00:00:03
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to The Houndation’s podcast. I’m your host, Tony Peterson, and today I’m chatting with my good buddy Bob Saint Pierre of Pheasants Forever. You guys know how much I love pheasants, but my guest today might actually love them a little more than I do. Bob Saint Pierre is the marketing director for Pheasants Forever, a total upland hunting addict, a German shorthair owner, and all around great guy. I always love talking to Bob, who also happens to host the Pheasants Forever on the Wing podcast. Today we cover all kinds of good stuff related to pheasant hunting, young dog development, how wrong Stephen Ronelle is sometimes, and a whole host of other good stuff. So buckle up because it’s time to start. Bob Saint Pierre, it is always good to see you, even when you shave and you look like you de aged by like twenty five years. How old are you not?
00:01:06
Speaker 2: Seven? I’m looking forward to turn thirty later this winter. I you know you hit that age. I saw I’m fifty one and I don’t know like every two years. I was at the gym the other day got down working out, and I grabbed one of those just cheap ass razors at the gym, right, and I went through no lote twenty six races. Oh boy, my face looked like you know, I was going through huberty and had just for the first time, Oh my gosh. And you know, I just so I went to town and yeah, I shaved it all off, which is the opposite of what you’re supposed to do heading into you know, the hard hunting season.
00:01:57
Speaker 1: Well, if it makes you feel better. So a little while ago, I filmed a youth rifle hunt with one of my daughters, one of my thirteen year old daughters, and we were sitting in the blind on the last evening and we were just going through my camera role, looking at fishing pictures and whatever else, just just killing time, right, and she saw a picture of me from two years ago when I was down. I was scouting some public land in Oklahoma for a white tail hunt I did with Steve, and I had found a turtle and so I just like took like when I catch critters, like I catched snakes and whatever out there, I always take a picture for the girls. So like those are those are the selfies I take typically and there was a picture of me. I had found a turtle while I was scouting, and I was pretty clean. I wasn’t totally clean shaven, but I had like a nice trimmed up beerd because I was filming a show. And she’s like, you know, Dad, you should probably do that with your beard more. And I was like, okay, point taken. Not a subtle nudge. She’s like, you’re a little too scruffy. So I hear you, buddy before. So why don’t you give people you know, I was just on the Pheasants Forever podcast not too long ago. People should go check it out. We had a great conversation. Do you do a really good job with that show? But why don’t you give people just so like a little little thirty thousand foot view of who Bob Saint Pierre is and what you do for your job because it’s germane to the everything we’re going to talk about today.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, right on right, And thanks very much for the kind words. Joining on the Wing podcast where you admitted to liking Pheasants more than anything else, including white tailed deer. So I will point people back towards that. Yeah, I grew up in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan where that’s relevant because I fell in love with upland birds, particularly rough grouse and the timberdoodle as a youngster. In you know, I guess three things I loved right from the jump, rough grouse, timberdoodle, and baseball. And I worked in a minor league baseball for seven years out of college. And I had two job opportunities, one to be the director of marketing for the Detroit Tigers or one to be the director of marketing for Pheasants Forever. And in two thousand and three I took the Pheasants Forever gig and haven’t looked back. It’s been a dream job.
00:04:30
Speaker 1: How tough was that decision to make oh Man?
00:04:33
Speaker 2: Honestly so, because you know I named my bird dogs after Detroit, you know, Tigers. My first bird dog was named Trammel, My second was named Iserman, called her Izzy after the Red Wings star. My third bird dog was named escanaba Eski after my hometown. Fourth is Getchie after Getchie Goomy. So Michigan is you know, buried in my heart for sure, And you know, to think about trying to choose between a job with my childhood team or my child passion. And it was pretty that decision was informed by seven years in the minor leagues where from Easter to Labor Day I worked at the ballpark every day and I wasn’t breaking rocks, but I really didn’t get to fish and very rarely got to hunt. Because when you’re in baseball, you get done with the season and you make your money based on how many outfield billboards you can sell, can you sell inflatable bat night, loco baseball night? You’re making commission. And if you’re not in the office selling those promotions and those advertising in October, November, December, you’re leaving a lot of your salary on the table, which meant no fishing, very little hunting. And so I chose Pheasants Forever in three You know, it is perfect choice for me because I could do something that you know, I give back to, something that’s so important to me, so important to you know, the future of the planet, honestly, creating habitat for wild species. And yeah, and I could live vicariously through the Tigers. They’ve been to the World Series twice since I said yes, the Physics Forever, but they haven’t won a World Series so at some point I hope they win. But yeah, it’s been a good decision.
00:06:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can’t imagine that choice for you, knowing you the way you are. I want to talk about so you’re out in my neck of the woods. Now, you live in Minnesota, you know, work out of the Pheasants Forever office here. Obviously, before we get into it, I want to just talk a little shit about Steve Vanella, if you’re good with that, become a Michigander, right, who took a vastly different path than you did. When I was out in Oklahoma on that hunt, I brought up earlier Steve and I just got onto the topic of whatever, and I can I love to argue, Steve loves to argue. So the whole time we found lots of things to disagree on. But one of the things he said to me was that pheasants aren’t a real game bird. And I said, because they were brought in, right, And he’s like, well that and they need to be babysat otherwise you don’t have a population and they can’t really survive out there in the wild. And I was like, you have no idea what you’re talking about. How do you feel about that.
00:07:49
Speaker 2: Stirring the pot right from the get go. I like, you know, I think that I’m within a month’s age of I might be a month younger than Steven, if I recall correctly. And so we came up in Michigan at the same time. And there was a fundamental problem in Michigan with pheasants in our formative years, and that was in Michigan they spent a pile of money on what was called the Seschewan pheasants, and it was build the Michiganders as this bird that could live anywhere, and it was going to populate, you know, from the suburban area of Detroit to the north woods of the Upper Peninsula, and it was super adaptable and was going to live in the grasslands, and it was going to live in the woodlands, and it was going to be all things to all people bird hunter wise, and nothing could have been further from the truth. It was the biggest waste of money. The birds never took off, They never took a foothold. And actually the the money, if I recall correctly, this is before my time at pheasants forever. But it was such a disase aster that the Michigan d n R kind of bailed on that concept and donated the money to pheasants forever back in the day and said, go do some good work on habitat because that, as always is the right thing for wild populations. And so I think back to that, and I think about, you know, the combination of Stevens you know, thoughts on pheasants, and he is disdained too strong of a word for his perspective on dogs, and I think I know he wasn’t. He wasn’t set up to like burden hunting, and he’s got a negative perspective.
00:09:46
Speaker 1: In fact, I invited him out for a late season hunt. I was like, come on out and I’ll show you a real pheasant hunt. He won’t do it, but it would be great because it would just be fun. It’s that mentality has even infected his own a son who had a conversation with recently out there, who also told me the pheasants weren’t real. He actually told me that we couldn’t be friends because I like white tails and I like pheasants. I was like, we weren’t going to be friends anyway, buddy, but I want to so those Seschuan pheasants I’m want to get back to that story for a second, because was there I’m not that familiar with that story in Michigan. Was there like a case study somewhere else where those birds had really taken hold in a similar environment or a similar like, No.
00:10:32
Speaker 2: That’s a I don’t know. I mean, this is gosh, this is circa nineteen eighty seven, you know. So I’m fourteen years old and I’m watching through Michigan out out of Doors television and Discovery, the old school outdoor programming in Michigan, and you know, they had really hyped it up. These Sescheuan birds are going to be coming to everywhere in Michigan, and they’re going to be fabulous. By two years, they had thrown in the towel and nobody’d ever seen it. I mean, I think they essentially fed every hawk and coyote in the state of Michigan, these sesuon birds, and no nobody got to experience and with their bird dog. So I don’t know if there was any research or what kind of research was done to make the dn R believers in it. I can just say it tainted my view, and I’m assuming that it tainted other people’s view. Including Steven view of pheasants as a you know, a legit game bird, because these seschuans just weren’t the real thing.
00:11:39
Speaker 1: It sounds like somebody in the mafia got a line on some game birds and they’re like, hey, I got a guy, and I got this connect over the DNR. I think we can siphon off a bunch of this state money and whatever.
00:11:53
Speaker 2: Uh that.
00:11:54
Speaker 1: You know, that’s an interesting so when you when you talk about something like that, you know, the messaging now from a lot of conservation orgs, you know, like the one you’re involved in, and many of them. We kind of used to be way more comfortable moving animals around and moving fish around and just trying things like that. You know, when you think about it, you know, you’re talking almost forty years ago now for that failed experiment. And when you bring up nineteen eighty seven is a year. The first thing I thought of is I remember, so I was seven at that time. That was the first year that my dad drew a turkey tag in Minnesota. That was when we just started to get this sort of viable hunting population. I can’t remember when the first season went, was eighty one or eighty three or something, but it was you know, back then you had to draw. Obviously, you could only hunt till noon, had a five days season or whatever. It was like it was a very very limited opportunity thing. And those birds had come up from there was a trap and transplant thing from Missouri and I actually think we traded them grouse for it something like that, and that used to be sort of them of a lot state game agencies. Was it was just like very we weren’t we weren’t paying attention to the invasive species thing. There wasn’t maybe quite the emphasis on habitat and that connection to viable game populations, and so that was sort of a thing that happened, was like, let’s just try this. Put this put this critter on the landscape, put this fish in the water, just see where it goes. And we have learned a lot right since then, and now, you know, who knows, maybe in forty years they’ll look back on this and go Habitat wasn’t the answer, but it sure seems like with a lot of these critters you can you can watch you know, locally like a micro example, or you can go macro and go you know, pheasants are such a great example of this in quailr too, where it’s like it sure seems like the connection between having a whole bunch of these birds around year after year, surviving bad winners and predators and good years and wet years and everything is just the right habitat.
00:13:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you’re so right ahead. And about that. Back in the eighties there was so much of that horse trading going on with state agency. I think Michigan traded turkeys to get a moose population in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. But you’re like all sorts of states were trading, trading one thing that they wanted with something they had in abundance of. And you know, it was an era of look for the easy way out, like let’s just take populations, you know, transplant them and hope the habitat is right, And often was the case habitat wasn’t right, you know, to your point, like you gotta do the hard work to have the right amount of grassland to write or whatever the habitat type is for the species. You just can’t simply overpopulate something and hope that it takes a foothold. If the habitat recipe isn’t there, it was a completely different era, and thankfully, by and large we’re letting science dictate what we’re doing nowadays.
00:15:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean you think about it, you know so wild I mean, there’s there’s a lot of studies out there on wild turkey populations right now because in a lot of like sort of the premiere you know, states where there’s been a long the longest tradition of hunting them in modern times anyway, the populations aren’t doing that great, and you know, so they’ve dialed back, you know, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri. You kind of look at those regions and there are studies now like what’s happening to them? Right because they bring in a bird like the wild turkey, you know, to Michigan or to Minnesota wherever where you already have you might have more extreme weather than a lot of the places they came from to some extent, right, worst winters, whatever, but you’re already putting them in a place where the habitat is like generally conducive to that bird, right, tough bird can make it through the winters, can eat a lot of different stuff. And so you look at that and go Okay, then you look at like a pheasant or just a prime example, grouse. You know, where I grew up, southeastern Minnesota. I grew up hunting pheasants and grouse all over down there. And because we had a lot of CRP in the nineties, so we had our pheasants, you know, and then we had it seemed like just like a more prevalent uh timber industry. And so the grouse situation was like we would go out, my dad and I, we would go out without dogs and shoot grouse and pheasants and not really you know, you’re just kind of taking it for granted, like you can. I can look back now and go, man, I had no idea that those days were going to end right or change to a point where it’s like, yeah, like to Steve’s point, there are only going to be babysat pheasants for a while kind of in some of these places because somebody has to like specifically cater to them, and you’re going to have this little population that’s sort of an island, and you just look at that and go, man, that wasn’t that wasn’t that long ago. It was twenty five thirty years ago. But you can go down there and find a grouse now, but you’re gonna work your ass off for it. And it’s not like there aren’t populations there. But when you see land use change or you see the habitat, you know, the CRP is such an easy one for us to connect because we follow this issue every year and you see the contracts expire and the farm bill comes up, and it’s like such a there’s like a linear connection there, but we don’t sometimes think about like how much this stuff has changed in not really like that long of a span of time.
00:17:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, I often equate, you know, pheasant hunter hunters and rough grouse hunters. You know, I think rough grouse hunters because the habitat is so incredibly visual, they’re a little bit more in tune with changes on the landscape because you think about you go to your favorite habitat for rough grouse and it’s like that silver dollar diameter asspin with some mix Christmas tree size evergreens where they always seem to flush on the other side of right, and some you know, food sources, but visually you can tell when that stuff starts to age out or doesn’t have quite the right grousiness to it. And with pheasant hunters, so often as well as habitat managers. You know, we talk to people landowners and they’re like, oh, yeah, we haven’t we haven’t done anything, and we don’t have any birds anymore. It’s like, well stop there, you know, we haven’t done anything. And if you were to take a before and after photo of your grassland habitat where you know, fifteen years ago you had all kinds of rooster, all kinds of pheasants, and then you take a photo of it now and things have changed. If you haven’t done anything, if you haven’t done a prescribed fire, if you haven’t done woody tree removal. You know, the progression of grasslands is to become a woodland if you don’t do something to manage it. And as you mentioned about CRP, you know, in our lifetimes, you know, the high point of CRP, the acre numbers is just shya forty million, thirty nine point two million acres a CRP and that six o seven eight timeframe. And if you look at a line graph when CRP was at its peak, pheasant numbers were at its peak, you know, and it crossed the range. Minnesota had a sixty year high harvest and I think it was seven South Dakota forty year high, North Dakota forty year high. The only state that wasn’t like popping, you know seven o eight was Iowa, and Iowa had bottomed out on CRP. They had peaked earlier than that. Back in the day. You know, Iowa was the pheasant capital of the country. They were harvesting the most birds out of any state. It wasn’t South Dakota. But then as CRP took off in South Dakota and it declined in Iowa, that’s when the crossing of the streams happened. In South Dakota became the clear and present pheasant capital of the country, and Iowa struggled to recover. You know, even a four hundred thousand bird harvests since those days when they were easily harvest in a million birds. So there’s there’s no better line graph to illustrate the importance of CRP is that pheasant harvest total, you know, when those numbers were high and when they bottom out or pheasant numbers bottom out too. It’s just it’s it’s symmetrical.
00:20:41
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, if you want to maybe this isn’t a great analogy, if you want to understand how good. The pheasant population was like in the late nineties in Iowa. I almost didn’t graduate high school because of how many birds were out there. And we skipped school a lot because we could get down there in fifty minutes and we hunted. We hunted Iowa like crazy and it was just incredible. And I would say this, I feel like Iowa has come back to some level at least. And it’s totally anecdotal, right Like where I hunt, there’s definitely wild roosters to be found, you know, It’s it’s not what it was, you know, and we were hunting an eastern Iowa, which is a totally different thing back then. I want to back up a second. I want to ask you a question. So you made that joke about grouse getting up on the other side of a pine tree when you’re walking through a spruce tree whatever. Yeah, And it’s and you know, so when you think about like pheasant hunting, if you’re walking the cattails whatever, and there’s like a willow thicket or a you know, a dogwood thicket or something, you know, they’ll get up on the other side and you’re always like, well, yeah, they ran through, they hit some kind of soft edge, sat there, we kept coming, dogs kept going and that’s where they took off. And it seems like very You’re like, I can make that connection with grouse when that happens. I’ve started to think about this a lot. So when I said, on tree stands, which I do, all fall for white tails, a lot of times owls and other birds of prey will take an interest in you. And it’s because you’re sitting up there and there’s like little movements right and so they’re like, you know, they see your hand move or your your hat move or something. And I’ve had a lot of birds of prey over the years take a little like come in and take like a close swipe and I’ve seen you for a while. In one of the places I hunted had a pretty high owl population, and I would watch those suckers. They’ll come in and they’ll they’ll see you and come in to check you out, but they’ll fly with a tree between you, so you’ll see like wingtips and then they’ll scoot around it. And I’m like, that is a intentional act where they’re hiding their approach, and so I wonder about it, like and and so we look at predators like that and we go, yeah, like they’re kind of calculating. We give them like a little more mental horsepower credit than we do prey animals a lot of time. Like you think about I always joke about grouse. I’m like grouse and cottontail rabbits are like the candy bars of the outdoors, Like every gets dude, everything eats them. They’re easy to kill, like you can. You can just about scare a rough grouse to death right and a cottontail. But I wonder if there is like a certain percentage of them that in their little brain have figured out that if I get something between me and the danger, I just have a better chance of getting away. Do you think that’s real or you think that’s total bullshit.
00:23:21
Speaker 2: I think it’s real, and I think it’s true of all upland game birds because I think about you’ll quite a scaled quail hunting in the desert. If you can’t get them pinned down. You know, you’ve probably heard stories about them being track stars. If you can’t get them pinned down into a clump of grass or get a dog on the you know, to get in front of them to point them, those sons of guns will get to a mesquite. You’ll just run till they get to mesquite and then they’ll flush out the backside. So I mean whether pheasants too, I mean you witnessed it with like there’ll be one eastern red seed and a sea of grass and the rooster that you’re you know, I run pointers, My dog will be point relocate point, and I think I’ll get to it and that son of a gun rooster will flush on the back side of an eastern seed or you know, trying to look around like you were. So I absolutely believe that’s true. They they know exactly where their escape routes are and they put you know, their their one mission in life is well two missions in life to reproduce and survive. So they know how to survive. They know that if they can flush on the other side of evergreen or flush on the other side of a patch of mesquite, by golly, they’re going to do that.
00:24:46
Speaker 1: They’re going to do it. I mean that’s you know, you made a joke earlier. But when I was on the On the Wing podcast and you guys asked me, you know about deer hunting versus pheasant hunting, and what I would give up if I had to give up one, and I like begrudgingly said that I think I’d give up the white tails because the pheasant hunting, to me is my favorite thing that I do every year. Like I there’s I love to hunt lots of different stuff, but for myself, when I’m just like, if you were like you can spend tomorrow doing something that you love, what’s it going to be? I would pick I’m gonna unload my dogs and I’m gonna go follow them around for roosters every freaking time. And one of the reasons is what you’re talking about there where you know, grousel run, you know, like you mentioned scale coil there, Like there’s these birds have like different methods, right, even a woodcut. We filmed a woodcock running one time and people are like, woodcock don’t run. I’m like, well that one did. I don’t know. I found one that did, and I’m guessing he’s not the only one. But you know they’re not They’re not doing what a rooster’s going to do, right. But my thing with them is there is no question in my mind when I go out there that those birds not only know where I am, but they know different ways to try to get away from me, and their last resort is to fly, and so they’re like I just love that. There’s like there’s like true intention on their parts, Like I’m gonna hide first, and I’m gonna try to hide really well and until I run out of space or you sneak up on me or I hit that little drainage or something that I don’t want to cross, then they’re gonna fly. But they you know, and when you get them on public land, like I know, you hunt public land like crazy, we hunt some of the same stuff. It’s like those birds figure out multiple different ways to make it work and they they get you a lot, and I just I love, I love that they’re just good at that.
00:26:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know. The other thing you said is you brought the dog into the component when you’re deciding between white tails and pheasants, and I totally agree. I think you said something to that effect of you just nothing is so rewarding as being able to hunt birds hunt pheasants with your dog, and you learn so much about the game, habitat and your dog that relationship. I totally agree that when you boil it down here, you as a human being, you’re in partnership with a canine, and you live all year long to create this bond and to train, and you know, on Saturdays and Sundays you go out there with the rest of the weekend warriors to test your metal against these wild birds with your canine best friend. And you know, unfortunately, our dogs don’t live forever. You know, you have to repeat this process every ten to fifteen years. And when you strike magic at that six to eight year timeframe and it’s all working, there is nothing as sweet when you have a dog and its prime and you’re healthy and it’s a beautiful golden forty degree autumn day and you’re just it’s like a symphony. You know, you and your bird dog hunting the cover in search of these birds. And you know, in many places, unlike deer hunting, you know, it’s not one and done right, you can achieve that success, Like, let’s go get it again, buddy.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: That was awesome, right, I mean, And so you brought up something there that I think is like, so we all talk about like the teamwork aspect, right, Like you’re you’re working with your dogs, like I mean, you’re running pointers, I’m running flushers. Your dogs are going out and doing their job. You’re doing your job coming up there, and it’s like a back and forth thing, but you’re still working together, you know, on my side of things with flushers, like the eye contact, the like the back and forth like that, everything is like there is you’re you’re almost continually reminded whether your dog’s working with you or against you or like I shouldn’t say that working with you or for themselves for themselves, right, And so you know we I cover a lot of training stuff on here, just inter interview Josh Miller a great trainer. People are always like, you know, I want a really well trained dog that’s a bad aass hunter. It’s like, yeah, everybody does, but that that development of that team work aspect, which is why you know, like guys like Doc and like Doc and and some of these other guys talk a lot about established at eye contact right away, get that puppy like to look to you, and then they like they’ll return that favor eventually. And you start that young enough and there’s no like replace there’s like no training replacement for that last part, right Like it’s more time in the field. And you know, you see this a lot with people who just don’t either don’t have the time to hunt with them as much, you know, don’t really you know, like I know, you hunt everything you can with your dogs, which I think is crazy important. Right, Like I’m gonna I’m taking my dogs this weekend. We’re gonna hunt some grouse, we’re gonna hunt wood cock, and we’re gonna hut some ducks in between some deer. And you know it’s not it’s gonna be short stuff, right, like an hour or two here there. But all of that time with those dogs, especially if you’re running a young dog, you start to build up that rapport with them and so not we kind of look at it like they’re that tool, right I’m gonna take them to South Dakota and they’re gonna flush a limit for me and I’m gonna kill it for three days in a row with my buddies. I’m like, that’s great. But the more that you do with them, no matter what, just like the shed dog thing and everything, is you start to read that dog with that’s Doug starts to read you too, and so you start to get to that point where it’s like you can see this if you hunt with people long enough, like if you have really good hunting buddies, you don’t have to talk anymore. Like I’ve got a couple buddies. We’ll wade into a slew together, and we kind of hunt independently a lot of times, like they’ll take one side, I’ll take the other. But you don’t have to We don’t have to whistle back and forth. If I see my buddy hustling up here or going down this point or whatever, I’m like, I know what he’s doing. And it’s like a it’s just like this fluid thing. And like you said, when you get a dog with enough reps under its belt and then you go out there and there of the right age where this is like fifth, sixth, seventh season whatever, and it’s like just like automatic man, there’s nothing better. And I always tell people that, like, you know, I know, you hunt a lot of the cattail slew stuff that I do. You do a lot of late season stuff. To me, when I get a prime age dog, which my old dog has aged out and my young dog’s four now, so’s she’s bumping right up on it, I can walk into a cattail slew in December and I don’t have a plan in mind. I’m just like, I’m just gonna follow you, and if I’m hunting by myself, I can let that dog just dictate the pace. You go where you need to, you smell where you need to be, cause they’re gonna work into the wind, they’re going to do certain things, and you’re like, I’m literally just like now you drive right, and it’s like there’s nothing freaking better because then you’re not, you know, because then you’re not like, oh, you gotta get over here, you gotta do this or whatever, like you’re not. You’re just like this is like a flow state thing. And man, it’s freaking sweet.
00:32:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, nothing drives me crazy more than somebody oversteering their dog in the field. You know. It’s like yelling every hundred yards come over here, like ah, you just want to go hunt alone and follow the dog. It’s funny because you know, recently, I was hunting with Billy Captain Billy, the guy do k Fan radio with in the Twin Cities, and he’s pretty much just you’r died in the wool, hardcore pesant hunter and I was running my one year old short hair and she ran through some pheasants, just blew them up, and he and he’s giggling, and he looked at me. He’s like, you think it’s hard on that pupp that you keep changing the bird she’s chasing, Like, yeah, it is. She’s one years old. Last weekend we were hunting woodcock, and in the week before that it was sharp tales, and now we’re hunting pheasants and you know, she’s one year old and she’s blowing things up.
00:33:08
Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, I’m sorry about that, but yeah, it’s gonna be It’s gonna be like that for a little while, but eventually that versatility is gonna pay off.
00:33:19
Speaker 2: She’s gonna be able to read the cover, she’s gonna be able to ascertain the different species that I’m putting her on, and you know, yeah, there’s gonna be some some pickup, you know, some some hurdles, some potholes, but in the long run, she’s gonna be a more well rounded dog. And uh, you know what, she has four five six in the prime of her years. No matter what kind of cover I put her on, I think, uh, you know, based on my experience, I’m gonna have a you know, a well trained dog on any versus variety of upland birds.
00:33:55
Speaker 1: Right, and a one year old dog making a mistake out there like that. I was, I’m taking my kids. Has taught me a lot. Training dogs has taught me a lot. Me Being sort of a dumb ass has taught me a lot. Like I think about that stuff. So you think about that, and you haunt a lot. So you look at that and you go, that’s a mistake whatever, like. It would have been better if she had picked up those birds and locked on point. She didn’t. It’s a mistake. Right. Where that stuff gets a little bit gnarly is when we like put too high of expectations on it and we put too much weight on that. And that’s so this goes back to you know, you talking about you’ll woodcock hunt, grouse hunt whatever like, whatever whatever there is, you’ll hunt it with that dog. That dog’s going to get those contacts. That dog’s going to learn to work with you in different environments. It’s going to have that been there, done that mentality. It’s going to get there. You take somebody else who maybe only gets three days or five days to hunt South Dakota and they go out and that that dog blows through that group of pheasants looking for something else and you know, it’s seventy five yards beyond where you could shoot with your shotgun and then you light that dog up or whatever. I always think about that stuff, and I’m like, Okay, the mistake was made. Why why? Like why did that dog? You say in your case, that dog’s young, right, it’s excited, it’s been whatever. Like it’s just it hasn’t had a million pheasant contacts yet to know that thing hasn’t slowed down, hasn’t hit the governor yet, whatever, And so I always look at that and I go, it’s just what happens, right, So what happened to have that mistake made? Because like I think about that, you know, every single season I go out there my dog, I’ll get birdie and a rooster will get up right in front of me and fly away, and I’ll I’ll empty both barrels and that bird will be fine. And I’m like, what was that mistake? Right?
00:35:47
Speaker 3: Like?
00:35:47
Speaker 1: What was that? Like I will never forget when I took when I took Sadie my pop on her first pheasant hunt. So Luna was still hunting then, and I was like, man, I would just like to get one good flush with her kill a bird and I’ll consider it a huge success. Right, we walked into this slough that I love in western Minnesota. She flushed a rooster like twenty minutes into it, and that sucker, I knew it was common that sucker got up flew straight away and I missed with both barrels, and I was like, not super happy with myself. Went a little bit farther, flushed another rooster, and I did one of those things where I hit it and it went out into the middle of the slow and went straight up and then fluttered down. And so we got in there and it was wet and chaos and there was birds getting up everywhere. And I think about that, and I go I walked into that slough thinking like, this dog’s gonna screw up. This dog’s gonna make the mistakes, and me, who’s been fezant hunting since I was eleven, made two big, bad mistakes right off the bat. And so I always look at that when you when you have a young dog like that, or even an older dog, right, it’s like why what happened? So if you have a dog that’s burning through those birds at one whatever, it’s gonna learn like you’re gonna get there’s there’s nothing you don’t want to punish that dog for that. If you have a dog that’s still doing that at five, you made a mistake. So now so now why like why is that dog? Is it not getting the contacts? Well, maybe you should, maybe you should try to dial into that woodcock migration at home, even though you love pheasants or you know, doves or whatever, like just there’s there’s a reason for that stuff, and it’s usually our fault. But it’s like, yeah, it’s easy to offshore that blame pretty quick on a dog because that dog can’t really talk back, you know.
00:37:28
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you think about you know, the whatever ten hours, fifteen hours, you know, drive that you made to South Dakota, a couple grand you spend, you know, the buddy that’s watching over your shoulder, and you know, your dog goes in and blows everything up, Like you know, it’s it’s easy to see how you put the pressure on your dog because you get the pressure on yourself, you know, and to your point, like you gotta take a step back and okay, you’re gonna know you’re gonna have pressure on that South Dakota trip, Like spend a couple hundred bucks go to the game farm then like get your dog dialed in. You know, it’s not the same thing, but you know it’s practice, you know, like al and I Evers said, talk about practice. It helps. You know, it’s not the game, but it but it helps. It creates a little bit of extra rapport between you and your dog before it is showtime. And that can be a very beneficial component, even if it’s just to build your own confidence in your dog and yourself.
00:38:36
Speaker 1: Well, and I know you do this too, and I’m a I have become like a huge proponent of hunting by myself with my dogs a lot, especially when they’re younger. And I always think about this. One of the first hunting white tail hunting shows I ever filmed was a guided deal down in Illinois, and you know, I was contracted through bow Hunter went down there and there were fifteen guys in camp. So there are four of us for this kind of media hunt thing, and then eleven dudes from New York who were on this you know big deer paid hunt in I think it was in Pike County, but one of the premier whitetail counties. Whatever, the weather was tough, the hunting was tough, but people were getting some opportunities. And I remember one guy came back and his arrow was muddy, like twelve yards down the shaft right, and he said he was walking in and he had an arrow knocked and he slipped and pushed the arrow into the ground. And I was like, that’s bullshit. You missed one, and you don’t want to talk about it, right, And I remember thinking like, like, Okay, there’s there’s like a vast array of experience here just in this group of fifteen people. Some people have been bow hunting all over the world. Some people are like this is like their kind of first time. But the ego aspect of being around a bunch of people, where like the expectation is you paid a whole bunch of money and you want that success bad. That’s immediately going to have you making more mistakes because of that pressure thing. And when you think about that with bird hunting, if if you take that pup that’s a year old whatever, two years old, that doesn’t have a lot of experience, and you’re like, we’re going to go to South Dakota do this gang hunt. You know, bring eight of my buddies and everybody has dogs, and you’re going to throw that dog into the mix. You know, maybe maybe it can shrug off those distractions. Probably not, but that dog would be so much better prepared for that, and you’d be more prepared for handling your dog with some solo time with them to let them figure it out, because then you don’t have the ego involve you’re not trying to get ahead of your buddy. The other dogs aren’t getting into the mix. And it’s like, to me, it’s the best way to get those dogs to relax and understand their job and not constantly be distracted by something else. And I know you know this, but like when I go do those hunts and it’s like a low it’s like a calm, low pressure thing. I shoot way better, typically, way better, and you know, and we have better recoveries if you knock one down because you don’t have you know, through your body’s like, let’s get moving, we’re not going to find it. It must have run away. Like you can work through that process, that hunt dead process with them or whatever whatever your command is. I just don’t think they I think the value of that is like incredible when you’re developing a dog, Yeah.
00:41:36
Speaker 2: I totally agree that, you know you talked about earlier that eye contact. You know, if if you’re hunting alone, you can build the eye contact with the dog and your dog can key in on you. If you’re hunting with twelve other people, you know, and and then god forbid, it’s a mismash of experience levels and dogs and people yet flushers and pointers running together. If you try kind of steady up a dog and there’s a flusher you know, coming in and crowding that point and flushing the bird, it’s like, oh my gosh, it’s just And I’ve had to participate in those from media perspectives for my job, and it’s like I have known to just go on to walk about, you know, just wander off because you know, you spend so much time, uh, you know, dialing in a pup, particularly if it’s a pup you’re trying to get steady to wing and shot as a pointer. You know, somebody who doesn’t have real good control their their dog and yo comes in and flushes your your your bird that the pointer is pointing, and then all of a sudden, it just deteriorates a lot of training that you’ve been putting in on that dog, and it’s a to be a really frustrating situation. So when possible, like you say, from a relaxation perspective, I I definitely did it here to go hunt by myself, hunt quiet, enjoy the experience and just you know, I’ll have way better success.
00:43:12
Speaker 1: Right well, and the hunt quiet thing is important too, Like I mean, I have a really good buddy, h He’s into goldens. He’s always had golden travers. And we used to do a lot of late season grouse hunting, you know, especially back when Wisconsin. Wisconsin used to have a season that was stayed open through January. They closed it down several years ago, but that was like, it was like such a great opportunity. We used to go up for two weekends, long weekends and hunt a milk rum a public land. Never saw another hunter like it was. It was freaking great.
00:43:42
Speaker 2: It was great.
00:43:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I miss it all.
00:43:45
Speaker 2: I miss it bad I because it’s in the last maybe two years before they shut that down, there was just very little snow and I had them dialed in. Man, it was so awesome. And then they canceled that over. So, you know, fear mongering around the West Nile virus is like, oh.
00:44:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, that was a really good lesson. Kind of goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning when they were kicking that around. What they did that as like a it was like optics, right, it was like a pr move to like we’re doing something we’re going to take away this month that almost nobody participates in. Like if you go on it, you see that there’s just like in January, there aren’t a lot of people out there, but they could show they were doing something. And when when you’re facing an opportunity being taken away on the on the like the reasoning of the you know, the population is not doing that well, so we’re doing this for the resource. There usually isn’t a clear cut case to bring it back, so it’s usually like we’re going to take this away. Like Minnesota moose was another example of this. Right, Like when I was growing up, you could draw a once in a lifetime moose tag and that like a big deal. When they were when that population started going down and they were talking about how they were going to maybe like suspend the season, I was like, if this goes away, we will never hunt moose again. And it’s been true since then, and I don’t see that coming back, that Wisconsin grouse season. I was like, what if the population comes back, are we going to get this back? And we never will probably, and you know we have, it’s been gone for several years now, and so I always look at that when we you know, like we were big into the resident non resident fights and all that shit that’s going on and the state going to a draw and and you know, over the countertag is going away, and I’m like, you guys, gotta be careful what you wish for, because if you if you’re comfortable taking away my opportunity because I live across state lines, your next like something that you love could go away and it will not come back. And so you see this a lot. There’s like a lot of myopic views. You know, we look at like in the dear world, people look at it like my farm is this They do this on my farm, and you don’t. It’s hard to like think about it in a grand like a whole state or even like a whole region type of thing. But that’s what they have to manage to. And so when you’re like, well, I don’t care if they take away trail cameras on public land because I don’t hunt public land. And it’s like, okay, well, if they’re not fair chase here, they might not be on in private land in five years, you know, like if you’re like, this thing could go away and I don’t care. I think we just have to be super careful about that. And you see that with stuff like that. That Wisconsin late season grouse hut was freaking awesome, Like that was such a cool experience and it hasn’t been replaced by anything, and it’s not coming back, and it’s like, I don’t know, there’s a shitload of grouse over there again? Can we have it?
00:46:44
Speaker 2: There is? And it relates back to let science lead the way, you know, if it is truly you know, a disease, and let’s figure that out. Let’s not make a one year blip be the cause for ending opportunity. And as it turns out, you know, like you said, Wisconsin’s grouse numbers have surged back up, you know, and it might be more complicated then, you know. I remember the news story is one of the commissioners and was Konds saying, oh, yeah, just only people out there, people driving around shooting them out of trees as they’re eating buds and in the evenings like, that’s not what I’m doing. I you know, coming over every weekend because it’s the only thing around here that’s open. And if you put in the time and you bust your butt because when there is snow, that’s a hard ass hunt, but it is so rewarding when you get that you know, great big heavy plumage rough grouse, you know, on January tenth, it’s like, heck, yeah, I did this. That was amazing. Then, like you said, at opportunities gone and it’s probably not coming back, right.
00:47:56
Speaker 1: I totally got off track there. My buddy who has the goldens, when we used to see that hunt, uh, he would have to yell at them a lot. And you’d be in the north woods. That’s like pin drop quiet, you know, because a lot of times it’s not very windy that time of year. You have that snow, and so it’s like a different You walk into that environment and is like just a it’s like a recording booth or something almost. It’s it’s amazing. And he would be pretty loud with his dogs, and so you’d find spots where those grouse picked up the pace and then they flew off ahead of you. And you see that mentality with pheasant hunting a lot because people are used to hunting with buddies, and I think they kind of look at it and go, we can’t really be quiet when there’s five of us getting out of the trucks and letting the dogs out. Everybody’s got a whistle and everybody’s doing that. But I’m like, the more lead time you give those roosters, like that’s I mean, I’m convinced that’s why people think that public land like late season public land birds are so hard to hunt. And it’s like, well, yeah, if you make your presence known and you know, in some situations you just make a lot of noise anyway, So you got to figure out where you like, where you’re going to hit that little edge or something we were talking about where they’re going to hold up or like how are you going to work that? But the more noise you’re making out there, just like you’re not helping yourself at all. Like you just got to try to be quieter. And I think that I think the dogs feed off of that. You know, we know our dogs feed off of our energy, like they can read us pretty well and if a bunch of people are out there being loud, making noise, it’s just another distraction thing. So not only are the birds like just a little more keyed in, but your dog’s a little less keyed in a lot of times. And it’s like a negative due.
00:49:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you know, it’s well known. Like the first snow of the season is a day you call in. If you live in pheasant country, you call in sick that day and you go hunt because it just makes pheasants just dumb. But another great day to call in sick is those late seasons days when you get like that three inches of just fresh, fluffy powder. To your exact point about being quiet, it just muffles every sound that you and your dog make. And you know, here are these birds that have been surviving for three months because they can hear you approaching on crusty cattails and ice, and all of a sudden there’s three inches of powder and you can sneak up on them and get right in there, and oh gosh, if it’s a little bit of you know, not a whole lot of wind in a nice bright sun, it’s one of the best hunting days of the year to be out so good.
00:50:39
Speaker 1: We had we had that ah Man. Maybe four years ago. I was down I was I was hunting western Minnesota and we got that dreamy like three four inches of powder. I was hunting Soloh. My buddies had been there till the night before they left. And I went out in this spot in Minnesota. I like ran across the tracks going into the saloo, right off the bat dogs flushed it up, killed it one shot, went a little bit farther, dogs put up two roosters. I killed them both. So I was like twenty minutes into it. I got my limit, took them back to the hotel, cleaned them. And I had my Iowa license that year, drove down to Iowa and just picked out a couple spots on on X went out there and they flushed two roosters in the in the remainder of the day. And so I shot five times that day and killed five public land roosters with a flusher, And I was like, it was the best freaking hunting, like the best conditions, And it was exactly what you’re talking about there that shit, and you know, and on top of that, and not only is that just like fun, because that’s that’s the easiest time to kill them. Like they’re going to just sit tight and it’s just like a special like you don’t you don’t get it very often. But also that I think that was Sadie’s first season or second season. So when you can put dogs in that situation where those roosters are like, I’m not running today and I’m going to hide in this you know, twenty yard wide strip of cattails around the lake or whatever, those young dogs, the contacts they get, you know, not only just the roosters, but the hens too. It’s like, man, you can’t hardly beat it because they don’t have to. They’re not like figuring something out right, Like they’re like, I smell him, he’s right here now he gets up in front of the gun. Those days are so valuable.
00:52:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know when there is that fresh snow and your dogs are in the mix on those birds because they you know, maybe have left a little bit of scent with tracks in that powder and they get those contacts. It’s just priceless and it’s a lot of fun too.
00:52:43
Speaker 1: Oh it’s the best. Man. Let’s let’s we’re about done with this. Let’s tie this up and talk a little bit about the work on the ground that Pheasants Forever does. How can people help? How can people pay attention to this stuff? I know, I know you guys are always asking people to reach out about farms and things like that. What do we have going on right now that people listening could maybe help out with some pheasants?
00:53:05
Speaker 2: Yeah? Right, so pheasants and quail, right, Pheasants forever and quail forever. So when you think about the uplands, we get an organization that represents the entire country, from the quail range of the southeast bobboy quail, to the desert species of the southwest, the mountain quail out in the Pacific Northwest, and then obviously pheasants across the bread basket of the country. Right now, we need a farm bill, you know, we’re we’re been limping along like one year extensions of the farm bill. And as we touched on earlier in this conversation, CRP and pheasants in particular, but our other you know, sharp tails, bob boyds, you name. It really depend on the habitat that’s in the farm bill, and CRP is super vulnerable right now. We need we need reauthorization and we need it before the end of the year. Uh So, number one thing is to contact your elected officials, whether that’s your US Senator or one of your two US senators, or your US representative and let them know you want a new farm bill and you want CRP strengthened in that farm bill. That’s, you know, number one thing. Now, the number two thing is most people, you know kind of ride along when it comes to conservation. You know, roughly eight percent of Americans belong to pheasants forever, quail forever. Eight percent of the sorry of the upland hunters in the US are our members of our organization. So that’s a lot of folks that are carrying the weight of a lot of others from public land to habitat. And you know, we could just get twelve percent to people that are bird hunters to contribute to be a part of this organization. You know, we’re super proud of the fact that if we raise a dollar in our forty four year history, ninety cents on the dollar gets into the ground to create better habitat, more public access. We’re super efficient. We’re super effective, and we just need more people to give a rip and get involved and it’s it’s a small price to pay for something we love so dearly.
00:55:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we’ve seen you know, I mean, I know that you kind of mentioned this, like hunters are just generally kind of apathetic, right, like we just let things happen. But you know, most recently, we saw the public land fight come out, you know, out of Mike Lee down in Utah. He’s gonna bring it back around, We’re going to keep having this fight. But we effectively shut that shit down. And that was just people aware of it, going I value my public lands, don’t sell them, and letting their elected reps know. And it worked like it was you know, in that phone call. I mean I did a phone call actually for the for My Foundations podcast to show people, you know, like this is this is super easy. So I did the call, did the podcast, and it was like thirty seconds of my time, you know. But when lots and lots and lots of people do that from all over, then you get the attention of the people who are making these decisions and trying to pass these bills or pass these laws. And so there are different ways to skin this cat, but the fundamental thing is we know the recipe for having more Pheasants and more Quail. Like we can. We can read the TV’s we go. We know how to do this shit. It just takes some action, It takes some money. Pheasants Forever is a great org. People listening should consider joining. Check it out. I’m sure that you guys have something on there on the site or somewhere about how to reach your reps all that stuff. Go check it out. Where can people find you personally if they want to follow along on your adventures.
00:56:53
Speaker 2: Pheasant Bob on Instagram Pretty hard one to forget there. Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram there, I’m on book just under my name as well as an X. But yeah, check me out on Instagram and I post a lot of Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever, and Detroit sports team stuff. So right, you can forgive me if you’re a non Detroit fan, but I’d love to have you follow and check out what’s going on with my dogs and with the conservation Bob.
00:57:24
Speaker 1: I appreciate it so much. Thanks for coming on.
00:57:26
Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, I really appreciate it, Tony. Thank you.
00:57:32
Speaker 1: That’s it for this week. I’m Tony Peterson. This has been the Houndations podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening and for all your support. If you want to listen to some more podcasts. Maybe you need a little bit of entertainment when you’re driving down the road to go to South Dakota to shoot some roosters, or maybe down south somewhere to shoot some quail. Maybe you need a new recipe, Maybe you want some how to articles, Maybe just want to watch some films of the med Eater crew out hunting and fishing for stuff. The media Dot has you covered. We dropped new content like every single day there. Go check it out and once again, thank you for everything.
00:58:07
Speaker 3: M
Read the full article here