Fan Outdoors: Billy and Bob’s Rambling Segment, Stan Tekiela

The Captain is back with Bob St Pierre and is joined by Stan Tekiela!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
From the fish filled Midwest lakes to the deep woods
of the North Upland prairies filled with pheasants, to the
whistling wings of duck ponds. This is Saturday Morning, Fan Outdoors,
your show for hunting and fishing tips, topics and conversations.
You can also send us a question or opinion by
emailing us booth at kfean dot com. Here's your host,

(00:38):
the Fans, Captain Billy Hildegram.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it is
Saturday morning. We have made it to yet one more weekend.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Not just one more weekend. It's a special one.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
A special one more weekend. That is the voice of
the man who is a real specialist when it comes
to tree ruts. Here we go.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
This is gonna be a special episode of Fan Outdoors,
is it?

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:20):
That was probably that had to be a cabin cast
when because you had because you had dropped and I
was left to sputter talk about something on the spur
of the moment. And yes, I talked about tree ruts. Yep,
do you remember what I was referring to? This is
this is what sixteen years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I can't remember the specific if I could just remember.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
The I remember pretty specifically. I don't know why my
mind went to this. When you dropped at the cabin,
I was in studio and we had no guest. We
were just chatting, so I had unlimited space to fill
with no one to talk to. And this was like

(02:08):
maybe the first time it had ever happened to me.
And uh, for some reason I had my mind went
to aspen colonies, which happens to be there's an aspen
colony because aspen trees share the same root and a
lot of different A lot of the trees share the

(02:29):
same The largest organism on the planet. I can't believe
you got me talking tree roots again, right out again,
I have no interest in The largest living organism on
the planet is a colony of aspen in Colorado. So
that's why my mind went to tree Well, I don't
know why my mind went to tree roots, but that's
what I was different.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
All right, Well, we we're excited for you.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
He had bored you once again. We didn't even lose
we didn't even lose connection.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
No, we didn't. But Bob was talking about a special weekend,
a special Saturday beginning at nine o'clock and.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
That is because it's the Minnesota Peasant Opener, correct, correct,
And it's also the Resident Peasant Open in South Dakota
and the North Dakota Pheasant Opener.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
So there take that.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
So there's a lot of stuff going on if you're
on the airwaves listening to fan out.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
And when I was in I went to town yesterday
to get okay, what I got. I got some donuts
for breakfast and yeah they are yeah, And that was
basically it. But when I was there, I noticed a
number of dogs that people were airing their dogs out

(03:48):
and they were at gas stations and there was kind
of a free space and there was a couple of
dogs there and it was people are obviously going. There
was one guy that had a really really nice looking
Brittany and he was walking him and just coming down
this hill where I had parked. And when I was

(04:10):
walking by, I complimented about the nice dog because it
was a big bread a little like Chevy, and he said, well,
thank you, he said, but he doesn't hunt, and I said, oh,
that's too bad. Well he says, that's not really true.
He's never had a chance, he says, because I quit
hunting and I didn't go into that. But he said,

(04:32):
this is my third one, and I had two that
were phenomenal hunters. And he said one of them, that's
all he wanted to do was hunt. He would rather
hunt than eat. And I thought, well, that's I don't
know if that's mine or not. But he said he

(04:52):
was hunting all the time and he was really really
good and died about when he was about ten years old,
and so I thought. But then I saw some labs
and I saw a short hair and a wife ariner,
and that's a breed. I don't see a whole lot.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, there's a two of them at the Pheasants Forever office,
so I see them on occasion. I haven't I haven't
actually hunted with those pups before, but they're they're in.
There's a few out there.

Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
They're a big run on dog, do, aren't they.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
I think? You know, they're like many pointing breeds. They
run a little bigger than some.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
And I've been out. We'll talk about this this morning too.
I've been out a number of times when Bob Bob
has been swinging from state to state, and but I've
just been out walking and trying to get my legs
back into shape because I've taken for granted that I've
always just been able to get up and walk, and

(05:54):
that ain't the case anymore, as I've found out last year.
And it took me, uh, it took me probably a
couple of weeks. And I go about every third day
go for a walk, and you're walking in the grass.
That's totally totally different than just walking down a sidewalk
if people just go for a walk.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Peasant hunting is totally different walking than hunting sharp tails
or hunting draft grouse. I'm prepared to be sore at
the end of today.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
And one of the things I learned in talking with
my doctor was I've begun carrying my wallet instead of
my back pocket. I put it in my front pocket
because he says you're sitting on a mussel and that
you sacarilia. I can't remember what it is, but you're
sitting on a mussel and it pinches it. And sure

(06:47):
enough I had my right knee was really, really sore.
And after a couple of weeks of taking my wallet
out of my back pocket, I got by with that
for twenty years. Never bothered me. But I just took
it out and put it in my front pocket. Oh,
I gotta find my wallet all the time. That's awful.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
So sitting on your wallet can cause your knee to
be sorry?

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Is that? I have no idea why. I am not
that not that wise. But I took it out and
I'll keep it in my front pocket, or I don't
keep I don't carry it, I leave it in the car.
My knee feels great now now, whether that's in shape
or whatever it is, I have no idea either.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Do you have it? George to Stanza wallet? Do you
know what that means? A big one, A giant one.
Think you could fit like a bible in your wallet?

Speaker 2 (07:39):
No, no, it's not all money either, so I can
already tell you that. Yeah, no, not at all. In fact,
I this one's wearing out. I'll have to replace it
soon because it's turned into strings. But sometimes from time
to time I clean it out because I've got some
receipts or something in there I think I should keep.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
But I for your expense report, Yeah I have to
do that.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, I have a you have an expense report?

Speaker 5 (08:10):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Well yeah. Nowadays though, you just take a photo of
your receipt and throw the receipt away. Oh, Okay, then
you email your RECEIPTO. Yeah, the joys of expense reports captains.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Ye, I don't know. That's my expense report is still
in my wallet when it's empty, I need to report
I needed to refill. But anyway, and this is gosh,
I don't know how many years we've done this, but
this is kind of an anniversary.

Speaker 4 (08:41):
Or the.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
How many years that we've opened the pheasant season here?

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Oh boy, I want to say it's seventeen something something
in that neighborhood that is. I think I started doing
radio with you the first year I got Trammel, and
I think that was eight. And I want to say
I came up here with no I hunted by myself

(09:09):
on the opening with Trammels, So maybe nine. So I
think it was the second year because I remember distinctly
I came up this direction by myself with Trammel, and
it is you know, there's a wildlife area just to
the west of this, like between here and Alec that

(09:29):
I go to. I went with Trammel just randomly, and
I had gotten her first two roosters ever, and then
when I had been coming here with you with my
subsequent dogs, three dogs in a row have pointed and
retrieved there, which means I actually hit it their first
three first.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
There's another story we could retell well.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
I'm sure that I'll come up at some point, but
my first three bird dogs got pointed and retrieved their
first roosters within a hundred yards of each other on
the exact same wildlife area. You know, probably it over
the course of seven years apart. My most recent pop

(10:13):
Gitch did not get her first rooster here, she actually
got it on.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
A rooster road trip.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
But winter it will be making her pheasant hunting debut
this morning. So at some point I'm gonna sneak away
from you, that's fine, and go take a walk down
memory lane and think about my bird dugs in the
first first roosters and see if I can put winter
on one in that wildlife area.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
And if you're listening and you're either going pheasant hunting
or you are a pheasant hunter yourself, the dog's first
bird is something that's very memorable, Oh gosh, And I
really don't care if it's the first duck a water
retrieve or if it's first fez and to the first
anything is a memorable landmark of an occasion because some

(11:08):
of the things that I have learned over time is
that it's no secret either bird dogs don't live the
life expectancy we want them to because they're more short lived,
and that's pretty important. It gives you the opportunity experience
different dogs and different dog personalities and realize that they

(11:31):
truly are individuals. Really really are no two dogs that
I've had have ever been to say that the truth.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
They are so different, yes, and how you interact with
them or how they interact with you is so different.
It makes me giggle.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
You know.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
They Yeah, some of them are just goofs. Others are
all business. They have different talents. You have some super
athletic can stretch you out for a mile in summer.
Stylists they go on point with the tail held high
and the head and head held high and the tail
straight up. Others are just goofy, you know. They nuzzle

(12:14):
India and they're your best buddies. Gosh, they're awesome.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
And each dog, when they get on a scent, react
to it different.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Uh, it's that you've got to learn that there's a
dog guy, gal, a dog person. Each dog is a
little bit different, and you've got to figure that out.
They can't sit down and write on a notebook. Here's
what I do when and what I'm what I got
you when I found it.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
It's always equate it. I'm not a big poker player,
but it's trying to read tells from somebody and the
way a dog's tail vibrates. Their wags, Uh, you know
what they you know, when they pick up scent, how
they move, what they you know, are they quartering their speed?

(13:05):
Pick up? Each one is a little bit different.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
And when they lose a cent, they always and this
is multiple dogs I've had, they'll make a big circle
and come back back and try to pick it back up,
pick it up again.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, but I I can.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
I so vividly remember I was so sure I knew
where that bird was, and the dang dog wouldn't stay there. Yeah,
and it kept wanting to go off, and I call
her back.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
And I got.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
Right here.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
I talked with Tory McCormick. There's an article in this
week's Outdoor News about that very thing. One of the
biggest mistakes, particularly young dogs opening weekend is that you
knack a rooster down and they're tough right there, and
you think they go down in a heap of you
think I crushed it, and and you run into where

(14:01):
you think the bird is and you're pointing in the
grass and find it, find it, and the dog spinning around,
and you're screwing up the scent because you're stomping all over,
like slow down, let your dog. States. When you knock
a bird down, stay back, let the dog go to
that area. Don't screw it up with your scent, because

(14:23):
you know you've been eating donuts and coffee all morning
and you get all kinds of stuff on your boots.
Just stay back and let your dog figure it out.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
There was a wildlife here. It was in the evening
and Chad and I were together. We saw this rooster
down the edge of the public crowd, the edge of
the grass. So we got out and I think it
was Snap. I know it was Snap. Walk down there,
and the bird got up and Chad shot and just
absolutely hammered it. There was a puff of feathers and

(14:55):
it came down just in a pile of gunk, and
a Snap ran over there and she took off, and
I thought to myself, damn dog, what are you doing?
And she was gone into the brush. She just took off,
and Chad and I are stumping around looking for it
and thinking that maybe just crawled under some grass and

(15:17):
everything was good. About five minutes later, that little dog,
and she's done that to me before, a little dog
came back with a very much a lie rooster in
her mouth, brought it over and held onto it tight.
Chad and I just laughed at each other, thinking, boy,

(15:38):
you guys are a couple of knuckleheads. And I'm sure,
I'm sure the dog caught the same thing.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
Yeah, I was guy. Oh they're so special. When you
have a dog that does that, that you know, gets
on the trail, it makes the five minute retrieve and
you know it comes prancing back over the hill. You
know you got a special pump when that.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
And for Snap's first bird, it was out at the
wildlife area. Were going to and I knocked a bird down.
It wasn't real hard. Snap took off and got where
and she took off. There was a cornfield right there.
She took off into the corn and I thought, oh,
my goodness, gracious, I've lost my dog. And I have

(16:22):
visions of never seeing her again because I've taken dogs.
One was a short hair I found a dog that
got lost in the corn and came out the other side,
and I didn't know what to do, and I stayed
there and stayed there, and somebody finally drove in and
picked up the dog. But Snap took off into this corn.

(16:45):
It seemed like she was gone for hours, and I
know it wasn't, but I was so distraught and thinking
I'd lost my dog and I'm not going to find her,
and how am I going to do this? And where
will I go to look for And I'm screaming my
lungs out until I'm a horse. That little dog came
out of that cord and that was her first retrieve
and very very proud and not no, no prouder than

(17:10):
I was. I mean, it's one of those deals to
you puff your chest out. I went around. That's my dog.
Oh it's fun. Hey, we do have to take a pause,
and let's take that first pause. We'll be back with
yet some more ramblings of Billy and Bob. Is that

(17:32):
the name of fan out Doings? Now? I have no idea,
just came to me new name. But Stan Tequila will
be along also this morning, and we will chat with
Stan about all things my nature and see what he's
been up to. Also, last couple of times we've talked
with Stan, he's been on some various animal rutside right

(17:55):
rut times a year he's been doing what he's been
following him and photographic.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Okay, stander is a different life than you and ideal.
He's been on rot cycles. But it would you say,
this is Billy and Bob's.

Speaker 6 (18:16):
Ramblings might be here we go and from all like
here we go, but we are going to take that
pause and we will be right back with more after this.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
I'm getting some greed.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
I'm getting a lot of grief.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
People have noticed Billion Bob's ramblings and it was not
intended to be that way. It just kind of happened.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Is that gonna be a new segment Billion Bob's Ramblings,
first segment of the show at six am? That would
be wonderful.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, I've got I've got all kinds of things to
open the show with, but I didn't use any of.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Them, didn't yet. All kinds of show prep today huh oh.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, I've learned a lesson. Was tree roots on there?
There were no tree wes.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
Stan's escapades on there there's none of none of that.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
No, okay, I did get a I got a photograph
from a friend, Steve Kuiper, and Steve and I have
opened a number of pheasant seasons together, and there's one
with Snap and me hugging her. And that was another.
I don't know if it was opener, but there were
a group of us together because we took a picture

(19:59):
on the end of the hailgate with birds. And but
it was out at public land and here comes one
of the other the.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
Other corner aims, yeah, and we have a golden in
the mix.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Now, yeah, we do an orange sweatshirt. And that would
be Eric, my son Eric. That is so pat rivers.
If you're listening, Eric is here too. And but there
was we were sitting together in a parking area and
a bird came and flew and lit right to the

(20:33):
edge of the edge of the road and cattails and
saw it go down. Brian Zustiak was there also, and
I just I said, Brian, bird, Yeah, I saw him.
I saw him. Well, my gun was right there. I
had my gun there. I said, here, take this and
go shoot him. And so he walked down the road
and the bird got up and flew away from the

(20:53):
road over the wildlife area. Brian shot the bird dropped,
but he dropped in cattails, the thickest, guggiest cattails that
you could find, and they happened to be right off
the road. Snap took off into the water, went out there,
swam out, got that bird, remember that one.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
And brought it back.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
And I was so proud of her for doing that.
That was her first water retrieve, I think. And there
it was so much fun. But a person remembers that
and it sticks vividly. There was a bell who died
very suddenly on me. She had just come of her own.

(21:41):
I think she was three or four years old.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
I was thinking she was two.

Speaker 4 (21:46):
Maybe she was two.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Okay, because we were out we were out by west
of the West of the Tower by Cooper.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
Anybody try to Yeah, don't don't bother looking in your
on it ex folks that these are needs that are
not relevant to Yeah, the tower's gone. West of the
Tower is still there. The West Coopers haven't lived there
for decades.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
No, No, but this is this is actually west of
Cooper's a little pothole there and we didn't get to
the pothole. We were walking along the edge and the
bird got up and I knocked it down and winged it,
and the bird was running and birds that run in plowing.
Oh my goodness, gracious, all you see is dirt flying

(22:33):
with a dog behind him. And it made ninety turns
and just zip zip zip got into the grass and
Bell went down there, crabbed it, brought it back. That
was her first real retrieve and her last real retrieve.
She had her to the vet and she had a

(22:57):
tumor that we we began treating it for a bladder infection,
and we were in the basement and the tour must
have burst and she screamed, made out the most blood
curdling scream, and I got down on the floor to
console her, thinking that was just something going on? What

(23:19):
was She literally crawled, put her head on my thigh
and died. And it was real hard. I cried and cried.
I tried to give her blood mouth to mouth, and Danielle,
Eric's wife, she was right there and we were trying
to revive her and called Dennis Gallenberg and he had closed,

(23:43):
but he came back and she was gone by then.
But it was a pretty speedy trip to Barrington, oaks
and Elk River from my house, and those things happened.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
As you know, yeah they do. Today is meant for
happier times.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
It because I was.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Happy and sad. So last night as I was listening
not less, say, I was sitting in bed, the lights
were off, you were sawing some logs in the room
next to me. That would be me, and I was
I was watching the Tigers lose in fifteen innings last night.
They got knocked out of the playoffs in fifteen innings.

(24:27):
But as I was watching that on my phone, I
was thinking about, you know, different different birds of openers
past and like you mentioned before, those first roosters that
your dogs get, Yeah you can. I can play them
back in my mind, like you know, some of the
most important moments in my life. I can I remember exactly,

(24:51):
you know, if there was sun or wind or clouds,
the direction I was walking, and exactly what happened, you know,
Just it's a play by play that and you'll never forget.
And every time, you know, you lay down to go
to bed on the opener eve and you play back
a couple of those just makes you smile and think

(25:14):
maybe maybe one of those moments is in store for
a young pup, you know my winter pup this morning
fingers crossed. You know we can have a memory that
will last forever. Yes, everybody knows where I'm gonna go try. Yeah,
I'm not gonna put the actual name out there for

(25:35):
people to join me. But there is a wildlife area
between Sock Center and Alexandria. It's a big one. Sometimes
there are a cattle on it, which drives the captain.
That's crazy. Drives them crazy because it's not the easiest
walk in the cattle kind of No, it's got your
bogs bogs and they create potholes. But for some reason

(26:00):
there's a there's a stretch there on the I guess
it would be the north side of that wildyfe area,
that one hundred yards where magic has happened.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Do you remember either ASA's first bird or Calas.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
You know he doesn't have a microphone.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
I was going to give him mine that spot that
Bob was just talking about.

Speaker 7 (26:30):
I had out there in her first woodcock was out
there and I didn't know what it was. Right out
of the gate and Flushed went back down and that
was a woodcock walked over Flushing again, missed it dog
looks at me.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Followed the third time dog flushed.

Speaker 7 (26:47):
The third time I shot it, and then the dog
went up to it and she didn't want to retrieve it.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, that's that's not unusual either because something about them,
the sound or the smell or the feel or something.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Yeah, there's a lot of dogs that just don't like
to have timber doodles in their mouths.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
I haven't had that problem with my my short hairs,
but I know a lot of dogs that, you know,
they won't even pick them up, or they'll pick them
up in the minute they get to their owner. They
just spit them on. They don't make me do that again.
I have some hunting buddies that treat treat eating them
like that, so give them to me because I love them.

(27:34):
But yeah, that's one that's kind of a fun thing
about pheasant opener in this area where you can get
a timberdoodle pheasant mixed bag and some of those uh
you know, willow thickets that we go to point, you know,
poking around looking for roosters, and a woodcock blushes out.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
And a couple of times that has really saved the
day for me when I've chad and his buddy came out.
We came across, would come and we ended up shooting
a lot of shells at them. The boy shot a
couple of boxes of shells because they did They wouldn't
didn't hit them, but they wouldn't go that far. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Would you expect a rooster to come out of the
grass and a timber doodle flies. That's a kind of
like what a turkey flush is. It's nothing like a
there's a there's a Parker factor there as were We say.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
That's there's nothing like a turkey when you're expecting a peasant.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
As you know, I'm well aware of that. It's been
captured in camera multiple times.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
And there is nothing when you're expecting a pheasant or
the dog come back with a pheasant and get blocked
with a deer.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Yeah, and knocked down, ran over. I've had many close
calls until what was that the opener twenty twenty three
where I actually got ran over in a cattail slew
after knocking down a rooster and being on the trail
of that BIRDEP and dude came.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
We did.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
Yeah, the dog went for the bird, and I think
the deer was flushed out by the dog coming into
the cattails to retrieve that bird, and I was going
down a deer trail because I knew I hadn't supposed
to be on his trail. Well clearly, because thankfully it
was a she, because if it was a he, I

(29:22):
think I would have gotten a little injured.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
He would probably have gone out of the out of
the swamp on on the head of a deer.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah, mom, look what I got. It made A couple
of years prior to that, a buddy of mine in
North Dakota, Christopher, we were hunting sharp tails and he
went into a cattail, slew to get across to some
high ground and encountered a cow I think it was
a cow moose. And thankfully that one didn't run down

(29:53):
the same trail, it turned and ran the other way,
because that would have been a different sort of crack block.

Speaker 5 (30:00):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Wow, Well, we the time goes by really fun billion
Bob's ramblings two point zero.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Well we are with a little bit of Eric on
the sign.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah. Well, the guy that was studying various ruts is
going to be up next. Oh okay, so we'll take
that pause and we'll be back with mister Stan tequila.
Find him at nature smart dot com and he will
be with us. He'll be with us for a while,
and then we'll get back to Billy and Bob.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
We're gonna go from routs to ramblings.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
This morning are so everything is good. Nine o'clock we
will be out on some public land searching for the
wiley rooster. And I think what people are going to
find today is a lot. That's what I have found.
Everything I have seen our little brown feathered balls of.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
Flying some youngsters. After we get there with Stan, I'm
interested to hear what you've been seeing, because you've been
out scouting and you're more optimistic than some years.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Very true, very And I don't believe the roadside counts
whatsoever because I just hadn't seen anything until I got
feet on the ground.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
And now you're starting to be a believer, somewhat of
a believer.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
I'm going to find out the first stop we make today,
because that'll that would make me a believer. Okay. In fact,
if I've I was out the same place a couple
of times and found birds each time, but that will
get hunted. I promised it's too easy, because that's kind
of way I roll into easy when my legs are tired.

(31:49):
So we'll take a pause and we'll be back with
Stan Tequila right after this.

Speaker 5 (31:56):
Welcome back to Fan Outdoors.

Speaker 4 (31:59):
Join now by author, naturalist.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
And photographer Stan Tequila.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Whether it's in Minnesota, Alaska, or Africa, he's always in
search of all things wild and natural. He may even
know more about animals than they do themselves.

Speaker 5 (32:17):
And you thought the.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Cat knew the outdoors, here's fan favorite Stan Tequila on
Fan Outdoors. Stan, we were just discussing some of our
past conversations about ruts that you were out and studying
and taking photos of, and I got all kinds of grief,
my friend.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Well, good morning, guys.

Speaker 5 (32:42):
How you doing it?

Speaker 2 (32:46):
We are, Yeah, a number of family members are here
along with Bob. He's kind of an adopted family member
when it comes to the kinda the pheasant openers. So
that's what we have been chortling about out.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
But yeah, that's what going on with the pheasants.

Speaker 4 (33:05):
Is there?

Speaker 2 (33:06):
No, not a lot, an awful lot of little brown
ones do sad mm hmm. But to me, I guess
that's a second hatch that would come around and the
first ones would have some color out them. But that's
good for them because it'll save them until later on
in the in the season, I hope.

Speaker 5 (33:28):
But any way, to have contacted me about having a
exceptionally small turkey poulse running around and small white tailed
deer going around. Yeah, it's been kind of an interesting
year people contacting me with interesting reports like that. Oftentimes,

(33:49):
what happens that when people contact me, uh, then I
forward that on to outdoor News and they like to
print those pictures of people with some unusual things like that.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Oh sure, interesting, do you think? Yeah? Do you think
a lot of that is because either like the fawn
small fawns were dropped late.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yes, mine mine certainly were at my house.

Speaker 5 (34:22):
I have trail camps on them and I'm watching them
all the time, and uh, they they were. They seemed
to be very late this year. But I mean that's
just my area now. Of course, as you know, it's
not general, you know, across the board, it's going to
be something localized those females when they were bred and
and all that. So it's it's it as always in nature,

(34:45):
it's highly variable.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
We had with a waterfowl opener. We were up on
some of my son's lease Land and northwestern Minnesota. We
had a big body, a bigger body of water that
we hunted, but a lot of the well six of
them that came through, they were hooded mergansers. And the

(35:08):
guys have been out there hunting waterfowl for the last
number of years, they have never seen this many hooded
mergansers before. And when they're coming through and over decoys,
I can't tell the difference, but it was surprising to me.
Would there be a reason there's a large number, larger
number of them than usual.

Speaker 5 (35:30):
It's an interesting trend that I'm seeing with hooded mergansers.
These are a small fish eating duck and they are
They're an interesting species that we hardly ever had them
in the Twin Cities area thirty years ago, and then
all of a sudden, about I don't know, ten years ago,
we started seeing them everywhere, and they literally are popped

(35:50):
up all over the place. And now I see them
not as often as when they first kind of moved
into the area. Doesn't surprise me at all to have
areas that didn't have it all suddenly seeing them and
then again tapering back again. I used to have them

(36:10):
nesting in my yard because I have a bunch of
wood duck boxes up and I would put a camera
in there and monitor them and then I probably haven't
had them in the last six years or seven years.
I haven't had them at all, But I used to
have them there. We would just be enthralled watching them
with a camera inside, you know, getting a live video
feed of them and watching them, you know, incubating and

(36:33):
the baby's hatching and jumping out of the box and
all that. It was actually just kind of an event
for us. And now it's like, okay, now nothing. So yeah,
so it's not surprising.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
Very common duck in Lake Michigan area growing up. Yes,
it's a duck that would get a free pass whenever
I was duck cutting because they don't taste very good.
Oh so there you just let them fly by and
hope set a few teal come by because they taste

(37:07):
way better.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Well I bet they do, yeah, way better. But yeah,
it's have the has migration slowed down yet standard is
it in full swing?

Speaker 5 (37:21):
It seems to have moved out of the Midwest and
moved more towards the East coast. If you, I know
I mentioned before, if you get onto Birdcast and take
a look. You can see where it is a big
shift from the kind of that central flyway to the
more eastern flyway. And I'm looking it up real quick

(37:41):
to see what what numbers we had last night, Uh
coming through. But anytime you have these favorable conditions, you're
going to have a fair amount. But yeah, I'm looking now,
and it's quite a bit to the east, just south
of the Great Lakes, and then to the east is
where we're seeing a lot of that at the most
activity right now. I'm just sorry for being slightly distracted.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
So it's three over which Illinois Missouri was the heaviest
last night.

Speaker 5 (38:15):
Yeah, and last night in my county over just over
three million birds passing over the area. So a fair
pretty good, darn good migration is still going on for
a lot of small birds. For those people who don't
know what we're talking about, a lot of our small songbirds,

(38:36):
or let me just rephrase that, most of our small
songbirds migrate at night, and they will feed during the daytimes,
but then when the favorable conditions are right, they'll take
off slightly after sunset, about an hour or two hours
after sunset, they'll take off and start flying and they'll
fly fairly far. They usually average about anywhere between two

(38:59):
and six thousand feet in elevation when they're flying, and
they fly all night until right about now before sunrise,
and then they'll come down to the ground and then
they'll spend the day feeding and you know, getting ready
for the next night. And so we don't even notice
it because it's you know, at night and they're up
fairly high. I mean the high enough where you wouldn't

(39:19):
see that. You're not going to see something, not going
to see a small bird at you know, three thousand feet.
So they're they're they're migrating over and when the millions
of birds that pass through is really what's remarkable about this.
Like I said, right now, I'm in Carver County and
a little over three million birds from my area. So bo,

(39:41):
did you say you had numbers up for your area?

Speaker 3 (39:45):
H No, I was just looking at the mean bird cast. Yeah, yeah,
the main landing page.

Speaker 5 (39:53):
One of the things really interesting things going on there.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
One of the things I haven't I have noticed is
it were a couple of weeks ago I had some
loons yet on the lake, and I think they don't
seem to be they seem to be gone. But those
you said would be the last ones would be the
young ones.

Speaker 5 (40:13):
The young ones, Yeah, and it wouldn't surprise me if
they got a good lot of this year.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
All of my.

Speaker 5 (40:22):
Loons in Wright County had hatched before June first, so
that is really early, upwards of one to two weeks
earlier than what they normally would be, and so it
doesn't surprise me that they've gotten mature enough and started
to fly. For those who don't know, with the common loons,

(40:45):
the males will leave back in August and the females
leave in September. Meanwhile, the babies can't even fly, so
the babies have to teach themselves how to fly. And
then after they've you know, started flying, then they have
to migrate on their own also, and reminder, don't migrate
in flocks. They migrate individually. They may be going all
at the same place at the same time, which you know,

(41:06):
looks like they're maybe going as a flock, but they're not.
They're they're individuals all operating on their own time schedule.
So it's, uh, it's interesting to see that too, and
that's such a fascinating thing. Now high that do those
baby loons know where to go, you know. And more importantly,
how do they know when they've gotten there? They're they're
in the right place, you know. And then uh, and
of course I mean to add to all the remarkableness

(41:29):
of these loons is that they they spend their winters
on salt water. They you know, they're born on fresh
water and then uh, you know, move to a salt
water condition. There's not many bird species that can flip
flop back and forth between those uh different types of habitats.

Speaker 4 (41:48):
Yeah, that's.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
I have a good My son is making faces at
me out there looking out the wind.

Speaker 3 (41:59):
There's docks on a pond. Must know what's going on?

Speaker 5 (42:03):
Is this the hunting the hunting camp for opening.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
This is the family camp. It's a tradition that we've
had for there.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
There is activity all around us, Yes, there's which means
that there are ducks in view and uh, pheasant camp
might become a water folly camp within a half hour.

Speaker 4 (42:25):
Stand.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
You mentioned that there's not a lot of species that
go from fresh water to salt water, you know, because uh,
but but there's a lot of bird ducks and grebes
and stuff. They they go to the Gulf of Mexico.
What makes that difficult of a transition from a bio

(42:47):
biological perspective.

Speaker 5 (42:50):
It would be the salt water and the high intake salt.
So they in order to do that, in order to
go from fresh water to salt water, you have to
be able to excrete or get rid of that extra
salt that you would take in while in those areas.
And so with the loons, they they're able to excrete
those salts near theirneries, which is the nostrils of the bird,

(43:15):
and they excrete it the extra salt through there. So
that it's a really it's a it's a quite it's
a it's a challenge to be able to live. So
switch back and forth between them.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Loon is eating fish and then they when it moves
to eating fish in the salt in an ocean or
in the gulf, then there's a lot more salt inherently
in the fish, right, So that's what you're saying there.
Extreme What about fish ducks, ducks that you know go
to the ocean, are they able to excrete the salt

(43:51):
as well or are they eating different things and stand in
fresh water?

Speaker 5 (43:55):
No, they're excreting the salt also, and there's not a
whole lot of those. We've got like the eiders who
generally are you know, spend most of their time on
salt water and then only come to fresh water for
nesting and things like that.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
So there's not a whole lot of those. Most of
our docs are.

Speaker 5 (44:12):
Going to be going down to you know, the coastal
areas Alabama, Arkansas or whatever, and they'll spend the water on,
spend the winter's on fresh water, not gotcha.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
So blue bills and scop and golden eyes, they'll they
won't go into the ocean. They'll stand fresh water. Yeah,
they'll stay near it, but not not go into it.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
What about the brackish water stand is that specific to
salt water? Is it mix both of them?

Speaker 5 (44:41):
Yeah, that's that's another highly that's another highly adaptable, uh,
the spot that needs to have some very specific adaptations
going on with it. So the brackish water is where
fresh water and saltwater meet and it's a it's a
highly productive area with a lot of animal life to it.

(45:04):
But it is one of those that again you have
to be kind of specialized for that. The waiting birds,
herons and egrets and things like that, don't. They're not.
It's not as hard for them because they're not submerged
in it all the time, unlike the loons and greebs
and things like that. So brackish water is a whole different,
whole different thing. Too interesting.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
I guess I didn't realize that it is.

Speaker 5 (45:27):
Yeah, hey, can I make a Can I make just
but yeah? Before we run off here, can I make
a thing?

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Aric?

Speaker 5 (45:33):
If anybody's today I'm going to be at I'm giving
a talk today at the Cresmeadows.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
Wildlife.

Speaker 5 (45:44):
It's a state refuge, sorry, the Wildlife in Grantsburg, Wisconsin.
I'll be there today's at twelve thirty giving a talk
about why you are not like a bird. It's a
fun kind of informative look as to why why people
are not like birds, because you know, you know how
it is people we're always looking at you know, looking

(46:07):
out the window or looking out at birds that we're
trying to figure out their behaviors, and then we base
all those guesses that we do based on our own
human mammalian existence, and you're almost always wrong. So I
it's a fun kind of talk about why you are
not like a bird. So it's kind of a humans.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
To birds kind of.

Speaker 5 (46:31):
Well, so it's a it's a fun it's a fun
talking anybody's interested to for We talk at twelve thirty
at X Meadow's state wildlife or state. Uh, it's a
nationals a state refuge.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
Yeah, it's a stage.

Speaker 5 (46:46):
It's not it's a state refuge, state refuge. It's not
a wildlife management area. It's a state refuge.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Well, because there are areas you can hunt on around. Yes, yeah, okay,
I got you.

Speaker 5 (46:57):
Yeah, you're right. So it's Meadows Wildlife Area, no fee,
no field. It's official. Yeah, the official name is Cracksmadows
State Wildlife Area is what it has online, and it's
a free They're having their Wildlife festival today so people
can stop by. I'll be talking. There's talks all morning

(47:17):
and things. I'll be giving a talk at twelve thirty.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
And one of the best places to catch a glimpse
of a sharp tailed grouse east of the Mississippi.

Speaker 5 (47:29):
Yes, this is, yeah, one of the better places for anything.
It is truly one of the most remarkable wildlife areas
in the Upper Midwest. It's in absolutely treble. They do
have a small wolf pack there. They do have bears.
They've got just about anything you can possibly imagine, is there.

(47:49):
It's a really wonderful place.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Well, stand, we have to take a pause. Can you
stay with us for another segment? Please look, yes, sir, wonderful,
well wonderful. We will tell you yet again about the
Craig Meadows activities that include Stan Tequila on our return
before we let him go too. So hold on, get

(48:12):
yourself some coffee, and we're going to take a pause
and we will be right back. Donuts are here too,
We'll be right back. We're back four minutes after the

(48:39):
hour of seven o'clock. Bob Saint Pierre, he's on the
other side of the table. I am Billy Hildebrand and
this is the twenty twenty five Pheasant opener for the
state of Minnesota. And we are we have four six

(49:01):
dogs here.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
How many dogs? We have five people? You have one dog,
I have two three, So we got Golden four and
then two more Britney six dogs.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
And we are going to hit the field at nine o'clock.
And our guest right now is mister Stan Takila, who
will be over at Cracks Minnows Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin
at twelve thirty today giving a free talk on humans

(49:36):
and birds. And they're not the same as much as
people those guys that tried to fly off the roofs
years ago in Wilmer. It didn't work, and they're not
the same.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
We keep telling him that Grandsbury's a very easy drive
from the Twin Cities, about forty five minutes an hour.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yeah, so anyway, Stan, what what have you been up to? Also, I,
like I said, I when we first started talking about
the ruts of the guys were giving me grief on
but I thought that was super interesting. And uh, is
there anything that you're chasing now?

Speaker 5 (50:16):
Well, I was gonna later this week, coming up the
week coming up head to South Dakota for the Prong
Horn Rut. But I'm we'll see. I'm I still may go.
I've run into a couple of issues. I'm in the
process of getting up and running the my new flying

(50:38):
squirrel live cam so that people can sit at home
and watch their watch my flying squirrels.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
So that should be fair.

Speaker 5 (50:51):
Yes, I know it's such such issues.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
And then.

Speaker 5 (50:56):
Also yeah, let me be let me also mention that
I have a new email newsletter so people can go
to nature Smart dot com and scroll down at the
bottom and sign up for a uh of Every two
weeks you'll get a notification from me. You'll get a
uh uh basically a story a blog, and then there'll

(51:16):
be information about the photo tours I'll be doing and
you know, different things like that will be in the
in that uh newsletter that I'll send out, So people
just go to nature smart dot com and you'll see it.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
Also, that's where the live feeds are at. There's there
there there.

Speaker 5 (51:33):
I've got one setup for the flying squirrel and have
one setup for this for my great horn owl for
this winter. And so right now, the technical uh, I
don't know what to call it.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (51:45):
The level of technical technical difficulty is like a of
a one to ten scale, it's about a twelve. So
I'm we're we're one step away from getting it all
up and running. But for people who've never seen flying squirrels,
it will be fun. I'll have them, I'll you know,
because I feed them in the wintertime, as you know,
and I'm hoping to be able to share that because

(52:07):
they're so adorable. There's so much fun to watch.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
They really are, I mean, they're incredible and people stand
I still maintain that most a majority, I would guess
a huge majority of people have no idea that they're
living amongst flying squirrels.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
Right.

Speaker 5 (52:26):
It's funny. I mentioned that on another radio show that
I do on a Fargo Moorhead and they were like, oh,
we don't have any flying squirrels here, And of course
I got all sorts of people emailing into the station
and texting in the station and saying, yeah, we do,
you know, because they are. They're They're all over the
place there. Some people might argue that there's even there's
more flying squirreld than there are even gray squirrels, which

(52:47):
is absolutely amazing. By the way, I've been trying to
talk my publisher and to let me do a book
on squirrels, and they the eye rolling when I bring
it up every time is quite remarkable.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
Not a huge audience for squirrel but.

Speaker 5 (53:04):
I guess I'm fascinated by them. Yeah, there should be.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
They're awesome, They're pretty turned cool, but I don't so
any rate.

Speaker 5 (53:11):
I think they're fantastic.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Yeah I do too. I then the cyclical nature of
squirrels is gray squirrels in particular. That's what I've got
out here. And I noticed just south of me, down
the road, maybe a mile or less, I saw a
couple of black squirrels in somebody's yard. And they evidently
they don't they don't travel down this far, because I

(53:35):
have no I had won one this year and never
saw him again. Either he was met his waterloo or not,
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (53:45):
It's it's interesting those those black squirrels are still an
Eastern gray squirrel, and Bob, you're familiar with these because
they're very common in the up of Michigan. Matter of fact,
they're the dominant ones there in the Up. And there's
different pockets of these melanistic Eastern gray squirrels all over
the country, and I find that absolutely fascinating. I was

(54:08):
at my visiting my daughter here a couple of weeks
ago and saw that they had one in their yard,
and I thought, wow, they're just really fun to see
all over the place. And then I saw from a
friend of mine posted a squirrel in South Carolina that's
an Eastern gray squirrel and it's pure white with a

(54:30):
black patch on its head. And it is not albino
because it's got dark black eyes. You know, in normal
colored paws and things like that, and it was just
sparked me again. I was like, Oh my gosh, here
we go. This is another species, another kind of variation
of the eastern gray squirrel that I was not familiar with,
but pure white with a black spot on its head.

(54:52):
And I thought, this is, this is why I should
be doing a book on squirrels, because I'd love to
be traveling all over the country photographing these different school
worlds everywhere. Would be pretty duarnk cool.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
My neighborhood, I would say, So in the White Bear
Lake area, we have fifty percent black dray squirrels there
you go. Yeah, And it's my assumption has always been
that it just has become because their their home range
is not a very large footprint. So there's the genetics

(55:25):
of you know, one black squirrel gene starts to get
more and more prevalent, so it spreads out through the
population of a localized area. That pretty accurate.

Speaker 5 (55:36):
Yes, Yeah, that's exactly it.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
And it's a.

Speaker 5 (55:41):
It's a recessive gene that's found in the areas and
then so when it becomes the dominant gene in that area,
that's what you get. And so you get these pockets
all over place, and there's there's towns like in Missouri
that claim to be, you know, the black squirrel capital
of the world and things like that, but they're found
all over the place. This is not something that's highly unusual.
It's just one of those kind of cool, cool things

(56:04):
that happened.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
So switching the conversation real quickly from from squirrels to
hawks during the break. Yeah, talking about hawk ridge and
when is the peak? If somebody wanted to, you know,
make a trip up to Duluth and see the hawk migration.
Has the peak passed already?

Speaker 5 (56:27):
Well, depends on what species you're looking for. The bird
with the most numbers, So the most volume of birds
coming through would be the Broadway hawks and they came
through mid September, so two three weeks ago. And those
are the ones where you can get twenty thirty thousand
birds at a time coming through. Let me remind you

(56:48):
though that And by the way, I think at least
last time I checked it, I could be wrong. The
record in one day that they've had up there was
over one hundred time in one day coming through. But
the yeah, there's a lot of birds coming through there.
The migration time is going it's getting pushed further and

(57:11):
further back as the climate changes. We're seeing this adaptation,
this change of the birds and their behaviors to match
up with this, and I find that absolutely remarkable because
the biggest concern with the climate change is being able
to adapt to it quick enough to be able to

(57:31):
survive those changes. And as far as some of the
bird species go, it looks like they're doing fairly well
because the birds are adapting pretty quickly in just a
twenty five year period. They're they're already adjusting their migration
times to go, and I find that absolutely fascinating. But
again it goes back to that the dynamics of nature,

(57:54):
and in order to survive you have to be able
to have to change and adapt. The species who can't
are left behind and the species that can are the
ones who flourish and move forward. And so we are
seeing that. So having said that, in October, we are
seeing the larger hawks, so more red tails are coming through,

(58:16):
so there's plenty of time to still get the hawk ridge,
still see these types of things, it's just you're going
to see a different variety of them, the larger ones.
And then this goes through October into November where you're
going to see like the eagles migrating through later in
the year. So starting out with the smaller hawks moving
all the way up through the bigger ones September, October,

(58:36):
and then into November.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Stand with a large number of hawks that you mentioned,
like one hundred thousand at one time, perhaps the largest number. Yeah,
when they come through an area like that and they
have to eat, are they putting a dent on their
favorite food source as they travel through.

Speaker 5 (58:57):
That's an interesting thing is because these hawks are daytime migrators.
Now we just finished talking about the songbirds, the smaller
birds that migrate at night. These larger birds like hawks, eagles, cranes,
those you know, pelicans, those are daytime migrators. And so
with the hawks, when they're migrating, they'll spend the first

(59:20):
two hours of the day early, you know, right when
the sun's coming up to the maybe you know, to
about two hours one hour or two hours after sunrise
hunting and they're as they're hunting, then if they find something,
then they'll stay, eat and then migrate. If they don't,
they just keep migrating and keep moving through and they're

(59:41):
gonna be operating on reserves, which is another whole topic
to talk about too, because these birds cannot, like a bear,
put on a bunch of weight and you know, for
the migration, because they have problems flying, you know, see ratio.
You know, having too much weight when you're flying is
a bad thing, and so they can't like bulk up

(01:00:02):
before they go. They can, they definitely put on a
little extra weight, but it's a it's a real balance
there because they get too heavy than the amount of
energy that they need to expend to to fly like that,
it is not worth it. So these things are, you know,
again very dynamic and are changing all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
The hawk ridge is it that the hawks don't want
to fly over Lake Superiors? So that pinch point at
the head of the lake is why so many of
them cross that area? Or is there a different reason?

Speaker 5 (01:00:37):
Yeah, No, they're coming. These birds are coming down from
out of Canada and northern Minnesota, and as they're heading
relatively south and sometimes they're heading southeast, they run into
Lake Superior. These birds rely on thermals. Thermals are rising
columns of warm air and they ride on top of
these thermals as they go up. So the sun heats

(01:00:59):
up the land. The land gives off short shortwave energy
that warms the air. The air then warm air rises,
so it goes up. Cold air sinks and as it
rises up, the birds get on top of these thermals
and ride them like a free elevator ride. And then
so over the cold water of Lake Superior. There are

(01:01:20):
no thermals. So it's not that they don't want to
fly over a lake. They don't really care, it's just
where are the thermals at The thermals are on the land,
and so they're following that. So there's what over one
hundred to two hundred miles the shoreline from Duluth up
to Canada, and so you got this funneling effect of
all these birds bumping up against Lakespirit and then taking

(01:01:41):
a right hand turn and following the shoreline down, which
then funnels them all down to Duluth and Deluz got
a high ridge just behind the city in which they
fly over, and that's where the hawk ridge is at.
Hence the name ridge because this higher ridge, and then
it kind of gives you a natural perch to sit
and watch these birds as they fly over. Now they're

(01:02:01):
not flying over at I they're flying higher, So especially
during the middle of the day, if you get their
midday and you're seeing the birds flying, you're going to
see birds that are straight up and quite high, maybe
you know, five hundred feet above where you're at as
they fly over this area. But they're you know, you
can see them, and they count them there too. And
this has been going on for decades and decades. It's
a great source of information data on the number of

(01:02:25):
migrating birds.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Stand before we let you go, give us a specifics
once again about where you will be today speaking.

Speaker 5 (01:02:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, a couple of things. I'll be at
Cracksmadows and Graansburg, Wisconsin today twelve thirty giving a talk
about why you are not like a bird. And also
people can now go to the nature smart dot com
sign up for my newsletter and get information about my
photo tours and things like that. And then hopefully in
the next week or two we'll be up and running

(01:02:54):
with our flying Squirrel cam, which is already on the website.
But we just have to make that final last link.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
So I know we get to go. Next time we
have you on, you're gonna have to help us navigate
a proposal that was lobbed our way yesterday, and that
proposal was for Billy and I to go into a
bear's den during hibernation. And I'm I'm inclined to take

(01:03:25):
uh say yes to this proposal. Billy is inclined to
say no.

Speaker 5 (01:03:33):
Who's got a bear den that you can go into?

Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Well that will just keys that for next time. We
were looking for your advice and whether or not I
want you or a bad idea.

Speaker 5 (01:03:46):
Well, having having done it several times, I want in.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
My place. Okay, Well I like the idea. We increase
the number of people, we only have to outrun one
of them.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
How the heck? Hello, Hello, I'm.

Speaker 5 (01:04:12):
In I've actually done a live radio show from inside
of a bear's den. Come on, I have, I actually
have and on my cell phone and it is. Yeah,
it's it's incredible, it really is. I've done it two
or three times, and I don't recommend it. Don't don't

(01:04:33):
get me wrong, I don't recommend it at all. But
let me know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Yeah, if I have a rope on my foot, somebody
is in charge of pulling.

Speaker 5 (01:04:44):
If you get to you some day, yeah, someday, I'll
tell you a story about how when I was in
a beard and I had my family with me, and
when the bear kind of made an aggressive mood towards me,
I thought my family would pull me out. But what
happened to me is I tell rescued myself. And when
I got out and lifted my head, all I saw
was three rear ends running away. So they left me

(01:05:11):
and they were running to save their lives.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Well, you know, some people say all I got to
beat is one to get away, But evidently they got
a head start on you.

Speaker 5 (01:05:20):
Oh boy did they.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Oh my Stan will talk in a couple of weeks.
My friend and I thank you and have a wonderful
weekend and a great talk over at Crex Meadows.

Speaker 5 (01:05:31):
All right, guys, talk to you next time.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
Thanks stand Tekela find him at naturesmart dot com, but
today at twelve thirty fine him at Crex Meadows Wildlife
Refuge in Gransburg, Wisconsin. We'll take a pause and be
back with more right after this.

Speaker 4 (01:05:48):
Scers, we are back.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
We'll be with you until the eight o'clock hour. Where
in the zone follows us and be sure that you
keep it right here because Sinecon and Tucker are a
great pair to listen to because they are both extremely
knowledgeable and fun. And then once in a while, our
producer jumps on board too because he is kind of

(01:06:27):
the resident hockey expert and he will offer some very
very timely, timely reports on what's going on in the
hockey world also the football world. But you know that's
kind of green bayish.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
Yeah, we don't like that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
I'm just kidding. So he is there anyway, but keep
it right here all day long. You'll enjoy it, and
yours truly, Bob and I will be along with Eric
Chad and Kurt Colin Colton, we will be out chasing
the wiley rooster. And there was a what was it

(01:07:13):
when did Simonette come out with us? Oh? Boy? Seven
years ago?

Speaker 4 (01:07:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
I was going to say twenty nineteen, but it might
have been twenty seventeen something in that window.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
Dave Simonette, the lead singer for trample By Turtles, came
out with his initial time hunting pheasants and we had
a phenomenal shoot and encouraged Dave, who is a really
really good guy. If you know him, you will agree
with me. If you don't know him, I hope you

(01:07:43):
get a chance to meet him because he is a very,
very class individual. But he was on his initial hunt.
And as we finished the limit and Eric's hollered over loudly,
we are done, nobody shoot, and we were. We had
a limit and Dave shot his first bird that particular

(01:08:07):
day and it was super fun. And that's the first
time and the only time I think that we have
taken a limit out of there. Really, I think, so, okay,
we've gotten some most usually, but yeah, that was a
limit and it was classic. It was really really fun.

Speaker 4 (01:08:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
Now Dave has two bird dogs in the schedules, a
touring around bird hunting season, which I can empathize the identify.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
I had to look twice ladies and gentlemen when he
drove in because I wasn't sure who the guy was.
Snap was growling her, Bree was growling at him. Snap
would groovy growling too if she was still here, but
she is not. But anyway, Yes, so what.

Speaker 3 (01:08:53):
Do you do You have a hope for the day ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
I hope somebody gets a somebody gets some good shots.
I really do.

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
That's pretty minimal expectation.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
There's no sense and you know, I really don't for
me personally, and I've told a number of people, including
people on the air here, I'm just not that bad
at them anymore. If we have what I do, what
I really want, selfishly for me is to get breathe
on some birds. And she has not been on. And

(01:09:29):
it's all my fault because I've always if you've got
multiple dogs, and you've got one that is kind of
your pride and joy.

Speaker 3 (01:09:40):
Yet you had the dog of a lifetime I do.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
For how old is Snap?

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
Fourteen?

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
Fourteen? So?

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
And when she got ill right at the beginning a
year ago now, yep, opening day, it kind of put
a handcuffs on your hunting season.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
And I didn't hunt after that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):
Yeah, and now Brie is what three?

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Yeah, three or four? I think she might be. I
don't know, three or four.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
So now is her prime time?

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Yeah, it's all about her now she has been promoted
to the A team.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
I've got that situation too. Yeah, although mine's a little
bit older. Six year old Gitchee is on the A
team now and Winter is coming up the ranks. But yeah,
I'm just so it sounds weird, but like there's no
no video cameras, no work obligations. I Am just going

(01:10:34):
hunting with my buddies and my dogs today. And I
cannot tell.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
Ya I am a video camera because.

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
There is no video camera today.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
I am because I will replay step four step for
you in a week.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
I'm walking the other direction, then, Captain, because I I
am like you. Yeah, i'd love to, you know, have
some action today, but just to go a walk in
the field with my friends and my dogs. And a
forecasts a little bit warm, but the forecast has come
down temperature wise since earlier in the week. Ah, it's

(01:11:14):
gonna be fabulous. I'm just really excited.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
Well the other thing too, it's gonna be a great
time to fish if you've still got your boat.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
My boat's been winterized. It's the fourth of July.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
I needn't winterized, but it's in the garage. And I
see these boats going by here heading north on the lake,
and I know the fisher.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
It's driving you a little crazy, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
It really is. I enjoy that tremendously. I really like it.
And but my docks and lifts are coming out of
the water today. There's a business, a local business west
Kemper Docks. The guys come out. We were just talking
about it on a break. They usually arrive sometime during

(01:12:00):
the day, and my grandson Jack was here. They all
they were all wearing at that time black wetsuits, so
they were from the top of their head until the feet,
they were all black. Jack looked at him when they
got here and they got out of the truck, and
he looked at his mom, and he looked at at
Debbie and said, what's going on?

Speaker 3 (01:12:22):
Looked like Navy seals.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
But then I remember the days when you didn't hire
a service and midday pheasant hunting we all put waiters
on it and lifted the docks out. Thanks for hiring
a service, Captain.

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
It was mostly on my part from self or self preservation,
because it just I it's getting kind of beyond my ability.

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
There's a lot, I'm certain there are a lot of
pheasant hunting groups that will be taking docs out midday
to day.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
And the other thing is to midday. Bob was here
and he was on ONYX plotting out some strategy today.
One of them was he was marking where he was
going to take his truck nap later today. I will
have a truck nap today. You don't want to burn
yourself out before the golden how I understand that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
You know, I'm looking towards a very relaxed, casual day,
nice little walk in the morning, have a delicious sandwich,
hopefully I do not grab the one with any special
secret ingredients in it. After that, I look forward to
putting the recliner on in my tahoe and shut my

(01:13:44):
eyes for a little bit and taking a nice golden
nowur walk with my dogs. And maybe at the end
of the day, I've got to clean a couple of birds.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
You know. We talk about this, folks, We talk about
this every year, and after the first the first walk
is usually ending up around from nine until probably twelve
thirty quarter to one. By that time, this guy has gassed.
It's the golden hour comes and it goes, and I'm

(01:14:16):
if I am still able, I'll go for a short walk.
But there's some of the posting.

Speaker 3 (01:14:24):
Would you so you think he got only one walk
in you today?

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
Maybe? Yeah, maybe they don't. I could start posting early. Yeah,
that's I got that from my brother. Early. My brother
used to post he'd find himself a good spot with
a gravel road between it on to usually public land
with grasses on it, and when the birds had come
out of the corner and run in, he would have

(01:14:50):
a place so that he could post and go and
hopefully find him. To my chagrin, I've tried that they
don't stop. Yeah, either that or they fly out of
the corner and land in the middle of things.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):
But you've been you've been out doing some scouting.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
I have. I've been doing some walking, okay, but in
the in the guise of going to different places and
walking different types of wildlife areas and saw public land
that I and probably returning to old memories. I found
some some things that I would return to, but I

(01:15:32):
found some things I ain't going back to.

Speaker 3 (01:15:34):
Is there a consistent type of cover that you're finding
birds in, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
It's kind of hard to tell you. Yeah, there's there's
an awful lot of big blue stem that this year.
It's big. Yeah. I gat.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
I let my dogs out just to air out on
my way up here in the grass considerably taller than
it was a year ago. Because we had a just
tremendous growing.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
Yes, I mean unbelievable. I had Chad's dog Rex and
bri out, and we had I had collars on them
and sport dog collars, the upland game collars on them,
and I could buzz them or beep them to find
out where they were. But the other thing they're getting

(01:16:21):
that bluestem. I couldn't find them because they're fairly They're
fairly tiny, especially bri. But when birds started getting up,
I could tell where they were, but they could point
a long time. But because I'm not going to find them.

Speaker 3 (01:16:39):
We got to get you into the GPS collar world.

Speaker 2 (01:16:42):
I need to do that, I think, and I got
to do that, but I don't have now. It's so
the other place I found birds is no different than
where we found them before. I found some birds in
uh short brushy junk.

Speaker 3 (01:17:09):
There's a descriptive short brushy junk is where we're gonna
hunt to day.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
But there's thistles and there's all kinds of different things
in it. And one year we found them in the
same type of area. But I've been back to that
particular place because now it's a big blue stem and
it's been really high. But some of the blue stem
that I found is not and I think it needs

(01:17:34):
some care. It needs to be burned or cut or something,
because it's real sparse. There's still some blue stem in it,
but it's sparse. But the nettles and the short grass
a lot of young birds and that's what we found
years ago in them too. The blue stem, the really

(01:17:56):
tall blue stem. It's good stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:17:59):
It's not real.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
It's thick, but it's not like trying to wade through
the heart attack grass that I call the canary grass.
It just well, it just eventually you got to push
your legs to I hate that. Yeah, but there are
birds sometimes in there, but my goodness, gracious, it just

(01:18:20):
destroys your body.

Speaker 3 (01:18:23):
Are you Did you have a hove frost here Tuesday night?

Speaker 4 (01:18:28):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:18:29):
So, assuming the bugs got knocked back, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
Not they aren't bad. They aren't bad at least when
I was out there.

Speaker 3 (01:18:36):
And I'm wondering if that killed off the grasshoppers out
ice traction, I would guess, But.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
I think, like I had, I had frost not here,
but right across the road. My neighbor had frost and
open areas. But some places it didn't get as cold
as other places too.

Speaker 3 (01:18:55):
We had we had pretty considerable frosts in the cities.
On I think it was Tuesday night, I had to
cover plants.

Speaker 2 (01:19:03):
We do have to take a pause, our final pause
of the morning, so let's go ahead and do that,
and when we come back, we'll talk a little strategy
and a couple of questions that I have written down
to that we may have some new hunters out there,
just as we had encouraged people to try turkey hunting
and our listeners tried it and found they loved it

(01:19:26):
and some even had success. So if we've got new
pheasant hunters, when we come back, we'll talk about a
new pheasant hunter and some strategy that you can use
to add some success to what you do and predict about,
predict about what you will be doing if you like it,
and guarantee you will. We were running out of time too,

(01:19:49):
because we get to a spot ourselves. Yes we do,
all right, We will take that pause and be right
back with one more segment of Fan Outdoors. For this

(01:20:17):
final segment, as you can tell by the music, come
bringing us back in. And that is compliments of our
executive producer, Brett Blakemore, and we thank him for all
that he does every single week for us, because it
wouldn't be the same, not at all. What was we

(01:20:39):
going to do with us last segment.

Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
Your mind is focus on getting your dog ready and
getting out there. But you had some questions, you said, yeah,
well for a new hunter.

Speaker 4 (01:20:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
One of the things, one of the things I talked
a little bit before we went to break is we
encouraged people to try turkey hunting because it was so
much fun, and we talked for a number of weeks
about it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:02):
You're telled the spring spring turkey.

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
Spring turkey season. Yeah, and there's a fall turkey season too,
but it's not the same because there's other options open
to you.

Speaker 3 (01:21:12):
Also, well, they're just not as responsive to calling, which
kind of makes turkey hunting unique.

Speaker 2 (01:21:18):
Yeah, it does. But pheasant hunting is something that can
get into.

Speaker 4 (01:21:25):
Your blood.

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
And when you're enjoying it. And we talked a little
bit about the walking aspect. There's a lot of walking,
and for me, it's difficult and it's unique. It is hard,
but it's not like walking down a sidewalk at by
anti stretch of the imagination. And very honestly, I love

(01:21:51):
the pheasant hunt. I hate to just go walking. It's
so boring to me, honest to god, Really, you don't
go for walks?

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):
No, No, I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):
And I'll go for walks out in the field. I
love doing that. I just take the dog and we
just go wandering around. I'll walk down the road in
the woods and a trail. I really enjoy doing that.
But in the Metro area, walking down a sidewalk and

(01:22:22):
looking at this house, this house, this dog comes running out.
I don't enjoy that at all. Or having somebody walk
by and have their dog crap in my yard. No,
not for me. But pheasant hunting is a different dynamic,
and it is so much fun. You need a couple
of things. I mentioned it was the waterfowling is equipment intensive,

(01:22:48):
and I get that it is. It's super fun. In fact,
when I grew up, I would rather duck hunt than anything.
And it's probably because it's fun right away in the dark.
It's not so fun when you got to pick everything up.
Fun throwing out decoys, not so fun wrapping them up
when it's really cold. But pheasant hunting, I gravitate to

(01:23:12):
that because I really enjoy the walk, and I tell
myself it's a great exercise. Old man, it's a wonderful exercise.
But when you get the flush of a rooster. Oh,
and I've I've hunted for I've hunted almost sixty years.
I've hunted for more than sixty years, and I don't

(01:23:34):
think there's a year I've missed. And I still when
a rooster flushes, or even a pheasant, but especially a rooster,
it just I lose it. I tell myself, set it down,
it's not a big deal. You've done this before you
But when they bust out, start cackling out. Safe safe, safe. Yeah,

(01:24:00):
there's something about that, and it never gets old. But
if you're going to try it, go with somebody. Go
with a friend, join a Pheesist Forever chapter, and hook
up with somebody that has done it in the past,
that has a dog. Without a dog, it's a little

(01:24:22):
like kissing your sister.

Speaker 3 (01:24:25):
I wouldn't know, but you're right. Bird hunting well, Pheasant
hunting is one of those things where you really do
need a dog to recover the bird. They're just so tough.
You know, rough grouse hunting you can succeed without a dog. Waterfalling,
you can see succeed without a dog. Pheasant hunting, boy,

(01:24:46):
unless you're watching walking a very narrow strip like a ditch,
and you know, very linear cover and you just hammer
your shots. It's extreme semly difficult to hunt without a dog,
and that's what makes the magic, honestly.

Speaker 2 (01:25:04):
And if you're looking, if you don't have a dog
and you're looking for a bird that you've dropped, and
even if it's just got a little life left, they're
almost impossible to find.

Speaker 3 (01:25:14):
And that's not fair to the bird. No, you know,
for you to cripple a bird and not have a
dog to help you recover it. In that partnership between
hunter and dog, it's so special.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
It really is, and you need to try it. You
don't need a lot of equipment. You need to wear
some orange, some good boots, some good walking boots that
you can walk in. Don't get this cheap crap that
you get and because your feet are gonna pay, and
which means you're gonna pay. But we'll talk more about

(01:25:50):
that as we get into it. Because today is if
you're just gonna start, today's not the day to start.
It really isn't. There's gonna be a lot of hunters
out and there's gonna be lots of activity. But give
it some thought. If you're not a hunter, give it
a little bit of thought and see what you think.
Because we will touch on this again in the upcoming

(01:26:11):
weeks and talk to you about it too, because it's
a wonderful sport that you could do for a long
long time.

Speaker 3 (01:26:20):
And there's a good meal at the end too. The
peasants a darn good table, they really are.

Speaker 2 (01:26:26):
They will. Hey, I want to say thank you to
Stan Tequila for joining us this morning and talking to
us about some things. Don't forget. He's at Cruxmote of
Meadows at twelve thirty today in Wisconsin at Grantsburg. But
we got to duck out of here because I want
to go hunting for Bob Saint Pierre, my very good friend,
for Brett Blakemore, our executive producer. I am Billy Hildebrand,

(01:26:50):
Leaving you with Tata