Brown Water & Blue Wings

• Posted on 22 October 2026
• By Drew Mire
• Posted in Duck Poppers, Marsh & Bayou, Whiskey Tree
• 0

A freezer full of teal, a bottle of bourbon, and a late summer work trip prove that
hunting season begins long before opening morning.

There is a certain kind of optimism that shows up at a hunting camp in late August. The thermometer says one thing and the calendar says another, but your mind has already skipped ahead to cold fronts, wet dogs, muddy boots, camp coffee in the dark, and that first morning when you can finally see your breath.

For me, a “work weekend” at the camp rarely falls on a weekend at all. It is usually a slow Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday when I can slip away, knock out a list, and ease that low grade worry of unpreparedness that starts creeping in as hunting season gets closer. It is not glamorous work. Nobody gets especially excited about pictures of cleaning decoys, running side by sides, checking fields, or fixing whatever other problems have mysteriously appeared like gremlins since January. Those images do not quite have the appeal of a sunrise, a strap of ducks, or your buddy kneeling beside a trophy buck. But the work is part of the ritual, and it is how the season really starts.

My work began on a Tuesday evening at our duck and dove camp in Jonesville, with dove season damn near knocking at the door and September teal season waiting just behind it. For Louisiana duck hunters, teal season is its own little preamble. The weather may still feel like summer, and the mosquitoes may still have the upper hand, but those first blue winged teal dropping into a spread are enough to remind us of what is coming. The anticipation is plenty of motivation to work, but I had another reason for being in Jonesville. It was time to make room in the freezer.

Every hunting camp freezer eventually becomes an archaeological dig. A pack of teal breasts from one hunt. Sausage from another. A vacuum sealed something pushed back into a corner. A piece of butcher paper nobody remembers labeling because apparently everyone believes his future self will recognize frozen meat by shape alone. Before you start filling it again, you have to make a little room. There were eighteen teal in the Jonesville freezer, so Tuesday night I pulled them out to thaw. By Wednesday morning, they went into a simple Allegro marinade. If the camp were stocked and I had the time, I would usually make my own marinade with a little soy sauce, Worcestershire, black pepper, garlic, onion, a few spices, and maybe something sweet. But there are times when a bottle of Allegro tastes more appropriate than anything I could mix myself.

For me, that flavor carries history. It takes me back to long weekend duck trips in Venice, Louisiana, when the whole operation was fairly simple. Shoot ducks. Clean ducks. Throw the breasts into a bag with Allegro marinade. Dinner. There was always too much gear, not enough sleep, damp, dirty clothes, and a group of guys perfectly content to eat whatever came off the grill. Allegro became part of those adventures, and sometimes nostalgia is seasoning enough.

As the teal swam in marinade, we spent Wednesday around the camp doing what we could to get ahead of the season before the season got ahead of us. By early afternoon, we packed up and headed east for Woodville, Mississippi, a little over an hour away, where the second half of the trip would unfold at the deer camp.

My close friend, Jeff Rogers, was already there working. After catching up and checking stands, fields, feeders, and ponds, we called it a day and headed back to the camp for refreshments. Jeff owns Whiskey Tree Bourbon and recently released a new Single Barrel Steen’s Finished Whiskey Tree Bourbon, an award winning bourbon finished in barrels that once held Steen’s cane syrup.

The pairing almost makes too much sense. Steen’s is one of those Louisiana products that needs very little introduction. The dark, rich syrup from Abbeville pairs like gospel with biscuits, ham, and pancakes and has been a staple through generations of Southern kitchens. Pairing it with the savory and sweet notes of Whiskey Tree Bourbon already felt like two old South Louisiana friends shaking hands.

Naturally, I wanted to get the teal involved in the party, less like a gimmick or decoration and more like kin.

Speaking of kin, my son, Christian, and Jeff’s son, Landon, headed up to join us. Born only twenty nine days apart, the two have grown up more like brothers than friends. They are both sophomores at LSU now, and along with a couple of their college roommates, they made the just over an hour drive from Baton Rouge to Woodville to join us. I still call them “the boys,” even though I guess that description becomes a little less accurate every year.

With a camp full of hunters and stories, it was back to the food. Teal are almost tailor made for poppers. The meat is mild on the gamey scale, and the breasts are small enough that I can simply cut them in half. I go back and forth on what belongs inside a duck popper. Sometimes jalapeño. Sometimes onion. Sometimes both.

For this batch, I chose onion. A piece of teal, a slice of onion, and smoky bacon wrapped around the whole thing. I also like to skewer several together rather than use individual toothpicks. They stay organized on the grill, they flip easily, and when the bacon fat inevitably starts dripping onto the fire, you can move a whole row of them at once. Instead of putting cream cheese inside, I whip it and spread it across the serving platter. It gives the teal somewhere soft and cool to land and, more importantly, leaves room for the sauce to carry the story.

The sauce began in my head as a classic French gastrique and, somewhere around Natchez on the drive to Woodville, started drifting toward an Old Fashioned. Traditionally, a gastrique starts with caramelized sugar balanced by vinegar. I skipped the sugar and water caramel and went straight for Steen’s cane syrup. Then came seasoned rice wine vinegar for acidity, Luxardo cherries, orange bitters, and a healthy pour of Single Barrel Steen’s Finished Whiskey Tree Bourbon. I let it reduce until it turned dark and glossy. Sweet, tart, bitter, and boozy. An Old Fashioned you could eat.

The poppers hit the grill late. Bacon fat met flame, the juices softened the onion, the edges charred, and the teal cooked quickly, as teal does, picking up just enough smoke before coming off the heat. I laid the skewers over the whipped cream cheese and spooned the warm Steen’s Old Fashioned gastrique across the top.

Of course, it paired perfectly with a Steen’s Old Fashioned, or three. It is a cocktail I usually reserve for colder nights and campfires, but that Wednesday night, in the lingering heat of late summer, it tasted like a preview.

Maybe that is what I love most about these work trips. They are anticipation disguised as maintenance. You are cleaning decoys, but you are imagining birds over them. You are checking stands, but you are picturing shooting lanes. You are fixing something broken in August because you do not want to be dealing with it before daylight in November. And now the boys are starting to understand that, too.

For years, we brought them along because we wanted them to experience what we loved. At first, they were mostly passengers. You packed their stuff, woke them up, told them where to stand, reminded them not to slam the truck door, and hoped they absorbed at least half of what was going on around them.

Then, somewhere along the way, it changes. They start making the trip themselves. Their friends come with them. They begin to understand that hunting is not just pulling a trigger. It is checking fields in August, cleaning decoys, helping with repairs, cooking dinner, telling stories, waking up tired, cleaning up afterward, and respecting the place enough to leave it better than you found it.

The hunt may be the headline, but the camp is the story.

Watching Christian, Landon, and their roommates settle into that world feels like watching a torch being passed without anybody formally handing it over. That is probably how it is supposed to happen. Not with a speech, but around a grill, with a plate in one hand and a drink in the other.

These are the small lessons that help turn boys into Southern gentlemen. Learn to contribute something. Take care of the place. Feed the people around you. Listen to the old guys’ stories, even when you have heard them before. And make sure nobody’s glass stays empty too long. The camp is a little more ready, and the freezer is eighteen teal lighter. Now the wait is on for cold fronts, campfires, chair naps, wet dogs, great hunts, warm meals, college football humming somewhere in the background, and stories that get better with age.

But sitting there in Woodville with our sons and friends, plates of teal poppers disappearing and the first Steen’s Old Fashioneds of the season in our glasses, late August suddenly did not feel quite so hot. Watching one generation find its place beside the next, I realized that maybe some of the best parts of the season had already begun.