It's quiet, I'm cold, and it's dark as pitch. My red-lensed torch is the sole source of light and it's scarcely enough illumination to operate by. A light drizzle drifts down from the black nothingness coating the world in uniform wetness. Merida is curled up in an impossibly tight ball at my feet, conserving her heat. She doesn't know what the hell is going on, this is her first duck hunt. Might as well be mine, I haven't sat in a blind since I was a teenager. I did it once, with my uncle, it was a miserable experience, much like the present. It's deja vu misery. We paddled out to the blinds in darkness and now we wait for daybreak, and for the ducks.

I slurp coffee from a thermos in an attempt to stay warm and awake. Mr. Henneman and I occupy this rickety blind, which is little more than a half-assed construction of scrap wood, merely a box cobbled together by drunken rednecks from what I can tell and the years have not been kind to it. The spongy floor has serious rot issues, if we aren't careful where we place our feet, we will find ourselves waist-deep in muck and marsh water. The box is haphazardly camouflaged with reeds and burlap, there are no creature comforts, a couple pine boards form a rudimetary bench and there is a small, crooked shelf to store a few items on. A large, rusty soup can sits on the floor, filled with years worth of cigarette butts. I push it to the corner with my foot. Empty shotshell hulls litter the floor from previous hunts.

Jake and Heather are in the other blind. Jake says she's a helluva shot and from what I can tell she is all business when it comes to hunting. She showed up in a Jeep dressed in head-to-toe camo, even her gun has that Mossy-Oak treatment. I can't tell if the two are romantically involved or not, there is a certain camaraderie between them. I can barely make out their blind in the murky darkness, just the unnatural right-angles of the box, a mist shrouded apparition. I hear a quiet giggle from time to time - I suspect Jake is letting loose with his off-colour jokes. Otherwise I only hear the soft lapping of water beneath the blind and the wind through the trees on the distant shoreline.

I keep touching my nose, it's tender. Jake has me sparring now, I'm a bit of a punching bag for him it seems. He lands far more shots than I do and he's not big on safety equipment, so no head gear. He falls just short from saying that head injuries are good for you. He does insist that getting hit is good, once you get use to taking hits it's not such a big deal. I almost agree, until he lands a crushing body shot that leaves me on all fours gasping for breath. I want nothing more than to knock him on his ass, but that is far easier said than done. It's one of the many items still on my to-do list.

He's incredibly nimble, and my God his hands are fast, if I didn't know better, I'd think he had three arms. It seems like every time I open up my defense to throw a punch, I get two in return. He slips my headshots with ease and the body shots I do land don't seem to cause him much worry. All the while he picks me apart from all angles. I'm tempted at times to either tackle him or kick him in the groin, but I'm certain that wouldn't end well for me. Instead I soak up as much punishment as I can before conceding defeat. On a good day, I can hang in there until the egg timer rings a fifth time, on a bad day I'm soft-boiled.

My problem now is marrying the lessons Ari teaches with what Jake says. Ari tells me the best way to win in a conflict is to avoid it, if at all possible. Jake takes the approach that the best defense is a full out offensive, a pre-emptive strike, preferably accompanied with verbal slights. What might work best for me is to start with the open-handed peaceful "I don't want any trouble" bit, followed with a quick sucker punch, prior to sprinting to safety. Yeah, that's about my speed.

Mark is drawing slowly on a pipe, the aroma from the Captain Black is delicious and fills me with an aching nostalgia. My grandpa use to smoke that stuff. Memories of Cuckoo clocks and bowls of hard licorice candies come flooding back to me. Mark has hardly said a single word since we got to the blind, I always figured teachers for morning people, I might be wrong. He's lined up eight of those monstrous ten gauge paper shells on the shelf. I'm concerned about them getting wet and his gun exploding next to my head. Also on my to-do list - don't die today. My ears are not looking forward to him touching off that cannon of his. He appears to be lost in his thoughts. Sometimes that is the best place to be lost, and I leave him be.

I fish through my pockets. Unlike Jake and Heather, I am not sporting the latest trademarked and fully branded camouflage. I have my father's old hunting jacket which has hung in my closet for decades. It smells of cedar and napthalene, in a way, it smells like my childhood. It's a simple green canvas waist length coat, seems warm enough and has plenty of large pockets. When I put it on, it feels like I'm wrapping myself in my father's memory, it doesn't provide the protection of Gore-Tex and synthetic down, but it adds a layer of emotional armour and that is good enough.

It has a large game pocket in the back and I stick my hand deep in there and find pheasant features and rabbit fur. Dad and I rarely saw eye to eye, we were too much alike, both too stubborn to admit our wrongs and too headstrong to say sorry, but there are times now that I really miss him. He would have loved a day in the duck blinds.

I open a fresh box of shotshells, drop one in the action, close it and put two more in the magazine. I double check the safety and put the gun aside. I toyed with the idea of bringing my trap gun, certainly it has no place in a duck blind, but I'm so comfortable with it I figured it would guarantee me more ducks. Looking at the drenched 870, I know bringing the trusty old pump gun was the right decision. Just touching the gun has gotten Merida all in a frenzy, she has no idea what she's to do but she's excited anyway. I have to wrestle her back into a seated position and slip her a rawhide to keep her busy. Mark follows suit and loads up, in the process his gun barrel swings dangerously close to my head.

"Whoa! Careful, I'd like to go home with my head intact." I complain.

"Sorry Connor." He says wrestling the unweildy beast back under control. "It's been a long time since I've gone hunting."

"Will you ladies keep it down!" Jake hisses from the other blind.

Sheepishly, we both shrink lower in the blind to avoid further scolding. I go back to fiddling with the sundry treasures I'm discovering in all these deep pockets, the deeper I dig, the further back in time I go. Mark returns to his thoughts and his pipe.

When it's light enough, someone in the other blind starts calling. Quacks and whistles and crazy sounds I never realized ducks made echoes over the wind wrinkled water. Thirty meters out from the blinds a couple dozen decoys float in deceptive innocence. Bobbing up and down on tiny ripples they seem almost alive. Come float with us, they beckon, we're one of you.

A couple ducks pass by on the wing, fast and out of range. I'm guessing Canvasbacks by the speed. Last night I had my old hunting manual out, basically cramming all the duck identification stuff into my head. I only want to shoot the ducks I don't mind eating - mallards, teal, maybe blacks, that's about it. Chances are, I won't be able to tell what they are until they are dead and in my hand. I'll do my best though, because diving ducks taste like shit.

The only instruction Jake gave us was to not fire first. Mark sets his pipe on the shelf and adjusts his hat. I grip my gun nervously and scan the sky. I have butterflies, as it was on my first duck hunt, so it is on my second. In response, I fidget with the safety on my gun.

CLICK - off.

CLICK - on.

CLICK - off.

CLICK - on.

It's a bad habit, probably annoying too.

A flock of twenty or so birds are heading quickly up the far shoreline, Jake and Heather work their magic with their calls and the flock soon turns our way. It's not a favourable shot, they are angling in toward us from right to left. It's not like trap. They are coming in fast, the lead ducks begin their descent, I check the other blind, they are still hunkered down, out of view. Mark and I wait for the signal.

When the first duck touches the water, Jake and Heather pop up and start firing, we quickly follow. I completely forget about duck identification, and start shooting. I draw a bead on my first duck, fire and miss. Cursing, I cycle the action and fire again, another miss. The ducks are in a full panic now, several have dropped into the water thanks to the real hunters in the other blind, and the rest are scattering in every direction. Mark fires his Marlin, with a thunderous roar it belches out a smoking cloud of lead-laced death, killing one duck and winging another with a single shot. My ears are ringing. I pick another target, a fast mover crossing my field of fire. I shoulder my gun and swing, in my head I recite the pass shooting mantra I was taught as a kid, butt-belly-beak-BANG! My last target tumbles from the sky.

Merida has lost her mind with all the shooting, she has jumped out of the blind swam around and climbed back in three times without fetching a single duck. Jake paddles over and coaxes Merida out to the fallen ducks in an attempt to get her on task. She starts picking up on what is expected of her. Takes about fifteen minutes, but she's a quick learner, especially when Jake is teaching. Once back in our blind, we use one of the smaller ducks for practice and toss it out into the marsh a few times. Each time she launches herself into the water, makes a beeline for the duck and brings it straight back.

The next couple hours tick by, at times it's excruciatingly boring, when the ducks don't cooperate, mixed with brief periods of frantic hysteria when all four hunters are banging away like an anti-aircraft battery. We fill our quota and them some, Jake has zero concerns about having a run-in with a game warden, I can't say the same.

We fill the boats with our gear and game, add people and one dog and paddle back to the make-shift boat launch where we started the day in complete darkness. I think I might be deaf in my left ear now. Mark will be worse off though, his shoulder is going to be all shades of black and blue, guaranteed. He's already got a bag of ice on it.

It takes a fair while to haul everything back to the waiting vehicles and get it all loaded up. I toss Merida, still wet, into the bed of the truck. She lays down immediately, exhausted.

"She did pretty damn good for her first time." I say proudly, although her performance isn't something I can take credit for.

"She did." Jake agrees. "She's smart and eager, but a dog can't have two masters. You gotta work with her more, she needs to listen to you. She needs to want to work for you."

"Yeah, I know, you're right." I say. He'll get no argument from me, I do have the time, I just need to get out with her and work on this stuff.

"I got something for you." Heather says, reaching into her Jeep. She pulls out a fairly compact, compound bow and hands it to me. "Jake tells me you needed something to learn on."

"I should have specified that my preference was something not pink." I say, I don't mean to be rude, but it's too late to retract my statement.

"It's not pink." She retorts. "It has some pink accents."

"It's a damn good bow." Jake adds. "There is no reason you can't take any game you come across with that bow, once you learn to shoot it."

"But, really? Pink?" I think Jake might have gone out of his way to get me a girlish bow, just to be an ass.

"Man up Connor, it's just a colour. If it bugs you that much, spray paint over it... but not the string. You are going to be stuck with that string." Jake fires back. I think I hear Mark stiffle a chortle, he pretends he's clearing his throat.

I sigh. "Okay... I mean thanks, I'll deal with it. What do I owe you." I ask Heather. She shrugs.

"I already covered it." Jake says, you owe me seventy-five bucks. "Plus you're going to owe me for that trailer when it's done. Two-hundred even should cover everything."

"You take a check?"

"Hell no. But I'm sure we can work something out."

"Sounds good."

We head straight back to Jake's and take to dressing our quarry. Many hands makes light work is mostly true and we have a healthy sum of thirty-eight ducks ready for the freezer. Heather hands out a few index cards with her favourite duck recipes which is very thoughtful. Neither Kate or I really know how to prepare a duck for dinner, a little guidance is much appreciated.

I get home and cram my share of the ducks (I only took six) into the freezer. I give Merida an extra large portion for her dinner, she burned a ton of calories today. She wolfs it down before I even finish refilling her water dish. She nearly empties that too and wanders to the next room and collapses on her bed. She's had it. I flick the fireplace on for her.

Kate is reading in the Great Room.

"How was the hunt?" She asks.

"Good. I didn't get shot or fall in the marsh and we have six ducks in the freezer. Is Heath still up?"

"I put him to bed a while ago and read him a story. He should be out by now."

"Okay, I'll get cleaned up then."

"Good idea - you smell like smoke and mothballs."

Yes, yes I do. I think to myself with a very self-satisfied smile and head to the shower.

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