I’ve hunted ducks and geese with Art from the wheat fields of eastern Washington to the mud flats of Padilla Bay, including his beloved Skagit. Waterfowling may seem to be an inherently funny sport; the camo garb, fake birds, and stupid dogs could, by themselves, be the elements of a good circus show. But serious sportsmen take these things as fundamental props for a much bigger play, sometimes a tragedy (for the ducks!) and often a comedy of sorts. Let me describe a typical day in the field with Art, gleaned from several memorable trips.
First, the quarry is identified, usually ducks, snow geese, or brant, equipment needs are discussed, and a meeting time set. Early the next morning you see the truck, with the duck boat in tow, pull up outside and you hustle to get the gear loaded. As you approach the rig, you hear a rapid thumping noise that increases in both tempo and volume with every step you take. Your first thought is the hope that he has that beast crated in back, but no such luck! Through the fogged windows, you see the shifting shadows and hear the muffled thumps and curses as man and dog sort things out. You open the cab door, taking in the rancid retriever stench and the blare of KIRO news radio, to see Art smiling benignly over this chaos like the Buddha as he wishes you good morning.
The ride north is uneventful: 7-11 coffee, donuts, and smug satisfaction in listening to the morning commute for all of those poor bastards going to work. The dog has secreted himself behind the seat, mostly quiet except for ripping out large chunks of upholstery periodically and choking them down. Art describes the tidewater slough we’ll be hunting, how well he did last time out, every duck taken there over the last 10 years, etc. Even the coffee is no match for this and you swoon into a dreamlike state, awakening just at the turnoff for the ramp. This type of ramp is what’s euphemistically known as “unimproved”…basically a cow path with some cinder blocks stuck in it.
No trouble for our hero, however, as he confidently backs the trailer down in the pitch black. The sudden jolts and screeching of metal bear testimony to his skills. Finally, the tailpipe goes under, the motor dies with a gasp, and Art declares a successful launch. The boat is pushed free, tethered to shore, and filled to the gunwales with guns, decoys, and what appear to be remnants from a very low-class garage sale. The dog bounds from the muddy shore into the boat and back several dozen times, soaking gear and people alike, while Art chuckles at his youthful exuberance. Truck keys are lost, found, and lost again during loading but eventually the rig makes it over to the parking lot.
We’re off!…or nearly so. The first 30 yanks on the outboard starter cord produce no visible results but Art is undismayed. He tells me stories while doing this…how he bent a prop last time out…how the sand in the water pump really shouldn’t be keeping this thing from starting, etc. Suddenly, his efforts are rewarded and the engine roars to life in a cloud of blue-gray exhaust. I jump in, and perch precariously atop a bag of decoys. The dog comes next, crawls over me, and sits forward. Art turns the boat into the leftmost channel entering the slough and brings it up to planning speed. There aren’t words to describe the exhilaration this produces in both Art and his dog! I can’t keep my face into the wind because my eyes tear up so bad and figure it must be his glasses that let him drive at such breakneck speed in the dark. Looking back at him, I see that his glasses are completely fogged over and the phrase ‘dead reckoning’ takes on new meaning. I figure I’ll just watch the dog; he’ll see it coming before I do. So I look off to the side, watching the marsh grasses and root wads go shooting by at arm’s length. Every now and then we bank sharply and I hear toenails digging into the aluminum moments before the dog comes flying backwards into my lap. Art gets a big kick out of this and mentions that most of the time the dog doesn’t even land in the boat! Suddenly, he accelerates and I think we must be going into open water again. Looking back I see him crouching over the outboard and begin to worry that there’s engine trouble. Looking forward I see the dog crouching as well, trying to flatten himself into the floorboards. Then we hit! Everything in the boat jumps 3 feet in the air and comes down hard…all except the dog who goes a bit higher and does miss the boat this time. Art slows down and encourages the dog to catch up, meanwhile explaining that the best way to deal with these sunken snags is go get up enough speed, tilt up the motor, and go right over them. The scary part, it occurs to me as I’m listening, is that he looks so completely normal. We fish the dog out, gun the motor, and are soon at our destination.
Now I’ve hunted my share of pits, blinds, and stands over the years…some of them nothing more than a burlap sack in a cornfield. But nothing prepares you for this. It looks kind of like Huck Finn meets Waterworld…a raft that survived some horrible industrial accident and hasn’t been allowed a decent burial. Art proudly describes how he found this craft adrift in the slough, staked it to the swampy shore, and has been making ‘improvements’ to it ever since; the slick, rotten plywood floor, also a gift from the slough, is only the most recent. Still, it’s cover and will do.
We go about setting the decoys, a practice that requires consideration of the species under pursuit, wind direction, and sun’s position relative to the shooter. Taking my directions from Art (they are his decoys, after all!), we soon put out our ‘spread’ and are instantly rewarded by the quacks and wingbeats of circling ducks.
We hunker down in the blind, listening to them get closer, until Art whispers ‘Take ‘em’. We jump up and sight down the barrels into the blazing sun, blindly firing at the west ends of eastbound ducks…three shots, three misses…each. The dog is clearly disappointed and skulks around the blind picking up our empty shells and chewing on them while we scan the skies. There is nothing that can put an edge on hair-trigger nerves quite like the sound of premolars working on plastic and brass. Art seems nonplussed by this although I give the brute a few discrete kicks under the guise of stamping some warmth into my feet.
Ducks come and go for an hour or two and we pick up a couple. Art then decides that it’s time to try out his new secret weapon and slogs back over to the boat, returning with the garage-sale flotsam I noticed earlier. He proudly demonstrates his newest creation, a so-called ‘motion’ decoy that is bound to bring the ducks pouring in. Now motion decoys do what they sound like: impart movement to an otherwise lifeless-looking statue. Some wiggle in place and others, like this one, flutter their wings like they’re landing. You can buy a perfectly satisfactory one for about $150 these days but Art is as inventive as he is parsimonious. He has rigged up a standard decoy with a little battery-powered motor taken from his wife’s dust buster. A shaft passes through the motor housing to which he has attached wooden dowels glued to the ‘wings’, pieces of plastic with a dark and light sides. I listen as he describes the long hours in his shop testing prototypes, the problems with getting good dowels, the right plastic for the wings, short battery life, etc...the undisguised pride of a junkyard craftsman! He grabs this monstrosity and a 6-foot piece of PVC pipe and strikes out for the spread. The object is to stake the decoy on the pipe, wings beating, several feet above the water. A sunken root on his path causes some delay but, after a brief swim, he returns to the blind just beaming with pleasure. There it sits, bobbing on a stick, wings rotating furiously in unison. The dog will have nothing to do with it, probably recognizing the decapitation risk it poses should he have to make a retrieve. Fortunately, the
batteries wear out some 45 minutes later and the ducks start coming back.
The sun is up now and the ducks are getting pretty skittish and wary in this ‘bluebird’ weather. Art decides that it’s time to start calling to them, ‘talking’ them into the decoys. I admire good calling because I’ve seen how effective it can be and am not particularly good at it, myself. Art’s calling defies description; if you can imagine a huge bumblebee rhythmically choking on a kazoo, then you get some suggestion of the real article. I don’t know where Art gets his calls, only that they all sound the same. His highball, feeding chuckle, and comeback vary by only one note and their differences in phrasing are so subtle as to be indistinguishable to my ear. The ducks can distinguish them, however, and their response is immediate and invariant. I have never seen so many ducks from behind as when Art tunes up on that call.
The sun starts getting low again, the dog is snoring on the plywood floor, and it’s just about time to head back. Nature calls first, however, and I move out of the blind, lean the shotgun against a bush, and start working at getting my waders down. Suddenly I hear the wingbeats and single guttural call of a drake mallard….a ‘suicide drake’ as we call them because they are unbelievable suckers for the single hen decoy we always place off by herself. I pick up my call and give him a single, low, very feminine quack and he locks his wings and falls like concrete towards the spread. I love this part: standing at a distance watching my friend and his dog doing what they love, and handing them this drake on a platter will be a nice finale for the day. Down he comes and I anticipate the moment that Art will stand, nail this bird with a single shot, then send his well-trained machine out to pick him up. Suddenly, the drake splashes in next to the hen decoy, realizes his mistake, and immediately reverses direction. There’s all sorts of commotion in the blind now….thumping and banging which then terminate in one, two, three shots that are well behind one very lucky duck. I get back to the blind and start ribbing him about ‘how the hell could you miss that bird, anyhow?’ and he launches off on a long harangue about fogged glasses and they don’t make left-handed safeties for shotguns when the truth was he was somewhere else until the moment that drake splashed in. The truth is that getting to that somewhere else is probably why he, or any waterfowler, goes hunting anyway.
So, we pack it up and motor back…much easier in the daylight although the dog couldn’t seem to figure it out in reverse and got knocked out on that snag again. The flat tire and shorted –out taillights on the trailer are only mild inconveniences until your hands go numb and that happens pretty quickly in the cold. Soon we are Southbound, feeling very cozy with the heater on full and the dog laid across our feet. Art notices a decoy bag tumble out of the boat on I5 through the rear-view mirror and the guy behind us has very good reflexes. Only a couple of dekes suffer from the incident and Art assures me that they can easily be fixed, repainted, or made into more motion decoys.
It’s dark again as we pull up to the house. We do the usual ‘good shoot’ exchange and Art says that we should do this again sometime. I say what I always say…“sure, Art….anytime!”
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