Crabs and Duck hunting in Maryland

It was an experience being back in the area that I grew up in. For those of you who don't know, I moved to Edgewood, MD at the age of 9 and stayed until I was 21, so I guess that you could really call this a visit to my "hometown". We stayed at Elk Neck State Park the first 4 days and hen moved over to Long Bar Harbor RV Park and Marina to park next to my sister Jeanne and her husband John.

Before arriving, I had contacted some friends and family to advise them that we were on our way. We made plans to see people, most of which fell thru (keep reading, you'll find out why) and had great  expectations to reconnect with people from my past.

While in Lancaster the week before, I found a good friend (Steve Upton) whom I have not seen or talked to for 35 years. Of all the people who I contacted, he was the most enthusiastic about getting together and we made plans to go crabbing and then duck hunting on Saturday, which was the opening day of the MD duck season.

Deb and I went to Steve's on Friday, met

 his wife Lorraine, and drank a few Miller Lites while we caught up on old times as well as the last three decades of our lives. Steve and Lorraine have a great place on the Gunpowder River with a "crab shack" right on the water. We met some of their friends and one of their daughters and although it was quite blustery , we hung out in the crab shack while Steve used his secret recipe in the home made steamer that he made out of a beer keg. When the bushel was done we all piled into the house and picked crabs for the next couple of hours. It was one experience which had been just as I remember it from my youth, the only difference being the fact hat we used to do it at Steve's parents house back in the old days.

Saturday morning I rose at 4:45 and headed to Steve's to duck hunt with him and his friends, Jeff and Kent. We headed across the river in the dark, set out the decoys and drove the boat up on shore. As soon as I stepped into the water, my borrowed waders filled up with water. I should have known, nobody buys a second pair of waders unless the first one is leaking, duh! That one thing set the tone for the day.

Five minutes before the legal shooting time, the ducks started buzzing the decoy spread. Back in the 70's we would have shot a dozen times but this day, everyone waited for the legal time and the shooting began.

By 10:00 the tide was going out and the water was quickly disappearing. Another group of hunters came out of the creek behind us at about 10:30 struggling to push their boat thru the 4" deep water (see picture) and all three of my companions discussed getting out of there but decided to stick it out and hunt until the tide came back in because nobody wanted to "mud walk" out of there. We were in a little sheltered area and what we had not noticed was that the wind had picked up, blowing about 40mph out of the NW which meant that all the water was being blown down river into the Chesapeake Bay which left us staring at a mud flat which stretched out 100yds in front of us. High tide came and went at 3:30pm without one inch of rise in the river level. The wind continued to blow while the river retreated even farther.

At mid afternoon, I was forced to call the friends and family who were going to congregate at our campsite for a campfire and visit. I am sorry that I missed you all while we were there.

By nightfall, the wind had died down but since we were on a retreating tide, we all figured that the water would not return until it turned around and started coming in. Since high tide was not until 4am, we figured that we would not see enough water to float the boat until close to 2:30 and none of us wanted to wait. We had all brought just enough food and drink for the morning hunt since we had made plans to go out for lunch.

As we started to slide the boat into the creek bed, it seemed that the job was not going to be as difficult as we had imagined. Forty yards later when the boat was stuck solid in the mud at the mouth of the creek we realized that we were wrong. After moving the boat just 1/2" in 4 attempts to push it, we changed direction slightly to try to take advantage of the small pockets of puddles which were spaced out across the mud.

Pushing was not only very difficult because we had very little water, it was compounded by the fact that we were in knee deep muck but we got the boat moving. With Jeff and Steve on the left of the motor and me and Kent on the right, we trudged along with Jeff shouting "don't stop!, don't stop!". About 40yds later, Kent fell and the three of us continued until Jeff and Steve were laughing so hard that they couldn't continue.

I looked back to see Kent laying flat in the mud trying to pull himself along on all fours, all the while whining " I can't get up, I can't get my legs up under me, I can't get up". As the three of us stood there laughing our asses off, Kent made his way to the boat's stern but, by now with panic in his voice, could not even pull himself up so Jeff and I lifted him and helped him drag himself into the boat. For he next 100yds Steve, Jeff and I pushed 20 steps and rested, repeating the grueling process over and over until Steve could go no farther so he ended up in the boat. Steve had a push pole in the boat so he and Kent took turns pushing while Jeff and I continued on.

At this point, I was not feeling confident. Jeff, I thought, was the one person who was in the wors

t shape out of all of us. He had just survived a bout of cancer and had spent 6 days in a coma and lost 60 pounds during the ordeal. He is still a big man and I thought for sure that this would be his last experience.

Jeff and I pushed the boat another 100yds. By now the muck was crotch deep but at least we had gotten to the point in which there was 2” of water on top of it so the boat was moving just a little easier. That was until another couple hundred pounds was added to the boat when Jeff announced that he could go no more.

And then there was one! For the last hundred yards or so I did all that I could until we finally had just barely enough water under the boat that the push pole was all that was needed to move the boat the last 50yds to open water.

Back on the dock we were met by Steve’s and Jeff’s wives along with Steve’s daughter. I looked up at Kent who looked just like The Creature From the Black Lagoon and after pointing it out o everyone else, collapsed on the dock while laughing so hard I nearly wet myself.