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Depending on which waterfowl species you target, and what part of North America you hunt, getting a single band can be a big deal. A real big deal.

And in other parts of the country, getting a duck or goose band is easier to do.

So keep this in mind as you retrieve your bands. Band numbers are relative to the location and species you hunt. But each one is unique in its own way.

Shot my first band on the last Friday of the 2008-2009 California Duck Season.

It was a hen wood duck banded on June 2, 2002 here in the State.

It was the first bird of the morning and was floating in a deep slough, so I grabbed my fishing rod and began casting to it for about ten minutes.

In the mean time, I'm thinking to myself, "Here I am casting to this thing and it's probably banded."

I have been hunting ducks in Northern California since 1980.

On Thanksgiving Day 2008, I shot my first banded bird. Since it was Thanksgiving, I had just a few hours to hunt that morning. To our surprise, the only bird we harvested was my mallard with "jewelry.”

This is a picture of my son Jackson with the prize mallard.

Around here, they hardly band any local birds that I am aware of, except for a few on the refuges.

I know of more than one guy that has been chasing birds longer than I have been alive and they still have virgin lanyards.

But some people seem to have all the luck with the bling, so when I got my first band in 2007, a few choice words and dancing went on, that's for sure.

It was a couple of days after Christmas.

I had been out scouting all preseason for this one particular flock of geese. They were about one and a half hours from where I lived, but my brother was keeping an eye on them for me.

When I finally had the time off from work to go, I called up my brother to get a status report, "Dude I haven't seen them in about three days." This was not what I wanted to hear, but I figured I'd give it a shot, so off I went.

I set up in the morning and didn't see a thing.

First day with my new shotgun.

I got two bands and my buddy got one also.

A great day had by all.

It was the 2008 opener of the New Jersey duck season and my hunting buddies and I headed out to one of our favorite spots.

We set up our blind, applied our camouflage face paint, placed our decoy spread, loaded our shotguns, and got ready for a great day of hunting.

This was just my third time waterfowl hunting though I have been a hardcore deer hunter. It was one of my buddies that talked me into hunting ducks.

My son shot his first banded waterfowl during the 2007-2008 season in the Mississippi delta.

He was six years old when he hunted for his first year.

He shot a Greenhead mallard with his .410 gauge shotgun loaded with Bismuth shells.

Here is a picture of Drake and his first band!

I'm 36 years old and was finally talked into going duck hunting this year.

I've been an avid fly fisherman for years and recently picked up hunting again after about a 20 year break.

I was only able to catch four hunts this year, but three of the four were absolutely stellar.

On my last hunt, I had still not harvested a drake mallard.

My 12 year old son, Drake, was lucky enough to collect many firsts with his first Black Duck. It was not only his first banded duck it was his first reward band for $100 as well.

He was very excited when I returned to the blind with the bird that our seven year old black labrador, Blue, had dug out of the dense cattails to retrieve.

He shot this bird in a blind that I have hunted the opening week on Prince Edward Island, Canada for the last 20 or so years with my Dad. We have also been lucky enough to collect several bands from this blind of various puddle duck species, but the reward band was a first for the area.

The bird was mounted to forever remember this early milestone in Drake's waterfowling life.

It was our last day goose hunting in Wisconsin as a group on Sunday, December 14, 2008.

Our season closed on Tuesday, 12/16/08 so we decided to give goose hunting one more chance before the end.

We planned not to arrive to the field until 8:00 am since we hadn’t been seeing geese until well after that time. To our surprise, across the road, there were about 200 geese already in a different field.

Duck and goose hunting brings with it many great experiences.

Friends and family, dogs, nature, working birds, unique stories, and waterfowl in the bag.

Getting your first waterfowl band can be a killer moment too. An experience you might reflect on from time to time, especially during the hunting season. It may stir up memories of a great hunt.

For those waterfowlers with multiple bands already, you also understand.