Argentina Duck Hunting: A Walk In Jake’s Shoes

Rocky Leflore: Welcome to The End of the Line podcast, I’m Rocky Leflore and in the Duck South Studios with me today, Jake Latendresse, Josh Webb. Jake dude, you’re back.

Jake Latendresse: Como estas? How’s it going? How’s everybody doing? It’s been a while.

Josh Webb: Good. Doing good. I got a surprise visit about an hour ago. I’m sitting at the table in my house doing some stuff on the computer, answering some emails and all of a sudden something beats on the door, I just figured it was FedEx or something, I figured my wife had ordered something didn’t really think anything about it. But then I look and the storm door, it just remained open and whoever it was just walking around out there in my carport and I was like, what in the world’s going on? Well, I get up and look behind the blinds and it’s Rocky. I said, oh hey, what are you doing?

Jake Latendresse: It was like a bear, a black bear.

Josh Webb: No, pretty much the same thing rumbling around in trash cans out there. Yeah, it’s the same thing.

Rocky Leflore: Look, I love any time I get together with either one of you guys. Stopped at Jake’s house about two weeks ago and then stopped at Josh’s today. Josh, you and I, we eat dinner together last week, we even talked about that on the podcast, but any time that I can get together with you all man, it’s a good time. Josh and I kind of hung around outside but when I was at Jake’s house a couple of weeks ago, I said, Jake, you care if I take any pictures because his mind vision, all right. You see pictures of Jake studio and you watch the outdoor cameraman experience, you just had this vision, you have this imaginary vision of what Jake’s studio looks like and dude, I was blown away. I had no idea it was that big. I had no idea that it was that many animals’ taxidermy around his office and dude, it’s a comfortable office man. You feel like you’re walking into the google studios man, you can lay down in a beanbag and talk to Jake while he’s sitting there working. I mean it’s a cool deal.

Jake Latendresse: It’s funny you bring that up because, and I’ve always wanted to ask – there’s not too many people that have been down in my studio, but I’ve always wondered what it’s like for someone that had never seen it, didn’t know what to expect to walk in there and to have that experience and honestly, it’s funny because this is relevant, it should be relevant with any conversation that we have on this podcast, but from an outdoor cameraman experienced deal, the whole inspiration for my studio goes way back to the very first job I ever got in the big game world, which was with a company called Power House Productions and it was owned by a guy named Jason Housley, he had a TV show called The Hunter’s Journal. If you remember that they were producing RNTV. They were the very first producers for RNT their TV show, they had another TV show called Hunting with the Pros with Kevin Gross who was an old Dodger’s pitchers’ way back when. And they had several other television shows. Oh, they had one called The Water Fowler TV, do you remember that? Where they had all different kinds of waterfowl. People in the waterfowl industry that would host a show at a different location all that. So anyway, you walk into their studio and it’s this big metal building up in hot springs Arkansas and it didn’t look like anything, it looked like a warehouse, but then you walk in and it’s like this super comfortable, it’s like a square building and it’s a hallway that goes all the way around the building on the inside and in the center was a big room that had an audio recording studio and then a really comfortable big screen viewing room like a lounge or clients that would come in to help, to watch episodes or for them to pitch their work to different people or whatever it was. I remember walking in there, this was back in 2005 I think it was, I remember walking in there going now, this is what – like it was a complete vision of what I wanted to build, turn my business into and I will never forget that studio and when I built my studio and office and what not in my basement, that was what I tried to not necessarily duplicate, but that’s where I got the inspiration from, so that you, someone like you Rocky could walk in and you would say when you left exactly what you said that you could sit on a bean bag and get really comfortable and have a conversation with me or watch a video or watch this work or cut an audio recording in the audio booth or whatever it is, so I’m glad you said that because that’s exactly what I tried to do.

Rocky Leflore: Well, the thing is that –

Josh Webb: I’ll say it too –

Rocky Leflore: I just imagine it well put 16 or something.

Josh Webb: Yeah, that’s what I was about to say, Rocky, told me –

Jake Latendresse: Say that again because I didn’t get any of that.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah, I just always just imagine a basement 16 x 16 or something like that, just a square room with desk and computers for editing but man, you had a small bar down there, the audio recording studio and like I said, to bring people into that it’s a comfortability aspect to it. It’s just a cool place and so many people and I guess there was so much response when I posted those pictures, like, a lot of people I don’t guess had known that you killed those huge deer that I took those pictures off.

Jake Latendresse: Yeah, I think, I actually get that myself a lot too Rocky, that I’ve stigmatized myself and I think on purpose too. Because there was a time when I took what I was doing and committed myself to being behind the camera instead of being behind the bow or gun or whatever it was because I didn’t really care if I had shot enough animals and fulfilled my ego enough I guess, to where it didn’t matter to me anymore. And so over time I’ve become my brand as cameraman, the outdoor cameraman experience or Latendresse media whatever it is and people don’t realize that I have hunted my whole life and I still to this day make room to hunt myself during the rut because I love – there’s probably nothing more that I love than two things, one is hunting flooded timber in Arkansas for mallards and bow hunting for white tails during the rut. I mean, if I don’t kill anything, it doesn’t matter, I just like to be in that space in my head thinking about what we’re doing and enjoying those moments and like you said, you walked into my basement, you can see my deer and could tell that that’s really where my passion is.

Josh Webb: Yeah, I’ll say that, well that’s one of my favorite times of the year to whether I kill anything or not. But away from that, away from deer now, your recent travel and where in the world do you ended up? Because you’ve got on some crazy waterfowl trips here recently.

Jake Latendresse: Yeah, it’s getting crazy, like it’s getting crazy really

Rocky Leflore: Australia, Argentina, I can just do a background sound as I name all these off and you can start talking about them. Little jealousy here.

Jake Latendresse: The list that’s in front of me, that Ramsey Russell and I have talked about because we’ve got a specific project that we’re working on together and it’s an emotional project for me, it takes me back to my roots which was duck hunting in West Tennessee with my dad. Never even considering it would turn into something like this, but the list of places and projects that we have in front of us it makes my head spin, sometimes I just have to close my eyes and go, wow, I don’t know how this came about, but I’m very grateful and thankful that it did because I’m working with some really cool people and some really cool places and as soon as one trips over, I start looking towards the next one and if Ramsey and I can sustain this then it’s just going to keep going.

Rocky Leflore: Well, hey, before we jump into talking about Argentina, the anniversary of you breaking your leg last year, that’s coming up soon, right?

Jake Latendresse: Yeah, it’s really right around the corner. It was August 8^th, 2017 that I broke my leg.

Rocky Leflore: And so that means that you’re about to start traveling for sheep. Pretty good bit.

Jake Latendresse: Yeah, I mean, ironically enough, I’m leaving July 28^th to go back to the Yukon. My accident was in British Columbia last year, but I ended up in Whitehorse, Yukon to get back to the United States with a broken leg and I’m flying to Whitehorse, Yukon on the 28^th of July. I’m going to be with the same exact client that I was filming when I broke my leg and instead of being in British Columbia this time, we’re going to be filming Fannin sheep in the Yukon Mountains. By the way Fannin sheep are hybridized colored sheep that are mixed between Dall sheep and Stone sheep.

Rocky Leflore: Josh, has got wondering around his yard, you may need to come take care of it.

Jake Latendresse: I had Rocky and my 3 old chasing two around earlier.

Jake Latendresse: Is it a sheep or a goat?

Rocky Leflore: We had a good time. I’m just thinking as a goat. All right, Jake look, I want to walk through this step by step, I want to walk in your shoes by you telling this story about your experience in Argentina. Look, let’s talk about the flight. How long the flight was it, where’d you leave out of? All those good details.

Jake Latendresse: Yeah. So, I flew out of Denver connected in Dallas and then from Dallas I flew straight directly into Buenos Aires, Argentina. I’ve never been to South America. It’s always been on my bucket list. I always seem to get pulled in the direction of Asia, Europe or Africa and I’ve never stepped foot in South America. So, this was really a bucket list checkoff for me and ended up meeting one of – I actually met Ramsey at – ironically enough at the McDonald’s in the Buenos Aires airport in Argentina when I got there. There’s a 10-hour flight from Dallas to Buenos Aires almost on the nose and the direction is from Dallas, you fly over the Gulf of Mexico, over central America all the way down from – I suppose from Columbia all the way over Brazil and over the Amazon rainforest into Buenos Aires which is Central Argentina on the west coast of Argentina.

Rocky Leflore: So, what’s the – you leave Dallas, I know you probably didn’t step out of the airport in Dallas of course with all the laws that we have today concerning flights but of course when you left Denver, I’m sure it was pretty warm but you step off the plane is it cool because it’s winter down there right now?

Jake Latendresse: Yeah, it was funny because everyone was wearing down jacket and snow boots. Even though it doesn’t really snow and Buenos Aires, it was 40-55° for highs and lows in Buenos Aires, so everyone was geared up for winter. All the leaves were off the trees, I mean it was similar to Australia which was a couple months ago there that the leaves were turning they were orange and red and yellow and when I got outside of the airport in Buenos Aires, we had a 10-hour drive from the airport to where we were going.

Rocky Leflore: 10 hours?

Josh Webb: Okay, well I got to ask then, is it paved 10 hours or is it bumpy barely even a road 10 hours?

Jake Latendresse: It’s paved bumpy road. Yeah, and then –

Josh Webb: Got you.

Jake Latendresse: It’s not like they’ve got DOTS and tons of money down there paving everything but they do. They’re second world, they’re not third world and they’re not first world by any means but they rented – Ramsey’s the company he’s working with down there they rented a big Mercedes shuttle bus so we had bucket seats that leaned back and there was air vents and all that. There was I think 6 or 7 of us in this bus, so it wasn’t the worst ride, we had to consume those 10 hours. It was actually pretty comfortable.

Rocky Leflore: I’m imagining being in the bus, I love Ramsey Russell to death as much as anybody on this podcast. 10 hours on the bus, man, I’m going to tell you something, you walked away with a lot of wisdom. A lot of people would say, oh man, you had to listen to Ramsey talk for 10 hours, no. Dude, if you just listen to what he’s saying, he’s one of the wisest, most knowledgeable people that you could ever be around.

Jake Latendresse: He is. He’s very cerebral. His whole life story, I mean how do you not come out of that being very cerebral and he’s had so much time in his life to think and the direction he’s gone with his career and all that now, he’s got his wheels turning and he throws a cerebral mind into a highly influential and motivated, dynamic man, you got Ramsey Russell, that’s what comes out the other end. And he actually had his headphones on watching movies on his iPad most of the time on that 10-hour ride from Buenos Aires to the Rio Salado, which is where we went to, so he didn’t talk a whole lot we did discuss a few things, the direction of the project there and some of the storylines we wanted to focus on and what not. But I had my headphones on too and I actually watched – have you guys seen – remember the movie with the Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe?

Rocky Leflore: That’s a good one.

Jake Latendresse: Oh man, I watched that movie and I was having to look out the window because at the end of the movie I was in tears. But it was a very long ride.

Rocky Leflore: Let me say this, so Ramsey must have had phone service for just a little while coming out of Buenos Aires and he sends me this photo, he texts me and he says, in a few words, tell me what you think this is? So, it’s a picture of your lap and you can see just the bottom third of your face, I can tell it’s you and your lap and chest and I said, oh my God, Jake’s getting down there, he’s kind of smoking.

Jake Latendresse: That was chamomile mate. But I got that a lot of messages like you were, you looked like you were hitting a pipe.

Rocky Leflore: Well, can you explain that though, some?

Jake Latendresse: Yeah, the chamomile mate is, it’s not a tea, it’s not a coffee, but it’s a plant that’s historical traditional drink, like green tea is to Japan or sweet tea is to the south. Chamomile mate is to Argentina and lots of parts of Brazil and Peru and different parts of South America, it’s old and ancient and this plant that they chop up and it’s very similar to say tea leaves and then you put it in a traditional gourd, a carved-out gourd that’s designed, that’s made to hold liquid like a cup. And then you pour – all these people have like backpacks and little – like purses and pouches and people literally walking around with these pouches and whatnot on their shoulders and what’s in there is a spoon, a straw spoon called a Bobia and a gourd or mate cup, I think it’s called a calabash. And then a bag of Chamomile mate tea and then a thermos full of hot water. So, you put the tea in these cups and then you pour hot water on top of it and you don’t oversaturate so it’s like this floating liquid, you pour enough water in there so it’s like got this consistency of runny oatmeal so to speak. And then you take this straw spoon that’s filtered at the end and you drink it until it’s all gone. All the water is gone. Then you top it off with more hot water and you pass it to the next person, so the tradition behind it isn’t just to drain, it does have caffeine in it so it’s made to be drank to help you stay awake like coffee does, but the tradition behind it is to share it with everyone in the room. So, you pass it around, you fill it up and you pass it to the next person, there’s no hygiene concern whatsoever. I mean, there is concern but no one cares about that, you pass this around and everybody drinks out of the same straw and to decline the offer to drink a mate with a group like that is an insult. So, unless you have HIV or something and you tell them that you drink out of it because it’s a traditional thing that helps build bonds in these groups, so to speak, if that makes sense.

Rocky Leflore: So, it is marijuana’s first cousin then.

Jake Latendresse: Yeah. It’s not exactly a who – you don’t feel the same coming out of it, but it’s got the same sort of tradition to it.

“Don’t go to a funeral with me… I’ll try to make you laugh even then.”

Rocky Leflore: I’m sorry man, I’m awful. I got to put a joke in serious moment. I told somebody the other day, don’t go to a funeral with me because I’m going to try to make you laugh to light the mood just a little bit. Hey, one thing I want to ask you though, Jake, was there ever a point that you felt unsafe?

Jake Latendresse: Never.

Rocky Leflore: Don’t say it’s the whole time.

Jake Latendresse: Never. Yeah, as you know, I travel a lot on a worldly, on an international scale and it maybe that – I’m not naive because I’m always concerned about places I’m going, I’ve always got my head on a swivel, I never sit with my back to a door or window, always sit with my back to a wall and I’ve always got expensive camera equipment on me, so I’m ultra-sensitive about thievery and hijacks and stuff like that. But I’ve also let my guard down a little bit because I feel like traveling the way that I do, I have found that there’s a sense of trust that can be built with how you present yourself to people and I think I’ve learned to do that so that when I am approached by people or if I walk into a restaurant or a bus station or an airport or a convenience store, anything like that, my approach is very friendly and I’m always walking in with a smile on my face but I’ve always got a firm grip on my camera where I know where my passport is at all times and blah blah. So, I’m never really concerned about that and I always feel like, let’s say you go to Pakistan people are scared to go there, the fact the matter is it’s not any more dangerous there than it is to drive through a big city in the United States. I mean, if you’re going to go through St. Louis and you got to go, if you’re going through St. Louis and you’re going to St. Charles, maybe you have to drive on around the edge of east St. Louis and I don’t mean that racially discriminatory or profiling or anything like that, it’s just a bad neighborhood man, it’s a dangerous hood. And every place has got those places but at the same time when you travel, especially when you’re with a company like Get ducks or some of the people I’ve run with in Asia and in Turkey or Pakistan or Mongolia or wherever it is, those people want to take care of you because you’re their economics, you’re their channel of money into their economic livelihood and the last thing that those people want to have happen is have you get hijacked or held at gunpoint or killed or hurt because some moron wanted to steal your watch or your wallet and those people are going to protect you because they know if you go back to the United States and tell everyone how unsafe it felt no one’s going to come back and they don’t want that to happen. So, there’s a built-in sense of security when you’re with people like that.

Rocky Leflore: Talking about 10-hour ride, what was your expectation as far as the lodging and when you got to where you were staying, what it really was?

Jake Latendresse: I really didn’t have any expectations other than, maybe you have this image in your head and perhaps I did, I thought, well, this is going to be a red carpet special. You’re going to walk into this ancient cathedral looking South American building and with marble floors or I don’t know, man, maybe I had some sort of a palace image in my head, but there again, when you’re running with Ramsay, Ramsay’s old saying is, if you want that kind of experience for your family, why don’t you take your wife to Italy to Venice, Italy have that experience. If you want to come down here and kill ducks and then hook up with us and that’s what we’re going to do and we’ll stay wherever we have to, we’ll travel however we have to, to get to where we’re going to accomplish that goal. So, with those sorts of open expectations, yet having a little image in my head and vision as to what I was getting ready to walk into what I did walk into was, this location out in the middle of freaking nowhere, I mean nowhere. We’re 10 hours from Buenos Aires, well, an hour outside of Buenos Aires is nothing, there’s no, like when you go to Nashville there’s no Murfreesboro than Chattanooga and Atlanta. Its Buenos Aires and then it’s nothing. And so, we keep driving deeper into nothing and when we stop to meet our hunting guides and the outfitter, his name is David and he had some guides with him that were to help us with our luggage, then the six of us piled into 2, 4 drive vehicles that had shells on the back and we put all of our luggage and we had five people, there was 10 of us total, we had five people in each vehicle and one of them was a Toyota diesel and the other one was a small version of an Ford F1-50. And so, we were literally crammed into these trucks and Ramsey said, well we got about an hour ride from here to get to the duck camp and about two hours later I was going how much further now? And these were dirt roads, it was nothing but – imagine being in South Texas, driving through down the Sendero’s doing 45 or 50 miles an hour through the Sendero’s in south Texas, going through ranch gate after ranch gate after ranch gate, one of the things that I learned about going through these ranch gates is, those people, when you open one, you close it just like you do on anybody’s private property. But I would say we went through probably 12 to 25 gates on a daily basis. And I’m talking every single gate – one thing I wish I had done and I’m going to do the next time I go down there is I’m going to take a photograph or a video clip of every farm gate that we go to from the hood ornament of the truck, the same exact distance and the same perspective and put together a montage video clips of nothing but going through gates in Argentina because it is fricking unbelievable.

Josh Webb: So, what did – leaving the “City” and going out at what point do you start seeing waterfowl or waterfowl habitat or I mean –

Jake Latendresse: It was dark.

Josh Webb: 7 hours in. I mean, yeah.

Jake Latendresse: I got there mid-morning and then we had to wait on four other, Ramsey’s clients to come in so we were there for several more hours and by the time we got on our way into the depths of nothingness, it was dark. So, I really didn’t see much and then like I said that what I did see what was most visible to me going in were all these gates and let me tell you, I’m not talking about metal gates with hydraulic digitized, digital panels to open these gates, we’re talking about beat up 100-year-old wooden gates that are still wired together with whatever they could use to wire them together with. So, each gate had its own identity it’s almost like, I don’t know man does that paint a picture for you? Do you see what I’m saying about these old classic 100-year-old farm gates that every one of them opened differently? So, then we roll in, we finally get to the camp and we roll into this old Spaniards – Let me back up, so Argentina is a mix between Spaniards and Italians – if you can imagine what it would be like to hybridize Italy and Spain, that’s Argentina like that is literally their blood and their DNA. So, we roll into this camp and it is exactly what I was thinking about, it’s like something you’d see in an old spaghetti western where some guy that runs a cartel lives. It’s not plush by our standards, it’s not rodeo drive but it’s not it is a beautifully well-lit Spanish Armada looking place with a groomed yard a small swimming pool on the side and you walk into the squeaky doors and all the door knobs are old, they’re probably 100–200 year old brass door knobs and you walk in all the doors squeak and they rattle and all the windows are thin and there’s a fireplace, the walls are red like a blood or maroon sort of red paint glass and plaster, beautiful just classic ancient Argentina.

Rocky Leflore: At any point did Ramsey say, hey, you’re 10 hours from the nearest city, did he ever say hey, this is how I met up with these guys. This is how I got in touch with them. This is how I found out about this hunting land 10 hours from the most major city of this country?

Jake Latendresse: Well, if you know Ramsey, you know he’s a scout, he goes in, he does his homework and we did talk about that but we also said, let’s save this conversation for the interview because we want the interview and this story to come out of here being as authentic as possible and the best way to do that is to initiate that conversation in camp while the cameras are rolling, the very first time you talk about it.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah, I look forward to hearing that because I don’t know how in the world in the most remote sections of this country do you find out about this hunting? So yeah, I mean, that does interest me a lot. All right now –

Jake Latendresse: Hold on, let me address that real briefly, real quick because there’s something really important and relevant and logical to the answer to that and the short answer to that is, Ramsey’s upbringing in Mississippi has a lot to do with his scouting ability and how he finds these places because he grew up in the delta and he knows that if you locate a river system, a big river system, there’s going to be a delta, wherever there’s a delta, there’s going to be ducks, wherever there’s ducks, there’s going to be an outfitter. That’s how he connects the dots.

Rocky Leflore: Wow, that’s pretty neat answer.

Jake Latendresse: Think about that for a second, that simplicity and wrapped in sophistication wrapped in his upbringing that’s very profound.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah. So, all right, your first morning there were going out hunting first morning, you’ve had this, like you said, you just got back from Australia and you didn’t know what to expect going into there, but going into Argentina, I’m sure being around the water fowlers that you’ve been around in your career some of them have already kind of painted a picture of what it’s going to be like and you had this image going into it in your mind. What was your image in your mind like and what was it really like that first day?

Jake Latendresse: Well, first of all because I got there when it was dark and we woke up when it was dark you might as well had put me in a blindfold because I didn’t know where we were going, I didn’t know what it was going to look like, I really didn’t and I didn’t even ask Ramsey, I was just going with the flow man, I grabbed my camera, my tripod, my backpack full of gear and I get in the vehicle and I just go where everyone else is going and when I show up I start letting people things do what they do, I become a fly on the wall and I just start watching and seeing what they’re going to do and it’s like you said – duck hunting, I don’t care where you go in the world and now, I know this for sure, doesn’t matter where you go in the world, duck hunting is duck hunting and when the sun came up the first morning the first thing I said to Ramsey was oh man, this looks like Southeast Texas or Louisiana. Probably more like Southeast Texas at that point where we went to some different locations that was basically a spitting image of like hackberry where Warren Coco hunts, I mean it looked just like that. So, all these things are flowing through my brain, now when I get into my camera lens and start looking through my eyepiece like Lee Cho said, in the interview we had with him on my show was, everything just goes quiet and I start focusing in on my job more importantly I start focusing in on the environment, the sounds, the animals, the people and I started trying to figure out how I’m supposed to capture this to tell the story right? And so, as the sun comes up, the freaking sunrises are unbelievable because ‘A’ it’s really dry down there right now and so there’s a lot of airborne dust in the air which crystallizes the light, creates all these crazy colors but they also burn – they burn their fields off. They don’t have a chisel plough, they don’t have herbicides, they don’t have all that. So, they dig a trench around defense lines on all the fields and there’s never not a fire, a field fire going on down there in that ranching part of Argentina like when the sun goes down and I put my drone up in the air at night and I do a 360º, there’s like 10 or 12 or 15 fires going on all at the same time and it’s amazing. So, when the sun comes up or goes down the refraction of light starts penetrating the smoke and the dust that’s in the air, you get these fire breathing sunrises that are just, I don’t know if you saw that photo on my Instagram page that I posted of the sunrise with the flooded corral and the windmill and all that but I think, I got maybe 420 something likes on it and I think that it was suppressed because people thought that I photo shopped that color and I’m telling you right now, if you go look at it, it’s the red as sunrise you’ve ever seen and I did not touch that color. I did do some, I crushed the blacks out because it had some grain in it because it was still dark but I didn’t do anything to that red. I tried to enhance the red when I did it made it look fake to what we saw. So, that’s what the vision was on the first morning when I started filming in Argentina that’s what it looked like for me.

Rocky Leflore: I saw the picture that you posted that went wild that went viral. The picture of the fog and around the blind, I don’t know what morning –

Josh Webb: That’s what I was about to say huge –

Jake Latendresse: That was unbelievable man.

Rocky Leflore: You got a ton of traction out of that, how – unbelievable that could be turned into a painting and sold thousands of copies. I mean that thing is, it is beautiful and it went crazy.

Jake Latendresse: Yeah, that was last morning in contrast to the first morning and we had actually been to that area before but not that exact location. It was kind of like – man hunting with Ramsey is kind of like do it yourself. You don’t go to a big blind, you don’t eat breakfast and cook hamburgers or cook sausage and eggs and on tortillas and all that stuff man, you go and you figure out where you’re going to hunt the night before you go build a blind the next morning, it’s do it yourself. I mean, if you’re a real duck hunter that grew up duck hunting and you’ve paid your dues that’s what it’s like and it’s not easy but its fun because it’s not completely catered to just – this red-carpet special man. You’re really duck hunting man. I’m telling you, it’s just like Louisiana, southeast Texas.

Rocky Leflore: See I like hunts –

Jake Latendresse: Parts of Mississippi.

Rocky Leflore: When I become a part of the hunt.

“We ain’t on the X, man. We need to move or do something because we ain’t on the X.”

Jake Latendresse: Exactly. You have to make decisions you have to figure it out. So, the place you’re talking about where that photo in the fog was taken, we had been there two days before we had been to that location and we kept – one of the most common things you’ll hear Ramsey say when you’re hunting is, we ain’t on the X, we need to be over there. That’s where the X is. See all them ducks, that’s what they want right over there. That’s the X. We ain’t on the X. We need to move or do something because we ain’t on the X, that’s Ramsey. That’s like – and you got 35 ducks in a pile right under your feet, he’s going, we ain’t on the X man, we need to go get on that X. So, that morning we were going back – that was one and only time that we actually went to the same marsh twice. We never hunted the same location twice until that last morning and it’s because Ramsey wanted to go get on that X. So, we get there and I’m actually pissed off because I never – one of the things that I hate more than anything, Ramsey asked me all the time, man, how do you take care of your gear? Why is your gear so good all the time? I said, because I take care of it, man. I don’t let people, I don’t let other people handle my gear. Can you borrow my camera? No, just for a second? No, can I look through your lens? No, get your hands off my damn camera. That’s just how I feel about it because that’s not – that is what I do.

Josh Webb: I attest to that because I’ve been with Jake on the shoot before and he said, Josh just reach down there and run that camera. And I said, I need you to repeat that before I reached down there and hit anything on that camera. He said, no, it’s okay. You can run that camera just hit that one button though that was it. But you have to be that way with your stuff, I mean that’s your livelihood.

Jake Latendresse: Exactly, so I’m already mad that morning because there’s so much confusion because of the language barriers, I mean it’s confusing because you’re there but then when everything like, when everything comes out of the wash, when you get there, it’s like it all works itself out because those guys know what they’re doing. It’s not like they’re just completely brainless Tian’s or peasants, these are actually real deal duck guides. If you could see them, which you will in our videos, see what they’ve done to their duck calls, they’ll take a normal whatever brand you want, they’ll take a duck call and they’ll modify it, they’ll tune it so that they can call like 6 or 7 different species of ducks with one call. And these aren’t – I mean some of them sound like humans, it’s bizarre because it’s different, you know what I’m saying? And so, these guys are real, I mean they’re real duck guides man. And so anyway, get out there and shoot –

Rocky Leflore: Hold on, no, don’t leave that a second, stay right there. So, what is the sound of the cadence like?

Jake Latendresse: The sound, I mean –

Rocky Leflore: Just give me an example of one.

Jake Latendresse: Okay. So, the yellow billed pin tail and the white cheeked pintail whistle, just like they don’t whistle like our pin tails do, but they do whistle and these guys have – they figured out a way to pop the primer out of a center fire shotgun shell hole, take two of them, you cut the plastic out of them and you mash them together and then they blow through where the primer was, the firing, – I’m sorry the primer was, they blow through that hole and create these sounds that sounds just like those freaking pin tails, both species, okay? So, now those are your pin tails. The teal they have a very similar sound to a teal in North America say a blue wing teal goes, but it’s a little bit different. So, they take their duck call and there’s a lot of back pressure, they put a lot of back pressure, I was watching them and filming them blow these calls and then they just make these sounds that are really fast cadence is like a blue wing teal but a slightly more gravelly, it’s like a mix between say a mallard and a blue wing teal, if that makes sense. So, then these other species of ducks, like the Brazilian duck has this – it’s almost like, it sounds like a human, but it’s kind of like a gadwall but louder and deeper than a gadwall. I can’t even do it. But I’m telling you, you’ll see on our film, these guys have it mastered. Like I had a hard time telling the cinnamon teal from the red shovelers because they look so much alike from a distance their wing patches are very similar, obviously, their bills are one is larger than the other, but they’re shaped the same way. And I mean these guys just like we all do in our neck of the woods, they know, they can see it from a mile away what kind of species it was and they immediately get on that call and it’s amazing how responsive some of those ducks are to those calls that they’re making.

Rocky Leflore: And these ducks, they don’t migrate. I know from two weeks ago when Ramsey and I talked, they’re local birds. All right, let’s talk about this a second. You’ve talked about, you getting into the element and you become a part of the hunt as the cameraman. You’re trying to hear the sounds around you, you’re trying to bring the people in through your imagination of what you need to get. So, the swamp wakes up and I guess that’s what they call them down there. This swampy places, swampy areas, what is it in compare?

Jake Latendresse: Marsh.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah, marsh. As it’s coming to life, what are your birds acting like? That’s what always curious to me. You sit in a marshy area, let’s just say a gadwall hole, well at five minutes before shooting time it’s going to fill up with gadwalls, that’s kind of what I’m shooting at that in my question, what was it like as it wakes up as the marsh wakes up?

“I would have done that for free… holding a duck in your hand is just unbelievable.”

Jake Latendresse: This is the greatest part about duck hunting around the world in different places for different species. The greatest part about being an American hunter down there is the ability to relate and identify the species that you’re hunting. So, let’s just compare this across the board to South Louisiana, okay? It’s the same thing, but different species. The teal act like teal, the pin tails act – the pin tails fly around in circles and you call at them, every now and then one will come in, one crazy one will come in and you’ll kill it but they fly around and then they go on, they act like pin tails. The teal buzz around, they see your decoys, we use spinners, they see the spinners, they come in for a check and they come in and bomb your decoys, you drop 6 or 8 or 10 or whatever it is out of it and then you’re waiting on the next flock of teal. They don’t have a mallard like Australia, the pacific black duck acted like mallards. I mean it’s a mallard, it’s a derivative of the mallard and in the black duck family so that’s what they act like. So, I can’t emphasize enough in answering your question how identifiable and relatable these species are that you think are just completely exotic and they act. The silver teal, those were probably those and the white cheek pin tails down in Argentina are my two favorite ducks because ‘A’ they’re so freaking beautiful. I mean, God, if you’re a duck hunter and you do it because you love duck hunting for the right reasons when you lift – how many mallards? Thousands of mallards have you killed in your life and you hold the next one in your hand a big bull, green head that it’s in mid-January or early Jan, whatever. And you just look at, you just admire the curly Q’s. You admire the speculum, you admire the big green head on it and the chestnut, chest and the white ring, it never gets old. And these ducks down in Argentina or Australia, let’s stick to Argentina, they’re just beautiful. And there were times where I got choked up because I would hold, say, a white cheeked pintail or silver teal in my hand or I’m taking photos of it in Ramsay’s hand, I’m just going, this is just unbelievable, like, thank you – I would never tell Ramsey this, but I would have done that for free, had I known how remarkable, the experience just holding a duck in your hand would be. They’re just, ducks are just beautiful. There’s nothing else you can say about.

Josh Webb: So, how many species did you all end up killing? I know it’s always there but –

Jake Latendresse: Probably the toughest – that’s the toughest question you could ask me, but I don’t know. I mean, I think there was like 14 or 17. Well, there’s 14 or 17 species that you can kill where we were and I think we probably killed 8 or 10 of them. We killed the Rosy Bill, Black Rosy Bill or Rosy Billed poachers. The white cheeked pintail, the yellow billed pin tail, the silver teal, the ring teal, the red shoveler, which brings – that’s all I can remember off and I go back and look at my photos to really nail that down. But we should talk about that red shoveler because two big duck hunting countries that I’ve been to now with Ramsey Australia and Argentina, the shoveler is revered like people when they see a shoveler, they’re like, that’s what we do when we see a big old fat green head or a big pin tail sprig with a long sprig, they’re like, there’s a red shoveler, like, okay, well we’re going to shoot it? Like, hell you were going to shoot it. That’s our trophy duck almost. And so, it’s just something that’s so revered in all these other countries and one of the things that Ramsey wants to do, you all are familiar with his – that decoy that mojo is going to come out with called the spoon zilla, right? I mean, that’s a real thing, that’s like a real concept. It’s a real manufactured product and it’s about to be on the market here in the next month or so. And what Ramsay wants to do with me is travel the world and kill, harvest shovelers, the four different subspecies of shoveler ducks, true shovelers over the spoonzilla on video and he wants to start it as a collector’s trend or collector’s goal is to shoot the shovelers of the world because they’re all so different yet they’re all the same. So, you got the red shoveler, the northern shoveler and then you’ve got a shoveler in Asia and I believe you got another one in Europe. There’s only four in the whole world, but that’s what he wants to do on videos to – and he wants to call it the shoveler slam.

Rocky Leflore: Well look, we got about 10 or 15 minutes left. I want to ask you this Jake, one of the greatest parts of Argentina in talking to multiple people that have been down there is after the hunt. I have heard that some of the greatest times in people’s lives were spent around a fire pit in Argentina after the hunt is over with. The meals that you eat.

Jake Latendresse: God. The meals are just unbelievable. Like, you’re out in the middle of – I mean, let me tell you about two different kinds of meal settings that we had as quickly as I can. One is at the lodge and again, you’re in an ancient, like you’re waiting on Clint Eastwood to ride in with his cigar and his flat bill hat or some dude in a sombrero or whatever. I mean, it’s just this really ancient traditional Argentine setting and they cook everything over in an open fire. It’s in like a fire pit, like kiln brick fireplace out in the little porch, square area at the lodge and they cook duck, they cook beef, they cook pork, they cook chicken. But it’s always like this really authentic Argentinean spiced meal with this very traditional setting and they don’t mean to do it that way, that’s just how it comes. It’s like when you go to Mcdonald’s, you get a burger wrapped in this and fry wrapped in this and it all comes in this bag with three napkins and a straw, that’s what they think they’re doing, but when you get it and they put it and sit down in front of you like holy crap, this would cost 100 bucks in the United States. And they’re really big on Melbourne wine, Argentinean red wine. And so there’s always two bottles of wine on the table, there’s coca cola and bottle of water on the table and spices, you know, there’s all different kinds of sauces, dipping sauces and sauces and these things you put on your meal and then, so that’s one sitting the other setting was, we pulled into this and I’m talking about like this ranch house that was just beat down something you’d see and like you imagine in central Mexico or like the poorest of poor, chickens, naked kids running around with no shoes, running noses like this, just I can’t paint the poverty enough and then they break out this picnic table, they put a freaking – some sort of Argentinian tapestry over it like a tablecloth. They break out the wine, you get the cups and then all of a sudden you go behind the house and there’s this brick kiln looking thing in the back that’s on this pedestal, like a brick pedestal and there’s a fire and there’s smoke coming out the chimney and you go over there and there’s 30 Brazilian ducks that are whole plucked split and have their butterflied open their feet are still on them, sticking up they’re spiced and salsa and different kinds of spices and you’re like holy crap, we are getting ready to eat the most authentic Argentinean duck meal that you’ve ever had in your life. And then all of a sudden you sit down, they bring you these freshly sliced tomatoes, this fresh cabbage that they chopped up some cheese that they graded and they bring you freaking Brazilian duck that was cooked on an open fire like just, it’s hard to explain until you see it and you’ll see it in the video and you’ll see photos of it. It’s just a remarkable colorful spiced meal that you can’t get anywhere but Argentina.

Rocky Leflore: What were you thought leaving? Was it one of those deals where you man, I hate to go but I’m ready to go see my family?

Jake Latendresse: Yeah. I’ve always got my family in the back of my head. I got three Children and a wonderful wife who holds the fort while I’m gone. So, I’m always anxious to get back but you do man. You never really absorb the true blood of the culture that you’ve immersed yourself in until you’re leaving because when you’re leaving you realize you’re about to leave it behind and you start thinking about what just happened. I always do that on the ride to the airport and especially on the ride in the airplane on the long rides home, that’s when everything starts to soak in. And that was really – that was one of those trips where I know I’m going back because of the conversations that Ramsey and I have had and so I wasn’t sad to leave but I’m very anxious to go back and go and experience a different part of Argentina duck hunting that Ramsey and I talked about to see something different man, now he’s got me now where I just want to see it all. I want to see it all. Want to go on a hunting in Pakistan, I want to go to Mongolia, I’ve been to those places but I want to go from a duck hunter’s perspective. I want to go to Netherland. He told me that the Netherlands hunt was the greatest goose hunting environment that you’ll ever – and Ramsey has been everywhere. He’s been all over this planet. He knows – I don’t know any single person on this planet that knows wild ducks and wild places more thoroughly than Ramsey Russell does. He is an encyclopedia of waterfowl around the world and he’s got me chomping at the bit for more.

Rocky Leflore: I know that Ramsay had of – look there’s two things that I want to say before we leave this number one, when you do your job as a cameraman trying to capture all this on film, there’s a lot of work involved and Ramsey’s job as a guide is there’s a lot of work involved in these days pass by quickly and I’m sure you’re going to the airport, I’m sure after that 10 hour ride you like man, this seven days it’s going to go by slow and then you’re sitting at day seven on the ride back to the airport and you’re like holy crap man, this went by fast, it’s over.

Jake Latendresse: It always does. Yeah.

Rocky Leflore: And then in the other sense. You and Ramsay you’ve got to be really close and I bet that there was a moment of sadness to see such a good friend leave.

“Men don’t hug three times… but we hugged three times. It meant something.”

Jake Latendresse: We hug three times, Rocky, that’s a great point. When we got to the airport in Buenos Aires, Ramsey was – he’s staying down, he’s got two more weeks down there with clients and some other scouting he’s going to do so we get off the bus and he says goodbye to his clients and then he comes over to me, I was sort of laying low in the background, comes over and gives me a hug and we shake hands and then he says, it’s almost like we could, we had a hard time saying goodbye and then we hugged I counted them. We hug three times and I walked away knowing that that meant something to both of us because men don’t hug three times. You just say goodbye and get on with it most of time, right? But there’s something about being in those places doing the wild things and having – sharing the dynamics and that camaraderie and really the profundity and intelligence of – let’s say, I don’t want this to come out the wrong way but you put Ramsey’s experience and knowledge in the duck world and throw my experience with my camera and storytelling dynamics together and you’ve got this really cool dynamics going on where Ramsey takes me to places and then I find the story to tell or Ramsey initiates the story and I dig deeper and get into them and you look, you go to the back end of it and you see what comes out, you’ve got this really cool picture of these stories that not everyone gets to share with other people and to be able to share that with someone like Ramsey in his story is, I’m getting choked up, I’m seriously getting choked up just talking about it because I mean, it’s just special man, that’s all you can say about it.

“Life’s short. Get ducks. That’s what it’s all about—relationships, not numbers.”

Rocky Leflore: I think the reason that Ramsey is success that he is, don’t get me wrong, outside of the duck knowledge and wisdom and the great duck hunter that he is, he understands something that you and I and Josh talk about all the time and he utilizes that everyday life is about relationships and they matter, it is number one to him. Life is not about – listen, we’ve all been with guides in our lifetime, all of us have been with a lot of different hunting guides where it’s just, it’s a motion to some people to Ramsey Russell at the end of the day, it’s about him, form a relationship with you, that’s always the way I looked at it. Listen, people didn’t mind ever writing me a check because at the end of the day, we were more friends than just a business or guided hunt. If anybody is listening to this, anybody take anything away from this, whether it being the coal gas oil business or being an accountant, whatever you may be, life at the end of the day, even in businesses are about the relationships with the people that you work with.

Jake Latendresse: 100%. And if you don’t get that, anybody listening to this, you don’t get that, you’re never going to be successful in life. Anything that you do, because it’s all about the relationships man, it’s 100% true what you just said, Rocky.

Rocky Leflore: Success at the top alone sucks, success at the top with everybody else is a party, it’s great.

Jake Latendresse: Exactly. What are you going to do with it if you get there and you’re standing all by yourself, who you going to share it with and how do you celebrate that by yourself? And it’s impossible. And Ramsey, I talked to him, he gave me permission to open this conversation up about what our project is and it’s really interesting because it really sums up what you’re saying, it’s a great way to conclude this podcast and that is what Ramsey’s hired me to do, is travel with him and develop a series of stories from every country that we go to and the theme of all this the big picture is the name, it comes out in the name of this series and it’s called Life is Short Get Ducks. I mean, to make it more casual, it’s called Life’s Short Get Duck. And if you can’t understand the synopsis and summary in those four words, Life Short Get Ducks then you’ll never understand what we’re trying to do. But if that gives you chills and it gives you momentum and influence and inspiration then you know, exactly what this is about because this ain’t about duck hunting. It’s about life and how short life really is and it is about how duck hunting brings people together because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter where you go, Australia, Pakistan, Argentina, Mexico, Mississippi, California, Colorado, Arkansas or Tennessee, we’re all the same, we’re all duck hunters and we share that common bond and that’s what this is all about.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah, and man, I mean, it’s something that Josh and I have been talking about a lot about lately is the principle of – you identify these people that all have a hand somewhat in the hunting world. Listen I don’t want to go, I don’t want Duck South to go without Latendresse media, without Josh Webb, at four corner properties without Ramsey Russell and Get Duck, what I’m just saying all of us, if you find something that you can latch onto Marty Roberts at sporting life kennels, there’s so many businesses have to me have so much credibility and people are what matter and they have the same values that you do. You want to see everybody go up and that’s the way you look at it, it’s what Ramsay looks at it.

“The guides down there… they don’t speak a lick of English, but they want you to have the best experience possible.”

Jake Latendresse: Exactly. If we’re successful, those people down there are successful because people are going to figure out that, man, if you want to go shoot 100 ducks a day, you can do that and if you’re into numbers, I mean duck hunting is a numbers game, we all want big numbers, but the end of the day, man, it’s about the experience, what you see how it goes down, what you figured out. You’ve got to find the X. It’s a game and we all have these little details that we’re concerned about. Those guides down there, can’t speak a lick of English, but they don’t want their waiters to leak, they don’t want their guns jam, they don’t want their duck call to stick on them and they want you to have a great experience, they’re not there for them, they’re getting paid to do it. They’re getting paid peanuts compared to what our guides make, but they want you to have the best experience possible. Just like when you take people duck hunting – I mean it’s the same, we’re all the same. There’s no freaking – we may not speak the same language, we drink different teas and coffees and we pray differently. Some of those people freaking kneel on prayer rugs and they’re Hindu, Muslim, Christian, whatever, Buddhist, whatever they are. But man, when you take all that away and you look at the duck hunter, we’re all exactly the same. We wear our hats the same way, we wear our waiters the same way, we strap our guns on the same way and we load our freaking guns the same way, it’s all the same man and that’s the remarkable thing about what Ramsey Russell is doing. It’s unbelievable.

Rocky Leflore: Many many people have attempted to be and do what Ramsey is doing, but the success, I hadn’t seen it replicated and I think that it all goes back to his people matter. People matter to him the most and that’s why I like being good friends with him and because it’s how I based my value system. People are the most important thing in your life and I think that’s a great closing point to close it out with.

Josh Webb: Yeah, I agree with that.

Jake Latendresse: I just 100% agree. I think Ramsey – Likewise.

Rocky Leflore: No, go ahead.

Jake Latendresse: I was going to say – I think when Ramsey quit feeling sorry for himself, that’s when he started feeling the emotions behind his connection with other people because there are other people that need things in life that he had and some of the things that he took for granted, when it was staring him right in the face after his injury and all the dark places he went to in life and that’s what connects man.

He and I talked about this on the bus man and I looked at him right in the eye and I said, man, I think this and I’m sure you do Ramsey, but what happened to you is probably the greatest, I mean, you’re lucky that that happened to you because it’s turned into a blessing, it helps you see the world very differently than most people see it and you have this caring compassion for people that most people don’t and had you not gone through the experiences that you did, you wouldn’t see the world the way that you do. And he just looked at me and shook his head and he said, man I agree, a 100%.

Rocky Leflore: Great guy and Jake, thank you for coming back because listen, I know that you’re trying to catch up on life and business because in being able to stop for an hour to talk about this with Josh and I, man, it’s been great because especially when you were talking about the cooking part of it, sitting around the fire pit, walking around the ducks are hanging up, man, I can envision all that, it’s great stuff.

Jake Latendresse: Thank you for having me.

Rocky Leflore: Heck yeah. We’ll be back together end of the week. But until then, I want to thank all of you that listened to this edition of The End of the line podcast, powered by ducksouth.com

[End of Audio]

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