**President’s Corner**

**November 2025**

A few weeks ago I joined Curt Matzinger & Craig Kessler for “hunt day” during youth waterfowl weekend. I’ve only been a mentor for a few years but for Curt & Craig go back nearly 30 years to when the program was first created.

A special thanks also needs to go to our hosts and partners including Suffolk County Parks who provided the duck blinds as well as NYS DEC for continuing to facilitate the program. Mike Menza from DEC did an excellent job getting the mentors and participants dispatched from the central check in area at Southaven Park and out to the blinds. For me personally as well as the young man that I mentored, we were at our blind with our 12 decoys rigged out about 10 minutes before legal shooting which was AWESOME! I say this because If you’ve ever hunted at the County Parks most area familiar with the lottery not taking place until legal hunting has actually started elsewhere. By the time you actually get to your blind and get your decoys in the water it could be an hour into legal shooting, but that’s for another topic of discussion.

Experiences can vary from year to year depending upon availability of birds, the previous experiences of the youth and lets face it a little bit of luck can go a long way. Well I’ll take good luck over bad luck any day of the week because we had a great day in the field. Speaking for myself I was joined by a young man whose father had previously taken his son deer hunting as well as pheasant hunting, this kid knew how to use a shotgun. That experience small game hunting proved to be worthwhile as he bagged his 1st 2 ducks, both mallard drakes with his Grandfather’s Remington Model 58.

WAY TO GO FRANKIE!!!

As an added bonus his 1st mallard actually had a band on it! Banded in 2020 in Nassau County in Baldwin, NY about 40 miles away from where it was taken. Retrieves were made by 2 year old Hudson who was thankful for the work.

At the end of the hunt I was thanked by the Father & Son and I could tell they wanted more. Wishing them the bets of luck as they continue to pursue more waterfowl hunting opportunities.