Have Gun, Must Travel
THE BLIND WAS tucked neatly into the treeline, yet
we brushed it in heavily anyway, something you don’t
normally have to do in Saskatchewan, which is why you
go there. Scouts reported a remnant mob of gun-shy
sandhill cranes staging in the area, and as light slithered
in across the wetlands a few hundred yards away and
started to turn the water’s surface dark and coppery,
black blobs appeared, stump-like in the shallows of a
marsh, most likely grass clumps.
Then the croaking started, gwa-a-a-wk, gwa-a-a-awk,
rising through the air and driving our blood pressure
right up with it. The grass clumps started unfolding their
wings and cruising our way. Smart, spooky, old prehis-
toric birds, cranes look down their long, shrewd discrimi-
nating noses at you like the snobby professors of avian
life preservation. We shot a dozen or so that got too curi-
ous, a bucket list thing. “The only way shooting cranes
could be more spectacular is if they burst into flames,” a
friend once chided. But they are far too delicious to wish
that, each precious and a grand prize.
This is why we travel. To experience the exotic, the
new, and to feel a soul revival of why things are interest-
ing in the first place. Fun, concentrated. Hunting cranes
and specklebellies and ducks and also learning about
Canada’s tribal system, adventuring with a local First
Nation chief on his heritage lands. Seeing old friends
and bonding with new ones. Laying in the mud with a
new friend and an old one, Charlie Holder of Sure-Shot,
who’d organized it, and long-time buddy Alan McClain.
Being with folks who get it and get you, and feeling rich
in the currency of life; and living. Hunter numbers may
be declining, but those of us who prevail in the lifestyle
are much more committed than the drop-outs, and more
adventurous. Sure, our strongest hunting memories are
the early ones that drew us to the life in the first place.
But surveys reveal WF readers have a high household
income. If you aren’t branching out it’s not because
you can’t. Yes, some of us (magazine types) have more
opportunity, but we can all escape. Here are a few of
my soul-sustaining mental flashcards born from chasing
feathers. At any time, I can close my eyes, and see:- Giant white eiders winging toward our layouts in
Maine, the biggest of all ducks, a species that is a grand
conservation success story...and getting to eat the lobster
and scallops from those same waters. - Venice, Louisiana. Flocks of hundreds of pintails
swirling, followed with giant softshell-crab sandwiches
in a place where huge tuna hit the dock. A duck guide
going barefoot while it was snowing back home. - Harlequins diving at the shot off Kodiak, so you think
you dropped them clean but learn it is a defense mecha-
nism. You missed, and they resurface just fine, laughing. - The first sight of rosy-billed pochards stealing your
breath, the big black Argentine diver that dices like a teal. - That first successful timber hunt, fluttering mallards
maple-leafing down to the blocks, the soft pop of our
sub-gauges, and picking up by 8:30. - Greaters by the hundreds landing 45 seconds after
legal light on the Shore, after staring at sandbars all day. - Grabbing at ducks landing on us in our layouts in the
pre-dawn of hypnotically beautiful British Columbia.
EDITOR'S CALL
© Skip Knowles