Rabbit Season! Duck Season!

I received this humorous description of the machiavellian beauracracy one needs to traverse in order to go duck hunting in Virginia:

I just returned from a trip to the Courthouse, after a call from Than Greene reminding me to get my yearly duck blind license. I love this stuff because it’s a combination of the good old boy South, pirates of the Caribbean, mysteries and miseries of duck hunting, and government fraud. Than is one of the Ship Cabin boys and he gives me a heads up when I need it. (“Nathaniel Greene” perhaps, although this is Virginia so it could be “Thanatopsis” or “Thanatheria:” we hate to give away a person’s sexual identity with their paper name.)

I’d guess there are perhaps 100 “deep water” (in my case about 6 feet deep, and as distinguished from “shore” blinds, which are for pantywaists) blind locations in Back Bay, and perhaps 25 deep water blinds. September 30 is the last day to pay for the 2006 license, although until this year there was no way to know that: the Clerk didn’t send any notice. If you don’t pay, your blind location (or blind license – who knows) “goes into a lottery” that no one has ever actually seen conducted. You can’t pay by mail, only in person, and you have to pay cash: like a speakeasy. The Clerk of the Court (charged by the Commonwealth with running this operation) will not show you the list of blind numbers or who has paid. (It’s the same place marriage licenses are issued, so you get a quick lesson in the weaker aspects of western civilization too.)

So I paid $27 for a yearly right to have a duck blind at a certain but poorly defined location in Back Bay. My 1920-era description says “750 yards southeast of the clubhouse” but neglects to mention which clubhouse. There is no map of the locations in 1920. One year we put the license on a salt-treated 4 x 4 and stuck that in the water where Back Bay Blanton (the previous owner of the location) judged the right location (“You know I never actually hunted from this blind, so I’m not real sure...” says he, as we circle around in the pouring cold rain and he looks grimly for landmarks on the shore), but someone pulled that out later. Hunters in boats were not allowed to shoot within 500 yards of such stakes, so they pull them out: as of this year only a genuine blind counts: not the stake.

“Do you want to buy a (Federal) duck stamp too?” (It really is a stamp with a painting of a duck on it.) “What do I get for that?” “Nothing: you have to have one to get the blind license.” “Well then: yes.” On the stamp back it says in very small light grey type “...waterfowl stamps must be in possession of licensee with respective stamp validations on the license.” What validations? What license? I can’t see why carrying a gooey little postage stamp, in addition to the actual metal duck blind license plate the stamp entitled me to, is a useful thing. Virginia has only two game wardens and they are chasing bear claw pirates in the Appalachians; the blind is actually for hunters, not ducks, and I don’t have a hunting license anyway. But $27 is a very reasonable price for all this administration and paper brou-ha-ha: absolutely none of it affects what actually happens on Back Bay.

You have to BUILD the blind, if you build one at all, by November 1: the true hunters don’t want you out there pounding away during the season. No one has a map of where the state designated the locations in 1920 to keep hunters from accidentally peppering the next blind over with shot, and most boys who have blinds have inched them over the years to where they thought the ducks really were. Most people don’t even build a blind: it’s a nuisance and it’s very cold out there before a winter dawn. I have not yet met a rocket scientist in a duck blind: I guess they don’t like the cold, or maybe the ducks, or maybe cold wet dogs.

There are several signs in the Clerk’s office saying “If you don’t have a blind or don’t use the one you have, please sell the license (a private sale of an annual state license? Should I sell my car’s license plate to someone who’d use it more?) to someone who will use it.” They apparently don’t realize that the very reason most boys keep the license is to keep others from hunting there: not to hunt there themselves. The Ship Cabin boys have 6 blind licenses: one with an actual blind and five to keep everyone else away from the first. (One of their locations is “100 yards off the south tip of Big Island.” Big Island disappeared 30 years ago.) The Ram Island boys (Ram Island disappeared before 1950.) have only one blind, and they lease it to the Ship Cabin Club.

Dean Davis put some of his blinds in the names of his grandchildren when they said a few years ago that you couldn’t have more than two. He “sold one of his blinds to Sonny Stallings for $5,000.” Selling something you don’t own is a way of life around the Bay: only slightly frowned on because it’s often very hard to tell just what marshy, undefined mess you do own. Sonny is regarded as a sharp sportsman for that move. Unfortunately they can’t agree just WHICH of Dean’s locations Sonny bought: Dean is dead, his son is a contentious idiot, and the grandchildren can be deprived of their property as easily as they were given it, apparently. (I can’t imagine that six year olds toodled in to pay for a blind license. Maybe so. Who knows.)

So the summary is correct. I have a license plate for a blind I don’t have, to hunt ducks I don’t shoot, with a gun I don’t own. (I am actually a good shot, let it be known: depends on how far away things are.) But no one ELSE has this license damn it, and the whole business builds character.