Ducks ducks ducks and more ducks

Clouds of ducks taking off from the Lone Oak Duck Club in western Missouri. Probably mostly mallards with a few shovelers, gadwalls and teal. But this video was taken in FEBRUARY! Where were they in November and December?? The guys worked hard all summer creating good  waterfowl habitat and I’m glad the birds can use …

Kansas Wildlife & Parks magazine

This is my first Way Outside cartoon for Kansas Wildlife & Parks magazine. July/August 1998. If my math is right…and it sometimes isn’t…2022 will start my twenty-fourth year working with this wonderful publication. I’m thankful that then-Editor Mike Miller took a chance on me and did something goofy and I’m blessed that when current Editor …

Fast food from the farm

The annual early teal season is usually a total crap shoot. At least it is at the Lone Oak Duck Club in western Missouri. Sometimes the little speedsters  have come and gone before the season opens. Other times they’re still up north. The table is setNo need to brush a blind. Just hunker down in …

Big Fishweir Creek

While eating lunch on the deck at Harp’s Pub, which is only a few thousand yards from my house, you can look straight down into the murky waters of Big Fishweir Creek. This once navigable urban waterway meanders from Jacksonville’s trendy Avondale neighborhood under the Herschel Street bridge and into the Ortega River where it …

Florida Black Bears

A recent Associated Press article in the Florida Times Union States that Governor Ron Desantis signed a bill to protect black bears against poachers. I don’t even like poached eggs so I can imagine how yucky a poached bear would taste. Anyway, the main reason some people were poaching bears is because the Florida bear …

Pets by day, killers by night

They stalk the suburbs by night. With catlike quickness they pounce upon their unsuspecting prey. With no respect for the concept of fair play the nocturnal monsters toy with their helpless victims, often flinging them into the air or swatting them with cruel paws. Eventually tiring of this sadistic game, they commit the unthinkable… they …