“Tag: Geese”

When Captain Bob Wetherald, owner of the Mid River Guide Service, invites me to go hunting, I drop everything. He's arguably the Potomac River's best seaduck and diver guide, and the spread of smoked duck breast and spirits he puts out for the post-hunt social hour are alone worth the trip.

Is wind energy bad for waterfowl? It's something we've discussed here before, and a North Dakota study by Ducks Unlimited and the United States Fish & Wildlife Service in North Dakota found that when wind farms are placed on wetlands, breeding pairs of ducks are reduced by an average of 21 percent.

I was catching up with a friend of mine, who for whatever reason prefers hunting deer to waterfowl, when he mentioned his freezer full of ducks and geese.

I've never been a big fan of coyotes, but new info released by the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) may change my tune: Apparently they eat a lot of cats.

Penn State's University Park airport has developed a widlife hazard management plan that's due, in part, to a 2010 collision between a mallard and a private aircraft. Nobody was injured, but the duck managed to do a whopping $45,000 in damages to the jet—sure makes hitting a deer with your pickup seem not so bad, eh?

One evening many years ago a wise old man was sharing the secrets of life with me over cold drinks. "Tell me, Frank," I said, "What's been the key to your long and healthy marriage?" "Oh, that's easy," he replied, a twinkle in his eye. "If I give up, my wife wins."

For some reason professional chefs seem to really underestimate my ineptitude in their cooking instruction. They include ingredients I've never heard of or can't find at my local grocer. They use fancy equipment that I don't own and don't care to own. And they employ such fancy techniques and swiftness with their knives that my feeble brain can't keep up.

California Waterfowl board member and long-time volunteer Jay Goble shot this tremendous video of wood ducklings (or is it wood duck ducklings?) plopping from their nest for the first time. I don't normally use the word "cute," but friends, this is one cute video.

Federal duck stamps go on sale today and, while competition for the winning artwork is always fierce, I think Joe Hautman's woodie drake is as pretty as they come. Therefore there's no better year than this to join a growing waterfowl conservation tradition: buying not just one, but two duck stamps. I like to frame one stamp, and tuck my signed stamp (the one I hunted with) inside my duck journal as a memento.