Jim Ronquest, Drake Waterfowl

Our buddy and Drake Waterfowl’s Vice President of Development Jim Ronquest joins the show again. He’s fresh off the NWTF Convention and shares insight into Drake’s new campaign, “Make Boat Ramps Great Again.” We also dive into Jim’s square-body Chevrolet truck restoration, duck boats, reuniting with John Stephens, and the future of RNTv. Be sure to stick in until the end, where we talk about what worked with last year’s habitat projects, what’s on the list this year, the mast crop bust, and other oddities from this past season.

Thanks to our sponsors: Lile Real Estate, Sitka Gear, Perfect Limit Outdoors, Tom Beckbe, Ducks Unlimited, KC Laser, Greenhead: The Arkansas Duck Hunting Magazine and Purina Pro Plan. 

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Transcript

Since 1937, Ducks Unlimited has been the leader in waterfowl conservation, with over 16 million acres of habitat conserved. DU's supporters and volunteers have led the charge to fill the skies with waterfowl, today, tomorrow and forever. You too can play a role in leaving a legacy for the future of waterfowl hunting. To find an event near you or to join our volunteer team, go to www.ducks.org/volunteer. Ducks Unlimited. Conservation for a Continent.

Welcome to the Standard Sportsman podcast. The show features trending topics, touching all aspects of duck and goose hunting in an effort to motivate others to leave the resource better than they found it. Hosts, Cason Short and Brent Birch, are lifelong Arkansas hunter conservationists, delivering thought-provoking discussions with engaging guests before, during and after duck season. Thanks for spending time with us today. Now let's jump into today's show with the guys.

Hey everybody, it's Brent. Cason back with another edition of the Standard Sportsman podcast. We're hurdling into the spring, I guess, because we've got past some snowfall a week ago and now we're at 75 degrees. And that makes us kind of shift gears with what we talk about on the podcast because we've got some episodes coming up. I think we're going to talk about some Habitat a little bit, some projects. Probably we both got going and then some things, you know, maybe some other things that need to be tended to this time of year as we kind of hurdle into spring and all that. But today we're going to talk about some fun stuff with a buddy of both of ours that we've had on the show before and excited to get to visit with him now that his stuff is kind of slowing down for a minute before he gets into his other passion and we'll talk about that a little bit too. But Cason, why don't you introduce our guest?

Well, yeah, you kind of open the door to what he and I were just talking about when you're talking off-season maintenance and stuff. I mean, I think Jimbo and I are thinking about fuel injection and tires and all that truck stuff we were just talking about. But joined again with my good friend Jim Ronquest. Jim, welcome to the show.

Hey, guys, thanks for having me. As always, it's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, we'll save the truck talk for another day. Maybe somebody will listen if you and I go off in the weeds on that subject.

I'm in. To your idea there, I'm in. I love talking trucks and whatnot. We can get down into nitty-gritty gears and tires and all kinds of cool stuff.

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That's okay. We'll have fun doing it.

That's a fact. You guys have been busy, man. Last week, I guess it was last week in the ice or recently, you guys were busy. NWTF looked like a good turnout. How was that show for y'all?

Oh, gosh, it was huge. You know, we come right out of, we had duck season and then we had the youth hunt, veterans hunt. So that ended one day. So we had to have the truck at the NWTF show on Monday, February 10th, I think is when it had to be in Nashville. So we ended duck season on the 31st. So I got it kind of cleaned up with a two-inch water pump, you know, got it cleaned up and most of all, the blood off everything. And you know how that goes. And then got it better cleaned and got it hauled to Nashville. So man, we rolled right out of duck season in the basically turkey season, getting everything ready for NWTF. We had a huge show over there. Huge crowd of folks. That place, whether you're a turkey hunter, duck hunter, deer hunter, if you enjoy the outdoors and you want to see new stuff, man, go to the NWTF show. It is huge. We were doing some hat giveaways and we used the RV truck as a stage place to, we had people up there playing music. We were doing giveaways off of it. And we was doing a hat giveaway deal. And I was standing on top of the truck with Audrey Wicken and my daughter, Jenna Bug and Lindsey Smith and one of the other buddies, Mary Catherine. And just, I just kind of quit chugging hats and just paid attention to how crazy the crowd was. And it was like in 360 degree circle, man, people were shoulder to shoulder. This place was unbelievable packed. So yes, it was great. Got home to that. Of course, we had the cold front, had a big photo shoot. Last week in the sleet and woods freezing up. It was kind of cool and loaded up and had a little personal vacations past weekend, went to the Bourbon Trail up in Louisville, Kentucky. So there you are. That's the up to speed with what I've been doing since the duck season went out.

Well, that's kind of cool, man. I think for those who especially watch social media and see the truck and how cool that's been this year, I bet they all underestimate the amount of effort that goes into cleaning that thing up.

Well, you know how that goes as well or better than anybody.

Well, I got tickled when you mentioned that. I don't think I've ever told you this story, but you know that power stroke out there, we used to run in the rice fields a lot. We don't really anymore, but it was about this time of year, several years ago, and we were taking it into Brinkley to get the boggers taken off of it. And we roll in to the gas station there in Brinkley and jump out, go, I don't know, buy some scratch offs or some worthless waste of time. And we get out of the truck, this guy coming out the front door starts yelling at us, he's like, man, your truck's on fire. Man, what the hell is he talking about? Step out and sure enough, all that rice stubble in the wheel, it caught on fire in the brake rotor. So we just jumped in and went on to Bobby Hennard and had them deal with it, but it was out by the time we got there. I figured as long as you kept driving, it wouldn't be too bad.

Man, that's probably a good point. But it's amazing where stuff can get for dang sure.

It does. And it is, I mean, for us, it's a couple of day project tearing a truck down, basically greasing every surface that mats to another surface because they will rust up and lock up. And it's all fun and games on social media. But man, they are a lot of work.

But sure enough, but it's fun.

Yeah, you may for those that don't aren't aware of, you know, you've referenced the truck and it's a pretty slick looking machine. And I mean, there may be an element of people listening to the show that don't know what Cason's talking about with his trucks. But you may paint a quick picture of this truck you reference and how you towed it around to shows and everything else. What you're dealing with that may paint the picture since we don't have any visual here with the podcast.

Got you. So, all right, Cason, we're doing our truck show anyway. Sounds like.

You just can't avoid it.

You can't. Not when we're talking. But anyway, what we've got, it's a 85 square body Chevrolet. The cool thing about it, it was the military version that General Motors made for military use and they really called it a ton and a quarter. It was called the CUTV M1008. So the good thing about the old truck is the axles and suspension and gearing was stuff that you would want to do to one anyway. It's got locking differentials on both ends, 456 gears, the kind of cool stuff you'd want to do to it. But along the way, the previous owner swapped the old 6.2 diesel out to a big block Chevrolet motor. And we've had a custom bed built with it with our friends up at DNW Outdoors and Automotive in Jonesboro, custom built, a flat bed. We've got accessory drawers, drawers you put shotguns in. We've painted it in Mossy Oak Treestand. Got a big Drake logo on each door. Winches on each end and one in the middle. So, you know, if you hoist in a deer or something up on the bed, you got something to help pull with or a four-wheeler or another boat. Or if you need to pull somebody out, do some recovery work with it, we're covered to do some of that. Just a cool truck, you know, it's a, and it's a, it's, you go to a show, people love it. We got a PA system in there. We got sirens and horns and you can make it make all kinds of rackets. And that's kind of fun. You be at a show and you turn it up and you start hitting all them different sirens and beep, beep, whoo, whoo, whoo. Everybody comes to see what's going on, but it's just a fun old rig.

I got a mental image of Jimbo playing with it there in the middle of the show in Nashville.

Oh, that's exactly what's going on. So we was giving hats away. So one of our young guys working for us, I said, all right, when I bang on the roof, I want you to start hitting every siren this thing's got. It's got like four or five, like Yelp, Ilo, Horn, and it makes all kinds of racket. And I mean, it's loud. So he would just hit every one of them, go back and forth through it, bom, bom, bom, bom, whoo, whoo. So people just come, you know, it's like a train wreck. You're gonna stop and look, right? So everybody came to it. We were giving away hats and having a big time. We had people singing on it. It's been a fun rig. It's got a little bit more to do. But again, the folks up at D&W Outdoors in Jonesboro have done a fine job on this old rig.

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That's cool. That's cool. I used to have one of those Japanese mini trucks.

Oh, them are cool.

Oh, it was so cool. I did the same thing, painted it, bottom land. You know, tricky, it was like 88 Suzuki Carry is what the model number was. But you know, it's just a little cab, but then it had a truck bed. And it was the farm I was hunting at the time, which is the one right there by your house. It was a great rig to hunt speckle bellies out of because you could load up that truck bed with all your stuff. But I had the same thing. I wired it to where I could hit a button, and it would either play Ducks Calling, Speckle Bellies Calling, or the Race or Back Fight song.

Awesome.

So I could hit a button in that thing, and I had a speaker mounted up underneath it that would crank off whichever one of the buttons I would hit. But I've since sold that to a buddy of mine because it doesn't really fit my current farm. But a similar kind of deal, kind of so cool to look at. And I think we even did a Green Head article about some alternate transportation. And we included the mini truck in that deal. But yeah, I had a lot of fun with that thing. And there wasn't too many places that thing couldn't go because it was so light. And it was four-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, manual shift. And of course, you drive on the other side. So you're on the right-hand side driving that thing. But it was a novelty for sure and a lot of fun.

I drove one once and it messed me up. Of course, I drove a four-speed forever. But I was used to shifting with my right hand. So you know the shift pad where you're supposed to be with your right hand. So it messed you up with your left hand where everything went or did me.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Fun little vehicle though.

Yeah. It's been all good. NWTF was a big time again. A lot of people, a lot of folks, a lot of interest in the brand, a lot of interest in not only our waterfowl stuff and new waders and all that kind of stuff, but our turkey line and stuff and old Tom. We did very well. Thanks for asking.

Hey, since you brought it up, tell us about your new waders. I saw the pictures. I know it's something that you've been pretty passionate about since you moved over there. Take a few minutes and tell us about those.

Yeah, man. Thanks for the opportunity. Your new waders are going to be pretty sweet. Of course, there's other people out there who's got really nice waders too. We've got some cool material in them. We call them the BMF line and stands for Ballistic Material Fabrication. Trying to be cute there with that deal, but using some Kevlar and the knee pads and stuff that holds up good. The material, the waders got just a touch, a stretch to them, which is really cool. The insulation in the boots has been what has amazed me. Now, I wore other brands of waders and never really had the cold feet. These suckers are just super duper warm. It has amazed me how warm they are. There have been a couple of different iterations of sampling and trying different things to land where we have landed. We are using magnets wherever we can instead of zippers other than the front zipper, naturally. Speaking of it, we have made it longer, where it makes it a little handier to do things without getting into detail there. We offer them, like other folks, you pick your foot size and then your height and your body size for sizing. They have turned out really well. I'm really excited about them. Warm, hard, all winter. Had a couple of different pairs, lonesome out, tried to beat them up best we can. Haven't had a failure yet, but it's a small sample size. We've kicked ice, walked through briars. I've done everything I could to within reason. You can always tear something up. I don't care who makes it. But as far as just everyday use and in and out of the truck, in and out of boats, wading through briars, sticks and whatnot, they've been excellent thus far. Again, the last ones we had, there were just a couple of changes coming for this fall. Time we get to the DU show in early August, we should have plenty of them for everybody to come look at.

Awesome, awesome. Okay, talk about what patterns you're going to have that in.

They're going to be available in Mossy Oak, original tree stand, bottom land, and we call it green timber. It's kind of a greenish brown solid color.

Okay, yeah, gotta have a solid.

Gotta have a solid, everybody likes solids.

Gotta have a solid.

Yeah, you bet.

That's right, definitely do.

Just to kind of tell a little story about the production, and so coming from working for a duck call company to working in equipment apparel side of things, well, that's, I'm not necessarily a product design guy. I work side by side with the product guys about ideation and stuff that I use in the field and would like to use in the field. And this is where you think you got a good idea, but it's really not. So I thought it would be really cool for the boot part of the waders to be the same height as the pair of knee boots, kind of bringing that joint up a little higher on the shin and thinking, man, that's going to be a great idea, you know, because we all wear knee boots when we're not wading around, right? Whether you're turkey hunting or duck hunting or in the blind, bad idea. Did not work at all. So it just, the time you fold the material down, it just didn't work out and it made the calves too tight for some folks that maybe had big calves. So, you know, there you go. Not every idea is a good one, but if you don't throw it against the wall, you don't know if it sticks or not. But we've got that remedy. Where we wound up, it's been really nice. It's a good slick finished fit where the upper meets the boot part and been really tickled with how well the boots wear and walk. For those of us, like us, that spend more than a couple days a year in a pair of waiters walking around, having a good foot makes a world of difference. They got built in or not built in, but we have orthotic insoles where if you're walking in the mud all day, you know how a lot of times the bottom of your feet or at least mine, at times would get cramped from walking in that loose mud. These fit snug, your foot's in good shape, your arch doesn't hurt, there's some arch support in there. Again, I'm very tickled with them. They're going to be nice. Thanks for asking.

Yeah. Well, I think we're seeing that a little bit more with, obviously, you have competitors. I mean, it's not like.

Oh yeah, there's other good stuff out there.

Not everyone's out there.

Keep your own.

But I think more and more are paying attention to the boot. It's in the comfort level. Then just, you know, worried about either how it looks or how it fits and all that. Cause I mean, it's not hard to tell, you know, duck numbers are down, but Duck Hunter Day's out there and the amount of time they're spending out there is getting pretty high. So I can totally understand and appreciate trying to spend a little effort on comfort. Cause yeah, old school boots, they weren't that in any shape, size or form. So yeah, I appreciate the efforts there.

That's right. And it does make a difference. You know, if you're wearing them, walking in them, guys that walk in will appreciate it. They're light and comfortable. The uppers are very flexible. They're going to fit nice where you're not feeling too baggy. I think they're going to be good. I think they're going to be good. So time will tell. We'll see how the rest of the world thinks about them. But I'm proud of them.

Yeah, sure, sure. Well, that's cool. That's cool. All right, so let's talk about something that came out of the event, kind of made some waves with everybody in the duck hunting community. It came out of a turkey event, but we're all aware that that's heavily attended by the waterfowl industry too. But let's talk about Make Boat Ramps Great Again and that campaign that Drake and some other partners are rallying around and kind of maybe explain who's involved, where it came from, and then and what the goal is.

Yeah, man, so we kind of internally, Darren Simms kind of come up with an idea. He's our head of sales at Drake. We've kind of badgering ideas around at the Delta Waterfowl Show last summer and got to meet and speak with the Louisiana governor when they're gaming fish people and was talking about different ideas. And of course, before Austin left gaming fish, I had talked to him about it, but kind of come up with an idea, said what can we do as a company to kind of give something back? How can we do something to help duck hunters out? You're not coming from hunting public ground all the time, and used to be anyway. But that being said, we thought what can we do to raise money to maybe fix up some boat ramps around the country, and what can we call it? So come up with the idea to make boat ramps great again. So it's kind of a partnership between ourselves, Prodigy Boats, Mossy Oak Camouflage. We've got hats made up to say that. So the way the program works, you buy a hat for $40. That puts your name in a drawing to win a boat. We're gonna give the boat away January 31st, 2026. So the end of this next duck season, we will give the boat away. And in the meantime, all the money we can raise, all the proceeds go straight to a separate account, if you will, that the more money we can raise, the more boat ramps we can work on. And there's some other people maybe talking about kind of, hey, we'll help you leverage that. Or, you know, if we can put so much money into a boat ramp, maybe we can get somebody else to kind of go along with us and we can do more. And maybe it's a couple loads of gravel. Maybe it's gonna be, maybe it's the idea, let's build a, like a gazebo or just an open air shed with a roof on it and a bench where if it's raining and you're wanting to swap your weight, take your weighters off or something, you can do that or we're just trying to ease into it. Let's see how much money we can raise in this next year. And then we're gonna see what we can do with it. Everybody we talk to about it, is excited about it. Again, we've talked to Game and Fish folks. They say, heck yeah, man, we'll help you identify boat ramps that need the help. And we're kind of working through some of the duck hunters in different places. That, hey man, this landing is a place we use a lot. It'd be great if we could fix it up or have a better parking area or being able to park and not get truck stuck. Or maybe it's an extension of the boat landing when the water gets down. A lot of it's just gonna depend on what kind of money we can raise for it. But I think it's gonna be something that'll make a difference around the country, giving people a little more access or making it easier for people to go duck hunting. Now, that being said, I'm sure I'm gonna get tarred and feathered from some people about that. I understand it, but there's hardly any secrets left anymore. There's no reason to tear your stuff up if you don't have to.

No, that's for sure.

You're trying to leave it better than you found it. So anybody that's gonna complain about that can just go on complaining.

Yeah, it's just gonna be what it's gonna be. No, I think it's gonna be a good program. We've had a lot of people, we're gonna have a lot of social media little video shorts where people, the name, who they are and we're helping make Boat Ramps Great Again. Even though it's like it's us, Prodigy, Mossy Oak and you know, we want everybody to be able to help out. So it's all good, gonna have some hats for sale. You can find the hats on the drakewaterfowl.com website, drakewaterfowl.com. You have to dig around there. I can look at it in a minute or I'm gonna be an event Saturday at WJR Customs up in McCray, a guy that paints a bunch of boats. He's a fellow that painted our truck, our duck truck we was talking about. We're gonna have some Saturday up there. And then, of course, the DU show we talked about a little bit earlier, we'll have some there also. So they'll be out and about different places that we are over the summer or the off season. And again, you can also find them on our website.

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Gotcha.

Well, so I got to ask this question because you brought up a pretty substantial brand name there when it comes to boats. Do you know specifically what model or what hull they're going to give away?

Yeah, we had that boat at the NWTF show. It's the Reno model. Okay. 15, I believe it was a 1554, a 1554, I believe. Oh, don't pin me down on these specs. But it was what they called the Reno model, 100 gauge boat. It was a 1554, I believe, or 1556, with a, I want to say it had a 60 Tahatsu on it. So the Tahatsu folks were involved there. Nice trailer. It's a pretty nice boat. I mean, it's a pretty nice boat. And there's a lot of, I know, good boat manufacturers out there that we've worked with also. But this is a pretty sweet rig.

Have you had a chance to run it?

I have not. I look forward to. We're going to run it for some video photos and stuff. And I look forward to running it. The boats in Mossy Oak Treestand and Prodigy does a great job with their paint and their fit. The finish is really good. Really nice looking rig. And it's all tricked out with flooring and all the lights. And it's got a kicking jack plate on it. It's a sweet rig. It really is. It made me go, hmm, wish I could enter the drawing for this.

Man, the fit and finish on those things is really, it's very impressive. And you and I both obviously have run other boats and other brands. And there's a lot of good stuff out there. But the Prodigy boats are well done.

They are.

We actually, we ended up with one of those for a few weeks there at the end of season. I was talking to our buddy, Ed Wall, and he needed a favor. He needed some images shot with it. So one landed at our place there for a couple of weeks.

Oh, cool.

Man, I'm a 18 foot flat bottom surface drive kind of guy, but I will say that new boat that they've got coming out that Reno is, it's pretty impressive. It was different than what we run. It doesn't actually fit what we do in terms of size and everything else, but it was nice and it would move.

Yeah. So you've run one of the Reno hulls.

Yes.

Okay, cool. I haven't, but one of the guys there that was with us said they ran one all duck season with a two-stroke on it and I was pretty impressed with some of the numbers they were spitting out that they were getting out of that boat. Made me want to go run it for sure.

Yeah.

Neat rig.

Yeah, they're neat. And again, obviously they're, you know, really have their roots in the custom manufacturing phase, you know, more than these bigger production companies. So they're, they're fit and finishes. I don't want to say better, maybe different in the way they do things. And you can see it with the stuff they turn out. Definitely a slick boat.

Yes. No doubt they put a lot of time into it.

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Yeah, so this first one goes to January 31st, 2026. So the end of this next duck season will give that boat away. And if the program continues moving like it is right now, we're going to be okay. We're going to be able to do some good and fix up a boat ramp or two. And then we can maybe get bigger next year and, you know, move around different places. I don't know, I don't really know the first boat ramp that's going to get a treatment. We don't, that's not yet identified. We're going to see how much money we can raise and then go from there. But we sold, just to give you an example, we took, I think, 250 boat ramp hats to NWTF and thinking, God, we'll never sell all them. And we sold all of them. So, people are excited about it. You know, when Brent hit me up the other day about the deal, there's a lot of people ask about it. So, we're going right, Drake.

I think, you know, between, talk about that or even the little survey we did the other day, the Waterfowl community is, there's an appetite for change or improvement or whatever. I think people, you're starting to see a tide change kind of in the, maybe a culture, I guess. And then maybe it's always been there. Maybe just people talking about it, it's really bringing it to the surface. But I commend you guys for this project. I think it's a good deal.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll see how it does. Time will tell. Yep.

Yeah, I would agree, too, that there's been some shift into looking at some ways to make things better, regardless of what it is. And so something like that, I mean, obviously playing off of the Make America Great Again, you know, that was obviously catchy. Getting the waterfowl industry folks involved at a huge show like NWTF was big. So I could see some momentum building behind that, and we're starting to see some momentum building around some other projects. And the collectiveness of all that hopefully does make Fill in the Blank Great Again. And I think that's a positive sign for the waterfowl and culture that we're looking at some of those things and taking some of those things to heart. And they're not just a fad or a thing to kind of quickly make happen. I hope this goes really well for Drake and the other partners. And y'all are able to do some good for years to come versus just a quick hitter kind of deal. So yeah, I would echo Cason with hats off to looking for an opportunity to make an improvement somewhere in the sport, regardless of what it is.

Thank you. Yeah, and that's again, that's the whole point. Try to give something back or try to help out where it benefits duck hunters.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. All right, so let's talk about another kind of, I'm not gonna call it a coup necessarily, but it sent some waves in the waterfowling world. And I think it's cool, I think it's cool from my perspective, knowing both of you guys as well as I do and as long as I have, that you and John Stephens are the bands back together. So to speak. So maybe talk about that. And you can obviously can't speak for John, but where Drake was coming from on that and what y'all's plans are, maybe some of the components he brings to the table, what y'all are planning on doing going forward.

Yeah, man. So it's something cool, something I'm proud of. It's of course worked with R&T and for R&T for many years, produced co-host R&TV. The idea come up about being a major sponsor of R&TV from the Drake side. So I've talked to John and Stahl about it, and we went back and forth for some time trying to put something together that made sense for both parties. So as we move into this summer, when R&TV starts airing late June, early July, we will be a major sponsor of R&TV, and of course all their stuff will be using this past duck season. John and Sean, we're all wearing Drake Apparel Duck Hunting. Getting that kind of switched over, something we're excited about. I'm going to be a part of a couple shows. We'll be doing more moving forward, kind of trying to work together again. To your point, the band's back together. We want to kind of promote that a little bit. Happy to be back in a position where I can work with folks that I worked with for over 20-some years. You know, that was a big deal right there for me. And really fun to kind of have that back together. Thanks for asking. And you'll see some collaborations moving forward, coming up between us. They have input naturally on product. Besides just myself, you know, both John and Sean and all of their crew will have product input back to Drake and vice versa. So I think it's going to be a good partnership. There'll be some good stuff come out of it in the future. And more than that, it's going to be a lot of fun had. And hopefully some pretty entertaining stuff moving forward.

The Standard Sportsman is brought to you by Perfect Limit Outdoors, the creators of the designated Puller Automatic Jerk Rig. This is one product creating motion throughout your entire decoy spread. Check it out at perfectlimitoutdoors.com and make the water move. No, I would think so. I would think so. And yeah, I got wind of it that he was leaving for Drake way before it was announced. And, you know, he was wearing his previous gear quite a bit, you know, on his social media. But then I noticed in the middle of all that, he slipped. And he had an image in there that you could tell he wasn't wearing the previous brand. And I don't know. I guess you got to be pretty dirty about all this stuff or whatnot to catch it. But I bet I happened to catch it. And I was like, oh, I wonder how many people noticed that don't know what, you know, what's about to go down. So, yeah, I figured y'all were y'all were doing all kinds of stuff during this past season. So you be able to announce it and then TV show everything else going forward. It'd be in the Drake gear.

So yeah, I think it will really show up more this next duck season and then the next TV season. But you always want to be respectful for those other brands. You know, we all we all can't play on the same team, but we're all in this together. So you got to be respectful of the brands and a lot of other good product out there for sure. We're just happy to be be a part of it and happy to be moving the needle in our direction right now.

Yeah, I mean, if you're not careful, you'll end up in what Brent and I kind of jokingly call camo wars. You know, at the end of the day, we are going in the same direction. We're all duck hunters. You know, we may wear different stuff or some people wear everything, you know. So it benefits us all to work together and celebrate each other's successes. So yeah, kudos to you on that should be a was a good partnership before and you guys work together should be a good partnership again.

Yeah, man. I think it's already good. And it's kind of fun hearing people talk about it. It's been fun having these kind of conversations and being around doing different things. And it's certainly a good fit for both sides, for us for sure. And I think John and Stahl would tell you the same thing.

So I've got to shift gears a little bit on you here. I've got a question. I know you and I talked last summer about some of the early rice and some of the potential ratoon crop and more soil and stuff that you had. So I wanted to ask kind of how some of that stuff turned out and if it's going to impact your plans going into this next year.

Great question. So naturally, like we talked, you know, about there was no you couldn't manipulate anything we had simply because it was volunteer rice, which is US. Fish and Wildlife Service looks at that as same as Ratoon. Yeah. There's a good discussion there. However, by the Code of Federal Regulations and by all the enforcement people I spoke with, that's what stuck and I certainly wasn't going to go against that grain. I got too many friends there and I didn't want to be that guy. So we pulled a bunch of coffee bean by hand.

I had your back if you wanted to.

Oh, I appreciate that.

Somebody's got to be the guinea pig. Might as well be you.

Yeah, this will be. So anyway, we pulled a bunch of coffee beans by hand.

Hang on just a second. Let me explain that because I'm sure someone's listening and did not really catch what we were just talking about. So Jimbo called me back in the summer, had a very serious and very legitimate question regarding what is and is not considered baiting per US. Fish and Wildlife Service. And there is a, and you'll have to help me a little bit with this Jimbo, but there is a regulation that states and it specifies millet. And I don't know why millet, but basically any crop, grain, grass, whatever that has gone, has planted or whatever, and then goes to seed when it comes up again on its own, it is considered wild. Now, the regulation, I think, talks about millet specifically. And you and I were questioning, you know, does rice fall under that? And in my opinion, it should. It's no different than Sprangletop, barnyard grass, you name it. Once it hits the ground as a seed and then comes up and makes a second crop. This is not ratoon rice. This is not an ag crop. It is volunteer. Same as you can manipulate it for dove. I guess there's some gray area in waterfowl. Millet, you can, but per your understanding this year, rice is not exempt in that, like millet, correct?

Absolutely. That is absolutely correct. By the Code of Federal Regulations, it is not. Now, I definitely understand if it's the first generation. We planted that seed this spring. We cut the rice, then we put some urea on it, put a little water on it, and we retuned that crop. Still the first generation seed. What I'm talking about is it's gone dormant, been through a winter time and a spring, so it's regrown. It's strictly volunteer or wild. I think where it gets you at when you read that, and you really got to read a lot, and one of the federal agents helped me understand it. Jeremy Wien helped me understand it in black and white. He said, one, we look at it as a retuned crop, but when you really read it, because it started as a commercial agricultural crop or plant is where it gets you at there. That's why they say you cannot manipulate it. Why they separate jack millet from that, I don't know. So the first year you plant jack millet, if you plant millet this summer for a duck food plot, you can't manipulate it this fall. But if it comes up volunteer next summer, you can roll it, mow it, do whatever you want with it. In my mind, rice should fall under the same thing, but it does not. So that's why I wanted to call and get your opinion. I got other people's opinions and it was varied amongst even folks with Fish and Wildlife and Game and Fish from either habitat managers, law enforcement guys, and then everybody, they go back and read it and nope, you can't manipulate it. So if you happen to have volunteer rice show up next year, don't roll it or mow it. Or if you do mow it, mow it before it heads out.

That's an area I think they should clean up the discrepancy there, as we found this year that there was a discrepancy. Because you get into red rice, you get into all sorts of other things, especially more soil units and managing those. At what point are you baiting and not realize it because you've got some rice tech or you name your producer, variety of ag product out there that you didn't even realize was there.

Well, and here's another question that I haven't asked. So how far out does it matter, right?

So forever, it sounds like.

Yeah, I guess it's forever. So if you've got a field that you've converted over to some sort of the WRP program, or you just let it go fallow and go back to natural stuff, and it was a rice field the last year you planted it, but you're going to have some volunteer rice there for a few years. You know, at which point does it become or does it never change? So that's a great question. And that's a big gray area. But from my understanding right now, just keep yourself out of the trip bag, don't manipulate it. And we did not. You know, I tried to be real careful walking around. You know, it says in the CFR, you can hunt a standing crop, but you can't, you gotta be careful not to overly disturb what's there. And I was extremely careful of it. We did everything by foot, didn't run a full winter through it, wasn't doing none of that. We was being very careful. Had a bunch of coffee bean that we pulled by hand. And had I known that earlier, in all fairness for this conversation, when I talked to you about it last summer, had I been paying attention earlier or studied it sooner, cause my whole process was, hey, that's great. Get ready to get the field ready. I'm gonna roll a spot out there in front of the blind for decoys and around the pits to show decoys, whatnot, and then call it good. Well, if I'd have studied it sooner, I could have mowed it before the rice headed out. It would have been no problem. Couldn't have took a bush hog and done anything I needed to do before it made seed. So keep that in mind moving forward.

Yeah, and we did that in some rice. We had a bunch of stuff that we didn't need openings for that had already headed out, a ratoon crop that had already been harvested. We had some stuff down there on our south end that we went in, cut it later, but we knew what we were up against and we didn't get after it. So we knocked some spots down around our blinds for decoys early before it headed back out. And then we're catching up now. We're actually having to let water down a little quicker because we've got a bunch of rice stubble to deal with. We didn't knock down in the fall like we usually would. So all kind of a balancing act. But to put a bow on that, how did it work out for you this year? Did it work?

It did work. Yeah, we fed a lot of ducks. When we got ducks, we had several ducks on those fields. For a long period of time, I hadn't got to be back in the past couple of weeks. But I was talking to one of our guys this morning that was trying to get drawdown, go on and get the water off, Cash River back in the place. We were loaded up with ducks, both thought it was more soil and those fields. The beauty of it was between the volunteer rice and the barnyard and the spangletop and everything that was in there, it held and fed a lot of ducks. It made hunting a little tough. It was frustrating. You get it in the pit or get in the blind and you'll run a pile of ducks out. Well, they all go to the other side of the field, go over here, go over there, and now you're fighting those ducks that you're feeding. So that was somewhat from a hunting perspective, counterproductive. You think, hey, that's going to be awesome. Duck hunting, look at all the birds are holding. And you do hold them, but it makes hunting a little tough because you're competing with all those ducks that you're feeding.

That's right. Yeah, and I think that scenario right there, you have a lot of detractors or people that say that refuges or sanctuaries or whatever is what's wrong with duck hunting. And I think that's where they develop that opinion. You look at these birds that are able to go and sit and feed and rest and not get shot at and yeah, maybe it has a negative impact on you that day. We saw some similar stuff with our Ratoon Rice. Ducks stayed in it really well. Sometimes they didn't want to get out of it, but they were in the area and I'll take that over, have an empty sky.

So yeah, buddy, and we got a lot of trade going back and forth from those fields to some other managed stuff across the river and probably the Federal Sanctuary there close by. So I think we helped some folks out along with ourselves there. So be interested to see what this spring brings.

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So are you actively trying to duplicate or replicate those results?

It's going to be up to the farmer. So that's kind of out of my hand. And if it was up to me solely, I would definitely try to replicate that again. Except once everything dried up this year, I would mow it. You know, once everything laid down, I would mow it and keep my openings open and just let it do it again. Coffee bean was kind of an issue. You know, you could argue, okay, maybe you need some kind of disturbance or something to hold the coffee bean down. But at the same time, I think Ducks like getting in that stuff, you know. I do. The same thing as getting in the cornfield. You know, you get some overhead covers and you get just a lot of good stuff from that.

Yeah. You can get a pretty good monoculture going on too after a couple of years and it will just blanket everything. But I'm with you. They seem to like it. It irritates me. It makes jerk rigs and everything else tough sometimes.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It makes it hard to hunt, but Ducks like to get in that coffee bean. They feel hid. They got some, again, overhead cover. Got some terrible cover. It gets parabond isolation later in the year. So I think it does a lot of good for them.

Yeah. I like a little bit of it. I don't want to see a whole lot of it.

I had a whole lot of it.

Yeah. How big is this field you're going through and handpicking coffee beans?

Well, what I did, it ain't that big.

It can't be or you wouldn't be pulling.

We just kind of picked a spot. So a buddy of mine, Cade Parnell, his son Wesley, and all his junior varsity football playing buddies from Dezark High School, junior high, they picked a spot and they went to pull it by hand, and then they made bundles out of coffee bean that we could use to go cover pit tops with and stuff. So it was a relatively small area, but it was enough to make an opening and then we could show some decoys. And as the water came up and started kind of everything, started laying down and ducks started getting on it, it opened up very nicely, looked very natural. By the end of the year, it looked better like that than it did, a rolled out spot with pretty decoys, because it just looked very natural and ducks and geese both loved to get in it.

Yeah, late season, it does look really good.

Yeah, I'm the same. I don't want a ton of coffee beans, but I do want some. We had a bean field that didn't make it, and kind of just let it go once it decided it wasn't going to produce. And it had a pocket of this particular field that came up in coffee beans. And I was like, don't touch it, leave it. And it took until January, but once the ducks found it, you couldn't get them out of it. And they do. There's so many. I think raptors are a highly underrated problem as far as duck disturbance goes. And those coffee beans allow them to get out of it. I think that's a little bit misunderstood, too, on all the attraction to corn. Everybody believes they just go in there and just eat all they want to eat all they want to. A lot of times they wipe the food out, but they go back to that corn for that cover. So, it's a bigger deal, and obviously, coffee beans are a pretty cheap way to accomplish some of that. But you don't want to, you don't want them everywhere.

No, they were bad born, hard on dogs, you know, make you appreciate a good crippled dog for sure.

Oh, yeah, no question. All right, so you travel around quite a bit and hunt, you know, within the state. This wouldn't really apply to other states unless you did hunt some true timber and in another state. But what did you see from a from a mass crop standpoint, you know, here in Arkansas, you know, especially Red Oak wise, because I know that was a struggle for a lot of people because it just had a really off year regarding regarding that. And curious kind of, you know, as you bounced around, what did you see?

Well, I didn't get to bounce around as much as I normally do this year. That said, though, I kind of kept my ear to the ground with people around the state and some places that I had opportunity to hunt. And the red oak acorn crop was pretty much null and void this year. And a lot of folks struggled in the woods because of that. I think I talked to several people that, man, you just ducks weren't there like they normally are because of not having having acorns. Now, that said, one of them, I had a theory that I threw out at a couple of folks, and this kind of came true on a couple of spots that we talked about. But I had a theory that if we get some, a good warm up in late January and get a bug balloon, that it would drive ducks to the woods, you know, shallow water. And in a couple of places that did happen. One of the tracks that I hunt got some ducks late. Once they got in there, they got in there pretty thick, and another one of the legacy properties around, same thing there. Even though they were down overall for the year, once they hit a bug balloon, ducks really started coming back to the woods. But as far as other places around, I can know of several that really struggled just because of not having a mass crop. And it showed. I think it showed quite a bit.

I do, too. But what was interesting, you take some clubs, because I'm pretty intimate with a few there in the big ditch bottoms. And nobody had a good mass crop in those bottoms. But then you had places side by side, one that had a really solid season, until that particular part of the world really starts to dwindle duck wise January.

It's always been interesting to me that that happens.

Isn't it? Always has the early ducks. It's going to be full of early ducks. Now, a lot of that's because there's clubs in there that do a lot of early habitat work. But I grew up hunting the Hildebrandt Farm. Everybody knows that farm. Drive down the highway, leaving a hum note on your way to Stuttgart. Right there on the highway, you're seeing ducks everywhere. Early ducks. But you always saw the bottoms too. Bull spring always put water out really early. So those woods would get ducks in there, and then they're gone pretty much after you get to pass that first week of January. But there were clubs in there side by side. Ducks don't know the borders and the boundaries. They don't know what woods they're in. And the club, no, and neither one of them had any acorns for them to eat. And side by side, one club had one of probably their best season they've ever had, and the club next to them probably had one of their worst. Which was really bizarre. Both managed, both very controlled water levels that do all the things you're supposed to do. And this year, for whatever reason, some weirdness happened.

Weirdness, weirdness is a good word. Is a good word. That fills out this duck season, for sure.

Yeah, it was just bizarre. But most of them didn't have the season that they would call typical or good. But there were pockets in the same block of woods. And people that know where those are, look at them on a map. Nothing segments them, as far as a duck is concerned. And the tree health is all pretty similar. I mean, there's some better and there's some worse in there, but it's not recognizable. It's a big block of woods in a significant flyway. Yeah.

When you add it all up, it's a big track of woods. And then you go, like, Biometer WMA. I don't know that there was a 100 place that borders right next to it, and there never was a whole lot of shooting. And I heard that the crowding wasn't much of a crowd in this. She wants it to get water either.

No, it was not. All my neighbors are all biometer guys. And a lot of times their camps would be vacant, even when it got water. So I, you know, you got to believe the mass crop was a big, big factor in that. The Ducks figured out they weren't eating food in there, so why would we go back? Especially when they could find food elsewhere, they just weren't going to find, they weren't going to find acorns to get it done.

Now, and a couple of old timers told me before season that their prediction was going to be a tough year in this area because we don't have any acorns. And dang, they weren't right. It's, you know, and somebody told me, I stopped one of the other guys that manages the place and he thinks it's all, he thought it was crazy. He said, you know, they got to get in there to know if there's acorns there or not. I don't know how they know it, but they know it.

Yeah, you got to suspect that they visit enough tracks and enough block of woods and they figure out none of them have them. So if these don't have them, none of them have them.

Yeah.

And if they didn't find the bugs, too, if the timing went right and the bugs weren't in there, then why go in there? I can't get what I need other than some shelter. And you got to manage pressure to do that.

Yeah. I think they, as far as bug bloom, I think that's something that they just know, you know, temperature, barometric pressure, whatever. Yeah. I think they just know and go from there.

I agree.

So, just, and I agree, they don't just sample their way to success. And so that we don't all sound like a kook. There's a biologist friend that we all share or are familiar with who he believes wholeheartedly that there is some level of communication between waterfowl, that somehow they express to one another where they have found food. And there's a certain level of understanding too. I think they understand their environment, know when things change and when the timing is right. But yeah, they don't just... I don't think it's just blind luck. You know, phyloepatia and everything else proves that wrong as well. So they know. I don't know how they know, but they know.

Well, yeah, think about it. Think about when you go into one of your spots and there's a handful of ducks in there. And then you go back the next day and there's a bunch of ducks in there. Like that, you know, that little group that figured out, oh, wait, there's something to eat here. There's nobody bothers me here, whatever it is. And then they start leading other ones back. And that doesn't happen just because they all jump up and they all fly together. Because like on our farm, they come and they trickle onto it. It's not like you don't see this big wave come off and all of a sudden they descend on us. It's this trickle.

Yes.

And has to be that has to be this communication element to it that, hey, we found something we like.

Absolutely.

Come on. Come on.

Maybe it's verbal. Maybe it's something visual. Whatever it is, there's some sort of communicate, if you will, that lets them know. And it goes back to that pressure management. You know, you can say, okay, man, I just took a ride around the field. There was only two ducks on there. Man, there ain't no ducks around here. I'm not hurting nothing riding around my field. There's only two ducks on it. But how do you know those two don't equal four and four is eight and eight is 16? You know, if you just leave them alone, could that help? One of the tracks I referenced that I get to hunt some, maybe the reason ducks got in there late is when people quit hunting and left them alone, they just started getting in there. You know, a good argument for that, for sure.

Yeah. Well, Jimbo, I know you got to run. You got a busy schedule. Man, we appreciate your time and as always, enjoy shooting a breeze with you, especially when it comes to boats and trucks and all things duck hunting.

I'm in, buddy. Just let me know when you want to talk about it again. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Yeah. We'll do it in person with a cold beverage here in the next few weeks.

I'm in. I'm in. As I recall, And your trucks. As I recall, you made pretty good whiskey sours. So, you know, I can see us doing something, you know, have a truck deal, a truck day at Buyers Farm. And, you know, maybe we get into this again.

I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time.

No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. No, thanks, guys. I do appreciate y'all letting us get on here and talk about what we got going and appreciate your interest. And if I can ever be of a help or a part, just, you know, a phone number.

Yeah. Well, we appreciate you. And thanks to all our listeners for tuning in. You can find us online at The Standard Sportsman or on social media. Thanks, guys.

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