The two coyotes were licking their chops and were about to attack the only unarmed member of our hunting party! It was like a scene out of a bad horror film called Killer Coyotes. I looked at Jep and realized he was oblivious to what was going on behind him. I jumped out of our makeshift blind and ran toward the coyotes. One of the coyotes took off running, but the other one ran about twenty feet and stopped. It turned around and started growling at me. It looked at me like, “Hey, you want some of me?” I raised my shotgun and shot it dead. I had planned on shooting only ducks, but it’s a bad move when a coyote decides it wants to fight a human. Once it stood its ground and said, “You or me,” I wasn’t going to take a threat from a wild scavenger.
It was a prime example of what happens when animals become overpopulated and lose their fear of humans. The lesson learned: don’t bring claws and teeth to a gunfight.
I will always view humans as being superior to the animal kingdom and will continue to manage their habitat and population until I see animals pick up a weapon. It is a dangerous thing to view an animal as having greater worth than a human or even God. It’s troubling to see people deny the existence of God and elevate the importance of animals above humans. Romans 1:21–23 says: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.” This type of thinking leads to immorality and impurity in the face of God. Romans 1:25 says: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
We have a list of priorities in the Robertson household: God, people, and ducks—in that order. We trust God’s order of things, and while we love animals, we value human life as the most sacred on earth.
Scouting is another important part of duck hunting. You have to understand the fly zones and patterns of ducks and what species of ducks are migrating in your area. You look for discoloration in the water and feathers to see if ducks have been on your property. Whenever you see one feather, that usually means there were ten ducks there. If there’s food around, you look to see how much of it has been eaten. You can get a pretty good idea of how many ducks were there without even seeing one. We’ll usually go to the blinds at night, and we’ll use spotlights to walk through the water to see if there’s been any disruption in the vegetation. If we see signs of movement and feathers, that’s where we’ll hunt come daylight. Since deer season falls in the middle of duck season in Louisiana, I usually carry a rifle with me while I’m scouting, in case I see a buck. Even when I do see one, I don’t usually shoot it because I don’t want to disturb the ducks. It has to be a big buck—or a tasty-looking doe—if I’m going to shoot.
Shortly after we returned from the Platte River in Nebraska, I scouted a few of our duck holes on my dad’s property. I wanted to see what kind of ducks had gathered on our land while we were gone. On this particular day, it was cool and crisp as it got close to sunset. As I sat in a deer stand waiting for nightfall, I was counting mallards that flew over my head. Meanwhile, there were fox squirrels scurrying in the trees around me looking for acorns, while groups of wood ducks waited in the water for the squirrels to drop acorns. A few minutes later, fifteen wild turkeys walked in front of me. I thought to myself, Man, this is paradise. As I soaked in my surroundings, I heard the sounds of footsteps in shallow water. A majestic eight-point buck walked right in front of me. I raised my rifle and fired. The buck hit the ground. My dad was in the woods with me and heard me shoot. As we loaded up the deer, I shared the details of what I had seen with my dad. We both agreed that there is nothing better than the beauty of the outdoors. It was about as perfect a day as I’ve ever had in the woods.
Other days in the duck blind haven’t been as perfect. Over the years, we’ve hunted in all types of weather conditions. We’ve hunted in hurricanes, rainstorms, and, well, poop storms (we’ll get to that in a minute). Regardless of the weather or circumstances, I’m rarely going to skip a day in the blind during duck season. I can only remember one day when I didn’t get out of bed to go hunting with my dad—and that was when I was a kid. When my dad tried to wake me, I rolled back over and told him I didn’t want to go. As I lay in my bed over the next couple of hours, I heard the volleys as they were shooting ducks. I felt sick to my stomach each time I heard the guns fire. I vowed I’d never skip a hunt again, and I haven’t unless I was out of town or severely ill.
About the time Phil set out to film the first Duckmen of Louisiana video in 1987, there had been a really bad ice storm in West Monroe, which was kind of rare. It was so cold that a lot of the water on our property froze, so there was nowhere for the ducks to go. We climbed into our trucks and headed south to find the ducks. When we arrived at Lake Maurepas in South Louisiana, our guide took us to a hunting camp that was located about eight miles into the swamp. As we made our way to the camp near sunset, there were so many ducks flying overhead that duck feces started hitting the boat like it was a hailstorm—that’s what we call a poop storm! The sound of all those ducks was like a roar. The ice storm had pushed all the ducks south. It was the most ducks I’d ever seen.
The next morning, we called in a group of about three thousand ducks! They funneled into our decoys like a cyclone. It took them over thirty minutes to land. Hundreds of ducks landed in front of us and swam to the edge of our hole, and then more would land in the vacated areas. We sat in stunned silence during the entire event. Finally, Phil whispered to us to be careful because we might kill more ducks than we needed with stray shot, since there were so many of them and they were so close together. My dad thought he saw a rare duck and without warning broke the silence with a gun blast. The roar of the ducks getting up was deafening. We only shot once per hunter and had our limit. It would have never happened if we hadn’t been completely concealed in our blind. It was one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen.
At the start of teal season in September 2008, Hurricane Gustav was churning off the coast of Louisiana. It was a category 2 storm and caused billions of dollars in damage in Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands. When the storm made landfall near Cocodrie, Louisiana, on September 1, it drove most of the teal population north—right back into our flyway. We realized there were going to be a lot of teal on our property, and we weren’t going to miss the chance to shoot them—even if driving rainstorms and high winds were coming with them!
The day before Hurricane Gustav was supposed to arrive in West Monroe, I drove to my parents’ house so I wouldn’t get stranded in town. The next morning, we had a difficult time getting to the blind because there were so many trees and power lines lying over the roads. We eventually made it to the blind, where it was raining sideways because of eighty-mile-per-hour winds! We ran out of shells because the wind was blowing our shot off course! Even though those were miserable conditions, it was one of the most memorable hunts of my life.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to chase down a wounded duck that day. What a lot of people don’t understand about hunting is that if you shoot and hit a duck but don’t kill it, you’re legally obligated to make an attempt at retrieving it. Over the years, I’ve become a better retriever than our dogs. It’s an entirely different set of circumstances when you’re tracking a wounded duck. I look for feathers, bubbles or ripples on the water, or anything else that looks out of place. You don’t actually look for the duck; you look for a trail and signs of where it’s headed. I get into “Stilker” mode and chase the trail, and it usually leads me to the duck. I would estimate that if I go after a downed bird, I bring it back 99 percent of the time. I have a treasure chest full of memories in which someone lost a bet with me on whether I would return with a downed duck. These days I have to give very favorable odds to make a bet happen.
Phil has always said
I’m better than a dog at retrieving wounded ducks. During one hunt, Uncle Si shot a mallard drake, and it took off charging after it was hit. The duck went flapping across the water and was out of sight in a matter of seconds. The most important aspect of duck retrieval is speed. I jumped from the blind and was running wide open in hot pursuit, and our dog was swimming behind me. I must have followed the duck for more than a mile. I was running in my waders, which were getting wet as I kept falling into the water while jumping over stumps and trees.
After about a mile, I heard the dog yelp behind me. I didn’t know if it had been bitten by a snake or hurt itself on a jagged limb. The dog actually suffered a heart attack because it was swimming so hard. I was going as hard as I could go, the dog was going as hard as it could go, and the duck was going as hard as it could go. A couple of guys from the blind rescued the dog, and I kept going and found the mallard drake. I found it hiding in a brush pile on the bank. It took me a couple of days to recover from that retrieval, and unfortunately, it cost me a dog. The dog survived, but its hunting career was over. Retrieving is one of the reasons why I shoot a tight choke. I don’t like crippling ducks; I want to either kill them or miss them. But every once in a while, you’ll clip one, and the chase is on.
One of the reasons concealment is so important is because animals live in the woods and humans only visit the wild. Animals make their homes throughout the woods. Just like I’m alert to someone pulling up in my driveway or walking through my yard, wild animals are highly sensitive to trespassers. During one scouting trip at a beaver pond on Phil’s property, I saw the biggest beaver hut I’d ever seen. It was probably thirty feet tall! It wasn’t a very cool day, and I was kind of hot from all the walking. For whatever reason, I decided I was going to crawl into the beaver hut to see what was inside of it. I started trying to nudge my way into a bunch of different holes in the beaver dam, and I finally found one that was big enough for me on the back side of it. I was amazed at how the inside of the beaver hut looked. Compared to the chaos on the outside, it was like it was furnished on the inside.
As I was breaking limbs, punching holes, and digging into it, I heard something growling! I turned around and there was a thirty-pound beaver standing about three feet from me. It was on its hind legs in the kill position. I remember thinking, Man, I’ve got to get out of here! Fortunately, I escaped from the beaver before it could get its teeth into me. It was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.
A couple of years later, I found out an angry hog is even worse than an angry beaver. My buddy Mike Williams invited me to go hog-hunting with him on a cantaloupe farm. Wild boars were destroying the cantaloupe crop, and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries gave the landowner permission to have hunters kill the hogs. They even let us chase the boars and shoot them from the back of a truck while the game wardens watched the proceedings from a distance! Now, I’d never hunted hogs, but a few of the guys I was hunting with claimed they were experts. We shot one or two hogs apiece and then chased a 360-pound boar into an adjoining cotton field.
My buddies convinced me to go into the overgrown cotton field and attempt to flush the hog out into the open. About a hundred yards into the thick brush, I heard the hog grunt. The hog was so close to me that when I put my scope on it to shoot, I couldn’t tell if it was its front end or rear end! I fired my gun. Unfortunately, I shot the hog in the rear, which only made it madder! The hog turned around and charged toward me. I turned and ran out of the cotton field. I felt its tusks clipping at my ankles as I ran. Fortunately, I stayed ahead of the hog until we reached the cantaloupe field, and then to my surprise the hog fell into a heap. It was dead. I looked at my buddies and they were laughing and rolling on the ground. I thought it was a very strange response to my almost getting devoured by a vicious wild hog. I didn’t know I’d lost control of my bladder during the chase!
In my opinion, one of the most frightening verses in the Bible is 1 Peter 5:8, which says: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” As a hunter, I can imagine nothing worse than trying to take on a lion. For whatever reason, people tend to view the “evil one” as a fictional character dressed in red with a pitchfork. That type of description of Satan doesn’t come from the Bible. John 8:44 describes the devil this way: “He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Revelation 12:9–10 depicts Satan as an evil spiritual being that “leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”
I think everyone will agree that there is evil in the world. The good news is that Christ defeated all aspects of fear, death, and evil by His death on a cross and triumph over the grave. Hebrews 2:14–15 says: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
The evil one uses camouflage and temptation to lure his prey. But Christ defeated the evil one, and as we surrender to Christ we are safe from being devoured by evil against our will.
As a hunter, I’m aware of how powerful the use of deception and camouflage can be. It’s surprising that the evil one’s tactics are usually veiled in righteousness. Second Corinthians 11:14 states: “And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” The best lie is the one with the most truth, and Satan is the master of using the truth to disguise evil. Even a broken clock is right twice a day! The evil one uses human selfishness as his weapon and offers up a steady dose of pride, pain, and pleasure to keep us from putting our faith and trust in God. First Corinthians 10:13 states: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
God always provides Christians an escape from any dangerous situation, which is more than I can say for the ducks we lure into our decoys. God overcame a lion by becoming a lamb and giving Himself over to death so that we may live a life free of fear. Our job is to keep our focus on the Creator and enjoy the “created things” from the right perspective.
When dealing with any enemy to our faith in Christ, my favorite passage of scripture is 1 John 4:4, which states: “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
13
SPRING CLEANING
GETTING READY FOR THE HUNT
For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
—JAMES 3:16
Growing up on the Ouachita River meant that our lifestyle changed with the fluctuation of the river. We often had to park our vehicles far from our house and then boat up to the front door. One of the reasons my parents were able to purchase two houses and seven acres for such little money—I think they paid twenty-six thousand dollars for the entire property—was that the land was located in a flood zone. My dad actually embraced the Realtor’s disclosure with excitement.
The good thing about the flooding was that it was great for the fish spawning in the springtime, and it offered new territories to duck-hunt in the winter. But the bad thing was that our material possessions often broke free and floated downriver. We took turns as lookouts for anything of worth floating downstream. People who live in flood zones are nicknamed “river rats,” and I think it’s because they have to act a bit like rats during high water.
When the water rose on the Ouachita River, creatures without fins and gills climbed to higher ground, and the first place they seemed to go was our houses. The culprits that caused us the most misery were ants, rats, and snakes. One particular day, when I was only a kid, I heard shotgun blasts near my grandmother�
�s house, and I went next door to investigate. Then another shot rang out! I looked a little more closely and saw a big fish snake in the water, and whoever was shooting at it had done so with a surgical strike. As my grandparents’ porch came into view, I saw that my grandmother was the one doing the shooting! She chuckled and asked me, “Did you see that shot?” I couldn’t help thinking that maybe the reason my dad is such a good shot had something to do with what I’d just witnessed.
As I said earlier, some of the best memories of my childhood occurred in my grandparents’ house. It was extremely upsetting when a great flood in 1991 destroyed their house and everything that was in it. My parents’ house was also badly damaged, and I saw firsthand the power and destruction of rapidly rising water. We had to bulldoze the remains of my grandparents’ house, but my parents were able to replace their floors and remodel their house. My parents live in that same house to this day, and it’s where my entire family gathers for meals on frequent occasions, as some of you have probably seen on episodes of Duck Dynasty.
During the flood of 1991, a great friend of mine, W. E. Phillips, and I fished the ditches and bridges of a major highway while the water rose. One of the positives of a flood is that fish swim up with the rising water to feed on the fresh food sources and can be caught like no other time. Fish will gather up at drop-offs and humps during the flood to ambush bait fish. A perfect example of a drop-off where fish gather is a roadside ditch.
One day, W. E. and I parked on the side of the highway and launched our boat in a ditch. Our fishing spot of choice that day was a bubbling culvert right under a fifty-five-mile-per-hour-speed-limit sign. When we started fishing at daylight, there was normal traffic on the road. But as the day went on, water came crashing over low points of the road and traffic stopped when the road was closed. We had set a goal of catching fifty-five largemouth bass under that sign, and we were paying more attention to reaching our goal than the rising floodwaters. As you have probably already realized, determination is a Robertson trait that is an asset most of the time. But this time, not so much!
Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl Page 16
