Ep. 181: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Cold Fronts

Cold fronts, Good night, nurse. It's cold and Arkansas folks a lot colder than we're used to and it's all because of a big old cold front. And normally we look forward to them because they usually ramps up the hunting this time of year, but these major ones they do just the opposite most of the time. We're gonna talk about coal from us today, but first I'm going to tell you a story. This story is called Dynamite,

Ice and Rice. I know more dynamite. I don't want you to think that my life was just full of stories and incidents that involved explosives, but there were a few, and it wasn't limited to dealing with beaver dams. And flooded timber. Not this time anyway. This was all due to a major coal front and duck hunting right after the turn of the century. The most recent one. My brother Tim and I were prepping for a group of

hunters from the East Coast. A large percentage of our clients hailed from up and down the Eastern seaboard, and they always seemed to travel in herds. Now, other than a few exceptions, if we got one of those rascals, we got a whole passl of them. Not a problem.

Tim and I would try. I had a limited number of hunters booking at the same time, to about eight, and we would split them up and hunt four to a guide for safety, and it's easier to hide a smaller number of folks in the woods, which is where we did the largest portion of our hunting. After all. That's why folks travel to Arkansas to duck hunt. They want to experience what it's like to have large groups of ducks falling into the timber and hovering above the decoys.

It's one of my favorite things, but seeing others see it for the first time is probably my most favorite of ault. It's one of those if you know you know, moments, and it has to be experienced in the flesh. Pictures,

stories and even films don't do it justice. Feeling the air generated from the thump of beaten wings here, and chattering and quacking of drakes and hens as they jockey for position to land during the final approach, the splashing of feathered bodies as they turn graceful flight into what resembles amateur night at the dim Anglicien Derby for the final few feet of descent to the surface of knee deep water. That's the ticket, man, that's the show. That's

what you pay your money for. That's what you see in your dreams when you lay down at night anticipating the next morning's hunt. It plays over and over in your head, and like that, one good golf shot out of a thousand bad ones keeps a golfer coming back to the tea box. The thought of having a chance to witness a spectacle such as I just described is what keeps a duck hunter spending his hard earned money to travel halfway across the country and the off chance

that they might see it again or for the first time. Now, the group we had coming would see none of that, not even close, but they would see something just as incredible, record lows, the product of a blast of Arctic air, ice and snow. The can we talk about down here forever and folks up north would probably call a Tuesday was forecasted to hit a couple days before they arrived. In Arkansas and South Arkansas anyway, any mention of snow

and ice was anticipated as eagerly as Christmas. Any ice on the road meant school would be closed and the whole state was shut down with a quarter inch of ice or sleep. Literally, I ain't kidding. As a youngin I'd go to bed with snow and ice forecasted for the following day, having already made my plans on what I was going to be hunting the next day, tracking rabbits, quail, deer, whatever was in season or close to being in season was on the agenda. Then I'd wake up to find

that the weather man had missed it. Once again, I waited for the bus and the cold matter than a mashed cat hating school and the weather man. But this time, however, he nailed it. Temperatures in the twenties and several inches of snow locked up the flooded woods, and Timber. Now we told our clients about how everything was locking up, but they wanted to come anyway, So Tim and I

scrambled to find a solution. Now we had an eighty acre rice field at least next to forty acres of woods that bordered the world famous by Meat of Wildlife management area we called by a Meat of the Public Shooting Grounds or the Scatters, among other local names. But if hunters could get out to the main bow where there was some current, they would keep the ducks moving in and out instead of just sitting in there like

it was a sanctuary. There would be plenty of people trying to get to those coveted open spots, so the competition in there would be fierce, but it would work to our advantage if we could just get some open water. The evening our hunters arrived, we scouted the rice field, which was fifteen minutes away from the camp. Now, ice was already a quarter of an inch thick, and the temperature wouldn't get close to thirty two for the next

few days. We drove a four wheeler out in the ice and in the water in front of the skid blind we had brushed up in the middle of the field. We were breaking up a large area of muddy open water as we drove in circles and made it shine like a diamond. Of ducks coming in with the coal front and they were landing in it before we got back out on the turn road. To leave open water would be the key to our success and a struggle to maintain the blind would hold five people safely and comfortably.

Now that meant we had to stagger our groups. But we had a plan that Tim would take his four hunters and get in there at daylight. The trailer we had for hauling the four wheeler would serve two purposes. Once we arrived, he unload the four wheeler, then hook it to the trailer to haul our hunters and all their plunder along the turn row out to the blind. He didn't hook the trailer and make a loop through the ice where we were going to put the decoys

while our clients got in the blind. Now, once he had the hole opened up, he'd parked a four wheeler behind the blind and start hunting. Ten would hunt from the opening of shooting ires till around nine o'clock, and then I'd have my crew there where we parked our trucks. You're ready to swap out when he came out. It was a good plan. The best part was I got to sleep late. It had been a long season. My Nokia fifty one to ten cell phone started buzzing before

seven o'clock. The message from ten was y'all come now, all caps and with several exclamation marks. Well that wasn't a good sign. It was barely shooting light outside and my crew had just started getting up and moving around. No doubt he's stuck or is having some kind of trouble, I thought. So regardless, I needed to get them open, get them moving with whatever had transpired at the rice field. Y'all, get your stuff up and let's go. We got to

go right now. Something drong just now. If someone had been hurt, he would have said that, so I knew whatever the emergency was, it was hunting related and not an issue of life and death. So like herding cats, I finally got my folks and all their stuff in my bronco and we took off. I'd messaged him a couple of times to see if I needed to bring anything other than what he knew was in my ride, but he never answered. In my head, I'm thinking he's elbow deep in cold ice and mud, and I figured

he couldn't answer. So about seven twenty when I pulled up to the property and saw Tim with the trailer loaded with all his hunters, making their way back toward us along the levee. Immediately my mind raised as to what we were going to do with these hunters. Now. If he's driving back, he's obviously not stuck, so the rice field must be frozen up beyond opening up. I figured, man, they hadn't been there forty five minutes from the time shooting ears opened up until now, and I had no

idea what we were going to do next. But Tim must have a plan. Wouldn't have called me to come over. We're sitting in the bronco and I turned to the guys that were with me. I said, boys, I don't know what's going on, but don't look like we're gonna be hunting here today. Their disappointment was obvious, even though they didn't say anything. But I was disappointed too. Now. As they got closer, one of them said, look at

all those ducks. I looked out across that field, and ducks were piloted into that rice field from every direction. I looked back at the trailers. Tim got closer and it was filled with mallard ducks and smiling duck hunters. I started laughing. I said, y'all, get y'all, get your stuff together. The B team is going in now. Tim said it was an absolute dream. They couldn't spook the ducks out of the field. All his hunters were wanting to tell their buddies about what they'd done, but I

was in a hurry to get them out there. Who knew how long this would last, and I wanted all of them to have every opportunity to shoot ducks that we could give them. So I got my boys loaded up and we looked back at that rice field that had a tordinata of ducks bombiting that muddy water. I told Tim, y'all can wait here if you want. We're gonna be back in a few minutes. He didn't wait, but I wasn't wrong. Tim and his crew went back

to fix breakfast for all of us. It took us longer to get ready at the camp and get there than it did for us to shoot five limits of ducks. Wave after wave of ducks being pushed into the area where that coal front were falling into the decoys. It was too cold to have my lab out there, so I was picking up dead ducks and live ones were still dropping in. As high as you could see a duck, you could call at him, and immediately they locked up

and fell like a rock. Wings were pressed close to their sides, and they sounded like a jet engine as they gained speed, getting closer and closer. No circling, no, nothing, straight down, like they were on a string. We were back at the camp before Tim could get the biscuits done. We'd shot ten limits of mallards tag team style. But what about tomorrow? What were we going to do about tomorrow? Most folks are judging their jobs by their last performance.

A duck guide has to sell himself on what he's going to do next, and I had no clue what we were going to do. That ice would be too thick to break with the four wheeler. Tim had a plan, though. He knew what we were going to do next, and what we were going to do next was going to be just as entertaining as what we had just done. We planned to hunt after the sun came up the next day. It would give us time to safely put our plan into action. We had acquired two sticks of

tovekx tovax more or less replaced dynamite than that. It was safer the store and handle back then you could legally buy it. That's enough of that. That's not the important part of the story. Anyway. Our plan was to blow a hole in the ice that had become a lot thicker through the night. Breaking it with a four wheeler wasn't possible any longer. We could do doughnuts without even trying. All ten of us were walking on the ice, jumping up and down, trying to make a hole, slipping

and falling and generally risking life and limb. At one point I looked around and everyone had fallen and was on their backs, flopping around like someone had kicked over the shining bucket in the bottom of the boat. It was slick, and I'm not sure we could have broken through with a truck. Enter tovex Tim with the explosives prepped, He lit the fuse and we retreated to the relative safety to witness the festivities. How long you cut that fuse for tens old about any time now, And with

that it detonated with a large boom. Our clients were cheering from the levee After they had all taken refuge behind the four wheeler trailer about one hundred yards away. Tim and I had tucked in behind the duck bline. The results were less than we'd hope for, but we had managed to knock a hole in the ice, a hole almost big enough sticky foot in. Now we had one more stick left, but decided against putting it in that hole for fear of reckon the laser level filled

that we had leased. Doubtful the farmer would have appreciated a big low spot in this dead center where we were hunting the coming spring when planting time came, So we all worked as hard as we could to make that hole about the size of a kitchen table. The biggest chunks of ice we slid into the ice that we could that we couldn't break, or just lay it on the outside of the hole. Then we threw three decoys in it and called it good. It was all

we could do, and it worked like a charm. The wind was steady, and the ducks that were coming in were all migrators and looking for a place to sit, no matter how small the hole was they wanted water. It was literally the perfect storm. Temput all our hunters into the blind and we stood behind it and we shot another full ten man limit that afternoon, just like we'd done the day before when we alternated groups. On the third day, we were frozen solid and our guests

got an early start back home. We tried to talk them out of coming at the beginning, but they wanted to experience an Arkansas duck on now. While they didn't get it in the classically historic sense, what they did get was an experience with some Arkansas flare, and that's just how that happened. Cold fronts, Man, We looked forward to cold fronts as much as anything done. Number One, it's going to start giving you some relief from the

heat that is the south. And number two, if you're a duck hunter, it usually means more ducks are coming. Ducks only go as far south as they have to. They're fueling up to make it through the winter, select a mate and travel back north to make more ducks. So if stut guard Arkansas is as far south as they need to go to have food and water, that's where they'll spend the winter. If it stays warmer further

north will be their cold weather home. It's been my belief, not from schooling, but from observation over the past almost fifty years of chasing them, that ducks are energy hoarders, and they're only going to burn enough to sufficiently stay healthy enough to do what ducks do this time of year, which again is to prep for making more ducks. Snow and ice that cover and freeze all the food sources up yonder force all the waterfowl to make tracks to

my neck of the woods. I remember watching the weather man talking about all better bundle up and have plenty of firewood on hand. There's a big coal front coming now. My wife can hear a forecast like that, and she starts inventoring wool socks and seeing how many she can put on at the same time, just to stay inside. All I hear him saying is Brent, you better get outside. The critics are stirring now as I'm telling you all this.

I've been locked in the house for the past three days because a particularly big coal front came through, bringing snow, ice, and single digit temps in a historically low water year that froze the water. We did have while giving the lowest duck numbers recorded in the past twenty five years, the old boot in the breeches, kicking them on down the road. The light at the end of the tunnel is it'll start warming up in the next day or so and the ducks should start moving back in before

duck seasoned plump slips away. Now that's the ebb and

flow of coal fronts. Low duck numbers and unprecedented lower There was a time when I wouldn't have missed a minute of it, and Tim and I would have been somewhere where there was open flowing water, even in this severe cold, because there's one thing that's one hundred percent guaranteed in nature, and that there is no one hundred percent guarantees all the water doesn't freeze, all the ducks don't leave, and all the duck hunters don't stay home.

Derek Reynolds a man who was first introduced to me and Tim when he was a teenager. He wanted to duck hunt and needed someone to take him, and we did, and Derek became a member of our family. He now has a beautiful family of his own, and he became a staple at our guide service when he was a kid, and if we'd ever had an official mascot, it would have been him. And once they got to do with cole fronts, well, I'll tell you. Derek sent me in

tim a pitcher this morning. It was ten degrees and Derek and a friend of his were posing with two limits of ducks. There was some open flowing water in the background. The picture made me shiver just looking at it. An aluminum boat with frozen mud, dirty snow, and covered with ice. The mount of clothes those boys were wearing reminded me of Randy in the movie A Christmas Story. My response to this text was heck yeah, But in parentheses I wrote, I'm glad I wasn't there, but that

was a lie. I would have been there. I've been stoke for the past three days to get out and see what's shaking in the woods. And I'm not sure if it's habit and learned behavior or genetically ingrained in me to be outside when it's cold, but that's where I want to be. Maybe cold fronts affect me just like they do other creatures. Now, I don't have any scientific data to back that up, but I bet there's

something to it. I do know the coon stay in the den for the most part where I live when it's this cold, so cutting whaling loose would be more like an exercise and futility. If I wanted to tree a coon outside of his den, and with my duck holes frozen up and dear not moving much, I've had to lay up in the house and wait out the cold TIMPs, just like an old boor coon, getting more

anxious every day. Then, when I thought staring out the window at iced over roads and snow was going to be my new hobby, a road greater and a salt truck passed by my house. Then Michael Rosemand called and said, get your stuff together. I've got some beagles and we're going rabbit hunting. Man, old man, how I love a cold front in this country life of mine. Thank y'all so much for listening. Chuck a big log in that fireplace that'll still be burning when you get back home.

Bundle up and get yourself outside, take someone with you, and enjoy the gifts of winter. We don't know how many of these we're going to get, and we need to take advantage and revel and the ones we did Until next week This is Brent Reed signing off. Y'all be careful.