Episode 57 - Kelly Presley

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Hey, welcome to Tailgate Beers. Ryan and Austin here as usual. Hey, today we are sitting down with a friend of ours here locally in the Peoria area, Mr. Kelly Presley. Kelly is with Presley Outdoors, which is a very friendly business here in the Peoria Bartonville, Illinois area that has graciously been involved with the podcast with cruisins, tailgate and tall boys and everything else. So, Kelly, welcome. [00:00:52] Speaker B: Thank you. Glad to be here. [00:00:54] Speaker A: So. So tell us about what your involvement within Presley Outdoors is. [00:01:00] Speaker B: How many hats do I wear? [00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah, how many hats currently? [00:01:03] Speaker B: All of them. As I was saying earlier, we've been in business for 79 years. So my grandfather started Presley Southside Worm Ranch 1946 and ran it. And he had nine kids and nine kids picked worms, went out and got minnows, got shiners, got crawdads, did all the work for the business. They all got older. Everybody started splitting off and going their own ways as they're still working at the store. And then my dad was, I would say more involved than the others or stayed more involved than the others anyways, and he took it over in the late 70s and him and my mom ran it until 10 years ago. I bought the business from them, but in that time they took it over. It was a little like 1500 square foot building and then they doubled the size in 1993 and they doubled the size again in 1990 or 1989, doubled it again in 1993. And then we moved up to Bartonville 20 years ago when we quadrupled the size we needed to get out of the. Where we had previously at the Southside Worm Ranch was in the south end of Peoria. Oh, really? Yeah. [00:02:06] Speaker C: Was it. Isn't it right by where there was. There's like an old Hardee's building there by the old Coca Cola. Yeah. Is that was. [00:02:13] Speaker B: It was just up the road from there. Is it the very corner of like Adams and Washington where they split and. And Kraus comes down? But a nice part of town 50 years ago, a little, little rougher when we got older and moved on. But they had a couple, you know, reasons we needed to get out of there and we needed a bigger business more than anything or bigger building. My dad had bought the whole block and it still wasn't enough room for us to do what we wanted to do. And getting into the hunting side more, that was mostly fishing. When we were down there, we had some hunting business. We moved to Bartonville 20 years ago. I think we moved a hundred guns. It's, you know, and two of them were handguns. Ten of them are rifles and maybe 90 shotguns. It wasn't many. And we got 4,000 guns in there right now. [00:02:55] Speaker C: So now you guys have a massive parking lot. I don't know how much of that lot you own, but, you know. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of property. [00:03:02] Speaker B: It was really. Did you ever go. You went to the old Worm ranch, didn't you? You never went down. It was tiny, it was small and it was very congested. It was a bad intersection. And yeah, we had probably 30 parking spots. It was. [00:03:12] Speaker C: It was tough because when I would have been going. If you did 20 years ago. Yeah. [00:03:17] Speaker B: Is when you moved to Bartonville, 2004. [00:03:20] Speaker C: So honestly, I got into hunting two years after that. [00:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:25] Speaker C: So it was very new out there. [00:03:26] Speaker B: It was rough. Wayne worked there. You can ask. It wasn't it? It was fun. I mean, we look back, we stayed open for a year while we kind of got people transition to coming up to Barnville, which is only five minutes away. It's not very far. But yeah, it was an interesting, like, interesting time in life from going from growing up down there in the south end and, and, you know, beating up the alleys down there with the local kids and whatever, to moving up to Bartonville. It's an old Sullivan's Thompson's food basket or whatever. The Sullivan's food store. So just a big square, but allowed us way more space to do what we want to do and expand into the hunting category more. [00:04:03] Speaker A: So growing up, were you brought right into hunting outdoors? What is your activities that you did growing up and what are you doing today? [00:04:13] Speaker B: I grew up asking my dad to duck hunt and bass fish way more than he had the ability to take me. But he was working, you know, he was running the business. I grew up playing hockey and I traveled hockey for a while. So I was busy. I was a busy boy in general, but all I wanted to do was fish. I went to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota for a hockey camp one summer, and my dad pulled his boat up there and was crappie fishing every single day when I was in camp, you know, working my ass off in there, going from like 7am to like 6pm so it was a full day of hockey for a whole week. And he'd get back every night and he's just filleting these monster crop. He's like, yeah, we caught 100 today. I'm like, okay, I'll go back to hockey again tomorrow. But yeah, I wanted to duck hunt and fish way more than I. I Did when I was a kid, But I did it a lot. I did it enough. That's what I do. Duck hunt. I don't deer hunt. Travel to duck hunt a little bit. Travel to goose hunt a little bit. And I love to fish. I'd fish every single day if I could. I'll go tomorrow. [00:05:11] Speaker A: Never deer hunted, though. Never got into that. [00:05:13] Speaker B: I did a little bit when I was probably 16, 17, 18, maybe to my low 20s. It's not my speed, man. I love doing it. I love doing it. And I say when I. The older I get, the more I relax. I think that when I'm retired, I probably will deer hunt the more. Or deer hunt in the evenings, duck hunt in the mornings. That'd be my life. My wife stays with me. [00:05:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:37] Speaker C: Because my dad. My family didn't hunt or fish or do any of that stuff at all. And so it wasn't until I started working that a guy who I was training under and stuff, he's showed me how to bow hunt. They were all. He taught me how to fish, taught me how to bow hunt. Bought all my rod and reels right there, you know, at Presley's. Went there and had all this money to blow because I was living at home, you know, working a job. And so I bought all these best reels and rods. Still have all of them. But then he started showing me bow hunting. And then I think that's also why Presley's came in. Because you could go out there and [00:06:10] Speaker B: you could shoot the range, help the [00:06:11] Speaker C: range and all that stuff. So it's like, well, go out there. Might as well, you know, go shoot and go mosey and see what else I need to fucking buy. But then as I started deer hunt, it was fun, and it worked. It's another thing when you have the property to go, because I think that directs you of. If you have great places to fish, you become. You fish. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:33] Speaker C: If you have great places to hunt, why would you not deer hunt? And I had a good place to deer hunt. But for me, it also turned into my patience. And sitting there, taking the morning off, Then even as you're doing this, you're going, even if I kill it, I don't know if I. [00:06:48] Speaker B: If that's when the work starts. [00:06:49] Speaker C: If I see a deer right now, I'm going, man, I got all this to do. When I get done, I got to go grab this thing. But I get. When. When you're duck hunting or fishing, you can have that stuff cleaned, done, and off. And I think that's what Directed me to duck because once I started ducking, goose hunting, I'm like, I'm. I'm sold. The social aspect, there's more action is most, actually. [00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I'd go on a tree, and I'd be like, same as you. I would sit there and be like, all right, I could be at work doing this, or I could be at home doing that, or I could be. At times, I could be duck hunting this morning. Why did the hell they go deer hunting when I should be. It's windy. I should be in the duck blind. [00:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:21] Speaker B: And I'm, you know, whatever. But no, I. I would think way too much when I was in a deer stand by myself. So for sure, I think I'll do it when I retire. Yeah. [00:07:31] Speaker C: And it's an adrenaline rush. Like, no, it's cool. It's fun. It's. [00:07:35] Speaker A: I grew up deer hunting. Mid teens, I started hunting, and then I didn't duck hunt or goose hunt probably until. I know it wasn't until I moved here and got to know some of these guys and. And other buddies that we've got, and my cousins, obviously, Wade and Payne, we talked about. And then they've got me out a few times since then. And I enjoyed. Because I enjoy the. The. [00:07:57] Speaker C: The. [00:07:58] Speaker A: The additional adrenaline rushes of. Of, you know, having multiple birds and groups like that come in rather than just, you know, a deer hunt adrenaline rush, you know, at one time. [00:08:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Or a squirrel. Yeah. You get one. Yeah, right. Like the heaviest feet in the world, and you turn around and it's a squirrel. And you're like. [00:08:16] Speaker C: But I even go back to. It is social, and you can make it as fun or what you want to do with it, but a day of just slow deer hunting is brutal. A day of slow duck hunting, you could have talked about, God, who knows what the hell, you know, all sorts of stuff. And to this day, we had a podcast at White Oak. I looked at my boy Luke, who's 11, and I said, hey, this is like a duck blind. He's like, what happens in the duck blind stays in the duck blind. But the thing is, is that such a young age, you're like, I, you know, I started hunting with a guy who was in his upper 70s, and again, all the things that he would talk about were so crazy. [00:08:55] Speaker B: All the. All the good old days. [00:08:56] Speaker C: Just good old days. Or again, he again talk about his marriage to. Talking about the way he. They used to party and what he used to do back in the day to his first car. And so a completely dead Day. A wasted day of duck hunting was so much bonding and a fun time to me. [00:09:13] Speaker B: It's not. Yeah. Unless I got something crazy going at work and I really need to be there. But now I can sit something. I don't know why I can sit in duck blind all day, shoot two, you know, or shoot none. Versus a deer hunt. Yeah. I don't know. It's just not my speed. But I got friends that would much rather be in a deer stand for 30 days straight. Just go, go, go, go, go during the ride. Like these ducks, ducks are flying. He's like, no, I ain't going to go tomorrow morning. No, I ain't going. So whatever. Each their own. [00:09:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's kind of a, A realistic. I mean, so we consider our podcast kind of a country lifestyle. It's called Tailgate Beers. We've talked about the story of, of. Of how Austin essentially came up with the idea of tailgate beers and kind of the, the setting of, you know, just a couple of guys or whoever it is sitting out in the middle of cornfield where we kind of grew up, and on tailgates, drinking, drinking some beer, maybe a fire going, you know, middle of nowhere kind of thing. So it goes very well hand in hand with your store. Just because you have everything outdoors that hunting, fishing, guns, everything else there that, that would align with that. [00:10:17] Speaker C: Even the lifestyle brands. Now there's a lot of people that just love the brand. [00:10:23] Speaker B: Yeah, like we talked about Drake. Drake's real involved with the lifestyle side of things. But yeah, like this weekend, for instance, we're gonna go turkey camp and I go Friday, Friday morning I'll run down there, Schuyler county, and I'll come home on Sunday. But the few guys I'm going with, they're going on Thursday and they'll be down there till Wednesday. Next week they'll go down for. They make a week vacation out of it, but it's exactly that. It's turkey hunt in the morning if we get up, and then at night it's just, you know, grab a beer and hang around and have dinner and then a fire and just do the whole. It's an old country home we stay in out there. That guy grew up there. He raised four kids there. They live in a different home now, and nobody lives there. So it's like just kind of an old country home out in the middle of nowhere in Camden, Illinois. There's like 18 people there, but it's just get away, do a, do the whole man weekend and the deer camps a Big thing for people. Obviously, come to your season, but not a lot of people do turkey camp, so it's kind of my little thing. [00:11:19] Speaker A: So. I've never been turkey hunting. I don't know if you have Austin [00:11:21] Speaker C: or not, but I have not. We talked about it last Thursday with. With Cole. [00:11:28] Speaker A: Yep. Cole Goodwin. [00:11:29] Speaker C: Cole Goodwin was here playing, and he's one that he has a show. But I'm like, man, if you come back, we can always get you hooked up. But we had talked about how I. When I deer hunted, about how you could just see turkeys for days. [00:11:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:46] Speaker C: But if I ever wanted to try to shoot one, I'm like, I've never seen one. [00:11:49] Speaker B: They would never be there if you bought a permit, they wouldn't show up. [00:11:51] Speaker C: They would never show up. So, no, I have not dreamed of it. Yeah. [00:11:55] Speaker B: Turkey in the fall is just a turkey, you know, walks under your tree and you shoot one. Cool. Turkey hunting in the springtime. They're like their mating season. So they're all fired up. Their heads change, go. Go from red, they white and everything in between, and they're gobbling like crazy. So turkey hunting aligns a lot with duck hunting because you're kind of communicating with them. You're calling at them, and they're gobbling back, and you're calling in them, you're gobbling them back. And then you. You can sit and wait for them, or you can kind of run and gun and go at them or whatever. But it's. It's most duck hunters. I would say most duck hunters that I know turkey hunt because they have that same love, but they can't get that same love out of deer hunting. So that turkey hunting is definitely a lot like duck hunting. [00:12:34] Speaker C: And when you guys do your turkey camp, are you. Everybody gets a certain zone or how does that work? [00:12:41] Speaker B: We get up. That's the problem. Aspect is for real. Yeah. So we're lucky that we know a guy over there that owns a ton of land, and he knows everybody that owns a ton. He's the kind of guy that, you know, he's just. Just total hillbilly farmer. Hey, Kelly, go over to. Give me your map. You go over there and go sit under this tree right here and just sit right there and just call Adam and just kind of hanging out. And if you see anybody, you just tell him Dennis sent you. [00:13:08] Speaker C: Oh, my God. [00:13:09] Speaker B: No, I'm not doing that. That's what he said. You just tell him uncle Dennis sent you. Okay, hang on. Who owns the property, and where does the guy Live. Is he farming? Is anybody else on it? [00:13:18] Speaker C: Next thing you know, some guy's charging with a gun. [00:13:20] Speaker B: Yeah, anybody? [00:13:21] Speaker C: Dennis sent me. [00:13:21] Speaker B: Dennis? Yeah, Dennis sent me out there. So, yeah, we've been doing it long enough. We kind of have our own little farms we like to go to. But yeah, he's got a ton of land. So, yeah, I always go to the same farm every year and I never shoot one because not the great at it, but I have a good time. [00:13:36] Speaker C: So you guys all know generally where everybody's at. So you're moving around. [00:13:40] Speaker B: Yeah, there's like 10 people hunting. Everybody knows where they'll be. But he's got thousands, like literally thousands of acres to hunt. So nobody even sees each other. Wow. [00:13:49] Speaker A: Yeah, turkey similar to deer, where you could, you know, push turkey into somebody else's area. [00:13:57] Speaker B: No, they'll go, well, they can fly. Yeah, they don't fly like a lot, but they can fly. So, yeah, if you get, if you scare them and you chase them, they would literally jump up, fly, and then go somewhere and glide away. And they would go away. Or like pheasant hunting. It's not like that. No, it's kind of a patience thing. But sometimes when you're calling at a turkey the gobbler, because you only shoot the toms, you know, the guy or the males, the gob, the gobblers. But they may hang up and you may have to go to them, but if they see you, they just put their wings down and just, just bolt off. So, yeah, like deer. I mean, if you were to try to sneak up on a deer, you can do it on a windy day. [00:14:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:14:31] Speaker B: But if he finds you, yeah, if he sees you, smells you, he's gone. He's not going to give you a chance. They're. They're curious, but they're curious from like a half a mile away. Right. So, yeah, kind of like turkeys. [00:14:43] Speaker A: So let's go to your connection with Wayne. So all of our fans know who Wayne is. Just previous goodness. Previous podcast and conversations with Wayne on the podcast. Tailgate and Tall boys and cruising, certainly. So how did you and Wayne come to meet and what's your relationship? [00:15:06] Speaker C: Wayne's first podcast. You know, Wayne always says, this is Wayne's podcast, you know, tailgate beers, that his won't be out much sooner than yours. No, because he just finally sat down with us. Finally. [00:15:17] Speaker B: Oh, I didn't know he did one. [00:15:19] Speaker C: Well, his is gonna be like a five part series. [00:15:21] Speaker A: I think he's episode 40 and I think you'll be 42 off top of my head. Something like that. [00:15:27] Speaker C: So you guys are actually gonna be. You know, because Wayne's gonna have a part two, part three of all his stuff. [00:15:33] Speaker A: I think it might be 43, so [00:15:33] Speaker B: we should do one together. [00:15:35] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:15:35] Speaker B: He. We went to Limestone High School, and I knew Wayne. Just knew him in passing in the hallways because he was a nerd, and I was a nerd, and. [00:15:47] Speaker C: What do you mean when you say nerd? [00:15:48] Speaker B: They called him Poop Stane Wayne. He was. I would say he's kind of. He was just that guy. I mean, he was just totally neutral. He didn't have any real groups of people. He just kind of knew everybody and hung around everybody. Kind of like me, but we were just kind of. But he was a book nerd. [00:16:03] Speaker C: Like, he was a smart dork. So he was a dork. [00:16:07] Speaker B: He was kind of a dork, Not a nerd. Exactly. He's kind of a dork. But no, he. He. I one day. [00:16:11] Speaker C: Poop stain Wayne. You got to jump back to that one. [00:16:14] Speaker B: I'll never forget the exact moment that I fell in love with that dude. If you remember this story, Wayne. [00:16:20] Speaker A: Wayne is in the room. By the way, [00:16:24] Speaker C: he just brought up your nickname. Poop St. Wayne. [00:16:26] Speaker B: He had it. He had an old truck, a six 68 Chevy, right? 68 Chevy that was baby blue and primer gray. And he pulled. I was. Whatever reason. Me and somebody were walking out of Kroger's in Bartonville, and Wayne pulled up in his truck and reached over, stopped, reached over to the passenger door, flew it open and said, what are you guys doing tonight? You want to come hang out? And he raised. He had a six pack of Budweiser sitting on the seat. We were 16, 21, but 16. And I'm like, sure, yeah, why not? So we hop in with him, and he's like, this truck's just. Was faster than hell and drove off that night. That was kind of the day we kind of fell in love, to be honest. That was. That was the. The moment that we started hanging out. Besides that, it was just kind of a passing. [00:17:15] Speaker C: You guys were the same grade. [00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it was just kind of a passing hello in high school or whatever. And then that evolved into wearing camouflage to football games and using our duck calls to do the theme song at the games. [00:17:30] Speaker C: Really? [00:17:32] Speaker B: For the Rockets? Yeah. And then my day, my dad had a cabin at a lake. At a lake where we duck hunted back in the day. And then we invited four or five people to come, maybe 10 people to come hang out and party afterwards. And it was like a hundred people just at a game turned into a silly, crazy mess of people that, you know, we got. They got my dog drunk. All these people came and whatever. The next day I saw my dad at work and he's like, did you have a party at the. [00:18:02] Speaker C: At the. [00:18:03] Speaker B: What do we call it? The Red Nose Duck Club? You have a party at Big Lake last night? It's like, yeah, we did. Wasn't a lot of people there. I said, yeah, there was. There was actually a couple because my. Yeah, we would. We would get beer at the football games. We had a buddy that would put a case of beer in the back seat of our truck and cover it up. [00:18:21] Speaker C: That was Rod. [00:18:21] Speaker B: That was Rod, Yeah. And that was Hot Rod. [00:18:26] Speaker C: No way. [00:18:27] Speaker B: He had the hookup. He had a wet S10. I'd always pull up next to him. He would put it out and put it in the house. [00:18:31] Speaker C: He was your beer dealer? He was your beer dealer? [00:18:34] Speaker B: Ford Ranger. Sorry. You had an S10. [00:18:35] Speaker C: Hot rod was your beer dealer? [00:18:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And was he. [00:18:39] Speaker C: He was older than. [00:18:40] Speaker B: I'm assuming he was a grade or two older than us. [00:18:41] Speaker C: Yeah, he just had the hookup and. That's so funny. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess everybody leaving because I passed out in the trailer with and some girl and Wayne had passed out in his truck or whatever the hell it was. But all the people that had left were going, of course, going to the cornfield and doing donuts and dumb shit. And there was a guy, old Roger that, that was the caretaker out there that called my dad and was like, there's a couple people down here at your cabin. Just want to let you know. [00:19:10] Speaker A: So at this time when you guys started hanging out and doing this, your dad owned Presley outdoors at that point. Both of you were. [00:19:17] Speaker C: You were. [00:19:18] Speaker A: You were working for him or working. [00:19:19] Speaker B: So anyway, yeah, shortly after that, I found out that he liked to hunt and like to fish. So we started doing that together. Then. Yeah, he. He got a job working for my dad. [00:19:27] Speaker A: Both you and Wayne were working for [00:19:28] Speaker B: your dad at Presley's. [00:19:31] Speaker C: How was Wayne as an employee? [00:19:32] Speaker B: He was great. Outside of that day. Found him sleeping. No, it was great. [00:19:38] Speaker C: Tell us about that story. [00:19:40] Speaker B: The old worm ranch was interesting because we did sell clothing back then. And my dad was all about like over putting out like 15 size large, you know, Columbia jackets. And we'd have to like use two people to pull them apart and slide another jack. But he wanted to have the place packed and have his warehouse empty. So we would always walk up and down the aisle. Because if you wanted to take a coat out and look at it, it would pull four other coats out with it. So we're constantly in there, you know, put stuff back or whatever. But the back stock room. Wayne and I had come in on a. Whatever it was a Saturday or Sunday morning hungover. And I couldn't find Wayne anywhere in the world at the store. And he was logged in and I found him back in the archery room and there was. They went clothing back there, I think, but he was up there sleeping on the second shelf. Tried to wake him up. [00:20:32] Speaker A: He's like, wait, what? [00:20:33] Speaker B: No, I go get my dad. I'm like, Wayne's sleeping back there. Go yell at him. You won't listen to me. [00:20:42] Speaker C: I don't. [00:20:42] Speaker B: He snitched. Never. [00:20:47] Speaker C: That's so funny. Bad me [00:20:52] Speaker B: that would have that have been the second to last New Year's Day I'll ever work. Because it must have been. It was the year 99 to 2000 when we thought nothing was going to work the next morning. Remember that? And we were partying a Dave Ingleke. And I got my ass up that next morning and my dad wanted me to be there at 6 o'. [00:21:12] Speaker C: Clock. [00:21:12] Speaker B: And I got up and I'm like. It was like whatever, like six. I'm like, shit. So I get in my truck, you know, I had nothing. I got off the couch with whoever and bolt my ass in there. Get there at like 20 after 6. I'm gonna get my ass ripped by my dad. I'm so pissed. I'm like, oh gosh. I like strolled in there with my tail between my legs. He's not there. What do you mean he's not. The whole place is shut down. So I stroll. It's a good feeling not knowing what's gonna happen, right? I stroll back to my house because I lived at home then. And my dad's like, ah, yeah, we were nothing going on. So I just went home. I'm like, dude, I busted my ass to get there. I didn't know if my truck was gonna start. I checked the microwave to see if the time was gonna be on. We thought everything wasn't gonna work. I'm like, that's the last New Year's Day I'll ever work. And we shut down on New Year's Day. We only open closed two days a year before that, Thanksgiving and Christmas. So that's the year 2000. I made it three days. I was like, I'll never commit. So it must have been New Year's Day the year before that is when [00:22:10] Speaker C: James Joe Hurston ran every single stop sign, stop light to get us to. It was me, Joe. On New Year's Day. We woke up, like, super late. We ended up still being, like, 20 minutes late, but, man, that was another. His dad. His dad drove you guys? No, Joe Hurstman drove me and him. You did not show up late to Presley. Kelly drove. Kelly. No, Joe Hurstman drove me and Joe Hurstman to get to Presley's on New Year's Day. [00:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think I was there. I was there. [00:22:43] Speaker C: We were working with Tim, with Kelly's dad. [00:22:47] Speaker B: My dad was a hothead. [00:22:49] Speaker C: But you did not show up late [00:22:50] Speaker B: to press this or your day was ruined. [00:22:52] Speaker C: What would he. What would he do if he knew you were hungover or you were dragged? [00:22:56] Speaker B: What dumb stuff. Yell at you and make you feel like. But that was my dad back then. He was just that kind of guy. But he'd be like, gets. Get a. Get a minnow bucket full of water and a rag and you're gonna wipe down all the landings and clean all the dust up off of every little fishing lure package and whatever. And it didn't need to be done. It did. But nobody actually did that unless you were late or pissed him off in some way. Yeah. [00:23:22] Speaker C: Yeah. Because we will get his side of the story here hopefully soon. But I mean, what. I mean, what other things would he, like, do with people as far as knowing that you guys are just. I mean, at this point. How old are you guys? 17, 18, 16. [00:23:36] Speaker B: That year we were 18. Yeah, we just graduated. 18, 19. [00:23:41] Speaker C: What other crap jobs were there at Presley's? [00:23:45] Speaker B: Clean the parking lot. If there was nothing going on, you go outside and clean cigarette butts out of the parking lot. And being in the south end, there was always cigarette butts and. Yeah. Beer bottles and whatever else laying around. [00:23:57] Speaker C: Organizing the rocky boot, [00:24:00] Speaker B: the other little attic. [00:24:02] Speaker C: Organizing the boots. [00:24:03] Speaker B: That was. I don't know why the attic was tarred. Like, the floor was tarred or maybe the ceiling was. I don't know. Whatever. That thing was nasty up there. You go up there when it's hot out and it was in an attic and it was dark and it was tarred so your feet would stick. It was so damn hot up there. And that's where you would put, like, boot back stock. And understood why he did that, but he did what he had to do back then. He didn't have much space. [00:24:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:24:27] Speaker B: Clean the minnow tanks. That was one. It's a drain. Them get in, scrub them down with everything. Hose them down. Yeah, it was fun back then. [00:24:39] Speaker C: What's a. What's a. What's a crap job now at Presley's? [00:24:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it ain't that crappy anymore. [00:24:46] Speaker A: But what. [00:24:47] Speaker C: What would that. What would the kids now that work there consider when they piss me off? [00:24:51] Speaker B: Yeah, clean the bathrooms. [00:24:52] Speaker C: Oh, go straight to them. [00:24:53] Speaker B: They're disgusting. [00:24:56] Speaker C: Disgusting, really? [00:24:58] Speaker B: No, we keep them clean. But, yeah, they do. It's just dumb stuff because they do, you know, a little quick douche, I call it. But they just get a quick little clean. But the in depth clean is pretty nasty. But I did have a guy the other day exactly, that, you know, I want. I want it to look better back. What do you want me to do? So here's a. What you need to do. So I took him over the middle tank, I grabbed a bucket of water, I gave him a little rag, and I said, start cleaning all these landings. I don't want a speck of dust here. Well, what if it gets dirty? I said, dump the water out and grab new. I don't think younger people quite understand that. We were beaten by all that, by my dad and my Uncle Lester, who was my dad like, but much angrier and a little bit shorter. He had short man syndrome, but he would have. He would get real mad at us and have us do all that shit. So it was a little different back then. And I'm not as. Yeah, Dennis. He was just whatever. But I'm not that mean. I'm simpler. [00:25:55] Speaker C: You don't think you are my mother. Who's Karen? [00:25:58] Speaker B: Your mom? Yeah. She's the sweetest thing. You know what, though? She's still, to this day, she'll come into. She'll come into the store and she'll start counting. One, two. There's four of you standing here. Why are y' all not doing anything? She'll count, like, out, like, just like this. So you already know what she's gonna say instantly when she starts pointing her fingers. And she didn't even own the place in 10 years, but she. Which is nice because I'm in my office 99% of the time, so. [00:26:26] Speaker C: So good. [00:26:27] Speaker A: I was just gonna say, I mean, do you ever find yourself. I mean, at a younger age even, you know, and your dad owned it, and you and Wayne are buddies, just, like, going in there, like, playing in the store. I mean, you got a whole store full of, like, you know, things that people like us love. [00:26:41] Speaker B: I did it today because I'm gonna go fishing tomorrow. So. Yeah, I'll spend an hour down just like talking to the employees or whatever or talking to customers. I go shop. [00:26:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:51] Speaker B: Grab the thing. The few things I think I'll need for the day or during duck season is the big thing because most of the guys in there are duck hunters. Some of them are deer hunters and they're kind of private, you know, anyway, sat in a deer stand. But the duck hunters are always talking, chit chatting, who's undercoat, who shot somebody's swing or who pissed somebody off or who's killing the most ducks at what stateside or you know, who did this, who did that, whatever. So who's the migrations going on today or is dead. So duck season. A lot of times I'm just kind of standing there bullshitting with the customers and the employees or whatever, which don't get anything done. And they get used to that. All right, so Kelly's talking to us so we can kind of stand around the rest of the day. Right. And I go into my office and work and I come down, I'm like, no, you got to kind of get something done today. [00:27:32] Speaker A: So you mentioned any. Any thoughts on what Central Illinois, Peoria area, Illinois River. [00:27:39] Speaker B: What. [00:27:39] Speaker A: What's happening with. With migrations? Are numbers low as far as ducks that we're seeing? Get into that at all. [00:27:45] Speaker B: That's loaded. I met with a guy a couple months ago about that who's pretty intelligent. He's not a DNR guy or anything, but I don't think the numbers are any lower. I think that there's a couple areas that are being managed either really well in your opinion, or really not well in your opinion. I guess everybody can figure how they feel about that. But I think there's a ton of ducks here still. They just were so good at hunting anymore. People are really good at duck calling. Decoys look like ducks spinning wing decoys splashing, you know, on the water and whatever. I mean, we're really, really. We throw everything at them now that when we hunted growing up, we. You throw out some decoys and we kind of thought we knew what we were doing. It's changed a lot. So ducks have gotten accustomed to that and they've gotten smart to that. I don't think necessarily there's less ducks here and somebody will argue me that. And I don't think that. I just think we're really good at it. I think we're pushing them to areas where they're all sitting in one spot where they know they're safe and they know they have Food, they have water, they have rest and they don't leave. [00:28:50] Speaker C: You don't think that temperature changes a little bit? How it's like 60 degrees on Christmas Day and how nothing's froze over has any effect on it? [00:28:57] Speaker B: I mean, last year was cold. Last year was really frozen. [00:29:02] Speaker C: The last five years before that, I [00:29:04] Speaker B: felt like the two years before that were very mild. But I mean, outside of that, I mean, no, I don't think on those years. Yes, but I don't believe in climate change. I don't. [00:29:17] Speaker C: But I do believe there are changes that you look at the temperatures and different things. You know, those years, February and March were super cold. [00:29:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:27] Speaker C: The cold happened later. I mean, it was arctic, late January, February time. A couple of those years where we had these negative days. In that time frame when you drive up to Chicago and you have fields that are just black with geese. [00:29:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think the migration has changed in general, especially with geese, with ducks a little bit. But Rye duck hunt, for instance, we shot a hell of a lot of ducks this year was really good. But we had changed a lot of management practices to get ducks doing that. You know, right next to us is 2200 acre. You're familiar with them in between the rice ponds, you know, they only got 15 guys that hunt there. I got 2200 acres to hunt. So when they're not hunting, what are the ducks doing sitting there? [00:30:08] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:30:09] Speaker B: So everybody that hunts around there are complaining there's no ducks. Go in there and look, there is tons of ducks in there. It's just that one guy keeps buying all that land, all that land, all that land around there. And those ducks can actually get up, fly around in a mile or two mile circle and still nobody can see them because the land so big and they have food and they have water. So why would they leave? There's some other refuges around town that south of Peoria and a couple north of Peoria that I kind of an advocate for. Maybe we should hunt them once a week just to kind of stir the things up a little bit. But if you open it all up to everybody, the ducks are just gonna fly right through. They'll never stay here. They'll just migrate right through. And people in Arkansas complain they don't have ducks anymore. When our duck season was over, there were some here like there is in a year. There's some mallards, but there's no teal, there's no shovelers, there's no widget, there's no pintails, there's no this, there's no that they're all south. Arkansas says we don't have them here. Where are they? [00:31:08] Speaker C: Right. [00:31:09] Speaker B: They didn't disappear. They didn't go out into the Gulf of America. [00:31:11] Speaker C: Right. [00:31:12] Speaker B: You know, they're not just sitting nowhere. [00:31:14] Speaker C: We even have better tracking on like [00:31:16] Speaker B: the migration they do everywhere in Arkansas. And they watch them go from refuge to refuge to refuge to refuge in Arkansas, you know, they got these mud boats and they got these mud motors are loud and they put these stock car, you know, exhaust kits on them and they're even louder. And they're there at 1:00 clock in the morning and they're going through the woods, you know, down there. They're just blowing them ducks all over the place. So then they're saying the ducks aren't there, but at the same time their practices have changed immensely. And how they're hunting down there and what they're doing, they're just pushing them all out. So you got guys that are reverting back to the old ways, which is kind of what my duck club's doing. And the clubs around us, some other clubs down the river too, that are going to more quiet, getting rid of the boats, you know, getting rid of the rangers and four wheelers and all that stuff. And they're trying to go to a more quiet, silent way going in. We're only hunting four days a week in our club instead of five or six like other clubs are doing. And you know, just things like that that have improved our hunting. [00:32:11] Speaker C: But what's the, what's the craziest or funniest ducks hunting story you have that you can share? Because I have a buddy, for example, who's again, much older, he's in his 70s, and he talks about when his dad took him to one of those clubs you're talking about way back in the day, guys come down from Chicago, all this stuff and next, you know, like, you know, you know, he's got a guy, you know, bringing in, you know, a stripper. [00:32:39] Speaker B: From the first Playboy I ever looked [00:32:40] Speaker C: at, like shit like that, but you [00:32:44] Speaker B: know, just those Dick Dempsey's and he was, this guy was a little Irishman and like 20 DUIs or I mean, I don't even know how he was still. He had his seat on the Chicago Board of Trade. You know, he was one of those guys and he was from Chicago area and he had duck club down just north of up there between Spring Bay and Lake. And my dad took me up there hunting. I was little, I was probably like 10, 12 years old. I didn't know. I was probably 10 years old. And we had shot some ducks in the morning, and we came back in to have something to drink for them, eat for me, and go back out. And I was this far from my dad and Dick. They were talking at a table when I had this Playboy. I was like, oh, my God. So I grabbed it and I was sitting like here, kind of looking at it, like, low. And I kept looking at them, and I'm like, they don't even know I'm looking at this Playboy, dude. You know, I'm kind of holding it down because. Pitching a tent, you know. Of course, I was 10 years old, and I keep looking at them. And I remember we went back out, we shot a limited ducks that day. I'm like, that's the first Playboy. Because I heard about it from my kite older cousins Craig and Jeff, that. That had talked to me about Playboy, and I didn't know what Playboy was. Now I do, sitting in this duck shack. Maybe not my best duck hunting story, but. Oh, that's an interesting duck moment. Growing up when I was a kid. [00:34:02] Speaker C: No, that's a good one. I mean, the one that he also told, which is more not so much funny, but he. In order to learn gun safety, he had to go out and do all the things, pick up the ducks, go get this, go run and do this. Pretty much, he was the camp bitch of doing everything because he's however old. And then he would go back in to hunt. He would essentially pretend the entire time as if his gun was loaded for, like the whole season. Yeah, raise it, do all the things, [00:34:38] Speaker B: but not actually shoot. [00:34:39] Speaker C: But not actually shooting. But then finally, once he had done all the work and he had gone through the motions, he essentially got his first shells and said, hey, today is live. [00:34:50] Speaker B: I did that for my son when he was little. Pretty cool. He had one shell for a whole season, like when he was 10 or 11 years old. Then the next season I let him shoot two. And then the third season he hunted, I let him have three. When I was a kid, my dad didn't have a dog. He had a dog when I was older, but when I was a kid, he didn't have a dog. You were a dog. It was kind of me. I had a size 12 chest waders that he gave me out of the attic we talked about up there, and they probably leaked. I still this day wear a 10 and a half. I had size 12 when I was 11 years old. So I would tromp, you know, my feet coming out I tried to get everything, but when he. When I was hunting, I would think I was 10 or 11 years old. I had a Remington 1120 gauge that did not have, like your typical rubber buttstock on it. It just had a plastic, like, stock piece on it. And I was standing. I was on a cinder block, and I went to set the gun down, and I didn't set it on the block. I. I let it hit the floor. It dropped it accidentally. And my dad said, you do that again. So I did it again. I dropped it and I cracked. I didn't go off or anything, but I cracked the wood stock. And he took the gun from me that day. And that whole season, he gave me a pellet gun and said, this is your gun for the rest of season. [00:36:02] Speaker C: Wow. [00:36:02] Speaker B: I couldn't go duck hunting anymore, and he made me take the hunter safety course again, which I'd already taken once, which is terrible. Yeah. So I had to go through and do it again. Yeah. Wow. That wasn't any fun. [00:36:16] Speaker C: Teaches you a lot of life lessons. Absolutely. I love it for my kid. [00:36:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a. It's a great thing. Yeah. So I've got. [00:36:23] Speaker A: I've got a question I want to ask. It's not a loaded question by any means, but today's youth, right. How do we continue or how do we improve? How do we give access, whatever it is, to today's youth to get them off of The Xboxes, the PlayStations, the video games, the telephones, whatever it is to. To get them to want to be out there doing the hunting like it sounds like all of us did at a fairly early age. [00:36:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's. It's a different world, you know, I mean, kids, when my son was little, he. He came with me. He started coming with me when he was five years old, four years old when you. I knew he was old enough to go outside and not complain too much, and he didn't push it. Like, if he was out there for a couple hours, he didn't, like, you know, time to come. Okay, let's go home. I would not allow electronics. And realistically, when he was little, electronics were just in their infancy. Then, like, the iPhone came out, what, 20 years ago, and he's 21. So it was all pretty new back then. Apps were new. But move forward to my daughter who duck hunted for the first time. She's dove hunted a few times, and it's nice, but duck hunting for the first time this year at 8 years old, and she's like, can I bring My iPad. [00:37:34] Speaker C: I'm like, no, no devices. [00:37:35] Speaker B: Your iPad. She wanted to bring books. If I get bored, can I read? Of course you can read before bored, you know. And that morning actually was just enough. I shot my six ducks that morning. Four mallards, two gadwalls, and it was like one every half an hour. It was just. She's like, can we go now? I'm like, well, we'll go, and we'll go in 10 minutes. And then, boom, I'd shoot another one. And she. Could we stay longer? Of course we can stay longer. But having. Bringing your kids and getting them involved with you is extremely important. Right? Just not necessarily for Presley's outdoors, but for the sport itself and for you to be able to pass that along to your kids. I watch my son, you know, on mornings when I'm going to work and he's off and at it. He's going duck hunting in the mornings on a Saturday morning. He's pretty cool, you know that. I taught him at a young age, but not everybody has that, you know, you didn't learn that from your dad. You know, you had to kind of get that from somebody else. And how the hell you fell into that and actually liked it is. Is a cooler story to me than somebody who does that around their kids because they look up to their dad, they look up to whatever, and. And, like, I want to do what my dad does, but you didn't have that. You know what I mean? So you had some great guy come in and grab you and bring you into that world. That's interesting. And it's cool to see people do that. And I do see that often in my store. I see that often through the youth hunt weekends for duck hunting and the youth hunt weekends for goose hunting and, you know, those kind of things. I see along on the fishing side a lot of things, too. You know, the. They got high school bass fishing going on now, but bringing your kids with. It's your time to be. To do what you want. It's time. It's dad's time away. But there's got to be, you know, a day a week or a day every other week or whatever where you bring your kids along. And as a parent, I think you're supposed to like that. And if you don't like that, I don't know what's wrong with you. But like, I watched my son shoot his first duck. I was blown away. We had a group of gadwalls come in. We're in a cornfield Industry buddy of mine and his wife were there actually, and they said, let Tyler shoot the next group that comes in. There's a group of Gatwolks in a cornfield. Group of gavels come in. Tyler comes up, shoots two, like 10 years old. Shoots two, whatever he was 10 or 9 or 10, 11 years old. Shoot two Gadwall out of the sky. And I have them mounted and they're in my office at my house now, side by side. But it's just interesting to see, you know, that happen at such a young age. And then watch him develop, you know, into the asshole he is now. But also, you know, he leads to Duck Hunter and he loves to do it. And he visits Wayne's establishments every now and then, now that he's 21. But he. Yeah, it's just cool. I think you're supposed to want that as a parent. You're supposed to want your kids to do the things that you do, the good things that you do and succeed and have fun and enjoy the fun side of life and not just work, work, work. [00:40:10] Speaker C: Yeah, it's tough also going even to my side. It's tough being, you know, 17, 18 and you have somebody showing you. But now you have to go into these. It's a little nerve wracking. Like you know exactly what you're talking about. You go into your store, a lot of people, it can be very intimidating of like, yeah, well, I don't know, kid. What do you like? Do you know what you want? I don't know what the fuck I want. I literally just started this I in the Internet. Really again, at that time wasn't what [00:40:36] Speaker B: it was all just kind of developed [00:40:37] Speaker C: to be able to Google and look up all this stuff. And so to have somebody to lean on, to ask these questions, it took some time because you can feel very awkward going into a duck blind of all these people that know what they're doing and they're the one idiot that has no idea. [00:40:51] Speaker B: And yeah, and there's people that don't do that well, but there's a lot of people that do too. There's a lot of people that are like, hey man, try this or do that or use this. You know. [00:41:01] Speaker C: But they've also all done it by trial. Yeah, they've also all tried the shit. They've all been in the same situation at one point or another. They've all felt like a. Or tried something that didn't work or [00:41:12] Speaker B: when growing up, when. When Wayne and I were just in high school and out of high school we hunted with a Guy that had a decent hunting spot, and he would. He would invite Wayne and then Wayne brought me involved, and then he wouldn't invite us. And we would pretty much anytime, just call them and say, well, can we come tomorrow? Yeah, let's go. And we had a couple guys like that, actually, and they. They had their own kids that would hunt, but they would. He would take us all the time, you know, and we were willing to do all the work, which I'm sure was a ton of it for him. And we. One guy's passed away, now I can think of. The other guy I can think of. I don't hunt with him anymore. But they didn't have to do that. And they weren't. But they were cool. They weren't. They weren't like, what are you doing, dude? Like, yeah, what do you. What kind of gun is that? You know, they were cool, like, hey, let's do this, or try that. Or like, you're shooting number twos today. It's really windy. Maybe you should shoot BB's today. It's windy. Or, you know, the one dude would always make us go up. He would have decoys on the strip, mine on the water, and then he got his blind in the bank. And then up above in a cornfield, he had a bunch of big feet goose decoys up there. And we knew after time that he had this, a propane can and a torch. And he would go up there and torch all the decoys to get the frost off early in the morning. Because if you caught any geese coming out early and they saw frosty decoys, they wouldn't like that. Right. So just little things like that we learned from him. But that dude didn't have to take us. Yeah. [00:42:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:42:32] Speaker B: He could have sat out there by himself every single day and smoked a joint and just like, totally had his own little moment all by himself. But he would hoe us. Yes. Every single time. I thought that was cool. [00:42:40] Speaker C: Who was the better hunter between you and Wayne? [00:42:43] Speaker B: Better. [00:42:44] Speaker C: Better. [00:42:44] Speaker B: Oh, God. What do you think? [00:42:47] Speaker C: Group's coming in. [00:42:48] Speaker B: Who do you think? [00:42:49] Speaker C: Group's coming in. Who's. [00:42:50] Speaker B: Honestly, we were. We were both pretty bad shots back then. I don't think there was anything that would bring us in. Duck calling, goose calling. Weren't great at it. No, we were just kind of like the work dudes. We did all the shit work. Who was a better duck hunter? I don't know. [00:43:09] Speaker C: I would say nowadays we know who stuck it out the longest. [00:43:12] Speaker B: I would say I'm a better shot [00:43:13] Speaker C: in a Duck blind would just be [00:43:15] Speaker B: like, he could do it. We're going to go this year. [00:43:18] Speaker C: He could never do it. [00:43:19] Speaker B: He. But he took on golf before I did. There's no doubt. [00:43:22] Speaker C: That phone, just like your kids. No devices. No devices. The phone. Got to put it down, we'll film it. [00:43:30] Speaker B: I make it a point to keep mine in my waiters zipped up. Unless I get a call, I'm not in there farting around with it or whatever. [00:43:36] Speaker C: But yeah, if 10 minutes goes by, he's going to be like, all right, so now what. What are we doing? What's. What's up? [00:43:42] Speaker B: There's so in the duck club, there's some guys from Peoria and there's some guys from Chicago area and there's some guys that are kind of older and did the whole duck club thing when they were younger, you know, because duck clubs have changed a little bit. Duck clubs 50 years ago were. Get away from your wife and do nothing. Revolving your wife or family. It was a little. They've evolved a little bit into a bit of a more family setting now. But I get some of the mole boys in the blind with Wayne. I think they'd have a really good time. [00:44:10] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Just the stories. [00:44:12] Speaker B: I imagine the conversation would. We'd be there past shooting time. [00:44:16] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. We're pumped to have this partnership. So with Presley's now we'll have tailgate and Tall Boys official outdoor store with the Friday night camo night. We'll have, you know, several podcasts and things going on. So we're excited. Do our first maybe tailgate podcast maybe in the store. Ryan's got some ideas. I know I've got some ideas. [00:44:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Camp out and wait till the store closes and then we peek out and interview your dad. [00:44:47] Speaker C: Yeah, interview. Interview Tim on the podcast. [00:44:49] Speaker B: We gotta get my dad. Yeah. [00:44:52] Speaker C: Maybe get some. Just employees. Employees just, you know, some reviews, feedback. [00:44:59] Speaker A: I am in and we talked about it. I'm. Well, I need a couple of guns, actually, because I was gonna say too, because my cousins still make fun of me when I bring out my. My 500 pump. [00:45:09] Speaker B: That's okay. [00:45:10] Speaker A: I still pump. [00:45:11] Speaker C: We do a podcast called Rya. [00:45:15] Speaker B: There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm used to. We'll get you a new one. [00:45:18] Speaker A: They offer me the, you know, the automatics and semis or whatever. And I'm like, no, I like my pump. [00:45:22] Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of like driving the stick and going to an automatic truck, though. Once you get in there, you know, you like, why didn't I do this earlier? [00:45:27] Speaker A: Yep. I'm in the market for concealed carry, too. [00:45:30] Speaker B: And you need multiple handguns like we talked about. One just won't do it. [00:45:33] Speaker A: That's true. [00:45:34] Speaker C: You gotta be like Rambo, scatter all over the house. You never know they'll be in. The strategy of getting out of the house. [00:45:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:40] Speaker C: But no, we're pumped. So, I mean, I think so many different things that we're gonna do. So this is kind of part one of several. And we appreciate you sitting down. Hopefully it wasn't too bad. [00:45:49] Speaker B: No, it's great. Thanks, man. Easy. [00:45:51] Speaker C: In one of the next ones, we'll get more into the music side of. [00:45:56] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. [00:45:56] Speaker C: Of what we've. Because all. We always try to, no matter where anybody comes from, loop it all back into music as well. Just, you know, what kind of your music taste is and. And what you. [00:46:06] Speaker B: I was a big country in. In grade school. Love country music. Like, give me some. I mean, the Neil McCoy, like, you know, the stuff that was cool back then. And as country music evolved and I got into high school, I met some friends that were more into rock and I got into rock and now I find my in. In whatever everything was going on. But the early 2000s were a good time for music, no matter what you were doing. Yeah. I find myself evolving more back into just a more relaxed country music kind of thing. So I'm excited to be part of it. Thanks. [00:46:38] Speaker C: Touching all that. Anyway, so cheers. Thanks for being on. [00:46:43] Speaker B: Cheers. Thank you. [00:46:44] Speaker A: Thank you.