Ramsey Russell Worldwide: A Conversation With Mat Schauer on The State of The Migration

Rocky Leflore: Welcome to The End of The Line podcast, I’m Rocky Leflore in the Duck South Studios in Oxford, Mississippi. Joining me somewhere from the great wilderness of Canada, Ramsey Russell. Where in the heck are you headed now, man?

Ramsey Russell: Man, I’m in a top-secret location in Saskatchewan, wouldn’t give it up if you made me. I’m with a good long-term friend and client and we’re doing it yourself. I’ll be up here, I don’t know Rocky, 10 more days and it’s all do it yourself now and just teamed up with some friends and clients and associates. My inbox was flooded this morning, after yesterday’s Instagram story, where people ask me where I was and I’m like, I just don’t even answer those. Yeah, everybody that duck hunts ought to know better than to answer those kinds of questions if you value your friendships and a good thing. But it’s some beautiful country and today was really different. The world is a whole lot bigger than our backyard and we all tend to paint ourselves into our own little corners of what we call duck hunting or goose hunting and waterfowl hunting is a lot bigger and a lot broader than our own backyard, the world is lot bigger than our own backyard and people do things differently. This morning we parked the car and I don’t know, we hiked 20 minutes.

Rocky Leflore: According to the video, you looked – you know what, let me say this and I’m breaking in and people get pissed off when I break in, but I want to say something. It’s so refreshing to see the Will Primos of the world still doing deer pushes and the Ramsey Russell’s of the world catching Specs coming off the roost headed out.

“There’s a governmental limit on how close you can get to it”

Ramsey Russell: It was – I don’t know what to expect because I was shooting, I brought a lot of these little ‘shorties’ – The boss man called. I got hooked on these 2 and 3-quartering shells, it’s like going old school again. You got to recalibrate your choke, get tighter, like you did back in the lead days, and I had 5s mostly, but I had some 4s – And I said, “Man, I don’t know, pass shooting a lot of times can be a deliberate sky bus or something. But boy, I packed these little, ounce and a quarter of 4s with a Rod Robert’s T-3, which I think in Benelli, it had performed a lot like a light full choke. And it was foggy, we hiked in about 15 minutes and look, this is mule deer country, this is pronghorn country, you can just smell the sage, permeating in that fog. This morning we’re hiking up the damn trail and got into position and it sounded like every Specklebelly and crane in the world just beyond the fog. That alone was worth to walk and just hearing, just hearing that sound of all those wild birds, and you have got to remember, we’ve talked about this in some upcoming podcast. These Specklebellies, migrate – My hunting buddy described it very accurately, like an hourglass. These birds are coming from none of it to the East-Alaska, Arctic to the west, and that’s the top part of the hourglass and they’re coming right down through this little bottleneck and once they get below here, they fan out to Mississippi central and pacific flyways, and go in their own little ways, wherever they go. I was told on good authority that this area we hunted this morning, we hunted near – you can’t encroach on that area there. There’s a governmental limit on how close you can get to it. And it’s a – because I don’t want to disturb them. I mean obviously, it’s a very critical area to the Specklebelly goose migration. It is where all these birds converge and form the largest white fronted goose roost in the fire way. It’s just incredible. Right off the bat, I couldn’t see anything in the fog. You don’t, know which way to look, man. I mean you have got to be looking 180 degrees all at one time, and in the fog, the birds can pop out anywhere. And I was relieved, I was hoping, that with the fog, they would be way high up above it, or they would have their bearings off and they’d be a little lower. So, they were all coming over 30 to 40 yards, some of them higher, but 30 to 40 yards on average, it was just beautiful. I wasted a couple of shots on a too far Sandhill crane. But other than that, I was 5 for 5 on Specs and I was a happy camper. It felt good. I don’t know, it’s just something about feeling that weight on your shoulders and hearing leather strap creek, it’s just very satisfying. And you do it differently, you learn something and we had a great time, and now we’re on our way to town to get a few groceries, few odds and evens. That’s why I’m driving – I’m not driving, I’m riding.

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, you got a chance to sit down with Mat Schauer, Northern Skies Outfitters in Saskatchewan, while you were hunting with him last week. So, tell us a little bit about that conversation.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I think everybody’s going to really enjoy it because I’m up here hunting in the headwaters of the migration, and it’s well underway, I’ve been coming up here a long time and every year it’s a little different. You start off always – There’s Big Canadas, and mallards, and pin tails, those are the local birds. But then the arctic birds start coming in. The little Canada geese, the Specklebellies, the Ross geese, the white fronts, there’s a sensing in order to it. And these outfitters like Mat, year-round outfitters – 10 months a year. From Saskatchewan to South Dakota, South Dakota to Texas Panhandle, Texas Panhandle back to Arkansas and then chase the snow geese up back to Saskatchewan all the way to mid- May, it’s fascinating. His anti-dole observations of what he sees, that very easily reconcile. And to me it made for a great discussion talking about this kind of ebb and flow of the migration, and I think everybody’s going to really enjoy it.

Rocky Leflore: Mat runs a heck of a business. I mean he’s one of the leading outfitters from top to bottom, of chasing ducks and geese, geese mainly. I mean that sucker – They’re still shooting geese in June.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. That really kind of is emerging this conversation about – and it is, if you pay attention, I have hunted in the month of May. I hunted snow geese in Manitoba, I shot them in the fall, I shot them in the wintering grounds, I shot them when they’re flying back, mid fly away and I shot him, round cycle in May while they’re fattening themselves to go to the arctic. But to hear Mat talk about it is very fascinating. Just think about it, Rocky. If I say snow goose hunting, everybody’s base of reference of their interpretation of snow goose hunting is their baseline is like a pit blind in Arkansas or layout in Louisiana or Texas. But man, these birds – Snow geese are fascinating. They’re not sky car in my opinion, they’re one of the most noble game birds, they come from high up in the arctic, up in none of it. And they go clear down to the gulf coast and they come back, they turn around over and 2 months later they’re coming right back down to fly away, they live a long time. Everybody knows it’s hard to kill old birds. It’s just to me, it’s a very fascinating migration and along the way at the different stops here in Canada in the fall, as they’re migrating down, toward the gulf coast when they’re wintering down in the part of the world that we’re all from – Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and when they’re starting to come back and then we’re finally sitting back here again, they change. It’s almost like a different goose. Their behavior, their life ecology is just really different. So, that’s kind of where we talked about the fall migration, then we talked a little bit about the snow goose behavior and he gets to see them. He see them right when he shows up and he says, “Good bye”, to them in May. He just sticks with them and I think it makes for some really interesting conversations.

Rocky Leflore: If there’s one person that knows a lot about snow geese, it’s Mat. It’s unbelievable. We will get to that conversation right now.

Ramsey Russell: This Ramsey Russell from getducks.com. It’s duck season somewhere. Today is September 12^th and I’m in Saskatchewan. I’m in the land of living skies. This is where it all started for me. My first real trip away from home, I started here in Saskatchewan. I’m here today with Mat Schauer, owner/operator of Northern Skies Outfitters. Wonderful guy. I’ve been here 3 years. He’s a part of our ‘US hunt’ list. We’re not going to talk about the commercial hunting aspect. Mat has been doing this for a long, long time and I marvel, at what guys that spend so much time of their lives chasing these birds or helping put clients on birds have really learned about the birds themselves. And we’re in the headwaters of the migration. Right now, it’s 100°, Mat’s back home. Everybody swatting mosquitoes and sweating, still mowing grass and the birds are starting to pile into Saskatchewan. The season has been open here for a couple of weeks. How are you?

Mat Schauer: I’m good. The weather’s turning. We had rain in the last couple of days, clouds are breaking this afternoon, blue skies poking out. We’ve got a full moon just on the horizon. It’s a good time to be in Saskatchewan.

“I hate hunting in the rain. People say, “Oh, you’re supposed to like hunting in the rain” no”

Ramsey Russell: I hate hunting in the rain. People say, “Oh, you’re supposed to like hunting in the rain” no, I want sunshine and wind and shadows to hide in. And one thing I saw up here about – These birds are feeding out in these grain field because right now even though the crops are a little behind, they’re feeding on peas – Primarily pea fields are what we’ve been hunting. And what I know is the first couple of days, other than the fact I was soaking wet, is the birds didn’t fly back to rut mid-day they sat out on the field and fed, which kind of screwed up our afternoon hunting.

Mat Schauer: Yeah, absolutely. When it rains like that there’s water in the field. All the little ruts in the field catch a little bit of water, so they can eat and they can get the water they need right out there in the field. It also softens up the grain. I think it makes a little easier to digest when everything’s wet. So, it’s very common for them to stay out in the field and feed nearly all day long in those conditions.

Ramsey Russell: They swarm in and literally – What I’ve seen – This typical pattern is, we go set up for geese, the birds come off the roost, maybe they stop and get a drink of water, then they come and feed. We shoot them, mid-day to go back and lay up in a roost, afternoon to come back out and repeat. Rainy days, they just sit in those fields and feed and fatten themselves all day because they have got a long way to fly to get down south from here. One thing about this part of Saskatchewan is, it produces birds and it seems to me – am I right or wrong? It seems to me to be a pretty darn wet year.

Mat Schauer: Yeah, it’s definitely a wetter year than the normal, up here. We were up here for the better part of the summer, working on construction of our new lodge and we had a heck of a time getting a parking lot built. I mean, it rained every other day.

Ramsey Russell: Every day.

Mat Schauer: That’s not common at all.

Ramsey Russell: And talking to your farming neighbor that was here last night for dinner – Great dinner by the way. Goose Oscar with the hollandaise sauce and the seafood topping. One of my favorite meals I may have ever eaten at a hunting camp. And of course, your neighbor shows up because he knows it’s good too. But he was explaining how far he is behind harvesting the crops right now because they were so late getting them in because of that wet year. So at least locally, production is good and productive – Primarily what? Big Canada geese and mallards and pin tails.

Mat Schauer: Yeah, local production here is primarily big Canada geese, mallards and pin tails. We produce some gadwall and I’m sure some divers as well, we see them on the lake, I’m no expert on waterfall production in the area. And I couldn’t tell you how the diver production was because we don’t pay a lot of attention to them as we’re hunting dry fields. But mallards, pin tails, the local Canada’s, the biologists I’ve talked to here, in the region all say that they’ve done very well this year and way above average numbers.

Ramsey Russell: I can see it. But here is where I want this conversation to go. Here’s what I find so fascinating, every time I come to visit yours or your observations about the migrations and it’s not just all the water fowl pick up and migrate at one time, its stages, its ebbs and flows. It is very species oriented. You said something to me the other night at dinner about the mallards because of whatever happened with the spring, that the local mallards seemed to be behind on their egg laying production this year and therefore the young birds were behind on feeding in the field. And I don’t know, man, I didn’t doubt you, but it did. Yesterday, I noticed there were 6 of us hunting in the blind, I’m going to say we shot 40, 45 mallards, I don’t remember exact count. But as I was looking at them, there was exactly one juvenile mallard, the rest were adults. And looking at some of the pictures on the inner webs, best I can tell from pictures laid out in a tableau, they all appear to be looking at their wings, they all appear to be adult birds, no juvenile. What’s up with that?

Mat Schauer: Well, I’m not a biologist, but I’m fortunate enough to know quite a few biologists and waterfowl biologists and that’s an observation I made quite a few years ago, that it seemed like our earliest hunts in Saskatchewan every year – Some of the ducks, they decoy well but, they acted a little different. It seems like they got more friendly as the month of September went on, as you got a little later in the season, they got more friendly, which isn’t really what –

Ramsey Russell: They decoy better, you mean.

Mat Schauer: They decoy better. Started responding to mojo ducks better and some of those things and that kind of struck me as odd and I started paying attention to the age of the birds we were killing. And over the years I’ve noticed that those birds you kill the first two weeks of duck season in Saskatchewan at least in this part of a provenance, seem to almost exclusively be mature birds, not young of the year birds and when you follow the birds off of the roost, you see that, some of the birds are going to go out and dry field feed, if there’s dry fields available. But other ones are just going from water to some other water, they’re not going to the dry fields and I got to talk to some of the different biologists, they know about it and the age of the birds we were killing out there in the field and I guess what was told to me was that the birds were young mallard. It takes time for their digestive system to develop to where they can handle those hard grains, those cereal grains, the peas, the wheat, the barley, so they don’t really key into it immediately when it’s available, they’ve got to be a certain age before they can process that and handle it efficiently and that’s why we don’t see those young birds in early September out in the fields often. But it’s all relative to when they have.

“They start off eating a very high protein and fat diet”

Ramsey Russell: It makes perfect sense too, because a young bird, his primary nutritional needs as he building feathers and moulting and growing and it’s going to be fat and protein, which is going to come from invertebrates, out of some of these wetlands here and then later carbohydrate, as he’s starting to build up energy reserves for the migration. I mean it makes perfect sense. And I actually asked over lunch, I was talking to another guy that’s not a biologist but kind of sort is and knows a bunch and he said – I can’t cite it, but I remember having this discussion before the same right. He said, I don’t think it’s just duck, I think it’s birds in general. They start off eating a very high protein and fat diet and then over time. But I never really noticed that before. In the years past I’ve hunted here, the mallard is more friendly, the pintails are more friendly and it makes perfect sense because those birds maybe had hatched earlier, and had gotten to that stage where they were gorging on grain out in these harvested fields. That’s only since –

Mat Schauer: And this year, the ducks hatched later. We had a very, much colder than average spring. Those temperatures hung right around that freezing for several weeks longer than we’d normally see. So, the ducks – Everything initiated a little later on the nesting. So, those young ducklings – It just takes more time. They’ve got to put that age on them before they start dry field feeding.

Ramsey Russell: Speaking of which something I noticed when I hunted up here with you, a couple of years ago – And this is my 3^rd year, same week, the same approximate timeframe, I like to come early September, I remember the shooting whitey, the snows and the Ross geese, especially the Ross geese. It was absolutely magical. It’s like the first afternoon I showed up, I was moving in, I said, hey, you have got time to go jump in the truck and go shoot some white birds if you want. I jumped in with a couple of guys and we went out and shot a whole bunch of white geese, limited on white geese, they were all Ross geese. Last year, there were some white birds, weren’t many Ross, but as I was leaving, the weather took a turn for cold. A lot of white birds just started to piling in. Mat, what are some of the things you have seen over the years or some of the observations you’ve drawn about the differences you see in year to year and what that means in terms of snow goose population and productivity?

Mat Schauer: Sure. Well, when it comes to snow geese, you get reports from different biologists and there’s the official reports that come out in late summer, early August and we’re of course always paying attention to those. But as far as hatch success goes and really knowing how many juveniles are in the flocks of snows that are coming through this flyway that we’re in, I pay a lot of attention to when the snow geese arrive. The quicker that we see snow geese – Last year, for example, we had large numbers of snow geese here on September 1^st and large numbers of the Ross geese here already on September 1^st, so we would drive around scouting and see a 1000 to 10,000 all in one feed already. And when you see that, it’s a bad sign as far as production goes because those birds, they have no need to stay up there on the tundra, they don’t need to wait for the weather to chase them out. They know there’s grain and food and it’s the time of the year that they can come down and they will come down if they’re not raising young and they’ve got to wait for those young to be strong enough to make that flight. So, we start seeing them much earlier on years when they don’t have production. And you’ll notice, in the snow geese that we’ve shot here this week that most of the snow geese that we’re shooting right now are adult snow geese, there’s no juvenile snow geese in there. Now, we are starting to see some Ross geese and this is a normal time of the year for them to show up, and there are some juvenile birds mixed in with them and it’s not lots and lots of Ross geese in the area yet, but they’re just kind of trickling in and there are some juveniles in them. So, that’s telling me that the snow geese that are coming yet, the ones that are coming later this month, are going to have juveniles in the flocks with them, as compared to last year, where the large majority of them was already here by now and they just didn’t have any young.

“Chances are there’s going to be more fly down this year”

Ramsey Russell: A lot of the reports I’ve read have said that snow goose productivity was good this year and apparently unlike last year when snow goose productivity was good, but there was a late snow that killed them when they’re all a little furry, little fuzzy yellow balls running around the arctic snow come and cover them up and kill them off, which is why we didn’t have many juveniles last year. So, chances are there’s going to be more fly down this year, you think?

Mat Schauer: I would say so. Things are pointing in that direction. However, some of the biologists I’ve talked to recently here have indicated that, some of the snow geese had a tough year again, hatching, but other ones that were very successful or averagely successful, they did initiate 2 or 3 weeks later than normal. So, that puts them in a position yet where they’re not here because they’re still raising those young up on the tundra and this is kind of at that time of the year when snow storms and ice storms and all sorts of bad weather, that could wipe out our favorite little poof balls, could come down. So, I don’t count my chickens before they get off of the tundra.

Ramsey Russell: Believe when you see them over the decoys.

Mat Schauer: Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see them over the decoys, and that should be here in the next 3 weeks or so.

Ramsey Russell: It’s exciting time to see it. You get to see it every year. You get to see the whole migration originate, right here at the headwaters. It starts trickling in a species or a cohort at a time and doing its thing. So, right now, the birds we’re shooting, the white bird, I’ve noticed they’re primarily adult birds. They’re likely, birds that didn’t breed or lost their clutch and for whatever reason, they just don’t have any children to raise, ladies get started early.

Mat Schauer: Yeah, the first birds that we always see arriving in Saskatchewan every year are going to be local birds that were crippled, didn’t make the trip, stayed here all summer, a handful of those. But then when we actually start seeing birds migrating in, the first ones we see are going to be the adult birds, they’re going to be either too young to breed or too old to breed or birds that for whatever reason – A fox raided their nest or something, seagulls ate their babies, they don’t have any young to raise. So, they’re getting a head start on that on that south migration. And I think most people notice that, through all the states, even down into the lower states as they go south – Those very first birds that will show up in Arkansas and Mississippi mid-October early, early November, you’re going see the first ones that get, they’re going to have many juvies in. But you can’t judge the hatch success by the very first –

Ramsey Russell: There’s no different than the blue wing, because right now at home, blue wing teal season is open or is fixing to open and I believe that the adult season is going to open Saturday. But for a fact that the first big slug of blue wings that we begin to see in August are predominantly adult males, every one of them because they don’t have a clutch to raise. They’re adult, they’re of breeding age, mamas got the babies, boom, they’re going off with the boys down south and some of those years – That just the time and when the season opens, there are times that you can monitor the heartbeat of the migration just by looking at the sex ratio, the age and sex ratio of the bag. And there are times, it will be all adult juvenile blue wings and then as the season progresses and the migration comes in spurts all of a sudden you start killing adult hens with young birds. Okay, now I’m into the main flow of the migration and it’s just – I get that because I’m from the Deep South as we start talking geese, it’s very interesting. Last week, Corey Loeffler and I had a great discussion about moat migrators and I’m just going to tell you this Mat, you didn’t know, I can remember being very excited – 1998, a long time ago to come to Canada because I had never shot one of these little Canada Geese. I shot the big ones, I never shot a little Canada goose. I want to come shoot the littles. And all these years later, I’ll shoot everyone that comes in. But the ones that I’m just enamored with a great big B-52s. I don’t care where they are. I love shooting these migrator Canada geese. Do you see when you first get up here setting up shop, is it kind of like back home? Because right now we’re shooting good numbers of big Canada geese and a few pairs, few triples, a lot of smaller, what I call family cohorts, 5 to 8 packs, and then some pretty darn gone big flocks. Are those big flocks local family groups that are starting to aggregate bigger or they migratory moat migrators? What do you think?

Mat Schauer: When we’re talking about the big east, the big flocks, of big Canadas that you’re seeing are local geese that are just starting to get together, starting to flock and stage. We wouldn’t have any big push of big geese migrating down yet. Now, we are starting to see some flocks of the lesser Canada and those are probably going to north.

“To me they both sort of look alike”

Ramsey Russell: We’ve been shooting cacklings and they are so much different. To me they both sort of look alike, other than size, with the dark body, and white cheek patch. But their behavior is so much different. It’s almost like those cackling geese got some snow goose in the woodpile. They like big flocks, they bark and they are very gregarious and there’s a lot of eyeballs, and yeah, sure you shoot some singles and stuff like that to get lost. But most of you are working big flocks of the big Canadas. When do those cackling geese start to show up? Kind of, what is their time and period during this whole fall process?

Mat Schauer: We’re right at the start of these cackling geese right now and they’ll continue to build numbers and get to be more and more – I’d say on a normal year, they said it was a pretty good hatch here, the way it sounds on those lesser Canadas again this year. But I’d it’s in a normal year, between the 5^th and 12^th of October is kind of where we’ll see the peak of the little geese. Yeah, those little, lesser Canadas in the area.

Ramsey Russell: Is that about the same time for snow geese, do they kind of migrate generally with snow geese? All I’m saying, does the timing coincide?

Mat Schauer: Snow geese have generally peak just a little earlier. Snow geese, kind of last week of September, very first couple days of October are typically the peak of the snow geese. But all those dates shift a little bit with weather and just with the timing of the hatch, like a late spring usually, will indicate that we’re going to have a later than average snow goose arrival in the fall just because they nest a little later, takes them a little longer to be able to fly. The kind of the same thing applies to those little Canadas and everything else. If nest initiation is later, it takes them a little bit longer to be able to make the trip. We see the stages of the migration, watching these birds and the different birds that are coming through the area both as you were talking, sex and maturity of the birds that really need. As you get down towards the end of the season, you get down to that late October, early November time frame and as a guy scouting, you’ll watch these ponds that are covered in ducks and you’ve been looking at fields and ponds full of ducks all season long as part of your scouting routine and all of a sudden one day you’ll notice that pond is covered in ducks, but there’s no hens, they’re all drakes. And whenever it gets to be that stage of things, I always kind of say that, well, once it’s all drakes, we’ve probably got, 10 days or 1 real hard freeze up before where we’re going to run out of ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Because they have got the fat reserves of the size, they’ll hang back later and just weather it out. And get whatever food is left to themselves.

Mat Schauer: Yeah, they’re feeding and it’s the weather that’s going to push those drakes out.

Ramsey Russell: Bad weather.

Mat Schauer: Yeah, it is bad weather, cold and ice. They’re going to sit right there on that cold and ice line. When you get them, then you kind of know that you’re getting near the end of it, that everything else has kind of come through and you’ll still have big honkers. These big party Saskatchewan honkers that will be lingering around. Yeah, it’s a sure sign that you’re near the end of the fall migration, the fall flight when you start seeing all drakes.

Ramsey Russell: It seems like by the time the birds have staged in southern Canada and up along the northern tier and have migrated during a normal winter that they’re actually going to migrate like they do, they just show up in the big flocks, it’s just all mix and match, it just seemed to me just speaking generally, but up here, it’s so much dynamic going on during the staging period. So, start off hunting local adult mallards, later local juvenile mallards are mixed in with it. You’ve still got migrator mallards coming in, right, later in season? You’ll have new mallards showing up from up north. Is it like 2 different pulses? You’ve got the non-breeding birds from up north that are pulsing down to here, then you’ve got the juvenile flocks coming in later. Do they seem to come at one time?

Mat Schauer: They don’t necessarily seem to come at one time, like we talked about, the non-breeders will be the first ones that show up and then the breeders and when the successful breeding birds are showing up into the area whether it be Canada geese, snow geese, whatever it is, they’re always going to be easier hunting because they’ve got those young of the year birds that have never seen one of us before, never seen a decoy, never been shot at in this particular part of the country, it’s not uncommon when those snow geese meet their first decoy, spread that they come in, you shoot at them and they make a little half circle and they come right in again and you just recycle them 3 or 4 times before they figure it out. So, you’ll know when the young of the year birds are mixed in the flocks.

Ramsey Russell: And I love to – people ask me all the time what my favorite duck is and my answer is always the same, a dumb one. I like a dumb duck. I like those dumb duck. They’re fun to hunt. You’ve been doing this for 10 years, you’ve got to see a lot of this and develop a lot of understanding about this stuff, but then as a guide and an outfitter there – It really is a lot of people component. I’ve always said that, I wish I sold the light bulbs for a living because light bulbs on and off, everybody expects the same thing, duck hunting is a very subjective experience. Am I right? You probably don’t get a lot of species collectors up here, serious species collectors. But do you have people show up that – Well, how would you describe most of your clients, do they want to come up here and have a good time and shoot? Are they opportunistic on whatever a great hunt is or do you have guys that come up here and want to focus on one thing over the other?

“Every hunter has an image in their head”

Mat Schauer: You know over the years, every hunter is different. Every hunter has an image in their head, what the perfect waterfall hunt is, what they really want to get out of a hunt. Because there’s so many different species and there’s so many different ways to hunt. It’s very common, you’ve got a guy that wants to layout, blind hunt, likes to be out there in then layout blind and have those birds landing, you’re right on top of his face, wants to be so close, you can feel those wing beats on his face. But then you have your next group of guys and maybe it’s older gentleman and they absolutely want nothing to do with the layout blind because they want to sit in a chair, they want to be comfortable, maybe they have a hard time getting up fast enough to shoot birds out of the layout.

Ramsey Russell: Put me in that category, when they’re too close, I usually miss.

Mat Schauer: Yeah. You have got to give them a little distance. I’ve had one or two complaints over the years that the birds are too close. I’ve always had an answer for that, just sit up, wave your gun around, believe you me, they’re going to get farther.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, they’re going to get farther quick, aren’t they? Good answer. We were talking about talking about bands earlier. If you got any good band stories, we got – I know you see bands come in left and right. What is it about a band? Because I’ve always said, kind of tongue and cheek, but you think about all these wild birds, you shoot an unbanded bird, you’re the first person to put hands on him since the hands of God. It’s a truly wild bird. So, in one way, all these bands were collecting are coming off of birds that have been handled by some pervert biologist or something. We kind of kid about that. But you got any good band stories?

Mat Schauer: Oh, I’ve got a lot of band stories. I don’t know if any one in particular comes to mind, but as a guide and an outfitter, a band is really a blessing and a curse. Everybody’s excited when you shoot a band out there in the field and the dog brings a band back to the blind, there’s a lot of excitement. So, I don’t know exactly where we crashed, but like I was saying, getting a band as a guide or as an outfitter, when you shoot a band, it’s kind of a blessing and a curse. You’re excited to get a band. Everybody in the blind is excited to see a band, it can really make a hunt –

Ramsey Russell: It can make or break your hunt, no doubt.

Mat Schauer: Absolutely. It’s an instant attitude changer to have a band.

Ramsey Russell: So, it’s a blessing because it’ll pull any hunt in the world, either sheer, but it occurs because of who gets the band.

Mat Schauer: Because of who gets the band. Everybody’s excited when that band gets back to the blind.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve seen a million times, there’s 6 guys in a blind in Canada or Netherlands or Arkansas or somewhere, you’re having the time of your life. The birds are flying, the birds are dying, everybody’s high fiving and then the dog brings in a band. Things start to get quiet and eventually – I may be exaggerating a little bit, not much, but it gets really quiet because everybody in the back of their mind thinking, “Who gets the band? How do I get the band?” Is that what you’re saying? Who gets the band? If you got a team up here in Saskatchewan, who gets the band?

Mat Schauer: Well, if I see the band come back and they don’t see they band come back. The first thing I’ll do is I’ll ask, “hey, who shot that bird over there on the right?” If there were just two birds shot who shot those birds and I’ll see who volunteers that they shot those birds because now we’ve narrowed it down. Then we’ll go about figure and then I’ll reveal that that bird was banded and we’ll go about trying to figure out who gets it. Now, if it’s a private group of hunters, then my job is super easy because there’s been one guy from that group who organized the whole trip, who’s my point of contact, the team leader, it’s going to be his problem deciding who gets that band. I’m just going to hand it to him and tell him, congratulations.

Ramsey Russell: I know some team leader is going to pocket it, they’re going to get it automatically.

Mat Schauer: Yeah, absolutely. And when that happens, all of them hunters will come back the next year, wanting to book trips. But you better believe they all went out there and tried to recruit their own 6 guys so they can be team leader because they’re not going let that band slip away from them another year.

Ramsey Russell: That’s hilarious. What are some of the ways you all -if you don’t have a private group, you got 5 or 6 guys or whatever in here, how do you decide now? Now, it’s your problem to decide who gets a band. How do you do that?

Mat Schauer: Well like I said, if I see the band come back before they see it, I’ll grab it and then I’ll ask that question that, who shot that mallard, drake or who shot that one snow goose over there on the right. And usually there’ll be a couple of guys that say, oh yeah, I shot that one or I shot at that one and then I’ll reveal its banded and now we’re down to just to 2 or 3 that said they shot it and we’ve got to figure out between them who gets it and we can draw straws or shells, pull shotgun shells out of a hat or sometimes we just play a little game of stud poker ideal to meet your poker hand, whoever’s got the best one, gets the band.

Ramsey Russell: Best 2 out of 3, best 3 out of 4, best 5 out of 6?

“We’ve had guys who want to wrestle for it”

Mat Schauer: And that’s where it goes next, until we find out who really wants it the most. But we get all different types of creative with it. We’ve had guys who want to wrestle for it. We’ve had guys who want to race for it.

Ramsey Russell: Have you ever had anybody gets seriously in a fight or get your feelings hurt over a freaking band?

Mat Schauer: I’ve seen some guys get feelings hurt. I’ve seen grown men get their feelings hurt because it was a mixed group and the other side of the mixed group got to keep the band. If I have got 3 on my right and 3 on my left and everybody shot at that banded bird. I’m going to decide who gets it from the group that was on my right to the group that was on my left and then it’s going to go from there to the group leader of that particular group and he’s going to decide out of the 3 of them which one gets it. I try to pass off that band, delegating responsibility as quickly as I can –

Ramsey Russell: Go find a cup of coffee or something else to do let them figure it out. I’m sure given the species, you all mostly shoot up here that snow geese, probably the most prevalent banded species. And what next, mallards?

Mat Schauer: Yeah, snow geese – I don’t know for a fact that they’re the most prevalent banded, but just because the limit is 20 birds per person, sheer amount of snow geese that are coming through camp, you see more banded.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what I meant to say. Most band recovery you all encounter are going to probably be snow geese.

Mat Schauer: Yeah, and after that it would really be a toss-up between the lesser Canadas and the mallards. And we don’t see very many of the big Canada bands. We must not be in the right fly away right here. You go down to the Dakotas, where I’m from and we see a lot of big honker bands, they band a lot locally there. So, if we were hunting there, the more prevalent band would be the big honkers.

Ramsey Russell: That makes sense, because what little I know about moat migrator will fit in my visor but a nice discussion with Corey, last week and as he was explaining those birds going up the Hudson Bay and Maltan and then flying back down the principal flyway, would carry them, probably more along the woodlands from where the woodlands start hitting the prairie and it kind of comes out in central Minnesota and from there they fan out south, down to Iowa or Illinois, where they’re going in east over towards New York and then west out, as far west as Colorado and Utah. So, I can see where you all maybe a little out of that major moat, migrator corridor that makes perfect sense. What are some of the most interesting bands you’ve encountered or have seen turn up? I’m sure there’s some good ones.

Mat Schauer: I’ve seen in double snow geese from Russia over the years. Taken by our clients, neck collar and –

Ramsey Russell: Was it written in Russian?

Mat Schauer: Yeah, they were neat. You definitely knew it was something different as soon as you looked at it. We’ve seen two of those over the years, but some of the more interesting –

Ramsey Russell: All hunts or spring hunts?

Mat Schauer: Those were both in spring hunts, conservation hunts in the US actually, South Dakota, both of them. But up here in Saskatchewan, I’ve probably seen some more interesting things, I guess. I’ve seen white PVC pipe on the neck of a big Canada goose and I don’t know who caught that goose or how they got that pipe on there, but a solid chunk of white PVC pipe and everybody was excited, thought it was a neck collar. And just a white PVC pipe, but maybe a little more of a trophy than an actual neck collar because there are a not a lot of those out there –

Ramsey Russell: Probably some kid’s pet.

Mat Schauer: Maybe some kids pet but it looked like a regular big honker to me.

Ramsey Russell: He wrote, don’t shoot on the collar and it wore off in the weather.

Mat Schauer: Got a lesser Canada once with just a solid red leg band on it, just the number 4. No contact info, nothing else just a red piece of iron with the number 4 on it. It was a lesser Canada.

Ramsey Russell: But it was a Canada, it’s a small bird.

Mat Schauer: It was a lesser Canada, absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: There is a chance that it came out of captivity or something, drew or aviary, who knows?

Mat Schauer: You don’t know, it’s kind of an original. Once got a snow goose with a hose clamp on his leg, just a weird deal. Who knows where it came from or how it got there, but kind of a one-of-a-kind trophy. And I kind of think that stuff is maybe even neater than a real leg band.

“You do that. I mean, you’re full time in this game”

Ramsey Russell: Mat, I want to wrap up our conversation. I find it very interesting because you’ve been doing this full time, all the time and you’re a 10-month outfitter – I have a lot of clients call and say one day when they’re old and have a camper, they want to start up in Canada and follow the birds all the way down the gulf coast and back up. You do that. I mean, you’re full time in this game. Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, South Dakota, Saskatchewan. I mean, it’s a big loop, isn’t it?

Mat Schauer: Yeah, we start here and we follow them all the way down to Texas and we turn around and we follow those spring geese right back to here and we’ll wrap everything up here in the spring about the 17^th to 20^th of May when all these geese get up, go over the trees and disappear, until they come down again in the fall.

Ramsey Russell: How do you know in that spring, when it’s over? How do you know it’s over? How do you look up and say it’s over?

Mat Schauer: In the spring, it’s a photo period and it’s the same day every year, it’ll change with a leap year. But once there’s enough hours of daylight, minutes of daylight in the day at the time and gets right and it will be for our particular area, it’s going to be the 17^th to 20^th May, it’s just that one day and you’ll be out hunting in the morning Ramsey. Decoys all set up, you’re in the feed you’re where those geese were. We make sure those – When we know it’s getting close to that time of the year, we’re always going to hunt a feed that’s on the north side of wherever the birds are roosting because the day that they leave, they’re leaving north.

Ramsey Russell: Picking up and going.

Mat Schauer: I’ve been out there hunting on that day and been in the field, they’ve been feeding in for a week and on the south side of the roost and watched every one of my geese get up and go north and leave. None of them come back to me. But fortunately, if you’re hunting on that day of the year, all the geese to the south of you, all the geese everywhere in this part of the world get up and go north at the same time. So, we were still able to shoot our limited geese, they were just traffic geese coming out of the south going north and just stopping for a bite along the way.

Ramsey Russell: They were saying goodbye and just got shot. We’re almost done, all these days getting hunted, mess up over the last path. Yeah, one more mouthful.

Mat Schauer: Yeah, one more mouthful of peas. Maybe they taste a little better than that tundra grass.

Ramsey Russell: Matt, I appreciate you. This has been a good conversation and I hope all these other guys enjoyed it. Hey, check us out on Instagram, Ramsey Russell GetDucks. We try to post daily with all of these great adventures. I’m sure you all would like to see what we’ve been putting away up here in Saskatchewan in the last few days with Northern Skies Outfitters.

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, like we talked about in the opening man, Mat knows a lot. Not only about snow geese, but the migration of waterfowl overall. It’s unreal.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. It’s not scientific, but it doesn’t have to be a body of science. Our observation as hunters, it’s valid. It’s important. It’s what drives us and makes us better hunters indistinctly. And I just really enjoy hearing accomplished people like him to spend a lot of days out in the field here in their observations. And he’s kind of lit a fire in the majors here in that story where we wrapped up, about where those geese are in their lifecycle, right there in mid-May before they all just basically get up and leave it one time to go to the arctic is got me wanting to go hunt them. I’m not hunting them like that’s it, but I intend to.

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, do you think it should be that every water fowler – And I know that you’re going to say yes to this because it’s a part of who you are in your business. But, every water fowler should chase ducks or geese, it doesn’t matter from top to bottom and back to the top, but you’re not going to do that with ducks but at least once. And if you love it that much due to understand what’s going on. It’s got to be an amazing thing for what you learn, chasing them from top to bottom and back up.

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah. Rocky, of course I think everybody should travel but every real duck hunter that I know does travel or wants to, every one of them. They may not want to go to Azerbaijan or Argentina, or someplace like that, I believe there’s only two kind of duck hunters, those who want to go to Argentina and those who have been, because of the trigger pulling part of it. But at the end of the day, we are duck hunters. We love waterfowl and we have to understand – The more we understand and know about them and their behavior, the better hunters we become, so the more we enjoy it. And ducks migrate and I just see where a lot of hunters, even if they’re just within driving distance of their home, they tend to migrate to different habitats within their state or their home county or different states or different flyways. And I tell people, I talked to – fortunately a lot of young people especially, that are collecting or want to get into this or get into that. And, I warn them and I know it’s futile to warn them but I say, just be careful because it’s a real slippery slope. The further you go down the trail, the further it beckons you to come further. And it’s a fascinating journey. It’s a fascinating migration, as a hunter. But we become better hunters and I say, we become better people just because of the other people and the other cultures and the other species and it makes us evolve as hunters, Rocky. Because we all learned the basics, the fundamentals of duck hunting, mallards. They wrote the rule book, but then not all species are mallards. Not all species are snow geese or Canada, they’ve all got their own behavior. It makes us better hunters and better people as we gain understanding in that. We gain understanding by experience. So yeah, I think everybody should travel and I think everybody wants to anyway.

Rocky Leflore: No, I do too. It’s unreal that – Like you talk about this, it’s unreal, the difference in the behavior as you travel around. Mallards in Mississippi are so vary about what is coming into a decoy spread and then you skip out to Oklahoma and they try to kill you falling into a spread.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Rocky Leflore: Literally, thousands.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Rocky Leflore: It’s so different, everywhere you go.

Ramsey Russell: No, it is. And reading birds – reading their behavior and learning to adapt. I thought I really hit the nail on the head yesterday talking about seasons and the more you hunt, it’s like – Just imagine you start a job tomorrow as a carpenter and your boss gives you this little tool belt with a hammer but a week later you buy a tape and a week later you buy a crowbar and a week later – Before you know it, you’ve got this whole big toolbox and still you’re going to encounter problems, you look in your toolbox, you don’t have exactly what you need for the job at hand, but you make it work. That’s really to me, the rewarding part or the fun part about what we do. Rocky, I just perceive a lot of these young people and I’m not judging. Hunting is not a one size, fits all thing. I just perceive that, younger hunters, less experienced people are looking for a silver bullet, like a light switch – flipping on lights on, flipping off lights off. And it’s not that. Hunting and duck hunting is not that. And you as a hunter and hunting, collectively as a tradition and the wildlife as a resource itself, demands more respect and just go out and shoot them and go back. It is a game of sorts, it is like life. Figuring it out is the fun part. Being on top of the hill, big deal, man, it’s to walk up to the top that defines it. And that’s what pulls me along this trail, anyway.

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, talking about behavior. I’ve walked into spots in the central flyway from Texas through Oklahoma and Kansas and you look at some of these spots, some of these old – What we call peel ponds here in Mississippi, you’re like, a duck’s not coming in here, there’s no way or cattle tanks for the guys out since flyway. They would never land in something like that in Mississippi and it just amazes you, they stand on top of one another in those little 2-acre ponds.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And I wonder if it’s just what they’re able to do. I wonder if it is preference or availability, that’s what I find myself wondering, it doesn’t matter. But man, you get off in that part of the world, it doesn’t look like duck country. Like I said, it’s all about our baseline. It doesn’t look like duck country, just like today, walking out in those little scrub willows and sage grass, it just didn’t look like anything I’d ever productively goose hunt in, but it was amazing. And you get out there, parts of the west and your just in this prairie and these little potholes, these little stock tanks and ducks are just coming in, you just lay down and think, well man, I can shoot across this thing, it is nothing and you leave a few minutes later with a half dozen gadwall slung over your shoulder. That’s such a wonderful experience. I love doing new things. I love finding new little facets of this jewel of water fowling. That’s what makes it so great.

Rocky Leflore: I agree. I look forward to more conversations. I think this is going to quickly become a popular part of this podcast. Because it’s just like that guy told me last night, Ramsey. A guy walked up to softball game or softball practice and he said, I love your podcast. I said, what do you think about the new episode, with Ramsey that we’ve put in there and he said, I felt like I was sitting at the table with him. I couldn’t say anything, but I felt like I was sitting at the table listening to him talk. He said, it is a really cool concept and I said, I think so too, I really think so. So, Ramsey, thank you for taking the time to do this.

Ramsey Russell: Yes sir, I’m enjoying it. Thank you all for listening.

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, be careful and we will talk to you again, probably first part of next week. But thank you again for doing all this. We want to thank all of you that listened to this edition of

The End of The Line podcast, powered by ducksouth.com.

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