Getting Back to Our Waterfowling Roots
Ryan Barnes for SPLIT REED
During the new year, I found myself making a resolution to read more. With the amount of downtime I have between travel, appointments, and everything else in my day-to-day life, I spend way too much time on social media. Obviously, my selection of books and other reading material gravitated towards that of the hunting world. I’ve found myself diving into classics like The Old Man and the Boy by Robert Ruark, almost anything I can find by Gene Hill, De Shootinest Gent’man by Nash Buckingham, and many others of the like. As I read story after story from these famed authors, talking about hunts from years gone by, I can’t help but appreciate their sentiment for the sport of waterfowl hunting. When you read these stories, you can tell that these were men who didn’t care about how big the piles were at the end of the hunt. They only cared about getting out into the field and having a good time. Now, while I don’t think that there are many waterfowlers who go out hunting and don’t actually enjoy it, I do think it would do some good to step back, and not fall so far out of touch with the roots of our sport that we forget them.
We live in a day and age when it has never been easier to be a waterfowler. If you disagree with that statement, you either suck at waterfowling or never had to hunt without a smartphone. In today’s world, we have the most advanced gear, calls, shotguns, decoys, and hunting tactics that have been developed. We’ve come a long way from the old pioneers of waterfowling who used painted black bottles as decoys and used their mouths as calls. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, either. It’s good to survive and advance. But we also need to remember the “sport” of what we’re doing. No, we don’t need to kill ducks and geese to provide a meal anymore, but would it be such a bad thing to hunt with that “old-fashioned” appreciation?
Let’s take a look at how most waterfowl hunts go in today’s day and age.
You and your friends wake up at some absurd early time to make sure you get the best possible blind. Get your morning essentials, head out to the field, then start getting ready. Unload your 20’ boat, with a 25 horsepower motor, and use OnX maps to find your pre-scouted destination, where you unload $500-$1,000; maybe even $10,000 worth of decoys. Pull out your calls, put up your boat blind, load the shotguns, and wait for birds to come in. As the hunt goes on, maybe a few birds dead, you switch things up in your $850 waders you got on sale and begin eating your lunch. Once the afternoon hunt starts you pick up a few more birds, maybe even top off a limit if things go well. Pictures are then taken, Instagram captions are thought of, Snapchat stories are filled, and everyone starts getting texts from the envious asking when they’ll be invited. You then head back to the ramp, load up the boat, and head home.
There isn’t a thing wrong with that scenario. I would imagine everyone reading this article has found themselves in that story almost exactly as it’s described, if not, at least real close to it. Like I say, there isn’t anything to balk at with that given example. However, let’s look at the same scenario, just back when waterfowling was still “old-fashioned”.
You and your friends wake up, boil a pot of coffee, and decide where to go for the day. After the decision is made you decide you want to take an old classic shotgun you haven’t used in a while, to add some fun to the hunt. You go out, get the dogs, while your friends grab their 6 or so hand-carved decoys they made during the off-season. Everyone makes their way to the local marsh, hops in an old flat-bottom, and trolls out to a spot that “has been good before”. The hand-carved decoys are then thrown into the water, shotguns are loaded, and friends begin telling jokes. A pair of ducks works into the spread, you pull up and fold a big drake mallard with your old shotgun, which brings back all the fond memories of hunts gone by. You walk out in your hip boots you got from a friend, retrieve the duck, and make your way back to the blind. The morning carries on, a few more ducks are shot. Your friends are satisfied with decoys, you’re satisfied with the hunt, and you all come to the consensus that it’s time to go home and cook lunch.
First, let me say, I know I’m kind of comparing apples and oranges here, but hopefully, by now, you’re getting the point. The more I read the words of writers of old, the more I learn that successful hunts were never dictated by a limit of birds, they were dictated by the hunter’s satisfaction. Many stories are told by Ruark, Hill, Mathewson, and others, about days afield, when only a handful of ducks or geese were shot, but because of the time hunting, they were satisfied with the hunt. We, as a new generation of hunters, might do well to take some of that into consideration.
By no means am I trying to be some sanctimonious ass who’s trying to tell everyone else how to act. I am saying, however, that in our day and age, why not do something to get in touch with the roots of waterfowl hunting? Why not go back in time a little to appreciate the sport a bit more? More people are starting to carve their own decoys. The side-by-side shotgun is coming back into style. Maybe instead of gauging our success by the number of dead ducks, we could use the “old-fashioned” barometer and see how satisfied we are with the hunt. Set goals, try new things, go back in time to some old tactics you used to try, and see if you can’t gain a little more satisfaction than you thought you could.
At the end of the day, it’s the roots of waterfowling that got us here, and it’s the roots we keep growing and fostering that will dictate how the sport grows. So why not get in touch with roots that allowed the sport of waterfowl hunting to grow into what we love so much today?
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