Stiff Wind, Stiff Tail

The last hunt of  the season was
yesterday.  I had to solo hunt since
my buddy was hunting in Texas.

I got up at 0200 and checked the
weather.  It was 50 degrees instead
of the forecast 44.  At 50, I haven't
needed a jacket, but I took one any-
way.  Better to be safe than sorry and
the wind was forecast 10-12 mph
with 20 mph gusts.  I thought there
might be some wind chill on the
marsh.

I got to the ramp at 0400 and it
was noticeably cooler than at the
house.  I was glad for the jacket.

Getting the kayak to the water
was an ordeal.  I couldn't get
the boat on the cart correctly,
but it worked well enough to
get down the hill and across
the levee.  Unfortunately,
when I unstrapped the boat,
I found that one of the
supporting arms had cracked.
Hauling it back up at the end
of the hunt would be by brute
force, but that was for later:  I
needed to get out to paddling.

With no GPS and no stars in
the sky, I had to navigate by
picking a cell tower in the east
and paddling towards that.

I tried several of the small
floating islands that I came
across, but none of them would
work:  no cover, no hydrilla, too
close to other hunters.  I paddled
east quite aways before I turned
back west and finally found a spot.

By now, the wind had really picked
up.  Since my dousing a few weeks
back, I was nervous trying to paddle
around, tow the sled and toss out
the dekes.  Nonetheless, I managed it.
One thing that made it easier was that
I only brought 5 ringer decoys and 12
coot decoys.  Still, I could only toss
one or two out at a time before I had
to paddle back into the NW wind
and start over. 

I decided to camo up on the west side
of the island in some low dollar weed
type stuff.  It took 4 or 5 tries to get the
boat angled right.  Much to my surprise
I found that all of my palmetto fans
had blown out of the sled and were
nowhere to be found.  I'd even managed
to lose the coot decoy bag.  I was fairly
exposed, but that's the way it had to
be.

I had an hour and a half to sit and wait
for 06:42 and shooting time.  Without
Mike to talk to, I was pretty bored. On
top of that small waves would slap
the back of the boat and jar my
memories of tipping over.  Also, I
was fairly cold in the wind that
had to be well over the forecast.

I had one distressing moment after
I was set up.  I looked in front and
saw the black mass of another island
right in front of me.  It would cut
me off from any birds flying in.
I looked and looked at it and it seemed
to be moving toward the wind.
I eventually figured out that it was
several hundred coots wadded
together.  And they did cut me
off all day.

When shooting time did come,
there wasn't much action from the
north side of the 4000 acre marsh.
That's where most folks hunt closer
to the bank and under more cover.
I feel like they spend a lot of time
"skybusting" and unable to get
the vistas that hunting farther out
gives me. 

By 0800, I hadn't fired a shot
because there were no ducks
near me.  There were no ducks
anywhere.  I looked to my left and
saw a duck swimming into my spread.
I wasn't going to waste the oppor-
tunity and shot it on the water.
I quickly pulled in my camo netting
and paddled over to it before the
wind blew it too far away.  Small
duck of a kind I didn't recognize
right away.  Turns out it was a
hen ruddy duck.  It is in the
family of stiff tailed ducks
because it will swim with its
tail feathers pointing up like
a sail.

Sometime later, I saw two ducks
flying low towards the island from
the east.  Instead of flying over
the decoys, they flew behind the
island.  I turned my body as hard
as I could and nailed a drake blue
wing teal with a tough over the
shoulder shot. Normal targeting
is from 10-12 o'clock out the
front of the boat. 

A new species!

Finally, the ringers started flying,
but they wanted nothing to do
with my small spread of decoys.
All day long, I'd watch birds look
at my dekes and then turn to
join their buddies swimming with
hundreds of coots.   Way to the south
I could see hundreds of ducks
milling around and not even
flying up our way.  There's no
cover down there and paddling
that far is out of the question.

I didn't even wait for the 10 o'clock
duck.  At 0945, I unloaded the gun
and went to get my decoys.  I'd found
my decoy bag during one of the
retrieves, so that wasn't a loss.

Paddling back was an ordeal
because it was straight into
the wind.  But I ended the day
on the plus side - in fact - I
did better than anyone else I
talked to at the ramp.  One young
man was good enough to help
me tote the kayak up the hill to
my truck.  He kept a pretty fast
pace up and I was huffing and
puffing when we got done.

Here endeth the season.