EP 605. The Thrill Is Gone?

Is the thrill of duck hunting gone? Is social media sky high expectations or just nostalgia, is it clouding our vision of what duck hunting is or should be?

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where today we’re kind of asking a philosophical question that a lot of waterfowlers are secretly wondering themselves, and trust you me, I hear from them all day, every day, 365 days a year. Is the thrill of duck hunting gone? Is social media sky high expectations or just nostalgia, is it clouding our vision of what duck hunting is or should be? I’m joined today by Kyle Winterstee of Delta Waterfowl, a longtime hunter, respected outdoor rider, a buddy of mine who has watched this culture evolve up close and together, we’re going to dig into where the romance has gone, or is it just hiding in plain sight? Kyle, how the heck are you today?

Kyle Winterstee: I am great, Ramsey. Thanks for having me on. This is a real treat to join you.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’m not lying when I hear this topic. When I called you back a few days ago and talked to you about this subject, I hear it all the time, not only is it just everywhere in social media, manifest in social media, all the disgruntledness of this thing we call duck hunting, but all day, every day, I’m hearing from people, people that want to go to foreign countries or people that want to hunt somewhere else in the United States or just people that want to call up and put myself out there, talk about it. Just this morning coming back from the gym, I mean, if you told me 4 or 5 years ago that that guy and the people he surrounds himself with and the ambitious initiative, time and money that they’re willing to commit to duck hunting in the Deep South, especially here in Mississippi, if you told me that conversation was coming, I would have never seen it coming, I wouldn’t have seen it coming last week, I wouldn’t have seen it coming when I answered the phone this morning where this guy’s going with it. And then I heard you on Delta Waterfowl, I know that you all talked about it, I’ve read some of your stories. And I said, this would be a great discussion, because we duck hunters are, we’re a rare breed, I think we are. I think we’re a rare breed. And I think you’ve got to be a passionate and committed and dedicated individual to want to go duck hunt today with a lot of what it is seemed to be plaguing duck hunting as compared to “the good old days”. Now, personally, I’ve shared this conversation, then I want to warm up into who you are, I’ve shared this conversation. I can remember, growing up around a supper table with my granddaddy and my daddy, my uncle, talking about the good old days, man, back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, them growing up in Mississippi Delta shooting birds. I was in college, we’d been hunting the Mississippi River 4 mallards apiece, you know what I’m saying? And my dad made really good coffee, and we were passing through town, I said, stop over here and get a cup of coffee, he’d like seeing these ducks I bet, he hadn’t hunted since he was probably in junior high or high school. And he come out back and look, we got to talking and my buddy was like, what was it like back in the day and all this good stuff? And my daddy looked in that boat and he said, son, the good old days are now. Are you kidding? We couldn’t go out when I was young and shoot 4 green heads apiece like this on any given day, he said, you all shoot 6 ducks. He said, that ain’t what the 70s were, not the 70s I remember. I’m like, the good old days are now. So that’s going to be the question we explore today. Are the good old days now, or is the thrill gone, Kyle? Let’s back up. Take me back, who is Kyle Winterstee as a duck hunter and as a human being?

I don’t remember deciding to become a duck hunter, but in that moment, this was something that I realized I’m going to do this forever

Kyle Winterstee: Who is Kyle Winterstee, well, let’s see. When I was 15 years old, my dad made me wait to go out on the Susquehanna River in our John boat until I was in his eyes, a strong enough swimmer that he didn’t have to worry about. I’d done the deer hunting thing and that’s okay, and pheasants and grouse I like. But I was 15 years old when I went out in the Susquehanna River and I shot a black duck. And I don’t remember deciding to become a duck hunter, but in that moment, this was something that I realized I’m going to do this forever. And it’s still to this day, there’s very little I have in common with my 15 year old self, but I like to duck hunt as much now as I ever did as a kid. I became an outdoor writer in 2004, it was my first job out of college, I started with American Hunter in the D.C area, was there 8 years freelancing for 3 and now I’ve been with Delta Waterfowl on the magazine staff communications team for the last 10 years. And Ramsey, I think in all this, my evolution as a duck hunter, people, when they meet an outdoor writer, they automatically assume that you’re like a really good hunter, which is, it’s an interesting thing to me, because I’ve never met a baseball writer and thought, I bet you got a great slider. I’m just a guy who has a passion for it, I live and breathe ducks. I may not be great at it, but I think I’m somewhat of an expert on enjoying it because I’ve said there’s guys who know the ins and outs of this, who can kill way more ducks than I ever will, who have better dogs or better shots, but nobody will like it more than me. I can put the check in my column.

Ramsey Russell: Kyle, I didn’t realize you were from back east. I mean, hunting the Susquehanna River, I mean, that’s like going back to the cradle of American duck hunting, what a fabled part of the world to grow up duck hunting.

Kyle Winterstee: It certainly has its history. And I wrote about that some in the magazine piece that originally got us talking on this topic in the spring issue of Delta Waterfowl has duck hunting lost its romance? Setting up on the Susquehanna, we were right outside my little town but we were also, there’s no cell phones back then, we were so far removed from society, we may as well have – it looked like an ocean to a kid and we were so far from the doldrums of life, work, school, all the other things that just drain your soul, we were out there with the ducks, and I think when I look back, that’s probably the vibe that I felt in those moments is what we still a lot of us chase and that we ask, is it still out there to be found?

Boy, I tell you, a lot has changed since the days of hunting the Susquehanna River up there, which dumps into the Chesapeake Bay

Ramsey Russell: Boy, I tell you, a lot has changed since the days of hunting the Susquehanna River up there, which dumps into the Chesapeake Bay. I mean, God, when you think back to that era, that just harkens this level of nostalgia and romance that few places can. I mean, the Chesapeake Bay. What was your first duck? A black duck?

Kyle Winterstee: First duck was a black duck followed by a hen merganser that I still have mounted.

Ramsey Russell: Hairy head.

Kyle Winterstee: Yeah, that was the first duck that I was the only person who shot, it was clear that I got. And I was like, yeah. So thrilled over this animal. And then, I still remember, later that season, the first time I shot two greenheads, two drake mallards, like, I’ll never ascend any higher than this.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I tell you what, give me two drake mallards any day, I’ll take that any day. To this day, people have asked me my favorite duck in the world, and I love so many of them, Kyle. But what is it about a greenhead? I love black ducks, I love canvas back, I love pintails, but greenheads? I mean, I think if I could only shoot one species for the remainder of my life, I just have to say greenhead, I’d have to.

Kyle Winterstee: And I think that here in the Atlantic Flyway, if you asked me, I’d say black duck. And I think it’s unique, it’s a cool bird, I love them. But I think part of that is also it’s the one thing in here in the Atlantic that we can look at you guys in the central Mississippi and go, black ducks, the best, that’s our one little claim there. But mallards, if it wasn’t the most populous duck in North America, I think it’d be everybody’s favorite.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. You hunted with your dad there on the Susquehanna River, who were the most influential people that shaped your idea of what waterfowling hunting was or should be?

If a guy hand carves his decoys, I think that tells you a lot about how he’s wired and he was one of those

Kyle Winterstee: Certainly my dad, certainly a gentleman by the name of Eric McGargle, who was the captain of our, I don’t know, 16ft, 17ft John Boat, family friend, decoy carver. If a guy hand carves his decoys, I think that tells you a lot about how he’s wired and he was one of those. And everybody likes to get ducks, everybody likes to shoot ducks, I love getting ducks, but that wasn’t what the point of emphasis, they did talk a lot about the nostalgia and just the beauty of the river and I just feel like I had a proper example set for me so that the enjoyment I got out of duck hunting, which don’t get me wrong, it’s more fun when you shoot ducks, but it’s a sustainable mindset when there are also other aspects that keep you coming back that are attainable every single time you go out.

Ramsey Russell: Like what?

Kyle Winterstee: So I do think we’re conditioned. Somebody asked that question, we’re like, wow, I’m just out there for the sunrises and fellowship.

Ramsey Russell: Ain’t nobody out there to watch sunrise.

Kyle Winterstee: We all know that, I don’t know. Even surveys, you send out a survey and people answer, the sunrises and friends and family. Great, that’s a big part of it. But I think that what I get the most thrill out of, whether the scouting report is good or whether it’s bad, is when I pitched my decoys and the sun’s coming up, anything can happen, I don’t know what kind of ducks we’re going to get. I don’t know the quantity, the diversity of species. Is there going to be some good dog work? Just the sunrise. There is the beauty of the sunrise, but just that first 30 minutes of anticipation, I love that. And I think it’s important to go into the hunt, it’s important not to set expectations because I know, I have learned that, if I scout a spot and there’s a couple hundred greenheads sitting on it, if I go out the next day and we just scratch down a few, I’m kind of bummed because my expectations were limits for everybody. But if I scout and see none and think we may not see a duck and we shoot the same number, I’m a pretty happy guy. I think that ensuring we aren’t thinking about what could be or should be can help us find that vibe, that sense of just, I don’t know, that magic, I feel like a big component of this is the sense of wonder I had as a kid. And sometimes I find myself working to sort of suspend disbelief. I know a lot more about ducks than I knew as a kid. But I think if you kind of set that aside for a second and just appreciate them for what they are and wherever they may have come from, they’re over my decoys right now.

Ramsey Russell: You describe being there before shooting time and the world is waking up and the decoys are set and I’m hidden and maybe hadn’t even loaded my gun yet or maybe have. And people have asked so many times, what’s your favorite duck hunt? And I flippantly say the next one. But the truth of the matter is it’s the next one. Whether it’s going to a waist deep, willow surrounded hole that I’ve hunted a hundred times with friends and family, or especially a new area in a new part of the world, it’s just something about it. It’s like Christmas morning, the possibilities are boundless. At that time, we don’t know what’s going to happen and anything could happen and it’s going to happen. You start talking about being a child, thinking about that kind of stuff, I grew up going dove hunting and younger going hunting, and I didn’t really have expectations, I was there, I was in the moment, that’s almost the benefit of being a child, that you can just be kaboom in the moment.

Kyle Winterstee: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: And love it for what it is and what it ain’t, just the moment.

Kyle Winterstee: Yeah, absolutely. Living in the moment, that’s a great way to put it. I’ve often looked at my dogs like, I envy them that they don’t have good days or like every day is a good day, they don’t have bad days, they can be sleeping one moment and oh, we’re going to throw the dummy, let’s go. Like they’re right in that moment. And I think that’s – not to get off on a tangent, but I think that’s what ducks over decoys. I think that’s one of the reasons we love it so much. When there’s ducks over the decoys. You’re not thinking about anything except for those birds cupped right there.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, you ain’t lying.

Kyle Winterstee: It’s just a wonderful headspace to be in.

Ramsey Russell: But there again, a dog’s mindset. Char dog, I mean, she’s the one. Char dog, she don’t care if we shoot one duck or a hundred, she don’t care. Her tail is wagging and she’s happy and she is living in the moment and her rapt attention is on the next play, whether she’s waited an hour or 5 minutes, she is there and she is gung freaking ho. It can be the worst duck hunt we’ve ever been on, it’s 70°outside, there ain’t no duck flying and the concrete sweating. And the minute, out comes the wax cotton canvas jacket on, she’s at the door, frothing to go. She loves to just hunt, I think she loves it more than I do. Why can’t I be like that?

Kyle Winterstee: I envy them for that. It’s one of the reasons, even if a dog is semi mannerly, it’s just nice having a dog there because that sort of mind set can be infectious.

Ramsey Russell: Speaking of dogs, because I got to bring this up, Kyle, I’m sorry, I got to bring this up. Because one thing we’ve got in common is our love for Springer Spaniels. My granddad duck hunted with Springer Spaniels back in the good old days back in the 40s and 50s and 60s and his line originated in Holland, a buddy of his from Greenville, Mississippi brought a pair home and I was 13 years old hunting over bears and sundry other of that line of dogs, and to this day, I love them. How did you get into Springers? Were you all hunting over Springers on the Susquehanna River back in those days?

Kyle Winterstee: So the Eric McGargol I mentioned had chessies and good chessis, like very nice mannerly chessies. I do hunt ducks with my Springers now, but my dad got our first Springer in 1980 and I was born in 1981, so I just grew up with them. I’ve never known life, literally never known life without him, I don’t think I’d be very good at it. But I do hunt ducks with my Springers. Before we started recording we talked about they do have a singular coat, so you do have to be careful, their skin can get wet. When people ask me why Springers, what are you saying a Springer can do what a Lab can do? Like no, I never said that. Ducks particularly in certain conditions, that’s a Lab’s job, that’s what they bred, that’s not a Springer’s job. A Springer to me, I will throw down over whether springers are the ultimate upland dog, I think a Springer on a running pheasant, to me there’s nothing like it. And for that matter on a crippled duck, I think a Springer, it’s really good at tracking them down, sniffing them out. But there are certain things a Lab can do a springer can’t. I have found my Springers, I love hunting ducks with them. Like I say, I am careful. But I also think about when you pick a dog that’s right for you, you have to think about your hunt ducks for in my flyway 60 days and I have to think about the other 10 months out of the year and these springers just suit me, they just love being dogs and they add to my quality of life.

Ramsey Russell: Their enthusiasm is contagious. They pour their heart into it. They’re not a duck dog per se, like a Lab, but they are all in on the task at hand. And I’ve had Briar, that dog I was telling you about, which was a lot for back in the day, I think he picked up 3000 or 4000 career retrieves, almost 4000 career retrieves, I’d have to go back and look in the book. But everything from big Canada geese, which he had to hold a certain way to bring back or to woodcock to rabbits to mourning dove to bobwhite quail and pheasants and everything else we could get into. But now back in the days I was hunting Arkansas public, cutting my teeth, just getting started, I took a Springer I had, a liver and white Springer out to the duck boat and out in the woods and there about 8 or 9 o’ clock some birds came in and we volleyed about 10 of us and I sent the dog out of the boat to go start fetching and some guy goes, golly, I said, what? He goes, I thought you just brought that dog for a boot warmer, I didn’t know he fetched like that. I mean, heck, yeah, he fetches ducks, they got web feet, they love the water. But I thought that was interesting because I’ve met very few people in my circles that really love Springers like we do, and I love Springer. I’ve got a backyard full of Labs right now, and sooner or later it’s going to thin out enough I can go get me another Springer just to have because I just love – and if there’s a better breed to be around kids, I’ve never met it. they love kids and kids love them.

Kyle Winterstee: Wonderful around kids. And honestly, with not getting the weather the last several seasons, I mean, it’s been quite a while, it’s been very few hunts that I have felt like it was unsafe to take a Springer. And I mentioned hunting the Susquehanna with chessies, but on some of these smaller waters and different -yeah, I had a lot of trout streams here in more the central part of the state where known for Spring Creek and Spruce Creek for anyone who fly fishes knows of them, Springers do a darn good job on those.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Kyle, you’ve written about the romance of sea duck hunting, the adventure you talking about, the distance from ordinary life, our removal from just ordinary life. What is it that defines that aura? I just don’t think. I want to be a deer biologist, I still deer hunt and bear hunt and I do different things, but it lacks something that duck hunting has.

Kyle Winterstee: I’ve wondered that myself so much because I don’t dislike deer hunting, my youngest son loves deer hunting, so I get to drug out into the woods with a rifle more often than I would. But I’ve rarely hunted deer without wondering what the ducks are doing, they’re what call to me. And I’ve wondered if it’s the environment, the social aspects of it, or just the birds themselves. It’s the old hunter’s paradox of killing what you love, the birds fascinate me. I think it’s all those things. I don’t know, I don’t get the sense of removal when I’m wearing orange and carrying a rifle and not in a duck blind.

Ramsey Russell: Well, as a deer hunter, now you see them, now you don’t, or now you do. He just walked into a food plotter, stepped into range or flicks in the air, and all of a sudden he’s there. But it’s not the same as those feet coming down and the wings pitching and the head, the way the duck head is shaped and she can rock and frothing to and fro, coming in and working her or pick back up and coming back around, it’s spellbinding. You know that moment when you got the duck hooked up and you make that last call and he set up and you drop your call and you watch and it’s just that instant before the shot when those ducks are setting up, it’s spellbinding. A deer don’t spell, he don’t have that on me. Nothing in the big game world has that on me like that, that magic.

Kyle Winterstee: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Or like a flock of blue wings that don’t sit there and do all that artistic stuff like black ducks and mallard and pintail. But when those big flocks come through in the fall and they start to, they stretch out and they start to coil like a snake and they hook in tight and come running like a freight train, and right when they get over the decoys that long line compresses because they’re all starting to set down at the same time, if that doesn’t get your heart beating, it’s a wonder I hadn’t asphyxiated, not breathing when that moment comes because we’re all holding our breath.

Kyle Winterstee: And they are just all so special and cool in those different ways. And I think that’s part of it with deer, I might not know what size buck I’m going to see or if I’m going to see a buck, but I’m hunting whitetails. But ducks, maybe a canvasback will skirt my decoys, you mentioned blue wings. Will I see one of the rare northern pintails sliding through Pennsylvania? I think it’s that sense of the unknown for me just helps build it.

Ramsey Russell: We you talk about that, how one duck makes a difference. I was hunting in, it was a bucket list trip for me hunting Prince Edward Island last year, we went out the first day and shot mallards and black ducks, we had balled up, gone and got some fresh eelgrass and plopped out in the field, looked like little black ant hills ducks just decoying to it, it was amazing. And the second day we went out to a slough, it looked amazing, there was no wind, whatever. And kill one duck that day and it was kind of a, it wasn’t a gimme, little birds, the wind, whatever, it just wasn’t a day to go shoot duck, I’m telling you. And a flock came over, they had left the slough as we were looking over and kind of gaining ground to go out somewhere. And they were 35, 40 yard and I picked one, shot him, he fell. And it was the most beautiful black duck mallard hybrid I’ve ever seen or laid hands on. And just that one duck that was the shot fired for the day and that’s the only duck we got. But you never know. You never know what’s going to come in. What if the one duck you shoot that day is that hybrid you’ve been wanting or a banded duck or what if it’s just a duck? A hen gadwall comes balling in, at least you didn’t go home without nothing, you got to see that one thing. I mean, it’s enough to keep me going.

Kyle Winterstee: Yeah, one duck seems to feel a lot different than no ducks, that’s for sure. But yeah, I have said if you only kill one duck and it’s a black duck, you had a great day, you live for kind of stuff like that.

Ramsey Russell: You grew up there on the Susquehanna River, you want to talk about the bedrock of North American waterfowling romance, you grew up right there on the Susquehanna River, all those legendary carvers, all that market hunting, all that lore and legend. But do you think that the sense of romance, do you think it was ever really real? Or is that just something we contrive as a nostalgic feeling and thinking back to those days? And I’m prefacing this by saying this. A buddy of mine, Ryan Graves collects a lot of antiquities and duck hunting, and he showed me a market hunter’s journal one time, and I’ve told this story before, so if you’ve heard it before, bear with me. But it was just a day by day journal of this guy’s hunting. He said, but you got to see this one. And this is back in the 1800s. I read that single line on the date, didn’t kill shit, that’s what it said. So don’t you think that even back in old days, for all the legend and lore of the Chesapeake Bay, somebody somewhere went home and wrote in a journal, didn’t see shit, had to been.

Kyle Winterstee: So that’s a beautiful piece of writing in communications, we say, don’t say in 10 words what you can say with 3. And boy, every duck hunter knows that feeling, didn’t see shit. I think it’s both, I think what it must have been like to have all that access and generous limits and all these things. But I do think that there is – so I think it’s called, what is it? Nostalgic bias is something that psychologists have identified that we do as humans. We always look back at certain eras with rose colored glasses. I think that I’m guilty of it. You look back and think, that was great being a kid and whatever, doing this and that, well, yeah, but you’re under your old man’s roof, you had no money, there were some things that weren’t great. And my dad talks about the night, he talks about the 1980s as if that was the golden era, that was the time to be a duck hunter. And I’m like, point systems, the ad steel shot started coming on and it was terrible, the drought in the prairie, that’s to me the prime example. He’s able to look back in the 80s, as if the ducks, they caused the daylight, it looked like night, there was somebody just blotting out the sun, and I’m like, I don’t think so.

Ramsey Russell: Nostalgic bias.

Kyle Winterstee: Yeah, I think that’s part of it. And it’s similar to our social media now. Like you go on social media, maybe we’ll get into some of this –

Ramsey Russell: That’s the next topic. Because I mean, I’m sitting here hanging on nostalgic bias. Do you set a risk in idealizing? We idealize the good old days. And I can say the same thing, until I idealized all the time frame of my dad and granddad dated black and white pictures and them sitting in front of the clubhouse with all those ducks, a lot of ring necks, by the way, hanging up, and all them smiling kids in black and white. And then I stopped by my dad for a cup of coffee and looked down in my boat and he says, the good old days are now. I mean, I was kind of sobering.

Kyle Winterstee: So I think that both eras have their highlight reels. I think that our social media, we get a false sense of how everyone else is doing, we get a false sense everybody else is having success, everybody but me is shooting ducks because we’re getting their highlight reel. And I think from that bygone era, we look at all these black and whites. Well, they didn’t have access to cameras like we do today, I’m not even talking like on your phone, just personal cameras weren’t really a thing going back. And so of course, you see these guys standing in front of the saloon or whatever, and they got this pile of birds that, who know, maybe they shot those over 3, 4 days, but they’ve got them all laid out, and you think, my God, what a better time it was to be a duck hunter back then. But I can certainly think of things like the quality of clothing, granted, there was a lot more romance to that wax cotton. But even compared to the 1990s, sitting on that cold air coming off that river, I would freeze in compared to the base layers they have now and transportation, the logistics, I could be in a place that, tomorrow that would have taken a several days journey in, and early vehicle just with the road systems and so forth. So, there are advantages to being in this era. I’ve wondered if someday my kids are going to look back and think, boy, 2025, it was a simpler time.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they got to. Yeah, I think you bring up a good point, I don’t think they didn’t take pictures of every single thing they did during the hunt. And I think we look back in those black and white pictures and see those big pile pictures that even that was extraordinary for them. That’s why they went to the effort and the enormous relative expense of even taking a picture, let alone saving it.

Kyle Winterstee: Yeah, absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: You talk about social media, do you think social media has changed duck hunting for better or for worse?

Kyle Winterstee: I think it depends how you use it. Starting with the negative, I’ve wondered in my early days of duck hunting, I mentioned that day I shot two mallards and I thought it doesn’t get better. I will never be a better duck hunter than I was today, I got two ducks. If I had gone home and gone on Instagram and seen, pile after pile after pile and guys that think that that’s what it’s all about, posting those kind of things, all of a sudden it might have changed my perspective on my ducks. And I do think in terms of finding the romance, if someone else’s success makes you feel differently about a particular hunt, I think you’re doing this wrong. I think if you scroll social media and all of a sudden you don’t feel the same level of, pleasant vibes that you had about your morning, you might want to take a look at, how your thinking about those. And I mentioned it gives you a false sense of you think everybody’s having success but you, because I feel like there’s not enough people, posting here’s my empty duck strap, still had fun or whatever.

Ramsey Russell: That’s the way it feels though. That’s the way social media will make you feel. And I always have to remind myself that – you’ve got kids, don’t you, Kyle?

Kyle Winterstee: I do.

Ramsey Russell: Have you ever been to Disney? Have you all ever taken them to Disney or have you been able to dodge that yet?

Kyle Winterstee: I have so far dodged it with them.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve been well I thought I had dodged it, I kept putting it off and my wife won’t take the babies down to Disney and I kept shrugging it off and we ain’t going to do that. And one day I hear talking to her mom in the kitchen and they’re going to Disney, I walk in there to get a new Coca Cola, I said, we’re going to Disney? She goes, we are. If you’d like to go, you’re welcome to. I said, well, I want to go to Disney with the kids. So I ended up going to Disney and I had a great time. But here’s a point I’m making about Disney. Here I am sitting at work, you’re sitting at work, whatever we’re doing in our real normal life and our neighbors and somebody look at them having all that damn fun down at Disney, it’s a trip of a lifetime. But they’re not showing that 2.5 hour wait to get on that roller coaster and with no shade, they’re not showing that $19 Coca Cola that they’re drinking or little Johnny being threatened by mama to be whooped within an inch of his life if he didn’t smile for the picture she’s fixing to take. You catch a 1 and 250^th second glimpse of the whole experience and today it don’t reconcile with reality, it just don’t.

Kyle Winterstee: And I think that you have to prep not just kids, but newcomers to hunting for that reality. I think that it can really make them feel like they’re losing, as if this is a competition, which it’s not. And I want my boys to understand that because even knowing that I’ll make the mistake sometimes of coming home from a hunt and looking and going, I don’t know what I’m doing, these guys are hammering them just 10 miles that way. And I try now I’ll even make a habit of avoiding social media and just processing the hunt without that possibly creating a bias or changing my sense of the good vibe, the restoration of my soul that comes from a duck hunt.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, it is. That really has nothing whatsoever is the complete opposite of anything on that cell phone. In fact, it’s complete opposite of cell phone technology for what the goodness that really comes, the therapeutic benefits that come out of a duck hunt. Being in that moment with your kids with your dog with the sunshine, with the ducks flying. And as tough as duck hunt gets, what I’ve learned, look, I have flown halfway across God’s earth to be on a tough duck hunt. And when a going gets tough, the tough gets going, that should command more of your attention. I can remember being one particular hunt, really tough, we were in Azerbaijan, which is literally halfway across the world. Takes forever to get there, 36 hours travel status just to land in Baku, now I’ve got to drive and get to the lodge and go to sleep, get up and go out into the marsh and hunt and it was tough. And at noon, I would be just exhausted because since sunrise, I had been looking downwind, wrapped attention, you had to make every play count, and that takes a lot of mental focus. And if 3 pintails are setting up, you got a whole lot to do, not this pass, hopefully it’ll come back so you can sweep the table. Because that might be the only 3 pintails you see that day. I don’t want to kill one, I want to kill them all. It takes a lot of attention and a lot of focus and a lot of energy. And back home in Mississippi anymore, there’s a lot of days like that, you got to focus instead of playing on your phone, stuff like that. But I know that I have felt the pressure to not keep up with the Joneses, but keep up with the feedback, it adds this undue pressure and expectation of what I should be as a duck hunter. Well, I’m not as good as this guy, and there’s a lot of variables go into that, and it could be smoke and mirrors. And I’ve seen where, in the competition for clicks, especially as it affects younger hunters, I’ve seen people post that, I know for a fact we’re lying, I know for a fact that was false, I was there, and I’m like, come on, that’s not what this is about.

Kyle Winterstee: All right, wait a minute, that wasn’t even this season. Like, I’ve seen that one before. Yeah, I think there’s an old quote, and I don’t know who originally said it, but it’s so true. “Comparison is the thief of joy”.

Ramsey Russell: Boy, that’s a fact.

Kyle Winterstee: You compare yourself to others, you’re setting yourself up for failure and trying to compete and keep up with Others. I love sports, if you want to talk football, basketball, I coach youth sports, I love to compete, look, I am a competitive guy, but duck hunting is not a competition to me. And I think sometimes we get into that sort of mindset where we have to win. And there is nothing to the romantic aspects of waterfowl, however you define them that can be found when you’re competing, when you’re trying to compete with somebody, that is not a component in my book.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a very good point, comparison is a thief of joy. And my challenge is trying to play as clean a game as I possibly can, meaning this. I go out as an average day, I’m going to come out with 3 ducks in the state of Mississippi. And it’s one thing if I should have shot 6 and I only killed 3, something else entirely different if I played a clean game and killed all 3 I was supposed to kill, now that’s 100% game right there. You know what I’m saying? I’ll take it as a win. But as long as you ain’t comparing me to the guy that’s got 30 of them hanging up with him and his buddy were bailing them. I mean, we’re all rock stars when we can do no wrong, I mean, we’ve all had those days, no matter what. I can remember one time somebody turned on a Bluetooth speaker in the dark just listening to some music, we were limited out before we could turn it off, you could do no wrong, ducks were just piling in. You know what I’m saying? And I mean, yeah, but that’s not near the joy and the satisfaction is having played a really clean, tight game for me, that’s how I play it now, Kyle.

Kyle Winterstee: I hear you. I hadn’t considered that aspect of it. But yeah, a clean game.

Ramsey Russell: Don’t leave no scraps on the table.

Kyle Winterstee: Yeah, I’m certainly – you made me think of the fact that I’m not willing to even enter into any sort of gray area in order to keep up with people as far as laws and regulations. My dad used to say that someone who’s willing to break a game law is not a hunter, it’s just a guy out there with a gun. Like, the title of being a hunter, it means something, you’re a guy who believes in have a conservation ethic, and you’re a believer in being a good sportsman or sportswoman. And yeah, you’re talking about a different way to play the game, but certainly that would rob me of joy, that on my conscience I’d be like, I’m not Nash Buckingham out here. I thought that would just dissolve that illusion.

Ramsey Russell: Well, what I’m saying is, I beat up myself if it’s a slow hunt, it’s an average hunt, where I hunt normally in Mississippi, it’s just an average day, nothing special, it’s going to be what it’s going to be, which probably ain’t going to be the three of us limiting. And where I took my tail and beat up myself the most is if I was given an opportunity and scratched, that’s where I beat. Or I do reach for my phone and I’m whatever, playing on my phone, an email or a text that can’t wait an hour and the Dutch come in and I’m sitting there with a phone in my hand instead of my shotgun. You see what I’m saying, that’s where I’m like, damn it, boy, I broke my own rule. You know what I’m saying?

Kyle Winterstee: I especially feel that way when I have a dog with me because I don’t really care who shoots the ducks, whether it’s you or me, I want my dog to retrieve it, that’s all I really care about. So when I screw up an opportunity for him, it’s a bummer. But I think that also speaks to – so I love hunting with friends and family. I love recruiting new hunters to the sport, if you can call it a sport, I love hunting with people, the camaraderie, social aspect of duck hunting are one of the things that makes it special. But a time or two per year, I like to hunt just me.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Kyle Winterstee: Love just a solo hunt where I can – If you don’t know what it is about duck hunting that will allow you to find those romantic aspects that magic, or if you feel like you had it and you lost it, I feel like sitting there by yourself and just listening, like, not so much with your ears, but your mind, feel it. And not having the pressure of, if I have someone else with me and we’re not seeing many ducks. I’m like, I’m just feeling for the – I’m like, I beat myself up, like, I wanted to put him on ducks and put us in the wrong spot, my decoys are wrong, the wind’s coming this way, what was I thinking, if I’m by myself, I’m not screwing up anybody because I don’t care, and I think that can be a good exercise.

Ramsey Russell: If you could change one thing about how we share hunting online, what would it be? That would make a good meme.

Kyle Winterstee: If I could change one thing, I can think of one for sure.

Ramsey Russell: What’s that?

Kyle Winterstee: I hate when I see someone spell out a number with their birds.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’ve done it. But, yeah.

Kyle Winterstee: No offense, Ramsey, but I don’t like it, I just think it’s counter intuitive. I think it puts emphasis on just the count that you killed, and it loses – I see that, and I know how much work went into that. I know how rare it is, I don’t know, there’s something about the emphasis, even if it’s snow geese or something, where we shooting a few might, shooting a bunch is a good thing, I just don’t love it.

Ramsey Russell: No, I get it. I’ve evolved beyond that, I feel like I have. And I don’t I try not to be judgmental on how people want to do it. But I’m in situations a lot on big hunts elsewhere where there are non-North American bag limits, many more opportunities than what we get here, and especially among first timers or guide services, they want to lay them out, lay them out like dominoes, but you just count them all. And I don’t want to do that. Put them in a pile, stack them up, whatever, because I don’t think that the number is what is what’s most important. And I tell you, one of my pet peeves is a wet duck, I hate a wet duck. I feel like I owe it to hunting and to myself and to that game bird to present him as nicely and beautifully as humanly possible, that’s what I think. You know what I’m saying? That’s what I think. But we’ve created an echo chamber in social media, we’re still talking about social media and we’ve created an echo chamber. If anybody listening right here, if you asked everybody listening to this episode, what would you change about being posted online? Boy, I tell you, we hear a million different answers, you know what I’m saying? And I’m going to share getting kicked in the cajones on social media here in a minute. And what else would you change if you could? What are some of those other rules that guide you?

Kyle Winterstee: I don’t like gripping the birds by the neck, at least grab it by the foot if you’re not a photographer, or just hold it. Just any sort of portrayal and it’s hard to really put your finger on it, but you know it when you see it, that it’s not a respectful portrayal of the duck, that it doesn’t demonstrate that, yeah, we shoot ducks, but we also love them in value conservation. And I think, the market drives it though, that’s how do you fix it? Like, you can tell people that all you want, but when someone posts things that to me I find visually offensive and it gets a ton of likes, well, they’re going to do it again.

Ramsey Russell: Well, let me share my experience. Respectful portrayal, that’s the word you used. And I travel with a decoy, I get everybody I hunt with to sign, if I’m in a blind way, I’m passing around get everybody to sign it, I love to do this with people. And point being that this black duck I just got done with, Kyle, it is an oversized black duck made by Ian McNair out in Virginia and it is covered top and bottom 6 ways Sunday with hundreds of names on it. I hunt with a lot of people. I love to hunt in the blind by myself and I ain’t going to lie to you, but I hunt with lots of people over the course of a year. And I have seen, let’s own it, we can talk, we can wax poetically about out there duck hunting and everything else, but at the end of the day, we kill stuff. And it’s an imperfect sport like hitting a Baseball, you’re not going to line drive it, you’re not going to get a solid hit every time. Sometimes you’re going to dip and tuck and clip of it and it’s going to fly, foul ball and everything else. And with all them little BBs coming out of that pattern, sometimes you’re going to cripple that duck and sometimes Charlie was going to come in with a very much alive duck, that’s got to be dispatched. That is a part of duck hunting, it’s a dirty little secret of duck hunting that we’ve got to own as hunters, we have to kill this duck. And I have seen and again, respectful portrayal and I’m going to talk out of both sides of my mouth on this one because I got kicked in the cajones trying to make a point online recently. I have seen ducks kill all manner of ways, I have seen people hold that duck and just beat them like a drum, beat that head on a boat seat or beat him with a boat paddle, I’ve seen them hit with sticks, I’ve seen them rung and I can’t stand a rung neck duck, I’m sorry, I have to do it on geese sometimes, but I just don’t like the way it looks. I don’t like doing it. And especially the guy that gets, oh man, never goes the body and he’s done tore the head off the duck that is crazy. I’ve seen sit on them, I’ve seen people press them, I’ve seen people stick feathers and other store bought doohickeys in the back of the heads and scramble the brain. Somebody had a tool looked like pliers one time called an eradicator, and that way you just put it on there, I mean there’s all kinds of just medieval techniques for dispatching a duck. My favorite way that I grew up learning to do and have seen to be very successful is the head bite. You don’t crunch, you sometimes going to get a little blood in your mouth, but you bend his neck, don’t try this with a big goose, you bend his neck, you excerpt bite, you hear, it’s like using your tooth to crack a pecan. You just listen for the crack, he flips a little bit, he’s dead. That’s it. It’s nice, it’s humane, he’s dead, which is the whole purpose of the sport. And I was in Argentina this year and was doing that, practicing that. I mean, Char dog are bringing a duck crack, hang it to guide, he’d hang it up. Well, he started doing it instead of wringing the neck, he understood I didn’t want a wrong neck, crack the head, he’d take the duck, crack head, put it up. And I filmed him doing that. And it was funny. I’m sorry it was funny, but it made a point and I posted that. And I’m going to say, and I posted it right as I was sitting down to supper, and by dessert, 15 minutes later, it had gotten 375 likes and 50 comments and all them 50 comments almost hurt my feelings, if I had feelings. I was portraying it wrong, I was doing it wrong, I unfollowed this and unfollow that, and it projected the sport bad and everything else. My point being, I think it’s the best way to dispatch a duck. That’s what I think. But people got opinions about stuff like that. I took it down, and I sometimes when I think about it, I said, I should have left it up because that’s the best way to kill a duck. My humble opinion, that’s the best way to dispatch a duck. But it rubbed people wrong because it portrayed hunting wrong. It wasn’t just that the animal it was portraying hunting wrong, you know what I’m saying? And I’m like, let’s be honest here, we’re killing stuff. And I’m not the only duck hunter that has crippled ducks come in and I showed that and boy, let me tell you what, everybody’s got opinions on that. There were some real strong feelings going around. I took it down. So anyway, you don’t want to get your feelings hurt to get kicked in the ball, don’t post that kind of video up on the Internet.

Kyle Winterstee: I mean, it is an aspect of duck hunting. I’ve said with dogs, if it’s killed clean, I can go pick it up. Like, where the dog helps you out is when it’s not, that’s when I’m really glad I had one and why there’s some spots I won’t hunt without a dog because you’re not going to find them. But I think, optics aside, and I’ve seen that in the south more than anywhere else, down in Mississippi and various regions of the South, I just don’t – you don’t see the bite, us Yankees doing that. But it is a clean, it is a quick way to kill them. And that’s my big thing is, regardless of what your preferred method of dispatch is, do it fast, and I usually feel, I don’t love doing it, nobody does, but it is part of it. And I think that, yeah, the idea of giving hunting a bad name. See, that’s why I don’t really jump on people, even if it’s something that might make me cringe, it had to be something really egregious, just blatant for me to jump on them. And because I so often, throughout my – I’ve been an outdoor writer for 21 years now and you get all these letters from, used to get letters, now it’s emails or social posts on from people going, you’re giving fuel to the antis. Well, heck, if they want fuel, they’re going to find it and they already hate us. I haven’t made them hate what we do anymore by portraying this, showing a little bit of blood in that one photo which was – I remember one guy’s gripe that really stuck in my crawl once as we showed some blood on a deer when I was an American hunter and when you shoot things, sometimes they bleed.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Kyle Winterstee: I don’t make apologies for what we do now.

Ramsey Russell: And we’re still talking about social media and I guess, how do you personally balance sharing stories or how to, but yet protect the experience or the collective ideal of what that experience should be. I mean, social media is tricky, man.

Kyle Winterstee: I’m trying to think of some good examples off the top of my head. I mean, I love your platform, enjoy what you’re putting –

Ramsey Russell: Well, you must have missed that one post then, Kyle.

Kyle Winterstee: I didn’t catch that. But I don’t know that it’s tough to frame the hunt in proper context on social media. I think it needs to start with mentorship, but I do think I mentioned that there’s positives and negatives and then I’ve kicked the crap out of social media since. But in terms of my sons learning about hunting, if you curate informative content, I mean, they’re learning so much stuff that – I used to get, I’d read Outdoor Life and Field & Stream at home and before I get my hair cut and print media was my access as a kid. But they’re getting these really informative, like videos and how to’s. And not everybody’s out there just shooting birds or showing their bird. My kids have surprised me with how much they’ve known about different aspects of hunting and setting a decoy spread just from watching different people.

Ramsey Russell: Right. It’s a very useful platform. Social media, you learn so much from other people. Talk a little bit about expectations versus satisfaction. Why do you think – basically, as we’re talking about social media, why do you think so many waterfowlers seem to tie happiness to numbers, to the size of a pile? Is that something that’s learned or is it human nature? Or just the fact that, I mean, it’s like I say this, I had to talk with a former state biologist many years ago that was doing boat ramp surveys, duck hunters coming off the public land and he said, everybody’s unhappy, it’s all about a number, they didn’t get the limit. I said, you want to make duck hunters happy, lower the limit. He goes, how’s that going to make them happy? Said they got a limit. Because like on the one hand, you and I have talked ad nauseam previously in this podcast about our happiness is not tied to numbers. But nonetheless, duck hunting is a numbers game. Bag limits 4 mallards not to exceed one hen or 6 ducks, no more than 4 mallards, it’s a numbers game. Now all of a sudden I’m supposed to be happy and it had nothing to do with numbers?

But I think that for me, when I found that it’s helpful. But I think that we go through in terms of the emphasis on numbers, we go through phases as hunters, I think that’s pretty well documented that initially you define success by numbers and that’s pretty true across the board

Kyle Winterstee: And I want to be careful that the perception of what I’ve said, what I’m going to say. I’m not saying that, well, people just need to lower their expectations and just be happy with what they’ve got. I mean, there’s been several lackluster seasons of duck hunting in North America, especially in the south, compared to the historic harvest and I don’t think anybody denies that, the numbers play that out. Certainly at Delta Waterfowl, we’re hearing from members at every level, public and private land hunters, there’s been some tough seasons, it’s been lousy. I’m not saying like, well, you should just quit complaining because lower your expectations, that’s not at all what I think is the mindset of finding the romance and waterfowling. What I am saying long term is that there can be lousy seasons, but from hunt to hunt, I try not to set expectations going into those and I try not to think about what the future holds or what I did in the past, I just accept and hunt. And I think that for me, when I found that it’s helpful. But I think that we go through in terms of the emphasis on numbers, we go through phases as hunters, I think that’s pretty well documented that initially you define success by numbers and that’s pretty true across the board. Like when kid, you just want to kill everything and then it starts to sort of taper until, someday you might think, well, some guys start shooting a 20 gauge or 28 and want to challenge themselves more or there’s some other aspect that they use as their bar of success. So I have wondered if that that phase one of duck hunting, which I do know some guys that seem like they never got out of that, their day is completely defined by numbers. But I’ve wondered if that curve has kind of been extended just by our connection to everyone else. Are we not getting out of that phase as early or at all where we’re chasing numbers? And it’s not like you have your hunt and go home and you don’t know how anybody else did, you’re just in your own world. I think they all play a role in that.

Ramsey Russell: But isn’t it crazy how uniquely fragile waterfowl hunting satisfaction is compared to deer hunting or turkey hunting? I mean, for example, I might hunt 15 or 20 times deer hunting and not pull the trigger one time, that’s just deer hunting. Countless of the times I come back and hang it up and go get a drink, then think nothing about not seeing a deer. But boy, let me go and not see a duck and I’m like, oh my God, the sky is falling, the world is ending. Seriously, why is it so emotionally different?

Kyle Winterstee: I don’t know. I forget that. If you want to experience that, take one of these guys that started archery hunting on first week of September or whatever the heck when it’s still 80 degrees and they hunt all the way through and take them duck hunting, a guy who’s not really a duck hunter never been. And you see a couple flocks and no shots fired and you’re like, I didn’t put them on any ducks today, shoot. And the guy’s like, we saw like 36 mallards that was crazy. Like, you forget that speaks to expectations alone in their eyes, like, we actually saw game, that can be a big deal for a guy who hasn’t seen ducks. But I remember a long time ago, a guy said to me, there’s no such thing as a happy duck hunter, hell, this was 20 years ago. And I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was like, I like duck hunting. What do you mean? I don’t know if it’s part of the echo chamber that you mentioned or what kind of breeds it, but I think to me, it is negativity, it’s masquerading as negativity. But what it is, we care so much about the resource that it’s not just that we aren’t seeing them, I think that there’s this – we care so much about the resource that we’re not just ticked we didn’t see them. We’re ticked because we worry spells something the population at large. I think that’s where a lot of the passion lies. I have to think that for most duck hunters, who I interact with and much as we can all talk about we had this bad interaction at a boat ramp or that one, duck hunters tend to be pretty good people, I think that’s coming from a good place, but boy, it can get intense.

Ramsey Russell: Kyle, what would you say to a duck hunter who says thrill is gone? I’m not even sure I want to keep going. What would you say to somebody like it? And where would you say they could go look to find that spark again?

Kyle Winterstee: I think first you need to define what a thrill is for you. Like what is your joy in duck hunting? Because duck hunting is not a homogenous thing.

Ramsey Russell: Very subjective.

Kyle Winterstee: Like the dogs are one of my favorite things. If you leave a hunt satisfied, what is it? Is it shooting a limit? Because that’s not sustainable. To me, maybe I’m just an Atlantic Flyway guy, but that to me is not a sustainable thing. In the rarest seasons, you’ll shoot a bunch of those. But in my experience, I think that if you haven’t identified what gives you that joy, and I think it can be found through a little bit of solitude and reflection and maybe tuning out the rest of the world and worrying, allowing, someone else’s hunt to success or failure to affect how you feel about yours. I personally have found a lot of joy in reading some of the classics. This is going to make me sound like a dinosaur, but like Gene Hill, he’s who made me want to become an outdoor writer because he made me feel feelings about hunting that I’m like, if I could just make somebody feel a smidgen of that with. If I could just get a reader engaged with something I wrote it and it made him feel anything like this makes me feel, that’d be amazing. But I think the things he writes about – and again, I’ll just stay with Gene Hill, he created this place called Hill country, which is this great place that never actually existed. It’s not a real place, so he’s romanticizing it in itself. But you can pick up little things, whether it’s reading about them or experiencing yourselves that you’re pursuing. Okay, so you’ve got those things. Now, what might rob you of that joy? Like, what could sully that for you? Have you experienced that thrill and gotten it, robbed? So, men sometimes, I think, have a hard time admitting that certain things hurt their feelings or whatever. But what is interfering with your ability to achieve that thrill? And for me, part of it – I still hunt a couple private land areas, but I got so sick of that battle that I often will just go out on public land and set up somewhere where I might see fewer ducks. But I’m not going to fight with people over a duck, not literally, but I got tired of competing for spots.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Kyle Winterstee: And I’ve got my couple that I hunt and other people find them, and that could happen, that’s a concern for everyone. But I think it’s just, okay, here’s a problem, here’s what’s interfering. Like, I’m stressing out about something that’s supposed to be fun and fighting this battle, trying to get and maintain access. When I just scoot out to the lake and there’s somebody here. Well, I’m going to go down there. That was one of the great things about the Susquehanna River, so much of it’s public like, there’s a guy there? Well, let’s go 1,000 yards that way, and we’ll set up. It was just freedom to do that. So, yeah, I think that that’s not an easy process, but I don’t know how you stay a duck hunter long term if you don’t find those things that regardless of whether you shoot a few ducks, you can still walk away feeling like you didn’t waste your time.

I tell you what, it’s crazy how I don’t know how many millions of that particular shotgun model Remington shotgun was made that my granddad handed me when I was in high school

Ramsey Russell: I agree. We talked about solo hunting earlier, would you agree that solo hunter are a powerful means of rediscovering your personal meaning? For example, I love to hunt solo, but if I need a hard reset, I don’t care how many duck what the scouting report is, I can go pick up papaw’s old shotgun and just me and old Char dog go out and sit next to a willow tree and hunt. I’ve done it a million times, and chances are, if I’ve got that shotgun it’s going to make a lot of memories come back. And really none of those memories spark around numbers, it’s always something else, you know what I’m saying? And I can find a lot of joy in doing that. And I push myself differently than if I’m hunting with somebody else, you know what I’m saying? It’s all on me, then the hunt is all on me. Like you were saying earlier. The decoy placement and playing the clean game and doing the work. I tell you what, it’s crazy how I don’t know how many millions of that particular shotgun model Remington shotgun was made that my granddad handed me when I was in high school. But boy, having that gun sitting across my lap and a duck blind just really brings back these nostalgic feelings in a good way. They don’t have anything to do with duck hunting with them, how many ducks we shot together, nothing else, it just brings back this goodness that I like to feel sometimes.

Kyle Winterstee: Yeah, that’s wonderfully put. I remember fondly as a child before I was old enough to hunt, I don’t know, 5, 6, 7 years old, my dad would get home and I’d run out the door, what’d you get? And he’d show me the ducks and he’d have these carry light decoys. I mean, and I still have a dozen of his old carry light black ducks, which compared to the production decoys we have nowadays, I mean, these things are cartoonish. The duck bill is way too big, they’re light, but they’re also hollow. They’re so light, you pitch them out there and they tip over.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Kyle Winterstee: But once a year, I’ll go out by myself with my dad’s old carry lights and I’ll hunt over them, and once in a while I’ll shoot something over them. And it’s just neat to      feel that connection to the past, which for some people, it’s not just the nostalgia, it’s that I’m one of the long line of hunters going back to gosh decoys being one of the oldest, truly North American art forms and used to attract ducks back into the indigenous peoples. But I lost my train of thought, Ramsey.

Ramsey Russell: Well, we’re just talking about hunting by yourself and connecting with our roots and really and truly, what it really is, does. Because come on, Kyle, if you take away the history and the lore and your experience with it and those old shotguns and stories and really and truly, if you strip it of everything but its bare essentials, all we’re really talking about in duck hunting is a bunch of dead, wet ducks. And that don’t entice me at all.

Kyle Winterstee: Yeah. And you jarred loose my last thought there, which is, when I’m hunting alone and you do set the decoys and things, when I do shoot a duck or two, that is one of the best ways for me to feel like a kid again in this with that sense of one, I’m like, wow, like, nobody helped – I’m 43 years old and I’m still like, man, nobody helped me shoot those ducks. Like, I did everything, and it still gives me a sense of magic, of like, wow, like, I was able to pull this off and just the opportunity to just think and have be with your own thoughts and not trying to keep a conversation going or to make sure your buddy’s having a good time, it’s all about you, maybe the dog. Well, yeah, the dog adds to it, he’s always welcome.

Ramsey Russell: Talking about the thrill is gone by the time I had kids, I fished like a son of a gun in high school and college, I mean, boy, did I fish and just like to fish a lot, especially when class might have been going on or if I didn’t have class. But anyway, by the time I had kids, I was working, I was focused on something else, I guess it’s possible I never caught another fish again in my life until I started taking my kids fishing. And I can remember taking them both, I can remember both their first fish probably better than they can. And it’s something about introducing them to that magic that sparked my interest again. Taking kids hunting, walking through it again, seeing this thing that I’ve done and done again through new eyes, it sparked this, it rekindled this magic about fishing, and I think duck hunting could be the same way. You were saying earlier, you like to take new people, you like to introduce new people to duck hunting. How do you set it up to showcase waterfowling magic when you introduce new people. How do you set that hunt up and introduce them to – so if they get a real sense of what you do and then how does that reconnect you to your enjoyment?

Kyle Winterstee: I don’t know that there’s any active pursuit of demonstrating to them the vibes I’m seeking through duck hunting, I think it’s just when you’re wired a certain way and you found it yourself, you can’t help but sort of exude that. And I think it rubs off on them and how you perceive the progress of the morning and your attitude or ducks on the wing. But I think you raise a really good point and that can be a great way to rediscover through new eyes why you fell in love with duck hunting in the first place. If you think the thrill is gone – I love the simple questions about fundamentals where I’m like, I forgot I even had to learn that. Like, I guess somebody had to tell me that at one time and how rigging the decoys and just set a simple j-rig, and why you do it this way? That’s fun. It’s fun watching the thrill in their eyes, it’s fun, we get so jaded about the pursuit of mallards and this duck outranks that duck or whatever. And like I was on a recent, Delta’s got this great program, the university hunting program, where we take aspiring waterfowl biologists and wildlife managers, those all used to be duck hunters, they all used to be hunters and now a lot of them aren’t and we see that as a problem, if you’re going to manage wildlife using hunter dollars, you should at least have tried it and understand the culture and consider our perspectives. And heck, I could without belaboring that point like, it’s amazing how many of them actually stick with duck hunting. Like, for me, that’s been a surprise. I thought this is great, they’ll get to experience duck hunting and at least, not be against it. But a lot of them have surveys reveal, like the vast majority bought duck stamps the next year and went duck hunting, it’s crazy. But most recently I was on down in Virginia with some Virginia Tech students and watching, the young man killed a ruddy duck and the young lady, she shot a hen merganser and the smiles on these two faces, I don’t know, 20ish year old kid, they’re adults, kids. It just made you feel good. And I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition for me looking at that now as an adult and knowing I felt the exact same way when I was just a little bit younger than this lady was when I too killed a hen merganser and felt like I was king of the world.

Ramsey Russell: Heck yeah. Do you all get any feedback from those students at the universities that you all were introducing to duck hunting? And the ones that stick with it, why? How do they describe tribe their newfound joy in duck hunting?

Kyle Winterstee: A lot of them who do, their perception of duck – Well, I know the reason that the ones who don’t is because you can’t just take somebody duck hunting once and go, we did it, to really establish a duck hunter, you have to mentor them several times, which is something that the R3 community has embraced and is working on solutions to ensure. But most recently I talked to a couple students and I followed up with them afterward and they said, we were just really surprised that you didn’t make us feel small when we didn’t know anything, they basically said, they didn’t think they had any preconceived notions about duck hunters, but maybe they did because they didn’t expect us to be this friendly, welcoming group who really loved the resource as much as they do. I think that there’s a false sense of like, yeah, we love to shoot ducks, but that we’re just out there to kill them all kind of thing. And I think, they were moved and appreciated the fact that, yeah, we hunt them and we kill them and we eat them, but we also love ducks and love the resource and care about what they’ll do one day as wildlife managers. So that was kind of infectious for them. And I personally think that human beings are wired to kill and eat, I think that a lot of us have been removed from that, some of us feel it more than others. But I think that I would not feel fully human if I didn’t kill and eat and share and do all those things. And I think that people who have participated in that program didn’t realize, how good that is for your soul.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Kyle Winterstee: Something that’s ingrained.

Ramsey Russell: Feed my family, feed my traditions, and feed my soul is how I feel about waterfowl hunting on the good days and the bad now, Kyle. And one of the biggest revelations in the past 25 years for me is, every time I held a 9 to 5 job and hunted on weekends and holidays, I was lucky to get in 15, 20 days a season and now just a lifestyle, I do it all the time. And you would think that, wow, if a guy that’s hunting 150, 200 times a year is shooting all these great, no. You know, what I learned to do is, it’s just the spread gets bigger. It’s like, same relative proportion of really great days you can do no wrong. Same relative proportion of really day that you can do no right and a whole lot of just average days out there, either you got to love it for what it is or what it ain’t.

Kyle Winterstee: Well, you have witnessed firsthand that I can screw up a hunt, skunk a hunt, no matter where I’m at. Drought in that area of Argentina that year aside, I think it was mostly my vibe screwing up, I got skunked in Argentina, like I can get skunked anywhere for that one morning. But I do think that, traveling around, I have also learned, like, people that say, how can you go to Arkansas or the Texas golf and shoot redheads and pintails and come back here to central Pennsylvan, hardly known as a duck hunting capital, even of the Atlantic Flyway. How can you adjust? And how are you not spoiled? That to me, speaks to just how powerful those expectations are that we’re talking about in terms of the joy that you get out of hunting. Because if I’m in Pennsylvania and I shoot one or two, I feel just as good as if I’m in Oklahoma and shoot 6, I feel just as satisfied.

Ramsey Russell: It’s all about context and those expectations. I mean, I used to get asked all the time, opening day of dove season, which is my favorite single day of the year, you’ve been to Cordoba a million times, you go down to Argentina and shoot all them hundreds of ducks, how can you possibly be happy coming out here and shooting at most 15? I’m like, are you kidding, this is Mississippi opener. These are my people, my place, this is my day, and 15 is plenty, here in the great state of Mississippi, I love that day, it’s all about context. And you want to talk about, the one day I am most nostalgic on God’s earth is going up to the Mississippi Delta and shooting mourning doves. I mean, the smell of those doves, the smell of cotton foliage in the air, the memories of my granddaddy growing up, going out in the field with him, this is why I hunt. It don’t matter if it’s 15 or 1500, this is what I do, doves. I love this day.

Kyle Winterstee: I will never not love the smell of smokeless powder. And I don’t know, if somebody doesn’t hunt, it smells good to them, too. But my goodness, Hoppy’s number 9 in smokeless powder.

Ramsey Russell: And WD40. I’d have to add WD40, that’s what my granddad used to clean them, it’s just up at WD40, I can remember cleaning guns with him. Last question is, what has waterfowl hunting taught you about yourself that you could not have learned any other way?

Kyle Winterstee: Wow, that’s deep.

Ramsey Russell: Hey, we ain’t swimming into kiddie pool on this podcast.

Kyle Winterstee: That’s a really good question. I’d have to think about what it has taught me, but I do know that I am very blessed and that I found waterfowl hunting and outdoor writing, because I know that those are the two – I have found to me my calling, those are the two things, they are such rewarding pursuits. I will never not enjoy either of those things. They say, if you had $100 million or whatever, what would you do? Well, I’d hunt ducks and I’d still do some outdoor writing, I would just only write about what I want to.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Kyle Winterstee: But I guess, they’ve taught me what a blessing it is to find, waterfowling has taught me that what a blessing it is to find something that you have a passion for that you can do for your entire life, get the same enjoyment of your entire life. Hand it down to your kids, because I just see so many friends who have not found that. Most of them don’t hunt, but they haven’t found something that gives them that level of joy, that level of a passion for some sort of pursuit. And heck, it’s wonderful that it has become part of my job too, because you hear about so many people that are in a career that, it’s 40 to 60 hours of your week every week, and you don’t enjoy it, what are you doing? But I think that’s the biggest thing is it taught me is just how critical it is for us as human beings and it’s a combination of luck and just trial and error, I guess. But thank God my dad took me hunting when I was a kid.

Ramsey Russell: Heck, yeah.

Kyle Winterstee: I don’t know if I would have found something else, I don’t know if I’d own a gun, I don’t know who I’d be. But I have found who I am as a human being through the love of hunting ducks and own some great dogs and met some great people along the way.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a great note to end on, Kyle. I think everybody listening could say the same thing. And I worry so much, when I hear so much disgruntle, and I understand that duck hunters have always been relatively unhappy, you know what I’m saying? Didn’t shoot shit, I bet he went home in a bad mood that day, even back in the 1800s. But I’m starting to bristle at the notion that there are people out there that do not want us to recruit new hunters, that do not want us to have more people on the landscape, you know what I’m saying? And I’m starting to see that become manifest on the social walls, and I think it’s just wrong as night and day. Most recently, there was that big scramble in the big beautiful bill to the budget reconciliation to sell off 3 million acres of public land. And everybody, boy, we forgot our differences than and everybody started calling in, and doing what they could. We rallied together as a cohesive voice and a cohesive team. And then a few weeks go by and the senator capitulated a little bit, I’ve heard the voices, so he cut his number in half. And I was talking to somebody, and they asked me what I thought, I wonder, Kyle, I said, I wonder if there’s enough of us hunters out here to even make a difference anymore. Because I have been to Australia and the Netherlands and Argentina, where they’ve got so few hunters relative to society, nobody cares what they say anymore. Who cares? They’re a minority, they become irrelevant. And that’s a scary thought for all the stuff we talk about on this episode, many more that we all hold near and dear to our heart that ceases to exist if we don’t have enough voices to be heard anymore collectively. That’s scary.

Kyle Winterstee: On the macro level, that’s a concern. That’s reason alone, it feels good to mentor somebody. But on the more micro level, sharing the hunger hunt with a newcomer, helping a fellow human being establish themselves as a hunter, those are rewarding things that can be an aspect of the hunt that adds to that magical vibe. For me, it’s a neat thing when it comes together.

Ramsey Russell: Kyle Winterstee, I appreciate you. Thank you very much for all you do, and thank you for coming on and sharing your thoughts about the romance or the lack thereof of duck hunting today. I really do appreciate you taking the time from your schedule to do so.

Kyle Winterstee: Thanks for having me on. Thank you for your voice, Ramsey, and this is a real treat.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where I leave you with this question, is the thrill gone? Comment below and let me know how you deal with it. What is your secret for keeping the spark in duck hunting? See you next time.

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