Revision

Anders’ First Duck Hunting Adventure

            I was following in my dad’s footsteps in the pitch black morning stumbling through the grass and somehow we managed to find the blind. It was so cold that my dad had to break the ice just to walk out into the ice cold water.  I was shivering, because I forgot my gloves and my fingers felt like popsicles. As morning broke, I remember seeing one of the most vibrant sunrises I have ever seen. I remember seeing light blues, blood reds, pumpkin oranges and a whole mixed array of other colors.

            As the sky got brighter, it started to warm up, which I was extremely thankful for, because my fingers felt like they were about to fall off. I actually felt the difference in the temperature. It rose like 20 degrees and my hands finally started to warm up. Then my dad started making a sound with what looked like a cylinder he put to his mouth which sounded like a frequent quack of a duck. Then I realized  that he was making the sound to call at a duck. I was frantic, with my head jerking back and forth looking for what he was calling at. Then suddenly, he stood up and shot 3 times and killed 3 small birds that were laying on the water like statues. He immediately stood up and said, “At least we didn't scratch,” which means that at least we killed something. After that we sat on a levee looking for ducks for another 2 hours, trying to see if we could manage to kill any more before the birds stopped flying.

            After the hunt my dad would always let me shoot his shotgun off into the water. So he handed me the heavy camouflaged piece of weaponry. I aimed it at what looked like a decoy and pulled the trigger. The muzzle let out a cloud of smoke and fire as the projectile launched into the target. I looked at my dad with eyes of excitement as my dad said, “Good shot kid.” Then my dad went and got the decoys in the icy water picking up one at a time until they were all in the bag. Then he brought them ashore and went back out to get the ducks that he had killed. When he brought them back, their vibrant colors glistened on their wings, and their bodies were petrified in their death positions looking almost like they were stones.

            My dad gave them to me and told me to hold them up for a picture. Their bodies were hanging out of my hands and the flash of the camera blinded me. As he went to go get the four wheeler I stood there in the middle of the field just watching all the wildlife. I found everything about the place interesting, from the smell of gun powder to the way the colors of the sky reflected off the water so clearly it looked like you were staring into another world. As we got back to the camp, we unloaded all our muddy, moist gear from the four wheeler and put it into the grey truck bed. The smell of mud and blood was exuding from me. After we loaded all of the supplies into the truck my dad started to clean the ducks. He asked me if I wanted to help and I said yes. I knew I smelled like the muddy earth that we had previously been sitting in about an hour ago because I could smell myself without even trying to. But the smell of cooked bacon and biscuits coming from the oven masked the scent. That was the best meal I have ever had, the buttery biscuits melting into my mouth and the taste of the crunchy bacon made the morning just so much better. After that when we were about to leave my dad turned around and told me,” I hope you find ways to remember me because people don't last forever, it’s the memories that people remember you by.” And right after he said that I grabbed him and said, “this is going to be one of the memories that I remember you by forever.”

Comments:

For this paper I have chosen to fix sentence fluency and word choice. Sentence fluency is a major issue in this paper as frequent run on sentences and under use of commas makes this paper very hard to read. To overcome this I went back and re-read this paper out loud and added commas and periods to make this paper more fluent to read. I have also improved sentence meaning and taken out the sentences that go off the main topic of the narrative story. Most of the changes as a whole are pretty substantial in making this narrative easier to follow. Also I have gained a lot of help from the writing center about what I needed to improve and where to make changes. They helped me determine what parts of the paper that I could change for better understanding of the narrative through deletion, addition and changing sentences. Through the comments from my English teacher on this paper I needed lots of added commas to slow down the reading and give stoppages more often. Another thing that has helped me reread and be able to catch some of the mistakes I have made was class discussions and powerpoints on how to find and change these infractions. Such as information regarding run on sentences, comma splices, and also embedding quotations better.