Georgia Duck Hunting and the Nut Duster from Hell Story‪‬

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host Ramsey Russell. Join me here to listen to those conversations. Welcome back to duck season somewhere and I’m just about to wrap up the North American tour before Christmas. I know you all will listen to this later, but it’s getting close to Christmas, I’m getting close to being home. Been on the road a while and I am in Georgia. I’m closer to Alabama right now than Atlanta, but I’m in Georgia and came over here and scratched it off my list and got to duck hunt, got to shoot and one of my buddies asked me, what the heck you going to Georgia for all the Georgia boys coming to Mississippi to hunt duck. I said, well I ain’t never killed a duck in Georgia and duck season somewhere means everywhere. So I came to Georgia. I’ve got with me today Chase Gibson and Caleb Jackson and a couple of local duck slayers and mostly deer hunters I think. But how are you both doing today?
Chase Gibson: Man we’re doing good.
Caleb Jackson: Good Ramsey, good.
Ramsey Russell: Thank you all for your hospitality. And we’re over here also with Sean and Amy Harris and they’re listening real close by, but Amy actually set this thing up. I met her at SCI she knew you all, you all knew me. And somewhere when she became aware of this little whirlwind tour I’m doing, she said, well, if you’re passing through Georgia want to come duck hunting, come do it. I said, well, I think I will. But introduce yourself Chase, introduce yourself. Who you are and where you’re from and what you do.
Chase Gibson: Chase Gibson. I’m originally from the coast of Mississippi down in Biloxi down there and I went to Mississippi State and I met Heather, who is now my wife and Sean and Amy’s daughter. So we got married and we live in Starkville. I’m a civil engineer by trade over there. So we live and work over there and Heather works for old Clark beverage, doing a distributor. So we like it up there in North Mississippi and we’re down this way a good bit, hunting and hanging out in Georgia so.
Ramsey Russell: Did you duck hunt growing up?
Chase Gibson: Yeah. We did. We hunted down in Delacroix Louisiana down that way down south of Chalmette and South of Slidell down there. And we did a bunch of that and, you know, I mean you’ve been talking about, it’s crazy how that marsh has been eroding and that’s just a not as good as it used to be.
Ramsey Russell: Times have changed. That’s correct. That times have definitely changed. What about you Caleb? What’s your story?
Caleb Jackson: Ramsey, we all are family right around here locally. Webs county Georgia. We farm here.
Ramsey Russell: What do you farm?
Caleb Jackson: Peanuts and cotton.
Ramsey Russell: Georgia Peanut farmer. Did you grow up duck hunting? I mean I know you duck hunt now, so I’m kind of seriously.
Caleb Jackson: Yeah, we shoot wood ducks in beaver ponds. That’s what we do here.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I mean Georgia is not right in the middle of a flyaway but it’s kind of in between the Atlanta fly away and the Mississippi fly away and to give you all some background, I’m driving in yesterday and I mean we’re talking longleaf pines, cotton fields, peanuts, pecans, not swamps, not delta. You know this little small creeks and drainages along the way in here. This ain’t a duck fly away here. But you all did grow up duck hunters. Ducks everywhere we’re talking about that this morning everywhere there’s water like that. Beaver pond is at least going to be wood ducks. What did you mostly grow up hunting?
Caleb Jackson: Small game start like everybody does squirrels, rabbits from that kind of thing and then bird hunting and then the older I got my dogs and that kind of thing. So I you know deer hunting and bird hunting.
Ramsey Russell: Who got you all both into hunting at all?
Chase Gibson: So my dad’s sitting here Keith Gibson. So I grew up, like I said hunting down in south Louisiana and that’s just what we did and that’s how we grew up hunting and before we had a camp down there, we used to wake up and we would drive, he would put me in the back of the truck and make a little bed back there and we would drive from Biloxi to the boat ramp, launch a boat, go duck hunt, drive back, do it the next day just back to back to back. So that’s what we grew up doing. So he was the one who got me into it.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You know, I drove up yesterday and as I’m driving through getting here, I think to myself there ain’t no way this is like a duck camp, there’s got to be like a deer camp or something like that and we pull up and make introductions. I guess I got here about 03:00 – 03:30. And you know the interesting thing about Georgia is you got a one day duck hunting license, small game license, one day $20 bucks. It’s nothing. I think $5 – $10 stamp. It’s nothing, just one day, okay, it’s great. And we get up, you all Keith getting suited up to go deer hunt you all man, you all talking about, deer – deer, do you want to shoot a deer? I’m like, yeah, I want to shoot a deer. So I call my wife and I text her and I say, hey, get me a big game license. That’s where they kind of get you a little bit, but it ain’t crazy. And boy, that action yesterday, that was action packed hunt. What was the name of that blind we went to?
Chase Gibson: Little Rascal.
Ramsey Russell: Because it looks like a Little Rascal playhouse. It’s got an easy stairway, just a nice slow stairway going up to it. We parked the truck in a slot and we walked over 50 yards, went up the stairwell, got to the Little Rascals camp house. The first thing I noticed, when I looked out of the window, the first thing I noticed was distances. I mean boy, that somebody, the feeders this far, the left hand side of this far, and the second ridge is that far. I mean it’s just all mapped out good. Because then I start looking at to get my bearings and all them food plots is full of deer.
Chase Gibson: Yeah, we get up there and Ramsey looked at me, man, there’s a bunch of deer in the field right now. He said, man, you got a lot of deer around here. I said, yeah, well, you know you were coming in and we were talking yesterday before Ramsey got up here. He said, you know, I don’t know if Ramsey would want a deer hunt. So I know he’s killed deer, he’s duck hunter though, you know. So he shows up and he said, you want to go sit in a deer stand? He said, man, I’d love to go sit in the deer stand. Because I’ve been killing ducks every day. So we went up there and we had a good little hunt. I’ll let you take some of the story here. But we had a good experience.
Ramsey Russell: No, it was an exciting hunt, because your dad in law Sean’s there, you can shoot doves off your license and I need to shoot some doves and we got some small management bucks and if you don’t mind doing that, I’m like, in the whole time he’s talking, I’m just putting more bullets in my pocket going, I’m your Huckleberry, I’m your guy. I don’t care about no trophy deer, but I’m your guy. I’m thinking, man, it’s going to be something else. And so I brought a whole bunch of bullets, had to put my snuff can in another pocket. So it didn’t rattle too hard on the bucks walking in. And that was an exciting hunt and we saw a bunch of doves at lot of spots and you told me you’ve seen some little old eight points, little management bucks come out and sure enough they came out and you tell that part of your, like, you know, well, I don’t know, you can shoot that deer if you want to wait a little bit the whole time you’re talking, I’m getting ready.
Chase Gibson: So one, we’re sitting there and Ramsey said, man, I hope one of those eight points comes out and Sean had seen him yesterday, three of them. I said, it’s going to come out 25-35-45 I bet. So 05:33 or something. And Ramsey looks and he looks at me and he goes, here’s a buck right there. And I sat back, I looked at him, I said, yeah, you can shoot him. And as I’m saying that, I said, well you can wait if you want. Ramsey is ready to roll.
Ramsey Russell: I’m ready and I pop my elbow up, kind of easing him out of the way and taking deep breath.
Chase Gibson: I said man, he looks at me goes, you ready? I said, I’m ready brother. Boom let him roll. So I was looking at him and he runs off up in the woods up in there and I said Ramsey you hit him good. He said, man, I thought he would have folded right there. So yeah, I think you hit him good though, he tuck that tail and he ran.
Ramsey Russell: Well, you can hear the bullet here and it wasn’t a gut shot. You could tell it was in the right there where you want to get them right there in the wheelhouse and what I saw, you know, could you get always get a little kickback on that scope. But what I saw, I saw the deer buck, throw his back feet up saw him tucked down, as he was disappearing off the ridge, I noticed he wasn’t like dragging a shoulder, so that looks like a pretty solid hit. But I’m used to really, that’s a 300 magnum I’ve been shooting longer than you are old. I’m going to tell you right now. I got that gun back in 1989. It’s my bell we call it. Back in the day of Telephone Company, my bell, you know, reach out and touch somebody. And I’m really used to when I touch that trigger off, I don’t shoot at a bunch a couple of trigger pulls a year, but I’m used to just seeing white belly staring back at me through the scope when it settles down. And he hopped over. He didn’t go far, so then you see it. Well, I’m going to get Caleb and Whelan. I said, well, I met Caleb, but who’s Whelan? Which ones Whelan? He goes the middle sized dog? I said, oh, so you show up with a Boykin and I ain’t never seen a blood trail in Boykin. Not that we had a trail far it didn’t go with about 70 – 80 yards, but you know, he ran up in the woods and he come back out looking at you.
Caleb Jackson: He’d found him. He had already found the deer.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And then we were there to drop of blood there to drop of blood, looks like a little piece of long and you’re like, I said something to, we look for later. No, I’m just following the dog, he knows where he is. When we got there, he was standing right on top of it. It was a perfect little management. But here we didn’t have no brow tines, about three year old Sean see it, no brow tines little old scrub.
Chase Gibson: Perfect buck to kill around here. And we got a lot of deer walking around here like that need to get it and Ramsey was more than happy to take one out. It was a great hunt. Whelan did good he came over there, and he kind of quarters, Caleb can tell a little bit, but he kind of quarters like a bird dog looking for those deer. He ran right up in there and man, he was right on him.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that was a very exciting hunt. And I really, I knew you all had a lot of deer over here, but you all got a lot of deer. I mean just sitting around breakfast this morning, we heard about two or three deer getting whacked with a pickup truck. I think I’d have to put one in big Texas bumpers on here somewhere, drive a tank.
Chase Gibson: Yeah. We had a couple of deer coming out this morning from the duck blind this morning. They were staying in the middle of the road. But this part of the country, there’s just lots and lots of deer around here.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a perfect habitat. Pine country, a lot of timber harvest, a lot of timber management, a lot of spraying, which is what Sean does. It’s a lot of good deer habitat, so they ought to be thrived here. But what about the ducks? It ain’t just turned to duck habitat.
Chase Gibson: Well, we got a little place down and we’re in Stewart county Georgia right now. We got, it’s in Terrell County is where our duck hole is and it’s a natural pond, about 60 acre pond and it’s got some food in there and some years we got a bunch of ring next on it and we’ll get a bunch of wood ducks and here and there we’ve killed some teal and we heard some quacking ducks today. I mean, it just depends what’s coming through and we had some geese, we saw some geese today and but it’s a good little area. And so this morning we get out there and nice morning, it’s clear and yesterday morning it was real foggy, but so we get out there and anyways, we had us a little set up and we wind up getting a couple ring necks come in and kill us a couple ring necks. So we didn’t get skunked, that’s the main thing right there.
Ramsey Russell: I’m the easiest guy you ever hunted with because my only objective is to kill a duck. More ducks is better, but a duck check, I’ve killed a duck in Georgia. That’s what I told you. And the truth of matter is, it was perfect that we shot at Georgia ring neck instead of wood duck. Because that’s kind of, you all state duck is a ring neck duck. And I was wondering to myself this morning why that is. Because when you get a pair along the Atlantic seaboard of the North Carolina, specially a lot of ring necks. I think it’s really I wish you’d have a lot of ring necks in Mississippi too in that deeper water. At our camp we shoot, I’d call it the will break duck would be a ring that we shoot a bunch of times, but there seem to be predominant here in Georgia. Most people I know were shooting ring neck and wood ducks. I mean your entire spread Caleb was ring neck a few would duck and a Spoonzilla.
Caleb Jackson: You have to have a Spoonzilla.
Ramsey Russell: But a lot of ring necks out there. You even had some old carry like decoys you painted up for ring neck.
Caleb Jackson: Yes, I painted them up. They were all mallards and turned them into black and white duck.
Ramsey Russell: Well was this morning a pretty typical hunt?
Caleb Jackson: Pretty much was.
Chase Gibson: Yeah. And we’ve had some times down there, those ring necks will pile up and we’ll have 100, 200 ring necks and you get three or four passes with 200 ring necks. You know, you’re working on a limit quick. So I mean, it’s just catching it right down here. Anyway, so it’s a good little spots of cool spots of fun hunting. We’re glad we got to cross off number 39.
Ramsey Russell: Number 39. Ring necks to me are interesting species because technically they’re a diver. But they do like, in this part of world they do like, what I think of it as puddle duck habitat. They like willows and button bush and trees and swamps and stuff where you’re going to see wood ducks, where you’re going to see Gadwalls and Wigeons when you got them. I mean they’re really adaptable like that. I don’t know why maybe something to do with their diet, but I do like to shoot ring necks. It’s like if I had to pick a species in North America that I just really like to swing through on and pull the trigger, it’s a ring neck, because they’re fast, they’re fun. They don’t make a pass over the decoys pretty often like 200 ring necks we’ve had us to shoot this morning.
Chase Gibson: Yeah, I tell you, we’ll get up in there sometimes last year even and we got 200 ring necks coming in. It sounded like a fighter jet coming through there. It’s some kind of fun though. I mean I just assumed shoot a ring necked than anything. I mean, I love shooting their fast, fun shooting and they humble you sometimes though.
Ramsey Russell: We had that one pair of break off of that full pack come in and I shot to left, Caleb shot to right and knocking both down. But your dog Junior, when I was there and found that one, it was still swimming just a little bit briefly. I tell him to swim up in that bush and come right out with him. But, that was his, tell me about that because that was a significant bird for him.
Caleb Jackson: That was today would have been what was Junior’s first real duck hunt.
Ramsey Russell: Real duck hunt. What constitutes as a non-real duck hunt?
Caleb Jackson: Well, I mean training. I got a chance to test and that kind of thing. Today was the first time he actually went with us in real hunt.
Ramsey Russell: You’ve got three Boykins and Char weighs 50 pounds. He’s kind of a small size petite lab. And I was noticing Boykin back up, when we got done picking up decoys, Junior has ever been as big as she is 50 pounds. Yeah, he’s a big Boykin. But I got to look when you had all three of them out there are about that size.
Caleb Jackson: They all are.
Ramsey Russell: Is that standard for a Boykin? I think the Boykin of it being almost like a poodle sized dog, you know like a lapdog. I mean those are sizable dogs you got.
Caleb Jackson: 30, 40 pounds for Rae Boykin is probably they are same.
Ramsey Russell: How long have you been raising Boykins?
Caleb Jackson: I never raised any of, but we got our first Boykin 10 years ago I think.
Ramsey Russell: Why did you choose the Boykin spaniel?
Caleb Jackson: They would probably tall and feathery for saying this, but just because of the color. I had chocolate layups forever and we lost our last old chocolate layup and that’s what I had for him from birth for those chocolate layups and I decided we wanted to try something different. Get a spaniel and I like the Boykin because of their color.
Ramsey Russell: But they’re very versatile. I noticed, I mean that that dog and I’ve raised Springer’s for many, many years. My family did and I love the spaniel’s personality, eager to please and I know a Boykin has web features like a springer. So that’s what I’m going to do stuff, but you don’t hunt just the few ducks you all got around here with the birds, you do a lot of up hunt everything.
Caleb Jackson: A lot of woodcock hunting, quail hunting.
Ramsey Russell: Talk a little bit about that Caleb.
Caleb Jackson: You got to have one other for them too. It’s got the cold getting down here. It’s a fun huntinh. Just find the thickest nastiest swamp. Because you need to wear hip boots in the way then. That’s where we find them.
Ramsey Russell: And those little Boykin to get in there and flush them. And do you try to hunt quail with those dogs?
Caleb Jackson: We do a quail a little too.
Ramsey Russell: How far do they run little figure in front of you and.
Caleb Jackson: Yeah, they hunt for the gun. You know that once they learn they flush the bird out of range, when you’re with bird, so they learn to stay in close, you keep them in close and you just follow your dog.
Ramsey Russell: Just like you were on that deer yesterday.
Caleb Jackson: That’s right. Just like that.
Ramsey Russell: I mean they truly are versatile if you are hunting ducks and opaline and dear. That’s pretty good little dog to have. And besides I bet they are good. They probably don’t get as hot as the labs and stuff get.
Caleb Jackson: I believe they can in September. We keep plenty of ice water for them to cool off and all that.
Ramsey Russell: You were telling me yesterday evening, you all got a nice little, this house has got to be 100 years old. Nice little farmhouse out here in Georgia. Probably been around forever. And you’ll spend the whole week over here at Christmas. That’s a big deal.
Chase Gibson: Yeah. So me and Heather usually around this time of year take some vacation and we’ll come up here. It’s just the kind of stuff we like to do around here, we hang out with family, hunt, duck hunt, deer hunt, have a couple of cold beers, it’s just kind of stuff we like to do around here. So it’s a big week end, Caleb’s always hanging around and my dad will usually come up around this time and with his wife and so we have a big old time, and you saw last night we had a big old cooking and we’re all about eating some good food around here, so we took a bunch of food and have big breakfast and we just have a big time, it’s just a good time of the year.
Caleb Jackson: Just loose it all.
Ramsey Russell: That’s exactly right. That’s the thing about this is, I’ve been traveling for months jumping all around the country and everybody shares the blind with have also shared the duck camp experience in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. It doesn’t matter where you go. It’s all about the people and the food and the atmosphere and maybe there’s a fire going in the evening. There’s certainly some beer and brown water going if you that way. And a lot of stories, a lot of jokes, lot of carried on. But now, it hit me last night we sat down to supper table that I’m finally back home. I’m not even in North Carolina. I’m home when we ate dinner last night, baked chicken and Crowder peas, purple hull peas and I like macaroni cheese homemade. It was a, I’m like, boy, I’m home. Purple hull peas cooked with smoked pork meat in there. I’m like, yeah, I’m home now.
Chase Gibson: Yeah. We’re sitting in a deer standing and Ramsey looked at me. We’re talking about something. I said, yeah, we’re going to do smoking some chicken quarters. He said, you’re shitting me. And I thought I looked at him like he didn’t like chicken quarters. He said, I just told my wife the other day. That’s exactly what I wanted when I made it back to the house.
Ramsey Russell: I love chicken leg quarters. I’m telling you what, it’s like one of my favorite food group, and I eat three or four times a week if I can.
Chase Gibson: Man the night where something, we cook them on that smoker out there for a couple hours and there was some kind of tender.
Ramsey Russell: It hit home and I slept. I had no problem at all falling asleep at night after brown water drinks and a good chicken meal. Here’s something interesting I noticed last night Caleb, you know, Georgia duck hunter, true or false? You are a master coot carver?
Caleb Jackson: I wouldn’t say master.
Ramsey Russell: That’s the best coot decoy, homemade I’ve ever seen. I’m just going to tell you that game little gift you gave me last night and we walked in your shop today and you had tons of them. What’s up with that? That’s a compliment man. I mean I ain’t never met nobody that had a fleet of homemade coot decoy.
Caleb Jackson: We’re hunting over on the Chattahoochee River a lot. Hunting mallards over there and eat up with coots and sometimes I dated a bunch of black decoys. And I don’t know where I wound up getting the idea of saw it done, but crab trap floats. Just split in half into, I mean it was easy to do.
Ramsey Russell: And then you burl out wrap them. How long did that take?
Caleb Jackson: I didn’t burl out wrap all of them because that’s what it took to the paint the bullet we did a handful of that one, rest of them just painted black.
Ramsey Russell: Well, I’m proud of you, I can see where those divers a lot of time to get down that submerged, aquatic and feed and it’ll float to the top. And I’ve seen coots come in and do that and feed behind those divers like that. And I see that association.
Caleb Jackson: You’ll have rafts just thousands and thousands of them over on the river.
Ramsey Russell: And I’ve said forever a black, jet black, flat black decoy is probably all you need to hunt any duck species with.
Caleb Jackson: Maybe with a little flash of white on it.
Ramsey Russell: Well like just they were. How many of those coot decoys reckon you got?
Caleb Jackson: I had 120 of them one time that I had made.
Ramsey Russell: Boykins pick them up? Will hey fetch coots if you shoot. Do you shoot them?
Caleb Jackson: I have shot coots. Okay. The coots are not bad either.
Ramsey Russell: I’ve read a report one time and delta waterfowl of all time. It was like they quiz some biologists with delta waterfowl and it was like a two questions. Most underrated wildfowl, most overrated wildfowl and all of them said a mallard was the most overrated and nearly all of them said a coot was the most underrated. Made me think, I’ve since eating coot, I’m going to tell you it ain’t bad to eat. But not a duck. But I’ve eaten I’ve been a matter of fact before this morning. The only wing shooting I’ve really ever done down here in Georgia was clapper rail down there on the gulf coast and it was a fun hunt and surprisingly very good eating bird and coot I think tastes very similarly. You all ever done that? Clapper rail, Rail hunt?
Chase Gibson: No, I’ve never done any rail hunting. We have got a down in Louisiana, man, there’s more coot you could walk across them down there and we’ve, you know, a couple of times, especially for a dog down there, you’ll be hunting and we won’t have any birds or something and we’ll shoot some coots now. I don’t mind it one bit.
Ramsey Russell: Well a lot of these guys down south Louisiana won’t shoot the coots during the season because then coots kind of be around their hole and like free decoys out swimming around and do stuff. And then on the last day of season won’t be into them. They’re going to shoot your limousine coots. I’ve got a buddy who’s telling me one time years ago. His grandmother made gumbo but she only make it with coot gizzard. So when she gets to hanker to make a gumbo, she’ll call him and he’ll go out and shoot her some coots.
Chase Gibson: Lord. If I just got the gizzard.
Ramsey Russell: A big coot. I may have probably got more gizzard and breath move. You know a bunch of it. How many more times we all try to go out there and hunt that area we hunted this morning. That’s probably about a 60 acre beaver pond.
Chase Gibson: Probably hunted a couple times this week. To be honest with you, we’re talking about that weather and so this morning, like, I was saying was clear and it was about 39-40 degrees this morning. So it was good weather, you know, its fine weather. But this end of this week towards Christmas is supposed to get a hard freeze coming in 20 degrees.
Ramsey Russell: That ought to push you all a few ring necks down here.
Chase Gibson: And that’s what we are thinking.
Ramsey Russell: Maybe you can push some of them, a lot of wood ducks would be blowing in from up north. Do you all ever shoot your band down there? Any banded wood ducks? Have you ever shot banded wood ducks? Where do they come from?
Caleb Jackson: Seriously, I’ve killed two over the last 10-15 years. They both came from Ohio. I know of three other bands that were killed in the county around here and they all three came from Ohio. And this is over a scattering of years.
Ramsey Russell: That’s pretty strong correlation.
Caleb Jackson: I don’t know.
Ramsey Russell: Man. Well I wish I’d shot number six. That have been fun.
Caleb Jackson: But I always thought that was rare.
Ramsey Russell: You’ve ever seen or heard of a banded ring neck?
Caleb Jackson: I have not.
Ramsey Russell: Me neither. But I look I call myself looking at every foot, but I ain’t never seen or heard one.
Caleb Jackson: Wait a minute. Chief killed one.
Chase Gibson: He did. Was it a ring neck?
Caleb Jackson: It was a ring neck.
Ramsey Russell: Where was it from?
Chase Gibson: Did we shoot him in Arkansas? I can’t remember.
Caleb Jackson: No, he killed it on the duck pond.
Chase Gibson: You’re right, you’re right.
Ramsey Russell: I’m going to give him the mike, I’m going to ask him about that.
Chase Gibson: That’s right. So we killed a banded duck off that pond we hunted this morning. I forgot about that. That’s exactly right.
Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s good. Well, I’ll tell you what, I sure appreciate your hospitality. I mean, I know it’s no small feat to produce a duck, let along duck pool in the state of Georgia. But you all did good and I had a bunch of fun. And the deer was just huge bonus man. You know a lot of my, everybody I know they call me to go duck hunting. They go duck hunting for vacation. And I kind of like to go do something else to have fun. I like to shoot something else and I’m not sure I did enjoy that. But I’m going to get to Sean, Chase, I’m going to swap out that Mike to Sean, he got a good story to tell. Thank you for your hospitality. Thank you for having me. You know, both of you all are welcome to come over Mississippi anytime and I can’t guarantee no more birds we saw this morning, but I love to have you come over and eat and socialize and bring some of your coot decoys we’ll try them in Mississippi.
Caleb Jackson: I’ll do it.
Ramsey Russell: Now, Sean. I got you on now because you told me some good stories. You got a good hospitality. Got to ask you a question of, I mean you’re obviously a big deer manager and stuff like it. What is kind of your, you told me himself about your hunting club yesterday, how it’s managed how you want to manage what it’s for. And I just found it so interesting. Tell me about your place here. Tell me about your hunting camp.
Sean: So we got about 1800, 2000 acres. And we don’t have a whole lot of people hunting it. Basically family first and customers and close friends and we try to do some food, plant some in the spring. And then in the fall we plan a lot then we do minerals and whatnot. We got good signs, food plots. I think that’s a big key. We’ve probably got 25, 26 acres worth food plots.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a lot of good browse like I know just from where I could see yesterday, there was a lot of greenbrier, a lot of dewberry. Just a lot of browsing when we watch the deer over, I’m not sure what my directions are, but we watched a deer just kind of off to the right of that little blind was in yesterday and it never left, it was just browsing on natural stuff right over there. It wasn’t in the food plot if you stop eating natural stuff is happy to be there all afternoon.
Sean: It is and it’s amazing. You’ll see them a lot of deer feed off the edge of the food plot. And it is they’re doing their edge pcs, yep. And we do some burning when we can when we find time. That helps a lot. Get some fresh browse out.
Ramsey Russell: Do you ever do any spraying on your property? That I know you spray for a living but spraying can be good for deer habitat. Dear and quail and turkeys.
Sean: Yes, especially mallards appeared and you’ll get rid of a lot of your undesirable species and then it promotes your lagoons mallards properly won’t bother your lagoon so that promotes.
Ramsey Russell: You try to follow that up with a coot season and burn.
Sean: Yeah, that was really good. And then you get a massive flush of real good stuff browse for not only turkeys and the deer.
Ramsey Russell: By having a lot of deer and a lot of good habitat really is, Chase and I were talking yesterday to me not having too much hunting pressure and everything else. These deer are able to achieve age structure. And to me that’s like the most critical link of good deer. If deer’s meant to be, it’s going to be when he is 4, 5, and 6 years old.
Sean: It is. I thought we would never and we’ve been here a long time. I thought we’d never see a 5 and half year old deer, but we finally did. And you got to have rules. That’s just all there is to it.
Ramsey Russell: What are your rules?
Sean: Well, any of the small young tents 2 and half, 3 and a half, 9 points. I have seen an occasional 8 point, but we let them go and we try to let them for sure get the 4 and a half or 5 and a half if we can. And a lot of times we’ll see our deer change and we’re not hunting 150 class deer. But we have killed someone 40 class deer, which is absolutely sensational for here. And I think pressure is a big deal. We don’t put a lot of pressure on our deer either.
Ramsey Russell: They didn’t look pressure to me yesterday.
Sean: No, they need some now because we get too many doves, you conquer one thing and you bring on another. So and everybody wants to try to kill a big buck so they all want to shoot a Ramsey buck. Yeah, so we’ll start trying to fill some dove tags here.
Ramsey Russell: How productive are these shores?
Sean: They’re very productive.
Ramsey Russell: Pine trees and stuff.
Sean: Oh yeah, they do good. And then especially with some good fertility, they really do good and that’s the key on food blocks, you got to keep that pH above six and pot ash is real important.
Ramsey Russell: How long have you had this place and been managing like that? I your kids grew up here.
Sean: Yeah, probably 15. I’ve been hunting here probably 20 years.
Ramsey Russell: Really. Well, I tell you what that there’s a lot to be said for that. I’ve got a place up I’ve been hunting that long and you just kind of know, I don’t need a headlight. I know just where I’m going and it’s just where I want to stand.
Sean: Yeah, we do, we always have the same stands every year. It seems you always see that new buck and it’s amazing how a place stays the same and we’ll get a surprise every now and then and every now and then every year it seems like, we have cameras and we don’t work them. I mean we only work 4, 5, 6 cameras on the whole place. But we’ll always have a buck harvested we’ve never seen.
Ramsey Russell: Isn’t that crazy?
Sean: And it is nuts, because we’re here all the time and we’re keeping an eye on things all the time. And I don’t, I went six years without killing a buck. And I love to go in the afternoons. I have $2 and they love it. And they probably killed the biggest deer on the place and they don’t mind telling me either.
Ramsey Russell: That reminds me of a story you told me yesterday, Chase. Tell me about the first time you came up here and hunted with Heather.
Chase Gibson: Yeah. So I was telling you about this first time I come up here where we were in college, me and Heather were dating. And so we come up here and I had met Sean and Amy. And so they knew I was a big, they knew I was a big duck hunter, which I grew up in Biloxi, like I was saying we deer hunted down there and if we saw a deer, it was it was something, we wouldn’t see deer all year. It was just a different deal down there. So I come up here and we’re sitting over a food plot, we call the 10 acre. So we’re sitting there and me and Heather sitting there and she’s on the gun. And I’m telling you if there was one buck, there was 15 bucks running around and I was coming unglued and Heather was just looking like it was just another day and I was having a heart attack and I said Heather I said are you going to shoot one of these? And she would just say, yeah no problem, I’m going to shoot one and I was just freaking out. So we get out there and she winds up shooting one shotgun you probably member she shot that big old seven point remember he had broken off. So anyways that was the first deer hunt I ever went on this property and I said what is going on over here. And of course it’s not like that every single time. But I said did they let him out of pens when I showed up or something, I didn’t know what was going on. So it was something else. But so that’s how it kicked off, that’s how it kicked off over here.
Ramsey Russell: And you kept on dating her.
Chase Gibson: Yeah, I told you this is funny. When I was growing up, my dad told me two things. And it was a joke obviously. But you know kind of wind up happening. He said when you get married you got married someone who’s sweet girl and he said and her daddy’s got to have some hunting land.
Ramsey Russell: You all remember that listeners. Dreams do come true. Sean you were telling me also yesterday you do manage to harvest. You have friends, you have family of clients and then you’ll have like some of these children come in and hunt.
Sean: Yeah, so we do a couple of these hunts try to every year. And it’s for outdoor and it’s pretty neat deal these kids come in enough and we let them come in for two or three days and do some hunting and they’ve had some hard times.
Ramsey Russell: They get to come out here and have a good time.
Sean: Yeah, it’s funny how you try to plan it because if you sit in the stand here you’re going to see 10-15 sometimes 25 deer. So I was out of town two years ago and I said okay, you all know the routine, I come in on Thursday, you put them in the sorriest stand on the place, maybe they’ll see a deer or two and Friday, you kind of take them to another place and then it’s all, builds on Friday afternoon builds up and then Friday and Saturday, I’ve got the places already picked out. I sat there, I know the deer are there, that’s when we let them shoot deer because you know how kids are they come in on Thursday and shoot a deer there. I mean it’s hard to keep them going till Sunday afternoon. Low and behold they come in here and I said, all right, you all take them over there. So I called in, I was out of town actually out of town on a hunt somewhere and I called in, he said boss, I hate to tell you but the girl killed a buck. I put her in sortie stand. But I think she’s killed biggest deer on the planet. We fell out laughing. It was so funny. And she did get a really nice but and she really enjoyed it.
Ramsey Russell: It’s a really nice deer. But that’s a real sweet note she wrote you on that picture. I know she got there in your trophy room and that was probably a real big deal because she had been through some tough times. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Look what is, change the subject just a little. I know you’ve got other hunters over here too. What is the nut duster from hale story?
Sean: All right. So, I got a friend.
Ramsey Russell: Give me the long version. Everybody wants to hear about the man that’s the nut duster from Haiti.
Sean: So my gosh, I got to take them build. It’s funny. I got a friend and he’s 79 now and he started hunting with me probably 8 or 9, 10 years ago. And I should have known then Ramsey, not to let him study. I invited him over here as a customer and I put him in a stand. I said now you sit right here, there is guaranteed two knot head’s going to walk out in this field. Do not shoot the knot heads. There will be some more bucks. There will be some more deer here, you know he’s a customer. So I was, so we’re all hunting you know. And I was going past him. It was getting late and I think he should have seen the deer by now bam. He shot, it went a little about 30 more minutes. Bam, he shot again. I said well good you got any couple doves. I went over to pick him up and I said well Jimmy look. Yeah, I got two so yeah where are they want them right over there? He’s getting out of the tree, you know, he’s kind of slow. I walk over there and I’ll pick it up one hand. I said well there’s my first knot head. You got the first. Where’s the other one on the other side of the field? I walk over there and pick it up with one hand, about 30 pound there’s another knot head. I said, well you got both of my knot heads. No way. I said, you’re damn sure. Did you knew they were knot heads? I said, I don’t know that I’m going to have you back. Of course I was picking on him and so we got to be really good friends and he hunts with me and everything and he is eating up at his age and he’s kind of like I was when I was 12, 14, he is mad at these deer. He don’t care if it’s a knot head or 12 point. They’re all relevant to him. It’s a number, it’s a deer. He’s got to kill a deer. He’s got to kill a deer and people come over and get aggravated cause he don’t care. You got to give it to me 79 years old. He don’t care if it’s pouring down rain. I got to get a deer. I got to get a deer. So we started us a little the wall in here. We’re not completely through with a wall of shame.
Ramsey Russell: Well, it’s all dedicated to him. And what made me notice it is, you’ve got the biggest barn, wood plaque I think I’ve ever seen and the smallest little knot head horns hanging dead center. That really makes them look smile on that big old plaque. That’s what caught my attention. That’s a mighty big plaque such a small set of horns. They might be three quarters of an inch long.
Sean: Yeah. So, he’s going to kill a knot hit every year and I said, it’s just ridiculous. But you got to understand he’s getting up his age, he can’t see real well and his site is really getting worse. So I’ll give him a let off him a little bit because it’s hard to see it’s not his, but again, you got to understand, he don’t care. So we said, we’re going to start this wall of shame and we’re going to finish it up and he wins every year and I’m going to go back and put the little metal plaque on it, probably for the last seven years and last week he gives a knot head and he blamed me because you all didn’t come get me at 09:30 left me to 10:30 I shot here a little after 10:00 and if you want to come got me on time, I’ve never shot that deer and he just gives me up and down. But one of us tries to sit with him now just to regulate him.
Ramsey Russell: Give him like just one bullet. Try that.
Sean: We did that this season a little earlier and in a matter of fact he was sitting right over in a Little Rascal where you were. And boy that works with me sits with him. He said, okay, how many bullets he gives him one bully. He said, what are you doing, I said you got one bullet, you start with it. So they’re sitting there and we knew it was a deer, it was a deer over there had 1 spike on 1 side and three on the other and I said take anywhere and let him shoot him he’s coming out every day. So they go over there and they he shoots at him and he misses him. And then deer walks about 10 or 15 yards, he shoots again. He takes off running and they don’t get a deer and I thought, what the heck. But that’s the way is he might miss or he may kill 200 yards. You don’t know. He could be over four or one for one. Sometimes he’s you just never know with him, but if he’s, and so after the first shot, he said, all right, give me another bullet. He said, I’m going to give you one more bullet. So he gave me a bullet and he’s trying to load his gun and I think he said, well, that’s why I didn’t hit him a second time. We had this big transition going up there and I’m going to put another bullet in my gun. So the deer walks off and I sit there a lot in the afternoon, it’s pretty close to town and after work I can go slide in there before the fever goes off and I sit up there and I can talk on the phone. It’s a basically looks like a Little Rascals playhouse. And I look up there and I see a buzzard light on top of my feet and I said, uh huh. He said hit this deer. And I said, and I start texting, I said, hey, there’s a buzzard on top and you it’s hunters and you know how we do that, there’s a buzzard on top of the feeder, I see buzzards everywhere. There were no more buzzards. I said, you all don’t shot a deer over here and you didn’t go find him. And I said, I’m mad as hell. And I said, what do you all do it? No, no, we did not. Of course. You know Mr. Eddie, he comes on in the text, he said, I told him to go look closer. I knew I hit that deer. You know, he’s all you now. And I said, well, I think you might have hit him. And then when you’re sitting there, text and then the board it sits with him comes on, he said no, I saw it. The first shot you missed it because he didn’t even run in. The second shot, you shot right under his belly and the damn dirt, sand blasted his nut. I thought I’d fall out. And I said, hold on, hold on, hold on, I see a deer coming. I see a deer coming out. Oh, it’s that buck you didn’t hit him Eddie. He’s got something wrong. Oh my gosh, you all, he’s got a jock strap on in a cup. But he is coming back to the Eddie you all, a bunch of SOB’s and boy, he lit into me, but we have the best time doing that. So we got a thinking about it another day. I told another guy worked for me. I said, you know, I really, really wish we could come up with a way to get a picture of him and put a coonskin cap on him, Low and Behold one of my employees in it. And he basically took Daniel Boone off, put my guys head on there and he called him Eddie Boone no Duster from hell. So I had to add a little to the bottom out to our Life magazine Man of the Year. And what was funny? He saw it the first time. He said, oh you all go to hell and he looked at the picture, he said, man, I look pretty good in that picture. About 150 pounds lighter. He said, send me a copy of that picture, let me keep that. So he’s got a new name and we got an addition to the wall. And he’s a really good guy. So we, you know, we have a lot of fun.
Ramsey Russell: You probably put that on a date nap and get all kinds of fun.
Chase Gibson: You’re going to have to post that one with the podcast.
Ramsey Russell: [**00:46:00]
Sean: When he hears about this, he’ll just squall. But he’s good at heart and that’s what matters.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, there’s a real special place you all got here and I really, really, truly appreciate your hospitality. It’s been, I’ve only been here 24 hours, but it has been like coming home. I might give a, I don’t shoot knot head, but I might give you run for his money if I come back.
Sean: I want you to come back.
Ramsey Russell: I’ll bring plenty of bullets.
Sean: Hey, that’d be great. You come back and we’ll see if we can get the old nut over here too and we’ll have big time. We’ll shoot some doves and some, as he calls them. They’re all cool bucks.
Ramsey Russell: If they hold still long enough to get the cross hairs off.
Sean: I guarantee you we have a big time.
Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening. Thank you all for your hospitality again. But thank you all for listening this episode of duck season somewhere from the state of Georgia. You know what, they might not be in the prime fly away, but they sure know how to run a hunting camp and how to roll out the red carpet for folks, see you all next time.