like, out in Colorado right now, there’s a big issue about prohibiting mountain lion and cat killing. And there’s wolf bans and everything else going on. You know, they don’t want us hunting those things because, you know, they have their place in the environment, and it’ll be all natural. Well, that ship sailed a long time ago when Christopher Columbus landed on Plymouth Rock or whatever the story is. Those days are over. We have disrupted the natural cycle now. Preceding this event in time, the wolves and the mountain lions and the coyotes and the possums and the prairie chickens and the wild turkeys and the elk and the deer and all the native wildlife, they kind of coexisted. They managed each other. If the wolves moved into this area and ate too many elk, the wolf population began to decline. Then the elk population built back up, and the wolf population built back up and matched. Well, those days are over. You know, we have stuck a stick in the spokes of the natural cycle of things. And, you know, you’re talking about, to your point about predator management on grasslands. We were scouting two days ago and drove by a big, massive, I don’t know, half-section NGO waterfowl production area. Good to see my daughter sitting out there on the landscape in great nesting habitat near a lot of major water areas and potholes when it’s wet and stuff like that. But it’s just good nesting, breeding ground. And again, the local farmer said, and he traps in the winter, he contract traps. And he said, yeah, but it’s not producing anything. He said, I hate to tell you, but as good as it looks, we’re not getting many ducks out of that because there’s too many predators. He said, the fur market went down. Nobody traps, nobody hunts or kills the predators. And they’re going through there like little Hoover vacuums and eating all the hens and all the eggs. He said, I just hate to tell you, but that’s just the God’s honest truth about when you see all these grasslands. And for as long as I can remember, Ryan, Delta Waterfowl came out advocating predator control.
Ryan Watson: Yes. Yeah, so we 100% advocate it because that’s the number one thing that’s going to increase the duck population is getting them away from the predators and removing the predators off the landscape that are killing them. So, to your point of the fur trapping business kind of going under, you know, after they quit paying for pelts. That’s where Delta comes in. We’re the only organization that actually has boots on the ground, contracted employees who are solely paid to do predator management activity, get out on the landscape and trap and remove predators from the breeding grounds that these ducks are living in.
Ramsey Russell: A former CEO of Delta Waterfowl, I heard him say one time, save the best and trap the rest. Was that a slogan or am I just imagining things? Save the best and trap the rest.
Ryan Watson: I personally haven’t heard that one, but I’ll have to look into it.
Ramsey Russell: I think I heard Olson say that one time, and it makes sense.
Ryan Watson: Yeah, I mean, and like I said, you know, you talked about the imbalance. You know, there used to be a natural balance between the apex predators and the sub-predators and then the animals of prey. Well, that’s not there anymore. And that’s where, you know, humans are this apex predator. We have got to do the trapping efforts. If we do not get out there and put in these efforts to trap and remove these raccoons, possums, skunks, everything that is eating the duck hatch, we will not see the population restored to where we want it to be. We won’t see it go up at all. We have got to get out there and make sure that they make it out of the nest into the fall.

The Relationship Between Predators and Waterfowl Populations

And I think that shooting autumn coyotes is contrary to producing more waterfowl on the landscape.

Ramsey Russell: A month driving around during the afternoon, scouting waterfowl, driving out in the mornings, hunting. And my observation is I have never seen more skunks and red foxes, especially in Canada, and deer and moose and elk or whatever. I’ve never seen more, especially of those little predators, in all the years since 1998 that I have come to Canada, as I saw this year. And I think it’s got to do with just the warm winters and lack of snowfall. They don’t have the winter attrition. But when I say I’ve seen some red foxes, son, it’s like every other day or every day it stretches. You see red foxes out there on the sides of roads at 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon, or they come trotting through your decoys thinking those geese. One time, one of the coolest observations. We were sitting there scouting a field in Manitoba, watching the field, figuring out where we were going to hunt the Canada geese. It was just a quarter section slap full of Canada geese. And when he trotted out, kind of sneaky-like, came out of the woods trying to go flock to flock looking for a Canada goose he could grab up. I thought he was a coyote because I’m used to seeing little bitty Mississippi coyotes or Texas coyotes. It was a red fox, and I put glass on, realized it was a red fox. I don’t know what the heck he’d have done with a 10-pound Canada goose had he caught one. And I mean, I think they’d have beat him to death if he’d gotten hold of one. But my point being is they’re just brazen, and they’re abundant out there on the landscape this year because of these winters. And you know, Check, check. I’m gonna loop back and change the subject just briefly. You and I met in a duck blind hunt down at Steve Bigger’s. It was a super full moon and no wind and humidity, and we shot some teal. But it wasn’t the day that guys like Biggers are known for. It was an off day. It was slow enough. It was me and you and Terry Denman and several others, and we were sitting in a blind together and we got to visit. It was sporadic enough that we got to just talk for extended periods. And you were telling me a lot about Delta Waterfowl. That’s when I decided I wanted to get you on. But it’s so tough when you go, go, go, hunt, hunt, hunt in that kind of environment to make time for a podcast. You had things going on, I had things going on. And so here we are. But as we’re talking about the predators, you know, you said something, you said something that I had never heard anyone else speak that I have a heartfelt belief in about predator control, and it involves coyotes. I’ve just got this, I’ve got this personal bias that I think if we want more waterfowl in these production areas, we need to trap, I’m sure. But I believe if you want more ducks on the landscape, we need to kill fewer coyotes. We talk about trapping predators, when I talk about trapping everything. Mountain lions don’t eat many ducks and eggs, for example. Wolves don’t eat many ducks and eggs, for example. Coyotes will eat a duck and an egg, but that ain’t their chosen benefit. What they’re going after are the skunks and possums and raccoons and red foxes. They keep those populations in check. And those are your egg eaters, those are your nest raiders, or the possums and the skunks and the raccoons and the red foxes. That’s what they make their living on. And coyotes, they’re an opportunist. But man, they’re the ones that keep those meso predators in check. And it just, it sickens me to see people get bored out here. And hey, if you do it, I’m not judging you. I’m just saying I think if you’re a predator hunter, by all means go predator hunting. But I’m a duck hunter. I want more ducks. And I think that shooting autumn coyotes is contrary to producing more waterfowl on the landscape. What are your thoughts?

Ryan Watson: So, yeah, we talked about that down there in El Campo. And then I actually went to North Dakota the week after and got to spend some time with a lot of higher-ups at Delta Waterfowl. And one day we were out on the way checking some hen houses and predator management sites, and I looked over to Joel Bryce and Matt Schouinard and I said, I’ve got a question for you about coyotes. And we talked about it, and the best answer that I was given was, so on a township level, which is 36 by 36 square miles, it is okay to have about three pairs of coyotes. So, you know, six dogs total, male and a female, three pairs of dogs. However, on the areas that are humanly influenced, which is still a very minor bit of the prairie pothole and southern Canada where these ducks are breeding, humans are the apex predator and there’s not really a need for another predator in that area. But again, we’re not covering that landscape yet. So those areas that are untapped in the predator management and trapping market, as of right now, we actually want about three pairs of coyotes on that 36 by 36 square mile township level to help balance out that predator-to-prey ratio between the ducks and the raccoons, possums, and skunks. Because just like you said, will a coyote eat a duck, will it eat a duck egg? Yeah, it might. But it’s not out there actively seeking for it like those raccoons, possums, and skunks are. But what those coyotes are actively seeking for is exactly those three things we just talked about that are eating all the ducks. So there is benefit, there absolutely is benefit to having coyotes on the landscape in the area of predator management and natural balance between the ducks and the predators that are eating them. Having that coyote be that apex predator for those species that are the nest egg eaters.

Ramsey Russell: Ryan, we will circle back completely, and then we’ll come back to some of these topics. Where are you from and what do you do?

Duck Hunting in South Carolina

Ryan Watson: Ah, there you go. So I’m originally from a town called Greenville, South Carolina, which if anybody’s from there, they know it started out a lot smaller than it is, you know, as of today. But my family has a lot of history from that area. I actually grew up in the house that my dad grew up in. Went to the same high school, the whole nine yards. So family has been in Greenville, South Carolina, for a long time. Grew up a duck hunter, instilled into me through my father, who got it from his father, a long history of bird hunting, whether it’s duck dove, quail, down there in South Carolina, hunting those plantations. Bird hunting and just hunting in general and being outdoors has been in the Watson family, especially for the men, for a very long time now. Throughout high school, attended conservation banquets and was part of local high school chapters. But I was also a baseball player. I really enjoyed the sport of baseball, was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship and go and play in college for four years.

Ramsey Russell: What position did you play?

Ryan Watson: What’s that?

Ramsey Russell: What position did you play?

Ryan Watson: I was a catcher.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. Wow.

Ryan Watson: Yeah, I was your non-typical, I was skinny and fast. Not, you know, not large and slow. Yeah, but no, had a great time. Baseball and hunting, you know, those were neck and neck for the longest time of my favorite things to do.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about duck hunting growing up, when you were young? Talk a little bit about what was it like Duck hunting back home when you were young, with your daddy in South Carolina?

Ryan Watson: Yeah, so South Carolina, you know, for my Atlantic Flyway guys, South Carolina was waking up and going to the beaver swamp and shooting your three wood ducks and calling it a morning and waking up the next day to go and do it again.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Ryan Watson: Just because we were so obsessed with it. Loved it. I’d say the turning point for me when I was like, this is no longer a hobby, it’s an obsession. I met a friend through Little League baseball whose father was an obsessed duck hunter. He had his own property, with three ponds across the street from a place called Beaver Dam WMA in upstate South Carolina. That’s right off of Lake Hartwell right there on the South Carolina-Georgia line. And he had three flooded corn impoundments across the street from the state-flooded corn impoundments. I went out there for my first hunt, and I mean, you got out of the truck in upstate South Carolina, and all you could hear was mallards quacking, wigeon whistling, a couple of pintails. I mean, I had never seen that before. I didn’t know there was anything other than a wood duck. You know, I’m 11–12 years old at this time. Anyways, went on that first hunt and got hooked. I continued to hunt with them. My dad and I started taking a trip every year. We would go, at the time, out west, to mid-Missouri or Arkansas, and hunt right around New Year’s, end of December, beginning of January time frame, about every year. Made a tradition with him. I had a cousin who was a couple of years older than me. He got out of college, came back home, bought a house, started working, and he had a boat. So, you know, I’d hop in the truck with him every chance I got and go hunt the public lakes and rivers all over South Carolina. And of course, that continued through college. Kept going out west, stuck with it, and still enjoyed it all through my college years. I started dating a girl my freshman year of college, who is now my wife, which I’ll expand on later to where I am today. Played all four years of baseball, but my junior year of college, I had been dating my girlfriend at the time, Callie, for two years. Her father-in-law retired as a two-star general in the United States Army. I went to a change of command ceremony for him in July of 2019. And I said, this is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. What can I do to be involved? What can I do to serve my country? I was already on a path to graduate with my degree. And he came to me and said, “Have you ever thought about doing ROTC—the Reserve Officer Training Corps?” I ended up committing to that my junior year of college, did an accelerated program, and I commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Reserves Corps of Engineers in May of 2021, as well as graduated with my degree. And that leads me to today, sitting in San Antonio, Texas. Again, my wife, my now wife, her father-in-law retired in June of 2021, and he retired out of Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas. Well, we were graduating college, and she had grown up in like 17 different states in only 23 years of life. And she said, “My family’s in one spot, and they’re in San Antonio, Texas. I’m heading there. You can figure out what you’re doing.” I said, “Well, hell, I guess I’m going to San Antonio, Texas.”

Ramsey Russell: Yep.

Ryan Watson: So I ended up following her out here. Great family, love her to death, and it has definitely led to some things that would not have come. You know, they say everything happens for a reason. But I ended up in San Antonio right after graduation in 2021. Got here, got back involved with some conservation groups, of course, still duck hunted. Went on my first duck hunt in Texas on Choke Canyon Reservoir just south of San Antonio for an early-season teal hunt. I was like, okay, I think I can hang around here. Texas might not be a bad place to end up. And we were still dating at the time. I’ll skip over a little bit in the beginning. Come October 2022, I got orders to go to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for about six and a half months to fulfill a military obligation. While I am in Missouri, I was still duck hunting, still involved with conservation groups. I had been working prior to this military commitment. And I guess I’ll back up just a minute. If anyone listening or yourself isn’t familiar with how the Reserves work, I maintain a full-time civilian career, and then I go in once a month and do military training. And then about two to three weeks out of the year, I’ll go out for an extended period where I’ll be in Army uniform every day for two to three weeks doing that part of my job. But prior to going on this six-and-a-half-month military commitment, I was working for a nonprofit in the city of San Antonio doing sports-side programs. We did after-school programs. We had a big Hall of Fame event for any professional athletes out of San Antonio, big Met Gala-type fundraiser event. So I was familiar with the world of planning events and activities and the world of nonprofits. And of course, myself just being an outdoorsman and a duck hunter was very familiar with that. Well, I went through those six-and-a-half months in Missouri, and when I came back from my military commitment, I said to my previous employer, you know, I think I want to pursue a job in the world of conservation. I enjoy sports. I told you baseball and duck hunting were neck and neck for the longest time growing up. Well, I’ve gotten out of baseball now, enjoyed my four years of college. I’m a duck hunter. So I started pursuing a career in conservation. I was looking for anywhere to get my foot in the door. It was either May or June of 2023, Delta Waterfowl posts a Regional Director of South Texas opening position. I jumped on it like white on rice. I mean, that was my dream job. I’d been following around a good buddy of mine for a long time. I believe that you know Clint Pace.

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah.

Ryan Watson: And learning everything I know now about what it means to be a regional director in a conservation organization. So Delta posts this job opening, I hopped on there, did an application, submitted all my volunteer work, and the work that I’d been doing for the nonprofit in San Antonio for the past year. I went through a couple rounds of interviews, did what I do best, talked about duck hunting and how passionate I am about the world of conservation. And here we are, a little over a year and a half later. It’s been the best thing to come my way. I can’t tell you how appreciative and happy I am to be in the position I am in with Delta Waterfowl.

History of Delta Waterfowl

Delta Waterfowl was founded in 1911 by a guy named James Ford Bell of Ford Motor Company.

Ramsey Russell: For those that don’t know, Ryan, what is the history of Delta Waterfowl? I mean, most people in the modern era think of Delta Waterfowl as a dinner and a local chapter dinner that raises money to do something with habitat conservation. But what really is the foundation of Delta Waterfowl from its beginning to now?

Ryan Watson: Yeah, we’ll dive all the way back to 1911 when we started. Delta Waterfowl was founded in 1911 by a guy named James Ford Bell of Ford Motor Company. He did so in conjunction with the Winchester Brothers, Winchester Repeating Arms, and then also brought in a guy named Aldo Leopold, who is considered to be the father of modern conservation. It all started with this idea. James had a place up in Manitoba, Canada, you know, we call it the Delta Marsh, where he loved shooting canvasbacks. It took that one post-morning hunt thought of, “I’m killing these ducks. What am I doing to make sure there’s more put back?” So he came up with the concept of, “Kill a canvasback, I want to put two back into the wild.” He brought in Aldo Leopold and came up with the modern conservation scale that all groups are using. We founded Delta Waterfowl Foundation, and what Delta did for the next 80 years or so was provide all the research, field tech, and biologists, all the information to the groups out there that were doing grassroots fundraising and hands-on projects, moving dirt, and habitat restoration. A lot of people say, and we say it too, Delta was this tiny old research cell out of Manitoba, Canada, doing all the behind-the-scenes work as far as research and figuring out and training the next generation of biologists and field technicians in the world of waterfowl conservation. We did that for the longest time, and it wasn’t until the late 1990s, early 2000s, that we had our first predator management program launched on a wetland in North Dakota. At that point, we turned into a grassroots fundraising, membership-based organization and became what Delta Waterfowl is today with the event fundraising system, dinners, and auctions you just mentioned. For the longest time, it was solely research. We did not do any type of fundraising. We had a group of people who financially backed us while we were doing our research programs, the pond counts, the breeding habits, and figuring out what makes ducks. But we finally figured out what makes ducks, and it goes back to the beginning of our conversation was predator management and nesting structures. We’ve got to protect them so that they can make it into the fall flight. We took that information and presented it to the groups we had been supporting and got a head-scratch of a response on it. No one really wanted to take it and run with it. A lot of groups said, “If we start saying we’re killing Rocky Raccoon, we might lose some investment.” Well, finally, Delta said, “If no one’s going to do it, we’re going to do it.” We’re a duck hunting organization. At the end of the day, all the efforts we put into predator management, nesting structures, research, and education are done for the fact that we want more ducks for the reason that we want ducks to shoot. Delta Waterfowl is the duck hunter’s organization. Every one of us is a duck hunter. We’re crazy about it. That’s where it gets into the differences, we say we like harvesting them. That leads up to the creation of the fundraising system. So where we’re at today, Delta Waterfowl has four pillars we work across in conservation. We have duck production, which goes into predator management and nesting structures. Research and education cover all the biology and graduate student programs that we have. Habitat conservation includes the Working Wetlands Act and the work we do on the Prairie Pothole Region in southern Canada to collaborate with farmers and make sure this landscape is used as effectively and efficiently as possible to produce ducks. Finally, we have something called Hunter 3. Hunter 3 stands for recruitment, retention, and reactivation. A big thing a lot of people don’t know is we are losing duck hunters. As much as Facebook and Instagram make you think we’re not, duck hunter numbers are declining. The number one group funding waterfowl conservation is the duck hunters, through the duck stamp dollars, licensing, and all the money that goes into duck hunting.

We actually have a program called First Hunt, where we take people out duck hunting for the first time, and it’s all done through the chapter fundraising system. This year, we surpassed 100,000 people introduced to duck hunting for the first time through the fundraising efforts of Delta Waterfowl and our volunteer chapter systems. In a nutshell, Delta Waterfowl focuses on those four pillars. We have the largest graduate student program, where we feed people in, take them through projects and scholarships to go to school, and they come out on the back end as biologists, commissioners, and game wardens who are good for wetland conservation and outdoorsmen and women. I don’t know if you’ve got anything you want to say or if you want me to keep rolling with all the programs Delta has.

The Million Duck Campaign

Ramsey Russell: I want to talk about some of the programs. I want to talk about some of the, like, most recently, the one that flies up on me is the Million Duck Campaign. What is the Million Duck Campaign? How do nest boxes and hen houses come into play in all this stuff, and predator management? Tell me how that works.

Ryan Watson: Yeah, so to preface it, when we do our fundraising as a nonprofit, we split the funds up into the four pillars of conservation. So right now, it’s about an even split of 21% across three of the pillars, and 27% of the funds go towards duck production. The Million Duck Campaign is scaling those pillars to solely focus on duck production and put 1 million birds into the fall flight year after year. So, with the Million Duck Campaign, the funds go from 27% for duck production and 21% across the other three to about 60% going into duck production, and 10-11% between the other three. What that is, is just scaling the amount of financial backing that solely duck production efforts will get. This year alone, we had over 13,000 nesting structures on the Prairie Pothole Region in southern Canada, as well as trapping on over 220,000 acres. Now, what that means for duck numbers is we are producing an estimated no less than 150,000 extra birds that are going to be in this year’s fall flight. That is a minor percentage of where we plan to be by the year 2030, at 1 million birds per year into the fall flight on top of the natural fall flight that occurs. The Million Duck Campaign was just an effort that we launched. We have something called the Million Duck Council, which is a group of investors that donated anywhere from a million to tens of millions directly to the fund.

Then we also put some money from the event fundraising system into it. But the goal is $250 million for an endowment fund. What that means is once we hit that $250 million, we don’t have to fundraise for it anymore. It will make its own money, and this will be in perpetuity. This program will last forever, 1 million birds every year for as long as the Earth and Delta Waterfowl exist. We are currently, and I don’t want to misspeak, so I’m going to go below it just a little bit, I believe we’re currently about $210 million out of $250 million.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Ryan Watson: And we launched this program just two or three years ago.

Ramsey Russell: So, you know, it’s so important. You mentioned previously that we hunters are financing all the conservation work through mostly involuntary Pittman-Robertson Act time, money, donations to NGOs like Delta Waterfowl or Ducks Unlimited, or somebody else. We’re footing the bill for it. But still, like we started off talking, we are losing ground on habitat. You know, we’ve got to recruit more and more people onto it. You know, and I see some of these animal welfare groups, some of these anti-hunting groups, some of this other stuff, you know, saying, “Well, I’m against you shooting ducks because we need more of them or whatever have you on the landscape.” But at the same time, where are they putting their money? I’m unaware of any other group that does not hunt committing themselves to a quarter-billion-dollar endowment to go towards producing waterfowl, you know?

Ryan Watson: Yeah, and that goes back to, like I said, we are a hunting organization. We’re not scared to say that. We don’t have anything, we don’t take, you know, government subsidies. We’re grassroots funding and major donations. And everyone who contributes to Delta Waterfowl, you know, is a duck hunter. So we are 100% working for the duck hunter. The fact is, you’re giving your money to our organization because you believe that we’re going to produce waterfowl to increase your success in the duck blind, and that’s 100% what we’re working towards.

Ramsey Russell: You know, there seems to be this prevailing thought that we have to take sides. You know, it’s Mississippi State versus Ole Miss, Alabama versus Auburn, Dallas Cowboys versus Pittsburgh Steelers. You know, I mean, it’s always this, like, SEC rivalry that we’ve got to choose sides. And I have been asked many times, you know, in a duck blind or at dinner or somewhere, “So who do you support? Delta Waterfowl or Ducks Unlimited?” And I’m like, both. I support them both. A lot of university and governmental and state and federal government, I should have said, and a lot of biologists on the landscape today have done their graduate or postgraduate research in Delta Marsh in cooperation with Delta Waterfowl. You know what I’m saying? I don’t see it as picking sides. I see it as, you know, they are two pillars, two frontal attacks onto conservation that we need. So I, in as much as I’m capable of doing, I support Delta Waterfowl and Ducks Unlimited whole heartedly. How does Delta Waterfowl, for example, to that point, how does Delta Waterfowl work in conjunction with state and federal agencies and other NGOs like that?

Ryan Watson: Yeah, 100% to your point. It’s not a pick-and-sides thing. You know, I always encourage people to support both because they focus on different areas of habitat or waterfowl conservation. And you need all of them to work collectively to make the best outcome for the duck hunter. The number one way that I say we work together is we have partnerships or relationships, I’d say rather, with all the other NGOs and programs and groups out there where we will refer to other people. You know, if someone comes to me with a question, “I’ve got a property that I’m looking to do a shared-cost thing to get some water out there to create a wetland for some waterfowl, you know, for wintering ducks in South Texas?” Well, Delta Waterfowl doesn’t do that, but these organizations do. Here’s the phone number of that guy. We want to work together. And it goes like you said, like, you know, the rivalry. It’s 100% not that. We’re all on the same team here, and we tell people, or I’ve heard it told before, it’s like saying you can’t support Delta Waterfowl because you support X, Y, and Z is like you can’t support St. Jude’s because you support Shriners. Doesn’t make sense. We’re all working towards the same goal here. We want to fill the flyways. A lot of the work that we do is, since we are a zero-land-acquisition organization, we have to have the lands to work on to do these projects. So other organizations, let’s take Ducks Unlimited, for example, they’ll go in and do a habitat restoration project, work with a landowner, put some water on the landscape, restore a wetland, whatever it may be, grasslands. Well, then Delta may come in and reach out to that same landowner who worked with another organization and say, “Hey, we want to come out and do a predator management program or a nesting structure program.” And that’s where it kind of comes full circle. You’ve got to have the land to do it on, and you’ve got to have the efforts put in place to make sure that land is at maximum production when it comes to waterfowl. So, yeah, exactly what you said, you know, we’re all in it for the same reason. It should not be by any means a rivalry. We’re all in it together, and it’s all for the ducks.

What is the Waterfowl Heritage Fund?

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely. What is the Waterfowl Heritage Fund?
Ryan Watson: Yeah, so the Waterfowl Heritage Fund. When you have a Delta Waterfowl chapter, as far as non-profits go, especially on the fundraising side, you won’t see a ton of differences. Some may have a different live auction structure, or they’ve got some different raffles over here. But as far as fundraising goes, it’s a dinner, it’s a great time. We’re going to talk about what we’re raising the money for, and we’re going to have a couple of different raffles and auctions to raise the money. The difference is where the money goes afterward and how it’s spent. Delta Waterfowl has what’s called the Waterfowl Heritage Fund. What that is, it’s a tool that the chapter, every Delta Waterfowl chapter gets to retain a percentage of the money they earn in net revenue on the night of the fundraiser. So, it’s on a scale of 15 to 25%. Let’s say we hold a fundraiser here in San Antonio, Texas, and we raise $100,000 in net revenue. Well, based on that percentage scale, that chapter would actually keep 20% of the funds they raise. That’s $20,000 coming back to San Antonio, Texas, that we can spend on introducing people to the sport of waterfowl, buying gear, waders, blinds, whatever we need to go out and do these first hunt programs. We can do scholarships to send kids to school, nesting structures, and predator management activities for the areas that need them. Not only can you fund all the local stuff, but you can also take 10% of that Waterfowl Heritage Fund and put it toward any other nonprofit in the world of conservation that you see fit. There’s a model that you use as a Delta Waterfowl chapter to submit these requests and say, “Hey, this is what we’re going to do with our money,” and you get a big thumbs up. They say, “Go light a fire in the world. We want to see the money invested in the community.” It’s a big thank-you to not only the people who come and attend but also the sponsors to show that the money they’re pouring into Delta Waterfowl in San Antonio, Texas, or wherever it may be in the world, is being used effectively. Here’s the reward. We want to see you do conservation and Hunter R3 projects right there in your community where the money is being raised. Over a million dollars of WHF funds have been spent at the local level since it started, I believe, in 2013. That plays into what I mentioned earlier, we’ve taken over 100,000 people duck hunting for the first time. That comes out of the Waterfowl Heritage Fund and these chapters choosing to get out into the community, taking kids, veterans, and people of all ages into duck hunting, introducing them to it in a one-on-one mentor-type environment. That’s all through the funds raised through the chapter system. It’s just a big thank-you to the local level for supporting Delta Waterfowl.

Ramsey Russell: What are some examples down in your neck of the woods in South Texas? Tell me about how this all plays into South Texas.
Ryan Watson: Yeah, so I’ll run through this past year. One of my chapters actually put out over 100 nesting structures in Chambers County, that’s Dayton, Liberty area. Real marshy, lots of wood ducks. We put out about 70 wood duck boxes, and then we put out some nesting structures as well for some local mallards that hang out in the area. In College Station, I know they gave away five scholarships at the banquet this past year. They also did a wood duck box project in the Navasota River bottom, putting out nesting structures to help increase the wood duck population around there. Wood ducks do migrate, but you also get a ton of resident wood ducks. It’s exciting to see those boxes going up and increasing the population in these areas. Another big thing I’ll touch on real quick is we’re doing a lot of this on public grounds. We focus on areas that everyone has opportunity and access to. But at the same time, ducks don’t only use public bodies of water. So we do some work with breeding efforts on private lands. Back to South Texas specifically, the money goes into scholarships, nesting structures, and local WMA improvements. For example, if there’s a boat ramp at a local lake or river that’s not good for access, we can actually put money into that. We’re working on dredging one at Choke Canyon Reservoir right now for folks south of San Antonio. You can also choose to pour money into any ongoing Delta Waterfowl project you like. Instead of splitting up those percentages we talked about earlier, you can choose to allocate funds to the pintail project, predator management research, or hen house installation in the prairie pothole region. On top of that, we’ve given, I believe, a little over $16,000 in South Texas to local FFA, 4H, and skeet shooting high school programs. There’s a ton of money being poured back into the community.

Ramsey Russell: All the need, all the benefit, national, regional, local, Delta Waterfowl is bringing to bear. Here’s a question I’m dying to know. You are a regional director in Texas. The more chapters, the more people you’ve got involved, the better, the more fundraising for all these different initiatives we’ve talked about. How hard is it, in the year 2024, to start a new chapter, to get people involved, to motivate people to attend these meetings? What are some of the hurdles? How hard is it to develop? I’m just curious.

Ryan Watson: Yeah, so like I said, I’ve been in the job for about a year and a half. I’ve already started four new chapters across South Texas. Not to say anything is easy, but it’s not hard. The number one way to get a chapter going is I get a main contact and find out if they have 10 buddies that like to go duck hunting. Usually, that’s pretty easy to figure out. Most people have 10 guys they like pretty well who go duck hunting. So, we get together, meet at a local restaurant or bar, have a couple of drinks, talk about duck hunting, talk about all the programs we just went over, and get fired up. The biggest hurdle for having a Delta Waterfowl chapter is you’ve got to have the time to put in. It’s a volunteer role, a selfless position to donate your time out of your day to a greater cause for restoring the flyways. But the benefit of it is all the programs we talked about and what Delta Waterfowl will produce. What’s needed to make it happen is that core group of about six to 10 individuals. Of course, the more, the merrier, it’ll make it a lot easier with more people involved. I’ll come and meet with the chapters, and the regional director for each area will provide guidance and knowledge. In the world of fundraising, what we need from the local side, from that volunteer chapter and community, is to get people in the door for a fundraiser. The number one way to do that is to reach out to local businesses, small businesses, police departments, and fire stations, get the local folks involved. Delta is a 501C3 non-profit organization. When these sponsors and donors support these local chapters, not only are they supporting a local fundraising event and a Delta Waterfowl event, but they’re also getting the benefit of a tax deduction and write-off for supporting a 501C3 charitable organization. That right there is the number one hurdle, I would definitely say is getting people in the room. There’s no minimum and no maximum. We like to see a room of at least 80 people for a night out, that’s about 10 tables of eight people per table, 10 businesses supporting. But at the end of the day, we’re here to have a good time and raise money for the ducks. All the RDs across Delta Waterfowl have the expertise and knowledge to guide these volunteer chapters. The help we need is, well, I don’t know 100 people everywhere I go just yet. You know, we need people in the door supporting the chapter, the underwriting, the sponsorship, and the butts and seats for the night of the night of the event.

Ramsey Russell: Yep. Ryan, appreciate you, folks. You all been listening to my buddy Ryan Watson, regional director, Delta Waterfowl down in Texas. Ryan, how can they get in touch with you? And how can anybody listening that might want to start a chapter in their own local area anywhere in the country, how can they proceed from there?
Ryan Watson: Yeah, so the easiest way to get in touch with your local regional director is to actually go to deltawaterfowl.org. There is a tab called “Get Involved.” You’ll hit a dropdown arrow, and that will pull up something that says “Find Your Chapter.” When you click on that, it’s going to bring up an interactive map, and it’ll have a little Delta Waterfowl logo over every chapter that is active in the United States and Canada. When you click on that logo, it’ll show you the area and also give you a name and phone number. For example, if you go to the map right now and hover over San Antonio, Texas, and click that chapter, it’ll show you the Alamo Delta Waterfowl Chapter regional director, Ryan Watson, and my phone number. That goes for every chapter across the U.S. and Canada. Again, it’ll give you that individual’s number in your area. Reach out to them. Give them a call. They love to talk about it and discuss how to get a Delta Waterfowl chapter going and get started with you and what you can do in your community with the Waterfowl Heritage Fund. For those of you in South Texas that want to get in contact with me directly, again, my name is Ryan Watson. My phone number is 864-991-1453, or you can shoot me an email at rwatson@deltawaterfowl.org.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Brian.

Ryan Watson: All right, Ramsey, thank you, sir. Good talking to you.

Ramsey Russell: And folks, thank you all. Get involved. That’s the key word. I mean, don’t sit in the duck blind wondering where the heck the ducks are. Get involved. Make a difference. The federal government ain’t coming to the rescue. We all know that. There’s no cavalry going to come in and pull this thing out of the crapper. It’s up to us to make a better future for waterfowl. And getting involved with Delta Waterfowl, with Ducks Unlimited, with these other NGOs, with both of them, as we’ve talked about previously, that’s the way to make a difference. See you next time.