Guide Life: Will Riddle
Jacob Morris for SPLIT REED
Have you ever been out of breath after a goose hunt? If not, then you have likely never experienced hunting Lesser Canada Geese while lying in the decoy spread, anxiously watching big flocks of aggressive geese drop feet down into your lap. If that sounds like another box you need to check off your bucket list, then you need to contact Will Riddle of Crooked Wing Outfitters in Lubbock, TX. This hunting style is what fuels his passion and it seems like after every hunt for him, the last one was the best goose hunt he has ever been on.
I asked what makes hunting Lesser Geese so special to him, he said “These Lessers come in huge groups. They are aggressive and its fast and furious. You don’t have time to mess around, after you shoot a group it’s a 52 card pick up with your dog and hopping back down as quickly as you can. If you are not out of breath after a lesser shoot, then something didn’t work right.”
Will Riddle of Crooked wing outfitters grew up hunting waterfowl on the coast near the Houston, TX. His dad used to guide waterfowl hunts before becoming a lawyer. “25 years ago, my dad guided hunts on the coast before he decided he was going to quit guiding to become a lawyer.” You could say that Will was born to be a waterfowl guide. He got his start at guiding when he was around 14 years old. Sometimes all it takes is a family friend and some good connections to get your first big break in an industry that can be cutthroat and hard to enter. You can contribute some of that to his great success as a guide and his career at Crooked Wing Outfitters.
“My dad was starting to get really busy with his law career around the same time that I was getting ate up with waterfowl hunting. I made the connection with Scott, the guy we were on the lease with. He convinced my mom to begin dropping me off so I could start helping him with groups and sit in on guided hunts.” When Will was just 16 years old Scott really started to give him some true guiding experience, and allowed him to start taking his own groups during teal season. “Scott let me go after it and I started booking my own hunts throughout high school and helping him with running his overflow groups. That’s where I got into guiding.”
There is a lot of stress that goes with being a guide from making your clients happy and wondering if the birds are going to cooperate that day, it is a truly a selfless way to hunt and most times you yourself are not getting to pull the trigger. If you ask Will though, he’ll say about not shooting on hunts, “Quite honestly it’s all I ever known. All through high school I spent all of my time on the weekends guiding hunts. That was the only way I was going to get to hunt. I was either taking a group of lease members, Scotts overflow hunters, or my own hunts. I was always guiding people, right from the time I started, to figure out how to hunt on my own. It taught me a lot and I learned how to hunt while I was learning how to guide.”
Sometimes when one door closes it can open up a whole new opportunity that you never knew existed. That’s exactly what happened to Will when he was applying for acceptance into Texas A&M, where he could have stayed a little closer to where he was already guiding and knew the hunting area well. Instead, he had to move across state to Lubbock, Texas where he attended Texas Tech. “I didn’t get into Texas A&M; it’s an incredibly tough school to get into. I thought it was the end of the world for me, and the only other school I applied to was Texas Tech. I was so sour about moving up to the Texas panhandle.” It was a completely different hunting environment for Will, he had to totally change tactics for hunting waterfowl. “It’s just a completely different style of hunting, down on the coast it’s similar to Arkansas. You’re hunting your specks out of a snow goose spread or off of a levee with full bodies. You are shooting specks, having some snow goose shoots, and hunting permanent blinds when you’re going after ducks. Up here it’s balls to the walls, full throttle, running roads and scouting little wads of geese and cranes to see where they are going. It’s not that it didn’t interest me, I just had it made down there on the coast before moving.”
Like any good guide, he had to adapt to unexpected changes. He had to learn the new area and make new connections in the guide world in West Texas. I can tell from our conversation that Will was glad he made the move, and that it did not take him long to fall in love with the Texas Panhandle. “I moved up here and got connected with my new boss, Evan, right away. I started running hunts with him during college. I fell in love with the area my first waterfowl season up here, I told myself I am never freaking leaving.”
While Will was about to graduate college from Texas Tech, he started exploring his options regarding what he could do and still guide waterfowl part time. We all want to hunt for a living and for most it sounds more like a dream than a reality. Not for someone like Will, who has been guiding waterfowl since he was 16; it seemed like the next logical choice and that’s what happened for Will who was at the right place at the right time! “Right when I was fixing to graduate, I was going to get a real estate license or sell crop insurance, just something semi part time where I could still run waterfowl hunts full time in the winter. That’s when Evan had his first partner come to him with the whitetail guiding opportunity. Evan told me ‘If I’m going to do this and go the whitetail route I am going to need you to run the waterfowl stuff and everything that happens out of Lubbock fulltime’ It was perfect timing, and he gave me a job offer right when I was fixing to graduate.”
The rest is history for Will, who still manages the waterfowl side of the business for Crooked Wing Outfitters, a premier outfitter with Split Reed. If you are looking for an opportunity to watch those aggressive lesser geese work the spread and fill your freezer, then Will Riddle is the guy for all of your West Texas waterfowl needs. I am sure his passion for waterfowl hunting will rub off on you, as it did me.
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