Retrieving Freedo‪m‬

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host, Ramsey Russell join me here to listen to those conversations. Folks, thank you all for joining us today for another great episode. I hope it’s late May as this is being recorded and I hope that this cootie quarantine starts to let up in your part of the world and I hope that things are beginning to resemble normalcy again. Thank you all for listening today, live from Bowman North Dakota. I have got Mr. John Devney, vice president of Delta Waterfowl on the line. How are you, John?
John Devney: I’m doing great, Ramsey. How are you man?
Ramsey Russell: I’m good, I’m good. Tell me what’s going on? Its late night, what is going on in North Dakota? What’s the weather like? What’s the ducks doing? How are things going?
John Devney: Yeah, it’s been an interesting spring, spring came pretty early and then it got cold and then it gets nice and then it get cold and then it gets nice and then it gets cold. For the most part we’ve been dealing with spring since 1st May. Ducks got back here right on time.
Ramsey Russell: Which is what time?
John Devney: We start getting them back in late March and early April typically. And then we had some pretty crummy weather Ramsey and it sent some of them back, the snow goose migrations screwed up like a soup sandwich this year just because this geese is this is not real good. Then we get cold weather and the snow and then push them back and they yell it around a little bit. It was kind of interesting to watch because sort of where I live here in Bismarck and then used to here. We were kind of like at the absolute northern edge of the canvasback and ring neck migration. Man, those dudes were here in huge numbers and they were here for a couple of weeks so they could get a runway to start heading further north. So, but we got, I would say I haven’t been out in the field, although we got lots of folks out doing research and nest ragging, but I would bet the only species does put eggs on the dirt right now are blue bills. Everybody else is part of work and we’ve seen the first few mallard broods and Canada goose broods and pin tail broods. So it’s spring on the prairies.
Ramsey Russell: That’s interesting, man. I tell you what, it’s amazing to me that there’s already next year’s falls light on the ground. These little yellow fuzz balls already living around.
John Devney: Yup, and what we know about those if you go back and you look at the literature you look at the science of breeding ducks. What we know about ducks, is there is this pretty interesting trail off Ramsey. So if you hatch early and your ducklings hatch and hit the water early. They have a much better and higher likelihood of surviving.
Ramsey Russell: Yes, I’ve heard that. How are the pin tails doing in North Dakota this year?
John Devney: They’re going to be, you know, we’ve got great water conditions in North Dakota I think, you know, and it’s pretty bloody dry in Saskatchewan, so I think we’re going to catch a bunch of those ducks. So yeah, they’re hard at it. I think both here and in eastern South Dakota, we’re going to have a pile of pin tails, but we’ll never be able to measure how big a pile of pin tails that we’re going to have because we don’t have a duck survey this year.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. John, a couple of questions I always like to ask people is for people listening and myself of course is, can you describe a little bit before we get into the conversation further. We all know you’re vice president of Delta Waterfowl, but who are you as a person? What is your background? Who are your influences growing up? How do you go from a little boy growing up where you did to Vice President of Delta Waterfowl committing yourself to waterfowl research? How did you do this?
John Devney: Well, yeah, I mean, I grew up in Minnesota, I was lucky enough to have a dad that loved hunting fish. My first duck hunt Ramsey, I was four years old, and I grew up in kind of north and east of ST Paul. And my dad did most of the duck hunting, loved to hunt diving ducks in north central Minnesota, but he had a little place that he could hunt close to home when he wasn’t, his work was busy that he could sneak out to. And when I was four years old, he took me to that little pothole, told me not to step in Calpis through a gunny sacks over the top of me and told me to shut up. And that was my first duck hunting experience and how anybody sort of emerges from that experience that duck hunting be sort of the center of my life. It’s pretty interesting. But yeah, I mean I grew up spending a lot of time duck hunting and fishing and other kinds of hunting with my dad. And as a kid the neighbor kid father was also a big duck hunter. He was a number of years older than me and I grew up on a lake in the suburbs of ST Paul and every fall we’d build duck blinds down on the beach and we had to hand me down duck decoys, hand me down with hip boots and hand me down duck calls. And I spent virtually every night in my youth, sitting in all night in my youth watching the ducks and listening to him call and trying to imitate it, reading books about duck hunting and making decoys out of hilex bottles and two liter coke jugs and doing all the stuff that a kid that was a tough duck hunter. I had the chance to come to Delta just before I turned 28 years old and here we are 22 years later now and getting to live out one of the things that’s most important to me in my life duck hunting and duck conservation, get to do it for a living. I’m a pretty blessed guy, Ramsey.
Ramsey Russell: Where did you go to college and grad school?
John Devney: Well, just so everybody’s on the same page. John Devney is not a biologist. I play one on television. I play one on the radio. My degree is actually in political science and philosophy from a little itty bitty liberal arts college in central Minnesota called ST John’s University. So I don’t have a professional biological background. I’ve sort of learned on the while. Lots of great people here at Delta and lots of other professionals who taught me a great deal over the last 20 years.
Ramsey Russell: I think that’s really important. You do a great job. You do such a great job, communicating. Need to hear information that guys like me don’t know. I did assume you were a biologist. I would still describe you as a functional biologist because in the world of policy, in the world of getting the word out, stuff like that. That’s very interesting, political science and philosophy.
John Devney: So yeah, nobody’s ever, nobody’s going to confer any honorary PhDs on my goofy ass. I can’t do that.
Ramsey Russell: I can’t either. Oh, I’m terrible. I’ve asked about my weak spot. Hey, get back to this, you brought a couple of good points talking about growing up hunting with your daddy in Minnesota, what is your favorite hunt and your favorite place to hunt?
John Devney: You know what’s interesting, I grew up as a kid that thought any old idiot could shoot a mallard, we had him on every suburban lake where I grew up, they were half domesticated, I had mallard ducklings eaten bread out of my Melissa as a child, I never thought they were terribly interesting and my dad’s big love of duck hunting was hunting diving ducks, blue bills, canvasbacks, redheads, ring necks on big water. And so that’s really where my passion was as a kid growing up in Minnesota, I’d compete with anybody on your podcast to be the number one fastest decoy rapper in the world because I was rapping seven dozen of them with 12 ft. of chords two times a day. I was pretty good at rapping decoy chords. I may be better at wrapping decoys than anything else in my life actually. But today, if I had to tell you a hunt that I absolutely treasure is, I love shooting green winged teal, cherry picking green winged teal drakes on late October day, 12 mile an hour wind, big blue sky in the cattle March, 20 minutes from my house. Those are the hunts that I cherish the most. I’ve decided Green winged teal is about the perfect duck, a limited green wing, great green fat green winged teal is the perfect need for my family and I, and I love those little devils, they’ve become my favorite duck.
Ramsey Russell: My favorite duck is the next one. Just about every time I try to key in on what my favorite duck is, it changes with the next duck that comes in. But I do, I really do like green wings and worldwide that I’ve been that green wings exist. They are the preferred table fare everywhere. Every hunting camp I’ve been in and the continental United States shoot green wings, Azerbaijan, Russia, Pakistan, all those countries that shoot green wings that’s what they like of all the ducks we are going. Azerbaijan, we shoot a lot of Eurasian green wings and we shoot mallard we shoot pin tails we shoot gadwalls, but when it comes time, let’s cook dinner tonight. They want the green wings. They tell a lot about that little bird to me.
John Devney: Well and they are sporty little duck, right. And they do cool stuff. And I mean, I think back on some memorable green wing hunts I’ve had and I’ve had some beautiful ones here in North Dakota. I had a green wing hunt in the Bear River marshes of Utah, I’ll never forget that.
Ramsey Russell: Oh boy. Absolutely.
John Devney: I saw rivers of the green wing teal coming over us for four hours and hunting in the shallow marsh up near the refuge boundary there. And they’re just, I don’t know, it’s interesting for a guy that, and I’ve been blessed to hunt lots of places and shoot lots way more ducks than the man should be entitled to. And listen, I love shooting mallards in the timber. I love shooting sprig whenever I can and I like shooting geese. But man, I tell you, I’ve gotten to the point where I really like shooting and eating fresh teal.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What time of year did you shoot the green wings in Utah?
John Devney: That would have been in late December. Excuse me. It would have been in late November after thanksgiving.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. We all doing the classical Utah set up great state lock where you hung it in the black spread with the silhouette.
John Devney: No, we did that the next day. This was a March hunt way, way out, way up north on the Willard spur.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah been there.
John Devney: Yeah. And we were hunting back up in the marsh. Beautiful cattail on frank mighty marsh was a big salt wind big blue sky and the ducks couldn’t, you know, you could hide an elephant in the vegetation as you well know Ramsey. We had the wind and the sun in our back. It was kind of a midday hunt and I mean honest to goodness, we had rivers of Green Wing teal coming over us for three hours. We shot there are four guns of the blind. We shot, who do we shoot? We shot, I shot a mallard because I’m from North Dakota. One of the guys shot a pin tail. One of the guys shot a pen green wing teal, but we kind of went one man and one gun at a time and just cherry pick drakes out of these big bunches. I think we shot, we’ve been allowed 28 ducks. We shot 24 drake green winged teal on that hunt.
Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. Well I tell you was that really reminds me that that’s a hunt with Chad Monty out there and we went morning. I really can’t recall where we were, may have been on the refuge, but the teal that time of year were in the Alkali bull rush, that’s what they were key and be able to eat. And it was just, we shot a few chauffeurs just because Ramsey was there. But it was just we sat and waited on those green wings and we tried to target the drakes because you could, it was just but when you look out in the wide open, where those birds were wrapped and you just you got close enough that they could hear the air boat motor and get up. I’d counted on one of the five greatest sites in waterfowl I’ve ever witnessed. God I’d say million. There are millions of them flying. It was clouds and clouds and clouds up in the air.
John Devney: And we can get them here. Not great lake sort of numbers but when they’re here and you’re in the right place. You know it is not five at a time. You know, they’re big, big bunches of them wheeling around and they make mistakes fairly frequently and they’re fun to shoot. And like we said they are the most wonderful duck to peck and the most wonderful duck to eat. I just I have a lot of affinity for those little birds.
Ramsey Russell: Well you’ve got plenty of them too. I know I have been on some really good green winged teal hunts in the Dakotas and up in Canada. But you’re not going to shoot them out in the fields. And you’re not going to shoot them in the in the deep water. You’ve got to find those little bitty. It seems to me that when we shoot the Gadwalls and the green wings, we’ve got to find these little pity mucky little marshes, shallow water. And if they’re still blue wings on there usually it’s in September, you’ll get in the blue wings too, they select those little pity areas they want to hunt that they want to use.
John Devney: The green wings here, spend a lot of time on mud flats and so a marsh it’s got a little mud flat but even the bigger marshes here and in Canada big shallow marshes from time to time, all it takes is a wind shift to change the location of those mudflats. We’re talking about crazy shallow water and wind blows out of the west. You got a mud flat in the west and wind turns around blows out of the east you got a mud hole at the east. Man those green wings seem to be right on that mud and they like rubbing in and eat those invertebrates and then going and finding feeds and no shallow wet lands.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right. I know opening weekend in Arkansas, hunted in the camp in Arkansas for 10 years. And the coveted draw for opening day was a particular pitch that like you say, if the wind was out of the north, it was dry on the north side of the blind and just mud flat out front of it. But all those ducks needed was just a little bit to get just enough mud to land in to get their feet wet and they didn’t need water, they just needed mud. It was always green wing, there was a green wing shoots of epic proportions on the opening weekend especially at just those little mudflats. I guess I do like green wings, kind of like blue wings. I like all the ducks. I’m just a bird nerd like that. I find something beautiful in all of them, and the green ones are hard to beat. Now tell me this, I’d ask you your favorite hunt. Now, you do travel, you do get around, you do hunt the fly away and business meetings and travel with associates. Have you got a favorite place to hunt or a favorite region that just calls out to you?
John Devney: Well, I mean here’s the deal. I was a kid grew up in Minnesota and read about places that I never imagined I’d ever hunt. I never imagined I would duck hunt at the Great Salt Lake. I never imagined I’d hunt the central valley California and never mentioned thought I’d hunt the Susquehanna flats, green timber in Arkansas seemed like it was completely out of touch with coastal Louisiana, and then you hang around an outfit like delta for 20 years, you get the opportunity to see these places and I think Lord knows Ramsey, you’ve done a million times more travel than I have. The thing I love about duck hunting is it’s so different depending upon where you are and hunting mallards and the prairies most guys associate it with playing in a grain field. I’ll do that. It’s not my favorite way to shoot a mallard. I’d much rather shoot them up on water. But to have that experience which is a great one to shooting them in the green timber in Arkansas right or shooting a speckled belly on the rice plain in Louisiana. And there’s just so many experiences and there’s all these different approaches and techniques and species and ducks doing different things in different places. But I think that’s the most fascinating thing about waterfowl hunting.
Ramsey Russell: That’s exactly where I stand with. It’s like you’ve got the fundamentals of duck hunting. It’s just kind of the same rules like baseball. It’s kind of the same thing. Baseball has a universal rule, here’s how you play, but you’ve got these different species and all these species have different life from the time they leave Canada, the time they get to the gulf coast, the time they fly back, they’ve got different lifecycle requirements so they’ll behave a little bit different and then you go into a different habitat or a different type. It’s almost like when I think about duck hunting in terms of baseball, it’s almost like especially when you start applying it worldwide. It’s almost like traveling with a duffle bag with a few baseball bats and some gloves and some balls and going to Mongolia, going to Utah, going to Argentina, going to Canada, going somewhere, dumping it out, try and explain to everybody. But it’s all the same, but it’s so different. And just when I look at the little nuances the fundamentals are the same, the hardboard basics the same. When you look at the fundamentals of just the duck calls, the cadence and the sounds that people in Washington State versus southern Arkansas versus Maryland make. It’s just different, but it works.
John Devney: Well, I mean, I grew up as a kid thinking Les Kouba was a deity. I mean, I loved to Les Kouba paintings and I lived the places that Les, I lived in and hunted the ducks that Les Kouba painted, he painted blue bills, he painted ring necks and he painted canvas backs and he painted red heads in the north. And as a kid, the sky I wanted to see was Les Kouba sky. It was dark and it was gray and it was rough and it was all those things. Well, I remember the first time I went and hunted with guys that are now fear dear friends and wonderful belt waterfowl supporters down in Arkansas for the first time in 1999. And I remember them telling me, well it’s going to be a great day, it’s going to be sunshine and we don’t have good duck hunting, the shooting doesn’t get good until we see sun on the decoys and now I look at my experiences hunting puddle ducks in Barcelona and I’ll give you a little insight Ramsey, my wife will tell you this too. If there’s a forecast for Southeast wind and a big blue sky on Sunday, the Devney family magically goes to marsh on Saturday afternoon. Because I want to hunt that big blue sky in a cattail marsh on Southeast Wind. That is the day I am going to mine eliminate nice ducks and so the Devney’s magically go to church on Saturday afternoon, go out to dinner because dad’s going to hunt on that southeast wind on Sunday morning.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’m with you man. Give me sunshine almost universally. The only times I’ve really seen that the wives tell of dark sullen skies and high winds and bitter ugly weather is when you’re hunting real big water in the rasp of divers. They are going to get off that big water to come into protected areas. And I really, I guess my weak spot, well let me back up and say, this is what I find myself. I love the experiences that’s what I chase. I’m a junkie for the duck hunting experiences. Just something new, something different. And I really have not, kind of in my bucket list is a Minnesota Wisconsin Lake Michigan diver hunt. I want to experience that. I could have because I haven’t, but I’d like to I’d really like to.
John Devney: Yeah, it’s funny. So Jason Thorpe in our office, a dear friend of mine, our chief operating officer and Jason’s been hunting ducks his whole life grew up in Bastrop Louisiana. And Jason being from Louisiana had found a bunch of Ducks, but then because he’s from Louisiana, forgot that water freezes below 32°. And, he had this great duck spot lined up and I was a little skeptical knowing, growing up in Minnesota, I know water freezes at 32°. So I had a plan B, I had a little duck boat along with a bunch of blue bell decoys. Plan A was frozen over, looked like a skating rink. I said, well, I got a place of small bluebells, let’s go hunt them. And, I said, here’s the deal. We can only shoot three apiece that year. And I said, let’s just shoot them one at a time. There’s plenty of them, we don’t need to be in a rush. And the first lot came in and I fell over laughing because he grew up hunting puddle ducks and mallards his whole life. Here comes a flock of bills about a foot and a half over the blocks. You can clearly see where the pattern was hitting and it was hitting considerably behind the last time. We had more fun that day. Just sitting there watching each other miss those things coming through at Mark and I knowing full while where you miss them because the water doesn’t lie when it blows up 10 yards behind.
Ramsey Russell: No, the water doesn’t lie, you’re right. I like a sporty shoot and I will say, one of my favorite ducks to actually hunt when we get into good is down here in south is ring necks.
John Devney: Oh, they’re wonderful.
Ramsey Russell: They’ll embarrass you all the time, they make sure, they will.
John Devney: The good news is when they embarrass you. Often times they are so gullible they will come back and embarrass you over and over again. They just keep doing figure eight until they get tired of laughing at you.
Ramsey Russell: That’s right. But I do love a fast line type. You know when I think of places in United States. We do travel all over the world, but and America is so blessed with diversity of species, with diversity of habitats, with different hunting types, different little micro niche cultures, that a man could really spend his entire life just in the continental 48 in Alaska and never see it all. Never experience it all, possibly.
John Devney: Well, I’ll give you a, for instance on that. I mean, we’ve got a great chapter in Vermont which is never a place that I thought about a lot as a duck hunter. You think of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Prairies, California, east coast, eastern shore and some place like that. Well there’s this crazy diehard duck culture in Vermont in Lake Champlain and shooting golden eyes on Lake Champlain, like that’s a cool hunt. And that could be an experienced by a guy that hunts in a rice field in Arkansas or green timber field in Arkansas or natural marsh in Kansas can’t even imagine leaning up in a gray coat against a bunch of rocky stuff hunting over a handful of decoys in 70 ft. of water snowing and blowing like crazy to shoot a whistler. There’s lots of those kind of cool hunts scattered across the country that I think we can’t forget about going to North Dakota or the Platte River, green timber of Arkansas or these other sort of Harold of places.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, no, I want to hunt them all. That’s just me. It’s something about, I want to hunt all of it. I want to experience Lake Champlain. I’ve written a ferry across with a bicycle way back in 1990, 30 years ago, but I haven’t duck hunted. And there’s a lot of those states up in that mid Atlantic area that I have not hunted in, that I want to and that’s just me. I’m just, I don’t know what it is. It just possesses me to experience and see that. And maybe that’s why if I could see being an, I say I just want to chase green winged teal. I mean you could spend, you can chase green wings in a lot of places.
John Devney: And lots of cool places and lots of different places.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, lots of cool places.
John Devney: Salton Sea of California. Like that’s a crazy place out in the middle of the desert and it fills up green wing teal.
Ramsey Russell: I’m going to find out this year, California has been high on my list and I’m working through some clients and friends and associates in the month of January, I’m going to spend a couple of weeks. I might go down to San Diego on an invite. But mostly we’re going to hit the guy from the grasslands north. Everything goes right. We’re going to hunt public private, starting down around the grasslands and end up hunting those little Squeakers, the little Aleutian geese up in Humboldt County. And it’s just a very ambitious schedule. But California enamors me, people think of California, they think Golden Gate Bridge. Well on that Golden Gate Bridge, there’s a whole lot of scorchers back in the water, its greater scaup and pin tails and mallards and lot of ducks around the fringes. And then it shocked me a couple of years ago out there, meeting some folks California waterfowl it shocked me to learn that California is second only to Arkansas in rice production, 700,000 plus acres of rice production only because of their state laws, they can’t burn to stubble. So they have to decompensate with water. 700,000 flooded acres of rice that attracts ducks in this day, a lot of duck in places. And they’ve got such a surprising when you get outside of the craziness, you see in Hollywood and fox news and what not. I mean, they got an amazing hunting culture, die hard duck hunters. Really serious duck hunters and good habitat to this day.
John Devney: Yeah. And you just can’t mention the fact to your Louisiana listeners. They can shoot pen speckled belly.
Ramsey Russell: Pen speckled belly. That’s right. And tale of those Aleutian geese. But I tell you what, that’s an interesting, you speak of speckled belly. That’s a really interesting thing. I’ve got a meeting in the next couple of weeks. I know, you know, Paul Link and he’s going to discuss some of the speckled belly stuff down southwest of Louisiana. And it blows my mind that, I don’t think anybody knows for sure, but you might be a shed some light on it. When you look at the speckled belly migration it is like a big old hourglass with a real skinny center right there along the South Saskatchewan River on the political boundary between Alberta and Saskatchewan. And at times there will be 750,000 specs landing up on the sanctuary.
John Devney: Yup, virtually the entire midtown and population change in a couple 100 square miles.
Ramsey Russell: And when they come out of that area, they fan back out to the pacific central Mississippi fly away. Over here in the Pacific Fly away we’re shooting 10, Idaho 10, Louisiana is struggling. They’ve got a fraction of what they used to have, they used to have a overwinter, somebody told me one time they over wintered 80% Of the Mississippi Fly away population at one time and now about 18%. And that’s something’s going on.
John Devney: Well, it’s interesting we were a partner in that project and Link will do a much better job and cover much greater ground that I will. One of the interesting anecdotes that I saw with that project is the geese were getting there at the same time they always have and it’s really cool because if you draw a map between South Saskatchewan River and Cameron Parish, you draw a line right over my house, and you can almost set your clock by that speckled belly migration. And October 10th, I can walk out, go let my dog out or do something the yard at night, just your wave after wave after wave of those speckled bellies and I’ll get a call from somebody in south Louisiana in 24 hours inspects just got here, yup, I know, because I just blew up in my house. But the interesting thing that Links study showed those birds were coming back to Louisiana and getting into the gate on in those places where they’ve always been and then once the hunting started, they disappear and some of them going back to strange places like Indiana, I don’t know why in the hell speckled belly would ever be in Indiana. But those birds, once that hunting pressure got on them, they’re on the new side of it and it’s pretty fascinating to see. But it wasn’t this, people talk about short stopping with speckled bellies, those speckled bellies are migrating the gate on southwest Louisiana and then they’re redistributing back north.
Ramsey Russell: There’s such a myriad of factors affecting migration and behavior of waterfowl you and I were talking before the show, I’d like to get into it now or later, but whatever. Anyway, a lot of people knowing that you were going to come on and meet today and sent me a few checks, I said no, explain the transitions, explain the migration of behavior, and explain why birds are doing what they’re doing. I mean obviously there are things influencing hunting as we know it today versus a 20-30 years ago. But when we start looking at the hunting pressure, that’s what I’m getting back onto is hunting pressure because you and I were talking before the show about the surveys, fishing and wildlife surveys and all the science and all the information and how we predict and model and set bag limits and all this good stuff. It doesn’t exist elsewhere in the world anywhere else in the entire world does it exist at all, let alone like it exists here in America but it really kind of comes back. We’ve got to have that information that data because of the unbelievable amount of hunting pressure we put on the waterfowl resources compared to places like Argentina and Mexico and Idaho. It’s unbelievable.
John Devney: Yeah and it really, you know I think the good thing about it is listen there’s people don’t believe data. Like you know them, I know them they’re all sorts of people that don’t believe data but when you talk about, in part of the mismatch and this is thing you and I talked about, we had a good conversation on a Mississippi back again in February is I think the waterfowl management community and I include delta waterfowl on this. I’m not being critical of others without being critical of the whole of ourselves is you look at the data we share and the primary data we share is the primary data we’ve got, which is we share the breeding population and that’s the big number. We’ve been collecting that data since 1955. But as you and I talked about we were together in February, the breeding population isn’t what drives success in the fall for duck hunters. That’s amount of baby ducks those breeders make and you can have years where you’ve got a lot of adults and not very good production and you can have yours where we’ve got not that many adults, but great production. And even if you had one of these snow goose gurus, every snow goose hunter will tell you when there’s really hard core snow goose hunters and their scouting for a field to look for geese. They want to see a lot of those great buggers in those flocks and they won’t hunt them if they’re solid white because they know they’re going to be hard to hunt. Well, we can’t differentiate most guys will certainly can’t differentiate when they’re flying around between a juvenile and adult mallard. But the reality is that phenomenon is alive and well and we know a couple of things. One we know young dumb ducks make more mistakes than old smart ducks. And here’s the other thing that I think we learned in a pretty significant way last summer is when you start looking at the data, especially for the south end of the Mississippi flyway. When duck production is good on the breeding grounds, the south end of the Mississippi Flyway is the primary beneficiary of it. And when we have great duck production south end of the Mississippi flyway has great hunting and when the production stinks, they don’t have as good a hunting. And interestingly enough Ramsey, if you guys are more beneficiaries of that than we are. Because duck seasons are short. We’re going to crop off a few just because we’re here early and we’re here right with them where they left, that you guys get the benefit of a full 60 day season and you’ve got more guns in the field and you got more hunters. And it’s pretty clear that the great years in the south are years of great production on the prairies.
Ramsey Russell: John you know how we got in that conversation. And boy, it seems like a lifetime ago that myself and you and a lot of the federal and state and NGO people were sitting in Mississippi for the Mississippi wetlands and waterfowl symposium that seems like a lifetime ago with all that’s happened in the past few months. But kind of how that conversation started is, it’s too easy for me even to look at a lot of cumulative duck hunting experiences in a season all over the country and then come as exacerbated by talking to duck hunters nationwide all day every day. It’s really easy for me to, and I tell you I’m just admitting it man, I’ve become extremely dubious sometimes of the number of delta paper duck [**00:39:57]. I mean look at the TV look at what’s going on with this whole covid thing. Obviously damn lies and statistics matter because they predicated this whole freaking world response on a faulty model that has proved itself to be just a little exacerbated. But I do believe numbers don’t lie, I do believe that, but at the same time it’s real hard for me sometimes to reconcile what I’m saying, hunting a 100 plus days a year throughout the entire north American continent with what is on paper and what we’re expecting. And I know that you’ve got a lot of variables. You’ve got weather, you’ve got production. You explain something in that conversation about made pond counts and breeding pairs and how little it really matter. It got us all hopeful, but it really didn’t matter.
John Devney: Breeding and production it has to do with the baby ducks that those pairs make. And I’ll go back to one of the figures I cited with you is, you know, you take the year, let’s take the year 2014. What year on the prairie we had a breeding population of under just to touch over 10 million mallards. When we do a retrospective analysis and look what the production was based on the harvest surveys. The false flight of mallards that year was almost 29 million. When you go to 2017, where conditions started to dry out a little bit. We had a breeding population, higher breeding population we did in 2014 almost. Let’s call it the same. The fall flight of Mallards was 20 million. Well, shit, man, that’s a third less mallards. I mean if I took 30% of your paycheck out or any of your listener’s paycheck, you feel that right?
Ramsey Russell: Oh, boy. Yeah.
John Devney: And so, but again, this is going back to my sort of statement there earlier. We don’t have a good means to assess production across the whole of breeding groans until we see the harvest, until we see what hunters turn in through the wing B after the fact. So we talk about the net pond count, net pond counts are important. We talk about the breeding population that’s important what those two values mean in terms of what it means for ducks produce to mean again, 10 point, the same number of breeding mallards could get you a false flight of over 28. Right at 20. That’s a big difference.
Ramsey Russell: Yup. John would you agree that in the last 20 years do you all even have data to support the last 20 years hunting pressure has increased in North America?
John Devney: Actually the days of field for hunters is actually decreased because we have lost a whole pile of duck hunters. We lost a lot of access.
Ramsey Russell: So it’s kind of a bouncing act, go to Mississippi public land or any public land and tell somebody there are decreasing hunters.
John Devney: Well, I almost got hung and quartered talking about declining hunter numbers in Louisiana, they said you haven’t been right hunt. I said guys. But yeah, I understand your experience, but let me frame it this way. We used to have 100 rats in the Superdome. Now we’ve got ted rats in a shoebox. We still got less rats, but you’re bumping into each other a lot more. So and listen, the guys that are hunting today, pretty good chunk of them are traveling are better equipped, better access to information and frankly are way better at it. Look at the stuff, I mean when I was a kid, Ramsey and I’m, I’ll be 50 this year. It’s not like I’m 90, But when I was a kid, the Cabela’s waterfowl section was four pages that included, wagers. Max Well have 63 pages of duck calls in their catalog. So the business of duck hunting has changed the way hunters, 25 years ago how many hunters from Arkansas went to Saskatchewan? Not very many, today a bunch of them.
Ramsey Russell: All right. Now, that’s exactly what I was trying to take this conversation because as compared to my granddad back in the “good old days” my granddad might have hunted most weekends, probably hunted all weekend, but he would leave the office on Friday, go duck hunt on Saturday and Sunday mornings come back and work. You know, they’re in Delta and I wonder what he would think about somebody like myself that just is possessed. And I’d say every duck hunter I know pick a spot most every duck hunter I know especially by the time they get to the late 30s and 40s, they’re at least going to go a few states over get a plane ticket go to Canada, go do this, go do that. Now here’s where I’m getting at, it’s all about production, it’s all about the number of baby ducks, the number of hatch year birds flying down south. We go back to when these models, when the current model of North American duck hunting was established, would you say it was adapted harvest management 20 years ago, 1998?
John Devney: 1995 is the first year of that harvest management strategy.
Ramsey Russell: It’s pretty much still the same extract?
John Devney: Well adapted harvest management by its nature is supposed to be adaptive. And so basically adaptive harvest management had a couple of objectives. One, it quit the chaos and the fighting that occurred in the fly away most notoriously in the north and the south Mississippi fly away where you know those stories.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Back during the Bill Clinton administration was written into the national budget, the exchange of duck season in the Deep South.
John Devney: Exactly. And so adaptive harvest management was really to sort of set a framework where we make decisions without having to have a bloody damn war every year about duck regulations. So that’s one thing it did. The other thing that was supposed to do was supposed to answer questions there. It started out with four different model weights. So we’ve got this big question about duck populations. Is harvest additive or is it compensatory? And is there strong or weak density dependence? So what they did is they created four models that were quote “competing” as we populated them with data. So we start with the number of ducks we predict how many were going to kill and then predict how many are going to be there the next year. And then those model weights adjust over time and it gives us the best ability to predict the outcome of our season. Well, the reality is we’re not going to learn that much because we’re not going to shoot the hell out of ducks when populations are low and we’re not going to not have a duck season when populations are high. So we can’t run the great experiment. But what it’s done is it’s created what adaptive harvest management is saying is, with the liberal season, what it should be. But I think there’s a difference between what it’s saying the duck hunters and what duck hunters hear and I understand that. So duck hunter says, well, we’re going to have a liberal season. Well that tells me, there’s a lot of ducks out there. But it really isn’t saying that what its saying is we can safely shoot ducks at this harvest rate without hurting populations. It isn’t the notion that there’s lots of ducks like it used to be when we were kids in the seventies, when duck populations were high, we had liberal bag limits when duck populations and production on the prairies was kind of crummy we had more restrictive limits. That isn’t the way the system runs anymore. System basically says you can have 6 and 60 because we don’t think you’re going to harm populations at these population levels and at these harvest rates.
Ramsey Russell: Okay to which I’m going to add to get back on this, this new hunter this traveling hunter, this hunting pressure this connect to young birds flying all the way down the fly away?
John Devney: Yup.
Ramsey Russell: Is it possible because it seemed to me to be possible. I’m just a redneck duck hunter. But it seems to me that it’s possible. That may be, is it possible? Is it possible that we are over harvesting hatch year Mallards in Canada?
John Devney: No, here’s what I’m going to tell you.
Ramsey Russell: Wait a minute, John, come on now, John. [**00:49:29] I mean the slam duck, 8 mallards a day. Wild ducks, no hands, no, don’t matter.
John Devney: They shoot them in the dark in the peace field. I get it overall compliance.
Ramsey Russell: Come on man, it’s just a gimmick. Go to Canada. You’re going to shoot practically every day you go duck hunting, you’re going to shoot your 8 ducks as compared to my granddad Darryl when very few ducks got shot back then I’m being the devil’s advocate here. But I’m asking.
John Devney: So in 1974, both Saskatchewan and Alberta shot more mallard ducks than Arkansas did. And today Saskatchewan shooting about $200,000 mallard Ducks. So you’re right, there’s a bunch of guys getting on airplanes, hiring guides, flying to the Saskatchewan airport. But guess what you’ve lost 75% of the Saskatchewan residents. There are years that there are more Americans hunting in Saskatchewan then there are Saskatchewan residents. So I mean you’ve gone to Mexico, you’ve hunted Mexico and we all hear the guys scream and yell about the high bag limits in Mexico. Russell, why can’t we have high bag limits like it’s been in Mexico.
Ramsey Russell: I get where you’re going. It balances out that hunting pressure plate you take into account the, what’s that term they use for harvest distribution. Hunter harvest distribution I guess that is it, isn’t it?
John Devney: Yeah. And so what’s happened is, yes, there are lots of Americans hunting with lots of guys in Canada, but they come up and do it for four days and go home. And yes, that is happening for 30 days, 40 days in Saskatchewan every year. But what it doesn’t account for is the fact that every farm get in a CCM or Canadians Jersey was running around pot shooting ducks all over Saskatchewan in the 70s. And honestly look at the harvest evidence both Saskatchewan and Alberta shot more mallards in 1974 than Arkansas did.
Ramsey Russell: Wow, the numbers don’t lie. That’s an interesting number to know 1974. John speaking of Mexico, if I and rarely do I feel like it, but if I just feel like I need to be beaten in social media like a rented mule. If I wake up tomorrow and I decide you know what I was going to good, I want about 50 people to hate me and ban me and crucify me as the anti-Christ of northern pin tails. All I need do is go hold up 15 drake sprigs from Mexico posted on the internet.
John Devney: Your mailbox will be cashing in by lunchtime I warn it.
Ramsey Russell: It’s infuriating and never mind the fact it recently I kept up with a couple years ago and shoot eight pin tails in Alaska, four pin tails in Canada, one pin tail maybe two this year in the and one nationwide and lower 48, 15 down in Mexico. But boy that’s not hunting and trying to explain and I’ve got in my notes on my phone just so when the sucker comes up, I can cite it. It’s been known since the late 70s. What’s the problem with pin tails and it’s not hunting it’s not hunter harvest, is it?
John Devney: No, no, it’s, we’ve lost all the little itty bitty wetlands and they are pretty candid in their productions too.
Ramsey Russell: No teal farming residual.
John Devney: Yeah ecological, actually we’re just talking about this stuff in the last couple of days. This ecological trap entails believing that last year’s wheat stubble is grass. They think, looks like nesting cover, they nest in it. The overwhelming majority of those nests amazingly get hammered by predators, if they don’t get hammered by predators or if they get hammered by predators and they re-nest in that same stuff. They get whacked by the air cedar and pin tails are the only ducks that’ll mess in that stuff. Mallards wouldn’t touch that stuff with a 10-foot pole.
Ramsey Russell: Has there been any empirical data or estimates done on how many millions maybe of pin tail eggs fall to the plow or get decimated because of their want to nest in last year’s residual crop?
John Devney: I’m not going to guess an empirical number, but I mean, we just finished supporting PhD and postdoc at Utah or Colorado State University that looked at that question and looked at pin tail populations at the Transact Fishing and Wildlife Service Transact by Transact level. And the number one attribute that they found was this ecological trap hypothesis that pin tail loved nesting in that stuff. But again, everybody believed in the late 1990s, the fate of those pin tail nest was getting whacked by the air cedar. Well, Penn Rich Kiss, who did his masters and his PhD at LSU supported who is a delta graduate now he is a bigwig with the Fishing and Wildlife Service migratory bird program. He followed the fate of those nests. The overwhelming majority of them got separated before the air cedar ever got to. We never imagined that predators were out foraging in those stubble fields. But there are a lot of pin tail nest that will tell you otherwise.
Ramsey Russell: Right now. It like that again, favorite duck. I love pin tails, I love them. I don’t think there’s hardly anything boy you talk about watching massive flocks just to sit on the point on a bay near the sea of Cortez or parts of Mexico and see hundreds and hundreds of pin tail just working, just to see them working. I find myself running out of air, I’m holding my breath just watching filled up.
John Devney: And the one thing you’ll notice about pin tail is the sex ratios are completely out of whack in the harbor state that bears this out. I mean I was lucky enough I had some business in California and I got to sneak in one day duck hunt district Tahoe which is just east of the Butte sink. And there were lots and lots and lots of pin tail around. There was not a time every single bunch pin tail that we saw was one hen with 5 – 15 drakes.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that could speak a lot as I remember I can say I’m no biologist, but I do remember Rick Kaminsky talk about Mississippi state that the amount of energy it takes for a hen to produce the hen duckling hen egg versus a male egg is substantial. And if you’re looking at maybe a lot of pin tails we are seeing or re nest or second nest, that could be a reason why I would think.
John Devney: Well and the other thing that you’re dealing with is if you’re a drake on the sprig, on the prairies, you live. If you are a hen, not so much. Well, I guess the rival between drakes and hens during the nesting season it’s not even comparable. I mean drakes do stupid stuff and get caught up into a three bird flight, fly across 94 and key bone into the side of a semi, females get eaten and drakes do not get eaten.
Ramsey Russell: No, John when we were meeting the Mississippi and sit around having a few cocktails and go on each other’s company. We were talking about some of the issues in the waterfowl management, some of the limitations, some of the banding studies, for example, budget constraints already, remind me what we were talking about their?
John Devney: Well, we were talking about how the banding program. You know, I think you had mentioned you just don’t see the number of bands you used to. And I hear that from hunters a lot and there’s a reason for that. We’re banding a lot fewer docks. And you look at, you go back to, let’s use 2010 as sort of a benchmark here. You look at what’s happened in the Fishing and wildlife service in 2010. This isn’t a political speech there is republican and democrat blood all over this issue. So this isn’t a partisan issue. But since 2010 our migratory bird management capacity at the Fishing and Wildlife Service has been cashed out and our refuge system has been cashed out. I mean, we had a meeting us DU and others had a meeting down Arkansas in 5th January which you will recognize as good timing to talk about our policy priorities. And one of the things we were talking about is a banding program and refuges and what we knew about refuges. Since 2010 Ramsey, refuge system has lost a 1000 full time staff. And at the same time now, that’s the migratory bird program hasn’t suffered the same losses but proportionally they have. And so, the very bedrock information that we need to manage ducks for duck hunters is waning. The biggest one of the biggest banding stations and a lot of your listeners, I can guarantee you have certificates that say J. Clarke Slayer national Wildlife.
Ramsey Russell: Absolutely.
John Devney: One of the most important banding stations in the midcontinent. It’s certainly it’s one of the most important banding stations for pin tails in the prairies and J. Clarke Slayer, walked away from their banding program, and couldn’t afford to do it anymore. Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Again, incredibly important refuge in northeast South Dakota suspended their banding program. Well, that means that if we don’t fix that, we’re going to be dealing with imperfect. Listen, all data is imperfect to some degree but that more imperfect data you have is better than less imperfect data. And so we can find ourselves in a situation trying to manage a complex species like North American waterfowl with having less information instead of more. And that’s going to make our job making sure regulations are both meeting the needs of ducks and duck hunters in the future have a lot harder.
Ramsey Russell: Well, if I understand what you said previously is we are assessing this year’s productivity based on harvest data, which would translate into band recoveries. We don’t really need the band to figure out that a duck from Saskatchewan is flying to central Arkansas. We need it as a form of harvest, right?
John Devney: Harvest and survival rate. You have to be able to compute harvest and survival rate.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And all I know about statistics is little but really and truly, the bigger your data set, the better your guess. Do you think we’re surveying enough? You think our pond counts are enough? You think the transact are flying right now enough? Have you seen any data or statistics that indicates that yeah, we would probably better served with bigger sampling?
John Devney: Yeah. The challenge you have is again going back to, so you’re right. So at some point more data is better than less. I mean let’s assume that fact. That is fact. The other fact about data though is your abilities compare it to data in previous years. And so what you really want is long term data sets. And that’s what the current breeding population gives us. And listen, I recognize there’s all sorts of folks that are skeptical about flying around on predetermined transacts counting ducks from an airplane at 100 miles up and 100 mph. But what I will tell you is that there are other survey methods. Fishing and Wildlife Service also does what they call a four square mile survey through the refuge program, which we use for other purposes, not management and the numbers aren’t the same. But man, are they tightly correlated? So it’s a really good survey. It’s really robust data. And when we’re talking about things like understanding how pin tail populations or blue bill populations or mallard populations are changing over time, having that foundation, going all the way back to 1955 is completely invaluable.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I know. I’ve heard the aerial surveys. It’s been a little dubious. You’re flying transects in the way you do it. But you know, I actually thought of working with US Fishing and wildlife service as a dumb porter became the guy for a couple of seasons that flew midwinter waterfowl counts and I refuge north Mississippi. I learned a lot and I enjoyed it greatly. I always suspect in my own numbers because you don’t just go 1234567 I mean okay, it must be like, you know, I was concerned and I said something to the senior biologist who technically was supposed to do it, but that’s just what he cared for. He didn’t care for it. So he pounded off on me and greatly I loved it. But you know what he explained to me and showed me the data is that you know, he said Ramsey, I might fly over that field and count 300. You might fly over that field and count 600. He said that number doesn’t matter. He said because this has been proven. That’s a fact. He says I fly over the next time and I see 600 you’re going to fly over next time, account 1200. He said that relative percent. He said we’re going to perceive that percent the same, he said and the trends up and down really what matters not the number. The number is just a number. That’s just a guess he said, but he said it’s been proved over time. And so I gained a little confidence. The most astounding thing I ever saw in North Mississippi that has got to say that the whole entire Mississippi delta froze up wouldn’t you tell you how long ago it was. And we had a sanctuary, a section of sanctuary. And I flew over it. That pilot, well fixed wing aircraft, we circled at 500 ft. 1000 ft. at 1500 ft. back to flight. We circled, well, I’m looking down and that’s actually trying to count ducks and appreciate it till I was just about Narcisse like a carnival [**01:15:27] I remember that number that I find when I tallied it up, it was 62,500 ducks. That can’t possibly, but that’s a duck square flew on an acre or more. And three or four days later, the state waterfowl biologist for the state of Mississippi then had flown and he called me up and said, hey, is that your property at Rock 32. Yeah. He says, have you flown it late? I said, yeah. And we came up with exactly. I got sick flying over that thing trying to figure it out. And he said, you might wish walk notes. Not only did we have the number the same, but our species this many mallards, this many shovelers, this many green wing it was the same. So we felt very good about that estimate.
John Devney: And just going back to the prairie experience, remember what you’re counting on the prairies isn’t big bunches, here’s a mallard [**01:06:25] I mean, you know, yes, there’s indicated pairs, which means there’s a six Greg mallard sitting on a mud flat somewhere, but it’s pair to pair. It isn’t 20,000 here and 500 here, they’re all paired out and spread pond to pond.
Ramsey Russell: John everybody listening myself included, you, everybody in the world I know has been affected at some level by this pandemic. And I’m not going to get into all the tinfoil hat conspiracy, but nonetheless it’s affected everybody. I know people that it is really hurting. I’m sitting here wondering what the future is going to look like for myself, for my family for my business, how is it affecting Delta Waterfowl?
John Devney: Yeah, it’s an interesting like we’re doing really well on 28th May 2020. I think, just as any business person would do when this thing first hit, we had to get pretty cautious and pretty concerned and we managed to the reality. But we’re facing a pretty big unknown Ramsey and I don’t think I’m talking out of school and when I say our friends at DU or friends at National Turkey Federation, all the credit groups that your folks support.
Ramsey Russell: All of them, yup.
John Devney: You know, we don’t know what the fall is going to look like and before the show I told you, I’m going to be pretty surprised if there are 110,000 Coonas is in Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge in September just because I think I know human beings.
Ramsey Russell: Wait a minute you’re saying you do not think there will be 100,000?
John Devney: I’d be surprised if there weren’t 100,000 Coonas in Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge. But here’s the thing, am I willing to bet my paycheck on it. And you’ve got organizations like ours and others, that are looking in the future and based on current guidelines, we’re not allowed to hold a fundraising event under current guidelines, 95% of the country. And so, we’re in good shape right now and we’re taking steps to mitigate against the risk that may be coming at us this fall. But it’s a huge unknown. And so we’re doing the best we can to manage through the great unknown.
Ramsey Russell: That’s all we can do. But it concerns me and how is Fishing and Wildlife Service? How are the banding activities? How are the survey activities this year?
John Devney: No surveys. I mean the Canadian Wildlife Service shut down everything in the arctic. There’ll be no banding activities on arctic geese this year. We’re not counting ducks. The only duck survey that will be conducted in North America this year is North Dakota game and fish survey.
Ramsey Russell: And so for the first time, the North American model for the first time in North American waterfowl models history. We’re kind of going into the future like a 3rd world country, not knowing. That’s scary stuff.
John Devney: Except for the fact that I can, listen, it’s really wet North Dakota. It’s really wet in South Dakota, kind of dry and crafty in Saskatchewan, we’re going to have plenty of ducks. We’re going to have plenty good production of the US side of prairies. We’re flying blind, but we’re flying blind with really good sideboards on us. And so we’re not going to destroy North American duck population because we’ve missed survey. I wish we weren’t going to miss it, but we are. And it is what it is. But yeah, I mean the banding of activities are going to be down. The survey activities are shut down. We’re not going to ban in the arctic. Yeah, I mean it’s having a really significant impact. I mean there are places, I guess there’s duck hunters in Utah right now because the refuge managers aren’t managing water the way they think they should. Well, no kidding. They can’t work. And so, there’s all sorts of consequences.
Ramsey Russell: You didn’t say this, I said this. But from what I understand having spent a little time out in Utah, that issue preexist covid. They need to step up a little bit. They’re listening, they need to get out there and manage water a little bit better for some of that fine sago weed and everything else. I mean, the state biologists are doing an extraordinary unbelievable job managing some of those state resources. So, but I’m not, I didn’t mean interrupt you john, I’m sorry.
John Devney: So in terms of what it means for Delta, we’re hopeful but cautious and probably being more defensive. You know, I think like anybody would prudently run their business preparing for not so great hoping for the best. And again, I think all of our colleagues in this space that have relied on membership and banquet revenue, I think we’re all sort of in the same boat. I think we’re all just hoping that life returns to normal, but that doesn’t make us much different from the rest of America.
Ramsey Russell: Rest of the world actually, you know there its normal in Mississippi as it’s kind of starting to feel again, it’s weird now. I was telling somebody the other day, I’ve got to share this with you all. My buddy calls up since they we are frying catfish, come over and I’ve been kind of hunkered down, and when we drove over, there are five or six couples, we had a couple of drinks, we sat down, he fried fish, the best fried catfish I’ve ever eaten. I told him, he said you have my catfish million times I cook the same way every time. Like yeah, but it tasted so freaking normal. Just to be here with long term friends and family sharing and breaking bread and eating. It just felt so normal. And I think everybody’s, but at the same time I go to the grocery store and it don’t feel normal. It feels kind of weird.
John Devney: Yup, I agree.
Ramsey Russell: You know, it just feels kind of weird and I wondered, you know that’s one thing I wanted to ask if it’s just how you felt covid would affect delta waterfowl obviously, but also just waterfowl conservation average at large. And I’m sitting here watching the politicians spend money like sailors don’t leave. But I hadn’t heard waterfowl or anything I’m interested in mentioned other than my life, he said, but I hadn’t heard conservation.
John Devney: Well, we’re working on it. Yeah, we figure if we’re going to spend all the money we’re spending, there’s a number of us trying to make sure some of benefits ducks and duck hunters, but I’ll leave it at that for the time being.
Ramsey Russell: Good. John we really appreciate having you on today. I enjoy every time I see you, every time I’m around you and can get to visit with you, pick your brain, you’re a fountain of knowledge. And I’ll tell you what I’m kind of glad you’re not a rocket scientist biologist because I think that’s why you’re able to articulate a very complicated subjects or very complicated subject plural in a way that a simple guy like me can understand it.
John Devney: Well, man, here’s the deal. I’ve enjoyed it immensely too, I could do this for hours and hours on end. So any time that I can be a resource for you and your listeners, I’m delighted to do it. We’ll have more good information coming out of the prairies here in the next couple weeks. I’d be delighted to share.
Ramsey Russell: Good deal. God willing and the creek don’t rise. I’ll be passing through North Dakota this year and I’d love to stop by and visit with you and some of your staff. We didn’t even cover, we’re kind of running out of time. But I’ve just got to share this with you. There’s one more little topic. I was hunting down in Mexico with Ben Peterson. And I had laid my gun aside. I was tired of shooting at a great brand hunt that morning tired shoot. But we were just going to pick a few teal and ducks and some of the boys still want to sentiment. So I just, I was in there just enjoying the conversation and I had not heard his subject yet, but it, I’ve got a degree in wildlife with Mississippi State University. I’m going to say there were 5 or 6 dozen of us that graduated that year in wildlife and forestry. And back in those days we were all hooking bullet biologist. I mean we all grew up hunting fishing.
John Devney: You all need 70 in the back of the truck and black light slayer.
Ramsey Russell: I mean, yeah, it’s just we all grew up hunting fishing, we all got let into wildlife management and I got to talking to a very close friend of mine now and one of my professors back then, he’s now working at the Mississippi State University he got to explain to me that that extended wildlife program is maybe he said 300 people. 300 students at that program now. And he just explain to me how relatively few of them have a hooking bullet background. A lot of them just are they love nature, they want to be outside, they like wildlife. So they get into one of the various Littlefield’s they’ve got in there and the fact that they’re just wildlife, there’s a lot of different fields and paths you can go, but Ben began to explain to me this, this program, you all got where you all are actually going into universities and exposing these young students to hunting because they are, if it shakes out and they get a degree and in the field one day they will be our future policymakers. That’s kind of sort of important. They at least recognize the value of hunting to conservation.
John Devney: Yeah. I mean they don’t, not only did they grow up hunting and fishing in our generation, they grew up on farms, right. And that’s over fields. So plus what they don’t like farmers, they don’t like hunters and they don’t like fishermen. That’s not a great recipe through our future. Ramsey Russell: I got a buddy whose daughter went and bandit, rails and gallon mules and whatnot on the Mississippi gulf coast. I keep up with him in social media and just making conversation with, her daddy’s a hunter, one of my duck hunting buddies, but just making conversation with her over crawfish after where? And she wouldn’t tell me she was scared of death. I’d go down there and try to hunt those. I was just curious wearing the Martian. I was shocked learning those birds. I just thought, you know the migratory birds, the clapper rails and king rails. Well I just assumed they migrated. But I was surprised to learn they spend most of their lives in that gulf coast market in their Mississippi, they’re not migrating and but boy, she would not tell me, even after dinner, even after I’ve made a second pass, she wasn’t about to pinpoint where those birds were. But anyway, john how can people, what’s the best way for people to connect to delta waterfowl in social media?
John Devney: You know our Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, all great resources talk about what we’re doing. We’ve taken this opportunity or the challenge withhold it that it’s presented, recognize that we’re not front of people as much. We produce some incredible content about wide breeding ducks do what they do and Delta solutions, Facebook Instagram Twitter and our websites great. And listen guys who want to contact me directly just call the call the delta office here in Bismarck I’d be delighted to visit.
Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening, I really appreciate it. And I hope your world starts to spin around a little bit more and just remember life’s short, get ducks. See you next time. Duck Season Somewhere is produced by Ben Paige. Original soundtrack by our friend Cody Huggins.