License-sales data mined by the Department of Natural Resources suggests as many as 243 waterfowlers age 80 and older will be hunkered in marshes or alongside wetlands a half-hour before sunrise Saturday when the latest edition of Minnesota duck hunting begins.
That's how many small-game licenses, in combination with federal duck stamps, have been sold so far by the DNR to an age group that begins at the bottom end of the octogenarian decade and extends north to 93.
The 243 figure is impressive because duck hunting is in most instances physically challenging. No one on a lark rises at 4 a.m. or thereabouts and pulls on waders and heavy clothing before clambering into a two-bit camouflaged boat or blind. This is sport, yes, but also work, and rarely undertaken casually.
Yet perhaps the addictive nature of waterfowling and the passion with which it is pursued each fall by true believers explains the participation still of so many old-timers. Watching ducks, after all, and watching for ducks, is a habit that once formed is not easily broken. The sky and its limitless conformations are a part of this, as are, often, rising and setting suns. Silhouetted against these, a mallard or canvasback or wood duck reveals itself in ways both splendorous and mysterious. Either you understand this or you don't, and those who do can't get enough.
David Maass and Arnold Krueger, the former of the west metro, the latter from Le Center, will be among the 80-plus cohort who will be alert Saturday morning with scatterguns in hand when waterfowl become legal fare.
Lifelong friends, and men of artistic bents, the two first shared a duck blind in the mid-1960s. They've been inseparable on opening mornings every year since.
"For most of those years, a third friend, Barney Anderson, who is the retired chair of the Owatonna High School art department, also has been with us on opening day,'' said Maass, a famed waterfowl artist.
The three met early in Maass' career when he worked at Josten's in Owatonna and painted wildlife on the side.