We had a wonderful shoot. But the cold weather took it's toll on us. Whit and I were both cold, but Crutchfield, uncharacteristically, got very quiet. I recognized his behavior as hypothermia, so we got off the water as quick as we could and got him back to the trailer to warm up. He had been wounded in action during the Korean War. While recovering from his wounds in a VA hospital he had contracted polio. It seriously damaged one of his legs. He had limped through life, making the best of it and I never really heard him complain. When we got back to the trailer, he was complaining a little. Whit was concerned and we immediately turned two, getting him warmed up. All the heaters on, the oven door propped open, all the surface burners on, warming the old trailer as quickly as we could. We started undressing Crutchfield to make him more comfortable and so that he could walk around some. When Whit pulled off Phil's waders and removed his socks to check his feet, particularly the bad leg, it was pretty sad. His left leg was black from the knee down.
Phil had fought the bad leg all his life, and seemed to remain pretty calm. We ran a hot bath for him, prepared a hot meal and he seemed very comfortable. But the black leg concerned me. I wanted to take him to the nearest hospital and have them take care of him. He refused. Said it wasn't the first time that he had overdone it, and that by morning, he would be OK. Well, the next morning, he was a lot better. Well enough, he said, that he could drive himself home. So Whit and I went hunting.
We had to warm up the hydraulics on Whit's boat with a torch, to get them thawed out, but the boat started pretty easily and we thought everything would be OK. We took the battery out of my Jeep and loaded it in the boat as a back up. Launched and headed out to the blind. 12 degrees, with a wind chill of -5. Not much of a crowd at the ramp. One other boat trailer was there ahead of us, and no others came while we were launching and heading out to the blind. Morris, of course, was excited. He told me that he knew for a fact that the Game Wardens had a safety rule that prohibited them from launching their boats when the weather was that cold. So, of course, he had plans on killing a zillion ducks.
We didn't get in the blind till after shooting time and birds were moving, but nothing like the day before. We killed 2 drake Gadwall and 2 Black Ducks in about 3 hours. We continued to start the boat every 15 minutes to make sure it was OK. We were warm enough and everything seemed alright, except for the lack of ducks. We thought on it and decided that the migration we had the day before must have just continued through the afternoon and night and all the ducks were long gone. Disappointed, to say the least.
Whit's old frostbitten index finger started bothering him, so we packed up and headed in. Didn't make it too far. Went in through the Mouse Harbor Ditch and made it to about the head of Prong Creek when the hydraulic system on the outboard motor threw craps. The motor was tilting itself up and we couldn't keep it down in the water to run the boat. After washing ashore, we found a bleed off screw, but it was frozen and we didn't have the tools to back it out.
Huh, bad predicament. We got out the little air horn and flare gun from the emergency equipment can and got ready to signal any boats that we might see. Both of us remembering that we had only seen the single trailer at the ramp. But some of the locals continue to hunt, fish, and poach all Winter, so we thought we had a slight chance of seeing someone. We knew we could get out on the shore and hike towards civilization. But there was deep water that would prevent us from being able to make it all the way in to safety. So we decided to stay with the boat and keep our frozen fingers crossed.
About an hour later, we heard a boat running. Coming through the Mouse Harbor Ditch and really no where for it to go except to pass by us. We had drifted a couple hundred yards from the channel, but could still see out into Oyster Creek where the boat was heading. When it came out in the open and we could clearly see it, Whit started waving an orange life jacket and sounding the horn. No change of course by the speeding boat. Whit said to shoot the flare, so I launched our last ditch effort. I made a good shot. Almost too good. The boat was 250 yards from us and my flare actually hit the outside of the hull of the boat, near the bow. The boat immediately slowed, Whit kept signalling and I started loading another flare. I heard the boat crank up and looked up to see it heading towards us.
The guys in the boat were a little upset about my marksmanship. But there was no damage to their boat. They threw us a tow line and pulled us back to the landing. They were in fact the only other boat that had launched. We got pretty lucky.
No, we got real lucky.
No comments:
Post a Comment