Bill Burkett
Active member
It is a real pleasure to read all the opening-day hunts and adventures as they show up here, since I am more or less "on the beach"this year with little prospect of getting out. Maybe I can repay this enjoyment with snippets from my duck-hunting memoir, since comments have been mostly favorable about my previous posts. So here's my very first encounter with ducks in the wild...
We were standing in a clearing when a big flight of ducks swooshed over, so close their wing beats were loud in the hush of the squirrel woods.
“Ducks!” Cricket shouted, so surprised he didn’t even raise his gun.
I got off one shot—I had gunfighter reflexes at age sixteen—but I missed. My pulse was hammering; it was the first time I ever had a chance at ducks.
Cricket recovered his equilibrium first, like the seasoned woodsman he was. Okay, he said professionally—those were wood ducks. We’re under a wood duck flyway. More will be here any minute. We need to hide.
He positioned me near a tree trunk on the edge of the clearing, and moved off a ways. We waited. And waited. My eyes seemed to be starting out of my head like some cartoon character, trying to invent more ducks above the clearing. There! Over the far trees I saw wings. But as they cleared the oaks they veered left and I lost them. Then another flock came right behind that one. Again, they arced out of sight instead of crossing the clearing. There were more behind that bunch, and they did the same thing. What the…?
Cricket came stomping back. “Something’s spooking them…” he broke off and started cussing me out.
He hadn’t told me to hide behind the tree, I said.
Any idiot should have known that, he spluttered.
I had been standing in plain view so I could see to shoot, wearing my dove-gray school coat—only warm coat I owned—and my grandfather’s maroon corduroy fedora. Cricket proceeded to give me my first duck-hunting lesson, at the top of his voice, about the superior eyesight of waterfowl...
We were standing in a clearing when a big flight of ducks swooshed over, so close their wing beats were loud in the hush of the squirrel woods.
“Ducks!” Cricket shouted, so surprised he didn’t even raise his gun.
I got off one shot—I had gunfighter reflexes at age sixteen—but I missed. My pulse was hammering; it was the first time I ever had a chance at ducks.
Cricket recovered his equilibrium first, like the seasoned woodsman he was. Okay, he said professionally—those were wood ducks. We’re under a wood duck flyway. More will be here any minute. We need to hide.
He positioned me near a tree trunk on the edge of the clearing, and moved off a ways. We waited. And waited. My eyes seemed to be starting out of my head like some cartoon character, trying to invent more ducks above the clearing. There! Over the far trees I saw wings. But as they cleared the oaks they veered left and I lost them. Then another flock came right behind that one. Again, they arced out of sight instead of crossing the clearing. There were more behind that bunch, and they did the same thing. What the…?
Cricket came stomping back. “Something’s spooking them…” he broke off and started cussing me out.
He hadn’t told me to hide behind the tree, I said.
Any idiot should have known that, he spluttered.
I had been standing in plain view so I could see to shoot, wearing my dove-gray school coat—only warm coat I owned—and my grandfather’s maroon corduroy fedora. Cricket proceeded to give me my first duck-hunting lesson, at the top of his voice, about the superior eyesight of waterfowl...
