The following day brought the same numbers and the same opportunities. With only one hunt left, our family guide decided to make a few phone calls and got us hooked up with another guide which had several flooded rice fields and no one to hunt them. We were in. We met at the edge of the fields where we would meet up with the president of the club that leased the rice fields. He unloaded his four-wheeler and began taking us in one by one. I decided to go first and help set up some of the decoys when we got there. I will never forget how my heart sank when I was told that I had to ride on the front rack. He was in an extremely big hurry. I found this out right away. I held on as tight as I could with the same grip used by a professional bull rider and with about the same expectations of falling off. That four-wheeler bucked and twisted, but I managed to stay on for my eight seconds.
  It didn’t take us long to get the decoys placed, and then he was off to retrieve another poor soul that thought riding would be better than walking. In the mean time, I walked over to the blind, and on one end, was a small opening roughly two feet by two feet. Without hesitation, I crawled in and set up on the end as to be out of the way of the other hunters. As the next hunter arrived to the blind, I gave my instructions for entrance to the blind. He did just as I did. Now when the third hunter showed up, we took a turn for the worst. He told us of how he really didn’t think he could hold on to the front rack any longer and how the driver had to steady him so he wouldn’t fall off. As he approached the blind, we told him to crawl in just as we did. He let out a sigh of disgust, but bellied up to the opening and started in. Upon getting halfway in to the blind, his waders got stuck on one side. As he tried to free himself, the other side of his waders caught. Now he was stuck and I mean stuck. We unsnapped his waders and pulled him in while his waders slid off, but nevertheless, he was in.
  The rest of the group showed up with the dog, and I noticed the dog making a direct path to the opening where we had entered the blind.
  “No way,” I thought to myself. “I know we didn’t just…..”
  I looked at the other two, and we silently agreed that there had to be more to this than we were aware of. Just then, the dog shot in through the opening, or dog entrance and the rest of the hunters walked over to the end of the blind and lifted a small piece of rope. The gate to the end of the blind opened and the hunters walked in. All three of us simply stared at the gate and then at one another.
  “How did you get in,” the guide asked. “This gate looks like it hasn’t been opened.”
  “Just like that,” we said, not wanting to reveal our secret ignorance.
  The rest of the afternoon, I spent answering the silent looks of disgust and embarrassment from my fellow hunters. We never told anyone any different so don’t you go telling anyone either. That turned out to be the highlight of our hunt. The ducks were circling extremely high and there hadn’t been many of the “new” ducks, as the locals called them, coming in to the swamps. Just as it is called hunting, the experience was all we thought it would be, even though we didn’t take limits of ducks that we thought we would. It was true southern hospitality at its best and I am forever grateful for the stories that came from it. I don’t remember taking the shots that I took over the weekend, but I will never forget the look on their faces as we watched the end gate fling open. It was priceless to say the least.
Braden Arp