THE BEST DUCK HUNT---EVER

THE YEAR WAS 1959....
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I reckon it was about twenty degrees that
ice-cold December morning fifty-five years
ago--- at six a.m.---and you'd think any person
with gumption would be at home in a warm bed
cuddled up with the wife.

But there I was, with my hunting partner, "Brother
Ed," a missionary preacher---we were crawling
through an awful maze and tangle of tall willows,
mesquites, dead weeds and brush...along the
seepy, soggy, boggy, swampy, shore of Lake
Childress.

Even as light was beginning to break, you couldn't
see five feet ahead. We had walked, then crawled...
several hundred yards from the car.

Our breaths were frosting...and we were panting.
We'd pause and rest a minute...and then go on.
I was twenty-five and Ed was twice't that.

We were forty yards from the water, and split up...
Ed angling off to the left. We had scouted this lake
several times and we knew there'd be ducks on
this little brushy cove.

As we split up, our blood pressure soared---there
came the most exciting sound off that cove that a
duck hunter could want. It was the sounds of dozens
of ducks QUACKING...happily! Not a care in the
world!

We had seen mostly green head mallards on that
lake and wondered where the lady ducks were. We
didn't know.

Wow! Do ducks' quacks sound loud, up close, on
a clear, frosty, winter morning, on a cozy lake
branch, when they are waking up, and think no
human is within miles!?

It sounded like a big scad of ducks, maybe fifty
or a hundred!

"Brother Ed" was a great fellow from North Carolina.
He had a gentle-sounding Southern brogue when
he spoke. He was an old hunter; name it---he had
hunted it.

I had hunted bobwhites and blue quail many times
with Ed, and he had an old faded light tan canvas
hunting coat, which was to die for. It was likely a
richer tan color a good many years before I knew
him...a long life of hunting trips had faded that old
coat, with the shell loops---and game bag in the back.

I doubt that it had ever been washed...maybe aired
every year or two, if it needed it.

It was a coat a young guy like me would look at,
dream of, and envy. It had character; it had "patina,"
as they say. That jacket, if it had a voice, could
entertain a bunch of old hunters, sitting around a
fire, in an old mountain cabin somewhere---with
their glasses of diet Dr. Pepper---for hours.

Well sir, I decided I had to have me a jacket just
like Ed's. I ordered one, a forty long.

It was a blinding-new caramel tan right out-of-the-
box from Monkey Wards! Now thereby existed a
problem---it was TOO NEW-LOOKING! Ed's was
a light, faded tan. He could crawl into the bushes
and you couldn't see him; when I crawled they'd
say: "WOW, who's that young dude over there in
the weeds in that bright hunting coat!?"

I set out to acclimatize my new coat....give it some
unearned-character, you know. I stomped on it a
little, dragged it around the yard, and left it in the
sun to fade---but all to little avail.

That morning my new coat was getting a workout---
it and particularly the elbows were covered with
mud. It was unlined, and if it hadn't been for my
thick sweater, I would have frozen.

I had my old 16 gauge double barrel Stevens that
Dad had given me when I was fourteen---he went
out and bought himself a twelve gauge Ithaca pump,
the one with the hunting scenes stamped on the
receiver.

My Stevens was loaded with number four high brass
shells and ready to go. I was always a safety-minded
nut with guns, and had been careful not to ram the
barrel into the mud.

So there I was, all ready to go, fifteen yards from the
water, legal daylight, but all you could hear was the
quacking ducks---it was too brushy to see them!

What happened next, I don't know. Something must
have startled the ducks. There was that sound that
makes a duck-hunter's heart nearly stop---the sound
of a hundred or more mallard wings beating in unison
as they rise together off the water.

There were far more ducks in that cove---right and left---
than we ever expected.

A slew of them came right over me and I fell backward
and shot straight up, dropping two. For a minute or two
there were ducks circling all around, trying to figure
out what was going on.

I kept shooting...and heard Ed's Bang, Bang, Bang. As I
remember, we didn't lose a single duck to the water.

The ducks were gone.

We gathered up our gear and our ducks and walked to
the car, so excited we could hardly talk! We stopped at
our favorite coffee cafe in town and ordered sausage
and eggs, biscuits and gravy, and just finished up by
leaning back in our booth, as men do, having more coffee
and reliving our hunt---the first "re-live" of a hundred to
come over the years...which is part of what the outdoor
experience is all about...the memories.

I fancied that the waitress and some of the customers
were eyeing me and Ed, in our muddy, rustic hunting
coats, tho' his was "rusticker" than mine.

We went to my house and spread six green head mallards
and one hen, in a semi-circle on my dead Bermuda lawn,
a tan color. We criss-crossed our shotguns with the birds.
I posed and he posed. Somewhere there are color
slides.

I don't honestly remember who got four and who got
three.

It was the best duck hunt I'd ever been on....and at age 25
I thought: "Wow, how many more great duck hunts I will
have in my life...it's gonna get better and better!"

But, my hunting friends, life and its events and opportunities
are ever unpredictable---it is the nature of things here...
Duck hunts are iffy occasions that depend on any number
of factors and variables....

Turns out...that I never had a better duck hunt than that one...
or a better hunting friend than Ed.

I did drop a few geese in later years, but those are other tales
for other cold winter nights  around the fire.

As to my forty-long Monkey Wards hunting coat, "Whatever
happened to it?" you ask.

Well, I wore it and wore it, on many quail and dove hunts, and
a few hunts down along the swampy land around Bernardo
where the ducks hung out...it weathered and gained character
on many a "goose crawl."

It faded out a right smart, like Ed's old coat...it could hold its
on in a tale-telling session with old hunting coats, if'n they
had voices.

Alas, it either shrank...or I put on some. It's too little now and
I fear my hunting days are o'er...and maybe now only...lore.
It hangs with honor, in the back of my garage...an old friend
that symbolizes a life in the outdoors...one of the great gifts
God has given to us guys.

Life goes on.

*******30******
BY MIL
8/26/14






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