Table of contents for August 2024 - Equipment Annual in Wildfowl

GRINDING FOR MONTHS TO put this giant equipment issue together, something leapt out at me: Waterfowlers are the original gear nuts, yet our sport has not been ruined by technology. The latest decoys are still just decoys, not so different than the beautiful rush-reed canvasbacks found in a cave in Lovelock, Nevada over 100 years ago, stashed by a prehistoric hunter eager for his next season, then unearthed 2,000 years later. Built for a spread before the birth of Christ with such hand-feathered artistry I guarantee you and I could still take them out and shoot ducks over them if they’d let us. Fishing and big game hunting have been severely impacted by tech “advances,” from super sonar to crossbows to night vision and the badly abused long range hunting…

BEER CAN CHICKEN remains a popular menu item for many home cooks and even in some trendy restaurants. Some recipes call for putting spices in the can along with the beer, while others brag that the beer boils up and infuses the chicken with flavor. (Spoiler: It doesn’t.) Still, the concept of vertically roasting a bird has its culinary worth. In the case of ducks, it means you’re cooking the legs before anything else, which is important when roasting wild ducks. For all you beer drinkers, you may have noticed a beer can doesn’t fit inside a duck. (No, you thin-can sipping Michelob Ultra fans don’t count as beer drinkers.) The solution? Indulge your sensitive side and pick up a sixer of hard seltzers. You want to pick a flavor…

I sat at my computer, stressed on deadline, when the phone buzzed atop the desk, flashing a name I love and fear. Captain Jeff Wasley. A ring from Cap generally means two things: Adventure is calling, and I will no doubt be spending a lot of time and money a long, long way from home. And this time, it would turn out, over the holidays. As usual, no small talk. “They’re gonna open up the Rock again,” he growled. Kings! “You need to do a story on the return to Saint Paul. For a while there we thought it would never open again. What are you doing around New Years’?” St. Paul Island had closed to hunting due to covid, and reportedly would stay closed for the foreseeable future, due…

A good outdoor writer hunts first, writes second. Hunting is the classroom where learning takes place, and where gear is put to the test. More than anything these days, I love duck hunting with my dogs and my dad. That’s one reason I hunt ducks so much. I’m not going to use something one time and write about how great it is. I want to test it in a range of conditions on as many hunts as possible. Nowhere is the testing of gear more important than when it comes to clothes. With guns, chokes, and loads, there’s an element of possible human error. With running calls, decoys, and blind setups, there’s room for mishap. But with clothes, they either work—or they don’t. The rain gear keeps you dry, or…

❶ BAND: 2097-40023HUNTER: Jake Stewart, Norman, OKSPECIES: Cackler Canada Goose, femaleBANDED: 1/1/2012, Baffin Island, Nunavut, CanadaRECOVERED: 12/10/2023, Kingfisher County, OK Flyway Veteran 2,207 mile long-distance -champ- ❷ Band: 0855-27747HUNTER: Rod Andrew, Spanish Fork, UTSPECIES: Cinnamon Teal, femaleBANDED: 8/25/2014, Harrison, Kootenai County, IdahoRECOVERED: 10/14/2014, Box Elder County, UtahCOMMENTS: I was hunting the opening day of the Northern Utah waterfowl season with family. The banded duck came over our backs and was going to land in the decoys when I harvested it. It was retrieved by my young yellow Lab. ❸ BAND: 1158-18458HUNTER: Cody Smith, Bloomington, ILSPECIES: Canada Goose, femaleBANDED: 4/22/2013, Brant River Mouth, Ontario, CanadaRECOVERED: Jan 13, 2018, Kankakee, ILCOMMENTS: Imagine the worst day you could ever hunt-I mean miserable! It was snowing like crazy. We gave the geese a little…

THE RACY LITTLE 20-GAUGE SBE3 I was holding was a proven killing machine. I’d clobbered seven huge late-season honkers with it in seven shots last year over a few mornings with a tungsten-steel blend. By comparison, my wispy new 3-inch 28-gauge in the same model felt puny, and so did the shells. Could a 28 even come close to the firepower of the 20? They are two of the loveliest little semi-autos ever, but was there a big difference in the field? I have been shooting a 28-gauge for 10 years now, taking one with me to the flooded timber, and to various fast-action teal potholes. I have enjoyed smashing ducks with tungsten/steel blends, a murderous combo, but how would it perform with the larger shot sizes needed for Bismuth?…

It had been in the teens less than a week earlier with anywhere from 8-10 inches of snow covering the region. Warmer rains melted the snow immediately a few days afterward. With the tropical air moving in as I drove north on I-95 that morning, the thermodynamics of the cold water with the warm air created a blanketing fog. As we left the docks during the mid-morning hours our only sense of direction came from the GPS. Our guides knew where we wanted to be, and when we got close rafts of geese and swans rose through the sunlit haze. Measuring the depths with a crab line hook, the guides settled on the location for the day. The marker showing chest deep, and a few of us laughed nervously in…

With all the awesome new hunting accessories out there to help us, my biggest regret in hunting is not wearing hearing protection sooner. As I age, I struggle to hear the basic things in life—my wife talking to me, the kids calling my name, birds singing in the yard, even ducks chattering as they circle the decoys. I get frustrated with it, my family is annoyed, my friends tolerate it. There’s no excuse, I didn’t think the inconvenience of wearing ear protection was worth it. I thought I was invincible.Youngsters, you need to listen; take care of your ears! Because when you’re older and have a family, there’s no getting back this great gift. As for the rest of you, you can save what’s left. At the suggestion of fellow…

YEARS AGO, A NORTH TEXAS DUCK HUNTER by the name of Mike took his friend Joe to the rice fields of Eagle Lake, Texas, an area once hailed as the goose hunting capital of the world. After a pre-dawn breakfast at the legendary Sportsman Café, Mike and Joe headed afield with their guide to set out a decoy spread in a harvested rice field. Shortly thereafter, the sky filled with a vast number of snow geese noisily rising en masse from roost ponds and rice fields down the road. That’s when Joe looked at his friend Mike and said, “I believe we’ve come to the right place.” Unfortunately for Lone Star State waterfowlers, that was then, and this is now. The once-fabled snow goose hunting has faded away, the local…

BROCK TANNER AND MAX ANDREASON have been hunting partners for years now. They both spend most of their waterfowl season guiding for Black Goose Outfitters in Iowa. However, when time permits, they break away from their guiding duties and try to sneak in a few hunts for themselves. This past season, in their home state of Utah, joined by fellow friend Montana Acree, they found themselves on familiar waters close to where they grew up hunting. “We finally had a Christmas break where we all could meet up and hunt,” says Tanner, who tells the story. They loaded into Brock’s boat—and despite a drive actuator going bad—made their way to the marsh. After finding a spot to hide, and setting their giant diver rig out, the games began. “As soon…

ON A COLD KENTUCKY MORNING with the thermometer stuck at zero and the air draped in thick fog, Scott Shankle and seven fellow hunters parked their vehicles at the edge of a field and walked 200 yards to their blind. Descending the stairs into the yawning pit’s doorway, they readied their guns and gear, popped off the lights and waited to see what the mist-delayed dawn would bring to their decoys. “It was a Saturday in late January 2024, just before the conservation order season opened,” Shankle said. “We heard snow geese calling the entire time because they were roosting at the Ballard County WMA, right next door. As the sky got lighter, the geese started flying in flocks of 30 and 40. It wasn’t long until one flock started…

Half a century of teal hunting means I have a truckload of memories regarding the little buggers. There’s my first drake cinnamon, courtesy of The Great Salt Lake; incidentally, that same Fall I killed my first tundra swan. A great year, that one. But there were more, like September limits with a pre-Habitat Flats Tony Vandemore on public ground in Missouri; six-drake green-wing bags in eastern Iowa; and watching what might have been every teal on the planet back-pedal over Gray’s Bay in western Washington State. Still, there’s one that sticks out in my mind. It was ’94, and my then-girlfriend/now-wife, Julie, a brand-new duck hunter, was beside me in a stick-blind on a public wetland in southwest Washington. She was a long-time deer and elk hunter, but a green-as-grass…

I killed my first duck, a one-legged hen mallard, in the late Bob Wolfe’s beaver swamp back in ’74; a too-short gangly kid in a too-long Walls canvas coat, a hand-me-down Elmer Fudd hat, and an eight metric ton set of Red Ball waders that had more hot patches than actual neoprene. During the intervening years between then and now, I’ve had the opportunity to hide in thousands of different blinds around the nation. There were the big box blinds, complete with full kitchens and season-long spreads. A 55-gallon drum sunk into a pond levee. Lest we forget the feed bunk in Oklahoma, a Mighty Layout Boys’ two-man on the Mississippi, backboards, and soggy burlap. I haven’t used them all, but I’m getting close. Today, waterfowlers have access to some…