Duck Hunting

It is 6:25am and I am sitting here waiting on some duck hunters to show up so I can collect their contract/liability waivers and then show them out to the hunting area. These guys are a little late and were plannng on getting here around 6:00am. Just a few thoughts:

1. These guys are hard core! They are coming out in the middle of what will likely go down as the coldest weather of the year and they said they are planning to bring a sledgehammer to break through the ice (if needed) so they can sit around in the cold and shoot a few skinny little mud ducks.
2. I am cool getting up at 6:00am to wait for them because 'early to be early to rise' fits in nicely with my "new years resolution(s)"

It is now 6:42am and I just came in from collecting contracts and $$ and showing them where to go. It is COLD out there! The cattle have frost on their hides and my fingers are having a hard time typing this even though I was wearing gloves and I was only out there for a few minutes.

I give the hunters a guarantee that if they don't shoot at any ducks, they don't have to pay. It is a fun guarantee to give because they are always asking about it when they first come out to hunt, but I have NEVER had to refund anyone their money. The fact is that the ducks come in to this lake every morning and if a hunter is dedicated enough to come out here and set up before first light, it would be hard to find a way to not end up shooting at some duck.

This year there has been about half the quantity of ducks there was last year, but from what the hunters are telling me, having any ducks at all this year is really something extraordinary. It may be the pricing (I only charge $50 per hunter per day) or it may be that the guys who belong to the high-dollar hunting clubs aren't getting the chance to shoot any duck at their club lakes, but I only posted one craigslist ad and from it: I booked out the entire season, developed a large list of backup hunters, and keep getting requests for next year to lease the place out "for the season."

In summary, it is real nice to make a couple hundred dollars before 9:00am (which is when they usually head out of here) and it is also kind of fun for me to meet all these different hunters and watch how differently they all operate. Last week the guys that came out didn't bring a retrieval dog and they were using our boat to retrieve their ducks and decoys. The problem was that there was a stiff wind and they looked like they were performing a comedy routine out there trying to get that boat to go against the wind. They finally gave up and used a lead line to manually pull the boat all the way around the lake. This week the hunters actually came out with a portable blind made of hay and I think these guys (or at least one of them) must know what they are doing. They were talking about the direction of the wind and ice-breaking like they do this all the time. I have a feeling the ducks are going to be in trouble this morning.

It is now 6:51am and if today is anything like the last few weeks, we should be hearing the first gunshot(s) within 10-15 minutes.

It is 7:07am and they just took their first shots. Good times!