"A Series of Unfortunate Events"

Part 1


After my first couple of seasons of getting my feet wet, literally, I set out go where the ducks are. I have a friend who has some family in Stuttgart and told us that we could come over to his place and hunt with him for free. I was all about some free so we planned to go the following winter. He had some great swamps to hunt and had access to even more flooded timber if we didn’t have any luck on his spots. We loaded up, four of us in all, and headed for Arkansas.
We arrived after about an eight hour drive on Friday evening. We walked in and introduced ourselves, the ones that wasn’t family, and were immediately invited in to the table where his wife had prepared gumbo. I was impressed already. I had gotten myself into a strange place and was at the table eating in less than twenty minutes. If that isn’t hospitality then I don’t know what is. After dinner, we unloaded our gear and headed up to our rooms to turn in. Now take into consideration that we don’t have a dime in this hunt yet. We had hit the gold mine of hunting.
Morning came and we drove down to meet our guide for the morning, which turned out to be a friend of the family. I was ready to be adopted at this point. We walked in to his camp where there was a hot fire and breakfast waiting. We waited around there for a half or so, and then we loaded up into a wagon type trailer that was pulled by a small tractor. As we were loading our gear, the teenager with our group made it known that he had to use the bathroom so he began untucking and unbuckling all that had been pulled up and stuffed in. He was gone for twenty minutes or so, but then was ready to leave. I noticed walking out of his camp building that the temperature was a balmy five degrees with a stiff wind to boot. In case you are from Arizona, that’s cold.
We made it to the flooded timber and had a short walk in after getting the details of the morning’s hunt from our guide. As we slowly made our way in, the youngster went down and went down hard. I had his jacket in my hand and was doing all I could do to keep him out of the water. It was of no use. One arm broke free of the jacket and then the other arm slipped out, and then the splash. One thing we all found out was when it is that cold outside the water will actually warm you up, provided you’re not submerged in it. We also found out that if you are submerged in the water, you get significantly colder very quickly. His father took him back to the camp to get dried off and get his clothes as dry as he could. I learned when we got back that day that if you place wet socks on a wood burning heater, they will still burn.
The morning’s hunt was really a disappointment as far as a numbers standpoint, but no one really cared because we were standing in a swamp in the duck capitol of the world. How bad could it be? About mid morning, a single ring neck flew in and cupped just in front of the blind. We never figured out who killed the duck but we did figure out who shot, all of us. That poor bird didn’t have a sporting chance. That would be the only duck in hand for the morning hunt.