The Rescue

Larry Dablemont paddles the first official "float" of the new johnboat

Last November, I drifted slowly down a river in my johnboat, with a blind attached to the bow; limbs of sycamore and oak to hide me and the boat as I floated down the river. It was getting cold. I figured there would be mallards on the river, but there weren’t many.

As I looked downriver, trying to make out the movement of a flock of ducks, three wood ducks flushed from some brush alongside me, only twenty or so yards away. I dropped my paddle and picked up my shotgun in time to drop the last one of the three. A beautiful drake wood duck in front got clean away, but the other two were hens, and the last one folded cleanly and fell to the river downstream from me.

That night, I admired what a beautiful creature she was, and cleaned her, cutting out the two sides of meat lying to each side of the breastbone. The meat was dark, and red. I soaked it in milk overnight, and the next evening I cross-cut the two breasts into a total of 8 little steaks about an inch and a half wide, wrapped each in a small piece of bacon, sprinkled some special seasoning and garlic on them, and put them on a wooden skewer, with a slice of onion and green pepper between each piece of meat. In about fifteen minutes over a hot flaming grill, the meat was cooked, and it was delicious.

If you are a vegetarian, that is fine with me, but I am not. I like wild game, and I would not hunt anything unless I prepared the meat and ate it. That makes me a predator. You would think I would sympathize with other predators.

That brings me to only a few days ago, when I drove a couple of miles down the road that takes me from this wooded ridgetop where I live, and started to pull out on a two-lane highway, just beside a bridge over the river. As I stopped there, I saw another wood duck hen fly along before me, only a few feet from my hood, and right above her was a sharp-shinned hawk, death on wings.

The hawk nailed the woodie in flight, and drove her to the highway shoulder pinning her with its talons, and trying to rip away her neck with its sharp curved beak. I just stopped my pickup in the middle of the highway, jumped out and ran toward the scene of the crime, and rescued the squealing wood duck by threatening to make a football out of the hawk. It tried to carry the hen away, but he wasn’t quite as heavy as she was, and the hawk couldn’t get airborne.

Freed from the iron grasp, the hen waddled out into the highway as if stunned, the feathers on her back askew, her mouth open, squawking as only a hen wood duck does, a sound like no other on marshes or rivers. There had been no traffic, but I looked up to see a couple of oncoming vehicles now stopped, drivers frowning, not understanding the urgency of the situation. I got back in my pickup and the hen took to flight over the bridge, and was nailed again by the hawk. The feathers flew from her back when he hit her and knocked her to the bridge-top pavement.

What could I do? I jumped out again, screaming threats at the hawk, and the wounded wood duck dived over the side toward the river as the hawk retreated. I don’t know what happened to her, but I gave her a chance. Drivers in both lanes now were stopped, yelling something out their windows, hopefully directed toward that villainous hawk. If they were talking to me, I hope they are ashamed of themselves. After all no one should be in such a hurry so early in the morning, and patience is a virtue!

Reflecting on it later, I felt bad about what I did. Not so much about stopping traffic, but for not realizing the hawk had more right to take a wood duck for a meal than I do, because he was merely being what God created him to be. It isn’t his fault that he looks wicked and mean. Actually, I too have sharp toenails and little beady eyes. Certainly his plumage makes him more beautiful than I, and his graceful, swift and powerful flight is spectacular. When I am chasing rabbits out of my garden, there ain’t nothin' swift or graceful about it.

If the hawk had shot the wood duck with a shotgun, and cleaned her and cooked the meat, I would have less of a problem watching it. But the attack of the sharp-shinned hawk is swift, savage and heartless. In his talons, the duck would not die quickly; she would be partly eaten before her heart stopped beating. Maybe it is that part of it which makes it hard to watch, difficult for us to accept. Nature is perfect in its functions, but brutal at times.

I am a naturalist, trained and existing that way since boyhood, and I know what happens in the woods because I have always lived there and worked there. It doesn’t bother me to watch a hawk kill a rat, because I don’t care much for rats. I can hardly stand to see a little fawn or a baby rabbit killed and eaten by anything, even though I know the great Creator made it to be that way, and I need to accept it.

In the reality of it, there is nothing more brutal or savage than man. Man has this little streak of evil that wild creatures do not have. He is destructive, gluttonous and barbaric at times, and yet in most all of us, there is a ton of goodness, and compassion and sympathy. I see my friends and neighbors showing love and generosity constantly, and find it more often than not in complete strangers. But men are not part of nature any more. Neither am I. That poor hawk may have gone hungry that day, when God meant him to eat, to serve his purpose in nature thinning out the weak and sick, feeding his youngsters just as we must feed ours.

But if you were in one of those vehicles behind me, He meant for you to be a little more patient when somebody is trying to save a wood duck!!

What a great day we had at Bull Shoals State Park in north Arkansas, last Saturday, building an old time White River johnboat. A big crowd turned out and it was fun. We took the boat down to the lake and gave folks a boat ride and it didn’t leak a drop. Now we don’t know what to do with it. If you know someone in need of a 20-foot wooden johnboat like they made almost a hundred years ago, contact me. And you can see photos of the event, and the finished boat, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

My publishing company has a facebook page now. You can find it under Lightnin’ Ridge, if you know the way to do that facebook stuff. The ladies who work for me, Sondra and Dorothy and Diane, take care of facebook and websites and computer stuff. I am a grizzled old veteran outdoorsman, and I ain’t never gonna get involved in such technical, modern nonsense. There’s fish to catch, rivers to float, wilderness to explore and computers are evil, to my way of thinking… like them darned hawks.
Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. Or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. E-mails aren’t evil, I don’t suppose.