Friends, Family and Freeloaders

Friends, Family and Freeloaders

By Bob Zettler

January 3, 2011

“Frack! Frack! Frack!....

A continuous stream of vulgarities exploded out of me like a volcanic eruption of pent up magma and searing gases on New Year’s Day 2011 as I hunted with Greg Masterson at his Big Cypress Club in Olive Branch. I don’t know who was more shocked by the outburst, my blind buddies, me or anyone within 10 miles of me for I popped a lung and generated a hernia that was sure to cripple me for life after the shots I just made. But I am getting ahead of myself…

The last four or so years I have taken the week between Christmas and New Years off to go hunting with friends – old and new – from Quincy, Cook County, Shawneetown, Columbia, Mount Vernon, Ottawa, Hennepin, Champaign, Marion, and, of course, to Olive Branch. I have packed all that my aging body could absorb during the nine or 10 days I had available where my primary obsession of harvesting waterfowl would envelop me like a Heroin addict looking for his next score. And I have been very fortunate to have people who have not only allowed me to hunt with them and experience some of what they have grown up around.

Let me tell you that while we all work towards killing ducks and geese, how someone goes about it varies from one end of the spectrum to another – even within say a 10 mile stretch of the Illinois River. What goes as routine in the Hennepin Hopper might be worlds away from what people do in De Pue. But again, the goal is to kill ducks and geese and I savor the varieties of the pursuit in all these areas and more, just like a wine connoisseur would if given the chance to roam from winery to winery in the south of France, the Napa Valley or even the vineyards of southern Illinois.

Fortunately for me I have developed relationships with a number of people and the last several years have concentrated more and more on the Rend Lake area and Horseshoe Lake (Alexander County) where I will stay with friends and hunt with them on either public or private lands and waters. However, with the holidays falling on a weekend this year and many of my friends traveling to visit family elsewhere, it wasn’t going to be the same…

At least for the first day of my vacation I was scheduled to hunt with Nick Schafer at Rend Lake and came down the night before to avoid the Christmas Eve storm headed our way. Nick and I have only been hunting together for five or so years but have a lot of history between us. Both of us had a connection to the Niska Farm goose hunt club and its former owner (it’s now a part of the refuge) John Clark. And nowadays Nick, John Nolan and sometimes my son will fish together and then the three of us hunt waterfowl as much as Nick and John have room for me. And what some might find interesting is that while I just passed 57, Nick is just 30 and John is in his 20’s. But even with the age difference we share a passion for waterfowling and I love my time spent with them. In fact, the last several years I have stayed at their homes during my vacation which sure beats the 320 mile round trips I had been making every day before!

This Christmas Eve hunt was going to be different than past years in that John had picked up a pair of layout boats and Nick and I were going to use them in the morning. Once again a little bit of the past was re-entering the picture for you see my first experience with hunting on Rend Lake proper was when Wayne Zarko boated me out one morning to hunt with “The Crew” in one of their layout boats. Don Hayes had introduced me to Zarko at Bubba’s there in Nason and he in turn introduced me to Ronnie Guyeski and Buzz Summers. Now, some 20+ years later I am going to hunt out of a layout boat with a good friend but for ducks this time instead of geese as times have changed. Back then geese were the primary target. However, nowadays the geese don’t always make it down like they use to but ducks more than make up for that! And when the Goldeneyes are down and you’re set up for them…well, let’s just say the action can be fast, furious and even frustrating!

I was a little nervous as there were just going to be the two of us – for layout hunting in the open water you have a tender boat that ferries hunters back and forth between the layouts and where the other hunters waited in the wings for their opportunity - and I am NOT at all familiar with Nick’s War Eagle. And what with my Dark Cloud luck I could see me not being able to get the boat started to pick him up or instead of docking alongside I would crash it into and sink the layout! Fortunately, he already had that covered as we would set the layouts in reasonably shallow water near land where we could wade back to shore and then park the War Eagle out of sight. With shooting time just before 7 AM we were able to set the decoys and layouts with time to spare and had ducks buzzing the decoys shortly thereafter. With Nick’s dog Koa to retrieve the ducks and a box of 3 ½” Kent #2’s I was ready and before you knew it we had our 12 Goldeneyes and had picked up, loaded the boat and was out of there well before 10AM!

It was over too quick but it had been a glorious morning as the ducks came through the snowflakes to fall to our guns. You all might not know it but Goldeneyes are a hardy bird and many times they will repeatedly dive after being mortally shot only to succumb to their wounds long after they have disappeared from sight. In any case, it was a great time and I was on the road home by Noon and was extra cautious so as to avoid slipping on the icy roads. It was a nasty day out there but I had a great start on my vacation! The next day was Christmas Day and since my children are older, I send them to their Mother’s so they can spend it with family as my children are my only family any more, and this allows me to more time to go hunting!

It was still pretty cold out with just a little spitting snow as I marched to my spot to try and shoot a couple of geese. This is not the shortest of walks as it is a little over a mile there and the drifting snow made the walk….shall we say interesting. The geese usually fly around sunrise but today they didn’t start up till nearly 8:30 AM. No big deal as I would sure to be back to our home by 10 AM and hadn’t even brought anything to drink or eat. And when that first group came out and at me at 8:30 AM and I took the first shot whereupon that bird folded deader than a doornail and I started on my second bird finally bringing it down with my third shot no one was more shocked than me! I mean my friends can attest that I am seldom on my game for geese but here I had just dropped my limit in seconds! As the second bird had fallen crippled into some heavy cover, I made my first beeline to him as the first bird had fallen in front of me and to the left (also in a patch of semi-heavy cover) but I wasn’t worried about him as he had been “stoned!”

Fought my way to the second bird and ended up wringing its neck and then headed back to locate the first bird. Walked right back to the point from where I shot and then began to work the cover back and forth to find that bird. Shouldn’t be a problem as he folded like a sack of potatoes and even in the fresh snow and cover it shouldn’t be too difficult to find…

That was at 8:35 AM and after criss-crossing the area dozens of times, expanding my search pattern to the left and right, then looking for blood or tracks in the snow, I was ready to give up, - get this, at 11:30 AM!!! Now call me stupid, crazy, insane, or stubborn but don’t for a second call me anything but dedicated as I seldom give up as I knew that bird was D-E-A-D! I knew it in my soul and it couldn’t have recovered and made it out of there when I went for the second bird…could it? And as I was giving up to head home, that is when I walked up on him another five yards farther to my left than I had searched. He had fallen on his back and what with the snow it had been difficult to spot breast-side up but I had persevered!

As it had been a trying and exhausting day I went to bed early and when I woke up late Sunday morning I decided to take the day off and try and get the house in order. Fun, fun, and more fun being a single male parent…

Now Monday was a different story and I headed down again to hunt divers with Nick. That episode was already covered in another story but let it be said while we didn’t take limits it was a very memorable day as I took a Blond Mallard which is going on the wall! Unfortunately, John was hunting at Greenheads and Mallards where they were smacking the geese and Nick headed up there to assist the next day which left me to my own so I decided to go after the geese again. All I can tell you is it was a miserable day, a VERY LONG and miserable day where I stayed out ALL day and never got a real shot and no birds. Yep, 10 hours out with just a 24 ounce bottle of Coke Zero and no birds to show for it. Slept in the next day as I could not move and as I was on vacation and had to shoot something went back out that afternoon only to hit one bird and lose it when it made it to sanctuary.

I was truly depressed by now and decided to head south to our lease as I would hunt waterfowl in the morning and deer that afternoon since I still had three permits to fill. Didn’t get there until after 8 AM and while I saw birds flying our water was frozen tight and forgotten my Mojo Mallard decoy poles and hadn’t been able to bring but a few decoys so it was either deer hunting, suicide or make other arrangements and that was when I decided to call Greg Masterson.

Now I knew he had a few clients still in the offing but he had said call him if things went astray and he said come on down. Without any hesitation I threw my stuff in my packed Jeep and headed to Olive Branch some 74 miles away. When I arrived, there was Herman, the owner of Ko-ko-Jo’s and Ed, a friend of Greg’s from the Belleville area sitting in the truck and watching the show. Greg was guiding for a father and his three young sons in the flooded corn pit and the ducks were flying already at 10:30 AM. Less than an hour later Ed and I got our gear together and joined some hunters in the levee pit and the hunt began!

These hunters were from Thebes and hunt most days in this pit. Usually, with a south wind this pit doesn’t do too good but today the Mallards seemed to respond to the calls and decoys. Even with the prime pit exploiting their location and blasting ducks we were able to scratch a dozen or so before the day was over – Greg usually quits prior to the legal end of shooting time just to give the ducks a place to retreat from all the others still out there blasting away. We gathered at the parking area and watched in wonder as the skies filled with waterfowl and began their descent into Greg’s fields. Neither pictures nor words can do this justice as to see and hear the birds float overhead and then into the flooded crops cannot be duplicated; no way, no how.

I was able to take a few pictures in the fading light but even with the grainy pictures the smiles of the three young waterfowlers shined through. Back at the club house stories were told, adult refreshments consumed and other friends and family members stopped by to visit as we pitched in to smoke some hamburgers and cook up some French fries. Burgers always tastes better when slow smoked and there were more than enough for the hungry kids and adults before everyone either retired for the evening or headed for Ko-Ko-Jo’s, a local watering hole owned by Herman. Herman and Greg are old friends and Herman stops by most days to watch the fields and help escort hunters. As a matter of fact he was the first person I met when I first hunted with Greg several years ago. He met me at the clubhouse and drove me out to the field where I harvested my first Bull Sprig! Ahhhh, the memories…

The next day was New Year’s Eve and the weather forecast was not conducive for waterfowling. What with a high of nearly 70 degrees the ducks simply did not fly. We didn’t even join the father and his one son until early afternoon and while we saw a few, and I mean a very few, ducks that afternoon, we were all more interested in the storms forging their way through the Midwest and our way. As I used my DROID X to keep everyone abreast of the pending severe weather, I couldn’t help but wonder how others were doing west of us as we weren’t even hearing any shooting in our neck of the woods. Finally, about 3:30 PM the pit scratched another nice Mallard Drake and as tornados and lightening lit up the skies to the west, we all decided that it was in our best interests to vacate the steel-lined pit in the flooded waters for safer havens. Our guides, Bro and Mick, made a wise choice as the skies opened up as soon as we got in our vehicles and headed to the clubhouse.

This was the last day the Father and his three sons were hunting so they headed home right away and we had a great meal of either chicken and dumplings or ham and beans. And since it was New Years Eve, adult beverages became the primary objective as other friends from up north showed up, as the weekend was for friends, family and freeloaders – like me.

Wow! I don’t know what happened but somehow what I wrote about the evening simply disappeared and I cannot recover it. I do recall spending some time at Ko-Ko-Jo’s and then back to the clubhouse but the rest seems to be a blur…

You know when I was a youngster, I never thought much about my life after 2000 and now it’s 2011 and the only milestone I concern myself with is what opportunity is right in front of me and I do not worry about the next 10 or so years…well, maybe I do as I need to lose weight and get into better shape but my primary concern right now was to ring in the new year with dead ducks! And since several people did not get to bed until just before the sun began to creep up in the east, there were not many people ready or willing to head out. From my bed I could hear a couple of people come and go but even I did not arise until maybe 7:30 or 8:00 AM which is usually plenty early as the hunters seldom go out until the birds fly and come back to his fields which is nearer mid-morning. However, Mick had already headed out to check on things and put out the Robo’s.

For the morning, it was going to be Bro (guide), Mick (guide), Cousin Willy, Mick’s Dad, and me. Now I had hunted several times with Bro and had met the others over the years but had not hunted with them. And as I was a guest, I deferred to their decisions and when to shoot but it wasn’t long before we had Mallards dropping in for a look as Bro and Mick worked together to bring the ducks into range.

Now here is where Greg’s operation diverges from many in that for some clubs, a duck within 40 yards is a duck that will be shot at, but that is not the case here. Nope. In fact, the shot was seldom called unless the ducks had their landing gear down and hovering. The major exception was when there were more ducks working and instead of taking the easy shot on a single or pair, we would wait on the group only to have someone else fire a shot a mile away to have ALL the ducks vacate and head higher and higher. I cannot tell you how many times this happened but what made that tolerable for me was the fact we were ALL still shooting ducks and that included me! But you have to understand that for me who grew up on public hunting where people in another blind who didn’t even shoot at a falling waterfowl would still try and claim one that this was extremely difficult and stressful. Yes, we as a group contemplated taking those singles and pairs even when we had 20, 30, 40, and 50 or more working as a bird in the hand…but to place that into effect didn’t come easy. And for me, a person who had just been through the longest drought of not killing waterfowl during my week’s vacation, I was quickly becoming another Mount St. Helen’s!

Then around Noon or so, some of Greg’s ironworker pals showed up and Greg himself wanted to come out so since Mick’s Dad had to leave and so did Cousin Willy they boated out and the two left. Now I had Keith on my left and Big Sean on my right with Greg calling the shots in the gunners chair and Mick at the other end of the pit. And since Keith and Sean hadn’t shot yet, they were given the first opportunities and before too long they each had a duck or two as we were still just getting singles and pairs to shoot at. But since Greg was there and these were his birds (so-to-say), we all of a sudden had a large group of 25 to 30 Mallards working.

Again, I am the guest and I am no longer the quickest out of the box when the shot is called. In fact, in recent years since I have been hunting with Nick and John at Rend who are much younger and better shots than me, I have been tortured by that fact and will usually rush my shots just to get a chance to kill something before they all fall to my buddies’ guns. It is like I am competing and have already lost most times but with this group I hadn’t felt that way. Many times I have had a difficult time getting through a blind/pit cover but not here and now. So while I had these anxieties residing in the dark recesses of my mind the last several years, I seemed to have at least relaxed a little and knew that if I took my time getting clear and then choosing my shot(s), I could and had been successful this day.

Yeah, yeah, on my first outing with the boys from Thebes I seemed to have been shooting dead ducks for my first several volleys. And while I remained stressed from the past week of not having had a really great hunt other than Christmas Eve where I killed my limit of ducks, I seemed on the surface calm and relaxed as the shot was called on the biggest group of Mallards I had seen all season where the closest ones were maybe 12 yards on front of us! And as I rose and selected a Mallard drake on top and rising away I could hear the others shoot and see out of the corners of my eyes birds begin to fall. Again, I felt calm, collected and in charge as I selected that drake and pulled the trigger as I felt he was one no one else would be shooting at. I was shocked as not only he fell but another looked to be crippled so I swung on another Drake heading straight away from us as the shooting was coming to a close.

BANG! A miss at what was now at a 40 yard shot and then I decided to try a Hail Mary shot as the bird crossed the 50 yard line or more. All the others had expended their magazines and just as I pulled the trigger a Hen swung close to him and no one was more surprised that not only did I crumple the Drake but that Hen crumpled too and that was when a year’s worth of coping at work, with family and friends, driving 300 mile round-trips to kill one bird (or none at all) came to a head. God only knows what rose from the depths of my soul at that moment but as I set the Beretta Extrema down by my side and with everyone else watching, a stream of vulgarities burst forth over the river valley sending the Ohio River upstream and the Mississippi flooding over to the Kentucky side as I screamed “Frack. Frack. Frack. Frack.” “Frack You Mother Fracker!”, and so much more spewed from my mouth over the next 60 seconds. And as I recovered my composure and took in all that had just happened I felt such a release, almost as if I had just received absolution from God!

Now I had three ironworkers and two other men of stout body and soul beside me but when I turned to look at them I didn’t know if I saw fear, shock, awe, or simply this boy is NUTS in their eyes. Was I embarrassed you ask, well, not really as I felt a wave of peacefulness course through my body which is a feeling I hadn’t had in a very, very, very long time. Then the radio crackled to life and Kevin Masterson was calling to see if someone had shot themselves and if we needed assistance. A laugh coursed through the pit as they tried to explain to him how I had simply killed a duck or two. I had no explanation as it was a spontaneous eruption that had swept me away and cleansed my soul of all the depression that had draped over me for so very long this past year. I mean here it was New Year’s Day and up until Thursday I hadn’t shot a dozen ducks and now I had in two outings nearly doubled that and it was all due once again to a good friend who allowed me to join his family and close friends to start out the new year. Will I ever go berserk again? I don’t know but I can tell you that simple “cleansing” provided me with a release that this boy has needed and deserved for a long, long time! My primal screaming at the heavens was just what the doctor ordered but the day was not done as I still had bonus ducks to kill!

Now this is where it gets interesting as I mentioned earlier that I killed my first Bull Sprig (Drake Pintail) with Greg on my very first outing and now for some reason I had it in my mind that I would love to kill a Drake Widgeon as I could not recall ever doing so. And as things returned to normal and I simply took a backseat to the others as they shot at the continuing stream of Mallards dropping into the decoys in response to Greg’s calling, he yelled out there was a pair of Baldplates coming in. Now, I love to duck hunt and have been doing so for 31 years or so but I am still not up on all the lingo. In fact, I once tried to come up with a crib sheet listing all the different names for the same ducks when I was in Metairre, LA for a state waterfowl organizational meeting.

So when Greg yelled out take them I knew at least it was my bonus duck so I swung on the drake and he folded with my shot and that was when the others informed me that he was in fact the Drake Widgeon I had been looking for! However, I was not the only one shooting at him and while I appreciated the sentiment, I will only mount a bird that I know that I have shot. So it was a bittersweet moment that night as I cleaned him and breasted him out to join the other birds we ended up for the day – 28 Mallards and two Widgeon. It was quite the night as a local boy had killed a nice deer and they were dressing him just 15 yards away as we grilled chicken, pork chops and the tenderloin from the deer before heading out for some more adult beverages.

I called it a night early as I was exhausted and crashed well before 8 PM only to be summoned by Greg when they returned around 1 AM. And while some might be a little put off by being dragged from bed (literally), I ended up having a great night – make that an early morning as we stayed up till nearly 5 AM. How so? Well there was Greg, Keith and Sean sitting at the table with me as they talked about old times, primarily work, and as I am a “desk-jockey” for the most part, the things an ironworker does are alien to me. But as I listened to them reminisce about how they did this job or improvised this and that to get it done the “right way”…well, I developed a new found respect for what they do. I never really thought about what Ironworkers did in the past and now I know a little about what they do and how they live life. They are hardworking individuals who will band together as necessary to get things done the first time and the right way.

When you look at a power plant or major construction project, I bet you seldom think about all the pieces of the puzzle, for we are most concerned about just seeing it finished. But upon listening to them talk about how they had to weld something using mirrors as no one could fit into the spaces or how what they put together is the basis for everything else and will most likely outlive us all, well, you just can’t help but find a new found respect for these men. They work hard, they party hard, and they live life - and not just simply go with the flow. It had always amazed me how when I was a guest of Greg’s he could hunt all day and then party all night, sometimes into the wee hours and then do it all over again day after day. Well, maybe not every day as I recall one last day of the season where none of us could get out of bed or off the couch but he is approaching 50 and can still outdo most guys half his age but I digress as usual….

As we four never got to bed until nearly 5 am, there was no way we were going out early but we still got up around 8:30 and fiddled around for the next couple of hours until we started to gather the guys who were going to hunt, as this weekend was for family, friends and freeloaders. We ended up having eight guys head out shortly after Noon and as we threw out a different spread of decoys and reconfigured how the Mojo’s and the like would be situated I reflected upon how lucky I was to be included. For you see I had not intended to come down to Greg’s until the next weekend or so. And, I had been prepared to deer hunt the afternoons up by DuQuoin for the late season but this was turning out to be another memorable experience.

And as my time on this earth and I have fewer seasons ahead of me, I feel blessed for being included – even after my outburst the day before. In the pit was Sean at the end with Keith and Mick taking turns at the next hole with Cousin Willy next and beside me. Then there was a Father and his son taking turns on my right and Greg in his customary hole next to the dog box where he would call out either one person’s name to shoot or for us all to rise. And you know, this process worked out pretty well and the only real issue was how poorly some of us shot that afternoon.

And since I had done so well the day before and had actually hit a couple of birds early this day, I sat back and let the others shoot many a time. And that was fine for me, which I couldn’t believe as I am a lush and most times cannot get enough but today was different as I viewed the others in a new light. In fact, by sitting back on many of the shots I was able to observe the others either connect or not and that was when I also noticed Cousin Willy who several times would let the others empty their guns and with a departing waterfowl, he would rise, aim, shoot and drop the bird. Here he is with his Yentzen call and an older shotgun who is maybe 66 and he is taking his time and connecting which is what I had been doing this time.

We did pretty well that afternoon. No, not full limits for everyone but some pretty good shooting, some family and friend time, and another great time where new memories were created to be savored like a good wine when times are different and one can read this and recall those times years ago. And as we all grow older and memories fade and our bodies can no longer achieve what we use to or still desire, I hope I can recall watching Cousin Willy knocking the ducks out of the sky and pray that I too can continue to enjoy life afield with my friends, family (blood or adopted) and other freeloaders like me…