after 42 years of grinding as hard as i could, the goals the “why” have started to change. this year i turned control over to my boys. they scout, plan, strategize, set the decoys, and call the shots. not gonna lie it was pretty damn nice to sit back and watch the show instead of being the show.

first half of the season in Tx stunk because we were in the worst drought for Bell county in 25 years. everything was planted and ready but we had zero water. timing worked great that we planned an AK trip in Nov and burned up some of that down time. Took my youngest, my usual AK trip partner, and 2 newbies.



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i was able to finish the 42 bird list with my .410 and the common merganser.

finally got the high quality H2O we needed in Dec and we had ducks like i haven’t seen in over 10 years. boys were nice enough to include me on some of their hunts.


youngest and i have gotten to where we prefer to “trophy hunt” instead of pike hunt. we spend hours glassing ponds looking for pretties. it used to be all about the pile and now we’d rather get one target over 100.

although we still love pickin a big pile of cotton.



added a couple more to the bpr collection.








ended with our annual trip to the coast and blew up somebody’s roost to finish the season…..

Congrats on the nice season. The boys are growing up.

Very rare to get a Ruddy plumed like that around these parts. That’s a great one. Congrats

Very cool.

we have 2 small groups that spend the whole season on two of our ponds. they get here in Nov and leave in May and i’ve never seen one that red. it surprised us to see that one in December.

Congrats on the 42 with the .410!

Enjoy them while they are young and want to hang out with Dad. If you are lucky, it sticks, and hunting will be their passion forever. My son was crazy about hunting as a kid, he went with me every hunt. He lost interest though in high school. I think most kids when they are young, it is more about hanging out with Dad vs hunting.

I tell you though for me and what drives me, it is less about pulling the trigger these days, and more about the scouting, the planning, the strategizing...The day I lose interest in doing all that is the day I probably stop duck hunting.

been picking away at it for about 10 years. took me 4 years to get the common mcgreaser.