Ramsey Russell of Get Ducks

Casey Combest: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Made in Mississippi Podcast where we talk about entrepreneurship in our state. I’m here today with Ramsey Russell of get ducks. Ramsey, tell me a little bit about yourself.

“Born and raised in Mississippi and I grew up in the Mississippi Delta and duck hunts kind of a thing back then, back in the 70s duck hunting was a thing of the Delta.”

Ramsey Russell: Born and raised in Mississippi and I grew up in the Mississippi Delta and duck hunts kind of a thing back then, back in the 70s duck hunting was a thing of the Delta. Deer hunting was for the hill country and we moved down to Byram, grew up in Jackson metropolitan area since 79 plus or minus less and except. Travel around in Mississippi State University in Grenada and different jobs and whatnot. We’ve been in Rankin County for nearly 20 years now.

Casey Combest: Yeah. And what’s something if you had to go back 20 years and somebody said you’d be doing what you do every day, what’s something that would just surprise you as a 20 year old?

“I hit a crossroads and just like my father in law warned me he said, you know one of these days you can hit a crossroad you’re gone have to make a choice and step off decide one or the other and we did. I mean, we took a leap of faith about 11 years ago and never looked back.”

Ramsey Russell: That would surprise me because at 20 years old I couldn’t have imagined. I wanted to be – actually I went to college because I wanted to be a whitetail deer biologist. And guys like Jim Crowe like Bob Zeigler, whom I worked for, Harry Jacobson at Mississippi State man, I wanted to be them, I wanted to be a doctor deer. And actually ended up working down in south Texas in my early 20s, very early 20s down in south Texas, 107,000 acre ranch just within an hour of the Mexican border. Whitetail deer like back in 1990, the state of Mississippi couldn’t imagine, Boone and Crockett just everywhere. Free range. Unbelievable. And of course don’t shoot the bucks, we shot the antler less deer as a part of whitetail deer management like to hurt her mama, shoot some javelinas, shoot some hogs else work, has nothing to do 30 miles behind that locked gate but work and entertain yourself. But a crazy thing happened given the go ahead to intensively manage whitetail deer by shooting antlerless deer became work and it wasn’t really fun, it was work. And every time we drop the disk and those food plots start planting. I mean, there was nothing but wooly crocheting and while sunflowers, the mourning doves just swarmed to them. And that particular period of time it was very wet consecutively during the growing seasons there was abundance of bobwhite quail and every time the wind blew out of the north beginning around thanksgiving those stock tanks would fill up with ducks and it kind of brought me back to my roots and even then I didn’t think I never dreamed of something like we’ve gone on to do now but it changed my life. It brought me back to my roots but I would have said you’re crazy. I really and truly by the time I graduated Mississippi State University I really wanted to work for the federal government, work on a refuge, wear the brown uniform make the world a better place. And I did have a chance at that, I did it for a little bit. And left the federal government transfer from Fish and Wildlife Service to the US Department of Agriculture which brought me down to the Pearl Office we covered 20 something counties as a forester with US Department of Agriculture and this little side business and interest of get ducks kind of turned into something. I hit a crossroads and just like my father in law warned me he said, you know one of these days you can hit a crossroad you’re gone have to make a choice and step off decide one or the other and we did. I mean, we took a leap of faith about 11 years ago and never looked back.

Casey Combest: And fast forward we’re going to go all the way back and kind of walk through your journey, just give us a snapshot where are you today? Like what are you doing that’s so crazy? I mean, you mentioned before we started recording some of the travel you do and I mean, it’s pretty wild.

“I told somebody one time and it’s really the truth, we talked to duck hunters and duck outfitters, 365 days a year that consumes my life and as we started off on Water Fowl magazine one time described me as the Christopher Columbus of international duck hunting and I like that.”

Ramsey Russell: My wife and I – getducks.com is a booking agency and I don’t like that word because there’s been too many examples. I’ve got too many clients that have dealt with “booking agents” that didn’t do their jobs. But there’s no other way to describe it. We organize trips duck hunting trips around the world and most of our clients are very busy people making money to pay for this hunt or working and pulling a little wagon full of mortgage and car payments and everything else life and we do all the heavy lifting man, these are trips of a lifetime, whether a guy is going as close as Mexico, which you can get to in a day or Argentina, an overnight flight or way off deep in the bushes. Places like Pakistan, Azerbaijan, New Zealand, Australia we’re on 6 continents of duck hunting and that’s what we do. I told somebody one time and it’s really the truth, we talked to duck hunters and duck outfitters, 365 days a year that consumes my life and as we started off on Water Fowl magazine one time described me as the Christopher Columbus of international duck hunting and I like that. Finding new locations and looking and exploring.

Casey Combest: So, you’ve done duck hunts in Pakistan?

Ramsey Russell: We do a duck hunt in Pakistan. It is unbelievable. It truly is unbelievable. And now look you want to talk about some dinnertime conversation with your wife and people that love you tell them you’re going to Pakistan to shoot ducks and I’ve actually had a few clients back out man, my wife won’t let me go, but it really truly is. And I was speaking with a local entrepreneur here, BC Rogers runs a beautiful business called Wren and Ivy, they make a lot of very nice gear for hunters. And we were recording the other day on our podcast and he says Ramsey, I’ve known you long enough and every time I talk to you, your eyes light up, your voice lights up, I don’t think you’re addicted to duck hunting, I think it’s the dead gum traveling and the cultures and the experiences and really I don’t think as much – I think there’s a lot of truth to what he said because I’m that guy that for Christmas or birthday or whatever holiday it was, my grandmother gave me a subscription to a National Geography Magazine and I poured over it and now I think, man, I’m that guy that walked through the pages of National Geography with a shotgun and hip boots on.

“That’s right. And it’s neat to so many times we see successful entrepreneurs where there’s these multiple threads of interest and for you, it sounds like travel and duck hunting for me it’s entrepreneurship and music and as you guys are listening right now, just a little aside, I would encourage you think about what are those threads in your life that you’re interested in? Because a lot of times the end of that is something really cool and something special and this unique spin that you get to bring to the world.”

Casey Combest: That’s right. And it’s neat to so many times we see successful entrepreneurs where there’s these multiple threads of interest and for you, it sounds like travel and duck hunting for me it’s entrepreneurship and music and as you guys are listening right now, just a little aside, I would encourage you think about what are those threads in your life that you’re interested in? Because a lot of times the end of that is something really cool and something special and this unique spin that you get to bring to the world. And so no matter what business you’re in or what business you’re thinking about starting to look for those threads, look in your past and see what’s led you to where you are today. And Ramsey speaking of your past, let’s rewind the clock a little bit. Let’s go back to why in the early days was duck hunting and travel such an important part of your life?

Ramsey Russell: I don’t think it really was. In the early days, I mean really and truly I was raising the Delta, my people hunted my grandfather duck hunted. He really kind of – I came along and got duck hunting age by the time he started to fade due to health. But I heard the stories I went to the camps, I saw the stories, I spent a little time in the blind before shooting. My earliest fondest memories are dove hunting with him, that’s what really hooked me into shotgun and I tell people as much of the world as I’ve seen and still want to see my last supper hunt would be a dusty hot Mississippi opening day dove hunt with friends and family. It’s just something about the pageantry of that event I really, truly love a lot.

Casey Combest: And paint a picture for those who are hearing that right now and they’re thinking, wait a second, a dove hunt. What is that about? So, if they’re not familiar with what that opening day is like paint that picture for them.

Ramsey Russell: As a child of the Delta I thought Mississippi dove opening, which happened typically around Labor Day, I thought Labor Day was we all got out of school to go dove hunting, I had no idea it was a federal holiday, I don’t know what a federal holiday was back then. And it was time to be out in the field with a shotgun and shooting birds flying over grain field with my family and over their dogs. And I grew up as a little boy trying to beat the dogs retrieved back before I could shoot and it was just being with people. I learned this lesson in retrospect for those of you that have Children, Children don’t spell love L O V E, they spell it TIME. And it just left a very big impression on me and I really think as compared to – I do hunt big game, I do avail myself of other opportunities around the world but my passion is birds and its waterfowl because everywhere you go there are ducks, there’s 165 species plus subspecies worldwide of waterfowl. I think they’re a beautiful creature, they remind me of my roots but it’s also as opposed to say sitting in a deer stand by yourself whispering you know because there’s a deer might, you’re in a blind and there’s this whole magic and this social aspect that comes with sitting in a blind with people you care about and talking and carrying on socializing. I realized my oldest son now 22 fixing to graduate Mississippi State his senior year of high school, there’s so much, did you prepare your kid for the world? And in this day and age especially with text messages and TV and football and all the business that consumes a young man’s life, it was very hard to find time to just have those talks, but we did in a duck blind. He and I are sitting in a duck blind maybe with the brother maybe not just sitting in a duck blind, it’s not just a flurry of activity turn on a duck hunting show, it’s 22 minutes of bam, that’s not real duck hunting. Duck hunting is some ducks work, you call to them, they might start setting up, they’re responding to your calls they’re responding to your setup. You’re having a real live interaction with this bird that’s free to fly anywhere in the sky, anywhere in the world there’s no fence in the sky, he’s free to fly anywhere he wants to, you snagged him in, you’re having a conversation with him, you’re having a negotiation with him, you’re bringing him nearer to the guns and then a lot of time you’re just sitting in a blind waiting on that to happen. And that’s when real life happens because there’s no distractions. You can sit there and have those conversations with people you care about. And I’ll say one thing else and I think it’s very relevant unless you live under a rock the last couple of weeks and haven’t watched any news whatsoever. Look at what’s going on just here in America with the whole craziness and I don’t get it, I don’t get the narrative they’re trying to portray because I spend 225-250 days a year traveling and my friends are like a crayon box in Pakistan, in Mexico, in Argentina, in South Africa and in Central Africa around the world, different religions, different colors, different people, different backgrounds. But in a moments I spend with them, we’re all just duck hunters. We go to camp and we share meals together, we share hunting stories, we share experiences, we share pictures of our families and we’re all just duck hunters in that moment and that’s what I love so much about what I do besides just shoot ducks.

Casey Combest: Sounds like you create some very special moments for people.

Ramsey Russell: We try to. I’m long enough into this – Now look getducks.com did not start like I know a lot of guys have probably been on here had a business plan and flew into it and had this business idea, we did not. It took a life of its own. And I’ll tell you how we got started was I had just left grad school, I had my first job, federal government jobs don’t pay a lot of money, especially when you’re getting started. I had my first child, I had a mortgage, I was married and I wanted to go to Canada and shoot some Canada geese like, we don’t really get the migrator Canada’s this far south anymore. My grandfather hunted them back in the 50s and in the delta they don’t migrate this far south and I really wanted to go experience that. We went to Canada and it was a train wreck. The whole hunt, we booked it through the world’s foremost outfitter. We paid a lot of money, we showed up, it was just an absolute cluster. Nothing that had been presented to us was as it appeared. And we rounded up a good hunt. Break-break I still want to go to Canada and experience really, go to the headwaters of the migration where a lot of these birds come from and experience it. And the internet was not then what it is now, you had to do a lot of due diligence and I started calling outfitters and boy, I knew what questions I asked then. And I found an outfitter in Alberta and I talked 3 or 4 grown men to go up there with me and we had a wonderful time. The following year that number doubled the following year it doubled again. And one evening after dinner outfitters said, hey, come out here with me and the boys and drink a beer, we need to talk. And I went out there and drank a beer and he says, I’d like for you to be my booking agent. I said, what the heck is a booking agent? I’m a forester for the US Federal government, what’s a booking agent? And he goes, no look man. And the whole time he’s talking his guide staff is nodding their heads like heck yeah, he’s like Ramsey, these people you’re sending us, they show up, they’re prepared, they know what to pack, they’ve got the right attitude, they know what to expect, they take care of my staff. My staff is cutting cards out here in the barn who gets to take the Mississippi boys. And he said, I’d like you to start sending me more business and I’ll compensate you a little bit, so we worked on some terms and I came back home and what do you do now with this whole new internet thing, right? And I was doing a little bit of habitat consulting back in the day and I just had this idea, I think I’ll market this guy’s hunt on a web page and that’s really very truly back in – this would have been 2000 that’s kind of how it started. And I went down to Argentina and booked a trip, I always wanted to go. It’s not all of Argentina, you can’t paint everything with a broad brush but real Argentina which we specialize in. If you want a 5 star experience and fat cigars and edible art that kind of experience, take your wife to New York City or to Italy somewhere like that. If you want to really experience what pure wild duck hunting is or like imagine it to have been back in the early 1800, late 1800, let me come show you this part of Argentina. We went it wasn’t that part of Argentina, it was a terrible experience and I realized – so anyway, as I began booking these hunts and started doing things, I realized a lot of these people, they’re just selling hunts, like it’s blue jeans at JC Penney’s, they don’t know what this hunt is, they don’t know how to prepare me, they don’t know how I need to get there, how I need to come back, they don’t know anything. They’re just selling hunt because it’s something to do and one thing led to the next. And I’m very blessed and I’m going to tell you the brains of the operation, I’m just a good looks and truth matter is both my wife is my partner and whereas I’m big picture creative and people oriented, she’s fine tooth comb detail oriented and we just – as this thing kind of sort of started getting out of hand she took over the smart part the bookkeeping and all that good business. And we really fortunately very luckily one step leads to another, it became something, it became out of hand, it became to where one day I did realize I had to – you’re going on a trip of a lifetime and you’re entrusting me with this and if I’m working for the federal government part time you don’t need my part time attention, you need my full time attention. So, we found value. We found a value that we could offer to clients and money is money and time is money but you know what? Time is the limiting factor of the 2, it’s the greatest limiting factor. We Americans especially are very busy, tireless workers who works 40 hours? Not many. Most of us work a whole lot more and time to organize, time to do this, time to go through the details of the trip and get everything lined up so that you can escape. I’ve described this before but whether if golf is your thing going on a golfing vacation to pebble Beach or going on a Disney vacation, all of these events, we do our trips of a lifetime, they’re vacation, they cost money, which take a lot of time to produce this money. But what I’ve learned is it’s got to be right. Your expectations have got to be met. We come in, we bring value to the tourists to those people if you want, we just talked about so much of the – man you go to Argentina if you want to see Buenos Aires because it’s a beautiful city, there’s tango show, there’s museums, there’s all kinds of cool stuff we’ve walked through it, we can we can lead you there. I pride myself on having been personally many times to every destination that we represent. You know we get a lot of phone calls, hey could you come and look at my operation, could you represent my operation? And sometimes I will go look and take a look at them and even develop them. We started off Canada and then Argentina we moved into Mexico and think of guys that duck hunt, think of it as a trigger pulling vacation, it’s just fun. Whereas in parts of Mississippi for example 6 ducks daily limit is plenty, it can be but it’s not a guarantee. A lot of times you go out and come back with 1 duck, no duck, 3 ducks but you can go places that you can shoot more because of hunter harvest distribution there’s greater opportunities for the really fun part of what you like to do and what we didn’t expect, what I didn’t expect, now I knew I liked to collect species the different – there’s 50 some odd species in the United States of America geese and ducks worldwide we said there’s 160 something and I’ve got clients now that collect and they began – as our business began to grow, they began to contact us and say, have you ever heard of this particular species? And it began to take a life of its own. That’s how we ended up so far off the beaten path.

Casey Combest: And you said you started this 11 years ago, is that right?

Ramsey Russell: We actually incorporated in 2003. I left the federal government 11 years ago, went into it full time all the time.

Casey Combest: I guess give me one of the – what’s been the most pivotal moment of – wow, we’ve really got something here. This is something that people really want we’re providing a great service.

Ramsey Russell: The client feedback was almost immediate. And right after the client feedback bookings began to increase, I’m proud to say, we’ve been in business, we incorporated in 2003 and we have grown every single year since. And it’s like what I tell you about a particular hunt is one thing maybe it is a little bit biased, it’s what the clients talk about that experience. And there’s a lot of satisfaction that comes from working with people and delivering experiences and there’s a lot of satisfaction that – this is not a get rich business, we make a living, but more importantly, we have a life, we’ve built a life for ourselves. I love to duck hunt and travel. You know, one of the funniest things, as I got ready to leave the federal government and come and work at home, home office with my spouse, we wondered how long we’re going to get. I mean, how is it going to work out all of a sudden there’s twice as much husband and it’s been the best thing for our marriage, we get along really well and we work as a team, we have to. We have to communicate more and do things and we’re in close contact like this all the time or at least when I’m not traveling and that’s been wonderful. And the great thing about being a self-employed or a business owner is you only have to work half a day and you get to figure out which 12 hours of the day you want to work. So if your kids have a soccer game, if there’s a school presentation, if there’s a graduation, you just manage your time and you go enjoy it all.

Casey Combest: Yeah. And kind of the flip side of that, what’s been one of the toughest moments in the last 11 years as you’ve gone on this journey to building something really special?

Ramsey Russell: Oh boy. The toughest moments, there’s been plenty of them. My youngest child just graduated high school, starts Mississippi state next year and she’s struggling about trying to decide the perfect major and of course, man, I want to encourage my Children to find something you like, find something that you’re passionate about, find that and then look down and find a niche, find some value or find something you can do better in that area and then deliver it, but don’t deceive yourselves anybody in their 18s and 20s and 30s are going to start off business, don’t deceive yourself just because you love and are passionate about this topic that it’s going to be just all a bed of roses, it’s going to be – there’s a learning curves and things change, you’ve got to stay abreast of changes. The universe is not static, it’s always changing. Some of the most stressful moments of our business are beyond our control. If we can reach out and touch it and control it, we control it, we eliminate those variables. Airlines don’t work that way. In fact, airlines sometimes, it’s like you go to the McDonald’s drive through and ordered the first might drive up to the first window and pay them, get to the second window say sorry, we ain’t serving Big Macs today and shut the window. I mean, that’s kind of how airlines can be. You’ve been planning for weeks or years to go on this particular hunt and COVID comes along borders are sealed. A thunderstorm hits you missed your flight because your flight got delayed. And look, I love it because I don’t love it for the client, I don’t love that their flight got delayed or compromise or something like that. But it is an opportunity to do what we do and keep that hunt and keep that experience, keep it on the rails. And yes, it’s a little stressful that’s what we do. You know what I’m saying? We do it, so they don’t have to. A lot of clients at times I’ve had people say because we’re a very small business, we worked with a lot of teams like yourself, web people and accountants and art people and just a lot of different resources we use, but we’re still a small business and I’ve had people say in the past, man, I’m surprised that is big, as you all appear to be and we are and our little bitty corner like think of our business in respect the universe of being a little bit of stock tank, we’re big fish in there. We get a lot of traffic, get a lot of hook thrown at us and people say, but you answer the phone, I say, I have to answer the phone. The first thing I do in the morning before I step – before my feet hit the bed, I get up, I pick up my phone, I look at my calendar and every client is in my phone. I know who you are when you call and all my hunts are in that calendar. So on any given day of the year, the first thing I do is look and I say yes, Mr Smith is traveling today. And if I hadn’t learned anything in 20 years, if Mr. Smith is on his way to Mexico or on his way to Argentina or wherever, if he calls me, it is not to tell me he found the coldest beer in the Dallas Airport. If he’s calling from Argentina or wherever he is, it’s not to tell me they had the best food he ever had or he just had the best hunt, that’ll wait, he’ll tell me that later. It’s usually airlines or just some little wrinkle that needs smoothing. And that’s why we respond. I can’t possibly answer the phone every single time it rings but our reputation is to respond immediately.

Casey Combest: That’s really cool. Mr. Ramsey as we get ready to close, one of the key elements of this show is that it’s made in Mississippi, it’s about Mississippi entrepreneurs and for you, why did you stay in this state? Why did you choose to do business here?

Ramsey Russell: Because home is who you are. And my roots go back to the Mississippi Delta and in Mississippi I’ve traveled and lived short term a lot of different places around the world, but I’m Mississippi. And William Faulkner said one time that the past is never dead, in fact it’s not even really past. We are the sum of our back experiences. I love Mississippi. Mississippi is my home and you know the more I’ve traveled, I love traveling out west. I love traveling and seeing all these other countries. But the more I travel, the greater I had this appreciation for what’s right in my backyard, the people, the cultures, the food, the ambience, the hunting, everything about it, it’s just a very good place to live, to raise a family and to do business.

“what has you excited about our state over the next 3-5 years and in regards to an entrepreneurship?”

Casey Combest: Yeah. And what has you excited about our state over the next 3-5 years and in regards to an entrepreneurship?

Ramsey Russell: I think Mississippi is growing, I think we’re moving forward. I mean look at – well, take the present pandemic response in a lot of states around the country that for whatever reason are dragging their feet on, opening on getting the people back to work on getting the people productive. I like the way our state has responded, I really do. And I think that vision and that ideal may move us up. And look at what’s going on the news right now, does anybody really want to move to a big city? I mean, here we are talking in the Mississippi’s capital, but there’s 3.5 million people in the entire state of Mississippi. I mean, it’s just a great place to live and raise up, I just don’t see myself leaving ever.

Casey Combest: Ramsey thanks so much for your time. If someone’s listening and your story has resonated with them, where can they find out more about you and your business?

Ramsey Russell: If this kind of stuff interest you all, please go to our website, getducks.com presently being rebuilt and it’s more than just hey, come look and buy hunt, it’s not that it, it truly is a comprehensive website we’ve watched for 20 years as people read the content, look at the pictures and just explore and just look but by all means contact us, if you got questions about a hunt. We’re also very active in social media @RamseyRussellGetducks is our Instagram account. We’ve got a very small podcast Duck Season Somewhere anywhere you listen to your podcast. Throughout social media we do a little short film, if you’d like to see a little 7 minute video of some of these hunts we’ve described beyond just the trigger pulling, check us out on YouTube.

Casey Combest: Ramsey, thanks so much for your time today and thank you guys so much for listening to another episode of the Made in Mississippi podcast. Have a great day everyone.

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