Youth Duck Hunt

My son and I got up at 4:00am on Saturday and drove down to Eagle Bluffs along the Missouri River in Boone County for the first day of the two day Youth Duck Hunt in our area of Missouri. My son turns 16 on October 30, so this was his last chance to do the youth hunt.

We had with us a friend of my son's and his father as well as another friend of mine who is a trout biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation, not to mention a waterfowl hunter of long experience.

My son was one of the last to draw for the choice hunting sites, but I think we ended up with the pick of the day. It was a little tough to walk into, and the slough we crossed had a mucky bottom, but we got set up and waited for 6:59am to roll around. We took the sound of shotguns all around as our cue, and the two boys went to work while the adults coached.

The teal were still in abundance, and the boys both took their limit (6). My son had 5 before the sun came over the horizon, and was in danger of getting his limit in the first half hour. The other boy was a little slower, but he caught up after sunrise. Both filled out their limit before 8:30am and we were off to breakfast (and the job of cleaning the catch once they got home).

The two young men were pumped, and if truth be told, their fathers were just as proud. The MDC biologist's son did his youth hunt a few years earlier and he welcomed the chance to help initiate more youth into the sport.

I have really appreciated the way hunting and shooting have worked in my boy's life, and the way we have been able to move our relationship into a different phase. In both hunting and trap competitions our kids, for the moment, are out there on an equal basis with the adults and are held to adult standards, and that has to be good for their development into adulthood. It certainly helps foster a sense of responsibility. And now he is an "adult" as far as the Missouri Department of Conservation is concerned because come this weekend he will have to buy a hunting license along with various options and Federal Duck Stamp.

Show-Me State Games 2008

The Show-Me State Games are underway in Missouri. This three week event began last weekend and covers pretty nearly the full spectrum of sports from cycling to shooting to archery to triathlon.

This year my son, who has enjoyed trap shooting for a couple years now, was encouraged by the owner of one of the local rod and gun clubs to enter the games this year. I was more than happy to help make it happen, and he shot in the Youth Male division (16 and under).

The trap and skeet events use the "Lewis Classes" in which all the contestants shoot, and when the final results are in, they are separated into classes by score. Each class has its own set of medals. The upside of this is that the top shooters don't take all the medals, allowing the less experienced contestants a reasonable hope of placing in their class. Ironically, though, this often leads to a situation where if a contestant broke one less target, then he or she would have taken the gold in the next lower class instead of not getting a medal in the higher class.

Well, Liam broke 35/50 targets which resulted in a bronze medal in the "C" class (there were four classes today) -- not bad for his first time in a structured competition. He was in a squad with four adults and they welcomed him and treated him as a equal. It's nice to see how all the shooters -- male, female, youth, adult -- competed together. The importance of adult role models cannot be overrated here or in any other aspect of life.

Liam has one more year in the youth division, and at age 17 he will be considered an adult for competition. We watched some of the other squads shoot and were impressed with the level of skill shown by the men and women. The "A" class for adult males had a 5-way tie for first, all having broken 49/50 clay targets. The tie-breaker is the longest string of broken targets, and the gold medalist had broken 35 in a row. If you do the math on this, the range of tie-breaking strings is 25-49, so the difference here is very slight.

The squad on the firing line.

He shattered the target, but out of the image frame...

A tired young man

A Promise Kept

Since my son -- now 15 -- was about 9, he has been asking to go hunting, and I told him to check back when he had taken the Missouri Hunter Safety Course. You have to be 11 to be certified, so this put off the day of reckoning for a couple years.

I last hunted when I lived in Kansas between 1977 and 1979. It was enjoyable, but I gravitated over the years to fishing, and specifically fly fishing. Hunting never lost its allure for me, but I just never got out to hunt. By the time my wife and I started raising a son, the time constraints just weren't conducive to getting out.

Well, when my son was 11, he took the hunter safety course, and we started shooting at target and trap ranges together. I started purchasing the annual hunting and fishing combination license, and even added the migratory waterfowl option a time or two. I still couldn't find the time, and I suspect that I was just a little daunted by passing on a tradition that I had never fully embraced. Over the past few years he dropped hints that some of his school buddies would let him come along when they went hunting with their dads, but I felt that I needed to be a part of this rite of passage.

As luck and timing would have it, a friend of many years who works for the Missouri Department of Conservation, and is a skilled sportsman offered to take my son and me out for some duck hunting. Saturday the 29th of December was the day we chose. Ordinarily it takes a crowbar to pry my son out of bed on a Saturday morning, but when he was awakened at 4:15, he got dressed and was ready to go. We met my friend at the headquarters of Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area near Columbia for the 5:00AM drawing for hunting locations. We we didn't draw a low enough number, so we went out to the Missouri River near the conservation area and tried to lure in some ducks. The river itself had a strong current, but wing dams had created a pretty quiet backwater, and we set up the decoys, and sat on overturned plastic buckets and waited for the sun to come up.

We saw plenty of ducks and geese, but most of them were flying high. Occasionally a solitary mallard or a pair of mallards came in close enough to take a quick look, but they moved on. We saw large numbers of seagulls, and couple herons working the river, and we heard crows. The closest we came to shooting was when a small flock of geese came overheard from behind, but shooting a goose in the butt is not a high percentage shot. Now if we had been facing away from the river....

Essentially, this was "catch and release" hunting. We saw plenty, but few came within range, and we chose to not take any marginal shots.

We did have a special treat about halfway through the morning. My son suddenly said "those are otters!" and we looked where he was pointing, and sure enough, there were a couple otters cavorting in the slow water. They came in and checked out the decoys, and we counted 4 of these beautiful creatures. One of them looked our way, and started snorting like a small pig. Soon they were all looking at us, and hissing and snorting, and after a few moments they swam off downstream.

Duck season ends New Years Day, and I told my boy if he wanted to get up a 4:00am again, we could try to draw a location within the conservation area. We'll see... The overnight low is forecast to be about 10 degrees with a high of 21.

This was an enjoyable morning. My son and I learned a bit about waterfowl hunting from an expert, and we had a great time. My promise of several years ago was kept, and if my son wants to continue, then this is something we can do together.