Vermont's Northland Journal

Words of Wisdom about Vermont’s Seasons

by Scott Wheeler

There is a fine line between late season duck hunting and early season ice fishing here in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Just don’t let yourself get caught between the seasons as my sons, Curtis and Nicholas, and I did this year.
Hoping to get in one last hunt, we left our rowboat tied to a tree, with the boat left bobbing in Lake Memphremagog. That night, when the temperature dropped to about zero degrees, a nagging feeling crept over me that we were about to transcend from one season to another (ducking hunting to ice fishing). With this realization in mind, late the following day, with it still bitterly cold, the three of us went to retrieve our boat before the lake iced over. Much to our surprise, the bay where we kept our boat was frozen over with an inch or two of ice, ice that encased our boat. No amount of stomping, sputtering, or cursing would free our boat. With darkness approaching, we rounded up a couple of round pointed shovels and a couple of picks.
Hacking at the ice, we dug a trench around the boat in an attempt to free it. Finally, the boat began to bob in the water, a sure sign we were on the verge of liberating it from its icy prison. Lifting up on the boat, we envisioned it sliding out of the water without much trouble. It would have slipped right out if we hadn’t weakened the ice immediately surrounding the trench. As we began to hoist the boat out of its icy confines, the ice under our feet suddenly gave way, sending two out of three of us almost waist deep into the numbingly cold water. Scrambling out of the water, and with toes too numb to feel, and pant legs freezing solid, we gave the boat a swift yank and pulled it ashore.
As we loaded the boat, the three of us laughed that this would surely not be a duck hunting season we’ll soon forget—the year that ice fishing season snuck up on us and stole our last duck hunting trip, almost boat and all.