Dedicated duck hunters are quite the closed group. I'm not the best pass-shooter with a shotgun and I can't justify a guided hunt with minimal knowledge and experience. I have a few friends who love duck hunting, but I don't think they believed me when I said I wanted to go.
2019 was different. I went into the lottery pool to hunt a local state park, none of us in a small group were picked, but I guess this did make my wish to hunt waterfowl appear earnest enough.
Dave is a down-to-earth guy. He emailed me mid-October to ask if I wanted to head to a nearby lake to try to go after some ducks. I was in - 100%. Sadly, as the day approached after a near-drought late summer and fall, that day appeared to be ferociously wet and windy. We bailed on the idea. But the following week Dave asked. And again, I was in - 100%.
November 2
The day before the end of daylight saving's time I met Dave at a nearby convenience store just a short distance from the lake. My truck smelled plasticy like my new waders. I had tons of other gear for hunting - and hopefully enough. We caravanned to the lake and got set up in the parking lot. My Amazon-purchased waders, nylon and rubber, were sticky to get into.
We loaded up the boat and dumped it in the lake. Some other waterfowlers were in the area Dave wanted to go to, so we headed out to another spot. We dropped a bunch of goose decoys and a little closer to shore dropped some ducks in the classic "J" pattern. Then it was time to situate everything tucked into some cedars on the shore. It was getting light at this time. It was cold - near freezing - but I was still comfortable. For all I had brought, I forgot to bring an extra pair of socks. The comfort of my feet diminished until they were numb. But I was not going to complain.
I was almost anxious as legal shooting light brightened. If ducks did come in flying fast over my head or across the water, I wasn't sure how well I'd do. Big game usually allows some time to look over the situation - ducks don't meander in the sky.
No blow-by-blow run through of the morning, but there were a few highlights. We saw several ducks, most too far away and none wanted to commit to our most lovely decoy spread. We did have two geese come in twice. We both shot and both missed twice. So it goes. I was just thrilled to have seen a few ducks and to have been able to get a couple shots off.
A couple other hunters did set up a little too close to us a short time in the morning. They didn't get any shots off and almost lost some decoys in the deep water. When we were packing up to leave, they did stop by and apologize as we talked ducks a little bit - they hadn't seen us when they set up.
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November 30
With a very "ducky" final Saturday of Indiana's deer gun season, I was glad for a reason to not go deer hunting.
Dave was going to take me to Grand Lake to hunt ducks on a controlled hunt he had drawn for, but he had a family emergency. "Family Emergency" is a euphemism nobody wants to think about - let alone think about on Thanksgiving. Tyler was free so Dave gave his Mercer permit to us, allowing us to head north and hunt ducks.
I was up early by even my standards. Just about everything was ready to go so it was a quick few minutes to take care of the dogs, dump them on SO and head out the door. Predictably, there was no traffic and I suspect some of the cars I did see were late-nighters heading home, rather than Saturday morning goers. As I drove through a nearby city center, I'd never seen so few cars; the Christmas lights coupled with wet roadways sparkled - very pretty.
We met at Tyler's parents house since it was a safe place to drop the truck and relatively convenient for both of us. All of my needed stuff was transferred to Tyler's car and we headed north. I had only met Tyler once before but we got along pretty well. As we traveled the couple hours we talked hunting, life, hunting and hunting...
We got to the DNR office early and signed in. They had a calendar with the recent activity on the various controlled-hunt stands. Most were zeros, but a few looked decent and the period before the windstorm the day before Thanksgiving had apparently been quite good. The drawing was done promptly at 5:30 - we were picked first. It was hard not to jump up and down at this, but I suspect that kind of behavior would have been call for a beat down by other hunters. Tyler chose the stand that had had the most activity, closest to the fish hatchery.
With minimal instruction from the DNR, we headed to the hunting area and changed into waders and hauled our gear to the pit blind in the dark. The concrete pit blind looked pretty nice, but it had several inches of cold murky water in it. We set up duck decoys on the left with goose decoys on the right, an open area in the pond right in front of us and got into the blind to wait for daylight. It was raining, but Grand Lake was right on the edge of the rain. The rain stopped as it started to get light. The pit blind smelled like a swamp...
At first, we didn't see any birds. Then one lone duck came in and landed off to our right. Tyler said to hold off shooting since two more were coming in. We waited, but the two didn't land. Tyler peaked up and said he thought the duck that did land was within range but with some brushy grass between us. He told me to stand and see if I could shoot since it was on my side of the blind. I saw what I was nearly certain was the duck's head above the grass - I aimed like I was shooting at a deer, not pass-shooting ducks and pulled the trigger. No duck flew away; the duck was hit. I got out of the blind to finish the duck and bring it back. My first duck!!!!
As I came back, Tyler was walking away from the blind telling me he had seen another duck land on the main pond a ways away. I watched as he stalked the duck, eventually jumping it. He shot and hit it, bringing it down a short way away. He had to walk around the pond to finish it before joining me in the blind. We had both shot big drake mallards.
As the morning progressed, we would see waves of geese a few hundred yards away, but none would head our way. We thought they were headed to the main lake. Some ducks were mixed in as well.
We did get a few more small groups of ducks to take interest in our decoy spread and tried a few tactics to bring them down. Waiting to watch them land in our little pond resulted in the ducks not liking what they saw once they started cupping and flying away. Shooting early when they were on the edge of range resulted in them flying away. It was a losing game; the ducks had probably played this before.
We were really glad to be in the blind we were in, since the birds we did see were stragglers from where the large masses were landing. The other controlled-hunt blind a short ways to our right only shot once all morning - and it was a prayer sky-busting shot at geese that was outside of any range except hope.
I did get a chance to try to stalk one lone duck that landed in the same pond Tyler shot his from. I got very close to it, but trees and brush prevented me from shooting as soon as the duck took off and by the time I had a clear shot it was moving fast on the edge of range. It was still exciting to try.
As it got close to the end of legal hunting for the controlled hunt, we almost left a couple times only to have ducks come in for a look-see again. But eventually we started to clean up and head out. The wind had picked up and it started to rain again. I was still mostly comfortable, but my feet were unhappy from sitting in the frigid muskraty water in the pit blind.
We dropped off our report card for the hunt by the fish hatchery and saw hundreds of geese and many mallards in the hatch ponds. This is where we had seen geese all morning. The scene was almost funny after the morning of hunting ducks.
We headed south, stopping for lunch before getting back to Tyler's parent's house. We took some time cleaning the ducks. Since Tyler was going to breast his out, I chose to clean the whole duck so he could teach me both methods. Neither was hard, but plucking results in feathers going wherever they want. Gutting the duck wasn't the most pleasant thing in the world, but not too different from a very tiny deer. I couldn't help but thinking that doing this at Tyler's parent's house felt a little like high school - the non-wretched parts...
I headed home for the day as the rain came down and the night sky took over. While a long day, it was an awesome second attempts at ducks with my first duck in the bag. I'm not ready to run out and buy a boat and a few hundred decoys, but I do hope for future opportunities to go after ducks again.
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