Blue Hen Outdoors Podcast
Hunting,travel,outdoors,comedy
Blue Hen Outdoors Podcast
Episode 75: Jeff Stanfeild
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This episode we have the one and only Jeff Stanfeild of the Big Honker podcast. We talk about how he started out hunting and how it then lead to guiding and talked about some west Texas bird hunting, as well as how conditions have their own unique way of controlling hunts. As well as dive into how he started the Big Honker podcast and how it’s has grown to what it is.
The one and only Jeff Stanfeild
Tonight, Mr. Jeff Stanfield of the Big Honker Podcast. How are you doing tonight, sir?
SPEAKER_00I'm doing wonderful. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate that.
SPEAKER_02I appreciate you sparing some time to come on tonight. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you're quite welcome. So, how's it going up back east?
SPEAKER_02It's going pretty good. Uh, weather's finally getting decent. Um, not as much sporadic rain as it was in the early spring, but um now that we're rolling into summer, the weather's pretty steadily sunny and hot, but um hopefully get able to get some fishing done here soon.
SPEAKER_00Well, I would take the rain that you're not getting. Well, I would we'll always take rain. It's it's not hot, it is probably 82 degrees today, which is really nice for us for this time of year. It's real humid, but I would much rather it be this way than 110. So I I like this weather.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. This week it's been like 96. But next week's supposed to tick back on like high 70s, mid eighties, so oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00Those are good days.
SPEAKER_02But um, I usually start Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's start with how did uh your season go this year?
SPEAKER_00Terrible. Probably it's in the top three of the worst seasons in 30 something plus years of guiding in the outfitting business. It was as bad this year to me. I put it equivalent to like I'm gonna say the late 80s duck hunting in Texas was pretty bad because the duck numbers were way off, but it was a it was a really, really slow year, and we had a lot of good days too, but the overall was maybe a five or six out of ten.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Now you're in West Texas, right?
SPEAKER_00Yep, northwest Texas.
SPEAKER_02Okay, did you guys get any of the um two big hit with any of the two big cold fronts that came through?
SPEAKER_00The big front that we had the last week of season, we had a bunch of snow and a really cold weather. Our last two weeks of season were really good. I have no complaints about the last two weeks, but November, we had birds all year. We we weren't lacking birds. We had birds, we had tons of geese here the whole time. We just had a hard year this year. I mean, it they started out hard. Yeah, the last two weeks were good when we finally had some weather, but we just and we weren't really hot. It's it's it's weird. We we didn't have like a hot, hot winter. We just had a gradual cooling the whole year long. We never had any big fronts, like our average highs were not very far off the normal, but we never had the dips where it got really cold.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, that's kind of how like it was around here, too. Like from October, it was kind of like steadily just dropping down, dropping down like little by little by little. And then once December hit, we got a nice little snow. And then we had the two or three big fronts that came at the end of the season and in February, which blew everything in, but it's like season's out, so it's like great.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my last our last thing. That's one of my big things too.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if oh go ahead.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say our last we had no the last three days in season. We got a lag in here. It could be. I've got I'm living in Hooterville, so I can believe that. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was just gonna say I've talked to a couple of my buddies that I hunt with, and um not that they concur with me on some of this, but I say I don't know how it is down by you, but as far as like for waterfowl up here, get ready September teal season, because there's not not really much teal here anyway in September. And then have our first split be like that week of Thanksgiving, open a second split in December, and then towards the end of December through January into February, have the big third split.
SPEAKER_00Well, we are fortunate where we live at, we don't have any splits. We have a teal season that's last 10 days, I think nine days, maybe nine days now. It was 16 and it's nine days. And teal hunting is hit or miss. We're so busy with dove hunters that I really don't worry that much about teal hunting. When it's wet and we have a lot of teal, we shoot them. If it's not, I don't worry about it. But we open our waterfowl season opens the first weekend in November and we go to the last weekend in January. Ducks and geese both know splits in West Texas where we are.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Hmm. That's interesting. How do you like that?
SPEAKER_00It's been that way since I was a kid, so I like it. Now, if you go east of me about 30 miles, they do have a split. I'm in the high plains, Mallard, but east of me, they do have a split, a couple of splits. Not a lot, though. They'll have a they start a week after we do, and then they'll have a split for maybe a couple of days, but it's it's still not a long, a very big split.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So how did you get your start into hunting and waterfowling?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I got started hunting with my dad when I was little. I'm 58 years old, and I was in a blind hunt with my dad when I was eight years old. So for 50 years I've been chasing ducks and geese. And then when I was in college 35 years ago, started guiding hunts. And we've been in the I've been in the hunting business for 35 years now.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. How have you seen from when you started guiding to now things change with like the hunting industry and with guides and all that kind of fun stuff?
SPEAKER_00Well, I've seen a lot of changes, I can guarantee you. I um I was in business before there was a mojo duck. I was in business before there was any social media, I was in business before we had emails. Uh there wasn't an on X. Um, there was Go Devil Motors. When I was a kid, my neighbor had a Go Devil. And that's so that that was the first mud motor with the Go Devils, and that would have been, I'm gonna say 81, 82, 83, somewhere around then, I think is probably when the first time I was introduced to a mud motor. Uh it's changed tremendously. Um nowadays, like where we are in northwest Texas, back in the day, a few people went to Canada. Canada hunting wasn't like it is now. There weren't as many people went, not as many people went to the Dakotas. So a lot of the birds that we would hunt in November hadn't been shot at all year long.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Now the now the geese are hammered from September 1. Well, actually, they start in the middle of August in the Dakotas with their uh nuisance season. So the birds are getting hunted from August 15th, basically till May 15th, because then you get the extended snow goose deal, and that puts a lot of pressure on geese that aren't snow geese. People are fools to think that there ain't a bunch of other birds get shot besides just snow geese during the conservation season. So those birds get pressure on them. So the bird the pressure on the birds now is six months, what used to be about three months. And there wasn't as many people hunt in Canada. So the birds didn't they didn't get hammered from September 1st from Canada down here. And we hadn't had winter. We ain't had winter in 10 years, and it's not just the cold, it's no snow. When when I first got in the business, I would go to a trade show in Minneap in Minneapolis, and we would that their big show was in March, and I went and did it around 97 or 98, I would guess. So almost 30 years ago, and there was people selling snowmobiles up there, a lot of them. And people were using snowmobiles, and that was all part of it. And nowadays, there's you know, there's no snow no more in the Dakotas. You know, you got to go to northern Minnesota, northern Michigan to find people on snowmobile trails. And it used to not be like that. We used to have a snow line that by the time January 15th got here, the snow line was somewhere halfway between Oklahoma, the Kansas border at least. And if you drove up north, once you got to Kansas, it was going to be wide all the way till Easter. And now that it doesn't happen anymore.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. I can also concur, especially like out here east, like we don't even really have winter anymore. Like we'll have maybe one or two good snows, if that, and then it's like kind of just like a mild winter the rest of the year, lots of rain. But I mean, you you've probably known seen like you know, like the New York White Christmas and all that fun stuff. You know, my dad, he's from originally up around Great Lakes area up in Erie, Pennsylvania. He he would tell me stories of like they'd have six, seven feet of snow in a week and it wouldn't they wouldn't bat an eye. And then it's like now it's like they get four feet and they're getting ready to shut stuff down.
SPEAKER_00Like what? Yeah, it but yeah, we don't we don't have the we don't have it no more, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that definitely affects a lot. Not just the birds, I mean even even with deer hunting around here, it's it's you can see how the weather affects it because September and I'd even say from September to early November sometimes, it's still like 70, 80 degrees around here. And it's like the deer aren't really moving like they used to.
SPEAKER_00We had a great deer season this year. A maybe the best deer season we've had in a long time, but that stems off of we had a lot of rain last summer, and we're starting off this summer with it raining all the time. We haven't gotten big numbers of rain, but when you get in West Texas, when you get rain twice a week in June, July, and August, and we're supposed to have a wet summer, you have huge horns. So we had a great deer season this year. So where the waterfowl was lacking this year, the deer hunting was amazing.
SPEAKER_02Do you think that both deer and duck hunting kind of reflect each other in a way as far as like with the weather patterns and stuff? Or do you think they're both two totally opposite things, two totally different opposites?
SPEAKER_00Two completely different things. The deer are here, they're not migrating, so you have your deer that you're gonna have. Cold weather obviously affects it, but I we we have we're we're in a unique situation where we are with our deer hunting because we don't have a lot of pressure on our deer. I can take you to a field right now at two o'clock in the afternoon and can show you deer moving all day long. We don't pressure them, nobody messes with them, they got plenty of food. I can't do that with waterfowl in waterfowl season. I can show you the duck, ducks and geese, they can't make them feed. Uh, cold weather definitely makes the deer move. If it's real windy, they'll lay down and stuff. But the deer are here, they're not, they're not moving. We don't we we need weather to move the ducks and geese. We had a we had a lot of geese here all year long. We had a tough season. Ducks, we had no ducks last year at all. The last two weeks of season, we started seeing a bunch of ducks here because we finally got some weather. You have to have weather to move the ducks. The geese will move more by calendar than than than the weather. You have your calendar geese, then you've got your weather geese. October 18th, if you call me up on October 18th and you say, Jeff, what's your duck or goose population? I'm gonna tell you somewhere between 15 and 25,000 geese are here. I don't care if it's 100 degrees or if it's 27 degrees, that's what we're gonna have. Now, if it's 27 degrees, we probably will have the Grand Passage and we will have 100,000 birds here. But no matter what the weather is, on October 18th, we're gonna have X amount of birds. October 13th, we're gonna have X amount of birds. Happens every year. Our deer here, they don't ever leave. So I don't really put that cold weather makes the deer more active. But a buck's chasing a doe in heat. He don't care if it's 100 or if it's 22.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, true. Do you guys do much uh crane hunting out there in Texas, West Texas? I mean, I know that's kind of big out there, but I've I've never really talked to anybody. Do you personally do it much?
SPEAKER_00We do a lot of crane hunting. We do we we sell a waterfowl hunt because I get guys that call all the time. They're like, hey, we want to book a we like to do a three-day hunt. What all can we do? We can do cranes, ducks, geese. But I'm gonna book it as a waterfowl hunt. If you want to target cranes, that's what we'll target. But let's say the day you're crane hunting here, it's gonna be raining all day. Cranes aren't gonna fly in the rain, they're not like a duck and a goose. So there's days that we'll have multiple crane feeds, and there's days we got one or two crane feeds. There's days we don't really have much of a crane feed. If it does that, then we're gonna shoot ducks or geese. Maybe you book a duck hunt and I've got cranes and geese. Well, we're gonna shoot cranes and geese because this year, if you'd have booked a duck hunt, we didn't have a lot of ducks. And so whatever my hottest feeds are, I give guys the opportunity. We run three groups of hunters a day on average, sometimes four on weekends. And if I've got a big crane feed and everybody signed up to goose hunt, we have dinner that night, I'll say, is there any a group that'd like to crane hunt? We got a hot crane feed if you'd like to crane hunt. And so we'll we we do shoot a lot of cranes. Cranes are a lot harder to hunt than a goose is. If you're on the X and it works out good, they're the dumbest birds in the world. But if they're wanting to go a quarter of a mile away and for some reason they change their mind and they want to go over there, they're in a damn thing you can do to change their minds.
SPEAKER_01I haven't thought about that. Are they as good as they say that people people say they are?
SPEAKER_00For eating? It's not it's not livery like a duck or a goose. No, and they're not uh they're grain eaters, that's what they eat. They eat grain. The the you know, everybody thinks of a crane that's never hunted before. They think they're hunting a blue heron, you know, or a fish eater or something, and they're grain eaters. That's all they do is eat grain. But uh they're they're a finicky bird, they're they're uh we call them the dinosaurs, you know, pterodactyls is what they are, and uh they they they've got their own personality, but you can't deviate from what they want to do. And you can have a field set for three days and they go to the same place for three days in a row, and you can go set your ass right up there in that spread to hunt them, and that next morning they decide they want to go the opposite direction uh three miles. No rhyme, reason, nothing at all. I ain't so sure they don't have a crane scout that gets up in the middle of the night and flies when they see people start setting decoys up, goes back and lands and tells them all, and they go the opposite direction. But when you're on the when you're on the X, there's not a dumber bird in the world. I I have seen them land three yards in front of the blind right in front of you and just land there. And then there's days that you can't get them within a hundred yards of you and they'll flare. Same setup, same everything. They just when they when they work, they work great, and when they don't work, they're a pain in the ass.
SPEAKER_02Hmm. Interesting. I never really like I said, I never really talked to anybody that crane hunts, so I'm glad for that insight. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they uh well, like a goose hunt. You can you can goose hunt. I've I've many mornings where geese are flaring or they're doing this, and you move something, and you move something, and magically all of a sudden you look like you're uh Einstein and they work perfect.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00It ain't that way with cranes, they either do it or they don't do it.
SPEAKER_02Right. Oh yeah. We kind of mentioned it a little bit. What's um what's it like going out on a guided hunt with you?
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't guide no more. I haven't guided a hunt in 30 years. And you don't want to guide, you don't want to go with me on a hunt. I have guys call and they'll book a hunt and they go, We want you to take us. No, you don't. First of all, I have my days of guiding are way, way behind me. It ain't happening. If I'm guiding, we have had a serious sickness at the lodge or emergency, and I'm having a guide. And I'm telling you right now, if I'm guiding, by God, we're going to the X. So um I don't guide anymore. So I and I hunt a little bit, not much. I I'm busy. I get up in the mornings and I'm usually at the field at first light. I usually drive a V, uh I usually take people to the spread. I'll get and they'll get my truck and I'll drive them to the spread after they park their vehicles. And I'm there at first light and I'm there for probably usually about an hour. It depends on what we got going on. If we've got three or four groups out and they're all within close range, I'll watch one group and another and I scout in the mornings and then I get back to the lodge usually by about nine o'clock or eight. Whenever we're sometimes we're done a lot of times we're done early, but I get back and I do the bank, the post office, all that stuff. And then I head, I'm at the lodge and I stay at the lodge until lunch, and then we scout again at three. But I don't I don't do much guiding anymore. I don't do any guiding it anymore at all.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So how did you get started in doing the um Big Honker podcast?
SPEAKER_00Andy was his idea.
SPEAKER_02And did you ever think it was going to go where it's been?
SPEAKER_00Well, first of all, I didn't even know what a podcast was the first time Andy pitched it to me. And that would have been 2016 or 17, he pitched it to me. And I didn't know what a podcast was. I knew who Joe Rogan was from Fear Factor and knew who he was, but I didn't I didn't know nothing about a podcast. And so, anyways, Andy listened to Joe Rogan all the time. And he's like, at first it was like, hey, Jeff, you need a podcast. And I was like, I don't even know what one is. So then after he hammered me and hammered me about it, I said, I'll tell you what, I said, you do a podcast, we'll do it together, and we'll do it, I'll do a podcast and we'll do it together. Because I'm pretty outspoken on social media and I speak my mind about stuff and I piss a lot of people off, but a lot of people like to hear what I say and I talk a lot. So he pitched the idea of a podcast, and so we had to come up with a name. Well, our lodge is called the Big Hunker Lodge, a Big Hunker Podcast, and so we named it. And we did our first podcast April 9th, 2008. We released our first podcast April 9th, 2018, and it was absolutely horrible, absolutely trash. And um we we just started growing and growing and growing. And after about 15 or 20 episodes, we realized that we couldn't do just waterfowl hunting. It's only so much to talk about, waterfowl-wise. And then we branched out and started having some extra guests come on. And then we branched out and started doing the world on fire, where we talk about all the shit going on in the world every day. And it just started growing and growing, and we've got a huge following of people that are very loyal to us. And we started out, and I'll never forget a guy told me one time after about three months, he goes, Y'all, y'all are pretty serious. Y'all, y'all, y'all understand Waterfowl World. Well, yeah, we've been in it for 20-something years at this time, and um it just kind of grew. And I never thought it would be as big as it is. I mean, we've been as high as number two or three in the wilderness, which is behind Steve Ronello, behind Meat Eater. And we stay in oh wow, we stay in the top 10 or 15 at all times. We have millions of downloads a year, and uh we're ourselves, we don't change for people. I have people that come to the lodge the first time they hunt with us and they're like, You guys are just like y'all are on podcasts. Yeah, we're we don't that's what I think that's what's made it the as popular as it is, is we don't change what you see on the podcast is what we are in real life.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, for sure. And that's how I try to be as well, with me doing this whole deal that I got going on. You know, I just try to be me, and I I mean, like I tell people I do a podcast, I'm like you know, it's nothing special. I'm not like Ranella or Rogan. Like I don't got no, I mean, I have some big and cool guests like yourself and some other people I've had on in the past, but it's like I just see myself as a regular guy, just talking to people.
SPEAKER_00It's all it's all it is. We uh as we've had growth, it it it at first it was like just in the waterfowl world, like we would go to a waterfowl show, and you started after about year or two, you started getting where people would recognize you at waterfowl stuff. And now it's we've kind of changed over to not just a waterfowl podcast, we're just a podcast. And we have we have so many different people on. Um this next week, we've got a kid on that was a quarterback at Tennessee when Peyton Manning was at Tennessee as a freshman and they fought it out as a freshman. They were both of them were five-star recruits, and we've got him on, names Brandon Stewart. We got him on next week. He'll be on Monday, and so it'll probably come out like Wednesday. But uh we have so many different things that we talk about and um different different avenues that we take. We may have a redneck on, we may have a famous varmint hunter, Clay Reed's on all the time. He's a friend of ours. We have artists on, we'll have uh actors, singers, athletes, and then we'll just have Joe Blow, the plumber down there, he's got a cool story, and we'll have him on. But it's getting now wherever we go somewhere, you have regular people that aren't waterfowl hunters that'll come up and say, Hey, I listen to your podcast, or this. And it's not just a hunting podcast anymore. And and I think that's the biggest change. But I think that's what may that's why our numbers are so high. We're the only waterfowl podcast that's ever in the top 10 wilderness. And a lot of times, a lot of times we're top five. And the next waterfowl podcast. Podcast might be number 50. I mean, there's a big difference usually, but but a lot of that has to do with just the different kind of people that we have on as guests.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, and I have not to say I've been following you guys since you started, but as of recently, from you being on with my buddies, the Marsh Boys, and all that, I've kind of started following you a little more. And I love listening to your guys' stuff. I mean, you guys have all kinds of different, funny, crazy, interesting things you guys talk about, whether it be like you guys just talking in general with yourselves, or like how you guys have cool guests on, or the public land segments you guys have been doing. I think those are really cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we were really proud that Shin sponsors that it's a Shin Gear podcast, the Public Hunter, brought to you by Shin Gear. Great company. The as good a customer service as there is, and we've been with Shin since they first started. And um we do we we we have a good lot, a lot of brand loyalty with our listeners and stuff, but that is a really enjoyable podcast. And we're fixing to have our first guy from Canada on that's a do-it-yourselffer on that. We're gonna also get somebody from I'm trying to get somebody from Mexico that's a do it yourselfer, but people can relate to do-it-yourself stuff, and it's also the most controversial. I get more ash chewins off of the public land deal than anything we do, and it amazes me how pissy people get in territorial about public hunting.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, for sure. Especially like in places like Arkansas or like I mean, even up here, people get pissy about going to certain spots, or you know, there's I've heard I've never seen it, but I've heard stories, people get into fist fights up here and stuff like that. And it's like it's public land, dude. Like, you know, if you want to go hunting, go hunt it. And especially like for somebody like me, or like people in my generation that are younger and kind of getting into hunting and want to do the cool, big, adventurous, fun hunting. Not that going with a guy is bad. I mean, the guy knows what they're doing and can teach you a lot more. But as far as like for a budget standpoint, young people like me doing it yourself on public land is kind of more easier and accessible for some things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, waterfowl hunting is is cheap, but it's expensive. For a dozen decoys, you can buy a dozen decoys for a hundred dollars. You can buy you oh, yeah, you don't have to buy shin waiters, you can buy you some cheap waders and stuff, and you can become a public hunter with some cheap waders and a dozen decoys and buy you a call for, I don't know, $400, you know, and and you can be a hunter and you can hunt and you can learn. And that's why a lot of guys learn. And duck hunting is more is different than any other sport. Duck hunters are a tight fraternity of people. Um, but boy, they sure do get territorial about stuff. And I've had my ass chewed out over stuff that uh it's just people, you know, I I I shouldn't be able to voice my opinion on public land hunter because I hunt all private stuff. Well, I'm in the hunting business, but I grew up hunting public land. I know I didn't forget what I learned and what I saw. And it's a different game today than it was 30 years ago. One X has changed the mode.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's changed tremendously.
SPEAKER_00One X, Mud Motors, and Spinning Wings have changed waterfowl more than anything. And I don't have against nothing against any any of them. I mean, nothing at all. If that's your jam, that's now knock yourself out. But it has changed in social media. There's so many internet scouters out there. And I tell guys all the time, like we have a joke on our stuff, Lake Winnipesaukee is the lake on our public hunter series. I don't care where you're hunting at. Had a kid from Georgia on where do you hunt in Lake Winnipesaukee this week? That's our that's our go-to word from What About Bob. That was the lake they were at in New Hampshire. And so that's our go-to lake. That's what we call it all. But if I have a guy come on and he's like, listen, I hunt in Salmon Point and we hunt on, you know, right off County Road 16. And if there's a salmon point and they've got a county road 16, I'm just making shit up. So that's just strictly me making up a name. But what they will get, they get you know pissed. I have guys call me all the time. I can't believe you had him on and he don't know what the hell he's talking about. And he did this and he did that. Well, it's uh he's a public hunter. That's what we want to talk about, is public hunting.
SPEAKER_02So anyway, oh yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00That's that's been a really good series for us. We do a we do a football pick'em series that's really very, very popular, and we do it every year during football season, every week. We have an NFL pick, we have a guest picker on every week, and we pick, and that's getting to be really, really big. And we got some other stuff we're working on right now that are gonna be with the podcast, and then uh I think we're gonna have a sports talk, syndicated sports talk show that's fixing to come out here probably in the next six months, too.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that'd be cool. Yeah, just I love listening to that. I'm a big sports guy myself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, most men are, and that's what and a lot of women do, and so we're fixing. I think that's gonna be a direction we're fixing to head, also, besides the podcast. But the podcast has been very good for my family.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome, man. Did um you mentioned the sports deal, the public land that you guys are doing. Do you guys have any other branches you're trying to branch off with it or just whatever comes calm?
SPEAKER_00No, we've got a TV series called The First Family of Waterfowl, and the new one of that will drop in about six weeks. And it's a it's just a it's a YouTube channel about it's on the Big Honker Podcast channel. And there's season, there's four seasons already out there that we've done. This will be our fifth season. We'll start filming again this year. And all it is is just our family. And it's uh it's the back the backside of having a hunting lodge. Uh I don't think a lot of people realize all that goes in that's not hunting related. You know, we feed 40 to 60 people every night, just about. We've got anywhere from eight to 12 guides that work for us every year. We got a full staff of kitchen ladies that work for us. So we've got nine rooms, and each room has at least six bunks in it. Each room sleeps at least six. So there's days that we're turning over and we're cleaning, we're doing 54 beds. We've got three meals a day we feed 54 people or 50 people. Not, you know, it's not always that many people, but we do three meals a day, and we're not just warming shit up, we're making stuff. Michelle and the ladies in the kitchen do a tremendous job, and we feed you three meals a day. And we got a truck that comes in delivering food. We got an ice truck that comes in, we have something that'll break down. We have, you know, you got the same anything you could imagine goes wrong goes wrong. And we got a TV show that films all that stuff.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, for sure. That's like an interesting way to for people to see that because like people see the I don't want to use the word flash or like the glitz and glamour of the whole guide stuff when people like you know film guided hunts or do the whole guided thing with somewhere, somebody somewhere, but they don't see the whole back end side of things like you guys are showing. They just see the okay, you show up, everything's done and ready for you, everybody hanging out, and then you go out and hunt and then come back, and that that's just kind of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's there's so much more to that. The the good, like you said, the glamour part is the hunting part, and they they don't they don't see the backside of having to scout, they don't they don't understand that you know we've gonna we've got a south wind tonight of 10 miles an hour, but at midnight we're supposed to have north wind hit, we're gonna have 30 mile an hour north winds. Well, I know that one of our big roost lakes, when we get a north wind, the fields north of that lake is where the birds go to. Well, last night everything went south. So is everything gonna go north in the morning or are they g or are they gonna go south again? And or uh I'm gonna we we don't run traffic very often, but we're gonna run traffic tomorrow because everything's gonna funnel down this little area. There's just there's all kinds of things that go into running a hunting operation other than just the shooting of the bird and the decoying part. The easiest part is that. In our business to be an outfitter, you either got two, there's two ways to do it. You can either be a one-man operation, meet your people at the gas station, and you have to worry about one group a day, or you have to run multiple groups like we do to make a living and compete and at least enough land to pay for it. And that's where you're at. And so sometimes I'm jealous of the guy that's meeting somebody at a grocery store or gas station in the morning at five o'clock and he runs one group a day, other than when he's having to scout for himself or he don't have nowhere else to hunt.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Oh, yeah, it kind of makes you think, oh man, wish I was kind of just had one group and could be done for the rest of the day instead of having a whole bunch of people coming, and then you also gotta deal with all those different personalities sometimes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when you got 30 people a day, you deal with a lot of different things, and and and that's part of it. I love what I do. I I don't take for granted what I do. I'm very blessed. And we were walking in the Turkey convention this year, and I think it's me and Dirk from Boss, Boss Shot Show is one of my big sponsors, great people, family of ours, been with them. We've been together with them since 2018. And we were walking into Turkey last year, and I told Dirk, I said, you know what? All these people that are paying to get into this show, most any of those guys would die to get to do what we do for a living. I mean, we are so blessed, and most of us don't even realize it.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. I mean, if I could snap my fingers overnight and be like a successful guy or just go hunt for the rest of my life and make that be my living.
SPEAKER_00Well, you don't get a hunt. I would I would love to you don't get to hunt like everybody thinks. Like my guides don't pull the triggers. That's it. We don't we don't shoot, we don't do that. Now, someone's gonna be listening to this. I damn I hunting with him and his guides take guns. My guides will take guns, shoot cripples, someone's gun breaks, but we don't we're not out there pulling and killing birds. If we've got 10 guys, we we're on a five-bird speckle belly limit here. But our law, our our our limit is three, self-imposed three bird limit. Five birds is stupid. So if I've got 10 guys, we shoot 30 specs. And when we get our 30 spec, we're done. We're not shooting the guide's limit, we're not shooting over 30 birds. If we do, and we have let's say we need three birds and eight birds come in and we shoot and we kill four or five extra, we're still way below the limit, but that's our limit. Because I want to be doing, I want my grandkids, if they want to do this in 35 years, to still be able to do it and not kill out all the resources.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, for sure. And you kind of see that in some other states. I mean, I know Jersey's a big one as far as for like turkeys. Like you can kill six or seven turkeys up there if you wanted. And it's like, why? Like, what's the point? Like, you're just burning a resource at that point.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if you're an outfitter and you're shooting all the birds you can shoot, you're you're hurting yourself long run. And let me tell you, the customers may bitch and they may gripe, but they want to hunt. You know, I have I have said and said that I think the duck limit should be three. Keep our days, run the ducks to three days, three ducks per day per person. Let us keep our 80 days, 90 days, 100 days, wherever you're at. People are still gonna hunt, they want to hunt. So if the limit was 10 or 3, you're gonna have the same amount of hunters wanting to go hunt. It just you know, but shoot your three ducks. We we hunted in Oklahoma, we had a duck camp in our goose camp in Oklahoma, and we hunted for about four years. We went through a bad drought here. We moved up to Oklahoma, and we had a lot of really good hunts up there, met some good people, have great contacts up there. It we could be running an operation up there still today. The goose limit up there is eight small Canada or eight Canada geese a day. Absolutely stupid. 12 guys, nine, 12 guys, 96 birds. That's a lot of geese every day. You know, shoot 60 birds, it's a great hunt still. Where else can you kill 60 geese in a day and be done?
SPEAKER_02Not around here.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's there's there's a lot of places you can't, but that central flyaway, and there's places on the west coast. I mean, there's there's different places. Upstate New York's got great hunting, but there's no reason to kill eight birds per day per person.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, I agree with that. I mean, even on that point, like I'm pretty sure you've heard this past year around here, the whole East Coast where you can goose hunt, east of at least from what I've heard and kind of seen, east of 95, it was a one bird limit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and there were still people hunting, right?
SPEAKER_02And there were still people goose hunting and putting the work in and doing what they all had to do for one bird. And it's like people are still gonna hunt no matter what. And I've even talked to people, I was like, you know, is it even worth it for the one goose? And they're like, dude, we've been doing this for years, like, of course, we're gonna make it work for one goose. Yeah, it's not gonna be as fun or a bang up hunt as we've had in the past for like three or four bird limit, but uh you know, we're we're gonna make it work.
SPEAKER_00Too too many people get caught up Instagram, Facebook with the glam of the pictures.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the pile pictures and the gripping grip.
SPEAKER_00We don't my guides, I have a rule. We don't do any any pile picks. Contact picks is fine. Geese landing in the decoys, geese getting shot in the decoys, a guy coming in holding some birds up, a dog coming in. I'm all for that. But to stick set set a pile up, I just don't like. And people will say, Well, yeah, because y'all aren't killing 100 bird stacks every day. When I when I first got in the hunting business, we shot hunter bird stacks every single day. All the hunting, all the small candidates that are up around northern Amarillo, a million of them wintered here. So, my first 15 to 20 years in business, all we did was shoot big stacks of birds, ducks and geese, both, every single day. It's bad business. It doesn't do you any good. And I and I I've got a good friend of mine that's runs a very successful outfitter, and me and him talk about this sometime. And I said, when you put a stack up and you do it, all you're doing is in making every group that's coming with you expecting they're going to shoot that hunter bird stack also. And sometimes they're going to, and sometimes they're not. But it's it's just it's bad optics for the non-hunter, is what it is. If a non-hunter sees you carrying three speckle bellies all barred up and pretty, they're like, Oh, he shot three birds, you know, blah blah. But when they start looking and they they count and they go, Those guys shot a hundred geese. That sounds terrible. And or to see guys taking these geese and they uh I'm not gonna pick on Phil Robertson, but like biting its head and stuff. That might be cool to other waterfowl hunters, and it may kill them quick. But when someone's a non-hunter and they see that that's not good, it's like seeing watching a deer hunting video and a guy, a deer gets shot and it's flopping around out there. That is terrible, yeah, terrible look for hunters. We have such a problem with the optics with non-hunters right now. We don't need any of that, and not and hunters need to start sticking together and quit fighting with each other. If you got a discrepancy with someone, go talk to them in person, don't put that shit all over Facebook.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was just gonna say, I mean, I've talked to a couple people on here, and it's like we we as hunters in our own community catch so much flack from the outside of people looking in. It's like, why we gotta put others down within our community, whether it be people, you know, like just dudes arguing, people putting women down that hunt, or like pe other people that hunt. It's like it's it's not needed, like just try to stay positive and bring each other up instead of tearing us down. Like, we already have that enough as being hunters in general. Like, why can't we just stick together?
SPEAKER_00We we need to, and that's that's another big change is the women hunters. When I first got in business, the first 15-20 years, we didn't hardly have very many women that hunted with us. Now there's a woman at the lodge every day. Sometimes there's a group of them, sometimes there's two or three of them. But we used to not see that.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. And I think that's an awesome thing. Like the more people we have coming in, the the the better the long run is going to be for us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, one of my biggest pet peeves is dads that hunt but don't take their sons hunting. And I see that so often. I'll have a guy sit at a deal, and he's he'll talk to me and I'll say, Do you have any kids? You know, I'm visiting with them. Yeah, I got a 12-year-old and uh and a 10-year-old. Oh, do y'all hunt a lot? Nah, you know, I just I it's kind of my time with the guys. I'm like, what are you doing? If if if you don't teach your kids to hunt, but when they get to be 18, 19, they're never gonna have any interest in it hardly at all. You know, right. Get them off the video games and take them hunting. Now, if they hunt when they get older and they don't want to hunt, that's okay. But you tried. But but we we need to take kids hunting. Uh, we need to introduce everybody. That's my biggest challenge. If everybody out there would take one person that's never hunted and take them hunting with you, it would be a good thing.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. And I kind of I've kind of starting to been not starting to do it, but like I've done it a few times within the past couple of years, like taking people out for their first time and stuff, and because you know, I've talked to people that don't hunt, or like I'm in groups of circles, I don't want to say groups, but I'm around circles of people sometimes that they're like, Oh, like you hunt, like tell me about it, and not that they tip their nose up at me, but it's just like they're they kind of ask and they're curious about it. And I'm like, you know, I explain it to them the best I can, and it's like if you want to really experience it and feel it the way I feel it, you'll have to come out with me, is what I end up telling them when I finish the conversation. Because I'm like, and Jeff, I don't know how spiritual or religious you are, but to me, whenever I go hunting, I just see God moving his hand and painting this like sunrise. I see him painting the sky almost, or it's like like there's just so many things that like nature does in itself that we are so blessed to see. Yeah, if you if you don't watch this, most others don't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when that sun comes up in the morning, if you don't think there's a god, something's wrong with you. When you see the miracle and those little Chi Chi birds start making noises, or you hear the sound of that whistling wings, that rush of wind, you know, the whole morning. If if if that's the little things we forget about. Like if you've got a a grandfather, a dad, and his son, and they go on a hunt together and they're sitting in a blind and they kill some birds together, or they kill one bird, or they'll kill 10 birds. That's a blessing for that family to get to spend some time together because those days are numbered. And you don't ever get them back when they're gone. I would give anything, anything to be able to sit and visit with my dad again. Anything. And I was lucky to have a dad I did. He's the one that got me into hunting. He retired as a fireman, and he came and he ran pheasant hunts with us and he goose hunted every day for 15 years, probably. He would go with my guides, and I'd give anything to see my dad sitting in my office again just bullshitting with people. Anything. Because when them days are gone, they're gone. And take time to go hunt with someone you love and spend time with them. And it's not always about the killing everything. And it, and and I'm in the business to kill stuff. I mean, I hate to say that that's what we are. I mean, we're in the I have guys all the time who say, Man, Jeff, you know, because I'll tell somebody we had a bad hunt. I had a guy last year in that, we had terrible three days of hunting, wind blowing 80 miles an hour, it was hot, just bad conditions. And I said, Man, I wish the hunting would be good guys, kind of guys you really want to have good hunting. The guy goes, you know what, Jeff? He goes, It ain't about the hunting, it's getting to hang out with my friends and blah, blah. I said, Everybody says that, but I ain't had nobody call me to book a hunt in June and just sit around the lodge for three days, you know. They want to hunt, yeah, and I want them to hunt, but that's the important thing, is getting to spend time and laugh with your friends.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, for sure. And I am I mean some of my best hunting memories, you know, I've been out with some friends or my dad or my uncle or my cousin, and it's like we didn't really see anything or have much happen, but we were just out there having a good time, cutting up, laughing, and enjoying life. And like that, that that's what makes it for me. That's what drew me to it more.
SPEAKER_00Me and um, me and my youngest son were on the Texas coast fishing. He was probably, I don't know, 14, 15 years old, maybe. And um, we fished all morning. And I fished that guide all the time. One of my insurance, my insurance salesmen takes me and Tony down there every year. We'd go down and go fishing. We helped fish guy the same guide. Well, me and Michelle and Payne, my our youngest, went down there and we went fishing for a couple of days. And the first day we fished, I threw lure, I threw bait, I did everything. I couldn't catch a fish for nothing. Payne's catching fish, the guide's catching fish. I didn't catch any fish that first day. And my guide's name was Herb. And Herb, man, he's he's he's worried. It's probably about 10:30, and we're fishing until about noon, and it's starting to get hot about 11 o'clock. And I said, you know what? I said, let's call it a day. Well, Jeff, I think if we go over here, maybe we can try to get something. I said, Herb, it's been a great day. And he he's like, Man, you you ain't caught nothing. I said, let me tell you something. Me and Payne got to hang out all morning. We got to laugh. I got to watch him catch some big fish. We had a dolphin come up and right to the boat and blow us, you know, his air horn, whatever you hell, you blew out right there next to us and stuff. I said, we saw Mexican tree ducks flying over. I said, it's been a great morning. I'm in the hunting business. I know good and bad. It's about effort. God worked his ass off. And he worked harder than he would have if we were sacking him up. I've just fished with him six weeks before that, and we caught a limit of fish three days in a row. And he worked a lot harder for this trip than he did that. But it's it's just it's it's being in the outdoors is what's important.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. That's what I'm blessed to. Before I have I have a one-year-old son now, and I just always tell people I cannot wait till he gets older and is able to start going out fishing and going out hunting and me starting to teach him and show him that. And or my dad take him out fishing or hunting and teach him. Like I just can't wait to see the spark and light in his eyes when he starts doing that.
SPEAKER_00The greatest days in your life is when you're daddy. That's the best times when they say daddy, daddy, daddy. Because when you become dad, that gets expensive. So daddy is the best the best word best word in the whole world is daddy, daddy, daddy. You know, and they come and hug you and love on you. But when you become dad, it gets really expensive real fast because then they're getting old and they need you for money, usually, is what it is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, I know that feeling.
SPEAKER_00So there's a big difference there.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, Jeff, we're getting ready to round off the end here, and I have a question I love asking all my first-time guests when they come on. Okay. And it is, what is your why that keeps bringing you back for more?
SPEAKER_00Why do I do what I do for a living?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, I'd say it's I have a pretty good lifestyle and I want to keep that up, but that that's I could find a job in sales and make a whole lot more money, probably with a whole lot less stress. Um, and if I won the lottery, I'd still be doing what I do. I just like what I do. Man, I I haven't there's very few days I go to work. Very few days that I have to go to a job. I mean, most of the time I enjoy good, bad hunting, whatever the hunting's like, whatever the weather is, I just got a pretty good job. I get to visit with people, I like people, I get to talk about things I enjoy. I mean, I'm fixing to be, I got four weeks off basically, or five, and then I'll go do three hunting shows in a row back and back. I'll be at Squad Fest, I go to Delta, and I'll be at Ducks, and Ducks and Lemon's a big sponsor of ours. And I can't wait to hang out with the Ducks Unlimited guys, great people. But I get to be around cool people, you know, that like to do the same things that I do and love. So I guess my why is I just get to fulfill a dream that of my own personal dream. And I I don't have an answer of why. I just I'm very blessed to get to be time with my family and get to do something I love to do is kind of winning the lottery in life. If I die tonight, I have if I died tonight, I've had a wonderful, wonderful life. I have no regrets.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, that's the way to do it, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I'm and and I truly, truly can tell you that. If I fell asleep right now, it's night and I never woke up. I don't have one thing that I haven't got to do that I wanted to do. Um, me and Michelle travel all the time. We go places all the time. I'm around my grandkids. I mean, I we have a good life. I can't complain.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00You bet. Thank you very much for having me on and just holler if you need anything, Ever. I appreciate you.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. Do you have any um last-minute thoughts, shout-outs you'd like to give before we head off of here?
SPEAKER_00Any what?
SPEAKER_02Last minute shout-outs, plugs.
SPEAKER_00Um check us check us out, stanfieldhunting.com or the big honker podcast. Um, I still have some dates left this year. Uh I can shoot. We got I've got two deer hunts left. If you want to shoot 130 to 150 inch deer, I can do that for sure if you can hit something. Um we dove hunt, duck hunt. We do a gold star dove hunt every year the first weekend in October, and that's for kids whose parents have passed away. Either there's a first responder military. We do that. Mossburg gives every kid a gun. It's a wonderful situation. We do that every year. This will be our fourth year of doing that. Um, and it's sponsored by Mossburg and Boss Shot Shells. Um, just if you if you have questions, just look us up at stanfieldhunting.com or check out our our uh podcast and our new TV show, The First Family of Waterfowl, will be dropping on YouTube mid-July.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Thank you again, Jeff, for your time tonight, man. I really appreciate it. It was a pleasure talking and meeting with you. Um, I always extend the invite forever out this way out east. Just hit me up, man. We'll definitely have to get together sometime or get on a hunt if it's hunting season. Just let me know.
SPEAKER_00You can take me to Peter Luger's deed. I ate at the one in Vegas. I gotta try the one in New York City next time I'm that way. Hey, God bless you, babe. You have a great day.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, you as well.