Innehållsförteckning för September 2025 från Wildfowl

Just past the trees beyond our blind erupted loud, boisterous honking, unseen but rapidly gaining in intensity as they approached. We clutched our shotguns in anticipation as the guides began to answer with their own sonorous siren’s songs. Propelled by powerful broad wings, these birds finally materialized about 100 yards away heading directly toward us at deceptively fast speeds for such massive birds. Our guides stopped calling as the birds kept coming. Finally, our head guide yelled, “Take’em!” By the early 20th century, overhunting and habitat lost greatly reduced the population of the giant Canada goose subspecies. Wildlife managers thought this magnificent bird went extinct in the 1950s. Fortunately, someone discovered a small flock in Minnesota. From that remnant, state wildlife managers began breeding and releasing the huge waterfowl all…

Everyone loves ducks. Mallards in timber, divers on big water, wood ducks in small sloughs—just the mention of those scenarios sends excited shivers up any waterfowler’s spine. However, if you want to illicit that same response from me, bring up a disced corn field covered in a blanket of snow with Canada geese circling overhead. When I picture the waterfowler’s eternal reward, that’s what I think of. I don’t see floating mallard decoys; I see full body honkers. Instead of boat blinds, there’s well-brushed layouts. And of course, the resonant, cracking honks from big Canadas back-pedaling into the spread. My love for hunting honkers, like most, started at a young age. Dad would wake me up and tell me to get ready; we were going to the river to hunt…

THAT FLASH OF SILVER and the sound of jingling aluminum as a hunter walks across a goose field or moves around in the blind is an almost universal badge of honor in the waterfowler’s world. Those bands serve as proof—in most instances—that whoever is wearing them is a skilled practitioner at luring ducks and geese into shotgun range. But not always, because sometimes this unquenched thirst for bands carries a dark side. Take for instance, the story that comes from WILDFOWL Associate Editor Ryan Barnes concerning a Utah waterfowler named Christian Brody. “On one hunt, he left his lanyard—filled with bands, 30 or more—in his truck for a short period of time while he ran out in his boat to grab the rest of the hunters he had left to…

EARLY CALIFORNIA WATERFOWL HUNTING evokes images of northern coastal bays with hordes of divers, and inland river valleys with rice fields abounding in pintails. Perhaps unique to the Golden State, however, is the number of celebrities with guns. Some rolled out of Hollywood, like Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Fred MacMurray, Robert Stack, and John Wayne, while others were well-known sports stars. The picture of Yankee legends Babe Ruth (center) and Lou Gehrig (third from left) after a California hunt is from my collection. Growing up collecting old baseball cards, I thought it was a special image—my baseball heroes on a hunt with a harvest of pintails. Turns out, the picture was common on the internet, and versions of it have been published in magazine articles and even a book. While…

IT’S CHILDISH, BUT IT STILL EXCITES ME. I vividly remember sitting in my grandfather’s basement, sorting shotshells into boxes. There were no 3- or 3-1/2-inch offerings, but the old lead shells felt remarkably heavy. The purple and orange (16 gauge) hulls were my favorites. The orange had a cardboard wad that sealed the shotshell, and the purple sported a modern (at the time) star crimp. Grandpa’s favorites were the 12 gauge Peters True Blues. He told me, “They kill geese deader than hell.” The blue ones didn’t do it for me. The green paper hull Winchesters were my favorite 12 gauge shotshells. I write this because I’ve always been fascinated with shotshells—various shot sizes, lengths, hull colors—I love it all. Today, that love affair has come full circle. Getting to…

AUSTIN CROWSON AND I WERE right where we wanted to be. He’d been scouting the spot near his home for over a week. Honkers were landing in the exact same place in a stubble field early each morning. It was early September, and we were confident. We heard the first pair of geese well before we could see them. They lifted off a nearby roost, gained just enough elevation to clear the tops of towering cottonwood trees, then set their wings and glided into our small decoy spread. We each shot. Both birds dropped. “There are about 250 more birds that should do the same thing,” smiled Crowson as we tucked back into our layout blinds. Over the next 90 minutes we saw more than 300 geese, but not one…

Oak Grove in Creole, Louisiana is one of the most storied clubs in the Mississippi Flyway, and when you first step foot on the grounds, you immediately see why. The location right on the delta marsh, the luxury lodge like a modern waterfowl art museum, the wild World War ll history and the club rising from the ashes of hurricanes over and over again. The stuff of legend. But anywhere in duck country, in the wee hours before dawn, regardless of where you are, duck camp is duck camp and once you step into the boat, none of that matters. We strolled through the darkness and the heavy hot air to the cavernous boathouse, hearts trembling with excitement for the day ahead. We’d seen teal buzzing around on the drive…

❶ Band: 2177-99575 Hunter: Mike Clark, Delta, UT Species: Lesser Snow Goose (M) Banded: 7/30/2023, Colville River, AK Recovered: 11/30/2024, Sutherland, UT Comments: My first band with a 28 gauge. ❷ Band: 2227-15312 Hunter: Jed Winters, Altus, Oklahoma Species: Mallard (M) Banded: 8/21/2022, Brooks, Alberta, Can. Recovered: 1/24/2023, Duke, OK Comments: A banded mallard drake that had made its way down the flyway all the from Alberta to Oklahoma. ❸ Band: 2287-06032 Hunter: Matt Kincer, Marysville, WA Species: Mallard (F) Banded: 8/17/2023, Fairbanks, AK Recovered: 1/19/2025, Fredonia, WA Comments: I shot a Mallard on a slow day out field hunting. As soon as the dog had her in his mouth, I could see the band. I got the whole thing on film. I ended up shooting a limit that day.…

ADMIT IT—you’ve pulled some cold Chinese leftovers from the fridge at 3 a.m. and eaten it for breakfast ahead of a morning in the duck blind. Or maybe your guilty pleasure is a trip to Panda Express for lunch afterwards. Often, though, such quick cuisine rarely has the spice level to thaw out a waterfowler following a frigid day in the blind. Luckily, we are doctoring up commercial Asian sauce with smoky spice. Truth be told, if you have a tried-and-true, favorite stir-fry sauce; feel welcome to stick to that. This recipe does call for smoking some peppers, which greatly boosts the appeal of the sauce, along with some fresh mango chunks. The main takeaway here is how to best fry your wild fowl for some incredibly tasty and crispy…

ON NEW YEAR’S DAY 2025, Cleason Zimmerman and six friends set up his blind for a goose hunt in a Pennsylvania cornfield. For days, he had been watching Canada geese in a field on his hunting lease. Today, however, the birds had all piled into an adjoining farm. “We got there around noon,” Zimmerman said. “We towed the blind to a field at the edge of my lease where the two properties meet. The geese were resting on a pond on the neighboring property and we decided to run with an all-silhouette spread.” The day was windy, with air temperatures hovering just above freezing. When the geese started lifting off the lake, they came straight across the field, landing into the wind as though the decoys were sucking them in.…

The morning begins as so many others—unloading and placing decoys under illumination from headlamps and headlights, assembling brush covered panels, organizing gear, and settling in the blind. A sip of coffee and hopeful chatter. Faint calls emanate from the distant mist. Skies brighten, and temperatures warm to shake the chill. Suddenly, a large V-formation appears on the northern horizon. Greeting calls, now with increasing clarity, are met with expert volleys in kind from both ends of the blind. A low elevation fly-by follows, with sharp banking into a telltale 180-degree turn. Soft, sweet moans of encouragement, and clucks from the ground entice landing gear extension. With the hunt leader’s command, a medley of metals fills the air—steel, bismuth, and tungsten—and a dozen or more 10-pound birds plummet to Earth. Over…