LA_MERC_Dirge
November 7th, 2003, 07:08 AM
Hunt for the truth
Duck season opens a Pandora's box of questions
Friday November 07, 2003
Angus Lind
As a non-hunter living in "Sportsman's Paradise," where the duck season opens Saturday, and in an effort to broaden my horizons, I've been talking to outdoorsmen and trying to understand what makes them tick.
I've tried to pick up on the hunter's lingo because many a time I've been caught at a cocktail party when the conversation switched to duck hunting and suddenly I've been left out in the cold and out of the loop.
People start talking about teal season and I wonder to myself, "Is that before or after mauve season?" They talk about coot seasonand I'm thinking, "What about old coot season?" They'll talk about tagging birds, and I'm wondering if those tags say, "This duck for roasting," "This duck for duck l'orange," or "This duck perfect for duck gumbo."
A couple of things I can tell you about duck season with authority:
There haven't been any tropical storms or hurricanes so the marsh is good. The mallow, well, that's another story. But we must get cold weather up North to push 'em down South. No cold, no migration. No migration, no ducks. No ducks, no hunters forgetting to put the drain plug in their boats. Folks, it's that simple.
I've been going to bed at night reading the Louisiana Migratory Game Bird Hunting Regulations for 2003-2004, which is absolutely fascinating reading. My favorite paragraph so far is: "The bag limit is an artificial limitation on how many ducks you can shoot if you are 'in the bag' and can't hit anything. Brandy in the duck blind is a way to lower your bag limit." Not.
Actually, it says this: "The daily bag limit on ducks is 6 and may include no more than 4 mallards (no more than 2 of which may be females), 1 black duck, 2 wood ducks, 3 mottled ducks, 3 scaup and 2 redheads. The daily bag limit on coots is 15."
Now how you identify a duck flying at 50 miles an hour a half-hour before sunrise when you're just shaking out the cobwebs is a mystery to me.
But the bag limit on ducks is six, the limit on coots is 15 and since we never see any recipes for coot l'orange or coot gumbo, one would presume that coots are plentiful and not especially fine dining. My presumption was backed up by a coot recipe I found: "Rub coot with salt, pepper, herbs and let marinate for 24 hours. Place in brown paper bag and cook for 1 ½ hours at 350 degrees. Remove coot from bag. Throw away coot and eat the bag."
But before the recipes, there have to be birds, and hunters, and therein lies the answer to one of the mysteries of life: Why hunters hunt.
You have to get up in the middle of the night to go duck hunting because the shooting hours begin a half-hour before sunrise. When you get to the boat launch, it's almost always pandemonium. Dogs are running all over the place, excited about the hunt.
When you head out down the canal in the darkness there are boats crammed with hunters, dogs, dekes (not the fraternity guys; dekes are decoys) and guns that just appear and disappear as apparitions in the dark. It's hard to see because of the bags of decoys, and the dogs are going crazy, tipping the boat this way and that and occasionally over.
When you get to the duck blind there are often moccasins there to greet you -- and not the kind that keep your feet warm. Alligators are a real hazard in warmer weather, especially for the dogs. They take your ducks, too, as do otters. Mosquitoes and gnats can be horrible.
"When a hunter and a lab get in a pirogue," one hunter told me, "it isn't uncommon for the dog to jump out suddenly upon seeing a crippled duck. This often flips the pirogue and out goes the hunter."
Like golfers who sit at the 19th hole bemoaning the shot that went into the lake, costing them the match, and fishers who let a 12-pound red get off the hook, hunters similarly seem to thrive on telling tales of misfortune. For example:
"Watch me and I will show you how to do this," a duck hunter told his son, who had just downed a duck. Wanting to teach him the proper way to collect downed birds, he volunteered to retrieve the duck.
"It was quite cold so I carefully eased our 12-foot flat boat and finally the Go-Devil motor cranked," the duck hunter recalled. "Weaving my way through the lily pads, I spotted the duck and he spotted me at the same time. The duck dove and I continued to circle until he surfaced. At this time, I reached for my shotgun to finish the bird off. But I had forgotten to turn off the motor.
"As I let go of the Go-Devil handle to pick up my shotgun, the boat turned suddenly and water began pouring in from the stern. I rushed to the front of the boat and announced to my son that I was sinking."
The water was only chest deep, so Dad was not going to drown. However, his pride and reputation as an expert duck hunter did.
He stood up holding his shotgun in one hand, tow line in the other. His shell bucket went down with the ship. Floating in the middle of his well-planned decoy spread were shell boxes, insect spray, a roll of toilet paper in a plastic bag and an extra hat. And there was his son in the blind, watching every move.
A better explanation of why hunters hunt comes in this story:
It was 5 a.m. and pitch dark. He had just started his Go-Devil motor (forward gear only, no neutral) and was revving it up, tiller tied carefully to the hull by a small rope. A fellow hunter and two dogs started climbing into the boat. He leaned forward to help with the dogs and the guns and shell buckets.
His dog, jumping around excitedly, somehow kicked the safety rope off the tiller. The propeller dipped into the water and off roared the boat down the canal.
"I am flipped partly out of the boat," the hunter recalled, "only my legs still in. I try to bend my body back into the boat to reach for the starter key. In a split second the boat passes the end of the small pier and slams my head and shoulders into it, knocking me out of the boat and underwater."
He was wearing a heavy coat and hip-waders. He went down about five feet, did a full cartwheel under water, gasping for air. Meanwhile, the boat ran itself with the dog a hundred yards down the canal into a mud bank and stopped. The hunter surfaced, dog-paddled himself to the bank and discovered he was bleeding from arm and face. Luckily he couldn't see how bad the carnage was because he lost his glasses.
Most people would have packed it in right there, but duck hunters are not most people. The dog, meanwhile, was sitting in the boat, just looking on this as normal behavior. The hunter changed into dry clothes on the pier, reloaded and went back out.
It's just another day in the life of a duck hunter. And another hunting story that will keep me on a golf course forever.
. . . . . . .
Columnist Angus Lind can be reached at [email protected] or at (504) 826-3449.
Duck season opens a Pandora's box of questions
Friday November 07, 2003
Angus Lind
As a non-hunter living in "Sportsman's Paradise," where the duck season opens Saturday, and in an effort to broaden my horizons, I've been talking to outdoorsmen and trying to understand what makes them tick.
I've tried to pick up on the hunter's lingo because many a time I've been caught at a cocktail party when the conversation switched to duck hunting and suddenly I've been left out in the cold and out of the loop.
People start talking about teal season and I wonder to myself, "Is that before or after mauve season?" They talk about coot seasonand I'm thinking, "What about old coot season?" They'll talk about tagging birds, and I'm wondering if those tags say, "This duck for roasting," "This duck for duck l'orange," or "This duck perfect for duck gumbo."
A couple of things I can tell you about duck season with authority:
There haven't been any tropical storms or hurricanes so the marsh is good. The mallow, well, that's another story. But we must get cold weather up North to push 'em down South. No cold, no migration. No migration, no ducks. No ducks, no hunters forgetting to put the drain plug in their boats. Folks, it's that simple.
I've been going to bed at night reading the Louisiana Migratory Game Bird Hunting Regulations for 2003-2004, which is absolutely fascinating reading. My favorite paragraph so far is: "The bag limit is an artificial limitation on how many ducks you can shoot if you are 'in the bag' and can't hit anything. Brandy in the duck blind is a way to lower your bag limit." Not.
Actually, it says this: "The daily bag limit on ducks is 6 and may include no more than 4 mallards (no more than 2 of which may be females), 1 black duck, 2 wood ducks, 3 mottled ducks, 3 scaup and 2 redheads. The daily bag limit on coots is 15."
Now how you identify a duck flying at 50 miles an hour a half-hour before sunrise when you're just shaking out the cobwebs is a mystery to me.
But the bag limit on ducks is six, the limit on coots is 15 and since we never see any recipes for coot l'orange or coot gumbo, one would presume that coots are plentiful and not especially fine dining. My presumption was backed up by a coot recipe I found: "Rub coot with salt, pepper, herbs and let marinate for 24 hours. Place in brown paper bag and cook for 1 ½ hours at 350 degrees. Remove coot from bag. Throw away coot and eat the bag."
But before the recipes, there have to be birds, and hunters, and therein lies the answer to one of the mysteries of life: Why hunters hunt.
You have to get up in the middle of the night to go duck hunting because the shooting hours begin a half-hour before sunrise. When you get to the boat launch, it's almost always pandemonium. Dogs are running all over the place, excited about the hunt.
When you head out down the canal in the darkness there are boats crammed with hunters, dogs, dekes (not the fraternity guys; dekes are decoys) and guns that just appear and disappear as apparitions in the dark. It's hard to see because of the bags of decoys, and the dogs are going crazy, tipping the boat this way and that and occasionally over.
When you get to the duck blind there are often moccasins there to greet you -- and not the kind that keep your feet warm. Alligators are a real hazard in warmer weather, especially for the dogs. They take your ducks, too, as do otters. Mosquitoes and gnats can be horrible.
"When a hunter and a lab get in a pirogue," one hunter told me, "it isn't uncommon for the dog to jump out suddenly upon seeing a crippled duck. This often flips the pirogue and out goes the hunter."
Like golfers who sit at the 19th hole bemoaning the shot that went into the lake, costing them the match, and fishers who let a 12-pound red get off the hook, hunters similarly seem to thrive on telling tales of misfortune. For example:
"Watch me and I will show you how to do this," a duck hunter told his son, who had just downed a duck. Wanting to teach him the proper way to collect downed birds, he volunteered to retrieve the duck.
"It was quite cold so I carefully eased our 12-foot flat boat and finally the Go-Devil motor cranked," the duck hunter recalled. "Weaving my way through the lily pads, I spotted the duck and he spotted me at the same time. The duck dove and I continued to circle until he surfaced. At this time, I reached for my shotgun to finish the bird off. But I had forgotten to turn off the motor.
"As I let go of the Go-Devil handle to pick up my shotgun, the boat turned suddenly and water began pouring in from the stern. I rushed to the front of the boat and announced to my son that I was sinking."
The water was only chest deep, so Dad was not going to drown. However, his pride and reputation as an expert duck hunter did.
He stood up holding his shotgun in one hand, tow line in the other. His shell bucket went down with the ship. Floating in the middle of his well-planned decoy spread were shell boxes, insect spray, a roll of toilet paper in a plastic bag and an extra hat. And there was his son in the blind, watching every move.
A better explanation of why hunters hunt comes in this story:
It was 5 a.m. and pitch dark. He had just started his Go-Devil motor (forward gear only, no neutral) and was revving it up, tiller tied carefully to the hull by a small rope. A fellow hunter and two dogs started climbing into the boat. He leaned forward to help with the dogs and the guns and shell buckets.
His dog, jumping around excitedly, somehow kicked the safety rope off the tiller. The propeller dipped into the water and off roared the boat down the canal.
"I am flipped partly out of the boat," the hunter recalled, "only my legs still in. I try to bend my body back into the boat to reach for the starter key. In a split second the boat passes the end of the small pier and slams my head and shoulders into it, knocking me out of the boat and underwater."
He was wearing a heavy coat and hip-waders. He went down about five feet, did a full cartwheel under water, gasping for air. Meanwhile, the boat ran itself with the dog a hundred yards down the canal into a mud bank and stopped. The hunter surfaced, dog-paddled himself to the bank and discovered he was bleeding from arm and face. Luckily he couldn't see how bad the carnage was because he lost his glasses.
Most people would have packed it in right there, but duck hunters are not most people. The dog, meanwhile, was sitting in the boat, just looking on this as normal behavior. The hunter changed into dry clothes on the pier, reloaded and went back out.
It's just another day in the life of a duck hunter. And another hunting story that will keep me on a golf course forever.
. . . . . . .
Columnist Angus Lind can be reached at [email protected] or at (504) 826-3449.