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We’re back with more adventures from retired USFWS pilot biologist Fred Roetker! This episode is highlighted by memorable observations, including a wolverine, barren ground grizzlies, expansive beaver ponds, a military intercept in Mexico, and a rare sighting of the elusive prairie skinny dipper! Fred concludes with sage advice for young people looking to enter the waterfowl profession, and DU extends a sincere “thank you” to Fred and his fellow pilot biologists!
Listen now: www.ducks.org/DUPodcast
Send feedback: DUPodcast@ducks.org
Listen now: www.ducks.org/DUPodcast
Send feedback: DUPodcast@ducks.org
Creators and Guests
What is Ducks Unlimited Podcast?
Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, Reloaded. We bring you the best of our past episodes. Whether you're a seasoned waterfowler or curious about conservation, this series is for you. Over the years, we've had incredible guests and discussions about everything from wetland conservation to the latest waterfowl research and hunting strategies. In Reloaded, we're revisiting those conversations to keep the passion alive and the mission strong.
VO:So sit back, relax, and enjoy this reload.
Mike Brasher:Everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. We're here with our second episode with Fred Rutger, Rutger, retired Fish and Wildlife Service pilot biologist. We're gonna be exploring some more of his stories during his thirty plus years. Is it thirty plus years? Thirty two.
Mike Brasher:Thirty two? Thirty two years as a pilot biologist conducting all sorts of waterfowl surveys. We kind of introduced some of his experiences, introduced Fred on the previous episode, I certainly encourage you to go back and listen to that, but we're going to get into some more storytelling and experiences here, hoping to bring all of you a glimpse of just how unique this role is, how much it means to this profession, but also some of the neat things that you're able to observe there. Fred, thanks for being with us again here.
Fred Rutger:Always a pleasure.
Mike Brasher:We're gonna pick right back up and go back to a question that I think I asked you, and I think you answered part of it, and then we got off on something else like it's so easy to do in this conversation. What are some of the most memorable wildlife outside of ducks that you saw during these surveys? I'm thinking any bears, I'm thinking wolves, moose, some what what all did you see? Other kind of large mammals that you Well,
Fred Rutger:before we go to large mammal life, one of my favorites was seeing a wolverine. I've only saw one and they're really you know, they just don't show themselves when they hear an airplane, you know, they're they're pretty secret. But on the Arctic Coast, on the farthest most line in the b pop survey up up at Tuktiuk Latitude, Tuktiuktuk Latitude North Of Vanuvek near just to the east of the Mackenzie Delta out toward Palatuk. It's almost this year when I was back, you know, helping in the right seat, we did not get to see the Bering Ground grizzlies. But most years in in my tenure up there, we would see, and it was kinda near the Anderson River, but just great habitat.
Fred Rutger:But just awesome to see the sow bear and and two or three cubs. I think we saw three cubs one year, but just doing their thing on the tundra.
Mike Brasher:That that takes me to my question. How far north would your survey lines go? I don't have the map here in front of me to know what sort of survey strata you you surveyed there, but did you go all the way to the coastal plain?
Fred Rutger:Yes. Yes. Yeah. And and, yeah, that the farthest north line in the whole survey is is obviously the Northwest Territories, and we go beyond the tree line, and the last one is we can see the Arctic Ocean as we do that. Unbelievable.
Mike Brasher:And where would you stay up there? What's the And here I am jumping all across the place again.
Fred Rutger:No, that's great. In Nuvik for the most part. I have stayed in Tuktuktuktuk and we were there one time for aboriginal days and there's a weekend or a day, a Saturday in early June that they celebrate that. And we actually got to eat some white fronted goose with, you know, it's totally legal and I respect that. This is part of the culture.
Fred Rutger:But when we were out for a walk the night before, we kinda got up on a bit of a rise on some rocks and sure enough, here's all these goose feathers and but they had Fresh. Yeah. Anyway, no, that's you know, the people we met along all that, know, doing that, it was it was, you know, I had a lot of respect for, you know, when we met, we met a lot of First Nations people in our banding camps and all, and it's all been a real positive thing.
Mike Brasher:We talk about you stopping at various locations along the way. I wanna make sure we're clear on kind of how that happens. We talked about it on the previous well, when we spoke with you earlier this summer, like you have your time, I don't know what you call it, behind windshield? Windscreen, windscreen. Yeah, behind the windscreen.
Mike Brasher:That's that's kind of tightly controlled in terms of how many days in a row or how many days out of fourteen you can do that, then you have to take some time off, right? Are safety protocols in that regard, so I wanna wanna make sure we're clear on that, why you end up with these days where you're just at these whatever remote locations doing nothing, it's because it's mandated. Right? Tell us about that.
Fred Rutger:Well, yeah, it's real easy to kinda overload yourself and beyond beyond the flying hours, prepping the airplane, getting it secured for the night, and the data, you know, just a lot of transcribing and and keeping track of data. But the rules are the same pretty well throughout government aviation. No more than eight hours eight flight hours a day. The old the old adage in aviation is usually it's about that's about half. If if you fly five hours a day, you probably commit a 10 to it, and that's not doing data already.
Fred Rutger:That's just in a in a normal aviation world. But but so they mandate that that we tell you, you can't fly any more than 12 in a row or so many out of 14 and all that, so.
Mike Brasher:And what about your favorite fishing experience? The one, the most memorable fishing experience when you when you get up there?
Fred Rutger:The first one that comes to mind was my friend Jesse. We he had showed me a place. It'll may remain undisclosed Yeah. Of course. Near one of his camps, but I we didn't I didn't you know, we're we're doing our thing.
Fred Rutger:We had seen him a few days earlier, but I didn't know he was knocking around that far north from where he lives. But we we had just landed and we're headed into Cree Lake Lodge on Crystal Lodge, to be more precise, on Cree Lake. It's out in the middle of Cree Lake, one of the largest lakes in Northern Saskatchewan. And our routine there is we'd usually pick up a little bit of pickerel and bring them in because at that stage, they're all working on getting boats prepared and building new cabins and whatever. So we hadn't seen our friends there yet, but we know that that's the kind of activity that's going on.
Fred Rutger:So we're gonna bring up some fresh pickerel. And here another airplane is Jesse. So I'm kinda in his spot. There's no dock there, but we we we're tied up to the to the vegetation. It makes wells and whatnot, short the short stuff that grows on the hummocks there, just make a perfect place to tie up.
Fred Rutger:It wasn't my first time there, and I've learned all this from Jesse. But he came in and he said, man, he said, we don't even have a place to park. But we caught him and got him tied off right, you know, the two airplanes there together. But I had a fellow from the Patuxent headquarters with me that had really was he was a great outdoorsman, but he hadn't had an opportunity to fish. And I said, here, tie this jig, or I just gave him a rod with a jig on it, I said, just let it down to the bottom, close the bale, showed him how to close the bale, and I said, I just lifted up a little.
Fred Rutger:And and just that quick, he's got a pickerel. And anyway, but he caught five pickerel, which is the limit, and they were all keepers. That was the limit back then, it might be four and a But anyway, Jesse was just like, that guy's never fished. It's a testimonial to to the spot, so that's one fishing story.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. That's awesome. Now in terms of other things that you saw that are memorable, seem to recall may hearing some rumors about maybe even some nude sunbathers being among your observations. Is that right? You may and you may or may not have had to circle back to double count those
Fred Rutger:circle back. No. I'll tell it like I told you last night. We're not sure. That's that's kind of You're not sure yet?
Fred Rutger:No. Wait. But anyway, here here's here's the facts. Is as we Ross Hansen, was favorite implicate For those of us, those in the profession and those that if you haven't read the book Flyways, which is a government publication, it's got a long history of these surveys and waterfowl management in general, Ross was quite a flyaway biologist back in the day, and he was sort of known as a bit prim and proper for lack of another term, but good guy and I was just, it was my first survey. Like we talked about when I helped Garrett Wilkerson this year, I was in the right seat, Garrett's first survey in the left.
Fred Rutger:I was in that role. I was in the left seat and Ross was mentoring me And I didn't wanna do you know, I'm I'm kinda brand new to this and I I wasn't gonna have any distractions. But as we came up on Last Mountain Lake as we came down Yeah. Last Mountain Lake, Saskatchewan. And we came down the hill, and and this is a July survey.
Fred Rutger:It's not the May survey when the water's still cold, but it's it's warm enough to swim. And there was a truck parked down by the shoreline, and it's sort of like something out out of, a music video nowadays, that sets the scene, and as we get closer, see and this is all on my side of the airplane, you know, we're both looking out our respective windows looking, and anytime you're on a major shoreline like that, you're gonna be all eyes scouring that shoreline. So Ross was busy with his side, and I'm taking this all in on my side, first a truck, I saw there's people there, and yeah, they're swimming. And then as I get closer, I see clothing articles on a big rock. And then people started waving, all three are are are are are you know, they had taken a break from farm activities.
Fred Rutger:They were in the water. They were happy. Sure.
Mike Brasher:They had their all their fields were planted. They're ready to go.
Fred Rutger:They they were happy. They were waving. I wagged my legs. And I think I muttered to Ross something about, oh, thought I missed that. Was that a coot?
Fred Rutger:Did you see him? No. Or something like that. I just I thought, you know, this is something we don't really need to address here, but it does stick in my memory.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. Yeah. Probably was not transcribed either.
Fred Rutger:No.
Mike Brasher:Well, but we have memorialized it here. Great story will live on forever. Thank you for sharing that. I'm sure you saw a lot of other interesting things through the years. Anything else from Canada that you want to to share or Alaska?
Mike Brasher:I don't know if you ever flew into Alaska, but here's let's let's do this. You flew the the the Northern breeding grounds for thirty two years, and what are some of the lasting observations that I guess you would have made regarding how things have changed? What has stood out in your mind? Whether it be in the Boreal or whether it be in the Prairies or just anywhere, any anything kinda stand out to you?
Fred Rutger:The the continuity of habitat, the preponderance of good duck habitat, and it just for example, I think we covered this, in our when we talked this spring while I was on the survey, but after a five to six year hiatus from being retired in COVID and everything else and getting back into that country and now riding in the right seat, flying. I had more time to think and look and and and just reflect, but I just can't I'm an advocate of the boreal forests waterfowl production area. But when you sit there and look at the endless beaver dam, when you see a stream falling between two larger lakes or coming out of hill country and and as it gets down on the foot, the terrain, the beaver dams are stair stepped. And it's like if you were gonna design waterfowl management, you know, it's it's management by God. I mean, it it is just outstanding that the amount of of each one is sort of managed by the beavers for production.
Fred Rutger:It's surrounded by grassy metals and all this. But the miles and miles of shorelines around the larger lakes, the the the the smaller stream beaver habitat, it's just the the amount of area is is endless up there.
Mike Brasher:Has the has the footprint, has the prevalence of those beaver dams changed, increased noticeably over the years since you've been flying that? Has it been noticeable to you? Because I've heard there are some like, if you go back far enough, obviously, the beaver has made a tremendous comeback from, I don't know, maybe I don't know what the length of time would be, but if you go back far enough, certainly that's the case where we're going to see a lot of beavers now, we're in some places where maybe we
Fred Rutger:Well, that country was founded on on beaver trapping and fur trapping and the fur trade, and that's why it was explored and and all that. So you go back that far. But in in my in the in the thirty some years and and since, that window isn't big enough for me to see a change. I was impressed with it from the first time, continue to be impressed, but but, yeah, I I I really can't say that I've noticed this. It's they're there every year, different beavers, different places, and but yeah.
Mike Brasher:What about the prairies in in terms of grassland conversion, wetland drainage? Because they're these transects are all the same year after year. Were there any of those areas that you would you would fly year after year after year and noted as great waterfowl habitat, lots of grass, lots of water, and that now it's been converted to agriculture, the wetlands have drained?
Fred Rutger:The yes. There's there's you know, I'm I'm not flying those areas enough to be you know, back in the day, I would be familiar with individual wet lands and maybe come across the hill and say, oh my goodness, that's not there anymore, and tiling operations and whatnot. But the thing I noticed this year riding across the prairies on our way to survey up north is the margins. The newer implements are the bigger tractors and the huge field cultivators. I like to eat, I'm not gonna slam farmers here.
Fred Rutger:I grew up in a farming But community in just the fact is that the efficiency of being able to work the soil with the kind of equipment now, the margins just
Mike Brasher:bigger. It's not smaller.
Fred Rutger:They're smaller and smaller and about the size maybe of a sidewalk, you know, three, four feet wide, and it just looks like a predator trap where once the fox struts around and does that margin and then walks over to hill to the next one. But so, you know, I I think DU has a lot of programs where they where they work with farmers on that and dense nesting cover and where they can. And so, there's it's it's a it's different. And we're coming out of the drought, you know, this year, so it probably looked more pronounced this year, but it's it's, you know, that's that's what I see as the biggest change.
Mike Brasher:Well, and you're right, we have that's why the programs that we have in place up there in Canada and The US are so important, and they're important for because we want to conserve, restore those habitats, but we have to do it in a way that's compatible with the desires of the landowner. You know, as you said, we all got to eat, we can't take that route and throw all of our farmers under the bus, we have to find a way to work together to produce these multiple benefits, including food and including wildlife from those resources because we all care about all those different things. Fred, I wanna wanna talk about Mexico and maybe any of your your activities in The US. You've, like, talked about you flew the midwinter survey for a number of years. How difficult was that relative to the breeding population survey?
Mike Brasher:I've talked to people that have flown those surveys and they say it's totally different, way harder to do the midwinter surveys because you're dealing with much larger larger groups of birds. Do you did you find that to be generally true?
Fred Rutger:Yeah. The straight line transects on breeding population surveys, especially on a prairie, as you might be following a fence line or a road in the bush. Now that we have all the navigation tools, it's a little easier. But but basically, it's a straight and level transect and you're counting breeding birds and pairs, single drakes, small groups. In the winter, you're probably maneuvering around flocks and trying to count those flocks and put numbers on them and keep track of where they're going, if they're rowing up to the next line or in the next pass.
Fred Rutger:So it's a challenge. I love to fly with seasoned observers, we know we fly with the same folks here in the year out. They know what I can do and I know what they can do and and and my I get my satisfaction out of maneuvering the airplane. I like the word presentation. Give them give them the best presentation I can for the wind, the light, you know, you don't want glare if you can eliminate the glare factor.
Fred Rutger:And so I got a lot of satisfaction out of maneuvering for the best possible count. And but they, you know, the old adage of of counting and wintering ground is how do you count thousands a day? You know, if you get a raft of scoff that numbers in a thousand here in Louisiana, something like that, and I said, you start with 10. Yeah. You know, I mean, 10 is ten and ten groups, that's a 100, and a 100 in your mind's eye, and a lot of the midwinter stuff on puddle ducks you can do in in hundreds, estimate hundreds.
Fred Rutger:So that like like ducks down on the Laguna Madre in Mexico, you're getting in the thousands, and as you go through that flock, okay, now we're in the thousands. And and But it's an experience, it's hopefully comparable from year to year, but the midwinter's that kind of, it's not as scientific, it's not the science that goes into the breeding population survey.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. There's so many other variables there, and and plus that some of the transect methods differ from one state to the next. You do I think whenever you're talking about maneuvering around flocks, you're describing what we refer to as cruise surveys, where you go to the large concentrations of ducks, you try to, in some areas where, let's say, you have rather discrete, maybe smaller scales, relatively speaking, blocks of habitat, and you try to achieve some type of complete coverage. Right? That's sort of a cruise survey.
Mike Brasher:There are some states, Louisiana is one of them, Texas is one, I
Fred Rutger:think Arkansas.
Mike Brasher:Arkansas and Mississippi, they've all kind of moved to a transect based technique, but it's still I mean, and so although they're flying in a straight line, they still have to contend with the biological aspects of that. You have the big of birds during winter, whereas you don't necessarily on the breeding ground breeding surveys. Which did you prefer, the breeding ground survey?
Fred Rutger:Yes, I mean, I've preferred it all. Mean, sun, yeah, in the sun, you know, all of us that did this enjoyed doing your respective areas up north. You you got to know the people, you got to know you you wanted to see what the ducks were doing. That way, if it's a drought year, if it's a good year, it's always like what's happening with the birds. The wintering grounds is the same thing.
Fred Rutger:Like, where are the ducks this year? What are they doing? It's it's a different level of satisfaction.
VO:Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan and Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
Mike Brasher:Fred, I wanna talk to you now about Mexico. I know you flew a number of surveys there. Tell us about that. It was part of the midwinter. How many years did you do that, and where what parts of Mexico did you did you fly?
Fred Rutger:I did the the there's three survey areas in Mexico, the East Coast, the Central Highlands, and the Pacific Coast, and the the two coasts are just sad. They're the coastal lagoons, and and the the Central Highlands are more discreet lakes up in higher country. But I was since I'm based in Lafayette, Louisiana, I did the Eastern unit.
Mike Brasher:What were what were some of your favorite experiences there and and memories? Had you have you dealt a whole had you did you have a lot of experience with the waterfowl habitats, wetlands of Mexico before you started doing the survey?
Fred Rutger:I did my first survey with Art Brasda while he was still working. It was in '85, And I was amazed we get down there, and the numbers of ducks and the diversity of the habitat and the expanses, like down in state of the Tabasco and Campeche, and it goes on and on. But yeah, it was as time went on, I got more familiar with, you know, it wasn't as intimidating to find your way around. I mean, that was a cruise survey. We could is this a good time to talk about the differences since we've Sure.
Fred Rutger:We've talked about cruise versus transect, and that habitat is so large down there. To transect it with any kind of confidence levels, it would take a whole lot more effort than we put into it. We would try to do that survey in two weeks or less, and you just had to kind of cruise through it, and not necessarily high grade the habitat, but try to use to the best of your ability, get the good stuff, some mediocre stuff, and even some poor stuff to to mix it all up. And and there wasn't a science, but it did give us numbers, and I think the I think if Eduardo could hear this, I think he'd agree that back in the day that what we wanted to do would just show the significance of the habitat and and document where it was and all that. But in terms of the numbers for management, the accuracy wasn't there as much as what surveys are going to be moving forward.
Mike Brasher:And the Eduardo that you're talking about is Eduardo Carrera, he's our well, he's the equivalent to the CEO for Dumac. I'm not sure if he is if that's the title that he has, maybe executive, I forget, I forget
Fred Rutger:the He's the senior guy that knows, he's Mr. Mexico as Ducks go.
Mike Brasher:That's right, that's right. He's the head of Ducks Unlimited de Mexico, and I remember you and I sat down in my office in Lafayette a number of years ago, I was asking you about some of these different wetland eco regions in Mexico and having you my question to you simply was, like, if you had to rank these in terms of importance, but could we could look at some of the numbers. It's kinda hard to pull some of the numbers out of some of those regions, or maybe that's not actually true. What I was trying to do is that's what I was doing was pulling some of the numbers out of that dataset and putting them into these different regions, and I was wanting to get just an idea of what this habitat looks like and maybe trying to partition out some of them by species or whatever. But anyway, you were talking to me about some of these areas, and one of the things that I remember is that you talking about just how impressive they were, but how that could vary from year to year, and I wanna say the Tabasco Lagoons, this may not be right, is one that when it's wet is that right, or is Yeah.
Mike Brasher:There No. That when it's wet, it's it's expansive, like you wouldn't you couldn't imagine, it's very shallow, covered with teal. Am I getting that right? You're getting yeah. Okay.
Mike Brasher:Tell us about that. What I mean, what's that habit when you say waterfowl habitats in Mexico, there's the Alvarado Lagoons, there's the Tabasco Lagoons, there's some of the wetlands along the Yucatan, some of the mangrove forests there.
Fred Rutger:What do we do Alvaro Lagoons are a great example, and a classic habitat there is a lot of subsistence farming. People will be on the, I call it bayous here in Louisiana, but they're on the river systems. There are some roads, but there's still places where people are getting around boat and a few cattle and all, and they're actually, as you drop into the marsh, we see the birds, especially Blue Wing Teal, in and around these areas where where the people are setting back succession. And with their cattle and all, it might it bays it. The easiest way to describe this is I used to say, me cattle with wet hooves and I'll show you some blue winged teal.
Fred Rutger:So that's yeah. So, you know, it's really interesting. You can make the case that there's more birds in slightly disturbed areas than just totally pristine areas.
Mike Brasher:Yeah, and that's that's I don't think that's a stretch at all. In fact, I mean, is absolutely the truth in a lot of cases, and we've seen it here in Louisiana. You go three or four years or maybe it's more like four, five, six years, and some of these coastal marshes begin to grow up into monotypic stands of vegetation that aren't all that productive from a food standpoint, at least the vegetation itself. Now you get the marsh ponds where there's still submerged aquatics that are growing, and then whenever we get a hurricane or some some surge of some saltwater that sets back, kills a lot of that robust emergent vegetation, and then two or three years after that, you get it's basically like a 10,000 acre moist soil unit or a 100,000 acre moist soil unit out there in some of those location. Not that we would ever wish for a tropical storm surge or hurricane to do that, but it's an observation of these some of these processes, natural processes that have existed historically that cause this periodic reset of that successional staging, and then, of course, some of these, some some agricultural ranching activities simulate some of those same types of disturbance and their effect on those systems, and that's kind of what you're describing there, so I believe you.
Mike Brasher:Okay. I believe you for sure. Now flying in Mexico, you don't speak Spanish, you're not fluent in Spanish? Poquito. It's very little.
Mike Brasher:Very little. So that had to That's probably what you meant by when you say when you became a little more comfortable with it. Intimidating was that whenever you're flying into some of these remote areas also and you can't speak as fluent as maybe you would like to? Did their air traffic controllers speak English?
Fred Rutger:Most of them do, yes, at the bigger air where we'd fuel at the larger airports they did. Another Phil Thorpe story here, he he was learning some Spanish and he thought, well, I'll just answer them in Spanish because most of the chatter on the frequency Pronunciation Yeah, and then it was, don't go down that road because they think you know it, now we're in over our heads. But no, the airports are set up for good safe operations.
Mike Brasher:Did you ever find yourself, because you're flying low and when you're doing some of these surveys, when you're doing the mid winter surveys, are you still flying about 150 feet or are you able to come up a little?
Fred Rutger:No, pretty much so.
Mike Brasher:Pretty much so.
Fred Rutger:Yeah. You might be a little higher, and then when you're really counting, trying to get numbers on ducks, you're probably back down in a 150.
Mike Brasher:And and help me on the years here, Fred. I know the last time that those surveys in Mexico were flown, you know, prior to what's happening now, they're trying to resume some of the surveys and have been over the last three or four years, but there was a window of time, was it like 02/2009? '6.
Fred Rutger:I think it was
Mike Brasher:the last
Fred Rutger:time. 2006 is when stuff got
Mike Brasher:It got a little risky.
Fred Rutger:It got a risky.
Mike Brasher:Yeah.
Fred Rutger:And so that was the last survey. I was still working then, and to my knowledge, that's the last US fish and wildlife surveyed
Mike Brasher:down Okay. All right. And so did you how many do you recall how many years prior to that they had done those surveys in Mexico? Way back in
Fred Rutger:the late goes fifties. A long way. There's pictures in flyways of a grum and goose, army surplus government goose in a banana plantation down there, and and, yeah, it goes way back. Art Brasda, I followed him in Lafayette, like I say, my first survey with him, I think I did two or three with him before while he was still around and then took it over after he retired. But yeah.
Fred Rutger:It's got a long history.
Mike Brasher:Did you kind of going back to the safety issue and the time period when it began to get a little bit risky, did you ever find yourself when you were doing any of those surveys in a situation that you felt a little uneasy about? I've I have and I got this story in my head from somewhere, and I don't think it's true, but I wanted to say I I think I had told somebody that there was a story where you had you were flying on some of these midwinter surveys in Mexico, and maybe you entered into the wrong airspace or something, and you were escorted down by some Mexican fighter pilots, but you told me that you didn't recall that happening.
Fred Rutger:Is that somebody? Maybe somebody. That might have been somebody. It wasn't fighter pilots, we got a really good look at a Huey helicopter with car being it was the doors open and Maybe the
Mike Brasher:that's what I'm remembering Anyway,
Fred Rutger:was the end it was Tommy Mieschow was with me a lot.
Mike Brasher:Well, that would explain a lot.
Fred Rutger:And I gotta tell you, Tommy was into his element, Count Blue Wings. We were really tightly maneuvering just North of Merida, and that beautiful country up there
Mike Brasher:Merida was there in the Yucatan. Yep. Where outside.
Fred Rutger:Yeah. That helped me out were Ducks and Ducks Unlimited. Celestoon. The
Mike Brasher:Johnny Walker. It was a
Fred Rutger:little Exactly. We weren't far from there. We were in that habitat, in the mangrove habitat, and and it was really loaded up with teal, and we were doing our thing, and I happened to catch the helicopter and and he's he's converging on us. And I was on the Merida Tower frequency. And like I say, this is all well before nine one one when now people monitor guard frequency, the universal emergency frequency in aviation, one twenty one five.
Fred Rutger:So if it was nowadays, you cranked a radio up or already been on that on one, you know, like, who are you guys or whatever, we just sorted it out. But I made a turn. Tommy said, oh, they're just they they they they they're watching us count. Shook Classic my Tommy.
Mike Brasher:Tommy, military helicopter coming, oh, just wanted to see Yeah. What we're
Fred Rutger:so I make a turn just to see what they do. They turned right with us and they're kind of closing on us a little bit. And so I'm already on Merida Tower frequency, and I just asked, we're obviously being intercepted out here, and they didn't know what, you know, they don't know what's going anyway, I said, I'd like them direct Merida and Land and and, you know, that's approved and all that. So that's what we did and they stayed right with us. When we landed, I landed at the bay the FBO, the fixed base operators right next to the tower, and I kinda got over closer to the tower and shut down there.
Fred Rutger:Yeah. And they landed right beside us, all the young guys with the guns jumped out and surrounded us. Wow. We model fit of drug runners. You know, we're float plane.
Fred Rutger:Yeah. And it looked like maybe we're trying to find a boat, a rendezvous and drop or whatever, in their mind that's what we were doing. The last thing on there was Yeah. Counting so That's the
Mike Brasher:first thing on Tommy's mind. He just knew that's what they were after.
Fred Rutger:Yeah. The ultimate biologist. That's right. So anyway, doctor Michaud. Anyway, when we as soon as we landed, the El Hefei comes and comes up on the float, papers, and I just happened to have all my documents in the right seat behind Tommy and presented it to him.
Fred Rutger:I mean, this is through the window. Hadn't opened a door or anything yet. And he's some Who who are you guys? He spoke English. And I said, we're US Fish and Wildlife biologists.
Fred Rutger:We're doing international, you know, we have permission here with Megan. We dropped some names, Center NAP and all the agencies, you could see it start as he turned pages and heard that, you could see like, these guys aren't what we want. Anyway, it was over as quickly as it started. He he oh, and and while he was doing that, I didn't have the baggage compartment locked. There's guys on the float pulling stuff out and tossing it down and starting to open up our personal bags and stuff, and they're looking, you know, they're all kind of shaking their heads too, like, where's why did we stop these guys?
Fred Rutger:So anyway, that was he just did a, you know Motion drifted. Cut it off. Yeah. They kind of drifted off. It does kind of go on.
Fred Rutger:We walk into the FBO, and there's a guy in there, and he says, what happened out there? And I said, well, they thought we were druggies, and we're doing surveys, counting ducks. Oh, yeah? He said, how do you do that? And I told him some stuff more than he wanted to know, and he said, where are you based?
Fred Rutger:Lafayette, Louisiana? He said, Louisiana? He said, how the Saints doing? And I was thinking, this is an interesting thing. And I said, yeah, I said, I really don't follow sports that much.
Fred Rutger:Well, how do you, you know, who now this Department of Interior, who are they? I said, well, Spark Service, Us, Fish and Wildlife, and I went on, named the other BOM and the other agencies, and it's like, I'm being really interviewed here. And so fine, he's kinda lightening up a little bit. Oh, when he started this, he rolled a badge and he named it, I didn't really say, can I really look at that, you know, or nothing, but I was going along with it? And I said, when we finish, I said, I'd like to talk to that game warden.
Fred Rutger:Because I when this started, I thought we scared the flamingos, and it was was that. And I said, is well beyond that. And he muttered to me, it was an adjective in there, he's not a game warden, and I'm not quite who I told you who I was. He told me he was from the State Department, he's here to help me. He was a customs agent and for US, you know, for US customs.
Fred Rutger:They're down there. In okay. In Merida, yeah, I saw their citation later and with her ice skosh experience at the air shows, I've got to meet a lot of those customs guys over the years. But anyway, he was quite cordial. He said, incidentally, you pass.
Fred Rutger:Now, how do we help you get settled? And and it was over That was over too, but it was quite the afternoon. But anyway, that was was he said, look, nobody trusts anybody down here. We gotta do our own our And own he said, obviously, you guys are You check out? Yeah.
Fred Rutger:Yeah.
Mike Brasher:Well, that's good that you did all the talking and not Tommy. Any other any other kind of harrowing experience like that? Yeah. Anything else come to mind? I think you told me one you hinted to one story where you, you know, fuel, you have to be really conscious of fuel and being able to get from one location to the other.
Mike Brasher:Any a lot of planning goes into that. You ever find yourself in a situation where you, yeah, you thought maybe you'd made a bad decision or you started to get worried about anything?
Fred Rutger:Oh, I like lots of fuel. Yeah. My my model is the only way you can have too much fuel is be on fire. But, you know, loading and all that, you might fudge a number here or there once in a while to get to have that extra fuel. But And with the equipment the guys have today with the turbine airplanes, that's not as, you know, they have adequate equipment to where we were flying the heavy amphibs with piston engines.
Fred Rutger:So that's kind of corrected itself over the years.
Mike Brasher:Noah, nothing else that was
Fred Rutger:Oh, know the one you want is we had dinner last night and I mentioned a time we were trying to get into Tampico and the weather went down. And we couldn't we couldn't I I was within three or four miles to the airport, but the airport's up on the hill. There's petrochemical plants all the way around. They are on three sides of the airport with some pollution, and and if the weather goes down at all, there's always smoke, but mist and the smoke, and it it goes to zero zero. And we're we're again, we're heads down doing our thing over to Laguna, and when we get ready to land, I call, and I knew it wasn't gonna be the best weather, but they gave me like zeros, and he says, above instrument minimum, sir.
Fred Rutger:And I said, I'm just not current. I don't have the right equipment to do it. So your intentions? I said, I'm going back to Lopeska, which is 90 miles back up the coast. And but anyway, long story short, we had adequate fuel to get there, but I knew when we made that decision that they don't sell fuel there, that we'll figure that out later.
Fred Rutger:But it turned into quite the evening. We landed without incident, but then we have to figure out the fuel, and it involved our host the ranch where we stayed before, working it out with the Mexican Navy to sign some papers so we could take jerry cans of Victoria, Mexico, and buy fuel, and it involved a Cabrito dinner and a celebration. And anyway, it was it turned out okay.
Mike Brasher:Yeah. And so the reason that you couldn't land at that other airport is because low visibility, was that
Fred Rutger:the Yeah. The fog had moved in of temperature dew point with the toys, right along the coast. We we were in the coastal lagoon, it's a mile or two wide, and then the airport's up on a hill.
Mike Brasher:Fred, we'll I think we'll try to wrap to start wrapping wrapping this up. I could ask you a lot of additional questions about some of your, you know, favorite habitats that you've seen and a whole host of other things. We'll start to wrap this up. I do wanna ask you, what are some of the more memorable observations that you would have made of of waterfowl, like, either in terms of the concentrations that you've seen? I'm thinking Laguna Madre, you know, when you those big huge rafts of redheads, but also, like Mexico, some some of the if would you would've does anything there stand out in your mind in terms of, oh my gosh, look at all these birds?
Fred Rutger:I just run through a litany of what pops into my mind. Redheads in Mexico on a Maguna Madre, Mallard's in Arkansas, Canvasback in Maryland, and I gotta, you know, think. But all the places that people have hunted and live around these incredible places on the continent, you know, I've always enjoyed getting to see that. And a good problem I have is how are we gonna get, you know, on a cruise survey, how are we gonna maneuver to get all the ducks, you know, and get them in the count, and it's it's it's been an enjoyable career to to see those sites.
Mike Brasher:So Fred, you've kinda you kinda hinted at some of what I want to end with here, and that is kind of reflecting on your career. That's always fun for me to do to hear people talk about that and see the enjoyment in their in their face as they think about that. You you clearly have enjoyed what you've done. How fortunate do you think you've been? Do you consider yourself to have been to be one of the group of people that have meant so much to this profession that is really responsible for for for some of the, I guess, tremendous datasets that set waterfowl, waterfowl management apart from a lot of other groups of birds historically.
Mike Brasher:There's a lot of other bird group birds and datasets that are coming online now, but historically, waterfowl have really stood out as being rich in data that we have available to study the populations and learn about them, and a lot of that is because of the work that people like you have done. We've talked about the breeding population survey, but you're also a very critical role in the banding programs. And without the banding programs, you don't get the band recoveries, harvest estimation, the survival estimation, all that kind of stuff. So people like you have filled an incredible role in this entire enterprise. How fortunate and how thankful are you that you've been able to do that?
Fred Rutger:Very fortunate. Amazing. I'm just, you know, growing up, small town in Illinois and and hunting ducks and then wanting to get into this profession and getting into aviation, so it's been very rewarding. I like a quote by Bob Jessen, legendary waterfowl biologist for the state of Minnesota, and he used to, when he'd be in meetings, and he'd say, wouldn't one of us, maybe not me, but one of the other flyaway biologists, he said, look, these guys are the eyes and ears of the Fish and Wildlife Service. What they see is important, you know.
Fred Rutger:So anyway, but yeah, it was a wonderful ride and, you know, we're we're transit I had the pleasure of flying with Garrett Wilkerson from Louisiana who is our newest Flyway Biologist. We talked a lot about his path, how he got here. But when I'm doing work now as a temporary person for DU and doing some events and talking to students and whatnot, my advice to them is get a job. Get a summer job if you have to volunteer, but get to know people within the agencies. Knowing people and getting your foot in the door, so to speak, I had we covered, you know, I had some lucky circumstances, but if you can if you can get in inside of wildlife agency and work your way, you know, you're something besides a resume in a pile.
Fred Rutger:And so I just say, look, I graduated with people probably a lot smarter than I am, but they're doing something else because they didn't know anybody when they got out of school. So that's that's the first one. The the combining wildlife and aviation, I think, is a great thing to do now. Right here where we are, coastal erosion, it just begs aerial stuff. And there's another avenue to go is drone stuff.
Fred Rutger:You That's know, there's there's all the imagery stuff that's coming on board. There's there's as as as we move on in time, the technology is going to be there for aerial imagery and all. So get out there, get involved, and good luck.
Mike Brasher:Fred, I thank you personally for all that you've done for waterfowl, waterfowl management. On behalf of everybody in Ducks Unlimited, I also thank you, and I thank all your your fellow fish current and past Fish and Wildlife Service pilot biologist, flyby biologist for all the work that y'all have done. We wouldn't be able to do the things that we do without all of your work, all of your all the data that you've helped collect. So just a tremendous thank you to you for all of that professionally. Thank you personally for everything that you've you've helped me with over the years, and thanks for sharing your time yet again here with us on the Ducks Unlimited podcast.
Mike Brasher:It's been great, Fred. Appreciate it. Thank you. Pleasure. A very special thanks to our guest on today's episode, Fred Rutger, retired US Fish and Wildlife Service pilot biologist.
Mike Brasher:We thank him for his years of service, and I thank him for his friendship here. As as always, we thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for the wonderful work he does getting these podcasts out to you. And to you, the listener, we thank you for your time, and we thank you for your support and commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation.
VO:Thank you for listening to this episode of the DU podcast. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show, and visit www.ducks.org/dupodcast for resources based on today's topics as well as access to more episodes. Opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited. Until next time. Stay tuned to the Ducks.
VO:Stay tuned to the Ducks.