So we wake up at some ridiculous hour, four a.m. or something like that. We drive out to Farmington and park at the end of a line of approximately four million trucks. Lots of men, not a lot of women, probably no women. We are going to just go with zero women. For a demographic of people that tend to be unfriendly to the gay community they sure like spending time with the same sex. It is even more ridiculous when you think about these men going home that night, sitting in front of a t.v. and watching other men lay on top of each other while grunting. (I'm talking about football.)
Anyway, it is time to get outfitted to kill me some duck. Waders, check. I believe my waders were about 5 sizes too big. I was stoked though, I figured I could just do like extra deep wading with my extra huge waders. Next up was a camo vest, which on it's own was pretty sweet. Then my dad filled the two large pockets with approximately fifty shotgun shells. "Dad I'm gonna shoot like fifty ducks today!" "Uh-huh, sure you are." The main problem with fifty shotgun shells, is that the weight of fifty shells in comparison to my net weight....well the numbers were strikingly close.
I am officially waded down......get it...waded...down....Sorry. I bet Annie laughs.
My dad hands me my trusty shotgun and we are off, walking along the Dike. I was pretty excited, I had recently passed my hunters safety exam. Honestly, anybody could pass that exam. This is an actual question on the test. "When you approach a fence, how should you cross it with your rifle? A: Throw your rifle over the fence. B: Place your rifle carefully through the fence." I am not making that up.
Unfortunately, we did not encounter any fences along the way. I was disappointed because I had all this knowledge about proper fence procedure. I could be like "No Josh, don't throw your rifle. You have to place it on the other side. It's safer this way, wow what would you guys do without me?"
After about 5 minutes of walking I am pretty tired, we are still on the dike and I'm beginning to think that these waders are a bit unnecessary. Then things got a little bit interesting, we left the paved dike and headed out into the swampy marsh. An extraordinary thing happens when you walk in a swamp with huge boots on. You see they create a type of suction, that actually requires a reasonable amount of effort to keep walking. For a man with man strength this is no big deal, for a boy who is used to dancing shoes this is rather difficult. So I am taking it step by step, having to heave my body around in order to get my feet out of the mud, all while carrying a shotgun.
After about an hour of this we get to the right spot. For the record, the right spot looks exactly like all the wrong spots that we have been passing for the last hour. Me: "Oh dad look, some swamp, looks like a good spot!" Bob: "No son, that's a bad spot, not swampy enough." Me: "Oh, well look how swampy that spot is!" Josh: "Way too swampy rookie."
We finally found "The spot"! Ok, so lets start and shoot some ducks. Me: "Um...ok first of all, great job guys on this spot. Wow, it is....well it's a great spot, good swamp location. Um actually I was just kind of wondering, well, it's pitch black out here. So are we like looking for the Duck house or something?" Bob: "The hunt doesn't open for an hour." Oh, ok. Bob owes me an hour of my life back, good to know. I think I will be going into work late tomorrow.
After about 30 minutes we suddenly hear a shotgun go off. Everybody in our group starts loading up. I'm a little confused. Me: "So, the hunt doesn't start for 30 minutes right?" Josh: "That's the official start time, but once people start shooting it's pretty much fair game." Huh. I do not like this. It's like a guy starting the 100m dash before everybody is even lined up, and then the judges say, "Oh man you guys better get going, he's really fast."
When I imagined what the duck hunt would be like I pictured it being very peaceful, and occasionally a mean old duck would fly by and we would have the proper time needed to line up a shot and we would take it. This is not a reality. The truth is that there are thousands of ducks, who up until today have been lounging in the swamp without a care in the world and now there are people everywhere shooting as fast as they can into the sky. It's like duck genocide out here.
I AM BAD AT THIS. Everybody is shooting and reloading and shooting as fast as possible. How can they possibly be aiming? These ducks are going like a thousand miles an hour and quite frankly, I think "The Spot" kind of sucks. There are tall reeds everywhere so I can only see straight up into the sky. I am no scientist, but shooting my rifle straight up into the sky seems like bad policy. I give it a go. I aim my rifle into the sky and shoot, forget about trying to hit a duck. I'm gonna keep my goals realistic and just aim for the sky. Sky hit!
After a few minutes of this nonsense sky shooting Bob must have started to feel bad for my sky shooting. He told me not to aim at the flock of ducks, but to pick out a single duck within the flock to take down. Wow, ok sniper Bob I will do just that. That's like aiming for a plank the on the side of a barn instead of the entire barn. I barely have time to get my shotgun into the air, aiming at an individual duck seems like a joke.
I suppose that my Dad started to feel bad for me after thirty or so direct sky hits. Bob began discharging his shotgun at the same time that I discharged my rifle. Then when a duck would fall out of the sky(because Bob doesn't miss) he would exclaim, "You got one!".
I appreciated the gesture, but I was not fooled. As fate would have it I was just not meant to end the life of the world's waterfowl. I'm ok with that.
-Nick
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