Innehållsförteckning för November 2024 från Wildfowl

❚ GUNDOG OUTDOORS THE BUNKER MODULAR DOG BLIND After years of research, GunDog Outdoors is proud to introduce their newest offering: The Bunker Modular Dog Blind. Built with a removable heavy duty 900D Cordura cover that includes regular and bungie style brush straps, this blind is field-ready and can be upgraded with different colored covers and other features for season-long performance. Dog-worthy features include a patent pending “creep bar” that keeps dogs in the blind and a moveable floor with a two-inch waterproof foam pad that can be upgraded to a heated pad with rechargeable battery. This blind is over-built, quick to assemble and crazy tough. It was designed to keep dogs of any size safe and comfortable while providing total concealment. It measures 40 inches long, 22 inches wide,…

Canvasbacks in the 1800s and early 1900s were prized by American epicureans above all other wildfowl. The best canvasback ducking regions, the optimal diet of the big diving duck, and preferred recipes for it were debated in newspapers, sporting journals, and restaurant circles for at least a century. After the media elevated canvasbacks to the height of culinary chic on American and European tables in the late 1800s, demand for the white, black, and red diver exploded. Access to America’s prime canvasback gunning grounds also reached dizzying heights, and period players went to great lengths to protect the source of their livelihoods. They were equally protective of their game markets. Maryland’s Susquehanna Flats on the upper Chesapeake Bay had set the culinary standard for America’s canvasback, and the region dominated…

A group of us piled into the big A-frame blind. The guides had gone ahead of us. The blind and decoys were in place when we arrived. I wasn’t used to that. I don’t go on many guided waterfowl hunts. I wasn’t complaining. “I’m going to be honest,” said Clay Forst, one of two guides in the blind. “Our duck hunting has been absolutely terrible this season. But, that can change any day, especially late in the season.” We’d all done our homework and knew the duck hunting was slow in this part of Oklahoma. In fact, anyone who seriously hunts ducks knew the Central Flyway was struggling last season, even into December. The original plan was to split up into three groups and hunt three different places. But there…

WATERFOWL WERE SOLD IN New Orleans as early as the 1700s in open-air markets in the French Market and Jackson Square. By the early 1800s, the French Market had grown into one of the leading game markets in the world, the most renowned of which were manned by professional butchers who learned their craft in Gascony, France. The variety of birds in the markets was so stunning that artists such as Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon bought birds there to use in their famous illustrations. As the tools of the gunning trade improved—notably repeating firearms and pre-loaded white powder shotgun shells—it wasn’t just the variety of species in the markets that was impressive, it was the number of birds. History taught us it couldn’t last, but it was not…

AS I POPPED THE LID on the cardboard box and peeked inside, a flood of waterfowl memories hit me. There, cloaked in all-new Kryptek Flyway camo with Burnt Bronze Cerakote on the barrel and receiver was Remington’s renovated 870 Super Magnum Waterfowl. My first-ever waterfowl shotgun was a standard Remington 870. For 12 years that duck hunting legend filled my freezer and made my waterfowl dreams a reality. As I opened the 3-½” chamber and dropped the 28” barrel over the forend, a wave of nostalgia washed over me. After tightening down the knurled magazine cap, the shotgun came to life. The synthetic forearm welcomed my hand like gripping the steering wheel of your favorite pick-up truck. Depressing the slide release button, the pump action was silky smooth. Remington Arms…

THE OTHER NIGHT I had dinner with a D1 football coach. He’s been coaching for 39 years. I’ve been duck hunting for 48. We’re both 60 years old now, veterans of our sport. “What do you find the younger generations to be like compared to when we played?” I asked him. “The players are still kids in big bodies,” he smiled. “It’s the coaches who’ve changed. I’m more than twice the age of most of the staff, many are younger than my sons. They have lots of energy and some great ideas which I love, but you’d be surprised how often they call on the old man when challenging situations arise.” When it comes to duck hunting—and most situations in life—there’s no substitute for experience. The more you hunt, the…

The best hunting stories are so often the ones you do not see coming. The sound of the geese at dawn rising up in waves behind us was hard to believe, the cries of the lines of speckled bellies blending into one loud white noise. The birds undulated in lines that spread all the way across the horizon, getting up off the roost and working rapidly our direction. We watched them come for a few tense minutes, drinking in the spectacle and praying they would come all the way. Strings and small groups broke down and milled briefly, moving into easy range. Our guns roared in unison and birds fell all around the pit blind. It was a short, high-octane hunt, and I was called out to shoot my final…

IT’S A PARADOX OF SORTS, a grumbling question that gets asked in early morning duck blinds and coffee shops after the morning hunt is over: “If hunter numbers and participation rates are in decline, how come the parking lot was so full this morning?” For a good number of years now, hunting writers have helped fuel that question with a steady flow of stories that detail how American hunter numbers are falling away slowly as the hunting population ages and begins to head for the sideline. Kip Adams is someone who understands that idea because he’s a man who routinely wrestles with the question as the Chief Conservation Officer for the National Deer Association. While he may be a biologist who loves to deer hunt and is charged with the…

THE DAY WAS WINDY and biting cold—good weather for hunting ducks. But blue skies had Josh Johnson and Alex Morice on edge. Josh, Alex, and their friends had arrived an hour before daylight on Tennessee’s season-opener. Legal shooting time was only five minutes away when a mallard winged by. “I hit my call, and he came within 15 yards and landed,” Johnson said. “That’s when I knew all the work we had put into finding the right spot and building this blind was going to be worth it.” They hunted into the afternoon and finished with a mixed bag of ducks. Johnson, 41, lives in Gallatin, Tennessee and manages a plumbing company in Nashville. He started hunting waterfowl at age seven with his father, David Johnson. He shoots a Beretta…

It is the tales of hunting in weather that would sink the Edmund Fitzgerald again that drive waterfowlers out of warm beds in the morning. As we motor across choppy waves to set decoys on a sheltered cove or wind-blown point, we hope to intercept the birds that are riding the wild winds from the north. Even with 2024 surveys showing a dip in redhead and canvasback numbers, there is reason for hope this season with an increase for scaup and goldeneyes in the Atlantic Flyway. Last season, the opportunities conspired to allow me to have more divers than puddle ducks in my freezer for the first time ever. Divers fill our dreams not only with their acrobatic “figure eight” displays before landing amongst the bobbing decoys, but also with…

Two ducks lift off the spring slough in the dark. Even now, long before sunrise, the white undersides of their wings flash like the departing moon. I continue down the bank and find a place next to the dogwoods to hide. There’s five minutes until shooting light. I need to leave at sunrise to make it to the office. Work will always cut into duck hunting, but in good years, the cold sends birds down to my corner of Montana from British Columbia around Thanksgiving. That means the tenderloin of the season lies ahead with orange-footed northerners pouring in with every storm. The Christmas and New Year’s holidays offer a few extra days, and when the straps whine with weight, it can sometimes feel like enough. But in bad years,…