The Child-like Joy of Hunting Wild and Free

I usually hunt in very human-controlled landscapes where the hunting is good, but the restrictions are thick. This Christmas Eve hunt would take me to a different place, and not just physically.

Most of my hunting takes place in very human-controlled landscapes. This is because I’m a duck hunter in California, where more than 100 years ago, we (read: the European-Americans who took over after statehood) wiped out wetlands as fast as we could.

What we have now is a restoration of wetlands in limited spaces that MUST be highly managed to ensure they provide habitat for literally millions of migrating birds each winter. Effectively, we have relegated wetland-dependent wildlife to reservations, the land and water left over after we’ve taken what we wanted for cities, farms and industry.

The highly managed nature of these wetlands means I hunt marshes with straight-line edges (levees and roads), with lots of other hunters in earshot and eyesight. The hunting can be quite good, but there a lot of extra restrictions: