Column: Duck, duck, jalapeno popper

I have to resist the temptation sometimes to wish that I had started things earlier because that might imply that my life, to that point, may have been lacking.

I didn’t really start deer hunting until I was 33 years old. I didn’t start duck hunting until last year, though I owned a shot gun for over a decade. I intended to start duck hunting when I lived in California, but it was a chaotic hassle of too few public areas and too many people. The same thing went for deer hunting. I had a .270 but drew tags in small units with tens of thousands of tags and only rumors of deer.

Since I moved back to Alaska in 2013, hunting has become not only a means of freezer filling, but a main mode of exercise, source of productive frustration and bona fide happiness.

On Sunday I shot my first wigeon and in doing so, escaped a little of the haunting I had from last year when there were a dozen and all managed to escape unscathed. That night I prepared what has become a tradition with duck – poppers.

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