What's going on everybody and welcome to another episode of loan ducks,
gun dog chronicles, baby. Really excited to have a repeat guest, Nick Larson back on the show.
This was an OG one of probably the first 30 episodes. I'm looking at Kevin for recognition.
Maybe he can look it up quick, but it was early days of the podcast. Nick joined us so long ago that
we got talking about his quote, unquote, new setter. It was a puppy back then and now it's had three
grouse season. So Nick is from the birdshot podcast, upland gun company. I mean, I was just going to
say his normal Instagram, but it's an I larson. So my bad birdshot podcast, upland gun company,
great, great grouse hunter. I loved talking grouse hunting with him and the woodsmanship behind it.
But we also dabbled into the upland gun company and fitting a gun and the importance of how it
works through the woods and how it fits you and just like super knowledgeable guy entertaining
to listen to. And I know you're going to enjoy the show. So stay tuned. Nick Larson is coming on up.
First, hit up the patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfitters. Link is in the bio. It's the
community where you can get a little piece of the one on one with me. We have zoom happy hours
where I answer your questions. We crack a beer together. We have a ton of fun. And right now,
until September 1st, 2023, if you're a part of our patreon community, you're entered to win a
free hunt with Kevin and I in southern Missouri to go the content. We're also doing a seminar
in the afternoons, probably some some bush lattes drink in the evenings with a bonfire.
It's going to be a blast. All expenses paid. Basically, we're working out the details of that,
but basically.
Spencer paid asterisk. Asterisk. I think so mostly we're going to work on it.
It's yeah, on the podcast live, I'm telling you it's going to be the lodging, the food, the beer,
the hunt will be included. Your airfare or driving, probably not, but there's other cool stuff you'll
get to. So I don't solve if that's a problem. Join patreon. Five bucks a month. Win a free hunt.
Let's go baby. YouTube, loan duckoutfitters.com. Excuse me. It's just loan duck outfitters on YouTube.
We are pumping out content on there for the for people to just train their dogs better.
So I hope you enjoy it. We're working hard at it. Please subscribe and leave a comment. Tell us
what you think about them. And if there's anything you'd like to see in the future, pop up on the
old YouTube's. And lastly, our force fetch course. I worked my tail off on delivering a start to finish
force fetch course that takes different breeds, different personalities and different stages of
the process where they haven't done it. This is not a perfect specimen. This is where I work
through problems is where I share with you the methodologies, the reasons why if this happens,
this is what I do. If this happens, this is what I do. This is super common. Here's what you should
do to fix it. It's me teaching you how to force fetch your dog. The link is in the description to
the force fetch course. Go ahead and get you some. By the way, if you're a patreon folk,
you get a discount on the force fetch course. So I'm saving you money already, baby. Let's go.
Next up Purina from the duck blind to the holding blind. It's Purina. Baby, the food that fuels the
truck loan duck. Our big dogs are on the 30 20. Bro plan sport and our little dogs are puppies
under a year old are on the large breed puppy formula. I want to make sure that those young dogs
are growing at the proper rate. I don't want them exploding and having huge, you know, growth spurts.
I just want them slow smooth, smooth as fast and develop healthy bodies, healthy minds,
and a healthy appetite for that. Purina, baby. Next up Gunnar Kennels, man's best kind of made
in America. Made in America. What is that for? Mariah. This is going to be a new one Apollo Creed.
Let's go. I don't know. I just lost my track.
Karina thought here with Apollo Creed, but Gunnar Kennels, man in America, it's cold up north where
Kevin is in New York. And the new Kennel panel for the door is basically what he's got on his
gunners in the bed of his truck. He's got a cap on it. So you're not getting the wind. You're not
getting the precipitation from snow or sleet or rain, but it's still chilly back there. And so
with the all-weather kit plus that door panel, the dog in the bed of the truck is actually warm
in their body. He is keeping the Kennel warmer as well as now they have to expend less energy
to keep themselves warm. So it's a win, win, win, win, win, plus they're safe rolling down the road.
Gunnar Kennels always innovating, always coming out with more. Check it out.
Next up, shooter shoot, baby. That can't cartridge. I got maybe a little sinus infection.
Is that the sniffles or this man? I don't know. Probably a little bit of both.
Interesting conversation with Nick in terms of old guns and the type of ammo we can use with them.
Like the power behind load, it's like Bismuth is probably not going to hurt the barrels of the old
guns, but it's more the compression of the shot and so being careful with that stuff.
But in the old Browning Satori, the Kent three inch number five's number six is at the old
Milardo Eduardo Milardo is a delightful treat to throw down range. Check them out at Kent Cartridge
on the Instagrams. Last but not least is our friends at DT Systems. These are the e-colors that
we've been messing with over the last several months, testing them out and making sure that
it meets the standards to be a part of the podcast and our training program and to deliver for you
guys. What can I say? We're really pleased with what we've seen. I'm also excited about what's
coming down the pipes for DT. One of the units that we've been using a lot lately is their 1820.
It's a great all-around collar for training, for duck hunting, for upland hunting. It's got
all the little things that you need. It's got a few extra bells and whistles for
some people. I just think it's the simplest, easy to use. It's got great consistency and it's high
quality. The 1820 from DT Systems is a solid, solid, solid unit. Check them out at DT Systems
on the Gram. Let's get into the show. Nick, welcome back. We appreciate you joining us. Tell everybody
a little bit about what's been going on in the light of Nick Larson.
Well, as you can see behind me here, we're getting some more snow here in Duluth, Minnesota, buddy.
Thanks for having me back on. I got nothing better to do in the midst of this blizzard we're having
on March 21st. It's a pleasure to be back on the Lone Duck podcast and happy to be chatting with
you boys tonight. Yeah, I saw in your background the snow and the first thing I said is, boy, I don't
miss that white stuff. No, thank you. No, thank you. One of my favorite things about you is your
intuitiveness about grouse hunting. Before we get into it and dive into it,
you've got the Birdshot podcast. You've got the Upland Gun Company.
Tell us the Birdshot podcast. What's been new with that? Tell us about the Gun Company.
Let's dive in, man. Yeah, those are hunting. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. Those are
definitely the two things that keep me most busy outside of my family. I got two young boys now
and a lovely wife and two bird dogs, which we'll talk about a little bit, probably more so than
maybe the little rascals. But yeah, those are what I'm doing mostly on a daily basis. And since we last
spoke, the Birdshot podcast is new. It's a continuation of what I was doing for the project up in
podcast. But really an opportunity came along to work with Upland Gun Company, who was the company
was started by a friend of mine, Jerry Habel, owner of Pine Ridge Growse Camp, and got to know Jerry
over the years and kind of put myself in a position to be able to help them out when they needed it
not long after they launched. So that move kind of combined with the switching of the project
upland and taking that solo as myself to and switching the name to the Birdshot podcast. But
really as longtime listeners of the show will know, not a lot changed behind the scenes. It was more
of a outward looking change, just so I could take ownership of the show and take it with me. And now
I'm in May. It will be two years since I officially joined Upland Gun Company, which is it's been
a really fun time working with Upland Gun Company. And I guess I maybe could have predicted it,
but probably not to the extent, but the synergy between Birdshot podcast and Upland Gun Company.
Obviously, up in hunting podcast, we talk a lot about shotguns on the show, but just working for
Upland Gun Company and talking to so many customers that listen to the show and clearly have an
interest in in shotguns and bird hunting. It's been a really, really unique experience thus far.
And the way we see it, we're kind of just getting started. So
those two things are a lot of fun for me.
Yeah, I listen to a recent podcast you had, and I don't remember your guest name, so shame on me.
But side by side question and answer episode. No, it was it was a great guest. And he was like,
hey, by the way, I don't mean to give this plug, like I'm about to, but man, you nailed it with the
suggestions. You nailed it with measurements. You nailed it with the quality. And I'm like,
I mean, you're not paying him to say it. He just was raving about the marksmanship that he saw
from this gun. And I don't know, it was a great podcast in of itself. That was Randy Schultz,
the quail hunter from from down south. Yes. Yes. I recall that. Yes. Yeah.
It was it was a great episode. But I wanted to learn more about the Gun Company. Like,
where are they from? If I like, I'm strongly considering getting one, walk me through the process.
Yeah. So that's a that's definitely a fun part about what we do. It's pretty unique. I would say,
I wouldn't say it's never been done before. Maybe specifically in the way that we do it with our
website and the online builder. And there are tools and things that we can do today that cannot be
done 20, 30 years ago. So that's where we found our ability to to prop this business up and
and start making a lot of customers happy, which has been fun. But it starts with the guns,
which are Italian made shotguns built by a company by the name of RFM. They've been in business
since 1957. So over 60 years at this point, they've been making shotguns and they just never really
had a strong importing business to North America, a little bit to Canada, maybe here and there in
the US, but not a lot. And Jerry and Dan, we're looking to do something sort of in this space that
happened to align very well with what RFM does, which is specifically making these guns kind of one
of one made to order customized in a way for the individual shooter that you just don't see a lot
in in the shotgun world, especially at the price ranges that that our guns are selling at. So
most people are familiar, you go to a store with lots of guns on the rack and you eventually
you pick and choose from lots of options and find what suits you best. But clearly shoulder it and
like stare into the sky and you're like, maybe look down the barrel, you're like, yep, I'll take it.
Yes. Yeah. And you're, and you're, of course, comparing and contrasting to everything else,
which people are doing that with our guns as well. But we give you the options because they're made
to order. And because RFM is very receptive to making these sort of one by one and customizing
all of the different options barrel length grip, you know, we can get into all that stuff, choosing
your wood grade custom engraving. I mean, you can really go crazy with it. I don't really pitch it as
sort of like anything is possible. We have constraints and limitations that we work within, but I think
relatively speaking, you have a lot of latitude to sort of tailor and tweak the gun to suit your
shooting style preferences, but also what you like to look at and carry in the field. And that's
really what we've heard over and over again from customers. That's what they appreciate about
what we're doing. So yeah, that's super cool. All right. So I'm going to be a new customer. I'm
going to tell you what I have a Browning Satori. Wow. So I got a bunch of them. But my go-to gun
that I do shoot the best is a Browning Satori with 26 inch barrels.
Bent rib, it really helps my pattern. It's from smashing against rocks, duck hunting, slipping
on ice and falling and just it's a rough shape. But man, I love that.
Crows that are curving around a tree of that. Yeah, it kind of hooks a little left.
What gauge? 12 gauge. All right. So I hunt ducks, geese, pretty much everything with it.
Then I was gifted a 16 gauge Ithaca side by side.
Three barrel set. Three barrel set. I heard that on your large Jacob episode today.
Great episode. Thank you. Love it. And so that's what I grouse and would got
come with. That was a 16 gauge, right? Yep. So I've got to get the RSTs for it.
Would you suggest anything else? Like does Bismuth work through that or should you stick
with the low brass low? It's yeah, I would definitely not say like, yes, go ahead and shoot. Bismuth
won't damage the barrels, but it has more to do with the pressure in those old gauges based on
my understanding. So you'd want to have, you know, like you'd need a Dell Whitman or somebody to
take a look at that and tell you what you could shoot through it. RSTs always a great option.
And it's a bummer because they haven't had the supply that they've had in previous years.
And this ammo shortage has really hit them pretty hard based on as far as I understand
components and stuff. And as I was talking to a guest recently, RST is a great,
I wish they were at full capacity because they really specialize in a lot of different
shots like SKUs that have varying payloads and velocities that you really don't find
in a lot of other places with factory ammunition. So they just, they have a lot of great options.
And I would, even though I shoot plenty of guns that don't need to shoot RST, I would happily
shoot that stuff just again, knowing you can, and you and Lars talked about this a little bit,
you know, you can shoot lighter payloads or slower velocity because you just don't need
bigger, faster, stronger all the time when it comes to shotgun shooting.
Sure. Which, when he explained it that way,
like no one has explained it that way. It was genius. So if you're wondering what he's
talking about, we're not going to dissect it now. Go back and listen to the other episode. But
it completely made sense to me on the wing.
Um, so I love and over and under, I shoot grouse and would gawk with that side by side,
16 gauge, and then I dabble taking an old A5 Browning, like old A5. That's a 20 gauge.
Yep. And I'll take that grouse hunting because it doesn't really get dirty.
Where if you're duck hunting, it's such a pain in the butt to clean, right? It doesn't get used
as much as I thought it would. So I would be looking for a side by side or an over and under.
And so if I'm in between, what would you tell someone? Yeah. So the side by side and over under
conversation is a very interesting one. You typically, I would say the majority of customers
I talk to have already decided whether they want to go side by side or over under. And,
and that's for varying reasons. I do get the question, you know, which way should I go? And
I'm kind of considering it. I was going to tell you, like after your conversation with Lars,
how could you not get a side by side? I heard the way he kind of painted it. And, you know,
I'm, I'm sort of, you could definitely say I'm drinking the side by side coollate at this point.
Like when I was younger, I never really thought about side by side as much. I grew up hunting with
pumps and I love browning guns. I had a browning BPS 12 gauge. And then I always wanted,
when I was younger, I always wanted a BPS browning upland special. There was,
because they made this gun with an upland special, it had a straight English grip. Like I would see
that in the catalog on Sunday in the newspaper. And I was just like, it's an upland gun. I need
that gun. And I never, I never did end up getting the BPS upland special. But my very first double
gun, I still have it is a Satori upland special, which is it's got the straight English grip.
It's got a terribly short length of pull. Somebody chopped it way off. So I got like three inches
of rubber on the thing to get it to 14 and a half inch length, length of pull. But it has the straight
grip. And of course, it's got 24 inch barrels, which I shot, I shoot that gun pretty well. But now I,
the guns that I shoot tend to look quite a bit different than that. Sure. So to answer your question,
I would say, you know, if you like shooting the side by side and, and your, your, it's not a big
hurdle for you, you know, it's not your first side by side. You know, when somebody comes to me and
they want to build a custom gun, if it's their first side by side, you know, we want to be sure
that that's the road they want to go down, right? Because this isn't like necessarily buying and
selling some other guns. So, but if you're already comfortable with it, and that's the way you're
kind of leaning, I would, I would sort of double down on what Lars said and just, I mean, the way it
sets up for the field, they tend to be lighter weight from the comparable gauge and, and, you know,
configuration on the over under platform. And I do think there is some, I don't think the performance
is going to come down to like you missing the bird or not missing the bird. But I sort of buy
into the theory that Lars is talking about from a completely instinctive wing shooting perspective,
having your hands really close to the line of sight. Like, I just think it sets up really well
for what we're doing in the for up and game shooting on the wing instinctive quick shooting,
especially rough cross and woodcock hunting. Yeah, I like the side by side for that application
for sure. Okay, what about if I wanted it to double as my duck gun? Right. So, in that case,
there, there is a little bit of consideration there just because you're, you're considering
maybe weight of the gun, maybe shooting some heavy, you know, duck hunting is interesting
because you've got the non toxic aspect and you're, as soon as you cross over to non toxic,
your ammunition options start to get a little bit different. And you tend to see stuff with
heavier payloads, not that it has to be, you can always custom load stuff, but you tend to see
heavier payloads, faster speeds, especially if you have to shoot steel or something like that,
which our guns are plenty capable of doing, but then the weight conversation comes into play,
because, you know, if you are going to be pushing some waterfall loads through it, how light of a
gun do you really want? And sort of, what are you, what are you looking to get out of it? So,
because of the recoil? Yeah, yeah, yeah, really just felt recoil, which is, you know,
it's felt recoil is you're going to feel it in the field a lot less than you would if you were
shooting clays or shooting a patterning board, you know, we don't tend to feel a ton of recoil
when we are shooting at birds, but that's not to say it isn't affecting you. And you guys will,
you'll both know, like, you know, the minute you have a gun that doesn't fire or you got a bad
shell or something, which is pretty rare. But yeah, you see it. And so even if you are the
guy, you know, you step up and say, I don't recall doesn't affect me, but a blank in that guy's gun
and see what happens when he pulls the trigger, right? Yeah, he's flinching. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, so that would be interesting. So, it makes sense.
Lightness of the gun. So one of the things that I like about the Browning Satori
is its balance. It's heavy. It's a heavy gun. But it falls forward really easily. So when you
shoulder, it just like lopes into place and other guns, if they're too light and I'm not used to it,
like it usually takes me a little bit of practice to get back in the swing of things with my side
by side, because it is light. And I'm used to my Satori just like boop, boop, boop,
muscle memory. Would you? I'll have you as your Satori. It's probably north of seven pounds in
a 12 inch. Yeah, I would think it's over seven pounds. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, usually if we get
in that conversation, we have two different models of side by side, we have the Venus and the zoos.
And the main differences between the two are they have a slightly different barrel construction,
functionally at that amount to a whole lot. But the Venus is a smaller sleeker gun. The frame
size is smaller. A 20 gauge frame on a Venus is smaller than a 20 gauge frame on a Zeus. Overall,
you get a smaller sleeker lighter weight gun. So if you come to me and you say you're looking
to for a duck gun, it's going to double as an upland gun and a duck gun. My mind is immediately
going to go towards the Zeus just because it's a little heavier, more robust gun. Now, I'm still
not talking about a heavy gun here. A 12 gauge Zeus is going to be under seven pounds. I think
I've got one here in the garage that's like six pounds, maybe 15 ounces. And that's set up,
I think pretty classically splinter foreign straight grip. So sub seven pound gun. And then
as you go down and gauge, you know, basically go down from there, 16 gauge is going to be six
and a half to six and three quarters. 20 gauge Zeus is getting down towards six pounds. I've seen
some under six pounds. So my mind would go to a 20 gauge Zeus or something like that. And what
I was going to ask you at the beginning was, and this is my Lars brought up, which I find this a
really interesting conversation is most of the time when people are buying a shotgun, I feel like
one of the first things you decide on is gauge, which seems like a very natural starting point,
kind of this fork in the road moment. But if if folks heard the episode with Lars,
it's like gauge is almost irrelevant. It has more to do with the payload that you're planning to shoot
through it, because you can, as he clearly pointed out, I can have a 28 gauge and I could shoot a
one ounce load out of it, which is effectively a 16 or a 12 gauge load. So what do you really
have there? You have a 28 gauge or do you have a 16 gauge? Right. And so it would come down to
like, where do you want to be from a weight and feel perspective? And then we can kind of go from
there, because you can do a lot with ammunition within reason. Sure. That doesn't really have to be a
fork in the road for you. I think I would lean towards the 20 gauge, because I think it would
bode well for my grouse and woodcock. And then it would it would be my dabble in the duck hunting.
I can't remember if I've ever shot a side by side duck hunting.
Yeah, there's no way. No way, because you have nice side by sides and you are brutal on your guns.
No, I have that old Stevens 12 gauge that was one of my first guns. And I don't think 11.
Probably. I don't even know, man. I paid 50 bucks for it. And it's a 12 gauge side by side,
Stevens, and it it what others. Yeah, it was my first shotgun. I got an 870 after that.
Yeah. And so I think I duck hunted with that, but that was 15 or more years ago. I don't even know.
But long story short, yeah, I think I would go to I think I'd go 20 gauge, man. I'd be that's the
new fad, right? Like the smaller, the smaller it is, the bigger you know what is.
Okay, right. Yeah, the 20s, the new 12 and the 28 is the new 10 gauge, right? Right. Right. Yeah.
But I do think it's it's it's really hard to argue with the practicality of the 20 gauge,
especially you're talking about adding in some versatility. You know, maybe it's primarily an
upland gun, but it's also maybe a really nice day duck gun. And I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be
too worried about taking it out on a rainy day either. You know, you just got to make sure these
things are dry and clean. Well, that's what I love about sorry to interrupt you, but that's what I
love about over and over and under a side by side, man, it's three pieces, whack, whack, yeah, you
stripped out dry them out, clean them up, oil them up. Yeah, you're good. Yeah, it's pretty simple.
And and I will say that we are as we as upland gun company gets more and more out in the world,
we're starting to talk to more customers. And we are right now we're building some some guns for
guys that are, it's going to be a duck gun. That's what they want. They want to shoot. They want to
shoot a side by side double gun with ducks and being a modern gun with some modern manufacturing
things that we can do. We can Sarah coat the receiver. We can Sarah coat the barrels. In fact,
we just I just took an order yesterday for a guy. It's this third gun. He's building a Zeus,
a zoo 16 gauge that we talked about. We're doing Sarah coat black on the action and the barrels.
And we have this really cool duck game scene engraving that we're putting on their forum and
he's he's over the moon about it. So you have that you have that capability and you can sort of
dial it in and and fine tune it the way you want it. But yeah, in a 20 gauge, you're going to have
the ammunition options to take it from the duck line to the woodcock covers. And you can do that
pretty seamlessly. One of the things that I found interesting in the episode that you had,
and I wish I remind me of what's episode. Do you you and Randy Schultz? Thank you. Randy Schultz,
he was talking about getting shorter barrel length and I always thought, hey, I'm in the woodcock
woods and I'm in the thickest of thick. Hangles and alders and you know, you swing a gun. I want
to be shorter. Yeah, because it's less likely to snag on a vine, snag on a tree. I can pull up and
pull the trigger. So what is your methodology on? Why you told him go longer? Yeah.
Yeah, it's a great question. It comes up all the time and the short barrels thing is a very logical
thing to go to in your mind. And myself included, you know, I hunt rough grouse 99% of the time. So
I'm in I'm in the grouse woods. And you know, when I first got that Satori up on special with 24
barrels, I thought it was, you know, the greatest thing since sliced bread. And it's not that short
barrels don't perform, but the more and more I've done this and the more and more I've got to shoot
different guns and now one of the perks is I get to experiment and play around and build some stuff.
You just I don't see that you have as very much to gain by shortening the barrels and it has more to
do it has more to do with the weight and the feel of the gun than it does anything else.
These guns, especially the gun that he bought, which was a Venus 28 gauge, that is a that's our
smallest frame gun that we make. You're talking about a five and a quarter pound gun in in a gun
that has 28 or 30. I've got one over here on my bench that's got 30 inch barrels and it weighs
five pounds five ounces. So you take that gun and you start chopping off barrel length. That's
when you risk getting the whippy or zero momentum swing that people talk about with short barrels
and to kind of come full circle to the whole getting caught in the brush thing. I think while
that makes sense in theory on paper, when you actually get into the woods, you don't when you
get hung up in the brush, you get hung up on your arms or your body. It's you're just you're either
hung up in the brush or you're not. It's not because of the last two to three inches of barrel. That's
not where you're swinging making this big long swing and the last inch of my barrel runs into
an oak tree and stops my swing. It's not just my time. I've heard that one before. I believe that.
So the way we kind of frame that for a lot of folks is, especially if we're talking the
the Venus shock on the small lightweight one, I like 28 inch as a minimum unless you are a very
small stature person and are going to have a really short length of pull, then we can get into
like the whole proportions and balancing. But our FM is paying attention to the balance of
every one of these guns during their hand fitting and finishing process. So whether you get 26
inch barrels or 30 inch barrels, it's going to have a pretty similar balance. They're paying attention
to that. I have I've gone from I went from kind of shooting mostly 28 to then 29. And last year
when I got my 28 gauge, I put 30 on it and I was honestly like nervous until the day I got it.
Nice took it out in the woods and started dropping birds with it. It's just it's not a it's a non
issue. So I don't really push people to go way out of their comfort zone. But I just I don't really
see what there is to gain by going shorter than say 28 inches. Okay. So because I've got the
three barrel set for the Ithaca, would you tell me this year dabble with putting on the longer
barrels and let it rip? Well, I'm assuming the way they used to do those barrel sets,
typically they would have you know, the shorter barrels would be more open showings and the
longer barrels would be tighter. Do you know the specs on each set of barrels?
Not off the top of my head. I either have the paperwork for it or wonder if
but you know how you can like look in the barrel and kind of put an eyeball on it.
They might have mark they might have markings on it or something too.
Exactly. So are you are you pretty much hunting with the 26 inch barrels up to this point?
Exactly. Yeah, which again, I don't I don't necessarily think in a in a gun like that that
you inherited it's got 26 inch barrels. They you know, presumably they balance that at the factory
and we're paying attention to it. There's really nothing wrong with shooting the 26 inch barrels
if it's got the right balance and feel that you want but you know, go ahead and put the 28's on for
a day and I pretty much guarantee you're not going to have any incidents where those extra two inches
you know, muff the shot for you. Yeah, no doubt. I'll be the one muffin the shot.
Exactly. Is it we either screw up or we're caught in the brush or or it's it's not it's usually not
the barrels. Yeah, no doubt about it. Well, I think I think I'm I mean, I'm excited to maybe travel
down this road and see if I can get myself into one of your guns because it's it's something I've
always wanted to do. I would love to have an heirloom and I beat the heck out of the Satori enough that
I've kind of understood that that gun. That one's not going to be it. That's not going to be it.
I won't be able to look at it, but it's it's rugged man. I've shot the bluing off of it.
And Satori's they'll take that beating. I mean, they're they got a reputation.
Yeah, I love it. But it I think something like this would be
I have my great great grandfathers engage Charles daily Damascus barrel. I don't shoot it. It's
there. I clean it once a year. I look at it. It's and it'll be continued to be handed down. But man,
that like something like this, you know, that'll be what I couldn't use and then let someone else
use and let someone else use. So I think it's badass and and I would like to dive into that
before I get too old. I got a question for you, Nick. You mentioned that you have two kids now.
Do you have have you purchased guns on their behalf?
I guess it depends on if my wife is asking or if my body's not listening. So let her rip.
She's not listening. It's fine. She's definitely not. I mean, I have some guns right now that I
would I sort of envision them them hunting with at some point. But I would tell you that I don't
probably have their first gun at this point. I imagine that will be a 28 gauge at some point,
whether it's an over under or side by side is is to be to turn my my young or my oldest will be
five in April and the youngest is not yet too. So we got a ways to go there. But I haven't done
anything yet. And and really with with the guns that I've built through RFM, I'm kind of in this
early stage where again, I get to have some fun and experiment with different builds. I haven't
really I haven't done the personalization that a lot of our customers do just because I'm I might,
you know, I might be hunting with a new gun next fall or or I'm playing around with stuff at this
point. At some point, I'll probably I'll probably cross that line and build something once I get it
to where I know it's something that I want to keep for a long time. I will maybe consider putting
a dog engraving on the bottom or putting my initials on it or something. You know, we can do that
kind of fun stuff and a lot of our customers do. But at this point, I'm still kind of definitely
playing around with different builds and configurations, even though I am like, if I pulled all my guns
out and laid them on the table, they all look about the same because I'm I'm kind of a like a
plain vanilla guy. Everything's got a straight English grip and splinter four. And that's just
that's just the way that I kind of I it's hard to get me to step outside of what I like. Why do you
like the straight English grip? It's it started as nothing more than literally seeing it in a catalog
and thinking, wow, that's cool. And that's different. And oh, it has upland attached to it. So that's
where the fascination started. But once I got my first gun with it, I just I just always got along
well with it. And a lot of times you'll hear it's it's sort of it's good for double triggers because
you've got the freedom of movement. That's a little bit debatable. You're not really sliding your hand
like six inches back to get to the second trigger or anything. And my my Satori has a that's a straight
grip, but it's a single trigger over under. But I do like it for I just think it's a it sets up
well for that quick instinctive shooting. It's it's a you really don't want to be doing a whole lot.
And this is another thing that Lars talked about on your podcast when you're shooting wing
shooting, you're driving the gun with your lead hand. So for me, that's my left hand. The left
hand is grabbing the barrels, steering the gun. My eyes may contact with the bird and my my left
hand is is putting the barrels on the bird with the right hand. You really don't want to be doing a
whole lot other than just using it as a support to lift that up and then eventually point the trigger.
And I find that with that straight English grip, it kind of I feel like it kind of influences
less activity with your right hand where you don't have this big full pistol grip that you're in
control and steering the gun with, which he talked about is kind of what a clay shooter is looking for,
a big full pistol grip to take the recoil out of it. And you're kind of I don't know if you're
driving the gun with it so much. I don't personally don't shoot a lot of sporting clays in that style.
But I think it's a I think it's a great grip for an upland bird gun. But if you if you were to ask
me my thoughts on like what grip should I get for a field gun? I like the straight English grip or
the round knob Prince of Wales grip, whatever you want to call it. Both of those are kind of a
they're an open relaxed grip, which both lend themselves to what I was getting at where
we're really shooting the gun with our lead hand. And the right hand is just there to support the
back end of the gun and pull the trigger. Cool. I think that's a great explanation.
I don't have a preference. Yeah. But I don't own a gun with the
but the English grip. Yeah. Well, you have on your satori. Is that a full pistol round knob? What
do you got there? I would I would consider it full pistol, I guess. There'd be a semi
semi pistol where it's kind of relaxed, but yeah, I'm kind of a relaxed guy. So I'm going to say
it's relaxed, but I don't know the answer, Nick, to be very honest with you. To be very honest, I
just I thought it was more straight or not straight. Yeah.
Kevin, would you be able to help? I don't think it's I think it's the relax. I think it's like the
nub and then fans back would be how I would just kind of don't know your gun as well as you do.
I kill things with it. All I know is it shoots where I point and things go fall and dog goes gets
send me a picture of it after after we record and I'll I'll give you my assessment of it. But I
I think that springs up an interesting point and that is because we give people the choice on all
of this stuff, like every every sort of line on the gun builder is an opportunity for like, well,
why would I choose this or that? You know, so it invites all of this like hyper analysis and
some of the things are just they don't have to be that complicated. It can just be your personal
preference. What looks best to you? There are some things that have functional differences and we
we do our best to sort of talk through that and how it might apply to you or not apply to you.
But it's not everything needs to be super over complicated and with grip. I would say,
you know, I do think if you're if you're interested in side by sides and again, you don't have a
strong aversion to trying something like that. I think trying a splinter foreign straight English
grip just because that's kind of the the sort of the in like the ultimate aesthetic that the
English the Brits designed with this gun. I think it's worth trying and just to see how that
see how that fits and shoots for you. It sets up very well for that specific purpose and I think
it was there was a reason why they designed it that way. Yeah, I pretty much just want to shoot
more grouse. So if you tell me that and yeah, that's kind of my they don't they don't come with a
guarantee that you will beg more grouse but will you should shooting shooting a gun that that fits
you and you enjoy carrying and you have confidence in that will help you shoot more grouse.
Cool. That leads me to a question slash comment that you made or a comment that you made that
lead me to a question. How do you you're proficient man? You in the woods are proficient at bagging
game. What do you do to prepare yourself for going out into the woods in the fall
to up your odds that you and your dog are doing all the work you find the covers you do all the
work and then when the opportunity presents itself, you're able to take the shot and bring down a
grouse. What are you doing now? So that ball hits. Yeah, that's a great question and I would say,
you know, there's a lot of things that sort of lead up to that and sort of, you know, the end of the
line being rough grouse down in the bag. You know, that's that's certainly the pinnacle. That's a
loaded question basically. They're loaded. He said he doesn't do traditional sporting clays.
All right, that's a good. So what's his secret? Well, I'd like to say that I'm kind of a product
of my environment in that I live in I live in Minnesota. I have access to lots of lots of
good grouse habitat and I have time to do it. And I've been doing it for a long time, you know,
so right since I was 10 years old or whatever, 27 years of grouse, I think to varying degrees,
you know, I once I got my driver's license, that's when I really, really started hunting,
being able to do it on my own. But I didn't have bird dogs for a long time, which people may know
if they've listened to my show. I didn't I've got my my first dog laying on the floor next to me,
or he's going to be nine in June. So up until about 10, 11 years ago, I didn't hunt with dogs very
much other than a time or two before that. But it's a lot of especially in the last last 10 years,
like just a lot of exploration and finding finding new covers like again, it's more about
having a lot of places to go that I can be productive. And in in having that, I have gotten more reps,
you know, more repetitions, more we flush more grouse, I've got more chances to shoot at them.
So all of that leads up to it. I will say I don't want to overlook. I have seen a big increase in my
proficiency based on the time and investment I've put into shotguns and learning more about
wing shooting and putting some of the things that we're talking about in the episode today into
practice, driving the gum with my lead hand. Now I do go to the clays range, not like I'm not
shooting a thousand targets a year or anything like that. But I try to get to the sporting clays
range once a week, you know, two, three times a month. If I can in the summer, I'm just really
not there to keep score per se. But I go with my buddies and and I shoot and it's all of that all
of that help. So practicing and becoming proficient with with your gun is a huge part of that process.
And even to the point of I never really put a lot of stock into this before I started doing it,
but you'll read a lot practice mounting your shotgun in the in the garage or in the office. I do
that I do that quite a bit. Consistency having a consistent gun mount so that in that split second,
we have to actually shoot at a grouse, which which if you do any your house hunting, you'll know
full well what what that is like. There's there's not much room for air. So there are some things
you can do again with practice mounting and having a gun that fits you properly. That's a
that's one that we can definitely talk about. I have gone down that route and I have seen the
benefits of having a gun that properly fits me. So that when I'm in the woods, it's not a lot of
conscious that going on. It's just the experience that I've got over the years and time after time
of mounting the gun and pulling up and pulling the trigger and I still miss plenty don't get me
wrong. But I definitely have improved my improve my wing shooting and I make my dogs happy every
once in a while. So good for you. So you've mentioned you you have had gun fittings before. Yes.
I don't know if it's like not cool to add. How much does that sort of thing cost? Oh no. Yeah,
totally. The typically within with Waup and Gun Company, we're work with a network of gun
fidders now. Typically, you're going to pay anywhere from like three to six hundred dollars to go
to a try gun fitting and a try gun is a you'll see some variation here. A try gun fitting is
which is what we recommend. That is a gun with a stock that is adjustable. So you go out to a
gun fitter. He's going to do all kinds of exercises. Check your gun mount. Look at your technique and
every gun fitter has their own kind of style and method of doing things. So I won't capture it all
here, but they're checking for eye dominance issues and and they're going through the basics,
right? But then they're going to have you start shooting at a at a patterning plate. And they're
really not trying to coach you too much through that shooting the patterning plate. What they want
to see is you mounting the gun, not thinking too much, not adjusting while you're in the gun,
but mounting the gun and shooting the patterning plate. And you're looking at the orange dot on
the plate. So it's Nick is looking at the orange dot. He mounts the gun and pretty quickly shoots.
And then where does that pattern hit? Does the pattern lay right on top of the orange dot?
If so, great. Let's take the dimensions off this stock because that gun is shooting where Nick is
looking. That's ultimately what we're trying to get to. So if the if the pattern more likely
scenario, the pattern's not going to shoot right where you're looking. At that point,
the gun fitter then begins to move the stock around to affect and dull itman's
fair that we work with a lot of his great at explaining this. But your eye is essentially the
rear sight of a rifle. And the stock is being moved around to move your right eye around in
relation to the barrels and the rib to eventually get that pattern to hit right where you're looking,
which goes back to what we were talking about when you don't have a split second to
consciously think about shooting a rough grouse. All you can do is look at the grouse,
raise the gun and pull the trigger. We got to make sure to the best of our ability
that with a good gun mount, that gun is shooting where you're looking, if that makes sense.
That makes a ton of sense. I also didn't know that that's how they did it. So great question,
Kevin. Well, I didn't know that. And I guess I just always assumed that was like,
to me, that sounds like a rich person thing. Like that's like a $5,000 deal that I'll never
be able to. It's kind of foreign to a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
But at the price that it's not $5,000, it's $3,000 to $500. And depending on how much time and
or money you want to invest in it, it's definitely, I would say it's one of the best $3,000 to $500
you could invest in whether you're taking your favorite gun there, along with to figure out if
that fits you or doesn't fit you, that's helpful. Or if you want to just totally start from scratch
to potentially build a gun with up and gun company where we can put custom stock dimensions on it,
either either one of those or both of them is a reasonable way to go about a gun fitting. But
just knowing that, knowing that your gun is not working against you. And that's really what I
realized. I know with the benefit of having done a couple of gun fittings in hindsight,
I know I have guns that do not fit me and I do not shoot very well. And I no longer have to bang my
head against the wall wondering why like when I look at that bird and pull the trigger with my
Fox sterling worth, does it not fall? And when I when I shoot it with one of my guns that fits me,
it's more likely to fall, it doesn't always fall, but it can make a huge difference. And for me,
it did. So that's one question that I want to get into dogs and a little bit of grouse hunting and
not take up all of your night. I find it very difficult to go from Satori to the grouse woods to
Satori to the grouse woods, because I don't think the ethic affects me. Right. I just if the more I
shoot it, the better I get with it, because I probably adjust to the gun.
This would take that gun to a gun fitter and he will say like, I'll put this much butt stock into
it. And like, I don't know, I don't even know. But like, I'll walk you through, let's say you go do
a fitting with with Dell women. So I've seen him do because we do him for help a gun company. So I
now have had the benefit I've done a gun fitting with Dell personally. And I've I now shoot guns that
are basically the prescription that he gave me. And I've seen the results that way. But I've also
seen a ton of other people get fit by Dell. And it's, you know, when I'm sort of standing back and
get to sort of watch the process, you learn a lot that way too. But you go you go fit with Dell,
he's going to do all those things I talked about check your eye dominance, check your mount,
walk you through that plate fitting process. And we're starting from scratch. So he is using
his try gun. And he's going to come up with it doesn't matter what guns you have in the truck
or what you've been shooting. He's going to come up with a set of stock dimensions that get you
hitting the orange dot where you're looking shooting the gun where you're looking. And
then he can once he gets there, then he will measure his try gun measure the
dimensions, which will be drop at comb drop at face drop at heel cast, length to pull the things
that you may or may not be familiar with. We've got a video on gun fitting with Dell women. You can
go watch that. It's kind of walk you through that. But once he has that 3D map of the stock that
he's got you fit for, then he can pull out your old faithful if the gun put it up on his little
jig and measure it. And he'll then have the map of that stock. And then he can kind of look and
compare those two and gunsmiths can alter guns to fit certain dimensions. But there are it's not a
automatic process that he can he can't necessarily adjust every gun to fit you. So,
or in my case, I brought a gun to Dell that I thought I would go get a fitting with him. He would
he would bend the stock or adjust it or whatever. And I'd be happily on my way. In my case, because
of the dimensions that Dell fit me for, he he couldn't make the bends to fit me without like
throwing one of the other dimensions out. So there's limitations like around the gun that
you currently have. And so just to kind of put that out there, like it's not it's not a guarantee
that a gunfitter will be able to adjust your gun to fit those dimensions. But in a lot of cases,
they can. And to your point Bob, consistency, and I've found this from my personal experience,
is huge. There are some people that can just kind of pick up any old gun and basically figure it out,
whether it's a level of proficiency that they have or just a level of adaptability.
Not everybody can do that. I don't really think I'm one of them just based on my experience and
shooting guns that fit me different. So now the more that I have guns that are all kind of set up
the same way, I can switch between one or the one of the other a lot more seamlessly than I could
before, if that makes sense. It makes complete sense. And that's where like that tried and true
gun that just feels right and you find yourself being more consistent in knocking things down
when breaking the clays. It's like, it's that's the gun. That's the gun. And then anything else
feels foreign to you. Well, I was gonna say one of the easiest ways to kind of you kind of realize
this if you have, let's say you have two guns, one of them has a 14 inch length of pull and maybe
the other one has a 15 inch length of pull, practice mouth the 14 inch length of pull gun
a bunch of times, and then go ahead and pick up the 15 inch one and raise it up and see if it gets
caught under your armpit, which it very well could. And that's kind of like, it's kind of the light
bulb moment for a lot of people that you sort of have this groove greased in your gun mount that is
again, consistently doing it the same way every time that is beneficial for wing shooting. But if
you start changing the variables by picking up a gun that has a totally different fit, you're
going to throw off that gun mount that you have, absolutely, to varying extents, right?
Yeah, absolutely. 100% agree. And then you throw in hunting jackets and vests and young all the
other crap. But but I agree, let's start with the best foot forward and then do your best to
mitigate. But all right, dude, I love that conversation. We just nerded out pretty hard on that. But
last time you're on the show, you had a setter puppy. You've now had two seasons under her belt.
Talk to us about that dog, man. And favorite points, favorite moments where light bulbs went off,
like, just give us the rundown on that experience, bringing up another dog into your family and into
the woods. Yeah, yeah, good question. It's so actually this season was Rose's third season,
actually. So she'll be okay. So I'm pretty sure I talked to you guys the summer when she was just
a tiny teeny tiny pup right ahead of her first season. And that was three seasons ago now.
So she will be two years old. Wait, maybe she's going to be three. I'm getting this mixed up now.
She's I think she's going to be two. She's only going to be two. She's had three seasons. She was
very young her first season. And that was the season when my older dog, Hartley, towards ACL,
like right in September. So he was out the whole season. And I just was had a pup. And we were lucky
in that are the conditions in the gross woods that year held up for us well into December. So
Rose got a lot of woods time her first year. And we got her on a lot of birds. And that was a
pretty good year for gross. The two seasons since then have been even better, I would say around
there. So in her three in her three seasons, like I don't know that I could ask for more as far as
like getting her on wild birds and getting her in the woods. So she's had a lot of bird contacts.
And I'm just, I mean, she's my second bird dog. So I try to keep everything in perspective,
like it's a small sample size. I know for me personally, like what I knew when I was bringing
up dog number one, compared to what I knew when I was bringing up dog, I was in like a completely
different headspace. I was so much less stressed with dog number two, just having been through it
before. I certainly knew a lot more about reading my dog. I had, I had learned a lot more about
growl sunning and was better at wing shooting. So there's all these things that you're better
hunter every day, every year. So a lot of that plays into it. And I feel like Rose has had,
she said a lot of opportunity for success in her first three years. And she has
like met and exceeded all my expectations in that regard. And just like, I couldn't be happier
with how she's progressing. And knowing that she's only two years old, like we've got, you know,
if we're lucky, we got a lot of hunting ahead of ourselves. And she's, she's doing really,
really good. So that's awesome, man. What did you find?
Were her strengths and what would you, her, her weaknesses in the field?
That's a good question. Like a giant, Bob.
Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I did. What's your biggest weakness? Yeah. Like, I'm always on time.
I never don't want to work late. I'm a people person. I'm good at dealing with people.
I love stress. Yeah. So Rose has, I think she's got a, she is, she's like barely weighs 40 pounds.
She's small. She's really light on her feet. She moves really, really well. Like I love her
confirmation and I love her size too. Like she, in my eyes, like she does everything that
heartly, the male dog, he's 50 pounds. And like, this will sound like I'm like favoring Rose. Like,
I just, it's just two different, two different dogs. And I'm just like, you know, it's sample size,
one sample size too. But she kind of does everything heartly can do in a smaller package. And I just,
I just love like her size. And she seems to be so light on her feet. She covers ground effortlessly.
So I love watching her run. And she, she moves through the grouse woods fast, but in control.
And I would say both my dogs do that. And that's, that's very appealing to me.
You know, a swift, swift hunt through the woods, but in control, not crashing through cover,
not banging around there, they're in control, right? And I stop here right there.
Cause that is one thing that I love about my Sutter. She is, I wouldn't say she's swift.
She's methodical, but she is almost silent in the woods, where it's like, she's not bumping
grouse from breaking branches and crashing through things. She like, is like a snake that just slithers
through all the tough stuff. And she still works at a breast pace and she's like, getting it,
but it's, it's silent. And then you hunt with other buddies dogs or Kevin's dog.
And as soon as you, I knew, no, like five minutes ago, I could see the, the wheels turning.
And I knew I'm like, here we go. Here we go.
Go Kevin's dog on the bus.
You're hilarious. Keep going. Thanks. I appreciate it.
That's good. But I do appreciate Andy's ability to, to sneak through the woods,
but in a athletic and methodical way. And I just find it fun to see her
get in there and work them out. Can you describe? You know, it sounds like you kind of described it,
but like, do you, are you picking up what I'm putting down on Andy and like, yes.
Yeah. Are you, are you, is that something that you worked on with your dog, Nick? Like, is that
something that's where I was going to go? Because I've, I've won, I've wondered that myself, like,
you know, is there, is there something that I've done to, to facilitate this? And I would say,
effectively, no, like, I don't think I had much to do with it other than one thing,
which may very well could be it. And that is living here, I run in the woods with my dogs from day one,
you know, there were in the woods, like, not 365 days a year, but 300 day, I mean, every day,
like six, seven days a week, we're going for a run in the woods. And there's not, we are in cover
that they could find a growess. Typically, when we're doing our exercise runs, like this time of
year, I saw growess tracks today. We don't get into a lot of wild birds on our regular exercise
runs. But I wonder if having dogs run through cover and run through woody, woody dense cover from
a very early age could facilitate that sort of style of running. And I couldn't tell you that,
yes or no, that is the answer. Like, it would be, do you, what if you raise the same dog on the
prairie and then bring it to the growess woods, does it then all of a sudden start crashing through
the growess woods? I don't know the answer because I don't have the comparison. I just know that my
dogs run in the woods almost on a daily basis and have done so from a very young age. And I have to
believe that that somewhat contributes to their ability to move through cover in an efficient way,
if that makes sense. I think that that can't hurt. They maneuver it, right? Yeah. It's like running
landmarks and watermarks and doing all the retriever stuff. The more they do it, the better they get
at maneuvering the situations and being efficient in it and burning less calories to do it.
But I'm also wondering if it's personality is an age versus nurture. And then because it's a
setter, like all the short hairs, and I know you're going to, we all are going to get backlash on
this and know my short hairs freaking smooth in the woods, maybe the ones I hunt with crash through
the woods. They're not that disruptive at all. But they're pile. It's like bowling a china shop
versus Andy is smooth as silk through it and like silent. And I got to imagine that helps finding
grouse and not busting them early. Yeah. Yeah. I think from a to varying degrees, like there
would be a, I always sort of think of like a grouse, whether it's going to hold or not,
is like there's this sort of pressure meter, and how much pressure is being put on that
on that bird, whereas if a dog sort of, again, is swiftly moving through the woods,
not crashing through the woods and comes up on a grouse real quick and all of a sudden is locked
up on it, the grouse's pressure meter hasn't gone through the roof where he's like, I'm done,
I'm getting out of here, right? Versus the dog that comes crashing through the woods and all
of a sudden is five yards from the grouse. I think a lot of that is hard to, it's hard to really say
like, out of me in any like definitive answer, you know, one or the other, because it's just like
every wild bird contact is different. And you have the luxury of like hunting with your own dog,
so you see them and you learn how to read your own dogs and you kind of get an idea of what's
going on. But to your point that you made earlier, Rose, I feel like she has that kind of sneaky,
stealthy ability in the grouse woods. And that's one thing I've really come to appreciate about
the way she goes about it. And it's not so much on the first contact, it's the second contact in
her ability to relocate and stay with grouse that are moving because we all know that grouse run
and they move. And that's where Rose has, again, one of the things that I really love about her is
she has she has a proven ability to track and relocate grouse and stick with them until I can
eventually. And again, it doesn't work all the time, but she's doing her daimest to get that bird
stopped and held up to where I can finally get into position and maybe get a flush and maybe get
a shot. She's got she's got a knack when it comes to that. And it's it's really fun to watch. I will
say that. What are what are some tips and tricks you would give to a grouse hunter on getting into
position to put yourself in a better opportunity to get that bird? Yeah, I was going to say better
position, but I just said position. Yeah, tell me. Yeah, so so so that is a that's that's kind of a
name of the game when it comes to grouse hunting over pointing dogs is it's one thing to get a bird
pointed, but that is still a long ways from getting a look at a at a bird. And the method that I have
have the most success with or is kind of like the underlying. It's what I'm trying to do on every
point is to and Lars touched on this too. And he hunts with flushing dogs because flushing dogs,
they sort of force grouse out of cover and in doing so I haven't hunted over a lot of flushers,
but I sort of envisioned this and I would like to, but they can force grouse out of cover and I
feel like they can force a grouse into doing something it maybe doesn't want to do, which maybe gives
you the shooter a better opportunity. So to kind of counteract some of the flip side of that, I'll
rewind the pointing dog pointing dog comes in points of grouse let's say I'm 100 yards away,
I'm making my my way in. Meanwhile, this grouse has all this time to kind of like, all right,
I got a dog over here. He's assessing his surroundings. I assume like the grouse has some
instincts as to where he wants to go, how he's going to escape. And he's got all that time to
sort of think and plan to the extent that a rough grouse can, which they've got some ability to
escape. They do that on a daily basis. And so when you come up as the hunter, it's like,
what can I do to better my odds? And what I'm trying to do is, I think of it like going back
to that pressure thing, the dog is one point of pressure on the bird. And if I come up right
behind my dog and walk right up past the dog's flank and the dog's nose, we've got basically a
single point of pressure on that grouse. And that grouse has 300 and however many degrees
that he can escape or at least in 180 that way, I feel like that puts the ball or that puts the
advantage for the grouse. He's got more room and more ways to escape. Whereas if I can make a loop
around the dog, if I can get eyes on my dog, which is always what I'm trying to do, if I can get
eyes on the dog and gather some information as to which way the dog is oriented, maybe which way
I feel the breeze coming in, which is not always relevant in the grouse woods. But I'm trying to
assess where I think the bird is. And if I can do that to the best of my ability, I'm trying to
make some kind of a loop around the dog and the bird. And usually it's a struggle to,
it's a struggle to go wide enough around the dog. The dog's like, for me, it's like a tractor beam.
Like I just want to go into the dog. So I'm always fighting that urge to kind of go right into the
point. But over time, I've gotten better at it in some scenarios set up better than others. But if
in an ideal scenario, if I can get around the dog and get it to where the bird is trapped between
the dog and myself, we've now got two points of pressure on the grouse. And we've just limited
the places where the grouse can comfortably escape. I do feel like I have done that enough.
And I've seen it enough at this point to know that if you're successful in doing that,
your odds of getting a grouse that flushes higher and into an area that is going to give you a
better shot, your odds will increase if you can apply pressure from more than one angle. That's why
if you got one dog on point and two hunting buddies and you can flank, maybe you both might not get
a look, but one guy might get a really good look because again, you're applying that pressure from
multiple angles on the bird. So that's kind of the main method that I try to employ on every
every point if I can. That's super smart and makes complete sense. And we also say it from a
training perspective, I don't want to walk behind that dog because it's going to push the dog forward.
Correct. You always come in from the side. And I guess,
can you explain? Hang on. Can you, before we move further, can you explain why you walk to the side
of the dog when you're training? Are physical. Yeah, our physical presence on the dog is going to
change the dog's behavior. Right. So they're focused in on their point. And if I come up behind
the dog, it's going to take their focus on it could take their focus off of what they're
nosing, what they're smelling, what they're huffing in the air. It's going to take their focus off of
that to when I move in on a dog, it pushes. So if I'm, the way I equate it to people,
and this has more to do with retrievers, but if you just put it in the pointing dog world,
if I walk at you, really at you, Nick, you're going to be like, hey, and you're going to lean back,
right? You're going to, you're going to give me space because I'm taking your space.
It's kind of the same idea as if I come behind you, you're going to move out of my way.
You're going to step aside. You're going to step forward. You're going to say, I'm not sure about
this. So you're doing the same thing. If I'm pushing behind the dog, coming straight behind
them, that dog inevitably is even if they're super steady, they may not move, but they're going to
be thinking about it. So if you give them a wide berth and come around, you're going to keep
staunchness on the point, you're going to keep the style up, and you're going to keep their focus on
the task at hand, which is that bird is over there. Mind you, I'm not a pointing dog trainer. I've
just dabbled in the dark arts of pointing dogs enough to know. You've read enough dog behavior
to pick up on that too. And I think it's, again, just like it's more speculation on my part, but
you see it like more in a younger dog, you know, a younger dog that doesn't know the game as much.
You come up right behind them, the chances that they're going to want to creep or move forward,
a little bit of competitive nature, they want to be in the lead. And that's where you start to see
that come out. Whereas the flip side is if you circle around it and the dog can see you,
they can kind of see the whole situation and they don't have the same desire to move and get ahead
or anything. They just kind of sit back and watch, which is exactly what you're saying, right?
Yeah, exactly. That's a great point too. So yeah, that's what I would prefer to do. But then as
far as the shooting goes, at least Nick, and I would like your opinion on this, when I'm coming
in on a point, I just got the GPS collar to say like 70 yards this way. That's where she is.
So I will maneuver around like you do, but maybe not take enough wide berth because you're
going through the tangles. And you're just like literally trying your damnedest to get there.
And you come up, as soon as I locate my dog visually, like, hey, you're 20 yards, right?
Or 30 yards. I'm visually looking at exits that the bird could go. And I'm typically wrong.
Yeah. Right. I'm typically wrong. But I'm looking like, dude, that is more open. It's going to bust up
and go that way. Is that a thought a grouse has from your experience? Are they going to the opening?
Or are they going, you know, what trees between you and them? I always thought that they would,
if I were a bird, I wouldn't want to get tangled up. I'd want quickest escape route possible.
What do you think? Yeah, I do think that they are, they're not trying to fly through stuff that's
going to throw them off. One thing that's interesting in recent years, I've started wearing a GoPro.
And so I've got a lot of grouse flushes and stuff on camera. And as I watch some of this
back and slow motion, like I've seen, I'll see birds fly through like hazel brush and twigs and
stuff that you don't perceive that when you're, you got a loaded gun and you're bearing down on it.
And you're, you know, you got tunnel vision at that point. But when you can watch some of the
stuff in hindsight on the GoPro, it's really cool because you will see grouse fly through
stuff that like, it doesn't even phase them. I mean, clearly they've got an ability for doing that.
But I tend to agree with you that I have those thoughts where like, you know, a lot, it happens
enough where a grouse ends up, it puts a tree between you and it. Now, did it do that intentionally?
Or is that just the cover getting in the way of the escape? I tend to agree with you. And then I
think the grouse's main goal is to get out of there as fast as possible. And they're not necessarily
trying to trick you by getting in front of something. It happens plenty because of the nature of the
cover that they live in. But I think they're just, they're looking for the quickest way out of there
at that point. And, you know, in theory, they've been, they've been sitting there while this dog is
on point and I walked all the way in and they're, they reach a point where they, I'm done with this,
I'm getting out of here. And I think that they've got a route where they can, they can stay low and
not go high. That's what they'll do. I mean, rough girls are known for that. And that makes it really
hard to shoot them. If you can get them to go high by doing some of those things to kind of put the
odds in your favor to pop the bird up, that certainly improves your odds as the shooter. But at the
end of the day, it's an unpredictable bird. And the minute you think you've got to, you've got to
figure it out, you know, they'll do something different. And that's honestly what makes it what
it is. That's what makes it special. Yeah, that's what makes it special, for sure.
Um, the last kind of question and segment I'd like to touch on is woodsmanship. And yes,
before we go to that, the next part, um, I would like to kind of circle back to something that you
said. And that was that when you're, when you're walking in on a point, you're looking at stuff,
where you think the girl is going to be right. I do the same thing. And I feel like I've read a lot
in like sort of wing shooting and stuff when you're approaching point, don't look at the ground,
don't try to spot the bird on the ground. And I wouldn't necessarily sit here and debate that.
But for me, when I was growing up hunting without a dog, I prefer myself as a
parcher-chunner as that's what I was. I, it was just me and all I had were my six senses for five
cents. And I don't have a six cents. But the five senses. And for me, it was like,
I needed every advantage I could get. So I, for me, it was a game to try to spot a
grouse on the ground before it took off. And if I spotted it on the ground before it took off,
I was shooting this. And that's what that's what I did when I grew up. I mean, I shot grouse on a
log in a tree, whatever. As I look back on that, like, I just, I don't have any interest in doing
that anymore now with my dogs. And like, I just, I love wing shooting for grouse, but at the time,
you know, it made you better though.
You know, it made you better in the woods. It did. It did give me, give me a, a, a
knack or a skillset or whatever you want to call it for spotting these birds on the ground. And
again, like I said, I kind of gamified it. And to this day, I cannot, I mean, I just love doing it.
So like, if I have a dog on point, when I'm walking in, I'm doing the same thing, I'm looking for dead
falls. I am, I am voraciously scanning the ground, trying to spot the grouse before it takes off.
And what people will say is, if you see the grouse on the ground, you kind of have too much time to
think about it. And you are inevitably going to miss, which does happen to me from time to time. But
the reverse is also true. I've spotted plenty of grouse on the ground and have made that shot. And
it comes down to, to make a good shot, you need a strong visual connection on the bird, which is
what Lars said. So some, some kind, sometimes it just works out where I spot the grouse on the
ground. And that bird takes off. And I've got a dead lock on it from the time it, it takes to
wing by the time it takes me to get on it and shoot it, I've never lost visual on the bird. And
that's not a bad thing. So I'm the same way as you. And again, I, a lot of times, I guess, like,
Oh, there's a dead fall, that's where I think the bird is. And sure enough, he gets up over here,
and I don't, and I don't get a look. But I'm, I'm always trying. And that's part of like my,
my thinking brain, when I'm doing that kind of stuff, I'm just, I'm trying to find the bird.
That's super cool. And I think a great piece of advice. I'm typically like, I feel like a hawk,
where it's like, I'm trying to just see every peripheral vision, I'm trying to have all my senses,
I'm trying to have everything where it's like, as far as the eye can see that everything is wide
open and ready, because it could be over here. And then you're bang, because they're so damn
unpredictable. Yes. One other thing I will try. This is another tip I thought of at that point.
So, so this is a common sort of mistake that you'll see people make that don't,
it's maybe their first growls or whatever that they're just, you see people do it a lot.
You got a dog on point, you walk up sort of in the vicinity of the dog, and then you stop,
to try to kind of assess the situation, think, all right, what's going to happen next?
A lot of times that's the opportunity that the bird takes off, because they get unsettled when,
like if you're walking along at a steady pace, and you never stop, you might walk right by a
grouse and they'll never move, they'll just sit there and watch you walk by. But if you walk within
the vicinity of a grouse and then you stop, it's pretty well known that that sort of
pause or silence will then sort of unsettle the grouse into taking off, because they don't exactly
know what you're going to do at that point. So, the point of that is walking to the vicinity of
the dog and stopping is not necessarily a bad thing. But if you are going to stop, you want to make
sure you are ahead of the dog, or if you did what we talked about earlier and circled around,
don't stop until you are in a place where you've got the ability to move and shoot and not get your
last two inches of barrel hung up on an oak tree, right? Don't stop unless you are going to stop
in a spot where you can get a shot off would be the main takeaway there.
Great advice. I'm going to parlay this, segue this into woodsmanship.
When you're walking through the woods with your dog, how do you walk? Are you brisk? Are you slow?
Are you looking and almost silently stalking a deer? What is your pace?
I'll let you go with that and then I'll double back.
I would say that with my dog, when I used to help without dogs, the name of the game was
going slow, and that kind of goes back to what I was getting at. The slower you move through the
woods, the more opportunity you're going to have to potentially unsettle a grouse and make it make
the first move, whether that is maybe making a clock sound, maybe taking a couple steps to the
leaves to give away its position, or maybe just taking off and flying versus walking at a very
steady pace. If you don't have a dog on the ground, I can't imagine how many grouse I walked by,
even then, even when I was trying to walk slow, because that's just one of their innate abilities,
survival instincts to let predators walk by and just move through the area. We don't have a nose,
we can't smell them, that sort of thing. Now hunting primarily with bird dogs, or I should say,
always hunting with bird dogs, I have a tendency to probably walk faster than I should. I say that
who's telling me how fast I should walk or should I not? The reason I'm walking fast is because
I just freaking love being in the grouse woods, and I love going for big hikes, and I love seeing
the cover in the country. My dogs are hunting, they're doing their thing, they're sticking with me,
and I know in the back of my mind that hopefully they're going to point a bird. While they're
doing that, I'm just kind of on my own little adventure walk, and I'm just scanning and looking.
I'm observing some of it for fun. I'm also mainly looking at like, oh, this looks like
grouse cover. There's some grouse, but there's some hazel brush, there's some thorn apples,
and we can talk about some of this stuff, but I'm like 100% observation mode.
The other thing that I do, which not everybody does, and it's just kind of like how you want to
go about is I'm kind of maintaining as much readiness as possible because if my dog's 60 yards
over to the right, and I foot flush a grouse, if I get a shot at it, I'm probably taking a shot.
Yeah.
That's a question.
For some people, they only want to shoot birds that their dog points, which to each their own,
right? At the end of the day, I'm a bird hunter first, and I now do it with dogs, and the dogs
have changed grouse hunting for me forever, and I don't see myself going back, but I'm still a
grouse hunter, a partridge hunter at heart. I'm looking for every opportunity I can get, and part
of that is, again, looking at dead falls, looking at what I'm seeing on the ground, observing stuff,
and so to kind of answer your question about pace, I do think there's something to be said about
walking at a slow enough pace to allow your dogs to cover ground. I think,
depending on what kind of dog you have, how it works to cover, and it's range, we have a tendency
to, we could very easily push our dogs through a lot of cover to get over the next hill,
knowing full will that if my dog casts out 100 yards this way, and I cover 50 to 60 yards by the
time that dog checks back in, there's probably a patch of cover over here that maybe wasn't hit.
So it's a balancing act of what's my assessment of the cover around me, how well do I think my
dogs have covered? Is there an objective that I want to hit, or am I just strolling to try to get
to the next edge or the next seam in the cover, that kind of thing? So it's a give and take, I guess,
if that makes sense, but I probably, on any given day, I'm probably maybe walking a little quick,
but I just like walking through the woods. Yeah, I dig it. Do you hunt on a, do you hunt your dogs
alone, just you and your dogs, or do you hunt with a party? And does that change your style of how you
maneuver the woods? That's a good question. Yeah, very, very good question. I would say, at the end
of the day, if you wrap up my whole season, at least like at this point in my life, I end up probably
hunting a pretty high percentage of just me and my dogs. And for me, that is me and one dog on the
ground, one dog in the truck. When I got my second dog, I had this, I always thought there would be
times where I would hunt them both at the same time. But the way it has played out in reality is
that I'm usually, I'm hunting one dog and I'm resting the other dog to try to maximize my dog
power. So I'd rather take heart leaf for an hour run over here, and then go to a new spot, and take
rose for a hunt in another spot. That gives me the chance to hunt two different spots, see more territory
and rather than burn up all my dog power in one spot. So that's how I do it. And for the most part,
I do hunt a lot where it's just myself. Now, that aside, I certainly love the October is kind of the
month where I'm doing some grouse cans, I'm getting together with friends. And I do plenty of hunting
with other people. Ideally, that's again, maybe two guys and one dog, maybe two guys, two dogs.
For me, I kind of like the simplicity of having one dog on the ground. And it's easier to kind
of keep everybody moving in the same direction. I've been on plenty of hunts where you got two or
three guys, maybe two or three dogs, and that can work, but it can also turn into chaos pretty quick
if you get a dog on point 100 yards over here, another dog on point 100 yards over that way. And
then we're yelling and talking in the woods. And the more stimulus you got out there,
the my enjoyment level starts to go down. So there's kind of like nothing better than like,
I caught one dog loose and it's just me out there. And like other than the incessant conversation
going on in my head is literally nothing being said. My dog is maintaining visual contact with me,
intermittently as it moves to the cover. But we're just like, we're like one team moving through the
woods. And I don't have to say anything. I mean, that's like, that's like the best, in my opinion.
That is I love hunting with Kevin. I have another buddy Nick, who I grouse on with
a lot. Actually, he and I grouse on together a lot and we'll spread out. So you're not putting
two dogs and two dudes in one cover that's tight because we feel like we're not covering ground
efficiently. And we're higher likelihood of spooking birds.
Sure. 100%. Yeah. But I wondered if you had a tactic of like two guys and two dogs, like,
how do you if you're in charge of the group, how do you go, Hey, man, I've been here before,
I know the terrain, you go this way, you go this way, or let's stay 100 yards apart. Or how do you
work it to be the most successful possible? Yeah, I would say that's that's somewhat dependent on,
again, the person you're hunting with, do they know the area like you do or do they know their
way around the woods to the extent where we can pull up on X maps and say, you know, here's the,
here's the cover that we're going to look, I'm going to swing out around kind of generally work
this edge, you swing out here, we'll meet in the back, we'll assess game plan, and then we'll come
up with a plan to make it back to the truck. If we both have a dog, we might do something like that.
I do certainly enjoy hunting with two hunters and one dog. And that's just fun because then
you got two people that can share in the experience, right? And so it's double the fun, right? Like,
you get, you get a point in the bird contact, you were both there to see it, maybe your buddy
shoots a bird over your dog. I mean, that kind of stuff is irreplaceable too. So I like a healthy
balance of that throughout the season. And so if it's, again, if it's one dog,
two hunters were obviously hunting together at that point. If it's two hunters and two dogs,
I wasn't always this way, but more and more, I'd probably be more like, let's sort of hunt this
cover to get, you know, separately, but together, and we'll be back at the truck at the same time,
and we'll break everything down together. I mean, that's one too.
Yeah. That's kind of how we do it with the two dogs, two dudes,
is you just spread out enough where you're still together, but you're not encroaching,
and then we'll like halfway through that cover, we'll maybe sync up or we have like a little whistle.
You know, it's like the mocking J, like, right? We just mocking J each other.
Yeah, and a sebordine, anybody. Yeah. I couldn't do that right now. My lips are too dry, but
I can hear it in my head. Thank you. So it shouldn't alarm anything else, but it's letting him know,
like, Hey, we're on point over here and come on by. And it's kind of fun doing stuff like that.
I really love it. And we have an ability to talk to each other in the woods without talking
that it just comes with time. Yes. But let's talk. So I appreciate your breakdown of that,
because I do find it difficult when you add more people, add more dogs, add more,
you just pushing woods. And there's an inverse relationship in sort of like my enjoyment level
and the amount of activity and commotion you got going on in the woods, right? As one increases,
the other decreases. Generally speaking, there's ways there's ways to do it that kind of
keep the enjoyment level up there, which you've hit on. But the other one of the other cool things
that we have today is the technology, whether it's on X maps, if you know how to pull up the map,
you can kind of really assess the cover and get a bird's eye view of like, all right,
you're going to work this, I'm going to work that we can kind of meet here and keep in touch. And
we maybe even hear our dogs bells in the woods and that kind of thing, maybe you hear a shot,
that sort of thing. The other thing is a lot of the people that I hunt with have Garmin GPS
callers and the technology you have there to sort of track your buddy's location, track your
dogs location. That's a nice way to keep in contact with people without actually having to be in
contact with them. So those are just little things that can help those kind of situations I found.
That's a good tip. All right, so you're in Minnesota. I'm in New York.
We went to Kevin and I went to Michigan this year to the UP. Awesome experience.
We didn't move as many groufs as the allure
speaks of, if you will. All of you had built up in your mind. Exactly.
You're exactly right. We had built it up in our mind like, boy, I hope we brought enough shells.
Exactly. Drive 15 hours. And we really did have a blast. Good amount of woodcock encounters and
shots and birds taken and Kevin's, I would say Kevin's dog. Light bulb moments for her like really
turned it on. Well, it was fun. Yeah. She was dabbling in the grouse woods. She hadn't had enough
bird contacts. And I felt like that trip, you could see a switch flip for her. Great experience.
But the grouse just weren't. And so we were like, we were on on ice. We were on the cuts. We were
on the years. We were on habitat. We were on food. And we're, by the third day of our hunt,
we had started to increase our woodsmanship and say, we flushed grouse in this area.
What is around us? And then go looking for that. And then we ended up towards the third day. We
had way more flushes than the first day. But from a New Yorker going to Michigan,
the covers were just different. It doesn't look the same. The concepts maybe might have been sort
of similar in the end, but like the foliage isn't the same. And I'm not like you, what I'm impressed
by you, Nick is like, your, that is a. Suffering such a dash. Yeah, that's a
and I can visualize and say, I know what that is, because I've seen it before. I don't know what
the hell it is. But I flushed grouse in that thingy. So I'm impressed by that. And what makes you
tick in terms of increasing your woodsmanship. And then can you part, take a piece of information
and share with everybody on how to be better at it and what they should be looking for in the
Northwoods? Yeah. So great question. And I will say admittedly, like that level of sort of paying
attention to things is a more, it's more recent for me. Going back to some of those days when I
mentioned when I was hunting younger, I was much more of that mindset where I got to know what
grouse cover was simply by just doing it over and over again, flushing grouse in areas where you
just get a feel for, okay, this is grousy. And you know, I now know, like, I was looking at
hazel brush, I was looking at aspen trees, I was looking at alders, I was looking at spruce trees
and cedars, but I didn't label it in my head that way. Like I did last fall when I was
hunting with a dare and we did the video on it. And that has come later for me as just sort of
as I dive deeper and deeper into this. And obviously I love grouse hunting. And so I'm always looking
for ways to kind of dive deeper and squeeze more juice out of that orange, so to speak. And so,
but I have found like, I think there's a takeaway there where you can take it as far as you want.
But we now have again, going back to some of this technology, the tools, this was the first year
that I started using like plant identification apps to start like double checking some of the
things. And I had, you know, I put together the pieces and like, I knew what hazel brush was,
and I've learned this stuff over the years, but I find that a tool like that where you can
in the moment where, hey, I just flushed a grouse, he's right next to this clump of stuff, I can
pull out the app, I can get a data point on it. When you use that stuff enough, you get a confidence
level that you start to put those puzzle pieces together a little bit quicker, I think. So I think
you can really, you can shorten the learning curve by paying attention to that stuff if you want to.
And exactly like what you're saying, if there's anything I've learned is that as much as rough
grouse hunting is rough grouse hunting, it can vary a ton by going from region to region.
When I when I used to hunt, it was a very small area that I used to kind of go to over and over
again. More recently in the last decade or so, I hunt a lot of different areas within Minnesota
and Wisconsin, and I've been over to Michigan as well. And I can see the similarities, and I can see,
you know, some of those core principles like stem density and edges and swamps and some of the
features that I'm looking for, I can kind of go to a new area and start to identify that stuff quicker
than I then I would have been able to 10, 15 years ago. But there's just, I don't think there's
quite a replacement for getting to know an area and it's subtle nuances by that being your home
turf, so to speak, and hunting that over and over and over again. And it's kind of just the nature
of the bees, like we all have limited time, you can you guys go to Michigan, you can't be over
there for two months, you're there for a week. So like what you described was kind of, it can be
you can be on the struggle bus on day one or two. But at the end of the trip, that story arc that
you painted where by day three, you're starting to flush birds. I mean, that's that's hunting to me.
That's that's paying attention paying attention to your surroundings, using your power of observation,
putting the puzzle pieces together and finding success and knowing that tomorrow is not always
going to be like today, but at the end of the day, that is bird hunting and hunting really in its
in its purest form. So it's part of the allure. It's part of the draw, but it's it's definitely
there's a way to approach it and a way to think about it. Yeah, no doubt about it. I think you hit
the nail in the head with that too. It's it's the allure. It's what keeps us coming back for more.
It keeps us improving. Yeah, I also think like you said, when you were growing up,
grouse hunting, there was like a sixth sense, sixth sense.
That's a tough one. That's a tough one. Six cents of you're going to hurt yourself. I know, but
it's been a long day. But you start to just feel like, man, yes, just feels like a grouse would be
in here. And then bang, they flush like under your foot or, you know, up around the corner,
here comes bang dog locks up on point. You do get that sixth sense of grouchiness, but then
to take it a step further and improve your ability to say it's because of hazel brush or
starting to see more cherries and all these different things. And it's like, I just feel good
about the spot. Our brains are our brains are hardwired for pattern recognition. And that's
like, I think you can put some logic to that because that's I have the same feeling. It's like,
it's it's like, I would just say that looks grousy, you know, and I still say that in my head all the
time. And it's it's your brain recognizing the pattern in the cover and the structural diversity
and the density and everything it recognizes that you flush birds there before. So you, you know,
the neurons light up and that's what it is. But I've now begun to, you know, sort of label the
pieces of that puzzle that sort of make it what it is. And that adds like, it's like another layer
of enjoyment for me. But also, I do think it's sort of like, it's got to help your numbers go off.
Well, yes, it supports your your knowledge of of the cover and what you're looking at. It's part
of the foundation. Yeah, the probability of success for you and your dogs being in the right place at
the right time goes way up in when you're more educated. Oh, man, I had a good one. Dang. All right.
I'll let it slide because this won't be the end. And I know it's been a long show for you. And you've
got kids and a wife and Kevin's got a kid and a wife. So I'm gonna let it I'm gonna let it roll
for the next episode. Yeah, I appreciate you being on here again, man, I could talk about
grouse hunting and just listen to you. And I talk about retrievers and duck hunting a lot. This is
like my my outlet to the dogs and and still be in the woods. And so this is like a passion project
for me to just enjoy the grouse talk. So thank you. Thank you for passing on your knowledge. Tell me
where or tell them where they can find you and the helping gun company. Yeah, well, thank you for
having me on. It was it was my pleasure as as you can probably tell, I love talking about this stuff.
And I will commend you. You're asking great questions and for for being something that you're
you're getting deeper into your you're on a good path. And it was fun talking to you about it,
especially this time of year, March, you know, we got a long time to look ahead to next.
It's gonna always, you know, always talk about grouse hunting. So it's a blast. And yeah,
appreciate that birdshot podcast. You can find it about anywhere you can listen to podcast,
Spotify, Apple, that sort of thing. I do have a website. There's not much up there other than
new episode posts and stuff, but birdshot podcast, birdshot podcast on Instagram. I do have a personal
page on there at N.I. Larson 13 and I can send you guys some links to that stuff. But uplandguncompany.com,
we talked plenty about the shotguns. That's if anybody's interested or wants to learn more about
it, definitely go to uplandguncompany.com. You can play around there. Look at the different
models of shotguns we have. Play around with the builder. We got a YouTube channel. We did some
videos. There's not a ton there, but there is a cool video on gun fitting that we did with
Dell women last summer. So if that if that conversation sparked any interest from anybody,
I would encourage you to check out the uplandgun company YouTube page and have a look.
Yeah, we'll drop the links in the description below for all these things, including the gun
fitting YouTube link. I think that will spur a lot of people to learn more about it. So
for sure, Nick, thank you so much for joining tonight, man. It's a pleasure to see your face.
It's a pleasure to talk grouse hunting and guns and dogs with you. So
stay well, my friend. And maybe one of these days we'll get into grouse woods and I will
enjoy working or watching your dog's work and hunt with you, buddy.
Let's make it happen, boys. Right back at you enjoyed it very much as well. And we'll keep in touch.
Sounds good. Have a great one. You too. See you boys.
Thank you.
.