On the Hunt with Alpen Optics Dec 16th, 2020

Transcript: hi everybody welcome to on the hunt with alpine i'm kent martz along with co-host rick white rick how you doing today i'm doing just fine that's the same here it's a good day to be alive i'm also with co-hosts scrawky mark how are you doing again i'm well doing awesome it's great to be here wednesday night talking about hunting always third one in a row third yep third one in a row and i think this may be episode number one we'll just call the first two pilots number one and two and uh this may turn into a pilot two we'll see and there goes again so mark don't you tell us what we're gonna be uh talking about today sure ken let me walk everybody through who we're going to be talking to and some of the topics we're going to cover today you may remember those of you that watched last week we were checking in with rick on on deer hunting in indiana and we want to get the final update see what happened or what didn't happen we don't know yet haven't talked to rick about it but he'll uh take a few minutes to bring us up to speed on that and kind of tell us where he's heading next we've got uh joe falcon on the show um really looking forward to speaking with him this evening talking about some duck hunting and duck hunting youth ministry that he's got going on he's really doing some great stuff and i'm not going to talk about it too much i'll let uh let joe and kent cover that with you finally we're going to check in to elizabethtown kentucky with mike mcdonald one of our pro staffers and mike is uh getting ready for some more duck and goose hunting out in in kentucky and he's on uh a far far east part of the mississippi flyway out there and he's going to tell us a little bit about what they do out there some of the things that maybe they do differently than the rest of us are accustomed to but that's what we're covering this evening so back to you kent and then there there's something else coming up towards the end of the show isn't there always forget about that the alvin special the alpine special that's right it's not an on the hunt show without an alpine special one all right [Music] hey ken i can hear you how you doing buddy i'm doing great great good to talk to you i'm talking about wow uh joe falcon i don't know 20 years no no is a former olympian and uh retired police officer and i always joke joe's probably the fastest one on earth and um yeah hey thanks kent um years ago as as you know my boys uh christian and dakota and i we love duck and getting out with friends and what we discovered was there's so many kids out there and dads that may not have all the gear and they may not have the equipment and they may not have the ability to go out and get out in the creation and enjoy it so we began initially just taking one family at a time and enjoying that piece and about eight years ago we got blessed and there was a great dairy farmer out in the centerton community that had a really nice two-acre pond that we approached with the option of saying you know could we bring families out here because mike might talk about it here in a little bit in kentucky but you know if you load up and you go to the arkansas river you go down to stuttgart and you spend the whole weekend that's a commitment and for folks that are just trying to get into hunting that can be a difficult piece but a nice farm pond where the ducks work really close and you can bring them in awful tight for young kids to have an opportunity to harvest some was a blessing and then more so for us it was the ability to sit down and really serve those families so to do a gun safety with them to bring them out to the blind to teach them how to call some ducks to when they worked right help them with their shooting and then afterwards be able to show them how to process the ducks and then provide a meal with them if they need to be and then coupled within that was my sons and i having an opportunity just to talk to them about the lord and how blessed we've been to be out in his creation you know we've had a little over 120 families that we've taken so if you take that multiplied out by the kids we probably had in excess of about 300 uh folks that we've had the privilege to uh share a duck blind with and some great memories and stories and then ultimately you know though there have been those that have come to know the lord as a result of being out in the duck blind and we're grateful and humbled by that so uh i know you know at one point how many ducks you would have taken out of that you know we did through the end of last year the kids had harvested just a little over 500 ducks in the last six seasons you know this year as as america has dealt with covid we had to make the hard decision and the decision was we weren't going to take families out due to social distancing and uh you know that's been a that's been a challenge but we know that god's timing is good and that next year we'll have the opportunity to begin getting additional families back out there but it's just been a real joy to watch those the faces of those kids and more so the the parents themselves and many times the grandparents that are sitting out there with their children to be able to have a conversation because as you all know one of the things i ask is don't bring your cell phone out and sit in the deck blind i wanted a time where the kids and their dads and their granddads can have a conversation and there's nothing like being in a duck blind and being able to to have fun and and enjoy that creation and there's there's just nothing like hearing those wings whistling early in the morning before the lights come up or a shooting time and then being able to walk them through and talk to them about the different species of ducks and and what that looks like and so most of these kids they've never done any hunting before probably uh and it's their first experience out in the woods potentially or in this walking through the woods then through a cow pasture and you know it's a working dairy farm and so they also get to experience uh you know the fun of stepping in a cow pie at four in the morning yeah they have you know kent and uh you know more so it's that piece of the anticipation of it's one thing to do a gun safety class with them and it's another thing to get in the doug blind and have the guns in in the in the shotgun rest but when that first group of mallards or gadwall or teal start working and you tell them to go ahead and grab the gun and then when they're about to cut and you say go ahead and take your safety off and then you know take them it's the joy of watching those kids and typically for the young ones we just allow them to to chamber one round at a time so that we don't have any kind of accidental discharges within the uh the blind but watching those shots go off and then them getting excited to see that they've harvested duck or if they don't harvest the duck understanding that you're not going to get every one of them and then you get to encourage them to do it again when the next group comes in yeah we're flipping through the pictures now that i i took about four years ago i think when we when we hunted uh the last picture we saw is a that's you on the right taking a picture of a young man i don't remember who it was uh but that's about half the blind right there uh you know i have a picture of my son curled up asleep on top of a bag of decoys i didn't include and there's a picture of you and i think dakota out picking up geeks after uh the hunt and yeah yeah you know one of the probably the bonus benefits for our family is there's one thing to talk about serving others but it's another to get out there and and have your sons be engaged in it so to to go out early and to set the decoys and then to meet the families and walk them down to the blind and get them set up in the blind and then to cook a meal on a little cook stove in the back and provide them with a meal and to pray over it with them and then afterwards to you know to teach them how to to harvest because it's one thing you know the lord's real specific that you know that which we harvest we have to be good stewards of so we want to make sure that they understand how to clean the ducts properly and then how to obviously cook them and and then eat them because duck is really really good to eat and uh for me it's the bonus of watching my sons over the years having served those families and uh that is something that i'll always cherish and now as we have grandchildren that are starting to get of age to hunt that'll be the next season of life is now and getting the little grandkids out into the duck blind and enjoying those same experiences with them you know uh what's your favorite go-to duck recipe my favorite my favorite recipe that i like is duck gumbo i really like to make a gumbo and season the duck over a period of about five days and then brown it and cube it and then mix it in with all the great stuff that you'd have from louisiana which is really about anything you can find on the side of the road you just cut it up stick it in the old pressure cooker and let it cook for a day and it's pretty darn good uh so um we just changed camera angle i've just lost my train of thought this is what happens when you're not a professional tv guy um so we had sandhill crane last week and it was astoundingly good it was rub your belly high five darn darn good meat i wouldn't have guessed that it was a bird at all i mean it was like a steak in between uh steak and pork almost yeah it was really really good and marx and chris had cooked it and it was fantastic so um joe now you had a dog and that i think may have you retired you had logged every retrieve that dog made correct yeah you know ken i appreciate you mentioning magnum so magnum now is 13 and and sadly i tell you it makes me really my heart hurts he is in his last season of life and we're hoping to get him through christmas of next week and we've already visited with dr parker a couple different times but his back legs are getting to the point that he struggles to get up we have to get him up and get him outside and you know it's that time where we have to make a decision as a family and well i'll tell you he has been a blessing because he's lived in the house dakota got him when he was five he's been on every duck hunt with dakota from five up through you know 18 and you know it's that that time where you're grateful you love him and uh he was just the best companion and friend and i'm going to miss him i'll tell you i'll miss him we'll we'll get another lab and it'll be time to train a puppy but there'll be nothing like magnum and i think i was there the day either the day or the day after you got magnum and it's just amazing to watch those dogs grow and and become such family-oriented pets that that are companions and just just love to be around you that's what i love about labs they just want to be around you the whole time you know kent to your point i think what i cherish most about the duck hunts was watching the kids interact with with magnum because when he gets in his hay bed and majority of them are back there wrestling around you know people would say that we are pretty good at understanding when the ducks are coming but really we're not all we do is i get the the big boy up in the in the right position he listens and when his head turns you know there's a group of ducks coming from the right or kind of coming from the left and then you just get off the fall and get quiet and they'll usually cut and come right in but you know the joy to have a well-trained dog that's you know whistle train that you can sit in the blind and send him out the back and then watch the kids watch him work as you give him signals and tell him to go over her back or however and hunt him up and then to have that that grip great finishing dog that brings the duck back into the blind and sits and then lets that young child put their hand out underneath his mouth and then you tell him release and he's not dropping it in his hand that was just a blessing and a bonus and something i'll cherish and i know my sons have specially dakota and you know we'll look forward to whatever that next pup will be but man i tell you what there'll be some tears shed when we have to send magnum to the to the big death blind in the sky when when titan died a few years ago we were on vacation and we were driving back and uh doug called me himself on a saturday morning in tears and to tell me that we had kindled him there and uh that was a brutal telephone call to take in illinois driving back home for vacation uh you know and you miss dogs like that forever getting choked up about to cry anyway that's not you know memories you don't want to get necessarily and you but you want to keep them at the same time those emotions of a dog are just just so deep seated um i don't have anything else any questions no i'm just happy to hear joe talk about this it's incredible over 300 kids and i can't imagine being there to watch that for first time hunters and just them being behind them when they're when they're drinking it all in it's a beautiful thing i i thank you for doing it yeah so joe i appreciate you being on thank you for being a guest we may have you back sometime i may come out and do a little video uh next fall we'll get you back on as well maybe do some video of your training your new dog when you get one and just out enjoying life and god's creation because you know that's what it's all about and i want to thank you personally for for taking such an active role in introducing so many kids to the outdoors and to the sport that we love and and have grown up doing i think you just you're doing a great job thank you for agreeing and uh uh we'll have you back on some of the time you can stay on if you want to or you can go on and and get off the the meeting but we appreciate you very much joe thank you thank you that'd be great thanks kent appreciate the opportunity hey there's one of the i want to say here's my memory of the hut uh that picture of the group can we go to that i don't have the group nope you don't have the group all right there was a group picture of everybody smiling holding up ducks and it was snowing to beat the band in the background it was just a pretty picture so anyway uh we'll go on down the road uh joe talk to you sometime all right now we go to mr mike mcdonald go ahead mike you there sorry about that there's mike hey mike there's a bunch of deer right up behind you looking be careful don't move there's like five big deer looks like they're staring at you right behind you all right so anyway i don't know about big well they look big from here come on rick show us your wall so so mike you're doing uh duck and goose hunting in kentucky and people go you don't really think about you know elizabethtown as being you know in the mississippi flyway but it's like we're on the western edge i guess the mississippi flyway you're on the far eastern edge along the ohio river right yes so talk about duck hunting over there and goose hunting for the matter well we have a lot of canadian geese um that migrate through um a little bit more east of us around shelbyville but we have another flyway that runs right through elizabethtown just a little bit south of here not only do we have ducks and geese that migrate through cecilia which is south of elizabethtown we also have sandhill cranes that migrate through here um in kentucky we have a draw four sandhill cranes you're allowed to kill two or three depending on the tag some people get three some people get two i have not personally got any sandhill cranes but i have gotten tags and it seems like every time i get tags we don't see them and when you know when we don't have tags they're landing in in our decoys so that's generally how duck and do something goes a lot of times is they're always in somebody else's field and you hear a lot of shooting and they just will not come down where you want them to come down for whatever reason they just don't want to be there uh so what ducks do you get same bags we get is is there a predominant species or is it you know mallards the the the bird of choice pintails and mallards well we don't get a lot of pintails we get mostly mallards and occasionally when it gets really cold we get a lot of redheads we kill a lot of redheads on the river canvas backs blue bills ring necks we have killed some pintails around i personally have only been in a boat one time and it was a hen pintail um but mostly mallards we get a lot of wood ducks and a lot of teal um this year we still have wood ducks around it's been so warm that wood ducks and teal both are still around this area i mean they're very educated um one thing about hunting in big cities as most people would know when you're hunting around big cities they get a lot of pressure and the more pressure you get with ducks i mean they start moving not they'll go nocturnal and they'll fly out in the dark and they'll come back and feed in the dark so it gets tough but you learn how to adapt and overcome with hunting and just like early season you know you'll use a dozen decoys and then when it gets later in the season i mean i've went out and took two decoys or take six decoys and tighten them up and a lot of people run like great big spreads and we don't have a lot of you're not going to have 75 mallards come down i mean if you see 10 or 12 you're like this is a good day and if you kill four or five that's a great day so that's about how kentucky duck hunting has been especially the last couple years it's been very slow so we just saw a picture of a dog uh in some standing timber do you mostly hunt standing standing timber or your honey hunting pools what are you doing we we do have some standing timber um i think that particular picture there was from stuttgart arkansas we was in the timber and some good friends of mine that live uh just outside of there i think they're in um lone oak i think it's lone oak is where they're from and that was his dog and and it and i'll tell you when you're hunting in timber you need a dog and if you shoot a duck and you knock it down you better keep shooting at it because they will get underneath things in that timber and it is very tough to find them and if you have a dog you're probably your chances go up to about 85 percent of finding that duck um one of the first timber hunts i ever had it was it was really a great experience to get out there to hunt in arkansas in the timber but i just remember that where we were hunting was in biomedia and you could only take 15 shells in and the guys were like be very conservative you know save your shells and i was like ah this is easy i you know i kill ducks all the time i don't miss and i'll never forget it the first volley we had come in there was probably about 75 birds in it and i shot three times and knocked three birds down and didn't find a single one of them and they were like you gotta keep shooting and i was like well you told me to keep my shells so yeah so i got made fun of the rest of the week so when you went to balmita were you a part of the uh stampede uh when they released the boats oh yeah or will you just let everybody else go it's entertaining talk about race through meet it talk about the chaos of the launch what's that talk about the chaos of when all the boats take off oh it's crazy um so there's there's multiple boat ramps but the way they launch boats down there is you'll have like a double ramp and it it actually launches into a canal the canal is probably 15 to 20 feet wide maybe a little wider in some spots and it and there's like about a 150 yard shoot and then it takes a really hard right well several years ago i guess somebody had forgot something and they was coming back up through the canal and somebody come around and they actually hit each other and i i think there may have been a fatality with that and after that they slowed the speed down so it's nothing like it used to be um i think that it's either five or eight miles per hour once you're in the canal now once you get into the timber i think you can go you know most people split up but the reason everybody's racing is is everybody especially the people from that area those ducks want to be down in blow downs and they'll find big blow downs where it's open and they'll get in there and feed you know they're in there feeding in that timber because they're looking for acres i mean they're hungry ducks migrating and that's what they're looking for so if they find big pockets that are open and those locals know those pockets and they want to get in there before anybody else does and that's why it's just chaos but it's but it's something that everybody should duck hunted or thought about duck hunting uh public land in arkansas which it has changed uh now there's um they have specific dates for public land in arkansas and non-residents can only hunt i don't know it's like four or five days a month or something it's it's really strange now but it's still very awesome and almost every time i've hunted it we've killed our limit i've always been blessed in east arkansas to have access to private lands and always some um really good duck hunting there was one duck i had and i'll plan on having the guide on one of these days that literally every duck wanted to be in that field butted up against this this flooded timber and it was just a field and 20 acres wasn't a big field but there were so many ducks coming in that they were landing on top of each other and it looks like those pictures and videos you see from the 30s and 40s in east arkansas and we just sat there and just let all the birds just land and land and land and just enjoyed the joy of it and it was like okay let's shoot and we shot our limit and the birds came right back they wanted to be in that field and and that was like joe was talking about that's one of those moments you thank god for because you don't see those very much and um you know that's what those memories i'll always cherish and uh i've seen videos of of the chaos of biomedo and it is uh before they tamed it down it was truly a circus uh to watch people uh just take off all of the the same time um yeah well and see a lot of people don't realize either in biomedia they have a walk-in area you can actually park your car um it it's just by almeida if you could imagine as like a big campground there's campgrounds around so you can camp um but you can park on the side of the road and you can walk into a lot of those areas and matter of fact the last time i was down there a couple years back me and two other guys we walked in and we was only in most of the water was between your ankle and your knee so i'm talking a foot foot and a half of water and the one thing i've learned about duck hunting is if you have five days to hunt public land even anywhere even if even on like a pond like joe was hunting if you can watch that pond for a couple of days give a couple days up hunting and scout because if you can find that x you don't need nothing you don't need decoys you don't need calls and that's just one of those great moments where you can just sit there and you you just realize we're in the spot and that's how it was when we walked in the guy that we hunted with they have an overlook that looks over the whole entire uh biometa wildlife refuge and for a couple days he just went up there and was watching and he was like i don't know exactly where those ducks are going down but i know about where they're going down and that morning we probably had at least 7 500 i wouldn't be scared to say 10 000 mallards landing all around us i mean it was just incredible to see and it was kind of weird because those ducks was they would hop so they would all come down and then they would get up and lift and they would maybe move 15 feet and i don't know if they were feeding or what they were doing but they were just moving all around us and it was it was just awesome sketchy because when you walk in like that and everything looks the same you're like well i hope i don't get turned around and if it's a cloudy day it could be bad i think it's uh 6 600 acres or something and every single tree looks exactly the same there was there was a guy from up here that uh uh walked off into the woods to take care of some extra business and got lost and uh he was lost for like eight or nine hours they got helicopter up looking for him and he ended up you know and you think about it you're in full camouflage everything you have is camouflage all his camo and everything else was camouflage how do you spot a guy that's the same color as everything out there and so he ended up pulling his underwear off and used his underwear as a flag to uh flag down the helicopter and that's how they found him because he realized the only thing that he had that wasn't camouflaged was his underwear i'd learn from that so when i go duck hunting now i always take an orange flag with me like a trash bag because you can use that trash bag as a shelter you can use it for other stuff but if nothing else you can wave this orange thing up and flag the helicopter down that's looking for you but you know he ate a raw duck um he didn't drink any of the water all though he thought about it but you know it's just [Music] you're exactly right every tree begins to look exactly like every other tree after you get 20 feet away and that's what happened to him it's like i've got well at first i thought she was going to own any orange underwear wear orange underwear and i was going to say we just lost half of our viewers all right orange underwear oh and oh so i actually have a real question for you so just because i ate some crane meat last week i got a crane question for you mike what um are when you're goose hunting and you're out in the fields are you uh what are you hunting in the same fields that those cranes will come into or is it different uh places they're looking to land or there's one no looking for more water than a goose or what where are you were you doing that i have seen cranes especially around cecilia which is right around my area um i'm just south of fort knox well actually i'm hunting south of fort knox if you was to look at a map but um cecilia is that main flyway and they a lot of those go to green river in kentucky and some of them go to the baron there's actually a refuge there but i have seen sand hill cranes um 500 of them in a dry field feeding and i've seen them in a field that had an inch of water in it in just a pothole maybe out in the field and the cranes don't need water i mean they're just looking for corn they're just wanting to feed so that they can move and go to where they're going to but last year um i actually had crane tags last year and it never really got cold enough to push them down they were all well just to say how they were they staged last year i went and filmed rick um in iowa and when i was coming back through brown county indiana which is i'm gonna say central indiana um there was probably a hundred and fifty thousand cranes and they were flying tree top high indiana don't have a crane season and they just stay there and i was like well why would they want to leave it didn't get cold enough to freeze the ground and they have food why go anywhere else we you you need cold weather to push all them birds down and i think that's a big problem you know in the north they have so much food if it doesn't get cold they don't push down and that's what everybody's seeing here arkansas their numbers are down um kentucky our numbers are way down i'm sure from well probably over the last five years yeah same thing you hear about that from the game of fish commission and their bird counts in their in their surveys um what do you um uh plan on doing to get ready right now now you're do you have a january duck season or are you in duck season now our duck season goes to the last weekend of january so so are you doing scouting now or what are you doing a lot of scouting i'm actually going to be hunting tomorrow i'm going to be hunting on the river which is the ohio river actually just a little bit east of louisville in the morning or not to morning we're going to go tomorrow afternoon because we're mostly going to scout but we'll go look for birds and see what's around um really my favorite time to hunt is like the last two even sometimes three weeks but the last two weeks of january that's always our best and when it gets cold we'll get divers and when you get divers on the river we've killed um scouters which are eastern shore duck we've killed white wing scouters we've killed you say something did go on there was a microphone came on oh um but yeah we've killed skoda's which are eastern duck i think just last week um one of my buddies um i believe he was in louisville killed a white winged scouter and he had put it on facebook and he was like has anybody ever killed any of these and i was like yeah i actually have one mounted on my wall uh it's a female white wing scouter and then the same guy about five days before that actually killed a mandarin duck which are not even from here they're like an asian duck or south american duck and a lot of people here will buy them and they'll buy pairs of them and they're about five or six hundred bucks for a pair of them alive and sometimes they get loose and they'll get in with wood ducks but i believe he had some wood ducks come in and that mandarin duck was flying with it so i you know he's killed two he's killed two unicorns this year so his season's probably pretty good it might be the only two ducks he's killed so far but he's killed two rare ducks so you're so far east you're like getting birds from both flyways and that's pretty interesting uh yeah um last year well i don't think it was last year was about two years ago um one of our biologists from the fish and wildlife he had put a post out and they were saying that there were i don't remember if he said that they were idears i think he said they were items in a lake about 75 miles east of here and i guess they got blown in off the east coast you know if we get a lot of eastern bad weather cold weather those ducks will push here and then if we get you know west if if the if you get really strong winds out of the west it pushes a lot of ducks this way but we do have i mean we do pretty good i mean to not be in a major flyway we we do pretty good well i think the critical thing like you said and this is for all hunting and fishing and outdoor sports that if you figure out where the animals want to be you've increased your chances of success significantly by just going out and plopping down we've got a a deer blind we've built down in the woods and it's in a place where people see it and go why did you build it there and so because this is where the deer are and they really have a hard time believing it but the success is in all the check marks that have been put on the uh the wall of the blind all right so um mike i think we're going to wrap up this segment with you any final thoughts you want to give us before we go to rick well i was just going to say he had you had asked him about a recipe for his ducks and i was just going to give you a quick recipe because rick white of all people don't think ducks are good to eat i'm going to give him some soon he just had ducks that were good they were cooked properly but to anybody that's listening duck is is great and what i do with it is cut the breast in the strips put flour cornmeal and taco seasoning which is all dry in a in a bucket mix it up real good put the duck and some people do it in like jalapeno pepper juice and buttermilk but you can do just an egg wash and just fry those ducks and believe it or not one of the best things you can dip that in is horseradish and a lot of people take ranch dressing in hot sauce but i learned that from some cajun guys that like hot stuff so but it that's an easy duck recipe that i promise you you can eat and it's good with any type of wild game pheasants um uh woodcock a lot of people say woodcock or livery i've done it with them and they're amazing so so it's an easy recipe but that's all i got to say are you pan frying them are you deep frying them or what are you doing i'm deep frying them the guy that showed me actually pan fried them because they was doing it at a campsite maybe just didn't like an iron skillet okay very good so appreciate that and uh look forward to proceeding with you and getting you back on the show in the future and uh you know work on getting some video this year that you can share um that's one thing we we haven't gotten a lot of yet and we need to work on so be getting some video for us to share of just the beautiful things around you when you get out in the outdoors so um now we're going straight to rick who update us on his couple of weeks spent in indiana uh trying to um find a nice deer so rick what you got well listen first let me let me thank joe for for getting those kids involved in the outdoors uh all the years i've been in the hunting industry that's that's my number one goal is to get kids uh brought up in the outdoors and uh you know there's not a better feeling in the world when you're uh you're out there with a kid especially on one of their first hunts so thank you joe and uh you know my wrap-up of my hunt in indiana really is going to be pretty brief i i ate a very expensive indiana tags sandwich on this hunt uh it was it was not good it was it was nothing was moving uh we had the weather a little bit the rifle season maybe a little bit of pressure uh food everywhere so it was really tough you know and you know and i hear this a lot from people you know when they watch me on tv or on a video all they're ever seeing are the successful hunts but sometimes they don't realize that in order to have three or four successful hunts you have to do you know six seven eight hunts uh they're not all successful um you know you like them to be we're hunting a new place this year so more than anything we really kind of got things figured out so that i'm a step ahead for next year uh and sometimes sometimes that's what we have to do to be successful is just try to get things figured out but nevertheless i was out hunting you know there's not a better thing in the world especially with what's going on nowadays one of the safest places you can be is is in the outdoors and uh i got to spend a lot of time with uh fellow pro staffer john dallas and and we had a lot of fun and and uh you know i'm looking forward to doing it next year again you know um you have to just look at it as scouting but i've always felt like a bad day of deer hunting is a better day than cleaning a house um you know i'd rather have a bad day at deer hunting and spend a day a good day cleaning the house and you know don't tell my wife i said that because uh she'll figure it out and maybe quit hunting so anyway uh did you see any deer at all yeah we did we we saw we saw you know we saw a deer i wouldn't say that we saw a lot of deer now last year ehd hit that area really bad so their deer numbers were probably down 50 maybe even more percent uh so we're up against that uh on top of everything else uh we did see some deer i did see a couple of really good bucks uh just not to where i could could get a shot uh but um yeah you know they were there and um next year i'm hoping will be a little bit better so what was it that that was hit had hit the deer hud deer deer heard cwd chronic wasting disease no ehd a hemorrhagic disease that they get from a midge fly okay right yeah really really hit them hard last year especially in that area you know we have some cwd here and haven't just haven't seen any deer at the farm that look like they've had any problems with it all you know there's been they test you have every deer tested if you want to and we just haven't seen any it's been more over in the east of us more in north central arkansas where the big elkhurt is along the buffalo river and um you know it is majestic to go over there and listen to those elk bugle in the mornings and evenings and see them come out in the field and see those big majestic animals but you know that's for another time we need to show on that haven't done that but we need to talk about that all sorts of ideas come up so uh what are you getting ready to do now rick what's coming up for you well i you know this time of year i always take off the week before christmas i always spend at home with family i'm a big christmas guy i like the holidays and so i'm going to be doing that now right after christmas i'm planning on running down i still have a missouri gun tag i'm going to go down and hunt for a few days and then our late season muzzleloader uh starts uh well it actually starts next monday but i'll wait until after christmas and then i'll be out uh until about january 10th or until i i tag out but i've got those two hunts left and and you know what i'm ready for turkey season at that point so do you but i'll be hunting a little bit yet do you pull a trailer tent camp what do you do no no i don't pull a trailer i just get my truck and drive very good all right rick good to talk to you uh we're now going to go uh to talk about what kind of specials we have coming up why not what do you got mark got a great special night in honor of um all of our guests tonight i guess we're going to have probably alpine's historically most popular duck hunting binocular binocular called wings really really nice very traditional looking binocular we call it a double bridge binocular it's got uh two areas of of support on it but it's binocular that's been around for a while anyway i'm not going to tell you all about the specs i'm going to tell you about a great deal we got on this thing so if you go to the bresserusa.com site through alpine optics you'll see wings binoculars 10 by 42s it's uh model number 546 i think it's called you'll see it on the site for 179 dollars and for on the hunt viewers tonight through sunday we've got a special on there for half price 50 off so 90 bucks for this binocular which is an outstanding uh binocular for two hundred dollars let alone a hundred dollars so that's what's going on kent so what do they just putting type in give them to me for free or what's the what do they have to put in for the coupon code do that but they won't get them they don't get them that way huh no no so what you do is go to um alpineoptics.com or pressureusa.com go in and again you'll see a model 546 wings binocular it's going to be listed for 179 dollars go to the checkout section after you select one of these things and you're going to see an opportunity to put in a promotional code and the promotional code is on the hunt the name of our show here so put in on the hunt and that'll let you check out at 50 off for 90 bucks or so on this binocular so you know it's a they're good binoculars they're waterproof uh they're a dandy uh product uh they carry the alpine lifetime warranty when you're registering within 60 days of purchase it's a lifetime warranty and uh you know as we've owned uh alpine for two years and a little bit two and a half years and uh the the alpine warranty we have people send us in binoculars and we'll find a pair to match them and if we don't have them and do whatever we can to take care of those customers when we bought the company we did not have to honor the warranty but ownership made that decision to continue to honor the lifetime warranty because it does uh have a good effect on on brand loyalty and alpine customers i have learned are very very loyal customers and we want to keep them that way so you buy the binoculars just go to the website click on registration register them for warranty within 60 days and you will earn yourself a lifetime warranty uh for the alpine products i saw one that had a truck tire mark in it that came back in and said uh had a tag on it saying my binocular doesn't work anymore we we've got i i need to we honor the warranty i've got to do the right thing i'm going to see if i can find this we have one came back that you won't believe and we have it back there somewhere i think i'm not going to say what it is but i am going to find it and uh if we have it i will show it to you next week and it is very scary what what happened to it but it is quite a a visual and we sent him a brand new spotting scope but it was quite an interesting ordeal and i think y'all will get some g-whiz out of seeing that so we'll see if we can find that in a spotting scope and bring it back for next next week so um i want to thank uh joe fi joe falcon and mike mcdonald for joining us today giving us their valuable time to share with us their passion uh for the outdoors and uh for for for the pursuit of like joe said the gifts god has given us uh it's it's the creation out there and it's the wildlife and it's the outdoors and what better place to go out and then and get away from covet than the great outdoors hunting uh is up around the country in every state get out there buy a hunting license go be safe in the woods that's the key just get out in the woods go enjoy it and for me it's not about the kill it's about being out in the woods and seeing what's going on and just enjoying being out there with people around me uh mark anything final thoughts i think that's it for me thanks for watching on behalf of rick white and yeah hey mark or rick what you got i was just going to say next week we have jordan dean uh as a guest on the show and he'll be talking a little bit about uh what's going on in missouri so he he's a waterfowl hunter along with the deer hunter and turkey hunter and maybe we'll get an idea of what's going on down there yeah and right right before the show mark told me he wasn't going to be here next week so i got to come up with a sidekick we might make tyler or one of the guys in the back come up here and we got some hunters back in the back that work in shipping and production that would probably uh if we can prime free from the uh christmas uh rush it'll be over hopefully by then wednesday before but probably not so anyway on behalf of rick and mark i'm kent martz you've been watching on the hunt with alpine have a great evening everybody thanks for joining us you know good optics are a must for a hunter particularly binoculars not only during hunting season but times like this when it's time to start scouting but there's one thing you need to do when you get your binoculars that a lot of people don't realize you need to set them up for yourself everybody's eyes are a little bit different and here's how i do it it's simple and easy just take the binoculars and just kind of grab good focus on an object and i go and put my hand over the left lens the dot ring which is on the right side i will go ahead and adjust that until that right eye is in focus once it is i take the hand off the other side both eyes in focus and you're ready to go it's simple and easy and it's a must that you do this before you go out and use them you know good optics are a must for a hunter the new alpine teton they're lighter they're better in low light excellent excellent glass you'll be hard-pressed to find that glass for under a thousand dollars everything that you would want in a pair of optics i know what i'm looking for and once i know what i'm looking for and find what it is that's what i'm interested in buying the bottom line is they're affordable they're lighter and they're great in low light the new alpine tetons another deer coming out