Bird Hunting Opportunities in Iowa Circa 1912

[Kevin McCormack]

When I lived in KC MO briefly in the early 1970's, I fell in with a couple who were ardent bird hunters but knew nothing about duck hunting, which the husband had recently taken a liking to. His wife was the personal secretary of the Big Mahoff VP of the veterinary pharmaceutical firm I worked for, and overheard some of my war stories of duck hunting back East. She said she and her husband would take me upland bird hunting if I would guide and show them how to duck hunt (e.g., rig decoys, brush blinds, select guns & ammo, etc.). I told her I would as I could see no downside; she being a real looker and her husband being a deputy sheriff and liked good cigars to boot! They had a terrific Brittany Spaniel dog and a "mini Winnie", the smallest Winnebago RV sold at the time; no kids and almost no other interests other than hunting and fishing.

We alternated weekends during hunting seasons between quail and pheasant hunting in southern Iowa around Adair (scene of the first daylight train robbery in the US, compliments of Frank and Jesse and the Younger boys), and duck shooting from a blind we paid $5 a day fee for down in lower MO right on the river, about and hour from KC. The owner had big fields of milo planted adjacent to the river and owned a bulldozer; the week before duck season he would cut the dike against the river and flood a few of the standing milo fields where he had erected primitive but good blinds. I often think of it as "Little Beaver Dam."

When we hunted around Adair, quail were extremely abundant and almost anyone would let you hunt if you knocked on the door of the farm house. Rare was the outing that we failed to kill our limit - each of us. I remember several trips where the farm owners more or less insisted that we park the mini Winnie in the side yard or equipment bay and hook up to their electric and water.

Similarly, the wild pheasants which had been established around the time Craig's research shows, were literally everywhere. My abiding memories of those wonderful days are the huge size of the pheasants, the height of that Iowa feed corn, and the fabulous wild quail shooting. For an eastern boy transplanted to 'middle America', it was quite an adventure!