Following the Flyway … According to ‘Duck Junkie’ Gretchen Steele

When most of my hunting friends begin their early October “Buck Fever” phase, I’m  getting ready for life on the flyway highway. I know that soon the birds will start to appear and soon I’ll be chasing north and south, following the gaggles of geese, flocks of ducks, and piles of pelicans.

I’m a duck junkie and I will readily admit it. My normally busy schedule goes into full tilt boogie mode  when I hear the honking and cackling and quacking that tells me the birds are their way.

My husband sighs a lot. He mutters things like – “Reckon you’ll be home by March?” and “Don’t forget to change your oil. How many miles did you put on this week?”

My hunting partner gently reminds me, “Baby doll, you need a nap; your’re dragging your foot and your face is getting crooked!”

I live on endless cups of bad coffee and crummy convenience store food, gobbled down as I roll from one batch of migrators to the next. I cruise up and down the Mississippi flyway, in the snow and darkness so that I can have my boots on the ground long before daylight.  Most days start at 3 a.m. and  rarely are  finished by 10.

I feel that it will be July before I am actually warm and dry at the same time. I’ve forgone cologne, because there’s none that can quite mask the smell of gunpowder, wet dogs and dead ducks. Mud, cornstalks, paw prints and bloody feathers litter  hatch back — empty cigarette packs, candy car wrappers, coffee cups, chapsticks, and tubes of hand lotion litter the passenger side floor.  Soon I’ll have to scoop shovel out all the flotsam and jetsam that settles in my vehicle during waterfowl season.

I break ice on frozen lakes and rivers, lie in snowy fields for hours on end. I wade icy water that’s waist deep and slug through heavy wet mud negotiating a soft cornfield.

Those first honkers I heard back in October were calling me  –  to three solid months of being cold, wet, tired and hungry. My body screams back at me on a daily basis;  my neurologist and immunologist fret and still I go on — chasing birds, racing the flyway highway.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well,  here’s a chapter or two – some images from this years season so far.  There’s still a while to go.  We’re band hunters … we’ll see you when the birds go home.

http://youtu.be/lIrxAiAM7RI

To see Gretchen’s photography, click here.

Keep tabs on Nancy Jo and Marti’s moves for Campbell Outdoor Challenge

Nancy Jo Adams journals daily about her experiences in the Campbell Outdoor Challenge, that provides a competitive sporting event format for professional hunter and cameramen teams to match their skills in filming hunts. The Campbell Outdoor Challenge consists of a professional video circuit of fifteen cameramen teams with the ultimate champion determined by the team accumulating the most video points throughout the events that form the circuit. Nancy Jo and WOMA member Marti Davis make Team Artemis. You can read her blog here.