EP 569. Flying V

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where today all the way from Bozeman, Montana are my two buddies, Matt McCormick, Brady Davis. They got a little company called Flying V Solutions. But the last time my long term listeners heard them was way back in episode 76 of Hippies and Cowboys. Which one of you all is a hippie? Which one of you all is a cowboy? I get asked that a lot.

Brady Davis: Well, I would put us both closer in the cowboy category. We just live amongst hippies here in Bozeman, Montana.

Matt McCormick: Yes, we do.

Ramsey Russell: But I like Bozeman, the few times I’ve been out there, I like Bozeman because it is a little bit of a hybrid community like that. I mean, a lot of cowboys, but a lot of regular folks too. I guess that’d be fall into the hippie category.

Brady Davis: Well listen, I think overall that creates a pretty good and eclectic atmosphere and let’s be honest, when you get all those different types of people, you get better restaurants, you get better concerts, you get better stuff to do. And so, yeah, we have no problem with it at all, it’s a good spot for us to be.

Matt McCormick: And yeah, I’ve been here for over a decade now. It’s crazy to think that we’ve been here that long. We were just talking about that yesterday with Trey.

Ramsey Russell: You all been there a long time.

Matt McCormick: Yeah, not planning on leaving, actually. Quite the contrary, we’re planting a flag.

Ramsey Russell: Remind everybody where you all originated.

Matt McCormick: Yeah. So, I come from Wisconsin originally, born and bred and grew up hunting over there, public marshes, got into goose hunting in high school time frame and ended up making a decision to move to Idaho and the hunting there is phenomenal and I knew some people over there. And so I just packed up the truck with all my goose hunting stuff and headed west and haven’t looked back, man. I ended up in Bozeman in 2013 and met my wife here, she’s Montana native. Now I have two boys, a 4 year old boy and a year and a half year old boy, Deak and Dax. And yeah, that’s the story up until now. And the journey’s just begun, it feels like.

Ramsey Russell: What about you, Brady?

Brady Davis: I grew up in Utah originally. I grew up kind of more in the big game hunting world. Grew up with hounds, we ran mountain lions and bears and bobcats with dogs. After college, my wife and I moved to Colorado where I was managing a ranch, and that is where I got into waterfowl hunting. I had some buddies that kind of introduced me to the sport and then started doing some goose hunting on my own and got into waterfowl hunting there, spent about a decade in Colorado, a couple quick years in South Carolina and then up here in Montana. And like Matt said, this is the final destination. It wasn’t a round trip ticket when we got here, so it was a one way, we’re staying here.

Ramsey Russell: Matt, is it kind of like one of them deals, when you marry Montana, you get some form of honorary citizenship or something? Like, you travel around the world, if somebody marries an American, they get their American citizenship. Is Montana work that way?

Matt McCormick: It’s kind of one of those deals where you got to earn your keep around here. That’s what I’ve learned.

Ramsey Russell: How’d you all, last time I saw you, we had a couple of two or three really fun days hunting out there in the Gallatin river valley, getting over those big Canada geese. Jumped in with some other boys, hunted them some of the fields, had a really good time. Believe it or not, that was Char dog’s first season. She’s seen some world since then, but that’s how long ago it’s been is a long time ago.

Brady Davis: She was nice then.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well she’s just older now and a little more experienced. Tell me what’s this fast ass, good looking dog you running now, Brady?

Brady Davis: Oh well, we’ve got Lad. He’s a 7 year old black lab. He’s an awesome dog, fully finished. I mean the dog’s picked up, 10,000 plus birds. But then I started a few years ago kind of doing some research on chessies, Chesapeake Bay retrievers. And I’ve got a 13 month old pup with a trainer in western Montana right now that’s just doing awesome.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Brady Davis: And so super excited about that. And then this upcoming summer I’ve got another chessy puppy coming. So, on the waterfowl side, I’m kind of veering off right now and going down the chessie route a little bit for a number of reasons.

Ramsey Russell: I tell you what, I have been blessed to hunt over some Chesapeake Bay retrievers in the past and the good ones are great. They’re such a durable, made for waterfowl hunting animal, a beast. A good friend of mine in Mississippi had one of the best ones I’d ever seen, 100lbs, he was big, but he was extremely athletic, muscular and how now were they doing that bottomless mud type cypress break, that dog was bulletproof. I mean just impervious to nature. And I would think that’d be an asset out there where you all hunt, where it gets cold.

Brady Davis: That was part of the mindset going into it. I mean, I’ve been around, it’s really funny when you talk about chessies because people will say, I’ve been around some really good ones and I’ve been around some that I didn’t like. Well, the truth is we could all say that about Labrador. We’ve been around some really good labs and I’ve been around some that I’d like to have taken right back to the truck or taken straight to the dog pound. And I think it’s like anything, I did 3 years of research before diving into this project. Last spring, Matt and I flew to Maine and went and picked this puppy up that’s in training right now. He’s going to be a big dog, too. He’s 13 months old, he’s 80 pounds right now, but he’s real tall, real leggy, which is what I’m looking for. I want something that can handle the extreme cold, but also has some size and shoulder and neck muscle to him carrying these big geese through a foot of snow in a corn stubble field, the height and the speed and the power is advantageous for sure.

Ramsey Russell: How extreme cold are you all hunting in out there?

Matt McCormick: Oh, man. It’s a loaded question. Because we’ll go any day, so if season’s open, we’re going to go. And I think this last year our coldest hunt was, was -20. But we’ve had hunts in the close to -50 before up here. And at the end of the day, those bird, the ducks don’t fly as much, but the geese will, they will fly and you just got to be there, man. And this last year, our coldest hunt, what would you say our coldest hunt was real great?

Brady Davis: Yeah, we were probably right there in the 20 below this year. The year before, our coldest, like Matt said, was the last week of the season with our wind chill, we were 40 below zero basically the whole week.

Ramsey Russell: That sounds perfectly miserable.

Brady Davis: Well, it depends on the blinds. We’ve been upgrading some blinds this year. We put in 8 Kohler pit blinds this year on one of the properties. And so, they’re 16ft pits with four heaters in them. And I mean, those some guns you can sit in there and be cooking bacon and eggs and be 70 degrees in your crocs.

Ramsey Russell: Those are nice pit blinds too, aren’t they?

Brady Davis: They really are. Yeah, we’ve liked them. The problem is, for me as a dog handler, I can do 90% of the dog handling from the pit, but you do got to get out and run some blinds and you’re warm and you’ve taken a bunch of your layers off and then you stand outside there to go send a dog on a back cast and boy, before you even blow the sit whistle, you’re already half frozen again.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. That’s exactly right. How’d you all season go this year?

Matt McCormick: Man, it was a banner year for us. Last year was a little bit trickier, we had a slow push everybody kind of felt that warm up and El Nino and we were feeling it up here in the north country on the border too. But this year the birds came early and they came consistent. And we held birds, at least on our flagship property, which we’re on right now, we held birds here basically all season from day 1 till day 105.

Ramsey Russell: Are you all counters or goose hunters or both? Because when I was there, we were targeting geese and I just think of you both is if you had to pick, and I’m asking a question, when I asked you when you are ducks or geese. But when I think of my buddies Matt and Brady, I think of if you had to pick, you’d probably err towards the Canada geese.

Brady Davis: Yeah, I think if Matt and I were out fun hunting on our own, just out going to go scout and hunt a random Saturday or Sunday, we’re going to go scout for geese every time.

Matt McCormick: Yeah.

Brady Davis: But we’ve been hunting a lot of ducks. In the last few years, it’s kind of rotated to about 50-50. And what I’ll tell you is our numbers this year were significantly more greenhead mallard ducks, and they were big Canada geese, which felt a little bit dirty to us internally.

Matt McCormick: Well, and this year was a little bit interesting because we had a good push of ducks early, and we’re doing all this duck habitat work and we’re focusing really heavy on the ducks on a few of these different ranches. And so when the duck showed up and the geese weren’t here, I mean, you got to hunt, right? So we went duck hunting. And from a Flying V Ranch’s standpoint on that end, I mean, the greenhead mallard is the name of the game up here in the north country. And we just put so much time and effort into trying to figure them out that inherently you got to hunt them to do that. And so to Brady’s point, over the last few years, we have switched over to, I would say, 50-50, potentially maybe even a little bit heavier on the duck side, just learning a little bit more about that game here in the small water of the north country.

Ramsey Russell: Sure, I get that. That reminds me when I was out there with you all, you all showed me a blind and it just blew my mind. It was a property and I’d have called it a ditch back home, because it couldn’t have been ankle deep and we could just about step across the water itself and it was behind a barn. But down behind that barn, sitting on the bank was, looked kind of like a lumber, small baseball dugout. And you were talking about, boy, this place, the colder it gets, the better this place gets. Because even though that water shallow, it’s warm, it never freezes, there’s snow piled up on the blind and all around it, the mallard just pitched right into your gun barrel. That doesn’t excite anybody, I don’t know, that’s that skinny water everybody talked about out west.

Brady Davis: Yeah. So we’re actually, where we’re sitting right now is about 4.5 miles is the duck flies from that property we showed you.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Brady Davis: So just to the northwest of that property and we have a lot of that small, skinny, shallow water that comes out of the ground at 58 degrees and runs clear to the river at 58 degrees.

Matt McCormick: So 4.5 miles of it on this particular.

Ramsey Russell: Will the duck just land anywhere on that 4.5 half miles or do some places they like better than others day to day?

Brady Davis: We found that there’s a few spots, I would say they lean more towards. But the nice thing is, when we’re hunting that water, we can set up anywhere. If they’re all going, say, to the top end of it and they’re kind of piling up there, we never hunt those areas, we’ll back off and come down the creek a good ways. And we do a lot of fringe hunting basically here, managing pressure and not blowing all the ducks out. So, we’ll put engage restrictions and different things for different holes and different spots we hunt. But the truth is, to answer your question, you can set up just about anywhere on that small water when the ducks are here and you got some decoys out and you can blow a duck call, you’re going to talk them into it.

Matt McCormick: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Did I hear you say -? Oh, go ahead.

Matt McCormick: There’s some variables in that. There’s times when we will hunt, like a mass. Let’s say there’s 5,000 birds in this one spot, there are times when we’ll go in there because we don’t want them there, because the flight path to and from that spot are a little bit off the line from the places we do want to hunt. So go in there and put some pressure on them to get them out of there a little bit, knock that number down to a thousand in that hole and push them into a different location. It’s pressure management, right? And being able to hunt them on the fringe is valuable, but you also don’t want to go out and the flight line is a quarter mile away, half mile away, and you can’t get into them. So sometimes you’ll go ahead and you’ll kind of hunt those heavy holes. But yeah, for the most part, we’re fringe hunters on it. Get under the flight line, try to call them in, shoot single drakes and pairs and rarely shoot into anything over 6 or 8 in that small water.

Ramsey Russell: Wait a minute, Brady. Just a minute ago you talked about some kind of sub gauge as a form of management. The last time I saw my buddies, Matt and Brady, they were swinging big old 10 gauges. You had one American flag colored 10 gauge out there, like bam, bam, I go big. And obviously the 28 gauge at the time I felt a tad underwhelmed. But are you telling me you finally embraced my beloved 28 gauge?

Brady Davis: You know what, Ramsey, I’m going to tell you my quick saga with the 28 gauge, I’ve been shooting it for 2 years now. Year one, I hated everything about the 28 gauge. I was trying to figure out different loads and different shot and patterned it and got the gun to fit me a little bit better. Where I like the 28 gauge now, A. I figured out how to shoot it, so that’s good. But where I really like the 28 gauge is when we’re in tight quarters, small water. I mean, Matt and I have some footage coming out in some episodes and some of the stuff on our YouTube that’ll be coming up. But we had some hunts, Ramsey. We were literally shooting greenheads, I’m not exaggerating at like 15ft.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Brady Davis: So that is the case now if I’m out in a big cut barley field up on top and we’re in layout blinds or A-frames and we’re edge hunting and our decoys are set up to where the kill hole’s 35 yards away, like we do a lot edge hunting big geese, man, I will live and die by the 10 gauge. I think the 10 gauge is the most effective shotgun gauge by far. And it isn’t that it’s – people always ask that most blow your arm off, that must this, 10 gauge, I mean, it shoots the same FPS, it’s just more pellets on target, it patterns significantly better, but with the weight of those shotguns, it doesn’t rip your arm off or knock your teeth out.

Matt McCormick: Well in the shot string is so much shorter comparatively.

Ramsey Russell: It’s funny you say that because I was over in the UK this fall and they still shoot 4 gauges and 8 gauges. Hunted with a punt gunner who loves the 4 and 8 gauge for shooting big geese at long distance. He told me that 8 gauge was dialed in at 65 yards. And there was a painting hanging in his den that somebody had done of him hunting up on the in Scotland past, shooting geese at 65 and 70 yards and boy, I tell you what, but he said the same thing. He said the weight absorbs the recoil, it’s that big pattern that I need. He said the weight of the gun also carries through my swing at those distances right there. But he made the point and went into a little bit of detail on our interview that today’s 10 gauges are as effective as an 8 gauge. He said, really and truly, even though an 8 gauge is banned in the United States, you really are shooting a modern day 8 gauge when you shoot a 10 gauge. Because if you look at the ballistics and blah, blah, he said, it’s the same freaking thing. So, I mean, there’s a time and a place, I think, for everything, I really do.

“It’s really funny when we look at our logs and the hunts “

Brady Davis: Yeah. It’s really funny when we look at our logs and the hunts we did, we own 12 gauges, we own 20 gauges, but I’ll be honest, Ramsey, we both, Matt and I shot the 12 and the 20 very little last season. It tended to be the big mighty 10 bore or that little petite 28 gauge. And in the right setting, the 28 gauge is just as lethal as anything else, right? But we use it because the way our warm water works, we’ve got creeks and ditches and holes kind of spread throughout the ranch, well, sometimes we might be hunting a little flooded impoundment or a little hole, but less than 100 yards away can be another warm water creek that the ducks are piling into. And we’ve done a lot of experimenting over the years and it’s been really interesting, Ramsey, that we can hunt certain holes and depending on the angle that the shotgun is pointed, whether you’re shooting way up or straight out or down at them and we can hunt some holes that are really close to birds on water and not mess with them, as long as we use the 28 gauge. And so it’s been really neat to see that in full color, experiment with it and watch it work.

Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. I want to pivot just a little bit because since I met you all, since we hunted together up there, you all have founded and developed Flying V Solutions. What is Flying V Solutions? What does it do and what in your backgrounds led you to establish the Flying V Solution company?

Matt McCormick: Yeah, the Flying V Solution company. So there’s two businesses, Flying V Solutions and Flying V Ranches. I’ll go into Flying V Solutions real quick. And Flying these Solutions is a media house, for lack of a better term, it is our integrated media house into Flying V Ranches, for the most part, vertically integrated into it. So we have full time cameramen, editors, guys doing social, all of our marketing. And for us and for other businesses and brands, Flying V Solutions is executing all of that. In addition to doing all of the media for the Meat Eater show, so that’s production of it, we’re the producers, the directors, we’re the hosts and we’re the cameraman and we’re the editors too. So Flying V Solutions does all of that. They do all of the marketing, all of the media for all things Flying V and then all of the affiliate brands with it. That business was founded about 8 years ago.

Ramsey Russell: Okay, why? What led you all to doing this company?

Matt McCormick: So on the media side, I worked for an agency about 10 years ago here in town in Bozeman, and it was just a way to get out and get hunting more with a camera, right? And so you think about 10, 12 years ago, there wasn’t a bunch of people running around with cameras out in the field anymore, like they are today, there was a little bit more of a hurdle and you had to have some sort of connection with a brand or some outlet for the content, right? Now, everybody has an outlet for the content, but back then they didn’t. So fulfilling that need for brands and SITKA gear was the primary brand that we were working for, SITKA gear and YETI as they pushed their way into the waterfowl industry. And Flying V Solutions, myself and a couple of different guys and now, a team helped pave that way for them from a content perspective. And so the goal was to find a way to get out in the field and hunt more and tell stories that people aren’t, they don’t know exist. Give credit to the people that are out there doing it every day and then have an outlet for it, that was the original goal. Now today, the goals have, only somewhat adjusted to focus on us and our partners. But it’s a media house, it’s a marketing agency and media house.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. What about the ranch side of things?

“We’re looking to do some acquisitions of our own”

Brady Davis: So the ranch side of things, we officially started that business about 5 years ago. And what happened, so backing up, my background is in the ranch world, right? I grew up horses, cattle, running cattle. Like I said, as soon as my wife and I left college, my first job was managing a big ranch in Colorado. So I come from the ranch management side, but was really more focused on the hunting as I got out of that. Well, once Matt and I met 10 years ago, we started hunting a whole bunch together, to be honest with you, Ramsey, we started getting phone calls from people saying, hey, we’re looking to buy this piece of land over here, this place and would you guys be willing to come and take a look at it for us or with us? And so we were going out and looking at properties for guys and giving them, basically doing consulting work for free, and which was awesome. We got to see a lot of really cool pieces of land. And it kind of turned into us going, we’re getting a lot of calls for this, we could probably make a little bit of money doing this and doing some of the consulting and going and looking. Because Matt and I have crisscrossed the west, as much as anybody in waterfowl hunting. And we knew the area, we know where the birds have historical use, we know the areas that have warm water, we know the flight lines. And so it kind of just slowly developed. And so we started doing some consulting and worked our way into full scale ranch management. Now, to where if somebody wants us to go look at a property for a half a day and give, one page written report and give our opinion, we’re happy to do that. The one we’re on right now, it’s full scale management of everything that relates to wildlife. So the hunting, the gear, the farming practices, the dirt work for building new impoundments, ditch work, all that stuff, we kind of oversee. So we can do it as big or as little as people want. Now, going into this year, one of the things that we are doing a little bit different is we are doing some ranch shopping. So we’re looking to do some acquisitions of our own, acquire some of our own properties, and we’ll be doing some work on our own places as well.

Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. I’m real familiar down here in the deep south with habitat management and practices, but what strategies and practices do you all deploy to create waterfowl habitat in you all’s naked woods out there in the Gallatin river valley and in the west?

Brady Davis: Well, and Matt can speak to it as well, but the thing that’s cool about the duck or the goose, whether they’re coming from, way northern Canada or down into your country and further south, they need three things, right? They need food, they need water, they need safety. And so now, while the food sources and the water sources can be different up here in the north maybe than they are in the woods of Arkansas or down where you’re hunting, at the end of the day, painting with a broad brush, we come into a property, ideally, that has some historical use, right? So that ducks have been there. The neat thing about Montana is you’ve seen Ramsey, is we’ve got a lot of river valleys, so we’re in the Gallatin river valley now, but we’ve got the Missouri river, We’ve got the Madison river. There’s tons and tons of blue ribbon trout streams, and 90% of that water stays open all winter. And so what happens is these birds, whether they’re coming down the Pacific flyway or the Central flyway side of the state, they’re coming in and getting into these river valleys and settling in, because they can be on the river, and then they go out to agricultural fields. So here, all of our geese are hunted in fields. I mean, basically 100%. 2 years ago, Matt and I shot some geese over a pond for one morning and I think that’s the first time in 10 or 11 years that we’ve ever hunted geese over water. And so our ducks, we can kill in the field here, but obviously, warm water and water is very beneficial. So our practices revolve more around the food sources and the crop rotations and in conjunction to the water. Because, again, like Matt was saying before, we might have a water source that holds a whole bunch of ducks, and we’ve got food in between, well, we can either hunt them in the field or we can put in a small water source in the middle of that flight line, kind of like running traffic. And we can pick off the fringes so that we’re not blowing all of our birds out. Another thing that we employ and we’ve done on this ranch is self-imposed refuge. I’d have to look at the exact area, probably 10 to 13 acres here of a really neat wetland, 3 different ponds, really cool spot on this ranch that when Matt and I came in, we self-designated as a refuge. We don’t hunt it, we don’t do anything in it, during the season or before or after, we rarely even drive near it. And that refuge creates kind of the nucleus of the cell for them to come be safe, hang out, have open water, get off the river. Because in Montana all of our rivers are public. So anybody can float the river and shoot ducks. And so when we have that refuge on the ranch, it can get them off, let them settle into the property and then they’re going out to different food sources, different directions throughout the season.

Ramsey Russell: Amen. That reminds me, we’ve tore it all around this topic. It gets -40, -50, you all got warm ponds, a lot of those world class trout streams, trout streams don’t freeze up in you all’s neck of the woods. And it seems to be, as I scroll through social media and hear folks in the podcast world, it seems to be an almost a misunderstanding that all mallards leave Canada and eventually fly south and that’s just not the case. I mean, historically there have been populations of mallards that never migrate below those river valleys, that never fly south of Montana, that never fly – I mean there’s a million mallards that historically have overwintered off the Missouri river and Platte river up around Nebraska, and you’re talking about Ag management, I just want to bear out. When you talk about managing crop rotations and all these mallards staying up in your neck of the woods, when is -50, it ain’t because they’re flocking into flooded corn, is it?

Brady Davis: No. Flooded corn because that wouldn’t be warm water. If it was flooded corn, it would freeze up, we wouldn’t be able to hunt it anyway.

Ramsey Russell: Right. So what are those birds eating? They’re going out to dry harvested fields to eat, make their living for as long as there’s not snow. What do they do when there is a lot of snow?

Matt McCormick: Yeah. And backing up just a little bit to answer that question. So one thing to note about when you’re in the north country, like this is we are different than guys in the south. We are in the nesting area, right? Like we are in the prairie pothole region of the flyways, both Pacific and Central flyway, right? And so nesting is taken into consideration on any sort of habitat improvements. So you’re looking at summer food sources for the ducks as well. What kind of invertebrates are they eating? How do you get that nesting and brooding habitat available? Once we get into the season, we’re looking from a management standpoint as 3C. We break our seasons into 3 chunks.

Brady Davis: We have 109 days.

Matt McCormick: Yeah, early season. Yeah, it’s over 100 day season. So early season, it’s going to be all of that summer early work, right? So it’s grasses and invertebrates and natural wetlands and all of those habitat and wetland areas that those birds are going into, that’s your main hunting source as well as some early season crop like a small grain, like a barley or wheat. Then when you get to mid-season and the corn starts coming off, now that becomes a food source, especially for the geese, but the ducks do love the corn, right? But when it gets late in the season and you get heavy snow, which we do get, right? And it gets mega cold, now there is water in the springs, right? You get aquatic plants that they love to eat. Any tubers that are growing in, depending on what the spring looks like, every spring has a food source in it. And that could be a speed well, that could be some sort of sweet grass. There’s a number of different things that those birds will eat and they’ll rip out of the ground, they’ll even eat the roots. So they do have food sources inside, natural food sources inside those springs. Once they fly out for some sort of grain, there’s two things that they focus on, they either focus on cattle because there’s a cattle feed that’s coming out, so they’re in the cattle or what we’re doing is leaving some standing crops so that they can get up on top of the snow and pick around and eat. For example, we had a standing barley field, let’s just say it’s a standing barley field. Well, that stalk is going to be 10 inches up. So you have a tolerance of 10 inches of snow before the food is covered up, right? And Those birds can get in there, get on top of that snow, and they can find food. But they do spend a lot of time. When it’s -40, they’re not flying out to the fields, they’re just picking around in the water and not. Not expending the energy to fly out to the field because it’s so dang cold out.

“There was tens and tens and tens of thousands of ducks coming from the warm water”

Brady Davis: To give you an example, Ramsey, on this particular ranch, we’re here, so I’m using an example. We had a couple fields of standing barley. And when the season ended here in mid to end of January, February, we got really cold and the snow started coming. And I was very curious to see how many ducks we were going to lose. At the time, we were holding right around 40,000 ducks on the ranch. When it got cold and the snow pushed in, there were still ducks migrating from Canada at a high level coming in here. And at one point, for about a 2.5 week period, anytime Matt and I were out here from morning till night, you could park and glass that standing barley field and there was tens and tens and tens of thousands of ducks coming from the warm water, hitting the standing barley, getting their bellies full and going back to the warm water. At the end, it’s tough to say exactly how many, but we picked up a lot of ducks and we feel like through most of February on this place, we were holding around 60,000 mallards that we were feeding and holding.

Matt McCormick: Yeah. And when that Peace river got that big storm last year, late in the year, we started to see a heavy, I won’t even call it a trickle, a heavy flow of birds coming for, and they came for over a month after that, they were just working their way down through. Once that storm hit Peace river, we started getting more birds. And so right here on this ranch, we’re getting birds from both sides. We’re getting birds from the Central Flyway side, and we’re getting birds from the Pacific Flyway side out of Alberta. And so, the jet streams are different, when you look north, they’re a little bit different. So as those storms were pushing through the north country, we were getting trickles. And then when that big storm, that heavy snow came, we had a steady flow for over 30 days. And the truth is, man, I do believe that they keep going, but we were holding a lot through the end of the season.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s all good stuff, I learned a lot today. And now, everybody thinks about the deep south, think about flooded corn up north, but that’s not the end all be all. In fact, it would be a detriment if that was the end all be all habitat management you all were doing in that part of the world. Because it would be frozen all the way down to the soil.

Brady Davis: Yeah. And as much as we can all agree, frozen corn is awesome to hunt or not frozen corn, flooded corn, excuse me, is fun to hunt, it would be really tough to manage and build habitat based off of that regardless. Because listen, Ramsey, you’ve hunted it, we’ve all been in it, the truth is, in flooded corn, 95% of the time, those ducks go completely nocturnal anyway.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Brady Davis: So you’re feeding ducks for sure. And yes, there’s been some banger hunts and flooded corn, no doubt. However, if we were to base our management practices off flooded corn, I feel like we would just be shooting ourselves in the foot. I think in a world of, ranch and land management like we’re doing now, there’s so many different arrows in the quiver to employ. And the thing we go back to all the time is what Matt commented on earlier is we have to break the season mentally into 3 chunks, early, mid and late season. And so because we want consistent hunting throughout, we have to provide those food and water sources that match up to duck tendencies and duck habits in the early season, in the mid-season, in the late season.

Matt McCormick: I mean, our roosts change right? Like, you just think about the roost alone. The roost changes from September to January. Well, you got to have a plan for that, right? When the mass of the bird shifts and they may still be on you, but their flight pattern is going to shift, everything is going to shift, you can’t base everything off of one roost or one sanctuary. So we are looking at it from a 3 category season as those birds make their adjustments in food source and water source and safety, you got to have a plan all the way through the whole thing. And then the programming on how do you actually hunt them when they move? How do you hunt them in the early season, how do you hunt them mid-season? How do you actually hunt in late season without kicking them all out? Because late season, one of the mistakes that we see people make here, especially here, is their ranch is awesome late season because they have a warm water spring. Well, as soon as those ducks show up, they go out there and they beat the piss out of it, right? They shoot 40 mallards and 40 mallards and 40 mallards. And then all of a sudden their season’s done because they’re not shooting any more ducks because the ducks don’t want to be there anymore. Helping people understand that, yes, it’s really cool you have that, now let’s figure out how to make it sustainable, that’s a really fun project and that’s something that we can help with at a high level is being able to identify these areas that the birds love and then figure out how to hunt them consistently so that you can hunt more than once a month.

“There’s more than one factor we’ve got to manage”

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. There’s more than one factor we’ve got to manage. And we’ve already talked about hunting pressure, I mean, hunting pressure is killing the entire continent, you know what I’m saying. And you’ve got to make allowances for that, don’t you?

Brady Davis: Yeah. And I think you know how you hunt it, like Matt’s talking, there’s times and days will self-impose limits. One thing about the Pacific flyway side of Montana, here in the Pacific flyway in general, we have little duck limits, right? We can kill 7 mallards here, you can kill 7 greenhead mallards every single day of the season here for 109 days, if you have. And so there are days when we will go in with Matt and I and our crew or maybe we’re hunting with some of our other friends or partners and we’ll go into a hole and we’ve scouted, we know when the ducks are going to get there and we know when they’re going to get out of there, we might go in there and put our heads together and say, listen boys, we’re going to have a fun little gentleman shoot this morning. But everybody is limited to 3 mallards or 4 mallards. Because let’s be honest, Ramsey, you know as well as I do, if you came up here and joined Matt and I again, we went out to a small, cool, little warm water duck shoot, if you shot 4 greenheads with your 28 gauge and Char dog went and picked them up, shooting 7 isn’t going to your experience of the day, it’s not going to make your day any better. We already went out and had a banner day, we worked ducks, we called ducks, we had some beautiful dog work with Char dog, you don’t need to shoot 7 every single time. It’s not always about just stacking up big limits of docs. And so there are a lot of times when we will self-impose limits as well, based on what we’ve seen, the week prior, we’re watching these places every single day. And I just think having the foresight to make some of those decisions and stick to them, which sometimes can be hard because say we go in there and we shoot our 4 and then you’re just watching ducks just sail down into the hole from all directions and you kind of get a little, itchy trigger finger like, we can shoot 3 more each, maybe we should just keep shooting. It’s having the backbone to make those decisions and stick to them. And when you get into the hunt, the hunt’s over, let’s all be grateful for the 4 greenheads we shot and high five and scratch Char dog behind the ears and go back to the shop and have a cold beer.

Ramsey Russell: Quantity is the least appealing part of quality, the older you get in duck hunting, I think, you know what I’m saying? To your point State of Mississippi, 60 days, I’d rather go out 60 days in a row and shoot 1 or 2 mallards, greenheads, let’s say, than go out some of those days and shoot a full limit. I mean, the truth of the matter is I’d really rather would. Every morning I’m going to get up, I’m going to pick my green head or 2 and boom, head on back to the house rather than just go beat the brakes off of it and wonder where the hell they are for the next 15 hunts.

Brady Davis: Yeah, you get more time to hang out with your friends and family. You get more time to work your dogs. I mean there’s so many reasons why that in imposing a self-imposed limit at times is very beneficial. Now, there are also times here that we’ve got 30,000 ducks and we’ve got consistent black skies and flight lines and we’re like, all right boys, we’re going to go in and we’re going to torch their ass, we’re going to shoot 7 apiece, it’s going to be awesome and feed your dog a little extra the night before, he’s going to need it because we’re going to work tomorrow. That happens too. And those days are fun too. But again, going back to the arrows in the quiver, it’s the management practices, it’s the self-imposed limits. It’s thinking about the season in 3 different chunks. There’s a lot of different things because, we open our season here in the end of September, there’s opening days where it’s 80 degrees and then at the end of the season we’re closing, we’re 40 below zero. So there’s a massive change in 109 days that happens in the north country here during that time frame. And so the way I would explain it in a short term is just play the long game. Like it’s not all about today, you think about this season as a marathon, not a sprint.

Matt McCormick: Yeah, we are definitely marathon up here. Another thing is, I believe it makes you a better hunter if you are focused on killing a bird the way you want to kill him, right? So you’re going to shoot 4 in this small water, okay, so we all agree on that. But then you start to get picky with how do I want to shoot this bird, right? I want to make sure that we fool this. But if we’re only going to kill 3 or 4, like, let’s do it, right? And you’re not just shooting them over the top on the first pass you’re working them and then they might bugger off and you learn something, right? And then you switch it up and you try a different call or you try a different technique and you start to hone in on your skills as a hunter, when you start focusing on those details and if it’s just a smash fest and they’re just grinding, nonstop, you don’t learn anything. Because there are challenging days down the road, righ? Whether it’s a 60 day season or 100 day season, there are going to be challenges down the road. And when you get to those challenges, being prepared for them and being able to identify what’s going on and make the adjustments and still have a “good shoot” that day, that was a really hard one, it’s something that you can really feel proud of coming out of that day. And you got to be able to pay attention to the details. And sometimes I just feel like if you’re there to shoot 7 and that’s all you’re worried about, some of those details get overlooked.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I agree. Of all the stuff we’re talking about in the world of waterfowl management in you all’s neck of the woods, what are the most significant challenges that you all face in waterfowl habitat management and development and how have you overcome them? Is it just a matter of trial and error? Here’s what works, here’s what’s not?

Brady Davis: Yeah, well, so I’m going to give one of the biggest answers that I can think of off the cuff and Matt will have his as well. The answer is yes, it’s a little bit trial and error. We had the luxury of basically spending a decade hunting together for 70 to 90 days a year and just seeing what was working on our own before we ever even launched the business, before we were putting our own capital and our own hard earned dollars into projects. And so that was a luxury. Luckily we were observant, we took notes as we were hunting on what was working because at that time we just cared about having good hunts. So we were seeing patterns of something that worked. And so then when we were scouting, we were scouting other areas to try to duplicate those patterns. I think one of the biggest challenges in the north in general in the western US is water. Water is gold here. We do not have an unlimited amount of water in this valley, in Bozeman, for example, the Gallatin Valley, you can’t go just drill a well, you can’t even drill a stock well without selling both your arms and maybe a third of one leg. And even then you got to know the guy and you got to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to even do it. So what we are constricted by is we have to take the water that is there and then do any improvements based on what is already there. We can’t just go, we can’t take a main channel of a river and just say, hey, it’d be really awesome to have a backwater channel here, we’re just going to reroute this sucker and excavate it out and flow some water in it. That’s illegal here. So our biggest –

Matt McCormick: Pumping.

Brady Davis: Pumping, yeah. We can’t always pump out of the river and we can’t just pull this water because water is such a precious resource here, that for us the biggest challenges is finding the properties that have either enough or the right water rights or the right natural water that the ducks have historical use that then we can go in and do the improvements on. I don’t think we can take a 500 acre, 640 acre section of just good Ag land that has just one pivot on it, no other water. We cannot turn that into a duck mecca. We need some water or proximity to water and then ideally we prefer water that we can then do some improvements on. But water in general, the permitting processes, it is not like our friends in the middle and southern part of the country where they can buy a piece and pop a well, drill in there and start pulling water out of the ground or throw a pump off in the next little creek and start moving it into your flooded corn or your whatever. We just can’t do that. Matt and I would be in prison, so fast your head would spin. So I would say that would be my answer is currently that is the biggest challenge.

Matt McCormick: That is the biggest challenge by far. Yeah. We have to work with the natural landscape. So what that does is it constricts your view because you have to be focused on what water is there and then what water stays open. So the cold is another huge challenge. It coincides with water, but the cold is a real thing. Birds, they do leave, right? They will leave here if it gets really cold. One of our main rivers in this state is the Yellowstone river, longest undammed river in America. Well, that thing freezes up, right? And when it freezes up, birds leave. That’s just how it works. And it gets so cold that it’ll freeze up the food sources, right? So big river, let’s just say the Yellowstone, the big river, I mean, that’s out of food, right? It’s a trout stream that turns into a warm water fishery, but it runs out of food. And the weather’s so cold that they fly out to try to get food and they don’t have it because it’s all frozen in, and that duck cannot work that hard for a kernel of corn or a barley or whatever. So the cold is a huge challenge. And you think about gear, so transferring from the hunting to gear, the cold is raises havoc on all the gear. It doesn’t matter how good the gear is, things break when it’s 40 below.

Brady Davis: That’s your shotgun, that’s your truck, that’s your trailer, that’s everything, that’s your dog.

Matt McCormick: I mean, you’re talking about when you shoot a shotgun shell that the side of, like the hull cracks because it’s so cold, right. It’s been sitting in the chamber for so long and all of a sudden, here comes your duck, you shoot it and that shell comes out and it’s cracked all the way down the side. It’s so charge, that charge just heats it up so fast and boom, it breaks everything, man. So the cold is a challenge on the gear. And from an investment standpoint, you got to be prepared to either have backups or be prepared to reinvest in some gear because things are going to break.

Brady Davis: I will add real quick one kind of 2.5 answer to this. When people think about Montana, the images that pop into your mind are a bit postcard esque, right? Beautiful big mountains, snow top peaks. In our case, shooting ducks in the water, shooting geese in the field. These beautiful mountain backgrounds. As awesome as that is, the mountains themselves present a hell of a challenge as well, because it funnels birds into certain valleys at certain times of the year. So going back to the luxury we had, and thank God we were observant when we had this and we’re hunting all over the state is learning these mountain valleys because you could have an area that loads up with ducks. We know one just down the road from us. There’s a valley that absolutely loads up with waterfowl. And there’s a small mountain pass in between these 2 river valleys that run kind of parallel. One gets absolutely loaded. One has dang near nothing, Ramsay.

Matt McCormick: Yeah.

Brady Davis: And so you have to put some real time into the science of that. Matt and I, we got a lead on a property about a month ago that’s coming up for sale. We went and looked at it and Ramsey, if you were on the ground with Matt and I, knowing what you know about ducks, you’d be spinning circles, you’d be so happy. You think this is going to be the coolest duck property on the planet. It had warm water, it had a natural river running through it, it had pivots, it had ag, it had cattle, it had everything, right? But this little valley that it was in, which dumps into better valleys, doesn’t really get the bird population naturally that it does. So I don’t care what we would go do in there, we could lace barley with gold and cocaine, and we’re not going to get the ducks in there. And you just have to know that, because if somebody from out of state came in and you know they’re looking at the real estate listing that every real estate listing here says there’s abundant wildlife. Ducks and deer and elk and pheasants and it’s partly true, mostly not. But if somebody didn’t know, they would look at that property, a duck guy, if you looked at it in the off season right now, you would think it is going to be an absolute hammer of a spot. And so understanding the mountains, the mountain ranges, the way the wind blows, the way the jet streams work, like Matt was talking about, the way they migrate into these valleys. Valleys that they use as a stopover and valleys they use as a true hangout spot. There’s a big difference. There’s valleys, yes, ducks go through it. And if you owned a piece there, you’re going to shoot a few ducks here and there. But it might be that 60 miles over the hill in the next valley, you could buy a piece that on paper, looked way less sexy than the first one. But you’re going to shoot 10x the amount of ducks on it.

Ramsey Russell: Wow, Good stuff.

Brady Davis: So it’s just that knowledge of the birds, the landscape, the water.

Matt McCormick: The migration patterns are real around here. You have to pay attention. That’s really what it comes down to, is you have to pay attention.

“What inspires you all with the Flying V Solutions to document the hunting trips?”

Ramsey Russell: There’s no substitute for experience. I mean, this just goes to prove the point. I’m going to circle back around and talk about content creation hunt. And I would tell anybody listening to go back and listen to episode 76, because both of you all talked about where you were and how you ended up in Bozeman. And Matt, you went from Wisconsin to Idaho and came to Bozeman and paid dues to come to Bozeman. I mean, you paid your dues. You put it all on the line. And what I’m trying to say about you all, just like a lot of people I know out west, in and around Bozeman and elsewhere out west that went out there when they were young, they were looking for an ideal. They were looking for a lifestyle. It kind of found them, they kind of found it. But unlike an episode of Yellowstone, you guys didn’t show up from out of state with boatloads of money. Man, you all showed up with empty pockets and a dream. And both of you did. I mean, YouTube, Brady, you told a story about you and your bride basically down to your last $22.13, and making the move. And it was very inspirational stories that led you all there. Now, Matt, how you ended up getting into content creation, that’s kind of what led you there. You paid your dues on a non-paid internship, stuff like that. But here comes the question, so what inspires you all with the Flying V Solutions to document the hunting trips, the ranch management, behind the scene activities? And how do you balance the solutions part with the ranch part? How do you balance the core mission versus the media?

Matt McCormick: Yeah, it’s a great question. And it’s one that we’re always whiteboarding and brainstorming on all the time, right? Because you can get really hung up with content. You can spend a lot of time building it, but really what it comes down to is what we have going on is really fun. The guys we have are fun to be around. And what we’re doing is super cool. We think it’s super cool. And the projects that we’re working on are, they have their own inherent challenges and people can learn from them. One of the goals that we have, and we were just laying goals out the other day, one of the goals that we have is to help people learn alongside of us. We do have experience in hunting in this area and other areas, but we do have experience that people can learn from. So that’s one, key mission of ours is to help educate people, whether it be from us or with us. But also, man, like putting the commercial and branding stuff aside because we do, a fair amount of commercial work and taking photos of products in the field, naturally, with what we’re doing, putting that aside, showing people that there is some really cool stuff out there and there is some, I guess it’s more just like, and you jump in here. But, like, when I look at our content and I think about what is the vision and what is the goal and what is like, where are we headed? It’s to get to know us, the people behind it, humanize us, but also show that these projects are attainable, show that these ranches exist. But this style of hunting is a real thing because it’s a little bit of a fallacy, but it’s real and there are ways to do it. And am I wrong there?

Brady Davis: No, I think that’s really good. And Ramsey, as I didn’t come from the media side of it, I got introduced to it when I started hunting with Matt, right?

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Brady Davis: But there’s a really interesting thing, I think the educational piece is really cool. Again, I look back, if people listen to the first episode, my story of getting into waterfowl hunting. When I first started goose hunting, man, I went to Sportsman’s Warehouse and bought some decoys and a DVD, I didn’t know anything. There wasn’t really a lot of “educational stuff” out there. And I want to help those people who have a desire to learn to get into it. Now, listen, they might not all be weirdos like you and Matt and I who want to go and build a life around it, they might just want to be able to go out and enjoy 10 or 12 or 15, 20 days a year out in the duck blind with their golden retriever that’s currently sleeping at the foot of their bed. That’s fine, too. But for me, in the very first episode on our Meat Eater series, Matt made a statement and he said, one of my biggest fears is that we’re living in the best of times right now. He said, when you talk to old timers or people historically that hunted and you’re having coffee with an older gentleman, you hear a lot of, you should have seen what it was like when I was a kid, the skies were full of birds. And there may be some truth to that. What I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that stories get better and better, including my own, the longer they go, right? I rode bucking horses in rodeo, and every single year, I was a little bit better bronc rider when I was 20 than I thought I was. And next year, I’ll probably be a little bit better than I thought I was right now, it just kind of happens with stories. However, what I think is so cool is being able to document all this. We had the privilege this year taking Matt’s son out for his very first duck hunt. He’s 3.5 years old. We went out, had the damn time of our life. I think we killed 4 ducks, 4 or 5 ducks between Matt, me, and his wife, all shooting, we killed 3 or 4 or 5. And for me, and I know Matt hands down the coolest hunt of the season just watching this little kid light up. And I look back on it, and my son started hunting with me. I’ve got a son who’s a sophomore in college. He started hunting with me at the same age, and we hunted together 50, 60, 70 times a year, certain years, I mean, that kid just went everywhere with me. But that was back before cell phones had good cameras. And I’ll be honest, I was hunting, I wasn’t even thinking about bringing a camera. And looking back, it kind of bums me out. I mean, I have those memories in my head, and so does he. But memories fade and experiences fade. And I know that because even when Matt’s going through old photos of us from 10 years ago, he’ll pull up a photo, and it’s just something on one hunt. And it’s weird because I totally forgot about that hunt, but as soon as I see that photo, instantly, I remember everything about that hunt. And so doing our business and building habitat and improving the landscape for birds, there’s a legacy behind that that we take very seriously, and we want to document it. We want to be able to show all these good things that are happening for the wildlife and for the birds and also have it as a record for ourselves. It’s great for our business because, again, memories fade, who knows? We may find a property in 15 years, Ramsey, that we want to do something on, and we kind of forget that. Remember that one we did 16, 17 years ago? We did something kind of similar. And how did we have that thing laid out? What did we do again? You’re sitting there, well, now we got the footage. We can go back through it and see everything we did from A to Z and recreate that. So I think there’s a lot of ways that content is really valuable.

Matt McCormick: That reminds me, going back to – so my mentor, Randy Southard, the whole reason that I bought a camera initially was because he had told me one day, way back when in 2005, he said to me, he’s like, you want to invest in a camera? This is before you had, we all had Razer flip phones, but like nobody was taking pictures on them, right? It’s like, you want to invest in a camera because I’m telling you, he’s 20 years into his hunting career at this point, I’m telling you, you are going to forget these hunts. I recommend you get a camera and start at least, at the very least taking a trophy photo just so you can remember these hunts. He’s like, I wish I would have done it sooner, and he always carried a camera with him. I wish I would have done it sooner, but I’ve made it a point to do it every single time now. And that was my motivation to go out and buy my very first, DSLR, which was a cheap Canon DSLR at the time, just so that I could capture the hunt that I can remember it by. He gave me the advice. He said, you are going to forget these. Well, I’m having a great time and I’m learning a lot and these experiences are very impactful to me, I better start documenting them to some extent. That was my foot in to getting a camera and then starting to document or hunts which then led to documenting hunts from start to finish. Because there’s more to it than the trophy photo. Although the trophy photo we all love, right? That’s a photo we can all look at and see the smiles on our buddy’s faces in the area that we’re hunting with all the birds and all that. Those are the photos that get printed a lot of time. Those lead ins from start to finish, from throwing the decoy out, picking the decoy up, there’s a lot of fun and a lot of experiences that happen in there that you can either learn from or are worth reminiscing about. So yeah, that reminded me of that because he told me that and I instantly went out and I had my Shekel saved. So I instantly went out and bought a camera and started just taking pictures.

Brady Davis: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Fantastic.

Matt McCormick: So the mindset –

Ramsey Russell: Go ahead.

Matt McCormick: Well, the mindset’s the same. I guess that’s it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, except that sometimes it’s one step lead to the next and beyond. And in you all’s instance it’s presently a collaboration with Meat Eater. I mean, a freaking massive media company. How did you all’s partnership come about with Meat Eater and what impact has it had on your projects and outreach?

Matt McCormick: Yeah, I’ll start with the – I worked with the VP of content. He is now the VP of content at Meat Eater. I worked with him at Sitka Gear before he went to Meat Eater. They had acquired First Light, they had began conversations with us and we were kind of just hesitant with it on, where we’re at, where we’re going. This is right when Flying V Ranch has started. So we’re kind of had all of our time and resources put into that. So we were willing to take photos and do some video work, but doing a full on production was a little bit outside of our scope at the time. And then a year and a half later they came back and they said, we really would like to have you guys a part of our team. The First Light is launching all of their waterfowl gear, we would like your help on some of the development of it. And we want you in, what do you think? And we started going through kind of the details of a negotiation and contract like that. And what we ended up with was creative freedom to be able to, make it what we wanted to make it. And they’re not going to overstep any boundaries. They’re not going to force us in one way or another. And that was appealing to us, right? It was important for us to be able to have our message be our message, not have us regurgitating somebody else’s message. And so once we got to those terms, we just kind of hit the green light and we brought another video guy in, Ryan Kendall with a ton of experience with outdoor media. And we just hit the ground running, man. Let’s start filming everything.

Ramsey Russell: What was your vision and what did you want it to be? In terms of your narrative and having that license to project what you all want, what did you want it to be? What was your vision? What was important to you?

Brady Davis: I think that when I look at it, Ramsey, there’s 2 different types of things you have inspirational and aspirational. Aspirational in the sense of like, man, I’d really like to go do that. So you watch a duck hunting show and the dudes are going to Cold Bay and shooting king eiders in the sea, there’s so many cool things out there in the world. And obviously, you’re the king of knowing that, right? From the inspirational side, our message was we are in a unique situation now because every single day of our working careers and lives revolves around waterfowl. I don’t care if it’s waterfowl season or not. I mean, it is, March 14^th today. And we’re cleaning ice eaters and we pulled ice rippers out of the refuge today, I mean, every single day revolves around waterfowl. We wanted it to be an open door to Flying V. The show, the Meat Eater show to just be like, we’re going to open the doors of Flying V and come along with us and here’s what we do. So there’s farming stuff in there, there’s excavation, there’s building this, there’s projects you get to see us come up with some harebrained idea like, what if we put in a little flooded cell system in here and had some barley in it, we hunted in it. Well, you get to see the planning stage, you get to see the construction, and then you get to see us rolling into the first hunt after all this money and time’s gone into it with a bit of a knot in our stomach going, my God, I hope this works, because we’re going to look like idiots if this doesn’t work. And so it’s a lot of fun that way. And the whole idea of our message was to be educational, entertaining. I mean, I think we’re a fun group of guys, we sure have a lot of fun together, so letting people kind of come along for the ride. When Matt was taking photos back in the day and I got introduced to him and I was hunting with him, one of the comments I used to make to Matt is when I would look at his photos, and I’m not just blowing smoke up his skirt, but I’d look at his photos and the way that he took the photos, I could look at the photo and I felt like I was a part of that hunt. I could envision how that hunt was going. And so with our show, we wanted to bring people along for the ride and have them see what we’re doing. Also see our failures. Listen, man, we shoot a lot of birds, we screw up all the time, and we have bad days, and we have days where we think we’ve laid out the best plan to fool these waterfowl and they make us look like, junior varsity freshmen, right? They just they work our butts. And so being open, honest, vulnerable, transparent, and just letting them see that there’s really cool opportunities out there. There’s some really good duck and goose habitat going on. We’re huge fans of all the conservation organizations, the Ducks Unlimited, the Delta Waterfowls, NWTF, all these groups that do what they do. But when people think about private land, it’s a really interesting thing because there’s kind of two camps, there’s the public guys that go, yeah, it must be nice to be you to get to hunt all this expensive private stuff and have this money to put in. Well, while that’s true, it is really cool. A, it took a whole lot of work to get there. But B, when we do a duck project, say we’re going to put $200,000 into something, Ramsay. $200,000 every cent goes into habitat and conservation. And that conservation work we do on ranch A, B, C or D, whatever. Yes, it’s great for the ranch, but these are migratory birds. We are literally doing so much conservation that benefits the public as a whole. This ranch specifically, we’ve got miles of the Gallatin river that run through the ranch. And there’s always guys that hunt the river. Over the past 2 seasons, we get Instagram messages all the time from fellas that are hunting this ranch on the river saying, man, whatever you guys are doing, my goodness, it is working really well. Please keep doing it. The hunting is awesome. And we don’t begrudge them for hunting it, listen, Matt and I, we were those guys years ago too, rowing rowboats down the river at 30 below, trying to shoot a gold eye, maybe a gadwall if you got lucky and one flew by, right?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Brady Davis: Well, doing that conservation work is really cool. And I think if people can see, I think there’s real, it can work really well together, the public land conservation and the private land conservation efforts.

“They’re sitting there 365 days a year and never leaving”

Ramsey Russell: We got to have both. And I mean, you make up such a great point. I’ve seen it, I’ve heard it. Oh, it must be nice hunting public land. I mean, private land where I, private land, boy, I’ll tell everybody, I hunt public land every year. I’ve hunted public land from coast to coast, north to south, and cut my teeth on public land. But 70 some odd percent of waterfowl habitat in the continental United States as expressed in kilo calories or energy or what ducks eat, is on private land. And it’s like, just because old ducks are sitting over there on Matt and Brady’s private land don’t mean they’re sitting there 365 days a year and never leaving. They are leaving, they are flying off. And having all that habitat on the private is holding duck that everybody in that community, that little corridor that region benefits from, you know what I’m saying? So that’s a really good point, you brought up.

Brady Davis: This ranch we’re on Ramsey thousand acres total, and we have sat in the duck blind and had great duck shoots. We had some later in the season this year, we’re sitting in a field shooting dry field mallards, having just awesome days. And Matt and I are watching tens of thousands of ducks fly off the ranch, go somewhere totally different. Even though we have all kinds of food and water and everything for them here, we’re watching tens of thousands of ducks go out and feed all day, miles away from this place. And then in the evening, some of them come back and some of them don’t. And it’s just a constant trickle back and forth. So if we can give them a place after they’ve made that big push from Canada and they get, this is their first river valley, they’re hitting and they’ve got food, they’ve got safety, they’ve got security, the three things we talked about at the start of this conversation, we’re doing the resource of favor. And as hunters and hunters who have really enjoyed the resource and hunter who looking forward, we want to do this until the day we die. We want our kids and our grandkids to be able to do it. We owe that to the resource to give back and hopefully at the end of our lives, we can look back and go. As much as we enjoyed and utilize the resource, we want to know that in our hearts that we hopefully did more for the resource than we took from it.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, you got to give as well as take.

Brady Davis: Yeah, absolutely.

Matt McCormick: Leave it better than we found it.

Ramsey Russell: So joining the Meat Eater team, did it have an impact on the scope and the outreach of what you all started off doing?

Brady Davis: Yeah, I mean, it definitely reached a different audience. So Meat Eater, when you look at them historically, they haven’t had a real strong flag planted in the world of waterfowl hunting. When Steve started, he was doing big game hunts and he was really great at cooking. So that kind of started out as a hunting/cooking show, and then it’s evolved, and there’s really awesome wild game cooking segments. Steven Rinella is a very smart individual, very well educated, very well read. I’ve argued for years before we even did an ounce of work with Meat Eater that I think as hunters as a whole, if we took all the hunters, one of our best spokesmen forward facing to the public is Steven Rinella. He’s a very good spokesman for hunters and hunting rights and appreciating what we all have. But when we came in and did a waterfowl specific show that was different than other ones, right? Most waterfowl shows and there’s nothing wrong with this, we’re going to go to X spot, we’re hunting with Y outfitter, and we’re going to get Z outcome, and it’s kind of just the linear storytelling. And you get to go see them. They go on this cool hunt and they leave. And when people watch that, that’s really cool. I would say that’s aspirational. Somebody in their couch might go, man, I’d really like to do that. Because their audience wasn’t historically a bunch of waterfowl hunters, I think it’s definitely led into more people being interested in the sport. But also the goal, again, the educational side of our show, we want it to be where, when Joe and his buddy are sitting on the couch watching it on Thursday night, that when Saturday morning they get out in the goose field or the duck blind, they go, hey, man, like, I watched Matt say this, and he set up his decoys this way, and I’ve never even thought of that. What do you boys say we give it a try. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. Well, we want them to be able to try it out. And so our goal is to be wildly open, wildly transparent, exactly what we’re doing. We don’t have any secrets, but I do think that the outreach and the extension of that has definitely led to a newer audience than it would get if it was on, waterfowl social media.

Ramsey Russell: Heck, yeah. I mean, I’ve always felt the same way about Steven Rinella. The hunting community is like the preacher talking to the choir. And I think that Steven Rinella and Meat Eater brand was able to get beyond the choir, out the front door of the church and hit some of the people that are almost on the margin of what I’d call hardcore hunting that may not even be hunters, but are now open to it. And crazy enough, Joe Rogan, of all people, I think he’s also been able to reach people that aren’t necessarily hunters and make them more open to hunting, which I think is a very powerful thing in this day and age.

Brady Davis: And he got into hunting through Steven Rinella.

Ramsey Russell: Exactly.

Brady Davis: So, again, it goes – I read a thing the other day when they were talking about the American public, and as hunters, we always talk about the anti-hunters, there’s the pro hunting people like us, and there’s a group of people that are strongly anti-hunting. The vast majority of this country is neither.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Brady Davis: They’re really, truly neutral. And so if they have a bad exposure to it, they can swing into the other category. If they get good exposure and educated dialogue behind it, they can swing into our category. And so the truth is, we’re not trying to convert everybody in this country to become waterfowl hunters or hunters in general. But if we can give them a truly good look at what our lives look like, the conservation, the habitat and the hunting and the camaraderie and the dog work and everything else that goes into it, that is a very positive message, and I think it helps us as hunters as a whole.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I agree entirely. Which leads me to this question. As you all have grown, I mean, Matt, you came and started working for a big brand in Bozeman, now you’re doing it for Flying V, now you’re associated with Meat Eater, and it’s all about community engagement. How do you engage with a broader hunting and conservation community? And what role does social media play in that engagement? I mean, boy, when you two boys showed up in Bozeman, social media really wasn’t what it is today. Now, it is an absolute form of conversation and it invites a lot of different thoughts into the same pool. Even if we’re talking about the 10% margin of just the hunting community, it invites a lot of different frames. How do you all use it, and what does it play in you all’s community outreach? And what role does it play just in hunting in general? Because I’ve got another question I’m going to follow up with.

Matt McCormick: Let me go.

Brady Davis: I’ve got my own thoughts too.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I want to talk this out with you all because I think it’s interesting times we live in.

Matt McCormick: It is definitely interesting times. So when I first moved to Bozeman, Instagram had just launched, nobody even had one. Personal people, they didn’t have one. People didn’t have one, 2012, 2013. And the evolution of social media has certainly played its role in not only, making more people aware of what’s out there. I think there’s some negative impacts that, people have unrealistic expectations on what hunt should look like, because everything is so glorified on Instagram. We do try to be as real and honest as possible. Like, if we have a bad hunt, we talk about it, if we have a good hunt or a good spot we talk about allows you to get the message out there. And one example I want to give you is when we started working on a project here on this ranch, we did an interview style of just like – this project is done, and we’re about to put water on it for the very first time, come along and check it out. We had like, 600, 000 people watch that video, and they’re all fired up on just this idea that there was a project going on, on the ground somewhere in Montana, and it was for duck hunting. People liked it, and it was nothing fancy. It was not this high, production value piece of video, it was just us hanging out, talking about this project, and we were very excited about it. And I think that transferred through in the video. But it allows people to get a look into what’s going on at their fingertips in other areas of the world, right? So in my opinion, a lot of people are in the daily grind of their life, right? They get up, they get the kids off to school, they go to work, they come home, cook dinner, and then they go to bed and there’s a lot of repetition in that. They’re living vicariously through people like yourself to be able to stay energized about a sport or hobby that they like a lot, like duck hunting. And so to be able to watch that stuff, it keeps them engaged, it keeps them thinking, keeps them exploring ideas of their own. Like, if we can inspire somebody to go look at a piece of wetland that was ruined by cattle in their area, and they’re like, man, it would be really cool to be able to kind of revitalize this. And you can do it for a little bit, not a lot of money. If you can inspire somebody to go do that, that’s pretty cool. Because otherwise, if they didn’t see your post or they didn’t see our post, they might not have done that at all. And that, I think is really cool to be able to get those daily messages out of just, this is what’s happening. Like, well, you’re at work, this is what’s going on a duck ranch.

Ramsey Russell: I agree entirely. But you know and I know both there’s some outspoken people that say that we are the antithesis of the future of hunting by posting anything in social media.

Matt McCormick: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they’re hunters themselves.

Matt McCormick: We get that.

Ramsey Russell: And then there’s other thoughts that, I’m only posting or I’ve only got a YouTube channel, or I’ve only got a podcast, or I’ve only got a social media account so that I can prostitute brands. Well, yeah, I mean, hey, wait a minute. Whether I’m filming a YouTube channel or running a podcast, it involves time and money. And in terms of opportunity cost, time is money. I mean, so it necessitates, unless I’m independently wealthy and I’m not, it necessitates having relationships with brands.

Brady Davis: Yeah. And I have a thought on that as well, Ramsey. Ping ponging off both what you and Matt have said. Anytime I get asked the question about social media, I will tell you that by nature, I’m an eternal optimist. I can also look at the past 25 years of my life, Brady’s life, and if I were to sit down right now and identify, other than my wife and children and family, the 20 people that I care about the most on this planet, a large majority of those people, those introductions may have never happened had it not been for social media. And so I have been a benefactor, I’ve benefited greatly from social media, from getting to meet with people. I also think it’s really cool to see the next generation coming up. My son’s a sophomore in college, him and his buddies, they pay attention to that kind of thing, it’s a different world than you grew up in or I grew up in. And if they’re not getting positive messaging on social media, then all they’re getting is negative. We already know the mainstream media is all negative. You watch, turn on CNN or Fox News or, I don’t care, I’m not talking politics right now, I’m just saying you watch the mainstream media every night and all you’re hearing is a bunch of bad shit, and it’s truthfully mostly shit. And so if we can give a positive message and to our very small group of people that pay attention to us or care about what we’re doing, man, at the end of the day, isn’t that what life is about? I mean, as much as we love hunting ducks and running dogs and doing what we do, at the end of the day, when I’m dead and you all are at my funeral, yeah, it’s great, if you can say Brady was fun to duck hunt with, but at the end of the day, I’d like him to say he was positive, he put out a good message, he was kind to other people. And if I can do that on social media, that’s great. I got a message the other day and listen, I’m no patron saint, but I got a message the other day from a 16 year old fella in southeast Idaho. Never met him, never anything, he sent me a message and he sent this big, long apology in the start of the message. Hey, I know you’re busy and I built up the courage to message you, but I just like to ask about what you do looking forward. I think it’d be so cool to, make properties better for waterfowl hunting and do duck habitat. And he said, here’s my cell phone number if you ever get a minute, I know I may never hear from you. And he’s giving me all these disclaimers and man, I called that fella up, he had just gotten out of school, he was driving home from high school and we talked for 2 hours on the phone, that kid’s smart as a whip and he has some really good ideas. The truth is, when he’s out of school, I’d love to have him come and work with us. I mean, he knows what he’s talking about and his heart’s in the right place. And so again, I think just having that access, had it not been for social media, he wouldn’t have even known who I am or how to reach out to me or Matt. We all get these messages and these things. So on the flip side, yes, there’s a whole bunch of people that say a bunch of bad about us, right? I mean, every video we post, especially on YouTube with, the Meat Eater ones, you can go read the comments, there’s a whole bunch of people saying these guys are a bunch of idiots and they are dumb SOBs –

Ramsey Russell: And it ain’t just you all, that’s what I’m getting at. That’s exactly what I’m getting at, Brady, it’s everybody. News flash, whether you’ve got 15 followers or 1.5 million, if you post a picture in social media of you and your buddies, you and your kids shooting one duck or 10, you’re a brand ambassador, for nothing else, you’re a brand ambassador for whatever you’ve got on the clothes on your back that whether they’re paying you to wear or not, you’re wearing and people are noticing. And most importantly, you’re a brand ambassador as hunter. You’re a hunter. And you’re being lumped by the algorithm with everybody else that’s a hunter. And so I’m asking you all because, man, as we’ve talked about, from where you grew up to now, it’s been a transition and you all are gaining in, let’s just say influence and community outreach and stuff via social media. So I’ll just ask this question. How do we ensure that brand partnerships stay authentic and not just a dollar chasing sponsorship? And we all know there’s folks out there just chasing the almighty dollar for at any cost in the world of hunting. Well, this is easy, all I got to do is put on a G-string. I can’t put on a G string, maybe Brady can and go out there and get brands partnerships.

Brady Davis: I can put it on, you just don’t want to see it.

Ramsey Russell: Everybody pay you, not about to wear it. But seriously, you all get what I’m saying? How do you do brands partnerships and stay authentic, not just a dollar chasing prostitute. How do you do that? What advice do you have for doing that or how do you personally do that?

Matt McCormick: Yeah, our approach on this has stayed consistent from the beginning. Use the products you love and if you can build a relationship with those people, send it. It’s when you start forcing things that it starts to feel inauthentic, right? It starts to feel forced and people pick up on that shit. Like, you cannot put something, a product in somebody’s face that, you don’t stand fully behind and say that this is the best product available. If it’s not, it’s not. And so what we do is we work with premium brands that hold their weight and work for us. We start working with, let’s just take for example, dog collars and Garmin, it’s top of mind for me. We use Garmin dog collars, well, that’s an easy, that would be an easy relationship to build because we already love their product and if their people are cool and we’re cool, then this is a good relationship. But you don’t need to push it in front of people. You authentically integrate it into your media, show that you’re using it, answer questions about it when they come up, because let’s be honest, they’re going to come up, if somebody sees that dog collar or somebody sees, you wearing First Light now, they’re going to talk about it, they’re going to ask questions, tell them what tell them how it works for you and move on. You got to just be you, right? And if you are a guy that cares about hunting and being comfortable and products working right, then you build trust. Trust is what it comes down to is that if you can build trust with your people and your following and your audience, then all of a sudden you have some ground to stand on to say that this is a product that I really do enjoy.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely.

Brady Davis: I’ve got a little bit of an out of the box answer to that question. And I totally agree with everything you’ve said and what Matt has said as well. There’s some sayings that come to mind in my head. I think when a person is truthful and at times willing to be vulnerable. Like in my careers, when I’ve ever been involved in the sales side of a business, there’s a saying we always use called facts tell, stories sell. So I can tell you a fact, Ramsey, but that’s not going to maybe sway you any way, one direction or another. But if I tell you a story and there’s some vulnerability involved in it, you have a way to then identify with that story and find your own truth in the dialogue that I’ve given you.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Brady Davis: I think that when it comes to our world and waterfowl, at the end of the day, man, for me, it’s be truthful, be willing to be vulnerable, but be positive, right? Every single day, my kids, if they were sitting here right now, from the time they were in kindergarten till the time they’re in college, every day when they go to school, I tell them the same thing, they’re walking out the door, I would say, hey, have a good day, be kind to everyone, don’t take from anyone and kill them with kindness.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Brady Davis: At the end of the day, man, nobody hates people that are kind and honest and vulnerable. And I just think that in the positions that we’re in and people like you, and you do a great job of this, Ramsey, is being open with people and being vulnerable and saying, hey, here’s what I know, and guess what? Sometimes it may be bad news, sometimes it may be good news, but we don’t have to inflate the truth. We can be honest, we can be vulnerable and let people see why we do what we do. So I know that’s a little bit, and my mind’s running in circles a little bit, but I think vulnerability and truth is what matters the most.

Matt McCormick: That’s right.

Brady Davis: Just tell the damn truth. Same thing you tell your kids when they’re 4 years old, just tell the truth. And the same thing goes for hunting, just tell the truth, man. It’s already good enough. The truth is good enough, we don’t need to embellish it or create a fake reality. Instagram, which we all use, we know the people that when you look at their stuff, it’s always mega polished, it’s always mega pretty, and they’re always so happy, and they’re always so this, man, that’s great, we all have those days. But let’s be honest, there’s a whole bunch of that goes into every job. People can tell us, must be cool to focus on waterfowl all day, every day. Yes, it is, but guess what? It’s still work, and there’s still days that, our team probably wants to kill Matt and I. There’s days Matt wants to strangle me and choke me out.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. Work’s a work.

Brady Davis: It’s still a job. And at the end of the day, I just think in general, in personal and interpersonal and I will put online into this, just tell people the truth and be kind. At the end of the day, that’s really – if some people don’t like us for doing that, then that’s okay. But you’re not going to see us get into a big piss and match on Facebook or Instagram or arguing with people about practices or what they’re doing. The truth is, I find it interesting that so many of the people that do give negative comments on what we do, don’t live anywhere near us and have never even hunted our area.

Matt McCormick: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Brady Davis: That’s a terrible decoy spread, you guys are a bunch of idiots, what a bunch of fools. Well, come hunt with us. The truth is, I’ve told people that. Listen, the truth is you seem cool when I look at your own page, like, you’re probably a nice guy, I know you’re talking shit right now, but I’m fairly confident if you got in the blind with Matt and I, we’d find a lot of common ground and probably end the hunt as pals and have breakfast and a beer afterwards and plans for the next hunt. But at the end of the day, the reason why we do what we do is because of our experiences. We’ve failed so many times, we found what works for us, and we will never stand on the mountaintop and tell everybody we know more than you do, right?

Ramsey Russell: Well, Brady, you said earlier that talking about experiences, you talked about earlier how every time you got bucked off a bull, you came back just a little bit better, that’s life in general. Working life, professional life, Life-life, in general. So here’s a question I’ve got as we start wrapping up. If you reflect back on your journey, going all the way back to how episode 76 led you all down this path to now with the Flying V’s and everything else. What have been some of the most rewarding experiences and what have been some lessons you all have learned along the way?

Brady Davis: That’s a great question.

Matt McCormick: It is.

Brady Davis: I will tell you that some of the highlights for me has been enjoying the ride with people that I care about, for one. Matt and I obviously have a great relationship, there’s a business relationship in that. We were friends for a long time before that. And at the end of the day, I trust Matt. So that has been a very positive thing in my life. Some of the lessons that I’ve learned is, and I knew this before, but it just keeps coming back is not everybody means what they say. And here’s what I’ll tell you by that. I don’t think people are overtly lying all the time or they have nefarious intent. But a lot of people say things that they can’t hold up their end of the deal. And what I’ve learned the older I’ve gotten is to afford those people some grace and keep doing what we’re doing, and if there’s ever a way I can help them, I want to do that. Again, we want to add more value than we receive, whether it’s in business. If Matt and I enter into a financial partnership with somebody, I want them to leave that deal, whether it’s a real estate deal, a consulting deal or anything else, and feel like they got more value from us than they paid us in financial dollars. And again, it all goes back to what I’m saying. And I promise I’m not trying to be some hippie dippy guy and kindness and love and all this stuff, but at the end of the day, I think, be willing to trust people until you can’t. That’s a lesson that we’ve learned is be willing, be trustful until you can’t, and then move on, but still afford that person some grace and be willing to do anything to help them as well. But some of the biggest benefits for me, other than, the cool hunting and all, that’s really great. What I found is with our team, for me personally, has been so rewarding to start something from scratch and see it actually work. Ramsey, there was years, 2, 3 years where Matt and I both had regular day jobs and we actually shared an office. Matt leased an office from me in a totally different business. And we’d get done at work at 6 o’ clock and we’d call our wives and say, hey, we’re probably going to be home a little bit late. And Ramsey, there were times we’d leave the office at 2 o’ clock in the morning, 3 o’ clock in the morning, and we’re talking on the phone as we’re both driving to our individual homes. We went years with never making a single penny. We were spending tens of thousands of dollars of our own money to try to even flesh out the idea that we hoped might eventually work. And so seeing that work, I mean, that’s been the coolest thing ever, right? And getting to do it with people that you love and care about and that goes for Matt and I, and also our team, our guys that work with us all day, every day. I mean these guys are absolute rock stars. And we do anything in the world for them, we’re very lucky and very blessed to have the people around us. And that’s been done intentionally, but it’s pretty cool when you get to wake up and do what we do every day for a living.

Matt McCormick: Yeah.

Brady Davis: So that’s my answer.

Matt McCormick: Yeah. I mean it’s the big answer, right? You sniped it right from me, which, thank you for that. Well, I mean, I completely agree with all that. I’ll turn it back to the media side a little bit, but you never know, one of my biggest lessons that I learned is you never know when these relationships are going to come back around, right? So you meet somebody and you have coffee with them, you have this short chat and it’s great. But you never know when that impression that you put on that person is going to come back around at the end of the day, waterfowl, this world is really small. And I know it seems big sometimes, but it’s not like once you’re in it, it’s not, it’s small and the people that love to hunt ducks, that’s even smaller community. And these relationships come back around. So you got to go into it, to Brady’s point about being kind, you have to go into every relationship a little bit or conversation a little bit open minded because you never know where that relationship is going to lead. And that’s something that I’ve seen work over and over again of something that happened 10 years ago, all of a sudden this guy, pops back up into my world and there’s an opportunity that I can help him or there’s an opportunity that he can help me or he’s just passing through and wants to grab a beer, like, let’s do that. Saying yes to things like that is really important. You just never know. And so you got to be able to think ahead far enough past like your day to day and be able to think about the future on the relationships that you’re building, the communications you’re having with people, whether it be on the road or in your own hometown. Another thing that I’ve learned from a content side and this is something a little bit that people may or may not understand. In the beginning, when we were building content for brands, we were doing everything in our power to meet whatever brand requirements they had. So you’re conforming yourself into turning into them and their voice and they’re leveraging you to do that. That’s not worth it. That’s something that I’ve learned, that’s not worth it. It’s not worth it to change who you are to make the brand happy. And there’s a number of reasons why and I could go into, a number of stories on this, but the turnover rate at a brand, this is education, this is for people trying to get into this business. The turnover rate at a brand, let’s just say it’s an apparel brand, a hunting brand, is very high. These people move around. They jump from this business to this business, that business to that business, and they’re moving around all the time. It’s hard to build relationships with people like that. And with brands like that because things are always changing. Be you and be authentically you and make you valuable to them. Not your voice, not who you are, and we’re going to change you into this because they will try to change you into this. Be you and add value as an authentic hunter and who you are. Just be true to yourself, I guess is really the message here. Be true to yourself, don’t sell your souls to the devil.

Ramsey Russell: Perfect. Tell everybody how they can connect with Flying V. Tell everybody listening, I’ll have a link below on the caption. But tell everybody how they connect with you all.

Brady Davis: Well, we just launched a new website that is pretty cool website. It’s got a lot of our media on it. It’s got a lot of what we do. It’s a central location. You can watch all the episodes. We’ve also got some merch and some products that we’ve launched recently on there. And that website is flyingv.us. That’s kind of our central hub. Obviously there’s the social media channels. There’s two of them of Flying V Solutions and Flying V Ranches.

Matt McCormick: As well as Matt McCormick5 for me, Brady Davis406 for him.

Ramsey Russell: What about your YouTube channel?

Brady Davis: YouTube, we just launched a YouTube that is coming up that is flyingv_us on YouTube, so you can go to that and you know the YouTube, we’ve kind of used it as a little bit of a behind the scenes. There’s some fun stuff on there, there’s some shenanigans, some games, it’s a little more light hearted than the episodes, the hunting episodes. It’s a little bit more light hearted. So it’s kind of fun, right? I mean, the whole goal of the YouTube, we’re not trying to be YouTube stars, we’re not trying to be celebrities. We just wanted to give people a real look into the vulnerable and authentic side of what we are. And listen as much good as we do, we’re also still a group of dudes hanging out and we razz each other and BS and play pranks on each other and have fun. And when you spend as much time as we do with our team, you got to make it fun or you’re going to go crazy.

Ramsey Russell: Dang, right. I get it. Well, I appreciate both of you all coming on. Matt McCormick, Brady Davis, I appreciate having you all on. Thank you very much.

Matt McCormick: Yeah, thanks.

Brady Davis: Thanks for having us, Ramsey. Appreciate all you’re doing.

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

[End of Audio]

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