Author: C.L. Sill

Three chocolate doughnuts bobbed back and forth in ankle deep muck around the boots of my waders.

Casualties of stiff fingers and poor blind placement, half of my only snack had gone to waste in what was already becoming a ‘why do I do this’ morning. Of all the hardships often endured by duck hunters, sitting in water is by far the most egregious and disheartening.
 
I hadn’t been in a duck blind for nearly five years. In fact I’d stopped hunting altogether for most of that time, until an English setter puppy bought on a whim threw me back into the sporting world. I’d done a little pheasant and quail hunting since then but this was my first time wading back into the marsh. 

My brother Dan sat to my left on a mostly submerged 5-gallon bucket. We were scrunched together in a half circle blind made of fence posts and camo burlap on the south side of a very forgettable lake near Lincoln, Neb. Dan was an obsessive duck hunter, but as the condition of our blind made clear, we were both still learning on the job. 

“Jesus Christ, this is boring,” I said, hoping to get a rise out of Dan, as older brothers are known to do to kid brothers. 

He knew my game too well and said nothing, breaking his gaze across the water temporarily to fill his lip with what I thought was an ungodly amount of Copenhagen snuff. His brown spit hit the water at our feet and mixed in with my doughnuts. 

“Just be patient,” he said. 

I quickly decided the hell with that, leaned my head against the closest fence post and closed my eyes. Dan’s greeting call brought me out of my trance a few minutes later as I opened my eyes and said way too loudly, “what’s going on?” 

“Mallards,” came the reply. 

I looked up just in time to see five greenheads divebomb through the draw to our left and land 30 yards beyond our decoys. Heart rate sufficiently raised, we peered through the burlap, telepathically willing them to come closer. Another pair landed to our right about 40 seconds later. 

“What do we do?” 

“Patience,” again was the answer, but even the most disciplined duck hunter can only wait so long. 
Eventually our fuses ran out and the order came down from my fearless leader. 

“Ah shit, lets just shoot ‘em.” 

Before we’d even stood up the mallards reared their wings and bolted off to the left, gone forever. 

But almost instantly there was hope, as two new birds came screaming in from the right, directly at the blind. 

“Kill ‘em,” Dan said, all the stealth removed from his voice. 

I stood up, leveled my borrowed 870 on the front duck and pulled the trigger. The rear duck tumbled into the water — At least I’d hit one of them. I emptied the remaining two rounds into the bird before it stopped thrashing, but instead of the green head and bright blue speculum feathers I expected to see floating in the drink I saw nothing but black and white. Confused, I uttered what must be the worst of the seven deadly sins of duck hunting. 

“What is it?” 

“That’s a merganser,” came Dan’s dejected reply. 

I could’ve cared less, and honestly at the time I wasn’t quite sure what the hell a merganser was. It was the first duck I’d killed since I was 19-years-old and I was proud of my mediocre accomplishment. 

Since I was wearing a pair of my dad’s old hip boots that were at least 3 sizes too big, Dan set off to retrieve my trophy. Five yards from shore he was at his wader’s capacity and turned around. 

“No way I can get out there,” he said. 

We were equally as boat-less as we were dog-less, so the conversation quickly turned creative. 

“Get a stick”

“No that’s no good, its too far”

“I’ve got a fly rod in the car, maybe I can cast to it” 

Just before I suggested shedding my hip boots and swimming out to get the god damned thing, I noticed the wind was decidedly not in our favor. The bird was now 40 yards from shore in at least ten feet of water. 

At this point my quest for this sawbill became an obsession. For whatever ridiculous reason, I decided I must have this duck in my hands whatever the cost. 

“I’m going back to the car,” I said, with an idea starting to percolate. “I’ll figure this out.” 

A half hour later I was in the checkout line at a Lincoln Wal-Mart, black camo paint all over my face, with a neon green kayak under my arm. A ‘youth’ model, It was really only a kayak in theory. The thing was actually somewhere between a paddleboard and a pool floaty. 

“$92.25,” said the checkout kid, eying me suspiciously.

I knew I had at least $105 is my bank account, so what the hell. 

I realized in the moment how ridiculous this was. Buying a kayak to retrieve one duck was near lunacy, even for me. But I’d decided to let the obsession take full control; I was in this for the long haul. Looking back, it’s clear to me now I was so adamant about getting this bird because in the last five years I’d become a bad hunter. I had this ridiculous idea when I started hunting again that I could pick up right where I left off and fall back into the natural rhythms of an experienced wing shooter. I’d told myself I was a proficient outdoorsman and this merganser was proving me wrong. 

I stuffed the green monster into the trunk of my car, half of it hanging out the back, and raced back to the lake. 

It was a Saturday in late October and as I drove the Nebraska football team was being thrashed by of all teams the Minnesota Gophers on the radio. I’d hoped to avoid the game altogether by spending the morning in the blind and it only added to my encroaching depression to have to listen.

“Fucking typical,” I said, punching the power button on the radio, cutting off the announcers midstream. I drove the rest of the way in silence, trying to convince myself I hadn’t completely lost my mind over this ridiculous bird.

I drug the boat about a quarter mile to our blind from the parking lot. Just as I got near the blind I stepped in a knee-high hole and went face first into black mud. 

This was the breaking point for Dan, whose laughter had only been held back up to this point by what I presumed was respect for my dedication to the absurd. He bent over and clutched his knees, cackling wildly. 

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said through tear filled eyes. 

I replied with more confidence than I should’ve ever been able to muster at that point. 

“Help me get it in the water,” I said. 

However unstable I thought this Huck-Finn piece-of-shit was going to be, it was worse. As I sat down into the boat and Dan handed me the paddle, I looked across the lake and saw a tiny black dot floating near the opposite bank — My prize awaited.  

As I paddled into open water my senses quickly returned. Most of the lake ran around 15 feet deep and I was still strapped into my hip boots. It was 40 degrees and beginning to rain, I had no life jacket and there was around 4 inches of neon green plastic between the water and the top of the kayak. The sticker on the inside of the boat said “maximum weight 105 pounds.” I’d never weighed an ounce over 135 but that was still 20 pounds over the limit. Half way across I tried to turn my head to look at Dan, the boat started to flip and I just barely righted myself with the paddle before going under. I took a deep breath and kept going, knowing full well I was way too old to be doing something this stupid. 

Twenty minutes later the ugliest bird I’d ever seen sat between my legs as I rowed back to the blind. All desire for the duck had evaporate and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of the water. 

As I got close to the blind, I could see Dan’s hands were hidden beneath the edge of the burlap, holding something he wanted me to see. 

“I’ve got bad news,” he said as I finally docked the kayak. He lifted up his arms, in each fist a drake mallard he’d stashed away until the opportune moment. “They came in ten minutes after you walked back to the car. I didn’t want to say anything, but you’d have found out eventually anyway.” 

I said nothing. 

We walked back to the parking lot in silence, kayak in tow. The neon green was now covered in scratches and shit-colored mud, all hopes of returning it for a refund had disappeared. 

I hefted my new toy into the back of my car and sat on the tailgate, munching on my last doughnut and vowing to never shoot another merganser for as long as I lived.