Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2020 i Wildfowl

IT’S AN INTOXICATING thought, the idea of returning decades later to some place that holds powerful memories from magic times afield in your life. But should you? Last year I alluded to a return to Texas Gulf Coast by my father, some 25 years after we’d moved, wondering if you can ever really go home. He possesses a true hunter's soul, and my memories as a small child in the ‘70s are of an old aluminum skiff he hauled around in a sky blue two-wheel-drive 1968 GMC truck with a wood-floored bed. When it got too dirty, he’d throw a fist full of change in the back and turn his 5-year-old loose with a straw whisk broom. I’d sweep it clean and keep all the change I found. One day,…

SOME OF OUR Band Tales involve waterfowl that have made unusual journeys or lived exceptionally long lives. Others relate the extraordinary circumstances under which the band was obtained. This is one such story. Jaqueline Pennington’s first waterfowl hunts were as an observer. “My uncle Scott and his son Sean are avid waterfowlers,” she began. “After they got my dad hooked, I also became interested. I took a hunter safety course, my dad bought me a gun and my uncle set me up with the gear I would need. I went on two hunts with my uncle and cousin as an observer, to get a sense of what it was like and to find out if this was really something that was for me.” That was enough to convince her it…

THE ROCKY SHORELINE he hunted from several times earlier was now off-limits due to a half-inch of skim ice. Undaunted, Cooper Nickerson anchored his boat 40 yards offshore at the ice’s knife edge. It was deep-freeze cold, but calm and bright. While a bluebird day is bane of any duck hunter’s existence, he was determined to hunt. After all, it was the final day of the 2019 season. “The ducks never knew I was there,” he said. “Mallards were cupping wings into the decoys, oblivious to the boat sitting out in the open. I killed three drakes and a hen. One drake was wearing a band and another had bands on both legs.” Nickerson, a siding installer from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, hunts places within a 90-minute drive. Now age 60,…

THE ARTICLE MADE a solid point, but still, it was hard to believe. Nocturnal ducks? Really? Could migrating mallards become like a savvy whitetail and operate under the cover of darkness? Normally, I would have scoffed at the idea, but my 2020 season, when it came to mallard smashing, sucked. I was looking for any excuse I could find. Ticked off and with only a handful of days left in our duck season, my son and I put the shotguns away. We’d killed some birds and even pulled a few limits, but our greenhead count was way down and a night of coyote calling sounded like a good remedy. The plan was to call around some ag fields near a local reservoir. We were on our first stand when I…

CHRISTMAS EVE IN 92’ my father showed up at my house with a Chesapeake pup with a red bandana on her neck. I had fallen in love with her at the breeder a few days before. No one wanted an odd-colored Chesapeake, dark brown with light colored legs. I named her Boots. It turned out to be the best gift I had ever received and the last one my Dad gave to me as he died a few months later. She was a powerful dog, over 100 pounds of muscle and determination. I had been a waterfowl guide since I was 19 so I had a wonderful life planned for her. In 93’ I took a gamekeeper job for a wealthy man who bought an island off the south fork…

DURING A CONVERSATION with Dr. Seth Bynum last year, I asked him what the number one issue he sees with sporting dogs is at his veterinarian clinic. His answer probably won’t surprise anyone—obesity. He casually offered up an estimate that 30 to 40 percent of the dogs he sees—both general pets and bird dogs—were overweight. When I took my own Lab for her yearly checkup this past February, I mentioned Bynum’s estimate to our veterinarian. She laughed and said, “It’s way higher than that here. It’s probably close to 50 percent, and honestly, I think as a society, we have mostly forgotten what an in-shape dog is supposed to look like.” This isn’t good, and it seems that our four-legged friends are following closely in the footsteps of the general…

THE CANADAS WERE shy this season. Maybe they imprinted our Center Pit last year, but they came close enough and the shot folded the big honker like a cheap suitcase at about 35 yards. The day was windy, so when the pit cover flew open they skedaddled fast, but not fast enough for a load of Migra (as in Migration) ammo. Talking with a couple ammo guys I know at the recent SHOT Show, one told me that he had seen some of this new ammo on a dealer’s shelf in the south. Migra’s claim to fame is their stacked load. The ones I tested combined No. 4 under No. 2 steel shot. The idea behind a stacked load is that the larger, hence more dense pellets, carry a lot…

“LET’S GRAB YOUR gear and get to the lodge, Audrey has lunch ready and the afternoon tide is going to be perfect for brant,” encouraged Jeff Wasley as I reached out to shake his hand. No hellos or small talk, which is what I love about hunting with this man. In less than three hours from the time our plane touched down in Cold Bay, Alaska, my dad, Jerry Haugen, and I were laying comfortably in a two-man layout boat, a few dozen strings of black brant decoys bobbing in front of us. We were in about a foot of water, surrounded by over 40,000 acres of eelgrass. “It’s low tide now, and once it starts rolling in, the brant will be coming back through here to feed,” instructed Wasley,…

HAVING JUST BAILED my yellow Lab, Jill, out of two night’s confinement at the local veterinarian clinic to the tune of $380 including x-rays, I have been thinking about how much keeping two waterfowl dogs is actually costing me each year. Not that it would matter, of course, as waterfowl dogs are a big part of who I am, and I have paid many times the purchase price to keep them healthy. In the case of Jill, her problem was minor in the big picture—a compacted bowel and bone fragments in the stomach from snacking, on a whitetail leg bone surreptitiously drug from the creek by the house and hidden in the shrubs. My transgression was reported to the college president and though not expelled, I was kicked out of…

AT THIS POINT in my waterfowl tenure, my focus has shifted. Have I gone soft? Negative. I still crave feet-down action and cherish sending steel into the air. Mostly, though, I embrace the elements for my 14-year-old son Hunter and Lab, Kimber. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine a waterfowl hunt without either. I cherish my son’s ever-optimistic attitude, and the Lab sure makes life easy. While our rights as hunters are constantly under attack, I feel confident my son’s waterfowling career won’t be interrupted. As for my dog, I’m not so sure. Happening right under our noses are multiple attacks pioneered by the Humane Society of the United States. “It’s a direct attack and a behind-the-scenes effort to simply end hunting,” said Brian Lynn of the Sportsman’s Alliance. Lynn, who is…

FLYWAY VETERAN 1 HUNTER Greg McGlone, Brazil, IN BAND # 1527-16705 SPECIES: Mallard (H) BANDED: 08/05/2007 LOCATION: 7 W of Ogema, MN RECOVERED: 09/28/2019 LOCATION: 6 mi WSW of Jamestown, ND 2 HUNTER: Ken Schopp, Sheffield, MA BAND #: 1048-83256 SPECIES: Canada Goose (F) BANDED: 08/03/2010 LOCATION: 15 KM E of Aupaluk, QC RECOVERED: 11/06/2019 LOCATION: 0.5 miles W from Ashley, Falls, MA 3 HUNTER: Don Davidson, Klamath Falls, OR BAND #: 1797-922281 SPECIES: Mallard (D) BANDED: 07/28/2008 LOCATION: 13 MI SW of Bonners Ferry, ID RECOVERED: 10/22/2019 LOCATION: 1.9 mi W of Shady Pine, OR 4 HUNTER: Bill Massenburg, Denison, TX BAND #: 2197-35209 SPECIES: Greater White-fronted Goose (M) BANDED: 07/13/2014 LOCATION: Near Cambridge Bay, NU RECOVERED: 11/09/2019 LOCATION: 5 mi NE of Sadler, TX 5 HUNTER: Dave Siegel,…

DAPPER FEDERAL GAME WARDEN Larry Merovka looks over his haul from a group of hunters who made the mistake of overshooting their then-generous limits of ducks and shore birds. Merovka’s working clothes were probably hip boots and a canvas coat, but lawman and gangster alike in the 1920s dressed up when in town. Chicago’s Al Capone wore nothing but the finest and his Northside rival Hymie Weiss was equally attired on his way to Mass; the stray Chicago Typewriter bullet holes could be seen on Holy Name Cathedral’s cornerstone for years after Weiss’s “rub out.” A Parker, Winchester Model 97 and possibly an L. C. Smith were among the shotguns seized by Agent Marovka. The remainder were single-barrels and several hammer guns. In 1922 a Parker Trojan cost $54.75, a…

PUSHING BACK FROM the table, I smiled at my dinner companions, Steve and Sue Aagesen. We had just finished a delicious duck dinner at my home on the Minnesota prairie. Tucking in to a second glass of Merlot, I could tell my friends were impressed by my culinary skill. I was hoping that they would be interested in the species of duck that I served them. They were. Nor did I keep them in suspense. Butterballs, I told them. “Butterball” in my country means ringbill, which is of course actually the ring necked duck. The ring around their neck is about impossible to see and the gleaming white band around their bill so distinct you have to wonder why they are not officially named ringbills. Making it worse, elsewhere “butterball”…