July 28, 2025 • 16 mins
Doug's interview with David Pruett, for your listening pleasure. Originally aired on July 19th, 2025.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have on the phone right now, and I'm going
to punch him up in just a second. The man
with whom I toured me, David Pruett and Jeff out
there from Riceland Waterfowl Club. We took a nice little tour. Well,
I got a nice little tour of the prairie. They
were just rolling over roads. They rolled over a thousand times,
probably taking care of the property that's going to be
(00:22):
duck hunted this coming season.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
David, how's it going out there today this morning?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Oh? Doing great? How about you?
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm all right, man, I really am. I was so
grateful to you. I don't know if you realize how
much fun I had just riding around and talking about
waterfowl hunting and talking about where the water is going
to be and all of that, because it just brings
back so many many good memories for me from But
I hate to say back in the day, but you
know what I'm talking about. You really do, don't you.
(00:52):
I understand fifty years for you back in the day.
Huh Now this makes my fifth year. Yes, sir, When
you started, when you took a deep breath at some
point when you were you were still teenager, when you
opened up, weren't you.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Yes, sir, I started out on Lake Conrad, and I
quit high school to do what I'm doing. My dad
more or less said, boys, you think you're good enough,
go get them, And I'm the second longest running person
still out here.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You went and got them, didn't you?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Man? Oh Man is still here?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Dude?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
At that point, when you first started that first year,
did you ever think it would be a fifty year deal?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
No, you never have.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
You have hopes and dreams, but you never realized how
far you can carry your dreams until you go out
there and try to pursue them.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
How many buckets of sweat you think go along with
that dream?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
There's no counting.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Only you know you could.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
You could probably fill a goose roost with sweat that
you poured into that prairie.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Yes, sir, Yeah, every year. It's exactly out there working
all the time. Let's let's talk about the prairie.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Okay, that the big giant prairie that at one point
was pretty much all the way from Highway six and
nine ten all the way out to.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Where you are.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
It's shrunk a little bit, but it still supports a
lot of waterfowl.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Oh, yes, sir, it has shrunk over the years.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
I've seen it change with commercial buildings coming in land
being sold, houses, developments, and it just never seems to
end headed west. But this is the one of the
last areas are mostly in and development out here is
a little slow, and that's a good thing for the
waterfowl and the waterfowl hunters. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
And one of the things that you and I talked about,
especially while I was doing more listening than talking, was
the fact that there's more rice out.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
There than people might realize.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
And that's really not the reason the ducks aren't around,
or not the ducks, but the geese.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
The geese have changed over talk.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
About that a little bit, about how the water the
migration pattern has changed.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And it's not really a lack of rice. No, it's
not a lack of rice.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I all these years, and I know there's people going
to disagree with men that's their opinion. But I might
hear every year every day this is where I live,
this is what I do, and I talk to other outfitters.
I talked to some biologists, and I know that there
is some rice gone. I agree, But the overall pictures
there's rice fields out here every year. I mean hundreds
(03:20):
and thousands of acres that I see that's never touched
by goose. So it's not the rice. And they also
don't just eat rice. You'll see them in different fields
of milo, of corn, of even cotton fields. You know,
once it rains, they get into all these different fields
that's been plowed up. But the migration changed a little bit,
and I think a lot of it had to do
(03:41):
with the electronic calling.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Years ago. We warned them Larry Gore and.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Ken Jessic back in the day Texas Waterfowl Outfitters and
it was help Larry Gore, Kakey Prairie Outfitters, they all
was there at the meeting we had from Canada, Mexico
and you not the States and you know, the fisheries
and everything else would do with wildlife was there and
Kim Jesson stood up and said, hey, you need to
(04:08):
listen to this man. And but it was all because
they were trying to do something and did which should
have only lasted three years. With electronic calling, it pushed
the birds out. There was too much pressure, too quick
on them, and it changed everything because every guide, every
person out there the cabash of button become an instant
professional guide, and it just overran the geese and you
(04:31):
watched it immediately change everything.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So they didn't go where they was pressured as much.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
And once a mama and daddy goose takes the birds
only so far, they learned that, hey, we don't have
to go as far south. And they did find food
up in you know, rice fields and places up north
in Arkansas.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
A lot of that, I think David came from that
in the early back in when I started guiding, and
when you were you probably had several years under your
belt by them. But the bottom line was we show
to all these people up north that you can hunt
snow geese over decoys, that it does work, that people
will pay to do it. And they they left us
(05:09):
a lot of times saying, man, we're gonna go buy
some banquet cloth, we're gonna go buy some rags and
sticks and all that, and we're gonna do this up
the flyway. And just like you said that, these birds
aren't going to go an inch farther than they have
to go to survive the winter, because that's that's nature,
that's conservation of energy.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And we kind of brought some of that on ourselves,
didn't we.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Oh, sure we have, Yeah, we have over the over
the years, we brought it on ourselves. And you know
a little bit different in migration patterns and things have changed.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
And that's what expected.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Anything that you hunt, I don't care if it's an
elk hunt or deer hunt.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Things do change over time. Let's they you know, raised in.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
A pen well, and the migration pattern changed because we
changed where the We showed the people in the Midwest
that if they stopped these birds and fed them and
gave them a place to sleep, just like it's like
opening a motel on the highway between here and Dallas.
If somebody doesn't have to go all the way to
(06:10):
Dallas to do what they're going to do, they'll stop
at that motel and stick around as long as the
food and the water stay up right exactly.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Somebody says it was They said it's because of the
change of the rice.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
That's what I hear steal. But you look at it.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Back in the day, how many thousands and thousands of
geese they went all the way to the coast and
stayed on the coast of Marshes before the rice stuff
was even here. So it tells me that it's not
just the rice, it's everything else that's changed it mostly.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You know that that's a very good point, because for
the longest time I was convinced myself that losing all
the all the rice and losing all these big, big
farms to development where the problem. What what part do
you think development of that prairie place where there used
to be a beautiful field of some crop and now
(06:58):
there's a giant warehouse.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
How much? Which has that impacted the birds?
Speaker 4 (07:02):
I think it's impacted them a whole bunch over time,
But the biggest impact is the amount of rooster areas
where no one's messing with them.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Now.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, every person that has a let's call it a
water hole, they hunt it and they don't never get
these birds a rest Where we used to have roost
everywhere and it was all limits I've ever had them,
And there was hundreds of them everywhere. Some of them
was a mile apart at times. But now you can't
find one eleven, twelve miles apart.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
It's unbelievable. That's why we're building one for this year.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, wherever they are, somebody's gonna hunt around them.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
That's tough. Factly, that's really tough.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
How much of a buffer zone would you say is
necessary around an actual roost?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
God Like, take the vineyard for example.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Man, there was so much hunting pressure around there, But
the only reason that worked was because there were so
many birds that they were going to be there. Now,
every time those birds get out of bed in the morning,
there's somebody got one hundred full body decoys and a shotgun.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Oh exactly.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
And back then, I mean, if you was half a
mile away, you're okay. We used to hunt a hunted
on the vineyard, got opportunities several years ago, and we
was a quarter mile away more and it didn't seem
to bottom because they was used to it. But we
we try to get further than that. I would say
half a mile or more. Give them a chance to
get up, yeah, turn spend where they want to and
(08:27):
get out of there. But the farmers don't let you
build roos anymore like they did.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
They don't want pump water.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
It's the pumping of the water is the main key
to any waterfowl down here, and we've got to get
more water on the ground. I've talked to different waterfowl
people and ask them what are you doing for helping
down here? And I said, are you pumping water?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
No?
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Well that's that already tells me they don't know what
they're doing. I mean, that's my opinion. You've got a
pump water, you've got to have it for them. Yeah,
you know, the birds have no place to stay.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
From the tour you gave me and from what you
said you were gonna do with your water, you might
want to just buy a few boats, be a little
easier to get around, probably on your places.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Well, it's just about you've seen that close our duct
lines drop your stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Oh yeah, I understand. We're adding.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
If everything goes as plan right now, counting our roosteria,
we're gonna be adding close to five to six hundred
acres of water this year and another five to seven
hundred next year.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
It's not like you got you got roads that occasionally
bump into water. You got water that occasionally bumps into
a road. And uh, that's you know, that's that's what
it's water. They don't call it land foul hunting. They
call it waterfowl hunting. For a reason, man, and you've
you've got it kind of died in So what do
you what's your crystal ball say about this coming teal season?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
David, Now, well, there's two ways I look at it.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
One a lot of times, you know you got the
late migration when they come here, and that you always
have calendar birds, which we call calendar birds. I mean
they just go because they know it's time, without any weather,
without any push.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
It's just they're leaving. But I'd like to check.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
The full moon, because birds do move more on the
full moon towards that. But if it comes later, the
people that put all the water in and hold it
just gives us an extra week to hold the water,
which lets it's all the birds just stack in there.
If you can keep people off of it driving by them,
they're just heart holding there and nothing attracts ducks like
other ducks. So opening weekend of Tilsey's could be a
(10:35):
banner hunt for everybody that's out on the pray. I mean,
they could just stack in here and stay, but I've
seen them leave overnight. You catch a cold front and
a lot of those birds are already pushed. Oh yeah,
but I'm hoping that it looks like everything's gonna by
having that extra time because crops aren't out of the
fields all the time and early enough, and you're worried
about getting that done. They give us each farmer and
(10:57):
that time to pump more water before Tilsey actually arives.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
David Pruitt from Riceland Waterfowl Club on the show, I
got just a minute or so left, David, tell people
why kind of the way you explain to me why
you feel like you've got a really good system in
place that works so that everybody gets a fair chance
at what I'm gonna wrap quotes around the best blinds.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Well, first off, we don't run any guide. It hunts
on our club. This is members only, and we do
hunt every day of the week. But with enough property around,
we can rotate properties and keep everybody hunting. But we
have a fair system as far as people putting in
their blind Pixie give us our top six blind choices.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
And order preference.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
I go through the list and then work that jigsaw
pose out every day and then text them back say
you got this blind And then over the last six
years it's about eighty two and a quarter to eighty
three percent of getting your first and second blind choices. Well,
so we show two things with that. There's plenty of
blinds that choose from and not only when place is
killing birds. Everybody would be picking the same spot.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, you know it's funny.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
You and I have been doing this long enough, and
you especially to realize that because ducks or ducks, and
because geese or geese, there's no crystal ball, there's no
magic solution to exactly where you want to be. There
are gonna be some places that are probably gonna produce
better than others. But every now and then somebody will
(12:25):
go out of the I know it happened with us
as guides. Somebody go out of there thinking, oh man,
I just got to burned. My guys aren't going to
do anything. And there's a little wind shift, or maybe
there's cloud cover when everybody thought there was gonna be sun,
and all of a sudden you just can't shake them
out with a stick, you know, they're just all over you.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
So yeah, it depends on who's calling and how the
decourser sets.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
A lot of it depends on what pine.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, I'll pick a scab right here. It depends on
how much they're calling too, doesn't it.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Most people need and even myself, I say, David, with
the call back in your pocket.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Let the decoys do the work, and we kill birds.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Oh my gosh, my rule when I was when people
would ask me, how do I know when to call
and when not to call? Said, when the bird's coming
to me, coming at me, I shut up, And when
it's going away if you if you can't see that,
if you get if you can see more of the
south end of the duck than the north end, then
call away.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
If you're seeing the north end of the duck, let.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
It keep coming, you know, as long as this keep coming,
let it get as close as it wants.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Don't pull up your guns.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Movement is the biggest keecher, Yeah, which scares off more
birds than anything.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Point too. That's a very good point, man, boy.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
You know what We're gonna have to do another one
on just just like decoy setting and when to call,
when not to call, how to how.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
And when to move around. One of the things I
like when when big.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Groups of penttails are working, I always only called the
lead bird, that was my bird, the one in the front,
because all the rest of them are following him. And
if you just you kind of call the lead duck.
If the lead duck's going away, but there's still some
kind of circling close. It's okay to give another little
pop because you can turn him. You just get the
whole wat of them in there. And conversely, if if
(14:15):
that lead duck is coming at you, but some of
them are breaking off and leaving, just let that lead
duck come on and bring all the ones he's got
with him.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
It was just exactly.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
It only takes about thirty years to learn that. Yeah here, God,
all right, David.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Well, we're gonna talk again.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
The closer we get to duck season, the more I'm
gonna be talking to you, man, So just be ready.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Sure, And I thought, anybody wants to then come out.
I'm going to show property today to some people that
wants to join the club.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
That's all we're about.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
I want them to look and see and be comfortable
with their own decision of what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
How far blinds are a part too.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Anybody comes out there and gets half the tour I got,
they're gonna kind of understand who you are, what you're
doing for waterfowl hunting out there. And I asked my
listeners when I'm talking about you, that if you had
a kind of a so so duck season last year.
Raise your hand, and I just envisioned all these hands
going up because I got the phone calls, I got
the emails. It wasn't that good for a lot of
(15:09):
people last year. But your guys did okay, didn't they.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Well, we had groups that was in the four hundreds,
five hundreds. We've had groups, say David, we had sixteen
limits shoots for all of us, and we're still killing birds.
I know that there's off days and bad hunts. That's
just no matter what you're doing. But my guy seemed
to stay on birds four.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Or five hundred ducks. Those guys have jobs.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
I guess they.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
All right, dude, I see you man, all right, thanks
for that. Yeah, well, thank you and Jeff for the
tour or two.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
I really, I genuinely learned a lot from you guys.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I really did. I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Well, you're more than welcome anytime.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
I'll careful what you wait for. Man, all right, thanks dude, idio.
Let's see what a great guy. He's so genuine too,
he really is, and very kind of humble about what
he knows about waterfowl, but he does know. If you
ever had a question to ask, give him a call
and ask him
I have on the phone right now, and I'm going
to punch him up in just a second. The man
with whom I toured me, David Pruett and Jeff out
there from Riceland Waterfowl Club. We took a nice little tour. Well,
I got a nice little tour of the prairie. They
were just rolling over roads. They rolled over a thousand times,
probably taking care of the property that's going to be
(00:22):
duck hunted this coming season.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
David, how's it going out there today this morning?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Oh? Doing great? How about you?
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm all right, man, I really am. I was so
grateful to you. I don't know if you realize how
much fun I had just riding around and talking about
waterfowl hunting and talking about where the water is going
to be and all of that, because it just brings
back so many many good memories for me from But
I hate to say back in the day, but you
know what I'm talking about. You really do, don't you.
(00:52):
I understand fifty years for you back in the day.
Huh Now this makes my fifth year. Yes, sir, When
you started, when you took a deep breath at some
point when you were you were still teenager, when you
opened up, weren't you.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Yes, sir, I started out on Lake Conrad, and I
quit high school to do what I'm doing. My dad
more or less said, boys, you think you're good enough,
go get them, And I'm the second longest running person
still out here.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You went and got them, didn't you?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Man? Oh Man is still here?
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Dude?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
At that point, when you first started that first year,
did you ever think it would be a fifty year deal?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
No, you never have.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
You have hopes and dreams, but you never realized how
far you can carry your dreams until you go out
there and try to pursue them.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
How many buckets of sweat you think go along with
that dream?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
There's no counting.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Only you know you could.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
You could probably fill a goose roost with sweat that
you poured into that prairie.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Yes, sir, Yeah, every year. It's exactly out there working
all the time. Let's let's talk about the prairie.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Okay, that the big giant prairie that at one point
was pretty much all the way from Highway six and
nine ten all the way out to.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Where you are.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
It's shrunk a little bit, but it still supports a
lot of waterfowl.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Oh, yes, sir, it has shrunk over the years.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
I've seen it change with commercial buildings coming in land
being sold, houses, developments, and it just never seems to
end headed west. But this is the one of the
last areas are mostly in and development out here is
a little slow, and that's a good thing for the
waterfowl and the waterfowl hunters. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
And one of the things that you and I talked about,
especially while I was doing more listening than talking, was
the fact that there's more rice out.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
There than people might realize.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
And that's really not the reason the ducks aren't around,
or not the ducks, but the geese.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
The geese have changed over talk.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
About that a little bit, about how the water the
migration pattern has changed.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And it's not really a lack of rice. No, it's
not a lack of rice.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I all these years, and I know there's people going
to disagree with men that's their opinion. But I might
hear every year every day this is where I live,
this is what I do, and I talk to other outfitters.
I talked to some biologists, and I know that there
is some rice gone. I agree, But the overall pictures
there's rice fields out here every year. I mean hundreds
(03:20):
and thousands of acres that I see that's never touched
by goose. So it's not the rice. And they also
don't just eat rice. You'll see them in different fields
of milo, of corn, of even cotton fields. You know,
once it rains, they get into all these different fields
that's been plowed up. But the migration changed a little bit,
and I think a lot of it had to do
(03:41):
with the electronic calling.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Years ago. We warned them Larry Gore and.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Ken Jessic back in the day Texas Waterfowl Outfitters and
it was help Larry Gore, Kakey Prairie Outfitters, they all
was there at the meeting we had from Canada, Mexico
and you not the States and you know, the fisheries
and everything else would do with wildlife was there and
Kim Jesson stood up and said, hey, you need to
(04:08):
listen to this man. And but it was all because
they were trying to do something and did which should
have only lasted three years. With electronic calling, it pushed
the birds out. There was too much pressure, too quick
on them, and it changed everything because every guide, every
person out there the cabash of button become an instant
professional guide, and it just overran the geese and you
(04:31):
watched it immediately change everything.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So they didn't go where they was pressured as much.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
And once a mama and daddy goose takes the birds
only so far, they learned that, hey, we don't have
to go as far south. And they did find food
up in you know, rice fields and places up north
in Arkansas.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
A lot of that, I think David came from that
in the early back in when I started guiding, and
when you were you probably had several years under your
belt by them. But the bottom line was we show
to all these people up north that you can hunt
snow geese over decoys, that it does work, that people
will pay to do it. And they they left us
(05:09):
a lot of times saying, man, we're gonna go buy
some banquet cloth, we're gonna go buy some rags and
sticks and all that, and we're gonna do this up
the flyway. And just like you said that, these birds
aren't going to go an inch farther than they have
to go to survive the winter, because that's that's nature,
that's conservation of energy.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
And we kind of brought some of that on ourselves,
didn't we.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Oh, sure we have, Yeah, we have over the over
the years, we brought it on ourselves. And you know
a little bit different in migration patterns and things have changed.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
And that's what expected.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Anything that you hunt, I don't care if it's an
elk hunt or deer hunt.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Things do change over time. Let's they you know, raised in.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
A pen well, and the migration pattern changed because we
changed where the We showed the people in the Midwest
that if they stopped these birds and fed them and
gave them a place to sleep, just like it's like
opening a motel on the highway between here and Dallas.
If somebody doesn't have to go all the way to
(06:10):
Dallas to do what they're going to do, they'll stop
at that motel and stick around as long as the
food and the water stay up right exactly.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Somebody says it was They said it's because of the
change of the rice.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
That's what I hear steal. But you look at it.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Back in the day, how many thousands and thousands of
geese they went all the way to the coast and
stayed on the coast of Marshes before the rice stuff
was even here. So it tells me that it's not
just the rice, it's everything else that's changed it mostly.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You know that that's a very good point, because for
the longest time I was convinced myself that losing all
the all the rice and losing all these big, big
farms to development where the problem. What what part do
you think development of that prairie place where there used
to be a beautiful field of some crop and now
(06:58):
there's a giant warehouse.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
How much? Which has that impacted the birds?
Speaker 4 (07:02):
I think it's impacted them a whole bunch over time,
But the biggest impact is the amount of rooster areas
where no one's messing with them.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Now.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, every person that has a let's call it a
water hole, they hunt it and they don't never get
these birds a rest Where we used to have roost
everywhere and it was all limits I've ever had them,
And there was hundreds of them everywhere. Some of them
was a mile apart at times. But now you can't
find one eleven, twelve miles apart.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
It's unbelievable. That's why we're building one for this year.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, wherever they are, somebody's gonna hunt around them.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
That's tough. Factly, that's really tough.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
How much of a buffer zone would you say is
necessary around an actual roost?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
God Like, take the vineyard for example.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Man, there was so much hunting pressure around there, But
the only reason that worked was because there were so
many birds that they were going to be there. Now,
every time those birds get out of bed in the morning,
there's somebody got one hundred full body decoys and a shotgun.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Oh exactly.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
And back then, I mean, if you was half a
mile away, you're okay. We used to hunt a hunted
on the vineyard, got opportunities several years ago, and we
was a quarter mile away more and it didn't seem
to bottom because they was used to it. But we
we try to get further than that. I would say
half a mile or more. Give them a chance to
get up, yeah, turn spend where they want to and
(08:27):
get out of there. But the farmers don't let you
build roos anymore like they did.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
They don't want pump water.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
It's the pumping of the water is the main key
to any waterfowl down here, and we've got to get
more water on the ground. I've talked to different waterfowl
people and ask them what are you doing for helping
down here? And I said, are you pumping water?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
No?
Speaker 4 (08:51):
Well that's that already tells me they don't know what
they're doing. I mean, that's my opinion. You've got a
pump water, you've got to have it for them. Yeah,
you know, the birds have no place to stay.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
From the tour you gave me and from what you
said you were gonna do with your water, you might
want to just buy a few boats, be a little
easier to get around, probably on your places.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Well, it's just about you've seen that close our duct
lines drop your stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Oh yeah, I understand. We're adding.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
If everything goes as plan right now, counting our roosteria,
we're gonna be adding close to five to six hundred
acres of water this year and another five to seven
hundred next year.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
It's not like you got you got roads that occasionally
bump into water. You got water that occasionally bumps into
a road. And uh, that's you know, that's that's what
it's water. They don't call it land foul hunting. They
call it waterfowl hunting. For a reason, man, and you've
you've got it kind of died in So what do
you what's your crystal ball say about this coming teal season?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
David, Now, well, there's two ways I look at it.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
One a lot of times, you know you got the
late migration when they come here, and that you always
have calendar birds, which we call calendar birds. I mean
they just go because they know it's time, without any weather,
without any push.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
It's just they're leaving. But I'd like to check.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
The full moon, because birds do move more on the
full moon towards that. But if it comes later, the
people that put all the water in and hold it
just gives us an extra week to hold the water,
which lets it's all the birds just stack in there.
If you can keep people off of it driving by them,
they're just heart holding there and nothing attracts ducks like
other ducks. So opening weekend of Tilsey's could be a
(10:35):
banner hunt for everybody that's out on the pray. I mean,
they could just stack in here and stay, but I've
seen them leave overnight. You catch a cold front and
a lot of those birds are already pushed. Oh yeah,
but I'm hoping that it looks like everything's gonna by
having that extra time because crops aren't out of the
fields all the time and early enough, and you're worried
about getting that done. They give us each farmer and
(10:57):
that time to pump more water before Tilsey actually arives.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
David Pruitt from Riceland Waterfowl Club on the show, I
got just a minute or so left, David, tell people
why kind of the way you explain to me why
you feel like you've got a really good system in
place that works so that everybody gets a fair chance
at what I'm gonna wrap quotes around the best blinds.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Well, first off, we don't run any guide. It hunts
on our club. This is members only, and we do
hunt every day of the week. But with enough property around,
we can rotate properties and keep everybody hunting. But we
have a fair system as far as people putting in
their blind Pixie give us our top six blind choices.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
And order preference.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
I go through the list and then work that jigsaw
pose out every day and then text them back say
you got this blind And then over the last six
years it's about eighty two and a quarter to eighty
three percent of getting your first and second blind choices. Well,
so we show two things with that. There's plenty of
blinds that choose from and not only when place is
killing birds. Everybody would be picking the same spot.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, you know it's funny.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
You and I have been doing this long enough, and
you especially to realize that because ducks or ducks, and
because geese or geese, there's no crystal ball, there's no
magic solution to exactly where you want to be. There
are gonna be some places that are probably gonna produce
better than others. But every now and then somebody will
(12:25):
go out of the I know it happened with us
as guides. Somebody go out of there thinking, oh man,
I just got to burned. My guys aren't going to
do anything. And there's a little wind shift, or maybe
there's cloud cover when everybody thought there was gonna be sun,
and all of a sudden you just can't shake them
out with a stick, you know, they're just all over you.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
So yeah, it depends on who's calling and how the
decourser sets.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
A lot of it depends on what pine.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, I'll pick a scab right here. It depends on
how much they're calling too, doesn't it.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Most people need and even myself, I say, David, with
the call back in your pocket.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Let the decoys do the work, and we kill birds.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Oh my gosh, my rule when I was when people
would ask me, how do I know when to call
and when not to call? Said, when the bird's coming
to me, coming at me, I shut up, And when
it's going away if you if you can't see that,
if you get if you can see more of the
south end of the duck than the north end, then
call away.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
If you're seeing the north end of the duck, let.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
It keep coming, you know, as long as this keep coming,
let it get as close as it wants.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Don't pull up your guns.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Movement is the biggest keecher, Yeah, which scares off more
birds than anything.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Point too. That's a very good point, man, boy.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
You know what We're gonna have to do another one
on just just like decoy setting and when to call,
when not to call, how to how.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
And when to move around. One of the things I
like when when big.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Groups of penttails are working, I always only called the
lead bird, that was my bird, the one in the front,
because all the rest of them are following him. And
if you just you kind of call the lead duck.
If the lead duck's going away, but there's still some
kind of circling close. It's okay to give another little
pop because you can turn him. You just get the
whole wat of them in there. And conversely, if if
(14:15):
that lead duck is coming at you, but some of
them are breaking off and leaving, just let that lead
duck come on and bring all the ones he's got
with him.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
It was just exactly.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
It only takes about thirty years to learn that. Yeah here, God,
all right, David.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Well, we're gonna talk again.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
The closer we get to duck season, the more I'm
gonna be talking to you, man, So just be ready.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
Sure, And I thought, anybody wants to then come out.
I'm going to show property today to some people that
wants to join the club.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
That's all we're about.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
I want them to look and see and be comfortable
with their own decision of what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
How far blinds are a part too.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Anybody comes out there and gets half the tour I got,
they're gonna kind of understand who you are, what you're
doing for waterfowl hunting out there. And I asked my
listeners when I'm talking about you, that if you had
a kind of a so so duck season last year.
Raise your hand, and I just envisioned all these hands
going up because I got the phone calls, I got
the emails. It wasn't that good for a lot of
(15:09):
people last year. But your guys did okay, didn't they.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Well, we had groups that was in the four hundreds,
five hundreds. We've had groups, say David, we had sixteen
limits shoots for all of us, and we're still killing birds.
I know that there's off days and bad hunts. That's
just no matter what you're doing. But my guy seemed
to stay on birds four.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Or five hundred ducks. Those guys have jobs.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
I guess they.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
All right, dude, I see you man, all right, thanks
for that. Yeah, well, thank you and Jeff for the
tour or two.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
I really, I genuinely learned a lot from you guys.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I really did. I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Well, you're more than welcome anytime.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
I'll careful what you wait for. Man, all right, thanks dude, idio.
Let's see what a great guy. He's so genuine too,
he really is, and very kind of humble about what
he knows about waterfowl, but he does know. If you
ever had a question to ask, give him a call
and ask him
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.