Daddy's Girl

Mulak Reader - Daddy's Girl

Here’s a story where-in a take a corporate vice-president duck hunting. Of course, it was a long time before she actually was a VP. This one generated a lot of mail, mostly from people considering doing exactly what I describe here: take a kid hunting. In every instance, my advice was to insure that the outing was brief. Spend as much money and time as you must to insure that the kid’s first exposure not be one where he’s bored. This story appeared in 1980 in the then-for-free magazine of the Mass Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Daddy's Girl

          Sunrise is only 90 minutes away, but it's dark enough that it could just as well be midnight. The stars do their best to light up the night. Soundlessly, I push the canoe along between the indistinguishable dark forms of trees on either shore. It is so still that I whisper.
          "You're not afraid, are you, Jennifer?" The wrong choice of words. Of course she is.
          "No."
          "Even though it's dark, it's still kind of pretty with the stars so big and the sky reflected in the water, isn't it?"
          No reply.
          Then, "Daddy, are there bears and things out at night?"
          "Naw. They all live up in the mountains. Maybe if you watch the water, though, you can see another muskrat swimming."
          And, as if on cue, not a muskrat but a pair of ducks jump from the darkened cove on our left. Quacking reedily, they cross our field of vision paired with their watery reflections, leaving a stream of droplets and a path of expanding circles on the surface to mark their passing, and it is beautiful with the sky and the water and the stars, and Jennifer says so.

It has been years since I gave a second thought to overturning in a canoe, but last night I made up for lost time. With a lifejacket beneath her home-made camouflage poncho, Jennifer now she looks like a six year old hunchback. With one of my own duck hunting hats safety-pinned into a bonnet under her chin, she sits in the bow of the canoe with one arm around my Brittany. This is her big moment: After much campaigning, Daddy has agreed and is keeping her out of school for a morning to take her duck hunting with him.

          We sit on folding stools among grassy hummocks and swamp bushes, watching the sky grow progressively lighter. A pair of too-early blacks comes and goes as quickly as that. It is 40 minutes before sunrise now, and I tell her "It's time to start watching."
          Now it's legal. I give a couple of soft quacks on the call, and a few moments later I spot a pair of blacks headed for us, answering as they come. In the morning gloom, I loose the blacks momentarily when they pass from the sky to the backdrop of the still-dark trees. I am able to raise the gun without spooking them, and I take the first while his wings are still cupped. The second grabs for air, then folds as he breaks the skyline.
          I send Win for the downed birds, and she dog-paddles out among the decoys. The noise of the gun in the early quiet has evidently left Jennifer's ears ringing, but she just shakes her head when I inquire. She is watching the dog, and giggles as the Brittany mouths and then rejects two cork birds before finding the duck floating among the blocks.
          Another pair of blacks visits our rig ten minutes later. They beat a fast departure after getting a good look at the decoys. Jennifer understands about limits, but Win doesn't, and eyes me in disbelief.
          Keeping watch to our rear, the dog suddenly crouches, her eyes wide and staring skyward. A pair of wood ducks tree-tops overhead and are gone as soon as I see them. I give them a little feeding chatter on the call, and in a moment they reappear around the bend in the pond on a glide into the decoys. They come in paired-up, moving what seems to be just the tips of their wings. Out of the corner of my eye I notice that Jennifer has covered her ears. The hen decides to put down first, and I shoot beyond her to take just the drake. The hen squeals something in wood duck as she makes her escape.
          After Win has brought in the lovely little drake, Jennifer asks, "How come you didn't shoot the other one?"
          "Well, because she was a hen, and I don't shoot hens if I can help it."
          "But you said one of the other ducks you shot was a female."
          I nod. "With black ducks it's hard to tell the difference."
          "Well, maybe you shouldn't shoot them, then."
          "Okay." She's got a point. "Maybe I won't any more."

A kingfisher rattles from a leafless swamp maple. He roller-coasters his way across the pond to a dead oak, where he sits and rattles some more. Win and Jennifer eye him closely. He takes a quick plunge and returns to his perch with a minnow. His antics hold our attention until he flies off for other fishing grounds.

          A drake mallard flies over us. With the sun up now behind us, we can see his colors clearly as he wings down the pond, 40 yards up. He passes, and I offer him some feeding chatter and then a couple of loud calls, but to no avail.
          "What do you say to the ducks when you talk to them, Daddy?"
          "I tell 'em breakfast is being served." Replies Doctor Doolittle.
          A half mile away, from the other end of the pond, there is a single shot. A minute later the drake is back, returning to where it was that he came from, still 40 yards up. I stand and give him a lead of ten miles and pull. Like a long trap shot, there is a moment when I am sure that I missed, then the bird collapses, one moment pale gray and rust in the sunlight, then a dark form when the shadows from the distant trees intersect his fall as he becomes larger and larger, then quickly passes behind and hits the marsh with a soft thump not 30 feet from us.
          Win is a set trap, waiting to be sprung, quivering. I smile. Jennifer says, "Go fetch him, Winnie!" and the dog takes two quick steps before putting her rear back on the ground. She shoots me a quick apologetic glance, then returns her intense stare to the spot where the mallard struck. I pause for effect, then send her to make the retrieve.

          John is leaving for work when we pull up to his beach, and his dogs bark a greeting from their kennel. He allows me to park on his lawn and stumble around in the dark on mornings when I hunt the lake. He is either very generous or an extremely sound sleeper.
          "Quitting already?" He calls. "I didn't hear much shooting."
          "Four for four." I hold up the birds in a tangle of iridescent plumage and white wing linings.
          "Hey, not bad! What do you think of that, Jennifer?"
          She recounts everything to him; the muskrat, the star-lit ducks, Win's comical retrieves, the kingfisher, the pink-tinted sunrise, the cocoa we drank from the thermos, how I talked to the ducks and how Win spotted some before I had... But not one word about my shooting.
          My daughter has had a good experience: Her first time hunting and everything has gone right. It has been cold enough to make her warm clothes appreciated, but not uncomfortably so. The action at dawn was fast in spite of the beginnings of a bluebird day. She has been out long enough to know what waiting is all about, but has not been bored. The dog has been able to show off, and so has Daddy.
          But when it comes to impressing your children, you have everything to loose and nothing to gain. Daddy shoots birds. In the world of my daughter, that is common knowledge, just as he can drive a car and Mommy sews on the sewing machine. This morning I have merely done what I was expected to do. Never mind the fact that for the first time in my life I've gone four-for-four on ducks.
          Jennifer went to school, only a little late, and told all her friends about the kingfisher.
          I hope she never forgets him.

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This site was last updated 09/20/06