EP 539. West Virginia Duck Hunt

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast from West Virginia, the duck epicenter of the universe. Definitely not. We are up in the high mountains of the Appalachian region, where I scratched off state number 48 from the list, thanks to my buddy, Mike Smith. Mike, it’s been a heck of a great couple of days. Thank you much.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. It’s been a good time.
Ramsey Russell: Yep. No, the pleasure’s been all mine. I guarantee you. Mike, I’m gonna start like this. Where are you from, and what do you do?
Mike Smith: So I’m from Chesapeake, Virginia, originally. I grew up a typical kid down there, played baseball, liked to surf, and hang out at the beach. A little different than the lifestyle I live now. Now I live up in the mountains, a long way from the beach, and I work for an Anheuser-Busch distributor nowadays selling beer.
Ramsey Russell: Boy, I tell you what, you kept me in Busch Lights down here. I like that a lot. Busch Light has got to be your top-selling beer.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. These days it’s at the top of the ranks for sure. We’re Bud country around here, and you’ll see a lot of Busch Light, a lot of Michelob Ultra. They kind of dominate the market around here.
Ramsey Russell: Back before the big fiasco that everybody knows what I’m talking about, I never was. I’m sorry, I just never was a light fan. If I showed up and you handed me a Bud Light, I’d probably drink it, but that ain’t what I chose to drink.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: If I went to the store to buy a beer, it was Busch Light or Miller Light. I like Miller Light. But I’ll tell you something funny that happened recently. About a month or two ago, well, I mean late September, I was up in Saskatchewan, and the place I was staying at, Prairie Limits, had a little icebox, a little refrigerator full of beer, help yourself. They had a Bud Heavy, Budweiser Heavy. I think, man, it was 80 degrees, and it’d been so long since I had a Budweiser, a Budweiser king of beers. And I drank one, and I’m like, man, I forgot how much I love Budweiser. I mean, I don’t like it. I love it. I could go look at my box right now. I’ve been traveling with them ever since.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Whole world full of beers. I’m a Bud Heavy man.
Mike Smith: It was the king of beers for many, many years. Funny little fact on that is when Bud Light was originally introduced, it was originally put out as Budweiser Light, and it tanked. It didn’t put up any numbers. They got rid of it, rebranded, and just called it Bud Light, and it took off like wildfire.
Ramsey Russell: There was a picture of me eating or doing something and had that Budweiser can in there. I mean, I’d open a can and start to put it. Every afternoon I’d open it and start that first long pull, and I might drink half a can before I put it down, like, God, this is so good. And somebody wrote me, and I swear he summed it perfectly. In the world, I mean, can you imagine? Since I was in high school, we could drink. We were 18 back in Mississippi, and now it’s got to be 21. But there were five or six or seven different selections of beers. Now there’s hundreds.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Hundreds of beers. And all these craft beers and all these, I call them all these hopped-up bitter beers. I don’t like a hopped-up bitter beer. But he said this, and I swear, I think it’s the truth, Mike, If Budweiser somehow had launched Budweiser Heavy today as a craft beer, I think it would shut down the world competition. I think it would just shut it down and own it. That’s my story. I’m sticking to it. I like Bud Heavy.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: But I buy Busch Light.
Mike Smith: Yeah, it’s easy to drink. A lot of guys go to the Busch Light because you can drink a lot of them.
Ramsey Russell: It’s easy to drink in a social setting where you don’t drink a lot of them.
Mike Smith: Those Budweiser’s are so, a lager is the hardest beer to brew. It’s got to be very clean in order to get a good taste out of Budweiser. It’s crisp and clean.
Ramsey Russell: It is crisp and clean.
Mike Smith: That’s why you enjoy putting them down, probably. It’s very smooth. Very, very smooth beer.
Ramsey Russell: Were you showed last night we were over here. You all got a tight-knit family, man. I mean, every night you all eat with other family. The whole group gets together like a tribe.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: I got my own. First night, very hospitable, brought me some Miller Light. Next night I showed up with my Bud Heavies.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. Even though they’re family, they still like to poke at me.
Ramsey Russell: They poking at you?
Mike Smith: Oh, yes sir. They give me a hard time.
Ramsey Russell: How long you been married?
Mike Smith: So we’ve only been married three years.
Ramsey Russell: Give it about seven, eight, nine more years. You’ll show up. Don’t have Budweiser.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. I’ve gotten Westy, I’ve got her switched over to Michelob Ultra Gold every now and then. So we have a good time with it. And they like giving me a hard time.
Ramsey Russell: You grew up in Virginia. How long have you lived in West Virginia?
Mike Smith: I lived in West Virginia.,
Ramsey Russell: Like, you’ve been over here a while?
Mike Smith: Yeah, since 2008.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, God, 16 years. Yeah. So what was it like? You grew up in Virginia. What was it like growing up? Tell me about what. Like, what did you do when you were a kid? What’d you do for fun? What, you didn’t duck hunt, apparently.

Mike Smith: No sir.

Ramsey Russell: But you did some other stuff. What was it like for a young Mike Smith to grow up in Virginia?
Mike Smith: So I grew up in a baseball family. My mom was very into sports. When she was a young kid, girls weren’t allowed to play sports. And so, when Mom was 19, she started girls’ softball back home.
Ramsey Russell: Was she a rebel?
Mike Smith: I think she had a little rough side to her. I could see her wanting to be a little bit of a, how do you say it?
Ramsey Russell: A free spirit.
Mike Smith: Yeah. And she started girls’ softball. It’s funny, when you go back home now, there’s a statue of Mom in front of the fields and stuff.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. Where she started it. And then she branched out and started playing some travel ball herself. As an adult, she’s played in a couple of different countries and had a lot of success in that stuff. And so, naturally, I was born into a baseball family and started out with a ball in my hand. I think it was probably the first thing Mom ever gave me for a toy.
Ramsey Russell: You told me not to get personal, but you told me your dad passed when you were very young.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: And you were raised by your mama.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Who was a baseball fan, softball fan of epic proportion. Not just regular stuff. Like you told me the other day, who was your baseball coach growing up?
Mike Smith: Mom was my coach until high school.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Not just softball. Baseball?
Mike Smith: Oh, yeah. She started coaching, let’s see, I’m 37, and I have a cousin that is four years older than me. And so she started with him in baseball when he first started coming up. And so she ran the baseball scene, and even though she was still active with softball, helping them run the organization and stuff, you know, all those years later, she helped start coaching baseball then and has been involved until about four years ago, even coaching a high school JV baseball team.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: One thing you told me, I didn’t forget. You said, no, seriously, you said, your mom was obviously a notorious athlete, but the entire time she coached you from the time, I guess, she taught you to catch a ball, she never ever told you about herself. She focused 100% on you.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Mike Smith: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of the stories you’ve heard about your mom’s notorious reputation as this? I mean, they got a statue to her.
Mike Smith: Yeah. Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Seriously.
Mike Smith: So mom was a 100% all-in player, from what I’ve heard.
Ramsey Russell: What positions did she play?
Mike Smith: She played everything. If you needed her to play it, she played it. She was hard-nosed enough she’d get back there and catch and challenge you to run her over. Anywhere from that, or she could be in the infield turning double plays. It didn’t matter to her. Most of the stories I hear about mom as a hitter, she wanted to hit line drives so hard that you didn’t want to stand in front of it.
Ramsey Russell: Really.
Mike Smith: That was her goal. They said if the third baseman was crouching in, she would just pull one just as hard as she could down that line, just to see if they would stand in front of it.
Ramsey Russell: You know, kind of the stereotypical mom and dad. You know, dad’s a hard-ass, “Boy get on in there and play, throw that ball. Mom “Oh, honey, you know.” What was your mom like?
Mike Smith: Mom was a very play 100%. She never got on me about how I did. She never got on me about winning and losing. She just wanted me to give 100% while I was on that field, and that was the only thing that bothered her.
Ramsey Russell: And a mama knows.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: What kind of pep talk would she give you?
Mike Smith: Ah, she wasn’t a hard-nosed, grind-and-try-to-push-you-to-play-hard type. She would talk to you about what you had coming at you. Even as a young kid, if we were facing a pitcher that had a reputation for being a powerful pitcher or throwing some off-speed stuff to try and trick you little bit, she would just walk you through the best scenario. She wanted to play that middle game like just wait for that mistake he was going to make, because they all make one.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Mike Smith: That was her mindset on that. She never pushed numbers or any type of statistic-driven baseball. She was just raw, play hard, and give it your all. It was great. I could never look back and think of a time where mom got on me about winning or losing. It was all about energy in the game and attitude towards the game. She was very big on respecting the game of baseball.
Ramsey Russell: Did she ever place expectations on? And I ask because I’ve got this belief that whether we’re talking Labrador retrievers or business partners or kids, I think that most people try to live up to the expectations placed on them. You know, my expectations were not that my kids be straight-A students or that they be the fastest and the strongest. It’s just that they do their best. Because if you’re doing your best, you’ll go far in life. You know what I’m saying? And I just think that, it seems like she put a little expectation on you, said you would do your best.
Mike Smith: Yes, I could see. Yeah, I would definitely say that. And respecting the game was a high standard for her.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, like when you were a child, would she get out and throw the baseball with you, teach you to bat like a normal daddy?
Mike Smith: Funny story, she would. We worked together. But a funny story with that is, I was nine years old, and I was pitching, and she called time in the middle of the game and came out to the mound. She said nothing bad had happened.
Ramsey Russell: She was your coach?
Mike Smith: She was my coach. I was gonna reiterate, she was my coach. She came out there, and she said, “Michael, why are you throwing right-handed?” She had no idea because she focused on all the other kids so much while coaching that when I was seven, her best friend’s older sons, and he got a new glove. One of her sons gonna new glove and he gave me his old glove, and I thought it was the greatest thing that I got his old glove. I started throwing right-handed, and she didn’t notice it for two years because she focused on all the other kids so much. We would play catch, hit in the batting cage, and do things, but she was always so focused on the other kids and helping them that she didn’t even realize that I had switched.
Ramsey Russell: Could you throw both sides?
Mike Smith: I could.
Ramsey Russell: You started throwing right. Could you also throw left?
Mike Smith: Oh, yeah. I had a cannon left-handed. She’s got videos of me as a little boy throwing the width of our backyard left-handed at like 18 months old.
Ramsey Russell: Do you shoot right-handed or left-handed?
Mike Smith: I shoot right-handed.
Ramsey Russell: You shoot right-handed?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: You signed my decoy left-handed?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. And I hit left-handed. Yes, sir. But ever since,
Ramsey Russell: Did you shoot both sides? How can you not shoot left-handed?
Mike Smith: I guess as a kid I never learned it. I never tried it. So I have since I’ve gotten older, but it’s not pretty.
Ramsey Russell: One of the very best shots I ever shared a blind with, a late client of mine, shot both sides. He shot as well off his left as he did his right. And I never paid attention whether he was right-handed or left-handed. But I asked him, I said, “Jay, how in the world did, ” I’m sitting there trying to hold a gun left-handed, and it don’t work.
Mike Smith: That’s me.
Ramsey Russell: It don’t work. And he said he was the third or fourth son, and by the time he got old enough to go to the duck boat, he said, “My daddy sat in the back. Oldest brother sat next to him. Next, next, next.” He said, “I was left in front of the boat, and I had to learn to shoot left. Daddy backed the boat up where it was a good shot for him.” He said, “I either shot left-handed or I didn’t shoot.” That’s how that. But that man was 50-something years old and was light-freaking-out. And the thing about it is you could put him on either side of the blind. It didn’t matter. He might shoot alternate sides depending on what the ducks were doing. It was crazy, and this guy was lights out. You ought to work on that, son. That’s gold for you.
Mike Smith: I might have to play with it a little bit. That’d be cool. Because there are times where that would be handy on that side of the blind. Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: What else did you do besides play baseball?
Mike Smith: So I surfed and skateboarded. That was kind of a fun thing to do with friends. We had a family friend after my dad passed who helped my mom out a lot. He’d come out, help us work on projects around the house and stuff. His wife and my dad worked together, and he was from Montgomery, Alabama, originally. He worked at the naval shipyard, and he got me into deer hunting. He was the guy that would take me deer hunting. And I grew up, we ran deer with dogs in southern Virginia. Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Wow, that’s a lost sport these days, man. One of my only regrets raising my kids, got hunted with them as much as I could, was I never got them on a good old-time dog hunt. Because to me, there is nothing more southern. Anybody say, “Oh, well, that’s cheating.” No, it ain’t. It is absolute. Tell you what, if anybody listens, wants to bite old double R right here on a dog hunt, I’m all in. That’s the good old days, man.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. And I do have some friends that still do it. We might be able to make that happen for you if you’re interested. And the sad thing is those guys are very limited. Like you said, nowadays, it’s not near the amount of hunting that they’ve had. They’ve had to resort to fox pens and things like that to keep the dogs running.

Ramsey Russell: You know, just in the last, since I did it back in the, let’s say 1980s, 1990s, the landscape has become so fractionalized.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: And a lot of people have gotten away, gotten into the horn era, man. I mean, trophy buck, still hunting, archery, and I’m not knocking none of that. But, you know, a dog does not read a boundary line. He’s on the trail, he’s running. And you need a lot of ground to run dogs.
Mike Smith: Oh yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: They don’t run.
Mike Smith: They are. You know, now do the duck hunting, and we have our dogs, and we love our dogs for what they do. It’s a passion for them. And those dogs, those deer dogs that was a passion for them. They loved to get out and chase deer. They put the energy into it, and it was awesome to see. It was awesome to be a part of that. Now that I look back and it’s not as popular as it was back then, I appreciate him taking me. You know, it was a part of my life that I really enjoyed. Might be why I love Labradors as much as I do now.
Ramsey Russell: Right.
Mike Smith: Growing up around those deer dogs.
Ramsey Russell: Getting back to baseball. Your baseball didn’t end in high school. You kept going. I mean, your mama’s coaching did good.
Mike Smith: Oh, yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: How far did you go in baseball? What are some of the championship games you played and all like that?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. I moved on to college. I played two years at a junior college in West Virginia. That was originally what brought me up to West Virginia, my freshman year.
Ramsey Russell: I ain’t no surfing around West Virginia.
Mike Smith: No, sir. I was a bit out of place when I first moved up. Lots of flip-flops and shorts, kind of looked a little funny up there. But I was bound and determined when I came to college that I would go home, and when people asked me how it was, I could say I played.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Mike Smith: “Wood ducks here are something else. They’ll hit those flooded timber spots like clockwork. You just have to be patient.”

Mike Smith: It’s not always common for a freshman to go up and start and play a lot. And that was a personal goal I put on myself, and I busted my butt and worked as hard as I could that freshman year and had a lot of success. In my freshman year, I was actually an All-American in the junior college. And funny story about that was when I got that announcement, mom basically came up and just kind of gave me a set of knuckles and said, “Congratulations,” because she had made it. In her successful days, she’s in about three different Hall of Fames for her time playing ball.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Mike Smith: And so to her, it was just a, “Hey, cool.”  Like we had talked about, mom’s never sat down and told me a single story or any accolades that she had ever received in softball. A couple of her friends had shared some, and my grandma shared some with me. Those kind of things didn’t mean anything to her. She wanted to see you play hard and win. I played in two super regional championship games in my junior college years, and then I ended up playing two more years at a small Division 3 school, and we played in two super regional championship games there and made one trip to the Division 3 College World Series.
Ramsey Russell: Golly.
Mike Smith: Had a lot. Had a lot of fun, a lot of success in college with baseball. It was a good time.
Ramsey Russell: That’s fantastic.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: So how’d you get into all this waterfowl hunt stuff in the state of West Virginia? Now look, I’m not poking fun. I’ve had a great couple of days, check, mission accomplished. But if you’re ranking duck hunting 1 to 49, Hawaii don’t count because there ain’t no duck hunting. I don’t think there’s duck hunting in Puerto Rico, which is a territory. I’d have to place West Virginia. Just based on my personal experience, Alaska. I’d have to place it at number 50.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: And that’s no insult to anybody that duck hunts around here, which there might be, I’m guessing, and we’re gonna talk about this later. There might be a dozen of you that duck hunt in the whole state of West Virginia. And I see why, there’s no flyways.
Mike Smith: Yes sir. Your quote of the trip so far I think hits the nail on the head with, “I see why you travel to duck hunt.”
Ramsey Russell: I see why you travel to duck hunt. But you know, you’re a passionate duck hunter. Today we’ll talk about that later. That was a prime example of a guy that knows how to get the ducks in his backyard. And getting a duck here is like finding a needle in a haystack. I mean, it really ain’t. There’s no flyways.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: That’s just it. I mean, the worst day anywhere else in the world, you can kind of go set up on some traffic. There ain’t no traffic.
Mike Smith: No, sir.
Ramsey Russell: You know, there ain’t no traffic. Today we hunted way up. We drove for an hour, and three-quarters of that drive was uphill. You know, water runs downhill, not up.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: But anyway. So how did, how did you get into waterfowl hunting, and what did that do to your baseball career?
Mike Smith: So I took a year off after junior college, and I was working at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Morgantown, West Virginia. There was a gentleman there named Jason, and he was a little bit older than me, and he was all about this duck and goose hunting. I asked him one day, “Can I go with you all one time just to see what it’s all about?” You know, he was pretty excited about it. You know, some inclination about trying. And he took me out one day. We went to a cattle pond and shot a limit of honkers, and I was hooked, line and sinker. After the first group came in, it was just a pair, and they came right in.

Ramsey Russell: They were calling.
Mike Smith: Oh, yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: And the birds came in.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Old black paddles down, wings back, necks outstretched.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. I don’t know if it was watching them come in with their wings cupped up, kind of coasting in, or if it was the fact that, you know, we were in layouts and they came just, I mean, they were right there. They did it the way you wanted them to do it, and they were right at your boot bags. It was just, it was super cool. I don’t know. It lit a fire in me from that day on that I don’t know, if it’ll ever go out at this point. But it was a pretty cool thing because my life had mostly consisted of baseball up until that point.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Mike Smith: And from that point on, I still played, I still loved it. But when I left the ball field, I might have been going home to watch a waterfowl DVD or sit with my two buddies that I talked to about duck hunting. We’d sit there and try and blow calls and learn how to blow calls better. And, you know, when we got away from the ball field, it kind of went consumed by waterfowl after that. It took my life after that. Like, it took a passion that I didn’t know would ever be replaced with baseball. And now it gave me a sense of, you know, where I’m at and, and how life goes now, because it is a full-blown passion.
Ramsey Russell: It consumes you.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Do you deer hunt at all, or are you still a deer hunter, or just all in on waterfowl?
Mike Smith: I’m all in on waterfowl these days. I used to deer hunt a lot, even when I moved up here. I enjoyed archery hunting. The horn craze has kind of taken the fire out for me personally. I enjoy it, but, you know, I’m one of those guys that if it makes you happy, kill it.
Ramsey Russell: That’s kind of how I am.

Mike Smith: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, it doesn’t fit the mold for, you know, a lot of places I hunt. You know, let the bucks get older and stuff like that, manage them. But, I mean, really, I’ve been through that phase. Now I’m kind of in the other phase. I just want to shoot an old, mature deer. I don’t care how big he is. I’m going to saw the horns off anyway. I don’t care. To me, it’s about the hunt. It’s about hearing that bullet whop.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: “Marsh management here is critical. Without it, these habitats wouldn’t sustain the wood ducks and mallards that make this place special.”

Ramsey Russell: You know, that’s how I started as a deer hunter. It’s just something different. I mean, I can tell you this, a lot of clients that go on trips with us are on their vacation. When I take a vacation, it does not involve shotguns and waders. You know what I’m saying? It involves something else, probably a rifle. And I enjoy it. I’m lucky to have a few places I can hunt where I can shoot cull bucks, management bucks. You know, in my own camp, we got to shoot a lot of does and management bucks to include spikes with horns below their ears. Man, I usually run out of daylight before I run out of bullets if I’m managing my deer hunting. We got tags and everything else, and I do enjoy it. I get the guys that go out there. You know, I mean, heck, I’m the guy that’ll fly all the way to Mongolia to shoot a species of duck, so I get that. But I just, it doesn’t reconcile with what I’m out there for.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. Yep. And I might find myself back in it with the right group of people in the future. Because I enjoyed it. I really did. I spent a lot of time doing it, and I had a lot of passion for it. But I just got to a point in life where the bickering and everything about the horns just wasn’t for me. And now that I have a little guy coming up, I can see it probably coming back in my future. And like I said, with the right group of guys, we might get back into it a little more.
Ramsey Russell: Where’d you go from that first goose hunt? Then what? Oh, what was your evolution?
Mike Smith: So after that, I continued to honker hunt for probably the rest of that season. But in the off-season, I started looking at places I could go to Duck hunt.
Ramsey Russell: In West Virginia or elsewhere?
Mike Smith: I tried to venture out to the Eastern Shore.
Ramsey Russell: Okay. Yeah. Virginia not too far from here.
Mike Smith: No, sir. About four hours. Yep. I did a couple hunts out there, mostly sea ducks, on my first couple trips. That was new to me, too. So that was just as exciting. That fueled the fire even more because it was a whole other aspect of that game, you know, that I didn’t know. And then as it kind of progressed, I started learning more about the area I was living in, places I could go, you know, asking people, getting to know people, meeting more people in the area. Since I wasn’t from here, I don’t know a lot of people. So I’d meet people and start talking to them. Most of the guys up here, when you talk to them about duck or goose hunting, you ask them about why you want to shoot an old duck or goose and old dumb things, you know, they don’t think anything of them. I just kept pursuing it, meeting more people. The hard part about hunting up here, like you said, there’s no flyway. There’s no main rhyme or reason to it, and we don’t have a lot of birds. I won’t lie to you, Ramsey. If we see six or eight ducks, we’re on the phone. We’re calling somebody. We’re trying to get into that little pond or that little creek or wherever they’re hanging out at, because six or eight ducks, that’s worth it for a hunt for us.
Ramsey Russell: Look at what we did today for a dozen.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: A dozen ducks, saying surprise, surprise. I could barely fall asleep last night thinking about it, to be honest with you. So West Virginia for me. I had this quest, this silly idea. I wanted to shoot a duck or goose or waterfowl in all states possible. And here I am almost fixing to close the deal. But West Virginia was hard to find. Anybody that knew anything, said anything, did anything. And I’m asking folks in adjacent states, and you reached out to me. You heard it on a podcast or saw it in social media. You reached out to me and invited me, and, all right, I got a guy. I’m going. And so we show. And you were very encouraging. You were very, very encouraging. You went scouting one day and saw, let me think what you saw. You said, “Do you mind shooting geese?” I said, “No, I’d love to shoot geese.” So you went out, scouted a lake, and I think your scouting report was a merganser, a wood duck, and an old squaw that is lost.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. And I’m like, all right. Well, so we go off, and you’re very, very encouraging the whole time, which is to say you ain’t. We’re all in on this deal. I’m here at your house, we’re welcome. We’ll get moved in and sorted and hatch a game plan. I told my wife, “It’s going to be a long three days.” She goes, “Why are they bad people?” I go, “No, they’re awesome. There ain’t no ducks.”
Mike Smith: That’s it.
Ramsey Russell: My guy’s being less than encouraging. And so we go. I’d say we drove an hour. Mike.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: First, we went to Harper’s Ferry one afternoon. On the report, somebody called you up with a hot tip. “There’s geese. They got some geese on the spot.” And we drive up, go all the way down to Harper’s Ferry. We cross over to Shenandoah River. We look down where your scouting report said they were. There they were, all four of them.
Mike Smith: That’s it.
Ramsey Russell: All four geese sitting on. And I did not know the Shenandoah River was rapids, rocks. I’m like, all I can think is, “How do you hunt this?” And we drive through, we’re looking for a boat ramp. We’re looking for access, looking for some way in there. I mean, all I can think is I know one thing we ain’t doing is, we ain’t walking through all these tourists at Harper’s Ferry with loaded shotguns and decoys. I know that ain’t happening. And who knows what’s going to happen if we fire off a shot.
Mike Smith: Yeah, it’s tough sometimes. So, like we said, sometimes you just find a couple of birds, and you got to make the best of it. We don’t get a lot. Waterfowl hunting here is definitely about the guys you’re with.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Mike Smith: Because it’s not gonna be the piles. It’s not gonna be the kill. We spend a lot of time on that river.
Ramsey Russell: And the bite to experience.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: And the same can be said anywhere in the world, you’re really. You know what I’m saying?

Mike Smith: Yes sir.

Ramsey Russell: So anyway, we drive an hour in another direction, and the truth of the matter is, you know, somebody at dinner last night asked me, “You know, where’d you all go?” I have no idea. Because every hill and every mountain and every town, I’ve been lost since I’ve been in West Virginia. The roads wrap like a long snake in a cane thicket up and down the mountains. Every view from the mountain looks the same. It’s a long way off. I haven’t known where I’ve been since I’ve been here, and my GPS will lie to me. That don’t help. But we go off and we set some goose decoys, because there’s another hot tip that at some point in time in the last couple of weeks, there’s been a few geese. I’m assuming four could have been the same four sitting in this pasture. And so we set some geese, but then we’re going to go right down here to the river and wait it out. If we hear a goose or we see a goose or something, we might move back over and try to call them. It was a beautiful river. I got to tell you, that fork of the Potomac River was gorgeous. There were mountains in the fall, foliage is spectacular right now, and this river’s coming down. But here’s what you do. We pitched the decoys, backed up in some cover, and we took a knee, sat down, you know, and we waited. Here’s what struck me, I’ll never forget is, there weren’t any birds flying. There weren’t any whistling wings overhead. You couldn’t hear a goose 200 yards away clucking. You couldn’t hear wood ducks screaming. It was silent, deathly silent. Look anywhere you want to, there ain’t a duck of any shape, form, or fashion or goose in any shape, form, or fashion nowhere. I’m like, boy, this is now. You know, you had asked me about shooting a merganser. I’m like, well, if I got to, you know, that is a waterfowl, and that’d be a story in and of itself. “I went all the way to West Virginia to shoot a merganser.” I’ll take it. And, you know, here’s what happened. It’s like you’re looking one way, I’m looking the other. And, I mean, I’m just bearing down as far as I can see. I’m watching for anything. Fortunately, that river wasn’t but 50 yards wide. Lord woe be unto him if something comes tracing the other bank instead of mine. Middle of the stream. We got him. I mean, It’s a shot, okay. But it’s there. And I’m looking, I’m looking. About that time, Easton, local kid, son of a friend of yours, starts telling a story. And as best I could understand it, because you all know, we’re up in West Virginia, and you hear about this stuff up in these Appalachian folks. You know, snake handling and preaching and all kinds of stuff. But as I could understand it, one of his friends and girlfriends got to fooling with a snake, and she up and picked it up, got bit. And I’m trying to figure out. I’m looking downriver, and I turn my head to cock my ear to hear it better. And when I look straight ahead, there they go. Mack 3. Freaking. There goes my mergansers. And I haul a shot. Oh, my God. I can’t believe I took my eye off the ball. I could beat myself. My idea after an hour of being in West Virginia hunting is that could be the only possible shot that I get in three days and I just blew it. I wasn’t ready.

Mike Smith: It very well could have.
Ramsey Russell: But I did, I got one in birds. He was downstream 50 yards. And you were relieved. And I’m sitting there thinking, okay, I got a common merganser. Check box. Done. Mission accomplished in an hour. But man, it started to sink in that this is. We’re not in Arkansas. We’re not in Louisiana. We’re not nowhere in the Mississippi Flyway. We’re not anywhere else in the United States of America. I’m in West Virginia, way up in the mountains all around me. And wow, this started to sink in. This is West Virginia.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: That’s your world. That’s how you hunt.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. We don’t target the mergansers a lot. I don’t want that to be thought.
Ramsey Russell: Only crazy Mississippi boys checking boxes go out for mergansers.
Mike Smith: No, I get it. But with the river up here, it’s really hit or miss, you never know. I’ve killed anything from redheads, gadwalls, and widgeon. But you’re just there. You’re there hunting, and you’re just hoping. You know, you might see some mallards and wood ducks, and stuff comes in. But it’s never a focused hunt. You’re never going after a specific group of birds that you see when you go to the river. You’re checking out what’s going to be there that day. You know, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. You’re hanging out with your buddies and, hey, we’re going to go sit on the river today.
Ramsey Russell: What’s so interesting is so much of the new GPS, like, technology. You know, like back in the days, I just imagined that when a front blew or snow hit, ducks migrated south and just got down south. Based on a million years of instinct and being able to fly high, looked around, found habitat, exploited it, and keyed in on areas. But now we’re seeing where they’re not. They’re going somewhere. Ducks are flying south, going to a. Like us leaving here and going to that boat ramp. They’re going somewhere. And I just wonder, you know, maybe that doesn’t apply to West Virginia. Maybe those ducks are getting blown off or coming somewhere, following the wrong creek and going, “Where the heck am I?” You know, I mean seriously.
Mike Smith: Yeah. There’s a lot of opportunity for where they can go. Like I said, we don’t have a ton of birds, but there’s a lot of ponds, there’s a lot of creeks, a lot of rivers. You know, there’s a lot of water out there for them to go. Not a lot of habitat, but there’s a lot of different areas that they can go if they want to loaf. A few places, you know, they’re going to go to eat. But the opportunity for them is very broad. So it’s hard to pinpoint.

Ramsey Russell:  It’s a lot of habitat, but if you look at the wetlands, it really ain’t relative to. There’s a lot of creeks and streams and riffles and rapids, but it really ain’t. It’s like, relative to the entire state of West Virginia, it ain’t a tremendous amount of habitat. Therefore, what few ducks there might be are going to be in some of that limited amount of habitat.
Mike Smith: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: Waterfowl need water. Find the water, find the duck. I mean, it’s like that. Second bunch yesterday, I was ready. Oh, boy, I was looking. We saw them coming. And common mergansers, you know, flying absolute Mach 3, leaving a wake behind them, tearing down the rip. I mean, they come ripping through, and they left some buddies behind. All right, I was ready that time.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. You were. It showed for sure. Yes, sir. You put a hurting on that first one for me, he was pillowcase.
Ramsey Russell: And charred dog was happy. She got some more trees. Thank you, Lord, out of nowhere comes a greenhead. I mean, there’s a greenhead. Bam. A real, bona fide, good-quality, recognizable, bona fide duck on the strap. I was ready to go eat breakfast. All right, now we really got it done.
Mike Smith: That’s it. That was a big relief for me. When we had talked on the way up, Aaron, you were, you know, we talked about the merganser, and you were, I could tell you were okay with it, but it’s not what we really wanted, and that’s not what I wanted you to have either. So when that came in, that was a reliever for me because when I go to the river, like we said, you never really know. And so I was hopeful. You know, we had a spot that we knew the geese, you know, had been in there. And the river was right there, so it gave you access. The geese tend to fly a little later, so I knew we’d be safe hanging out at the river for a little bit. I didn’t think we’d get burned on that deal if they did come. I knew we had some time if the ducks flew. But it was a relief when that mallard came in, that’s for sure.
Ramsey Russell: We left yesterday’s hunt. Went to Mountain Top Restaurant. Great omelet. Little mom-and-pop, hole-in-the-wall. Perfect, boy. My kind of place. Greasy spoon, I call it. Awesome. Dropped the trailer, gonna go look at another spot. You’ve seen the merganser, and the wood duck, and something else.
Mike Smith: That old school.
Ramsey Russell: Old school. And we start climbing up the mountain. I noticed now, then I noticed why you dropped your trailer. We trudged up the mountain, and I said, boy, I could see all of West Virginia when we’re halfway up. I’m like, you know, and we’re at 1,600 feet elevation. We get up to this, you know, remember again, like we’re kind of in Deliverance, land of Deliverance. There’s one of them TVA-type lakes that the government had dammed up a bottom of hollow, and it ran. Man, we were surprised. When you look at the map, it runs for miles. Just kind of narrow but long. And we stopped, and we glassed, and we glassed, and we glassed, and I didn’t see a duck one. I’m like, man, I don’t know. But what we decided, look at the map, well, let’s just, let’s go up into the headwaters of it. Let’s just go up into where it might be more cover, more something. So we take off down a foot trail, cross through the woods. Boy that was an adventure in Crocs. And we called him Rock. We are in Appalachian Mountains, and right when we get to the water, a flock explodes, and it’s mallards. Wow. Okay. And they get to buzzing around, and it ain’t just mallards. It’s mallards and black ducks. Now I’m excited. Now I’m excited.
Mike Smith: Ramsey was fired up when he saw those black ducks.
Ramsey Russell: I’m like, wait a minute. It’s a long way from a common merganser, son. And we hatched a plan. And we could walk, I guess, about 19 and a half miles around that lake to get to that backside. We needed to be on where they were yesterday. Or we could take a boat. We got your boat, came back here. Where’s that little boat you got? That’s a nice little boat, man.
Mike Smith: It is. It’s a Beavertail. I think it’s like a Stealth 2000 is the model. It’s a great little two-man boat.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a great little boat for, I mean, it’s very stable, and it was perfect for the day. And unlike a flat-bottom aluminum boat, it does got. What’s the bottom of that boat?
Mike Smith: Little pontoons.
Ramsey Russell: Little pontoons which, right smack in the middle of the lake at 5:30 this morning, us both paddling, we skidded. Boy, think about that old red way. It was a stick pond and a half. And with all the weeds, and duck weeds, and fog on the water. And even if you saw it, even you said, oh, there’s a log. We’re fixing to run up on a stob five. It ain’t got no brakes. You couldn’t stop the boat. So we skidded on it. And we’re out in the middle of the lake thinking, oh, Lord, what are we going? We’re in ten foot of water, I’m gonna guess.
Mike Smith: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Or more.
Mike Smith: Or more, yeah. We tested the stability of that boat for sure.
Ramsey Russell: We did. But we got there.
Mike Smith: That’s it.
Ramsey Russell: We got there, and I’m fired up, man, we’re here. The wind ain’t what we want, but the decoy what we want. We got the motion, we got the mojo, we got everything rolling. By God, we’re here. And you know, you come this far, I’m here. I ain’t got nothing to do but wait. Don’t we just see them duck? I said, man, we saw them ducks about 11:30. Maybe they got here at 11:15. We need to wait it out. They might just be loafing here or something. I don’t know.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: And I was all in. It was cold this morning, too. 29 degrees. I was kind of glad that one, that 15–20 mile front wind flowing.
Mike Smith: It would have been chilly.
Ramsey Russell: We got up in the cover like I like to hunt. I mean, we got the decoy, hit the boat, got up. We were in great cover with shadows and brush. It was just awesome, dude. And you know, kind of sunk in, about an hour or two into it. We might have to wait these birds out. Is it West Virginia? And there wasn’t nothing else, dude. Again, it was deathly silent at daylight. There weren’t no birds trading around. You didn’t hear no other hunters. You didn’t see no other headlamp because there wasn’t no ducks flying. And then out of nowhere comes that Canada goose. Just out of nowhere, flying midway down the lake. Just a lone Canada goose. Not silent. Didn’t make a sound. And you clucked at him one time. And I’m gonna go take a look at this. I flipped off the mojo just in case. And there he comes, giving us a 35-yard. Well, boom. We didn’t get skunked. We got him.
Mike Smith: That’s it.
Ramsey Russell: On the deck. Then we shot a pair of gadwalls. And I’m like, you know, I’m sorry, but that’s kind of my bird back home. This ain’t the only place I’ve been that I shoot gadwall that you ain’t really supposed to shoot them. They ain’t supposed to be here. I think they follow me.
Mike Smith: They must. Because I will say, in the 15-plus years I’ve been hunting up here, I’ve only seen one other one killed. And you killed a pair of them this morning.
Ramsey Russell: Exactly. And we called it quits. Called it quits by 11:30, and God only knows, who knows where the mountain black we never saw them.
Mike Smith: How about the flock of geese that hung out across from,
Ramsey Russell: That was weird.
Mike Smith: They were there two hours.
Ramsey Russell:  All day far, I know.
Mike Smith: And never made a sound.
Ramsey Russell: Never made a sound.

Mike Smith: And never got off the water. They just swam from one side of the lake to the other, and never made a peep.

Ramsey Russell: “I’ve seen hunters here who’ve been coming for generations. Their stories are as rich as the duck blinds they build.”

Ramsey Russell: It is stealth mode. Even when we were loading the boat, picking up decoys. They were just down the bank about 200 yards, never made a sound, and never flew off. They just sunk back into the bank and remained still.
Mike Smith: I will say that was very different. I’m not used to that. We do a lot of honker hunting here. That’s the majority of our waterfowl hunting, hunting resident geese. And that was strange to me that weren’t even trading over each other in the water. They were just hanging out. I mean, never made a sound.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Mike Smith: Never made a sound. It was wild.

Ramsey Russell: And in pitch-black dark, we centered one stop, and coming back in broad daylight, I think we skidded that boat up on every single one of them between us. Until we remembered you forgot your gun. So we had to go back.
Mike Smith: I don’t think you were too happy when I first said that.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I mean, we were stuck bad when you said that. We were almost at the truck. What an adventure, man. You know what I’m saying? What an adventure.
Mike Smith: Today in that kind of hunting. It’s a lot of what we do. And I kind of go back to those baseball days where you have to give 100% because if you don’t put the work in for hunting up here, you’re not going to have an outcome. You’re not going to have a positive.
Ramsey Russell: Here’s something else I noticed today, you don’t have a lot of ducks. You’ve got to make the effort, yada yada. But that goose, a couple of clucks, a couple of calls, and he came back around. Two gadwalls, I shot the drake. The female came back. Never in a million years, anywhere I’ve hunted, would a duck be that naive.
Mike Smith: They definitely have not been pressured.
Ramsey Russell: And that’s what compelled me. I mean, man, we had a great visit. We solved world problems. We got to know each other. What did we have to do but sit there and enjoy the weather and duck hunt in a very, very beautiful spot? And what kind of buoyed that is that if we see a mallard or a black duck or any, if we see another duck, they’re gonna come in. I would bet anything that that flock of ducks has never heard a gunshot.  I don’t believe them gadwalls ever been shot at or called to or ever seen a decoy. I just don’t believe it. They came in like the most naive ducks I have ever laid eyes on. And I like a dumb duck.
Mike Smith: Hey, I won’t lie to you, Ramsey. After going out there today, I’m not saying I won’t be going back to that spot after seeing there’s a chance at mallards and there’s a chance at those black ducks.
Ramsey Russell: If I knew the wind was going to be 10–15 miles an hour like it was yesterday, blowing, you know, they want to be up in that little cove, or just down beyond there around, you know, they do. I think that’d be awesome. What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages? Because you have hunted some other places. What do you see as the primary advantages and disadvantages of West Virginia duck hunting? Like, you’ve hunted other places. You’ve heard about other places. We were talking about Arkansas today.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: I’ll just throw it out there. Based on your experience, you’ve been hunting half your life, would you rather go duke it out on public land wood down south or do what we did this morning?
Mike Smith: I’d have to say go where we did this morning. It’s an adventure either way, you know, I can see where those guys enjoy it that are fired up for that.
Ramsey Russell: I’ve got tremendous respect for them. I love those guys. They’re great hunters. But I’ve heard too many stories. I’ve seen the videos like everybody in the world has seen the boat races and, you know, heard about cut tires and just so much barbarism that doesn’t belong in a sport. I’ve heard about the 50, 60, 70 people in a duck hole, and that just doesn’t appeal to me.
Mike Smith: Yes sir.
Ramsey Russell: Be like everybody on both teams in the dugout and all the parents going to the same duck hole to duck hunt.
Mike Smith: Yeah. And we talked a little bit about this is, the hunting here isn’t the best, but the time spent with the friends is what makes it. And so, to me, how I relate to waterfowl hunting because of the time I’ve spent in it is that time with friends is valuable. And if I’m in the blind with 18, 20, 60 guys, whatever it may be, it’s hard to have that conversation and that camaraderie that, you know, we talked a lot.
Ramsey Russell: We probably talked about stuff we wouldn’t otherwise have said with even one other person, let alone 5 or 10 or 15 around.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: You know, and I appreciate that time.
Mike Smith: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: What is competition and access like in West Virginia?
Mike Smith: Competition’s not terrible. There’s a few other guys that do hunt in the bigger areas. Like, if you find birds, there might be some other people calling on it, but access is probably one of the harder things. Deer hunting is very big here. You know, a lot of the guys, it’s a big culture for deer hunting. So this time of year, there’s a lot of guys going after deer, and they don’t want you trampling around on their fields or, you know, they don’t want you in their woods. So it takes a little bit of effort, but, you know, we make the best of it. It’s just part of it for us. Now, come January and February, it’s not nearly as bad. You know, if you find some birds, usually you can get in there. Deer season’s over, you know, and the farmers are done working in the fields and stuff like that. Most farmers up here won’t let you drive in the fields, a lot of no-till farming here. So you have to drag everything in. But once deer season’s over, it’s not too bad.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you’re still more of a goose hunter, though. It’s just more opportunities for goose hunting.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. That’s fueled that passion a little stronger than the ducks. You know, we shoot a couple of ducks a year, but the majority of my hunting is goose hunting. Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: And you told me you have shot some duck bands here. You have shot some goose bands. Where do most of the bands originate?
Mike Smith: So, I would say most of them are Michigan, Pennsylvania. I think it’s that Lake Erie up there where they do a lot of banding. That would be the majority of the birds that are migrating. West Virginia actually bands a lot, so we shoot some resident geese with West Virginia bands.
Ramsey Russell: I see that.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: What about the ducks?
Mike Smith: Both of the ducks that I’ve harvested band-wise have been from Michigan.
Ramsey Russell: Okay. Great Lakes.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Isn’t that something? They’re mallards?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. Both of them were mallards.
Ramsey Russell: I’ll be darned.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Mike Smith: “The Ohio River corridor is where it’s at for late-season mallards. When the cold hits, they’re everywhere.”

Ramsey Russell: So, they really aren’t coming from Canada. They really aren’t like a Canadian migration corridor coming to West Virginia. Those birds could be doing anything. They might be just passing through heading to Virginia or something.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Isn’t that something? That’s good stuff, man. We ate lunch today at my kind of hole-in-the-wall spot called the Apple House. Tell me about that place. One of your big accounts.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir, they are. The Apple House has been in Front Royal, Virginia, for 61 years now.
Ramsey Russell: 61 years, man.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: And we met the owner.
Mike Smith: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: Her granddaddy started the place.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. They started out as a fruit market, as we talked about today.
Ramsey Russell: A fruit stand, yeah. wow.
Mike Smith: Yep. And they’ve branched out now, and they have a pub side of their restaurant. It’s kind of low-key. They close early, 7 o’clock, 8 o’clock on the weekends, so it’s not a big bar crowd, not your typical bar crowd. But they sell a lot of beer.
Ramsey Russell: What kind of beer?
Mike Smith: All Virginia beers. All Virginia craft beers.
Ramsey Russell: All Virginia craft beer?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. They do a great job with it. They have such a community backing. Their passion to work in the community and support the community is big, and they have such a big following, they have a great croud. Lots of people come into town. We talked today about the leaf season, you know, when the leaves are changing up here in the mountains.
Ramsey Russell: That’s the big tourist draw right here.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I did read yesterday about Harpers Ferry. What is it about Harpers Ferry? Number one tourist attraction in West Virginia, which is right down the road. That’s a big Civil War something-or-other. Big rebellion there back in the day. The first man hung for treason in the United States of America started right there in Harpers Ferry.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: But leaf season, I mean, we’ve seen some beautiful foliage. Was it better a week or two ago?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: Really?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. When the leaves are full on the trees, before they start to drop, they just have a beautiful, just kind of golden glow to them when the sun hits them. It does, it brings people. I’ve seen New Jersey, Pennsylvania, we have people from all over D.C. And as we talked today with Katie and them there at Apple House, they sell 200,000-plus donuts a year. They’re apple butter donuts.
Ramsey Russell: Seasonally sold? It ain’t all year? Seasonally sold apple butter donuts? 200,000, she said at least. I said, really? 200,000? She goes, “At least.” She sold 15,000 last Saturday.
Mike Smith: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: 15,000 donuts.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: I’d like to meet whoever’s cooking 15,000 donuts, son. That lady probably got there at 2 in the morning. Some people are still going to bed when they show up to work to make 15,000 apple butter donuts. And that probably ain’t all they’re selling.
Mike Smith: No, sir. No, they’re known for their barbecue around here.
Ramsey Russell: Well, they make a mean bacon cheeseburger, I’ll tell you that. That was good.
Mike Smith: The best part about it for me, Ramsey, is they are top-notch people. They’re fantastic humans. They put back into the community just as much as they receive.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Mike Smith: And it’s great to be part of that.
Ramsey Russell: You walk into that place, and you can tell, like where we ate in the bar, was where the apple stand was because it’s got that garage door. She pointed to it. And as you walk in the door that’s kind of in the back now you go, it’s like if Cracker Barrel were a mom-and-pop business.
Mike Smith: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: You know, instead of corporate selling stuff from China. It’s like that.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. Yeah, that’s a great comparison.
Ramsey Russell: Because I mean, golly, I found myself walking around like, man, maybe I’ll be Christmas shopping. There’s hot sauce. And boy, I laid eyes on one of them big ol’ country hams when they got a big ol’ ham hock, smoked country ham in one of them cloth sacks. I’m like, boy that caught my attention. But they got everything in there, T-shirts, I mean, everything. It was really nice to walk around and see that. But you talk about the community, and I love places like this. Can you tell the story? You showed me a picture of a guy, you said, “You see that guy in that picture? That guy in that bar?” I said, yeah. Can you tell that story? I thought that hits home about what a place like that and a sense of community is.
Mike Smith: Yep. So, I’ll start with, I’ll go back to the fact that they only sell Virginia craft beer. That’s their niche, that’s their big push. And I used to have a coworker, his name was Jason. And Jason was in charge of all of our bars and restaurants. And he loved Katie and Mr. George at Apple House as much as I do, maybe even more. And he begged for years for them to carry Busch Light on draft. He’d say it was brewed in Virginia, Williamsburg, Virginia. It’s a Virginia beer. He tried to push it every which way he could to get them to take that Busch Light keg. And he had an accident a few years ago, and we lost Jason in a side-by-side accident. And it was a tough blow. He was a great part of our business. He was loved by everybody. And Katie and Mr. George got together, and in support of him and how much they loved him and what he was all about, they put on a Busch Light keg every year just for him.
Ramsey Russell: They make one exception a year.
Mike Smith: One exception a year. You will find a Busch Light keg on that line. And all the proceeds go to his wife and two sons.
Ramsey Russell: Wow, man. When you told me that story, I said, “Man, I wish there were more places like this in America.” And I took a bite of that cheeseburger and thought about it. I said, most places in America are like this. That’s more representative of America than the media gives us credit for. Americans, a lot of them, are like that. And I always think, every time I think of stuff like that, I think of the Cajun Navy. When there’s a natural disaster event, it ain’t FEMA coming to the rescue, buddy. It’s a bunch of coonasses in white shrimp boots and mud motors going to help their neighbors.
Mike Smith: It’s your neighborhood. Yep.
Ramsey Russell: And that, man, that means a lot. Now, let me tell anybody that ain’t never been to West Virginia for foliage or duck hunting. No other reason. This is Trump country.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: I ain’t never seen so many Trump signs and flags in my life. Coming into your community the other day, there was about a two-mile stretch of fence, and every fence post had a Trump flag on it, still.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: This is absolutely Trump country. Somebody told a story last night, though, and it really kind of hit home to me because, like, I go to some pretty downtrodden places on Earth. I’m thinking of Africa. You drive through some of these local communities, extremely poor. I don’t mean poor like we know it, I mean unimaginably poor. These little communities, they have nothing, dude. I mean, they have nothing. In a lot of these communities, Michael, they’ll have a big old cauldron pot. We’ll shoot geese or whatever, and they’ll come out with wheelbarrows and take those geese. They’ll skin them, throw the birds down in these pots, and maybe add water. I don’t know. They just cook it down to gravy, to nothing. It could be there for days. And every little family, you know, they’ll take these little pot balls of grits or cornmeal, make little round balls of dough, and the whole five-house family will get around. Each meal, when they’re hungry, they just dip a little and eat. That’s poor. And I asked one of my hosts this year. We drive by in one of those little, just the poorest little village I’ve ever been through. I said, do you think those kids have ever heard of Santa Claus? Oh, of course, they have. Everybody’s heard of Santa Claus. I said, does Santa Claus come here? No, Santa Claus has never been to that house. There is no Santa Claus in those communities. And I was shocked to learn it. And I’m not picking on West Virginia, but here’s what I’m building up to, something bigger. One of the ladies is an administrator in a local school. Seven hundred kids up to about fifth grade, and 25% of those kids need adopting for Christmas. That’s shocking, man.

Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: And you know what? Here I am in West Virginia. It’s got me thinking, how many in my own backyard don’t have a Santa Claus? Or go home being raised by grandparents because their parents are doing something else too important? Grandmas on a Social Security stipend, ain’t got money to feed herself, let alone grandkids that need two gallons of milk a day. I mean, seriously.

Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: That’s sobering.

Mike Smith: Yeah. It’s one of those things. So I went to school for education. I obviously didn’t take that route, but I had no idea until our family kind of broke it down to us. We have a family member that works at the school and told us about these kids. And it’s sad, Ramsey that you hear about bullying in school, and you immediately think it’s a kid picking on another kid to be cool or popular or whatever it may be. But they have kids in that school that bully another kid because they have snacks. And they don’t care about the snacks, but that kid does. They need it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Mike Smith: To think that, they’re not mean kids in spirit. It’s just, hey, if you’re not going to use that snack, give it to me.

Ramsey Russell: They’re hungry.

Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, she was saying there are families with kids they send home on Friday with meals. They know those children are not going to eat.

Mike Smith: Two hundred of those students go home with what they call a backpack program, and that’s food for the weekend.

Ramsey Russell: God. We live in America, man. I know there are people who choose by lifestyle otherwise to live under overpasses. Those are grown adults. They can do what the hell they want to. These are children.

Mike Smith: I think when we talked about this a little bit today, it’s very hard to talk about because, like you said, the adults make choices. These kids don’t have a choice.

Ramsey Russell: No, we talked about that. I’m gonna say, I grew up lower middle class, poor.

Mike Smith: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: You know, which is to say that I got one pair of tennis shoes a year. It’s all I needed.

Mike Smith: Right.

Ramsey Russell: I was barefooted as much as I could be. I mean, you see what I’m saying? I might have just the cheapest bicycle at whatever store Santa Claus brought, but I had a bicycle.

Mike Smith: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: I had everything I needed. My childhood, I had.

Mike Smith: Never knew there was anything different.

Ramsey Russell: What I didn’t have, there was a ditch full of turtles or snakes or something else I could go do. It was just that life. I didn’t miss meals. And it’s just heart-wrenching to think about that kind of stuff, man.

Mike Smith: It is. And you heard us talking about it last night.

Ramsey Russell: Especially this close to Christmas.

Mike Smith: Yes. And we try our best to get our friends and our family and everyone we can, that we know, to help support these kids when it comes to the holidays. And you brought up a good point last night that when we sponsor these kids, a lot of times, we buy them clothes because they need clothes. But it’s sad that you can’t, just get them toys.

Ramsey Russell: Toys.

Mike Smith: Let them be a kid.

Ramsey Russell: Let them just, golly, be a kid.

Mike Smith: Yeah. That’s the hardest part when you’re out shopping and you’re doing this thing. And I know everybody does it. Everybody’s got an angel tree, everybody has their thing. But it’s hard when the kids are right down the road.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. They’re gonna go to school with your kids.

Mike Smith: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: That kind of hits home, don’t it?

Mike Smith: It does. It’s tough. It’s something, you know, I don’t think a lot of people know. And if we didn’t have someone in the school system, I don’t think we would know. If you go around the community, it’s not visible.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Mike Smith: But it is shocking when you hear the details of it and how these kids are having to live.

Ramsey Russell: Lot to think about. Boy, the things you talk about and the problems you solve and the world problems that come at you in a duck blind. See, it’s more than just duck hunting.

Mike Smith: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It’s kind of hard to explain it to people, isn’t it? And I don’t think I’d ever have had that conversation if I hadn’t come to West Virginia.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, how can I be a grown man living a great life and a happy life and so focused on what I’m doing to not take notice of other families and people around me, maybe even in my backyard, that don’t have it? You know what I am saying? I’ve learned in my life. I ain’t learned nothing else, Mike, is that the best way to help oneself is to help others. There is no other feeling in the world like to truly help people. But like yourself, man, I don’t want to give a kid socks. I want to give him a ball.

Mike Smith: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I want to give him a toy and let that child, because all children deserve to be children, man.

Mike Smith: It’s an innocence that you can’t replace, being a child, you shouldn’t have to know about life’s problems.

Ramsey Russell: No, but they do, don’t they?

Mike Smith: They do.

Ramsey Russell: What’s the rest of your duck season look like?

Mike Smith: So we talked a little bit, before I have a dog that’s coming up on five this year.

Ramsey Russell: Good looking dog.

Mike Smith: “West Virginia’s public lands are a lifeline. You don’t need a private lease to have a world-class hunt.”

Mike Smith: She has her days. She’s a pretty good dog. She spent some time down south with a gentleman, Adam Campbell, and she completed the National this year. Very, very proud of her for that. That was a lot of hard work. I knew she was good because I enjoy training, and I’ve spent a lot of time with her. I did my best with her, and she completed that and had more training than she’d ever had. This year, we kind of made it a goal to try and get her as many retrieves as we can. So we did. We hunted in North Dakota for a few days, then headed up to Canada. We hit Saskatchewan for a few days and got her some retrieves.
Ramsey Russell: You all did, didn’t you?
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: I bet she likes that.
Mike Smith: Oh, yeah, she did.
Ramsey Russell: All dogs like hunting dry fields I think.
Mike Smith: That’s it. So we came back, got back a couple weeks ago. Our season actually will change over, it’ll close for two weeks and then come back in. We’ll probably do some more honker hunting then. Come January, I’m going to try out the Arkansas deal. We’re going to see how that goes.
Ramsey Russell: Public?
Mike Smith: No, sir. I am going through an outfitter.
Ramsey Russell: Okay.
Mike Smith: Some of the guys I met down in Alabama with the trainer and their buddies, we kind of hit it off.
Ramsey Russell: Arkansas is a wonderful state. I’m not knocking Arkansas, if anybody got that out of that mess. I mean, I hunt Arkansas on public myself.
Mike Smith: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: But we just somehow bob and weave and dodge around the crowds.
Mike Smith: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: But I also hunt private, too. Arkansas kills 50% of the ducks in the entire Mississippi Flyway. That’s why it’s worth a trip for a guy like yourself.
Mike Smith: That’s it.

Ramsey Russell: “West Virginia’s rivers and marshes are a hidden gem. You feel like you’re hunting in a postcard—those Ohio River bluffs, the cypress trees… it’s pure waterfowl heaven.”

Ramsey Russell: On the worst day in Arkansas, you’re going to think you died and went to heaven. Because even if you ain’t killing them, you’re seeing them.
Mike Smith: Hey, when I travel, a lot of people go, “Ah, you know, it’s not this, not that.” Right now, they’re all good to me. They’re all better than what I got at home. So it’s all good to me. We’re going to go down with some great friends and do that. Then I’m going to head to Chincoteague, Virginia.
Ramsey Russell: I’m heading there next week.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: For the opener.
Mike Smith: Yeah, that’s it. I’m heading there towards the end of the year. I got my buddy Jason, who got me into waterfowl hunting all those years ago. Him and I go up there and spend a weekend together. We’ve done it the last few years. It’s the only time we really get to see each other. He’s got a little girl now, and I got a little boy. So we talk and swap family stories and just kind of sit out there and hang out. That’s a great trip for me. I really enjoy that one.
Ramsey Russell: You know, it’s all relative, right. Duck hunting is very subjective. Maybe some places I hunt in Mississippi are better than West Virginia. It’s all relative. I’ve been asked a question, so I’m going to ask you this, How do you go somewhere like Argentina, Mexico, or Canada, where the limits are more generous, the birds are more abundant, and the opportunities are greater, then find happiness going back home where it’s none of the above? How do you reconcile the experience of going outside your backyard to a bigger flyway, greater opportunity, where you shoot more and your dog fetches more, but still get up every morning? This morning we got up at 3:30 to drive up the mountain. As far as I’m concerned, West Virginia was a resounding success. The few birds we saw, most of them ended up on that strap. Someone said, “How do you balance that? How do you keep it in context?”
Mike Smith: That time we spent today, sitting there talking and telling stories, we’re learning about each other. I got friends I hang out with all the time, but when we get on a hunt, we talk and share things. It’s life stuff, usually.
Ramsey Russell: We sit right here, drink Busch Light, and get to know each other.
Mike Smith: That’s it.
Ramsey Russell: Why go to a duck blind? How do you keep yourself motivated?
Mike Smith: Oh, I enjoy it. It’s the hunt, it’s everything about it.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Mike Smith: The passion to chase that bird is definitely what gets you up to go. But spending time with those friends, when you have families and everything in life, it’s not always easy just to get together to hang out. There’s usually a reason why you get together. For us and my buddies, a lot of that’s duck season. I got two buddies that, even though we live 20 minutes apart, they own businesses. They’re busy all the time. We get together every now and then, but during duck season, we see each other a lot.
Ramsey Russell: I think you got to frame it. Wherever you are, you got to put it in context. Enjoy it for what it is and for what it ain’t. We went all in on a dozen ducks.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: In fact, there were 11 of them. Not even a dozen, 11. We went all in on a big old lake.
Mike Smith: That’s right.
Ramsey Russell: In a big state. We went all in on 11 ducks. I told you yesterday, we talked about it, we had to do shot, get your boat, get your trailer, get everything going. We made a list, a hit list of how we were going to hit these ducks. I said, “We may show up and not see them ducks.” I can accept that. You know the worst feeling on earth? The worst thing isn’t going all in and not pulling the trigger. The only thing that makes it worse is if I hear somebody else beat me to it and they’re pulling the trigger. That sinks in. That ain’t no fun, you know?
Mike Smith: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: That’s like being a lonely bachelor, sitting in his apartment, watching HBO reruns, and hearing a big, lively, raucous party next door. A P. Diddy party next door. You’re stuck there watching HBO reruns. That ain’t no fun. But seriously, I think you just gotta love duck hunting, no matter where you are, what stage you’re in, or where you’re hunting. You just gotta love it for what it is. The people, the dogs, the weather, the fog out there. When that sun came up over the mountains, the way that mist was dancing and swirling on the water, the golden foliage shining in it, it was just, I mean, we were all in. We had a great time. Nobody got hurt, nobody got wet, and we shot some birds. By God, as far as I’m concerned, West Virginia was a huge win, for that matter.
Mike Smith: Yeah, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I knew going into it, it was going to be tough. But hanging out, you got to see what it’s all about around here.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I did. Like I told you, I got to truly immerse myself in West Virginia duck hunting culture, for what it is and what it ain’t. It was wonderful to me, it was a win. Had a great time. Thanks, Mike. I very, very much enjoyed it.
Mike Smith: Good. I’m glad to hear it. And I’m glad we were successful.

Ramsey Russell: And the last thing we saw, I couldn’t believe, talking about naïve, we were coming out back, we went back, got your gun, coming back, those three otters.
Mike Smith: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: We got to within 50 yards of them sitting there eating that catfish. That was crazy.
Mike Smith: Char was on them.
Ramsey Russell: She was like, what are they doing? What are they doing? But, you know, it’s like, really, truly. I don’t even know that he finally slid off and swam away. I don’t think it was us. I think it was them two other otters trying to get his fish.
Mike Smith: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what it was.

Mike Smith: They came up from behind him.
Ramsey Russell: They didn’t care. That was so awesome just to see. We just drifted right up on them. That was so crazy watching that.
Mike Smith: We got so close you could hear him crunching the bone.
Ramsey Russell: I could hear those bones crunching. That was crazy. I was above the wind, and I could still hear those bones crunching. That was crazy.
Mike Smith: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: But anyway, West Virginia was awesome. I had a wonderful time. I may even come back here one day, Mike. I really had a good time, and man, I’m so appreciative of you and your family’s hospitality. I had a great time meeting your whole extended family. You got a big family. Family reunions must be big. How many are going to be here at your house Friday night, for Thanksgiving?

Mike Smith: We’re gonna have, I would say, somewhere between 35 and 40.
Ramsey Russell: And ain’t nobody driving too far, are they?
Mike Smith: No, sir.
Ramsey Russell: They all live right around here somewhere.
Mike Smith: Yes, sir. We’ll have our Friendsgiving this Friday, and some of that’ll be family. But then when we host actual Thanksgiving this year, my wife and I are in a new house, so we’re gonna host the family Thanksgiving. And that is exactly 36 people that typically come to that one. And that’s just our immediate family living right here.
Ramsey Russell: You said you’re cooking tacos.
Mike Smith: We’re gonna do something different. Yes, sir.
Ramsey Russell: I think it’s great idea. Who doesn’t like a taco?
Mike Smith: That’s it. You know, we’ll all get together and have your traditional Thanksgiving at some point also, but trying to get everybody with their families and extended families and everything lined up, it’s just, you know, it’s tough. So we figured we would do something different that way, everybody comes, and you don’t have to have turkey three times and ham three times. And we’re going, yeah, we’re doing a little taco stand and maybe make a margarita machine.
Ramsey Russell: There you go. Well, having met some of your relatives, that’s going to be a fun night if that margarita machine gets going. I’m going to tell you right now. Folks, thank you all for listening this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast from West Virginia. My buddy Mike Smith showed me a good time. He immersed me into it. We learned a lot, we thought a lot, and it was just, you know, beyond the trigger pull. No matter where I’m at, you know, it just goes to prove it’s just, it is the people you’re with. It’s the full context and just being immersed in a place you’ve never duck hunted. That’s why my favorite hunt is always the next time. See you next time.