Here's my question: Should we be paranoid about this as an attack on our gun rights or do we need to adapt to survive?

Paranoia or Reasonable Response?

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.

Homecoming - For My Dad and Me

I was 15 years old when I found my place in the world. I had struggles as a geeky type kid, not adept at team sports in a town that worshipped football. My father was typical for the age. He spent more time working than I wanted him to and my mother was left to raise me and my siblings. So when he bought me my first gun and announced that we were going deer hunting – after taking a grueling Hunter Ed course – I was curious about what this expedition would mean.

Around 9pm my father went to bed and I, still dressed in my Levis and flannel shirt, stood downstairs in the “Wreck Room”, watching the snowflakes come down in monstrously large clumps as I cleaned my Winchester 30-30 for the third time. I breathed in the smell of the Hoppe’s Solvent and ran the cotton pads through the barrel again, just to make sure that there was no residue left from factory test fires. I coated all the darkly blued steel, dreaming that maybe one of my friend’s fathers had smelted it in the small steel town in Pennsylvania where we lived. Without a gun case, I placed it tenderly back into the green and white cardboard box in which I had received it.

I opened the French door to the outside and under the spotlight behind the house I could see that the white stuff was piling up quickly. I stared into the light and watched as the large flakes seemed to define the limits of my vision. It was as if the world was closed in around me and comforted me. When it snowed this hard it felt as though even a kid of 15 could melt into its largesse, like being encircled by Mother Nature’s arms. I decided that I needed to alert my Dad to the fact that the driving might get difficult and that we had better get going earlier than planned. After all, we would be driving into the mountains of Central PA and the ride, under normal circumstances, took about 4 hours. I snuck up to his bedroom on the third floor and creaked the door open. He wasn’t sleeping. I whispered to him that we might want to get going early because it was snowing “like heck” and there was already 6 inches on the ground.

He agreed! Holy cow! We were going to get started! I had already packed the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser with both of our belongings. I had run the checklist of necessary hunting items through several times, adding a new item each time. Jon-E hand warmers. Check. Leather boots with bacon grease for waterproofing. Check. Wool mittens. Check. The list went on and on and ended with hot chocolate in thermos. Check. As we pulled out of the driveway past the cherry tree, which was barely discernible except for the branches which were bent to ridiculous positions laden with the heavy snow, I thought “This is it! Just me and Dad! A true wilderness experience.

He snaked the old station wagon through back roads North to Zelionople and on to Interstate 80 East. He drove the old Vista Cruiser like it was an 18 wheeler, plowing through drifts, and while others’ vehicles were sliding off the road, he captained that old wagon like a Captain of the Highway. There was no stopping us. He had the window rolled down and was listening to WWVA 1170 AM. I was lying down in the folded down back seat with a sea of blankets and a sleeping bag as a cocoon, insulating me from the cold air filtering in through the driver’s side window. He was singing along to old country songs from Merle Haggard, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. I thought I hated that music. I was young and rebellious. I liked Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and anything that made my ears ring. Like my 30-30 did. Hmmm. Maybe I needed to re-think this music thing.

As we slipped North through the dark night I would lie on my side and watch the heavy snowflakes in the lights of the big trucks and imagine talking to them on the CB radios. “10-4 back door. Got your ears on, good buddy?” Soon, we pulled into a truck stop in Strattonville. Big diesels with bright colors and fancy scroll designs on their cabs were everywhere, rumbling quietly with their parking lights on. My father said, “Come on Brad. Let’s get a little something to eat.” I was in heaven.

As I walked to the door of the truck stop I forced my eyelids open t glance at the tall streetlights that lit up an arc of solid white flakes.  I felt like this was the greatest adventure I’d ever been on. I was with my Dad. And it was just me and him. We walked in and sat at the overly cheerful yellow counter and placed our orders. The waitress took a keen interest in these two wayward travelers dressed in hunting attire. My father had a deer shooting outfit that was red and black and the pants puffed out at the thighs like some old English riding britches. He looked like Friar Tuck and I was embarrassed at first, but when the waitress acknowledged that we were courageous souls to be driving on a night like this, I welled up with pride. We were, after all, intrepid deer hunters and nothing could stop us!

After a giant plate of turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy on a slice of white toast and my first cup of coffee, I knew that this trip was more than just a Sunday drive with Dad. I was being indoctrinated into the world of grown ups, where men make decisions and take chances on things that are actually thought out and not impulsive. We rolled on through the night in the old Vista Cruiser and I stared out the window of the roof and started to sing along with my Dad to the Grand Ole Opry. I would let no one know of this for decades.

Arriving in the town of his birth, Grampian, we were blasting through drifts 2’ deep and sliding sideways around old logging roads that weaseled their way through the old strip mining town and up into the hills. Just when the going got to a point that I thought the old wagon could push no further, we turned into an driveway that was nothing more than a tunnel in the snow. My father floored it up to the camp door and laid on the horn to announce our arrival.

Introductions were made to a bunch of old men who were dressed in flannel shirts and canvas pants. Many were holding glasses of beer and mixed drinks and a few were smoking cigarettes. Throughout the camp the rooms were bathed in the warm golden glow of kerosene and propane lamps. It seemed to me that here was a place that all of the rules of proper society were being shattered in a glorious cacophony of glasses clinking, raucous laughter, cussing, teasing and general mayhem. Everything that I had been being punished for at home was here, being celebrated, free of all judgment. I was being initiated into manhood in it’s most primitive and crude form. It made an indelible impression on a sensitive young man.

I remember the smell of the woodsmoke from the chimney and the pungent aroma of slightly moldy furniture, an tattered sofa with a tapestry covering over it in front of the fire. The smells are what really hooked me. Scotch. Coffee. Beer. Cigars. Woodsmoke. Bacon. My senses were overloaded with happiness. I was a man. For the whole weekend and then a few days afterward, my father and I were stranded together at this deer camp.

During the day we would plow through waist deep snow walking down to the pines, where the deer would yard up. We sat under big old spruces and peered through the mountain laurel for brown fur moving up the hillside to the wind-blown fields above.

We never saw any deer that weekend but the hope and connection to the nature that surrounded me made a permanent connection. I had found my place in the world. For the next 36 years I would harbor a dream in my heart of hearts to be able to recreate this period in my life. When I was lonely or sad I would meditate on the images of this place. When each deer season came around I would feel a deep longing for those times. It took me about 30 years to figure out that longing. I had a profound existential desire to connect. Connect to nature, my father and myself.

This deer season I realized that dream. At the beginning of this year I was offered a deer camp in the town of Huntington, Vermont for lease. It was a run-down, dilapidated and vandalized shack at the end of a nearly impassable logging road. I had gone there for a few years under its’ previous owner, Johnnie MacDonough, when I knew that I had found my home.

Johnnie welcomed me into the fraternity and I hoped that someday it could be mine. Late at night, when everyone was asleep, Johnnie would coach me on how to run the camp and tell me that someday this would all be mine. “But how?” I thought.

A few years later Johnnie passed away and I thought my heart was broken. I loved this guy like my father. The property was sold to an investor in Great Britain and was going to be managed by a forestry company here in the states. They had no interest in leasing another camp. That is until it was vandalized and they realized that it was better to lease it and have someone looking out for the place. In April of this year it was offered to me. I swooped in and took it, inviting 3 other of my favorite men to join me, Steve Osborne, of Williston, my father-in-law, Brian Hoyt of Charlotte, and Chris Thayer, also of Charlotte. We banded together and nearly every weekend during the summer and fall we worked tirelessly to renovate the place.

We put on a new deck, we removed an old non-functioning refrigerator, we re-plumbed the water system that ran from the brook. With the help of Lynn Osborne, Steve’s dad and a master handyman, we re-worked the entire gas system and added new propane lamps. We cleaned out the toilet and primitive septic, moved the shower next to the hot water heater, built bunks and put new cabinets in the kitchen. We replaced the chimney and woodstove with a used Vermont Castings Defiant. We cut and chopped wood and stacked it on the porch. And before we knew it the season was upon us.

We put up 2 ladder stands and waited for the Opener. It was bright and crisp and warm…not exactly what deer hunters hope for. But we all saw deer and I passed up a shot on an 8 pointer that was standing behind a fallen pine tree. He never came back. But the purpose of the season was yet to come.

For Thanksgiving weekend, the end of our rifle season and historically one of the most well attended hunting weekends of the year, I invited my father, Arthur Spencer. He traveled all day by Amtrak to arrive here. After a bountiful harvest feast on Thanksgiving Day, Chris, my father and I piled ourselves into my truck and, after an essential grocery stop we headed up the old logging road, bumping the chassis and plowing through mud and rock.

When we arrived at the camp, I took a moment to stand on the deck beside the gurgling brook and the bathtub full of beer and announced “Thank you all for being a part of my dream.” After unpacking and getting the woodstove lit, I offered up the Lazy Boy recliner in front of the woodstove to my father. I toasted the crew that we would be living with for the next few days. The smell of woodsmoke and the clinking of cocktails swept me home to that place, where as a young man, I knew that I belonged, in the company of men reveling in their escape to the great woods.

We all found ourselves breathing in that divine moment of the present, content with the knowledge that we would rather be here than any place in the world. Throughout the camp the room was bathed in the warm golden glow of kerosene and propane lamps. Then it began to snow.  Big white flakes.  I watched them float down through the rustic wooden window as far as my eye could see.