Hooked for life!
By Bob Zettler
March 10, 2008
"Hello," I answer the phone. "It's Rich. I went scouting this afternoon and found a flock of SOB's that stretched out on the ground for nearly three miles and now we have permission to hunt the field they were in so heavy that they were even covering the road - you wanna hunt tomorrow?"
Now I hadn't hunted for three weeks due to weather, my hosts not being able to go and had also been battling within myself not to give Dr. Phil a call to discuss my depression and anger issues when I get the above call. I mean every time I scheduled a vacation day during the work week so we could all get together and hunt SOB's somewhere between I-80 and Illinois Route 13, it had snowed. No, that is not correct we had ice, snow and freezing rain storms, Ney, Blizzards EVERY time, so I went into work instead.
So how do you think I responded?
"Hell ya I can go" I was able to muster out between tears and sobs of relief, joy and a kind of perverted sense of self-flagellation as it was late Saturday and we would have to meet near where we were going to hunt at 3:30 AM. That gave me just enough time to get myself and my family ready so I could be in bed by 11:40 PM…
Now I am not in the best shape unless round and hairy count - which they do not - and lately have to take medicines to live by and even get to sleep. So I popped my Requip for the RLS and packed away my blood-pressure, asthma and prostate meds for the morning before falling into a drug induced sleep only to have that alarm go off just after 2 AM. It use to just take me 10 minutes and I am out the door, and there are those days recently where it is three times that, but I managed to remember ALL my "stuff" and was walking out the door in short order when Rich called to make sure I was on my way. You see Todd had just backed out and he is Rich's right hand, go-to guy! We couldn't blame him as he had just driven in from a week's vacation with the wife in Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, and was B-E-A-T! So I needed to beat feet in order to arrive at our "designated spot" by 3:30 AM.
I like to try and be on time and hate having people wait on me but I knew I would be at least 10+ minutes behind so I got directions to where they were headed. I wasn't too worried as this was a full hour earlier than the last hunt, and we had been ready in far less time than I anticipated it would take for today's outing - and with more people this time to help!
Anyway, to make a long story shorter (HA!), I arrived just minutes behind them and after I threw my stuff into the truck, we all got a ride out to the spot which was only 400 yards away or so. It was situated in a corn stubble field and the ground was frozen solid - go figure after sub-freezing highs for the prior week. And while there were five of us, two had never been SOB hunting and one was a 10-year old! However, we had three drills and a punch to get the stakes into the ground and went right to work in the darkness (almost a New Moon).
It seemed like we were making excellent progress and bundle after bundle of the newer Texas Hunting Products Windtamer rag decoys were easily going into the holes we drilled and punched into the permafrost. These Texas style rag decoys are a whole lot improved over prior products as they are mounted on a fiberglass poles which is smaller in diameter than most use AND they will hold their own against the elements! That means they are tougher and will hold their shape once opened up to catch the wind - a huge improvement over what Chuck Barry's imitators have been selling for years now. No more flaccid and limp rag decoys just lying in the field when the wind dies down. Not only that, since they hold their shape once fluffed up, they offer a quieter and better looking decoy for a reasonable price - around $125 per 100 assembled and on these great new stakes! We like them!
Once again I digress as usual.
Anyway, we broke up into teams with me and Brett and Rich and Larry (the new guy and not to be confused with the Cable Guy) doing the decoy placement, with one person either drilling or punching a hole into the ground and the other sticking it in; the decoy that is. Geeez!
You know the routine, the opening into the wind and the stake at a 45-degree angle, and it went well but we soon discovered a job for Alex - he became our decoy "fluffer!" He would walk behind us and open up the decoys after we placed them into the hole and this went well but then I noticed the sun breaking in the East (where else) and we were far from close to having out decoy spread ready. Now this might have been our first major faux pas as we continued to put out decoys with the spread kind of like an oblong where we would be laying in them at the front and several hundred being scattered trailing with the wind. I say this with all respect but it is a hindsight sort of thought. We already had the big spread up front with a major landing hole in the middle and a good number of scattered decoys trailing with the wind but our guns were still cased, the sound system was not setup and we didn't have our spots established. So if we had any early birds come in before sunrise and we weren't done putting out more decoys, they would leave unscathed.
Based on past experience we do not see the bigger groups until well after sunrise and we were motivated on getting the decoys out ASAP for that reason but we did miss out on a number of willing subjects before we finally decided to postpone any more decoy placement and got situated. Why? Simple, we could see waves of birds in the area and they just might come our way! We established our positions, who calls the shot, firing lanes and the like but still did not have the two sound systems working. And as Todd wasn't there, it ALL fell on Rich's shoulders to put it ALL together and operate - no small task as none of us had ever played with Todd's new toy - a 180 watt, four speaker sound system with two battery packs no less and a new CD!
It was easy getting Rich's Johnny Stewart's game caller together but you have to admit, the quadraphonic high-wattage sound system really reaches out there and it was not ready for those first groups of birds we had trying to drop into the decoy spread! And, while Rich was trying to figure it out, we kept getting interrupted by waves of SOB's!!!
Unfortunately, we couldn't get all of them within range without the sound system but did mange to scratch one or two before deciding to concentrate on getting it working. Man that was tough as we perpetually and literally had waves of birds on top of us but we wanted them in our face and they just wouldn't fully cooperate without the sound system. We finally got the speakers stretched out to all four points of the compass (and away from our ears) and we really began to work the SOBs. I was real impressed on how we let young Alex get his first bird and allowed him the opportunity on the first goose that came in because even though Rich, me and even Brett (Heh! Heh!) preach a good life, we ALL have a dark side buried beneath the surface and would just as soon "kill em all" some days. So to bring out not only a 10-year old on his first SOB hunt but his Father too on such a glorious morning and be so supportive and understanding says how pretty good the people I hang with really are. Major kudos to Rich on all that he did for Larry and Alex!
As I said, we now had the speakers hooked up, all was working and by God those SOB's just wouldn't let up on us! We would sometimes have hundreds of them above us going in all directions - including closer to our loaded shotguns! I kept thinking I would be able to get my camera out to take pictures but we never had a break until 9 AM! And by then we had 14 birds on the ground with a couple still out a ways after falling dead from their wounds. And there was the obligatory gun malfunctions - Brett and his and Rich with a borrowed sticky pump - but mine all worked perfectly as I had brought my Beretta Extrema 2 and the Winchester SX2 that had both just returned from the repair shop last week and the SBE. I had equipped mine with two new choke tubes - a Patternmaster for the Benelli and a Kick's Waterfowler Modified for the Beretta and was impressed with the knockdowns at longer distances with the Winchester HV Expert's in BB#. Actually, I started to use the SBE more as it seemed to be doing the trick for me. I ended up loaning the SX2 to Brett and it worked for him until he fixed his pump so my collection is now complete!
##END PART ONE##
By Bob Zettler
March 10, 2008
"Hello," I answer the phone. "It's Rich. I went scouting this afternoon and found a flock of SOB's that stretched out on the ground for nearly three miles and now we have permission to hunt the field they were in so heavy that they were even covering the road - you wanna hunt tomorrow?"
Now I hadn't hunted for three weeks due to weather, my hosts not being able to go and had also been battling within myself not to give Dr. Phil a call to discuss my depression and anger issues when I get the above call. I mean every time I scheduled a vacation day during the work week so we could all get together and hunt SOB's somewhere between I-80 and Illinois Route 13, it had snowed. No, that is not correct we had ice, snow and freezing rain storms, Ney, Blizzards EVERY time, so I went into work instead.
So how do you think I responded?
"Hell ya I can go" I was able to muster out between tears and sobs of relief, joy and a kind of perverted sense of self-flagellation as it was late Saturday and we would have to meet near where we were going to hunt at 3:30 AM. That gave me just enough time to get myself and my family ready so I could be in bed by 11:40 PM…
Now I am not in the best shape unless round and hairy count - which they do not - and lately have to take medicines to live by and even get to sleep. So I popped my Requip for the RLS and packed away my blood-pressure, asthma and prostate meds for the morning before falling into a drug induced sleep only to have that alarm go off just after 2 AM. It use to just take me 10 minutes and I am out the door, and there are those days recently where it is three times that, but I managed to remember ALL my "stuff" and was walking out the door in short order when Rich called to make sure I was on my way. You see Todd had just backed out and he is Rich's right hand, go-to guy! We couldn't blame him as he had just driven in from a week's vacation with the wife in Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, and was B-E-A-T! So I needed to beat feet in order to arrive at our "designated spot" by 3:30 AM.
I like to try and be on time and hate having people wait on me but I knew I would be at least 10+ minutes behind so I got directions to where they were headed. I wasn't too worried as this was a full hour earlier than the last hunt, and we had been ready in far less time than I anticipated it would take for today's outing - and with more people this time to help!
Anyway, to make a long story shorter (HA!), I arrived just minutes behind them and after I threw my stuff into the truck, we all got a ride out to the spot which was only 400 yards away or so. It was situated in a corn stubble field and the ground was frozen solid - go figure after sub-freezing highs for the prior week. And while there were five of us, two had never been SOB hunting and one was a 10-year old! However, we had three drills and a punch to get the stakes into the ground and went right to work in the darkness (almost a New Moon).
It seemed like we were making excellent progress and bundle after bundle of the newer Texas Hunting Products Windtamer rag decoys were easily going into the holes we drilled and punched into the permafrost. These Texas style rag decoys are a whole lot improved over prior products as they are mounted on a fiberglass poles which is smaller in diameter than most use AND they will hold their own against the elements! That means they are tougher and will hold their shape once opened up to catch the wind - a huge improvement over what Chuck Barry's imitators have been selling for years now. No more flaccid and limp rag decoys just lying in the field when the wind dies down. Not only that, since they hold their shape once fluffed up, they offer a quieter and better looking decoy for a reasonable price - around $125 per 100 assembled and on these great new stakes! We like them!
Once again I digress as usual.
Anyway, we broke up into teams with me and Brett and Rich and Larry (the new guy and not to be confused with the Cable Guy) doing the decoy placement, with one person either drilling or punching a hole into the ground and the other sticking it in; the decoy that is. Geeez!
You know the routine, the opening into the wind and the stake at a 45-degree angle, and it went well but we soon discovered a job for Alex - he became our decoy "fluffer!" He would walk behind us and open up the decoys after we placed them into the hole and this went well but then I noticed the sun breaking in the East (where else) and we were far from close to having out decoy spread ready. Now this might have been our first major faux pas as we continued to put out decoys with the spread kind of like an oblong where we would be laying in them at the front and several hundred being scattered trailing with the wind. I say this with all respect but it is a hindsight sort of thought. We already had the big spread up front with a major landing hole in the middle and a good number of scattered decoys trailing with the wind but our guns were still cased, the sound system was not setup and we didn't have our spots established. So if we had any early birds come in before sunrise and we weren't done putting out more decoys, they would leave unscathed.
Based on past experience we do not see the bigger groups until well after sunrise and we were motivated on getting the decoys out ASAP for that reason but we did miss out on a number of willing subjects before we finally decided to postpone any more decoy placement and got situated. Why? Simple, we could see waves of birds in the area and they just might come our way! We established our positions, who calls the shot, firing lanes and the like but still did not have the two sound systems working. And as Todd wasn't there, it ALL fell on Rich's shoulders to put it ALL together and operate - no small task as none of us had ever played with Todd's new toy - a 180 watt, four speaker sound system with two battery packs no less and a new CD!
It was easy getting Rich's Johnny Stewart's game caller together but you have to admit, the quadraphonic high-wattage sound system really reaches out there and it was not ready for those first groups of birds we had trying to drop into the decoy spread! And, while Rich was trying to figure it out, we kept getting interrupted by waves of SOB's!!!
Unfortunately, we couldn't get all of them within range without the sound system but did mange to scratch one or two before deciding to concentrate on getting it working. Man that was tough as we perpetually and literally had waves of birds on top of us but we wanted them in our face and they just wouldn't fully cooperate without the sound system. We finally got the speakers stretched out to all four points of the compass (and away from our ears) and we really began to work the SOBs. I was real impressed on how we let young Alex get his first bird and allowed him the opportunity on the first goose that came in because even though Rich, me and even Brett (Heh! Heh!) preach a good life, we ALL have a dark side buried beneath the surface and would just as soon "kill em all" some days. So to bring out not only a 10-year old on his first SOB hunt but his Father too on such a glorious morning and be so supportive and understanding says how pretty good the people I hang with really are. Major kudos to Rich on all that he did for Larry and Alex!
As I said, we now had the speakers hooked up, all was working and by God those SOB's just wouldn't let up on us! We would sometimes have hundreds of them above us going in all directions - including closer to our loaded shotguns! I kept thinking I would be able to get my camera out to take pictures but we never had a break until 9 AM! And by then we had 14 birds on the ground with a couple still out a ways after falling dead from their wounds. And there was the obligatory gun malfunctions - Brett and his and Rich with a borrowed sticky pump - but mine all worked perfectly as I had brought my Beretta Extrema 2 and the Winchester SX2 that had both just returned from the repair shop last week and the SBE. I had equipped mine with two new choke tubes - a Patternmaster for the Benelli and a Kick's Waterfowler Modified for the Beretta and was impressed with the knockdowns at longer distances with the Winchester HV Expert's in BB#. Actually, I started to use the SBE more as it seemed to be doing the trick for me. I ended up loaning the SX2 to Brett and it worked for him until he fixed his pump so my collection is now complete!
##END PART ONE##
