On The Wing Podcast

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Pheasants Forever’s Michigan State Coordinator Ben Beaman for a conversation about hunting pheasants, ruffed grouse, and woodcock in the duo’s home state. The guys also discuss Michigan’s Adopt-a-Game-Area Program and the importance of intensive habitat management in preventing grasslands from becoming woodlands void of pheasants, especially in states east of the M...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Jonathon Tremblay from Walton’s Inc. to talk about caring for game bird meat from the moment it leaves your bird dog’s mouth to the time it hits your plate as a delicious meal. Tremblay also discusses Walton’s deep connections to hunting and conservation as a company, and how the pandemic changed the way Americans approach meat. Episode Highlights: • Jonathon talks...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by PF’s Andrew Vavra, Logan Hinners, and Aaron Black-Schmidt for a lively discussion answering questions submitted by the organization’s social media followers about this year’s Rooster Road Trip. And for the first time in our podcast’s history, watch the conversation on our YouTube channel. (LINK) Episode Highlights: • The crew tackle questions about bird dogs, publi...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by PF’s Andrew Vavra, Ben Lardy, and Hunter Buth for the final leg of the 2021 Rooster Road Trip in South Dakota’s Glacial Lakes Region. The crew talks about finding birds around cattail edges in this beautiful landscape filled with lakes, hills, and public land habitat. Episode Highlights: • Buth, the newest and youngest member of the Pheasants Forever employee team,...

The Rooster Road Trip crew moves to South Dakota where they ride a major weather swing from cold and rainy to beautiful and sunny as they hunt Aberdeen Pheasant Coalition walk-in lands and state-owned Game Production Areas. Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by PF Director of Marketing Andrew Vavra and the organization’s new South Dakota Regional Representative Jake Hanson. Episode Highlights: • The cr...

In this installment to the organization’s popular Rooster Road Trip adventure, Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Pheasants Forever’s Andrew Vavra, Renee Tomala, and Emily Spolyar to recap the crew’s second pheasant-filled day in North Dakota. The team starts the day on a fresh PLOTS (Private Land Open To Sportsmen) parcel with NDSU biologist and PF Chapter President Ben Geaumont leading the hunt. E...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Pheasants Forever’s Andrew Vavra, Renee Tomala, and Emily Spolyar to recap the first day of the organization’s annual Rooster Road Trip. Recorded live from Emily Spolyar’s home on the prairie, which was once a North Dakota pheasant hunting lodge. The crew details a very birdy start to the 2021 Rooster Road Trip on the state’s publicly accessible lands. Episode High...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Pheasants Forever’s Andrew Vavra, Marissa Jensen, and Renee Tomala from the field. In fact, this episode was literally recorded live on a gravel road next to a North Dakota PLOTS (Private Land Open To Sportsmen) parcel as the crew prepared to kick off the twelfth annual installment of the organization’s popular Rooster Road Trip. Episode Highlights: • As with all p...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Douglas Spale, a hardcore bird hunter and newest member of the Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever National Board of Directors. The guys talk about Douglas’ Nebraska roots, his “Bird Dog in the City” blog series, and how our podcast episode with Erik Petersen changed his life’s trajectory. Episode Highlights: • The guys kick off the conversation with Spale’s impres...

Tom “Carp” Carpenter, editor of the Pheasants Forever Journal, joins host Bob St. Pierre to add color to his recent PF Journal story “Hunting With the Wind.” In the podcast, as in the printed story, Carp offers eleven tips for handling wind during a bird hunt. Episode Highlights: • Bob admits to historically not paying very close attention to wind conditions in favor of assessing habitat and follo...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Reid Bryant, host of the Orvis Hunting and Shooting Podcast, and Chad Love, Quail Forever Journal’s editor, for a free-flowing conversation covering strong opinions about bird hunting influencers on Instagram and great bird hunting literature. Episode Highlights: • There is clear chemistry between Bryant and Love who share a mutual passion for literature featuring...

Tom Carpenter, editor of the Pheasants Forever Journal, joins host Bob St. Pierre to break down his recent article about identifying quality pheasant habitat by focusing on grass, grain, and winter cover. Episode Highlights: • Bob and Tom talk about the importance of grass and forb identification as part of a hunter’s ability to locate birds. They also spend some time discussing how grass density...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever’s Director of Government Affairs Jim Inglis for a conversation with Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation’s Chris Horton and Kent Keene. Chris and Kent explain how CSF works on three different government levels (federal, state, and gubernatorial) to advance habitat, hunting, and angling legislation across the country. Episode High...

Host Bob St. Pierre visits with David Nolt and filmmaker Erik Petersen about the production Long Way Home released by Pheasants Forever earlier this month. Long Way Home is a film about loss, second chances, identity, bird dogs and the power of hunting to connect people to places all through the eyes of Nolt and captured through Petersen’s camera. Episode Highlights: • Bob compares Long Way Home t...

This week, ten organizations have joined forces to unveil a vision for new grasslands conservation legislation modeled upon the successful North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA). Host Bob St. Pierre leads a discussion with the presidents & chief executive officers of three of those partner groups. Through this important conversation, Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever’s Howard Vincent,...

Oklahoma State Professor Dwayne Elmore returns to the podcast with his better half Leslie Elmore, Quail Forever’s coordinating biologist for Oklahoma. Whistle along as the couple share their love for quail, habitat, cooking, and of course bird dogs with host Bob St. Pierre. Episode Highlights: • The pair share their path to the uplands and how they became Oklahoma’s leaders for quail research and...

Larisa Harding, Arizona Game & Fish Department’s small game program manager, and Jim Heffelfinger, Arizona Game & Fish Department’s wildlife science coordinator, join host Bob St. Pierre for a conversation about Arizona’s Gambel’s, scaled, and Mearns’ quail. Larisa and Jim tag-team a fascinating discussion about how each of these three quail species reproduce at different times and gravitate to di...

Host Bob St. Pierre and Precision Agriculture & Conservation Specialist, Emily Spolyar, talk with new upland bird hunter Jennifer Reilly about chasing challenging species right out of the gates. Reilly started her upland journey in pursuit of chukar, progressed to mountain quail, and now lives in Alaska where she is figuring out ptarmigan. Episode Highlights: • The episode kicks off with Spolyar (...

August marks the annual roadside surveying of pheasants and quail by state natural resource agencies. Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Iowa DNR’s Todd Bogenschutz, the state’s upland wildlife research biologist, and PF & QF’s Jared Wiklund, the organization’s public relations manager, for a conversation about the logistics and science of counting game birds along roadsides in late summer. Episode...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Mike Retterer, the organization’s National Rights of Way & Energy Coordinator, for a thought-provoking conversation about the organization’s efforts to create wildlife habitat along roads, railroads, solar fields, pipelines, and powerlines. While obviously not the pinnacle of opportunities to create habitat for upland game birds or hunters, these marginal acres ser...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by television personality Travis Frank for a conversation previewing the new season of The Flush, airing on Outdoor Channel during the months of July through December. The conversation starts with a few entertaining stories of Travis’ new bird dog pup Daisy before diving into what to expect from the new season. Episode Highlights: • The guys talk about the increase in...

David Gutierrez, Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever’s new regional representative for the southwestern United States, spent 2005 through 2015 as a Green Beret in South America and Afghanistan. After returning to the United States from war, David struggled to find peace until he got a bird dog and started upland hunting. Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Marissa Jensen, our Path to the Uplands cont...

Hundreds of thousands of bird hunters travel to South Dakota and North Dakota each autumn to hunt roosters. With bird populations on the rise the last few years, coupled with a very mild winter in 2020, anticipation for the season ahead was skyrocketing . . . until a dry spring turned into a summer drought. Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Rachel Bush, Pheasants Forever’s state coordinator for Nor...

Host Bob St. Pierre is joined by Dr. Scott Taylor, a biologist and the National Wild Pheasant Conservation Plan Coordinator. The conversation includes how the National Wild Pheasant Conservation Plan was created to provide a blueprint for restoring and maintaining pheasant populations across the country. Written by biologists from 24 state wildlife agencies, the plan details the habitat needed to...

Did you know healthy pollinator habitat is great upland gamebird habitat? The plants that bees and butterflies rely on are the exact same insect-producing flowers that help pheasant and quail broods thrive. Pollinators also impact 75% of the global food supply, which is scary because our pollinator populations are in a steep decline. Enter bird hunting conservationists to the rescue! Host Bob St....