Sumter Boys in Kansas

[JABIII]

SC boys are just famous wherever they go... lol

"We drove 18 hours to get here and duck hunt," said Michael Boozer of Sumter, South Carolina."

Not just a trip to the grocery store

By Jeff Glines

Special to The Morning Sun
Living on the west side of Pittsburg has many benefits. Since I do most of my hunting and fishing out west, I can leave my house at any time and not worry about traveling through town catching any one of a number of stoplights. Hey, I'm all for traffic control, but when the fish are biting or if the geese are flying, I'm in a hurry. But one drawback to living off of west Highway 126 is the lack of grocery stores nearby. With IGA on the south side, and Dillons/WalMart on the north, it takes a considerable amount of time to grab a gallon of milk. Several times each week I find myself running to the store for something I urgently need to make dinner taste just right. But imagine my surprise when on a recent outing to the Milford Wildlife Area near Junction City, Kansas, I met four outdoor adventurers trying their luck duck hunting. And they were a long way from home. Hearing their story made my own complaints about traffic and traveling to the store pale in comparison.

"We drove 18 hours to get here and duck hunt," said Michael Boozer of Sumter, South Carolina. "We have been going to Stuttgart, Arkansas for the last few years. My friend here (pointing at Hugh McLaurin of Elloree, South Carolina) came to Milford Lake last year and saw one hunter the whole time he was hunting. Hugh was here in January of 2003, and shot a limit of ducks everyday for five straight days. With a lot less pressure than at Stuttgart, we skipped Arkansas this year and came here instead."

"I found Milford by searching the Internet and speaking to local hunters like Rick Dykstra of Junction City," Hugh continued. "Rick took me that first day last year and we shot a bunch of mallards. So this year I brought Michael, Jase Felts and Hank Beckham (both from Myrtle Beach, SC) with me."

Driving two trucks down the interstate with a duck boat in tow behind each is no small task. Throw in three dogs, twelve dozen decoys, and other waterfowling paraphernalia on an 18-hour one way trip, you have the makings of an outdoor adventure that can be highly rewarding but potentially disastrous.

"We left Columbia, South Carolina at about 5pm on a Friday headed for Kansas and drove all night," Hank told me. "We stopped about every four hours or so, in places like Nashville, St. Louis, and of course, Cabelas in Kansas City. We arrived at Milford at about noon the next day, Saturday. We had no real problems getting out here, but made sure before we left that the trucks and trailers were ready for the road."

"But all this travel was worth it because Kansas has so much more waterfowl to offer than South Carolina," Jase offered. A quick check of some information from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and the KDW&P seems to confirm Jase Felts' assumption. Out of 17 public land areas in the entire state of South Carolina, only 232 ducks of all species were harvested last week. In contrast, Milford Wildlife Area has more than 10,000 ducks using the area right now.

It can be common for us residents of Kansas to take for granted what we see outside our living room windows. Sometimes it takes a fresh perspective from out-of-state outdoor enthusiasts for one to fully appreciate what we have in our own backyards.

http://morningsun.net/stories/010105...50101006.shtml

[Duck Nitz]

Northwest Missouri's got em too. I may be heading that way next year. Funny though, how far we'll go to bust a duck.

[Ghetto]

Cool...I believe I went to school with some of them fellers. [img]graemlins/read.gif[/img]

[Boom Boom]

Milford Lake, eh? I don't believe that I would have told a damn newspaper reporter where I was from, lol. But thanks for the heads up on a new place to check out boyzz.

[deadriver]

Yep. The carolina boys are hell!!

My brother and I had a running joke about the whole time we were in Sodak this year that we seem to have been one of the lead teams for the SCWIRT.
South Carolina Waterfowl Invasion Reconnisance Teams

Representive members have to be some of the first Carolians to hunt the ducks of a given state and then report back home. I think the sumter boys make the team.

Although we did go to Kansas twice before the millenium, we failed to report back.

We even joked about making a web site.

SCWIRT (Cause after the word get out back home, and the crowd comes, the locals always feel like they have been shit on)

[CommieKiller]

I grew up Near Milford Lake. My Grandfather lost 175 acres when the Corps built the lake. I go back every year and hunt on family land. Ducks have always been plentiful, and hunters few and far between. Upland bird hunting is more popular in Kansas......and like ducks there's lots of pheasant, quail and dove. There's a good chunk of public land near the lake. But the best hunting is on the opposite end of the lake. Fort Riley used to allow hunting on the military reservation also. If you can make the trip, it's deffinately worth it.