I took a hiatus from the blog to dedicate my time to losing weight. It’s ironic because writing and the outdoors motivated me to make serious changes in my life. Yet writing about the outdoors has fallen off my time-pressed list of things to do.

Last September I drafted three simple goals. A short-term goal. To feel comfortable in my own clothes. A mid-term goal. To see the scale read below 200 for the first time in my adult life. And the long-shot. To look back at the pictures from Bert’s wedding and not lament my weight. This contract with my conscious was easily the most powerful document I’ve ever written.

The decision to write these goals was made for me. A sleepy morning photo on the banks of the Snake River in Idaho. Johnny captured my then-bison-like-frame soaking in the moment. I was sore. Out-of-shape. But I was exactly where I wanted to be. A weekend float trip with the guys in remote country isn’t something I’d be able to if I continued to weigh 260 lbs.

I wanted to enjoy the life I want to live. With the goals written down, I had to honor them.

It hasn’t been easy. I went all in on a high-dollar weight loss program. I’ve battled years of ingrained negative self-perceptions. But I’ve slowly changed everything. I don’t drink that much anymore. My evenings are spent at the gym or working, instead of writing. My single point of consistency has been the outdoors. My weekends remained dedicated to upland bird hunting, ice fishing, camping, bass fishing in Georgia and Kentucky, hooking Michigan crappies and jigging for Detroit River walleyes.

Between September 24, 2012, and February 24, 2013, I lost 75 lbs. I’ve kept the weight off for over two months. Bert gets married on Friday and I’ve never been happier with how I look.

I’m not here to preach. But I encourage you to think about something you can do that’s nice for yourself. I’ve erased a massive pile of credit card debt. I’ve hunted and fished in distant destinations that I dreamed of visiting for years. And now this. Being open to change is important. I resisted it for years before realizing the only thing standing between me and fixing my weight problem was…well….me.

If your goal is to shed a few pounds and you love outdoor gear as much as I do then consider it this way. None of my stuff fits me anymore. The only thing keeping me from buying all new gear is that silly thing called a mortgage. Mackspw.com, Bass Pro and Cabela’s are going to be real happy by hunting season.

Stop talking. Start doing. This is my mantra for 2013. It’s good to get back to writing. I have a lot of trips that I’ll get to relive by writing. I’m thankful for that. And thankful that I’ve again been inspired by the wilderness in a way that most people will never understand.

Right now, it’s pretty cool to be Pete.

Before: Aug. 2012

After: Early March, 2013

After: April, 2013

After: May, 2013

This is my duck season.

My Friday nights are short. Spent loading the truck. Skipping dinner. Counting 18 shells and packing-up my waders. Charging the mojo. Cleaning decoys. Feeding Zeus. My head is on a pillow about the same time most people leave the house to kick-off their weekends.

When flight ducks press on the edge of the Canadian freeze, intercepting them at Harsen’s Island is a matter of early mornings and luck of the draw. I get up at 3 am. Get the boat on the hitch by 3:30. 4:45 we’re in line for the ferry. Cross the channel and to the DNR shack by 5:15. The bingo is at 5:30. Get picked in the top 20 and you’ll have a good hunt. Get picked later than that and you’ll put in some work to pull the trigger.

These Saturdays are sacred. Fleeting moments trapped between 5 days of work and watching the weather. Each hunt is different yet it’s the same. Great shots. Great retrieves. Cigars at sunrise. Uncle Mike’s Chocolate Coffee. The stories I’ve heard a million times and I’ll hear a million more. The sweetness of the time spent on this island with my friends, family and great dogs isn’t lost on me. I need to remember each hunt. The memories fill the void in my brain from the last day of the season to the first of the next.

I feel at home on these Saturdays. Surrounded by people I’ve never met.  Yet they understand me as well as anyone. Duck hunting is about passion. It’s about punishment. It’s about adrenaline, gear and skill. Every camo-clad decoy jockey is there for the same reason. It’s like a huge duck club but it’s public land. And it comes with the usual annoyances of packing a bunch of hunters into close proximity. Still, for it’s good parts and it’s bad, there’s nothing like it.

Now my season is done. My Friday nights are back to normal and my weekends don’t start at 3 am. I’ll be home in time for dinner with my wife on Saturday nights without paint on my face and duck blood under my fingernails. My knees should ache less. My shoulder should be unbruised on Monday mornings.

Damn it. I miss it already.

Good Morning

Dusty and Tug

Jim and Zeus

Widgeon, Gadwalls and Greenheads.

Dusty and I at the Bingo Board

Jim Waiting on Another Shot

Zeus Watches a Flock of Mallards

The Refuge

Uncle Mike and a Heavy Strap

Sundown over Flooded Corn

The Drake Black Duck: At the Taxidermist

Two silhouettes. A man. And his dog.

Me? Furious. Sweaty. Plodding down the street in 1,000 lb waders.

The dog? Happy. Go-lucky. Pissing in flower beds. Trying to lighten the mood.

We weren’t really lost. I’ve hunted the bay enough to know exactly where we were. That said. We weren’t where we wanted to be.

Three hours ago shooting time ended with a spectacular sunset. One of those “this is why I hunt ducks” kind of moments. Between then and now? Less than spectacular.

Low water in the bay nagged us to find a new way back to the launch. We dragged the canoe a fair distance just to set the decoys. The idea was to avoid all that work. All that hassle. In the dark. Without a spotlight.

All we found was mud.

The sun disappeared. We walked.

The moon rose. Dusty dragged the canoe.

Hours passed before the situation boiled over. We split up.

Dusty backtracked to deeper water to motor to the launch. My plan was to fight shin-deep mud and get to the road. Thick. Evil mud. That swallowed my boots deeper and deeper the longer I paused to catch my breath.

Moonlight casts the longest shadows.

Two silhouettes. A man. And his dog.

Standing by the truck. Waiting for their friend. Who is still lost in the bay.

Me? Guilty. Worried. Wondering how much the Coast Guard helicopter is gonna cost.

The dog? Asleep.

I heard the outboard just yards from the launch. We didn’t say much while we loaded the trucks.

Except.

“Where we hunting next weekend?”

“Anywhere but the God Damn Bay”

The Morning Hunt was Good

The Pup, Tugboat, did a great job. And we had enough water to float the canoes.

Mike with Fistfulls of Mallards

The sunset on a great day.

The start of the faithful trip back to the truck.

We sped down the dirt road. Everything rattled from shotshells stuffed in the door pockets to the lanyard of calls on the dash. The wind pounded the windows and only got stronger as night prepared to give way to a dreary dawn on the prairie.

Ice pellets bounced off my glasses and hung in my beard. The mojo’s swayed in the wind waiting for shooting time. The ducks didn’t wait. Flocks poured into the bay. Landing a few feet from my numb fingers. We scouted this spot for two days and it was about to pay off.

Gadwalls, widgeon and mallards set their wings. They struggled to descend in the building winds. We fired shot after shot and struggled to keep enough ammo in the guns. Ducks were down everywhere. Only 10 minutes into the morning and both of us were out of shells.

A quick trip to the truck put both sweat and ammo in the waders. The sleet stopped momentarily but the wind hung ducks in the air like beach balls. We finished our limit and had everything packed up in the truck by 8:45. So what’s next? More scouting? Or walleye fishing? The best questions answer themselves.

Dusty and Tug head back to the truck

Zeus and a Drake Widgeon

The Limit

Tug Cuddles Up

Sunset over Walleyes

Meet Range. He’s a traveling decoy. He’s traded between a few waterfowl hunters who share their stories through Twitter and blogs. The final result is a donation to charity funded by his final auction price on eBay.

Range has tagged along on my first hunts of the 2012 season. From small marshes in northern Michigan. To the prairie potholes of North Dakota. You’ll see him in a few pics in my upcoming posts and now you know his story.

If you’d like to find out more about Range visit his blog at travelingdecoy.com.

Range Arrives

Zeus and Range get Acquainted

Opening Morning in Northern Michigan

Keeping an Eye on the Sky

Range with Wood Ducks and Teal

Welcome to NoDak

Opening Morning: 5:30 am

My eyes where on fire. My nose dripped. The overwhelming stench of skunk assaulted my senses. Chad leaned on the tailgate in the dark driveway. His new pup, Jax, was the perpetrator. Camo vest, face and fur saturated in skunk juice. I loaded up the truck between dry-heaves.

6 am

We hammered the wood ducks and teal in the back pocket of the marsh last year. I scouted our spot the week before and it was filled with ducks. I was convinced it would produce again.

We set a few decoys in the dark. Then watched flocks overheard. We counted down the minutes which trudged like hours. I took a few deep breaths. I closed my eyes and envisioned the first shots. My entire being solely focused on what was about to happen.

8 am

Nothing. Not a teal. Not a wood duck. A mallard. A goose. Nothing.

Another party set up down the shore from us and the pressure had the birds working weird. The wind completely died and as soon as the morning fog burned off the sun was giving away our location like a blinking neon sign.

Jax wasn’t the only one to get skunked on opening morning.

11 am

I kicked rocks and cussed the entire walk back to the truck. I was beyond disappointed. I gave up. I was ready to head back for breakfast and to watch college football when a blue wing teal came streaking by the truck. My dad dropped it in tall canes. Zeus and I went to work. Something stirred in me watching my old boy pull off that retrieve. My resolve was new. I wasn’t going back without more feathers in the truck.

12 pm

I stood with my back to the clump of aspen. We spooked the ducks up off the pond and it wasn’t even 10 minutes before they began to come back in smaller groups. Three teal zipped over the tree tops. A wood duck folded over the pines. Zeus flushed woodcock and grouse searching for downed ducks. It took us an hour to save the day from skunked.

Just about the same amount of time it took Chad to scrub the skunk from his pup.

Shooting Time

Dad Saves the Day

Not a bad start. Not a great one.

“Dear Zeus,
I want to start by saying happy 10th birthday. On July 25, 2002 you became part of our family. Since that day you have demonstrated loyalty, obedience and love for us every waking moment. Your talents in the art of waterfowl and upland game retrieving has brought joy to all who have had the privileged to hunt along side of you. Your overall mellow personality and love for people is unlike any other dog I have met. In a world filled with worries about work, school and money you remind us of the little things in life that should be cherished. A ride in the truck, a walk through the woods, a nap in the club house and a sunset from the blind. We find our best qualities in you. You have celebrated some of our biggest accomplishments in life, yet helped us through our greatest defeats without saying a word. You are the truest example of what man’s best friend should be. Congratulations on reaching the decade mark and may the next ten years be filled with “get dem birds”, blinky balls, chippies and club house napping. Love you BigBoi.”

Sincerely,

Jimmy Thrubis

Thanks for the heartfelt words brother. I’m looking forward to another season with the old boy. Almost as much as he’s looking forward to tasting all those feathers.

Here are just a few of Zeus’s finer moments. Here’s to hoping for many more.

NoDak 2009

Z’s First Swan

Z’s First Snow Goose

Wake-up Call

Grouse Hunting

Long Retrieve

King of the Road

Last Call

Happy Boy

My Lowe 1648 “Big Jon” is a fishing and duck hunting machine so the seats have to be versatile. They can’t block access to the livewell and they have to be easy to remove. I figured the install was going to suck and cost a bunch of money.  I was wrong. I found all the stuff I needed between Cabela’s.com and BassPro.com and I installed these seats for about $110 (without shipping included). Here’s a rundown on the products and the installing adventure.

Tools & Materials:

Long-handled screwdrivers

Ratchet set or set of box wrenches

Drill with bits and a holesaw. 6 sheet metal screws.

Saws-all with a metal eating blade

Cuda Clamp and Swivel Base

Swivl-Eze: 3/4″ pin mount base and pin mount seat base

Install:

Let’s start with the center bench. It’s about 14″ wide and most of the surface is the door to the livewell. I ordered a Cuda Clamp ($40) and a swivel base ($11) from Cabela’s.com for this seat.

Center Bench

The Cuda Clamp is a spring loaded seat base that quickly clamps onto the boat bench. It’s easy to install and has few neoprene-piercing or mono-snagging sharp edges.

Cuda Clamp out of the box

The swivel base gives my passenger some mobility to net a bass or draw a bead on a mallard.

Bottom of the Boat Seat and Swivel Base

First, I backed out the screws in the bottom of the seat and installed the swivel base.

Swivel Base attached to Boat Seat

The threads in the bottom of the seat are plastic and I didn’t want to strip them out. I used a screwdriver to tighten everything down.

Attaching the Cuda Clamp to the Swivel Base

I detached the spring in the Cuda Clamp and attached the side rails of the clamp to the swivel base. The nuts, bolts and washers were included with the clamp. Then I reattached the spring and stretched the clamp over the boat bench.

Cuda Clamp and Camo Seat: Installed

So that was easy. It even clamps right down on the lid of the livewell leaving easy access to storage. When I trailer the boat, I pull this seat right off and toss it in the back of the truck.

Cuda Clamp and the Livewell Door

The rear seat was a bit more difficult. This one got a Swivl-Eze pin mount base ($30), a pedestal ($16) and a pin mount seat base ($16) from BassPro.com. I started this one by placing the seat where I wanted it on the bench. Then traced the outline with a pencil. I set it slightly to the right of center making it more comfortable to reach the tiller.

Setting the Swivl-Eze Seat Base

To flush mount the seat base, I cut into the bench with a holesaw attached to the drill. I finished the cutting with a saws-all and removed some Styrofoam with a screwdriver and shop-vac.

Start with the HoleSaw. Finish with the Saws-all.

With the plate flush to the bench, I drilled some pilot holes and attached the plate with 6, #12, 2 1/2″ sheet metal screws.

Swivl-Eze Base Plate with Pedestal Installed

My original plan was to use a pedestal and cut it down with a hacksaw to give the seat a little height. But I’m afraid I’d rip those screws right out of the bench because the sheet metal is pretty thin. Instead, I just placed the seat mount directly into the plate and it works great. The spring gives the seat a little boost and it swivels without a hitch. It’s easy to remove for trailering or for concealment in the marsh.

Swivl-Eze Pin Seat Mount

Before:

Before

After:

After

After

After

Results:

The next morning we tested out the seats by chasing panfish at a nearby state park. The Cuda Clamp turned out to be very solid front-to-back but tips a little bit side-to-side. The addition of the swivel base helps but overall it performs pretty good. The swivel-eze pin system worked great.

Prince Lake

Seats in Action

Bass season wasn’t open but that’s all we caught. No keepers to the buckets today. Just a quick photo then back to the lake. This chunk was the only nice fish of the day and a great way to break in those seats.

First Bass with New Seats

I must disclose that I did not receive any of the products in this post for free. I did not receive any compensation from Bass Pro Shops, Cabela’s or any manufacturer to mention these products or websites.

I needed a blind cover that I could remove from the frame between hunts. One with enough color variation to vanish in the marsh. Not to mention waterproof, durable and able to handle 30-40 mph wind gusts. The research took months and many, many beers. It was totally worth it.

The new blind system is sweet. It blends well with all types of cover from flooded corn to big water flats. It handles windy conditions like a champ, dries quickly and rolls up into an old over-sized Cabela’s decoy bag for transportation. Plus it’s durable. It’s lasted over 20 hunts from Michigan to North Dakota and still looks great. Here’s how I made this duck slaying contraption.

Materials:

2 Rolls of plastic Green Garden Fence 40 inches wide x 25 feet long (Home Depot)

1,000 8-inch Zip-ties (Home Depot)

8-10 Spring Clamps and 1 can of brown spray paint (Home Depot)

30 feet of Die-Cut Camo Fabric, Avery KW-1 pattern (Mackspw.com)

3 Avery KillerWeed Duck Boat Camo Blind Kits (Mackspw.com)

I have a 16 foot Lowe Semi-Vee with a Cabela’s Northern Flight, scissor-style blind. Start by removing the blind from the boat and place it on a level section of concrete. My driveway was level enough.

Cabela's Northern Flight Blind

Next, unroll the garden fence and cut two sections to fit the length of the frame. Leave some fencing to overlap either end. This is useful when covering the boat in the marsh or to cover the gap in the front and back if you’re hunting from the boat.

A Waterfolwers Friend

Zip-tie the fencing to the frame

Zip-tie the two sections of fencing together to extend from the top to the bottom of the frame. Pull the fencing tight and Zip-Tie it to a few places on the frame. Make sure the fencing extends past the part of the frame that sits on the gunnel of the boat. In this picture, that’s the crossbeam on the grass. This way when the blind is folded up, the camo extends over the edge of the boat and down into the water. By covering the edge of the boat, it breaks up the outline and makes it disappear to air-born ducks. Trim the “tails” off the zip-ties.

Attach the Fabric

Next, take the fabric and zip-tie it to the fencing ONLY not to the frame of the blind. Note all of the zip-ties along the top of the fencing. I folded the fabric over giving it a camo edge. I slashed a small hole with a knife in either side of the folded over fabric and secured it with a zip-tie every 12-15 inches.

The die-cut leaves in the fabric give you plenty of spots to attach the fabric to the garden fencing. I probably put 200 zip-ties on this side alone to ensure the fabric stuck to the fencing. Make sure the fencing is pulled tight to the frame to get a nice, flat finish when the blind is folded down or set-up for hunting.

Grass Bundles

The next step is to start attaching grass bundles to the fencing. Making the bundles is a lot like making Raffia bundles for a layout blind, only larger. Start by unwrapping one pack of the Avery KillerWeed boat kit camo. There will be different colored bundles of plastic grass in the pack. To keep the mess to a minimum, I dumped all the colored grass into a plastic tub. Grab a handful of each color and mix them up. Holding the grass vertically, put a zip-tie in the center, to create one bundle.

The KillerWeed

One Pack of KillerWeed in the Tub

Start attaching the bundles through the fabric and onto the fencing with more zip-ties. It should like this.

Grass Bundles on the Blind

Mix up the colors and layer the bundles on top of one another to give a lot of dimension to the blind. I used 1.5 packs of the KillerWeed boat kit per side of the blind.

Grass Bundles on the Blind

Repeat the entire process for the other side of the blind.  Then remove the camo covers and put the blind back on the boat. Put any leftover grass bundles on the blind to hide obvious areas that ducks might see.

To keep the bottom edge from flying around in windy conditions, take some 6 oz decoy strap weights and zip-tie them along the bottom of the fencing. They’re lead, so pliable and dense, and have holes drilled on either end making them easy to work with. I put 4 or 5 on each side of the camo sheets.

Fully Camo'ed. Ready to crush 'em.

The other side

To hold the camo to the frame of the blind, I use spring clamps that I painted brown with a rattle-can. You can see the clamps in this pic before I painted them sticking up along the top rail of the blind. When you want to remove the camo, pull off the clamps and lay one sheet on top of the other. Roll them up together and toss them in the bottom of the boat, in the back of the truck, or in a big mesh decoy bag. They do get a bit bulky but it beats my old blind hands-down.

Here’s a few pics of the boat in action.

In the Marsh

Another Marsh Shot

To be fair, I didn’t shoot out of the boat all season. I prefer to put Zeus on a Sport Stand and sit next to him on a marsh seat. But we stashed the boat nearby, sometimes only 50-100 yards away, and the ducks never saw it. This project cost around $275 and I expect it to last for a few seasons without any upgrades.

If you have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll try to answer as quick as can. If you’re looking for instructions on wiring lights or installing a switch panel on your duck boat then checkout these posts from awhile back.

Duck season is only 6 months and two-weeks away. Not that I’m counting or anything.

Disclaimer: I did not receive any compensation or free products from Avery, Mack’s Prairie Wings or the Home Depot for mentioning these products. I purchased all of these products, made a kick-ass duck blind, used it for a full season and wrote a review of my own handy-work. It’s as simple as that.

This highlight reel features my Dad, Brother, cousin Nick, Uncle Mike and friends Geno, Dusty, Rick and Chad. Hope this holds you over until Sept 1, 2012, when it starts all over again.

Click and enjoy.