The huntress, the mentor and the end of the lame duck hunting streak

I drove up Interstate 5 in a pounding rain early Sunday morning, more nervous than I usually get before a duck hunt. Dianne and Bob at the Delevan National Wildlife Refuge had set me up on the hunting equivalent of a blind date.

On my way into the refuge the Sunday before, I'd told them I wanted to learn how to hunt "free roam" - the vast area where hunters rush to stake out the best spots. It's competitive - there are no safe little assigned blinds.

By the time I'd come out that evening with my characteristic one lame duck, they'd hooked me up.

"Charlie Peebles is gonna take you out," Dianne said. "He hunts here all the time. You've probably seen him."

"OK," I said.

"Here," I told Dianne as I scribbled my cell phone number on a business card. "Please give him this!" Read more...
I started hunting Delevan three years ago alone, earning every bit of knowledge about the place the hard way. I had good reason to believe the hunting would be better in free roam, but I was just too intimidated to try it alone. So this was my big chance to learn a lot - both about Delevan and duck hunting in general.

I might even break my bizarre streak of bringing home just one duck per hunt, always wounded first by another hunter.

I could only hope that I wouldn't shoot like a total dolt.

A week later, I pulled into Delevan at 4:30 a.m. sharp, just when Charlie had told me to meet him there. As I walked to the check station - a little oasis of dim light - I scanned the crowd for someone who looked like he'd be looking for someone.

"Holly?" I heard behind me.

Yep, it was Charlie.

Charlie is 59 years old and has been hunting Delevan since he was 14 - starting the year before I was born. He's there every hunt day, showing up the night before to enter the lottery for a spot out in the field, then coming back the next morning to go find one of his favorite spots in the pre-dawn blackness.

As we stepped into the calf-deep water in free roam, it was clear Charlie knew the place like a blind man knows his house. He knew where the mud would be squishy and where it would firm up, where the bottom dropped and where it came back up again.

We angled toward Grand Central, a big network of tule patches located in the center of some "big water," as we call the vast open sheets. Twinkling headlamps ahead of us told him what he needed to know - how many of his spots had already been staked out by other hunters, where we should go.

Charlie and I settled in a spot that was thick with hunters - we could easily see four or five parties within 100 yards. I'd've never had the huevos to set up there. But that's what it's like in free roam. You just have to be careful about shooting teal that come zipping in low over the water - there was 180 degrees in front of us where doing that would risk peppering other hunters.

We were definitely in a good spot - it was a fairly slow morning, but we had a decent trickle of ducks coming through, and it seemed that everyone we could see was getting opportunity to shoot. Which was good, because Charlie was on first-name basis with a lot of the guys out there.

"Does everyone know everyone out here?" I asked him.

"Pretty much."

I wondered if I would become part of that club. I was pretty sure I'd be the only female member.

I missed the first set of birds I shot at. Or at least I thought I did.

"You hit one," Charlie said. "I could see it." But they had flown away, so I hadn't hit the duck well - I'd just wounded it. Not good.

The next group to came in was a small flock of wigeon. I shot, missed once, hit a hen on the second shot, fired a third at her and watched as she began a long sail while Charlie knocked a drake down hard, dead on the water.

My hen had landed in a little patch of grass poking up about a foot out of the water, a good 75 yards away. I sloshed there as quickly as I could, glad I had an unobstructed view around the grass patch. She had to be in there.

On the walk over, I heard another hunter yelling in the distance. "Hey, YOU SHOT MY DECOY!" Yep. It was crowded here.

As I walked into the grass, she lifted up about 20 yards from me and I dropped her quickly with one shot.

Whew!

I walked over to the spot. She was nowhere to be seen.

What the hell? I could still see the ripples from where she'd landed, and I could see a faint remnant of a ripple leading away from that spot. She was swimming under water and I could not see her. She probably had her bill sticking up someplace, but I couldn't see it amid all the stalks of decaying grass. I searched and searched, but I was acutely aware that I was making a ruckus close to other hunters nearby, and no ducks would come in for them as long as I was there.

I trudged back to Charlie.

"We'll go look for her later," he reassured me.

The next bird that came in was a drake mallard I caught out of the corner of my eye, flying about a foot over the water and heading to that grass patch where I'd lost the wigeon.

Charlie and I watched him for a while, and he finally said, "He's injured. You should go over there and get him."

"That's my cripple for the day!" I said, laughing, and slogged my way back over there.

On the walk, I heard more strife in the distance. "LET THE F***ING BIRDS WORK!" one hunter yelled at another. A high-volume back-and-forth ensued.

I giggled. This is the kind of stuff that I knew happened out here in free roam, and one of the big reasons I didn't want to navigate this business alone. I was deathly afraid of either breaking established etiquette, or being so afraid to break etiquette that I wouldn't take any shots.

When I approached the patch of grass, I scanned it and could see the faint outline of a green head about 25 yards away. I raised my gun. One of the hunters in the nearby blind yelled, "Don't shoot me!"

"I won't!" I yelled back. I tracked the greenhead as he swam away from that blind and when I had a good clear shot - away from the other hunters - I pulled the trigger.

Done. The drake was dead. But the shot had stirred up none other than that hen wigeon who'd been hiding about 10 yards from that greenhead. She tried to fly, but couldn't. The nearby hunter came out with his dog and got the bird for me. "Was this the one you were looking for earlier?"

"Yup, sure is!" I said.

I walked back to Charlie with two birds in hand - an enormous greenhead and the wigeon I thought I'd wounded and lost. He later told me he wished he'd had a camera because I had a smile about a mile wide.

The curse had been lifted. I had more than two ducks, and at least one had not been wounded by another hunter before I hit it. Perhaps my season would finally turn around now.

After a while, some of the hunters started clearing out, and with less congestion, the birds began to work better. And there was this ongoing conversation between the hunters.

"Teal coming your way!"

"Nice shot (guffaw)."

"What happened there?"

We weren't all hunting together. But strangely, we were all hunting together.

I got one more duck in Grand Central that day, a gorgeous drake gadwall that had come in with three others just outside of our decoys, maybe 40 yards in front of us. We hung out for a while after that, but Charlie said, "Hey, you've gotten three birds here - let's move to another spot."

So we moved to his favorite afternoon spot on the refuge, a place where we could intercept a few ducks in a known flight path. Serious insider information.

As we settled into that spot, Charlie's friend Don came by with his two dogs and a bull sprig that he handed to Charlie. It was a cripple his dogs had picked up while he was pheasant hunting and he didn't want it. Charlie handed the duck to me.

Not long after that, two mallards came sailing overhead nearby, out of our range.

"Watch them," he said. When they dropped into some water behind us, just the other side of some tules, Charlie announced that since they were out of our sight - and we were out of theirs - we were going to go put a sneak on them.

As we sloshed toward where we'd seen them drop in, I couldn't imagine how they couldn't hear the racket we were making. They weren't flying away, but they were probably swimming away at light speed.

When we hit the tule patch in front of where they'd landed, Charlie and I split up. We'd both walk around the tule patch in opposite directions and the first person to see the ducks would get the shot.

A couple minutes later, I heard three shots.

I slogged over to him and saw an enormous greenhead in his hand. He was smiling a little sheepishly. "I was hoping you'd get the shot," he said. But he'd come through a little passage in the tules and the drake was right there, maybe 10 yards in front of him. He got about a foot off the water before Charlie had nailed him. He'd shot at the hen, too, but hadn't brought her down.

We got one more shot at birds after that - a small group of spoonies came over. One drake fell. Charlie swore he hadn't hit it; I swore I hadn't either. Turns out we were both shooting No. 2 shot, so the autopsy wouldn't decide the issue. But whoever did it, it was an immaculate shot - the bird was DOA.

We watched the bird activity pick up as the sun dropped, but no more came our way before shoot time ended, so we were done. I had three ducks that were legitimately mine and a fourth that was maybe mine. Charlie had given me the other three birds, so I left the refuge with a huge pile of birds, much more than I'm used to.

For his part, Charlie had passed on a lot of shots to make sure I got plenty of opportunity, which was awfully sweet of him.

And I had learned a lot. I'd learned some free roam etiquette. I'd learned where ducks work in Grand Central and the other spot. I'd learned another couple spots I could try. I'd had an experienced eye watching my shots and telling me what was happening with them. I'd gotten to hear Charlie's thoughts on decoys and calling.

And best of all, I'd made a new duck hunting friend - I now have a standing invitation to join him and keep learning.

I know at some point he'll cut me loose to fly on my own. But hopefully by that time I'll be a bona fide member of the free roam family at Delevan.

* * *

I don't have a photo of Charlie (yet), but you can see him on the Delta Waterfowl website. Delta did a big piece in the Winter 2009 issue about hunting ducks on public land in California. One of the spots they hit was Delevan, and one of the people they interviewed there was Charlie. While you can't read the article online, you can see Charlie on video by clicking here and looking for "Delevan Duck Hunters" under "New Delta Videos.")

© Holly A. Heyser 2009