Lifestyle Archives - Page 2 of 2

By; Justin Hunold

When we are introduced to hunting at a young age we generally grow up with a solid idea of what we need as far as gear goes. For those of us lucky enough to get to see the sunrise over the water and through the reeds from a childhood, waiting for the whistles of the wings and the calls of overhead ducks and geese, we have a great idea of what we need to have to go duck hunting. We likely started with hand me down wares, and by adulthood have worked into our dream gear.

Unlike most of the past, there is an up and coming population of hunters diving into the field that are past the hand me down stage. These hunter’s have taken on the moniker of “Adult Onset Hunters” and they can often afford to go right into their dream gear and do. But how would they know what’s for show and what’s for go. This leads people to duck duck go things, and at the end of the day one question rings true: What do I need to start waterfowl hunting?

This could end up being a series because of the depth and quantity of answers possible, but we are looking at someone who has decided to pick up waterfowling for the first time and needs to start a gear drive from scratch. There are levels to every game, but we will be trying to run at about a mid to higher end level for quality, and more than likely price. Also focusing on one hunter and assuming they can walk in or have a boat, canoe or kayak. So, what does an individual NEED to try and shoot a duck or goose in their first season or so of concerted effort.

Shotgun- Obviously, a shotgun and ammo are the meat and potatoes of what makes hunting different than hiking, wading, paddling or boating. I would suggest a 12 gauge repeating shotgun to start. If the shooter is uncomfortable with recoil or a larger gun a 20 gauge would be a great option, but a bit more limited. If I had to choose one choke to run for most waterfowl situations it would be modified. I like a fiber optic bead and generally a 3 inch semi auto. Black or Camo synthetic stocks fit the bill. Your gun will also need a sling of some sort. That about does it for the “Needs”.
Ammunition- When hunting waterfowl you need to shoot non toxic ammunition. This has been the case since 1991 and will probably never change, rightfully so. The lead ammunition gets ingested by waterfowl and other wildlife like Eagles and kills en masse. I would suggest steel shot in sizes #2-4 for ducks and #2 and larger like B or BB for Geese. 3” shells will be plenty as long as your gun will handle them. Almost every new or semi new shotgun will. There are also more recent to the market non toxic loads made from Bismuth or Tungsten alloys. These are closer to the mass of lead and will certainly deliver more kinetic energy and penetration. These shells cost more per individual shell, but maybe cost beneficial when having to shoot birds multiple times with steel comes into play. If I can make a suggestion here it would be to grab a few boxes of target loads and some clay pigeons, or better yet go to skeet or sporting clays course and break that gun in, along with yourself. Get to know your gun and what chokes are good for what ranges. This will change with steel shot but in general more practice is better.
Waders– Waders are important. You can shoot ducks without them but you’re really limiting yourself. A person with a pair of waders, shotgun and ammo can feasibly hunt ducks in a lot of places and situations and not need anything more than those things. Waders are what gets you in the game, duck hunting is all just a level of how wet you are and waders keep half of you dry. The half that would definitely be wet in most hunting circumstances. You will wear them hunting, putting out decoys and picking up birds. I like boot foot, breathable waders if budget allows, but for most a good pair of neoprene waders fit the ticket. Boot foot keeps your boots attached when stuck in deep mud. Plus, boot foot is generally less expensive than stocking foot waders with the added expense of a wading boot. I would get a good set of brown or camo waders. When in doubt brown is a good color to go with in the world of duck hunting. It just blends everywhere.
Decoys- We can pass shoot or jump shoot ducks and skip decoys all together, but that’s not what you had in mind when you pictured yourself duck hunting. You picture your camo covered face looking up at ducks cupping up coming into land in a well placed decoy spread. Decoys are arguably more effective as a duck magnet than calling, and fake friends can bring birds that were passing by closer into your effective shotgun range. I would start with a dozen mallard decoys. You will need decoy line, weights and a bag to carry them in. The line and weights attach to the decoys to keep them from floating away and the bag is there for transporting and organization sake. Decoys can range from a few bucks all the way into the hundreds. The more realistic the decoys the better off you will be, but there have been a lot of birds killed over “economy” decoys and this is where I would start. A spinning wing decoy is another great addition but not a necessity. There are wind operated models and mini models that cost a little less than the professional grade decoys. Either of which would be a fine addition to the spread, but aren’t absolutely needed.
Clothing- A good waterproof and windproof jacket is a start. Camo is great but a simple brown will work as well. All hunting is a game of layering. When you have a camo or brown outer layer you can layer whatever color you need under it for temperature regulation. This means that red fleece you love to wear can go under your camo jacket for extra warmth, just make sure the red isn’t showing. I would say a hood isn’t necessary but is a good option too. I like a camo or drab baseball hat when I can get away with it. The Brim is nice since I will be looking up most of the time. When temps dip I leave the hat on and put a winter hat over it. Two sets of gloves. I like a good set of wool gloves for most of my hunting. Wool insulates when wet. The other pair are elbow high decoy gloves. These are worn when setting and picking up decoys. They can also be a lifesaver when it’s truly cold and you forgot to bring any other gloves. A facemask is optional if you choose not to wear face paint. But one way or another camo your face. Your face is one of the most unnatural sights a bird can see coming into a decoy spread. Plus human skin shines, so keep that to a minimum.
Calls- If I were to choose one call to hand a first time duck hunter it would be a drake whistle. These are often a horn shaped whistle that can imitate a Mallard Drake, Widgeon, Green Wing Teal and Pintail. They are easy to learn, and don’t freeze up. Understatement in calling is often better than over calling. And drake whistles fit the new hunter, understated, if it ain’t broken don’t fix it mold. They are also generally not expensive. From there I would go with a double reed duck call. They tend to be easier to learn with and have a bit of rasp to them that sounds good to you and the ducks. I generally blow a single reed call, they have a wider range of volume and tones available. They are a bit tougher to learn on, but once you get them you can blow any duck call well. There is a very valid argument to learn a single reed call first, because you will be a better double reed caller once you do. In any case, please watch videos and listen to professional callers and live ducks to learn how to call. Practice at home, in the car, but never while hunting. Until you have calling down, and you sound like a reasonable version of a hen mallard, don’t take your call to the woods and water. Stick with that drake whistle and you’ll be surprised how many ducks you can call in.
Blind Bag- You will need a blind bag of some sort to keep your gear organized and have a centralized location for your stuff. There are backpack style blind bags and duffel bag style. I prefer a duffel style most times although each has their place. If I were hunting standing timber, pass shooting or jump shooting I would always use a backpack style. I like the duffel style because much like a pack mule load distribution matters when walking into spots. I can sling a gun on one shoulder, blind bag on the other, and a decoy bag over both. I couldn’t do that with a backpack style. What goes in the bag? We have a list of things for your blind bag listed here.
Licenses, Stamps, Tags- As far as I can tell most content outlets virtue signal and say this first, but I think my readers are smart enough to understand that these things are first and foremost. Plus, each state has different requirements so check your local regulations and verify that just like after using the can, your paperwork is in order. If possible try to keep your Federal Duck Stamp every year. They have a culture all their own.

That’s it, with these eightish things you’re on your way to duck hunting. I would suggest taking a peek at my mindset into detailed duck hunting. There are other things that you will certainly need, like a headlamp, reasonable binoculars, water and snacks but again I believe that you are smart enough to piece that together. Take your time to learn your different duck identifications, this is super important as bag limits are different between different sub species. Black Ducks and Mallard Hens can look a lot alike for instance, and too many in your possession of either one is illegal. Also watch some videos on duck behavior or go see it live and in person in your hunting area. The more you watch waterfowl and take in what’s happening and what they sound like the less your gear will matter.

At the end of the day, you will buy some things you don’t need but maybe you want. You will dive into jerk rigs, and confidence decoys, acrylic calls, different duck species for decoys, swamp stools, the list goes on. I say this in full confidence, because if done right there are few styles and types of hunting that are as fun and as rewarding as waterfowl hunting.

I am a solo hunter most of the time, but waterfowling is always best with friends and family. I would make a concerted effort to align with some local friends to hunt with, or even someone far away if you’re willing to take that adventure on. Will I hunt ducks by myself, yes. Do I prefer it, no. So in my opinion the very best investments you can make into your waterfowling career are first in yourself, to learn as much as you can, and second into a hunting partner because ducks or not, my hunting partners have become lifelong that rank among my closest family and friends.

By Justin Hunold

When I made my southern migration in my early 20’s to see what North Carolina had to offer, the move came with the best intentions to understand and embrace as many southern traditions and ways of life as my thick northern blood could find tenable. We all know about sweet tea, grits and NASCAR. Fish Fry? Country Music? Pickled Okra? Dove Hunting? Those are all easy things to check off the list early on. Yet, there was a southern hunting tradition that I was pretty steadfast on not embracing : Hunting deer with dogs.

I walked into my first morning shift as a Team Lead in the Hunting Department at a major big box outdoor store and I met him. There stood a middle aged man, shorter in stature, well kept, green shirt tucked in and jeans without a wrinkle, Merrell slip on shoes on his feet. I would later learn that this was the only style of shoes I would ever see him in with one exception. “You must be our new Yankee” with a true southern accent, stuck out his hand and said “I’m Barry Ridenhour, I run the morning crew”

After some short intros to the morning crew “ That there is Spider and Raid Man” turn the corner into the ammo aisle “ This here is Larry Beaver, we call him Beav” Barry pulled me aside and said “Listen here, You don’t go F$!@ing with me and I won’t go F@$!ing with you.” He poked my chest a little harder than he poked his own while saying that. This was the most honest anyone had been with me since I moved south. The sentiment was as serious as the poke was hard. Barry had retired from tree work to then spend another couple decades as a bricklayer before starting his retirement job of retail supervision. His callused finger brought that life to a point on my sternum.

I closed every night and Barry opened every morning, so all in all our interactions were brief but normally really filled with humor. Barry had a quick wit, and a very different perspective than mine. He was normally done around 2:00pm and I began my shift at 1:00pm so we had about an hour of overlap a few days a week. In about 3 years of working together we had only one real cross interaction. And the sentiment of the chest poking conversation was at the heart of the matter. Other than that, mostly laughs and picking on any poor coworker that walked by. I could, and maybe someday will, write a story about this man who might have been 5’4” but lived life like he was 10 foot tall and bulletproof.

Some things I had to get used to when it came to deer hunting in the south were the heat of the early season, corn feeder and piles of feed, dodging snakes and spiders, gas lines, thick thick woods, no snow, and always hunting from an elevated position. None of these things were normal to me, neither was the hard scrabble living the deer piece together in the different areas I was chasing them in. I had never hunted a beanfield, small chunks of woods in completely urban settings or box blinds that have names like “The Hotel” with deer coming to bait as reliably as a Timex Ironman tells you it’s time to get out of bed. Set it right and it works all the time.

As I got adjusted to these things I started paying more attention to the culture of deer hunting around North Carolina.Although the Piedmont was now rich with whitetails this wasn’t always the case. I ran into a lot of people who bird hunted, doves, quail and waterfowl and then occasionally deer hunted, or were just getting into deer hunting. Hunting has deep roots and rich traditions in this area, but whitetails were fairly “new” still. With all of my coworkers chasing whitetails, ducks, geese and other small game we were constantly sharing pictures and stories of our adventures. Barry was no exception.

As the first fall we worked together began to take hold I got my first peek into hunting deer with dogs. Barry belonged to a club “out east”. So,on his days off Barry would drive the almost two hours before daylight to be at the club early and hunt deer with the people he shared the club with. He didn’t own a deer tracking dog, but the guys that he had been hunting with for 30+ years did. And that was part of the story and tradition of the club. A lot of the Dog Handlers didn’t bring a gun to the game, just the dog. Barry just brought a shotgun and buckshot. He would tell me about the big buck his buddy shot, or the doe days where everyone got a deer. Those stories were at the time, different and altogether more enticing to me than even my own. I was hunting over bait, and we sold more feeders and corn than I could shake a stick at. Could hunting deer with dogs be a more traditional, wholesome, and sporting way to chase whitetails than what I was doing?

One Sunday that following summer I went to Barry’s house to work on my car. That again is another story altogether. Barry invited me into his house, and there in the living room with bows tied around their necks were two shoulder mounts. The bows were Barry’s wife, Kay’s way of getting them pretty enough to hang and as interesting as that notion is, I wanted to know the story of the bucks. They were both small, not much to speak of for antlers. I knew for certain these weren’t Barry’s biggest bucks, but for the man who at one time owned the fastest Cadillac in the world, these were the ones he chose to display with pride.

Barry told me those were the first whitetails he had ever shot at his club. In fact they were the first whitetails he had ever seen while hunting years ago. Mind you he had hunted his whole life and these deer were taken in his adulthood. He told me the story about these bucks creeping through the black jacks and pines with dogs in tow. Between that story and the previous fall tales I was intrigued.

“Hey, you think I could tag along with ya some time.”

“ Hell Yeah Dawg”

It was early when I met Barry in the parking lot at work. I got in his Chevy 1500 and we started the trip to get to the club. It was abusively early, like 3:30 AM. It would take us about 2 hours to get to Rockingham. That name might strike you as familiar, that’s because of the world famous speedway the ROCK. So, there in a Red Chevy I sat eating my Bacon and Biscuit sandwiches, drinking my coffee, listening to the original world’s most interesting man on our way to hunt deer over dogs, in the shadow of a world famous speedway that was once a crown jewel of the NASCAR schedule. This was as southern an experience as anything my carpetbagging mind could wrap itself around.

We pulled up to the camp which was a pavilion with a trailer next to it. Barry Jumped up on the tailgate of his truck and shouted out instructions. “We’re doing the cornfield hunt first”. All of the set ups we hunted that day had a traditional name. The plans for those hunt’s weren’t decided that morning, the night before or even the weeks prior, these setups have been decades in the making. So we rode over to the corn field. Shotguns and stools ready to go we set up in an “L” shape along the field with safe zones of fire understood. I was told to shoot any buck, if it had horns I was to shoot. You see, the meat gets shared between everyone, any buck would be split between everyone there. This was proven when one of the sitters shot a spike buck almost immediately when the dogs took to the field.

The dogs we hunted over were varied and of no particular lineage as I could tell.

With the first run being made in a cornfield I wasn’t able to really see what was going on with the dogs. These dogs weren’t any fancy breed or particular lineage that I could tell, so much as a mix of beagles and other hounds. They were small. And able to weave their way through a lot of this very tight, thick, snake filled, sand bottomed cover.

We set up on a sand road, I was sitting on my dove stool looking into the woods, trying to see through the black jack oaks and mixed pines when I could hear something coming. I got ready, hoping to see horns, but instead a big doe came to the road I was sitting on the other side of. When she hit the road she bounded over it and easily hit the other side without touching the manicured sand. Then she trotted out of my life at 7 yards.

A few minutes later I heard bells and some barks and one of those short statured hound mixes came sniffing the exact path that doe had taken to the road. Then I watched the damndest thing, that dog went to the spot where the doe took off for her leap and walked across the road in a direct line and nosed down in the exact spot she impacted on her first earthward step. He then followed her off into the brush on the other side of the road. I have no clue if he was intuitive enough to guess the path, if his nose was good enough to track a gap that big, or if he just remembered every hunt on that road, but that dog missed nothing. And as fast as they both appeared, that dog disappeared into the sandy, snake infested, spider filled forest.

A friend and coworker, Trey, had been hunting with Barry before. So, when I told Trey I was going he said, “ You’ll have fun with Ol’ Barry, just remember if you can hear the dogs the deer is already past you.” He wasn’t wrong. That is exactly what happened with that one encounter. And just like when I had hunted birds or small game with dogs, hearing their howls and barks coming through the country was as exciting as seeing the deer. There is something primal about the sound of hounds and the unknown outcome that that report signifies. It was strange to have the idea of these two things, the sight of the game and the sound of the dogs having to be in conjunction but slightly detached. It’s like wrapping your head around fraternal twins, you know they go together, but you can’t quite understand how that all works.

We kept rotating through different sets, or hunts as Barry would call them, The Corn Field, The School House, The Race Track. These were traditional pushes, and everyone understood their place and job. We were set up on some thick low pines with grasses mixed in when I heard the blast of a shotgun in the distance. And after the dogs filtered through and were gathered up we went over to see a nice 9 point buck that had succumbed to the 00 buckshot.

A Semi Auto Shotgun is the only tool for the job when it comes to this style of hunting

Eventually, we went back to the camp, which was a trailer and a pavilion. With a few deer hanging up from the pavilion, I watched as they used a rock, rope and truck to skin the deer. Making standard caping cuts around the hide, the “butcher” then inserted a rock just under the skin where the necklace cut rides over the spine. Then with the rope that was tied off to the truck’s trailer hitch, he tied that rock into place. This appeared to be a similar way as you would affix a roc to a stick when you were trying to make a spear as a kid. Once the knot was deemed tight the truck drove forward and the skin all came off in one piece. From there the deer were pieced out, with the shooter getting some choice cuts but each buck got spread out through the club members piece by piece. And at the end of the day, this made sense to me in a way it wouldn’t have when I got in Barry’s truck earlier that morning.

In a crazy way I went from having no attachment to this style of hunting, in fact I’ll go as far to say a disdain, to an admiration for everything it represented and an understanding of the culture that surrounded it. This understanding is slight at best but it is a tangible line on the grains of my inner vinyl record that is deer hunting. The dogs were shared, the spots were shared, the jokes were shared, the culture was shared, and so were the plenties of the harvest.

As I grow older I find that I better understand the ins and outs of different and wrong. We often do things differently that someone else deems as wrong. Those lines are subjective. In the hunting community we need to start taking in the experiences of others, try to understand that other hunter. You are both a part of a dying breed, we are wolves. So understand that although you might view someone hunting by legal means that you don’t agree with as wrong, in the end likely they are just different. There aren’t enough wolves left to start making members of our pack outcasts. Even when those members use a pack of real dogs to pursue whitetails.

And by the way this was the only time I saw Barry wear anything other than those damn Merrells