Ramsey Russell Worldwide: Nova Scotia Sinkbox Hunting with Brian Mason

Rocky Leflore: Welcome to The End of the Line Podcast, I’m Rocky Leflore in the Duck South Studios in Oxford, Mississippi. Where are you Ramsey Minnesota, Michigan?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’m in Michigan right now. I’m sitting down in front of the shop of Boss Shot Shell, Brandon Cerecke and I. Cerecke he says it, I got that southern twang to it. I spent the night with him last night, we’re having to meet today, I’m on my way back. I’m fixing to go pick up a lab next door and hopefully, I got one more stop on the way home and I will spend the night in my bed next time I sleep and I’ll be glad to be home. It’s going to –

Rocky Leflore: Really you will drive all the way tonight?

Ramsey Russell: It’s 12 hours. Man, I’ll probably call you back, talk your head off and not use somebody else. And between that and waffle house and love’s truck stop coffee, yeah, 12 hours is nothing hop skip and a jump and I can make further than that. I’m just running a tab behind this morning, but just another day at the office.

Rocky Leflore: Wow that is a long ride. But the last time you made that trip, you take –

Ramsey Russell: 65,096 miles so far. Go ahead.

Rocky Leflore: I think about 02:30 in the morning, you text me last year when you were on your way back from Canada, you were passing down 55.

“I’ve always heard these stories, it’s what I really love about, what I do is the people and their stories and just sitting around in the truck while you’re scouting and the driving and sitting in the blind between volleys and are plucking birds and talking, just the people part is so, but having the opportunity to platform to record these discussions or parts of these discussions, now is just giving it a – I don’t know, a fresh intensity.”

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I may have. I don’t think it’ll be that long. It might be that long night. I mean, I plan on getting home probably around 1 o’clock this morning, if had to guess about 1 o’clock. And it’s funny because once that magnetic pool, its one thing when you head somewhere and you’ve got time to kill. But the closer you get to home man, the heavier my foot gets. And the faster everything starts going by on site and I mean there’s no stopping now that momentum is coming, it’s time to get home. But anyway, I did nothing but another day in paradise just driving. But man, what an incredible month it’s been. And it’s like I look back to hunting in Michigan about this time a month ago and it’s like looking back 2 years ago or 5 years ago, it’s hard to remember. And then Minnesota with Cory Loffler and then Saskatchewan and Alberta and back to Saskatchewan bouncing around freelancing and then jumping down in North Dakota. And especially since you’ve given me this opportunity to meet with people and talk, I’ve always heard these stories, it’s what I really love about, what I do is the people and their stories and just sitting around in the truck while you’re scouting and the driving and sitting in the blind between volleys and are plucking birds and talking, just the people part is so, but having the opportunity to platform to record these discussions or parts of these discussions, now is just giving it a – I don’t know, a fresh intensity. And it’s kind of putting me on a mission. Because all these duck hunters, you don’t have to be the world’s greatest duck hunt, Jake said it a million times everybody’s got a story, everybody’s got a perspective. Duck hunting is not one size fits all. Now, up here in this northern tier hunting those big Canada geese is a religion and back home we don’t have that. We always shoot Canada geese, but it’s not the same. And I’m really having a good time doing this, I really and truly am having a good time doing this.

“Well, I was going to say and I wasn’t going to interrupt you, but last year on your way back from Canada, correct me if I’m wrong about St. Louis is where you stopped to get a soda and you put the window down from St. Louis to Memphis to keep you awake, do you remember that?”

Rocky Leflore: Well, I was going to say and I wasn’t going to interrupt you, but last year on your way back from Canada, correct me if I’m wrong about St. Louis is where you stopped to get a soda and you put the window down from St. Louis to Memphis to keep you awake, do you remember that?

Ramsey Russell: I remember, I was going to stop it. I had not eaten and I was going to stop somewhere around St. Louis and spend the night. And well, there’s a waffle house right next to where I was going to stay, so I decided to go in and get me a standard waffle house order, which is just 3 egg omelet, jalapeno, bacon, no cheese the waffle house don’t have real cheese you all and 3 eggs over easy on top of it, mash it up, eat it, like Popeye and spinach, I guess because I ate that and drank a cup of coffee and perked up a little bit and I asked for another cup of coffee and buddy, I hammered down all the way home. And I had thought I was going to spend the night coming the next day, but it was like Popeye and spinach ate my 3 egg omelet, 3 eggs over easy and I was ready to roll.

Rocky Leflore: Oh anyway, all right. So Ramsey, one of the last conversations that you had before Nick Marcyes which will be coming up soon, the outfitter that you hunted with their North Dakota. You spend some time with Brandon Mason. Brandon Mason does a lot of sink box hunting, correct?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. For about the last 10 or 11 years we sent a few people over to hunt with Brandon, I don’t even remember how Brandon and I got in touch. I don’t remember how we got in touch but our paths crossed and we got in touch. And remember I’m an experienced hunter and sink box hunting was prohibited during the Migratory Bird Treaty Act days back when all these other laws came into place but not in Canada, not in Nova Scotia. I mean it is deeply rooted in that part of the world. And kind of like hunting in a pit blind except that pit blind is floating in 30 or 40ft of water with waves and action and you’re shooting sea ducks. And to me it’s just one of them bucket list experiences. If you’re going to try to do everything in duck hunting, you really need to go shoot some bird’s out of sink boxes. And Brandon and his wife Mary have this little hunt up in Nova Scotia just outside of Halifax, I went up and hunted with them and so for the last 10 or 11 years I’ve sent clients, I’ve talked to clients about hunting up there with Brandon and Brandon and I stayed in touch and of course he and his wife talk quite a bit. And you know what struck me though? I was running around through western Canada shooting these geese and this northern tier stuff out in Western Canada hunting fields and doing things – Brandon’s old school buddy Brandon, he does have a smartphone, but he don’t play on social media, he doesn’t do all that kind of stuff. He just cut from a different cut of cloth but it’s what I’ve done. And I had an appointment, somebody was going to hunt with, we’re going to do a little freelance and their plans changed, so I was kind of left with a gap in my calendar and I want to kind of hang back because I want to join Dirty Bird Outfitters, Nick Marcyes is up there for their opener in north Dakota it’s always a lot of fun and I didn’t know what I was going to do in just timeliness Mary hit me with an inbox and she said, hey Brandon’s going to be out there hunting, you ought to give him a shout or whatever. And so I reached out to Brandon, he said, oh yeah, come on up and it was him and 3 of his buddies and they’ve been hunting out in western Canada for 20 years freelance hunting. They’ve got a hotel they’ve been hunting at, it’s a great little hotel, they store all their decoys out in the shop and it’s just like family, they’ve been out there for so long, but they target specifically snow geese. And Rocky build hunting for snow geese is as polar opposite sink box hunting as anything. I mean, it doesn’t get any more opposite than that. And so for me, I went to go see my buddy Brandon but you know like and we may have talked about this in our recording, have you ever known somebody like at work or at church or the office or something and you just kind of kind of hung on this peg there’s the quiet one or they’re just this person right they’re whatever they’re peg, you got him hung on. But then you bump into them at a restaurant or you see them at a party and all of a sudden you see them in a new light, you know what I’m talking about?

Rocky Leflore: Exactly, I know exactly what you mean.

“And I just want to share that to me that kind of person, it is not out there to take pictures and to prop up ego, it’s all about the game, it’s all about the friends, it’s all the stories that I wish I had recorded and could hear of my grandfather or my uncle talking about hunting with my grandfather all those years and all those stories, Rocky a whole lifetime of hunting.”

Ramsey Russell: I haven’t known Brandon because there’s nothing easy about putting together a sink box hunt. It takes work, it takes know how, it takes knowing those birds and all kinds of little things that go into safely orchestrating putting a man in 30ft of water. Keeping him safe, attending the hunt and a lot goes into place for this. And all of a sudden flip over to the other side of the spectrum to go from due west to due east. Really vice versa from east to west and see him pour that kind of intensity and the shooting whitey. And Rocky, you know what I do for a living, well, all of a sudden the last week I’m up here, I’m freelance hunting with friends and it was wonderful. It was so wonderful to get back to the roots while we really do this. And I’ve got to share this about these 4 Canadians I hunted with. Have you noticed that a lot of the – it comes up just kind of organically, have you noticed a lot of the people we’ve met with and talked to they’re off into this numbers game, this limit concept, this numbers thing, this mind-set that it is in a lot of ways perverting hunting today? And you snow goose hunt, you’re all in, you don’t have measures. Sometimes you got the hottest feed, you’ve got the best plan, you get there early, you lay everything out perfectly and the wind doesn’t blow. There are some little wrinkle and it’s awesome because I hunted with them for 3 days, it was all awesome. I mean, the birds were decoying. I was shooting a 2 and 3 quarter inch copper plated bismuth number 5. When’s the last time anybody went and whoop some hiney on snow geese with that that means them birds were decoying. There’s one limit, there’s a bunch of birds it was awesome. 3 of the best days I’ve ever snow goose hunted. But this is what I’m trying to get at after the hunt these guys will – I just noticed they take snapshots with her phone of me put my stuff away in my bag or a buddy picking up a decoy or doing this. And I suggested we put the geese out. We don’t need that. And we go back to camp, we clean them and do everything to go eat breakfast and go scouting that afternoon, the 2^nd day little bit better. Hey, we want to hold these bird, can we take a picture, no we don’t need that. Do you understand how different that is from hunting with nearly 100% of hunters with whom I’ve hunted with or seen on social media? They’re not out there to take pictures, they’re snow goose hunters, they’re out there to hunt and have a great time and laugh and play the game. And on the last day Rocky, we were about 3.5 miles and where a whole lot of geese were roosted and we put those birds to bed and it was half a section of white and we knew the wind was going to blow, the front was coming in, everything, the stars were aligning. It was epic. You could look out 3.5 miles through binoculars and see those birds coming up off the roost in stages step after wave coming your way. And we were on the one side of the section and those birds would get over the other side of the section coming to us, they look like escalator stairs, wave after wave starting to descend in the field, wave after wave and they come in and we’d volley. You go snow goose hunting, you just got to accept it man, every day is not like that no matter what you do, you play the game, you play the game right Brandon knows the game. But sometimes the geese don’t get the memo it’s hunting that day they did, that was that day and they did it. And on that day I said, guys I’d really like to have a picture with my new family and they acquiesced and we took a picture, get a snapshot nothing fancy, just a picture because it’s one of those days. And I just want to share that to me that kind of person, it is not out there to take pictures and to prop up ego, it’s all about the game, it’s all about the friends, it’s all the stories that I wish I had recorded and could hear of my grandfather or my uncle talking about hunting with my grandfather all those years and all those stories, Rocky a whole lifetime of hunting. And one time my grandfather decided he needed to take all those pictures out of a shoe box and put them in a photo album and his whole hunting life is confined between the covers of about a 15 or 20 page magnetic photo album. Always hunting and fishing is right there in just a few dozen photos. All that hunting they did, I never heard them talk about numbers. I’ve never heard him talk about numbers Rocky, they only talk about the good times and the people and breaking through the ice and hat floaters and they never talked about numbers. And at the end of that generation’s life, my granddaddy, my mentor, my upbringing is that there were just a few pictures but it was enough because that is why they were there. And so that’s what I remember most about hunting with Brandon. And if Brandon’s listening, he knows I’m going to be there. I said, oh yeah, I got to be here a month, you’re going to pull up and I’m going to be writing on you, how you all doing? I’ll be like Cousin Eddie at Christmas, I’m just showing up. I don’t found my new family, I adopted you all, they’re great people, I’ve never had so much fun, Rocky. And I’ll tell you something else personally that just kind of – I don’t know, I mean I don’t how to articulate this just something because I was hunting with friends and we were self-hunting and you know what I do for a living. And we would go and clean the birds because in Canada, if you’re Canadian you can go the meat processor and at the meat processer you can process the birds and they can convert them into sausage, smoke sticks and because they’re Canadian not crossing an international border, they can take those birds home as sausage and snack sticks and then give them out to farmers and they can eat them and whatever, can’t bring the birds back process the United States but they could. And after we got that all sorted out, we would go eat breakfast. And this town, we were in practically every hotel and restaurant it seems like everyone is staked out by another outfitter with all these white trailers with logos, very heavily hunted area. Kind of heard me – and I was talking about that last week about of all those knocks on the door these people are getting a little bothered by it. But anyway, hunting with my friends, sitting at the table I wasn’t in my business, you said, I was hunting with friends and it just kind of struck me one day by the 3^rd morning that as hunters were coming in, filing in through the doors I was kind of like on the outside of what I do looking in and that was kind of interesting for me too. I don’t know, I can’t explain it but it kind of – it gave me an awareness about what I do and who I am and how I might be perceived and how my clients might be perceived, it was just a perspective that I’m not really considered. The guys coming in, high fiving and chef bumps coming in and dancing down the aisle going to the booth and the guy’s kind of coming in and you could reconcile it with the social media post of the logo out front. You put two and two together while some guys were on cloud nine, some guys weren’t quite there. I don’t know it was just a very interesting trip but I felt like Brandon because he was such a full spectrum because I believe that a Nova Scotia sink box hunt, it is such a bucket list experience to step back past the migratory bird treaty act and hunt like those guys did and he touched a little bit on some stories about the old timers, how he grew up. I know that at one time in high school he had told me, he and his buddy ride on one of the islands and found an old sink box and somehow drug it back to the house and he kind of measured and modelled after it. And they started customizing it to make it deeper, make it better, make it ride higher, make it safer, it’s in his blood man. He’s Nova Scotian and so it’s kind of who he is. And I thought that would be a great conversation. But to hear him jump back and start talking about the parallels between those opposite worlds of snow goose hunting and sink box hunting. Yeah, I thought it made for a great conversation. I really did. I just enjoyed this guy always have. He’s always just – anytime you get around the right sea duck captain, the right kind of guy – you understand when you’re fooling around deep-water hunting those kind of birds Rocky, you’re putting your life in that man’s hands. It’s a demeanor.

Rocky Leflore: Right.

Ramsey Russell: He’s soft spoken, he’s serious, he’s a thinker, he’s fun to be around and he is even more good shot, don’t get me wrong, he’s all that. But it’s just his personality that I’ve always respected. And so I thought it made for a great conversation.

“Well, I’ll say this I hadn’t heard the part of it I’ve listened to it’s about a 31 minute conversation I think I’ve listened to about 16 minutes of it man, it’s really good.”

Rocky Leflore: Well, I’ll say this I hadn’t heard the part of it I’ve listened to it’s about a 31 minute conversation I think I’ve listened to about 16 minutes of it man, it’s really good. All of them have been good though, Ramsey. When you’re able to sit down face to face, you’re able to read body language and you’ve already spent time probably that day before you recorded interview. You’re able to go into a lot more depth with the people that you’re interviewing.

Ramsey Russell: You’re right. Because Brandon and I are talking, there’s 2 duck hunters sitting in a hotel room or another conversation 2 duck hunters sitting in a hotel or 2 duck hunters sitting on the back patio or 2 duck hunters sitting in a hunting lodge or 2 duck hunters sitting around the dinner table and it’s just – I love those conversations and like Jake says everybody’s got a story and I love that part of it, it’s what I love so much about these trips. It opens my horizon that opens my mind, it makes me a better hunter, it makes me a better person to share times and share stories with people. And I hope you guys listening or getting something out of it. I’m raw with this, I’m trying but I hope guys are enjoying it. And I would tell anybody, if you know anybody or you’ve got a topic or a story, I’ve got a whole lot of them topped up in my iPhone I want to talk to, but I’m always looking for another. And I would hope that anybody listening, hey there’s a team effort by all means steer somewhere and we’ll try to go and talk about it too because all this man, the world is so much bigger than our backyard. And when you start talking duck hunting, it’s not one size fits all, it is much bigger than that, the different cultures, the different regions, the different call styles, the different hunting techniques, two different species. It’s all very different and that’s what I really love about it. I just love that. And I just want to help share that story, the full story of duck hunting with anybody that cares to hear it.

Rocky Leflore: Well, Ramsey like I said, I’ve heard about 16 minutes out of the 31 and it’s pretty doggone good. We need to get to that interview now.

Ramsey Russell: This is Ramsey Russell getducks.com, it’s duck season somewhere. It’s late September and I’m in Saskatchewan chasing snow geese with a long-time friend Brandon Mason. Have you all ever known somebody like maybe a co-worker and you’ve known them a long time and you see them at work every day, maybe they are the shy one or maybe they’re the nosy one, you got them hung on a peg. There’s just somebody you’ve known a long time and then you go to a Christmas party, you see them dancing on the table with a lampshade on your head and you realize there’s more to this guy than you’ve known a long time. Well, that’s kind of where I’m at today. I’ve been chasing a lot of birds up here in the northern tier and I was invited to come here to Saskatchewan and join my friend Brandon Mason. He and his wife Mary on Golden Eye Guide Service in Nova Scotia. I don’t know for how long, but I’m going to say for about 10 years we’ve been referring our guests to them to experience genuine bona fide Nova Scotia sink box duck hunting. So even though we’re out there shooting snow geese right now in Saskatchewan, that’s not the topic of the day. I really wanted to take advantage of the opportunity of spending some time with Brandon to share with you all the experience of old school down and dirty sink box hunting. Brandon how are you?

Brandon Mason: Good sir, how are you?

Ramsey Russell: I’m doing good. You really are kind of that guy with a lampshade, out there today because I mean, when I met you in Nova Scotia, that was like a Canada unto itself. We’re out here and just as far as the human eye can see, there’s barley fields and the pea fields and snow geese and all this kind of stuff and Nova Scotia’s not like that. I mean its evergreen trees and rocky shore’s and deep bays and seafood. If you want seafood here, you eat some kind of rubber shrimp from Thailand in you’re part of the world there’s lobster and all that good stuff. But I’ve really enjoyed these last few days. And to kick things off tell me what sync box hunting is, explain sink box?

Brandon Mason: The sync box hunting is an old tradition came from the market hunting days back well probably in 1800’s. And they had this little box made out of boards back then because there are no plywood around and they put a heavy weight on the bottom of it, weighted it down, so it was pretty much level with the water and then they put their decoys out around it. And then they kind of developed from there that they put wings on it to kind of stop the wind chops from getting too wet and whatnot. But in the old days if have you got a real heavy wind come up you are going for a swim. So when I started it, they said, well I can’t take my clients out there and have them go for a swim, especially in the North Atlantic in December and so I put a platform around it, filled it with a Styrofoam and we kind of went from there, we went from the small ones. And back in the old days you said in the thing cross legged, it wasn’t much more than maybe 2.5ft high, maybe close to 3ft, but no more than that. And so you were pretty cramped in there. But now the ones that I use, I built them, there’s a 2 man one that we use, 1 man one and you can sit down on a nice level seat and pretty much the only thing sticking above the water is maybe 4 inches of the float that’s around the box and your head if you set up straight. And that’s what a –

Ramsey Russell: It’s a deadly way of hunting. Imagine standing in the water surrounded by protective wall, it’s kind of like a sunken bathtub. How deep is the water we hunting that day, 30ft?

Brandon Mason: 30ft.

“So you’re sitting looking as you’re seated in that sink box, you’re looking right over the chop and you’re looking for birds coming in and they’re not coming in little, they’re coming in fast but you’re literally immersed in the bay with these birds.”

Ramsey Russell: And you’re hunting scoters and long tails and eiders and different species of birds that don’t come in from way up high and come down there, they fly about a foot or 2 off the water. So you’re sitting looking as you’re seated in that sink box, you’re looking right over the chop and you’re looking for birds coming in and they’re not coming in little, they’re coming in fast but you’re literally immersed in the bay with these birds. Brandon, how long have you been doing sink box hunts?

Brandon Mason: Sink box hunting, we have been hunting off and on since I was a teenager but I built my own when I became a professional guide, a license guide back in about 1988.

Ramsey Russell: But it’s not just a guide thing though. I mean, like I know I’m meeting with the Nova Scotia’s we’re hunting with right now your buddies they sink box hunt, just they grew up sink box  hunting.

Brandon Mason: Yeah, some of them grew up with sink box hunting.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a thing.

Brandon Mason: It’s a thing. It’s not a big thing anymore because it’s a lot of work to put one of these out and so a lot of guys just want to go out for a few hours in the morning and shoot some birds and then go home. These boxes here, I set some of them out there out there for weeks at a time. And then we have some portable ones, smaller ones that we use that we can put out of the boat and put them out there for 2 or 3 hours but you’ve got to put a lot of steel in the bottom of them, we put a lot of steel balls and pieces of steel plate to sink them down to get them down to that water level.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that was a crazy thing I remember when I showed up years ago to hunt with you and Pete. You all had drug it out into a bottleneck coming into that bay, all the birds are going to run traffic through there and sunk in what you told me was about 30ft of water. It wasn’t calm water to me, it was not calm water, it was north Atlantic type chop and I was fixing to step off into water that come up to my eyeballs. You know what it is? As I’m sitting in the bottom of this thing looking up and you started throwing these big steel balls into, you looked at me and said, how much do you weigh? And you started trying to balance it with these big chunks of steel and a couple of buckets of water, which it just seems so counterintuitive me I’m thinking, wait a minute, I want this thing to ride as high as it can, but I don’t want to get 30ft of water we’re throwing weight in there plus me. But it’s an important technique.

“Oh, it’s a technique. Yeah, we’ve got to get them right for how much weight of the person we’re putting in like there’s 2 guys that’s roughly around 400lbs and we’ll judge that and put the correct amount of weight into it, that we can get them down as low as possible because that’s what it’s all about getting outside of the birds.”

Brandon Mason: Oh, it’s a technique. Yeah, we’ve got to get them right for how much weight of the person we’re putting in like there’s 2 guys that’s roughly around 400lbs and we’ll judge that and put the correct amount of weight into it, that we can get them down as low as possible because that’s what it’s all about getting outside of the birds. And then we put some decoys real close to you, some on top of the box now on these bigger boxes that we’re using today. And it’s a real technique. Like I said, they’re coming in there and they’re only about 3 to 4ft off the water and those birds are coming in fast and –

Ramsey Russell: Very fast.

Brandon Mason: Very fast, especially the long tails.

Ramsey Russell: Especially the long tail. And if you’re not accustomed to doing it, they can sneak up on you quick. To me, at a distance they tended to – it’s cloudy, they were greyish looking and they tended to blend in with the dark little freckles of the water as it was waving, to me, they blended in perfectly. Sometimes they were just right on top of me doing mark 3 before I realized there was a duck coming in.

Brandon Mason: Yeah, that’s right. There right there before you know they’re there. And we try to keep the decoys 20 yards away because most of them will not decoy like a mallard does or a black duck or Canada goose or anything like that come in and they’ll have the edge of the decoys and just flip off and maybe land 100 yards away from you. But that’s why we keep the decoys close, so it’s a good shot and you’ll get about 10 to 20% of them that will actually come in and like land right in the decoys.

Ramsey Russell: Did you tell me one time when I was up there that you all had – you and a buddy, maybe when you were teenagers or when you all were younger had been kind of exploring around the bay and found an old like one of the old timers, you called them, one of the old guys sink boxes.

Brandon Mason: Yeah, that’s correct. We found one, a friend of mine found it and called me up and asked me if I wanted, I said no, no at the time. And then he took it to an older fellow and he had fixed it up an fiber glassed it and make it and he used it for one season and I ended up buying it off him. So I still have it, it’s up in the storage area of my barn and it’s still there and like I said, it’s only a short box, but the way they built them, it was quite comfortable. I mean, you sitting there kind of cross legged, but it was fairly comfortable. And the only time it wasn’t comfortable is when you’re getting water in on you from the wind chop.

Ramsey Russell: Those guys must have been a heck of a shot because like, hunting out of a layout blind like we’ve been doing here is, if you’ve never done it, it’s different because you don’t have your feet under you, you’re swinging just from the hip up, but to be sitting cross legged in chops or rollers or waves and shooting a bird doing mark 3 to your right that must have been a heck of a shot.

Brandon Mason: Yeah. Well, like I said, they were market hunters too, so they were living with – selling those other birds.

Ramsey Russell: They were. The same species of ducks you think back then, were they hunting the same species of ducks then?

Brandon Mason: They were Ramsey, they were hunting the same species that we hunt today.

Ramsey Russell: Scoters, long tails ducks.

Brandon Mason: Scoters, long tails, 3 different scoters and the eiders.

Ramsey Russell: And the eiders?

Brandon Mason: And the eider. My wife’s got recipes that, yeah. You would never know if you just tried to bake one, you wouldn’t want to walk into the room. My wife can really do them upright –

Ramsey Russell: Like just an example, what would be one way she would cook one of those ducks?

Brandon Mason: She does.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve eaten food. She’s a very good cook.

Brandon Mason: Yeah, she is. She’ll marinate these things in a bowl and milk, take the breast meat off and chop it up and put it in buttermilk and let it sit in the fridge for about 24 hours to 48 hours, depending on when she’s going to have that meal. And then she’ll do them like in a stir fry type of thing. It’s very good served over noodles or rice or even potatoes, it doesn’t really matter what you serve them with and you would never really know that they’re a strong tasting bird.

Ramsey Russell: Growing up in Nova Scotia and I’m thinking about the sink box type. What were some of your influences or some of your – Did your dad hunt? Did the locals in your town hunt out of sink boxes that kind of way we did it?

Brandon Mason: Yeah, my grandfather hunted it in the sink box and that’s where it came down and I was always just kind of interested in as a kid, I guess running around, playing and played in them in the summertime, they set it in the backyard or wherever they were down on the wharf and just got interested in them and when I became a teenager and was able to go hunting and that’s when I experienced my first one. And it was pretty cool. It was pretty awesome just to hunted of it, which I don’t get to do a whole lot anymore because I’m running clients out of most of the time.

Ramsey Russell: Right. Well, that’s what we all do anymore it seems like, what the world thinks of is one thing, but what we actually do is something else entirely different, I get that. When I came up for me to come up and climb off into a sink box, like literally stepping back into history. It’s the closest thing to going back to those days that I could have imagined just the technique, the experience. It’s not particularly sexy, I mean, it’s real duck hunting, even as relatively mild as the weather was, I remember getting a few splashes down the back collar and stuff like that which was fine. It was just being immersed in it all but I was shocked to remember we were driving up the road to your house one day and I was just watching the lakeside out there and I saw some black ducks and you all got a lot of black duck. I can remember the last black duck I saw in the state of Mississippi that I can remember the last 5 black duck I saw in the state of Mississippi and you’ve got a lot of black ducks up there.

Brandon Mason: Yeah, that’s one thing we like to go for is black ducks and we spent a lot of time chasing them around. They’re pretty weary duck, they’re not like a mallard. Mallards is being stupid but I guess they just don’t get pound it as much as they do in the Southern States. But black ducks are really nice eating duck and we’ve got lots of them. And it’s difficult to hunt them at times because of weather conditions. They will set out there on a nice fine day and just thumb their nose at us and not move at all and they don’t come in in big groups. You might see a group of 6 or something like that, on occasion we’ll see more. But most of times it’s 1 to 2 ducks and I don’t know why but that’s the way they like to travel even though they’ll come to the same spot to feed, they all come in one field and it’s a lot of fun.

Ramsey Russell: We hunted those by ways that were just a little more familiar to everybody hunting from the shore, hunting from rock piles hunting from different ways that they don’t decoy into those sink boxes.

Brandon Mason: They don’t decoy in the sink boxes. We have shot them out of the sink boxes when we get ice later in the year. You get an early freeze and the little inch of day they will freeze up. And for some reason the ducks will just come out to the open water, deeper water and they’ll kind of pick up little things off the surface of the water. But they don’t really feed that much out there. They’re mostly in the shallow water, same as a mallard they’re puddle duck. And well, like I said on occasion we will shoot them out of the sink box, but we don’t set up for them under the sink box, it would just be a long day looking at the sky. If you’re –

Ramsey Russell: That’s all about those sea ducks and divers.

Brandon Mason: It’s all about the sea ducks and divers and the black ducks we hunt in the marshes and shallower water. Yeah, for sure.

Ramsey Russell: All the movies I’ve seen and history channel and all that cool stuff right there, you know about the titanic I guess, everybody knows the titanic sank. Everybody knows there weren’t many survivors. Leonardo DiCaprio died the whole works. But it never occurred to me to ask myself where did the rescue come from? I just said, I guess they came from England, I didn’t know where they come from, but to me it was kind of cool to come into Halifax and we were talking one night at dinner and we started talking about it and he said, well they’re all here. How many cemeteries are their regard to

Titanic people?

Brandon Mason: There’s at least 2 that I know of and there could be more, but I’m not that big in the titanic, I knew about it grew up knowing about it really. But yeah, the majority of the people were taking the Halifax especially the bodies.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s where they were. So that would have been like the Canadian Royal Navy.

Brandon Mason: All odds fishing boats at the Newfoundland fishing boats out of Nova Scotia you know that were out there fishing at that time would be the big commercial fishing boats, but they weren’t that big there were probably only maybe a 60 or 80ft boat. And that would be fishing. And I’m sure fisherman in a Gloucester Massachusetts picked up bodies because they’re all in that area.

Ramsey Russell: All in that tidal flow, whatever. Yeah, isn’t that crazy just what the world is? And am I right or I’m I confused that the Acadians, the folks that got pushed down to Louisiana. They originated in Nova Scotia originally?

Brandon Mason: Yes, they did. They originated in Annapolis valley.

Ramsey Russell: And what ended up getting them moved from Nova Scotia to Louisiana?

Brandon Mason: The British.

Ramsey Russell: The British, kicking out the French.

Brandon Mason: Kicking out The French.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, 4 French.

Brandon Mason: 4 French. That’s what it was. During the wars back in the 1700’s and they figured that was the best way and they allowed them into the Louisiana and places like that.

Ramsey Russell: And they flourished.

Brandon Mason: Oh, big time.

Ramsey Russell: You know what shocked me haven’t come to Canada for a long time before I went to Nova Scotia again. The grain fields and the agriculture and the prairie and historical bison references and things that nature. But not the same cover type trees and rocks and shore, but how similar south Louisiana, Nova Scotia really are. I mean it’s just right there on the ocean. It’s the salt water, the fish and the commercial fish and the crab and the lobster, I mean it’s just very similar.

Brandon Mason: Very similar.

Ramsey Russell: To South Louisiana.

Brandon Mason: Very similar. We did all the same pretty much all the same things, but we lived off the land and some of us still do. I live off the land as much as possible.

Ramsey Russell: Well, Joe was telling me this morning that growing up they never ate beef, they ate.

Brandon Mason: No, we ate wild game.

Ramsey Russell: Which would have been deer and moose?

Brandon Mason: Deer, moose, bear. Yeah. And I still eat all the same things. My freezer if you come to my house, I’ve got 2 freezers. My wife got her little beef freezer and I’ve got the big game freezer. And the only beef we eat was probably about maybe 10% beef, but that’s about it. When it comes to our meat supply, it comes out of the woods out of the year.

Ramsey Russell: There was something, we came out at a boat ramp one day, we came out, we had launched a boat, we shot some ducks, we came out and hanging on this net were a lot of fish filets. You remember that? It’s just like an acre of fish filet and I asked you about it and you said something to Mary and it was a very traditional dish and you all cook, what was that?

Brandon Mason: That was codfish and it was a salt cod.

Ramsey Russell: Codfish. It was salt cod for sure. And she cooked it well – My gosh, was that a comfort meal? It was fish and potatoes and cream and I got full as a tick and it was delicious. And the next day I think I drank five gallons of water, I was that thirsty.

Brandon Mason: You sure did. Yeah, for sure. That’s a great meal but it’s a traditional meal. That’s what they grew up on from the time they landed in North America. And actually that’s what it all started with the fish and sending it back to England, send it back to France. The French and The English, that’s what they came for. They came for the fish and then all of a sudden it was full and the lumber. Yeah and it’s just graduated from there.

Ramsey Russell: Duck hunting is still big in Nova Scotia.

Brandon Mason: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Here’s something – I’ve got a question for you getting back to hanging somebody on a peg, you know this guy this way and all of a sudden you know him some other way. I’ve been all over the world, I’ve hunted a lot of ducks, but it’s not the bag of tricks, it’s not, it’s not all the gimmicks, it’s not the latest greatest, it’s not this or that, to me whether you’re hunting a mallard or an eider or a red crested pochard, there’s so much similarity that really one of the best starting wind up is the fundamentals just bare bone fundamentals. How would you – because it’s such different worlds sync box hunting versus snow geese. Because guys look, let me just say this real quick Brandon and his buddies have been coming out to Saskatchewan for 20 years specifically targeting white. Yeah, wellbeing to the Canada goose or the mallard that comes into the white spread. But these guys are snow goose purist and getting them on the deck is just their game. But Brandon, I was curious today as you were executing the plan and getting the lines laid out and getting us lined out on what to do to hatch this plan? What do you observe it? It’s just common fundamentals between, what you do out of sink box and what you do out here in the western prairie.

Brandon Mason: The fundamentals are pretty much the same thing. You scout the birds, you see what they’re doing and then you do what they do.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Brandon Mason: You just put them down the same way, you put the decoys down the same way. I’ve been with guys that hunted and we’ve gone out to hunt black ducks and we’ve got 50 decoys. Most times I even with my clients, I hunt with a half a dozen decoys, maybe 12.

Ramsey Russell: Because that’s what you see the fox do.

Brandon Mason: That’s what the fox does, so that’s what you do. And it’s the same with the snow geese, same thing. It’s just that very simple thing.

Ramsey Russell: If you’ll get out there and scout and get to know the resource you’re hunting. They’re going to draw the lines, all you have to do is color in between.

Brandon Mason: Yeah, for sure. And one thing that I can say about scouting is a lot of guys don’t do, a lot of guys scout, but what they don’t do is, they don’t look in 3 different or 4 different directions at those birds to see exactly what they’re doing.

Ramsey Russell: Where they’re coming, where they’re going? Why they’re there?

Brandon Mason: Exactly. Yeah. If they’re on the ground or in a pond, why are they in that corner of the pond? Is it because of wind? Was it because of feed or what is it that that they like about that corner of the pond? Why aren’t they all over the pond? So you look at it and just look at what’s there and you just duplicate it. It’s just that simple.

Ramsey Russell: Now, here’s a good topic. Last topic of the discussion because I found this very interesting yesterday at lunch. We got to talking about this, you’re an outfitter, you as a hunter me doing what I do, me as a hunter. And we’re up here in Saskatchewan and there’s an outfitter in every single hotel. There’s white trailers with different logos running up every highway scouting all these fields. Scouts running every which way, it’s kind of crazy. And this has been a real common thing for the last several weeks up Minnesota, Michigan, Saskatchewan, Alberta back to Saskatchewan now talking to my Nova Scotia outfitter and it’s this concept of “limit”. And one thing I’ve really enjoyed about the last couple of days hunting with you all is that we’re just out there having a good time the number one agenda, make a good game plan based on our scout and then have a good time. And we’re killing birds.

Brandon Mason: Yeah, we’re killing birds and that’s what it’s all about to me anyway. And I’ve turned down clients. When I first started, I’ve turned down clients is if he even mentions how many times I’m going to kill my limit? I’ll say, well, I can’t guarantee you that, so maybe you better phone somebody else and I’ve done it and we kill limits, we do kill limits, but we don’t kill limits every day. And I had a loyal guy with me for years, he came with me for years and he said, you can’t produce birds, he said, you just got to fool. Yeah. And if we shoot 20 birds even though we got a 5 limit here today, if we shoot 20 birds, it’s still a good day because it’s what we did.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. That’s how you play the game.

Brandon Mason: I don’t care whether you’re 400, you can have that much fun too. But it’s about playing the game.

Ramsey Russell: I agree. You made a comment yesterday that the hunters we’d sent out there to you to hunt for the sink box hunts they’d all been happy to hunt one day they’re happy and to which I said, I’ve never had a client come back and describe numbers, they were happy but I never asked how many birds they killed, they never said how many birds they killed, they just had a great time. And because it’s an experienced hunt Nova Scotia is different than say, I guess the mind-set for going to Canada, the mindset for going to Mexico, the mindset for going to Argentina. It’s an experience hunt.

Brandon Mason: Yeah, it is totally different. You’ll never find, well, maybe somewhere else. I mean Quebec, I think there’s another outfitter in Quebec, there’s a sink box hunting, but it’s going to be the same experience that I get it. It’s just something I don’t know, you just can’t grasp until you do it and then you understand it. But it’s not about numbers. And like you said, people don’t ask about the numbers. Most people don’t ask about the numbers according to me, it’s –

Ramsey Russell: They don’t because they’re there for a very specific experience and there’s so many facets the way they hunt in the Midwest versus Mississippi versus Louisiana versus Nova Scotia versus western Canada. I mean, you could spend the rest of your life chasing the different call techniques and blind techniques and hiding techniques and hunting styles and to me everyone is important, it’s just another page in this big beautiful book of duck hunting, and I just sitting there at the restaurant, you see some guys coming in jubilant and walking 5ft in their in their boots. And you see some guys coming in there moping and dragging their feet or something, so they didn’t – but you how did they not fire a shot or did they just not get their limit? You know it just blows my mind. It was a 6 duck limit and if you come up 2 short big deal, it’s 2 ducks. Did you have fun? Did you play a good game? And more important, did you learn something? Did you make yourself a better duck hunter? long story short, I just enjoy doing what we’ve been doing and I wish I could encourage people just let go of the ego and go out and play the game.

Brandon Mason: Play the game because that’s what it’s all about. It’s all about fooling that bird, it’s like fooling a big buck. If you fool them, I’ve deer hunted for all my life since I was 8. And if I fool that big buck, even if I don’t get a good shot because I do hunt with a bow even though they don’t get a good shot at him and he gets away, I fooled him. I got him in my zone and I could have killed him.

Ramsey Russell: That’s exactly right.

Brandon Mason: But it’s an enjoyable thing and just play the game with those ducks and you will end up having an experience that you’ve never had before in your life.

Ramsey Russell: To the average guy that might be listening that has grown up hunting in waist deep water in Mississippi or something like that. What would you tell him about coming to sink box hunt instead of what to expect in terms of preparedness or what’s going to be just real different? I know you’ve dealt with thousands of hunters over the last 2 or 3 decades you’ve done this, what do you see being the – you know what I’m saying? What you want to fish for? What’s going to surprise and what do they need to really maybe packing their ditty bags that they don’t have normally?

Brandon Mason: Lots of good dry clothes.

Ramsey Russell: All right.

Brandon Mason: Yeah, you packed some good rain gear and you’ll enjoy yourself.

Ramsey Russell: All right, yeah, you all hear that? Pack your rain gear guys. Hey Brandon, thank you very much. Everybody, thank you all for listening. We keep these stories going at Ramsey Russell Get ducks Instagram story lines. Check out the great hunts we’ve been having up here in Canada with Brandon Nova Scotia sink box hunting. It’s really not duck season somewhere until you’ve been everywhere and I really think just for sheer experience everybody should add that to their bucket list.

Rocky Leflore: What a heck of an interview Ramsey, I appreciate you taking the time after that hunt was over with to sit down with Brandon.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’m glad you all enjoyed it, Rocky. He’s a good dude man. He is such a good guy and I would tell anybody if you want to go to sink box hunting call him, call me just go. It’s such a beautiful and unique part of Canada and he is such a great tour guide. I mean, not really a tour guide, but it’s just a beautiful part of the world. When we think Canada, we think barley fields and golden fields of barley and out to the horizon and you go over there to Nova Scotia and it’s totally different but it’s like stepping back in time and he and his wife Mary will take good care of you, no doubt.

Rocky Leflore: Hey, Ramsey real quick before I let you go. What’s on the horizon? I know that you sat down with at this point you sat down with Nick Marcyes and you’ve also sat down with Brandon Cerecke their Boss Ammo. What’s on the Horizon pass at?

Ramsey Russell: I’ve met with both those guys, the next couple of guys I want to meet with, I’m going to meet with Jeff Foiles. You all have heard a lot about Jeff Foiles story, but I want to sit down with Jeff. I just getting back right now from this travel. It is profound impact that his story and along with Ryan Warden story that their story on The End of The Line podcast had on the hunting community. And I didn’t know some of these guys I met hunted with until just a week ago or whatever until I met them and it’s really amazing. The narrative or the way of thinking the mindset that they’ve created. I just wanted to meet Jeff, I appreciated his story. I’m also going to meet with my old friend and I’ll call him a mentor of sorts because he’s had a lot of a lot of influence in my life. But he’s also a very close personal friend, Mr. Terry Denmon. I’m going to hit it from a different direction. I know that’s spinning wing decoys are controversial, but I think it’s a very good story and I think he’s a very good person. And so he and I are going to talk, I’ve always wanted to meet with him like this on the record. And then I’ve got phone note to my phone full of people of biologist. I’m going to meet with there’s a group down in southwest Louisiana and we’re going back and forth. Somebody contacted me via social media in my inbox and to make an introduction to a biologist down there. And I finally asked the guy, who are you? What do you? I don’t understand where you’re coming from with all this. And he’s concerned citizen. He’s concerned about the future of waterfowl hunting in Southwest Louisiana. And he and some other men or where the Louisiana Wildlife and fishing park budgets stop, they’re picking up the slack on some very ground cutting or ground-breaking and some very interesting white fronted goose research. And I’m looking forward to meeting with this biologist about that. There are things a foot that makes you wonder and already not having met with this guy, a lot of my understanding of it, I believe to be an error now, maybe I misunderstood some facts and I think he can shed a lot of light on it. And then I don’t want to tip my hand too far out but I’ve got some other important meetings with other hunters with government officials, both sides of the border with biologists that are subject experts. That conversation I had with Corey Loffler about moat migraters and about that Rochester Minnesota population of geese. I’ve got some questions thanks to me after that interview and I realized they were a little more digging to do a little more, there’s a whole another chapter of that story that we didn’t cover because there were questions left afterward and I’d like to address them. What did hunt hunters have to do with it and specifically who and how did they take those birds and make what we have now in the northern tier for big Canada’s? So, they’re just some other things I’m chasing down. I’ve got probably one of the foremost wild game chefs, very knowledgeable, very well written, got some very good books. He’s agreed to meet with me and I’d like to maybe even fly out there to California and meet with him so I can sample some of his food. We’ve talked in the past about how so many people now, what do you do with all these Canada geese? So many people make meat sticks and jerky, which is great. But come on, there’s got to be more to do to it than that and without being a French chef and having a sous chef at your side helping you cook a 5 hour meal there’s got to be better ways to prepare these birds and I know he has shared some stuff with me over the years that made me look and think about cooking duck and in a whole new light. So we’re just kind of all over the board with this duck hunting and I’m hoping to have a couple of recordings out in Utah next month. I’ve got a recording with an outfit in Ontario next month. And so we’ll just see where it goes. I’ve got a list full of stuff.

Rocky Leflore: Well, a lot of the excitement around this kind of episodic series with you. I’m telling you the feedback that I’m getting is unreal. And I knew that if you ever decided to do it man, it was going to be big and it is becoming big really fast. Because I just know the conversations that you are in the way that you look at life from a relationship standpoint. Whenever you look at life as build relationship with others, you really go in depth with what you’re talking about. If you live a life, then he kind of bounce people off of you then never really going to go in depth with anybody.

Ramsey Russell: Well, thanks everybody for listening. Some of the comments I’ve gotten that they feel like they are sitting at the table with us again, I would just say, don’t just sit at the table chime in. Reach out to me. Shoot me a text, Shoot me a call. I mean be a part of the conversation because we’re all duck hunters and we’re all in this thing together. So hey, thank you all for listening. But I want to hear from you too. Come join the conversation let’s talk. So anyway, thank you all Rocky, I appreciate the opportunity and I appreciate everybody for listening.

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, thank you again for doing this and being part of The End of The Line podcast. I want to thank all of you that to listen to this edition of The End of The Line podcast powered by ducksouth.com.

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