Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where today’s guest hails from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, SuperTalk Outdoors, Ricky Mathews is an outspoken voice from Mississippi wildlife conservation. How the heck are you, Ricky? I’m glad to have you on the other side of this conversation today.

Ricky Mathews: I’m doing good, Ramsey. It’s great to see you, my friend.

Ramsey Russell: Where are you from? Are you from the Gulf Coast?

Ricky Mathews: Well, I was born in Birmingham, Alabama. My dad was a traveling salesman, so by way of Mobile and then Pensacola, we moved to Gulfport when I was 4, so I consider myself a native of the Gulf Coast.

Why the World Needs More Grandfathers

I think of growing up and all of my connections to the outdoor world were through my grandfather, who introduced me with a cane pole and model filament to bluegill brim up in the Mississippi oxbows and to this day, that is one of my favorite things to do. 

Ramsey Russell: Well, you’ve been there long enough now, I guess we’ll take you. What are your hunting and fishing origins and how important has that been to your life growing up?

Ricky Mathews: Well, I was lucky, as I mentioned, I spent a lot of time early in my life, spending a lot of time with my grandfathers and others – My grandfathers loved the fish, both of them and they also loved to hunt, mostly squirrels, that was kind of their thing. My dad, he loved to hunt, but we didn’t hunt a lot together, we would do one or 2 big dove hunts a year, we would fish when we had an opportunity too. He worked a lot, but in our free time, when we could be together, we would do that as well. But I spent a lot of time, my grandfather’s fishing and just, I fell in love with the outdoors at a very young age, I mean, I’ve got pictures of me fishing when I was like 2 years old and it gets in my DNA, you know how they say it, Ramsey, I mean, it’s in my DNA and it became part of who I am and a lot of my success in my life actually came from fishing off a pier off of Gulfport and looking out over the water and seeing these big boats pass by and I said one day I’m going to own a boat, but in order to do that, I’m going to have to have some success in my life first and the rest is kind of history, but that’s where I got it from, just family, like a lot of people did.

Ramsey Russell: You talk about grandfathers. And it just reminds me of a meme I saw one time online that described grandfathers as the original Google. And there’s a lot of truth to that, isn’t it? It’s like the world today needs a lot more grandfathers.

Ricky Mathews: They do.

Ramsey Russell: I think of growing up and all of my connections to the outdoor world were through my grandfather, who introduced me with a cane pole and model filament to bluegill brim up in the Mississippi oxbows and to this day, that is one of my favorite things to do. Isn’t it crazy how you can connect to nature with a single piece of monofilament string?

Ricky Mathews: Isn’t that amazing? Oh, my gosh. And then if you see the room, I’m in now up there, I’m looking at, this is what we call our fishing hunting room at the house, this is also my studio, but I’m looking at probably 50 rods and reels that are organized nicely in this room. But, yeah, it is, man, I mean and boy, that piece of monofilament has created a lot of fun for me, to be honest with you, it’s been the connection, it’s that piece of monofilament that runs through my family, that connects me with my sons and my daughter and their kids and nature and the legacy of my family. You’re right, it’s a wonderful image.

Ramsey Russell: I think about how much my past and my ancestors are to who I am, through those little subtle connections, monofilament shotguns, old vests, bird dogs, whatever. It’s crazy how generations surpass like that through time and how it becomes so important to who I am.

Ricky Mathews: I’ve got an old sweet 16 single shot, 16 gauge that my son Jordan, 2 years ago killed a beautiful 8 point with, his goal was to use this shotgun, okay. But it was my grandfather’s shotgun and it must have been his father’s shotgun before him, but he passed it to my dad and my dad one day got this wild idea that he was going to carve in the stock and he made a little, he made some carvings. They aren’t very good, but I remember when he was doing it, that’s cool that he’s doing that and then when he got done doing it, he said, man, I think I might have ruined this gun. And then, of course, my – unfortunately, my father died when I was 21 and I look at that gun today and I’m so happy that he made those carvings in that gun. I mean, just think about it and now I’ve used it to hunt with it, my son is hunting with it. It’s something like that thing that connects us to the past is –

Ramsey Russell: It’s a story that it keeps writing new chapters with subsequent generations like that –

Ricky Mathews: Isn’t it, man, that’s so true.

Ramsey Russell: Now what are you going to do with that old shotgun? Are you going to do any carving or anything to it?

Ricky Mathews: No, obviously, we’re still already it’s my go to gun for squirrel hunting, even today. I love that old 16 gauge single shot.

Ramsey Russell: And you talk about squirrel hunting and some people kind of think of small game hunting squirrels, rabbits, as just being child’s play but, gosh, it’s no telling how many people cut their teeth on hunting small game and one of my sons, especially my youngest son is a ardent squirrel hunter and really and truly, we duck hunted, we deer hunted, we fished when he was a little boy. But the squirrel hunting was something took on it and I’m not really a squirrel hunter. I had squirrel hunting when I was a little boy, but he brought me back into it, brought me right back into this thing and it became a longstanding tradition of I was on his birthday, his mama would give him a Friday out of school to give all our kids that was our family tradition. Boy, I wish I’d been so lucky, growing up because on their birthday, they got a, not only did we celebrate birthday all week, they got a day out of school, he would always take his on a Friday. So we would have a 3 day weekend squirrel hunting. And I was just kind of going along with it but I really went from shooting a shotgun back to a 22 rifle and he was a dead eye with that little 22, quietest could be walking through the woods. He’d always outshot his old dad, I’m telling you, he’d always fill up his game best before I did and then it became a tradition of ours to cook squirrel dumplings. And on Sunday for lunch, mama and the other 2 kids would come over and we would eat squirrel dumplings and that’s just kind of our recipe we developed which is kind of like chicken and dumplings with a lot of squirrels and a secret ingredient. But that was our big deal and to this day he got out of the US marines, after 4 years, came back to Mississippi and that was his thing with squirrel hunting, that’s still –

Everyone Has a Hunting Story to Tell

But it’s the learning about the woods and the things you talk about and the tranquility of it all and the memories you’re making. 

Ricky Mathews: Ramsey, I’ve been doing SuperTalk Outdoors now for a little over 2 years and I love the – I bring my guests on, I love to talk to them about where their love of the outdoors came from. 90% of them got it from fathers and granddaddies. Some of them were introduced to the outdoors later in their lives, but the ones who got it from their daddies and their granddaddies, inevitably, it was small game, as sort of the begin, the opening salvo of their other hunting experience, going out into the woods with their dads or grandfathers and walking around that, certainly, that’s my story as well. But it’s not even really in those moments it’s not about shooting the squirrel, although that’s a nice cherry on top of the experience. But it’s the learning about the woods and the things you talk about and the tranquility of it all and the memories you’re making. I can remember almost every hunt ever went on with my granddad’s or my dad, that’s impact right there and everyone has a very similar story to tell.

Ramsey Russell: It’s the passing of a torch. I can’t remember the exact steps of a hunter, but it does kind of start off you’re a child and you’re following or being carried by your ancestors off into this strange new world that you’ve never really seen and then kind of the goal is you want to shoot one, then the goal is to shoot more and become proficient and then we go through a numbers phase where it’s all about the limits and this, that and another and now a couple of older guys like ourselves, Ricky, it really does become an appreciation where the duck or the goose or the deer, to me is more about a conduit, 2 connections not only to the natural world, but I cannot go duck hunting around trees without thinking about my grandfather, who I never duck hunted with. He had aged out before I got to duck hunt with him, but he gave me, in high school an old Remington 1100 shotgun and I commit myself on Christmas morning, now that the kids are grown up and there ain’t no such thing as Santa Claus around our house anyway, maybe around your house, but I get up in the morning, Christmas morning, drive to camp and I go duck hunting with that old gun, no other gun, it’s just that old gun. And I’m going to tell you, man, it’s almost like the old man is sitting in the blind with me. Little did he know what a passion or a tradition he was passing on to me when he gave a 13 year old kid that 12 gauge.

Ricky Mathews: I’ve got a 12 gauge 870 Wingmaster, which I use for dove hunting and early days of my duck hunting experience and man, do I cherish that gun today. I mean, that was my dad’s go to gun just for before a bunch of the fancy guns started to come out. He wanted me to, he said, you can do an automatic or semi automatic, but you, I want you to learn how to use a pump, you’re going to use pumps. And it just he made me think that was getting back to the tradition of hunting, I still look at that gun today and have, there’s so many memories in that gun. We used to go to West Point every year dove hunting with friends and man, did we have some good times doing that together. All these people coming together and hunting these fields and following the doves at the end of the shoot and cleaning them and then cooking them and the camaraderie and man, what a great experience. And people who don’t love hunting, when they start to understand those aspects of it, they usually get hooked, they usually say, oh, my gosh, I didn’t realize hunting was all of these things, these traditions and this camaraderie and this learning about life, that’s what hunting is.

One Last Hunt: Honoring My Grandfather’s Legacy

I never did duck hunt with my grandfather, but we dove hunted, Labor Day weekend and I swear on a stack of Bibles, I was a teenager, way too old to know better before I realized that Labor Day was not a day off to go dove hunting.

Ramsey Russell: That’s so important, I never did duck hunt with my grandfather, but we dove hunted, Labor Day weekend and I swear on a stack of Bibles, I was a teenager, way too old to know better before I realized that Labor Day was not a day off to go dove hunting. I thought that’s what it was all about and the holiday itself but man, my earliest, most nostalgic type memories are hunting with my grandfather, the smell of a springer spaniels, spent shotgun shelves, doves and we were always the last group and he was an amazing shot, my dad was much better, I was learning and growing up, but we were always the last one out of this big dove field because I never heard of breasts in a dove, we sat there and picked them all, which, it doesn’t take much to pick a dove, we picked them all and he cooked whole pick game, that’s how he did it. And that’s just, I didn’t know any better, that’s what we did. But that and I have said, no matter how far around the world I go, if I had one last supper type hunt, it would be Labor Day weekend dove hunt opener with that environment, going back to those scents and smells and to this day, my kids even I got off the road last year, came back from a real long trip over to South Africa was wore out, we had shot a bunch of doves over there. I’m like, man, it’s hotter than hades out here in Mississippi, I’m going to call it a day and sit in the air conditioned and my kids played the tradition, they said, you got to go, dad, it’s what we do. And it’s all they’ve done since they were old enough to go, I dragged them along to a dove field and they were right, it is what we do on Labor Day weekend and it’s the last hunt. If I only had one more hunt to go on in my entire life, I want to go on a Mississippi dove opener, brink of heatstroke, it don’t matter and hopefully live long enough to whole pick those doves and cook them in a skillet like my grandfather did.

Hunting Traditions Around the World

I bet no matter where you go in the world, those traditions are part of all families. You might speak a different language, but the traditions are similar, aren’t they?

Ricky Mathews: Yeah, no doubt. Hey, it’s interesting, in your travels, I bet no matter where you go in the world, those traditions are part of all families. You might speak a different language, but the traditions are similar, aren’t they?

Ramsey Russell: They really are. It’s what I call a universal truth, birds of a feather flock together, but almost entirely worldwide. When we were hunting down in Argentina, even though a lot of Argentines don’t have a hunting tradition, especially for small game and birds like we do, it just so happens that the people of my orbit down there do. And we have this same vibe, go to Azerbaijan, same exact thing, they speak a totally different language, they’re Muslims, but they have this hunting tradition that is a hand me down tradition from their kids, they got the old guns or the artifacts, you see what I’m saying? It’s so the skill for making homemade decoys out of nothing or the art of hiding their boat and now they hunt at night, but again, that tradition was passed on to them. I’ve got an opportunity this year, Ricky, to, I’m going to the United Kingdom to hunt and with some guys that are going to introduce me to their traditions, shooting geese at night by moonlight. And even though it’s real underground and all the practitioners are very old, I mean, older gentlemen, they’re up in their 70s now, it’s just becoming like a lost art. They still legally punt gun over there and scared of public scrutiny and what the public may think, never mind the fact they can still sell ducks on the market. The punt gunners are real quiet and under the radar, but nonetheless, they’re trying to arrange for me to go out and skiff with them and I’ll be honest with you, Ricky, I’d like to pull the trigger on a punt gun just to say I did, but it’s not just the – My point being, those are very traditional, hand me down for generations until they aren’t anymore. Last story I’ve got about that small game is we go every year to Safari Club International and there is not a game animal that flies or swims or runs from the highest mountains anywhere in the world that is not available on that floor. It’s 10 acres of boots of just naming animal you ever seen in a catalog or want to hunt worldwide and somebody on that floor has got that experience for sale. But I never will forget the first year I went, this goes back to our roots of small game, I can’t dream of going and shooting a markhor at 16,000ft, 17,000ft elevation in some mountain chain in Pakistan. But even those guys that do that stuff can connect back to squirrels and rabbits and one of the first shows I ever went to, there was a man from Missouri selling, among all the things, exotic things in the world that were available, he was selling rabbit hunts behind beagles in Missouri and there was a line a mile long from his booth because everybody could connect at that level, everybody. And what a great way to introduce kids, if it’s your turn to pass the torch, take them to the squirrel wood, put them behind some beagle hounds that’s just I love that aspect of what we do in the outdoor world.

Ricky Mathews: Yeah, me too. That’s so special.

Ramsey Russell: Now, are you a deer hunter also? Did you grow up deer hunting in Mississippi, back in the day?

Ricky Mathews: I got into deer hunting a little bit older in life because my dad or my grandparents didn’t do it. And I had some friends who introduced me to it and that event I was in my late teens, early 20s. We used to hunt down here in South Mississippi and we would see a deer every now and then. We spent a lot of time in the woods not seeing anything but I was hooked by it. It was my sons came along, we would spend time in the woods together. And then over time, I started to have friends who had places up in the Mississippi Delta and along the way, I started leasing some land up there and where I lease some farms up there now, cumulatively about 2000 acres, but it’s mainly just for a couple of my closest friends in my family. And I would say that I’m a pretty serious deer hunter just because I enjoy being out in the wood, I enjoy the process of making food plots and creating food for the animals and managing them properly and trying to grow them big and it’s been a lot of fun. I mean, my sons and now my grandsons are all involved in that process and it’s been a lot of fun for me.

Ramsey Russell: Were you around or were you actively deer hunting back when hunting with dogs was a very popular and widespread sport in the state of Mississippi?

Ricky Mathews: Yes. I was actually a friend of mine, very close friend of mine who hunts with me today, actually. They had a place up in McLain, Mississippi and they hunted dog, what they would do is hunt dogs in the morning and then they would still hunt in the afternoon, which I always found interesting that they actually peacefully coexist. I mean, I went to sit in a stand after running dogs all day long on this property and I’m thinking there’s no way, I had my son Jordan with me, I said, there’s no way we’re going to see anything and it was a great hunt and we saw plenty of deer and it’s just interesting to me how that worked. But I got a chance to see what the tradition of hunting with dogs is all about and while it’s changed over the years, smaller pieces of property and the infringement factor is higher today, not as many people doing it as there was before, but the tradition of listening to those dogs running the woods and all of that, I get it. I get what that’s all about.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I do, too. I think it’s almost become a lost art, the world is changing, morals are changing, values are changing, certainly the landscape is changing and dogs don’t read posted signs, they get hot on the trail and run. And to people that don’t understand it, it’s not a greyhound fixing to catch this deer, it’s beagles just getting on trail and they may be a couple 100 yards behind them, but they’re making those birds, excuse me, the birds, they’re making the deal that deer get up and move when they might not, otherwise. I think it’s one of the most traditional forms of deer hunting in the state of Mississippi back in the day.

Ricky Mathews: I agree. Listen, back in the early 90s, I was the president of the Mississippi Wildlife Federation. I was a young guy in my early 30s and I’ll never forget it because after I became the president of the Wildlife Federation, there was some discussion in the legislature about trying to figure out a way to manage dog hunting and still hunting because the Dog Hunters Association and Steel Hunters Association were going after each other. And I remember at our annual meeting, we had a discussion about it, we said, okay, we’re going to let these groups come in and share their points of view. Holy mackerel, man, it was an unresolvable conflict, this is the way I would say it. I came to appreciate, each had their own set of values and points that were really well stated, but there was no way they were going to peacefully coexist in most cases.

Ramsey Russell: Well, it was a conflict, it was almost a cultural conflict. It was just guys that wanted to approach hunting one way versus guys that wanted to approach it another and there really wasn’t much middle ground I could take, I miss them both, I like them, in fact, kind of ADD prone that I am, I kind of like the dog hunt, it’s a little more action packed, a little more moving around and doing stuff, but I remember those days and I do remember, I know exactly the time period you’re talking about in the state of Mississippi did it, it clashed.

Ricky Mathews: Well, see I mean, used to, you had these huge blocks of land, you alluded to it a minute ago and the deer population is not what it is today. But then over time smaller and smaller sections of land, lots of privately owned land and many more dear than there used to be. So, I mean, it was just inevitable there was going to be conflict. So it is what it is. I don’t hear, you still see these conflicts, I mean, the US Forest Service and others are working to try to minimize the conflict as best they can. But I think it’s the tradition of it, though, is something, the people who are engaged in dog hunting, man, they believe in that and they, like you and I, were just talking about passing down this love of hunting and we’re starting with small game and whatever. A lot of them were introduced to hunting, listening to those dogs as a child sitting with their grandfather or their father and it became, it’s part of their DNA, I mean, there’s just no denying that. So that is part of hunting that we should cherish.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, I guarantee you. The clatter of hooves on frozen ground down in the hollow getting louder as the deer approach. Now, back in those days, though, Ricky, we didn’t have the liberal doe seasons that we’ve got and I mean, it had to be an antlered buck. So herds of does allow to come stampeding past you and you had to be looking for a bone on top of their head. Times changed and then if you shot a legal buck, it was something you could be proud of.

Ricky Mathews: Yeah.

The Value of Rituals & Traditions in Hunting

Ramsey Russell: Now it’s almost, if it doesn’t score something or it’s not big or whatever, it’s almost – And I have, the pendulum is swung completely back for me in the era that so many land ownerships, particularly throughout the state of Mississippi, but elsewhere, nationwide, have grown to this really mature buck, this big, beautiful boon and crocker, man, I’m just a legal buck kind of guy. I really, I’ve swung back to my heritage, where I just like to go hunting. I like, again, the ritual of it all, the tradition of it all. You follow what I am saying?

Ricky Mathews: That’s what has happened. I’m with you. I actually, this past year, I killed the biggest deer I’ve ever killed in my life, 167/8s and it’s a 9 point, but it’s a deer we had experience with. When I visited with William McKinley, the head of the deer program for the department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, I said, I wish I could tell you that it was dramatic, but the truth is, he came out on a food plot, a beautiful food plot and I just got lucky. At the end of the day, I just got lucky. I knew he’s in the area, but he was kind of, I called him a nomad because he’d show up at night and early in the morning and over here sometimes and over there and then he would vanish for 3 or 4 weeks, one of those kind of deer, but William said, no, what was dramatic is that you had 3 years of experience with it, the fact that you passed on it those other years. So we got a chance to see, when you do it right, that’s what can happen, but in some ways, we’ve taken a lot of the fun out of it, too. You want people to come and enjoy and if that’s deer that they’re looking at is one that they’re really proud of, we got to be a little less stingy about that.

Ramsey Russell: I think so.

Ricky Mathews: So it’s somewhere in the middle. And by the way, we’ll talk about this in a second. But with chronic wasting disease and what it’s doing to older deer if we don’t manage that properly, we may not have the opportunity to manage deer into the 4 or 5, 6 year old class because that can be a real problem for us. So we’ve got to cherish that still.

Ramsey Russell: Ricky, I know you as host of Mississippi SuperTalk Outdoors and I’m not exaggerating when I believe you to be an outspoken voice for wildlife and for conservation and hunting traditions in the state of Mississippi. But where were you between being the little boy fishing with your granddaddy and being the host? What is your professional background? Is it communications?

Ricky Mathews: Yeah, I’ll give you the short story. Out of high school, I went to paramedic school at the University of Alabama in Birmingham and became an advanced paramedic and my goal was to continue in the school, which is what I did and pre-Med, and I was going to go to medical school and become an emergency room physician. I was pretty far along in pre-Med, continue to work as a paramedic and I saw a lot of death and dying at a very young age, I was a full-fledged paramedic at the age of 19 and I really wanted badly to be an emergency room physician. But I came to appreciate that to be a doctor, you have to take a leap of faith and I have a type A personality and it would have been, I like being able to look at spreadsheets and income statements and balance sheets and having some control over stuff. As a doctor, you have to, you don’t always have control and I came to appreciate that maybe this was not for me, I changed my major and I went on to get a degree in business, I did an internship at the Sun Herald newspaper, ended up working for the Sun Herald newspaper, I worked there for 27 years. I went on to get my MBA, got my masters at night, I became publisher there, president publisher of the company in 2001. Literally, this is interesting. The week after I was named publisher, we were up in one of our conference rooms, had community leaders in doing sort of an informal get together celebrating me becoming publisher. The first plane had already flown into the World Trade Center and we had a TV on and while we were up there and they were welcoming me and we were sort of celebrating this new tenure as a publisher. The second plane flies into the World Trade Center and we ended the meeting and went downstairs and this is literally a week after I became publisher. We were doing a special edition of the Sun Herald because of the World Trade Center and what I said to the group before we broke the group up, I said, life as we know it just changed forever. So it doesn’t make sense for us to continue to celebrate when we’ve got this happening in our country. So I go down the newsroom and sort of, the rest is history. Then, of course, in 2005, Katrina hits and I worked with Governor Barbour to form the governor’s commission on recovery, rebuilding and renewal, I was responsible for the tourism recovery planning effort, for that effort, we published a book that really helped inform the governor in getting tens of billions of dollars for the recovery in coast of Mississippi, went on to write the foreword to his book. He wrote a book called America’s Great Storm Leading Through Hurricane Katrina and I was honored to write the foreword to that book. And this is an incredible telling of how a community comes together under the leadership of someone like Haley Barbour to rebuild and you come to Coastal Mississippi today and you can appreciate that we are an incredibly resilient community, set of communities and we’ve done a pretty good job of coming back after Hurricane Katrina. In 2009, I went to work for advanced Conde Nast, the largest privately owned media company in the United States and I had this opportunity for almost 5 months, it was on the table and I couldn’t see myself leaving the Sun Herald, man, I just couldn’t get my head around it. We were still in a recovery effort after Katrina and this family just stayed with me. We had these, like, weekly and bi weekly conversations and eventually it occurred to me that maybe I can do what they’re asking me to do and then I got excited about it and I left the Sun Herald, went to work for them. I was publisher in Mobile for a while and president of a company had Birmingham and Huntsville and other properties that I was responsible for, then I went to New Orleans, same company as president of NOLA Media Group and publisher of the TeamSpeak unit, NOLA.com and lots of changes involving the industry at that time. And then when I was 56, I gave them a 2 year notice that I was going to be leaving, it took 2 years and 6 months to pull it off and in the process, they promoted me to regional president. And I said, I appreciate it, but I’m pretty determined that I’m going to retire. And so in 2016, I retired and I didn’t plan to work another day in my life, to be honest with you. What happened is I got a call from an intermediary for SuperTalk, who set up a conversation with Steve Davenport, who owns SuperTalk and Kim Dillon, the president. And we started over almost 5 month conversation about doing a show down here on the coast that became the Ricky Mathews show and we’ve done over 1100 conversations, incidentally. And I finally said yes and it’s been a great marriage. And then a couple years into that journey, I got the chance to host SuperTalk Outdoors. And so that’s kind of my story in a nutshell.

Ramsey Russell: All that travel around you did because you were jumping around, you didn’t plan on leaving the Gulf Coast, but you did, and –

Ricky Mathews: Well, here’s the interesting part. I never actually left. I kept a house on the coast and then when I went to Mobile, we had a place to live there as well, went to New Orleans, I was in the warehouse district, we had a place there as well, but I kept dual residents, I always kept Costa Mississippi as my base station. Yeah, because I had a son who was still in high school and another son who had just graduated from Southern Miss and he was in law school Ole Miss, my daughter had just finished up her masters and she became a teacher. We felt it was important to kind of keep the base station in Mississippi. But incidentally, before I left the Sun Herald, I was involved in a re-engineering effort for Knight Ridder. Knight Ridder set was at the time the second largest newspaper company in America, 31 newspapers in some of the largest communities in America and over 26,000 employees. I was involved in co leading the strategic planning effort for that company from Biloxi and I had responsibilities for newspapers and other states as well when I was in Biloxi, so I was continued to get additional responsibility, but I was never willing to move from here, I loved Mississippi and passed up a lot of tremendous opportunity along the way, but I wasn’t going to leave being here. So Mobile worked great for me and then New Orleans worked great for me, but any opportunity beyond that, I wasn’t willing to do it. I got an opportunity, for example, to move to San Jose at one point for Knight Ridder and I would have had 19 newspapers reporting to me and would have had to move the whole family to the Silicon Valley. That’s just what just wasn’t in the cards for me.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I don’t blame you. That’s a lot, it’s interesting how we talk about different aspects of hunting big buck deer, for example, changing. But boy, the print media industry, the newspaper industry has really transformed since going back to Katrina. It is –

Ricky Mathews: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: You don’t see a whole lot of print newspapers anymore, it’s almost all digital.

Ricky Mathews: Yeah, what I call is a digital tsunami. They didn’t have a problem getting readers, obviously. There were still lots of newspaper readers, but the advertising model, the business case for what supported. I used to say that, someone along the way taught me that the fuel that fuels our first amendment obligation, the ability for journalism to do what it does in the local communities back in the healthy newspaper days was profit, tremendous success with advertising revenue. In most of the markets we did business in, we had over 50% of the local advertising dollars, that’s tremendous and you can imagine the kind of profit we were generating from that, it employed huge newsroom. When I left the Sun Herald, we had over 50 new reporters in our newsroom, that’s a big newsroom for a newspaper just in Biloxi Gulfport area, today they have maybe 4. So the business model for newspapers has been obliterated and those newspaper companies that really embrace digital and have moved into more of a digital approach, I was very involved in very significant digital efforts later in my career. They’re doing fairly well today, they’re smaller companies for sure, but they’re healthy companies because they embrace digital. Those that didn’t, it’s too late. So that’s kind of how it end.

Ramsey Russell: I might blunder into this topic, so don’t take offense and if anybody’s in this reporting industry, don’t take offense, I’m just going to blunder it blindly into this thing, but you go from an industry, it’s got 150 reporters downstairs cranking out news to 4. Has there been a transition that would lend credence to the concept of fake news? Some of the news reporting really more about the warm and the fuzzy and ad sales than the actual Walter Cronkite type deep cover news reporting.

Ricky Mathews: Here’s what happens simultaneously. We could spend hours on it, but I’ll just give you in a nutshell, Cable news was already coming to be a thing back from the Ted Turner days, you think about it for a minute, as they needed to feel time, they had talking heads and they were biased and whatever Cable news kind of started that process and then you could still watch the evolution of news as social media became a thing, listen, what we can do on our smartphones is incredible, everyone’s a reporter today. Every single person who has a – they have the ability to report news and touch the world with what they get in videos on their phone, that’s just a reality. So what has happened is there are less people who are reading newspapers today. Newspapers used to be given, the editorial voice was on the editorial pages, the news was on the news pages, they tried to be objective, giving people the information they needed so they could choose for themselves. But what happened along the way, as we saw degradation of newspapers, the ability to use social media with fake news, with misleading information, became dramatic. So I mean, I can make, if you give me the money, I can make people believe whatever you want me to make them believe, that’s the reality of social media today and it is a major problem, there’s no looking back. The genie’s out of the bottle, I don’t know how to put it back in. And it’s a major issue.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, for example, I go to some of the big news headline aggregators like Drudge Report and I read the headlines, but rarely do I click the link because the story may have nothing to do or answer the title or nothing else. It’s just a way to get me to get a click and so I read the headline, but hardly go deeper than that, but I spent some time in Washington, DC about 20 years ago and I would read one whole newspaper going to work on the blue line and one whole newspaper coming back and you would fall into some of these deep, multi episodic, deep dive reporting series about a topic. I’m like, I just don’t see that anymore.

Ricky Mathews: Yeah, because you don’t have the – see, in most markets newspapers, the number of resources they had in their newsroom was more than all other media combined. Okay, the deep reporting has always come from newspapers. Now that newspapers are not there anymore or they’re there in some skeletal remain. The reality is the deep reporting locally is not there anymore and that’s why, to be honest with you, that’s why something like SuperTalk Outdoors, that’s why I tend to lean more toward issues these days because there’s just not the reporting muscle that’s going to pay attention to wildlife issues. This is true in every state across the nation that you don’t have the reporting muscle to look over something like a commission and making sure that we’re making good decisions. The sunlight on the wildlife process is so incredibly important. So the way I look at my outdoor show is this is, I feel like a bit of divine intervention in a way, because my 42 years in media and what I learned being a publisher for 16 years of my career and understanding how that works has kind of intersected with my love of the outdoors. At a time when we need sunlight, we need more focus on these kinds of issues and the beauty of it is that I’m independent. I don’t, I’ve already financially and otherwise found myself in a position where I’m not beholden to anyone and that the freedom that, that gives me is unbelievably important.

Ramsey Russell: It gives you reporting muscle. Honest reporting muscle.

Ricky Mathews: It’s like you got to be careful with what you – I use it responsibly, that is for sure, but at the end of the day, I don’t mind speaking truth to power, because at the end of the day, a lot of people are, even though they believe what I’m saying is important and true, they can’t do it themselves because of the political ramifications of what they do. The independence part of what I do is, I can’t tell you, is so important.

Ramsey Russell: And that leads me up perfectly to my next line. I want to talk, I want to dig deeper into this SuperTalk Outdoors and the outspoken voice, the reporting muscle that SuperTalk Outdoors brings to the great state of Mississippi. What would you say, we talked a lot about growing up in Mississippi, small game hunting, fishing, our ancestors and everything else, but what is it about Mississippi that gives us as a people, I feel like such cultural identity around the great outdoors?

Mississippi: The Capital of the Outdoors in America

I refer to Mississippi, no offense to people from other states and other countries even who are listening to this, I refer to Mississippi as the capital of the outdoors in America.

Ricky Mathews: I refer to Mississippi, no offense to people from other states and other countries even who are listening to this, I refer to Mississippi as the capital of the outdoors in America. And why do I do that? I mean, you’re not going to find elk hunting here, you’re not going to find mule deer hunting here, but what you’re going to find is a collection of some of the best hunting on a species level that you’re going to find anywhere else in the country, whether it be deer or duck or turkey. Think about the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I mean, from here, I can leave my backyard, literally leave my backyard and go catch yellowfin tuna or dolphin or marlin. I can go to the rigs and catch King mackerel and wahoo and red snapper. I mean, some of the best fishing in the world is off the coast of Mississippi and then you had the backwaters fishing. Of course, you had the barrier islands and have incredible fishing and then the backwater fishing here, I mean, within I could, from where I fish, I can see my house and catch beautiful speckled trout and big flounder and beautiful redfish. When you add all these things together, we are unique and people here, I think we may take it for granted at times because it’s so darn good, but it’s something we’ve got to not only cherish, but we’ve got to make sure we don’t take it for granted and we protect it for generations to come. But that’s the best way to explain that.

Ramsey Russell: I was surprised to learn recently, speaking to Kathy Shropshire in a former issue, that Mississippi was the last state in the lower 48 to have a department of natural resources. And it all came back to one lady named Fannye Cook that just, she was a determined lady, I mean, she made it happen and founded the Natural Science Museum. Isn’t it hard to believe that just 90 or 100 years ago, we were the only state as blessed with natural resources, the abundance of nature that we have, that we didn’t even have a governing body of DNR, let me tell you, in my mind –

Ricky Mathews: Let’s look back in our past, though. We embraced, for example, Aldo Leopold’s North American wildlife model with the notion that, of course, wildlife belonged to the people and we manage it appropriately. We instilled into our deer management efforts, quality deer management. You just think about all that we’ve done to try to preserve for future generations in the state, there’s a political element to it, so the legislature’s got a role, there’s a department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks commission. They have policy decisions they have to make and you have the department and the people who work at that department, law enforcement officers and others. It takes a lot of people working together to make sure that we’re protecting it the way it needs to be protected.

Ramsey Russell: When you took this job that you have Ricky with SuperTalk Outdoors, were you expecting more of a Paul, warm and fuzzy eye hunting fish or did you go into it expecting more controversial, kicking medicine type topics? I mean, because –

Ricky Mathews: I didn’t know. But the foundation for Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, the funder of this program until really very recently and when I went to the board to tell them about this, it was originally called Mississippi Outdoors Radio, it was an extension of the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. And I said, well, for me to do it, I can’t do it under the banner of Mississippi Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, it has to be SuperTalk Outdoors and you guys don’t own it, SuperTalk owns it and you’re a sponsor of it, okay.

Ramsey Russell: You needed all that timeless reporting muzzle.

Ricky Mathews: Well, I didn’t want – See, the thing is, I needed to be beyond reproach and it would be very difficult to do that if I were literally seen, even though I wouldn’t have been seen as an employee of the department. The truth is, it still caused a lot of trouble because we talked about a couple of issues that brought a lot of attention on the politics of things. But at the end of the day, no, I knew that could come up, that’s why it was important for me to have an independent voice and I made sure everyone understood that going in. And it’s become more important than I realized, let’s put it that way, that the independent voice has become more important than I realized. But there’s always going to be some politics in wildlife management, that’s just the way it goes. And I was smart enough to realize that. And a lot of folks look at me today and say, man, you seem to have had a pretty good feel for that when you went into it the way you said we needed to go into it and what I would say, the answer to the question is simply that 42 years of media, man, I mean, I’ve seen it all. I mean, imagine, my teams won Pulitzers and Edward R. Murrow awards and Peabody awards. We’ve led some pretty significant news efforts. So I’m not new to how this works. And just thank God it turned out the way it did. 

The Politics of Wildlife Management

So, I think that there’s always going to be a mix of politics and science and let’s hope that always what we end up with as a result of the focus is more science and less politics but I’m not naive. 

Ramsey Russell: Ricky, I’ve got a question for you, how much of wildlife management in the state of Mississippi is science and how much of it is just pure politics?

Ricky Mathews: That’s a really good question. And I would say that, that question applies to any state, any state in the United States, that question and what we’re experiencing in Mississippi is familiar, I think, to other states in the United States, in our case, the members of the commission are appointed by the governor. They’re approved, are confirmed by the Senate and they serve staggering 5 year terms. Some of those elections, the governor goes through a tremendous amount of thought about whether that person would be a good commissioner or not, whether that person can bring, can set aside the politics and think about what’s best for conservation long term. Because a lot, let’s face it, the decisions they’re making about conservation certainly will impact the here and now, but they’re going to really impact our kids and our kid’s kids. So they’re really doing generational work, some governors give a lot of thought to that, some governors give a little bit more thought to political appointees, people who have, there’s some political payback of some sort. So you’re going to have a mix is the point. You’re going to have a mix of people who are there making selfless decisions based on generational impact and you’re going to have others that are making short term sort of political decisions supporting special interests. And one of the reasons I think SuperTalk Outdoors is important and if you’re in another state, hopefully there’s some other outdoor media person that’s willing to speak truth to power in the way that you and I talked about during this conversation, but I think one of the things we’ve got to be able to do is bring that what I call the public trust, the work that they’re doing on the commission is the public trust. They got to protect the public trust, that’s why open meetings laws are so important. They can’t do stuff behind the scenes. They need to be out there so we can understand what are the decisions that they’re making and why are they making those decisions. So if there are political reasons they’re making those decisions, we can begin to understand that. And if they’re making decisions based on our kids and our grandkids, we can begin to understand that, too. In Mississippi, I think the majority of the decisions we make are based on good science. But from time to time, they make decisions, our commission makes decisions, we see it as it relates to chronic wasting disease. We see it too often that unfortunately lately has been a little bit too based on what’s best for them as commissioners or their buddies. And we sometimes get away from what it is we need to be doing. So, I think that there’s always going to be a mix of politics and science and let’s hope that always what we end up with as a result of the focus is more science and less politics but I’m not naive. Politics are always going to be part of the conversation, unfortunately, it’s just the way it works.

Ramsey Russell: It’s what we – and I did not know what they were talking about when I was young and in college and going through all these classes in forestry and wildlife management when they talked about biopolitics and commissioner problems, good, bad and ugly commissioner issues are not limited only to the state of Mississippi, it is nationwide.

Ricky Mathews: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: And so extreme that in some states, I’m thinking of Washington state, for example, all of their commissioner appointees are non hunting or anti hunting. How does that influence what we do and this treasure we’ve got in natural resources? You see what I’m saying? But you know what? Even though we can point a finger, say, oh, well, anti hunters are non hunters. My gosh, when we have a set of conservative, for lack of a better word, leadership that is serving their own self interest before the people, before the natural resources themselves, it’s the same, morally, it may even be worse.

Ricky Mathews: Yeah, actually, that’s a really good point. I mean, we’ve all got to be concerned about the anti-hunting thing, it’s been a thing, it’s going to continue to be a challenge for hunters as we continue to push forward this notion that hunters play an incredibly important role in the conservation of our wildlife resources. And unfortunately, anti-hunting community doesn’t understand or appreciate that. And when you get, let’s say you got a governor, you name the state, you mentioned Washington, but you name the state, you have a governor who is not a hunter, doesn’t come from that place. And maybe they’re liberal in their thought. Maybe they’re anti-gun, maybe they’re anti-hunter within, naturally their selections are going to be like that. And so, what’s interesting about your point is that at least they’re not hiding that that’s their agenda. Their agenda is to impact hunting in some negative way, that’s their agenda. The problem with when you have political people engaged or people who are looking out for special interests, often we don’t know what those special interests are, that’s kind of the problem. And so they claim that they’re doing it for one reason but what’s really happening behind the scenes is you’re trying to serve a very small number of people. And you’re right, at least in Washington, it’s there for the world to see. Here, we have to dig and dig to try to understand, now, why are they doing that? Why did he say that? What’s going on there and that’s what I tried to do at SuperTalk Outdoors, is try to bring clarity to some of these conversations that too often are happening behind the scenes out of the public eye. And I’ve been privileged through this show and through my guests to smoke some of that out. I mean, I’ll give you an example, the one that you and I talked about on my show, this notion of spending duck money on duck farms.

Ramsey Russell: That was a complete embarrassment, Ricky, that was an embarrassment.

Ricky Mathews: So it’s unfortunate. The other one that I deal with, if you look at chronic wasting disease, if you look at USGS map of chronic wasting disease and you and you plot high fences and in fact, you can also, you see on that same USgs map high fence areas that have been unpopulated, which means, you know what that means, all the deer inside those fenced enclosures have been killed because CWD was found. But when you look at that map and you see the gray areas, the gray areas represent counties that have CWD in America now. And you see the direct link between the sale and transfer of deer into the heartland of Mississippi or excuse me, the United States. And you understand, and you see also the gray areas that now have CWD, you see that there’s a direct link between the sale and transfer of white-tailed deer and whereas chronic wasting disease is now, in some cases, rampantly spreading. And so in Mississippi, we have not approved the sell and transfer of white-tailed deer. But, man, there has been a tremendous effort in this state, a new AG’s opinion. They realize, I would say the deer breeders realize they’re never going to get this through the legislature. So their hope is that they can get 3 commissioners on this 5 commissioner commission that would vote for the sell and transfer of white-tailed deer under sort of the economic benefits of it and to get it done. So they’ve worked hard to sort of stack the deck. They haven’t gotten the votes yet. We made an effort in the legislature this year to pass a bill called the public trust doctrine, it passed the House 117 to nothing, which would have said that the wildlife belonged to the people, True North American wildlife model. The wildlife belonged to the people and cannot be bought or sold and it didn’t even make out of the committee on the Senate side, we didn’t even get the conference committee to talk about what do we want to accomplish with this? It just got killed in the Senate, he wanted to get killed, who killed it? Why did it get killed? Did deer breeders have a role in that? But the reality is the chances are we’re not ever going to get something like the sell and transfer white-tailed deer through the legislature so that their hope is to stack the deck on the commission and get the votes they want to be able to do that. What makes this conversation more difficult these days is clearly the spread of CWD and when you look at the actions of our commission as it relates to CWD, putting counties in CWD zones and taking them back out again, in one case, in one, in particular case, it was one of the commissioners actually hunt in that county and they took it out. And this happens to be where one of the farms that I lease is located. So you’ve got all these things we’re wrestling with and that’s why we have to keep the light of day shining on the process, because if we don’t, the average person is not going to be aware that these are the kind of issues that are being talked about and being debated. And there were, listen, I’ll tell you, Ramsey, there were tremendous efforts to silence my voice, unbelievable efforts to silence my voice.

Ramsey Russell: I wanted to ask you how much of that – I was going to ask you that question, how much did they lean on you? Because here you are standing up to the –

Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks

And again, that’s why it’s important for me to have an independent voice, which I have.

Ricky Mathews: A ton of detail, because it doesn’t matter. But just suffice it to say, efforts to impact how the show is funded, efforts to literal commissioners through the foundation of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks requested board members to the Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, literally go to the management at SuperTalk Mississippi news to have me fired. Listen, Steve Davenport, who owns SuperTalk and Kim Dillon, the president, we are joined together in this effort. They would never allow that to happen. But the point is they tried. And again, that’s why it’s important for me to have an independent voice, which I have. I’m a rare guy, maybe in America, where I had 42 years in media, as we discussed earlier and it intersects with my love of the outdoors and in retirement, I get a chance to – I don’t have P and Ls to worry about. I don’t have 2000 employees to worry about anymore. I can bring all of my attention and all of my focus on this issue and I’m focused on it in a way that I think that my grandkids and my kids and my grandkids and their kids will be proud someday. And the beauty of it is, Ramsey, is a lot of people have joined in this effort. Average guys who and women who care about hunting, people involved in the department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, farmer employees, big contributors to Governor Tate Reeves are very engaged in this now. So I think the outcome of this, while sometimes the process can be rocky at times and difficult, I think the long and short of it is that the sunshine that we’re providing, me and my guests are providing is illuminating some challenges that need to be fixed. And I think they’ll eventually get fixed. That’s where I am on that, I really believe that.

Ramsey Russell: I’m very optimistic about that, too, Ricky, here in Mississippi, we read these national lists and we’re always at the bottom of some list. Somebody reporting not in natural resources, thanks to our Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, which may have been the last DNR in the lower 48. Nonetheless, thanks to them and what they bring to the table, we have got such an abundance of wildlife that I would say that here in the state of Mississippi, it is firmly a part of my and our cultural identity that may be why such a luxury of riches, may be why regular people like myself, Ricky, just kind of take our eye off the ball and forget about it. It’s easy to forget about it, but we can’t forget about it in this day and age.

Ricky Mathews: You have people like these people in other states, but you think about William McKinley, who’s over the deer program, the opportunity he has to work with someone like Bronson Strickland at the white-tailed deer program at Mississippi State, who’s incidentally funded by a guy by the name of Drew St. John. The St. John family Trust is what provides this opportunity for Bronson Strickland to have that chair. But these committed people, you think about Houston Havens on the duck side and Adam Butler on the wild turkey side these guys, unfortunately are only going to be as good as this commission lets them, because at the end of the day, the commission can make a decision that’s completely not science based and these guys can’t disagree with it. They have to just implement it based on what the commission wants and so I think the more sunlight, I mean, the good news about our commission is now that it’s live streamed, you can watch the videos and I’ve gone back and watched all the, as long as they’ve been videoing, I’ve watched them all. I can tell you all key points that have happened in that journey. But at times, I can absolutely assure you that certain commissioners, like Leonard Benz, incidentally, who was recently found cited for hunting on a baited field in Mississippi.

Ramsey Russell: Buddy, let me tell you that that’s how, that was a very embarrassing moment for the state of Mississippi when I saw it hit the social media on the national, making the national rounds.

Ricky Mathews: Right, yeah. Well, people like him on the commission forget, I think, that is being videoed. And so he’s tried to revise history. Some of the things he said, he’s tried to come back and he’s attacked me in commission meetings. Like, one of the things, I’ll give you an example. At the end of a commission meeting recently, one of the things I’ve been talking about as it relates to CWD is we need to really have a serious conversation in this state about baiting for deer. I mean, there’s growing evidence about congregating deer around feeders is not a good thing for managing CWD. I never said that I didn’t hunt in some places where feeders have been used and I personally have not killed a deer on a feeder ever in my life. A biggest deer this year, 160 plus inches that we discussed earlier, was not anywhere near a feeder. But the point is, I’ve talked about this. Well, he has someone going to my personal Facebook page, not the public side of it, the personal side of it and go through thousands of family photos, literally looking for pictures of feeders or maybe a feeder on the back of a 4 wheeler that a friend had or something like that and he’s showing these photos in these, in the commission meeting at the end of the meeting and saying that Ricky Mathews is the, I think he said, the poster child for baiting and as if he had caught me. Unbelievable.

Ramsey Russell: That’s getting personal there, Ricky.

Ricky Mathews: When my points to him are not personal, it’s about, I only comment about things that have been said in public meetings and his public persona. I don’t discuss anything having to do with his personal life. But you know what, man? I’ve been in media a long time, I was CEO of media companies for 16 years, publishers of newspapers, leading some of the most dynamic teams in the nation. And I have been the target many times before and it doesn’t even faze me because I live my life as if anything that I do could be on the front page of the paper tomorrow and I don’t worry about it at all, man. I’m proud of everything I’m associated with. And so it doesn’t bother me. But in that tirade that he went through, he tried to rewrite some history of some of his past actions and just sort of literally completely rewriting the history. But the history is already there because it’s in the videos, the commission meetings have been videoed. So it would be interesting because this, he’s been cited for hunting over the bait, but the reality is the investigation still continues. And so I think there’s more to learn. The owner says he didn’t know that it was illegal to put live crickets on his property, that’s his name –

Ramsey Russell: I didn’t even know you could bait with crickets, that had never crossed my mind.

Ricky Mathews: Listen, I never heard that either, he could go search about it –

Ramsey Russell: I’m assuming it took more than crickets –

Ricky Mathews: I found, it’s interesting. I found on archery talk back in 2009, someone was joking that Will Primos and somebody who’s appeared on my show many times, a very good friend, Will Primos. But Will said that, Will ought to come up with a new call called the cricket call and this is in 2009. So out there for a long time, it just wasn’t part of our everyday conversation. But the guy says that he didn’t know, the guy who owned the property says he didn’t know that it was illegal to put live bait out there. But Leonard says that he asked, have you baited? And he said the answer was no, so he went hunting. The guy didn’t know that it was illegal, when Leonard asked if you baited, you would have think, you would think that he would have told him, yes, I released 4000 to 7000 crickets where you’re going hunting. It doesn’t add up, we’re going to learn more from all of this. But this is a commissioner, this is a sitting commissioner that we’re talking about who is, incidentally, very significantly put on the board that he supports deer breeders and to sell a transfer of white-tailed deer and has voted against everything related to chronic wasting disease since he joined the commission. And he voted for, he voted against the duck stamp money going to the prairie pothole region. So we got work to do. But I think when you focus on those kind of situations and I can do it, I don’t mind speaking truth to power, I don’t mind having these conversations you can’t get to me, it makes, I think the public appreciates that and they become much more aware why they need to pay attention. And these situations, as you know, Ramsey, they play out all over the United States.

Ramsey Russell: They do.

Ricky Mathews: And the people who are making policy, we need to pay closer attention to them, that’s the bottom line.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’m going to say, I’m going to end this episode on this note, Ricky, I am born and raised in the state of Mississippi. I’m eternally thankful to my Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, to the people you’ve named and many more that I went to Mississippi state with and have worked with on private lands and in different meetings and stuff. I’m eternally thankful to them. And I am very thankful, especially in light of this one or 2 commissioners on the board. I am very thankful of the commissioners we have that are voting in the interest of Mississippi’s natural resources and Mississippians, okay.

Ricky Mathews: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And I’m also thankful for people like yourself. Thank goodness we’ve got people like yourself, Ricky, that aren’t scared to speak the truth, to power and to flex your reporting muscle to uncover that truth that is too often time buried in a personal agenda. Thank you very much for coming on the show and having this conversation. I’ve enjoyed it immensely and like I started off saying, I’m glad to be on this side of the interview this time. You’re a very interesting and accomplished person and thank you very much for coming on this morning.

Ricky Mathews: Well, Ramsey, thank you very much and thank you for what you do and I look forward to a long association with you.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. See you next time.