Bootheel Lodging and the Waterfowler’s World

Every fall, there’s that one day when the temperature cools and you feel or sense Indian Summer will soon arrive. Days will shorten. Grasses and tree leaves will begin to turn colors. While these natural wonders start taking place, another natural wonder starts taking flight in the north: the fall waterfowl migration.

For more than 100 years, waterfowl hunters have pursued the sport of hunting ducks and geese, and Southeast Missouri has been an attraction to both birds and hunters alike. Missouri’s bottomland hardwoods, flooded crop fields and shallow streams attract migrating birds, and with it comes hunters from around the country. One hunting lodge in Southeast Missouri wants hunters to have the best experience they can when the flight is on.

Dereck Turner grew up in Southeast Missouri and is an avid duck hunter. In 2018, he opened Bootheel Lodging in Holland, Mo., near Steele, Mo. The lodge has private rooms with bunk beds, kitchen, dining area, lounge, ATV storage and hookups for camping trailers, but these amenities are only part of what Bootheel Lodging is about. They’re about hospitality, as well, and hunters from South Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and more have experienced it.

The book “The Golden Age of Waterfowling” by Wayne Capooth is a collection of county and hunting lodge records, hunting stories, pictures and other matters related to duck hunting in Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri and Mississippi. In the book, Capooth lists at least 11 different hunting clubs and lodges that were in Southeast Missouri from 1864 to 1937, including Hi-Ki Hunting and Fishing Club, St. Francis River Hunting and Fishing Club, Big Lake Hunting Club, Kenneth Sporting Club and more. So in a sense, Dereck Turner and Bootheel Lodging are carrying on a tradition of providing hospitality to waterfowlers who travel to the area. There are a few other hunting lodges in Southeast Missouri, and maybe one day, we can visit them, too.

Bootheel Lodging works closely with a hunting guide service called Feathered Pursuit. Their head guide is Clay Boyd, and he’ll take hunting groups of, say, two to four people, and let them hunt from several of the blinds he has available. There is a fee for hunting with them, but his team does all the work for you. The blinds are spacious, they have the decoys out already, they do the duck calling for you and they might offer you a made-in-the-blind meal to warm your stomach. In most cases, they can let you ride in a Polaris right up to the blind.

As mentioned earlier, Clay has a team. Those I’ve personally met are fantastic guys — William Francis, Kyle Doherty and Dereck’s son, Garrett. When hunting with William, it seemed to me he could see a flight of ducks or geese much farther away than I could. Perhaps it’s my aging eyes, but he can see birds well in the distance, which is helpful to allow time to get down and hide if birds are headed our way. Kyle knows waterfowl hunting, as well as the hunting in Southeast Missouri, and he can make slow time in a blind pass easily. The morning I hunted with him, the birds were loafing on Big Lake in Arkansas a few miles away, but we had great conversation, and that’s appreciated (got a drake mallard to boot). Garrett gets a grade “A” like the other two. In his case, he’s about as polite a man as you’d want to meet, and he sweet-talked a white-fronted goose right into my game bag. He’s great with that Riceland call, and if you get a chance to hunt with him, take it.

This past duck season was pretty well below normal just about everywhere in the region. Even so, I stayed at Bootheel Lodging a couple times, met some new friends, learned about hunting the flooded fields of Southeast Missouri, and introduced my dogs Violet and Dawn to new dogs and hunting situations. Even though the hunting was slow, the folks at Bootheel Lodging and the guides with Feathered Pursuit made the trip worthwhile. We waterfowl hunters would want nothing more than to get a limit every time we go out, but the experience is more than just a bag limit. It’s also about meeting new people, sharing stories and building friendships that will carry through to another season.

When fall arrives months from now, a day will come when the temperature will drop, the grass and leaves will start turning colors and that autumnal waterfowl migration will begin up north. The fall flight is something many of us anticipate all year, and it’s always a blessing when we can spend our time afield with people who appreciate the outdoors just as much as us.