Duck Tales: That Shouldn't Have Worked

The other day I was thinking about one of the craziest duck hunting trips I ever took.  After thinking about it, I realized I hadn't written about it on this blog.  What follows is not only a great "Duck Tale," but also a hand drawn map to explain everything in further detail.

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.

Douche Canoe: The Tale of the Worst Outdoorsman I Ever Met

It occurred to me that I hadn't told one of my classic, "Tales of Old" in a while.  When I started this blog it was about destruction.  But after about ten blogs of destruction for fun and profit I thought I should expand into other ideas.  I ended up writing posts about all the weird things that have happened to me.  I just haven't done it in a while.

So, it's time for me to tell the story of the "Douche Canoe."  Yes, this is the story of the worst, most stupidest, outdoorsman I have ever met.  Let me start at the beginning.  Dad and I were out duck hunting at Cockroach Bay.  It's out of Ruskin, Florida.

I have drawn a map to help everyone out.  As you can see Dad and I would make our blind in an small island.  The water around the island was anywhere from one to three feet deep.  It depended upon the tides.  Here's my hand drawn map.

We would lay out our decoys in candy cane patterns.  The mallard, pintail and Florida mallard decoys were laid out to the left.  The green and blue wing teal decoys were laid out to the right.  We would put them out forty yards since that is the furthest a hunter would want to shoot at ducks.

We would try to be in our duck blind just before 7 AM since 7 - 8 AM is the best time for duck hunting.  That day, we had seen a few ducks flying around, usually about 300 - 500 yards out.  We tried calling a few in to no avail.  Now just because ducks weren't coming in didn't mean other birds weren't coming into the decoys.  We always had kingfishers flying by.  Storks, cormorants, ibises, blue herons, and other wadding birds would drop by. 

However, at 8:30 AM all wildlife movement stopped.  Nothing was coming near.  Heck, no wildlife was even on the horizon.  Now, I sat on the left hand side of the blind.  Dad sat on my right.  As I looked as far left as I could, I saw something I had never seen.  It was an idiot in a fishing boat within 120 yards of our blind.

I said to Dad, "Surely he can see our decoys?"  It's standard outdoor courtesy that if you see duck decoys you avoid them because that means there are duck hunters trying to duck hunt.  I mean, it's just common sense.  Especially since duck hunters are shooting guns, and you want to stay out of shooting distance.  Again, this is not a hard thing.

So this guy comes around the island in a flats boat.  He's operating a trolling motor while casting a fishing rod.  I keep saying to Dad, "He has to see us, right?"  Dad said he had been duck hunting since the early 70's and never had anyone do something like this.  So I blew my duck call at the boater.  But he kept coming around the island.  I blew my duck call again.  Still, the guy kept fishing out there.

Of course, I don't have explain that no birds or wildlife were coming anywhere near us due to this moron being out there.  I'll admit, I can be an angry guy.  I said to Dad that if the boater didn't get the hint with the duck calls, maybe I should shoot a few shots across his bow.  Dad, of course, wanted to handle the situation in a calmer way.

So Dad made a point of putting his gun down.  He waded out to where the guy was fishing.  Like the map shows the boater was only 120 yards from us.  So Dad wades out and nicely lets the guy know that we are duck hunting.  The guy says, and I'm not kidding, "Are you having any luck?"  I'm sitting in the blind, and I can hear the conversation.  The guy's comment caught Dad off guard.  The boater also said that, "He wondered why the ducks weren't flying away?"  Yeah, that's because they're decoys.  Seriously, I'm not making this up.

Honestly, Dad was being too nice.  I felt like yelling from the blind, "Tell the fuckwad to get out of shooting distance!!!"  But I didn't.  So Dad comes back to the blind believing he got his point across.  So we sit there for another ten minutes.  The douche canoe keeps fishing behind our decoys.  I asked, "Does this guy have a death wish?"  I'm not going to lie.  I was getting very upset.  I was really considering shooting pretty close to his boat and yelling, "Duck!!!"

Dad told me, "We have to share the outdoors.  And if we start shooting at people it will give all hunters a bad name."  But Dad had also had enough.  He said if the moron was going to ruin our hunting he would ruin his fishing.  So Dad set his gun down again.  He waded rather noisily towards the boat.  The guy tried moving away with his trolling motor, but it wasn't that strong of a motor.

So Dad had another conversation with the guy.  To be honest.  It was just like Jerry Seinfeld, a conversation about nothing.  So Dad talks to him for a few minutes.  It was a bit tense, but cordial.  After the conversation Dad waded back to the blind, and the moron boated away from the island.  This whole event took around twenty minutes.  By this time it was almost 9 AM.

Dad and I would usually hunt until 10 AM.  After 10 AM, the wildlife decided to take a nap.  So that's why we stopped hunting at 10 AM.  However, after the boater had hung around our decoys, nothing was coming near us.  So at 9:30 AM we decided to pack it in.  We never fired a shot that day.  We never had a duck come near us.  It was decidedly one of our worst days duck hunting.

I am still hostile about the whole situation to this day.  I can't believe anyone could possibly be that stupid or uncaring.  Here's some sage advice, if you are within 100 yards of ducks and they aren't moving, they're decoys.  I still think I should have fired a few shots across his bow.  But if he didn't get the hint with decoys and a visit, I don't know if shotgun fire was going to work either.