It was a cool, crisp December morning. I was venturing to my duck hunting spot, all in efforts to shoot with not a firearm, but rather my camera, all while showing my Dad and Uncle how to put in some hard work for some waterfowl.
We met early, as we needed time to set up decoys and a make-shift blind. We hiked in, found our spot, and set up our decoy spread. We had 12 decoys; 6 green-winged teals and 6 mallards, all by Avian-X. Our spread was somewhat decent, but I figured that I would work for our application. We would run into some ducks that were weary from being shot at, but I wasn’t planning on running into any “easily-spooked” species, like pintails or canvasbacks.
I was planning on seeing mostly mallards, maybe some wigeons, green-winged teals, shovelers, and maybe, just MAYBE some geese.
We were setup before the sun rose above the mountains.
This was a different experience for me, as I was gun-less. I was admittedly less excited as I’d normally be. I treated it the same as any other waterfowl hunt, and was ready to “shoot” some ducks.
3 minutes before legal shooting light something caught my eye; a small group of mallards flew right over us. It was a sign that we would at least see some ducks, assuming these wouldn’t be the last for the day.
We continued to wait, legal shooting now permitting legal harvest. We had two teal fly over, but not within range. Several minutes after, 2 mallards flew by, but the shots were far, both for my camera and for the shotguns.
About 5 minutes before actual sunrise, a large flock was seen coming at us. I not only had the job of a photographer, but also the job of duck caller. If the ducks became spooked and turned, it was my job to call them back in.
As they were coming in and, sure enough, they spooked. But wait. These weren’t mallards. These large ducks had long tails and a distinct shape. These were pintails, and pintails are some of the most easily scared ducks there are, but I had to try to call them back in.
I started calling gently, but made my presence known. Sure enough, the flock turned again, heading back at my direction.
At this point, I didn’t want to reach for my camera, as I didn’t want the ducks to possibly see me. As mentioned, our decoy spread wasn’t meant for this duck application, nor was our “blind”. Pintails generally require a bit more finesse.
The ducks continued to approach and, amazingly, 3 of the 8 curled their wings to begin their ascent into our decoy spread. I couldn’t believe it, I was about to get some pintails to land in our spread!
But something happened. I think the 3 ducks that committed to the spread noticed that the other 5 ducks hadn’t committed, and swayed them to not fly into the decoy spread. They started flapping their wings again, and the entire flock turned around flew the other direction.
We were so close to getting a good flock to come in, but we failed, all while learning some critical lessons though.
We sat for another 20 minutes with no action, and decided to call it a morning. We were cleaning up when I heard a sound. It was the honking of Canada geese.
I looked to the sky but didn’t see anything. I looked all around and finally saw a flock of 6-8 Canada geese, all flying away. The hunters were kicking themselves, but I’m not sure they even had shells big enough to take down a big ‘ ole goose…