Hunting

There are two accessories I always take afield with me these days. The first is a quality pair of binoculars to help me see deer skulking in the shadows that would otherwise go undetected...

And the second is a deer call.

If I am careful, a single note can lure that buck into range as if I possessed a magic flute (a buck, I might add, that could easily walk out of my life forever.) Do grunt tubes work all the time? No. Most experts are pleased if they can get one out of 10 bucks to respond favourably to their renditions.

Down in Yarmouth County, NS, a hunter for whom guns, cartridges, camo coats, boats, ducking and duck toller dogs have meant more than words can convey, looks out his front window at the windswept, foggy, and ruggedly beautiful southern tip of Nova Scotia. For this man, the thought of a tolling dog that hasn't worked a bird is almost more than he can bear.

I had been seeking a man to be the subject of the final, clinching chapter of my book on the history of Nova Scotia's duck tolling retrievers.

An evolutionary case of fatal attraction.

By late March at Pomquet, the local black ducks are feeding and courting in cracks and openings that develop with each new tide in the harbour ice. Soon a male, or drake—easy to identify by the white cast of worn feathers on his back—leads a slightly smaller mate into the bushes and the forest. Together they inspect potential nest sites. A second male sometimes attaches himself to the pair. He is vigorously spurned at first, but gradually tolerated by the dominant male, who claims a small bay in front of our house as territory.

In spite of the new gun regs, this year’s shoot calendar is bigger than ever.

What a shooting season we are going to have this year! The nasty measures that Ottawa hoped would discourage shooters and shooting sports seem to have had the opposite effect as this has to be the fullest calendar I have put together thus far. In speaking to other gun clubs, most are encouraged by the amount of new members, and by the general attendance for the shoots they held last year. I find this renewed enthusiasm to be very positive and exciting. It promises a future for our sport.