Double R 2 wrote:I like mornings the ducks fly better than when they don't, and am the first to admit that I'm not out there to watch the sunrise. That said, there's plenty days we come back with light straps that were magical nonetheless for reasons far beyond dead ducks. For several years I've progessively transitioned ino a full-context kind of hunter. I like it all. The people, especially, but also the place, it's history and local, club or group traditions. I wouldn't swap the stories told in duck blinds for a lifetime of limits. I like good dog work and am am blessed with friends that invite me as well as Delta. A mile and half walk through woods and sloughs to kill ducks in a public hole that a host points to the spot hid daddy raised him onto his shoulders to peer at his first wigeon; crack of dawn "beer bird" hitting the water; an older gentlemen pointing across the way at a spot and saying that where he first hunted the hole 45 years ago when he was still in college; someone's dog getting sick while you're turning tight circles in the boat clearing ice from a hole; shooting a 135 year-old piece of functional side by side art and seeing ducks fall like you're waving a magic wand; a pot of opening day teal and andouille sausage with maple syrup; cleaning the linoleum with a spilled whiskey drink; whisking a retriever off the couch for a place to stay; knowing the driver of the atv is a bonafide expert because you're a 2 miles from camp, through sloughs and over logs, and the sumbitch aint let so much as a drop of sprite and charter spill from his foam cup; feeling you legs burn and sucking your lungs back into your chest pulling a pirough through low-tide slop, rafts of cans lifting off the bay a mile away, bone-in canvasback breasts simmering on the stove in grandma's traditional holy-trinity recipe; a hole on the river no longer recognized since it was just a bare sandbar when you hunted it 15 years prior, but you know from landmarks across the way this is exactly where you and a former buddy killed snows, specks, honkers, mallards and a black duck years ago dug in to the bar; a tall flying whistler for falling long enough you could whistle dixie, and you've seen you old-salt buddy do it many times before but it's always memorable, like the first firework explosion on the 4th; famous public holes with folks that have hunted them forever; quiet out of the way spots on the brink of civilization where a son kills his first duck after falling in along the way. All along the way, dead ducks and memories. It's who we are and what we do.
Teary eyed saying: This. Is. Epic.
