Gundog Nation
A show to bring together gundog enthusiasts, trainers, and handlers with discussion focused on all breeds and styles of gundogs.
Gundog Nation
Gundog Nation #010: Steve Snell, Gun Dog Supply
In this conversation, Ken Witt interviews Steve Snail, the owner of Gundog Supply, which has evolved from a mail-order model to a diverse online presence. They discuss the origins of the business, the challenges of adapting to the digital age, and the importance of habitat management for quail hunting. Steve shares insights into the various hunting traditions, the appeal of different dog breeds, and the economic aspects of hunting and land management. The conversation also touches on advocacy for hunting rights and the complexities of import regulations for hunting dogs. In this conversation, Steve discusses the importance of public access to lands for hunting, the economic impact of hunting on local communities, and the various organizations that support conservation efforts. He shares insights on balancing a busy business life with his passion for hunting, the significance of training dogs for hunting, and the value of learning from different training methods. The conversation also touches on the challenges posed by weather conditions during hunting seasons and the importance of community engagement through events.
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Hello and welcome to Gun Dog Nation. This is Kenneth Witt and I'm coming to you from Texas. I want you to know that Gun Dog Nation is more than just a podcast. It's a movement to unite those who want to watch a well-trained dog do what it's bred to do. Also, we are set out to try to encourage youth, to get encouraged in the sport of gun dogs, whether it's hunting, competition, trials, hunt test, all the above. This is a community of people that are united to preserve our heritage of gun dog ownership and also to be better gun dog owners. So if you'll stay tuned to all of our episodes, we're going to have people on here to educate you about training, about nutrition, health. Anything can make you a better gun dog owner. It's my pleasure to welcome our listeners and please join our community. All right, welcome to Gundog Nation. I've got a special guest. I probably spent a lot of money at this man, Steve Snell with Gundog Supply. Steve, just curious, what got you into the supply business?
Speaker 2:Oh, my parents started the company back in 72. Oh wow, and so yeah. So so my brother and I've been doing it, you know, uh, uh, we grew up in it. Um did not didn't really intend to go that route. Um kind of kind of ended back up in it a little bit, a little bit by accident, but we came back around to it in the late 90s.
Speaker 1:So you, guys were pre-internet and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. People talk about mail order businesses and we are a. I grew up as a mail order business. When we were going to work, we would go by the post office first to stop and pick up orders, and that was back in the day when you would get orders and it'd be a check and an actual order form People filled out. That's how I grew up, so I'm 56, steve, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm 54. Okay, so yeah, we're the same generation.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You know things have really changed. So how did you guys adapt to this new age of online ordering? Is that your forte?
Speaker 2:No, it's my brother's forte actually as far as the Internet side of it. He and I we've been in business since we were little kids. I grew up in resale and that's kind of what we've always known and he and I did a bunch of little ventures when we were kids, anything from selling painted rocks to rock and roll, and we actually got into the comic book business back in the late 80s and he and I had a chain of retail stores that we started when we were in college and sold comics and cards and games and all that kind of stuff and got online doing that in 96, 97. So super early in the online side of it. And my parents at that point had kind of they were still in the mail order business but they had transitioned more to retail.
Speaker 2:And in the early nineties my dad and I started hunting in Texas and he saw how many folks were, you know, were still bird hunting and traveling and so wanted to kind of get back into the mail order side of it a little bit, how many folks were still bird hunting and traveling, and so I wanted to kind of get back into the mail order side of it a little bit and Rob put them online. We actually set up a catalog request for them online in like 97. And within a couple of weeks my dad was like either turn this off or figure out how we can sell online, because we were getting so many catalog requests that he was like this is not going to work. So we put them online in late 97. I don't know, sometime in 97., go ahead.
Speaker 1:Well, I actually can remember. I'm pretty sure I had a hard copy catalog. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were still making catalogs up until about 2000. We stopped sometime around then but we put them online. Rob put them online. I wasn't really that involved with the day-to-day at that point, but after about a year it was so far out of hand that I actually had to step in just to help them because it had gotten. You know, it got out of hand pretty quick and so I've been doing that, you know, pretty much since the late nineties.
Speaker 1:Did y'all ever have a?
Speaker 2:brick and mortar. Yeah, it was more of a dog. We were in the dog food business back in. We had a. We had a store in Ridgeland, mississippi. We were big in the dog food business for a long time. We sold all the stuff that we sell. But it's hard for a company that's as specialized as we are to do. You've got to have a pretty big draw, you've got to be in the right place. We did okay with that, but it's not. You know, that was not really what we did. It's not really what we did.
Speaker 1:I had a convenience store in Eastern Kentucky. Oh yeah, yeah, I remember you'd have to sell just the profit margin on.
Speaker 2:dog food was so slim.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, the storage space and the time you loaded it you know you couldn't come out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the storage space and the time you loaded it. You know you couldn't come out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. So you and your dad hunted.
Speaker 2:What all kinds of hunting did you do? Primarily he was just a quail hunter. That was his thing. Toward the end of his life he started traveling and you know, and was doing a little bit of pheasant and a little bit of grouse, but uh, but he grew up quail hunting in Mississippi and uh, you know, that's that's all I ever knew. You know, um, you don't still have quail there much. You know if, if you work at it, I'm fortunate that I've got access to some private ground, that is. That is, uh, that that a lot of money is spent to keep a quail, and so I've got access to wild quail, but in most of the state we don't have a huntable population. It's pretty much like the rest of the Southeast. You can have quail in the Southeast if you work at it pretty hard, but you've got to work at it Just so hard to keep.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's all about land management and a lot of the practices that we do nowadays just aren't beneficial to quail. You know I don't know when I was young and I didn't really do it so much then in high school, but you know grouse hunting was big in southeast Kentucky, sure, and most everybody had setters yeah. And you know I can remember probably about the time I was in high school, late 80s, that turkey was kind of introduced. You start seeing turkey. We never saw turkey when I was little and it seemed like and I'm not a wildlife specialist, but it seemed like that the turkey, once they come in the grouse were gone. And I don't know if that's the case.
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of people want to say that I think once again it comes back to habitat. Well, a lot of people want to say that I think once again it comes back to habitat. Turkey, can you know, turkeys are ground nesting birds, which so are grouse, so are quail, and so a lot of people are like well, you know, as the turkey population is going up, the quail population is going down, and that is true. But it's got more to do with the fact that turkeys can live in habitat conditions that quail cannot. Turkeys can live in habitat conditions that quail cannot, and I'm not a rough grouse expert, I'm not a quail expert, so I don't know that much about what rough grouse need. But from a quail-turkey combination standpoint it's got more to do with the fact that turkeys can survive and even thrive in some habitat conditions that quail cannot. Now turkeys benefit drastically and even thrive in some habitat conditions that quail cannot. Now turkeys benefit drastically from quail work and so the brood needs are very similar. So you can have both. But you can have really good turkey ground. That's not good quail ground, but it's got more to do with in the Southeast. It's got complete. It's got to do two things.
Speaker 2:We went from about three, you know, we went to an enormous amount of clean farming, just like everybody else. You know, our farming is fence row to fence row and we have everything's cleaned up and and then our, our, our woodlands went to a heavy pine density but it wasn't being managed and uh, and then, uh, in the mid 80s, uh, there were a bunch of lawsuits that, uh, that kind of backed off people from using fire and uh, so a lot of places you know went away from fire and fire is kind of a key component for quail really. So, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, they, well, they're an early successional bird. They have to have, they've got to have a lot of dirt and they've got to have. They're small birds and they've got to have a lot of brood cover.
Speaker 2:They've got to be able to move around on the ground and then they've got to have access to. Most of their food source is going to be bugs and weeds, so you've got to have areas that grow bugs and then you've got to have weedy areas and so they need a lot of sunlight on the ground to grow those weeds. And so your forest density, as the canopies and forests get tighter, you don't get as much sunlight on the ground. So the grand scheme of things for quail it's a combination. In the Southeast it's a combination of sunlight and fire and you can do it with other stuff. It doesn't have to be fire, but fire is the best way to do it.
Speaker 1:So I guess in that respect you can kind of man make.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, completely. We had in the Southeast in the early, you know in the early 19,. You know from the 1900s 1950s. You know it kind of peaked in the mid 60s. You know, as far as quail numbers, that had more to do with land use than anything else. You know everybody had there was a lot of small farming. It was a lot of dirty farming. Everybody had a little bit of gardens. Everything was in little parcels and you had a lot of crop rotation. You had a lot of weedy areas. Fire was common. You know everybody was burning and so it was more of a byproduct of land use than anything else, by-product of land use than anything else.
Speaker 2:And nowadays, you know, the majority of the, of the, the, you know the, the quail ground you know is is viable because of stuff that people are doing. Like I said, I'm on a, I'm on a lease that the only reason it exists is for quail. I mean that's that's why that property is there. It's strictly for quail. You know, and that's been. Every decision is based off of how does this benefit quail? You don't have a lot of places that are set up that way.
Speaker 1:That being the place, you are now, where you're actually at right now.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I'm up in the plains right now. It's a little hot in Mississippi right now we don't start quail hunting. Our season opens on Thanksgiving day and it's still sometimes a little on the warm side.
Speaker 1:It's supposed to cool my ranch. I'm here at the ranch today in Menard, Texas. Okay, I think tomorrow is supposed to start cooling down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty nasty in Texas right now. It has been.
Speaker 1:Steve, when you all started out being upland hunters, did you kind of gear your business towards upland dog supplies, more so than waterfowl, or how did you?
Speaker 2:start I think it was a combination. My father was a quail hunter and so that's kind of how he based his thought process. But there was an enormous amount of need for waterfowl stuff, so that became a focus too fowl stuff so that became a focus too. We're actually pretty spread out as far as what we sell and who we sell to. I still think of us as primarily being an upland waterfowl company, but the reality of it is that we're not. We sell an enormous amount of stuff that we have a very large a lot of coon hunters, a lot of rabbit hunters, a lot of squirrel hunters, a lot of hog hunters. You know an enormous amount of bird hunters, which that spreads out into a lot of you know different things waterfowl guys, competition retriever guys. We sell to a lot of competition folks. Just you know the number of different kinds of ways you can compete with the dogs kind of crazy. And then we have, you know, pretty healthy, you know pet business too.
Speaker 1:So we're pretty diverse as far as a pet business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you mean? I mean as far as just people that own, you know just pets, not necessarily hunters.
Speaker 2:No, no, it's surprising. I mean we sell. We have a tendency to sell high quality gear and that's harder to find in the pet side of it. The pet side has a tendency to be. A lot of the pet stuff is cheap and poorly made. Important, yeah, very much, and so if you're looking for something, that's certain pieces of gear are hard to come by and so we do some business on that side of it. But I mean we're do some business on that side of it. But I mean we're you know we're pretty comfortable with who we are. You know we're you know we sell stuff for hunting dogs. That's what we do.
Speaker 1:You know I think I found you years ago when I was in the Beagles and I had squirrel dogs. Oh yeah, and never really. I never personally. I told you earlier I had the 2024 UKC world champ, coon Hunter, who, as we grew up in the same old town his father and I and mother we all around the same age, but I didn't realize, steve, I interviewed him that that's a. There's some heavy money in that world.
Speaker 2:It's a big deal. It is a gigantic yeah, and bigger than most people probably realize. I mean it's an enormous amount of folks.
Speaker 1:Do you have much of an overseas and maybe I'm getting into business, no, it's fine Do you have a lot of overseas customers? We don't sell overseas.
Speaker 2:We used to. But a lot of the stuff that we sell Is radio based, so there's restrictions on it and so, yeah, it's just not worth it. And certain companies won't even allow us, like Garmin, we're not allowed to sell outside of North America On most of our Garmin stuff. And then, like certain things that we sell, like garment products, like the American version is not legal in Canada and that's because it's a radio frequency and so different countries have different radio frequencies. So we don't do it. We may get back into it at some point, but it's a hassle. I mean, it is a hassle, probably not worth it. Well, it is a. It is a hassle, probably not worth it. Well, it just depends, you know, it depends on the country and it's, it's challenging, for, you know, certain, you know there's customs restrictions and there's there's a lot, there's a lot to it. It's, it's not, you know, it's not the easiest, easiest thing in the world to do.
Speaker 1:Well, Steve, have you ever do you do you train your own dogs? I do. As busy as you are, you still do that Cause I know it's time consuming. Oh, yeah, yeah. Had you ever competed field trials, or?
Speaker 2:tests. I competed pretty heavily as a teenager and really enjoyed it, did a lot of MBHA and and had a really good time with it. Did a lot of MBHA and had a really good time with it. Reached a point where my father said we're either going to need to, you know, go, we're either going to need to. You know we need to kind of get specific as to what we're doing. And if you want to keep competing, I'm fine with that, but that's what we need to do. And and that didn't sit well with me, I'm you know I was like no, I want bird hunt.
Speaker 2:So at that point is when we started, you know, kind of shifting Um, cause they're there. I know a lot of guys that do both Um, but but at that time it was just something that that you know he kind of needed to figure out. You know which way he wanted to spend his time and I enjoyed it. Occasionally I threaten to do it again, but I spend so much time. You know I try to hunt from September to early March and so it's kind of hard to do anything else.
Speaker 1:Now tell us what you got in your kennel today. What's your dogs as?
Speaker 2:far as I primarily, primarily I have English pointers. I've got one setter, I have had German shorthairs and Brittany's. I think that's it. Yeah, my dad was a Brittany guy and he got into Brittany's. He grew up primarily with setters and had some pointers. He got into Brittneys in the late 70s, early 80s and had Brittneys the rest of his life. That was his focus.
Speaker 1:Is that how you got acquainted with the Smith family?
Speaker 2:Yes, my first bird dog came from Rick. First two Brittneys we got, both came from rick, real nice dogs. And uh, I've known ronnie and suzanna and uh, mr delmer, you know, and rick and k. I mean uh, all of them. I even uh tom. Uh, rick's older brother trained a couple of dogs for my dad. So, yeah, I we go way back they're fine people.
Speaker 1:I had ron and suzanne on here last week. Yeah, they're good folks. And then, let's see, I bought a britney off of rick and uh, at the time I was still doing a lot of protection dog work and I realized that my protection dog training techniques and a female britney was not so.
Speaker 1:She would just, you know, she was so soft and I was so used to hard dogs that you know that could take any kind of pressure. Oh sure, roll off their back. You know, if I raised my voice to her, it was over shut down and I was like oh no. So I ended up, uh, had a training friend up in wisconsin. I said hey, I'm probably not a good match for this dog and it's got too much talent to sit here with me and get wasted. You know that's funny.
Speaker 2:The the first dog that I got from, from Rick. Uh, she may have been one of the toughest bird dogs I've ever had and, uh, she could take pressure, like you would not believe. I mean she was, she was stout, Um that's what I need. Yeah, yeah, she was a tough dog you know, steve, I've been on hunts with pointers.
Speaker 1:I've never owned pointers yeah, even though I'm more of an upland than a waterfowl 10 to 1. But they look so athletic I'm sure they just got endurance for days. Tell me what's your love of those dogs?
Speaker 2:You know, I didn't get my first pointer until I was about 30. And we were hunting primarily in Texas and it had a lot to do with the heat. Pointers have a tendency to be able to take the heat a little bit better than some dogs, and that was. That was a big part of it for me. Um, I'm a big believer. You know there's um, you gotta be careful putting dogs into situations that they aren't built for. And uh, um, it's not that, uh, I I've I've been around plenty of Brittany's that that hunt. You know where I hunt. Uh, I've I've hunted behind. You know, you know great ones. Um, I've had a couple that weren't um but uh, but overall, you know, uh, but, but they're not as as heat resistant as uh as an English pointer. So that was that that played a role in it. Um, but there's just something about their personality and the way they are that I like.
Speaker 1:Are they kind of a loner?
Speaker 2:I know, I'll you know they have a reputation for that, but I don't believe that at all. So I have a stance on English pointers and why people have a certain take on them. I have not had, okay, so I've probably had, I'm going to say, 30 pointers in the last 25 years and of that group maybe one or two of them would not have made great house dogs, but the rest of them they'll crawl up in your lap and they'll get up on the bed and they're fine on the couch and they enjoy being around people. They have a reputation for being dogs that are only in the kennel. They don't like human affection, they're not interested in any of that. I just don't see that. I think that has more to do with the fact that the guys that own them don't want them to be that way. They want them to be kennel dogs. So that that's how they, you know, they deal with them.
Speaker 2:Now, if you've got a dog, I had a dog of mine that had to go to the vet and was at the vet for a couple of days. His name is Jack. He's English pointer, he's he's 10. And you know, jack has grown up in the kennel and has always ridden in the dog truck, and you know, and to my knowledge, probably never been in the house, but I had to go pick him up and I just so happened to be in one of my wife's Jeep and I didn't have time to go back out the house to get my dog truck. So I was like, well, I'll just throw him in the front seat, no big deal. Well, he'd never been in the front seat before and he didn't handle it incredibly well because he'd never done it before. It's stuff like that. No, I wouldn't hesitate to take one. It's just how you raise them.
Speaker 1:The reason I asked you that there's a river here where I go swimming in the summertime in Menard. I had some of my dogs out there swimming and I was swimming and anyway, these guys were big pointer guys and he was like, he's like, yeah, I like these dogs. Labs, you want to want to pet them all the time. That are too personable and yeah, but I just thought that's curious now I've got my.
Speaker 2:I've got a dog on the truck right now. He'll crawl up in your lap, I mean he's. You know, like I said, I just I just have never experienced that. Like I said, it's just got more to do with what they're used to.
Speaker 1:The English pointers, just because that's not my niche. Yeah, you know, I've got labs from overseas, from England, and stuff in Ireland, but are some of those dogs imported?
Speaker 2:or most of the stuff.
Speaker 1:American born.
Speaker 2:It's pretty much American. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know of anybody that's doing that nowadays. I mean, that's where they came from, but you know, now it's a US product.
Speaker 1:And you know now, in fact of August 1st, you can't import a pup anymore under six months old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they have changed some of those rules. Those are getting looked at. Yeah, they have changed some of those rules. Those are getting looked at. But, yeah, that's an issue. I did not go to Canada this year but we were working on a trip and there were some concerns early summer that getting dogs back into the country was going to be a problem. Yeah, yeah, so they have backed down on some of that. I'm not current on what's going on with it, but Sportsman's Alliance stepped in and a couple other organizations stepped in and you know, I do think there's going to be some issues with the importing, but I think they're going to get more specific about which countries it's coming from.
Speaker 1:Yes, so it was Like the non-radio companies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was pretty poorly thought out. So it was yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a pretty. It was pretty poorly thought out when it was originally presented, but I don't know that much about it. I've got a real good friend of mine that, excuse me, sorry. I've got a real good friend of mine that imports a lot of dogs out of the UK.
Speaker 1:So you just gave me something to think about. You know, one of the things that I want to do on this podcast. One of the goals of it is to, you know, of course, unite gundog owners, preserve our heritage and also, you know, be aware of social issues that can affect our way of life. Oh yeah, so you just mentioned something to the Sportsman's Alliance, steve. I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds like I need to find out but it sounds like I need to find out.
Speaker 2:It's not always the most. The best way to describe the Sportsman's Alliance is it's the NRA for hunting dog stuff. They are a hardcore. They look at everything. If it's a hunting issue they're. A lobbying organization is basically what they are, and they do an enormous amount of protection. Vast majority of it is big game stuff, but they even get down to dog issues. I've seen them get involved with tethering laws and e-collar laws. It's a good organization. They do a really nice job.
Speaker 1:I'll definitely research that when I get off this podcast. That's something that I want to be involved in. I hope my listeners do too. You know well, all of us, I mean. That affects you.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know I hate to get politics, that's all right.
Speaker 2:Well, politics, politics is, you know, some people take it the wrong way, but but this reality, um, you know, because a lot of folks um were talking about out of state hunters and, um, you know, and I'm an out of state hunter the vast majority of the time, uh, and so for me that's a you know, for me that's an issue, um, but it all comes down to economics and uh, um, you know, and in, you know, and politics plays a role in that.
Speaker 1:So, um, you know, though, when I go, I hunt here on. That's where I'm headed out to here in a day or two, tomorrow actually. Um man, they, they treat us like gold up there. You can tell they really appreciate the business you know, and you feel very welcomed and uh, so I've never felt, you know, like I was resented by being an outside hunter. But that's maybe.
Speaker 2:That's a small well, you know you'll run into some stuff you'll run into some stuff where and this goes back to economics where people get upset because you got folks coming in from out of state and they're by, they're either they're either buying up ground or they're leasing up ground and and money gets involved with it. And that's I. You know, I understand, as somebody that has been on both sides of that. You know, I understand, you know that side of it, but there's some reality to it in that you know I'm not a very big property owner but you know I've got land and you know it's not free, you know, and it's not cheap to upkeep and there's got to be ways for it to, you know, to make money and hunting money and hunting is one of those things.
Speaker 1:I had a big farm in Kentucky that I sold in 19. And I had hunters come from Florida. They paid money that no one around home would pay. No, no, no. And I was like, okay, sure, I won't even hunt myself. And when you got that kind of property it's expensive to upkeep.
Speaker 2:Just like this ranch here.
Speaker 1:You know, if I fence, well, I won't get into that but it's a lot of expense. You got to find ways to make it work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I, you know, I'm a big fan of, I'm a big fan of public access, you know, and we have an enormous amount of public ground. The amount of federal ground, especially in the West, is crazy, and so there's an enormous amount of access. And so to me there's kind of two sides to that. You're always going to have an economic side, you know to it, whether you like it or not, that's just the reality of it. Certain states, I think, handle it better than others, like North Dakota does a really good job with their walk-in stuff, like the first week of pheasant season, you know they have a resident-only hunting and so, like all their walk-in ground season, you know they have a resident only uh hunting, and so, like all their walk-in ground, you know you have to be a resident to access. You know, now you can still go up there and hunt, you know, federal ground, um, and you can hunt private ground, but you can't hunt the walk-in stuff, um without you know, unless you're resident. Okay now, and I think there should be more of that um, you know there's been a uh, you know there's always been a push for, you know, for unless you're a resident, and I think there should be more of that. You know there's been a.
Speaker 2:You know there's always been a push for, you know for some of that and I have no issue with that. And besides that there's plenty of federal ground, you know. So I have no problem with the state stepping in and taking care of the residents. But that's the thing where you kind of have to be organized and you have to. You got to put some pressure on them, you know, because you know they want my dollars. You know the Chamber of Commerce in your local town is is, you know, advertising to me because they want me to come up and spend money, and so you know. So there's a couple of different sides to it, and you know and I kind of see. You know all the different angles to it and I'm all for it. But there's plenty. Access is really not a problem.
Speaker 1:Even this town here, menard, texas. You go on down the road to Brady, major hunting towns.
Speaker 2:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:While right now, in the weekends, every grocery store you'll see hunters, atvs and trailers. Those guys are spending a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a huge economic impact.
Speaker 1:But no, that's interesting. So yeah, I mean, are there any other organizations like the Sportsman Alliance that you're aware of that protect our interest.
Speaker 2:You know there's a lot of different organizations and you know, and I think, that there's advantages to all of them. I'm big in Quail Forever, pheasants Forever. We do a lot of stuff with them and that's a major one. Ducks Unlimited is huge. Delta Waterfowl is a really important organization In Texas. I'm on the board of the Rolling Plains Quail Research Foundation. We've got a research facility in Robie, texas. There's a lot of the number of organizations that are doing stuff. Texas has an organization called the Quail Coalition which is a fundraising primarily for research in Texas for quail. So there's an enormous amount of organizations that you know. I tend to be focused on the ones that are upland based.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I need to look into those. Well, I've been a member a long time. I'm on the board in Midland for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, yeah, and I've been active with them since probably 2016. Yeah, but no, I need to look. I am a member of Pheasants Forever, though Sure, now, being through your busy lifestyle, I know you've got a huge business. How often do you get to hunt out of the year? How many days the year?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goals all tell that it doesn't bother me, they know it in the office. I'm very fortunate that I have a really well, my partner runs a big chunk of it. Rob handles an enormous amount of the day-to-day stuff nowadays, and that's your brother, that's my brother and he I ran the company primarily until about 2001. And he's been running the day-to-day operations since 2001. So and I'm I'm fortunate he he primarily does waterfowl stuff and so he doesn't have to go quite as far. He goes to North Dakota some, but he's primarily in Arkansas and Mississippi.
Speaker 1:That works out good. One waterfowl, one upland, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I tell folks that if you see me duck hunting a lot, it means that the quail numbers are real low, yeah, but so I'm not as involved with it day to day as I used to be. That kind of helps Some of that's hunting based. My goal is always 100 days. That's always my goal. Sometimes I hit it, sometimes I don't, Sometimes I go over it, just kind of depends.
Speaker 1:Your dog get a lot of hunting?
Speaker 2:yeah, they do. There's no substitute for that.
Speaker 1:No no, um, I've got two labs right now up at a paul nelson farm with a guy. He's running them seven days a week and then oh yeah I'm so I'm going up to pick them up this week and then I'll get to hunt with them wild birds. And I'm, yeah, I'm just I can't wait to see the difference in the dogs, oh yeah yeah, yeah, you can't beat experience you know so how many miles you put on your feet a year oh, quite a few.
Speaker 2:I do a lot of walking. I do a lot of walking yeah, well, I don't know, uh, but it's uh, they're good, they're good. I, uh, I do. I do a lot of work year round to to be able to walk. I I don't. I've done every kind of hunting. I don't like hunting out of a vehicle. Um, I don't like. I I did some horseback hunting for a while, but me and horses just aren't. You know, I'm just not that talented of a horseman, that's me, I can trail ride barely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, not anymore, uh, but you know, I I like to walk. That's how I grew up doing it, that's what I like to do, so yeah, and I need it, so yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:I try to work out, I try to get in shape before yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, I yeah, that's the primary reason no, no.
Speaker 1:Oh, how long are you going to be a thrower in Montana?
Speaker 2:I don't know, maybe another 10 days.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll see, Now do you hunt a lot by yourself. You have both friends.
Speaker 2:I do both. My schedule kind of allows me to come and go as I please. I have a very small group of folks that I like to hunt with and, uh, it just depends. Um, I, you know, I I do a little bit of both and so, uh, so it just depends. But, um, I don't mind going by myself it it, I enjoy it. Um, I was this week. I've got three young dogs with me and we've done a bunch of just me and one dog and that's a nice, you know, that's a nice not having to worry about anybody else, it's just focusing on that one dog. That's a nice thing to get to do every once in a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with young dogs, you just about have to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you got to let them figure it out, and that's primarily what I'm up here doing right now is you know you can do a lot of training and yard work and you can work on pigeons, and you know you can do a lot of stuff, but it doesn't. You know these, these birds you know wild birds don't behave like anything else and you know there's only one way to learn.
Speaker 1:Steve, you said you train yourself. Do you use mostly some of the Delmer Smith methods? What do you use? But still borrow things you've learned.
Speaker 2:I grew up, I attended my first Delmer Smith seminar when I was 14. Wow, yeah, and I went and saw Rick do a seminar. You know, mr Delmer's stuff was not e-collar based, you know, it was all. You know it was all check cords and pinch collars. And you know, and this was in the like you know, his book was written in I guess late 70s that's what I'm thinking around 70 was written in, uh, I guess late seventies. Um, yeah, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 2:And uh, you know, we really didn't have e-collars that could do the kind of stuff that you can do nowadays. So if you, if you go and see what Rick or Ronnie are teaching, um, it's a whole, you know it's, it's, it's, it's the same stuff. They've just translated, you know it, into training collars. So there's a lot of stuff that we can do nowadays that you couldn't do before. I went and saw one of Rick's seminars in probably 2000, 2001, and kind of changed my entire mindset on what I was doing as far as training dogs. And at that time, and Rick told me that Ronnie was the most talented e-collar guy you know that he had ever seen, and especially at that time Rick was the more well-known cousin and I was like, come on, really Best you've ever seen. And I went and trained with Ronnie shortly after that and he was hands down. You know, I mean it was phenomenal, it changed my entire mindset on stuff and he was hands down. I mean, it was phenomenal, it changed my entire mindset on stuff.
Speaker 1:And nowadays Susanna is who I go to.
Speaker 2:She's hardcore man, she's something else.
Speaker 1:I just couldn't think of your brain and I was like, wow, I didn't know what to expect because I don't know her, I hadn't been to her seminars yet and when she started talking I was like that's big deal, take notes, yeah, she's hardcore. But then I realized heck, she grew up, was raised on a ranch probably an hour west of me, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that kind of made sense, yeah, yeah so they're there, but that's most of my, most of my stuff. I do a few things outside of of what they they do and I like to study other stuff. I've got a bunch of different trainers that I you know, because it's always good to see other disciplines, you know, to see stuff that the waterfowl guys are doing, to see stuff that you mentioned. Canine A lot of stuff that the canine guys are doing. You know amazing stuff, amazing stuff. Um, and then, uh, you know even just just basic obedience. Uh, you know and and and you know general pet trainers. Um, my oldest son is a professional uh, you know pet trainer. You know he does. He does, um, just you know, uh, obedience work with dog owners.
Speaker 1:It's a huge market too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's one of those things too, that there's a lot of stuff. If you're just trapped in your and this is the only thing that I do and these are the only people I listen to there's so much stuff you miss out on I go to.
Speaker 1:British seminars. I've been in the Popo School. Oh yeah, I'm going to go to Gold School next, as a matter of fact, to gold school next. And, and you know, and I use that Matter of fact, I use retriever, a retriever training thing. That's the cornerstone gun dog Academy. I use their stuff, oh yeah, for the basis of my protection dogs.
Speaker 2:You know my obedience work and stuff.
Speaker 1:But yeah, no, it's. I'm like you there. I I'm never a know it all and I try to be like a sponge and learn from everybody.
Speaker 2:It's amazing the stuff you can pick up and just different thought processes. Yeah, just be humble. Oh yeah, very much, very much.
Speaker 1:So yeah. So, being such a company that's so involved and engulfed in this world, the sport of gundogs, do you all like any events or do you host any kind of gatherings?
Speaker 2:We do a couple of things, but we're kind of out the middle of nowhere and so that that's kind of tricky. We do Ronnie's been doing a seminar with us for probably the last 10 or 15 years 15 years probably and we do that. We do that typically in the spring, uh, over at uh, we're doing it now at a place called Prairie wildlife. It's over in West Point, mississippi. Uh, we'll have that. Uh, april, I think it's the fifth and six is the first first Saturday Sunday in April. Uh, we've got that set for 2025. Is that open to whom? Oh, yeah, uh, like to do that. It's neat stuff. Yeah, I highly recommend it. Yeah, you should come join us. It's a lot of fun, it's a neat setup. And then we do a couple of other small things, but not a lot. That's just. Every once in a while I'll get the inspiration to want to do something, but we're a long way from any sort of population centers. What is the closest town to you?
Speaker 1:all it's a big city.
Speaker 2:Big city as far as Mississippi Jackson would be the closest thing to us. Tupelo is about 60, about 70 miles northeast of us. Tuscaloosa is about an hour and a half. Memphis is about two hours two and a half hours.
Speaker 1:I just drove through all that area.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I know you're up there hunting. I hate to take all your time.
Speaker 2:It's okay. The only reason I booked today is because it's too hot to go today. I ran a couple of dogs this morning, but it's going to get up into the high 70s, maybe like 82, something like that.
Speaker 1:Now, what's your house weather there the upcoming weekend? What's it going to be like as far as where?
Speaker 2:In Montana it's going to be highs in the 50s.
Speaker 1:I need to check it for South Dakota. Yeah, I haven't.
Speaker 2:I might say it's been a hot fall. I typically come up in September and I I couldn't this year for some family obligations, and but I didn't miss anything as far as the weather, cause it was highs in the nineties almost every day and I, you know I'm not running a dog in that. So they're miserable and you are, it's not fun at all, and so it's a long way up here to you know, come up here and do nothing. So at all it's a long way up here to come up here and do nothing. This week's weather's been pretty decent, so I can't complain.
Speaker 2:I hope it stays that way when I get up there, yeah me too.
Speaker 1:Last year opening weekend, I think the second day we got sunburned. It was that hot in.
Speaker 2:Saskatchewan. You've got to be careful. It's hit and miss. I've been up here and gotten snowed on in September, you know, and I've been up here where it was, you know 100 degrees and so you know it's unpredictable and you got to be careful because if you push too late, especially from a waterfowl standpoint, you know, if you push too late a couple of times I've been, you know I'm like, well, I'll come up and hunt in November, and next thing, you know, a blizzard comes through and everything's locked up. So you go when you can go and the weather is what the weather is. You just deal with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Now what's the latest? You'll stay up that far north hunting. Oh, I am from the south.
Speaker 2:Please watch out. Oh, it depends. I have been up here in late November. I don't know if I'll ever do that again. I'm just not. I'm not built for it. I am just not. Uh, I don't like to hunt in the snow. Everybody tells me that I'm missing out. That's the best time ever. I just do not care for it. Uh, yeah, it's just not for me. So I typically uh, texas opens for, you know, opens for bird season the end of October. The biggest problem with Texas that November hunting in Texas can be a little on the warm side. But I like to be back in Mississippi when we open. I'm a quail hunter. In the grand scheme of things I'm a quail hunter. So once quail season kind of kicks in, I tend to be in the south.
Speaker 1:And it's manageable there. I mean even yeah, you know we'll have hot days here in December and oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not, it won't last, no, no no, you'll get plenty of cold weather in that part of the world. Now, do you do any big game hunting? Strictly no, I never have. It's funny deer hunting you're talking about like turkeys same thing. I've never turkey hunted. I've never deer hunted. My dad grew up in Mississippi. He said he was back then. If you saw a deer it made the paper. It was a big deal back when he was a kid, he told me once he was 25. He lived in Mississippi his entire life. He said he was 25 before he ever saw it his first year. They were incredibly uncommon. I just never did it and just don't have a big attraction to it. I'm all for it but it's just not my thing.
Speaker 1:In the 80s everybody in eastern Kentucky, we all went to western Kentucky to hunt. It was kind of funny. On Sunday evenings you'd see deer on car hoods coming back from Western Kentucky back to East Kentucky. But now you know, now there's trophy deer in Eastern Kentucky.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I'm like you. You know we didn't see turkey until I was in my teens. Seeing a deer was a big deal in the early 80s in Kentucky.
Speaker 2:you know, If there's not a dog involved with it, it just doesn't do anything for me.
Speaker 1:The older I get, I like to move around. I'm tired.
Speaker 2:I've hunted tree stands for many, many years.
Speaker 1:I've been there, done that.
Speaker 2:It's funny, I'll sit in a tree stand every once in a while just doing something, just hanging out. You miss some stuff when you're not sitting in a tree stand. You know cause, if you can blend in and the, the, the, you know things get quiet. You get to see some stuff that you don't see when you're out. You know moving around, but I, yeah, I like moving around.
Speaker 1:I was hunting in Eastern Kentucky right after they had a big elk release in our county.
Speaker 2:I've never heard of an elk.
Speaker 1:Bugle, oh sure, and I was in a tree up on her, up on a Ridge on the mountaintop, was kind of spurs, so I could have four, you know four directions coming into me and uh, as elk had come up behind me. I've never seen elk in the woods, oh yeah, suckers are big and bugle, I almost. I mean I come unglued, scared the crap out of me, but it was the most majestic thing in the world. You know, yeah, oh yeah, but but you're right, I, there's one I do miss sitting in the stuff. You see, you see everything, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But, but it's yeah, it's just not yeah, like I said, my my primary focus is is walking behind a dog with shotgun. That's my primary focus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's just stay moving. If I don't move, I get stiff as a board. So I have to move. Exactly, yeah, well, uh well, maybe I'll get to meet you in person one of these days. Steve would cross paths, um, maybe if they're hunting or something, some of these days. Oh, actually, I'll probably.
Speaker 2:I will probably put them on account of that seminar. I know they do a beginner-intermediate advance. Yeah, this will be a foundation seminar. That is what teaches the basis for everything that they do. It's primarily getting a dog to come to you, getting a dog to go with you and getting a dog to stop. Those are the three primary things that we teach at a, at a foundation seminar.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll come there. I won't do all three of them, I think it'd be a big worthwhile for me, but oh yeah, yeah. Well, steve, tell the listeners you know you're way more well-known than I am in this, in this industry, by a long shot. How can they, where can they, find your, your store?
Speaker 2:We're online. It's a gundogsupplycom. We take orders over the phone, but everything that we do is on the internet.
Speaker 1:I will say that the delivery is really quick, thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm impressed.
Speaker 1:The speed of stuff arrives when I order it.
Speaker 2:Well, we grew up in the Amazon world, so that's used to. You know that that's who we, that's, that's who we judge ourselves against.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's, it's comparable, for sure. Yeah, um well, steve, it's been a pleasure. I thank you for taking time.
Speaker 2:Oh sure, Well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you.