Word, Mel! Remember when they would let ya bring yer Lab into the headquarters? That doesn't happen NOW, tight asses...

And remember... ya could rent those Neumann and Bennett's inflatable dekes for $1 a dozen... and they came in those big HEAVY canvas army duffels HAHAHAHA Boy, three or four doz dekes in a soaked canvas duffel weighed 100 pounds or so it seemed.

Then add in having the whole deal FREEZE SOLID on ya... and it was a real joy to deal with!!

Remember when they used to keep an olive drab parachute in every water blind... to cover and hide the boats????

I have a group of four dekes that I snagged from the decoy room before the closed it a few years ago... like to have a buck for every duck killed over those four dekes HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Remember old Buzz Jacobs who ran the decoy room? He was somethin!

Mel you are correct about the shooting... we killed a TON of geese out of G9 and C1, and a bunch of the other waterblinds... and the "hill" blinds (pits mostly) were good for mallards back in the day.

Mel and others... do you recall when they had those goose pits at the Grove... on the hill on the far side of Jo Shelby Lake... ??? You could boat across to em or go the long way around... MAN we used to kill geese galore out of those...

the geese and dux naturally flew (and still do fly) up that ridge that runs north from the Grove up over Fountain Grove town, and on north past Shoemaker's old farm, and Hoss Buckner's land... on up over McKenzie's land ... and still north over Meadville to big fields way up by Browning and Chula...

Every evening, it was a parade of ducks and geese flying back and forth over Meadville to those fields further north. I and several other town kids would shoot at em sometimes... I knocked three or four dux and geese by emptying a fully loaded .22 auto up into em... IN TOWN ... my neighbors LOVED that! One snow goose landed on top of the locker plant, another Canada landed on the Babdist church roof LMAO!!! Spent bullets came down somewhere ... I suppose in all the neighborhood roofs!!

The old man was Mayor, so... nobody said anything far as I knew HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA