Just Beyond the Treeline : Part 1

  Our stands have been stowed and the stories have all been told. The what weres and the what should have beens lay fresh on our minds in the midst of the reflections of another season that has come and gone. For some, the season brought success. For others, I suppose some regrets. No matter what the case, our daily countdown has begun to the coming fall where we can get back to square one, just mano y mano with that trophy that eluded us for some three months this season. Some of us spend nine months of the year preparing, scouting, and getting ready for the upcoming season.
  Some of my greatest finds have come shortly after season had ended during stints of small game hunting with my children. Some of my finds have been helpful, while others were a painful reminder of how I hard headedly stuck with a bad stand location. After a month or so, the what could have been woes are gone and preparation begins for next season.
  At least in my case, the single most factor that keeps me from the woods in summer is the fact that we have forty seven different types of poisonous snakes crawling around. There is nothing that spoils my day more than having to dodge a snake. I have a friend that was struck by a copperhead while scouting in mid July. Luckily for him, he was wearing chaps and snake boots. Of course, I know another fellow patron, while coon hunting, was struck in the forehead while walking along a trail at the base of a rock embankment. I haven’t found a snake proof hat yet, but if someone makes it I am sure to have one. Needless to say, I am a huge fan of clean trails going in and out of the areas I hunt, which in turn, allows me to visit several areas without leaving the ATV. I am far better at dodging snakes with 350cc under me. This is just another reason that I prefer to do my scouting in the colder weather.
  Small game hunting is an excellent time to explore new terrain. Deer season in north Georgia ends on the first day of the year, which means the second day of the year, we can be found trailing behind packs of hounds chasing rabbits in and out of the briar thickets. Small game hunters are rarely denied a right of passage from anything that grows from the ground, which with a few Band-Aids can provide useful information for later.
  This January 2nd was no different. We planned a hunt over on the lease where I had been deer hunting for most of the fall. We started in at the head of the swamp and moved in to my proverbial “honey hole” that I had been hunting. I told the crew that we would have to turn in shortly due to the fact that the scrubby trees were just too dense to pass through. Without giving too much information to which tree I had perched from, a friend of mine walked over to the scrubby trees and attempted to plow his way through.
  I had been answering the questions about the deer I had seen from this area, and I had to say that the numbers were rather modest from what I was expecting. Shortly through the conversation, our buddy had disappeared in the mangled madness and began to call back to us.
  “Are you coming?” he asked.
  “No, I think we will go around and meet you on the other side. I really don’t want to tromp into the middle of a brush pile.”
  “What brush pile are you talking about? Once you step through those few trees, it opens back up into a meadow of green grass in the corner of this swamp bed for a couple of hundred yards,” he replied.
  My heart sank. As I moved over and through the trees, I noticed it was just as he said. Tender green grass grew as lush as any food plot on the lease. The saw grass was about waist high with trails coming from every direction. Trails were on top of trails and tracks were inside of tracks. The edges opened up into a mature pine meadow with grasses growing like a pine wood pasture.

A Series of Unfortunate Events : Part 1

                                                                                                    After my first couple of seasons of getting my feet wet, literally, I set out go where the ducks are. I have a friend who has some family in Stuttgart and told us that we could come over to his place and hunt with him for free. I was all about some free so we planned to go the following winter. He had some great swamps to hunt and had access to even more flooded timber if we didn’t have any luck on his spots. We loaded up, four of us in all, and headed for Arkansas.
  We arrived after about an eight hour drive on Friday evening. We walked in and introduced ourselves, the ones that wasn’t family, and were immediately invited in to the table where his wife had prepared gumbo. I was impressed already. I had gotten myself into a strange place and was at the table eating in less than twenty minutes. If that isn’t hospitality then I don’t know what is. After dinner, we unloaded our gear and headed up to our rooms to turn in. Now take into consideration that we don’t have a dime in this hunt yet. We had hit the gold mine of hunting.
  Morning came and we drove down to meet our guide for the morning, which turned out to be a friend of the family. I was ready to be adopted at this point. We walked in to his camp where there was a hot fire and breakfast waiting. We waited around there for a half or so, and then we loaded up into a wagon type trailer that was pulled by a small tractor. As we were loading our gear, the teenager with our group made it known that he had to use the bathroom so he began untucking and unbuckling all that had been pulled up and stuffed in. He was gone for twenty minutes or so, but then was ready to leave. I noticed walking out of his camp building that the temperature was a balmy five degrees with a stiff wind to boot. In case you are from Arizona, that’s cold.
  We made it to the flooded timber and had a short walk in after getting the details of the morning’s hunt from our guide. As we slowly made our way in, the youngster went down and went down hard. I had his jacket in my hand and was doing all I could do to keep him out of the water. It was of no use. One arm broke free of the jacket and then the other arm slipped out, and then the splash. One thing we all found out was when it is that cold outside the water will actually warm you up, provided you’re not submerged in it. We also found out that if you are submerged in the water, you get significantly colder very quickly. His father took him back to the camp to get dried off and get his clothes as dry as he could. I learned when we got back that day that if you place wet socks on a wood burning heater, they will still burn.
  The morning’s hunt was really a disappointment as far as a numbers standpoint, but no one really cared because we were standing in a swamp in the duck capitol of the world. How bad could it be? About mid morning, a single ring neck flew in and cupped just in front of the blind. We never figured out who killed the duck but we did figure out who shot, all of us. That poor bird didn’t have a sporting chance. That would be the only duck in hand for the morning hunt.

A Series of Unfortunate Events : Part 2

  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

All in a Day’s Hunt

  Several years ago, I thought it would be an adventure to strap on a pair of waders and head into the mucky marsh swamps in search of a limit of ducks. There are not a lot of video on this one so you pretty much have to wing it so to speak. I’m pretty good at winging it and decided the first thing I would need is a pair of waders. I found a pair at a local sporting goods store, and to my surprise, was fairly inexpensive. Later I would find out why. They had everything from brush resistant waders to thin fishing waders. I opted for the thin waders to go aver my hunting clothes. After all, water doesn’t poke holes in waders. Nonetheless, I had a pair of waders and equipped my shotgun with a choke tube suitable for shooting steel shot. I was on my way. After purchasing license and stamps and shells and socks and a half hearted duck call, I was ready to go on my first duck hunt. I really didn’t want to invite anyone just yet being that I wasn’t sure of what to expect. After all, if I was to fall in and drown, I would hate for someone to be there with me to see it so I went alone.
  A friend of mine had some swamp land just over the hill from where my father and I had been working. I inquired to him about trying my luck in his swamp and he graciously agreed. I went down to the edge of the swamp during the middle of the week to try and get an idea of where I wanted to set up and try and get a pathway mapped out in my head of how to get in to where I wanted to be. As I arrived to the edge, twelve to fifteen mallards flushed from the back of the cove where I was planning to be. Everything was coming together smoothly. I had found a spot with ducks and also had found an entrance in that seemed to be a path cut out in the water. It almost looked as if someone had been there before me and had taken the trees out of the walkway for easy access. All I needed to do was follow the bushy tree line all the way in to the back of the cove. I had seen all I needed to see. I was ready for the weekend.
  The weekend didn’t come soon enough as it rarely does. That Friday night, I gathered my gear and got ready for what was to surely be a great first timer duck hunt. Saturday morning came and I was up early getting my gear loaded. I made my way to the swamp about an hour before daylight so as to get set up while it was still dark. I put on my waders and extra jackets and hat, and headed for the swamp. There was a brief walk through a grown up field to get to where I needed to be to enter the swamp. I noticed on the way in that it was a little more difficult to walk in the waders than it first had seemed in the sporting goods store.
  I made it to the edge of the swamp and started in slowly. I could feel the fallen logs under my feet, but I stayed steady in my pursuit. Taking one small step at a time, I made my way to the opening that would lead me to the back of the cove. The water level was manageable. I was around two to three feet deep and making it just fine. All of a sudden, I felt my left foot get extremely cold. I had stepped over a beaver hewn tree that had been chewed down when the water levels were lower. Chewed to a nice sharp point, my waders found the edge which made about a two inch gash directly in the side. That was the exact moment that I began to appreciate the brush resistant technology and was really wishing that I had bought into it. There was nothing to do but keep my direction and move forward. I made it to the bushy tree line, and hanging on to the limbs, started down the opening through the water. After a couple of steps, I noticed the water level had gotten up to be about waist deep. On the next step, I realized why there was an opening through the timber and bushes. My left foot slipped. I tried to catch myself with my right foot by taking another short step. It was no use. I was sinking like the Titanic. I had stepped off into an eight foot wide creek channel. On my way down, I knew instantly that this wasn’t going to be a good thing. Turns out, the channel was around seven feet deep. I know this because I made contact with the bottom. I am roughly six foot two so you can do the math and figure out where the water level was in accordance to my head.
  I pushed my way back up and reached out and grabbed for one of the bushy limbs and it snapped. I went down again. This time, I grabbed for the base of the bush when I surfaced and made it to the edge of the channel and back up to a manageable level. I had a drain system now from the earlier experience with the cut down tree. The water exited my waders down to about knee high. By now it was breaking daylight and I had spooked everything from the swamp back to the river. I wasn’t about to let a near drowning experience dampen my chances at a limit of ducks. I proceeded on by a different route to the back of the cove and got set up. Wet and cold, daylight came, and as shooting time approached, I noticed that the ducks were starting to dive bomb into the swamp despite all the commotion I had caused.
  With shooting time here, the first two ducks came in. I raised my gun as the ducks cupped their wings and shot. The first duck folded. I shot two more times but missed. Within seconds, more ducks flew over the cove where I was set up and after circling, they flew in as well. Three more shots produced two more ducks. I reloaded and soon fired again, this time, at a pair of woodies. One of the woodies fell and splashed over to the edge of the swamp. Upon gathering my four duck limit, I noticed that all my ducks were drakes. What are the odds of that? I had taken my first hunting trip and had folded four drakes within an hour.
  Back at home, my wife was preparing for the birth of our second child which would come soon in the spring. As we did with our first child, she picked out one name and I picked out the other. I had been trying to come up with something but was drawing blanks. This was a pretty big decision and I knew I didn’t want to blow it and give my son a horrible name. I pulled up into the driveway and was admiring my harvest when my wife met me on the front lawn.
  “Have you thought of a name for our son yet,” she asked?
  “Actually I have,” I responded.
  I was dead in the water. I was supposed to be out to spend some time alone and think about my decision. With the morning’s events, that never happened. I had to come up with something fast. I made the best decision I could, and so we derived at my second son’s name, Joshua Drake.

Braden Arp