This is a tough time for our country, actually for the international community. But this morning it was kind of hard for me to concentrate on how serious the situation is when Capt. Andrew Mizell of Southern Marsh Charters and I were taking off for a few hours of fly fishing for redfish. Isn’t …
Author Archives: BruceCochran
Northward Bound
The main reason several guys go together and spend a lot of time and money to buy, develop and manage a piece of duck hunting property is so they’ll have their own duck hunting place. It’s a yearlong job but a labor of love. Many things can thwart a promising duck season: weather patterns, migration …
A Firearms weekend
Our grandson Silas accompanied his dad and others to the farm of a fellow church member. This guy is obviously quite the outdoorsman. He has a safe place to shoot firearms, hunts deer and turkeys and has a pond where he hopes to eventually duck hunt. Fourteen year-old Silas had never fired a weapon. He …
Urban trail cam
Urban trail cam photos aren’t nearly as interesting as rural ones. No deer mugging for the camera, no turkeys, no raccoons. We just have to go with what we’ve got. In this case it’s a neighbor’s cat. I’m still hoping for a possum or a marauding cougar (the 4-legged kind)…but I’m not holding my breath. …
Still MORE big Kansas bucks
My friend Scott calls the deer in the first nighttime photo the Crabclaw buck. He only poses for the trail cam at night. Scott has been watching this buck for three years as it grows. As you can see by how roughed up he is, this buck is a fighter. The daylight photo below appears to …
A duck hunter is born
My baptism into the awesome sport of duck hunting took place when I was twenty-nine years old and should’ve known better. My “John The Baptist” was long-time buddy Ned who had duck hunted since high school. Before dawn we waded into the shallow waters of John Redmond reservoir in eastern Kansas. I could hear the …
The Lone Oak Duck Club
The Lone Oak Duck Club is an L-shaped tract of land in Bates County, Missouri. As the duck flies it’s roughly three miles northwest of the Four Rivers Waterfowl Management area. It was founded in 1979. I know because I was one of the founders. “Duck Club” sounds like a fancy place where rich …
Antlers Away
Trailcam photos of Kansas white tail bucks just keep coming. These beautiful shots came from my friend Jon Blumb whose camera hung on a tree somewhere in northeast Kansas. It’s funny how sometimes deer almost seem to be mugging for the camera.
Florida redfish
Moving from Kansas to Florida is not a cultural shock, it’s an ecological shock. Kansans are not used to seeing flocks of curlews feeding in our front yard, reports on the evening news of alligators or black bears wandering around the suburbs. It’s taken me over a year to find an outfitter who takes clients …
More big Kansas “non shooters”‘
More pics from Scott’s fleet of trail cams covering most of eastern Kansas. And of course, to Scott, these are “non shooters”. Do you think deer have a sense of humor? One buck is licking the tree with the camera on it.