Everyone wants to feel good. Once you get past the demands of mere survival, we all pursue feeling good in one way or another--foodies, band groupies, model train enthusiasts, etc. Obviously, this applies to us waterfowlers too. You have the Daddy Warbucks Hunters, the Performance Hunters, the Gods Guns and Guts Hunters, the Nostalgic Hunters to name just a few subspecies. All of these hunters choose their spots, gear, and manners to best reflect the type of hunter they are or aspire to be. Why does a man choose (or wish he could choose) a fine bespoke double rather than the latest model of Italian autoloader? While another man chooses a beat-up, 40-yeaqr-old 870? I suppose there may be some hunters who don’t give a damn what kind of gun or camo or decoys they use, but I suspect that such a detachment from the accoutrements of the chase is itself a carefully studied detachment, kind of like the bed-head look (Do you have any idea how long it takes to look like I just woke up this way?). I could go on at length about what gets other hunters’ outboard revving. But I won’t.
Instead, I’ll talk about Myself. I’m a variation on the Nostalgic / Collector with a splash of Punk / DIY. I’m drawn, not to hunting in the 50’s and 60’s, but in the 80’s when steel was young and camo was blotchy. I like spray painting 5-gallon buckets, making wading poles out of broomsticks, and using old belt buckles for decoy weights. My ultimate duck gun would be a late model Winchester 1897 threaded for choke tubes and some kind of sand colored paint job, set up to shoot steel. I wish I had an unlimited supply of NTC wads and 800x. I love the IDEA of #TT shot because it was only factory loaded by one manufacturer for a few years in the 1990’s—most hunters my age have never heard of it (I guess there’s a splash of hipster in me after all). This is why I like the 16 gauge; to realize it’s potential, you HAVE to reload for it, and even then, you have to dig for the best data. Does it offer an advantage over any 12 ga load? No, but that’s not the point.
I’ve always been very sensitive to textures, probably due to my poor eyesight. One of the main reasons I don’t like synthetic stocks is the feel of them; there’s something so soulless about the plastic buttstock that I find hard to shake. Obviously, I’d hunt with a plastic gun rather than not hunt at all, but I’d be missing out on the warm fuzzy I get from well worn wood. (In which case, I’d have to temporarily transition to a different kind of hunter in order to be truly happy. Performance Hunting is just too athletic for me, so I’d probably have to opt for the Bed-Head. Or perhaps some kind of Sand People LARPing type thing.) I don’t like using a plastic shell box, even though it makes a lot of sense given the aquatic nature of waterfowling. I like the feel of reaching into the soggy carboard shell box. I knew a guy who kept his shells in a Ziploc bag—I think I’d vomit. Not that I have a problem with plastic in all contexts; I don’t feel the need to use wooden decoys, a cane call, or paper shotshells. And the use of 5-gallon buckets and zip ties has a long, storied history in duck hunting.
And that’s the key phrase: a long, storied history. I have an 870 Express I bought new a couple years ago as a backup gun. A fine enough gun for what it is, yet devoid of any life (I believe it was one of the last Remington made before their melt down). Meaning, I haven’t used it enough to build into it any memories, and being new, neither has anyone else. On the other hand, when I use my 1949 Ithaca M37, I’m adding more pages to that gun’s scrapbook, and participating in a mystical way with the previous owner’s hunts. Obviously, I don’t actually remember those memories, but having the object in my hand connects me to those events whatever they may have been. I hope they were happy. This tell of human experiences adds umami to the hunt; verily, the plinth is as important as the sculpture.
Old things are rad. Some imbibe deeper from the fountain of radness then others (e.g. a box of Winchester Super Steel c. 1990 isn’t as cool as a box of Western Super X Steel c. 1980), but it’s hard to find an old hunting thing with absolutely zero appeal. The question is at what point does a thing transition from out-of-date to vintage? In clothing and music, it appears to be roughly a twenty-year cycle--girls are wearing flares and listening to 90’s alternative again—but the longevity of firearms (perhaps the only consumer product not engineered to fail) and the overall high average age among waterfowlers seems to push that point a bit further back. I think forty years is a safe bet—I mean, who doesn’t want a Browning B-80? But for me personally, the transition is The Year 2000. Is it because I’m trying to reclaim my youth? Or is it that my fashion sense is more inline with 18-year-old girls than with my fellow grey-haired comrades? (Is this weird; should I feel bad about this? Or is it another case of American youths' cultural appropriation? Wonder how my folks felt when I started wearing tie-dye.) Whatever it may be, I’ll giggle over a box of steel #F that most hunters wouldn’t even notice. I wonder if my personal transition point is fixed, or will I start to collect BlackCloud boxes at some point. We’ll see
Of course, I’m speaking as the Nostalgic here. Age lays a blanket of legitimacy over anything that survived (whether or not it was a piece of crap at the time or not (In some cases, age reverses the desirability scale: which is cooler, a 1959 Thunderbird or Edsel? ). But there are other vectors of Authenticity in hunting. The Technohunter’s gadgetry, the Gentleman Sportsman’s luxury, and the Performance Hunter’s trekking all provide the assurance that they are not mere poseurs, but are real hunters doing it right. The ragged claws do not scuttle across the floors of silent seas in adherence to an aesthetic code—and it turns out the ragged claws are not Authentic Men.
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