Captain Jeff Coats is a very popular guide from Maryland who specializes in sea duck hunts. He is also an accomplished retriever trainer, brant caller, wildlife photographer and decoy carver. He also produces and is featured in the Ducks, Dogs, & Decoys video series.  Jeff is also a member of the Zink® Calls Pro-Staff®.

I’m sure there are a lot of waterfowlers out there who know you much better as “Pitboss”. Where did you get the nickname?

Jeff: Actually, around 1992 when I was first getting on the Internet you needed a user name for the forums. Maybe in hide sight, I should have used my real name from the get go, as I don’t know if it’s better to be know by Pitboss or Jeff Coats. So Pitboss, it came about because I had a little falling out with some friends, who I had a couple goose pits with along the Eastern Shore. There were two guys who married into a family, a son, the father/father-in-law and me in the pits. These three guys wouldn’t do a thing without the father telling them to or telling them it was okay. They all called him pit boss and you couldn’t move decoys or change anything without asking pit boss. Well we had our little break up and seeing in Maryland you can get personalized license tags, I put Pitboss on my tags because I thought it was kind of cool, being a goose hunting reference and at the same time, I thought maybe those guys would know what that meant.

What was life like growing up in the historic waterfowl area of Havre De Grace, Maryland?

Jeff: Well, Havre De Grace is on the Susquehanna Flats and is the self proclaimed decoy capital of the World. In the day there was a lot of market hunting on the flats, a lot of sink boxes, hand carved decoys, and the whole Upper Chesapeake was right there. I have to tell you, even though I was born in Havre De Grace, when I was growing up, I played a lot of sports and really wasn’t that interested in hunting. It wasn’t until I was 21 or 22 that I went to the Havre De Grace Decoy Show with my younger brother. Going there I had an interest in hunting, but not a strong one; then I saw the decoys. They had a gunning rig contest and because of that I wanted to learn how to make decoys. I wanted to be able to hunt over something I made and that was really what got me going. Prior to that I hunted some, but it wasn’t like now where I think about it every minute of the day.

What led you to form Pitboss Waterfowl and make a full time career in the waterfowling industry?

Jeff: Whatever I do, I do it to the fullest. I just don’t do things kind of half way. I used to be heavily into drag racing before ducks, dogs and decoys. I was all about cars and I still have a 1970 Chevelle original big block sitting in the garage. I went into it with both feet and to be honest with you, what has made me what I am today is good friends and people willing to share information with me. All of the friends who have taken the time to show me how to carve, one in particular is George Williams from Delaware and another is Donald Hughes who I actually met online. Donald had what was like a diary online, he was retired/disabled and was able to hunt everyday from September first to March tenth. You could read what he did every day and at the time I was really interested in hunting snow geese near Bombay Hook, so I emailed him and then met him. I had the interest and he had the time and knowledge. Donald told me how to sea duck hunt and taught me about guiding. Friends with dogs were instrumental in helping me have Master Hunter dogs and Qualified All Age dogs.

With so much to talk about, let’s first hit the guiding part of your business. How many years have you been guiding duck hunts? Have you ever guided for anything else?

Jeff: It’s funny because people always ask me this. I’ve had my captain’s license for quite a while, I’m into my third license and they are good for five years. It’s hard say a specific date because even if you call yourself a guide, it doesn’t mean you have people knocking down your door to go with you. The first few years were a little bit tough. I officially tell people 1999, but to be honest I did some guiding here and there before that, but not necessarily full time.

I’ve just kind of fallen into sea ducks, brant and diver ducks. With divers, I chase canvasbacks specifically. That is pretty much all I’ve guided for under Pitboss. I have a friend who guides full time for snow geese in Delaware and early on I helped him out and still on occasion I may here and there, but when I go out there now, I really just like to take pictures.

Can you list the activities that you conduct within your business or that support your business that keep you engaged in waterfowling year round?

Jeff: The service of guiding is my main stay. At the moment the DVD is not necessarily a profitable venture, although we are working on turning it into a TV show in the future, maybe then there will be a little profit in that. I do make cork decoys, but not as many as I used to. At my peak I was probably making around 150 decoys a year, as I was busy with guiding, but not as busy with the dogs and the DVD. I have some hooded sweatshirts, hats and that kind of stuff as far as gear goes.

How many days a year are you guiding duck hunts?

Jeff: Sea ducks in the Atlantic Flyway are open 107 days and I guide between 80-90 days and I try to fun hunt as much as I can. I only guide the mornings and try to fun hunt as much as I can in the afternoons. I don’t guide in September or the first half of October, so that gives me time to do some fun things. Then once the sea duck season is over with, we are lucky enough to have a snow goose season that goes though March 10^th.

Besides sea ducks, do you typically harvest other types of waterfowl? Do you offer other types of hunts targeting puddle ducks, divers, geese or brant?

Jeff: When we are hunting sea ducks, brant or divers, we do shoot puddle ducks. Wood ducks, blue wing teal, and you name the rest of the puddle ducks and we’ve shot them over the sea duck rig, over the brant rig, the thing is that it’s just got to be cold. Things need to be iced up to push them out to the open water.

Do you call brant with a call or your voice?

Jeff: I use a call. I’m working with Zink now to help them develop one. They made me one that I use as kind of a prototype. There are a couple other guys out there who make brant calls also. The brant react very nice to calling. 

Are your guided sea duck hunts typically over your own hand made decoys? What types of decoys do you make?

Jeff: I get this question a lot. With the sea ducks it’s just too hard to do. The sea duck decoys just take so much abuse, I’m not saying that people aren’t sitting there purposely trying to shoot your decoys, but the boats moving, a big flock of birds come in over the decoys, it’s rough on the decoys. With sea ducks you also will have a lot of crippled birds and you have to shoot them in the decoys, so the decoys get shot up a lot more that way.

My brant rig, I do pride myself in that we do shoot over a hand carved rig. I mix a lot of cork birds into my divers too, but as far as sea ducks goes, I think I’d have an ulcer. My plastic birds, I have 15 on a line and when I put them out, they sound like baby rattles, they are all full of shot. 

Do you make decoys for just yourself or do you make them to sell as well? Do you sell them individually or in dozens? Any specific species you carve?

Jeff: I use them and also sell them. Most people purchase singles or pairs, sometimes maybe six. It just depends on if people are using them for gifts or if they are going to hunt with them. Some guys like to gun over them for a season and then retire them. I have had people buy them by the dozen because their purpose is to actually gun over them, but the majority of my business is someone wanting a single or a pair. I make pretty much anything; the only species I’ve never made is a Canada goose.

I know that you have a hand in carving some of the decoys that will be used by Avery Outdoors® for their Greenhead Gear® sea duck line, which decoy(s) are you working on?

Jeff: I’m not the greatest carver in the World, but I have worked with Fred (Zink) and carved the pattern for the scoter decoys. Avery contacted me and asked if I was interested in being involved with the scoter decoy and pretty much like with everything else, I said yeah, I’d love to do it. I think, at the time, they were trying to branch out and trying to get some different people involved in the decoys. Being that cost is the bottom line, the way it is going to work is I carved one body and then three different heads; a surf scoter, a black scoter and a white wing scoter. The molding process is very expensive, so to make the physical blow mold, it’s just really expensive. It’s a very specialized market, as you have the east coast and the west coast. There are still many different ideas being tossed around for these and until they are 100% done, we just won’t know exactly what the final decoy will look like.

How does photography play into your business?

Jeff: First of all, I just enjoy taking pictures and then remember that I have to do everything to the fullest and the best that I can do it. Second, in 1992, ’93, and ’94 no body was posting pictures on the Internet, so then it was easy to say you did something, but show me the picture that proves it. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I’m not that good of a writer or typer, so my thought was I’d post pictures up on the Internet. So you could tell me that you shot 10 snow geese, but I would show you I shot 10 snow geese. More recently, I pride myself in the photos I take and I think posting up a picture of a bird with shot all around it and the water erupting in the decoys speaks more to my guide service than a pile of dead birds. It’s also opened a lot of doors for me, as I’ve had pictures published in Ducks Unlimited Magazine and sold some photos to magazines in Europe where sea duck hunting is really big.

About how many pictures a year do you take?

Jeff: I used to keep track of it, but not any more. I can tell you when I bought my Cannon 20D, from October through January of the first season with it, I took over 42,000 pictures. I just take as many pictures as I can take; memory cards are pretty cheap compared to what film used to cost.

Can you share a tip with us on a way to take better pictures?

Jeff: In general terms, I think a lot of guys forget about lighting. To me lighting is one of the most important things. It doesn’t matter if you are using a point and shoot or the highest powered camera you can buy, if the sun is not at your back, the sun is wrong. Your pictures will not be good and I think a lot of time people just don’t stop and think about it when they set up a picture. Unless you are looking to do a special effect, I can guarantee you that every time you shoot into the sun; your picture is not going to be good and will look off. Think about the lighting and how it’s going to affect your picture, you’ll see a night and day difference in your pictures.

How many retrievers do you have now? Are you still running any types of retriever tests with them?
 
Jeff: Well six weeks ago we had twelve of them, as Coot had puppies. I had four, but some how my daughter sucked me into another and now we have five. The fifth one, the puppy, is supposed to be her dog, but it stays with me all the time. I’ve been divorced fourteen years or something like that and my daughter is with my ex-wife most of the time, but the puppy stays here with me. The purpose of this last breeding with Coot was that in a few years I’d like to have a granddaughter of Coot’s. So I have five dogs; Coot who is a Master Hunter and QAA, Diamond who is a Master Hunter, Poacher who is a nice little dog, but not sure she’ll be a Master Hunter, Booger who is a young male from Coot’s first litter and now a fifth one.
 
Recently I haven’t run any tests or trials, but to keep myself active in it, I’ve judged a lot of AKC hunt tests and field trials.
 
Last year you released your first video, “Ducks, Dogs and Decoys” and this summer you are releasing a second video.  What motivated you to produce your own video series?

Jeff: I can not take full responsibility for this; Tim Furness is my partner with the DVDs and potentially a TV show. It started with a little thirty minute brant DVD that Tim filmed when he came down and hunted with me, he had cameras going in the boat the whole time and I didn’t know what he was going to do with it, but he put together that thirty minute promo DVD for my guide service. We talked about different ideas in doing it for other guides and what it would be worth to do that and set up a web page. Tim then asked me if I wanted to do a DVD to sell that would be something different, not just cluck, cluck, cluck, boom, boom, boom, not all killing. That aspect was something we both agreed on and with our video; Tim is usually the guy behind the camera and does the majority of the editing. The end result is all Tim Furness.
 
You advertise your videos as being a look into your daily life and they aren’t all about killing birds. Can you tell our readers what they can expect to see in your videos and what makes them different from others on the market?
 
Jeff: We try to use the actually hunt or killing as just a piece to tell the rest of the story. It’s all about ducks, dogs and decoys and includes all the behind the scenes stuff, so it covers what happened before the cluck, cluck, cluck and after the boom, boom, boom. A lot of our feedback was good and people enjoyed seeing something different, but there were a few people that told me that they’d just rather see the hunt. I guess our videos are more about the adventure.
 
Will you be filming for a third video in the 08-09 season? Any new places you’ll be heading or new segments you are planning?  

Jeff: Yes, we will be filming for Ducks, Dogs and Decoys 3 this fall and hopefully some TV show episodes. I’m not sure where we’ll be exactly, but I know we’ll get out of Maryland some.    

Being your life revolves around Ducks, Dogs and Decoys and there really is no “off season” for you, do you have any time for hobbies or interests outside waterfowling?

Jeff: A hobby…in my current situation, I would say any spare time I put into women. The title of Ducks, Dogs, and Decoys actually came from a few girlfriends ago when she told me that her head was going to explode if she heard anything more about ducks, dogs and decoys. When she said it, I was thinking that’s perfect, so I have to give credit to Jen for that. I also spend as much time as I can with my daughter, she’s into sports and I try to be involved there. I keep active with my family; I have a younger brother and three nephews.

So I guess I really don’t have any hobbies, everything revolves around ducks, dogs and decoys. I really don’t have any interest even in other types of hunting.