Going Digital with Lake Pickle

Lake Pickle, waterfowl marketing manager for OnX, joins this episode of Highballs & BS presented by Gundog Outdoors. We discuss how he started hunting and then working in the outdoor industry, the evolution of OnX as a digital resource for hunters and land managers, plus some of the favorite trials and errors (i.e., the steep learning curve) of hunting.   

Educational Articles via the OnX Blog

Delta Waterfowl’s Wood Duck Box Program in Louisiana

Check out B.S. Calls via Instagram and website for custom made hand turned duck and goose calls.

Thank you to the podcast series sponsor Gundog Outdoors! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

All right, welcome back to High Balls and BS presented by Gundog Outdoors. As we record this episode, Stapleton, the Travel Duck Call, is headed back to me for a little cleanup before we do the inaugural auction for the Call and Travel Journal. 100% of the proceeds will be split 50-50 between Chris Stapleton's charity, Outlaw, State of Kind, kind of play on one of his songs, and with Ducks Unlimited. So be watching out for that in the coming days. And this is the second to last episode of the season, and I'm excited to have today's guest joining the podcast, Lake Pickle from Onyx. And thanks for taking time out of your schedule. We were talking before I hit record. This is a busy time for you. You're in Mississippi. Turkey season's fired up, but really appreciate you joining.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah, man. Happy, happy to be here. Yeah, I'm always happy to come on these things and talk and yeah, ready to get into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

I will say off the bat, I I know I told you I don't publish the video, but I'm a little bit envious of your wall. Uh, you've got plenty of turkey fans back there. Are those all Easterns? Do you have a little bit of variety in there?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

There's a mix of them, man. There's a little bit of everything in there except for like oscillated or egoulds, but there's Easterns, Merriams, Rio's, Osceolas, all of them are back there. Everyone that comments on the backdrop, I tell them all the same thing. All this is a result of is my wife saying, make it fit in one room. That's all that's all this is.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

You know, I'm trying to think of a waterfowl equivalent. I have seen some stuff where folks are doing now taxidermy where they take the wings and like the back feathers and kind of splay them out in a kind of a sh shadow box. Yeah. And those are pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah. I had an idea, like I saw someone do like a turkey. It wasn't a shadow box. I mean, it pretty much was just like a like a picture frame. Yeah. And they did the whole thing with like the turkey fam was kind of the centerpiece, but it they had all the layers of the feathers around it. And I just thought it would be really cool. I don't know if I could do it or not. I haven't tried, but my thought was like, man, if you could get a bunch of mallard wings with that pretty purple speculum, you know. Yeah. I think that could be pretty cool. But I I haven't done it yet, but maybe next season.

unknown 2:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Well, so do you do some of your own taxidermy or you got some buddies in taxidermy for you?

SPEAKER_00 2:22

What you see behind me with like turkey fans, which like anybody can do a turkey fan. That's the extent of my taxidermy. I mean, like pluck the curly cues uh and the sprigs off of ducks. As far as like actual taxidermy, that is far outside my realm of knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Nice. Well, not to uh call it back to previous episode, but we'll have to take your idea and share it with uh we had Billy Hardesty, he's a taxidermist in Kean Shore of Delaware. Yeah. I'll have to share your idea with him, see what he thinks.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

I feel like most hunters appreciate taxidermy, but yeah, folks that can like just do some really cool stuff with taxidermy, I'm keenly interested in it. So I like I'm a connoisseur of taxidermy, but I have no idea how to do it. Cool. We've talked talked some turkey, but how'd you get hooked into waterfowling?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Where where was your start?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah, I didn't grow up in a waterfowl hunting family. I didn't grow up in a hunting family, man, really. Like my dad is a obsessed largemouth bass fisherman and is to this day. And so the hunting thing, I mean, like we hunted, don't get me wrong, but it was just more like kind of a thing we do from time to time, and it just kind of took hold of me. And so my dad would go, especially when I started, I tell everyone like spring turkey hunting was kind of the catalyst for everything else. Like when I realized how much I enjoyed spring turkey hunting, I started to think, like, well, what's bow hunting about? What's waterfowl hunting about? I started thinking about all these other types of hunting that I had friends that was that they were doing, and I I just got curious, you know, like, man, if this is as fun as turkey hunting is, like, I need to check it out. I would have been 14 or 15 years old and just had some really good family friends of ours that were duck hunters, and I knew that they duck hunted and they were pretty hardcore about it, you know, went all the time, and that's just where I started. And I was like, hey, will you take me duck hunting? That's about how it played out. And when I say like family friends, I mean like it was one of those deals where like this family had two sons. One of them was my age, his name was Daniel, and then they had another son who was a year or two younger than us, his name was David. So we grew up together, and it was one of those deals where like their dad was not my biological uncle, but I called the man Uncle Robbie my whole life. I still call him Uncle Robbie. And so, like me walking up and going, hey, take me duck hunting, you know, I was like, they were like, Yeah, sure, just hop in. And so they would have had to come and pick me up because I've been 14 years old. Yeah. So they come and pick me up and we drive to the Delta. I'm from central Mississippi, which everyone knows, like if you duck hunting in Mississippi, the Delta is like the historical place to be. So we drive an hour and a half before daylight, get to a piece of public, put on waders for the first time in my life. And dude, I think I was I'm not gonna say I was hooked, but like just from the sheer fact that I waded out in some flooded woods in waist deep water and didn't get wet because I had waders on. Like my 14-year-old mind thought that was the coolest thing in the world. There was already like, I'm gonna come back and do this again before I had even seen a duck work, shot at a duck, anything like that. I mean, I was just enamored by it. And one of those moments, the first duck that I shot is pretty much what hooked me in. And it's one of those deals where like as the years have gone by and I've grown, gotten older, gained some more perspective, it's like I've gotten some more clarity on how special of a moment it was. So the first duck that I shot, we're standing in flooded trees on public ground in Mississippi, and I shoot a greenhead mallard duck. We didn't have a dog at that point, but I had to walk over and pick him up out from under a big water oak tree. Just watching that duck, I remember seeing the sun shine off of his head. I thumped him in one shot, which is very uncharacteristic of me, but it did make the moment more special, right? Just see him and you know, hey, shoot him, and I pull up and boom, and he drops, and I walk over there and pick him up, and I was just, man, this is crazy. And just watching him do what mallards do when they're working, and I and I've kind of been a duck hunter ever since. I've just gone deeper into it and deeper into it.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah, it's kind of funny when you think about those moments, like just how many stars had to align for that hole to work out so perfectly. And just there's that magic in it. Like it's the man upstairs or or somebody else, guard angels, I guess it all helping get it all right. Yeah, but also like the waiters, too, like you're talking about. Like you have that adventure, like waiter, like I'm wading through water for the first time. Like this in 1415, it's like, and I'm exploring this whole new area that I never thought I could explore before.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Man, I always try, like when I'm when I'm sharing that story with anybody, whether it's on a podcast or just talking to somebody face to face, I always try to highlight that because it's easy. Once you start hunting, it's whether you mean to or not, this is something for me at least, this is true for me. Whether I mean to or not, you can begin to take for granted some of the little stuff that used to just enamor you. Like the waiters for, for instance, you know. Like I said, I was 14 years old when I went duck hunting for the first time, which is still young, right? But like I know I have buddies now that like, well, for instance, Jordan, we took his daughter duck hunting. She's five. I was 14, you know. I mean, I was close to being able to drive. Yeah, I just thought wading out through those woods was so crazy. Like I remember taking those first steps into the water and being like, oh wow, I'm not getting wet. I'm not getting wet. This is wild. And like feeling what it felt like to step and walk in waiters for the first time and really didn't shoot any ducks, if my memory serves me right, we really didn't shoot any ducks. It was later on in the morning, but we saw some ducks high flying over, and I I was just I was just enamored, man, just by all that little stuff that happened before I shot that greenhead. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Kind of fast forward, like what led you to be working with Onyx? Like, how'd you get involved?

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Yeah, so I got like just when I say like I just fell I took hunting farther than I ever thought I would. That started when again, it was just like with the turkey hunting stuff, and then I got into bow hunting and then duck hunting, and then just like everything that I could possibly try to do. That was like my mantra. I was like, well, if this is as fun as the other stuff, let me try that, you know. And naturally, I started seeking out like resources, right? Like like content, you know, like and uh this is before YouTube, and so I was buying Primo's truth videos. That was like, you want to talk about like fame or like a star or whatever. In my mind, there was not a bigger star in the world than Will Primo's. I thought that guy hung the moon. I remember going to the local Walmart and just like watching, because that's the way it used to work. If you went there, they would have the new truth video sitting in the sporting desire, and I would grab them, you know, and just why and I would binge watch them in one sitting if my mom would let me. And so like that led to like, hey, you got a video camera that your family uses to film Christmas morning with. Like, let's take that out to the woods, you know, just like messing around. And long story short, like I got an internship at a show called Midwest Whitetail that opened up a lot of doors. Guy named Aaron Warbriton, who I'm still friends with to this day, does the hunt in public. Like, Aaron was like kind of my supervisors, bosses, whatever. He knew how I felt about primos. Aaron ran into Brad Ferris at I believe I forget what trade show, but told Brad that you know they had a local kid from Mississippi that went through their internship program that wanted to work for them. I had left the internship, gone back to college at Mississippi State University. This is a long story, man. I'm trying to convince it. I'm all good, man. I end up running into Brad Ferris, who had worked for Primos for 20-something years at the time. I ended up running into Brad at a local sporting goods, at a local like sporting show. It's like a imagine like the NWTF show or the DUX show, but smaller, just like local Mississippi. And Primos always had a booth there because they were a Mississippi company. And I had been, since Aaron had, you know, told Brad about me, Brett, he had given Brad had given him my email. So I had been emailing Brad some, just like trying to see if he needed any sort of video work when I was a college student. So I'm at this trade show and I see the Primos movie and I see Brad standing there. I said, Well, I'm gonna use this opportunity to walk over and introduce myself, let him put a face with a name. One thing I've always had going for me is people can forget literally everything else about me, but they never forget my name. Because my name's like my name's so odd. Like someone hears Lake Pickle, they're like, that's a weird name, and they they just they they remember that. And so when I walked up to Brad and said, Hey, I'm Lake Pickle, he was like, You're that kid that's been emailing me about doing video work, and I was like, Yeah, and that's me. Uh there's only one, you know. If you if you know another one, let me know. And little did I know it, thank the good Lord above, they had the week prior, not even the week, but like four days prior, something like that, they had had four video guys leave to pursue a different opportunity. Okay. So, yeah, like I met Brad at that show. He remembered the emails and stuff, and he you know, knew I had some experience for a 21-year-old kid. And he said that I remember him acting more interested in me than I expected him to. I was like, man, he might actually have some work for me. This is crazy. Well, like two days later, he calls me, and I was already back in Starfield, Mississippi, because I was about to start fall semester, and he was like, Man, I'm gonna shoot you straight. I don't want you to quit school. I realize you're in college. I'm asking if you would consider taking a semester or two off because I need someone to video an elk hunt in like two weeks, and we're gonna need help videoing with throughout the fall. And I was like, Yep, I'm gonna do that. And uh went home, went to the Primo's headquarters, and still had to formally interview, met Will for the first time. Will Will told me that. He said, I'm not gonna hire you unless you promise me you'll finish your school, which I ended up finishing online, but I always admired that he helped me to that. But yeah, that dude fell out of nowhere. Thank the good Lord every day for it. My life, I mean, you wouldn't be talking right now if that hadn't happened. Because I was at Primo's for just shy of 10 years, nine years and some change. Worked on the video team that whole time. All those guys are family. Will, Brad, Jimmy, the Rett Jordan, and Troy. There's not enough hours in a year for me to say all the good things that I could say about that group of guys and what that brand means to me. But yeah, they Onyx started to sponsor the Primo show. That's how we kind of started developing a relationship there around 2020. It was either late 2021 or early 2022. A lot of stuff had changed at Primos, like the ownership had changed. Will and Jimmy Brad had both kind of like stepped back a little bit. And Onyx approached me about a job about working at the time, it was for running social media and doing some YouTube stuff, and it was a tough decision, even with Will and Jimmy and Brad all kind of stepping back a little bit. I was just so connected to that brand. But it was like Onyx, it was a great opportunity. And frankly, my now wife, her and I were we were still dating at the time, but we knew like we were gonna get married that summer. And although the Onyx job still definitely, you know, has some travel involved, it is nothing compared to how much I was traveling around doing the Primos video thing. So man, Lacey, my wife, I remember that's how I realized that like this relationship I was in might actually like that, like we may actually be on to something here because she lasted two years of me doing full-time primo. If I saw her one time in a weekend, I was doing good because I was I was just gone, man. Like we would leave for sometimes up to three weeks at a time, you know, just gone. There's a very, very long-winded way to answer your question of how I ended up at Onyx, but that's that's how it happened. Just kid running around with a family video camera, led to an internship, led to primos, primos for 10 years, onyx, now here I am.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Well, man, it was like you were saying earlier, just you gotta run that thread out. You never know where that adventure, the passion, the hobby's gonna take you.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

You know, same way with podcasts. I never thought I'd have a podcast. An award meeting podcast at that, and you know, here I am talking to like about Onyx.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

So yeah, there's several facets of my life that I never thought I would be in, but here we are.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Yeah, so I mean, we're talking about technology or kind of things where you know running work run the thread out and stuff. And so I was talking to uh so I had mentioned before we started recording, I got connected with with Jack, and he ended up connected me with you for for setting up this episode, but I had talked to Jack around the holidays, and I have used Onyx, I've I've used it for a couple of years now. My some of my buddies do, and obviously you know it through sponsoring different shows and and the like. Um, but then I was back home hunting over Christmas in Oregon. I'm in Virginia now, and I was talking to my dad. Like you said, like Uncle Robbie, like Dave, I never called him my uncle, but he was like a he's like an uncle to me. Sure. Uh hunting mentor. And I was talking about Onyx. Like, yeah, you know, have these guys on podcasts. And I was like, oh yeah, I use that. I was like, what? Babe, you use Onyx? He's like, oh yeah, because he drives Christmas tree trucks, you know, folks cutting Christmas trees, he hauls them down off the hillsides and stuff down. He's like, oh yeah, we're when so and so we know it's maybe somewhere. He drops me a pin and I know how to get there and I can see if I'm on BLM land or forest service, if I'm on state ground or you know, what have you, I know what gates I gotta go through. Totally didn't wouldn't have thought about that. You know, it's kind of funny. One of the things that, you know, it's been helpful not just for sharing pins, but it's also like it's a little bit of a hunting log as well. How do you think that evolution within the app has kind of shaped your hunting? Now that you've knew you've been hunting for a long time, you've seen technology grow.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

That's a good question, man. It's hard to put into words, man. Really, it is. Because just everything from straight hunting application to like what you're talking about with your friend, and you know, like the we hear stories like that all the time where it's folks using it for not hunting stuff. Like they they might use it for hunting too, but like I I know a guy that like he oper he operates uh uh a lot of heavy equipment for a living and he does like some dozer work, and he'll have guys that like when they go to flag a line, if he's putting a road in or anything, like they'll track it with on X and then send it to him, and then he knows exactly where he's supposed to go. You know, stuff stuff like that. But as far as straight hunting goes, dude, it's I mean, it's been exponential. I hesitate to say the word game changer because I feel like that's just such an overused term these days. But for instance, man, from like the early days when I was still in high school, right? You just were told, like I remember I remember one time I had a I had a good friend that I knew from church, and he told me, like, I just got my driver's license, so I was just now able to drive, which was like huge for a young hunter, right? Like, now you don't have to wait on anybody, now you can just go. So like I thought I had the world by the tail. My buddy from church says, Hey, you can hunt my family's 120 acres. It's right here, you know, and like I know he tells me, like, you know, he tells me where on the road it is, shows me where the gate is, and then I kind of have to just go off of like I okay, and he's like, Oh, it's it's the front pasture and then the woods back there, the west side. If you run into another pasture, that's not us, don't go there and then look for post-it signs, right? So you just walk up to it, and it's hard to even fathom doing it now because of how much stuff has changed. But like you just drive up to a gate and walk in, and you just know that you've got some pasture in some woods, like you don't know if there's a creek back there unless you pull up like some maps or like some paper maps, yeah. Uh, which I was not on my mind as a 16-year-old kid. Well, then I remember the first time someone showed me like Google Earth, and that was next level, man. That happened when I was probably around a senior in high school and then college. Like, dude, in college, we were Google Earth warriors. We would, if we were, especially duck hunting, man, we would be looking at all the NWRs and WMAs, and we were watching where these sloughs run and these sloughs run. And at first, this is a true story. We would have printer paper and we would draw out, we were like, okay, here's this is where we park. And then we're like, we we would have like that. Was our reference point. We literally had maps that we drew. Like if we had some like new slew we were going to go to, we'd be like, all right, we know how to walk and get to this point. Then evolved a little bit further, we figured out we could pay 25 cents at the school library and they'd print off a color map for us. So now we had Google print offs that we would fold up and put, you know, stick in our blind bag or our waiter bag or our turkey vest. The funniest memory I have of that is I remember one time we'd been walking for a while and we weren't exactly where we thought we were supposed to be, so I pulled out that map and we had been sweating, so I unfold it and all the ink had bled everywhere, so you couldn't tell where anything was. Well, man, I vividly remember the first time I opened up Onyx on my phone. I was a customer user of Onyx long before I had an employee. And I remember I was standing on a place that I had turkey hunted since I was a kid, and I was mind blown. I was like, I'm looking at my phone screen and I can see the property lines, I can see, you know, all of a sudden I'm looking at a picture of like I've known for years that you know the property line to the west is right here. But I didn't know what was over there beyond what I could see when I walked over there and looked. And I I all of a sudden I'm looking at all this around me, and man, it is hard to fathom how much has changed. How much has changed. Like now for e-scouting, like when you're traveling for an out-of-state trip, borders, picking out spots. I mean, like, it is insane how much it's changed things. Insane.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Yeah, exactly. I had a lot of different memories pop up when you're telling your story. You know, one of them I was thinking of is like some I'm probably a couple years older than you, but we'd use my buddy John and I, we'd hunt this WMA in in Virginia. And I don't hot spot, I'll I'll e I'll even bleep it if we have to. But it was down in central Virginia, we just scour Google Maps, Google Earth, and then we figured out you could overlay the GIS map of the WMA over top of Google Earth. So then we could actually see a boundary. This is before Onyx. And then so we're like, okay, well, we know the boundary here. We can you see a little bit of topography, but then as soon as Onyx, and we like would we do our own little breadcrumb trail on it, we'd we'd have our own pins on it, but there's really no way to share it. There's really no way to have it on your phone when you're hunting, like, oh no, we need to try that slough. Let's let's let's try this bend in the little river, let's try and hunt that. But then now to have it in the app, it's great. We did notice a couple hiccups in the boundary. I mean, this was still early on. Sure. There's one little sliver in the boundary of the WA that it was all posted, no trespassing, but with the they got a neighbor to the north that was very adamant against uh against hunting. So we knew like that was clearly not part of the WMA.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Yeah, so it's nice to kind of have that now just all within the Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

It really is like I feel like I I mean it's one of those deals it's like you're talking I'm I'm thirty-four years old and I'll catch myself talking to some young hunters that are in their early twenties or even guys that are in like their teens, you know. Like I got friends now that have kids that are in their teens and you know, like they hunting without on X is not they don't really even remember it, you know what I mean? And so I'll feel like I'm the the boomer in the room as I'm talking about like y'all don't know what it was like back in my day when we drew maps on a piece of paper, you know. It's crazy to have known because we what you know, like from our perspective, I mean you did as well, like we we watched that change happen. I go back and think about how we hunted and what we did. It's crazy. I'm like, man, it's just like the whole world got opened up to us when you when that opened up that mapping like that. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

And I will say that I think there's something to the fact of you know, having it available to you, but also like knowing when to apply it and like when where you can kind of step away from it. I'm thinking of a couple times on that WMA, like looking down, like I know this slough's gonna be up there, and you gotta trust like your bearing, your markings. I know north is that way, and I should run right into the slough. Looking at landmarks, haven't be able to tell it. And I think it's kind of lost a little bit on some of the younger folks that hopefully they will pack up on. Your other story about hunting your buddy's farm, and like but Jordan and travel like this one, but hunting our friend's farm, Johnny's fields, because he was a larger farmer, his family is a larger farmer, but having that permission, well, then we could hunt Uncle Bob's fields. Well, which one's Uncle Bob's fields? Well, you go down Wakanda and it's down here, and and like now you have that completely questioned eliminated. Well, let's just look. Like, well, okay, that's Bob's field, right? We got the access to that one. We don't have to worry about this or that. Yeah. Sorry, Sudley's struck my my lab's trying to get his voice in on this too.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

I I you you will catch no negative words from me about dogs. I'm a dog man myself. It really is why it's like a again talking to this is just me, but stuff that I hunted so much when I was younger, like family ground, for example, just the way that like kind of the own confines of my own mind back then, I knew, especially the family land, right? Like I hunted that thing every inch of it that I could, right? And I knew the west line ended at a cotton field, I knew the north line ended at a patch of woods that cornered up next to a cattle pasture, and I knew the east line butted up to more woods, I knew the south line butted up against the road, and there was another pasture on the other side. But I never thought about what was beyond that. You know what I mean? It's like I had no reason to. Like I was like, I knew what I could see with my physical eyes, and that's it. Like I said, it's just you have this whole much bigger, more holistic view of the of the land now because you can see it, and it just makes more sense.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Exactly. I'm not uh a Luddite at all, but so what do you think is probably maybe an underrated feature in the app folks should probably check out?

SPEAKER_00 25:07

I think, man, there's a couple of them. The one that comes to mind that like people just don't, and this one's gonna seem silly, but the weather, man. The weather, like I I mean, you can get weather from a lot of different apps. I used a couple apps before I started using, and we did just like upgrade the on X one, but the weather I don't think people utilize enough because the way that it's kind of configured now, it's it's set to where it's to give you, instead of like uh you pull up your weather app, whichever one you use, and go, all right, what's my nearest town? The way that the on X one works is it's it gives you the most accurate to where like wherever you put on the map, like wherever you're at, that's gonna pull up the most accurate wind direction and sunrise and and and all that stuff. I think that one is very underutilized. I think from a duck hunting standpoint, well, I don't know if underutilized, but yeah, to a degree. Recent imagery, I use that a lot for water levels for crops during the summer. Recent imagery is a big one. I use the tree species layer a lot. That one's more of a turkey, turkey related one, but that one doesn't get near as much love as I think it should. Oh, and roadless areas. Like roadless areas, like if you're really trying to find a fact of life humans hunters. We love roads, we stick close to roads, and so like the roadless areas show you places where you can really get away from some folks if you wanna, if you're willing to put the footsteps in. So those are just a few. I probably if I sat here long enough, I'm sure I could come up with more because there's just so much there's so much stuff in there, but yeah, those are some big ones.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Okay, yeah, I didn't even thought about the recent imagery one. Like I I know it's and it's those things that you know it's there, but I haven't haven't thought to try it out yet. And actually, the predictor one, you kind of read my I don't think you knew this question, but I had that on there. I'd have I asked my buddy about it, and he'd used that some in during deer season.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

The weather predictor, it kind of shows off what was it, like percentages, you might see activity in a certain area based on certain conditions. Yeah, it I wonder how that would work for waterfowl. I mean, you'd have to know wind direction, maybe a little bit of temperature, how you're sitting and and where you are.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Yeah, man, for the one, the biggest like weather use that I get out of strictly waterfowl, and this is for more of like one is like wind direction, right? So like that just that in itself, like gathering, you know, what the wind's gonna be that morning and how hard it's gonna blow. But like a couple different ones, like if it's a if it's a spot that I've hunted before, or like I I have a duck club at home, we have a lot of spots at the duck club, right? And so there's a feature called wind on waypoint. And a lot of people when they hear it, they immediately associate it to whitetail hunting, you know, because people you put up a stand, tree stand, you drop a waypoint on it, and then for that particular waypoint, you can go in and you can say set optimal wind. And you go in there and you say this tree stand hunts best on a north-northwest wind. Great. You could do that for duck spots, like you can drop a waypoint where either, you know, if you got a blind there, or if it's just you know where you normally set up, you can look at like this spot hunts best on a east wind. This one hunts best on a west wind. And so you got a lot of people at camp that day. You pull up the app, you have it all sitting there, you know. If the the way the wind on waypoint works is the the waypoint shows up on the screen, and then it has like a little icon above it that has like E for East, W for West, you know, that all that kind of stuff. And if it's if the letters are in green, that means it's good wind. But but basically, you just kind of like real quick, you're like, okay, these four spots are good today for the wind that we got. How many groups do we have? Three. Okay, sweet. You know, that that takes care of that, you know. Big on time saver stuff. It's one of the things that I get most out of the app, is like just not wasting any time.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Kind of talking a little bit about getting familiar with the app, but I mean I know a lot of attention is paid out west, big open public lands, folks, you know, wondering which units they're on. You know, it's a great way to utilize it that way. But as I mentioned, I'm here in the Atlantic flyway. Not a lot of big tracts of public land. I've certainly used it for the marshes and WMAs. But for those landowners at hunting, you kind of talked a little bit there with your duck club. Maybe what are some features that they need to try to think of that might help for just the land management outside of the hunting season?

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Oh, yeah, land management. One, I would say talking about underutilized features, there's a soil data layer in there that you could pull up and it'll give you it's not gonna be as accurate as sending in and getting a soil sample. It's not. But if you don't have the time to do that, if you don't, if you don't want to do that, like you can get a pretty good idea of what kind of soil type you're gonna be dealing with if you flip that layer on. So that's one. Man, I use it for tracker. You don't have to use tracker to do it, you can't just draw them out, but like marking your road systems is huge, especially if, like, man, if duck hunting, you're usually with groups of people, right? Or with deer hunting, if you've got a guest coming in that's from out of town. You can send, like, you can either show them on your map. I would recommend sharing that stuff with them, but you can share that stuff to where it's on their app, which is another point I'll go into after that. But basically, like you could give someone that information that you plotted out, you know for a fact they can get where you want them to go with zero issues. You know, again, going back to the old days where it was like, go about 200 yards and you're gonna see some orange flagging, all right? And back then you go ahead due west till you cross the creek, go 10 paces till you hear the beehive. You know what I mean? Whereas like now you're just like follow the map. And so probably the biggest one that is the newest addition for land management or any sort of group setting is we have something called collaborative folders. And so what that is, like my duck camp is set up on it. And let's say my duck camp, I have all the roads marked, I have the camp house marked, I have all the blinds marked, I have all the different duck holes, I have everything that you can mark on that duck camp. I have marked. It's called a folder. So you go to create a folder, there's an option in there, it makes it real quick and easy. It says, Do you want to add everything on the screen into the folder? You say yes. So that way I have like my entire, I'm zoomed out enough where you can see my entire duck camp on the screen. So I add all that to a folder. Then I can, there's an option to turn it to a collaborative folder, right? And I can add every duck camp member into that folder, and they can see everything that's in it. The beauty of that too is that you can set someone to either be like a contributor or a viewer. So like if someone is in that camp, I'm gonna make them a contributor. And if they're like, hey, in the JPons, we moved this blind 50 yards over and they moved the waypoint. Well, guess what? Now everyone in that camp, their waypoint moved too. You know what I mean? So it so it keeps it up to date. Viewer and not a contributor comes from, like I said, if you have a guest come in, you can add them to that collaborative folder, and you know, they're a guest, they can't go in and change anything, but for the weekend or a couple days that they're down there, they have everything they need. So that one's been huge.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

I was just, and you were talking about moving blinds, and we were talking before I hit record, you know, we were doing wood duck nesting boxes. Well, guy was talking with you know Matt Ferry, and he's like, you just gotta move these boxes, gotta do this box, or that box fell down. I'm immediately thinking with volunteers that they use on different different areas, like he can mark where his nesting boxes are, which ones got dropped by a tree that fell over and needs to be moved, where the new ones replaced, then immediately it updates the rest of that folder.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

Yeah. Same premise, man. Like the uses are virtually endless. I mean, even as far as someone told me they had it marked, like they were out there in the off season before they had like, because some of the some of these types, you know, the they get pumped with water, right? And so they're out there and they're planting millet or whatever. And someone marked, like, hey, we were out here and it was the spot was a lot more wet than we realized, and we almost got the tractor stuck. So there's this huge tractor tire ruts in this one spot that if you stepped off into, you know, you'd sink yourself if you're driving through there with the UTV. And so they had it marked on there so everyone could see, like, hey, this spot right out here in the middle of the water that looks like everything else. If you drive right here, you're gonna sink. You know, like you're gonna go under. So it's stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Yeah, they that takes me back to some memories walking through uh through certain sloughs and uh finding little drop offs where somebody had used uh the backhoe to deepen up and to tell anybody exactly where it was. You know, as you mentioned, you probably don't put us about as many miles on the road as as you did with with primos. You know, what have been some of your favorite places over the years? To uh duck hunt? Yeah. We can talk about we can say duck hunt and then we can say just in general.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. No, I hear you. And I'm not like this with with everything. I love I mean, I love the Dakotas. Who doesn't? That's no secret. Every duck hunter in the world knows the Dakotas. The Northwest is really cool, just because it's it's very unlike anything that I duck hunt at home. But man, I never like I just have this gravity about and I love every kind of hunting at home, but like I like for turkey hunting, I love to travel. I and I travel a bunch for for duck hunting too, but man, something about hunting those ducks at home, I don't know if that will ever replace I don't know if anything will ever replace that as far as my favorite goes. If I had to pick a favorite outside of my home region of the southeast, it would be the northwest, I think.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

So what kind of scenario at home? Flooded timber. At home? Oh, dude, flooded timber, yeah, man. Yeah. Flooded timber and not just like flooded timber gets all the romance, right? Like it gets all the love. And and for good reason. So when I think of flooded timber, I don't just think of like the very picturesque, like big hardwood flat. Like that's awesome, but I also think of like some of these like broken up sloughs, too. Exactly. Because that's what I like at the first mallard I shot, that's kind of what I was in. I mean, there was some flooded timber for sure, but we were also kind of on like this fairly sizable break. And when I'm saying flooded timber, I'm not only picturing like these big, beautiful oak tree flats where the all the oaks are just like the size of a Volkswagen. Those are great, but like some of the little bit more diverse stuff with sloughs, and that's always, from what I can see right now, is always going to be my favorite.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

I mean, it makes sense being there in the Delta, and that's why I try to talk to some folks. I've never been to Arkansas, I've never hunted that picturesque timber, but you know, we've got some you know, flooded timber around here where it's like those old beaver sloughs, and when they get filled up, you know, you have the edges that are flooded, you know, timber like the little pop river poplars and stuff like that. Maybe there's some oaks and hickories along the edge, and you're sitting that, you know, we've taken some good wood ducks, black ducks, mallards through their you know, red hawks coming through the trees and jumping on your spinning wing decoy in the middle of the setup.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Yeah. But yeah, no, I totally get that. Yeah. It it's just hard to beat home when it comes to ducks. I just I'm so drawn to it. And like I said, I I I tr I will travel, I'll travel next year and I'll love it. I've never been duck hunting anywhere and hated it. You know what I mean? Like it's like if someone said, What's your least favorite place to go? I'd be like, I don't really have a least favorite, you know. Like they all have their own merit. It's just like as far as like where I want to be, if I had to pick one spot, I'm gonna be at home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Well, it's kind of like I've interviewed some guys down in Florida. It's like, you know, I've so being from the Northwest, snakes really aren't high on my list. Gators definitely not high on my list. But you know, you know, hunting, you know, malted ducks, you know, hunting the blue wings down there, and the large population of wood ducks and the black bellied whistlers that they have in Florida, like, yeah, that sounds really cool. Yeah, but their pluses there even with dealing with gators.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

That is one thing at home. I guess if if it warms up, which it does sometimes do during duck season, and it's not everywhere, but in the right spot or the wrong spot, I should say, there are gators about. I have a very vivid memory. We were hunting at a place of public, we would have been in college, and it was a war it was a some days we'll get these warm spells. But it happened this season. We had we get these warm spells in January, and it just seems wrong, but it happens. And we're sitting there hunting, not killing much because it was dreadfully warm, but we were on break from school, so we were gonna go regardless. And we're sitting there, and my buddy goes, That log kind of looks like a gator. And then we're looking and we're like, I don't think that looks like a gator, I think that is a gator, and it swam by us very slowly. It was sluggish because it but I mean it swam and it was probably whatnot, giant, it was probably a seven, eight foot gator, swam by us at 40 yards, and we were like, huh, okay. January duck season. Oh man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

You can keep that down there. I'm I'm thankful, like like Virginia's in the south, but it's just north enough. Like I don't have to worry about that.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

And probably just because I've grown up with galligators or nothing new, but the only thing you really have to be concerned about is dogs. Like humans, I mean, like, yeah, uh like a gator has attacked a human before, but not something I'm concerned about. But a dog, yeah, no, you're rolling the dice if you've got dogs about and there's gators around.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

Exactly. And like you said, I'm dog man too. I like like working my dog, like like taking him along. Yeah. And that's just one more variable you gotta think of on top of, you know, making sure they're they're hydrated, that they've a you know, they're working, they don't have hypothermia, and like there's no gators in the water. There's one one more thing you gotta add to the mix. You get any adventures coming up this off season or things you're looking forward to for next season? I mean, I'm looking at it. It's turkey season now. I know that's that's 100% focus.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

Yeah, yeah. I mean, turkey season is just getting going, so like there's there's plenty of uh plenty of stretching of the legs to do when that gets going real good. I'm always looking forward to next season, man. I mean it's hard not to. Turkey season's turkey season. I'm going on safari in Africa in June. I'm very amped about that. And then summertime, but then next thing you know, it'll be coming in on fall again. And yeah, I mean, I'm always looking forward to next season. I don't I'm trying to think if there's anything that I have scheduled for next waterfowl season that's like out of the normal. I don't think so so far, but it is a long ways away.

unknown 39:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Well, you know, as it gets close to time, you know, I have a few things I always share that I've seen or read. And uh, you know, a quick shout out, of course, to the Onyx, you know, they're more than just the app. The website has some great educational articles, historical stuff on there. I've mentioned before on a previous episode, and it's escaped me I didn't do my homework in time, but Maggie Williams had an article about one of the early duck collar ladies. Gail Camp. Yep, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Yeah, I'll drop that in the show notes again. Dude, Maggie's great, man. So my wife and I, we got to spend some time around Maggie this past this past summer. We both were at a like this Dallas Safari Club thing that was in Dallas. And anyhow, and we had like we'd worked with Maggie for like on the waterfowl and turkey side of Onyx for a few years. I but I hadn't really spent much time around her. But yeah, so my wife and I were around her for those few days, and I'll tell you that that girl is as advertised. She is, man. She's legit, like she is legit. Nothing but good things to say about her. And my wife and I and her, we had dinner one night, and she was telling us about Miss Gail. I asked her, I said, Would you be interested in writing an article about that for Onyx? And she was like, I would love to. And I'm like, Well, if you can write what you just told me, you need to do it. I mean, just a great story. And she did, she did it. I mean, she knocked it out of the park. She did an amazing job on that article.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

Yeah. It's like you're reading my show notes. I had that up and I talked about it earlier when it got published because it was it was a great article. And it's good to see kind of that nod back to uh history from you know this generation at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

Yeah. Yeah. She I I mean, she's so like, I wish I could have met her. She seemed like an incredible woman.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

Yeah. And so on the last episode, Matt Ferry on the latest podcast shared some of the numbers with me as they wrapped up their nesting box work. So let's see here for Huntley Meadows, a state park outside of Alexandria, Virginia, they had nine of nine boxes producing and estimated over 300 ducklings hatched last year just in that one stretch. And then for Mason Neck, the refuge I was at with with Liam and Matt Matt at, they had roughly 160 hatched, but only 17 of the 30 boxes were used, uh, which is their worst rate percentage-wise since about 2019. But overall, since the program started there, estimates about 1,947. It was a pretty exact estimate. That's a great estimate, have hatched uh on the boxes just there at Mason Neck. So just want to say, you know, thanks to Matt again for joining the podcast, but great work for him, the Pentagon DU chapter, and all the volunteers. Um but then lastly, I want to do a quick shout out to Alex Lang Bell's dog, Miss Ellie May, on her well-deserved hunting retirement. As Alex said in his post, she's the one that it helped inspire him to start Gun Dog Outdoors. And awesome that hopefully she gets plenty of great naps in the sun. That's kind of wraps up for this show. Lake, any closing sentiments you want to share?

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Hunt every bit you can and leaving your dog at home is a sin.

unknown 42:38

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

So how can folks, I know you got your podcast. I don't I'm pretty sure it's Backwoods University.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Yeah, Backwoods University on the Meat Eater Podcast Network. Been doing that, closing in on a year now. So it's still relatively new, but it's wild that it's wild that it's even almost we're we're closing in on a year. So backwoods University still do the STL podcast with Jordan as well. Other than that, I yeah, I'm around. Like I said, because again, because of my odd name, I'm not hard to find. Like that's what everyone's like, how would we find you on social? I'm like, if you type in Lake Pickle on social, you're gonna find me. Like I'm not cool.

SPEAKER_01 43:15

Well, I appreciate it again, Lake. Best of luck with uh turkey season and uh we'll be in touch.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Yeah, thanks, man.

SPEAKER_01 43:21

I enjoyed it.