Gettin' My Ducks In A Row

I’ve been undercover lately, unrecognizable even to my closest friends and family.  Sporting full-body camouflage from the top of my face mask to the toes of my camouflage thermal waders, I’ve been hiding from migrating ducks on the Mississippi Flyway – a path that extends from Canada all the way down the Mississippi River Valley to the Gulf of Mexico.

Not to worry.  I’ve had a notebook clutched in my gloved hands, not a gun.   Although tempted, I’ve done humanity (mostly ‘man’kind) a favor by not taking up shooting.   In my camo waders I have crouched in duck blinds on icy mornings and blended into flooded timber stands and cypress swamps.  I’ve watched the first rays of dawn break over flooded corn fields, rice fields and timber. I’ve learned to appreciate the intense devotion and passion of duck hunters to their sport and to conservation of the land.  I’ve eaten big hunting camp breakfasts after the hunt and enjoyed lively tradition –filled dinners the night before the hunt. And it’s all in a day’s work, just doin’ my job --which is to observe, absorb and help document the unique culture, history and tradition of the sport.  And what a job it’s been so far.  From St. Charles, Missouri to Stuttgart, Arkansas to Booger Den, Mississippi, I’ve been migrating with the ducks.

My assignment is as part of a team from Wild Abundance Publishing, an offshoot of ArtsMemphis, a creative, cutting edge non-profit arts group in Memphis.  We’re creating a book – their third. Their previous books First Shooting Light and Wild Abundance are valuable testimony to their mission of chronicling, celebrating and preserving the unique culture and tradition of American sportsmen and their intense devotion to land and wildlife.  Proceeds from the books go support the arts and wildlife conservation.  It’s a brilliant fundraising strategy and a first class, tangible legacy to the sport.


The third book, eagerly awaited by thousands upon thousands of devotees of the first two, is scheduled for October 2012 release. My gear bag is by the back door waiting for the call – a duck call, that is.  Tomorrow is the last sojourn to photograph and document a south Louisiana hunting camp and there’s room for only two team members and sadly I’m not one of them.  I‘m day dreaming of the beauty of the marshes at first light and like a child being sent off to her room, and not allowed to play outside, I’m pouting just a little bit.  I don’t like to be left at home…especially when the ducks are flying.


Learn more about Wild Abundance Publishing and the books at www.wildabundancepublishing.com