The Midwest Outdoors

0:00It's time for the Midwest Outdoors with Fred Ramsey and Chris Ramsey brought to you by Reed Chevrolet and St. Joseph Azurri. Now, here are Fred and Chris Ramsey. Good morning ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another edition of the Midwest Outdoors tickled at me with you this Saturday. She's even like about the same time every Saturday for some reasons. I don't know why. Same bat time, same bat channel. It could be the possibility thereof. My producer is having kittens in there this morning. He's not happy. He's not happy. I don't understand why he would be like that. But give me this obviously gesture 5318. Did you deserve it? Yes, I did. Jerry, okay, day. I'm a little dragon today. You dragon, huh? I'm dragon today. I almost didn't make it here. Really? My alarm goes off at 430. I thought I hit the snooze button.

1:00I did not. Uh oh. So we would have come and found you later wondering why my snooze didn't go back off. I might want to get out of the house right now. Yeah. Well, you're an awful good producer. I'm making hard on you. I know I do. Every day. Every day. Driving to work. You know, I'm crying. I'm brutal. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I tell you why. Here's what I think we ought to do. I think we could raise some money, Chris, get rich here real quick. Charge everybody a dollar to listen to our show. Yeah. A dollar? Do you think it's worth that much? Well, I'm trying to be, you know, I'm trying to be a Walmart type guy. Yeah. Because we need money by needing or decoys that we do. So if you would call in right now and pledge a dollar, we'd appreciate it. Yeah, we're like, we got the lines open. We're having the Midwest outdoors telephs on this morning. We need decoys back. Yeah, we're poor. We need decoys.

2:01Uh, please, please give us money. Shotgun shells. Yeah. Speaking of hunting equipment, we need a new dog. Yeah. That dog we hunted him what was Tuesday or what do we want up there? Yeah. Yeah. And let's hope that he's 13 years old and acted like he was six months old. He's 11, but it's how it is. Yeah. But yeah, he's got the excitement for it. That's for sure. It's just like he was completely out of control. Yeah. It's been a long summer for the backster. Evidently, yeah. He's been cooped up in the house all summer and it's been hot and humid. And he wants to get after him. My goodness, we were covered up with ducks. Yeah, that was, you know, that was a pretty impressive to see for this time of year. Just the amount of ducks that were around the area. We had a good wind blow in that afternoon. There was a ton of blue wing teal around. I mean, saw some green wing, a few pintails.

3:05It's starting to be a lot of pintail show up. And actually, I was kind of surprised at how many mallards you saw. All some mallards, you know. Yeah. And, you know, it's nice, you know, they weren't just, you know, sitting on the refuges. They were up, you know, cruising around. And so that was good to see. I haven't seen any speckle bellies show up yet. Yeah. Now that's just, I haven't seen them. I'm sure there's probably a few here there and, you know, but, yeah, you know, things are looking pretty good. The refuges, the refuges formerly known as Skull Creek has, is looking the best that I've seen it look probably in 20 years. And you know, talking to the guys over there, they don't have any help. You know, they've got way cut back on their people. They hate any of us there to be done. Yeah. And they just, the refuges never looked any better. Yeah. Well, that's the thing about these places. It's like, what's there to be done? Yeah.

4:06You know, just let them go. Yeah. You know, I mean, yeah, I understand, you know, I manage, you know, impoundments, you know, flooded impoundments. You know, I know the tubes and levees and ditches and all that need, you know, a little bit of maintenance. But outside of that, you know, they're just really, I think they do too much with a lot of these areas. Yeah. You know, if I had it my way, if I, if I were to win the power of all life right now, and I just had endless money to invest a conservation, I would just buy ground and let it go. Yeah. You know, that's all you really got to do to it. Yeah. Now, you can do a, you know, a little management to it here and there. But, you know, for the most part, I've seen it happen, you know, somewhere it can be a cornfield for a hundred years and you just let it go. And, you know, the native species eventually worked their way, you know, back and it just,

5:08you know, over time it'll develop back into native habitat and it'll be full of wildlife. You know, if you build it, they come. You know, one of the maintenance things of Skull Creek is the road and it's very expensive to maintain the gravel on the road. Yeah. That's a big gravel road. It goes around. And then also the tubes that claps in over the rusting over the years and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, I let it go. You know, let it grow up the way it's supposed to be on a darn thing and forget about it. Yeah. That's my humble opinion. Some awful good news though. My buddies, one crew guys are six of them up in Alberta, Bruce Horal and they his clan. They have limited out every day up there. And then Steve Kitchen and from Rich and Tone calls, they're up in Saskatoon or where they're probably back now. I think you only hunt five days now, as a non-resident. And they're probably back now, but they were just hammered. The snow geese, the Rosses geese have like a 500% increase in the hatch.

6:13The mallard, everybody has just got piles and Jim Maconville, who's the wildfire magazine comes together once more. They had the best year they've ever had up there. Yeah. So the moral of the story is, I think they've missed this duck count completely. Do you think I'm wrong or right, Chris? I don't know. No, no. But they're seeing record numbers of mallards up there. Yeah. I'm sure they are. Yeah. And they've hunted those places for 10 years in a row and they said they've never seen ducks like this. So my kick back on that is, how do we count these mallards and how accurate is it and can we do better? That would be the question. That would do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. You know, on the day off. So, yeah, I should have you got to deer count having the guys been whacking some of the deer? Yeah. Counts really jumped up this week. In fact, last week it had doubled from the week before and this week it's pretty much

7:16doubled again. Wow. So we're up to a total harvest so far of 11,278 deer. Yeah. And in the great state of Missouri, 7,000 doves, little over 800 button bucks and about 3,400 antlered bucks. Top harvest county right now, Jefferson County at 344 deer already. Gee, that's a lot of deer. Yeah. Today is a smooth head season, isn't it? Yeah. Today is the start of the early antlerless season for the state of Missouri which, you know, looking at the numbers so far, you know, the dove harvest harvested so far, you know, almost twice as many doves as we have bucks. You know, at least antlered bucks has taken the button box out of the equation. And so, you know, it's really a great management tool.

8:19And the numbers kind of show that people are, you know, taking a more active approach I think as we were talking with Jason Sumner a while back and, you know, he made the point that, you know, it seems like over the last probably 10 years or so, I think people have, you know, really realized that they need to take a more active role, you know, in the management of our wildlife populations. And so, you know, you see that with turkeys, we had, you know, one of the highest turkey harvest that we've had in a long, long time, in 20 years, this spring. And you're seeing that, you know, now reflect with the, you know, the deer harvest numbers that people are actively trying to manage there in the state of Missouri's deer herd. And so, it's a great tool and it's great to see that people are taking advantage of it,

9:21you know, especially when it's been so, so hot and warm. And so, yeah, people are getting it out there and getting it done. I think the realization of CWD is not as bad as what people thought it was going to be. People finally just threw up their hands and I'm going to eat deer meat regardless because it's never translated over to humans. So maybe, you know, get a few doves out of the equation, kind of equal out to the herd just a little bit. I tell you where I'm hearing some great big bucks taking bone arrows over here in this great state of Kansas. They harvest some monster, monster white tell over in that state. I don't know, you know, I guess it goes back to management. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you got, the rut is, the rifle season starts out of the rut. Yeah. And so I would like to see a Missouri do that. Yeah. But, yeah, it would be, I think a lot of people would like to see that, but, you know, I think

10:23there is a lot of people that like the way it is, the tradition of it. Sure. And, you know, especially if you're a guy that doesn't get to get out, you know, real often, which is probably most hunters. And so, you know, I see, I think, you know, from what I've heard, I think hunters are kind of split 50, 50 on that. I think about half of people like where it's at. I think half of people, you know, would want to see that moved out of the rut. You know, when you look at our surrounding states and what we're doing, you know, a lot of times when I'm trying to look at these issues, you know, I like to look at, you know, especially where we're at, you know, we're very close to the state line. You know, people are listening to us in three or four states right now. And so, it's good to kind of look at all the states, you know, around the area to kind of see what they're doing and get a feel on what works best. And so, when you look at, you know, from a standpoint of growing and, you know, raising

11:29and maintaining mature bucks. Yeah, the states like Kansas, Nebraska and Illinois, you know, those are probably, if you ask any deer hunter out there what their three top states are, they're probably going to say those three. Sure. Yep. And they're completely surrounding us and where it seemed like we're missing out on this. I agree. And so, you know, you look around everywhere around us, they've got these, you know, great mature buckhards, not that Missouri does it. But, you know, they do things differently and I think, you know, Missouri should probably get on board. Yeah. Eventually, you know, the bow hunters want the rifle season to move back. Yeah. Well, and, you know, I guess you could even put like the muzzle loader season, you know, during the rut if you really want to do it that way. But then again, you know, any more of these modern muzzle loaders. I mean, they could show like a rifle.

12:29And so, you know, is that really, there's a lot of these muzzle loader seasons now and I don't know that it's really a primitive weapon anymore. I don't know. If you're looking at it from that standpoint, you know, even shotguns now can, you know, they have shotguns, you know, specifically designed to shoot a slug out of it. And, you know, they can shoot a long ways with them. Yeah. I'm be accurate with them. Yeah. So I don't know if that's really going to change anything much, but you know, it's just, it's an idea. Yeah. You know, I don't, you know, people don't like change. I don't like changing. Anybody like change, especially as you get older, but you got to kind of once while step back and look at things where we had it. What's the trending? Is it okay? Are we hitting too many deer on the highways or getting too much crop damage? Is there too much focus on trophy deer? The deer in your mind that you harvest is your trophy. And that's why I like that. Yeah.

13:30Yeah. Now, you know, what is a trophy is different to everyone. And so yeah, that definitely is a factor in it. But at the same time, you can quantify, you know, what what a trophy deer is. There's numbers that you can, you can put on it. And we can look and analyze those numbers. And you know, it shows that if you look at the surrounding things, it shows that it does make a difference. Yeah. And there's no reason why we shouldn't have more 150 white tail running around state of Missouri. Right. Well, I don't want Missouri to like turn into Iowa. Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't want us to not be able to use high powered rifles. Yeah. You know, Iowa just does a lot of things weird. And they have for a long time, you know, for the longest time, you know, we're talking about this vodka the other day. You couldn't even have dubs in the state of Iowa. And so, you know, I don't want us to be as strict as like Iowa or Illinois, but I think

14:34Kansas takes a good approach. And honestly, you know, Nebraska does a decent approach to it. You don't write. So I think maybe just take them back, take a look at it. Yeah. Get involved if you want to, you know, listen to the commissioners, talk to the commissioners, send them an email to the commissioners. Things can't get changed. Yeah. And, you know, as always, you know, hundreds of listen, if you want things changed, the reason I try to educate people on like things like the flyway council, for example, you know, if you want to change things, you know, everybody I hear people always complain about this stuff all the time. It's like, well, if you're really concerned with it, go do something. What are you doing? Go change it. And so in order to do that, you need to understand how these things function and work and come to be. Okay, we're going to take you to South Dakota to go fess and hunt in here in just a little bit. We've got Alex along coming on from the South Dakota fishing game, a fessant biologist. I believe he's what his terminology would be. If you are in the mood today, which raised your right hand, if you are a brand new Silver

15:34Auto pickup, the 20s, 26s with $15,000 rebates. There's never been rebates offered like this ever. And they don't want them under a lot. And the 27s will be hitting here probably in November. This is the ultimate time for you to buy a pickup truck. Now they're only placing my mind to buy a new Silver Auto pickup as Reed Chevrolet up in St. Joseph, Missouri. There's nobody like these people to run to the guy that they bought these eighth V-hick all from Reed family. Now think about that just a little bit. Why would he go back eight times because he'd been treated with respect? And he said they service after the sale. He said I felt like that's part of the family up there. And that's the way you do business. The Reed family people are the nicest people you'll ever do business with. So I mean that's from my heart. Do business with the people that are upfront and honest. That's Reed Chevrolet, their auto complex where you're looking for a Dodge Ford, whatever. You see the name Reed on the front door.

16:35You're going to get a straight up on a steel. And I mean that. Ladies and gentlemen, listen to the Midwest outdoors take a little break. We'll be right back with you. Welcome back ladies and gentlemen. We're brought to you by King City lumber, King City lumber dot com for everybody that needs a outbuilding behind their house or on their farm. There's only one person to deal with the perro's. That's King City lumber dot com. Go to their website. You'll be on there for about a half hour. You won't believe these guys. They're the best there is in the Midwest. How? Very busy. I mean the 911 3810810 but never let's find for decoys. Is it working J or do? Yeah, how's the telephone going? How's it burning up? I don't hate you working this hard. It rang once but it turns out it was a wrong number. Did you ask him to donate? Yeah. Let me call him back. Yeah, call him back. I don't understand this. You know a couple bucks. You know, ain't got a break here.

17:36You know, just that's poor Ramsey's. And 911 3810810. That's right. You know. Well, direct you to where you can donate. Exactly. I mean, my goodness, think about compassion that we need here. These poor old ducks, we got to shoot their beaks off and we don't have decoys. We won't get them to come around. Yeah, that's going to be real. Then we won't have anything to talk about on the radio. That's right. Yeah. All kinds of bad problems are going to happen if you don't give us money right now. Because that's why you asked me how I would look in a duck suit. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. Well, just think of poor Baxter. He didn't have nothing to do. Well, yeah, that's why we're putting him in the duck suit. That's right. You know, to keep Baxter employed. There you go. But, you know, we need contributions bad. I mean, we're so poor. Yeah. You know, if we don't harvest any ducks and what's Baxter going to do? I mean, you know, think of the dogs here. And then also, what are we going to eat? We don't have duck feet. Yeah. We don't have enough food. I mean, you can surely contribute something here, you know.

18:36And any proceeds that exceed over $500 will give it to the triple children's runner or whatever. Yeah. You know, we're trying to be nice guys here. And I promise that we will spend your money better than the government will. That's the only thing I can promise you. Very good point. Yeah. So, my goodness. I just can't believe the phones just aren't burning up. I just, you know, maybe we can start like a 501c3 and people can write these donations off. This is a good project. Yeah. But we got merit here. I think I've hit on a nerve here. I think we're going to be okay on this deal. You know, but the phones, you know, any minute now they're going to start like this. Jerry Lewis can do it. Yeah. Works for him. Works for him. Doesn't work for us. I don't understand. Oh, that was also a different time. Oh, I guess so. Yeah. Also, what the hey. Alex Lomond with South Dakota, a pheasant. He's the biologist in South Dakota. And the reason why I wanted to do this show was I've enjoyed South Dakota many, many times.

19:41And I've hurt done it on the air. But until you go to South Dakota and understand what goes on up or during the pheasant season, it was such an eye-opening experience. I went to winter South Dakota and they've got a beautiful airport there and you couldn't believe the Lergeettes flew in there. Well, and, you know, I'd be interested to see kind of the demographics of the non-resident hunters there in South Dakota because I'm willing to bet that as, you know, metropolitan area goes, there's probably more people, you know, from the Kansas City metropolitan area that go to South Dakota to hunt pheasants and, you know, maybe any other, you know, large metropolitan area in the nation. Yeah. So, yeah, that's a big deal. You know, it's not that far from us. Yeah. You can be there and, you know, one day's drive half a day, really. Yeah. And half a day back and, you know, it's great fun. You're pretty well.

20:41You know, it's not like waterfowl hunting where the birds might not even be there. Well, they're there. They're there. You're around. They don't go anywhere. And so, you know, you're odds of success if you go, especially if you go with a reputable outfitter or great, but, you know, there's also DIY opportunities too for South Dakota pheasant hunts. A lot of public ground. Yeah. There's a lot of public ground. And I think, well, I have to ask him about this, but I think you can still hunt from the roadway in South Dakota. Now, if you're going, that's what your plan is to go to South Dakota and hunt from the road, be careful with what you're doing. There are specific ways that you have to do that. You know, just because you can hunt from the road doesn't mean that trespassing laws don't apply. Yeah. You know, it deals with right away. And, you know, you have to, if your bird does fall on private ground, there's specific pattern. You've got to follow to go retrieve said bird. Exactly. Yeah. But, you know, it does provide, you know, opportunity for the guy that's not looking

21:46to spend an arm and a leg. Well, it's a trip of a lifetime. Everybody needs to do it once because you won't believe what you're about to see. Yeah. You know, you go to Northwest Missouri where you hunt fethanche and you walk all day, you jump a couple, maybe, and maybe get one, but up there, it's phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah, he's talking about wild fethanche. Now, you know, one thing, you know, to be kind of a leery of when you go up to South Dakota, if you're wanting to specifically hunt wild birds, you need to ask your outfitter about that. Because, you know, there are some operations out there where, you know, they take 12 guys into the same field in the school bus every day. And it's like, really, you're hunting the same field with 12 guy every day, every day, every day. And you're coming up with 50 birds out of there every single day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

22:46Yeah. Well, my, I guess what I'm getting at is if you want to hunt pen race fethanche, you can do that here. You know, you can go up to roars there and throw a Kansas. There's another one up my Bethany. There's, you know, one there. My chill call if he's got one. Yeah. There's one and one there by Beatrice. You know, they're all over the place down here. But, if you want to hunt wild birds, South Dakota is the place to go. You know, I mean, one of the things too that you kind of, I'll have to ask him about this, but the season, we started at noon up there. Yeah. Which is tradition I set for halfway through the season, I think in a whole day, but they got some different rules. But one thing you kind of gloss over when you're hunting roosters, they're probably the best eating bird that you're harvest out of the wild. They're awfully good eating bird. And there's something about a rooster when he gets up and cacles in front of you. Yeah. It makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

23:47The first time it ever happens, it'll scare you. Because there's, it goes from being quiet and monotonous to all of a sudden, there's all kinds of action. They have a way of kind of lolling you to sleep. And then all of a sudden they're there and you got to be ready. You only take waffle up there. Yeah, waffle to do pretty good. And then you like hunting roosters on them. You get down on the brush and get after them on the deal. But anyway, the backster, I don't know if he can handle that or not. He's not a very good fesit dog. He walks behind me instead of in front of me. He doesn't like to. He doesn't like to tall grass. Yeah, he's tired. He's tired. But the first time I went to Wintersouth Dakota, we stayed at this people's house, slept on the floor because there was no place around. We weren't prepared enough. But which was okay. So I got up early in the six o'clock in the morning and took off and we drove up and down the roads, went out of Wintersouth Dakota and the black top turns into a gravel and

24:48a gravel you drive down forever in a real wide, right away. And come up over the hill and there's 10 or 12 roosters standing in the road. And you know, I'm from Northwest Missouri. I'm not used to that. And so we go up over the next hill and gee, with, you know, there's 20 roosters standing in that little wall up there. So you cannot believe what you're about to see. Well, the season starts at noon. We had a bunch of roosters run across the road and we had permission to get on this one piece of ground up there. Well, about 1130 we saw them all flying to the weed patch. And of course we got to adrenaline pumping and we're, you know, gee, we need to get after these birds. Well, season starts at 12. And so I told the guys, they said, everybody was amped up and I said, no, no, no, no, no, we got to wait to noon to do this way off on their rise and way, way, way far away. I saw a shiny pickup setting up on top of the hill and it was the game ward. And he came down there and checked he was a professional.

25:49He was very nice. And he enjoyed us being up there as non-residents on the thing. And we started at 12.1. Basically got her guns out and started on the thing. And he said, I was watching you and I appreciate you guys not starting early. It was very, very nice. What I ran into up there was exceptionally nice. Now you really, they have severe and untalking severe trespass laws up there and they do enforce them. So you better know where you're at at all times and who you're on and what's going on. We ended up hunting in a junk yard of all places. And there was probably 150 old junk cars there and it was clear full of roosters. It was absolutely unbelievable. And I think the limit was four piece at that time and we'll have to check in on that too. But we, there was five of us and we had our four birds of peace within the first hour. I'm looking here, you know, they moved the start time up to 10 a.m.

26:51Did they? Yeah. Good. That's good. So boy, it's kind of antsy to be able to. Yeah. We're interested in kind of the season dates and regulations here. So the use season was September 26 to October 4. Non-residents can hunt the use season. The South Dakota, the resident only season starts October 10 to the 12th and the regular season for non-residents starts next Saturday, October 17. It goes to the 31st of the month. And it's cool. I mean, it's a great place to go up there and hang out on the day. So if you haven't been there, you should go in there. We're brought here by Sure Ag for the humans that farm out here trying to make a living. These are the people you need on your farm. The other pros are the best. They're located at Osborne, Savannah, four city in Placberg. There's nobody like Sure Ag. I depend on them 110% and I've been using them for 17 years.

27:54That's how long we've been together. So get with the guys at Sure Ag. You're going to enjoy talking to them on the phone. Got to take a little break. When we get back, we'll get to the fishing guys on South Dakota. I want to make a good show. Put your feet up. Got to be a second cup of coffee and we'll be right back with you. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Listen to the Midwest outdoors. We're going to, by the magic of the telephone fly up to South Dakota. And do, got to turn down the radio there. Alex, you have to, Alex, you have to. Uh-oh. We're getting too much feedback. Alex, because he's ready. Got you ready, you on there, Alex? No, I don't. Can you hear me better now? Yeah. Oh, there you go. I apologize. That's all right, Alex. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Yeah, you guys were pretty lucky to get me up at the end of the talk session. So it shows how much I really love them. Yeah, we apologize. If we apologize, you're the senior upland game biologist for the South Dakota.

28:54Is that correct? Correct. Yep. I work for South Dakota Gamefishing Parks and Senior Upland Game Biologist. I'm in charge of Sessons, Growl, Sage Growl, and Turkey's East of Missouri River. Whoa. So, um, how would you describe the outlook for South Dakota, you know, 2026 upland season? Yeah, we're really optimistic. I mean, I hear on area where I'm around, or I'm from, where I'm driving around, you're seeing birds everywhere, especially now that crops are starting to come out, that sort of stuff. We had a super mild winner, and we've actually had three mild winners in a row. And then when it comes to weather and Sessons, generally speaking, mild winners bring more hands into the nesting season. And then the more hands you can get, obviously, the more chances there are for successful nests. And even this spring, we had just, you know, normal. Finally, we had a normal spring where we didn't, wasn't too cold, had a right amount of moisture, right number of rain

29:55storms that came through to keep that vegetation popping, growing that sort of stuff, growing season. So we're super optimistic, been seeing a lot of birds. I'm excited. So what's the kind of the age structure of your fesant population, you know, look like? Have you had some good hatches over the past couple of years? Do you think hunters are going to encounter a pretty good mix of young and older birds? Yeah, one of the crazy things with fesances is that we can't really stockpile fesons for multiple years. So they're one of those species that it's super boom and bust, depending on what the year is, the summer prior, that really goes into what hunter's seed in the fall. So I think with years of good production, and one like this year, they're expected to see a lot more fesants on the landscape than if we were to have just kind of a horrendous hatch. We usually shoot about 70% juveniles for the first couple

30:55weeks of the season. So again, I'm optimistic that those conditions that we had and experienced, we're going to have a pretty good year. How big is it? People don't understand. I don't think people listening out of the Kansas City marketer especially wouldn't understand about how big impacts the economy up here. It's a big time deal in it. Yeah, it's huge. Not only does it just give us good funding and stuff in these small towns, but it's part of our tradition. Feson hunting brings in over $300 million into our state annually. So that's just feson hunting. So it's a big deal. We like to keep them around. There's that trickle-down economy where folks go to little towns, they go to diners, they stay at restaurants, buy gas, all that sort of stuff. And it's a huge impact. So this year, now you've had some changes since I've been up there, but is it 10 o'clock in the morning now you can start hunting fesons? Correct.

31:55Yep. Used to be about noon at noon, I guess you could say probably four years ago. Five years ago. So we changed it to 10 a.m. So it's 10 a.m. To sunset. Our opener is actually October 17th. And then we actually added another month to the end of our season. So hunters can come up and enjoy a South Dakota till January 31st. Wow. So you know, you put yourself in the shoes of one of our listeners right now here in the Kansas City area that wants to book feson hunting in South Dakota or just go on a feson hunting in South Dakota. How should they start on figuring out when to go and where to go and what to do once they get there? Yeah, for sure. So it really just depends on what type of experience you want to have. And I talked a lot of non-residents that come in that have never hunted South Dakota before. And I always kind of ask them the same questions. How far do you want to be from a big town?

32:56What type of amenities do you want? Hotel, Airbnb, just renting a house, that sort of stuff? And then also like, are you okay with hunting in an area that may have really good bird numbers but maybe not a lot of public land or do you want a place that has a ton of public land with a lot of opportunities where you can bounce around and maybe less bird numbers but you just have more opportunity. So when it comes to that, you know, I always recommend, I mean, mainly anywhere in eastern South Dakota so eastern Missouri River you're usually setting yourself up pretty good. We do have some really good spots right along the Missouri River and even west of it. But just pick a spot on a map that you think you can bounce around to maybe a plan A or B when it comes to hunting public and then, you know, do your homework, know what how many fessence are shop in the county or like what the harvest density is, how far I have to drive all that sort of stuff.

33:57It's not super difficult but as always, you can always call somebody in our department and we're more than willing to give you some tips. One of the things that people have asked me is what about public ground up or how do they find it, you got a map to you, how do they know where to go and that kind of thing. Yeah, we have a bunch of resources that folks can use so we have a printed at list that a lot of folks can find at a gas station or like a sporting good store for those old school guys that like to have a map in their hands and their truck, I still have one just to for a good resource. We have an online map on our website where it's interactive, you can actually go and see what type of landscape it is, what the land uses, all that sort of stuff and then it's also available on other apps such as on X. So, you know, it tracks you, let's you know what, road you on, really easy to find, really convenient. Well, you guys do a good job, man. I'm both. Well, thank you.

34:57Yeah, unbelievable. And, tell you, go there, people don't realize what they're about to see. You know, it's just absolutely blew my mind. The first two times I was up there, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. And, you know, the other thing that came across to me when I was up there doing the TV show, how nice you humans are. You know, and we're paying in the butt, you know, as non-residents all here, all of a sudden we're all buddy buddy. But, you know, that was the nicest people I ever been around in my entire life. And, they welcomed us into the community. And, they was like we'd known them forever. And, just south Dakota people are just good humans. And, you got to be proud of that. Oh, absolutely. I mean, if, you know, like I said, feds and third really part of our culture, they've been around for a long time. You know, we've learned to love them. We know what type of impact they have in the state. Not to mention just the connection with family and friends that it brings. You know, we get, we have, I've had folks that have, obviously hundreds that come in that I've met, that now they come back annually.

35:58Yeah. Just met them on a whim. And, they're just great people. It's cool to learn about them, cool to learn about their lives, what they do. And, then, yeah, just get the chance to shoot a few roosters too. You can't beat that. Well, I had an awful lot of fun up there. And, it was just as ton of birds. Every time we turned around, there was some birds somewhere. And, and it was just a great, great outdoor experience for me. And, I'll never forget South Dakota. I'd come back this year. And, I think, oh well, if we're going to run it clear into the late season like that, on the deal, what was the deal with opening it noon? What was that all about? You know, that was well before my time. I've been working for the department for a while now for about 15 years. But, you know, noon, it's a, it's a great way. Like I said, it's part of the culture. There's a lot of communities that have breakfast open morning, like hunting breakfast. So, I think it just gives folks an extra time to kind of, you know, go out there, have a good breakfast, meet people in the community, fill up with gas, you know,

36:59go around, do all that sort of stuff, and not feel rushed to go out there. You know, and there's a little bit of biology behind it, you know, allowing birds to go out in forage in the morning and then get back to the roosting cover. So, there's some strategy involved with it too. Now, what about the win of when to go hunting? Because, you know, for non-residents, the season opens next weekend and it runs clear till the end of January. And I imagine the weather in South Dakota can be quite a bit different at the end of January than it will be next weekend. Yeah. How does the weather and hunting pressure affect the birds as the season goes along? Sure. Yeah. You know, it's kind of pick your poison when it comes to when you want to come out. Opener, obviously those birds are super naive. You know, they haven't been shot at, they haven't been hunted. So, they're fairly easy to sneak up on. I'm not going to say that they're super easy because obviously it's the wild bird. They're on the prairie, everything's trying to eat them, so they're pretty neurotic.

38:02But, opener, it's generally very busy just because there's folks that come out and have been doing it for 30 years, come into the same spot, same spot, same family, all that sort of stuff. The success of opener was really dependent on what the temperature is. If it's 80 degrees, guys can't hunt a lot. You know, you have to be pretty cognizant of what your dog is going through, as well as what crop progresses. So, you know, how the beans and soybeans come in out or beans and corn coming out per se. The later in the season birds get a little bit more wild, but at the same time, it's kind of nice because they know what type of cover they're going to use. If there's snow on the ground, they're going to be in that thicker, like, cat tail type cover. So, it's eliminating a lot of the grass stands that, you know, you might be just kind of haphazardly walking through. And then, there's also, it's kind of cool, like, in January, what we've experienced is, you know,

39:06they're pretty hard to hunt December, maybe the first week of January. And then, all of a sudden, we get that January thought, where it turns nice for a few days, and maybe the snow melts a little bit, or what have you. And it's like a light switch. Those birds just all of a sudden go from being super wild to flushing back at your feet, like it's early season, so. It's really cool. It is. Now, you know, for a guy that wants to go up there, it maybe wants to look into some other opportunities. Do you have opportunities for sharp tail or prairie chicken, or anything like that quail? Yeah, absolutely. We're one of the, we're really one of the, you know, only couple of states in the nation where you can shoot both sharp tugrows and greater prairie chickens. So, they're not everywhere in the state. Our chickens are kind of in more of the central part of the state, kind of centered around that four-peer area, a peer area. So, that's the capital right on the Missouri River. Sharp tails are obviously pretty spread out throughout western South Dakota.

40:07They take a lot of grassland, and that's primarily pasture cattle operations, all that sort of stuff. But we do have some fairly decent pockets of both sharp tails and chickens, Easton, Missouri River. You know, one of the other cool things is, especially up in Northeast South Dakota, we got an absolutely ton of lakes, so you can plan a cast and blast. Go out ice fishing a little bit, shoot your roosters on island on some of these public lands, and then go back to chasing your kip ups or catching walleye. It's pretty fun. Yeah, you know what I noticed too? The farmers up there understand it's a cash crop. And they manicure and groom their cornfields and beanfields and leave some feed for the birds and make you a little easier access for them. They understand what's going on, don't they? They realize the tourism is a big thing in their state, don't they? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that kind of goes back to the culture. I mean, those guys grew up chasing fesins when they were younger, all the fun they had, the connection that they had for it.

41:07You know, they're obviously out there to make a living and earn money, you know, like you said with cash crops, but a lot of them have habitat aside, you know, specifically for fesins or deer or what have you. And we have a whole program in our department that's, you know, just for private landowners that want to do fethin habitat, fethin habitat improvements, deer habitat, all that sort of stuff. So we really cater to keeping that bird on the landscape. Yeah. Now, as far as regulations go, you know, what, what all permits to somebody from Kansas City that wants to go up there and hunt need to have and are there any misconceptions or new regulation changes that you want to talk about? Yeah, sure. So there's no, no real new regulations that have come on the books for fethin hunting and probably the last four or five years. So, you know, it's just an extended season, you can start at 10, that sort of stuff. All anybody needs is a small game hunting license, which is there two five day hunting periods. So that's probably where folks get a little hung up.

42:13So you can either use your hunting period at your total of 10 days continuously or you can break it up, which is kind of nice. You can maybe experience five days in that early season, set your next five days to later in the season, going back maybe with some snows on the ground and that sort of stuff. Yeah. And then just in addition to that, we do have a habitat stamp. Everybody that buys a license has to buy a habitat stamp, residents and non-residents alike goes right to our private lands program, access improvements, access programs, all that sort of stuff. So we're really putting our money where a mouth is and making sure that doesn't stay there. We're about out of radio time, but for someone who wants to go on the internet and find something, where do you go to? SDGFP.gov. You can go there and search around, look at maps, hunting regulations, all that sort of stuff, and you guys will be pretty set up with our website.

43:13Well, I'll tell you what, you guys do tremendous job. You don't get a pat on the back. I know that. You guys, you can't believe and tell you go up there, ladies and gentlemen, and see what this state has to offer. And I'll tell you, and I hear something and I, and you probably just take it for granted like I do, but it's a beautiful state. It just lays out good. So the rest of the country looks to South Dakota when it comes to up with management. Yeah, exactly. It's a cool place, man. It's something you should do on your bucket list. Not getting any younger, you better get up there and go after it. I'll make sure to spread the word and give all the people in the department your guys' compliments. You need a raise. You need more money. Yeah, there you go. If you want, you can send an email in. We're trying to raise money on this. Tell us how good raise. We're trying to raise some money here to buy some ductic oil. And then we haven't had a call yet. Yeah, no way. It's called to our tell. Well, thank you for coming on Alex. You're a wonderful human and a great gas and ladies and gentlemen again.

44:17As I re-interrated, please get to South Dakota. You're not getting any younger and you're going to enjoy when you're up there because it's too good to be true. So thank you, Alex for having me. Thank you, buddy. I tell you what, it's a good gas. I like it. Yeah. And ladies and gentlemen, I'm from my heart. Go to South Dakota and go Fesnot in one time in your life. You won't believe what you're about to see. Yeah. I mean, it's just absolutely unbelievable. Now, do respect the private property owners up there. And a lot of the farmers up there in the smaller towns especially go up knock on the door and say like go Fesnot. Let's see, sure, I just saw somebody down by the barn down there. I'm sure you can find plenty of people that are willing to help you out. And there's a lot of public ground up there. Now I would give you the heads up on public ground to be there the first weekend on public ground. Yeah, well, and I'm sure, you know, there's a lot. You know, South Dakota is a big state with a lot of habitat. You know, if you do your homework, I'm sure you can find places throughout the season.

45:17I want to briefly mention HSM ammunition for humans out of getting ready for deer season. You know, if you're going to get ready for deer loads, you better be getting them by. They will deliver them straight to your door. Get your credit card out and you will be enjoy, especially that tipping point. That's one I recommend. And they got the low recall 243. I don't have a lot of ammunition, but in a 243, we won't we shoot. And for kids that are just starting into the deer war, my goodness, you're going to enjoy shooting that stuff. They want their wraps it up for this edition of the Midwest outdoors. We got to go for this week. I hope we see in the great outdoors. Bye bye.