The end of duck season: Nothing exceeds like excess

When my alarm went off at 3:15 a.m. on the last day of duck season, I knew I was going to have a problem: There was a crick in my neck.

Minor annoyance? Nope.

When I was 20 years old, I got myself hit by a car crossing a busy, high-speed street on a bicycle. I flew across the handlebars and belly-flopped on the pavement.

It appeared that I'd gotten off with nothing more than deep abrasions on my hips, elbows and chin - the latter took 13 stitches. But I'd actually done some damage to the top two vertebrae in my neck, and the price I paid for my stupidity that day would be a lifetime of devastating, sickening headaches whenever those vertebrae go out of alignment.

Which is frequently. (Cue the violins.)

When my alarm went off on Sunday, I didn't yet have a headache. But duck hunting involves scrunching your head down and cranking it left or right as far as you can to watch circling birds. I knew that would twist my neck into knots and trigger a headache eventually.

Dammit! The last day of duck season is a special day. I like to hunt with Boyfriend until sunset and say good-bye to the marsh. A headache would cast a dark veil over the entire affair.

But did that stop me? Hell no! The motto of my 2010-11 duck season had been, "balls to the wall" (look it up; it's not as filthy as you think). Once school was out in December, I hunted just about every day I could. And unlike seasons past, I always hunted the morning, meaning I was getting up at 3 to 3:15 a.m. a lot.

I was exhausted, but driven. Why? Because the more I hunted, the more I succeeded.

I'd topped my best season total ever by the ninth week of the season, and I'd doubled it by week 12. If I got my limit on this day, my season total would be more than my first four seasons of duck hunting combined.

It had been noted by more than a few of my seasoned duck-hunting friends that I was going through the "limiting out" stage of hunter development. I found this irritating, because I like to think of myself as an individual, not a predictable statistic.

But for the first time ever, I was getting limits of ducks a lot, and there was no denying that I was reveling in my success. When you spend four seasons missing a lot, hitting a lot feels pretty damn good. My hunting became a potlatch: I was so successful that I gave away ducks to new hunters and non-hunters without a second thought, something I never would've done in my first few years of hunting (the "Mine!" phase).

My Saturday hunt on closing weekend was textbook. Boyfriend had work to do and wouldn't be coming out until late morning, but my buddy Charlie and I hunted the morning, and it was epic. There was a high fog and a good breeze, and there were so many ducks flying that when Charlie and I whispered back and forth to each other about incoming birds, we were almost always talking about different sets of birds.

I got my limit of ducks well before 10 a.m., and Charlie was holding out for a bull sprig, so we ended up sitting in our tule patch for a good hour while waiting for Boyfriend to come out, just watching ducks swarm around us.

When you're not hunting anymore, the birds tend to come really close because their sixth sense isn't picking up any hint of threat. Ruddies - which don't really care about threat anyway - flew over us so low that if either of us had stood up, we probably would've been injured by the high-speed collision. Greenwing teal arced around our patch at light speed, so close that when they finally saw us, we could see that "Oh shit!" look in their eyes. Wigeon and gadwall landed in our decoys.

Charlie and I just laughed and laughed and laughed. "See?" he said. "This is why I stick around after I've gotten my limit." It was joyful.

The hunting on Sunday was tougher.

The flight wasn't quite as vigorous as the day before, and I was missing a lot. By mid-morning, I had a hen wigeon and hen gadwall, and my neck, as expected was ratcheting up pretty tight.

"I'm gonna take a walk," I told Boyfriend. Some guys near us had been taking some pretty high shots, and I knew there was a good chance they'd sailed some cripples into an unoccupied area of our pond where the nutgrass gave ducks a place to land and hide. Besides, walking gets my heart rate up and opens blood vessels, which tends to ease my headaches.

As I stepped out of our tule patch, I glanced to the left in time to see a hen teal landing in our decoys.

Bam! I shot her.

She was wounded but not dead, so Boyfriend shot her too. I could see the shot pattern hit the water all around her, but her head was still up.

"Shoot her again!" Boyfriend said.

"No, I'm down to BBs," I said. Shooting at close range would turn the duck into hamburger; waiting and giving her some distance would mean there would be big holes in the pattern (the bigger the shot, the fewer the pellets you have in the shell).

Teal don't tend to be the best escape artists, so I decided to chase her. And so began my own personal Odyssey.

I'd charge toward her. I'd start to close the distance. She'd use her wings - one broken - to flap away on the water and gain some distance.

We went through this process 10 times before I acknowledged that I'd have to shoot her. So I'd let her get further away, aim my shotgun just off of her head so the pattern wouldn't hit her whole body, then fire.

Thunk! Each time I'd watch her dodge just as I was pulling the trigger and the shot would furrow into the water, harmlessly, at her side.

I did this four times, all the while running the two options through my head: It was "She's suffering and afraid - I need to end this" versus "If I obliterate her, I will have caused this suffering for nothing but hawk food."

Out of breath, I stood and let her gain distance on me. I aimed close to her body and pulled the trigger. It was finally over. Not my finest moment as a hunter. But I'd shot perfectly and hit her head, not her body.

At this point, I was already in the grassy area where I'd planned to look for crips. Of course, any duck with wingpower had already left the area because of all my shooting, but I decided to walk the grass anyway.

Earlier that morning, the high-shooters had sailed a bull sprig into this grass patch. I'd yelled to them: "HEY, THAT DUCK YOU SAILED JUST LANDED OVER THERE!" They didn't respond, and they left the pond that morning without going after that duck.

So I walked around, and before long, I saw the unmistakable horizontal outline of a dead duck floating in the vertical grass. Bull sprig. It had died where it landed. I picked it up and headed back to my tule patch.

Thank God it wouldn't go to waste! Not that nature ever wastes anything, but if an animal must endure the pain of human predation, the least we can do is ensure that it isn't just to feed other predators perfectly capable of getting their meals without shotguns.

Back at the tule patch, Boyfriend and I scraped away. A duck here, a duck there. The fog burned off and the breeze turned into a light north wind - nice hunting weather, but devastating for my neck. You hunt ducks with the wind at your back, which in a north wind means you hunt with the sun in your eyes. That requires further contortions to avoid blinding yourself while following ducks' flight.

My total was at six ducks when Slam! the headache came down like a sledgehammer. It was dizzying. I felt like throwing up. I just wanted to get my seventh duck and get back to the car, where I could lie down and submit to the thunder in my brain. Fighting a headache hurts. I needed to go limp.

"I'll take anything," I told Boyfriend, slurring a bit. "I don't care. Spoonie's fine."

Which was good, because it was the spoonie hour. Nothing but spoonies flew past us.

Generally, I'm an average shot under the best of conditions, but a really horrible shot when I have a headache. I whiffed on easily four gimme shots at spoonies.

Our friend Tom, who was joining us for the afternoon, called to say he'd finally arrived at our parking lot, and Boyfriend left the tule patch to go meet him.

"Could'ju gemme s'more shells?" I asked. I was running really low.

The spoonies continued to circle as he left. I was watching a pair come closer, gun ready, when my phone vibrated.

"Who the fuck is calling me and why?" I growled. I ignored it, fired at the spoonies, missed.

My phone vibrated again. It was Charlie in the next tule patch. "Why don't you come over here? There's better cover and you won't have to scrunch your neck so much." I'd texted him about the headache earlier.

"OK," I said. I picked up my tule seat and trudged over, sloshing through the water. The pain in my head was staggering. Charlie met me halfway to take the seat.

"I juss wanna get my seventh bird and go," I told him. Closing day sunset? Who cares.

The spoonies continued to work, and I whiffed on a few more shots.

Boyfriend and Tom came back to the other tule patch to find it empty.

"Where's Holly?" Boyfriend yelled up to Charlie.

"Here!" I yelled, waving my gun. I sat back down, propped my gun on my knee and leaned into it. The sun was warming my face and oh how good it would've felt to just lie down and sleep.

Maybe half an hour later - maybe five minutes? Who knows? - I was down to the last three shells in my gun when a pintail pair came through. Charlie let them pass in front of him unmolested. They were coming in for a landing in front of me.

Wait. Wait. Wait ...

Now!

They were two feet off the water, maybe 20 yards in front of me, when I fired my first shot.

Bam! Miss. Ducks now alarmed.

Bam! Missed again. Chaos and flapping everywhere. I hear Charlie's gun, also a miss.

The drake lifted from the water, creating a striking silhouette that I will never forget - long neck, outstretched wings, sprig jutting from his fully-fanned tail feathers.

Bam! It was my last shotshell. This time, he folded.

The hen escaped us, but flew south, directly in front of Boyfriend. Bam! Duck down. His seventh of the day too. His last duck of the season. We'd taken out a pair for our last shots of the season.

Later I'd reflect on the macabre symmetry of that moment, but at the time all I felt was relief that I'd finished my day. I charged out to pick up the bull sprig, but no speed was necessary. I'd head-shot him.

Back in the tule patch, I hugged Charlie and thanked him for helping me. Then he walked back with me to Boyfriend and Tom's patch, where I gathered my ducks from the morning, then made my way back to the parking lot. Back at the car, I put the passenger seat down and curled up. I fell asleep to the myrp myrp myrp of nearby coots and the boom of distant gunfire.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

About an hour later I woke up. Looked outside my window in time to see a hunter in his tightie whities, changing out of his waders. I lay back down to give him privacy.

The violence in my head had eased somewhat, and now I just felt sad that I wasn't in the marsh. About 20 minutes before sunset, I bundled up and stood at the water's edge, watching the silhouette of the coastal mountain range grow darker as the sun descended.

It was beautiful out there. The rippling water glinted in the setting sun, and the wind brought me the voices of Boyfriend and Tom and Charlie chatting away. Guess things had slowed down. Soon I saw Charlie picking up his decoys.

I choked back tears.

Not tears of self-pity - I had been blessed this season, and I had ended it with the king of the marsh: the bull sprig. I wasn't even sad that this was the end of duck hunting, because I was exhausted, and it would now be a long time before I had to set my alarm for 3 a.m. again. I needed a break, and so did the ducks.

I was crying because it felt like I was leaving home.

Despite my totally obsessive quest for more-MORE-MORE! ducks - which I regarded with mixed emotions even when I was in the middle of it - the marsh is one of the very few places where I can find perfect happiness, even on days when I embarrass myself with bad shooting. It is a three-dimensional theater of beauty, grace and the vivid realities of nature: eating, playing, resting, pairing, evading, killing.

The more I hunt and spend time in places like that, the more I resent the grotesqueries that human civilization has imposed on the planet. Human progress at the expense of habitat for all living things, technological advances at the expense of our own physical and mental health, and everywhere the poison of our clever inventions.

In the marsh, I know I am just a flimsy imitation of the humans who used to live as part of nature, not "above" it. But it's the best I can do under the rules and limitations of modern life. For very limited stretches of time, I can cling to what we used to be. The end of the season wrenches that away from me, and returns me to the drudgery of progress.

If I could flee civilization and live as humans are supposed to live, I would do it in a heartbeat. But there isn't enough habitat left for wild humans, and even if there were, living wild would break dozens of laws and lead to a life on the run.

So instead, I go to work five days a week, cash paychecks and pay bills.

And I wait for the next season - any season - that will allow me to feel human again.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011