A New Tradition

Nothing tops what was the beginning of a new Thanksgiving tradition for our family: duck camp.  It began one morning in October when, completely out of nowhere and to my utter surprise, my wife announced after fourteen years that she'd like to go duck hunting during the pending season. She clarified further: I don't really want to duck hunt; I just want to see what it's all about since it's such a big part of y'alls life. I gladly obliged.

With the exceptions of photographs and detailed hunting stories, which I can only suppose she listens to less than intently, her exposure to waterfowling consists entirely of hunting programs that are occasionally viewed at home. She later commented that she really had no idea that ducks actually got so close - boys, those little green-winged devils that came in at daylight were right in her face - or that Delta could possibly be as still and quiet (because like a good retriever, she remained intently focused during the entire hunt). First hunt for the girls. Forrest killed his first greenhead and his first full limit of ducks.  It was Duncan's first rice field hunt, and he killed his first green-winged teal (several) and first shoveler. The first morning was easy. We hunted a pit blind that is easily accessed by a wide, hard-packed rice field levee. You could practically roll a wheel chair to the blind. The second morning was also memorable, but more so for the walk in than for the numerous waterfowl we enjoyed. The hunt required an easy quarter-mile walk down a grassed turnrow, and then about a quarter miles walk across a shallow-flooded bean field. With a standard amount of gumbo mud beneath the water.

The strategy for keeping the children dry on the walk to the blind was simple: I'd walk ahead with the boys, put them and equipment in the blind and return to help the girls. When I got to the blind, the youngest son said, Mom is yelling to you, Dad.  I stop and listened carefully. I could hear the shouts but couldn't quite make it out above the wind.  I asked what she was saying. He replied, you told me not to say those words! Turns out, her first experience with real gumbo mud - wearing waders a full size too big - made for difficult walking while assisting a 4 year-old little girl. In th pitch black darkness. Dad to the rescue. Everyone remained safe, happy, dry the entire weekend. The ducks cooperated wonderfully. I was truly and most humbly thankful.

Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com

Hunt Report: Argentina and Uruguay

Never thought I'd say it, let alone admit it, but I shot out while hosting groups of guests. Wore down to a nub. My trigger finger anyways.

One of the best trips ever.  Volume doves and ducks. A perdiz hunt or two mixed in for good measure.  Travelled 15,600 airmiles, through a dozen connections, 3 foreign countries, several estancias in Argentina and Uruguay. Highlights: seven hunters averaged 43.5 patos per man per hunt. On 3 memorable hunts, clients averaged well over 50% hits with 5 boxes each of shotshells. Five hunters averaged 328 dove per hunt; two hunters, with an increased tolerance to 20-gauge recoil, shot over half the 5-hunt take. Shot over 74% one morning in a hunt I'll never forget. It's like: you've had plenty but "ain't no" way you're passing up the opportunity. I'm sure there are some that will disagree. And yet I hurt more from laughing and from eating than from shooting.

Favorites: steaks 3 inches thick, cooked medium rare and preceded by platters of blood sausage, goat, beef and pork; Maltagliati alla Bolognese or Pappardelle with Mushrooms (cream, dried mushrooms, chanterelles, mushrooms and portobellos); dove enchiladas, dove breasts over cous cous and, believe it or not, chocolate. Red wines - Tannats, Malbecs, Carbernets, Merlots.  Two glasses at lunch, perfect for pre-siesta; more following the afternoon hunt, during dinner and into the night. Watching tango in a smokey bar room located downtown Buenos Aires, a city of 17 million souls in which the dance originated; rheas trotting across the pastures dotted with palm trees, muskrats scurrying across the headlights on the way to the rice field, southern screamers (birds, not tango dancers) topping every palm tree in the fading moments of daylight, shooting stars as seen where the nearest streetlight is 20, maybe 30 kilometers distant; the fluted murmer of corscoroba swans before dusk, the shrill screams of lapwings at dawn.

Long, twisting, turning columns of doves for as far as the eye can see, the sounds a million doves roosted in the thorny scrub a short distance below your position, hawks and eagles swooping down, foxes bolting across the field, beating bird boys to the easy meals of dove that gunfire means. Typical Uruguay duck hunting set up: 1/10- to 1/2-acre of water, a sack of decoys.

Moved about half the decoys one afternoon and the rosy-bills responded perfectly. They locked up, sailed dead into the gap in front of the right-most gun, hung a 90 degree and came the next gun and then, finally, me. The teal passed between the blinds and the decoys, running the same firing line. It was all she wrote; the guide struggled under the weight of the strap on the way back to the truck.

The morning with an old college professor I've shared a blind with for nearly 15 years (heck yeah I got an A in that class), and I hunted a pothole in a rice field I'd hunted the first day when the ducks had streaked in from the east: we stood across the pond facing the blood-red easterly sky and were shot out of shells, 100 each, before the sun had quite made it fully above the horizon. I was the best hunt we've ever shared. Actually, I ran out a few minutes before he did.  I offered encouragement during his few remaining shots (sort of like a catcher talking trash to a batter).

Five ringed teal darting over the blind from outta nowhere, the young doctor and I shot 5 for five in a very brief, 20-yard distance of opportunity. It was one of those rare instances that, miraculously, neither hunter shot at the same bird.

The left-handed banker and myself, right handed, situated in separate dove blinds such that one particular flight path perfectly suited both of our "perfect shooting angles". We laughed and cussed, tried to beat the other to the punch, fell our birds onto the other's stand. One client shot his first-ever 30 doves the first morning (in about 15 boxes of shells), and finished his last hunt with exactly 1000 doves (and a much improved shooting average).

There's that groove you fall into when it's just clicking real fast and you find yourself instinctively, intuitively, searching the incoming flight first for that 2 (or maybe even 3)-for-1 shot - when one or two birds start sliding past a slower one - before moving through the remaining birds and taking it to the plug, handing off the unloaded for the loaded gun, and picking up that arc of swing where you last ended.  Repeat. Definitely repeat.


Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com

Cordoba Dove Hunting

The Cordoba dove hunting tradition is much different than what we in the US are accustomed. You've likely heard about it, or seen it on TV, but it's far more easily experienced than accurately described. Experience is the only way you'll every really understand it. The hillsides are covered with relatively low brush, ten or so feet tall. Thorny, gnarled acacias were all I recognized. Dove take flight from nearly every bush as your drive along the dusty, winding senderos. Openings planted to milo or sunflowers.  The eared dove. At a glance the look similar to our mourning dove, but are maybe about 25% or so smaller. Adult males have mainly olive-brown upper plumage, with black spots on the wings. The head has a grey crown, black line behind the eye, and the blue-black on the lower ear coverts. These black markings give the species its English and specific name. The female is duller than the male, and immatures are grayish-brown, very dull, and have pale barring. Eared doves feed mainly on seed. They can be agricultural pests. This is a gregarious bird when not feeding, and forms flocks especially at migrations time or at communal roosts. We're talking millions of doves, not mere thousands.

Boy’s First Limit: Sandhill Cranes

Have shot many sandhill cranes over the years but usually while set up for geese or ducks. It's been my experience that sandhills are extremely wary and generally require tall shooting unless the hunters are perfectly concealed. I've heard that some crane hunters prefer to shoot small buck shot (lead shot is legal for sandhill cranes). My outfitting partner assured me that tall shots would be the exception if I would just make the long drive to west Texas, saying he really wanted to help Forrest get his first crane.

We arrived to the hunt location, a field adjacent to one of the gazillion playa lakes that dot the west Texas landscape, about 2 hours before shooting time, brushed our blinds (low profile Power Hunters for them, a Finisher for me and Delta), deployed the crane silos and enjoyed shooting stars; the eerily beautiful sound that only a thousand-plus sandhills roosting about 1/4 miles upwind can make. We practiced throwing back the Power Hunter lid and shouldering his 20 guage a few times with Forrest. Even in the dark he began to look like a seasoned pro!

On cue, a pair of sandhills glided silently into the decoys at precisely 6:47. A lone shot from Forrest's 20 gauge cleanly folded the bird on the right and I picked off the retreating bird on the left. Forrest had his first sandhill crane within the first few legal minutes of the hunt! Hungry flocks of sandhills picked up off the roost and departed in all directions for distant fields including the wheat field near which we were hidden. Their distinct calling soon surrounded us.

Within the next half hour, we repeatedly enjoyed the sight of decoying sandhills. So close were the shots, hevi-shot 6's and 20 gauge steel 2's were ample. We yielded first shots to Forrest. I especially enjoyed watching my 8 year-old son picking his shots and accomplishing his first wingshooting limit. It is something I will never forget. The last bird of the morning was Forrest's and it sailed into some tall grass in the roost pond. Not wanting to send Delta after a live bird we glassed the grass for the crane's head for quite awhile. Convinced it was dead, I gave her a line down wind of our mark. Turns out it was alive (the only live one of the morning). Luckily it was a juvenile and Delta was able to quickly subdue it.

You other Dads know what I'm talking about: there's no better feeling like watching your young hunter hoist his first honest-to-God limit ever plucked from the air...

The second morning we setup about one mile west where fields of harvest milo, harvested beans and winter wheat converged. Sandhills had been in each of the fields thick the previous day.

The hunt was a repeat of the first morning, but with only 2 juvenile birds downed. Done by 8 o'clock, my favorite part was just watching Forrest putting it all together. It was brisk, with about a 25 mph wind out of the north, but the boy just won't wear a coat because it impedes his shooting. That's my boy!

Ramsey Russell, GetDucks.com

Trip Report: Muchos Patos, Muchas Memorias en Uruguay

Bordered by Argentina, Brazil and the Atlantic Ocean, Uruguay has a population similar to that of Mississippi (about 3.5 million) Half lives in capitol Montevideo, where Rio de la Plata (named The River of Silver, because of the way it appears as sunlight reflects on its surface) exits into the Atlantic. It is a rich culture primarily influenced by Spain and Italy. An ally in WWII, there is a sunken German warship just offshore. It has an old country, European feel that imbibes tradition, culture. The city of Montevideo is built along an expansive beach that, for me anyway, defines this beautiful city. It's among the largest city-front beach in the world.

Imagine an expansive vista of grassland, no native trees (except for the ombu). It all looks vaguely familiar; is reminiscent of U.S. areas I have visited: the Dakotas, parts of Texas maybe. There are palm trees growing almost everywhere down right invasive and law, I was told, forbids their being cut. For all the grassland, there are no native ungulates, like deer. Instead there are rhea, huge ostrich-like birds that graze, and livestock. The seasons are the complete opposite of ours; it is seasonally February-like down there while we swelter up here during August. But Uruguayan winter temperatures are similar to coastal Louisiana, with daytime highs often in the low- to mid-60's (F). Pack your lightweight breathable waders for duck hunting.

Rice farming south of the equator appears to be very much like I would imagine rice farming to have been in the Carolinas a century or more ago. No wells, no crop rotation, little equipment and lots of manpower; a system of plugged ditches to get water on and unplugged ditches to get the water off. No government subsidies, no cost-share, no incentives, just hard work and common sense. Cash crops include rice, beef, wool, and fur (primarily nutria) - as well as waterfowl, pigeon, dove (which can be as good as the fabled Cordoba, Argentina, region) and perdiz. Gaucho are the authentic Uruguayan equivalent of an ATV: one came along as we were picking up decoys. Check out that simple, hand-made bridle, and rope reins. Our guide, Emmanuel, handed up a bag of decoys, which the young horse did not care for too much for and reared high-ho-silver-style on his back legs, which made the decoys bang around all the more. The gaucho never said a word, his calm expression never changed. He simply held the reins lightly in one hand, the decoy bag in the other and let the horse settle down (or get used to the sound of a sack full of GHG decoys banging on its haunches). He sat so smoothly in the saddle the entire time that the ashes never fell from of the hand- rolled smoke parked in the corner of his mouth. The Marlboro Man couldn't carry this fella's hat. He wanted a few ducks and we gave him several heavy straps. He told us the next day that every one has been eaten by the ranch hands for dinner that night.

Uruguay duck hunting is fabulous. Principle species include Brazilian ducks, rosey-billed pochards, speckled and silver teal, yellow-billed pintail, white-faced tree ducks. Peak hunting dates are typically June through mid-August. For those that have been hunting in Argentina and are looking for new scenery, Uruguay is the perfect venue; for hunters looking to enjoy a full itinerary of mixed bag shooting for waterfowl hunts over decoys in the morning, followed by a traditional asado for lunch, followed by high-volume dove, perdiz on point or decoying pigeon hunts, Uruguay is a must-do destination.

Duck hunts are typically conducted over well-maintained bait stations on small, natural water holes and sloughs. One afternoon, however, ducks were found pouring into a low-lying swag in the middle of a rice field after torrential rainfall. We made an impromptu blind near the new water and enjoyed some of the most fast-paced duck hunting two hunters might ever expect. As the sun began to set, I grew uncharacteristically weary from the preceding days of shooting and swapped shotgun for camera. Capturing Gene shooting a Brazilian teal at dusk, with the shotshell for the trip ejecting, provided a perfect ending to yet another epic hunt.

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Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com