Brent Frazee

OSBORN, Mo. -- Dennis Browning didn't get much sleep the evening of Aug. 31.

Browning, a wildlife management biologist at the Missouri Department of Conservation's Pony Express Conservation Area, tried to nod off on the couch in his office. But he knew whatever sleep he would get would be short-lived.

This, after all, was the eve of the Missouri dove opener. And hunters always arrive in the middle of the night to check in and rush off to the fields to get a choice spot.

"I got my first hunter at 2:30 this morning," Browning said when the opener arrived. "But it's like that every year. That's why I stay in my office the night before the season opens.

OSAGE BEACH, Mo. -- When Jim Dill pulled his boat along a dock at Lake of the Ozarks, he bypassed the easy places to cast to.

He was looking for a spot that was hard to reach -- a bass refuge. And he found it behind a cable that extended from land.

"This lake gets hit so hard that it pushes the bass back into some of these quiet, out-of-the-way spots," Dill said as he launched a cast that sailed over the cable.

WARSAW, Mo. -- Ken Just knows where to go when he is in search of his version of the fountain of youth.

Each spring, Just, 77, makes the long trip from his home in northern Minnesota to the woods near Truman Lake in west-central Missouri.

There, he meets up with guide Steve Stokes, and the thrill of Missouri turkey hunting helps him rediscover his youth.

HUTCHINSON, Kan. -- Bob Aronsohn may be the only Kansas resident you'll ever meet who moved to the state because of crows.

That's right, crows.

Aronsohn, you see, is an avid crow hunter. And when he was living in Long Island, N.Y., he read all about the giant crow roosts Kansas had and how they were virtually untouched by hunters. So he just had to travel here and see for himself.

JUNCTION CITY, Kan. -- Marti Mace made her way through a standing milo field until she came to a trail so worn that it looked like a cattle crossing.

"That's not from cattle. This is a major deer trail," she said with a smile. "I call this I-70. This farm has a lot of deer -- and I think every one of them must use this trail."

Seconds later, Mace had reached a timbered field border and was climbing the steps of her tree stand to a platform overlooking the crops.

CLINTON, Mo. -- A duck hunter was born early Saturday morning.

Sitting in a blind during a youth hunt at Johnny and Linda Everhart's Wilderness Lodge, 10-year-old Malakai Lawrence was immersed in a new world.

MOUND CITY, Mo. -- At many duck camps, the teal season creates nothing more than a low-grade fever.

Many purists pass on the season that features the early migrating teal, not wanting to put up with the heat, humidity and mosquitoes.