Anatidae wrote:I still enjoy the anticipation with the first morning glow and sounds of wings overhead in the dark. So does my wife - and BJ. As long as one of us still gets excited about hunting (regardless of prospect or how you assess the 'results'), I will feed off their excitement and contribute my part of the team effort. I might get to shoot - might not. Just let me break a duck down and get him eyeball to eyeball.
This is not directed at anybody on this thread, but I have noticed a lot of belly-aching from the duck hunting crowd around these parts here at home. Many of these folks doing the complaining have nare a day's worth of blood, sweat and tears to even know good days from bad days...let alone the audacity to brand themselves with a name along the line of "east ms mallard mayhem boys." The way I figure, when you set yourself up on a pedestal that high, you fall pretty dang hard when the mayhem role is reversed. One would assume, putting myself in the mayhem boys' shoes, that it would become quite difficult to save face when the mallards are causing mayhem on your psyche- and your pride. Quite frankly, I'm tired of hearing about it... tired of the roost shooting, tired of the muffler-less motors, the trespassing and the bitching and moaning. Anatidae's post struck a chord with me- right about the time I was thinking of my last hunt this season.
I took a friend duck hunting Saturday morning who may very well not see many more seasons. He is a couple of years younger than I, but he is on the list for a heart transplant. Same old story regarding this scenario: He's as good as gold. His predicament couldn't be happening to a person less deserving of it, if any of us ever "deserved" much anyway.
While I was not expecting a barn-burner, I
was expecting a decent shoot that never came (roost hunters the afternoon before spoiled the morning hunt). And so, in the pre-dawn light I was thinking of what "it" is that drives me to wake up and hunt these birds- or any critter or fish for that matter. Is it the kill, or is it the journey-the adventure? What is it that gives me that feeling in my gut- when adrenaline flows through me like the antifreeze of the Jeep parked out by the road?
It is the anticipation of the unknown.
Anticipation- especially before the hunt, but also while the hunt is underway. Will I find a suitable log to deposit my Havana omelet? Will there be birds to commit? Will this bird commit? He is committed; will we hit or miss? Will we get him before he reaches the deep part of the slough? One can plan best he wishes, but he will ultimately never know until his body, recoiling and limp from the instantaneous mass exodus of adrenaline, has the quarry firmly in his grasp.
The key component that roused me out of the bed that morning is what
I did not know. You just
do not know.
That is what brings me back the next day: It's not the "barn-burner" hunt in and of itself: It's my own private showing, via my mind's eye, of birds falling from the sky they once owned, of friends and family drunk with the carnage at hand. Memories of the amazed gaze of exhausted dogs who once
defined the word physical; who once made their owner
proud to say, " Fetch'em Up." Dogs who now physically exist
only by a carefully made, tattered and weathered headstone. A headstone that tells an indifferent world that, while your over "here," make no mistake: You stand on
hallowed ground.
Hallowed ground. These "what if's" that play out in my mind's eye are all that I have in my armament to supply the critical millisecond of mental fortitude needed in order defy a paralyzed and defiant hand to reach over, flip off the quilt, and go after the animal that "might be." The unknown wildness of the wild and all of its components like weather, wind, the prey, the beaver runs, the belly aches- none of them can be controlled by the average man, nor will they ever be. I wouldn't have it any other way.
My partner and I were discussing this philosophical point (the anticipation) under the devoid-of-duck, ever-brightening gray skies. By 7:00, with our minds now privy to the mystery of what the future holds, we discussed when we would pack up. For what had been kept secret for all these millenia had now been made known to the two men in that space, in that time. As we picked up to go, it occurred to me, as it sometimes does, that even though I'd been fooled into believing this day was void of any memory-worthy content, it would surely be packaged and received by the studio upstairs, and it'd eventually be memorialized and immortalized just the same as the dead hounds back home who lay in the dirt of a quaint woodlot. Thank the Creator that he has given me these gifts that I have no control over-these memories and the process of them being processed. For they are as real as the crown that mankind will one day don my head with- a crown made of granite, placed squarely 6 feet above what was once perceived as the "real me".
I've only been a half dozen times this year, and while I did not go back the next morning, that night as I lay in the bed, I thought about the unknown. What
if there are birds tomorrow? What
if memories are made?
And as always, until a night of sleep had successfully separated "me" from the day before by an eternity, I had failed to realize the memory had already been made. Those memories and the ones yet to come, if they come, are why I had a good hunting season- a great hunting season.
I'm
thankful for that. For a little while.
)
