The ‘Strait’ Skinny: Jeff Foiles on the Hot Seat

Celebrity Waterfowler Facing Serious Charges in U.S., Canada

I remember, and vividly so, the first time I met Jeff Foiles.

It was at Game Fair, the popular late-summer outdoor show near Anoka, Minnesota. A semi-circle had formed around Foiles, who was wearing a lanyard thick with his designer Strait Meat calls and glittery waterfowl bands, the spoils of his many years of gunning. The shoulder-to-shoulder scrum, mostly young duck hunters acting like star-struck groupies, were hanging on his every word, like he had just discovered the cure for cancer.

The adulation of these twenty-something waterfowlers shocked me and clearly tickled Foiles. I had never seen such blind hero worship for anyone, let alone someone who for a living guided hunters, manufactured calls and produced hunting videos.

He's not JC, I remember thinking.

For the first time as a reporter, I watched the celebrity waterfowling culture reveal itself, and Jeff Foiles was its Pied Piper. He held court that day like he had just been given the keys to the kingdom; like he was entitled to something long overdue. The entire mini drama curdled my stomach (it still does), but Foiles was merely basking in his celebrity and leveraging his momentum. His calls were hot. His videos too. And his stature in the waterfowling industry was growing as fast as his ego. With a blend of arrogance and narcissism put at odds only by an occasional nod to modesty, Foiles seemed to be living—and enjoying—the good life.

USDA Announces New CRP Signup; Will Prairie-nesting Ducks Benefit? Not likely

Let’s start with the illusion of good news: The U.S. Department of Agriculture, for the second time in as many years, has announced a new general Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) signup for interested landowners.

The USDA would like to enroll 4 million acres into the program, so says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. The new acres will be put on the rolls in October.

Now the bad news: Roughly 4.4 million CRP acres are set to expire in 2011, which means a net loss of roughly 400,000 acres. What’s more, over the next few years, a slew of expiring CRP contracts will occur in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR), AKA the duck factory of the Dakotas and parts of Montana and Minnesota.

Translation: Prairie-nesting birds (game and nongame) in general and ducks in particular will lose thousands upon thousands of acres of indispensable grassland habitat, the consequences of which will affect hunters, especially duck hunters throughout the U.S., in the years ahead.

My Ongoing Brush with Blindness - An Eye-opening Experience? I’d Say

My fly-fishing buddy Wade sent me an email several months back. He was wondering why I haven’t made a blog post since September. Yes, September.

“I haven’t seen an update on your blog in quite some time,” he wrote. “You must have had a few things to write about after a fall of chasing ducks around?”

Two weeks ago Wade sent me another email, asking me if I wanted to take a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Ely, Minnesota, where in year’s past we’ve canoed and camped and, most importantly, fly-fished for smallmouth bass, those freshwater street fighters of the piscatorial world.

I’ve been remiss in not returning Wade’s emails, and I’ve been remiss in not responding to some of the many dispatches—emails, letters, phone calls—that I’ve received over the last several months from readers wondering why I fell off the grid.

In the last eight months, I’ve had four surgeries to repair a detached retina in my left eye. Forgive me for playing the sympathy card, but this entire ordeal has been as pleasant as gargling a cocktail of battery acid and antifreeze.