Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2019 i Wildfowl

WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG you just want the action. A wild boat ride in the dark, ducks and geese back-pedaling point-blank, a black dog exploding to motion and hitting the water, huffing out after fallen greenheads. Gun blasts, recoil, warm birds in hand. Those things never get old, but us hunters, well, we eventually start to. As you mature you realize that hunting is a lot more than outdoor thrills. It is in fact the most amazing way of seeing the world, a visceral lifestyle. You are different from your neighbor, the guy who gets outdoors only to barbecue, attend soccer games and mow his lawn. Through the pursuit of wild game from the field to table, you have developed keen awareness of weather patterns and shifts in nature. While catching…

A NICE MORNING’S shoot maybe along the North Raccoon River, or perhaps nearby Storm Lake. Sac City is nearest to Sioux City, Iowa, to the west on the Missouri River, and it is possible these guys went all the way to the Missouri for their day’s sport, although unlikely because the roads at the time were not what we know today. Most were still dirt wagon tracks and cars of that day, like this Locomobile, were not up for speeding along. Initially I though this to be a Cadillac like the one President Woodrow Wilson was once pictured in, but my eagle-eyed friend, retired National Geographic photographer Bruce Dale, showed me the error of my ways, which was revealed in a photo of Geronimo sitting in a similar car that…

A KICK-ASS DUCK BOAT gives you options you just do not have without one. You can take on big water, backwaters, bays and bayous or rip across sprawling marshes. If there’s a duck on it, someone builds a boat that can take you there. Some combine the boat and the blind concept, purpose built for hiding in a spread of diver decoys or up against the brush. Others are made just to get you there alive, or slipping through vast timber in a public hunting area to a sloggy, stump infested secret hole. And they are all built by people with a passion for duck hunting and boast features that make every hunt easier and safer. Motors run the gamut, from quiet fuel sipping four-strokes ideal for open water to…

IT’S THE PUBLIC hunter’s nightmare. You just paddled 21/2 sweaty miles upstream in the dark only to round the last bend and see the beam of another hunter’s headlamp bouncing off the surface of your secret wood duck death hole. You can’t see the guy’s face, but you know his expression. Smug. Self-satisfied. A raise-the-eyebrows, shrug-the-shoulders, “sorry buddy, what can ya do?” kind of look. After all, you both know Unwritten Rule No. 1 of public land fowling: First guy gets the spot. Always. Clear, simple, inviolable. Or is it? Take what happened to me a few months ago. I had just dropped my decoy bag at the edge of a public pond when two lights appeared on the trail behind me. I turned my flashlight in their direction and…

MY NAME IS Lewie Casper, owner of Wings of the Prairie Outfitters. We travel from Minnesota to Arkansas, Missouri and South Dakota, chasing birds each year. I am a huge fan of your magazine and work. I took this image earlier this fall that was just a right place right time deal. Being in the field over 250 days a year, we see some incredible things and I would like to share some of it with others. Please feel free to reach out to talk hunting or join us sometime. I always like meeting new people and sharing my passion with others. Thanks for your time and looking forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Lewie CasperVia e-mail The e-mail below is from my son. It probably won’t mean as much…

KILLING GEESE WITH consecutive or close band numbers is not all ha unusual as it typically involves resident Canadas that are banded as family units and often shot nearby. Occasionally there are exceptions David Erickson fortunate to live in the Finger Lakes region of New York, an area that annually serves as a stopover for up to 500,000 greater snow geese on their way back north to the breeding grounds. He takes full advantage of the brief bonanza, hunting the spring conservation season. “We hunt over around 1,500 decoys, which we leave out for the short amount of time the birds are in our area, making small adjustments according to the wind direction,” he explained. “This morning, the conditions were perfect.” It was March 2016, and the duo had already…

JUSTIN BOMIA WAS hunting from his new boat blind on a perfect November day in 2017. The wind was blowing northwest at 30 knots and air temperature was in the mid-30s. Aboard were his father, Chuck, uncle Brad and cousin Jake. “We were hunting a backwater off the Mississippi River and it was a race,” Justin Bomia said. “We launched the boat at 12:30 a.m., so we could get to one of the four good spots in that area ahead of other hunters. We set out 13-dozen mallard and goose decoys and hid the boat in the buckbrush and grass. Some hunts you just know are going to be good. We had that feeling...mallards were landing in the decoys before shoot time. ” When legal light arrived, the ducks kept…

(Editor's note: This is the second in a three-part series using a heel stick.) TEACHING YOUR DOG to sit when you stop walking can be done with a heeling stick. You do not give your dog a visual clue, a verbal command or a whistle command; instead, you just stop walking and simultaneously allow the heeling stick fall on your dog’s flanks. With the lead properly placed on your dog and your dog sitting on your left side, hold the stick in your right hand and behind your back in the vertical position. Command “heel,” walk a short distance, stop walking and blow the sit whistle while simultaneously letting the heeling stick drop so that it lightly contacts your dog’s flank area. Since the dog will not see the heeling…

AT FIRST GLANCE, Florida might seem like a duck hunter’s paradise. It’s just about impossible to drive anywhere in central and south Florida without running into a sprawling lake or swamp. There is water everywhere, much of it filled with aquatic vegetation that looks like a duck buffet. At one time, Florida was indeed a top destination for duck hunters. These days? Hunters still kill plenty of ducks, but the birds don’t show up like they used in places that held gobs of waterfowl in the past. “They just aren’t using places like Big Cypress Swamp or Lake Okeechobee like they did in the 1980s and 90s,” says Travis Thompson, a fifth-generation Floridian and full-time waterfowl and fishing guide. “We still kill a lot of ringnecks and blue-wings in the…

TYPICALLY, PET TRENDS lag behind human trends by a couple of years. This is definitely the case with supplements, which are a mainstay in the health-conscious-human world. If you work out enough, or are generally concerned with day-to-day upkeep of your body, then supplementing with the right stuff is a no-brainer. This goes for our duck dogs as well, but choosing supplements isn’t as simple as it might seem. And before you make the purchase, you’ve got to decide if you’re supplementing your retriever for overall health or to address a specific issue. To get the breakdown on both, I reached out to Kinetic co-owner John Howard, who is instrumental in product development. EVERYDAY HEALTH “Probiotics have gained in popularity with us over the last few years, and now we…

A GREENHEAD plopped down across the stream from our blind, and as we stood to flush him a trio of drakes caught the corner of my eye. “How about these?” I said as we swung our new 20-gauge Winchester SX4s. We were hunting just off the North Platte River in northwest Nebraska—every bit as much a mallard mecca as Stuttgart. Feeding the main channel are numerous warm-water streams fed by deep-in-the-earth geothermal heat. It can be way below zero, but there’s always open water for ducks and geese. Our group was hunting with North Platte Outfitters, part of Cheyenne Ridge Lodge (cheyenneridge.com) where we stayed. Waterfowl hunting can be tough on a body, so gourmet lunches and dinners by the resident chef do much to soothe sore shoulders and cold…

TEXAS WAS DROWNING. At least that’s what it looked like from the windows of the Toyota 4 Runner as we rolled north on U.S. 81. Ditches ran like rivers, cow ponds flattened into reservoirs, wheat field after wheat field transformed into puddle duck paradise: food aplenty, and also plenty of, uh, puddles. “Looks like you guys had some rain recently,” Brad Heidel remarked from the passenger seat. Brad,with Delta Waterfowl, had flown south from the polar reaches of Minnesota that morning and seemed impressed by the sight of “soft” water in mid December. “Yep. Plenty of rain,” Holder replied, keeping his hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. “Texas ain’t all desert, you know.” I smiled from the backseat. This was also my first trip to Texas, and…