How to Learn
A lesson on humility, making mistakes, and using duck hunting to make your brain bigger.
The glow of a headlight in the dark can be the most damning thing.
In the distance, the glow represents a sinking feeling that someone’s had the same idea as you and a quick pivot to Plan B is in order. Every waterfowl hunter knows the feeling too well. It’s a quick damper on high spirits and even higher hopes. It’s a reminder you didn’t quite work hard enough.
“What if I hadn’t taken so long at the gas station?”
“What if I had just loaded up my decoys and shell box last night instead of this morning?”
Once you’ve finally found your new spot, you’ll settle in and start to think back on where you could’ve shaved off those precious minutes that may have earned you the spot you wanted. Somebody just wanted it worse than you did.
I will admit that my early years of duck hunting were spent toiling in jealousy towards the people that beat me to my spot (which was often in my early 20s). It’s hard to admit you’ve been beaten at a game you’ve purported to be good at.
I realize now I’m not good at duck hunting. As much as I love this sport, I’ve seen newer hunters reach levels of success I’ll never achieve. Some of them even take me along for the ride, which is a fun story for another time.
I don’t feel the need to prove how good (or bad) I am at anything anymore. My job, my hobbies, my ability to keep life together. There are strengths, sure. There are far more weaknesses. I wish I could say that came from some sort of personal introspection that I went through as I grew older, though I can’t. I believe wholly that it came from duck hunting, the most humbling sport a man or woman could ever partake in.
The beauty of duck hunting is the number of skills that will invariably grow amongst those who do it enough. Reading tidal charts. Small engine repair. Knot tying. Ornithology. Emergency survival. Duck hunters become good at these things whether they aim to or not, as long as they have the means. For instance, a duck hunter in the prairie pothole region (Hunter A) won’t have the urgent need to learn how to break down the carburetor on an air-cooled engine like a duck hunter who hunts in a coastal marsh (Hunter B). That’s not to say Hunter A won’t learn it, but his hunting season won’t depend on it like Hunter B’s will.
Those skills aren’t learned overnight. In fact, through duck hunting, they’re learned the hard way, and typically out of necessity.
The necessities that crop up throughout a 60-day duck season force hunters to hone their most important skill: Adaptability. When the boat breaks down and the coffers are looking empty, take the paddle craft. When a stick lodged itself in your waders and bore a hole too big to patch, find a place where waders aren’t a necessity. Leave a small can of WD-40 and a roll of duct tape in your blind box, for God knows what.
Why should I bother telling you this, though?
Go make those mistakes. Relish in them. Learn from them.
Most of all, remember them.