Yesterday I awoke at 1am, petted my girlfriend and kissed my dog. The car was already loaded with decoys, blind bag, waders, heavy jacket, water, a thermos of mate, and Thumper. Time to drive through the cold, dark morning and into the fog that blanketed the Inland Empire.
One simple hour later a left turn led me up into a shallow valley and a dirt road at the end of which sat the ranger station. Several trucks and for once another Element, all of us waiting for the 5:45am shooting time. In the end, it's all a crap shoot even if you have a reservation for one of the fifty duck blinds. I end up with a semi-crappy draw and make my way out through the dark into Walker 1 blind. Not bad but definitely not good so I decide to leave the decoys in the truck. Sleep little decoys, sleep. After getting situated and as comfortable as you can get when it's thirty degrees out I hear ducks but as I've learned over time they will leave just before the sun comes up. Smart little ducks. There are widgeon, mallards, and shovelers out in the dark and they are talking and making plans. I am drinking mate and eating a Green Bar as I am a champion and this is what we eat for breakfast.
I hunt two different blinds and use the decoys. I shoot a Northern Shoveler in the morning and he goes down like a champ. Flaring to my right and doing what he can to make me miss but he goes down somewhere. I find him as I leave and scare a hawk away from his perfectly folded corpse. He's been split down the chest by the hawk but the meat is still intact. Damn fine duck. Later, after more mate and after I deploy the decoys, I shoot a hen Pintail. She pops up from the cover to my left and we look at each other in surprise for a moment. Thumper is leaning against the blind to my right and I have a book in my hand. The pintail has jumped out of her cover to land in my spread but she is now almost frozen in the air ten yards from the blind, the duck equivalent of a look of surprise on her face. Suddenly Thumper is in my hands and the duck is moving and I am shooting and the duck is falling and then it's quite again. Out into the pond past my decoys and I thank them as I wade out towards the Pintail. She is a fine looking duck, damn fine duck.
Sooner than I'd like it is quitting time. As I grab the last set of decoys a wave of Northern Shovelers flys low out of the setting sun and I freeze in both wonder and frustration, Thumper lying twenty yards away on the bank of the blind. I scramble back trailing decoys and throwing gloves to the side, desperately trying to get to cover and Thumper. As I get into the blind I start in on the calls and use every one I have hanging around my neck. Hails and feeding and contentment and teals and widgeon calls blare from the blind to no avail. I throw two rounds of steel into the air and watch the ducks give me the finger as they soar overhead. I smile. There will be more ducks next season and I will be here.
The next fifteen minutes look like a commercial for Ducks Unlimited. Wave after wave of ducks fill the sky and I sit back into the corner of the blind and pour myself some mate and enjoy the show. My depression melts away and I wonder what all the fuss was about.
Peace out, bitches!
2 comments:
Maybe the wave of ducks was a salute to the ones you already shot. Or the ducks telling you that you can take out a couple of them but you'll never take them all. Duck defiance.
Great photo, by the way. Perfect.
Great birthday present. I like to believe the waves (multiple kid, multiple) were a statement by the Universe for those watching and listening that humanity is but one facet of a vast and beautifully variegated existence. Let's not take ourselves to seriously as it were. Damn fine duck.
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