Goose Hunts, Walleye & Golf in North Dakota | Behind The Blind

The early season grind doesn’t slow down, and neither do the stories. In this episode of the Behind The Blind Podcast, the Heartland Waterfowl crew — Logan Burditt, Justin Michaels, Joe Palumbo — along with special guest Cody Beiswenger, sit down to recap the last two days of chasing early season geese in North Dakota while also swapping tales of late-season walleye and even sneaking in a round of golf.

From long days in the blind to evenings on the road scouting, this episode captures the true outdoors lifestyle — a mix of waterfowl hunting, fishing, and camaraderie that makes the early season so special. The crew breaks down how the hunts unfolded, the strategies behind decoy spreads, and the ups and downs that come with chasing Canada geese in the early season. Cody adds his perspective as both a hunter and outdoorsman, highlighting how the North Dakota hunting culture blends seamlessly with time in the field and time with friends.

We also mix in some fun with the “Ducked Up Question of the Day” powered by Dirty Duck Coffee, because let’s face it — every good story starts with coffee in hand. Then we slow things down for the “Old Timer Minute” presented by Old Timer Knives — Built For Generations, reflecting on the timeless values and lessons passed down in the field. And of course, none of this would be possible without our presenting sponsor, Double T British Kennels, trusted by hunters everywhere for world-class British Labradors.

Whether you’re passionate about goose hunting, love chasing late-season walleye, or just enjoy hanging out with friends who live the outdoor lifestyle, this episode will hit home.

👉 Watch the full conversation on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts — Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and Overcast. Don’t forget to subscribe, drop a review, and share with your hunting buddies to keep the tradition alive.

[Music] Hartland Waterval presents Behind the Blind podcast. And we’re back. And we’re back. We’re back. This is our second episode of Behind the Blind for season 13. And Behind the Blind is brought to you by DoubleT Kennels. For more than 20 years, Double T British Kennels have imported dogs directly from Great Britain Britain to build superior bloodlines. Their top-of-the-line dogs are proven in the field and major field trials. Learn more at britlabs.com and tell them Artland Waterfile sent you. Tell them we sent you. Actually, speaking of that, I was talking to or Everett was talking to Corey the other day. We were up here and he was like, “Man, does Palumbo want a dog?” And I’m like, “Uh, yeah.” So, it looks like I’m going to be getting one here uh before I head up to North Dakota or come back up here in a couple weeks. We’ll see. Man, way to steal the show. Yeah. Bruno. Bruno, I think, is the dog. Yeah. Yeah. Getting a mail, huh? Mhm. Yeah. Yep. But anyway, shout out Corey. Shout out Double T. Can’t wait. About to get a workout up here in North Dakota. Oh, yeah. I’m excited. So, anyway, give your Achilles a little break. Oh, man. Be nice. Yeah. Millie. Yeah. Milly needs a little break. Yeah. Milliey’s Milliey’s Achilles. Say that 10 times fast. Uh Milliey’s Achilles needs a little break also. But no. Yeah. Pretty exciting. Shout out Corey. Love the dogs. They’ve been awesome. Yep. Well, we got Justin Michaels, Cody Biswinger, Joe Plumbo. I’m Logan Berdett. We have just basically wrapped up our North Dakota trip. We are leaving in the morning. We’ve had two pretty phenomenal days the last couple days. Um, we’ve done pretty much everything you can do in North Dakota. Um, that involves being outside. So, um, we’ve had a lot of fun. Um, I guess we can just jump right into it. Uh, Justin, since you haven’t been on here in a minute, welcome back. Welcome back. Good to be back. I think the last time I I was here was 2018. Wow. Yeah, it’s been a while. Been a while. Wow. I did this trip like six or seven seasons in a row. Yeah. When we were up at uh John Warders, there was no podcast at that time. Yeah, we weren’t ping. No pod. Yeah. Well, here we are. And we’re going to put you on the spot. Yeah. All right. All right. Talk to us about yesterday. What happened yesterday? Uh I mean, we shot 13 geese. So, a nice baker’s dozen. Yeah, it was a good day. You know, early season, you can’t beat that. All right. Tell us about tell us about the scout. Tell us about the hide. Tell us about how many decoys we put out. Where was the wind coming from? Give us some a rundown of what was going on. I mean, honestly, I didn’t even scout that. So, man, I’m really putting Oh my god. All right, Cody, we’ll resort to you. What do you know? Anything going on around here? Uh, no. Yeah. Um, the field we hunted yesterday, well, it was kind of part of the same group of geese we hunted on Saturday that we just kind of pushed. Yeah. A couple miles away. Yep. But um really good hide. Uh Dad and Joe went and scouted that one on Sunday night and they were back in that far southeast pocket of the field and we cut down some choke cherry bushes to hide down there by the choke cherries. Yeah. Real good hide. But we didn’t have no wind. Yesterday was non-existent. The wind was Yeah, it was non-existent. But the few groups they they flew really late. really really late which is not typical for this time of year. And I don’t know if it was the cool no wind the complete opposite of the morning before when they flew at literally 6:41. Yeah. They didn’t fly till what 7:30 7:45. We didn’t we didn’t see most of our geese till after 8:00. That’s true. Typically we’re like getting like this morning we were ready to pack up at 8:00. So it just complete opposite of today. But I mean the ones that came out came to us were great and finished right where we wanted them. Yesterday was a fun shoot. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was awesome. I think what really helped is we were in that corner and they wanted to be in that corner, right? Definitely where they were. It was probably because they were loafing in that that water right off right behind there. So, you know, they’re just probably hopping back and forth or whatever. So, that’s probably why they like that corner so much. Right. But, it just gave us the best hide. Really cut the field down. It’s a big field, but we literally only had to worry about a sixeenth of it. Right. Right. Right. Which definitely helped in my opinion. Also, I I think uh and the birds were coming, you know, those were coming from a good direction, too. They’re coming from the east and they’re coming from a good way. What a mile and a half, two miles, two and a half miles. So, yeah, a few surprised us over the hill, but made it work. Yeah, we made that work. It was all right. Did a little walleye fishing. Yeah, yesterday’s walleye bite was on fire, man. It was good. And it was just such a beautiful day yesterday. like just just to be out on the lake like you really don’t I mean you don’t get a lot of days like that just on a puff of wind. I mean that lake the water was glass. I mean it was beautiful and the fish were biting. Golly we we put it on what we catch probably 15 in our boat. They caught what 12 13 in the other boat. So enough for a real good fish fry. I’m definitely looking forward to taking some of the walleye home uh back to Texas and having a little fish fry at the house here in next couple weeks. Maybe we’ll do that for like a little dove opener deal next week. Perfect. Yeah, have a little fish fry. Good deal. What do you want to talk about next? Uh why don’t we go ahead and like uh talk about today. Um let’s because today was a lot of fun. No, not yet. Not yet. First off, we got to talk about the HW uh swag pack. Uh, make sure you like, subscribe the HW YouTube and you’ll be entered to win the HW Swag Pack that we will be giving away um sometime this week on our social media. So, make sure to uh you got to comment comment, like, and subscribe uh on the new video. Correct. That’s going to be dropping next week sometime. Dakota Q. That is correct. So, whenever that video drops from this episode next week. Yep. Dakota Q next week. They’re shaking their heads. Yeah. Yeah. thumbs up. So, whenever that drops, make sure you like, comment on that for your chance to enter to win the HW Swag Pack. Uh, we will talk about our phenomenal day today next. First, we have to do the ducked up question of the day. Oh, we’re going to jump into the jump into the ducked up question. Yeah, might as well. And then we’ll go into the oldtimer minute and wrap. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Coco’s got a good old-timer minute for us, too. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. All right. If you could invite any celebrity, dead or alive, to hunt with you, who would it be and what would the conversation be like? Didn’t we already do something similar to this last year? You said Teddy Roosevelt. I was just gonna say it again. I already knew. That’s a good one. New question. New question. I already knew. I was like, I already know the answer to this one. Yeah. Teddy Theodore. Yep. Next. Next. What’s the craziest superstition you’ve seen hunters believe in? Oh, that’s a good question, actually. Crazy superstition. Um, this is a hunter one, but the one that stands out to me is the no bananas on boats. Yeah. Like that might be the biggest of them all, I think, in the outdoor world. Yeah. Very superstitious. It’s a big deal up here, man. People don’t talk about their superstitions as far as hunting, right? Isn’t that something they just keep to themselves? Yeah, I have some stuff I’ll do here and there, but it’s like not a big deal. And I don’t even notice I’m doing it anymore. I was like, I’ll wear those socks. It’s like random. It’s like I’ll wear those socks again. We hunt had a good hunt yesterday. Yeah. I mean, I don’t really wash my hunting pants like all hunting season. I like to have like blood on them. I think it just I don’t know. I just don’t like I don’t like washing my hunting pants, dude. Like those pants I wear today, they’re they got a lot of blood on them from this morning. And I probably won’t wash them suckers till end of February. Yeah, that’s really gross. No, it’s not. You can’t stand them up straight by February. Yeah, I definitely think there’s some hats that are kind of lucky hats. You know, I try to cycle out hats, but I got some right some ones I keep around. You know, my You know, my problem with the lucky hat is that it just blows off while I’m on the boat. Yeah. And you lose it. I was good for at least two or three a year. Two or three. I’m going to lose two or three hats. But yeah, you’re right. I’ll I’ll wear the same hat. I’ll get in a groove with hat. Oh yeah. I tie him with sunglasses. Dude, don’t give me a pair of sunglasses on a boat because going in the lake, man. I’ve I’ve dropped some money on the bottom of the lake. I guess mine would be, and I’ve done this for a long time, and it’s not really a superstition, but like when you’re done setting up, kind of standing around waiting for it to be shooting time. I always either have an energy drink, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, and it’s every single time I’m out there. Don’t know why. It just kind of turned into a habit. Creature habit. Yeah. Yeah. And it just doesn’t feel right if I don’t have it, right? Yeah. I mean, I don’t have any like weird superstitions like that, dude. I don’t know. You have you have the creature of habit like you I and I know one of your creatures of habit. What what is it? The the old bumper dumper in the morning. Well, when you go park the trucks, you’re pretty good at that. You have a pretty good one with that. I do have a really good method for taking a dump in the field. Um my I mean I typically That’s where we’re going. Okay. I’ve got a grill guard on the front of my truck and I can just lean off hang on and lean back. So you’re a hanger? Yeah, me too. Yeah, I do. Yeah. I mean, it’s not superstitious, but it’s definitely habitual. Make sure you get your Make sure you get your dirty duck wipes. They are uh pretty fantastic when you’re in that scenario in the morning. I used some this morning. I did. They’re nice. Yeah, they really are. Thanks for letting And they have like a little travel pouch, you know, ever keeps them in his blind bag. That’s funny. That’s funny. What’s the oldtimer minute? Let’s talk about it. Tell us about your Oldtime Minute brought to you by Oldtimer Knives. I’ve had a couple days to prepare. He’s got notes. I mean, hey, Jo was pretty good. I got a note to talk about. Yeah, I got to I got to outdo him, but Oh my god. I’m I won’t um I’m not really going to say like a specific story. Just going to kind of talk about how like I was raised in the outdoors and hunting and everything. Like how I got into it and who got me into it. So, I mean, it starts my dad’s on the show all the time. And it starts with him. Uncle Bill, he’s here. He just got here. And then my grandpa who passed away this year. Um, when I was a little kid, I got to start going on trips. We lived out in the eastern part of the state. Not known for it’s more known for waterfell hunting, but they didn’t waterfell hunt a lot when I was a kid. It was more feeasant hunting, and the feeasant hunting was a lot better out here. So I got to starting, you know, shoot probably when I was five, six years old, I got to come out here on weekend trips, go feeasant hunting, and that’s what I grew up doing until I would say till I was probably in high school. And then that’s when water fell started I started meeting buddies that like to waterfell hunt and it just kind of it blossomed from there. And then got to meet you guys. Got to hunt with you guys. Have been hunting with you guys for what almost 10 years now? Yeah, pretty close. So, you know, like 10 years them starting me hunting and everything, it’s it’s got me to some pretty cool places, right? You know, I’ve got the guide for 10 I got to guide for almost 10 years for Nate up at the lodge. Got to meet a lot of awesome people through that. And that’s not something like if I don’t meet you guys, that’s not something that ever happens, you know? For sure. So, it’s it’s like You’re welcome. Yeah. Right. I mean, basically where I’m going with that is like life could have went a lot of different paths, right? like if I don’t get into the hunting space because of them, you know, I don’t end up here with you guys today. No doubt. It’s crazy, you know. Yeah. It’s awesome is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. It’s uh it’s pretty awesome. We’re It’s truly a privilege. I mean, this isn’t something that I take for granted at all, right? Like we get I get to come out here every weekend, go scout, go hunt, and it’s just it’s the best. Yeah, I’m with you there, brother. You’re in a pretty good mecca. Yeah, I’m with you there. Pretty good little spot. Yeah. Who taught you how to play golf? That was that boy your dad or grandpa played golf too? You know, my dad just god-given talent, dude. This dude can golf, man. My dad didn’t play golf when I was a kid. Like he he played golf when he was younger, but Right. He didn’t start really picking it up until I took it serious. He’s just he’s ready to get back and start hitting the balls. Do you want to go to the range tonight? My my golf game was not so hot. Can the guy that I didn’t play much this summer. I’m going to go to the range tonight. Oh, it’s funny. It was like I’ll be back next year ready to roll. Hey, it was $3 for a bucket of balls. You didn’t realize like remember we said we like to play golf like a day whenever we’re up here. You didn’t realize like how serious No, this is some cutthroat stuff going on up here. We had big money. Yeah, dude. I hit some shots today. We’re not up here. We used a few of mine today. You played much better today than you did on Sunday. Once I started hitting your club, I played like not the rent club. I played like crap the other day. Yeah, you guys both picked it up today. Yeah. Yeah, I played a lot better today. I piped a few fairways, not gonna lie. Felt good. But okay, back to your oldtime man. Sorry to take away from the oldtime man. So Jazz just want some golf. I thought he was done with that. He taught you how to play golf again. Just god talent. Thought maybe there was a good family tieback story there. Never had lessons. Never not. He’s just a natural. Yeah. Yeah. And I played hockey, too. And that correlates usually pretty good of, you know, a lot of hockey players play a lot of golf. So like Happy Gilmore. When you first started coming out to this area before you lived here, you were mainly feeasant hunting. Correct. And then was it just like all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, look at all those ducks.” That and then like we went through a really big wet cycle right at the beginning of when I was in high school. So like the area that we feeasant hunted a lot all of a sudden had a ton of water and obviously the waterfall follows that like a year or two after and it just kind of turned into our own little mecca that we kind of had to ourselves. So that’s that’s part of it too like you kind of have this. It’s like might as well take advantage of it. It’s right there your pheasant hood and you’re like look at all those ducks. We can probably kill those. Right. Yeah. And obviously it turned into an obsession. You guys know that I’m torn up with it. Right. Yeah. You like running the roads probably more than anybody I know. Yeah, that’s and that’s what that’s my Yeah, I mean that’s part of what you can control. I’m going to do everything I can to control what I can control and that’s the that’s one of the biggest parts of it. It’s it’s fun to find the hidden gems that nobody else can find. Oh yeah, down those dead end section lines, but like today like the birds we saw today, the birds we shot today, like not that was a hidden gem, but it wasn’t. So, let’s talk about that a little bit. I was going to bring that up later on, but we can just go right into it. Those birds kind of tricked us a little bit throughout this week, right? It was kind of like little wave of emotion. It was like, so to start off, me and Joe were scouting and we saw these birds in the field, but we were there pretty early, right? But normal time with everything else, birds were already in the field. All the birds were in the field everywhere else. But for whatever reason, this set of birds were coming out later. We obviously didn’t know that at the time, but we drove by and there was like maybe 25 or 30 in it. Just rode it off. We just wrote it off and kept going. Never came back to it. Well, then Cody goes by the next day and was like, “Hey, did you guys see all these birds in the field?” Had to drive drove right by it and we’re like, “No, there’s like 25 or 30 in it. No big deal.” Whatever. And he’s like, “It’s loaded.” We’re like, “What?” So then we go and check it. What? The next morning? Yeah. And it’s loaded. They’re in there. And then we go back the next night and there’s not anything in it. Yeah. Not a bird. Not a bird in there. And we’re like, “What is going on?” Right. Early season geese, man. So, we don’t know exactly what happened. And then, uh, we go and check it the next morning. Yesterday morning, and it’s loaded again. Yeah. Big Mike went and checked it yesterday while we were hunting. And then go back and scout it last night, and they were they were in there. We were there, but they didn’t come till late. We were there later than we were any other night. Yeah. They came in super super late. and they went exactly where we wanted them to go. I mean, exactly where we wanted them to go. Um, but yeah, talk Joe, talk about literally the hunt this morning. I mean, the only the best possible place that the birds could have been sitting in that field is where pretty much they have been the last they had been the last three days. You know, that first night we saw them when there was only 25 or 30, that’s where they were. Whenever Cody saw them, that’s where they were. Whenever Big Mike saw them yesterday morning, that’s where they were. And when we saw him last night, that’s where they were. So, we knew, you know, they were set up in a very killable spot. Like, they were going to be vulnerable. And we knew that, you know, the hide was going to be good. We were supposed to have a good southwest wind this morning, which would have helped, you know, a little bit more. Not like we didn’t necessarily need it. Everything went as planned this morning, but um you know, we had a great hide and we knew that if we could get to where the birds were and get the blinds, get get the panel blinds in there and gussy the crap out of them, we knew that we were going to get them. And man, they started coming off that first group. We had a little ground fog this morning. And I think that uh what played to the advantage of some of the geese that came out very first thing because they they really couldn’t see us yet. I don’t think you know we pushed a couple decoys out more into that stubble and away from the edge that was tilled up. And man, once that sun started coming up just a little bit and some of that that ground fog started to push off of our spread a little bit more, them groups just they ate it up, you know. They ate it up. We had a couple groups short stop us in the field. uh you know, but it really it didn’t matter, you know. Uh the birds went there, they started coming and they figured out, you know, where we were and they were like, “Okay, that’s right. That’s where we want to be and they started coming.” Man, it was it was a ton of fun. It literally couldn’t have worked out any better. Right. Cuz even scouting it last night, there was a couple little groups out more further east. Yeah. Further east in the field and the the other the bigger flocks would just fly right over them and come right to where they wanted to be. So, we weren’t totally, no, we, you know, we weren’t totally screwed, you know, or worried whenever the couple groups started to shortstop us. We knew that there was plenty of birds coming to this field, and we were exactly where 98% of them wanted to be. And when those birds started coming, it was very evident that we were where they wanted to be. You know what I mean? Like, they didn’t they didn’t really hesitate, man. A couple of them started cheeto flipping, locking up, you know, five, six hundred yards out, and we’re like, “All right, boys. They’re they’re coming. Here we go. Yep. Yep. Here we go. And when that first couple groups did it, we knew like, all right, this is going to set up to be an awesome day. And there was a couple of those groups where you could tell they were new birds because they like they couldn’t figure they were coming from so high. They were high and they couldn’t figure out how to drop enough altitude. Sorry guys, my wife’s calling me. Shout out Kate. I’ll call you back, babe. And that’s how you know where you’re hitting, too. They couldn’t drop enough altitude to get down to our spreading time and they would come right right over top over us. And you know sometimes when you’re not covered up great, you can hear the wing beat and they start real honking. They would come over us quiet and turntally go back out. That’s how like it makes you feel good when that happens. We’re hitting. Yeah, we tricked them. Oh yeah. They don’t have a clue, boys. Yeah. No clue we’re here. Yeah. Yeah. That is a really good feeling. Yeah, it was awesome. But yeah, I mean for, you know, final morning up here, you know, we really wanted to end with a really good hunt and we did. I mean, we shot 40 We shot 40 geese. Logan, we need to look back at the footage, but Logan might have single-handedly tripled and shot three bands, maybe. I’ll say I I shot two for sure. We’ll we’ll give you the triple. Who shot that other one? Triple. I think I did. But Chaz has been really fing for the band. He’s been want He’s been looking at it. I mean, to shoot 40 less to shoot 40. He wants to put it on his pinky ring. To shoot 40 with three bands on the last day of the hunt. I mean, dude, what more do you want to wrap up a trip? Like, yeah, it was pretty incredible. Literally couldn’t have gone any better. Total, you know, game changer. It’s like, think of K State losing that football game and having to fly all the way back from Ireland. That’s how the drive back to KC and my flight back to Texas would have been tomorrow had we not banged banged them this morning. It this morning. Yeah. Like it would have been it would have been brutal. That would have been brutal. But no, definitely going home on a high riding high in the flying in first class home. You would have been back in economy. We’ll be back by the Uh but yeah, like total uh you know, really good, you know, confidence booster, morale booster here going, you know, leading us into the rest of fall. You know what I mean? We come up here, we have a great trip. We didn’t get skunked one hunt this trip. No, we was great. We got We got the single. The single saved us. Hey, it’s one more than we had when we got there when we got there. But, you know, we didn’t get skunked, you know. uh we banged them up really good today and uh it’s like I said it’s a really good kickstart to what we got going on the rest of the fall. So we talked about it earlier what we talked about on the last podcast of arguably our two best weather condition days were our first two days and those were our two I would say worst least productive the last two like yeah we killed the same number of birds yesterday but the birds worked better yesterday than they did on sat the first day we hunted I would agree and I said it on the podcast you did of we’ve killed a lot of geese on not so goosey days blueird sunny days. It’s all about just their attitude, right? Yeah. Doesn’t the weather this time of year a lot of times it’s just early seed, dude. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. It’s just early season geese, man. There’s no rhyme or reason. Just the right situation, the right hide. Yep. The right the right direction they’re coming from. Some days you get them, some days you don’t. That’s just the biggest deal. Them geese today were coming from a long ways away, which was, you know what was cool, huge benefit. Speaking of the long ways away, they were coming into the field at like a 45° angle and then they would like hit the rose and go straight across the field directly parallel with the rose. It was it goofy. And they did that last night. And they were kind of doing that not as so much this morning, but last night they were taking a beine in the middle of the field and then they’d come right to where we were set up. And I thought about that a lot. I’m like, why are they doing that? It had to have been something to do cuz we were hunting close to the farm. That farm, right? It had to have been something with the farm and the trees that they didn’t like going that way to go to where they wanted to. It was like they were coming out away from all that stuff, right? And Yeah. They weren’t really cutting behind us at all. No. And and they had been on both sides try to get away. They really wanted to get out the back. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. But I don’t know. It was It was bizarre, but I I didn’t mind it. All right. Well, um, we will be back with you the second week of October. What is next? Going to Canada. Yep. When we go up to Canada, we’ll be up there. I think we’re leaving on October 10th. So, check back with with us then. Check out uh the H Heartland Waterfell YouTube. This episode will be airing within the next 10 days. So, make sure you check on that. Check all of our social medias. We’ll be giving you guys updates on when that’s going to air. Um, make sure you like, comment, subscribe. um get in on that chance to win that swag pack as soon as this video drops. Video drops. Make sure you’re commenting on that to enter the in the HW Swag Pack. And uh yeah, thanks to DoubleT Kennels for uh sponsoring Behind the Blind podcast and we’ll see you guys here in a couple weeks. And big thanks to big thanks to Cody and Big Mike. Absolutely. And Brenda Brenda. Yeah. Shout out Mrs. B. Uh we love you guys, man. We look forward to this trip every year. It’s one of I mean, y’all are like family. We love you guys. And we get to see each other again in November. Yeah, that’s right. So, come on. Here we go. Hell yeah. Until next time.