Oh, how I love to turkey hunt! Now I love to guide as well. This is my first “paid” guided turkey hunt. I’d been asked in the past and was always too busy with my own hunting or scheduling other shooting and hunting events for my business. After thinking about it, I decided I’d try it; after all, nothing pleases most hunters – myself included – more than turning others on to hunting and enjoying[...]
About White Perch Ask anyone in Maryland to tell you the first fish they caught, and the most likely answer will be a white perch. (Morone americana). Close cousins to striped bass, they’ll take an artificial lure quicker than a whipstitch on a shad dart. They’re prolific in most tidal streams, and they are great fun to catch. Not just for kids either - there are plenty of full-grown adults, including this old stump jumper[...]
Everyone wants to be an outfitter on the Eastern Shore, or at least that’s what it seems. People see dollar signs! Really, outfitting is so much more than making a dollar. If you love the outdoors like I do, then you understand. Seeing hunters come to our camp, experiencing the atmosphere, and the camaraderie is something everyone should get a chance to be a part of, at least once in my opinion. If our camp[...]
In today’s society, the number of young hunters is declining. I find it a shame that the youth, under the age of 20, will not learn all the invaluable life lessons that can come from hunting that I’ve had the pleasure of learning. Hunting creates bonding time, helps to create memories and new friends, and creates relationships that last a life time. I have great memories and have had bonding time with my grandfather, dad[...]
Growing up in a family full of avid hunters, being in the outdoors was just a normal everyday thing to me. I can remember like it was yesterday, going with my father on my first-ever out of state hunt as a child in Alabama at a place called Bush Creek Plantation. That hunting trip is just one of the many reasons I picked my career path as a hunting outfitter. Everyone wants to be an[...]
If you tell someone you are headed to a muskrat-centric weekend, they might look at you a little funny. That is unless they are from the Eastern Shore. In that case, they’ll tell you that you are in for a treat. First things first—what’s the deal with these muskrats, sometimes marketed in the restaurants of yesteryear as “marsh rabbits?” Most folks get them a bit mixed up with beaver, otter, and the like. They are[...]
It’s hard to imagine somewhere more quintessentially Maryland than the lower Eastern Shore. Deeply connected to both its past and a sense of place, it’s the source of most of our iconic blue crabs, the home of our remaining skipjacks and the center of some of the region’s last working maritime communities. It’s also a place where the land and water are so intertwined, it’s hard to know where one starts and the other begins[...]
If you tell someone you are headed to a muskrat-centric weekend, they might look at you a little funny. That is, unless they are from the Eastern Shore. In that case, they’ll tell you that you are in for a treat. First things first—what’s the deal with these muskrats, sometimes marketed in the restaurants of yesteryear as “marsh rabbits?” Most folks get them a bit mixed up with beaver, otter, and the like. They are[...]
There are few things that bring me as much joy as a squealing child as he or she hoists a gyrating sunfish up on the bank. The fish is flopping, and the child is giggling as they try to immediately pounce on this incredibly interesting form of life we know as a “fish.” By my own claim, I caught my first fish, a humble bluegill, at the age of five…and I haven’t been the same[...]
In the spring, Maryland’s Chesapeake swells with silver: shad and river herring. Like salmon, these fish are anadromous: the adults run upstream into fresh water to spawn, then return to the Atlantic Ocean to live for the rest of the year. The new generations develop from fertilized eggs suspended in stream currents to swimming fry and then juveniles, feeding and growing over the summer before migrating to the ocean, where they somehow meet the adult[...]