The Original MotoDuck, California Duck Huntin‪g‬

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host Ramsey Russell, join me here to listen to those conversations. Welcome back to Duck Season Somewhere, and today it is steel duck season in California. It will wrap up the 2020 North American tour and what an incredible adventure. I’ve got a great guest today. I’ve got a man that revolutionary that changed the face of duck hunting more than anybody else that may be the guy that invented black powder. And it all started right here in the Sacramento Valley of California, right here where I’ve been hunting. But in fact, not far from right here where I’m standing recording this in Colusa County and on a rice farm with a friend of mine Sean Doherty and his son Gus. And the other day we were in a duck blind and looking at this goalpost because everybody, every single person, all five or six we’ve duck hunted with that hunt puddle ducks out here in these rice fields and around this area they use the goal post, or the blade, or the moto duck, or whatever they choose to call it at the time. But it’s doesn’t look quite like the spending wing decoys were used to, they used the original because it’s right here in their backyard and this thing came about. And the other day, but nobody really knew, you might have heard the last podcast when I’m talking to Casey staff. We didn’t quite know who had invented it or how they came up with this idea. So the other day I was duck hunting with Sean and his son Gus, and I just wish I know who invented because well I know who invented. He’s one of my neighbors used to come over here. He’s equipment [**00:04:46] operator. You mean a mechanic? I said really? He said, yeah, I’ll send your cellphone number, you visit. And I got to meet today’s guest Mr. Andy Anderson, born and raised in woodlands California. How are you today Andy?

Andy Anderson: Oh, pretty good.

Ramsey Russell: Good. Man, I appreciate your coming out and meeting with us today. Andy I want to back up, we’ve had a nice little visit while I was coming in and putting away some ducks from this morning’s hunt. But introduce yourself to everybody listening. Who are you?

Andy Anderson: Well, I’m Andy Anderson. I was born in woodland California. And lived there all my life and hunted around YOLO County, Sutter County and Colusa County. And I started hunting when I was probably about 8 or 9 years old with my father and my uncles. And shot ducks back in those days in the 60s and 70s. We just pass shoot the ducks when the windy days or stormy days they just fly in the fly away and you get in the flyway and stand in a ditch or pile up some tumbleweeds and shoot ducks all day.

Ramsey Russell: What kind of duck hunters were your dad and uncle? Did they have a favorite duck? Did they target just drake mallards or pin tails?

Andy Anderson: Well the pintail or the spring is what most people eat around here.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Andy Anderson: And green heads.

Ramsey Russell: Bring them out. Now back in those days, it was no one pin tail limit, was it?

Andy Anderson: No. At one time it was ten per day. That was when I first started and then it went to seven, and then the last few years they’ve cut her down to one or two.

Ramsey Russell: Back in the 60s and 70s when those were 10 pound [**00:06:37] duck. And you would go out and pass, you stand in the tumbleweeds in a high wind day and press them down close to the ground. Y’all could make numbers like that. Did your dad and uncle, y’all choose drakes only? Was that a thing or would it just go shoot pintails for the pot?

Andy Anderson: Yeah. No, we try to shoot the drinks. Just maybe because that big old chocolate head, and they were prettier, and there’s wings stuck out so far, and the way they just kind of glided in there. And you did think, someday you might need a few more. So if you kill all the women, you’re not going to have much to shoot at.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. The other day hunting right here with Sean and Gus, we came back and we hold, plucked them, sandstorm and I could not get over how fat those pin tails were. I mean that fat like I had pure white, just beautiful fat from eating all this Colusa County rice. Is that, was there’s much right back then where they felt like?

Andy Anderson: There was as much rice back then as there ever was. And that brings up part of it when this duck hunting really changed around here. They used to burn the rice. That rice has a fungus or something in the roots and stuff. And so they burned it to kill that. And that way they could plant rice in the fields every year, year after year after year. Well then environmentally we didn’t want to smoke in the air anymore. And that’s when they started the decomp and they started flooding all the fields. Well, at that point in time it costs money to flood those fields. So farmers figure what we’ll put a few duck blinds in there and we’ll make a little money and get our water bill.

Ramsey Russell: Yep, double crop it, so to speak.

Andy Anderson: So that’s basically when duck hunting just blew up and everybody became a duck hunter before the decomp.

Ramsey Russell: Now where was that way back? Back in the 70s?

Andy Anderson: It probably was back in the 70s.

Ramsey Russell: Late 70s, 80s like that.

Andy Anderson: And they quit burning the rice and they started flooding everything. And then you had your marshes where people hunted since the early 1900s. But as far as blinds and stuff there wasn’t anything around a place like here. Sean might have one little field, Sutter basin, there might have been six fields flooded. Now the whole Sacramento valley flooded. And that pretty much changed the way duck hunting was. Then you started using tanks and decoys and everything else.

Ramsey Russell: But there’s a rich duck hunting history and a culture in California. When people think of California, they normally think of surfboards in Hollywood. They don’t think a duck hunting, let alone the level of duck hunting that I’ve seen since I’ve been here. I mean serious duck hunting. It sounds like it’s been that way for a long time.

Andy Anderson: Well a friend of mine that I handed with. His grandfather started to clump up in the butte sink. North butte Duck Club, which is now the north butte Country Club.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Andy Anderson: Right up off the west butte. And it was just a little wooden shack like they had in the old days. And then it burnt down and then they built a real nice wooden one. And it burned down. Now this country club, it’s 20 feet up in the air, all on cement pillars. It’s kind of like a castle, when you drive up out in the middle of nowhere up there, the marshes, and boat dock, and you drive out to your blinds, and shoot ducks and very good eating.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I’m assuming you still duck hunt when you can?

Andy Anderson: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Right here around woodland and this part of the world still and Louisa Country.

Andy Anderson: Actually, I shoot about three miles to the east right now. Our fields not flooded this year because of the water.

Ramsey Russell: What’s up with the water out here?

Andy Anderson: Well, we haven’t had any weather, and reservoirs are down so they take the water out of the river, and they don’t allow unless you have water left over from the farming they won’t let you use the water until it rains this year. We’re just not going to have no rain. Where you’ve hunted around here and there’s a field flooded here and one over there, this whole area would be flooded.

Ramsey Russell: So there’s not as much water on the landscape is normal right now.

Andy Anderson: There’s hardly any compared to normal.

Ramsey Russell: I didn’t know that

Andy Anderson: If you’ve got it, you get an airplane a normal year, you’d fly from soon, soon marsh to butte sink, the whole thing would be flooded from five over to 9970.

Ramsey Russell: Well, when did you? Because I’ve always wondered this. I’m so excited to meet you. I’ve always looked at spinning wing decoys and ask myself how did somebody come up with that idea? How in the world did somebody come up with the idea of a spinning wing decoy? I mean, how did you come up with this idea?

Andy Anderson: Well, a friend of mine, he wasn’t much of a duck hunter, but he told me that he didn’t come home with much most of the time, and he said, oh, I use this kite and it works really good. Well, I didn’t believe him. I thought he was about half crazy. And so then another buddy of mine about five years later says, hey, they sell these kites over in Sacramento, the kite story says they’re calling them duck kites. It was just a Styrofoam kite, you paint one side brown, and we put them up, and they worked unbelievable.

Ramsey Russell: Was it the kind of kite, I’ve seen some decoys out there that got like a spinning wing that make them elevate as the wind blows, that those wings are spinning so they’ll get some elevated spin.

Andy Anderson: It would spin, it would rotate, and then it had a round disk in the center to keep it straight, and just sat there and spun and go back and forth.

Ramsey Russell: What they call those decoys? I wonder

Andy Anderson: I don’t know. I don’t know.

Ramsey Russell: They’ve seen them, but I’ve been a long time since I’ve seen one.

Andy Anderson: These were just kites that they, like, people would have over the coast at the ocean on the beach. And that’s where the guy that he was watching the seagulls go to it. So he took it out in the rice field and the ducks can just fall out of the sky for it.

Ramsey Russell: Leave it to a duck hunter to see somebody flying a kite on the beach and go. I bet I can kill a duck with.

Andy Anderson: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I go out there and try because anything for a duck.

Andy Anderson: But it kind of had problems because it took about 7 mph to fly it and then about 15 mph destroy it. So you had to have pretty much the perfect wind, and then if the dog don’t step on it or get caught up in the line. Yeah, so it was kind of, it worked very good when it worked, but it didn’t work all the time.

Ramsey Russell: Right. And so you hunted with that for a period of time?

Andy Anderson: We hunted with that for a year. And then I took a blade and I put it in the saddle which wasn’t motorized and the wind would blow it. And so that worked very good. But when the days the wind doesn’t blow, you didn’t get any shooting.

Ramsey Russell: So these ducks had never seen this blade spinning and they’ve never seen that flash. So what was it like on the days you actually had wind? Was a magical?

Andy Anderson: It was a magical. The ducks would fall out the sky. That first year when I had the only one and nobody else had them. Pin tail, whatever you want to call them, they will normally circle 4-5-6 times and come into your decoys. You probably see it today. They wouldn’t even make one turn. They just come straight in, just fall out of the sky. And it wouldn’t be 3 or 5, would be 50 or 100. It was unbelievable.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, y’all were loving life back then, weren’t you?

Andy Anderson: And it was funny because the neighbor, he was a farmer and he had 200-acre field with one blind in the center of it, and he had 1000 decoys, and he killed all the ducks in the sky from everywhere around. And once I got that motor Duck, it stuck it out there. I could pull the ducks away from that field. They just went right on by him.

Ramsey Russell: What do you think about that?

Andy Anderson: Well, he was out there with a spot scope, trying to figure out what’s going on over there.

Ramsey Russell: So when did you come up with the idea of motorizing it?

Andy Anderson: After putting the blade on the days the wind wouldn’t blow. One night I was just lying there thinking and all of a sudden I said, hey dummy if you put a motor on that thing, it would work every day.

Ramsey Russell: About what timeline would this have been? Back in 1990s?

Andy Anderson: 97.

Ramsey Russell: 1997. And when you pulled up here, we were visiting for a little bit. And I was surprised because like everyone I’ve seen here in California is what they call a goalpost. And it’s like, I think four ft tall, 20 to 36 inches wide with a single rectangular or oval blade in the middle, brown on one side, white on the flash side, and it’s just one big contraption. I saw one this morning, it was shorter and so I know they come in different sides but it’s a goalpost, not a decoy, not duck looking, but the original one that you showed me, the very first mechanical you made, it actually had two wings, with the motor in the middle.

Andy Anderson: Right. That first one that it was before I came up it was the blade but I had to cut the blade in half to attach it to a remote control car. I didn’t actually think about two wings spinning. I just, that was the only way you could attach it to the remote control car. Then when I started making the moto ducks, you just made a solid blade. It works the same.

Ramsey Russell: But before you got to that, 1997, you’ve got this top-secret weapon that is Poland Duck’s off of 1000 duck decoys bread into your field. You’re probably cherry-picking bull sprigs and having the time of your life. Did you keep it top secret and hidden? I mean, would you put it behind the seat of your trucks? Nobody could see that at the grocery store or what?

Andy Anderson: Not really that. Actually I left it in the blind out there. Back then people, you don’t have to worry about people taking stuff. And so we just stuck it out. And the reason it got out, my buddy that I shot with, he took a guy out there, and he’s seen it, and then he had his kid make one, and that kind of started this whole ball rolling.

Ramsey Russell: Started the whole ball rolling. What was the initial as this thing started coming out in 1997, in that timeframe? Because I can remember, around that time frame 97-98, we were Hunting Canada Geese on Super Bowl Sunday, last legal data season. I don’t think there was a conservation order season. And in fact, it was not. Must have been 97. And somebody described to me some contraption out in California that was magic. Would call ducks in just from a million miles. And he couldn’t really articulate what it was his yes for details. He didn’t know either. He just heard 50th hand, somebody told him. So it all left us wondering what this magical decoy was out, coming out of California. And I can remember back then. But what was the reaction here when people started seeing knocking [**00:18:46]? I mean, what was going on in terms of just the hunter, in terms of the non-hunter? Did you ever have any problems with law enforcement?

Andy Anderson: Well actually not the first year this thing went so fast. It was like it was on fire. I had gotten to the patent-pending point on this, and so I figured I was safe, and so I started producing them selling them. Well, anybody that looked at one of these blade in the goalposts would think you’re totally out of your mind that duck would ever come to it. And so I have to take them out and show them. Well, I’d only sold 3 or 4 and it was all over the county. And at that point in time everybody wanted one. I couldn’t build them fast enough. And every sheet metal shop, welding shop, radiator shop, if they had a welder and something that to cut tent was building them. There’s a million different look than they all look different but they all worked. That first year the speckled belly geese would fall out of the sky which the geese don’t even like them now.

Ramsey Russell: Really.

Andy Anderson: And the ducks, they just loved it. But it was only about a three or four-week deal because around here the ducks don’t normally get here until about thanksgiving. I mean you have your local ducks, but the local ducks after opening weekend pretty much go to the big water and the refuges. So if you just got a little pond here or there, you don’t have much action. But once it freezes up North, that’s when we get all the ducks down here, which you saw today when you were out hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Oh boy, did we see them? You know for the last several days, every duck hunter I’ve met or talked to has talked about this big wind, like it’s the second coming of Jesus Christ, our savior, and Lord, I mean it’s like this is a big deal, and I mean everybody and a brother trying to get out to the blind today because of this big win apparently. You know, over the last several days we’ve had 5-6 mile an hour wind and I thought that was fine 10 mile an hour. But man, it was gusting day and we really, they put on a show. The ducks really came out and put on the show today.

Andy Anderson: Oh yeah, and it helps, especially when a lot of big water out there that doesn’t get hunted around here, and then ducks all pile up and congregate there. And you get that wind, get that water gets choppy, they don’t like sitting in it. So they get up, and go look for something to eat, and then they try to find a place out of the wind, and that gets every bird it’s on the water up. That wind started blowing last night probably about 2:00 and it was just howling.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. So everybody and the brothers making this thing. There’s this rage going around this decoy. And what was happening then? Did you ever get a knock on your door like, I mean, were you ever out there duck hunting back in those days that a game warden come up and said, not knowing if it was legal or not but you’re killing too many ducks? I Mean, was anything like that going on?

Andy Anderson: I’m sure they were. I never had any problems with them but I’m sure that they were checking, they were on the go to check people for everything because people that didn’t kill ducks were filling limits every time they went.

Ramsey Russell: So everybody killing ducks, right?

Andy Anderson: That big club up there in the butte sink there was two or three of the older guys. They’d get one or two ducks when they went out. They were going out and killing seven mallard, green heads in an hour.

Ramsey Russell: My goodness.

Andy Anderson: Because they just brought him in there and it’s kind of like sitting.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Even people that didn’t get a limit normally was killing one now.

Andy Anderson: But after that first four weeks then U.C Davis they started doing the study on it and stuff, and so they wanted to shut it down.

Ramsey Russell: So you invented it in 1997. By 1998, this thing is blowing up out in the sack valley. Everybody that got a 10 cutters making one. Every old man that normally kills one duck killing seven. And within that season around 1998 now U.C Davis says all we need to do research because all of a sudden these folks killing ducks, is that right by the time line? And what did their research say?

Andy Anderson: They were just totally murdering the poor yearling mallards. Were just came in, you know. It’s like the little kid, you tell him don’t touch that because it’s hot, they didn’t care. So they were shooting all the young birds. Young birds were gone, and the numbers of birds killed probably five times over. These clubs that were keeping track of every bird that they kill. If they killed 1000, they were killing 5000. It was just unbelievable. So they fishing game made them illegal.

Ramsey Russell: California D.N.R.

Andy Anderson: Yes. California waterfowl or ducks unlimited. All them got together, and the University of Davis study and they said, hey we can’t have this that first two weeks of the season, they’re murdering off all our young birds that were hatched this year. And so they closed the season.

Ramsey Russell: They have been a lot true to that.

Andy Anderson: They closed it down so you couldn’t use them until December. It was December 1st or I think of January 1st and then they moved it. Now it’s December 1st. So the first half of the season you can’t use them.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I think I heard, December 10th.

Andy Anderson: They could have changed it this year. I haven’t even looked at the regulations this year.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. And that was just to let those birds grow up and get a little worldly.

Andy Anderson: At least let him get a year old.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, get a little fat on them before we shoot them. That’s very interesting. What was going on with your business side of things as all that was going on? I mean, I’m just sitting here imagining probably it’s about time I heard about it, you know, sitting out in Mississippi by the time that somebody says there’s a machine out here that’s annihilating that shooting these ducks. I mean, I’m betting the demand went through the roof for these things.

Andy Anderson: Everybody was building, and couldn’t build them fast enough. And it was funny that these kids that were building them, even in high school. Just out of high school, they were going Marysville, Yuba City, and Colusa. They’d go sit out in front of the bar, and these guys from San Francisco, and all the place going up to those big duck clubs that $500 $600 it was, everybody had to have one.

Ramsey Russell: $500 or $600 back in the 90s for this decoy.

Andy Anderson: If you wanted, if they wanted him. I was sending back to Louisiana and Arkansas and it was $500 overnight air.

Ramsey Russell: Your overnight air to Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana. You were telling me on the phone about a couple of guys, you had sent some two in Mississippi that, I mean, they really did cloak and dagger top secret. They had them a secret little weapon right there. Do you remember those guys?

Andy Anderson: Yeah, I said something a little rock Arkansas, Scott guard, Louisiana and the Price Brothers. They actually were going, they had built airplane parts and they were going to take if I would have got the pat and they were going to take the motor duck and build them and make it run and had been. But once the patent ever went through and somebody else ended up with the patent, everybody just kind of backed off. I build them for two years, and the fad was kind of over then the plastic decoys that I think the second year of fatal deduction came out and everybody had one of those.

Ramsey Russell: I think that’s one of the first one.

Andy Anderson: I think that was the first one. Matthews up here in Colusa built them. He had a warehouse full of guys. They were doing it the hard way, starting, just cutting decoys open, put motors in them and putting wings on him. You were lucky if they wings lasted two trips but they buy them as fast they could get them.

Ramsey Russell: How did, you know, it became real obvious early on that it wasn’t just a brown and white or whatever Wayne flashing. It had to be the right RPMs there. It’s not just too fast, too slow. Doesn’t work. It’s got to be in some range. How did you figure that out? Observation?

Andy Anderson: I checked them because I had worked on automotive stuff, and then we had a counter we used for speedometers, how many turns in a mile. So I hook a speedometer counter on there and tell me how many rpm revolutions it was turning. And it seemed like between 500 and 600 was about the best. And once they got down below 400 then it just quits strobing. It’s basically if you looked at them out in the field and the sun shining on it, there’s a shadow coming off of it. Well, there’s a flash coming off the front of it if you’re looking at it. But behind it, there is a shadow that is flashing on the water, and it makes those duck decoys, if it’s a calm day it’ll make those duck decoys like they’re jumping up and down because that shadow flashing.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, well, that would be a huge advantage of having a big blade versus two little wings because you create that look. I never thought about that Andy.

Andy Anderson: I think that’s probably what anybody been around here will say that, not just because I made them, but that motor duck with that big blade seems to work better than like the dull ducks with the spinning blades, two blades because it’s got a bigger area which makes a bigger shadow.

Ramsey Russell: I never thought about that right there. I always thought of that spinning wing concept as mimicking the contract, as a mallard duck is flapping his wings back to land. That’s not what I always envisioned it as a being. But that really makes a very good point. I never thought about.

Andy Anderson: Yeah. And that was when I started to try to sell them originally, and if you put it in a magazine and there was nobody, if they didn’t know the story, they wouldn’t buy that they’d like to tackle what is this, who does Goofy guy come up with?

Ramsey Russell: Well, you were showing me a lot of magazine articles, and research, and some of displays and stuff before we started recording. What all magazine reporters calling you or you know, were you doing stories and stuff like that?

Andy Anderson: No, they never did really. I don’t know where they got their information. Well, I got a cassette tape sitting over there that the radio station KFBK and it was funny. You probably heard of bob Sam’s and Chris Fortner.

Ramsey Russell: Go ahead.

Andy Anderson: They had this radio program every Saturday morning as a hunting fishing show. And about halfway through that program they said, oh, this moto duck that everybody’s getting and buying and selling. Oh, Andy from Woodland, he sold it to Cabela’s and for $1 million. And I had to laugh. So I got the cassette tape, I called him up and they sent me the recording of the show that day, and I’m thinking well at least everybody thinks I’m rich anyway.

Ramsey Russell: Or you were saying at some point time and all our visits that you got the fame, you just never really got the fortune because everybody started making it. It just went viral, kind of, sort of.

Andy Anderson: Yeah. And I mean I did good. I made some money on it. There was a lot of other people did a lot better but everybody made money on the deal when it was all set and done.

Ramsey Russell: Where were you selling moto duck? I mean were you selling at local shows or you’re selling them? I’m thinking back in those days. The internet really wasn’t it? Internet marketing isn’t what it is there now?

Andy Anderson: There was tell flip phone days.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You’re still a flip phone guy. Found out. That says a lot about you.

Andy Anderson: Yeah I’m pretty old-fashioned but I get by. No, it was just word of mouth. Most of them were sold right out of my backyard, you know, parked in the front door. I had people from San Francisco coming down here that hunted that soon-soon marsh and all that country up there. Just one guy and he’d tell his friend and they came from everywhere.

Ramsey Russell: Was it mostly the rice fields and marsh that people used the moto duck or were they out in the bays, were they out hunting divers and stuff with these things too?

Andy Anderson: I don’t know about the bay. Probably pretty. You’d have to have a calm day probably because I’ve used them down there in delta. And like a day, like today when the wind was blowing, you stick it in there and it’d be gone then that tide would come in and out. So there was be a lot of problems doing it that way. And mostly Rice fields and ponds. That’s where that longer one I had, where the water 6 feet deep or so up there in the butte sink and that soon-soon marsh. You had the longer pull on them.

Ramsey Russell: Sure. I know you’re still duck hunt. We talked about that. But y’all got a lot of pin tails out here, but the limits only one.

Andy Anderson: Well, that’s something I always wondered about and we always talked about it, and didn’t have anything good to say about the people that made it that way. And I was thinking last night, when we go deer hunting in Colorado Salt Lake, we go by that Salt Lake, seeing that about November October, and I think it’s full of spring and pin tail and here that’s all there is here.

Ramsey Russell: Well today I’ve seen a lot of pent l in California, the sack valley. But today, this morning.

Andy Anderson: What was your percentage, you say pin tail versus everything else?

Ramsey Russell: Hunting with Scott five out here on this farm. I’m going to say 90% of 5000-10,000 birds that we saw were pin tail. And of those Pin tail, I would say that 80%, and it just didn’t do no math, I’m just saying it at a glance in my memory, 80% for every five pin tails we saw one was a hand. The rest were drakes.

Andy Anderson: Right.

Ramsey Russell: And delta waterfowl, I interviewed a biologist, not too long-ago, Chris Nikolai, worked for Delta water fowl. And he says the data supports and they advocate for 30 years. I get my time since you invented moto duck or a little bit earlier. For 30 years we’ve been abiding, we hunters have gone along with a restrictive harvest of pin tail model. They say that’s what we need to do to protect our pin tails, that’s what we do. But he says it ain’t working. And he was on, he explained as I understand it that basically the data supports a three-pin tail limit one hand. And from what I’ve seen, the people I’ve hunted with right here in the sack valley, that’s about what I doubt anybody shoot a hand knowing that it’d be good to have one in the bag just in case. But I mean it’s so easy. There’s so many bull sprigs out here. Everybody I know don’t even bother with the hands. They want to shoot the drakes. Every night again the sun gets in your eye and you make a mess up I guess. But I don’t know, I’ve just heard about, I’ve been to a lot of places, got a lot of pin tails, but I’ve never been anywhere that has pin tails like sack valley California except in the United States, I haven’t been anywhere. It was unbelievable to show they put on this morning. It’s just you’re sitting there, you’ve got, you’ve won a piece. Six in the blind, and now you’re watching 5000 flyovers. It makes no sense. I mean, but I’m no biologist. I’m just saying it makes no sense.

Andy Anderson: Well, right over here about 10 miles. If you go over there and sit on that levee tonight, about quarter to six. That whole mountain range is going to be read. And as far as you can look from the North to the South, it’s just going to be black with ducks and geese.

Ramsey Russell: Pin tails.

Andy Anderson: But they don’t come out, wherever they’re at they don’t get up and fly until 45 minutes after shooting and then they go to feed.

Ramsey Russell: We were talking earlier, you had said, how things have changed, the landscape, lot more, the water, the rice, decomposition, everybody became a duck hunter. What do you feel like back when you’re a little boy, hunt with your dad and your uncle? As you were growing up, as era that you develop even back in the mid to late 90s, this moto duck. How have things changed? How else have things changed here in the sack valley of California? I’m thinking of hunting pressure. Do you notice a difference? Do you think hunting pressure has an effect on the behavior of ducks, now versus then?

Andy Anderson: Oh, very much so because like I said, you’re not seeing it because we’re dry this year, but when every fields flooded out here, it’s just boom-boom-boom, boom-boom-boom, them ducks never get arrest.

Ramsey Russell: Never get arrested.

Andy Anderson: And There’s a lot of people hunting out there, that doesn’t know the difference between 20 yards and 80 yards. And when you start banging on them at 80 yards, every once in a while you get the lucky BB that might hit one in the head, but that just gets some wild and well opening weekend. Everybody shoots ducks, they just come in there nice and pretty. And as the season goes on, come December, now it’s January. A lot of people take the last week of duck season off to shoot ducks and it’s probably the worst week of the season because there’s a blind shy and decorish shy that they just don’t want to have nothing to do with anything anymore.

Ramsey Russell: It’s funny you say that because now in the Mississippi fly away and I’m sure here to the season will go all the way until end of January 31^st this year. And I was on board 20 years ago, I was all about that later-later-later. And I just think it’s a very low marginal return on hunting if we get that late because the ducks are beaten, they’re wary, they’re pressured and they’re transitioning into a different life cycle. I mean, like I think it mallards back home in Mississippi flyway. By late January, man, they’re already pair-bonded. Now they’re not wanting to go layup with 500 other their friends, they want to go off somewhere quiet, and do their thing and kind of courtship. Between it all, I’ve just gotten to where now the last week of season, if I got somewhere else to go, something else to do, I’m gone. I think, around January 15, for me, time to go find something else. I don’t play golf. So I’m maybe going to Mexico or something else, but I’m not out there killing myself chasing ducks in Mississippi and in January, I think it’s futile.

Andy Anderson: Normally here we don’t even start hunt until thanksgiving, and normally shoot thanksgiving to maybe the first week in January and call it good.

Ramsey Russell: Thanks to thanksgiving. I got to ask this question, I’d like to ask a lot of people do you have a favorite duck recipe?

Andy Anderson: The way I cook them. I marinate them and I cooked a hold duck. Pick it, clean them, send [**00:39:00] them.

Ramsey Russell: And it’d be a sin not to pluck a pin tail or widgeon or one of these rice bad ducks out here in California.

Andy Anderson: Yeah. When I came in I’ve seen some guys down the road cutting the breasts out of the big old mount green heads and then sprig. I was just shaking my head. I picked so many ducks, I don’t enjoy picking ducks, but I still pick them.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you know.

Andy Anderson: And I like picking them by hand. The Plücker is work, but they beat him up and all that oil comes out of them.

Ramsey Russell: Sean said the same thing we got back and he said, Ramsey, I know you can’t take these ducks with you because you’re traveling. It’d be a shame for you not to sink your teeth into some of these ducks. So we sat right out here by shop and hand plucked them and sends [**00:40:52] them. And I’m telling you it was succulent at a butter path. It was unbelievably good. And I just couldn’t breast the duck out here man, I just couldn’t do it, I’d have to. And he said the same thing, he said you know those mechanical pickers work but they just beat the skin too much.

Andy Anderson: I never did like them.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t mean to interrupt you. Go ahead. You talk about your favorite recipe, hole plug.

Andy Anderson: Anyway, I just put a little lee appearance, and soy sauce, and teriyaki, and then a lot of orange juice, and that citrus is what really brings out the flavor.

Ramsey Russell: I agree.

Andy Anderson: Just soak them overnight. But I’ll just put salt, pepper on them and cook them. I cook them maybe 20 minutes for 450 in barbecue or the oven.

Ramsey Russell: Yep. Do you cook the whole duck? I’ve seen this, the only time I’ve seen it, where I got the idea was in California, where you lay the whole pluck duck down and then you start the sternum and you kind of breath it out skin on to include in, “pum” pop the joint out of the wing, and then you come on down, “pum” pop the joint of the hip and you’ve got that whole half a duck. It’s like to duck house with the skin on. Have you ever seen that? Or do you ever cook?

Andy Anderson: Yeah, I’ve seen that, I’ve seen them cut them down the back all the way around, just throw the carcass away.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve seen that too. Yeah. Butterfly cut the backbone out with some sharp shears. I’ve done and pop it open.

Andy Anderson: They normally just pop the joints out of the wings, take the wings off of cooking whole like that.

Ramsey Russell: How did your dad and uncle cook ducks back in the day? Did they cook them similarly?

Andy Anderson: They ruined them.

Ramsey Russell: They ruined them while they cook them? Overdone?

Andy Anderson: They’d cook them in the oven and baste them like, 250 or 300, and baste them for two or three hours, and they came out and they were dries up on. But you always had mashed potatoes and gravy to go with it and stuff. So it was good.

Ramsey Russell: My grandfather was one of the best cooks I’ve ever known until thanksgiving. And he would worry over that turkey for so long. And to this day I don’t like turkey because it’s just, I think of being salt to us. He would cook that turkey so much, I just couldn’t get it, you know? But I get. What do you think, they were avid duck hunter, duck shooters. I know you tell me a little bit about your uncle. Can you talk about your uncle what he was as a duck hunter, and how he got around what he did way back in the day?

Andy Anderson: Well, there wasn’t any money around back in those days, in the 40s, a lot of work around, so him and there’s probably about a dozen of these local people around YOLO County. They go out in the evening and just shoot 3500 ducks. They put them on the train and send them to San Francisco. And that kind of kept them going during the winter when there wasn’t any work.

Ramsey Russell: Kept his bill’s going, you know.

Andy Anderson: And then federal government didn’t like it very much. And the federales finally got wind of it, and a couple went to prison, and they spent, they got life.

Ramsey Russell: Life in prison for shooting duck.

Andy Anderson: Having a barn full of ducks. They might have 1000 ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Not your uncle, but some people he knew.

Andy Anderson: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Life in prison.

Andy Anderson: Two of them did. They caught him red-handed. There was probably about 1000 ducks in the barn. There’s probably 10 guys have been shooting them all week long. They just draw him.

Ramsey Russell: Who was it? Who will they sell them to back in those days?

Andy Anderson: It’d go to Chinatown.

Ramsey Russell: Chinatown. Okay. There’s a lot of peking duck with wild pin tail out of sac valley.

Andy Anderson: Yeah. I’ll bet they taste a lot better than the peking duck down there now.

Ramsey Russell: I bet they do too. I bet they did too. How do you think they were hunting those birds? You just pass shoot, just going out?

Andy Anderson: No, you shoot them on the ground.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, Slew some, creep up, just make numbers.

Andy Anderson: Whistle and they got about a foot off the ground, give them five.

Ramsey Russell: Well, man had to make a living and you know.

Andy Anderson: They didn’t get wasted, but it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Ramsey Russell: The right thing to do. But you know, we’re talking 6, 7 decades ago, we’re talking a long time ago. And times were different, you know, right after the war there wasn’t a lot of job.

Andy Anderson: Depression.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. And so I just like, I’m saying this just because nobody listening to me and you, we don’t describe that kind of stuff, but times were different. I just find it very interesting. I’ve always believed that the past is never dead, it’s not even past, you know what I’m saying? It’s our history and here we are. What do you think? Your folks, your dad, your uncle, what do you think they have thought of this moto duck back in those days that y’all were, you were a little boy following them out there and pass, shoot a duck? What would it have done for their game? I’m thinking they have been proud of you.

Andy Anderson: No, my dad was very proud of me.

Ramsey Russell: So he saw this, he knew.

Andy Anderson: He was still alive then.

Ramsey Russell: He hunted over it.

Andy Anderson: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Good.

Andy Anderson: He was at the end of his hunting, in his late 70’s. He hunted over it once I think. But he had some friends that he was selling them, hey, the kid made this, try it, he wants a couple $100 for it. And the guy said, look out of here, you’re crazy? If you say it works I believe you. He retired and then he went to work for another guy, baling, hay and stuff just to keep busy. And that guy took it out there and he stuck it in the field and he hadn’t even got back to the blind and I’ve heard that happened hundreds of times. And the ducks are already landed in the decoys by while you’re walking back to the blind. That first year when I had that first decoy, I have to tell you those ducks were so crazy over it. We had a three-man blind, just two of us shot it, and we had a Coleman stove, we sat on, a day like today when the sun was shining, we’d set that Coleman stove on top of that Centre blind. And sit there, and cook ham, and eggs, and bacon and sausage, and sit there, and eat, and pick up the gun and shoot a duck sitting on top of the tank. It was unbelievable.

Ramsey Russell: Good old days.

Andy Anderson: Sitting up on top of the tank and eating breakfast, and shooting duck.

Ramsey Russell: Shooting ducks, drakes only. Andy Anderson, moto Duck Enterprises. Very truly appreciate your driving over to Dunnigan and meet with us today. It’s been a great story. I just, I know a lot of people listening, I know a lot of people in social media, I know everybody, since you invented this thing in the decade since a lot of people, have strong opinions, a lot of people have strong opinions about spinning wing decoys. It’s the anti-Christ, it is the end of duck hunting. It’s this, it’s that. But you know to me and I’m just the reason I wanted to have you come on and explain it because you know, I remember somewhere in Nevada, somebody found some decoys that would just read and mud that the Indians and feathers that the Indians had used and hundreds of years ago, and to me that the purpose of a decoy is to lure wild birds to within a killable range. And I don’t know to this day, I don’t know of a decoy that, that has done what a decoy supposed to do, like a spending wing decoys. And it was important to me, and I hope everybody listening appreciate it, it is important to me to have your story told and get to shake your hand and meet the man that invented this device. I’m just proud as I can be to have met you and heard your story.

Andy Anderson: Well, I thank you. And it’s been nice meeting you and interesting. And I tried to tell Pope Moses story as well as I could remember it.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you didn’t find it.

Andy Anderson: You choke me up there a little bit.

Ramsey Russell: I know this, I know that decades later they’ve come out with all these different configurations and incarnations of a spinning week decoy. But then you come here to the sac valley, butte sink, all this sac valley, all up in here everybody swears by the original goal post. I have not seen a single spinning wing decoy other than the goal post and any spread I’ve been to, and I’m impressed. I’m just, I watched this pin tails, the way Scott set it up today, the way those pin tails and those birds were working. It’s so windy they weren’t just. Now someone was finishing on it. The first mallard I shot, first green head I shot in the state of California a few days ago hunting over there with Casey Stafford. He had broke down and was coming right into it, just like the good old days. And I said, man, this is right by the time I think I’ve seen and done it all. And his goal post was probably one of years from way back in the day. It was decades old. Same one he’s always used. But anyway, thank you very much. Andy, you don’t do social media, do you? Flip phone, no social media, no Instagram.

Andy Anderson: I look on the computer a little bit. That’s basically it. I try to stay away from most of it. You watch that TV, and that news, and listen to all the stuff that’s going on, and just kind of brings you down.

Ramsey Russell: I hadn’t watched the news since the election, and I’m not going to, I feel better, my blood pressure has gone down. But folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of duck season somewhere. You’ve been listening to Mr. Andy Anderson of Woodland, California, Moto Duck Enterprises. He is the man that invented spinning wing decoys. Thank you all for listening. Duck season somewhere in California. I’ll be here next week. Thank you all.