Oh, before I forget, the day that we had the gwteal shoot, I have to tell you a little about the conditions that day. We had cloud cover, spitting rain/mist, but we still had a good south wind. On this particular zero grade rice field, the ducks do crazy things. They like to land with the wind, on the wrong end of the field, etc.
Well, there were plenty of bootlips and teal in the area, and we were having problems getting mallards and pins in. We shot a few gadwall, but still, the big ducks didn't want to play. Anyway, we moved the bench around and faced north because of the s wind and rain. The dadgum ducks wanted to land on the south side of the pit, so we had to turn around and face south. It worked for the most part, except my glasses stay boogered up, and between that and my nasty dog shaking off on me, I don't see exactly 20/20.
I told you that story to tell you this. We are all buried up in this pit with our heads down, trying to stay hid from the big ducks. I look over my right shoulder and see a drake spoonie flying right at the pit, 5 feet off the deck. I don't say anything because we have a few in our crew that can't lay off of them. It flies over my left shoulder and on out to about 30 yards. Now this here spoon is getting with it and is acting like one of those diver types we have on our reservoirs over here. Then, I realize its a wedge head, full plumage, bull canvasback. I was tore up for about 30 minutes. If I had recognized it in time, I could have cut him in half, but I was in disbelief for a split second, and the opportunity was gone. How coold would that have been to kill a big can in a nasty zero grade rice field?!
Ok, back to Monday morning. Without a doubt the worst conditions of the season. Some of that MS fog rolled into Arkansas, no wind, and cloud cover. Me and a fella headed to our hottest pit and decided to give her a whirl. He brought his young dog, and I brought mine. It was a breaking, whining, nightmare. The AR state bird, the mosquito, was out in full force. Anyway, despite the lack of killin weather, we started whittling on our limit. I'm not much of a caller, and I damn shure can't call a goose, but the fog made me feel like I knew what I was doing for a minute. Called in a bunch of 3 lost snows and Scotch doubled, and rolled a big eagle head. Harry's dog gets to retrieve his first goose, and I get a few pics of it.
It was a mud fest there in the pit. Everything I own, including the dog, is covered in the nicest smelling gumbo in the county. I look over at my boy, and start to laugh. I have to get a picture of his nasty booty.
We had 7 mallards, 2 pintails, a gadwall and gwt in the bag, plus four snows and blues. We needed one mallard and we were headed for the car wash. Well, a hen mallard and a hen gadwall started circling our dead spread of decoys. Those ducks worked for at least a couple minutes until a big drake mallard joined up with them. I told Harry, when we get a shot we better take it. He calls the shot, shoots once, misses, and says 'I'm jammed, KILL IT!' So, I do manage to knock it down on the second shot.
