Alright, it's the DT Difference, 30 years experience in the game, DT Systems.
E-cows have been using for a while now, but let's quickly talk about their dummy launchers.
They got the Super Pro dummy launcher and the remote dummy launcher.
It's a great way for you and your dog to get ready for duck season,
loud bangs, make sure your dog's cool and gunfire before you use it,
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bag of tricks, and get you and your dog ready for duck season.
It's the Super Pro dummy launcher by DT.
Hashtag man's best kennel baby, that's gunner kennels.
Man, let's talk about these crates because when it hits the fan,
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It's an investment emotionally and financially to keep your
hunting buddy safe.
If you'd like to get into a gunner kennel,
slide into the DMs and we'll hook you up.
But do your best friend a favor and keep him safe this duck season.
All right, Cliff, welcome to the show.
Thanks for taking time on your day to join us.
Do me a favor, tell everybody a little bit about yourself.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me on.
My name is Cliff Enzoer.
I am the owner and founder of Uplander.
We are a lifestyle brand located in Michigan for
everything geared towards upland hunting.
And when I say lifestyle brand,
I try and bring everything into one circumference of relating
everything in the digital space towards upland hunting.
And we're not just an apparel brand,
but we're also a content producing brand where we try to
incorporate everything that makes us so passionate about
our sport of upland hunting, whether it's the dogs,
the buddies that we hunt with, or even the things that come
down to the things that we say in the field,
you know, missing birds and birds, whatever it is,
everything that we are so passionate about and love our sport,
it's everything wrapped into one single brand with uplander
at the pinnacle point of it.
And I think that the name hopefully fits it really well
and everything that we're trying to do.
Absolutely.
So how did you get into upland hunting?
How has that become a passion of yours?
It's something that I grew up hunting.
And it's not something that totally took stake
until a little bit later in life,
but it's something I've been around my entire life doing.
I grew up hunting ever since I could walk.
I feel like my dad was taking me into a deer blind with them.
We were going out.
We always had bird dogs growing up.
We had Britonese and we would,
we'd go out hunting with the dogs from time to time.
And it was never so much at that point in time about the dogs.
It was just about us going out and having a good time
and what we were doing and the dogs were an added bonus to that.
And maybe my perspective has changed on that.
A little bit now, it's a little bit of 180
where the focus is so much and what I'm trying to do
with the dogs and everything else outside of that is a plus.
But I mean, that's where it all started,
man, just going out hunting with dad,
having a good time with dogs.
And yeah, just growing up and outdoor lifestyle
and my dad fueling that passion for me.
I mean, I guess with Father's Day coming up,
I guess it's a good time to plug my dad
and just, you know, for everything that my dad took the time
to get me involved with things outdoors and pass that on.
And it's funny, I think about myself and the family that I'm front.
I have so many cousins on both sides,
aunts, knuckles and well.
And if you look at like the lifestyle
and what everything is funneling down to
just from the population in general,
like out of 10 cousins on each side,
I'm the only one that hunts and our entire family.
And it's so, yeah, yeah.
And it's just, you know, sometimes I feel like that puts it
into perspective of me where things are moving.
I guess maybe I shifted a little off topic of this,
but it's something I think about,
something I'm thinking about from time to time
and just how that played out.
But yeah, just, you know, back to props to my dad
for getting me involved and always taking me with him
whether it was hunting or fishing.
And yeah, that's where I guess I would all up to
and back to Father's Day.
So yeah, cheers to pops and from there everything,
it's just everything's evolved from there.
That's really cool.
So I'm gonna give you a shameless plug
and probably a shameless moment,
but I was a little hungover one morning.
Kevin's probably listening like, where is this going?
But I have to get up super early to take care of the dogs.
My fiance's sleeping in and I'm laying on the couch like,
ah, ah, drinking water.
And I'm flipping through YouTube on my TV
and you popped up.
And I followed you for a long time on Instagram,
but you popped up on YouTube.
And I started watching I went on like a binge
of your YouTube videos and you do a phenomenal job, man.
And I sent a video, I can't remember what one it was,
but I sent it to Kevin.
I'm like, this is awesome.
You should watch it and let's, you know,
connect with them and get them on the show.
So if you're an upland bird hunter
and even if you're not,
if you want to watch some really cool grouse hunting
and guys out in the field with their dogs,
check out your YouTube.
It was, it was really good stuff, man.
It was fun.
Thanks, man.
I really, I really do truly appreciate that.
Yeah, well, you're welcome.
And I appreciated the hangover watch
nursing Microsoft back to life.
And it was fun.
I mean, the quality is really good,
but it also just gets you super pumped up
for our season.
So, you know, maybe you know, maybe you don't,
but Kevin and I both have setters.
I've got a, I've trained a few utility dogs for NAVDA.
And one of those dogs is a dear friend of mine, his owner.
And so he and I are like,
grouse guys together.
I mean, we just, we pound the woods and have a great time
and it's a real break for me.
And so it feels like you're with you on the hunt
on your YouTube channel.
And that is one reason I really liked it,
but it gets me fired up to like,
get in the woods and go.
Yeah, I mean, I guess even thinking about sometimes,
some part of, if I think back 10 years ago
when I first got into filming stuff,
I mean, part of it was so you could sit back
and you could re-watch some of these things.
And every once in a while, I find myself just drifting off
and it's a late night or something you had a beer or two
and you're just going through some old footage
and you just, yeah, it gets you pumped up for,
you know, what's coming up
and just even other content creators
and just going out and having that access
to those types of things to just immerse yourself.
And yeah, it gets you fired up for season coming up.
Absolutely.
Are there any other YouTubers or whatever that do what you do
that you would recommend as well?
Like, if I'm going to go on a binge,
like, I think I watched most of your videos already.
So, you know, is there anyone else that's like doing it
where you're like, dude, this one,
you got to check this person out?
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think you're starting to see a little bit more
of it finally pushed through in the upwind side of it.
It just, it seems like.
Exactly, it's kind of sparse.
Yeah, it is.
And when you look at the hunting industry as a whole
and like, let's take, for instance,
if you compare the big game world to upwind hunting,
like, well, even upwind or even the big game industry
is so far behind what the rest of the world,
whether it's fashion or entertainment
or any type of media has been doing for years.
And finally, now in the last decade,
it started to trickle in.
The last half decade a lot more
where you see a lot more stuff on YouTube
from big game people and things like that.
And now that's just finally starting
to translate over to the upwind world as well.
Like, that's how, just how far behind everything
in this space is.
And you're starting to see it trickle down
and more upwind content you're seeing more guys
like, you know, yourself get involved
with producing online content for training
and just more online content in general for dogs,
whether it's upwind or waterfall space.
And it's really a cool thing to watch
evolve and push forward in our industry.
There is a couple of other guys that I've seen
that do a really good job in their videos.
One of them is a personal guy that I hunt with quite a bit.
His name is Justin Berkeley, Northern Forest Gun Dogs.
He's got a YouTube channel as well,
Northern Forest Gun Dogs.
He does a really good job of, you know, going through
with building a storyline at least with his dogs
and what he's doing.
And that's what everybody wants to follow along
with his some type of storyline with what people are doing.
And that's a cool part about it.
And I think you're starting to see a lot more stuff
like that come forth in our industry.
And it's cool to see.
Yeah, I really applaud you because the quality is good
and it's enjoyable to watch.
And again, it motivates me.
It's like, oh, I'm just itching for grouse time.
Grouse and woodcock.
I mean, for me, it's a retreat training
and duck hunting are meshed together so tightly
that sometimes it feels a little bit like work
or I feel obligated to whip the phone out
when really I should be enjoying the moment
where when I'm grouse hunting, yeah, I can't.
And I don't have the equipment that you have
to like capture it either,
but it's just like that dog, my setter.
It's just me and her, man, boots, a gun and a dog
and I go and I can go for an hour, you know,
I can go for four hours,
but I don't have to get up at the butt crack a dawn
and do it.
And so to sit there watching your stuff is like,
I'm just itching for that little mini vacation
to go in the grouse woods.
And it sounds so simple.
It's kind of funny.
I guess I think about this all the time.
Like it's a little bit easier in some regards
to go grouse hunting where like you said,
you just grab your gun and you're good pair of boots
and like kick the dog loose.
But it's definitely not easier.
Like every time I think that and then you go,
you're huffing and puffing and you're sweating.
Like I, well,
why the hell am I here doing this?
This is like, like I, 2020 is where I'm eating donuts
on a boat, but there's just so much that goes into
like shooting ducks and stuff, but it is funny.
I always find the drive there is always like,
oh yeah, this was so way easier.
Yeah.
And as soon as your eyes meet, it's not.
I mean, it for me, it's a mentality shift, a mentality shift.
Yeah.
So I can show my brain off and just go and walk and hunt.
Well, what's interesting.
Sorry, Cliff.
Go ahead.
It's all good, dude.
So it's funny as I can relate to that
in a completely 180 of how you're talking about it.
And I try really, really hard to not let myself come to this.
And the biggest thing I always tell myself
is when you're creating content,
don't let the content overtake the hunting experience.
And it's something that like I kind of burnt myself out
and years ago when I was trying to film my white tail hunts
and I made that basically into my job
for filming big game hunts.
And I really burned myself out of it.
And then for this, you know, I'm trying to keep it
where it's just, it's mellow and cool.
And I'm having a different mindset
where I'm not letting this become so frustrating to me
that I'm not getting the content that I want
that I'm not enjoying the hunt anymore.
And that's really a really big part of it that I've learned.
And it can become frustrating at times
because it feels like you're going out.
And if you're doing this and putting all this work
into filming, the editing, getting the dogs to do things right.
And you want it all to come together perfectly.
And sometimes it just doesn't always happen.
And you can't get frustrated about it.
And a lot of times I feel like that
when I go hunting nowadays that there's just so much,
you know, I'm so far deep into the filming aspect of it.
Like, you know, it's become literally a job.
And even though you do these types of things
to get away from your daily routine or your job,
it's kind of morphed into that in an odd way in a bit.
And it is funny.
I actually went, I've never been a big duck hunter myself.
I went out a time or two with my dad.
We waited through a deer lease that we had back when I was a kid.
And it was flooded timber and we shot a few wood ducks.
But outside of that, I've never been a duck hunter.
But I did this past fall, take one of my dogs
and go and sit out on the edge of a duck pond a couple days
after duck season opened here in Michigan.
And it was funny because I just felt like I had completely
gotten away from like my grouse hunting routine
or my regular upland hunting routine.
Like I didn't give a crap.
Like I was just out there having a good time.
It was chill, I was just sitting there hanging with my dog.
If something came in and I shot it, I shot it.
If not, if not.
Right, yeah, that's exactly how I feel.
It's just like a little light switch flip
where I can tone it down and relax.
And I still relax and enjoy duck hunting like thoroughly.
But it's still so close to what I do
from the minute I wake up to the minute I go to bed
that that upland hunt is different.
Tell us about your dogs.
You said you grew up with Britneys?
Yes, yeah, I grew up with Britneys.
My dad always had Britneys.
We had a beagle in the mix too when I was younger.
And we rabbit hunted a few times,
but it was never anything serious.
The beagle was just kind of there hanging out with us.
It'd run off every once in a while.
We'd get pissed about it.
And that was the extent of that.
But yeah, we had Britneys growing up
and that just kind of translated right over
and to me getting my own dog.
And now I have high of four of them.
No way.
How old are they?
What are their names?
I've got a six-year-old male named Yeti,
three-year-old female named Amber,
two and a half-year-old female named Aspen,
and a third female that is about to turn a year,
the end of June here.
So she's going on 12 months.
And that's actually a pup that we bred.
So I'm pretty excited about her.
That's really cool.
So Yeti, he always kind of stands out in your videos.
He's like, you know, you'll kind of comment, commentary on it.
And it's like, all right, well, we let the,
the other ones run now.
It's time to break the bring gun, the big ones out.
You do a great job working with your dogs, man.
For a guy who does this for a living,
you know, your dogs are crisp and deliver nicely to hand
and do what they're supposed to.
Obviously hunting, they all meet mistakes.
But overall, you've done a really nice job.
How have you molded them?
What was that process like developing them?
Thank you.
Yeah, I really do appreciate it.
I mean, that's a big compliment coming from somebody
who works with badass dogs on a day in and out basis
and makes badass dogs.
So I really do appreciate that comment.
And it all comes down to just working with dogs
at every single aspect of what our life is.
And like you mentioned, you know, molding the dog.
It's not with, with my lifestyle that I live,
I have so much access to the dogs all the time,
whether we're, you know, training or doing anything serious
or not, it's all about molding the dogs
into specific behaviors and conditioning them
to do certain things because I have so much time available
with the dogs.
I'm not trying to put a dog through a certain, you know,
30-day program because that's not what I am.
I just, you know, I have so much time
that I'm spending with the dogs.
And I guess that's kind of how my mindset is
that every aspect of everything we do,
I expect the dog to listen, you know, to mind me,
to have its own independence, but still listen to me
when I need it to do.
And I try and translate that to every single thing
that we do, whether we're just, you know,
come out of the kennels in the morning, you know,
going outside for the morning for, you know,
bathroom breaks or, you know, eating in the evening,
whatever or if we're doing retrieving any type of work
that we're doing.
And I guess that's kind of how the mindset translates
over to everything.
Is there a program that you followed or, you know,
club that you joined or mentors that kind of guided you
along the way as you develop these dogs?
You know, I tried when I first got into it
of training dogs more on my own of, you know,
sitting down and looking at this one program versus this,
or that, and it was just kind of, you know,
trial by error and eventually things worked out
where I got, and I felt like I've gotten to a good rhythm
right now of understanding, you know, how my dogs
are going to work and how they're going to work out
if I do A, B, and C with them from the start.
And that's kind of how it's translated over.
Do you, I kind of, I need to write it down
because I'm going to forget.
But I, because I want to talk more specifically
on the breed itself, but I am curious, like,
do you have homing pigeons?
Do you work them on wild birds?
How did you develop their point and steadiness and all that?
I do, I do not have pigeons myself.
I have access to them from time to time,
but pigeons aren't really a thing that I utilize a whole lot.
I guess from this, where I'm at now,
I guess I see the dogs at all different progressions
and different things that they need.
And from, I guess if I'm starting my,
one of my younger dogs, like I'll say example,
my, my pup fox who's about to turn a year now.
So her first year has just been spent
where a gun broke the dog really worked on her,
just, you know, minding me, teaching some,
a few basic commands in the house and learning her own,
giving her her own space to learn her own independence,
but still being mindful when I asked her to do something,
and then translate that over into fieldwork.
So if we're going out, we're running the dog,
you know, if I give the dog just a simple cue,
like over here, let's go, just, you know,
just be mindful for me from time to time,
and then translate that into bird work,
where I'll start out with quail for the young dog,
and I might put it in like a launcher
to start if the dog has had no prior exposure to birds before.
If it hasn't had any prior exposure before,
I'll put the bird just on the ground
and just see however it reacts to the bird,
let it come up to it.
If the quail is going to fly away or jump
or if it's going to stand there and let the,
the dog take it out, whatever happens at that point,
you're not really worried about it.
And then from there, trying to scale back,
just a little bit and a little bit,
but as long as in that first year,
you can take that dog out and turn it loose
and it can point a bird,
and it doesn't even have to like, you know,
be the steadiest point you've ever seen.
As long as that dog can point a bird,
like let's go hunting, game on.
Like we're going to go hunting
and you're going to learn the rest from there.
And then the following year, we can follow it up
if you need a little bit more steadiness training,
a little bit more wool work, you know,
if you're trying to creep in on a point
while I'm moving in, those types of things.
But that first year, if that dog can point a bird,
like let's go, let's have fun.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I agree, I think the main point you said
as you got it introduced to gunfire properly.
So, you know, pointing butterflies in the backyard
and then taking and hunting, no.
But if it's pointing things and it's cool with gunfire,
I think that the wild birds,
especially in an area like, you know, you're lucky enough
to be in Michigan, where you have a plethora of woodcock
and grass, they're going to learn from those birds a lot.
So as long as they're not spooked by gunfire,
they listen to you well enough
to where they're not going to chase off
and get lost in the woods.
Plus, we have all the technology, you know,
you always kind of look at your watch on YouTube,
show where the dog is.
So you've got the GPS action, so you know where they're at
and you can build them.
But I think wild birds truly do teach
a pointing dog more, you know,
what I do is I have homing pigeons, you know.
So I get them on homing pigeons, I teach them how to be steady,
I can move in, I can hold on to my bag
and do a simultaneous like double flush.
I can manufacture a lot of instances
that these guys will see in the wild,
but we don't have enough wild birds.
And we're actually, this is a question I have for you.
We're not allowed to train on them
from this date to this date because of nesting season.
And so a lot of the guys back in the day
would go during the woodcock flight basically
and work dogs on wild birds.
And is that a thing in Michigan
or are you not allowed to do it either?
Yeah, so the cutoff date in the spring
when you have to stop running dogs on birds,
wild birds in Michigan is like April 15th.
And then it goes until July 7th or 8th,
depending on the year and the how the dates fall.
So really that period is when you can't be out in the woods
and you know, you're not even supposed to have a dog
off a six foot leash technically,
even in your backyard.
Crazy stuff, but yeah.
I'm sure everybody follows that rule.
Yeah, so easy, I'm sure all strict followers.
But yeah, I mean, I don't, I have,
I have run my dogs on spring woodcock in the past.
It's not really something I've utilized
on my older dogs so much anymore,
but if like my pup fox, I did take her out a few times
and I ran around spring woodcock
just because those were the birds that I had available
and the dog was coming into it.
We had just came home from Arizona
for a month long trip we had down there
and the dog scout got ran on wild birds.
And that was really one of the first times
I hunted this pup at six months old
and then we came home here sat for a month or so
and then she got ran on woodcock here
and Michigan for about a month or so.
But it's, it's a thing that I'll,
I'll take like a younger dog out like that,
but as far as the older dogs,
I mean, they all already, they already understand the game
they don't really need the tune up at that point.
And it's just, it's added stress
and added things on top of the dogs.
And I guess maybe my perception of it changed a little bit
a couple of years ago when I had actually
a really bad injury, who wasn't that bad,
but I did have an injury from one of my older dogs
that I was running on spring woodcock.
And if you think about woodcock habitat,
it's real dense, thorny,
a lot of crap that your dog has to run through.
And there's a risk involved any time you're out running,
you put a dog on the ground,
there's always a risk on the vault.
So on the ground, or there's always a risk involved
whether it's hunting season or not.
And I didn't think anything of it at the time, the dog,
I ran the dog, didn't have any problems with them.
He completed his run, it was about 45 minutes long.
We come back, give him a quick look over, he's all good.
The next morning we wake up and I'm sitting out here
and my wife is back in the kitchen
and she starts screaming on her own out there
and the dog is sitting in a big pool of blood.
And he pulled a thorn that was from like an olive branch
out of the pad of his foot.
And it just started profusely bleeding everywhere.
And he was literally sitting in like a 12 by 12 pool of blood
underneath his foot.
And you know, that was just, you know,
it's something that just because I wanted to run my dog on,
you know, a spring woodcock.
Yeah.
I get it, but I mean, that could happen anytime too, I guess.
It's the, oh yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, it's one of those things like,
you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.
And, man, that sucks.
Oh no, there's, yeah, there's, there's,
there's absolutely that, totally at both sides of it.
I mean, it all comes back down to it doesn't matter what you're doing.
Anytime I let my dogs out at the house here just to go outside,
there's a risk they could run off, they could get hit by a vehicle or anything.
I guess, I guess I look at it maybe as now,
it's, it's not miles that the dogs necessarily need put.
The risk at that point is bigger than the reward for something like that.
So what do you do with the, let's, let's forget Fox for a minute.
You have veteran, you know, three veteran dogs, Yeti, Aspen, and,
what was the other one?
Amber, I would say two veteran dogs.
And then one that's still kind of in the middle, okay, in the middle.
What are you doing through the summer to get them in condition, to keep them steady?
Is that all quail work?
Yeah, it is.
I will have a time or two that I'll meet up with somebody and run dogs on,
on pigeons, get some birds and launch her and just launch birds out in front of them.
Just to, just to give them a little bit of a surprise or tune them up a little bit more.
But for the most part, I do run on quail just because I personally,
where I live, don't have access to pigeons.
We just have a, a half acre lot that we live on.
And a lot of places that I train on is either, you know, lots of friends that I have
or, or place or meet up with somebody that has, you know, access to somewhere to run.
And, you know, quail is the most access thing that we have to.
And it's not, it's not, definitely not as nice as working with pigeons.
But I have come to, after doing it for three or four years, come up with a few things
that have helped me out with versus just going out and throwing a quail on the ground.
And, you know, sometimes you're, when you, when you use crappy flying birds,
you sometimes set yourself up for disaster.
But there's a, a few things that I've,
I'm going to stop you because this is great dog training talk.
What, what, what do you, what do you mean by it, digress into this little rabbit hole of,
because I've used quail and I flip and hate them.
Yeah, they're like, if there's any do on the ground, they don't fly.
If you dizzy too much, they don't work.
If you don't dizzy enough, they're gone.
Like, um, what are some tips and tricks and, you know, talk, talk to me more about this
So the worst thing you could absolutely do is just go out and just throw a quail,
like in a little bushel of grass, right?
And especially with a young inexperienced dog, um, because that,
that bird is giving off such a crappy scent cone.
Like, it's basically producing absolutely zero scent.
And then depending on what the conditions you're working in, if it's really dry,
hot summer day and that scent is just burning up so fast, like that bird's given off
absolutely zero scent cone.
So you're setting your dog up right there to not even have a good opportunity to find the bird.
It's going to be doing a lot of nosing around when it hits somewhat of little scent that's around.
It's not going to be, it's all going to be ground scent.
The dog's just going to kind of nose around.
Eventually it's going to stumble its nose right into that little bugger sitting on the ground.
And that quail ain't going to take flight.
It's going to pop its head up and look at that dog and go, oh shit.
And then the dog's probably going to take it out if your dog, depending on how broke your dog is.
But if like I said, if it's a young dog, yeah, that dog's probably just going in there and taking the bird out.
Right.
And then it learns it can take the bird out.
Yes.
Yes.
Exactly.
And that is probably the biggest issue.
My vocabulary gets very pulver and I'm cussing the birds and whatever.
Yeah.
So you have everybody's in a bad mood and you just, you're, you're pissed off with that bird.
It always comes down to, I, I often hate these quail.
I find myself saying that a lot.
Yes.
Is it going to kick it up?
But so then it's running and then the dog, yeah, he's, yes.
Yep.
And that's another thing.
A lot of times if you plan a quail, if you don't dizzy it enough, there's like a fine line.
If you dizzy it too much, it just sits there and it doesn't do anything.
But if you don't dizzy it enough, it just, it wanders off.
And while that leads again to your dog going into the initial spot and it doesn't leave much scent behind,
it's nose and around going, what was here?
This is kind of fun.
And then it trails right into that bird and guess what it grabs it again.
So if you can, if you can work with what I'll do is I'll try and get good flying quail.
And I raised quail for a couple of years myself, a bobs and Tennessee reds.
I built a flight pen behind our barn and I'd rail raised like a hundred to 200 quail every year.
And I would go in here every day to this pen and I would like, it's funny because they start getting
accustomed to you real quick.
I'd go in there and I'd feed them and they'd come running up to me like, Oh, dude, you're our friend.
Like we like you.
But I was like, no, get away from me and I'd start like kicking them and throwing stuff at them.
And like I eventually they'd get, they get a little spooky of you and they don't want much to do with you.
So I'd go in there on the daily and get them really kicked up, get them, get them flying well.
And then I could take those birds and I would felt confident that if I put it in a launcher,
the bird was actually going to fly away.
So I was controlling the situation and that's how I was starting out with the dog.
And especially on a first run with a dog when we're just getting back into training,
that dog hits a little bit of scent and I can just launch that bird.
And now essentially it is a pigeon and the bird just flies away and the dog never has a chance to get it.
Right.
And then from there, I'll take them and I'll just start planting them on the ground in little cages.
I'll just make like a little makeshift cage and works best has been the heat lamps.
Uh, you have like a heat lamp for poultry or something.
It comes with this wire cage on the bottom where you can take that off and you can take two of them
and put them together and it fits a quail perfectly.
And you can just drop that out in the field with a quail.
That's a little tidbit right there.
That is a tidbit.
Yes.
I also would say kit cages are about 20 bucks and that heat lamp was probably 20 bucks.
This is true, but I already had the heat lamps because I was raising the quail.
I dig it.
I love it, dude.
Oh, let me ask you this.
You, I love the ingenuity.
You said you don't have room for homing pigeons, but you have room for 200 quails.
I could, all right, I have room for homing pigeons.
I just don't have anywhere initially right here where I'm at on my location to run the dogs on those homing pigeons.
And I guess I could, you know, teach them to home and take them different places to fly.
But I don't know.
It's just, it's, it's, it's one of those things I could do.
But I don't know.
I just, I follow you.
I've made you all talk to Uncle Bob here who loves his pigeons.
I do, I do.
I do love pigeons.
I would, I would love to have pigeons just because it would be so, like, I'd just have so much fun, like being into the birds.
I mean, like, oh, dude, look at this one that's got like mostly white, but he's got just this little bit of specling and his black coming off of his feathers.
Like, yeah, stuff like that.
Bob had one that was called the mother dragons and that thing had about 5,000 pigeon pigeon babies, and it was just the greatest.
Yes, rest in peace, she got killed by a weasel.
Oh, yep, that's a hard way to go out.
I had to give you a lot.
I had that pigeon for almost eight years.
Really?
That's a lot of, that's a lot of dogs trained.
A lot of popped traps, a lot of action on that bird.
She was a beast.
She was cool looking.
She was brown with iridescent green around her neck.
And this like, you know how they got the white thing on their nose?
I don't know what it's called.
Yeah.
It was like, she was so old.
It was like, gnarled up with warts and just she'd pop out babies left and right.
The mother of dragons.
But anyways, we digress.
So tell me, I do want to talk about the Brittany Spaniel as a breed.
I have limited experience with them.
In fact, the seer.
Quit Google.
Sorry.
The pigeon in the nose thing.
The seer.
C-E-C-R-E.
Learning something new.
I didn't know that.
But again, I'm not a pigeon guy, unfortunately.
Maybe I'm a wannabe pigeon guy, but I'm out there.
You get there.
I'm a wannabe pigeon guy as well.
Yeah.
But I had a handful of coil that we had for like three years.
And I fell off on the last day that I emptied out our pen and I took them out.
And they got turned into the dog food basically.
We're not dog food, but fun for the dogs.
I felt a little bit bad about them.
Three years.
And shoot them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hold on.
One thing back to the coil real quick.
So I mentioned putting the coil in traps.
And this is now where I've moved on with the dog where it can go in.
It's going to snap on point and it's going to hold and point on a planted coil.
And instead of going in there and it's always a pain in the ass trying to kick up coil.
If you got a planet on the ground and they don't fly very well.
So what I'll do is I'll have this coil in a little trap down below.
Or even if I have it in a launcher.
Sometimes they don't always fly out of the launcher very well.
So whatever the bird is in.
I'll always have extra coil in a bird bag with me.
And when that dog goes on point, I'll take a few steps in front of that dog.
And as long as the dog is still standing there on point, I'll just chuck a bird right out from underneath my feet real quick.
And there goes the bird for that dog.
So I'm not trying to, you know, kick up any quail or anything.
And then I can easily come through with the next dog in my string.
And I don't have to replant a bird.
The bird's already sitting there in that cage.
I can just run the same exact sent cone where a little bit of sense already built up from this one bird.
That's a good pro tip.
So you got an ace in your sleeve, basically, right?
To, yes.
To again, manufacture what you want instead of hoping that it doesn't pop up and land on the ground two feet away.
Yes.
Yep.
Can we, can this, that's a really good one.
Can we like slowly just review that one?
So everybody kind of understands like the, the why it's important to control the controls.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So a quail suck it flying.
So you want to, and whenever you're in a situation where you're a dog, especially training, you want to be able to control the situation.
And quail and young dogs are unsteady dogs don't always mix.
So you need to find your best way to be able to control that.
And you can do that by putting a quail into a cage.
So the dog can't take it out and the quail is just going to sit there nicely in one spot.
And if it's a younger dog and you're still trying to get this dog to progress in its steadiness, the dog will come up.
And hopefully you're not too far behind it.
And the dog goes on point.
And if it's a dog, you're trying to get the whole point longer.
You feel like maybe you're not going to be able to make it where you walk out in front of the dog.
You don't want to put too much pressure on the dog, but you want it to get a reward for standing there and standing still.
So before you can even make it to the dog, you can throw that bird, pull one out of a bird bag on your side.
If you have another quail and throw that bird over top of that dog.
And the dog will look up, see the bird taking flight and think that's it.
That's its reward.
So it's going to take off after that quail that you threw for it.
And that's that dog's reward is that chase after that bird for standing still.
And then eventually you can progress where you get to the point where you can now walk in front of the bird, where it walk in front of the dog.
And instead of trying to kick the bird up out of the grass, you can just throw a bird out of your bird bag for you for the dog.
Very good.
All right, I dig it.
I think that that is a great tip.
Let's go into the Brittany as a breed.
So what I want is quirks.
Again, like I said, I've had limited experience in them.
Most of what I've done is short hairs, giraffes, poodle pointers, setters, griffons.
What else have I done?
English pointer.
But most of them were short hairs and setters.
So the Brittany, I'm going to lay out some, what are they called, stereotypes.
I'm going to lay out stereotypes and you tell me if I'm right or wrong.
All right, let's say I only have a few.
But I'm excited for this.
This will be cool.
It's a good podcast segment.
There are types of dog breeds.
Um, soft.
I feel like I'm going to be split on all these.
I feel like I know what's coming up.
And this is one of the ones that I feel like, see, all right, I'm going to just break this up real quick.
And I'm going to say I feel like.
The Brittany's are overall very easy dogs to condition.
And I feel like they pick up and condition on exactly what you want them to do.
So if you want the dog to be a little bit soft and maybe you, you overwork it, it's going to become soft real quick.
But that doesn't mean that the dog is overall necessarily soft compared to what you're doing with it.
And I feel like that translates over to a lot.
But I guess to backtrack on what I just said, yes, they can be a little bit softer.
All right, fair.
Good answer.
It's also dog dependent, right?
You have a love them and have had several of them in your career of doing this with your dad and whatnot.
So like out of all of them.
But that is a good answer.
Like they may be soft.
But if you overdo X, whatever X is, collar condition, belly band, you know, whatever it is.
Like they kind of, if you're, if I'm picking up what you're putting down, it's they are learning quickly.
So if you overdo it, then it can take it away from them.
And they're like, uh, yes, yes.
And I think that's one of the biggest things is maybe the dog doesn't quite understand.
Understand fully what's going on.
And that is often perceived as soft.
Fair.
Yeah, I would go with any dog breed on that.
Okay.
For all you listen for dog training tips, any dog.
If they don't understand why they're getting corrected and they're getting corrected,
they're going to react in a way where they're like, I don't know to offer me.
So if they understand.
That might be different.
But I have seen both ends of the spectrum between breeds or between the Brittany breed.
I've seen dogs that just don't give a shit.
And I've seen dogs that have become, you know, this, you know, you kind of twitch of not twitch a finger.
But, you know, you go to a dog does something wrong and you go to take a step at it to correct it.
Whether it's picking the dog up, setting it back down or you just want to relocate the dog, whatever it is.
And maybe the dog does, you know, the tail drops down.
The shoulders hunch up a little bit.
It just looks and anticipates that something's coming.
Yeah.
Okay.
How about this is a weird word.
But I'm going to use it neurotic.
We can kind of get.
Put you in fixated and little wiring and.
Mm hmm.
Go on.
Yes.
So I have.
I have one dog that.
That if I had to say something that I wish the dog.
It could improve on it is just being able to hold itself together.
A little bit more.
And I see.
And I, it's, it's interesting watching the dogs between seeing what the lines that I have now and which dogs do these certain things and which dogs don't.
They have a liver female, Amber, who are puppy fox came out of both dogs, super, super good at controlling their emotions, keeping themselves composed.
They don't get overly excited about anything.
And they are just complete pros at in the heat of the moment, anything that's going on of keeping themselves together.
And on the other end, I have another female aspen, two and a half years old.
She gets really overly excited, really super easy.
And when this happens, I almost feel like she's short circuiting a little bit and she's getting so jumpy and so wired up that she's not, you know, you're not able to just exactly translate to the dog and other ways that you're translating to the other dogs with.
She just gets so wired and so jacked up and so she, she loses all of her emotions and that one point is so excited about what's to come and she struggles to keep it together a little bit.
And I see that who is a half sibling to her just ever so slightly bit in my other male.
He's a lot better at keeping himself more composed and keeping it together, but I still slightly see that trait in that line.
Gotcha. Very good.
Not super watery.
You know what I mean? Like loving to swim.
You definitely ask that like a bone.
Yeah, but that's okay.
Well, we would say a dog is sitting here judging you. It's fine.
That's fine. Yeah. Lab is watery.
Like if I'm if I'm taking my dogs out to go on a on a boat on the afternoon in July or we're going down to the lake and we're going to do some
water work. I'm throwing bumpers. All my dogs are fair game to jump in there.
They're in the water. They love the water. Now let's go out in December 23rd.
It's two days before Christmas. We're back home. The boys are doing a duck hunt.
There's a frozen pond that we're busting over water on.
Am I expecting one of my dogs to want to go dive into that water like maybe you know a dog like a lab that is designed and maybe bread for doing that more?
No, my dog probably isn't going to do it. Could I force him to do it and maybe would he do it?
Yeah, he probably would, but he wouldn't enjoy it like other dogs would.
That's a good and fair question.
Overall, like as a puppy developing them, you didn't find any averseness to swimming.
Or do you and I'm going to caveat this with do you think because you're savvy introducing them young and positive environments you were able to manufacture that and create that?
Because like I wouldn't expect them to do the December 23rd either.
Yeah, right. Like the short hair people like to somehow sometime to be like my short hair loves icy water flows.
Right. Right. Yeah. No, I mean, I don't think for the for the most part, I get in the dog.
Maybe you have to spend a little bit time, you know, getting the dog acclimated the water be like, hey, like, yeah, you can actually go in here.
Not that bad, but once the dog gets over that fear of being in the water, it's always cool from there.
Awesome. That's a good answer, man. I agree. And by the way, again, I'm using stereotypes because I saw several really high quality UT prize one, Britney's that were, excuse me, did the doc search like nobody's business.
So I would just say I'm literally trying to stereotype and now I'm trying to come up with another one and I can't.
So are there other stereotypes that you can think of that you can maybe dispel of the Britney like hard mouth.
And now literally making this up hard mouthed or vocal or whatever, like things like that.
Yeah, I think there's there's two that come to come to mind. It would be I guess they go right in line with the next part of bird dogs is one that the dog doesn't run as big or aren't Britney's aren't big runners and two they don't retrieve.
Which I think the retrieving thing has been said about every single breed out there, especially for pointing up when dogs out there and it's dispared in each and every single breed, but I'll just throw it in there for the mix of that too.
But so Britney's don't run that big and I think when you you have to boil it down to the realm of what the what the breed is and what the what it's competing against in general and what your expectations of running big is as well.
And that's really fair. Those are all really fair things.
And it all comes back into how I said Britney's are really easy to be conditioned into doing certain things and I think is a is a Britney an English pointer hell no.
Obviously there's with there's you know within the breed there's both ends of the spectrum, but for the most part Britney's are not dogs that are going to hit the prairie and open up to six 700 yards.
Like that, but you can find dogs that will go out and hit for 500 yards on the open prairie is Britney's.
But then there's also I think a lot of this where this myth comes from it.
Oh, especially if it's a Britney maybe you're newer or this is just how you work your dogs for example is you know you don't want the dog getting too far away from you.
So you're constantly heckling the dog constantly calling you take the dog to go outside to the bathroom.
The dog gets 40 yards away from you you're heckling it to come back to you.
You know you're going out you're taking your dog to just as a dog owner you're going to a park or somewhere.
You don't want the dog running off on you you're constantly heckling it hey come back here come back here buddy.
Well guess what that dog has now been over time condition to stick in that 40 60 yard pattern of you because you've never given it the opportunity to go out and be its own independent thing to to search and find things you're just constantly heckling it like I said Britney's are very
conditional both dogs so if you're constantly on your dog like that Britney's range shortens up real fast and just from from looking at it I feel like there's there's a lot of that that potentially comes from that part of it.
Those are really great points what do you think as an avid grouse guy what do you think is an ideal range for a grouse dog.
If the dog if the dog is working with you and and minding you I don't have a problem letting a dog go hit 100 150 yards in the grouse woods and that's not a dog that's you know circling back behind you 100 yards constantly trying to find you at 100 150 yards and now the dog is you know behind you it's way off to your left it hasn't made a cast back into the right for a while.
So if that dog is minding you and it can stay in that 100 and 150 yards rain you should be well off in the grouse woods now if you the dog maybe isn't minding you as much you got to shorten it up and say today I'm heckling you you're staying within 75 yards in me because once you get past 100 you're losing me and it's just not working for the two of us to get any birds in the bag because you're over here I'm wanting to go this direction and you're just not minding me and it's not working because you're working that extra distance today.
So you make a great point I feel like it also has got to depend on where you're hunting how the woods look because I or tell me I'm wrong I mean I feel like 150 yards for me maybe I'm just like fat and slow but I feel like it would take me a long time to get over to the dog and I'm going to just drag on Kevin's dog that's how much is going to be 200 real quick.
She runs like a horse through any amount of yes and cover question but I'm remembering some coffee hunts were like well she go she go she go right no no well yes but my point is is like if your dog so let's say your dog goes on point in 150 yards away where do you expect that bird to be that was going to be my point I feel like at that point by the time I would get there at least for myself yeah I feel like I'm going to get there.
Yeah I'd be like either I watch your walk off you know what I would maybe expect suck I don't know you don't expect I would expect I would have expected the dog or the bird to have moved at that point time unless the dog absolutely has it pinned and you know at the bottom of a brush pile or something like that but if it's just like you know like normally on your grouses the grouse always has some type of escape route it's not going
to get pinned down in the first spot it's sitting in unless you catch it with its pants on the ground and it's like holy crap there's a dog 30 feet for me I ain't moving now but normally that's not the case right so the dog you're expecting the dog to have to relocate and rework that bird at that time and it's something that comes with time it's not something
that's just like hey my dog's going out there and he's hitting a grouse at 125 150 yards from me and he's pointing and by the time I get there the bird has moved off well that's all that all becomes part of the learning process for the dog and it can take a couple years for it to stick and it might not be
until the dog is four five years old where at that point it's really figuring out how to figure out those grouse that are a little bit farther away between
when the dog is farther away from you and the time that you get to the dog
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All right that makes sense that's a good answer it's a great answer I have to slow down because
my brain is firing on graphs experience and so I got to slow myself down so that I don't ask
10 questions in a row I'm doing the same thing and I feel like all I want to do is jump and
then cut you off and be like yeah but what about this what about that over here like what does
that look like oh good yeah that's what I'm thinking together so um I'm going to give you the
we're going to use your dog yeti as an example older experienced dog um he's out at 120
you are alerted by the GPS collar he's on point how are you approaching him and how are you
ex uh what are you expecting to find do you release him to go find it like talk me through a
scenario that is common as you at you know approach a dog and how it you approach it
so in for the example of yeti yeti is a fully seasoned dog he's you know I would consider him
you know my grouse dog and if I he was working a bird I've entrusted the confidence onto the dog now
to say if the bird isn't here and you feel that it's up to you to take matters into your own hands
and relocate and rework the bird go for it buddy I'm just going to hang back like if I if
let's say the dog is 125 yards from me goes on point I make it 75 yards and I'm now 50 yards
from the dog and I hear you know I see now I look down on the GPS and the dog is moving well I'm
going to slow my speed down a little bit because I don't want to add any extra pressure to the bird
itself the bird is already aware to the dog so I'm just going to let the dog work this out on his
and if he comes up with it he comes up with it if he blows the situation it's on him
and it happens from time to time that sometimes the dog gets you know a little greedy
overpressures the bird but you're hoping that from those experiences that the dog learns
from his past and eventually you know is going to be able to put all the pieces together where
it's it's it's comes together almost every single time the dog is learned from his past mistakes
and he's going to work cautiously on this bird and he's going to play it right so I've pretty much
transferred all the power over to the dog in that situation and I take myself out of the equation
like I said I'll hang back and just let the dog work the bird and hope that he comes up and he
pins it at some point and I guess that's like like that's what I'm looking for right there it's just
like that one-on-one interaction between that dog and that bird for that dog to do it right there
like that's what like that's badass right there if that dog can go out there and work that bird
like that and all your job is to come in and do and it's just shoot the bird when it gets flight
like that's it man like that's what I'm looking for I think that beautiful
when when it happens and I think that's the art and science and beauty and finesse and wonder
that keeps me going back into the grousewoods is for every one that they do it right like that
and you get a shot and you get it you shoot the bird there's 50 where you bump the bird and you
don't even see it you just hear it or the dog bumps the bird or it does just wander off or whatever
the case maybe so there's 49 swings at that if you will and then the one where it's like
the heavens open up a little light beam shines down on you and your dog and your gun and the bird
and you're like oh and then you miss no I'm saying you get that's the one in 50 that's the one in 50
then there's 25 where you miss and then there's others where it's like I hear I I got caught a
glimpse I didn't even pull the trigger or whatever but that one in 50 man it's just like a beautiful
beautiful thing um how are you approaching your dog on point in the grousewoods what is your
tactic as you're weaving through the the thicket towards the dog how are you setting yourself up
for success for a good shot what do you also we have a 10 million question Blake on top
of that like what are you thinking what are you looking for yeah as you're making your way
well you're trying to look at you know if you think of it like rabbit hunting like you know
you look at brush piles like where's that bird gonna be and it's something that especially while
you're approaching the the dog you're constantly thinking okay if as I'm walking right now where
I'm at in this point in time if this bird was to get up where's it gonna get up and then you
take another 10 steps and now your 10 feet farther the bird hasn't taken flight so it's like each step
you're constantly evaluating what's in front of you what's what's my shooting lane where's this bird
getting up at potentially where's the dark spots like where's the dark shadows that a bird would
slip into if something was coming up to it especially on those blue bird days where uh there's a
there's a lot of shadows in the in the woods and do they have really bright sections and really
dark sections in the woods so like where's that dark spot at like that's what I'm trying to key into
those types of things when you're walking up on the dog and you're trying to cut up out in front of it
like you know if I can make it to this tree it looks like this from this tree in front of me like there's
a there's a shooting lane over here to my left that I could shoot through if the bird got up and
there's one straight in front of me and if it's not there if I make it up to this next tree what's
it look like in front of me from there for a shooting opportunity but yeah just looking for those
those dark spots those shadows um a cluster of pines but you know wherever that bird might be
sitting in that's taken cover because it's probably not just sitting out and you know the random
openness you know that grouse is ducking into something absolutely absolutely what part of
Michigan Michigan are you from I am from the southeast part of the state uh just below the mid
mid state line we if you you take your map and you have your your thumb area here in Michigan we
live just on the outside of the thumb area up below mid Michigan okay so I've been uh I got a
buddy what's what's the big city there uh flint and Detroit not well not Detroit
um i'm trying to think of where he lives where's camera from
hey grand rapids yes okay grand rapids had a wedding in Traverse City
um and then Kevin and I so basically what i'm trying to pinpoint is like if we're
drove past where he lives yeah i googled it yeah i drove through you so Kevin and I went to the
UP with my buddy hammer and his brock fron says uh this last year first voyage for me and Kevin
to the UP um our experience was awesome
um minus the grouse numbers
so which isn't may not necessarily uh i say grouse numbers is pretty aggressive like it
probably okay you're going to the mecca no i know i was there i had an entire fours
you know i was probably talking to you about how we're gonna see a thousand grouse and it was
gonna be like yes i expected i expected 20 flushes 30 flushes a day
in my in my wildest dreams right like you're going to the mecca so and i wasn't being greedy
in expecting this i just i thought it i just thought like we're going to the place where
our dogs are gonna get the experience we're gonna crack set bat that's what i'll expect
if i was going to the UP tomorrow and i was going to find somewhere to grouse hunt whether
somewhere i knew if i just pulled up i would expect a good day i'd find 20 to 30 birds
see that's awesome to hear and also ridiculously disappointing things from this
my face cliff yeah we had we had good woodcock encounters and we did have grouse encounters
just not as many as i thought and we had a couple but again like we to say grouse numbers like
it's also very possible that like where we were going to just show up and be like all right like
let's pull up on acts and see what we can find it's also quite possible that we were just not in
the most ideal place exactly and so that i don't know yeah you're right Kevin i looked at it again
i'm trying to balance this question or and it's not even a question it's like a discussion
we had high expectations the first day was like we got humbled then we started to find grouse
in different habitat that is new york right so we went and looked for new york habitat and weren't
really finding grouse then when it's like well let's hit this spot up we found some grouse
then when we found a little bit more of that habitat we found a little bit more grouse
and like one guy i think he got six grouse he shot six grouse yeah he was a son of a gun
yeah he was a killer and he's not getting invited back
he was a killer but the habitat was just a little bit different than what we were used to
so it took us a day or two to figure it out and then the last two days we started having more
contacts but new york and the up isn't that different and that's what kind of got me like
i still found habitat that in new york would be prime grouse but there weren't grouse there
and then you'd be like it doesn't look that good to me but then there's freaking grouse there
so it surprised me man i think you just perfectly described grouse on like i don't know if you
were trying to but i think you like literally just summed it up perfectly humbling yes humbling
and just when you think you're like oh shit like i got like i got this figured out like we've
starting to put a few pieces together this spot over here seems very identical to what we just
last run like we're gonna go in here and have a good time then at the end of it you're like
i heard two birds and my dog busted one and like that was the extent of my walk that was a good time
i'm glad glad my i have blisters now because we walk so far yeah i got a few extra scratches on my face
so grouse habitat to me has to have multiple different parts to it it's not just one aspect it's
not just like let's say aspen there's not it's it doesn't just involve aspen there has to be
different structure different type of edge lines habitat to that aspen besides just like hey
the the state decided that they took this big flat of oaks and cut 40 acres of it and it came back
as aspen and it's just a flat aspen cut uh surrounded by oak like yeah it's aspen but like there's
not a whole lot around there really mean yeah you know what word i try and remind myself of when
i'm like hunting and and searching for birds right like is confluence like where and where where is
everything come together types of contours of land types of trees like where are we hitting that
like everything hits right here and we and we have all this edge habitat yes that's it so like
where does everything come together like where does this creek that runs through this area it finally
comes up on the back side of this cut and that drops down into a little bit of a low area and now
you have some moisture in the soil which is produced a few different types of plants whether it's
some dog wood or some thorn apples and you know some more darker soil temps and then up high you
have a an oak ridge that comes off the top of that and then between that coming in is now maybe like
some type of conifer you know flat that runs along and that so it's all those things converging
just like you summed up together it's uh one of the things i really like about it is how
it's not just like with deer and i like deer hunting too but like you just you sit and wait for
for deer and you know where they're going to be or whatever you know they might be in the corn
you know they might be in alpha or blah blah blah right but and with ducks like you know what
ducks are flying blah blah blah with grouse hunting you have to learn the area you have to
learn the types of trees the types of berries what kind of bush is that how wet is the ground
right like just there's so much to it it's unbelievable it's so cool that i think you'll never be
an expert yeah never you never master it you'll always be trying to like untangle the knot
that is brick and grouse hunting yeah that's it as soon as you think you got to figure it out there's
always something else that comes into it and you hit on something with it where it just seems like
it's it's unpredictable a lot of times but there's a lot of other predictability that goes into
upland game birds like you know go out west and we go out and hunt sharp tails huns on the prairie
and it just those birds become so predictable with where they're going to be
roosted the type of cover that they're in compared it to to grouse back home and you know there's
you look at it yeah the birds could roost here but they could also roost over here and they could
fly down and feed here in the morning but they could also fly a half mile this way and spend
their morning feeding and you know it's then you're like well maybe i'll try and cut the roads and
pick up a bird or two picking up grip but there's so many different you know spots where a bird could
pick up gravel and get its grip from in the morning and so it really becomes hard to pinpoint
those exact areas on unless you can string together these certain areas within a loop of a walk
that you're doing and that's where you can become a little bit more deadly as you you start checking
your ABCs and Ds as you go through on a loop and eventually you'll find them i feel like i'm a
pretty analytical person and so i always find myself trying to figure out like okay like what are
some patterns here what am i finding what are what are like the variables here what are we doing
what are we not doing and there's just so much that that it's hard to keep track of but that's
part of the fun yeah that's i mean that's that's that's grouse hunting absolutely i mean yeah
you're always trying to put the piece together and it's it's tough to pinpoint down exactly it
is and you can't over be over analytical into and you can think way too far into it and then you
really just start to you know getting your own head and you're like i really don't know what
i'm doing just walking around in this stupid woods here like what the hell am i doing here anyways
i knew i should have went to the other spot versus this right so let's say you're coming to New York
first up have you ever been i have been to New York i haven't been upstate New York
but i was just there briefly for work okay uh let's say you're coming to
hunt with me in cabin and we're going to take you to you know give you a general like this is
where we want a hunt it's a 50 square mile take a look at it on on x
do your research how many what you see what you don't see what are you looking for when you're
going to a new area and trying new covers i'm looking for multiple covers that run together
and things can't just be one sided it can't just be all aspen or all pines or all oak or whatever
that type of structure is that you're looking at it has to be something that has all parts of those
pieces together so it's got to have um aspen to it that's within a certain age range and then
it also has to have i like areas with lower land to them darker soils because those darker soils
versus the higher sandier areas produce a lot more um structure within them versus the sandier
areas that sandier areas just kind of grow back like sparse crappy looking stuff like you wouldn't
even want to waste your time walking through that looking at it because it's so wide open but
those darker soiled areas that are low land where the water collects down a little bit more
they grow a lot more structure to them you have a lot more different plants on things that grow
into these areas so i'd be looking at lower lands um depending on what type of time a year it is
where you know is our leaves falling yet it for example or is it still early season with a lot of
leaves on the trees yet um or is it later in the year when it's a little bit um there's maybe snow
on the ground and so i guess those are that's what i'd be looking for going into an area is is
where's the low land area and surrounding that low land area what what type of habitat where
multiple habitats converge into one area and that's where i'd start off at very cool very cool
dude i uh i feel like i'm almost questioned out because we covered so much
in like the best way i feel like i i would take notes i know the podcast but also you know
taking so it's me too so i want to i am not done with questions so it's not over but i want to
learn about your business because we never even touch on that yet so
so how long this is business been involved because i started as a t-shirt and hat company like
selling gear and and e-collars and wingers like that's how i got my name in the industry
and and so to see a fellow you know entrepreneur getting after it i want to hear your story and how
you got into this and and how it's evolved so we've been around for the brand itself going into
our fifth year now and we're in our fourth year of sales right now for apparel so we sell hats,
stickers, t-shirts everything upwind inspired type of lifestyle gear like that and we've been at it
for the brand's been around for five years and it's been four years now that we've been we've
been selling and it all started out with like i was i was gluing i'd ordered some like Richardson hats
and i'd started the brand and just put uplander on like this faux leather patch and i ordered the
patch and i like glue them on and we just started off by like selling that and the on the website and
we kept at it and we we made more designs and we just it just evolved from there and that's kind of
that the cool start about it has always been a from the ground you know like a root startup type
thing that we've been able to to grow into what is fortunately now between my wife and i it's our
full-time living and we're i was shout out to my wife as well she's not seen here but she is my other
half in this business venture in uplander so shout out to her she is the other half of uplander
she's just not represented by being here tonight but yes um i started out
looking at the upland industry as a whole and saying like hey like how can i get into this and
like what are my what are my strengths and how can i help you know push this industry forward
how can i help you know keep moving the needle in this industry forward whether it's creating content
or creating lifestyle type gear that i felt both those things were really lacking from the market
at that time so that's really how it all transpired was just looking at the upland market and saying hey
like here's my background of uh social media marketing photography video or graphic design and how can
i apply that to something i'm really passionate about and a planter was born from there and it's grown
into now we have a full line of graphic design or lifestyle t-shirts hoodies uh we have some
performance where as well for the field and yeah it's just we're trying to keep expanding and keep
growing in that market for uplander it's awesome man and again your your content on youtube and
instagram is fantastic how did you get started in like being good at this stuff being good at
the graphic design and is this what you did before or it's just like you tinkered with it and
manifested into your passion yes so i always um i'd started out with i graduated high school and
i was going into first semester of college and dude i had no idea what the hell i wanted to do i was
like and i spent a semester going and sitting and writing papers and doing all this bullshit and
math problems and i'm like why the hell am i like sitting here doing all this when i don't even know
what i want to do with it i guess so so yeah i mean i just was like why why am i sitting here at
school writing papers and doing math problems still when i don't even know what i what i wanted to
do and i happened to um have more time to myself like after you know graduating high school you're
not in such a day to day routine you know going into semester college probably slacking off a little
bit more hunting a lot more than i should be and i was like like what can i do with hunting that would
like be something cool and fun with it so one day i just bought this little handy cam and i started
just like i taped it on a tripod or something like this makeshift tripod that i had
and i started like filming just filming my hunts and filming deer and i really got into
the creative side of filming my hunts and just like being wrapped up in the cameras and i really
got like into that aspect of it of of doing the camera work editing and then that translated into
me just getting more cameras um and eventually i went to i dropped out of the school that i was at
the university i was and i went to more of a trade work school for photography digital media which
was graphic design photography video work and stuff so i went to a year-long program there
and learned some things and then yeah i just i just became i tried to really become you know a
master of my craft of being super creative and translating that into uh uh digital media whether
it's graphic design or photography or video work and i ended up doing more in the big game outdoor
space and i ended up uh becoming for i think gosh i think i was like three or four years i was full
time outdoor filming for television shows so i would travel with people to go film their hunts
for whether it was this the sportsman's channel or the outdoor channel network um so i did that
for a few years and then uh came back home and decided i was kind of done traveling so much in the
fall and i wanted to get back to hunting myself and having a more day-to-day life versus just
traveling so much and the opportunity came up and i worked for a company called hawk tree stands
and killer instant crossbows yeah and they were just at the just at the time they happened to be
just up the road for me from where i was living currently and i'd reached out to the guy and
you know i got a job there and i started doing graphic design for them um and just shout out to
you know my mentor from there scotly um i worked with a gentleman named scotly there for almost
eight years and he really taught me a really good work ethic and being you know creative and being
able to hone all these things in together and that's where i i picked a lot of my success from
from a mentor like that of just being able to now work in a multi you know fasted uh social media
world with sales content and also you know driving a business and that's that's where a lot of
that came from and then it translated into just starting my own brand good for you yeah dude i love
hearing people's stories like that because a it reminds me of myself we're like to your point
you had no idea where you're doing what do i want out of life you weaseled your way into the
outdoor industry because it's a passion and then it put you in touch with people that
built you and helped stand you up and then i are crushing it so i respect and admire and
bully appreciate that yeah absolutely that's it that's it yeah
sorry i i just love your story it's it's very inspiring man like it's just a hard
just grit like you just worked your tail off and got it done i respect that um we
should do something co-branded loan duck up blender something grousey i don't know i have no idea
why i just i feel like it'd be awesome yeah absolutely always always open for opportunity right
i saw you just just wheels are turning like hey well i don't we do uh yeah no that would be fun
as shit we should also figure out a grouse hunt and that's probably a much important thing yeah that's
the most important thing can you are you able to travel much during the hunting season or you stuck
to home hunting home oh yeah i mean i i definitely i travel quite a bit during hunt and season like
i think um i guess yeah always open to go places hunt i think for this year coming up i'll be
out west for three weeks in september then back home october uh michigan grouse hunting here for
october november december and then usually we head down south west and hunt coil down there for
a month too after that so you just got to dunk on everybody with having such a cool hunting life
it's okay but maybe so we'll figure something out we should we should figure something out but
uh do you have a bucket list upland game bird that you have not been able to hunt yet or maybe
you've hunted but just swung and missed or what uh man i i i had one at the top and i didn't even
i guess i didn't even really realize it was at the top until i went and did it and that was
we we went sage grouse hunting two years back and i kid you not and it almost pains me because
it sounds like you know fake and phony to say it like this but dude we we absolutely like knocked
it out of the park on our first walk and we all limited out on sage grouse like i expect and
going into a hunt like this like you're gonna walk 14 miles and maybe see maybe see a bird and your
dogs pads are gonna be all tore up and you're all parched and sweating and you've killed two snakes
on your walk but yeah that was it we went we we we set up a hunt to go sage grouse hunting like
this is what we want to go do and we did a lot of research into it and we went and had an absolutely
unbelievable walk on our first half mile stretch for these birds and they was it was unreal and i
don't think i could ever replicate it again what we did but outside from there i don't think i've
set another another bucket list bird very cool very cool all right do me a favor tell everyone
where they can find you again if they want to follow you and grab your gear and watch your videos
because like i said if you're a little little sluggish on a Saturday or Sunday morning after a
long night a bush lattes i promise you this is the youtube channel that will get you ready for
grouse season so tell them where they can find you you can check everything out on our website
uplander lifestyle.com and then you can see everything on our social channels that for the content
we create instagram uplander lifestyle and then our youtube channel uplander as well
absolutely i highly support you i highly encourage people to watch your your stuff and uh if
you're feeling fancy and want to grab some of his gear please do so dude thank you for taking
time for me and kevin and joining the show i enjoyed it i would love to somehow finangle a hunting trip
together uh it's not all the question that we won't be coming back to michigan um my buddy lives
there we love it there we had a blast and so maybe if if that is something that can happen this year
next year we'll have to connect and just send it oh absolutely man absolutely thank you for being
a part of the show yeah thank you