Published: September 18, 2008 10:19 am      

Scarlet’s successful debut highlights our start of teal season

Outdoors

We had just finished building a temporary cane blind in the dark, loaded our shotguns and took our positions.

Five of us — Noah, James and Joseph Gallaher of New Braunfels, my son Tim and I — were eagerly waiting for the first flight of teal to swarm into our decoys.

Last year, on the same lake near Kenedy, we all had our four bird limit only 30 minutes into the early teal season. But would we have birds this year?

Normally, I always scout the lake a couple of days before the hunt. But busy schedules and the ominous approaching of Hurricane Ike prevented any scouting. Actually, Ike was just coming ashore and battering Houston as we waited for legal shooting time to arrive.

The darkness slowly began to recede in the eastern sky when the first flight of teal zeroed in on our decoy spread. Unlike bigger ducks, like mallards, pintails and gadwalls, which glide in a graceful formation into a set of decoys, teal come in a darting mass. It looked like a scrambling midget hockey team.

Steel shot began to fill the sky over the decoys to greet the little feathered rockets. One folded. Another wounded bird began to angle toward the shore, rapidly losing altitude. Noah’s lab, Darby, bolted toward the dead bird while Tim took my retriever, Lady, to look for the cripple. Lady has a good nose and quickly located the downed bird. Somewhat unusual, both birds were green-winged teal.

More of the teal harvested in the early September teal season are blue winged. They’re the first migrants of the year and most are in Mexico by the arrival of the regular duck season in November. That’s why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s give us the early season. But a few green wings usually follow their blue wing cousins on the early journey to Texas. That flight probably wished they had stayed up north a bit longer.

Several more small groups of teal buzzed our decoys in that early light. Some died. Then it was over. No more birds and our limits were not yet filled. But we were still happy. Ike had not canceled our hunt. To miss opening day would rate as a near tragedy.

Sunday morning Lady and I slipped out to a local lake near Buda for a brief hunt before church. There weren’t many birds but I had opportunity to take my limit. But my shooting was lousy. I got one bird out of the first small group but should have nailed a double. Then a flock of more than 20 blue wings came down on the decoys like a flight of hornets. Three easy shots — one bird fell. Lady gave me an awful look. If she could have talked ….

I just got too excited and shot into the flock instead of picking an individual target. But the day a group of 20 ducks over my decoys doesn’t excite me, I’ll quit hunting.

Tuesday morning before work Tim and I hunted a local lake. It was a special hunt — the debut of his one-year-old lab, Scarlet. She had shown some indications toward being gun shy so we took light gauge shotguns. Tim brought a 20-gauge autoloader and I took my .410 automatic. We had hoped that the cold front might push some big numbers of teal into the area but, again, we didn’t see lots of birds.

A pair came into the decoys early and we both dropped one. But Tim’s bird crawled to the shore in front of the blind and when Scarlet charged he experienced a resurrection. The bird flew about 30 yards before hitting the water again. But that duck was in big trouble. Scarlet is super fast and she was right behind him. He flew again across a cove and went down. She had the line on him and wouldn’t give up. Eventually, she was about half way down the lake after that cripple.

While she was gone, three more teal appeared and two fell. Scarlet was now charging back. I figured she heard the shots and gave up in her pursuit of the first bird. But, to our surprise, she emerged in the semi-darkness with a green wing teal in her mouth. Then she quickly retrieved the other dead birds that were floating among the decoys.

Tim was ecstatic. Lots of training hours had preceded this first real hunt. She had made a remarkable retrieve on a cripple, brought in the dead birds, and paid no attention to the noise of the shotguns. I don’t think a 12-gauge would have bothered her but we wanted to take no chances of ruining her.

The early teal season continues through Sept. 28. Hopefully, more birds will show up soon.

To hunt teal be sure you have both federal and state duck stamps.

Jim Darnell is an ordained minister and host/producer of the syndicated outdoors show, God’s Great Outdoors. His column appears every Thursday in the Daily Record.