CLARKSVILLE - I dare say, the two Yankee fellas looked a little sheepish Monday when they came off Lake Dardanelle at Spadra Park.
Clad in insulated waders and ballcaps, they were dressed like it was mid-January, but their faces were beet red and they were sweating like it was Sept. 1, which, of course, it was. A hot and balmy Sept. 1, at that.
Meanwhile, Alan Thomas and I were kicked back and looking Redneck Riviera cool in our earth-tone shorts and camouflage T-shirts. Al wore Aqua Socks, and I looked positively stylish in my khaki Crocs. Ordinarily we might feel foolish hunting geese in such getups, but again, we were cool and comfortable. The two Yankees certainly were in uniform, but they looked like the last two survivors of Pickett's charge.
Al and I learned our lesson about wearing winter clothes during the early waterfowl seasons a couple of years ago. As usual, we wore waders and long-sleeve shirts on opening day of the 2005 early teal season, which happened to be one of the hottest days of that brutal summer. Even worse, Al wore fleece-lined waders. We got wetter with sweat than we would have without waders.
Last year, we hunted in our lawn-mowing clothes, and it was our most comfortable early-season outing ever. It prompted Al to declare he would never again wear waders during the early teal or goose seasons. For him, it was also a statement, an act of defiance against goose hunting conventions and protocols. When he saw those poor heat-stroke victims from the north country tumble out of their boat in a heatinduced stupor, he glowed with vindication.
Even so, they eyed us with a look that said, heat stroke or not, they wouldn't be caught dead in such outrageous outfits.
The adventure began at 5 a.m., when Al, I and Grace, Al's highly entertaining chocolate lab, motored across Spadra Creek to one of our favorite goose-hunting spots. Geese often roost along the south side of the Arkansas River, and we hoped they would fly over us on their way to their morning feed. Problem was, we hadn't scouted before the hunt so we didn't know if geese were nearby. We were hunting on hopes and memories, and as any bass tournament fisherman will tell you, that's a sure recipefor failure.
When we reached our hunting spot, Al put out a half dozen Canada goose decoys, and then we scooted a couple of camouflage chairs into the brush where we could sit and wait in obscurity.
"It always amazes me to come out here and see people with three or four dozen decoys," Thomas said. "I'm like, 'Oh, really? And how often do you actually see that out here?' "
Al's decoys, in comparison, are old, faded and out of style, butgeese still come to them.
As the sun came up, Al and I talked of politics, music (Grace loves classic rock), careers, canoes, smallmouth bass, women and all the other things good friends talk about while waiting for birds to arrive.
We talked and waited. And waited. And waited, but the skies were empty except for the thick, full clouds gathering like hair blown from the head of Hurricane Gustav.
Finally, I succumbed to the effects of my 3 a.m. wakeup and 90-minute drive in the dark. With nothing flying to stir my adrenaline, I retired to the boat and lay atop mounds of burlap, shotgun cases, gear bags and dry boxes. I woke myself up snoring sometime later as Al uttered an expletive and began blowing his goose call. I clambered into a reclining position and saw about 20 Canada geese flying low across thewater heading north. Despite Al's honking pleas, they didn't give us so much as a look.
"Your 'sleep taunt' almost did it," Al said, referring to the arsenal of taunts hunters use to entice waterfowl to visit their spreads.
"It was a desperation play, a fourth-quarter Hail Mary," I said.
"Well, it almost worked," he replied. "I tried the 'pee' taunt, the 'walk around the island' taunt and the 'leave the gun against a bush and go stand in the water taunt.' "
"I guess I just didn't sleep hard enough to get them to come over," I said. "I'll do better next time."
By then, the heat was getting rude, and no geese were to be seen anywhere. We ended the morning with a superb consolation prize - breakfast, including biscuits and gravy - at the South Park Restaurant in Clarksville. It made the trip worthwhile.
Sports, Pages 19 on 09/04/2008