Stringing Decoys, a tale not an instructional

[tupe]

Stringing Decoys


I can’t pinpoint the exact year when it happened, but somewhere in over the last quarter decade it has become a sort of ritual. No matter where I live, or when that season may open, I always find myself stringing decoys the night before the opener.

This year, like a few in the past, I have done so; even knowing I would not be hunting the following day. Up here, way at the northern end of the Mississippi Flyway the Wisconsin season open at noon today. And though that border is a scant twelve miles from my front door, I won’t be there among the throngs that cover every inch of wet ground to fire the shots that mark the start of the season.

I tell myself it’s the crowds, and the horror stories of hole hogs, and downwinders, of all night camp out to secure spots, only to have some yahoo set up 25 yards down the shore at 11:55 AM. But the truth, as is often the case, has a bit more to it than that.

It’s not that noon openers are that foreign to me. I found in the field notes of my late father mention of days long past when even the hallowed ground of my home state of Mississippi rang in the season with a noon opener. And there is a part of me that wonders what it must be like in the small towns around the local marshes when city officials, upon the timiming of synchronized watches ring fire and civil alert sirens to alert hunters that the game is afoot. The tone harkening back to the long forgotten days of horse driven dog drives for deer or foxes echoing across the land.

In truth it is that here in the land where I have resided for the last few years, opening day just isn’t the same. With no camp or season group of friends known as a duck club, the night before opener is generally spent in my home, a New York vision of an open loft apartment, though it overlooks a quaint town square reminiscent of a Rockwell painting.

But still, I was waist deep in cast-off, worn lines and new brainstorms of the perfect new rig as it dawned on me last evening that this is now a full part of my sacred ritual of the coming of the season, my last in this land so far from home, and my friends with whom I share the wonders of the Mississippi Delta.

Back home, so many seasons ago, the ritual always played out the same. After a big steak dinner a fire was kindled in the giant heart of our camp. Even if that meant, as it often did, that we had to kick on the AC just to keep from running ourselves out of the house.

Bellies full, weary, but excited, we would all gather around the hearth and start the process. Each member generally took up one part of the task, one cutting away old, worn cord, making sure to salvage weights, another cutting new cord. One set would be rigged with shallow lines, for old cypress breaks and bean field and another longer, much longer, usually in hopes that the mighty river would soon be on the rise and warrant the debate of length, 12, 16, 20 feet or more. The rest of the crew would take up the chore of tying the lines and weights, wrapping them around keels and separating the river rig from the shallow rig into large and small sets, “boat rigs” and “pack ins”. An assortment of decoy bags scattered before and around the hearth, some in service since I was a pup, other yet to be christened in the duck weed sloughs and fast currents of the Big River.

The decoys too painted a picture of years gone by and seasons to come. A veritable timeline of decoy technology. Game Trap brands setting along side new Flambeaus, next to an always shrinking number of old Victor D-9s, banked by a mass of what ever brand had been the best bargain in recent weeks at out local, independent sporting goods stores. And among the mix few but unmistakable, a loose bakers dozen of magnum high dollar fakes, gifts from friend of my father as their way of thanking him for his hospitality and time spent among the bayous and backwaters of the Mississippi Delta.

In the years before his presence was so sorely missed at the camp, having succumb to age and decrepitude my mother always thought his hunting must have contributed to, we, the “young guard” would ply my father with a few after dinner nips of his favorite brandy mix, on the pretext of coaxing him into telling the old tales, that doubtlessly would have come forth even without the liberal application of celebratory libations.

And though we all new the stories by heart, and had many of our own, we sat enthralled each year, listing to the old man, a master story teller as he would again take us back in time. Carrying us on his rebalances from the days of no “hard roads” and ferry crossing, row boats to cross the big lake, through his days as a river hunter and up into the more recent seasons when we had been granted the honor of becoming characters in his stories.

At some point, as his words carried us back through time, Dad would pause and request that one of us light a simple coal-oil lamp, which always sat atop the color television. He called it “The Nostalgia Lamp” and his request always came with a reminder to use “pups” of the day before electric lights, indoor plumbing and outboard motors had become a part of the camp we now shared with him on the banks of the old river oxbow.

The old man always lent a hand with the work, as the brandy flask passed around the room, pausing longer in his weathered hands with each passing tale. And though we out strung him ten to one, no one kept score. Nor would we have dared to offer to let him lave out of the work. His work was slow, in no small part due to the constant urging from one some one of us in turn prodding him to tell our own favorites of the countless stories he held.

Dad always stayed up a bit later than he knew he should on the night before opener, but usually left the new guard to finish the work, with a brief announcement of wake up time and his nightly farewell. “Glad yall got to see me.” He would say as he drank his nightly Alka Seltzer, filled a large glass of ice water and climbed the stairs to retire, making certain that he was the first up to the bedrooms and therefore set the air far colder than most of us could stand, until in his decline that thermostat shifted and we sweated through the nights, enduring what we knew he needed to be ready and comfortable for the excitement of the day ahead.

Once left to our work we each in turn took up our pale attempts at equaling his story telling powers. Telling our own tales of years gone by and times shared together as the new kids or with the Grand Old Man of the camp.

When the last of the rigs were ready, the newer members of our clan generally retired, if a low stakes poker game had not been set in motion. Twenty dollars in chips per man, a cheap buy in for such valuable entertainment, the big winner walking away with the money he would use to fill gas tanks or buy lunch after the opening hunt.

As the crowd thinned it usually fell to me and one or two of the longest standing of the new guard to straighten up the camp, and make sure everything was loaded and ready for our morning departure. Short debates took place each year, sometimes after listening to the old weather radio for potential shifts in the forecast, or perhaps about last minute changes of plans and whether or not to save a bit of time by hitching trailers in the cooling night air so as to have everything ready for “wheels up” as dad called it when the appointed time came.

Without fail, I was always the last to sleep, or at least to try to. Stoking the remaining coals of a more often than not unneeded fire, and tossing on a slow burning log to nestle by in the morning.

My last task always seemed to be the sweeping up of last years snips and bits of decoy line, dried duck weed and the sorting of extra weights and line, set aside or left abandoned as the work at hand had finished and the call to sleep had come. No one ever slept too well that first night in camp, but we tried, if not for want of rest, then in vane hope that some slumber might help pass the hours less noticeably, so that we could start the season anew, our decoys freshly strung and our hearts and minds filled again with the ritual of the night before the opener and all the hope and anticipation it brings.

So the tradition continues. From Illinois to North Dakota to my home lands of The Detla. Needed or not I always have on hand at least a few decoys to be strung or re-strung on the night before the opener, or first hunt on my travels to chase waterfowl in other parts of the world. And so it shall continue, so long as my bones contain the memory of the past and my longing for the days gone by and memories to come.


(c)Bradley W. Ramsey 2007

[duckkiller]

nice story, thanks for sharing

[gator]

beautiful.......glad you're coming home and miss that old story tellin site you had at one time.

gator

[chevy01234]

Thank you for sharing that, I look forward to reading more in the future!

[QUACKERS]

Tupe, great read man great read

[waterfowlwidowmaker]

Nice.....Enjoyed the read..

[tupe]

Thank fellas. I am thinking of starting my old stories back up again and maybe even putting them into a book. You never get rich as an outdoor writer but this kind of stuff is just not represented in the outdoor media much any more. So, I may start a virtual fireside for everyone to send stories too and to share my own.

Can't wait to get home.


Tupe

[marshmaniac]

Really enjoyed your story!

[duckkiller]

I wish you would start posting your stories back up here, I like reading yours as well as others

[Double R 2]

Excellent, Bradley. Very much enjoyed.

[crackhead]

WOW!!!

thanks

[JMCMILLIN]

good one

[MagDaddy]

Very nice.... Enjoyed it....

Thanks.

[Double R 2]

check your pm

[Bankermane]

Nice. Don't forget you have to charge the spinner batteries now.