Show Notes
What's the deal with waterfowl hunting? That may sound like a bad Seinfeld joke, but if you've ever wondered that for yourself, then this episode is for you! On this week's episode, Pierce talks with Chase McCulloch from Somewhere in Wisconsin and Shotty Gear, to talk about all things waterfowl hunting. Chase shares how he made the transition from diehard bowhunter to a full-time waterfowler, stories of hunting with his dad, how he started filming hunts and building his YouTube Channel, and gives us a great rundown of how to hunt waterfowl. We get into everything from habitat, to scouting, to what gear folks need.
Speaking of gear, Chase also tells us about his new company Shotty Gear, how he got started, and the awesome Shot Shell Pouch and gear he's got for sale! You can follow along with Chase and see the Shotty Gear Shot Shell Pouch in action on his YouTube channel, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok and follow Shotty Gear at the links below. We hope you enjoy this one!
Find Somewhere in Wisconsin on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram or Tik Tok.
Find Shotty Gear online, on Facebook or on Instagram.
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Show Transcript
[00:00:00] What
is going on everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Wisconsin Sportsman Podcast, which is brought to you by Tacticam. This is your home for all things outdoors in the Badger state. I'm your host, Josh Raley, and I'm flying solo for this week's intro here. A little bit weird feeling not having Pierce on, but Hey, things happen.
We had one heck of a weekend. One of us got out for a family camping trip that involved trick or treating at a campground. One of us ended up with a bloody arrow did a guide trip and ended up too sick to record an intro today. So I'll let you guess which one is which on that front, but Hey, we've got a good episode for you next week.
We're going to come back. Explain the story of what went down for for Pierce and for myself this weekend. But for this week, we've got Chase McCullough [00:01:00] on from somewhere in Wisconsin. He and Pierce had an awesome conversation revolving around waterfowl. That's something that has gotten Pierce's attention more and more.
And something that for me, I'm really interested in waterfowl hunting. The stage of life that I'm in right now, it's if a buddy invites me, I'm gonna go. But I can't prioritize it in the midst of, deer hunting and then turkey hunting in the spring. And then, trying to get that time in the middle to my kids.
And it's just not where we're at right now, but you better believe as soon as my kids can shoot a 20 gauge we're probably going to be looking into doing a little bit more waterfowl hunting, but anyway, these guys had an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for listening this week. I hope you enjoy the show.
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com. Now let's get into this week's show. All right. Joining me on this week's episode. While Josh is on a standardized test duty in his house, helping the kids study. I've got Chase McCullough from somewhere in Wisconsin. Chase, how you doing? Good. How are you doing today? Excellent, man. [00:04:00] Excellent. I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite a while.
We were just chatting. Last year, I got a little tiny taste of waterfowl hunting. Just a little bit. I hit the first duck that I shot at. Missed the, subsequent few that flew in afterwards. But man, I don't know if it was just the being on the water or if it was the, I don't want to say the immediate gratification of having a shot hit home or what exactly.
But, man. I couldn't believe how much freaking fun that was. And so I figured, at this point in the evolution of our podcast, it's about darn time that we had somebody on who knows a thing or two about waterfowl. So Chase, you seem to know a thing or two about waterfowl, right? Yeah, I put up a good front at least.
Yeah, no I I've been, but I've only actually been water. I waterfall hunted a little bit when I was younger with my dad maybe three or four times. And I was like 12, 13 years old, like right around that age. I want to say I started playing [00:05:00] football in high. Cool. And football middle school.
So I didn't really get out in the fall that much to do any duck hunting, did a little bit of bow hunting and stuff with my grandpa. When I was younger, he got me into bow hunting, shoot archery. So I shoot a lot of archery. I used to be a big bow hunter. I used to bow hunt pretty much every single weekend from the opener all the way through the season until I shot, my deer.
And over the course, I did that. I think I started shooting bow when I was like 10 or 11. With my grandpa and he would always be in the garage working on arrows and give me arrows to shoot and stuff like that. And he he got me into bullhunting, but he was also a big duck hunter when he was younger.
So as he got a little bit older, he started getting more bullhunting stuff into shooting archery. And my, I've flipped in what I've done. So I did a lot more bull hunting when I was younger. And I'm done a lot more waterfall hunting the last eight to 10 years now, probably eight, eight, eight to nine years now, like reasonably about eight to nine years the first few years.
I was still bow hunting and we would go duck hunting two weekends a year and I'd always be thinking [00:06:00] about going bow hunting when I was duck hunting. So I'd be like October opener and it'd be a cold front and I'd be in the duck blind and my dad would just be like, Or my dad let's go duck hunting.
I'd be like, yeah, okay, fine. We'll go duck hunting. And I'd be in the duck blind and be like, I know there's a buck walking under my stand right now. It's cold out. It's gotta be deer walking right under my stand right now. All these pins I have. And I would actually bring my bow hunting stuff with me.
Cause if we do a lot of hunting, we did a lot of hunting on the Mississippi river. My boasts of with me and I was pretty amateur to like the bluffs and stuff, but I would get out there and hunt the bluffs a little bit. And it was pretty fun just getting out and doing both. And then over the course of like maybe a four year span.
We started doing just a little bit more duck hunting every year, and I was still wishing that I was bow hunting when I was duck hunting, and then the end of the third year, we had just a great weekend of mallard hunting out on the Mississippi. It was snowing the last day, but I think on the whole weekend we shot, I don't know, probably 20 ish birds.
I think we could, me and my dad [00:07:00] could shoot about eight a day, total. Each four. So we... We had a great hunt on the last day of the season. It was snowing. We got five inches of snow overnight, three or three to five inches of snow overnight, and then we got another four inches during the day while we were hunting and you couldn't see above the trees.
It was snowing pretty hard. So you'd hear the birds chitter chatter over your head, the big groups of them. And then you'd just rip off a call and they would just dive into this, dive into the spread and you'd see him about 50 yards out and here they come. And we, you'd shoot one or two out of the group and then sit there for 20 minutes and you'd hear that chatter again.
You're like, Oh man, this is unbelievable. Just seeing those mallards cupping through the snow. That's what really hooked me on waterfowl hunting. And then the next year, I did more waterfowl hunting than bowhunting. And then by the year after that, I only bowhunted one time all year. And I waterfowl hunted every other weekend.
Or every other time that I could. I think I went out for the opener. And that was it. In fact, if you look back at my videos, my last bowhunting video was like an opener video, I want to say. And I [00:08:00] think that was the last time I was bowling, which was four years ago. I want to say, geez. So you're saying I'm in danger here.
Yeah, I still shoot my bowl. I still shoot my bowl quite a bit. Like in the summers I shoot spot leagues and archery and stuff. And I shoot some 3d stuff. And so I still shoot my bowls a lot. Probably more than a, like even a bow hunter shoots them typically, I'll shoot hundreds of arrows a week just in my basement at the club and things like that.
But yeah, I just, I became addicted to waterfall hunting after that year and it's just been growing ever since. And then, so I've been hunting just generally speaking, probably my whole life. I remember like being a little kid shooting like pigeons off my buddy's farm and off the silos in his farm and stuff.
And are you still there Pierce? Yeah. Yeah. You're a screen pro, so I wasn't sure. And so yeah, so we were we did just a ton of that little stuff. I remember being out with on the farm and they're shooting like blackbirds and stuff and crows and all the stuff flying over and they'd bring deer back like from deer camp and things like that.
It was it was [00:09:00] definitely Hunting has just been a part of my life, my whole life. Waterfall hunting is more like the last, eight to 10 years or so. So that's like how I got into all that stuff. I always like to tell like how I got hooked on waterfowl because I just think it's a good story.
And it's like that it's that teeter totter of bull hunting and waterfall hunting. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Gosh, you I tell you what. You had me there just picturing those ducks coming in, cupping through the snow and all that. I feel like that's the the duck hunting marketer's dream right there.
That's what everybody everybody kind of pictures and thinks of when they're when they're thinking about that. So in, in that, you mentioned your channel and filming hunts and stuff like that. Talk to me a little bit about somewhere in Wisconsin and how you got started in filming yourself and filming your hunts.
Yeah, so everything I film is, I'm somewhere in Wisconsin on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook everything I film is basically with two or three cameras. It's mostly head cam, GoPro head cam [00:10:00] footage, and I feel like I do it a little bit different than a lot of the other YouTubers that film with the GoPros out there, because I work, I shoot really wide, but I shoot in high resolution, so I crop in a lot of my stuff, so it doesn't necessarily always look like GoPro footage as you envision it typically doing.
If I'm like layout hunting in a field, I, a lot of times all the cameras set behind the blinds and it's almost like someone sitting back there with a camera because I'm shooting wide. I'm shooting in high res so I can crop in my footage pretty tight, and I can follow the birds like in, in like post like when I'm editing and stuff I can, track the birds.
In the camera, because I'm cropping in so far. So that kind of is one, it's just kind of something that I do with my footage to try to get, get rid of that, like GoPro feel. And I actually learned how to edit footage. I'm a fourth grade teacher and I learned to edit footage from one of my students.
He made this commercial in class for like his baseball. We were working on like advertisements and he made this commercial and he did it in [00:11:00] iMovie. And I was like, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. And he showed me how to edit. And then the next year I was like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to film my hunts.
There's not that many waterfowlers out there sharing their like footage. And I was pretty new when I started waterfall, like filming was probably like my third year of where I was like into it, like totally into it, where I was like. I would rather go waterfall hunting than actual like bow hunting. So I was like, I want to fill my hunts.
I, my cousin gave me a cheap camera to start. And the next year I bought a GoPro. Threw it on my head, put one behind me, like over my shoulder, in the blind, and that's where I film all of my hunts from, and then I learned how to edit in the meantime, and figured out, what people like to watch, and how they like to watch the clips, and what they didn't like, and so over the process it's been fun, but it is, it's a grind to come home after hunting, getting in the marsh really early.
Then download all the footage, take a couple hours, download the footage. Then you got to scrub through all the footage and get stuck, get rid of stuff that you don't want, that you're not going to use. And then finally you can sit down and be like, [00:12:00] okay, how can I shape the story? Cause I don't like film it to create a story I'm hunting and I just happened to be filming it.
That's like my philosophy. I'm filming. So I'm out there hunting. I honestly will. Sometimes I won't even film an intro. I'll film it in my garage afterwards to make it look like it's the morning of depending on how. But I don't always do that, but I do that quite a bit, especially if I'm hunting like fields and stuff where we get there and we have to do a bunch of work.
Sure. But yeah, so it's it's been fun. I just decided to start it to share my grandpa, he hunts a lot of the same areas or he hunted a lot of the same areas that I still hunt today. And he liked seeing the videos and like seeing where we were hunting. So I'm like, I'm just gonna start making some videos and I think he'll like them.
He watches every video still to this day. My grandpa does. Unfortunately, my dad who got me into waterfowl hunting, mostly he passed away this last July. And that was tough, but... It's been a it's been fun learning and hunting with him in the blind and things like that. I think one of the things that really got me like loving waterfall was that I could spend time with my friends, with my dad, and you didn't necessarily have to [00:13:00] be quiet, you could hang out, you could joke around, goof around.
It wasn't as isolating as. Like bow hunting was, and I liked isolation as well. So now that my dad's gone, I probably will have, I'll have a lot more solo hunts on my channel and things like that, but I also hunt with buddies quite a bit too. I'll definitely miss my dad in the blind this year.
It'll be a different feeling, different feel. Cause wherever I was, my dad was always there. So it'll be a weird season for sure with not having my dad in the blind this year, he's he was 67, he hunted all the way to the end. He, he got sick early June and then he passed away early July. He was sick probably longer than that.
He had cancer and he just, he didn't know and it happened really fast. So it was shocking because he hunted all the way through last season. And I have one more hunt of his last river Mississippi River hunt that I haven't posted yet. Not for a reason. I just never got to editing it last year and I still haven't edited it yet.
So it was a really great hunt. We shot like 24 birds. Or 21 birds, I think on that hunt, the four of us did. And it was just a blast of a hunt. So I'm looking forward to get that. I'll probably [00:14:00] publish it like in November. And then I posted his last duck hunt as well. Earlier this season, just a few weeks ago, I published that on the YouTube channel, and then I also published what else did I publish?
I had one more that I published with him in it, I thought. Oh, his last goose hunt, which was technically his last ever waterfall hunt. I posted that last January during late goose season. It was that 45 and five hunt. I think we shot 45 birds, five bands. And it was a blast of a hunt. It was like the season opening, like the late season goose opened back up and we had just a good feed and we smashed him in there.
So it was pretty fun. But yeah, it'll be an interesting year with not having my dad in the blind for sure. Not really sure how it's going to go, but I'll probably get a little bit more solo hunting in. I'll probably be hunting with other buddies that I maybe didn't harm with quite as much. But I know I'll still be hunting the Mississippi.
I know I'll still be hunting the stuff that I normally hunt. Just sometimes it might be with different people and definitely won't be with my dad, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah man, I'm sorry to hear that, but that really is unfortunate. [00:15:00] So with that, it sounds you're talking here, 40 plus bird days there and 40 plus bird.
Is that snow geese you're getting on or is that? Oh, these are Canada's. Yeah. These are Canada's during late season in Wisconsin. You can shoot five Canada's a day. Okay. And it's actually a pretty, we had a big group, like in the morning, the birds didn't really fly. And we shot a few and we sent a few home with the guys who were there.
And then in the afternoon, we had I don't know, maybe 30 birds left, 25 birds left to shoot with for nine of us of our 45 that we could shoot. So we, cleaned out our limits there and I think that happened pretty fast. And we had just an awesome display the last 20 minutes of shooting time.
We had thousands of geese come and land on us. Just a super cool video. Yeah. You'll see if you go to the channel, it's. I think it's pinned to the top. So if you've never been to my channel before, it should show up right at the top. It's just, you see just a bunch of geese, the sun's kind of setting, but it's a thousand geese in the air because we bumped them up when we were going to pack up and they all just got up.
We're flying away. They were flushing away, [00:16:00] but it was a cool thumbnail, cool hunt, just unbelievable hunt. And one thing my dad said on that hunt, he said He was sitting right next to me. We're hunting layouts. And he goes at one point, all these geese were laying around us. He goes, this is the greatest thing ever.
I've never seen anything like this in my life. And I wish I had it on camera. I don't have it on camera when he said that, but it was a cool way for him to end his waterfall career. Cause that was legit his last. Waterfall hunt and then he got sick in June. Like officially sick in June and he passed away in early July.
So yeah, it was a great last season with him. I'm just glad I got to hunt so much with him the last, 8 10 years. And yeah, it's just been such an adventure and I'm glad I have all these videos that I have for the rest of my life to show my kids. My daughter won't know, he won't remember grandpa boat.
My son, he remembers grandpa boat and yeah, it'll be, it's cool. It's cool to have all that stuff. Which is why I started filming in the first place. I just want to capture those moments, save them. And you only remember certain little snippets [00:17:00] of your like waterfowl career, but I've done a lot of good job of capturing a lot of those good moments and I'll have those forever.
So it's pretty cool. That's basically why I started. Filming my stuff. I've always been into like videos and cameras and things like that. But once that my fourth grade student once he taught me how to edit film, I was like, this is what I'm doing. I know I'm going to film my haunts now.
And I filmed some bull stuff too, for a couple of years. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's awesome, man. And I think, being able to share those hunts and stuff with your kids who might not remember him now, but they're going to be able to see that and, see all the time that you guys shared together outside.
You just hope that that I'm sure you're doing a heck of a job instilling that love of the outdoors and, waterfowl hunting in them already, but being able to see that that grandpa was doing that too. Yeah, that's something that's really special. Yeah, for sure.
100 percent special. I actually took my son out. For youth opener this year. It was his first waterfall hunt. Oh, awesome. and everything. He didn't shoot a bird. We had some, he's eight. , so he was shooting off [00:18:00] some sticks and he had a four 10 and we're like, our job, our goal was to try to land a wood duck in the decoys.
There's some teal in the decoys. We landed four teal. They almost centered square up on the, on us, like perfectly squared up on us and they they circled. If you've never hunted teal, teal will almost always circle and then land. They won't almost, a lot of times they won't land their first pass.
They'll give you a passing shot, which is a tough shot, but a lot of times they'll circle back around and give you a nice decoying shot, like within 10 seconds after that pass, especially in bigger groups, like big wads of teal, like 10, 20 birds. They'll, Pause the decoys swing out 50, 80 yards and then come right into the decoys.
And then they're going slow, like just hovering over there and you just pick them off. It's shooting I dunno, they're just like bang. You could shoot like triples and doubles a lot easier when they do that. Yeah. But anyway, so our goal is to try to land teal on the decoys.
If you've ever seen teal land, at least blue wings. They'll land and then they get up out of the water and they fly over here and then they land again and they fly over here [00:19:00] and they land again like three to five feet from where they started, right? And then eventually they'll fly away. So we had these birds come in square up, I thought they were going to land, they came back around, didn't land the second time, and then the third time they came around and they landed off to the left of our spread.
So my son's like in the front of the boat, the left is way to the left. He's got to shoot across me and my buddy not across us, but on an angle in front of us. And he's on the shooting sticks and he's like moving around and make all kinds of noise. And he's still are getting up. And then, he's like just about to pull the trigger.
He's they moved. I'm like, just. Just take your time. Just don't worry. Just shoot it. Shoot it, Beckett. Just pick the closest one and shoot it. But he's still pretty young. Like knowing how to handle the gun. It was like, it was pretty funny. So we never did get a shot off.
And then we asked him, I'm like, all right, Beckett, what time do you want to pick up today? Cause he's pretty young. So I knew we were probably only good for a few hours, couple hours. He's eight o'clock. I'm like, all right, but I'm just warning you. We normally sit till nine. He's I want to pick up at eight.
I want to [00:20:00] pick up at eight. I'm like, okay, that's cool. And no, no worries. I'm like, but as soon as we start picking up, you're going to have birds coming. You know that, right? I'm like, they always fly at nine. He's ah, they're at eight. And he's ah, that's okay. That's okay. Sure enough, as soon as we start picking up some mallards fly over or He gets set back in the blind and then he's like, all right, you sure you don't want to sit any longer?
He's no, I don't want to see you longer. Then we're picking up. I case my gun, my buddy Max cases his gun and Beckett's gun is still out, but it's a 410 and all of a sudden we're honk. And I'm like, did you hear that? It's yeah. And I turn around and my gun's cased, my buddy's gun is cased and maybe 150 yards away.
This, these two geese are just like low over the cattails and they're coming at at us. And honk, so I'm like Get your gun out. Get your gun out. So me and Max pull our guns out real quick, uncase the guns. We each throw three shells in there. I don't know how he did it. And as soon as I loaded my third shell, these two geese were coming right at us.
One split to the right to my buddy Max, one split to the left of me. Take them and bang, we shot them. They both [00:21:00] fell in the water and died. And we got some cool pictures of my son back at picking up the decoys and stuff. So the geese out of the decoys. It was pretty cool. That's awesome, man. So that's all love that.
Like you thought that was so cool. And then we brought the geese home. We ate them that night. He loves eating geese and ducks, but you got to make them certain ways so they taste good. We'll keep talking about that a little bit later on. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You're, there's a lot of stuff that I want to cover between now and them.
First one though, you said you're taking a four 10 out there. You can duck hunt with a four 10 and you can get the job done. You can the reason we took the four 10 is, this is this is dumb, but my, I had my son shooting business, so he was I think it was four shot in business. So there's plenty of BBs in there.
Some guys duck hunt with a 28 gauge, which is almost the same size as a four 10. And we had my son out shooting like the day before he shot the gun, like for the last two years. It's not his, but it's one of my buddy's guns. And he'll go on the yard and he'll shoot like off sticks. Or I'll hold it and then he'll aim it.
And he can, he could hit a bottle pretty much [00:22:00] every time and it would decimate, the 410 would decimate the bottle at 20 yards. So our goal is to get a duck or a teal to land at 20 yards and then, we'll try to take it off the water that way. So yeah. Sure. So yeah, I mean it's not ideal to shoot a duck, with a 410 but if you want to get your kid out there and you're smart about it and, you get it close enough and.
The birds sitting there long enough. You could easily shoot a duck with a four 10. Yeah, totally. So it's all done, but it's we were shooting number fours in business, so it's a little more dense, little smaller BBs. More bb's in the 410 because you can shoot a little smaller shot. But yeah, totally.
Yeah I know guys who the turkey hunt with a 410 and you can do it But you got to be a little careful doing it. So they're shooting like probably TSS, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely so we're gonna circle back to guns here and we start Come around some gear first, but as I mentioned, I'm a total newbie when it comes to waterfowl hunting.
And I know that waterfowl, [00:23:00] those who waterfowl are into it, right? And then there's everybody else who sees it. They're familiar with it, but maybe they've, it's just something that they haven't wanted to try. It's really gear intensive. I don't really know. I don't really know what I'm doing, all that kind of stuff.
But before we get into all that stuff, can you give me just a brief Overview here of, basically waterfowl one on one here. What are we looking at for food? What are we looking at for habitat? You mentioned a cold front coming through. I'm not entirely sure what the best place to start or what, but the best angle is to take on that.
But what's the general overview there? What are we looking for here if we're getting into that? We can leave the gear for later. But as far as like word docs hang out. I've shot ducks in deep water, I've shot ducks in shallow water I've shot ducks over mud, I've shot ducks in fields so a duck's habitat is pretty broad.
They can, you can, take a duck or harvest a duck in a lot of different places and [00:24:00] situations, which I think by waterfowl hunting is pretty cool. And on my channel, like I hunt rivers, I've hunted lakes. in fairly populated areas where it's legal to discharge a firearm. I've hunted marshes, smaller marshes, big marshes, walk in marshes kayak in marshes, big boat marshes where you bring your big boat into, hunted the Mississippi River.
So you can really almost always find ducks to hunt, especially in Wisconsin in the Midwest. You can always find ducks to hunt. If you're hunting lakes, if you're going to try to hunt them on lakes, I would suggest, especially if it's like a fairly populated area, check the municipality, make sure it's legal to discharge your firearm, make sure where it's legal to discharge your firearm, make sure there's no restricted restricted areas on the lake, like that the DNR sets, because some lakes will set like a restricted area, we're not allowed to shoot the ducks, it's like a safe zone technically yeah, so that's some things to think about, but ducks eat seeds.
Like the, my favorite way to kill ducks is over like flooded vegetation either on the Mississippi river[00:25:00] flooded in fields flooded in marshes, like a lot of the marshes that I'm hunting right now, they've been so dry the last few years that there's been like millet or which is like barnyard grass that has little seed pods on them that floods it when that floods, that is duck candy.
There's a weed called smart weed out there and it's a little pink. It's got little pink Pink seeds on it, like pink flowers on it in late, early fall, late summer. And it's probably about belly button to chest tall. And if that floods, that's, that is like the duck candy. That's where you want to be if it's flooded.
And if that's probably where there's going to be ducks. But I like we've hunted those flooded grass flats last year. We hunted them quite a bit and shot a lot of ducks over those flooded grass flats. We actually. There's one flooded in a marsh that we hunt for early duck and we had water behind us.
We had grass in front of us and we had no there wasn't really any visible water in front of us. It was just the grass and there was like maybe three to four inches of water inside of that grass that we knocked out. We knocked, [00:26:00] just walked around on it a little bit when we're setting decoys, but we actually hunted the grass rather than hunted the water behind us.
Because we know those ducks, they'll come over and they'll just hover over your spinners if you got like a spinning wind decoy out. Especially the teal, which we had a lot around. They'll hover right over that and then you just shoot them right there at 15 20 yards in the grass. And you gotta get over there and find them pretty quick.
But, I love hunting them over that over the grasses over the smartweed. That's a great way to kill ducks. If you have rivers that are low all summer and the weeds are growing on the bank, it's likely smart weed or it's the barnyard grass almost like 60 to 70 percent of the time, I would say it's one of those two grasses that are growing and the ducks just love those, especially you see all those little seeds on the water.
And if you see that it's a good place to duck hunt can also shoot them in fields. So late in the year is it can be really good duck hunting in Like cornfields and stuff just, cut cornfields all day. They eat all the scraps that are left on the field. Just like geese. And a lot of times we'll kill our ducks in fields.
We'll kill them over goose decoys. We won't even kill them over duck [00:27:00] decoys. So that's fairly common knowledge. If you're a waterfowler, like a field hunter, that you can kill your ducks over goose decoy only spreads because the ducks feel safe when the geese are there. So there's been times we've shot, 10 to 12 ducks and we'll have just a goose spread out.
We won't even have hardly any ducks in the spread, but throw some spinners out there for sure. A hundred percent of the time, if you're hunting a field for ducks and you're hunting for ducks only, or you're just hunting ducks, spinners, and as many spinners you get in that field, the better because the the ducks love the spinners in fields.
They don't always love them in water. But they absolutely love them in fields and you can hunt them every single day in fields and the ducks will just come right in on the spinners and fields. No kidding. So is that Yeah. Now the don't like them as much. They don't like the spinner as much, so we always run 'em on remotes, so we'll just turn 'em off.
Okay, gotcha. And so is that, is it important to then have proximity to water in late season there? If you're gonna field hunt? Does it have to field pond near? Yeah. You a have to [00:28:00] be. Yeah. You either a, have to be seeing the ducks in the field already. Or seeing the ducks fly over the field.
If you're, you can see the ducks fly over the field, like from a roost pond, which you want to talk a little bit about roosting a little bit, but if you can find a pond where there's a lot of ducks in it in the middle of the day slash in the evening, they're coming back to it and like right before dark you can get there in the morning, like first light and watch which direction they're going.
And then get to a spot where you think they're going and then get to that spot and then just watch the sky, see them fly over, see where they're going from there and then just basically keep moving down the road until you see where they're actually going or where hopefully they fly over field you have permission on.
But if they're flying off the field and you run a big goose spread with spinners there's a good chance you can traffic the ducks into that field. Okay. So that's how like we do our field hunting with ducks, like we'll see them in the area and then we'll try to get permission under them or in the acts around the acts wherever those ducks are actually feeding.
Yeah, I don't want to talk [00:29:00] ducks in fields. I like hunting ducks and water on public land. That's like my favorite thing to do. Yeah, that's how we like scout for ducks. If we want to hunt ducks in a field. Sure, absolutely. So I've got a couple questions here that the second one is going to be on public land.
But the first one you mentioned trying to figure out what direction they're going. Most of us know common knowledge of that, ducks are flying south, right? Yeah. So is that generally just like the starting point or is it a matter like, will they meander, going in general South, will they meander?
How does that I'm talking about ducks, like in a field, I'm typically just talking mostly about mallards. I'm like, 80 percent of the ducks that we kill in fields, probably 95 percent of the ducks we kill in fields are mallards. You might shoot a tail here and there. You might shoot a pin tail here and there.
Wood ducks, we've shot wood ducks in fields before. Plenty of those. But when I'm saying which direction they're flying, I'm saying like, the mallards will fly the ice line if there's ice up north, and there's no ice where you are, you're gonna have mallards to hunt. And those, a lot of times those [00:30:00] mallards that are coming late, they'll stay until they have to leave.
Whether there's too much snow or too much ice, they'll stay. Now I have a spot that I hunt and it's it's near Lake Michigan, and once all the neighborhood ponds freeze, The ducks will then roost, they'll stay on Lake Michigan because there's open water there. They'll come off Lake Michigan and fly right over my field.
So that's how we shoot them in that field. So I don't even necessarily at this point have to scout for ducks in that field. I know that when the neighborhood ponds freeze and all the suburb, like the area that I hunt, when all that stuff freezes, the ponds and the little marshy areas, all that's open is a little river here and there.
And Lake Michigan is huge body of water and there's the ducks and the geese flood to it. And for some reason every year they always flood the same part of this, at least. There's always a pod of them in this area and they'll fly right over my field because it's the first field off the lake.
It's really cool. That is cool. So once, and they'll just hang out, they'll mill around in the area until they have to leave. And then once the weather pushes in and the ice, [00:31:00] then they push south a little farther until there's, until there's open water and food or no snow. And then once the ice shows up there, boom, they'll push a little farther.
They're only going to go as far as, a lot of them, a lot of the mallards are only going to go as far as they have to go south. A lot of them still will go all the way south, like to Arkansas and the coast and everything. But there's a lot of mallards that will only stay on the ice line and wherever the ice line is, that's where they are.
And I've seen mallards in the middle of winter and they'll be at, 40 by 50 foot wide hole in the middle of a lake. And it'll be all mallards and geese sitting on that hole to keep, try to keep it open so they can still stay there. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah. So if you have around like late in the year, like bigger bodies of water and you just take your binoculars and you glass out there, like the little holes that aren't frozen yet.
A lot of times there'll be ducks and geese on them in the middle of the day, or like early morning and stuff. Sure. So I want, I do want to circle back here because you mentioned a roost pond. Explain that concept to me here. Is it[00:32:00] it might even be more, more beneficial for us to cover different species because I'm not sure how each species differ in where they roost.
I know each of them like different sort of habitat and stuff. Yeah, so if we're just talking really about ducks, and if you're hunting ducks in fields, a lot of times they're going to roost in your neighborhood. So we live. Like I live in like a suburb. And it's legal to hunt in parts of our suburb where it's legal to hunt, we'll hunt them.
So a lot of times these ducks will load up in these neighborhood ponds. That are put in or the big businesses that have ponds, like that, we get a ton of ducks off the big ponds that the businesses are putting in, like the big buildings when they're doing the construction on those. We'll, those will load up with ducks, geese, and ducks.
And a lot of times they turn into roost ponds. They're safe. You can't hunt them there. They feel safe there and they will stay there all year. And the numbers in those spots just get bigger and bigger until they freeze out. And then they're gone. And then when they unfreeze, they come back like in the spring or whatever.
[00:33:00] So yeah, you, we look for a lot of those where we hunt in my areas where we hunt, like if we're hunting ducks in fields, geese in fields, that's what we're looking for like our roosts. If you're hunting like marshes, ducks like cover cattail marshes, like that have water up into the cattails and little pockets and openings, the ducks will just hover right over the cattails and drop right into the cattails.
Like it'll look like it's just a sea of cattails. But they'll roost inside of those cattails. They feel safe there. No hunters go in there. They can fly over those cattails, whether or not they're not getting shoot at, shot at and inside those cattails. So one of the marshes we hunt, it's not holding a lot of birds right now because the water's not up into the cattails, so all that's holding water are the little ponds on the public land.
Whereas if we get another foot of water in there, the water would be up into the weeds, up into the grasses, up into the cattails, and that gives more opportunities for birds to roost and feel safe inside of that marsh. Same thing with the Mississippi River they'll roost in like backwater ponds or big open water, like big giant open water.[00:34:00]
That's a lot of times where the birds will end up roosting, sleeping at night basically is what the roost is. It's where they sleep at night on water. Okay. Gotcha. Cause it's and it's secure for them. And so are they, so from a hunting standpoint, then would it naturally, I think it would be, from what it sounds like is that it would be beneficial to locate where they're roosting and then make a play off of that.
Now, are you ever hunting? That roost pond, if it's, say it's on public ground and maybe it's just thick, or are you trying to set up near that or in the field stuff we do around here, we can't hunt the roost because they are they're on like private property. You can't hunt around like property, so you can't really hunt them.
You try to avoid hunting roost for the most part, but people still will bust a roost. If the roost is on a lake, they'll sit at and they'll hunt it. Which is fine. They'll just, the birds just move to another roost somewhere else. A lot of guys like in our area, they'll hunt birds coming off the roost and they like to keep the roost there because then the [00:35:00] birds are there.
You know where the birds are. I just got to find, okay, which field are they hitting today and they'll hit that field for a week straight and then they're going to move to another field because they'll eat everything out of that field. So then there'll be another field or you try to get under them and traffic them off of that roost.
That's just like you do with the ducks. Gotcha. So that's that's how we. Kill them around by us. But yeah, that's, was that, did I answer your question? Yeah. Yeah, no, that was great. That's. That's fascinating, man. Yeah, if I'm scouting and I'm scouting field hunting or fields. The first thing I try to find is I'll go to a high spot, I'll look where I see birds flying and I look where they're flying from, and wherever they're coming from that's telling me okay that's generally the roost like if you're sitting there in the afternoon, and you're looking for the evening flight wherever they're coming from is either they're low for they're hanging out during the day.
Or it's their roost. A lot of times they're both where we live because they're just neighborhood ponds or like business park ponds. So that's what we look for. And then you find where they're coming from and then you can, a lot of times see where they're going down from those high [00:36:00] points to okay, it's in that field.
I know exactly where that is. Cause I've scouted these fields and I know where these fields are. I know there's corn in this one. The birds are on corn right now. So I know there's corn here, corn there, and corn there. So they're in one of these four fields, like a hundred percent, and then you go and you look at the field.
If you see him in the field. Then you got to get permission on it. I don't like to ask permission at the time, like on stuff. I would rather get permission on it, like the couple of days before I'm going to hunt it. Okay. Cause I can go around all summer and get permission on stuff and then there's never a bird flying over it and you just waste it a bunch of time, right?
So I'll, I am hesitant to ask permission in the middle of summer and a summer, but I will almost always, if I see birds in a field, I will go ask permission to hunt that field and I'll just say, Hey, do you mind if, I see a bunch of geese in your field. You mind if I hunt it on Saturday? I'll give them, I'll just say, do you mind if I hunt it for one day, like on Saturday, or would Sunday work better for you?
I try to like, give them feel like they have a choice because it's their land. Do you mind if I hunt it on Saturday or maybe even Sunday if you want, me and a couple of buddies. And a lot of times, a [00:37:00] lot of times they'll say, yeah, because it's not like you can just have free reign on my property.
It's you're going to hunt it on Saturday or Sunday. And they, a lot of times say, yeah, sure, go ahead. Then the next year, guess what? Birds are flying over that field again. You've already talked to that neighbor. You got their number. You shoot them a text. Hey, I saw some birds in your field.
I hunted it last year. My name's Chase, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, go ahead. Have fun. Sweet. Thanks. And now you pretty much got them locked in for whenever you see birds in their fields, you can hunt their stuff. That's how I've gotten like. Probably, most of my fields that I've gotten permission on, I've been in that manner.
I see birds in it. I asked right that day asked to hunt it the next day or two days later. And they're like, yeah, sure. Go ahead. And then over time you just build a relationship with up you send them. Thank you cards you stop in after the season and you just build a relationship with them.
So they feel like they know who you are they can trust you and you're good to go on the field. Absolutely. Yeah, building that relationship with the landowner is so critical. No matter what you're hunting or fishing or whatever you're doing man it's that is. Just it's a skill that never [00:38:00] that never hurts developing.
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com and share your hunt with Tacticam. On the note then of scouting, you mentioned getting on a high point and looking around. When you're scouting, so say you're going into a new spot or something like that, are you Typically e scouting ahead of time. You're looking on the map for ah, this looks pretty good.
Is it a lot of just while you're driving around? Yeah, if I'm in my, if I'm in my boat, so if I'm scouting, generally scouting for the area that I live in, I pretty much know where everything is. I know where the response are. I just got to find the birds in which ponds they're using and just watching the birds and seeing where they go.
That's my scouting in the area. I'm not looking for new stuff. I'm not like trying to figure out like. Fields or who owns stuff? Cause I, we pretty much already know who owns all the stuff around us. So we're not really looking at we know who says no on properties. We know who says yes on properties.
So we like, we know if there's birds in a field and they're on this property eight and we're like, they always say no to us, [00:40:00] we'll get on property B right next to it that they say, yeah, we'll just try to traffic them onto that field instead. So that's the, if I'm going out on my duck boat. A lot of the scouting I'm scouting in the summers, like late summer, I'm scouting for that food, that tall grass, the smartweed.
I'm looking for the smartweed, I'm looking for the millet, I'm looking for the food where the ducks will eventually want to be. And it's okay, if it floods, the ducks will end up here, for sure. Because they're there every year, if there's food. That's what I'm looking for as far as scouting early season.
I'm checking water levels when I go into scout places. Can I get my big boat in there? Do I need to use my little boat? Do I have to take a kayak, just got to figure out which boat I want to use. And I've been doing it long enough and I'm so addicted that I have any boat you could possibly want.
So that's also a problem. But yeah, so that's how I scout marshes. I scout for food if it's during the hunting season and I'm hunting an area for the first time, there's a couple of things I'll do either reach out to a friend who's hunted it before and I'll be like, Hey, [00:41:00] I'm headed up here.
Anything I need to know about the area before I just go in the dark, and I'm not asking for for spots, because I can e scout like online for spots oh, river's down two feet, so be careful in this area, stay in this channel, watch out for this, that's basically what I'm looking for, is like, where is it safe to boat, where can I boat anything I need to know about the area, and then they're like, and I just go on my way, and I just give it a try.
And that first morning in a place, I'll sit a spot just like I sit when I'm scouting for geese, not a high point in a marsh, but I'll sit in a spot where I can see the sky. And that's and hopefully my job like the first day is okay, hopefully I kill a few birds, three to eight birds me and my dad or whatever last year.
And then, but our goal is to find a spot to hunt the next day while we're sitting there. So you'll see okay the birds are really working this stretch of rice over here on the Mississippi or they're working this wood line over there. So that's how we scout outta the Mississippi is we'll hunt and we're scouting while we're hunting.
And if we see a lot of birds go into a spot, we will pick up our stuff and go there [00:42:00] immediately and just sit it and hunt it the rest of the day. If it's something where it's okay, there's a flock working in here, a flock working it there, we'll save it for the next morning. We'll hunt it the next morning, but I'll have a pin wait for the birds to get up in the evening.
We'll check it, we'll pin it, and then we'll go hunt it in the morning the next day. That's how a lot of our, like Ballards we find in the trees. On my channel. We hunt this point specifically so we can see everything. It's not the best spot necessarily, but it's the best spot to see everything. So then the next day we can, if there's birds using the area, then we can pretty much pin them down and know exactly where they're working and what they're doing.
Yeah. It's a lot of real time scouting then. Yep. Real time scouting, especially when we're hunting in the Mississippi. You're hunting a lot of migrators that time of year anyway so if the birds on public land have a chance to settle in and get into a routine, which isn't always that common, you might get one or two hunts like that a year where you find them in a routine on public land.
It just means there really haven't been many birds there, but now there are birds there because there are some people in there hunting them[00:43:00] so that's how we ended up finding them on that, those public land spots. Sure, really. So are you looking for when you're scouting for a spot? Are you looking for spots that maybe might be a little more difficult to access something that maybe it's a little further into the marsh than what other people are generally, may or may not be willing to go or wanting to go?
Is there any aspect of that to it? Or is it a lot of just actually our local stuff? Like a lot of people that hunt the local stuff? Yeah. They'll boat in, they'll crawl over the dike and they'll hunt off the dike or on the edge of the dike. They won't walk across the water to go hunt grass on the other side of it.
Okay. So we're, a lot of times we will hike up the dike, hike down the dike, hike across the 200 yard marsh water, and then hunt the flooded stuff that's on the other side of it. That's where we wanna be. Sure. So it's a little more effort to get to. I don't have a ton of walk-in spots, but I have friends who do hunt it.
And they do [00:44:00] a lot of like walk in spots where it's just harder to get to people don't really want to, they'll go in with small number of decoys, throw them out there, and they'll have a good hunt. They'll shoot them up pretty good. But yeah, so if you work a little harder, there's a better chance you can find ducks but the really the big thing is the scouting like you got to find the birds.
You got to see where they are, and then you can go and do the hard hunt because nine times out of 10. If I see a spot where there's birds using on public land. Especially in my part of the state where I am. It's in a spot that no one wants to walk to. They're comfortable there. So we have a spot, right now, we saw it during the openers the birds keep working this area, but it is we're debating on if we want to walk there or not.
You know what I mean? It's one of those things. Do we really want to do this to ourselves? We're getting old should we really be doing this? It's there's birds there, let's go. Kind of situation yeah. Yep. Just, yeah, knowing the marshes and knowing the areas you hunt is also helpful because all the little potholes are, what floods first you where other people kind of [00:45:00] gravitate towards in the marsh.
So you know how to get away from people and also like hunt spot where the birds, hunt spots where the birds want to be. Absolutely. So you mentioned there, there's some walk in spots and stuff like that, but you've also got a collection of boats as well. Do you need a boat if you're trying to get into waterfowl hunting?
Or is it, how can you, is it, can you get away with, just climbing the dike and stuff like that? Yeah, you can definitely, a lot of the walk in places you can, you should be able to wait in waiters. You always want to check it or at least have a a pole for your decoys at the end of a hunt or reach your ducks if you shoot a duck and it's in the middle and it's too deep you want to be able to have some way to get those ducks so whether it's a dog or a kayak or canoe or you just walk out there and see okay can I wait all the way across this here's where I can't touch.
The window blow the ducks past that. So that's fine. Like I can hunt it, so yeah, you don't need a boat. It definitely opens up more opportunity. If you have some sort of boat, like when you get a canoe or [00:46:00] kayak, you have more options. You have more places you can hunt. Then you get a boat with a motor.
You can go a little farther and get away from the canoes and kayaks. So it's like a progression, right? So you're hunting and you're walking into places you're hunting with other walking hunters. Because they're all in the same situation as you, they're walking in. And then you have the guys who are in the kayaks in the same marsh, who don't walk in with their kayaks, but they're getting past the walking people because they have kayaks.
They can just paddle right past and work a little deeper in the marsh. But those kayakers, they only want to go so far too because they got to kayak out. And then you have the guys in the boats who are going to go a little farther than the kayakers. And they're going to go a little farther than the kayakers.
Then the kayakers can go. So then you have that group of people who's out in the marsh or, if it's a big marsh or a big area. So you almost always have pressure. It's just different kinds of pressure based on what you're hunting. But there's definitely plenty of opportunity to hunt without a boat, especially if you're asking permission on private property and hunting in fields, get a.
Get a couple dozen goose shells to start [00:47:00] and go give it a shot and a layout blind or a panel blind or hide in some brush, you gotta be pretty hidden in fields. The ducks can be leery, the geese can be very leery, especially later in the year. But if you hide yourself well and you're in 12 decoys, you have a chance to kill geese and ducks in a field.
With a spinner or two out. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it definitely sounds like that private land permission. Have you found that it's easier to get private permission for waterfowl hunting than it is for, say, I don't know if you've done as much asking for, white tail hunting or something like that.
I know, especially defensive, but it depends. I think on the property type, like if there's a lot of woods around the property, you're probably not going to get permission because there's deer hunters on it. Sure. If it's just big, wide open fields. A lot of times the farmers will be like, have fun. You know what I mean?
Just don't drive in my field if it's wet. If I tilled it, make sure you walk in. A situation. So be respectful of the field. That's pretty much all the stuff that we have. It's just, [00:48:00] it's like that. We've had, I feel like I've had good luck getting permission on stuff that I've wanted to hunt.
I think a lot of it is just because I live in the area, so I live where I hunt. And I can be like, Hey, I was driving home from work. Saw these geese in your field. I live over here on whatever street. You mind if I hunt your geese on Saturday? Hunt the geese in your field on Saturday. And then they'll be like, Yeah, sure.
Or no. And I'll be like do you hunt? And they'll be like, If they hunt a lot of times, they'll say no. And then it'll be like my buddy, we got a big trailer. We got lots of decoys. So if you want to get out there with us, just, let me know. And then they'll be like, Oh, okay, yeah. Maybe my son and I will come out and hunt.
Or maybe my uncle will come out and hunt or something like that. Sure. Yeah. So that's yeah, you don't need a boat. Yeah, you can ask permission. You're going to get a lot of no's, but you're also, if you ask enough, you're going to get yeses for sure. Gotcha. Absolutely. Another question here, just that sprung to mind as you've got guys who are in walk in spots and you have guys who are in peddling spots or, [00:49:00] the motor in spots and stuff like that.
So guys are obviously going to be crossing paths. A lot of time, especially on public land, what's the etiquette looking like in the water fouling culture? Is it a matter of, obviously you want to be safe and you don't want to be set up, too far or too close to somebody else, or, have anyone within potentially harm's way there, but what's the etiquette of getting in, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you openers are always tough.
Like opening days, there's lots of people out, lots of people only hunt the openers. So you're going to have people who aren't maybe typically out there. You're going to have people who are just into duck hunting. It's the first or second time duck hunting. So pointers are a little tougher to get away from people.
You're still gonna have people set up to you. People will come in late and set up close and you got to just encourage them to move away. Or like our northern opener this year we went to a spot where we're going to hunt it. There was a group there before us, but they were farther away.
We thought they were going to hunt a different part of the [00:50:00] pond, about 300 yards ish away. But they were paddling in a canoe. We were going to walk in off the dike into the spot. And they parked there because they could pull their canoe over and get right to the, they could get right to the water.
We had to walk through some cattails and stuff. So our walk was a little harder. It wasn't in the water. Where they just pulled over and put their canoe in. It turns out like we wanted to hunt the same spot. They beat us to the area, so we could have turned around, walked away and left.
We could have just said we're hunting here, but we just, we decided to all five of us just hunt together. So that morning we hunted together in a group. We knew it was opening day. We knew there's pressure. We're probably gonna have a better hunt. If we're all sitting in a group of five, then two over here and 350 yards away.
So we decided just to hunt from the five and do it that way. And it turned into a good hunt, but openers are bad. I honestly, I look for places to hunt that I'm don't have to deal with people. And if someone shows up, it's easy enough to go to the next spot. There's plenty of opportunity to go to the next spot.
I also try to be there [00:51:00] early enough where I'm not one of the last ones in the marsh. So I'm not like. There's nowhere else to go a situation. That's when it gets dicey I feel is like people coming in late They run out of places to sit and now they either can go home which who wants to go home Or we can just sit right here in this channel, 70, 80 yards from these other guys who are there for two hours before you a situation.
And it's Hey guys, it's not safe to sit there. We're shooting right at you. Like you can't sit there. That's basically what you have to say. We're just going to sit over here, or whatever, blah, blah, blah. It's it's not safe. You can either hunt with us or you can not hunt there, basically is what happens.
Sure. So I almost, you can either hunt with us or you can just go hunt somewhere else because you can't hunt there. And sometimes they'll join you. And sometimes they're like, ah, whatever, fine. And then they'll just throw them off and go fund on somewhere else. So that's really the only super crowded areas, busy days, but I honestly try to get away from it.
Like I would rather hunt somewhere and. [00:52:00] Shoot three or four ducks, then go to a super popular place. I have to deal with people sending 80, 90 yards from you. If I'm there second or third and I got to go sit a spot, I don't really want to sit. I'll go, I'd rather go sit there then hunt, 150 yards from somebody, 200 yards from somebody.
Sure, definitely. Is there any etiquette as far as or what's procedure then if you're like, because obviously you're going in the dark. Is it just if you hear or see somebody like flash a flashlight at them to just let them know you're there. Sometimes people want to come and see, like, where you're sitting, so then they know okay, I have to go this far away.
But yeah, usually, if someone's flashing a flashlight at you in a marsh, it means they don't want you to sit near them, you're too close to them or something, typically. Or, if I'm over here, you don't have to come this way any farther, because there's nowhere to go over here, I'm sitting here. Yeah, that's pretty much the etiquette.
And if you're a new hunter and you're coming into a marsh try to get at least 250 away from somebody, and if it's possible to get farther away. It's only going to be better for both of you if you're a little bit farther [00:53:00] away from the other guy that was there first. If you're coming in second on top of people at shooting light get there a little bit earlier, first of all.
You know what I mean? So you're prepared in case you have to go to a number two spot, you can get back in the boat and go there. That's really like the biggest thing if you're coming in late on somebody. And if you absolutely have to sit there, ask to join or try to get 250 plus yards away.
That's my like recommendation on etiquette as far as like hunting or someone else's. Gotcha. Yeah, that's huge. And you're still going to get rained on. Like at 250, you won't get hurt with BBs, but you'll get rained on. Like they'll come down and you'll, they'll, hear them hit the water and stuff around you, but they're not going to hurt you.
Gotcha. Gotcha. No, that's super helpful. All so let's start shifting gears for a little bit to No pun intended to gear. I think we ought to start here decoys. You mentioned spinners, you mentioned big spreads, small spreads, stuff like that. How many do you need? Are you running a [00:54:00] mix of them?
Like what's the general kind of rule of thumb is bigger, better or more better? What dictates that? Yeah I guess we'll just start with duck hunting, not really field hunting duck hunting on water. I think you can get it done with 12 decoys. If we go to the Mississippi and we're running migrators, we'll run 60 to a hundred decoys.
Like I'll bring all mine. So I have five to six dozen. I have six dozen and then my buddy, I'll bring his six dozen. So that's what 120 decoys or something like that. So yeah, we'll run our whole spread. Now you got to pick it up at the hunt. So that kind of sucks, but yeah. But me and my dad have also gone out there with three dozen on a migration day and kill them over three dozen.
Just mallard decoys. As what we hunted for a long time now, like my buddy, a lot of times I'll bring my mat, all my mallards and he'll bring a few mallards and then he'll bring all those like other species, ducks that could be in the area, pintail, he'll have three or four pintail in there.
I'll have a couple of black ducks mixed in. I'll have some widget mixed in.[00:55:00] But the main core of our spread, especially once November comes as Matt but basically Mallard's, if you're hunting mallards, if you're hunting divers, which I talk a ton about divers are pretty specific to like. where they want to land and what they want to land with.
So having that white in your spread will attract, those ducks that like to land on the whites. And having just that, that bright colors in the spread that those divers like, I think is important. I don't really know a lot about diver hunting though, but I feel like the guy that I hunt with up in green Bay he, when he sets his spreads, he sets them by species, They'll put the blue bills in one area, put the cans in a different kind of area of the spread and the buffies he'll put in a different spot or whatever, and it makes them in with certain species.
And a lot of times it seems like they want to land with those species that they're hunting. Yeah, but yeah, as far as spreads go like on water, you don't need a huge spread like if you're a kayak hunter, it doesn't take places, probably about as much as you want to get in your boat. And maybe a spinner.
That sometimes the ducks [00:56:00] are going to flare off it. Sometimes they're going to like it. If they're fresh birds, a lot of times they'll like the spinner. If they've been around the area for a while and they've seen a lot of spinners, they're not going to like the spinner. So you might as well leave it home, but I always have it in my boat.
And then just motion too, like having a jerk rig or something to get the water moving on those calm days. That's also helpful. So if you're a new hunter, get a jerk rig. They make agitators, like Lucky Duck makes an agitator that squirts up some water. I know The Real Decoy sponsors my channel.
They make something called a flutter And those are like they shake and they really just put big ripples in the water, not like some of the other big ripples in, they put real small ones. These just put like big ripples in the water and it makes it look like a really active feeding area where the ducks are.
It looks like the ducks are moving around a bunch. Those are options to get the water moving. So like the real decoy flutters, the lucky duck agitators a jerk rig, jerk rigs work good. Like motion decoy, is it motion ducks? Motion ducks. It is a company, it's like a decoy spreader. So you put four ducks on it, you [00:57:00] pull it and it's on a bungee.
And then the ducks come towards you and they go away and they look like real ducks swimming around on this spreader. So that's pretty cool too. And that's not expensive. Maybe 40, 50 bucks for the spreader. Okay. Use your own. There's guys who will run one spreader, like with the extended attachment with seven decoys and that's all they'll throw out and they'll kill ducks over that because all their ducks are moving.
They look real. Huh? Yeah. So is it as much motion of the decoy or motion of the, like seeing the ripples on the water that really. The ripples on the water. It's a combination of both, I think. For sure. It's a combination of seeing bird, like in the wind, the birds move more, right? So if it's a windy day, you don't see that motion as much because the birds look like they're moving and they are moving, or if they're in current, they're moving.
But if you're in a pond or water, you just got to get the water moving because then it looks like the ducks are moving. And then, paddle. The motion ducks is moving the water and the ducks are moving. So it's, it's like a best of both worlds. But then you got to pull that jerky all the time.
Yeah, totally. So [00:58:00] then, yeah, sounds you can get started with a dozen decoys and, you're going to wish you had more a lot of times, but you can definitely kill birds with 12 decoys, eight, six decoys and a spinner or just something to get the water moving, and you'll be awesome.
It's really good to know. So that's on water. So then field or field decoying, I'm assuming that requires. A bit larger spread. Yeah, so I didn't get into field hunting until after one I needed permission on fields. So once I got that, then it's okay, now I need goose decoys. So I worked my way up the decoy ladder.
I started with two dozen shells, two dozen shell decoys, less expensive. And it was enough for us to kill some geese in a field over. We didn't never get any big groups. But we got a few here and there. We, we would get them to come in and in our hide. That was probably mediocre at the time.
But yeah, you start with a few, a couple dozen shell decoys. I actually just gave those [00:59:00] away to a newer hunter. I just posted like in my group and I just gave him to him. So he got started and he messaged me the other day. He's Hey, I just killed four geese. We just killed four geese over here.
Your shells you gave me. I'm like, Oh, sweet. That is awesome, dude. Yeah. So then I went from shells and I was in like a silhouette buying phase where I bought a bunch of silhouette decoys. I think I bought 10 dozen of those, but I bought five dozen and we were killing more birds over that.
So we had five dozen silhouettes plus our shells out. And we were killing more birds over that. So I'm like, Oh, I need another five dozen. So I bought another five dozen the next year. So now I have 10 dozen silhouette decoys, my shells. But in the meantime, I've also been buying people's used full bodies.
So I got rid of my shells cause I started buying some full body. So I have four dozen full bodies myself, plus. My silhouette decoys. So I have a big enough spread where if I'm going out with me and a buddy, I'm pretty confident that we can kill birds over it. But my decoys now are in our trailer, like me and my buddies.
My buddy has a [01:00:00] trailer, so we just put all our decoys together. And if our whole crew is together, we got a giant full body spread. We don't even really throw the silhouettes unless it's a walk in spot. But we have two trailer fulls of 10 dozen decoys each maybe even more 10 dozen full bodies.
So we can run a pretty massive spread. And then if we throw out all of our silhouettes to it, can triple the size. So we can really pull birds, whole big groups of birds. That's when we're hunting 9, 10 guys, 14 guys, whatever, which isn't always that fun to hunt that many. But. Sometimes in big goose feeds, it's, it is still pretty fun to shoot on that one.
Oh, it smokes, man. But yeah, so again, it's it's all really kind of preference. Like, how do you want to hunt them? You can kill them over 12. It might kill his money. It might be like a two man a hunt situation, where you shoot five, four, three, three birds or something and be perfectly happy.
And then as you get more into it, it's okay, I could see how this, or you hunt with somebody like, man, those birds just, they wanted in. They had an [01:01:00] extra 10 dozen decoys in their spread. So then I got to have 10 dozen decoys in my spread. But yeah, you can definitely get started with smaller stuff and learn how the geese respond to it and how they work.
And you'll see guys later in the year just run small 12, 12 decoy spreads, even with geese, and they'll shoot them that way. Bigger isn't always better, but when there's a lot of birds in the area, bigger is pretty good, especially if you can make a lot of noise and you've got a few good callers.
Two good callers at least, and then other guys that can make noise. I'm just a guy that kind of makes noise in the goose blind. I'm not a great caller. So with the geese, but yeah, so I'll just make I'll honk, I'll clock, I'll moan a little, and then let the good callers do their thing.
Gotcha. So you mentioned with the decoys on water, then using some wind to create some motion in the decoys that, that'll keep things moving is when generally good for duck hunting. Do you want wind [01:02:00] does like wind direction impact things too much? What, how do you make a play off of the wind when you're duck hunting?
Yeah. That's. That's like the number one thing that duck hunters want is wind. A good wind is anywhere from 10 to 25 is like ideal. 10, you can still get birds to work the right way, but it gets, they get a little more picky, like in what they're seeing, there's less stuff blowing around.
Everything's still in calm, so they're a little more leery to land in spots. But ducks and geese will always, 98 percent of the time, A mallard is going to land into the wind. A goose is going to land into the wind. So when you set up your decoys and your spreads and where your blinds are, if you want to shoot them coming into you, Set your spread up so the birds are gonna land into your decoys.
A lot of times they're gonna land right with your pods of decoys. If you throw out 12 over here and 12 over here, they're gonna land in one of those twelves, right? Or you throw out a dozen over here and a dozen over [01:03:00] there, and you put a pod of six in the middle. They're gonna land in either side or with the pod that's there.
Sometimes the short, but for the most part, they're going to land with ducks that are already there, right? Either right in the spread, teal always, almost always will land. We'll just throw a big pod of decoys, three dozen teal in a pod. Almost always those teal will land right in that pod or just off the edge.
We don't spread our teal decoys out really. We run them as a fairly tight pod and the birds will come right into that pod. If you watch my I have a teal hunt, I think might be called teal opener hunt. But we have three big flocks of decoys come right in our face, right in, we had good, decent enough wind, but every flock landed on top of the decoys.
And it's just because we have our teal decoys set up in a pot. You spread them out, then they have more places to land. It's just, they want to be where the other birds are. So they kind of land in them, especially teal. Mallard, same thing. They'll land with them. Always into the wind. So I personally like to have the wind directly behind me and I like to shoot him right in the face as they're coming into me but it's a little [01:04:00] better height if you can hide off to the side.
And then you set your decoys up a little so let's say the wind I'm sitting in the hole, and the waters in front of me, and the wind is blowing from my right to my left in the hole. I'm going to put my decoys where I want the birds to land. I guess it would be up wind of where I'm sitting so farther to my right deeper into the hole so that when the birds are coming to land, they're gonna land into the wind.
They're going to swing out over the pond, they're going to come in and they're going to work almost past me. Yeah, so that I can shoot them as they're coming past me to land in the decoys right so you're going to shoot them as they're coming past you, not as you're not going to necessarily sit right where your decoys are going to shoot, sit, a little farther from your decoys so the ducks have to pass you to land with the decoys and you shoot them right as they're coming.
That's how if I'm going to cross shoot them. That's what it's called. That's how I'll set up if I'm going to shoot him in the face. I'll put my positive decoys out in front of me, spinners out in front of me, and I'll just, we'll get them when they're coming right at us.
Sure. So you mentioned your [01:05:00] hides better off to the side. I can't imagine that a sunny day is going to be, it might be more crucial to have that better hide and be off to the side than say maybe an overcast day because you're not going to be as lit. Is it, does that play into it at all?
It's actually the opposite. Oh, so your hide is where your height is. So a lot of your height is wherever your best height is. That's. That's how I look at it. If I can get my best hide with the wind or a really good hide with the wind at my back, that's how I'm gonna set up. If hide, if I don't have much to hide in or I don't have good cover I'm gonna hide where my height is and then I'm gonna set my decoys ba based off that to try to get the birds where I want them to land.
If they have to absolutely have to land going away from me, I will shoot 'em that way. But I prefer 'em to be crossing or coming into me when I'm shooting 'em. Just 'cause you get 'em. Then it's easier to get 'em when they're like flaring off of you too. You get more opportunities. But your height is where your height is.
So wherever your height is, it is the sun [01:06:00] can play into your hide. So shadows are your friend as a duck hunter, as a waterfall hunter. So if you can hide in the shadows, so let's say I'm hunting in a marsh and there's cattails, I would like the sun and the wind to be on my back. Okay. So when the ducks come in, the sun is glaring in their eyes, but they have the wind they like.
They can't see you because you're on the shadowy side of the cattails. Your face isn't lit up. You're hidden in the darkness. With the bright sun behind you, the ultimate highs with the sun behind you and the wind behind you, that's the ultimate sun and wind behind you with some shadows to hide in.
Cat tails, get back in them a little bit, some sort of blind, where you're absolutely covered up. So use the shadows to your advantage, use your cover to advantage, use the shadows, wherever they end up being based on, if you're sitting and you're going to cross your room, but you're standing next to a tree, don't stand on the sun side of the tree, stand on the shadowy side of the tree.
Even if it's on approaching where the ducks are approaching from, [01:07:00] get in that shadow. You have some sort of cover between you and the ducks. Gotcha. So I think it'll be something that's cloudy days are harder because everything just looks the same in the woods, right? So cloudy days, you can't hide as well because you don't have shadows to hide in.
Okay. You have to have a solid height on those types of days. Huh? Think about if you're like, if you're driving down the road and you're looking at the sun when you're driving. Think about how hard it is to drive when the sun's blaring you right in the eyes. Yeah, that's true. Man, think of the sun on your back, and it's much easier to drive if you're driving down the road.
Totally. Because the sun's behind you, you can see everything in front of you perfect, there's no glare off the water, there's no glare off the road, there's no glare off the cars in front of you, everything is shiny like in a marsh, the cattails are shiny, the water's shiny. Everything is just reflecting off the end of the duck's eyes when they're coming into land, into the sun, into the, sure. So if you can get the sun at your back, if you can get the wind at your back you're sitting pretty. Okay. Like your height will be, even if you don't have a great height, your [01:08:00] height will be solid. Gotcha. Yeah. And so a height can be something as simple as just standing next to a tree. It doesn't have to be, obviously you would like to be covered up, as well as possible.
But you're really just looking for anything that's going to. Obviously you mentioned shadows, but just anything that'll break up the silhouette of yourself, pretty much. Yeah, ducks can see color, apparently. So if don't wear bright colors, just be dark, be, wear dark colors, try to fit in with your surroundings and it should be okay.
Like guys in Arkansas, they stand next to trees and kill them. They'll just lean into the tree, or behind the tree or use the tree as their cover when the ducks are approaching. And they pop out and they shoot them, so you can use trees. If there's trees for cover and, if I'm hiding my boat blind, a lot of times I'll hide it on the shadowy side of the cat tails and I'll pull into the cat tails and the shadowy side, I'll look for a little jut out of cat tails.
Pull into that little jut. Hopefully they got shadows to cover that sides and then you get the birds work right into you with the sun coming up behind your back. Gotcha. [01:09:00] That's a little bit about height and how I try to hide. Okay. Yeah, no, that's super out and there's precipitation. Like I'm sure snow makes it more difficult to be seen.
Yeah, like somebody say they fly better in snow. Some say they don't fly in snow. I've had one really good hunt in snow. So maybe my my perception, I should say in over water, like with ducks on snow. I've had some really good hunts, or one or two really good hunts in the snow. So my perception is a little bit skewed, I would say, because I'm like, if it's snowing, I want to go duck hunting.
Whereas other people are like, eh, I'm not going to go, the ducks don't fly in the snow. But it's in my mind, they do fly in the snow. So I, that's hard to really say. I know for a fact that if it starts to snow and you're a goose or a field hunter, you need to get in that field ASAP, as soon as you can, because those ducks do, or ducks and geese do some stupid stuff in a field when it's snowing.
Like they don't care. They just eat. So you could just stand out there and probably shoot them. No [01:10:00] kidding. They are desperate when it's cold and snowy out and you got a nice wind. Those geese want to get into the field for sure. So it's just as soon as it starts like a white tail, as soon as that cold front hits and as soon as precipitation starts there after food, it's one thing on their mind.
Yep. Especially once it's chilly out and cold out. Yeah. It's just like deer, they want to just be in the cornfields and eat. They get out there a little bit earlier. They stay out there for a little longer. Yeah. Geese are the same way. If it's geese, typically a lot of times they'll fly like in the morning and the, and in the evening when it starts to get really cold, they'll start to fly a little bit later in the day because they're trying to keep their ice hole open.
So they're in the ice, we'll leave it the warmest part of the day to go feed and then they'll come back. But if it starts snowing, they're going to start flying because they want to get some food in them, and some energy and then they'll get back to their spot. Definitely. Man, it's just starting to cross my mind here that we've barely touched [01:11:00] on guns here.
We mentioned we touched on the 410 briefly. Is a 20 gauge going to get it done? You mentioned a 28 gauge. Yeah. Yeah, the 14. So yeah, my buddies, they shoot, I have buddies who shoot the 20 gauge. And I have buddies who shoot the the 410, or not the 410, my son shot the 410. And then there's a YouTuber, Hyperia Sportsman, he shoots a 28 gauge at ducks. shoots a lot of ducks with a 28 gauge. I got a buddies who shoot the 20.
I shoot a 12 gauge. It's really kind of personal preference. And I think guys have been shooting for a while. They like to switch to a 20 because little lighter gun, they can get on the birds or second birds a little faster. They don't need as many pellets because they're a little better shot, I'm just comfortable shooting at 12.
So that's just what I shoot right now, and I shoot business, but I also shoot, I'll shoot steel shot steel, number fours. And a three inch all the way, at least until a few more weeks yet I'll shoot it. And then I'll switch to like my bismuth stuff that I shoot during like later season, midseason ducks and [01:12:00] mallards and things like that.
Sure. Sure. And you mentioned that four shot, is that typically what you're going for is shooting four? I'm just hunting. I'm just hunting ducks. I'll shoot four. Okay. Yeah. Almost exclusively. And then even my steel shot, a lot to earn my bismuth I'll shoot four in that too. I just like the number of BBs that get on the bird in that.
So that's what I shoot typically at ducks is the fours. It's a little more BBs. If you shoot them in the head, they're basically, there's nowhere for you to miss if you're shooting fours. Where you're shooting like twos or double Bs, you got a little more holes in your pattern, you can miss more birds.
And they might be a little more dead when you shoot them, but the fours will, if you had shot them and, or even shoot them in the chest, they're going to be dead if you're shooting at reasonable distances, inside of 30. Okay. Ideally for a shot, yeah, 30, 35 get lucky and shoot them at 40.
If you're, if you run in a full choke or run something tight and you shoot that a lot, you could kill him at 40. But I just try to get in as close as possible, right? I like getting him really close. [01:13:00] Yeah, totally. Speaking of shells there, man You've got some gear that you're Selling don't you?
Yeah, I do. I started a company in April. It's called shoddy gear and it basically started as a need so the company started because I was like a lot of people carrying my shells around in plastic bags Ziploc bags, grocery bags. I was carrying them around in the boxes would get wet, you'd spill they'd, you would crush them in your box, then you got boxes in your boat, boxes in your blind, boxes in your layouts.
And I just got tired of of that, like having stuff everywhere and it not be waterproof in the end. My shells would get wet and ruined. My bags would rip the Ziplocs and eventually rip or tear, get a hole in them, so the shells are getting wet in there. Yeah, so I started, I went on this mission to look for a bag where I can store my shells in.
As it turned out, I couldn't find anything that was the right size to store my shells and everything was like, best mafia, like the best mafia [01:14:00] bags for like plastic baits. They have these like best mafia makes these like big Ziploc heavy duty bags. Yeah. Yeah. Hard plastic. I was like, wow, these work really good.
So for a few years, for a year or so, I was using the best mafia bags, but they're like, 24 bucks for a plastic bag. And I'm like, that's ridiculous. I was, and I still use one of those actually like to keep a good number of shells. And if I'm going out of town, I'll throw a bunch of shells in there.
And so then I was like, I need to find something less expensive. This is ridiculous. I'm not spending 25 bucks to do that. So then I was like, Oh what if I just use dry bags? I've been using my dry bags for a while. Like earth pack dry bags is what I used to use for keeping my extra gear in if I was going on a really wild hunt, I'd throw all my, I'd use it as a blind bag, essentially.
So I started buying smaller ones. I think I would buy a 5 liter one, and it was just too big. I used it as in my truck, so I was still using boxes of shells, but I would keep the boxes in the dry bag. And the 5 liter bag was just too [01:15:00] big, and I couldn't find anything smaller for years.
So then, I guess it would have been going into last season, so last... Two summers ago, I just started to go on this like mission to find a small bag to use to, to keep track of my, to keep my stuff organized, dry is the biggest deal, keep them organized and dry. So I finally found a company that would make me a small dry bag, like a small style dry bag.
And I ended up having them make a smaller bag and it's the perfect size for you can get 50 shells in a pouch, but it's, but I usually run like 35 or so shells in it. It rolls up. It's a roll top dry bag. You can roll it just like a regular dry bag and it's got some buckles on. It's got a clip. You can hang it, on a tree branch off your blind in your boat.
It fits in your blind bag easily. It's no it's smaller than a two liter bottle. It's probably more like the size of a one liter bottle. Of say pop something if you're drinking soda and you could easily [01:16:00] get two of them in your blind bag if you want or throw two in your truck on the floor and then take one with you, whatever you want to do.
But yeah, it's essentially it's a small shell storage dry bag and I bought 100 to start like my samples. And I'm like, Oh, maybe I'll sell a hundred of them to my buddies. Yeah, maybe I'll sell a hundred. I sold a hundred in three days. So then I was like, I guess I got to order. And we use the samples for for a while.
So my first order, actually, they were plastic. And if you, if anybody's listening and you ever ordered them from me, it was like a clear plastic bag. If they ever fail, just shoot me an email. I will send you the new upgraded ones for free. I won't charge you for them at all. But they had a tendency to crack like in the plastic.
Cause it was just the way that material was. So I went to a little heavier duty material. I bought, I think 300 more. I'm like, okay, I'll sell these over the summer into the fall. Like it'll last me, through the year. And I did a tick tock and it fricking went off. And I sold 300 bags in five [01:17:00] days.
I'm like, Oh, wonderful. People actually like these. So I've sold, so I sold 300. So I sold a hundred in two days because the tick tock went viral and then I sold them. That was out of stock. I had to wait a month to get my new ones in, got those 300 and they were gone. And I made another tick tock one night.
This was at the beginning of summer. So like beginning of June I did a tick tock like right before I went to bed about the shell pouch. You're not supposed to post tic tacs then because people are like sleeping. It was like 11 30 at night I woke up in the morning and I have 14 or 15 orders already So which and most people were ordering like two to three of them each and then I went to shoot archery at the club with My buddy and my phone was going ding all day I should say like between 100 and 300 I set up a website My cousin does a lot of like online retail stuff So he helped me get a website set up told me what I needed to do So I set up a Shopify and then all of a sudden, like I'm out shooting archery and my phone's going ding.
I'm like selling all these bags, and I get to the, like the end of the archery round after an hour and a half [01:18:00] and I almost sold out of my bags. I have 40 bags left of the 300, maybe 60, something like that. So I sell like a hundred, 220 bags or something ridiculous overnight in through the next day.
And I'm like, this is crazy. So I had 80 left. The tick tock died off. The sales kind of died off. I'm like, I'll try it again Sunday night. So two days later, do a tick tock. I sold a lot of the bags the next Monday. So I was done. Those 300 were done. Wait another, like six weeks to get my next order.
I was going to like, when I get to one 50, I'll order more. That was my mind. Cause I thought they would take a while, whatever. So I literally started this company with 300 bucks. I put into it and I've now sold I sold over a thousand in the summer of these bags, these pounds, way over a thousand and.
I've, I just got an order of what I get. How many did I get? They had 1200 bags on September 1st. I want to say[01:19:00] I have less than half of those left. So I sold six or 800 this month, last month. And then this month in October, I've sold already like another I'm going, I'm probably going to run out.
I just ordered another 1500 the other day. Those should hopefully be here by like mid November. Sure. But yeah, it's wild how the company just took off. I was like, literally, I was hoping to sell a hundred. Just for ah, I'll sell a hundred and see what happens. And I've sold, I've already ordered thousands and thousands of dollars of pouches.
To get to to get to where we are now. You can see me, but like my office is literally, this is my basement. So this is shot of your headquarters right here in my basement. And I got, my pouches. I'm going to eventually come out. I have an elite pouch I'm coming out with. It's a little tiny bit bigger.
It's got metal buckles. It's got a loop on the back. It's got magnets to help like self close. And then it also has they make these Like desiccant, whatever, or silica packets, [01:20:00] like moisture. Yes. They make them that you can recharge. So I can actually brand those in my name and then I can, they can drop them like in the bag.
There's a little sleeve I put in the bag for my pouches. So those will be pretty nice. I think people like those 24 bucks a pop, but my like normal pouches, which I'll always have because they're such good sellers. Right now you can get on my website for three for basically 30 bucks and then shipping.
So it's 36 bucks shipped for three of them. And honestly, in the meantime, another company had come out with these, like before I technically. Mine were out, even though I was like sampling them and I had my order ready. Another company came out with them and they're selling them for around 30 a piece.
So you get three for plus 5 or six bucks to ship. Technically they're 12 each on the website, but if you put three in your cart, it takes 2 off a pouch. So it basically pays for your shipping for them. So it's three for 36. Or 12 each plus shipping. You know what I mean? Absolutely. You're losing money by not buying in bulk, folks.
That's what [01:21:00] we're hearing. Man, that's, I said, we're losing money by not buying in bulk. If that's what we're, that's what we're getting. Yeah, a little. If you buy three of them, you're going to save. And a lot of guys will buy one like, Oh, why didn't I buy more? Because I honestly, I have all three colors, right?
So all of my 12 gauge duck loads, four inch in one of my business load in the next one, like you can see on the camera there all business loads in the next pouch, and then I'll have like my 20 gauge rounds in another pouch or dove loads in another pouch. And when I go hunting, I just got to make sure I have my pouch and make sure it's full.
And walk out the door. And it's easy, they're easy to fill up. You just dump a whole box of shells in there and you get a second box in there. If you really want, if you want to take two boxes out, but yeah, they're just convenient. They keep your shells dry. They fit in your blind bag. It's just like a little niche that I think people didn't realize they need until they saw it.
And that literally selling like hotcakes. Like I'm selling, I don't know, I'm getting anywhere from like 10 to 30 orders a day of these things. Or I would say five, five to 30, just depends on the day. Like some days, [01:22:00] like yesterday I had 24, 25 orders like 13 orders, and it's pretty fun.
It's been really fun. Just really the thing is it's been fun to do this. It's just been a cool. Cool. Yeah, man. One, you're right. It's such a, one that's just awesome to see that kind of growth and seeing something like that take off. I'm sitting here thinking and I'm sure most of the people who are buying your pouches and stuff, they're like, why the hell hasn't this been done before?
This is, this makes so much sense. And I love that on the front of it, you've got you're the white. Shoddy gear, shot, shell logo and stuff. But like what you've been doing there, taking a Sharpie or a marker and just, marking each bed or whatever shell you're putting in there, you can totally customize your your whole setup.
And are you selling merchant stuff with those two? Right now I have hats, so I have On my website I have a green, it's like a loaded in black Richardson 112. I have a charcoal in black Richardson 112. I have a caramel in black or caramel and I think it's caramel in black [01:23:00] 112. Which is like more of a brown color.
I have a birch, which is a light brown color. And then I have a couple camos. I have a real tree. I have bottom land and I have that veil camo as well on the website for hats. Awesome. What else? I don't have any sweatshirts yet. I have a sweatshirt on right here, but this was just a sample that I ordered to see if I liked it or not.
Just a big, it's got the big Shotty gear logo on it on the front. And then I got some stickers that I include in orders, little ones. And then I also sell some bigger stickers like for the boat, for the truck, whatever on the website as well. So I don't have a ton yet, but my hope is by next year I'll have.
Larger, like just dry storage bags for like gear as well as the shoddy shell pouch. And then I also will have, I'm hopeful that I'll have I'll eventually will have some blind bags and other waterproof gear out. That's like the goal where I'm thinking of going now. Sure. But it's the website's called shoddygear.
com. If you want to check it out, I would appreciate it. It'd be cool. And S H O T Y G E A [01:24:00] R. com. Absolutely. Yeah, folks do yourselves a favor. Do chase a favor, go check it out, go order some of these bags. They are freaking sweet. Chase I've had you on here for we're creeping up on two hours here.
Now post technical difficulties is getting late. I want to be respectful of your time here. Lastly, so shoddy gear.com as well as somewhere in Wisconsin on Instagram and somewhere in wisconsin.com, correct? No. I'm somewhere in Wisconsin on YouTube. I'm somewhere in Wisconsin on Facebook, somewhere in Wisconsin on Instagram, TikTok.
That's right. I think that's it. And then I'm also on TikTok shoddy Gear Official is the, my TikTok for shoddy gear stuff. I also have a shoddy gear for Water Fowlers Facebook group. Smaller, but growing. I will release stuff there first. Give people first opportunity to order stuff. And then I also have shoddy gear LLC on Instagram and I have a business page on Facebook as well.
Shoddy gear [01:25:00] LLC, I believe too. Awesome. So yeah, good stuff for you guys to look at. Yeah, absolutely. Not to mention the content on somewhere in Wisconsin. And shoddy gear. I'm following both of them right now. The content on there is freaking sweet. So folks be sure to go check it out. Chase, I'm sure we're gonna be seeing a lot of awesome duck and waterfowl hunts coming up here this season.
I'm excited for it. I'm excited to see the growth here at Shoddy Gear. Thank you so much for your time tonight, man. I learned a ton. I thank everyone listening here. Whether they're already experienced waterfowl hunters or somebody... Looking to get into the sport. I think they're going to benefit from this as well.
So thank you, man. I'm hoping we'll have you on here again soon. Appreciate it Pierce. You have a good one buddy. That's all for this week's episode as always. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you dig this show, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. While you're at it, if you could leave me a five star review, I would very much appreciate that.
You can also follow along with my outdoor adventures on Instagram at the Wisconsin Sportsman or at HowToHuntDeer. That's also the best way to get [01:26:00] ahold of me, suggest topics, guests, or questions that you'd like me to explore on the show. Big thanks to our partners, Tacticam. Huntworth and Onyx, please go support the brands that support this show.
And if you're looking for more great outdoor content, check out the sportsmansempire. com where you'll find my other podcast, the how to hunt deer podcast, as well as a ton of other awesome outdoor podcasts. And until next time, make sure you make the time to get outside and enjoy the incredible natural resources that are ours as Wisconsin sportsmen.[01:27:00]
