"Duck hunting the Mississippi river flood waters"

It was finally here.  We had been waiting most of the winter and finally the back water was out in the Mississippi river bottoms.

Kenny Wilson, Larry Farlee and I were finally going to get some duck hunting using the boat blind and not be limited to one spot in a blind in the slough.

The night before our wives fixed sandwiches, Susan made her famous brownies and we were ready to eat if we did not get to shoot at anything.

We were up way before dawn and had boat and decoys ready to go.  We wound our decoys with staging line fixed where we could vary the depth from three to twelve feet. 

We unloaded below the hill near Indian Camp creek and headed out to Roy Dillards field and put out our decoys.  Not un-predictably the ducks, wanted to be East of us so we decided to move our spread.  Now none of us were lazy but we decided that no further than we had to go we could do it an easier way.  Farlee and Wilson will say it was all my idea but there was no desent.  We very slowly picked up our decoys but leaving the lines and weights over the side of the boat and in the water. 

Needless to say this led to a calamity.  The resulting huge glob of lines, from maybe three or four dozen decoys, looked to us like an eagles nest and that fact was mentioned.  In fact we never forgot it.

We managed to salvage some of the line and rigged up new ones and headed for the trees along Indian Camp creek to lay another spread of decoys.

We lit the propane heater to warm our sandwiches and poured a cup of coffee to warm up, for we were a little wet and cold. 

In a little while a deer was spotted off our bow swimming for its life.  It was headed toward where we put in but after passing by us it made a very long circle and circled completely around our blind and headed back in the original direction.  We were all tortured at his misfortune but we were helpless to do anything but watch.  After clearing the canal it veered to the north and headed in the direction of Obion creek.  We had no idea if it made land or not.  Even though deer are famous swimmers this one was pitifully exhausted and we hated we could not help it.

Funny thing about hunters they will try to help an animal in distress if they can and may have hunted it the day before.  We hurt when they suffer.  I was just hoping it made it to the hill behind Sugar Kings place.

We were so intent watching the deer we did not notice that ducks was working our decoys.  The boys thought there were a whole lot of ducks flying that day and there were a good many but I was not that excited as I could remember days when I was their age and the sky would be black with ducks down there.

We had a successful hunt but to be honest the memorable part was hurting for the deer and the huge wad of decoy staging that we carefully placed in a tree to keep someone from getting hurt with it.

To this day if we cross Indian Camp Bridge in a vehicle one of us will exclaim, “Look` at that big eagle nest in that tree down there.”  The staging line is no longer there but our memory lingers. 


published in The Hickman County Times Vol 3 issue 29
07/17/17