Ducks and geese better scurry

Sherwood’s population is 186, 184 of whom, seemingly, were lodged in a duck blind under our bedroom window and shooting birds one half hour before dawn. It’s 6:32 am and I remember when I thought early morning car horn alarms in LA were annoying. Deer season may be over but gaming season is not over until January 28, so here comes our next lesson in rural living.

Youth days: There are only two days a year in which youth under the age of 15 can join in the hunt with a valid license. However, during those two days the daily bag limit is (get this) six ducks, two Canada geese, two brant, 25 light geese and 15 coots. So Ralphie, armed with his Red Ryder shotgun, is not allowed to drive for a few years but is allowed to shoot a total of 100 birds in two days.  Brant, by the way, are small geese, not to be confused with light geese. And exactly how does one differentiate the two? I don’t know, but wonder, what if shooting a small light goose makes it a two-for. And coots; the Cornell Lab of Ornithology says a coot is a common water bird, often mistaken for a duck but is all black and possesses a white beak. All this time, I thought coots were those silly old men who would sidle up to me at a bar and attempt to gain my attention. If only I had known that I could shoot coots seasonally, I would have done so.  “Oh, wrong type of coot, my bad, officer.”

For grown-ups, the daily bag limit of ducks is six: Donald, Daffy, Huey, Dewey, Louie and their mom.  But it’s not that simple. The six duck limit, including mergansers (more on mergansers later), consists of no more than (it’s easier to read this next sentence while humming the Twelve Days of Christmas) five long-tailed ducks, four scoters, four mallards (but only two hen mallards), three wood ducks, two redheads, two hooded mergansers, two pintails, one canvasback, one fulvous tree duck, or one mottled duck, among others ( . . . and a partridge in a pear tree). In addition to the duck bag limit, hunters may take 15 coots per day. Again, if only I had known about the coots, I could have narrowed that population genre down considerably. And who knew there were so many varieties of duck, when really, what matters after Peking, l’orange, canard confit, foie gras, or roast duck. And how can these hunters tell the difference in the early morning darkness?  Hawk like eyesight? Large duck manuals with big, color pictures? Night vision goggles? How can they tell the difference between a tree duck and a wood duck. How much wood could a wood duck duck if a wood duck could duck wood? (Sorry, but it had to be said.)

As for geese, forget the romantic picture of geese flying in V formation on the crest of the silver moon. This is real life. Mergansers, according to John James Audubon, are large buff breasted geese, originally from Europe and Asia (not to be confused with the double breasted bed thrasher types that my brother seems to invite), while the hooded Mergansers, obviously, come from south central LA.  The daily bag limit of five geese per day may include (here we go again) cackling geese, white-fronted geese, Atlantic population Canada geese and resident population Canada geese. These last two varieties beg the obvious: how to tell the difference between the Resident and the Atlantic Canada geese? Aren’t both types (dare I say it) wetbacks?

Fortunately, there is no open season for swans. The thought of variations on a theme of Swan Lake would drive me quackers.

Rifles and Shotguns

Evidently there is a big difference between rifles and shotguns, a huge difference. Growing up, watching Rifleman on TV, I thought every long barreled weapon was a rifle and everything that fit in a pocket or a holster was a gun. After all, there was no TV show entitled “Shotgun Man”; to think that I’ve lived my entire life without recognizing this distinction. Apparently it’s like asking about the difference between brown and white sugars. Well,  it depends on who is asked.  Any doctor will say that sugar is sugar and the body deals with either one the same way; no difference.  Julia Child, though, would roll up a thick wad of parchment paper and swat me on the nose while describing the intricacies of cooking with molasses riddled sugar instead of white sugar.  So when I kept referring to shotguns as rifles my patient husband grit his teeth and, undoubtedly contemplating using something more substantial than parchment paper (except for those pesky wife beating laws), tenderly remarked,  “there is a difference! Oh sweet city girl, take a load off those Stuart Weitzmans, and I will teach you a thing or two”.  As was explained to me, while both have the ability to kill, rifles use bullets, have grooves in their barrels, which offer greater accuracy and range, as opposed to shotguns, which have smooth barrels and fire a load of pellets (shots), with less accuracy but more quantity. Ah, so here is what I’ve learned so far: Chuck Connors used a Winchester rifle to make his point.  Tim Allen probably uses a shotgun.  Both pieces are effective, but Chuck Connors was really hot! It was the rifle.

Yesterday the men loaded their shotguns in the trunk and their women in the backseat.  We then scurried over the creek and through the woods to the local ‘outdoor recreational center’, which looked for all the world like a golf course that used shotguns instead of golf clubs.  We even rented a golf cart. The men carried bags of shotgun cartridges to the cart, we hopped on and down the path we rode. It really looked like a golf course, although some areas looked like a miniature golf course with pint size lighthouses dotting each side of the road and a miniature barn on the other side of the water hazard. Each station was set up differently to simulate different environs and sported unique written instructions on the number of shots allowed. When a real pheasant crossed the grass at one station, there was some confusion about whether it was acceptable to shoot it, but nothing could be found in the rulebook, and since it was New Years Day, we pardoned it.  Back to the shooting; whenever “Pull” was yelled, a clay saucer or two appeared in the sky. Clay ‘pigeons’ (I was corrected) were fired at with abandon, scorecards were marked, great conversations re accuracy ensued and then we moved on to the next station.  It was an icy cold day and I was grateful for my warm L.L.Bean barn coat, but I felt like a complete pansy when I noticed one man in the group behind us was wearing shorts.  The others with him weren’t wearing much more either. New Englanders are a hardy stock. While the men discussed the finer points of hitting the clay pigeons I looked around for the ubiquitous Ninth Hole bar.  Alas, it was nowhere to be found.