Duck Hunting

Years ago as we approached duck season, my bride and I considered sending our son, Catfish, down to Arkansas for a Thanksgiving duck hunt with my brother Matt, his son, creatively named, Matt 2.0 and my brother-in-law, Tony, and his son Guy. My brother and my brother-in-law had a duck club complete with flooded woods, a blind, and most importantly, a club house with a wet bar, leather couches, Persian rugs, Direct TV and a 60 inch flatscreen TV. I was a little concerned because, although my brother and brother-in-law are great guys, and they would take great care of Catfish, they can not call ducks for shit. They sound like two guys who spent their adolescent years studying calculus rather than calling ducks which happens to be exactly what happened. One is an engineer and the other is a doctor. Neither can call for shit. I have a good friend, let’s call him JD. JD is a great guy and, more importantly, an excellent duck caller. Like me, he can not even spell calculus, but we can put the duck butts on the water. Perhaps, I thought, a call to JD is in order.

JD and I used to frequently hunt a slough off in the Cache River bottoms. This meant that we had to weave our way in a 14 foot aluminum jon-boat loaded with guns, decoys, beer, and Duke through a tree studded swamp just to get out into the open water of the slough. Once on the slough, we had to find a spot in agreement with the wind, put the decoys out, and then wrestle the boat back into the brush so the ducks wouldn’t see it, but not so far as to block either our field of vision or that of the dog. If Duke couldn’t see the ducks fall, he wouldn’t know where to go get them.

Usually, we’d get some ducks and have a good time. Sometimes, if the ducks weren’t flying, we’d just sit there, drink beer and talk about girls. Sometimes, we’d do all three. One time when we were hunting, a bottle of wine got spilled in the bottom of the boat, and Duke lay there lapping it up. A little while later, when one of us shot a duck, Duke was too drunk to go get it so we had to get the boat out of our hide, and go get the duck. This happened several more times, and pissed JD off greatly. Each time we’d kill a duck, Duke would just lay there and growl. Duke, it seems, is a mean drunk.

Finally, JD and I had enough of the attitude from the damn dog. Dogs that can’t hold their liquor should not drink. We collected our decoys and headed toward the landing. JD was steering the boat, and I complained to him that we were going too fast through the trees. I was afraid we would hit one. We had a 9.8 HP Mercury motor on the jon-boat, and even with the load we had in the boat, we were moving pretty damn fast. JD, fortified by drinking beer all day, was very dismissive of my concerns and supremely confident in his ability not only to guide the boat but also to judge whether or not the boat would fit between two trees. We were simply flying through the swamp. I’m in the front of the boat scared stiff as we pass closer and closer to trees, or squeeze between two trees standing close together. Duke is passed out in the bottom of the boat. Decoys are clattering as we shift and weave between the flooded oak trees. The motor is going flat out, and I can hear JD laughing over the roar of the motor when suddenly everything stopped.

Well, almost everything. The boat and motor stopped. Everything else including me, my gun, the decoys, the cooler, 100,000 beer cans, JD, his gun, and Duke continued moving through the air at pretty much the same rate of speed we were traveling at before the boat got stuck. I made out the best because, sitting in the front of the boat, there was nothing for me to hit on the way out of the boat and into the cold, cold water. Fortunately, the water was only thigh deep. Duke bounced off the front seat of the boat and then into the water. JD hit the middle seat, then the front seat, then hit the water. I was cold and wet. JD was cold, wet, and a little dazed. Duke was cold, wet, drunk and pissed. He was trying to bite me and JD, and may have eaten a decoy. While I was splashing around trying to evade Duke, I stepped into someones lost trap. The steel jaws slammed into both sides of my ankle and even through my boots, hurt like hell. Duke was going nuts and continued to chase me which was bad because with my foot in the trap, I could only run in a fairly tight circle in the water. Fortunately, JD lured Duke away. While Duke was chasing JD, I cut the rope that secured the trap. I told JD that I was going to kill who ever owned the trap. I pried the trap from my foot, and checked the tag. It said “WLG/JDS”. Damn.

Finally, we got Duke calmed down and back in the boat. We spent probably an hour splashing around collecting decoys, beer cans, coolers, guns and dead ducks. Finally we set about getting the boat unstuck from between the trees. It is not possible to convey in words how cold we were. It was early December and a north wind was blowing through the swamp. We were cold. However, as with most things, unsticking the boat was in the end, simply a matter of motivation. After an hour or so’s struggle, we were successful in freeing the boat.

On second thought, Landi and I decided that Catfish might be better off hunting with Uncle Matt, Uncle Tony, Matt 2.0 and Guy.

122921 17329