Hunting on the Trinity river my entire life I have learned to hunt throuh some difficult times and situations.  It is amazing how things and places can change so drastically in a few years.

I can remember being a young boy and Dad picking me up from school on a Friday evening.  We would head home to the river, the place I called home for 21 years, and jump into our loaded air boat and head for the flats.  I will never forget the serenity and peacefulness of being on the open water with the sun setting and watching thousands of birds flying down and the winds of a northern front.  It was just us, my father, my trusty dog Starr and the birds.  We would sit and watch wondering what opening day might bring.

It was a time when there was a unspoken waterfowler's respect, a time when decoys could be left out the night before and a time when you always knew who was hunting where.  A time when sky busting was unheard of and boats buzzing through your spread just did not happen.

I left the river at the age of twent one years old and took some great memories with me, I loved that place.

Moving to Austin for a job assignment I found myself lost in a world I knew nothing about. Living in a residential neighborhood was different, there was not a lake in sight, people knew not of a airboat and I was looked at funny while dressed in camo and face paint the few times I did get to hunt.  Four years of that was enough, I resigned from my job and moved back to place I knew as home.  The River!

Returning to the river felt good, I found a nice little home a mile away from the boat dock, built a new dog kennel and got the decoys lined out.  I was ready, but evidently things had changed. Things like common courtesy and respect.

I hunted the way I did with dad, going out the day before the opener to a blind we had built many years ago, setting out the decoys and trying to take it all in.  Opening day came and that is when things started to change.  I had to etch my name in my decoys now, had to get to the blind at 2am to keep others out and had to "shine" people out of my spread while birds where feeding and swimming about.  What had happened to the quiet place I hunted as a boy?  Why was there no longer a unspoken common courtesy of the hunters around us?  Waterfowl hunting had taken on a new era and I had to adapt.

I continued to hunt that river for a few years and still do when I get a chance.  The courtesy is there among the the few that grew up on that river as I did, but it is gone with many more.

I think we as hunters need to re instate the waterfowler's code of conduct in our youth and teach the new hunters out there the way it should be done.  Hunting is a sport that gets in the blood and stays there for a lifetime, it is an addiction that our youth can enjoy that does not involve drugs or alcohol.  Hunting is what keeps families together and forms a bond between a father and son that can not be compared to.

It is time a new era is born and the breed of waterfowler's that once was is here again.  Lets do what we can to keep the sport we love a fun one