56 WILDFOWL Magazine | June/July 2016 wildfowlmag.com

Chasing the birds we should have shot together.

Frost crept in over the sashes as our Montgomery Ward space heater tried to keep up with the bit-ter cold breaking its way through the bedroom window. My grandfather built this home when the neighbor-hood was just an open field of dirt and weeds. He didn’t see fit to pipe heat to the second floor; let the kids freeze, I guess.

Summers were worse. Oppressive heat made sleep hard to come by—not that you need much as an adolescent. But slumbering in a pool of your own sweat is downright awful. Only an August thunderstorm would save us. Carl, my younger brother, and I would plead with our father to let us get out sleeping bags and enjoy the cool of my parent’s room. It was a meat locker in there. So cold, you could catch a cold. But we were at a disadvantage. Dad had spent his entire life in this house. No fans, certainly no air-conditioner window units in his youth. He dealt with the heat, and so would we.

OUR OWN PLACEPiled under layers of covers, his massive hand pressed on my chest.

“Wake up, boy.”Before finding the motivation to

brave the cold temperature I would expose myself to by peeling off blankets, I looked up. His silhouette filled the room. At 6-foot-7, he was the biggest man in the world—at least to me. This was a day we both had been looking forward to for months. We were going to “his island.”

So I sprung from my trundle bed, probably stepping on Carl just to rub in the fact I would be duck hunting with dad, and he was likely destined for some terrible department store with mom. The old man was already dressed in full camo, and thinking back, I’m surprised he didn’t have the recently purchased Browning BPS in-hand. It was a toss-up what he was more proud of, his two sons, his Chevy or that darned

BY JOE GENZEL

From the author: In the dream my father is just as he was 25 years ago. Big-rimmed glasses and an even bigger smile on his face, he walks towards me. I’m older than him now, but he still wraps me in the biggest bear hug and I’m 10 years old all over again. I wrote the story that follows in 2012 to remember dad, and in recognition of my younger brother and mother, who never gets much credit for raising two ornery boys and a disobedient black Lab mostly by herself. Since then my wife, Katy, and I had a boy of our own and named him after dad and her grandfather—Donald Bucky Genzel. There is not a person I love more in this world. I hope this Father’s Day finds you well, and close to your daughters and sons. —JG

Hunting for my

Many evenings were spent

practicing on this Olt and hand-

carved goose call. Dad rarely

missed a chance to chirp at the

resident Canadas passing over

our house each afternoon.

FATHERy

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pump-action shotgun. Pulling on a tight pair of snow pants and parka from the previous winter, which I had already outgrown—we Genzels are of a sweaty, large-bodied ilk—it was off to fill our Thermoses with hot chocolate and coffee.

Dad’s island sits on the Illinois River, near Peoria. It was an interesting and lucky find. There aren’t that many places to duck hunt in the central part of this state unless you’re a private landowner, buy a lease or belong to a duck club. My dad was a union carpenter, who co-opted his way through high school, going to class half the day and spending the other half working as a mechanic. So, we wouldn’t be joining a club or making any land acquisitions, limiting our options. His island is just north of a highly-trafficked bridge, so my guess is that’s how he discovered it. I vividly recall him locating the owner of the land we crossed to access the island, and them giving him the go-ahead. He was ecstatic. It meant we didn’t have to launch a boat, it meant jump shooting the shoreline, and best of all, it meant we’d have a place to kill birds.

SAGE ADVICE The summer was full of “scouting” weekends. We would head out, watch for birds and dad would quack and honk at them, doing his best to mimic the call tapes. That usually lasted an hour or two, then it was off to a dingy tavern, where he picked the brains of legendary duck hunters, err, boozers, that worshiped at the altar of the nearest jar house. My job was asking for quarters to pump through the PAC-MAN machine, and stuff ballpark-sized hot dogs and frozen Snickers down my gullet. And to “not tell mom.”

The legwork paid dividends, so I guess those barflies had a few wise words…a few. We walked the shore-line, chasing the ducks—no blind, no decoys, no dog—down the birds fell. Some days they poured in, oth-ers I laid on my belly, building sand castles. Our chest freezer was full of limits of mallards and a few Canadas. It was coming together.

There was work to be done, though. We needed decoys, a blind and a dog that could retrieve, a determination

made after our own black Lab wouldn’t fetch up any doves at a nearby strip mine. Dad downed the bird and it fell over the deepest end of the pit, Dyna just stared up at the two of us. After much prodding and zero response, he pushed the gun into my chest, grabbed the dog’s collar and dragged her down the side of the hill. He picked up the bird, stuffed it in her mouth and made the ascent, cursing her. Tom Dokken would not have been proud.

LAST SEASONIt wasn’t hard finding another hunting partner. The old timer had a boat, and a dog, which we ended up using sparingly as the birds tended to fall on land or in the shallows. We built a box

blind; I helped by finding big rocks and chucking them into the water. Dad scrounged up some cash and got us in on a blind for goose season—which ended my junior hockey career, I think. That’s OK, killing honkers and having enough teeth to eat corn-on-the-cob is more important. He pilfered a batch of plastic oil drums from a mechanic friend. We sawed the barrels in half, spray-painted them black and white, and affixed plastic Canada heads to the make-shift decoys. Once again, our freezer runneth over.

But that was the last season we had together. He died suddenly of an atrial fibrillation Oct. 5, 1991, not long before duck season opened. The doctor told my mother his heart was too big—I

Dad, Carl and I doing our best Gomer Pile impersonations.

We shot plenty of shells on this fall morning from an Illinois River duck blind.

58 WILDFOWL Magazine | June/July 2016 wildfowlmag.com

Hunting for my fatHer

believe it. Hunting started to go by the wayside. My uncle enrolled me in a hunter’s safety course and we went on some squirrel and rabbit shoots, but I guess it just wasn’t the same. As an adult, you look back and think, “I should have stuck with that.” The knowledge, friendships and hunts I could have been exposed to would have been endless. I watch the eyes of deer hunters turn into saucers as they reel off a big-buck tale; guys around the office brag of shooting an Alaskan black bear. That could’ve been me with mounts on the wall; those could have been my stories.

BLIND DAYSLucky me, I have some great friends, and a few years ago was invited by one of them to go sit in a duck blind, not far from my dad’s island. It was reinvigorating to say the least. Saturday night we took a boat ride and watched the ducks fly in over a few beverages. The next morning we got after some birds, and though our shooting was hardly impressive, I was renewed.

My office building is right across the river from that spot I spent so many days jump shooting and sipping hot chocolate. I’m drawn to the windows, looking east towards our old spread. I

inquired about hunting there recently, and found the state declared it an official preserve, so it’s off-limits. A few floating steel cranes work there now, digging silt from the bottom of the Illinois, likely incorporating dad’s island one day. Before that happens, I

hope the DNR will re-open it, giving me and whoever else wants to join, a crack at the ducks and geese that still flock there.

As the seasons have progressed, I’ve found myself in more and more blinds, thinking of him often. We used to watch Canada geese drop into a local marina, and I recall one time in particular, a massive bird hunkered down on the docks. He just stood there ogling it. They were his favorite. This year, the honkers were elusive, at least for me. My brother and I went goose hunting together once, and I wanted him to have a chance at one. We sat together for hours, eating crackers and smoked salmon, ribbing each other over a few of the terrible shots we’d made on birds in past seasons. It didn’t matter the geese weren’t flying as I could only think of how much dad would’ve enjoyed this moment, and how his two sons would’ve likely glossed over it. But since he’s gone, we realize the importance of days such as these. With sunset approaching and still nothing in sight, I peered over the treetops and asked dad for some help.

Just one straggler, please…but no response came. Figures, he was prob-ably in his own blind, hopefully on the birds.Donald Bucky’s first goose season.

The old man when he was a young man holding a honker alongside his

brother Fred (right) and a neighborhood friend.

June/July 2016 | WILDFOWL Magazine 59wildfowlmag.com