Good hunting with good friends

Thursday, November 28, 2013

I began Thanksgiving Eve at sunrise, standing with some friends in an icy, buckbrush reservoir in Arkansas County.

The bitter wind was no match for layered clothing covered by neoprene waders, but it sunk its claws into the lightly protected strip on my back between the top of the waders and my neck. My oilskin ball cap with the furlined earflaps kept my head toasty, and boots lined with 1,000 grams of Thinsulate protected my feet.

If your head and feet are warm, you’ve won 95 percent of the battle.

I stood in a narrow gap between two buckbrush strips. It was a natural pathway for ducks, as evidenced by the scores of mallards that flew right over my head. True to form, that all ended the moment our leader announced it was shooting time. The mallards vanished before the first shot was fired. Of course, we had plenty of teal and shovelers to shoot, as well as some pintails. We had plenty of mallards, too, but they were high, and we had to coax them down.

Oh, and light geese. They were so loud in the neighboring fields that we almost had to shout to hear each other. They rose by the thousands, and enough came over low enough to meet our shotguns.

All in all, it was a mighty fine Winchester day. I got my first limit of the year, and got it efficiently. That Super X3 really has a way with No. 2 steel. It’ll reach up high and rope them down to the water.

My most effective duck combination ever was 3 ½-inch No. 2 and a screw-in Poly-Choke set to extra full. It had stratospheric killing power. However, 3 ½-inch 12-gauge loads have just gotten too unpleasant to shoot over the years. After a session with those, I feel like my retinas are detaching, and my shoulder and neck muscles ache for days. The 3-inch loads work perfectly fine for most everything, so that’s about all I shoot anymore.

The hour after sunrise is my favorite time to hunt ducks. The breasts of the specklebellies glow almost bronze, and the gray and chestnut breasts of the drake mallards shimmer.

Best of all is the fellowship in the company of friends like Scotty Caroom and his son Ely, who shot his first deer near here a couple of weeks ago. It was a 10-point that grossed about 130 Boone and Crockett. I only see them a couple of times a year, always to duck hunt, and it’s always a highlight.

Also sharing this fine morning were Michael Withrow and his son Skylar, both of Dallas, and Cole Alberius, a classmate of Ely’s at Little Rock Christian. My first duck hunt of the year is almost always with Sheffield Nelson. It’s always an epic hunt, and I always look forward to it.

I am also thankful for my fellow members at the Old Belfast Hunt Club in northern Grant County. They include Mike Romine, Larry Romine, Zach Smith, Gunnar Smith, Henry Jezierski, and P.J. Spaul, to name a few. We have good hunting at the club, but it’s the people who make it the great club that it is.

That also goes for my favorite fishing buds, Rusty Pruitt, Bill Eldridge, Tim Griff is, Ed Kubler, Alan Thomas and especially my son Matthew and daughter Amy. It’s rained on every trip I’ve taken with my kids this year. The weather was always fine, but our timing was bad. May it be better next year.

So many thanks for the sights and sounds of the past year, the deer, the fish, the ducks and the breathtaking places they live in this great state of ours.

Finally, special thanks to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for allowing me to live this dream. People often tell me I have the best job in Arkansas. I can’t argue with that.

And thank you, our readers, for sharing in the adventures on this page twice a week. Let’s do it again soon.

Sports, Pages 30 on 11/28/2013