This 81-year-old has a passion for Squaw Creek duck hunting
On a cloudy Saturday morning, Paul Knick was back where he belonged.
After a long summer of waiting, Knick returned to his duck club near the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge.
Knick, 81, has been hunting ducks at the wetlands in northwest Missouri since 1948. And he has memories of days when mallards fogged into the decoys; when friends’ dogs made excellent retrieves; when he hardly missed a shot.
Some good openers, some bad ones. But no matter what the results, it’s always a good day.
It marks the beginning of another duck season.
“It just feels good to be back,” said Knick,who lives in Gladstone. “The ducks aren’t flying today, not like they are some years.
“But it just feels great to open another season.”
Knick stood in the blind he has hunted since the 1970s with his friend, Mark Penrod, and patiently waited for the ducks to arrive. It was a long wait.
For the first half of the day, Knick and Penrod failed to fire a shot. But their luck changed during the afternoon hunt. A flock of wigeons passed in front of the blind and the hunters dropped three of them. Penrod’s red Lab, Bella, splashed out to retrieve the fallen ducks, and Knick welcomed another duck season.
“A duck hunter has to be the most optimistic person in the world,” Knick said. “He keeps thinking, ‘All we need is one good flight of ducks in here.’
“The way we used to hunt, we’d get in the blind and we’d stay all day. We wouldn’t leave until we had our limit.”
Patience. If there’s one thing Knick has learned in a lifetime of duck hunting, it’s that.
Saturday was an example. He, Penrod and Bella stared at mostly empty skies during the morning. But the ducks became active in the afternoon.
Part of it was that the hunters had far less competition for the birds’ attention than they did in the morning, when duck calls emanated from all directions.
For Knick, that was nothing new. He has been hunting the Squaw Creek area since he was a teenager. “Before I could even drive,” he said.
He would tag along with his uncle and thrill to the way ducks would come to their calls.
“I go back far enough that I remember times when Squaw Creek would hold a half-million ducks,” Knick said. “It’s not like that anymore.
“We have a lot more refuges now and the ducks have a lot more options. But Squaw Creek still gets its share.”
Knick rarely expects to see the best on opening day. Even when Squaw Creek has large numbers of ducks, they often stay on the refuge early in the season because of a ready food supply. And even when they do fly out, shots from other hunters will spook the ducks and cause them to climb in altitude, out of range for hunters.
Still, Knick has to be there. He is a die-hard duck hunter who has to be at the marsh on opening day.
“I’m an old geezer, but I still love to hunt,” Knick said. “Opening day is never the best hunting. A good rule of thumb is to get out sometime between Nov. 14 and the 22nd. That’s when the mallards will be in.
“I remember one year when I stayed up here for three straight weeks. My wife wondered if I was ever coming home.”
Get the idea? Knick is about as avid a duck hunter as you will find.
He also gives back to the sport he loves. He and his wife were major donors in the effort to restore Mallard Marsh and Pintail Pool on the refuge. He was state chairman for Ducks Unlimited, a national conservation organization, and he served in other capacities. He later was inducted into the Waterfowlers Hall of Fame.
He passed down his passion for duck hunting to his family. He laughs about the days when his boys were young and he would take them to Squaw Creek.
“I told that they were entering the sacred valley and that they had to take their hats off and put them over their heart,” he said.
Today, the boys, Mark and Paul, are grown and have left the Kansas City area. But they still return home each fall to hunt with dad.
One of Knick’s daughters, Kari, also has a story about sharing her dad’s passion for duck hunting.
“Her first word was ‘duck,’ ” Knick said. “I had a mount of a duck on the wall and I would always point to it and tell her what it was.
“Her first word wasn’t mommy or daddy. It was ‘duck.’ I always got a kick out of that.”
Brent Frazee: 816-234-4319, @fishboybrent
A hunt for the ages
When Paul Knick, a Squaw Creek hunting legend, is asked about his most memorable duck hunt, he often talks about an outing that took place last November.
He and two friends, Bob Pearson and Gary Parker, were hunting at a duck club near Bigelow, Mo., and were passing the time on a slow afternoon by telling hunting stories. Pearson spotted a teal speeding toward the decoys, raised up and hit his target.
While Pearson and Parker were out of the blind, searching for the duck with the help of Pearson’s yellow lab, Knick spotted a flock of four ducks flying toward the decoys. He raised up and fired three times, and connected on each shot. Then he reached in his pocket for another shell, quickly loaded it into his shotgun and fired at the last duck and hit it, too.
“If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Pearson told Knick.
Ah but it gets better.
Knick returned to the marsh in the evening and saw two ducks flying toward the decoys and fired twice. Six shots, six ducks.
“Sometimes old men have good days, too,” Knick said.
Brent Frazee: 816-234-4319, @fishboybrent
This story was originally published October 31, 2015 at 4:20 PM with the headline "This 81-year-old has a passion for Squaw Creek duck hunting."