Do We Really Have Fewer Ducks?

0:00Who's coming to see me? I'm Travis Padcast, I'm George Ho, Joey Basayo, and I am alone. In the studio today, hi, everybody. It's actually, I'm not alone. I have Kwabi Grunianio, Carter here. Carter? True. See, I'm going to need you to really participate here today, okay? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I like how you say that. Thank you. Very good. It's very good. No, no, no, no. We had Goose Open yesterday in Wisconsin, Carter. How'd you do? Bad. Very bad. Did you hunt Jared's? I did hunt Jared's. Yep. If I would have stayed probably a half hour longer, I guarantee I would have killed the bird, but it's how it always goes. It's fine. Like we, but I, all that matters is that I went out with my two and a half year old son. Yep. And I didn't, like I saw Jared had his camera, but I didn't see him like actually capturing any photos, you know? Yep. I thought maybe he was just doing like product stuff or whatever. But dude, look at these photos. Scroll through.

1:03I had the most adorable son on the planet. Sick. Jared's actually a very good photographer, so he is. Yeah, I was just like, I'm framing that one. I'm framing that one. Thank you so much. It was a lot of fun, dude. Yeah, those are great. Yeah, big memory stuff, you know? And he had a fricking blast and we've had all these people on the podcast as of late that are fathers that have kids that are obsessed with it. Like Corey Loughler, Alex Langbell. I don't think we asked Sean Stahl, but we asked of, I've asked him a variety of people throughout the years. You know, what do you do? So I took their advice and I had a lot of books that I brought into the pit. I let him just like walk around when he wanted to. We found a snake. We found some frogs. He was playing with a little BB gun. He's having a blast, dude. Sick. That's awesome. Gave him donuts. I even let him drink a little bit of coffee that had some sugar in it.

2:04He loved it, of course. And then, you know, once he was getting really hot and really tired, dude, his 91 degrees. Gross. Yeah. And to start out at 7 a.m., it was 91% humidity. I'm good. It was gross. It wasn't so bad in the pit, but when it's that hot outside, any pit, I don't care how new it is. It's going to smell a little moust-y. What? Grass. Moldy grass. Yeah. Not good. And that thing was pristinely cleaned by Jared. I didn't realize he was that OCD. Yeah. He's super OCD. Yeah. He was giving me some insight on that. I went into his house and it was immaculate. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, he's like, I can't stand a dirty house like ever. I don't know if I would have guessed that. Nope. I would never have guessed that. Yeah, he was awesome, man. Him and Luke, famous. I think it's how he pronounces the last name, Tamer. And they were just so good with Robbie. He was hanging out with him, making sure he was having a good time, letting him just destroy

3:05everything in the pit, throw a ball in there, whatever. Yeah. It was a lot of fun. That's soup. That's super cool. That's soup. That's soup. That is beef soup. It was really fun. It was a it was a proud dad moment. You know, that I can that I can do that with my kids. And I can't wait to do it more and more. I know it's going to be a little bit more difficult once it gets cold and wet. Yeah. You know, so I'm going to try to get them out as much as I can. Did he want to go back again? Oh, yeah. He's been asking. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I keep asking. And I was like, did you have fun? He's like, um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And right when we got there, they shot two. And so he watched Hank get it from the water and he's sitting there like this. Just so excited. Just so excited. Hands up to his mouth. Just that's awesome. Just pumped. Dude, he does that when he's really angry or he's really excited. You never know what's going to happen. He doesn't know how to release his energy. Yeah. So he was really excited. And then he was holding the dead goose and he's touching it all over. He wasn't scared of it at all. One of them is still kind of kicking.

4:06And so he's asking me questions about that. And I was like, well, you you look at it for a second. I'm going to ring this one's neck. And then you just watch it. And he's just sitting there watching it kick. And he was just mesmerized. You know, and he was asking me if it's dead. Whatever. So it's like a really good teaching moment to like dispatching. It's not like he understands, you know, he's still half. But it was just cool that I get to, I don't know, pass this on to my kids. For sure. You've talked about it for so long now. It's happening. I know. I know. I know. Really excited. So I was really pumped. I went to Fleet Farm and spent like a hundred bucks on a little camel sweat pants and a little long sleeve shirt and a little like a car heart sweatshirt. You know, and they're all a little bit big for him. But it fits my four year old perfectly. Perfect. And so he'll be able to grow into it. She'll be able to use it all year. And I get to take her out on Minnesota opener. I'm going to be up north at a friend's cabin. Okay. And group of buddies is very graciously letting me jump in with my four year old.

5:09And hopefully shoot some geese with her on Saturday. And then go to the lake right afterwards. Because I'm sure it's going to be blazing hot. It is. Yep. Can't wait. Yeah. It might be one of those things. You only stay till nine. Yep. Type of a deal. And then you get a picture from the field at 1030 and the birds are in there. Yeah. Every time. Yep. Exactly. But you know, what I'm really focused on is not burning them out. Not being like too strict and me like, Hey, shut up. Get your head down. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Well, we had, I know you weren't on the podcast, but we had Justin Martin on. Yeah. And he was talking about that, taking his kids out. That'll come out soonish kind of maybe. Well, because how old are his kids? He they're both two boys are four. And he was saying when he goes out with his kids, it's not him taking them out on a hunt. He they're taking him on a hunt. Or they take the hunt. Whatever they want to be done. They leave. Yeah. It's just keep it fun. So they don't burn them out. Yeah. Well, and like that's his job. Yeah. Exactly. So like you obviously want them to get in there.

6:10But that's cool. That's cool. I wish I, I wish I could. I could have been there for that one. It was a very good podcast. You'll have because I wasn't there. It was so much better because you weren't there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like who wants to hear me talk? No. We got the better Joe on for the host. Yeah, you got Hines. That's all he did the whole time. Little stem every couple of minutes. Oh, yeah. Was he actually stemming? Justin says something funny. We we got Oh my goodness. Oh well. While you're doing that. Oh, I'm dying. I hear that. Okay. Guys, I don't know if you know it's the shirt that I'm wearing right now. If you're watching us on YouTube, which we are posting on again, thank you very much.

7:10YouTube. Unbelievable. Violating fire on policies when I'm talking about firearms and ammunition. Get out of here. But the shirt I'm wearing is a very cool shirt from first light. We've been working with first light with quite for quite some time. If you guys have not checked out some of their awesome waterfell stuff, please go check it out at firstlight.com. But the wool is amazing. The lifestyle stuff that they've been coming out with is great. Yes. I'm a big fan of it. A big fan. It looks incredible and it feels even better. So as you get older, you got to worry about like what material is touching your skin all the time, especially around your your crotch, you know, it's better to use like a natural material instead of polyester. So I would go check it out. I love it and they've got some really cool shit. A lot of solids there too. Yes. And one of the new things they actually just came out with is for any uplin hunters, which I'm a big uplin hunter now. They have those. They're three away pants with chaps built into them.

8:12Oh. So yeah, very nice, very nice. I can't wait to use those. How many pairs of 308s do you think you got at this? I have five. Because they're awesome. Yeah, I think I have four. Yeah, two line to online and then those chaps. Nice. They're just the best pants. Yeah, I got two line to online. They're really comfy. I've been wearing the the unlined pretty much all summer and they're they look really good for work too. Yeah. They got some nice pockets on there that you wouldn't find a normal pants. So people just kind of look at your legs more. Yeah. They're like, I wonder what's in that pocket. Yeah. You're like, you don't even want to know. Some of the pockets you unzip, they're just vents. Yeah, they can see right in. Exactly. He's the access. Yep, you can even see my turtle tad if my pants turn a certain way. Get some more clients that way. Oh, yeah. They're like, he's got a tropical water creature on his leg forever. What a cool guy. I love that. He obviously makes great decisions. Let's use him for work. Yes. There you go. Oh, satire. That was satire, by the way. Oh, really? But anyway. But no, I'm excited to go out for Minnesota.

9:14It'll be nice to, I have not really been scouting this year just because of the lack of geese. When I have seen geese, they're not there three days later. Yeah. Type of a thing. So I kind of don't even want to waste my time going scouting. And I used to scout two, three weeks ahead of time. And I'd have a great field for opener or whatever. And they just don't show up. Yeah. So I've just kind of learned as I've gotten older to kind of wait till a couple of days beforehand and then attack it. Either do that or get permission for 15 fields, which is a lot of what a lot of people do. I know that's the problem. You know, and then someone's like, well, someone's already got permission and then they don't even hunt it. Yeah. Pists me off. Like I understand the mentality. But it just kind of screws everyone else over. Yeah, kind of screws everyone else over. I'm voicing my first time ever doing the early teal season on Saturday. Really? I am. I got invited for a group of friends that always go out. So I'm going to try it out. We'll see how it goes. Hmm. It's going to be hot. And gross. Are you staying local?

10:14Are you going out west? OK. Yeah. A lot of a lot of tea, apparently. So we'll see. Yeah, there's a lot of tea out there all the time. It's just it's a lot of work for a little bit of meat. Yeah, they they have like a permanent blind and stuff will go out and sit in. So we won't be standing swat and mosquitoes. We'll be sitting swat and mosquitoes. So it's private. Yeah. Oh, I would do that in a heartbeat. Yeah. Someone says I got a lot of teal on my private bottom. Be like done. Yeah. I got a video today. It looked like over 500. Yeah. So hopefully we'll be done quick. Watch it drop below 40 degrees one night. They're all gone. I you know, I looked at the weather. It doesn't look like it's going to get below 70. So I think we're good. I think we're good. Like where you live, have you noticed how bad it's weird. This year has been really strange. We've gotten essentially no rain. Yep. This year in Minnesota. And there's like no standing water anywhere.

11:17Nope. None. Like I have a creek behind my house. There's no water in it. Mississippi just damn near dry. Really? What where we are? Yeah. Geese are standing out in the middle of the river. Oh good. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. That's a good sign. Really? Yeah. But they say they're like we in Minnesota switch off. One year we'll have really bad flies. The next we'll have really bad mosquitoes. It's a fly year. You think it's a fly year? Oh yeah. Dude, it's a mosquito year for me. No, really? Bad bad bad bad bad bad. But it's weird. They're not out at all until 20 minutes after sunset. Yep. And then it's like you cannot be out there. Really? Where are they coming from? That's my question. Like if there's water, they can lay their eggs somewhere and then they come out and get that. But there's no water. What do you think's in the clouds? Aluminum, barion, barion, ticks and mosquitoes. Ticks and mosquitoes. Yeah. That's where they get dropped in from.

12:18Have you found any ticks on you this year? A lot early in the spring. But since probably June not really. But this early in spring it was bad bad. Like we took me out at a national park. It was like mid-May. She had like 40 of them on her in a half hour walk. Oh. It was bad bad. And like staying on the trail. Really? Yeah. Like she wasn't veering off the trail. Nope. I had like 10 on me from walking on the trail. It was unreal. Dude. Unacceptable. But since it's like that, I don't know. Since I got really hot in July, I haven't had any. Haven't seen any. Have you? Not a single one. But I'm pretty conscious about it. No, no, no. I did find one tick crown on my. I'm a shoe one day when I was golfing. Really? On a golf course? Oh, yeah. Like the tall grass where you like walking into the woods 20 feet to find your ball. I don't normally go there. So I wouldn't know. You're right. You're right. Well, you don't go to the golf course. Oh, I do.

13:18I'm a big golfer now. I just keep around the fairway. No ticks there. Too much glyphosate in the fairway. They don't spray with harsh chemicals in the woods. No, good point. Yeah. But no, I've only found one on me. I found it immediately pumped. No bite. Was it big or small? It was normal. The ones early this year were like half of a like a fingernail clipping size. Like so small. You could barely see them. They were the larvae. I don't know what they were, but they were ticks and they were tiny. Or nymph stage. I think I think they calm. Yeah, I think they're nymphs. Like the smaller version. They can still crawl around on their own. Not good, bro. Yeah, and they could still bite too. Like there were some stuck on. Yeah, that were like that small. Impossible to find. Dude, it's just such a nightmare. Like imagine, imagine waking up in the middle of the night. Feeling like something crawling on you. And then you, you feel it in your fingers.

14:19You're like, oh, it's a tick. So you get out of bed. You go into the light to see what kind of a ticket is. And then you look to where it was crawling on you. And there's 45 more of them. Bit into your skin. Nope. Nightmare. I had that nightmare before. And then I got up out of bed and checked myself fully for ticks. It wasn't satisfied. Took a shower anyway. Did you find any? No. Must have been a spider running across me. Most of them. But it's just a bug. I can't do it. I can't do the tick. So props to all you turkey hunters, especially now, apparently as people are dumping them from helicopters and airplanes, I'm crazy to me. Yeah. If that's true, man, it can't be. But like so many people are saying that they're seeing boxes dropped from helicopters or planes. And it's on their property and they go and check it. And it's just millions of them. I just can't believe it until I see it with my own eyes. Oh, you're from Missouri. Yes. Gotcha. Show me. No, I just, I don't know. If you see enough of it online, and now it is from online, right?

15:20That's you can play the sound. You can play the sound. Yes. Fine. But I don't know if I see something too many times from too many different areas, I'm like, there must be some truth to it. I feel like there's always a little bit of truth to everything. It's tough because TikTok, if that's where you're seeing it, their algorithm is so good. If you watch one video fully, they just keep giving you as many possible that are similar to it. Sure. So it's like, there could be 10 of those videos in existence, but TikTok's algorithm is so good, you're going to see all 10 and think it's super common. Oh, I'm not saying like, oh, it's everywhere. Yeah. But if it says man in Oregon found man in Alberta, man in Ohio, man in Massachusetts, it's like, okay, it's kind of widespread. I'm not saying, I've seen so many videos today. I understand algorithms, but yeah. I don't know. I don't know, speaking of algorithms, the main pond counts came out. Yeah, how'd that look for you?

16:20It didn't look good, man. It didn't look very good, and it's kind of confusing. And I think a lot of people are confused about it. I'm just going to pull them up real quick. Or do you want to put them on the TV? Yeah. So Maypons in US and Canada is at 4.7. And the total ducks are at 33.4 million. Now, I think everybody knows my position on this. How do you know that? You know, are you flying all over the nation? No, you're not. So this is essentially just like a rough estimate, but they're saying that mallards are down 11% from last year. No shot. That's a lot. That's a lot. You're saying it's false? No, I'm saying, yeah, I'm saying I don't believe it. That's down like almost 700,000. Do we lost almost a million mallards? That's what it's saying. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. 2025 is at 6.5, and now it's at 5.8. That's insane.

17:21We lost 700,000 mallards. 800,000. Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. And then it's still down for like every other duck and then up 20% for the shoveler. Yep, up 19% for the shoveler. 11% down on teal, on blue wings. 11% down on pintail. Redheads went up a percent. Canvas packs went way up at 13%. Blue bills went up at 13%. But if you notice the only thing, or no, there's a couple of them. Redheads are up 26% on the long-term average. I mean, I would love to just, now this is out. I'd love to get someone from Ducks and Limited or Delta to come on the podcast and just help explain this. I watched this guy just rant about it for, I'm not kidding, you 10 minutes on TikTok. Yeah. And he had some valid points, but it's just like, people are saying that they're lying about numbers because there's money and duck cutting now.

18:21I don't think that's an issue. I think they're just bad at doing a survey of how many ducks there are in the entire country. You're saying the US Fish and Wildlife? Yeah. I think there isn't a great way to do it yet. Well, it's not accurate. Exactly. And they say that it's not accurate, but they're just going off of like their normal routes. And people are really mad at Ducks and Limited for this, but Ducks and Limited isn't doing the survey. No, you know what I mean? Ducks and Limited is just the hate target for everything. Right. And I think it's very unjustified. If we didn't have Ducks and Limited guys, it would be horrendous for waterfowling. We would have so many less rights. They do so much lobbying to the government. It's insane. So, and I mean, we've had so many people from Ducks and Limited on here talking about what they do for the sport. It's incredible. So just do some research on it. Don't let your emotions get on you. I'm emotional about how everything is down like all puddle ducks are down. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is,

19:22according to this, the shoveler would be the fourth most popular duck in the United States. There's, I just don't believe that. Population wise? Yeah. Do you believe that? In our area. Probably. Really? Yeah. Like in October, I see so many. I see so many shovels. You think that's the fourth most common duck you see? Why do you think the most four most popular are? I would, Carter. I would put mallard for sure above, scalp for sure. I would almost put teal. Because, yeah. I mean, that's a really low number for green-winged teal. I think that's too low. Yeah. Well, they don't have, well, they do have green-wing up there. Yeah. Yeah. And then I would say Wiggen is almost higher if not the same as shoveler. Yeah. Wiggen and Gadwad. There's a lot more Wiggen than there are Gadwad. I didn't realize that. It doesn't feel like that. It feels like they're about the same.

20:23But on the Pacific Northwest, there's a lot of them. Yeah. Like a lot. So, I don't know, I'd love to dive deep with someone from US Fish and Wildlife and really dig into how they're doing these surveys so that we can just help enlighten everybody, not just myself, but like everybody else. Because the hate coming from this stuff is insane. I think what, here's how I really think about it. I have seen so many ducks this year, so many. Same. So many. I can't remember the last time I saw this many ducks this early in September. I was expecting this number to be up a lot. Me too. I was expecting it to be way up. Here's what I think is going on. They're doing these surveys. And since there's less areas with water, they're finding new areas. And so they're outside of the survey bounds. Yes. You know what I mean? So like you just said that the Mississippi River, you can see rocks in the middle of it and geese are standing in it. Yeah. That's very unusual. There has to be water somewhere else,

21:24especially with how many geese have been born this year, how many ducks have been born this year. My mind has been blown. So like these creatures are super adaptive, and I think they're just finding new areas to survive. Yes. I agree. Completely. The mallard can eat pretty much anything, dude. They can live in salt water. They can live in brackish water. They can eat muscles from the ocean. They can eat muscles. Yep. They're breaking open clams and eating them. And then they can eat dry feed. They can live on land or water. Now someone like a scop or a camispector or a redhead, if they lose their habitat, they're in big trouble. Yeah. Because the camispect mainly eats wild celery. Minnesota used to be a huge producer of wild celery, now not so much, because of all the chemicals that we use in our water. Or all the chemicals that we use in our lawns is going into these lakes that has wild celery. It's killing it. What state has the most wild celery now? Mm. I want to say it's Louisiana.

22:27Like Lake St. Charles has is super well known. Why don't you look it up? I want you to look it up on Chatchee PJ. Yeah, it looks either Maryland or California. Right. I guess. So not in their flyway? No. At all. Not at all. But it makes sense for like a camispect, like a mallard, they can adapt so well and they can eat whatever. Yeah. They're eating slugs and a pond one day. The next day they're eating a freshly cut wheat field. Camispect can do on that. They have very strict diet, fish, celery. Yeah. I mean, have you seen divers in dry fields before? When they were flooded, not in an actual dry field though? No. I mean, we've shot redheads in a corn field before, but it was in a blizzard. And so they're just really confused. OK. You know, like it was a brutal storm. Got super cold and you couldn't see 35 feet in front of you. And we knew we were going to kill a mallard. I was a kid. But it was my dad and then Tim Grounds is on that hunt.

23:31And that's one of my pictures that I have with Tim Grounds, where it's a limit of green heads and a limit of redheads. Sweet in a corn field. We shot blue bills in a corn field. Really? Not flooded. Like on a normal day. Yeah. Sick. Yeah. That's so sick. But yeah, they don't, they can't really walk well on dry land. So obviously they can, but they're not going to spend all their time. They're not going to spend a lot of time on dry land. They can figure it out if they have to. Right. Oh, yeah, it's not like they physically cannot. But no, I just hate seeing all the hate online about this whole duck survey thing. I think they just need to expand how they do their survey. They need to start switching it up. Like still do the same route. I think we need to start like a go fund me for like the people that are doing the duck survey and be like, OK, you're doing the May Pond count on this day. Just go 50 miles outside of your radius. Yeah, they need a new long term route.

24:31Mm hmm. Like go on on X with two week imagery and see what areas have water just outside of that and go patrol those areas and see if your numbers change. You know, yeah. Because like the fact that mowers went down seven, 800,000. I just don't believe it, dude. I agree. It doesn't. It's from what we've been seeing. And I don't. And for the people saying like in my, well, in your area, whatever, we had a terrible duck season last year in Minnesota. One of the worst. But in our area, we produce a lot of water foul where you are in the Prairie Pothole region. Like historically, Minnesota is huge for producing ducks. So when I see as many, I was driving down 35 W. Head and North. I was driving up 35 W. Head and North. And the amount of teal and mullards and wood ducks, I saw flying over 35 W was staggering. Yeah. It's been unreal.

25:32Crazy and through fog and it was at like 6 a.m. And there were just hundreds and hundreds of ducks trading over for like 30 miles. Have you heard how it was up in Canada? Like was it wet? Was it good? I saw a bunch of stuff like Manitoba and Saskatchewan. They had record rainfalls right before breeding season took part. So it should have been good up there too. It should have been good up there. But they're saying that, you know, everyone's been saying that we've been in a drought cycle which we have been obviously. But then this year, I don't know if we got too much rain too quickly. It had probably flooded outness or or water. Maybe it was too early. I started to dry up but I know that a lot of farmers had tough times getting like crops into their fields. I saw so many videos of people driving jet skis into their cornfield. Yeah. It seemed like it was about the right time to get the rain though. It didn't seem like it was too early or too late.

26:34I know. I know. And maybe, and I don't know, I'm just shooting stuff at the wall. I'm sure I'm going to get so much shit for this episode. Talking out of my ass about the waterfell survey and what my thoughts are on it. But maybe they had such an unbelievable hash that they just left. You know what I mean? Yeah. But they hatched earlier than they normally would and they're, they just dispersed from that area to go get food. I don't know. Yeah. Where I walk every day, I know I saw at least two or three duck and geese like families that had a double hatch. Really? Like the geese were like dang near full grown and there was a new set of little yellow fluff balls with them. That's awesome. And then same thing with wood ducks specifically. Yeah, there's a lot of woodies. A lot of woodies. A lot of woodies. And I was talking to a guy from Delta Game Fair, super cool dude and he has property down in Red Wing. And he said he's never seen this many wood ducks down there. Yeah.

27:35He's since the 80s. People are going to have to be careful for early teal. Right. You know, go and do your duck ID and watch how wood duck flies in the air. They drop their neck down. They come up. They drop their neck down and come up. Teal pretty much don't make any noises. They're flying unless it. Yeah. Wood ducks have a lot different. So please don't get yourself a ticket by shooting a rainbow teal. That'd be nice. They don't even look rainbow at this time. Right. I love how wood ducks aren't even on this list by the way. Yeah. Really weird. So they've been in the past. I would assume not, but I can look. I guess these are just the ducks that everyone cares about, which is kind of weird to just pick random ones if they're doing a survey of everything. And what's interesting is pintails are back down. Yeah. One third nine and they last year they're at 2.2. I hope they don't use that to take away the three pintail limit they gave us. I don't. They don't just take it away immediately. But they could. They could.

28:35I mean, they don't do that, but but they could. Yeah. You look up past years. Guys, I know everyone's always looking for a new way to kill ducks. Everyone wants to like try the new cool toy out there and see how it works for him. Let me tell you about the cool new toy we've been using for a couple of years. It's called the flashback. This thing is incredible. I feel like ducks are starting to really get freaked out by spending wing decoys. They learn it quicker than they ever have. I feel like we have a lot more older ducks nowadays. So try switching up your spread and throwing in a flashback. It is a decoy that floats and the head moves and it throws its butt up in the air and it creates ripples on the water. It looks super realistic. It takes it lasts like 12 hours on a charge and the battery is also the weight. I cannot speak enough good things about the flashback guys. I love them and I think it just makes your spread absolutely come alive. So you can also stand out from the crowd every time I've gone to public water. I look at what everyone else's spread looks like.

29:36Two to four dozen decoys, a couple of spinners and a butt splasher. So look, set yourself apart from those other spreads and throw something different. The flashback is an amazing tool. It's American. Pretty much all the parts are made in America and it's put together in America and you're supporting a small business as well. Damn things are pretty much indestructible. If they've survived with me for three years, they're going to survive for you. True. Trust me on that. I went back and looked the last three years. It's been the same ducks. In 2022, do you want to guess the mallard count? No. Seven point four. Seven point four. That's much higher. Much higher. Yep. It's almost two million less this year. Blueing Teal was at 6.5. Damn. Damn. See, no, there's no way that many green-wing Teal are dying, bro.

30:37Yeah. It doesn't make sense. I just saw a clip of a guy from Delta Waterfell talk and he wishes that they could change the season to all of September for Teal. Really? He's like, they're here and gone. You know, I'd rather give people more of an opportunity at those Teal than, you know, 14 days. Yeah. We're long, most people's Teal season is. It's like there has never been a shortage of Teal in Minnesota ever. And especially green-wing Teal, man. Those things are there till duck clothes. Yeah. Those things are everywhere. It's not uncommon to get a fully plumed out green-winged Teal. No. Blue-winged Teal is a little more rare for sure. Well, you'll never shoot a fully plumed out green or a blue-winged Teal in Minnesota. I've seen it. You'll never do it. I have a picture from a hunt. Really? Yep. Some a shot one. Yep. I thought you said you just saw it on the wing or something. Nope. Hmm. But very rare. It is very rare. Yep. I may be seen too in my life.

31:37Really? That's it. Yeah. I mean, they don't really come in like after the first week or two of season, I'm, I really kind of pull back from shooting Teal. Yeah. Just because I don't know. I'd rather shoot bigger ducks than shoot Teal. And there's a lot of days where I definitely should have shot those Teal, you know, because nothing else came. Yeah. But you're too greedy for the mallards. I am. I just, it's more so just like big ducks, dude. Like if I had a bunch of witch and coming into my spread, I would shoot those things so quick. Or if I had just shoveler after shoveler coming in, I mean, you've seen that. Yeah. I'll crank a shoveler any day. Yeah. I love it. You just want more meat. I do. I do want more meat. You know, you'd want ducks the size of deer. Yeah. Yeah. But I want them to taste better than a duck's, or a deer-sized duck. Yeah. Deer-sized duck would not taste good. You know, if all I could eat for waterfowl is canada goose, I'd probably be a lot more sparing on the canada goose, too. You'd be a big band hunter. Yeah. More so than I already am, for sure.

32:40But I don't know. It makes me sad seeing these numbers. Essentially, we're down 2% overall, but we're down big on mallards, apparently. I don't believe it. It just something doesn't seem right to me. And I suggest everyone go out and start looking for the fuzz balls. It might be a little late now. Definitely. Yeah. Definitely late. It is. But I mean, if you wake up early for work and you're taking major highways that go near, like, I went up 35 W. I was flabbergasted by how many ducks I saw. It was stoopifying. So many. It made me so pumped up. And then this comes out the day after, or the later that day, I'm like, there's no way. So if we have a great duck season, better than we've had in the last four or five years, do you think anything? Do you think there'll be more of a push to get this survey changed to represent the actual count better? Well, they're never going to change it. I think that waterfowlers need to pool together.

33:42I think someone needs to put together a go fund me essentially. And someone at DU or US Fish and Wildlife need to tell us how much it costs to do this survey. And let's do more than where they do to. Yeah. And they do it on the same week every single year and they follow the same routes. Let's do some research. Pay some scientists and be like, okay, if I could go outside of this route, here's where I'd probably go. Here's the next area that I would check. And then we get five years of data or three years of data of that. You're telling me out of the almost a million duck hunters in the United States of those people wouldn't want to know the true numbers on this survey. I guarantee you by all the hoopla that's come out of it, I guarantee you all these people would pay a hundred bucks to go to the people actually getting the work done. Yeah. We need an Elon Musk that duck hunts. We do. That just puts money into it because he wants to. We need a daddy war bucks. Yes. Big time. So if anybody knows daddy war bucks, right, Joey will do whatever he needs.

34:46I will rally the troops. I would love to rally the troops and be like, hey guys, every duck hunter needs to put in 50 bucks so that we can stop seeing these numbers and getting so upset. So we can stop changing our laws without enough data. You know, we're concerned about bag limits. Okay, let's get actual data that proves that. Okay, the same route we've taken every single year. It's not looking good. How many people think it's because they've moved? Okay, let's just say it's 40%. Of those 40% would you donate $50? We need to get $250,000 in order to run another survey for fuel, for scientists, for people to come through the data for counters for everything. You know what I mean? Yep. How many duck hunters would it take giving $50? So you get $250,000? That would be $250,000 to buy with 50. Five. Five. Five duck hunters is all it takes. Guys.

35:465,000? Out of everyone in America who depends on this survey, who duck hunts? Can't give 5,000 people to give $50? I bet you'd be way more than $50. Or way more than 250 grand is what they would get. Probably. Especially after the first one if it was more accurate the next time around, for sure. Right. And let's say it does fluctuate like this. You know, and we've had pretty drowty years for the last six, seven years. Six or seven years. And how did it go down this much? What about this year is so much more impactful than the year before? Because I don't feel like that much has changed. No, like it's been pretty consistent weather for the last six years and it's shitty weather. Hot and dry. Hot and dry. So it's like, let's do some real research. Is it habitat loss? Is it bag limits? Is it whatever everyone from everyone who has a degree in this shit is saying bag limits

36:49don't affect anything. But a lot of people online are saying they less than bag limits for a lot less back then is because there wasn't that much data back then. Yeah. You know, they didn't know what to do. They're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what's stuck. But then the people complaining on this online are saying then the year after they dropped the limit to three and 30, we had a banger year the next year. They say there's about 15 to 17 million ducks a year being shot in the United States and Canada. I don't know if that encompasses Canada actually, but that's a lot of birds. Yeah. That's half of the current amount of ducks right there. Yeah, there's no shot. Can you say, like if we are killing half of the population of the, these are accurate numbers. Do you think that we would have only a 2% drop? There's no way. No. No, no shot. It's crazy to me. It's not, yeah, it's not possible. It's not possible. So it's not possible that there's a 50% turnover rate on ducks that are alive year-to-year.

38:06We're not killing half of them every year. If that was the case, we wouldn't be able to hunt them. Yeah, we wouldn't have any ducks. We wouldn't have any ducks. They'd have one bad breeding year and we would have ducks. We'd wipe out the population. Yeah. Right. So just to you on that a little bit, guys, I know that these numbers are frustrating. They frustrate me too. But there's a lot of people screaming online just about the stuff that I just said, which is we're killing 15 to 17 million. You're saying that bag limits don't matter. It's like, well, obviously there's more than 33 million, you know? If you think about how many ducks are in each hatch, there's about four to six on average, right? Looked that up for me, Papa. For what duck? Or just, let's just say mallards. We'll see average mallard brewed. I would say four to eight. Eight to 13 is the average clutch size. Wow. So even if we are killing half the ducks, if one of those is a mating pair, they're more than tripling their numbers.

39:07Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, there's no definitive answer, which is upsetting, but it's all some mother nature and mother nature. I mean, these things know how to keep themselves alive, you know? But it's nice that we can have organizations like Delta, ducks unlimited, Minnesota DNR is doing some stuff too. Like all of these areas that recognize themselves as the Prairie Pothole region do a lot for the Prairie Pothole region to keep these things around. But when people go online, it's just like what we said when I was on the Delta Waterfowl podcast with all the other podcasters, you go online, you see these people just bitching out ducks unlimited, bitching out Delta Waterfowl, bitching out the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and all these people are like, yeah, yeah, everything sucks. Everything sucks. It's like, no, guys, we need to band together. And I think one of the best ways we can band together is start like a go fund me and figure out what's actually going on, you know?

40:08Yeah. So, so yeah, don't listen to every single stat you see online because what we're seeing in person is a lot different. It gets a lot different. So, anyway, anyway, you know, it was really cool about opener. What was that? You got to take the weather be Orion 28 gauge side by side out. Oh, really? Yeah, it was awesome. Jared and Luke were like, what is that gun? And they just couldn't stop touching it. You know, that gun is so sexy. Guys, if you go, I think it's under their legacy guns, right? I think so. Yep. If you go on their website and you look up under shock guns and you'll see legacy, you see all these overunders and side by side guns that they have on there. They are drop dead, gorgeous. They look so good. They're not that expensive, which is insane. I figured these would have been very expensive guns, but they're flowing right around a thousand. And I think some are even less to, but these guns are so good. It's so much less moving parts for these overunders and side by sides.

41:11And honestly, they're so it feels like you're shooting a popcorn 28 gauge, 410 gauge, 20 gauge. I love these guns guys. If you have not shot a weather be, please go check them out. They're in pretty much every retailer you can go out there, put it up to your shoulder, see if it feels good for you. When you look down the peep site, it was really weird shooting a side by side for the first part, but as I've gotten used to it, it's been pretty badass. You know what's funny? You were saying everybody wanted to like touch the gun, look at it. Yeah. Had the exact same thing with my sorics when I went sporting clays. Every single person picked it up, brought it to their shoulder like, wow, it's so nice going. Every single person. Yeah, it's nice. They're nice guns. People don't realize how nice a weather be is, but I mean, they've been around since the 40s. So thank you guys for making awesome guns. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And it's not just like a semi auto every single time. So many of these other brands just have semi-autos, but weather be has been around long enough that they can kick out the old shit that just continues to kick ass.

42:13You know what I mean? Yeah. I did not rehearse that whatsoever. It just felt right. That was so good. It just felt right. Thanks, dad. You're welcome. Thank you. Let's see here. Oh, wow, we're done. We got to go live. We got to go live. If you guys have not checked out the Humt Club, it's in our link tree on Instagram and on Facebook. Go sign up. I'm pretty sure we still have a free trial for a little bit. Yes, we do. I ain't talking like a week or two free trial. One month. But we do a live every single Wednesday at 730 Central. We put out videos all the time. We actually have to put out a bunch more videos now that we're coming up to season. People have been sending us fields and they want to know how to hunt it. Where to set decoys, how to set it. So then they sent a picture of an on X map. And then I draw out a whole diagram showing how I would hunt that. I don't give duck and goose calling lessons anymore unless you are a member of the Humt Club. And so if you want duck and goose calling lessons, you can go on WAP and you can sign up

43:13there. It's just a nice app. We do a lot of giveaways. We just give away a hunt. Yeah, we just gave away a hunt to Jared's farm. Actually, it'll be a couple of weeks here. Yep. Winner is picked on this live. We're about to go do. Oh, shit. Hell yeah. That's big time. So guys, go check it out. It's less than I just got a cup of coffee today. That was about a coffee for a client. It was $7.99 because it has like, it was like a matcha deal. Yeah. $7.99 for like a large matcha thing. Great value. I might do. That's how much the WAP costs. But it lasts all month, baby. It does. You can consume content, new content every single week and you can interact with all the people in there. It's a huge community that has been so much fun to put together. And I think you guys will like it too. You can keep drinking the content for $7.99. And it tastes delicious, guys. Thank you so much for listening to this week's podcast. And hopefully I don't get clipped to shit by Carter to make me look dumb talking about

44:16the Maypon account. So talk to you guys later. One more thing. No.