Why The Hyde-A-Way is for Catfish, Not Spreadsheets

You're two hours south of St. Louis, pulling off the highway somewhere near Dexter. The truck smells like gun oil and wet waders. Three days of flooded rice fields and timbers, cupped wings, and greenheads piling into the decoys. Your ears are still ringing from the blind. Your cooler is full of birds.

You pull into The Hyde-A-Way Catfish Inn, grab a table, and order the all-you-can-eat. The beer is cold. The catfish is perfect. For a moment, life makes sense.

Then Carl—the one who booked the lodge eight months ago, the one whose credit card is still holding $20,000 in deposits—pulls out his phone. Notes app. Calculator. A screenshot of a Venmo request from three weeks ago that nobody answered.

The vibe dies before the hush puppies hit the table.

The Real Cost of a Missouri Delta Duck Hunt

A premium guided hunt in the Missouri delta isn't a weekend trip you throw together. It's a logistical operation with five-figure stakes:

The Lodge Deposit: Someone locked in dates back in February. Six hunters at $3,600 each means $21,600 on one credit card—and that guy's been floating the group's money for eight months.

Licenses and Stamps: Missouri doesn't care that the lodge is all-inclusive. Every hunter still needs a small game permit, migratory bird stamp, and federal duck stamp. Non-residents are looking at $135 each, purchased separately, before they even board a plane.

Flights and Rental Cars: Memphis is two hours out. St. Louis is two hours the other direction. Someone books the flights. Someone else rents the Suburban. A third guy "gets the gas." None of this ends up in the same spreadsheet.

Shells at the Lodge: They sell them, which is convenient—until someone throws down a card for a case of 3s and says, "We'll figure it out later."

The Tips: Guides. Dog handlers. The chef. Lodge staff. At 15-20% of a $3,600 package, you're looking at $500-700 per person. In cash. Did everyone bring cash?

The Hyde Tab: Someone always covers the table. Someone else grabs the next round. And suddenly the pre-trip catfish run becomes another line item nobody wrote down.

Why Spreadsheets Fail Before You Reach the Blind

The Deposit Float: A shared Google Sheet doesn't solve the problem of one guy carrying $20,000 for most of a year. It just documents the awkwardness.

The License Chaos: Everyone bought their stamps at different times, in different amounts. Some guys paid $25 at the post office; others paid $32 for the e-stamp. It's a rounding nightmare.

The "We'll Split It Later" Drift: Every small expense—gas, shells, a cooler of ice—gets pushed to "later." Later never comes cleanly.

The Venmo Spiral: After three days in the delta, nobody wants to send nine separate payment requests. So nobody does. And three weeks later, Carl is still chasing $1,400.

Enter Field & Tally

We built Field & Tally for exactly this kind of trip—where the stakes are high, the group is big, and the expenses stack up before you ever pull a trigger.

Log the Deposit Early: The guy who locked in the lodge enters it once. The app tracks who's paid their share and who hasn't—no awkward texts required.

Separate Individual vs. Group Costs: Licenses and stamps stay with the person who bought them. Shared expenses—gas, shells, tips—split automatically.

Real-Time Logging: Enter expenses when they happen. At the gas station. At the lodge bar. At The Hyde. One tap.

One-Tap Settle Up: When the trip ends, the app tells everyone exactly who owes who. Venmo, PayPal, Zelle—done.

---

The Bottom Line: The Missouri delta is for greenheads dropping through flooded rice. The Hyde-A-Way is for all-you-can-eat catfish and stories about the double on mallards. Neither is for spreadsheets.

Field & Tally handles the money so you can focus on the hunt.

Plan the trip. Work the spread. Split the tab. Plan your next trip.