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Marla Jo Fisher: I’m not game for the life of a…

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Tuesday, April 23rd 2024

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Marla Jo Fisher: I’m not game for the life of a hunter

Marla Jo Fisher
By | mfisher@scng.com | Orange County Register

I was watching mallards swim in a pond Sunday, and I was reminded of my late stepfather, Fred, a cantankerous old character who had one passion in life, other than my mother: He loved to shoot ducks.

All winter long, Fred would get his shotgun out of the bedroom closet, head out to the wetlands and bang away at so many ducks that my mom’s big chest freezer was constantly packed with their frozen remains.

This wasn’t much good for anyone – particularly the ducks – because no one in our family liked their gamey, wild taste.

But the fact that no one would actually eat his offerings didn’t stop Fred from sending as many as possible to meet their maker – assuming you believe that ducks have an afterlife – and he even trained a Labrador retriever just to help him fetch their lifeless carcasses from the water.

Now, here’s what I find peculiar about this: Fred was a veterinarian.

So, he spent Monday through Friday trying to save animals’ lives, and Saturday and Sunday trying to kill them.

I don’t know what would have happened if someone had brought a pet duck into the hospital.

Fred didn’t find anything contradictory about this at all, but then, he lived in Utah where men are men, and real men hunt. He was one of those guys that you never knew what to buy for, so his house was filled with our gifts of duck statues, paintings, boxes with ducks engraved on them, to the point it was starting to look a little creepy.

I decided I needed to learn more about this hobby, so I called up my friend Holly Heyser, who used to be the political editor at my newspaper, the Orange County Register.

She went from dealing with headline hunters to duck hunters when she took a job as editor of California Waterfowl magazine up near Sacramento.

Holly started hunting because she loves the taste of wild duck. Too bad she never got her hands on the contents of my mom’s freezer, though she’s got her own to contend with.

She patiently explained to me that duck hunting is tremendously challenging, because the ducks mostly refuse to fly where you want them to go. So you have to sit and spend endless hours trying to lure one near you, and then even more time trying to bring it home.

Sounds like most of the men I’ve dated in my life, actually.

Duck hunting brings you closer to nature and the ancient way our ancestors got their food, she said.

“My whole first year, I only killed three birds,” she told me. “When you actually hit one, it’s kind of a big deal.”

Nowadays, she’s an expert shot, but it took her a decade of practice to get there. Luckily, her husband, Hank Shaw, is a gourmet cook who wrote “Duck, Duck, Goose,” a cookbook about preparing and serving waterfowl.

All right, maybe I get it a little more, now.

Hunting was big where I lived in Utah, and every fall lots of men engaged in the ritual of going deer hunting the first weekend of the season. Meanwhile, local bars catered to their wives, the so-called deer widows, with drinks specials and events designed to lure them out to play while their men were away.

Sometimes, I know, they cheated.

I imagine they figured they were entitled to cheat, since their husbands had deserted them for Bambi’s mother.

My father, who grew up in Colorado near Pawnee National Grassland, also loved to hunt, particularly for elk.

Every year, he, my uncle and grandfather would apply for one of the scarce and expensive permits the state granted for the right to shoot one of these magnificent creatures.

This always infuriated my mom, who felt the elk-hunting money should be used for more frivolous things, like food and the electric bill, but my dad didn’t care. If he got an elk license, he was going hunting.

They would horse pack up into the snowy Rocky Mountains with their rifles, looking for elk. Then, if they shot one, they’d use the horses to help bring it back down.

I was always sympathetic, because it was virtually the only fun my dad ever had.

But, as a child, I always secretly hoped he wouldn’t get an elk, because if he did, I knew what my life would consist of for the entire winter, and it was this:

Elk burgers, elk liver, elk steaks, elk tongue.

He’d have the poor beast butchered, wrapped in little white paper parcels, and they would fill the freezer on our back porch all winter, as we ate our way through it.

Elk meat isn’t as gamey as venison, but it lacks the succulent deliciousness of beef. Last time I went to Yellowstone, I sent my dad a postcard of an elk and suggested he could come and shoot it.

Ironically, I am now an Elk myself – a card-carrying member of the Garden Grove Elks Lodge No. 1952. I told them when they accepted me last year that all I knew about elks was from eating them.

My dad and Fred were from the last generation in America where your leisure time wasn’t really your own: You grew up believing that, even in rest, you still needed to be productive.

Going to the lake? Better bring a fishing pole and try to score dinner.

In my family of ranchers and farmers, there was no hiking for the sake of admiring the scenery. Instead, you brought your shotgun along and looked for something to eat.

I have no objections to hunting as it’s practiced in the U.S. today. Please don’t shoot Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion, but we’ve destroyed the natural predators of many of these animals, so their populations need to be thinned out.

Plus, I’d be a hypocrite to complain about hunting as long as I continue to enjoy my big juicy steaks.

Just don’t bring me any elk or wild ducks. Thanks anyway. Those can stay in your freezer.

Contact the writer: mfisher@ocregister.com or 714-796-7994

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