Bucket list ideas to stay away from

  I wrote this last waterfowl season. I thought I'd post it to remind myself of the coming winter.

  My brother’s brother-in-law made an all night drive from Colorado to go water fowl hunting with us.

  Jim tries to do this each year. He seems to be blessed to hit his timing just right and we have fantastic hunting.
 This year the weather turned cold, very cold. The lake froze solid, pushing the ducks and geese onto rivers and mostly, onto private ponds where public cannot hunt.
   “We’ll just have to do the best we can with what we are facing,” I told Jim on the phone, while planning the mornings hunt.
  Jim, his son Kyle, and our nephews, Nick and Luke arrived in Jim’s Toyota and began piling on the clothes. It is so hard to dress for these hunts. We have to pack decoys about a quarter mile out in a field and then lay in a ditch to hide. If you dress for the cold hunt, you sweat like crazy packing decoys. If you dress for packing decoys you freeze as soon as you stop moving. You have to dress light for the pack because the last thing you need is for sweat to start freezing as the morning progresses.
  We packed about five dozen decoys into the field, pitch dark, working with head lamps. We hurried driving the trucks to a farm yard to hide them, then hiked our way back to the ditch.
  For the next two hours we hunkered under white sheets while laying on our backs in the snow drifts that filled the ditch, wondering why we hurried to get out of our warm trucks.
  Jim looked down the ditch at the shivering crew and made this comment, “I’m going to write a book about the top fifty crazy bucket list things one should NEVER do.”
  We managed to shoot a few geese before we all froze out. The geese were still flying over the field as we drove the trucks away. “Who cares,” I thought as I tried to warm my hands with the cold air blowing out my truck heat vents.
  The next day’s hunt was even better… I mean worse. We met at the Snake River with my jet boat to try a duck hunt. We always try to get the kids as much shooting as we can. Goose hunting is rewarding, but the shooting is usually much less than the duck hunting.
   I arrived at the river early, once again hours before daylight,  and chipped the ice out of the boat drain plug holes until I could wiggle in the rubber drain plugs. Burrrr… my hands were freezing.
   I backed the boat into the water in the pitch dark and set up to launch. It seemed to take a long, long time to get the motor fired in the bitter cold, but at last, it roared to life and in a cloud of steamy smoke. Over the sound of the outboard motor I heard a grinding sound.
  “What in the world is that,” I thought, while digging for my head lamp. I shined it at the river to see big chunks of ice float past the stern of the boat.
  I dodged the ice foes, launched the boat, and then tied it tight to the shore to wait for Jim and the boys to arrive.
   When Gary’s truck pulled into the parking lot at daylight we were greeted by the sight of huge chunks of ice floating down the river. I was looking to see if I could pick my way between them with the boat, but as the morning progressed they moved tighter together and larger in size. Some of the ice foes were as large as a car. Not something I wanted to try running a jet boat through in freezing temperatures.
  Bad bucket list idea number two.
  We decided to bag the duck hunt. Gary, Jim and the boys would go upland bird hunting in the desert hills.
  Later that day I received a call from a friend that one stretch of the river was flowing ice free, and ducks were there. I texted Jim and Gary about a hunt the following day.
  Daylight the next morning found us on another boat ramp, launching the jet boat through the ice frozen across the boat ramp. At least the river was not flowing ice, even in the below zero temperatures.
  I informed Jim that I was very nervous to be running the river in this bitter cold. One mistake and we would be in trouble. It was just too cold to make any mistakes.
   The two mile run up the river was nothing short of torture. There was no way to keep ears, face, or hands warm. It was so cold. We set out the duck decoys and had a fairly good shoot, but once again the words, “What in the world are we doing here?” kept coming up.
  Guns freeze up, as soon as you got out of the water your waders would freeze stiff and we would have to walk like little tin men! It was great.
  Back at the trucks with hands warming by the heaters, we again talked about the bucket list of things someone should never try. This was number three in just as many days!
  Three of Jim’s days in Idaho waterfowl hunting were days you could cross off your bucket list as things you have to be a bit crazy to even think about trying.
  We did them, and lived to tell about it.