Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 16, 1994 TAG: 9401160089
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: E11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Most of the small ponds are frozen over, and this has sent ducks to either big water or flowing water. During a scouting trip we'd spotted several mallards using the river, the winter sun reflecting on the iridescent green heads of the drakes.
I must admit I haven't been a very faithful duck hunter recently. For a number of reasons:
Steel shot. Low limits. Competition from other hunters. No longer a retriever in my kennel. A greater desire to spend an early morning under a goose-down comforter rather than plucking down with hands raw from the cold.
I blame most of my apathy on the ducks and their steady decline as drought and the manifestations of civilization have destroyed or degraded thousands of acres of nesting and resting wetlands. You could say they have enough problems without me trying to ambush them.
You could say that, but I don't. Not around my hunting partner, anyway, who is less than half my age.
There is little more annoying than to hear someone gloat over the "good old days."
My "good old days" were in the 1970s, and I didn't want endless talk then of the '50s, and had I been hunting ducks in the '50s I wouldn't have wanted laborious descriptions of what it was like in the '30s. Not in a duck blind, anyway.
Situations do change, but the flight of a duck is timeless, no matter the year or the limit or the cost of a box of shells. So is the joy of just being there on a river bank, in the cold, with decoys bobbing on the water, a choice companion to share the danger and drama, a chance that a duck or two will come winging across the trackless sky. A young sportsman should experience this.
As I savored it from my snowbank seat, I realized what I'd been missing. Maybe any day watching for ducks is a good old day.
We heard the raspy voice of mallards downstream from us, then quickly a flock was heading upstream, showing no indications of decoying. My partner and I glanced at one another, then back at the ducks, telling each other with body language that we'd better take a crack at them while we had the chance.
A lone drake earlier had been dropped from the sky, its unwavering upstream flight deviating not a wing beat when it saw the decoys. Only a flock of unwanted mergansers had passed overhead, banked sharply and splashed into the decoys.
We pondered why the mallards all were heading upstream, showing no interest in our decoys.
Duck hunting is like that, a time of wondering, watching and waiting while the rawest kind of weather beckons you to give up.
In time, we did leave, driving upstream to see if we could pinpoint the destination of the ducks we'd seen fly over. We traced the river for several hundred yards, finding an old man walking up the stream-side road carrying a plastic bucket.
When we waved to him, we noticed that the water beyond him was alive with ducks.
"He's been feeding them," my partner said.
The same mallards that had winged by us wild as foxes now frolicked in the water and waddled on the bank as docile as fowl in a petting zoo.
For them, at least, it was the golden days.
by CNB