Clider Day 3, take a youth hunting!

I was a little nervous taking Cathi's son hunting, I was actually surprised she let him go.  Chase comes into the office after school sometimes, but we've only spoken a handful of times. He takes Peat out and throws the ball for him and every once in awhile he'll swing by my desk and talk about hunting.  He's 13 and pretty quiet around adults at least, and for some reason it seamed like a good idea to invite him out for an evening hunt.

Mom made sure he had a lunch packed when they met me in Kingston, complete with home made banana-nut muffins, packaged in a bright pink bag.  After a quick stop at his friends place for borrowed waders we were headed for Hidden Lake, neither of us had been there but supposedly it's the place to slay ducks around here.  After a few minutes in the car he started talking about bow hunting, turns out he's a stone cold certified killer, got an elk last season, with a bow, at 15 yards, oh and it was a giant bull!

Chase, future enemy of Greenie

We unloaded and headed out toward the little channel that leads to Hidden, it's about 20 feet wide but the grass chokes it down to about eight or nine feet for most of the mile and a half journey.  About half way out the channel we saw a kayaker picking cranberries, most likely because he wasn't man enough to kill a limit of ducks.  As we pulled into Hidden it became obvious that all the guys in airboats, that had been talking about this spot also have blinds on their boats.  We scared off a large flock when we pulled in but there was no where to hide except on the opposite side of the small lake.

We headed over and got to blind building, $42,628 later we had a pretty good hide.  Employing many of the DaFolder methods we were able to expertly hide ourselves from the empty bog.  It was strange, everything was floating, it looked like land but you can feel it moving.  This floating mass covered a few square miles, with little holes that were of unknown depth spaced out every so often.  I checked out a few holes and I couldn't reach the bottom with our boat oar.

We settled in with Chase running the jerk rig and myself on the duck flutes.  It started pretty quiet but as it got closer to dusk the birds started moving in.  Not in huge numbers, but it was nothing to sneer at, everything wanted in to that spot on the other side.  Chase fired a couple shots over the course of the hunt, trying to scare up anything but with no real results.  Might be time to pick cranberries.

Between us we managed to fill a gallon freezer bag, cranberries are a strange plant.  It's the smallest stalk with giant berries hanging off, the plant is so small it looks at first like the berries are just sitting on the ground.  After limiting on cranberries it was time to pull blocks and head back.  This was a two man job in the mucky, bottomless, bog.  With Chase picking up the blocks and myself fumbling around with the motor we got them up in about twenty minutes, pretty respectable considering the soup.  The muck was so thick that the boat had to be pulled around at times because the motor couldn't move it through the layer of scum about six inches down.  You had to pull from the edge of the bog on the floaty stuff, everything took alot of extra effort.  I'll need to get a hook of my own soon, after that experience I can't imagine pulling the blocks by myself in those conditions.  T.J. Hooker will have a new partner soon, names?

At last we were on our way out, Chase turned out to be a better spotlight operator than I was too.  Once we got into the channel, the full moon was so bright we could turn the lights off and cruise by moonlight.  We loaded up and headed back.  This was only Chase's second time waterfowling and he said he had an awesome time, even though we headed out empty handed.  I was surprised at how mature he was, we had a couple birds come around and he waited patiently for them to commit.  No sky blasters in this camp, the future generation of ethical hunters looks safe for now.  Because we are the best,

Monica cleans cranberries, I clean ducks.