When things just won't go right...

The Sunrise at 6:37 a.m.

Well at least my coffee is hot and tasteful, but all other things in my duck hunting world have officially gone bust. Today was supposed to be a day of reckoning. With the advent of junior hunting day, my father and I made the decision to move to a more remote, but closer venue. Rather than use our Alaskan, it became pertinent to utilize our tending crafts for our lobsterboats. Now these specially made boats powered by 3.3 Mercury outboards are very proper for gunning in areas that bring ledges, rocks, shallow spots, and any thing else questionable for larger vessels. However, I have had as many times of difficulty with that outboard as I have had pleasure. And my father on the very same morning got the same poison. Just so you know, legal shooting today was at 6:24 and I'm currently blogging at 6:49 with my thermos at my feet...

Okay, it's been a few days in the works. Matt Diesel elected not to attend this Saturday's hunt for reasons that I'm still trying to figure out and my father didn't want to be interfering with any kids chance of tagging a deer on Junior Hunt Day. So we watched the weather and figured we could gun on the Northwest side of the island amongst some of our neighboring smaller islands. The tide would be half-flood and it would be a great chance to shake up some of the ducks who have been moving in to the mussel beds. We took all 40 of my eider decoys, and other equipment, out of the Lund and loaded up the tenders last night in order to minimize the efforts in the morning. All that we needed this morning was the coffee, apparel, and the firearms. I felt quite encouraged by our plans.

Enter my good friend Murphy, he's a bastard...

We get to our tenders that are on haul offs (for those who don't know, we have an anchor off the shore with rope running through the eye, this ultra big loop then allows us to pull in our boats from shore) and loaded up. It took three pulls of my cord to fire up the little Mercury and I sat there idling waiting for dad to fire up, well he never made it and never did I. His outboard wouldn't start at all and mine wouldn't hold idle. I thought at first it was flooded, so then I put the throttle down and pulled a trillion times, then I'd get it running for three seconds and stall. Meanwhile, my father had his motor torn apart and was losing his dedication to our hunt quickly. So here we were, my father, myself, and that jerk Murphy who seems to show up at any given time when I'm supposed to have fun. My dad threw in the towel, and I rowed back to the shore to unloaded all the gear that I spent over an hour fixing for this morning. Game over...

So here I sit at 7:08 wondering how well things are going for the Rabid Outdoorsman and his dad, actually I know things are going awesome. You see, Murphy found me... What annoys me the most is that all I wanted to do was share in a great morning with my dad... For some reason, it couldn't be and that what bothers me the most... I guess I'll give Rabid a call to see if there is balance in the universe... We did talk about Taoism in World History this week...

The Downeast Duck Hunter