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Thread: Old report from two years ago. Diary of a ducky day.

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2014
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    1,122

    Old report from two years ago. Diary of a ducky day.

    I wrote this up on my Facebook and thought to preserve it somewhere else because you never know when you want to pull the plug on that one. This was from an experience at Brunswick in 2019.

    Diary of a typical ducky day. Wake up at 430am because your body knows your alarm is set for 530am. Who needs sleep?


    430 to 6am: drink coffee, sit on the pot and read internet.

    6:20am: Remember you told hunting friend you wanted to meet at 630am. Oops. Text friend you will be late. Get dressed in under five minutes, poop because you hate doing it in nature, grab everything* and go to elevator.

    6:35am. At elevator remember you needed gun. Go back for gun. Neighbour sees you load up elevator with the gun and gear and makes eyes like O_o.

    6:45am. Finally in car and text OMW and start driving.

    6:50am: Hunting buddy texts: where are you?

    7:15am. You arrive and there are five big pickup trucks already parked and all but one of them have Browning stickers. The other one says "Molly Maid". You're pretty sure the Molly Maid is a hunter who will be in your spot.

    7:30am. Light is beginning to illuminate the dyke. You hear the first hopeful shots of the day from those hunters who didn't dilly dally. A huge bird buzzes close overhead. WTF was that?

    8 am. Two people wearing brightly colored ponchos step out on the dyke. Hikers? They approach you and you begin to understand from their Arabic / Turkish? flavored speech that they want to hunt and are trying to meet someone. Meet you? Is this like a random connection? Meanwhile the shots are ringing out from the swamp. You should be there but you are instead talking to these new immigrants like they are tourists lost downtown. You begin to understand they are trying to meet one of their relations who is taking them hunting. You ask them: do you have licenses? Shrug. Do they know they can't hunt without licenses? Answer: we are shooting our relative's gun. Do they know it is illegal? Five minutes have passed. You tell them it is in fact a big deal and no they can't do that and it could get them in a big pile of trouble and no you won't help them find their relative somewhere "out there". They seem impressed and you part ways.

    8:05am. You are finally in the swamp and it is now entirely light enough to stop tripping and falling. Now the hard work of dragging your sled of decoys and other useless equipment begins.

    A few minutes later you bump into a hunter wearing Canada Goose. You take a chance and ask if he's lost two relatives. At first he doesn't know how to answer. You jump in and say if those are his relatives they are wandering this way and that and also they think they will get to hunt but they should not because if they're caught they will all be in deep doo doo. Also where the hunter is is not far enough from the dyke and legal shooting is 150m away from the dyke path. What's a dyke? The dyke is that path you walked to get here. Spitting distance from the dyke is not 150m. You give him one last warning and point him to a landmark that is far away from the spot you are aiming for.

    8:30am. Your buddy is sitting on a log and his robo duck is spinning madly over head like a pinwheel. Did you talk to those dudes? Yes I did and I wish I hadn't.

    8:45am. You are in the spot. But it is not the spot. The spot doesn't resemble how Google Maps portrayed it. It is under water. Big whitecaps are pounding the waves into the reeds around your waist. You wonder how far the tide will come in. You look around and reset. The landmarks are different. The bullrushes you remember from earlier in the week are gone. The log you wanted to sit on is floating out in the bay. A yellow Coast Guard plane dips through the clouds and you imagine they are marking your location for later.

    9am. You pressed on, dragging all your crap to the very edge of the water or where you imagine the water will come up to. You are wrong but at that time in the morning you don't know that. Feeling positive for the first and only time until the end of the day you march out into the mud and cast out your decoys. You wonder if these are the only birds who will get within range today.

    10am. There are birds coming! But they are big fat majestic swans. You cannot shoot them. They know they cannot be shot. They come in low, flapping their big powerful wings like they are fat elephant ears. You wonder how they would taste.

    1030am. Ducks! There are ducks! You see them coming from far away. Tiny dots getting bigger and then getting smaller and then going far far away. Your buddy is calling furiously. He sounds like a kazoo with one note.

    1045am. You are surprised by a low flying flock of widgeonmallardtealsomething and you both leap up blasting. As the flock disperses in a panic one falls. Your buddy is excited... until he realizes it has fallen on the other side of a big deep channel. You can see it flapping like a broken toy not 10m away but it may as well be the moon. Your buddy decides to chance it and wades out there hoping to find a shallow ford. Two steps later he is up to his neck but manages to save his gun. Holding it over his head like he is attacking Normandy he makes it across. By then the bird has disappeared. Ten minutes of fruitless searching later becomes twenty until finally he returns in despair, but before he crosses again you shoot a widgeon and it falls right at his feet. When he picks it up and stares at you, you wonder if he is going to ask for it. Instead he gives it a twirl and rips its head off. You do not take a photo of that one.

    11am. As the tide and wind have picked up so have the frequency of birds. They come in low and they come in high. They do everything but come close enough and they want nothing to do with your decoys. But then a random flyby and another bird tumbles from the sky. This time both of you triangulate its location and your buddy claims his first. As he raises it up in triumph you jealously wonder whether you can ditch him for a dog.

    11:40am. The tide has forced you to move twice already and your decoys now look like they are going out to sea. After a hair raising reset where you are on your tiptoes watching the water lap up to your chest you are just hoping to survive and not go under.

    Your buddy is on the phone. You hear the words: "uh I can't get that answer for you. I'm ON THE ROAD." You understand he is actually playing hooky so that he can come out on a weekday.

    12:30pm. Your buddy is cold and wet and packs it in. But you can't admit defeat. You stay. You bury yourself in the floating weeds nearly submerged. You start dreaming of wearing a full dry suit. You again dream about being on an actual boat.

    A few minutes later a couple birds decide your string of plastic fakers are interesting enough to check out and you track them until they are overhead. BANG.

    This one falls in the reeds behind you with a solid THUMP. Not taking your eyes off it you plunge into the swamp after it. For two minutes it is nowhere to be found. But then a nearby squawk betrays its location and the chase is on.

    The bird does not want to die. It dives over and over in and around your feet. You think for one idiot moment about shooting into the water but you don't think it is possible to drag yourself to help after shooting yourself in the foot. You again dream of a dog. Finally you plunge a hand into the water and feel for it until you seize it by its feet. You raise it up at head height. It is flapping madly but most of all it is blinking at you in fear. It is a decent sized hen. You don't want to leave without your second bird. You wring its neck but its body continues dying all the way back to your spot.

    1:30pm. All the activity has died down. All your clothes are soaked. All your gear is rolling around your half sunken sled. The only ammunition you have left is rusting before your eyes. It's time to go.

    On the way back to your car a nature walker asks if you have had any luck. You grin and nod and your way back home is made easier.

    Ps. 7pm. You just got up from a long nap and your clothes are rolling in the dryer. Your shotgun is in pieces in the living room. You feel like one of the dead. A text comes in from another hunting buddy. Wanna go tomorrow?

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  3. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Posts
    282

    Re: Old report from two years ago. Diary of a ducky day.

    Your buddy sure desperate for that duck. It reminders me about my High school friend and his older brother back in 70's who exactly swam out to retrieved a down mallard in one Surrey local river. Mind you this is back in October opening weekend.
    "Nothing kills a Deere faster than Magnum .....CaseIH."

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