Category: Hunting

Sage Grouse – Montana, September 2022

The sun had turned to orange early, filtered by the smoke of a nearby wildfire, and the dust of the two-track trail. All around, vast expanses of sage brush stretched to where nine thousand feet high ridges framed the scenery. The oppressive heat of the day still lingered, as our minds slowly started to shift from birds to the cool waters of the alpine lake ahead, and perhaps trout for dinner. Suddenly something stirred in the shrubs ahead. One bird head bobbed in the sea of grey-green leaves, shortly followed by a second. Sage grouse!

It all started with a spur-of-the-moment email to a friend in Butte.

“What do you know about sage grouse hunting in Montana?”

The response came quickly and oozed confidence: “I know everything about sage grouse hunting in Montana, my family has been hunting the opener for decades. We are going again this year. Why don’t you join us?”

Two days before the opener Finn, my seventeen-month-old Small Munsterlander, and I drove down, met up with my friend and his son, and set up camp the next day in time for a reconnaissance drive. Finn and I had chosen to stay in a tent. I like my privacy, and he would likely be too much puppy to allow for a quiet night in the trailer, with other people and other dogs. But mostly, I like my privacy.

The nights at seven thousand feet were cold. Despite the daytime mid-thirties (Celsius) temperatures, nighttime temperatures straddled the freezing mark. Though that notion had crossed my mind, I had still brought a sleeping bag that could not be cinched up across the shoulders. Rookie mistake. Finn was comfortable, I think, in his kennel, with fluffy pillow, wearing a jacket. I was not.

We hunted the early mornings, to avoid overheating the dogs. Finn was running big, using the freedom the long views provided, casting nicely left and right, like he had been doing this for years. A few hours were all we had, before the dogs started to suffer. I fed Finn all his water and most of mine
but halfway through the mornings it was time to call it. The area had a surprising number of alpine lakes and shallow creeks, when everything around it was bone dry. Both dogs and hunters took advantage of the opportunity for a cool swim after the morning’s hunt. Late afternoons, with the sun losing just a hint of its sting, we would saddle up again, slowly driving and walking two-track rocky roads and field edges, trying to spot moving birds.

The choice of fields to hunt looked random to me, as for a mile in all directions the terrain was featureless, but it was based on years of experience in this area. I was beginning to pick up small clues about what sage grouse might like. Fresh greens, of which we saw little, grasshoppers, which were ubiquitous, just not in every field. Water perhaps? Some animals get their moisture from plants, but things were pretty arid here. I just imagined birds hitting up water early morning, working their way up to higher areas to catch a breeze, perhaps to return to water late afternoon, before retiring for the night in cover. But that was just speculation.

The first morning we flushed a single sage grouse, and two huns, which all escaped unscathed. Finn had not pointed any of the birds, but he had seen them fly, and had decided to abandon whatever steadiness we had so tenuously achieved in the pre-season prep. I could not fault him, because I had forgotten all my intentions to focus on the dog with the first few birds, and help him remember. The dog did not know better, I should have.

 

That evening we found the bobbing heads near a small water course and just off the two-track. I suggested falling back and around to get downwind of the birds and letting Finn work the breeze, but it was decided to follow the moving birds, taking the leashed dogs with us. As soon as we had stepped
across the water, Finn’s nose glued itself to the ground, the tail started working, and he became a handful. To my great surprise we managed to get within range before the first grouse flushed. The big bird worked hard to gain altitude, and the shot was not hard. Training a pup and hunting an elusive bird do not go well together. Both dogs rushed in for the retrieve but got distracted by two more falling birds, shot by my buddy. Each grabbed one of the fluttering birds and retrieved nicely, and my bird was found not too much later. A nice male bird, perhaps not the biggest, but not a young of the year either. We cut off wings for the registry, and took breasts and legs.

The second morning was mostly a repeat of the first. We hunted a large swath of land, in semi-circular fashion, above a small water source. My friend connected first, missing birds in a covey, but then connecting with the third shot on a single. Finn was bullied out of the retrieve by the other dog, but he got another chance. First a pair of grouse were bumped out of range by my friend’s dog, but not much later I shot a single with the second barrel, as it was rocketing down and around the slope. Finn nicely
delivered to hand.

After a short, late-afternoon fishing session the next day, catching some cutthroats to add to the intended grouse dinner, we again found some birds. We tried to get organized, but waited too long and the grouse flushed. I followed them with Finn, on leash first, but as I got downwind, I let him run. The birds were in the open, and two grouse flushed out of range, but the third one hesitated, and once airborne, followed the downhill slope which curved towards me. I gave him a good two body lengths lead, and the bird crumbled at the shot. Another nice retrieve for Finn.

We investigated the crops of our birds and found they contained fresh leafy greens, and whitish, or light-yellow berries. We have yet to identify what those were. The fresh greens indicated that perhaps water courses, or the few fields that had not been grazed recently, were the preferred feeding areas this time of the year. But again, this is speculation, based on just a few observations.

At night, my friend’s son cooked us up a nice meal of cubed, breaded grouse breast, and cutthroat trout. A few cold beers went with that, and life could not have been much better.

Upland hunting – way up!

The wind howls from the West. Chinook, we call it. Snoweater. Down on the plains the temperatures will rise, the snow will melt, and some will wear shorts even though it is only late March. Bloody cold up here, where nothing grows to block the wind’s path. It’s been a long winter as usual, and the end is not near, but the mountains called, and we went. Labouring up the steep slope at 9,000′ of elevation I have the occasional thought of a soft couch and a steaming cup of coffee.

Preoccupied with my own thoughts, I hardly notice the change in the dog. But something is up. The wind is doing 50 miles per hour from the back, but the dog’s focus is in front. I look up and around but see nothing. A band of ewes generally hangs out here, they like the open patches that the wind creates. Then, a movement. Something stirs, and it’s white. Another one, then five, six, ten. Ptarmigan. Beautifully camouflaged they rummage in the snow-covered grass. I take some photos. With the help of the zoom on the computer screen I’ll later count twenty-seven in this covey. Hardy little beast, surviving winter up here. I’m sorry I have to spook them, but my ridge lies beyond. They scurry around nervously before flushing to the left and sailing over a cliff.

A full year and three seasons later I’m heading up the same ridge. It’s not been a good year. A nasty little virus has the world in pandemonium; and on top of that I developed a condition that doesn’t seem to want to go away. CT scans, surgery, MRI’s and maybe more surgery, I’m sick of it in more than one way. A few days of feeling OK, a spell of decent weather, and a forecast with a lot of snow in a few days has me up well before dawn, and climbing while the sun is still hiding. The snow is not too deep, and the trail has not seen too much of the thaw/freeze cycle that turns most into a sheet of ice later in the year.

After an hour of steady climbing, with daylight started, I hear voices below. I’m not the only one here. Not even on a weekday is mountain solitude guaranteed these days. My plan requires that I am the first. It only takes one hiker to chase the birds off the front face to parts unknown. Soon enough we come to the little grassy plateau underneath where I found the ptarmigan. Time to uncase the side-by-side and slip in a couple of shells. A few ewes and two lambs look at us with wide eyes. A three year old ram takes the opportunity to get a good sniff, neck stretched out, horns turned. It is the rut after all.

The young dog (almost four years old) behaves admirably. He only needs a few whispered encouragements to stay close to me and not give chase. He’s turning into a good buddy, though some of his habits still need work. We know little of his history, other than that he was born in a First-Nation’s community 200 miles North of Yellowknife. His early life may not have been easy.

We climb past the sheep, and come to where two-dozen-and-then-some birds were feeding last time. I scan around for white blobs on white/brown speckled substrate. Failing to see any, I work the binoculars, and look for pitch-black beaks and eyes. Nothing. I check the dog. No sign of agitation. Slowly we work our way up, and find lots of ptarmigan droppings, but none of their creators.

We take a break on the other side of the ridge, to glass for sheep, without luck. Before us lies a deep canyon-like valley that flattens out into treeless alpine tundra as it gains in elevation. Only the odd section is free of snow. Immediately below us lies terrain not dissimilar from that holding all the sign on the other side, but despite our search we turn up no birds and no sign. As I turn to work my way back up to the ridge, muscles protest. Three months of reduced activity, antibiotics and hospital stays are making themselves known. It’s fine, it has been a good morning.

Back at the ridge, hunkering low because of the wind, I feed the dog some treats and water, and devour my lunch. I peak over, back down the way we came, and find four hikers resting in and around the ptarmigan slope. The sheep are gone. So much for hunting that area again on the way down. Suddenly there is movement on the ridge, higher up, towards the peak. A ram appears, and looks down on us. He walks away at first but then changes his mind. He turns, follows the ridge down, and walks on over, crossing not 40 yards below us. It would have been a long shot with the longbow, but not impossible. As it is, season closed over a month ago, and I take pictures and relish being so close to a good-looking, mature ram.

Mid-afternoon we are back at the truck, with no birds to show for, but full of impressions, and new information for the next time the itch to chase birds in the alpine become unbearable.

Memories 3: The Best Hunting Dog In The World

“Do you think Aika will be able to find my deer?”

We were standing on a cut line in the municipal forest where my uncle leased the hunting rights on some 700 acres. My cousin had shot a small buck that had jumped off the trail into a stand of immature pines. Thick stuff. He’d looked in the first rows of trees, but found no sign. So he backed off and waited for me to show up after the morning sit.

Aika was a German Hunting Terrier, six months old. I had picked her up at a breeder near Hannover, Germany in late winter. The pups were born in a small unheated kennel in the heart of winter. There were six pups. More had been born, but the breeder had killed them, because he “didn’t want to deal with bottle feeding”. She was so small, fitting into a shoe box. Hard to see at the time how she would grow into a fierce little hunter, flushing pheasants from thorny cover that bigger dogs couldn’t (or wouldn’t) enter, retrieving anything up to the size of a big hare, crazy about working in water, never losing the drive to hunt during long, taxing days in the field. But that was still uncertain future when we were zipping West across the Autobahn, with a furry bundle in my wife’s lap.

Aika and I had barely moved beyond training on continuous-drag scent trails to a trail with discrete drops (more like small gushes) of blood. She’d been doing just fine, but it was all still pretty playful; short trails in easy terrain with no distractions. After all, at six months old, she was still all puppy-brain.

“Do you think Aika will be able to find my deer?” my cousin asked again.

“I don’t know. It may be asking a lot of her, but let’s try.”

We drove back to the cabin to pick up the little munchkin. About 90 min later I rolled out the long line, trying to relax and send calming vibes to the bouncing pup at my feet. As we walked up to the first blood, beyond where the yearling buck had been standing, the change in the dog was striking. She went from playful to business in a heartbeat. During practice sessions on a fake trail she usually was borderline disinterested, but now it was all concentration.

With a final confirmation from my cousin about the direction the buck had disappeared we entered the thicket. About 30 feet in, the little dog sniffed up a clot of blood. Perhaps 100 feet beyond that, she found a patch of bloody hair, rubbed onto a tree. This was actually working! Five minutes later I was not so sure. Aika lost intensity and started meandering. We were off the trail.

I took her back to the beginning for another try. She pointed out the same blood, and the same hair, but again lost interest a little later. It was just too much to ask for such a young and relatively untrained dog. We started to circle back to the cutline, when Aika took a sharp left and pulled hard. I almost told her to stop playing around, but something told me to give her a little more time and trust. Moments later we were standing next to the dead buck.

Opportunities to work on lost or wounded deer don’t come very often. Aika’s star really shone brightly when hunting small game. I fondly remember so many great retrieves of pheasants, ducks and hares, that I gladly forgive her for the time she made me swim out into a beaver pond. She had not found the duck but instead had grabbed onto a branch, and was determined to retrieve it, even though it was attached to the beaver’s lodge. Her tiny brain had momentarily locked up, and I was afraid she’d drown before letting go. I swam out, and she cheerfully greeted me, happy for the support. With mixed emotions I pushed her into the direction of the duck that floated a ways beyond the lodge. We swam the loop around the pond, she picked up the duck and after some drying off we continued to hunt.

Unfortunately Aika died too soon at the age of nine. Kidney failure. I still miss her.

F.

Memories 2: Making Fire

My office wall has photos of over three decades of hunting, though the memories go back much further. In this series of posts I'm recounting some of the stories that go with them.


I acquired a PhD in Chemistry, so I am pretty much an authority on the subject matter. In order to make a fire you need three components: a combustible material, oxygen, and some way to overcome the threshold of energy required to let the two react; AKA a lighter, or a flint and steel, or a stick that you rub between your hands vigorously, or a lightning strike. For most people a lighter will do.

Oxygen is available, in varying quantities, depending on altitude, all across the globe. Combustible material, on a morning of hunting in a forest setting in an Eastern European country, two decades and a half ago, can also be called ubiquitous. That leaves component #3. Right? You had one job…

We headed out early that morning, sights set on pushing a few sections of forest. Not a big affair. Just my uncle, cousin, and myself carrying the rifles, my dad as independent observer, the local forest warden and his little Dachshund, and one of his friends with another dog whose progeny was hard to guess. We were hoping for wild boar, but expecting to settle for a roe deer. I think we got skunked.

But no room for despair or disappointment, because we were about to enjoy a good fire, and even better fresh-roasted sausages-on-a-stick, washed down with some questionable vodka. Con gusto we attended to the task of collecting one of the three prerequisites that would keep us from having to eat the sausages raw: fire wood. We were counting on the fact that oxygen would be available. OK, light it up!

Despite the language barrier it became clear fairly quickly that we had failed to provide for the third component of a good fire: the lighter. I gave up smoking when I turned twenty-one. My dad gave up smoking long before that, when he found out his father had lung cancer. My cousin only smoked a cigar or two at parties, and I’m not sure if my uncle ever smoked. And by some stroke of coincidence we were accompanied by the only two non-smoking males East of Berlin. Our situation was dire.

But wait! We came here by automotive vehicle. A vehicle contains fuel. That fuel is ignited by a spark. All we needed to do was to somehow combine spark and fuel, outside of the vehicle’s engine, and create a flame that was transportable to the wood pile, without blowing ourselves up. Hunger sparks ingenuity! Old newspaper was crumbled into a ball, doused in gasoline which was sucked from the tank through a rubber tube (standard emergency gear in Eastern European vehicles?), and the battery terminals disconnected, while those with more good sense than a sense of adventure (me) were busy sharpening sticks on which to impale the sausages, a fair distance away from the possible source of third degree burns.

It all worked beautifully! In no time we had the fire roaring, and the big sausages sizzling. We each had two. Fine sausages too, if I may be the judge, leaving us wanting nothing more. We then drove home where we drew the ire of the forester’s wife, who had prepared a big lunch meal for us. We tried our best. I don’t recall if there was any napping in the tree stand that afternoon, but there may have been.

F.

#huntingisconservation

When Emory announced a podcast episode on the topic of the "hunting is conservation" slogan, and if perhaps a new one is in order, I typed up the following e-mail to him. I thought it might be of interest to a broader audience. You can find the info about Emory's By Land Podcast here: https://byland.co/podcast
Emory,
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Do we need really a slogan or a hashtag?
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As far as slogans go “hunting is conservation” is pretty catchy. It is supposed to drive home the fact that hunter dollars pay for a lot of the wildlife management that is going on, both on this continent and on others. The maligned trophy hunters’ dollars pay for poaching control in Africa, and keeps habitat away from sprawling development by allowing people to make a living off the land that doesn’t involve cutting and planting. Projects in Asian countries, like the markhor projects in Pakistan, have shown that hunter dollars provide more value to local remote communities than the meat of a wild goat in the pot, and the population of markhor is rebounding. The story on our continent here is well-known (to us anyway).
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The question is, does the intended recipient, the non-hunter, know how “hunting is conservation”? Perhaps they align with the notion that conserving something cannot mean killing it. They may not buy into the thought that it is OK to kill some individuals for the long-term survival of the species. They may not instinctively agree with the science that says that population reduction is required to keep things in balance (like with snow geese that are eating themselves out of a summer home).
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It is very unfortunate that in today’s fast-paced society we need slogan. The complexity of hunting, of what drives us, and of our contributions to wildlife management, are hard to fit into 3-5 words. I have a hard time explaining it in 3-5 paragraphs, or even pages, and nobody reads that much anymore.
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Perhaps the problem is that we have two messages to convey, and “hunting is conservation” only tackles one. Many non-hunters are likely interested into personal motives for hunting. Nobody is buying it when I tell them I went out duck hunting to help conservation. I went out duck hunting because I love to be out on the water, love to challenge myself by doing things that are difficult, love to see ducks and geese fly, love it when I make a good shot, love it when I pick up the bird, love the feeling of self-sufficiency when plucking and converting a bird to a meal, love the fact that during all of it I forget about COVID, work, relations, future, and so forth. I’m just there, in the moment, making all the decisions and living by the outcomes of them. “Put that in a slogan, Mr. Marketing Guy”. The non-hunter may think I’m a pervert who just likes to kill innocent birds.
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A defining moment in my past, involved a small bird and a BB gun. My uncle hunted, my cousin too, and I wanted nothing else than to follow in their footsteps. Being way too young to legally hunt I would roam their little forest plot with a BB gun trying to kill birds. Some would call it blood lust, I would rather call it a desire to do something similar to what my role models were doing, even though wanton killing of little birds without any intent of eating them is not a cheerful matter.  Good thing I couldn’t hit anything anyway. Till one day, I managed to clip a little house sparrow’s wing. It came fluttering down out of the tree and crawled away in leaves. I was distraught obviously and started to walk away. Then I realized that I needed to finish what I started, the bird would not survive on one wing. I found the bird and killed it outright with the next shot. I didn’t shoot too many song birds after that. But I think it did show me that I could carry the responsibility of life and death of an animal, in a way that many people cannot or will not. And that divides the masses. How can I explain what I just described to a person who has never felt the last breaths of a dying duck in his hands, or who has never looked into the eye of a deer that seconds ago was still alive, or who has never felt the warm heart inside the chest cavity of a moose (or less poetic – who has never struggled to get a pile of guts that would fill a wheelbarrow out of an elk).
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I don’t know. And to me, there lies the essence of our communication problem.
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I encourage you to also read Why I hunt and BC closes the grizzly hunt - what went wrong? for a broader perspective on my personal motivations and some thoughts on how we as hunters are failing in the public relations department.
F.

Project Duck Boat – Part V (Finale)

The alarm went off at an ungodly hour, and it took a quick shower to get some of the haze out of my head. I don’t know who these people are that jump out of bed straight into their boots, and are ready to go, and I don’t understand how they do that. Regardless of what the day ahead has in store, waking up is a process for me. With joints creaking I took the dogs out for a quick one, and slowly the blood started pumping and the brain geared up.

It was a long dark drive to the lake I had scouted out in the spring, and this being opening day, I feared I’d show up at the sandy staging area on the North side a little late, with other hunters out on the water before me. This sneak approach really only works if you are the only one, or the first one, to paddle along the reeds.

I needn’t have worried, nobody was there. It was still cold, and the last of the fog was rising off the water as I set off. In spring the marsh had been full of sound of ducks and geese. It was a lot quieter now. The 20ga loaded with steel shot #4s rested on my right, and slowly I paddled the meandering water. When a couple of teal came soaring past, I dropped the paddle, grabbed the gun, swung, and missed twice. Not a great start.

A little later I happened upon a pair of teal, that took off as soon as I came around the bend, and I managed to drop one! As the morning progressed I added three more to the tally, before I ran out of suitable water. There had been some gun shots on the south side of the lake but otherwise I had the place to myself. Plenty happy with my modest harvest I drove home.

That night we had a wonderful dinner of pan-seared duck breasts. Ducks make a fantastic meal, if treated right, meaning searing it on high fire and briefly. You want, no must have, the insides still pink, or risk the meat turning dry and livery.

We ate this with ciabatta bread, oven-roasted tomatoes and onion, and a balsamic reduction drizzle (that’s nothing more than balsamic vinegar mixed with brown sugar, allowed to simmer for a bit to make it thicker). It was fantastic!

A week or so later I repeated the routine, hitting up a larger reservoir that has, according to Google Earth, lots of bays and islands on the East side. I’d love to report about my shooting prowess, how I plucked the ducks and geese from the sky with ease, but that would be lying. Two double misses started the morning, but luckily I was up for some redemption and ended the day with a tally of six ducks. The number of shots fired will hopefully fade from memory, as my brain chooses to remember the highlights of the day only.

This is not a way to get big bag limits, and it was never intended that way. But it allows quiet time on the water, taking in the sights (like the two otters I saw on the first outing), relaxing through the morning, and potting the odd bird for dinner. It’s nice too to vacate the water before noonish, as this is generally a day resting area for birds, migrating birds in the latter half of the season, and they need their quiet time too.

And that’s it. Project Duck Boat finished, but in a way it’s just beginning. We have a month or so left of open water, suitable for such a little boat. I have no intention to fight the fall storms and freezing water. I can get hypothermic in other places without the risk of drowning. Next spring, pike will be waiting in the reeds, to eat the fly that I will present to them.

Good times!

 

Project Duck Boat – Part IV

Though the solid fresh green colour of the boat really was appealing, the glare was pretty apparent, and for duck hunting purposes it would likely be better to have some drab colour on there. So I decided to try my hand at putting a gentle camo pattern on.

The Rust-Oleum camo spray cans were surprisingly hard to find. I had to go to three hardware stores to get three colours: brown, tan, and light green.

The process was pretty straightforward. After a quick scrub down with steel wool and rubbing alcohol, the boat was sprayed with  a base layer of varying colours; four areas of solid colour covered the whole thing. Then I used dry cat tail stems and leaves as a stencil of sorts, spraying contrasting colours across the leaves. For sharp edges, the leaves would lay flush with the boat, for a more fuzzy effect I’d hold them up a little higher. In general, I didn’t give it too much thought, and fought my inner perfectionist from overworking the colours. Just flop on the plant material, and with quick squirts from left to right and back, get some paint on.

For example, on the stern of the boat, the pattern was achieved by laying a base coat of brown and green, and then spraying a layer of tan with leaves/cattails held in front of it. The tan went through the openings in the plants, leaving the darker base colours to show through on the boat. It’s a lot easier to do than it is to describe.

The final touch (for now) was to add a cross bar, which would serve as a rest for the gun barrel(s).  I didn’t feel comfortable laying a loaded shotgun down flat on the bottom of the boat, because an accidental discharge (never happens, right?) would have some very wet and potentially life threatening results.

A few final squirts of camo paints, and she was all done. Well, almost; I added a strip of rubber on the right side of the cross bar to be gentler on the gun’s finish.

The boat was ready, and duck season was just around the corner (see part V – Finale).

Project Duck Boat – Part III

The boat was looking pretty functional, but the inside needed some tuning up, fixing cracks and chips in the gel coat, adding some foam to the flotation and putting on the top trim.

The push fit trim fit perfectly, and will provide protection from and for the fiberglass edge.

The polyurethane foam from a can was nasty, sticky, and probably unhealthy stuff to work with. It stuck to tools, to hands (gloves!), the floor, my clothes, and some of it even to the old foam in the boat. I could not make this look fancy, so I settled for functional.

After patching the inside bottom, it was time for the final coats of paint and varnish. The transformation was spectacular, if i may say so myself.

I decided to not rebuild the oar locks. In fact I built one, from hardwood , but didn’t put it on. The boat is more like a square-stern kayak, and the oar locks would be sitting quite close to the rower, making for an awkwardly short stroke. I would paddle it like a canoe at first and make further decisions later.

I had some trepidation if I would actually be able to transport it in the truck, but that worked out OK.

The maiden voyage took place on a beautiful spring morning. I went looking for snow goose, found none, but did manage to sneak up on dozens of waterfowl, within easy shotgun range. The concept of using this boat to cruise the edges of lakes might actually work!

After this first trip,  I decided to add a hole to the outboard mounting plate, so I could rig up an anchor of sorts, which would be helpful for fishing trips.

With spring season over, it was time to put on the final tweaks (see Part IV).

 

Project Duck Boat – Part II

After a thorough clean and a a proper sanding job, two things had become clear. Firstly the outside of the hull was not in as bad a condition as I had thought, and secondly, there were a lot or divots, scratches and imperfections to fill up. I decided on a skim coat of epoxy for most of the underside.

Since I was using slow-setting epoxy, the same kind I used when building the longbow (see Building a Longbow – Part II ), I needed a source of heat the keep the epoxy well above room temperature while outside the snow was blowing and it was freezing hard. I went through a number of heaters. My electric ceiling heater overheated and started spewing smoke, and a heating fan motor just stopped. The plug of an electric radiator became so hot that it could only be used a few hours at a time. The construction lights proved the most reliable but they only covered smaller areas. (lights below are pointing upwards to reduce the glare for the photo)

It took about a week to get the skim coats done, and a first layer of primer put on.

The next step was very satisfying: putting on a coat of paint! Not wanting to spend hundreds of dollars on a true marine paint meant for vessels that are in the water for long periods of time (like in a harbour), I picked paint that was meant for surfaces exposed to water, but not necessarily submerged all the time. The outside of the boat looks like the million bucks I didn’t spend, once done.

I used the same green to touch up some mallard decoys.

The inside of the boat still needed a fair bit of work (see Part III)

Project Duck Boat – Part I

She came to me on a cold November evening, and was unceremoniously dumped onto my garage floor. When Lee had said she might need a bit of work, he hadn’t been kidding. Anything wood was crumbling, anything metal had rusted, the fiberglass would need some touching up, trim had partially come off and was swaying gently in the cold Western breeze. But on the bottom lay a gentle layer of mud and grass, faintly smelling of the marsh. A few duck feathers clung to the hull, stuck to a patch of dried-up blood. It was clear: this was my new duck boat.

Where I live, it’s rather hard to give a boat, or anything really, a good hose-down between mid-October and some time in April. First of all, the water will be disconnected to prevent freezing of the pipes, and unless you want to turn the cull-de-sac into a hockey rink, water is best not used outside. But a series of buckets with hot water and soap turned to mud as I tried to clean my new prize inside and out. The kitchen drains did not clog, so I must have diluted the grime sufficiently.

The boat was stripped of anything that would come off: the oar locks, protective strip along the top and the piece of rotten wood on the transom. Before me now lay a blank slate. One in need of some serious sanding, a coat of epoxy and a few layers of paint. But first the most pressing issue needed to be addressed, the rotten outboard motor mount.

I have no immediate intention to use a motor, but it would be nice to have that option some day. Unfortunately the wood of the mountain plate was very wet and very decaying. All the softwood layers of the multiplex had turned to mush, in I spent a few days prying away at it to get that out as much as I could. Then I set the boat upside down and ran a heater under the transom for a long time, until, much later than I had thought, the inside appeared to be dry. In the mean time I started work on the hull (see Part II).

Enter modern chemicals, which according to the label turn mushy, punky wood into rock-hard material. Not sure if it did, but I poured it on thick. Next I used hardwood and bamboo strips and an epoxy to fill up the voids. It still being the middle of winter, all use of epoxy required lamps or heaters to provide a temperature that allowed it to set.

Once that was done, I rebuilt the outside by using aluminum strip, filling the surface with more epoxy.  Time to continue working on the hull!

(Continued in Part II)