First light in a Southern swamp
By Tom Bryant
I was just getting ready for, hopefully, a good night’s sleep. Granted, the evening was still young, but I was planning an early rendezvous with a brace of wood ducks right before sunrise. “I’m going to bed,” I said to Linda.
“It’s just 9 o’clock. What time are you getting up?”
“Four-thirty should give me enough time to get to the swamp right before shooting time. The truck’s loaded with all the gear, coffee pot’s ready to fire up first thing, sausage biscuits are wrapped and in the fridge. Not much else I can think of except creeping out of here without waking my cute little bride.”
Linda looked up from her latest issue of Southern Living. “You know I can’t sleep with you rattling around in the kitchen. I’ll get up and help you pack your lunch and send you on your way. And you be real careful in that swamp tomorrow. I hate for you to go off hunting before daylight all by yourself. What if you broke a leg or something? You aren’t a youngster anymore.”
“Babe, just how many years have I been doing this without breaking anything? I might not be as young as I was, but I’m a lot wiser. Remember what Gus McCray said in Lonesome Dove: ‘The older the violin, the sweeter the music.’”
“That quote has nothing at all to do with you wandering around a snake-infested swamp before sunrise. You know that,” she admonished. I headed down to the guest bedroom so I wouldn’t wake her during the night. In my excitement before a morning duck hunt, I usually toss and turn a lot.
With my hunting clothes laid out, I climbed in bed and read a little of Havilah Babcock’s classic book, My Health Is Better In November. I thought about the similarities of our lives, hunting and fishing in the South. He grew up in Virginia but lived and had most of his outdoor experiences in the low country of South Carolina. He was head of the English department at the University of South Carolina and was so popular that students had to sign up for his class a year ahead of time. There was one great difference in our experiences in the woods, though. He bird-hunted when quail, or partridges as the true old-time Southern hunter called them, were extremely plentiful. It was nothing in his day to jump 10 or 15 coveys. I, on the other hand, might raise one covey, or as of late, no birds at all.
I put Havilah’s book on the nightstand and clicked off the light, making a mental list about the gear needed for the next day’s hunt. Canoe loaded on top of the truck, paddles in the back, wood duck decoys in the decoy bag ready to go, shotgun and gunning bag beside the back door, hunting coat and waders ready to put in the back seat. I would put them on before I pushed off in the canoe.
The next day’s weather was going to be a bluebird day, a little crisp, but not too cold. I’ve found that wood ducks really aren’t that influenced by the weather, though. Usually, with them, it’s a morning event, over right after sunrise. A big yawn and stretch placed me in Lady Morpheus’ arms, and the next thing I knew, the little alarm clock beside the bed was ringing me awake.As promised, Linda met me in the kitchen and had already fired up the coffee maker. In short order, the thermos was loaded with fresh hot coffee, my travel mug was ready to ride, the biscuits were in my gunning bag, and I was eager to head to the swamp.
“You be careful,” Linda admonished again, and I quietly eased out the back door, cranked the old Bronco and was on my way. I’ve noticed lately that 5 o’clock in the morning is not as deserted as it used to be in Southern Pines. These days, there are a lot more troops on their way to work at Fort Bragg. As I got farther out in the county, though, traffic became sparser, and I soon rolled up to the locked gate at the entrance of the farm I lease for hunting. There was still plenty of time before daybreak to drive to the tree line where I could drag the canoe to the beaver pond nestled in a low cut in the swamp.
My canoe is a camouflaged Old Town boat perfect for hunting and fishing out-of-the-way locations. And best of all, it’s lightweight enough to let me hoist her on top of the Bronco without pulling a muscle or tearing a rotator cuff. A nearly full moon reflected enough light to help me navigate through thick alders and briars as I dragged the boat to my launching point. In almost no time, I had the canoe loaded, and I cast off into the darkness.
A swamp at night can be a forbidding place; but fortunately, I had spent enough time walking the perimeter of the banks of the beaver pond to get the lay of the land, and moonlight helped me paddle to the spot where I wanted to hunt and hunker down to wait for sunrise.
With the decoys set out, I draped an old brown tarp over the bow of the canoe and sat on the floor of the boat to present a smaller profile. I was right next to a giant cypress and used one of the paddles to wedge the boat in as close as I could. All in all, it was a pretty good set. Watching the world come alive on a late fall morning is one of the things that keeps me coming early to the woods as many times as I have. It’s a wondrous thing. All the cares of the day before are a thing of the past as the grayness of dawn begins to cast shadows and the sun begins to rise over the pines. I’ve seen hundreds of sunrises and you would think that they would all be alike, but it’s not that way. I believe that each one is like the day itself, always the same but forever different. It heralds a new opportunity, a new beginning. I checked my watch; another 10 minutes and it would be legal shooting time, and in the distance, down toward the creek, I could hear the hawk-like screech of a wood duck on the move. The sun was just peeking through the underbrush. It was going to be a great new day. PS
Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.
