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The Bottoms

The Bottoms is a family hunting camp, celebrating fifty years of stewardship and sportsmanship.

06/20/2026

10/20/1980 I’ve heard the stories about this morning . My dad was at the office, Ken Lewis, Coval Gann, John Collet, and Bill Mason had a quick hunt at crescent lake. Huge flight day. Either Collet or Lewis finished up super quick and called my dad from the cabin. Said you better get your ass down here. It is the best it’s ever gonna be. Dad left the office. Those guys stayed in the blind. Apparently my dad couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. The peanut gallery jested jabbed my dad as it took 10 bunches of mallards for him to kill his four. He always said this is the best flight day he’d ever seen in Crescent Lake, wasn’t even a weather event just calendar mallards migrating.

That afternoon, I would’ve been 11 Ken Lewis picked me up after school and took his son Bill and me down to Crescent. As we walked to the blind, the lake was completely full wall-to-wall mallard ducks, blackened the sky it looked like Claypool reservoir.

Only about 20 minutes to hunt. With so much much excitement and adrenaline, I pulled up early shot into the first bunch of mallards that came back. I missed, and Bill got one. Ken Lewis chewed my ass out. “Why didn’t you let them come in close? Greg you screwed up the whole afternoon!”

05/21/2026

Happy birthday dad! Hope you’re up there toking on your pipe and drinking some Gilbey’s on ice.

05/10/2026

Turkey 26. After bellyaching about the new MDC non-resident tag capping one bird, since I live in Arkansas, I hunted 6 days. Most action in years and most humbling as well. I did not connect.

First morning had one hit so fast off the roost, I was sitting giant white oak tree, too close behind and couldn’t get in position.

Friday sitting at my dad’s spot, active birds all over the ridge. Finally right at 10 am. Boom, over the ridge on a string. Gets to decoy gun up and wtf there are 2. Now choices and picked the bigger one; bam, bam, whif, whif. Extra bullets in my pack un accessible. These tight chokes and tss are not the ticket for close birds. 18 steps, decoy WAY too close. Live and learn.

Had contact and saw, heard birds every day.

Luke and Jake both killed nice birds the first week at the bottoms. It’s So rewarding to see conservation at work on the farms. Someone said on social media that there seems to be good turkey numbers in MO this year and hopes it’s a trend. I hope so too, because I clearly need multiple opportunities to connect.

02/21/2026

It's great to see lots of waterfowl taking advantage of the habitat at The Bottoms, which provides a resting haven for them on their way back to the breeding grounds.

02/07/2026

Luke took a bold solo trip to Lewis Lake, closing out the Canada goose season on a high note yesterday afternoon. He witnessed an abundance of mallards and pintails, and tripled on the first hunch of Canadas.

01/14/2026

Flooded 🌽. In the past, prior to the implementation of the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), we would plant and flood corn, resulting in an influx of 5,000 to 50,000+ mallards. Interestingly, these birds would typically arrive 10 minutes after shooting time and depart 10 minutes before shooting time. This approach not only benefited us but also our neighbors, as it helped maintain a local mallard population west of fountain grove. Nowadays, the Golden Triangle appears to be a vast, moist-soil and flooded corn extravaganza, which I believe has created an 'electric duck fence.' I recently conversed with a conservation area manager from the Missouri Department of Conservation, who mentioned that private properties within the Golden Triangle, specifically the Grand River bottoms between FG and the Missouri River, have become the new Saint Charles bottoms. Our family's 'Bottoms' is located just outside the northwest region of the Golden Triangle. This year, and for quite some time, we have not observed the usual traffic of ducks over our bottoms; however, I am not complaining, as duck hunting has always been a sport of the haves and the have-nots. In 2025, the dry conditions led to limited success, which was largely confined to the beginning and end of the season. The draining of Crescent Lake, while beneficial for the lake bed, posed significant challenges in terms of pumping water onto our pools and refilling the lake. It seemed that the water was evaporating as quickly as we could pump it. Eventually, we managed to flood the pools, filling one of our best wild millet and smartweed crops ever. However, a subsequent 3-4 week freeze forced the ducks to seek alternative food sources. In 2026, we are reassessing our strategy to increase our pumping capacity, which will likely involve flooding corn within the parameters set by the WRP. We are also exploring options to finance this endeavor, such as forming a club or partnership. Additionally, we have a tract of timber that, with sufficient pumping capacity, could be transformed into an 80-acre Green Tree Reservoir (GTR). We will be examining all possible solutions.

Operation MTBGA. Make The Bottoms Great Again.

12/13/2025

Not lights out, but hey, watching them feet-down in the woods is hard to beat. I'm not seeing big numbers in Arkansas like I thought after the cold fronts. Maybe all that corn flooded up to the ears up north?

11/23/2025

Solid opener in Arkansas! Doc is pleasure to work

11/09/2025

Another good morning today, john finished at 7:04!

11/08/2025

Luke and friends had Nice morning at Crescent Lake!

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17058 LIV 265
Wheeling, MO
64601

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+16606468180

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