ABOUT US

Hey everyone, thank you for your time, and welcome to Greenwood Prairie! My name is Casey Doody, and I’m originally from Tully, New York.
 

Growing up, I was very fortunate to be raised on my family’s large third-generation dairy farm. It was there that I found my love for the outdoors and developed a deep appreciation for the importance of hard work. I was equally blessed to have been brought up in a hunting and fishing family. From sitting in the deer stand and turkey woods with Dad to chasing ducks and geese out in our fields, turkey hunting in the springtime, and casting a line anywhere there was water—it’s safe to say I fell in love with it all.
 

As I got older, though, my love for the birds always stood out just a bit more than the rest. I started out with just a handful of old truck tires for decoys and a Haydel single-reed goose honker call. I would spend countless hours out there, learning and waiting. After some serious begging and arm-twisting, I finally convinced Dad to order us a few magnum shell decoys from the old Cabela’s magazine—and from that moment on, I made him take me hunting every chance we got! But as any waterfowler knows, that only made the itch even stronger.
 

Growing up in a small farm town, most kids made friends through sports teams or school events. But I found my friends showing up to the same goose and duck spots I was hunting. That’s where I met Jay, and from there, our passion for waterfowl only grew beyond belief throughout our lifelong friendship.
 

Before I knew it, I was stuffing my old Jeep full to the ceiling with decoys and blinds strapped to the roof, driving back and forth to college—and often skipping class if Jay and I had a loaded duck hole to hunt instead!
 

After taking a few hunting trips to the Midwest, I knew I had to move to where the birds were and try to make this my living. I started my guiding career in 2018, working for a few different outfits along the way, guiding for turkeys, ducks, and sandhill cranes. From the front range of Colorado all the way up to the prairie pothole region of North Dakota—and everywhere in between—I was chasing the migration.
 

But year after year, Kansas kept calling me back. I knew this was where we needed to plant our roots. After working a few more guide jobs, Jay and I decided it was time to start our own outfit. In the fall of 2022, we opened the doors of Greenwood Prairie.

My name is Jay Vinson, and I’m 31 years old. I grew up in Fabius, New York. I was lucky growing up because my father was big into hunting and started taking me waterfowl hunting when I was 12 years old.
 

And boy, has the waterfowl game changed since I started in 2006—with just a couple dozen wooden silhouettes and a piece of burlap in a picked cornfield, or hunting out of a canoe in a small cattail marsh with a few old duck decoys, the paint half worn off.
 

Before I knew it, I was 16, working on a small dairy farm, saving all my money for Big Foot decoys. With a driver’s license and some nice decoys, it didn’t take long before I met Casey Doody, a few towns over. Back then, it was hard to find other kids who loved to waterfowl hunt, but Casey and I became great friends fast.
 

After graduating high school in 2012, the only thing I could think about was hunting. I took a job paving roads so I could take a layoff in the fall and spend as much time as possible chasing the amazing animals we find in the outdoors.
 

A few years later, in 2017, Casey invited me on a trip to Kansas to chase greenheads—and after that, I was hooked. In the spring of 2018, I sold everything I could, loaded up my truck, and found a job helping an outfitter with spring bear hunts in Montana. But knowing my true love was waterfowl, I found a job guiding in the Front Range of Colorado that fall. That’s when I realized how much I loved taking people on hunts and sharing the knowledge I had learned over the years.
 

Still, I wanted to get back to Kansas to hunt those small cattle ponds in southeast Kansas—I fell in love with that place. The next year, I was lucky enough to find a job in Kansas at the same outfitter Casey was working for. I guided there for a few years.
 

Since Kansas duck season doesn’t start until November, I found myself guiding up in Saskatchewan for a few years during September and October, getting the first crack at greenheads in the massive dry fields. I learned a lot about the do’s and don’ts of outfitting.
 

Eventually, Casey and I decided it was time to go out on our own so we could control the hunting pressure on the ground and put more into our gear budget to get the best decoys we could get our hands on.
 

Our first year at Greenwood Prairie Outfitters in 2022 turned out to be a screaming success. We had some of the best hunts we’d ever had in Kansas!