A recent book entitled “Generation DUX, Xciting, Xcessive, Xtreme – Runnin’ and Gunnin’ With Duck Hunting’s New Breed,” published by Ducks Unlimited in late 2004, prompted an uncomfortable and unpleasant memory.1 I had been invited to hunt with a friend at a club in the Suisun Marsh, part of the San Francisco Bay/Delta complex of waterways – a prime hunting area until the mid ‘70s and in serious decline ever since.

Oak logs burned brightly in the stone fireplace, radiating heat to fight off the cold drafts invading the rickety old clubhouse, the advance scouts of a storm raging on that December night. The weather, the season, foretold a fine morning in the marsh, full of rain, wind and waterfowl under a dark, roiling sky. The indifferent quality of the season to that point added an edge to the anticipation in the room. For the moment, however, the circle of warmth pulled the men close, whiskey glasses in hand, their faces flushed from the good but simple meal they had just enjoyed, happy conversation and laughter nearly drowning out the clamor of wind and rain that pounded their place of refuge. Smoke from several cigars added their distinctive freight to the atmosphere.

After a time, the president of the club called for order to introduce a special guest, a man who ran a commercial duck and goose hunting operation on the plains of Alberta, about one hundred miles northeast of Edmonton. He was a large, pleasant, outgoing fellow, roughly fifty years old, with a broad face and full head of grey hair, well-nourished and prosperous looking, even in faded Levis, cowboy boots and chamois shirt. He possessed the aspect of a small town banker, or judge, or church elder – someone of class and stature who commanded respect. He briefly described his operation, handed out a bunch of brochures to the twenty or so men present, and then stuck a video tape into the VCR to show us whereof he spoke.

From a brief, narrative introduction – complete with musical soundtrack – the video took us on a tour of a graceful log cabin clubhouse and then inside to see a group of happy hunters eating a gourmet meal, the table bearing several wine bottles and other marks of the good life. Five more minutes of promotional happy talk preceded the main event, the hunt.

Eight hunters, two guides and two Labradors rode out to the hunting ground in a van, driving right to the blind – a narrow long pit in a wheat field, disguised by cut willow branches. Anyone who has been to northern Alberta would instantly recognize the setting. Grain fields in rolling country with groves of aspen in fall colors on the distant ridges and black spruce bogs on all the low ground, lying under brilliant blue skies that carried shifting cumulus to cast their shadow patterns on the fields in the background. When you are there, the setting on a brisk fall day makes the heart sing. The video did it full justice.

We watched as the guides set out perhaps three dozen shells and another three dozen silhouettes. As soon as the van pulled away to a reasonable distance, the first Canadas appeared, hooked by the guides’ calls, and cupped to the decoys.

For the next thirty minutes, we watched as the camera zoomed in for close-ups on big geese flying to their doom in real time. As each bird came within range, eight men rose and emptied their guns. The camera recorded each bird shuddering under the impact of multiple hits before collapse and fall, sixty-four birds in all, each kill scrupulously recorded. (Some of the first ten minutes or so of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” reminded me uncomfortably of the footage of those goose kills). The soundtrack preserved the riotous shouts of glee, the heehawing and hoorahing that celebrated each “triumph,” i.e., a hovering Canada over decoys at twenty yards, felled by a fusillade from eight fearless, steely-eyed hunters using autoloaders, their empties filling the air to punctuate each barrage.

The limit on Canada geese in that zone was eight per day that year. I guessed that none of those hunters in that video could actually have lifted and carried off their limit. But of course, they didn’t have to – as the van and another support vehicle drove up to relieve them of that and all other physical burden. The video ended with the obligatory picture of the hunters, holding their guns in various casual poses, grinning in jubilant satisfaction behind the pile of dead geese, while the narrator exhorted the viewers to sign up immediately for the next season to share the joy.

The mood in that room changed as the video rolled. This was a group of dedicated waterfowlers in a club on marginal ground – men who worked hard for their birds and often did not succeed despite their efforts and considerable skill, men who were living with the decline of a once great property into mediocrity or worse. The enthusiasm with which they greeted the opening scenes of that video subsided into sullen unease as it ran on, kill after kill, barrage after barrage, outlandish celebration after celebration.

At the end, most of the men in that audience were more than mildly disgusted – and somehow ashamed of being associated with such an activity. Basically, that video depicted nothing so much as wretched excess – inducing in the audience the type of nausea one might experience after a guilty binge of gross overeating. No one signed up for the next year’s hunt. And although the members treated the guest politely, a definite coolness settled over the gathering, a coolness that had nothing to do with the weather.

It has been said that one should never underestimate the power of bad art. That video and others like it (of which, sadly, there are more than a few) expose a raw nerve for most hunters who think about what they are doing. They leave us twisting in the chill of our little dilemma, our philosophical predicament. For an object of the hunt is the kill – killing something important in our lives that we have grown to love. Yet, killing is not hunting. A profound gulf separates making love from an act of rape, despite certain common elements. A more difficult and ephemeral line divides a certain type of art from pornography. Perhaps that’s the best metaphor to expose the critical distinction here, raw and extreme though it may be2. We are hunters – not killers. There’s a qualitative difference between the two.

GenDux is of a piece with that video. Mostly in pictures with a few paragraphs of text on each page, written in a tacky manifestation of the “gee-golly-wow, ain’t I the greatest” literary genre, the book depicts the exploits of five youthful waterfowlers – reveling in a “take no prisoners” approach to the sport3. The pictures show them utilizing every conceivable motorized aid in their energetic pursuit of slaughter (consistently proclaimed as their preeminent goal), from mechanical spinning wing decoys (in high multiples) through farm tractors to huge amphibious motor vehicles employed to get them to the best places.4 In the text, they celebrate themselves shamelessly for their high energy and addiction to the “sport” of killing ducks, clad in tee-shirts that proclaim their commitment to “devastation” over conservation.

About halfway through the book, memories of the John Belushi movie “Animal House” bubbled up from my subconscious, only to be set aside. “Animal House” had more class.

Don’t get me wrong here. Anyone has the right to author a book and try to get someone to publish it. Anyone has the right to compose a celebration of himself, replete with outlandish claims fueled by the hot gas of rampant ego.5 Indeed, in a society that idolizes professional athletes who beat their chests and posture shamelessly when they do something on the field that is simply what they are hired to do (like tackle a guy wearing the other uniform) and for which they are paid millions, a crass upwelling of self aggrandizement such as GenDux should come as no particular surprise, sad commentary though that may be.

Neither the book itself, the content nor the authors would be worthy of the $18 price, the few minutes required to read it cover to cover – or the time I have spent to write and you to read this article, but for one incredible fact. That piece of worthless, pernicious tripe was published by Ducks Unlimited. Worse, it appears to have been a DU project, as the organization’s logo shows prominently in several pictures, including one in which it adorns the side of an oversized amphibious conveyance – that resembles nothing quite so much as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle – clearly designed and intended to pursue ducks into the most remote and normally inaccessible sanctuary, there to be ambushed and slaughtered by the heroic young tyros with their “take no prisoners” attitude, testosterone overload and inflated self-image.

How could this be? Profoundly disturbed and looking for clues, I visited the DU website, something I have not done for many months. There I found the Mission Statement, as before: “Ducks Unlimited conserves, restores, and manages wetlands and associated habitats for North America’s waterfowl. These habitats also benefit other wildlife and people.”

No National Anthem or fight song for whackers and stackers here. Indeed, I doubt that anyone exposed to GenDux would perceive it as the proud product of an organization that purports to espouse such a mission.

Browsing further, I hit the “Conservation” key which opened a page headed by a quote from Aldo Leopold: “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” I seriously doubt that the hunters depicted in that unmentionable book see land as a community to which they belong. Love and respect have nothing to do with the behavior afield they have chronicled. Perhaps I do them an injustice – but of one thing I am as certain as I can be. That book has the redoubtable Aldo whirling in his grave like a wind turbine in a gale.

Looking further on DU’s website, I hit the “waterfowling” key, one of eight along the top of the home page, somewhat hard to spot in the clutter, obviously intended to be seen as a low priority. (Most of us know that DU usually acts embarrassed by its origins as an organization of hunters and tends to downplay the connection in most contexts – making its sponsorship of GenDux all the more curious). Nothing in the limited material exposed by that key gave any inkling of an organizational shift in support of high energy, kill motivated, competitive waterfowling, celebrating misguided youthful exuberance over conservation and ethics. What is going on here? Is anyone paying attention?

From what I see and hear locally, from the laments on the internet, the hunting this season has been generally poor from one end of the country to the other – with few and widely scattered exceptions. We started with low counts and pretty much had the experience those counts foretold, despite generally favorable weather. This continues a trend of five years’ duration, that coincides with a striking decline in hunting morality as exemplified by robos and other profane manifestations of greed and disregard of stewardship obligations (such as the growing clamor to open the sanctuaries in the name of expanded hunter opportunity). For DU to publish, sponsor and promote a book such as GenDux in this environment demonstrates an astonishing lack of regard for its own Mission Statement and a total abdication of any claim it might otherwise have to leadership in difficult times.

John Kenneth Galbraith once famously observed that men could achieve immortality through spectacular error. Maybe that’s the answer – a misguided quest for enduring approbation from the cheap seats. Who are those guys? Whoever they are, may they seek their immortality at the expense of some other diminishing treasure. If that book doesn’t demonstrate that DU has totally lost its way, what else will it take?

“Ducks Unlimited conserves, restores, and manages wetlands and associated habitats for North America’s waterfowl . . . .” That’s the Mission, the mantra DU employs to solicit contributions and justify its elaborate establishment. At a time when North America’s waterfowl populations decline at alarming and persistent rates, DU is failing on its own terms, in the only measure that really counts. Is such a time appropriate to publish an exuberant ode to the unrestrained killing of waterfowl?

Wake up, gentlemen. You cannot afford to look that frivolous, irrelevant, complacent and out-of-touch.

1 For the sake of brevity, I refer to the book as “GenDux” in this piece.

2 Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once famously observed that whereas he could not define pornography, he knew it when he saw it.

3 There seems to be a growing epidemic of this trash talk. An outfit that calls itself Quack Head recently advertised its wares in Waterfowler.com as follows: “Hardcore waterfowl calls, extreme attitude, and pimped-out accessories and apparel.” No kidding. We do not make this stuff up.

4 That gear doesn’t come cheap. I wonder how hot these hotshots would be if they had to get by with the gear available to the average effective public land hunter.

5 The satirist Joe Bob Briggs once observed of a person afflicted with similar hubris: “He arose each day secure in the knowledge that the sun shone for him alone, gazed upon his own self with boundless love – and found it good.”