Hunting, Not Finding

I do a little duck hunting every year, but my enthusiasm for the sport is waning. Nowadays I mostly leave it to the youngsters who really don’t need me to lead them a field anymore. A while back, a friend of mine asked me to pony-up for a guided hunt at nearby Fullers Hill. Usually a very successful operation, but things are a little slow everywhere this year. The night before we’re to hunt, he sees the boy and tells him there’s a cancellation, so why not join us. GREAT, I pay twice! Well, we go and make a day of it, standing with only our heads sticking out of the ground in a pit up on a hill over-looking the wildlife refuge from dark to dark. Turns out the wind is wrong, and the water is right elsewhere and we end up barely firing a shot. Still, we see a lot of wildlife, including a Bald Eagle that flew around us most of the day. I guess in some places he’d need to worry about getting shot, but most of us knew that Eagle tastes too much like Owl to be good to eat. So we talked a lot, ate some fine gumbo and had a good day after all. It had been a long time since I’ve had the boy to myself for that many hours in a row. That made it worth the money, for me.