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Terms and conditions apply. Back then, the place to be, to be at blue Nile dot com. You can find endless ways to make your moment sparkle from classic and timeless jewelry gifts to creating the custom engagement ring of her dreams, all at prices you won't find at a traditional jeweler. And right now, you can save up to 40% on fine jewelry and 25% on engagement ring settings. During the blue Nile anniversary sale, going on now, go to blue Nile dot com to shop the blue Nile anniversary sale and save up to 40% that's blue Nile dot com. This episode of the Burt Shop Podcast is presented by OnX Hunt, the number one GPS hunting app and final rise, premium quality made in USA hunting vests and field apparel and upland gun company, custom built and fit handcrafted Italian shotguns. Hey everybody, welcome to episode number 287 of the Burt Shop Podcast. Thanks for joining us this week. We've got a great conversation coming up with our guest today, Sabin Adams from Pheasants Forever. We will talk to Sabin in just a moment. I will quickly thank Patreon patrons of the Burt Shop Podcast. As I always do, those of you out there making contributions in support of the show to keep these conversations coming your way. I appreciate your support. Patrons are eligible for bonus content. We put the preseason kickoff party zoom room up on the patron page earlier this week, so that is available for any patrons that weren't able to catch it live. That's some good preseason conversations there. Patrons get exclusive discounts. We've got one for Marshware clothing. We set everybody up with some Burt Shop Podcasts, can coolers and stickers as well. If you want to learn more and sign up, you can do so at patreon.com/burtshot. Everybody else, leave a rating, leave a review, subscribe to the show, follow the show, share an episode, tell a friend, all of those are other ways you can help support the Burt Shop Podcast, and I appreciate it. Okay, before we jump into our show today, I've got a sort of a listener question that is going to tie in nicely to something I wanted to mention to all of you anyways. Coming up next week, I will be interviewing once again for our annual conversation and Jandrana, owner/founder of Scout and Hunt Northwind Mapping Enterprises. She does the Grouse and Woodcock maps, among other things. We talk to Ann every year. We ask her all about Grouse and Woodcock hunting, conditions, both last season, nesting, brooding. You know the drill, if you've been a long time listener. So this is my annual call out for questions. Those of you listening to this podcast today, if you've got questions for Ann, you want to contribute and participate in our annual interview, please do so. You can send those questions to me, nick@burtshotpodcast.com, and to go along with that, I'm going to share a question that I got from a listener earlier this week that was looking for just the kind of information we often talk about with Ann, Jandrana, aka the queen of Grouse, as one listener affectionately called her last year. Anyways, Dan writes in, "Hey Nick, I'm new to Grouse in the Northwoods. Have you covered how to e-Scout on a podcast?" My response to him was to first check out all of the previous Ann Jandrana interviews. This is, there should be seven of them. This is the seventh year of the podcast we interviewed Ann very early on. So there should be seven. This will be our eighth, our eighth episode with Ann. So all of those are good episodes to start with. There's another episode, episode number 197 with Brady Martin. That was a Q&A with somebody that was newer to Grouse hunting and Brady had a bunch of questions for me. So he and I went back and forth and got into a bunch of stuff. And then the other ones I mentioned to listener Dan were the episodes with Fritz Heller, which I don't have the episode numbers here, but if you search Burtshot podcast, Fritz Heller, as you may remember from those episodes, Fritz Heller, Avid, Avid, Grouse Hunter, been doing it for a long, long time, wealth of knowledge on the topic and subject matter. So I thought those episodes would be good for him as well. So for anybody else out there that has a similar question to Dan, looking for some more of that deeper dive conversation on Grouse and Woodcock hunting, all of those episodes would be great. So I mentioned all those to him and Dan went on to say, I will review those episodes. Thanks for the guidance. I guess my general question would be from the aerial image, what am I looking to target? So far to me, it looks like green puffs on the landscape, occasionally a lake or open area. We've gone some cut data and topography lines in on X, but I know that's not the whole story to finding birds. Lots of walking will help. Thanks for responding and sharing all the information with us listeners. I certainly learned a lot while driving and mowing the lawn. I appreciate the help. A 49 year old dude learning the Grouse Woods. I got a ways to go. I love that. I had to share that. I love getting emails and feedback like that from listeners. You're finding enjoyment, entertainment, education out of the show while you're mowing the lawn and driving the truck. I do all that same stuff with podcasts that I'm interested in. So again, knowing that there's people out there listening and enjoying it, I always love to hear that and I appreciate Dan for checking in with me and asking those questions. I followed up with one more little tidbit for Dan because he mentioned that he does hunt in Wisconsin. If you're in Wisconsin, you want to turn on the game bird layer. It's called the W.I. Gamebird layer. It's a Wisconsin specific layer and it is a very high quality data set for Grouse with Woodcock Hunters in Wisconsin. You turn that on and I'll give you a little tip or at least how I use it. And if you go to the Wisconsin DNR website, you can find all this information on what exactly it is. But you turn it on an on X, which I used to use it on the Wisconsin site, but the fact that it's in on X is so it's just so easy to use. I mean, on X anyways, you turn on the layer, bam, it's right there in front of me. So having it there makes the data so much more available and easy to use just the fact that it's in on X. So I love that we have access to that. What you'll find are kind of a pink color, which denotes Aspen cuts and those will be labeled Grouse area. You will also see a purple shape file that is denoted Woodcock area because and what that is is lowland, alder, wetland areas, Woodcock area, moist soils, good for Woodcock, et cetera. I think it's kind of funny that they're labeled that way. I know why they are, but if you are a beginner and you're just getting started out, be careful of that don't. It could just as easily be labeled Grouse and Woodcock area, both colors. I like the fact that they're different colors to tell me one is a cut and one is a lowland area, but don't get too carried away with thinking one is for Grouse and one is for Woodcock because as you probably know, there's a lot of overlap in Grouse and Woodcock areas. But what I will say is oftentimes a cut, if it's a certain kind of cut, young Aspen, I might look at that and think that is actually more Woodcock cover than say Grouse cover. And the reverse is true. Some of those purple shaded areas, lowland areas, I would look at and think are better Grouse cover than Woodcock cover. So when I'm looking for stuff, I really like to, if I'm looking at a higher level view of a general area, I really like to see both, I like to see those pink cut areas and the purple cut areas together. To me, that's telling me that that area in general has probably the kind of cover type that I'm looking for and the mix and the transition and the edges. So I like to see them both, but again, I know why they're labeled that way. It's maybe not how I would label them, but it is what it is. Use that to your advantage. The way I look at those, every one of them is an objective, a place on a map, a place you can go check out, put boots on the ground and see for yourself. Now be careful of not getting tunnel vision just because those are labeled Grouse and Woodcock cover. That's not the only Grouse and Woodcock cover. There's a lot of cover that is that would not be denoted by those specific layers, but there are a lot of those on the map. And in my experience, I have found that many of them have been worth my time checking out investigating. Again, the more you know about the forest and the habitat and the cover that you're hunting, I find the better. So that is a, it's another layer of information. When you are pouring over that digital map, that satellite imagery, it gives you something to focus on and it's giving you more information about the cover. That's my thoughts on the Wisconsin game bird layer in Onyx Hunt using it there, how to use it, how I approach it. I appreciate once again, Dan reaching out and asking that question. And one final reminder before we get too far off on a tangent here, questions for Anne Jandrana, our annual conversation about Grouse and Woodcock hunting or hunting other areas of the country as well. Please email me those as soon as you can, Nick at birdshotpodcast.com and we will work as many of those into our interview with Anne as we possibly can. Alright, let's get into our conversation for today, which is with Minnesota State Coordinator of Pheasants Forever, Saban Adams. You may know him from his YouTube channel, The Bird Tales, which we talked about a little bit on the show today. Saban's been on the show before a number of years ago, actually. So it was great to catch up with Saban. We talked about some of his work at Pheasants Forever, Public Lands, Acquisitions, some of his hunts from last fall, and we mixed in a little bit of early season, sharp tail and hunt conversation as well. So timely interview, hope you enjoy this one. With that said, let's welcome into the conversation and back to the birdshot podcast from Pheasants Forever, Saban Adams. It's been, I don't know if you counted, I had to go look just shy of six years since we had you on the podcast. Wow, I can still remember doing that though. I remember talking to you, recording that podcast six years ago. So where were you sitting? You remember where you were? Yeah, I was sitting at my house at my desk trying to just like this. I'm in my kitchen right now, but yeah, same thing. I love it. Well, welcome back, man. It's great to get you back on the podcast. Obviously, I kind of follow you from afar with The Bird Tales and our paths cross at Pheasants Forever, and we're both in Minnesota, but it's great to have you back officially on the podcast. Thanks for joining us today, buddy. Yeah, I'm glad to be talking with you this morning. What the heck have you been up to? I mean, obviously just working at Pheasants Forever, Quill Forever, recent promotion. I definitely want to want to talk about that congrats on that. Tell us what you've been up to. Once I figure out what I've been up to, I can tell you, I feel like my head's just been spent in the last couple of months. So I was recently in a May, I believe, promoted to state coordinator of Minnesota, for Pheasants Forever, and that, like I said, I'm still trying to figure out what that means. But, I've been doing a lot of meet and greet style meetings with folks at different agencies and different groups talking about our conservation initiatives that we're doing together. Learning all of the staff we have, I believe we are currently sitting at 45 Pheasants Forever staff in Minnesota. And so, between learning all of the staff and then, you know, all of the staff intricacies and all of the programs that all of the staff and different sectors of staff are working on, it's been a heck of a two months. So I'm just spending trying to figure it out. Let's talk again in a year and I'll have a really good answer for you. Well, yeah, that sounds good. Let's not wait six years and I'll put this on my to-do list. We'll get you back on next year. But yeah, I think many folks would be familiar with the drinking from a fire hose aspect of a new role like that. So we know you're getting your bearings. But talk to me actually because I find this interesting and I think I mentioned this recently, I do get inquiries, you know, we interview guests that are in the natural resources profession or habitat wildlife conservation like yourself. It's interesting that kind of career paths like talk about sort of your brief history with Pheasants Forever and sort of the roles you went through to get to Minnesota State Coordinator. Yeah, absolutely. I started with Pheasants Forever in 2013. It was actually my first job at a college. I was a farm bill biologist working in a USDA service center with private land owners doing private land conservation. So I enrolled a lot of people in the CRP program. At that time, the big topic was pollinators and that hasn't really gone away, but I feel like that really started to kick off people or that's when colony collapse disorder was being talked about with honeybees a whole bunch. So I got really involved in pollinators and some of the programs USDA was doing. Then in 2017, which was probably about the same time when we did our last, when we talked last for a podcast, I started working on the public lands team as a restoration specialist. So Pheasants Forever acquires a few thousand acres every year. So we buy land and then we donate it to the Minnesota DNR or to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And increasingly we've been buying land and donating it to counties quite a bit too. And we don't just buy it and donate it and say, "Here you go, it's your problem now." We buy it, we restore the habitat and then we give it to them and say, "Here's a gem. Now you guys hold it and open it up to the public and let everybody use it." So I did the actual restoration work for a couple of years there and then I was promoted to the public lands manager so that position runs all of those acquisitions. So getting the funding to buy the land, working with the landowners, the sellers, working with attorneys, working with DNR and Fish and Wildlife partners and actually getting land bought and donated over to those entities. And then as of May this year, I've now been the state coordinator. So it's been a wild ride, but it's been really fun. Yeah, absolutely, I definitely remember the farm bill biologist beginnings and I've seen a lot of the public land stuff. I was reading something, I think Minnesota just recently hit 500 public land projects, either acquisitions, restorations, I'm sure you could say more on that. But I have some questions on how those things come together, but anything you want to add on just kind of the 500 number and that mark of successful projects? Yeah, that was a really big deal for us and I was very excited about it. It's funny. I don't know if I should say this, but I'm going to because I think it's funny and everybody understands it. But just to tell how grassroots our organization was, we've been doing land acquisition since the very beginning. And as you can imagine, back in the 1980s, we're doing land acquisitions in Minnesota and elsewhere. And I literally have found like photocopies of, and I'm not kidding, of napkins, where people said like, I bought this piece of land in September 1983, signed so and so. And like, that was the documentation that they did something. So between staff and all of our local chapters and the land acquisition work they did, it goes back a long ways. But the data keeping has always been, we're really good now and we haven't for like the last 10 years. But I just, the funny part from you was I could officially say I have record of 500 projects for sure that we did, but I'm 100% positive that we reached 500 a while ago. But it's in a filing cabinet in a basement of somebody's house somewhere. So it was just, it was a really good, a really good moment to actually officially be able to say we accomplished that. Yeah. You maybe could have moved the timeline up if you had a few more bar napkins lying around. That's right. That's right. That's funny. So on the public land acquisition, I mean, I, again, I hear that I get interested. I think most people listening to this podcast would be intrigued by new and restored public land access where all bird hunters here. How do those things, is there a, is there a pattern for how those things come together? I imagine there's some outreach and some, you know, sort of this legacy giving and gifting idea that, that a lot of the organization similar to PF and QF utilize, but how do you, in your experience, how did those things come to be? Do you just get a random phone call someday from somebody that kind of wants to make an impact and leave some land behind? Yeah. I mean, all of the above. Yeah. At the end of the day, the land, the public access, the habitat, the wildlife is our mission and our goal. And so however we get there, we're not picky about it. But it comes through all of the routes. A lot of them come from we've got, we've got local chapters and staff that work in a county and have relationships with a bunch of private landowners. And so those, those local landowners will find a pheasants forever, staff person volunteer and say, hey, you guys buy land, I'm thinking about selling mine. And then hopefully that message gets to the public lands manager who used to be me and is now Jacob Grandfurs. And we'll take from there, we'll start the ball rolling on actually buying that piece of land. But we also get a lot of people, not a lot, but a decent amount of donations. Every year, we get a couple of properties that people put in their estate planning and their will and donate that property to pheasants forever, which is unbelievable. So we do that quite a bit. And then what's been happening, probably the biggest increase in the last couple of years has been we get calls from, from realtors. We call us from auction companies saying, you guys are in, in the land market. We have a property for sale. It's adjacent to wildlife management area. Would you be interested in this? So then we'll work with the DNR or the Fish and Wildlife Service and it's always the same kind of process after we find the initial, the sellers or their representative tell us that they're interested in selling, then it's, does the DNR want to hold this property? Does the Fish and Wildlife want to hold this property? Is there a public entity that wants to hold this property in perpetuity and allow habitat and hunting on it? So then we work through all those venues and acquiring land in itself is the, is where the real nuts and bolts are, and it's a bit boring and dry for a podcast, but there's a lot behind the scenes with attorneys and abstracts and appraisals and titles and insurance and all that stuff that has to go on. So it's, it's certainly a process. Yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt. Yeah. I mean, again, those are, those are exciting. I think when you talk about expanding the public land base, right, we've got a piece of property that, that was private, privately held and it's, especially if it's like adjacent to a WMA and all of a sudden now you're, you're expanding that opportunity and that access. I mean, those are, I don't know if we wouldn't get excited about that other than maybe the person that had private land access on there before it became public. Yeah. Yeah. And I'd say, I mean, it's got to be 90% of the land acquisitions that we do probably even higher than that, are on lands adjacent to existing wildlife management areas, waterfall production areas. And sometimes you hit these really awesome snowballs where one, one individual sells their land and then the neighbor is thinking, well, I was going to sell my land too. And then that one happens and another one happens and you can, you can really grow a complex of habitat and public access. I can think of one property in particular that I've just been amazed with. It's in Swift County, which is in West Central Minnesota. And I think originally it was like a thousand acres. And now we've got to be approaching 2000 acres and it was just like, it was like a broken puzzle piece or a broken puzzle with a bunch of missing pieces. And over the last five to 10 years, we've just been plugged this one and plugged that one in and filling this whole missing puzzle in. And now there's like a 2000 acre grassland complex that is just super, super awesome. Yeah, that's crazy to do it. So again, I'm kind of curious, like the motivation, like, like, is it, is it people just wanting to build this like of the surrounding landscape? They want to build this up or is it more like opportunistic buys and opportunities? Like how are these pieces becoming available? Well, it's both for sure. We have, we have people, like I said, people donate their land every year. We get one or two donations in Minnesota every year where someone put it in their state, their will, or it was just time, sometimes just for tax purposes, they'll donate their land to us. And we do also get, we get a fair amount of donations in land value where like, obviously, if you, you know, not everybody has the capital to just donate outright a whole bunch of land. But there's a lot of people that still have passion for wildlife and want to see it protected. And so they'll make a deal with us. We'll sell you the land and we'll give you a, you know, 20% discount on the appraised value. What happens a lot where once they realize what we're going to do with it and restore the wildlife habitat and keep it protected, then they're super jazzed about it. And they'll give us a donation because they're just so excited about the opportunity to have their land protected for wildlife. But I'd say the biggest growing sector, again, is just people selling their land and there's a lot, a lot of realtors know us, a lot of auction companies know us. And so they'll, a property comes for sale and it's next to, they know that we're looking for lands next to wildlife management areas and next to waterfall production areas. And so they'll, someone comes in and wants to sell their property and they want to sell it too. So they'll give us a call. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that makes sense. And yeah, I think it's, I think it's fairly, maybe it's a bit, not pie in the sky, but, but yes, it wouldn't be nice if everybody sold their land for a little bit less. You know, they could sell it to the highest bidder, but they sell it for a little bit less to put it in the business, whatever's hands to, to maintain it. But, but it's easy to see how that some people could be in that, in that spot where they value that. And then is the available to open to public hunting or public access in perpetuity? Is that a requirement or is that a part of all properties or not necessarily? So that is any property that we acquire in fee title, meaning we own, we actually own the entire property is, I'm trying to think of an example where it isn't as far as I know, every single property we've ever bought is open to the public and protected in perpetuity. And that is, well, number one, because that's what pheasants forever wants to wear pheasants forever, not pheasants for a little bit. And so we want to protect that property and that wildlife habitat and the access to wildlife habitat. But the fun sources that we get to buy land, grants from the state, from the federal government, basically they all are going to require if you're going to use our money to buy property, we want it protected in perpetuity. So that is, that is the name of the game. What I was going to mention, the other thing that we've done a fair bit of is we also purchase easements. So you've got an individual who owns this property and they'd like to make some money in creating wildlife habitat and we can offer it to be permanently protected. So we've got a partnership with the US Fish and Wildlife Service where pheasants forever will go out and buy an easement from a private landowner to protect the habitat on their property. And then we don't have the capacity to hold thousands of acres of easements and make sure the habitat is maintained and such, but the Fish and Wildlife Service does, then they've been doing it for a long time. So we'll go out and buy an easement that matches what the Fish and Wildlife Service does and then we give the easement to them to protect wildlife habitat. So in those instances, that is private land that will continue to be private land, but we have forever protected the wildlife habitat on it. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. So that would fall under your umbrella of sort of private land habitat, wildlife habitat conservation. Awesome. That was the other thing I wanted to just sort of at least touch on was and you've kind of you've danced around a little bit, but some of the funds that we have available and I know Minnesota is kind of a unique beast with our lisard Sam's and some of the some of the big funds we have for land water conservation, that kind of thing. But, but talk about like from the, even from the chapter level, just sort of a basic structure of how, how an acquisition might occur and sort of pull funds from the local chapter all the way on up to like those, some of those big grants that you guys might use to, to make a big land purchase. Yeah. I'm glad you brought this up. It's um, it's a very unique situation that we have here in Minnesota with our clean water landed legacy amendment and anybody who's been in Minnesota listening to people talk about conservation, you're going to hear about the clean water land and legacy amendment, which passed in 2008 and you can go and talk to any neighbor, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin. And if they're working on conservation, they're looking at Minnesota and they're jealous of what we're doing here, um, because of, because we pass that, uh, the constitutional amendment. Um, and so we have a great opportunity to buy, to buy land, restore land and make wildlife habitat. Um, but one of the unique things about it, I shouldn't say unique things about it, but one of the things that comes with these types of programs is it is run, um, by the legislature, the legislature is the one who appropriates the money. And so it is, it is government funds, it is state government funds. And when it, when money comes from the government, it comes with a rule book as anybody would expect. Um, and it's a, it's a quite a hefty rule book. And so there's, there are certain things you can spend the money on and certain things you can't spend the money on. And so I just wrapped up, um, going to a couple of our district meetings with chapters and we're constantly going to our chapters and asking for donations, um, to work on land acquisition projects. And one of the things that comes up is people always want a, I want to put our money, I'm going to give you a dollar and I want you to spend it on, on habitat. I want you to spend it on buying that property. And I, I've really, really been trying to tell the story lately that, hey, we got a lot of money from, from, from state and federal governments to buy land and do habitat. I really need your money to put in a culvert, I need your money to help tear down an old building that has asbestos in it. Um, and that sort of thing, because the money from the government has all these rules, but has all these rules around it. And what we really need is the flexibility to take care of all the odds and ends that come with buying a property that people don't necessarily think about when they're thinking about flowers and, and monarch butterflies and habitat and bird dogs and all that stuff. But there is all of this other stuff that comes when you start buying properties that backs up a pretty good bill. So we're always fundraising with our chapters, with our donor network to get unrestricted dollars to help us cover those additional expenses, but then the bulk of that weight is being carried by the Clean Water Land and Legacy Amendment, which, which gets divvied out through the Outer Heritage Fund and the Sards Hands Outdoor Heritage Council, um, as well as, um, through our partners at the, the NACA program, which is a federal program, the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. Um, so we, we couple them together all the time. We're using state and federal dollars to build these wildlife habitat complexes, and we're using private dollars to get us across the finish line to make it all happen. For many upland hunters, along with their passion for dogs, birds, and the places we chase them comes a passion for shotguns. Upland Gun Company specializes in customizing shotguns for the Upland Bird Hunter, imported from Italy and shipped direct to an FFL near you. 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Whether you're in the field or on the clays course, TrueLock Choke Tubes deliver unmatched consistency and better patterns shot after shot. With a wide variety of choke tubes, constrictions, and available thread patterns, TrueLock Choke Tubes are built to the highest standard. If you're ready to take your shooting to the next level, check out truelockchokes.com and discover why bird hunters all across the Uplands trust TrueLock Choke Tubes. Got it, love it, man. I guess I could say I've seen that work firsthand a little bit in that. I don't know when that was, but you called me up one day and you told me, you were all excited and you told me about an acquisition that PFE had made that was kind of within striking distance of me, and I've been there. This was years ago. I've been there now, and when it was first taken over, it's a really beautiful piece of property, but there was this old kind of like creepy trailer on there. This roll rundown, I think it was a donated piece of land, I don't know the full details you probably do, but yeah, that's cleaned up now, that's gone, and there was some gates put in. It's walk-in only, and yeah, it's really neat, but I've seen that habitat. That restoration work really take place over the past few years. Yeah, and I always tell people the same story because it's near and dear to me, it's not too far. I spent quite a bit of time on the WMA now, but one of the acquisitions that I worked on when I first started doing these, in negotiating with the sellers, there was this boundary issue with like their driveway was in a weird spot and the DNR did not want them to have that driveway going across the WMA because it would cause trespass issues and all kinds of other problems. So part of the deal was we need to get rid of this driveway, and they said, well, that's fine with us, but if you're going to get rid of our driveway, we need a new driveway. So we'll sell you our driveway if you build us a new driveway. Well, nobody wants to spend the money to build somebody else a driveway on private property and all that stuff, but I was looking at it like, well, this is going to cost us $5,000 to get 200 acres of public hunting land and wildlife habitat. The state and the federal government and those grant funds are not going to cover it, but I just went begging around to chapters and saying, hey, I just need a few thousand dollars and I can get you 200 acres of new public land and that was a pretty easy sell. But it's that sort of thing that happens all the time that we deal with. Yeah, that's really interesting just that everybody has a slightly different perspective and you kind of being the middleman there, weighing the cost benefit and obviously understanding the funding and how those different pieces can fit. I mean, that again, being around conservation, folks enough, it's kind of like you said, like even when you were describing that land, there's this puzzle and there's different pieces that you've got to kind of move around to fit to sort of make this bigger picture. And that's how these things seem to come together time after time. Yeah, exactly right. Well, keep up the great work on that and it's been fun to see your career progress and I know you're you're just getting started. So keep that up and and we'll be we'll be following along. But we are we're right on the verge of September, man. Where's your where's your excitement level at this point? It's about a 10.5 I almost 11 I'm pretty. Yeah, that's right. I've actually got I've got Canada Goose floater decoys piled out all over my yard right behind me. Yes, and I got the Teal decoys hanging up in the garage. I got dubbed decoys scatter all over. So I'm I'm rare enough for September 1st. I had a little bit of of heartbreak with the way the calendar laid out this year just because last year I took my whole family to Montana with me for the for the prairie girls opener out there. And it was fantastic. I got up as early as possible right at shooting light. I was out hunting, which I don't normally do for upland birds, but it was really hot and I had the family with me. So I went out, hunted for a few hours in the morning and hunting was fantastic. So I was basically done within a couple hours, then I went back and hung out with the family and we went fishing and we went rock picking and we did like a whole family adventure. And so I was really looking forward to doing that again this year, but just as the calendar laid out, the first is on a Sunday. And then the second is Labor Day. So we have the day off, but then the third is the first day of school. So I was like, I can still get two days of hunting in and I got back and ultimately we decided I'm just I'm just going to stay home and try and shoot some doves and some teal and some Canada geese and wait for the rough girl so far before I can really get into the uplands. So no other, no other prairie escapades in on the planner for you at this point. Well, I mean, early before, before, yeah, probably the only one that would fit the markets every year, my good friend, Will Clayton, who I know your acquaintance with him and I go to South Dakota and meet up with another buddy and and HUD Sharp Tails will be doing that, we'll be doing that again this year for the opener there, which they moved their opener a week later. It was always like the 15th and now they move it to the 21st, I think. So that was a little bit of a little weird change to the season, but we'll be out there for that. Gotcha. Yeah, I think I obviously the excitement has been has been building in my head as well. I kind of did myself in today. This morning, actually before we started chatting, I was reviewing some bird tails snippets and shorts and man, I started watching the it was a one of your one of your growls clips from last season. And I just saw like it was late. I don't know when it was late season, but everything was bare, just, I mean, just looked like and it was an overcast day. Everything's just kind of brown dull, but like growls, conditions and I was getting pretty fired up. It's funny. I do the same thing with I'm just I'm thinking about you saying brown and bare and how a lot of people would react to that as like the general public that doesn't grow sun. You say, Oh, everything was brown and bare and beautiful. Most people, like my wife always sells me, she's like, Oh, I just love when we get snow and everything is so white and I'm like, that beautiful snow. I hate it. I never come last year was such a just a spoiler of a year. I was I was rough girl sounding until the very end. I think I went rough girl sounding on the last day of season and shot a couple birds. It was which for Minnesota that we always do that January one, right? Yeah, I think so it's it's almost always yeah, January 1st, Wisconsin, which usually. Yeah, they end there is they they have theirs. It's one of those like it's on ends on a Sunday like the first Sunday in January, I think. So it's for last year, I believe it was January 7th. My last hunt was January 5th, but Minnesota is more of a calendar thing. But anyways, yeah, but usually in Minnesota, most years were saddled with some snow by then and anybody who rough girl sons and snow, it's possible. But it's not it's not the most productive thing that you could be doing with your time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not the same. Well, and that was I'm glad you brought that up because that was something I really wanted to ask you about just knowing that listeners of this show know that I'm pretty much like I hunt a lot of rough gross and last year was like a dream season for me because we had prime time conditions all the way till the end for the most part, as you as you pointed out, you hunt plenty of rough girls, but you you mix in a lot more variety just kind of based on where you are, your chasing pheasants and and doing a little bit more more prairie stuff. How did it feel? Obviously you were taking advantage of the roughed grouse woods that late in the year because we don't always get that, but was it were that those conditions kind of washed over to all the other like, did it make pheasant hunting better later, did it like did it kind of did that rising tide float all boats? Well, it depends on which boat you're talking about. I mean, an easy winter is an easy winter for all wildlife and so that was a great winter for pheasant production and for, you know, just wildlife in general. If it's not 30 below for two weeks, our wildlife tend to to do well over the winter. And I would say the reason I spent more time in the grouse woods last year than normal was because we didn't have the snow, which is better for grouse hunting, but late season roosters love to run and they can be downright miserable. If you get a good chunk of snow, it kind of slows them down sometimes maybe just a little bit and can find them to certain areas. Or you can be hike in cat tail marshes and find concentrations of birds and maybe have some luck. Last year without snow in the warm weather that we had, I mean, you could shoot roosters of course, but it was it was less than ideal. The whole world was open to them and it was dry too. So every cat tail martian slew was moderately dry and they could just run like crazy. The pheasant hunting was was definitely difficult and you could still rough gross hunt. And so that's one of the joys of living in central Minnesota is I can go north or I can go south and I I spent more time going north chasing after rough gross. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really what I was curious about because I I guess I've, you know, I've been around this stuff. Well, I've heard those things. You get that first snow and people kind of that kind of gets pheasant hunters excited whereas for me it puts a big frowny face on. I'm just thinking about one eyes ahead when we're going to have two feet of snow and last year that that just never came. But in that in that clip that you were at all, if you remember, but it was it was the day you were hunting and you you killed that grouse that basically like almost took your head off. It flew right at you. Yeah. I remember was that I'm not asking you like where that was, but I'm that was in in Minnesota. The reason I'm asking is like that habitat to me that looked so much like a lot of what I tend to find in Wisconsin. It was like I would describe it as like sandy soil. There was some scrub oak there. It was like kind of oaky areas that I typically hunt around here, but I just found that very interesting. Yep. That that spot is a very, very sandy habitat and like you're saying, a lot of oaks, but the DNR's done a pretty good job. They're managing it for rough grouse and I like I'm, I'm a big fan of hiking. I just, I love to hike and just cover ground. And so I've got a few handfuls of spots where I can make a loop. And what I remember about that spot is there's a trail, it's kind of a patchwork of trails that you know, there's a even highway, you can take your truck or your car down one of these like moderate gravel roads, but then that ends and turns to do a four wheeler road. And then there's kind of just like a deer trail that you can follow to the next one, but I can make like, how far was it? I think it's like an eight and a half mile loop. And then end up back and never have to like it bugs my brain a little bit. If I have to go down and come back. So I like to make those big loops and that spot, that was one just magical, magical day. I was shooting well and there were plenty of birds and I had four birds that probably mile seven and I was walking back to the car. I was skipping back to the car like hey, and then I don't even remember exactly how this scenario laid out, but I was within eyesight. If you could see the car who's a suit, they could see it, but I was within eyesight distance of the car and the last grouse flush. And I shot it and then I definitely skipped back to the car with a full limit. So that was a magical day, I'm sure. Oh, man, that, yeah, that's a day to remember. And again, just by looking at the GoPro clips, that is a day that condition wise, I mean, I don't think I saw there wasn't much for like wind or anything, it didn't seem like it, but it was just that gray overcast day and all the cover was down. I mean, that was prime time. Yes, it was awesome. See, now I'm getting really excited. Yeah, yeah, you and me both, I had to drag you down with me today. But as we discussed before we hit record, we're going to try to get out of the office after we finish our recording today. That's right. You technically have the day off, so. Yeah, that's right. I do. But it's, this is one of the things that makes it difficult when you work for, when you work for an organization like Pheasants Forever, is that I, it's sometimes hard to know whether I'm working or not, because it's like, I would do this. I'd be talking to you about bird hunting, regardless. So yeah, it's one of the props. Yeah. Well, we appreciate it. And I would, I would say the same thing. I, I consider myself lucky to, to be confused about whether I'm working or not at times. So yeah, that's a, that's a good problem to have. But yeah, last year, last year, grow season. And again, we, we talked about it. It was, you know, from a numbers perspective, that's one, you know, that's one topic of conversation. But for me, it was really, it was the conditions and just the weather and conditions, temperatures, just, it just gave you so many more days later into the season to go for those big hikes. And I'm right there with you. Obviously, I love structuring my hunt around, obviously, my goal is to be in good girls cover, but I usually have like a route or a loop or something that I'm trying to, trying, I'm trying to cover ground, you know, sometimes more so than spend all my time in, in a certain little pocket of cover, because I like to, I like to walk and explore and see things. And again, there's nothing better than at that time of year, you get into November, December, and all the covers down, you get in the woods, you feel like it's a far cry from the claustrophobic feeling you get in September, you feel like you can just kind of go anywhere at that time of year. I think there's a lot of us that we call, well, we are, but we're like, oh, yeah, I'm going hunting and maybe more appropriate would be I'm going adventuring, like, and, and hunting is the, is the second part of that. I've got plenty of spots on mapped out that I can, I can head to, and I know that I can shoot some birds of some variety or another. And I'll go there, you know, once or twice a year, just for, just for the sake of the hunt and, you know, bringing up the old memories, but I'm constantly on them, on my phone, on my maps going, oh, that looks cool, I don't know if there's gonna be birds there, I don't know, I just want to go to a new spot and stretch the legs and see something different. So I'm right there with you. Yeah, I think that's kind of one of the, one of the big benefits of hunting with bird dogs too, you know, whether they're pointing dogs or flushing dogs, you have a little bit more confidence and hey, I'm going to go for a walk here and my dog is going to do, do his thing and, and if there's birds here, we're going to, we're going to find them. So you kind of have that luxury, whereas if I was a rough grouse hunting on foot without a dog, you got to be a little bit more focused and paying a little bit more closer attention than just going for an adventuring hike. Yeah. Totally. I love some of your hunts from, in, in some of the videos over the years, just again, you, you being central Minnesota kind of have, you've got that mixed bag opportunity where you can go on a hike and like shoot a rooster and a rough grouse on the same walk. Did you do that at all last year? So I don't know that I did rooster and rough grouse. I've done that a handful of times and it's, I always say in those videos, this is my favorite thing to do and it's still pretty high up there. If you can go on the same unit, I'm trying to think of, there's been a couple of times where within really close proximity to each other, I've shot a rooster and a rough grouse, which is just like something special when you've got both of them in your bag. Um, and I've had plenty of days of, I'm, I'm on this piece of grass, shot a rooster, drive a couple miles, get in the woods, shot a rough grouse. But the story I want to tell you, which is an episode of the bird tales that's out there is, uh, Mr. Will Clayton and I, uh, we went on, we called it the triple, uh, trifecta. So we had heard lots of reports from people that they were seeing quite a few puns in southwestern Minnesota, Gray Partridge and, um, it's been on my bucket list to, to shoot a public lands, Minnesota Hungarian Partridge, um, which if, if you're in a western state, it's, uh, shooting Hungarian Partridge is no big deal if you're in North Dakota, especially western North Dakota or Montana, but to shoot one on public land in Minnesota is, is really difficult. Um, so with all the reports, Will and I said, let's do a Hungarian Partridge, um, extra polygons, we're just going to go and chase after Partridge in southwestern Minnesota, thinking that it's probably not going to happen, but we're just going to shoot roosters and hunt places that we've never hunted before, um, so we went down on our first day and, uh, we ended up shooting, I think we shot three roosters and this was in, in November. So, um, Minnesota's pheasant limit goes from two to three in December. So we were still in the two bird limit. So we shot our two, or we shot three roosters on our first day and, uh, the next morning we got up to go, uh, to go out again and we're looking for the shortest grass, um, patchiest anything you can find where there might be Partridge, not necessarily pheasants. And the first spot that we went to, um, there was already somebody parked and waiting. So we went to another spot a couple of miles down the road that we were less than excited about. Um, but we figured, okay, maybe we'll find some pheasants in here. So we walked around, we didn't flush any pheasants, didn't get any birds, and on the walk back to the car, there was a, um, a spot where they must have, um, taking gravel out in the previous, previous ownership of this wildlife management area. Um, it was all gravelly and, and steep slopes and, and kind of messy. It's a really short, really short, meaty grass. And, uh, we happened to flush a cubby of, I think it was eight or nine puns out of there. And when I pulled up my gun, um, you can see it in the video, uh, my shoulder strap is over the top of, of my sights. Oh, so I'm doing this like, like motion, trying to get it off of there. And I think I took a shot out of pure desperation. Um, but they luckily, they flew right to Will and Will got one of the Huns. And so if anybody who's hunted Huns in the past knows they're not very far away. Um, so he got his hunt. We made a big loop to circle around and, uh, we found him again and I happened to get a double there. And so we picked up those two birds and, uh, both of those, uh, one bird that I shot and the one bird that Will shot are both at, uh, at the taxidermist as we speak, we're going to get some kind of, of mouth together. Uh, and we could have easily kept chasing those birds, but I was already feeling guilty for shooting a double. I should have just shot one, but, you know, in the moment it was like, let's do, um, yeah. So we just left him alone and, uh, Will, we went back to the cafe in town and we're sitting down eating breakfast and Will goes, how cool would it be if we could make this really special and have some sharptails? Um, which if you are familiar with Minnesota, Sharpto Gross are, uh, you can only shoot Sharpto Gross north of highway two in northwestern Minnesota, which was about a seven hour drive from where we were in southwestern Minnesota. And I'm always up for an adventure. So hearing Will say that, I was like, what is happening right now? And, uh, he'd pretty easily talk me into it. And so we got in the truck and we drove, we wasted a day, drove seven hours north, um, to get north of highway two, and then the next morning, um, we ended up shooting our first Sharpto, which we were just over the moon about because we had completed, we shot roosters, puns, and sharptails all on public land in Minnesota. Um, so we shot the first one, and then we shot a couple more later that day, uh, and it was, I don't know, it was one for the, for the books, um, to have a weekend where you can shoot three different species of upland birds on public land in Minnesota is, uh, a challenge. And we did, we did take one small moment to hike through the woods to look for a rough growth, um, but we were short on time and, uh, gosh, that would have been special if we were to founder, but we, we didn't flush out what event. Had you had, had you not shot a Minnesota Sharptail before? No, I had shot quite a few of them, but just putting it together with that. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. That's kind of, that's kind of what I thought. Minnesota Sharptails. Oh, I was just gonna say Minnesota Sharptails are also kind of like, um, there's a, there's a decent population up in Northwestern Minnesota, but anybody who has hunted Sharptails out West, it's a different beast up there. They're more of a, uh, a brush country Sharptail. It's certainly not short grass, Montana, Dakotas, Sharptail, it's, it's a different kind of thing. Yeah. I'm nodding my head. I've never changed. I've never actually chased them. Well, actually I take that back. The very first Sharptail I ever killed was in Minnesota and I really had, I was sort of, I went along with, um, somebody, somebody brought me out, um, that I met through rough grouse society and took me to a spot and I, I killed a Sharptail that day. So that was the first time I really had seen them and I can, I can still picture that habitat. It's different than what you hunt out West, but I've, I've talked to plenty of people that have done it since, um, including a friend of mine here locally went and did it last year and said found, found plenty of birds, but it's yeah, more, more brushy woody cover, which if you do a lot of reading about Sharptails there, they've always been sort there. I mean, they're in Wisconsin, they, they do well in that mixed habitat, but when we go out West to, to hunt them, you're kind of envisioning this short grass roll rolling terrain prairies, but, but they can tolerate a fair bit of woody vegetation as well. For sure. Um, as much as I love, um, I love my logo of my rooster pheasant, for pheasant forever. I'm, uh, I am a die hard Sharptail lover. I'm on the board of the Minnesota Sharptail Girl Society here and, um, just the diversity of habitat that bird has figured out how to, uh, called home is, makes it just a super special and awesome bird, for sure. Yeah. I'm, I'm right there with you. I, I think, again, it's just, it's one of these birds that I've kind of fallen in love with. And I, and it happened because of my Western trips, but then you come back home and you realize, okay, we have them here and they're in Wisconsin and just sort of the, their versatility and resiliency, I think that I'm drawn to that as well. So I, uh, I definitely, I get the sentiment and, and I don't know, there's just, I mean, I guess they're, I love grouse and they're another grouse species, but there's just something really, really cool. That's right. Sharptail girls. Yup. Anytime you can flush a big covey of birds chuckling at you, it's well worth it. Yes. Yeah. You got to respect the bird that laughs at you as he flies away. When you are, because you're so darn adventurous and you do plenty of out-of-state trips and you're obviously looking at new landscapes and new birds and species and habitats, do you have a process for how you go about kind of scouting, planning some of those trips? Do you have a kind of a checklist where you step down and, you know, identifying habitat and places to hunt? Like what's your, what's your general process? Well, one of the things that we do every year, again, back to Wilclay, and I have to tell them that I've, I talked about them a bunch. I try to find a group of friends to go with at least one just because hunting trip is, hunting trip is fun while you're alone, but it's a blast when you're with, with a friend or two, especially late season when it gets dark at five o'clock. You got a long time to sit in a hotel or a camper by yourself. So that's step one. But then, you know, putting a couple of dates, this is a big thing. And I think the hunting part of it, you can figure out as you go along. But one of the things I see a lot of people struggle with is they say like, oh yeah, I'm going to go do that, but they don't actually account for it. They don't put it on a calendar. They don't make it a priority to do that thing. And that's, that's the one thing I like to stress to people is if you really want, if you're like, man, I would love to go out to the Dakotas and do it, or, and hunt sharp color, whatever, you have to, you have to put it on the calendar. Like you have to buy a license. You have to do something that's going to, that's going to hold your feet to the fire and do it. Otherwise, you know, the weekend just gets closer and closer and closer. And all of a sudden you're like, you know what, I really got them all along this weekend. So I think I'm just going to stay home. And you definitely don't want to get in that scenario. But in terms of when you get to the actual destination and you're looking at habitat and I do this, the same thing that a lot of people do is I'm looking for, I'm looking for adventure and I'm looking for places. I'm going on on X and I'm looking at aerial photos. And it's really, it happens pretty quick for people, I think, but you've got to develop an eye for, this is what an aerial photo looks like of, of this kind of habitat. So you're like proofing. I can look at an aerial photo and basically tell you that's cat tails, that's uplands, that's really shrubby. Sometimes I can, I think I can even tell you that's probably non-native bromegrass and that's native grass just, just by the coloration of the photo, just because after so much repetition of looking at an aerial photo and then going there, you start to realize the difference is what you're looking at. And so once you have an eye for some of that detail, you can start looking at maps and going, okay, I'm, if I'm hunting quail, I'm looking for, you know, a particular kind of cover in proximity to looking for some, a little bit of woody cover in proximity to, to nice native grasses and here's a couple spots that I definitely want to check out. And every year, it seems it takes a little bit of refining because I'm not, for instance, hunting Boboids. I'm not doing it all the time, but I'll sit on on X and pick, okay, I'm going to check this spot. I'm going to check this spot and I might drive by a couple of them right away at first and go, that's not what I thought it was going to be and just keep moving. So there's a little bit of on-the-fly proofing, but I think for the most part, I like to find a place where I can, like I said, big enough that I can stretch my legs, get away from the road, go for a big hike. And for me, one thing I've learned a lot is, and obviously take this with the weather conditions and the current year that you're in, but if there are birds around, I've definitely, I've definitely fallen victim to, we just keep driving. Oh, that doesn't look quite right. That doesn't look quite right. And we spent hours just looking at stuff and saying, nope, that's not it. And the reality was, there's probably some birds out there, and what you need to do is just start going. And you're going to learn more on your feet than behind the steering wheel. So you just got to start hunting spots and trying to figure it out. Otherwise, I could just drive around and find, no, that's not good enough yet, all day long and maybe never hunt. That's awesome. Finding that one down because that was kind of going to be my next question based on just out of curiosity, but also I find myself, you know, I get in this hyper analytical state where, like you said, you're driving around looking at places and you're, you're hydrating everything and like, yeah, that just doesn't look quite right. So you keep driving. And I was going to ask, like, are you sort of, do you have that tendency to like just get out and go? Or are you really looking specifically for a certain kind of habitat? And I mean, the easiest answer to that is it depends. But I think I think you kind of you, you sort of, you highlighted the important point there. And I will, I will say that happened to me last year in that we hunted on our sharp tail trip. We went to a little bit different area and our first couple of days, we drove around a lot because we were not seeing the kind of habitat we were used to. And then we ended up talking to somebody local there, kind of give us more of the sort of like, just get out here and go, you know, you don't need to, you don't need to see these other little things that you're looking for. And sure enough, we did that and the birds were there. So had we just, to your point about, you know, there's weather and conditions and time and dog power and all of those factors play in, but, but if there's birds around, they're using the habitat. So find a place to go for a hike and you'll probably, you'll probably learn something. You'll certainly learn more on your feet than you will behind the steering wheel. I love that. Well, and, you know, a great story that I remember, it was, it was probably four or five years ago now. Will and I were down in Kansas and we got a bunch of snow the night before, a bunch of snow for Kansas, meaning like, and it was, and then it warmed up during the day and in melted. And anybody who's done the Kansas, Nebraska thing, the roads are just an absolute disaster. You can drive the north, south roads, but you can't do the east, west roads. And so we had this plan of like, oh, we have, we have all these spots that we're going to adventure out to way off the beaten path that nobody else is going to get to because they're, you know, all in the sticks. And we stayed in this town and there was a pretty nice looking chunk of public land right outside of town, like a half a mile outside of city limits. And we drove by that spot, probably five times because we're not going there, like the, the hotel is full of dog boxes. Everybody's going to have that. We're not going to touch that. So we drive by this spot and on this particular day, the roads were just destroyed. We ended up going in the ditch and luckily the ditch was frozen and grassy and so got in formal drive and got out of the ditch and we got back on our main road and wells like, I'm not going on another east, west road unless it's tar. I'm just not doing it because I don't want to have to sleep in a ditch somewhere. There's no cell phone service. There's no towns around anything. And so we're heading back to town with our tails, talked a bit with, you know, plenty of light left in the day, kind of sad. And as we're getting close, I go, let's just pull in here and let the dogs run. Just so they're not so crazy in the hotel room and then we'll recoup and figure out our plan for tomorrow. That was our best spot of the whole trip. And I guarantee you every dog box in town drove past that or no, that's right by town like that, absolutely not. And I think the point I'm making is stop overthinking it, just let the dogs go and start walking. Yeah. More and more that you got to watch out for those sort of group thinking pitfalls. Like if the thought keeps bumping in your head that, oh, I'm not going to hunt there because everybody's hunting that, you know, it may be true, but it might not be and you might go in there and have a great hunt like you did. So yeah, absolutely. The overthinking analysis paralysis, I definitely fall victim to that plenty. I got to ask you about before we wrap, I got to ask about bird dogs and then and then some GoPro stuff. So, you know, I know since we since we last spoke, I know you you tragically lost lost dogs. And then you now have Gilly and did you have two short years and do you still have Phoebe? Well, unfortunately, the tragedy doesn't exactly end. We lost two dogs in a fire a while, like almost six years ago now. And then I got two short hairs. And one of the short hairs skip passed away two years ago now from an infection. Just fluke your dog owner, things happen kind of thing, but I do still have Gilly his brother. And then we got a lab after that named Phoebe. And so I'm trying to keep I'm getting back into waterfall hunting a little bit as a reference in the beginning. And so I'm trying to keep my, my options open for spending time in the great outdoors. And so I wanted a water dog a little bit too. So I have a lab named Phoebe and a short hair named Gilly. How old is Phoebe? Let's see. I think, I think she should be two and a half right now. Okay. So when you go, when you go grouse hunting, what's your, what's your strategy? Do you have them both down at the same time? Do you like to run them separately? How does it go? It just depends on the day and the situation. They both have their own individual kind of quirks. And surprisingly, they've gotten really good at doing the combination thing where all have, we did a lot of training with Phoebe is good at healing and staying with me as long as I am, you know, telling her that she needs to stay with me. So we'll do a lot of Gilly's on point. Phoebe's with me. We're walking up and, and then I'll release Phoebe in to flush the bird. It doesn't always work like that. But every once in a while, we have the dream scenario where that actually works. But she's, as you would expect, a hell of a retriever and bird finder and Gilly can hold his own, for sure. But two dog power is better than one dog power, especially when you're chasing after a wounded bird. But then I just, for the most part, they're separate a lot of times, depending on the scenario. And so like, I guess if we're, if it's big Western country and I know we're going to hunt all day and it's hot, they're going to hunt one at a time just so that I'm not burning up two dogs at once. But, and then back home, late season roosters and cat tails. If somebody knows how to hunt late season roosters and cat tails with a big running pointing dog, I would love to know how you do it because I think that it's impossible. It just seems to me like if you're, if you're busting cat tails, those birds are so jumpy, you cannot be quiet going through the cat tails and Gilly would just tear through there and you just watch birds, you know, I don't even, I don't know what, I don't know what he's doing. He's just going. So, um, late season cat tail, pheasant hunting will be a lot more phoebe. And then it's just a little bit of mix of whatever I feel like on that, that given day, who's going to run? Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Had you had a flushing dog before? Yeah. Actually, my first bird dog was a, a short hair lab mix that I picked up on my sophomore year in college. And yeah, she, she did not point. She just flushed, but she was the dog that, that really, I had upland bird hunted a lot in my younger years, but never like seriously taken after it. And then when I got my own bird dog and I, I was a very die hard waterfall hunter in college and then I can still remember the exact day, just late season waterfall hunting is over and I'm walking with her in my parents CRP and I saw her just get birdie as can be at a rooster flush and I was like, I'm going to do this, so she was the one that got me really. Yeah. And that's really cool, awesome. So okay, bird tails, we, for anybody that hasn't caught caught up yet or isn't familiar with you. You have a got a YouTube channel where you throw some stuff up, talk to me about sort of the where bird tails is at and having fun with it and what's your, what's your plans for it? Yeah. So bird tails is my, just my little YouTube channel where I put together videos of my hunting adventures and to be honest, it's kind of, it's, it's been when I started doing the bird tails, which I don't, I don't remember what year it was 2016 or 2015. I don't know. Oh, yeah. I didn't have any kids and I didn't have the same job that I have now. And so it was kind of like the passion project that I had going on at the time where I was dumping all of my efforts and, and thought into it. And I think honestly, at that time, there was not very much content on YouTube for like upland bird hunting videos, which if you go on now, you'd be like, what would you, how could that possibly be? There's literally thousands of channels and videos and everything else. And so over the years, when I started it, I tried to put a lot of time into editing and music and all of that stuff. And then as my life has filled up with, with all of these other things and I spend a lot more time at work staring at this particular computer screen, my willingness to sit down and spend a few hours editing has gotten less and less. But every year, especially on my trips, when I'm spending time with Will, I try to take out the camera, put the GoPro on and capture some of those moments. And I keep refining it more and more into, I'm glad if people watch it, and they love it and it makes them happy, but it continually turns more and more into, this is my memory bank. I bet I watch more of the videos than anybody else does, because then it's, I don't write in a journal, I don't, I don't take notes like that, I would, I make videos and put them on YouTube. And so that's my journal, so I go back and watch those all the time and it makes me extremely happy. Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. I mean, I can certainly relate. On multiple levels, as your life gets busy with kids and priorities, yeah, that stuff becomes more difficult. I do a lot of, I take a lot of footage GoPro, but I don't have the time to edit it or polish it up, or I hardly post any of it, which I'm, I'm sort of okay with. There are days when I'm like, gosh, I should, you know, I'd like to cut this together and share it. And because I do like, I like sort of the conversation that that stuff can spark over certain things and cool experiences. But at the end of the day, I tell myself, like, these are my memories. I have them, I've, I've captured them. And I'm kind of a, you know, I'm a little bit of a gear junkie tech guy. So I've kind of enjoyed messing around with a GoPro and figuring out what works and that sort of thing. And that's, that's where I'm kidding. Well, I will say, I appreciate the bird tails, whatever, whatever level of, wherever it's at on, on savings priority list, and however you're going about it, I appreciate it. I love the Minnesota flare and the mixed bag stuff. So I enjoy it, buddy. Yeah. Thank you. What are you? Do you have a question about GoPro? Yeah. Yeah. And now, and, and are you still doing the shoulder mount to talk me through that? Cause that was, that was something I always enjoyed from some of the early episodes. Yeah. Um, so right now, I think I have a GoPro hero seven, which they're on like nine or 10. They're about to be on 13. Oh my God. See? Exactly. Okay. Give up with it. Yeah. Um, so I just, I had, for a long time, if you go back and watch the original, um, bird tails videos, um, the quality, I can't hardly watch them. Like just because they're so shaky. Um, and so I, the first time that the GoPro with image stabilization came on the market and edit affordable cost for my particular life situation. I picked one of those up. Um, and I think I've upgraded one time since then. Um, but I've thought about, about moving up to the next model, but that the GoPro hero seven that I have seems to, to work well enough for preserving the memories that I want. Um, the, the shoulder mount thing is probably the more interesting part. I have a YouTube video on there on how to make your own over the shoulder now. And that, I think that initially, if there was any popularity with the bird tails, it was because of that, cause that footage over the shoulder is super cool. Um, but man, it is a pain in the butt. Um, if you're hunting out west over the shoulder mount is great. Yeah. No problem. But if you're in Minnesota, the over the shoulder mount, I, I bet I snapped off, um, whatever size that is, inch and a quarter PVC pipe that I made it out of, I bet I snapped six of those. Um, just from, if you're rough, gross hunting, crawling through the briars, dragging it through the cat tails, um, it, it was really difficult to run that over the shoulder mount in Minnesota. Um, but, and the video is super cool when you can see the perspective of the hunter and the side of their head and down the barrel and the bird flushing. Yeah, I, I love that footage, but it was really difficult. So mostly now, and because of just the time constraints and just trying to have ease of life, um, I just slapped the thing on my head and go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, uh, it is, it's one of those things. And that was always, it, for me, I wanted to, again, like I accept the fact that it's, it's, I'm not just taking the dog and go for a walk. Like I'm involving this GoPro and like it is a process, but I was always trying to figure out what is like the least intrusive experience I can have with the GoPro. And, and fortunately it's, there's some things that you can do. And the way I have mine set up where it's pretty seamless, um, basically put my hat on and, and rock and roll and it's not, um, it's not as so intrusive that I don't want to do it basically. And that's a, that's a line that everybody would have to find for themselves, I guess. But what, um, when you are, when you're recording and stuff, do you get into, cause like I run looping mode? So I'm not capturing the whole day of events. Are you still, do you kind of record everything? How do you do that? Uh, yeah, I record everything. I think, um, the model that GoPro here are seven that I have, um, I'm sure they've upgraded capacity, but it can do a 256 gigabyte video. Yeah. And so it, it loops after many hours. Um, I don't think I've had that as a problem of it, of it looping. And then I'll always have a laptop with me. Um, yeah, I'll have a laptop with me where I'll, when I get back, if I, you know, if I was just hunting for five hours, I would get back and dump the video onto the laptop or grab a new card and go, um, the, the, the big hack that I think made things easier is the GoPro batteries, uh, especially when it's cold, those little ones that are in there, just they're talking about being intrusive on your hunt and stopping and messing with a camera battery. Um, and so I, I bought, I know they're just some generic company off of Amazon, but they're a little like, um, I don't know what you want to, what you'd call them. They're bigger than like a bullet or chapstick, but they're a, um, like a couple inch long. Yeah, something like, like that external battery pack. And what I did is I ended up just zip tying it to the back of the head mount and then running a little cord to there. I didn't want a cord running all the way down my body and into my pocket that could get unplugged and then wreck the whole thing. So I would just run it right there, which it actually turns out kind of nice cause you got a little bit of weight on the back and a little bit of weight on the front. Yeah. Kind of a little bit more balance. Um, and those, uh, those power, a GoPro for, for five, six hours. And so you don't have to, I would like, you're saying, I just want to turn it on and then forget that it's there and have my hunt and then I'll deal with editing and stuff later. The only exception being that going in, um, the GoPros in particular have a, uh, the button, you can push a button to mark the footage on the GoPro app, um, which I don't edit on the GoPro highlight button or something. Yeah. Yes. Otherwise you get back and you've got five hours of video and somewhere in those five hours, you shot a bird that, that can be a real time trudge to try and figure out your scrolling through video, trying to figure out where the action was. So having that highlight button so that you can quickly go, here's where the thing happened. Um, that's really helpful that you could actually mark the highlight on your camera while you're in the field. And then you go to the quick app and that stuff kind of shows up pretty quickly. Yeah. You have to use the GoPro app to see those highlights. They don't show up if you're using some other software for editing. Makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Well, yeah. Oh, I was appreciate that. And, and, uh, as a, as a fellow sort of a GoPro nerd of sorts, um, always like to get those tidbits and I've, and I've heard from plenty of listeners that have, when we talk about it before they, they ask questions and, um, just something that some people choose to do and capture those memory. So it's very, where do you store all your stuff? Do you got external hard drives and I mean, you must have tons and tons of footage, which takes up a lot of space. I, I, I would or maybe should, I've got a couple external hard drives with stuff on there, but I'm, uh, I'm, I don't know, maybe it's a personal philosophy of just like when, when it becomes the final video and I put it on YouTube, I'm like, that's it. Where's my thing? And I don't really care what happens after that. Um, so usually all of that extra footage is saved on a desktop external hard drive for a season and then I get rid of it. Wow. And it just the, the final video is the final video, which, what makes it difficult then is if I'm like, if I ever have a call back when I'm like two years ago, this exact same thing happened. I don't have that video anymore. Yeah. Um, but it kind of just like it to be, I, it's like a journal, you know, you don't go back and tear out old pages and paste them back into the new stuff. You just move on. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. That, that, that kind of makes sense how you do that. Um, and yeah, it's, uh, other than having a thing of stuff sitting there that, I mean, you know, life is like, there's a chance you never go back and look at any of that anyway. So it's not weighing on your, when your mental state is just gone. Yeah. And I think the big part as you mentioned is like, if you want to do these videos and stuff, you know, um, hunting is obviously the biggest time consumer for, for the thing, but I wanted to go hunting anyways. So that was fine. Um, number two is editing and putting that stuff together. And so I spend my days at a computer, uh, doing work. I don't want to spend my nights at a computer editing. I want to get, I want to get it done and move on. And so I'm always looking for a more simplistic way to put together the memory that I want to keep and get it uploaded. And so the last last year, almost all of mine where I used a, I have a, I have a pretty nice personal computer with a video editing system on it. And last year I did almost all of them on my cell phone, um, because I could just quickly grab the snips. I want to throw them in and it's bare bones, but the memory is there and I preserved it. And I, I'm not trying to make a massive production killer video series. I just want to grab those memories and people. Yeah. Very cool. Man. Well, I appreciate the, the info and the, in the background and keep it up. I know you enjoy it and you, you're doing it for yourself, which, which I understand, but yeah, keep it up, man. Yeah. Thanks. Okay. We are again, we're on the verge of hunting season. Give me your top tips for going out and hunting sharptails early season sharptails. What are you looking for when you're looking at the map? What are a few things that you're looking for for a good sharp till and hunt spot? Cause we're a lot of times it's a, it's a mixed bag hunt early in September. We're talking about West. Yeah. Let's say out West sharptails. Yeah. Okay. People are going anyway, yeah. Number one, I'm, I'm a habitat guy. I work for friends forever. Habitat is the name of the game with all of these things. You have to know the, the habitat that makes the bird that you're hunting. It's not just any grass anywhere that's going to have these birds. And so first and foremost, you need a lot of grass. That's why the western states have sharp, more sharp tells than, than the eastern Dakotas than Minnesota does is because they have a lot of grass. And so you want to find a big complex of grass, first and foremost, if you find a big area of grass, you're going to, you're going to find those birds. Um, secondly, uh, particularly, particular to sharptails. And again, this is kind of like the eye thing is you can, you can start to develop an eye for like the level of grazing in particular, in particular with sharptails. I won't claim to have the best advice with Huns, um, just because I've had mixed results over the years with Huns, but particularly with sharptails, um, there's a certain level of grazing that happens where too much and, and it's ruined. It's a golf course. There's not going to be birds up there. Um, but there's like a sweet spot where it's going to be really good. And I almost want to say like, like any amount of grazing, I'm thinking back on a couple years, a couple of years ago, we went to a spot that they literally had just put the cows out like three days before. It looked like a tall grass prairie and we happened to have to cross that. We hunted this like beautiful looking pasture, no birds in it. We had to cross that to get back to the truck. And that's where all the sharptails were. It was like flushing sharptails where there should have been roosters, but yeah, there's something with a little bit of grazing and the right kind of grass. You just have to develop an eye for it. But then lastly, as we've already discussed, the big thing is just like in that scenario, we never would have found those sharptails if we didn't go. Um, so the number one tip, put it on your calendar, make it a priority and start walking, um, because you just won't get them any other way. And then that's how you'll start to develop the eye. That's how you'll start to see, okay, this is what I'm really looking for. And this is how I'm going to find the birds. All said, my friend, that's savings tips for early season sharptails and every other hunt that you go on this year, put it on the calendar, get out the truck and go. Yep. Absolutely. Heck yeah, man. Well, it has been a blast. It's been a pleasure catching up with you, saving. I really appreciate you giving us some time on your day off. And hopefully our, our pass will cross again soon. I wish you the best of luck this fall and thanks for joining us on another episode of the Birdshot Podcast, buddy. Absolutely. Thanks a lot. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Birdshot Podcast, presented by Audax Hunt, Final Rise and Up and Gun Company. Don't forget to rate, review, subscribe and share. And if you really love the show and want to contribute above and beyond what you already do by listening, you can sign up at patreon.com/birdshot. Thanks for listening. 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We've got professional retriever trainers and upland bird dog trainers from across the country and world sharing their tips and tricks and great stories to help you and your dog get ready for the season. We'll see you there.
