EP 578. Championship Tube Call and the Art of Old School Goose Hunting

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. For today, we are on the Eastern Shore with today’s guest, Mr. David Coleman, four-time world champion goose caller, but with a unique twist. David, how the heck are you, man? And welcome to the future.
David Coleman: Yeah, this is out of my comfort zone.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Now, man, I mean, what is out of your comfort zone? Talking like George Jetson over video or just being on a podcast entirely?
David Coleman: On a podcast. We did a few podcasts with Sean during COVID. And we did something then, and that was a little fun. They were just on YouTube and a little short video, 45 minutes worth with Sean and Albie Kimball and some of those guys. And it was about the tube call because a lot of folks didn’t know where it originated or how to blow it and learn how to blow it, stuff like that. So we were doing that during COVID with nothing else to do anyway.
Ramsey Russell: We’re going to get into this tube call you blow. And you know, the first time I ever laid eyes on one was when I met you over there at Charlie’s. I had never heard of one, never seen one. And I’ll bet that a lot of listeners have never heard or seen one. I would almost bet everything most of them have not. But tell me this, just David, really, real quickly, introduce yourself. Where are you from and what do you do?

“What I do, I do a lot. Well, I’m originally from David Coleman, you know, and most folks know me from the tube call and you know, and my decoy painting, stuff like that, you know, originally born and raised in Chestertown, which is some people call it the goose capital world. It’s not anymore, but it was during the late 70s and 80s, early 90s.”

David Coleman: What I do, I do a lot. Well, I’m David Coleman, you know, and most folks know me from the tube call and my decoy painting, stuff like that. Originally born and raised in Chestertown, which some people call the goose capital of the world. It’s not anymore, but it was during the late 1970s and 1080s, early 1990s. And, you know, you’re born and raised there. They give you a goose call for a pacifier when you’re a kid. I ran around with a goose call in fourth grade in school and had to have one. The teacher ended up with a whole desk drawer full of them.
Ramsey Russell: Ah. What do you do for a living, though, now, David?
David Coleman: I’m retired from Parks and Recreation.
Ramsey Russell: Okay.
David Coleman: Of the town of Ocean City.
Ramsey Russell: All right.
David Coleman: And practically my whole life, I’ve been a volunteer firefighter in Ocean City and in Chestertown. My dad was a past chief up there for over 35 years, so it kind of was in the blood there. But growing up in Chestertown, everything was about goose hunting since I can remember because we grew up on the Chester River, and that’s where all the geese would roost at night. And it all just came to form that way. But yeah, I’m getting all over the place here. But yeah, retired two years ago from the town of Ocean City. And now I’m just being able to gun all I want and go with friends, fun hunting, and paint decoys and rework these Herter decoys that I redo all the time.
Ramsey Russell: That’s fantastic, man. What a great retirement. Now take us back. You were saying in fourth grade, your teacher had just a desk drawer full of calls she confiscated. Is that about the age that somebody from Chestertown, Maryland, that you got into goose hunting?
David Coleman: I knew about goose calls and duck calls then, but I didn’t actually get to go goose hunting or kill my first goose until 1973.
Ramsey Russell: How old were you then?
David Coleman: Oh gosh, I had to be 14.
Ramsey Russell: Okay. Who were some of your mentors? Who were some of the influences in your goose hunting? Let’s talk first about the goose hunting. Who were some of your influences in your goose hunting life around Chestertown, Maryland?
David Coleman: Gosh. Well, back then you didn’t have social media and stuff, so you didn’t know about other folks. I knew about my Uncle Bob Coleman, who lived on the Chester River and had a blind on a point right from his house where I got to goose hunt a lot. And then everything else was just all the boys we went to school with. They consolidated all the small-town schools into one big school. You know, you got to be friends with guys who had farms, lived on farms, guys that goose hunted because their dad did, and they went with them. So it all evolved that way that I got to learn about it. Now, as far as mentors, just from the book Roy Walsh, Gunning the Chesapeake, that old book. One in our house. And then Harry Walsh came out in 1972 with that Outlaw Gunner book. I had to have that for Christmas. And just reading all that, even though it was all mainly about shooting ducks and stuff. But I couldn’t read a book, English book in school, but I knew every page in The Outlaw Gunner.
Ramsey Russell: Boy, ain’t that something. That describes a lot of boyhoods. Tell me a little bit more about your Uncle Bob Coleman. And here’s kind of what I’m asking, you talk about him having a blind out on the river and you all being from the then goose capital of the world. Was Uncle Bob more of a goose hunter or duck hunter?
David Coleman: He was more of a duck hunter. They shot a lot of canvasbacks and redheads off there. Wow. But after the hurricane in 1972, I think it was Hazel, that tore up all the grass and screwed the bay up and the tributaries, the ducks weren’t around as much. Diving ducks, and killed all the runoff. Everything came down. Pennsylvania ruined everything. And it hasn’t bounced back like it was from then. But it’s gotten better. He had a point blind, and we got to go there. I didn’t drive then, but my dad would take me out and drop me off early on Saturday mornings, and I’d hunt all day. He’d come back at night time around 6 o’clock and pick me up from Uncle Bob’s house because we’d hunt all day. If you killed a limit of geese or something, you’d still stay all day, hoping you’d kill some diving ducks or blackheads or redheads come through there or something like that. And we just stayed all day. Wasn’t like running parties and we killed a limit and got out of there. We stayed in the river blinds all day. We had a stove, we cooked and stuff like that. But after I got to be 16 years old and I’d still blow, learning to blow calls. Back then I just blew Faulk’s, Lohman’s, whatever they sold down at Western Auto or the local hardware store. But I was getting fairly good with them. And some boys up to the next point, the Baldwin boys, they had a point on Baldwin Point they called it. “Hey man, why don’t you come down here and help me call? See if you can call some geese for us, you’re pretty good at it.” So I parked down the boat ramp and walked down to the blind. And one thing led to another. I was just calling geese, even with those old calls. And those boys would give me a few dollars. I’m like, man, this is all right. Here I am, 16 years old, got gas money for the old hoopty Chevelle I was riding in. So that’s basically how it started. Every time I turned around, “Hey, you want to come with us next Saturday? Come on down.” I wasn’t hunting too much at Uncle Bob’s anymore. I was going down here because I was making good, boys would tip me out. Some boys would give me some money, and they were just a good old bunch of boys hunting. But they’d all say, “Hey, gather up some money. Give Coleman, he called them geese in here for us.” Because they couldn’t do it. So I just kept practicing all the time. Always had a goose call with me again in school. Always had them taken away. Then I’d go get a new one after I got home from school downtown.
Ramsey Russell: Who taught you to call like that? Your Uncle Bob? Or did you just get a call and learn to call?

David Coleman: Yeah. Rhyme, reason, through time, muscle memory. And just through time and watching and practicing. Nobody ever taught me. And then, of course, then when you got in high school, after I got the first call from Knight & Hale, what was that, senior year in high school, and I missed school a lot and ended up getting put back. That jammed me up, and all my friends graduated, and that was one of the worst things I did. But I was starting to goose hunt all the time, and guys were wanting me to go and pay me, give me some money. So I’m getting all over the place again. But I got the first tube call from Knight & Hale.

“Two questions I’ve got about then is, what are some of your fondest memories growing up and those days around Chestertown and how has it changed since?”

Ramsey Russell: Wait, before we get into that. That’s my next line of question. But I want to ask you this before we get into that. Take me back. Two questions I’ve got about then. What are some of your fondest memories growing up and those days around Chestertown, and how has it changed since?

“Oh, my goodness. The geese. The geese. The goose population down here was just off the hook and was just. You can’t imagine how it was. And every field you went by, there was a blind or there was a pit and there was a rig of decoys.”

David Coleman: Oh, my goodness. The goose population down here was just off the hook. You can’t imagine how it was. In every field you went by, there was a blind, or there was a pit, and there was a rig of decoys. The hotels, the gas stations, the trucks, the four-wheel drive trucks, it was just a mecca. The guys here today would never believe it was like that going on. It’s why there’s not geese here like there used to be. But it was just off the hook. And you talk about the fondest memories of me growing up. I mean, again, when I got the first tube call from Hale, we hooked school that Monday because I got it on a Saturday. Hooked school that Monday. I was getting basic notes out of it before I got back to Chestertown from Easton. And we were hunting early in the season because it was early November. Season just came in, and we were hunting on Uncle Bob’s Point, called Brickbat Point. It was behind the brickyard, so they called it Brickbat Point. And we were hunting over V-boards. And that tube call lit them geese up because they’d never heard it before on that Chester River. And I was getting basic notes like that, nothing fancy. And the geese ate us up with those V-boards. I’ll never forget it. I said, hey, I’m on to something here. I said, this is awesome, over the V-boards because normally we had a bunch of full bodies, but I didn’t have them all painted up yet. So I said, well, let’s just use these V-boards, get by with them. And we smoked them. One thing led to another. Every weekend we were going to rig up these V-boards because the geese liked those V-boards, and they liked that tube call back then. And I wasn’t, I’m just basic honks. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t doing my comeback call or the call I use when they’re tolling and locked up coming. Nothing, I was just calling. There wasn’t a whole lot of calling going on back then to the point it is today. It was a bit hot during the 1980s.

Ramsey Russell: David, you’ve got a reputation for dominating the circuit with a tube caller, which is very unconventional. Like I said, the first time I ever laid eyes on one was the day I met you. And if somebody had pulled it out later at the bar and said, what is this? I would not have guessed. I might have guessed a lot of different things, but goose call isn’t in it. What drew you to that style? How did you go from blowing Faulks and Lohmans to a tube caller that virtually nobody’d heard of?

David Coleman: Yeah, well, Mike McLemore was master of ceremonies at the calling contest in Easton. He was good at it. He was like you. He had a southern accent, and he’d throw a joke or two in there. He was good. And he got talking about how he liked to goose hunt with two things, he liked to hunt over corn or use this goose call. Well, he had a Knight & Hale tube call, and he was blowing it. And I said, man, I never heard anything like that. I want to get one of those. And he was demonstrating this tube call. Of course, then the next year Knight & Hale came down, and Harold Knight won the worlds with it. But I thought that was the neatest thing.

Ramsey Russell: Did Harold Knight invent the tube call?

David Coleman: Yeah, basically did. Yeah. It was a turkey call. Basically, those boys, I don’t know, were goofing around or in the woods or just blowing on it at their barbershop or something, and somehow eventually got a goose honk noise out of it. And they knew they were on to something then. But originally it was a turkey call, like that. That’s where it started. So he was in the prime of introducing that when goose hunting was in its prime in Maryland.

Ramsey Russell: For listeners that might not know or understand, what exactly is a tube caller? I mean, describe it to me. Describe how yours is made and how does it differ from traditional short reeds or flute calls? Wish I was recording a video right now. But of course, people can go on YouTube and see you hold this thing up.

David Coleman: Yeah, well, everybody looks at it like, what in the world was that? You know, wooden tube. It’s a round wooden tube with the diaphragm on the end of it. They actually call it a diaphragm call. Diaphragm tube call, or diaphragm call, because they call this a diaphragm. A lot of boys always say, man, I need some new rubbers for my tube call.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what it is. It’s like a latex diaphragm.

David Coleman: Yeah. Well, basically the original ones were dental dam.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

David Coleman: They used them in your mouth when you’d get root canals and stuff and kept everything sterilized. They would not last a week, maybe two if you were lucky. But these are Dura-Bands. It’s nothing but a Dura-Band that you use for exercise, like in nursing homes.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

David Coleman: And I use a lobster band around it. Now, the original ones weren’t like that. I don’t know what, he had some bands made and stuff. But I ended up using lobster bands that are tight, and they keep them tight, keep them just where I want them. This Carolina blue, I don’t know actually what thickness it is, but it’s the right thickness to give the goosiest sound that I like. And then, you know, during the shows, I use this clear one to try to show people how I hold it in my mouth. Try to let them see where my lips are, and kind of, they catch on to it a little better. Because it’s so complicated for the average person to drop one reed call and then pick this up. They can’t get anything. They’re blowing on it.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that already sounds a lot better than what I did. Mine sounded more like one heck of a buck grunt when I tried it.

David Coleman: And then I say, hey, all you got to do, go. They can’t get over it. And then they got it, and they do the same thing. So try to work with them to have patience. But best thing to do, going and coming from work, is to have it in your car or your truck and just keep going with it. Then eventually you’ll just get a honk, a basic honk, and you’ll catch on to, okay, now I see how it goes, how the air goes in and out. Before you get all this, before you get all that crazy stuff, which sets them geese in the world.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of the unique advantages of a tube call in either competition or hunting situations?

David Coleman: I guess in competition, in live, the live goose calling contest, it’s as realistic as you could be. Like John Taylor says, man, the thing is just so goosey sounding, it makes his hair stand up on his arms, he says. But it won’t freeze up. Coldest day of the year. It’s not like a reed call, full of spit, and then all of a sudden, geese coming, and the thing locked up, froze up. That’s one thing. It’s easy to keep in your pocket. It’s there. It’s not dangling all over the place. For me, and in the right hands, it’s as deadly as anything you could want. You can just work them geese. Every time I get done a good day guiding, I text Sean. I said, man, the best part of the day wasn’t the stack of geese. It wasn’t the guys I was with. It was just being able to talk to those geese and watch them respond to something so simple. And it’s just so, for me, easy to blow and just talk to them. And then, you know, lose them and bring one or two back to you. Pleading for them to come back. That’s the best part of the whole thing for me, that was calling them in. Not my picture stacked up with geese like a lot of them do nowadays.

“Your wife, Ms. Janet, your wife, Ms. Janney, said, you never leave home without that in your pocket.”

Ramsey Russell: Your wife, Ms. Janney, said you never leave home without that in your pocket. I mean, do you literally blow it all day, every day of your life?

David Coleman: No. Well, sort of, kind of. It’s always in there because I run into somebody who says, “Hey, man, I got one of them calls. I can’t blow it.” All right. “Hey, man, I need some rubbers.” “Hey, man, you got a call on you? Let me hear it.” And I just always have it. And I can put it in my pocket. It’s there all the time. I’m sure she’s going to find one or two in the bottom of the washing machine before it’s over with.

Ramsey Russell: Are there any specific techniques or sounds that you can do with a tube caller that are harder or even impossible to do with other calls?

David Coleman: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, a lot of guys, I picked up on the reed calls, doing the double clucks and stuff. But you can do very similar to those reed calls. But there are some other ones I can do, that I don’t think the reed calls can do fighting stuff and goofy stuff like that. Anytime I would do that was going on a pond, goofing around. But in the contest, I think that’s what put me over the edge because I was doing these geese fighting. A lot of guys would ask me, “Hey man, what was that you were doing?” I said, I watched those geese, mainly in the springtime. They’re fighting, or they’re fighting over territory, and they’re doing all this good stuff. I remember doing that, and you could hear the audience like, “Oh man, what in the world was that?” So I had a little edge with that. But other than that, I can do everything that the reed callers do, but it’s just not as fast. You see them up there, and they get to going, and they get fast. They’re like, “Oh man,” but we’re all geese. And the birds, I’m on by. I don’t call geese like that. I couldn’t call geese like that. I had a hard time calling like that. This smooth transition with this tube call was laying them nice clucks and honks out there. It’s a game changer up there for me. I did some of the stuff. I know it’s contest calling. It’s changed a lot from when we first started when we were actually all guides calling like we call geese. But it’s not. If I called like that, boss man come down there, yank me out of the blind and say, “Man, what are you doing?” So this tube call, just smooth and tranquil, and it just changes the whole morning. And it doesn’t bother anybody like, “Man, will you stop blowing that call? They’re driving me crazy,” like some of these reed calls. But that’s just my opinion.

Ramsey Russell:     Well, Tim and Timidus is somebody that grew up just a goose hunter, an avid goose hunter in the goose capital of the Atlantic Flyway, if not the world. What inspired you to transition to competitive calling and what did that journey look like? Did you just say, “I’m gonna go compete one day”? I mean, how did you get in, how did you transition, and what did it look like?

David Coleman: I was already going down there. I wasn’t goose calling down there. I was a better duck caller than goose caller. I was going down to the Mason-Dixon duck calling contest, and I would always get third, fourth, fifth, stuff like that. I was going down there just in the duck calling. And after I got this and I started picking it up really good, that’s when I said, “Man, I’m gonna go down there and get in the goose calling contest with the tube call,” and it all transpired from there. But I started with duck calling. Mason-Dixon was, if you won, that qualified you for the world in Stuttgart, Arkansas. I was always scared to death that I was gonna win and then I gotta go to Stuttgart, and I didn’t know how to leave, get outside Chestertown. So, I never got that good. But I was a better duck caller. And we would get second, third-place calls from duck calls from Glenn Scobie, some other things with prizes, we would get stuff like that. And then I’d go to other contests, World Muskrat Skinning Contest, and they would have a calling contest down there, and I’d win down there, and you get a trophy. So I had a whole box full of go-kart trophies, bowling trophies that I don’t even know where they are now.

Ramsey Russell: Was it competition for you, or was it just a way to continue practicing your craft and kind of up your game?

David Coleman: Yeah, up my game. And competition to an extent. As you’re younger, you’re like, “I want to win something.” But nobody else doing it that I was around in Chestertown. I was the only one doing any competition calling actually from Chestertown for a while. And then after I started going down and winning some places, even second and thirds, everybody was getting into it, saying, “Oh man, I think I can do that.” I think one year, four of the six finalists were tube callers.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

David Coleman: And all four were from Chestertown back then. But then when Sean came out with the Eastern Shoreman, I was pretty good on it. And I would use the same style as I used to call. And that Shoreman call, I had one of the first ones he made. It was 1983 or 1984. I was down there and I was going to blow it. Well, Harold Knight and Hale were down there and came to me, picked that up off my neck and said, “You gonna blow this? You’re going to go against the grain and not blow the tube call?” I said, “Okay, I just got it with me.” And I blew the tube call, and I didn’t make it. Sean Mann won. And to this day, Sean will admit, he says, “Coleman, you helped me start my business, you know, because you didn’t blow the call.” He thought I was better on it than he was back then. He says, “You would have won that year with that Eastern Shoreman.” But Sean won. He said, “I knew you would have won.” Because I was kind of determined to try to use that call too. And I would switch back and forth. But some days I’d say, “Man, I gotta put it down. I gotta pick the tube call up,” because the geese would respond better to the tube. But that was the only year I ever used that call, Eastern Shoreman. And actually, he has it back in his collection now because he had it written “To Dave Coleman, 1982 World Champion” written on it and all. His wife got it back for him and gave it to him for Christmas, a Christmas present. Do not mistake, stay with these. It’s just like the reason they say, “Fix it if it ain’t broke.”

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Especially on the competition stage. But let’s just say in general, what separates a good caller from a great one? What are your, I’d want to share some of your champion-level insights on this.

David Coleman: Gosh, I give some trouble with that. I think how guys perceive themselves, if they’re just good callers and they’re a good guy, good person and good personality, that’s what I think goes a long way. I mean, John Waltz, for instance, you don’t hear much out of him. He’s quiet, he’s passionate about his calling. I thought he was good. I felt like that. Kyle Jones, same way. And when he won that first year, I saw him in Stuttgart, Stuttgart out at Max in the store. And he was always nice to me, “Hey Mr. Coleman this,” or “Mr. Coleman that.” And I felt like an old man. I told him, I said, “You’re doing good. You’re doing a lot for the calling competition fraternity.” I said, “You just don’t let it go to your head. You just keep your personality.” I said, “You’re young, you can go a long way with this and build a name for yourself.” And he said, “I appreciate that, Mr. Dave. I appreciate that.” Other than that, I mean, some of these guys, goose hunting, goose calling and competition calls, it’s got to be two different things now. It wasn’t like that when we first started. Now it’s two different things.

Ramsey Russell: How’s it changed? That’s a good point. How has it changed?

David Coleman: Oh my goodness, well, it’s like somebody playing an instrument. I mean, you can take a kid that hasn’t been guiding and gunning geese for 45 years and win a contest. And he’s only shot and killed a few geese in his day because he practices every day. He gets that routine down to a science, flawless, never misses a beat, and it just rolls like that. That’s what I’m saying. I mean, back when we was doing it, when I was doing it, it was all the guides. It was everybody just having a contest between each other on who maybe beat the other guy and win something. Everybody had a different style, everybody had different calls, everybody had a different routine. And it just, who sounded like they were working geese. It wasn’t the routine that it is today. When I go back for the Champion of Champions every five years, tube call hardly has a chance. Because it just can’t do what they do on those reed calls, just rolling it off and that repetition and the total loudness and all that. Then we went back to the live contest, different story. When you sounded like live geese that everybody can relate to. They get that competition call in the way it is today, some people look at each other like, “Man, I never heard a goose sound like that.” It’s just got too far-fetched for me. Maybe it’s because I don’t blow that style or blow reed calls. I try. I change up to the routine to see like the open goose. But they do, you know, plead call, comeback call, lay down call and all that, but it still don’t quite reach, I don’t know, the judge’s ear, so to speak. But I get back to Chestertown, them geese up there hear it.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. Well, of the four championships that you’ve won, which one meant the most and why?

David Coleman: Probably the first one of the live contests because they started that down there. I was done. I said I’d go to them. I’d watch them. I’d step in the gym or the auditorium, but I’d be at the Waterfowl Festival the whole time. And Tim Grounds is out there, and I park around behind the school on the side. Tim Grounds was out there, smoking a cigarette. He comes up to me, “Coleman! Oh man, that’s who I need to see. They got this contest called Live Goose. Man, you’re in it, you’re going to win it. Man, it’s all you with that tube call.” And I said, “Man, I ain’t getting in no more contests.” I said, “The hundred-dollar entry fee, I can spend $100 quicker in 60 seconds than a contest.” And he says, “No, no, you’re getting in it. I’ll pay for it. I’m paying you. I’m paying your entry fee. Come on right now.” I said, you ain’t gonna do that, nope. He think I was going to win. He wanted to say, “I paid for his entry fee. I got him in there.” So we went out and signed up, and he paid my hundred-dollar entry fee. And I made finals and then won that first night, the first time with the live, because I won three in a row. And he was back there in the back, and he’s standing up, and he’s going, “I told you! I told you!” Never forget it. Then got my picture taken with him back there and stuff like that. He was like, “Yeah, yeah, he wouldn’t have got in there if I didn’t pay for it. I got him in there. I got him. I got Coleman in there. I got him back.” He was just so aggressive with things, and I’ll never forget it. And once in a while, he would do little podcasts, and he would talk about me with the tube call. He says, “I’m glad to see him back into it a little bit. Thank goodness. If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t have been there.” And of course, won a lot of money that night. I said, “I’ll pay you back your money.” “Nope, nope, I don’t want your money. I’m glad to see you do it. I’m glad to see you do it.”

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great story, David.

David Coleman: That was great. And I got the picture taken with him, and I’m glad I did because all that happened. Because after what happened to him, I’m like, I got good memories of that. I got pictures with him. So that meant a lot. Winning the first one in 1982, that was okay. I mean, it was neat. But it wasn’t like that one, because that one kind of meant something with that. And then winning the next two right off the get-go, back to back, that was pretty significant for a milestone in my life. But that one with Tim, coming back there, I think Dave Hagen was out there. He pulled up, took pictures of me and Tim standing by my truck because he had one of my tube calls, and he was trying to blow it, and he was just getting little honks out of it. He was out there blowing on it. I’ll never forget it, because when I got it back, I’m like, “Man, it tastes like cigarettes.” Because he’s out there smoking a cigarette, then he grabbed the call. I said, “Man, tastes like cigarettes.” But we weren’t worried about no COVID or nothing back then.

Ramsey Russell: How has your success on stage changed the way you hunt? Or is it a vice versa thing?

David Coleman: It’s vice versa. The stage, totally different from me hunting over the decoys that I use, that I repaint, refurbish, 50-year-old Herter decoys, and make my own silhouettes, paint my own silhouettes that I hunt over, all that using kind of a simplified call. This is the call I used the three in a row with. This is nothing pretty. It’s just pine wood that most people know the story, made from the old firehouse doors in Chestertown that was built in 1933.

Ramsey Russell: What a great story. Wow.

David Coleman: But in 1970, they had to get new fire trucks, and they had the big square-nose Mack fire trucks. Well, the old doors were round. The fire truck wouldn’t go into the firehouse, so they had to take the old 3-inch thick wooden pine doors off the firehouse. My dad brought all the wood home because he was fire chief, and he made hundreds and hundreds of decoys out of the wood because it was perfect seasoned pine wood. So they put just regular garage doors on there like you have on your garage, overhead doors, when they got the bigger new trucks. When Dad died, I was in the shop cleaning out the shop, because I knew where everything was and what was good, what wasn’t. I found a block of the door, still had some wood left from the door. Had a lot of white paint on it where it was painted 15 times and all. I said, “I’ll make a goose call out of it.” So my older brother had a lathe. I showed him what I wanted, and he through trial and error, he turned several for me on a lathe he got from a local auction house. And that’s how it came out, and that’s what I used. And that has a lot of significant value and meaning to it.

Ramsey Russell: A lot of sentimental value, isn’t it?

David Coleman: Oh, that’s it. Yep. And then at the same time, my brother makes, if you live in these parts, I don’t know how much Old Bay you used when you were here in Maryland, but he’s made a bigger tube call for me with Old Bay in it. So here’s the difference.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I see that.

David Coleman: I put Old Bay on my Old Bay. And everything. So this is the big tube call here.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, good stuff, man.

David Coleman: Well, also with this tube call and working them geese and got them on the hook and got them coming and circling, you’re talking about other days to remember. It’s not so much as the kid gunning. That’s guiding and calling. You can look up and, you see what I’m looking for. I’m always looking for something unusual, a quill goose or obviously one with a collar. So I was able to get these two radio transmitters off the geese back in the early 1990s. Talk about highlight, significant day there. That was. Yeah. Other than getting the Jack Miner band after these two, I got these two and got my Jack Miner band here in Maryland, which is unusual. I didn’t care if I killed another goose or not. All I wanted to do, I call them for hunters, but I was done. I thought that was the holy grail. So those were my real special days for sure.

Ramsey Russell: David, you talked about hunting today over the old Herter decoys or some of your silhouettes. And just as you were describing that, it made me think, it just reminded me, that it’s probably real comparable to setups from back in the old Chestertown days growing up. That it was more similar to then than now. Is that intentional? Is it old school to you?

David Coleman: Yeah, everything we still do pretty much old school. I’m usually on a pond or in a hedgerow party. I’ve gone into my shared pits, but not that much if I can avoid it. A tube call and a hedgerow and on a pond is awesome. Not so much out in a pit, big open field. I can get the volume out of it some, but the average guy probably can’t. And you need more volume back there, and the guys are flagging and all that. I do all mine, my work with the calls. And the decoys. And the satisfaction of picking 50-year-old decoys, a barn find or in a milk house or in an old chicken coop, big chicken shed, and repainting them, putting them on boards, put feet on them, changing the head styles on them and doing my paint job on them is just, I don’t know, it’s just what I like to do and my accomplishment with it. Then hunting over decoys. Bunch of decoys that are from the factory and stuff. And I don’t like their paint jobs anyway. I like a darker spot. I paint them, not that much gray on them, darker, not too bright of feathers. And I can get all these crazy neck patterns and change them up, not just feeder and upright, maybe a rester. And I get them for near nothing and spend all summer retirement. I call it my honey hole retirement rig. I’ve been working on them.

Ramsey Russell: How big is your honey hole retirement rig compared to what a lot of people think of as a conventional setup, running hundreds of decoys? How many decoys are you putting out?

David Coleman: Well, it’s like everybody else. According to where I’m going, how hot the spot is, and how much goose crap I’m walking on putting decoys out. But I usually like using, I’ve got 100 full bodies and I reworked them all. They got crazy head patterns and styles and stuff like that. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of my Instagram, Facebook, some of the pictures from the Herters, of my Herters. And I have 100 silhouettes, and they’re all, probably 50 are feeders, the rest are all different head styles and things like that. So there’s 200. It’s overkill for me. For most guys, it’s overkill. But I take a lot of pictures, and I want everything out there. It’s a lot of work. I’m 67 now. It’s a lot of work. I come home beat. I’m the only one going to handle them. I don’t want anybody else to help me. Just like, no, that’s okay. I got it. I’ll take them up. I’ll put them in my trailer. I’ll pull all these silhouettes up. Because I don’t want anybody to touch them. And I’m back there till dark, after dark, pulling decoys. And I get there early, pull them out, because I don’t want anybody messing them up. Like stuffers, I don’t want anybody to handle them wrong.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

David Coleman: And if you can’t tell them how to do it, they won’t do it. They just think decoys are decoys. Throw them in a pile and that’s it. Bring them to you. I don’t know. Guys are using a lot of dive bombs now, and Avian X’s and stuff like that. And usually everybody’s four dozen, five dozen. That’s where everybody, you see one field, you see them all now. Wasn’t like the old days. Some of them guys would put big spreads out, but they’d leave the decoys out for half the season, those big spreads, because they’re gunning parties, and they go to the same pit every day. I got to move around a lot, especially on hedgerows. And then you can move the hedgerow blinds, you know, an A-frame, you can move them different places. Or down to the pond. Four dozen floaters on a pond, that’s all you need, because you kind of know they’re going to come there. You just get in and get out. Try not to hurt it, burn it out or anything like that. Get in and get out. And usually, they’re my Herters, with a lot of sleepers, because a lot of them just roost on this pond, the main pond I got. A lot of sleepers, a lot of low necks, resters, some high heads out in the pocket where I want them to come into and light. That’s what will be the drawing card, where I want them to go, where I want them to come.

Ramsey Russell: How important is calling versus decoy placement, concealment, and scouting and all that other stuff? I mean, how important is calling versus everything else on a successful goose hunt?

David Coleman: I think, well, in my opinion, calling is big. I mean, the goose call in the right hands will definitely help anybody. Same thing with the duck call. Put them in the wrong hands and yeah, it’s not going to work too good for them. Scouting, obviously big. You’re going to go where you saw them the day before. That can’t always be that way. You got to have the right rig out and be able to pull them to you, some guys call it traffic, when they’re going somewhere else. And pull them young ones out of there toward the tail end of the group going by. Call hard on them and they’ll come out of there. I love doing that. I love saying, telling them guys, “You see that? See them last two?” I said, “Look, I pulled them last two.” I know they’re looking. They’re usually young birds. And they’ll turn. Decoy placement, oh, that’s enough. Yeah, you could write, you can have a whole other podcast on that. That drives me crazy. If I get to a place and somebody else has already rigged out, oh my goodness. Who put these decoys out? And we’re changing them around. My good friend Al Kimball, same way, moves them around when he gets there. It’s nice that guys help you put them out, but you gotta have it right, when and where are they going to come. I know what geese are coming, where they’re coming from. Decoy placement big.

Ramsey Russell: Well, let me ask you this. Are there any conditions or situations where you will intentionally go quiet or scale back the calling part of it?

David Coleman: Yes. Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s like anybody. Tim Grounds and all those guys will say, you watch them, you can say, “Okay, these are coming. These guys are oak-leafing and coming on their own.” I’m not even going to call now. The party might look at you like, “You ain’t going to call them?” “No. Don’t move. I’m not calling.” Yeah, there’s times where that happens, and that’s great. You’re in the spot they want to come in, or the weather conditions are right, or the weather’s changing. But I think a lot of guys pick up and call too much. You don’t need to call every goose or call hard every goose or run the routine on every goose. You got to read them. See what they’re responding to or what they like or if it’s even worth calling.

Ramsey Russell: John Taylor said the same thing. He said, no matter how proficient you are on a goose call, first and foremost, you’ve got to read that bird and listen to the conversation they’re having. Not just start running through a routine like you’re sitting on stage somewhere.

David Coleman: Yeah. The best ones, when you’re on the pond and they’re coming, they’re going, “Homers! Homers!” You know he’s coming home. We ain’t got to do nothing but sit back and wait for him to get there. Yep. You hear that goose call like that, the other guys, if they know what, you know, you’re with some boys that you hunt with all the time, “Oh man, here come some homers.” Yep. Coming home. Yep. But yeah, John Taylor was right. You gotta read them. And then sometimes you hear other guys say, “Man, stop calling. You’re just calling too much. Stop calling.” If you’re with a bunch of guys or some other boys, sometimes you can’t get them to work right. And you’re like, “I ain’t calling nothing. I’m gonna see what they’re going to do.” And then you see if there’s a difference. Sometimes there is. Sometimes it is like, “Well, I better make a few toots on here. The party’s expecting me to call for them. What did he be for if I’m not going to call?”

Ramsey Russell: David, do you have any advice for hunters that want to try to call but are intimidated by the learning curve? Let’s admit, it’s a learning curve. For most of us, it’s a learning curve.

David Coleman: They come to the shows, or if I’m working a booth at a show with Sean, and I’m trying to show them, and they’re used to blowing a duck call or reed call, and they’re going to go, they’re like, “I can’t get nothing.” The air comes out so easy. Even in your house, see, outside you can blow harder, get louder, it’ll get louder. But in the house, I’m hardly touching it. Air goes in and up and out. In, up, and out, they’re right there. We’re face to face, and just trying to show them. And they can’t get it. Then they get embarrassed. “Okay, well, I’ll get it. I’ll get it. Thank you.” But that’s how I was.

Ramsey Russell: I handed it right back to you. Mine didn’t sound near like that, though.

David Coleman: I thought you were going to show me up on it.

Ramsey Russell: No, I never even heard of one. I swear, it made a heck of a buck grunt the way I blow it.

David Coleman: And that’s upside down. So it’s just how the air goes in and down and up. The people freak out because I can blow it, I can get honks out of it upside down. I can’t do, the crazy stuff. And I do this when I’m calling a lot, but that’s just for my muscle memory. You don’t have to do that to get the note. But it don’t look good when you just hold it like this.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

David Coleman: So you can just do it. It’s so easy. Driving around in your car or truck, that’s basically how they’ll probably pick it up. I had basic honks 45 minutes before I got back to Chestertown from Easton when I got my first two. I got a wooden one, a plastic one from Harold Knight, David Hale. That shoebox full of them. Several shoeboxes. Practically sold them out of a pickup truck. They were here with, I don’t know if you remember Chuck Connors. He had a magazine called Waterfowler’s World. He was down here goose hunting as well, and I think they were with him. I remember they had them in boxes, and I called them a shoebox. They might have been a shoebox, but they were. They made them. They were still cutting hair at the barbershop and making these in the back room in the barbershop. I got basic notes out of it. Now when I redesigned it some, I made the mouthpiece bigger than the original Knight & Hale call because as I got older everything got bigger, kind of like. It just felt like it needed to be bigger. When it’s freezing cold outside and your jaws start stiffening up, you can’t even hardly talk sometimes. You’re so cold. The original Knight & Hale was so small I couldn’t get my lips around it right. So I made the hole in diameter bigger. Now it’s perfect. It’s perfect. I pick up a Knight & Hale call now and be hard-pressed to work it really good because the hole is so small for me. I think I made the barrel flare out just a little bit bigger to get my hand around it when I’m cold and frozen. Stuff like that. That was the difference that we changed up with this. So I guess you can say it’s really not a Knight & Hale call by any means now because I changed it up so much, my design. Then I signed my name on it. Sean said, “I want to engrave your name on it. Can you do that?” And I said I have no, what do you call that, not swing writing. Anyway, I think the last time I saw my name like that was on my pay check. I signed it 50 times. Dave Coleman made a goose head where the C came around. So I made it look like a goose head. We finally found one that looked pretty well presentable.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it is.

David Coleman: That’s what we came up with that.

Ramsey Russell: David, you told the story earlier about Tim Grounds encouraging you and getting you up on the stage like that the first time. And you’ve since inspired a lot of up-and-comer callers. What advice would you give to a young hunter entering their first contest?

David Coleman: Gosh, yeah. That’s a John Taylor question, I can tell you that. It’s neat to see the juniors getting into it. There should be more, obviously, but I guess there’s not. There’s too many other things nowadays. It’s just like gardening. I don’t get any kids hardly anymore. They don’t come with their fathers or grandfathers anymore. Some of the old guys still come, but you see these young ones come up with it. A young guy does it. It’s like anything else. Instead of kicking a soccer ball or playing football, give a duck or goose call and get up there on stage and impress their friends. As a kid, anybody likes winning some things. They get to win stuff. That’s an encouragement for them. It’s neat to see some guys practicing and trying it. When they come around to the booth, cute kids, and they got a camouflage hat on and a vest, jacket, and they got a call around their neck. And you say, “Let me hear what you sound like,” and they’re willing to show you. Maybe they’ll be the next generation caller.

Ramsey Russell: What do you think’s going on? Why there’s not a lot of a future generation? And what do you think we could do to get them on board?

David Coleman: I don’t know. Maybe it’s this thing,

Ramsey Russell: Hold up your iPhone. Yeah.

David Coleman: And it’s not socially.

Ramsey Russell: What about access? I mean, is there a lot of access for kids over there to really even have a place to hunt now?

David Coleman: No, not now. When every farm is rented out? Yeah. You gotta have fathers and grandfathers that the kids hang around with and grow up with that hunt, want to be like dad and go hunting with them or something like that. I don’t have any kids, but if I had two boys, I guess they would be following in my footsteps. They better be, or they’d be out of the house.

Ramsey Russell: You know, back in the days you was hunting with Uncle Bob over there around Chestertown, was it still a time back in the 1970s, even around Chestertown, the goose capital of the world? Could you knock on doors, could you network and gain access, or was it still just locked up with money?

David Coleman: It locked up. It was. That’s not like out West when they go, or Canada, when they’re knocking on doors and they say, “Here you go, have at it. Keep them geese off my wheat, that’s fine, you can go.” But no, unless you knew somebody that had a farm and said, “Hey, can you come up here, goose hunt?” “Yeah, go up there and knock yourself out. There’s some geese around there,” because they’re worried about milking cows. They’re not worried about going out there and goose hunting, worried about their farm work. But it’s always been, everything was rented out. There were clubs. There were so many clubs then, just hot rollers, D.C., Baltimore, lawyers and things of that nature, that had all these places. Most of that was almost for the duck and ducks, those kind of clubs. Then when that kind of dried up, and the geese were evolving more and more here, we did the agfeg. Somebody else said, “Hey, I’m gonna start taking day hunters,” or, “I’m gonna start taking hunters.” And everything went, whoever paid the highest rent money got the best farms.

Ramsey Russell: Do you still remember your first goose, David?

David Coleman: Yeah, I was in high school, first day of season. They used to come in the day after Halloween because we’re coming through town going to where we’re going goose hunting, and there’d be toilet paper hanging all over people’s houses and stuff, where the hoodlums were at nighttime on Halloween. So we’d hunt on the 31st, October. It was at a brickyard with a good friend in school whose grandfather owned a brickyard. They had a pit, and we hunted the pit over a bunch of old Herter full bodies. I don’t think we even had a goose call then. I didn’t even have a goose call. They didn’t know nothing about goose calling, but geese came in anyway. The first goose, there were three-bird limits. I don’t even think we killed six. But it was just me and another boy, and that was it. I was hooked on it ever since. This is what I want to do. This is what I want to get better at. This is what I want to learn. And then in school, like I said, everybody had farms or they hunted or their dads hunted, and they had clubs that rented their farms. That’s how we all, they would bring their goose calls too. Everybody had an idea. There was a bunch of young boys that could call with their mouths because they were going through puberty or whatever, and they could really break their throats and call like geese. That was pretty neat back then. Some boys were really good mouth callers.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. When you look back at the past 50-some-odd years from that first goose through four-time champ to now. What are you most proud of it, in your goose hunting career?

David Coleman: Gosh, all of it. I mean, nothing in particular. It’s just, all of it, that I can paint decoys. I learned from Charlie Joyner how to paint decoys.

Ramsey Russell: Really? You knew Charlie Joyner?

David Coleman: I lived right across the street from him for 10 years.

Ramsey Russell: Tell me about that.

David Coleman: I sat in his shop many a night watching him paint decoys. That was the other part that gave me the fever. Sit in his shop. He lived right across the street. I played basketball. He had a daughter who played basketball in school, and he had a basketball hoop. We didn’t. So I’d play in his driveway till he’d come out and run us off. He’s trying to paint decoys, and we’re back there bouncing balls and yelling and stuff. But I’d go upstairs in his shop, knock on the door, “Ms. Joyner, can I come in?” “Yes sir, come on in here boys,” and sit down and watch him paint decoys. These old codgers would be up there smoking their pipes, talking about the old days, shooting redhead and canvasbacks on the Chester River. That would just intrigue me. Listening to these old guys and smelling that pipe smoke. That’s about to start me smoking a pipe today. Pipe smoke and oil-based paint and watching Speed Joyner paint those canvasbacks and painting his decoys. That’s who showed me how to paint goose decoys. That’s how my paint job is identical to Charlie Joyner’s that I can remember to do. I do my feather pattern a little different, but everything else, where I blend everything in, I watched him paint Herter decoys for folks in his garage. He would do it in his garage. He wouldn’t do that up in the shop. I’d sit up there and watch him paint decoys many a night and learn how to paint canvasbacks and diving duck decoys with him. I thought for a while I’d probably be the guy to be able to prime them white and black for him, then all he does is the feather pattern. But never got to that point. We ended up moving to a different part of town. But we were there for 10 years, right across from him. He said, I talked too much. I remember that. Too many questions up there. I guess I shouldn’t have asked him all the questions about stuff. He said I talked too much. But I would listen to the old guys up there. Uncle Bob would be up there a lot with him too. He smoked a pipe, and he’d sit up there with him too.

Ramsey Russell: I bet you didn’t blow that goose call up in that shop.

David Coleman: No, no, I didn’t have it then. I didn’t have it. This was before I had that call or any goose call practically. He painted some decoys for me. I had fine decoys on the river shore and stuff like that. If I knew now what I didn’t know then, I’d have the biggest collection of Joyner decoys anybody in the network. I saw him throw seconds away. I kept some. I had some here and there, but didn’t think twice about it. He just knew he made and painted decoys. We’d come home from church on Sundays, he’s out there Sunday morning with that sander going, that belt sander, and the whole side of his shop vibrating. My mom said he shouldn’t be doing that on Sunday mornings, because we had to go to church every Sunday. He would be out there working. He had telephone poles. He worked with an electric company, so he could get all the cedar poles he wanted. He’d have a mountain of cedar poles in his yard, in his driveway, that would be delivered with a tarp over them that he used for decoys. I remember them. He’d always get these cedar poles because we’d always go over, look at them, because those guys would climb the poles with those spikes on their feet, and we would always see how many times they climbed up and down the poles. He pulled the copper wire off of them and saved them for other guys that wanted the copper wire to make the loops when they were melting down lead decoys, for the decoys he was making. He used the copper wire to make the loops for the lead weights for those decoys. All the telephone poles, all his electric poles, would have copper wire all the way to the length of the pole. I remember that. I remember those copper wires and him showing me how to bend them. “This is how you bend them. This is what you do,” while they’re holding the lead mold and all that. You should see people pull up there and load their trucks up with decoys that he just painted, redhead and canvasback, blackhead decoys. He had the best cork decoys ever made, with the big wooden fan tails. I remember guys getting their decoys as a kid.

Ramsey Russell: You know, it’s crazy. You got to see the end of an era, because it wasn’t too long after that a lot of those clubs burned all them old wooden decoys got rid of, got to get them light and plastic ones. Man, them made-in-China plastic ones, we got to get. I mean, it’s hard to believe that this is my lifetime you’re talking about. That was a big deal. These artisans, like all them boys, especially in your neck of the woods, were carving those decoys that are now just precious heirlooms. Folk art. And now the world has gone completely to disposable plastic-type stuff.

David Coleman: Yeah, I mean, I got some plastic that I used, but I reworked them and I repainted them. People couldn’t believe I painted a Dave Smith decoy. They’re like, why you paint a Dave Smith goose decoy? Because it don’t match the rest of my rig. Right. I repaint all my Dave Smiths that I get, or be able to buy off Marketplace or eBay or I catch one here, catch one there. But the Herters, the Herters, I still got a ton of them to do. Got some more to do this summer want to do. I’m working on some right now. New idea with some Nate now, making squatters out of them. I’m using Dave Smith bases in the underneath Herters. There’s no dowels or nothing like that, pushing the ground and all that stuff. So they’re on bases. But I’m making these squatters for the ice out on the pond. Got the bubble right there and put those squatters out there on that ice and they look real to be. Not a shell that’s half a shell. Because a lot of times them geese sit there, they still got a round body and they still got more of a breast sitting up than the shell. So that’s my new idea for this year that I’m working on. Working on seven right now, but I’ll have 24 stone put out there on the ice rig.

Ramsey Russell: When’s the last time you hunted over small tire decoys or something like that?

David Coleman: Oh, gosh, long time ago. Just like that.

Ramsey Russell: Golly, look at that.

David Coleman: Yeah. Got it for collection in the house. Kept a couple.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s a good-looking decoy.

David Coleman: That would be a rig that was put out with 400 of them and left out. And you just went in the pit with the boys, with a gang of them. But I never actually hunted over them with a party. I fun hunted over them, but I never took part. I either had stuffers or had the decoys, my own silhouettes, the decoys that I painted and reworked myself. I was fortunate enough never to have to use the tires. They killed a mess of geese, and on snowy days, they’re lethal. When there’s snow on the ground, from a distance, they just look good. But I just keep a couple for my collection. I’ve been fortunate enough not to have to hunt over them because I’d always come up with my own ideas with stuff to suit me. Too particular. A lot of stuff I do, you don’t have to do maybe to kill geese, but I go beyond what the other guys do, I guess, to have everything different than just right. And again, I take a lot of pictures too when everything’s just right, look good.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a whole new approach. It’s more than just the call. It’s just a whole approach to goose hunting for you, isn’t it?

David Coleman: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, some of the guys are like, if I don’t kill another goose, I don’t care. I’ve been there, done that, I’ve done it all. I’m tired of getting up every morning. I’m not gonna do this. It’s just too much work, too much of this stuff. I’ll go here and there, but yeah, I’m still ate up with it. My fiancée will tell you that. Miss Jenny will tell you that. She’s like, how long can you keep doing this? You’re 67. I said, well, I don’t know, we’ll see. I said as long as I can, until I can’t bend over, pick a decoy up, I guess, or put it on my trailer or bring it home, or I can’t chase cripples like I used to. Thank goodness they got labs to do that.

Ramsey Russell: I heard that.

David Coleman: But yeah, still ate up with it. Probably more so now than I have for a few years back because of being retired and can do it and go, because I’m watching the weather on fun days with guys that got a good place to go and want me to go. I get turned, I used to turn a lot of people down. They want to go and they want to hear the tube call or watch it work. It’s like, let me see, I want to see what that thing will do here at their place. I guess you call, catch in or get to go to some of these places now where I have these invites that I used to turn down.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

David Coleman: Because I was working or I was actually guiding, but not taking that many parties anymore because things have changed and the guys are dying out and there’s no new ones coming up in it, that want to come down and pay to go goose hunting. The whole thing changed. It’s not politically correct to go here and blast a bunch of geese anymore or have a gun in your house. Stuff like that. Things have changed on that side of things, I think. How many kids are getting a brand-new .410 for their first gun for Christmas? I don’t think there’s many nowadays.

Ramsey Russell: Not as many, that’s for sure. Let me hear that goose call one more time as we wrap this thing up.

David Coleman: Now real quick, real quick, when I got them coming in, they’re locked up, coming. A lot of guys don’t call. I cluck them all the way in because they’re clucking. I keep clucking with them and it’s memorizing. They don’t skip a beat. They’ll keep coming when they’re clucking. The hunters are with me don’t pay a bit of attention to what I’m calling or what I’m doing. When they hear that, they’re like, oh, he’s got them on the hook, dogs the same way. He won’t sit up until he hears that. So they know, that’s what I hit them with when I want them to come in there and they’re locked up, they’re coming, to keep them committed. I don’t do anything else. That’s what I came up with and that’s what works for me. Otherbody else does other things. If I do that in a calling contest, the open contest, I don’t think the judges actually realize that’s what I’m doing, because it’s a different routine from the recalls I’m visualizing. Supposed to visualize them, they’re coming to you, and then you lose them, and you bring them back, and then you lay them down. Well, that’s my lay down call. I don’t think they realize that’s what I’m doing. But in my mind I’m watching them coming in. You watch some of my videos right before we shoot, that’s just, you can see it. Just cluck with them because they’re clucking and their tongues out and all these pink tongues, and I’m clucking right with them. That usually never fails when it comes to this thing. Just do all kind of crazy stuff with it. High ones, low ones, young ones Clucks, chirps.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, David. That’s been awesome. I appreciate your time today. Thank you very much for coming on and sharing all this with us. I hope to join you in a blind one day next time I’m up here on the Eastern Shore.

David Coleman: Next time you up there with you or Charlie, I’ll be with you.

Ramsey Russell: I guarantee you. Thank you very much. Folks, you all been listening to my buddy. Tell me now, how many of you all gonna run out and go get you a tube caller? But thank you all for listening my buddy Mr. David Coleman, four-time world champion from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. See you next time.