How To GetDucks With Ramsey Russell (Mexico Duck Hunting)

Rocky Leflore: Welcome to the End of the Line podcast. I’m Rocky Leflore and I’ve got Mr. Ramsey Russell, Getduck.com on the podcast with us today, Josh will be joining us in just a minute. He’s still on the road back home from snowy Jackson. Ramsey, have you talked to your, I don’t know if your wife’s in Mexico with you right now, but if you talk to Duncan or Forrest to find out how much it snow down there?

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah man, look, I’ve been down here in Mexico since Monday, I left home it was fairly warm and I got some pictures from them in the blind today, they’re out hunting and shooting ducks in the snow. That’s unbelievable. We get snow that far south.

Rocky Leflore: Look, I talked to Daniel last night. Daniel’s one of the guides on Getducks.com, Daniel Kubecka and Nick Stillwell down at Run-N-gun adventures. And I’m talking to Daniel last night, I laughed at him because he was saying it’s going to snow down here tonight, they’re predicting snow. I said Daniel, get out of here man, it’s not going to snow that far south. Well, I wake up to pictures from Daniel with snow outside of Houston.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they’re getting snow man and to get this far south, it’s just unusual. I was thinking this morning, we’re driving to downtown Obregon this morning and they got the Christmas lights up around the country, those little houses have the palm trees wrapped up in Christmas light. I’m thinking, I think they don’t sing dreaming ever like Christmas because they’ve never seen it. And you know it was, this morning now, generally I would tell you if you’re coming down to Mexico expect for 60° in the morning and you know, 85º in the afternoon and boy when that wind try to come through today and I was glad I brought a cold coat, just old canvas coat, but you know, it was 55° and with a 22 mile an hour wind that come out of nowhere, nobody was just expecting it. I was glad to have it on and there’s no doubt about that.

Rocky Leflore: I swear Ramsey, that 45º to 55º range and the wind blowing, like you’re talking about 20 MPH. It’s colder to me when it’s 25º -30º.

Ramsey Russell: It just wears on you. It just, that wind just wears on you, man. Takes it out of you.

Rocky Leflore: Well look, what are you chasing, what species are you chasing down there?

“Pintail conservation is a big topic. They’re not overharvested in Mexico—this is a myth.”

Ramsey Russell: We’re down here, we’re in the province of Sonora, Western Mexico, good old Mexico town called Obregon. We’ve been pick this hunt up five or six years ago. And I came down here, I told the outfitter one time a client introduces, he said man and all the bad lady, blah-blah. This long time outfitter could really work with somebody like yourself. Would you mind working with him? We end up talking and hit it off. We worked on program it sounded pretty good. I said, well look, I’m going to bring a buddy down there and we’ll come and hunt with you for three days and kind of go from there I always like to scout these hunts. And by the time we showed up in February, I don’t know 12, 15, 16 hunters in total. And it was awesome. And since then we have sold this joint out, its ducks and doves and brant and you know chase American quail and do some different stuff in a great hunt. But one thing that really one of the species down here, it’s on the North American list, especially the big North American list is called the Mexican duck and it’s a Mexican mallard and the Mexicans down there call them black ducks, but they’re not our black ducks, they’re Mexican black ducks and they look like a model duck but they got double white wing bars like a mallard. They quack like a mallard you’ll never hear them quacking and gradually somebody out of Arkansas rice field. But they decoy, they work and all this kind of stuff and some of the ways they jump shoot them, you know, that’s okay. I was down in the past and we’ve been able to decoy and call me them in and so I just had the idea man, you know, I think mojo would like this because you see these birds now, Mexico, there’s no greater densities than right here in the Yankee Valley. As an outfitter told me one time he said, if you ever eat tortilla for free from Yankee Valley, there’s millions of acres of sweet bean cultivated right now and all that water in a dry environment, often held up clean and dry environment requires, irrigation, irrigation collection fresh right now they’re just thousands of acres. Look there’s a low lying areas that are being flooded because irrigation runoff. I looked at it. I look at the pond the other day, it was dry this time last week and said water in it for 4-5 days, there were 3000 pin tail sitting on it. Okay since a lot of new water coming up with a lot of fresh water.

Rocky Leflore: Its duck love.

Ramsey Russell: They love it. And but I really think that the Mexican ducks, these Mexican mallards, I think they represent one of the most unexploited mallard resources on earth. And so I invited mojo to come down here and let’s give it a shot and make a TV Show we’re hunting them kind of early, like I said a lot of our clients come down January February, it’s now mid-December. And but these duck live here, they’re non migratory, they live in this valley, tens of thousands of them, hundreds thousands of them lives throughout this valley and so we’re down here hung and my sons and I came down a few years ago and just kicked them in the teeth. It was, there were birds coming in so close at time we had to shoot them off in good barrel. And I’ve been down here at the scout there’s a lot of mallards a lot of pin tails.

“Cinnamon teal… they’re part of the scenery down there. You’ll shoot a lot of them.”

“What about the pin tails? That’s what Mexico is known for, right?”

Rocky Leflore: That’s what I was going to ask you about, what about the pin tails right now down there because that’s what Mexico is known for, is that pin tail, cinnamon teal, teal overall. What are the pin tails looks like?

Ramsey Russell: We’ve seen the, you know, pin tails that they migrate early anyway. A lot of the birds hold up north for the cold weather but overall they’re what I call a photo period migrate. In fact, you know, a lot of guys seen them, especially down in Texas. I’ve seen them come through Mississippi during blue wing teal season. They fly earlier a lot of times. And since we’ve been here, we’ve seen mostly the local black ducks, the pin tails, a lot of wigeons, seen some scaup, seen some red head, shot some redheads this morning saw a canvas back this morning. Blue wing and green winged teal jumped 20 cinnamons the other day while scouting, they’re coming on. Hearing from my California clients, they’re having a terrible season this year. Just the water situation and everything else is bad. That could be helping you know, because this part of Mexico, western Mexico catches central fly away and most of pacific flyway birds and some habitat conditions are bad up in California and those birds overflow has come down here to good old Mexico.

Rocky Leflore: Hey Ramsey, let me ask you this. This is a purely water fowl biologist question, Ramsey listen, I’m going to brag on him. I’m going to puffing up Ramsey is absolutely in that top 3 percentile in the United States when it comes to waterfowl, smartest guy, one of the smartest guys I’ve ever talked to. But this is purely opinionated. And if you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to. Did they jump the gun on the limits on pin tails this year? Do you think they did? Because there’s a lot of guys seen a lot of pin tail.

Ramsey Russell: I do think they did that, you know, thank you for your comments, you just haven’t talked to enough people. I’m just another duck hunter. But at the same time I really truly think, you know, we get kids in the sins when we post up pictures of shooting pin tails down in Mexico when statistically there are more pin tails killed even under one duck limit, there are more pin tails killed in a couple of weeks in Louisiana or California. They get killed in the next couple of years down in Mexico. There’s so few hunters. You know what I’m saying? And I really think they jumped the gun. And I think, kind of winter thing, a writer I’ve known and hunted with wrote an article you read it on delta waterfowl, he wrote an article in there that really to me explained it better of why maybe they jumped the gun, the fast jump have gun on list. I think pin tail maybe just kind of a little, one of those species you want a little high count species that people kill 25 or something. But, you know, the biological diagnostics of scaup and redheads and several other species, is far more vulnerable than pin tails. And yet you can shoot two of those birds, you see what I’m saying. And then only one pin tail, so I think they did jump the gun and I really do. And you know what, and I’ll tell you this, it’s really interesting, just go google and search and read up on if you can read that scientific kind of stuff. But you know, people say, well, you know, they’re killing all the birds down in Mexico that’s why we don’t have a pin tail up there man, that is absolutely positively a falsehood. That is not the truth. We got to feed the world, okay. The world has got too eat and its all conservation is important to feeding the world in the future. And so back in the late 70s, early 80s, those no-till farmers really caught on. We’ve got two things going on up in the prairie pothole region. One, you’ve got short grass prairies are the most easily converted into agriculture. And two, you’ve got the onset late 70s, early 80s and no-till farmers. Anybody all you guys out there, you know anything about the farm bill knows that if you don’t install conservation practices, you don’t get funded. And so no-till farming has taken over, especially up in that part of the world. And these pin tails in a long necks they’ve got, those pin tail hen like a city short grass prairie on nest. They raised their head like a periscope look around if predators comes and then they back down and when they fly back up to the Dakotas or some of the breeding areas up here they’re going and they return it and its last year something that was sitting on the field, that’s where they make a nest. And you know, for every pin tail’s kill, there’s tens of thousands of nest mechanically disturbed when they’re coming to put in this year’s crop. That’s what’s happening to the pin tail. That’s been documented just, it’s scientifically proven that’s what’s happening to the pin tail, you know I’m saying, they’re succumbing into agricultural practices. And, so you know.

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, hold on, hey before you leave this no-till conversation and we’re going to follow this up after finish answering this question. I want you to talk about a little bit in that central flyway. What’s happening with the no-till practices and why there is this, I don’t say, I’m not going to say it’s an illusion of the migration shifting a little bit west. But we’re going to talk about that. Go ahead and finish your answer.

Ramsey Russell: It could be. And I don’t know a thing about it to speculate on that kind of stuff, man. But I know this, I know that there’s a lot of variability in numbers and sentencing and the way they do this thing, there’s funding issues, the Fish and Wildlife is wrestling with, you know, kind of big fat bogeyman. They’ve got budget issues like everybody else. The truth matter is what’s being surveyed and what’s not being surveyed and always surveyed and ducks and when is enough is enough, you know what I’m saying? Because it’s like I know you can flash delta in Alaska, the drought in the prairie pothole region pin tail will move and I know that the Yukon delta up there were at times, have a third of the world population of pin tails breeding up there in Alaska, so, like I gave an example I said before, but like a couple of years ago, it’s crazy, the Atlantic brant population went from 60 days two brant a day to all of a sudden next year boom, we’re going to shoot 30 days one brant because there’s 120,000 of them missing. They are good to gone, we don’t have enough and something you know, and then you know, and lot of Bob just, we’re talking a lot of captains up there saying, look, you know, you can’t just shut it off, so this year we’re going to shoot 31, they sure going to shoot 31, next year’s there ain’t going to be a brant hunting man. These things are about to go extinct. Well, the following year, they go do surveys and they go, oh, we missed this 120,000 breeding pair last year. How did you do that? How did you miss 120,000 breeding pairs of birds? You know what I’m saying? But they did. And so, you know, silence and silence is not a perfect and the numbers aren’t perfect, but it happens. And I just think by the time you put some, the emotional equation into it, mix with a little science and little politics, here we are stuck with one pin tail. I’ll tell you anybody that went up to Canada Prairie this year to duck hunt here in September, October will tell you pin tail sure didn’t look like they were hurt. And I mean, I’ve never seen to me can tell in my life, I saw Saskatchewan back in September. It was spectacular. It was unbelievable flocks of 1500 working the fields at times. It was amazing how many pin tail they were. Who knows what the number we know are.

Rocky Leflore: Well, they came back out with that secondary count and they said that they hadn’t, the population hadn’t dropped as much as they first thought. And it almost would have been fine if there wouldn’t have been but you know, if they’ve left the bag limits, the same would have been fine.

Ramsey Russell: Then why are they changing back?

Rocky Leflore: Yeah, I mean, Daniel’s one of your closest compadres that to Run-N-Gun Adventures I’m going to talking about him again. But Daniel said, this is the most pin tails that I have seen a long time and they’re having to hold off and just shoot the drakes because there’s so many coming in that really picking their shots with all the pin tails that are there. They’re trying not to shoot a hen.

Ramsey Russell: And at a time we hunters collectively meet to recruit more and have more and retain more hunters to remain politically relevant, Fish and Wildlife government cut back to one. And whereas those hunters can enjoy shooting that extra pin tails this year, those birds are going to just die of natural attrition anyway, most of it. You can’t stock pile ducks, that’s the one thing I’ve learned, I’ve been taught to believe. You can’t stock pile ducks. I mean there’s just one botulism outbreak or one drought a year or one something from having problems and you can’t, you just can’t stockpile ducks man. Birds have a real interesting dynamic. I mean, I know you hear about the band recovery on 20, some odd year old birds within today, the average life span of a duck is a year or less, you know, and it’s just, you want to think, you like to think, you got to think that everybody up there doing the best they can on managing these resource or something like pin tail limit makes you wonder, you know.

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, I have to ask you this because if there’s a smarter person when it comes to teal out there, I’d like to know who it is because there’s so many resources that follow you during teal season. I have to ask you this and I wish we would have got you back on an earlier podcast, but I want to ask you this, can you recap how teal season went this year? All of those teal.

“Blue-winged teal season… you’ll see them mixed with mallards and pintails.”

Ramsey Russell: Man, my teal season was awesome because, I left and drove up to Canada and hunted for a couple of weeks and missed the whole teal season. And I got the feel of it last year and then I could take a day or two off and I did. But, it was a huge disappointment and my expectation would have been crushed if I had stayed home, my camp didn’t kill anything. Some of the best camps in Texas and Louisiana I know had a very poor season. It was very, very poor. And you know, always the optimist. I was sitting there looking at all that horrific rainfall they’ve got in Texas, all of the water on the landscape, a massive push, massive production of birds up north and right about the time teal season started rolling around, we had that super full moon and well on the northern front coming and thinking this is going to be unbelievable. For some reason they didn’t matter of fact I shot quite a few blue wings up in Saskatchewan. I mean, you know the, not the fields, you shoot the mallard pin tail, you hunt these tiny little potholes, you get into the gadwall and teal. We shot blue wings up there when guys back home were singing the blues because they want to blue wing teal and just, it is what it is. I mean, you know, it was like I was telling you earlier, you know, tough hunting makes for tough hunters and that’s just the truth, you all don’t want to go out there and shoot, but trust me, we will be out there if you didn’t nobody that they’re watching sunrise. But you know, average duck hunting is a lot different than the really good days and really bad days and most of duck hunting is average duck hunting, we’re dealing with the weather, we’re dealing with migration all type stuff and it just is what it is. I mean in Mexico, I’m down here and sit down here for three or four days scout and seeing tons of birds and more than, you know, the water fell out one duck hold left holding the blind and today we had a 22 mile an hour wind, we only decided to hunt it just was not the place, it wasn’t the ‘X’ it was somewhere between ‘F’ and ‘U’. And we got some birds, but it wasn’t what we wanted. And, you know, it’s just, sometimes you just got to roll up your sleeves and get after them. I mean, you know, it’s like I’ve always said the location changes, but the rules of the game don’t and that’s really, you know, you see so many guys online talking about the movies and you know, ganging up on the guys, man, let alone duck hunters and what I see is guys getting frustrated by killing ducks It’s not like they were on television. You know when you watch a television episode, you’re looking at 4, 5 or more days of hard hunting diluted down in 22 minutes of reel and that’s not reality man, reality is just getting out there and join them and playing the hand you get dealt and that’s really what I enjoy a lot about it, you know I’m saying, you know, somebody asked me last year Rocky, it was a good morning baby. We hit it just right and got to draw to spot to a willow break which is mediocre duck hunting at best. I believe that if you can conceptually kill ducks where I hunt at home, you can kill ducks anywhere. It’s not a game, it’s never a game and you got to play by the rules. You got to honor it, man. You got to be keen. You got to be the right location to spread out right, you don’t miss, don’t stare on your phone because that party comes blowing through your decoys while you’re sitting there text home maybe the difference in your limits or getting stung. You got to play by the rules. We were out there hunting one day and it was beautiful. I had to push some skim ice off, put a few decoys out, gadwall was just buzzing all around me landing on the ice and I get back to the blind, the guy goes, you sure you done? Like yeah I’m done, then why’d you come? I got 5 minutes. And I was done 5 minutes after the whistle blew 10 minutes after starting time out. I mean just 10 minutes of shooting boom-boom gadwall on your face, he quickly shot limit and we were sitting there talking birds just falling in you know his friend, I just don’t get it you go all over the world, all the different places you go why do you hunt here? You can go after this stuff every time you’re home you’re out here and you’re hunting and you know heck, like I’ll be honest with you, a lot of my hunts at home we’ll come out with six ducks man come out with three ducks or two duck’s a piece and a lot of them do that he said, I don’t understand you know why you choose to hunt here and I’m like well you know if I’m going to go sit in 200 pounds of corn, shoot 50 rose bill decoys, oh yeah, I do that. If I was down there in Mexico and hunt like this, go here and do that. I do that but you know here you’ve got to play by the rules and I like that. I like having to earn those ducks. And, you know, I know we all get four stages, five stages of hunter everybody’s got their own thing. I get it. And I’m raising two teenagers, you know, 18 or 20 year old. They ain’t about what days about they’re bout a whole different experience than what I get out of duck hunt anymore. And what I got a duck hunting more is just being there with my dog and the right people and the good conversations, happened to play by those rules and earn that duck and if you can do that, then you see hunting all over the world, pick a continent and then I’ll tell you a situation we dealt with it in. It makes you better duck hunter. And, one thing we were talking about this in the bind this morning how I’ve got a really, really, really good staff down here. I put them against anybody in the world, really hard working, they know a lot about it but I notice when you go somewhere like Argentina and Mexico or Netherlands or Sweden or pick a country that has just super abundance of shooting opportunities, what you said is a lack of know-how. It’s like the easier it is to shoot a bunch of ducks without doing anything the less people really know about placing decoys and being concealed and calling them just right or calling them when you don’t need to and playing by those rules. And so this morning we get set up. I sketched it out five times to them last night, here’s how we’re going to put the decoys in the dark and soon the light came up a little bit we radio them and they came back out and got in a boat with them and talked up a big old hole and put the mojos where we want them down and check just right. And then we did that period of birds coming right where we want. The bird were close morning flight work. It’s just, but that’s what I get out of the duck hunting anymore. So to me anybody, I’ve hunted with would tell you, I like to pull trigger Rocky, but you know, it’s more to it, there’s so much more to it than that, you what I’m saying, it’s talking first about not just think about this, think about last season, think about last weekend. Just think about your duck hunt last weekend, just think about it now. I guarantee you ain’t thinking about a bunch of wet dead duck piling up in the back of your ranger. You think about laughing, you thinking about man that bird came right in, I called him, I shoot him come right in and landed where I want him to in that right little spot we carved out for. That’s what we all remember the food and the laugh and good times that retrieve, ain’t no way he’s got that duck because he have that dog go rooted out. That’s what we all live for, don’t you think?

Rocky Leflore: Oh, I fully agree with you. That’s what you remember. Let me ask you one, this is something that josh and I have talked about multiple times over the past few months and it was a hunt you did last spring and watching the, not watching but seeing the pictures and it was so mesmerizing. You did a flooded timber hunt in Australia.

Ramsey Russell: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Rocky Leflore: Can you talk about that just a little bit?

Ramsey Russell: Look right about the time you think you’ve seen and done everything and duck hunt, you walk into 1000 acre public land swamp and have it to yourself for two days and they were just, I mean this massive old, they call the river red gums. Massive, I mean 10 men couldn’t hold hands and hug that tree and still touch, I mean massive trees and, but we walked into this thing, I didn’t know what we were, I had no idea, I thought we just walking through the woods till we get water. And then when we had water a little, I thought we were just going to walk through that or somebody or something out there he knew about again, he just going on a hunch. If somebody told about, his buddy told to stop and, they were walking out through that just become damn it, I mean I’m just like man unbelievable. There’s this of this home, its loud noises all over these thousands and thousands of cockatoo up in the canopy, feels like parents on the birds just buzzing around squawking and about this time and you know how you’re walking through the woods, you hear this herd of beer bust out of the swamp, now do you like to collect up and water on dry ground? But I hear there’s a herd of deer bust out. I looked to my left about 75 yards away, there goes the big herd charging through the water and it’s not deer, its kangaroo. And I’m just, I’m enthralled. I’m like, this is unbelievable. So we walk a little bit further in there, all of a sudden these black duck start getting out of the shadows and these little grey teal start jumping up in front of us and we find this little open where one of the big tree have fallen they said well lets hunt here and we set up and shot a few ducks and grey and good day, you know, we just kind of scouting and he was looking at his phone doing something, so I’m like what you doing Glenn? He goes well, I’m trying to figure out where we’re going hunting tomorrow. Oh I know where we’re going to hunt tomorrow and he go where, I said we’re going to hunt here. And, we both got on the phone and found this bigger hole a little bit deeper in the swamp and easier to guide to go around the other way. And we got there in the morning and we had about two miles down this section line road on edge of this timber I’m on the other side of the big old hatchet. He was just cutting along with like a, I mean like if we’re going to buy a fast man walking on crushes going down the road because the kangaroo jumping off past jumps across the fence and run off into the woods and you want to hit one, you know, like a deer. So we part, he sort through the decoys, he’s starting to load the sled man, we’ve got a pretty good hike now. We’ve got about a mile hike, get back to where we go and to get to the woods and I said, well I think that’s too much. As long as I grab two black ducks and that monkey duck. And so you think? I said, yeah, I grabbed, hey, look, I want a lawyer. I grabbed the mojo duck that took off from the shadows and I was gone. He grabbed two black ducks and called up with and we walked down, you know, we got to where we were just walking down this levee, we knew our pin was over to the left and we started picking our way through the timber and opened up in this beautiful elopement duck, started kind of getting out, we kept walking and kept walking, duck kept getting out, we finally found the spot we want to be where the wind was right. Folks leaned up against this huge tree and took the mojo out and they can see the mojo, you know the buzz around but when they set up and got direct downwind of it to get their landing, you know, landing pattern, they couldn’t really see it. I stuck it out about 35-40 yards, I put those two black duck decoys right kind of where we wanted to kill him and it was just the limits 10 apiece in good wet years. And it was just absolutely amazing. It’s like, you know, I don’t know what I expected when I went down there. You know, you got some pretty odd stuff like, there’s pretty cool species, pretty, I think like a pink year duck and, you know kangaroos and all that crazy stuff. But you know, it was so similar to every single thing, every duck hunter you know has experienced, but yet it was worlds apart. And that’s what, it’s really one of my top favorite hunts of all time was going to Australia. And see I just scratched the surface. We were in Victoria province and it’s a big country and we were in Victoria problems and we roamed the whole province, we hunted rivers, we hunted flooded timber, we hunted lakes, ponds, there’s little wetlands and stuff and had a great time shot all the species and just kind of all this time, but they’re still southern Australia, still Victoria. I mean excuse me. There is still a New South Wales, there’s still northern territories. You can take a year to get it all sorted. You know and the craziest thing, I’ll tell you the craziest thing the plane was so low. I’ve been traveling forever because our flight got cancelled. They put it up in a hotel, blah, blah, blah. I get to the curb and here comes land. Man you know, I want to speak and I’m here says, well you want to go to the house or do you want those duck hunt said, dude, I been incarcerated an airport hotel for 50 hours. I’m ready to go, let’s go hunting, I’ll deal with sleep later. So we go grab a cheeseburger and hit some land. And he had told me, hey, great finger duck calls, now just to understand clearly I hunted together commander’s corn in Arkansas a few years ago, I got to know each other. So bring your call you might find useful down here. So brought a mallard call, never dreaming anything that sounds like a mallard. And we’ve been there 20 minutes, in the hole, it was like a big, huge, massive cattail marsh. We went back to the center for the mud motor and sit kind of at the center of this whole, about 20 minutes, 30 minutes into the hunt, a trio of black duck comes racing down the other side and just instinctively I grab my call and quacked and two of them just kept going but the third had peeled off and came right into the decoy shot right on gun barrel. And I like, I got my first pacific black duck. And I looked and said, you know these things like duck calling said, but he damn sure like yours, they sound like a mallard. They’re just another little variation of mallards and that, you know, look, there’s some really cool bird down their species. You couldn’t dare lay your hand on anywhere else. But I come home, which one of these things with my favorite I don’t want to say pacific black duck because like hunting mallards, you know, that’s exactly what we’re doing in Mexico right now and chasing these Mexican mallard, Mexican ducks and because they’re like mallards, you know.

Rocky Leflore: That is, look everybody just listening to this, you need to go back to Ramsey’s page and recaps on some of these pictures from his Australian travel because it is really cool stuff. Hey, Ramsey I’m not going to let you get out of here without talking about the US hunt list real quick because most of the guys that are listening to this podcast are looking for great hunt in the US this year. Let me ask you this first, who right now is having a lot of success hunting on your US hunt list?

“I shot my first canvasback this morning. It was unbelievable!”

Ramsey Russell: I think all of our guys, all the guys from Texas are steady and the great thing about Texas especially we started getting kind of south Texas, those two guys, the great thing about south Texas is you’ve got options. If a duck’s aren’t playing, so you want to go shoot redheads, redheads aren’t playing, you can come in and shoot duck. Those are, if that didn’t happen and you got the option for geese, you’ve got options and plan A B and C is, that’s just a good thing. You know what I’m saying, we don’t have that, I don’t have that back home. I’m all in on going duck hunting. And that’s a good thing. They’re chipping away at him steady. The guys out in Washington State, oh boy, they’re having the season man it’s just, it’s unbelievable what they always do. They always have great season and who the heck, that I know would complaints about seven mallards moments, you know, and they’re doing great. Those boys up in north Texas, north Texas outfitters, just a mile north of Dallas, man, they’ve had a great season this year. They had a really good season. I think the guys down in Louisiana chipping away at them pretty steady to, and I think, you know, I don’t know what you’re probably looks like rocky, but we’re dry, man, we have pumped every square inch of water we can pump and the Good Lord will have to fill the rest. And it’s not just my problem it’s the whole region its dry, just like it was last year and what I think is happening, I don’t know, I’m not home. I don’t know what this front did, but if I had imagined dry as the delta and Arkansas here passed off on the show about it and some of these other areas it’s just drive, well, I know it to be. I made a lot of these birds just lying down the gulf coast to wait it out. You know I’m saying, they got to go with their habitat, you know, and I know, I’ll say this if you want opinion, I’ll get you an opinion man, everybody saying man, we got water and nobody else does, that’s what I want. Baloney man because right now in Mississippi and I’m sure parts of Arkansas and everywhere else, you know, there’s nowhere a duck can land without getting shot. You know, we can have a whole program on the pros and cons of the federal refuge system and how it may or may not have changed migration and what it does affect homes. But in the day ducks, if you want to kill ducks all season, you got to have habitat, but you’ve got to have places that ducks can go and not get shot where they can just fly off a little waves and sit and eat and do all their life cycle requirements until they’re ready to fly back off and get shot at again. And that’s just the truth matter. You know, I was talking to Rick Kaminski, old Mississippi talking Scott baker, who’s a state waterfowl biologist for a long time, you talk to anyone of all things equal, the more water you got on the landscape, the more ducks you’re going to have. That’s why that Northeast Arkansas so strong up there because especially in a wet year, they start flooding, they’re just so much contiguous water up there. The birds can, they got a lot of water enough to hang out in and right now I’m just like my answer, I think a lot of these ducks, all they’ve really got going for them right now is that Louisiana gulf coast and there’s a lot of, couldn’t have hunted down there getting action, but there’s still big enough ducks can find place to get out of the way. They’ve even shown, some of the studies have even shown those pin tails and other species canvas backs and scaup they’ll get offshore. Man, they will go out of the marsh into the gulf and lay up just to rest. And so man, we need some rain, it’s so bad, it’s not even funny, you know I’m saying, we badly need some rain in the delta. If we’re going to have a good season, good nesting season.

Rocky Leflore: I’ll tell you this Ramsey, I think that’s what happened with the gray duck with the gray duck being the predominant species in Mississippi that I’m used to killing. I think that’s what’s happened in the past two years with these dry falls. I think those suckers have just totally passed us up and went down to the Louisiana coast.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And what if we get water, you know the migration, is multidirectional. You know, you can see plenty of day when the Arkansas season split hits our ducks get in Mississippi. I mean all you got to do is fly, fly an hour and they’re not getting shot at and you know, last year, what I saw happening is it was dry and everything else and a lot of ducks we all know went south but going over two or three weeks of the season they came back or more. Those birds are hot bags we get, they love freshwater, they love blue water. And if we start getting some rain and some of these cracks will fill up Mississippi we will get some ducks. Did you read that thing and you want to talk about a great paper. Great story, try to cook over there delta wildlife, they want their lands correlates. It could be a good guy to talk about this about rocky because I was just, I thought was one of the best things I’ve read in a long time short razy did and delta wildlife. And he got to look at some data. He and his staff got to look at some data and they said we ain’t reading it right. We got to be wrong. So they took the data and the Fish and Wildlife and went to ducks unlimited biologist and stuff and asked them and they said, no you’re reading it right. And what they shown it is in the last 20 years and ask anybody dumbass ducks they’ll tell you, you know duck hunting down by the way that we don’t lost a lot of duck when you get the duck we ever had to go to die. And what they’re shown, the data show is in the last 20 years, Mississippi duck population has drastically increased and that’s, man I’ll tell you what that makes you think when you read that, but what they showed that they started looking harder at the data, it was just the ducks in the Mississippi Delta are distributed it’s evenly inexorably as they used to be, but now they’re more heavily concentrated in these little hubs and what their belief is and I tend to agree, what their belief is that in those hubs were the most ducks are concentrated, you’ve got more water concentrated on the local landscape. And they made several I think very good examples how, you know all pay for example do it. But maybe it’s not as good because a lot of the waters covered up right now and brush and you’ve got a lot of bags is pulling water off. You know, they don’t want water on the field all where, because they get after it and capture the greatest commodity prices front. And they were talking about how Howard miller has such a great preponderance of ducks during the duck season, but how some of the properties next to it that instead of having these big cat fish pond size sales, water bodies out there have these tiny little potholes and they don’t have mere the ducks on them that just mile away, Howard miller has. I think it made some very interesting reading over the landscape has changed so in Mississippi dealt with that in a dry year, we all see it, but even a wet year, we don’t see the favorable results of it, the same. I think it’s a very, very interesting story they did and,

Rocky Leflore: I think it all goes back to management exactly what you’re saying is how you manage what you have, whether it’s 40 acres, just I’ve heard some wise people say it doesn’t matter if you have 20 acres or if you have 2000, it’s all how you manage it. And it goes back,

Ramsey Russell: 50,000 acres of water. I mean, just imagine a duck cruising at 10,000 ft. looking down, boy, he’s going to see a lot of stuff on 50,000 acres to play around on versus 250 acres. You know I’m saying, it’s going to attract and it’s going to register with them but biological cubits says, let’s go hang out over here.

Rocky Leflore: So it goes back to your original point, it goes back to one of your points that you brought up in what you’re talking about a minute ago. If you have 250 acres, let’s just say you have 200 acres to 200, 250 whatever it may be, if you manage those properly, now management can be food management, can be pressure because he goes back to something you said just a minute ago. The ducks are being shot at on the landscape that’s there for them to use right now. And one of the biggest faults in duck hunting and see if you back me up on this is over pressure. A lot of duck holes get over pressure to hunt too much and ducks are going to leave.

Ramsey Russell: Man, I don’t want I got mixed feelings about that, you know, I really do because when the ducks are in an area, they’re in an area where it’s hot and hot and what is not is not and you know, I think we can overpressure them, at the same time I mean you got to hunt because you dropped by the duck holes and you see ducks on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. You know and you’re saving, you’re saving for Saturday morning. You know, well what have you been looking at them this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Where you going to be hunting Saturday morning? Maybe those ducks are gone. Maybe this front blowing the heck out of there. You got to hit them when the iron hot. You know, I tell you what, if we get in there today and the iron is hot, they might still be hot tomorrow, you know and I don’t disagree with you. Maybe what I would say, maybe in terms of pressure, I wouldn’t think of putting pressure on the duck hole as much as there’s so little water resource in the region like the Mississippi delta that we’re going out hunting them just looks too much pressure on the area and the ducks don’t have anywhere to escape. And you know, boy I tell you, its apples and oranges, when you start talking Mexico or when you start talking Argentina or you start talking some of these other areas because you know, in Argentina there’s just so much habitat. I mean just imagine the entire Mississippi Delta we’ve got. I don’t know how many outfitters 10 or 15 let’s say in some particular corner of the campus down there but you can imagine the Mississippi Delta with 30 outfitters or 30 groups hunting today. That’s it.

Rocky Leflore: Not much pressure.

Ramsey Russell: No. Yeah, there’s not much pressure, you know. One of my favorite places you know, we’re kind of particular about Argentina duck hunts I’ve had people you know if you want a five star lodge and elegant food, take your old lady to Italy. If you want to shoot ducks call me. Okay, that’s what we choose. We choose high quality hunting when we found that just good Mississippi duck camp style accommodations. You know, just good authentic accommodations. Those operators that get it and manage right and go after those ducks right, produced consistently way more ducks in the Ladida’s outfit. There’s plenty a lot of you when you do a lot of die out there. Goodbye its local waterfowl banquet. We’ll get you a lot of the outfit and come home and talk about 15 ducks a shot drake. You know, one of my favorite places and it is so remote, you can’t hardly get there from here. There’s a kind of place, the first morning I set foot in it about 6, 7 years ago shot a bunch of ducks and I just looking out over the water as far as the human eye can say it look like I imagined Louisiana marsh market hunting 150 years ago. There were ducks trading everywhere all day. And I got back to camp Martha goes, well, what do you think? I said, I want my ashes scattered at this marsh. And she burst out laughing. I said, no, I’m serious. I’ve walked all over the earth and I finally found paradise it’s an 80,000 acre marsh. 80,000 acres. And they don’t bait you go out in the blind by yourself with a guide to the guide not a bird boy and he whistles and he calls and the scouts and he build a blind and you hunt in the purest way in the most efficient environment. And what we’ve seen in the years we’ve hunt there, we’re having clients that has haunted 10 years down in Argentina. They’ve 20 years down in Argentina. One of them come back and tell us that was the best place they’ve ever seen. The best place they’ve ever duck hunted for none and it’s no bait, it’s just pure. And we’re bringing out numbers, I can tell you this a team of seven guys, we’re going to shoot in five days or a club like willow break do for the next three years. Is that astounding? But that marsh is so productive, it satisfies all the lifecycle requirements of all the birds at any given day, five people hunting 80,000 acres. That’s just amazing. You know, it’s amazing. And so, I think pressure has a lot to do with it, but you know, I would kill anybody out there listening, you got ducks in the duck holes, you better get asked, you know, because they’re ain’t going to be there next front it hits and they placed on this, it’s time to turn to ice. They are going to move. You get some new water, the water this deeper. There’s a million different things a duck stop using, stopped using with the dunk hole for and they get stale and quit working. So getting while the getting’s good and on. Yeah, I don’t believe in the duck hole hunted out in day, I just don’t. And, I believe giving ducks the afternoon hours will, a couple of days a week off and just get back in there and get settled and do what they got to do. You know what the side die, there’s a good thing.

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, when are you headed back home and what’s your future plans after you get back?

Ramsey Russell: I’m coming home Monday morning and we’ve got shows coming up so we’ll hunt and have some holiday time, first week of January and kicks off our convention season, we’ll be in Dallas all week and I got baby’s coming up the first week of February and then things get done. I’m going to be home from Las Vegas two weeks. I’ve seen two days and leave for a country called Azerbaijan and I’ll be home for it, if my timing and everything goes right, miracles and planes fly like folks, I’ll be home for a day and a half, be back down here to Mexico for a couple of weeks and, then I get a few weeks off and going to Russia and hunt capercaillie. It’s just back into Argentina for the month, you know, so, but it work and play man, same old.

Rocky Leflore: Well, there’s one thing,

Ramsey Russell: We’d do an interview from Azerbaijan. You know, everybody heard that, scratching their head going, where the hell is that Azerbaijan, you find it on a map you’re like, man, that guy is crazy. And, but anyway, I’ call you from Azerbaijan and we’ll do an interview.

Rocky Leflore: Look, hey, before I let you go, its Getducks.com. Now it goes back to what Ramsey, just said. And I’ve gotten to know a lot of these guys that Ramsey deals with, especially on the US hunt list, Getducks.com. Look, it is the list of the most reputable guides out there. It goes back to what Ramsey said,

Ramsey Russell: Let me follow up on that Rocky. Let me follow up. We started talking about that got wrapped around an actual minutes ago, but you know, Getducks.com, we hunt all over the world and years ago we used to book in the United States and more and more and more and more bigger we got, we’re so busy with the international stuff. You know, that’s very hard to administer all the bookings and stuff in the US and more and more people were calling us because this place is on the internet, you can find anything. You know, I’m saying, it’s like anybody can find anything on the internet. The downside of that is, and anybody’s ever written enough check going somewhere to duck hunt knows this, anybody can be anything on the internet. Okay? We’re all going to have an average day and pick an outfit in the world, he’s going to have an average day. We’re not, everybody will come out looking like rock stars with bad limits but a good outfitter, he’s going to give his best. You’re going to get your money worth having a good outfitter average day or a poor day, a good outfitter work twice as hard, not half smart and you know people calling us and what referrals and stuff like that. We just found it to come to help build a network of good outfitters shortcuts. I mean you know one of crazy things go google Arkansas duck hunting and you know, how do you decide when 250 outfitters come up and somebody on Facebook something got something good to say about everyone, somebody got some bad say about everyone. How do you choose? If you don’t know. You know I’m saying, and what we did is, we know a lot of duck hunter we know a lot of these operators and we just started network. And one thing we do is we go and visit same as we do Argentina and Mexico where else? We don’t just say, oh yeah go this guide here and go book hunt. You know we’ve been there, I’ve met these operators and I’ve had dinner with them. I see what they do and trust me, I’ve had mediocre hunts at all of, I kept them because they’re good guys and they take burst their hunts to make that hunt happen. And that’s all you can ask for in duck hunting, you’re going to fly all the way out to watch the state of drive to Mississippi all the way down to Matagorda Bay in Texas ain’t nobody about guarantee ducks but you know that guy doing right. So what we did, we develop this resource US hunt list.com where anybody can just look it up. You don’t call Ramsey or need to the book a hunt with daniel Rebecca or Justin franklin or whomever you choose, you call them directly and you start building a relationship with them and talking their days and talking your preferences with them. So they get a real good idea of what you’re looking for and that’s just, you know what we felt like it was, it was just a good, I couldn’t wait for us to, if everybody kind of a toehold, not everybody can afford to go to Argentina. That’s an expensive proposition. It really is. But you know, all of us as duck hunters, ducks migrate and all of us as duck hunters kind of want to go somewhere else besides a regular hunting places and we just tried to build a network of good reputable outfitters in the United States that you can and Canada, I should say that you can work with, you know.

“Dry field hunts… nothing beats seeing 400 mallards lock up in a field.”

Rocky Leflore: Like I said, yeah, I mean you guys that are on duck South, you see some of these guides in the migration report that are part of Ramsey’s network and like I said, they’re going to go the extra mile to put you, they’re going to work triple hard then then the 250 that are, like Ramsey said, man, there’s a lot of gas station guide services on, you know, that pop up on Facebook and google, but the ones that Ramsey has listed, I’m telling you they’re going to go the extra mile.

Ramsey Russell: Good guy’s man, they’re good guys and got good outfits. There is one thing I tell you to, not all of them have lodges, not all of them are expensive, a lot of are day hunts, you know, and it’s good, I mean well I’ll tell you one of, well you just hunt around and traveling and one day, you know, you find yourself on the front range of Colorado, just outside of Denver, I’ve been there a million times never done a goose hunting there. They’re jumping to a blind, the last pass outfitters and it was just unbelievable. It was unbelievable. You stay in a hotel, you eat locally, go kick around Denver if you want to meet them in the morning and go jumping to go on some of the best, it’s like I brought my good call and you know, I’m going to break out my good call, to wit call a goose head you know. The first flock of geese went over them for jumped on the call sounds like a flock of geese, just flown into pit with us, I just put my good call up, get the shooting, but anyway, they’re good guys and it’s affordable, you know, I’m saying most of this stuff is affordable. You know what we really wanted. If we’re not looking for expensive, we’re not looking for any fancy, we’re looking for good credible guys with good experiences and kind of what I envisioned because you know for a guy like me that’s got two sons, they’re out for Christmas, we can jump into a truck and go on a little weekend trip and go shoot some ducks or new species and make country and experience some hunting outside of our own backyard. That’s kind of what my visions was for building US hunt list.

Rocky Leflore: Well look, it’s Getduck.com, you’ll see the all the worldwide hunts that Ramsey has for waterfowl. Like said, you can go on there and you can find the US hunt list. It’s his recommended guide in the United States. Ramsey, I know you got to get back outfit this afternoon. Look, I want to thank you for joining the End of the line podcast and I want to thank you for listening today. Ramsey brought a lot of good stuff. Ramsey, any final words before we go?

Ramsey Russell: No man Rocky. I like what you’re doing. I like to see, MS ducks get a heartbeat again. It’s a lot of fun seeing those familiar faces and new faces back on Facebook and heck I screamed too and look at the watch the podcast and listen to the podcast and watch videos same as everybody else. And it’s just, it’s very exciting times. And I appreciate what you’ve been doing, to get that obese going again.

Rocky Leflore: Well, I appreciate it. I mean that means a lot coming from you because, I’ve got a list of about 5-10 people that I highly look forward to talking to and highly respect in this industry and you are definitely one of those guys.

Ramsey Russell: I appreciate it, Rocky. I’ll see you soon.

Rocky Leflore: Okay, I appreciate you joining the podcast. Thank you for joining this edition of The End of the line podcast power by Ducksouth.com.

[End of Audio]

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