A Mallard Morning On The Mississippi

At 10 years old Dare was no stranger to a duck blind – he’d been hunting with me since he was 3 and he’d shot a few wood ducks on our farm in Georgia, but this was his introduction to the big time, holding down one of the spots in a pit blind on the Mississippi flyway in the heart of duck paradise, and he was a little nervous.  A good portion of the 8000-odd ducks we’d scared up when we walked in before dawn would be headed back our way in a few minutes, flooded corn on their minds.  They’d be headed straight for him. 

We waited as the eastern sky in front grew pink, then yellow-orange, and the first black dots appeared in the gap between trees where the railroad cut across the horizon, black dots that grew quickly into a flight of a half-dozen mallards already starting to sweep left and drop toward the decoys.

Phil hit the call once or twice to make sure, but these ducks had already made up their minds.  One quick bank to catch the headwind just right, then straight in they came, wings locked.

“Take ‘em!” Phil said, and we did.  Three ducks down in the decoys, then one more down as they climbed overhead, and the last two kept going to circle big and high before heading down river to the refuge.

Phil sent Murphy, the big black Lab, to retrieve.  As he brought each duck back Murphy circled the blind once before depositing it in Phil’s hand, then on the final lap he paused briefly in front of the blind to shake an icy shower on his audience.  Dare laughed in delight at the comedy act.

I looked over at him. “Did you get a shot?”

“I started to but then I didn’t want to shoot someone else’s duck. How do you know which is which?”

“It’s kind of hard to tell when they all come in together like that.  You just shoot whichever duck you get on first. We’re all okay with doubling up if it happens.  You and I will stick to the ones on our side of the blind if they’re on one side or the other.

Phil passed the retrieved ducks down for Dare to put on game straps at the back of the blind.  I watched Dare handle each in turn, stroking the feathers smooth and extending a wing or a leg here and there to examine the patterns.

He looked up at me and held up a drake. “I really like how the green shines in the sun,” he said. “I could see the green heads when they flew in.”

“Yep.  Those are the ones to try for if you can.”

“Single coming in!” Phil called.

Dare popped back up and we watched the lone dot on the horizon grow larger. Phil and a couple of the others called, the duck turned for the decoys and we caught the glint of green from its head, a drake, dropping now to pass over the decoys in front from left to right.

“Your duck, Dare,” Phil said. “Take him!”

Dare rose, swung. At his shot the duck slowed, still flying. Dare shot again and the duck crumpled, tumbling just past the decoys to our right.  The blind erupted in cheers and Dare looked over at me, beaming.  He watched Murphy make the retrieve, replete with victory lap and shower-shake, then took the duck from Phil and held it up in the light.

“Thank you, Mr. Phil.  I really like this duck.”

Phil grinned. “You did great, Dare. Now better get down.”  He pointed toward the horizon with his call. “More ducks coming in!”

We stayed in the blind until everyone, Dare included, had a limit.  Some of the ducks were other species – a few gadwalls, a pintail or two, a lone canvasback that surprised us late in the morning, but the rest were all mallards, mostly drakes.  When we left the blind we made sure we got a picture of Dare standing in cornstalks and draped with everyone’s ducks.  He looked like he was wearing a duck-feathered ghillie suit.

That evening at sunset we sat together at duck camp a mile from the blind watching a huge black funnel of circling mallards drop eagerly into the flooded corn.  The morning was going to be fun.  I asked Dare what he thought of Mississippi River mallards so far.  He looked up at me.  “Well, I think I’m going to need a duck call before next year.”