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    by Published on 08-06-2017 09:34 AM
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    I decided to try to win a blind this year. Had no idea about the details and had a hard time trying to find info online about the details. So, now that I went to the draw, I figured I'd share some info for others that might need this info. The draw was Saturday, July 29th at 2pm. Sounds like all of the Illinois public land draws are at 2pm. When I called that morning to confirm a few things, I was misinformed that it was 1pm, so I needlessly scrambled to get there. So I was off to the Chain O' Lakes. When I got to the entrance, I was directed to drive all the way to the boat launch parking lot. Given the 20-25 mph range through most of the park, that was about a 10 minute drive. The parking lot is rather large and there were a ton of folks that must have gotten there when the park opened (6am?). The park Ranger suggested they expected 500-600 people for the draw. As I mentioned, info was scarce, but when I got there, I found out that you needed pick one of two draws. One was for one of 29 stakes on the combination of Grass Lake, Nippersink Lake, and one blind on what looks like the northwest corner of Fox Lake. The other drawing was for one of 5 stakes Redwing Slough and ...

    Teal! 

    by Published on 09-14-2015 08:56 PM
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    Early teal season came in on Sept 5th. We got a cold front last night and there has been a lot of birds pushing in front it! My son killed a banded blue wing on Monday, it was his first band.

























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    by Published on 01-01-2014 09:41 AM
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    My wife and I dedicate 90% of our charitable money towards St. Jude's Children’s Research Hospital as well as about 90% of our charitable time. The past 3 years we have become involved with the St. Jude Memphis Marathon by raising money and competing in the Half Marathon. Last year I had a friend that saw me complete 13.1 miles and he just had to do it too. Part of the marathon is raising money to the level chosen by the participant. I chose $2500 and my friend chose the $1000 level. We had some creative ways this year of raising money.
    One of the ways I raised money was auctioning a fishing trip on Reelfoot Lake, I also auctioned a fish fry for 8 people (complete with everything imaginable so that the one who bought it would just have to bring an appetite). We did a few other things and then the idea hit me to auction a duck hunt.
    This duck hunt would be buyer’s choice of weekends for 2 hunters at a private club in east central Arkansas. Included in the hunt were all meals, lodging, processing of birds, an afternoon of hunting wild hogs and transportation everywhere we went once at the club. The guys that bought the hunt chose the weekend after Christmas which ...
    by Published on 12-28-2013 07:12 PM
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    Had a pretty good hunt with my brother, cousin, and a friend. Found a bean field they were feeding in with a grass waterway that ran to the middle. End of the waterway was flat and full of warm season grasses to hide the blind. Deployed 6 doz real geese pro series II silos. We were a little leary due to the proximity to the roost but it worked out okay. Had 100 ducks look at us, and a thousand snow geese settled into the corn field just north of us. Anyhow killed 15 before the wind died effectively ending our evening hunt. Did shoot a goose straight up and it almost hit the guy in the blind next to me. Bent the headrest on his layout blind.
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    by Published on 12-04-2013 07:35 PM
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    This story is actually about a trip I made right about a year ago. I went Duck Hunting with Nick Shafer (Crappie predator on the forum). It wasn't just a Duck Hunting trip. A combo trip, we hunted in the morning and fished in the afternoon. We had such a great time we're doing it again in a couple weeks. This is the middle of the hunting season so I thought it would be appropriate to tell the story now.

    Nick told us this wasn't one of his most productive trips, but I thought we did just great. I think over two days we ended up shooting at least two dozen ducks. We certainly shot enough to make me want do it again. The whole experience was cool, dropping decoys, watching the dogs work. Just watching the dogs do their thing is awesome. You don't realize how much they love jumping in that ice cold water to retrieve ducks till you see them do it. They live for this. In fact, one of Nicks dogs always takes the long way around the boat to climb in. Seriously, the place to climb in could be right in front of him, yet he'd take a swim around the whole boat, and then climb aboard. It was almost worth the trip just to watch them work. Like a good pointer working a field.
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    by Published on 10-25-2013 07:38 AM
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    Saturday morning had me sitting in the brush along the shore of little lake in Southern Michigan with my trusty Ithaca Model 66 single shot 12 gauge and my buddy Mike by my side. We were waiting for the sun to rise and the ducks to fly on my first hunt of the season. The wind was just a breeze out of the west over our right shoulder as the sun began to make its’ way over the shoreline to our left. As we listened to geese on a distant lake begin to chatter, the first wood duck of the day sped by almost unnoticed. It was followed shortly after by a few more wood ducks, then a couple mallards and a few shots from our guns.

    Those first couple shots were misses but were enough to consider the day a success. For us, most of the time, it is not about the killing, but rather about the hunt that leads to the harvest. Of course bagging a bird or two is always nice, but not necessary for a good day, and we enjoyed the morning thoroughly as we each took a couple more unsuccessful shots. But by 12:00 noon, when Mike and I left the lake, we had actually connected on a couple nice wood ducks and were very excited about our morning and were really looking forward to Sundays hunt. ...
    by Published on 10-23-2013 07:43 PM
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    The past week, it seems, has had me feeling like summer is finally on the way out. With the home fans no longer running all night, and daylight fading away around 9:00 pm, I have begun to feel the change. Then this morning I saw it. Right there in front of me, along M61 west of Gladwin, were orange leaves. That’s right, orange leaves on two different trees. Sure there were only a few orange leaves on each of those trees, but they are the colors of fall. Those few leaves signal the approach of a day that I look forward to 364 days a year.

    It is a day that will begin with 5:00am breakfast burritos cooked on the grill at a trail end by the lake shore. A predawn kayak trip across a local flooding will get us to our hide out in the cattails. It is a day that many local ducks and geese will regret waking up, for it is opening day of the youth waterfowl hunt.

    Opening day of the youth waterfowl hunt is one of the most memorable days of the year for me. It is an event that I was never able to participate in as a hunter because there was no such season when I was a youth. But for the past 11 years, since my oldest son turned 12, I have had the privilege to spend ...