Alan Liere: A Yellow Jacket Safari

As a fisherman, I have an interest in bugs. I capture them, study them, and try to re-create fish-catching artificials that imitate them. I find most bugs easy to get along with, but there are two I do not care for – mosquitoes and yellow jackets. I’m convinced mosquitoes and yellow jackets snuck aboard the Ark despite Noah’s attempts to screen all the windows. Of the two, I despise yellow jackets the most.

Many bugs are annoying, but yellow jackets are the only insects I know of that are downright mean. If a common honeybee lands on your arm, it will stroll around a little, decide you are the wrong flavor and consistency, and buzz off. But the psychotic and homicidal yellow jacket will sting you as an afterthought after landing on your steak. It’s like, “Oh yeah – I forgot something” …and it stings you just because it can!

When a honeybee stings you it dies, because along with its stinger it leaves part of its insides. Despite my affection for honeybees and their honey, I appreciate the justice in this. When a yellow jacket stings you, it does not lose its stinger. In fact, it is more likely to try to sting you again.

It used to be that when my family camped at Priest Lake, we would hang a hotdog above a pail of soapy water. In theory, the yellow jackets would gorge until so full they fell in the water and drowned. In actuality, most of them ate their fill, washed up, and then flew home to get the kids.

The most satisfying yellow jacket purge I have ever participated in took place on a fishing trip to Lake Roosevelt. Sitting at a picnic table after a day of trolling for walleye, trying to enjoy a slice of watermelon, I was suddenly swarmed by yellow and black thieves set on eating my treat and doing me bodily harm.

At first, I did the usual frantic swatting and cursing, but then I remembered the can of flying insect spray in my camper. I returned with it to the table, popped the lid and cut loose, ground-sluicing four yellow jackets that writhed very satisfactorily before expiring in a puddle of pink watermelon juice.

The second blast netted me three more of the tenacious beasts. Then – an inspiration! I took the seven carcasses and arranged them around the outside of my watermelon rind as decoys.

In singles and pairs, more yellow jackets came to my decoy spread. After a time, they began circling warily, but I adjusted my lead and took them from mid-air. Applying the same principles as in wing-shooting mallards, I took lefts and rights and even some tricky overheads.

I was having so much fun, that when it got too dark to calculate lead, I turned on the car headlights. But by then, the yellow jackets had turned in for the night and big white moths were circling crazily. I took out a few of them, also. But moths were too easy, and I quit because I felt guilty.

That night in my camper along the lake, I pondered the delightful possibility of repeating the day’s shooting performance using “decoys” of my own creation – hand-tied yellow jacket imitations that would turn every summer outing into a “Cast and Blast.” I felt a lot better about yellow jackets when I finally drifted off.