My Father and I used to duck hunt at Cockroach Bay out of Ruskin, Fl. And yes, that really is it's name. Despite the name, it's an amazing estuary where the Little Manatee River flows into the Bay. All sorts of wildlife lives there, whether it be fish, birds, or plant life. I've seen a flight of Rosette Spoonbills sitting in the mangroves a number of times.
Of course, Dad and I were there to duck hunt. We had our favorite island that we always hunted at. Depending on the tide, the water around the island could be anywhere from six inches deep to three feet deep. Usually it was about a foot and a half to two feet deep. Just perfect for ducks.
Below I've drawn a rough map of our hunting spot. I've marked, "Our Island," as well as, our decoy spread. We would run two rows of candy cane shaped decoys out from our duck blind.
The trick to duck hunting is to get up insanely early. The idea, is that, you want to have your decoys out before it's light out. So getting up at 4 AM is not uncommon.
This particular morning everything went as planned. From the time we got up to the time we were in our blind everything went as planned. So Dad and I were sitting in the dark waiting for daybreak. Once the first few rays started shining through I noticed that we had ducks. Although, they were on the shore about 250-300 yards away from us.
Duck hunting regulations say we can only use steel shot in our shotguns, so our range is limited at about 40 yards. We actually put the last decoys out at 40 yards so we can judge our distance. If the ducks are beyond the decoys we know not to shoot at them.
Well, the sun starts shining through, and I notice what appears to be quite a few ducks setting up... at the shore away from us. Fifteen minutes go by, and I can hear them quacking across the water. This is usually when we would have a few ducks come over to our decoys. However, none were making their way over.
A half hour goes by, and the sun is now up. About 100 ducks are over at the shore. A group of bluebills swims near our decoys, but they are still out of range. I'd say the closest they ever got to us was about 70 yards. Again, that's way too far for steel shot.
By this time, from the time we first saw the ducks it had been one solid hour. Not one duck had come over to our decoys. Now there were at least 200 ducks over on the shore. There might have been upwards of 250 ducks. When there are that many it's kind of hard to judge.
I could see Dad was getting frustrated. As long as he had been hunting nothing like this had ever happened to him. Suddenly, a thought came to my mind. I said, "Dad, how about I shoot one shot into the air to scare the ducks up?" Dad replied with, "I don't care." Dad never talked to me like that. But it just goes to show you how frustrated he was.
I said, "Okay, but let's get a few things organized. I took shotgun shells from my box, and lined them up so I could quickly grab them. I then held one shell in my hand so I could quickly reload after shooting. I then asked, "Are you ready?" Dad said, "Sure." Again, he was a bit frustrated.
So I aim up high and straightaway, and I pulled the trigger. What happened next could only be called a mass exodus from the shore. Ducks started swarming all over the place. It took about a minute, but some of the ducks swung back over our island, and dropped in our decoys. And as you would expect, we blasted the snot out of them.
But our second round of shooting caused something else to happen. The ducks we had driven off the shoreline with the first shot had flown to another spot as expected. But when we shot a second time those ducks started flying again. And wouldn't you know they came over to our decoys.
Dad didn't even have time to get out of the boat to go pick up ducks. They kept coming in waves so we kept shooting. After about 10 minutes Dad was able to go our and retrieve our ducks. Again, most of them were about 20-25 yards from us. Dad barely made it back into the boat before the next wave of ducks dropped into our decoys.
Again, we started knocking them off the water, and out of the sky. We were shooting green wing and blue wing teal. Back then the Florida FWC rules said we could shoot ten of them each if we didn't shoot anything else. It was on a point system which was kind of weird and hard to explain. The short version, is that, we were allowed 10 teal a day per hunter.
So, going back to the beginning of that morning, we sat in our duck blind for a solid hour without even thinking of taking a shot. After I fired that first shot to stir the ducks up, it only took us about 20 minutes to limit out. That's right. We managed to shoot our 20 teal.
I think back on that hunting trip, and the only think that comes to mind is, "I can't believe that worked? I mean, I can't really believe that worked?" I could have easily scared all the ducks away, and we might have never seen another one that day. Any number of things could have happened. But as luck had it, we managed to have one of our best hunting days ever.
That trip really stuck out to me. If you've ever watched a hunting program you'll hear them say, "It's not so much about the hunt as it is the memories." And that's definitely the case with that trip. It reminds me on "Family Guy" when they had the segment called, "Damn Nature! You Scary!" Yes, nature can be scary, but it can also be really weird. And this trip fell into the weird category.
