Impending glory: The magnificent story of Sarah's first duck hunt ever

I go into pretty much every hunt with the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning, probably because I still am a youngster in terms of how long I've been hunting. But this Sunday morning, there was a little extra sizzle in my anticipation.

Not only would it be my first hunt of the season with Alison and Darren - whom I'd hunted with on the closer last season - but this time we'd be joined by Darren's wife, Sarah, who was one of the graduates of the Cal Waterfowl Women's Hunting Camp this September. It would be her first duck hunt!

Making things even better was the forecast: north wind, 10-15 mph. Nothing like a brisk north wind to stir up the ducks.

We met at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area at 3:25 a.m., picked our hunting spot, then headed out to set up. The wind was almost non-existent, but it was supposed to pick up.

And we could hear lots of birds around us - the meep of gadwalls, the squeaky whistle of wigeon, the wicked-witch cackle of teal hens, the fluting of pintails and the unmistakable quack of the loudmouth of the duck world, the hen mallard. Ah, my favorite symphony.

As shoot time approached, we still had no wind, except for the sound of vast flocks of birds crossing over us high in the air. As it became lighter, we could see them, and I can honestly say I've never seen anything like it - wave after wave after wave of ducks! Makes me all tingly just to remember it.

The only problem was that the ducks pretty much stayed at that elevation. And the wind never came up. Ever.

A couple ducks accidentally flew at the outer edge of our shooting perimeter - including a canvasback that hurtled through at rocket speeds - and we took a few unsuccessful shots at them. Then it was immense nothingness.

First we relaxed our guard a bit.


Then Alison declared it was time for her to do yoga, because that's what everyone from Berkeley does in the morning.



Then Darren and I began trying to teach Sarah and Alison how to blow mallard calls. I took some pictures of Darren's demonstration, but they're rated R, so I'll just leave that scene to your imagination. Just understand it was twice as bad as what you are imagining at this moment. Suffice it to say I nearly peed myself laughing.

Still no ducks.

Alison played "Pop Goes the Weasel" on her Mickey Saso 8-in-1 call. I played the theme song to Jeopardy. Then - and I really can't recall how we came up with the idea - we began playing all of our calls at once:




We didn't worry about pissing off other hunters, because there were no ducks in the air. We know, because when we stood up, we could see for a mile in every direction.

We traded food. Darren and Sarah brought about ten pounds of snacks with them. Alison brought a spicy trail mix. I brought mixed nuts and dried cherries, which no one wanted. (Sarah did, however, explain why everyone's least favorite nut - the Brazil nut - is always included in mixes. Something about being a superfood loaded with good nutrients.)

While we sat there chewing, I looked out on the water in front of us and spied a low-flying squadron of ducks. Six of them.

"Hup! Ut! Up!" I stammered urgently. "Those are ducks!"

The birds swung around Darren and Sarah's side of the blind so low that they never saw them through the dried flowers that lined the edge of our island. By the time I had my gun in hand and the ducks had gotten safely past Darren and Sarah's faces, they were a mile away.

"Had to be buffleheads," I said, explaining that it was my life's goal to kill a bufflehead so I could call myself Holly the Bufflehead Slayer.

As I was discussing the relative merits of eating buffleheads - not that I would know first-hand - the squadron returned for another Mach III swing past our blind.

"DAMMIT!" I shouted at them. That was so wrong.

If those little bastards were going to keep speeding past us with impunity, then we'd be ready for them. We all left our pit blinds and staked ourselves out at noon, 3 o'clock, 6 o'clock and 9 o'clock on the island - all standing so we'd see them coming and get good shot angles, no human faces in anyone's way.

Nothing was going to get past us!

And unfortunately, nothing was going to come near us either.

By the time we admitted defeat around 10:15 a.m., an armada of floating spiders had created a network of webs between all of our decoys. Seriously. When we picked up decoys, we had to shake three or four spiders off of every plastic bird.

And they must've been active all over the marsh that day, because on the walk back to our car, we were busting through long strands of spiderweb non-stop. We were certain we'd look like cotton candy by the time we returned to our cars. It was the marsh's final Eff you! of the day.

Back at the car, we wiped the camo paint off our faces, packed our gear into our cars and gave each other good-bye hugs. Then I told Sarah something every duck hunter hates to say.

"At least we don't have any plucking to do tonight."

Oh well. The season is still young.

© Holly A. Heyser 2010