The Armchair Outfitter

Sunday, October 29, 2006

We’re just days from the start of our Kansas trip, and I’m still ordering equipment. I’ve decided that my luggage isn’t up for the rigors of a trip like this. We will be hauling our gear in the back of a pickup. Everything will be double bagged in yard size trash bags to prevent water incursion, but I don’t have a large enough bag for all the clothes I will need. Raimey ordered flats of shells months ago, but I’ve waited until the last minute. I also realize that while hard-sided luggage won’t compress and will take up too much room, I won’t have any way to protect my camera and other breakables if I stuff them down in a massive duffel bag. A call to Mack’s Prairie Wings solves both problems. I order the requisite massive duffel bag for the clothes, and an Avery soft-sided cooler for the breakables. The cooler space may also come in handy when we get there. I have to spring for 2-day air freight, but I am assured that my bags will arrive in time for the trip. I pick the camo pattern for each bag (why not, right?) and that’s one less thing on my list.

I check my guns, making sure that both are ready for travel and use. It’s Raimey’s suggestion to take a backup shotgun. A malfunction could ruin the trip, and there’s too much planning and preparation involved to blow it with a broken ejector or a weak magazine spring. Raimey and the other guys have been reviewing satellite photos and topographic maps of the area we will be hunting, even though R.J. and I went last year and this is the third trip for Raimey and Kirk. A change in the water level in the river basin could make areas we hunted with great success last year inaccessible now. They also check to make sure that a massive logjam across the river is still in the same position as before. The result of a flood some years ago, the logjam provides a difficult but passable route to the other side of the river without walking out, driving around to the parking area on the far side, and then walking back down into the bottom.

The hunting conditions are difficult to impossible, high-stepping through the cattails to flush birds that have taken to the river bottom for refuge. This is public land, and the row crops receive a tremendous amount of hunting pressure on opening day weekend. Our style of hunting depends on this pressure to concentrate the birds in a small enough area for the four of us to hunt effectively, but thick native grasses six to eight feet high are the rule and not the exception. Couple the exertion with the tremendous daily swings in temperature and a steady wind that sometimes exceeds 20 miles per hour, and you’ve got a recipe for heat exhaustion, hypothermia, or both.

Just getting there is bad enough. It’s a good six hour drive from the Gulf Coast to Raimey’s house where we will all meet. From there, it’s another sixteen hours in the saddle with each man driving a four hour shift. I’ve scheduled extra time off from work after we return, because the immune system takes a beating in a solid week of dawn-to-dusk hunting. Everyone seems to come back with some kind of flu bug and some nagging injuries. For all the planning and effort, I still love this trip. I’ve been on a few guided hunts before, and I’ve also taken friends from out of town fishing in the salt. Just from these few outings, I know that the experience of the guide is far different from the experience of the guided. A mediated adventure is not the same as the outdoors unfiltered.