Last weekend I took two of my kids up north to open up the cottage and on the way home we made our way over to our 40 acres in Missaukee County for a quick visit.  The reason for our detour to the property was to place two wood

duck nesting boxes that my oldest son Michael and I built back in the winter.  This past winter he wanted to build a couple of these boxes to help provide some nesting areas for wood ducks.  When we built them, we didn’t really have any idea of where to put them, but a recent scouting trip took care of that for us.  About a month ago I had to make a trip to the town of Cadillac, which is only about 30 - 40 miles from our 40 acres.  We thought that this would be a great opportunity to stop by and do some scouting.  While we were there we saw a ton of ducks on the beaver pond on the property and there were quite a few woodies in with them.  Right away we both knew exactly where to put the new boxes.

     Well this past weekend we took all the supplies to finish the job and place them on the pond.  With some help from my daughter Mackenzie we managed to place both nesting boxes at the waters’ edge.  Hopefully there will be two nesting pairs that put these boxes to good use, and hopefully this will keep a few of them around until the opening weekend of duck season this fall!  Even if they don’t stay, at least we know that we helped to provide a suitable place for them to nest and raise their ducklings. 

     I hoped that this little adventure taught my two kids, that if you plan on having game to harvest in the future, you

must help provide for them and give them plenty of opportunity to flourish and grow.  Without our help, the abundance of wildlife would not be possible.  If you want to see our video of how to build a wood duck nesting box, check out our videos on youtube.com here is the link directly to our site, and here is the link to the wood duck nesting box video.