Were we hunting duck or snipe?
Did he ask me or did I invite myself to my first, and my last, duck hunting expedition?
He says I invited myself. But I suspect he invited me because he knew all along how he would get a good laugh out of me trying to be a duck hunter.
Frank was the only guy I ever dated that my brother Roy liked – probably because he was the only duck hunter I ever dated, and the only one who ever asked my kid brother to go hunting with him.
My dad and brother and most of my uncles and male cousins on my mom’s side of the family hunted and we all ate a lot of wild game. They went after deer, squirrel, quail, dove, ducks, geese and even frogs. They didn’t shoot frogs, they gigged them, but they still carried guns to ward off the snakes that liked to look for frogs in the middle of the night, too. I used to shudder when the guys would talk about shining their flashlights on the pond banks to spot the frogs and keep from stepping on any cottonmouths.
Sometimes my mom and brother and would spend the night with my Aunt Rena and cousin Shirlene while my dad and Uncle Johnny and cousin Lenford went frog gigging. When they got back early in the morning with a towsack full, the women would fry up couple of skillets full of fried frog legs to serve with hot biscuits and white milk gravy.
If any of the girls in the family hunted, I don’t remember it, and I had never considered it. Riding horses was my favorite outdoor sport, and my ornery pinto, Amigo, made sure that just catching him every time I wanted to ride him was a sport – for him.
But then this handsome duck hunter encouraged me to tag along with him and his best hunting buddy, Bill Schenk, one day. He even offered to let me drive his jeep if I went.
Except for the part about getting up before the crack of dawn to be on the Arkansas River before the ducks started flying, I decided that it might be fun.
Since it’s wintertime when it’s duck season in Arkansas, my dad told me to be sure and dress warm. He even loaned me his heavy, all wool, Navy issued pea coat. So I got up that morning and pulled on a long-sleeved shirt and sweatshirt and my heaviest pair of jeans. Then I put on two pairs of socks, my dad’s rubber hip boots and his pea coat and waddled out to Frank’s jeep looking like the Michelin Man.
Frank started grinning right then, and that was only the beginning. When we met Bill at the river and he got a look at my garb, he started grinning, too. Bill already had the decoys out on the water so all we had to do was sit in the blind and wait for the ducks to fly by and get shot.
Somebody must have forgotten to tell the ducks the plan, though, we waited and waited and waited…but didn’t see a feather or hear a quack.
That didn’t seem to bother Bill or Frank a bit, however. They just sat in the blind drinking coffee and grinning and enjoying the peace and quiet. You can’t talk or move around in the blind when you’re waiting for ducks, see. So we waited some more, quietly, until eventually I imagined that even Bill’s Chesapeake Bay retriever, old Jake, must be as bored and wanting to go home as I was.
Finally, as the sun was starting to heat up all my layers of clothes, Frank had mercy on me and said we could leave just as soon as I helped bring in the decoys.
Thankful to at last have something to do, and eager to please my new duck hunting buddies, I waded right into the river intending to get all those decoys rounded up loaded so I could get on with my day.
But just a little ways out in the water my hip boots started feeling like they were made out of lead. There was sand or mud or something holding my boots down and I started swaying back and forth trying to keep my balance.
As I began an unstoppable headlong plunge into the water, I heard Bill giggle. When I finally managed to stand up and immediately fell backwards he and Frank were both laughing. That time as I struggled to right myself in my waterlogged coat that now weighed about 200 pounds, they were laughing their heads off instead of coming to save me from drowning. Bill was actually ROLLING on the riverbank he was laughing so hard.
Finally, Frank came to my rescue and helped me back to shore. Then he brought in the decoys while Bill tried to go back to grinning at me instead of laughing at me. I was too wet to make them take me to breakfast and too mad to drive the jeep home. And I never even got to see a single duck.
From then on I let my brother hunt with my boyfriend. I just married him and gave him three daughters, and two sons to take duck hunting, instead of me.
Frank (left) and our son Morgan (right) with
my brother Roy (center) and his sons Andre and Pat
several years ago.
Linda Seubold, editor of Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine, can be reached at lindaseubold@efortsmith.com. Read her archived columns and articles online.
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