50 NEBRASKAland • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2018
sleds to the middle of the channel, put out his spread, and
stashed the sleds on the far bank. When he was done, he
settled in to his blind in the middle of the river: the stump
of a massive cottonwood tree that had been sawed off and
weathered by three decades of ice and rising and falling
water. This was not his first rodeo.
Not really having anything to do until evening, when I
planned on waiting for swans to return to roost on another
part of the reservoir, I decided I had to know this guy's
Schuckman rearranges his spread, a mix of modern-day
commercial decoys and 50-year-old homemade fiberglass
models (left) made by his father, John.
