Spyderco Lil Matriarch saves life!

[Surfingringo]

A duck's life that is. We were lake fishing in Mexico last month and the water was riddled with Tilapia nets. On the second day we ran across this little gal. She was completely entangled and was so exhausted she could barely move. Things were looking pretty grim for our feathered friend until I pulled the lil Matriarch out. Sometimes you just happen to be carrying the exact knife that you need. This was one of those days. Lucky duck!

https://youtu.be/5yQivUhsBZA

[bearfacedkiller]

Good stuff!

[tvenuto]

Nice work and nice vid. Thanks for sharing.

[Donut]

Lance, you are a hero. Thanks for sharing.

I keep forgetting to check the magazines at Walmart, I will remember.

[Surfingringo]

Lance, you are a hero. Thanks for sharing.

I keep forgetting to check the magazines at Walmart, I will remember.

Thanks bud. I wasn't trying to get sappy with the music...it was simply an effort to cover up our unbelievably redneck dialogue. It was painful to listen to. :p

[Donut]

LOL, well, I watched it without sound.

[Studey]

Good on you man. Birds are cool. Glad you had the knife you needed! I enjoyed the video. :)

[elena86]

:cool:

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Thank you, Lance! Excellent video. That was very caring of you and the pics of the knife are very good.

[OldSarSwmr]

Good job Lance. Call me crazy but it looked like the duck realized that you were trying to help it after a bit and just kind of let you do your thing. Pretty cool!

[Surfingringo]

Good job Lance. Call me crazy but it looked like the duck realized that you were trying to help it after a bit and just kind of let you do your thing. Pretty cool!

Its a nice thought and who knows, maybe true, but I think the poor gal was so exhausted she just went with it.

[xinam]

That was really good of you. Its nice to see good people doing good things these days. Thats a lucky ducky! I'm sure she appreciated the net popping edge and your skilled hand!

[remnar]

Cool video. Thanks for sharing Gringo.

[Michael Janich]

Very cool on all counts. Thank you for sharing!

Stay safe,

Mike

[Mushroom]

Wow, that was awesome, good for you man!!!Thanks so much for sharing!

[Donut]

Good job Lance. Call me crazy but it looked like the duck realized that you were trying to help it after a bit and just kind of let you do your thing. Pretty cool!

Its a nice thought and who knows, maybe true, but I think the poor gal was so exhausted she just went with it.

I think it's good that you kept good hold. My experience with animals is that they would get partially released... then try to wiggle out and still be half stuck.

[Surfingringo]

Good job Lance. Call me crazy but it looked like the duck realized that you were trying to help it after a bit and just kind of let you do your thing. Pretty cool!

Its a nice thought and who knows, maybe true, but I think the poor gal was so exhausted she just went with it.

I think it's good that you kept good hold. My experience with animals is that they would get partially released... then try to wiggle out and still be half stuck.

Actually, thats not me doing the cutting. Our guide was running the trolling motor so he grabbed him first. It was easier for me to hand him the knife than for him to hand me the duck. He did a great job though! And he was totally enamored with my knife! :D

Your post reminds me of another encounter from last year though. I was trolling a brand new (expensive) surface lure and a huge brown pelican dove on it. Of course he got both upper and lower beak hooked and his mouth couldn't even open. It was a nightmare getting him loose. Those guys are huge and he had plenty of energy and was NOT happy. Had to get one hand around his neck and the other around the beak to control him. When I finally got the last treble hook out of his mouth he freaked out and tried to escape and, sure enough, ended up hooking the webbing of his foot on the same lure I had just got out of his mouth. It all ended well, but he was lucky we were right close to the beach which was full of onlookers. If that had gone down around the point without an audience to judge my performance...mmm, not sure he would have gotten the full VIP treatment. :o

[Enkidude]

Nice work!!

[bearfacedkiller]

Your post reminds me of another encounter from last year though. I was trolling a brand new (expensive) surface lure and a huge brown pelican dove on it. Of course he got both upper and lower beak hooked and his mouth couldn't even open. It was a nightmare getting him loose. Those guys are huge and he had plenty of energy and was NOT happy. Had to get one hand around his neck and the other around the beak to control him. When I finally got the last treble hook out of his mouth he freaked out and tried to escape and, sure enough, ended up hooking the webbing of his foot on the same lure I had just got out of his mouth. It all ended well, but he was lucky we were right close to the beach which was full of onlookers. If that had gone down around the point without an audience to judge my performance...mmm, not sure he would have gotten the full VIP treatment. :o

I grew up outside Boston and all I wanted to do as a kid was fish everyday and most days I did. We would fish for big stripers among other things. I would ride my bike down to the pier in our city with all my fishing gear strapped all over it. :) I had a medium weight rod that I used for flounder but the first thing I did with it was jig off the pier for mackerel to use as striper bait. After I got a couple mackerel I would switch that pole over to a flounder rig. I would then set up a 7 or 8 foot surf casting pole with a big chunk of mackerel and a heavy 2oz sinker so I could really chuck that thing out there. There was a pretty good current there so a heavy sinker was a must. Well, the stupid gulls would be circling all day long and sure enough they would see that thing flying through the air and head straight for it. There was considerable hang time when casting that heavy sinker from a surf casting rods off of a pier and the further out you got the better the fishing was. Luckily the sinkers were heavy and the bait sunk fast but not always fast enough. You get pretty good at timing it so they weren't close enough as they circled around so they wouldn't get there in time but again, not always. You could also pump fake them and then cast and avoid them sometimes. Anyway, there isn't much love for gulls around there so the common suggestion was to just cut the line and a few times I did. Probably happened to me four or five times in all the years I lived there. I reeled one in and tried to help but he was not cooperating and I ended up just cutting the line. I wish back then I new a better way or that I wasn't just told to cut them loose but that was what everyone did and I was just a kid so I did to. :o

[DougC-3]

Great work Lance and interesting story and afterthoughts, Darby. I had some attitude changes like that as I got older too. When I was 10 to 13 I was crazy about fish, turtles, snakes, and wildlife of all sorts and spent all my spare time paddling around around in a small skiff up and down Dog River, which flows into Mobile Bay on the Gulf. I liked to watch giant alligator gars roll on the surface, fiddler crabs scuttling around on the bank, etc. At one point there was a large log that somebody had nailed fish hooks to in order to hook turtles as they tried to slide off into the water. I would free any turtles that were hooked and finally just took off all the hooks. I think they had been abandoned anyway. Other than stopping in busy traffic to get turtles out of the road that's about all the humanitarian deeds I can think of off the top of my head :) Oh yeah, once I was out running and encountered a large beaver trying to cross a four lane which ran between a river and a lake, headed him off and made him go back to the river. He was pissed and tried to get by me, but I finally got him to go back. If he'd made it across the road, he wouldn't have amounted to much where he was headed lol.