Shortly before dawn one recent cold morning I met Scott Davis and John Lucas and their hunting companions Lucy and Holly. Lucy and Holly are not your ordinary hunting compadres, but they are jam up duck and dove retrievers second to none! I had witnessed their zeal and gusto on previous dove hunts but had yet to see them work a duck hunt. If we had ducks then surely we’d have a little action, but that was yet to be determined.

Donning waders, Davis, Lucas and I began wading towards our early morning ambush spot and duck slough. “When we first got this land we tried to trap all of the beavers out so we could deer hunt,” Lucas said. Now, however, the pair was looking more seriously into duck hunting and had even constructed a small water hole to hold water and ducks during the usually dry fall hunting season. You’ve got to have water to have ducks, it’s that simple. Add a few acorns, or duck food and you’ve got the makings of some mighty fine hunting.

Davis and Lucas had enjoyed a fine hunt the previous morning in flooded timber and had seen quite a few ducks making their manmade slough home. They’d hoped to have a good shoot this morning as well. It quickly became evident that something was different. The small creek had swollen overnight due to recent rains and was rising fast. In fact, the creek had flooded the entire swamp bottom, rendering their hotspot duck hole almost useless.

As the sky began to lighten, whistling wings and dark blurs whizzed by near the treetops and began landing in the acorn filled creek bottom just out of range. Shooting time finally came and ducks began to drop in from out of nowhere.



Quick arrival



Suddenly a group of mergansers buzzed in and crash landed before we could fire a shot. Seconds later the ducks took off and shotguns blazed. One duck peeled off to the left and Lucas knocked down his first bird of the day.

I zeroed in on a hooded merganser and promptly dispatched him as well. To my right Scott Davis followed up with a successful shot. Lucas motioned to Holly and she was off to the races retrieving a duck. Davis and his trusty black lab, Lucy, were already on their way to retrieve their own ducks.

With the recent flooding the water rose from knee deep to chest deep in some places. The higher water made it a tad harder, but Holly and Lucy tore out after the ducks with a zeal and fervor that was hard to mistake. They had come to retrieve and strut their stuff, and it showed.

Wood ducks continually dive bombed our position and flew by so fast that missing was sometimes easy. For me that is. Lucas and Davis are crack shots and proved that they were more than up to the task at hand.

Suddenly another flock of woodies appeared overhead from out of nowhere. I raised my shotgun and put the bead on a duck and squeezed off the trigger all in one motion. The colorful drake wood duck crumpled at the shot and crashed through the pine trees into the water.



He’s banded!



Lucas and Holly had just gotten back from yet another retrieve and Holly took off for my duck. As she got about halfway back to Lucas our day suddenly became even more special. “He’s got a band!” exclaimed Lucas. “Giles shot a banded wood duck!” Lucas spotted the band on the duck before Holly even finished her retrieve.

As Lucas handed the beautiful multicolored wood duck to me, I marveled at the brilliant colors on the drake and wondered where he had come from. How far he had traveled I didn’t know.

Lucas told me that he’d taken banded ducks released in Maryland and I was determined to find out as soon as possible where my duck had come from. Arriving back at the house I called the number on the band and gave them my numbers and statistics. The lady told me that the duck had been banded on August 30, 2009 in East Prairie, Missouri and that the duck was born in 2009.

There’s nothing quite as exciting as an action packed duck hunt with plenty of ducks, great guides and good friends and crackerjack retrievers!



Contact Mike Giles at 601-917-3898

or e-mail him at Giles1958@bellsouth.net