A dude named Kevin

How does one get to the point where getting out of a warm bed in the wee hours of a chilly fall morning, driving for hours to the middle of nowhere, putting on layers of clothes, socks, hip boots, hat and coat, grab a bag of toy ducks, a bucket, your gun and shells, then tromping through the cold, stinky marsh to be the first to arrive at your favorite spot, then sit on a bucket in the cold water for untold hours, just for the chance that you might get a few little black ducks, how does that sound like a fun thing to do?  Well that's the question that my dear wife asked me the first duck season we were married. Oh and by the way, answering 25 seasons, when asked the question "how long have you been married", not a good idea. Any who, what a great question, how does one get to that point, for me the journey stated when my sister met a dude named Kevin.

The two met at  the wedding of our oldest sister and by October they were in love, and when Kevin said he was going duck hunting alone, well I was recruited to make sure he had someone to go  out with him. With an old borrowed coat, hat and hip boots I was picked up at 3:30 in the morning to insure that we were in the marsh all set up for the morning start time. We pulled into the parking lot to find we were the second party to arrive, so we needed to get ready to make our way out to the marsh as fast as we could. It was dark and cold, we walked through the marsh for about 45 min, arriving at our destination, Kevin put out the decoys and we settled down into our blind. We has about another 25 min wait until shooting time, the marsh was very quite, slowly it started to come alive, little tweedy birds begin to stir, ducks quacking and splashing in the water, and in the distance the honks of geese ready to take flight, as it got closer to shooting time and the morning light crept across the marsh, you could make out the silhouettes of ducks in the air looking for a place to land. Then the first shots rang out, and the marsh came to life, "don't move" Kevin whispers I have no idea what he had seen but I froze, a few seconds later, bang then the splash of a downed duck hitting the water. It took a while but I finally could see the ducks in the distance coming into the decoys, hearing the sound of the call, the anticipation of the shot, the smell of gun powder, I was hooked!
I had not taken hunters safety yet, so the first year I did not shoot, I sat in the marsh and learned as much as I could, how to set up decoys, what kind of spread worked the best for each kind of weather condition, when and when not to blow the duck call, but the most valuable thing I learned was how to see ducks at a distance and how to identify each different species of duck in flight. Kevin and I have been hunting together for the past 30+ years, we have taught our kids how to hunt , and as much as I love hunting with my kids and cant wait to take my grandson out, and wish my dad was still with us to take out, Kevin is still my favorite hunting partner.