By Jay Gore
This is a story for dog lovers. Well not really. A story for dog lovers that are hunters: well maybe not that too. A story for dog lovers that are duck hunters, oh, not that either. OK, a story for duck hunters that hunt ducks from a boat, preferably a metal boat.
To hunt ducks, one must be very, very quiet and still. Movement and noise scare ducks. Not good! Many folks have dogs. And what do dogs do? They wag their tails and that’s normal. With Labs, they usually sweep the coffee table clear. Woe be that glass of wine!
I have two black Labrador retrievers. And beautiful dogs they are. Normally around the house and other usual places, one, the boy I call Jazz, wags his tail all the time. It’s in constant motion. The other dog, the girl Francesca, wags her tail seldom or not at all. Why the difference? What’s this all about?
Well, all that changes when we hunt ducks from my aluminum sport canoe. Ole tail wager Jazz goes silent and statute still and this is good. He’s intent on watching for ducks. Meanwhile ole non-wager Fran’s tail goes wild: thump, thump, thump on the side or seat of the metal boat. She’s watching for ducks too but her tail comes alive. Noise carries for miles over water in the marsh. Okay maybe not miles, but certainly a long ways when the point is to be very quiet so the ducks will come near the decoys. Well here I am shushing at thumper in the boat and making as much noise, or likely more noise, trying to get Fran to still her tail. It’s quite a show and the main reason I hunt alone. Not many can tolerate my fussing. To compensate for my incompetency, I hunt where there are a lot of ducks and not many other hunters. Of course this just increases my opportunity of scaring more ducks, thus teaching them to shy away from other hunters. Its my method of schooling the ducks because they get wise around me and ole thumper. This in turn, causes other hunters to hone their skills to a higher level so they can decoy in my schooled ducks. If they don’t, they don’t get many ducks. It’s my answer to conserving waterfowl.
Alas, occasionally a few young ducks come in, I drop them and the two kids get a chance to swim and retrieve some birds. They love it. I love it.
An Argentina hunting colleague of mine once told me–the life of the hunter is very, very hard. Yes, and it’s especially hard when you have ole tail thumper in the boat!
Happy tails! Or should that be “happy trails”.
For more from Jay Gore please check out his website here.
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