Duck Season Somewhere

It's the week of Christmas. Coast to coast, north to south, everyone seems frustrated while awaiting south-bound ducks, asking themselves where in the hell are the ducks?! Is the sky falling? Do we really even have ducks? Or is the answer a little more straight forward? Waterfowl migration guru Dr. Michael Schummer explains what we're seeing--or not! Using his proprietary forecast model, he even m...

How well do ducks and geese really see--and how can understanding this make you a more effective waterfowl hunter? Dr. Bradley Cohen from Tennessee Tech explains waterfowl eyesight to Ramsey, focusing on depth perception, field of view, color discernment and rapid "refresh rates." Citing many years of in-depth research, he paints a pretty clear picture. I mean, there's a reason they sell camo long...

Ramsey scratches Oregon off the duck hunting list, leaving on Virginia and West Virginia remaining. He recounts his visit with host Brandon Potter, who describes waterfowl opportunities, waterfowl species, hunting styles, and what it's like living and raising family in close proximity to Portland, the most left-leaning, woke-assed city in America.   *** Correction: In Oregon, dusky geese can only...

Building a world waterfowl collection--and we're talking everything--is a daunting challenge. But for hunter-scientist-curator Andy Englis, it's just another day at the office. Why the collection and its importance, sure, but among the other interesting topics covered are his close-as-a-speartip encounter with a head hunting tribe and longest duck penises in the world. The things you learn, huh?!...

It's as hot while goose hunting as when cutting summertime Mississippi grass, plus there's plenty dangerous critters in the field and water, but geese and ducks are flying! Australia's outback no different than goose camps elsewhere around the world--good eats and good times are had by all. Falling in with the motley assortment of Australian goose hunters that Ramsey considers friends, he learns t...

Waterfowl geneticist, Dr. Phil Lavretsky, Ramsey and others hunting the Australia Outback for magpie geese, whistling ducks and other endemic duck species. What makes magpie geese so unique, how are they living fossils between chicken-like birds and duck-goose-swan-type waterfowl as we know them today, and what, if any, is their relationship to reptiles and dinosaurs?  Describing the importance of...

Three generations of Australian duck hunters--grandfather Ray, son Glenn, and granddaughter Kareena--describe their family's duck hunting traditions Down Under, emphasizing why it's important to each of them, how it has connected them to the waterfowl resource and to each other, and how they feel about its possible closure. They each share personal anti-duck hunting experiences, too! You'll likely...

Way back before trophy sea duck hunting went mainstream due to the internet and North American species contests--and in a region where the almighty mallard reigned supreme among local duck hunters--the Otto brothers began plying Washington State's Puget Sound for the beautiful waterfowl species that most duck hunters had only seen in bird books and largely ignored. Their youthful obsession spawned...

DU's Logan Nevins and I talk about Michigan waterfowl hunting, public land duck hunting here versus there, Memphis barbecue and more before jumping Into the Vault. Wow! From hard to find collectible shotguns and once-in-a-lifetime Terry Redlin original artwork to ready-to-hunt duck boats and antique decoys, Logan takes us on an amazing tour. My advice? Just buy it for your wife's Christmas gift--i...

Retreating from fast-paced, frenetic Seattle to tranquil Olympic Peninsula settings seemed the perfect escape even though their friends thought they were crazy. And there was just one question--how in the heck would they make a living? Now decades later, Captain Dave and Tiffany Drewry recount building a life and the hugely successful Peninsula Sportsman guide service in their Washington State Pac...

Learned during a recent visit the Washington State leads the nation in oyster production--and I love oysters, ate them the entire week! Hama Hama Oysters has been operating for 6 generations. Over a huge sampler of oysters, clams and mussels, Adam James describes his family's history in oyster and timber production, telling how the two go hand in hand. He explains what it takes to produce great cr...

Washington State's waterfowl resources are extremely diverse, and managing a full suite of dabblers, divers, seaducks and geese is a daunting task to say the least. The recent closure of the Harlequin duck season in Washington was extremely controversial. Washington State was for many years the only place in the continental United States that harlequin ducks could still be harvested. Prized by col...

Should waterfowl hunting guides and outfitters have licensing requirements? Is the waterfowl guiding industry really the Wild West? Should there be some form of professional oversight to weed out the worse from the best? What might those minimal requirements be? And how might a professional outfitter society benefit hunting, local and client hunters, habitat and waterfowl resources? Alberta Profes...

A 7th-generation Baytown Texan, Shannon Tompkins was an outdoor journalist that highlighted Texas hunting and fishing for over 40 years. He recalls growing up duck hunting, describing his mentors and LeFour's Model 12; places like the sprawling Barrow's Ranch during its heyday, the infamous cardiac pond, Los Patos; bygone times like when Texas was the foremost US  snow goose hunting destination. A...

What won't our beloved retrievers do for us? To-the-horizon, full-blast retrieves across wide open fields or across frigid waters to recover downed waterfowl seem their singular life missive. Our ride-or-die duck hunting partners will do absolutely anything to live up to our expectations, requiring they be high-performance athletes instead of just pets. When Char Dawg's professional trainer, Alan...

For 20 years, Rob Reynolds and his wife Lori have operated Ranchland Outfitters. Their reputation for delivering best-of-best Alberta waterfowl hunting experiences is unrivaled. But why? Rob describes the random events leading him into this business, his family's deep-seated roots in Alberta, how and why he's amassed hunting from Alberta's boreal forest clear down to the US border, what the waterf...

"When Jake scouts, he always finds a great hunt. Always," says Northern Skies Outfitters Matt Schauer. Visiting between incredible fall hunts, he introduces me to a couple of his top goose guides, Jake Slimp and Jeremy Bolanbarker--who were inducted to the business at an extremely young age. How'd they find their way into a year-round waterfowl guiding gig, what do they like most about it, and wha...

Hailing from the Red River valley that forms the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma and only about an hour-and-a-half from downtown Dallas, Dakota Stowers is a long-time waterfowl guide. And when he's not guiding waterfowl hunts in Oklahoma? He guides deer, turkeys, wild hogs and doves. He and his wife, Summer, talk about getting into the business, lessons learned from an old outfitter mentor, wh...

"Find a job that interferes with your real life, not the other way around," someone once told Isaiah Bateel. And he did just that. He's now traveled through 50 states and several counties doing the things that matter most--hunting, fishing, hiking. Talking about how and why he crafted his lifestyle, he talks about some of his hunting and fishing adventures and shares his fairly unique take on the...

Navigating giant ships was not only a dream come true for John Dunaway, it was destiny. His family had done similarly for generations. An avid Texas wing shooter and creative story teller, Dunaway puts on his pilot's hat today, recalling high seas adventures to include middle-of-nowhere wildlife, dangerous pirates, storms, being stuck in countries due to crazy circumstances, cargo escorts, and oth...

The sky overhead is filled with more decoying snow geese than stars, birds are cleaned, scouting's completed and it'll soon be time to start dinner. For Tekton Game Calls maker, Joey D'Amico and world champ decoy carver, Luke Costilow, it's just another day in paradise. They brought their full-time regular jobs along with them to Saskatchewan, too. They describe all that goes into guiding geese an...

Mornings turn into seasons turn into years, and before we know it our entire hunting lifetime--the best of times spent with family, friends and retrievers--is in our wake.  I've never been one to journal hunting experiences. Until now. The new Huntproof app makes it way too simple to document harvests, species, retrieves, weather conditions, scouting reports, photos, to generate season summaries a...

For a week we crawled up Andes Mountains switchback trails and along Pacific Ocean estuaries while duck hunting in Peru, but were it not for our tour guides Raneiri and Dwight, it'd have ended right there. More than just a duck hunt, these two amazing young men were our cultural interpreters among indigenous high-altitude shepherd families, exhibition bullfights and cockfights, newly discovered ru...

The oldest waterfowl decoys on earth were discovered in the Pacific Flyway. There are century-plus-years-old hunting clubs, and pit blind hunting may have even originated there. Bull hunting was borrowed from a traditional Mexican trick of the trade for filling up the commercial meat wagon quickly—all those gold rushers had to eat after all. Then came the goose patrols. Former US presidents broke...

On October 19, 1977, Lynyrd Skynyrd was inarguably the greatest rock band touring the USA and played what was their final concert in Greenville, South Carolina.  While enroute to Baton Rouge on October 20th, their plane crashed in the remote southwest Mississippi woodlands, killing 6 passengers to include frontman Ronny Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backup vocalist Cassie Gaines.  Decades...