Cajun Hideaway

       In a hidden corner of the world there is a small camp where land meets water and the wild swamps of Louisiana form a small haven tucked away from the world. It is a place where cayenne pepper and cold beer come together to form a sweet partnership. A Cajun heaven unlike few that I have been to before. To get to the camp you must travel down what seems like an endless dirt road stricken with potholes and covered in mud tire tracks. After about the seventh song on George Jones greatest hits you will come up on what looks like just another hunting camp. You have the usual posted signs riddled with bullet holes and as you drive down the road you can almost taste the history of this place. It is a deer camp that Cajun families have been coming to since before the 1950's.

      As we made a right into the camp ground I could not help but be taken back by the nostalgia of the place. No electricity, a small amount of running water and the air filled with familiar smell of creole' seasoning. We unloaded our gear and headed into the house which was fronted by a covered kitchen equipped with antique cast iron skillets and what looked like a stove that had been there long before most of the nearby alligators were born. To say the least this kitchen had probably been producing world class Cajun cooking for the last forty years. As we peeled back the swinging screen door you could hear the wood stove cracking and I was all of the sudden taken back to twenty years ago when the smell of cigar smoke and home cooking filled my grandmother's house. I had to choke back a few tears laying in bed  thinking of how much the smell of the cabin reminded me of my late grandparents. After an unbelievable supper filled with Cajun shrimp stew and the best green beans known to man, I drifted off to sleep thinking about the adventure that the next morning would bring.

      Although this camp was built for deer hunting we were after a much different creature, one with a green head and bright orange feet. You see, when the Mississippi River begins to stretch its banks and the Atchafalaya Basin begins to come up, this property becomes an absolute honey hole for mallards and pintails. It is one of the few places on earth that you can find green heads and pintails cupping up through flooded timber at the same time. In my short five or six years of duck hunting I have seen nothing like it. As we cut the engine to the four wheeler the dark flooded timber was teaming with mallards. The silence of early morning was broken with feeding chuckles and loud raspy cadences. If you could not get excited to hunt ducks at this point you might as well stay home and watch the latest installment of Bill Dance Outdoors. This was the antithesis of why I get up and hunt in the morning. As we began to set our decoy spread you could hear nothing but quacking and the beating of wings as birds began to buzz us long before the sun rose. All duck hunters know that the time between getting setup and waiting for first shooting light are some of the longest minutes of the season. After what seemed like hours sitting there beneath the large cypress trees my buddy Beau picked our first mallard of the trip off the water. A short time after, while fixing the decoy spread I was able to make a good passing shot on another drake and have him fall almost in my waders.

      It was such a promising start to the morning and to the weekend that I could not help but feel like we would be back at camp in about thirty minutes with eight mallards in tow. But as is the case late in the second split I could not getting passing birds to commit to our spread. By the time these birds make their way down from the Midwest the boys in Missouri and Arkansas have given them a pretty good education on what is and what is not a flock of real ducks sitting on the water. I know a lot of great hunters in Arkansas and if these birds can make it past them that they are sure going to be tough to hunt. Now, I will be the first to tell you that I will not be bringing home any calling championships in the near future, but I was able to get some birds to work. After a couple of hours watching thousands of birds tornado into a timber hole about five hundred yards from where we were, we determined that we needed to do a little scouting for the next morning's hunt. What I witnessed next will stick in my mind for as long as I live. As we began to approach this oasis ducks began to get up five to six hundred at a time. The sound of their wings leaving the water was almost deafening. It was like a scene out of a movie. It made me feel even a bit worse about only killing two ducks that morning, but after seeing this I was determined to get on them the next morning in that new location.


     After another delicious supper of grilled pork chops and rice dressing I was ready for another fresh  morning of chasing mallards. This would be the last hunt of the season and one that I would not soon forget, for the wrong reasons. As we rode the four wheeler out to our new spot for the morning we suddenly got behind another group of hunters that seemed to be heading in a similar direction. It was a bit odd because as I stated this was a deer camp and no other hunters had been hunting the ducks recently like we had been. I had a very empty feeling when I saw those hunters, but my partner assured me that they would be going to a different property and would not be near us. As I had suspected though these boys had no intention of hunting on their property and must have seen and heard all of the birds that we had been working the past few weekends.


     What took place next was one of the most aggravating things that I have experienced during my brief career as a hunter. It is one of my biggest pet-peeves as an outdoorsman and the sole reason that I shy away from hunting in these big clubs and around a bunch of public property. As we sat in our blind silently and watched the other hunters setup decoys within shooting distance of us I knew that we were in for a let down. Not only were these guys trespassing, but they setup right on top of us. When the first birds of the morning circled and worked their spread Beau and I were showered with number four shot and from that moment I knew that our season was going to end with a let down. We were forced to either stay there and endure showering pellets or move and try to kill some birds in another hole. After they sprayed us the second time a yelling match ensued and I was ready to leave. This is not the way I wanted to end my season, but I could surely live to hunt another day. It was quite a let down to have such a promising hunt on such a beautiful morning end in such disappointment. I will probably never forget that hunt for those reasons and it makes me sad to think hunters could have such a lack of respect for another man's land. This is one of the reasons hunters get such a bad rep. People believe that we just go around trespassing and killing everything that moves. If we are going to keep our traditions we must abide by the rules and hunt using ethics and good judgment. Are these the lessons that we want to teach the young hunters coming up today?


      I hated to end my season with such an event, but overall it was an incredible duck season for me. I got to shoot birds that I had not yet harvested and experience some Cajun traditions that most people will never have the pleasure to. The one thing that this trip made me realize is that no matter how you start or end your season, once it is over you cannot wait for the next one to begin.

-Good hunting
     

 

Finish Strong

     There are not too many things that my Mom and Drew Brees have in common, but there is one phrase that both of them have uttered the majority of my young adult life, "FINISH STRONG." We all know that in life it is not how you start the game but how you finish it. In this instance I am talking about my own personal hunting season.

    

      I have hunted more hours and more days this year than I have in a long time. I put in countless, mosquito filled hours during the early bow season and really have not let up on the whitetails yet this season. I have had enough duckless hunts so far to last me for the next ten years but I have not let up on them either. The recent cold snap in the northern reaches has brought droves of birds to the southern states. This past weekend provided me with one of the better public land duck hunts I can remember. There were birds in the sky and they were actually listening to what we had to say. Soft chuckles and feed calls were making the greys and even a lone drake pintail commit to the decoys like Japanese planes in Pearl Harbor. I had been waiting all year to see ducks suspended in time over the decoys while my front sight covered up their breast bone. Teal were flocking and though we were not lucky enough to suck in any of the passing green heads it was great to see them down here for a winter vacation. The long hours we put in scouting and finding new holes were paying off. My patience was beginning to pay dividends and it looked as if the season could end with a bang.

 

     We were beginning to turn the duck hunts around and I was hoping the deer hunting would be next in line. The rut was beginning to peak and bucks were being spotted all over running does. Even with the rut peaking I still cannot get hooked on the deer down here like I can on the northern whitetails. Like I have said several times in past posts I am a whitetail hunter at heart and will probably always be. Louisiana though is not exactly the best place to pursue such a passion. I know there are many great places to hunt deer in the state but as a whole it just does not have the luster that the fall mountains provide for an avid bowhunter. Most of the season is spent swatting mosquitoes and when the rut finally does come around and the temperatures drop, the woods are filled with men covered in hideous orange vests toting high caliber cannons through the woods. As many of my northern readers know, the rut is a time for us bowhunters to enjoy the cool weather and sit in silence waiting for grunting bucks to run a hot doe past our set.

 

   Another aspect of southern deer hunting that does not quite sit right with me is the fact that most states in the southeast allow 'baiting.' Now I know this can be a very controversial subject throughout the country but to me personally it really takes away from the sport and the fair chase aspect that most purists love. Don't get me wrong, I have sat over a corn pile on a buddy's property and to me it just didn't feel right. I know that this does not guarantee success but when you bag an animal over bait I believe it does sour the success a bit. My apologies for venting about this issue it is just something that I strongly believe in.

 

   With all of these tough hunts this year I have been able to realize one thing. The failures that we face as outdoorsman make the good times that much better. I started the season with several tough duck hunts and now we have been killing our fair share of birds. I am scheduled to to hunt mallards in central Louisiana this coming weekend and I am expecting nothing but success. I have put in too much time to fail this year and I plan on finishing the season with success.

     Every year we as hunters believe that "this is the season." We think that this year will be the defining year in our hunting careers. Well let me say this, many state's hunting seasons have come and gone and from what I have seen through several different social media outlets some amazing trophies were taken this year. Down on the bayou we have just a few weeks left and I plan on filling tags and making these coming weekends some of the best I have had. As many have said over time it is not how you start but how you close. What ever you may be chasing this weekend enjoy the ride and do not take it for granted. I am going to tell all of you what my mom has told me since childhood, whatever you are doing "Finish Strong."

 

 

-Good Hunting