https://americanlongrifles.org...ex.php?topic=69166.0

The link has all the details, story and pics, but I'm back from the big Iowa hunting trip and it was a success on every level.

Well, Osprey, it might not be an elk, but it's about the size of one!

Yowza!That's easily as big as one of our muleys out here.

I have discovered one major flaw in going out there and shooting that big buck - it's very depressing to be back in Maryland where the deer hide all day and don't get nearly as big.

Ah, but what a rich history Maryland has in waterfowling.
As well as just to mention crabs, oysters, clams, and the old, iconic "skipjack" sailing oyster dredging boats. And, "the Chesapeake oyster war."

While I don't think much of current Maryland politics, I used to be quite the duck hunter, and although I have never hunted in Maryland, I have read much about the subject there.
The old market hunting days are long gone (and rightly so), but that tradition has been much romanticized. Wooden decoys of canvasbacks, bluebills, redheads, geese; punt guns and battery guns, 10 and even 8 gauge double barrel shotguns, sinkboxes, sneakboats, the Susquehanna River flats, the eastern shore, and much more. I love it!
The annual decoy and bird carving show in Ocean City is a wonderful event.

Some of my wife's ancestors hailed from the Elkton, MD. area. That family line goes back to colonial days. One of her ancestors owned the Elkton Hotel back in the late 1800's. Gradually, the generations migrated up to Pennsylvania, and finally to New Jersey where my wife and I were both born and raised.

(I have recently re-read one of my books on decoys of the Atlantic flyway, and that is what stimulated this response to your last post.)

Ohh, you don't know how much I miss it. Before I got into flintlocks I was a die hard waterfowler in my younger days. Went six straight years after college and never missed a day of duck season, not many days the next 20 years either. Family farm was on tidal river full of divers, one of the best Canada goose spots on the Shore and even had pretty good puddle duck hunting. I lived for that stuff. Still a good number of geese around, but the duck hunting really died off a half dozen years or so ago. We still have the heritage, but the hunting isn't like the old days, even the now old days of the 80's and 90's.