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August 23, 2025 11 mins
Originally aired on August 23rd, 2025. Doug's exciting interview with David Pruett, for your listening pleasure.
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, second hour of the program starts right now.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
We're getting David on the phone, and as soon as
he's on the phone, I'm gonna start talking to the guy.
It's not gonna take long either. Frankie's dialing him up there,
getting him tuned in. You got nim F Reggie three
two There he is. Bam, David, what's going on? Rise
and shine?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Man. You've probably been up two hours, haven't you.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
I've already been up, Yes, sir. We don't get time
to sleep around here. We got work to do. Tal
seasons on the way.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I know, Holy cow, I didn't think we'd ever get
here back in about February, March, April, May, all of that,
and then all of a sudden, you blink and it's
it's time to load him up.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Man. Let's still get you excited.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Oh yeah, yeah, we're Yeah. We're seeing a few till
around further south from where we are in north of
Eagle Lake. But they start a few showing up, but
I think the big group's gonna be later.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yeah. Why do you think that? Is it just weather patterns? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, we've got a few fronts coming in. But we're
looking at the weather patterns, and you're always looking for
the full moon. You always have calendar what we call
calendar birds. They just show up every year at the
same time, but your mass majority of them don't come
down until later when the drakes come first.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
And then you got your hens bringing the young. After that, fifty.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Years in the business, you know what you're talking about.
I'm one hundred percent sure. I'm not gonna challenge anything
you just said. It just never gets old though, either
does it.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
No, it doesn't. It's always exciting. I mean, I got
it sided.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
The other day, we've seen a bunch of the baby
black blood whistling ducks. I watch, there's twelve of them
out on one of our spots, and just to see
it every day and going, man, they're growing fast on
knowing the other ducks are growing just as fast.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
I'm out at that golf course playing bass fishermen half
the time, almost as much or more than I do golf,
and I see those same paired, paired up, you know,
little whistling ducks like that, and the first time I
see them, they might have twelve fourteen little babies swimming
behind a pair of them. And then the next time

(02:01):
there's ten, and then the next time there's six. It's like, uh,
we got a couple of alligators. We got some big
snapping turtles, and sadly that's just that's just nature.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Though I guess it is. It's part of life and
uh not. I don't always like things I see, but
sometimes that's just goes.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, yeah it is, that's okay.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Uh So, back when I did that du TV thing
up in ol Campo a couple of years ago, seeing
geese in the air was just as special to me
as it was my first morning on that whole prairie.
And and then as soon as they came off the roost,
it just got bigger and bigger.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
And then same with the pent tails.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Man, when those pent tails started buzzing us, that really
kind of made me feel like just like I was
at home. That's that penttales might be my favorite waterfowl.
What's yours? What's your favorite bird to hunt on that prairie?

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Snow geese? Yeah, I gotta be with you.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
There's nothing like watching, you know, fifty to two several
thousand snowgies coming in at one time. I'll honk in
here and on and uh getting them to come in range.
To me, it's a lot harder to do than you know,
a duck. But those days of the heydays are over,
but there's still a few around.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
There's there are enough around that if you if you
really want to go goose hunt, and you can time
it right and you can get in the right field,
you can have a very productive hunt. We we kind
of proved that on that du thing, and I'm glad
to hear that that's still available because it you're kind
of right when when I was a guide, we as

(03:33):
the guys who really targeted geese kind of snickered a
little bit at the duck guys. It was a friendly
rivalry result, it was. But we used to tell them
they had to shoot seven ducks to equal one goose.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
About that, yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
So big question here for you, is you getting some
free water to trap from these afternoon.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Storms a little bit?

Speaker 3 (03:55):
It's just it's most of it soaks right in unless
you've already got water stack pretty well stoked soaks in.
We've got some places that's stacking up some water a
little bit. It helps who we're plumping water in the
rice field for the teal. It does help there, But well,
we're drained water to cut the rice.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
It's not helping.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah, and just letting it fall out. Yeah, you get
the pros and the cons of rain. I mean, we're
trying to disc up some spots. Well we can't disc
because it's too wet now. So it's just back and forth,
you know.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
And that's it's spent fifty years. It's been the same,
hadn't it. That's never changed every year. It never changed.
Just it's always a challenge because you're fighting nature.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
When you want water, you're breathing dust, and when you
don't want water, you're up to your neck in water.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
That's crazy exactly.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
So based on your plan for this season, with your
fingers crossed, how many acres of water are you gonna
have on the ground when the regular season opener kicks off.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
When the regular season opens up, we're pushing somewhere around
I'm hoping over two thousand. That's a lot of water, man,
that's a lot.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Of water, and it's all little pieces of water. That's
what's beautiy.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
You don't want a two thousand acre lake, you want
ten twenty two hundred acre places or what, Well, you
got more than that.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
I know how many actual spots do you have.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
The we're blinds this year, we're going to be pushing
somewhere around fifty some odd blinds. We backed up a
little bit the number of people were taken, but we're
doing We changed some things up and our blinds to
have two blinds on a one water hole. Our goal
is four hundred and forty yards apart. That's a quarter
of a mile more than safe enough. And you're not
the same birds as the other guys.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, you can still work your birds and they can
still work theirs.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
On the business side.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Since we're getting there, I guess you're kind of getting
pretty tight on being able to take on new groups, right.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Oh, yes, sir, Yeah, we're getting real close. We've got
just a few spots left.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
You know, a few single guns we can take and
put in with the other single gun groups, and then
a few couple of groups and we're done.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
That's single that's a single gun thing is kind of
I don't know a lot. There's a lot of guys
who probably be interested, but don't have five friends they
like enough to sit in a duck blind with them
all morning, so you're you're able to patch them up
with other guys who actually appreciate the waterfowl hunting as
much as they do.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh, yes, sir, we do that. And what we do is, uh,
it's just a group leader from each group. Yeah, he's
just he's just a guy that liaison when they do
the blind picks.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
That they want.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
And uh, but we have the fair system we've got anywhere,
you know, out of their group, that's thrill only three
year hunting out of the six man group, they can
bring their three guests in their place, no charge.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah that's cool.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah, if the only guy hunting that day that could
have brought five, you know, that's wow.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
No one does that, you know. And it's I'll tell
you what.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
It's not easy sometimes to spend four or five hours
in a duck blind with some people, even if they're
old friends or work friends, or your kids are on
the same baseball team or whatever, for me and that
and that goes double for people who can't look at
a picture of Donald Duck without blowing a hell call.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, exactly cool, exactly put it down, man, just put
it down.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
You don't realize how many ducks you're scaring away with
that thing.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Most people scare more ducks. Right.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Do you remember David low Price, the guy who was
game warning out that way. David and I sat one
morning up on five twenty nine at Katie Hockey cut off.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
I didn't have a group that morning.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
I saw his truck parked over there, and I just
went and hopped in and we were had the winds
down and listening to all the duck calling that was
going on across prairie around us. And I mean every
bucket of water had six guys on it that morning,
and it was just like a symphony of duck calls.
And he turned to me at one point and he goes,
you know what, Doug, I'm convinced now that the duck

(07:50):
call is the single greatest duck conservation tool ever invented.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
And he was right, man, he was right, exactly exactly
if people just put their calls in the pocket, just
let the decoys work.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
I know, people set in duck lines if they've been
a duck hunt a long, if they have sitt in
a duck by them and looked at each other and
kind of whispering talking, and all of a sudden they
hear splashed by, say.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Looking up the ducks from their decoys.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, eating a sandwich and ducks come running. Peanut butter
and jelly sandwich is as good as a duck call
if you know how to use.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
It right exactly.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
So do you do you have any time left this
time of year, David to do tours?

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah, we do.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, we'll go show the guy a group the other
day that we wanted to come in and he said,
I've never I've been on some other clubs everywhere, he said,
I've never seen nothing like this.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
We're in check right there. Yeah. Good, I don't blame them.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Tell you if anybody ever comes to you and says,
you know, I'm still kind of on the fence, tell
them to call me and I'll.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Have a little chat with them. I really will. I mean,
that's what the way you.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Explained your operation to me when we made that big
old tour us and Jeff and driving around that whole
prairie for as long as we did. I'll help you
out if they need a reference, and just tell them
to call me. Not a problem, okay. Oh what is
by the way, if you don't mind sharing it? What
is the ticket?

Speaker 1 (09:05):
What's the price to get in to all you got? Well?
A single gun is thirty one fifty. OK.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
They can hunt every day of the season. We've got
plenty of places. We do shut some down, like we
hunt some weekends and Wednesdays, some weekends and Thursdays.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
But there's at least twenty some lines.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
Open any day during the week, and we'll never have
that many groups going anyway. Right, everybody's got to work,
so sure, there's more than enough that if we need to,
we can open up something else if we get you know,
behind her and he a little bit.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Fierce the spots.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
But that way, we're still resting birds, We're still shooting birds.
You're not competing with any guides because we do not
run guided hunts on this club.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
It's members only. Yeah, That's That's one of the things
I like about it. And I'm saying that's fourteen years
as a guy. Believe me, I'm not opposed to guide
at hunting, but it's different. What you offer is just
different from that, and I like that aspect of it
now as a as a regular old duck hunter, I
kind of like the idea of that because I know
how all of that works, and it's tough sometimes if

(10:03):
you're in a group setting and you also have guides
jockeying for positions.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
It's just tough. You go it is, and go ahead.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
I was gonna say, you got it figured out forty five,
forty eight years ago.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
Huh, yes, sir.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
And what it helps is it's the thrill of being
able to do it yourself and also with us. You
can say, you know what, I can take off tomorrow
and I can go on this club, I can hunt tomorrow.
But you can't always find a guide instantly for the
day you want to go.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
They're full or something. Yeah, that's a good point of this.
I mean, it makes it real simple.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
You can bring a buddy out all of a sudden,
no one else is going, Hey, you call your buddy
up or in laws that just come in for some
holidays or something, take them out hunting, and it doesn't
cost you nothing extra.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, that's a very good point. And I don't know
a lot of places that do that either, David.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Thanks man.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
I'm glad you got birds coming in. I hope your
little squealers make it all through.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Well.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
We used to see them back when they were really,
really dumb and they weren't getting.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Hunted in any of that.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
I'd man I'd see they'd get squashed in the road
out there on those old back roads, man, And now
they're they're thriving again. But they know better to walk
across the street with all our babies.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
You know, no kidding, Holy kid, we don't have alligators
to get our so here they couldn't.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
You don't have any alligators? Oh man. We've got a
little bitty one out there at black Hawk right now.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
He's only about two and a half feet long, maybe
three uh, and then we also have about a ten
foot so I'm not so sure how long that three
foot is gonna last.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
We got plenty of turtles.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
For him though, right right, David Pruett, Riceland Waterfowl Club
nine three six eight two seven two four one three,
give him a call. Go to the website, check it out.
I think you'll be glad you did. Thanks David.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
All Right, y'all have a good appening, yes, sir,
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