The Outdoors is for everyone: Taking Adapting the Outdoors on a Waterfowl Hunt

The Outdoors is for everyone: Taking Adapting the Outdoors on a Waterfowl Hunt

This past week we had the pleasure of taking Nate Lamberson of Adapting the Outdoors on a waterfowl hunt at the Nature Conservancy's Emiquon.  It was a morning full of laughs, education, and good memories.

About a month ago Capitol Outdoors saw a Facebook message from  NWTF - Illinois asking if anyone would like to mentor a gentleman who's 26 years old and has Spina Bifida.  It stated that he is interested in fishing but has never gone hunting.  After a little discussion among ourselves  we decided to volunteer our time and take Nate out.  

A few days later Nate contacted us and we began planning a waterfowl hunt.  He informed us he had not taken his Hunter Education class yet but was enrolled and would be taking it shortly.  You could hear the excitement in both his attitude and voice.  As we talked we discussed where could we go.  Capitol Outdoors hunts only public ground and getting drawn in at some places is just the luck of the draw.  

We discussed a few options but I kept thinking about how most locations have a lot of other people and pressure.  That's when I informed Nate about Emiquon and told him how the land used to be all farm land and has been restored to prime wetland habitat by the Nature Conservancy.  Most importantly they have disabled hunts and a permit allocation.  We also informed him that it wouldn't be easy setting up but that we feel confident that we'll get some birds.  Nate applied for the permit and was successful. 

Leading up to the day we went over all the possible issues that we may face along the way and also what he should expect.  Attentive and eager to learn all about waterfowl hunting, he listened and asked questions.

The morning was finally here, we picked him up and got on the road.  We  laughed and talked about everything under the sun.  We arrived, checked-in and headed off to our stake.  Once there we went over the different options for setting up and then got ready to hunt.

Watch this video to see how we did.