My Gut Tells Me He Can't Build a Raft

Originally aired on October 11th, 2025. On this episode, Doug talks about the upcoming flounder closure, duck decoys, and much more.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's Doug Pike. All right, here we go. Saturday
morning starts right now. Thank you very much for listening.
I do appreciate it. There's so much going on in
the outdoors. Holy cow. If you like, if you liked yesterday,
if you like Thursday, you're gonna love today, and you're
gonna love Sunday and Monday and probably Tuesday and Wednesday.

(00:21):
Even it just looks like we're gonna get this little
stretch of pre fall. I guess you could call it
like kind of like Goldilocks is poor. It's not too
hot and it's not too cold. It's not well, it's
not too cold at all. It's really not even cool yet.
But low nineties and maybe a day or two with

(00:42):
highs in the high eighties sure seemed welcome after after
just this long stretch we've had of mid nineties, and
we had a couple of days I can't remember exactly
when they were where the high was in the low nineties,
but ninety anything is still pretty dog on warm, and
it's enough to it's enough to make me at where

(01:04):
I am in my life now, it's enough to make
me kind of rethink some of the time I want
to put in on working on my golf game or
fishing or hunting or whatever I'm going to do afternoons.
It's a little tougher than it used to be. Kind
of welcome those early tea times I've been having with
my old buddies. I play without at Blackhawk. Either way, though,

(01:29):
this time of year is a great time if you're
an outdoors person. You absolutely must love this great state
of ours, especially Southeast Texas, because things are all the
seasons are about to go and get going. The fishing
is not going to stop. It's going to get better
as things cool off a little bit. And well, we've

(01:51):
got the flounder closure coming up all too fast though,
especially since we haven't had the fronts. We need to
move those fish out of all over the bay and
into that little funnel that leads them offshore where they spawn.
A lot of people, a lot of grown ups who fish,
who have fished all their lives around here and don't

(02:12):
realize that most of the flounder, most not all, but
most of the flounder in our base system spend the
wintertime offshore in as much as one hundred feet of water,
out there doing what they do to make sure they're
a baby flounder for next year. Any a quick sidebar
to that. By the way, there was I can't remember

(02:33):
who told me about it, but I looked it up
and did some research and found a lot of corroboration
that out there offshore where all those flounder are, there's
documented evidence people have seen it happen. In other words,
divers down on the bottom in eighty ninety one hundred
feet of water watching big hammerhead sharks just kind of

(02:55):
cruise along very slowly out in those flounder breeding grounds
and they'll they'll pause and they'll smack their jaws together,
real hard spam like that. And what happens when they
pop those jaws is that those flounder. What would you
do if somebody came up behind you and said, boom,

(03:16):
you jump, wouldn't you? Well that's what those flounder do.
And the one the ones that give up their position,
well that is hammerhead lunch. Nice little hammerhead flounder sandwich
straight from the Delhi seven one three two one two
five seven ninety Email me Dougpike at iHeartMedia dot com.

(03:38):
I am so we have this closure coming up. It's
November one through the fourteenth, and that for that stretch
of time most six weeks flounder off limits can't keep
a one. And that's part of a very long time
uh long time coming, long term, long time coming effort
to boost that population, and it was getting pretty low

(04:01):
along our coast. Flounder story way different than than redfish,
though tons of them back in circulation now, thanks in
great parts of CCA and Parks and Wildlife Department working
together to raise redfish in hatcheries. The redfish much much better.

(04:21):
Thank you. I appreciate that. All right, We got all
kinds of stuff going on around here. Oh, I got that.
Brett's by the way, Brett's in again helping out because
Frankie is on weekend two of back to back friends
getting married weekends, and so he's he'll be back next week.

(04:43):
I think, yeah, he'll be back next weekend. Man, I'm
out of I'm so glad I'm out of the age
pool for that. I'm I'm like in the age pool
for second marriages. Third marriages. Those are fun, though they're
always like themed and everyone's drunken all the time. I
don't know that, I I don't know that I've had
to go to any of any one of those. Actually,

(05:06):
they were all first timers for me, every one of them.
I'll tell you what. Pop. Put Aaron on the phone.
Let me talk to him, because I got to congratulate.
If he's with Heather, I got to congratulate her. I
got it, I got it, Brett, Hey, Aaron, what's up?

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Man? Uh?

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Oh hold on, let me put him back on hold,
and then you pop him up mostly if it works
hitting there we go. Now I can hear you about. Hey,
there you are. What's going on?

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Oh in Memphis, Memphis, Texas? On my way up to Montana.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Oh my word, man, you between you and Rick Bis,
you guys keeping the tire industry and the truck industry alive.
I think single hand.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, just outed by four new ones last week.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Oh my gosh. I'm sitting on ninety nine thousand on
my and and then I went up to look do
some other stuff at the tire place yesterday and the
guy said, no, they're still okay for a while, okay.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Good, good, Well you created a monster.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Ate the monster. Oh man, Heather's into wade fishing now. Huh.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Eight hours later and she got and she got stung
by a by one of those boon jellyfish, and she
didn't get out of the water. And then she put
the pressure on me. Her fifth cast her fifth cast
in she catches the seventeen inch black trump and uh yeah,

(06:45):
she caught a thirteen inch speckled trout a few others. Yeah,
really nice little lady fish to put up a beautiful fire.

Speaker 4 (06:58):
There.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
Oh. Absolutely, we just had a blast. Yeah, it worked,
it worked out.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
I'm yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
They were packed in the shoulder and shoulder there at
the packery channel trying to catch a bull. We we
didn't get into that. It got a little uh stormy,
but wow, what a what a trip, and it worked out.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
I'm that's good. Now we got somebody else out there
shoulder to shoulder with.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Well, she put the pressure on me too, you know.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Well, yeah, you still have to told me what you caught.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Oh well that's my business.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
And just man up and and accept your defeat. You know,
you gotta just take it.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
When you get it.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
No, I got two bikes from as well. Yeah, no redfish,
But now, what what a trip. And yeah, thanks for
getting out of the water. But yeah, now she's all into.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
It, so.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
You know that, and I know, yeah, good for you.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
Many, sir, We'll be listening to you on the way
up to Montana weekend.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, save travels, my friend all right, save man audios.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
He called me last week. They were going down to
Corpus and he was wondering how how safe it would
be for her and how to help his girlfriend, Heather,
get into the water and stay there and have some
fun and catch some fish. And they were throwing live
shrimp and getting bites and she all up in it.

(08:32):
I just the best advice I think for a new
wade fisher person man or woman, is to try to
keep them pretty shallow. Don't wait somebody out there waist
deep or any deeper than that on their first couple
of times, because being that deep in the water when

(08:52):
you're out there fishing, for a lot of people, it
might be somewhat intimidating. They're thinking about what else might
be in that water with them, and they're not really
focused on the fishing part. If you're if you're standing
in knee deep or maybe thigh deep water at most,
you could still if you need to cast out a
little deeper or really frankly in our bas system, pay

(09:14):
attention to the shallow water around you. They're going to
be just as many fish up in there on the
average day, and as long as you can get a
bit out in front of them, they're going to bite it.
That's what they're in there doing, is looking for food,
and they will eat. That's great. I'm glad she got
three different kinds of fish and not a redfish. That's

(09:35):
That's kind of the most surprising thing to me of all,
is that she didn't catch a red fish. And I
guess it goes without saying now that neither did Aaron.
He would he wouldn't quite come to telling us that
he got skunked. I'll say it out loud. I've been skunked.
I don't know how many times when I've been fishing,
and it just all all not catching a fish does
is teach you something about not repeating that same mistake.

(09:58):
Maybe where you were, how you were fishing, what you
were throwing, how you were retrieving it, whatever, But something
you did just didn't put your bait in front of
a fish that day, and that doesn't make you any
less of a fish and fisherman. Frankly, I think it
makes you more of a fisherman. You learn, you learn
from every trip you take. That's what kind of makes
it fun. Back to speaking of fish, the redfish story,

(10:23):
there are just tons of them in circulation. As I
was talking about before Aaron called, they're all over the place. Literally,
you can't hardly throw a rock in salt water without
hitting a red fish. Drove down to galves the last
week I saw three red fish hitchhiking up sixty first
Street towards the beach. It's just they're everywhere everywhere. Trout

(10:44):
fishing's holding its own. It's gonna get better as we
get into cooler weather and keep working through this recovery
thanks to that three fish limit. That was a really good,
necessary move, in my opinion, goes without saying. You know,
I hate saying in my opinion because everything I say
is in my opinion, but people use that I think

(11:06):
for emphasis, and there I let it just slip out
of my mouth. And as soon as the words started
falling off my mouth, I no, don't, no, pull them back,
pull them back. But I couldn't the way I look
at it. That's a little easier way to do it.
The way I look at it, going to three fish
leaves enough fish in the water. Should we get a

(11:28):
major winter issue. I don't even want to say the word,
but if we were to get one of those, the
more fish, the more trout that are in the water
when that freeze hits, I'll say it. It just happens.
It happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. The more fish
that are there when it hits, the more there are afterward,

(11:48):
percentage wise, to start a fresh recovery. And that's where
we were getting kind of to a potential tipping point.
You get a couple of freezes back to back, and
they do a lot of damage to a bay system.
If there aren't a whole lot of fish left, then
it's just gonna take them all the longer to recover

(12:12):
their previous numbers, and previous numbers of late haven't been
anything like what the numbers used to be. When I
was a young man and I was starting to go bayfishing.
The very first guided fishing trip I ever went on
was with two very close friends of mine, and we
fished with Captain Forrest West, who the last name you'll recognize.

(12:36):
That's Jimmy's dad. And Forrest had us out in West
Bay and we caught one speckled trout after another and
loaded up to forty eight cord igloos with them. And
it's just we had more fish than we could possibly
eat for six months and had a blast. And that

(12:57):
was the norm back then. What we didn't get the
lucky that was just it. That's how it worked, and
it was just absolutely amazing. Got to take a break.
Shooter's Corner down to Palmer Highway and twenty nine Street
in Texas City has been around for a very long time,
forty plus years as a matter of fact. And it's

(13:17):
nothing but what it says. It's the place for shooters
to go, and it's on a corner of a strip center.
You can't hardly miss it if you're just thinking looking
for those two things. A gun store on a corner
of a strip center on Palmer Highway to twenty nice
Street in Texas City, that's Shooter's Corner. Inside. If you
don't know what a gun store or a shooting place

(13:40):
looks like, old school gun store, if you don't know
what it looks like, if you don't know what it
smells like, just go down there, close your eyes, walk
in the door inhale that's the smell, and then open
your eyes and if you're a shooter at all, whether
you hunt or target shoot, or your competitive shooter, whatever,
self defense, any aspect of the shooting sports, You're gonna

(14:01):
appreciate what you see when you're opening your eyes. You've
got plenty of ammo in there for every caliber, every
boutique caliber there is. You've got a great selection of
new and pre on firearms. You've got outstanding gunsmithing service
available to you. And boy, if you've got a rifle
that was balking at the end of last last season,

(14:21):
you might want to get it in there and figure
out what's wrong with it before ben. The days are
just falling off the calendar. It's gonna be deer season,
it's gonna be duck and goose season before you know it.
The Shooters Corner TX dot com. If you wear a
badge for a living, you get a discount, which I
think is very very cool. Everything you could possibly need

(14:42):
as a shooting sports enthusiast right there on that corner
in Texas City, the Shooters CORNERTX dot com. Come on
Done seven nineteen. It is on Sports Talk seven to ninety.
I'm only two SIPs into this cup of call. The
first one too, by the way skinned adjust that right

(15:04):
temperature where it's not gonna scald my mouth if I
move too quickly and grab too much coffee on the
way on the webt to my mouth seven one three
two one two five seven ninety Email me Dougpike at
iHeartMedia dot com. I would be glad to hear from you. Okay,

(15:26):
got that taken care of. I've got this taken care of.
Now I'm gonna tell you about something I've told you
about that. Yeah, this is a good time. I got
an email from Mojo Early sent me one of the
coolest videos I have seen in years. It might have
even shown up last night. I'm not even sure. I'd

(15:48):
have to go back and look. And it's the receipt
time is not nearly so cool as what I received.
And here's what it is. It's a video that I
hadn't seen yet, and I'm glad I've seen it now.
It's so cool. This guy is loading his buck. He's

(16:08):
deer hunter. He's got a big old buck. He's loading
it into the back of the truck. He's somewhere up north.
He's in the dark, so I'm presuming it's an afternoon hunt.
That got really really late. But man, he's got his
deer and he's got it in the back of the truck,
and out of nowhere, well actually out of the right
side of the frame, comes walking up to the back

(16:31):
of his truck a fully grown mountain lion and two
of her little cubs if you look closely on the ground.
When I looked at the video on my phone, I
didn't even notice the cubs. On my laptop, I went,
Holy cow. So here she comes and she hops into

(16:52):
the back of the truck. The guy's still standing there
working with his deer. He's still manipulating that deer, and
the mountain lion hops back in there like she's picking
up a baked chicken at the grocery store. Grabs this
thing by the neck and is and just turns to
leave the shoplifting, I guess, or maybe she was gonna

(17:13):
stop and pay up front. Anyway, she's picked that thing up,
and the guy just instinctively it's like, hey, don't take
my deer, and he kind of pulls a little bit,
and I don't know what facial expression the mountain lion used.
Maybe it just made eye contact with him and he
might have peed his pants just a teeny bit. But anyway,

(17:37):
she just takes that thing, hops out, and then walks
off with her little cubs in tow, just like she's
checking out, and just grabs a fully grown buck and
hops out of the truck with it and just wanders
off like she was carrying a sack of bananas. Amazing, amazing.

(17:58):
That guy is so lucky, Hey, lucky to be a lot.
Anything like that ever happened to any of you, I mean,
and not that I think I would know if any
of my friends had their deer taken from them physically
by a mountain lion that was no more than two
feet from their face. I'm not trying to fight a

(18:21):
mountain lion over anything. I guarantee you that mountain lion
wants my wallet. It can have it. It can absolutely
have it. The closest I ever came to anything like that,
and it's not remotely it was dangerous, but it wasn't
remotely as dangerous as it as This situation could have
become very quickly. It kind of came face to face

(18:42):
with a big old sow hog on a bow hunt.
Once I was up in a tree just a short
distance off the ground, like maybe four feet off the ground,
this nice, big old limb. I could lean against it
and see over some brush. And when I hopped down
from there, I stumbled just a tiny bitch and ended
up getting some a little bit of mud in a

(19:03):
couple of arrow knocks on the bow. And so I
was just kind of sitting there. I picked up a
little twig off the ground, and I was knocking that
mud out of there, no big deal. And I hear
this like that, and I look up and I'm face
to face, man, I'm absolutely face to face, and holy cow,

(19:23):
holy cow, I'm looking at maybe, I don't know, two
two hundred and fifty pounds of sow hog. Thank goodness,
it wasn't a big old boy that wanted to just
rip me to shreds. But I looked at that pig,
and that pig looked at me, and we just kind
of made this silent pact that neither of us would
hurt the other so long as both of us turned

(19:46):
around and just walked away from each other. And that's
what we did. No harm, no foul. I didn't have
any problem with that. But it was to just lose.
I hadn't seen anything. I hadn't seen a thing had
I heard a thing, hadn't seen anything. And then I
hop out and I'm not paying attention now, not looking,

(20:07):
and this thing snuck up on me like it was
a just like a ninja, and there it was, right
in my face. I'd love to hear anybody else's stories. Uh,
let's get to Alan and see what's on his mind.
Alan wants somebuddy.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Hey, good morning, deck, How you did.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
I'm good, thank.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
You, nice morning.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Just the little rain so we could use it.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
We could use more than a little, now, Yeah we
could probably we can hand I guarantee you. We can
handle twenty inches easy, not all one. We can handle it.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, We've done that before. It's no fun. Let's just
get two inches. Uh a week.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
I'll take you weeks.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Okay. So what do you got so so?

Speaker 5 (20:49):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (20:50):
A place that I hunt up in East Texas. Uh,
they've got cattle on there and then but they put
out these lick tubs for their cap uh. And I
looked them up and I'm assuming, well, I don't know.
I'm assuming that I'm assuming they wouldn't hurt the deer.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
I would I would agree that I don't know the
only thing they might And I'm no veterinarian. If doctor
George is listening this morning, maybe he can set a
straight on this. There may be some of those licks
that they put out for the cows that have some
sort of antibiotics in them or or whatever, but I
don't know that at all. Man, I wish I was
a veterinarian.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Now these these I read, uh, you know, I looked
up the brand name and it's and then they say
for the cattle, it's supposed to tour flies and ticks. Okay,
I don't know what's that. I don't know what's in
the mix. Yeah, And I thought, well, I mean, deer
are out here and the you know, and and there,

(21:50):
and they're made they're made for cattle that have you know,
kind of a not great grazing areas, right, okay, you know,
corner roughedge, stuff like that, briars or whatever. So I
was just thinking, you know, maybe that is maybe that
will help the deer. Maybe it won't. I don't know.
I just wanted to. I just was wondering. You know,

(22:12):
I'm surely, like I said, I don't know, if sure,
I don't think it would hurt them, But I just
don't know. I know, it says not to give it
the sheep because of the copper content. Okay, but other
than that, I'm just I'm just wondering if you might know.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yeah, well, I got my fingers crossed at Georgia's listening
this morning because that's our only shot.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Man. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I said, deer out with
cattle all the time, and I'm sure they eat the
same things that cattle are eating that they get fed,
especially blocks, you know, all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
So I don't think that it would be dangerous to
deer or I think the Parks and Wildlife Department would
have stepped in and said, Okay, you've got to figure
out a way to keep the deer out if you
want the cows to have this, because that the partie
Department's going to take care of its deer population for sure.
So I would guess that it's safe for you around deer,

(23:01):
But I don't know. We'll find somebody who knows. Oh,
Hank tight man, I'll see if I can find somebody.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, like I said, they're doing these big tubs.

Speaker 5 (23:08):
We'll look.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
I'm a shom assuming they got my lasses in them.
I didn't really look and see what they Hollered had
at them. I'm just saying what they were for.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Okay, yep, we'll find out.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah, we'll find out. Thanks, yes, sir, thank you? By
all right, let me click that one. Got that. We'll
talk to Dave for a minute. What's up, Dave?

Speaker 6 (23:27):
How you well?

Speaker 7 (23:28):
I got cool up here Lake Conro. First thing is
make sure check your anti freeze, you know, make sure
your car or truck is cool.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Man, you're dripping the gun. Don't be talking about freeze
is when it's going to be ninety degrees today, Dave,
Holy cow.

Speaker 7 (23:45):
Now I'm talking about at a freeze in your vehicle.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
I know, I know, I don't he.

Speaker 7 (23:52):
Hey did you yeah, any freeze? Oh yeah, now I'll
get you okay, Hey, no, I know if you've got
some pictures of them, them dude surfing over there.

Speaker 5 (24:04):
But that was really cool.

Speaker 7 (24:05):
And what what what? What an adventure? What an adventure?
But uh, okay, now don't get all worried and everything.
But uh I went to my neck doctor because you know,
I got my medal and my neck and everything, and
uh they're gonna they're gonna have to uh lay me down,
put me to sleep and shoot me in the neck
with a needle next week, and uh, which is it's

(24:27):
all a good thing. But uh, then we were sitting
in there and he goes doctor Sims his name, and
he's like, you know, James Bob Captain James Box.

Speaker 4 (24:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (24:43):
I go fishing with him once a month, and my
father and my father in law fishing with him every week. Yeah,
And I'm like, well man, he was, I mean.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
We were laughing.

Speaker 7 (24:55):
I was laughing so harder there. I was like, you
gotta be that's kind of like my uh my heart,
doctor that I didn't even know that he deer hunted, wow,
you know. And yeah, so I mean, you know that's
it's uh wow, you know, it's hard to breathe now.
I'm not on the water right now, but I got me, uh,

(25:17):
I clean my tank out real good and everything, and
I'm getting me some uh you know. And then like
you like, you call me the fish whisper, you know,
I mean, I feed him and then I tell him that, hey,
you know, hey, we're going to go and catch bigger fishing,
you know. And there's a couple of them I got
in there right now. A gold fishing looks kind of
like a small car or something, or it's a silver

(25:39):
looking goldfish or whatever. But I told my wife that
I don't know. I think I'm gonna hang on to
these boys here because they look real cool and I
got the tank real clean and everything, and it's just
an I enjoyed just just sitting in there in my
chair and looking at him and watching him swim.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
You know, yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 7 (26:00):
Hey, but uh, hey, what oh oh, what what do
you think? I don't know, I don't know baseball and
everything else or whatever, but the high school football reporter.
Hopefully there's gonna be some cool stuff. I know Willis
out here there they played Friday night somewhere else, but

(26:21):
I think I'm gonna be heading out, uh over here
to Willis. They're gonna be playing here in Willis, So
I think I'm gonna go over there, hopefully it'll be
cold enough for work, and wear my jacket. You know,
you got a letterman jackets, get over there and walk
in like a big dog. You know where my Saint
Pie's hat. You know, Hey, this fun man. Hey, you

(26:42):
know what, and then people they'll recognize my people probably
recognize your voice too.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Don't they A little bit? Yeah, a little bit.

Speaker 7 (26:49):
Yeah, yeah, I got people every once in a while
they're recognized mine. And it is such a good I mean,
and so many people listening to this program, and and
you know, it's a it's a blessing. And I'm glad
I get Belleville deer sausage and free fishing trips.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
All right, man, I got a bounced All right, yeah,
let me let me know what you see. Audios, Holy mackerel.
Let's take a little break here, shall we. Perfect day,
Perfect day for golf, especially if you can get out
early this morning somehow. If you're just kind of sitting
around the house now, you you don't have a chore
list in front of you. Everybody else has other plans,

(27:33):
and you're just kind of thinking. You look over and
see those golf clubs in the corner, and they're just
kind of they're crying out. You say, pick me up,
put me in the car, take me to black Horse.
Let's go to black Horse, northwest side of town two
ninety to Fry Road, Fry Road south two three miles.
Maybe whatever. You're gonna see golf course on the right
hand side. It's a big old par five. Then you're

(27:54):
gonna see golf course on the left hand side and
the right hand side, and that's when you put on
your west blink. That's gonna be a right coming off
of two ninety like you're going now. So you take
that right, you go in the gate, and from that
point forward, everybody in there who's wearing a name tag
is they're just there to make sure you have a
good time. North Course still daily feed, do what you want.
Set your own tea time right now at the website.

(28:16):
If you want to get in there, have some fun,
bring three buddies, go by yourself, make three new friends.
I've done that several times already and I truly enjoy it.
You never know who you're gonna play with. You don't
know what tea boxes are gonna be playing from, and
if they're if they're too far back for you, just say, hey,
I gotta I gotta move up a box. Don't don't

(28:37):
be a hero. That way, you'll have fun. Everybody will
have fun. You'll keep it moving. Blackhorse Golf Club dot
Com is a website. The South South Course now is
private and membership options are up to and including access
through that one membership to both courses there. Both courses
at Golf Club of Houston and to Blackhawk Country Club

(28:58):
out in Richmond. Blackhorse Golf Club dot Com is the website.
Go check it out black Horsegolf Club dot com. Boll,
this goes way back Holy Cow nineteen what seventy one?
Somewhere in there. I think you're right. Yeah, I might

(29:18):
say yes, close. It's got to be close to that,
because I can I can envision the album spinning around
on the little lunchbox record player in my room at
the time. This was on their first album, wasn't it.
I think so? Man, that was a good first album,
wasn't it? Yeah? Holy Cow? Okay seven three two one

(29:41):
two five seven ninety Email on me, Dougpike at iHeartMedia
dot com. Already dance jumping in Oh, that's Ai. That
that video with the Mountain Lion, that's gotta be a
I gotta be fake. I don't think so. I don't
think so. I've looked at it and I was telling

(30:02):
I was telling Brett during the break that we've become
we were, and he pointed out we were already skeptical
of a lot of things, and a lot of things,
especially a lot of things we've heard and seen and whatnot,
people putting tapes together that were fake, and all these

(30:24):
photo shopping and whatnot, And now all of a sudden,
with AI, you can make even more realistic fakes and
the assumption when we see anything that is not normal
in our eyes, in our minds, oh yeah, that's AI.
I think that thing might be real. And if I

(30:45):
get called out and somebody's got proof that it's not,
then more power to them. They did a great job
with the AI, but I they're just a lot of
things that fit in that thing as being real. Let's
go see what's on. Mike's on here, saw.

Speaker 8 (31:02):
Mike, how are you doing, young man?

Speaker 1 (31:04):
I'm okay, how are you not bad?

Speaker 8 (31:08):
I want to touch base on your your catamount onto
that deer. You know, hunters, when they're out in the field,
they're educating the predators as well as the prey. Because
I don't know about you, but every time that I
field dress an animal out in the field and go

(31:30):
back the next day, nothing is left. It's all gone.
There's something, there's something waiting on you. Every time you shoot.
You know, their appetite up. You know there's going to
be a dinner bell ringing.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Sure, Well, it's ringing as soon as the wind wafts
down their way.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Well, you.

Speaker 8 (31:50):
Shoot a bird, there's a snake around it. You shoot,
you shoot a deer, there's going to be uh, some
poor legged creature like a hog or a a cat
or you know. I've got an uncle who shoots up
in Alaska all the time, and he says, when they
shoot a moose, they have to stand guard because there's

(32:12):
a bear coming somewhere.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, And so down here on
a smaller scale, if you're hunting over a stock tank
that's got a four foot alligator in it, you're not
gonna get your doves that fall in the water.

Speaker 8 (32:24):
Oh no, no, no. You shoot a bird and that
lands in the water, you can forget about that bird. Yep,
that's all I got.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
But that's a good point. Yeah, I appreciate that. Mike,
Thank you man, take care, Thanks a lot, audios. Yeah,
he brings up a very good point. Everywhere we go,
the high level predators are dialed in and know how
to find whatever it is we're leaving behind, and they

(32:52):
get accustomed to it. On if you're in the same
place on a regular basis, say you're cleaning fish side
of a lake or a creek or a pond or whatever.
And you clean those fish and leave the stuff you
don't want behind, and come back twenty four or forty
eight hours later, They're probably not gonna be anything there.

(33:15):
The bones will be scattered, there won't be any meat
left on them, and if you wait a little bit longer,
everything's gonna be gone. They even the bones will get
gnawed down by something. Look at what squirrels do to
shed deer antlers. They tear them up, need that calcium.

(33:35):
All of that is part of nature and part of
learned behavior by those animals. It's really fascinating how it
all works. I'd still believe that that video is real.
I believe that right now, and if somebody can prove
me wrong, then hey, they got me, they fooled me.

(33:55):
But either way, I think it's more plausible that it
actually happened then that somebody thought that up and even
thought up the part about putting the two little cubs
running through the shot, and if it were AI, I

(34:16):
don't know. As a creative person for the last forty years,
well for my whole life, really, but that's kind of
how I've made a living A lot of There was
a lot of creative writing. There was a lot of
adventure writing, and I would have I don't think I
would have written it that way, and that's why I
think it's probably more real. There were a lot of

(34:38):
things in that video that leave me more to believe
it's real than it was just some whimsical idea in
somebody's head who knows a lot about computers. I would
have taken a lot of I don't know, boy, it's
just too easily, it's too I like it. I just
like it. I'm going with it real until somebody can
prove me wrong. And if you can, it's probably easy

(35:01):
to find online by now. And I really hope it's real.
It's pretty cool. Seven one three two one two five
seven ninety email me Doug pikeyd I hot a heartmedia
dot com. That was kind of a mess. Where do
I want to go now?

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Speaking of stories like that, this was another one that
I'm entirely believing is real. It's just a little boy
standing on his front porch up north somewhere, way up
north somewhere, and I don't know how far up north,
but far enough that there's a lot of black bears
and there's a kid on the front porch and he's

(35:37):
maybe maybe three, maybe four, and he's just standing there
right outside the front door, hand feeding something to a
black bear. And that black bear it's not a cub,
it's it's legitimate, full grown black bear. And I think
the little boy says something or makes a little for

(36:00):
whatever reason. The mom comes looking for him, opens that
front door, sees what he's doing, and just freaks and
grabs her son and yanks him inside the house very quickly.
And the poor bears like, hey, where'd my kool aid go?
Or where'd where'd my blueberries go? Or whatever. That kid

(36:22):
was feeding that bear, but it was just eating out
of his hand. It wasn't eating his hand like a
kyot might have done. That was another speaking of that
was another video I saw. I'll tell you about it
when we get back. I'm just I don't know how
we got off the rails where we are now to
all these close encounters of the wildlife kind. But I

(36:42):
love them, I really do. And the only way you
get cool experiences like that is being outdoors. AI. If
you're getting all your outdoors experience from AI and YouTube
and all of that, you are missing out. If you
want to learn what it's really like to struggle to
catch a few fish in a day, then go fishing.
Don't just sit down and keep reading more and more

(37:04):
and more videos. Go fishing. Get your own experience all
the way out. I'll tell you all about Bellville meat Market,
and here's what's going on now. They are taking orders
now for pecan smoke turkeys. You can order ahead, reserve
your big old holiday bird day average about eleven to
thirteen pounds and will handily feed ten to twelve people

(37:28):
hungry people. Of course, you got your sides, all your
stuff that you have that everybody bring. Everybody brings a dish.
But you can go out and order that turkey from
Belleville Bellville meat Market and it's going to be a hit.
I guarantee it.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Man.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
They're absolutely delicious. Of course, they've got the stuffed pork tenders.
They've got m man, all kinds of those, jalapeno cream cheese,
sweet chipotle cream cheese, dirty rice, boot and stuff, pork chops.
You got that, pans sausage, laboucherie, stuffed chickens. I didn't
know they had those out there, oh man, All kinds

(38:03):
of delicious stuff. And of course you're wild game processing,
which started up with the kickoff of bo season on
the first and goes right through the end of deer season.
Take that deer out there, drop it off at Bellville.
There'll be somebody to come out there, young man. Come
out there with a big old cart and get all
that meat out of your truck. Take it inside when
you go in there, and get on that recipe list,

(38:24):
or not the recipe, but the menu, and decide what
you want done with that meat. A couple of days later,
you get to call the text, the email, whatever it
is you sign up for to let you know your
meat's ready and you can come on and pick it up.
Belleville MeetMarket dot com is website there on Highway thirty six,
about fifteen minutes north of Siily, fifteen minutes south of Hempstead.
Very easy to find Belleville MeetMarket dot com. He's seven

(38:53):
fifty one on Sports Talk seven to ninety The Duck
Pike Show. Thanks for listening, Okay, CAPM Scott. It took
time to analyzed, and I'm I'm looking now and I'm
I'm kind of going with the AI thing because the
antlers on that deer. Yeah, they kind of move around
and become uh, sort of in an unnatural position. Yeah,

(39:19):
I see what you're talking about. Okay, it was It
was fun while it lasted, but I think I trusted
Scott and I went ahead and looked at it exactly
what he's talking about, and yet it makes no sense,
so doc, I know, dad, Gummet. I wanted it to
be real so badly, And now that the more I

(39:40):
look at it, Yeah, the antlers that and like he said,
AI is still having trouble, uh dealing with appendages. Yeah that,
now that I look at it, the antler looks like
it's coming out of the deer's chest. Always check the fingers,
you know. Yeah, you're exactly right. Uh that's a tell. Yeah, oh,

(40:02):
burst my bubble. I was so wanting that to be real,
but it it. And I talked to myself into why
the cat didn't react badly? Why because it knew it
could take that guy. I just wanted to deer. All
these different things that I was trying to use as

(40:22):
reasons it wasn't going to be real, And it's not real.
That's okay, that's okay. It was fun. I got that
taken care of, I got that taken care of. Let
me get back to my big page that I was
working from, because there was a lot going on with that.
Oh I didn't tell you yet about the guy with

(40:43):
the coyote. And it looks like they might even be
in a truck stop somewhere. I don't know, But there's
this guy kneeling down, and there is a coyote that
looks to be fully grown but maybe not super mature,
a teenager, if you will. And the guy's knelt down

(41:04):
kind of in front of this dog coming I guess
the correct term amongst those who are big fans of coyotes.
Song dog. This song dog's coming up on this guy
and very cautiously, mind you and his buddy, the guy
who's video and says, you realize that's not a dog, man, don't.
And just about that time, the guy extends his hand

(41:27):
toward that coyote, and that coyote extends its jaw toward
the guy's ind and does a big old chomp on it.
And so yeah, now that guy's on his way to
an urgent care place somewhere to see if he's got rabies.
It's so another kind of a byproduct of our society

(41:53):
and all these movies about how animals and people can
get along so well, is this fall sense of security
a lot of people have around truly wild animals. That's
why people get mauled in Yellowstone Park every year by
elk and by every other animal up there. That truly

(42:14):
is what the bison people want. I'm gonna go get
a picture. Look how docile that animal is. Well, it's
docile over there because you're not in its face, That's why.
But if you go get in its face, it might
just kick you across the road, it might just plow
you into the ground. Elk or that way bull elk.

(42:38):
During the mating season, they're gonna be running around gathering
up cows as fast as they can. And if you're
in their way wanting a selfie, you might take an
antler to the back, and or worse, you might just
get stomped. There's all kinds of reasons not to get
too close to wildlife, and with these bears, like in Yellowstone,

(43:00):
I want to say that they put the the boundary
at about two hundred yards because a bear, if it
decides it's sick and tired of you can cover that
ground a whole lot faster than you can run away,
and still people tempt fate. They tempt fate, and they
get hurt very badly and occasionally killed. Anything that's wild,

(43:23):
I don't care how what a cute little smile it
might have on its face when it comes wandering up
on your front porch. It's still a wild animal. You
got to remember that. Seven one three two one two
five seven ninety Email me Dougpike at iHeartMedia dot com.
Got a nice little morning breaking along the coast. Let
me pop over here to my email or my websites

(43:45):
over here, let me look at surfside. I'm gonna have
to refresh that camera. Holy cow, it's still dark. It's
six twenty three this morning. I was taking pictures. Ah, yes, yeah,
definitely an east wind or an easterly factor in the
wind at least, because there's a whole lot of a
whole lot of bump on the on the Gulf side,
and not much in the not much in the channel side.

(44:08):
Beautiful morning down. They're not a cloud in the sky
at least in this in this view that I'm getting
more while somebody else manipulates the camera. That's one of
the things I really like about Saltwater Recon and the
way it's set up is that you can, uh, once
you go to the camera you want, and they've got
dozens of cameras along the coast, and once you go
to the one you want, you can take control of
that camera and move it left and right, and then

(44:31):
you can also zoom in and zoom out. So you
can get some really really good information just from being
a subscriber to that. And I've loved having that. I
use it all the time.

Speaker 9 (44:45):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Like I said, the live wind along the coast, let's
see if anything's changed, I'm going to hit a refresh,
although it's constantly refreshing and drum roll please uh north
Jetty's down to eleven now, that's good. Out of the northeast,
eat most of the wind all the way down to
I would say, like around Corpus or So has gotten

(45:06):
northeast in it, and then south of there it's more
of an easterly flow. Was still was just a hint,
as they would say in the wine industry, a hint
of north in there, but still nothing worse than eleven
miles an hour. And for the Texas coast, especially down south,
like a calm day, wouldn't even bother trying to fly

(45:28):
a kite and eleven miles an hour wind down there.
Kites are too big to take those bigger blows. I
had a guy asked me the other day, and I
want to kind of visit with you guys about it.
How many duck decoys do I need to put out
to be able to shoot ducks? And that, to me
is like asking how much does a car cost? There

(45:51):
are just so many variables, so many different things. Where
are you hunting, what sort of ducks are hanging out around?
Where you hunt? How many people are gonna be with you?
Do you have water on all four sides or just
two or three? How much water are you on? Are
you on a stock tank or you on a reservoir?

(46:12):
What are you on? I've had great Mallard hunts over
fewer than a dozen decoys, and I've had ducks turn
their noses at more than two hundred, just so much.
I'm kind of curious if there's your what's your go
to strategy for duck hunting. I want to talk about
that when we get back. We've got to take this
little break here at the top on the way out
I'm going to tell you about American Shooting Centers out

(46:33):
there on West Timber Parkway between Katie and Highway Sick.
Very easy to find. Can't miss those berms out there.
I mean there are big, old, monstrous berms rising from
the flatlands of the of the Attics Reservoir, well the
Attics Retention area. There shouldn't be much water, if any
in there now, but a sidebar. I'm thinking about a

(46:56):
place to fish out there in any of it. Three
sporting plays horses ten trap in skeep fields, beginners, wing
shooting area, rifle and pistols start at five yards, go
out to six hundred yards anywhere everywhere you want to
go or you want to enjoy the shooting sports, there's
something for you out there there. Given a little pop

(47:17):
up silhouette range, rim fire only. You take your little
twenty two's over there, take the kids, shoot all day
and burn up twenty bucks worth of AMMO. It's a
lot of fun. It's a great place to get people
into the shooting sports. If you're not good at shooting
and you want to get better. They have professional instruction
in every discipline. American Shootingcenters dot Com is the website.

(47:38):
It's gonna be a busy place for the next few weeks.
Might as well get out there. There's plenty of room,
more than two hundred shooting stations. There'd be someplace for you,
American Shooting Centers dot Com. All right, here we go,
second hour starts now. Thanks for listening, certainly do appreciate it.
I'm gonna get to the duck thing, I promise you.
I'm gonna talk about duck decoys and I a hunt

(47:59):
them and all that. However, I want to go to
Jeff first and see what's on his mind. What's up, Jeff?

Speaker 4 (48:06):
Hey, Doug, good morning.

Speaker 5 (48:07):
How are you doing.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
I'm all right, thank you man?

Speaker 5 (48:10):
Good good?

Speaker 4 (48:11):
Uh whatt a lead into to my calls having a
commercial for my Buddy's waterfowl company right before you put
me on the air?

Speaker 1 (48:20):
How about that? How about that?

Speaker 4 (48:22):
There you go? Couldn't been timed any better. Hey, it
was just gonna give you a few wildlife encounters that
I've had. You were talking about that earlier, and you
know it is true. Unless you're out there, all you
can see is what people take videos there, and there's

(48:43):
a lot of a lot of times I wish I
would have been able to video some of the things
that I've seen. As you know, David and I pretty
much work NonStop. There's doesn't matter if it's daylight dark.
But I was out the disc and disc in a
field one spring, and as you were going through the field,

(49:06):
obviously if you're during the day, you can see the rabbits,
you jump the rabbits, or you jumped her field mice
or what have you. But after dark, I was disc
in one night and there were actually two coats that
were kind of walking along beside beside the tractor waiting
for me to push something out, whether it was a

(49:28):
rabbit or there was a fieldbouse. But they would go
up ahead of me and I could see them with
the tractor lights. They'd go up ahead of me set
basically ten feet from the edge of the disk, and
as I was, as I was moving, they were they
were waiting, So that was kind of their dinner bell.

(49:50):
The other thing, uh, when you're discing a lot of
times during the day, you'll look around, there won't be
any cattle egrets anywhere, and the next thing you know,
you've got one hundred and fifty catilely grids come from everywhere.
Following along behind you. And I've seen them pick up
field mice and take off with them. I've seen them

(50:13):
pick them up, pick up bigger field mice two or
three times, put them back down. But it's just again,
it's like a dinner bell for them. And then something
you've probably seen before is do you ever notice there'll
be a bunch of like when there's a bunch of
geese sitting on the ground watching them, you get a

(50:37):
buzzard or a crow flying over, and the geese they
don't do They just sit there, continue feeding. But you
let a care of care or eagles show up and
they go on alert.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Bald eagle will run them off in the whole county.
Little hawks and all that. They just couldn't care less
about a hog.

Speaker 4 (51:00):
It doesn't botherable. I've been been in uh mark them before.
Shoot a duck and you know, hit the water and think, okay,
well we'll pick that up in a little bit. Next thing,
you know, you look over and there's an eagle sitting
on top of it, or care of karras sitting on
top of it.

Speaker 9 (51:19):
Yes, sir, they do.

Speaker 4 (51:21):
They do know the dinner bells.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Yeah, they do for sure, Thank you. For that, man,
I appreciate you.

Speaker 4 (51:26):
Yeah, I say, unless you're out there. Unless you're out there,
you don't get to you don't get to see it
live and in person.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
I couldn't agree with you more. I love telling my
stories and I love hearing your story. But you and
I both I know, would rather be just out there
making another story. That's where I'm looking at. Absolutely, thank
you for that.

Speaker 9 (51:46):
Absolutely, all right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Thank you boy. All right, let's go hook up with
Forrest here. What's up Forest?

Speaker 5 (51:55):
Well, who're on?

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Buddy? Called yourself?

Speaker 6 (51:57):
So I said, wait a minute, wrong, man, what do
you do?

Speaker 1 (52:00):
You know better than that? That's okay? Yeah, looking at
that video you sent me in, it looks kind of
like the same guys. We're up to the same tricks almost,
you know.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (52:09):
Maybe so.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (52:12):
Coffee fishing, Oh yeah, people are getting good at it, man, Yeah,
they really are. But but I was gonna go coppee
fishing this morning. But I ran into a guy at
the grocery store yesterday, say you fishing the bass tournament tomorrow? Oh?
Thanks for television. I'm gonna wait go this evening. So
what we're gonna do this morning? We're going to run
to Huntsville and get a good Mexican breakfast. And I

(52:34):
put a after forty plus years of this three to
nine Redfield on this seven hundred roumister thirty six, and
I put me a new uh the vortex crossfire scope
on it, just a little bit better radical, I mean
that other Redfield's never missed a deer knock on wood,
but time to upgrade a little bit. And my vision
aimed as good and scope get a little bit better

(52:55):
optacle on this year.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
So you don't have to justify it to me. It's okay,
just buy whatever you might have to use. Just practicing
with that story, aren't you making sure it'll fly?

Speaker 6 (53:06):
I was practicing exactly exactly. But on the on the
duck hunting thing, you know, as far as decoys to me,
and I'll go back to Phil Robertson's O ten Commandments
of duck hunting, to me, the most important thing obviously
is being where the ducks want to go.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
Yeah, okay, aimen to that. We we know if you're
not whare the ducks want to be. I don't care
how many decoys you have.

Speaker 6 (53:30):
Out exactly, but I play it by if I'm fishing
a backwater pond, if I'm fishing a lake, if I'm
fishing a bay, if I'm fishing for divers on big water,
I don't think you could put out enough decoys. But
where I see people mess up, they don't put them
out correctly. Yeah, to give the duck dunks a lane
to come in. When we ran diving decoys out two

(53:51):
hundred yards out of the bay on a straight line,
but they all come in too. Where you want to
where you want to stop Atlanta shoot them. Yeah, But
like up here in back water, I've killed more Mallards,
and I think this is a decoy everybody should have,
and a call everybody should have on the quiet, foggy
still mornings. Yep, I'll put out three or four Mallard

(54:11):
decoys and one shaker Mallard decoy.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Yeah, getting the Watercall I blow?

Speaker 6 (54:16):
Is that exactly? The only call I blow?

Speaker 9 (54:18):
Is that?

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Mallard drake call?

Speaker 6 (54:20):
Yeah, I don't quack anything, just like I've kill more
ducks doing that than anything else.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
But we've had this conversation before, you and I have.
I know, and pretty much anybody I know knows how
to duck hunt. We have it. The less you call
usually the better you are. Because when ducks are feeding
their their mouthful, they don't talk with their mouthful, just
like we're taught to do. And you don't need to
be just blowing hail calls at ducks that are coming

(54:49):
at your decoys with their feet down. Just let them
come exactly.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
That's what I talk about.

Speaker 6 (54:57):
Like you had a chance to look it up, Phil,
Phil Robertson's time come out and said, up, honey, I
don't think you think he talks to calls, talks about calls.
So he gets down to eight or nine because you're
already there, they're already coming to you, dope, don't screw
it up. Never, you already did your work.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
Unless if if you're never blow a call. How did
I phrase it to the north end of southbound duck
something like that. You know, if it's if it's going
away from you, knock yourself out, strike up the band,
do whatever you want to do to see if you
can change that. But if they're coming at you, just
shut up and enjoy the show.

Speaker 6 (55:34):
Yeah, Like out there in the woods, you may do
some light quacks just to let you know that's flying
around the area that you're over there.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
But I agree.

Speaker 6 (55:40):
You're not going to sit there and tieball in the woods.
You know, you go knock the leaves off the trees, you.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Know, really, man, And I've heard it. I've been everywhere
that you can hear horrible duck calling and too much
of it. I've been there and just smiled every time
I hear it, because it's just better for me and
keep my mouth shut.

Speaker 6 (55:58):
You know exactly what I I was. I was feeling
better yesterday and I did get down to Quintana yesterday
and I went down there fish tail low tide bottom
guy at eleven thirty. And when I first got there,
it was, well, I feel like I wasted the first
hour throwing lures because it was if I had a surfboard,
I'd have been more productive. You couldn't get to the

(56:19):
end of the jetty because it was it was getting
people down by the rain gear. I could have got
down there, but uh, but I the day before I
went out here at Lewis and I caught a bunch
of shad and I started using them shad after on
the bottom and I started popping sandtrout. I sent you
a couple of pictures out saw that man and uh,
the other couple of guys come over and ask me
what do you use?

Speaker 2 (56:39):
What are you using?

Speaker 6 (56:39):
I said, Shad, I actually gave a guy a handful
of them. Sure, and nobody else was catching fish. I
felt like man old Bache from that here putting on
these boys and they don't know what's up. But they
don't know about the freshwater tactics, you know. Then I
caught that? Uh is it?

Speaker 2 (56:55):
Was?

Speaker 6 (56:55):
It a ribbon fish? Is there another name? I never
coxcept on TV?

Speaker 1 (57:00):
The other name is cutlass fish as in the old sword.

Speaker 6 (57:04):
Yeah, that's a that's a cool looking fish, boy.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
And you talk about a king.

Speaker 6 (57:11):
I can imagine going that behind a boat. It was
fun of me. The traffic going down there back. I
don't know if it's Columbus Day or what, but it
was almost not working for the traffic. I mean, from
the time I left All Alaska at the time I
got the surf side, it was a traffic boat.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
What a nightmare. That's a long drive in traffic, buddy,
Oh man?

Speaker 6 (57:29):
It was, But it was fun. I mean, the breeze
was nice to me and I didn't didn't break a sweat,
but it was it was just too rough water kind
of kicked up a little bit, but caught some fish.
I had a good time.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
It happened. Well, good for you, man, I'm glad you
got down there. You you're kind of hooked on that
salt water stuff, now, aren't you.

Speaker 6 (57:46):
Oh Man, I just need to get down there like
I used to. After somebody's got a boat out there
in Charity Bay and go fish like I used to
when I was a kid.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
So yeah, man, that's good stuff. Trade the trade them
for some crappie trips.

Speaker 6 (57:58):
Hey, that's what I'm talking you.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
You got any the guys out.

Speaker 6 (58:01):
There, your friends, they ought some crappy for some trout
dress telling me I put him on crappie all day
at long.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
I know you can. Man, Thanks for us. It's good
to hear from you, buddy, I bet yeah, man, Audios,
Oh we gotta take a little break. That's what it
says here some guy named Ryan Sparrow on Facebook. There's
a cat in the picture and it just says, and
there's a little like a little sticker off a teer

(58:27):
or maybe off a t shirts I wish I was fishing.
I bet that cat does, But I bet it doesn't
wish it as much as I do air ride bikes.
This is my buddy Wayne Errington. I saw him at
the show that I did, the fifty plus Expo at
Stafford Center this week. On Wednesday, I was out there
and Wayne came all the way down from tom Ball

(58:48):
brought three bikes with him and had them on display,
and I got to ride that big, old monster, amazing
rambo E bike, the one that could climb a wall
if it can get traction, according to Wayne, and that
that was my first experience on an electric bike and
it's not going to be my last. That was just

(59:09):
so interesting. And so I was riding around that big
old parking lot of the Stafford Center just I had
this beautiful expanse of open asphalt, and it was amazing
how effortlessly I got back onto a bicycle after not
having been on one in quite some time. It was

(59:31):
just an absolutely amazing thing to and to just go
ahead and take off on that thing and pedal it
about halfway around and have that motor kick in and
start pushing me where I'm going. Holy cow. And I
was bearing mind.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
Now.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
I was on speed level one, power level one of five.
And Wayne told me, he said, yeah, he told me
not to go any higher than that, because he said,
if you put it on five and you're not used
to this, it'll snap your neck back when it kicks
into gear. And it was They're just they're interesting, they
really are, and I hope you'll go up there and
see him. He's on tom in Tomball, on that Tomball Parkway,

(01:00:11):
very easy to find up there. It's called air Ride Bikes.
They have several different models. They'll put them together for you,
and I highly recommend go ahead and paying for that
professional assembly because that's going to help you out. Everything
they sell is good, solid and it's backed by the
underwriters laboratories on those engine or the motors, the batteries,

(01:00:35):
so you don't have to worry about the fire problems
that some of those other models might have. Coming in
all from offshore air ride Bikes. A r r ide
air Ride Bikes in Tomball. Go look them up, go
test fire one of those things right around on it.
You will be so amazed and you'll start thinking like
I did, about riding it up and down the beach,

(01:00:55):
chasing fish, riding it through the woods, sneaking up on deer,
just you name it, wherever you want to go you're
gonna be able to get there on one of those bikes.
And if you're just going to the grocery store, there
are other bikes that are not as powerful, not as cumbersome,
not as difficult to manage. There's even a three wheeler
if that's what you need. Air Ride Bikes dot Com.

(01:01:19):
Hey twenty one on sports Soft seven ninety The Dugpike Show,
Thank you for listening to something to appreciate it. Let
me turn my body and back up in here.

Speaker 3 (01:01:26):
Boy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Some of that the way are the way this thing's
set up. It gets kind of loud when I go
to break, and so I have to turn it down
and I want to get back turn it right back
up where it belongs. Seven one three, two one two
five seven ninety. Email me Dugpike at iHeartMedia dot com.
Uh going back to those duck decoys.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
Personally, when I was prairie hunting so much back as
a guide, it was the number of decoys we were
gonna use because we were typically in a flooded rice
field or occasionally there'd be standing water after a big
rain and a boy, I remember an amazing hunt I
had once in January in a plowed beanfield, so you

(01:02:09):
can imagine how muddy it was. And there was one
little This thing was kind of I hesitate to call
it a hillside on the Kadi prairie, but there was
visible relief upward on one end and downward on the other.
But anyway, the water had accumulated on that down the
lower end of that thing, and we marched and slopped

(01:02:33):
our way out there and got around that thing and
managed to get comfortable on the high side of it
and had decoys all out there, and maybe maybe three
or four inches of water was all we had. In
some places we had to kind of put the decoys,
just push them in a little bit so they didn't
look like they were tipping over and exposing their keels.

(01:02:54):
But the bottom line was we had an incredible duck hunt,
and it took us forever to pick it all back.
It was fun putting them all out. We put out
about one hundred and forty decoys, and that was fun,
and forty hundred and fifty I don't know a lot,
but picking them up in all that mud afterward wasn't
except for the fact that we had an incredible strap
of ducks and we had several geese on top of that.

(01:03:14):
This was back in the heyday of the prairie, and
I tended to like on the prairie, putting out as
many ducks as I could, leaning back though onto what
Forrest was talking about about making sure that you give
them some place to land, because if it's just all

(01:03:35):
like a checkerboard of duck decoys, the birds they get
a little I don't know, they just seem uncomfortable. You
can see it, you can sense it in them where
they're looking like, well, where are we supposed to come in?
We can't just dump in there, because we'll land on
somebody's head or over there. We'll land on somebody's head,
or over here or over there, anywhere there's no place

(01:03:56):
to land, and a lot of times they'll just bogger
on out of there and go somewhere else. But if
you leave them, there's a kind of a there's a
the old schools thing was a jay kind of like
a fishing hook. Okay, you'd have decoys up one side,
let's say, depending on the wind, and then a bigger
bunch and then just a tail kind of out to

(01:04:17):
the other way where there's just this little hook of
a place where they can come land, and in ideal
conditions they would be landing coming right at you, and
the ones that you would actually let land might land
fifteen to twenty yards in front of you, and then
the ones that are still coming normally you would shoot

(01:04:38):
them before they got there. But that's kind of where
you wanted to have that landing area you wanted, and
it puts a real premium on concealment, There's no question
about that. If you if you and your friends aren't
staying down, aren't staying still, you got to keep the
dog still. Absolute minimal calling if any when there are

(01:05:00):
ducks lined up and kind of on final approach to
the airport, if you will just let them come, let
them keep coming. I think that's probably that's as important
as decoy placement, and both of those things, calling and
leaving that landing strip are paramount to success long term

(01:05:26):
on duck hunting. You if you mess up the placement,
you're gonna have a hard time. And I would rather
have I would rather have three or four dozen on
the prairie. I'd rather have three or four dozen ducks
duck decoys set up exactly how I like them and
how I want them depending on the wind. Then have
a hundred that were just had four or five teenagers

(01:05:49):
just ran out there and threw them willy neely all
over the place, half of them upside down, a couple
of them tangled up. That's that's not going to do
you any good. The ducks these days are just they're
smarter than that. They really are. I don't know what
it is. Any the young ones aren't. But once about
a week and a half go by, and most of
the first and last flight they'll ever make, ducks are taken.

(01:06:11):
Now you're getting to the ones that have been down
here once or twice and been by the way, been
hearing duck calls and looking at duck decoys all the
way down the flyway. There aren't many waterfowl, I don't care, ducks, geese, cranes, whatever.
There aren't many of them that get all the way
down here without seeing a whole lot of human activity.

(01:06:31):
And they learn from that. They learn every time. I'll
go back to a story I've told about geese that
I saw happen a million times on that prairie. When
I was guiding, there'd be birds flying high over us.
Pretty big v's coming off a roost, and we're way
down from where they let took off, and not even
close to where they're going to land. But they're pretty
pretty high up there, pretty far up in the sky.

(01:06:54):
And i'd look up there, and of course, my whole
all my guys are going to call those birds. Men,
you call those geese. They're right up over as well.
They're at three hundred yards. They're not working, they're not
looking at us. They they've already they're looking way past us.
But i'll call if you want me to just pick
up the horn. And all of a sudden, two or

(01:07:15):
three young birds drop out, They drop out of the
v and they start kind of easing on down. And look,
these these geese are coming, man, they're coming. They're not
gonna make it. They're gonna get picked up. What do
you mean, They're gonna get picked up? And sure as shooting.
Almost every single time a couple of young birds drop out,
two or three old birds you can clearly tell by

(01:07:37):
their coloration when they're in the air, especially the snow geese.
That's easy in the speckle bellies as well. But anyway,
these older geese would drop out, they would see those
young ones drop out, and very shortly thereafter, seconds after
the older birds would come out of there and do
exactly what good parents would do. No, no, no, that's a
dangerous place. Don't go. So they would drop down below

(01:08:01):
the young geese and then gently kind of bring them
back up, putting them on a lease. You know, get
back here, You get back here. Don't go down there.
It's not gonna end well for you. It was fascinating
to watch this, and I watched it up one hundred times,
watched it one hundred times maybe more over fourteen years.
A guid now out there, you learn so much. And

(01:08:23):
now I can tell you that the equipment, the decoy
setups for geese and for ducks are so much better
than they were now. The duck decoys haven't changed all
that much. But as Forrest talked about the mobile, the
ducks that just sit out there and quiver on dead,
calm water or mojo's anything that will make that water move,

(01:08:46):
used to be done mechanically. Back when I started duck hunting,
I had a decoy that was attached to a line
of a fishing reel and we would set it out
there on a There would be a stick to keep
it from coming all the way back. Stick just at
the top of the water with a little screw eye
on top of it, a dowel rod with a screw eye,
and from the blind I could yank that fishing line

(01:09:09):
and that decoy would go down and up and down
and up and down up and make ripples on the water.
Now they've got motion at battery powered stuff, even remote
controlled battery powered stuff, so you don't burn up your
battery in the first thirty minutes. All of it helps.
All of it helps, but nothing helps more than being
where the ducks want to be. Let's take a break,

(01:09:31):
shall we? Bottom of the hour. Kobe Stevens golf apparel.
I ran into Kobe. We've played together, he and I
and Rob Lowing and Mike from Concrete Kylie Pattern Pro.
I think it is concrete. Great guy, great player, too,
great golfer. All four of us played in Rod Ryan's
tournament on Tuesday and absolutely had a blast. We finished third,

(01:09:53):
by the way, hooray for us. And I didn't contribute
a lot, but yeah, I was cheerleader home mom. In
any event, he has Kobe Stevens has some of the
most amazing golf apparel you'll ever put on some of
the most comfortable shorts and shirts. I've got a lot

(01:10:13):
of shirts. I need to get some shorts from him.
As a matter of fact, I have none, and I
was watching him and Mike walking around in them, and
they look sharp. They help you look like you play
better than you do. And for me, when I'm dressed
right for golf, I feel like I do play a
little better. I'm trying to kind of live up to
the image that the gear, the Kobe Stevens gear puts

(01:10:34):
on me, and it does make me feel better, it
makes me play better. It'll help you as well. He's
also got some outdoors gear right now. You go to
the website Kobe Stevens dot com you can see all
of that. And he's got a store up on the
North Side in the Spring or Champions area, somewhere up there.
I can't remember where it is. I haven't been there yet.
I want to go though. As a matter of fact,

(01:10:56):
and by the way, he has kid sizes. He has
gear for women and men, and the men's sizes go
up to four X, so there's not a whole lot
of people who can't get something really good looking to
wear onto the golf course or onto the water from
Kobe Stephens. Great community guy too. He's always doing charity
work somewhere. That's now. He had a booth out there

(01:11:17):
at Rodd's tournament and helping people raise money for a
good cause. Kobe Stephens dot com, cob y S T
E V E n S. Kobe Stephens dot com eight
thirty five on Sports Talk seven ninety The ducklike, yoll,
thank you for listening. I started to go appreciate it.

(01:11:37):
Just look at a picture that I finally got to
thank goodness, finally got to it. Mark from over there
in Georgia Senate he was at Lake Conroe, I guess
last year says yeah, he was at Lake Conroe last year.
Got a sun Rode sun Roger sunset. Yes, sunrise on
Lake Conrae. Absolutely beautiful shot. Wow, well done man, Holy cow. Yeah,

(01:11:59):
there's a lot. There's a lot going on in that
picture and it's very well. Hang on, I'm gonna blow
it up full size here and take a better look
at it. Oh yeah, that's well done. Man, that's a
good one. I like that. I like the composition a lot,
the coloration, the color's good.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
The.

Speaker 1 (01:12:19):
Cropping is well I don't know if it was cropped
at all. It doesn't really need to be. I'm not
sure i'd mess with that one. I just leave it
as it is, pretty shot, man, I think a lot
of times the biggest mistake, and I've talked to I
don't know how many people about this when they're shooting sunrises,
it's put in the sun right in the middle of
the photograph, just right dead smack in the middle. There's

(01:12:43):
something called the rule of thirds in photography. And Scott,
by the way, Scott and Old has been notified by
one of the most prestigious outdoor photography competitions in the
country that he's won an award and or more than one.
He just like he said, this is back dates back
to when, uh, when I was doing the Texas Outdoor

(01:13:06):
Writer stuff and Outdoor Writers' Association of America stuff contests.
You you don't get a letter that says exactly what
you want. You just get a letter that says you
won something. Come on over and pick it up. And
so he's on his way to San Antonio, and I
got my gut, says after seeing some of the things
he was he was considering putting in there. My gut

(01:13:27):
says he's got he's got more than one coming. And
if he doesn't have more than one, I want to
see what beat him, because he puts in the work,
and I think he will agree with me that probably
the rule of thirds is one of the most important
things you can learn if you're gonna be doing outdoor photography,
because it gives your gives your photograph some direction, and

(01:13:51):
putting the main subject matter right smack dead in the
middle doesn't help any picture. As far as I'm concerned,
I still I still reach for my camera. In fact,
I sent a friend of mine up in New York
two videos yesterday of one of the alligators at the
golf course. And this guy, he's a city boy from

(01:14:11):
New York he is, and he hates alligators. He hates snakes.
He doesn't have any affection whatsoever, although he is a golfer.
But other than that, that's the end of his outdoor stuff.
He's not walking through the woods because he's just kind
of hesitant. He doesn't know anything about it, and he's
scared of it, and alligators scare him to death. And

(01:14:35):
I sent him one video and just said, hey, man,
what do you think? And we miss you. Down here
is one of my friends dressed in an alligator costume.
And it's no friend, it's no costume. And anyway, I
sent him another and he sent back something like that,
you're crazy or something like that, don't get close to
those things. And I sent him back a quick text

(01:14:56):
that said challenge accepted. And then I walked in even
closer on that allegation, and as I took one particular step,
I don't know what triggered him, but he kind of
lifted up on his back left leg. He was facing
right to left, and that back left leg came up,
and I thought, I don't want him in the starting

(01:15:16):
blocks like that. I'm just gonna stop. And I got
within about fifteen feet of him, fifteen eighteen feet somewhere
in there. And this alligator was an honest He's an
honest eight feet and maybe a little bit more.

Speaker 3 (01:15:31):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
It's not like I was just gonna jump on his
back and ride him back into the water and then
send him on his way, and not at my age,
I don't even know that I could outrun him very far.
So in any event, I lived, and I sent that
second video and then he said some things. He wrote
back some things that I can't tell you on the
air about my sanity. In any event, there you go.

(01:15:55):
Let's see what Travis has got on his money. He
sent me something Travis ways in with. We used to
grab a handful of rocks or little limbs and throw
them out for the ripple effect. You know, I go
back that far too before there was anything to make ripples. Yeah,
Or just if you had decoys right up close to
the blind and the blind was actually in some water,

(01:16:17):
you could just stick a leg out the blind and
shake it around a little bit. We did anything and
everything we could to make those decoys move on flat water.
The only hard harder thing to do than to make
dead still water move is to make ice move. And
that was really tough when you had to break ice
before you could hunt, and you put your decoys in

(01:16:39):
the little holes in the ice you made, and everybody
got out there and stomped around in their uninsulated hip
boots until their toes went dumb, trying to open up
something that might look a little bit like a pond
before it freezes back over. Oh man, some of the
crazy stuff we did, Holy cow, looking back at all
the this was pre gortex. It was pre any really microfiber,

(01:17:07):
high tech insulation gear. It was just wool and flannel
and thin rubber waiters and hip boots, and we got
cold a lot. It made us a lot tougher. Honestly,
I think it is so much more comfortable now to

(01:17:29):
deal with cold weather because we have the right gear
for it. It's lightweight, it leaves you able to move
and move your fingers in your body, do what you
have to do to hunt better. It was considerably more
difficult back when I was guiding, it really was, and
that didn't stop us at all. We just figured out

(01:17:50):
ways to get through it. Some days were more comfortable
than others, but we figured out ways to get through it.
And we even knew how to tie our own shoes.
We didn't just walk over to the corner and step
into our shoes. Although I'm wearing a pair of those now,
I must confess. And even the shoes I have to tie,
I've got them set up now where I can kind
of whiggle them in. And my golf shoes. I haven't

(01:18:12):
tied my golf shoes in years. I just keep I
keep a shoehorn about about a sixteen inch long shoehorn
in the back of my vehicle and reach down, put
my foot in, pull the tongue of the shoe up
a little bit, put that shoehorn in the back, and
off I go. I got them just set to just

(01:18:33):
the right tightness to make me almost feel like a
real golfer. We'll take a little break here, back to
the hunting part. Boy Carter's Country. If you're unfamiliar, if
you're fairly young and you don't recognize the name Carter's Country,
Carter's Country, understand this. Sixty plus years ago, Bill Carter
started this company in which he made custom rifles, and

(01:18:56):
then on top of that opened a little bitty store
and a little bit building at the range where he
was test firing his custom rifles, which he bought from
that the guy who owned that, And he grew and
grew and grew that business into one of the most
complete shooting stores anywhere anywhere period. They have every gun

(01:19:23):
you can imagine, they have all the ammo you can imagine.
They have excellent gunsmithing up there at the store on
Treshwig North, just north of Intercontinental Airport, a full service
shooting range, you name it, they've got it up there
to shoot it, and you can if you go take
your gun up there and get it sited in, you
can take it just walking. Go in, buy a brand

(01:19:45):
new gun, buy some ammo, make sure you got hearing
protection and eye protection, walk right out that back door
onto the range, and start shooting that rifle, getting it
ready for deer season. Shooting that handgun to make sure
you're good for self defense, shooting your shotguns to make
sure you can kill more ducks and geese this year,
and cranes. Why not. Carter's Country's been around for six

(01:20:06):
plus decades, family owned and operated and everything you can
imagine that you might need. And by the way, right now,
red tag sale going on as it always does this
time of year, right before deer season, so you can
get in there and get some cool things that you
want and whatever else you need to enjoy the shooting

(01:20:26):
sports a little more tomorrow than you did yesterday. Carterscountry
dot Com is the website. You can check that out
and kind of get an idea. They've got three stores
around town, every one of them loaded with great stuff
for hunting, guns, Ammo and hunting stuff. That's all they
carry at Carter's Country Carterscountry dot Com eight forty eight.

(01:20:51):
Good heavens, we have rounded second and are headed third.
To borrow some baseball lingo. Even though we don't have
a team, we don't have a dog in the hunt
right now? Do I old a dog in the fight?
I don't like the dog fighting reference, So we don't
have we don't have skin in the game. Let's just
put it that way. Unfortunately, astros are there's all kinds

(01:21:16):
of stuff going on. I saw a story the other day,
by the way, about from ber Valdez. I don't know
if it's true or not that he turned down a
really huge offer from the astro. I'll have to do
some more research. I need to check with the A
team or maybe Yuh, maybe Dan or maybe Matt. I
don't know. I got to find out from one of

(01:21:37):
those those guys if it's true, because it is. If
it is, I got a lot of respect for the
guy if he's doing what he says, what the story
said he's doing. But it just this is one of
those things that might be AI generated and just just
clickbait or something like that. So in any event, Oh,
by the way, I was sharing with Brett during the break,
I looked through my emails when I'm going through this,

(01:21:58):
and there was one guy posted to one of those
next door apps from my neighborhood. And I feel for
the guy, but he should have he should have made
all he should have made all of the arrangements and
all of the stuff before that he hired this roof contractor.
Because this guy doing the roof repair on the the

(01:22:22):
upset person's house showed up to start the job at
five am. A couple of trucks roll up, Guys get off.
They sling the ladders up there and bang them against
the gutters on the fence, probably are on the roof,
and get up there and go to peeling off shingles

(01:22:42):
at five am. I don't know who's matter, the guy
whose house it is or the neighbors on all four
sides five o'clock in the morning. No, and yeah, I
would never allow a contractor to start working. The last
time I had my roof replaced, I actually we had

(01:23:03):
agreed to start the job at seven, which is as
early as our neighborhood will allow work to start, and
their crews were in my yard at six thirty and
I went out and said, guys, you can't start yet,
and they were, they were getting all their stuff out
and they were ready to ready to go up the ladder.
The ladders were leaning on the house, and I said,

(01:23:23):
I'm sorry, but you just you can't start until seven o'clock.
That was that was our agreement, and that's I don't
want to wake up my neighbors. All my neighbors think
you're gonna start at seven. That's what I told them,
So they just kind of had to hang out. You
get what you pay for, You get what you pay for,
and you get what you ask for. And if you
don't ask for them to start after the sun rises,

(01:23:45):
they just might show up at five am, seven one three.
I don't know where how we got there seven one three,
two one two five seven ninety. Email me Doug Pike
at iHeartMedia dot com. I've got the TV in the
studio here set on the bass Master's channel, and I
may tinge it to golf in a little bit. I'm
kind of tired of watching these guys catch one pounders

(01:24:08):
and they're they're all happy as happy as large. They're
big competition. That might I've never I don't even think
the NASCAR guys have more patches on their shirts and
more sponsors on their shirts than the bass Masters guys do.
And honestly, a quick, quick couple of emails if somebody
will send them to me. If you watch phishing on

(01:24:30):
TV faux Pro, I know you do. Does does the
name of a fishing company on one of those guys
shirts make you more likely to buy that product? I'm
just kind of curious whether that sort of banner ad
on a guy's shirt. And they all wear long sleeve

(01:24:50):
shirts not because they're worried about sunburn because they can
get but because they can get more sponsors names on there,
I think, and did sponsors? Hey man, sponsors may pay
my bills too. I understand say that I do, But
I think that the storytelling option of the of the
audio medium is a little bit more convincing and more

(01:25:16):
more believable than just slapping something on your on your sleeve.
I don't know. I don't know, and I don't want
to quibble with those guys. They do well and so
do we. But I still I like being able to
tell a story about my client. I wouldn't want to
just just say the name of a company and then

(01:25:36):
expect you to go use them That's why I like
telling stories, which I'll do forever if they'll let me.
We got the weve got the waterfowl decoy thing. Something
else I wanted to talk about, since we're getting so
close and both seasons already open. It's I think probably
one of the toughest challenges in deer hunting would be

(01:25:59):
still hunting with bow and arrow, if you're out there
walking in the woods with any sort of a bow.
And I know some guys who do longbow still hunting
walking through the woods with a long bow, and they
rarely end up getting a deer. But man, when you do,

(01:26:19):
that's just that's the holy grail. That is the holy grail.
There's still there was a there was a fad for
a while, something that kind of had popularity a little bit,
but it's waned as far as I know. And if
any of you know somebody who still sits up in
a tree with a spear in your in their hands

(01:26:43):
waiting for a deer to walk underneath so that they
can spear that deer. I'm not even sure if that's
legal in Texas anymore, or if it ever was, but
there were some states that were allowing it, and I
just I mean, I think that's just kind of over
the top, and I think it would lend it elf
sadly to a lot of wounded deer hobbling off and

(01:27:06):
just dying somewhere else in the woods. The emphasis in
sport hunting has to be on a clean shot with
whatever weapon you're using, and a swift dispatch of that
animal so that it doesn't limp around for days and

(01:27:27):
get taken down by wolves or coyotes or any other
predator mountain lions. If you're gonna hunt, you need to
do so ethically, and that means taking care of business.
That's one of the reasons I'm not a big fan
of very small caliber rifles. And I know a lot
of you are in your very good shots and you.

Speaker 2 (01:27:47):
Do it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:49):
With great expertise. But I would still and do still
almost all of my deer hunting with my seven mag
because I want to make sure that that's the same
gun I use for an elk. When I went up
with Bill Carter to his place when he was still alive,
when he had just for I think it was only

(01:28:10):
the second season that he'd had that elk place in
Colorado still has it beautiful place. The family does anyway,
and it's it's a lot of gun for a white
tail deer, especially a Texas whitetail. But I've never had
one run off on me either. Seven one three two
one two five seven ninety. Email me Dougpike at iHeartMedia

(01:28:30):
dot com. If you've got a secret on how you
walk through the woods to stalk deer, I'd love to
hear it. And there's one thing that I learned many,
many years ago, and I don't do that much often anymore.
But when I'm in the woods, even if it's not
hunting season, even if I'm not hunting, I still, if
I'm just by myself and lost in my own thoughts,
I'm gonna walk through those woods like I'm stalking something

(01:28:53):
because there's always wildlife. You could see. You can sneak
up on a bunny tail, a little bunny rabbit, sneak
up on squirrel. See how close you can get to
a wild squirrel. And I can tell you right now,
won't be very close. All right, goodness, we gotta stop.
We gotta tell you a little break here. I'm gonna
get out early so I can get back in sooner,
and we'll shift gears talk a little bit of golf

(01:29:15):
and a little bit of whatever else you guys want
to talk about. Seven one three, two one two five
seven ninety You know that. Put it in your phone, though,
Make sure you have it in case I say something
that that makes you think, you know, I need to
ask him a question about that, or you know, I disagree.
I want to I want to share my side of that.
I'm happy to listen to that, as long as you
don't scream at me or say bad words. El Cubano

(01:29:36):
Cigars You're just gonna say nothing but good words once
you fire up one of Manny Lopez's cigars. El Cubano
cigars are manufactured in Texas City by people who are
Cuban of Cuban descent and have worked in cigar factories
almost their entire lives. El Cabano founded by Manny Lopez

(01:29:57):
and his dad in two thousand and six, and they
have been well. Manny's taken over the whole kitten kaboodle
now and he is doing a fine job. Cuban seed
tobaccos that are grown in Central America mostly, and for
years they've had this tobacco delivered to that little bitty

(01:30:18):
place in Texas City, and then once that tobacco's there,
it gets cured and taking care of. I don't know
exactly what they do with it, but it takes a
while for it to be ready, and then they start
unrolling those leaves and rolling cigars and they ship by
I don't know how. I guess they ship them on
the ground. In any event, they ship hundreds and sometimes

(01:30:38):
thousands of cigars a week all over this great country
of ours. Because what you're getting is a hand rolled product,
about one hundred and fifty varieties of them too, that
he and his crew can make for you, and you
can get them with special bands. If you want to
give them as a gift to somebody, or you want
to use them for a big charity event that's going

(01:30:58):
to have a lot of people, lot of cigar smokers coming,
they will put a special band on there that has
the logo of your charity, weddings, whatever special occasion you have.
You can either buy those cigars up front, or you
can have Manny or one of his crew come to
your place, sit down and physically roll cigars for each

(01:31:19):
individual guest who wants one. It's a fantastic option. Got
that cool smoking lounge there in Texas City where they
do the rolling, where they do the manufacturing. And then
there's also one in League City that's more of an
old havana feel. It really is roll up doors, big
garage doors. Let the breeze blow through, hot or cold,
it doesn't matter. It's just fresh air blowing through there.

(01:31:40):
And it's really comfortable this time of year. Go see
for yourself. Elcubano Cigars dot com. Elcubano Cigars dot com.
Tell many, I said hello, will you nine oh three
on Sports Talk seven to ninety the Doug Fight Show.
Thank you for listening, certainly to appreciate it. Click there,
get that. Let's go over to golf for just a

(01:32:05):
minute and we are going to talk about when I can.
Where did it go? Oh there, it is right there.
The Bay Current Classic ongoing as we speak in Yokohama
Country Club in Yokohama. The Bay Current Classic is leaded
right now after one two full rounds. Oh the no

(01:32:28):
excuse me, I forgot. Yeah, we're halfway around the world.
Already finished with the third round and through three rounds.
Max Graserman is at twelve under par along with Zander Shawffley,
who popped off pretty good yesterday and Friday, or yesterday
and Thursday. No, yesterday and Friday. This is it's kind
of hard for me to look at this and realize

(01:32:49):
that they're already finished with their third day of play.
That's in any event. Twelve under par for Grazerman and
Shawfley Thorburnson and and bjonghoon On and Gary higgo all
at nine under par. Anymore nines? Oh holy call, you
have two more seawoo him and Nico at Chavaria and

(01:33:09):
then they're a pair of eights. I'm looking down the
list here for some more big name players, but the
big name guys still really apparently aren't coming out, And
if they are, they're not working hard. Maybe they're working
on some part of their game and not focused on scoring,
which a lot of those guys in the top twenty

(01:33:30):
or top forty do. They'll enter a smaller tournament to
hone a skill, if you will, under battle conditions, instead
of just doing it at the range or around on
just fun rounds with their buddies. These guys all do
play a lot of golf, even outside of tournament play.
That's one of the reasons they get as good as

(01:33:52):
they do. They're constantly playing golf, and some of them
I've talked to have looked back in after they've gotten
all the way out of golf, and it's kind of
a bittersweet thing. Sometimes they regret not spending more time
at home. Sometimes they're glad that they made the sacrifice
when they were young and are getting to enjoy the

(01:34:15):
fruits of that labor when they get a little older.
But either way, being a full time one professional golfer
is not easy, and there are several layers of professional
golf under the PGA Tour, Underlive Golf, where it's it's

(01:34:38):
kind of like minor League Baseball almost. You have to
have sponsors just to help you pay for your airfare
getting to and from these tournaments, or gas money if
you're driving, which a lot of these younger guys still do.
They're hustling every day of their lives to make sure
they got a full tank of gas and maybe a
room sharing a room with another player, a cheap motel

(01:35:01):
and whatever town they're headed to. Not as glamorous as
it looks, a lot of these guys get apparel deals
with companies that want them wearing their gear, but they
don't get the big contracts like the big boys do.
They're hoping to be a big boy someday, hoping to
make that giant money someday, may win a few tournaments.

(01:35:22):
Even it's still possible to make a good living without
winning on the PGA Tour, and a lot of those
guys do. But ma'am, once you win something, it just
it multiplies. So fingers crossed all of these guys at
the Bay Current Classic over in Yokohama, and hopefully it'll
be somebody. I'd like to see Xander Shoffley really make

(01:35:44):
a charge this year, this PGA Tour season, and we're
coming into that season right now, the part of that
season where there are lots of opportunities for these young
guys or the guys who haven't won yet to get
that crack at the top, and I'd love to see
some of them do it. There are good numbers if

(01:36:05):
you look at the entire season. There are quite a
few first time winners on the PGA Tour now since
Scottie Scheffler Ran started his reign of victories on the
PGA Tour, and the usual two or three suspects behind
him who might be finishing top fives all the time.

(01:36:26):
It's been a little harder for the unknown to finish
holding a trophy on Sunday afternoon, but it's still happening,
and it'll still continue to happen as good as these
guys are coming out of college now, or even coming
out of high school going into college, they've already had
ten years of professional instruction if their parents can afford it.

(01:36:49):
And that's one of the issues that golf will have
for a long time too, because those who have resources
have access to better instruction, to do more time on
quality golf courses where they can really hone their games.
And I wish there was some way that golf could
open up some of that quality instruction to players who

(01:37:15):
are dedicated and devoted to the game but whose families
don't have the resources to play at that level. And
by play, I mean participate at that level. There are
some really good players in this country who who are
starting with kind of one hand tie behind their backs,

(01:37:35):
and that's something that golf's always kind of struggled with.
It's always been kind of a sport that requires significant
investment not only to play, but with clubs and with
shoes and with travel. Once you start competing. The highest
level tournaments almost always draw even June young young people,

(01:38:03):
their families get on an airplane, fly all the way
to the tournament, play the tournament, and fly all the
way home, and and more power to them. I don't
begrudge anybody that. I think it's great if you can
do it, but it does it does exclude some people
who just flat can't do that. And maybe, I don't know,
maybe somewhere down the line there there could be a

(01:38:23):
way a foundation that would recognize some of these better
young players and get them into competitions that will really
test them to see just how good they can be
at golf and give them the same shots that all
these other kids get. Seven one three two one two
five seven ninety Email me Dougpike at iHeartMedia dot com.

(01:38:45):
It's not a it's not a handout I'm looking for
for these kids. It's more of just an an opportunity
to be seen and to test themselves in the sport,
not test themselves for any other reason. Or I'm just
talking about giving him an opportunity to see how good

(01:39:07):
they are and see how good they can become, and
maybe maybe they go to a high end tournament somewhere
and just get clobbered and realize that winning a few
junior tournaments at a very young age at home aren't
the same thing, and maybe maybe they who knows my son,

(01:39:28):
I felt like was a pretty good player coming into
high school, and he actually, as a freshman made the
golf team and was out there playing, and then he
just decided, you know what, Dad, I want to focus
on baseball. And I couldn't take that away from him,
and I certainly couldn't tell him, no, you have to
play golf too, because you're also good at that, because
then if both sports had failed him somehow, or he

(01:39:51):
had not gotten as good as he wanted to be
at one or the other, then all of a sudden,
it would have been my fault. So and I talked
to my wife that I said, look, we've got to
let him in sports. We've got to let him play
what he wants to play, except for football. I did
draw the line at football because I knew people who's

(01:40:12):
who as adults, after having played a lot of football,
had some issues, had some serious issues with their heads,
and I didn't want that. More power to you if
your son's playing I love the game. I love to
watch football, even at the high school level. I played
high school football, but we didn't have any idea what
concussion protocol was. Concussion protocol back then was how many

(01:40:36):
fingers am I holding up? And if the guy who
got his bell rung, which is what it was called, then,
could tell you how many fingers? Okay, get back in there.
You're all right. It's amazing what was going on back then.
And I'm so glad it's far more sophisticated and far
safer now. But there's still some pretty rough ones. Oh,
get him on the phone and ask him to hang on,

(01:40:58):
and because I know who that is is asking to
hold through the break. Phoenix Knives. Let me tell you
about Phoenix Knives. This is Cowboys Emanski's place out there
in Belleville, right there on Main Street, a bigger space
than he had before, and a space now where he
has more people working under him and learning how to
build knives, kind of like Cowboy does, learning how to

(01:41:19):
build knives for anybody and everybody. Any possible kind of
knife you want, You can get anything with a blade,
basically a sharpened blade. They'll make it for you out
there at Phoenix Knives. In Belleville. A custom knife, a
custom hunting knife for somebody you know and care about
a lot who loves to hunt. They'll do that. Fishing knives,
steak knives, axes, swords, whatever you want that can be

(01:41:43):
forged from hot steel and blade it up. They'll make
that for you. Amazing. They have more than a thousand
knives for sale out there at any given time already.
And oh, by the way, for fun, if you and
your family want to do something that probably nobody else
in your neighborhood's ever done, go out there and say, hey,
we would like to experience building our own knife, and

(01:42:05):
time permitting, and if you're next in line, they get
a lot of traffic through there doing this. One of
their journeymen out there will take you back there to
the back and let you hammer out a blade from
hot steel. It's amazing, fun thing to do with the family.
Phoenix Knives dot com is a website p H E
n i X right there on Main Street in Belleville.

(01:42:27):
Phoenix Knives dot com. Fap Okay, my gut tells me
he can't build a raft. I'm just saying, you know,
I'm just saying. It's a great song. Great music, but
he's no raft builder. Here's a guy who's a golf coach.

(01:42:50):
So Tommy, Oh, what's up man, Tommy O'Brien.

Speaker 5 (01:42:54):
Doug, how are you? I was, uh, I mean, you
can't beat the Doogie Brothers, by the way.

Speaker 9 (01:42:57):
That's that's great intro right there. That's good stuff. Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:43:00):
Now, I was listening to what you were talking about
with the instructors, and there are there are quite a few.

Speaker 10 (01:43:07):
High end instructors that I've been able to mirror and watch,
uh Chuck Cook in particular in Austin that don't charge juniors.

Speaker 5 (01:43:15):
He said, you know, you.

Speaker 10 (01:43:16):
Kind of gain you kind of go you kind of
gain notoriety and whatnot by working with these kids that
are super talented, like you're talking about. And I was
out watching him one day a while back, and he
had some juniors and some college players and he didn't
charge them.

Speaker 5 (01:43:31):
I'm like, you didn't charge them? And he goes, no,
I didn't charge.

Speaker 10 (01:43:34):
Him because you know, that's kind of the building block
of of me and and and it helps and it
helps me and whatnot.

Speaker 5 (01:43:41):
And when these.

Speaker 9 (01:43:42):
Kids start to really excel as a professional.

Speaker 5 (01:43:45):
Then he charges them.

Speaker 10 (01:43:46):
Obviously, I remember as a kid. When Tiger started working
with Butch harmon Tiger, I mean they didn't have.

Speaker 5 (01:43:53):
A dime to their name.

Speaker 10 (01:43:54):
Yeah, and he Butch worked with Tiger for for free,
you know, until he became a pro. And he became
a pro, there was a hefty bill at the end
of that of that work right there.

Speaker 5 (01:44:04):
So luckily, there there are quite a few high end guys.

Speaker 10 (01:44:08):
I mean you kind of got to know someone, unfortunately,
but there are quite a few that do exactly what
you're talking about.

Speaker 5 (01:44:14):
Where talent. Yes, they'll take on a talent and give
them some time.

Speaker 10 (01:44:19):
And I know personally as well, when I've got someone
who's trying to make it or whatever, we work something
out because it does require more than just an hour of.

Speaker 9 (01:44:28):
Instruction a day or something about effect.

Speaker 10 (01:44:31):
It might require going on the golf course and it's
more than that. I know that whenever the instructors work
with tour players on tour, it's usually a percentage of
the winnings. I mean, it's not just a set rate
typically right there. And so there's so many ways that
this does get achieved, but it probably could happen more
like you're like you're talking about, But.

Speaker 5 (01:44:54):
It does happen luckily.

Speaker 10 (01:44:55):
I was like, I was, I was blown away by
Chuck and uh, I mean, he's eighty years old, so
do that cracks me up. I'm like, you got to
be kidding me that he's he's doing that. And uh,
but he he gets it. He understands kind of exactly
what you're talking about right there.

Speaker 5 (01:45:09):
And he said, you know what, I didn't make, uh.

Speaker 9 (01:45:13):
My career off of tur pros.

Speaker 5 (01:45:15):
I made my career off.

Speaker 10 (01:45:16):
Of high end juniors and college players that then turn
into tur pros. And I'm like, wow, that's a that's
a really great way to get your name out and
get some notoriety and and and.

Speaker 5 (01:45:27):
So on and so forth. As an instructor is to
take these guys on and and do that. Pretty wild,
didn't it?

Speaker 1 (01:45:32):
What if yet? It is a good thing. I'm glad
to hear that what if anything Tommy is available some
of these kids who who maybe have trouble with access
to golf courses or access to to new clubs when
they outgrow. An old said, is there anything like that
out there?

Speaker 9 (01:45:50):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:45:50):
Uh.

Speaker 10 (01:45:50):
The Southern Texas PGA and the Houston Golf Association both
have people that donate clubs all the time.

Speaker 5 (01:45:57):
They can also make you know.

Speaker 10 (01:45:58):
The SCPGA especially can make sujets on who to go see.
I I contact them all the time on saying, hey,
if I can be of help at any of the
junior events to be to be an extra little addition
where at a high end event we do like.

Speaker 9 (01:46:12):
A little aim point clinic or something to that effect.

Speaker 10 (01:46:15):
That makes it work a while to kind of give
back to the section. And it's been so good to me.

Speaker 5 (01:46:20):
I I do that all the time. There's always guys
that are willing to do that.

Speaker 10 (01:46:23):
And if you just get in touch with the junior
golf staff at the SDPGA and and whoever at the HGA,
they usually have resources they can direct these use kids too.

Speaker 5 (01:46:34):
Yeah, it's good stuff, it really is.

Speaker 9 (01:46:36):
It's it's it's.

Speaker 10 (01:46:37):
Such a fulfilling thing to work with a kid. That's
that's that's really on the up, you know, And you
were so right. I I tech so many kids that,
like you said, they literally fly in, fly out, have
hotels all over the nation. The good news is you
don't have to do that to to to really improve
and and to catch a college coach as I later
down the road, and so on, so forth my teammate

(01:46:59):
that was now the head coach of Samian's state.

Speaker 5 (01:47:02):
He was the Division one Coach of the Year in
twenty one.

Speaker 10 (01:47:04):
Tell me, does you do not have to leave the
state to catch a coach's eye or to really improve?

Speaker 5 (01:47:09):
And uh, you can do everything right here in the
state of Texas. So it's just a little a little
more duab. So that's a nice thing.

Speaker 10 (01:47:16):
It's not a situation where you have to chase the
aj G A all over the nation every week.

Speaker 5 (01:47:21):
And go from there.

Speaker 10 (01:47:23):
You can make your bones and USA events and legislaure
events and and uh AJG events that are actually in state.
You don't have to break the bank if you will
to improve and to catch the eye of a college coach,
hopefully leading you to.

Speaker 9 (01:47:41):
A professional career after that.

Speaker 5 (01:47:43):
Yeah, it's more doable that people think.

Speaker 1 (01:47:45):
Yeah, if I can ever afford to buy myself a
new set irons, I'll gladly donate the ones I have
now right now. May just happy we.

Speaker 10 (01:47:54):
Can work on that.

Speaker 5 (01:47:54):
I've got connections.

Speaker 10 (01:47:55):
And by the way, you need to tie your shoes
every time you play golf.

Speaker 1 (01:47:59):
No more of this.

Speaker 5 (01:48:01):
Shoe worn it. I heard that on the rain no, no, no,
that's why you can't put the brakes on.

Speaker 1 (01:48:06):
Don't do that.

Speaker 5 (01:48:07):
You need to tie him tight.

Speaker 1 (01:48:08):
It's okay, okay, Tommy, I'm with you. Who was it?
Who was it that used to live over by? Oh?
Dog gone it? What's the course? The nice course over
there off West Timor in Beltway eight, Dad guming, I'm
looking right at I can't well, thank you very much.
I was thinking the one dulse. But there was somebody
who was senior tour guy, early senior tour guy who

(01:48:33):
Keith Fergus didn't tie his shoes let practice.

Speaker 5 (01:48:36):
Yeah, he told me, there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:48:38):
I asked him why. He said, because I want my
swing to be smooth and if I if I overswing
with my shoes tight on right for for play, then
on the range. If I do it on the range,
then I'm I'm over swinging and I want to stay
in my shoes and like, okay, whatever, You're the one
who's the pro, not me.

Speaker 3 (01:48:57):
That's right.

Speaker 10 (01:48:57):
That's a page from Sam Snead if you if you remember,
I mean he was famous for playing golf barefoot because
he grew up.

Speaker 9 (01:49:07):
In the hills of West Virginia playing golf barefoot.

Speaker 10 (01:49:10):
And that really helped him with his footwork and his
balance and whatnot. But in today's game, I mean, distance
is a huge piece of that, and these guys are
using the ground dick time, pushing down to the ground,
pushing off of the ground.

Speaker 5 (01:49:23):
To help them.

Speaker 10 (01:49:24):
And I'll tell you what, I'd hate to see Scotty
Scheffler with shoes that weren't tied tight.

Speaker 5 (01:49:30):
That's with the way his feet, his feet moved, that
would not be helpful to him.

Speaker 1 (01:49:36):
Would actually he have a much better chance to get
somebody in the face with a shoe than with a
golf ball, because he's going to hit the ball.

Speaker 10 (01:49:45):
I was at the coaching and teaching summit this year
and there was a guy that was around Scotty when
he was getting.

Speaker 9 (01:49:50):
Fit or something of that effect.

Speaker 10 (01:49:51):
One of the instructors there and he overheard the fitter
ask Scotty. He goes, hey, can you actually make swings
keeping your feet a little more normal, a little more steady.

Speaker 5 (01:49:59):
He goes, absolutely, I can't because and he just showed
them and he ripped one.

Speaker 10 (01:50:02):
He goes, but I found that I lost three to
four miles an hour of clubhead speed when I had
my feet normal and I.

Speaker 5 (01:50:09):
Really don't care what I look like.

Speaker 10 (01:50:11):
I don't want to lose twelve yards off the tee
or whatever, because I'm going to go with traditional feet
as opposed to you know what. He does just kind
of go nuts with it, which I thought, Wow, that's
really insightful that he chose result over a textbook in
an effort to help him have every advantage he can
over these guys, because, boy, you better, because these guys
are really freaking good. These girls are really good on

(01:50:33):
the on the LPGA and PGA tours. And if I
can have an extra twelve.

Speaker 5 (01:50:37):
Yards off the tee, I'm going to take it. I
don't care what I look like.

Speaker 2 (01:50:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:50:41):
Well, the trouble for me is sometimes those ten or
twelve yards are left or right. I'm getting there, though, Tom.

Speaker 5 (01:50:48):
Only when you move forward. Only when you move forward,
that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:50:51):
I played back for you.

Speaker 1 (01:50:52):
I played a few holes yesterday and I played them well.
I'll give you a recap later. All right, man, Okay,
it sounds yes, sir, my pleasure. That's Tommy O'Brien. He's
out at Blackhawk Country Club and you can take lessons
out there from him. You don't have to be a
member to get lessons from him. And I've known that

(01:51:13):
guy since he was knee high to a toad frog man,
and he's learned and developed into what Golf Digest called
one of the top instructors in the country when in Texas,
at least for now. Uh, they'll figure it out. He'll
he'll get national accolades soon enough. They've already figured out
he's one of the best in Texas, and he'll get it.

(01:51:35):
I listened to a lot of his lessons when I'm
out there on the range, and he's he finds a
way to connect with every golfer, and that that's the
sign of a good instructor is having being able to
relate to something in that person. He talks to me,
he uses fishing and hunting references for me, a lot
of fishing stuff with casting and whatnot to kind of

(01:51:56):
help explain things to me. Now, this ground stuff I'm
still struggling a little bit with. But I am. I am,
He'll be proud to hear. I am staying behind the
ball a little bit better until impact. It's okay to
go forward after impact, he says. But that subtle difference
between just before and just after sometimes eludes me. It

(01:52:16):
was better yesterday, though. I may go run out there
this afternoon and see if I can share with him
what I've learned from from the young Master. I've just
whatever Tommy tell me what to do, and I'll do it.
Man the good That's a good thing to do with
any good instructor you come across. If you find somebody
you can relate to as a golf instructor and they

(01:52:38):
can relate to you, grab onto that relationship and hold
on to it, because it's so much better than just
randomly going to some guy for one lesson for one
hour and thinking you're going to be a tour pro
day after tomorrow. It's not gonna work that way. You
got to put the time in. You've got to invest
the time and hit a lot of balls the right way.

(01:52:59):
Not just hitting balls, it's hitting them the right way
that matters, all right. Got to take a little break
here on the way out. Berry Hill, Berry Hill Baja
Grill down there in Sugarland off Sugar Creek Boulevard and
fifty nine big shopping center there, and Barry Hill's kind
of a stamp. What's's it? The end of a strip?
But it stands right there next to fifty nine. You

(01:53:20):
can't miss it. There's outdoor dining, which is going to
be really nice for the next month or two at
least for evenings. There is indoor family seating and tables
and booze, and then there's also kind of a sports
bar area and actually three private rooms towards the back
of the place where you're and your crew can go
in there and celebrate a birthday or an anniversary or

(01:53:43):
whatever you want to do over some of the most
delicious text mex food you'll ever taste. The two primary
people in that kitchen, the two who run the kitchen,
have been in there more than ten years apiece each,
and they turn out a delicious, consistent product. I am
still partial to the fish tacos and to the seafood enchiladas,

(01:54:05):
but their whole entire menu is loaded with stuff that
pretty much anybody and everybody in there can find something
they're going to fall in love with, just like I
have great people, great family atmosphere. If you haven't been
there yet, or you're new to sugar Land or Houston
or whatever, just walk in and say I'm brand new.
Anybody want to make a new friend, I'm looking for.

(01:54:26):
I'm looking to hang out with somebody tonight and get
to know this place and somebody will welcome you over there.
I've seen it happen Berry Hill Baja Grill. It's a delicious,
delicious food and they'll cater anywhere in town. They've got
a nice truck. They just brought us a lunch about
a week ago.

Speaker 3 (01:54:44):
Maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:54:44):
I think it was absolutely delicious. We were all stuffed
and there was plenty of food. Plenty of food. Berryhillsugarland
dot Com. When you go down there, see if Wendy's there,
and if she is, tell her. I said hello, Berry Hill,
sugar Land and dot Com on some horse Talk seven

(01:55:07):
ninety the Doug Pike Show. Thank you all for listening.
I certainly do appreciate it. You need to get this
email out to Bonnie Joe. I'll get that done a
little bit later, probably right after the show probably, I
think I'll do that. Uh, seven seven ninety email me
Dougpike at iHeartMedia dot com. Going back to the golf
thing for a minute, I'm really glad to hear Tommy

(01:55:30):
talk about the options and the access that good young
players have now. If you're if your child, I saw
some kids on the range yesterday who were just out
there kind of having fun, and they weren't old enough
to really be honed as golfers yet they're still in

(01:55:50):
the recreation and fun and playdate kind of stuff. Uh No,
just do what you can with them to get them
interested in the game. Do what you can to get
to get a kid's club. Don't cut down your own
old club and put a grip halfway up where it
used to be that just to the heads are too heavy.
And that's why a lot of young kids even still

(01:56:12):
today look awkward when they're trying to swing shorter clubs.
It is because the for them, it would be like
us having a bowling ball on the end of the shaft.
They're just not strong enough yet. But if you get
the right club in their hands, even if it's just
a couple of them, and let them get to get
the feel for getting the ball airborne, just actually well,

(01:56:32):
first of all, they've got to actually hit it. There's
gonna be a lot of clean misses. And then once
they start getting the ball airborne, then just incrementally move
it up, move it up the ladder. That's how I
did it with my son. He hit his first golf
ball when he was very young, and I still have
the photograph that I took on my phone down there

(01:56:54):
in gall at Moody Garden's golf course. He was I
want to say, maybe four or five and old at all,
maybe four probably, And I actually, luckily, I just quick
thought he was about to take the very first swing
he was ever going to take, and the only first
swing he could ever take on a real golf course
from a real tea box. And I just knelt down

(01:57:18):
across from him and actually ended up catching him at
the top of his swing on my phone. I just
got dead lucky and timed it just right. And to
this day he looks better at the top than I do.
I mean, he really is. He's focused on the ball,
is all of his body parts are in the right place.

(01:57:39):
I need to show that to Tommy next time I'm
out there and just let him see it and see
what he thinks. He knows. He knows my son will
and he helped him with his swing when he was
playing both sports several times. I greatly appreciate him doing that.
But yeah, to see that little bitty kid turning the
club like he is doing is really special. I saw

(01:57:59):
it video of a little kid in pretty much the
same way. He's barely high, tall enough to barely as
tall as his golf club. But this this kid's got
to swing. I don't know if he's the next anybody,
but he's flat swinging the golf club like he knows
what he's doing already. I love watching these kids play.

(01:58:20):
I took my son to a lot of tournaments. That's
something else that I hope hasn't persisted in junior golf.
One of the things that I saw was a lot
of these parents when their kids were six, seven, eight,
nine years old, going to these little tournaments. They are
little nine hole tournaments that the Southern Texas PGA puts on.

(01:58:42):
Little Lynksters, all kinds of organizations that host these tournaments,
and some of these parents are just just obsessed with
how their kids play, and they kind of take all
the fun out of it and really push these kids hard.
And they're instructing from the sidelines, which they're not supposed

(01:59:03):
to do. They're supposed to just keep their mouths shut
and watch their children develop a talent for golf or not,
but they following them around. There was one guy I'll
never forget it. Out there at Sinco Ranch, there was
a man who had two daughters in the tournament, and
his two daughters were playing in the same little group,

(01:59:23):
and he went up there and read every putt that
they had. I'm talking about down to two footers from
all four sides, and he took his time, and he
just all this extra wasted time, and finally one of
the tournament organizers came out and said, hey, everybody else's finished,

(01:59:44):
but your group. We were well us. We were behind him,
and every other group was already off the golf course.
Someone priority at home eating lunch, and we were still
out there because he was a cessed with making a
mess of things. Let them have fun when they're little,

(02:00:05):
Let them have fun. Let them run through the bunker
if they want to. Now not on the golf course,
but on the practice range. Let them run through the bunker.
Then on the golf course, teach them gently that that's
not acceptable. You can't run through the bunker. And if
they do run through a bunker when they're a little
like that, hand them a rake, say hey, you got
to go cover up all your footprints, and teach them

(02:00:25):
how to do that. It's a great bonding experience. I
love the game for families because you're gonna be together.
If you play eighteen holes when they get to that age,
you're gonna be together for four four and a half hours,
or just play nine holes for a little while you're
still that's two hours of parent child interaction. Oh well,
on the TV, I just saw an alligator. It reminded

(02:00:48):
me of the one I saw yesterday and sent the
video up to my friend in New York. He's deathly
afraid of them. I said, next time, I said, before
you come down here, next time, I'm gonna get out
and try to find a place where I can take
you to go catch a snake too. We're gonna do that,
and it just Yeah, he didn't like that idea either.

(02:01:08):
Seven one three two one two five seven ninety Email
me Dougpike at iHeartMedia dot com. On the way out here,
I'm gonna tell you about Timber Creek Golf Club. Speaking
of golf, Timber Creek is down on the south side
of town off FM twenty three fifty one, three or
four miles west of the Golf Freeway. Very easy to find.
Twenty seven holes that are that are designed specifically and

(02:01:30):
deliberately to be fun. You can stand on that tea
box and you can see exactly where you need to
hit that ball if you can to have a great
chance at making a second easy shot onto the green
and then maybe rolling into birdie putt. Now if you're not,
if you're seeing it all but you're not quite able
to hit it where you want to hit it, then

(02:01:52):
go check in with JJ Woods and his staff over
at the Timber Creek Golf Club Academy right next to
the driving range, big old, big, big practicee big putting green,
which helps them get some of these bigger tournaments they
host all started at one time. You know, having that
twenty seven holes that third nine makes it a lot
easier to get a lot of people out there having

(02:02:12):
a great time all at once. Great food in the grill,
good staff in the pro shop. They're gonna make you
a better player, and you're gonna make sure you enjoy
the round you have no matter what score you shoot.
Timbercreek Golf Club dot com is website. You can set
your own tea time right there, right now, on a beautiful,
beautiful day for golf. Timber Creek Golf Club dot com

(02:02:37):
nine twenty seven. Already good, heavens have time flies, right, Brett,
Holy cow, Frankie's back next week? Right, I think he's
back tomorrow. Actually, slacker, Holy cal He's been on ten
days out. What is this now? Sounds like something I'd do.
I don't think I've ever taken two weekends off in
a row. I have it now. I'll take a whole week.

(02:03:00):
I'll do that, and then at the at the tail end,
after I take a weekend off, I'll take my traditional
Monday off as well when I need to really reset
and rejuvenate, which I'm gonna do another one of those
pretty soon, I think, just to get out and experience
some more nature somewhere. I'm not sure where I'm gonna go,
but it's gonna be as I'm not gonna go tent

(02:03:23):
camping anywhere, but I'm gonna be outdoors.

Speaker 9 (02:03:26):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:03:26):
No matter what hotel or motel I end up staying at,
I'm gonna be out of the room more than in
the room, probably for three or four days. I may
take a week off just so I can have a
couple of days to do some stuff around the house
that need doing, that needs doing. But I'm gonna be outside.
And the good news is I like enough things outside

(02:03:49):
that no matter what the weather is, I can I
can always find something to do, unless it's pouring down rain.
I won't go out and pouring down rain. I'm too
old for that and too tired for that. And I'm
not a big fan especially of really what is going
on here. I'm not a big fan really of of
cold rain, even a cold drizzle. I had. I got

(02:04:12):
enough of that as a waterfowl guide. When we'd have
people in from out of town and on days that
most of the guys around here, who were hunting almost
every day anyway, would just say, now, we're not going today.
That's a sloppy mess out there. And my guys who
were in town from Florida or or Oregon or wherever
they were from, Yeah, let's go, man, this is all right.

(02:04:35):
We got our rain gear. And then about eight o'clock
they're going, it's kind of chilly out here. Uh how
long this was the question that that was. It just
made it. It made it a lot easier on a guide,
especially if it was slow. It If things were going great,
we had birds working us pretty steadily. You could you
could shake off the weather. But if you got to

(02:04:58):
the little gap that typically happened between about eight fifteen
and nine o'clock on that prairie, the birds had already
come off the roost, they'd gone wherever they were going
to feed, and all of that interaction early interaction in
the sky was kind of done. They were back on
the ground somewhere filling their bellies. There'd be a few
birds flying around, but not nearly what it was in

(02:05:19):
those first probably ninety minutes to two hours of daylight.
And the question that said everything you needed to know
about their enthusiasm level was this, how long do you
usually stay out here? And like, okay, we can pack
it up now if you want to, And it usually

(02:05:42):
took somebody to break the ice and ask that question,
how long do you guys usually stay out here? And
then the backup question is do you think it'll get
any better if we stay? And my answer was always well,
if we leave now, we'll never know. But the truth
of it was that if you stayed while most of

(02:06:05):
the other people hunting around, you all over that whole
giant Katie prairie, while most of them were packing up
and driving around and stopping on the side of the
road where there were big concentrations of birds but no hunters,
just all of these things that would get birds back
up into the air between about like nine thirty and eleven.

(02:06:26):
If you stayed, you could probably pick off four or
five more birds. And on a day when you only
had four or five, that would be a pretty nice bonus.
On a day when you had quite a few, if
you've already had thirty on the ground, you could justify
going ahead and packing up and getting back for lunch.
It was a fantastic, wonderful time in my life. I

(02:06:49):
really enjoyed doing all that. It will wear you out.
If anybody's thinking about being a waterfowl guide, it'll wear
you out as fast as being a fishing guide will.
And you'll you'll get some you'll get some memories added
to your life, and you'll get some you'll just have
some things taken away from the beating you'll give your

(02:07:11):
body trying to do all that and keep doing it
every day and every day and every day. Waterfowl guiding
it required a lot of physical stuff. Back before the
days of four wheelers, and when I started out, there
weren't even three wheelers. There was nothing to help you
get everything you needed out into a middle of a
muddy rice field except the man power behind you. And

(02:07:33):
a lot of those guys weren't the best of shape.
Some of them had been in gentlemen's clubs until they
closed and then raced back to the motel and grabbed
their hunting gear and took off for the prairie. They
weren't much help, but we all made it through, and
knock On Wood never had any kind of a gun problem,

(02:07:56):
an accident, no hunting accidents in my spreads the entire
time I was out there, and mostly because all of
us were very very conscientious and very very safety minded
and didn't put up with anything. If somebody was doing
something unsafe, I'd give them one warning and just let
them know, Hey, what you did just then, whatever it was,

(02:08:18):
was unsafe, and if you do it again, I'm going
to have to ask you to leave this spread. And
usually their friends would jump on them and say, hey,
if he said something to you, you better be listening
and you better not do it again. We'll all wave
goodbye to you when he runs you out of here,
but no, don't do it again, because we want to

(02:08:38):
all have a good time and all get out of
here in one piece. That was my That was my
main That was every guide's main responsibility that day number one, safety,
number two, everything else, and we got through it. There
were a couple of instances out there, fortunately not in
my spreads where there were accidents. There was an idiot

(02:09:02):
who knocked his own big toe off of one of
his feet, whichever one he had put the end of
his barrel on when he dropped it down into the
gun case in the mud, because he didn't want his
gun case to get muddy or his gun, so he
put the end of the gun case on his toe
of his boot and then dropped the gun in there
still with one racked, and somehow the trigger got touched

(02:09:28):
by the hand that was probably holding the gun case
and he lost a toe. And then another man accidentally
shot his own dog, And that was also one of
the worst mournings I can remember. In fact, that probably
was the worst mourning as far as hunter safety and
all of that goes that I recall from all that guy,

(02:09:49):
and I'm sure that guy I know him very well,
and I know he suffered a long long time. I
hope he's forgiven himself, and I truly do, because that
was just it's a freak accident. It wasn't really all
his fault at all. It was a freak accident and
it just happened. But that was something that rocked every

(02:10:10):
one of us out there on that prayer for a
very long time. We're getting kind of close to the end.
I hesitate to take another phone call right now, but
maybe if you've got something going on you want to
talk about it, then by all means, give a call
tomorrow and we'll tee it up. For sure. Looking up
and down our coast, still not a whole lot of wind.

(02:10:33):
It's expected, I think, to come up maybe a little
bit this afternoon, and then tomorrow looks even better. For
anybody planning on going down there. That should be okay.
If you're gonna go run down there and fish, whether
you're gonna get on the beach, whether you're gonna get
on the rocks, whether you're gonna jump in your boat
and run twenty thirty miles off shore, whatever you want
to do, Tomorrow to be a pretty good day for

(02:10:54):
that bass fishing. Getting better every time I talk to
Faux Pro, He's gone somewhere and bought twenty thirty fish. Uh,
good for him. I need to get back up there too.
I want to get on some of these bass on
a couple of other lakes that he fishes, and just experience.
There's one of them I've never fished, and that one
I do want to get in. All right, the music
means I'm done, unfortunately for today. I greatly appreciate any

(02:11:18):
one of you and every one of you who participated
with a phone call or an email. Adam Scott just
weighed in, Oh yeah, that yeah. I like what he's
talking about. When he's out there fishing with his clients,
he's ready to get off the water. He starts talking
about all the good restaurants and the food available in town.
That's subtle, like as subtle as a train wreck. But

(02:11:41):
it works. I know it does, Scott. I've been there myself.
Thank you all for listen, Thank you all for contributing.
I'll be back tomorrow morning to day. I hope I
can't count on all of you to be here as well.
That's it for me. Ideas