Before the thought of Open Season was conceived, I was pursuing the creation of a simple, yet larger sculpture.  Almost initially, I knew I wanted the sculpture to have two arms with some sort of an object mounted to one of the arms such that it would rotate in a seemingly random orbit.  Deciding on the shape of each arm was an iterative process that lead me to decide on two arms with rings at the ends.  My computer modeling of the sculpture's movement showed that the front most object appeared to 'float', so I knew that the object should be something that naturally floats, such as a bird, fish, etc.  And then the idea hit me!  Make the rings as gun sights and use a silhouette of a  duck as the floating object.  I was very pleased with the finished prototype, in that the movement of the duck caused it to sway slightly to give it the illusion of dodging the gun sights. 

Open Season is propelled by a stainless steel constant force spring that is fully wound by placing an index finger next to one of the spokes of the lower right pulley and turning counterclockwise for about 22 turns. Once the drive pulley is released, the sculpture will receive its first 'push' from the spring which lasts less than 2 seconds. The spring will not be needed again until the rear arm slows enough to rotate backwards.  The two arms spin in opposite directions and are completelyindependent from each other.  When the rear arm rotates backwards, a clock-like escape mechanism is tripped which allows the spring to impart another 'push' to the sculpture.  This cycle continues for about 10 hours.