Foodie hunters ... most of the time

Today was my fourth hunt in seven days, and at the end of the day, a delicious irony dawned on me.

One of the reasons my boyfriend and I love hunting is that we love the quality of the meat. Since we've begun hunting, almost all the meat we eat is either hunted, pastured or otherwise raised in a way that produces healthy, nutritious meat from animals that lived decent lives. We never buy factory-farmed meat at the grocery store. Lord, it just doesn't have any flavor.

But when we left our hunt today in a car filled with sodden gear and and a bag of teal, spoonie and scaup, where's the first place we went?

Burger King.

Yes, the King, where you can get King-size servings of chemicals, additives and grease bundled up with meat from cows treated like crap. And man, it is so good when you've just spent a couple hours standing in flooded corn in Day 2 of the biggest storm to hit our region this season.

To salvage my self-esteem, I went back and read a friend's recent blog post about a wild-game dinner at our house last weekend. You'd never know from reading it that the hosts of the dinner party could be found at least once a week this time of year in a drive-thru, yelling at a crackly speaker, "I'll take the No. 5. King size, please."

And about that hunt today? It was something else - my first experience in a very guy hunting-camp atmosphere. But I'm getting up bright and early for a goose hunt tomorrow morning, so that tale will have to wait for another day.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Hellen's hunt with Holly the hunter

Delevan National Wildlife Refuge is the place where I learned to hunt alone last year. While my boyfriend was at work on Wednesdays, I would take advantage of my academic winter break, drive up Interstate 5 in the morning and see if I could get into a blind vacated by a morning hunter.

The folks at the check station got to know me because I stood out as the only female hunter hanging around. They'd try to get me into a good blind, and when I checked out at the end of the day, look at me expectantly, then with fallen faces, as they saw I was empty-handed. Again.

"Didn't you see any ducks?" they'd ask.

"Plenty," I'd tell them. "I just missed all of them."

This week, I returned for my first winter break Wednesday hunt of the year, but this one was really special: I had my colleague Hellen with me.

I blogged about her just before Christmas: Hellen is an English professor at my university. When she and I were at graduation, I'd mentioned I was a duck hunter. She pounced on me - she'd been wanting to learn how to hunt ducks, but didn't know anyone who could show her the ropes.

We began plotting immediately. I needed to get her on a hunt to make sure she really likes it before making the investment in gun, gear and hunter safety training. And to get her on a hunt, I needed to get her in waders and full camo. Fortuitously, my waders sprung a leak in the left boot the day after Christmas, so I bought a new pair. But I also bought some Shoe Goo to see if I could repair the old ones enough to at least let Hellen spend one day in them.

I told her I'd need to work on a jacket for her, but then she started sending me emails with photos of things she'd just purchased from Cabela's - waders and a jacket of her own. She was a madwoman! Two weeks ago, she didn't even know what Cabela's was. And she had not yet even watched a duck fall. But she was so certain she would want to hunt that she was already spending serious money. What's not to love about that?

We decided Wednesday would be the day, and as I prepared her in a series of emails for what conditions would be like, I was silently praying, "Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease don't let me suck when we're out there!" I wanted her to witness success and the good and bad that comes with it, and I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing.

As we headed up I-5, I pointed out enormous flocks of geese that stained the sky all around us.

"Where are they going?" she asked.

"Delevan!" I said.

When we pulled in and walked toward the check station, I spotted a small mixed V of snow geese and specklebelly geese flying low over us and stopped Hellen to show her the difference between the two: Specks have dark wings and darkish speckled bellies; snows were white with black wingtips. It's crucial information at Delevan these days: The speck season there is over; the snows are still legal.

"Oh, now you're showing people around here!"

I looked down and saw James, one of the many hunters I'd sat with waiting for blinds last January, talking about how hard it was learning to hunt.

I grinned. "Yup, now I'm the expert. Ha!"

Turned out there was no waiting - three blinds were available. I took one just south of other blinds I'd hunted in the past. I remembered watching ducks fly high over me and bomb into that blind. Perhaps we'd be so lucky today. We suited up and headed out.

It's funny - just two days earlier, I'd gone out to hunt alone so I could figure some things out for myself.

But as I explained to Hellen everything I was doing (starting with a lesson on how to fall in the water without getting soaked), I realized how much I'd learned from my mentors - primarily my boyfriend, who figured out duck hunting without any mentor at all - but also other friends we hunted with and total strangers I met on the Duck Hunting Chat.

How to get into a blind at the refuge. How to use Delevan's Island blinds, where you're totally exposed. Decoy placement. Sentinel geese. Winducks. Hiding gear. Directions ducks fly. Duck identification. Cupped and committed. Skybusters. Duck calling. Ear protection. Eye protection. How far shot travels. Stealth. Snack food. Remembering where partners are in your blind and stopping the swing of your gun well before you get to them. Wind v. no wind. Sun v. clouds. Watching ducks' behavior to see if anything looks out of place in your blind.

"It's a lot to learn!" Hellen said.

And the first thing Hellen learned firsthand Wednesday was how fast ducks fly.

I saw a spoonie drake coming right over the blind. Argh, my worst shot, straight overhead. I stood, fired, and missed.

Hellen was startled - she hadn't even seen him come in. Next time, I alerted her as another spoonie whizzed in. I stood. Fired. Missed. Didn't even take a second shot, he was speeding away so fast.

"They're so fast! And so small!" she exclaimed.

"Yeah, it's really hard to hit them," I said.

Three more times that happened. Five spoonies. Five shots. Five misses. Crap, it wasn't going to be another one of those days, was it?

I shifted position in the blind, trying to place myself where I'd have the clearest shot. I looked down at my watch: 3 p.m. Two hours to go. Things should start getting good now, I told her. Theoretically, anyway.

I saw ducks in the distance and hit my pintail whistle, exercising the call I'd fine-tuned on Monday. One was coming in from the south and looked as if he were going to pass about 20-30 yards in front of me. Perfect.

As he came closer, I crouched behind my batch of tules and carefully shifted my feet. Whistle, whistle, whistle. There he is!

I stood and shot. Missed. Shot again as he swung around to the north of our blind. Missed again.

Lead the bird, dammit! Lead! I told myself.

When I shot again, he tumbled.

"I got him!" I shouted, and charged out as Hellen watched. He was upright, but his face hung in the water. I'd hit him hard. When I got there, I picked up a gorgeous drake wigeon. Big. Beautifully colored.

And still alive. I grabbed him by the head and helicoptered him quickly to break his neck, and took him back to show to Hellen.

"He's beautiful!" she said.

Then, watching him twitch, she asked, "Is he still alive?"

I looked at him. His eyes were blank. He did not lift his head. "Nope, that's just nerve reaction," I assured her.

"Did you see me hit him?"

"No!" she said.

I had this blurry image in my mind of her standing stock still as I shot, facing me, not the duck.

"Awww..."

But she'd passed the test. She had watched me finish him off, handled him as he twitched, and remained completely unfazed.

"God, I'm so happy," I told her. "I was really afraid I'd suck today!"

We got back into our positions again, and it probably wasn't 20 minutes before two more ducks came in on the same path. It went down almost exactly the same way: I stood. Fired. Fired again. Reminded myself to lead the duck. Fired again and watched her tumble.

"Yes!" I shouted.

This time Hellen had seen it.

I walked out and retrieved a large pintail hen. She'd dropped right where the wigeon had dropped, and her face, too, was in the water - a good sign. When I picked her up, she was dead.

What a relief! It had taken three shots, but when I hit her, I hit her right.

"Now I have to be really careful," I explained to Hellen. I'd have to make damn sure I didn't shoot anymore pintails, because the limit on them was one.

The bird action was really picking up as the sky over the coastal mountains to our west began to redden. Several more hens came in close, including one perfect shooting distance right over the blind. But I couldn't be sure they weren't pintails, so I held my fire.

Then we got strafed a few times by the really fast ducks - teal and bufflehead flying low over the water. They came in so fast that by the time I determined they were actually ducks, they were whizzing past me.

"Have you heard of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer?' " I asked her, referring to the TV show.

"Yes," she said.

"I want to be Holly the Bufflehead Slayer," I told her. "They don't even taste that good, but I want to be such a good shot that I can actually hit them."

As the final 20 minutes of shoot time passed, we were thoroughly investigated by some snow geese that liked our snow decoys, but couldn't understand why the decoys weren't talking to them. I have a snow call that I haven't learned to use yet, so I'd just have to get lucky.

I wanted them to come in for a landing, because that'd be the only way I'd get a killing shot - I didn't want to see anything sail off a mile into thick tules at sunset.

But without a call, I couldn't close the deal. And of course, while I was watching the geese, a pair of spoonies had snuck up behind me and landed 100 yards ahead on the water.

4:49 p.m. ... 4:53 p.m. ... 4:56 p.m.

I stood.

"That's it?" Hellen asked.

"That's it," I told her, and we began pulling in the decoys.

When we checked out, I was triumphant. One of the Dept. of Fish & Game staffers, Diane, was waiting for hunters with a flashlight. I stopped my car, went to the back, pulled out my birds, and held them up high for her to see, doing a little dance.

"You got some!" she said.

"Yes!" At last.

Back at my house, Hellen stuck around for the dirty business, helping with plucking, learning about how we wax our ducks to remove the down feathers, and watching me remove head, feet, wings and entrails.

After I cut off the wigeon's head, she picked it up and cooed. "It's so beautiful!" she said as I returned to plucking. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw her casually flip it into the trash can.

My girl!

She's going to make a fine huntress.

Check out Hellen's hilarious account of the hunt
on her blog - The Adventures of Hellek.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008

Welcome the new huntresses (or: Pink Camo Is For Real!)

I had to share this fantistic photo from the Women Afield forum on Jesse's Hunting & Outdoors.

This was the girls' first hunt. They and their dad jumped a pond on their farm. "Four shots later," Dad proudly reports, "we were picking up our prizes."

My pedigree as a huntress

One of the reasons I took up hunting so late in life is that no one around me hunted when I was a kid. I didn't have any role models in the sport.

But my dad grew up hunting, and now I get to read about it all the time: My uncle has started a blog in which he writes plenty of stories about the exploits of my dad and his sisters in the Paiute Mountains of Southern California during the Depression.

Right now, the focus seems to be on snakes - the time when my dad and his sisters brought a rattler in the cabin for Grandma to cook (she was not amused), and the time my aunt and my dad brought home a whole bag of snakes for Grandma (again, not amused).

Check it out! You'll learn a lot about my sensibilities reading about my my late father, Fritz.

Hunting alone on New Year's Eve morning

The boyfriend and I had plans for the morning of New Year's Eve: We were going to head up to Amador County with our friend Evan to hunt rabbits, squirrels, pigeons, quail and pretty much anything else that moves.

But I'd had an unsettling hunt on Sunday where nothing seemed to work right for me, and I needed to hit my reset button. So I sent my boyfriend off to Amador with my best wishes, and packed my car for a solo hunt in a little flooded rice field north of Sacramento.

The conditions were not good. The weather forecast had called for a good north wind, but when I arrived just before 6 a.m., it was deadly still and clear as a bell - horrible duck hunting weather. Seven hours later, I would leave empty-handed, having never fired a shot.

But I would be just as excited about my day as my boyfriend was about this odd little strap of Amador County game (three rabbits, three pigeons and a squirrel).

Why?

Usually I'm pretty big on deferring to the advice of those around me - learning from their experience, trusting their judgment, following their orders.

But sometimes, I just need to figure some things out on my own - without advice or interference - and in that respect, my little day in the rice field was a huge success.

One of the things that has been bugging me about our rice field hunts is that there are fixed decoy spreads. That's one of the perks of our club membership: You don't have to haul out a ton of dekes, just the specialty dekes, like geese or standups. But I've always had the sneaking suspicion that those things are like billboards: Duck blind here - beware of hunters!

My goal had been to move the whole spread a bit and hunt from outside of the pit blind, but it was just too big of a job to manage before shoot time. So I shifted things around a bit and foraged for as much cover for the steel pit blind as I could find, pulling up clumps of grass and plopping them all around me to obscure the obviously manmade shape. Then I sat back.

There were a few flights of spoonies here and there, but no good shots to be had. And as the sun came up, I was starting to have a real problem.

On a bright day, I have to wear sunglasses or my eyes will be fried by the time I'm done. But I've had glare from my glasses flare birds many, many times, so I've learned to face away from the sun. Doing that, of course, ensures that ducks fly in from the direction of the sun, meaning I don't see them until they're speeding away from me. Maybe when I'm better at this I'll be able to react quickly enough to get those ducks, but I'm not there yet.

It happened twice on this morning. I lamented the fact that I had not yet purchased non-glare camo shooting glasses.

What could I do?

I needed netting over my face, but all I had was my decoy bag, and I could just see throwing that over my head and getting my gun tangled in it. That could get ugly.

I looked around me and noticed another hunter had left some pipe insulation in the blind - the flexible black polystyrene tubing that wraps around pipes to keep them from freezing in the winter.

Hmmm.

I pulled it out, wedged the ends between the edge of the pit blind and the earth to form a small arch, then threw the decoy bag over it.

Wow! I couldn't see through it well enough to spot ducks, but it covered my eyes and let me search much more of the sky than I'd been able to see before. It was fantastic.

Lesson No. 1: Get some flexible tubing and buy more netting - cheap, lightweight, effective.

Now I could see the ducks better without flaring them, but I was still having a hard time closing the deal. Nice flocks of pintails were coming in for a look, but they were still were flying along the opposite check - about 75 yards from me - well away from my decoy spread.

What the hell, I thought. I'll just get up and sit on the other check. Since there's no one else back in the blind, and no other shooters in this field, we don't have to worry about shooting each other.

So I sat on the opposite check facing my blind and started hitting the pintail whistle hard.

It was getting to be midmorning - a deathly slow time at this place - but because it was so quiet, the sound of my whistle was really carrying, and I actually got some pintails to take a look.

Closer and closer they came. They whistled. I whistled back, each time altering the flutter of my tongue, the tension of my mouth, the duration of my whistle and the length of the slide tuner on my call (a Mickey Saso 8-in-1) until, by God, I sounded just like they did. I can honestly say I've never heard any other hunter sound so perfectly like a pintail.

Lesson No. 2: Remember this sound. It's perfect. They're totally responding.

Around and around they went, circling me, probably wondering where the whistling pintail on the ground was.

Lesson No. 3: Bring a couple decoys with you when you decide to go galavanting, you moron.

I could hear them getting closer, but I couldn't see them. They must be behind me. I turned my face a bit, hoping to catch a glimpse without catching the sun on my glasses.

Finally, I saw one out of the corner of my eye. It was in shooting range! But it was behind me, and the only way I'd get a shot would be to fall on my back and shoot from the ground, because there was no way I could stand, find solid footing and get in the correct position in time to shoot. Hold your fire, I told myself. Maybe they'll keep working and come around again.

But they didn't. That was it.

Lesson No. 4: Just shoot from the ground next time.

Oh well.

I looked back at my blind and admired my netting arch looked from a distance. Lord, it was beautiful.

Better get back to that blind, I thought, so I know I can stand, swivel and shoot if I can get these birds to come in again.

I started hitting that pintail whistle hard again, and sure enough, I got another group to come back for another look. That never happens in this place - we always watch them lift up, then settle back down, at great distance.

They worked and worked and worked. I whistled and whistled and whistled. They were cupped and committed.

One hundred yards away. Across that check. Right where I'd been sitting.

They dropped into the water, about 75 of them, and started feeding and whistling away contentedly. Three more started coming in. I whistled at them, but they obviously preferred a large flock of moving, whistling ducks to a large flock of plastic ducks. They bombed in with the others.

I cursed.

I might be able to get out of my blind unnoticed, but there was no way I could walk across that water to get close enough for a shot without getting their attention. I whistled in vain for a while, then decided to call it a day. It was 12:30. Time to pack up and go home.

But it was an amazing day. I'd found a low-cost solution to my sunglass-glare problem. I'd perfected my whistle. I'd determined that the birds were much more willing to work away from the fixed spread. It had been a fantastic investment of my time.

When I hit the road, speeding toward my favorite burrito joint, I dialed up my boyfriend to see how he'd done. He was excited about his unusual small-game strap (read about his hunt and a good rabbit recipe here).

How'd you do? he asked.

I didn't get anything, I said.

Oh, I'm sorry!

No, I said. Really, it was wonderful!

© Holly A. Heyser 2008