Whistlers

The boat trailer is already hooked up. As the truck turns over the thermometer on the dashboard blinks reluctantly. 10 degrees. Most accesses will be frozen. I toss the axe in the bed of the truck in anticipation of chopping ice. As I lay my fingers on the steel head of the axe I feel a burn. It’s one of those mornings when everything I touch has a little sting associated to it.

During the drive to the access I reflect on the beginnings of my day. A cold blast of arctic air had crept in through the window of the bedroom. Usually, I leave it open just a crack to let in fresh air to offset the old Vermont Castings woodstove which cranks out an almost intolerable heat from down in the kitchen. I had been sleeping above my covers when the frigid Arctic fingers reached through the window and wrapped themselves around my feet like a death-tolling ghost. I bolted upright and looked at the clock. 3:25am. It would be five more minutes until the radio began crackling the local country station’s middle-of-the-night news. I figured that I might as well just get up. I staggered downstairs and when I opened the porch door to let out my whimpering black lab, Boo, I was assaulted by the air sailing around the Northwest corner of the porch. I commanded him to “hurry up!” and he wriggled past me, breathing frosty exhalations of gratitude for letting him back in. I meandered over to the sink and turned on the weather. The old radio whispered static for a moment then the voice of the outdoors began to deliver his monotone soliloquy. The voice in the box said that the wind was indeed from the Northwest and attached the moniker of an Arctic Clipper. These were to be clear, cold winds of 10-20 mph on land with more dramatic currents on the lake. The lake level was deemed moderately low at 95.5 feet above sea level and the water temperature was delivered in the same uncaring voice; only 36 degrees at the Coast Guard station 20 miles North. In minutes I was dressed and was pouring a thermos of dark French Roast coffee. I grinned as I add a drizzle of maple syrup. What is it about maple syrup in coffee that warms the soul after spending hours outside? Maybe it’s the thought that something that comes from trees has to be helpful to ward off a chill.

Arriving at the access, launching the boat goes smoothly. The ice is about 1” thick but breaks with a gentle tap of the axe. The amber lights of the trailer guides glow warmly in the rear view mirror. Slowly backing down the ramp so as not to lose the boat by sliding off the trailer, I hit the ice on the bottom of the ramp and the truck lurches backward, sending my heart into high gear. Then as the wheels enter the water they catch traction again and I settle down. The bowline is clipped to the rings on the bed of the truck so I can launch solo. The boat slides easily off the trailer and into the steam rising off the water.

The whistler decoys are in a bag, strapped to the bow with bungee cords. The wind is blowing about 10-20 knots from the Northwest. I climb into the canvas blind surrounding the cockpit, being careful not to tear any of the Fastgrass on the sides. I lean over the stern and pray. “Please let this old motor start this morning.” The old Honda resists on the first two pulls and then she coughs once, sputters, and roars to life like a race horse at the gate. I call my pup, Boo to “kennel” into the boat and he jumps proudly on top of the decoy sack, like a hood ornament.

We shove off, busting through a thin layer of sheet ice, turn into the wind, and head toward the corner of the island.

With each decoy I toss out, I am thinking that later it will be painful to pick up with its wet cord and anchor. I set out 2 dozen whistlers and a dozen bluebills, then pull the boat up to the rocky shoreline. I wedge the boat’s hull under an old oak tree that clings to the rocks. My Barnegat Sneakboat is as mobile and shallow drafting a boat as can be made. I am filled with pride that it took me 18 months to complete this craft in my old garage and now it is serving me in these rugged conditions like a dependable friend. I light the propane heater and push it up under the spray curtain. It billows a welcome heat out from under the fore deck. I set up my milk box with a flotation cushion and hunker down inside the grassy mound. I pour a cup of coffee from the neoprene covered thermos and place it on the port shelf made by the canvas siding. I watch the steam swirl off of the cup and feel nirvana arriving. As I load my Benelli I hear it. The distinct, unmistakable sound of cold arctic air tearing over stiff wing pinions, like a child blowing on an acorn top. Goldeneyes!

I scrunch down, hunching my shoulders under the top of the blind and peering out into the smoky fog rising off of the water. I raise my gun to ready and watch closely. The big bird swings across the bay from shore. A lone drake whistler. He swings over the decoys at 30 yards and presents himself to me in a picture perfect broadside belly shot. I raise my gun to my shoulder and swing through the gorgeous black and white body. As my eyes find the cheek patch, still swinging, I squeeze the trigger and the bird folds up in mid-flight, bouncing off of the surface and coming to rest without motion at the edge of the decoys. Boo is shivering with excitement on the bow. “Back!” I command loudly. Boo flies off the bow like an F-16 leaving the deck of a carrier. He breaks through the surging water and creates a wake with his powerful swimming technique, using his tail as a rudder. As he approaches the bird he opens his mouth and slams his jaws shut on the big drake like it was the most important singular event in his life. 

His swim back to the boat is filled with pride. His head is held high above the rippling surface. I could swear he is grinning. He crawls up on the bow and holds the beautiful boutonniere-adorned bird, it’s head glistening in the sunlight, a black-green iridescent sheen. “Leave it!” I command. He gently places the drake in my hand and in that moment life is defined as the joyful expression of the present. I am grateful for all that is. Man and dog share the bond that has spanned generations. 

A Waterfowler's Life Wish

It was late in the duck season, and for several weeks there had been few birds in the area. Rumor had it that “our birds” were staging about 100 miles to our north, in Quebec. We knew one thing that might bring them south was a weather pattern of monumental proportions. On the weather maps all week I watched the powerful front move up from the southeast, spinning counter-clockwise, accumulating strength and humidity over the Atlantic. It was shaping up to be one of those epic Nor’Easters. It was due to hit us hard on a Saturday afternoon, and, we all hoped, would blow the the ducks down from the St.Lawrence and Richelieu rivers

On Saturday morning I drove my truck around surveying all the access points to the lake that could be used with a northeast blow. Most of the accesses were already frozen in. Those that were still open were blocked by drifts of snow too deep for most boats and trailers to penetrate. I found only one that might be negotiated, and it had to be prepared by ramming through some deep drifts that had been plowed up onto the end of a street of summer cabins. The water just past the drifts was full of slush from the snow that had started falling. I started calling around to find trustworthy partners for the trip, preferably ones I could count on in an emergency. My friends John and Eric, my two best hunting partners, signed on. John is a middle-aged well-cultured and dependable friend who has shared many harrowing outdoor experinces and maintains his calm demeanor when faced with challenging conditions. John’s yellow lab, Remi is equally as dependable and a methodical hunter, calculating in his reserved style of retrieving. Eric, a young man headed for the Marines, is a thin, strong and quiet character who takes orders well and anticipates what needs to be done before anyone asks. These are the kind of partners with which you feel confident taking chances. We watched the wind and weather carefully.

At noon the snow and wind tapered off, giving us a short window of time in which to launch our flotilla of handmade sneakboats, bags of decoys, 2 dogs and thermoses of hot coffee. The boats were built to handle extreme weather. Barnegat-style sneakboats have long covererd foredecks and combing encircling the cockpit to keep water out, and with a traingular spray curtain on the deck in front of the cockpit, most of the water rolls off the curtain and back into the lake. Our goal was an island offshore about 400 yards, the first 200 of which were icy slush before we broke into open water. We headed for the southeast, leeward side of the island to set up under a big oak tree that wrapped it’s strong legs around the rocky shore. Then we spread our decoys out to our east with two-pound “H”-style anchors. Finally, we wedged the boats securely between the gnarly old oak and some shoreline shrubbery, then hunkered down to wait for wind-beaten birds to circle the island from the west and come barreling around the corner, seeking shelter in the cove.

The lull in the storm ended, and the wind started to increase in tempo and intensity. We tucked ourselves tightly into our boat blinds, backs turned to the tempest and huddled under our hoods. Then I heard it: the sound of wind strafing over the primaries of a goldeneye, a whistling sound so characteristic that old Yankees call these birds whistlers. "I can't see them but here they come!" I said. And from out of the mist-covered waves came a single goldeneye drake, beating his way crosswind toward our spread of decoys bobbing aggressively in the waves.
As he turned his chest away from the most distant decoy, at about 35 yards, I said to myself "Butt, body, bill...bang!" Down he went, into the icy water, and in a flash my Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Boone, leapt off the rocky shoreline and swam powerfully toward the bird who had fallen about 60 yards out.

At that precise moment it began to snow, hard. The wind ramped up, creating waves three to four feet high. Boone had nearly reached the bird, and when they both crested a wave, the bird dove. Boone circled in the trough, the whitecap spray flying over his head. This Chessie was not giving up.

The bird surfaced to gulp a short breath, then dove again. Boone circled furiously. Finally, he stuck his head underwater, came up with the feisty old drake in his jaws, and started to paddle back to shore, fighting for every stroke against the wind.

I watched him a moment. Then I said, "Boys, I think it's time to go. We've got to get back to shore before dark or this is going to be the longest night we've ever spent."

Boone came ashore, exhausted but proud. We took a quick picture of Boone and the bird and quickly packed up our field bags. We shoved and grunted the boats off the submerged rock shelf between the oak and the shrubbery and fired up the short-shaft motors. I breathed a sigh of relief as the 15 hp Honda jumped to life. It is, at these times, that one is most grateful for dependability.

As the motors roared to life, the wind became fierce, the tops of the waves were being blown off in a heavy spray and the snow came at us sideways, burning our faces.  We had to hold our hands over our eyes to shield them from the stinging sharp crystals. We picked up the decoys with numb, frozen fingers and soaked decoy gloves. Then, one wave at a time, we fought our way back to shore. The wind whipped a vicious spray over the bows of the boats and smashed the waves into the foredecks. Water rolled off the boats in sheets. Each wave was a hurdle to be taken with the greatest respect for its own potential. Quartering was imperative. If we were to be blown sideways we would capsize. The only workable strategy was that of taking each wave at a 25 degree angle and pointing the bows upwind as we came off the crests. In my boat, Eric hunkered down on the floor and held on to the cockpit combing with one hand on each side as I had instructed. He was quiet and focused.

As I guided the boat by the tiller of the motor, we gradually, slowly and methodically fought each wave, closer and closer to the shoreline. As we beached the boats on the sandy shoreline o

ut of the wind, we all started to laugh, partly with joy that we had survived, but there was an undertone of wonderment at nature’s extraordinary force. We felt invigorated by the knowledge that we had faced nature’s power and were alive.

As we loaded the boats back onto the trailer, John laughed and pointed at his van window. There in the caked-on snow someone had written the word “Crazy.”

And of course, the graffiti artist had a point. Why would anyone in his right mind go out in a small boat on the open waters of Lake Champlain during a December blizzard, why take that kind of risk? Because risk acknowledges that my life is sacred and cherished, that something important is at stake. I take chances because I feel more alive when humbled by a force greater than myself, one that commands respect and brings out my best. It’s not a death wish, exactly. I’d call it a life wish.

Life Stages of a Waterfowler

Have you ever stopped dreaming of waterfowl hunting long enough to ask yourself “what provides me with the greatest satisfaction from this sport?” This autumn I will celebrate my 30th year of waterfowl hunting. If someone were to ask me that same question, I would have to condense my long-winded pedantic answer to several “stages” of my career. I stumbled upon my passion relatively late, at the age of 22. I had no one to lead me, mentor me, or guide me in the dark mornings of my post-adolescence. I was exploring who I was when I found an image of a duck hunter on flooded tidewater, wandering the phragmites in his traditional duckboat with his loyal Chessie. It was a painting by Chet Reneson titled “Northern Birds.” I think it may have been in a Ducks Unlimited magazine that I picked up in a dentist’s office. I was captivated by the solitude of the sport. The romantic notion of a man who knew how to work with nature to take what he needed to survive and to revel in the true meaning of life supporting life.

Something about that image grabbed my soul at its depths and pulled out of my core, the roots of a duck hunter. For the first year, I wandered the swamps around coastal Connecticut and upland New York in search of something that quacked. I had no idea what I was doing. This was the discovery phase of my addiction. I was satisfied with even seeing or hearing a duck. I just wanted to know that I was in the right place. I had no waders, no boats, no decoys, not even a dog that knew what we were looking for. I reveled in the mastery of jumping from one clump of cattails to the next without going in over my rubber boots. I hunted places that no duck hunter in his right mind would venture. Ditches. Streams that flowed past community ballfields. Even small drainage ponds behind manufacturing plants. I’d lay in cornfields so small you could throw a rock across them. I would cover myself up in burlap bags and use lawn ornaments for decoys. All for the hope that some silly goose flying overhead might break all migratory tradition and pick that field to land in. I watched sunrises over developments and restaurant roofs, longing to experience “real” wild places, where vast expanses of water defined thousands of acres of wetlands. Nonetheless, satisfaction came at the end of the day, exhausted and soaking wet, lying in front of the fireplace and smelling my wet springer spaniel sleeping beside me.

The following year, my boarding school drop-out buddy and I purchased a homemade 12’ flat bottom boat, a used trailer, a Sears Gamefisher motor and a dozen L.L. Bean cork decoys. This was the beginning of the next stage; the Equipment Accumulation Stage (EAS). 

By the way, this stage becomes its own addiction and is a continuous aggregation of gadgets that eventually consume entire rooms of the house and garage. When it comes time to move or change households, the first requirement becomes storage space. Vehicles have no place in a garage. Lawns are arranged in a manner as to accommodate several boats, canoes, kayaks and various floating conveyances. The equipment stage actually brings to bear its own sense of satisfaction with the arrival of the UPS truck on a regular basis. Every year brings mountains of new tools. Back then it was Flambeau decoys, then G&H swivel-heads, then jerk cords, quiver magnets, flags, and then the predecessor to Mojos called “Miracle Decoys” with belt-driven spinning wings. Then come the calls. Calls of various tones, colors and shapes, (some purchased for the sheer attraction to marketing verbiage like “bourbon and water colored acrylic”) flutes, short reeds and finally, custom ground calls by Alec Sparks of Dead Creek Calls.

After the EAS, and running concurrent to its rabid development, comes the “I Shot A Duck! stage (ISAD). This acronym, if you are a decent person, is appropriately named because the first time you actually kill one of these beautiful creatures you will likely feel some remorse along with the elation that you were finally successful. This first duck does not have to be a full plumage rare Eurasian Wigeon. It could be just a common hen merganser. It is seen as a trophy and is hoisted high above the proud hunters’ head and he/she is now a card-carrying member of the fraternity. This is generally celebrated with a war whoop and a dance of questionable origins. The elated hunter brings home the trophy with the M.O. of “you eat what you kill.”

This leads to the next stage; the belief that we are now providing sustenance for our families, and thus they are now subject to this new tradition of honoring the animal that sacrificed its life for our nurturance. This stage is known as the Sustenance Hunter Introduces the Tradition (SHIT) of serving wild game to his family, the first meal being roast merganser in a crock pot. To a 23 year old, the meal is pure epicurean delight. It must be because it is served on newly acquired Abercrombie & Fitch placemats with flying duck scenes and water glasses with engraved scenes of the hunt. The meal is paired with a fine wine chosen by the fledgling sommelier, a bottle of Beaujolais, because if it’s French it must be haute cuisine, right? This stage rarely advances beyond its baseline of SHIT.

Occasionally, if the hunter can render his ego to those who truly know how to cook, he can learn to produce remarkable dishes like char-broiled breast of duck with cherry ginger compote in a merlot reduction and presented with a slice of genuine foie gras with Belgian truffles on semolina toast points. But that’s much later. For the next 20 years his family will grudgingly eat the SHIT he puts on the table with such pride.

The next stage is the one where too many hunters get stuck. It is measuring the satisfaction of the hunt by how many birds one kills. It’s unfortunate, but almost everyone hits this stage. This phase is known as the If It Flies It Dies (IIFID). During this phase a good day is defined by limits all around, hens are shot indiscriminately and after a full bag of mixed mallards, the obligatory black and a woodie or pintail, this hunter will shoot a few “extra mergansers” if the state does not count them as a part of the daily limit. This is the stage where game wardens, who in the past have been respected authorities, suddenly become the adversaries. Their interpretations of the law are suspect and the hunter begins to “push the limits,” “legal” out of season baiting, leaving blinds up beyond their regulated dates, and crossing state or international boundaries to shoot another limit in another area. When you meet one of these folks, it’s best to walk away or hunt with someone else who isn’t in this stage. I’m not saying it’s wrong to shoot a limit, but I have to ask myself what will satisfy their idea of the hunt.

After graduating from the IIFID stage we seek to humiliate ourselves in other ways; like learning to shoot expertly. We become obsessed with fancy guns and high scores on sporting clays or skeet courses. Some people actually lose their desire to hunt at this point and subjugate their bloodlust for the fragrance of gunpowder and the recognition of going 100 straight. During this stage you may encounter peers who will shoot a pair of $15,000 custom engraved over and unders at a rate of 300 rounds a day, 4 days a week. They will travel 4 hours to attend a shoot where they receive a small red and blue patch that they can then sew on their leather vest with padded shoulders that reads “100 straight.” When one of these fellows steps up beside you on the sporting clay stand, prepare to be humbled. Don’t fret my friend. Know that many of these shooters don’t hunt. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with this phase…except that it detracts from the actual purpose of hunting. That and I can’t afford the guns. Someday, when I sell my first book, I will buy a Parker side by side.

Another sometimes common affliction of a maturing waterfowler is the dog training tangent. This stage is commonly known as Canine Obedience Means Everything or “COME!” This acronym is frequently employed at trials after a retriever has taken a line to the concession stand rather than the distant mark of a downed avian-fragrance enhanced bumper. What dog in his right mind would turn down the smell of fresh grilled frankfurters? But seriously, these folks spend an inordinate amount of time mastering the intricacies of commands that can spin a dog around to the left or to the right at 400 yards away and “cast” him in the opposing direction by a variance of 2 degrees South/South West to catch a cross current of scent that is rising off of water that is calculated to be cooler than the air surrounding it, such that it will travel between the shoreline and a distant twig bent at a 45 degree angle. And that’s where the bird lies. These people amaze me! 

I have trained with a few of them and am so awed by their talents that I can only console myself by making sure that no one hears me scream “You Moron!” at the top of my lungs when my boy heads for the nearest blind that is cooking bacon on a propane stove. I have even had the privilege of taking one of their dogs hunting and watching them identify ducks that we want to shoot and looking disdainfully at us when we raise our guns on a less desired species. At any rate, the dog training crowd are a force to be reckoned with… and admired.


The next stage is the DIY stage or Do It Yourself. This stage begins the maturing of the waterfowler. He now seeks to add meaning to the hunt by loading his own shells, building his own boat, carving his own decoys and training his own dog. At this point everything takes on greater meaning. Until you have shot a reward banded greenhead over your own cork and pine decoys, out of your own Barnegat sneakboat with a reloaded shell and had it retrieved by your own well-heeled lab that delivers it to hand, I submit that you have not known true magic outdoors. The DIY’er is easily recognized by their quiet demeanor in the blind. They are busy trying to calculate how to engineer a decoy with mechanized tongs to retrieve the bird you just shot. They will look at your custom built boat and take it one step further by adding a “left handed donut shelf” that will not interfere with the camouflaged side rails of the gunwhales. I hunt with one of these guys and let me tell you, there is no one more entertaining than a DIY’er. He’s made dog blinds out of thrown away suitcases and boat trailer guides out of PVC pipe complete with reflective tape. He is the McGyver of the Wetlands. The problem with this stage, if there is one, is that the DIY’er cannot be satisfied. The need for constant improvement will not allow for this. Occasionally, the DIY’ers extravagant inventions allow him to recognize that, at the base of all that is waterfowl, we are all DIY’ers.

The next stage of the aging waterfowler is the Meteorologist & Weather Prognosticator, alias the Logistical and Intuitive Atmospheric Researcher (LIAR). At some point in every waterfowlers career he becomes obsessed with gaining the upper hand on what the next low pressure system is going to bring, which direction it is coming from and what barometric pressure changes may do to the hormonal balances of the migrating flocks in his region. He will sit for hours reviewing every possible chart of the jet stream and the recent history of weather patterns (as if they really had any pattern to them.) They will stare for hours at satellite pictures in Doppler, Mosaic loops, Wind conversion charts and infrared satellite diagrams of pressure fronts as they work their way toward the watched area. A true waterfowler will get on the phone with the local meteorologist and debate him/her after they deliver their evening forecast on the local news channel. The hardcore waterfowler knows what acronyms like GOES, NOAA, NWS and CONUS actually mean. The problem with this group of LIARS (see above) is that they actually sound like they understand more than those around them and convince them that the pothole on the windward side of the river will prove to be the hot spot when that Southwest winds shifts to Northeast at about 8:47am according to the sunrise tables that he has discovered are directly linked to the tidal currents based on solar spot activity following the tail of the last comet to pass through that longitude. It’s scary, because when they are right, we turn our backs on all common sense and from that point on willingly hoist the sails for the long run downwind to “the spot”, bucking 4’ rollers as the sun rises and the ducks head inland for calmer ponds.

When the waterfowler has finally reached the stage of mastery, he is well into his mid-life crisis and is now driven by the desire to re-kindle the spectacle and wonderment he experienced as a neophyte. There is only one stage left that can possibly bring any sense of blind enthusiasm like he felt as a beginner.

The final stage of a well-developed hunter is PIO, or Pass It On. If you have a child, or like me, have to “borrow” someone else’s, and mentor the little bugger, you will see how these stages come full circle. When you see your young protégé’ slog through knee-deep mud with a grin on his/her face, and that banded drake woodie in their hand, you re-discover the meaning of the hunt. It’s not about how much equipment you accumulate, it’s not about how many birds you kill or running your dog like a robot to his mark. It’s all about being there. The smell of the swamp, the bouquet of gunpowder and wet dog, the crafted lines of the hand-made boat, the perfection of a solidly built blind, the calls and bands jingling around your neck, and the eternal beauty of the sunrise over the swamp. This, my friends, is the definition of satisfaction.

Waterfowl Season 2009 rev 01 0001

Outdoors Magazine - Never Give Up

Ducks & Geese

January 2011

January is not for quitters. While many of the Northern tier hunters have put away their decoys and hung up their waders, the hard-core are just getting going. Those of us who love the sport so much that we would travel 5 hours to shoot a limit of Canadas or a brace of thundering bluebills will enjoy this month. It weeds out the faint of heart from those who just can’t get enough. So pack up those decoy bags in the truck and load the boat. Double check those tires and axles for wear. Make sure your spare is in good condition. Dig out your warmest ducking gear and, if you have a little propane heater, bring it! We’re headed south to Long Island Sound. Fill the thermos full of coffee and fire up the old pickup. When we arrive on the CT coast we will pitch into a “Diver’s Special” motel, then check out the local access at one of the many refuge areas on the Northern shore of the Sound. Surprisingly, most of these accesses are clear of heavy ice. Names like the Norwalk Islands, Lordship Point, Salt Meadow, Great Meadows and Calf Island await late season die-hards with concentrations of hardy black ducks, red-legged mallards and lots of scoters and geese. One point of consideration: be aware of the tides in the Sound. Time it wrong and you’ll be sitting for 6 hours on a salt flat waiting for the water to come back in and let you sail off. One of my favorite late season locations is the little wildlife management area off of Stratford, known as Charles E Wheeler. Charles “Shang” Wheeler was a remarkable hunter back when there were ducks enough to “blacken the sky. ” He was a master decoy carver and conservationist. It is this little piece of real estate where I cut my teeth on the late arriving bluebills and Canada geese. We would put in at a small access on the West side of the Housatonic River and cut downstream to the main channel of the swamp, then back upstream into the tidal pools. We would try to time our hunts so that we were in the pools just as the tide began filling them and we’d wait for the birds to come in to feed on the beds of eelgrass and invertebrates. I remember hunting one January afternoon with my father in my little homemade flat bottom boat with a chicken wire blind stapled to 2x4’s and woven with local salt hay and cattails. We sat only about 2 feet off of the top of the water as it had come in. It was evening and the geese started to return to their roost. The first flight of 3 birds came in silently from behind us, out of the sun. We never saw them. At the last second I turned my head and started to stand when I heard a faint “herrrronk.” I dropped to my knees just in time and found that my father was struggling to do the same, the giant Canadas barely missing our heads. There was no time to shoot. We sat down in utter amazement that neither of us had been hit by the big birds. We laughed for quite some time until the next big flight bore down on our spread. We harvested a few nice birds and called it a day as the sun glowed a golden orange and light green behind the buildings of the city. On the way back across the river we could smell steaks being grilled in a restaurant on the shoreline. We pointed our boat toward the yellow lights of the dining room and carved our way through the darkness, home.

If you find yourself appreciating some of the articles you’ve read here in the past year, I’d like to invite you to join us at the Yankee Sportsman’s Classic at the Champlain Valley Expo in Essex Junction, VT on January 14-16. This is one of those true wonders of the winter. It’s a lot like being in a candy store the size of Walmart, but for families. There is every possible kind of booth and seminar. Last year there were over 15,000 attendees and this year there will be more than 45 seminars on everything from turkey, deer, bear, icefishing, trophy heads, tracking and raptors. But my favorite is still the Duck and Goose Hunting Vermont seminar, where I get to meet my readers and compare notes on our seasons. We put on a slideshow/movie, display new equipment, talk about new strategies, what worked and what was just a gimmick. We exchange comments and opinions about the seasons, bag limits, best and worst days, weather impacts. Heck, we even share some of our time-proven secrets and locations. We will be giving some calling demonstrations and if you want to join us bring your own calls and let’s rock the house!

Outdoors Magazine - Adding Fuel to the Fire

Ducks & Geese

December 2010

 

When we enter the swamps and lakes that we hunt, what do we feel about the space we occupy? Is there a reverence for the area, or do we just “use” it to get what we want out of it? Most of us spend an extraordinary amount of time thinking about how to become better hunters – we seek out the most advanced decoys, guns and boats. We put enormous energy into grassing our boats, practicing our calling, building our blinds and perfecting our strategies for high and low water. It would seem that these things that mean so much to us would garner considerable respect since we seem to love them so much. We profess that we respect and admire all that is wild and beautiful, yet some of us still behave like children, who when they don’t get that spot that they want, act in an immature and jealous manner. Here is what I mean. My partners and I have built and maintained a blind in a legal manner for the past 8 years. It takes us approximately 30 hours of hard work to build it. We enjoy the work and value the challenge. We have planted wild rice in the spot and always welcomed others to use the blind when we are not there. It holds plenty of ducks and has been a very productive location for us. Some of you may know that I run a mentoring program (http://www.traditionsoutdoormentoring.org/) for at-risk young men in an attempt to teach them the previously mentioned respect and appreciation for nature. I thoroughly enjoy taking these young men out and showing them how waterfowlers hunt. We talk about values and how they can use them in their everyday lives – dealing with problems at school and home – and what it means to be a part of a brotherhood of duck hunters. These boys are deeply influenced by what they see and hear from us. So when we rounded the bend in the creek last Saturday to find that someone had burnt down our duck blind, I bit my lip and decided that rather than get angry I would use the episode as a lesson in how to respond to the ignorant and maladjusted element of our fraternity. Instead of expressing anger we tried to understand what would have motivated someone to do this. Could it have been an anti-hunter? Doubtful, because most anti-hunters don’t carry a can of gas in their canoe or kayak. Could it have been someone who was jealous of our spot? (When I say “our” it goes without saying that we do not “own” any real estate in this place – we just stake out a claim by building there on the first Saturday in September each year – according to VT law) We do shoot a lot of ducks from there in most years and I’m sure that others who have witnessed it might wish they could be there instead of us. They COULD wake up earlier and build there – no one is stopping them – but typically people who do this kind of thing are lazy and angry about others “stealing their opportunities.” Truth be told, the majority of us are mature enough to seek the next best spot and make the most of it. Or, in my case, if I’m not there, go ahead and jump in my blind and use it. Just leave it like you found it and enjoy yourself. From that point the day became about teaching how karma works. It can be simplified like this: It’s a scientific fact that all energy never dies or ends – it just changes into other forms and continues to return to its source. What kind of “energy” did those who burnt down our blind put out into the world? Was it anger? Resentment? Jealousy? Now, if energy does indeed return to its source, it’s just a matter of time until these individuals receive it back – in one form or another. And instead of feeling defeated or angry I will revel in the knowledge that it will indeed come back to them. And next year my blind will be bigger, better and more productive. A little jealousy never kept me from my passion. And a little gas just adds fuel to my fire.