Douche Canoe: The Tale of the Worst Outdoorsman I Ever Met

It occurred to me that I hadn't told one of my classic, "Tales of Old" in a while.  When I started this blog it was about destruction.  But after about ten blogs of destruction for fun and profit I thought I should expand into other ideas.  I ended up writing posts about all the weird things that have happened to me.  I just haven't done it in a while.

So, it's time for me to tell the story of the "Douche Canoe."  Yes, this is the story of the worst, most stupidest, outdoorsman I have ever met.  Let me start at the beginning.  Dad and I were out duck hunting at Cockroach Bay.  It's out of Ruskin, Florida.

I have drawn a map to help everyone out.  As you can see Dad and I would make our blind in an small island.  The water around the island was anywhere from one to three feet deep.  It depended upon the tides.  Here's my hand drawn map.

We would lay out our decoys in candy cane patterns.  The mallard, pintail and Florida mallard decoys were laid out to the left.  The green and blue wing teal decoys were laid out to the right.  We would put them out forty yards since that is the furthest a hunter would want to shoot at ducks.

We would try to be in our duck blind just before 7 AM since 7 - 8 AM is the best time for duck hunting.  That day, we had seen a few ducks flying around, usually about 300 - 500 yards out.  We tried calling a few in to no avail.  Now just because ducks weren't coming in didn't mean other birds weren't coming into the decoys.  We always had kingfishers flying by.  Storks, cormorants, ibises, blue herons, and other wadding birds would drop by. 

However, at 8:30 AM all wildlife movement stopped.  Nothing was coming near.  Heck, no wildlife was even on the horizon.  Now, I sat on the left hand side of the blind.  Dad sat on my right.  As I looked as far left as I could, I saw something I had never seen.  It was an idiot in a fishing boat within 120 yards of our blind.

I said to Dad, "Surely he can see our decoys?"  It's standard outdoor courtesy that if you see duck decoys you avoid them because that means there are duck hunters trying to duck hunt.  I mean, it's just common sense.  Especially since duck hunters are shooting guns, and you want to stay out of shooting distance.  Again, this is not a hard thing.

So this guy comes around the island in a flats boat.  He's operating a trolling motor while casting a fishing rod.  I keep saying to Dad, "He has to see us, right?"  Dad said he had been duck hunting since the early 70's and never had anyone do something like this.  So I blew my duck call at the boater.  But he kept coming around the island.  I blew my duck call again.  Still, the guy kept fishing out there.

Of course, I don't have explain that no birds or wildlife were coming anywhere near us due to this moron being out there.  I'll admit, I can be an angry guy.  I said to Dad that if the boater didn't get the hint with the duck calls, maybe I should shoot a few shots across his bow.  Dad, of course, wanted to handle the situation in a calmer way.

So Dad made a point of putting his gun down.  He waded out to where the guy was fishing.  Like the map shows the boater was only 120 yards from us.  So Dad wades out and nicely lets the guy know that we are duck hunting.  The guy says, and I'm not kidding, "Are you having any luck?"  I'm sitting in the blind, and I can hear the conversation.  The guy's comment caught Dad off guard.  The boater also said that, "He wondered why the ducks weren't flying away?"  Yeah, that's because they're decoys.  Seriously, I'm not making this up.

Honestly, Dad was being too nice.  I felt like yelling from the blind, "Tell the fuckwad to get out of shooting distance!!!"  But I didn't.  So Dad comes back to the blind believing he got his point across.  So we sit there for another ten minutes.  The douche canoe keeps fishing behind our decoys.  I asked, "Does this guy have a death wish?"  I'm not going to lie.  I was getting very upset.  I was really considering shooting pretty close to his boat and yelling, "Duck!!!"

Dad told me, "We have to share the outdoors.  And if we start shooting at people it will give all hunters a bad name."  But Dad had also had enough.  He said if the moron was going to ruin our hunting he would ruin his fishing.  So Dad set his gun down again.  He waded rather noisily towards the boat.  The guy tried moving away with his trolling motor, but it wasn't that strong of a motor.

So Dad had another conversation with the guy.  To be honest.  It was just like Jerry Seinfeld, a conversation about nothing.  So Dad talks to him for a few minutes.  It was a bit tense, but cordial.  After the conversation Dad waded back to the blind, and the moron boated away from the island.  This whole event took around twenty minutes.  By this time it was almost 9 AM.

Dad and I would usually hunt until 10 AM.  After 10 AM, the wildlife decided to take a nap.  So that's why we stopped hunting at 10 AM.  However, after the boater had hung around our decoys, nothing was coming near us.  So at 9:30 AM we decided to pack it in.  We never fired a shot that day.  We never had a duck come near us.  It was decidedly one of our worst days duck hunting.

I am still hostile about the whole situation to this day.  I can't believe anyone could possibly be that stupid or uncaring.  Here's some sage advice, if you are within 100 yards of ducks and they aren't moving, they're decoys.  I still think I should have fired a few shots across his bow.  But if he didn't get the hint with decoys and a visit, I don't know if shotgun fire was going to work either.  

Destruction For Forty Cents A Pound

It's been a while since I had a "Destruction" post.  The original intent of this blog was for me to write about destruction for fun and profit.  This particular post actually fits both.  Let me explain.

We had an old john boat in the backyard that hadn't been used in almost two decades.  It was aluminum and a lot of the pop rivets had come loose.  The boat also had scrapes and cuts that made it unseaworthy.  So I was given the greenlight to cut up the boat and recycle it for scrap aluminum.  It sounds a lot easier than it is.

So this is the boat:

I ended up destroying two grinders cutting up this boat.  Not grinding wheels, actual angle grinders.

I found out the best tool for this job, besides a grinder, was a sledgehammer.

I made sure to wear gloves with all this sharp aluminum, but the one time I didn't...

I found out what look the longest was removing anything that wasn't aluminum.  That ended up being Styrofoam and steel bolts.  On a side note, when recycling you don't want to mix metals.  The scrap metal recyclers want the metals as pure as possible when they melt it down.

It's hard to believe that the Styrofoam was in as good a condition as it was after forty years.

After burning up the two angle grinders, Dad came up with an idea that he had heard about.  I won't post it here since it's not exactly OSHA approved or safe in any way.  But with the use of multiple tools I managed to cut the boat in half.

I used the sledgehammer to knock out the seats.  It was actually the easiest way to do it.

I spent most of my time going around the boat smashing off bits that contained steel.  There were bolts that gave extra strength to the back of the boat where the motor sat.  I had to take every one of them out.  There were rings used to tie the ship to the dock.  All of those had to go.  But in the end I managed to free it of any other metals.

Oh, the reason I cut the boat up into pieces to begin with?  So it would fit in the back of my short-bed truck.

Don't worry, I made sure to strap it down.

When it was all said and done, I received forty cents a pound for the boat.  I ended up with 120 pounds of scrap aluminum from it.  That, along with all the aluminum cans I turned in netted me a grand total of $52.05.  Hmm, I guess no one said that destruction pays well?