Adventures, Sarcasm, Dead Animals, and A Bunch of Fish: Okay, This Shooting Ducks Thing Is Growing On Me...

Keta's 2nd day duck hunting: 2 pintails and a mallard

Okay so my outlook has completely changed. Yes, duck hunting is muddy and smells and cold and wet, but [I can feel an "I told you so" coming from Scott] I love it. Why? Here's the scoop. First of all: where you are walking, it is a workout and a half. For example: people take step classes at the gym for an hour (I've taken these before myself) and they are fun- you work your hip flexors from all those knee raises. Now, picture doing that with your body weight strapped to your foot- that is duck hunting (well, where we go at least). One minute you are standing on a squishy plant and the next minute you are, in Scott's words, "sac deep" in mud. Now if Scott's "sac deep" that means Molly is chest deep. So, you are pulling yourself out of the mud, crawling, and walking. Such a calorie burner. And, unlike a workout at the gym, you come home with your dinner in tow, and an extremely healthy high protein dinner at that. Talk about satisfying! Second of all: My dog is tired. Does anyone know how difficult it is to get little miss crazy energy dog tired? So you take her duck hunting, she gets stuck in all the swamp shit and has to pull herself out. Then the grass in some spots is taller than her head so, if you were watching from a distance, every few seconds you'd see a black blob just fly over and back into the grass to catch a peek of what the heck is in front of her. Then, she retrieves and carries around ducks, also tiring for her through the swampy messyness. So we get home, give the swamp creature a bath, and she sleeps for the rest of the night. That's like 5pm to 9am the next day. Amazinggg. And finally the reason why duck hunting really rocks is eating ducks. Um, so good. Last night, Scott made a bbq rub and rubbed the duck breasts with it, then wrapped them in bacon and put a homemade bbq sauce on the bacon. I am telling you, I'm drooling just talking about it. Stuff is the best. Granted, not quite as healthy when you slather it in bacon but it is well deserved. So we have gotten 10 ducks so far this season- we've eaten 6 (pigs, I know) and frozen 4. We've kept all the wings to work with the dog (we hide them in the woods and make her find them) and we cook up all the organs (WOOF) for her to eat- she loves it. The only thing we don't keep is really the carcass itself. Not too shabby I think. And it's a reason to make delicious meals: last night I made homemade rosemary olive oil bread (I'm getting better at this bread making thing), a goat cheese cranberry spinach salad, rosemary roasted potatoes, and bacon wrapped bbq duck breast. Oh, and pumpkin chunk cookies. It's basically winter here soo my body is in baking mode [as if its ever not in baking mode]. Next time we make something delicious, I might try to put up pictures and a recipe- we'll see!