Covering up for the shortcomings of others

TOMORROW, AT 5 A.M., I will be driving for a little over an hour to my cousin’s place and from there we will drive another hour so that we can put cover on a few duck blinds for our hunt next week. This is just one more reason why duck hunting is a dying sport.

The idea of covering a duck blind is simple, which is only fitting since that word also aptly describes anyone who would get up at 5 a.m. to do it.

Essentially, you are trying to make a platform in the middle of the marsh look like a bush in the middle of the marsh. Then, if all goes well you will be able to hide from ducks so that they will try to land in your decoys when you are sleeping, pouring coffee or answering nature’s call.

The whole idea of a duck blind is puzzling to some. In fact, people unfamiliar with duck hunting often say, “Why are you hiding? You guys are the ones with the all the firepower.”

There is no good answer to this other than to say you can never be too careful and it is always a mistake to underestimate your opponent.

In any case, there is a fine line when it comes to

the degree in which you conceal a duck blind. You want to camouflage your blind well enough that ducks don’t see it but not so much that you can never find it.

Therefore, as you might have gathered, covering a duck blind with vegetation is not a simple operation. It takes teamwork. Typically, one person holds the piece of cover in place and the other person ties the cover along with the other person’s thumb to the blind. Typically, this happens twice before the team stops to re-evaluate how the operation is proceeding.

Done correctly, however, the entire blind will be soon be covered in cedar boughs and thumbprints.

Surprisingly, there is more to it than that.

In fact, you can tell a lot about the people who built the duck blind by the way it is constructed. For instance, if you were to look at the duck blinds we cover tomorrow you would quickly ascertain that the cover at one end of it is at just the right height while the cover at other end is freakishly tall as is generally the case when anyone over 5-foot4 decides to help out. The good news is that can be clipped off when they are not looking.

Also, if a blind is concealed predominantly with begonias, you just know it was built by someone who has the soul of a poet and is concerned with aesthetics or conformity.

There might even be an art to covering a duck blind. You know you got it right if the ducks view it the way humans view Trump’s hair: you know it’s totally fake but you would love to circle round for a closer look anyway.

Unlike Trump’s hair, however, a duck blind must fit in with its natural surroundings and not be susceptible to wind. Our gang typically uses cedar boughs because they stay green for the entire season. They also create interesting shadows, break up unnatural horizontal lines and can withstand all kinds of weather – but mostly we use them because not one of those cretins has the soul of a poet.