Extreme(ly weird) duck hunting

Saturday was the third time I have hunted the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in my four seasons as a duck hunter, and for the third time in a row, I came home from that refuge duckless.

But it'll probably be among the most memorable duck hunts I'll ever have, because it was marked from start to finish by the unexpected.

The fact that I got no ducks was not surprising. The ducks had largely cleared out of the area the previous Sunday, the day before a huge storm came in. There was a break in in that storm this weekend, but that didn't help.

But here's what did make the day a delight: Read more...
1. Good friends. I got to hunt Sac's free roam with three of my newest duck hunting friends: My Delevan free-roam buddy Charlie, his hunting buddy Don and my new huntress friend Alison.

2. Strange visitor. While we didn't get many ducks coming through our little pothole, Don alerted us all to the most unusual visitor I've had so far on a duck hunt: A little blacktail deer was tromping through our water about 20 yards from us.

When he saw us staring at him, he jumped a little more vigorously through the water. But he could only go so fast - the refuge had plowed a bunch of this area when it was a dry field, so walking in the thick mud was a challenge - even for a nimble little deer.

3. Scream Like a Girl Part I. I got to hear Alison scream. Here's how that went:

Boom! Boom boom boom! from the tule patch where Alison and Charlie were.

Scream! (of joy)

(Plop goes the wigeon.)

"(Bleep) yeah!"

Love that girl. She is enthusiastic and eager to learn and a joy to hunt with.

4. Still no ducks, but... When we were all looking off into the distance for birds, we spotted a herd of six deer working through a flooded field to our north. Dang. Lots of deer here!

5. Diversion. At one point during the lull (well, OK, the whole morning was actually a lull), Charlie wandered off looking for greener pastures and found them.

"I jumped some snipe over there," he said when he returned from his walkabout.

Oooooooh. Boyfriend loves snipe and has been begging all his hunting friends - including me - to get him some ever since surgery on a ruptured Achilles took him out for the rest of the season.

Well, hell, there were no ducks flying lower than 500 yards, so we might as well check out the snipe. Don opted to stay in the duck blind - he'd be leaving for the day soon - and Charlie, Alison and I headed to the boggy snipe field.

6. This is actually fun! I've never hunted snipe, and I've never really been that excited about hunting snipe, because when duck season is on, I want to hunt ducks. But I found that hunting snipe was really fun.

Once Charlie pointed them out, noting the sound they make when they take off (skaip!, or at least that's how my Audubon book describes it), they were easy to spot. And really challenging to shoot, the way they zig-zag. A lot of them were lifting in front of us, then flying back between us. (Isn't there a comedy routine that involves just such shooting peril?)

But the key here is "a lot." There were a lot of snipe in this field, so after having fired just a few futile shots all morning, we were suddenly shooting a lot. And we had confirmed for Alison that snipe hunting is not, in fact, a practical joke.

7. Woot! Woot! Wah. Charlie got the first one. I got the second. And I couldn't find him.

We were walking in a field of bunch grass, so when my bird went down, I couldn't see him on the ground. But I made a bee-line in that direction, never taking my eyes off the spot. That's what I'd done when Charlie's bird went down - we triangulated to the exact spot it fell. But in this case, I couldn't see my bird lying there.

He could have run, still alive. Or he could have plowed into that grass, dead, but speeding like a long-beaked missile and just burrowing into some spot where we couldn't find him. The three of us combed the area, parting bunches of grass, for a good ten minutes before we had to give up. Hell.

8. Rabbit anyone? After we gave up that search, I looked up on a dike 20 yards ahead of us and saw a jack rabbit speeding away from us. I raised my gun and...

"You can't shoot them here!" Charlie said.

... and lowered it, watching as the jack flattened his ears on his back, running flatter than I've ever seen a jack rabbit run. That in and of itself was pretty cool.

9. Finally! We resumed the snipe hunting and I dropped one. I charged to the spot and as I was charging, another snipe lifted in front of me - skaip! - and flew straight down the line I was walking toward that other snipe.

It would've been an easy shot. I could've dropped him probably five feet from my bird. Get the downed bird first, Holly. Don't risk losing two. So that's what I did. One bird found, another now hiding in the grass a safe distance from us.

10. Other denizens of the bog. We were walking our line through the field when something rustled maybe 30 yards in front of us. Our eyes widened as two beautiful specklebelly geese lifted in front of us and flew away.

We were, unfortunately, in California's Special Management Area, where speck hunting is limited to half the bag limit for most of the rest of the state, and it ends in mid-December. So we held fire on the closest specks I'd seen in two months. (Why the limits? Long story - read here for the details - you'll find them about halfway down the story.)

11. Scream Like a Girl Part II. After a quick break - wow, it was hot walking that field in full duck gear - we turned back to hunt all the birds that had flown between and behind us.

I heard a quick rustling five yards in front of me and prepared for a super easy shot at a snipe.

Unfortunately, it was a hen pheasant, which for some reason scared the shit out of me.

I screamed.

Charlie laughed his ass off.

12. Duck? After shooting at and missing several snipe on the return trip, we finally returned to our duck blind, two snipe richer, many shells poorer and exhausted from the long walk.

Not too long after we settled in, a hen mallard came diving down from the stratosphere and actually worked our spread. Charlie hit her. She landed a good 75 yards away, and Charlie and I both went after her, though we were pretty sure she'd fallen dead.

Groan! Walking through that soft mud was brutal. We cursed whoever had decided to disc that field.

But yay! We had another duck!

13. Beauty. Saturday was the big break between storm systems and the sky was beautiful. A stiff south-southeast wind kept engineering scenery changes, alternating between stunning blue sky, enormous white thunderheads and dark, black clouds.

For a while, there was a thick, thick rainbow rising from a distant line of trees to our north. A grind of snow geese lifted in front of it and the geese made their way across the bands of colors, like glittering confetti blowing in the wind. If a duck had flown by when we were watching that, we probably never would've seen it.

14. Oh for the love of Pete... When we finally pulled out at 4 p.m. and made our way back to the parking lot, we jumped two more deer in a little canal about 20 yards ahead of us. Can you tell they don't let you hunt deer here? Or jack rabbits. Don't forget that.

15. Ow. As we neared the cars, I became convinced I had a blister on my right heel. We had walked that much. (This set of waders has never given me a blister.) When we all changed at our cars, I found not only the blister, but an enormous hole in my sock on the same foot. My socks were in perfectly good shape that morning. I've never put a hole in a sock duck hunting. Or even upland hunting. Wow. That's one hell of a hunt.

The three of us sat there shooting the breeze for a while in the parking lot, watching the other hunters come in as the sun began to drop to the horizon. And finally, it was time to go. We made tentative plans for our next hunts, hugged each other good-bye and made our way out of the refuge.

What a hunt. It was probably the happiest I've been going home without ducks. I'd seen cool things, I'd made good use of a lull - trying something new - and I had a present for Boyfriend that I knew he'd be really happy about: two snipe.

Back at home, I regaled him with the tales of the day, my legs stretched out on an impromptu ottoman (read: folding chair) and a glass of whisky in my left hand when...

16. Scream Like a Girl Part III. ... a series of the most ferocious cramps I've ever felt coursed through my quads - the parts I'd used to lift my wader-weighted legs as I high-stepped it through the boggy bunch grass hunting snipe.

The cramps hit over and over again. It was like I was being electrocuted. I screamed. A lot. I writhed on the floor, trying to make it stop. I begged for a massage from my boyfriend, whom, you might remember, was laid up on the couch with a healing Achilles. God bless him, he said yes.

Dang. That was one hell of a hunt. The cramps were an unexpectedly painful reminder. But I still wouldn't trade that hunt for anything.

© Holly A. Heyser 2010