500,000 acre habitat program

[Fritz the Cat]

Would be nice to see most of this put toward preserving wetlands and associated upland habitat around them. Keep low spots from getting farmed, have buffer strips around water, etc. 5 acres here, 10 acres there. Gotta think that's going to be our best bang for our buck and would have the most impact.

A farmer let us hunt a 20-acre slough. In wet years it would claim ground and in dry years it would recede. Cattails grew well and so did Canada Thistle. The cattails provided us with a great place to hide.

One year it was especially dry and the farmer disced everything down. Barren no natural blind. I understood why he did it. The Thistle always had big fuzzballs providing a forever reservoir of seed.

We improvised and built a blind out of plywood and covered it with mud. Setting it next to the water it resembled a muskrat hut. Could have caught waterfowl with a butterfly net.