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

Music has always been there. Longer than I can even remember hunting and fishing. Or maybe not. Maybe just as long as I can remember walking through the woods. And Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits.

The Big Chill Soundtrack. Lionel Richie. White cassette tapes rattling on the floor of Dads suburban. In a brown vinyl coated case with a ridiculously over-engineered chrome buckle.

Smokey Robinson. The Temptations. The Four Tops. The truck is parked at the beach before dawn. It smells like Fish-Fly weather. Humid. Late July. The trolling motor hums. Water silently cut by the V-hull. I can’t wait until I’m old enough to fish without a life-jacket.

DMX. Dr. Dre. Just out of college. Hell, just out of class. A parking lot near a swamp on public land. Doors open. Navy blue standard cab S10 pickup. Speakers trying to keep up. I’m painting my face for an early season goose hunt. A dirty look from a fellow hunter. I could care less.

And there’s always Gordon Lightfoot for the drive to North Dakota. There just can’t be one without the other. It somehow makes the duck hunting even better.

Today, I’m just down the street from my friends house. Lacing my boots. Zipping up my Carhartts. We’re hiking to a spot that should have some decent ice. Bluegills. Crappie. Bass. On tip-ups. On jigging rods. On both at the same time. 2Chainz jamming on my phone.

I’m jigging, yeah I’m jigging. Pull up to the lake with my ceiling missing!

2 CHAINZ!!!

The Walk

The Lake

Spudly

Gill on a jig. Bass on a flag.

Last fish of the day

It didn’t take much to spud through the ice. One solid shot splashed water on my Carhartts. We kept walking while the ice creaked and complained. Two or three turns from the auger had bait hanging under a line of flags. Damn. It felt good to be back on ice.

The sun set behind a quilt of heavy clouds while the shanty flooded. Our weight on the ice must have created a low spot. Water rushed through the jigging holes until our boots were completely underwater. One decent strike, and frozen toes, was it for the first night.

We weren’t the only “down-staters” in town. A group of 8 or 10 guys beat us to our spot the next morning. I’m not going to lie. I was scared as hell to walk past the footprints of the anglers who tested the ice before me but I wanted distance between my tip-ups and the drinking party. Every crackle from the ice pushed visions of an immanent icy-water death. Lines set. I ran back to the shanty with my heart pounding like a little bitch.

A flag popped within minutes. My first UP fish: a 20″ muskie. Another flag. A pike. Another flag. A bass. I was dialed in. Introducing myself to fish after fish just waiting for a crack at old Mr. Walter. Which would be my first walleye thru the ice.

I set one line in “the swamp hole”. A flooded expanse on thin ice. I figured the fish would know that I was petrified to venture back to that line so they’d hit it. Yeah. That worked.

The spool was smoking by the time I got to the tip-up. The entire frame rocked on the ice. I grabbed the line and set the hook. Wet line ran through my hands with a metallic squeaky sound. I gained on him but there wasn’t any furious head-shakes. He ran again. Straight to the bottom. My feet went numb when I saw that gold flash and that giant, reflective eyeball. I scooped him onto the lake. The white spot on the bottom of his tail matched the snow. He looked perfect. Like this fish was made just for me. Just for this moment.

The adrenaline kept pumping. It turned out to be one of the best days I’ve ever had on the ice. 5 keeper walleye, an eater-sized pike and more largemouth battles than a pre-spawn, early spring trip. At our best estimate we put 50+ fish on the ice. And an encounter with a bald eagle who thought we were interested in sharing one of our keeper ‘eyes. He flew off disappointed.

Back in town, the lady at the gas station looked concerned. Twelve consecutive hours on the lake and I must have looked like a zombie.

“Criminey. I’m surprised you boys didn’t fall through. You were out there all day? How many did you catch?”

I responded with some of the best words an angler could ever say.

“Yeah. We got a few.”

Crossing the Mackinaw Bridge

Wet Boots

Dawn on the Ice

My First UP Catch

Northern

My First UP Walleye

Bass-o-Matic

Dinner

A 20″ Walleye

First shot. Underneath him.

Second shot. Underneath him. The grouse slipped behind the pine and gained distance. I leaned back to keep him over the barrel.

Third shot. I thought he shook in the air but he kept going. He banked to the left of an old cedar tree.

I stood in the icy mud in disbelief. Then berated myself. Easy shots in grouse hunting are rare. Like fat-free-bacon-that-actually-tastes-good sort of rare. I was pissed.

Excuses spilled out of my face. Then four-letter shots of encouragement for the next bird.

I walked to the spot where I saw him last. I kicked at the mud. Dejected. I was just about to move on under that big old cedar. Then the grouse exploded from the branches about 20 feet from my head. Ok. That one surprised me.

I drew a bead and followed him to the forest floor. Zeus finished the retrieve.

I stood in the icy mud in disbelief. Then congratulated myself. Like I was saying, easy shots happen mostly for expert grouse hunters. I enjoy the challenge of making easy shots look very difficult. Yeah. That’s right. Or…umm…something like that.

Every shot has a story. It just depends how you tell it. I think it would be cool to start 2013 by swapping some stories. Leave a comment or share a link to your latest #ShotStory.

Happy New Year!

Making it look easy. Haha.

Zeus working the woods

Jim and his grouse

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.

Most feather-chasers laugh when I say I’m hitting the northern Michigan woods for the grouse and woodcock openers. They tell me they don’t hunt until the leaves are down. The forest is too thick. The odds are stacked against hunters. They tell me they don’t waste the time.

I know the truth. They used to hit those woods when they were younger. When they had dogs that could run all day. When just a few motrin would put their knees back in brush pants instead of under ice packs. I know because I’m not as young as I used to be. These days it just makes sense to wait until the woods aren’t so mad you’re there.

But I can’t wait. I can’t sit at home when there’s birds to hunt.

It’s a good hurt.

So I push on. Dragging my brother and my buddies through the thorns and briars. Where spider webs cling to my face and aspen branches whip my ears. Where my old dog pulls new tricks. Where woodcock spring to air with that unmistakeable chirp.

The only place you can hear that heart-stopping sound of a grouse flush.  That’s what makes it all worth it.

The First Fall Colors

Grousey Cover in the Manistee National Forest

The Prize