This week, Alaska hunting columnist Steve Meyer pens an ode to the start of the waterfowl season, and to the duck hunters and jesters who have made openers memorable over the years.
Cook Inlet mud, swamp gas, brush hauling, rotten fish carcasses, and the aroma of wet retriever dominating your sense of smell. The dreaded standing in line at the post office for your duck stamp, and the satisfaction, practically a sigh of relief, when you find out they have them.
These obsessions over the years have allowed many of us to miss the obligatory events, a wedding, or funeral for a distant relative or not-so-close acquaintance, a dance recital, or a homecoming game. It varies, perhaps depending on upbringing and how important hunting was to the people who brought you along.
He’s fairly ungrateful, truth be told. Nevertheless, I pressed on. One opener, I was 11, and my dad and two of his buddies made up the hunting party. A favorite spot had two cattail sloughs separated by a wheat stubble field. Ducks would fly back and forth, and one would have to be a duck to understand why.
When you are 11 years old and trying to be a part of a world that you would rather die than not be a part of, you’ll do all sorts of what one might call marginal things to impress your betters.
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