Zach Meyer, WildEar

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host, Ramsey Russell, join me here to listen to those conversations. This is Ramsey Russell, Get ducks. I am at Dallas Safari Club Morning 03:00 and it’s been a heck of a show it’s been a ton of traffic. All these folks saying economy is not doing good, need to be in a business or be associated being an environment like this where people are buying hunts and hunt related products from all over the world and just see the flow of traffic and listen to the people at the morning breakfast saying, you know, it was a great day. We had a lot of people coming through. It’s been a lot of fun, met a lot of people from around the country, tapped in with some old friends here at Dallas Safari Club, not the least with Zach Meyer of wild deer. Zach, how are you this morning?
Zach Meyer: Good. How are you doing?
Ramsey Russell: I’m good. What did you all do last night? Tell me you went to bed at eight o’clock and woke better.
Zach Meyer: No, we didn’t do that. We went out and got some dinner with some customers and then went out.
Ramsey Russell: What is your take on Dallas Safari club? This show, better, worse than years passed. How’s it going for you?
Zach Meyer: This show is one of my favorites. Hands down.
Ramsey Russell: Why?
Zach Meyer: Just the people, everyone here, both the exhibitors and customers walking through the floor.
Ramsey Russell: And the staff. You know, I’ve told, a million people this truth you know, as an exhibitor, you got to get set up, you got to come in the back door preceding the event. Get all set up and these guys they’ll barbecue, they’re friendly. I’ve known some of them now for 10 years. They treat me like a friend. It’s like very hospitable.
Zach Meyer: Yeah, big time. It feels more like a like a part of your social gathering that a show. I look forward to this one. It’s like, hey I got to go see faces that I don’t normally see or don’t normally hang out with, and it’s like, hey dude how are you? And it’s like, your best buds.
Ramsey Russell: Or somebody comes by 05:00 and say what are you doing for dinner? Yeah, nothing, let’s go.
Zach Meyer: There’s a ton of on the fly like hey come do this. And, it’s like, sure why not?
Ramsey Russell: Duck hunting is a social sport.
Zach Meyer: Big time.
Ramsey Russell: So unlike somebody coming to buy Elk hunt or something you go do by yourself and you know, most guys want to talk to buddies, talk to their families. So I really don’t measure, the success of an event by how many checks we take. We take checks, we don’t, and it’s like this, like I look at my watch, its nine o’clock. Five minutes later I look at my watch and its one o’clock. Five minutes later, they’re turning the lights off and I hadn’t set down, that’s the measure of a good success. It’s like power point is finished. The more people that come through the more energetic, more and more. It’s just an energy and I’ve come by your both a few times and you all are just swan.
Zach Meyer: I looked at Corey yesterday Lava [**00:05:09] flows down here, helping me work the show and I looked at him and I was like, dude, its 3:30 already.
Ramsey Russell: I know. Mark elbowed me yesterday and said, I kept saying good morning when people come into booth, and he’s like its two o’clock.
Zach Meyer: I did a double take on that too.
Ramsey Russell: And I love it though, it’s just people and then the real fun to me, now look, I’m an old duck hunter and I duck hunt all year long. So practically the whole year of getting up at 03:30 – 04:00 o’clock in the morning. Man look about 08:30 09:00 o’clock, I’m ready, I’m ready to hit the pillow. No, no shit, 10:00 o’clock I’m lights out. But I still like to leave here about five o’clock and go eat dinner, have a cold beer, socialize, meet people. You know, if I go out with you there’s five people I had never met. If I go out with him, there’s, there’s three people I’ve never met. Just the stories I hear about people’s hunting experiences or life. It’s just incredible.
Zach Meyer: Yeah, there’s a ton of knowledge down here, even asking, I’m just like, hey, what would you do or what do you do? You know, like that part to me is probably one of the best from being down here because I’ve never done all the fancy exotic stuff. But you sit here and talk to people and I mean, you see everything down here at the super flashy, all the way to regular folks.
Ramsey Russell: But they’re all hunters. That’s just, it’s like, you know, my little niche in Dallas safari club is the world of duck hunting. You know, people come by the booth to see the bar headed goose or the cape teal or something they’ve never seen before and it’s like I have actually have a little repeat, a little crowd that comes through, especially I remember they see what new birds we’ve got, but at the same time, I’m in this massive thing and I see animals and critters and I start thinking outside my world, well man, you know, I’d kind of like to go climb the mountain, maybe shoot that animal that, that’s kind of a cool animal or just experience some of the stuff.
Zach Meyer: They’re not just hunts though. Like they’re doing, it’s the full experience. It’s the four flights in, you know, and one flight is a no fly because of weather or whatever. And then you talk to them about that and they’re just like, hey dude, it is what it is.
Ramsey Russell: That’s part of it. Half the adventure just getting there sometimes try going up, try coming up, going from Mississippi to Minneapolis and get caught in traffic. But I mean that’s a mess. You know, it happens anywhere in the world. Zach, tell me this because I’ve known you for a good while. I’ve never hunted with you not yet shared a blind. How did you start hunting? How long have you been hunting?
Zach Meyer: I got into waterfall hunting pretty heavy in college. I had always growing up with my dad and uncles upland hunting and just sharing the deer camp thing. I never got to deer hunting with him. I always had to sit in the camp or sit at grandma’s house when they all went hunting for dear, but that was the Minnesota deer hunt where it’s 10 – 12 uncles out in the woods and it looks like a meat, procession coming.
Ramsey Russell: Orange [**00:08:13]
Zach Meyer: Oh yeah, Orange Army for sure. A bunch of pumpkins out there. So we and all my cousins, we’d go up there, we just love the tradition of it, so we had our plan on, we would go pheasant hunt, but that was the same type of thing, 6 – 7 trucks or it was back then it was station wagons and minivans and whatever you have. You know get in the dogs or sitting in the middle of the van and it just, everyone pours out of the car it’s awesome. I had my little BB gun and again I couldn’t load it. So I would actually just stuff it, my BB gun. I put my BB down on the ground with snow so the cap was formed and pump it and shoot it and I at least get to see the snow shoot out of the gun. I never got a gun. So I’m just walking.
Ramsey Russell: Again. It’s crazy how we start talking about your origins of hunting and finding memories you’re shooting at the end of a BB gun. That’s part of the process. I mean those memories are just being out, being with family, being in a fun environment. It hooks you.
Zach Meyer: Yeah. That’s all I wanted to do.
Ramsey Russell: I almost feel sorry for some of these kids stepped out on the first hunt at 5 years old and shoot and hunt seven years old Whitetail or something. I mean, what’s the point?
Zach Meyer: Yeah. I don’t know how you ever talk with that.
Ramsey Russell: No. Where do you go from there? But you grew up in around Minneapolis?
Zach Meyer: Yeah, five miles west of Minneapolis of downtown. So I didn’t have a ton of opportunities close to hunts, so we always have to go where my folks grew up, which is Western Minnesota.
Ramsey Russell: Wow that’s a beautiful country. What do you call in Western Minnesota?
Zach Meyer: This is up 1994. So to me it’s northwest Minnesota but it’s probably central Western Minnesota.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah that freaking western Minnesota, Eastern North Dakota. Maybe if I had to just put my finger on a US Map. This is the most beautiful part of America. I think this is.
Zach Meyer: It’s a nice country. For sure.
Ramsey Russell: I really think every time I go through there I feel like I’m in a little house on the prairie or something. You know, it’s just like, God, this is gorgeous. Do you remember you started duck hunting in college and a lot of people are surprised to learn that I did too. I remember going out, not shooting, just going out once or twice with my granddad. I went out absolutely dove hunting with him, but duck hunting was just no. His health failed, go out in a duck blind, with the wet dog, me wrapped up in a warm blank or something. At the end of the day you can buy your kids $1,000 worth of gear, man. Grandma’s old coat and whatever else you could wrap up. It was cold, you know. And but really, I got into duck hunting. Gosh, it had to be in the very early 90s, which seems like yesterday, but it’s been a while and, I was in my 20’s. When I really, truly got into duck hunt.
Zach Meyer: Yeah got the bug.
Ramsey Russell: And it was a two matter limit. And I was hunting with a fraternity brother and his crowd with which chief of Police, West Helena Arkansas, they hunted public land timber and Arkansas limit was two mallard. And their whole aura was not about shooting ducks. It was about landing them. And man when the first big water mallard come in, boom, boom, I’m shooting. And Mr. Boyd was so nice, so fatherness [**00:11:49], his son. I’ll called the shot. I know the folks would have cursed me and told me he didn’t say that because he knew all were just was wrong, green and excited. And about the second time it happened he said, look, look, son let me explain how this works. He said, anybody can shoot a dumb duck coming into would like this. We want to own them. We want to land them. We want to own the water and then we’re going to shoot them because that’s what we’re doing. But that aren’t the point. The point is land them on in those ducks. And that aren’t the way I hunt all the time. But it really it’s just something and it hook me through the roof of my mouth, like a big old number five hook and I’m stuck for life. I mean that was it. All these years later I still get excited when that one mallard comes into timber and land in your lap. Do you remember your first hunt, duck hunt? Do you remember you’re killing your first duck?
Zach Meyer: Yeah, I do. I think I was 13. I played football and hockey growing up, so I didn’t have a whole ton of free time in the fall and pretty much both of those at least hockey for us, Minnesota’s more than full time. So, I didn’t have the opportunity to go out all the time. So me and my uncle were up, he had some ground where they grew up and I remember we were sitting out there and it’s a little, it was a slew really kind of a bigger pond.
Ramsey Russell: You hunt the Puddle duck?
Zach Meyer: Puddle ducks and geese. And my first bird, so we’re sitting there and he goes back to the truck, he said, hey, I’m not, I don’t know what he was going to go to grab food or sandwich or bring something back to me. So I didn’t have to walk. So we’re sitting there and I’m sitting in the Kat tells us kind of looking at whatever, anything probably picking grass or playing with the gun or something. And this goose comes in and I’m like, oh man, here we go. Like, I don’t know what to do. Ramsey Russell: Shoot it.
Zach Meyer: Soon they are watching this thing. It comes in, spins makes one pass and I’m like, oh man, I just blew it, I missed my opportunity. By the grace of God, for whatever reason does another spin comes back around and it’s flying right at me. And I’m sitting there, I got no one to ask like, what should I do? What do I do? Like when do I shoot? So I’m like, well, alright, here we go. And it’s probably like 30 yards away now again, coming right at me still. So I’m like, well, all right, let’s try it. So I pulled my gun up and shoot the goose and boom dead sitting in this pond. So I’m like, all right now, what do I do? Like, I got go get this thing, but it’s the water was high.
Ramsey Russell: You all don’t have a dog?
Zach Meyer: No dog. Oh, no, nothing. So had a little John boat back on the shoreline. I’m like, I’ll just go walk and get it. So I start walking to go get it and the water’s coming up, waters coming up, water is coming up and it’s like, it was one of those words, like two steps away, but you shouldn’t take the second step.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah you do it anyway.
Zach Meyer: Yeah, of course you do. It is right there, I’m not going back. So I take the second step, grab it and yeah, water over the top of the radars, just like a little bit of like what would be like a little piece of wave, You know, you’re like, whatever, grab it. And I walked back and uncle still at the truck and I dropped my gun on shore and I got this goose and I went running through this little slew to go show it to him. Like, look what I did. You know, I got it. And he’s like, dude, you’re sucked. He’s like, you’re going to be cold. I’m like, oh yeah, yeah, I am cold.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’m cold the freeze of Minnesota.
Zach Meyer: But I had no clue. And he was ecstatic, fired up that I shot my first goose and we shot ducks and all that. But vividly remember that.
Ramsey Russell: It’s just amazing and I had a discussion last night supper. It’s just very hard to articulate the magic for me of duck hunting. Anybody’s ever been on a blind with me knows, I love to pull the trigger, but it’s just so much more than that. And I can just remember talking to my grandparents, my dad, they never talked about, they talked about the time they floated their hats and did this and did that. They never talked about duck numbers. You know, it was all about those memories. That’s what they remember. Even when I think back of any given duck scene. I don’t remember. I might remember, oh yeah, we shot a limited, we didn’t, but I don’t remember that I remember something else. I remember eating sausage on a creek bank or the joke somebody told or the time I took a near the pretreatment dog might just be little other attacks which you know.
Zach Meyer: Yeah, it’s goofy for me. It’s the weird details of the hunt or the trip with buddies and or family or whatever it is. You know, the dog did this and that the story about like a dog, it’s like, yeah, that wasn’t even a retrieve, you know? But the dog did something out there and you’re like, that’s awesome, it’s fun to watch.
Ramsey Russell: Change of subject because you are wild deer. And I do get to ask quite a bit which here in product obviously I’m wearing a lot of these photos. But I’m 53 years old, I can barely hear thunder. I can barely hear a Turkey gobble. I mean, I bet you if I hear a Turkey gobble I’d kill them before I can see it. And I’m the guy who’s got the TV up full board. It can barely understand. People can hear that mailbox on the street but I’m struggling to hear words and it’s just all that darn shoot. It’s funny because here in convention, you know, especially all of my clients, all of my clients, we’re all that way. You let the intercom come on, I can hear you talk but I can’t hear what you’re saying when you get into a cafe with a lot of background noise, I can’t hear what anybody is saying anymore. And my clients are all the same way. We’re like, huh? What? Yeah, misunderstanding. I mean, you know.
Zach Meyer: Oh it’s just this entire room, they’ll come in, you say hi. And then they ask a question and I either say what or they say what, it’s like, oh boy, here we go. And I would say the easiest way to recognize that for most people like you just said is, you know, you’ll be watching TV and your volumes at 29.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah I shoot at 29.
Zach Meyer: And the wife comes in and she puts it down to 11, you’re like huh.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah I can’t read it. I know you’re going to
Zach Meyer: You’ll be that guy with the headphones on across the room, you know.
Ramsey Russell: You know actually home for TV I do have Bluetooth headphones. Because nobody else can be in the den with me watching TV unless I’m wearing headphones and actually hear what they are saying.
Zach Meyer: Yeah, truck volumes the same thing. All the way up and wife comes in and she’s like turn it down.
Ramsey Russell: And it really wasn’t in adulthood that I started, my hearing started diminished. I was actually the first time I became acutely aware that my ears rang and I couldn’t hear high pitched noises. I was in college algebra junior college. Let me put this way. One of the only reason I showed up to that course anyway because the teacher was quite attractive, I was struggling to get by but I showed up to be a good sport about it and she was very cute teacher and one day in the middle of writing something a big formula for something, she slammed down the chalk and tell you how long ago it was, it was chalk not mag martyrs. And she turned around and turn it, you know, she started scolding class, might turn it off, I mean who is that? Who is that? I’m looking around, dumping like everybody else and finally the girl behind me goes, dumb ass turn the watch, off, it was my watch. And it had been going off the whole semester right in the middle of her time. I didn’t know, I couldn’t hear it, I couldn’t hear it. So after the class I’d go over and apologize to, that’s when I realized I can’t hear anything.
Zach Meyer: Not Good.
Ramsey Russell: And not too long ago, I must say 10 years ago I was in a duck blind with some friends really nice duck whole, little flooded cypress break and some of them were physicians and I was kind of in the middle of blind and my host was a couple of people down and right before the hunt started he handed me some hearing muffs that were amplified and help electric turn on and he handed him to me and I turn them on. And all of a sudden I could hear things I had, I realized I hadn’t been here like I could hear those gadwalls up in the air that I couldn’t see yet. I could hear things that I’ve been missing out on not knowing that. And that’s half of it. That’s the whole magic the very next day we’re in the same blind he hands those here and just to be a smart Alec. I go what am I death or something? And the whole blind, every six people said heck yeah man dude, you are deaf. We have entire conversations, you’re sitting there staring off into space you can’t hear nothing. God, its bad man. It’s all that shotgun. And you know what for me still, Zach for me, a very hard, how many at the time? It just seemed like a hard pill to swallow. Those products of you all are 1000 bucks?
Zach Meyer: Yup, 1100 bucks.
Ramsey Russell: Never mind $250 case on shelves. Quality shell, $3000 shotgun, $2000 a year in gas, $5000 boat, $600 ice chest, $700 Dog box, a bunch of lab training the whole cumulus expensive. I never mind all that. I mean, I know guys that spend way more 1000 bucks a year on shotgun shells, and here I am with, I got one set hears and I blew it.
Zach Meyer: You don’t get a second chance.
Ramsey Russell: And I’ve actually tried some of those hearing aids, digital reproduction. And the problem is they don’t work for ringing ears and hearing loss due to do the shot gunning. They can’t tune them for that. I tried to pay a guy tried to sell me, I don’t know, $1000 pair of hearing aids. I’m like, hell I’m going to buy them, if I hear better I’m buying them but I want to try them first. Man, I can hear grit under my feet and shop. I can hear grass crunching like somebody play the drums. But I look up at a mockingbird 40 yards away and I can see his mouth moving but I couldn’t hear nothing. I’m like, okay, these are here and they don’t work. I’ve blown, I’ve still got some hearing, but at that point I said, you know, I don’t want to be stone cold deaf. That was what that was what moved me to go ahead and get a set of those wild deer’s and of course, you all have been very good about, especially a clumsy guy like me, you know when they’ve been damaged or lost. Like you have been very good about keeping me and wild deer. Do you describe all your clients pretty similarly? I mean is anybody smart enough to literally be proactive.
Zach Meyer: Somewhere, I think they’re finally realizing it now. Like, hey, I can prevent this. You know, and you get into a room like this and you see your 50 – 60 – 70 year old guy and he’s like, hey, I got nothing left. It’s too late. It’s not too late. You can still protect what you got, save what you have left. But that generation is talking to the next and they’re like, hey, like you’re going to do this, and that’s a 20 year old kid, and they make a set, they’ll buy it, make a set for him. So that’s it. Here you go, take care of it and you can kind of, it’s hard because it’s a lot of money, $1,100 is a lot of money. But when you look at the grand scheme of things, you can buy your health, you can buy a new tooth, you can buy a new hit, but you cannot get your hearing at place.
Ramsey Russell: Cannot replace hearing, cannot replace eyesight.
Zach Meyer: That’s right, you’re going to get into hearing aids and now you’re living with hearing aids and you can talk to anyone you know of them how inconvenient they are of every single factor. You got bring him, you got to do this, and you got to do that. It’s brutal.
Ramsey Russell: As I’m talking to people, people I’ve hunted with for a long time ask me the number one reason I did not wear hearing muff, because it messes up my mouth. I don’t care what you tell me. Those hearing muff are made for maybe rifles and handgun. They’re not made for shotgun. And you know, we all put them on our kids because they’re cheating or eating [**00:24:55], but you’re not doing your kid’s a favor teaching them to shoot with headphones on, and then the plugs and stuff like that I couldn’t even hear myself call and let alone hear anything else. And that’s not a good situation and now I can’t, that is the one thing I love about it is I can actually hear better with them than without. But they attenuate when I’m hunting, when the gun goes off and I didn’t realize that somebody’s headaches, I was having after really good hunts. Had nothing to do so much with shotgun record. Had to do with all that blast going off my ears.
Zach Meyer: It’s not just your gun. If you got 3 – 4 – 5 other buddies in the pit lined layouts with you or whatever.
Ramsey Russell: Let alone got it like reported for some reason.
Zach Meyer: Yeah, and you’ve got, there’s fancy jokes out and it’s not your gun. If they all shoot three times, just do the math, four guys three times and you’re going to have 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 groups for the day. The math there. And then all of a sudden it’s a four day, five day hunt or it’s a full season. Your exposure to it is a lot. If you’re going to go shoot trap skewer sporting class, every single individual out there has hearing protection on whether it’s plugs or electronics, whatever. So it’s like, why would you wear it there? But not wear it when you’re hunting. Doesn’t make sense to me.
Ramsey Russell: Exactly. It’s because they want to hear the ducks, but they just don’t realize something like this exist. And I’m not having this discussion with you to advertise, it’s important to me. And it’s just sharing man, I lost my hearing. But now then again, this technology didn’t exist either back when I was growing up. We used Kleenex in years or something and you know.
Zach Meyer: And that’s what it was. We guys are like, I used to take a cotton ball. It’s like, hey I get it, the sun’s going to set tonight. I don’t care. Either if it’s wild deer the other brands out there, that’s fine. Just do something though because it’s not worth it, it’s not at all. There’s way more important things in life that you probably want to hear and listen to when you get older.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. No it’s just a day and age that 1000 bucks a lot of money then again relative to the whole scheme of things. Especially the world of duck hunting. Really not.
Zach Meyer: No. Not if I mean you look at it 10, 15, 20 years. It’s like okay 20 bucks, 50 bucks a season, “100 bucks a year, No big deal.” Let’s do it.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, but I, you know, of course my season is a long time. I duck hunted a lot of different places throughout the year. So I get my money’s worth out of them relative to guys that hunt for 10 days, but I actually put them to use outside the duck blind to, don’t judge me for this. But my wife wanted to go see Elton John this year. And, man, I enjoyed that. I mean, you know, I don’t care what you think of Elton john. I guarantee anybody listening knows the word to every single song he played that night because he’s Elton john like that kicked something off and the hottest band in the world kiss. And I got to go see them play their absolute well, who knows, they may come back after seven years and I laughed from the time that kind of went off in the fireworks when I laughed so hard. It was so fun. And I have my wild Deer’s in. It is crazy going to a concert now based the last time I went to concert, back in the 80s, early 90s, there’s no smoke of any kind, wafting around. There’s none of that mess going on, you can buy liquor drinks, that’s different, you’re not to smuggle it in. And of course both the performers and me are way older, and it aren’t a bunch of teenagers and there all guys my age and I wasn’t the only one with hearing protection. There were other people in there with hearing protection.
Zach Meyer: You can still hear it.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Oh, I can hear it just fine. I wouldn’t want tone deaf or my ears ringing that may have something to me, lose my hearing something crazy concert. I went to back in the day. What is your hunting situation now? I know you duck and goose on a lot. You still deer hunt?
Zach Meyer: I don’t. I’m not a big game guy at all.
Ramsey Russell: All birds.
Zach Meyer: I bet you, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve deer hunted in the last five years. I’m a waterfowl hunter. I love goose hunting. That’s what I got into back in college.
Ramsey Russell: You got a pretty wild swan. Gosh I know you hunt in Canada.
Zach Meyer: I start in Canada and pretty much go all the way down either Kansas Missouri.
Ramsey Russell: Are you a goose guy or duck guy?
Zach Meyer: More of a goose guy than ducks because we got those and at least hunt them at home.
Ramsey Russell: You’ve got a culture for it.
Zach Meyer: Yeah, I mean it’s hard to not hunt them in Minnesota. They’re everywhere, we get a pretty good crack at them.
Ramsey Russell: The first conversation I had in this format was with Corey Law for out from Minnesota and he’s a goose whisperer. And you grew up cutting his teeth on a goose call and all you got to bring that northern tier like that. I just wondered if you have a preference which one it was.
Zach Meyer: I love shooting ducks. Our problem is we’ll get them on opening weekend and then there seems to be avoid bridges, there’s not a lot of birds around. And then the birds will show up, you know earlier, mid-December and that’s, our season is done. You know, so we’ll chase them on the river. But the real numbers don’t get there until it’s too late.
Ramsey Russell: What about the geese? How long you all hunt them for up in Minnesota?
Zach Meyer: Season typically opens 1st of September and that will run through end of December, like Christmas.
Ramsey Russell: Wow. I think that’s a long season. For shooting Canada geese. Have you heard anything I just had this thought, have you heard anything about Minnesota opening a trumpeter swan season?
Zach Meyer: There’s been talks about it where they’re starting to gather some information on them. Which will, by them gathering information for a year or two that will probably lead to a season.
Ramsey Russell: That would be cool.
Zach Meyer: That would be awesome because there’s a little pocket of those around too.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, there are, I was up there with Chose at his house and there were a dozen.
Zach Meyer: He’s always got a bunch of this little pond.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I think, they show up and bread. It looked like a couple of adults and their offspring.
Zach Meyer: Yeah. He’s got the waterfowl zoo behind his house.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. He’s got waterfowl right there.
Zach Meyer: And he doesn’t shoot one of them. He doesn’t hunt it. He sits there and he’ll talk to him like, dude, let’s go shoot those. You know, he’s like, no man. He likes to have his coffee in the morning and look out that kitchen window and he’ll watch all of them and you’ll sit there. If you go over there, you’ll just sit there at that table and just stare at him for an hour, you know, and his wife Bonnie be like let’s go, what are you guys doing?
Ramsey Russell: Have you got any more hunting trip planned now that you all were shoot down in Minnesota, have you got any more hunting trips planned this year?
Zach Meyer: Yeah, I’ve got a couple more work shows here in January, you know, Dallas and shot and some other shows and I think we’ll probably get down to maybe Kansas again. Couple maybe for a duck hunt down there with some guys and then we’ll probably go to the hurt locker again and maybe end of January or February and run around with Christian Bailey.
Ramsey Russell: Chose and I made a huge spin through the Mississippi and central flyways before Christmas and catfish float over in Mississippi. I asked him the other day how he was doing. He got some of the best duck state of Mississippi duck on. He said, we’re killing some ducks every day, which kind of summed up to me the entire North American ducks season. But man, I look at, it was 7 degrees last night when I got to the hotel and I woke up this morning, it’s gusting 30 mph. It feels like 25 degrees. There’s snow up in Wichita Falls. That really makes still ducks move or maybe even pushing new bird down. So there’s hope that we could end on a good, good note this year.
Zach Meyer: I hope so. I mean all the guys I talked to and they’re killers, and everyone seemed to kind of ride that struggle bus a little bit. That’s not normal for some of these guys.
Ramsey Russell: What are you going to do? I mean I’m going to duck hunt. I’m not absolutely go ice skating or something.
Zach Meyer: If you want to go ice skate, come up Minnesota and its -30.
Ramsey Russell: I love to visit Minnesota. I love to visit up north. I truly absolutely love to visit and fall. But I’ve just realized I’ve got a rule in life. I want one of maybe five or six hardcore rules is if I have to own a snow shovel, I’m not living there.
Zach Meyer: You have to own a couple.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I’m just not, I never forget. I actually had a neighbor one time he lived in town for he came from I think Minnesota or Michigan but I was in the garage when I go, Man what the hell is that? He goes, it’s a snow shovel. We aren’t going to need that around here, thank God. But I just haven’t been pretty off that part of the world enough. I’m not people with all that cold with and I don’t get ice fishing either. I just don’t get ice fishing. I think it’s a northern thing. And I love it.
Zach Meyer: You got to come up and do it. I promise you.
Ramsey Russell: You know, sitting on a block of ice in a hut just looking at the hole in the ground. Just don’t sound sexy.
Zach Meyer: I mean it is cold. You can be comfortable, you’re not going to be warm or hot, but it’s again, it’s the whole experience. You going to ride a snowmobile or take your truck driving on the lake, there’s 2-3-4 ft. of snow or ice, you get a little bit of snow up top and they’ll plow the roads. It’s like a little communities out there, you know, there’s road signs, it’s the whole deal. You can pop from house to house.
Ramsey Russell: You aren’t got one you set up like a generator and a TV watching through the hole.
Zach Meyer: They are phenomenal and that’s what I do. I’d start to with that and then the next day we’d go earn it out of a portable, but the big permanent houses are fancy.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I know that sound. I might be in for the bear and a TV.
Zach Meyer: Yeah, absolutely. We’ll do it.
Ramsey Russell: But that look, I hear the crowd starting to wake up and folks starting to stream in to our show. Folks thank you all for listening. Check us out at Ramsey Russell, Get Ducks, getducks.com, and at wilddeer.com. And what’s your Instagram account?
Zach Meyer: Wild Deer Official.
Ramsey Russell: @WildDeerOfficial. Thank you all for listening. I’ll see you next time Duck Season Somewhere is produced by Ben Paige. Original soundtrack by our friend Cody Huggins.