On The Wing Podcast Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever

Host Bob St.Pierre is joined by PF & QF’s Habitat Education Program Manager Anna Swerczek and The Flush TV’s Travis Frank for a conversation previewing the family-friendly attractions at this year’s National Pheasant Fest & Quail Classic coming up in Minneapolis on February 17-19th.

Episode Highlights:
• With winter tightening its grip across much of the country, St.Pierre starts the conversation with a recap of his recent trip to sun-splashed Arizona where he was hunting scaled, Gambel’s, and Mearns’ quail.

• Swerczek provides an overview of the Youth Village and Pollinator Pathway sections of the event, while Travis Frank previews his talk on the Path to the Uplands Stage.

• St.Pierre also leaves an Easter egg in the conversation about retiring President & CEO Howard’s Vincent’s plan to unveil a pheasant and quail tattoo during this year’s event after losing a wager with the PF & QF employee team.
Learn more about National Pheasant Fest & Quail Classic at www.PheasantFest.org

Host Bob St.Pierre is joined by PF & QF’s Public Relations Manager Jared Wiklund for a fun and wide-ranging conversation with Keng Yang. The guys start by recapping the trio’s snowy pheasant hunt to close out the Minnesota season, then talk about Yang’s journey from anti-hunter to hardcore, every-single-free-day pheasant hunter.

Episode Highlights:

• St.Pierre explains how the group navigated snow drifts up to their nipples to find pheasant hunting success in the Minnesota cattails on the closing days of the state’s pheasant hunting season.

• Yang talks about how the addition of a German wirehaired pointer changed his perspective from anti-hunter to a person who loves hunting, and is adamant about giving back to wildlife habitat conservation as a volunteer for Pheasants Forever and a variety of other conservation groups.

Keng Yang will be speaking on the Public Lands Stage at National Pheasant Fest & Quail Classic 2023 in Minneapolis on February 17-19.

Host Bob St.Pierre is joined by three Pheasants Forever biologists to discuss the impact this year’s severe winter weather has been having on pheasant populations across the country’s northern tier of states. Those three biologists include Private Lands Conservation Program Manager Rachel Bush from Bismarck, North Dakota; Minnesota State Coordinator Tanner Bruse from Marshall, Minnesota, and South Dakota and North Dakota State Coordinator Matt Morlock from Huron, South Dakota.

Episode Highlights:
• Bush explains the philosophy of “putting the kitchen next to the bedroom” when designing quality pheasant habitat to best survive severe winters.

• Bruse breaks down the good and bad of seeing pheasants in open agricultural fields during the winter. Are they stressed and vulnerable or taking advantage of accessible food? Or both?

• Morlock delivers a few zingers as he talks about cattails (nature’s hot dogs), hot lunch (corn kernels in steaming cow pies), and the OG’s of surviving winter (sharp-tail grouse).

As we near National Pheasant Fest & Quail Classic and the celebration of our 40th anniversary, we’re turning the spotlight on Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever chapter volunteers, the true lifeblood of our organization’s habitat mission. In this episode, host Bob St.Pierre is joined by Will Clayton, the organization’s senior regional representative to introduce “The Year of the Volunteer” concept. To bring life to the celebration of volunteers, we’ve got four dynamic chapter officers lined up to talk about their motivations for volunteering. Those chapter volunteers include Austin Roby in Ohio, Cayla Bendel from North Dakota, Clay Denny out of Missouri, and Mike Coyle of Kentucky.

Episode Highlights:
• Each individual volunteer talks about their motivations for getting involved with a local Pheasants Forever or Quail Forever chapter and how those expectations resulted in friendships, on-the-ground habitat results, fun times, and cherished memories.

• Coyle highlights the importance of the organization’s unique, locally empowering model in which chapters retain 100% local control of the funds they generate through their efforts.

• St.Pierre closes it out with an interesting anecdote about being contacted for use of the PF or QF logos in tattoos and casket engravings as evidence of how important the organization becomes to people’s identities.

Check out more Year of the Volunteer Content
- https://pheasantsforever.org/forever-one
- https://pheasantsforever.org/forever-two

At this year’s National Pheasant Fest & Quail Classic coming up in Minneapolis this February, we’re presenting a special hands-on course called BIRD DOG TRAUMA TRAINING. It’s the brainchild of our very own David Gutierrez, PF & QF’s senior regional representative for the southwestern U.S. and a former Green Beret turned habitat conservation warrior. Host Bob St.Pierre is joined by Gutierrez for this episode, along with one of the Bird Dog Trauma Training session’s experts, Tom Sager, who is also a fellow serviceman with the unique role of training U.S. military special operations teams to take care of their canine partners.

Bird Dog Trauma Training Seminar
Where: At National Pheasant Fest & Quail Classic 2023
inside the Minneapolis Convention Center
When: Thursday, February 16th, Friday, February 17th, and Saturday, February 18th
8am to 3pm daily
Who: Sessions are limited to 20 participants each day
What: Each session includes training with Tom Sager, Dr. Seth Bynum,
and Jerry Snetsinger, aka “The Trap Doctor.”
Registration is $500 per participant and includes a PF or QF Dog Life Membership and a custom field trauma kit

Learn more at www.PheasantsForever.org/K9Trauma or contact David Gutierrez for more details at dgutierrez@pheasantsforever.org

Host Bob St.Pierre is joined by Gun Dog Supply’s Steve Snell to talk bird hunting, dogs, and bird dog gear. Steve is a passionate bird dog man and likely among the country’s top traveling wingshooters racking up truck miles in search of covey flushes from his home in Mississippi to his quail hunting properties in Texas to public lands destinations in Montana and beyond.

Episode Highlights:
• The guys reminisce about a quail hunting trip together on which Bob bagged his first-ever blue quail after making the 17-hour drive from Minnesota to West Texas to hunt over his own bird dogs. Snell also explains his love for hunting “cheating” blue quail (also known as scaled quail and cottontops) over big running English pointers.

• Snell explains the Gun Dog Supply origin story and shares the business’ top-selling bird dog gear items, while also offering some sage advice for what to list on a bird dog’s ID collar.

• Just back from a quail hunting trip to Texas, Snell provides a recap of his hunt and an overview for the rest of the Texas quail season.