With great regret I admit hunting season 2010/11 is coming to an end.  February and March are fairly useless months, the only positive is I am able to use the down-time to reacquaint myself with my family!  Since the marsh was an ice rink, late duck season was spent on the Arkansas River.  

After a couple of scouting trips, we found good numbers of birds concentrated in a bend of the river.  We were able to fashion a blind using cedar branches on a sandbar.  The river was mostly frozen (just like my hands), but had a few current channels open and some open slack water near our sandbar which we appropriately named “Miss Island”.  For the most part the weather cooperated with cloudy skies and even light flurries.

 

I hate to admit, but Miss Island earned its name due to the fact it took 3 boxes of shells to get a limit on day two.

Arranged Marriage

In 1923, twelve avid waterfowlers came together and started a hunting club near Oxford, KS.  They each paid $1,000 (2010 equivalent of $12,600) as membership dues and with the proceeds secured a few hundred acres and built a 60 acre marsh complete with hunting cabin.  Today, the property and hunting club still remain intact and is oasis in the middle of nowhere, offering some of the best waterfowl hunting in Kansas.  Although the original members are gone, the club's bylaws have allowed membership to pass by lineage to subsequent generations.  New members (only a handful of memberships have been granted in the past 88 years) may be added by vote of existing members and with payment of dues, which have remained $1,000.

If this cabin could talk, it would tell some amazing stories...there is still a hidden trap door in the floor from the days of Prohibition.    

The marsh was built for duck hunting with an average water depth of 4' and 20 islands. 

I have had the opportunity to be a guest at the club a few times this year and am amazed by the black clouds of ducks and geese at this private marsh.  The marsh itself is surrounded by a band of C.R.P., approximatively 100 yards wide, the C.R.P. is bordered by massive crop fields of winter wheat, milo and soybeans.

One of the current members has a grand-daughter who is about the same age as Ben, I am trying really hard to work out the details for an arranged marriage, so membership may be extended into our family (Sorry son, but we all make sacrifices and you'll thank me when your'e older!).

Our last hunt was prior to a massive cold front and it didn't take long to get a limit.  

   

Bad Luck Bill

The past few weeks have been spent laying in fields honking at geese.  I had a great time last week when my good buddies Bill and Peter came down for a fews days to do some population control and relive the glory days from Fort Hays State U.
 

Despite a great setup in a field which 24 hours prior had hundreds of geese, we struck out and ended the streak~ We did however shoot a limit of corn cobs!

The goose numbers have been unbelievable the last few days, prior to last weekend our last six hunts have yielded limits in less than two hours of hunting.  I blame the end of the streak on Bill.  Every time he comes to town hot fields go cold, not to mention we stay up too late and inevitably end up basking in the glow of neon lights.