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"For duck hunters, winter water often means certain death; Recent cases highlight dangers of freezing temperatures in duck hunting season" by Billy Baker | Globe staff, January 18, 2014
…. Two recent cases have highlighted the inherent dangers of duck hunting in coastal Massachusetts, where the seafowl arrive just as water temperatures plunge into the danger zone.
Last Sunday, the body of 21-year-old Brown University student Dana Dourdeville was found washed ashore in Falmouth, nearly two weeks after he went missing while duck hunting in a kayak off Fairhaven on New Year’s Eve.
Related:
Coast Guard calls off kayaker search
Search continues for missing Brown student
Body of kayaker found on Cape Cod
On Jan. 7, two duck hunters died, and another barely survived, when their 12-foot skiff capsized in choppy waters on the Westport River….
Related: 2 men die after boat capsizes in Westport
Also see:
"Essex County prosecutors say authorities recovered a body part Friday from the Charles River that may be linked to the strange case of a man who was apparently killed, dismembered, and set on fire this fall."
I'm going to skip the trip.
The Coast Guard requires dry suits for all its on-water personnel when water temperature drops below 50 degrees, but hunters say the dry suits — which feature thick rubber gaskets at the neck and wrists to keep water out — are hot and cumbersome, making it difficult to shoot….
On the day the hunters died in Westport, there were high winds and choppy waters, so it was one of two days this hunting season that Smith did not go out on the ocean. Instead, he took his clients hunting on a marsh.
As he steers his boat slowly through Boston Harbor, dawn is still a long way off when Smith drops the three buddies from Ohio at the end of a rocky jetty just off the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant and begins laying out a few dozen plastic duck decoys in the water surrounding them. The hunters are after trophies, not food, “because sea ducks taste like [expletive],” one of the men said. One of them is an amateur taxidermist, and the male ducks have a gorgeous, thick, white-and-black coat this time of year that he’s hoping to mount….
During the first minute in such icy water, the body goes through something called cold shock response, an involuntary mixture of gasping and hyperventilating that can be immediately deadly if the head is submerged, forcing the victim to take in water as the person gasps. The shock can also lead to a cardiac episode. Many do not survive the first minute.
Lieutenant Bryan Swintek, who oversees the Coast Guard command center in Woods Hole and was involved with the attempted rescues in Fairhaven and Westport, said that people should be aware of the 1-10-1 rule in cold water.
I was told the oceans were heating up and the ice was melting.
For the first minute, the goal is to get the breathing under control. After that, the body will have 10 minutes of functional movement when hands and feet should still be usable.
After that, the extremities will shut down as the body focuses on keeping the core alive, but a person should still have one hour of survival time in the water.
But that is only if the victim is wearing a life jacket that can allow a person to tread water. “The difference between functional time and survival time is what the life jacket buys you,” Swintek said.
Dourdeville, who went out in a 9-foot kayak, was wearing a life jacket and warm clothes, but he was not wearing any clothing designed for going into the water, Swintek said. The three hunters in the Westport River were similarly dressed in warm clothing for the air temperature, which was just 8 degrees, but nothing specifically designed for the water, said Swintek, and only one was wearing a life jacket.
Swintek said the three men on the Westport River were attempting a 7-minute trip across the river in a 12-foot skiff to a plot of land where they were planning to hunt. They had made the same trip the previous day. But on their fateful trip, the current and the wind were opposing each other, creating steep waves that swamped the boat. Two men, Steven James, 53, of Marshfield and Robert Becher, 55, of Cromwell, Conn., jumped out and tried to swim to shore, but never made it. The third man, Gregg Angell, 51, a physician from Westport, stayed with the boat a bit longer and made it to shore after he went into the water.
For those who go out on the ocean in the winter in New England, dry suits remain a rarity, said Joe Curcuru, manager of Fisherman’s Outfitter in Gloucester, which supplies many people who work the water year-round. “You’re not going to be wearing a survival suit or a dry suit when you’re fishing or hunting,” he said. “They’re too big and bulky, and they’re bright orange, and hunters want to be camouflaged. The only thing you can do is be smart and try to stay out of the water in the first place.”
On this day in Boston Harbor, things go smoothly for the hunters. Not so much for the ducks. The decoys work, and as the sun turns the fog milky white, duck after duck comes in for a soft landing next to its plastic cousins. In short order, each of the men shoots his daily allotment of four eider, including a few they describe as “studs” that will make great wall décor. After each round of shooting, Smith’s son, Adam Smith Jr., hangs from the bow of the boat and scoops them into a net.
When the day was done and they had shot all they could, Smith picked the hunters up from the slippery jetty and headed back to shore.
“This is what I like, all the guys safe and back in the boat,” Smith said as they boarded his double-bottomed fiberglass skiff. “This boat is unsinkable.”
“That’s what they said about the Titanic,” one of the hunters joked.
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Who they bagged:
"‘Duck Dynasty’ meets shadow-puppet culture war; If you have strong feelings about a TV show, why not at least watch it?" by Joanna Weiss | Globe Columnist, January 03, 2014
I call it political coverage.
…. By now, whether you’ve watched or not, you surely know the saga.
Not really.
Phil Robertson, the 67-year-old founder of a multimillion dollar duck-call manufacturing empire, made a series of colorfully bigoted statements to a GQ reporter last month, based on his personal interpretations of the Bible. The article went viral. The outrage was swift; A&E “suspended” Robertson from filming a show that wasn’t currently being filmed.
(Click sound as blog editor changes channel)
Then came the backlash, from Sarah Palin and her ilk, plus grass-roots protesters who fumed when Cracker Barrel briefly stopped selling Robertson-themed merchandise. Finally, A&E reversed its meaningless position and said Phil could take part in the money-making, after all.
I’m not here to defend Phil Robertson. Out of context, what he said was appalling, and he’s been spouting this stuff for years. But context matters, so here’s some you can glean from actually watching an episode or two. In the media circus, Robertson has been portrayed as the mastermind of his family enterprise, lionized by A&E as some sort of model American. He isn’t. Not even close.
Yes, Phil invented the duck calls that made his family rich. But it was his son Willie who built up the business, developed lines of related merchandise, and shopped a TV show featuring his family’s semi-scripted hijinks (on which he now serves as executive producer). If you put “Duck Dynasty” in Kardashian terms — and, really, that’s the proper way to view it — Willie would be the Kris Jenner of the operation. Phil . . . well, he’d pretty much be Kim.
His role, in other words, is to be mocked. The show suggests he has a sort of backwoods wisdom — in the series premiere, he gives a grandson “river rat counseling” while decapitating bullfrogs — but that he’s also pitifully retrograde. His rants about “yuppies” are a running joke, because we see that his sons, minus their entertainment-value beards, are almost as bourgeois as they come. In fact, the whole show is basically a joke, a series of skits about family members gently mocking one another, with some obligatory concluding scenes about togetherness and the healing powers of fried food….
As a modern-day Archie Bunker, raising his guns in futility against the future, he serves a cultural purpose. See it for yourself.
So sayeth Weiss in all her wisdom.
--more--"
Still have not watched it, and don't intend to. I'd rather party down South and learn with Honey Boo Boo.
Related:
"Why do media outlets tolerate the pollution of their websites with poisonous comments from anonymous posters? Feedback from readers is a fine thing, and a rollicking comment section can greatly enrich the experience of following the news. But editors enforce standards of taste and tone when they publish letters to the editor. They should be similarly concerned about the taste and tone of the comment forums they provide. As public discourse grows ever more bitter, here, at least, is one way that news sites can refuse to enable the ugliness…. Still, where there’s life, there’s hope. A healthy cynicism about the news business is always advisable, but…. journalists have stop pretending to be neutral."
Also see: Anonymous For Not Much Longer
It's a lot more than sour grapes, folks.
