Ryan Barnes for SPLIT REED
In the small town of Knox City, Texas, there’s one of the Country’s premier waterfowl hunting guide services- Stanfield Hunting Outfitters. Known for good food, the Big Honker Lodge, and some of the country’s top waterfowl hunting guides. One of those guides is Maryland native Josh Stoner. Split Reed had the chance to sit down and talk to Josh and see what it’s like in the life and times of one of the top guides in the country.
An Easton, Maryland resident, Stoner is no stranger to the world of honker hunting. Josh spends his time back home during the off-season in environmental development, working with heavy equipment for wetlands, ponds, and other different types of land. He then heads down to Texas come waterfowl season to guide clients at Stanfield Hunting Outfitters. However, growing up near the Eastern Shore, it wasn’t until 2003 that Josh got his hunter’s safety, and got into the world of hunting. “Once I got my hunter’s safety my dad took me deer hunting a few times, but my dad wasn’t a big hunter. He’d had a bad experience deer hunting in the ’80s on some public land and he just stopped. But once he saw that I had an interest in it and that a bunch of my friends at school were getting into it, he started getting the ball rolling again,” Stoner says. “It was probably 3 or 4 years later that I shot my first duck. It was funny, it was actually a blue-wing teal on a tax ditch in January. Out in the middle of nowhere on a farm tax ditch. I think I was a Freshman in high school when I shot that first duck, and here we are 17 years later.”
When asked when the desire to make hunting a priority set in, Stoner says, “After I shot that first duck when I was a Freshman, the whole following school year we would go out here and there just trying to shoot some geese during the local resident season. We’d have a little luck and try to get out as much as we could with school because at that time we really could only hunt on Saturdays because, in Maryland, you can’t hunt on Sundays,” that left Josh and his friends with only one day a week to try to get lucky on some public land or hope that they could get permission from a farmer to hunt some farm ground. “We didn’t know exactly what we were doing, we were just out there trying to have a good time. We cared about shooting birds, but we mainly were out there just enjoying cutting up and having a good time. Once I was able to drive, and during my senior year, that’s when it started getting serious,” says Josh. During his Senior year, Stoner got a work release from school, which gave him permission to start his school day at noon. For the first two periods of the day, he and his buddies would hunt every day of the fall that they could. “My buddy’s dad owned a business, and just wrote it off that I was doing a work release for him, and his son and I would go out and hunt every morning. So that entire fall, up until that spring semester, we would hunt 6 days a week most of the time”.
It was obvious that the passion for waterfowling hit hard during Josh’s high school career. That desire to be out hunting every single day that most avid hunters have was a reality for him. But it wasn’t until a few years later that Josh would get his first full-time guiding position. “A friend of mine’s cousin had a big outfit here in Maryland, and I would help him every once in a while when he had big parties or something, but it wasn’t until 2015-2016 that I got my first big guiding job. And it wasn’t ‘conventional’ I guess, just because it was Spring snows. Going full-force, just going right in. End of January, down in Arkansas, Top Gun Guide Service. I had been friends with one of the guys who worked down there and they were a pretty well-established guide service all the way from Arkansas to Saskatchewan. So I guess you could say I started big and just kept going from there,” he says. Stoner stayed with Top Gun, guiding for Spring snows until the 2018 season when he decided that he’d had enough of the grind of Spring snow goose hunting. That time with Top Gun jump-started a passion for traveling to waterfowl hunt as well, not just guide. Traveling all over the country- with Minnesota and Nebraska holding special places in Josh’s heart to hunt as yearly destinations before his grind as a guide begins. The following year after he left Top Gun, Josh stayed local and helped guide deer hunts and goose hunts, every so often guiding a duck hunt. Then, Blake Poppe, a friend of Josh’s, reached out to him about making the trip down to Texas to join the ranks of Stanfield Hunting. “I was just joking around with him like, ‘yeah, I’ll come down to Texas with you’, and then a few days later he called me and was like, ‘Hey man, are you serious?’ and I told him that if he really was looking to hire someone I’d come on down. I ended up talking to Jeff on the phone, showed up on Thanksgiving of this past season, stayed there until January, and I’m set up to go back there this November”.
Josh, who has also worked as a guide for whitetail deer back in Maryland, described the difference between guiding for waterfowl and guiding for deer as more of a one on one experience when you’re guiding for deer. “When someone comes out on a whitetail hunt, they’re having breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the guide. And it’s usually a week-long trip. They’re staying at the lodge and really everything they’re doing is with the guide. Every single day. With waterfowl, you may be coming for one day, or three days, or however many- but you go out, shoot your birds, take your pictures, and then you’re on your own”. When asked about the main pressures of being a guide, he says, “Obviously any guide is worried about making sure their clients have a good hunt and making sure they get the birds to work and getting their clients shots. But really it boils down to, what if the clients ask ‘why isn’t this working?’ or ‘what can we do?’ or ‘what do we need to do differently?’, and if you hesitate, or you don’t know what to say, or you say the wrong thing, they’ll take notice of that and they’ll really grind into you on that.” Josh explains that a lot of the pressure from guiding can be relieved by learning how to do everything in your power to make bad situations better. He explains that you have to be able to answer questions and understand why the birds aren’t doing certain things. If a client understands what’s going on, and can see you’re trying to fix it, the less likely they’ll be to get upset with you as a guide. “It all boils down to making sure the client had a good time hunting”, says Stoner.
Josh may be a guide at a place known for the “Big Honker Lodge”, but he says his favorite thing to guide for is the ducks and the lessers. Talking about the intensity of hunting lessers and working flocks of 500 to 1,000 birds is something that is quite the thrill for him and his clients. He also says that he has a true love and passion for hunting ducks. “I’ve hunted and guided for honkers plenty of times, and I like to think I’m pretty good at it, but I do love getting out after ducks. Last year I did go out on my first speck hunt. That was pretty awesome. I hadn’t ever shot a speck before but watching Andy and them work the birds, that was pretty sweet, and I could get into that, but I’ve gotta say ducks or lessers are my favorite.”
One can imagine that guides come across some pretty interesting stories in the blind (for better or for worse). Josh shared a story of a hunt where a gentleman shot a snow goose that sailed down into a different field. After determining there was a little bit of dead time, Josh decided he should make a run to go get the bird. The man who shot the bird asked if he could join him, “I automatically knew that he thought this bird was banded, but I was like ‘yeah sure you can come’ and we hopped on the four-wheeler and made our way to go get the bird”. As they got down to the field, a hawk was eating on the goose. After scaring the hawk away and turning the bird over, to Josh’s surprise and what must have been the old man’s inhibition, the bird was carrying an old, worn down, rusty band. “It was the craziest thing ever,” Stoner says, “so we went back that night, plugged in the information, and it turned out it was a 20-year-old lesser snow goose”. Josh says that was one hunting event he won’t soon forget.
Stoner also made an entrance into the world of contest calling recently. With Dive Bomb Industries holding an online “live goose” contest, Josh made an impressive showing in the novice division, where he actually was asked if he was even allowed to be competing at that level. “Ashur [Tolliver] reached out to me like ‘hey man we’ve had some people wonder if you should be competing in the pro division’ and I had to tell him ‘no, this is the first contest I’ve ever blown in’”. Putting his Molt Gear calls to good use, Stoner made a Tp 5 finish, showing that not only is he a top tier guide, but he can run a call as well.
Josh says that if he had to guide for something that he hasn’t guided for yet, he’d dive into the world of mule deer hunting. “Something about mule deer hunting really fascinates me. I’d love to learn the animal and learn how to hunt ‘em. I just think that would be so fun.” This year Stoner will be making his first attempt at a muley with his bow in Nebraska.
All in all, Josh says his favorite part of being a guide is all the different types of people that you meet from all over the world. “One day you could be hunting with some local guys that have saved up all year for this one trip, the next day you could be hunting with some multi-millionaire that you have no idea existed and they’re just out there with their family trying to have a good time. I just really enjoy meeting all those different people who come through the lodge,” he says.
There’s no doubt about the fact that Josh has a talent for killing birds and helping clients enjoy their hunt. Having experience from the Eastern Shore to Knox City, Texas, and having chased puddle ducks to whitetail deer, Stoner can help anyone have an exciting and fun hunt. A goal for any guide in the game!
