154 Northwest Sportsman AUGUST 2019 | nwsportsmanmag.com
THERE’S A LOT to this mentoring thing- a lot more than we have space
here. Calling skills. Shooting skills.
Blind placement. Camouflage. Safety.
Retrievers. Decoy selection. That’s
just ducks; then there are the geese.
Also, boats. Cleaning. Cooking.
It will all come in time, if your
mentee wants it bad enough. Good
days. Not-so-good days. Rain. Cold.
Wind. Early mornings. Late nights.
High water. No water. Sweat lines.
Crowded public puddles. Skybusters.
Heathens. Discourteous individuals
disguised as waterfowl hunters.
Sooner or later, you’ll run into it, and
so will your new hunter.
And this is where your experience
comes into play. Your patience. Your
maturity. Your rise above the rest.
Ethics, those qualities you display
when no one, absolutely no one else,
is looking. How you conduct yourself
afield is how this new hunter is going
to conduct himself or herself, possibly
throughout the whole of their career
as a waterfowler. As an outdoor
enthusiast. And as a future mentor.
You owe it to them, as well as to
Mother Nature, to be responsible. To
show respect. To speak your mind
while knowing when to bite your
tongue. To be humble. To be firm.
You want pressure? I’ll give you
pressure. As a mentor, there’s a lot
riding on you. A whole lot. According to
the Delta Waterfowl article mentioned
in Part I of this diatribe, there were
only 998,000 active waterfowlers in
the United States in 2015. An active
waterfowler, if you’re curious, is
defined by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
as a duck/goose hunter who went
hunting once that season. Uh-huh, I
said once. By now, four years later, I’m
sure that number is lower. How much
lower? I can’t say, nor can Ms. Google.
What I can say, undeniably, is
that every person you get involved
in waterfowl hunting and, by
default, waterfowl conservation is a
tremendous step in the right direction,
that step being the continuation of
what we ’fowlers hold most dear. NS