EP 533. Here Comes Santa Clause–Into the Vault

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MoJo’s Duck Season Somewhere Podcast. Here comes Santa Claus into the vault just in time for your Christmas shopping pleasure. Joining me today is David Schuessler, Ducks Unlimited. David, how the heck are you?
David Schuessler: I’m doing well, Ramsey. How are you?
Ramsey Russell: I’m fine, I’m fine. Look, we had to postpone for a little bit. You got called out of the office for an emergency. What kind of emergency have you been grappling with?
David Schuessler: My emergency was 22 degrees this upcoming Sunday, opening day of duck season in Tennessee. The emergency was going to put an ice eater in my hole. I probably won’t need it, but man, if I went out there on Saturday morning and it was iced over, I would be kicking myself. The only time I had to go and do it was in the middle of the day today.
Ramsey Russell: That definitely constitutes an emergency in my book. But how long has it been since you had to worry about an ice eater in November? That’s a good thing.
David Schuessler: I was thinking back, and I’ve only had this place in Tennessee for three years. We certainly have not seen it in those three years. But I’ve hunted across the bridge in Arkansas. I guess I’m going on my 18th year that I’ve lived in Memphis, and I can think of one time on opening day that we crunched around. Of course, that day it was just skim ice, and I imagine it’ll only be skim ice this Saturday in Tennessee. The ground isn’t cold enough yet to really have a true freeze-up, but that type of temperature on opening day is really, really unusual. But I will tell you, I will take it based on how hot everything’s been up until right now.
Ramsey Russell: Absolutely, absolutely. Man, I’m going to tell you something. Taking some cold weather like that early in duck season, that just, to me, gives me something to look forward to this hunting season.
David Schuessler: It will. And I’ll tell you, what excites me is that it isn’t just an early front that’s going to push and drop our temperatures down and then warm back up all across the country. I’ve been talking to some of my co-workers up in places like Wisconsin and Minnesota, and they’re freezing up. They’re below freezing and not coming out of it for the foreseeable future. Just before I got on with you, I was speaking with a gentleman named Barry Allen. Barry and I have worked together for, gosh, probably 22 or 23 years. He hunted this morning in Wisconsin, and he said they are about to be done.
Ramsey Russell: Good, send them down this way.
David Schuessler: Yeah, he said their diving ducks are moving out. All their small puddle ducks have moved out. He said they’re getting their late-season mallards now, which is music to my ears that they’re getting mallards at the end of November. Once they freeze up there, the next stop is going to be down here somewhere.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
David Schuessler: Two weeks ago, I was really worried, but then about five or six days ago, I said, hot dog. Mother Nature is going to catch up with us. I am encouraged by what I’m seeing in the weather forecast.

Ramsey Russell: “Hunting during the holidays isn’t just about the ducks—it’s about the magic. Imagine the first light of dawn, frost on your decoys, and that first flight cutting through the winter sky. It’s a gift, like Christmas itself.”

Ramsey Russell: I’m glad to hear it because having traveled since September until this past Saturday, it was warm. It just looked like it could be another season that winter forgot. To my point, tell me about your opening in Arkansas week. Because Arkansas was open and you were there. How’d that go?
David Schuessler: Opened four days ago. We had a fantastic opener if you’re a specklebelly goose hunter. We got down to scout a couple of days before, just a day before for me. What I found was what I thought, a few ducks but very healthy spec numbers. We made the decision to treat our duck opener like our spec opener because it certainly seemed more like that, and like everything was a month late. If you have the gear, that’s why you buy it and stockpile it for times like that. So we went spec hunting for three days and had a wonderful time. The birds were fresh, and they acted right. The guys who went duck hunting did not fare very well. I’m sure there were people in Arkansas who shot plenty of ducks on opening day. I certainly heard some shooting in the distance that was duck shooting, and I’m thrilled that those folks had good hunts. But we just didn’t have them, so we shifted gears and hunted specs.
Ramsey Russell: What was your spec opener like, the actual spec opener for Arkansas? What was it like?
David Schuessler: Hot, dry, and not a ton of birds. We got a push right before it opened, and I think it takes the birds a few days to settle into patterns. So if somebody had a field that had a big group that just got there, they seemed to do well. But once Monday or Tuesday rolled around that one week, that we have there, they started breaking up a little bit. Instead of trying to work groups of 200 from way up high, you had those groups of five or six starting to look for places to pattern on. We did well Monday on into the rest of the week, but the actual weekend was pretty tough.
Ramsey Russell: It was a really weird year up in Canada this year because I felt like the dearth of Ross’s geese, because normally that’s the number one bird we bag up there, we shot half as many as in years past. It just seemed the birds were three to four weeks behind. It didn’t seem normal. I don’t know if it was a late hatch. There seemed to be, and I don’t mean just going through our bag and counting gray birds, you expect to shoot more juvies snows than adult birds anyway. But, you know, glassing the flocks, it was a lot of gray birds, like they had a really good hatch based on my own scientific observations. But it’s like maybe it was a very late hatch, and that’s why the birds were so long getting into Canada.
David Schuessler: Yeah, everybody I’ve talked to seems to say the same thing. It just seemed like we were behind schedule. Even our dove hunting was a little bit. Now we had, you know, opening day was a lot of fun and great, and we had a good first week. But then in week two or three, we were starting to see birds in numbers that normally we would see around, you know, that first day. So it even seemed like the dove hunting was a little bit late.
Ramsey Russell: Where are you from originally, Dave?
David Schuessler: I’m originally from Tallahassee, Florida.
Ramsey Russell: Okay. Man, it must be nice moving up here to God’s country, the Mid-South. I mean, here we are five minutes into it, talking ducks, geese, and ice. You didn’t have that down in Tallahassee, did you?

David Schuessler: “I’ve hunted every Christmas since I was a kid. My dad would say, ‘The ducks don’t care about Santa—they just care about the cold and the cover.’”

David Schuessler: Well, Tallahassee is pretty far north now. Ice was not a common occurrence duck hunting. But I can tell you that I have seen creeks on the Gulf of Mexico freeze south of Tallahassee, and I have seen the freshwater inland three or four times growing up. We would, you know, have skim ice or even some that you had to, you know, we were running flat-bottom john boats, you know, get up on it and let it break through. And, of course, those were really exciting times growing up down there. We certainly didn’t have any geese. But I will tell you, it doesn’t get cold there the way that it used to and I don’t gauge that by my duck hunting memories because we all remember things, you know, like big ice-ups and everything, and you forget the hundreds of other hunts where you were slapping mosquitoes. I gauge it by how often you have to drip pipes at the coast there to keep your pipes from freezing or go ahead and just, you know, empty your pipes. What was a common occurrence when I was growing up, having to drain your pipes because you knew that you were going to have several nights in the winter hunting that you would be down in the 1920s down there, you just don’t have to do it anymore. And that’s as a homeowner down there. Now I’ve got a little place down there that I inherited, so I know it doesn’t get as cold as it used to, at least in the late 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s when I was in that part of the world growing up.

Ramsey Russell: You work right there in Ducks Unlimited headquarters. You do a whole lot of fundraising like we’re fixing to get into talking about. But do you hear anything about, like, what the habitat is like right now up north or throughout the United States? Have you got an inkling of an idea about just how dry it is? I mean, I believe we’re in a continental drought right now. I’ve seen it dry from the Atlantic coast clear out to the Pacific and throughout Canada this year, drier than I’ve ever seen it in prairie Canada.

David Schuessler: Yeah, I know there were parts of prairie Canada where locals would make that same statement you just did, that it’s drier than they’ve ever seen it. Of course, going into the population counts and the May pond surveys that Fish and Wildlife and the Canadian Wildlife Service do, everybody was certainly worried this year that we might see our seasons go into that, you know, from that liberal to a restricted season due to the population counts and the number of ponds. We didn’t see that. I think all hunters across the continent kind of breathed a sigh of relief. But I think we’re probably going to be talking about that same potential next year unless we see an abundance of snow that falls up there. The ground getting good and hard, and with all this cold weather, it’s going to be great. Early cold weather is going to be great because if we do get that snow, it will allow for significant runoff to fill the potholes and things instead of soaking into the ground. But yeah, it’s dry. It’s drier than it’s been in a long time. And I think, as duck hunters, we have to understand that there is a cyclical nature to Mother Nature up there and things that have to happen to drop those potholes so they can then refill and not be a lake but actually be a wetland with things that waterfowl need to not only have babies on but also feed those babies. But it seems to me like over the past 20–25 years, we’ve kind of ping-ponged that dryness from the U.S. side to the Canada side, and we were able to have really healthy populations of waterfowl. I think right now, we see dry on the U.S. side as well as dry on the Canadian side, although South Dakota certainly had a lot of water this year. But we need snow. We don’t just need snow to move birds south and cover that vast, vast landscape of waste grain from the harvest that they can sit there and feed on. We need snow to fill those potholes as well come breeding season.

Ramsey Russell: Throughout Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, the parts I traveled this year, it was drier than I’ve ever seen it. And, you know, for the past several years, I’ve seen them go out and disc those dry swags out in the field. You know, you’ll be driving down, looking at your maps, your Google Maps, and you’ll see these little potholes on both sides of the highway on the video. But then when you look up and look left or right, you see these little bitty brown dry cattail rings that have been disked right across. You see dirt pans being moved. Hey, I can move dirt from the higher spots into the lower spots.So when it gets wet again, I’ve got all dry spots. I’ve seen this year, I saw them tiling fields, just basically putting pipe. You can’t drain it when it’s got water in it, but, boy, you can put some drainage pipes in when it’s dry. And I’ve seen it like never before. And I bring that up because, you know, so much of what Ducks Unlimited really does, beyond the fun and the banquets and all the good stuff, what they really do is conserve those wetlands. And I just thought to ask a guy like yourself, as much as you do for Ducks Unlimited, how does it feel as a duck hunter in light of this drought?

David Schuessler: Concerned for the simple fact that, you know, there are parts of that world up there that, if they go away, if native prairie is broken, it can never get back to its native state.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

David Schuessler: I mean, we can replicate it pretty good. But there is something that is just magical about native prairie when it comes to not only waterfowl but pollinators and, you know, so many of these songbirds that fly by us when we’re in a duck blind. We might not fully understand what’s coming by that’s not a duck. But so many of those birds are coming from the same place. But at the same time, working for Ducks Unlimited and having the knowledge of what not only DU does but other nonprofits as well as provincial legislators or provincial managers up in Canada, and then our state Fish and Wildlife, National Fish and Wildlife, and state wildlife groups, what everybody is doing as a whole to work towards not only working with the landowners because so much of that up there is private but also representing the sportsmen and women in the United States of keeping sustainable and huntable numbers of waterfowl. If you think back, I only have just very fleeting memories of the 1970s and hunting during that time and how low duck populations were. I’d have to think my father at the time probably never would have thought that I would get to see some of the things that I’ve seen as an adult. And that’s due to Mother Nature coming out of a severe drought cycle back then, but also all the groups and entities that work to make sure that we can live in harmony with what we need from a conservation perspective but at the same time still have that part of the world being the grain basket for not only the United States but so many other countries across the world.

Ramsey Russell: There are so many uncontrollable, you know what am saying? So many uncontrollable. I can’t control the weather. I can’t control the snowfall. If I could, if I had a magic wand and could wave it right now, and I hope not to get any hate mail over this, but, man, I would wish and wave a magic wand and wish that it would snow up to the rooflines throughout all of western Canada and the prairie potholes. That’s how dry it is. I’d like to see snowfall measured in meters, you know, up in that neck of the woods. But I can’t do that. What I can do is I can support Ducks Unlimited and other NGOs to start laying the groundwork and protect what we’ve got. That’s my whole point, bringing up that topic.

David Schuessler: Yeah. But to your point, I mean, if you think back two, three years when they had all that snow out in Nevada and up in the mountains of California, and it was to people’s rooflines, and all of a sudden, California is out of a drought because of all that snow. It runs down the mountains, and it goes into those basins and reservoirs, and boom, they have water. That’s exactly how those potholes work up in the prairie pothole region. And it would be great to see them measure snow by the foot because it will bring such good moisture to that part of the world and restore so much of what’s there into just that pristine duck-breeding area that we all rely on so much.

Ramsey Russell: “That ‘vault’ of old gear—relics like my grandfather’s shotgun—reminds us that hunting is a legacy. Every Christmas, I load it up and honor the past.”

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. You know, out of tough times comes good things sometimes. I mean, Ducks Unlimited is a living example. During the Dust Bowl drought, a bunch of visionaries got together and formed what became Ducks Unlimited. Some silver lining came out of an epic drought. Here we are today. Similarly, you all got a great big event underway right now. “Into the Vault.” It started, it started almost as a, we got to do something. We’re all sheltered in place. Remind me how you all got started with this great auction.

David Schuessler: Well, it was during COVID. I mean, in the scary, scary time of COVID, the summer of 2020. Of course, COVID hit in March of that year, and Adam Putnam, Ducks Unlimited CEO, and I snuck into this building. Nobody was supposed to be here. You know, that’s back when you couldn’t leave your house and all of that. But we snuck in to walk around the warehouse to get a feel of how much merchandise we had on hand, because we weren’t doing events anywhere across the country for the first time since we started holding fundraising events. We started looking up into the top of our warehouse, and there were some old boxes up there on pallets. He asked me, “What’s up there?” And I said, “That’s a lot of items, old DU items, as well as just duck hunting stuff that’s been donated to the organization through estate gifts, where folks have passed away, and we just really haven’t had the chance yet to get it out and see exactly what we have and move it out into our events.” He said, “Well, let’s figure a way to sell it.” And what was created from that was “Into the Vault,” which was a big national online auction that we held later that November. We took all of that stuff and we sold it. It was so popular. I mean, it blew away what we expected it to do. It was novel in what it was. I think for a lot of our older members, it brought back great memories and maybe an opportunity to get a Terry Redlin print that they couldn’t get back in the 1980s. We just decided to keep doing this thing, and we’re now in our fifth year.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

David Schuessler: While we still have all of this merchandise and these old DU firearms, what it has also become is an opportunity for our 2,400 chapters from around the country to send to us the items that are donated at a local level to them. It acts as a consignment sale for those chapters. This year, just like the first four, has started off with a bang. I think we are going to do it again and break some more records with this auction that we have going on right now.

Ramsey Russell: That’s fantastic. Is it one of those situations where you all just, I mean, when the going gets tough, the tough get going? You started to do this, you hoped for the best, and it was so much better. Has it continued to grow for all these five years? The best I can tell, it’s just growing and growing.

David Schuessler: It has. It’s gotten bigger every year. We’ve actually spun off a secondary event that we do in August every year called our National Trip Auction, where our local chapters will go out and get trips donated, as well as the stuff that we have inside of our program. It’s a great opportunity for maybe a chapter in Wakulla County, Florida, to donate a scalloping trip. As somebody who grew up in that part of the world, I can tell you that if I never have to go scalloping again, it will be too soon. I love finding them, I hate cleaning them. Anybody listening in North Florida right now knows exactly what I’m talking about.

Ramsey Russell: We sure like eating them, don’t we?

David Schuessler: That’s right. They are good once you get them out of the shell. But for somebody from Iowa, that might be a bucket list trip, you know? But yes, it’s continued to do better every year. Actually, now that National Trip Auction competes with “Into the Vault” for the biggest event ever held. They kind of alternate every year, one of them breaks the record, then the next one does. I tell you, Ramsey, prior to the pandemic, we would not do online auctions. We had talked about it and said, “No, we want to protect the sanctity of what we do inside of our events.” I don’t know if the pandemic changed society to where it wouldn’t do that, or maybe I was just wrong beforehand, but online auctions now have become a big part of what we do. It offers people who might not have the opportunity to go to an event, maybe they’ve just aged out of that, maybe they live in a part of the world where we don’t have a DU chapter.

Ramsey Russell: But the live events aren’t stopping. Now, I know they ebb and flow among the different communities, but golly, that’s like a seasonal rite of passage. Duck season’s coming. Let’s go to a Ducks Unlimited event.

David Schuessler: It is. What we’ve done with these, not only just the statewide online auctions that we do throughout the year, but what we’ve done with “Into the Vault” and the National Trip Auction, really is just enhance revenue streams for what we do to raise money for the conservation efforts that this organization does across the continent. At the same time, they’re fun. I think that’s the most important thing. It’s a lot of fun to go and look at some of this stuff that we have on here. For me, some of this stuff comes in. It’s like Christmas Day Duck Hunting. We have things on these sales that I have never seen before in my 25 years working for DU.

Ramsey Russell: Like? Like what? Like what?

David Schuessler: Right now, and I will tell everybody there’s not a bid on it yet, we have a 1928 Parker. Everybody’s seen a Parker from the 1920s, but this one was upgraded by Frank Pachmayr. If anybody has ever played around in the grip world for pistols or things like that, Pachmayr should not be a stranger. He was kind of an icon in that. Well, in the early 1980s, Frank Pachmayr, who was a big supporter of DU, bought up a number of old Parkers. We don’t know exactly how many because we have nothing in our records about this. Then he had expert engravers around the country upgrade these things to what he called a “Pachmayr Invincible,” which mimicked the three Invincible Parkers ever made. The NRA has all three of them in their museum. But Pachmayr had these engravers do upgrades to a few guns and then donated them to Ducks Unlimited for use in our fundraising events. Again, we have no records of this, but I found some stuff online. The one that we have on this sale, which is a 16 gauge, was engraved by Angelo B., a world-famous shotgun engraver. He immigrated to the U.S. from Belgium, I believe, no Italy. I am getting trouble for not knowing that exactly, I am look it up right now. Immigrated from Italy to Belgium and then from Belgium to the U.S. I had it right, I had it all right. I had no idea that a firearm like this existed. It’s absolutely stunning. It’s beautiful. In fact, we’ve already had at least one request, maybe a second, from somebody who is going to travel to Memphis to look at this gun in person before making a bid on it. We have 13 different pictures, including the letter of authenticity that Angelo B. signed himself, confirming he engraved this gun back in the 1980s. That’s just the really neat stuff that comes in.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of the other firearms you all are going to have auctioned in the vault this year?

David Schuessler: Well, we have 89 firearms in the auction this year. This year marks the 51st year of our Shotgun of the Year program. It started in 1973 with 500 Remington 1100s. So there are only 51 Shotguns of the Year that have ever been produced. Forty-six of those are represented inside this auction. It’s the highest number of Shotguns of the Year that we’ve ever offered. If we had them all, it would be tough not to put another collection together. But these all came in, and we’re letting them all go. There are some tough ones to find, like the 1975 Winchester Model 12. Tony Palermo, who was the world-renowned expert on DU guns, is the gentleman who gave us our full collection about 10 or 12 years ago. Tony will tell you that a good to great condition or excellent condition 1975 is one of the hardest guns to find because everybody took that gun and started shooting it. It was only the third year of the program, and it looked more like a duck gun than the first two. So everybody took it and started shooting it. The day he showed me that collection for the first time in Sulphur, Louisiana, I asked him, “What was the toughest one to find, Tony?” And he said, “The ‘75 Gun of the Year.”

Ramsey Russell: I wonder if whoever buys that gun is going to take it to the duck blind and shoot it. I would.

David Schuessler: “Holiday hunts teach patience. You wait for the birds, just like you wait for Santa. But with ducks, you’re the one delivering the magic.”

David Schuessler: I don’t know. I’ll tell you, there’s one that’s a mystery in this thing. I had to name it. I called it “The Freak.” It’s a Smith & Wesson 3000. I’d never heard of a Smith & Wesson 3000 shotgun. It’s from 1984. In 1984, our Gun of the Year was a Browning BPS, and it was called “The Coastal.” It was the fourth of a series of Shotguns of the Year that paid homage to different hunting areas in the U.S. There was “The Plains,” “The Chesapeake,” and this was “The Coastal.” Now, we got this gun that came in through an estate, and it is a Smith & Wesson 3000 with a slug barrel on it. It has almost the exact same design as that ‘84 BPS Coastal. It says “The Coastal” on it. It has the Coastal medallion on it, and its serial number is 84DUXXXX. Very strange serial number. Really, really strange. So all we can figure is this, Smith & Wesson submitted this gun for the selection process for the ‘84 Gun of the Year. They weren’t selected. The Browning BPS was selected, and we sent it back to Smith & Wesson just as a, you know, thank you, but we’re going with the BPS. We think that because of the serial numbering on it. As far as the slug barrel, all we can guess, and these are just guesses; there is no paperwork on this anywhere, is they pulled one off the line, a Smith & Wesson 3000 that was going to be a deer gun, dolled this thing up for the presentation, presented it, and it didn’t happen. It went back to them and somehow was put out into the general public. Or maybe it was an old Smith & Wesson employee that had it. We don’t know. But we have it now. And it is the only gun like that I have ever seen. We tried to piece together what it could be, but those are the neat things we get that are just mysteries. And here’s a chance to own it. I mean, that’s going to be owning a piece of Ducks Unlimited history.

Ramsey Russell: What would you say is the most iconic Ducks Unlimited gun ever of all the years you all have done this, fifty-one years. What would be the most iconic shotgun?

David Schuessler: The 1987 50th Anniversary Browning A5, by far.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy.

David Schuessler: It’s a gorgeous gun. We have one on the auction this year. I think we’ve had one every year, if I’m not mistaken. But every time that firearm goes up for auction, it generally sells in that $8,000 to $10,000 range.

Ramsey Russell: What about the Remington 1100? You got any of those on auction this year?

David Schuessler: We have an 1100 that is a replica of the ‘73 Gun of the Year. Today, if somebody is awarded the Shotgun of the Year contract with DU, they are not allowed to take that gun and go out and sell it to the general public. I mean, that makes perfect sense. There are a few years at the beginning of our Shotgun of the Year program where the agreement was that we would have DU serial numbering on the 500 that went to our events, but that Remington could also sell one that looked exactly like that retail. It would just have stock serial numbering on it. So we have a ‘73. It’s called a special edition, a special DU retail edition, and it mimics that ‘73 Gun of the Year. But it’s not considered the Gun of the Year because it doesn’t have that DU serial numbering on it. There might be other components on it. I’ve never taken those guns apart to look at them, but it very well could have a couple of parts on the inside that could be different as well. But these are still popular guns because that gun was the first firearm ever released that had the Ducks Unlimited, back then, the shield logo, on it to the general public that you could purchase outside of an event.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve always wanted to stumble across one at the right price. My granddad had one of those guns. I think I told you in a prior podcast. And he sold it. You know, just. He didn’t hunt with it. He had another 1100 he hunted with. And I still have that shotgun, but he got rid of the other one.  I don’t think, it like, meant something to him emotionally because I think a client had given it to him in lieu of pay, you know, and he took it. I used to ooh and ah. He was proud of it enough to show me, but he never hunted with it. And I just knew one day he’d sold it.

David Schuessler: I’ll tell you a story. And the state is going to remain nameless. I’m not going to say what state this was in, but I was at a state convention. That’s where all the DU leaders in the state come together for training and celebration. And it was their Saturday night event. I saw a commotion behind the stage, and I thought, what’s going on here? So I walked back behind the stage and said, what’s going on, boys? And they said, well, we’ve got a pretty special gun here, we think, and we’re going to sell some raffle tickets on it tonight. I said, well, let me see it. I walked over, and it was a Remington 1100 with DU serial numbering, new in the box, never been taken out of the box. It had the cosmoline oil all over it and everything. I said, where’d you all get this gun? They said, well, at this pawn shop down in such and such. And they said, it’s been sitting there since the early seventies. I guess the person isn’t going to come and get it. He was just going to donate it to DU. I said, well, how many raffle tickets are you going to sell on it? They said, we’re going to do 100 tickets at $20. And I said, I’ll take every single one of them.

Ramsey Russell: I heard that. Yeah.

David Schuessler: They said, what? I said, I will take every single one. Go get the raffle book. I’m going to buy the entire book. You don’t even have to draw the winner. Well, then they started asking me questions about, well, what is this gun? I explained to them what it was, and I said, seriously, let’s not do that tonight. Let me take this thing back to headquarters because we only have one, and it’s in our big collection. That is the first gun of the year that now sits at the Bass Pro Shop at our Waterfowl Heritage Museum inside of the Bass Pro Shop.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s a heck of a museum, too. I have walked through there, and I’m highly impressed. That’s a beautiful exhibit over there.

David Schuessler: It’s neat. I think we really do a good job of changing a lot of stuff out in there. Obviously, there’s some things that have to remain static in there as far as the history of waterfowl hunting and the history of waterfowl in general. There’s a lot on the early days of how they did the population counts. But a lot of the DU and some of the waterfowling relics switch out on a regular basis. I try to go in about every six months just to see what they have in there.

Ramsey Russell: Heck yeah. What else have you all got on this year’s auction?

David Schuessler: Firearms have a very healthy category this year.

Ramsey Russell: Would you say that’s the strongest category?

David Schuessler: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Every year. And that’s people that are collecting Ducks Unlimited guns in general or guys like myself who might want just one. What would you say?

David Schuessler: “That ‘vault’ in my garage isn’t just for gear. It’s where I keep the stories of hunts past—like the year we tracked snow geese through a blizzard.”

David Schuessler: I think its Ducks Unlimited guns. At the same time, we have firearms in there that have nothing to do with DU that were donated to the organization. There’s a 1966 Winchester 101 20-gauge that already has a lot of bidding on it. You know, not an easy gun to find, being that it’s that old. We’ve got a couple of Belgium-made Brownings that are inside of our firearms this year. Like I said, we have close to 90 firearms. Actually, when you look at some of these things, they are sets. For example, we have a set that we’re calling the anniversary set, which is the 40th, 50th, 60th, 70th, and 75th anniversary Shotgun of the Year. So with all five of those, we certainly get over 90. A lot of decoys this year. I will say we don’t have 10, 15, or $20,000 decoys in this sale. We have some that are decorative. We do have some working decoys that have come in that are, what I would call in that affordable range. That $300 to $400 range is where I would expect those to sell. The original art that we have is really fantastic. We’re blessed to have a couple of Jim Killen originals. Jim was an iconic waterfowl and dog artist who passed away last year. But we have two of his originals this year, as well as a Ralph McDonald original.

Ramsey Russell: He always did the father-son stuff. I’ve got several of them hanging at my camp.

David Schuessler: He did. Although this one is unusual in that it does not have a youth component in it. This was a commissioned piece of art that became the 1984 North Carolina DU sponsor print. It’s called, I believe, “Carolina Cornfields.” It is a lab in a cornfield holding a Canada goose in its mouth. It’s a beautiful piece. We have a lot of Terry Redlin artwork this year. We have 34 Terry Redlins, and some are tough to get. Some were limited inside Ducks Unlimited events, like the “Canvas Golden Retreat” that we did a few years back. The Terry Redlins are always very, very popular. A lot of federal stamp and prints, a lot of first-of-state stamp and prints, and a host of Ducks Unlimited collectibles. Many are DU collectibles, some are not necessarily DU collectibles, like the Buffalo Trace Weller Millennium Whiskey.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy.

David Schuessler: It’s a collectible, but it’s a collectible. We’ve got everything from an autographed Taylor Swift guitar to an original Kenner Star Wars Darth Vader action figure case with all the action figures. There’s so much stuff in here. It’s just a great place to go and see things. It’s a great place to buy Christmas presents, too.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I was just about to say, you know, there’s a lot of people that are hard to buy for. I’m one of them. But if you’re married to a duck hunter, I can’t think of a better place to find something without having to go fight the crowds on Black Friday that your spouse is going to like. Ducks Unlimited has done a great job over the years of maintaining things that the wives would like, too.

David Schuessler: Right. I guarantee you I could find something for you on here, Ramsay. But along those lines of Christmas shopping, we’re doing something this year we’ve never done. We’ve got a Buy It Now section. This will be 20 items from our current 2024 merchandise package that has been offered at our events and through our online auctions. These are the items that we had a little extra of. As you can imagine, when you have 4,100 events, it’s very difficult to order the exact amount of items that you need. So these were great items. We’ve got a few extra in our inventory, given that we’re coming to the end of the calendar year and our merchandise runs on a calendar year. Through this Buy It Now section, you do not have to wait to see if you have won the bet. You can go and just buy one and know that it will be shipped at the end of the auction. I can tell you it has already been very popular. I know that people are Christmas shopping inside of this auction based on how many items some people are going in and purchasing. I know they’re just knocking people off their Christmas list. To your point, it’s not all decoys and duck artwork. We’ve got table lamps, bar stool sets, decanter sets, hammocks, and even a leather concealed purse clutch. You can even buy purses on this auction. So it’s great.

Ramsey Russell: Hey, seems like in the past I’ve gone through just, it’s a massive site to go and just browse. I enjoy it. But you all have done trips as a part of this auction in the past, have you not?
David Schuessler: Yeah, we have. We have done trips. We don’t do as many as we used to. We still run a few. I think we’ll probably have, I don’t know, 15 or 20 trips on it. But so many of those trips that have been donated in the past now go to the national trip auction in August.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
David Schuessler: But we still have our dove trips on there. And we’ve got a trip to Belize. We’ve got Costa Rica, bill fishing, some Africa trips. I think you can buy a Texas helicopter pig hunt on there. But the trips really are an August thing now.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I would think that helicopter trip would be popular. I’ve talked to so many people just in the last couple of months who want to go do that. Have you ever done that?
David Schuessler: I’ve not done it. I would love to do it.
Ramsey Russell: I think I would love to do it too.
David Schuessler: Been on it before, and I’m always getting outbid.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to end on this note right here because I do think this “Into the Vault” is an amazing place. Not only can I go buy something for myself for Christmas or buy something for somebody I care about for Christmas or complete my collection, you know, in doing so, I give back to the ducks. That’s what makes it so great. It’s not like going to give it to corporate America. I get to give back to the ducks. Then we talked about your trip auction you got in August. Something else you all got going on in August. I just want to give everybody a heads-up. I am personally very, very excited about the fact that you all are moving DUx to Memphis this August. I am excited. Tell me about this, David.
David Schuessler: Well, we’re bringing it home. You know, we had three good years in Texas. Covid really gave us a big challenge with DUx. We had to cancel that first year when the world shut down. Really enjoyed our time in Texas. But as we got feedback from the attendees as well as our sponsors, there was this constant comment that you really need to get this thing right before hunting season opens. And we just didn’t have that flexibility in Texas because of the race schedule that they had at Texas Motor Speedway. So fortunately for us, some things opened up, and we have been able to secure the Renaissance Convention Center downtown. And so it will be an all-indoor show. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to drive the ATV tracks or try out a firearm anymore. But given that it’s August in Memphis, it’s probably good that we’re going to be inside. But we sold out our space more than a year out from this event, which will be early August of 2025. And we are, I believe it’s August 1 2 3.
Ramsey Russell: I believe that’s right. First weekend.
David Schuessler: Yep, first weekend of August. And we are just so excited. Our sponsors are excited, our exhibitors are excited. The folks in downtown Memphis are getting excited. And I know the sportsmen and women and children of the Mid-South, as well as some areas from outside of Memphis, are going to be excited as well when they find out exactly how many folks are going to be coming and the things that are going to be offered by so many of those folks that are going to be in attendance. Given that it’s going to be right in front of hunting season, there’s going to be plenty to do at the event. But the fact that it’s held in Memphis, you’ve got Beale Street, you’ve got the Bass Pro Shop exhibits and everything else. I mean, what a great venue for the entire family to come.
Ramsey Russell: When they called me, somebody called me from your office back in February, I was sitting in Mazatlan Airport waiting on clients to get off, and they began to explain to me. And he goes, “Yeah, we’re moving. It’s going to be inside. It’s in August.” I said, “Yes.” He goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Yes, sign me up.” I mean, I’m in. He taught me, you know, the minute I heard it was going to be in Memphis, especially inside that time of year, I’m all in, man.
David Schuessler: You know, and it really can be a destination point for more than just DUx. That Renaissance Convention Center is literally across the street from Bass Pro Shop Pyramid.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
David Schuessler: And we’re going to have trams that are going to be running back and forth. We’re doing a complete relaunch of our Waterfowl Heritage Museum in conjunction with that DUx. So it’ll be a lot of new items and displays that will be in there. And you’ve been there before. You can spend a day at Bass Pro, easy. You can easily spend a day at Bass Pro. And I know that you can spend a day at DUx knowing everybody that we’re going to have there and, again, what their plans are to be launching some new products and things like that. So it’s going to be a real big weekend for us. And it’s inside and air-conditioned.

Ramsey Russell: “Santa’s got nothing on a good duck hunter in December. We’re the ones chasing miracles in the cold.”

Ramsey Russell: David, tell everybody where they can go, how long the auction will run and everything else. Tell me all the need-to-know about going into the vault.
David Schuessler: Yep. So it’s going right now. It’ll close on Saturday, December 7, at 8:00 PM Central, 9:00 PM Eastern. On Saturday, December 7, the auction will close. You get to the site by going to www.intothevault.org. And it’s important to remember that the price that you bid is the price you pay. There are no hidden buyer’s fees on this auction, and there are no hidden shipping charges on this auction. And that’s due to our partnership with Dive Bomb Industries and what they’ve been able to do to come in and sponsor this and keep us from having to charge those additional prices. So if you buy a print for $150, that is all your credit card is going to be charged. And we are going to ship it out to you by the end of day Thursday, December 12. So we’re going to take four business days and get the 700 items out the door. They’re already boxed up. They’re already insured with FedEx. All we have to do is slap the winner’s label on it and off we go.
Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. Well, as normal, I’ve already got my eyes on a few things. I encourage everybody to go to intothevault.org. The link is below in the caption. Check it out. At the time this airs, you’ll have four or five days to go shop for something, scratch off some of those Christmas lists, buy something for yourself, for others you care about, and help the ducks at the same time. David, I appreciate you as always. I enjoy our visits. And I hope you got a lot of ducks this weekend.
David Schuessler: Well, I think we’re going to. And it’s always a pleasure to be on. I know you’re going to have a lot of ducks no matter where you’re going, Ramsay Russell.
Ramsey Russell: Don’t know about that, but you can believe I’m going to be out there. Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. Go to intothevault.org, go Christmas shopping for the ducks. See you next time.