A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on it's shoes. - Mark Twain

The other morning a communications specialist for a big utility, a prominent local dentist, his fine young lab and I were stowing gear and guns and three limits of ducks in the back of the truck parked at a local wildlife management area parking lot. It had been a fine opening morning of duck shooting for us but it had been especially meaningful for the young lab's trainer. The dog's first outing with ducks had gone almost flawlessly, retrieve after retrieve.

While we were tying down our gear, a mud spattered truck crawled through the mud holes leading to our parking spot. Two younger duck hunters dismounted and the fine art of parking lot lying quickly commenced.

Telling lies in the parking lot is a time honored, and venerable, southern tradition that takes place during the mid-day, around tailgates of old rusty, dog filled, mud covered trucks. Lying about the last few hours of hunting success, or more than likely, missed shots, is a fine art form that takes years of subtle training. If you are indeed fortunate enough to have been apprenticed to a good parking lot liar you have been truly blessed. Parking lot lies are one of the few subjects not yet covered in mandatory hunter education courses administered by TWRA.

Let me take a minute here to discuss why lying about hunting and fishing is a good thing. I know that most of you that are not politicians and lawyers were raised under the belief that a lie was a bad thing and I also know that more than a few of you have probably kissed a bar of Ivory for lying somewhere in your young lives. Having your mouth washed out with a nice sized bar of soap after being caught in a lie may have convinced most of you that lying was something with significant enough risk that it was not really worth repeating. Lying, and being punished for it, was a life lesson most of us learned early.

Most hunters and fishermen consider this issue of being caught in a lie completely different from, say,... lying to the little woman about some minor transgression that involves, say,... Liquor, a late evening out with the boys, and that hot little red head that works down at the local Golden Gallon. Maybe you tried to help that sweet, young, red head out with her need for some extra Christmas cash and your wife just did not quite understand when she spied that flaming red hair on your camo jacket collar. Parking lot lying is different than lying to the little woman about hot red heads.

Most hunters and fishermen, at a very tender age marveled at the liars that they were exposed to early in life. They watched the really good liars get away with things that they would have never even thought of lying about. These timeless moments of misspent youth were carried forward with them as they began to hunt and fish and gather about in parking lots later in their life.

Good parking lot liars never divulge how their hunt went unless they have the tailgate piled up with a big buck or stacks of birds. Even then, after all the evidence has been reviewed by everyone in the lot, a really good liar will steadfastly refuse to let out his secret of exactly where the secret spot is. You see, this is the key to why lying is so important. NEVER let anyone know where your best hole is. NEVER!

This is the first rule of lying. An expert at lying in the parking lot will go to great, and detailed lengths to send inquisitors to the opposite side of the county. This form of lying takes some pretty nimble thinking on your feet, but believe me boys, it is well worth it. There is no honor when it comes to hunting on public managed hunting areas around here. Tell just one guy in a parking lot where you are killing ducks and the clown will go home and immediately get on his extensive E-mail network and the next time you pull up into your spot it looks like a million man march, in camouflage, has descended on your best sport.

Lying about where to hunt is a good thing.

I have hunted with guys that were some of the best liars since O.J. These guys surely could have survived Idi Amin's favorite torture before they would have told even a grand jury about their favorite swamp or pothole. Old Idi Amin was a pretty persuasive Ugandan interrogator. His favorite technique for exposing a liar included a big rat, a stainless steel mixing bowl and a blow torch. The alleged liar would be strapped to a sheet of plywood, stripped to the waist. Then the rat would be placed under the bowl on the victim's belly. As the blow torch was applied to the upside down bowl, the big rat would get really nervous and start trying to frantically dig out through the liars guts. Most Liars confessed rather quickly. PRETTY EFFECTIVE STUFF!

My duck hunting buddies would have probably had enough aiming fluid in their livers to have killed the rat within two or three minutes, but I can assure you, that to the man, they would rather be ravaged by a big, nervous, hot, rat than give up a good duck hunting spot.

The two young hunters started the lying around the trucks there in the parking lot. The lying always starts like this: "How did y'all do?" This is the good liar's first test. If he has managed to hide all the evidence he can just outright lie and say, "We didn't even fire a shot. How about you?"
If you have evidence lying around then the interrogator almost always comes closer to inspect the dead animal at hand. This means you have to come up with another, more sneaky kind of a lie. "We got a few." This is a non-committal kind of a lie. With this lie you hope that the other guys will just look at the situation realistically and realize that they are being lied to and you hope that the interrogation will end before you have to waste some more of your best lies.

When the two young hunters asked us to lie about the pile of ducks on the tailgate, the dentist blurted out, "We got three limits!"
My mouth dropped open. I would have thought a dentist would have lying down to an art. You know, "this needle won't hurt", "you won't feel a thing", I thought this profession was pretty well steeped in the fine art of subterfuge. I thought about it for a second and it dawned on me that he was proud of the days work his dog had done and I jumped in quickly to try to diffuse the situation from certain escalation.

"How'd you guys do?" I thought we could put these guys on the defensive and get out of the parking lot without accidentally giving up our secret spot. "Well, we saw lots of ducks but they wouldn't work our spread." They answered.
"Where'd you guys hunt?" I hoped to keep them off balance. "Cottonport." "Was it crowded?" I knew it had been crowded, but I wanted them to think that we had been crowded too. "Yep, same with us, too many people in here to let anything other than starlings land," I lied.

By this time in the mid day's lies everyone was spitting tobacco and shuffling around and we were all waiting for the inevitable next question, but these guys were pretty savvy. It appeared that they too had been once apprenticed to a good parking lot liar somewhere in their formal education.

"Yeah, my brother-in-law lives down around Houston and he says they are covered up!" This was a pretty good lie. The kind of lie that you have to just accept because you do not know anybody down in Houston and it therefore has to be a fact. "Yeah, he is a youth minister down there and he gets to go hunting every morning. He says that they are wearing them out!"

Now in parking lot liar land this is known as letting your opponent know that that you are a good guy duck hunter and therefore you are not going to lie about things and you also do not expect to be lied to about things. This approach is quite common but it too is a lie.

I thought this might become a liar's fest before it was over.

I knew what the next question would be and I was too slow to deflect it.

"Where'd y'all hunt this morning?"

Now when you have three liars lined up during a parking lot interrogation such as this, you have to be especially careful and not blurt out an answer of three separate and totally different lies simultaneously. While most interrogators know you are going to lie to them anyway, it makes you look profoundly stupid if everyone points in three different directions and then tries to recover by agreeing with everyone else, by pretending to have a bad and misguided sense of direction. It is a good thing that most dogs can not talk. A good dog never lies. I put the dog in his kennel just in case.

The Corporate Communications specialist was fastest out of the holster. He pointed 180 degrees from our secret spot and the dentist piled on: "Yeah, it was one heck of a walk! I'd say at least a mile and a half, or more!"

It was a great lie. I was feeling good about the chances for this lie.

Everyone laughed nervously. We had 'em good and confused now.

"You'll definitely need waders, that pothole is about chest deep." This was a monster lie.

There was no water in that direction, and there had not been water down that way for years. If we were lucky these two guys would lug all their decoys, and boots, and other duck hunting junk, for a mile or so, and then get totally disgusted at the fact that they could not find the mystery pothole, and then vow to never return to this area again.

This is exactly what a good parking lot lie is intended to do. It is indeed an art worth cultivating.

The two young guys immediately terminated the interrogation session and thanked us. They were armed with the knowledge that they had set out to get from us and they were about to go fetch their limits of ducks in our mythical pothole. They thanked us and trundled out of sight as we finished packing up. Good lying is a sweet thing to behold.

I profusely thanked my partners for their good deed, their good lying, and cautiously reminded them of the sovereignty associated with not divulging our lucky spot.

My friends solemnly agreed not to tell a soul about our secret duck hunting spot. They tried their best to appear sincere.

It was a pretty good lie.

We all knew it. We all accepted it. My partners must have been apprenticed to some pretty savvy parking lot liars in their time.

It was a good opening day.



Copyright ©2000 The White Oak Mountain Ranger