Maybe More

Last hunt of the season.  Public land, too.  We need go about 3/4 mile deep into the primevial hardwood forest in the pitch black dark of night, well ahead of other possible hunters.  Across: an undulating, Mississippi delta topography, wading waist deep cypress sloughs-deeper if you find a hole, and much colder if you stumble on the wrong submerged obstacle.

Crossing: oak-studded ridges to yet another brake.  Listening to the winter woods awaken: a beaver slapping his tail on the water just around the bend, raucously vocal barred owls sounding off their mating season, a few ducks flushing blindly out of our way, a buck's antlers clashing brush as he departs the thicket.

Decoys deployed, we wait.  Watching: silouettes of a few ducks trading, the stars fading, a pair of bluebirds feeding on mistletoe, two black labs exhaling frosty plumes of steam as they also search the brightening sky intently.

Then: a whir of wings, a splash of water as a pair of wood ducks land a few feet away, another pair darting through the tall snags.  Finally: shooting time arrives and a single shot fells the lone greenhead that came in hell-bent on landing in the small hole enshrouded with buck brush.

Other ducks trickle in.  The rest is history.  It beat a day at the office, or anywhere else for that matter, by 3/4 mile.  Maybe more.

Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com