Choose Wisely

A true partner. A son. And the freedom to go without guilt, fear, consequences or leverage. Paying homage to Mrs. Babcock.

“I gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul…” – Bob Dylan, Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright

“What is it? Are you OK?” The nightmare that woke me up startled my wife out of her slumber as well. “Yeah, fine, just a stupid nightmare.” She fell back asleep. I did not.

What was growing inside her belly would be identified as either male or female in a few hours time. There was no sense in increasing her anxiety about it at 3 a.m.

The next morning, we drove to her doctor’s office excitedly, and with a bit of trepidation. I wasn’t the only one who was hoping for a boy.

Bright lights, examining room. Petroleum jelly, the ultrasound wand and a monitor. We were both craning our necks to see if we could detect the sex even before the doctor went through the routine. “Two arms, two legs, cranium and spine developing normally” and such.

“Would you like to know your baby’s..?” We didn’t let him finish the question, “Yes!” We both blurted out.

“It’s a boy.”

My wife’s smile was unforgettable. My expression didn’t change.

I gave him the Larry David stare from Curb Your Enthusiasm. It’s the same look I’d give anyone who tried to tell me to put the decoys on the upwind side of a point instead of the lee, or add split shot to a Blue Wing Olive.

Do NOT f#*k with me

“Are you sure? I mean, how sure are you?”

The doctor chuckled. The nature of the chuckle and smirk on his face gave me the impression that he had seen similar expressions on the faces of men and heard those questions more than a time or two.

“Look.” He motioned toward the monitor as he manipulated the ultrasound’s wand until the baby’s legs came clearly into view. In between them there was some business of the type and shape of what should be there if the little bean growing inside my wife was, in fact, a boy. “You see that! What is that?!?” (Now he was just being a smart ass. Under these specific circumstances, I embraced it.)

He didn’t need to convince either of us any further. I recalled the nightmare from which I had awakened 8 hours earlier, in a cold sweat. The one I told my wife was “nothing, go back to bed.”

Giddy with excitement (and filled with relief...), we smiled and laughed all the way to the car. We were not out of the parking lot before she asked me, “So, what about that nightmare? I’ve never seen you startled awake in the middle of the night light that?”

I smiled. “Now I can tell you.”

“In the dream it was a late December morning. I was up at 4 a.m. The wind was howling out of the northwest. It was 33 degrees and spitting a light mix of sleet and snow.”

“I made a pot of coffee for my thermos, slammed down a bowl of cereal. I had the decoys, gun, and dog in the truck by 4:30, and cranked it with the lights off to avoid waking you up.”

“As I was pulling down the driveway, there you were, standing in a robe with your arms crossed, blocking the end. For a moment, I thought about driving over the yard and going around you before my mind did the necessary relationship calculus.”

“I slowly rolled the truck toward you. You walked up to the window. I was afraid to roll it down but did anyway. With your hands on your hips and your hair blowing in the cold wind, you said, “where the hell do you think YOU’RE going?!?!”

“Honey, this is the best duck weather we’ve had all season. Whipping wind, cold, snow flurries. I’m going duck hunting!”

“Oh no you’re not. You’re going to your daughter’s dance recital at 10 a.m. Now you get your ass back in that house!”

And with that, any anxiety we had shared over the information we would learn from her doctor in the previous few days, and which apparently triggered the nightmare I had privately suffered the night before, was all washed away like it never even happened.

Flash back to the beginning. After a friendship that began through work turned more serious, I went to south Florida to take her out on our first date in the fall of 1991.

She greeted me with a test of sorts. She cut her long, blonde, beautiful hair short a few days before I arrived. (Very short.)

I must have passed. The relationship grew more serious.

A few months later, when I knew she was “the one” and she came to visit me in Tallahassee for a weekend, I had my own form of test ready.

The night she arrived and met my first Labrador retriever, Woody, she was timid, reluctant, almost scared of him. She hadn’t grown up with dogs, so her reaction was understandable.

When we went to retire that night, Woody was already sleeping in his regular spot on my bed. When she went to crawl into bed next to me, he shifted and sighed, with a barely perceptible groan. Thinking he was growling at her for taking his spot, she jumped out of bed.

Having grown up around dogs, I found these reactions mystifying but comical, not the least of which was because it was early December, I had an plan, and Woody was part of it. The next day, she would come to see Woody (and maybe me) in a very different light, whether that turned out to be a good thing or not.

Every man has his own desires in a spouse. This woman had checked every box and then some. But viewing my outdoor passions as some sort of “hobbies” to be constrained rather than embraced for the way of life they were (are and always will be..) would be a red flag, and probably worse.

“I do not need, expect, or even want you to like or take up bird hunting and come with me. But you grew up in an area of the country where guns scare people and there is no hunting tradition. I need you to go with me once, to see that it is not just a blood lust sport. To see the rituals, the reverence, and the relationship between man and dog and birds, to understand that this isn’t a hobby I get to do once or twice per year. It is a way of life that is part of me and always will be.” Whether she sensed it was a test or not, she was game for the experience.

Now, fellas, if you’re going to do this, you need to do it right. First, take her on a day where the weather is not going to make her miserable. Second, take her for an afternoon hunt, if at all possible. Don’t drag her out of the bed at o’dark thirty. And, third, try to plan your hunt so you’ll have 30 minutes to an hour to set up (she’ll help toss decoys, cut blind material, make her part of it), an hour to hunt, and then another 30 minutes or so to pick your spread (she’ll help that that, too) and head back. Your goal is a two-hour or so excursion, on a reasonably warm day, to a place where you know a few birds will be loafing and not reluctant to come to the decoys.

This was the set up when, on a 65-degree Saturday afternoon in early December 1991, we towed my duck boat over to the Florida backwaters of Lake Seminole. Dressed in a chamois shirt with an old school camo raincoat over it, riding in the bow of a 13 and a half foot Gheenoe-style camo boat with Woody sitting amidship between us, this Yankee who had never seen a gun and was scared of dogs when the day begin was on her way duck hunting.

I set up where a small gut about 75 yards wide connects a large back bay to a maze of smaller sloughs and ponds. The wind was out of the northwest, from the direction of the dove roost I wrote about in Exodus, no more than a mile upwind from the point formed where the gut broke the bay’s tree line.

Cattails lined the point, and a thick mat of hydrilla in the water of the bay attracted lots of diving ducks and coots. Giant yellow Water lilies fanned out around the point, with patches of green dollar bonnet interspersed among them. The point had proven to be a reliable, easy afternoon hunt on this particular wind, in a place where I almost never encountered another hunter.

I tossed two camo dove buckets, my cased Browning A-5, and a blind bag with a couple of drinks where the cattails met the short myrtle shrubs at the water’s edge. Woody jumped out, relieved himself, and did reconnaissance in the cattails and shallows while I poled the boat away from the point to set decoys.

“Do you keep looking back over your shoulder worried about Woody and alligators?” I had pointed out a ten-footer sunning in the hydrilla as we crossed the open water of the back bay.

“No, we’ve had a couple of good frosts. They won’t bother him. I’m judging distance.”

When we were what I judged to be just under 25 yards from the buckets in the cattails, I told her to drop the drake ringneck decoy I had handed her with the decoy line unwound as I poled away from the point. “Just drop it right next to you over the right side. And don’t put any decoys any further from the shore than this one.”

With the bow pointed back toward the point, I grabbed another decoy out of the bag and showed her how to unwind it, handed it to her, and said “hold this until I tell you where to drop it,” then with a quick shove on the bamboo pushpole, moved us upwind back toward the point. When the bow of the boat got just over 15 yards from the point, I said, “drop that one right next to the boat.”

While she did, I quickly flung one to my left and one to my right, to form an outline. “Now, help me pile the rest within that outline. Make sure and leave 2-3 feet between each one.” She dutifully followed my instructions.

When all the decoys were set, and I was poling back to the point, I watched her take in her surroundings. The blonde hair that she chopped off four months earlier was now shoulder length.

This beautiful woman, with that blonde hair gleaming in the afternoon sun, smiled watching Woody play in the shallows. She burst out laughing when he dug his nose into the cattails and the startled red wing blackbirds scurried from their perches balancing in their slowly waving tops.

Once at the point, I had her don a pair of size 9 camo hip boots a friend let me borrow. Shoving the bow right next to the camo buckets, I helped her step out, steady herself, and find solid ground on the soft bottom.

Woody heard the boat and our voices and came sloshing through the cattails. Now on the edge of dry ground, he did what Labs always do before I could stop him: he shook violently, covering us both with swamp water. I looked at her face as she squinted her eyes closed: smiling, laughing.

“Sorry. That’s gonna happen once or twice more before the day is over. I’ll shield you next time.”

“Sit on that bucket. Wait right here for two minutes. I’m going to pole the boat around the corner, hide it with burlap and come up through the myrtles behind you. Relax and enjoy the view.”

Woody swam beside me, blowing off steam. A couple of minutes later, we were both by her side. A quick peep from my Gonia dog training whistle and Woody sat between us, looking over the decoys and scanning the sky above. She watched as the dog’s expression changed from the playful, low-ear position of his cattail and woods romp to the serious, eyes-wide, ears-perked classic pose you see in David Mass paintings of waterfowl dogs who know their business.

I handed her a Diet Coke and some peanuts. I stroked Woody’s back and spoke quietly.

“Here’s what’s going to happen. In the next few minutes, you’re going to see ducks drop in from great heights in the sky above this large bay in front of us. They are coming to loaf and feed in the hydrilla and dollar bonnet, the green stuff matted out on the surface so thick I have to pushpole the boat through it. They are going to circle this large bay.”

Pointing to the east, west and south, I said, “Some will land over there, there and there. Some will go whizzing over our heads at a speed so fast you won’t believe it, but you’ll hear it, and land somewhere upwind of us a few hundred yards away.”

“But a few are going to see these decoys, the calm water in the protected area along this point, and they’re going to fly right into those decoys. And when they get to the outermost one you set, I’m going to knock them down. And Woody is going to go get them and deliver them right to my hand.”

I handed her some foam earplugs and showed her how to insert them. I uncased the gun, grabbed half a dozen shells from the blind bag, loaded three and put the rest in my pocket.

“I want you to watch all of this. When you see birds flying, watch with your eyes, move your body and your head as little as possible. And whatever you do, do not tilt your head up as birds are circling and pass overhead.”

“Watch the flight of the birds. Listen to the sound of their wings tearing the air apart as they drop from altitude way up in the sky to about 100 yards off the water before they start circling.”

“Watch Woody. Watch him watch them. Notice how he does so with his eyes but does not budge until he is commanded to retrieve. If ducks circle our decoys a couple of times but move on, watch him look at me, as if he’s looking for an answer about why they kept going.”

“Watch his exuberance entering the water when he takes off to retrieve a duck. Watch how proud of himself he is when he delivers it to hand. Ponder whether you think he’s truly enjoying himself or finds this some sort of cruel and unual treatment.”

It was about 4 p.m. I had barely finished the last sentence when Woody stiffened. Glancing in the direction his eyes were peering, I saw the single ringneck drake just as it began falling from altitude, right before I heard the sound...the one a man can never hear enough...the one that can still make his heart race at 60, or 70, or 80 years old.

“There, look!” She followed my eyes. I pointed, then watched hers to make sure she was locked on.

The bird circled the open bay once then zipped right over the decoys about 40 yards high, with its necked craning, looking at them. “Watch his wings, if he turns left, he’s probably ours.”

He made a big left turn, swinging first to the west, then south. When he was 150 yards downwind and my eyes caught the final necessary tilt in his wings I said, “Watch this. He’ll make a U-turn and come right back and try to land with our decoys. Be perfectly still. Watch with your eyes.”

When the bird was 5 yards from the first decoy my future wife had dropped with his wings cupped, I shouldered the gun. One shot and he was floating, white belly up with water droplets glistening in the golden light of the afternoon sun.

I did not look at her. I simply barked the word “back!”

The coiled 85 pounds of chocolate fur covered muscle sitting next to her who had not budged shot from his position now shot like a missile, entering the water with legs outstretched. I looked over at her the moment he hit the water. The woman sitting next to me who had been petrified at the animal now sit with her jaw wide open and a smile of amazement on her face.

The duck was an easy mark, floating in the decoys. In no time, he was swimming back with the bird. At the edge of the cattails, his swimming strokes changed to lurching. “Stand up and stand right behind me so you don’t get sprayed but keep watching!”

Woody delivered the bird to hand. Then shook water everywhere. He looked up at me for approval. I gave him a pat on the head. “Ok, let him shake on more time, then you can sit back down.”

He did, and she sat back down. Woody resumed his post between us, his eyes scanning the sky again.

Over the next 30 minutes, she watched as singles and pairs and a few small groups flew into the bay, with many landing and feeding in other areas nearby. I took two more singles that decoyed perfectly. I had the three ducks I had set as my goal for the day but only half an hour had passed.

When Woody had delivered the last bird to hand, I announced, “well, that was great, let’s get you back to the ramp and not overdo it.” That’s when something happened that I was not expecting.

She said, “Wow. That was really cool. Can we stay for a few more minutes and just watch a couple land in the decoys?” Which is exactly what we did.

I cased the gun. We sat for another half hour, me drinking a Coca-Cola, her drinking a Diet Coke and sharing a bag of salted peanuts. She laughed at the sound of Woody’s tail beating the cattails. She marveled at the “whoosh” sound diving ducks make as they skid to a landing after coming in like winged rockets.

At about 5:00, strategically so that we would be picking up decoys as the sun started to set, I left her sitting on her bucket while I went to get the boat. As I poled around the point and the two of them came into view, Woody was sitting right next to her. She saw me, put her hand on his back, and matched the smile on my face.

The dog sat between us. I poled slowly through the decoy spread, with her leaning over the gunwale, using the handle of a wooden paddle to catch the decoy lines then tossing them into the floor of the boat. I used the bamboo push pole, dropping mine into a standing decoy bag between her feet and the bow.

After getting the boat back on the trailer and all the gear secured, I loaded up the dog, where he promptly crashed on his makeshift bed in the back of the truck. We stood by the boat ramp sharing a cigarette, watching the sun set over the water and the pines to the west.

On the 45-minute drive home with the dim light of the day fading behind us and the smell of wet dog coming from the back of my 1977 Toyota Landcruiser, she had lots of questions. “How did Woody learn to do that? How does he know to carry the bird so gently in his mouth? Why did some ducks pour right into our spot, and others circle us once or twice and move on?”

The questions were still coming from every angle when we pulled into my rented house. I told her to go get cleaned up while I unloaded gear, cleaned birds, and washed the dog.

Three birds took me no time to clean. I hosed off the dog, threw a squirt of soap on his back, and gave him what dad used to call a “Navy shower,” and toweled him off.

A few hours later, after returning from dinner, Woody was waiting for us, crashed out on my bed. This time, she crawled into bed next to me and plopped right between me and the dog. And this time, when Woody moaned from having been slightly displaced from a comfortable position, she laughed and hugged his neck.

I said to her softly. “You saw today that there is a lot more going on out there than meets the eye, or “killing” birds. My relationship with Woody, with those birds and their behaviors, with that land I’ve gotten to know in all weather conditions, how it changes from day to day and year to year. It’s not a ‘hobby,’ it’s part of me.”

“Now I truly understand.” I could see in the smile on her face and in the feel of her warm embrace that she meant it.

She passed the test. As I must have hers.

Three weeks later, the dog she was petrified of a month earlier delivered the proposal, jumping up on the bed with a note and an engagement ring connected to his collar with a twist tie from a loaf of bread. She said yes.

As I had hoped, she did not become an outdoorswoman. But two years later she asked me to go duck hunting one more time. I took this picture at the end of that day, while waiting for the Buckhead lock to open at the rim canal on the northwest side of Lake Okeechobee.

The day she chose to go.

This September will be our 34^th anniversary, and this fall will mark 35 years since those mutual tests. Over a third of a century, three different Labradors have shed their hair on her bed and in the nooks and crannies of two houses.

She gave me the greatest three gifts any outdoorsman could ever receive from a woman. She gave me herself fully, as an equal partner in all of life’s successes, failures, trials, tribulations, joys, and fears.

She gave me the son who has been by my side in the outdoors since he was a boy, for eight international hunting trips before his 24^th birthday, from the pampa of Argentina to the prairies of Saskatchewan. A hunting partner with every single reliable characteristic a man needs and desires: safe gun handling, a deep appreciation for the things in nature observed that most hunters miss – a dog marking and making a long blind retrieve, the sights and sounds of new species of raptors and songbirds and shorebirds passing low over the pampa in a foreign land - and no need to fill a limit when the fortune of a good day afield has been registered by measures far more meaningful.

Having a son like that grow up in the blind with you is more good fortune than one man deserves. That he should be more proficient than I could have ever dreamed, and I would both witness this and record it on video for him to look back on when he’s my age, makes the whole experience absolutely sublime.

This might sound like an exaggeration. It is not.

Few adults with decades of experience could clear a jamming autoloader without the gun leaving their shoulder and pull off a triple on decoying teal … with a 20 gauge.

How many times does a fortunate father get to see his son pull off a Scotch Double (two birds with one shot) in his lifetime? (I quit counting after a dozen.) How many times does he actually capture it on film?

Or, even more amazing and rare, how many times might he live to see his son cleanly harvest three pintails with two shots in a foreign land?

Alongside these two priceless gifts, she gave me the most selfless gift a woman can give an outdoorsman: she gave me freedom. No matter the season. On opening day. When the weather hit peak conditions and the time to go was now. When unique opportunities presented themselves. Or merely for the simple medicinal value of being outdoors, she never said no.

“Of course. You know you don’t even have to ask.”

I have friends who have to beg their wives for one afternoon in September to hunt doves. Twice mine has told me to take our son to go hunt on opening day when it fell on our anniversary.

I said I would like to take him to Argentina with me for six days last June, then fish with friends near Yellowstone two weeks after I returned in July, and then take our son to Saskatchewan in October, all in the first seven months after my retirement. She smiled, “do it!”

And she meant it. And that’s exactly what I did.

Famous outdoor writer Havilah Babcock (no relation!) ends his wonderful short story, The Reformation of Bo, writing about his close childhood friend who married a girl whose family had money, and a quail plantation in Virginia.

“A bird hunter, being a practical fellow, seldom turns a pretty girl down because of her money.”

Mine didn’t come with money (or a plantation). She earned it the hard way, shoulder-to-shoulder with me. But she gave me something I have always valued far more than money.

Freedom. She let me be me. Without which many of the stories in these pages would probably never have occurred.

Choose wisely.

Having paid homage to Dad for angling, and Leo for bird hunting, this one is for you, Dolly. Thank you.

“Like” this post if you’re going to go show some gratitude to your spouse or partner for your freedom. (Or maybe use this as a subtle suggestion….)

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