Hunting Archery Duck Deer

Duck hunting : A morning fit for a gentleman - Somewhere around Arcola, I drove south of the snow line. Illinois straddles a wondrously strange cross-section of America, from the “Driftless Area” in the northwest to the cypress-tupelo swamps in the southernmost tip. Our winter climate matches that diversity.

Remember the snow and cold of December. Just before Christmas, I was looking for any excuse to head south when Todd Gessner called with a duck-hunting invitation at Rend Lake.

“It’s a gentleman’s hunt,” Gessner said. “The beginning and end aren’t real gentlemanly, but the actual hunting is gentlemanly.”

By that he meant we’d be up at 3 a.m. Two young bucks — Jason Johns, 27, and Matt Coe, 24 — dumped Gessner and I into the Big Muddy subimpoundment about 5.

I ducked under his light while Gessner used his 18-foot johnboat as an ice breaker. Shattering sheets of ice punched the boat floor. He followed the broken ice path of others, but then they reached the prime spots first. It made for an eerie, crackling racket.

Rend Lake has two approaches to public waterfowl hunting. On the Casey Fork subimpoundment, there’s a draw for stakes. On the Big Muddy subimpoundment, it’s each boat for itself. Hunting ends at 1 p.m.

“They give a map, but if you have not been here before, you will not hunt until daylight,” Gessner said. “Come down a day early. When hunting ends at 1 p.m., go around and find the stakes. Look around and get your bearings.”

That’s great advice. I was completely turned around before Gessner chose his secondary spot. He spun the boat in widening circles to break ice. In the open-water hole, we spread three dozen duck and a dozen geese decoys, then stood a couple full-bodied goose decoys on the ice.

In this odd year, the ice has been gone for three weeks. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources gambled and won on the climate changes by setting the latest close ever for duck season in the south. It ends next Sunday.

“We will have good duck hunting right up until the end of the season,” Gessner said. “It is crazy.”

And wonderful. He tucked the camouflaged boat tight into the brush. We piled more dried stalks around to hide our faces.

“This is my favorite time,” Gessner said as the streaks of sunrise came through broken clouds. He meant it, not even loading his shotgun for hours.

Strings of high-flying snow geese — thousands — came off the refuge in a child’s scribble. We had occasional high-flying mallards and a bald eagle. But the hunters in the cove across from us had steady shooting.

A sheath of ice reformed in the decoys. Gessner took the boat to break it just as several dozen Canada geese came low over the dam. We scurried to re-establish our blind. There were simply too many geese, too many eyes, and they skirted out of range.

Around 9 a.m., Gessner broke out a propane stove and iron skillet. (The gentleman’s part.) He hacked off chunks of the frozen bacon and threw them in the skillet. When they fried enough grease, he tried to crack eggs, only to discover they were frozen. Even so, they splattered nicely into the grease.

Deliciously greasy smoke filtered through the boat blind. The meal was simple, magnificent: fried eggs, bacon grease and bacon slabs on white bread.

As we hunched over breakfast and a story floated, six mallards came hard, their feet extended for a perfect landing in the hole of the decoy spread, just like they were supposed to. Only two of us regained our wits enough to shoot.

Snow geese returned from feeding, heading back to the refuge about 10 a.m. Half an hour later, the sun popped out.

“Man, that sun feels good,” Gessner said.

Southern sun in a northern state. It was time

BY DALE BOWMAN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
NASON, Ill. —