Innholdsfortegnelse for December/January 2018-19 i Wildfowl

OUR BOYS HAD a great morning near New Prague, Minnesota. Settled largely by middle-Europeans, Minnesota also has a New Munich and New Ulm, whose favorite son was polka-band leader “Whoopie John” Wilfarth. Early settlers, like Rev. Burkle’s flock who founded Stuttgart, Arkansas, often named their new city after their home in “The Old Country.” Minnesota is the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” and there are numerous small lakes surrounding New Prague, which is south of Minneapolis, and not too far from there is the Mississippi River that rises just north of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/ St. Paul. These boys made their local Browning dealer happy as five of the six are shooting Automatic 5s that advertised “5 shots under your finger.” Their guns were but 10 years old in 1913,…

SETTING OUT HIS decoys on a public area in Michigan, Jeremy Tilly looked forward to the coming sunrise. Only a year old, his female yellow Lab, Skye, was in her first hunting season. It was cloudy and a breeze was blowing, good duck hunting weather in Michigan. “It was more of a dog training morning than a hunting morning,” Tilly said. “I wanted her to see some ducks and be able to mark them, so she was sitting up on the pod where she could see everything that was going on.” The long point where he had set up his boat blind was a notorious hangout for ringnecks and bluebills. It wasn’t long before he heard the sound of wings ripping wind. The flock of bluebills was two-dozen strong. He…

WHEN SNOW GOOSE conservation hunting began the Texas coastal guides were ecstatic. All that would be needed was to kick back, turn on the e-caller, and watch the light geese pile in. No more blowing on a goose call for six hours straight. No more watching big groups of geese approach the decoys only to slide off at the last minute No more scratching for a few juveniles when the weather wouldn’t cooperate. Now it would be easy hunting with smiling clients posing with big harvests. Well, it didn’t take long to realize electronic callers were not a magic solution. Sure, a few more juvenile birds would come in without hesitation, but the big flocks didn’t fall from the heavens. Guides learned the hard way that this wintering area where…

IT WASN’T UNUSUAL for Jay Gunn to see a small flock of white-fronted geese when he was duck hunting in Arkansas 25 years ago. The birds were always around, but they were little more than a novelty. Gunn even scratched a few down when they glided low over his blind. Times have certainly changed. Gunn, who hunts almost exclusively in west central Mississippi now, has become mildly obsessed with specks. A meticulous record keeper, he and his friends hunted 28 days in 2015 and killed 212 birds. The limit was just two birds per day. A year later, the USFWS bumped the limit to three birds and Gunn and his partners shot 252 geese. Last year, their total kill was 359 over 35 days. “Their numbers are ten-fold what they…

WATERFOWLERS ARE SLAVES to the weather. In the spring and summer we hope for the right mixture of rain and sun so we can dig duck hunting impoundments, plant supplemental feed, and manage weeds and cover. As we do this, we’re also keeping an eye on the conditions up north, praying that nesting success is high and the birds are healthy and well-fed as autumn approaches and the migration, and hunting season, draw near. And then it happens. The fall flight sends millions of birds cascading down from their summer range in the north country. With any luck your hunting site is a scheduled stop along the way, but now the weather plays a more vital role in the success or failure of our hunts. We need cold weather to…

SCOTTSBLUFF, NE—Any waterfowl hunt begins with a strong dose of optimism, but sometimes pessimism creeps in, too, as though we are shielding ourselves from possible disappointment. How good could a late-season Midwest hunt be for birds that had been shot at four-plus months? It was the first week in January, and know-it-all waterfowler buddies back home had told me we’d likely get frozen out in western Nebraska by that time of year. Worse (or so I thought) it had snowed heavy just a day or two prior, and now it was so cold I couldn’t keep my Lab’s water from freezing. That had to move ‘em further south, right? “Just show up,” Ricky Hart of Lucky Duck and “The Grind” TV show had said. “Warm water sloughs, the river they…

WHAT IS IT about snow geese that drive men to the brink of insanity? They walk away from steady jobs, abandon family for weeks at a time and drain their bank accounts as they follow the white wave south in the fall and then back north in the spring. Clothes and bodies go unwashed for days, faces covered by weeks of grit. Sleep? There’s no time, not when the birds are on the move and thousands of decoys need to be set before first light. You can spot a snow goose nut the second he pulls into the parking lot. Spend a day lying in a cold, muddy field as wave after wave of geese wing overhead and you’ll see why some hunters become obsessed with snows. It’s almost like…

“OBVIOUSLY, THE FIRST thing I look at when I’m researching puppies is pedigree. You want to make sure your dog can do what you need it to do. You also want to place the right bet that your retriever is going to have all of the health clearances,” says Ashly Kite, owner of Moss Bend Retrievers. “You’ve got to do your homework, there is no way around it.” Kite’s warning may seem like an obvious one, but plenty of waterfowl hunters aren’t heeding it. The reason? Mostly cost. A well-bred dog is more expensive than a standard, question-mark retriever that may or may not have all of its health clearances. This, coupled with a lack of understanding on how many genetic time-bombs could be hiding in any given dog, is…

HERE THEY CAME, a shrieking, barking wall of white as far up-and-down and side-to-side as I could see in the Alberta pea field. I felt a bit like Custer at Little Big Horn. At the command, “Now!” I sat up and picked a bird and the fireworks began. Hunting snow geese is an art. Being where they want to be is the secret, and if they want to be there, not much will keep them out. Where hunters are mobile, like on the vast prairies of Canada, where geese are treated by farmers as pests, finding a field at dusk then setting up there in the pre dawn darkness is the ticket. In places like Maryland, where all is bound with leases and private ownership, it’s a bit catch as…

YOUR RETRIEVER SHOULD be introduced to water at an early age, just make sure you do not attempt this kind of training when the water is too cold or deep. At this stage, the goal is to make a puppy’s introduction to water a pleasant experience, so he does not become fearful of it. If your pup does not eagerly enter or refuses to enter the water, don’t get overly aggressive and force it. This misguided effort on your part simply increases his reluctance to enter the water and swim. At the beginning of water training, on a warm day, find a shallow spot in a pond where the pup can walk and will not have to swim. Put on your boots, wade a short distance out in the shallows…

THERE IS NO QUESTION—and never has been, among flaggers—that the right motion will work for geese. Lucky Duck’s flappers put that to rest. Birds landed beside the spread, inside the spread and keyed on the decoys, not the hunters. “The Grind” crew were invited to test them here with Angel Wing Outfitters, via Nebraska native Kevin Wolverton. “Since the first year we went with Kevin and Ethan we realized that Angel Wings is a special place with great people and some of the best hunting in the United States,” Hart says. Perfect proving ground for motorized goose flapping decoys, which are still underutilized in most areas. Lucky Duck’s Tim Noe urges you to not overthink. “When your hide is difficult, adding motion can concentrate the birds’ attention away from the…

I RECENTLY HELPED register my 13-year-old grandson, Walker, for a hunter’s safety course. Walker has accompanied his father, Matt, and I on a couple goose hunts, and he wants to carry a shotgun himself this year when we go to Alberta. Way before he signed up for the safety course, I knew Walker would soon someday be joining us on a waterfowl hunt, and I look forward to having him along for years to come. My Cousin Ray is a good man, but hunting is not his thing. At Walker’s invitation, Ray’s kid, Jake, is also taking the hunter's safety course. Because Ray has never hunted himself but realizes its wholesome, healthy benefits, he has asked me to show his kid everything I know about hunting and shooting, which I…