The first person I speak to on my 40th birthday is a lawyer. This is unfortunate; I’m not much in the habit of interacting with lawyers, and there are other things I would rather be doing. Namely, cleaning ducks. That’s the problem, though: The day before I woke with the desire to go out and shoot some ducks for my birthday dinner, but it didn’t go well. Or maybe I should say it didn’t end well.
Argentines in my area of Patagonia aren’t much into bird hunting. Their infamous reputation for being hyper-carnivorous is fitting. It’s hard to get most of them to try a piece of meat that isn’t beef or lamb. Even chicken is considered more of a lunch meat than a dinner entrée.
When I moved to Argentina, I asked about the laws concerning waterfowl right away.
“Sure, you can shoot ducks,” said our local game warden.
“When is the season? What are the limits?” I asked.
He thought about this for a few seconds and responded, “Winter. Five.”
“Per day?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Five of each species, five total, or some combination of separate limits on different species?” I pressed.
“What do you mean ‘species’?” he asked. “Ducks are ducks.”
So I acquired a shotgun, admittedly through more efficient means than the legal route of a mountain of forms, psychological evaluations, background checks, and months of waiting. Then I implemented my own resource management system, by which I mean that because there were always far more birds than I could possibly eat, I simply shot what I wanted when I wanted and never tired of eating ducks all winter long. No one had any interest in the birds, so it was easy to get permission to hunt, and I spent the next decade’s worth of winters wandering happily through duck hunting heaven.
Back to the last day of my 39th year.
Disappointment Creek runs through a broad, flat valley nestled against the Chilean border 40 miles outside of Rio Pico, a town of less than a thousand souls, most of whom actually live on the outlying estancias in a province with a population density less than the Sahara desert. I’m the only foreigner who has ever lived here. The only people who don’t know everyone else in the community are the police, and that’s only because the government keeps them on a rotation of month-long stays in an effort to minimize corruption.
The stream appears as if by magic from springs sneaking to the surface beneath bogs that feel like waterbeds as you walk across them. Channels soon form but immediately spread out into a web of interconnected rivulets that run for miles before again connecting and forming a large stream that pushes to the Chilean border. It’s a bit counterintuitive, but most of the drainages in the province actually run to the Pacific, cutting back through the Andes in deep gorges that for the most part humankind has never seen.
I’d had permission to hunt the place for years but still brought a box of pastries for the gaucho when I went. This year he was nowhere to be found, and when I noticed his big gray gelding was also missing, I assumed he was out riding the property. Parking the truck at the farthest corner of the property, I stepped out into a thirty-mile-an-hour wind with sleet blowing into my ears—a perfect day for ducks.
Thus began one of the most spectacular afternoons of wingshooting I’ve ever experienced. Teal, widgeon, and pintails were everywhere, flying down the water in darting passes. About ten ducks in, I started plucking my ducks so they wouldn’t take up as much space in my backpack. I also wanted to slow the process down and savor the hunt. I knew I needed a lot of ducks for the party, but when it’s that good, hunting can quickly cross the line into a shooting spree.
By the time I got a mile downstream from the truck, the bag was getting heavy and the sleet had turned to snow. The ducks kept flying through, more of them than I had ever seen, and I was picking my shots carefully and passing a lot because there was no reason to take a chance on anything even marginally out of range.
Two hours in I’d shot a full box of shells—the only box I’d brought. I pulled each bird back out of the bag to rearrange things for the walk back and counted: twenty-five birds. Twenty-five shells. Never before had I accomplished anything near that and wouldn’t expect anyone to believe me when I told them. I sat down, watched the weather, and let it sink in until I couldn’t feel my feet. It was time to go.
Rounding the last berm before arriving at my truck I saw another truck barreling down the dirt road toward me. This struck me as odd, but I assumed it was one of the neighboring estancia owners heading into his property. Wherever he was going, he was in a hurry.
I got close enough to see my truck—and the four others parked around it. That’s when I noticed the men running through the marsh in combat gear and bulletproof vests with shouldered rifles. They were floundering in the mud and falling as they tried to plow across the canals. The scene was so out of place it took me a moment to realize that this might have something to do with me. When I put two and two together, I briefly thought about turning around, burying the gun and birds, and coming out as if I’d been hiking.
But it just wasn’t going to go down that way. The cover story didn’t seem plausible considering the weather, and besides that I’ve become something of a fundamentalist in my old age with respect to my admittedly anarchistic views. I whistled. They all stopped in their tracks and stared around eerily as if they were waiting for mortars to drop from the sky.
I whistled again and they zeroed in on me. Just like Pops always said: One shot, they have no clue where you are. Second shot, they know exactly where you are.
The commandos came running—most of them falling into the marsh along the way, one of them all the way up to his neck—and when they finally crawled out onto the trail they were soaking wet, freezing, and pointing their rifles at me.
“Buenos tardes,” I said, risking a smile that could have been taken for mirth or friendliness. Most of the muzzles came down. Panting, the one in charge asked me what I was doing there.
“Hunting,” I said.
“Hunting what?”
“Ducks.”
I wish I could have taken a picture of their faces.
It turned out they were searching for Chilean cattle rustlers who had stolen over a hundred head of cattle three days before; they had been patrolling the property 24 hours a day since. A gaucho on the neighboring property had heard my shots, assumed they were from the cattle rustlers, and ridden his horse to the top of a mountain where there was enough cell signal to call the police. Meanwhile I had been happily wandering through the marshes having a spectacular time with no idea about the cattle heist, the patrols, the gaucho with the cell phone, or the subsequent descent of a heavily armed motorcade on my location.
Such is life in Argentina.
The cops seemed to feel that it was necessary to photograph the “operation.” This was a big sting. They laid the shotgun out on the tailgate of my truck with all the empty shells and all the ducks and my Argentine residency documents and my American driver’s license and my passport and my buck knife and pretty much everything else except my socks. They took pictures of everything: of me, of themselves with me, of all the birds, of me and them and all the birds, of the shotgun, of the truck, and of everything together.
They eventually got cold enough to decide it was time to go. So we got in the trucks and made the slow drive to the police station, where it seemed like half the town was waiting to watch us come in. I felt like they should have put a bag over my head to protect me from the paparazzi before they got me out of the truck.
Then paperwork and questioning began. After living in Argentina as long as I have, I was prepared for this to be a lengthy process. All of the steps were similar to what they would have been in the U.S. except absurdly repetitive and inefficient. Lots of forms, all filled out on a mechanical typewriter. Each form required its own set of fingerprints; soon my hands were so caked in black ink they made me wash it all off with detergent so we could start again. During the interrogation the captain asked for such relevant information as my sister’s mailing address in the U.S., the maiden name of her mother-in-law, and my shoe size. I played dumb and complied.
Around nine o’clock that evening we neared what seemed to be the end, and I said, “Okay, what now?” The captain replied, “Well, we’re keeping the gun because you don’t have it licensed. I’m supposed to detain you for the night and then ship you up to Esquel tomorrow, but I talked with the judge there by phone, and we’ve decided to let you go home. We’ll sort out the rest next week. I’m doing you a favor.”
I thanked them, picked up my backpack of ducks, and headed for the door. That’s when the yelling started.
“No, no–esos no,” they hollered, pointing at the bag of ducks.
“What are you going to do with them?” I asked.
“We have to burn them.”
I took a deep breath and abandoned my dumb compliance. Sometimes there’s an advantage to playing along with the Argentine government’s silly rhythms, but there are moments when it’s necessary to pull out all the stops and hope for the best. This was one of those moments. I mean, we’re talking about ducks.
I stood at the door and in the loudest voice I could muster told them that in my entire life I had never killed a bird I didn’t eat—that my family didn’t do such things, that I had been made to eat a red-headed woodpecker when I was five years old after having irresponsibly employed my BB gun, and that if these ducks had died in vain my father, his father, and his father before him were going to come back from the dead and beat me to within an inch of my life and do the same to every man in the room.
Again, I needed a camera.
“All right, all right!” the captain said. “You can take them; just don’t tell anyone.”
I thanked him, picked the backpack off the floor, and headed home. After stacking the ducks in the fridge, I thought about how things might have turned out had I decided to run instead of whistle. I shook my head laughing and went to bed.
After finishing my call with the lawyer, I notice there’s a lot of new snow on the Andes. My lawyer says he thinks I’ll probably need to beg the judge and pay a fine, and that we’ll get the gun back if we play our cards right. The coffee in my cup warms my bones, and the ducks piled on the counter are plucked, salted, and oiled for the grill and tonight’s festivities. I anticipate being the butt of a great many jibes and bearing the brunt of my friends’ laughter, but at least my 40th birthday dinner will be one to remember.
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