Ep. 628 - Duck Hunting in Northwestern Ohio – History, Changes, and Warmer Winters

Dr. Mike Brasher is on location with Fred Zink Jr., co-host of DU TV and owner of Avian-X and Zink Call, and John Simpson, manager of Winous Point Shooting Club, for an early-season migration update and a discussion about the history of waterfowl hunting in northwestern Ohio. The group reflects on the vital role that private landowners and duck clubs play in conserving and managing high-quality wetlands and how warmer winters, less snow, and greater hunting pressure are affecting the timing of migration and hunting opportunities.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Mike Brasher

DUPodcast Science Host

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.

Mike Brasher: Everybody, welcome back. I am your host, Dr. Mike Brasher, on this episode, and I'm again on location in a very special place, and I'm kind of sitting across from a celebrity that many of y'all are going to know, and we're up at the Winus Point Shooting Club, or Winus Point Marsh Conservancy, up here in southwestern Lake Erie, just south of Port Clinton. South of Port Clinton, Ohio? Sure. So sitting across from me is John Simpson, the manager of the Winus Point Shooting Club, Winus Point Marsh Conservancy. Are you the manager of that as well? Director of that, yeah. Director of that. And so then our celebrity here is Mr. Fred Zink. Many of y'all are going to know that name. So Fred, tell us a little bit about yourself as well.

Fred Zink: I'm a Buckeye and I'm born and raised in Southern Ohio and moved up here in 2006. If you go live in Ohio, this is the spot to be right here. Right where we're sitting is the nucleus of all the waterfowl in this area.

Mike Brasher: And so, John, you were on an episode back in November 2020, we decided. It's a long time ago. Episode 172. I'd encourage folks to go back and try to find that and listen to it, where we talked in depth about Winus Point Shooting Club, how long it's been here, some of the significance of it. But tell us a little bit about your background briefly for those that haven't caught that yet.

John Simpson: Yeah, so I grew up in southern Ontario, Canada, so on the other side of Lake Erie. I forgot about that. Yeah, and did graduate research, was lucky enough to do my graduate research here at Wyness Point as one of their students, and have been here since 2008, so just a couple years after Fred moved to the area, I moved here to become the manager and director.

Mike Brasher: And then, Fred, how long have you been doing I mean, well, you were telling us last night, you've been doing this kind of stuff since you were like six or seven years old in terms of. Yeah.

Fred Zink: Yeah. I grew up hunting my, my entire life. I remember being elk camp when my dad and I was three years old. So in 1973 in Colorado. So I've been around fish and fowl and fur for a long time.

Mike Brasher: And so, folks that are familiar with Ducks Unlimited TV will know you. How long have you been, you're one of our hosts.

Fred Zink: Yeah, I think this will be year number five, I believe. Something like that. Yeah. You have fun with that? Yeah, it's good. I had, you know, prior to that, I filmed for Mossy Oak way back in the day, a Whistling and Wings series with DVDs and then, and VHS tapes. That's how old I am. And, and then moved on and did a bunch of stuff with Mossy Oak on The Hunting Country. uh, episodes back in the day and then started her own 24 seven DVD series. Like I'd say somewhere in early 2000, say 2002, 2003 ish, something like that. And then, uh, started avian X 2011 and started our TV show. 2011 did that until 2019 and then started hosting DUTV.

Mike Brasher: We're here with you guys in one of the most famous historic duck clubs in North America. And when you say that, it's also in the world. Winus Point, I actually did some of my graduate work here as well. So also graduated from the Ohio State University. Is this where I say O-H? I can't say that. And we wanted to, this actually works really well, expands really well from the conversation we had with John a few years ago, where we weren't able to get into as much of the history of waterfowling in this area. A lot of people don't think of northwestern Ohio, southwestern Lake Erie, at least outside of this region, as being a hotbed of waterfowling, but it really is. And so we wanted to dig into that a little bit. Before we get to that, that's going to be the main topic. But before we get to that, we're here on, what is this, October 24th. And I wanted to get these guys to give us a little bit of an update on what you're seeing in terms of bird numbers. Fred's over here smiling. I think he's going to tell me it's going to be a short conversation. But this will, by the time you, this will We'll be airing here a few days after we record that, but we're recording it on October 24th. So Fred, what have you been, what's it been like thus far? How long has the season been open?

Fred Zink: It started on the 12th. So we were looking at 12 days, you know, right on the nose today. Pretty slow started off. We didn't have a lot of weather up front. And then, you know, what's kind of hurt us here in this region is how the timing goes between Michigan, starting Southern Michigan and us. Usually they hunt about one week before we do in the last two years or three, this would be the third year we've been opening on the same weekend. Okay. So we're not getting the benefit of the migration. We call it gunfire migration. We, we have not got that in the last three years, but you couple that with the warm weather and the highs we're having. set record highs it's been 80 this week couple days next week you're talking about possibly two record highs so most clubs around here are living on wood ducks and teal and and pentail you know and like my club we primarily primarily shoot mallards About 83% of our harvest is greenheads. And weather like this really hurts us because they're a hardy duck and they're not going to move in daylight when it's 80 degrees, just no matter what. So it's been, I would say the first five days that we had, we shuttered limits in my clubs every day for five days. Everybody that hunted until last night, we hadn't hunted in a week. That's how bad it's been. It's been so bad we haven't hunted. Let's just say that. So what we're afraid of, and John and I were speaking about this. When you have a nucleus of ducks work in your hole or work in your marshes or whatever, you don't want to shoot them so much. You put them in the nocturnal or push them off in the smile stuff. Cause we're going to get some Northern flights here soon. And those we call them call flocks. They swim and they, they quack and they make, uh, make other ducks come to them. So we want to make sure during slow periods that we really back off on pressure. So when we do get a cold front, we allow, sometimes we won't even hunt the cold front for a couple of days. We'll allow those ducks to come in. settle in and we can double, triple our numbers within three to four days very easily. And then we can apply more pressure. Uh, but our, you know, at a small club, when this is 4,000 plus acres, you know, I have a 54 acre property and 142 acre property. So we have to do things much different, you know, in small duck clubs, then, you know, a larger one like when it's for Ottawa.

Mike Brasher: So, Fred, you mentioned pintails. Some of the folks that I was around last night were, they had come in from the marsh and they were talking about the number of pintails that they had seen, an unusually large number of pintails. John, have you seen that or y'all heard that around here?

John Simpson: Yeah, yeah, same thing. So here as well, I mean, we're just down the street from your place, but again, another slow start to the season. Last week, the first week we had green wings in the bag and that was kind of helping fill out the limits. But like Fred mentioned, those green wings, they've gone completely nocturnal now. They're still here, but they don't fly during the daytime. But lots of pintails. More and more every year the last few years.

Fred Zink: I would say it started, what, six years ago? Yeah, about six years ago.

Mike Brasher: So, this is not just a one-year anomaly in terms of the number of pintails.

John Simpson: No, it's going like this. It just keeps building. Yeah, there's probably 2,000 right out the window here.

Fred Zink: When I come down the driveway, they were flying around out there. They were up in the air. I stopped and I glassed them. They were like two grand.

Mike Brasher: And so, well, I'm all sorts of curious now about, like, are those prairie pintails? Have you got any bands off of any of those birds that y'all have, by chance, have you shot any banded pintails?

John Simpson: So we did some with Mike Schumer, his lab. We did some stable isotope work on harvested birds. probably four years ago, and we found that they tended to be more northeastern pintails. Quebec, you know, stable isotope doesn't give you specifics, but they were eastern birds, yeah.

Mike Brasher: Okay, I remember Mike telling me about that, and some emerging evidence suggesting there's maybe more pintails coming from Utah. That's pretty cool. Yeah, which is pretty interesting.

Fred Zink: There's a large number around here. I know in February, we were talking a little bit before we started the podcast, but in February, We shouldn't have pintails. We should be no ducks here at all. And my little place across the bay, just right over there, I bet we had 15,000, 20,000 pintails. No way.

Mike Brasher: Wow. This year you can still only shoot one per person. Next year might be a different story. We're hoping. Kind of depending on what your state does there, but yeah. Anything else, I guess, relative to status of the migration? Any other, any notable weather events on the horizon that you're looking forward to? None that I see.

Fred Zink: None that I see. I was thinking about putting my fishing boat back in.

John Simpson: The only thing that, the only thing on the horizon for the weather that I fished around, I did a little bit of looking at some of the long-term forecasts, and it's not very pretty. They're looking, you know, they're calling for warmer than normal fall. All the way through January. All the way into December.

Fred Zink: You know, like last year, it's been, to be honest with you, Mike, it's been warm in this region for quite a few years, and we've had very good, consistent hunting. I know our hunting at my clubs have been as good as it's ever been in the last three to five years, right? And we have good populations, we've been able to manage our pressure. And we try to target somewhere around four birds per man, over four birds per man per hunt. And we've been able to keep that average in the last five years. And last year we shot 4.02 birds per man per hunt for the year and had excellent hunting. What makes hunting good in this area and a lot of areas is inconsistent weather. It doesn't have to be cold, but as long as it's warm, cold, windy, rainy, cold, warm, as long as you get that, uh, that, uh, rainbow effect where it's up and down, uh, you can get ducks to move. But if you get a pattern like we're sitting on right now. to where it's just a long drawled out, no changes, no wind, no rain, and very steady temperatures. They just continue to go later and later, less movement, less movement, until it gets to where it's tough hunting.

Mike Brasher: You know, one indication of how warm it is, The air conditioner just kicked on a few seconds ago.

John Simpson: Listeners may be able to hear that in his shorts.

Mike Brasher: It's October 24th. It's not supposed to be like this. From here, I'm headed up to Harsin's Island to hunt with a friend for the next few days. And this is the time of year, late October, early November, when he said historically, when he was growing up, this was always the best. You could always count on it. at least for the type of what they do. And he said, but that's not really the case.

Fred Zink: It's shifted.

Mike Brasher: We really don't discriminate a whole lot. Yes, but we'll be, we'll be in the Bay and they had red heads move in pretty good about 10 days ago. We'll set up for divers a couple of days, and then we'll do some scouting. We find if some of there's some pockets back in the marsh that are bringing in some divers, we'll go target those.

Fred Zink: That place up there is just unbelievable. This is what it used to be here. If you look, if you talk to the old timers or whatever, this bay used to be real clear before, you know, the high waters in the 70s and this erosion, things like that. But when you get up on Lake Sinclair and you get all that vast area and the clean water and You know, I always say it pays to be up upstream of Detroit, but, um, there's a lot of things up there. That's it's just unreal. The fishing is unreal. Total water clarity is unreal. And the model waterfowl, that's the one thing about this region. It was like, you brought it up at the beginning. Mike is a lot of people don't talk about, I get to travel over us and Canada, and I only hear a lot about Ohio, Michigan or whatever, but when you draw. say about a hundred mile circle route here in a circle. When you think about late in the year, they could be three to 500,000 birds up on Lake Sinclair, you know, like in, uh, late January, February, they might be 150, 175,000 cans there. You come down here, uh, depends on the year and we could have anywhere from 65 to 70, 80,000 sitting right here on this bay. We're looking at on this window and then you put all these areas. It's not uncommon to probably have four to 500,000 birds within a hundred and a hundred mile circle here. you know, at some point.

Mike Brasher: It's pretty cool. I was looking at the map that we had out in the meeting area earlier today showing all the different WMAs, the state WMAs, the federal refuges, all of the duck clubs that are around sort of southwestern Lake Erie, all of the projects that Ducks Unlimited has worked on in this basin. It is, when you take time to visit certainly when you live here but if you take time to also learn about it you do as you said Fred realize just how historically special this area has been and and how it continues to be and probably is only going to increase And it's important as we kind of go forward in the future, if things continue to kind of warm and weather conditions, weather trends do what they have been, you know, you're seeing some of that where you talk.

Fred Zink: I'm a mallard duck hunter. I'll hunt ducks, but if I'm, if I could hunt one duck, I'm going to shoot a green, I'm just hunting ducks. I mean, green head ducks and those ducks, they don't want to go south. That's not genetically into them. They don't want to go down and sit on a beach in Florida, right? They're hardy. They're northern birds. If it doesn't get cold, they won't leave the breeding grounds. And it's been proven time and time again. I got friends, I got a lot of friends in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta. and they're sending me videos, December, some of them January, some of them rivers still open, there's ducks. If there's no snow up there, those ducks don't leave. So, you know, we're just a little bit of a warming trend. Is it global warming or is it just a trend? I think you can ask the dinosaurs. There's a lot of stuff that happened. A long time. Yeah. I think a global warming has been happening on this earth way before we were here. So, with that being said, I think just migration has changed. I think there's a cycle, just like the high water here on Lake Erie. I know John's had to really deal with it over the past few years here because of the high water. Now we're getting more of an average cycle. I remember coming up here in the 80s and I was living in Dayton, Ohio, in Southern Ohio. I leave down there about one o'clock in the morning and drive up here and we get up here to the boat ramp, you know, 1L Road, right over there, almost where I live now. And we put our boat in and go hunting. And I don't ever remember coming up here, Mike, and hunting on Sandusky Bay and not shooting a limb of the ducks. And then by the early 90s, we'd come up and about half the time we couldn't even get our boat off the trailer. Cause we had a 20 foot plate boat, you know, Iowa style, sleep in it. a public land hunting type of deal where you got to do what you got to do to get the spot, right? We come up here, a lot of times we couldn't go hunt because we couldn't get a boat off the trailer because of the water. So, that's, you know, John's lived through that. Now the high water and, you know, getting back to normal. But, you know, this point right here and what Winnis Point, Winnis Point in this area is a nucleus because of the bay and the rest bay. And without Winnis and the work that John and his crew does, it'd be detrimental to this area. It's very, very important.

Mike Brasher: Before we started recording, we were kind of going through some of the topics that we wanted to cover and this notion of things are different now than they used to be was certainly one that we wanted to cover. By the time people hear this episode, most of you will have your November, December issue of the, I guess, November, December 2024 issue of the magazine. In case somebody's listening to this a year from now, just specify that. Then there's an article in that magazine that is titled, Ducks on the Move. It's our understanding waterfowl segment, and we sort of lay out the results of a recent study that was completed in collaboration with some researchers down at University of Missouri and US Fish and Wildlife Service and then Ducks Unlimited. And we looked at 60 years of band recovery data for a variety of different species in the Mississippi and Central Flyways and actually detected and showed through those band recovery data, if you want to use band recovery data as an indicator, as an index of fall and winter duck distributions, it's reasonably reliable in that regard, then there is this general movement northward of those distributions. which is consistent with kind of what you're talking about. The one thing that we did differently in that study, we haven't talked about it on the podcast yet, but we're going to get that group of researchers together, is we broke it up into different subpopulations. The prairies of the U.S., prairies of Canada, and then the Great Lakes and Ontario birds in terms of where they were banded. to see if there were differences in how those shifts that occurred among those different populations. And there were. And so, I'm not going to spoil everything right now and make you go look that up in the magazine or online, but it matters depending on which species you're looking at, which month of the year you're looking at, which month of the hunting season you're looking at, and then also which of those quote subpopulations. So, I'd encourage folks to go check that out and keep your ears open for a future episode on the podcast where we'll dig into that in a bit more detail. The other question, the other part of that is, what are the driving factors related to those changes? And you've talked about warming winter weather. Whatever that cause is, it is happening. The other thing that comes with that, less ice on the Great Lakes. The other thing is less snow.

Fred Zink: I think that's the major when you're talking, uh, especially when you're talking candy geese and definitely a mallard duck, uh, snow moves mallard ducks way more than cold weather for sure.

Mike Brasher: And so there's a, there's another part of this study that we're still in the process of, of kind of sorting through and that'll be, uh, on into the future. But yeah, some of those initial things that you mentioned in terms of snow death or depth. has been sort of the death of snow in some northern latitudes in recent years, are showing up again, and even in this study is potentially a very important factor.

Fred Zink: We live 27 miles from the Ontario border, and I'm a snowmobiler. I grew up snowmobiling my entire life. In Southern Ohio and Dayton, at Christmas break, I used to ride snowmobiles at Christmas break, right? 78, 79, we had a blizzard. I rode for two weeks every day. And, um, and then if not, we go to the, um, lower peninsula, Michigan, around Gaylord, Grayling area, there would always be all the snow you want. Uh, I just sold two snowmobiles this past year because I bought them brand new ones. And, uh, you gotta go to the UP in Michigan, usually in February to March to find rideable snow. So, if you gotta go that far to find snowmobile snow, and a mallard duck can out-survive a hunting season like here, you look at all the resources, you look at all the wetlands that like Winnis Point has, and then all the cropland here, and then the ag fields and the impoundments and stuff like that. Once a duck survives hunting season, and they're able to sprinkle out across the landscape with no gun pressure, they're never gonna migrate south unless they have to.

Mike Brasher: And hunting seasons in northern latitudes, northern states are going to end before the ones in the south.

Fred Zink: A lot of times it lands before the snow comes. That's what I'm getting at. And that's the key. If you're sitting in Louisiana, you're sitting in Arkansas and you're like, where are all these ducks? I don't believe ducks are the limit. I don't believe the US Fish and Wildlife, their numbers are wrong. I think we should go to three ducks or whatever. I think you need to jump on an airplane sometime and go to Manitoba or Alberta, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, or South Dakota, and you'll have your eyes crossed because there is a hell of a lot of ducks.

John Simpson: Or even here in January and February, we're wintering. Well, you talked about snow and ice. Our marshes, the last couple of years, they only occasionally freeze and then they thaw again. And there's so many resources here. that our season's wrapped up and we hold ducks all through the winter now.

Mike Brasher: Your marshes freeze, the bays will not, the rivers will not, or at least it takes an extraordinarily extended period of cold weather to get that.

John Simpson: It takes three days. If we have three days where everything's froze and there's snow, then the ducks move. But if we don't get three straight days, they stick it out.

Fred Zink: Yeah, so we're sitting in a zone right here. It's Lake Erie Marsh Zone. There's a reason why we fought for that way back in the day, because we were much different than a North Zone. North Zone hunters are hunting the lake, hunting rivers, hunting gravel pits, deep water reservoirs, things like that. Right here where we're sitting in Port Glen, Ohio, a majority, even that Sandusky Bay out there, it's big, but there's only two little holes in that whole bay that's 18 feet deep and there's two springs. A majority of it is six to seven feet deep, eight feet deep, the entire thing. And so if you look out here at Muddy Creek Bay and you look at all the natural marshes and corn, it doesn't take… We live in just a giant marsh is what it is, right? And with any climate weather and climate weather whatsoever, we freeze and we're still not freezing. That's how warm it's been. So we're in an area that freezes pretty quick and still is not freezing.

Mike Brasher: Well, that was a topic that I think we, I originally was thinking we might handle on the back end of this, but as sometimes happens, you get to those topics earlier and that's fine. We will, I think, shift now to, to this area. And this is actually a very useful conversation because we're talking that. that we just had is sort of framed in the context of two people that have been hunting for a very long time in an area that is experiencing some of those changes, but in a different way from a lot of our hunters and colleagues in the South. I mean, you guys are seeing the things that we don't see, but you're able to speak firsthand to exactly what it's doing to the birds that you're seeing. So that's useful. So, this area, southwestern Lake Erie, northwestern Ohio. Historically speaking, John, you want to take this kind of from a standpoint of what was this area? Was there a big marsh here across several hundred thousand acres? I don't even know what the size of it was at one time.

John Simpson: You already know the answer. Yeah, so all the way from where we sit today in northwestern Ohio, there was the one million acre Great Black Swamp stretch from here all the way to Indiana. And most of that was forested wetland, and it was full of wildlife and all sorts of stuff. I mean, world-class bear hunting, black bear hunting, believe it or not. No black bears around here anymore. But, you know, there was that great big black swamp that stretched all the way across, but where it met the lakeshore was huge, vast, you know, quantities of coastal marsh. So probably hundreds of thousands of acres of coastal marsh, and Fred already talked about the water quality a little bit, but all the open bays and impoundments along the shoreline had really clear water, not the muddy water that we have today. And so that's what attracted all the waterfowl, you know, pre-European settlement and attracted all the waterfowl hunters eventually and really led to the development of a lot of the clubs that are here today.

Mike Brasher: And so when you look along the rim of Lake Erie and Sandusky Bay, Muddy Creek Bay, there's a string of public-owned land, whether it be a national wildlife refuge or a state wildlife management area, that have conserved and protected some of the last remaining wetlands in the area. The other really important component of the wetlands that still exist in this landscape occur on private land, mostly in the duck clubs around here, would that be?

Fred Zink: I mean, there's a lot of private, privately owned… They're about 50-50 split. I think the number's about 15,000 federal and state, about 15,000… You're exactly right.

John Simpson: In this little part of Ohio, there's about 15,000 acres of private duck club land. There's some other marshes, you know, in park districts and stuff, but about 15,000 acres in the hands of duck clubs. And about 15,000 in the acres of state and federal wildlife areas.

Mike Brasher: And these duck clubs go back how far?

John Simpson: So we're sitting at Wyness Point, which goes back the furthest. That's 1856 was when this club started, was incorporated, which makes it the oldest operating duck club in the country. which is probably in the world, too. Well, maybe not. There are probably some in Europe that are older.

Mike Brasher: It may be. I think I want to… There's a number of other things we want to talk about here. I want to kind of give… See if y'all have some thoughts on Why did duck hunting, why did it become the source of these clubs, of the management that has kind of continued to this day? What is it about duck hunting that you think may have led to that and then inspired sort of the original conservation ethic? And then Fred, we want to talk about the contributions that private landowners and duck clubs make to waterfowl populations and providing the habitat that they need. And so, we're going to talk about those things and maybe a few others, some personal stories and connections that y'all have to this area to kind of close it out. But we'll take a break right now. We'll come back and we'll kind of pick up there on getting, maybe giving people some encouraging people to think back to the late 1800s and what led people to kind of galvanize around waterfowl. So stick with us, we'll come back and we'll have that discussion. Welcome back, everyone. I am sitting here in Winus Point Shooting Club with John Simpson and Fred Zink. We're going to continue our conversation. We're going to try to get our minds back to the late 1800s. What was it about duck hunting, do you think, from anything that you've read? I'm not a huge historian on the origin of waterfowl hunting clubs and any of the original Yeah, I'm not a big historian on that, but John, you're kind of here in one of the most famous. What's your thoughts on that?

John Simpson: So, I mean, what… I don't know. I can't put my finger on what it is, but there's something about ducks and duck hunting that people get incredibly passionate about. I know what it is. About 50 green heads in the sunshine coming down. Oh, yeah. Like their wings are on fire. I mean, that's exactly what it is. It's something that, you know, you can't… It's not tangible, but you know there's something there.

Mike Brasher: And you can share intimately with the people real close to you in blind and such. Yeah.

John Simpson: In terms of duck hunting clubs and the development of clubs, I mean, a lot of the clubs, at least in this part of the country and around the rest of the country, were developed by wealthy businessmen that had a long family heritage that stemmed from European hunting. They brought those European culture and tradition of the gentlemanly pursuit of game and fly fishing and all that. They brought it here to the U.S. Um, and they started their own duck hunting clubs and they started the fly fishing clubs in the Adirondacks and all the, the gentlemen's clubs, sports clubs, uh, in the Northeast. And so that was kind of the Genesis of what started duck clubs, at least here in Ohio. I think all over.

Fred Zink: Yeah, that's a hundred percent spot on for sure.

Mike Brasher: And so, Fred, we want to make sure we do talk about that. The importance of the clubs historically in recognizing what it is, it's almost as though they recognize the responsibility. They enjoy the resource for what it meant to them. They're out there every day. It's sort of the same thing that we're talking about now. Hunters are out there every day experiencing the elements, experiencing changes, in various ways and always asking questions. And so, the early duck clubs were some of the first to adopt voluntary restrictions. I think Windis Point was one of the first to ban spring hunting of waterfowl. There are probably other examples that we could step through, but now in modern times, when you look across the landscape, and yes, we have our federal refuges, we have our state WMAs, but in all of these other areas that are super critical to waterfowl during the non-breeding season, We see private land that is managed and on an ongoing annual basis, the reason for that primarily in those situations is for hunting. And if you want to be successful in attracting birds to your property, you have to provide the right resources, the right type of habitat needs to be productive. That takes annual investments of time, decisions, and Fred, you said some things last night kind of acknowledging that, and so speak about that from your standpoint. You go around and what kind of appreciation have you developed for private landowners, whether they're private landowners that do it just for themselves and their family, or if it's privately owned clubs, what's the appreciation that you've developed for those people and the role that they play on an annual basis in making sure these wetlands stay productive?

Fred Zink: I think most private clubs are able to take the gloves off, right? They're able to do the right thing and there's not a lot of politics that surround that. You know, some of the state and federal refuges, there's a lot of hoops that they gotta jump through. Like we were speaking about, the US Fish and Wildlife can't even plant genetically altered grains or crops on their land any longer because of a longstanding lawsuit. And that is detrimental to the US Fish and Wildlife Refuges because they can't plant habitat for deer, they can't plant habitat for a waterfowl, I'm talking about any type of row crops or a clover or anything like that, it would be useful that a private land person would have no problem. So I think a lot of the private duck clubs, you sit around and you get tired of waiting on other people to do the right thing, so you do it yourself. And there's a lot of land and a lot of duck clubs happen around here where people wanted to have success. I know when I started my clubs and bought my land, I was told I was crazy because my first club that I bought, it wasn't a club, it was a farm field. And people were like, I can't believe you're buying that. You'll never shoot anything there. You might shoot a few geese or whatever. Why are you buying that? I said, well, show me option A because this is about option F right now, right? But with a lot of hard work, my background, Mike is excavating. And so I grew up doing commercial development and excavating like that. And we also did a lot of wetland projects for the soil and water in our area, Montgomery County, Ohio. And so my background was doing excavating, so I could look at property and say, I can see things other people can't. And so the It's very important in this area and across the entire landscape because private duck clubs and conservationists, whether you're a whitetail, a turkey, waterfowl hunter, whatever, there's not much of a budget. The budget's very flexible, right? And it's not dictated by who's the president or who's your senator or whoever that is. It's dictated by the people that's with the members of your club. and the amount of success they want. It's pretty easy. Duck hunting, in a lot of cases, much like anything, success takes time and money. It takes both. And like the staff right here at Winnis Point, they work 365 days a year to make sure these wetlands are in prime shape, both for fall and spring migration on returning. In my places, I feel like I'm a farmer. I do it on the side. I work a full-time job with my brands and all that. but I planted almost 200 acres of wildlife food this year on my clubs for whitetail and waterfowl. And my budget is whatever it's got to be. People, what's your budget? Whatever it needs to be to be successful because the more you spend and the harder you work, as long as you're in a good location and the weather's right, better you're going to do. So it's very, very important and it plays a vital part because private land clubs and conservationists can do things that federal and state agents cannot do.

Mike Brasher: Fred, the one thing that, I've mentioned this to you a couple of times in our discussions here over the past couple of days, the one thing that we don't have a really good handle on in terms of a number is the value in terms of, and you mentioned both the time and money that private landowners, whether they're doing it just for themselves and their family, or in the case for the clubs that we're talking about around here, that they invest on an annual basis. I mean, you basically take all the budgets, all the time associated with all those clubs, all those staff members, everything associated with that, annual operation and maintenance. We can quantify license sales, we can quantify excise taxes, we can quantify donations to a conservation organization. It's very difficult, I would suggest, to quantify the true value. that hunters and land managers, hunters slash land managers, provide to habitat conservation for waterfowl and any species of wildlife. And then whenever you kind of roll those benefits up to every other critter that benefits from the work that they do, those land managers, those clubs, those hunters are the unsung heroes of the work that we do. John, I know you being, well, both of you being in that group, you got to take a lot of pride in that. Do you reflect on that kind of often or you just sort of take it for granted because you do it every day?

John Simpson: No, no, I take a lot of pride in what we do here. I grew up, I don't have an excavating background, but I grew up on a farm and so I have that sort of land management ethic. And I grew up hunting and fishing and a big love for waterfowling and deer hunting. And so, I mean, I take a ton of pride out of managing the land and doing all the right stuff and spending a lot of money to do the right thing for waterfowl year round. But then here with all of our natural marshes, we're providing shorebird habitat and rails turtles and, you know, all sorts of non-game habitat, too.

Mike Brasher: There's a number… How many clubs are around this area? It's several dozen, right?

John Simpson: There's about 40 clubs in our… So we have… Fred and I sit on the board of the local Marsh Association, and we have about 40 clubs. that are all part of that.

Fred Zink: And there's probably 10 or 12 that are not part of the membership, you know, with small clubs. So, there's probably over 50 in this region right here within 20 miles of where we're sitting.

John Simpson: 15. Some of those are small clubs with, you know, one owner and he has 10 acres that he looks after all the way up to Winus Point and Ottawa and Tucson and some of the big clubs that are thousands of acres each.

Mike Brasher: Has that association been around a long time?

John Simpson: It's been around for 25 years or so. Still fairly new. It's had strong periods and not so strong periods. And right now, I mean, we've been really rolled on the last 15 years. We do a lot of stuff cooperatively amongst the club.

Mike Brasher: That's where I was going, wondering how much camaraderie, how much shared pride is there among all the different clubs? Or is it all just competition? I'm sure there's friendly competition, but you all, I think will, my guess is that you sort of cheer one another along because you, you realize you're sort of the, the last of a dying breed in, in, in many respects. And it's, it's important to you. It's important to the people that invest that are, they're part of this also. Um, so I suspect that's a pretty cool little collaboration.

John Simpson: Yeah, I don't sense that there's a whole lot of competition. You know, everyone runs their club a little bit differently and does different things, but at the end of the day, we get together, we meet twice a year, there's a lot of camaraderie, and I think there's a general understanding that we're all working together.

Fred Zink: Yeah, as a group, we're providers. I mean, we're providing a resource to Waterfowl, and I want my neighbor to be as good at it as I am because that means there's more ducks in the area. And so, uh, we, uh, we, I mean, I talked to John, uh, by my marsh over there on the Bay. I got a lot of questions about what soul management and what to do draw down. So I'll talk to him or, or Pete Oaks over at Ottawa. I wear him out on the phone, trying to, I ask a lot of questions, right. And I try to bring information in. I talked to Tony Vandermore at Habitat Flats. Him and I have been friends for 20 some years. Find out what's working there, what works at other places. And I'm always trying new things at my marshes. If I find a crop or a row crop or some type of drawdown period or whatever's working and somebody's struggling, I give them that information. Trying to make the habitat as strong as possible and recruit successful hunters.

Mike Brasher: From a habitat management standpoint in this area, what are some of your biggest challenges?

Fred Zink: Invasive species.

John Simpson: Oh, yeah. Invasive species is probably number one. And there's a long list of invasive plant species, but Phragmites is probably enemy number one. But that is something that having that marsh association has really been key for us because like 17 years ago, 16 years ago now, we got together with our local U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff and we set up a cooperative weed management area and we started bringing grants into this area for the association. And so now we have a coordinator on staff that runs our invasive species program for the region.

Fred Zink: Mike Lugavere It's about 900 and some acres you sprayed, what, in September?

John Simpson: This year they did 900 acres of Phragmites. Well, it wasn't just Phragmites, but 900 acres of invasive control.

Mike Brasher: Mike Lugavere Across the entire collection of clubs?

John Simpson: Across all of the clubs. And we work with some of our local park districts and other landholders, too. And we've accomplished a lot with that organization over the last 15 years.

Fred Zink: As you well know, wetland, dry soil wetland management is way more difficult than cropland. So because of the lack of being able to get the right equipment in there and do things, you know, John, I pride, I have a lot of pride in what they do and a lot of just understanding of what they're doing. A lot of times they're working in areas you can't get any equipment. You got to fly it in, and to be able to control that in this amount of wetlands in this area, it's a lot of work.

John Simpson: Yeah. Most of our property, we can't get equipment on most of our property when it is dry, or at least half of it. So, we do a lot of moist soil management, a lot of water level manipulations. We're managing for dry, moist soil conditions in the summer on some of our property, but we have impoundments, that we have deep water marshes, and then we're managing for a lot of hemi-marsh year-round in some of our areas too.

Fred Zink: And then on the ag side of things, Mike, we have different struggles. Obviously, we have invasive species that come in there, but we can chemically control that. But when you start row cropping, you got to understand when to flood, what to plant, how much to plant of corn, everybody says, oh, you just flood corn and you shoot ducks. That's not true. You flood corn and you get a lot of ducks, but it doesn't mean you're going to shoot many ducks. So understanding how much corn to plant, how to manage the pressure, how much wet soil in your same impoundments and or like a buckwheat or a barley, a jap millet. Barnyard grass is probably one of my favorites in natural food. and there's a very large seed bank of that in this area. In my opinion, it's the best food there is. On my land, definitely it is. So understanding that and managing your ag so you just don't have nocturnal ducks and you manage your pressure. If you can do that, two things. I plant corn to hide in. and I plant my wet soil in front of it to get ducks to move in daylight. You're very strategic, very thoughtful about how you're doing all of this. Yeah, just having a little hole in the middle of 60 acres of flag corn. probably not going to shoot a lot of ducks. You're going to have a lot, but you're not going to shoot a lot.

John Simpson: Fred mentioned pressure and more and more even, I mean, we talked earlier about how things are changing more and more. I feel like it's becoming less of a food game in this region and more of a pressure management game, a hunting pressure management game.

Mike Brasher: coming that way in a lot of places. And it's going to be really interesting to see if that changes once we get a string of years where we're producing a lot of ducks in the prairies. We're still in this downslide from record highs of, I think, 2016, 2017 timeframe. Prairies are have not been producing a bumper crop of ducks, haven't done that for nearly a decade now. If we can get that cranked back up with wet conditions across the entire prairies multiple years in a row, I'm going to be really curious to see how that may change, because what you're shooting right now are predominantly adult birds, a higher percentage of adult birds. You get several years of production. then you're going to have some younger birds in there. We all know that younger birds are easier to decoy.

Fred Zink: And managing that pressure is the number one thing that we do, especially having a small club. We have a mobile blind that we move around, but we hunt on the same blind every day. or every other day, whatever we do. But even on my 50 acre piece of ground, once we get a certain number of ducks coming there, we can hunt pretty much every day as long as we know when to stop hunting. And so I don't have equity members at my club. I just have pay to play type of people. are type of hunters. And so, I'm the boss there. And it works very easily because if I say, let's go, let's go. And what we do is we hunt a lot in the middle of the day. So, in November, we might have 5,000 to 6,000 ducks coming into a 10-acre impoundment. And we will hunt between 11 and 1.30 in the afternoon typically. And we might only see 30 ducks, but all 30 of them will come right in. And so, we'll have a good shoot. And we're typically out, and I estimate in true reality, I'd say probably less than, I would say 80 to 90% of the ducks that use my properties do not experience gunfire on my properties. Because we're out before they come.

Mike Brasher: I mentioned a minute ago that the two of you and the club members and the club owners and managers are sort of the last of a dying breed. I hope I'm wrong.

Fred Zink: I think it might be going the other way.

Mike Brasher: Well, and that's what I'm going to ask you. And it may be regional. It's going to be the wave of the future. Yeah. Are you seeing an increase? Because we've got the traditional clubs here right around the rim of Sandusky Bay, Muddy Creek Bay. Are you seeing more interest in creating wetlands, restoring wetlands for waterfowl, for other wildlife, maybe in that historical Great Black Swamp area adjacent to this area? What's the trend that you're seeing?

Fred Zink: I see it all over the United States, like popping up everywhere. Oklahoma, like back in the day, I was fortunate enough to go to Oklahoma before a lot of people didn't know about Oklahoma. And it was the best waterfowl hunting that I've ever experienced in the United States. When was that? I would say about 15 years ago. They had ducks there 15 or so years ago? Because that's not what I hear. You better talk to me then.

John Simpson: Until Fred told everybody about that. Yeah, until I started videoing there. I caused my own heartache there.

Fred Zink: Even in Oklahoma, where it was just a vast open area and not much water source, because I looked at buying some properties down there and doing that, and you didn't need to. You didn't have to because there was just so many ducks, so many areas to hunt, geese, mallard ducks, and pintails, unbelievable. But with outfitters and guide services and people and pressure, now those places that go there and hunt are becoming less and less. It's hard to knock on door and get permission. because they're dailies, right? So now, between the locals and also the guide services, even in Oklahoma, there's wetlands popping up everywhere. In Palmetts, look at Missouri, look at Habitat Flats, what they're doing. In digital media, kind of like what we're doing right now, We're talking about the here and the now. And if you go back way back in the day, everything was a year out. You did a TV show and they watched it on TNN or Sportsman Channel or Outdoor Channel about duck hunting. That's what happened last year, right? So right now, everybody's tuned into what's happening now, just like what we're talking about on this podcast. This is going to be out next Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody on social media, Instagram or whatever, a bunch of the duck clubs are talking about wetland management, talking about doing this. So I think it's really spread. Um, and I think it's sometime in the future, I don't know how far that it's out. If you're not a member of a duck club, now I'm talking about it as state where there's a large population, you're out in the middle of nowhere, Kansas or something like that. That's always going to be there because of the population. But when you get around a, a big city or whatever, if you don't own your own land or know someone or be part of a club or something like that, In the future, I think it's going to be very difficult. I think that's why there's so many outfitters popping up, because there's a huge trend of people that want to be successful. Look at lives today on how busy we are compared to we used to be. Simply, it seems like we're always working. And so a lot of people value time. And a lot of people are successful. They don't have time to own the marsh or be a duck club, but they want to go with an outfitter or they want to join a club like Winnis Point. So they can, the days they do have off, they can be successful. So I think management is growing. And I think people like Ducks Unlimited in this podcast, where you're talking about wetland management guys and people, I think people are tuning in to learn on how to be more successful. You saying we're part of the problem? No, I think you're part of the success.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, I do. So I know, I grew up hunting mostly public land. There were a few places, random places, privately owned that I would have access to when conditions were right. I would imagine that kind of hearing you say that, It makes some people sort of disappointed or sort of lament the direction that we're going, I would say. And because what that means is that, you know, there's fewer and fewer opportunities, quality opportunities, on some of our public areas. And so we talked about this last night and that's an issue.

Fred Zink: Technology's changed that too, the evolution of mud motors. Yeah. Uh, things like that is totally changed where there was a lot of public land that wasn't accessible prior to the mud motor, the go devils of the world and things like that.

Mike Brasher: So there's sort of your naturally imposed pressure management, right? 100%.

Fred Zink: You can get to where you didn't used to be able to get.

Mike Brasher: No place that's untouchable now. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And so, you know, from my seat, my perspective, I want to see, I would love to see, and I'm proud when Ducks Unlimited is able to work with our state and federal partners to help them get the resources they need to do the work that they need to do on their properties, to help them overcome some of the burdens that are in place for them, some of the hurdles that they have to deal with that others don't. And, and there are, I mean, you don't have to, you don't have to look very far to know that there are challenges in every form of, of government out there, uh, competing priorities, changing priorities. And, um, it's, it'd be, it's kind of easy to get a little depressed if you think about it from that standpoint, if you're a public hunter, but I think there's also reason to stay engaged and continue to fight, advocate for the things that are important to you and making sure we're continuing to, to do as much or more work on public land as we are private land, because we got to have it all, you know, I think, to keep everybody engaged and keep this thing going. So, we are, we're past 45 minutes. What else do we need to talk about here? Any of you, we've sort of touched on some of your personal connections, your stories. You're from Ontario, but you've been in Ohio here for quite a while now. Do you ever get back to Ontario to hunt? Are you full-time here now? I don't even know if you get to hunt much in your current role.

John Simpson: I'm full-time here now, and I'm pretty busy early in the season. When things slow down towards the end of the season, I'll get out and get my opportunity to hunt, although I did get in the marsh today. I get, I get home a couple times a year. My family has an old time traditional deer camp in Ontario, like a, you know, red plaid jackets, UP style deer camp. And so I get home and I do that almost every fall. and do some fishing up there. But I haven't waterfowl hunted in Ontario in 20 years, I bet.

Mike Brasher: Well, you look relaxed. You look like you're enjoying life.

John Simpson: That's Johnny. Maybe that's just in the near.

Mike Brasher: I'm in the swing of things now. And Fred, you travel all over. How much of your time do you spend kind of hunting your old stomping grounds? I guess I would call this your old stomping grounds. You said you grew up in Southern Ohio, but from home. How much time do you spend hunting home?

Fred Zink: I enjoy hunting here more than any place I've ever been. people right yeah it's it's a it's home and it's when you work on your properties all year long I do like shooting ducks I've always said this people's like deer hunting goose hunting duck hunting or whatever I've never, ever got tired of going and shooting green head ducks. Like I could go 300 days straight and he ain't wake up tomorrow and say, you want time? I just, that's the one thing in my life I've never gotten tired of doing is shooting ducks. I hope it never changes, but I like my home dirt. It's not as good as many places I've been, but it's mine. Number one. And number two, when you're out there and you're working and you see something, in my cases, I bought farm fields and changed them into a little waterfowl heaven, Mecca. And when you're out there, and I enjoy watching them come in and taking people that's never seen it before, like, oh, I get it now. And so I like here. I've been all over. I've seen some… I got friends in places all over the United States and Canada, and I love it all. But I tell DU, When we're hosting TV shows, I say from October 15th till December 15th, do not schedule me for any hunt. I'm going to be right here in Ohio. Yeah, I do not travel whatever in that month, two months. Well, good for you. Yep. I just don't do it. I'm here before the whitetail and the waterfowl, for sure.

Mike Brasher: Well, I overheard you last night saying that depending on what showed up on your camera, you were either going to be fishing this afternoon or in the stands.

Fred Zink: I got the right deer showed up, but I got a little east in it. It's going to hurt me. I'm probably going to go night fishing for walleye. Okay. All right.

Mike Brasher: So I want to let you get out of here. We're going to wrap this up. Any closing remarks from either of you before we do so?

Fred Zink: I'm glad you… I didn't know you went to Ohio State, actually. I did, yes.

Mike Brasher: I have a PhD from Ohio State. Very cool. And so, I actually did my research up in this area. And so, it's kind of cool coming back and revisiting the area. I spent a lot of time here at Winus Point.

Fred Zink: Well, we obviously appreciate the opportunity to be on the podcast. And we also, from Lima and all the people here, and Northwest Ohio. We appreciate Ducks Unlimited and what we've been able to achieve as a group as far as conservation, as far as awareness, conserving land. And then I was talking to Russ Terry today in the blind. We were talking about the amount of money that's been invested in the duck clubs with H2 Ohio and obviously with Ducks Unlimited, writing a lot of the grants and funding a lot of those programs we're able to take advantage of is a huge deal. So just proud to be a part of Ducks Unlimited and proud to be I think Ducks Unlimited is going, number one, it's as strong as it's ever been. And number two, I think the clarity of the vision of the direction that you guys are going has never been clearer.

Mike Brasher: Well, I appreciate that, and I'll always love to hear that. H2Ohio that you mentioned is going to be the discussion, the topic of the podcast to follow this one. We've got another group just kind of waiting in the wings.

Fred Zink: It's a great program. DeWine did an awesome job.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, I've heard a lot about it, so I'm excited to hear more, and I hope the folks listening to this, I hope there are a lot of folks around this part of the world, the Great Lakes region, Northwestern Ohio, Southwestern Lake area. I hope you listen to this episode and I hope you hear the appreciation that I personally have for all the work that you do. And I know that appreciation extends to or comes from other Ducks Unlimited staff, other waterfowl hunters. I mean, you're you're part of a core group that invest your time, your resources into the land, into the wetlands to make it productive for waterfowl. You also invest into our conservation organizations. They were all working together in one big partnership and we have to continue to do that. We have to continue to be thoughtful and innovative about how we do it and some of the new programs that you talked about are part of that. So thanks to everybody two of you and everybody that you kind of help represent for, for all that we're doing here. It's an exciting time and good luck to everybody the rest of the season out there. So John Simpson, Winus Point, Marsh Conservancy, Winus Point Shooting Club, and Fred Zink with Ducks Unlimited TV, Avian-X, what other… Zink Calls. Zink Calls, all sorts of other things associated with Fred. Appreciate you guys being here.

John Simpson: Thank you.

Mike Brasher: We thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for the great work he does with this episode, and then we thank you, the listener, for your time and for spending it with us, and for your support and commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation. Thanks, fellas.