The blind building a blind….

All great events come from a great idea, well executed.  And then there was our decision to hunt Pistakee Lake…… again.  After having our butts handed to us by Pistakee Bay (closest water access to our house) TWICE, we decided a wider map needed to be drawn, to “Terra Incognito”, or “the other side of Pistakee Lake”, or Myers Bay, as the locals call it.

We observed that in the fall, somewhat like the daisies of the spring, duck blinds sprouted all over the lakes nearby.  We made some calls, and found that the proper way to do this was to register for a chance to have a blind on the lake, and once selected, you went out on a boat with the DNR and numerous other hunters, equipped with a gallon jug with rope and weight attached, and your name- to select a spot for your very own duck blind.  We had our selection, noting the old rotten remains of a duck blind on the shore (we were certain it was last used around the time of Columbus…..)

 and decided that THIS would be the year of our success.

We then embarked on the PLAN (see Jim’s earlier blog about our ALL CAPS “PLANS”), making several drawings, and finally accumulating the necessary raw materials at Tators house (see “Goosses” story), and building sections small enough to be transferred north to Buffalo’s home, and then, by the BBB (Big Blue Boat), out to the duck blind spot selected.

What could go wrong?

We picked a nice early fall day to build our blind, and transported the boat and duck blind sections and poles to the closest boat launch.  It was earlier noted that the BBB belonged to my then fiancé (who will be referred to as Darling Fiance, or DF, to protect her reputation), but it was not mentioned that BBB hated men- or at least more specifically, me.  If DF was not nearby, BBB would resist starting, strongly.  It was especially unhappy when it would be threatened with drowning, which I did that day by forgetting to put the plug in.  at this point, lesser souls would have retreated back home and turned on a football game, but not us!  We emptied the boat, threw a few well placed curses into the air to scare BBB into starting, and loaded her (all boats are her, but this one particularly so) with fearless hunters and the pieces of our duck blind- and across the lake we went!

We locate our gallon jug marker, declare this spot hallowed duck hunting ground, and begin assembling the blind (a task worthy of a tale, but not here).  We finish it, and go to head home, with visions of ducks landing in our decoys in a few weeks.  All that was left was to come back shortly before the season started to camo the blind with lots of cat-tails and reeds.  Or so we thought.  BBB had other plans- she would not start, and the same well placed curses used at the boat launch did not avail us here.  My recollection is a but fuzzy, don’t remember if she had to be towed home, or finally started, or a combination, but we managed to get back.

So the week before opening day came, and as we were out decorating our blind, we were surprised by a boat load of very angry hunters, who questioned our not only our parentage but our IQ, because it turned out that the ancient rotted blind we built in front of was actually used every year…. (more on this later).  They claimed to have used this blind every year for decades, and were not to be displaced by a bunch of newcomers (who, as it turned out, were not as well armed on this decorating trip, and were threatened with a few well placed shots in our boats if we didn’t depart.  So, like gypsies, we were chased away, lifting the slightly anchored legs of our blind and moving it a couple hundred yards around the corner, to another blind that we were assured was also one of their older ones, and no problem for us to be near……. Uh huh.

OPENING DAY!!  Of course, we were there early, of course we were ready with decoys out well before the appointed hour that guns could be discharged!  The first of many hours of hot coffee and cold pop-tarts was spent in happy bliss, expecting hoards of ducks, eager for company, would find our decoys.  And then from across the bay, a boat approaches, and continues directly to us….. an angry hunter noticing that we put our blind directly in front of HIS!

I should back up.  After the threat and moving of our blind, we checked with the DNR, and got the name of the owner of that entire shoreline- a nice little old lady that knew nothing of anyone hunting on her property.  We kept her name and number handy for any further encounters we might have with unhappy shore hunters, such as we were just having.  We mentioned this to the angry gentleman we mentioned above, who assured us we did not need to call her, just a big misunderstanding.  He asked why we selected the location, we told him of our earlier gun-toting friends around the bend- he knew who they were, and suggested he would have a nice chat with them later that day….problem solved!

Except the ducks did not come- at least not any that we could hit with anything less than orbital launch capabilities.  Except for one nasty diving duck that taunted us for much of the day- never surfacing where we could actually hit him (if our code of honor would allow us to shoot a duck on the water….but we were tempted)

So, again, Hunters- 0, Pistakee Lake- 3, if you are keeping score.  By the end of that season, we further enjoyed:

·         Back Boat- a shifting issue with the previously mentioned john boat (still hazardously overloaded) forced us to back all the way across the lake, into the wind, to get home, creating ice crust that peeled off Tator’s back like a large frozen coat

·         Ticket Time!- more tickets- this time parking tickets at the boat launch, for sticking 6” into a resident’s driveway, where his winter stored boat was parked…..  Tator and Slug

·         Sunken John Boat Time!- we parked the boat at my Bro-in-Law’s channel near our hunting spot (cutting our 5 mph commute by nearly 75%), and heavy rains sunk it a couple times…..

·         Hammer Time!- Buffalo decided to use a 20 lb sledgehammer to drive in wooden stakes to hold the john boat in place at the BIL’s channel- only it slipped, and drive a 2” sliver into his finger, tearing it open from 1^st to 3^rd knuckle, and almost causing Tator to pass out as he drove the Buffalo to the ER for 12 stitches….

Sooooo, end of Duck Blind, Season 1, Pistakee Lake (and ducks)- 6, Hunters- 0

There has got to be a better way……..  or not, as we find out later.

The Mighty Mississippi

Slug and Buffalo take on the  Mighty Mississippi

Well our quest to hunt ducks was not going as well as hoped locally we decided to take the show on the road.
I (Slug) had a friend in Texas (more of an acquaintance) that would tell me stories of going home to his grandmothers house in Iowa and shooting ducks on the Mississippi. Stories of skies black with ducks. Limiting out every day.
Discounting for distance it still sounded like there were more ducks than we had seen where we had been hunting.
So being burned in the chain of lakes in Illinois I asked the following questions:
How do you get a blind, no blinds he says you just decorate your boat and hunt where ever you want. What I say, no blind registration, no one threatening to shoot holes in your boat, or burn down your blind. Nope he says just dont sit on top of anyone, plenty of water to go around. Well that sounds like heaven.

Where do I go, he names a spot south of Lacrosse Wisconsin on the Iowa side, he says hey you can even follow me to my hunting area and hunt near us.
Enough said, Im in. I call my partner in crime, the buffalo. Hey do you want to go hunt the Mississippi river, skies full of ducks, a local guide everything. He was in.

Now the big blue boat was not going to cut it, i had a 14ft Jon boat with a 6hp Johnson given to me by a friend.  About the size of this boat, but MUCH, MUCH older.




Up to now I have not mentioned the size and shape of the hunting party slug, buffalo and tater. Both slug and buffalo are engineers, that should give you a hint about our athletic prowess. Slug is well past 6 foot and over 300lb, buffalo is a smaller version. Tater is also well past 6 foot but not being an engineer he is quite thin. So we are talking about more than 500lbs in a tiny boat. I found I could get it on a plane if i was the only one inside and if i moved up to the middle seat and if i leaned just right i could get it up on a plane. Obviously, with 2 guys, decoys and equipment we moved quite slowly. But move we did and we could get anywhere given enough time.

So we put a plan all together, we designed a blind of wood and conduit and tarps, we decide that we will drive all night and sleep in the truck at the ramp. Yes I said truck, i had purchased a new chevy s10 4X4. I was black with very aggressive tires. Sadly, i went to work for a new company and they provided me with a car. It was a Ford Taurus so that wasn't really my first choice for a hunting vehicle but it was FREE and it came with FREE GAS and with FREE TIRES and FREE MAINTENANCE. Did i mention it was FREE. Well i had put quite a bit down on the Truck so at least I wasn't upside down. My brother agreed to take over the payments so this was to be the first/last duck hunting trip with my new truck.

So fall winds are blowing and its opening day of duck season. Buffalo and I pack up the truck, hook up the boat and set off for Wisconsin / Iowa. Its a bit of a hike and we had already worked a full day so we were pretty sleepy when we arrived at a lonely boat ramp in the middle of the night. We unloaded the boat and put all our gear inside and tied it to the bushes next to the ramp, we were ready. It was probably 2AM so in 3 short hours our friend and guide would show up and guide us to duck heaven.
Obviously, sleep eluded us. Two big guys in a little S10 meant no laying down, or even reclining but we subsisted on coffee and pop tarts.  Around 330AM we saw our first boat, was it our friend, nope. We watched them launch, big boat, go devil motor, decoys and a well built blind. We were in awe, they seemed to really know what they were doing. Well they launched into the darkness their motor droning steadily until they were gone.
One by one a steady parade of hunters launched their boats, checking our watches we were getting a bit nervous. He told us that it was a fair boat ride to the prime hunting area so we knew at our slow speed we needed to leave at least 2hr before hunting hours. Still no guide. Finally, we look at each other and agree he is probably not coming, he is over 1 hr late and still not there. The wheels have started to come off our plan, where will we go, we dont know where the SPOT is just that its north. So we launch, our tiny boat on the mighty Mississippi river. We chug across but all we have to see where we are going is a mag light flashlight, its pretty dark but we can make out the shores and trees in the darkness. About 15min in the motor starts to give us fits. It sputters and then runs and sputters again, our white light on the boat (the one to tell other boats that we are here) flickers and dies. We are near a path between trees and the engine starts to dig into the bottom. It dies.

So Im standing in the boat trying to get the engine started, restore the safety light and push off the bottom into deeper water. We hear a noise, kind of like a locomotive with a water noise. Being dark we have no idea, maybe it's a train nearby or some kind of boat.  Suddenly the night turns to day. A huge spotlight illuminates everything, it's in the middle of the river about 500 feet away and its sweeping the corners of the river. It's a huge barge. Now if you dont know what a river barge is let me help you


This thing is huge, i mean a football field running down the river. The train noise was the water being displaced by the front of the barge. We see it now being illuminated by the spotlight, a huge thing on top of the drive boat in the back. There are no lights on the barge portion and they only use the spotlight to check the corners in turns, otherwise its a huge floating structure chugging down the water in the complete darkness. We look at each other and realize that they could have run us over and never even known that we were there. Wow, it's a life evaluation moment.

Well having dodged death and having restored the lights and motor we agree that we are lost, no boats are coming our way but we can see them from time to time running about a 1/4 mile away, lets follow we say and we point our boat in the correct direction. We find a channel in between the islands in the river, yes islands. It turns out that huge portions of the river, primarily around bends have large areas of wetlands with trees, cattails and small rivers running through it. We are now on one of those rivers, the water nice and deep, the engine running well, the lights working we see a boat overtaking us. After a bit of rough waves as it passes we see it before us. Perfect, someone to follow. We quickly realized that these are real boats and are waaay faster than us, but there is a steady stream of them all going the same way so we figure we are on the right track.
About 1 hr of this goes by and we get to a bend in the path, we see some navigation lights on some boat blinds so we figure we are in the right spot. We start looking for somewhere to park and set up.

We see a large slack water area so we pull into it, the motor is chugging up some very stinky bottom mud but no one is hunting it (that should have been our first hint) so we anchor and set up. We get the assortment of conduit, 2X4 and tarps in place to conceal ourselves. We throw out the decoys and get ready. We settle down to await dawn and from the front of the boat I hear a faint whisper, "Hey I gotta go". I say just point it over the boat and he says not that kind. uh oh, i say can you just hang it over the side and go, now its completely dark but i can hear grunting and moving about and he works at it for awhile and says, i cant seem to get in the right position and the need is getting urgent. In frustration he checks the depth of the water and we see we are in maybe 6 inches of water, he says I'm going to put on my waders and walk over to the trees we can see about 20 years away.
Well he gets set and steps out of the boat, and sinks to his knees in really really smelly goop. I now understand why no one is hunting this area, its a swamp.
I hear cursing and splashing from the front of the boat area and then finally it goes quiet. He made it or is dead, either way i have to wait till light before i can do anything about it.

I sit their quiet, enjoying the stink of the churned up bottom with gun in hand peering out of the blind waiting for light. I hear noises again and Buffalo is making his return, so not dead at least. he gets to the front of the boat and is in much better spirits. He holds onto the sides and tries to get it, he is way too sunk into the gunk to get a leg over the side, he struggles for awhile to no avail. I'm a bit concerned at the way the boat keeps moving each time he tries, again this is not a big boat. Nothing.
Being engineers we ponder the problem, and engineer a solution. We decide to use the boat as a lever to pry him from his entrenched position in the mud. I walk to the front and get the nose of the boat almost to the water line, Buffalo heaves his torso onto the bow and i move the the back of the boat. Guess what it worked, we literally jacked him out of the mud. The smell is a bit overwhelming and now its in the boat rather than around it. But he is safe and in the boat. The struggle over we now sit there in the darkness quietly waiting for dawn and a sky full of ducks.

After about 30min we hear the tell tail sounds of duck wing beats, we are here in duck heaven, loaded guns ready to hunt. Just drop into those decoys boys and suddenly from right behind us boom, boom, boom. What the hell is that, its like they are right behind us. More boom, boom and we dont see any ducks, no cupping into the decoys, no waiting until you can see their eyes, just boom boom boom so we pull the blind open and start looking to the sky. We see a duck winging about 60 yards away and then more bang bang bang, we look at each other and there is no way this guy is going to hit a duck that high, he is just sky blasting, and he is ruining any chance of our decoys bring in some ducks.

We rip the blind off the mounts and push it off the boat and stand up to get a better view, maybe we can get lucky. In desperation we also take a few pot shots at some high flyers, but to no avail.
Now light we can see where we parked, we are in a 1 foot deep slack water area about 100 years across. The main channel is right behind us, this is where the hunters who know where they are going are positioned. Buffalo says he is going to jump in and look around, already being covered in muck there is nothing to lose. He stomps around out of sight for about 30 min and returns to the boat. We are in the wrong spot,

What do we do? Just sit, move, what? We are without sleep for 24hrs, living on coffee and pop tarts so not the best decision makers at the time. I say let's move, it stinks here and we are not going to get any shots in anyway. So we recover our now trashed blind and pick up our decoys and lever Buffalo back into the boat and head out. Now that its light we can see clearly, it really is a hunters paradise, miles of land anyone can hunt. No blind registration, plenty of ducks not that we can shoot any so we motor around for another 2 hrs looking for a place to hunt. We get out and walk some islands but they are covered with trees, ducks dont sit in trees like turkeys so this is not getting us closer to hunt able land. We see some of the real boats pulling up decoys and returning to the ramp for breakfast. These boats are awesome, they can even run over dry land if they get a running start. We are definitely two fools in a boat compared to these guys.

Exhausted, we decide to motor back to the ramp, the boat is filthy so we decide to take it to a carwash. Now I had taken my truck to the hitch guy so that I could pull my boat for hunting. He advised that we get a hitch but that was a lot of money for a truck that i was giving away right after the hunt so i ask can i just get a ball for my bumper. He shows me a piece of iron on the wall, its the hitch from a boat trailer. he says that is from a guy who asked the same question and when he had jackknifed his trailer because he used the bumper hitch be returned for both a frame hitch and a new boat trailer to replace the bent one on the wall. Undeterred i say thank you for the warning but Ill stay with just the ball.
The wheels are about to come completely off on this hunt
I pull into the car wash, you know the kind with the wand that you put quarters in. Normally you pull through these but as i pull in i realize that there is a wall at the back of the stall, the hose will definitely not reach the boat. Id better back in. So I put the truck into reverse and back up and then guess what, crunch.
Loud profanities spew from Slug, shit shit shit I get out of the boat. No i did not bend the trailer i put a nice dent into the side of the truck I'm about to give to my brother. Im livid, tired, pissed because i had been warned that exactly this would happen, mad that the guide didn't show up, mad that the hunter behind us was skyblasting, mad that my boat smelled like sewage pretty much just mad at myself and the world.
In frustration i slapped the troublesome light completely off the back of the boat into the weeds nearby.

I pull the boat carefully out of the spot and without a single word in a 5 hr drive (that is a miracle in itself as I never shut up) I drop off buffalo and drive home.

I arrive home, park the truck in front of the house and go inside, my wife, surprised to see me home early asks how was hunting?

Don't ask, and I went to bed.

So it doesn't end on a sour note, After a good nights sleep I pushed out most of the dent from the truck, got a hitch for the Ford Taurus company car, delivered the truck to my brother who said dont worry about the dent, talked to our "guide" who had overslept, got out late and only killed 2 ducks that day who gave me pointers on where to go next time.
We went on many subsequent hunting trips to the Mississippi river area, abandoned the blind / decoy idea and hunted pass by shooting and killed many ducks. There are many other stories but none so memorable as the first time we hunted the Mississippi river.

Virginia Duck Hunting?

You see that in Virginia there is legendary duck hunting, by that I mean how the heck do you hunt ducks in Virginia.
So waterfowl live near ....water. There is this beautiful river called the Potomac, by the way no chance old george threw anything across it, forget driver, sand wedge i'm not sure i would get across with a 30-06. Anyway its literally full of ducks, there is this duck they call a canvas back.


 I had never seen on of these in Illinois, either they don't fly there or by the time they do I'm out deer hunting. Anyway these ducks are big, meaty and tasty. They are truly the best bang for the buck.

Now I have a friend, lets call him Achmed. This is not his real name but is used to protect his identity much like slug, buffalo and tater. Anyway he's a normal looking guy, perhaps even good looking but I'm a guy so how would I know. He does share his snacks in the blind so he's ok in my book, although he has a sweet browning that I have yet to shoot.  Anyway he can grow this massive beard. He literally looks like a terrorist or maybe Castro but by the time hunting season ends a family of squirrels could live in it and you couldn't tell.
Im talking about something like this


Anyway Achmed, is a Virginia local and is plugged into the hunting scene. He seems to know everyone. He gets me into a friends blind. Believe it or not is can get really cold here. Not like Wisconsin but still nasty, so we go out one morning in his friends boat. Sweet boat, nice and big and we are breaking ice in the channel. We go downriver about 30min drive and come on a very sweet blind. Much better than a pimple on the butt of pistake lake we used to hunt out of in Illinois. I mean this thing has heaters and seats. His boat has a remote trolling motor and he is using it to lay out his decoys. These Virginia hunters do it right.

We get set in the blind, protected from the cold and with this awesome heater and I'm thinking that this is WAAAAY better than our Illinois hunting, boy would buffalo and tater be jealous. We sit for a long time, we get a few shots at some passers but nothing really.

Then Achmed shows me something kinda white looking across the river, I  use his binos and its thousands of canvasbacks. I'm not kidding, perhaps more. They are about that 30-06 distance away I was referring to earlier. (and don't think that didn't cross my mind) So I ask the obvious question
Why aren't we shooting those ducks, there is plenty of shoreline, I don't see a single hunter over there and enough duck to satisfy my wildest fantasies.

Achmed tells me how he wants to get scuba equipment and swim under them and grab one. You see it turns out that the Potomac river is MARYLAND water, the whole thing, not down the middle like any normal river but all the way to the Virginia shore.
Absolutely, no reciprocity.
Virginia hunters are confined to the shoreline and to the rivers that feed the Potomac. That is why I'm sitting in the nicest blind watching 1000 ducks just sitting on the water. Every once in awhile they get up and fly around but nothing comes close. I think these ducks can read a map.

So no go but I have a plan, Lets get a Maryland out of state hunting license and a boat blind and go kill those ducks. The other side is basically rural and forest, no hunting competition there. So I get home and look up the rules. Guess what, you can get that license, and a boat blind but

YOU HAVE TO HAVE A MARYLAND RESIDENT IN THE BOAT AT ALL TIMES.

Now I'm on the hunt for a friend from Maryland

Goosees

While I was living at the MJB Home for Wayward Men (MJBHWM), I did some goose hunting. The MJBHWM was taters house. While all the rest of us we perfectly happy to just pay rent, Tater bought a house and rented out rooms to his friends. He also worked 2 jobs. Im sure he was a millionaire before he was 30. This house full of men without girlfriends and many of them technical professionals was much like Big Bang Theory with guns. We enjoyed all the things that single men, having escaped from relationships with women, enjoyed. Hunting, fishing, and video games. 

Across from MJBHWM was an empty cornfield. This was in the neighborhood that was transitioning from farmland to suburbs. There were no homes on this land but there were a lot of geese. Resident geese in the Chicagoland suburbs live on golf courses and feed in the surrounding cornfields. They move from field to field as they are harvested. We would drive to work and watch swarms of geese descend like locus on the fields surrounding MJBHWM. There we no signs on the fields telling us we couldn’t hunt there and there were no homes to go to in order to ask for permission so we figured it must be ok. But also knowing that the neighbors may have a problem with our hunting adventures we needed to be covert.

Now these geese had some sixth sense that told them that I had a gun. While golfing I literally had to shoo them away so I could hit a ball. There is even a rumor that while hitting my tee shot my ball may have collided with a goose. This goose may have been overcome with the magnificence of my golfing and died of a heart attack. Said goose was present in the greens keeper's golf cart when he drove up on my foursome. Since there were no witnesses to testify and the goose was dead I asked if I could have it. No go.

But when present in a corn field even me crossing the busy road between our house and the field they began to move away from me. Crossing this road was a special delight. Dressed in camo we would hide our shotguns under our coat and scamper across the road. The morning commuters were a bit alarmed by camo covered men wielding shotguns crossing before them but the cops never showed so I guess we were all right. Anyway, once in the field the geese would move maddeningly away from us, just out of shotgun range. After trying to sneak up on them Slug (me) gave up. However, one day I came home to the MJBHWM and saw a pair of bloody goose wings hanging from the garage light fixture, and a floor full of feathers put there by none other than Mr Tater himself. Now among single men of this tribe this was a challenge of the highest sort. Kinda like chugging a pitcher of beer and slamming it down on the table and daring anyone to top his feat, the Tater had thrown down the gauntlet. We renewed our efforts to bag our own goose in response to his challenge. I reasoned that if I could not sneak up on them, perhaps I could ambush them. I found a nice thick stand of trees along the field and waited for them to come in. Now sitting in a tree strip on a bucket with cars passing by not 100ft, what is the legal distance again?, say maybe 300 feet for safety and with nothing to do I decided to light up a cigar. Now cigar smoking is one of those manly rituals that we adopted because it seemed manly. It was normally confined to poker games, golf and fishing. I figured that since they were flying in they wouldn’t be put off by the smell and decided to combine cigars and goose hunting. This would be mistake 1. Now I see several geese coming into range about 1 hr later. By then I have a long ash on my cigar, one that would make Arnold S proud and I raise my Remington 870 with 3 in magnum goose loads to my shoulder. I take aim, setting the proper lead for a goose not 20 years away and pull the trigger. Bang, suddenly I can’t see a thing and my eyes are leaking. Am I blind? I know people who have eye problems from shooting large caliber weapons over time. No thats not it, the muzzle blast blew the nice 2in long ash from my cigar directly into my eyes. Wiping my eyes I peer into the field and to my surprise I see a big Canada honker flopping about 50 yards out. Now its commonly known that with one shot is very hard to locate the shooter, two shots give you a good idea where it came from and 3 shots pretty much nails it down. Not wanting to take any chance of someone showing up with flashing lights on his car I don’t take a second shot, this would be mistake 2. I proceed out to the freshly plowed field. For you city slickers a plowed field has chunks of dirt about the size of bowling balls all unevenly stacked. In the spring the farmer will come through with a disc and make these small for planting but for now think of an open field with slippery clods of dirt. I slip and slide my way to the goose. It appears that I have broken a wing but he is not dying anytime soon. Being raised a city slicker myself my field knowledge comes from tales from my father and my imaginary friend Phil. Per my fathers tales of pheasant hunting,  I grab the goose by the neck and attempt to brain it against my muddy boots, no luck. Next the stock of my trusty shotgun, again no joy. Meanwhile this goose is attempting to beat me to death with its wings, I can only imagine the wonder of people driving by and me wrestling my pet goose. I then reach for my knife (mistake 3), seeing that I had been going to this field every day in a vain attempt to kill a goose and answer Mr Tater’s challenge, I steadily had been reducing what I took with me into the field, first extra ammo, then goose decoys and calls, along the way my knife bit the dust. Now I’m in a field holding onto this gooses neck, he is flapping furiously and I’m trying to figure out how to kill him quietly. Thinking how like a hose this neck is I try the bending in half trick I use to stop water flow. In this case airflow. Well short answer, I succeed in getting it bent in half but still the beating continued. Very desperate I put one foot on the goose and stand on it. I use the butt of my gun in an attempt to kill it but remember this is a plowed field. I end up putting one boot under the goose and one on it and using the gun against my foot I succeed. By now it was dark but rest assured there was another pair of wings on the light that night. Lesson learned was never leave home without a knife, unless you are going to the airport.

In the beginning

In the beginning, there was light, and it was good…….because it meant we could now shoot that damn diving duck that has been taunting us in our decoys for 30 minutes now!
That pretty much defines our typical hunting day, peppered with coffee, cold pop tarts, a few futile shots at high passers, diving ducks that refuse to fly, and the occasional ticket or trip to the ER to add spice to our hunting trips.  In the following meandering, often detoured trip down memory lane, you will relive our entertaining, never boring, attempts to kill the elusive duck, pheasant, goose, turkey, or in most cases, just the unfortunate tree, paper target, grapefruit, or shaken soda can……
“A Boil on the Butt of Pistakee Lake”- January 13, 2016
It started, at least as far as my hunting in IL, with the story shared by Jim (aka Slug) in his “Get your own gun” post of last month…. I was an early recipient of the SPAS-12 life lesson…..  I became a much more active, and willing participant in our hunting adventures in the following years, with a story that begun with a big blue boat, gray tarps, law enforcement, and shotgun plugs….. or the absence thereof.  The details are fuzzy, but in general, I think the discussion went something like….
BUFFALO- “I sure hear a lot of shooting going on at Pistakee Lake in the morning.” (it was duck season, and I had recently moved within a stone’s-throw of the mentioned lake).  “perhaps we should investigate”
SLUG- “Sounds like a PLAN” (our plans were always PLANS, all CAPS, with much discussion- we were all still single at this point, so had much free time to PLAN).  “Lets see if the other Usual Suspects are interested”.
The cast of the Usual Suspects would swell and dwindle with our failures and successes, but almost always included our US#1- Mike (who we will refer to as “Tator” to protect his identity..). in later years and stories, he remains as US “Only”, as all others disappear from the role call.
TATOR and others- “We’re in…..How do we get to the Happy Hunting Grounds?”
It was here that we were stymied….. none of us had a hunting boat, and the public areas to hunt required a boat to get to.  BUT, Buffalo did have a girlfriend (fiancée, and fellow homeowner, at that point) who had a very fine 17 ft bright blue and white Crestliner open-bow runabout.  Very fine for water skiing and general water fun, but did seem to pose a problem when it came to being indistinguishable from the general rushes and cattails of the Pistakee Lake shoreline.  
We were undeterred, however, as Buffalo had large gray tarps.  On a cloudy, low light morning in Johnsburg in the Fall, the water of said lake were very gray looking, and we reckoned that it would appear so for an overhead duck…….. so we, Slug, Buffalo, Tator, and a couple stray US’s unloaded the BBB (“Big Blue Boat”), loaded all the hunters onboard, and headed for Terra Incognito…..
We had everything covered…… including the boat with said gray tarps- all we needed were DUCKS!  Or, as we found out, shotgun plugs, and in the case of Tator, a waterfowl stamp, which he was unable to secure.  Our attempts to hide from waterfowl with our clever camo did not fool the local DNR law enforcement.  I can only guess (by the periodic snickers as we were interrogated) at the conversation that went on as the DNR officers, in their also shiny (with flashing lights) boat, as they pulled up to us…
DNR #1- another quiet day on Pistakee Lake, not many hunters out.
DNR#2- I wonder what that big blue boat is doing over there in the shallow, cattail infested bay over there- perhaps they are in distress, better go check it out.
DNR#1- Hello?  They are wearing camo and sporting guns, are they DUCK HUNTING?!?!?  Oh, we HAVE to check this out….
Anyway, we learned, after getting tickets for the 2 guns without the required 2-shell limiting plug in the magazine, that just throwing a pencil or pen in the magazine will suffice, and also found that ducks are indeed not fooled by gray tarps, and future hunting trips included a canoe provided by a regular US, one Dale “Sequences”, for his quite well thought-out Sequence Theory on hunting prep- a topic for another story later.








That story also will have to wait- Chapter Two of the Book entitled “How Pistakee Lake Kicked Our Hiney”…….

Get your own gun

Often our other friends who would see what fun we were having in our hunting adventures would want to participate. One of our favorites was pheasant hunting. We would journey to Indiana to see my invisible friend Phil and go pheasant hunting. He was said to be invisible because every time i told my friends we were hunting with Phil something would come up and he could not make it.

Knowing me they thought that I made him up so I could claim that I had a friend, I was later proven correct in that they met Phil with his soon to be invisible dog (other story).

Anyway they being first time hunters would want to borrow a shotgun. When I graduated from college i had no money but I did have credit. My father decided it was time for me to get my own shotgun ( I had been borrowing his fathers shotgun stored under his bed without his knowledge), and so off to the gun store for me. The movie Terminator staring Arnold was popular at that time and guess what, you could buy that shotgun.

Well that was the coolest gun in the store and it was only $700. Being a new engineer I spent all my money before it hit my bank account so I didn't have the money in cash. The nice man at the counter told me that HFC (Household Finance) would give me the money for the gun and I could make payments. This was the ticket, for $67 a month I could own this beauty. I ended up paying about $1200 for this but it was worth it.

I was so excited that I asked it there was somewhere I could shoot it, he let me shoot it into a steel tube into a barrel of water, kind of anti climatic but I did shoot it.

I took it to the trap range, there were beautiful guns there, Browning, Remington all with beautiful wood stocks and here I walk up with my Terminator gun. Boy did I get the looks. I quickly found that it is impossible to hit a clay pigeon with the stock in this position and I discovered that it folds down. I also found that the 20in barrel was unsuitable for hitting birds beyond about 20 yards. The upside was that it held 8 shells and you could fire them as fast as you can pull the trigger. I may not have been able to hit anything but I could get off at least 4 shots while it was in the air. I became acquainted with the hail over the PA system, "No rapid fire on the range". It turns out that this little beauty was not the best choice for bird hunting, I did take 2 deer with it though. So I went to the local sports store and bought a $200 Remington 870 express, perfect for the job at hand.

Not able to part with my Terminator gun it sat in the cabinet except for brief appearances at the range so that I could hear the "No rapid fire on the range" command once again. However, this little 10lb beauty found another purpose. When these newbie hunters would ask to borrow a gun I would send them to my gun cabinet. By now there were several choices available but invariably their eyes would glimmer and they would pull the SPAS 12 out of the closet and they would say " how about this one". At first I would caution them that this was a very heavy gun, that it was only good for about 20yards blah blah but they to a man never listened. 

Pheasant hunting went something like this, we would get up really early, pile into someones car and drive to Indiana for a put and take pheasant hunt. We didn't have a dog but that didn't stop us, we learned that if we followed the truck tire prints in the snow we could find where the driver had gotten out of the truck and released the pheasants. (remember we are all engineers here, well except one medical professional).

We would stomp around the field hoping to see a pheasant. We saw them of course, hopelessly out of range and the newbie hunter would be out there shooting away, never hitting anything of course. 

If slug and buffalo were one thing, it was persistent. We hunted all day long, other hunters would get their limit and we would keep hunting, the gun would get heavier and heavier as the day wore on. We would start hearing, wow this gun is heavy, wow this gun is really heavy, does anyone else want to carry this gun for awhile. It never failed that the person carrying the big gun was the first person back to the car.

To a man, the very next hunting trip that newbie hunter had purchased their own gun.