Great Scott!

•January 24, 2010 • Leave a Comment

I knew my wanderings through the 2010 Shooting, Hunting & Outdoor Trade show would yield some interesting moments, but I had no idea I would meet one of my industry idols: Scott Leysath, “The Sporting Chef.” Now, I wouldn’t pass up a chance to shake the hand of some of SHOT Show’s hunting and shooting stars — saw R. Lee Ermey and Jeff Foiles there — but as an avid amateur game meat chef, I’m more in awe of a man who can turn wild ducks into delicacies. That takes some talent, for some species especially.

Most of you know Scott Leysath from his appearances on Ducks Unlimited TV Shows and in their publications. His recipes are simple enough, calling for ingredients often already in the cupboard, and they produce savory results, though I suspect his versions would always come out better than mine. I’m a measurer, I told Scott at our recent meeting, to which he replied that he “never measures.” But that’s the difference between an artist, such as Scott, and one who merely cooks.

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A Windy Wednesday Past

•October 31, 2009 • 2 Comments

Mike probably got tired of hearing it all throughout our hunt this Wednesday, but so much about it reminded me of my very FIRST waterfowl hunt, on another Wednesday past…

I had just decided I wanted to try waterfowling. I’d hunted pigs, some upland, and when I attended a Quail Unlimited meeting and all they talked about was duck hunting, I KNEW I had to try it.

Found the waterfowl forum at Jesseshunting.com, learned a lot, virtually, theoretically, but it all helped a lot. Got my season-long refuge application in too late for the opener, but miraculously got drawn for the first Wednesday: a #22 card for Wister. Showed up alone with some borrowed decoys. Driving out to Wister the Tuesday night before the hunt, the wind was bending and whipping the palms and flags at the car and RV dealerships something fierce all along the way…

Again this past Tuesday, before the first Wednesday of the waterfowl hunting season, the wind was hitting the flags and palms hard. Driving past the check station and parking lot on Davis Road, I could almost see me parked there, back then, the white Volvo with the trunk full of borrowed decoys and brand new never used waders from Cabelas. Excited, scared (especially after two old Asian guys in the parking just shook their heads and walked away, muttering to themselves, when they heard I was alone and had never hunted ducks — or Wister — before). In the morning I asked for a pond where there were “mostly teal” so I wouldn’t shoot the wrong kind of duck. I figured I could identify the small, fast teal. No way could I tell a Canvasback or a Pintail or any duck with a restriction on it back then. Before going out, through an amazing act of providence and Old Max at the sportsmens shack, I connected with Matt Berg and ended up hunting with him. Who knows what mishaps that saved me from.

That was six years ago. And on this windy Tuesday as I was rolling along the 10, the 111, down Davis Road, past Wister, with the 4WD, the high-tech shotgun, the latest feeder decoys, heading for a Wilderness Unlimited property I had satellite snap shots of, feeling all that, cocky, it was good to be reminded of a more uncertain time, of stepping into a great unknown, and the never-to-be matched thrill of that first Wednesday hunt.

WU_102809_web

Posted in hunting, Waterfowl, Wilderness Unlimited

Twas the Night before Opening Weekend at Wister

•October 20, 2009 • Leave a Comment

By Neil Beltran

Twas Opening Weekend, when all through the camp
Duck n’ goose calls were blowing, most of them bad,
Some guys were yelling at their dogs to behave,
But that didn’t stop them from lifting their legs.

The old guys like me tried to sleep in their sacks,
While young guys by fires sat knocking back Jack,
Still I set my alarm with my new iPhone app,
And settled my brain for a short Wister nap.

When out of my dazed sleep I heard such a roar,
From engines of two-wheeled drives and 4 x 4.
Boots stomping on gravel were notice enough:
It’s now two-thirty a.m., time to get up!

So I stumbled with all of the rest to the shack,
And by strange yellow light, I studied the map,
When suddenly my focus was drawn from the dikes
To a large man with brass tags holding a mike.

“Good morning” he said and we murmured replies,
As he placed the brass tags ‘fore our watchful eyes.
Now it couldn’t be said I was fully awake,
But I knew in a moment he must be St. Ray!

“One through five, five through ten, now ten through twenty!
Better be listening when I call your rezzie!
Thirty through forty, now forty to fifty!”
My pond’s sure to go before he calls sixty.

An eternity passes ‘til it’s my turn,
But thankful not to be sweat-lining at Kern.
I push my way up through the camouflaged crowd,
And whisper my choice to St. Ray, who then frowns.

“It’s yours if you want it,” he says with a shrug,
“But it’s dry as a bone, the tules all dug.”
Ah, there’re secrets not known even to St. Ray!
My cousin’s friend’s brother says that spot will pay!

So I load up my cart with twenty-odd deeks,
Squeeze into my waders and hope for no leaks.
Lather on the repellant to ward off the gnats,
Make one last adjustment to the old camo hat.

Ready at last, I trudge on out to my spot
Dawn’s not even close but it’s already hot.
I toss out the deeks but being ever alert,
I note what they hit sounds a lot more like dirt!

Well, many hours later the sun has come up,
I’m hunting a pond that wouldn’t pass for mud.
But just when the water in my brain start to boil,
In fly two mallards, surprised by the soil.

Seems their cousin’s friend’s brother is just as full,
Of whatever ducks call it, we call it bull.
And as I raised up my gun, got them into my sights,
I said “Happy Opener Boys, now it’s good night!”

Posted in Humor, hunting, Waterfowl
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First Hunt of the New Season

•August 20, 2009 • 2 Comments

Scheller_valley

I finally joined Wilderness Unlimited. It was years in the doing, but not because of the cost (it’s really a rather good deal). It was the bad experiences reported by a hunter here or there, and just not wanting to be a “clubber,” feeling like a traitor to my brothers-in-arms left behind at the public ponds and woods.

But that solidarity got tougher and tougher over the past few years. Sky-busting at the refuges. People blowing goose calls in the middle of the night. Waking up at 2am to go stand in line. That awful ugly gambling and grumbling called The Waterfowl Draw, and its even worse alternative, The Sweatline.

Of course at least the public refuges had ducks and geese (when they bothered to put in enough water and some feed greens). I’d never even seen a deer in the taxpayers’ forests I’ve hunted.

So I finally did it. I joined the club.

And now I think the naysayers might be members who want to keep a good thing secret, or just people who thought their membership entitled them to a big buck without any effort. I enjoyed my first Wilderness Unlimited experience. Even before my boot hit their dirt.

I don’t deer hunt much, but waterfowl season is still a ways off, and so when I noticed it was archery season in the A-zone, I thought, why not try out this week-old WU membership?

So I flipped through the big binder of properties, chose a place in Santa Barbara (about three hours away), and called. No DFG forms to fill out and mail in. No one-in-a-thousand odds of being drawn. No waiting to hear, no wondering if I’d be going hunting or not. I just called. And got a reservation. Snap.

The property was beautiful. The campsite was dotted with big shady oaks. I hunted for two days and never saw a buck. But I know they’re in there; I saw several does with fawns. The best part was, I was hunting when and where I wanted to. No one had to pick my name out of a bucket. I didn’t need any points.

I’m looking forward to waterfowl season now more than ever. I’m flipping through the binder, making plans, easing into the daydreams.

Scheller_doe2

Posted in hunting, Wilderness Unlimited
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Dusty’s Gone

•March 10, 2009 • 1 Comment

My brother’s dog Dusty has died. I only hunted once with the “Dudderbutt,” as Jon and his family affectionately called her. That was a few years ago, and she was an old lady even then, white-muzzled and achy. Still, she hobbled out to that stormy blind at Delevan, where the rain came sideways and the howling wind pulled my Air Lucky spinner off the stake and sent it flying like Elvira Gulch in The Wizard of Oz.

Dusty did well, pushing slowly through the mud-colored chop to retrieve everything from a snow goose to a Eurasian Wigeon. Around 11am we took a break to eat Ericka’s homemade chicken salad sandwiches. Dusty crawled into the back seat of the truck with a lot of help, her tired eyes telling us she’d be spending the rest of the hunt there.  I like to think that morning in the marsh gave her good memories, and dreams she could drift into as the drug took effect and ended her pain.

So long, Dusty.  Next season we’ll send some ducks up your way.

crew_with dusy

Posted in Hunting Dogs, Hunting with family & friends

Wild Goose Chase

•January 2, 2009 • 1 Comment

In the sparseness of this waterfowl season, momentous events are more often made than born. The Scotch doubles, downing three ducks with three shots, bands and collars, and all the feats that gave a sense of pride in past years required that our quarry show up to the game in ample numbers. This season they have not. Even the usual time-fillers of slow days’ past – the philosophical discussions, jokes, naps – have lost their luster under the current season’s reign.

With the skies so empty, we’ve looked earthward for our grand hunting moments and amusements. And so this past weekend we took my son Griffin’s girlfriend Jenny with us to Wister.

Dressed in layers of Griff’s old, smaller camo clothes, she braved the 36 degrees, strange noises, and inky blackness of the pond at 4 am without complaint. An example of the whistling wings I’d talked about never came but a couple of the falling stars I’d promised Jenny did cooperate. The sun came up without a morning shoot. I was hoping a duck would swing by so Griff could show off his shooting skills, but the two of them were content just to be together, cold and mud and all.

I was near to giving up on the morning when Griff pointed to a line of tules that sliced into our pond, about 50 yards away. I looked for awhile before I caught a glimpse of white, there one second. gone the next, at a sliver of a gap in the green stalks.

“It’s nothing,” I said, returning my attention to the empty sky. “A heron or something.”

Griff kept his eyes on the spot though whatever it was had disappeared again into the distant tules. “It might be a goose,” he said finally. “I’m going to check it out.”

“If you want to,” I shrugged. “But you’re wasting your time. I really doubt that little bit of white we saw belongs to a goose.”

A half hour later, Griff returned, exhausted and coughing (the remnants of a bad cold), a mature snow dangling from his hand. “I got it,” he said between coughs. Minutes into the stalk he’d seen it was indeed a snow goose, wounded in one wing but with big pink feet in good working order. It swam adjacent ponds and flap-ran down dikes in several directions before Griff was able to catch up enough to finish it off. This goose was hard-earned, more so than geese steel-punched out of the sky. And it would’ve been wasted if not for following up on a hunch.

What did I learn that day? That it’s good to bring new people out to the pond. Things won’t go perfectly.  There’s a chance they won’t like it.  But there’s always a chance, too, that they will.

And that we should go on more wild goose chases.

griff__jenny_hunt1w1

Posted in Hunting with family & friends, Waterfowl, women hunters, Young Hunters

Tealicious!

•December 11, 2008 • 1 Comment

San Jacinto Wildlife Area, a little jewel of public duck hunting, blessed me with a strap of Green-Winged Teal this morning. Small, nimble flyers. these five weren’t fast enough and will be tealicious morsels on the grill.

todays_bag

Posted in Waterfowl
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Seven by seven

•November 19, 2008 • 1 Comment

After a couple of false starts, my duck season finally yielded a great hunt. I went out alone to a new pond at my local refuge, tossed a few coot decoys in the swamp timothy, and savored the whistling wings and hoarse quacks in the dark. My plan was to let the volleys of gun fire at first light go on without me, letting my pond become a closed zone. Sure enough, the teal sought out the sanctuary about fifteen minutes after shoot time, and I soon had a collection of four green wings and a cinnamon. Another green wing and a wigeon fell in the next half hour. About seven a.m. I decided to save my last shots for my favorite duck. No sooner had I formed the thought, then a big greenhead hovered into the decoys. He fell with two of my last three shells. Seven ducks by seven a.m. I stayed in the blind another half hour, to enjoy a sandwich and the silhouettes of ducks in the rising sun.

wed_strap_111908web

Posted in hunting, Waterfowl
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My first whitetail

•November 17, 2008 • 3 Comments

The buck I’d been dreaming about for three years eluded me on my early November bowhunt in Iowa. Still, fourteen days of climbing up and down and hunting from trees buffeted by 30mph+ winds without mishap, and the natural, organic, chemical-free deer meat heading for my freezer made my first whitetail hunt a success.

This doe, the biggest one that got within range, paused just long enough for my 20 yard pin to settle on her heart. The arrow flew, the Lumenok™ glowing red hot, disappearing for a split second as it passed through her, then marking the spot like a beacon as it stuck in the ground behind where she’d been standing. The doe went no more than 25 yards, where I found her lying in the grass, dead.

Every animal taken with a bow is a trophy, antlers or not. And we are forever changed by those moments. She will be the blessing and the story at our holiday table this year. She will be appreciated and admired, in a way that meat factory killed and casually plucked from a grocery store freezer can never be.

my_doew

Posted in hunting, Nature
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Observations from a treestand

•November 15, 2008 • Leave a Comment

shadow_of_treestand1

I watch animals in the woods.
They eat. Mate. Fight. Die.
Without anger.
Or regret.
No hate. No love.
No thought.
Without a single word.
That is their hell.
That is their heaven.

Posted in hunting, Nature
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