Ramsey Russell Worldwide: Corey Loeffler, Minnesota Molt Migrators

Rocky Leflore: Welcome to The End of The Line Podcasts, I’m Rocky Leflore in the Duck South Studios in Oxford, Mississippi. Joining me from Canada, again today, Ramsey Russell.

Ramsey Russell: Rocky, how are you sir?

Rocky Leflore: Man, I’m doing great. You know Ramsey, you and I had a conversation on your way on this trek, across the United States, through Canada, back through the US. Something that hit me, couple of weeks ago. One great thing about who you are, that makes – the thing about – Let me say this first. The thing that I want people to understand, what makes a great guide, is not the guy that always kill the most birds, that’s a huge part of it. But what makes a great guide, is the guy that can still be friends after a bad day’s hunt. Do you agree with that, Ramsey?

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah, I sure do.

Rocky Leflore: And how you do that? You have got to be able to talk to clients. You have got to have great conversations. So, I say all that to say this. So, Ramsey is on his trek – Ramsey, you’re going by all these awesome places and talking to these great people and having these conversations which is what makes Ramsey who he is, stick a recorder out and record it. When you go in to see Brandon, at Bosh M.O or when you’re hunting with Corey Loeffler up in Minnesota, in Michigan, when you’re sitting down with Mat Schauer on the front porch at the lodge, record these conversations. Because I spend a ton of time on the phone with you, if we could record the stuff that we talk about pre-podcast, just the conversations that you and I have, you’re talking about podcast worthy. I said that if you’re doing the same thing with these people, record it, it’ll be awesome. It will be the final piece in your puzzle as world traveler of Get Ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Well, Rocky, I’ll say you the moment –

Rocky Leflore: Well, you said, let me think about it. You said, let me think on it a couple of days and you actually called me back within – I guess about 18 hours. You said, man, this will work. I think that as long as I’m kind of control it, it’s going to work. I said, yes, it will, it’s going to be huge, so that’s where we stand today. We’re at that first episode kind of a conversation with Ramsey Russell, is what we’re going to call it.

“We all time say, hunting is conservation. The Canada goose, the big Canada geese are one of the success stories. Believe it or not, somewhere along in the 50’s, they were thought to be extinct in the United States of America and we talk about that and we talk about the origins of the birds, that can roughly be described, as the northern tier birds now, where they originated from and what their historic migratory pattern was.”

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’m going to tell you this, Rocky, I did think about it and it’s always like that little meme that you see floating around the internet, it’s like the picture of you doing something and it’s what your mama thinks, you’re doing, what your wife thinks you’re doing, what your buddies think you’re doing, what your father thinks you’re doing, what you’re really doing and I get an inkling of what people think I’m doing because – Posting up a bunch of Dad’s stuff all the time but it is really more than that. When I’m up here hunting with – I know a lot of great hunters, not all of them are commercial, a lot of them are friends, a lot of them are in industry, a lot of them are – Whatever, we’re all just hunters and I get to see them. We really don’t talk about a lot of – When I’m up here with Mat, we really don’t talk about a ton of business, like what you might read on the web page, if you’re considering buying our Canada hunt. We just talked like hunters do, we talk about things that hunters do and to me it’s always been a learning experience because the world is a lot bigger than our backyard, it’s way bigger than our backyard. Today’s podcast, talking to Corey Loeffler fascinating guy. And I’ll tell you, and I will probably mention in the podcast but back in the – I was born and raised in Greenville, Mississippi on the banks of Lake Ferguson and decades preceding my birth, my grandfather and his associates had a goose camp they called it. It was just a collection of grown men, 5 or 6 of them, that would get in a boat or travel and would go down river from Greenville and dig into a sandbar for 2 weeks each year and tent camp, they cooked and I’ve even got one of my prized possessions is some of their budget items, little mimeograph, mini notes and stuff they took, but they would count for 2 weeks to hunt migrator Canada geese. And my grandfather wasn’t a prolific photographer, he didn’t have an iPhone in his pocket. He just took a few pictures and print them and put them and it’s funny how the whole sum of his hunting life, it’s pretty much boiled down to one thin magnetic page photo album. And one of those pictures is him holding some Canada Geese in Cairo, Illinois. Back by the 70s, they were going up to Cairo Illinois to shoot geese. Since then, the birds don’t even migrate as far south as Cairo Illinois. And now I know guys back home shoot Canada geese, man, my buddy, big water, tadpole one of the boys calls and says, they got a Canada goose hunt, I am in because it’ll be a good field, but normally it’s 150 resident birds coming off a country club or something into an ag field and one volley, you’re done. We all kind of, sort of call, but not really – Rocky, when you go back up north now, somewhere between the 50s and the 70s, when my grandfather was hunting on them sandbars, to go into Cairo, Illinois to where the bird don’t come to Illinois, the south lost a lot – in my opinion of Canada goose hunting culture. I mean, it’s really not a big thing in the south anymore and one of the things that actually compel me to come to Canada was I want to hunt migrator Canadas. Well, from about New York – we’re actually on the eastern seaboard, as you go all the way out to Maryland from Maryland to Montana on the northern tier, the big Canada goose, I am talking about the giant, there is still a viable culture up here. When you start getting around Minnesota, Michigan, New York, North Dakota, buddy, it’s hardcore you meet young people up here, 15 years old, that don’t care anything about ducks. They’re all in on big Canada geese. And the opportunity to go to Minnesota and hunt with Corey Loeffler, who is a renowned Canada goose call maker, born and raised hunting him and his daddy, born and raised hunting Canada geese since a young man, it is pretty darn incredible. I’ll tell you something funny you can relate to. Somebody in Michigan or Minnesota one – We’re out there eating breakfast and they said, I just can’t believe, you hunt all over the world and you’re here. I’m like, man, to come up to Minnesota or Michigan or somewhere like that, and hunt real Canada geese, that’s like going to a foreign country because it’s so foreign to us in Mississippi to hunt and what Corey and I really talked a lot about how you hunt them yada-yada, but really the big thing, the big takeaway messages, a lot of these birds that are in the northern tier do not migrate further south, they may never have – There’s a theory, they may never have – This particular population, their genetic code because of how they originated may never have even gone. They may not have been the ones my grandfather hunted. We all time say, hunting is conservation. The Canada goose, the big Canada geese are one of the success stories. Believe it or not, somewhere along in the 50’s, they were thought to be extinct in the United States of America and we talk about that and we talk about the origins of the birds, that can roughly be described, as the northern tier birds now, where they originated from and what their historic migratory pattern was. And then you’ve got this whole phenomenon. I was posting in our Instagram account, I was posting a lot about using terms like moult migrator and meanwhile my inbox is blowing up, what is a moult migrator and it’s an interesting Canada goose phenomenon and it’s very important, I mean, down in the deep south we want those cold fronts, that will push the green heads down. Well, man these guys up here, specially this time of year, in September they’re all about the moult migrators. So, anyway it’s a really interesting conversation about real Canada goose hunting and Canada goose hunting culture.

Rocky Leflore: Let me give you 2 facts about Corey. So, Corey and I go back a few years. 2 really cool facts about Corey, one not so cool as the other one, but Corey was one of the first – I don’t want to call it pro or pro staff or ambassador or whatever those words are, but Corey was one of the first guys that Sitka chose to get their pattern out to. Did you know that?

Ramsey Russell: I did not.

“Corey drove over in Madison, South Dakota and I remember all of us are laid out in these blinds and they put Cory on the very end and all of us are laid out in these blinds, that Drake on and there’s Corey, sitting on the far end with his Sitka and anyway, I remember thinking to myself at the time, that is the oddest, wildest, craziest looking camo I’ve ever seen.”

Rocky Leflore: Yeah, we were hunting together in 14, we were filming a TV show for Drake Migration Nation, we were up in South Dakota. Corey drove over in Madison, South Dakota and I remember all of us are laid out in these blinds and they put Cory on the very end and all of us are laid out in these blinds, that Drake on and there’s Corey, sitting on the far end with his Sitka and anyway, I remember thinking to myself at the time, that is the oddest, wildest, craziest looking camo I’ve ever seen. It will never work. It looked like it was generated off of computer.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Rocky Leflore: We see how that turned out. But anyway now –

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, to take a step further, I was dumb as a brick when I was 21 years old and I remember listening to a bunch of kids talk about computers and I thought they were a fad, but go ahead.

Rocky Leflore: So, the second day that we were hunting together, Corey and I are not – Neither one of us are very patient at all. The ducks and geese were landing, I’m dead serious, when I say this, they were landing right behind the combine as it was cutting corn. I mean, this combine was cutting corn in 18 inches of snow. And Corey and I decided to get up and go to where that combine was cutting, crawl through the standing stocks, we were on an open field, there were stocks, standing corn in between this and a guy over there cutting corn. Corey and I decided to climb to go over there. Well, I was over there and there were just ducks everywhere. In a couple of shots, I had killed my 6. Well, Corey has this big idea before I shoot my ducks, he has a photographer with him. You go to his page and look at this because I’m sitting probably 100 yards away as this happens because this one specific photo becomes national note. So, I’m sitting there, Corey is crawling through the corn, those guys up there, all about geese. They could care less about a stupid duck. So, Corey climbs – We see snow geese like crazy – Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana Delta, we don’t think anything about them. To me, they kind of ruin duck hunts. Man, Corey’s fired up about all these snow geese. He crawls through that – Seriously 16-18 inches of snow on his hands and knees up to the snow geese – Go to his page and look at this photo. Corey jumps up backwards, he’s facing his photographer with the geese in the background and these geese jump up behind it him. And he’s got his arms spread out, kind of like a Rocky pose from the movie. It is a cool photo and that photo got used by a bunch of people, I think magazines, it was well known, back in 2014-15, that photo was. And I remember thinking that I was there, kind of to be a part of that or 100 yards away as it was happening. Corey is an awesome guy. He knows a lot about waterfowl hunting–

Ramsey Russell: Like you alluded to earlier, he doesn’t sit still. He’s not patient. I knew Corey, seen him around social media, we have got a lot of friends. I got to know him up the game fair, Minnesota, met him and talked to him a little bit, but spent a few days at Corey’s house – There’s talkers and doers in life and Corey is a doer. He is an accomplished call maker, he is a father, he is a gardener – Man, they have got the largest garden I’ve ever seen and I mean, everything that you can buy at the grocery store inside there. He’s a heck of a hunter, he’s a heck of a chef, he’s a heck of a cook, just a very interesting and high energy guy that just is out there conquering. And a lot of people, we talk about in podcast, a lot of names besides Sitka that you recognize in a modern industry – Cory’s had dealings with and been involved with, very interesting guy. But anyway, we had a great time and a great hunt, I think everybody will really enjoy hearing. It’s going to be talking to a Canada goose hunters.

Rocky Leflore: He’s a great listener too.

Ramsey Russell: He’s a good listener.

Rocky Leflore: You know, Ramsey and I one thing that we’ve always said, if you want to take away one thing from any of these podcasts, be like Ramsey or Corey, be a good listener and hang out with people smarter than you or equally as smart and have great success. Sit back and listen to it, don’t say a word. And I think that’s one key element to success in life. It’s hanging out with people smarter than you and just listening to what they say. That’s one of the things that I noticed about Corey and in my time with him, when I hunted with him years ago. He never stops learning, he’s always listening and learning. But anyway, I know what’s coming, I’ve listened to it. It is a great conversation that Ramsey has with Corey. It’s really good. Any insight to it, Ramsey? Anymore, before we go to the episode?

Ramsey Russell: No, I don’t want to steal Corey’s thunder and I think I had a real good time talking to him and I learned a lot because the world a lot bigger than my backyard and because the world of water fowling is just so diverse and huge with the species and cultures, and local nuances. I’ve just found that meeting with people like Corey and all the people, all the outfitters and hunters and everything else that my odyssey brings me and my life travels bring me in contact with that I really do, I’m constantly still learning things I never knew. And the story of the Canada goose and the moult migrators, is it’s fascinating. It really is.

Rocky Leflore: Well, before we jump off into that story, don’t forget to order your Toe Tags. You can order those at ducksouth.myshopify.com. Everybody’s using them. Don’t be the last one to get your hands on some. Tag these birds, it needs to be done, it’s the law and I think Brian’s got a great product. Brian has really put out a product that will make you legal with all parts of the federal law. Ramsey, let’s get to that conversation with Corey now.

“It is early September and I am in north-central Minnesota with my buddy Corey Loeffler. We’re at the DRC Call Company and I’m up here Canada goose hunting, which – Hey, back home, we shoot some Canada geese Corey, but nothing like you guys do, nothing at all like you do. Thank you for having me.”

Ramsey Russell: I’m Ramsey Russell, its duck season somewhere. It is early September and I am in north-central Minnesota with my buddy Corey Loeffler. We’re at the DRC Call Company and I’m up here Canada goose hunting, which – Hey, back home, we shoot some Canada geese Corey, but nothing like you guys do, nothing at all like you do. Thank you for having me.

“Yeah, man. Great to have you here. We’re having some fun. We’re in the middle of our hunt right now and I am just super pumped to have you stopped through on your travels up north to Mat and Jen’s place in Saskatchewan and then where ever the rest of your migration is going to take you.”

Corey Loeffler: Yeah, man. Great to have you here. We’re having some fun. We’re in the middle of our hunt right now and I am just super pumped to have you stopped through on your travels up north to Mat and Jen’s place in Saskatchewan and then where ever the rest of your migration is going to take you. But we’re having some fun. We’re just doing it.

Ramsey Russell: My migration is going to take me all over the place, man. I started off in Michigan, met with Boss Ammo and met with a buddy, Connor Goff and here I stopped over and saw you and yesterday was a huge blast. Now I’m going to Saskatchewan, I birded back to Saskatchewan, North Dakota, who knows, I’m going to be come banging on your door in a few weeks, need a place to crash as good as you cook.

Corey Loeffler: Hey man, when you’re on your way through, what are we going to eat?

Ramsey Russell: We’ll eat some goose, I’m sure. One thing I’ve learned the last couple of days being here is these people that say they don’t like Canada goose, are doing it wrong.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: We had a great couple of meals some of these geese you are cooking, but you ought to be a pro at it. You shoot enough of them in a year.

Corey Loeffler: I’ve wrecked a couple, I know that, I mean I’m not perfect for sure, but I tried to learn from my mistakes and well, I’ve got a couple of tricks up my sleeve, I think.

Ramsey Russell: You do. I got an inbox on Instagram the other day, from one of our followers and he said, man, I can’t believe you hunt waterfowl worldwide and you’re right here in my backyard chasing moult migrators. Yeah, and I’ve replied to him, I’m like, why wouldn’t I? Because –

Corey Loeffler: What are you doing in Minnesota?

Ramsey Russell: Coming to Minnesota is like going to a whole another country, if you’re from Mississippi. You all talk funny for starts.

Corey Loeffler: What the heck?

Ramsey Russell: Well, the lady at the liquor store didn’t understand what I was ordering today, but other than that it’s- Seriously, you’ve got hockey, you’ve got sports like curling, you all eat some pretty cool food up here. It’s flat – people have never been to Minnesota, what I described this country looking like, it’s absolutely gorgeous. It looks like a scene from little house on the prairie because, it’s a prairie Minnesota.

Corey Loeffler: You got it.

Ramsey Russell: This is Sioux Indian buffalo country, very productive ag fields of wheat and sunflowers and barley and peas and all kinds of legumes that the birds would eat. It’s very flat, yet rolling. It’s an incredibly productive country. But one thing that you really, truly have that we don’t have back in Mississippi, is a profound goose hunting culture.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah, absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: People back home duck hunt, we might shoot some snows, might shoot some specs, we certainly go out. I had a buddy named Big Water, always called me this time of year and always had a great resident Canada goose hunt – In other words, 150 birds coming off the local golf course or country club to hit a cornfield and all of them come at one time. We know what we were doing, so we would get some volleys. But, it’s nothing like what I experience, when I come to this part of the world. Back in the 50s, one of my most prized possessions from my family is, I’ve got a little dossier, some papers that my grandfather and his associates called Goose Camp. Greenville, Mississippi, the banks of Lake Ferguson, they would launch a boat, pretty big fishing boat and go down to a sandbar in the Mississippi River back in the 50’s and dig in for 2 weeks. Tent camp and hunt migrator Canada geese and by the – And it was pretty cool looking at the budget. Some of the stuff I remember, was a bottle of whiskey, 5lbs of butter, rice, beans –

Corey Loeffler: That’s cool.

Ramsey Russell: Their budget, they put together, it costs $10 apiece, for all the food you could eat and a lot of cool stuff for Goose Camp back then. But by the 70s, he was going up to Cairo, Illinois to shoot migrator Canada geese and now those birds aren’t really coming down there anymore. So, if a guy – I feel like anybody in the Deep South, we’ve shot some Canada geese at times, but the resident birds, we’ve really lost a lot of our goose hunting culture. And for me personally, Corey to see these big B-52, bow up when they finally get down wind and decided to come to those decoys, it makes my heart beat through my sweatshirt.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah, every flock does that same thing to me. Oh man, I love it. It doesn’t get old, it really doesn’t get old. And to throw it out to all my Minnesota buddies out there, Ramsey is talking about this culture that we’ve got and the other guys in other parts of the country, don’t really see it. Man, we shoot just about twice as many Canada geese as the next highest state and sometimes it’s Texas, sometimes it’s California, if you take a look at the US Fish and Wildlife Services projected or the past harvest data that they’ve got, we shoot a lot of Canada geese up here and what happened back in the 50s, they thought that bird was extinct. Well, they found a couple in the late 50s, like around 62 breeding pairs of them or so, they captured that many and they bred them in captivity for a while. So, I’m wondering if that genetic didn’t completely get changed and it just didn’t completely – They just quit migrating. They caught the 62 pairs, that were lazy and they were running from about Winnipeg to Rochester.

Ramsey Russell: Rochester, Minnesota.

Corey Loeffler: Oh yeah, Rochester Minnesota – Excuse me and they didn’t feel the need to run any further than that down to Illinois, down to Mississippi and yeah Winnipeg, Rochester and then they captivated those they bred them and basically that’s the genetic that we have now from North Dakota, all the way, I mean even Montana, all the way up to New York, is that greater Canada goose, that giant Canada goose –

Ramsey Russell: That is pretty interesting because I’ve seen where under the Hunting is Conservation propaganda, that the Canada goose, like the pronghorn, like the rocky mountain elk, like bison, like a lot of the species, the Canada goose is listed as one-time endangered species and I think they’re talking about the big Canada’s, like we’re hunting here with B-52s and have been brought back from the brink of extinction. But it wasn’t till the other day, we were talking, that you started telling me about this Rochester, Minnesota population that was captured, and it made me start thinking, that back in the 50s, when the big migrator Canada started drying up on the Mississippi River, south of Lake Ferguson, Mississippi. What about that time?

Corey Loeffler: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So, it could have been that population of geese because the headwaters of Mississippi River is just right down the road here – 50, 60 miles then they quit migrate, so now – But really those birds that they took, they placed – Basically from New York to Montana, all this resident goose population.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah. Absolutely. They would breed them and they would raise them up and then they would relocate all the chicks and I suppose mix and match some of the families to mixing a little bit of a new –

Ramsey Russell: Best you can about 150 birds mix and match?

Corey Loeffler: Yeah right and then distribute them out from there and they’ve gone wild with it. I mean they’re a surviving critter, they’ll take nest in someone’s flower garden in their front yard. They’ll take nest – They’ll beat the heck out of a little, fluffy floor duster dog or something like that, that someone is walking on the leash in town and they’ll take up nest and raise a litter, raise a brood, anywhere. I mean, all the places.

Ramsey Russell: Genetically, way back when we’re talking about big Canada goose species that are migrated from parts of Manitoba to Rochester-Minnesota, historically and overwinter in these brutal by southern standards, winters you all have up here, it makes perfect sense they no longer migrate south. But it’s my understanding that some of that same populations, they began to grow in number. A lot of locals in Mississippi or farmers or the state politicians began to swap wildlife resources and actually, I believe that a lot of our resident birds down in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, originated from there. And they don’t migrate either, they just camp out, man, they make a living.

Corey Loeffler: Right. Well, what we’ve got going on right now, is this big moult migration.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’ve been hearing that, ever since I’ve been here, everybody is saying, oh man, you’re hitting the moult migration just right.

Corey Loeffler: We’re doing it.

“As a southerner, that didn’t know much about moult migration, I had to do a little research and what I realized, is non-breeding Canada geese – Not the birds that are sitting on the nest in spring and producing offspring, but the ones that aren’t, whether they’re young or old, they actually fly up north just to moult and then they come back and join the breeding population about this time of year.”

Ramsey Russell: As a southerner, that didn’t know much about moult migration, I had to do a little research and what I realized, is non-breeding Canada geese – Not the birds that are sitting on the nest in spring and producing offspring, but the ones that aren’t, whether they’re young or old, they actually fly up north just to moult and then they come back and join the breeding population about this time of year.

Corey Loeffler: Predominantly, those are 1 and 2 year old birds because they are sexually immature and you’re going to get 8 or 10 or 12 year old birds mixed in there too. Why? I’m not 100% sure. Maybe they lost a mate, maybe they are non-breeders, I’m not positive there. But predominantly your 1 and 2 year old birds that’s going to be your moult migraters and it’s like, they fly up into Canada and it’s a single resort up there. I mean, they’re going to go up there, there’s hardly any predators nothing that they are really scared of, the arctic fox, he’s not a big deal, he’s just a little whippersnapper. He’s looking for some snow goose eggs or something like that. He’s not –

Ramsey Russell: No match for a 10-12lbs goose.

“So, they’re going to go lose their feathers up there and what they’re doing, is they’re turning around and they’re on their leisurely way back south to meet up, basically with mom and dad, and their new brothers and sisters. Is what it really is.”

Corey Loeffler: No. So, they’re going to go lose their feathers up there and what they’re doing, is they’re turning around and they’re on their leisurely way back south to meet up, basically with mom and dad, and their new brothers and sisters.

Ramsey Russell: I get you.

Corey Russell: Is what it really is. And these birds coming through this area here in my backyard, we are north-western Minnesota. Just to the east of us, you have got – you guys over in Bemidji and that’s the start of the forest and that forest is going to run heck all the way over into Michigan. So, you’ve got this big pinch point or this big funnel, everything to the west of me obviously is just all agriculture in North Dakota, Montana and so there’s this big funnel here that I’m kind of right on the seam of and we’ll get a lot of moult migration, coming through here for all these big birds, heading over to Chicago, heading to Iowa, Wisconsin. We’ll shoot bands from Missouri.

Ramsey Russell: Iowa?

Corey Loeffler: Iowa yours, yesterday and Oklahoma. I’ve seen Kansas, Illinois, I mean, that’s predominantly where we’re going to shoot most of our banded Canada geese from and they’re probably going to be either banded last year as a juvenile or 2 years ago as a juvenile. Yours not the case, yours was banded in 2011 –

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Corey Loeffler: As an adult.

Ramsey Russell: Right here in this part of Minnesota, what makes the hunting for these big Canada geese so good – You’ve got a resident population and you’ve also got these moult migrators starting to come in this time of year and today, at while we’re out scouting, we saw a dozen or more real high flocks that you said there – Your sense of direction up here is very easy to find because all the roads are laid out north, south, east, west. One mile apart, you always know which way you’re looking. But we saw a lot of flocks of high-flying Canada geese 20s and 40s coming from the north head and south. Those are moult migrators, new birds coming in.

Corey Loeffler: Pretty confused.

Ramsey Russell: You showed me a map yesterday, this map right here on the computer screen about what makes this area funnel? The big woods that come from here, all the way up in the UP. We’re right on the edge of the west side of that forest cover and these birds are coming down, like I couldn’t believe. Where do these birds going to do, all this moult migrate and just hop across the border to Manitoba, where are they’re going?

Corey Loeffler: From what I understand, it’s all the way up, it’s north of the Boreal Forest. I mean, Hudson Bay. I mean it is Churchill, it’s the tundra, yeah, where they don’t have to worry about any timber wolves or coyotes, chasing them down when they can’t fly. It’s just the arctic fox up there that little old arctic fox and they don’t have to worry about him too much.

Ramsey Russell: So, these moult migrators, all of them from all parts of the world, from all parts of the Midwest, most of them coming through this bottleneck. The Minnesota birds are getting them because they’re coming back home but then you’re getting the birds, that are going to all these other different places too.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah, absolutely. I mean any white tail hunter is going to understand it. It’s a funnel. That’s what it is. It’s just a natural funnel.

Ramsey Russell: Looking at the Google Earth map, I can see the funnel clear today.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah. There it is. You bet.

Ramsey Russell: You know, what I’ve noticed about duck hunting back home, we go out to our camp, we go out to our field, we go out to our pit blind, we go out to where we hunt, maybe get on public land right around and see ducks but it’s a whole another game up here in Canada goose hunting. Man, we covered a few miles a day.

Corey Loeffler: We did, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: We looked at some local flocks, you kind of kept up with, we looked in some areas you historically knew, picked up moult migrators or migratory birds. We were saddled in because the agriculture being cut on where those birds were keying on. Writing me a love letter over here. But the whole game of goose hunting, is way different than duck hunting. For guys down south, for some of these guys, that maybe listening, that aren’t apart of you all’s profound goose hunting culture – Look what’s your helper’s name, Garret?

Corey Loeffler: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: 15 years old, calls a goose 10 times better than anybody I know. Down south we go to wit, it works or it doesn’t. This guy sounds like a flock of Canada geese have flown into the flock. And as were riding on the field yesterday, I said – we were talking about the duck season because the youth opened today, he’s like, I don’t really don’t shoot many ducks, I said, what do you hunt? He goes, I like the big Canadas. He’s a part of a big goose hunting culture. Just to give a general rundown, when did you get into it? What is it that you like about Canada goose hunting versus duck hunting or the scouting, the look and the figuring out? I mean, just give everybody a little synopsis on that.

Corey Loeffler: My introduction, back probably 21, 22 years ago. Man, that just wasn’t many ducks around here, it’s just not a ducky area, it’s a goosey area. This is goose funnel that we’ve got going on through here. So, there wasn’t a whole lot of ducks around and yeah, we’d shoot a couple here and there, we go out goose hunting, the goose limit was 1 back then we go out and pass shoot our 1 goose, we didn’t have any decoys, I didn’t have any money for any decoys, so we just go pass shoot our 1 goose and we can always make that goose taste good. Man, we just didn’t really like the flavor of them ducks, we weren’t cooking them right at all. We were cooking them right with the Honker and –

Ramsey Russell: It was overdone or something.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah, way overdone. So yeah, now I love duck. But back then, I didn’t know how to prepare them, so I didn’t chase them. That’s what it came down to. I don’t know how to cook them. I don’t want to take something’s life, if I don’t know how to respect it. Ramsey Russell: When did you start learning to really call geese? When did it hook into the game? The language of goose calling and when did you convert that into starting to call geese or starting to make goose calls, I should say?

Corey Loeffler: Well, I’ll reverse that just like about one year, I was told to leave my call at home. It pissed me off. I was pissed. Yeah, I think Stu was doing the calling at the time, Stu is doing the calling, so just leave your call back. It’s like, goddammit, I’m going to practice. Next year, I’m going to be that son of a gun, I’m going to be the caller. I’m going to practice all summer, I don’t care.

Ramsey Russell: How old were you?

Corey Loeffler: Oh 14 probably, 15 maybe. I was mad and I mean it built a fire under me and I practiced and then the next year, I remember, I mean that was like winning the world championship, when I heard Gory is going to be calling today, when I heard that, they said a 15 year old kid’s going to be calling for all these guys that are in their 40s. They’ve been goose hunting for longer than I’ve been on the earth and yeah, Corey is going to be calling today and then it was like, you could have handed me a medal right there I mean, they did basically, verbally and it just kind of built a fuel that fire and built a fire that – I mean it hasn’t quit, I don’t think.

Ramsey Russell: No, I could see it in the blind yesterday. Your fire is far from ashes man. I mean, you’re taking pictures, you’re calling the shots, you’re cracking jokes, you’re seeing the geese, you’re talking to the geese like they’re an old girlfriend. Hey baby, come over here, you are anything but in the ashes of goose calling, the fire burns bright. One thing I noticed yesterday I got here about noon, I guess noon or something like that and we peeled around and then we went goose hunting. And I’ve always really kind of thought, maybe it’s from going to Canada for so much where a lot of the provinces or goose hunting only in the morning and goose hunting back home or whatever. But I don’t know, I’m just a little surprised because you had a feed scheduled, you found it, went set up. But you all don’t hunt just mornings here, its morning or afternoon, whatever the geese are doing.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah, it’s the temperature right now allows the geese to feed twice a day, they’re on the morning and evening feed, weather dependent. But if it’s a bright bluebird, sunshiny day, they’re going to feed right away at sunrise and they’re going to feed before sunset. I mean, that’s just the way it’s going to be. So, it’s a two a feed in maybe late October into November, they’re going to switch to a one a day feed, especially when some of the higher energy crops like corn and soybeans come down and they don’t need as much protein and carbohydrates in their system, they’re going to bump up to just a one a day feed, so they only have to come out of town once or off the refuge or where ever it is. But, yeah, we can hunt them in the morning, hunt them in the evening.

Ramsey Russell: Lot like deer hunt. Morning and evening.

Corey Loeffler: The same thing. Yeah, absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Pattern them out.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So, yesterday afternoon, we get here, we go out and we set up the Corey Loeffler special blind, which is the most amazing blind I’ve ever been. We put it in the field. It’s a long trailer, it is brushed up perfectly, very comfortable, nobody can see anything. I mean, the birds can’t look down and see you got this top over, you’re sitting in chairs, it’s all comfortable, we throw out a bunch of decoys. What a very creative thing.

Corey Loeffler: These guys don’t know what we’re talking about.

Ramsey Russell: No.

Corey Loeffler: And I’ve been asked – Literally have been asked, what are you guys doing hauling all those cattails around?

Ramsey Russell: It looks like a brush power, it’s like a little thicket behind your trailer and instead of one of these big white trailers wagon behind a truck, he has got this 30ft or 25ft duck blind on wheels, they are full of decoys and full of a stove to cook hot eggs and bacon and hot coffee and comfort city man, it’s unbelievable. And we get in and we dig these little holes in the tires, pull right off into them, so now the whole base of the trader’s sitting on the ground, you’re perfectly stable, you’re as low profile as possible, and then you rock, man. Yesterday was a very cool hunt. Just like you said the birds were coming off the lake, we’re lying around that area, and we had some flocks set up and it was a right – I remember at one point in time, you’re yelling down the blind, welcome to Minnesota Goose Hunt and I was just grinning ear to ear, it is just what I come up here for. In fact, Corey the first time I ever came to Canada, back in 1998, I did not come to Canada to shoot ducks, I came up here to shoot geese. That’s what I was after because we don’t have that back home. We don’t have that kind of Canada goose hunting here. How many geese did we even kill yesterday?

Corey Loeffler: I don’t know.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t know either, but it doesn’t matter, does it?

Corey Loeffler: Doesn’t matter. We didn’t shoot over the limit.

Ramsey Russell: It wasn’t over the limit.

Corey Loeffler: No.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t think anybody counted. I mean, we were under the limit just right the way the first finished man.

Corey Loeffler: We had fun. I think just – Man, the guys, the kids, the grinders that I see on Instagram and social media today, it’s just a numbers game, it is all numbers. We have got to get to 50, we have got to get to 60, we have got to get a limit, we have got to get this – Oh, it’s not a good hunt unless we get a limit. Limit and everything is just this numbers game and it’s like, oh we better stack them up, bellies up, get this pile picture taken, we have got to post these pile pictures, I mean if you’re not posting pile pictures, you’re not killing like, man, save that for the birds. Bring some fun back into it. Let’s have some fun. How many did we kill? I don’t know. Do we have fun? Hell yeah.

Ramsey Russell: We had a great time. It was unbelievable. Watching those birds just get out there and circle around and get sorted and then just come right out and the shots called, like – We had that family cohort come in and the guy, way down in, they come in, kind off my side and there were, I don’t know, 6 people in the blind by the time your buddy Brad right next to you, stood – Every bird through upon was falling because all of them just died. That’s what it’s so much about. But it’s like you have got to have limits for conservation. But now, in the year 2019, it’s like the US Fish and Wildlife Service “limits” have been somehow perverted into a finish line and it’s like, I don’t know how many birds we shot – I’m going to say I shot 3 geese yesterday.  That was plenty

Corey Loeffler: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And 3 geese short of the limit or 2 geese short of the limit doesn’t make or break how I feel about myself. It was awesome to be with you all and get into this goose hunting stuff and I just wish these young people could understand, it’s not about the finish line, it’s not about the top of the mountain, it’s about the size, it’s about getting there, it’s about making those birds finish like you want them to finish. That’s the sport, it’s the game. It’s their game and we play it.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It’s not about a federal government agency’s contrived number.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, how many birds do you think, were in range of our shotguns, yesterday?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Way more than we shot at, that’s for sure.

Corey Loeffler: Oh man.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Corey Loeffler: I mean, if they didn’t do it, we didn’t shoot at that.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Corey Loeffler: That’s it. I mean, that’s the truth of it right there. As long as we were within our legal boundaries, we’re just having fun and we had a great hunt. Like, not concerned about hitting this finish line, hitting this goal of we have to kill a limit and then we’re going to have fun. Oh man, if the guys on the left could have shot, we would have had a limit and then we would have had a good hunt. Oh, if everyone would have shot their lanes then we could have had a good hunt. Oh no, that’s all bullshit.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t remember my grandfather and the man that raised me into the sport of hunting, I don’t remember them ever talking about numbers.

Corey Loeffler: No.

Ramsey Russell: And I don’t know when – I know when I was younger, I wanted to get the limit, I was motivated, I wanted to shoot as many as I could but now I’m just happy to go out – And oh yeah, if the limit presents itself, it’s game on, but if they don’t, I just had a great time. I want to win in history, it’s all started. I mean, I wonder how we got from there to here.

Corey Loeffler: I see it. Back in kind of the early 2000s in that chat room, that forum type –

Ramsey Russell: It’s social media – Pre social media. Social media made it worse.

Corey Loeffler: I mean almost that pre social media stuff, back then and some – The big pro staffer push and the pro staffers are ordered, to put this product or that product in their pictures and put these bellies up and this here with the fill flash and this in the background and we’re going to talk about this product and mention this one product in our post and why it made a difference in whatever and they’re instructed do this and honestly, that’s when pro staffers kind of were a big deal back in the early 2000s. Now, do you need them? I don’t know, I’m not going to bash a pro staff or anything like that. As far as I’m concerned with my call company, I don’t do enough national shows to need a national pro staff promotional staff to be at all these different shows. I just don’t do it, it’s not where I’m at, I don’t feel the need –

Ramsey Russell: You don’t need one. I think that at the time, back in those days you’re talking about, man, a pro staff was a good deal. That first company came up with, that was a really cool deal. I was proud to be a part of it, I mean cool people –

Corey Loeffler: Pre-Amazon.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Pre-Amazon –

Corey Loeffler: Oh, yeah. You have to go –

Ramsey Russell: Pre-Facebook, pre-Instagram and now it’s like I was listening to Brandon’s Rocky over Boss Ammo the other day explain, there are no staff, we don’t have a pro staff, we’re no staff. You know what I’m saying? And I think that’s respectful. It’s kind of how the pendulum has swung nowadays.

Corey Loeffler: Absolutely, I agree.

Ramsey Russell: So, we got up this morning, went out and scouted and knocked on a few doors, which is another thing – You know, up in this part of the country, we’re knocking on doors and I just – That is again, it’s like I’m in a whole different country, not just a different state in America because back home, knocking on doors to go hunting is you just unheard of.

Corey Loeffler: Hey, one door we knocked on, we invited them to come with and his kids and they’re going to come out there tomorrow.

Ramsey Russell: And his kid and they’re going to come out tomorrow.

Corey Loeffler: They’re going to walk out their front door and come home with us. That’s cool.

Ramsey Russell: That’s so foreign man. Just go knock on doors and talk to somebody and they give you permission to come shoot geese on their property. But man, that property we put to bed tonight was – I’m pretty excited about it – I say 800 geese.

Corey Loeffler: Yeah, it was well above 500 definitely. So, yeah, it’ll be fun, we’ll have a good time.

Ramsey Russell: All right, well, I’ve enjoyed it Corey and I hope the listeners have learned something and gained something and – I’m looking forward to it in the morning, I sure am.

Corey Loeffler: We’ll post some pictures.

Ramsey Russell: Hey, speaking of pictures, you all come check us out, Ramsey Russell, GetDucks and follow along on this little trip we’re doing right here, we post up our storylines daily. Thank you all for listening.

Rocky Leflore: Well Ramsey, now it is post hunt because when you recorded that, it was pretty hunt but now its post. How did you all end up doing on those geese?

Ramsey Russell: You know Rocky, when I hunt with folks, even with really capable guys like Corey – I found myself hunt with a lot of folks around the country and it’s like the words, it has got to be special, it’s got to be something. And I told my buddy Connor Goff, over in Michigan the other day, I said, look Connor, this isn’t going to be my first hunt, not going to be my best hunt, it’s not going to be my worst hunt, all I hope for is this is not my last hunt. You just take it as it come because Rocky, we ain’t shooting caged birds. Some days, its chicken salad and some days chicken shit, but it’s all chicken, you know what I’m saying? You just go hunting. So, Corey and I had found – We’ve been looking all day, it ain’t like we just drove out there and there they are. Oh no, we put some miles, driving clicks, all of the roads up there, laid out, every mile, boom, you can literally get from my – As great as you have, by saying go 2 miles south and 5 miles west and they can drive right to your house on those directions. But we covered a lot of country and found a few little flocks and found a field we were kind of interested in, somebody else is going to hunt and then we found the mother load. Freaking, a mile long stretch of these Canada geese, about 800 to 900 geese in a field that he knew the farmer, had permission to hunt. There was a house nearby and we noticed a blind, we went knocked on the door just to let them know we’d be out there hunting the next day. And the following day we hunted was the youth opener, not for geese, but the youth duck season overlapped with the Canada goose season. So, Corey knocked on the door and we explained to the dad, we’re going to be out there hunting tomorrow and Corey is just that guy – And got back in truck said, yeah, they’re going to join us. So, there’s going to be the father and son in the blind with us and Corey has developed a massive, Taj Mahal blind that he can pull in to these fields on a big long trailer and lower hydraulically, they all brushed in and walled up. It’s kind of like being in a rolling pit blind but it’s inconspicuous out in these fields and so honestly, as good as 102, we have had together leading up to this hunt was, this was the one. And it didn’t help that glass and those Canada geese out there, walking around you can see some of the legs shining with jewelry, those moult migrators. A lot them are band, when they get there to Hudson Bay, they get band, a bunch of them do. And we showed up and everything was going perfectly as planned. The location was good, the decoys were good, we had the neighbor in the blind with us. We’re expecting a big show and – I don’t remember what time shooting time was exactly, but I know about an hour and a half after shooting time, Corey fired up his oven, his griddle and when I woke up that morning, walked upstairs to get coffee, Corey had already been awake, already had coffee and was chopping onions and bell peppers and jalapenos and last night’s goose, and sausage and bacon and had a dozen or more eggs ready to go and they roll first class. Corey – So, at 8:30, when that grill fired up, we hadn’t fired a shot. 800 geese didn’t come back. Don’t know where they went. The wind was blowing perfectly for them to come off the roost and head that way. The bird that did come in – one of the birds, we were after the birds on the south end of the field, these birds were going to the north end of the field, where there’s also been birds. South end the field, birds – Believe it or not, the best hatch plans turned to chicken shit to that chicken salad, except for the fact we ate probably the best breakfast Taco in the state of Minnesota right there in the blind and we laughed, we cut up, we had a good time, we drank coffee and we were goose hunters, so it didn’t work as plan that time but hey, that’s why you go back the next time.

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey like I have been saying, I think this is going to be wildly popular. It goes kind of how we sat down and kind of planned this out, where you’re just recording a conversation, just like it on the front porch with you and whoever it may be, it’s going to be huge. Ramsey, I enjoyed it.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you Rocky.

Rocky Leflore: Thank you for getting Corey to sit down with you and having this first conversation. I think that – like I said, I think it’s going to be wildly popular. Ramsay, be careful in your travels, I want to thank you for being here. Thank you again Corey for sitting down with Ramsey and recording that episode. I 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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