Ramsey Russell Worldwide: A Conversation Jessop Boden, Pacific Flyway Ducks Unlimited

Rocky Leflore: Welcome to The End of The Line podcast, I’m Rocky Leflore in the Duck South Studios in Oxford, Mississippi. Joining me on the other end of the line for another addition of Ramsey Russell Worldwide, Mr. Double R too himself. Ramsay, how are you?

“And what I did never pay close enough attention to was that those 2 trains joined at a place called for Promontory Summit, Utah. And even if I had, had I not gone to Utah, I wouldn’t have understood the significance of what those 2 rails joining in Utah meant because of when it happened and where it happened to what we now perceive as the recreational sport of duck hunting.”

Ramsey Russell: Man, I’m doing good Rocky, I’m not lying man. We got season opening finally down south in a few days, all my decoys are sorted and man, I’m just ready. I’m here, I’m happy and I’m going to tell you what, the next several podcasts or something I think everybody’s going to appreciate. Because I got invited several weeks ago, as many people know to go to Utah to duck hunt. I got invited by a client to come to his private camp that I knew nothing about except it was his private camp to come duck hunting for a few days. Well, I knew a lot of guys out in Utah and I’ve been invited, like back in the summertime when the swan draws up, several friends had messaged me and said, hey, the swan applications open, try to get drawn come up here and hunt with us, blah-blah and I always wanted to hunt up there, I need a great duck hunt, that’s it. But Rocky, I had absolutely, positively no idea, none whatsoever what I was getting into. I had no idea. I’m just going to duck hunt. And started off as a very old venerable historic camp that was founded in 1910 and I had figured when I go up there, I was going to hunt and – well if I’m going to be up there, if I’m going to spend 450 bucks on a plane ticket, I might as well be there for 3 days with this guy, I’ll jump in with this other buddy and see more country and then I’ll jump in with another guy and see more country. And it turned into about a 9 or 10 day Odyssey so unworldly to what I had expected in terms of history, in terms of conservation value, in terms of ecological significance. I mean, honestly it was almost, it was hitting me with so many different directions it’s overwhelming. And let me tell you where we’re going with this. It’s so funny how things are related that don’t relate. And I’m a duck hunter, so it’s funny how things are related back to duck hunting. Like how many times? Surely the guy flipping through the history channel or whatever on a late night, you have seen the story of those 2 railroads getting a government contract, one out west, one out east and building tracks, one to the west and one to the east towards each other to build the transcontinental railroad system. I mean, I dang it, it opened up the American west, it conquered – I mean man, no more of this months long journey and covered wagons and Indians and all that mess to get from the east coast to the west, we had a train system now and it transformed the country. And what I did never pay close enough attention to was that those 2 trains joined at a place called for Promontory Summit, Utah. And even if I had, had I not gone to Utah, I wouldn’t have understood the significance of what those 2 rails joining in Utah meant because of when it happened and where it happened to what we now perceive as the recreational sport of duck hunting. When you think market hunting, what’s the first thing come to mind, Chesapeake bay or maybe down sunken lands just outside of Memphis, maybe South Louisiana at the port of New Orleans, market hunting, no man, this region, the Bear River Valley on the north side of the Great Salt Lake and the Great Salt Lakes themselves were perceived as a Valhalla in the late 1800s. The hunters of America that personally witnessed flights of canvasbacks on Susquehanna flats and down the guys that were shooting a couple of 100 ducks tree topping them down and sunken lands Arkansas and the guys that saw passenger pigeons, they described this part of the world as the Valhalla. They said when those ducks would get up, it sounds like 6 locomotives coming down the train at one time and they ate ducks. And when duck season came in, you couldn’t sell a chicken in the Great Salt Lake valley. And right about this whole time as them 2 railroads joined up ushered in the era where you had hunters that went out hunted for the pot, hunters that went out and market hunted to feed the market for the guy that didn’t really go out and hunt and that exact same time in American history because now Valhalla was accessible, it ushered in sport hunter. It ushered in the era of recreational duck hunting. And I’m not going to give all these 5 stories away, you got to listen to them because coming up is a man named Jessop Boden, a young man named Jessop Boden a hunter himself, we just talked about, he’s now a Ducks Unlimited representative. What you’ve got to understand is Utah is a high desert, 80% of the wetlands are right there on that Great Salt Lake basin, a lot of freshwater marshes, a lot of river systems, a lot of drainages coming in, a lot of demand for water with industry, with civilization, with humanity with upstate Idaho folks need water out west. There’s a lot of competing uses for water, a lot of it’s already gone, 30% or so of it is already gone. And what I really didn’t appreciate or realize is not only, is that basin very important from a productive standpoint, most of the cinnamon teal in the Pacific flyway, most of the gadwall in the Pacific flyway, a lot of green wings, a lot of Canada geese, a lot of different birds, but it’s also a vital staging area for waterfowl that affects all 11 states of the Pacific flyway. And just pursuant to my 3 days hunting there with my guests, he had showed me some literature and I decided one of the first people I wanted to interview about this region was Jessop. I wanted to get the issues, I wanted to hear him discuss all these issues and what can be done and what is being done, but by not just Ducks Unlimited, but many stakeholders in that region. Next week we’re going to talk to my buddy Chad Yamane, he’s a firefighter but he’s also a duck guide, he specializes in swans, jump off into airboat man, we get way off into the boonies, man. I mean, it’s unbelievable. Then I’m going to follow in with another mutual acquaintance, a very prominent biologist, just wait till you hear some of the stuff going on. What he described, just imagine this resource, 80% public land, the effort that goes into a habitat management and hunter management and how they all get along and against some of the stakeholder and conservation issues. And we’re going to jump in and meet with my buddy Tony Smith, talk about diving hunting canvasback are his passion. And then we’re going to wrap it up talking to a historian and I promise you all, after you all hear these 4 podcast, it’s going to blow your mind to hear what this guy talks about the history of the Great Salt Lake. And break, while I was out there visiting and talking and my head was swimming and man, we actually went, we drove about 30 miles away from that duck camp to where they laid that golden spike, put them 2 railroad together, put a shiver up my spine, because how it impacted what I do today, what you all do today something as simple as that. And it transformed and put something into motion that today is recreational duck hunting and all the history behind it Rocky, it’s a very exciting place. But you know, while I was there and doing this, I became aware of a similar wetland in Indiana called Kankakee Marsh and I may be saying that wrong Kankakee Marsh at around this same time was described as the Everglades of the North. And if you look at the historical lake bed marsh bed on a map, it covered a big old geography, it was a big wetland. And around the same time in history, those guys figured out and that there were a lot of factors depending on that marsh and those woodlands surrounding it. But they decided, hey man, this is some farm ground right here, let’s drain this son of a gun and boy, they brought in the equipment, they drained it. There’s now 1% the number of wetlands in Kankakee marsh that they’re historically was. And biologists have said on record that the draining of that marsh precipitated the loss of 25% of migratory waterfowl in the United States of America. We lost as a country 25% the number of birds that used to migrate in America from the drain of that one wetland. So, I just kind of put that in place holder there and when you hear this talk about the Great Salt Lake because out there in the middle the centerpiece of the Great Salt Lake actually is a saline water body. But it’s those marshes surrounding it that are so vital. Very interesting podcast and I think Jessop does a real good job. He’s a hunter like the rest of us. He was a game warden down in Nevada. He grew up duck hunting or wanted to duck hunt, his daddy want to duck hunter but took it and he really does a good job explaining the ecological significance of this wetland and it just kind of giving it a good perspective that once we get immersed into it with these other guests, you’ll have a whole new appreciation for that wetland.

Rocky Leflore: Well, I know that Great Salt Lake is a bucket list for a lot of people, so I look forward to hearing this interview with you and Jessop.

Ramsey Russell: It was a bucket list item for me Rocky but here’s what I just can’t get my mind wrapped around. So you get up on a high point, you look down and you say forever. There’s no pine trees, there’s no oak trees, there’s nothing that you can reconcile the Mississippi scale in terms of distance with all you see is, to the west you see the Vermont Mountains, to the east you see the Wasatch Mountains boom, there’s valley right in between them. And what just blew my mind is here I am standing in waist deep water shooting canvasback and blue bills and redheads and looking to the west I can say to myself and looking at my phone 15 miles from here, I was standing in ankle deep water shooting green winged teal and shovelers and 15 or 10 miles north of there I was hunting in pools shooting mallards and cinnamon teal and gadwalls and 5 miles from there, I was in a cornfield shooting Canada geese. It’s all right there in between those mountains man, on the same water body, it’s unbelievable.

Rocky Leflore: It’s an amazing place. Amazing place but let’s get to that interview with Jessop now.

Ramsey Russell: This is Ramsey Russell, getducks.com, where it’s duck season somewhere. And today I’m in the great basin of Utah. We’ve been hunting up here for about a week. Right now, my buddy Travis is over there stringing together some duck poppers with jalapeno. We’re going to grill steaks tonight and I’m sitting down with Jessop Boden. How are you, Jessop?

Jessop Boden: Good, how are you?

Ramsey Russell: Just to let people know kind of who you are, what is your position? Who do you work for and what’s your position?

Jessop Boden: So, I work for ducks unlimited in Utah and I do our major gift fundraising in Utah, Arizona, Nevada and southern California. So, I work with any of our major donors. I help store them along and connect their philanthropic interest with our mission.

Ramsey Russell: I take it as you’re a duck hunter?

Jessop Boden: Oh yeah. I started when I was 12 and I started hunting in Utah and moved away for a little bit and came right back.

Ramsey Russell: So this is your home, Utah is your home.

Jessop Boden: It is.

Ramsey Russell: You grew up in Salt Lake City or -?

Jessop Boden: So, I grew up just north of Salt Lake about 30 miles north of Salt Lake and grew up hunting all the wetlands on the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, what an amazing wetland it is. I’ve always heard the hunting was good here in Utah, but I really – until I stepped off into it, I had no idea what I was getting into. Who did you start hunting with?

Jessop Boden: So, I started with my dad. So, I grew up hunting big game with my dad from the time I was about 2 or 3. My dad had been a duck hunter before I was born a little bit as he grew up, my grandpa duck hunted before my time, duck hunted and muskrat trapping all the wetlands in Utah.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jessop Boden: Really. But they all stopped by the time I was little. So, I grew up hunting deer with them and elk and chasing big game. And in Utah at the time you couldn’t hunt anything until you were 12 and you couldn’t have a big game until you were 14. So at 12 I went to hunter safety to 10 or 11, at 12 I could start hunting. I went hunting with grouse with dad a little bit and it wasn’t necessarily my thing. We went out on the youth hunt and dad hadn’t hunted ducks and 15, 18, 20 years it had been a long time, it was like pre lead Band-Aids. And we hunted Farmington Bay, I had a shotgun, a 12 gauge shotgun, full size, I was 12 years old that gun was way too big. But man, we didn’t have waiters, we didn’t have any of the gear, but we went out and dad had promised me we were going to go for duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Is that because you’ve been hounding him to go or he just felt obligated to take you?

Jessop Boden: I’ve been hounding him to go. I wanted to shoot ducks. I grew up hunting and grew up loving hunting and I wanted to try it all. I wanted to do everything. And at the time my dad was going through some health issues and I didn’t know it at the time but he wasn’t feeling good, but he promised me at 12 that we were going to go chase ducks on that youth hunt. And he did and we walked the dike and I shot 2 boxes of shells, didn’t kill one duck but I fell in love with it that day.

Ramsey Russell: Why? What do you remember? You didn’t shoot any ducks but what do you remember about that first duck hunt with your dad?

“I remember the sights, the smells man. I remember watching the sky turned black when that first shot rang out that morning.”

Jessop Boden: I remember the sights, the smells man. I remember watching the sky turned black when that first shot rang out that morning. The duck numbers were just incredible and there was something special about that and it was the smell of shotgun after you shot. It was the whole experience had me hooked from the time from that day, I was a duck hunter and we went out and bought cheap waiters that leaked and I got decoys for Christmas and that was how I started duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Well, your dad had obviously been a duck hunter in the past, got out and did some big game hunting and stuff and then you’re interested in it just drugging back into the fold. I can relate the same thing. I had all but quit fishing when I had 2 little boys and they loved to fish so bad, I kind of got hooked back into it. You know just something to do. I’ve always said kids spell love TIME and to get back into it with my kids was something so that’s kind of how your origins are with your dad.

Jessop Boden: It’s so true. And I’ve got 2 little boys now I’ve got a 3 and 5 year old, I started hunting with the 5 year old when he was 2 and I’ve got video of him in a field blind in Nevada going out and retrieving ducks out of the field after I knocked them down.

Ramsey Russell: So, how long after that first hunt before you shot your first duck?

Jessop Boden: It took me a whole year. I went through a case of ammo and a whole year. I kid you not, I had bruises from my shoulder to my elbow most days –

Ramsey Russell: Your dad just let you shell out.

Jessop Boden: Oh dude, I would go to town. And it was so much fun and I was – my head wasn’t on the stock of the shotgun right I know, I was looking over the barrel and missing high and behind them, but it didn’t matter, it was being out. It was listening to the marsh wake up in the morning and it was watching the pin tail circle and man, I was hooked.

Ramsey Russell: Do you remember your first duck?

Jessop Boden: I do. So, it was that youth hunt the next year I was 13 and I knocked down 2 that day. And as soon as you knocked down the first one, my brain went, oh, I think I’ve got this figured out now. And it could start figuring out how to lead and how to hold the gun better. And I got much better that second year. But yeah, that first year I went through the whole case and I didn’t knock down one.

Ramsey Russell: What was your first species, was it?

Jessop Boden: So, it was a hen green ringtail and I shot a green wing and a gadwall that day.

“I’ll be danged. I did not know until I did a little research up here on the Great Salt Lake that it was such a significant gadwall production area for the Western US, I had no idea whatsoever.”

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be danged. I did not know until I did a little research up here on the Great Salt Lake that it was such a significant gadwall production area for the Western US, I had no idea whatsoever. This habitat is so unlike what we shoot gadwalls in back home and we shoot gadwalls everywhere back on the Mississippi but tupelo cypress trees, things of that nature. They just got this big thing for these old oxbow breaks and this is anything but an oxbow break.

“It is not an oxbow break, it’s open sego pond weed ponds and bull rush flats. And then you’ve got the Great Salt Lake that has the brine shrimp, it’s a primary food source.”

Jessop Boden: It is not an oxbow break, it’s open sego pond weed ponds and bull rush flats. And then you’ve got the Great Salt Lake that has the brine shrimp, it’s a primary food source. And yeah, we’re a big production area for gadwalls, we’re a big production area for cinnamon teal we’re the main production area for cinnamon teal in the nation.

Ramsey Russell: I didn’t know that. I’d always thought it was Sacramento valley California.

Jessop Boden: No, that’s where they winter they breed here, nest here and then they’ll go down into Mexico or over the mountain in the sack.

Ramsey Russell: Yes, sir. Well, I’ve shot some redheads down or we’ve shot some redhead down in Mexico that were banded and a lot of them came from right here, in fact, all of them I’ve touched came from right here in the Great Salt Lake region.

Jessop Boden: We’re a huge production area for redheads, we were bigger back in the pre-eighties before the Great Salt Lake flooded in the 80s. And it was, most of the clubs had 2ft of water in their clubhouses. And the state was pumping water into the West Desert as fast as they could to try to keep that water from coming up in the Great Salt Lake. And after that man, it changed the habitat a lot here and it changed our nesting birds a lot. We had one of the biggest colonies of over water nesting mallards at the time and we were a huge nesting area for redheads. And it’s changed a little bit. We still have a lot of nesting redheads here, but not in the numbers we had before.

Ramsey Russell: Well, what else has changed for this area since you’ve started hunting? How long 20 years ago?

Jessop Boden: Yeah. So I started hunting in 2002, so 17 years ago.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. Yeah. And what other changes have you seen in this area?

Jessop Boden: So one of the biggest changes has been, we’ve had a big problem with fragments of the non-native invasive reed. And after that flood – so the Great Salt Lake’s all hyper saline water, it’s super saline water. And when it flooded it brought all that salt in our freshwater marshes and killed all the vegetation and it took a long time for it to recover. But in that meantime you had all that barren ground and we have this frag might ease and they’re non-native and I know other parts of the country have them too, but it took over and was so prolific and spread so fast. So, that’s been a huge change in a huge problem. The state’s spending half a million dollars a year on frag control along on our public marshes. And we’re making a dent finally, but we spent a lot of years just chasing it trying to get ahold of it. And I was telling you before we got on this, it’s like I had a – I found a hunting hole when I was 16 and it was 50 yards wide and 60 yards long and man, I killed the ducks, especially on a day where it was a little overcast and got some wind man, they would pile into this hole. And so I found it in about 2008 by 2009, I hiked into that spot and couldn’t even find my pond. The frag had choked it out to the point where that pond no longer existed. It was gone.

Ramsey Russell: We stood in a clump of phragmites today and its nasty gnarly bamboo like stuff and you’ve got to be careful because it’s thin like a pencil and if you’re not careful you can poke my eye out with it, but it made a good duck blind.

Jessop Boden: It makes a good duck blind. But that’s about the only thing it does. It doesn’t provide any duck food, it provides a little bit of cover, but it builds these big single stands of frag, right? Nothing can grow in them, nothing can compete with them. It’s got a big seed head on it that produces just thousands of seeds and then it’s also – it’s right dominant. So, it’ll send shooters across the ground 30-40 just like bamboo and it’s terrible. And it’s hard man. We got to put a lot of chemical on it, I’m sure you’re going to talk to Rich about it, when you meet with Rich.

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah, I think he’s got it in for phragmites.

Jessop Boden: Oh yeah, that guy –

Ramsey Russell: Most biologists do around here.

Jessop Boden: They spend a lot of time, effort and energy trying to control that plant.

Ramsey Russell: Well, what is the significance of this region, this basin right here kind of come at it from this standpoint here of the ecological or the waterfowl significance of this region because I’m from the Deep South, everybody knows about the Great Salt Lake, learn about it in 4^th grade or whatever. But why is it such a crown jewel for waterfowl in the pacific flyway?

Jessop Boden: It’s a hub of the west. So a lot of the ducks that come out of the prairies, they’ll nest up there, right? And they’ll breed and they’ll fledge out up there and then they’ll migrate this way and they’re going to stop the Great Salt Lake to stage. So, we’re a huge staging area and we actually peek out on our migration numbers in mid-September. So, we have more ducks in mid-September than we have right now.

Ramsey Russell: I did not know that, but you produced birds –

Jessop Boden: We produce birds –

Ramsey Russell: And I know there’s a lot of Canada geese here, probably the westerns, there’s a cinnamon teal, redheads, I’m sure you’ll have some mallards and pin tails and everything else. But it is a big staging area because of that rich food source, the brine shrimp, the brine eggs some of the other food sources. But what’s going on, like I read the other day that 30% of Utah’s wetlands more are gone. And let me ask you this, let me ask you another question come back to this one. You taught a pretty big state how much of this region right here in this valley constitute, your told real wetlands?

Jessop Boden: The vast majority of it. Yeah, most of Utah’s wetlands are centered around the Great Salt Lake. A lot of our freshwater marshes on the eastern edge and we’ve lost 30% of our historic wetlands. That’s really not that much when you compare it to like California that’s lost 90 or 95% of theirs. We’ve lost wetlands, but our biggest threat – we have a couple of big threats, one is the phragmites, but another huge one is water. Water in the west is like gold, right? Like down south, man, you guys don’t have to worry about water, right? If it runs across your property, it’s your water. You don’t have a water right in a share. Here, you have to have a right to that water and it’s a historic water, right? And you have to have a use that the state is deemed valid. And so water’s our biggest problem. There’s multiple demands competing for that water, whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s development and then habitat and habitat is kind of at the end, right? Like all these other uses get their water first because –

Ramsey Russell: Ducks versus real estate development.

Jessop Boden: Ducks versus real estate developers. And it’s finding that balance, we’ve got to find that balance because the Great Salt Lake’s 8 or 9ft below average and 8 or 9ft doesn’t sound like a lot, but it equates to miles a shore line. So, like you asked me what’s changed since I grew up, there was a spot, I grew up hunting and it was upon that kind of backed the Great Salt Lake the time it was probably within about a mile in the Great Salt Lake shore line. If you went out there today, the shore line for the Great Salt Lake is about 5 miles from that spot. It’s pushed back. Yeah, it’s only 8ft deep, but it’s pushed back 5 miles.

Ramsey Russell: And is it just dry all the time?

Jessop Boden: So, we’re in a drought period part of it is that drought and part of it is water use 80% of our water that falls and that would normally make it to the Great Salt Lake, if people weren’t here, it gets pulled out for ag and development. So, it’s getting used by their uses. So you got to figure that’s a lot of water compared to the 20% that actually makes it to that lake. And that lake even though it’s super saline and when you think of a salty body of water, you don’t really think of ducks, those green wing teal we have a huge overwintering population of green wings that use the brine shrimp and brine shrimp eggs and that’s their primary food source. We have one of the largest inland wintering populations of common gold mine on the western side of that lake. So this is an incredibly important area of habitat that if we lose this, it’s going to disturb the whole Pacific flyway.

Ramsey Russell: The whole Pacific flyway 11 states worth, that’s incredible. That is utterly incredible. Getting back to some of your own personal hunting. I know you’re from Utah but you spent some time down in Nevada. Did you do any duck hunting down there?

Jessop Boden: I did. So yeah, I was a game warden in southern Nevada for 4.5 years. So I started out hunting here when I lost my pond that was kind of the time in my life where I decided I wanted to do something about habitat loss and do something in conservation. So, I went to Utah State and got my degree in wildlife science. Graduated in 2012, I needed to find a job and Nevada had game warden openings and I always thought that could be a fun job when I was a little kid growing up, right? Like it’s one of those jobs where you’re like, that would be so cool to talk to hunters every day and spend all your time outside, right? And so I took a job in southern Nevada based out of Vegas as a game warden. And yeah, I didn’t think – I thought when I made that move and move to southern Nevada, like there goes my waterfowl hunting days, right? I’m going to have to travel home to shoot ducks. And I got down there and I couldn’t believe that there’s ducks in the desert in that dry place within an hour and a half I could shoot ducks in 3 or 4 spots and not just a couple of ducks, I had pretty good shoot.

Ramsey Russell: What was the prevalent species?

Jessop Boden: It was a mixed bag, so it’s a lot of the great Basin species. So we’d have a lot of wigeon, mallards, green winged teals, cinnamon teal, canvasbacks, redheads, it was a little bit of everything.

Ramsey Russell: Everything. I know they’ve got cinnamon teal I’ve heard that’s a big species when you get outside of this part of the world where they’re common. When you get outside the pacific flyway, everybody’s got this thing for those little red birds. And you see them up there this time of year, little like spring fall blue wings, you know there’s nothing special about them right now.

Jessop Boden: Yeah, they’re pretty brown right now, they get a little red about this time of year you’ll start seeing some red ones come by, but there’s still a lot of brown birds.

Ramsey Russell: And then through your conservation interest, you found a chance to come back to work for ducks unlimited move back up here at home and start doing good things for up here.

Jessop Boden: I did, yeah. I’d always wanted to work for DU when I was going to school and there was a great opportunity to – I took a job where I get to work with our great donors and our philanthropists that really care about doing conservation work and protecting habitat and they care about the same things that I care about right? I grew up wanting to protect and make sure that that habitat was there for my kids to shoot ducks on and they have those same interests and I get to work with them and talk to them and talk about the work that DU is doing. And it’s a dream job. I get to meet people that have been highly successful in business or real estate or doctors, lawyers that have the means to really make a difference and make a huge impact.

“You know, that’s one thing that I learned very quickly when I came here to the Great Basin, the Great Salt Lake area to hunt is, the reason that a lot of the wetlands are still intact is because especially private landowners that have bought land and became major stakeholders and their interest to shoot ducks and have quality hunting habitat, they lock this property up in the 19th century and they fought tooth and nail to keep it in an ideal habitat.”

Ramsey Russell: Right. You know, that’s one thing that I learned very quickly when I came here to the Great Basin, the Great Salt Lake area to hunt is, the reason that a lot of the wetlands are still intact is because especially private landowners that have bought land and became major stakeholders and their interest to shoot ducks and have quality hunting habitat, they lock this property up in the 19^th century and they fought tooth and nail to keep it in an ideal habitat. And that was just the most amazing story to me. We always talk about hunters and conservations and we’re footing the bill for this thing. Man, look, all the bird watchers out there right around the local refuge can thank us hunters for throwing money into the ducks via your organization or whatever. But man, that’s really digging deep when you’ve got that level of participation to produce quality habitat. And I had visited a camp nearby that wow, they have got some of the most amazing waterfowl habitat, they put a lot of time and money into that habitat and they hunt 60 days. That means for 305 days the whole region benefits from what they’re doing. That that is true hunter conservationist. Wouldn’t you agree?

Jessop Boden: I would totally agree. And a lot of it started as you said back in the 19^th century or the first duck clubs along the Great Salt Lake happened in the late 1800s and they did, they wanted to make sure that that land was safe from development. Because they were looking at the time to drain a lot of wetlands, drain a lot of the habitat on the eastern shore and use it for farming, use it for development and luckily we protected a lot of habitat in the beginning, the state protected 100,000 acres between the state and the Feds. The private duck clubs protected tens of thousands of more acres. This place is incredible because it is relatively intact. Yeah, we have huge threats from our water. Our water is by far the biggest threat to us right now. But we have the land that’s secured as long as we got the water to put on.

Ramsey Russell: What do you see as some of the biggest threshold to conservation moving forward in the future? I’m also a wildlife major and I find myself sometimes thankful that I’m not working directly in the field, because it’s not just – boy wouldn’t it be nice if you could just go out and manage habitat for ducks? But there’s so many things. I mean just in your conversation, we’re not talking about just water we’re talking about for ducks, we’re talking about water for real estate development, talking about land, marshland to put subdivisions on. We’re talking about all kinds of interest. But you personally what do you see? What do you see your kids facing? Where do you see your kids being in 20 years or 40 years?

“I hope my kids are still hunting here. Hunting ducks where I grew up hunting man, I love this place.”

Jessop Boden: I hope my kids are still hunting here. Hunting ducks where I grew up hunting man, I love this place. There’s no place like it in North America in my opinion. I was spoiled growing up. So I hope that they’re here hunting the same places. But really if we – the biggest threat man, it’s that water policy, we have to have good water policy that balances all of those challenges that you just mentioned, the development, balances agriculture, balances habitat balance is getting water to the actual Great Salt Lake so that lake can maybe come up a little bit and not be 5 miles from that pond because those ducks jump between that lake and our fresh water marsh. So it’s that, those are our challenge and it’s not going to be solved tomorrow, it’s a long term challenge that we’ve got to work on. And DU is looking to put a million dollars in Utah for the next 5 years and hire a policy person that can specialize in working with our legislature and working with the different stakeholders, the duck clubs, working with the developers, working with the ski industry because believe it or not, that lake has an impact on our skiing in the mountains, whether it’s the dust that blows off of it and increases snowmelt or its lake effect snow that comes off of that. So there’s all these stakeholders that rely on that lake. There’s the mineral extraction and there’s industry based around that lake and we’ve all got – everybody in this region has a stake in that lake being healthy. And that is the –

Ramsey Russell: Everybody in North America has got a vested interest in it just simply from healthy waterfowl populations. If you’re a duck hunter, especially like me for sure. I read somewhere there’s enough water if everybody will just kind of share it equitably and stuff like that, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a manageable solution if everybody just worked together instead of at odds with each other.

Jessop Boden: We’ve all got to work together to solve our problem and it’s a problem that needs addressing and it does need that collaborative effort where we all sit down in a room and talk about what the needs are. Because there’s health impacts from that lake with the dust plumes that come off of it and all the heavy metals that have sit in the bottom of it. It’s the lowest point in this basin and it has collected all the heavy metals have run down our streams, all the stuff that’s been dumped in it over the years. It impacts everybody and we have got to sit down and come up with a way to get water – to make sure that everybody’s got water. And we’re being as efficient with the water as we can be. That we’re not wasting water by bad ag practices, that we’re not wasting water with development and doing different – that we can develop it differently to conserve water. It’s a water conservation problem.

Ramsey Russell: Coming from the Deep South where you’re right, we had a ton of water. I mean it was an epic Noah built an ark type flooding situation this year. It’s hard to get your mind wrapped around water issues out west. And you think well it’ll always be there, it’s a Great Salt Lake, how can it ever go away? We actually do – I’ve been hunting down in Baja California there you used to be a vibrant river called the Colorado River that started up around hoover dam and ran clear down into Mexico into the sea of Cortez and it’s just a dry gulch now, it can happen.

Jessop Boden: It can happen. Yeah, I’ve got a dear friend and one of DU’s big donors that he grew up hunting – didn’t grow up. He spent a lot of time in his adult life hunting the sea of Cortez and hunting that before it turned into that dryer as you described and that’s his area of interest. And where he’s passionate about. And it’s cool to hear the stories of the pin tail numbers that were down there and the duck numbers that use that place. So it can happen. And we’ve got to make a difference before it gets to that point.

Ramsey Russell: It doesn’t take major donors to participate in ducks unlimited and make a meaningful difference for waterfowl anywhere, does it?

Jessop Boden: No, it doesn’t. We have 4000 events or more across the nation. We have 60,000 DU volunteers, our volunteers put a lot of time, effort and energy into putting on these events. Our membership numbers are huge, that’s what gives us our tooth within our policy realm, right? If we can go into the legislature, whether it’s the state or the Feds and talk about our membership numbers, we can go to the federal legislature and go, we have 725,000 members that’s a big number, right? That makes them take notice, right?

Ramsey Russell: It gives a political relevance.

Jessop Boden: It does. And those membership numbers are generated through our mailers that go to the duck hunters. They’re generated through every person that attends a DU dinner, you become a member. And so yeah, everybody can help DU by volunteering, going to a DU dinner and if you have the means become a do you major donor. It’s every little piece of that makes a difference. And collectively we can make a big difference together.

Ramsey Russell: Collectively. And that’s a good point to end on is collectively all of us, duck hunters can agree on something, if not everything, we can agree on something. We agree on conservation and giving back to the ducks as well as taking. Jessop, I appreciate you jumping in here today.

Jessop Boden: Thanks for having me.

Ramsey Russell: Thanks for showing up. It’s good to meet you. And we’re going to have a lot of fun this evening. We’re going to cook some duck poppers and cook some rib eyes and just have a good time. Thank you, Jessop.

Jessop Boden: Thank you.

Ramsey Russell: Guys, you all ought to check out @RamseyRussellGetducks and see the timeline and see the pictures of this incredible part of the world here in Utah. As somebody’s been all over the world, I’m telling you, it’s been one of the most amazing experiences of my entire duck hunting career is just to come up here and spend some time with these guys and see what they’ve got. Thank you all for listening.

[End of Audio]

LetsTranscript Transcription Services

www.letstranscript.com