Growing up I have always had a passion for the outdoors, whether it is sitting on the lake reeling in them spring time catfish or in a blind watching whistling wings drop right into my lap. I am the only son in our family as I have a younger sister and a loving mother and father.

My dad was introduced to the outdoors at a young age from his father. Since the day I was born, the passion for the outdoors and the sport of hunting was passed down to me. My family grew up primarily hunting waterfowl. Ever since being introduced to the sports, I have been hooked. Dad would tell me stories about times when I was too young to remember, about how he would throw a shotgun and a bag of decoys over one shoulder and I over the other shoulder, with the lab by his side, and off we went busting into the marshes.

I hunt anything from deer, turkey, waterfowl and small game animals to upland birds. I love to hunt all types of game, but waterfowl hunting is where I center my attention. Growing up my family has always raised Labrador and a German Shorthair dogs. Growing up I followed my dad around and learned from his tricks he learned through the years of hunting and fishing. I didn’t start carrying a gun around until I was 12 and received my first 20 gauge.

I started off hunting primarily ducks and a few geese. I hunted deer during deer season and turkey in the spring, in the fall I was in a marsh somewhere blasting away at ducks. It wasn’t until I was 16 when I really turned my attention on goose hunting.  When the ducks and geese start making their migration push through the Midwest and on through Kansas here, I focus my attention specifically on them. I will go that extra mile to harvest a few birds.

I grew up outside a little town named Meriden, located right here in Northeast Kansas. I currently live between the towns of Meriden and Ozawkie located right off of Perry Reservoir, allowing for some great hunting, whether it is small game, deer, turkey and a great number of waterfowl. We are fortunate to have a fairly large public wildlife area located near us that produces some great wetlands. We also are fortunate to have two rivers, the Delaware and the Kansas River, that hold a great amount of species of wildlife. I do most of my upland hunting out in Western Kansas, as I am fortunate enough to hunt a great amount of private land with my dad. All the land that I goose hunt on is private and I sometimes use the public marshes to our advantage for duck hunting in.

Waterfowl hunting is what I live for and always will!

With five days left until the end of the spring 2011 Kansas turkey season, my buddy Cole Thomas and I had a last minute idea to go turkey hunt in his neck of the woods around Blue Rapids on May 23.

The weather was warm and muggy, but that wasn’t going to stop us. We set out at about 4:30 p.m. to drive around a little bit and scout before dinner. The birds just weren’t quite active yet and were still in the shaded timber. After finishing up dinner we were going to head back out to put some gobblers to bed so that we could have a good morning hunt. We set out a little after 6 that evening to go scout.
Cole and I had discussed a few places that we wanted to try and set up on the next morning and where we wanted to hunt. We talked about maybe putting the spot and stock on some birds that night if we had time and the birds were on land he had permission on. After setting out the birds just didn’t quite seem to be feeding as hard as we thought they were going to before they went into roost later that evening. We drove by one honey hole that he wanted to hunt the next morning and we were planning on roosting some birds later that evening, as we saw no birds out there. We continued to drive around to a few other spots as I looked out into this field with my binoculars. I knew Cole had permission to hunt and saw a lonesome bird standing out there.