When it rains it pours…
© 2014 – Thomas Dugas
I grew up in South Louisiana, right
in the heart of Cajun Country. I started
hunting in 1971. We were a large family
and idle time was rare. Hunting was
considered by everyone except my dad as idle time as both generations ran
businesses, my maternal grandfather a general store, and my father a service
station located conveniently across the street from home. But, my dad liked to eat game meat.
I loved to hunt. My paternal grandfather was the source of my
hunting passion. An old swamp Cajun, as
they are called then and today, he hunted and fished year round. Hunting season for him was any day he woke up
alive. As a tow headed kid snapping at
his heels, he found in me a hunting companion that would cheerfully undertake
any chore in order to be invited to the daily hunt.
My arsenal then was limited to a
bolt action magazine fed .410 shotgun, a single shot shotgun in 20 ga., and a
Winchester Model 61 Pump .22 rifle. I
was entrusted with the shotguns at 8 years of age, but I had to wait until 10
until I could be entrusted with the .22 rifle, as my fathers’ reasoning of the
day was that the .22 rifle posed a greater danger than the shotguns, distance
wise. So I cut my teeth on that little
bolt action .410 & 20 ga. I was a shot gunner first and foremost.
It’s fair to say my grandfather
harvested rather than hunted. He hunted
to put meat on the table, and ammunition was expensive. Abandoned field corn was laboriously ground
and scattered next to a watering hold to attract doves by the hundreds. One or two quick shots produced a tow sack of
tasty edible mourners. Hunting at the
edges of farmers fields revealed dozens of cottontails which the little .22
made short work of. We didn’t hunt for
long but we came regularly returned home with table fare.
The family ate everything we
brought to the table, no questions asked.
I broke my first tooth on bird shot as I bit into a fricasseed rabbit
leg. After the visit to the dentist, I
vowed to improve my .22 rifle skills and focus on headshots versus shot gunning.
I didn’t like eating birdshot.
By the time I was a teenager, I had
taken to hunting on my own most of the time.
I loved to wander the deep forests that surrounded the local lake. I would be in the woods well before dawn and usually
finished by 8AM after the sun was up.
Squirrel hunting was a favorite and I was deadly with my trusty
Winchester 22.
As I often did, I traded firearms
and other notions among my hunting buddies. It was how I got in trade my first
semi-automatic shotgun. The years have
clouded my memory on many things, but I remember that Ithaca/SKB 12 gauge
fondly. My first semi-automatic and I quickly mastered it and began to take an
interest in duck hunting.
Louisiana Wood Duck…
A patch of woods I often hunted
held a relatively large amount of wood ducks in addition to the other usual
suspects. But wood ducks were special,
my father love to eat wood duck, and no matter the transgression I had
committed (skipping school, et al) it was instantly forgotten if I walked into
the house with a wood duck in my game bag.
In the fall of 1983 I was older and
wiser with years of hunting under my belt. That year, southern Louisiana had a strong
thunderstorm system move over the state for a period of five to six days. In those low lying parishes, many areas
quickly flooded. A cool front followed
the storm after it passed and temperatures dropped quickly. A perfect combination for duck hunting. With
the fields flooded and harvested grain floating on top of the water, duck food
was easy pickings and the ducks were thick as thieves in my usual haunts.
Ithaca/SKB
Semi-Automatic Shotgun…
The morning after the storm passed I
quickly donned my insulated chest waders and hunting gear, grabbed that Ithaca/SKB and my army surplus ammunition belt that held my
ammunition. I was out the door on my way
to my favorite patch of woods in record time.
To my amazement when I rolled up to
the cow pasture that bordered that patch of woods, there was three feet of
water over the field, more than I had anticipated. It was flooded as far as the eye could
see. I was tempted to return home but
almost instantly I saw signs of duck activity.
Dawn was just beginning to break, it was cold, I was wearing the right
gear, had shotgun in hand with plenty of ammunition, and I was young. The decision was instant; “let’s go duck
hunting” I thought.
I stepped off the roadway and
entered the flooded field. That water was cold...let me assure you. The chill worked its way though that
insulated wader outfit quickly. My teeth
chattered a bit, but fortunately, by moving steadily, I achieved a balance
between too cold and warm enough to hunt.
I quickly made my way to the edge of the woods where field and trees met.
As soon as I got near the wood line, two teal broke off the water like they had
been launched out of cannons. I snapped
the butt stock against my shoulder and connected on the second shot, the little
blue/green bird neatly folding and smacking into the water. I waded over and claimed my prize and tucked
the still warm bird into my game bag. “One down, a few more to go” I thought to
myself.
I decided to try and rustle up a
few wood ducks. My strategy was to walk
slowly thought the waist deep water along the wood line and catch the ducks
entering the flooded pasture to feed. It
wasn’t long before two of the beautiful green headed wood ducks sailed right
over me… beginning to flare towards the water.
They hadn’t seen me against the wood line. They quickly landed about 20 yards from me
and I waited just a second before moving towards them. My movement was instantly detected and both
birds rose out of the water.
I was ready. Two shots rang out in quick succession and
two wood ducks splashed into the cold water.
I was happy. I had been hunting for
less than thirty minutes and I had reached my limit. I could return home and still make it to
school on time. I slowly waded towards
the floating ducks to claim them.
I reached out to push aside a
floating brown mass thinking it was a pile of leaves; my attention was on the
ducks. I didn’t want to lose them if
they sank. But, it wasn’t leaves I
pushed aside. It was a floating mass of
red ants, South Louisiana’s tiny insect terrorists. They quickly took advantage of long sleeves
and hitched a direct route inside my open top waders. I sloshed onward in blissful ignorance to the
impending mayhem that was about to happen.
How red ants signal to one another
to all bite in unison remains a mystery to me.
But anyone who has ever had the misfortune to experience a red ant attack
can attest to this mass communication system they seem to possess. They struck, and they stuck all at once. I felt the burning stings instantly and instinctively
knew what had happened. I had walked
into a floating pile of red ants and they were now inside my waders, biting me
on my chest and shoulders, and likely had plans to head south for more tender
parts unless I did something drastic. My
brain exploded into action. “Kneel!” I
thought, let the cold water enter the waders and it will freeze the little
buggers. “No”, I thought, that will make
it impossible to stand, and you might drown you idiot.” That thought was the end of thinking as the
second round of bites began. Thinking
time was over. I did the only sensible
thing I could think of. I stripped.
I was raining black and blue words
in the air around me as I placed my beloved Ithaca/SKB
in the branches of a nearby tree and began stripping off my clothes. In seconds I was standing nearly naked in
freezing waist deep water with ants covering my upper body, still in the
process of an orchestrated attack. I
didn’t stop to think lest I hesitate… I dunked myself into the freezing water
and scraped off the ants. When I burst
back up though the frigid water my skin was blue and covered with angry little
bites. A temporary respite I quickly
discovered.
Ants float. This was how I got in this mess in the first
place. I was in the center of a still
angry mass of ants and I probably was the largest land mass nearby. I looked down and could have sworn I heard
one of them yell “all aboard boys! He’s
back up!”
I hastily grabbed my shotgun and
waders and started sloshing the 200 or so yards to my car. I don’t remember how I made it to that
headland without freezing but I did. The
welcome warmth of the still hot engine comforted me as I turned the blowers on
full blast. I sat there numbed and
shocked by what had just happened. As my
now blue skin warmed, my nerve endings returned to full function and began
registering the hundreds of bites I had sustained. “It just keeps getting worse I thought.” I put the car in drive and headed home. Fifteen minutes later I was standing on the
carport at home. “Safe at last” I
thought. I slung the waterlogged waders
on my mom’s clothesline and the heavy waterlogged rig instantly snapped the 30
year old steel line. “When it rains it
pours” I thought.
I walked into the back door of the
house grateful to be home. As I entered
the kitchen in my underwear my father was sitting at the table eating
breakfast…alone. He said I looked like a
blue & red polka dotted wet fish.
Wet, shivering, I sat at the table with him and reached for the coffee
pot. As I quickly told him what had
transpired, from beginning to end he listened closely and nodded his head and
clucked approvingly …seemingly to comfort me.
“Boy, that
sure was an exciting morning you had Tom.
I just have one question.”
“What’s that dad?”
“Where are the wood-ducks?”
And that my friend is really the
rest of the story. I had to go back and
get those two wood-ducks I had shot and left in that flooded field.
When it rains it pours.