It's your boat Captain!

Before I get started, I need to apologize for some of the explicit language used in this post. I tend to curse sometimes when I hunt, but I assure it is with poetic diction and taste if there is such a thing.  Remember, I want to write about exactly what happened over the course of this past duck season - the good, the bad and the ugly. And the incident I’m about to describe falls into all three of these categories. Personally, I find it to be one of the funniest events I’ve been a part of in quite some time. Maybe you’ll find some humor in it as well, just maybe...

The past several seasons, we’ve leased blinds on Reelfoot Lake located in northwest Tennessee. (Reelfoot Lake info)  The previous two seasons, the water levels were extremely low during hunting season.  When I say low, I’m talking about blinds that were not even reachable by boat and water levels that made running an outboard very tough. Hunters could barely go faster than idle speed due to the huge cypress stumps and knees that endlessly dotted the lake.

The morning of this particular incident was no different than any other morning at the ‘Foot. There was a low ceiling fog with no wind at all. Dad, Travis, and I loaded our gear in the trucks and headed to Kirby’s Pocket from Samburg where we stayed to launch the boat. Kirby’s Pocket is a very small inlet from the lake - probably only 12 yards wide and fairly shallow when the lake is on normal winter pool. 

Now, every duck hunter has their own routine when it comes to preparing their boat for launch from the ramp. My routine and Dad’s routine sometimes differ when getting the boat ready. We were each performing our separate routines on my boat simultaneously. Translation: I thought Dad was taking care of things that he was not and Dad thought I was taking care of things that I was not. So word to the wise: It’s better if ONE person handles the boat prep before launch.

I pulled the truck around and started backing the boat into the water like normal. It slid off the rails like a champ and into the water she went. After parking the truck and trailer, I walked back down to the ramp as other hunters and guides were loading their boats and preparing for launch as well.

As I approached the boat, Dad and Travis had already pulled it up to the bank. I walked to the stern of the boat (that’s the back of the boat for all you non-boating people) and saw water standing on the floor. 

I turn to Dad and ask: “Where did all this water come from?”

Dad responds: “Did you put the plug in?”

And I immediately say, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?!”

So I quickly got out and ran back to the truck. My plan was to back the truck into the water again so we could pull the boat out. Looking back, I should have just reached down and put the plug in, but hindsight is 20/20. Needless to say, I panicked a little as this was the first time something like this had ever happened to me. There wasn’t a lot of water in the boat at that time, but enough for me to get the hell back to the truck.

I backed the trailer into the water for the second time. Our goal was to pull the boat out and park on the ramp in an elevated position in order for all the water to drain out the plug hole. Pretty simple, right? Not so much. As Dad pushed the boat off the bank to pull it back onto the trailer, the bow rope (Again, for all you non-boating people, the bow is the front end of the boat.) comes off the clip. Now, stay with me here. Dad pushed my boat off the bank and was left just standing there, holding a limp rope, as my plugless boat drifted off into the darkness. Now, I have never come across anything in this world worth a damn when it’s limp, if you know what I mean. I kid you not, it was like slow motion. I look at the limp ass rope he is holding and then look at him. Dad has an expression on his face that says “ Oh yeah, we are fucked now.....”

I look at him and say: “Is this really fucking happening to us right now? We are like some Goddamn tennis shoe wearing weekend hunters. Jesus Christ! We are better than this! You taught me better than this Dad!”

Dad, with a slight grin of shock on his face, quickly retorts: “I’m fucking 60 years old! I can’t remember my fucking name!”

All I could do was laugh at that very moment. I remember thinking how shocked I was because that comment caught me so off guard I couldn’t say anything. How can a person get mad when their father drops that line on them? My blood pressure had to have broken the speed of sound. I could feel the veins in my head bulging out. I struggled like an ape to get my float coat off, all the while thinking I was gonna have to wade out there and fish the son of a bitch out of the water.

Luckily, there were two local men in their boat watching this cluster fuck unravel in front of them. Lord only knows what they were thinking watching this, but they were kind enough to help us. They paddled to our boat and pushed it back towards us and we were able to grab it and load it back onto the trailer. Thankfully, Kirby’s Pocket isn’t very big or I have no doubt she would have went to the bottom right there before our eyes. I got in the truck and pulled the trailer out of the water so the water could drain out the plug hole. It took about 15 minutes for all the water to drain out. Everything at the stern of the boat was floating. As the water was draining out of the boat, all Dad would say to me was, “ Hey! It’s your boat Captain......it’s your boat!” 

“My boat?”, I reply, “ I thought you put the plug in it?” 

“Hell, I thought you put the plug in it!”, he said. 'Til this very day when I tell this story all my father says is, “It’s your boat Captain! It’s your boat!” All I do is laugh about it now. I didn’t realize how funny it was ‘til after it happened of course. 

Every duckhunter at one point or another will probably experience something similar to this if they do it long enough. My day just happened to be that day. These events are what make this sport so much more fun than the actual killing. Scenarios like these are just another reason I love duck hunting.

One last thing, if you haven’t hunted Reelfoot Lake, I strongly encourage you do. I tell every waterfowler I know to hunt there at least once. The beauty and mystic of that lake are somethings you will take with you to your grave. The hunting there can be absolutely phenomenal - from the Cypress trees and the Bald Eagles to the people and their style of hunting. Just go there. Check it off the bucket list. I can’t promise a lot, but I can promise you’ll never forget the hunt or the sights and sounds of Reelfoot Lake. 

The Band of Bands

Some people say bad luck comes in threes. This past duck season, it was the opposite for me when good luck came in threes......three bands that is. Duck and goose bands are one of the many mystiques of this wonderful past time. Each tells a story about the duck’s or goose’s past. 

Some of you may be wondering what a band is or what they look like. The Bird Banding Laboratory website goes into further detail about bird bands. The next logical question would be  Why band birds? Don’t worry; problem solved, thanks to the wonderful people of BBL.

Learning about a band on a duck or goose truly fascinates me. (It’s a shame they didn’t have a subject for this in school; I might have been a better student.) Each band is engraved with a unique nine digit number. This nine digit number is used to report an encounter with a banded duck or goose. By calling in the band number (1-800-327-BAND) or registering it online, you can find out where the duck or goose was banded, when it was banded, who banded it, the age and sex of the bird, as well as many other interesting facts. You are then mailed a 5x7 certificate with all these facts and it looks really great once framed (as I do with all mine).

What a band certificate looks like.

Just a fraction of the wall of fame.

One can only imagine the lakes, rivers, ponds and other bodies of water each banded bird has visited while making their way up and down the flyways. In the continental U.S., there are four major flyways for migratory waterfowl. (As seen on the map from the BBL website.) They are the Atlantic, Mississippi, Central and Pacific flyways with the Mississippi flyway being the largest. 

All my bands have come from the Mississippi flyway with the exception of one. This picture is of a Drake Mallard I killed on September 22, 2010 while hunting in the Peace River Valley of Alberta, Canada. I can only assume he migrated down either the Pacific or Central flyway due to the location where he was killed in Alberta. I will never know since I killed him before he migrated south for the year. This is the first of three bands this hunting season.

Most hunters, like myself, wear their bands on their lanyards as in the picture above.

Here is some info from the band :

Mallard

Sex: Male

Banded: August 23, 2009

Age: Hatched in 2009

Banding Location: Cardinal Lake, 20 W Peace River, Alberta, Canada

Encountered: September 22, 2010 at Cardinal Lake (The same exact lake where he was banded and born a year earlier). This means he migrated south to who-knows-where and came back to the same place he was born! How fascinating is that?!

Band number two was on a Lesser Snow Goose - my first ever Snow Goose band, might I add.

Info from the Snow Goose band:

Lesser Snow Goose

Sex: Won’t know until I receive the certificate in the mail.

Banded: July 23, 2008

Age: Won’t know until I receive the certificate in the mail.

Banding Location: Manitoba 

Encountered: January 24, 2011 a mile west of the house in Crocketts Bluff, Arkansas across from the Lybow field (shout out to the gunslinger from the east). At least a three year old goose.

Finally, my pride and joy of the three bands this year - a rare Northern Pintail band.

Info from the Pintail band:

Northern Pintail

Sex: Male

Banded: August 23, 2006

Age: Won’t know until I receive the certificate in the mail.

Banding Location: Saskatchewan 

Encountered: January 29, 2011 at Wolf Island. (He was five years old. That means he migrated up and down the flyway five times! I can only imagine how many miles he had flown!)

Bands, just as the ones pictured above, are an absolute and lifelong treasure, as well as a rarity, in duck hunting. However, having many bands is not a reflection on how hard a waterfowler hunts as it is, in my opinion, more a reflection on where you hunt. If a duck hunter hunts near an area where the USFW Service bands a high number of birds, well, more than likely, he or she is going to have more bands than a person who doesn’t hunt near such an area. What I’m trying to convey is that getting a band is nothing more than being at the right place at the right time. It revolves around the big L word....luck. I know waterfowlers that have many bands but couldn’t blow a duck call if their life depended on it. I also know waterfowlers who have very few bands and are absolute studs in this sport. In turn, I think that alone makes them even more special and unique. A blessing, if you will, that I will always cherish for the rest of life. So tell me, do you have any good band stories? I eat them up, so post away fellas.

Opening day: The day of fog.

Opening day of duck season is a little hectic to say the least. A barrage of ”Do I have this? Did I get those? and Don’t forget that!” run through your mind the night before and the morning of the big day. It’s the first day that most of your gear gets used again since the previous season and along with that comes a long list of to-do’s and don’t forgets. I, for one, have a routine I go through the night before the season begins and every night for that matter. This routine includes a mental list of all the gear I’ll need (calls, bullets, drinks, snacks, camera, binos, license, etc).  Accomplishing all these tasks while experiencing the excitement that opening day brings can make things difficult at times.

The castle.

Opening weekend at the 12 is a busy one. Typically, all the members are there and in the morning, it can sound like a herd of buffalo going through the house. The shuffling of feet, gun cases being zipped and flatulence from the fried food the night before make it impossible to sleep after 4 a.m. Speaking of mornings at the 12, we have four coffee pots in the kitchen for our coffee drinkers. And let me tell you, when that timer goes off, it truly is like a swarm of bees drawn to honey. Men packed in the kitchen, shoulder to shoulder, filling those thermoses. It’s a sight to see. 

Because the Island can only hunt six people, four of us headed there while the other six hunted the 148 field. When we hunt the Island, I drive the 4-wheeler from the house to the field. The 4-wheeler pulls the wagon and dad follows behind driving Blackie (Blackie is the official vehicle of the Tennessee 12). This particular morning, the fog was as thick as I have ever seen. Visibility was maybe twelve yards and it was absolutely brutal. I had to follow the levee the pit was in just to see where I was going. But we finally made it and the hunt was on.

The 4-wheeler & wagon.

As shooting time (always thirty minutes before sunrise) approached, we could hear ducks and geese all around us. The sound was deafening. They never got up as they could not see us coming due to the dense fog. My hope was that the fog would lift as the morning progressed. This never happened; there was no wind and the fog was going to hang with us all morning. It was like a white blanket around us all day. I remember getting a headache from staring into the white oblivion. At most, I could see thirty yards from the pit. We could hear ducks chattering overhead and the Specklebelly geese sounding off on the ground to the west. Green-winged Teal would come racing through the fog and be out of sight in a matter of seconds only to be sitting in the decoys before we knew it. The morning started off slow as I knew the conditions were not in our favor. But, as a hunter, you must accept those things you cannot control. This is what we were dealt and we had to adjust accordingly. All things considered, we still managed to shoot ducks and geese at point blank range.

The fog.

It was about 8 a.m. or so and we were sitting in the twenty-foot pit when I hear a double cluck greeting call from a speckbelly (aka White-fronted Goose) coming down the levee from the east. I knew they were close, danger close. They appeared out of the fog like B-51 bombers behind us at twenty-five yards. There were five of them flying in a single line formation. I yelled “Behind us!” and the four of us emptied our guns throwing as much flack at them as we could. When the last shot was fired, there were five geese on the water. No cripples, just dead; hevi-metal 3.5 #2‘s at their finest.This just goes to show how close the birds were that morning. 

Brian & the snow.

Meanwhile, the 148 field which is about one and a half miles to our northwest was absolutely hammering them. They shot and shot all morning. It sounded like a mini fire fight going on. I said to dad, “They must be covered up over there!” We could hear their six man volley followed by water shots with ease. They had their limits by 10 a.m. At about 10:30 or so, we decided to pick up and head to the house with the visibility still at about forty-five yards. We walked out with 24 ducks and geese. Not a bad day considering the fog from hell. 

Opening Day 2010-2011

And so it began.

I decided to write about this past duck season for the simple fact that I may never experience one like this 2010-2011 season ever again. I think if I write about it now while the memories are fresh, years from now, I can relive them in my mind - that’s my hope anyway.  Never in my hunting life have I experienced something so special with my family and friends. The Lord blessed me with an opportunity to hunt a field through the grace of a close friend, that in my opinion and in the opinion of many others, is the best on the Grand Prairie. And the fact that it is mine until I no longer want it only makes it that much more special. This historic place is called Wolf Island. 

Sunrise at the Island.

Some of the greatest people I know and some of my dearest friends are from and around Crocketts Bluff, Arkansas, also called “The Bluff” by the residents. I’ve been hunting at The Bluff since 1996 and I’ve gotten to know a lot of the people there over the years. These friends of mine are as honest as the day is long. I trust them with my life and I couldn’t be luckier to call them my friends. They are like family to me. (Out of respect for them, their names will not be mentioned.)

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? It was a hot September day at work on the asphalt when I received a phone call from one of my closest friends. He asked me a question that has changed my waterfowling future forever. I remember having to sit down when I got off the phone and I immediately called my father. I had just been presented with the opportunity to hunt Wolf Island for as long as I want and God willing, that will be for the rest of my life. 

This first entry is a prelude to what the season encompassed and the events (the good, the bad, and the ugly) that took place during this incredible year at The Tennessee 12 Hunting Club. My hope is for duck hunters, non-hunters and those who are indifferent to understand how incredible this past season was. Maybe, just maybe, you can relate to some of the events that transpired during this season or even get a laugh out of it. But above all else, understand that I have a profound love for duck hunting as I am a product of my environment. 

Dad & I

Thank you dad.