"Watch this ..."

Colorful partners spice uneventful Bayou Meto hunt

Jim Rose (left) and Connie Meskimen pull a homemade pirogue full of gear across dry ground after a hunt Tuesday in the Government Cypress Walk-in Area at Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area.
Jim Rose (left) and Connie Meskimen pull a homemade pirogue full of gear across dry ground after a hunt Tuesday in the Government Cypress Walk-in Area at Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area.

BAYOU METO WMA -- Jess Essex would have been in a fix if not for the big ol' boy wearing boxer shorts and pink cowboy boots.

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Connie Meskimen tries to persuade a flock of mallards to land Tuesday at Bayou Meto Wildlife Management area.

We met him at the Lower Vallier turnaround at Bayou Meto, but more about that later.

The occasion was our second attempt at a second Purple Hull duck hunt for 16-gauge shotguns Tuesday at Bayou Meto. The group included Essex, Jim Rowe, Connie Meskimen and me. We picked the wrong place to hunt and took a very long boat ride to get there. We fired only one shot and didn't kill a duck, but when you hunt with colorful, chaotic characters, killing ducks is peripheral.

We chose a spot on the back side of the Government Cypress Walk-In Hunting Area. Only a few hunters were near, and it was soon clear why. A fair number of ducks overflew us, but most were high, and few were interested in working.

The woods at the edge of the double ditches were dry, and we had to walk about 150 yards to find water deeper than the ankles. One hole looked particularly inviting, so we threw out half a dozen decoys.

Ducks wanted to be deeper in the woods, so we picked up the decoys and walked another 300 yards until the water was about shin deep. We found a great looking hole where we distributed Essex's entire complement of decoys.

Essex is very proud of his decoys. More to the point, he's very proud of all the heroic measures he's taken to keep them serviceable. He has filled the keels with sand and plugged the holes and drains with various sealants.

I wrap the strings and weights around my decoys' necks when they're in the bag to keep them from tangling, but I use nylon string. Essex uses plastic cord. His weights dangle freely, and they don't tangle. Just pull each one out of the bag one at a time.

"Do y'all remember 'Dekes,' those inflatable decoys they used to have in the 70s and 80s?" I asked. "They had a metal ring around the opening in the bottom, and they inflated when you dropped them."

"Worst decoys ever made," Meskimen grumbled.

"They were made in Italy," Essex said. "Heaven forbid anybody shoot into the decoys because you couldn't repair them."

My dad had a bunch of them. They were highly portable, but it was an ordeal to gather them, fold them properly and wrap them so that they wouldn't tangle.

About the time we settled into our spots, Meskimen realized that he left his gloves on a log in the previous hole. His mild fretting blossomed into low-grade anxiety. Finally, he summoned Rowe, who brought a GPS backtracking device to prevent us from losing our boat like we did on our last hunt. He implored Rowe to backtrack to the hole, but Rowe was reluctant.

"The thought of losing those gloves is torturing him," Essex said. "He is slavishly devoted to not spending any money."

We tried valiantly to work ducks, but they always passed us by after a quick look. When the futility of our situation became manifest, we gathered on a log to converse and share coffee. Meskimen, who hails from the part of the state where I live, asked about the school my children attend.

"They were involved in a landmark lawsuit," said Meskimen, a noted attorney.

As he started into the details of the case, Essex, a funeral director in DeWitt, interjected, "Every conversation with Meskimen always devolves into an arcane legal history. So-and-so sued so-and-so, and ...

"Well, it's a hell of a lot more interesting than 'Famous people I've embalmed,'" Meskimen retorted.

Essex was only momentarily stalled.

"I've never embalmed anybody that was famous," he said. "Now, I say that, but I did embalm..."

"See there?" Meskimen said. "Here we go."

Undaunted, Essex plowed forward with a macabre but captivating recollection of his brush with, in that particular case, infamy.

On the way back, Rowe led us back to the first hole, but Meskimen's gloves were not there. He took it well.

The real adventure occurred back at the turnaround, where Essex's camper was marooned in the mud. The "camper" is a renovated school bus. Essex calls it his "mid-life crisis" project. He had backed it off the gravel pad and sunk the rear wheels to the axles in mud.

Essex wrapped a logging chain around the frame and bumper, and then secured the ends to the tow hitches on his van and Rowe's pickup.

He handed me his keys and said, "When I blow the horn, y'all gun those vehicles, and I'll run the bus and see if we can't pull it out of here. Pay attention, and don't let those vehicles fishtail into each other."

It was no use. The van and pickup didn't budge the bus an inch.

As we discussed another plan, a newcomer showed up with a 3/4-ton Dodge pickup with dual rear axles and four-wheel drive.

"Think this'll pull it out?" he asked slyly.

Dressed as he was, it takes confidence to approach a group of strangers. He wore a T-shirt, boxer shorts and cowboy boots with pink trim.

Against a taut chain, his Dodge didn't budge the bus either, but then he backed up and popped the chain. He backed up a little farther and popped it harder. The bus edged forward, and it edged a little farther on the third pop. The bus lurched on the fourth pop and jumped from the mud like a missile.

As Essex exited the bus, the driver said, "I'm really sorry about your bumper." As soon as he disengaged the chain, he and his buddy vanished like smoke in the wind.

As we ate breakfast in Meskimen's camper, Essex lamented his mangled bumper, but his mood soon lightened.

"There's an old bus in town that's been an eyesore for years," he said. "It doesn't run, but it does have a good bumper."

Essex rubbed his hands together as he devised a pitch to obtain it.

You can't keep a good man down.

Sports on 01/22/2017

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