THE FLYWAY

Essay by GORDY GORDON, Editor/Publisher Sumner, Missouri, October 1963. You think this is a photo of a beginning. It's not. Men at left and right, respectively, were my adopted uncles, Ray and Randy. That's a somewhat excited young Gordy at center. And yes that is my first goose. Moments beforehand, it fell to my shot. I had fired from a concrete pit in the ground so deep that I had to stand on a wooden box to see out and shoot. Now, my Dad was a Waterfowler, through and through. He chose the location where I grew up based heavily on the fact it was smack-dab in the center of duck and goose hunting grounds. And perhaps it was Dad's adult lifetime of wishing and hoping and working toward this moment that essentially willed my shot and the goose to collide in a burst of fate some 24 yards east of where three men and a boy huddled within the goose pit. A generation or two earlier, famed outdoorsman and conservation pioneer Aldo Leopold had -- and wrote about -- the exp...

“ Despite warnings of my demonic hex, he had to find out the hard way just how serious my condition was .”     By SEAN CARR I  have lived a blessed waterfowl life and have had the good fortune to shoot both a lot of ducks overall as well as many different species of waterfowl but as of January 20, 2015, I still had not taken a canvasback duck. To give a little history, I started tagging along with my dad on duck hunts when I was 4 years old back in the 70’s. He had a blind that he regularly hunted on a public slough that is now part of Ted Shanks Wildlife Area in Ashland, MO. I started hunting with a gun for waterfowl when I was eight so it had been about 38 years prior to the hunt I will be writing about that I had gone without taking the King of ducks.   Granted, I did not focus on getting one most of my early duck hunting years, but once I began to target a prime bull canvasback for a mount, some kind of demonic hex possessed me that would not allow it to happen. ...

The main flight of ducks had stopped and thinking the morning’s hunt was finished, Nels and I excited the pit blind.   Wading into the shallows and starting the task of decoy retrieval, we heard the faint, far-off music from incoming honkers.   Quickly, we splashed our way to the blind and changed over to Winchester Super-X 2’s.   Onward they came, 16 big, white-cheeked bombers on steady wings, 250 yards out and 40 yards above the latte-colored river channel.   I flattened myself against the shadowed pit wall, daring not to move as I peered beneath a layer of natural grass laid atop the ring of excavated soil. Using his Herter’s Numara Canada goose call, Dad sent out a perfect, goose-attracting riff!       AH-OOO, AH-OOO, AH-OOO!   The lead gander responded, banking his flock toward our setup.   The slight variation in   flight pattern looked as if it would bring them just over the outer edge of our decoy spread.   The final, slow-m...

A fantastic SHORT pod show with Lee Kjos of BOSS Shotgun Shells and Arkansas-based outdoor host Trey Reid.   In this excellent Arkansas Game & Fish production, Lee lays out a shocking cripple loss picture (it's worse than you think) and how hunters like us can turn it around...  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/arkansas-wildlife-podcast-episode-5-lee-kjos-from-boss/id1651250209?i=1000587145884

 

By George L. Hopper Of all the Chesapeake Bay retrievers, or any other kind of retrievers, it has been my pleasure to shoot over. Old Bob of Spesutia Island stands out, in my personal recollections, the peer of them all. He was a most perfect specimen of the rough or curly-coated dog. His outer coat was curled and twisted as close and as tight as the wool on a Guinea native’s head. It felt to the hand like the wool of a Merino sheep; in color like the sands on the shore. And he weighed about 80 pounds. At tolling Old Bob was unexcelled. We would saunter along the shore of the island until we located a raft of ducks within a half mile of shore. If conditions were favorable we would hide behind an old log or a pile of driftwood, as nearly opposite the ducks as possible. Bob was then coaxed into the hiding place and a red bandana, borrowed from old Aunt Melissa for the occasion, was made fast about midship of Bob’s tail.   When the bandana was made fast and secure, out would bound Old...