Blind Ambitions
If you hunt ducks, you’ve spent time in the no-fly zone when the minutes drag into hours while waiting for the wind to bring...
The Female Factor
Apparently Meta knows that I appreciate sharing marsh blinds and upland coverts with women hunters. Why else would my Facebook account, under the guise...
Dream Ranch
Mental note: Don’t hunt pheasants before taking on bobwhite quail! Why? Because if you start big and then go small, shooting success will shrink,...
Measuring a Hunting Life
As an older bird hunter, I'm discovering how many things that I experience now have a strange way of taking me back to the...
To the Point: Bird Hunting’s Third Rail
You can hunt birds without a dog, but why would anyone want to? Many years ago I chanced upon two old-timers in southwest Kansas...
To the Point: Specks in the Sky
Human nature being what it is, bird lovers of all stripes will seek the rare species. For this waterfowl hunter, that would be the...
To the Point: The Case for Snipe
One hundred twenty-five years ago, a Louisiana land baron named J.J. Pringle published Twenty Years of Snipe Shooting. Pringle’s book details how, from 1867...
To the Point: No Ugly Duckling
The first drake wood duck I shot as a high school hunter turned into a mounted disaster, proof that my future did not lie...
To the Point: Chicken Delight
If you had told me I would go to Kansas—that fabulous bird hunting state—for three days and not kill a pheasant or quail, I...
Paul Nelson Farm
How much would you pay to turn back the clock to those Soil Bank days of post-WWII when pheasants were as thick as blackbirds?...
To the Point: Dainty Dishes
If you’ve lived to age 60 and eaten three squares daily, you’ve already sat through more than 60,000 meals. How many of those involved...
To the Point: My Bird Dog Hall of Fame
Fifty years ago, the man who introduced me to grouse hunting said every bird hunter deserves at least one exceptional dog. “Counting Tammy here,...