What Do We Do Now?
By co-host Bruce Horrell
It’s right before Christmas. Jeremy Alvesteffer and I, along with two of our hunting buddies, just finished a great goose hunt to finish up our season in Michigan. A four-man limit of Canada geese was taken, and we enjoyed the morning of good shooting and fine dog work. As we picked up our goose spread for the final time for the year, I turned to Jeremy and asked, “Well, what do we do now?”
The answer to that question is pretty open-ended.
We hunted close to one hundred days, including all of the special seasons. We are tired and ready to sit in front of the fireplace. But most of all we are depressed…no more excitement! No more anticipation! No more scouting! You get the picture… Done. Finished. Cold Turkey.
Most waterfowlers go through the same emotions that we do, but I can only tell you what we do in the off season. Since we hunt all species of waterfowl on the water and dry fields, we have a over one thousand decoys, both diver and puddle duck decoys. On top of that we have a spread of over two hundred floating Canada geese decoys and finally, three hundred full body Canada geese field decoys. You combine that with shotguns, boxes of shotshells, still damp hunting clothes, dog gear, boats, motors, covered trailers, and portable blinds of all sorts… that in itself is a major storage job!
I could recount the long, long lists of things I do in the off season preparing for next season, however it wouldn’t be new information to a seasoned waterfowler. With one exception, and that would be building or constructing new waterfowl habitat. We are forming a small wetland in a low area in one of our fields. If it rains it will hold some water. This wetland will be surrounded by a crop. It could be oats, winter wheat or possibly corn. Other than that, I’m always on the lookout for new hunters that I can introduce to my world of waterfowl.
We waterfowlers are all different in the way we deal with the off season, but one thing that we all share is that we are all “dreamers.”
While we will reflect fondly about last season often, we quickly will begin to dream about next season.
Before long we stop asking “what do we do now?” Soon, we ask ourselves “what do we need to do next?”
