EP 541. Wild Goose Jack Miner Goes Mainstream

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere Podcast, where today we’re jumping into the Jack Miner Sanctuary story. They have recently collaborated with our friends over at 50 Ducks. I know a lot of you all don’t know about Jack Miner or 50 Ducks, but we’re going to get into that today. Joining me are Greer Smith, Joe Vermillion, and Matt Oliske. Guys, how the heck are you?
Joe Vermillion: Doing great. How are you doing today?
Matt Oliske: Good morning.
Ramsey Russell: I’m doing good. Joe, long time no see. I’ve seen you several times over there at Jack Miner. Always had a great time getting a tour, seeing it. You know, I’m gonna kick this podcast off this way. It shocks me. It never ceases to shock me how few people, especially the further west you go in the United States anymore, know who Jack Miner is and what the Jack Miner Sanctuary is. For those of you all listening, if you’re in the Atlantic and Mississippi Flyway and you’re over 35 or 40 years old, you probably know that the holy grail of waterfowl bands to lay your hands on will be a Jack Miner band. I’m going to ask you all, I’m going to start it off this way. Who was Jack Miner, and what is the history of the Jack Miner Sanctuary?
Matt Oliske: All right. Well, history starts in 1865. Jack’s born in Dover Center, Ohio, and he’s born to a rather large family, 12 in total, 10 children. And you can imagine that any family back in the day that had to pay for education would be picking and choosing which of their children showed promise. You know, it didn’t take long for Jack to realize that he was not fit for the classroom. In fact, his teacher said exactly that.
Ramsey Russell: We must have been related. Yeah.
Matt Oliske: Which is okay because he figured he’d learn better in nature anyway, and that’s exactly what his trajectory was. So, you know, metaphorically speaking, the pencil was taken from his hand and replaced with a gun. His father told him that if he wasn’t going to be in school, he was going to learn how to put food on the table. And so, by the age of 13, he’s a market hunter and providing more than what his family needs. They relocated to the Kingsville region, where his family had been given a plot of land. Originally, they intended to farm it, but they found a resource much more valuable than farmland, clay. And so, the first call to fame for the Miner family was, in fact, regionally speaking, that they were known as the family that owned the most profitable brick and tile-making factory.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Matt Oliske: Yeah. So, you know, it just so happens that as they were extracting clay from the site, they were accidentally creating waterfowl habitat. You can imagine all of these open pit clay mines just filling up with water and then moving from plot to plot. Over time, unknowingly, Jack was creating a sanctuary for waterfowl. He continued the tradition of hunting well into his 30s and 40s.
Ramsey Russell: Was he market hunting in Ohio, and then his family moved to Canada? Did he continue market hunting?
Matt Oliske: That’s correct.
Ramsey Russell: I’m thinking with all these bar pits sitting out there collecting ducks, he may have been feeding the family and padding his pockets, you know, selling geese off those ponds to start with.
Matt Oliske: Well, that’s just it. I mean, the story of Jack is one in which nature provides what he needs right from the start, whether it’s putting food in his stomach or, as you pointed out, padding his pocket. And, you know, the clay provided by the land, right? I mean, that’s the story of Jack, it’s the story of somebody who makes something of what nature provides. CN Rail, which used to have a stop over here, the Canadian National Railway, used to pick him up, and he used to guide hunts up in northern Ontario.  Another call to fame was that he was considered one of the greatest hunters in Canada. He was featured quite often in the early 1900s and 1910s as being the best, and anybody who wanted to learn how to hunt, or, you know, your bigwigs who wanted to show off their status and wealth through a big hunt, big game hunt, he’d bring them up north and show them how to do it. That was the story of Jack for the first part of his life. Once his pocket was padded, and the brick-making factory was doing quite well, Jack had started a family. His attention was laser-focused on one species in particular, the Canada goose. For many years, it was the food of the poor. They used to say the same thing about the Canada goose as they would say about the passenger pigeon, that these groups of birds would blot out the sun. They were just countless in the early and mid-1800s. And, as Jack continued to hunt them and the rest of the world acquired a taste for them, he was watching species population numbers decline year after year. He was one of the first to notice, as hunters are the first to notice changes, the ebbs and flows of what’s going on out there on the ground. He knew that something had to be done about it. So, he put his money where his mouth was, and in 1904, he established the first waterfowl sanctuary in North America, right here in Kingsville, Ontario.
Ramsey Russell: Wow.
Matt Oliske: Those habitats he was accidentally creating were already attracting waterfowl. He wanted to attract them in greater numbers, so he purchased wing-clipped birds and positioned them in his ponds to attract migrating flocks. In 1908-1909, it was a really special time in his life, especially when it comes to his legacy of bird banding.
Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah.
Matt Oliske: It’s in 1909 that he rekindles a relationship with a black duck by the name of Katie that he was feeding out of his hand. In 1909, he scoops her up, grabs his wife’s favorite set of scissors, and scratches his address and name on a little piece of aluminum and puts it on Katie. In 1910, the first full record and recovery of a band is done here in North America when he receives that uncrimped band and a letter in the mail from Anderson, South Carolina, where Katie was harvested. That was the beginning of a legacy of collecting bird data through banding. It informed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that was pass, protected migratory birds in both Canada and the United States. Quite a legacy to honor, that’s for sure.
Ramsey Russell: Matt, I have never heard that story about a black duck named Katie being his first. When or how, or why did he transition from his name scratched on a piece of aluminum to biblical phrases? Because that’s what I know Jack Miner primarily for, you pick up a band, and it’s got a very inspirational piece of scripture on it.

Matt Oliske: Well, it kind of all happened at the same time. I mean, you know, a lot of people perceive Jack as a strong, devout Christian, with very strong Christian morals and values. The influence that God had on his life didn’t happen until that second portion of his life. He was focused on raising a family, on his business, on hunting, and he was illiterate until he was 38. In fact, when he started going to church, he mentioned something to the tune of, when his family suffered tragedy, losing two children, it pushed him closer to God. And as he got pushed into the church, he gravitated towards children, considering the situation and the circumstances. It was the Sunday school children that in fact, realized that he was illiterate. He would have them read out of the Good Book. They realized the reason he was asking them to read so often from the Bible themselves was because he could not read. Once they taught him how to read and he dug his nose into the Good Book, he felt fulfilled by that. So it was right around the time of Katie the Black Mallard in 1909, 1910, and the construction of his large swim-and-capture net in 1912 that he got the idea. He wanted not just to focus on protecting God’s creatures but to share the gospel that had changed the trajectory of his life. He made his geese disciples of God and put biblical passages on his bands. We still do that today. People from all reaches of North America stumble on these bands. There are stories of Inuit hunters up in the great north of Canada who would harvest one of Jack Miner’s bands and go to their local priest and ask them to translate for them into their mother tongue. From there, they were influenced by biblical passages and the word of God.

Ramsey Russell: Was he aware and how was he aware that he was spreading the gospel to the Inuit’s? How did he know those geese were going up their way back then? And how did he know there were indigenous people who had not been exposed to Christianity?

Matt Oliske: I don’t think he did. He wasn’t a very learned man. But the nature of putting bands on geese, especially ones made out of aluminum, is that they last, right. They last the journey of migration. He started getting letters in the mail. People would hunt his geese, as I said, right along the flyway. Some of the initial responses to seeing biblical passages on bird bands were that people were afraid they were killing God’s birds. They thought these bands were dropping from the sky, from the heavens. So initially, it was a sense of fear and guilt. Then they would write a super personal, sympathetic letter to Jack, and he would explain why he was banding, in order to learn more about duck and goose species and to protect them.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Matt Oliske: So 90,000 bird bands between 1910 and 1944 is what we’re talking about.

Ramsey Russell: How many bands?

Matt Oliske: 90,000.

Ramsey Russell: 90,000. How many bands has he given? How many birds have been banded at this point now by the year 2024? Joe, you ought to know.

Joe Vermillion: More than 90,000.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Way more.

Joe Vermillion: Goodness, that’s a great question. We are going to be touching into 250,000.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Quarter million.

Joe Vermillion: So we have some great numbers out there. The realistic point is that for the small organization we are, we do a great job of getting bands out there, promoting the sanctuary. Especially now, with our new programs that we’re working on. One of the big ones, 50 Ducks that we’ll talk about here shortly. We are still spreading Jack Miner’s word and following his wishes to continue with the banding, track the data, and use it scientifically to assess changes in local migration.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Now, Joe, let’s talk a little bit about your involvement with the Jack Miner Sanctuary. I’ve been there a few times. I’ve met with you there a few times. You know, I call myself an experience collector, not so much a hunter. It’s funny, the experiences that chasing these wild birds all over Earth open up and create. One of my most treasured experiences, having known about Jack Miner since forever, was coming over to the shop. The press you all still use to turn out the bands is the original one going way back to the 1900s. It’s still the original press. Just to lay hands and spend it a few times to crimp that band, the same one that Mitchell Miner used himself, was pretty profound. My question is, when did you come on board, and what was it like? When did you start, how did you start, and how long have you been there and all that good stuff?

Joe Vermillion: Well, I’ll make it a quick story of when I started. I started when I was 17. We had a family farm, we still have the family farm. But I went across the road to my grandparents’ house, and my grandfather was fit to be tied. I asked my grandma what was going on. She said my cousin had just quit her job, and she was working here. She’d been here a few months. So I jumped in my old car and drove here, knocked on the door, Kirk Miner came to the door, and he said, “Can I help you?” I told him that I heard they had an opening for work. He said, “Yeah, who are you?” I told him, and he kind of looked at me a little differently. Then he said, “When can you start?” I told him, “I have my boots on.” And I did. That’s when I started. That’s how I got my job.

Ramsey Russell: Why did you want that job so bad?

Joe Vermillion: At that time, I just wanted the job because I wanted more work. I needed more money. I had a car, I had insurance, I had gas, and I needed a job. It didn’t take long, though, to honestly say, as Jasper Miner was my mentor here, to learn to absolutely love the entire sanctuary and take in all the crazy wonderful things that go on around here.

Ramsey Russell: What year would that have been, that you were 17?

Joe Vermillion: 1987.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Joe Vermillion: So just a few years ago.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, just a few years ago. Wow. A long time ago, Joe. That’s a long time ago. What was your relationship with waterfowl at the time you started that job? Were you a hunter?

Joe Vermillion: Yeah, I still claim to be a hunter, although there’s not much in my freezer. I don’t hunt waterfowl anymore. I still hunt moose when I have the opportunity and white-tailed deer. I stopped hunting waterfowl about 10 years after I worked here. To be honest, I just lost interest in it. We have the family pond on the family farm, and we’ve hunted a lot of birds there and had a great time there and a lot of family memories. But my interest in it just kind of died off after about 10 years of working here and hunting waterfowl.

Ramsey Russell: Is that some kind of emotional connection to waterfowl, having handled so many? Or is it more like, I hear these stories about if a kid starts working at Baskin Robbins, they let him eat all the ice cream he can, knowing that sooner or later he’s going to be sick of eating ice cream and he won’t eat it. How did you lose interest working with waterfowl like this? How did you lose interest in actually hunting them?

Joe Vermillion: Well, I think it was a few different things. One was my family was growing, so I was losing some time to go waterfowl hunting, and I still would love to go. I just not something I’m making a point of right now. The other part of it is handling birds all day long, putting bands on. And I’ve had some hunters call in and tell me some amazing hunting stories that kind of made mine sound not that exciting. So yeah, I think it was a combination of things. And I’m not against waterfowl hunting. I’d definitely go again. But my drive to go out and do it as passionately as I used to is just not where it used to be.

Joe Vermillion: “Jack Miner taught us that geese are more than quarry—they’re ambassadors. They remind us that every species has a story worth fighting for.”

Ramsey Russell: What did Jack Miner teach you about waterfowl that a young 17-year-old Joe didn’t really know or think about?

Joe Vermillion: Well, I can tell you that Jasper Miner, as my mentor, taught me some amazing things. It could be as simple as just standing at the end of the corn crib and looking up. And he always would say, “Look up,” and you’d look up, and he’d say, “You can see the way the birds are coming in. Watch the way these ones tumble. These are new. These are from the north. Or watch those birds over there on the east side. See, their heads are off. You’re going to see now an eagle come across the field.” And sure enough, 99% of the time, he’d be right on the money. And it was a lot more about being aware of the surroundings of Jack Miner’s, what the waterfowl are doing and how they’re acting, as opposed to just watching them fly overhead. Are they eating more? Are they feeding more? Do we have a storm coming in, or do we have some high winds coming in? All of a sudden, we see no birds for two days. And so it was really a lot of just understanding the habitat as well as the lifestyles of ducks and geese and how things pertain to all the surroundings around us and how they all interlink.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Matt, did Jack Miner also lose his interest in goose hunting? He started off as a commercial hunter. He was banding all these ducks. Did he also transition more into a waterfowl appreciator than a hunter himself?

Matt Oliske: Yeah. You dig into his book Jack Miner and the Birds, and I think the way that he puts it is over time he lost his thirst for blood. You know, he hunted until the day he died, but his interest in it diminished, and his interest in just observing, as Joe points out about how Jasper went on with things and taught Joe how to observe, it’s funny. Jack interest in just observing is what blossomed in his later years. I think he learned more just through being there, being immersed and watching, than he did with having a target in mind.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. How did you start, Matt? How did you come on board as executive director? When and how and why did you come on board with the Jack Miner Foundation?

Matt Oliske: So my background’s in education. I spent 11 years in private education. And, you know, in the tougher, earlier times of COVID, when everybody was locked indoors or pushed outdoors, my wife and I, both of us educators and both of us new parents at the time, would bring our daughter, our three-year-old daughter, here to the sanctuary because it was one of the few places, you know, we were seeking refuge. And the sanctuary is 450 acres, 5 kilometers of trails. You know, my daughter loved feeding the ducks and the geese in the public viewing pond. And it was really interesting, as educators walking through these seemingly abandoned buildings. Of course, they weren’t, it was just that they were locked up during COVID. But we would look at this place and have these long and drawn-out conversations about the potential as educators to reinvent the sanctuary. The longer I’ve been here, there’s less reinventing I imagine us doing and more just going back to our roots. Jack Miner was such a talented educator himself and spent a huge portion of his time engaging with anybody who would walk through the doors to talk about his birds, you know, and what they were doing, what we can learn from them. And so I took a leap of faith as an educator and left my job of 10 years. And actually, I worked under Joe for a while. I took a grounds keeping position here. You know, I was in waders and assisting him in the banding net and pretending, as I say, pretending to be a farmer. And, you know, when you’re staff here, you learn how to wear about 15 hats at a time. And then, with Joe’s support, we took one of our derelict buildings and converted it into an education space, a learning center. It’s now the Jack Miner Learning Center. Our board of directors, who governs this foundation, I think they sat back and said to themselves, “Well, he can read and write. Let’s see what else he can do.” And soon enough, there was a director of education position that was created for me. And about six months ago, I moved up to executive director. So that’s the story of how I ended up here. And I still strongly believe in that educational component of what we do. It is what has the greatest impact and will have the greatest impact on teaching that legacy and conservation.

Matt Oliske: “The Jack Miner Sanctuary wasn’t just a refuge for birds. It was a refuge for the idea that humans and nature can coexist.”

Ramsey Russell: You know, you talk about education, you talk about public outreach, and as best I can tell, that has long since been integral to the Jack Miner Foundation, to his mission as a human being and as a conservationist, is just that, public outreach. In fact, I learned that at one time in history, the number one tourist attraction in Canada was Jack Miner Sanctuary.

Matt Oliske: I’ll correct you. It’s number two. It’s number two. Back in the 1910s and 1920s, it was number two, second only to Niagara Falls.
Ramsey Russell: Niagara Falls. You’re kidding. I was gonna ask you about that.
Matt Oliske: I know. It’s still number one today. So yeah, I mean, back in the 1930s, you could count 30,000 geese, you know, foraging and nesting across the road in our grazing field, and it’d be bumper-to-bumper Ford Model T traffic in the 1920s and 1930s. There was a dedicated streetcar that went from Windsor Ontario, which hugs Detroit, Michigan, and it would bring people down here during migration. They would walk from the four corners of King and spend an entire day here.
Ramsey Russell: Well, Joe has shown me photos. It looked like a downtown Christmas parade worth of traffic. Old 1950s and 1960s Buicks and trucks, and people sitting on the hoods of cars for a mile just to watch the geese flying in the evening. It was unbelievable. And, you know, for those of you all listening, don’t imagine Jack Miner’s facilities as being a stock tank out on a federal refuge or a farm, you know, a flooded bean field where they’re shooting rocket nets. It’s not. It is his home. It is his family home. And in the backyard are some of these dugout clay pits. You walk in his backyard, and it’s almost like walking into a petting zoo. The first time I ever went to Jack Miner would have been, oh gosh, late 1990s, early 2000s, thereabouts. And golly, we just walked in the back, and it wasn’t like a bunch of game farm ducks just walking around. These were wild birds coming and landing in the backyard. In fact, I’ve got a photo somewhere on a hard drive. Back in the day, I carried a big camera. You would stop almost like at a bubble gum machine, put a loony in, and buy a bunch of grain. Then walk in the backyard and feed them like chickens. I was hand-feeding, almost hand-feeding, a wild northern shoveler that had a Jack Miner band on him, and that bird was free to go. There was no ceiling on that cage. Those ducks could come and go and do what they wanted to. Then you go a little bit further behind it, back by a corn crib, and there were telephone poles around with a big old drop net that wouldn’t drop on the geese but just drop around and close them in. Then Joe and the staff and volunteers would wade in, net the birds, and band them. The last time I was there, there was actually an enclosed pavilion where the public can come, interact, and be a part of this thing, or at least watch it from feet away. We were talking about experiences earlier, guys, and you know, I haven’t lost my taste for pulling the trigger. I don’t know if I ever will. But I’ll tell you this, to volunteer and go out anywhere in the United States, I’ve done it in Louisiana, I’ve done it in Arkansas, I worked for the federal government up in Canada one time, and to put your hands on these wild birds, handle them, measure them, speciate them, crimp a band on them, document it, and turn them loose, that is a whole other level of interaction with waterfowl than just hanging them on a strap, you know what I’m saying? Even as a hunter during hunting season, it’s totally different being able to put your hands on that bird and turn it loose for scientific or human benefit. It is a whole other level of experience. You all still do that, don’t you?
Joe Vermillion: 100%. Yeah, we still band lots of birds here. Over the last couple of years, just getting to know Greer and expanding our horizons personally at the sanctuary with how birds are caught, how they’re released, how they’re measured, just different ways of looking at it, whether it be the ideas behind Windsor University or Michigan State University. It was a great learning experience. We met a lot of great people, and it really opened my eyes personally about bird banding and the different ways that it can be done. It’s not so much in the administration of just putting the band on as in the way the birds are caught. I’d been, to be honest with you, very blessed and lucky to band here at Jack Miner’s, where it’s common for us to band up to 200 ducks in a day on a good day. Where working with Michigan State University, we drove 700 km in one day and only banded 31 ducks. It’s just a whole different way of looking at it, and there are a lot of great people out there doing the same thing. I agree with you 100%. There’s something about holding that wild bird, and I’m sure Greer can attest to this. Manuel was just here helping us band, and we had the opportunity to put some backpacks on ducks. You get to spend some time with each duck as we do the measurements, and so on and so forth. You can even see the different personality in the bird itself in the amount of time you spend with that bird. It’s just an amazing experience. And, like you said, anybody ever gets the opportunity to experience that, whether it’s here at Jack Miner’s or someplace else, volunteering, please put it on your bucket list and check it off because it’s just an awesome thing to do.
Ramsey Russell: Greer, that’s a great segue into asking you, Greer Smith, about 50 Ducks. How did you become introduced to Jack Miner, and what is your level of involvement now?
Greer Smith: Yeah, it’s kind of a great circle. When I was 9, 10, 11, 20 years ago, somewhere in that time frame, I was on a hunt in Macon, Georgia, with a group of guys, my dad, and some of his friends. We killed a Jack Miner-banded mallard. I didn’t kill it, but the group did. We had no idea about it. We saw the Bible verse, and I got introduced to Jack Miner at that time. You know, you fast forward 20 years down the road. We have the idea for 50 Ducks, and I just called the guys up.
Ramsey Russell: Take just a moment and introduce our listeners to what 50 Ducks is because it’s a great concept.
Greer Smith: So 50 Ducks is an educational and fundraising platform for places like Jack Miner and non-profits across the country. It’s a way to use GPS-tagged waterfowl and to introduce it to school children across the continent, as well as to waterfowl hunters, birdwatchers, and everybody in between were you can see in near real-time the general movement of these birds on our platform, 50Ducks.com. By the time this comes out, we’ll have an app on Android and iPhone stores where you can log on every day and see where the birds are. We have it overlaid with movement, weather, and all sorts of fun information like that. That’s the general premise of it.
Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. So talk about now becoming involved with Jack Miner and how you’re going to expand the Sanctuary’s reach at a time that it is important.
Greer Smith: Sure. Like I said, I was introduced to the Sanctuary 20 years ago. You fast forward, and I called Matt and Joe. I knew they had been looking at some of these telemetry studies to look at light pollution up there. I knew they were interested in doing that, and I offered to help fund it with them and pitch them the idea of this platform. You know, as you can hear, I mean, the passion in Matt and Joe’s voices, how much this means to them, it means the same to me. But unfortunately, we have a connection to something that fewer and fewer people these days do, which is nature and waterfowl. So how do we get that to more people? How do we meet kids where they are today? We want to use technology to do that. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been up to Jack Miner a handful of times. I was there twice in September, and I’m going back in early December. I’m a volunteer that tries not to get in their way when I’m up there. But I’ve fallen in love with that place too. For anyone that wants to make a trip, it’s a magical place. You can say that, but until you go there, you don’t really understand it. You can feel the history. You can feel the passion. It’s a place one of its own.

Ramsey Russell: I agree entirely that the Jack Miner Sanctuary belongs on every waterfowl hunter’s to-do list to go and visit. And speaking about the history and the passion, it’s not just a pond out in the middle of a field. It’s a home, and it’s now a museum. Let’s sidetrack just a minute and talk about the museum, talk about the people. Now here’s a guy that had a clay farm, started banding a few ducks, built this thing, and became Wild Goose Jack. He became, at a time, a massive national, or I should say because it crossed U.S. and Canadian boundaries, international celebrity. Who were some of the people that, back in the day, Jack Miner associated with? Who came up and moose hunted with him or visited him or helped him be a part of this thing? Name some of those folks and some of the stuff people could see in that museum.

Matt Oliske: Well, a very good friend of his, most notable, is Henry Ford.

Ramsey Russell: Henry Ford.

Ramsey Russell: “Jack Miner’s work wasn’t just about saving geese—it was about saving the soul of conservation. His sanctuaries became living classrooms for generations of hunters and naturalists.”

Matt Oliske: He’d spend weekends here at a time. Anybody who knows Ford in his later years, when he was sort of, you know, kind of by a forced hand told that he was going to give up his company to his sons who wanted to take it in a different direction, he became incredibly nostalgic for the past. So much so that a guy with a bottomless pit of money created Greenfield Village, which is essentially a primitive village that he created. He collected a bunch of old buildings from all over North America and Europe and would pay his workers to farm primitively, cut his hair, you know, like they used to back in the 1800s, and so on and so forth. So, a guy like him used to show up at the sanctuary, you know, as a means of jumping in a time machine. Jack was a guy who would walk from capture net to capture net in his bare feet. Birds would perch on his shoulder and eat out of his hand. Deer would walk right up to him and treat him like one of their own. It wasn’t only a Garden of Eden experience. It was a step back in time for guys like Henry Ford, who went on to fund a number of different projects here, including a kilometer stretch of barbed wire fencing to protect the capture net from terrestrial predators. Ty Cobb was another good friend of Jack Miner’s. The world-famous baseball player broke 90 baseball records during his time in the MLB and stumbled on a magazine article in an outdoor magazine about this wacky goose farmer in Kingsville, Ontario, that was highlighting some of the work he was doing. Ty Cobb just sort of cold-called and knocked on the door of the Miner residence and wanted to spend time here. The Kellogg family, of Kellogg’s cereal, not only were members of that family hunting with Jack, but Ford and Kellogg both families have waterfowl sanctuaries in Michigan. If you dig into that history, you’ll see that their sanctuaries were modeled after Jack Miner Sanctuary. And yeah, we’ve had U.S. Presidents, Prime Ministers, UN Delegates, and Marilyn Monroe visited the sanctuary. Thomas Edison was known to have correspondence with Jack Miner. So, the list of famous connections is endless, honestly. Before the Great Depression, he spent a good portion of his time on the road, as you pointed out. He went as far as Alaska and did a European tour. When he passed away, there were 4,000 speaking engagements that he had booked, upon the date of his death, he would have been busy for another decade as a speaker. He was known to be the most recognized name. We’ve got this really interesting artifact in the museum that lists the great men and women of our time. You’ve got names like Wilfred Laurier, Winston Churchill, and William Shakespeare, and third from the bottom, you’ve got Jack Miner’s name.

Ramsey Russell: Golly, that’s running around in some tall cotton now.

Matt Oliske: There you go.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You know, it may very well still be one of the top tourist destinations in Canada. But, you know, there are 900,000 waterfowl hunters in the United States. There are maybe 100,000 in Canada, relative to around, I don’t know, 375–400 million people in those two countries. That’s a pretty small segment of society that hunts anymore. Back in those days you’re talking about, it seemed like everybody hunted. And now, for whatever reason, access, cost, video games, or whatever else, very, very few people, relatively very few people, still hunt. And it’s very important, I think it’s more important now to introduce society at large to the miracle of waterfowl migration and conservation. Which is why I like to see the historical Jack Miner Foundation and 50 Ducks begin to collaborate. Because with Greer’s 50 Ducks programs, he can beam these things into classrooms so that inner-city children in New York or Toronto, who don’t have a clue about wild birds, can suddenly see what these birds are doing, their journey from the Arctic to Ontario, down to South Carolina, Michigan, or wherever else they’re going from there. I think it really kind of brings it home at a whole new, necessary, and meaningful level than even what it was back in Jack Miner’s heyday.

Matt Oliske: That’s where I think Greer is right on the money. I mean, of those 400 or so individuals who are interested in waterfowl hunters, who are interested in the sanctuary, how many are going to make it here? We need to engage with so many more people that are going to step foot on this sanctuary. His technology and his vision, our shared vision of what we want from this collaboration, is going to bring ducks into the classroom. It’s going to bring the discussion of habitat and how it links with wildlife into the classroom. We’re taking the Jack Miner Sanctuary experience on the road. We’re making it virtual, and we need to do that because you consider just wetlands loss, habitat loss. Regionally, we’re talking about a loss of 40% since the 1800s in Michigan and in southwestern Ontario here, we’re talking about 70% wetland habitat loss.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, I had no idea.

Matt Oliske: The clock is ticking, you know, and so yeah, kudos to the vision of Greer to take these issues and to live-stream them and to make them virtual so that we can get people thinking about, talking about, and caring about these things without ever stepping foot into a marsh.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, to your point, what we’re talking about is we waterfowl hunters put our time and our money into habitat conservation. But if you look at the past 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or 100 years, it’s just not enough. We’re becoming a minority of society at large, and we are seemingly the only people that care about wetlands and waterfowl conservation. If we’re going to turn the tide, so that we have more ducks to hunt and can continue to exercise our traditions, we’ve got to get society at large on board. We’ve got to get the remainder, the non-hunting public, to understand how important these canary-in-the-coal-mine-like waterfowl are relative to our own living environment, which is wetlands conservation. That’s what excites me the most about a program like 50 Ducks and about Jack Miner’s moving forward. You know, I was in Kingsville, Ontario, the last time I saw him a couple of years ago and stayed at a hotel there in town. I was just shocked, like a punch in the stomach. That little hipster hotel I stayed in had the “Top 10 Tourist Attractions of Kingsville, Ontario,” and it was bars and shopping, boutiques, and stuff like that. I held it up and said, “Where the heck is Jack Miner on here? What’s Jack Miner?” I go, “My Lord, have mercy. How can you live in Kingsville, Ontario, and not know what the Jack Miner Sanctuary is right down the road?” I began to explain it to them, and they’re taking notes. I don’t know if they put it on the list or not, but they should. It belongs on the list. But that hasn’t always been the case. You were telling me before we started recording that Jack Miner was a part of the local curriculum in schools at one time, was it not?

Ramsey Russell: “His legacy isn’t just in the skies above Canada—it’s in every modern hunter who understands that preservation is the price of privilege.”

Matt Oliske: That’s right, yeah. His name would appear right in there, embedded in the curriculum. So, you know, it was a tick box to get your students through the curriculum. It was touching on that Jack Miner story and that legacy. Without him, you don’t have the establishment of the Migration Act, the single-handed act that does plenty to pool resources together between Canada and the U.S. to protect migratory bird species. Without Jack Miner, you don’t have those common-sense hunting regulations that are going to save species from extinction because we were almost there in a time when there was absolutely no hunting regulation, period. Without Jack Miner, you don’t have the establishment of Point Pelee National Park, considered the lungs and the kidney, the filter of the Great Lakes system, and a beacon of what wetland habitat should look like. So, you don’t have all of those connections. No doubt, the accomplishments of Jack were recognized the year before his passing. King George VI himself honored Jack with the Order of the British Empire for the greatest conservation achievement in the British Empire. So, yeah, in today’s education focuses and just in terms of common knowledge, we’re a far cry from where we were back in the 1930s and 1940s when it came to who recognized the name and what it stood for, Jack Miner.

Ramsey Russell: But the same could be said throughout the entire waterfowl, wetlands, and natural world at large, not just Jack Miner. It’s almost like if you looked at Jack Miner, as explained just now, the person, if you look at it as a canary-in-a-coal-mine type to waterfowl hunting in the natural world at large, the same could be said. I mean, as his name diminishes, public interest in what he represents from a conservation standpoint does too. The same could be said throughout the entire waterfowl management world, throughout all of earth, I mean the same could be said, its everywhere in North America. As a duck hunter, as a father, as a soon-to-be grandfather, it concerns me a lot, which is why, again, I’m excited to see 50 Ducks collaborate with you all to get the word out. Greer reached out to me. I just wrapped up a six-province tour. Man, was that an epic road trip. Greer had reached out to me and said, “Hey, we’re going to be up at the Jack Miner Foundation banding ducks and putting these collars on. Please come by and stop by if you can.” Boy, I wanted to so bad. It was just impossible. I was way, way too far away when that took place for it to happen. What did you all do? What happened? 50 Ducks showed up to the Jack Miner Foundation this year. What exactly did you all do? How many birds were banded? What’s going to become of it?

Matt Oliske: Greer, why don’t you go ahead? Yeah, go into that.

Greer Smith: “Mainstreaming his work today means teaching kids to see geese as symbols of resilience, not just targets.”

Greer Smith: That was, I think, super exciting for everybody. We also have a super awesome partner, Manuel Grossellet, who runs an organization out of Oaxaca, Mexico, and runs 12 banding stations down there. He’s world-renowned in all things bird banding. He’s banded hummingbirds, black hawk eagles, and everything in between. This has been a long time in the making. Jack Miner and the University of Windsor had been in the permitting process to kick off this telemetry study, what, a year and a half, two years? Yeah, I mean, it had been a really long time. So, that was the first round of GPS banding that they did up there. Jack Miner and Manuel led the efforts of putting GPS backpacks on mallards. We put them on about 25 mallards. We’re going to put at the end of September in two sessions, middle of September, end of September, the 25 GPS back packs on, around the sanctuary for a light pollution study they’re doing. Here in a couple of weeks, we’re going to put about another 10 trackers on mallards, and we’re going to band 15 Canada geese as well. What they’re doing with that is studying light pollution. The University of Windsor, Oliver Love, and his department are helping them deduce all of that. What we’re doing at 50 Ducks is we’re repurposing all of that data. We’ve cleaned it up, put some safety measures on it so you can’t trophy on the birds, and put it on our website, 50ducks.com, where everybody in the world every morning can log on and see generally what these Jack Miner birds are doing. You don’t have to explain to a waterfowl hunter why that’s cool. You don’t have to explain to them why seeing the migration in real-time, not reading reports, not reading band summaries, not hearing general “We’re seeing birds here” but seeing an actual bird move and seeing that in eight hours, for example. I’m going to use the birds’ names. One of our outreach programs is we let kids from across the country name the birds. So, if you log on the website, you’ll see some funny names. We’ve got Buzz, Jelly Donut, Fat Daddy, Michael Jordan.

Ramsey Russell: Sir Somebody. I can’t remember.

Greer Smith: Sir Dabble.

Ramsey Russell: Sir Dabble.

Greer Smith: And there’s no bad name when a kid sends it in. We have teachers in the first month and a half that we’ve been doing educational outreach. We’ve got teachers in 20 states using this platform already in the classroom. And, you know, Jack Miner runs about 2,000 kids a year through the sanctuary from an educational standpoint. Isn’t that right, Matt?

Matt Oliske: That’s correct.

Greer Smith: Yeah. We want to put a zero on the end of that number, and there’s no reason you can’t do that with a platform like this. Anyway, we’re starting to see some migratory movement up there at Jack Miner. Buzz the Mallard was banded at the end of September. Last Thursday, two Thursdays ago, he left at 11 p.m. from the sanctuary and next touched down in southern New York. Eight hours later, he flew 350 miles due east, got up to about 3,000 feet in altitude, and reached a top speed of about 70 miles per hour. Right. And that’s super neat. You can make that super relatable for Buzz the Mallard, who is sponsored by a group of kids in Lebanon, Missouri.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Greer Smith: That makes waterfowl relatable. It makes them cool, and it might make one of them want to learn a little more. Then we’ve got the resources on there that you can do that with.

Ramsey Russell: How can anybody listening, I’ve got to ask you at this point, how can teachers and educators in classrooms and anybody listening connect with this program? What are the steps? How does 50 Ducks work? How can I watch this?

Greer Smith: Absolutely. Well, this whole platform is and will always be free for teachers. If you are a teacher and you want to use this in the classroom, all you have to do is send me an email. I’ll have you logged on that day. Use it in the classroom. We let kids sponsor birds. We’re about out of names for this year, but we can co-sponsor them. All you do is go to 50ducks.com. There’s a bunch of cool stuff on the website, and it will walk you through how to do it. Like I said, it’s completely free for teachers. For the general public, we’re using this as a fundraising tool for places like Jack Miner. I mean, these projects are really expensive.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Greer Smith: So we charge $60 a year as a donation to help fund these projects.

Ramsey Russell: Five bucks a month. Can’t buy a cup of coffee. One cup of coffee a month, who can join this thing to support conservation and have a way to be entertained.

Greer Smith: 100%. And the thing is fascinating. We’ll have an app out by the time this airs with some cool stuff on it as well. But 50ducks.com, that’s all you’ve got to do. There are some features on there to prevent trophy hunting of the birds. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that as well. That’s pretty important. There are a few bad apples out there that would want to kill one. None of these birds have a Jack Miner leg band on them, first of all. The data is on a slight time delay. There’s limited zoom, and we do little stuff or we randomize the data slightly so you can’t just go to where the duck is but after 120 days, all the data is released in its entirety within a 3-foot range. You can see exactly what the duck was doing its entire life. It’s really fascinating. It’s the only place where you can see this as it happens. You have a bunch of folks on your show that do some of this GPS data collection, right? No one else is putting it out there and trying to make it more open-source for the world to use as an educational tool. Currently, it’s doing a lot of good stuff for scientific studies, predictive models, and harvest management. My vision, and what Matt, Joe, and I have really bonded over, is education and conservation. You cannot continue to have the species that we have in waterfowl if more people don’t care and if more young people don’t get introduced to this platform in new and creative ways. 50 Ducks isn’t the answer to wetlands conservation, but it can be part of the solution and a way to get more people talking about it.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely. It’s a way to get the non-hunting public vested. I mean, my gosh, you give it to a classroom that names Buzz the Mallard, gives him a name, has a relationship with this duck, turns him loose, and all of a sudden, from a classroom sitting in Lebanon, Missouri, they and other school children like them can watch what this wild duck is doing, where he’s going, how he’s living his life, and connect them to that duck personally. Man, that’s a huge win. It’s like, I just think all of us duck hunters listening, we go out, we shoot ducks, the season ends, we clean our decoys, and we swap to fishing or whatever we’re going to do next. Have you ever wondered where those ducks you didn’t shoot, the ones that got away, are going or what they’re doing throughout the course of a year?

Matt Oliske: We been asking ourselves that’s same question, since we started putting these on.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Matt Oliske: What is happening between us putting that on a bird and that band being recovered? It’s 50 Ducks and our partnership with them and the technology that we’ve invested in that is going to fill in that blank. Right. And that’s what’s fascinating. We’re bringing banding into the 21st century.

Ramsey Russell: Education is conservation. Time and money are conservation. And for five dollars a month, I can contribute meaningfully. Five bucks a month, I can contribute meaningfully to conservation. When we start talking, Greer, you were talking about some of the state and federal government and university banding programs. The bottleneck in all of this, whether we’re talking wetlands conservation or research projects or anything else, is funding. All of a sudden, 50 Ducks, beyond just the elementary school classrooms, can recruit a stream. If every duck hunter in North America were to throw $5 a month, $60 at it, we’d have real money that could be funneled into research projects and habitat projects. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. Beyond the hunters, we’re dragging in all of society in an entertaining format. For five bucks a month, God dawg, man, every little classroom out there could go out and sell chocolate bars or M&Ms or whatever they sell these days and raise money for waterfowl. That’s the mission. That is the end goal here, to get everybody involved in a very relatable way in this conservation war.

Matt Oliske: Nobody cares to protect something they don’t understand.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. You bring up a good point there, Matt. I’ve always felt, as a daddy and as a human being myself, that we only care about things we know, and we only know things we touch and have relationships with. This is going to give potentially everybody a relationship with wild ducks. I couldn’t be more excited about that.

Greer Smith: And one thing you mentioned, that you talk about a lot on your show, is where all the money comes from that currently funds avian conservation. If you look at the State of the Birds report, there are only two species that are not declining in North America, waterfowl and birds of prey. Birds of prey thrive because there are a lot of organizations funneling money into their conservation. Waterfowl thrive because of the federal duck stamp, the Farm Act, and all this funding. People care. Right. So how do we get more people to care? How do you unite this group of people that’s ten times larger than the hunting community, the bird-watching community, the people who are part of the Audubon? How do you bring their money into the fold and provide them with something valuable that allows them to see where their money’s going? We don’t have enough programs like that now either and we have this huge disconnect between bird watchers and hunters on many points, but everyone wants to preserve the species. So we’ve got to find a way to reach into their pockets as well to help do some good.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, Bar, I’m going to change gears entirely. I haven’t heard enough from Joe today. Joe, Joe, Joe, you’ve been working at Jack Miner a long time. What was it like raising your family on the sanctuary and interacting with all the public, you know, that comes through and calls you up?

Joe Vermillion: Well, you know, it was a great experience. I lived here 19 years. I had the pleasure of putting my kids on the bus every day and getting them off the bus every day. Not too many people can say that. They got to watch ducks hatch out, feed ducks, catch ducks, band ducks, shovel corn. They even had the golden opportunity to help me clean bathrooms on Sunday, all those other kinds of fun things. So it was just a great experience. My oldest son still works at the sanctuary part-time, and my middle son volunteers here quite a bit in regards to equipment and so on and so forth. But they had the excellent opportunity of being raised here. There came a point in our life that my wife wanted her own house. So after 19 years, we decided to go that direction. And the old house I used to live in, we’ve got some exciting plans for it coming up starting in January. So I think you’re going to possibly see a Jack Miner, how do you want to explain it? Like an Airbnb here at Jack Miners. But it’s a whole experience.

Matt Oliske: The banding experience.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Talk about that a little bit. So somebody listening could come up, stay at Jack Miner, stay in the house or stay on the premises, and go out and band ducks? Wow.

Matt Oliske: You got it. Yeah, we’re hoping to have a banding workshop positioned out near our Capture Net. You know, the package would include an exclusive historical tour of the assets and the grounds, a workshop by Joe, who’s got plenty of experience and stories to share. And then included in that would be accommodations. So you stay for a couple of nights, or you stay for a night, wake up at the crack of dawn, and head to the Capture Net. And once you’ve got a couple notches in your belt in terms of what to do out there and how to assist with banding, you don the waders and you do the work. And yeah, we’re hoping to take that banding experience and share it with more than just our regular volunteers and our regular partners. We want to share that experience with those 400,000 waterfowl hunters and enthusiasts who want to come here and want to experience what it’s like and the source of that Holy Grail.

Ramsey Russell: Sign me up. I would love to do that. I’d love to bring my entire family up there for that. It is amazing. That’s exciting.

Joe Vermillion: It’s an exciting project we’re starting here at the sanctuary that has taken some time to put together, but it’s just around the corner. It’s going to be up and running soon enough. You asked me what it’s like to live here all that time. I can’t go without saying I’ve met so many amazing people that have come through, like yourself, Randall, Haley, Greer, just person after person that are here for the reason. And this is one of the luckiest things about our job. People come here because they want to come here. They didn’t come here to complain. They didn’t come here to create problems. They came because it was a stopping place they wanted to enjoy. And so I honestly believe that when people get here, their mindset is in a totally different place. They came for the entire Jack Miner, I’m going to call it, experience and his lifestyle in regards to waterfowl, the grounds, the history, where we’re headed in the future, all that kind of great stuff. So yeah, living here and working here has just been a great experience.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of the interesting phone calls you have fielded? Oh, I always love those stories, Joe. I mean, you’ve talked to people all over the United States, I guess, primarily the Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways. What are some of the most interesting phone calls you’ve ever received on band recoveries?

Joe Vermillion: Well, you know, I was going to bring this up earlier in the conversation. We were talking about the birds being missionaries of the sky. And it’s only fair to say that we’ve had some phone calls here that are true tearjerkers. We had one gentleman give us a phone call, a letter first and then a phone call to follow. He had decided on such and such a date that it was going to be the last day of his existence. And out of the blue, the night before, a friend of his called and said, “Let’s go duck hunting tomorrow.” So they went duck hunting, and he shot a Jack Miner band that morning. And he called to explain to us how that was the reason that gave him the will to live. The Bible verse gave him the touching aspect of knowing that something else was going on. And that’s what saved him from ending of that day. We’ve had that story, and I’ve had another story about a gentleman who was a big band collector, and I mean through duck hunting. He lost his whole lanyard on the last day of the season, and he was really upset about it. In the meantime, he had a stroke. His wife’s health wasn’t well. They were a retired couple. Then the spring came along, he was outside doing some yard work. The neighbor pulled up and handed him back his lanyard. He had found it on the side of the road, and it had gotten covered with snow and dirt and debris. So he got his whole lanyard back. And he said the cool thing about that was they had a meeting that afternoon with the doctor to try and make some decisions on their health. And he said, “When I held that lanyard in my hand again, it answered my question about what I was going to tell the doctor when I walked in that door.”

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Joe Vermillion: Yeah, we’ve had some great, great experiences. We’ve had people up here who had lost family members recently. This actually just happened last week. They came here, they wanted to just go sit on a bench where their daughter liked to visit here at the sanctuary. So that one wasn’t directly related to a band, but it was related to the relationship that their family built with Jack Miners through struggling health reasons. So they have their special spot, Big Toad, and they still come here. They were here last week just to come and enjoy the location. But let me tell you a story, a quick banding story. And this is obviously over more than a day or two.

Matt Oliske: On the lighter note.

Joe Vermillion: On a lighter note. On a lighter note. So we used to always have to get five pieces of band information off of every band because bands used to be normally phoned in. So you’re always standing beside a phone, or if it rang, you picked it up, and chances were, it was a band recovery. I needed five pieces of information off that band. I needed to know the serial number of the band, the year of the band, your name and address. I needed the Bible verse off the band, and I also needed to know where you recovered the bird, where did you shoot that bird? For our own information. And we are very proud that we still send out a certificate for every band that’s recovered, and we do our best to have all the information correct. So you can understand that there can be many ways to spell names. We always ask people to say everything and spell it. So if your name’s Bob, you spell it “Bob. B-o-b.” And I write it down as you go. So I had this Southern boy give me a call, and it was lunchtime, and my brother and I were having our lunch. We were on speakerphone. I explained to him all the information I needed. So I said, “Can I get the bird first?” He tells me it’s a goose and the serial number. So he gives me the serial number. I got the year, all good. I got the Bible verse, and I said, “Okay, now I need you to say and spell your name and address.” He gives me his name, says it, and spells it. I got all this information down. The last key piece of information I need is, where did he shoot the bird? So I said to him, “And where’d you shoot that bird?” This Southern boy goes, “I shot that bird in the head, H-e-a-d!” I spit my soup on the table. I was trying to shut it off so fast I couldn’t even shut it off. My brother just about fell out of his chair laughing. I finally got back to the phone call and finished the information I needed to get from the gentleman. But that is the craziest one I’ve ever gotten: “I shot it in the head.”

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great story. That’s the story I was hoping you’d tell, Joe. That’s a really great story. I probably know that guy. Where next? Where will 50 Ducks and Jack Miner go next with this program? What’s next?

Greer Smith: There’s a lot of ways it can go. I mean, we’ve got to finish, you know, this first year up, see what kind of outreach we can get. You know, Jack Miner’s on the front of doing a lot of really cool stuff, and we hope that this is just the beginning. We’ll be banding around the world. I mean, Joe, you know, he’s always wanted to be a rock star and go on a world tour, but maybe now he can do it through bird banding. We’ve got some awesome partners in some cool places, and we are going to start banding different species in different places, you know, on this crusade, on this mission. And, you know, we welcome more people in more places who want to work with us and collaborate with us to not be shy and to reach out.

Ramsey Russell: Fantastic.

Matt Oliske: I think we’re going to keep expanding that database of educational materials, too, that will supplement this mapping system, the technology that we’re offering to classrooms. So we’re going to keep expanding on our reach and how many young people get to interact with this. Yeah, the sky’s the limit there.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all very much. I’m excited. I’m excited for both 50 Ducks and Jack Miner, and I’m excited for the conservation movement at large. Thank you all very much for coming on board today and sharing this exciting news.

Greer Smith: Ramsay, let me give you this before we go. We’re going to launch this thing right before Christmas. This is a great Christmas gift. Go online, buy a subscription for your friends and family. We’ve got a gift card on there. Give the gift of migration. It doesn’t matter, everybody doesn’t have everything. Give them something new.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all.

Matt Oliske: Thank you Ramsey.

Ramsey Russell: “Mainstreaming conservation isn’t about making it trendy. It’s about making it essential. Jack Miner did that by turning goose banding into a community ritual.”

Ramsey Russell: Folks. Thank you all for listening to this special episode, Wild Goose Jack Miner goes mainstream, and it’s about darn time. You know, we all know, we as hunters, we all know that time and money are conservation, but education is conservation too. How the heck do we get the rest of society on board with our hyper-focused, mission-critical mission? You know, this is how, through education. All of you all who have kids, call the teacher and tell them to get on 50 Ducks. All of you folks that don’t have kids, find one and call the teacher and let them know. And go ahead and sign up. I mean, this is how we can put $5 a month, 60 bucks. I can’t go buy a couple of boxes of shotgun shells for 50 bucks, 60 bucks. This is how I can drag the rest of society, get them emotionally vested in waterfowl and wetlands conservation through this collaborative program with 50 Ducks. Link below, click it, swipe your credit card, and let’s get moving, folks. Education is conservation. See you next time.