Earth Image Photography, Nature Photography, My Summer Office

5:30 p.m.-

Pickup trucks, boat trailers, and a blue Metro jammed side-by-side filled the boat ramp parking lot. I'd never seen half this many vehicles here before, even during summer's busiest holiday weekends. No one around. What's up? Impromptu Musky tournament?

I walk onto the pier. Wheat-colored reeds mix against red and gold and evergreen pine against the far shore. EZ rampages, freed after nine hours alone

"BOOM."

Ah, duck hunting opener. Empty sky, uninterested sun. Duck blinds materialize, television antennas peeking above the meadowy expanse of wild rice beds. Fluttery fabric decoys waving in the breeze. Shotgun blasts boom, though I don't see ducks flying or diving or dressed in taxidermical costumes, nor any other reason for bullets whizzing, other than discontent exploding from men who'd crouched too long in prayer finally fingering the trigger. Off to the west, hunkering in the marsh, a slab-board lodge large enough to sleep a dozen unconscious hunters. A camouflaged man walks through chest-high swamp grass, gun high in one hand like self-assured terrorists do for foreign television cameras. Throughout the mile-wide view I count twenty-five blinds. Gunshots issuing from around the point suggest there may be that many again down-river. At times the gunfire is so continuous it sounds like a Vietnam documentary.

What an asinine thing to do, shoot to kill ducks. These aren't digital ducks to be shot in Wal-Mart's foyer then reset with more quarters to kill more and more all night. Having never hunted, I have not nurtured the pleasure from expending internal energy and employment expense to kill live things just for fun. What madness. So how can I be critical? Easy. I don't want to be sympathetic and tolerant when bowling--or domestic discord--could more cheaply pacify a man's violent lusts.

A quacking duck flying high and fast lowers below the tree tops. Shotguns explode. Duck weaves. Guns blast, boom, pop. Duck tumbles out of sight. Men cheering "YEE-HAH" drifts across the marsh. Two hundred yards out a mallard dips, swerves, cartwheels into the reeds. A "BOOM" reaches my ears a moment later.

So does, "Helluva' shot, huh?"

"Yeah."

Three-year-old Brittany, on Sycamore Street back in town wets her pants and doesn't know why. Or why chicken noodle soup has dribbled on herself. Or why rivets just popped on the camper next door and why happy dolls cry.

A speedboat zigzags through the channel going fifty. Curving sharply through the turns, throwing up spray, a guy and his girl who mustn't know duck hunting season's on and they're unknowingly running the gauntlet. Maybe they're Greenpeace protesters making a point. It streaks past a hunter standing in his gunboat, gun held to shoot, doing nothing but staring dumbly.

The sun lowers. Ducks begin arriving in packs of fifteen and thirty, and fifty, circling high out of range. Hundreds of ducks filling the high sky, flapping and swirling in loosening formations, seeking rest from hours of flight. Every so often a lone duck breaks out from the hundreds above, glides low and depleted and settles down in the marsh without a single gunshot.

6:55-

An apparition's on the move. A tall clump of brown swamp grass glides five-mph two hundred yards out. A head pokes through the back as the duck blind turns in the strait. A man steers an outboard motor with his foot and peeks at his route through grasses held slitted. A canoe slides behind, towed by a rope. Three ducks whiz through. Now there are two.

7:05-

The sun has set. Motorized duck blind pulls up to the boat ramp with a middle aged man and a boyish nephew. Two Labrador pups jump out wearing camouflage suits. They circle and sniff EZ who's beside herself with ado.

"How'd you do?"

"For shit. We didn't get our blind. Somebody was already in there. Whatta 'ya gonna' do?"

"How long were you out?"

"All day. They won't be there before us tomorrow though, I can guarantee that."

Uncle Jerry explains that sundown is the legal end to the hunt. He's resentful of too many hunters still shooting.

"Wasn't much fun," says nephew, standing crotch-deep in camouflage chest waders. "Not much was flying. Such a nice day they weren't comin' in."

As he talks a single mallard zooms above the slough, back and forth, high and low, around and around as boat lights appear moving through shallows, verging together into the main stream, headed for here.

7:20-

Boats and canoes and messes of dry grassy weeds float waiting in the watery landing queue, a singlewide ramp not intended for multiple take-outs. Those waiting are subdued, politely waiting their turn. Dog shit is scuffed from a man's boot in the grass and pee is released on the bushes next door.

The ducks must know the hunt is over. Thousands fill the sky as far as I can see, gyrating, curling, twisting, like overblown locusts caught up in a whirlwind. They are safe now and seem to know it, but haven't yet calmed down from their daylong terrorized flights. Picturesque scenes of boats trailing slowly rolling wakes on violet smooth water quenches some of my tension. So does my contact with the real people who've been brutal with guns. And seeing hardly any psychotically brutish men among the insane. There are few outboard motors. Mostly it's small humble boats muscled by manual oars dipping, and canoes with well-trained eager dogs sitting beside men J-stroking real wooden paddles.

Camouflaged guys stand describing, "sighted woodies" and "the redhead we lost." The light dims, night rises fast. Boats and canoes are hauled out. One is carried with a dog in the bow--"too old to retrieve, but he likes riding along." New arrivals wait and watch from the water. Nobody is afflicted with hurry. A patient slow emptying of the flowage; far away lights moving silently through known grassy channels. A trailer is not cooperating and does not go where the driver tells it to. Two men run over and pick up the rear and set it back down aligned to the ramp.

7:40-

Tall lights and red lights and green lights hovering on mirror water. Nearly dark. Hunters continue to line up, tread water and wait. The narrow congestion looks like a weekend at Tijuana's border. A ten-year-old boy with camouflage paint on his face looks dazed and ready to sleep in the bow of a canoe. Pickup truck exhausts mix with men's condensed breath. A mist starts to rise off the water. Chains jangle, truck engines idle, boat motors murmur, winch ratchets chatter, but there is little other sound. A hushed bunch of men going about their work packing and stowing and drinking shivery beer despite dismal hunting.

Two men trundle an aluminum boat in a hurry. The one with the back end trots backward and approaches an open truck tailgate. His butt bumps the bumper hard. His buddy still pushes.

"Stop!"

The trouble is, backward buddy needs to somehow get the rear of the boat onto the truck back behind him. But himself is in the way and the boat is wide and heavy with hunter's equipment and not easily gripped anywhere else, but by the handles on the back.

"Stop pushing! Back-up, back-up!" he shouts.

His partner backs up. Stern man drops his end on the gravel and leans over and, groaning, holds on to his crotch.

"C'mon," says the other who sets his bow down and circles to the stern, picks it up by the side. The injured man dutifully straightens, lifts the other side of the boat and they shove it all the way forward, strap two bungies on the side and drive away.