"Sweat Equity" | Glory Days: Chronicles of the Habitat Flats Guide

warming up a lot of ducks coming back from the South I don't see much open water till they get to here and then it's on [Music] yup grand majority of people don't see the work that goes into habitat flats and they say pictures you know guys holding up bunch of ducks or whatever and they just think that yeah we just show up and everything's good but they don't know the back end back end there is a pile of work it is all day long doing something and if you got to have a big team to pull that off every year and I'm pretty fortunate with the team we put together when we first started habitat flats we drew it up on a napkin it was just a pipe dream there was nothing handed to us on a silver platter there's a lot of hard work determination we made our dream a reality glory days are now [Music] [Music] you know for me the offseason habitat flats it's I mean it's not a one-man show it's just I'm kind of I guess I'm kind of type-a it's hard for me to to have it how I haven't pictured in my head tell somebody to go do it the plant from the mowing the spraying seating all that all that stuff management partner is what I love for me duck seasons 365 days a year if something goes wrong and something gets messed up to a management standpoint the only finger that can be places on me and I just seem that way [Music] [Music] [Music] not all green hedging sunshine I promise you Radio said 104 heat index today it feels like it Hill pumpkins always it can be kind of stressful times but it's exciting I mean I love kicking on the first pumps of the year because I know seasons getting pretty close there's roughly 325 thousand eight hundred and forty gallons in an acre foot of water so that means you know an acre of land a foot deep there's three hundred twenty five thousand eight hundred and fifty gallons of water so I can kind of use that calculation then take my gallons per minute and know how many gallons I'm pumping in a day and roughly how long it's going to take me to to flood say 20 30 40 70 80 acres so really you know when I'm looking at at my habitat and when I'm turning pumps on when I'm turning them off I just look at it roughly how many gallons per minute I'm getting out of a well and our good ones here you know single-phase 15 horse motor we're gonna top out around 900 gallons a minute that's one I'm kicking on now I'm guessing it's probably in the neighborhood of 500 gallons a minute which isn't great but electrics cheap too cheap to operate so it's a lot better than been doing something different with diesel a little bit nervous for this year being an extreme drought I'm sure our water table you know the aquifers drawing down pretty good look at that that's crazy as well we just turned on it's ran for 700 gallons of minutes we're probably 15 minutes and all it's doing is going right down on the ground and the cracks it's gonna take forever to fill this stuff up when you're putting this many hours on it running them two or three months straight 24 hours a day I mean stuff happens and you know you'll have you'll have wells go bad sounds good sounds bad some of the old tape and a ratchet strap ingenuity at its finest my things gonna work but it'll work for today out of my 20 gauge I'm shooting three inch heavy X sixes this is an all tungsten load which is going to shoot about two sizes bigger than your traditional steel shot so being a six it's going to perform like a steel shot four and what I like about more pellets is the pattern density now I'll get a lot more pellets on target a lot better pattern density and it's going to result in more kills and these sixes I mean they're they're lethal for everything day in and day out this is my go-to duck load early-season gadwal's Widgeon the late-season mallards it's going to take care of them all heavy x @ shell reminds you of the performance of the original heavy shot and a price you can afford they're all extremely hard workers I mean they they get up every day and they push themselves because they know that that what they're doing that day is gonna make their season better you know in a month or whenever it is that we start hunting the work they put in is gonna make it easier come fall and make them better hunting you know mark boss he's been around since this place started I mean we've hunted together well before habitat flights came into play he's kind of the jokester of the bunch maybe or he can't ever tell if he's being serious but great duck killer a good hunter all the way around Cooper Olmstead awesome dishes the team takes care of Saskatchewan and when he's down here he's awesome helping he's a very good duck hunter when we can get him out of bed but now he's just like everybody else good hard worker and a good duck hunter Aaron hence very very good duck hunter without question good worker great with motors and all that stuff but he's not always the most positive he kind of tends to look at things maybe the glass half-empty so to speak big bill he is probably the single nicest guy I've ever met in my life I've hunted with him over 20 years when you walk in the lodge in the morning the most upbeat person in that Lodge every day he's gonna be big bill Tyler Starr he is our kind of jack-of-all-trades very very good behind the camera and one thing that kind of defines him is is you're not gonna have to tell ty what to do he knows what to do and he's gonna do it without being asked Spencer Poole I could probably sum him up and say he's the professionals professional I mean he's a extremely good hunter all-around great guy converse as well with everybody gets along with everybody good worker I mean he's everything everything he wanted and a great pool Lucas Rudy the grinder he is he's a man of few words which I like he's gonna get the job done day in and day out whether it takes two hours or if he's got to be there for daylight to dark if there's something to do you can austan Kaufman is one of our new guys this year and you know he brings lots of table he's a very good caller got a good dog he's very good with a camera he's been he's been a very good addition to the team this year Logan Samson's been around the lodge a long time you know he's a local kid and he's doing a good job for us he just he's kind of kind of coming into his own you know he's younger than everybody else so he's willing to do anything at any time and he's good hunter he does a great job you know work weekend every summer is the highlight of the summer you know we have all the boys come back in and try to knock on some projects that I can't do by myself it is a lot about working but it's a lot about meeting up with the eyes meeting up with your friends again seeing them outside of the work environment seeing them laid back you know refreshed after a couple months off from hunting we get down we have a good time usually do some barbecue in that first night and get up the next morning and get to work [Music] [Music] [Music] interview about fifty one-and-a-half it'll be a little snow [Music] these guys do this blind not going too well [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] from Connecticut you know I his dogs average right below average most guys have some sort of construction background big bill I mean he's kind of a universal jack-of-all-trades handyman it goes a lot smoother with him around because there's no ifs or should we do this should we do that like he's got a he's got a direct answer on how it should be done and you know shows us the correct way to to do it he's a hard worker hello it works some of these younger kids that's for sure so work we can I mean we're getting pretty good at it I mean we know what we're doing when it comes to building blinds whatnot but after ten years of them we still don't know how to pack we're always forgetting something so as we're going down the levee I'm on my phone trying to get ahold of somebody behind us to go back to the shop and get a saw or a square or something that we needed kind of wasn't paying attention and I almost took it off site levy and you just seen him cut it cut it too sharp and he started going and it wasn't really a whole lot that you could do to save it one little wrong move and this trailer with all this lumber on it he's getting ready to fall off and then we're going to pick it all up so everybody's throwing out their ideas up we got to do this you're gonna fall off this way you're gonna slide off that way we need to pull it from the front we need to pull it from the back and finally old squints just rolls up with the Bobcat he's like Matt we're going this way so we did and it actually worked over here we're putting up one of our stilt lines because the Ducks like hitting this spot I mean when you get a farm you don't necessarily know right away exactly where the Ducks want to be I mean it takes it takes a couple of three years of hunting it before you figure out where they're comfortable at I mean each farm will have a little sweet spot and for this one it's right here a little ditch drain this ditch right here so I'll have plenty of depth rice eaters we've got the standing corn to block them so they can't they can't push up into this corner I mean really a you know using that standing corn it kind of funnels them I mean they're gonna land right in front of the barn every time but it's hard to imagine right now and it's hotter than heck and we're out here sweating but it'll it'll come to fruition here in a couple of short months [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] a couple of new guys that came to work weekend look like they're gonna work out for this fall so we're anxious to get to know them and you know it's all about creating new things mr. Disneyland duck hunting we got a couple new spots a couple new rides try out this fall and I mean I couldn't be more excited for fall to get here oh don't put it back out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] next week on the board a mall so we got who knows how much rain Tony was in Canada we were kind of like borderline panic mode I was kind of freaking out a bit we were gonna have enough time [Music] [Music] not being a blessing rather than a curse you

Channel: Tony Vandemore

Views: 53,650

Rating: 4.9189873 out of 5

Keywords: tony vandemore, habitat flats, duck hunting, habitat management, hunting, waterfowl hunting, hunter, hunt, glory days, gun dog, duck farm, duck hunt, mallard, greenhead, labrador retriever, benelli, bass pro, cabela's, hard core decoys, hevi-shot ammo, yeti, traeger grills

Id: h_-pa5sW7CE

Length: 17min 47sec (1067 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 17 2019