Gary Greene's Memories from an Old Hunter #51
For me it’s a sad time of year. Saturday, December 2nd, my son Nate and I were out in our duck blind for the last waterfowl hunt of the year. The duck hunting season closed the following Sunday. I will miss the shared time with my son as we have a weekly hunt date throughout the entire two month season. He is a third year veterinarian student at UW-Madison and his time is very valuable as he almost studies 24/7, but he makes a little time for me and his passion for duck hunting.
Nate Greene and three year old Schmiddy and a too common empty Wisconsin Duck sky.
At our waterhole the past three weekends the duck traffic has been painfully absent, but I share those four hours with my son and we catch up on each other’s lives. His daughter Olivia was born July 13th, so much of our conversation revolves around my first grandchild’s mounting daily accomplishments.
We haven’t seen many ducks except the weekly bunch of mallards that hover over us for ten seconds about two to three minutes before legal shooting time and they never came back to see us when we could actually shoot them.
Ten year old Hershey with one of her proud Bong hunt public pheasants.
Normally this time of year, we observe a small flock or two of diving ducks that give our decoys a quick glance as they whistle by us. Saturday, just before we were packing up our blind, from the north side of our waterhole a small flock of goldeneye ducks were flying in the direction of our decoys. Of course, at the precise time we were about to shoot, the goldeneyes flared and separated and made our easy shots a little more difficult.
We had our shots and we even changed targets as the birds began to fall. We emptied our guns and Schmiddy, my three year black lab left the blind for the retrieves, but he stopped on the cattail mound in front of the blind. As the sky cleared, Schmiddy, Nate and I all were checking the water for downed birds, but there were none. The ducks that started to drop must have regained their flight strength and left in other directions from the main flock. Schmiddy kept visually searching the water and checking over his shoulder for directions from me. I responded with: “No bird, come!”
Six year old Elsie with Greene's Bennelli and a Bong hunt rooster.
Nate and I were silent for what seemed like an abnormally long time. I was the first to speak with a well thought out: “Wow!” Eventually Nate responded with a: “I don’t believe it.” Then we were silent again for another extended period of time.
Because of the few birds we actually saw daily, the chances that we had this year to actually shoot at ducks were very limited. Each shot became that much more important and then we analyzed the shots to death. So when we missed our only chance for the day, the importance of that shot was amplified.
Over the past 54 years of hunting, the point that I would like to make is that I remember my missed shots more vividly that I do the shots that I connected on. Sunday morning I hunted Bong Recreational Area for DNR released pheasants. I text Nate a picture of the two pheasants that I harvested and told him the shots were easy ones. He replied: “The way it’s been going, no shot is easy!”
Next memory: I shots that I remember I missed ……….they still bother me.