Read Part I of this story HERE.
A friend of mine (of whom we will call Jack) picked me up and we headed to the White Mountains of Arizona. The White Mountains of Arizona are located in the northwestern portion of Arizona, but south of the Navajo reservation.
Day I
I was to spend a week here, and we would spend some decent time hunting waterfowl. We were a little bit early – the later it is in the season of Arizona, the better – but the White Mountains tend to hold birds, even early in the season.
On the first afternoon of hunting, we went to a couple of ponds to jump. We approached the first pond, creeping slowly and silently in effort to see any ducks before they saw us. As we approached, I caught the outline of a mallard quite near to shore. We retreated slightly, giving us space to prepare for a shot.
We crept back up, ready to shoot the duck as it flew up after seeing us. But it didn’t fly.
We kept approaching, now quite close to the duck.
But it wasn’t a live duck. It was a mallard decoy that we just couldn’t tell was a decoy with the sun in our eyes. We laughed and quickly scouted the large pond for other ducks.
There was a pair of ruddy ducks not far on the same body of water. They hadn’t seen us, so we were still in a good position to sneak up on them.
I’ll take this moment to share that I don’t care about what kinds of ducks I shoot. I’m not one to pick green heads out of a flock of ducks or will only shoot mallards and/or pintails amongst a group. If it’s a legal duck then I’m going to shoot it. You’ll notice this throughout the entirety of this trip. I also don’t mind shooting ducks on water. If it’s legal then I’m taking the shot.
We snuck up on the pair of ruddy ducks and had decent cover from the berm and grasses. We got as close as we could, counted to three, and we both shot at the ducks.
We shot at nearly the same time, but both ducks dove immediately. I learned quickly that if you’re going to shoot diving ducks on the water that you have to hit them hard the first time. Otherwise, they’re going to dive and you’ll never see them again. This is because they’ll either dive and swim a long distance away from you or they’ll die underwater and you’ll never find them.
The ruddy that Jack shot at wasn’t phased by the shot, but mine resurfaced and died at the surface – 1 duck down, and my first ruddy duck at that.
We spotted what looked like some teal at another near pond but couldn’t make a good approach without being spotted, so we moved on to another body of water.
Once again, we snuck slowly up a berm to find a ruddy right of the shore. Jack took the shot and put the bird down – 2 total ruddy ducks for us concluded the evening.
Day II
On day two we decided to go to the same spot in effort to catch the birds going from roost to feeding sites. The night prior we witnessed hundred of birds whirlwind into the water right after legal shooting light. Hopefully, we would be able to catch them before they came off the water.
We arrived at the water about 20 minutes before shooting light, the cold chilling us to the bone and making it difficult to move quietly. We gathered our things quietly and headed to our chokepoint as to where we thought we could catch them coming off the water.
Just as we did, hundreds of birds came flying off the water, 8-10 minutes prior to legal shooting light. We were bummed, but we hoped that there would still be a few birds still waiting.
As we crept up, we could see the bodies of a group of 6-10 mixed birds. I could see the outline of what looked like a…I wasn’t going to say it as I didn’t want to get my hopes up.
We stalked in closer until we got as close as possible. We peeked over the berm to find a group of mallards, gadwalls, and a solo drake canvasback.
That’s what I thought I had seen.
The king of all ducks was in front of us, and I had my eye on him. I didn’t care about the mallards. I wanted this canvasback.
This time, I shot first. Shooting 3-inch number 2s, I let a shot off at the canvasback…
He shook off the shot and took flight.
Jack shot at the king and missed. I shot at him and missed. Jack shot again and missed. At this point, the duck was out of my field of comfortable fire. Jack shot one more time, the last in his gun, and dropped the king.
I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t bummed that I didn’t shoot the canvasback. It was a full breeding plumage drake that was beautiful, but I was stoked that Jack managed to drop him.
We decided to circle the large pond to see if we couldn’t find anything else. The water was covered in ruddy ducks and coots, but it was a matter of being able to sneak up on them, and besides, I didn’t want a limit of ruddy ducks.
We silently circled around the water. Just as we did, I caught eye of something – a hen ruddy duck sat motionless in a patch of reeds right offshore. Either she didn’t see us or she was hoping that we didn’t see her. Regardless, I took the shot and dropped my first duck for the day.
1 canvasback and 1 ruddy duck down.
Jack waded in and grabbed the bird. I waited on the berm above him, but something caught my eye to the right. A bird that I thought was a coot from a distance wasn’t acting like a coot, but I couldn’t tell without glass since it was too far.
Using my binos, I identified what I thought was a drake blue-winged teal.
I left Jack in the water and stalked the teal. I knew that this was going to be tough as this area had off rock formations that would limit my shooting lanes, so I had to be on my game.
I snuck up and just as I did, he caught me. He flew from right to left at a good pace.
I swung my gun to the left. Sure enough, the entirety of my shooting lane was blocked by rocks and reeds, except for one small hole. I sat aiming in this hole, knowing that I’d need to shoot as soon as I saw the bird.
Sure enough, he came into sight, I fired, and the teal dropped.
It was a picture-perfect shot as the duck dropped out of the sky and skipped across the water.
Jack came and got the bird. But the thing was is that it wasn’t a blue-winged teal. I saw the familiar white patch behind the bill, but it wasn’t the same kind of patch as a blue-winged teal. It also didn’t have a green speculum, blue shoulder, and was too big for a teal.
I shot a female scaup.
1 canvasback, 1 ruddy, and 1 scaup down for the day.
From left to right; canvasback, scaup, ruddy
After that, it was getting late into the morning and we packed it in. We were going to try to set up decoys in the evening, but it was also going to be pretty warm out. We had our minds made up, though.
So, at around 2 PM we set out a dozen decoys and lay on a bank as hidden as possible. The wind was ripping but the temperatures were venturing into the 60s and 70s, which was way too warm. We saw nothing for the rest of the day.
Day III
Unfortunately, day three was going to be our last day of duck hunting. Both of us had to work and this would be our last outing, so we wanted to make the most of it.
Disheartened by the slow evening on day two, we decided to change it up. We moved to a different spot, unsure as to what it would hold for us.
We arrived at this area that had a couple of different medium-sized ponds. The thing about them, though, was that they didn’t have berms. They were surrounded by some juniper trees, but not enough to sneak up too close. It would be tough to drop any birds at this area.
However, there were birds galore. There were mallards, teal, gadwalls, and buffleheads, and good amounts. Unfortunately, none of them were really accessible except for the buffleheads. And to say that they were accessible may be a stretch.
We got as close as we could using the cover of juniper trees. From there, we got on our hands and knees and crawled up to a very small “berm” – I use quotes because it wasn’t really a berm, but sort of. It was just large enough to cover our crawling motions.
We got to the top of the berm and found the two female buffleheads just within range. We counted to three.
One
Two
Three
2 bufflehead hens
And we both shot. Once again, these are diving ducks, so we had to hit them hard. My bufflehead dropped immediately, but Jack’s dove. Fortunately, it resurfaced, hurt but still alive. We put some more shots into it and she deceased.
This pond was thick with mud and wading into the middle of it to get the birds was impossible. So, we had to use a fishing pole to retrieve these birds. Using a big treble hook with a couple ounces of weights, Jack retrieved the birds after many, many casts. The top of the water was covered in vegetation, making it very difficult to hook on, and also requiring to clear the hook after each cast.
2 buffleheads down.
We moved on to another body of water that we had to walk into a decent distance but found the most birds we had seen all week. The numbers and varieties of birds present were astounding. Mallards, gadwalls, wigeons, teals, redheads, canvasbacks, and more were on the water.
Unfortunately, with them were a lot of coots, and it’s hard to sneak up on coots. And, ducks pay attention to coots and will fly off if the coots are spooked.
As we wound through the juniper trees to sneak up on the birds, the coots caught us. We were busted, and the ducks knew it, too.
The ducks all began to fly off, so we ran a little bit closer and immediately hid in vegetation, hoping that we could get some birds to fly over us.
There was one decently-sized group that flew over us but were still decently far. I wasn’t going to shoot, but Jack was like “F$&@ IT!” and took a shot. He shot, so I joined and, sure enough, I dropped a bird. It was a far shot, but we got one down.
Gadwall hen
It took us a few minutes to find it, but we found a gadwall hen lying under a juniper tree.
2 buffleheads and 1 gadwall down.
And that concluded our duck hunting adventures. I ended up with 2 ruddy ducks, 1 bufflehead, a scaup, and 1 gadwall, which I was beyond happy with. I ended up breasting out one of the ruddy ducks and plucked the rest. I then spatchcocked all the birds except the bufflehead, and then vacuum sealed all of them.
This was my best and favorite duck hunting trip to date, and I have to give a huge thank you to my friend Jack. He was a great “guide” and let me get on some birds. Being from Phoenix, we don’t find numbers of birds like that – we get lucky if we shoot two ducks in an outing.
I hope you all liked this article and the photos that go along with it. As always, thanks for reading and I’ll see you all next time.