To Thoreau it was Walden Woods. Howard Pyle and anonymous "balladeers" are said to have created and written about the Sherwood Forest of Robin Hood. To me as a once sprouting waterfowl hunter I'm writing about Ralph's Pond.
I was awoken abruptly last Saturday morning by the blasts of a shotgun. It took me a minute or two to come to the realization that the Minnesota waterfowl season opened on that morning and as I wiped the sleep out of my eyes I remembered back to those days when I would have been among those who had poled their canoes and duck boats through the cattails and tossed their decoys into the water in hopes of attracting a wayward duck to their blind.
You could say that my grandfather had sown the seed of a duck hunter in my brain. He had a favorite tale of a day in late fall when he heard the approach of a flock of high flying geese to the north of his farmhouse. Thinking that Thanksgiving wasn't far away, he grabbed his Winchester Model 1897 and a couple of shells and headed out the back door of the farmhouse and into the grove of trees behind the house.
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The geese were what would be considered far out of range when he pulled up and pulled the trigger. He had been aiming at the lead goose and to his amazement a goose at the very back of the flock tumbled to earth. Thanksgiving feast secured! A neighbor who lived a half a mile away saw this miraculous shot and drove to the farm and saw my granddad emerging from the woods with a large white goose in his hands. That was the story and I have no evidence that his story is untrue. It was that story that implanted the idea that someday I would recreate that scene.
Those who live in the farmland of northwest Iowa know that lakes are sparse. Rivers provide the only sustained amount of water and fall waterfowl tend to use those as pathways south. That was true in my neck of the woods except for one body of water, we called it Ralph's Pond. Ralph's Pond was nothing more than a dam on a small creek that traveled through a lowland a mile from my home. But it held water most of the year and was used as a way to water cattle, not a place to hunt ducks and geese. But it was water and once in awhile a migrating duck or goose would somehow find it among the corn rows.
I purchased one of the first Iowa early season teal licenses in 1965. Since I had no other place to pitch a decoy, I asked Ralph if I could hunt his pond. He said yes, just don't shoot any cattle. And so, I purchased a few decoys and began my waterfowling career. I also made some snow goose decoys out of white bleach bottles that I weighed down with a scoop of Iowa dirt and anchored them with some large bolts I secured from my dad's workbench. From a distance, they looked like real geese bouncing atop Ralph's pond.
Those bleach bottles looked so good that one day I spied another goose hunter actually crawling on his belly toward the pond with the intention of shooting a goose. He looked rather foolish when he arose with his shotgun at the ready only to spy nine floating bleach bottles. He looked around to see if anyone else had seen him not knowing that I watched his whole crawl with my binoculars from a distant road.
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Some hunters travel to far off Canada to harvest geese and ducks. Some have elaborate duck camps on the Missouri River bottoms. Some spend tons of money on shotguns, blinds and other waterfowl hunting supplies.
I hunted with that old 1897 Winchester while wearing my torn up farm jean jacket with my pocket holding a pocket full of shells and needed no duck boat. You didn't need one on Ralph's Pond. I harvested my first goose there with my four-year-old brother by my side. He won't forget that hunt either. That's what I was thinking about the other morning when those first shotgun blasts woke me from a sound sleep. Ralph's Pond is a famous place. Just like Walden Woods.
See you next time. Okay?
