I went hunting for the closing weekend of duck season with my hunting buddy Jesse. We've hunted everything together and had determined that we couldn't stop until we'd tried ducks too.
The last day of a so far duckless hunt had arrived and we were hunting in the early evening. It was time to make it or break it and the sky was fire orange with beautiful dark clouds and a good wind. Our decoys are out and we had "cammo'd" the aluminum boat with burlap and driven it into the reeds. Standing up we could only see 3 of the 14 decoys floating in front and to the left of us. I was using a teal / pintail whistle with no success. Which I suppose is understandable, because I've never heard a pintail or a teal, and I was trying to guess what they'd sound like. All we had to go on was the 3 sentence description of their call that came with the whistle: "Short trill, quick, quick." Yeah, whatever that means. I basically just blew on this little whistle in an attempt to sound like a bunch of ducks.
We'd been standing in the boat for over an hour when we finally heard an answer to my varied attempts at calls: "Quick, quick." Jesse and I made eye contact, a shocked look on our faces. Complete disbelief! Where we actually going to get a chance to call in some ducks?? I nodded to Jesse, calmed myself as best I could, and answered "Trill, quick, quick." The reply came immediately – and closer than before – "quick, quick."
We were almost shaking with excitement; standing with 12 gauges shouldered, fingers on the safety. Unable to take in more than shallow, rapid breaths, pulses racing. I squeeked out another "Quick, Quick" and from out of no where a small white bird flies around the tulles and lands right next to one of our large Pintail decoys! He never even saw us take action, but Jesse and I had both drawn a bead on his tiny neck and flipped off our safety's, his death a trigger pull away. But neither of us fired... because we simultaneously realized, "Hey, this isn't a duck! It's a white tern!" That slender little white bird only survived a massive hail of steel shot by about ½ of a second.
Oblivious to the 12 gauage shotguns still aimed at him, he swims cockily towards the large decoy, chirping at it with his little trill voice. As the innocent little bird got closer he must have realized the plastic duck he was making advances towards was not real, because he actually hopped 2 or 3 inches right out of the water straight up in the air out of surprise! I swear his eyes got wider as the puzzled look on his face was almost human. When he actually reached the duck and it bobbed in the water he almost jumped clean out of his feathers with fright! In an obvious state of confusion, he lifted off and flew about 10 yards away, again probing for the location of his new friend: "Quick, Quick." I wanted to reply back, just for the heck of it, but due to shock and high strung nerves I was unable to move. After a few more queries he flew away and we burst into fits of laughter and amazement. It wasn't a duck, but it was still an awesome experience to "call in" our first bird. And his reaction when he realized he was swimming over to a plastic duck was priceless.
We had to "Break our cover" because we couldn't stop laughing so we talked about the experience for next 5 minutes. Then we decided to start calling again and see what else we could draw in to our little set of decoys. We hadn't called-in any ducks, but we'd duped a tern, and couldn't imagine a duck being much smarter.
We had relaxed again and started to really enjoy the beautiful sunset when my eyes drifted to the south. It was almost as if a sixth sense directed my eyes towards something in the sky, very far away. At first I didn't know what I was staring at or why my eyes were focused to the south, when three tiny specks appeared on the horizon and then almost instantly formed into three flying ducks moving at high speed. I still can't believe how fast they were flying! It seemed as if they appeared from nowhere and then in the same moment were only 100 yards away. The call already to my lips, I managed to squeeze out a "Trill, Quick, Quick" to the best of my ability, and was instantly rewarded when they banked in perfect formation, descending from 60 feet above the reeds to a mere 8 or 9 feet above the water in a maneuver that would make the Blue Angels cream in their pants.
We had almost enough time to shoulder our firearms before the ducks were already strafing through our blind. Our decoys were to the left, and they were approaching from the right, into the wind, exactly the way we'd imagined it. It was almost too perfect. Three bright green heads, amazing blue-gray coloring on the wings, bright white chests and long black bills disappeared and reappeared between the reeds as they came screaming through the air.
And directly in front of us, also too perfectly, they put on their airbrakes and dropped their landing gear.
Without a word Jesse and I opened fire simultaneously as with one thought. It sounded like a single, extended gunshot, but was in reality the sound of 6 contiguous ignitions. The plastic and brass shells landed all round us. Blue smoke filled the air. The reeds bowed over, filled with hundreds of tiny holes. Our two magazines had emptied in one and a half seconds and we kept pulling the triggers even without any more shells!
Here's what had happened: as we truly were acting "of one thought" - It turns out we had both targeted the same lead duck, and evidently, we both hit him at the same time... Lemme tell ya - We blew the freaking crap out of that bird!!! There were a ton of feathers, and he made a sizeable high-speed splashdown. One dead duck.
The two others had tried to reverse their decent, I beaded down on the second bird and pulled the trigger. To my complete amazement I watched him kick on his afterburners and start to fly away! I pulled the trigger on an empty chamber and as I lowered my gun to reload, I was watching him lift back into the air. I couldn't help but think: "How in the world could I miss that shot? I know I hit him. I had too… I can hardly call myself a hunter after blowing a shot like that!" He continued to climb about 40 feet higher when his flapping began to slow, then stopped, and he spiraled back to the water striking with a solid splash, dead on arrival! Two Dead Ducks.
I didn't see what happened to the third duck – as he had passed behind some reeds, but evidently Jesse said he was able to scoot out the back of the pond, thereby evading our quickly reloaded firearms.
Our elation and relief at finally scoring these birds cannot be described. Jesse and I were ecstatic and continued to discuss and relive the experience while pulling in our decoys and motoring home in the dark with our two prized birds in the ice chest. Add to that a few shots of celabratory drink, an hour of weary cleaning and plucking, and you have the tale our first two ducks… two Spoonbills.
HERE'S THE MOST REWARDING PART. Time to eat them! We roasted one in the oven. The other we cut into strips, wrapped in bacon with a slice of jalapeno, coated in tangy BBQ sauce, marinated over night, and then grilled over mesquite charcoal. Oh we couldn't wait to dig in. Paired with garlic cheese mashed potatoes, fresh grilled asparagus, and we were going to be in heaven!
Do you know what SpoonBills taste like? Butt. Yes sir, I said booty-hole! The old bung dropper. Poop shoot. Turd pincher. Now, I've never eaten booty-hole before, but I do think that's pretty close to what those winged rats tasted like. Straight-up Butt,
.Oh well, it was still worthy of the experience! Next time we'll have to hold our shots for mallards and canvasbacks – or go ahead and shoot the Spoonies but turn the meat into jerky. That's right, Teriyaki, butt-flavored jerky.
Yuck!
i've never tasted duck butt before and i'm not planning to now. 