Is This the Best Duck Hunting in America? I Called a Man in Nebraska to Find Out

I have never stood in a flooded cornfield at first light with a Benelli over my arm, watching mallards work a decoy spread against a Great Plains sunrise. I couldn't point to Overton on a map before this week.

But I spent an hour on a video call with Isaac Brown, co-owner of River Lodge Outfitters, and somewhere in the middle of it I stopped taking notes for the article and started thinking about flights. By the time we hung up I'd gone from "where exactly is it?" to looking up connections from Denver to Kearney.

That's usually a good sign. When someone can make you want to go somewhere you'd never heard of an hour earlier, it's normally because they actually mean what they're saying about the place.

Homestead country

To understand River Lodge, it helps to understand the land underneath it, and Isaac clearly takes some pride in that history.

It goes back to the Homestead Act: the nineteenth-century law that opened huge tracts of the American interior to settlers willing to work a piece of ground for five years in exchange for the deed. One of those homesteaded plots, worked by a family generations back, eventually passed into the hands of a friend of Isaac's grandfather.

That friendship is the reason River Lodge sits where it does today, on this stretch of the Platte.

Kearney is a small place, but its position is no accident. It sits close to where the interstate splits the state, roughly the middle of the country and just east of the Rockies; flat, open, and laced with water. The Platte, the Loup and the Calamus rivers all converge through this part of Nebraska.

Put that much water in the middle of a landlocked country and you get birds. A great many birds.

Where the birds want to be

"We sit on one of the largest roost areas for waterfowl in the country," Isaac said, and he said it plainly, without the kind of sales patter you sometimes have to wade through on these calls.

The ground is flooded corn, river channel, slough and backwater: low-pressure, food-rich habitat that keeps ducks cycling through rather than flying straight over. Mallards are the mainstay, but they're far from the whole story. Greater Canada geese, pintail, American wigeon, green-winged teal and speckle-bellied geese all pass through in real numbers.

Because the ground is private and undisturbed, the birds decoy close. Isaac talked about hunting from heated blinds with ducks finishing metres away, not yards.

There's a curious piece of local geography that helps too. Practically every sandhill crane on the continent funnels through this stretch of the Platte in the spring, to stage and pair up before heading north; a genuine spectacle in its own right. Whilst the cranes are strictly off-limits to hunting, the habitat doubles as a fantastic home for waterfowl species when the cranes aren't around. 

Not your average duck camp

What stayed with me longer than the biology, though, was the way the operation is run.

River Lodge only takes ten groups a season. Every piece of ground gets rested for a minimum of a week between hunts, often longer, so nowhere is worked twice in quick succession. Guides run with retrievers Isaac describes, without much modesty, as world class, and the outfit uses a large amphibious vehicle to reach water and mud a truck simply wouldn't manage.

Shooting Sportsman, who endorse the lodge, put it well when they wrote that the Platte River country of south-central Nebraska is "as fine a waterfowl area as there is" and having heard Isaac talk about it for an hour, I'm not inclined to argue.

It's a Benelli-endorsed lodge, so guns and ammunition come as part of the package. No wrestling gun cases through airport security, no last-minute panic over cartridges. Tips are included too. Everything is rolled into one all-inclusive price, which tends to be the surest sign that an outfit isn't trying to nickel-and-dime you once you've already committed to the trip.

Then there's the food, which Isaac clearly enjoys talking about almost as much as the hunting. A chef is flown in for the season. Tomahawk steaks. Proper wine pairings. After a cold morning in a Nebraska blind, that's not a bad place to land.

Getting there, and when to go

Logistically it's simpler than the middle of the country might suggest. The easiest run from the UK is a flight to Denver (DEN) or Chicago (ORD), then on to Kearney (EAR), which sits close to the lodge. From there, Isaac's team takes over.

The season runs November through to the end of January. Isaac didn't hesitate when I asked which month to aim for if you could only manage one trip: January, every time. That's when the migration is stacked hardest and the cold fronts have pushed the bulk of the birds down onto the river.

Packages start at $1,750 USD per day, all-inclusive; guns, ammunition and everything else covered. It's worth a scroll through their Instagram before you book, if only because the photography does a far better job than I can of showing just how thick the birds get over that flooded corn.

Would I go?

I went into that call chasing background on a lodge I'd never heard of, for an article I assumed would be fairly straightforward to write.

I came out of it wanting to see the Platte for myself: the roost at first light, the amphibious run out to the blinds, cranes stacking up on the sandbars while ducks work the decoys just downstream. It isn't often a phone call does that to you. Isaac Brown clearly loves this ground, and after an hour in his company, down a patchy video line, I understood exactly why.

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The Details

· Location: River Lodge Outfitters, near Kearney, Nebraska - Central Flyway, Platte River

· Season: November to end of January (January recommended for peak migration)

· Species: Mallard, greater Canada goose, pintail, American wigeon, green-winged teal, speckle-bellied goose

· Price: From $1,750 USD per day for a team of 8. 

· Capacity: Only 10 groups hosted per season; properties rested a minimum of one week between hunts

· Getting there: Fly Denver to Kearney, Nebraska ·

You can see River Lodge Outfitters on GunsOnPegs here or on Instagram @riverlodgeoutfitters

All images courtesy of Joel Jones