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Ep. 003: Live from Squadfest
What Four Conversations Taught Us About the State of Waterfowl
TrophyCast took the show on the road this time, broadcasting live from Squadfest at Dive Bomb Industries in Hazelwood. Over the course of the day, the crew, with added host and Trophy Agent Anthony Pozzi, sat down with four guests — a decoy company founder, a habitat nonprofit director, a hunting-tech entrepreneur, and a Ducks Unlimited regional director — and each conversation circled back to the same idea: this stretch of ground along the Mississippi Flyway is genuinely rare, and the people working to protect and understand it have a lot to offer anyone buying, selling, or developing property here.
First up was Cody Stokes, founder of Dive Bomb, who traced the company's start back to 2009 — photographing geese in a park and selling silhouette decoys on Craigslist before the business became official in 2011. Squadfest itself began as a pandemic-era response to canceled outdoor events and has grown from roughly 10 vendors that first year to 85 today. Cody also walked through the property that shaped his approach to development: 200 acres of what's known locally as Portage clay, soil so heavy and water-retentive that row-crop farmers had passed on it for decades. That same trait makes it ideal for waterfowl. His advice for anyone considering a similar project is straightforward — check the soil maps before moving any dirt, and physically probe the ground yourself, since sandy pockets can sit just beneath a thin layer of clay and prevent water from holding at all. He also made a point worth remembering: land that floods naturally today likely held water long before modern drainage systems existed, and ducks recognize that history through generations of migration, even when the ground looks unremarkable to a passerby.
Next was Hannah Hopson of Great Rivers Habitat Alliance, who's spent her career defending the floodplain where the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois Rivers converge. GRA was founded in 2000, originally in response to a highway project cutting through wetlands, and its core argument hasn't changed since — floodplain ground is meant to flood, and letting it do so protects everyone downstream better than additional development or levees ever could. Recent work has included pushing back on data center proposals near sensitive well fields in St. Charles and encouraging utility companies to reroute transmission lines away from wetlands and farmland. Hannah also oversees the Hens Wildlife Center, a converted 785-acre former duck club that now hosts youth, veteran, and first-responder hunts alongside a well-regarded wetlands management course that draws participants from across the country to learn moist-soil management directly from experienced practitioners.
Josh Hogan followed, representing Blind Book, a platform built to solve a familiar problem for anyone selling recreational property: documenting how good the hunting actually is. Rather than a handful of photos from a strong day, Blind Book lets landowners log every hunt — blinds, harvest data, weather, and migration timing — over multiple years. What started as a way to get his own kids more engaged in the blind has become a tool clubs and outfitters use to manage their operations like a business, and one sellers can use to give buyers real documentation instead of secondhand stories.
Closing out the day was Todd Carlton, a senior regional director with Ducks Unlimited who's been with the organization since 1985 and recently marked 25 years on staff. The numbers he shared underscored the scale of the work: DU just completed a seven-year capital campaign that raised over $4 billion against a $3 billion goal, with roughly 86 cents of every dollar raised last year going directly back into habitat. That marks a third consecutive year touching over a million acres. Todd also noted DU's growing involvement with private landowners beyond hunting — CRP program support, erosion control, and clean water initiatives that benefit farmers regardless of whether they hunt waterfowl.
Four distinct conversations, one consistent conclusion: this ground is worth understanding well, whether the goal is building a duck hole, protecting a floodplain from development, documenting hunting performance, or funding habitat work across the flyway. The people doing that work daily were glad to share what they know — and based on the turnout at Squadfest, plenty of people showed up ready to listen.
A massive thank you to the outstanding companies that partnered with us for this episode: Divebomb Industries, Ducks Unlimited, Great Rivers Habitat Alliance, and BlindBook. Be sure to visit their sites and support the brands that support the show!
Divebomb Industries
https://www.divebombindustries.com/
Ducks Unlimited
Great Rivers Habitat Alliance
https://grha.org/?srsltid=AfmBOoqvnXAyfTlmFi_q2VQECjkPsZJzn0eRNdKhIdM89WkkbhMkYZkZ
BlindBook