The stars aligned for an unforgettable end to the waterfowl season in my corner of Kentucky. My 11-year-old son, Anse, was home from school because the county roads were too icy and treacherous for the bus. I knew the ducks would be concentrated on remaining open water, so we bundled up and went hunting. With me at his side, Anse shot an enviable mixed bag of birds over the course of several days, including greenheads, gadwalls, wigeon, goldeneyes, and bluebills. But it was a hen bufflehead, tiny and drab, that he shot on the last day that excited him the most.
My boy is peculiar when it comes to his ducks. As a kindergartner, he would sit cross-legged on the floor with copies of this very magazine, naming the birds that he could identify in the Marsh Watch column. By age seven, he could expound on the courtship behaviors of the ruddy duck (even if he wasn’t sure what “courtship” meant) and on the preferred habitat of the smew (a Eurasian species). Even before he was big enough to go duck hunting himself, he wanted to save every wing, curl, and sprig from every duck that I brought home.
And then, as youngsters do, he got older. He tagged along with me a few times to jump-shoot stock ponds in Texas, but his first real duck hunt over decoys was on a public-water mudflat here in Kentucky. My wife and I agreed back then that Anse was still too little to be out on the river in a boat in December, but we could walk in to this spot, and I’d found a few ducks using it while I was scouting. Anse wore coveralls and knee boots, and my buddy Tim and I passed him between us as we crossed ditches and beaver runs by the light of our headlamps.
Finally, we settled into some buckbrush with a small spread in front of us. It was a clear morning, the sort that allows you to see ducks 15 minutes before legal light, and they were on the move. The predawn was a show of silhouettes, whistles, and thumping wings, and in the final minute before shooting light, a drake gadwall splashed into the decoys with a contented meep.
Anse begged to shoot with his single-shot .410. “One more minute, buddy,” I whispered, eyeing the clock on my phone while trying to conceal the light from the screen. “We have to follow the rules.” The gadwall began paddling toward open water, leaving the unmistakable V of a duck that’s concerned but not entirely spooked. I glanced at the phone again, and it was finally time.
“Shoulder it up good, and put the bead right on his head,” I whispered. I wasn’t worried about the kid’s shooting, as he’d had plenty of practice in the squirrel woods. I heard the metallic click of the hammer, and the gadwall must have too. As the bird flushed, the gun popped, and a tiny payload of Hevi-Shot number 7s plopped it right back into the mud.
After a quick retrieve, I dropped the duck into Anse’s lap and reminded him to reload, because more ducks were coming. His smile was one of pure, almost maniacal joy. I snapped a photo of him, and I’m so glad I did. Such moments are fleeting, and once they are gone, you never get them back. We shot six more ducks that morning, and Anse hauled them out on the strap, jumping across beaver runs and ditches and getting his coveralls soaked and muddy, but not caring about it a bit.
After a successful hunt on our first snow day last season, we hunted several days without firing a shot. I thought it might burn Anse out, but it only seemed to make the fire burn hotter. I took him scouting with me and taught him how to focus the binoculars and plan for the wind. We rigged decoys and cut brush and organized blind bags.
Perhaps it was due to all the years Anse had already spent learning about ducks, but he fundamentally understood that the waterfowl game is different than hunting the deer, turkeys, and squirrels that live closer to home. Ducks travel a long way to get here, and “here” is but a brief stop on their journey. Shooting ducks always requires hard work, but hard work doesn’t guarantee success. The memories of good hunts, and the promise of what can happen, keep you going when ducks are scarce.
The tiny bufflehead set its wings and rocked a bit on the wind as it sailed into the decoys. Anse shouldered his 20-gauge without hesitation and folded it with a single shot. He’d be spending his own money, he declared immediately, to have that duck mounted as part of a pair, alongside the gaudy drake bufflehead that he’d shot earlier in the season and put in the freezer.
“Did you know that buffleheads nest in dead trees just like wood ducks?” he asked me as he cradled the tiny bird in his cold, red hands. “I think it’s so cool that they end up all the way down here.” I agree. Buffleheads are cool. Then I told him to put his gloves on.
My kid is peculiar when it comes to his ducks, and that’s a good thing. All of the best duck hunters I know are peculiar too.
