Like most avid hunters, my first experience chasing wild game came at a very early age. I can still remember that hunt like it was yesterday: I was 10 years old sitting a goose blind with my grandpa, with an old youth model single shot shotgun by my side. I wasn’t able to get my first goose that day, but the quality time spent with family in the blind got me hooked for life. I spent most of my childhood begging my dad to take me hunting and primarily chased upland game with the occasional migratory bird hunt thrown in when we could.
As I got more involved with athletics in high school, my winter months very quickly became devoted to wrestling, and chasing pheasants and quail fell by the wayside. In its place, I quickly became infatuated with bigger game that I could hunt in the off-season. I harvested a spring turkey or two every year and bought a muzzleloader so I could take a deer in early October.
My involvement in outdoor activities took a hit when I attended college to pursue an engineering degree in 2011. I struggled to get any hunting done when I was at school in Arkansas, so any trips I got to go on were limited to extended breaks that allowed me to come home for more than a day or two. Coincidentally, those were years where the pheasants were scarce, and we began to develop a much greater interest in waterfowl hunting.
In 2014 I graduated from John Brown University with an associate’s degree and began my career in agribusiness. At this point, our duck hunting crew was pretty well established, but we weren’t doing much to film our hunts or make a name for ourselves in the waterfowl community. Unfortunately, I was unable to do very much hunting for the first several years after college. Almost every evening and weekend during September, October and November were spent at work, unloading fall harvest at one of the grain elevators I managed.
For 4 years I watched our group grow and constantly received pictures of birds while I was stuck at work. I hunted every chance I possibly could, but still struggled to shoot more than single digits in an entire season. Finally, I decided I’d had enough, and left my steady, well-paying management job in 2018 to pursue a career as a technician at the same company that a few other members of our crew work at.
Since then, I’ve gotten the opportunity to hunt in almost every zone in Kansas, as well as make it back up to western Nebraska to chase geese again in the exact same blind where it all started 16 years ago. At the end of the day, the number of birds we shoot doesn’t matter. From watching the Kansas sunrise over the marsh to airboat rides up the Nebraska rivers, the experiences we have hunting waterfowl can’t be replicated in any other sport. We don’t hunt ducks, we chase memories!
Easy Shipping & Returns
Priority Customer Support
Secure Online Shopping
(620) 386-4781
Questions? Call or Text
