Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i Wildfowl

Situated on nearly 5,000 acres, White Oak Creek Ranch, located just 90 minutes east of Dallas in the wildlife-rich hardwood bottoms of Franklin County, is redefining ranching. “Our goal is to deliver a first-rate, best-of-class destination ranch where the owner-members can enjoy the outdoors and their families without any of the responsibilities of running, managing and maintaining a ranch,” said Ty Looney, who with his business partner, Garry Kyle, purchased the ranch in 2016. The ranch, which had been managed solely for wildlife for the past 30 years, offered the duo an unmatched opportunity to create an exclusive hunting club and ranch community. “We set out to create something we—and other outdoor enthusiasts—would want to be part of for a life-time,” Looney said. Currently, only 12 owner-memberships remain out of…

IN A NORMAL year, Sam Schneider and his family grow corn, rice and beans on more than 4,000 acres of Mississippi River bottom near Cape Girardeau, Missouri. And when the crops are in, there’s a good chance Schneider will be sitting in a blind somewhere on that farm, scanning the sky for ducks. This year has been anything but normal. Thanks to extensive and prolonged flooding, the Schneider family managed to get just a few hundred acres of beans planted. Duck season? That’s anyone’s guess. “It’s like that all around here. Everything was still under water in mid-July. It’s the most water I’ve ever seen inside the levees,” says the Avery pro-staffer and "Day 60" TV host. “I feel like I’ve been punched in the face by Mother Nature, not…

IF I EVER strike it rich you’d better believe the ducks will want to hang out at my place. In my mind I have clear visions of wide-reaching private wetlands that are carefully managed and overflowing with waterfowl. Unfortunately, my current income situation doesn’t support the kind of over-the-top land management schemes I’ve conjured up, and I married for love, not money. As of this writing my dream of building a world-class waterfowl impoundment is on hold, awaiting substantial financial backing. I do, however, have the opportunity to live out my dreams of large-scale land management for waterfowl by writing this column, which allows me to be privy to what’s happening behind the scenes at some of the largest privately-managed duck hunting impoundments in the country. I’m also fortunate enough…

MARYLAND WAS ONCE a waterfowlers’ Mecca. And it is still loaded with hunters, though mallard and Canada goose populations have taken a hit over the last few years in the Atlantic flyway. The Eastern Shore is also a tough/costly place to hunt with such high human population densities and a sprawling urban footprint. First comes finding a farm. Next is negotiating a lease. Finally, hunters must figure out how to hunt a field successfully. For decades, John Taylor has locked in leases on several farms. He also has friends with their own leases. The standard way of hunting farms is from pit blinds and Canada geese are the focus. “One winter we had incredible amounts of rain and farmers were cutting their soybeans when it hit,” Taylor said. “Some beans…

THERE MUST HAVE been close to 50,000 geese roosting to the north of the pond. With a light northwest wind filtering down to the hunters, they sounded like rolling thunder. Mainly snows, their high-pitched barks and low murmuring groans drowned out all sound. But the hunters, two teen-aged kids from Houston, were not after geese this morning on the Katy prairie southwest of the big city. Ducks were the target, elegant pintails and flashing teal, friendly wigeons and cartoonish shovelers, a typical Texas mixed bag. First light was approaching quickly, the dark shapes of early fliers appeared on the horizon. A blue-winged pair darted in from the east, the rising sun framing their silhouettes on approach to pond. Rising from their hide, the boys tracked the birds and folded them…

1 HUNTER Logan Spohn Lindsborg KS BAND # 2227 12012 SPECIES Mallard (D) BANDED: 08/17/2018 LOCATION: Near Yorkton, SK RECOVERED: 12/29/2018 LOCATION: Bavaria, KS 2 HUNTER: Pat Arntson, Minot, ND BAND #: 2177-32664 SPECIES: Small Canada Goose (M) BANDED: 07/25/2018 LOCATION: Near Coral Harbour, NU RECOVERED: 11/4/2018 LOCATION: Near Bergen, ND 3 HUNTER: Stan Schultz, Liberty Lake, WA BAND #: 2117-14474 SPECIES: Mallard (D) BANDED: 08/16/2016 LOCATION: Fort Providence, NT RECOVERED: 12/08/2018 LOCATION: 3.2 mi W of Teske, WA 4 HUNTER Brent Jeffers Redding CA BAND # 1557 10724 SPECIES Lesser Snow Goose (M) BANDED 07/12/2000 LOCATION Banks Island NT RECOVERED 03/09/2019 LOCATION 0 8 mi E of Glenburn CA 5 HUNTER: Tom Hatfield, Muscatine, IA BAND #: 1176-35933 SPECIES: Redhead (F) BANDED: 08/15/2017 LOCATION: Near Dagmar, MT RECOVERED: 11/12/2018…

SINCE LEAD SHOT was banned in 1987 for waterfowl hunting the search has been on to find a nontoxic pellet that simulates the lethality of lead. Cheap to make, steel was readily embraced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) as the nontoxic solution to lead poisoning in ducks and other water birds. A pioneering Canadian carpenter named John Brown began melting bismuth on his stove and casting pellets that caught the eye of publishing magnate, the late Robert Petersen, who liked to shoot his fine British-made shotguns for which steel shot was too hard for its barrels, and many others, like the Winchester Model 12 and Browning Automatic-5, once the Cadillac of guns in the Midwest. Petersen paid to have ducks dosed with bismuth, not once but twice,…

“WHAT DUCKS ARE you calling to?” The old timer almost seemed angry that the younger version of himself would consider bellowing his old Butch Richenback-turned RNT at sky high greenheads. “I’m gonna breakdown these migra tors,” the son chipped, shooting back daggers with his eyes, cutting right through the man that taught him everything he knew about feathers. It was moving day, and the green heads were flying hard south down the river, passing over a small sliver of public water. There were four differ ent holes inside the 20 acre unit, each filled with other groups of hunters. Private flooded corn clubs surrounded the state WMA tough hunting. But the kid wouldn’t give up. The men awoke at an indecent hour, drove 90 minutes to the check station, another…

THE SUN WAS so low and bright red-orange it looked like lava spilling into the Western sky, dotted with specks of black, ducks pumping their way back to the refuge after an evening field feast. As beautiful a moment as this was it was equally treacherous, running the river in a small johnboat loaded down with gear and full sized men. Shallow, fast-moving current and sunken sandbars pulled at the motor prop, twisting the boat. If our mothers had been there to see it, they would have never let us do this again. But, God, was is worth it. Not for the few teal and greenheads that tumbled into the skinny river, but for the entirety of the experience. Like launching a boat down a steep ramp that fell off…

I’VE BEEN A duck hunter-only since 1962, and hunt as many as 50 days a season. I am not, nor have ever been, a mallard purist. I’ll sometimes exclusively target greenheads… once every five seasons. A plumed-out gadwall, wigeon or pintail will get my heart beating just has hard as a mallard. I agree with Skip Knowles’ editorial about it being time to move past the “a-greenhead-is-the-only-duck” mentality, yet that same mentality is clearly shown on the cover of the very magazine you wrote that in! “MO Greenheads,” “Kansas is still Mallard Mecca,” “Mallard Mystery: Where’d the Greenheads Go?” each are prominently displayed on the August cover. I know you have to sell the magazine, and many duck hunters/customers are going to be mallard-oriented for years to come, but you…

EARLY GOOSE SEASONS are usually a great chance for bands but because they are typically resident birds, rarely make our "Passages" map. Ohio’s early goose season had already been open for several days when Marvin Aeschbacher and his wife, Danielle set out to hunt a public lake. “Around mid morning, a pair flew in towards us. My wife got ready and was able to shoot as they came in.” Her second shot rocked one of the geese, though the bird still sailed to the middle of the lake. “The wind was blowing towards us so we waited for her goose to arrive.” It sported a shiny band, her first. Over a year later the Aeschbachers were again hunting together, this time under quite different circumstances. It was early January and…

DUCK HUNTERS HAVE plenty of responsibilities throughout the hunt and immediately following their blind time. From pulling decoys to cleaning birds, you’ve got your hands full once the morning wraps up, but don’t forget to give your retriever some TLC. According to Dr. Arleigh Reynolds, one of the most accomplished veterinarians in the world, this is the moment when you can give your duck dog a tailgate exam and figure out just how he is really doing. “The point of a tailgate exam is to notice problems early, so they don’t turn into serious issues later,” Reynolds says. “I like to stand over the dog and place my knees along its ribs to keep the dog in place Start by looking down the nostrils for plant material I don t…

I’LL NEVER FORGET the first time we went to “look” at puppies to obtain our first hunting dog My husband Brian and I had only been married a month when we agreed to make the leap and take on training a gun dog Zee has been trained as a retriever by my husband since she was just five weeks old and we worked together as a team through out the process Every day, Brian or I would walk her early before work, and I d come home at lunch to run some fun drills or walk Zee and train basic commands. At night he would run drills after work. Our diligence and our time invested paid off with successful training, but caused our girl some issues with separation anxiety that…