OUTDOORS
The early Texas duck season was worse than poor. We had no ducks migrating into our area in November. Several hunting trips produced zero birds. But finally after Christmas, ducks began to show up.
A forecast of “a strong cold front with northerly winds up to 45 m.p.h.” was just what my son, Tim, and I had been looking for. We called our friend Bill Jones and told him about the good duck-weather forecast.
So the three of us were in our duck blind near Gonzales before the first light. Just about legal shooting time, ducks began to buzz across our decoys. Tim and Bill began to drop ducks with their 12-gauge shotguns. But to my chagrin, I had mistakenly brought pockets full of 16-gauge shells for my 20-gauge gun. Not good! At least I had a few old 20-gauge shells. They were weak and wouldn’t even open the breach on my little Franchi autoloader. So I was shooting a single shot.
About 30 minutes into the hunt, a large group of blue-bills came right over the decoys. We all opened up on them and seven fell out of the group. I know I hit at least one. The two dogs, Winter and Grizzly, really got busy.
Tim later walked around the lake to pick up dead ducks and cripples. Winter found a big drake gadwall that I had hit earlier.
“Stop shooting,” yelled Tim from across the lake. “I think we have our limit.” His count was right. We had our 18 bird limit.
It was our best hunt of the season. We were eager to duplicate that hunt again.
Tim and I realized that we only had one week of duck season remaining. So we began to plan several hunts.
Our friend, Allen Piper, had been calling for us to come hunt on his lake. Allen lives in Early, Texas and has a great place to hunt. So we loaded my truck with shotguns, shot shells, cold weather gear and boots. Tim had a dentist appointment in San Antonio at 2 p.m. on Monday. As soon as he got home, I picked him up and we got off at 5:25 p.m. It’s a 200-mile trip so we knew we would miss some of the College Football National Championship Game.
Allen has a little bunk house on his property so we went straight there and turned on the TV. We saw most of the second half.
The next morning came soon. We walked with Allen and his friend, Mike, to the lake. We all got into position, loaded our shotguns and waited for the legal shooting time.
I was armed with my .410-gauge Remington autoloader. The .410 is really too light for ducks but I knew the ducks would be right in our face on this lake. Allen and I have killed hundreds of diving ducks on the lake. That’s the species we expected.
Suddenly at first light, a pair of gadwalls, which are not divers, dropped into the lake. Tim and I caught them on the rise and dropped both. Allen and Mike were to my right when three gadwalls passed over. They dropped two.
A diving duck landed right in front of me. “I’m not going to shoot the diver Tim,” I said. “Me neither,” shouted Tim.
The duck heard us and took off. Allen and Mike nailed him. We saw no more divers but we had plenty of big gadwalls pouring into the lake. We kept our barrels hot for a few minutes.
We kept Allen’s Labrador retriever, Drake, busy. Drake is 14-years old, deaf and partly blind. But he can still smell a dead duck in the water. He was slow due to painful joints. Then he began to shake due to the cold water. Allen saw that he was suffering so he walked him back to the house and put him in the hot tub. A lab, regardless of age, will hunt until they die. But Drake loves the hot tub.
Diving ducks [redheads, canvas backs, bluebills, scaups] can dive to great depths for food. Puddle ducks [gadwalls, mallards, pintails, teal] can only tip for food.
Tim and I shot many divers at our lake this season but few puddle ducks. We were delighted to shoot so many gadwalls.
The four of us ate breakfast together in Blanket, Texas. We swapped stories, pictures, and adventure tales for over an hour. Then it was time to head home until next duck season. Those guys are great hunting buddies. We will miss them.
