Out of Cache, Utah Duck Huntin‪g

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host Ramsey Russell, join me here to listen to those conversations. And we’re back from Utah duck season somewhere. You told me a couple of years ago that I would fall in love with the state of Utah for its duck hunting, out of college, crazy. But I really do. I love it out here is a lot of public land, it’s a lot of cool people. The duck hunting is good, species, diversity, the weather. I just, I really truly love everything about it. And today’s guest is a close friend of mine now. I met him last year while I was out here. His name is Kevin Booth. We hunt together, we talk all year. He’s a knife carver and a daddy and a heck of a good guy and we’ve become good friends. How are you today Kevin?
Kevin Booth: I’m hanging in there round and round as they say, you know.
Ramsey Russell: You wore out from this morning duck hunt, is that what it is?
Kevin Booth: It’s been a long day already.
Ramsey Russell: Two mornings in a row and you’re already starting to drag a little bit.
Kevin Booth: Yeah. Well, you know when Captain Tony calls and tells you to be there at 5:00, you better be there at 4:30 you know, so.
Ramsey Russell: That was a brisk hunt today. I thought the weather called for about a 7-10 mile an hour wind and it felt like 20 or 30 at times.
Kevin Booth: Yeah, at least 25 mile an hour. Yeah. And it’s that, you know that north wind is coming down out of the north and it’s just gets up under your coat.
Ramsey Russell: I was glad that boat you brought, they had that windbreaker blind on it.
Kevin Booth: Yeah, that’s nice see. I built that with the intention of my buddy that hunts with us from Nevada. He likes to be comfortable. So when we built that and put that windbreaker in there for him and he enjoys that quite a bit.
Ramsey Russell: Kevin, did you grow up duck hunting out here in Utah?
Kevin Booth: Kind of when I was little, when we turned eight, my dad would take us with him and we go a little bit and then, you know, he’d go once or twice a year and we go to this place down just north of here called Cutler Marsh. We’d head down there. But as I got a little bit older, he got, he owned several restaurants and managing and stuff and his philosophy all along was, if I owned the place, I ought to be the only one that knows where the light switches because I turned it on in the morning, turn it off at night, you know. Well he worked his butt off and provided us with a lot of really nice stuff and a great life, but the hunting kind of went away as I got older and then when I got to be high school age, I started doing it on my own. Me and a close friend of mine, we go hunting every everywhere, doing everything and so I did that and then as I got older, I got my own kids and things like that and for a while there. My son TJ was doing the calling contest and Hopkins was it really into being outside and doing outside stuff. Then they got a little bit older, they got to be where they was in high school and playing baseball and doing summer league and fall league and all this stuff and all the camps, all the winter. So a couple of years there I just kind of quit going. I remember the first opening day I missed, wasn’t that big a deal. And then the next year I missed the opening month and, hey okay and then I then about five years I didn’t go at all. I didn’t hunt, didn’t get the boat out, did nothing. And it was my boys that brought me back into it. I remember I had a big surgery on my one foot and I worked graveyard at the time. So was about noon, I was in bed sleeping and TJ Comes in and he says, hey wake up, we’re going duck hunting. I said I don’t want to go duck hunting. He says, yeah we’re going. I was, TJ I don’t got a license, I don’t got my clothes, I don’t got a stamp. And he says no I bought all that. I bought it all for you.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Kevin Booth: Yeah. Look I got it all for you.
Ramsey Russell: How old would he have been then?
Kevin Booth: He would have been 16 – 17. And what it was is he and his friend found a field out south of here that had a bunch of geese, a bunch of mallards and stuff in it. He says yeah come with us. Anyway, he had my license and he had my stamp and bought me bullets and everything. And he says you’re coming with us. And I say, TJ I can’t walk out in that field. He’s like no we got the farmers permission, I can drive the truck right to the ditch. So he basically took all my options away from me.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you ran out of these excuses.
Kevin Booth: Yeah. And I said, all right, we’ll go. And I says, well, you know what about clothes? And he had all my clothes out and everything, had it all ready for me to go. All right, take me hunting then. So we went out and you know me well enough, not huge mallard fan.
Ramsey Russell: I don’t understand.
Kevin Booth: Anyway we can, that’s a whole another puck. But so he takes me out and it was slow, it was cold. I mean it was December and wind was blowing, but flock of ducks come in and got up and I shot a mallard duck and I looked over and it was good flock, you know, I got up, shot three times and I looked over, there is my two boys just looking at me. They hadn’t even pulled up their guns and I was just watching me smiles from ear to ear. Just happy that I was back out and happy again. And it felt good, so.
Ramsey Russell: But that became a big part of because I think of Kevin Booth, my buddy, Kevin Booth, I think of you as the father man and I think of you and your boys as having this really big time hunting tradition. I mean that’s what y’all do.
Kevin Booth: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Your boys, I’ve not met TJ the oldest, but I know Hopkins and very, very good hunter. Very good hunter, very eat up with it. Tell me more about, since that day, some of y’all traditions and hunting together.
Kevin Booth: Oh, man. So after that we started hunting a little bit more. And then as they got older we got back into it and I got hooked up with some friends and built some boats and there’s a couple different things and so I got them all outfitted and rigged up. And then as TJ got older, he got a scholarship up in Montana to play baseball and he moved up there and of course up there the goose hunting is just out of this world. And he got real big into it up there and then his little brother followed him up there the next year and played some ball up there. And they, I don’t know what their grades were like up there, but they couldn’t have been good because every night they’d call me, oh yeah, we shot more geese down the river. Oh we got geese out in the field and we went and did this, went and did that. And I said, you guys ever study. Oh yeah we’re doing good. All right, whatever, but they did that. Once they started hunting up there, they started coming down here and we go out, both my boys really enjoy the diversity. They like hunting the different things, you know, TJ’s favorite duck is ring neck, Hopkins, I think he waffles back and forth. But this year he’s been in the wood ducks and then next year he’ll be in the hooded merganser or something. But he’s like you, his next duck is in the decoys is his favourite.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I found that out yesterday.
Kevin Booth: Yeah. You got to get up pretty early to beat him to the draw. That’s for sure.
Ramsey Russell: We had a good time yesterday. I thought, you know, it was a gale force wind. The weather had the birds a little messed up, I didn’t see a lot of ducks flying anywhere, I mean high, low, east, west, north, south but we killed a few ducks and had a good time and I mean, had a great time. The weather left something to be desired. I mean you know what, I tell you what the snow looks beautiful on a postcard but when you’re sitting out in there and it’s a mixture of rain and sleet and snow. Everything I owned was soaked to the bone and that wind blowing, things got wet, they got cold. We sure had a good time.
Kevin Booth: Yeah, you know you got to empty the snow out of your ear every now and then, you know, clogged up in there sideways. But yeah, we had a good time. Hopkins was super excited to go, he was super excited to show you that body he built, that motor he built and.
Ramsey Russell: The fact that a little bit, because that’s kind of one of y’all things I’ve noticed as we’ve come to know each other is, you’re one of those guys that builds stuff, I mean builds everything, it’s like last year when I met you, you have built that long tail motor, and I said, oh, is that a kid? You know, I mean you just built everything.
Kevin Booth: Yeah, we did, we built them. I mean that story starts a long time ago, but I remember where I was, it was 1986 in July, I was with my grandfather, we went into this old store down in Ogden called Price Savers, a lot like Sam’s Club, you know, wholesale club, and right in the front they had a go kart. And I told my dad, I said, or my grandfather, excuse me. I told my grandfather says, grandpa, we got to buy one of them go karts and he looked at me, he says, nah son, we can just make one. We got all the tools, we can just make one at home. And the light bulb went on. I remember I was wearing brown corduroy pants and a plaid button up shirt and the light bulb came on and I thought, well, there’s everything I want, all I got to do is get the tools and make it myself. And the running joke with us is why would we go buy it for 20 bucks if we can make it for 150?
Ramsey Russell: Sure.
Kevin Booth: But no, in all honesty.
Ramsey Russell: I just got it.
Kevin Booth: Yeah. But so in all honesty, you know, a lot of that stuff came from, necessity like for example that boat motor, if I wanted a boat motor, there’s no way I could go down to the store especially when we built that one, the boys were in baseball and you know that they don’t give that stuff away. You know that baseball is big time money and Hopkins was all-star hockey player and hockey ain’t cheap. And so if I wanted a boat motor, I was just going to have to build one. So I found a buddy of mine took his grain elevator apart and he had that gas motor, so swapped him for some welding on one of his trailers or something. And we put that boat motor together. So Hopkins could have something to drive around, you know, and I ended up with that rock, we call the rocket, ended up with that boat in a trade, doing some welding for a friend on a bigger boat. So he could have a bigger boat he gave us that one. And anyway, long story short, yeah, that’s just one of our things. So we, I mean like I said if we needed a trailer we built it, if we need, you know, whatever I drives my father crazy. But if you look over there on the wall, I can’t throw away a piece of metal longer than about six inches.
Ramsey Russell: You’ll find a good use for.
Kevin Booth: Oh yeah, and it seems like every time I go through it and throw them away the very next day I need whatever I threw away, you know. But yeah we just, Hopkins and I, we built that motor he bought this year. He got that old concrete saw and we fix the motor up. He says, here’s what I want it to look like, here’s what I want it to do it and I kind of let him take the lead on that, the engineering and whatnot this time. When they were little, I wasn’t real patient guy, I was kind of a horny ass. And I regret that more than anything in my life now. We talked about it all the time, my boys and I, but I wish I was a little calmer, a little easier on them when they’re a little. By the time there’s five or six, I had them up here running the band saw cutting and unfortunately, you know, kids make mistakes and I wasn’t real happy about it. But we patched it up, we banded up all right. But yeah, so and they were little I didn’t do much teaching, I just did a lot of me doing it, you know, telling them. But then Hopkins and TJ both, they kind of picked up on that whole, hey, you know, if we need something we can make it, you know, and dad will help us, so. We did that and yeah, I kind of let him take the lead and if you needed help with this or that, or hey how are we going to do this or are we going to do that? So I helped him. But he pretty much built that all himself, so.
Ramsey Russell: What are some of your favorite hunting memories growing up with you boys? Well I asked that because yesterday we were throwing decoys and there was a little clump of cat tails out there just down winter were, and you said, you know, that’s where Hopkins killed his first cinnamon teal.
Kevin Booth: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Y’all grew up hunting public. That’s a reward day.
Kevin Booth: We’ve never had any private ground. I hunt like I said, I hunted a lot here in the valley when I was younger, but I got the wanderlust, I guess you’d say to go over the hill, which is only about 50 miles. But we have that Great Salt Lake marsh complex over there and it is all public ground. We just learned to hunt over there. But yeah, with those boys, it’s hard to say any one thing because we got hundreds and hundreds of stories. But like you said that that first cinnamon teal Hopkins, a friend of mine took us out and he had been seeing Canvasbacks trading this one area. And he says, yeah, I know you like, can you want to come with us? And I said, yeah. He says, you got to bring Hopkins though. And I says, okay, what’s up? And he says, well, the ice is back in there. It gets a little western and I’m not letting your old ass out of the boat. So Hopkins got to help me. That’s all right, No problem. So, we went out there and he says, yeah, we’ve seen some cinnamon teal flying. And we’re just sitting there, we shot a couple canvasback, shot a couple, you know, gadwall or whatever. And cinnamon teal just appears out of nowhere. Hopkins shoots it, it goes down, makes immediate beeline into that Chile patch I was telling you about. And he walked, well he jogs through the mud. Yeah he hits a lot faster than I walk I can tell you. But he goes over there and they chase that thing around. Finally popped out of that Chile patch and he got it. I got that picture on my phone and when TJ was little like I said he did goose calling with his mouth. He didn’t use a call or anything. He just called.
Ramsey Russell: I heard about that last night. I’m playing aware with my buddy, Justin Baldly [**00:18:30] and Travis came by last night and they got to talking about TJ’s Mouth calling. Apparently he’s pretty famous with it.
Kevin Booth: Yeah, Travis talks, he used to call with them. And anyway he his mouth calls. We kind of did the calling contest scene back in those days with him. But once he got older, I remember in one hunt in particular we were hunting down by the Bear River and I had to go back to the truck and it was up on the plateau up above us and I was up at the truck and I got done or whatever and I looked down there and flock of geese is going around the blind we had down there and I hear it all TJ was just doing this “Howk howk howk howk”. And I was like, get him TJ and he got him, he pulled him right in the hole and he shot himself. He was all kind of happy, that’s just one I remember.
Ramsey Russell: That was the first time you’ve seen a mouth calling, did he just up one day decide? We didn’t have a calling and started mouth calling or what.
Kevin Booth: No. So what happened is, we were in the truck one day and that’s where I used to practice my goose calling in the truck. I don’t know, it’s too safe or whatever. But and he looks over and he tells me dad that sucks and I’m like, I was like, I can do better than that, check this out and he just starts doing the “howk howk” and I can’t do it. I can’t do what he does, but it sounds just like a Canada goose or did when he was little, I don’t haven’t heard him do it in a while. But yeah, so he did that and that kind of turned into the hunting thing when they got bigger and one of the things with my boys and good, bad or otherwise, I don’t know. But when they were little, if they wanted to come and hunt with the big boys, they have to be big boys. I said, if you’re going to hunt, you’re going to hunt like the big guys, where none of this, hey, let TJ shoot first, hey, let Hopkins get out of the blind.
Ramsey Russell: Run with the big dogs, stay on the port.
Kevin Booth: That’s right, that’s right. And I when I was there, I told him I said, look, I’m here to hunt, you know, I’m not here to baby tend, I’m here to hunt. If you want to play, you play. And boy, I’ll tell you what they got experts sneaking that little Remington 870 youth model 28 out of that damn blind, you know. But yeah, but I think, like I said, I don’t know if I’d do it again if I had that option, I don’t know. But for those boys they learned to play the game and we had some great, great mentors, they’d hunt with my friend Andy Parker and Tony Smith, of course we hunted with today. And I think what it did for him is there was no sense of entitlement. They didn’t just get to come. You know, if they wanted to come, they had to put out decoys and had to pick up decoys and if I needed to piggyback them over to the boat or whatever, that would be fine. But otherwise you’re here to do it. And so.
Ramsey Russell: Youth weekend isn’t? Anywhere I’ve ever been, but a day or two and on youth weekend, let the kid be a kid. Adults aren’t shooting, but they’re not going to become good hunters in just a couple of days a season, they’ve got to go and if they’re going to go, you’re not doing a kid any favors. I don’t think I raised my kids the same way you’re not doing any favor taking printers because there not yet up to snuff for shoulder the mountain and killing him when he’s in his own. You know what I mean? And I just, I feel like we were all there at one time and we just, we picked up. So if they’re going to chime in, they need to learn how to do it right.
Kevin Booth: But I think, you know, absolutely.
Ramsey Russell: Like teaching a kid to hit a fastball and you’re lobbing it under handed over to play, you’ve never hit a fastball that way.
Kevin Booth: No, no, I mean, you bring that up and I certainly threw him some fastballs, that’s probably where my shoulders all tore up. But yeah and I think what that gave them is they’re like, hey, you know, we can do this. And then when they started back into it themselves, like I said, I didn’t have a boat, they take their grandma’s garden cart down the dike and with the decoys on it and they’d ride their bike because they put them in those plastic milk crates and drag, walking down. So when they got back into it themselves, they knew that it was going to be work and they knew what they could do and they just did it. And I think that ethos has served them well. They’re both really hard workers and nobody’s ever said, hey, your boy’s going to show up to work. They know they’re going to show up, you know, and I think that’s one of the big problems todays too many parents, you know, hey, that’s my son, don’t, you know, you can’t do that. And if my boys have a problem, they know I got their back, they know that when push comes to shove, I got their back and if I don’t necessarily agree when we get home, we’ll have the discussion. But they handle themselves.
Ramsey Russell: I love the hunting out in Utah, it was a big surprise to me. I know y’all had ducks and I knew a lot of species, but I had no idea that at times it was what it is. What do you think the duck hunting in Utah compares to other places in the United States?
Kevin Booth: Oh man. You know, I told you when we were out today, I, you know, I haven’t been a whole lot of places, but I’ve been to Arkansas and Washington and Idaho and everything like that.
Ramsey Russell: Alaska?
Kevin Booth: I’ve been up to Alaska and so I’ve hunted places like that. And I think people in Utah don’t understand what we have here. On any given day, you can go out, you know, with you and a friend or whatever. And our records 13 species for two guys. So I mean in any one day you can kill just about anything. You know, we’ve got all the divers. The only thing we lack big numbers of the sea ducks. But I mean you’ve seen that every once in a while we get one or two of them.
Ramsey Russell: Saw a Scoters last year.
Kevin Booth: Yeah. White-winged scoter around the retention pond and Hopkins and TJ have both killed scoters out at the spur where we were at.
Ramsey Russell: Shot a goldeneye this morning.
Kevin Booth: Yeah, he shot a goldeneye this morning. Matter of fact, I had a barrels goldeneye on my wall that we shot about 400 yards back to the east of where we was hunting today. Yeah. Had Hopkins with me and shot of barrels and he’s pretty proud. He knew it was a barrels is not a regular. He’s pretty proud of himself. But yeah, hunting out here is incredible. I mean it’s just like anywhere else is subject to pressure and whether everything like that. But the thing we have out here that they don’t have, what other places we have mass amounts of public land, mass amounts. And you know today we went out to Willard and we drove past more than 100 spots you could hunt at least 100 spots.
Ramsey Russell: Well, let’s say it, we were the first round because Tony ain’t going to be late. No you know, he ain’t going to be – every time I’ve ever hunted with him he’s the first at the boat ramp, but no one came out, there was a dozen and a half trucks at the ramp. So people were out hunting, I didn’t see what one or 2 boats out there this morning.
Kevin Booth: No, and I mean it’s just like anywhere it gets busy on the weekends and things like that. But I mean we’ve kind of exploited to spur when you’ve been around. But we’ve got that whole salt lake marsh complex that goes all the way from Utah County, clear all the way up in the box out by promontory where you went out last year, promontory Summit and all that. And it’s just amazing. And the thing that I love is you go out there and you say today, I’m going to hunt cinnamon teal. You know, we don’t have a ton of them, but I’m going to target cinnamon teal today and you can go into that habitat into that niche and you can hunt them. You know, you may get them, you may not, they’re not real prevalent bird, but if you put your effort toward it, you can get to know the bird, learn the bird, go there. But like with Tony, Tony and I are kind of cut from the same cloth were kind of big into the divers and stuff. And that’s kind of how we started hunting together is we’re both in the divers and he said, yeah, they’re hanging out over here. But if you go to the other side of the marsh, that’s where the wigeons and the gadwalls hang out and out there where we were at today, just another couple 100 yards, maybe a mile to the west. We call it the pin tail grass. You go out there and it’s just nonstop pin tails all day every day. And so the diversity of the species out here and the diversity of the landscape, like all you experienced last year, you go out in their boat, you can see for miles and there anything taller than a tumbleweed forever and then you go today you’re in that shallow water of the spur like we were at. And then up here in the valley we’ve got a Cutler marsh. And it’s a deep water marsh. And it’s just when I was younger, we would hunt that Cutler marsh and every day and we hunt the same spot, same way, do everything the same, after a while I think man, I want to see different stuff and so I’d go somewhere else and I learned about that and then go somewhere else. You know, and I wanted to see different species and different ducks and everything.
Ramsey Russell: Why don’t you like Mallards?
Kevin Booth: Well you got all night. No. I was just kidding that. It’s half joke half serious. But Mallards to me I see him everywhere.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they are everywhere, they were in the northern hemisphere.
Kevin Booth: Go to the city park, there’s mallards, eating Cheetos and wonder bread. You know I go down to the dump right behind the hazardous waste disposal. There’s some mallards sitting in the pond. You know I tease the boys all the time to shoot mallards. I said they’re going to taste like paint and tall you lean. You know I give him a hard time. And I said yeah you know, God if you don’t you know, and but I like seeing ducks, I like targeting, is the word that we use, but I like targeting ducks that you just don’t see them. You know, Canvasback don’t hang out on the city pond. You know, buffleheads and I like that I have to go out into their home, on their turf, on their terms and I’m not a purist by any means. I don’t have to have the feet down on the decoys, man any 80 yards and then with that 10 gauge and off whack out but because you said it ain’t sky busting if they’re dropping right.
Ramsey Russell: Last year, you and I and Tony went out and in the dark, we’re putting out Tony’s Canvasback. Not too far, he showed me today where we we’re about a mile away. And he said something yeah, should limit the Canvasback, you get a knife. And I didn’t really understand what he was talking about, but I did get a very beautiful knife from it that had canvasback on it, what’s up with that?
Kevin Booth: It’s my own little thing. I call it the canvasback club and it’s just my thing. But Tony, he would have been, Oh, Jesus five or six years ago maybe, no, I don’t know. But I told Tony, I said Tony, I don’t know why, but I just have this burning desire to shoot a canvasback hunt over canvasback decoys with my 10 gauge. And he’s like with 10 gauge? I was like, yeah, read those old worth Matheson books and stuff and talking about 10 gauge and bringing home the meat and all those things. So a week after that I had to have my ankle replaced. So Tony is like, yeah, let’s get you out. So we went out on canvasback hunt and first canvasback end of the day I shot with my 10 gauge, you know, it’s got that bird mounted at my house, all those things. But after that day I got, man, I got, there’s something to this, you know, the targeting and doing it on purpose and stuff. And I said, well from now on, if I go out to shoot Canvasbacks and I’m out there to hunt canvasbacks whenever I do it, whoever is with me, I’m going to make him a knife. And it took me a few years to get where I felt comfortable making them to give them away and stuff, you know, but there’s a guy in –
Ramsey Russell: You’re already making knives at that point or did you decide to make knives too?
Kevin Booth: I had toyed with the idea at that point and then I thought, God, you know what if I learned how to do that then I can do what I want to do with this. And so that was part of what spurred me on. But I get these what they called, mosaic pins from this guy in Russia. He makes them with electric discharge and CEDM, they call it, the cuts them out. And I emailed him and I sent him a drawing and stuff and it’s a silhouette of a canvasback head and it looks a lot like the DU logo but it’s clearly a canvasback and so what I do now is any time I go out with anybody and we’re hunting Canvasbacks, if you get your Canvasbacks, I’ll make you a knife, a Canvasbacks club knife. And I made that one for you. You know Tony’s one, Rice Buse has one, a few guys have them. But that pin I got guys call me and say, hey —
Ramsey Russell: You were telling me that people call up saying they want that Canvasback pin.
Kevin Booth: I want that Canvasback pin in there and I say no, I’m sorry. You know the guy blacks, he is in Russia and only makes them for me. And as far as I know, I might not be, but as far as I know, I’m only what’s got him. I just say no, you can’t buy that when you got to earn that one. When they said, well I’ll take your canvas, I’ll take your hunting knife. No, we got to go Canvasbacks hunting and you got to get some, so.
Ramsey Russell: How did you get into making knives? I mean, it’s not everybody just said, I think I might start making knives.
Kevin Booth: Yeah. You know, my whole life, my adult life, I started working out food processing packaging facility. I got into the maintenance the group out there and they need somebody that could weld and fix and fabricate on the night shift. So hey, I’m your Huckleberry, I want to do that, and they taught me to weld, learn it, run a lathe and blah blah blah. And so with that I learned how to weld and I took that and that fueled the fire even more. You know, we talked about earlier how I learned to make my own stuff and all that thing. So got doing that. Well, that translated in later on, a welder, did take welding for a medical device manufacturers and is that career was starting to come to an end with my health issues and things like that. I thought, man, I got to have something to do with my hands and worked with my hands my whole life and I got to do something. And so while I was still down there, a buddy of mine says, hey we ought to make a knife because we had all the heat treating equipment and all the metal and the machines and everything. Yeah, so we made one in and was it was awful. Had this ugly Purple Heart handle and God, it was terrible.
Ramsey Russell: How did you get around to the duck zipper?
Kevin Booth: The duck zipper, that was Hopkins. Hopkins like the duct cleaner kid. When we get the ducks home, I don’t know if he wants to and I think he got violent told but he’s kind of the duct cleaner and he says, hey I need a knife to clean these ducks. And we started out, you know, fillet knife, paring knife and the old buck 110, you know, everybody’s got a buck 110.
Ramsey Russell: Just tried all the different designs.
Kevin Booth: Yeah, yeah. And he’s like, I don’t like it and then when I got into knife make you I’m like, hey let’s make a duck processing knife. You know, they’ve got burden trout knives and little knives like that. But everything he finds around here, especially is designed to, you know, skin big game or help butcher big Game. So he and I started making this knife about five or six iterations. Later we touched on the duck zipper when we finally got the one he wanted. He was like, man, this opens them up just like a zipper. So we named the duck zipper. But it’s just a little short deep belly knife that we designed it you just lay it on top of the mallard breast and just run it back and by the time you’re to the point you’re at the bottom of that mallard breast and off it comes. So that’s how we came up with that when the duck zipper.
Ramsey Russell: It seems like it was as much a way to spend TIME with your kids just like duck hunting. Just like baseball as it was anything else.
Kevin Booth: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Ramsey Russell: How important as that to you?
Kevin Booth: You know, you put it best. When you say kids spell love TIME and absolutely and first time I heard you say that, I believe it’s on one of Rocky’s old podcast or something, but I thought, man, you know what, that’s short and I believe that, but I’ve never put it in those terms. But yeah, it’s you know with the knives and actually, you know, we’ve been talking a lot about TJ, Hopkins, but I have a daughter also Gabby and when I started making the knives, she says yeah I’ll make the sheets. So she started making the leather sheets and when she started doing that, that was my way to spend a little time with her. And she learned how to do it and stuff and then she kind of taught me.
Ramsey Russell: It became kind of the whole family thing.
Kevin Booth: Yeah. She enjoyed it, she helped me now she’s down at the University of Utah. She’s way smarter than me and the boys. So she’s down they’re going to college, but anyway, she is a good kid, doing her thing, you know. And so yeah, it’s just if I can involve the kids, I do. That’s what I like to do.
Ramsey Russell: Yesterday, thank you very much for the ducks trapped by the way, but I got to tell this story.
Kevin Booth: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: So last year you gave me this beautiful duck zipper with the canvasback club and you know, I love sentimental stuff like it, but I just ended up putting in my knife collection. I don’t want to lose it.
Kevin Booth: Right.
Ramsey Russell: I’ll take a knife I can lose. Yesterday cracked me up though because it’s cold, it’s windy. We hung up in this little grass surrounded cattail, little pothole and duck comes and boom. Hopkins shoots it, shove up and Charlie brought to the unit and you handed Hopkins this duck strap, you know, we’ll break out duck strap and he hung it up on his chair, y’all set up conveniently. And I laid it down and you said no, no, no, hanging up on that strap. I said, all right, well, you know, put it there on that strap and boom, I shoot a duck. Another shoveler. Bring it in. I laid on the bed. No, no, no hang it on the strap so I had to hop it, hanging on the strap the whole time I’m thinking, I hunted with this guy several times last year, what is it with the strap? You know, we’ve got hours to go before we need a half stuff on the strap to carry out to the truck. What’s up with the strap? Finally 10 or 15 minutes late, would you please read that strap? I’m about to kiss myself. You’re looking at it. I was pretty, I was pretty blown away at that strap. You know, I love sentimental stuff like that. Of course I posted it up on social media. You know this beautiful other strap with a compass on it. And what’s the quote say?
Kevin Booth: “Not all who wander our lost”
Ramsey Russell: That’s right. With the compass barons and that quote, which is token. And it’s got my name on the other side. It fits me to a teak because that’s what I do, I wonder. I’ve got this wanderlust, I can’t stand. And I’ve noticed we’re talking about family here, some of the things you do your boys and your daughter now. And I just know that I got a son over in Okinawa and he’s got this burning wanderlust as we talk on the phone or text. He’s already talking about coming home, home not being Mississippi, but home being Bozeman Montana and Colorado and Wyoming. And then I’ve got this other son forest that we’ll jump in the truck and drive halfway across the country into the big road trip and go turkey hunting camp out on the side road with a buddy. And you know, it’s almost like the sins of the father have been transferred. They got this wanderlust passion. And during the Covid I was blessed to bed, spend time a long period of time at home. And it was just a whole different phase and I was comfortable but at the same time I just had this yearning to get the heck out and get back on the road and see this beautiful country. You’re talking about your daughter helped come up with these lovely cases and what I find so astounding about the craftsmanship. I love the knife cases that I literally took mine and hung it upside down and shook it. Like I’m trying to shake up of cocaine. I can’t get it to come out of.
Kevin Booth: No, we make them, each sheath we make custom built to the knife that goes in it and that all the knives are all handmade 100%. I don’t buy knife blanks and then put handles on them or I cut them out of a big hunk of steel and put the handles on and heat treat them myself and do all that myself. And so we make the sheath to the knife and we make it lock in and that’s one of the tests, like you said, we flip it upside down and shake it real good and if it falls out we just make another sheath.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a cool concept. The thing I like about your knife as I see occasionally get solicited or spam whatever you want to call it on Instagram. Somebody want to look at their knife and it looks like something out of Star Wars or I’m like, it doesn’t look like, but this knife has got a nice sweet to it, skin a deer, I mean short blade, but I like to sweep them. I know I can skin a deer as well as I breast out those birds. And that blade is heavy enough. I’ve actually punched and cut and done some stuff with it on ducks as I’m playing them and dressing them. But do you think you’re going to stop there, you got any other design ideas?
Kevin Booth: You know I do I do a little of this, a little of that. I’m like you I’m not big into the fantasy stuff and the big great big Persian re curves and that’s not my thing. You know it’s a thing now, guys get into knife making and knives have been around since two cavemen pissed each other off and went to stabbing, you know?
Ramsey Russell: Like a pony stick.
Kevin Booth: Yeah exactly and I mean the world, you know, steel knives conquered the world, you know. And so I built a little, this little that we’ve got a couple designs. My personal favorite design is the burden trout style, real long slender blade thin, compact, a lot of guys call them fin and feather or you know, you hear them call different things but that’s my personal favorite. But yeah, I make all kinds of stuff. I’ve got an office at my house where I sit down, I drop the designs and, but the one thing I focused on the most was it had to be a useful. It was a tool, it’s just like a hammer, hammers wouldn’t steal, you know, and it’s got a purpose and you use it. A lot of times in the knife making world, you get these guys and you know, I want to use this super steel and I wanted to be able to put butter on my toast and slice the recorder, play the steel, you know, and I mean, I have no delusions of my knifes are going to replace a plasma cutter or white saber type stuff, but I just want a good solid tool. And so one of the things that’s hard for me is when I when I give someone a knife or a sell someone a knife and they’re like, man, I love this thing, I’m going to put it in my Curio cabinet, I’m like, no, get that thing out, hammer that thing through a duck breast or cut through a rib cage of a deer or something with it. So what I did, and I’ve got one of these for you at the house is whenever I send out a knife, I include a, I’ve got a little letter that I give with them and it tells a little about me and what I think about knives and my kind of my philosophy. And then it says that it talks about this journal card that I do. And credit to Josh Raggio, I straight up stole the idea. However I did contact him. He said it was cool for me to do it. So I contact, but I do this journal card and explain, hey, tell me about how this knife plays a part of your life. Whether it’s hunting or fishing or in the kitchen, you know, tell me about a new recipe, tell me about, you know grandma come over and showed you how to cook her famous gumbo or you guys eat, we don’t eat gumbo here, but one day I’ll eat some real gumbo. But anyway, yeah, you tell me about the deer hunt you went on, tell me about you and your dad cleans your very first limited ducks with one or you just and I want to hear those stories and I want to see the pictures. So when I start getting those things back, I’m going to put them up on my cabinet here in the shop, I’m going to take them up and hopefully those stories will inspire me to keep getting better and everything. And one of my core beliefs about this stuff is you don’t get to call yourself a craftsman. That’s not a title you can give yourself that has to be given to you by people that have your work and hold your work and use your work and the greatest compliment I can have is when somebody says, man, you’re a true craftsman or an artist. You know that to me is the greatest compliment I can get.
Ramsey Russell: I don’t know why, but it just, it speaks a lot to me, knives, duck calls, all of these tools of the trade that we use it. To me it takes it to another level when it’s handmade or handcrafted, it just because your knives, I guess cut from the same general shape and design. But every unique handle you put on it, every hand ground, everyone is one of a kind. Just like Raggio’s calls just like just like all this other stuff. And I’m even going to throw out people get tired hearing me talk about balls shells, I love them, but because they’re not mass manufactured in a 50 million square foot factory. You know, you’ve got a handful of guys doing it almost handcrafted mass production, the very best they can. And this to me, it just takes it to an entirely personal level that I just decoys. I just appreciate that stuff for some reason.
Kevin Booth: You know, when you touch something and when you hold it, you know, this is just a personal belief, but when I’m shaping that and I do this and I, you know, a hand sanded. So that blade’s got the nice finish. Every time I work with that knife, a little piece of me, a little piece of my soul goes into that, whether it’s a knife, or it’s a decoy or shotgun shells or whatever, or gun stock or whatever, we were talking about, a piece of your soul goes into that. When you pick it up, it almost feels warm in your hand, the soul and the heart of that. And you go down to Walmart or whatever and grab a buck knife off the shelf and when you put it in your hand and you know, it feels cold and it’s just something about it that it’s just impersonal or whatever. But when you pick up anything handcrafted, you know, and like we mentioned Josh Raggio, I got to give him a lot of credit. He inspired a lot of how I feel and how I do my business and things, but never met the man, but we kind of bonded, we talked about, I met Justin Harrison up hunting in Alaska anyway, so on and so forth anyway. But yeah, handmade one of a kind, it’s, it’s got some soul in and you’ve got the only one in the world.
Ramsey Russell: I feel it when I picked those duck calls of those decoys or those knives or those things that have been just one of a kind like that. I feel it, it just feels different.
Kevin Booth: Absolutely, it does. And my personal belief is it’s part of the soul. It’s like when you’re listening to music and it touches a piece of you, you know that artist, that’s what he’s going for, he’s trying to get you to feel that. And like you, you’ve got the only Ramsey Russell canvasback club knife in existence. It’s the only one, there’s not another one. Never will never be another one. They’re all the same general shape. But even these two we got here, you pick them up, I can tell you what’s different, handle swell on this one or the finger toils a little further, the handle dips a little further back, the woodwinds got a thumb swell on the front for pension. And they’re just all different, every one of them. When I started it my older son TJ, he says well how come they’re not all the same? And I says, if I ever make two that are the exact same, I’m going to quit, you know. So, yeah, handmade and things have always meant something to me. You know my mom, she’s always done handwork with cross stitch or quilting or anything like that, I just always appreciated handmade, hands grown type things, so.
Ramsey Russell: Well I’ll tell you what, we’re going to give away one of your knives on a future episode. This episode here will run December 11th or 12th, we’re going to give away an episode probably the first week of January, give away an episode. Going to give away one of your duck zippers to one of our listeners and social media followers and they’re going to cherish it just like I do. And it was so funny because yesterday you brought this pair of knives to the boat and I had your whole one point and I just kind of announced the giveaway and this morning, I didn’t recognize you pulling up because you were in a different truck. What was the story about big express boats? And I thought some other duck, I’m like boy, knife sales must be good. You have a great 24 hours.
Kevin Booth: No. My truck had to go get fixed so my dad let me borrow his. And we brought the big boat today because I knew we were going to cross that big water. But yeah, you posting that up, I probably tripled my followers and quadrupled my order list, so.
Ramsey Russell: We’re good. You know, I love your knife and I appreciate you. Tell me this, how can anybody listen if they wanted to connect to your social media? What’s your social media accounts?
Kevin Booth: Facebook, it’s outofcacheknives, it spelled CACHE.
Ramsey Russell: All one word outofcache.
Kevin Booth: Yeah, outofcacheknives.
Ramsey Russell: Where did that name come from, you tell me.
Kevin Booth: Yeah. Well, back in the day of the mountain men and Jim Bridger and all that, they were all around this area. Well, Cache Valley was always the sight of huge rendezvous. Yeah, yeah. matter of fact, you know, we stopped at the Maverick this morning about two miles to the east of that is the spot where they hold these big rendezvous. Well, what they do is they bring their first in and they would Cache them, hide them or whatever. You know, they push them into the mud of the riverbank or whatever and because they’re heavy, couldn’t haul them around and then they come back and they catch, so they call them for Cache. And so there is a valley, little valley here is named Cache Valley and one day we were just talking, I said, I’m going to make a company and I said, that’s the only thing we’re going to be famous for is being out of money. And I thought, oh, hey, what if we’re out of Cache, the CACHE.
Ramsey Russell: So the Facebook is outofcache?
Kevin Booth: Outofcache and then same with Instagram, OOCknives.
Ramsey Russell: So Kevin, I appreciate you being on here. I’m looking forward to sharing a duck blind with you again in the morning.
Kevin Booth: Oh, you bet.
Ramsey Russell: First day you shot a 20 ducks, second day you shot at 10 ducks. What are you going to shoot tomorrow?
Kevin Booth: Opening my 410 tomorrow.
Ramsey Russell: Okay, good luck with that. You could be right in between me and Tony.
Kevin Booth: Fine between you and Tony. I shoot everything.
Ramsey Russell: So folks, you have been listening to duck season somewhere from Utah, my buddy, Kevin Booth. Thank you for listening. See you next time.