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The Wood Duck

A tale of growing up in the countryside

By Blaine ColemanPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 24 min read
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Image credit: Townsend Qalton-5962092- Pexels

And when there came a fork in my Path, I chose the way less travelled.

Robert Frost

I slowly released the safety on the shotgun, and though my thumb barely moved, an audible ‘click’ sounded and both wood ducks were instantly in the air, weaving through the maze of trees like a thread through cloth as they rushed for the shelter of the forest. Since I had set up there a half hour earlier, my gun was already pointed toward the area where I had seen two wood ducks feeding just after dawn, so I sighted quickly on the male…

∞ ∞ ∞

One of my chores after we moved to the farm was to make sure there was enough firewood inside the house to last until I got home from school. Dad had been hurt on the job and put on disability, so his pay was a lot less. He was an electrical engineer and there was a chemical spill in the lab where he worked. He was hospitalized for several weeks, and though he did not look injured, there was mild brain damage. When he came home, he was quicker to lose his temper than before, and his thinking was not always clear. With no physical therapy for brain damage, dad compensated by reading. He was considered a genius and had always read for hours when he was home in the evenings, but after the accident he read all the time.

The farmhouse did not have a furnace, but it had a cast iron woodstove in the kitchen, a perfectly good fireplace in the living room, and plenty of wood for me to split into firewood. The wood came from a huge, old, sycamore tree that a lightning storm had taken down in front of the house before we moved in. The tree had been cut into short enough lengths to use in a fireplace, but with the trunk up to three feet diameter, no one had bothered to split it or even haul it away. I asked dad to rent a powered log-splitter; I had seen one used before and was sure I knew how to use it.

But he refused, said it would be too dangerous. Instead, he got me a sledgehammer and steel wedges to break open the trunk and an axe to chop the split trunks into firewood. I did not understand why he thought hammering in wedges with a sledgehammer and then swinging an axe and would be safer than a powered splitter, but I assumed he was not thinking clearly so I did not complain.

Sometimes, when driving in a wedge with the sledgehammer, I would hit the wedge wrong and send it flying into the air. When using the axe, I had to be careful that it did not bounce off of the log and hit my leg or even cut off my foot. To me, using an axe, sledgehammer and steel wedges seemed far more dangerous. But later dad told me that he just could not afford the rental cost of a powered splitter. I knew he worried a lot about money, and since he was not able to do the work himself, splitting wood became one of my winter chores. It took me hours to make even one of the large pieces into firewood, but a single section of trunk lasted several days.

If I split enough firewood and stacked it right outside the front door after getting home in the afternoon, I had plenty of time before school to walk down to the old pond. I would leave the house when the sky was just beginning to lighten and by the time I crossed the field to reach the tractor path it would be light enough to safely walk into the forest.

The pond was in the woods behind the house, near where a swamp ran through the back edge of the farm, and since I did not have to be at the bus stop until about seven-thirty, a lot of mornings I would walk to the pond before school. My Aunt Eloise, who owned the farm, had told me to stay away from the marl pits. Marl, she told me, was a type of clay that used to be dug there and used to make bricks, including the brick piers for the farmhouse where I lived. She said they had stopped digging the marl after a tractor slid into one of the pits and had been left there. Since the old marl pits were close to the swamp, they had filled with water and tangles of tree roots, so falling into one meant you were not getting back out. I did walk around and between them and the water was perfectly still and pitch black; I stayed well away from them. Then I would sit on a dry log on top of the dam, the pond on one side and the swamp about fifty yards away on the other and listen as the forest came to life. Dad said the trees there were probably the only ones on the farm that had never been cut down, because the ground was too wet to get equipment close to the swamp. The sheer height of the trees, compared to those a little farther uphill, made that clear.

The canopy towered incredibly high above the ground, and even in the winter, there were bird calls when the first shafts of morning sunlight streamed through the mostly bare trees. Dark clusters of mistletoe stood out against the sky where they grew far out on the branches, and squirrels’ nests looked like random clumps of dead leaves where tree trunks forked high from the ground. Squirrels do not hibernate, and they would run from limb to limb, jump tree to tree, calling to one another in what sounded like short, scratchy barks. A murder of crows raucously cawed the start of the day from the branches of pine trees where they roosted. Sometimes, I would even see a red tail hawk leaving its nest to feed near the fields that bordered the woods on both sides of the swamp. Turkey buzzards soared above, dark against the sky, sailing atop the morning thermals as the sun warmed the fields. I loved the fresh, clear, crisp-in-the-winter morning air, the sounds of birds and squirrels, the forest awakening to a new day…

Those woods at dawn were the most peaceful place on the farm.

I had been going there for a while before I first saw the ducks- as I approached the swamp one morning, they flew off a still pool and disappeared into the woods while I was still at least 50 yards away- a forest floor of dry dead leaves is a hard place to walk quietly.

I identified them in the encyclopedia as wood ducks, prized for their colorful plumage and that mate for life and when one dies, its partner lives out life alone. With each male killed for its feathers, his mate will never lay eggs. I found a spot in the crotch of a double trunked tree that had one trunk broken off about three feet off the ground. I could sit there near the water and be relatively invisible from the swamp. Once I was sure I could safely reach it in near darkness, I started leaving the house before the first gray of approaching dawn so I could reach my chosen spot before the wood ducks arrived if they came back. And before long, they did. As silent as ghosts, they flew down from the trees and landed on the water with barely a splash. I sat there, still, and quiet, and watched as the ducks paddled a little, drifted for a few moments, and then dipped their heads into the swamp with their tales pointing straight up. Then they would pop back up, paddle a little farther and dip their heads to feed again. After ten minutes or so, they flew off and I headed up to the bus stop.

That pair, a male and a female, came to that small, open area of the woods to feed on a pool in the slow-moving swamp just after sunrise. I did not know if this was an everyday routine for them, but they had shown up most of the mornings I had been there at dawn,

The reason I had to be in position before they arrived, and then stay perfectly still, was because wood ducks have incredibly sharp eyesight and hearing. The minor crack of a twig, or even the slightest movement, would send them soaring for the cover of the woods. I had read about their sharp senses, but learned it from experience, too. One morning, I’d simply raised my head to glance up at a crow that had landed high in the forest canopy, and the wood ducks sprang from the water’s surface, their wings beating furiously as they weaved through the trees and disappeared into the woods. I could not see far into the tangled forest, but it did not slow them at all as they -navigated to safety.

I had started taking my shotgun with me when I went into the woods during winter so dad would not question why I was going out so early: he would just assume I was going hunting. Which I was because living in the country, it was what the other men and boys did, so carrying my shotgun made for good cover, at least. But I did load it so on occasion I could fire it up into the trees, or at a mass of mistletoe, knowing they would hear it at the house and think I had shot at something. That was true, of course- except that I was not shooting at anything they thought I would.

I did not like hunting- it was like a sporting contest for those hunters. They would pass around a bottle of Old Granddad, or whatever one of them had, and talk about the eight- pointer someone had shot, or who had gotten the buck with the biggest rack. No one I knew needed the game they shot, but neither did they waste it: venison steak and Brunswick stew with squirrel meat were favored dishes.

Dad finally asked me why I went out so often, using up his ammunition, which cost money, he reminded me, but never brought anything home. He said he knew I was not such a poor shot that I would miss everything I aimed for. So, to satisfy him, I decided I would go hunting with my cousin, Matt. He had grown up on the farm and hunted whatever was in season.

Sometimes dad let me use his rifle for target practice, so I borrowed it and Matt took me dove hunting. Even though I was a good shot with targets, and the doves just sat on power lines, unmoving and outlined against the sky, it was not until my third hunting trip that I hit one. Matt, of course, quickly picked off three of the others that took flight when I had fired the first shot. I doubted I would ever be as good as Matt at hitting small, moving targets.

“You can’t get much meat off just one of these,” Matt said as he picked up the dove I had shot and then the other three. “Mama will be able to do something with four of ‘em, though.”

And I was sure she would; Aunt Eloise did not like to let anything go to waste. My mom, on the other hand, was not about to pluck the feathers from dead doves, let alone gut and clean them, too.

Next, Matt took me squirrel hunting; he used his rifle, but I used my shotgun. After the trouble of hitting a dove that just sat there, outlined against the sky, I knew the shotgun was the choice for me, I could not imagine being able to hit a squirrel as it ran and jumped through tree branches eighty to a hundred feet above. Even with the shotgun, Matt had to take me squirrel hunting several times before I managed to hit one, and then I had to watch where it fell so I could find it. Matt got one with just two shots from his rifle, then one more a little while later. After we had collected all three, Matt tied them together by the rear legs with a thin rope and then carried the bloody things in his left hand.

“This is good,” Matt said, and he sounded pleased. “Mama can use ‘em in Brunswick stew.”

So far, I had killed a dove and a squirrel - the only other animal hunted on the farm was deer. Well, flocks of wild turkeys were sometimes seen, but they were rare, and way too hard to shoot anyway, so I left them to the truly dedicated turkey hunters in the area who knew what they were doing. I decided that I would get a deer and that would be one of each of the animals hunted on the farm.

Most of the deer hunters around there used dogs: underfed hounds they released when deer tracks were found in a field, or a deer had been spotted going into the woods. I did not see how anyone could call themselves hunters when all they did was shoot an animal that a pack of dogs funneled out right in front of them. That was slaughter, not sportsmanship.

I planned to wait until Matt had time to take me deer hunting; I was not sure what to do if I did kill a deer. So, I already had my shotgun loaded with buck shot, and when I approached the swamp one morning, a deer sprang up, water cascading from its body, and I instinctively raised the shotgun, aimed, and fired. The deer leapt into the brush across the swamp from me and disappeared into the forest toward the field on the other side. I had missed. Then I realized that was a good thing; I could get across the swamp if I had to, where a fallen tree trunk crossed it a few hundred feet upstream. But I could not carry a dead deer by myself, let alone get it back across the swamp.

I took the shotgun home, and then left to meet Matt and my sisters at the bus stop. The bus was already there, so I jogged the last hundred feet or so- our bus driver did not like waiting for kids who should be waiting for him. School that day was typical: repetitive and boring. Dad was an insatiable reader, a habit I’d picked up, and though I was put in what passed for “advanced” classes in the county schools, it seemed that everything the other kids were learning, I already knew. Of course, that made it easy for me to get good grades, but some of the other kids did not like that; they thought I was making them look bad. Still, I sometimes I helped other students with the assignments.

Matt lived in the old farmhouse down a dirt lane a few hundred yards from the street. My sisters and I lived in the older farmhouse at the end of that same quarter mile-long lane, so we walked right past Matt’s house. When we got off the bus one afternoon, my Uncle Rupert’s truck was parked near the barn with two others- they all had hunting dogs caged in the back. I knew Uncle Rupert had a big, wooden rack behind the barn where he gutted the deer he and his buddies killed. When we passed by the barn, he was cutting loose a deer carcass he had hung by its rear legs to gut and clean. They had to be hung upside down and the throat slit for the deer to bleed out. My sisters looked, then quickly turned away and hurried by, headed for the house.

Uncle Rupert saw me, dropped the butcher knife onto the wooden table, then turned and stared at me. I knew he had a mean streak, but the venomous anger in his eyes surprised me. He staggered a little when he turned around, then put his hands on his hips and stood stock still for a few moments.

“Well?” he said. “Are you going to thank me or not?”

“Uh- thank you for what?”

He pointed toward the deer carcass and shrugged. “For all the work I did for ya, that’s what! You shot this doe and then let it go off into the woods to die.”

I just stood there and did not say anything. I had no idea I had hit the deer that morning. I also knew that it is a cardinal rule in hunting that if you hit something and it does not drop right away, then you track it until you find it.

No matter what.

“And don’t try to tell me you didn’t kill that deer, Roland.” He pointed at the bloody, gutted deer carcass. “I know it was you. I was headed across the field on Horax’s land when I heard the shotgun and then I found the deer bleeding out in the woods, so I finished her off. I asked your father if you were out hunting near the pond before school this morning.”

“I did take one shot at a deer this morning,” I admitted. “But it jumped out on the other side of the swamp and leapt away through the brush, so I thought I’d missed.”

“You didn’t miss,” he said, still angry. “Deer don’t always drop right away, that’s why you track ‘em until they do.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle Rupert, I didn’t know that.” Then I shrugged. “But it was on the other side of the swamp- even if I’d known that I’d hit the deer, I couldn’t have gotten over there to track it.”

“If you’re that stupid, then you ought not to be deer hunting anyway,” he said and spat on the ground. “Just leave it for real hunters.” He gave me a disgusted look. “You were just going to let the damn thing go off and die, and then all that meat would’ve been wasted.”

I did not know what to say, so I turned and walked home. Dad was waiting. “Rupert came down here this morning and told me he’d found a doe on Mr. Horax’s farm. He wanted to know if you’d shot it before you left for school. Did you?”

I nodded. “I guess so,” I said. “I shot at a deer that jumped out of the swamp, but I didn’t know I’d hit it.”

“Well, you know how your Uncle Rupert can be,” he said. “It was only 10:00am, and he already smelled like he’d been hitting the flask, while he was supposedly hunting.” Dad did not drink, and he did not think much of people who drank whiskey while they were handling loaded guns.

“But there was no way you could’ve gotten that carcass back across the swamp anyway,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Mistakes are made.”

“I’m not worried, dad. I’m just not going hunting anymore.”

“Now you don’t have to be like that, Roland. Take your shotgun with you on your morning walks, in case you want to shoot a squirrel or something small enough you can carry by yourself,” he said. “And people are used to seeing hunters around here- it might look a little strange, you go walking in the woods in the winter, during hunting season, but without a gun to shoot anything.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’ll take my gun with me during hunting season.”

“Good,” he said. “But only in hunting season; you don’t want people to see you walking around with a shotgun any other time.”

I really did not think people seeing me with my shotgun outside of hunting season would be a problem; we were in the countryside, and a lot of people kept their guns on a rack right inside their trucks. I had not thought about it before, but I would feel better having my shotgun with me: Aunt Eloise let a lot of people hunt on her land and I only knew a few of them. Not that I did not trust hunters I had not met, but they were strangers with guns. And most of them liked their whiskey, too. I decided to not take a chance. So that is what I did from that day on: carried my shotgun, loaded with bird shot, and a few times I did see a hunter at a distance who I did not recognize.

I do not know why I shot at those wood ducks that morning. Since I had set up there a half hour earlier, the barrel of my gun rested in the crotch of the broken tree as I listened to the forest awaken. When the two wood ducks softly splashed into the pool to feed just after dawn, I instinctively flipped off the safety, aimed toward the male as they flew off the water and pulled the trigger. I never expected to hit a wood duck- they can dodge the trees in the forest faster than a scope can track them. I had had the shotgun for a while, but I had not been able to hit a dove that sat as still as a carnival target or even a squirrel without multiple misses and never thought I would hit one of those ducks. It must have been a lucky shot. Not lucky for the duck, though.

I lowered the gun and saw one of the ducks sailing in a downward arc to the opposite side of the open pool in the swamp where it landed on the wet ground just beyond the water’s edge. It had all happened so fast that I did not even see the duck’s body jerk when the bullet struck it.

I realized I had instinctively fired toward the fleeing ducks without thinking about it. Kind of like when I had shot that deer.

I could not believe what I had done when that poor duck fell to the ground. A sudden wave of guilt washed over me, and I quickly skirted the edge of the small pool to reach what I had just killed. I decided then I would not hunt again. I had killed a wood duck. Not intentionally, but I had done it. I had read that wood ducks mate for life, so I had left one without a mate. I lifted its dead body and saw the red bill. It was the male.

I had also read that wood ducks were a favorite of hunters and birdwatchers because the feathers shades of purples, blues, greens, with short bands of black that changed colors like the sheen of oil on water. On the head, feathers tapered into a slicked-back crest and the breasts were a shade of burgundy. The eyes of the males, like the bill, were red. It was the most beautiful bird I had ever seen. And I had killed it.

I could not, and would not, leave it there, so I took it by the feet and carried it home. Dad saw it and immediately bragged to mom about how good of a shot I must be to have hit a wood duck in the swamp. He was proud of me, and insisted mom take a picture of me holding the duck in a way that made it look as though it was sitting on the palm of my hand, still alive. Fake life is all it was- what is seen in pictures is not always true.

It was a Saturday morning, so I did not have school that day. Dad told me to get the duck ready for mom to cook. I scaled and cleaned the fish I caught in the pond and the swamp all the time but getting a duck ready was new to me. Dad said to put on a pair of gloves, then take the shears and cut the wings off as close to the body as possible, and then cut the feet off at the knees. I did that over top of a bucket, so I would have a place to catch the blood and body parts. It was far worse than cleaning fish. Then I pulled off the feathers, small clumps at a time, and then pulled out the tail feathers. Some of the feathers seemed too beautiful to just throw on the ground, so I set some aside to keep. I had no idea what I would do with them, but I didn’t want to just throw them away. When I was finished, the duck looked so much smaller without its feathers. A small, naked body with a head that flopped to the side.

I showed the bare carcass to dad and asked him what to do next. “Well, first you have to remove all of the feathers,” he said.

“I already got all the feathers off.”

“No, you didn’t. Look,” he grabbed the bird and pointed, “see all those little hairs? They’re pin feathers, and you singe those off before you can do anything else. Once that’s done, cut off the head and tail, and then scoop out the entrails and wash the carcass in a bucket of cold water.”

I had seen those hairs, and wondered why there was hair on a bird, but they were stiff, spine-like, and I could not pull them out. I did not know they needed to come off, or, if they did, how to remove them. Dad showed me how to roll up a piece of newspaper into a tight tube, and then told me to light the wide end and use it like a torch to burn off the hairs.

I singed off the pin feathers, then cut off the head and tail, removed the entrails, and washed the carcass in a bucket of cold water. It was not too different than scaling and gutting a fish, except that cleaning a fish never bothered me the way that cleaning that poor wood duck did.

After mom broiled it, there was not much meat, and I did not want to eat any of it. But dad insisted: I had shot it so I should be the first one to get a taste. Hesitantly, I sliced a small piece of a breast and took one bite. It was dark meat, and greasy, but I had killed it so ate it anyway.

I could not keep the image of that duck when it had been alive out of my mind, though. Then images of all the animals that I’d deliberately stolen life from flashed through my mind: the squirrel, which I’d watched tumble and bounce through the branches to crash on the ground; the dove that had jerked when the bullet sent it, limp, into the field, and the deer I’d wounded and left to bleed out in the forest.

And now I had killed a duck, that beautiful wood duck with its shimmering colors, its talent for expert flight through the tangled forests… Worse, I had left another duck without a mate when it might be too late this year for her to find another. I knew I should not have killed any animals, but because of peer pressure I had given in to what was expected of me by others. We were told in school all the time not to give in to peer pressure, not to drink or use drugs even if people all around us did. I was supposed to like hunting, because that is what men did if they lived in the countryside- they hunt. The guilt was overwhelming.

After that, I stopped going into the woods and to the pond in the early morning during hunting season, except on Sundays, when hunting was banned.

And I never hunted again.

Image credit: Andrew Patrick-9321209- Pexels

~ ~ ~

This story was originally posted on Medium.

Thank you for reading this short piece and I hope you enjoyed it. I have other stories and poetry written and more to write, along with my thoughts on issues of the day, spirituality, religion, politics, and more. You can subscribe to Vocal using my link and see all new work as I publish it and you can also read the thoughts, stories, and viewpoints shared by thousands of writers. And part of the money from every membership helps us all continue to publish and share our work.

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About the Creator

Blaine Coleman

I enjoy a quiet retirement with my life partner and our three dogs.

It is the little joys in life that matter.

I write fiction and some nonfiction.

A student of life, the flow of the Tao leads me on this plane of existence.

Spirit is Life.

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