Duck hunting frenzy: The electric mallard, the pigeons, the divers and the friend

Pant pant pant!

I've been hunting like a dog: relentlessly, joyously and with utter disregard for normal sleep requirements.

See, I taught my last class of the semester last Thursday, and something snapped. My brain knew: No longer do I have to save energy for teaching and grading and advising; I can hunt when I want, hunt as much as I want, exhaust myself, sleep, and then do it all over again!

Heh heh heh. I am totally powerless to resist this impulse. I have hunted four times in the past six days, and I am still reeling from the effects of this frenzy, constantly replaying a slideshow of crystalline memories.
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The brilliant morning sun is behind me. My back is pressed against cattails, keeping my body in shade - harder for ducks to see me this way. I have finally found the perfect spot in this particular clump of tules and cattails. I am on the back side, away from the roar of half a dozen hunting parties on the other side. Away from my own decoys. I've left them behind, because I kept seeing the birds over here. Where my decoys weren't.

I hear wingbeats, then catch a glimpse through some tules of two shapes zooming toward me from my right side. In a fraction of a second, they come into full view. A mallard pair.

Now, mallards are what everyone thinks of when they think of duck hunting, but for some reason I'm not very good at getting them. I don't seem to be able to identify them clearly by sight - I'm much better at identifying by sound, which isn't always an option.

But these are close. They are 10 feet over the water, 20 yards out, zooming across the water in front of me. This is the kind of shot I can nail - I'm good at this one. Really good.

As I raise my gun smoothly to my cheek, the drake becomes a vision of splendor. Every green feather on his head is glinting golden in the sun. He is sparkling. He is electric. Time slows. He is mine.

My gun swings. At the moment the lead feels perfect - right in front of me! - I pull the trigger. Nothing happens.

Nothing happens!
I've been having problems with my gun. The breech bolt isn't consistently opening all the way, or closing all the way. In this case, the latter. The gun isn't cocked. I reach up and snap it back and forth, but the ducks are gone - they have swung out of sight. My own personal sun god is gone.

The day is remarkable nonetheless: I leave with six ducks, the most I have ever gotten while hunting alone.

I'm not upset about the mallard. Shit happens. I have an appointment with my gunsmith first thing in the morning. But for some reason, the mallard I didn't get is the most vivid memory of my morning. I don't think I've ever seen a mallard look that beautiful before.

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Four of us are stretched out at the edge of a field of seedling wheat, each of us in our own camouflage sarcophagus. It's my first time in a layout blind, and I'm looking forward to that jack-in-the-box moment, enormous Canada geese feet out, wings flapping, suspended midair, right in front of us. Then - surprise! - we pop up and shoot them. This is how I can successfully hunt geese! I hardly ever get geese.
But I forgot: Boyfriend and I have never had a successful guided goose hunt. Ever. Why should this day be any different?

Our guide, George, is fantastic. The setup is immaculate. The calling is stunning. But on this day, all the geese in the valley are flying high and heading south, not entertaining any offers from the ground. The guide dials up some friends who are also hunting in the region and everyone says the same thing: They're not coming down. Period.

We've got the flaps of our layout blinds open and we're all chatting, and this group of pigeons starts circling. We start talking about how much we love eating pigeon. The birds circle close, and George says we can take a shot if we can get one.

I'd love to. I've never gotten a pigeon.

But pigeons are smart, and they drop to the ground 75 yards away from us. One of the guide crew sends his chocolate Lab Maggie out to them and they lift, and then drop into the next field.

We all decide our goose hunt is over, but Boyfriend and I are still thinking about those pigeons. We resolve to put a sneak on them. All I've got is BBs, but what the hell.

An elevated dirt road is between us and the flock, and we walk toward it, crouching to avoid detection. When we reach a treeline along that road, we separate, each of us preparing to pop out from opposite ends of the line.

When we emerge, I see the birds. They are far from me, but close to Boyfriend. He fires twice, and knocks two birds down. The one closest to me is alive, broken wing flapping in futility.

"I'll get the one on the right!" I yell, and walk toward it quickly. I'm wearing waders, and the field is soft from rain - I can't run.

The flock sets down around the wounded bird, and as I get closer, I realize they're not getting up - I might get a shot of my own.

At 40 yards, I raise my gun. I will ground-shoot if that's what it takes.

But they lift just before my finger touches the trigger. Perfect. Wings up. Exposed.
I never flock-shoot - of all the rookie mistakes I've made, that's not one of them. I always pick out a bird. But not this time. I just aim into the flock and pull the trigger. One drops. I shoot again. Another drops. It is my first double, ever. And my first pigeon. Pigeons.

Both are alive, broken wings flapping. I now have three birds to chase.

Now, far be it from me to demean the act of an animal that's trying to save it's life. Honestly, that's the hardest part of hunting for me - they're alive, trying to stay that way, and I'm doing my best to thwart them. It ain't pretty.

But if anyone had videotaped what we did next, the music that would've gone with the scene would've had to be the Benny Hill theme song.

Our friend Jim joined us in the field, each of us chasing after pigeons that couldn't fly, but that were still miraculously good at dodging us. We'd lunge, and get nothing. Lunge again and get a handful of dirt. Lunge again and come up with feathers. We looked ridiculous.

But we finally got them.

As we joined the crew in packing up the goose decoys and layout blinds, I looked up and saw five pigeons from the flock sitting on a nearby power line. I imagined they were holding vigil for their friends, waiting to see if they'd escape us.
They didn't. The pigeons finally left.



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The sky is gray and the water in front of us is a pale greenish-gray. Across the water - far across the water - we see Pittsburg. We're on Suisun Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we're hunting divers. Our first diver hunt ever!

Have you ever seen the episode of Benelli's American Safari in which Tom Knapp hunts goldeneye in California? We're with the guide who took him out, R.J. Waldron of Northwind Outfitters. We spend much of our morning trying to mimic Knapp's gorgeous baritone voice.

We doubt we can mimic his feat - his group bagged 21 drake goldeneyes.

But who cares? We have something on this hunt that Knapp didn't have: Chef Sheamus Feeley of Farmstead restaurant in Napa. He's an avid duck hunter. And he brought a miniature kitchen on the hunt. So while we sit on the shore of our little island, he's cooking on a folding table about 10 yards behind us. First up: home-cured ham biscuits! Delicious. Ducks come in.

I was getting all the shots at first, which was a shame, because I was missing everything. Turns out you need to get in a groove to get the lead right on speedy diver ducks. And because they fly low on the water, I could see exactly where my pellets landed in the water as they sped by. Behind. Behind. Behind.

When the seventh group of ducks comes through our decoys, 20 yards in front of us, I finally get it right. I pull the trigger and get the first kill of the day. Kills! A Scotch double. My first ever.

Two goldeneyes tumble hard into the water.

R.J. has prepared us for this: Keep shooting until you're sure they're dead, because they will dive, and you will lose them.

My ducks, it turns out, are not dead, so we all start shooting at them. One goes belly up. The other dives, and every time we see him, he's farther out. Once they get too far away, they're really good at ducking before the shot arrives.

R.J. takes his boat out on a search-and-destroy mission - one of many that day. But we never see that duck again. The second duck of my first Scotch double. But we do see a group of seagulls feasting on something on the water 400 yards away.

And I do have one goldeneye in hand. My first one!

They're so big! For some reason I thought they'd be small, like bufflehead.
Somehow, everything goes better after that. I start hitting more ducks. I get a canvasback - something R.J. doesn't see often out there. And suddenly I've reached my limit. At 9:15 a.m. Before everyone else! That never happens.

I feel guilty - like I hogged all the ducks.

But I didn't. Four hunters left with 26 birds. And very full stomachs. Thanks, Sheamus!


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My alarm goes off at 1:30 a.m. Brutal! I need to be out the door at 2 a.m. to get to Dana's house in Atwater at 4:15. Then we hunt.

I haven't seen Dana in probably two years. We met in 2007. I had just started this blog, and she liked it. She invited me to go hunting. It was incredibly fun - I was used to hunting crowded refuges, and Dana hunted on riverbanks, far from other hunters.

The setting was intimate - by the time a bird was over the opposite bank, it was in shooting range. The whole scene was like our own personal duck hunting theater, housed under the gray sky of the San Joaquin Valley winter. I fell in love with it.
For the next two seasons, though, we couldn't get our schedules to mesh. We were long overdue for a hunt.

But this was the day. When we jump in the boat to motor out to Dana's spot, two snuggly black Labs - Tule and Kid - manage to sit on my lap for the short ride out. They're happy to be going hunting. As am I.

Dana had warned me that it had been slow. I had told her I didn't care. This was about hunting with her far more than it was about killing birds.

At our spot, we set out decoys, Dana beats a little opening in the tules for a makeshift blind and we pour coffee and tea, waiting for the first sounds of duck wings.

We talk and talk. About students (she has taught too). About young people these days. About life and death. About the connection hunting gives us to the earth, restoring us to what is right, removing us from a man-made world that is insane. About how right we believe it is that our bodies should feed and sustain other animals after we die - it's only fair.

The talk was never this deep during our hunts that first season together. I wasn't there yet. Dana had been hunting for two decades, but I'd been hunting for just a year, and all I knew was that I loved it. I didn't understand why.

But now I did, and it pleased me so much that we were on the same page. When you let a young friendship lie fallow for two years, you never know what will happen when you see each other again.

Not a single duck came in shooting range all morning. A storm was coming in, and apparently they weren't in the mood to play - they were just on the move.
"I'm sorry we didn't get any ducks," Dana said for the 10th time as we picked up decoys.

Three years ago, two years ago, even last year, I might have felt sorry myself (or sorry for myself). But I'm doing really well this season. It no longer feels like every duckless day is an indictment of my hunting skills. I know the difference between hoping and expecting. And I know what I want out of a hunt.

I grinned. "I really don't care. I came here to see you."

© Holly A. Heyser 2010