September road-tripping through Southeast Texas during teal season means bs’ing with my long-time friend and onliest non-bourbon-drinking buddy, call maker Joe Briscoe. Never knowing where it’ll go but plowing full steam ahead anyways, we catch up following a couple eventful days shooting blue-winged teal together!
Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere, I’m in Chambers County, Texas, way down in the southeast corner with my buddy, the Briscoe Kid, Mr. Joe Briscoe.
Joe Briscoe: Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Man, I don’t know what to think of you, man. I just don’t. It’s on the one hand, I’m thankful, but then on the other hand, I was falling asleep the man. And here’s what happened. I show up to Ulster Bio and my man, the Briscoe Kid hands me a high end bottle of bourbon, because he don’t drink it. Joe, I don’t know how, I don’t think of a man, my buddy, the Briscoe Kid that don’t drink bourbon.
Joe Briscoe: I don’t drink bourbon, I drink very good scotch. What was that you said that one time? I’m a purveyor of good scotch, moonshine and cigars. I think it was, I don’t remember.
Ramsey Russell: Is that how I described you?
Joe Briscoe: Yeah. I don’t drink, no –
Ramsey Russell: Who don’t drink bourbon?
Joe Briscoe: Me.
Ramsey Russell: Why?
Joe Briscoe: I don’t like the taste of it. I don’t like smell of it.
Ramsey Russell: What’s wrong with you? You know what I think? I think you got dropped on your head when you was a kid.
Joe Briscoe: I got dropped on my head several times.
Ramsey Russell: Good to be hunting with you again, it’s been a while.
Joe Briscoe: It has. We had 2 very enjoyable hunts, I think.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, it was a good couple of hunts. Hey, what you been doing with yourself the last couple years, besides not drinking bourbon?
Joe Briscoe: Not drinking bourbon, looking after dad. And it just puts me in the call shop, job wise. But that’s okay, it’s my job to take care of my old man and that’s what I’ll be doing.
Ramsey Russell: That’s a good thing for you to be doing. He took you duck hunting. You tell a story yesterday, for example, I heard you tell a story about when you was a little boy, you all catching crawfish.
Joe Briscoe: Oh, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Talk about that.
Joe Briscoe: Under the Trinity River bridge, I think they may have changed a little bit, but when the river would come up and flood under the Trinity River bridge, under that flat, my mother would take a lawn chair and a book and she would sit there and dad had a 100 nets and he’d take a, just a package of bacon. And we catch all those big – and they weren’t farm crawfish, they were actual natives, I guess what you want to call them, but all those big reeds.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Joe Briscoe: Uh huh.
Ramsey Russell: With bacon.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, that’s what he –
Ramsey Russell: And then what would you all do with them? Boil them?
Joe Briscoe: Well, they’d go home and run through a couple of cycles of fresh water and then, we don’t eat, my family don’t eat boiled crawfish. We would clean those and peel –
Ramsey Russell: Peel them raw?
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, peel them raw.
Ramsey Russell: And then do what.
Joe Briscoe: And put them up, Freeze them. Put them up.
Ramsey Russell: And how would you cook them though?
Joe Briscoe: We fry them. We make a crawfish etouffee, things like that. That’s how we did, I love fried crawfish. I’m just not one of those guys that will sit there and break them apart and eat them. And I don’t know, one raised that way that was raised and now we get them by the pound package in Louisiana and they ship them to us.
Ramsey Russell: But it’s a gazillion dollar industry. The bold crawfish industry is a multibillion dollar enterprise. And you don’t eat boiled crawfish?
Joe Briscoe: No.
Ramsey Russell: And you don’t drink bourbon?
Joe Briscoe: I don’t drink bourbon.
Ramsey Russell: And you don’t eat boiled crawfish?
Joe Briscoe: I eat.
Ramsey Russell: What are you good for?
Joe Briscoe: Crawfish etouffee, I’m good for a good laugh.
Ramsey Russell: Especially when you shooting.
Joe Briscoe: I shouldn’t. Boy, I set myself up on that one. Thank God you eased up on me today.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, you were guarded today when that phone was out, wasn’t you?
Joe Briscoe: I’m telling you, just kind of cut my eyes over at it.
Ramsey Russell: How’s the teal call trade going?
Joe Briscoe: Teal calls good.
Ramsey Russell: Everybody uses it. I mean, really true to everybody in my world uses a Briscoe call.
Joe Briscoe: It’s not that it’s easy to make, it’s not, because I use – I make them all out of wood and it just makes that tone right, not like a piece of plastic with a metal reed in it or it’s just not, it’s different. It’s damn sure, I saw a couple of times a day on those big groups, I’d hit it. You had gone this end, hit it and then you hit it. And then I hit it and I saw a couple wingtips dip where I saw a head. I said, keep going like this.
Ramsey Russell: Yep. Have you seen where in the last, whatever 5, 10 years or since you started making that call? Now teal are a whole different critter down here. They are this far south than throughout most of North America. Blue wings are different because you all really get after them. But have you seen a growth in the number of blue winged teal hunters? Since when? I mean, because it seems to be that everybody’s kind of getting after them these days.
Joe Briscoe: I think so. And I think because I don’t want to say the big duck season is not what it used to be, because it’s not. But teal seemed to be easy access. You wear shorts and hip boots out there, but I think it’s opened up some avenues.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Joe Briscoe: Just that 16 days has opened up some avenues to some people.
Ramsey Russell: Did blue winged teal calls predominate your inventory. Is that like a sales leader?
Joe Briscoe: No, but it’s close.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, okay.
Joe Briscoe: It’s close. The TCM –
Ramsey Russell: The demand for blue wing teal calls is rising.
Joe Briscoe: Correct.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, it is rising. Everybody that –
Ramsey Russell: I know they said 10, 15 years ago, you might not sell many at all, but now it seems like everybody on my feed, blue wing teal hunts want to.
Joe Briscoe: Everybody that I know has listened and I know they’ve listened to this podcast because they’ll say, hey, I’m interested in a blue wing teal call. How much? Blah, blah, blah. And I write back in capital letters, the teal calls are this much because it’s good for all teal. Hell, you shoot them in. You use them in Argentina for silver teal.
Ramsey Russell: I do. See, it sounds just like a silver teal. Well, a silver teal and a blue winged teal are in the same genus. They’re very similar, looking different, but very similar.
Joe Briscoe: But a green wing are quite the same. Blue wing, cinnamon which we have very few around here, but they all quite the same. So don’t just limit yourself to a blue wing, don’t take it off to trade it for a whistle.
Ramsey Russell: I keep a pintail whistle and a shotgun shell whistle on my South American line for calling whistling ducks. But the teal call, it stays on my South America and my North America lanyard.
Joe Briscoe: I just quit carrying a teal whistle because it’s like they became tone deaf to it. You hit a whistle and off they’d go.
Ramsey Russell: The green wing is bad.
Joe Briscoe: Correct.
Ramsey Russell: And I’ve never understood somebody blow the whistle at blue wings. I don’t know that they whistle.
Joe Briscoe: All I do is if I can’t get to my call quick enough and they’re coming in there setting up, I just kind of whistle just to make it sound like a shorebird. Make it sound like something right there in the spread. That’s how I do it. If I can’t reach for it, by the time I get it, it’d be too late anyway.
Ramsey Russell: Well, if you’re not a bourbon man, what kind of scotch do you drink? What are you drinking now, double sleeve solo cup.
Joe Briscoe: This is called sheep dip. It’s dual purpose, you can dip sheep and or drink it.
Ramsey Russell: That’s about what scotch is good for, I think. About what it tastes like is a dip sheep?
Joe Briscoe: This is Balvenie.
Ramsey Russell: Balvenie, you dip your balls in it?
Joe Briscoe: No, it’s too cold for that, I keep mine chilled. But I had a Scottish caddy one time and they sponsored him on the European tour. He said, man, if you find this stuff and make – get the one that’s a Caribbean Cask. So, they age it in oak for 9 years and they buy all the rum cask out of the Caribbean, bring it over there and swap it over, so it doesn’t have a bite to it at all, but it’s really good scotch.
Ramsey Russell: Very interesting. I ain’t going to take a word for it. I’m a bourbon man. Everybody lives and probably drinks bourbon.
Joe Briscoe: Well, that’s good. Let them keep drinking it, the industry needs them.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Were you getting discouraged out there, missing them ducks yesterday?
Joe Briscoe: No. Because I shot more than you realized.
Ramsey Russell: I think you may have.
Joe Briscoe: I had shot shells, shot ducks. I tell you this, it was really nice to get a break.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Joe Briscoe: From what I’ve been having to do and all the things that are going on with dad. And so it was finally nice to get a break and go out there and forget about all that and get back to what we started doing when we hunted those first couple of years.
Ramsey Russell: Was your dad a big duck hunter?
Joe Briscoe: They would tank jump, when he was younger, him and my uncle. But we got on a leash right down the road here. It was mainly, that’s when we had a lot of geese. So we didn’t shoot a lot of ducks, we shot a lot of geese. And they picked up and come over this dry ditch that we were sitting in. And I saw my dad, I was watching him and he stuck that gun in the ground went boom, boom.
Ramsey Russell: Shot up in the air.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah. Put the butt of the gun on the ground and boom, boom.
Ramsey Russell: Because your shoulder was tired.
Joe Briscoe: No, he thought that was the easiest way to kill something that was flying over without aiming at them. Because they were like this.
Ramsey Russell: How long ago would that have been?
Joe Briscoe: Oh, I was probably 14, 15. And then we saw that article, me and a friend of mine saw an article in sports field because they mean decoys weren’t cheap then, they’re not cheap now or more affordable. So that’s when we, I read this article and I called him and I said, hey, man, I think we got our decoy problem solved. He said, how? I said, we go to the grocery store and I had one of those incinerators for all the boxes. I said, we’ll get the boxes and we’ll cut out these decoys.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Joe Briscoe: And we shot a ton of geese over the – Lay them out flat, they look like a heart. And you fold them and you just put a neck cut a – I gave you a pattern for a century neck and for a feed neck.
Ramsey Russell: You were a kid.
Joe Briscoe: No. And they was cardboard and we painted them good.
Ramsey Russell: How long ago was that, Joe?
Joe Briscoe: Oh, God, we were probably 16, 17, 18 maybe right in there. And every time we come home.
Ramsey Russell: Till about 30, 40, 50 years ago.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, it’s about then.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, 40 years ago.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: They done got a little smarter since then, I think.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, they –
Ramsey Russell: Would you all hunt over in this part of Texas, this where you all were hunting over on this east side?
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Really? Back when it was all rice.
Joe Briscoe: Back when we had a lot of rice, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: You’ve been hunting down here in Chambers County a long time.
A Memorable Moment: Witnessing the Migration
And I sat there for 8 hours and I watched the whole migration, all the whole day. And it was cool because they were like 20,000ft to 50 yards high coming, it was incredible.
Joe Briscoe: Long time. I’ve been out of state, really 3 times, once in Louisiana, twice to Nebraska. And I mean, the coolest thing I’ve seen in my duck hunting career life, whatever you want to call it, is I laid in a layout blind in Nebraska, in a cornfield and it was blowing about 30 and it was about 280. And I sat there for 8 hours and I watched the whole migration, all the whole day. And it was cool because they were like 20,000ft to 50 yards high coming, it was incredible. I’ll never forget that.
Ramsey Russell: Now this was 40 years ago too, was it?
Joe Briscoe: No, this was probably 6 or 8 years ago. I started making, found a machinist in Nebraska and he said, man, come up here and shoot some Canadas and some mallards. Well, I mean, up there you can call mallards and they’re 110 yards high and you don’t hit them with a high ball, but you hit them, the whole group locked and just never broke a wing beat again. Came all the way to us and we finished them all. I said, I’m coming up here more. I heard that Mallard Act.
Ramsey Russell: I heard that.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, it was –
Ramsey Russell: You all don’t shoot any mallard this part of the world.
Joe Briscoe: No, no.
Ramsey Russell: Have you ever?
Joe Briscoe: Yes. On the north end of the river, north of the pipeline, there was a couple of holes in there that we used to hunt. I don’t know, they’ve actually moved farther north to a bunch of private stuff, so there’s no pressure on them, flooded timber, and it was I mean, yeah, we did kill some. It froze early up north one year and they were shooting mallards. James shoot mallards for like, I don’t know, 8 or 10 a day.
Ramsey Russell: I’ll be dang.
Joe Briscoe: Between all the groups, but I thought, man, but those ones we shot up there. Oh, and I forgot, I shot in Arkansas in the timber a hole that Trey Crawford had filmed migration nation in 4 times.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Joe Briscoe: Yeah. And what that guy did, not Trey, but the guy that owned it, he would plant a rice field. He’d plant rice in that timber and they’d go through there every now and again they had a pair of binoculars and you could tell it looked like a cut the hell that rice off with a weed eater.
Ramsey Russell: I’d be dang.
Joe Briscoe: And it was just the ducks doing that. And we hunted that hole, and I said, and I never hunted in Arkansas and I said, they had big levees that they could drive on. And I said, I kind of rode this guide all day?
Ramsey Russell: I can’t imagine.
Joe Briscoe: No, you can’t imagine, I wouldn’t be like that. But, yeah, I got out and I said, how far we got to walk across this pond? He said, about 200 yards. I said, man, I didn’t sign up for this, I’m done walking soft bottom ponds. So we pull up and stop and he said, see, cypress tree right there, it’s about 20 yards. I said, yeah. He said, go lean up against it. And I said, you sorry rascal, you – And he was calling the shot too close. We had to get him to back. I said, man, you’re going to have to call it earlier. We can’t shoot these ducks 5 yards. We got too much jokes until we talked him into, hey, call it at 20. That’s what we’re used to. And he looked at my buddy, he said, yeah, man, by the time you all educate him up here, if they get to us, we calling them at it. We call the shot at 20 yards. And he had never seen anybody shoot along one, but there was one that was big as a park duck trying to get out and he was swinging on my line, which is right to left and I just rolled him up at about 65 yards and he goes, that’s the most incredible shot I’ve ever seen. I went, man, we do that every day.
Ramsey Russell: You’re left handed?
Joe Briscoe: Yes.
Ramsey Russell: I can’t believe I just noticed that this trip, you’re left handed, but you shoot a right handed gun.
Joe Briscoe: Shoot a right handed gun because –
Ramsey Russell: Because you’re cockeyed, too.
Joe Briscoe: Well, when you shoot a pump, it doesn’t, it would eject back this way, so you had to watch it. But these automatics are shooting them out straight away from you, across.
Ramsey Russell: They don’t bother you?
Joe Briscoe: No, I don’t even see it.
Ramsey Russell: I’ve now known quite a few left hand shooters that shoot a right handed gun, but for some reason, I just learned this morning that you’re lefty.
Joe Briscoe: And they’re shimmed for, they’re cast off, I believe that’s right for a left hander. So it comes in a little tighter to your face where you’re cast on.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Joe Briscoe: But I don’t know. My dad said you do everything left handed, you might as well shoot left handed. Was no trying to change it. They figured out my eye dominance was left and played baseball left handed, batted left handed, everything.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: How come you don’t? I noticed yesterday also, you won’t shoot at ducks by yourself.
Joe Briscoe: No, because I want you all make sure that I kill the duck before you all get to them.
Ramsey Russell: Uh huh.
Joe Briscoe: That’s how I – yeah.
Ramsey Russell: I heard you say this morning you were slow. You said, I’m slow.
Joe Briscoe: I was slow. Some of those birds are coming in there, man. They were, they look like a drag strip in there and I couldn’t get my gun up fast enough to line one up. So, somebody else take a shot, I’ll claim it.
Ramsey Russell: We was waiting on that last duck yesterday for you to mop up, finish your limit and duck come in and you didn’t shoot. I just assumed cause all of us wasn’t shooting. No pressure or nothing.
Joe Briscoe: No pressure. I don’t remember even why he come in there and I didn’t get to my gun, and he bailed out. But those last 2, all I know we needed was one and I leveled him. I don’t know how far that was.
Ramsey Russell: 60 yards.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And I don’t know who was more surprised, me, the duck or you. But it did hit him.
Joe Briscoe: Or the dog having to go get.
Ramsey Russell: She didn’t mind. She was glad to be able to air out go get it.
Joe Briscoe: That’s pretty. I enjoyed that shot. But that’s what we’ve always been used to, but I’ve seen you do it with a 28 gauge, so don’t –
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Joe Briscoe: The first time we hunted, you did that on that same line. And I said, man, I got to get this shot back down. I can’t get wore up by Ramsey, every time.
Ramsey Russell: Every time.
Joe Briscoe: Every time.
Ramsey Russell: Hey, we finally got to go see that, where was that we went yesterday on the way to dollar store, we stopped by historical marker.
Joe Briscoe: The marker says double bow Blues Club. And it was –
Ramsey Russell: It didn’t look like much of a building to start with.
Joe Briscoe: No, right now, you’d have pretty much be a pygmy to get in the door there.
Ramsey Russell: The walls fell in the roof stand, but it’s just old tin roof.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah. And they would, you had a bandstand. You had a place you could dance.
Ramsey Russell: Did you ever go?
Joe Briscoe: I never did go. I saw small –
Ramsey Russell: But you’ve heard about it.
Joe Briscoe: I saw small pictures.
Ramsey Russell: You’re big music fan.
Joe Briscoe: I love the Blues. And that’s where Pete Maye, that was his place.
Ramsey Russell: And was he a blues player?
Joe Briscoe: Yes. And he –
Ramsey Russell: Texas blues.
Joe Briscoe: Texas blues. Yep.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Joe Briscoe: He used to go to Austin. The guy that owned Antone’s thought the world of him. So every time he could book him, he would go to Austin and play.
Ramsey Russell: Really? Who were some of the other blues players you grew up listening to here in Texas?
Joe Briscoe: Stevie Ray Vaughan was of somewhat of my era and that was and of course, the older guys, I mean, the guys that put it on the map, BB king.
Ramsey Russell: But Stevie Ray Vaughan was influenced by a lot of those old Texas blues players too. I’ve seen videos of him playing.
Joe Briscoe: Albert King.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, Albert king.
Joe Briscoe: Albert king.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. He’s done whatever it is where 2 musicians get together and play a song.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah. They were just sitting there in the recording studio and just jamming. And I still go back and watch that video. I think it’s really – that was 2 guys that, they were definitely good at what they did.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Joe Briscoe: And then Gatemouth Brown used to play down here to at Pete Maye’s place. And he was from over and poor often.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Freddie King, still one of my favorite blues players.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, no doubt.
Ramsey Russell: He could hit a lick with that guitar.
Joe Briscoe: You better know it. He was good.
Ramsey Russell: What are you busy doing this year in your call shop?
Joe Briscoe: Mainly acrylic TCAs, that thing has been getting a lot of play. Crane calls, I’m already selling crane calls.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Joe Briscoe: Which is, it’s kind of odd because it’s early.
Ramsey Russell: Well, everybody’s getting ready for the season.
Joe Briscoe: Right. Gadwall calls and a teal call.
Ramsey Russell: Everywhere, we’ve been a couple of lodges and I’ve seen you go through and give tutorials on them gadwall calls quite a bit. That must be a pretty big deal too. That’s a big bird down here. Gadwalls and this coastal area is a big deal.
Joe Briscoe: Huge. But the thing is it’s, people would say, man, I need one that’s louder. And I said, have you ever heard a loud gadwall?
Ramsey Russell: No, I can’t even hear him if I don’t have my tetras in.
Learning from the Best: Insights from Gaston Moore
And of course, getting to talk to Gaston Moore, that’s fun. Getting to talk to an older call maker, boy, he’s a hoot.
Joe Briscoe: Right. So to change the tone, all you have to do is lift one finger and you’ll get a higher tone so you can sound like 2 gadwall time. And it’s 3 notes as they’re coming to you and about the time they slide off, you hit them with 3 more notes and they stay in the hole. That boy shot 84 in 2 weeks. He shot 6 gadwall a day with it, that’s the one we tested. I just, I refuse to put anything out without testing at first. And that’s just the way I learned it. And of course, getting to talk to Gaston Moore, that’s fun. Getting to talk to an older call maker, boy, he’s a hoot.
Ramsey Russell: He is a hoot. He’s on this podcast recently, told some good old stories.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, he did.
Ramsey Russell: Speaking of stories, you told a story this morning. I said, only in Texas. Talk about, who was that you were talking about was sneaking up on them birds back in the day.
Joe Briscoe: It was Sonny Bowman who I worked for. He owned Lost Gonzo’s. And he was, I think it was just me and him sitting at a table, I guess because everybody, there wasn’t anybody in the lodge. And he said he was, he’s kin to the whiteheads, which are west of the Brown Foundation. So he would start over there and he said it was a big roost of Canada’s. So, he started crawling from whiteheads and coming across –
Ramsey Russell: Flat shoot him a bunch.
Joe Briscoe: He –
Ramsey Russell: Back in the day.
Joe Briscoe: You bet. He’s going to let them heads pop up. He going to level them. So he got just about 40 yards from where he could shoot them. And he said, all of a sudden, this, I don’t know, this air force jet come right over the top of him, I mean, on the deck. I don’t know if they saw him, I don’t know what, but blew the birds out. And he was so scared, he turned around, he said, I’ve never crawled anywhere that fast again. And it turns out that LBJ was down there with Mr. Brown at –
Ramsey Russell: Leonard B. Johnson.
Joe Briscoe: That’s right.
Ramsey Russell: There’s probably a whole lot of deals cut down there, sound like.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, several.
Ramsey Russell: I-10, that was a fiasco.
Joe Briscoe: And then, he had, the Browns did all of the dredging stuff, in Vietnam, Cameron Bay, so they could get some ships in, things like that.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Big contract.
Joe Briscoe: Big.
Ramsey Russell: And there he was just trying to shoot old man, trying to shoot him some Canada geese.
Joe Briscoe: Yes, so but that was-
Ramsey Russell: Illegally, with president of the United States sitting in a quarter mile away, cutting deal.
Joe Briscoe: Sonny –
Ramsey Russell: What do you think would have happened if that gun had gone off.
Joe Briscoe: He’d been covered in secret service pretty quick. But back then, I mean, we had any size Canada you wanted up and including what they call a supergiant, which there’s not very many left. There’s a family that lives in South Dakota and they migrate to Minnesota. That’s it. But they used to come down and they would –
Ramsey Russell: I think.
Joe Briscoe: Did we talk about that?
Ramsey Russell: I think you’re talking about there was a Canada goose, giant Canada, that would come out of Manitoba down to Minnesota and they were thought to be extinct one time. And the scientists found some back in the 60s and they began to outgrow them. And now all these big resident geese we see are originated from that Manitoba Flyway.
Joe Briscoe: I can tell you a bunch about them, super giants is what he called them. I guess a biologist had told him, hey, those are super giants. But they would come to Robinson Lake and I had the farthest blind south on the canal going to Robinson Lake and I saw one come up and Sonny had a grit pile in there around the on loafing shed for some cows and they’d lay that little bitty pebbles in there and then the marsh would take it in, color it brown. But once those geese figured out it was there, you couldn’t run them out. So one big male come out of there, one big gander come out and I wasn’t even going to call because I knew it was useless. And Sonny, they got past us and I said, boys, you all might want to turn around, watch this. He said, man, it’s a big goose. I said, yeah, he is. And Sonny would call Canada’s with his mouth. If you got tonsils, you can do it. But when he called them, it was a no brainer. It was him.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Joe Briscoe: Yeah. And just didn’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. And he hit him once and that goes kind of ease that way. And he hit him again and he locked and I said, here it comes. And Sonny would hide under, I don’t know how big a Magnum decoy that was, but that thing was huge. And he’d lay under that decoy and he knocked him out. But it happened, I mean, every year he would kill one like that. And so I got back to lodge because I was really the first one I’d seen him shoot. I’ve seen him bring them in, but I’d never seen him shoot one. And I walked into the door of the office and he looked at me and he was grinning ear to ear. I said, where is he at? He said, back there in the freezer, he’s going to a taxidermist. I said, well, how much did he weigh? He said, 18, 2. I mean 18, 2. He said, yeah, his head was like this, man. I mean, he was massive.
Ramsey Russell: Come on now, 18 pound Cannada goose.
Joe Briscoe: 18 pounders.
Ramsey Russell: I would call bullshit, but go ahead.
Joe Briscoe: No bullshit.
Ramsey Russell: I was going to call it.
Joe Briscoe: Nah, we’ll call him on the phone. He’ll tell you how big he was.
Ramsey Russell: He’s probably 24 pounds now.
Joe Briscoe: I mean, a massive wingspan. It was like looking at a crane. I mean, he had that big a wingspan.
Ramsey Russell: Were you ever a crane hunter down here in Texas?
Joe Briscoe: No.
Ramsey Russell: Because you make a crane call? That’s a big deal down here in Texas.
Joe Briscoe: Well, on this side of Houston, no. They tried to open it one year and the first day a kid shot a whooper. So they went.
Ramsey Russell: Oh boy, no more.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, no more. And so I’d go on, like, to port Lavaca and hunt with Jake Huddleston. And I could hear this, I could hear that crane, the tone in my head. And so I sat up there and I said, I’m going to make this thing. I got it and sung, read. I didn’t like it. The tone wasn’t quite right. And I said, well, I know how to do this and I put a lighter reed in it, so I put, there’s 14 on top and a 10 on the bottom. So, I made it a double reed in it. And it just made it, just, you get that hard.
Ramsey Russell: Whatever cranes are, they’re such a unique and primeval sound.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: But it blows my mind how far those vocalizations travel. Cause you’ll hear one, it sounds like they’re right over your shoulder and you start squinting and there’s little dots out there about a mile away. I mean, that voice carries.
Feedback from the Field: Confirmation of Call Accuracy
And I said, man, oh, man, who’d I ever thought I crank off it? But when you think about it with the guitars and growing up around music, it’s just another musical instrument.
Joe Briscoe: It does. Had a boy call me after crane season started. It was like 3rd day. This guy calls me from Lubbock and he says, hey, a guy that bought a crane call from you brought it up here and he couldn’t blow it. I said, okay. And he said, I got ahold of it and within 2 minutes I had it figured out. And he said, I won’t buy one. I said, okay, well, I’ll put one together for you and ship it up. And so I called him after he got it, I said that, how’s the tone? Because everybody’s ears different? And over the phone, I can kind of tell you how to, if something happens, how to just barely tweak it. And he said, man, this thing’s dead on. And the next day, there was a picture with that crane call over on 6 cranes. He had one guy go, so they shot 6. And that crane call sitting right in the middle of it. And I said, man, oh, man, who’d I ever thought I crank off it? But when you think about it with the guitars and growing up around music, it’s just another musical instrument.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Joe Briscoe: Especially when you get the tone right.
Ramsey Russell: You still making guitars and stuff?
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, I’ve got 2 done right now. One of them I’m going to have to shim to get the strings leveled out, but that not a big deal. The other one –
Ramsey Russell: I’ve got 3 of them done.
Joe Briscoe: But I just don’t – It’s like my work week’s been cut in half with everything to take care of dad. And then the other half, it’s gotten so hot, my AC couldn’t keep up in the shop.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Joe Briscoe: I got a AC and 3 fans going out there. And when it gets hot, coolest it’ll get is 85 and I’m like –
Ramsey Russell: I ain’t cool enough.
Joe Briscoe: No, heck, no. When you’re out there sweating and you’re turning wood and sawdust just sticking to you.
Ramsey Russell: That ain’t no good.
Joe Briscoe: No, but we’ll get it figured out.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, you’re going home with some pretty fat blue wings we’ve shot in the last couple mornings. How you cook blue wings?
Joe Briscoe: I like making duck poppers just like I do dove. I breast them off and put them in liquid smoke with –
Ramsey Russell: Liquid smoke.
Joe Briscoe: Liquid smoke, like liquid fajita seasoning? Well, not just liquid smoke, it’s a liquid fajita seasoning.
Ramsey Russell: Well, they make something called liquid smoke?
Joe Briscoe: Not right. But it’s got liquid smoke in it. How about that?
Ramsey Russell: Okay, is it a liquid?
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: What’s a brand or whatever of it?
Joe Briscoe: Oh, there’s 3 or 4 of them, when you go in the grocery store and I said, that looks like a good one.
Ramsey Russell: You marinate it in a fajita flavored liquid smoke.
Joe Briscoe: Right.
Ramsey Russell: And make a popper.
Joe Briscoe: Add Italian dressing. And if you like them a little hotter without putting a jalapeno or something like that on them, which most people do, I got some hot salt and lightly, I’m not a big salt eater, so lightly hit them with that. Just to give them a little bite. And then every now and again, we’ll do the cream cheese deal. You roll them in it and then sometimes we’ll just straight cook them. But I’m the only one that eats duck in my house. I have to invite neighbors over to eat because my girls won’t eat them. They’re like, we ain’t eating that. But when you set it in that tray and you get that liquid over those pieces of duck – Oh, and I’ve got a tenderizer. It’s got 40 blades in it. Bam, bam. And that breast takes that liquid in, but you get the liquid level over it. And I leave it in there for 2 days. I mean, some people do it for a day, but when you start to put them out and wrap them up, all that, it looks like beef. I mean, it’s brown like beef.
Ramsey Russell: I’ll be dang.
Joe Briscoe: Like a lightly cooked beef.
Ramsey Russell: I’ll tell you something I tried this year during dove scene. I made some dove poppers. I like to cook them old granddaddy’s way, but I made some dove poppers. And when I use it, Lord knows the gallons of Italian dressing I’ve been through in my life making poppers. But, it’s really, the vinegar is kind of the primary ingredient of that. That’s what you taste later. And I just had this idea and I tried it and it turned out pretty dang good. I used jalapeno brine, like a jar of jalapeno. That was the vinegar, but it also had that jalapeno flavor. And then, because it was sitting on the top shelf of the refrigerator staring at me. I said, oh, that olive juice looks good too. And I used olive juice and jalapeno juice and then seasoned it like normal. And it turned out pretty dang good. I’ll do it again.
Joe Briscoe: That’s different.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, they’re both brines, both got that vinegar, but they both got the flavor of what they’ve been soaking in and it helps. And then I come up with a bright idea, cause normally I put jalapeno, like, I’ll take a bone in dove breast, make a little pocket, put a jalapeno in there. I put an olive in there, black olive. Turned out pretty dang good. Don’t knock it till you try it if you like olive you’ll drink that, too.
Joe Briscoe: I love even drinking martinis.
Ramsey Russell: Cause olive.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Well, hey, you don’t drink bourbon. What I mean, well I expect.
Joe Briscoe: I mean, I don’t even use an olive in my scotch. That ruin it?
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, no, that would definitely ruin a scotch? But it don’t ruin a dove breast, I’ll tell you that like a big old black olive. Just be sure to get the one without the pit in there, that might ruin it. Your dentist would like it.
Joe Briscoe: Some people put a piece of white onion on one side of jalapeno on the other. I don’t mess with putting a piece of onion on it.
Ramsey Russell: Well, see, I think be creative. I like a lot of creative stuff. I have tried, of course, jalapeno. Now, black olive, water chestnut, because it gives a little something.
Joe Briscoe: Water chestnut. Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: But I’ve been to places that will put, like, I want the craziest things I’ve ever seen stuffed in a popper, be it duck or dove is like a candy cherry. Like, one of the things that stick to your teeth when you eat, mama’s fruit cake, a piece, but that sweet and that little, like, okay, wow, this does something. I mean, I’m adventurous when it comes to that.
Joe Briscoe: Sweet and salt, if you want, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Now, a dove popper or a duck popper. Man, if you can find somebody that makes whole fig preserves and put a fig up in there, I don’t think, nothing goes with duck better than a fig. Like a fig preserve. Oh, boy.
Joe Briscoe: That may have some preserves left. He planted 4 fig trees. 2 of them died during the freeze and he can’t get around enough to go out there and pick them. So the birds get them all.
Ramsey Russell: I’ve got a lifetime supply. Don’t eat fig preserves daily. And I would not even tell this, but when my grandmother died, she cook a lot of good stuff, but fig preserves were kind of her thing. So under her dog, I’d be itching, climbing up in them trees, getting on them figs for her, but she’d make fig preserves and about 5 or 6. Well, during COVID How long was that, 4 or 5 years ago? I got to looking through the cabinet and there was some, her last jar of fig preserves. Black as an ace of spades, they was, because they’ve been sitting there for 30 something years and I ain’t scared. I cracked a seal on them and the jar lid popped. I thought it might be good. I’ll eat one, if it don’t kill me, I’ll eat the rest of them. They were as good. They were as good because she would put – She would slice up lemons and put them lemons in there and that ascorbic ass would kind of give it that preservative. But really and truly, the lemon rind inside those fig preserves was my favorite part.
Joe Briscoe: You bet.
Ramsey Russell: If you like lemon and sugar, buddy, let me tell you what that lemon. That whole slice of lemon inside there was always, I always save it, like, for the dessert after eating them fig preserves. And I got to telling this story. I don’t know how I got on this story about my grandmother’s last jar of fig preserves. And a cardiologist in Reno, Nevada, a client of mine, he said, I make fig preservatives. I said, get the hell out of here. He said, I make them whole. And he said, I’ll tell you something your grandmother probably didn’t do. I said, what? He said, I put lemon in mine and it is the closest thing to my grandmother’s fig preserved. And he sent, the man sent a case of them and I keep them just for making poppers with or something to that effect.
Joe Briscoe: I know dad uses orange peels.
Ramsey Russell: Orange peels? Heck, yeah.
Joe Briscoe: So, yeah, same type of effect. But he’s mad at the pork industry because hanks have gone up and so he makes boudin with no casing. He said, you want to take on some of this? No, it’s not the same.
Ramsey Russell: Your dad make boudin.
Joe Briscoe: They used to have me before the electric stuffer or grinder. I would be the one up there, I was 4 or 5 years old. Get up there, boy and turn that handle. And I’m like, that’s enough. Yuck. I don’t want to do this. It’s hot out here.
Ramsey Russell: See, I do like boudin and I’ve talked about duck recipes, man. Try stuffing a duck with uncased boudin –
Joe Briscoe: Oh, man. Yeah. I have had it.
Ramsey Russell: If roast in it. And then you pull that stuffing out and that duck will fall off and you got all that gravy and put it on top of that boudin, son, you want to talk about another level?
Joe Briscoe: Dad come bought a teal call, I don’t know, 2, 3 weeks ago and he brought some duck boudin. I haven’t even thought about opening it up yet, but it was all puddle ducks. And then he said, when he told me, he put shoveler and redheads in it and I went, okay, we’ll see what it turns out.
Ramsey Russell: Change the subject. Get back on the fig preserves, because I just started down memory lane. But, when she’d make those fig preserves, she’d can them all. And she always had a bunch of fig preserved syrup left over and you want to talk about a genius idea? I just had $1 million idea. If anybody wants to can this, I’ll be your guinea pig, try it. Take a bunch of lemons and oranges and put them in a jar and cover it with fig preserved syrup. So you got kind of like this fig orange lemon marmalade. That’d be good on anything.
Joe Briscoe: Even ice cream.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, it’d be damaged, if it’d be good on ice cream. Fig preserve is good on ice cream, I can tell you that for a fact. I ate my weight in Louisville vanilla ice cream and fig preserved as a kid. I’m going to tell you that right now. And that would be some kind of good. Well, you all have plenty of ducks for duck poppers.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah, I’m going to eat my winners worse.
Ramsey Russell: You might even kill 1 or 2 of them.
Joe Briscoe: Oh, boy. Here we go. Rotten, I’m telling you.
Ramsey Russell: Well, Joe, man, you don’t drink bourbon, but I guess you’re still my buddy. And the best part is when somebody gives you bourbon and I hope everybody listening will send you bottle, I know you’ll give it to me.
Joe Briscoe: Oh no. Well, yeah, if they bring bourbon in. Yeah, it’ll go – It’ll get to good use.
Ramsey Russell: Bring bourbon, folks. Bring bourbon.
Joe Briscoe: No. Balvenie Caribbean Casks.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Joe Briscoe: This 14 years.
Ramsey Russell: Bring bourbon. I know, where we’ll end up.
Joe Briscoe: All right.
Ramsey Russell: That’s piece of bourbon is probably going to last me a while, too. I got it down there in ice chest.
Joe Briscoe: Well, when you’re not. When you don’t even know it, I’ll just bust the seal on it, dump all the bourbon out and fill it full of scotch.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I will say this, I do drink scotch, but I’d rather have bourbon. Some of them scotches are an acquired flavor. like I never get one time. It was just a – no offense, but a guy had been saving this bottle, a special bottle of bourbon. I mean, of scotch. We went on a hunting trip and he brought it. And I ain’t saying we didn’t drink it to the last drop, because we did. Cause we were out in the middle of nowhere. But it tasted – Well I tell you this, back in the 70s, my mother and all them women around there, all them house moms, they had these big old, what they call a beehive haired –
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: They had all pulled up and sprayed plasticized with this hairspray. And it tasted like that hairspray smell. I won’t pass that scotch brand and mean time –
Joe Briscoe: Well, I was thinking what some of them have, that bite to them or that hairspray bite. Yeah or somewhat of a bitter taste. And a lot of it peat like peat moss. And now I sit there and watch them on a video one day and, I mean, they’re cutting slots like this wide and this thick and to go put it in a blend and I’m like, I’m going to try that peat. It’s still sitting there. It’s had one drink poured out of it. It’s pretty Stout. This stuff is, it’s so smooth as long as they don’t, they said they Trump, put some kind of excite stacks on them and it slowed up the scotch business.
Ramsey Russell: What you hear that on CNN.
Joe Briscoe: Absolutely not.
Ramsey Russell: A non bourbon drinking CNN watcher.
Joe Briscoe: That’s your ass –
Ramsey Russell: Sitting around with your pinky. Hold your red solo cup with your pinky fingers sitting straight out.
Joe Briscoe: That’s what they doing, Austin, right there. Just like –
Ramsey Russell: Watching middle finger.
Joe Briscoe: No, it ain’t. But I can do that.
Ramsey Russell: Joe, when we go hunt together again, man, I’ve enjoyed it. Good to catch up with you, as always.
Joe Briscoe: Well, it’s always seems to be this time of year, because you’re gone from now to thanksgiving and then you’re going to shoot with the boys back home, I’m sure, for a day or 2 now that you got both of them at home.
Ramsey Russell: Man, I’m going to tell you what I was home for – I travel a lot. I will admit it. But, man, I tell you what, after about 2 or 3 weeks at home. I live out of suitcase.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: And I tell you who was more glad than me to get back on the road and that’s Char dog.
Joe Briscoe: Oh, man.
Ramsey Russell: That dog’s demeanor changed 180% the minute she got in that truck.
Joe Briscoe: That is one special dog.
Ramsey Russell: I dropped her out yesterday over at jeans and she just, she knew. She recognized. She said she knew the game. And she’s full bores on. She’s ready to roll.
Joe Briscoe: I’ll tell you, that’s a special dog. I mean, she is just a fireball.
Ramsey Russell: She’s a fireball. I got to admit. She likes to fetch ducks much or more maybe than I like to shoot them.
Joe Briscoe: So how many? We talked about this yesterday, but so, no.
Ramsey Russell: I don’t say no, but I know what you’re going to ask, going to ask how many retrieves she makes and people ask that and I just won’t. I did it, don’t matter. She picks up a bunch.
Joe Briscoe: Well, I think I remember it the number. I ain’t going to bring it up.
Ramsey Russell: She picks up a bunch. But I don’t think it’s a bragging point. I just saw a number posted up one time on the Internet that I just. I did the math, I’m like, I don’t know if I believe that. And once you throw a number out that big and even if she had the year for the next, she’s 5. Even if she had the year, it would take a year like she had last year for about 8 years to do that. And I just don’t see how that’s possible.
Joe Briscoe: I wouldn’t see it as a bragging point. I would see it as more of an accomplishment –
Ramsey Russell: It is.
Joe Briscoe: Of what that dog can do.
Ramsey Russell: I have kept a retriever logbook since 1994.
Joe Briscoe: Wow.
Ramsey Russell: So that yellow chicken dog that passed back the summer when I was in Argentina, I know exactly how many birds she picked up in her life and I count doves and I count woodcock or whatever they retrieve in their life. They earned it. And I knew the dog before that, all the way back in 94, about 5 or 6 dogs, I know kind of what they do and what those numbers mean to me is not bragging rights or nothing.
Joe Briscoe: No.
Ramsey Russell: But it’s like I’ll find myself sitting around and I’m going, how’s this season going? I wonder, relatively. And I’ll pick back. Well, this time last year, this time 2 years ago,
Joe Briscoe: Got you.
Ramsey Russell: She was here. Now she’s here. But I think the dog earned it. They worked their butts off for them.
Joe Briscoe: They do, she does.
Silent Communication: The Bond Between Guide and Dog in the Field
She’s off doing her thing and we get back and I look down and now she is beside me and she’s got a very much alive duck in her mouth. The dog just hunts.
Ramsey Russell: Thinking about throwing numbers out for dogs is. This is the problem with how many – my dog fetch, this many, it don’t take into account. The 300 yard retrieve that took the dog 27 minutes or the time I was hunting in Argentina, this kind of stuff, I like seeing a dog. We was hunting in Argentina and I had sailed a bird, it was a silver teal. I’d sailed it 200 yards off to the east. But it was just so fast and furious. Bing, boom, I’m shooting, didn’t want to send her and mess up the hunt and just being a blind by myself, but I just, I knew and as I was strapping things up, before I could walk back over and float around, the guide whistled to me and pointed and I looked and that dog, I took my eyes off of her was bent down doing something. She was coming back. She had remembered that bird from an hour ago and 20 something marks and gone all the way back in that area and hunted that bird up and come back or the time we were horseback riding out and who knows where this duck came from. We were a half mile back towards the truck from where we’d been hunting. Of course, she’s trotting along and she don’t just ride, run right there by the horse. She’s off doing her thing and we get back and I look down and now she is beside me and she’s got a very much alive duck in her mouth. The dog just hunts. Like this morning, I don’t know if you noticed us. She started following him back to the machine.
Joe Briscoe: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: But then as we were picking up and doing stuff, she was off. She was gone and she was looking for duck. Numbers don’t really take that into account.
Joe Briscoe: The coolest thing I saw was yesterday when she went and she passed that cripple. She picked up the dead bird and, on the way, back she just looked like she put all 4ft on that crippled. Make sure he was –
Ramsey Russell: Make sure he wasn’t going nowhere.
Joe Briscoe: Right
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. She’s a character and what a dog learns and how a dog develops, a good dog, how they develop with a lot of experience. She can count a lot. She started, I noticed just this trip she started to wear. We’ll knock down 3 or 4 birds. She’ll run back to the apron of the blind and hand me a duck and then turn around and wait for her to send. And then when she comes back, hands me the duck and then gets back in the box or sits up on the blind. Well, I know she didn’t see something fall.
Joe Briscoe: Right.
Ramsey Russell: Which in the last 2 days, that ain’t been the case. She knew there was another bird out there.
Joe Briscoe: Well, not to change dogs, but I think one of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard is about your yellow dog on the airplane.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, my gosh. Char, by comparison, is just a big old black shadow that don’t bother nobody. In fact, countless of the times, as a service animal, the people next to me, around me don’t even know there’s a dog on the plane.
Joe Briscoe: Right.
Ramsey Russell: The yellow dog wasn’t that way. She was a bottomless pit, like a lot of labs. You couldn’t fill her up. I could lay a sack of dog food down and she might explode before she quit eating. It’s like the last time she’s ever going to eat. And she was a great dog. A totally different personality than Char. But on a plane, come meal service, she would stand up and whether the guy next to me knew there was a dog there or not, they learned there was a dog there because she wouldn’t – She just completely indifferent to me. And she would stare at the guy while he’s eating. It’s just a man, nobody liked to sit there and eat with something staring at you. But this dog, it might be 20 minutes, the dog ate bleak. And I try to ignore it, like maybe he won’t notice, maybe won’t bother him. But almost always they say, sir, your dog is staring at me. You see drool coming down the corner of his mouth.
Joe Briscoe: I got one that’s got the drool, too.
Ramsey Russell: I tell them, I say, it’s okay, sir. Just don’t take your eyes off your plate. Because if you look the other way to do something, she’s probably going to steal something off your plate.
Joe Briscoe: That’s hysterical.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, she would, too. I never fed the dog scraps. I never fed her on the table and she’d ignore me completely because she knew.
Joe Briscoe: She knew you weren’t –
Ramsey Russell: Broke her nose or whatever. She thought she took every passenger on every plane, like maybe this is the weak leak, maybe I can win him over.
Joe Briscoe: Just sit there and look like you’re standing on the corner with a piece of –
Ramsey Russell: I mean, there would be people just completely quit eating and later, fork down and look at the dog. They’re like dog, it freaked them out.
Joe Briscoe: Too bad you didn’t think about it. You could have hung one of them cardboard signs off her, we’ll bark for food or something stupid like that.
Ramsey Russell: Called her a chicken dog, cause her daddy, even though it comes from field lions stock, the little girl that had got the dog from my trainer at the time, her daddy had a poultry farm.
Joe Briscoe: Right.
Ramsey Russell: And what she did with Hercules, the name the dog came with as a puppy, is she’d go out to those chicken houses and turn Hercules loose. Because she said, well, Mr. Russell, every night chickens die. And my job before I went to high school was to gather up the dead chickens and incinerate. Well, I turned Hercules loose and he’d run around and I’d pick up all the dead birds and put them in the laundry basket I brought with me. And when he’d just stopped, look at me, I knew there wasn’t no more dead chickens. And I heard that story. I’m like, she didn’t duck hunt the dog didn’t duck hunt. I’m thinking, well, for $250 for that puppy, how can I go wrong with the chicken dog? And she was a chicken dog, never fetched a chicken in her life, but I’m sure she stole a few drum legs off somebody’s plate, drumsticks in her life. I guarantee you.
Joe Briscoe: Maybe that’s where she got the scent from.
Ramsey Russell: She died a happy dog. We’ve been knowing for the past year or 2. She was really struggling. Arthritis to heck and back, feeble and she looked 90 years old and had some kind of big growth on her larynx like something, she would sleep all day and at 03:00 we feed them at 05:00. By 03:00 she remembers getting close to 05:00. She don’t wear a watch. If she stand up and start barking in the backyard, get all the dogs riled up, sometimes you have to go feed them at 09:00 in the morning. And after she got done eating, she’d pick her bowl up and take it back to her bed. And that’s where she pretty much laid the last 2 years of her life until she passed. And it was real hot and my wife had brought her inside and took her eyes off of her for 5 minutes. She got into some dog food and ate. She was full of the tick and 2 hours later she passed, happy as could be, I’m sure.
Joe Briscoe: Oh, she had died with a full belly.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, probably died with a smile on her face. But anyway, Joe, I’ve enjoyed it.
Joe Briscoe: As always.
Ramsey Russell: Tell everybody how they can get in touch with you on Instagram. The Briscoe Kid.
Joe Briscoe: I’m at JB Custom Calls. Phone numbers on there as well. My email is jbcustomcalls@yahoo. Feel free to pick up the phone and call. If I don’t answer, I will call you back if it’s any day but a Thursday. And then, I mean, people are more than welcome to come to the shop if you live in the greater Houston area.
Ramsey Russell: Or passing through.
Joe Briscoe: Or passing like or passing through. Looking for some free moonshine.
Ramsey Russell: But don’t drink my bourbon.
Joe Briscoe: That is the only bottle that was there. Everything else in that fridge is scotch. You’re more than welcome to come over. The big deal is, when you come over, we can fit a call to you. And that’s probably what I enjoy the most. And you get a taste of the learning stick if you ain’t got your air right.
Ramsey Russell: The learning stick.
Joe Briscoe: The learning stick.
Ramsey Russell: Joe –
Joe Briscoe: Louisville Slugger or Marucci take your pick.
Ramsey Russell: Parting shot last thing, I did not bust your balls about it.
Joe Briscoe: Oh, boy, here comes.
Ramsey Russell: But didn’t even mention the shoveler called that you have been prototyping for 3 years.
Joe Briscoe: I ain’t prototyping.
Ramsey Russell: Still ain’t turned it out. The one the only, the world’s best bootlip call.
Joe Briscoe: And –
Ramsey Russell: But I’m going to ask anybody listening, go to that Instagram page.
Joe Briscoe: Oh, God.
Ramsey Russell: JB Custom Calls and encourage him. He just needs a little encourage. He don’t think nobody’s going to buy a shoveler call. Trust me. And we ain’t talking about just a shoveler call. We’re talking about a shoveler call that looks like a shoveler. A shoveler head with teeth and probably a gold tooth in the center.
Joe Briscoe: I was going to say, we will charge extra for gold tooth if that’s what you want it.
Ramsey Russell: And lips that flap like black baloney when you blow it.
Joe Briscoe: I can’t do that. The springs will rust out in it.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Folks, you all been listening to the Briscoe Kid, my buddy, Joe Briscoe. Thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’ll see you next time.
Joe Briscoe: Adios.
[End of Audio]
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