Moose Droppings

The Learning Curve of Duck Hunting

Dec 03, 2006 @ 01:18 am by Moose

The middle duck season has just closed and I didn’t even go out once during this season. I debated with one of my hunting buddy’s about whether we should chase duck & geese or go for the deer this weekend. Deer won out but only after the geese teased us for a couple of days hitting the dairy farm but then disappearing again into the abyss.

This has been a horrible year for geese, after a few years of us seeming to have their number they have pulled a pretty good disappearing act and avoiding us. By this time of the year we have usually had a few meals of goose BBQ but they don’t seem to want to cooperate with us.

Waterfowl hunting is a fairly new undertaking and although I’m not as hooked as some of the guys I hunt with I really do enjoy it. I got my start on geese and it has expanded into the ducks as well and I’ve even taken a tundra swan.
The two guys I primarily hunt with tell me they are experts in the field (in not so many words) and I’ve even been there when they have shared tips with Sean Mann & Buck Gardner. Neither of them have a television show but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they are discovered.

Myself I think I hold them back because I’m a pitiful duck hunter. Pitiful might not be the best word to describe me maybe unlucky is better. I seem to have a knack for killing mergansers (not a very good eating duck because it has a heavy diet of fish) We could have a flock of 20 mallards come into our decoy spread and I’ll kill a duck maybe two and 95% of the time they’ll be mergansers.

While in Maine last year on the moose hunt we had the opportunity to duck hunt on the river one morning a few days before the moose season came in. I had one of my expert buddy’s with him and he was beside himself because of the variety of birds they had up there as compared to what we normally see here in North Carolina. The hunt was fairly slow despite the cold rainy weather but my buddy killed his first black duck. He had to chase it down the river about 2 miles because it got out in the current. The so called expert had a difficult time operating the canoe with one of our guides teenage daughters. Learning canoeing on a swift running river during a cold New England rainstorm is not probably the best time but there was a black duck at stake.

I killed one duck that morning and you won’t believe what it was…… a merganser.

There was time earlier on in my duck hunting that we shot some ducks coming off a pond and headed for the dam I dropped one but was unsure what it was. About that time a warden pulled up and my buddy said to me I hope it’s a legal bird and that’s when I discovered how important duck id can be. Not to worry I thought to myself because I couldn’t even see the duck just a few feathers floating on the water. We had Rex the wonder dog with us not to worry cause we call him the wonder dog not because of the spectacular things he does but because we always wonder if he’ll retrieve our birds for us.

Well as the warden walks up to us Rex jumps in the water the warden begins checking our paperwork and our guns when out of the corner of my eye I see Rex climbing the dam bank with a duck in his mouth. The only retrieve I’ve ever seen this dog do with out a lot of begging and pleading on our part to get him to do it. He then walks over and drops it at the wardens feet. Warden asks “who’s duck is this?” and I say “mine sir” he says “ nice looking merganser”. They were in season so I was happy, since then I’ve done some work on learning to better identify waterfowl. That’s not an easy task unless it’s tundra swan and say a snow goose that’s pretty easy. The ducks are hard especially as they dive in at first light. Good thing I usually have my experts with me to help.

Wood Ducks are fun to hunt and Ed Wall has a good story about hunting them that you may want to check out. The photo is of me on a very lucky day when I actually killed some wood ducks and didn’t get a merganser.

Hopefully with the cold weather setting in up north the ducks and geese will really make a push to get here about the time the season reopens. I’m looking forward to some BBQ Goose and I hope I don’t have to settle for BBQ Merganser.