You can shoot our cripples.....

[MarketHunter]

This early cold snap has me remembering holiday hunts of the past and I thought I'd relate this one though there really wasn't a Parker involved.

This was a bit more than 20 years ago though it seems like yesterday. My old hunting partner Dave French had moved to Canada a couple years before but was home for the holidays. We decided we'd better make a Christmas morning hunt down at our old haunts on Mermet Lake. There was a freeze on but it had just started so we were hoping there was still some open water in the blind areas.

We got there just in time for the daily drawing and there were so few hunters they just let us pick our spots rather than making it a random turn of the bingo ball cage. We picked Blind 10 which was an old favorite and pretty exposed to the wind so we thought it might be open. Another party picked Blind 11 right down the way but it wasn't anybody we recognized.

We drove around to the boat landing and started to unload gear. One of the boys from the Blind 11 group came up and started talking. He said we'd really made a mistake picking the blind next to them because they were the best duck hunters on the lake. Said he was sure that we weren't even going to get a shot hunting next to them but that we were welcome to walk down and shoot their cripples over if we wanted to feel like we'd killed a duck. I mean this guy was really full of himself, just talked and talked.....

We really didn't say much, both of us being pretty confident in our abilities. We just chuckled at his antics and said we'd do the best we could, wished them a Merry Christmas and took off rowing for our blind.

We were right, the water in front was open and we ran out a few ducks in the dark. We could hear our over confident friends busting ice in the channel and then hit open water as well so the odds were even.

First light came and we didn't see much, then a single wood duck buzzed the spread and Dave managed to kill him with a snap shot. After about an hour a nice bunch of mallards flew off the lake and started working. Our friends started calling and it sounded like the jungle birds off a Tarzan movie, I mean these guys were awful. Dave and I opened up our old Haydel DR-85 "Deceivers" and had the flock short circling us in no time. We let them get in just right and then stood up with our pump guns rattling to deadly effect. When the smoke cleared we had three graveyard dead and one flopping cripple. Before we shot it over I hollered out across to our friends that they were welcome to come shoot it if they wanted to. Silence.....

In those days the duck limit was only three birds (two mallards) so we were just an odd duck short of two limits. Before we could even get a coffee thermos cracked open, our friends had picked up their dozen decoys and hit the road. I guess they didn't want to risk running into us back back at the launch.....

We didn't stay long either, it was bitter cold and there was turkey dinner waiting. I'll never forget that little hunt as long as I live, those boys really made our Christmas for sure.


DLH