Innehållsförteckning för December/January 2023-24 från Wildfowl

❚ TETRA CUSTOMSHIELD HEARING PROTECTION Not being able to hear is no joke, so why trust a flimsy pair of ear plugs to protect this critical sense? People groan that quality hearing protection that allows you to hear the hunt is expensive, but guess what? They’re half the cost of those pricey hearing aids you will one day need if you don’t protect yourself. Since we only get one shot at protecting our hearing, do yourself a favor and check out TETRA’s CustomShield hearing protection lineup. TETRA offers advanced hearing devices that are optimized for most the most critical sounds a waterfowl hunter needs to hear while providing hearing protection from loud calling and gunshots. These babies are custom molded for the most personalized fit possible, ensuring they stay comfortably,…

It was late in the morning on a frigid January day in western Nebraska, with clear blue skies and the distant sound of resting geese keeping us wondering when they were going to take to the air. As the sun warmed the earth and the ice began to crack, the first small flock took to the skies. Behind them was a massive black cloud of Canada geese rotating in a circular pattern in some hurricane-like illusion. The daily migration route to the feed from the roosting grounds was consistently upstream and they were headed our way. As the masses of geese approached our location, you could clearly see with the naked eye the variety of sub-species beginning to separate into flocks. One of the distinctive observations were the giant Canadas…

In the Arkansas timber, you are a hero at dawn but the coming sun soon reveals whether or not today is going to be the day. Most of the time… We arrived with a cold front pissing rain and the temp set to drop in half with clear skies in the morning. Dawn brought a steady 8 to 10 knot westerly wind. Perfect. Our destination was a 10,000-acre farm with classic timber holes carefully managed with different crops by the gang who founded Chene waterfowl gear. Chene (pronounced ‘”shin,” like “shin-deep”) is French for oak, a reflection of that deep cultural influence in this region. It’s a young brand that is getting it right, and we were here to muck around in their waders and duck parkas as an excuse…

IN THE INDIANA JONES FILM FRANCHISE that began in 1981 with Raiders of the Lost Ark and concluded this past summer with The Dial of Destiny, the iconic character Indy thrilled two generations of movie-goers with an everyday working man persona who sometimes was called on to help good defeat evil in an adventurous way that loomed larger than life or even Hollywood’s big screen. While Indy might be make-believe, the waterfowling world has its own swashbuckling figure that is real life flesh and blood. That, of course, is Dr. Chris Nicolai, a waterfowl scientist for Delta Waterfowl and someone Wildfowl Magazine interviewed at length earlier this year for The Wildfowl Podcast. “I think about waterfowl about 90 percent of my day,” Nicolai admitted on that episode. And he’s thinking…

FOR YEARS, retired North Carolina schoolteacher Louis Howard made an annual fall migration north to Alberta, where he enjoyed some phenomenal early season freelance waterfowling. He and a couple guests rented a cabin, taking care of their own meals and equipment and hunting where permission is often easy to come by. In fact, many farmers would welcome hunters who help thin out the grain-stealing birds. Howard has had many eventful hunts but one that particularly stands out to him w as the day he shot a banded lesser scaup. Not only did the bird sport a silver bracelet, it also had a red plastic nose saddle with the letters “CC” on it. After reporting this rather unusual recovery to the USGS, Howard received a standard certificate but no additional information…

KENT CARTRIDGE, AND ITS RISE AS A premier shotshell manufacturer, is a quintessential story of the American dream. Following a particularly frustrating season of chasing crippled birds at a hunting club near Detroit, Michigan, a group of gentlemen bickered about their distaste for the non-toxic shotshells they were shooting and reminisced on the knockdown power of the recently banned lead loads. Desperate for a better solution, they put their heads together to innovate a deadly, non-toxic shotshell. One of these gentlemen had knowledge of research being conducted at Penn State University surrounding a tungsten alloy, composed of tungsten powder and polymer, that mimicked the density and softness of their revered lead. Armed with that knowledge, plans were put in motion and the groundwork was laid for Kent Cartridge. More than…

HOW MANY TIMES IN TRAINING, while using dummies or cold game and/or in actual bird hunting situations, has your dog appeared to mark the fall, yet run out, searched the area of fall for a short period, and then put on the “big hunt?” I would bet that this has happened more times than most would care to admit, including me; especially when scenting conditions are poor. What is my definition of the “big hunt?” It is the dog going out on a mark, not immediately finding the bird/dummy and then, after a few minutes, leaving the “area of fall” and disturbing game on new ground by running all over the area looking for the dummy or bird. It is certainly not a desirable trait for any hunting dog to…

IT WAS THE SECOND TIME in five days I hunted a slough on a local river. The wind was perfect, the decoys looked great and though ducks were flying, they were reluctant to drop into the spread. After making multiple decoy changes my buddy and I relocated to another slough a few hundred yards downstream. We quickly killed limits of mallards and wigeon. The first spot was good, one we’ve been hunting for years and shot limits on earlier in the week, but there were other hunters on the river that day, lots of them. Rather than sit and hope the other hunters shot their birds and moved on, we decided to put some distance between us and seek a more secluded spot. The plan worked on this, the last…

It’s been a long_LONG_time since I saw my first big flock of snows in the spring. Maybe 1980. There was a 17-acre pond on the back edge of my Grandpa’s ground in northeast Ohio. We fished there often and shot a few Canadas in the fall. So one day, my Pop’s out at his Dad’s place doing something when he says, “Hey, Michael D., look at that, will ya?” And there, covering half of those 17 acres like a freshly washed bedsheet, is the biggest, albeit the first bunch of snow geese I’d ever seen. Almost 50 years, ago, but I can remember looking south over Grandpa’s ragweed-studded cornfield and staring at that undulating mass of white. “What are they doing here, Pop?” I asked ‘cause (1) I didn’t know,…