Fuel the Farm

that fifteen minutes or so before shooting time is probably my favorite time of day decoys are done for cup of coffee and just listening and pretty soon you hear that's when it really starts to get exciting I mean it just makes you a lot all summer long working ground out there sweating when it all comes to fruition and fall that's what makes it all worth it for me it's just a way of life you would go to the Friday night football game small town where I grew up then the next morning go goose hunting and duck hunting with my dad and uncles a family it's something that I've done my entire life don't know any different and hopefully I won't know any different when I was in college I played baseball I had a lot of good memories on bus and playing ball and was fortunate enough to get drafted despite duck hunting every morning played ball in San Diego system for a couple years it's a neat experience but learned pretty quick that a better shooting ducks and hitting fast balls live my whole life hunting and fishing trapping and when I got done playing ball what am I going to do to be able to continue this lifestyle not going to get my spend babe rain makes grain and we certainly needed it he's been awful dry around here this is by far my most stressful time of the year if we don't have good crops come fall our duck seasons not nearly as good my whole life have been laid up with going out with family friends hunting fishing trapping on the weekends and my grandfather had a couple of duck clubs he was a member of on the Illinois River when I was kid it's been a lot of time there loved it and from then on I always wanted to place my own and that's really kind of how it started for me [Music] but first farm up here with a friend and a couple of our buddies had farms down the creek just a couple miles and we started hunting together a lot and you know you can only kill it was early six ducks in the day and we had places that we were spending time and resources all summer pumping water planting food managing for waterfowl and we just didn't get to utilize them that much so from there we started taking a few groups out hunting and it kind of exploded who have pretty the big ball of green winds been seeing them all morning a bunch slipped up we knew it was going to go pretty well but it went quicker than even we anticipated I guess things that most people don't know about Tony what drives him is being in the field what drives him is sweating getting his hands and his arms and his legs dirty and coming home covered in sweat if he doesn't come home covered in sweat and grease he feels like he didn't work that day honestly that's what drives I missed the offseason I love the offseason management work I mean they're long days it's hot putting in work you're basically sitting a buffet table not knowing how many are showing up for dinner in the fall you think you know what it's going to look like but you never really do and then in the fall when they start rolling in there and you finally see it I mean it is it is so rewarding for me to see a little bit of thousand that win this morning a lot of people working right through there up to its mass maybe just hit them once and when they get down in the hole pop them where they come right back at the blonde bright moon a lot of these ducks are going back early there'll be a lot of them looking for water at daylight running a big operation like we have here you know we have to have ducks throughout season and to have and hold ducks throughout the whole year you have to have a variety of food sources start out with your natural food natural millet smart weed and that comes through moist soil drawdowns where you're taking water off of those wetlands at the proper time and people tend to get intimidated when they think of habitat management I mean they think it might cost a lot of money good habitat management for waterfowl is as easy as taking water off your farm at the right time this gets high enough that it closes those flappers we'll still be able to pump water out of our fields we'll be able to get rid of that surface water and save our crop I don't have a degree in this I've just learned a lot through trial and error and I used to think that I need to disk up everything and plant it with something in the first couple three weeks in the season or on a warm up those Ducks are eaten bugs so there's a lot to be said for natural foods that you can manipulate and then there's also a lot to be said for the crops that we grow we raise corn and beans the way I like to do it as I'll plant 40 yards of beans 80 yards of corn and then I'll cut the beans get that horizontal cover for the bugs put the water on and out nice clean open water it's easy to walk easy for the Ducks to get into and it makes that corn feel good from day one instead of late in the season and we certainly shoot a lot of ducks but that being said it's not a fraction of one percent of the Ducks that that we feed and hold throughout the season [Music] I love watching Birds I love calling to him and that's my draw to waterfowl hunting because it's so interactive I mean you're calling those birds into a place they may or may not want to be I mean you got ducks you got dogs you got your friends I mean it all makes it for me the best hunting that there is ah you hear that thing ripping winter them feathers it was coming as hard as II can tell us pretty good shake it off [Music] I didn't get much prettier [Music] [Music] you hear the stories from the old-timers I mean the sky used to be black with ducks and all you want to see it how it used to be again these four lower days are now

Channel: UNDER ARMOUR HUNT

Views: 107,988

Rating: 4.9065108 out of 5

Keywords: underarmourhunt, uahunt, uafowl, ua hunt, under armour hunt, waterfowl, waterfowl hunting, duck hunting, duck hunt, tony vandemore, always lethal, armour dogs

Id: 6982n2ZtikI

Length: 7min 57sec (477 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 01 2016