"Living a Dream: The Education of a Duck Hunter"
by Norm Seymour
278 pages plus Preface by Tony Dean, Forward by Harvey K. Nelson. Artwork by John House and Bibliography

Clarion Destiny: A Book Review

I have a nephew who glided through school on a lick and a promise. In college, he majored in parties, girls and offbeat intramural sports, such as ultimate frisbee and other pursuits not yet recognized by the International Olympic Committee. He resisted all efforts to channel his undoubted energy and intelligence into a productive avenue that might some day lead to a recognized and respectable career. On graduation, he wandered off to be a ski bum, quickley earning his way onto the ski patrol at a major ski resort.

For seven years, he spent winters on the patrol and summers either skiing in Australia or backpacking solo for thirty days or more at a time on the Jophn Muir Trail. Then one day, he quit that life, went back to school for a law degree and has labored in environmental and conservationist causes since his admission to the bar, with fervor and ingenuity.

I reflected a bit on that history as I read Norm Seymour's engaging book. For Norm also wandered without much direction before his personal bolt of insperation galvanized him into pursuit of his life's work as a waterfowl biologist, a pursuit in which he has attained international recognition. Perhaps a short stint of aimless wandering forms an important predicate to the embrace of true calling. Maybe the rest of us suffer for lack of that period in our lives.

Seymour's calling had its genesis in a love of duck hunting in one of its grittier forms. The uncle who introduced him to the sport in his early teens considered in inappropriet to shoot the birds on the wing, preferring the sitting variety instead. He was conscious of the bag limits but paid little heed to them as was customary in that place and time. Norm and his uncle hunted divers, mostly Scaup, in the reed beds that grow against the islands in the St. Lawrence which Seymour progressed from these beginnings to a keen appreciation of fair chase and ethical hunting practices forms one of the pervasive themes of his book and would be reason enough to read it for that alone. As important as those considerations are, however, there is much more here to justify the reader's time.

As the author himself declares: "Ducks have been an integral part of my life since childhood. In fact, I can't remember a day when I haven't thought about ducks. Studing their biology and management sustains my intellectual curiosity, but it's my passion for duck hunting that emotionally bonds me to them." As a reader, I quickly gained the impression that the intellectual and emotional are not cleanly divided in Seymour's makeup. Indeed, it seemed to me that fervor, energy and imagination are as much a part of his research as careful thought and analysis are a part of his hunting activities. Started another way, the hunter forms an integral component of the science as the scientist does of the hunter, producing a unique amalgam, a man supremely well equipped to see with clarity what most of us can only sence in the vaguest of outline.

And the scientist/hunter above all expresses heartfelt concern for the future of the birds and for the sport of hunting. Indeed, his Epilogue reveals that he wrote this book out of fear for the prospects of waterfowling and his perception that the fate of the sport lies squarly in the hands of the hunters and no others. Seymour fills his work with specific challenges on troubling issues. For example, in his commentary on the current push for season extensions, he begins with a scientific discussion of why hunting early and late could be harmful to breeding populations. But he ends on a note of ethics.

"It's difficult for managers and hunters to set aside parochial interests and view ducks and duck hunting from a flyway perspective. But if they do, then a philosophical question is bound to arise. Do people who legally kill large numbers of duck have any particular obligations to their fellow hunters? … What do southern hunters say to those in northern states who in some years have only a month of hunting before weather ends their season? Why should northern hunters, or their flyway representatives, support conservative regulations in order to save ducks, when the hunters farther south are killing so many, and lobbying to kill more?

"Professionals management can never allocate harvest equitably. But it can and should assure that gross disparities don't exist. Then there are practical considerations. What if mortality due to hunting does matter to the recovery and growth of populations, and a significant number of ducks saved from hunters' guns are likely to become future breeding stock? This may accurue benefits not only to ducks, but also to other hunters along the flyway. Hunters have to address these issues; we owe it to each other.

Thus, in two short paragraphs, the author mounts a challenge to extensions, the compensatory kill hypothesis and parochial selfishness on the part of flyway segments. He challenges the hunting fraternity - those of us who share his passion to shoulder the burden of rectifying the ills that can flow from these things. And all of it is written in a direct, declarative style that never intervenes between the reader and the message, promoting the clarity that I found so compelling in this work.

Seymour takes us from the Delta Waterfowl Station in Manitoba to a tidal marsh at Antigonish, Nova Scotia, near St. Francis Xavier University where he teaches biology, a marsh that serves as his primary laboratory. He describes his research in the context of hunting experience, hunting traditions and ethical considerations. Wheather hunting or the lands of the Swampy Cree along the shores of James Bay, with the 'Cajons in the bayous of Louisiana or night shooting pinkfooted geese along the tidal shore of Solway Firth in Scotland, Seymour never loses his focus on tradition and ethics, even while recounting travel yarns that I found fascinating.

Of all these tales, I found his chapter on Atlantic Sea Ducks the most riveting, perhaps because hunting these rugged birds in that setting is an experience I have never had and am least likely to have during my remaining years. Indeed, I could hardly imagine it - a hunt in temperatures well below zero as a raging storm buffeted the rocks along the coastline where they shot, water so turbulent that they rigged a lifeline to their retriever so that he would not be lost to the violent currents. Flocks of Eiders and other birds boring into the wind just above the wave tops in single file, barley visible in the snow and ragged cloud fragments torn from the firmament, as they swung to the decoys out of the storm.

To me, the setting was made more captivating by the people who live in it, men who scratch their existence from a hostile sea in an environment that renders human scale small, vulnerable, a life at the sufferance of an irritable and unpredictable universe. I have had the privilege of knowing a few such men, residents of Alaska and far northern Alberta. I recognized their kindred in Seymour's account. In my mind, waterfowling is a sport best pursued in the company of such men whenever possible - at least in their spiritual company. For the hunting tradition has its origins in a time when most of the human race lived a lot closer to the heart of the earth that we do today - as the fisherman of Seymour's tale and my friends of the far north still do.

In the end, this book is an appeal to the hunting fraternity to return to its traditions and to refurbish that respect for the game that was a hallmark of aboriginal peoples. Seymour deplores the greed and loss of values that tarnish the image of our sport and threatens its very survival. He manages to convey his message without sermonizing - and yet with quiet emphasis, backed by an intriguing amalgam of science and travelogue. He has provided an extensive bibliography for those who are motivated to pursue the issues further.

Every serious waterfowler should read this book with the care and affection that went into the writing of it. There is much here for all of us and the message is critical for the survival of our sport.

Personally, I completed the book feeling that I had learned a great deal, gained new perspectives on a subject that I thought that I knew well - and with a strong desire to share a blind with the author some day. It is difficult to imagine how it would be possible to get more from a book than that.

Howard N. Ellman
09/26/02

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