He took apart his duck call to show me the anatomy of calls. The soft whistling of mallard wings as they passed over the blind. He opened my eyes to the subtleties of waterfowling. I had never been duck hunting before as I was raised a quail and upland hunter by my family. Ken took me to his duck blind from when I was 12 years old until I graduated from college. I doubt he considered himself a mentor those many years ago and, if asked now, I doubt he would think what he did could be classified as mentoring. The waterfowling mentor I had was, well, the best. Lastly, and it’s an intangible, but a good mentor has eyes that “smile.” You’ll know those eyes when you see them. Rather, they are more of a coach, exposing you to many situations then offering subtle wisdom so you can make your own decisions.
YEAH DUCK THAT TIME SINK HOW TO
A good mentor is patient and doesn’t tell you how to hunt. A good mentor will usually be quick to tell you all the things they have messed up over their years in the marsh as well as teach you the etiquette of duck hunting. And, here’s the funny thing, the mentor benefits from this relationship just as much as does the mentee.Įach mentor is unique in both what they bring to the table and how they share it. I cannot stress enough the importance of a good mentor.
But I challenge all the up and coming waterfowlers to open your minds to living in the moment to enjoy the experience for what it is, an experience. I won’t fault any new waterfowler for wanting to shoot. To experience a moment in time with family and friends and create a memory to cherish for a lifetime. It was no longer about pulling the trigger and hanging ducks on a duck strap. I was much older and a father before I really started to know the true answer to the question of why I hunt waterfowl. Why? For the rush of adrenaline and for “grip and grin” photos after the hunt, that’s why. And I wanted my hunting partners to also shoot their limits. I wanted to shoot ducks and I wanted to shoot a limit. When I was in my teens and learning the craft of waterfowling, I’m not going to lie to you–it was all about the shooting. Ask yourself why you want to be a waterfowler and answer honestly The following are but a few of the things I wish I had known and taken to heart more than thirty years ago when I was young and thought I knew everything. I realized that while I couldn’t travel back in time to school as a teenager I could still pass along my experience to the next generation of waterfowlers.
“I wish I could send my younger self an email with a list of all I’ve learned over the last thirty years and somehow convince my young, stubborn self to actually believe it,” I joked out of the side of my mouth. “Yeah, and you know, we have about $300 of duck calls between us and neither of us has touched one all afternoon,” proclaimed Mike with a chuckle. “If I had known when I was 17 years old that it only took six decoys to have a hunt like that I would’ve never wasted all that money buying decoys,” I said, half jokingly. After we both dropped three greenheads in a matter of minutes we set our shotguns against a tree and simply watched the show until sunset. My hunting partner, Mike, and I stood near a clump of trees in the southeast corner of my marsh and watched flock after flock of mallards dive into our spread of six decoys. But it wasn’t until a duck hunt a couple of years ago that I had the maturity to really examine that statement. We have all heard it said many times, “If I knew then what I know now. With age and experience comes wisdom for this duck hunter, the ability to travel back in time would save a lot of trouble
0 kommentar(er)
