EP:457 | Talking Ducks with James Callicut

On this episode we’re joined by rabid duck hunter James Callicut to discuss waterfowl and managing for them. James is a certified wildlife biologist and is the Mississippi State Waterfowl and Upland Bird specialist and has some very interesting insight. Not seeing as many mallards as you have in years past? James speaks to the problem as well as some insight into how to manage hunting pressure to increase your productivity. There is a lot of good waterfowl info in this one. 

Listen, Learn and Enjoy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm Jeff Foxworthy and welcome to Gamekeeper Podcast. If you want to learn more about farming for wildlife and habitat management, everybody, you are in the right place. Join the Gamekeeper crew direct from Office Yoke Land Enhancement Studio as they discuss the latest wildlife and habitat management practices. News and of course honey. There's no telling what you'll learn, but I'm going to tell you, I bet it's interesting. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

We're live in three, two, one.

SPEAKER_06 0:28

All right, guys. Toxie's here, Lanny's here, Dudley's here. We're all crazy. Hail Hail the game. We're not talking on topic. We're not?

SPEAKER_08 0:36

No, we're not.

SPEAKER_06 0:38

Richie's here. We're going to talk about. I was going to mention Richie. I was getting around to saying how proud we are to have Richie over there on the board. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Thank you, Bobby. I really feel the love.

SPEAKER_05 0:48

Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. It's like it's an agenda. It's an agenda behind everything.

SPEAKER_06 0:53

He's been diving into television so much I didn't know if we were going to get him today or not. The shows look good, Richie.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Yeah, they're coming along nice. Of course.

SPEAKER_06 0:59

Sometimes they're surprised. Of course they do. No, not surprised. It's just fun to see him. It is. We're going to talk about something today that we all love so much.

SPEAKER_08 1:08

Love, love.

SPEAKER_06 1:09

Back to ducks. Love too much almost. Yeah. That's true. Let's get our guest introduced. We've got Mr. James Calicott. He is with Mississippi State. He's the Extension Waterfowl and Upland Game Bird Specialist. Come on. Expert. That's quite a title. Yeah. It is.

SPEAKER_07 1:27

Yeah, they get they handed a lot of stuff off to you. They did. Upland birds and waterfowl.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

I know, which is the unfortunate part of I have to work with Mark McConnell all the time. I know, that's tough.

SPEAKER_06 1:37

We've got a lot of, you know, with a title like that, we've got expectations we're going to get a lot of answers here today.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

I'm going to do my best, Bobby.

SPEAKER_05 1:45

You got to remember he can always pull the Bronson on you.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

It depends. Yeah, that's every biologist's favorite phrase.

SPEAKER_06 1:52

Yeah, that's right. Do you get to engage with Bronson much?

SPEAKER_05 1:54

I do. Yeah. He op he opts out all the tough answers because he just goes, Well, that depends. That's I wish it does.

SPEAKER_08 2:04

He's not here to defend he's not here to defend himself.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

We tried to do that on our podcast one time. Uh me and McConnell and one of our guests, Heath Hagee, was an MSU alumni and now he's a waterfowl scientist with Fish and Wildlife. And we were like, we're going to limit ourselves to each guest has three it depends that we can use during the course. And I think we failed miserably at it. Uh, because so many things do depend on so many different factors. So it's a more complex answer. And so that's we found out quickly we were gonna fail at that game every single time.

SPEAKER_06 2:38

Yeah, for sure. Bronson should have uh he should have trademarked that. Because it's no telling how many times there's been a lot of people. We all say it now. Yeah, yeah, we do. We love Bronson. We uh look, good for you. You get to spend a lot of time around him. It's is he completely retired now?

SPEAKER_01 2:53

What's his he does uh he's I'd say he's semi-retired, I guess, is the best way to describe it. I don't know his exact uh split, but he still has an office and it still uh has a certain percentage of time, but he's not at his full faculty capacity that he was before, but he's wrapping some some things up, research and extension.

SPEAKER_05 3:12

So you're saying he doesn't have all his faculty.

SPEAKER_06 3:14

Was he ever at his full faculty?

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Don't get me in trouble, Bobby.

SPEAKER_06 3:19

So I'd love you know, we're we'll start with Dudley and the rapid fires, but before that, I'd just like to take a moment and just kind of hear your story. You grew up in New Albany, Mississippi, and how did you you worked at Ducks Unlimited? You've kind of been around this waterfowl world a while.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

I have. Uh so I grew up in in New Albany. Uh my father was a veterinarian there, but my father was originally from Tallahatchie County, grew up on a farm in the Delta. I feel like kind of a hybrid Delta Hill boy, you know, it's kind of how my time, my childhood was split. Uh but and actually my early days of waterfowl hunting really were along the Tintam up in northeast Mississippi and uh hunting places like John Bell Williams WMA and Divide section. It wasn't until I was probably in high school before I started going over the family farm and in the Delta, but uh ducks seemed to capture my attention in hunting like no other game species had. From the first duck hunt I went on, which I didn't shoot a duck, we got lost in the green tree at John Bell, and my uncle thought I was gonna be like, he's never gonna want to go duck hunting again. And when he dropped me off at my mom's house, I was like, when are we going again?

SPEAKER_08 4:27

Love it.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Yeah. It's like I just waited around in the woods all day.

SPEAKER_08 4:31

You know, this is catch daylight in the water. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

And so from that point forward, I uh and then at some point, I think I read a Delta waterfowl magazine and read something about training the next generation of waterfowl biologists and realized you could do that as a career, and found out Mississippi State had a great program for that with uh Dr. Rick Kaminsky at the time, and went to went to to both for my undergrad and my master's at state under Rick's tutelage and went on to work for Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks as a waterfowl biologist, and then went to DU for as a private lands biologist for several years, then back to MTWFMP as a private lands biologist, and then eventually coming full circle back to extension because I one thing I really loved about all those jobs I had was talking with private landowners and communicating, you know, technical guidance to how to improve their habitat on their property. And that's what Extension's all about is getting the research that we, you know, find the findings from our research to the people who can put that to use. And so uh I I'm not surprised, I am very shocked. If you'd told me 20 years ago when I started MDWFMP that I'd be on the faculty at Mississippi State, I'd have told you you're full of it, because there's no way that I'm gonna wind up being an academia, uh, go back to school like that. But uh uh here I am, and if I was to guess where I'd be, extensions where I'd want to be, you get to do applied research and get to talk to landowners. And so that's my story in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_08 6:06

We always get props, but props, the the whole extension thing is is just an amazing thing. It really is. Anything you want to know about here from bugs in your tomato plants, upland birds, waterfowl to fences and livestock. Oh, yeah, it's it's there at your fingertips.

SPEAKER_05 6:21

And shout out to our Deer Oil MSU. They are continuing to slowly but surely form the A team. I mean, on a national basis. And collectively, like you talked about some of your counterparts and other species, but they're slowly headed there more and more and more. Well, it's always been pretty renowned. Uh man, I can see I can just see the vision that Dr. Keenum and all the rest of them are painting there. And it's it's it's special.

SPEAKER_06 6:51

You know, you you mentioned something. We we often ask people about their their first deer, their first turkey. Don't I don't know that we've ever asked anybody about their first duck hunt. You remember jurs. I'm gonna look at the end of the table. Taxi way back in the 1900s. Can you remember the first time you went there?

SPEAKER_05 7:07

Well, actually this late 1890s. You remember it? I mean, my first duck uh shooting was a wood duck, you know, during the fall deer and squirrel season in lower Alabama. Um my first like legit duck hunt would have been going with uh Carcy's dad, Big Duck. And then, you know, uh Sonny and Brian had a little spot that we could go, you know, as youngsters. But uh the my first memory, I can't tell you what the first duck was, though. I know it was a wood duck as far as killing one, but far as a legit kind of duck hunt, it would have been up here with Carcy's dad, which his nickname was Big Duck, if y'all remember.

SPEAKER_08 7:50

Yeah, he was one of the leaders in the time.

SPEAKER_06 7:52

You remember your first duck?

SPEAKER_08 7:53

Absolutely. Well, I remember my first duck, you know, and I do remember my first duck hunts too. We were uh young and and I I lived close to where close to where you grew up, and there was um uh they call them watershed lakes. Uh-huh. So I think they put them in the a governance system program to help flooding and agriculture areas. So uh yeah, that's that's where I originally started, and and like everybody else, you know, the wood duck holes on in the rivers and sloughs, but I do my first duck was a greenhead, and oh wow, and I uh remember spotting and stalking for about 30 minutes. Uh and and and the only reason I thought I could kill him is that I there's no way for me to get to him if he flushed, but the wind was blowing real hard in my face, and the duck flushed a shot and had to wait for 20 minutes for him to blow over to me. But anyways, but I got it right.

SPEAKER_06 8:47

I came to the house proud as I could be. Dudley, you probably went to some baunted duck club.

SPEAKER_07 8:54

Uh mine was uh it was like a cattle pond uh near the Big Black River in Madison County, and my dad took me, it was freezing, and we didn't even see a duck. But uh a year or two later, uh I did shoot a wood duck with my little 410 and it had a band on it.

SPEAKER_06 9:12

Golly, oh wow, my granddaddy. Actually, I don't know if you remember this, but when the the day I came over here to kind of interview and talk to you, we got in your truck and we rode around the cotton mill. And as we were riding around, we rode through some sage on the east side of the tracks, and some mallards flushed up out of the sage, and and you really just it was like no big deal. And I just remember thinking, oh my god, they have mallards.

SPEAKER_05 9:35

You know, it's funny people from Alabama would talk about having a lease in Arkansas or maybe here in the Delton, something, and they were saying, you know, duck hunt, duck hunt. No, no, he went on a mallet hunt. So it's like a mallard hunt was actually a legitimate duck hunt for people that just were used to only having you know local stuff.

SPEAKER_08 9:53

What about you, Booning Crockett, Bobby?

SPEAKER_06 9:55

What's your first duck? Wood ducks is where I started in uh in the late afternoon. Oh, yeah. That's how we I thought, yeah, I thought that's how a lot of gray area clock. Look, you don't know what you're doing at the end of the day. Cloudy days were the I just didn't know anybody.

SPEAKER_04 10:10

Aren't you glad of the statue of limitations, Bobby?

SPEAKER_06 10:13

Yeah, certainly are.

SPEAKER_08 10:14

Well, I can tell you most of the people around here, that's how they or our age definitely got an interest to it though.

SPEAKER_06 10:19

Yeah, no waiters. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 10:21

No, he just walked in there and got wet. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. All right, James.

SPEAKER_06 10:24

Thank you for letting us go down memory lane here just a little bit. But so, Dudley, why don't you uh with our nutrient rapid fire?

SPEAKER_07 10:30

Uh the questions are probably got a little tidbit about James. Uh we were in school at the same time at state, and uh I saw him, it was I think it was at summer summer camp portion, maybe he was out helping Dr. K with some stuff, and somebody's like, he's so hardcore into duck hunting, he doesn't even deer hunt. And I was like, Whoa, whoa, this guy must be hardcore. But uh anyway, uh I'm gonna ask you a few questions so our audience can get to know you better. Okay, are you ready?

SPEAKER_01 11:06

As ready as I'll ever be, badly.

SPEAKER_07 11:08

What shotgun do you most often carry in the field?

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Most often, uh these days, um a 12 gauge um Browning.

SPEAKER_07 11:20

Okay. Um, can you remember the last time you killed a deer?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yes. Uh and it was not how you would expect to think about it. It wasn't a deer stand hunting deer. It was actually when I worked for MTW FMP and we were doing health checks. So I was worried I was doing scientific collection. That's the last deer that I that I shot. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 11:40

Favorite species of bird hunting dog?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Uh I have a Gordon Setter right now. So that is my current that's your current phase. For uh for bird hunting. What's his name? Eleanor. Eleanor. His name's Eleanor. My second uh but for ducks, uh, I'm one of those squirrely people who likes things different than other folks. So uh I haven't replaced my duck dog. She she passed away two, three years ago. Uh her name is Matilda. She was a field bred Gordon Setter. Okay. I'm not Gordon Setter, I'm sorry, Golden Retriever.

SPEAKER_07 12:13

Okay. Um what is your absolute favorite preparation of duck? Hmm. Blackened. Okay. What was your first banded duck?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

It was a mallard in Tallahatchie County. I shot it in January of 04, and it was banded in Saskatchewan in 1994 as an adult. So it's at least 10 years old.

SPEAKER_07 12:39

Whoa. Uh what steel shot size do you most commonly carry? Three. Name a favorite gas station food spot in the Mississippi Delta. Come on.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

The double quick in Tutweiler, Mississippi. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 12:52

What is the largest item you found, largest or most odd item you found in a duck's crop?

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Uh found a pretty sizable minnow in a mallard one time.

SPEAKER_07 13:05

Okay. Wow. What is your favorite species to finish out a limit of mallards? Hmm. I have to say pentail. I just love pentails. Name a preferred duck hunting snack.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Oh, uh I don't know. Here lately, I've been partial fig bars. That seems to be my thing. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 13:25

Uh have you ever trapped or shot a hybrid duck?

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Uh I have not. Okay. Oh, well, I've been I've been on a hunt where we where one was shot. I didn't personally shoot one.

SPEAKER_05 13:36

What combination was it?

SPEAKER_01 13:37

It was a Gadwall Mallard hybrid. My buddy uh Matt shot it. We were actually hunting in North Dakota, and uh he had no clue what he had he had shot. He was a turkey guy, so uh uh he was like, I don't even know what this thing is. And we came over there and uh uh of course I called called it a brewer's duck because that's historically you know what Audubon would have called those, but uh it was really cool. It was a little bit different than a lot of the other uh crosses. You see, of course, now with all the things that Phil's doing, we're finding way more about hybridization than we ever knew about. Uh so uh but at the time I was like, that's crazy, you know, because not only is it crazy we we got a hybrid, but it looked different than a lot of the photos that I'd seen of a of a mallard gap wall cross.

SPEAKER_07 14:22

But yeah, that was and last but not least, who is your favorite game farm mallard hatchery? Oh I don't know a single one of them.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

There we go.

SPEAKER_08 14:34

I don't know where you were going. I didn't either.

SPEAKER_07 14:37

You know, the the game farm where did that come from? You know, the game farm mallards that are kind of messing up all the wild ducks.

SPEAKER_06 14:44

We know we just didn't know where you were going with that. So along those same lines, that so rapid fire is brought to us by our friends at Nutrient Ag Solutions. Jeff Tarsi's a big duck hunter. He is, he's from over there in Cleveland.

SPEAKER_05 14:56

For them to the world. No, they are they they have such a big chore feeding the world. It really is even bigger than the business itself. And they are so trying more and more and more to be conservation conscious because they can help affect, and they realize help affect a lot because of the enormous amount of land, you know, their products affect, but they are very conservation as a company.

SPEAKER_06 15:19

Good function. There's a store, there's go buy when you get this this fall, when you need something, chemical-wise, fertilizer-wise, they they've they they're so helpful. So all right, look, I oh and uh he he asked you a question about the hybrid duct, and it just made me wonder, and you will know the answer to this. So if I've got a hybrid Gadwall mallard, can I count that as a Gadwall and shoot another mallard? Oh or how how would you Great question. That's not a good question. Bobby's always about getting that limit. Get to that limit, you know.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

That is a good question, but I I am not a law enforcement officer. So uh I would imagine that was that'd be one of those things that often is to their own. We should dial one up and see.

SPEAKER_06 15:59

No, I think a good lawyer could make a case that you could go either way, however you wanted to go.

SPEAKER_05 16:02

Well, not if you what if you've already finished your you know, you got your four, you've got your four green heads or whatever it is you're doing, and then you kill that one because it looked real brown to you and didn't see it. I would hope that it would not count against. Yeah, I wouldn't think so.

SPEAKER_08 16:15

He just that's a gadwall.

SPEAKER_05 16:18

I would think they would have to let you just like an off-duck. Yeah, they would have to let you count, you count it either way. Yeah. You know, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_06 16:25

Probably because there's no way to tell for sure. Richie, we didn't ask you about your first uh Mr. DUSC. What are we talking about?

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Oh well no, no, no. I I I I didn't really jump into the waterfowl game like you guys did back in the day. So I don't have any grand tails. But you spent on more buck hunts than anybody through filming for well being on DU, yeah, I went on a good bit of hunts out throughout the country and stuff. There's yeah, there's some a lot of memories there, a lot of cold day, cold mornings and a bit. Mm-hmm. Yeah. How about that? Some fun snow geese hunts.

SPEAKER_08 16:57

Oh, yeah, those are great. Misery.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

I got me and James we actually went on uh goose hunting in Arkansas. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_06 17:04

Did you spook any birds?

SPEAKER_02 17:06

No, no, like I said, those when those snows that they they got when they're going, they're going. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 17:12

All right, let's talk about ducks. Let's look at you. I'd like to throw out the first question. Of course. And then we'll go in a bunch of different directions. But uh, my number one question, where are our mallards?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

That is a that is a great question, uh, and a question that I feel a lot uh these days. And um, you know, I think the what at least what all the data that's available to us at this point, I would say the biggest contributing factors to us, uh not wintering as many mallards as we had one, there are less ducks. So we're gonna see less ducks because we're not making as many. So we have lower populations, but then you compound that with the weather, and we just don't simply don't get the weather that drives you know birds south of certain latitudes. And so, like, of course, this year's a great example. I mean, we actually had weather, and that it came at a terrible time for us only to be able to enjoy it for the last weekend of the season, but we had a tremendous push of of birds in at that uh that last weekend this year. Yes, we did actually. And uh even here. It was great for me trapping ducks for my project because uh, you know, they were pretty well confined to certain places with everything being froze up. And then the South Delta of course had a lot of birds that had moved out of the North Delta into the South Delta. Uh so I think weather and and breeding uh you know uh cycle. That and too, I mean there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of threats at at at to the breeding grounds. And um, you know, if you look at from 20, I would just the amount of habitat for one is a big uh factor here. So if you look 2015, we have the highest duck population on record. You know, come to now, you know, we've dropped substantially from that. It's been a steady decline. Now we're kind of these last couple of years leveling, leveling out. But if you were to look at those breeding population numbers, and then if you wanted if you put the acres of CRP grassland in the prairie pothole region on that same graph, you'd see it go right with it. A lot of correlation. So we've lost tremendous amounts of grassland CRP that have that have contracts have ended, they have not re-enrolled, and they're going back into agricultural production. And I from a producer standpoint totally understand that. Um, but yeah, that we're losing habitat probably at you know uh at the same time as we're trying to invest, as lots of conservation organizations are investing in creating, restoring, and protecting existing habitat, we're losing a lot of habitat too. And not just grasslands but wetlands, there's way more tile drainage and things going on as well. And so uh that's really a big factor is for most, I like I tell my students in my uh the class I teach uh at the university, uh most everything that people ask me, you can ob just about say what's the question, the answer is habitat. More often than not, what is limiting a wildlife population is habitat. And in waterfowl, uh the vast majority of what um drives duck populations occurs during the breeding season. So, like everything that happens in fall migration, winter and spring migration, the mortality there, both natural and hunting, is only it's probably less than 10% of the mortality. You know, most of the mortality occurs during the breeding season. And so having sufficient habitat to have an have, you know, the the carrying capacity to support that many nesting ducks, and then to provide them the conditions for uh nesting, brood rearing, all that, and pre-migratory fattening and all the things they have to do before they start heading this way, uh, you know, needs to be there, needs to be in high quality, and that's what drives a lot of waterfowl populations. And then even in good years, we gotta have weather for us to have a good, you know, duck season. See more than the birds that because there's obviously birds that are coming to Mississippi, this is where they come every year. And, you know, I've had ducks that that I've uh trapped here in Mississippi, turned them loose. A year later they're back on the same wetland that I trapped them on, you know. And so there's certainly, you know, ducks we see the early mallards too, you know, birds that here the last week of October, first week of November, there's mallards here already. Uh you know, there are ducks that are gonna come to Mississippi no matter what. But some of those other birds that are more uh weather dependent in their migration, I mean, we just gotta have the weather. And we're seeing fewer, you know. I remember when I was a kid, uh the weather thing always sticks with me because I I think about in the last 10 to 15 duck seasons how many times I've broken ice versus what I remember when I was a kid uh in the late, you know, mid to late 90s when I started duck hunting and breaking, you know, I feel like there were several hunts a year in the you know that we were breaking ice out there uh to shoot ducks. And also, too, just something as simple as thinking about uh, you know, Halloween time. I use this example a lot, but mostly because it sticks out in your memory of the things your mom or dad told you you couldn't do and just pissed off and still 40 years later, you remember that? Yeah. But you know, like you're wearing, like I remember my mom making me wear a jacket on the evening in Halloween to go out trick-or-treating. I haven't seen a Halloween where a kid needed to wear a jacket in a long time.

SPEAKER_05 22:58

And I mean, and I've always heard about, you know, I didn't think about it until I got to hearing more about the Halloween migration, which is like, you know, first of November. And when we had some early water around here, even, you know, we're not in a heralded area. There would be a lot of ducks. Yeah, we'd kill them early. You know, and so it's been so dry in that period of time for so many years now. And I feel like that um we had to begin when those years that we had so many early like that, our beginning of our duck season was phenomenal. And then it got really cold and and we didn't have it, it was like the reverse. Then we and it took a while before I guess it pushed more down. One thing's really hurting us, I believe, is we're missing that Halloween migration now with not having so dry.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah, and we're we're gonna uh that's a big part of what our study that we want to do is we want to trap a lot of early, those early mallards and kind of learn more about you know where they come from, you know, where they go where they go to.

SPEAKER_05 23:57

How far south do they go from like here in Mississippi?

SPEAKER_01 24:00

I haven't marked unless it was a weather event that pushed them. Uh I haven't had last year we didn't have uh many mallards caught in November. We started catching them really in December, but nothing that we marked went south then. But this year we're hoping to have rocket nets, uh more rocket nets, and try to catch more birds in that early season because it's hard to catch ducks in uh late October, early November, even when they're here. Yeah. I mean, food is as available as it's ever gonna be. That's right, that's right. And so uh, you know, trying to bait them in with corn or something like that, they don't care about it. There's food everywhere. And so we're gonna deploy some different trapping techniques to try to catch those so we can understand those birds a little bit more. But see, you're exactly right as far as some of that pattern, and I used to see that all the time uh in hunting, that you would have this great opening weekend, and I always call it like the early December lull, like after that split ends and you come back to the to the you know that remainder of the season's uh segment, uh those middle of December was kind of real tough. And a lot of that could be they eat, and that's what I hope we find out a little bit about is if some of these birds leave the area, these early ones, or if they're just like you think about anywhere else, they've gotten stale. There's no new migrants coming in, they figured this landscape out, they know where to go and not get shot, and they s they may still be there, we just don't see them kind of thing. Uh and because you know, stale ducks obviously is a super real thing. I've hunted North Dakota in really warm conditions when they haven't gotten pushes from Canada yet, and it was like hunting ducks in Mississippi in the last week of January. You know, when they figure out a landscape, they they know how to how to operate it. So uh that could be a lot of it. But we hope to kind of tease out some of those questions uh for sure, because the you know, I want to understand any bird that's definitely coming to this state, you know, that's gonna be here for it.

SPEAKER_05 26:05

So a couple of years, I guess it's been a good while now, but I uh I was hosting uh Dale Hall, who was the CEO of DU here, and of course, his background, if I'm not mistaken, was actually the biology, not administration. And he was a great leader. But he was describing to me that the trend was more and more that the ducks, especially in the Mississippi Flyway, really didn't want to come any further south than were absolutely forced to. And what he said was um one of the reasons why is the food sources in the Mississippi Flyway. I said, What do you mean? We have more great, like eggs soybean, you know, all this rich farmlands left over, some rice, you know, maybe it's not as much as it used to be, and all that. He said, Yeah, we do, and that's the reason why. I said, that does not hold up through the winter nearly like native foods. And so what he described to me is like after years and years and years, things evolve, and when ducks turn around to go back north and they fly back through a biological desert over time, they'll not want to come any further south. So I thought that was interesting if that was the case, and it pointed out, and I know there was some truth to it, or he wouldn't have said that. And again, he was just talking in trends, but it points out the importance of having a balance of that. And the other thing is he said was causing it is because of the hunting pressure was so great in that flyway. And he said that's another thing why, and he's he was kind of visionary too. He said, Since he said that, it started to get on my radar more and more, and I see more and more people are doing, but they're establishing some sort of respond sanctuary place. And even people that have to kind of go in, a couple of different landowners could adducts migrate and have an area that they have something. So down here for us, if we didn't have something like that, I'm not sure we'd have much of anything to hunt in the days we're in right now. It's to me so important. So the food source and the pressure that we gotta be mindful of besides just going out there and shoot, shoot, shoot. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like we talked about earlier, uh, you know, habitat is gonna be the main thing that drives most issues that we see. And so um, you know, there's places all along the flyway uh that you know have have increased in them, some have increased in the amount of wetlands that they have at those those areas, and some places have declined substantially. Farming practices have changed tremendously where, you know, a flooded uh flooded harvested rice field's not the same habitat now that it was, you know, 20 or 30 years ago. You know, and uh uh that was a lot of what uh Dr. Kaminsky's work was at at the time when I came through his lab was you know assessing how much food is available in all these agricultural and natural wetlands. And uh even back then, that was 20 plus years ago, um, you know, it was pretty abysmal even at that point, you know, with combine efficiency and everything, how how much uh how little waste grain was left. And that's with no post-harvest treatment, just you harvested the field, and nowadays you've got to imagine that hot combine efficiency has improved. And then we also, you know, the timing of when we can harvest those crops and everything is getting earlier. There's a lot of fall tillage. By the time you flood a field now, you know, you're flooded mostly dirt, you know, dissed up, you know, uh ground.

SPEAKER_07 29:35

Do you think the uh I'm thinking rice here, but a lot of crops like all the landforming had had anything to do?

SPEAKER_01 29:42

I think, uh in my opinion, yes. I think that because that alters the hydrology of the landscape. And so I've I've seen places where land uh forming uh has uh at a very at the property scale could be beneficial to you as far as water management and things like that. Uh I know I benefit from it. I've got that my neighbor to the south of one of my uh duck holes, they just landform theirs, and now every bit of his water goes into this one ditch that comes right to my water control structure up along the bayou. And what used to take, and I have no pump there, what used to take half the season to get water, I get one big rain and I'm I'm good. But that's you know, that's a very specific setting where that's helpful to me. Uh but overall you got to think we made the the landscape drain faster. And one thing that ducks used to probably have a lot more of are these places when the river gets up and it floods out into these areas and it would stay out for a week, week and a half, you know, maybe in some places even. And now those are like 72 hours, they're they're gone. And so I I know I personally on our farm have places where I remember uh in high school, I would be out for a week at least when it got out. And now I'm like, if I know it's rained enough to get it out, I better get over get over there and hunt it because it's not going to be there long. And so a lot of that kind of ephemeral duck habitat or short-term duck habitat, I think certainly has left the landscape. Uh but I don't want to start off on the it depends part of our but it is a complex thing and it is completely, you know, or not completely, but a large proportion of it is habitat, but it's a very complex habitat issue. Uh that because habitat obviously is going to influence distribution of ducks, and they'll fly over places that don't have good habitat and come, you know, uh, because some of these birds, you know, when you look at them uh when we've tracked them with GPS technology and things, uh make some movements, some pretty substantial movements where they fly over a lot of a lot of habitat uh to to get to wherever they go. And then some that are just ink I'm not going any farther south than I have to. So within mallard, just mallards, there's I don't wouldn't even want to begin to speculate the number of strategies individual mallards take in migration. Obviously, a huge proportion of them are very weather-driven migrants. But then there's others that have, you know, different strategies. So like the ones that show up here in the end of October, you know, they're not local mallards, they weren't here all summer, they migrated from up north here. So to them that's a successful strategy, you know. Uh, and to others, it's like, why move for any further south than I have to? Because that costs energy, and I'm not real sure what conditions are south of me. Uh take, for example, the was it two years ago when we had that really bad drought, like 100-year drought, where I saw breaks in the delta go dry that probably hadn't been dry in eighty years.

SPEAKER_05 32:57

Trees dying.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:59

We've kind of had that just different degrees of it for I think three deers now. Yeah, absolutely. We'd get like normal duck water type stuff because we don't have places to pump and all, except out of a few little ponds. And it would be at least late December for three years in a row. And it was into January last year where we got we got you know, right that cold weather you talked about was the first time we really had much water.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:23

Maybe 10 days before the season was out.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Yeah, I know I definitely saw like probably that was a benefit for after the season for ducks as far as having habitat because all of that uh um ice thawing was a lot more water that they then had, you know, that they didn't have in the weeks leading up.

SPEAKER_08 33:43

Landon, you got a question? Yeah, uh actually it was kind of related to what um what Dudley was saying. I mean, Tallahatchie County is probably the duckiest county, or has historically been the duckiest county in in the Mississippi flood.

SPEAKER_04 33:58

One of the boat.

SPEAKER_08 33:59

Oh, it's almost in the country, yeah. Just from your perspective, you know, from being exposed to that all off. You did talk about the drainage. What other things have you seen, you know, that that might correlate something?

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Yeah, I think one thing that I definitely uh see is just way less winter water, just fewer people flooding ag fields and and that sort of thing. Uh, because I can remember going to my grandparents' house as a kid, and once we got off into the Delta, uh, so Highway 6, then we'd hit three at Marks, and then go down three to Tutweiler. By about the time I was, we were almost to Highway Three, that last little stretch of uh of six before you get to Marks. From that point all the way to Tutweiler. I mean, of course, you know, this is in the 90s, so my eyes are glued out the window because that's the case. I know what's coming. And it's just, you know, way more. There was just tons of flooded ag fields, and I just loved watching and seeing all the ducks and everything like that.

SPEAKER_05 35:01

It used to be, I used to say all the time in that period, and I guess all the way through thate more recent times, but if you rode through the Delta after even one cold snap in the winter, every puddle just about had a duck on it somewhere, you know.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

And now I can make that same drive, and I bet you I can count all the flooded fields on one hand that I see on that stretch of highway. And that's impossible to say or or Well, no, I think there's there there some of it could be that, but a lot of it is just they're just not flooding it anymore. And I mean that goes that can get as complex down to the point of it's just individual landowners, and maybe, you know, the kids have moved off the farm and they're aging and they're not hunting anymore, and there's just not incentive to do it, you know, whatever. It's not fitting that landowner's objective. And so I think a lot of that is that, and some of it could be, you know, as that probably started to happen, you know, you're not maybe holding as many birds in that area because you're not having as much of a wetland footprint, and then that might just get somebody to be like, well, I'm not gonna flood anymore because there are no ducks here anymore. But that's not to say, in tech, certainly in Tallahatchie County, there are places with extensive, it's one of the most extensive wetland complexes in the Mississippi Delta. I mean, part of that is it's just in a great place. You got the confluence of the the Coldwater and the Tallahatchie coming together there. Got uh, you know, Coal Water National Wildlife Refuge surrounded by tons of private lands that are heavily managing for waterfowl. You got O'Keefe, WMA, and you got Tallahatchie Refuge south of that, and from Charleston to Brazil and over towards it now, even more towards Tutweiler. People are kind of a lot more management's happening on the western side of the county. It's just a really great complex of what would habitat. And that's why that place still is gonna, you know, do fairly well.

SPEAKER_07 36:54

Yeah, it's it's like it takes an army of folks, you know, to keep it all together.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Ducks respond first to the landscape before they respond to the property.

SPEAKER_07 37:04

Um makes a lot of sense. Well, maybe we can get into the weeds a little bit here and uh you know talk about different ways, you know, like say a landowner wants to wants to uh have some ducks. Um it's obviously uh not just about planting a crop and flooding it. Um there's probably a lot more detail going on, and that's that's why we have you here. So uh can you get into that some?

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Yeah, uh sure. So when I when I visit with a landowner uh about how to improve their property uh for ducks, first off, you gotta take it from you know trying to find a realistic goal of what that individual wants to do based on the size of their property, what they have to work with. And I've worked with the 40-acre landowner all the way up to the several thousand-acre landowner over the years, uh, and all my various capacities uh providing technical guidance, but getting them in the place of like what they what they want to have, and then what they have the capacity to, both from a financial and from equipment and an infrastructure standpoint. So that paints me a picture of what you can realistically do on this property. What kind of, you know, if you've got a tractor and a disc and a bush hog and uh, you know, some strong uh uh kids that are gonna come help you or whatever, uh knowing what you have to work with tells me what you can realistically do. But a big thing uh before you even start, I think oft with oftentimes, and it's always seems to, and it doesn't matter if we're talking about ducks or turkey or deer, one of the first questions people always ask me is what do I need to plant? And uh I was like, Well, it depends. I knew that was coming. No, and it depends on, you know, uh what that landscape around you looks like and what you have the feasibility to do, you know, if you don't really have the all the necessary things you you gotta have to plant a good corn crop or something that's gonna actually produce food, then that's probably not on the table for you. But the big thing is to look at it from a landscape view and say, okay, where what do I have? Do I have like three uh duck holes, like three impoundments that I can manage? Uh what are they in right now? Are you got them in crops? Do you have them? Are they forested? Are they scrub-shrub type uh wetlands? So, kind of what do I have? And then um what any other barriers I might are I won't say barriers, but constraints I might have to doing things on those. Uh are my ones that I have in ag, are they actively farmed? Do I have to work with what my farmer wants out of this, what my tenant is gonna be able be willing to operate with? And then, or if it's in WRP wetland reserve program, wetland reserve easement, WRE or Conservation Reserve Program, CRP, because there's gonna be some limiting things you can do in those. So figure out where your constraints are and then look around the whole rest of the landscape and see what are my neighbors providing and what's out of all the things ducks need as part of a wetland complex, what's missing? And if you have the possibility to add things that your neighbors don't have, that gets increases the chance that ducks are going to use your property because they need that at some point. I've often had uh landowners where the neighbor next door has tons of hot crops that they're planting, they've got cornfields flooded and leaving portions of rice unharvested and all that stuff, and there's plenty of food out there. Uh and they've and they've got some forested stuff, but there's not any kind of grassy, sedgy, emergent type vegetation or anything like that. So I'm like, well, let's try to do some moist soil management if we can make that fit into your, you know, what your capabilities are. And so it kind of becomes mostly about trying to find how you make that landscape better by filling in the missing components. Because duck mallards in particular are most abundant in landscapes that have a lot of forested wetlands, um, a good bit of flooded agricultural fields, um, moist soil, about 25% of them moist soil wetlands at least, and then a small percentage of just like kind of open water. Uh, we've seen that through aerial waterfowl surveys over the last 20 years. That uh Aaron P Dr. Aaron Pierce did his PhD here under RIC. Uh, and he originally came up with that pie chart of this is the wetland complex that we counted the most mallards in. Uh Brian Davis and I and some other colleagues recently finished running that, uh running a 20-year analysis on that aerial waterfowl survey, both for here in Mississippi and in Arkansas. And like those that pie chart, those pieces changed by like a percent or two here and there. That held strong. So it's key that that landscapes that have all those things is what attracts mallards to those landscapes. And so I try to approach landowners with um what what can you realistically do and how can we add something here that's missing around you? Because, you know, uh, I don't know about y'all, I'd love to eat uh a piece of medium rare red meat and a piece of key cheesecake every day for every one of my meals if I could. But I probably ought to eat some broccoli and some other stuff, or else I'm not, you know, not that I am the uh the not the pinnacle of physical fitness here, but I have to, you know, I have to have nutrients and other from other things. And that's what like moist soil does. Moist soil wetlands are providing uh different uh nutrients, amino acids, uh, that are essential for an adduct's diet that they're not getting out of corn or soybeans or rice or something like that. There's also a ton of bugs in that, and there's a time in winter where they're switching to where bugs is a huge part of what their diet is. And uh when you say bugs, you're talking about these frag vertebrates. Yeah, yeah, well, like the aquatic invertebrates. So, like little freshwater shrimp, caronomid larvae, you know, like mayfly larvae, things like that. And so all the little bugs that live in the water. And the things that that that's habitat for those bugs is basically you can think of it as any plant's got some surface area to it. Right. And so things like smart weed are gonna have more bugs in them than uh the than grasses will. The grass is really about the seeds and the leafy stuff. Uh now there's bugs in the grass, but you'll have a little bit more bugs if you have the leafy stuff. Kind of the same thing if you hit have Mark or anybody come talk to y'all about brood habitat for quail or turkeys. You talk about forbs and all the insect life that's underneath in those forb communities. Kind of same thing.

SPEAKER_07 44:01

Makes the same in the water.

SPEAKER_01 44:03

Yeah. So uh finding those missing components and finding those things that the duck needs is what I try to help landowners understand. And it's tough because, yeah, ducks do get a get in flooded corn and all those things, and they, but I imagine their need for those is higher during colder time periods or high energy demands. Uh, you know, ducks aren't the brightest critter out there, but they're not the dumbest either, you know. Uh, there's also the fact of structure in habitat that I think gets overlooked a great deal. Uh, oftentimes, and hopefully our research will shed a little light on some of that uh with uh behavior within those different types of wetlands. But wouldn't surprise me if a lot of daytime use in that in in flooded corn, it and a whole lot about that just because of the vertical structure of that cover. Uh and uh so moist soil can provide a lot more of that vertical structure, that diversity in plant community, lots of different nutrients and things they need, and that structural cover. Um little willow trees and stuff you can leave, like thicken up in some places. So I basically like to try to approach it pretty much from let's find the missing piece of the puzzle in your area to hopefully increase your property's attractiveness.

SPEAKER_08 45:18

You you mentioned that you know, of that mix, 25% of that mix needs to be native. Is that what you're seeing is missing most across the landscape?

SPEAKER_01 45:27

More often than not, that is it. Uh now things like the WRE, WRP program has had a lot of that put back on, of course, and a lot of that's not necessarily actively managed and providing a lot or providing on every acre of that high the highest quality uh stuff. But where it is managed, you know, that's helped a lot. And I think landowners are starting to pick up on the moist soil concept a lot more. I remember when I started my career with MDWFP, uh, I remember telling Houston Havens, I was like, man, I feel like we are having to really hard to sell moist soil management to folks. And now it's just like I show up on a site and they're like, tell me about moist soil management.

SPEAKER_05 46:09

So folks are it's a buzzword.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

Yeah, yeah. So uh, and it's uh it's taken us a while to get it to a buzzword, you know.

SPEAKER_05 46:17

It's funny how stuff in in uh wildlife management and even conservation, but landowners and hunters, how and I hate to say it, but it's almost like the the ego gets involved, but when you can use that to your advantage, I I've said this before, the analogy when we started trying to get people to wake up and realize they don't need to shoot everything with horns if they want to grow bigger deer. It was just that simple. And so it was a struggle because they didn't want to change what they've been used to doing, and then all of a sudden, it evolved to where people were starting to get embarrassed at the hunting clubs over shooting a little four-point or something, and then actually it it took that ego part and put it to good use because people were all of a sudden bragging about how many they passed up. I remember first time I even met Bob Dixon in the 80s, he was telling me I passed up 17. He didn't tell me about the big eight-point he killed. He talked that I passed up 17 rack bucks last year, and then I hear that more and more and more, and it actually put that to good use. And now it has become kind of a thumbs and suspenders bragging point of landowners to say, yeah, we manage for more soil. Well, you know what? If that makes them manage to more soil, great. Yeah, I'm all for it.

SPEAKER_07 47:28

Or, you know, we got an area that we don't hunt, you know, it's a sanctuary. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

That's a great one there. That is a really good one, Dudley. Yeah, because that that's one of the tough parts uh to get with landowners too, because they've either never done it before uh or they want me to be able to tell them exactly how that's what they can expect out of it. Well uh disturbance is one of those things that's so tough to like like as far as from a researcher standpoint, for us to account for everything to be able to figure out, yeah, if you shut down this many acres, it's gonna do this. Whereas, you know, you might see somebody who leaves a place completely off limits and then have a place that just doesn't have as many hunters as they do, and they may only hunt that thing twice or three times during the year, but 90% of the time it's not hunted. You might see some pretty similar use there, but you might not be able to pull that off in a different landscape with a higher hunting pressure footprint print. So it is tough, but it essentially is something that is absolutely by far needed on the landscape because that birds have to have some place where they're not harassed, and it can help you support more ducks in your landscape. We know that for sure. Now, the exact if you do this on this many acres, this is the perfect recipe for a sanctuary. We don't have nearly the amount of information yet to make those kind of claims, but we can certainly tell you having sanctuary is an essential part, and you will have more ducks if you have sanctuary included in part of your management uh you know program.

SPEAKER_05 49:13

I can tell you already that the perfect the answer to the perfect respond, I can tell you that without research. It's gonna depend.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_08 49:23

Do you think the the the the overall need for more of the moist soil management areas is that directly related to the loss of WRP and WRE?

SPEAKER_01 49:33

Uh well there uh there hasn't been a lot of you know loss of WRP or WRE, at least in Mississippi.

SPEAKER_08 49:40

Or CRP, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

Uh that's more of a prairie guide issue. So like so CRP down here can be everything, you know, from quail habitat or duck habitat to pine stands. That's right. Uh uh most of the CRP probably in Mississippi is pine trees. Uh whereas up north is all grassland. CRP. And so uh in in those prairie potholes, so if it's in CRP, it's in grass, they have you know, wet potholes are left in those. And so that's a lot of you know, grassland nesting cover adjacent to you know, wetlands for brood rearing and and molting and all the the things that are pretty critical times for ducks. Do you think that reduction is coming from increasing commodity prices? I'm uh I'm sure to some degree that is is part of the that's a part of the equation. Um I'm not a yeah, that's not my expertise, and I try to steer away from it because ag markets are volatile at best. You know, I know enough to know that and I know that enough to to know that I'm not an expert in it, and I shouldn't be speaking on it. But I'm I'm I would imagine, yes, if the because m probably most of that that has come out of CRP has gone into row crop, back into row crop. So you would expect that would be the case.

SPEAKER_05 50:57

And the in the in the other part, I mean, you could pass all kind of legislation, but it's in Canada. I mean not all of it, but what? How much of our ducks are raising about 70% of them in Canada?

SPEAKER_01 51:07

A great I don't know the exact proportions for for for Mississippi. If you just look at our banding data, uh over 40% of the band returns that are harvested in the Mississippi Delta come from Saskatchewan alone. And so then there's things from Manitoba and a few in Ontario and Alberta. I mean, if you look at my GPS ducts right now, I have tons of them in North and South Dakota, but the vast majority of the 110 mallards I had transmitters on this year are stretched across the Canadian province. So yeah, Canada is a is another aspect of it. And most of those this year, actually in the a lot of them, not most, but a fair amount, surprisingly to me, yeah, because it kind of comes to when birds pass through those areas, because sometimes the U.S. prairies and the Canadian prairies will be dry when some birds come through, and so they'll go up into the parklands or the boreal, and then that later migrant group that decides to hang out down here a little bit longer, they may they they arrived in North and South Dakota to just excellent condition. So a couple of weeks can be a difference of whether ducks settle there or not. So I do have a fair amount of those GPS birds right now that are in uh in the parklands and in the boreal. One of my pentails is up in Northwest Territories right now. Wow, this is what are you doing up there? Um from the time we marked it uh in Tallahassee County till today, uh, or the last data I had on it, uh, it traveled like almost 4,000 miles.

SPEAKER_08 52:38

Wow. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

And when do you when did you December? December.

SPEAKER_05 52:42

Or no, January, early January. Yeah. Wow. So what's um I guess there's still to be determined, but what's this year, what's your ear to the ground say what this year is looking like?

SPEAKER_01 52:53

Yeah, it it depends on yeah, I didn't mean there you go. That one wasn't purposeful. I know seated that one just came out natural, right? That's right.

SPEAKER_05 53:03

I checked your office of demerit.

SPEAKER_01 53:05

Yeah, yep. Uh so uh anyway, I guess it it would uh Don't say it. I'm gonna try not to, and now you've got me trying to figure out how to how to phrase this. If the El Nino type effect happens the way that they some are predicting it to be, then it could mean you know that we have it's cooler here, but it's warmer north of us, so that's not a very great recipe for anything. And that those I uh I'm no weather expert, but I believe the El Nino is the one that comes with more rain. So anytime you have low duck numbers and a lot of rainfall that spreads ducks across, it's just a recipe for disaster. Like last year, when we did get those birds, you know, we did we had a dry year, you know, and so birds were really concentrated and that made for good hunting. Um, so you know, how cold it gets and then what our landscape looks like based on rainfall is a huge plays a big role, I believe, in how successful we are as far as waterfowl hunting is concerned. And so I don't know. I hope it's better than what I think it's gonna be because I've got in addition to wanting to shoot ducks myself, I also have to trap a whole lot of them and put transmitters on them. And uh that makes, you know, if hunting's slow, you can bet my trapping's slow too.

SPEAKER_05 54:22

So uh and I guess what I was asking about really even for before that was the hatch of the population trend. I know it's yet to be finished out, yeah. But I mean, you've I know you've got an ear to the ground about what's going on, and do we have any promise of increases?

SPEAKER_01 54:37

Well, uh, I would I would think that the um, like I said, uh the conditions improved uh in the US prairies, and so those birds that settled later came to better conditions. Great. And that means uh hopefully then too that that production will be better, you know, wetlands are in better shape, more water to support uh brood rearing and and and molting as well. Um, because that's a pretty I can imagine that we lose a fair amount of ducks during that molting process. You got 30 days where you can't fly. Uh, you just hope you chose a really good wetland to be able to hide in. Um, and um so it's really gonna be highly dependent just on what if those conditions continue to hold. And um, I I wouldn't think that there's anything that I've seen right now that would make me feel like we're gonna see a a dip uh by any stretch. Uh so I don't know if we're gonna stay steady or have another little increase. That seems like these last two or so years we've had like we haven't dropped again, but we're either flat plateauing or kind of bumping up a little bit. Uh of course that varies across species, but uh yeah, it doesn't look bad, I will say, at this point. Yeah, weather as part of the season, yeah. And and the production weather, you know. Yeah, and the production doesn't look bad right now at this point.

SPEAKER_07 56:05

So um oh go ahead. Um we've talked about, you know, people know how to plant soybeans, folks know how to plant corn. Uh can you go a little bit more into the moist soil to help explain that a little bit to more to some of our listeners that don't know about it?

SPEAKER_05 56:25

Yeah, let me ask you too, when you include it in that, talk about the difference between Japanese millet and barnyard grass, which are essentially almost the same thing, but is there an a a prefer a preference for the the the barnyard grass simply because it was native or are they almost identical? So talk about that in the middle of that because if it's like a chance to plant what's essentially a more soil or not, you know?

SPEAKER_01 56:49

Yeah, so Japanese millet does come into play as one of my steps in the management process, uh for sure. But to explain it pretty simply what it is, if ever just about anybody that's been out in the woods at any point in their life, uh they know what a beaver wetland looks like. And in the summertime, that pool that the beaver has made behind that dam as temperatures rise and everything, that that wetland starts to dry up, gets mud flats around the edge, and vegetation grows up. So that vegetation that grows in that moist soil, things like barnyard grass, things like annual smart weeds and and uh um sprangle top and all those different plant communities, that plant sedges, grass sedge, and and wetland type annual forbs. So all those things. And so basically, all moist soil management is is let's let's mimic that natural cycle of a wetland, of that wet, dry, wet through the year. So we build levees, flood a place, and then we use water control structures to slowly draw that water off in the spring and summer to mimic that slow of you know, through evapotranspiration and everything, the the uh what a beaver wetland does, to slowly do and create those moist soil conditions to stimulate the growth of those grass setch and annual forb kind of communities. And so it's real, so the speed and timing of that when you pull that water off, um, it's an early successional plant community. So just like if you're uh managing for quail or turkey and and you have a different burn rotation for what you want to have to keep it in brood rearing cover or nesting cover or what have you, and of course that looks a little different uh on the nesting cover from bobwites to to uh to turkeys, but you know, you have a disturbance regime to keep it into that state that you want it. Same thing with moist soil. Every, you know, year and a half, two, three, at least once in every three years, you probably need to just disturb that soil and keep it in that grass stage, don't let it succeed into shrubs and and perennial vegetation. You want as much annual because that's going to be your seed-producing ones. So it's about the drawdown, it's about some type of disturbance at some point, uh, and usually let the plant community dictate when you do that. So if it's looking pretty rough, getting more perennials, maybe it's time I need to run a disc through this thing. And I love Japanese millet as my plan B. Uh or I just now I'm in late summer and I just now got access to manage this thing, or I just bought this place. It's a great to get some food on the ground this year. It's the best thing you could you can do. Because it is essentially this it's it's a cultivar of barnyard grass. So essentially it's the same thing. Uh, the only thing I would say that makes moist soil better than that is because you've got the rest of the plant community. That's right. You've got all the other grasses and diversity. You've got the diversity. You're gonna have a monoculture of the millet, which is still outstanding for ducks. It's just, you know, from a habitat quality standpoint, it's better to have all that. But I like if I'm in late summer and I'm looking around and I've got sump weed and and and red vine and a whole bunch of other stuff, and uh a lot of little tiny uh sedges that aren't nut sedge or something that I think is gonna be really good, then I'm gonna say, well, let's just diss while we're still in the planting window for Japanese millet, let's diss this whole thing, let's plant it to mill it. We'll have food for this year. And then we've dissed it, so we've gotten soil disturbance. And and when we draw this thing down next year, it's gonna be drawn down off that ground that we just disturbed, and we're probably gonna have a better plant community. So uh it's it's mostly about just like I said, water drawdown, timely disturbance, and really about monitoring, learning what those plants look like at all the various growth stages and being able to walk out there in the summer and be able to see do I have a whole bunch of like coffee weed or cockle burr or something that's coming up? Do I need to spray that?

SPEAKER_05 1:00:55

Man, they hate cocoa burr.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

Yeah, I hate cockleburr. Well, the duct tape, the duct tape.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:00

Coffee weed, I think, is a little bit of a shelter. Because they can still swim through it most of the time, but they hate cockle burr. Oh god, they do.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:07

And like I said earlier, I was a golden retriever guy. I hate coffee weeds. Yes, sir. But uh uh I've come around uh a lot with with coffee weed, and uh um I've had a lot of people, like I remember making a post on our Extension Game Bird page about you know, a little bit of coffee weed's okay as long as it's not over 25-30 percent of the unit, you know, it's providing some overhead cover, probably screening cover, you know, for avian predators, because other than us shooting them, that's probably their number one worry is an avian predator. And most of the time that coffee wood's coffee weed still has good food underneath it. And so um, I was like, I I like a little bit of coffee weed, and I have a lot of people like, man, I I know that's probably right, but I just can't come around to liking coffee weed.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:55

Well, it's so hard to control, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:57

Yeah, so I got I'm dying to ask this one. So the one that's come on a lot, and I I've felt like it was good, but how does say, how does uh uh when you rate the um moist soils, like give give me kind of your your preference on down. So uh the one that's almost becoming invasive that's so prevalent around here now is sprang-top. And I mean, you can you can just let the water off, or you can, you know, you could even go out there and disc something and it gets wet and comes up, and it's gonna be more of the grasses than it used to be, a lot more barneary grass, more sprang top. It's just everywhere. Yeah. And so how how does it rate compared to like barneard grass?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:37

It's I I think sprang top and panic grass are kind of in that same place as far as they're really prolific seed producers. The seeds are not as large as a as a very tiny, yes. Yeah, they're not as big as that barnyard grass seed. Ducks still respond to them great. The big thing with sprangletop is it really I think of sprangletop mostly dominating in those real late drawdown time frames. So uh, like if you wanted to mix it up a little bit, changing when you draw down on some stuff can kind of help prevent a little bit of that uh to kind of increase that diversity of maybe some more barnyard grass, some more annual smartweed. But um they I I think all of those rank in my top. I mean, I love I like Springle Top, I like panic grass, the annual panic grass, annual smart weed, perennial smart weed's awful.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:29

The pink the Pennsylvania smartweed is the pink or purple and I don't it doesn't come on till late.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:36

Yeah, it depends on uh the site, you know, a lot. I hate I said depends again on that uh it does depend on the site because I have some places where it responds awesome early. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_05 1:03:49

And and some place where it's all mine or late, and it and if it has a little water standing on it, it'll take out almost all the other, and it'll be just nothing but smart weed. So um, but what other what other beneficial like um broadleaves are there? Because I I kind of manage for grasses on the native foods, other than if I let get a patch of smart weed. Pennsylvania pink smart weed.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:13

So there's some other ones. There's like Tooth Cup, that one's a pretty decent one. Um there's some that we really don't know whether or how desired they are, but I you can imagine that ducks eat them because like I'm not a big fan of of uh you know um prickly cider or anything, but if there's some of that, I mean you gotta imagine if they'll eat tooth cup, they'll probably eat that. Um I so as long I think I think of broadleaves more of so same thing goes with pigweed, sumpweed, whatever. If it's not more than 20 or 30 percent of my unit, I'm not worried about it. Right.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:48

Because they attract bugs too.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:49

Yeah, because it attracts bugs.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:50

Yeah, but here's the problem here is that if you almost have to smoke the broadleaves to get anything else because you've got such a dominance of uh, especially like uh cookaburrs, but even all the other ones we talked about, and then like giant smart, which is worthless kind of, you know, in fact, it chokes everything out, they can't even swim in it. So a lot of places around here, we're just the weed capital of the world. We've got to do some work on that in a lot of places. So I I've learned if I can go to a place where and I honestly will survive for years too. It'll come back, it'll come back. Just like barnyard grass, maybe not quite as as well. But if you wait till later on and you've disturbed the soil, just let what comes up natural, like it is, and when you see it's just in, you know, you've got time. If it's infested with broadleaves, take out a bunch of it, not all of it. You'll end up with a bunch of good food.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

Oh, yeah. And so you can kind of spot treat those places, you know, and uh, you know, use you know, some kind of broadleaf specific herbicide on a portion of it and then let some portion of it go. A lot of times when I see places that I tell landowners, well, that's looking like that's coming up on some time to be developed. Disturbing it. Like I've had some places that are a monoculture of uh fall panic grass, and it produces some seed, not as much as the other panic grasses. Uh, and ducks, they'll eat it for sure. And I hate to disc under panic grass, you know, but I'm like, that's showing signs you need to disturb when you start getting perennials. Right. And so I'm a big fan of like kind of that fall discing before flood up, and just like don't treat it as like I'm resetting this whole unit, but I'm gonna reset this spot in the unit. So I'm gonna go out and disc a little pack. Uh, when I was at the state, I'd just be like, tell the managers uh when they'd ask about like, well, how do I do it? Do I do it in strips? I was like, dude, you can just go out there and have fun. You can draw, you can write your name and get lost in a disc. I don't care. Uh the more because when it's flooded, it's gonna have that hemi marsh op interspersion of standing vegetation and open water that's gonna uh attract birds that's gonna make birds think that's a place I need to sample. Because, like I talked about before, ducks select landscapes first and then they select the wetland and then they select the food patch. So anything you can do at those higher levels of selection to attract a duck to it, the better. You know, and that's one way of doing it. And it solves that problem of maybe fall discing and then let that slow slow drawdown happen that next spring on that disc soil. Yeah, you sacrifice some food because you did someone under, but you set yourself up for success and probably a heavier grass component in that type of scenario than you would have if you didn't do it.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:30

Talk about that uh spring drawdown, yeah, what that looks like.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:34

So um it of course varies with the layout of your wetland. You know, some some of them are could be zero, it could be zero grade field, it could be, you know, a lot of micro topography, you know. I say ridge swells, but you know, in delta terms, that's like a little bump. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a ridge. Yeah, that's a ridge in the delta. So um, you know, that kind of depends on what how water stays in certain places, but it depends on the plant community you want. If you want um sprang top and uh and uh heavier barnyard grass, more grass component heavy thing, usually those late drawdowns are the time to do it. But those are the riskiest ones too, because late summer, if you got something coming water coming off in June, late June, July, it could have the like what Toxie was talking about with just tons of sprawl or sprang top and and and that sort of thing. Or it could be all cocklebert or all coffee weed, because coffee weed loves when soil temperature jumps up through the roof. So it is a risky time, uh, but that's that those tend to respond better to that. A lot of your uh uh sedges and some of your smart weeds respond better if you were drawing down in March through April. Uh and then the what we call we like to call a mid-season is kind of like the least risky. You might get benefits of both worlds, is if you're like starting late April or sometime in early May and carry that through uh like now, you know, about the time you'd want to start a late season drawdown, you should be wrapping up that mid-season.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:18

Well, and you and you're talking about a couple uh an inch a week, a couple inches a week.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:22

So a couple these water control structures, we call them boards, but you know, they're just they might actually be wooden boards in somebody's flashbird riser. Yeah, we do. Uh I know that's what all mine on my farm are. I I don't have full round money. Uh yeah. Full round riser, they're metal boards, they're in the levee type of thing. Um, but yeah, those you can have them specially fabricated to make you for allow you to do finer scale, like maybe just two or three inch boards. Some of them, yeah. Six-inch boards is like kind of like a lot of the common ones that most people have. And so pull, pull that, wait a week, week and a half, go and pull another one. You know, it just really depends on that topography. And it that's where I tell people so much that moist soil management is a learn-by-doing process. I can tell you the tenets of moist soil management, these are the things you need to do, and this is the general timing of things, but every wetland's going to be different. You could do the same thing to that wetland, and on the other side of the levee, do the same thing, and you'll get different responses. And you've got to figure out why that is. Is it the topography? You know, is it the seed bank? What is it that's causing these issues? And so there is a tremendous amount of variation in that. And too, uh, I have a tough time with this as an extension specialist when I'm making publications and stuff. Uh, you know, and folks are like, well, what's the timing of these? And they're like, well, it's really, you know, like, are people wearing shorts yet? Right, right. You know, you're you're going off course it depends on latitude. Yeah, exactly. It depends on latitude, it depends on the weather, all those sort of things. Uh, but uh yes, a slow drawdown would be you're only coming uh a few inches off a week, week and a half. And like I said, depending on the topography and layout of your wetland, how that need how fast that happens. On a zero-grade field, that's gonna happen pretty dang quick versus a field with some slope to it. And I like a lot of wetlands that have those places that are lower than the pipe, so they do have some water that'll just has to evaporate because you might get some more emergent and some duck potato and things like that. You also have these little patches where you have water maybe in September when teal are coming through and you didn't have to pump anything. Uh if it doesn't get too not these recent years, like we were talking about, that's probably gonna go dry too. But uh a lot of that can help make a diverse plant community without you having to fine-tune your drawdown because your uh your your wetland was constructed in a way to let that happen by default.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:58

Bobby, how much is it? Your turn. Yeah, Bobby.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:01

Do you have a question?

SPEAKER_07 1:12:02

We'll let you talk for 45 seconds.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:04

Yeah. My question is contingent upon. What I'd like to ask is how much of your time do you spend in research? And do you is that something you really enjoy?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:15

Yeah, I I I uh I do enjoy research. Uh all the research that I have going on as an extension specialist, all my research uh I believe should be applied. Something that when we're done with it, it's gonna tell folks how to better manage for waterfowl uh or or quail or turkeys. Uh and so in addition to you know delivering to the public all the all the other research that's been done out there, but when I'm leading my own research, it's mostly obviously I'm more of a duck guy than I am anything else. So my research program is biased, biased heavily to ducks, but I do enjoy it because it allows me the like the project I'm doing right now with the GPS uh transmitters with Mallards and Pentail and Gadwall is something that Houston Havens and I talked about long before this technology existed. We were sitting in the Jackson office MDWF and PV, and like, man, if we could understand this, this would help us, you know, drive how we deliver habitat as far as where and when and at the scale from the region all the way down to the property level. And so we've been talking about this for yeah. And so a lot of my research research questions are pulling out of my career before I was in academia, like things I wish I knew to inform me on how to more efficiently spend the little the the finite conservation dollars we have in the most efficient way. And so that's what this project's about is how to how do mallards use our landscape? What is what is that? How much different is an actual wetland complex based on mallard GPS track mallards than what we have gleaned from those aerial surveys, that pie chart I was talking to you about. Well, what does that really look like on the ground to the scale of one mallard within its home range? Has anything surprised you? Uh yes, mallards are way lazier than I thought they were. So I've uh I've got mallards and it it seems to be very um landscape uh or uh at least uh dependent. Contingent. Let's say contingent. Uh so contingent upon the landscape, if you are in a real deep wetland comp like in Tallahatchie County, where they're like I talked about it being one of the, you know, kind of just a a very large wetland complex. If you are a duck in the middle of that, you don't have to travel far for your needs. And but then you might have a one that's in a property that has a lot of the things they need, and they may venture off a little bit more to uh to find moist soil or forested wetlands or something they're not finding on that property. Uh, and so there's a big difference in a home range in that mallard that's out there in this isolated patch may be closer to eight to ten mile radius. Whereas that one over there, I've had some that all winter long they didn't move outside of a mile and a half, two miles. So, but the vast majority of them are like I roost in this wetland, I spend my day in most of the day in this one, some of my day in this one, and I do this triangle every single day. And then the weather will change, or maybe it's shifting more towards this pairing timing in late winter, and then I start spending more time in the woods because I've got a girlfriend now, and so I spend time over here. Uh, and so you see some of those shifts happen based on biological requirements or weather, but they do not move like you think they do, they don't cover the ground that you would assume they do.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:51

All the more reason to establish that respond because they're more likely to stick around if you just don't put too much on them.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:58

Yeah, because as long as pressure isn't running them off, they could they'll hang out in that same pattern.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:04

I've kind of yeah, I would go over what I've seen about that. Um here's another question because we're gonna run out of time and I could keep you all. Yeah, it's funny. When we talk about ducks, it's like a time warp. I gotta get the time. I gotta get this in. You don't have time. Help me out right there, Richie. Cut it out. You ready to go to trivia, Richie? No. We have not talked about woods or timber at all. I did a little bit when you were out.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:26

Yeah, I still got questions over there.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:27

I know, so but I mean just assume you built a green timber reservoir of 200 acres or so in this part of the country. Just assume. What would you do to optimize it for them, make it more attractive, but also beneficial and all too? Leave it all big mature oaks, or would you diversify it some?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:48

Yeah, uh, that's a that's a great question. And uh for and GTRs are really tough because there's a long-term management and then there's the short-term, I want to shoot ducks in it, management. So uh long term, obviously annual flooding is not a good idea. You know, you'd want to have dry years and all that to kind of help make sure those trees.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:09

Well, nature's helped on that because we weren't able to f it didn't pump, so it didn't need to be flooded until way up in the season.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:15

So and so I do think that uh having um you know some str strategic openings in there uh will help with a duck access, but then some different plant communities. You know, you make a small selection cut and and have some some uh vegetation grow up in there, a lot of it'll probably be similar moist soil plant communities that'll be beneficial. Um but uh I think obviously retain your oaks the best you can and or anything that that is uh you know um has duck palatable mast that's coming out of it, and that's mostly gonna be your red oaks. Um but uh that's the the main thing is making sure that they can access it. You have good at red oak retention from the long-term game that you have red oak uh seedling survival, like the next the next forest isn't gonna be all overcup and maple and any other kind of water tolerant species. Uh so yeah, you don't have to just leave it alone. I think there are ways to create openings and make duck holes out there that are also beneficial to the ducks as well, because they're gonna because most of our what we see ducks are accessing in these places, and those of us that grew up hunting public ground too know that that can be as little as like that old oak tree fell over out there in the middle of the woods. It's just big enough for those five mallards to get down in to open you up a half acre, quarter acre, whatever spot. And then those birds they'll they'll land there and they'll spend time in it, but then they're gonna, especially late winter when they're pairing, they're gonna swim off in those pears off in the woods and you know, and uh solidify and strengthen those pear bonds. And so just giving them access to the woods and making sure they still have the composition that's providing food, but just the structural thermal and pear isolation cover those provide make them the needed thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:11

Say how much is how much is food versus I guess food always trumps everything, but how much of it is like security? They feel better or safer there. There's a dimension of avian predator security with a tree over their head. And I didn't know if some is I know you don't want anything on the water that impairs swimming, or they don't like it. I I know that. But is it like some shorter brushier stuff here and there, something that adds security to them? Because I've seen crazy concentrations of ducks where I don't I don't think there was much food at all, but it had a bunch of this kind of buck brush stuff. Yes, there was just like a complete canopy over their head, pretty good size area, but open to swim anywhere they wanted to, and honestly, uh it once and it was a really cold year, and they kept it open at multiplied. It's maybe the most single ducks I've ever seen anywhere in my life.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:03

Scrub shrub is one of our, I think, the most overlooked component of a wetland complex. And I think when we do that pie chart, we kind of lump scrub shrub and forested wetlands in there, and it's a huge part of that pie. And I hopefully we'll find that kind of like I said, detail out what that really looks like from actual bird use from individuals. But from what I'm seeing, you know, scrub shrub is. I mean, I one of my biggest catches this year on our research was in the middle of about a 200-acre scrub shrub that my technicians probably still hate me for because you had to go a mile off into it to get to the trap. And uh so, and I wouldn't let them use the UTV because I thought it'd scare all the ducks off, you know, that were leading out.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:46

I bet they do.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:47

You gotta walk in there, huh? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:50

So uh I think it's actually on, they probably won't film the end, they won't show the whole filming into it, but I think it's gonna be on Mississippi Outdoors uh trap we ran in that in that uh that spot. But that was the most ducks, you know, that I've seen in one wetland, you know, in Miss in the Mississippi ever in my life. And I think it lacks some of the things that a big, you know, the big woods have, but I think it provides those same habitat functions. It's thermal cover. There's places for those pears to isolate in there. And I think the woods, especially in late winter, become that place that birds have to go to. And whether that's big timber and a green tree or a naturally flooded bottom land, or whether that's a scrub shrub wetland full of uh buttonbush and alder and all that stuff, that that scrub shrub is highly, highly overlooked and underrated from a lot of people. I think it is a very important component and hopefully we'll tease out just how important that is with what we're doing. But we're having tons of use of those types of wetlands. Like past a certain point in the winter, we'd have ones that they spent every single day in those until they left and they at night they went off in moist soil units and fed all night.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:05

So based on whatever if you did have a 200-acre GTR, would it be cool to have a couple 10 or 15 acre cutovers that are coming up in button bush and stuff?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:17

It could be, yeah. So anything that's the thing, it's hard to establish, you know, because a scrub shrub wetland is such a you know unique natural feature that kind of comes out of these certain conditions. And so it is hard to build it.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:30

But what what what starts a scrub? Is it a seed that floats in? Yeah, so it's could you start your own Dudley's that someone could grow? Yeah, we're growing buttonbush. Y'all sell button bush and stuff, yeah. Button bush, same thing. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:42

That's what I grew up calling buck brush, yeah. Button bush. So button bush, alters, things like that. Just maintain the conditions that allow survival for those those plants. You know, don't let them get too dry, all those sort of things. So you can, not to say that you can't create it, you can. It's just it's uh we don't have the the you know the plan for it.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:03

Where I've started, I had our main sanctuary, and it's a pretty good size spot. Um, I decided to quit because we've been like uh, you know, we've been manipulating uh plants by the crop duster and then also planting with a crop duster. Um so I decided to back off on that and only do parts of it and let the rest go on its own. And it's developed a bunch of willows. Now, you know, and it at first it definitely was attractive. But I just wonder do am I gonna hurt myself over time if it gets too many willows?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:38

Yeah, that there's the there's a fine balance with with the willows. I like willows because they do provide that same kind of structure and function that the others do. It's just like you gotta kind of keep an eye on them, you know. And the same thing with uh uh with buck brush. At some point that can close in, right, you know. Uh and if you can get it dry enough and get access in there with just a little mulcher or something to go in and keep some openings in there.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:01

Yeah, it's easy to because you can't disturb the roots at all. You can't push them up, and that's against the law, but you could cut them. You can cut them, yeah. As long as you leave the root there. And so, yeah, that in the case. This thing we we dry it completely up, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:16

I have a ton of landowners that have that that I've worked with that we've we've uh gone in and created small openings and little pathways to those uh in buck brush and and even in the woods, you know, too in the bigger stands with a larger multure, obviously. Uh, but that's been the mulcher in the last few last decade or so has become like a huge tool of not just waterfowl management. Everything just texting the guy mulching right now. Yeah. And I mean, well, I like we did have to go through the growing pains of like folks being like, no, we're not gonna rent those out anymore because everybody burns them up. Yeah, yeah. Can't rent them, try it already.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:56

You'll burn them up.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:57

You that get the you gotta have the person, you gotta say, I got this guy that actually does know how to run them.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:02

You gotta watch, you gotta get out and check it every now and then for sure. Uh we want uh we've been running them for 25, maybe more years, and did burn one up.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:11

They are absolutely amazing for that type of work.

SPEAKER_08 1:25:14

The the the the spots that you were just talking about, we've always called them loafing spots, isn't that what we're talking about? So places ducks go to sink sanctuary in the middle of the day and just cool out and chill and pair up and hang out.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:26

It just it seems like mallards, especially, and you that's what speak to what what's the attractiveness of the flooded timber? It's not just the food because they're leaving it's like they just don't like to they'll go eat whatever, but they don't like to stay out on open water just because I think this I just is it not avian predators probably?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:45

Yeah, that's that's a huge part of it. And probably too, like before we got here and did anything, the only habitat out there was wet and forest, yeah, or scrub shrub wetlands. Never thought about that. Cypress tupelo breaks. Well, then maybe if a tornado went through a place, then you'd have moist soil communities for a few years. So tear them up in there.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:04

Yeah, and so every Yeah, they didn't know what corn was 200 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:09

No. And so it I always kind of tell folks like the wooded uh uh wetlands are the one-stop shop habitat for a mallard. The mallard literally can find everything it needs in its life history in those types of wetlands, it doesn't need all of that. Uh, but that's assuming there's some moist soil component and other things, like there would have been historically, like I said, from uh natural events, blow down, blowing trees and all that. But uh so yes, there is some of that loafing kind of thing, but ducks, I I always I tell folks it's especially this research has been more enlightening to that, as far as they're not on the schedule that we put them on. You know, it's like when a landowner asks me, like, these birds are coming in here in the afternoon. How do I turn this into a morning spot? I'm like, You're not going to. Go hunting. Start hunting in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:02

That's the best way to turn them back into the morning.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:05

I was like, go, go shoot up, you know, shoot them well while they're there. But unbelievable how much turn they're getting. They will feed all night long and then sit in some cases. Like I'll have high use in these flooded standing cornfields at night and then daytime use in moist soil and scrub shrub and forested wetlands. And that's not across the board all the time. That's just a lot of movement patterns are like that. And now the weather and the timing of year can shift that. But yeah, ducks will eat at night. You know, you're assuming they're coming into your place to feed every time. They may not be. I mean, I've I eat a lot at night. I've shot ducks at daylight that had full crops. Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:45

So I can't tell you how many times we've gone in to a pond around here that was absolutely just like so many ducks. It was just almost breathtaking. And daylight breaks and I mean, if you want to wait long enough, it starts to get pretty good up in the morning. We really don't need to do that. And there's no duck. We have a terrible hunt. It happens all the time. And I think our I would say from my learning, our best success is to not even hunt your food places. And you and try to develop lots of little preferable loafing spots, as Lenny said, or hidey holes or things, and watch for them using those and hunt those. And honestly, you'll have better hunts because you're hunting all the smaller, more confined areas, so much easier to for them to decoy into it. And then even, you know, because I say to people all the time, go to your best food spot, go before daylight, the black dog, get ready from the first legal shooting time, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. You probably stick around a little too long. They gotta eat every day. And so if you're gonna shoot them like that, at least you ought to wait like Big Duck used to. He'd wait till about eight o'clock and then he would go. They'd already eaten. He runs them all out with like whatever, just a you know, an Argo or whatever it is, or a Ranger or four-wheeler. And then, you know, you hunt as they trickle back in, but you didn't cut them off from eating. Yeah. You cut them off from eating subsequent days, they're gonna go find something else, and you're done. You don't have them anymore.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:13

Absolutely. And it's the same way, no matter where you are in the flyway. I think about in the prairies, uh, when there's you know, when they're dry field feeding a lot. Oh, yeah. And then they're then they're going to the wetlands for water in the middle of the day, and that's usually where they're roosted too. And I used to make me so angry when I'd have scouted out and found this perfect field and I knew where the transition wetland or the roost wetland was. And then that next morning happens and not a dang duck shows up, and then you drive to the wetland you know they were roosted on, and there's some cats out there tried to hunt it that morning because they saw them there at the middle of the day, and like they weren't gonna be there in the middle. You know, they weren't gonna be there in the morning. They were there when you got there and you ran them out, you know. And so, same thing here in the same type of scenario. Uh, and I have a lot of landowners I work with that do they do a lot of moist soil and hot cropping, and they only hunt the moist soil and their wooded wetlands. Right. And they don't even hunt uh the crops.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:11

Yep, I know quite a few that do that. Some of the more hills and stuff. I would just say if you can, I mean, not everybody can do all these things, but if you can develop the smaller spots that they use, now I would say they might not come back to it as quick when you shoot one of them, but you're gonna keep more ducks on your place if you have a really good food source that you don't bother. Exactly. That I know for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:35

And I think uh hopefully that's what a lot of our our work is gonna kind of show, not just for mallards, but for Gadwall and and pentails too, uh, is because that composition, like we were talking about mallards being lazy and not moving around, pintails are the exact opposite. They're moving all over the place. I've some of my pentails would fly like 50 miles south, and then as soon as it there was a rainstorm coming to the north of them, they bounce back up because they're chasing that shallow water, because that's what pentails like. At least that's my assumption of what they're doing.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:06

They seem to like freshly flooded more than anything I've seen. Maybe, maybe some of the till a little bit, but yeah. It just seems like whenever you know we'll have a flood here and it displaces so many of our hunting in this good, but you'll see so many more pentails than normal on the freshly flooded real shallow stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:23

Yep. Pentails and shoveler. See them together a lot in the body's favorite.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:28

Well, we end up getting more and more shoveler late in the season, later in the season. Is that normal? Hollywood.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:33

Yeah, uh it to some extent is uh I don't know, is that over this way or in the Delta?

SPEAKER_05 1:31:41

Here.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:41

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:42

We seem to have more and more and more late, and we'll get to where there's quite a few late in the season.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:47

I uh I don't know as much about their migration chronology, but I always joke that I that I was gonna do my PhD in chevlerology because it was my favorite duck.

SPEAKER_08 1:31:55

I love a shovel now. So let me ask this.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:58

We we talk about creating spots, feeding spots, hot foods, we talk about creating loafing areas, managing moist soil and all this, but we never talk about roosts. And I I would just love for you to kind of explain are are these roosts that are out there on the landscape kind of historical roost, and maybe ducks from two or three counties come to this one area and roost there? And are is there a way to create a roost or yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:26

So that's uh that's a great question, and I think it ties real well into what we were just talking about uh because I think we get our minds in this roost, that's where they go to sleep kind of thing, that mentality. And like why are they coming in here to the afternoon or why are they coming in here at night? And I mean, they could be going and feeding all night long, and where you're coming to in the days where they're gonna hang out and sleep and do whatever. And so the so roost really isn't uh not always as we think of it as a roost. Like they're going in there and loafing and sleeping through the night. Uh, but uh certainly for some species like wood ducks, y'all know the roost it looks like for wood ducks. And I'm sure some of those are very historic. Yeah. Given that a lot of those birds are here all the time. All the time. And I'm sure there's some uh that function that way in um in the Mississippi Delta. And there's some I feel like, you know, especially with the pressure landscape, that some of those birds might now have kind of like on that flip side, they've they've developed these places. That's where I go and hang out all day. You know, because I think about growing up and I used to stop off the highway and just glass buzzered by you there, you know, and see all the ducks on it, you know, and I'm I can see that place as a as like birds just can go there out there and hang out and chill out along those peripheral edges and all that cover. And because there's all around them places to go spend their nights uh, you know, and feed. Yeah. And uh so it's not really like you're creating that rest place for a roost at night because they may not be actually using the landscape like that. They may be feeding all night long in a flooded cornfield and then going to some historic scrub shrub or something like that, uh, or moist soil impoundments or something to spend their their day in and and and feed, get the uh added nutrients they're not getting out of those crops they spend all night feeding in, and stay warm and and hang out, you know, and and rest, and maybe you know get off with their hens and isolate themselves.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:35

What you're telling everybody should listen, should know. Don't assume anything, yeah. And watch and observe your place and understand all of these could happen to you. They could flip and be nocturnal. It did seem like that the warmer it gets, they slow down, they seem to be a little more nocturnal for some reason, maybe. But other even than that, just don't assume the old status quo. They when we first started this podcast, we used to say it every time, we've quit saying it, but the one golden rule of all of this is nature always adapts. Exactly. Ducks are so adaptable because they're migratory, and so watch for what your ducks do because it's going to change depending on the conditions.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:12

That that is an excellent point, and that's the thing I can tell most landowners to do is watching where how those birds when they come to a place, when they're leaving a place, and let you the best you can kind of figure out what that pattern is of those birds, and then how you can manage pressure to be able to make use of that without blowing your birds out. Like mine's not because I'm actually managing it that way, it's just because I don't have much time to hunt. But I may hunt like the closest I might hunt a spot together seven to ten, twelve days, you know, because I just week limited to weekends or just whenever I can go. And so I have all this sanctuary time, and I can quickly see my neighbors that that's where they're going in the evenings, and they're coming to m to across the road to me in the day because they're not getting shot at. And it's nothing that little river is not what I would say is excellent waterfowl foraging habitat. So they're spending their night over there getting getting good, well fed, and they're coming to that place to loaf and all that. And so I know what that pattern is around my place, so I know I can't hunt that more frequently. Right. But I do know that's how they're using it. You know, they're coming in there in the morning, they're coming from that direction, and as long as something doesn't change on my neighbor the way they're doing things, I can I can take advantage of this. So the more you can observe and watch how ducks and help they could change the next week and do something totally different. But as long as you're keeping that your eyes peeled and trying to keep track of what those birds are doing, the more success you certainly can have and be adaptive and don't be like, I just want to hunt my woods today. Well, you might not kill anything. Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:59

I'd be hunting a lot.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:01

How quickly you can hunt it again, especially if it's food, to me is directly depending, you said like whatever week and a half or more, maybe two. I would say a week for us in good conditions, if we have hunted it and got out of there quickly. If we go, and even if we don't limit out, we just don't stay real long and pound it out. The more the longer you stay, the longer you're gonna have to wait. So if you wanna you don't have a lot of places and you want to be able to hunt them more frequently, get in there and get out. If you don't kill a limit, don't sweat it. What's the big deal? I mean, it'll make a difference, I promise you.

SPEAKER_08 1:37:33

Right, and that I mean, going on the limit thing, it goes back to the kind of the approach we've been preaching on on turkeys, you know, self-regulation. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 1:37:40

I know I I mean I want to limit out on ducks, but you know, we're just trying to change opinions so that it's not about how many, it's about how many you have.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:50

You know. And I've got uh uh several folks that I've talked to now that they have they have a number or a time, whichever one you get to first. That's a great idea. That's a great policy. Yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:03

What's the time usually?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:04

Uh I think they said if they don't if they don't have uh their birds by like uh 9.15, they start backing up.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:10

Yeah, I would even push it earlier than that myself, but that's good to have a limit because it is fun with the right crew and taking the stuff with you, just go to a place and hunt all day. And I mean, I think there's places maybe conducive to that, but it's not on your place where they're feeding. That is not the place to do that.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:27

Umly thing I know we've talked a lot, but the only thing I'm kind of wanting to know is somebody that's never really done this, say you got 40 or 80 acres you just got, and there's a little spot that looks like you could put a little dam or whatever. Uh other than calling somebody like wildlife investments, you know, uh somebody who specializes in that, where do you start? Like, you know, some people don't even know what a washboard riser is and where you get one.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:57

So uh two great places to start are uh the waterfowl program at MDW FMP, Houston and Darren. Uh they are great, they're willing to come out to do site visits with you and all that. Or any other state DNR or any other state agency if you're in another, because you'll have if if if that's not something the waterfowl program offers, they certainly probably have a private lands division and probably in that geography they'll have a wetland person if they're in that kind of waterfowl portion of your state. Uh so that and NRCS to find out if there's any call share uh um or financial assistance that they can provide to you. Techn they certainly can provide a lot of technical assistance, even if the financial assistant programs don't fit your particular ground because of you know, require you know, cropping history or anything for certain programs. Uh, but equip, certainly there's some wildlife stuff in that uh under NRCS's uh programs, but they definitely give you a ton of technical guidance and you can get a lot of uh advice out of uh out of some of our uh federal and state government you know programs. And those they oftentimes have cost share, even the state agencies sometimes will have cost share. Mississippi does have one that some of our state duck stamp dollars uh fund a water control structure program. So if you have a place and they of course have to rank them because there's obviously a lot of folks that sign up for it, but you can get a water control structure for your wetland. And that's a big cost, you know, right there. And so, and along with that, when they come out to look and sign you up for the that program, you know, you got to get a site visit from Houston or Darren to do that. They'll sit, they'll talk through management with you while they're out there. And so those guys are amazing and they can really do a good job. Uh, that's a lot of what I did when I was with M D W F and P. We're doing those site visits all over the state and and helping folks uh find out things that they could they could do. Like that's where I said, you know, from the from the back 40 landowner to the 5,000 acre landowner, you know, those those folks are out there to help everybody that has some questions and wants some technical guidance. Excellent.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:10

One thing they did always for us, and we always got them involved, especially when Diddy was doing them. Um he loved, man, he loved building duck ponds. But they would always come out and map it out for you and tell you exactly what you're gonna have on the hydrology and what was optimum possibly because you're looking for honestly two foot water and less as much as you can. I know it's beneficial, maybe have a deep spot, it says open more in really cold weather or some of those things, but they would do they would give you the road mapping and stuff, you know, very beneficial.

SPEAKER_07 1:41:40

And I'm sure there's some legalities with with wetlands and water. So you you need to make a phone call before you before you dig.

SPEAKER_08 1:41:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly right. No, this has been good. Very good. It's funny how we're talking about these subjects. I mean, we look, we've been in here over two hours now.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:57

Yeah, we'll have to edit it now. 92 minutes. It only gives in 90s.

SPEAKER_08 1:42:00

Oh, what kind of clock is that? I don't know. Richie got it. Richie, what are you bringing up in here as false equipment? I got that from Amazon as a probably suggestion. No, of course.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:07

James, we're gonna have to get you back.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:09

Yeah, I'm just right down the road here.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:11

Yeah, no, yeah, right here. Oh, homeboy.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:13

Before we let him go, Richie, if you got a trivia question.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:16

Uh, yeah. So uh earlier you mentioned about snacks in the blind, fit you like eating figs, fig newtons in the blind. You know, uh I think a good combination with those figs would be some boiled peanuts. Man, no doubt. Darn right. We'd love those boiled peanuts.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:31

Combo coming.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:33

So our trivia is brought to us by our buddies at the peanut patch. Yep. Um, so and we had a listener who left a review. Somebody's listening. Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:44

Oh both of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:46

They watched us an episode on YouTube. They watched episode 451 on uh Cahabalilies. Oh, cool. Jamie Hummer O2V. Uh great episode. The Macio Gamekeeper Podcast has yet to let me down. Great job, gentlemen, and continue to advocate for our wild America. We're probably gonna let you down.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:07

Wild America for sure. And the Cahaba Lily one got a lot of figures. It really is very interesting. Kyle and David. Yeah, it's good stuff. All right, so uh before we ask the question, I want to just look around. Do y'all say lightning bug or firefly?

SPEAKER_08 1:43:20

My child asked me. Have you been talking to my child? Because we had this discussion at the house the other day. Yeah. I call them lightning bugs. Yeah. Lightning bugs, lightning bugs. Okay. So they fire from the same time. You're from like Montana or something. Go ahead, bankie. Are you a Westy or a Yankee?

SPEAKER_02 1:43:40

Uh so true or false, many species of fireflies are declining in many areas. So say tree.

SPEAKER_08 1:43:51

I tell you, I've noticed this in my house, but this year uh they are back. Now I live in the river bottom, but they I've just as of this week, they've been lighting it up. Well, I hadn't seen them this much in the past. So hopefully they're on a boom.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:03

I've never had a problem because I hadn't owned a mower in about 15 years. Yeah. There you go. I live in excellent firefly lightning bugs. Lightning bug, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:13

Yeah, well, it's sad that they but we might be.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:16

Absolutely, yeah. That's that's something uh that one of those things often when we have those kind of conversations of like things changing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:25

And that's something you know from your childhood that you can we still have some, but have you ever seen um the synchronized? Oh, yeah. At the yeah, they say there's like a couple places in the world, and one of them is I don't have Tom Bigby here. Daniel witnessed it. Yeah, Daniel's jealous. Yeah. He said it was a lot of.

SPEAKER_08 1:44:40

Actually, walking up from the Barton Ferry boat ramp, I believe.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:42

My my buddy John Hart and I, uh it's been about 20 years, but we were out at my farm in Holmes County um at night on the four-wheelers, you know, just riding around. Yeah. And we parked parked in a big field. We called it the big field. It had a bunch of hardwoods on the back of it. And we started noticing these lightning bugs, and it reminded me of like that movie Fantasia, you know, the Disney movie Fantasia. It was like it was bright outside. There was so many of them. There was probably like one on you know, every inch of every branch on those trees. Yeah, wow. I when I was in entomology at Mississippi State, I mentioned it to Dr. Baker, and he said that happened. It's like a just a crazy hatch happened, and you just got lucky.

SPEAKER_08 1:45:34

But that it is I think we had a hatch this year, at least out where I am.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:37

So yeah, they're a lot of fun. So that what read one of the things that's causing their decline there, would be a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:42

Uh in the U.S. about 18 species are considered considered to be at risk of an extinction. Whoa. Uh-huh. And so uh habitat loss, development, urban sprawl, destroy the destroy the riding wood, leaf litter, and moist marshy areas where fireflies live and lay their eggs. Well, no wonder. That's exactly my. I bet the mosquito truck doesn't help either. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:05

Nope. That's true. We gotta make those just go away. James Calicut.

SPEAKER_06 1:46:11

Yeah. People can call you and you can you call them back. That's what you do.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:18

Can you share your phone?

SPEAKER_01 1:46:20

I'm just my office number, it's on the website. But it's quail, it's upland birds. Yeah, so waterfowl and upland game birds. So that's everything from morning doves, quail, turkey. You'll be back. Oh, we didn't even try to be back. No, Woodcock, yep. Uh Woodcock. Y'all need y'all need to show a lot. We do.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:36

We've done one.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:37

Mark and I will come and do a woodcock episode too.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:38

Yeah, we need to go hunting with y'all. Yeah, we do. We need another.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:41

Me and Mark and Adam Butler and about five other people in the state that are active Woodcock. Yeah. I'm sure it's more than that. You know what?

SPEAKER_05 1:46:49

I noticed some late like late year this year, for the first time in a while. I've noticed quite a few this year.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:54

So since the podcast I've done it, yeah. But yeah, that, and we also have our social media accounts that we put out a lot of information about. Try to do timely posts about the time of the year to be thinking about habitat management for all the suite of waterfowl and upland birds. Uh we give updates on our research, you know, tracking uh, you know, we've been posting a lot about the migration and and where our birds have settled into the breeding grounds up there. Uh but they it's Mississippi State Extension Game Bird program on on Facebook and and Instagram. And uh so we got a website in the works, but we're just not we haven't haven't finished. We do too. It's everyday.

SPEAKER_07 1:47:35

All the university podcasts. Y'all have got a whole suite of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:38

Yes, and we have Game Bird University Podcast. Uh, and so it's part of the uh Natural Resources University Podcast Network. So we uh uh we talk about all things game birds on those. So if anybody wants to tune in on some of those, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:53

Good stuff. Yeah, we'd like we're we we're mark Mark always has some really interesting motions to come following him. Keep up here. You're one of those guys. All right, guys. Well, thank you for coming over. Thank you offer to come back. If you have any more ideas, I mean we'll get you back, but it didn't mean to be a good one. Oh, you'll be back.

SPEAKER_07 1:48:10

I feel like I need to take a nap after that.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:12

That was a good one. That was a good one. The more questions we ask, the more I want to ask. Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:16

Why don't you say goodbye, Dudley? Goodbye, Dudley. Get us out of here, Richie.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:20

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Game Keeper Podcast. And be sure to tune in again. Subscribe to Game Keeper Farming for Wildlife magazine, and don't miss the Mafio Properties Fistful of Dirt podcast with my good buddy, Ronnie Custer.