If you duck hunt for long enough, you are bound to accumulate a few good stories of something you and/or a buddy did. With things like the internet and forums like Ducksouth, sometimes those stories can get a bit funnier and complex, especially for Mark Wilson(bigwater) and Ted Lloyd(tedl10).
Ted, who was a freshman in college in 2006, had been browsing the forums like he had many other nights when he found one topic in particular that Bigwater had posted very interesting.
“Bigwater, Mark Wilson, had commented on a thread about hunting this place called Crossgates Lake WMA. I had no idea what it was. I had just begun duck hunting public land myself,” Ted said.
Little did Ted know, that Crossgates Lake was just a joke that many guys like Mark used to write about on Ducksouth at the time.
“There was a joke going on about the Crossgates Lake, which is in a heavily populated area in Brandon, off of Highway 80. Some of the guys used to joke around about hunting the Crossgates Lake WMA. I had been in on the joke and messing around saying ‘Yeah, we hunted there today and wore them out!’ just kidding around,” Mark said.
After Ted had seen this comment, he decided to take a chance and see if Mark would possibly take him on one of these Crossgates Lake WMA hunts.
“I sent him a private message, something to the effect of ‘Hey man, I know you don’t know me. But if you ever have room for another person, I’d love to be able to go hunt Crossgates Lake WMA with you’,” Ted said.
When Mark received this message, he believed it to be another friend just messing around with him.
“I thought it was a buddy of mine messing with me. I had a friend with real similar initials and I was just like ‘Oh, that’s ‘ole Telbert just messing with me!’. So I wrote back and was like ‘I tell you what, there’s two of us going already, but we are gonna take one more person this Saturday. We got three people wanting to go, the first one to respond is in’. Ted messaged me right back and said ‘I’m in. Where do we meet?’,” Mark said.
So once they got the details figured out, Ted thought he was finally set to go and hunt the Crossgates WMA.
“He told me to meet him at a Wendy’s in Brandon. Naturally, I showed up a few minutes early and about 30 minutes goes by, and he hasn’t shown up, and I haven’t heard from him. So finally I called him,” Ted said.
Mark, who happened to be out hunting that morning, was very surprised to be getting a call from a number he didn’t recognize so early in the morning.
“I hadn’t thought any more about it. I get a call that morning from someone going ‘Hey Mark, bigwater; I’m here!”, And I was just ‘Who is this??’. And he said ‘This is Ted, tedl10, Ted Lloyd’. I said ‘Are you crazy as hell son? Do you know where Crossgates Lake is? It’s right in the middle of the largest subdivision in Brandon. We might have a good hunt there, but the first shot we fire off, we’ll be hauled off after that with the Brandon P.D. showing up!’,” Mark said.
After the mishap between the two and things got figured, it eventually became a story the two could laugh about as friends for many years following. The post has become legendary for Ducksouth members that know about the Crossgates Lakes WMA inside joke.
“We laugh about it every time we see each other now-a-days, for the most part. And you know? He still owes me a duck hunt!” Ted said.
To read the thread that started it all…. just click here!
