Six Weeks to Dove Season!

On this episode, Doug speaks with callers about Baffin Bay (who bring excellent points to the discussion), discusses the best shot shell loads for dove hunting, hosts an interview with Riceland Waterfowl Club's David Pruett, and much more. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, here we go on Saturday morning. Thank you
all for listening. I certainly do appreciate it, you know
I do. Frankie does it gives us motivation to hear
from you too, It certainly does me. Anyway. I can't
imagine just sitting here for three hours and talking to
just me, chatting and yacking and probably saying a lot

(00:24):
of things you guys don't want to hear about. If
you're not a golfer at all, by the way, you're
probably not gonna like about a third of this program.
Because I have got Frankie came in here and gotten
me the Open Championship on the big screen, and I
greatly appreciate that because I didn't want to say it

(00:46):
out loud. I was talking a little a little about
it on fifty plus this week, and we ricocheted kind
of off of it this past weekend. But Scotti Scheffer
is still the man to beat, and after the first
round he was I don't even remember where he was
in the first round. It doesn't really matter because yesterday,
despite some adverse weather and all kinds of things that

(01:10):
could have thrown a lesser person off their game, he
just went about his business and woke up this morning
a shot clear and is looking for all the world
like there's nobody who can beat him. Scotty Scheffer's at
ten under par, threw two rounds over there, Matt Fitzpatrick

(01:32):
at nine, Brian Harmon and how Tong League at eight,
and then from there the nearest competition is all at
least a sleeve farther back than that. If you take
out those three guys immediately underneath Scotty Scheffer's name, the

(01:53):
next best that the entire field can put up is
only half of the score below par that Scotty Scheffer's
working with today.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Better.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Whether it is over there, it's cloudy, it looks like
very comfortable temperature. I'm not sure exactly what the temperature is.
Let me see if it shows at the top of
this little leaderboard here it usually does. It just flipped
over to Royal Port Rush Golf Club. Most of us
who are interested in the game already know that, Yeah,
sixty seven degrees with a northwest wind at eleven, which

(02:27):
is virtually innocuous. So Scottie Scheffler just may rip that
course apart. I'm not saying he's gonna shoot another sixty
four but he I wouldn't be surprised to see him
just on a very casual, very calm day, go out
and shoot sixty five, maybe sixty six. And if he

(02:49):
does that, I think the rest of the field will
just start packing their bags. This guy has shown more
times than I can remember already how dominant he is
in the game. Now he'd have to do this for
another six or eight years to become the next Tiger Woods.

(03:10):
In Tiger's heyday, there was a there was a stretch
for several years where he wasn't playing a lot of tournaments,
but in the tournaments he was playing, his average finishing
position was second. That guy There's it's gonna be a
hot minute before anybody ever even gets into the same

(03:31):
conversation with him. But nonetheless, Scotti Scheffler is is making
making a play to put his name at let to
warrant mention at least in conversations about golf. So back
to the outdoors, I just I kind of digress a
little bit the surf. When I looked at the cameras earlier,

(03:51):
it was too early to see what the what the
water really looked like. It's looking it's looking calmer, and
the wind the live wind at windsurf dot com or winser.
Let me see what this site is when yeah, I
windsurf dot com shows mostly light winds along the entire coast.

(04:12):
There are a couple of anomalies, one of which is
the thing will load and tell me where it is
it doesn't want to this morning. There's one down around
in Matta Gordon that show in thirteen. There's a thirteen
at Freeport, and the rest of the coastal wind values

(04:34):
are in single digits. Well, there's yeah, right along the
coast single digit wind on shore wind. Mind you. Now
it gets a little bit more south in it as
you come up the coast from the middle coast down
to Gosh at least past Port O'Connor, almost all the
way down to like North Padre Island somewhere in there,

(04:57):
it's it's almost a dead on shore wind with with
single digit values. So have at it if you're listening
way down there. I got a hunch I might get
a call from Cliff Web this afternoon. I'm just I'm
not I'm not sure of it, but the way it
looks down there, if he didn't have to drive all

(05:18):
the way to baff in this morning, he probably will be.
In fact, I'm sure he would be in the surf
this morning, and good for him. Seven one three two
one two five seven ninety Email on me Dougpike at
iHeartMedia dot com. You don't have to if you want
to call and you want to talk about something other
than what I'm talking about, depending on the value of

(05:39):
what I'm talking about. For example, if we're talking about, uh,
the South Texas Brian deal, where there is there's a
company that wants to dump millions of gallons of brine
into baff And Bay every day in perpetuity, and there
is actually I had some about this this morning I

(06:02):
wanted to talk about. If you haven't seen it yet,
there's one of those online petitions circulating now that if
it gets enough signatures it probably has already by now,
it's got mine on it. Hopefully that will force the
folks down south who want to dump Brian into Baffin Bay. Well,
actually what it would do is force the people who
hold those permits, who issue those permits. It'll keep them

(06:27):
on their toes and pretty much force them to do
a thorough, thorough impact study on just how all that
nasty water would play out over years to come in
a basis to mind you that has virtually no water circulation.
Baffin is so isolated from the nearest legitimate exchange of

(06:51):
water that the only thing that moves water in and
out of Baffin Bay is the wind, and that's not
a terribly powerful force, being on where it is on
the coastline. The wind blows pretty good, but wind doesn't
have nearly the impact in anything coastally environmental as does
tidal movement and circulation. They just don't have it down there,

(07:14):
And I cannot imagine the only other way to flush
a bass system than title movement is a hurricane. And
we don't want one of those. Nobody wants one of those.
We don't want to have to rely on brine to
do something good for the bays, which is what we're
being told. I don't see any good that's gonna come
from this, I honestly don't. I just still see how

(07:36):
dumping something that that's potentially even slightly potentially toxic to
a pristine bass system can be good for anybody. But
the person who's making money off of it, that's the
only person who's gonna that's the only group of people
bound to be a lot of hands in that stir

(07:57):
in that pot. But I hope that we can can
nip this in the bud and at least at least
put in one or two years of study before something
like that's genuinely considered. It just makes no sense to me.
If you can find Brian Treadway is the one who
sent me that petition, and it's circulating pretty strongly amongst

(08:23):
our circle of outdoors people. And if you find it,
read it and see what they're asking. They're not asking
for anything outrageous. They're not climbing up on a soap
box and banging a tambourine on environmental this or environmental that.
They're just saying, hey, pump the brakes until we know,
until we can really know what's going to happen. If

(08:44):
that Brian gets pumped into there, I hope they can
figure it out. I hope they figure it out before
somebody slips in another overnight meeting that nobody knew about,
and lo and behold, the permits are there and the
desalination dumping begins. Nothing positive would come from that. Build
a pipeline, dump it into the golf. If it's so

(09:04):
important to you to dump that brine somewhere, dump it
into the Gulf of Mexico where there is title movement,
where it can be diluted, and the whatever's bad in
it can be reduced through dilution into something in innocuous.
It's just not that hard to get it right. And
so many times over the years hindsight has shown that

(09:29):
people who who react too quickly to things like this
and yeah, it's not going to hurt anything, don't worry
about it. We'll do it at backfires and we and
our resources have paid for that. Seven one three two
one two five seven ninety Email me Doug Pike at
iHeartMedia dot com. I had a kind of a funny

(09:51):
thing happened yesterday. I was trying to call. I don't
remember who it was I was even trying to call
at the time. It wasn't a very important phone call,
but it was just it was important enough that I
was asking my voice onboard voice phone to make the

(10:11):
call for me, and I said what I had to say. Hey,
I said call such and such, and I can't remember
who I said I wanted to call, but the phone
interpreted it as someone else, and I had to have
kind of an explanatory phone call with a man I
haven't spoken with and probably twenty five years, maybe twenty years,

(10:36):
probably twenty at least, because I haven't talked to him
since my son was born. I know that. And he's
almost well, he's not eighteen yet. He will be in
a little wall. But the phone just says calling KVD,
and I thought, wait a minute, that's not who I
asked for. And before I could even reach over and
try to hit the disconnect button, move my thumb over

(11:00):
on the steering wheel to disconnect the call, I get
this Hello, like Kevin, I'm so sorry man. It's Doug
Pike down in Houston. I I know we hadn't talked
in a ton of time. I met you a long
time ago up at Rayburn. Uh and and yeah, I
just my phone didn't understand what I was talking about.
It said, no problem, call anytime, no problem. Uh. That

(11:23):
was Kevin Van dam the probably one of the best
bass fishermen ever. He'd be in the he'd be way
up the list. I don't know how high he would
go up the list. And maybe a faux pro is
listing this morning. He could he could give kV d
at all time spot in bass fishing history. But anyway,

(11:44):
very nice guy and apparently still is because he didn't
yell at me, and he didn't. I don't think he
blocked me. I haven't tried to call him back, but
I'm hoping he wouldn't block me. Seven one three two
one two five seven ninety Email me Doug Pike at
iHeartMedia dot com. I can count on one hand two things.
I can count on one hand with this show, after

(12:06):
doing it twenty five years, we've only had to hit
the dump button. Have you ever had to hit the
dump button on us yet, Frankie? I think once? Maybe
thinks a little bit, Yeah, one, maybe I could count
on two hands. Yeah, go ahead and grab John and
I'll explain what I'm where I'm going with this. Two hands,
the number of times ever we've had to hit the

(12:28):
dump button with this show, and mostly that was just
because of enthusiasm. It wasn't because of anger. I think
there was one guy who tried to get off on
a big yelling and screaming rant and name calling rant,
and it's a boot. He pushed the dump button and
away they go. The other The other thing that I

(12:48):
don't do very often. Well, no, I'll tell you what.
Let's go get this call. I'll get that taken care
of when he gets finished with it. There's something I
wanted to talk about, but I'm gonna jump over that
and talk to John. Hey, John, what's up.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Well, the humidity is down, it's cool. I'm sitting on
the porch out at my place.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Oh my gosh. And you don't need to wipe your
brow every ten seconds.

Speaker 4 (13:11):
No. See, we we got dump.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
We got a dump of rain like three quarters of
an inch in about twenty minutes just before suns so
it cooled it down and it stayed cool. I was
here because I participated. I did it spotlight survey with
with the guys for the county. That's that's fun. But anyway,
on the desalidation plan, I'm I'm gonna I'm not gonna

(13:36):
go against you. I'm gonna add some alternate thoughts. I'm
all for pumping the brakes. I agree something something's amiss.
But a couple of things to consider. One is I
did it after last week or the week before when
you were talking about I looked into a little bit
good it's coming from there. They're they're not taking ocean
water or whatever. They're taking deep brine water. You know

(13:58):
how they create these uh salt dome caverns for storage
and stuff. So sure, so they're taking brine from the ground.
So it's gonna be clean, so to speak, just like
you're well water. If you have a well out in
the country, you don't worry about toxic stuff because it's
coming from two hundred feet down.

Speaker 4 (14:13):
It's been there for thousand years.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
So the good news is, I don't think there's gonna
be you know, heavy metals or all kinds of contaminants
from you know what what what we've done to the
surface water over the years. And the other thing is
clearly the area is gonna need water.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
There's there's problems out in that area right that need water.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
No doubt that there are, no doubt one hundred I
agree there's problems.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
They need water, and this is in my mind, a
good way to do it, provided they do it, you know, cleanly,
well and all of that, because I don't know if you know,
but they've there's I don't completely understand, but there's a
change to laws in Texas that water they've got to
stop taking water from aquifers and it's got to all

(14:56):
be provided via surface water.

Speaker 4 (14:58):
You're familiar with.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
That, familiar with that. That's that's a game change.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
It is because think about it, because of you know, subsidence.
Everywhere you pump out all the water and the ground
goes down, and especially in the in the in the
coastal area, all of a sudden, not places that didn't
flood do flood or more risk at But anyway, taking
all the surface water, well, that sounds easy. It's just
river going to the ocean. Yeah, but that's fresh water

(15:25):
going to the bays. That that that Mother nature depends
on for all those things, right, for the crabs and
the shrimp and all that stuff.

Speaker 4 (15:32):
They need they need.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
To be periodically desalinated, if you will, pardon the punt.
So So from that standpoint, is a good Any any
surface water we don't consume, to me is a good thing, okay, right,
And I don't think it's going to be dirty, but
I'm with you. There's there's just something about just dumping
it in and it's going to be okay. Maybe it's

(15:53):
a control of Okay, what's the average cylinity of Bath Bay?
As a minimum, it's got to go in at that salinity.
They can control that because they're doing desalination, right, they
can make it more or less salty before they dump
it in, right, So if you're worried about altering the

(16:14):
overall salinity of that pristine bay, then they should be
able to control that.

Speaker 4 (16:19):
But I'm just shooting from the hip there as.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
I'll shoot from the hip of the question back to you.
If it has to hit that baff and Bay level,
how do they reduce the salt level or increase the
salt level of brine to get it up to the
same pH as baff and Bay and the same salinity.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
I mean, well, because that's exactly what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
It's a reverse house most as you might have one
under your sink, right that takes all the crap out
and puts out pure water. Well, if you do that properly,
one side is all the leftovers, right, and that's what
they want to put back in baf and Bay. But
you can either do it stronger or less by diluting
if you use some of your desalinated water to get

(17:02):
that salinity back up to what baff and Bay. It's
coming out of the ground at some salinity, right, I
don't I don't know, but.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
It's one of the pitches they're making, though, John, is
that they're gonna reduce the salinity of baff and Bay.
And while they're going to reduce, that's what you know,
that's some of the early talk that I saw that
there may they may have changed their tune. But why
why change something that's sure been perfect for thousands of years?

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Sure?

Speaker 4 (17:29):
No, no, no, I'm I'm I'm with you on this.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
It means more a closer look, but you know, there's
there's probably something.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
Maybe the pipeline idea is the easiest thing.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
You know, pipelines are expensive then, and then who's ever
a property across and puts them up? You know, about
putting a property pipeline across my property, it's ten more
years of court fights and whatever.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
So, uh, it's a good one. It's a good one,
isn't it.

Speaker 4 (17:59):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's it all makes sense, you know.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
But but I'm off for I'm off for supplying that
need because because you know, we're more people are coming
to Texas and that's overall a good thing because they're
leaving California and New York and so forth, and so
you need more water and that's generally going to probably
supply the greater San Antonio area, right, the.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
The immediate need is closer to Corpus. They have a heart.
Yeah they're there. Water supply is in jeopardy. Okay, yeah,
they were down.

Speaker 4 (18:35):
You always hear about, You always hear about.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah, you always hear about San Antonio, and.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Say the farther farther up the watershed, you go that
like you go to Austin and all of a sudden,
there's all these things that Austin and San Antonio just
have to have this much water for this, and everybody
downstream all the way to the coast is drying up
because of the demand that's put on those rivers. Before

(19:00):
ever really gained momentum toward beach, just a trickle getting in. Hey,
I hate to do it, but I got to run.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
You so I am glad you Yeah, no, no problem,
I'm looking into some morri fine, you know, try to
try and make an educated comment.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Go enjoy your view this morning and the lack of humidity.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Oh yeah, and it's and it's a big mugga coffee too,
by the way, all right, you need to know that.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Okay, thanks John, see man. Yeah, let's take a little
break here, we'll come back. I might dabble more a
little bit more in that, and uh, I've got a
whole page full of stuff here. We can talk about
American Shooting Centers. I would suspect that there are quite
a few people out there early on a day like

(19:46):
this with little wind who are either fine tuning their
long range rifles just because they love long range shooting.
Shoot out to six hundred yards at American Shooting Centers,
or you can shoot as close as five yards at
American that's your handgun home defense kind of a range
right there, at your get out of trouble range if

(20:09):
trouble comes knocking at your door. America Shooting Center's been
around a long time. They are the largest non military
shooting facility in the entire state of Texas. More than
two hundred shooting stations out there, and that includes three
sporting plays courses. It includes trapping, skied I think ten
fields there. There's several five stands setups around the property there.

(20:34):
Like I said, rifle and pistol from five yards all
the way to six hundred yards. Plenty of instruction if
you're not shooting, as well as you'd like, And with
only what is it, six weeks or so now to go,
not even six full weeks, Holy cow, six weeks to
dove season. That means only about eight weeks to teal season.

(20:55):
You might want to get out there and burn a
little powder and make sure you can still hit what
you're aiming at once dove season opens, Once teal season opens,
then you'll you'll blink and it'll be deer season two.
Get those rifles out there, get them tuned up. American
Shootingcenters dot Com is the website there on West Timer
Parkway between Katie and Highway six. American Shootingcenters dot Com

(21:21):
seven twenty seven on Sports Talk seven to ninety. I
just watched Phil Mickelson make another crazy, ridiculously good shot.
He putted from I'm not really sure how far off
the grain he was, but that ball was on the
ground rolling for the better part of I don't know,
six eight seconds and just slammed right into the pen

(21:43):
and fell like a stone to the bottom of the cup.
That guy's made some pretty good shots. I don't know
if you saw it the other day. I think it
was yesterday, maybe it might have been Thursday, but he
was in one of those little teeny tiny pot bunkers.
After two gets in the takes a swing and leaves

(22:03):
the ball in the bunker. That's three, and then jars
it on his four shot to make just another whole
hum par whole hum. Phil Mickelson, That guys, If ever
there was a magician with a golf club that would
it would have to be Phil Micholson. He pulls off

(22:24):
some of the craziest, weirdest and that's that left handed
thing in him. I like to think so anyway, since
I'm also left handed, pretty good guy to watch. I
admired him more when I was younger. He became so
aloof I think in some ways isolated himself and almost
did sort of what bryceon Deshambo did before he was

(22:48):
reborn and became a fan favorite. Michelson at one through
one stretch of his career was kind of off putting
and wouldn't really talk that much with people, At least
from my experience around him. He would when he would
come to the Shell Houston Open, then the Shell Houston
Open out at Golf Club of Houston, he'd just go

(23:11):
off and hit balls by himself. He and his caddy
just out away from that main tea line, away from
all the other players. And I don't know what. I
don't really think that he was unfriendly or just didn't
like to be around people. I think it was perceived
that way by a lot of people, but I think

(23:31):
it was as much that he just liked to focus
one hundred percent on what he was doing and was
trying to avoid distraction. That's what I'm gonna go with anyway.
Holy cow, Well, I went so long talking with John
that we've already gotten to the bottom of the hour.
Now I'm gonna go ahead and get this one on

(23:51):
time to get us back on track. Black Horse Golf Club.
Speaking of black Horse, up there go two ninety to
fry Road, goes south on Frye Road a couple of miles.
You'll see golf course on both sides of the road
at one point, and that's when you put on your
west Blinker and take a ride into the property. From

(24:12):
that point forward, just about anybody you run into is
going to be there with a singular task of taking
care of you and making sure you have a good
time while you're out there on that golf course or
in the grill or down at the far end of
the range getting a lesson. Whatever calls you to black Horse,
there's somebody there to help you have a better time

(24:33):
than you thought you were going to have. South Course
now fully private, North Course still daily fee, still challenging
golfers of all skill levels in ages as it always
has done. Really fun place to play. Run by a
guy named Craig Hicks. He's been out there several years
now and he had a vision long ago when he

(24:54):
first came on board. I had him on the air
and we talked for a little while and he had
a vision about what he wanted to do with black Horse.
He's done it. He's done it. Black Horse Golf Club
dot Com is a website. Go there, make your own
tea time right now. Black Horse goolf Club dot Com.
Seven thirty four on Sports Talk seven to ninety The
Doug Pike Show, I got an email from Rudy. Rudy

(25:16):
was wondering why Shane Lowry got a two stroke penalty
for making his ball move at the Open Championship, and
I was I thought I knew the answer, but I
went ahead and double checked. There are a hundred stories
on it. It's a big deal. When somebody's assessed a
penalty at that level. And what happened. Shane was on

(25:40):
the fair or not in the fairway, in the rough
somewhere and taking a practice stroke caused his ball to move,
and he didn't realize it. He went ahead and finished
the hole. He actually ended up making a par there.
And the officials, which they are inclined to do, wait

(26:00):
until the end of a round so as not to
fluster someone or get them unnecessarily worked up, waited until
then to say, hey, you need to come look at this.
You made your ball move when you took that practice stroke,
and indeed, yep, look there, yeah there, I made my
practice stroke and all that gunsy rough and the ball

(26:22):
moved a little bit. That's one shot. The second stroke
was assessed because he didn't replace the ball to where
it had been when it first moved. Now, I don't
mind the rules of golf. I like the rules of golf.

(26:43):
I think some of them are a little stodgy and outdated,
but there are also If you become a student of
the rules and really know how and when and where
to apply them, a lot of times you can get
great advantage by actually playing exactly by the rules. There's

(27:04):
a quote from Shane here. It says, I didn't know
anything happened until walking up to the fifteenth fair way,
and then the rules official came over and told me
that there was a possibility the ball moved on the
twelfth for my second shot, So I said, I've asked
him how many shot penalty is that? And he said two,

(27:27):
And of course, poor Shane Lowry. Obviously, the quote continues, Obviously,
then I feel like I'm on the cup mark then,
which is not very nice. I feel like I played
well on the way in and then obviously waited to
see and it goes on from there. But the penalty
was legitimate by the rules of golf. And this kind

(27:51):
of goes back to the assertion by any and every
professional player out there when asked candidly, if the average
player actually played by all the rules of golf, everything
that they have to play by when they're in a
tournament like they're in now, what scores would they shoot?
And even if you allow that amateur to play from

(28:17):
whatever tea they want to play from, they're going to
be north of one hundred, north of one hundred most
of the time, putting out everything, making all of these
different little subtle rules that are going to cost you
a stroke or two or three. Yeah, it's just a
hot mess for anybody like most mortals, like me and

(28:41):
ninety nine point nine percent of my audience. Every now
and then I'll get an email or a text from
one of the guys I used to follow and add
chances to meet and get to know a little bit
that they were listening. But yeah, by and large, the
pros play a different game.

Speaker 5 (28:56):
You know.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
That takes me, gosh, it's another golf story, golf topic.
Takes me back to this whole notion of changing the
golf balls so that they don't fly as far. Who
cares how far I can hit it? Who cares how
far my friends can hit it? That amateur golfers should
be left out of all these discussions about changing the

(29:18):
clubs and changing the balls. If you're going to be
in competitive rounds and you're going to play in USGA
events or any well, really, any tournament could declare certain
balls ineligible or declare certain clubs ineligible, and if you
didn't want to change and abide by the rules of

(29:40):
that tournament, then you couldn't play it And that would
be more than fair. I don't know why in the
world they're trying to change the game as much as
they're trying to change it. Let's go get on to
get Tar day. If I got a hunch she's not
going to talk about golf, and I could be wrong.
I've been wrong before about him. What's up, Dave?

Speaker 6 (30:01):
Well, I'm about wore out like an old mule dragon
a lagging. We're still moving and I still got a
lot more stuff to do. But uh, hey, whenever, whenever
you kicked off with the Amarilla by morning by George Strait.
I remember Kelly Shopper. He he had the first hit
on that and he was a real good friend of mine.

(30:22):
He gave me a lot of CBS like to give
for church bazaars and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (30:28):
Yeah, got rest of this soul.

Speaker 6 (30:30):
But anyway, no, uh yeah, uh, you know I was
gonna talk about, oh, brackish water, you know, like yeah,
fresh and salt water, fresh and salt water. Yeah, you
can catch That's where the first time I told you
that I caught that speckled trout that I never even
knew what it was, and the captures. But yeah, it's

(30:51):
it's it's it's it's a.

Speaker 5 (30:53):
Pretty good thing.

Speaker 6 (30:54):
And you know, and then you, like I said, you
never know what you're gonna catch.

Speaker 5 (30:58):
You might catch an alligator guard, you don't know.

Speaker 6 (31:01):
Yeah, and uh now on the fresh water part of it,
uh now over here like it like Conrod, I know
a lot of guys they've been catching uh doing pretty
good on the croppy right now. Good and uh yeah,
so yeah so uh and then then there's we got
some young guys out of here, man with these brand

(31:22):
new little like skiffs, but they got gas pired molder
on them.

Speaker 5 (31:27):
And I asked that. I asked a young man, said
what are you going for? He said, Man, I'm gonna get.

Speaker 6 (31:31):
Some crappie and then I'm gonna go for stripers.

Speaker 5 (31:36):
Yeah, so that that would be a good that's gonna
take good.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Two very different levels of tackle. Stripers and croppy.

Speaker 4 (31:44):
Man.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Holy okay.

Speaker 6 (31:45):
When the strip when the stripers tear off on you,
it's like, uh what what they what?

Speaker 7 (31:51):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (31:53):
They call them a speed perch.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Little white mass many zip around there quick.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Man, I'll tell you what.

Speaker 6 (32:02):
And oh and and then uh uh I know you
probably remember, oh, Mike Schneider, Muff and Mike Schneider.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (32:10):
He he was rants man, you know, like rants.

Speaker 6 (32:14):
Uh pro or whatever, you know, for the depth finders.
Yeah and man, yeah, he and and he always, uh
you know, would coach me on a few things. And
not that I never had one of those. I just
had one of them little you know, like the ones
that's yeah, yeah, the flasher one that's.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
A different kind than you might run into in New
York City, but yeah, it's a flasher.

Speaker 6 (32:42):
I got you man, the over the airline drive over there,
but anyway, yeah, but no, the flasher.

Speaker 5 (32:50):
That's where I found that one spot over there, uh
uh over there by the.

Speaker 6 (32:57):
Over there, I ten that, you know, the sixteen foot
to a thirty five foot drop off, you know, and
that was a good place to catch catfish there and
breaking water. But over here now at Lake Conrad over here,
I've been uh. I've been still baiting my little hole
out over here down the street.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
How's that working out?

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Well?

Speaker 7 (33:19):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (33:21):
I had one buddy of mine over there, he was
he caught three or four or five catfish over there.
I was just sitting there in the chair while he
was catching. But I've been still using the range cubes
and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (33:32):
I didn't even a rodden reil out. I was just Doug.

Speaker 6 (33:35):
I was just out there looking at the water and
just relaxing and trying to rest from moving.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
All right, part of go rest up from all you're moving.

Speaker 8 (33:47):
Man.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
I hope you can take a little break here soon.

Speaker 6 (33:48):
And actually, actually my wife does tune in and listen
whenever I'm down there.

Speaker 4 (33:53):
Well, good giving reports.

Speaker 5 (33:55):
But I'm here at the house right now.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
So all right, David, it's great to hear.

Speaker 4 (34:00):
Hey, buddy.

Speaker 5 (34:00):
All right, man, I appreciate you, yes.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Sir Audio, all right, click away. Tim's gonna hang on
through the break. I appreciate that. Tim. You'll be first
up when I get back. I promise all that damage
Hurricane Beryl did last year, if you lost trees, just
chalk yourself up as being part of a really big
group of people around here who had trees that fell over,

(34:23):
and you just some of them. Some of these people
have no idea why their tree fell over. It looked
pretty healthy, looked pretty good. What happened? I was up
there talking with Irwin of Champions Tree Servant, Champions Tree
Preservation just this past week, yesterday, day before yesterday, I
went up there and we sat down and talked for
a good thirty forty minutes about trees and about how

(34:46):
to take care of them, and I learned so much.
It's amazing how much you can learn from somebody who's
been in the tree business for thirty five forty years.
Thirty years, I think it is at least maybe more
than that. I don't remember exactly how m I was
too focused on the trees. Bottom line is something interesting
that an arborist can explain better than I is that

(35:07):
there is very much such a thing as overwatering your trees.
If you're excessively watering those trees, what happens is the
roots never get a chance to breathe. The roots never
get a chance to get any air around them, and
you end up getting fungus and that starts killing the roots.
And suddenly your tree that you thought looked so good

(35:29):
just tips over in a good blow, and now you
got to deal with that. Champions Tree Preservation will send
an arborist straight to your house, assess all your trees
and let you know exactly what needs to be done
to get them fully healthy, fully strong, and able to
withstand a hurricane that comes through here. I hope not

(35:50):
Champions Tree Preservation. If you have to replace a tree,
they actually own a tree farm too, and can bring
one of those trees out and put it right back
where you had that tree before. Four Champions Tree Preservation.
Give them a call, get the consultation going, and get
them out to your house before the storms come too.
Eight one three two zero eighty two zero one two

(36:12):
eight one three two zero eighty two zero one or
go to the website Championstree dot com Championstree dot com.
All right, welcome back seven forty eight on Sports Talk
seven ninety The Doug Plake Show. Thank you for listening.
I truely do appreciate it. As promised. I'm gonna go
straight back to timsee what's on his mind. Hey Tim,
what's up man?

Speaker 7 (36:32):
Oh, good morning, Doug. Hope you're doing well today?

Speaker 9 (36:35):
Doing all right?

Speaker 1 (36:35):
I just poured my second cup of coffee, so it's
gonna get even better here in a minute.

Speaker 7 (36:39):
Yeah, I'm on my second pot. So just an aside
to that. Last gentleman was calling about the detalentization thing
that's going down at Athabay. He you know, he mentioned
that they were gonna MUDs and the municipalities that get
aqua for water. Out of the aqua are going to

(37:00):
have to go groundwater.

Speaker 1 (37:01):
Now, yeah, I had heard that. I'm gonna have to
look into that.

Speaker 7 (37:06):
It was pasted. I think it was like eight ten
years ago.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
Oh wow.

Speaker 7 (37:09):
But they're finally actually starting to implement because I work
at a mud in out in Cyprus. For the last
six months or so, they've been bringing supply pipes, digging
all these new infrastructure to bring into the City of
Houston to bring the groundwater out to all these MUDs.

(37:33):
As far as I understand, it's I don't think it
affects the individual who's on a well, but it doesn't
affect any municipality that pumps well water. Holy But my
concern about this whole thing is, all of a sudden,
you got I mean, there are thousands of MUDs in

(37:54):
Texas and probably ninety nine percent of them pump ground
out of the aquifers, hump water out of the so Now,
all of a sudden, I mean, look, just in the
Houston area, you're probably adding hundreds of thousands of homes
and businesses who are now going to be taxing the

(38:17):
City of Houston's groundwater soot, which means we're going to
be sucking a lot of water out of Lake Houston.
We're going to do to the freshwater habitat for fish
and water pole. I mean, you hear every year how
Lake Houston is down. Lake Houston's down twelveth the Lake

(38:39):
Easton's down twenty feet. Now all of a sudden, you
have hundreds of thousands of more people pulling water out
of that, out of that lake. How is that going
to affect our lakes and rivers just in just in
the Houston area, let alone statewide, because all of a sudden,
everybody's going to have to start pulling groundwater.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
Yeah, that was my immediate thought is if we're pulling
all surface water, I don't see how these lakes can
fill up enough and how we can trap enough water.
Good thing we got dams built places, because otherwise that
water just running into the Gulf like it did a
thousand years ago.

Speaker 7 (39:22):
Oh yeah, well, damns don't really do ye. I mean
they helped some. But I when I first first came
to Texas, it was when I went to I was
in the service, and I ended up getting stationed in
Del Rio. And I'll tell you, if you've never been there,
I'm astat is a huge dam. Yeah, it's it's massive,

(39:44):
and it's it's backed up a lot of water. But
every summer that that that that dam gets loaded, every
single summer, even with the water has been it. So
I'm just wondering, you know, what kind of kind of
situations that going to put the sport, the sporting for
freshwater fishermen, lakes, rivers, let alone habitat the animals themselves

(40:10):
to be to be taking that much water out of
our surface water.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Well, yeah, well it trickles downstream too. The bays need
fresh water too. There was a big fight over fresh
water in flux for the bays years ago. I mean
there were all kinds of state wide meetings and everybody
up in arms about the bay not getting the water
it needs to flush itself and cycle over it, you know,

(40:36):
turn it over and just maintain the balance that's been
there for ten thousand years. So yeah, it's going to
be very interesting. I hate to do it, Tim, but
I got to bounce over to Brandon before the break,
and I want to give him a lot of time
as will we ran kid, No, no, no, keep it up,
keep it coming.

Speaker 4 (40:51):
Man.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Always welcome, have a good one, Yes, sir, thank you audio. Yeah,
that's good, very good point to bring out all these
great dams that we've built, all these great places to
store water until we need it. We're based on need
at the time those dams were built. The needs a
lot bigger now, and then there aren't a whole lot

(41:11):
of people moving out of Texas. There's a lot more
moving in than out. Hey, Brandon, what's up, buddy? I'm good.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
I got myself the TV hooked up today or yesterday?

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Did you now?

Speaker 10 (41:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
You know what happened with the Astros last night because
I wasn't able to stay up long enough to see
the end of it.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
Uh, Settle jumped ahead.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
I saw that. That's the last thing I saw was
that they were.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Up one to oh, and then we were trying to
tie it. Okay, the All Star Game, kow, we just
hit a home one.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Oh yeah, why am I not surprised at that? So
we lost?

Speaker 4 (41:50):
Huh?

Speaker 2 (41:52):
They got to give them the two or one?

Speaker 1 (41:58):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Anyway, I got myself from I got a TV outside.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Oh, good for you, Good for you. Yeah, that'll be fun.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
I can do you think I can put an iHeartRadio?

Speaker 3 (42:14):
What?

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah, you could do that too. Huh yep, all right, Parter.
Well look Brandon, I'm gonna have to bounce, man, I
gotta get this break taken care of here in just
a second.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
Okay, we'll talk to you.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, let me know how the
game goes, because I'm not able to stay up till
midnight to watch the ends of these games. Man. All right, partner,
I'll see you audios, all right, coming up. Well, I
don't have to leave just yet. Look, I thought it.
I thought I was out of time when we get
back this top of the next hour. I don't know

(42:47):
how I cannot talk about dove season being so close now.
And I had, in fact that one of the guys
in the office here is all giddy about it. He's
wanting to go out to American shooting centers and burn
up about a case of shells just to see if
he can hit one or two targets. And I just
might ride out there with him, meet him out there.
I want to kind of pick a couple of people's brains.

(43:09):
Anybody who's been dub hunting as long as I have,
what do you start with as far as shotshell loads
in the early season and what do you go to
if you're still hunting doves like in the back half
of the season. For me, it's been a pretty easy
transfer from early season to late season. And I'm just

(43:32):
curious what chokes are you using? And it all depends,
I guess, on where you hunt. A lot of this
stuff is so it's so individual, and we tried desperately
to turn it into something that can be just kind
of all bundled into one. One perfect load for opening day,
one perfect load for the second half of the season.

(43:54):
And there are so many variables. It's kind of like golf. Yeah,
the shotgun is you is your club. Let's call that
you're iron. That's semi appropriate. I guess, so the shotguns
you're iron, and then the golf balls change. You can
change your golf balls. That's a horrible analogy. That was

(44:15):
such a stretch for no good reason. Let's just go
ahead and take this break. I know I can get
this right. Frankie Belleville, meet Margat. Been telling you about
them for a lot of years, and one of the
reasons I've done that is because I trust them to
take care of all the game processing year round that
you can ever need. And by the way. There is

(44:36):
wild game to be processed year round. A lot of
these ranches, especially up in the hill country, have exotic
game on them. And if you get into one of
those ranches and you've got the right permit and you
can tag one of those things, bring it back to Bellville,
they'll process it for you. They also, of course, year round,

(44:57):
do a perfect del it's barbecue, lunch and dinner ten
am to seven pm every single day of the week.
They have beef, chicken, and pork cut the way you want,
two dozen plus flavors of premium pecan smoked sausage. They
have bult pricing on ground beef and all that sausage
as well. Every day you can get homemade hot dogs.

(45:19):
You can get hamburger patties, stuff peppers, stuff, mushrooms, stuff,
pork tenders. Bellville Meat Market pretty much your backyard barbecue
and block party headquarters. Got these cool chuckwagon patties too.
That's a half pound of beef loaded with cheddar, cheese
and seasonings to make it just absolutely delicious, mouth watering.

(45:41):
As they say. All the good packing ghost stuff too,
dry sausage, dry stick, turkey, jerky, beef, jerky, everything you
need to make a long road trip a lot more pleasurable.
Speaking of road trips, Belleville Meat Market fifteen minutes north
of Sealy, fifteen minutes south of Hempstead on Highway thirty six.
Because I was on Highway thirty six briefly the other day.

(46:02):
Matter of fact, Belleville MeetMarket dot COM's website. If you
can't get the store, they'll send it to your door.
Belleville MeetMarket dot com.

Speaker 7 (46:12):
All right.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
Second hour of the program starts right now. Feel free
to talk if you want to call and you want
to tell me your greatest fishing story, the big giant
fish that you caught, or the big one that got away.
Hunting stories. I love hearing other people's outdoors stories because
number one, you're outdoors, and I love that to begin
with number two. If you're any kind of a storyteller

(46:35):
at all, I'm sure it'll be fun to listen to.
I've had all kinds of amazing, fun, crazy, weird things
happen to me in the outdoors over the years, and
I truly cherish all those memories. I hope you guys
have some as well. Like I said, feel free to
share them. Seven one three two one two five seven

(46:55):
ninety email me dougpick at iHeartMedia dot com. I think
it's it's actually where's my little cursor? Where did it
go there? It is hiding from me. I'm trying to
get something off the screen and I was having a
little difficulty. That's pilot error. By the way, that wasn't
anything because of the equipment. Although I am getting a

(47:17):
new laptop, I'm just giddy with excitement, absolutely giddy with
excitement over this. The reason being that mine is slow
as molasses because the last time I had a technical issue,
I call and actually got somebody on the phone. It's
not one of those AI generated chat bots talking to me.

(47:40):
The guy told me at the end of the conversation.
By the way, let everybody let somebody know in the
office that you need a new laptop because yours is
already and this was six or eight months ago, said,
because yours is already three months beyond the warranty date
on it. And that explains part of why it's so slow.
That and all the emails I get, which I enjoy.

(48:04):
Don't ever not send me an email because you don't
think I want to have more emails in my inbox.
It's not yours that I don't want. It's all these others,
the clutter that I get, And boy do I get
some clutter. I'm on every mailing list in the country,
it seems like. And you may or may not have
heard me say it before, but there was a period

(48:26):
of about two or three years where I was on
some sort of women's fashion email list. I don't know
where they got my name or why, but I was
getting all these press releases about the latest and the
greatest from the runways of Paris, and on and on
and on ad nauseum.

Speaker 11 (48:43):
Man.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
I just like, please stop it. Just I'm unsubscribing as
fast as I can to these things. And it's almost
like somebody pranked me and put my name on a
mailing list. But I think it's just the media connection
that's really all it is. All right, go ahead and
set him up, Frankie. I'll talk to him. I know

(49:04):
who that is. I saw it pop up. Talk to
faux pro. See what's on his mind. Come on, faux Pro.
There you are, Hey, faux Pro. What's up?

Speaker 8 (49:15):
Man?

Speaker 11 (49:16):
Man, I'm just sitting out here by the pool contemplating
my existence.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Look.

Speaker 11 (49:23):
Look, looking at a tree probably I don't have a
range finder, but I'm guessing this tree is probably fifty
yards from me. Okay, if I had, if I had
a Winchester Defender with nines in it, I could probably
shoot half a limited doves in one shot.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Oh man, only cow, some.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
Big new brothels doves.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Down there, this boy. You know, it's funny you say that,
because there are just some places that inherently have way
more doves than others. But like, like I mentioned earlier,
when I was driving the Eagle Lake Prairie with David
and Jeff from Riceland, we saw maybe probably one, if
you really boil it down, maybe one point five doves

(50:04):
per mile that we drove, and that that is not
enough to hunt. I can assure you. I can. Well,
it was just crazy.

Speaker 8 (50:13):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
It's beautiful country. It looks it looks so dovey, you know,
it just looks so dovey, and yet no doves.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Yeah I can.

Speaker 11 (50:22):
I can sit here on my floaty in this pool
and probably shoot a limit in about an hour round man.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Oh good lord man. Well, here's here's the question for you.
Since you you and I talked, well yesterday, was it
yesterday or day before. It was day before yesterday, yesterday,
Well it was, Yeah, that's right. I called you late
in the afternoon on my way home. So if you uh,
where you are there is water and there are fish,
I'm sure. How how many times have you thought I

(50:49):
should have packed a fishing rod?

Speaker 11 (50:51):
Yeah, yesterday it was one of those days. And a
lot of time, a lot of times I'll do. You know,
I don't have a whole lot of two piece stuff left,
but I can usually fit a And if I'm doing
something like that, I'll pack a spinning rod with a
with just an open hook on it and a bunch
of sinkers, and.

Speaker 4 (51:07):
And I'll see everybody.

Speaker 11 (51:08):
You say, something's gonna buy a wacky work or I'll
take a little shaky hit or something like can you
go to catch small mouth, large mouth perch, anything on
a shaky hit or wacky worms?

Speaker 1 (51:16):
So yeah, you know, that's really that's really good to
think about. Just you don't pack light. If you're going
someplace where you know there's gonna be fish, bring something
that everything will eat. That's a good idea. I'm gonna
have to go to worms. I gotta go to worms
at the golf course. Man as much as I hate
doing that, I've got to just reconnect with those fish.

(51:37):
We've been we've been distanced somehow. And my theory, tell me,
if you think I'm right for us, my theory is
that this little lake that has the best concentration of
fish in it, not the biggest, but the best concentration,
has got a ton of goo on the surface. Now
there's vegetation over probably forty, if not fifty percent of

(52:02):
the surface. And because that water is pretty clear, and
because that's never been that way, my gut tells me
those fish and their sensitive little eyes, like having a
little shade, like having a little roof over their heads,
so they're all packed up under that gunch and throwing

(52:22):
stuff into that open water isn't gonna do me any
good at all. Agree or disagree, Oh, I agree.

Speaker 4 (52:27):
That's where you that's where you do. One or two
things that I would do.

Speaker 11 (52:31):
I would throw a frog across that slop and make
one come out of it. Or I take and I
know you don't, I know you're not a fan of this.
I'd take me a I'm probably a one ounce bullet weight.
Give me about a four off good steel shaped straight
hood smell it. Put your little barber stop above that weight.
Get you like a sweet beaver or something like that,

(52:51):
some kind of creature bait, and just flip it in there.

Speaker 5 (52:53):
Punch into that hole.

Speaker 11 (52:54):
Hop it one two, pull it up, punch another hole
and you can. You can get your feelings hurt doing that.

Speaker 4 (53:01):
Well.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
Here, here's the here's the issue with that theory. Okay,
try to remember this is like a maybe six or
eight acres of water and there's no boat. I can't
drop anything into anything, except especially with an ounce on it.
I can't drop anything in the morning about two or
three feet of water tops.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
So yeah, you probably be restricted to the frog.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
And then yeah, I'll be open stuff.

Speaker 11 (53:25):
Just get you, you know, go to academy or wherever
you shop at and get you a good weedless uh
wacky hook VMC makes a good yeah, and get you,
get you, get you, get you the Berkeley General green
pumpkin sinkos rest you're like, and just throw it out
there or slack light and let it fallow and watch

(53:46):
that line.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
You'll just see.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
Yeah. Yeah, man, I've been trying. I've resisted doing that,
but I'm I'm shifting into desperation mode. I think beginning
about right now, and I know the fissure there. There's
no doubt in my mind that those fish are in there,
and I'm just gonna have to just spoon feed him
just right off the end of the rod out in

(54:08):
those little the little pockets and that and that I
think I can, honestly, I can probably pull frogs through
there late and early and get some good, good blow
ups too.

Speaker 4 (54:17):
I'm sure, oh well, sure for sure.

Speaker 11 (54:20):
And I'm uh on a. You mentioned KVD earlier where
he raced. He's a solid. So there's two anglers in
the rankings that I will never move from where they're
at today. I don't ever move him in the next
fifty years because life scope is gonna have it so
skewed anyway. Yeah, but kV D is number two, okay

(54:40):
for me, and he's a solid number two men.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
KVD.

Speaker 11 (54:43):
He's fishing, He's got three mlf cups, he's got four
bass Master Classics, eight Angler of the Years, one over
seven million dollars fishing good. He's finishing, finishing the top
ten over one hundred times, been to the Bass Master
Classic twenty six times, and he's won twenty overall tournaments.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
Holy Kell yeah, but number one for me.

Speaker 11 (55:05):
And uh yeah, I'm probably sure. You know this guy
he's a native Texas is Rick Klunk?

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Yeah, Rick, I was thinking him. Yep.

Speaker 11 (55:12):
I mean he's got, he's got. He's fished thirty two
bass Master Classics. They qualified forty eight years in a row.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Oh my word. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Speaker 4 (55:22):
But he's won, he's won four classics.

Speaker 11 (55:23):
Him and KVD the only two to win four bass
Master Classics.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
That's just crazy, man. That's that's that's right up on
par with winning four Masters or four Opens or something
like that. That's a it's a rare breed, it really is.
The competition and fishing, fishing is so it's so different
than golf in in the in the way that the
competitions are held and what has to go right for

(55:48):
you to win something like that. And you you hit
the nail on the head though, faux Pro when you
talk about how live scope has changed everything, that just
I feel like it kind of just destroys the whole thing,
it really does.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Yeh.

Speaker 11 (56:02):
You know, I thought about that on the way up
here yesterday. Two things I thought about real quick. We
have time, sure, so you know, back in the day,
say you hired a guide to go to Lake Fort, right,
it was the mystery of prestige. You might you know
they're in there, yeah, but you don't know where. So
if you caught one, it was a big wow.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (56:19):
And where Now you can just oh, there's one right there,
we'll try to catch it. It's like, okay, And I
kind of related that to you know, back in the day.
And I'm sure you've been on some of these hunts
down in deep South Texas looking for these monster.

Speaker 4 (56:30):
Bucks and I saw it. It was a big wow deal.

Speaker 11 (56:34):
But now you could get on the internet at a
high fence ranch and look at the buck you want
to shoot, and go shoot that buck.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
So a lot, where's the mystery? Where'th the wow?

Speaker 1 (56:42):
You know, you know we've we as it. Not you
and me, but we as a generation of out doors
people who have access to all this technology are using
it to remove the wow. It's just now, it's just okay,
I see one hundred and eighty point buck. Here, I
see one hundred and ninety point buck there. I'm gonna

(57:03):
go shoot the one ninety. And you sit in a
box until that thing walks out and you shoot it,
and you feel like you just It's amazing to me too.
Some of the stories that I've heard about guys who
will fall asleep in a deer stand with a guide
because they stayed up too late playing cards or drinking
or both the night before, and the guide has actually

(57:24):
had to nudge them and wake them up, say hey,
there's your deer shoot it. Oh oh yeah, okay, here
we go.

Speaker 4 (57:32):
Let's think a lot of it's gotten to words.

Speaker 11 (57:34):
I think a lot of it has gotten to wheres
people want instagratification. Nobody has time to do anything anymore. Well,
I go down here in South Texas. I could fly
from New York, go to South Texas one day, shoot
a two hundred and fifty boot and crockett.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
I'd be back in New York for dinner. Yeah, yeah,
And honestly that happens. That happens on some of these
ranches too. If they've got an airstrip close by, somebody's
gonna come sliding in sideways in their big old side
or whatever and dump it in there, and all of
a sudden they're out in the stand that afternoon. Bang,

(58:07):
you're done and see you later.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
I don't like that.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
It's gotten sad.

Speaker 11 (58:13):
It's like there's nobody's let me, You and Ted Nugey
just sitting around the campfire and I just talking, just
having a good time, Like hey man, let's let's talk
about what we did.

Speaker 4 (58:21):
It's like, oh no, you know, they want to go
pull the trigger.

Speaker 11 (58:24):
They want to set the hook and they want to
get it over with and get done.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
It's like, man, where's the fund? You know?

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Yeah, that's crazy for us, it really is. Man, all right, Parter, Well,
good talking to you. Yes, sir Man, Yes, sir, you
got it. Thanks fau Pro. All right, all right, we
got to take a little break and on the way out,
I'll tell you about El Coubano's cigars Eld Coubano Cigars.

(58:51):
If you don't know, I'm gonna tell you. I talked
to Maddie Lopez yesterday. As a matter of fact, El
Cobano cigars are hand rolled in Texas City by Man
and a few other people. There's only a handful of
people who work for him rolling cigars, and all of
them are of Cuban descent. They grew up in cigar factories.
They know how to roll a cigar and it's an

(59:12):
art form. Really. Company was founded by Manny and his
dad back in two thousand and six. They use nothing
but the finest Cuban seed tobaccos. By the way, Manny
told me the tariff thing is real, just like Jason
Fortenberry did yesterday on Jason Fortenberry from Optima Outdoor or
Optima Iron Doors told me the same thing. They're absorbing

(59:38):
at this point, the costs of the tariffs. And it's
not hurting Manny that badly, but it's still it's money
he's giving up. It's profit. He's giving up so that
he can maintain a good business model and hold on
to all his customers. The reason I called him yesterday
was I heard somebody on the radio, somebody else selling cigars,

(01:00:00):
and many said, yeah, those guys are all over the country.
They just buy overstock, and sometimes they're buying stuff that's
a little older and not fresh anymore. Maybe had men
kept in the right environment and they just mark the
price up and sell them. And that's not what Manny
at El Cubano Cigars does. All of his cigars once

(01:00:21):
their role, they stay in a climate controlled environment, in
a humidity controlled environment, so that you're gonna get a
smooth consistent cigar, and they make about one hundred and
fifty different kinds too. By the way, if you like
a very mild cigar, he's got probably two three dozen
of those. If you got to want a really heavy one,
he's got those as well. El Cubanos Cigars dot Com

(01:00:45):
a little hot sometimes in the afternoon, so maybe go
buy one of his smoking lounges and just enjoy the
ac and well, one of them's open air, one of them's,
one of them's air conditioned. He's a great man. He
ships hundreds of cigar almost every day all over the country.
There are he's got customers all over this whole country

(01:01:06):
of ours. Because he delivers a quality product. He can
put custom bands on too. If you've got somebody you
need to wow, you got to entertainment going on, you
got a big group coming along, and you got a
lot of cigar smokers. A golf tournament, a giant wedding reception,
whatever that event may be. He'll come to your event
and personally roll cigars for all your guests, or he

(01:01:28):
will make you customized cigars and you can dole them
out however you want. Elcoubanos Cigars dot Com is a website.
Elcoubano Cigars dot com. Eight twenty one on Sports Talk
seven ninety The Doug Pike Show. Thanks for listening, Greg,
you're not old enough to remember who that is or
that he had his own TV show or all that

(01:01:49):
stuff a long time ago. Hey, yeah, that's old Glenn Campbell.
He was a pretty interesting guy. All right, Let's go
straight to the phone and talk to my buddy Rick
byas see what's going on in his world? Rick, what's
going on?

Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
Man?

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
No?

Speaker 12 (01:02:06):
God, I sent you a message this week about what
I heard from the I'm pretty sure it was the
American Cattle Breezers Association, where they were going to pass
a bill where it would be legal to shoot buzzards.
The only requirement was you had to send in and

(01:02:26):
record or record and send in how many you shot
a year and where and all that. Now the reason
they're doing that.

Speaker 7 (01:02:35):
I sent you that text.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
But I have a.

Speaker 12 (01:02:37):
Question in a second. And I know there's guys out
here that cattle and frazier lows better than me. But
I know what cattlemen do when the buzzers are killing
their baby cats?

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
Sure?

Speaker 12 (01:02:47):
Sure, and they without getting the gory details A newborn
cat surrounded about fifteen or twenty buzzard and mama was
trying to fight them off. She's gonna lose most of
the time. And they're going to get that baby cat, right,
And I told you how they can how they got
the baby cap, but I won't repeat it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
Breakfast breakfast hours, okay.

Speaker 12 (01:03:10):
Now, Now, the thing is that I would like someone
to research and know or find out for us, because
I've seen this too, way more than you think this.
This happens. It's buzzards killed newborn wildlife, deer, no doubt anything,
especially deer. There's an easy target because of the fun

(01:03:33):
right and uh, you put twenty buzzers around a mama
doe and they were working her away in a way,
and and then my other ones get over and get her.
Get that one time in the right spot. Now yeah,
now down heil from there. So I hope they're going
to include wildlife, but I would just I think it

(01:03:54):
would be good to know for everybody that if you
see buzzards now over there, you might have a baby
cat if you don't even know that, or or a
baby deer or maybe whatever. And there's no shortage of
buzzers I'm all for buzzers. They have a very unique
purpose in the world.

Speaker 7 (01:04:15):
Yeah, they do.

Speaker 12 (01:04:16):
No, we have we need them there, we need them.
But then again, if they're becoming an economic crisis on
certain other items wildlifeless women referring to I think it's
h there should be some provision because it's always been
kind of a touchy thing about shooting buzzer. That's tearing

(01:04:40):
up your babies. The thing is, everybody, I say, you
shoot them buzzers and somebody find out about and improve that,
you're going to jail. I mean, that's always been the deal.
Now does a game word to turn his head to
it or sure, I don't know. Maybe they can know,
but it sure would be not a good deal to
do it and get charged. You're fighting it in the course,

(01:05:03):
and there's many people would like to put you away
for killing that merd.

Speaker 5 (01:05:07):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Yeah, that's that's a tough one. I think it's it's
kind of like sharks. Sharks are the buzzards of of
the ocean. They clean, they're they're the garbage men. They
take out the trash, they eat it basically, and they're
they're very necessary to the ecosystem. Everything in the ecosystem,
the the animals, the plants, all of that works together.

(01:05:30):
And if we get a little too over excited about
changing that balance, that's where the problems come in. I
would agree with you that, uh, these these ranchers certainly
have a right to protect their crop. It beat very
little difference in what if wolves came in and we're
taking calves there, there's remedy for that. So uh, maybe

(01:05:55):
maybe it is time to have a little a little
thinning of the herd, if you will. Of the buzzards,
I don't want them take an Over.

Speaker 12 (01:06:04):
The years, I've been hired as a as a Tom
Tom Horne to get wild barrel dogs off casts.

Speaker 4 (01:06:13):
Okay, yeah, yeah, okay, And you know what long.

Speaker 12 (01:06:16):
Distance and I always you know, and and you know,
we've even talked about the comorants and what the answer
is for that, you know, And but you know, even
for the buzzards. When I'm cruising these ranches and everything,
you know, I you know, the owners say, man, if
you see them, it's cab and time. And you see
buzzers on there on my any of my babies out there,

(01:06:39):
he said, well you get them off. Well, I always
call the game work because you in case the neighbor
hears a shot, it ain't dear season and it's you know,
it's a high powered rifle. I don't want them out.

Speaker 7 (01:06:52):
I don't need on checking me out.

Speaker 12 (01:06:55):
And but anyway, I have caught them, and I always
like the one and that one game Warden gave me.
I said, I'm out here. I know there's gonna be
some buzzers that are thinking about or they're gonna be
on some calves. And I've been asked to see if
I could dispatch you. And I said, so, what's what's
the answer?

Speaker 7 (01:07:13):
He said to.

Speaker 12 (01:07:14):
Boom, what else you got?

Speaker 4 (01:07:16):
That's this?

Speaker 7 (01:07:17):
That's all I needed to know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
Oh lord, Okay, anyway, it makes sense.

Speaker 12 (01:07:21):
Maybe somebody can check it out. This is what the
law really saying. Because I saw it on the mow,
heard it on the radio.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
Maybe just yeah, I got a guy. I got a
guy and may be called during this break. Actually I'll
see if I I got a game Warden friend, I
can try to call.

Speaker 7 (01:07:35):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
Good, all right, Rick, Thanks, it's great to hear from you.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Man.

Speaker 5 (01:07:39):
Audios you bet audios.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
All right, Before we get to the bottom, I'm gonna
share Mark's email. And this is the kind of stuff
I love to get because I love to share it,
and a lot of us, probably most of us, at
some point in our lives, have had a fairly similar experience.
This is Marx. He and he right, My wife Connie

(01:08:01):
and I went out on Lake Livingston last Wednesday in
our pontoon boat. Threw a cast at about twenty times
and caught one seven inch shad baited him on a
bottom rig with my Garcia sixty five hundred CEA around noon,
recast about three or four times. Right after lunch, around

(01:08:24):
two o'clock, the rod bent and the fight was on
at one point. At one point he jumped into the
front deck and his head was above the deck. Connie
screamed and headed to the back of the boat. It
was fun. He was five and a half feet long.
That's probably one of the places I would imagine that
somebody might see a big old fish like that. And

(01:08:48):
I can imagine a lot of people turning and running
from a five and a half foot long alligator guard
that jumped onto the deck of the pontoon boat. Remember
that that's crazy, man, absolutely crazy.

Speaker 8 (01:09:04):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
We got to take a little break here on the
way out. I'll remind you that Shooter's Corner would be
more than happy for you to drop in down there
at Palmer High Wind twenty nine Street in Texas City.
Owners an old buddy of mine, Jerry TK, probably the
best gunsmith I know and builds awesome custom rifles, Absolutely
beautiful Shooter's Corner, old school gun store. They know their stuff.

(01:09:26):
They take their time to make sure you get exactly
what you want going into Dove season, Tel season, Duck, Goose, deer,
nil guy whatever. They got a gun that'll take out
whatever you need to go take out. They got whether
you're shooting all your life or you're brand new to guns,
They'll help you make sure you get what you need
guns Ammo Optics, reloading supplies, a little bit of camo

(01:09:51):
everything you need. And expert gunsmithing the best. Two of
the best gunsmiths I've ever met, bar none, d Shooters
Corner t X dot com, These Shooters cornertx dot com. Hi,
welcome back, Dug place Shaw on Sports Talk seven ninety.
Thanks for listening so we do appreciate it. I have
on the phone right now and I'm going to punch

(01:10:12):
him up in just a second. The man with whom
I toured me, David Pruett and Jeff out there from
Riceland Waterfowl Club. We took a nice little tour. Well,
I got a nice little tour of the prairie. They
were just rolling over roads. They rolled over a thousand times,
probably taking care of the property that's gonna be duck
hunted this coming season. Uh, David, how's it going out

(01:10:35):
there today this morning?

Speaker 7 (01:10:36):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
Doing great? How about you?

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
I'm all right, man, I really am. I was so
grateful to you. I don't know if you realize how
much fun I had just just riding around and talking
about waterfowl hunting and talking about where the water is
going to be and all of that, because it just
brings back so many many good memories for me from
But I hate to say back in the day, but
you know what I'm talking about. You really do, don't you.

(01:11:00):
I understand fifty years for you back in the day. Huh,
Now this makes my fiftieth year. Yes, sir, when you started,
when you you took a deep breath at some point
when you were you were still teenager when you opened up,
weren't you, Yes, sir, I started out on Lake Conrad
and I quit high school to do what I'm doing.
My dad more or less said, boy, if you think

(01:11:21):
you're good enough, go get them. And I'm the second
longest running person still out here. You went and got them,
didn't you? Man?

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
Oh man is still here?

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Dude? At that point when you first started that first year,
did you ever think it would be a fifty year deal?

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
No, you never have. Uh, you have hopes and dreams.

Speaker 13 (01:11:40):
Never realized how far you can carry your dreams until
you go out there and try to pursue them.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
How many buckets of sweat you think go along with
that dream? There's no counting. Holy you know you could.
You could probably fill a goose roost with sweat that
you poured into that prairie.

Speaker 13 (01:11:58):
Yes, sir, Yeah, every year exactly out there working all
the time.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Let's talk about the prairie. Okay, the big giant prairie
that at one point was pretty much all the way
from Highway six and nine ten all the way out
to where you are. It's shrunk a little bit, but
it still supports a lot of waterfowl, doesn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
Oh yes, sir, it has shrunk over the years.

Speaker 13 (01:12:23):
I've seen it change with commercial buildings coming in land
being sold houses, developments, and it just never seems to
end headed west.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
But this is the one of.

Speaker 13 (01:12:33):
The last areas are mostly in and development out here
is a little slow, and that's a good thing for
the waterfowl and the waterfowl hunters.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
Yeah. And one of the things that you and I
talked about, especially while I was doing more listening than talking,
was the fact that there's more rice out there than
people might realize. And that's really not the reason the
ducks aren't around, or not the ducks, but the geese.
The geese have changed over. Talk about that a little bit,
about how the water the migration pattern has changed. And

(01:13:03):
it's not really a lack of rice.

Speaker 13 (01:13:06):
No, it's not a lack of rice. I've watched it
all these years. And I know there's people going to
disagree with men. That's their opinion. But I might hear
every year every day, this is where I live, this
is what I do, and I talk to other outfitters,
I talk to some biologists, and I know that there
is some rice gone.

Speaker 4 (01:13:23):
I agree, But the.

Speaker 13 (01:13:25):
Overall pictures, there's rice fields out here every year. I
mean hundreds and thousands of acres that I see that's
never touched by a goose, so it's not the rice.
And they also don't just eat rice. You'll see them
in different fields of milo, of corn, of even cotton fields.
You know, once it rains, they get into all these
different fields that's been plowed up. But the migration changed

(01:13:48):
a little bit, and I think a lot of it
had to do with the electronic calling.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
Years ago.

Speaker 13 (01:13:53):
We warned them Larry Gore and Ken Jessic back in
the day Texas Waterfowl Outfitters and it was help Larry
gotaty Prairie Outfitters.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
They all was there at.

Speaker 13 (01:14:03):
The meeting we had from Canada, Mexico and the United
States and you know, the fisheries and everything else would
do with wildlife was there and kN Jessic stood up
and said, hey, you need to listen to this man.
But it was all because they were trying to do
something and did which should have only lasted three years.

(01:14:25):
With electronic calling, it pushed the birds out. There was
too much pressure, too quick on them, and it changed
everything because every guide, every person out there that the
kubash of button become an instant professional guide and it
just overran the geese and you watched it immediately change everything,
so they didn't go where they was pressured as much.

(01:14:45):
And once a mama and daddy goose takes the birds
only so far, they learned that, hey, we don't have
to go as far south. And they did find food
up in you know, rice fields and places up north
in Arkansas.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
A lot of that, I think David came from the
in the early back in when I started guiding, and
when you were you probably had several years under your
belt by them. But the bottom line was, we showed
all these people up north that you can hunt snow
geese over decoys, that it does work, that people will
pay to do it, and they they left us a

(01:15:18):
lot of times saying, man, we're gonna go buy some
banquet cloth, We're gonna go buy some rags and sticks
and all that, and we're gonna do this up the flyway.
And just like you said that, these birds aren't going
to go an inch farther than they have to go
to survive the winter, because that's that's nature, that's conservation
of energy. And we kind of brought some of that
on ourselves, didn't we.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
Oh sure we have, yeah, we have.

Speaker 13 (01:15:41):
Over the over the years, we brought it on ourselves,
and you know, a little bit different from migration patterns,
and things have changed.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
And that's what expected.

Speaker 13 (01:15:51):
Anything that you hunt, I don't care if it's an
elk hunt or deer hunt.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Things do change over time. Let's they you know, raised
in a pen.

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
Well, the migration pattern changed because we changed where we
showed the people in the Midwest that if they stopped
those birds and fed them and gave them a place
to sleep, just like it's like opening a motel on
the highway between here in Dallas. If somebody doesn't have
to go all the way to Dallas to do what

(01:16:19):
they're going to do, they'll stop at that motel and
stick around as long as the food and the water
stay up right exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
Somebody says it was They said, it's because the change
of the rice. That's what I hear steal.

Speaker 13 (01:16:31):
But you look at it back in the day, how
many thousands and thousands of geese they went all the
way to the coast and stayed on the coast of
Marshes before the rice stuff was even here. So it
tells me that it's not just the rice, it's everything
else that's changed it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
Mostly you know that that's a very good point, because
for the longest time I was convinced myself that losing
all the all the rice and losing all these big,
big farms to development were the problem. What what part
do you think development of that prairie place where there
used to be a beautiful field of some crop and

(01:17:06):
now there's a giant warehouse. How much has that impacted
the birds?

Speaker 13 (01:17:11):
I think it's impacted them a whole bunch over time.
But the biggest impact is the amount of rooster areas
where no one's messing with them.

Speaker 7 (01:17:18):
Now.

Speaker 13 (01:17:19):
Yeah, every person that has a let's call it a
water hole, they hunt it and they don't never get
these birds a rest where. We used to have roosts
everywhere and it was all limits. I ever had them,
and there was hundreds of them everywhere. Some of them
was a mile apart at times. But now you can't
find one eleven twelve miles apart. It's unbelievable. That's why

(01:17:40):
we're building one for this year.

Speaker 1 (01:17:42):
Yeah, wherever they are, somebody's gonna hunt around them.

Speaker 4 (01:17:46):
That's tough.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
Factly, that's really tough. How much of a buffer zone
would you say is necessary around an actual roost? God
like take the vineyard for example. Man, there was so
much hunting pressure around there, But the only reason that
worked was because there were so many birds that they
were going to be there. Now, every time those birds

(01:18:08):
get out of bed in the morning, there's somebody got
one hundred full body decoys and a shotgun.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
Oh exactly.

Speaker 13 (01:18:15):
And back then, I mean, if you was half a
mile away, you're okay. We used to hunt a hunted
on the vineyard, got opportunities several years ago, and we
was a quarter mile away more and it didn't seem
to bottom because they was used to it. But we
try to get further than that. I would say half
a mile or more. Give them a chance to get up, yeah,
turn spend where they want to and get out of there.

(01:18:37):
But the farmers don't let you builds anymore like they did.

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
They don't want pump water.

Speaker 13 (01:18:43):
It's the pumping of the water is the main key
to any waterfowl down here, and we've got to get
more water on the ground. I've talked to different waterfowl
people and ask them, what are you doing for helping
down here? And I said you pumping?

Speaker 2 (01:18:59):
Why?

Speaker 13 (01:19:00):
No, Well, that's that already tells me. They don't know
what they're doing. That's my opinion. You've got to pump water.
You've got to have it for them. Yeah, you know
the birds have no place to stay.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
From the tour you gave me and from what you
said you were going to do with your water, you
might want to just buy a few boats, be a
little easier to get around, probably on your places.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
Well, it's just about you've seen that close. Our duct
lines are drop your stuff. Oh yeah, I understand.

Speaker 13 (01:19:27):
We're adding if everything goes as plan right now, counting
our roosteria, we're gonna be adding close to five six
hundred acres of water this year and another five to
seven hundred next year.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
It's not like you got you got roads that occasionally
bump into water. You got water that occasionally bumps into
a road.

Speaker 4 (01:19:46):
And uh, that's what don't you know?

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
That's that's what it's water. They don't call it land
foul hunting. They call it waterfowl hunting for a reason. Man,
And you've you've got it kind of died in. So
what do you what's your crystal ball say about this
coming teal season?

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
David, Well, there's two ways I look at it.

Speaker 13 (01:20:04):
One a lot of times, you know, you get the
late migration when they come here, and that you always
have calendar birds, which we call calendar birds. I mean
they just go because they know it's time, without any weather,
without any push, It's just they're leaving. But I'd like
to check the full moon, because birds do move more
on the full moon towards that. But if it comes later,

(01:20:28):
the people that put all the water in and hold
it just gives us an extra week to hold the water,
which lets it's all the birds.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
Just stack in there.

Speaker 13 (01:20:35):
If you can keep people off of it driving by them,
they're just heart holding there and nothing attracts ducks like
other ducks. So opening weekend of Tilsey's could be a
banner hunt for everybody's out on the prey. I mean,
they could just stack in here and stay, but I've
seen them leave overnight. You catch a cold front and
a lot of those birds are already pushed. Oh yeah,

(01:20:55):
but I'm hoping that it looks like everything's gonna by
having that extra time, because crops are and out of
the fields all the time and early enough, and you're
worried about getting that. Does I give us each farmer
and that time to pump more water before Pilse's actually arrives.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
David Pruitt from Riceland Waterfowl Club on the show. I
got just a minute or so left. David, tell people
why kind of the way you explain to me why
you feel like you've got a really good system in
place that works so that everybody gets a fair chance
at what I'm going to wrap quotes around the best blinds.

Speaker 13 (01:21:29):
Well, first off, we don't run any guide that hunts
on our club. This is members only and we do
hunt every day of the week. But with enough property around,
we can rotate properties and keep everybody hunting. But we
have a fair system as far as people putting in
their blind Pixie give us our top six blind choices
and order preference. I go through the list and then

(01:21:50):
work that jigsaw pole out every day and then text
them back say you got this blind.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
Then over the last six years it's about.

Speaker 13 (01:21:56):
Eighty two in a quarter to eighty three percent of
getting your first and second blind choice as well.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):
So we show two things with that.

Speaker 13 (01:22:04):
There's plenty of blinds to choose from, and not only
when place is killing birds, everybody would be picking the
same spot.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
Yeah, you know, it's funny. You and I have been
doing this long enough, and you especially to realize that
because ducks or ducks, and because geese or geese, there's
no crystal ball, there's no magic solution to exactly where
you want to be. There are going to be some
places that are probably going to produce better than others.

(01:22:32):
But every now and then somebody will go out of
the I know it happened with us as guides. Somebody
go out of there thinking, oh man, I just got
to burned. My guys aren't going to do anything, and
there's a little wind shift, or maybe there's cloud cover
when everybody thought there was going to be sun, and
all of a sudden, you just can't shake them out
with a stick. You know, they're just all over you.

Speaker 13 (01:22:53):
So yeah, it depends on who's calling and how the
decourser sets.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
A lot of it depends on what pressure on another pine.
I'll pick a scab right here. It depends on how
much they're calling, too, doesn't it.

Speaker 13 (01:23:06):
Most people need and even myself, I say, David, put
the call back in your pocket, let the decoys do
the work and we kill birds.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
Oh my gosh, my rule when I was when people
would ask me. How do I know when to call
and when not to call? Said, when the bird's coming
to me, coming at me, I shut up. And when
it's going away if you if you can't see that,
if you get if you can see more of the
south end of the duck than the north end, then
call away. If you're seeing the north end of the duck,

(01:23:35):
let it keep coming.

Speaker 13 (01:23:36):
You know, as long as let's keep coming, let it
get as close as it wants. Don't pull up your guns.
Movement is the biggest keycher. Yeah, it scares off more
birds than anything.

Speaker 1 (01:23:46):
That's a very good point, man, boy, you know what
We're gonna have to do another one on, just just
like decoy setting and when to call, when not to call,
how to how and when to move around. One of
the things I like when when big groups of penttails
are working, I always only called the lead bird, that

(01:24:06):
was my bird, the one in the front, because all
the rest of them are following him. And if you
just you kind of call the lead duck. If the
lead duck's going away but there's still some kind of
circling close, it's okay to give another little pop because
you can turn him. You just get the whole wat
of them in there. And conversely, if if that lead
duck is coming at you, but some of them are
breaking off and leaving, just let that lead duck come

(01:24:28):
on and bring all the ones he's got with him.
It was just exactly it only takes about thirty years
to learn that. Yeah here, God, all right, David, Well
we're gonna talk again. The closer we get to duck season,
the more I'm gonna be talking to you, man, So
just be ready.

Speaker 13 (01:24:44):
Sure, And I thought, anybody that wants to then come out,
I'm gonna show property today to some people that wants
to join the club.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
That's all we're about.

Speaker 13 (01:24:51):
I want them to look and see and be comfortable
with their own decision of what we're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:24:55):
How far blinds are a part two.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
Anybody comes out there and gets half the tour I got,
they're gonna I kind of understand who you are, what
you're doing for waterfowl hunting out there. And I asked
my listeners when I'm talking about you that if you
had a kind of a so so duck season last year,
raise your hand. And I just envisioned all these hands
going up because I got the phone calls. I got
the emails. It wasn't that good for a lot of

(01:25:18):
people last year. But your guys did, okay, didn't they?

Speaker 2 (01:25:21):
Well, we had groups. That was in the four hundreds,
five hundreds.

Speaker 13 (01:25:23):
We've had groups, say David, we had sixteen limits shoots
for all of us, and we're still killing birds. I
know that there is off days and bad hunts. That's
just no matter what you're doing. But my guys seem
to stay on birds.

Speaker 1 (01:25:35):
Four or five hundred ducks. If those guys have jobs,
I guess they all right, dude, I see.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
You man, all right, thanks for that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):
Yeah, well, thank you and Jeff for the tour or two.
I really, I genuinely learned a lot from you guys,
I really did. I appreciate that. Well, you're more than
welcome anytime. I've careful what you wish for. Man, all right,
thanks to Audia hut To see you. What a great guy.
He's so genuine too, he really is, and very kind

(01:26:06):
of humble about what he knows about waterfowl hunting. But
he does know. If you ever had a question to ask,
give him a call and ask him. All right, on
the way out here, I'm a little bit late. I
apologize Frankie. Timber Creek Golf Club up there on FM
twenty three fifty one and friends with twenty seven holes
meandering through the woods. There's actually some wood ducks up there.
I've seen him a couple of times. Great food in

(01:26:28):
the grill, great teaching staff right next to the driving
range over there with JYJ. Woods and his staff at
the Timber Creek Golf Club Academy. Whether you're just by
yourself thinking I'd like to go play golf today, or
you've got a whole big bunch of people you want
to raise a lot of money for charity, give him
a call over at timber Creek. They'll hook you up.

(01:26:48):
I'll get you taken care of, get all your players
out there, or just you, Like I said, go make
three new friends. That's what I do every now and
then when when I don't get the email that there's
no tea times for our little group of mostly retired
guys and me, I just run up to somewhere else,
jump in the truck, go to somewhere else, have a

(01:27:11):
good time, and make three new friends.

Speaker 2 (01:27:13):
Do that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:13):
It's fund be surprised the people you meet on golf
courses ninety nine point nine percent of them are pretty
good people. Timbercreek Golf Club dot com. They are all
good people down there, timber Creek Golf Club dot com.
All right, welcome back Dogpike Show on Sports Talk seven
to ninety. Thank you all for listening. I certainly do
appreciate it. By the way, something David and I were

(01:27:34):
talking about out there on the prairie when we were
riding around, we got to talking about him. I want
him to call me. The first time they see and
any of you as well, the first time you see
migratory waterfowl hit that prairie of ours on east side,
west side, whatever, see some new birds show up, I'd
like to know about it, and we'll talk about it

(01:27:55):
that weekend, for sure. While we were driving around on
the prairie, David and Jeff and I, we did there
was a pair of model ducks that jumped up out
of there. They never left home, they permanent residence down there.
But that was kind of fun to see a real
duck other than one of those squealers. The tree ducks

(01:28:17):
that are now so common. They were plentiful years ago
and just dumbest stumps. They were protected birds so you
couldn't shoot them. But they were all over that prairie
and nested out there as well, and sadly a lot
of those birds didn't make it. You'd see them on
the side of the road or worse, in the middle

(01:28:40):
of the road, and all of a sudden, when they
became fair game. They got smart pretty quickly. You couldn't
keep them out of decoy spreads for several years as
they really built up their population and realized nobody was
gonna bother them. But once they once the regulations changed

(01:29:06):
where you could shoot those things, boy, they smarted up
in a hurry, kind of like snow geese. Snow geese
are some of the smartest birds on the planet, and
the average this is I'm gonna give you information that
dates back quite a waste, but I doubt it's changed much.
The average snow goose in that up and down mid

(01:29:27):
continent population of basically snows and the speckle bellies, the Canada's,
the rosses, geese, all of them that travel back and forth.
The snow geese particularly pretty smart birds. The average snow
goose in those flights is more than seven years old.

(01:29:49):
It's on its at least seventh trip down, and by
the time it survives five or six trips, it's pretty
much got the game figured out. You just don't shoot
that many old birds, especially now since there are so
many fewer geese anyway. Most of the geese, most of

(01:30:12):
the snow geese you'll shoot anyway, are going to be
first and last year birds, like first year out of
the nest. Last time they're coming here, they're done because
they made a mistake that the older birds don't make.
I watched so many times on that prairie, and I've

(01:30:34):
talked about this before, so forgive me if you've already
heard me say it, but I watched so many times
on that prairie. There would be a pretty good flight
of birds coming out of a roost somewhere, and most
of them were just kind of overflying the spread and
headed somewhere different to go feed wherever, probably wherever they'd

(01:30:57):
fed the day before. If I was in between them,
and almost invariably there'd be one or two young geese
kind of drop out and start coming down and looking
at it at the spread, and waterfowl hunters, being what
they are, almost everybody in the group would be kind
of taking little peaks upward, no matter how many times

(01:31:18):
I asked them not to do. That's okay, it's hey,
it's exciting, it's fun. And they oh, look, look there's
a couple of young ones dropped out. It's gonna be okay, man,
maybe they'll work us. And I just say, yeah, let's
see what happens. And they would get maybe fifteen twenty yards,
they'd drop that much altitude, and out of nowhere there'd
be two or three older geese, two or three mature

(01:31:41):
geese who would start descending at a little faster rate
of speed than those young ones were, and and somebody
in the group would go, wow, man, a couple of
more just dropped out, and I would just say, watch
what happens now, And whether I called, I didn't call.
Whether everybody was hiding their faces or not. Those older

(01:32:04):
geese would drop down and get about eight or ten
feet below the young ones and then just lift them
right back up endo the parade. You can't. They just
they would not let the juvenile birds wander off. Basically,
they were like mothers trying to get their kids across
the street without getting hit by a car. Very protective.

(01:32:25):
And I saw it happen enough times that I know,
dog On well, it was real. It was absolutely real.
They drop out and jump down underneath those young birds
and just do all but spank them to get them
back up there in line where they belonged for safety.
Were remarkable, just a remarkable piece of nature. The parents

(01:32:52):
of birds taking care of the younger ones. Happens with
every species on the planet, most species on the planet,
not all of them. Oh yeah, we get fast and furious.
All here we are at the top of the hour already.
Berry Hill. Don't forget about Berry Hill. This is my
little place, my little hideaway out there on fifty nine
at Sugar Creek Boulevard, on the inbound side, the northbound

(01:33:14):
side of fifty nine at Sugar Creek berry Hill Baja Grill.
My wife's favorite is Baja chicken tacos there. Mine is
the seafood enchilada. You've heard me talk about that a
million times. I really haven't found anything I didn't like
at Berry Hill, so that makes it a little more confusing.
I'm starting to I'm starting to branch out on the menu.

(01:33:37):
The fish tacos are to die for. They're as good
as any I've ever eaten anywhere, even in Mexico. That's
part of that's because the two people in the kitchen
have been there, The two main people, the primary people
whipping up all this delicious food, have been in there
more than a decade apiece. They kind of know their
way around quality tex mex food, and that's what they

(01:33:57):
serve at Berry Hill. Very unpretentious. It's very family friendly atmosphere.
Kids want to make a little noise, that's okay. You
got a family area to the left as you walk in,
a sports bar to the right, and then there's outdoor
dining as well on nights when it's not too hot
and humid. They do tremendous amounts of catering around town too,

(01:34:17):
because people know the name that the brand has been
around for a very long time, and this is the
last store that's maintaining that brand. It's family run, family
operated by the family of the man who founded Burry
Hill many many years ago. Berryhillsugarland dot com. Go in there,
try it out. I promise you'll like it. Berryhillsugar Land

(01:34:40):
dot com. Wow, already nine o'clock. That hour went very quickly,
it really did. Thank you all for contributing it. Makes it.
That just makes it fun for me, It really does.
I like hearing your stories. I like hearing what you
guys want to talk about. What we got to talk
about now is the Open Champmpionship leaderboard on going on going.

(01:35:04):
Excuse me at Royal Port Rush over there in Gosh,
this thing keeps flashing back and forth. It's distracting me
on the other side of the world, basically on the
Open Championship leader as I mentioned earlier in the program,
is this sky. I'm sure you've heard of me. His

(01:35:24):
name is Scotty Scheffler. He's been leading golf tournaments in
the for the past several years with increasing regularity, and
looks pretty strong for this one. He's only one shot
clear of Matt Fitzpatrick, only two shots clear of Brian
Harmon and Haitong Lee, but everybody else is chasing kind

(01:35:48):
of from a distance. Roy McElroy, by the way, joined
the group at five under par a little while ago.
Let me see if he shows up on here. Yeah,
he's he's already birdied a hole. This is an I'm
got to refresh this scoreboard because the leaders are fast
coming up to the first t He's not gonna take
long till everybody's on a golf course, and that's gonna

(01:36:09):
be an exciting time for me because I get to
watch it. I'm gonna probably stay in here, Frankie, by
the way, unless somebody's coming in here to do something else.
I'm gonna stay in here to do the rest of
my work because for starters, it's about ninety degrees over
where I sit on the average weekday, and I don't
want to be in that heat, all right, So Scotty

(01:36:30):
Scheffer number one, Fitzpatrick, Harmon, Lee numbered well two and three, three,
and then the five unders currently Rasmus Hoyguard, Terrell Hatton,
Robert McIntyre, Harris English. Chris got her up and like, well,
this thing's not refreshing like it should unless something happened

(01:36:51):
to McElroy on a later hole. Now he was showing
at five hundred part just a minute ago, and I
don't know why he wouldn't be Now he's still stuck.
It looks like he may may have had an issue
at some point. I don't know. Ludvig Gaberg or you
o Berg, excuse me. I always mess his name up
at four Oliver Lindall at four, Russell Henry at four,

(01:37:13):
Wyndham Clark at four, Corey Connors at for Tony Feenow
at four. Kind of I think feenw might make a
little bit of a move today. He's played steadily so far.
He hadn't on the golf course shed according to this scoreboard.
I'm not sure who's to believe right now, but I
think this one's accurate. He'll be going out shortly and

(01:37:35):
we'll see if he can go chase down somebody other
than Scottie Scheffler. Scheffler gets out and Verdi's two of
the first five or six holes to get to twelve.
I think he has a separate gear that he kind
of shifts into when he gets a little comfortable. He
doesn't he doesn't take chances, he doesn't drop his guard,

(01:37:59):
but he there. You can just see the way he
walks when he thinks, okay, I can do this. I
can I can do better than anybody else is gonna
do in the next thirty six holes. And more often
than not he's been right seven one, three, two, one,
two five seven ninety. Email me Doug Pike at iHeartMedia

(01:38:20):
dot com. I'm looking at McIntyre English yeah, there's McElroy
five under par on television, so maybe I don't know.
Maybe this one website I'm looking at for it's a
PGA tour website where I went to get this leaderboard
and it's now finally it shows him. Yay, you caught up.
That's great, five under par for Roy McElroy. And I

(01:38:43):
don't think anything else has has changed, uh not. Of Yeah,
there's a lot of guys who are almost finished or
are finished with their rounds by the way, already four
hours behind four or five hours behind us or ahead
of us.

Speaker 4 (01:38:59):
Who is that?

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):
Just eagled? Xander Schaffey just eagled take himself from two
to four under par. That's a handy little move. Good
for him. He bumps up to seventh place with that
one stroke about a twenty five thirty footer. All right,
So back to what I said I was going to
talk about, which would be dub hunting, which is upcoming

(01:39:21):
in the early part of the season. A lot of
people ask me my opinion on what to shoot and
what loads and whatnot. I think just a an ounce,
maybe seven eighths of an ounce of either seven and
a half or even eights early in the season are
enough for this time of year. The birds aren't fat,

(01:39:45):
they're not tough, they've been lazing along. I don't personally
like to shoot eights, but I know a lot of
guys who do. And if you, just if you tighten
your choke just a tiny bit, the eights three eighths
hitting a bird is probably gonna have equal impact as

(01:40:06):
two seven and a half's, if that makes sense in
the way in my line of thinking here, I'm not
a real fan of super tight chokes for dove hunting,
unless you're hunting a specific place where most of the
birds are just going to be overflying where you are
to get to a feeding field somewhere in the distance.

(01:40:28):
There was a place, specifically in Katie, where the doves
were flying at or slightly over those big, big power
line transmission power transmission lines, the real tall ones that
look kind of like the Eiffel Tower, the Eiffel Tower
with wings, if you will, And those birds were up

(01:40:49):
there a good forty to fifty sometimes sixty yards, but
with a full choke. My friends and I did very
well on those birds. Most doves are shot just casual
pass shooting over pasture, and that tends to have them
down closer to about twenty five or thirty yards on

(01:41:12):
an average shot. Unless you're just a free wheeler and
pull the trigger every time you see the right bird,
you can pick your shot. That's something else that really
makes sense. If you're going to be a dove hunter,
take good shots. If you are missing birds at thirty
yards regularly, then either tighten your choke up maybe a

(01:41:35):
little bit, or I don't know, get a lesson. I
talk about taking lessons not as much as I probably should,
as a means of getting better at shooting, because you
can go out and shoot at all the clay targets
you want on the range. But if you don't have
somebody standing behind you and telling you what you did
wrong and why you missed that bird, there's a pretty

(01:41:59):
good chance you're not gonna do anything but just get
really good. This is this is one of these parallels
with golf. If you're missing a lot of birds, or
if you're missing a lot of greens, then practice whatever
you've been practicing isn't working. So invest a little bit
of money in one, maybe two lessons with somebody. Two

(01:42:24):
good one hour lessons with a professional instructor are invaluable.
Those two those two lessons are gonna save you at
least that much money in shotshells expended trying to get
a limited doves or ducks or quail or geese or whatever.
It's not that hard once you understand the understand how

(01:42:47):
shooting works, how wing shooting works, and you can get
your buddies to tell you all they want to tell you.
But what you're probably gonna get is the same advice
you would get from somebody who's a twenty handicap at golf.
The best they can do is make you a twenty handicap.
If you've got a friend who shoots, who hits ten

(01:43:11):
targets out of twenty five, and you're hitting only five,
and you start taking advice from that guy, he's going
to teach you how to hit ten targets out of
twenty five, and maybe not even that, because that person
is unlikely to have the teaching experience to give you

(01:43:31):
the information that you need in a manner that you
can understand it. I know some really really good shooting instructors,
and they all are just like the best golf instructors
I know, and that they can ask you a little
bit about your hobbies, a little bit about your habits
in the outdoors, a little bit about your life and

(01:43:52):
your job and all of that, and they'll pull on
something from one of those arenas to help you understand
what they're trying to tell you about wing shooting. It's
gonna make it so simple, so simple. I remember when
gil ashe told me he was gonna change the way
I shoot. That was after i'd been I'd been a
waterfowl guy for ten or twelve years. I'd been in fact, yeah,

(01:44:16):
I was probably closer to the end of that at
least fourteen years.

Speaker 7 (01:44:19):
Then.

Speaker 1 (01:44:20):
I'd been shooting doves and quail and everything that flew
that had a season. I was chasing it all over
the state, all over the country, all the way up
to Canada, shooting geese and was a pretty darn good shot.
I had won some awards in competitive shooting, and back
in the day. I'm not that good a shot anymore

(01:44:40):
because I don't practice enough. But the bottom line was,
he said, I'm gonna just turn your world upside down.
Uh yeah, sure, Gil, I'll be out there in a
little while. I went out there, and he said, okay,
just try your best to forget everything you know about
shooting right now, and just listen, just listen to me
tell it to you. You a totally different way, and

(01:45:02):
long story short, because I'm kind of up against a break,
I adopted that practice. I adopted that way to shoot
wing shooting and low and behold. It slowed everything down.
It made it so much easier to acquire the target,

(01:45:24):
to put the gun where it belonged, and squeeze the
trigger with confidence that I hadn't had in a long
long time. A lot of people are using that method now,
and it's working out. It's working out for most of
the students who go through it. I would venture to
guess that probably a high percentage of the people who

(01:45:44):
shoot competitively at a high level do the same thing,
whether they realize it or not. It's all it's God.
I just love birdho I love shooting moving targets. I
love all of that stuff. All right, it is time,
actually time right now to take this break at the
top of the hour. Well, no, I'm already past that.
Never mind. Where I am now is Champions Tree Preservation.

(01:46:08):
Champions Tree Preservation. As I mentioned earlier, I had that
visit with everyone out there at the at the big
headquarters of this place and where it is, you wouldn't
know at all what's behind it. It just you have
to you have to kind of know where you're going
to get there. But you don't really need to go there,
because they'll come to you. They'll come to your house.

(01:46:28):
They'll send an arborist there to assess your trees and
make sure that they're ready for anything nature throws at
us between now and about the middle of November. And
if they throw, if we get thrown something pretty tough.
Those trees of yours need to be on solid footing,
and that means a healthy, strong root system, and that's
what they're going to be able to tell from what's

(01:46:50):
above the ground, they can tell what's below the ground.
All these trees of ours have been subject through some
very wet periods to excessive water. That's something I really
didn't understand until everyone explained it to me out there
on a couple of days ago, sitting there just listening
and absorbing them. Not unlike the roots of the tree.

(01:47:12):
To too much water, they get to where they can't
absorb anymore water, and it gets to where there's no
air circulation around that root system and fungus develops, and
all of a sudden, you've got damaged sick roots that
don't really manifest themselves above the ground in areas where
you could probably see them, and that's a problem. If

(01:47:33):
a big blow hits a tree with weak roots because
of overwatering or because of underwatering, then that's a problem.
They'll help you understand exactly what to do to make
your tree healthy, and they'll put you on a good
watering schedule so that you don't overdo it or underdo
it ever again. And your trees are gonna look better
than they've ever looked. If you do have to take

(01:47:53):
one out, it's so far gone you can't save it.
They own a tree farm as well, and we'll bring
one of those trees to replace the one you had
to take out. Champions Tree Preservation great people, are really
good staff. They own all their own equipment. They're not
going to have to put you in line and wait
for somebody to bring something out there to get out

(01:48:15):
your big old tree. They'll take care of it all themselves.
Championstree dot Com is the website. Make that call, get
online with them, get on board with them, and get
somebody out to your house, championstree dot com. You can't
have enough trumpets, right, Reggie, What is the name of

(01:48:36):
this song? I can't remember. Oh yeah, yeah, gosh, it
just didn't get to the hook. Huh. All right, welcome back,
thanks for listening. Certainly do appreciate it. Looking at this,
I went back to my wind sir I windsurf dot
com site just to kind of see what was going
on where and all the way down to Harlingen. Granted,

(01:49:00):
the wind typically blows more farther down the coast, and
it is it's thirteen fourteen, but there's not that twenty
that I usually see. And when I get back high enough,
get back into say Port O'Connor, Port Levaka and up

(01:49:21):
and even Corpus well from Corpus north there are ten eleven, ten,
another eleven nothing bad. And even Corpus fourteen to south
of Corpus heading down the north Padre Island Seashore, thirteen fourteen.
That's not unfishable down there, not at all. That's just
a that's just a nice day. Now the downside up

(01:49:45):
here and it's we've got well that yeah, the wind shift.
The wind has shifted to more southerly than southeasterly since
I came on the air, so it's it's kind of
a sideshore wind ten eleven three. Where is that rollover
pass which doesn't exist anymore? It should say where rollover

(01:50:07):
pass used to be, but it's three miles an hour there.
That thing's got to be behind a wall or something.
Bottom line though, is that the water is not super rough,
but it's got that sideshore stuff on it, and the
tide's falling out, so this isn't gonna be a surf
fishing day. And I don't think it would have been

(01:50:28):
a good bite this morning. On a pretty steady falling tide.
Most of those fish would have probably pulled out and
leveled off a little bit somewhere farther out than most
people could wade and still cast seven one three two
one two five seven ninety Email Medugpike at iHeartMedia dot com.
I had an email asking twelve or twenty gauge for doves,

(01:50:52):
and that's just a personal preference. If you like shooting
your favorite gun and it's a twelve gauge, then take
it out there. If you've got a twenty you like better.
During dub season, take it out there. I'm not a
big fan of twenties for waterfowl, even pulling back to
teal season. I've hunted with twenty gauges during teal season

(01:51:15):
a lot, but I still just for a bird that size.
I like the little bit of extra oomph that that
twelve gauge can give me. A couple of more pellets
in the strike zone are gonna help me find birds
a little faster, help me get them down more cleanly.
The last thing I want to see is some winged up,

(01:51:36):
boogered up teal disappearing over the horizon when it's for
sure not gonna make it to the next day. Let's
go talk to Dennis. We'll sub Dennis.

Speaker 2 (01:51:46):
Hey, good morning, don't how you doing it?

Speaker 4 (01:51:48):
I'm good, good, good.

Speaker 12 (01:51:50):
Hey.

Speaker 9 (01:51:51):
I found your conversation or comments the interesting about the
shot shell selection for birds, and I wanted to ask
you because it seems like as I've gotten older and
more cognizant of seeing people cripple birds. Yeah, is there
any any data that supports the fact if you use
a larger pellet size it correlates to less cripples or

(01:52:13):
fewer cripples.

Speaker 4 (01:52:14):
Have you seen anything like that?

Speaker 1 (01:52:16):
I haven't looked for or seen anything in the last
few years, but the laws of physics say that a
bigger pellet is going to have more shock, more impact,
more energy transfer than a smaller pellet. It's a the
we're not talking about bullets that are flattening out and expanding.

(01:52:38):
Uh lead or well, lead pellets don't expand that much.
They flatten a little bit on impact. Steel pellets aren't
really flattening at all, or any any of the non
toxic loads. They're pretty pretty hard. But yeah, a bigger pellet,
just take it to the extreme. There was a Louisiana

(01:52:59):
attorney once told me, if you want to judge the
validity of any point being made, take it to an extreme.
So let's do that. What do you think would have
a better chance of knocking down a teal? Uh, something
the size of a bb or something the size of
a marble.

Speaker 2 (01:53:18):
Definitely the marble.

Speaker 1 (01:53:19):
Yeah, so that's I mean, that's a bigger pellet. Now
here's the issue though, With bigger pellets, you get fewer
of them, and that's where that's where the kind of
the guessing game starts. I would I would say that,
let's say you're shooting seven and a half's at doves, okay,
and you hit that bird with a good even pat

(01:53:43):
You're buying not the cheapest shells you can find. You
buy high quality shells that have a nice animony content,
and they pattern pretty evenly. So and your modified choke
at thirty yards puts like for the dove sized target
puts five six pellets in it. Okay, that's that's a
lot of knockdown power on a dove. If you go

(01:54:04):
up to sixes, maybe you only get two pellets in
that same amount of area, and that may not be
enough to knock that thing down cleanly. I'm I'm with
you one hundred percent. I don't like seeing birds wobble
off and God I saw a lot of that as
a waterfowl guy, where people would just barely get a
pellet or two in a bird and then oh, man,

(01:54:25):
that that bird's gotten away. Well not half the time.
If I saw it go down, I'd send my dog
and he would usually go out there two three four
hundred yards sometimes to go pick up a bird, and
he'd just come back tired. It's like, please, please, Dad,
teach him how to shoot.

Speaker 9 (01:54:41):
You know, yeah, well, you know, you pick up an
interesting point because when I used the turkey hunt, I
would pattern in my shot, yeah, the cop shots. But
have you ever patterned.

Speaker 7 (01:54:51):
Your your your.

Speaker 9 (01:54:54):
Gun that you use for dove or ducks just with
seven and a half's or six?

Speaker 4 (01:54:58):
Oh yeah, kind of see what.

Speaker 1 (01:54:59):
The absolutely and that I would recommend that to anybody
who shoots shot guns. I don't know if American Shooting
Centers has any place where you can actually do that.
It would have to be done sort of, and I
may call out there and ask ed if that's doable
out there. You could probably do it on the rifle
range at say twenty five yards and just instead of

(01:55:22):
walking out there with a bullseye target, just walk out
there with a big thirty inch circle and just see
how many pellets land in that thirty inch circle with
each of your chokes, and you'll get a good ideas.
That's something that I encourage anybody who's going to bird
hunt to do, is see how your gun and your
chokes pattern with different loads. And it's an eye opener,

(01:55:46):
I guarantee you it really is. You think you know,
as a turkey hunter, you want as many pellets as
you can right there in that head area. And yeah,
you'll see different tendencies out of different loads.

Speaker 2 (01:56:00):
That's a good idea.

Speaker 7 (01:56:01):
I think I may try that.

Speaker 9 (01:56:02):
I've never done that before, but it never occurred to
me so our conversation here, so I may give it
a whirl.

Speaker 1 (01:56:08):
You bet, thank you. That's a great I'm glad you
brought that up.

Speaker 4 (01:56:10):
Man, all right, thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:56:12):
Yes, sir audios. Yeah, that's a really good thing to
do if you've got a place where you can go shoot. Now,
some of the ranges won't allow it, probably, but I
bet you on the rifle range at I don't know.
I'll have to call that a riggie. I might try
and text him, text him during this break and ask
him if there's any place to do that, because it
wouldn't if the range is either hot or it's not.

(01:56:35):
And down range what you're shooting doesn't really matter so
much is that it's either hot or it's not. I'll
bet you there's some place out there where you could
go out there and put a thirty inch piece of
butcher paper and just see what your gun does with
each of the different chokes in it, so you'll understand

(01:56:57):
better how that works. And it is, like I said,
it's an eye opener. All right, I got to take
a break here. I don't want to get late on anything.
Let me tell you about Optima Iron Doors. Optima Iron
Doors is right down the street for me, actually their
showroom is. But what I would recommend first is to
start with a visit to the website optimiron doors dot

(01:57:19):
com if you're interested in one of those beautiful forged
iron doors or maybe one of those narrow profile steel doors.
Every one of them from Optima Iron Doors is made
right here in North America, down in Mexico. They are
subject to a little bit of a terrif issue, but
right now. I talked to Jason Fortenberry just yesterday about this.

(01:57:39):
He is not raising his prices. He is sticking to
his summer sale, which goes on through the end of
the month, and giving you an opportunity to buy at
a discount from prices that were in effect before even
anybody even talked about tariffs. Those doors are absolutely beautiful,

(01:58:00):
as is everything optim My iron doors, by the way,
sold exclusively through Primo Doors, which is in that they
share the showroom, and I've seen both. They're absolutely beautiful doors.
I bought one from him year and a half, almost
two years ago. Now every one of those doors is
custom fitted to the space where your front door is.

Speaker 8 (01:58:18):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:58:19):
If you want a bigger door, great, they'll do that.
If you want a smaller door, great, they'll do that.
But they're not going to just sell you some cookie
cutter door. That has to be They have to tear
up your house to make it fit optim My iron
door has been around a long time, but very beautiful doors.
If you go in there, somebody in there will help

(01:58:39):
you figure out from all the choices there are, and
there are dozens, if not hundreds, from all of those,
which door is going to make your house, your beautiful
house that you want to make even better, reflect your personality,
reflect your values. That a front door can do that
for you. It really, I've seen it some of the

(01:59:02):
some of the examples Jason's has shown me over the years.
Look at this guy is he does this for a living,
and his family does this, and you look at that
door and say, I probably could have guessed that these
are people who care about their homes. You should too,
and they can get you an excellent, beautiful door installed
by some of the best installers I've ever had work
on my house. During this summer sale when you can

(01:59:25):
get the best price you're probably gonna get for a
long time, steal, less maintenance than would steal, more secure
than most doors. Optimi iron doors dot com, optimairndors dot com.
They open at ten today. You can go by right
after the show. Optimiron doors dot Com. Hi, welcome back,
Thanks for listening. Certainly do appreciate it greatly.

Speaker 13 (01:59:48):
Do.

Speaker 1 (01:59:48):
By the way, quick note before I go to Mike
Alan Wade in America Shooting Centers, I had this in
my head, but I wasn't one hundred percent sure. That's
why I was gonna call Ed. I don't need to
call Ed anymore because let me know, because he's out
there a lot. In between the little bitty shorty pistol
range and the fifty yard rifle to start, there's a

(02:00:09):
twenty five yard area for patterning shotguns, and I strongly
recommend that take advantage of the opportunity before the season
to understand how shotgun patterns work. Bring all your choke tubes,
bring your different barrels. If that's how you still go

(02:00:29):
and get out there and pop a few round. Just
put a dot in the middle of the paper and
maybe draw it a twenty eight or thirty inch circle.
That should be kind of what you're looking to see
what's going to be in there. And I wish there
was like a twenty five and maybe a forty so

(02:00:50):
that you could see how many fewer pellets actually hit
on the other end of that thing. I have to
out toward extreme range with different chokes. But if you have,
and if you can find a place where you can
actually just go shoot without getting any trouble, just take
one out at twenty thirty and forty and shoot the
same choke at each at each piece of blank paper

(02:01:13):
with a circle on it, and you'll see, you'll see,
and just I'll tell you something else. It's interesting. Take
something about the size of a tennis ball, which is
basically the kill zone on a dove, and then just
hold that tennis ball or a piece of paper cut
to that size and just hold it in and you'll
see holes in a pattern with cheap shot shells, holes

(02:01:39):
where a dove could fly through. There you've made a
perfect shot. And there's a big old hole about the
size of a grapefruit in that pattern where there are
no pellets. All right, I don't want to get too
far into the weeds. Let's get Mike up here. Well, Sep, Mike,
I'm very good, thank you.

Speaker 10 (02:01:55):
Let me give you a little advice about if you're
starting out, when you go to the store to pick
up your shells, get the same load, the same velocity,
so that you become accustomed to that particular type of
load and velocity.

Speaker 1 (02:02:12):
You know, that's a pretty good idea.

Speaker 10 (02:02:15):
Second is, when you're starting out, semi autos on opening
day are great. After opening day, you're only going to
get two shots at birds, so you might as well
go down over and under, side by side. Stop wasting
shells and wounding birds.

Speaker 1 (02:02:32):
Oh Hit't at the truth that third yeah, that third shell,
that's probably about a chance.

Speaker 4 (02:02:41):
Of a hit.

Speaker 10 (02:02:42):
Exactly, is that you're just wasting money making noise exactly exactly.
The other end of the spectrum is is that if
you want to enjoy the sport of wing shooting, learn
how to cook these birds.

Speaker 12 (02:02:58):
Right, yeah, yeah, you know, if it.

Speaker 10 (02:03:00):
Tastes good, you know, it's all the better. If it
doesn't taste good, it's sours.

Speaker 4 (02:03:06):
On the hunt.

Speaker 1 (02:03:07):
It shut does, sure it does. There's a lot of
good ways to cook doves too, There really are.

Speaker 10 (02:03:11):
Oh certainly. Certainly wrap them up and bacon and cream
cheese and you're in good shape.

Speaker 5 (02:03:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:03:17):
That that's man, that's entry level A plus right there.
From there there are there are a lot of people
who add a little of this, or put a little
slice of that on there, whatever, Shove a little piece
of halapeno up in there. But cooked right, doves are
really tasty.

Speaker 12 (02:03:34):
I agree.

Speaker 2 (02:03:35):
I agree.

Speaker 10 (02:03:36):
That's all I got.

Speaker 1 (02:03:37):
But have a good That was plenty. Thank you, I
appreciate it, Mike. Yeah. The consistency of the ammunition makes
a big difference too, and and the hardness of the shot.
That's where the animony comes in. It's a little something
added to that lead to keep those pellets from deforming.
When when you fire that shell, the all the pellets

(02:03:58):
are in that little shot cup and they get pushed,
they get compressed by the back of that shot cup
going out the barrel, and a lot of them, if
you're buying super cheap stuff, will become unround and thus
not fly straight. Most of the pellets in a quality

(02:04:19):
shot shell are going to be harder and therefore going
to maintain their shape and therefore going to fly in
a straight line. If you ever get a chance to
shoot some super cheap shot at a big piece of
paper or maybe a double wide piece of paper, at

(02:04:42):
say twenty five yards, you'll see just how many of
those pellets are flying they call them flyers outside the
twenty four, twenty eight maybe thirty inch circle in which
you're trying to hold them all. The more pellets you
can keep in that circle, the better your chance of

(02:05:02):
hitting that bird. And if you're buying cheap shells because
you think that's gonna save you a little money down
the road, it's probably actually gonna cost you a little
bit more because you are going to have more holes
in your pattern and there's just nothing you can do
about that. I don't really care what gun you shoot,

(02:05:23):
but if you want to, if you want to become
a better shot, one way to like I said, first
of all, get some lessons. And then, even though it's
legal to have that third shell in your semi auto
or your pump gun or whatever it is you're shooting
doves with, don't put two shots in there. And I'll

(02:05:43):
tell you something else to save or to not waste
birds is if you're in a really good spot and
there are a lot of doves, flying around and you bang,
you shoot one, and then you're on your way out
to pick that one up, and you've got a good luck.

Speaker 4 (02:05:56):
Boy.

Speaker 1 (02:05:56):
That's something else we're gonna have to do. Maybe before
we get out of the pro today. I'll come back
and talk about marking birds when they hit the ground,
because doves. Doves are the little Houdinis of the the
winged world. They fall in the middle of a field
with nothing in it but dirt, and you'll lose them.
They're amazingly camouflage, more so than you think. But I digress.

(02:06:21):
So make sure when you shoot one that you go
get that one bird and then think about shooting a
second one. I don't care who you are. If you
knock down one bird and you're walking out there and
you see a couple of them coming at you or
flying by within range, and you take your eyes on
that spot where that first bird fell and you shoot

(02:06:42):
another one, there's probably a thirty percent chance or better
that you're gonna lose at least one of those birds,
because you now you're broken off the line of the hunt.

Speaker 8 (02:06:56):
There.

Speaker 1 (02:06:57):
I'll get to some ways that I used to mark
birds and made it much easier on myself. To find
them and then not find them when we get back
on the way out, I'm gonna tell you about Riceland
Waterfowl Club. Talked to David Pruitt just a little while ago.
I hope you got to hear that interview with him.
He's been doing this for fifty five zero years. He

(02:07:20):
left school to become a waterfowl outfitter and that's all
he's done. He lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps waterfowl hunting.
He's a world champion caller he was back in the day.
Now he's focused on the people who are coming out
and hunting, on the properties he leases and owns and
whatever out there on that giant Eagle Lake prairie. I

(02:07:42):
got a tour of it this week, and holy cow,
he showed me some places that I hadn't seen in
the summertime in probably thirty years. Places I don't go
in the summertime, but they look so different now. And
his vision is just remarkable, just remarkable. Riceland Waterfowl Club.

(02:08:04):
All of those blinds are a quarter mile apart. He's
gonna have more water probably than any other outfitter on
that prairie. He usually does anyway, and most of his groups.
If they can shoot and know how to call or
not call, and know how to put out decoys, we'll
finish the season with hundreds of ducks under their belts.
Riceland Waterfowl Club dot com is a website. Go there,

(02:08:28):
check it out, get a tour of the prairie, get
David to show you round. No guided hunting whatsoever on
his properties is just club members and their guests, and
he has an incredible system to make sure nobody gets
preferential treatment on blinds. Ricelandwaterfowl Club dot com. Ricelandwaterfowl Club
dot com. All right, welcome back Doug Clake Show on

(02:08:50):
Sports Talk seven to ninety. Very quickly before I take
this phone call that I'm absolutely gonna take. I heard
that spot talking about advertising on iHeart. If you or
anybody else you know might be interested in doing something
like that, you don't have to call anybody but me.
I'm uniquely positioned here not only to handle something in

(02:09:10):
my own shows, but anything we have anywhere in the country,
any stations we run spots on, plus all the digital stuff.
I'm uniquely qualified to do all of that, and I
carry a little kind of a personal list of clients,
and some of whom use me, some of whom use

(02:09:32):
different influencers here, and some of them who advertise all
over the country. Like I just said, but I do
that because I want to make sure these people get
taken care of. I've been doing this twenty five years,
and like I'll put in a lot of my emails,
I won't waste your time and I won't waste your money.
Let's go talk to Jimmy West, shall we? What's going on?

Speaker 8 (02:09:51):
Jimmy, Hey, Doug, how are you, sir?

Speaker 1 (02:09:54):
You know I'm doing all right. We're not getting any younger,
but we're still pretty tough. I think.

Speaker 8 (02:10:00):
I don't know that's a fact. It wasn't definitely not
getting any younger. I want to think I'm still pretty tough,
but I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:10:07):
Then you go outside in the middle of a July
afternoon when the humidity is about ninety five percent, and
you realize I can't do this anymore.

Speaker 8 (02:10:15):
I can take the cold a lot better than I
can take the heat.

Speaker 1 (02:10:19):
You know, I agree with that.

Speaker 8 (02:10:20):
Actually, had I had a heat stroke in the boat
last year, I was I was as close to it
as you can get and didn't have it.

Speaker 2 (02:10:30):
I mean I.

Speaker 8 (02:10:30):
Didn't fall out. I had a couple of people fall
out twenty five years ago. I mean had it. It
was crazy, Uh, I mean they just but I got
to shake, and I mean I got a headache and
it happened to me. I was just on the verge
of it a couple of days ago, three days ago,
and sut some guys out and I had older guy

(02:10:50):
in the boat and he started feeling the heat too,
And I'm so glad we came in early. Yeah, yeah,
that's that. That's one reason why I'm not And I
made up my mind. I was gonna do a have
a deal, going to have a project here. I'm building
an RV cover, and I was going to not really
fish in July unless I'm waiting or if I go

(02:11:11):
out in the boat coming early. So but AnyWho, that's
a different subject and kind of getting off on it.

Speaker 1 (02:11:16):
That's right.

Speaker 8 (02:11:18):
Listen to you earlier, a little earlier. You know. One
of the biggest mistakes that I see, and you may
have already touched on it, because I'm just catching bits
and pieces. It's people misjudged distance.

Speaker 1 (02:11:29):
Oh man, I haven't touched on that, but yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:11:33):
That is the number one crippling that you can do.
And shooting at those birds fifty plus yards, you are
not going to kill them.

Speaker 4 (02:11:43):
I don't care.

Speaker 8 (02:11:44):
You're shooting seven and a halves or you're shooting eights
or low breaths. And they'll tell you your effective range.
There's thirty five yards now that you can't kill them.
Forty forty five you can, you know, you hit them right.
But when you're I got people, I mean I'll see
them because you know, it's not it's not like it's guided.
You put people out and you're spreading people out. You're
not right there with them, and they shoot at them

(02:12:06):
sixty yards fifty yards.

Speaker 1 (02:12:08):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 8 (02:12:11):
That's the worst thing you can do. That's the number
one crippling issue you have. They go out there. Oh
it is, it really is. And ducks too, Now on
a guided deal, you know, it's a whole lot more but.

Speaker 7 (02:12:24):
A lot of people.

Speaker 8 (02:12:26):
You know, so you get a group in, especially big ducks,
they don't come right in, but they're forty yards. You know,
you call the shot.

Speaker 4 (02:12:32):
Yeah, well, whoever.

Speaker 8 (02:12:33):
They had that automatic, they're shooting at them out there,
you know, first shot, they're sixty sixty five yards. A
lot of times, you know, I mean they come in,
you want them thirty yards in front of you.

Speaker 7 (02:12:44):
You decoyed.

Speaker 8 (02:12:45):
But sometimes you call it marginal you know, shots, you know,
but a lot of times that second third shots too far.
I mean, it just happens.

Speaker 1 (02:12:54):
There were a couple of years towards the end of
when I was guiding a lot, especially for dove season,
a little bit with ducks but not but more often
with doves, when I would I would put people somewhere
and I'd give them, you know, those little surveyor flags
just on a wire, say I'm gonna give them three
of them. I'll say, walk out twenty yards, put one down,

(02:13:15):
walk out thirty yards, put one down, walk out forty
and put one down. And if there's a bird past
that last flag, don't shoot and.

Speaker 8 (02:13:24):
Not But that's a that's a good point. Yeah, that
way they know.

Speaker 1 (02:13:27):
And it's not gonna flare. That's not gonna flare birds anywhere.

Speaker 4 (02:13:30):
Nope, it's no big deal.

Speaker 2 (02:13:31):
Sure or not?

Speaker 8 (02:13:32):
Yeah, yeah, they do, people do they just shoot down
them too far?

Speaker 1 (02:13:36):
Yeah? Always, Well, you know, because they remembery and when
they do that and you ask them why they did, well,
you know, about fifteen years ago I watched the guy
kill one that high, like yeah, and and since then,
how many of you seen? Well?

Speaker 8 (02:13:50):
None, but yeah, yeah, and now now once and once
you get out fifty yards just very rare, maybe shooting
high brass sixes, you know, shooting sure, you know, and
the lead does carry you know better.

Speaker 1 (02:14:03):
Yea holds its energy pretty well. But you still the
further out you get, the more you have to just
it's virtually headshot or nothing.

Speaker 2 (02:14:11):
You know so much.

Speaker 7 (02:14:12):
Yeah, that's exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:14:13):
That's a tiny target at fifty yards.

Speaker 8 (02:14:15):
Or you break a wing, Yeah, you break a wing
next to the body. But I'll tell you one thing.
You know, where I hunt, I hunt over a lot
of croating fields. Oh yeah, and uh we have three
different two or three different kinds of croating. But it's
sometimes that if I get a lot of doves that
come in and the people they'll shoot, they'll double up,
and uh, they take their eye off that first bird

(02:14:38):
to get that second one. And if they are lucky
enough to make that second shot, a lot of times
they don't know where that first bird or they'll lose birds.

Speaker 7 (02:14:47):
Good.

Speaker 1 (02:14:47):
Yeah, I was just talking about that. I'm going to
go into it more tomorrow. Were about to run out
of time today, But tomorrow I'm gonna talk about just
kill one. And you got a pretty good shot, and
I got ways to go find that. But you try
to take that second one while you're walking to the
first one, sixty percent chance you're going to lose one
of them.

Speaker 7 (02:15:06):
Yeah, they are.

Speaker 8 (02:15:08):
They are hard to find in any grass and anything
at all, you know, where there's cover, They're hard to find.

Speaker 1 (02:15:14):
They're hard to find in the middle of a plowed
dirt field. You know, I've I've had guys lose doves
in a dirt field because they shot a second one
and took there and walked a couple of steps before
toward that one. And then you you turn about around
and look for your landmark on what you were chasing.
The first one is gone and so is the bird.

Speaker 8 (02:15:33):
Yeah, you missed you you lose your distance.

Speaker 7 (02:15:36):
Well yeah, so all.

Speaker 1 (02:15:38):
Right, call back man, if you've got time, call back tomorrow.
Let's talk about finding doves in the field, man, because
it's it's an art form. You're on Sunday. I didn't
know that, oh my god, only for about twenty years
on Sunday.

Speaker 8 (02:15:51):
Well, you know what I'm doing Sunday, I make a
point to go to Churchill.

Speaker 2 (02:15:56):
Good for you.

Speaker 1 (02:15:57):
Yeah, I wish I could eight to ten tomorrow, eight
to ten Sundays. Come on, all right, buddy, Hey, great friend,
I've known you so long. Yeah, thank you, Jimmy. I
appreciate the call man audio. All right, the music means
we ought to go. What a great call that was.
I hadn't talked to him in a little bit. Joe
Dogget and I are plotting a trip to the surf
with him if we can ever get the water clean up.

(02:16:19):
I certainly hope. So. All right, Like I said, I'll
be back here tomorrow at ten o'clock or no excuse me,
I'll be leaving at ten. I'll be here to get
started at eight, and I hope you can join me.
Then we're gonna talk some more about doves and finding them.
That's not the easiest thing to do, but it certainly
helps the whole population, and it makes us all look
better if we find what we shoot. Get outside, have

(02:16:39):
some fun. There's some great weather coming for a whole week.
Enjoy it outdoors if you can. Audios