Interests
Encyclopedia4 sections4 cited sources
Outside work Brent O’Mara hunts, fishes and plays golf, and he is a devoted Nebraska Cornhuskers fan. He supports Omaha causes including PlaySmart, Angels Among Us, Susan G. Komen, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society. Both sentences are plain facts, recorded once. The rest of this entry is about Nebraska itself, its seasons, its water, its courses and its football, from sources that describe the state and not the person.
The seasons the state sets
Hunting in Nebraska runs on a calendar published by the Game and Parks Commission, which describes the state’s offer as a diversity of species and generous seasons. Its season table for 2026 opens deer archery on September 1 and keeps it open through December 31, sets the November firearm season for November 14 to 22, and follows it with a muzzleloader season through December.1 Upland birds have their own dates: pheasant, quail and partridge from October 31, 2026 to January 31, 2027, with a youth weekend the week before, and prairie grouse from September 1.1 Turkey comes in spring and fall seasons, doves open on September 1, and waterfowl are managed by zone, with dark geese, white fronted geese, light geese, ducks and early teal each on their own schedule.1 Coyotes, porcupines, prairie dogs and woodchucks may be hunted statewide all year with no bag limit, and residents need no permit for them; hunter education is required for anyone aged 12 through 29.1 The entry on hunting and fishing in Nebraska covers the permits, the public land and the rest of the calendar.
Lake McConaughy
The fishing story of the state’s big western reservoir is told in Nebraskaland Magazine by a writer who grew up fishing from its dam while a parent worked there for the irrigation district.2 His rules of thumb are plain: Lake McConaughy is a wind driven lake, where the fishing is usually good when the wind blows and hard when it does not; on almost any day some species is biting somewhere; what works on the north shore usually works across the lake on the south; and an angler does well to find a spot of his own rather than join a hundred boats dragging bait in the same water.2 Walleye are by far the species most pursued, chased from the moment the ice goes out along the north side toward the dam, where they spawn on the face of the dam itself, and the lake also holds wipers, white bass, smallmouth and largemouth bass, channel catfish and common carp that take a fly in the shallows.2 The magazine’s warning is worth its own sentence: the weather there can turn from glass calm to four foot waves in minutes, and when storm clouds show, the right move is off the water.2
Golf on the Plains
Nebraska golf has a reputation that is younger than the game. The New York Times reported in 2005 that the Great Plains had emerged over the previous decade as the sport’s surprise hotbed, and traced it to the 1995 opening of a private club in Mullen, population 456, whose designers moved only 3,000 cubic yards of earth and chose a modest clubhouse over the usual monument, keeping the emphasis on the land, the sky and the game.3 In its wake came public courses, among them Wild Horse in Gothenburg in 1998 and layouts in the Dakotas, with fairways of ripples and hollows bordered by fescue and sand, and no houses in sight.3 The entry on golf in Nebraska follows the courses across the state.
Five championship seasons
Nebraska football, as Huskers.com records it, has won five national championships: back to back titles in 1970 and 1971, then three more in 1994, 1995 and 1997.4 Each was sealed in a bowl game, from the 1971 Orange Bowl win over LSU to the 1998 Orange Bowl, where Nebraska beat Tennessee 42 to 17 to close the 1997 season.4 The site adds that the Huskers have played in a bowl game for a national title on four other occasions and are among a small number of programs with three or more championships.4 The 1997 season fell within the years he spent at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, which is a matter of dates and nothing more. The subject index on Huskers and Midwestern life carries the stadium, the sellout streak, the volleyball record and the state fair, and the entry on fall Saturdays in Nebraska describes the day itself.