The Decoy

I was driving down I-5 recently when this truck towing a small boat passed me. The exposed portions of the boat were painted in camouflage patterns and the rest of the boat had all sorts of stuff attached to it to make it look like a duck blind.

Back in my teens my brother and I would go duck hunting at this large reedy pond. We didn’t have a duck blind boat so we would just lay low in the reeds in hopes that our decoys would bring in a flock. We never shot any ducks or even had a close opportunity to do so. It’s a good thing since we didn’t have a retriever to swim in the icy water for us. We would have shot a duck and then looked at each other as to what to do next as our duck floated away with the wind waves.

I clearly remember the day we gave up duck hunting. We had two inflated plastic decoy ducks on strings that we would throw into the water. We would reel in the string after we wasted our day duck hunting, then we would go home and eat store bought food instead of the greasy shot pellet filled carcass we’d hope to be eating.

Anyway, we were in position in the reeds with our decoys in place. I noticed Steve, a kid that I went to school with, hunting about a thousand feet away on the other side of the pond. He was walking on trails away from the pond and I assumed he was hunting for grouse or rabbits. About a half hour later the thunderous sound of both barrels of a 12 gage shot gun shooting off over our heads gave both my brother and I a startle. I watched as our inflated decoys sunk like stones. My brother and I both stood up and looked at Steve. He realized what he had done and said, “Oh shit!” We laughed quite a bit about for years.

Every time I saw Steve after that he hung his head in shame. I always tried to console him by telling him that he was a good shot. It would have been embarrassing had he missed the decoys entirely.