EP 414. Moonlighting as Duck Guides in Saskatchewan

 

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season somewhere podcast, today I’m in Saskatchewan with a couple of buddies of mine. You all have heard of both before Mr. Joey D’Amico, Mr. Luke Costilow. Interesting, though you all know them as call makers and decoy carvers, but today they’re duck guides. How you all doing?

Joey D’Amico: How are you?

Ramsey Russell: Good. That was a heck of a duck hunt you found for us today, Joey. I enjoyed today. Did not expect the moisture, the precipitation, the mist, whatever you want to call it, falling from the sky. We get out, and 5 minutes before shooting time, you can hear them and see the ducks already starting to hit the decoys.

Joey D’Amico: I brought the guys back from Parker in their trucks, and my lights are shining on the decoys, and they’re trying to land in the decoys. It’s pretty cool.

Ramsey Russell: How did you all find your way up here to Saskatchewan on this particular gig? Cause this is different, Joey. I love you two to death and that’s the only reason I accepted the invite and that I couldn’t find anything else to do besides sit around Saskatchewan for a few days, I almost get the invite. I don’t like to hunt anymore with Outfitters.

Joey D’Amico: Right.

Ramsey Russell: That I don’t know, haven’t been talking to, that we don’t got something possibly going on. I don’t like to just crash in and visit Outfitters. Somehow or another, I missed the memo that this wasn’t an outfit, this was a club.

Joey D’Amico: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That you all were hunting with, and I’m so glad I showed up, man. What a great club collection of people I met while here.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah, it’s been great. In November, I got back last year and was having some lunch with one of the members, and he threw it out there, like, hey, would you want to come up with us. It’s just buddy hunting and, get some exposure with your calls and meet some of the other members and, thought about Luke as well, because we’re both, doing this full time, basically. So this is just a perfect marriage, and everyone can kind of get some footage and hunt and test our products and fellowship and meet new people just cruising around and get to see you.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve worked as a guide before, like in a commercial outfit, this is totally different.

Joey D’Amico: Completely different.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, completely different.

Joey D’Amico: There’s been days we’ve just had 2 in the blind. There’s been days we had 8 in the blind. And it’s just a friend, buddy-hunt type of thing.

Ramsey Russell: It’s folks coming in the door. It’s friends. It’s business partners. It’s local farmers.

Joey D’Amico: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It’s incredible.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah, it’s been good. I said it last night, to kind of adopt you a little bit, where you can develop friendships and, reach out and get the 4 on 1 on who’s farming what and be able to keep a good, lasting relationship. It’s just been an incredible year, we’ve had lots of success this year. I think, we’re probably in the 2500 bird range for the club since September 1, so it’s been a lot of fun.

Ramsey Russell: Luke.

Luke Costilow: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Last time I saw you was at Delta Waterfowl last weekend of July, and you introduced me to your new bride. You all probably been married a month.

Luke Costilow: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: But that wasn’t. But a couple of months ago,

Luke Costilow: That was end of May.

Ramsey Russell: Well, what’s it-

Luke Costilow: What’s it like being married to somebody for three months and then leaving for two?

Ramsey Russell: How’s that going?

Luke Costilow: It’s surprisingly well, probably. She’s very supportive, and I’m incredibly lucky she was able to come up for. She planned a trip for, 3 days in late September, ended up staying for 10, and that was just so nice, especially as newlyweds, it’s hard being apart for that long. But she kind of knew what she was signing up for when we got married, because I’ve done, multiple week trips, several times while we were dating, but this was definitely the biggest test when it comes to being away.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And she came up for a little bit, didn’t she?

Luke Costilow: She did, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Was that her first time to Canada?

Luke Costilow: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What you think of what you got going on?

Luke Costilow: She really liked it. So she’s not a hunter, but she’s a birdwatcher and loves nature and stuff. We were scouting the one night, and I showed her the first time she’s ever seen a field of 30,000 snow geese, and it just blew her mind. She loved it. Loved seeing it.

Ramsey Russell: What did she think about the sundown spectacle flying over the camp? That was incredible. The first afternoon I was here, we were in there chopping up veggies or doing something for supper, and you said, hey, you hear that? You ought to go look outside the back door. I did and right across the front yard must have been 100,000 snow geese flying over, backlit by the sunset. It was amazing.

Luke Costilow: And speaking from someone who’s been here for, 40 days now, it just doesn’t get old. Seen it every night. I always make sure to take a minute or 2 to just stop and just watch, and it’s just incredible.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Luke Costilow: She absolutely fell in love with it. But it’s like, not only the waterfowl, because she loves seeing the waterfowl, but it’s like all the other types of birds here that we almost never see at home, too. Like short eared owls and the partridge and Ruffed grouse and sharp tailed and-

Ramsey Russell: Lots of Hungarian partridge in Canada this year. I’ve seen more than i’ve ever seen. There was a flock of 30 at the front gate when we pulled up yesterday. You all don’t chase those.

Joey D’Amico: We might have, done a little, scoot around camp with a 20 gauge, but now we haven’t taken it seriously yet. Probably will as the days get a little shorter, and we don’t have as much to do in the afternoon.

Moonlighting as a Duck Guide for a Season

I’ve been able to carve decoys here to completion and being able to hunt in the morning, carve in the afternoon, scout in the evening, and just kind of live that pure duck lifestyle, which, over the past couple years, i’ve just truly fallen in love with.

Ramsey Russell: What led you all individually, to want to be duck guides for a season? Moonlight. I’m going to call moonlighting as a duck guide in Canada because you’ve got a busy call making company. Joey. Luke, you’re busy carving decoys and managing habitat. It’s your own place. I hear a lot of people say, I want to be a duck guide, and I sort of do it. I know why I’m involved with that part of the industry. What led you all to wanting to be a duck guide and leave home for two and a half, three months and do this? Because it’s a totally different mindset, and I’m leading up to something in a minute, but go ahead.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah. For me, I just love the hospitality of it, the fellowship, being able to make a game plan, execute the game plan, let your call or your decoy help in the game plan. When you see everyone having a good time, even if you’re just enjoying the process and, you might have a average hunt or something like that, but the time in the blind with people. First time I came up to Canada, it just got in my soul. I can’t not do this for the rest of my life. I have to come make this trip. It’s just incredible.

Ramsey Russell: And you get to hunt a little bit, too.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah. Like I said, everybody here knows the program. I mean, they’re rushing blinds. Everybody’s working together. They’re not showing up ten minutes before shooting time.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Joey D’Amico: We’re all in this together, all here. Everybody’s getting the trailer packed at night, getting blinds brushed, and, scouting and figuring out what we’re going to do next. Obviously, last night, we had some farmers over for supper, and, it’s the whole gambit of. You can get it in the states, but not to the level it’s at up here.

Ramsey Russell: What made you want to do this, Luke?

Luke Costilow: For me, it was the next logical step in my personal waterfowl journey. It seems like every year, I just kind of slowly up the ante. When it comes to freelancing Saskatchewan, this is my fifth year up here. The first time it was camp for a week. Second time came up for 10 days, then it came up for 17 days, and I was like, well, might as well do 2 months and it’s with my trips. I’ve done a couple, east coast trips, and I did a trip where I hunted for a month straight down the coast to hunt with a lot of friends and carved decoys specifically for hunts and species that I wanted to harvest over them. Every year, I’m trying to do something more, something different and this just made sense. When joey and I talked about it for the first time, it was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up. We had a workshop area that I was able to carve when I was here. I’ve been able to carve decoys here to completion and being able to hunt in the morning, carve in the afternoon, scout in the evening, and just kind of live that pure duck lifestyle, which, over the past couple years, i’ve just truly fallen in love with. Again, having a supportive wife is just huge. I couldn’t do it without her. Can’t live without her. Couldn’t do it without her.

Ramsey Russell: Could you see her coming up here and spending an entire season with you?

Luke Costilow: Not a whole season, but she would do, a month. We’ve talked about it, because she’s a great cook. I think Joey can attest to her baking skills. She makes very good bread.

Joey D’Amico: Oh, my goodness.

Sandhill Cranes: Decoys & Hunts

Talk about making those sandhill crane decoys and how many you used and what it’s like to shoot sandhills over your own decoy.

Luke Costilow: That’s something that she would enjoy doing. She likes the camp atmosphere and likes being around and she’s also a good artist like, with those sandhill crane decoys that we made those together.

Ramsey Russell: Let’s go ahead and talk about Sandhill Crane now, since you brought it up, because both of you guys brought your shops with you. You bought what you need to do the duck calls the decoys, and you saw some. Had you ever killed sandhills before?

Luke Costilow: No.

Ramsey Russell: So you saw some sand hills and said, I don’t have any decoy, so I know what. I’ll make some.

Luke Costilow: Yep. The invention of necessity.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about making those sandhill crane decoys and how many you used and what it’s like to shoot sandhills over your own decoy.

Luke Costilow: We had a field that started off with a couple dozen sandhills in it and it was just always on a route that we would drive, every other day or so, and every time we saw it, there was more and more sand hills in it. Joey’s never specifically chased them before. I’ve never specifically chased them before. So we’re just like, well, we got to look into, how can we do this? How can we hunt them? So we did a little bit of research, and for whatever reason, Saskatoon Cabela’s doesn’t sell any sandhill decoys. A couple weeks went by, and we kept on kicking the idea around. We just got to make some. I don’t know how, corrugated, like cardboard or what but just got to make some. Then that kind of went behind us, another week went by. We checked the field again, there was even more cranes and my wife just got into town, and we were just, all right, screw it. We’ll just make them. So we went to the store and bought some plywood, and then I went to the ace hardware, and I bought a Theresa, and I picked out a gray rattle can and an orange can, and then she sketched out. She’s a very good artist. I can carve. I can paint. I can’t sketch at all. I can’t draw a bird.

Ramsey Russell: I wondered about that.

Luke Costilow: You ask me to draw a bird, I can’t do it, but she can do it.

Ramsey Russell: She free handed it on a piece of plyboard.

Luke Costilow: Yeah. We made a pattern. So, we went to the dollar store and bought some big sheets of paper, and she looked at a picture one, sketched one out, and we approved it and then we went and, this is all one afternoon, laid it out on a piece of plywood. We ended up getting eight out of a piece of plywood.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Luke Costilow: I went and bought a jigsaw, and we cut them out, and then I tried painting one, and she tried painting one, and we just decided on a paint, and then just painted the whole thing gray, put a little bit of orange on it. She cut out a template for the head, sprayed the orange on the head, and she drew a little eye on. I painted the bill black, and two days later, we went and shot sandhills over.

Ramsey Russell: With eight decoys?

Luke Costilow: Eight decoys.

Ramsey Russell: How many birds were using that field?

Luke Costilow: There was probably 500, which, as a simple Ohio guy, that was pretty impressive, seeing 500 sandhills in one place.

Ramsey Russell: That is a lot of sandhills, because when they come in and they decoy, it’s all she wrote in just one ply. The times I’ve been there, once they get in the kill hole 20 yards away and put their wings back, their feet down, they can’t go nowhere.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Is that what happened?

Joey D’Amico: Yeah.

Luke Costilow: We had a good morning. We killed 14 sandhills over the decoys.

Ramsey Russell: And were you calling to them at all?

Luke Costilow: The best that we could with our mouths work.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Luke Costilow: The best that we could with our mouths, but that being the first experience with hunting sandhills and then it being over the decoys that I made. Even though they were just plywood, that’s why I’m a carver. That’s why I do it, just that experience.

Ramsey Russell: It connects you to that species and the animal connected to that hunt.

Luke Costilow: Yeah, there’s nothing better.

Ramsey Russell: Then a couple of nights later, I pull into camp, and Joey kicks in with his part of the sandhill equation. A lot of the guys that were at camp that night were dubious.

Joey D’Amico: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: They were dubious about eating those blue hair looking game birds, and you worked your magic. How’d you cook those sandhill cranes?

Joey D’Amico: I did a little reverse sear on them. So put them at 250 on the traeger and got the Blackstone hot, and seared them off and took them off about 120 degrees.

Ramsey Russell: And took them off the smoker at 120?

Joey D’Amico: I took them off the smoker at like 110, 115, put them on the tray on the Blackstone, got a nice texture to them, and let them rest for a little bit.

Ramsey Russell: It tasted exactly like roast beef.

Joey D’Amico: It was very tender.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Cooked to medium rare, as they were sitting there resting, the platter got just full of all jaw and it was amazing.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah, it was good, and you made some potatoes to go with it, a little roasted broccoli. It was a good little supper.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, it was good. That was a very good supper. It’s been a while since I’d eaten sandhill. I’d forgotten how good they were.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah. And they made some good sandwiches next day with little horseradish and sliced them nice and thin. We put them on the bun. It was really good.

Ramsey Russell: I was talking to one of the partners the other day when we were picking up decoys and, about you all working here and stuff like that, and he had told me, it’s really hard to find good people to work and do this. Because you all are the caretaker, the guides, in the afternoons, everybody goes out and scouts, trucks going in all directions. There may be eight teams out scouting.

Joey D’Amico: Oh, yeah.

Doing the Real Duck Guiding Sh*t

This business is not for everybody. This life ain’t for everybody.

Ramsey Russell: You all are just holding down the fort, holding down the constant taking care of things so that they can go off and work and come in, and it’s a heck of a novel concept, I think. But they were talking about how a lot of guys they tried to work with before just didn’t really fit. It just didn’t work out. It’s like i’ve always said, everybody wants to be a duck guide till it’s time to do real duck guide shit. What do you all think it is about you all’s job and what you do that’s just not for everybody? Because it’s not. This business is not for everybody. This life ain’t for everybody. I’ve heard that line said before. It’s not for everybody. It is a hospitality business. You got to put the needs of others before yourself, and it is a grind. Even as just a hunter and somebody that jumps around and does this, it’s a grind getting up every morning and doing the same thing every day. What do you think about that? You bound to have seen or heard about some folks that just didn’t cut the mustard before.

Joey D’Amico:  I think the biggest thing is just having a new perspective every day. Today’s new day, we’ve got a new feed to get on, just managing expectations and kind of, just waking up and being excited that this is, what we are up here doing. It’s a grind, get up at 04:00, go to bed at 10:00, rinse and repeat.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a job like everything else.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It really is, it’s a job first and foremost.

The Essence of Hunting 

I love to cook, so the evening time, just jumping in there, everybody’s making a little something and putting it all together. Got happy people, full bellies and ready to do it again. That’s what it’s about, for me too.

Joey D’Amico: Like you said, it’s the fellowship of it all. You get to see kind of the same people, they might have friends, or friends of friends and then, everyone’s tied in somehow, and being able to hunt a considerably more than we would. If you were just a duck guide, in Canada, you can’t carry a gun if you’re guiding somebody. I think my dog’s probably picked up 1500 birds already, it’s just one of those things. It just completes the cycle, like Luke was saying. We’re making calls, we’re making decoys, running the dogs, filming, meeting the neighbors, meeting the farmers, meeting new folks that come up to hunt for three to 5 days, 6 days. I don’t know. I would be lying if I said I didn’t get tired but, you shake it off and you can just keep moving and you just get refreshed by, either new birds coming in or new opportunities in a different field that you might have been watching or something like that. Something’s different. You’re not doing the same thing every day, and then I love to cook, so the evening time, just jumping in there, everybody’s making a little something and putting it all together. Got happy people, full bellies and ready to do it again. That’s what it’s about, for me too.

Ramsey Russell: Are you enjoying it? Luke did everything that was cracked up to be even with flat tires.

Luke Costilow: Yeah. Even with flat tires. I was surprised. I made a month and a half before I get my first flat tire up here. It’s definitely mental and physical challenge, and because you’re here for such a long time, you truly have to take it day by day. Today is today, and tomorrow is going to be tomorrow, but you really have to focus on today. What’s truly been nice about that is, I hunt a lot back at home, but you don’t really see the migration happen, but being up here and being out there every day and, it’s your purpose to pay attention to the birds every day. You get to see, the migration happen and that’s just been a really cool kind of side product that I didn’t really necessarily expect. You see that first big waves of snow geese move in, then you see the mallards coming in behind them, and then you get that push of weather, and then all your snow geese leave, and then you think they’re gone, and then, the next week, another big push comes in, and you get to experience it and witness that, and that’s been truly humbling. That’s not something that I necessarily expected to experience, but that’s been pretty cool.

Ramsey Russell: That is a pretty cool aspect you just described. For example, we’re recording in mid October, and two nights ago, some of the youngsters went out, they shot geese. That morning they went out to finish up on some puddle ducks shooting a very tiny, I guarantee it was a tiny waterhole from what they described, just because they shot blue wings. Isn’t that crazy? That blue wings opened over a month ago down the deep south, and there’s still blue wings up here.

Joey D’Amico: Oh, yeah.

What is Waterfowl Hunting Like in Canada?

There’s a lot of ducks falling in. There’s a lot of dark geese falling in, white geese everywhere. 

Ramsey Russell: They won’t be here for long. It’s just a matter of the moon getting right, they’re gone. How would you describe to anybody listening that’s never been to Canada? You’re from Ohio, you’re from South Carolina. I’m from Mississippi. How would you all describe people listening, the Canada landscape and what hunting is like here versus back home?

Luke Costilow: It’s all relative. So I’ve heard from multiple people, when you go goose hunt to Canada, it’s going to ruin you from goose hunting back home. I can see that, and I can’t see that. I think, fortunately for me, I don’t really equate the two because, up here, let’s say you’re talking Canada geese. So we get a lot of Canada geese at home, but where I am, if you see a field of, 100, 200 Canada geese, I’m calling all my friends, and we’re going out the next day, and we’re all super excited. You come up here and you see a field of 200, 300, dark geese, Canada geese, you’re not even, blinking an eye at it. You’re just driving by. You’re like, oh, okay, then you just keep on driving. To me, it didn’t ruin hunting back home. So I have a special situation, because we have the property that we manage. So every hunt is special, and that two Canada geese that I shoot northeast Ohio at Coffee Creek is, to me, more special than coming up here and shooting eight a day or whatever. It’s just the sheer numbers that are up here. It’s just unbelievable.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a spectacle, and it’s changed a lot since I first started coming many years ago, in terms of access, in terms of crowding issues, in terms of guides, in terms of freelancers. There have been sometimes in the last few days I’m driving in, I was talking to you on the phone, you were behind me about 4 miles. There’s a lot of people out here, and these aren’t all farmers. It was a lot of traffic around here, pulling white trailers and rented minivans, and there was a lot of folks out here compared to 20 years ago anyway.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah. I think the loss of water has a lot to do with it, where birds are more concentrated now, especially around here with the big water. Yesterday I drove down south to a lake that, as a SU property, and I could get up in a tower and kind of look and see what was going on and you just see so many potholes are dry, so birds all kind of getting together, so that means the hunters are all kind of getting together. Same thing that’s, happening down south. We got loss of habitat. Seems like there’s more hunters. But really it’s just everyone’s kind of on top of each other trying to do the same thing.

Ramsey Russell: But it’s a really big landscape, and what’s so interesting is it is very dry. It’s drier even than last year, at least throughout a lot of parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba I’ve been in. Talking to one of the farmers last night, there’s a lot of hay bales. There’s been a good harvest. Everybody’s excited, everything produced. It’s dry because of a lack of snow to fill in all these potholes, but they got some timely rain. So there’s a lot of grain on the landscape. A lot of grain, a lot of wheat. Good wheat production, a lot of good hay production. I’ve seen alfalfa, I hate canola, but they say it was a great canola year.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah. They’re getting better at growing it. I mean, they’re out right now fertilizing fields and dragging and getting ready. They’re going to be ready for April before you know it. I think, they’re probably getting better at growing their food, and we’re getting better at hunting these birds, too I think

Ramsey Russell: Practically the entire landscape is divided in sections and range roads. Every square mile there’s a corner and it just goes on into infinity across Canada. And it’s crazy how you’ll drive three or four clicks and not see a goose, not see a duck, and then you cross this golden line and all of a sudden you’re back around. There’s a lot of ducks falling in. There’s a lot of dark geese falling in, white geese everywhere. It’s just crazy like that. That’s why you get in the truck and drive.

Joey D’Amico: You’re talking about, ways that you can still refresh yourself and keep going. I hate the word grind because it’s not a grind for me. It’s just get up and kind of do what you need to be doing to be successful, but you do get time in the truck by yourself or maybe the buddy jumps in and, you’re just seeing this creation out here and all these, birds and all the wildlife out here. Moose and mule deer and pronghorn and whitetail and I mean-

Ramsey Russell: Couch and bald eagles and magpies.

Joey D’Amico: It just goes on and on.

Luke Costilow: And I saw elk last night.

Ramsey Russell: An Elk. Wow.

Joey D’Amico: It’s just definitely something that refreshes yourself and gives you the optimism for the next morning. You were asking about, does it ruin the hunting, for us back home? And i’ll say the same thing, me being in a little rice field that I’ve managed is, I get just as much joy out of that, as finding 4000 birds in a field that we go and finish, a limit before 07:00 or whatever.

Wet and Dry Years: The Impact on Bird Populations in Canada

In drier years, they’re not, but in all years, you got these arctic geese, the cacklers, the snows, a lot more ducks, a lot big birds coming down, and they just stop right here, avail themselves of all that grain and get fattened up before they truck on down to our part of the world further south.

Ramsey Russell: It definitely doesn’t ruin it and the question was, how does it differ from how we hunt back home, because it’s just unbelievable. For as far as the human eye can see, grain, and in places, water, and in wet years, water across the landscape is the absolute top of the flyway. Right now, in wet years, a lot of the dark geese and mallards and pintails are hatching around here. In drier years, they’re not, but in all years, you got these arctic geese, the cacklers, the snows, a lot more ducks, a lot big birds coming down, and they just stop right here, avail themselves of all that grain and get fattened up before they truck on down to our part of the world further south. It’s just different in a way. I tell you what else, that second question, part of that is, I spent a long time up here, you all spent a long time up here, and Canadians, whether you’re in the city of Saskatoon or out here in the country, they’re such nice people overall. Its like going back to Mayberry, RFD. I tell you what you don’t do in the deep south anymore, you don’t go knock on a door, say, can I go shoot you ducks or geese, you don’t do that anywhere in the United States that I’m aware of. Maybe in some of the states, but not most parts, not the deep south. There’s no knocking on doors and going on nobody’s place to hunt. There’s no driving and, burning a tank of gas, looking out over this grain heavy landscape, looking at ducks and geese. That’s totally different, but the people now. Talk about a small world, this is what’s so amazing. I can talk to some of the members here at camp, and it’s unbelievable how many people we know or how many people we know that, know the same people. Yesterday we went scouting south of here, about 30 miles, I’ve driven through here a million times since. I’ve never hunted like we’re doing here, right around this area. The last time I was here, I was still working for US fish and wildlife service. And I was up here on a duck banding detail and we bought grain down the road from a man named Halter Halderson, who i’ve never forgotten. What I remember too, is he used to have these old international harvesters and John decades old, that he farmed his acreage with. We were walking in his shop one day. Cause that’s where he was to talk to him, and I started looking at his wrenches and his tools, and some of them, I swear, was long as my arm and bent 13 times at certain little acute angles to where he could sit there for Lord knows how long it took him to thread that all the way through all that implement, all the way to a back screw and sit there for God knows how long, turning it to get that screw on or off, and he had custom built those over decades to fix his own tractors. I always wondered, I stayed in touch with him for 5 or 10 years after that would have been the year 2001 is how long ago that’s been, and yesterday we go down to that same little community in jumps a farmer that one of the guys knew and he’s showing us some new ground. His brother’s out looking for mule deer, so he’s got an archery tag from mule deer. So he’s looking for ducks for us too. We just hit it off and we start talking. It’s crazy because it’s way before your time, but you didn’t happen to know this guy? Yeah, I knew him, he said, matter of fact because on the weekends, Halter and his wife Jean would invite us duck banders, us kids. They called us over to their lake spot or camp to fry fish and eat, just get away from what we had to do, and now his family, his parents owned that same Lake spot. Mister Halter passed just three years ago, right around COVID. He finally aged out and kicked the bucket. His wife still in town, and I hope, thinking tomorrow afternoon I may drive by and try to find her, say hello to her. I hadn’t seen her forever, but they were such good people and I said something to them one time, you all, it’s so nice inviting us in and taking care of like we’re family. I really appreciate that and she goes, what the hell else are we going to talk about when it’s -40 but our duck banders. We were friends for life once you come into their lives like that, and I still see that when I meet Canadians around here. They’re just good people. Is that not different than it is back home? I think it is.

Joey D’Amico: It’s like, I guess what 1950s America would have been like.

Ramsey Russell: I think so, man.

Joey D’Amico: Countless cups of coffee, it’s 04:00 in the afternoon. I just made a fresh pot of coffee, come on in. I’ll kind of slow my day down and reset and have some coffee with you.

Ramsey Russell: A couple local farmers came by last night and ate some of those smoked ribs somebody cooked and had their children with them. Think about this, that the daughter was in 7th grade and there were 4 total 7th graders, and they blended the class, I can’t remember 8, 7, 9. There were 3 classes in one that comprised about a dozen people. That’s how different this is than back home, where even in a town of 10,000 or 15,000, back home you’ve got 70 or 80 or 90 kids, in a single class. Classrooms are 30 and 40 people. It just makes for a totally different experience all the way around. When you get out here, it’s one of my favorite things about.

Joey D’Amico: I think, too, they’ve got such an amazing, work ethic up here, just getting everything done. There’s a 14 year old driving a, double hauler down the grid road when we got here in August. Can’t legally drive on the road, but he can drive a semi, two quarters down, and they’re so humble up here. They just do in their way of life up here.

Ramsey Russell: It’s simpler times and there’s a lot to be said about it. I’ve said a million times I would move to Canada tomorrow were it not for the wintertime. -20, I’m out, dude. I just can’t imagine being in these homes up here in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but go plough, push the snow off, and it just being bone chilling. -20 is bone chilling, and it gets colder than that.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of guys that can afford to go down to Mexico or go to Bahamas or something like that. They’re just able to kind of get out and get refreshed and bring their families with them. Some of these guys are here, like you say, turning wrenches, getting equipment ready for April, and just toughening it out.

Ramsey Russell: You two guys have been here for a while. When did you all get up here? Late August, early September?

Joey D’Amico: Yeah, late August.

Luke Costilow: Early September for me.

Ramsey Russell: So you start getting your boots on the ground, you start driving out, learning the roads, learning the area, learning the farms, learning the properties, knocking on doors, building relationships with local people. Can you talk about any of the relationships? maybe you knocked on the door one time and now you all buddies. Can you talk about any of that? Do you get to know and meet a lot of these people?

Joey D’Amico: Yeah. I think that’s the biggest thing. It’s not that we just want to come hunt ducks and forget about you. For me, I want to know, if they’re interested in, hanging out too, because, we might hunt them once in September, and then, two months later, at the end of the season, we might see birds again. I don’t want to just be that guy that picks up the phone and isn’t part of their community, even though we’re up here just two months, I want to be able to, hey, come over for supper. Hey, let’s grab a beer. Hey, let’s do something together. Let’s spend some time together. It’s just more for me than just-

Ramsey Russell: Go back to the guide part of what you do, it loops all the way back to being kind of a people thing. This whole life in and of itself is about people.

Joey D’Amico: Oh, 100%.

Ramsey Russell:  Life is about people, and when we come out and do a job like this or do a job like that, I can’t think of a job that doesn’t involve people. The human experience is about people.

Joey D’Amico: Community. Yeah.

Ducks Unlimited: A Controversial Topic?

Whereas, do you support Ducks Unlimited? Then you fall into the trap of, yes, sir, because, of course we are, and then it’s, nope, not allowed.

Ramsey Russell: You told me an interesting story this morning. You found Luke a heck of a heck of a duck feed, and we’re all excited. He knocked on the door. What happened then?

Luke Costilow: Yes, I went and I found the farmer, and he came out, and we’re having a little conversation. I was like, oh, sir, I’m looking to duck and goose hunt this feed over here. And he said, oh, okay, you can hunt the geese, but you can’t shoot the ducks, but what I was looking at was the ducks. It was about 2000 ducks in a field. And he told me where a couple other snow goose feeds were and things like that. But he didn’t want us shooting the ducks. That was the first time I’ve ever experienced them be like, oh, yeah, sure, shoot the geese, but not the ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Have you met people that just didn’t want you on their property? because that does happen.

Luke Costilow: Sure.

Ramsey Russell: They’ve got an obligation to somebody else, or somebody else is going to shoot it tomorrow, or maybe they don’t just like outfitters. Some of these farmers we’ve met don’t want club foot on their farm. There’s all kinds of stuff going on. Have you ever met some of those kind of –

Luke Costilow: Ducks Unlimited is a big, contentious topic around here.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Luke Costilow: A lot of times, a farmer will ask you, if you support Ducks Unlimited. Say, Sir, excuse me, I wonder if I can hunt your property. Then their first question will be, do you support Ducks Unlimited? And then if you say, oh, yes, sir, I love ducks unlimited and wetlands, then he says, nope, not allowed.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t understand that at all. Seems like we’re all on the same team here. I’m a huge supporter of Ducks Unlimited.

Luke Costilow: Sure. The farmers don’t like ducks unlimited because of the wetland restoration work that they’re doing, they’re taking farmland away and their livelihood away and making wetlands. I have run into that multiple times. Whereas, do you support Ducks Unlimited? Then you fall into the trap of, yes, sir, because, of course we are, and then it’s, nope, not allowed.

Ramsey Russell: I understand. Everybody votes their pocketbook, no matter what they talk about on the outside world. Man gets into a voting booth, he going to vote his own personal pocketbook. The reason I support ducks unlimited, you come up here in these dry years, like this year, like last year, and you start seeing, we’re talking about a one acre, 2 acre, just little ephemeral wetland that in a low spot, and it comes a dry year. It’s not just that they plough it. It’s not just they say, oh, it’s dry enough, I can plant my wheat across that low spot in my field and add an acre more production. When you start seeing the dirt pans come out, they’re taking off the high and filling in the low, well, guess what? That wetland’s gone forever, and we don’t need a no net loss wetland, in daddy Bush’s words, we need net gains. That’s why I support ducks unlimited, because they’re up here fighting to fight, man, and that’s an interesting topic, I guess it’s where one ideology against the next. I’m a duck hunter. I’m sorry we lived all these years, all my lifetime, without that pothole being filled in with a dirt pan. We need the water right there. I guess those kinds of people wouldn’t like me, Luke, because it might not be as simple as me saying, well, thank you very much, walk around. I might be giving them an earful.

Luke Costilow: Sure.

Ramsey Russell: That’d be a tough conversation, wouldn’t it?

Luke Costilow: It’s definitely two completely different, ideologies. I can see both sides, obviously. I’m on DU side and the water side and everything. Especially, I went to school for a while, wildlife management and wetland ecology and things like that, but I also see their side, too. And, acreage is literally their livelihood. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about a change in landscape. It brings up a topic. Every so often, you see a- I’m lacking the word, where you aggregate your townships and range into a bigger, and it comes up with something, but what you see is a marker and it’d be like a Canadian flag, and this little headstone, you stop to see what it’s about and it’s an old school. It’s where an old school used to be. Back in the 30s, 40s and 50s, up here in Canada, every 6 miles or less, you had a schoolhouse, because you had all these families from here to wherever. You had all these families farming a quarter section or a section, and all their kids went to the same little school, and then further up the road, 6 miles was another little school. All their families were farming out here, little quarter sections or half sections farming and now you can’t make a living farming a section or a quarter section. For as far as the human eye can see, there’s wheat running in one direction, I mean, for miles, running out there and they’re putting fertilizer on that little two inch furrow, and they’re planting that little two inch furrow, and life lives and dies by this little two inch furrow. That’s where they’re going to plant next year. The agricultural profit is so marginal that they’re having to aggregate and get bigger and bigger farms just to make a living.

Joey D’Amico: Oh, yeah.

The Impact of Droughts on Farmers and Ducks

So I can see where they need that five acres of that wetland. I can see where they love these droughts. Heck with a duck, they’re pretty plenty, they want to farm that land.

Ramsey Russell: Ain’t nobody getting super rich up here. These are still mostly mom and pop farms up here, but they’re farming to the landscape. So I can see where they need that five acres of that wetland. I can see where they love these droughts. Heck with a duck, they’re pretty plenty, they want to farm that land. I mean, we’ve done conversations on here before about how all this no till farming out to the landscape is a big black hole, that the continental population of pintails is just slowly but surely vanishing, because they can’t tell the difference in shortgrass prairie, and last year’s residual crops tell us they go and make a nest, and here come the tractors. There go millions of eggs a year, and that’s what’s up with pintail, it’s sad. Have you run into any farmers that don’t want you on because of outfitters? I’ve seen that a lot up here. As somebody that works with a lot of outfits, they have problems at times because of other outfits rutting up their fields or doing something wrong. Last year, I was up in a part of Saskatchewan, and we knocked on a door, and, boy, did we want to hunt that, because there were dark geese, light geese, ducks. Just a sweet little setup for us to get in there and knock it out real quick on our last day. We finally found the home, we knocked on the door, and I was with a Canadian. He was talking, trust you me, his accent didn’t sound like mine. She goes, nope, we don’t allow Americans, they go, but I’m Canadian. She goes, we don’t allow you either. Shut the door. Just did not want us on her property. Have you all never seen that?

Joey D’Amico: We’ve actually seen it both ways this year. We’ve got a couple farmers up north that only want one or two outfitters because they know heck and hold those guys responsible for being on my property if something happens. A lot of the farmers are not happy with the way that their fellow Canadians treat the property. They love Americans because, really, we clean up wads, we clean up our shells, we clean up our trash. If we brush something in, if we haul it into the field, we’re not leaving, weeds and sage and other stuff in the field. We’re picking, pulling it out type of thing. So, we’ve seen both sides of it where, question, are you an outfitter? No, we’re just up here, freelancing, buddy hunting type of thing and okay, you’re good, then. Same thing, are you an outfitter? No.  Well, we only allow XYZ outfitters to hunt.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Joey D’Amico: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. That’s very interesting.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah. We had a piece that we looked at, and the guy probably farms 30,000 acres or more, and it’s the same thing, only two outfitters on all of that property.

Ramsey Russell: I just had this thought, Luke, the guy said he didn’t want to shoot the ducks because his belief is the ducks weren’t doing well. I wonder if he’s one of those farmers filling in wetness. I just stuck a cord with me when you said that. I want to go knock on the door and ask him.

Luke Costilow: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: There’s a reason they ain’t doing well and, golly, man, it’s just that humanity’s past is meteorically colliding with the future. Us and our ducks are taking it on the chin right now. I hate to hear that. Let’s swap gears a little bit. The first few days I was here, we targeted white geese, and for the record, I love to shoot white geese up here, and I love it. I like to come back up here in the spring and shoot white geese. I love to shoot roskies and snows and blues like nobody’s business. About the same token, I like to shoot the ducks and I like to shoot the dark geese. But there’s something magical about you put out the big spread, you get everything in place. It’s not a simple task, even with a lot of hands, it takes a little work. Then when you got to pick it up, it takes a lot of work. When it happens, it’s absolutely magic. The way those birds will get downwind and birds out front along the deck coming in, but you don’t know, they may stay high, but, when they start turning upside down and dumping there, you’re like, this is fixing. Half the time i’ve been here in the snow, goose spread about every other play I pulled the trigger in a lot of plays, I keep my phone on. When you’ve got that little iphone on wide angle and those birds come in and just spread like a firework array right above that little can because they’re right on top of it. It’s just spectacular. I just do not get tired of it. Then yesterday, we hit a good white feed and did the deed. We got it all put out and everything else, and there were geese everywhere but where we were. Once the first flock goes down within sight, it’s all she wrote, let alone when two or three or five or ten flocks start hitting down all over the horizon it’s over.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah. I think, we had permission in the field across the way, and we, parked truck trailer there still, and-

Ramsey Russell: Or you should have seen them hitting that field after we moved the truck back to the spread to pick up decoy because they were tornadoing right on top of where our trucks have been parked.

Joey D’Amico: I think Luke has said it best. It’s hard work to find any feed and get permission and then make a game plan and execute it, but the wildness of the white birds makes it even more rewarding. When you have a day, like the first day, shot 140 or something like that, yesterday they did it right for the first little bit, and then all of a sudden, they bounced over to the next little section or next little area, and then there comes the other 30,000 of their friends right behind them.

Ramsey Russell: But it’s all relative, too. Yesterday morning, they threw us a middle finger, so to speak. There were five shooters, we killed 50 birds, half a limit. So on the one hand, well, they threw us the middle finger. On the other hand, when I fell in love with snow geese, the limit was 5, and on the best of days, we’d have shot 25, and on the average day, we’d have shot much less than that.

Joey D’Amico: Right.

Ramsey Russell: I still love them. I’ve said for a long time, the good old days really are now, especially if you like to shoot white birds, and I love to hunt white birds. I really do.

Joey D’Amico: I definitely enjoy it more here in Canada than into the states. I think they-

Ramsey Russell: It gets different. I mostly hunt them way down south in the past, and it’s just different. The flocks are so much bigger, they’re in a different life stage. It’s just different. And when they start to migrate back up this way in the spring, when you’re running traffic on them in some of those flyaway stakes, it’s different again, because a lot of them will just peel off and give it up. We ran traffic right out here the back door, and I hadn’t seen white birds sitting right out here. Could have walked to the spread from where we’re sitting right now. I hadn’t seen birds feeding. They’re coming off the big roost and flying for parts unknown. But we ran trafficking, and in doing so, 99.9% of a whole lot of birds never even checked up. Never quit wing beak, never gave our spread of single, but enough of them peeled off and came in that it was a almost a chaotic hunt.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah. That first day with Brad and Zach, it was, ones, twos, ten, and it was pretty cool to see. Like you said it, you’re trying to get birds picked up, you’re trying to get stay concealed, running the dog, trying to manage when people are shooting it was tough. I’d rather do that than shoot, into 5000 birds trying to all sit down at once.

Ramsey Russell: So dead white birds out in the decoys don’t spook more white birds from coming in. But you can’t count them. You got to run the dog, got to pick them up. You got to do stuff. At the same time you got birds trying to come in. It just gets a little chaotic sometimes like that.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah, it could definitely affect the dog working. All of a sudden you got 50 birds and you’re trying to send on a certain line and the dogs, smelling everything else that’s out there so-

Ramsey Russell: I hate to shoot over them when they’re, out there, because the retrievers here anyway, they’re running on marks. So three birds fail. 1, 2, 3, they’ve counted. They’re going to go after the last marks, and on the way back there’s a volley. Now there’s five more marks. That’s when stuff gets wrapped around the axle. That’s when you start losing a dog with a lot of good snap and just turn it more into a meat dog if you let that happen too much. These retrievers are about making the hunt better, about finding birds you volley into it, 3 fall dead in the decoys and 1 sells out there 200 yards and both those dogs have them marked and off they go to that mark. That’d be a big interruption having to walk out there and get that bird, but the dog got it. He’s there and back within 60 seconds.

Joey D’Amico: Right.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what those dogs are for. We sell one back behind the spread. It just fell out and not dead and char marked it. So I sent her, and that bird was 2 or 3, 4 foot off the deck when she launched and caught him. She built up enough speed to get airborne before he could get away from her, and that’s what you bring those dogs up here for?

Joey D’Amico: Oh, yeah.

Building a Big Goose Hunting Culture

Ramsey Russell: I sure love the white bird. Do you have a preference? Like, a lot of southern people I talk to, and I asked this of outfitters when I hunt with them, what do your clients want to shoot? The further south you go, the more this holds true. A lot of clients prefer ducks over geese.

Joey D’Amico: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: It may have used to been a big goose hunting culture throughout North America, the United States, but it’s not anymore. It’s mostly a duck hunting culture. Most Americans want to come shoot ducks, and me personally, I don’t. I want to come up here and shoot geese because I don’t get to do this back home.

Joey D’Amico: Especially with them finishing the way and coming the way that they come, I enjoy if I can fool them and they’re, feet down. It doesn’t matter if it’s duck, a goose, a crane, and whatever. If I’ve done my job and the plans right, that’s the most I get. It’s like this morning, just watching you guys through the binoculars, I came out, helped set up, and I went, 500,000 yards back, and it was-

Ramsey Russell: I wondered how you showed up so quick after the hunt.

Joey D’Amico: I was scouting or whatever, but, I just wanted to make sure that you guys were doing it. It was working for you all, and you all guys were having fun.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, it worked for us, yeah.

Joey D’Amico: I mean, I was on cloud nine, just seeing birds would turn around, and they’d come back to that east and just start dropping. Then, you see them start falling first, and then you hear the shots, and they got seat in the back, trying to bust his way out of the truck.

Ramsey Russell: This morning was mallards and pintails and quite a few wigeons.

Joey D’Amico: Right.

Ramsey Russell: That’s just not something you shoot every day in the field as wigeons. Have you hunted up here enough? What are some of the other crazy stuff you all shot out dry field hunting?

Joey D’Amico: Wood ducks, Teal. I think TJ, his crew, last year shot a Brandt in the spread.

Ramsey Russell: Golly.

Luke Costilow: I’ve had a Brandt work me in a pea field one time.

Ramsey Russell: You are kidding.

Luke Costilow: Yeah. Didn’t come in, but it was close.

Ramsey Russell: One of the craziest things i’ve ever seen in Canada. It was late October, it had just snowed, the first significant snow of the year, and it was a foot deep. There were big flocks of mallards working in the middle of them and we were way out in central Alberta, was a black duck. And the guy had finally parked a truck and got up and he said, no, we don’t have black ducks? Sure enough, that flock started working. I said, look, mid flock. He said that was the first black duck he’d ever seen in Alberta. That bird got lost, didn’t he?

Joey D’Amico: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You don’t see one over around here, have you?

Joey D’Amico: No, I don’t.

Luke Costilow: No.

Joey D’Amico: No. We’ve killed a wood duck this year in the field. Killed teal in the field. They’re just skirting through. I think that’s the two craziest ones, or not crazy, but just out of ordinary birds that we’ve killed.

Ramsey Russell: Coming up here to this particular place, especially I marvel at the technological advancements in decoys. Some of the name brands we were using. Those windsocks are just unbelievable how good they are. Built tall where we can put them over the blinds and get up under them and just work good, go out quick, pick up. It’s unbelievable. But you know what I want to do, Luke? Seriously, how cool would it be to go out with a fully homemade spread of silhouettes, dark geese, and hunt them? Just absolute yesteryear era.

Luke Costilow: I love it. Let’s do it.

Ramsey Russell: Let’s do it. Don’t dare me, because i’ve got it. I’m not near the artist or carver you are, but I have got a, 3 or 4 dozen super sized silhouette decoys made out of galvanized aluminum. They were tearing down a greenhouse at Mississippi State University, and I was working for the university at the time, and I saw it and I stopped, started looking around. Some of the guys with me were like I think I can make decoys out of this, and to this day, I still, once in a blue moon, break them out. If somebody calls me up, we’re going to hunt early Canada geese in Mississippi, I break them out. I would design them a lot better than I did, I tell you that if I had to do again. But they’re heavy. You don’t want to have to carry them into a field. You want to be able to drive right up and take them out. But I’d love to go out and hunt birds like that. I just think it’d be amazing. Just same as you going out and I don’t think you need this super realism anymore. Not this far north. Not with a lot of these new birds, not with a lot of these fresh birds that have forgotten last year’s hunting season or especially the hatchier birds. I think they’ll come into the old tried and true methods, don’t you? I think you want to do that one day.

Luke Costilow: I think so. I’d love to. To me, that’s why I’m a decoy carver. It’s the satisfaction of knowing that you were involved in every single step of tricking that bird that you just shot and watching them work and knowing you’re the reason. That’s why I’m a carver. I would love that project.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all for having me up here.

Joey D’Amico: You better.

A High Duck IQ

It’s a foregone conclusion that the kid, that our kids are going to be introduced to it. We need more kids like him getting into it.

Ramsey Russell: I’m so glad I stopped by, Joey. I noticed you took a shower and kind of shaved your beard. You don’t look as scraggly as you did. What’s going on?

Joey D’Amico: I got my wife and daughter just about to land in Saskatoon, so I’m going to boogie.

Ramsey Russell: Is that why you’re looking at your watch so much?

Joey D’Amico: It’s been good. I’m excited to see them, and, I know it’s kind of past halfway, but still, just to be able to see them. They came up last year for a month and stayed, and so they’ve experienced it before, but it’s just a good camp to be at this year, and I think they’re going to enjoy their time, and like you saw last night, the farmers got four or five kids, probably all got that late summer birthday. Then one of the other members got his kids up here now too, so it should be a lot of fun.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what camp’s about. One of the most adorable memories I’ll have of this stop was yesterday. Chad had left early to go do a little scouting, and when he came back, he had his two children, I’m going to guess ages 4 and 6, and he opened the truck, and it was like a couple of little bird dogs coming out running and screaming and hollering and picking up decoys and smiling outside, their faces. So glad to be there. What a great place to bring children.

Joey D’Amico: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Just the camp experience, them sitting there watching cartoons and coming out and picking with birds. Then we had something else special. I’ll end on this note today. They brought a 15 year old from, I guess, South Carolina up here, little Jack, and we came out the field the first day, and we shot a few geese in the afternoon. This kid was just inquisitive. What’s this? What kind of this? And i’ve shown him all the differences in the raws, and this morning, he shot his first duck. That wasn’t seven yards off his barrel. Still, I was impressed. One shot, boom! He killed his first Mallard. And I told the dad when we got back. Dad, he doesn’t hunt. I said, you got a duck hunter on your hands now.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: This kid’s ate up with.

Joey D’Amico: He’s got a high duck IQ, and that’s one thing you see when you meet people. You can tell if they’re going to be good at what they’re doing, and he’s asking the right questions and he’s doing the right things for just being here a couple days. I mean, he’s helped set decoys last two mornings, and he knew the program. He got the explanation one time and he was off, so it’s pretty cool.

Ramsey Russell: He’s fired up for it, and I just wish there were a lot more 15 year old kids like him that were coming up and getting this introduction.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Into duck hunting, we need it. It’s a foregone conclusion that the kid, that our kids are going to be introduced to it. We need more kids like him getting into it.

Joey D’Amico: Right.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all very much. I’ve enjoyed meeting with you, and we got one more night, and tonight’s going to be fun because they’re doing a low country bowl.

Joey D’Amico: Low country bowl. Yep.

Ramsey Russell: 40 pounds of white shrimp they brought up.

Joey D’Amico: Yep. Sausage, corn, potatoes.

Ramsey Russell: I’m trying to think of what we had this morning. This morning we had rice and grits.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah. Shrimp and grits.

Ramsey Russell: Shrimp and grits his morning. Yesterday we had something else, seafood like a scampi. And tonight doing a low country bowl, and all the farmers are coming over. Go out and shoot ducks in the morning, it sounds like.

Joey D’Amico: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Cause We found a feed yesterday.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I’m excited to see what happens with it in the morning if the ducks come back and they’re still kicking around like they’re worried. It looked like somebody kicked a beehive.

Joey D’Amico: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So Should be pretty exciting.

Joey D’Amico:] We’ll have one more guest in camp here in probably a couple hours, too. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’ll be the red Beard Yarnell. Everybody calls him Tex. I called him Red Beard.

Joey D’Amico: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And somebody told me one time ago, everybody calls him Tex. Just cause you ain’t never seen him racing down the Missouri river that freaking red beard, long hair flying behind him. He looks like a pirate, driving that boat down that river. He’ll always be red beard to me but. Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere from Saskatchewan. A lot of you all listening may want to be a duck guide even after hearing all this, and I encourage you to do it. I think everybody needs to try it at some point in time, but take a month, take a 2 off. And why not? Especially if you’re young. Get up here and try it. There’s worse moonlighting jobs and being a duck guide in Canada this time of year. See you all next time.