The Hunt of a Lifetime

The Hunt of a Lifetime

It was the day after Christmas and I was practicing with the goose call I’d opened the morning before. The phone rang and I yelled, “I got it,” to my mom as I ran to pick it up. “Hello;” I answered secretly wishing that it was a girl from school. My butterflies settled as the reply I got was “sup dude,” It was my friend Jon, he wanted to know if I could come over and shoot his new .22. I went and asked my mom if I could. She agreed to give me a ride as long as I picked up all the wrapping paper that was left scattered from the morning before. It was the fastest I’d ever moved as I ran about picking up every scrap of paper that I could find. Mom finally approved my clean up job, and we were off to Jon’s.

As we pulled into his driveway Jon ran out to meet us, .22 in hand, he was ready to shoot. I hopped out and thanked my mom for the ride. We decide that our best chance of finding something to kill would be at Jon’s family farm. Jon went in to get some bullets and before long we were headed across the neighbor’s field on Jon’s four wheeler. We got to the farm and parked the four wheeler by the shop. There was a twisting gravel road that led to the creek and fields below. We began walking down the road and as we rounded the last corner I grabbed Jon by the shirt and pulled him back. “Geese,” I whispered into his ear. He nodded in understanding, and we both slowly poked our heads around the corner. We looked at each other and turned silently, heading back to the shop. We immediately found Ken, Jon’s dad and told him what we had seen. We asked if he would take us hunting the next morning. He thought about it for a bit, but decided he needed to work. We called my dad, hoping that he didn’t need to work. He told us that he needed to work too. Jon and I sat down on a bench in the shop, bummed out that we weren’t going to get to go hunting. After a while Ken was walking by and turned, saying, “hey you guys are responsible enough, why don’t you go hunting by yourselves.” We looked at each other, this would be our first hunting trip alone. Little did we know, this would be the hunt that would never leave our memories, igniting a passion for hunting that will never be extinguished.

There wasn’t much sleep that night as we sat awake in Jon’s room, planning out every detail of the next morning. I sprang to life as the alarm clock sounded. Jon was already half dressed as I pulled on my waders. We loaded all our decoys in the back of a gaiter and headed for the field. Over night a fog had set in. You couldn’t see the stars and visibility was only about twenty feet. Right as we got to the field it started hailing. Big chunks of white ice falling so hard that they stung and left welts. We pulled our parkas tighter and tightened the drawstrings on our hoods, doing all we could to hide from the painful hail. We stopped instantly with a thump, and I slammed into the dash. We had hit a sink hole, the gaiter was stuck. We were only a hundred yards from where we needed to setup. We decided to carry our gear the rest of the way.

We trudged through the ankle deep sloppy mud for what seemed like miles. Finally we were at our spot and I heaved my load on the ground. The wind began to howl across the field. Now the hail was coming sideways and we had to look down to keep the stinging pellets from leaving welts on our faces. We loaded our guns and set them on a bale of hay that was laying in the field. We began setting out our decoys. The geese on one side in a patch of tall corn stubble, and the ducks to our right in a puddle that was slowly forming. We had about half of them out when I heard it, the soft whistle and fluttering wings that I knew was mallards circling, ready to land. I dropped the decoy that was in my hand and raced for the guns. I picked up a gun just as the ducks emerged from the fog within twenty feet of me. I threw the gun to my shoulder, and at this second I realized that I had Jon’s gun. It was to late to switch now. I looked down the barrel and found a drake in my sights. A flash emerged from my barrel and the duck fell to the ground. As I pumped the gun I swung left and found a hen that was turning to fly away. The instant I pulled the trigger she