“What do you mean you can’t go?” I quizzed my usual hunting partner John on the phone. “I know you’re supposed to leave tomorrow for Ohio, but can’t you wait till we get back from Madison?” I knew the answer long before the question even formed in my head. “Of course, I’m kidding. Drive safe. …. yes, I am going without you…. yes, I know it will be 14 degrees. They say the winds will be blowing hard too… I’ll be safe. Talk to you later.” That was that. I was going to brave the cold and wind with my yellow lab, Drake, and we would be hunting a small farm pond about an hour east-southeast from my house. The winds would be the only reason the pond wasn’t frozen solid and the fact that it sat deep into a hole in the woods would be the only reason it was remotely bearable in those winds. The truck was loaded with one thing left to do. I went out and grabbed my waders and brought them inside so I didn’t have to put my feet in waders that were 14 degrees.
I didn’t sleep well knowing the birds on the nearby reservoir would be looking for places exactly like my little honey hole in the woods the next morning, as long as the wind through the night could keep it from freezing solid. I could see them in my head pouring over the tree tops, zipping in by the dozens. The alarm went off at 4:00 am and I thought I had just gone to sleep a few minutes earlier.
The inky black sky revealed no stars on the drive. Usually in GA, by the time the wind and cold blows in, the skies are clear and you feel like you can see all the way to Heaven’s floorboards. I love the stars on mornings like that. This morning was real winter. The sun would strain to even make enough light to call it daytime through the thick winter clouds. The winds would howl all day and they were calling for snow by evening. Guy Sharp, the local weatherman, was telling tall tales of twenty-five mile-an-hour sustained winds with gusts up to thirty-five and temps like we rarely ever see here in the Southeast. The gusts moved the truck as I made my way down I-20 toward my exit outside of Madison. I would exit and try to decide if I needed anything from the convenience store that always seemed open. I had my coffee in a thermos already made, a few honey buns stashed into my jacket with a star crunch too. I was set, so I skipped the store and turned south on 441. About 15 miles down the road I saw the faint light from the Bruce’s house perched out in the middle of the pasture. Mr Bruce was a dairy farmer who had a few ponds he let us hunt. His wife occasionally had fresh, unpasteurized milk for us to drink after the hunt if we wanted it. I turned into the driveway and rattled across the cattle gate. There wasn’t a hint of light on the eastern horizon as I crept past the house with my headlights turned off. 300 yards of cow pasture led to the edge of a hardwood ridge where we would park. The wind nearly took my door off coming from the west as I opened it. The cold filled the truck with a vengeance expelling every thought of warmth in a split second. It took my breath and I had to hold my hat to keep from losing it. I quickly grabbed a few decoys, my gear bag, a stool, and my shotgun. I popped the door on the covered dog kennel and could feel the warmth from inside. “Amazing,” I thought to myself. Drake was whining with excitement as I petted his head and told him to “heal”.
We headed straight down the hill into the woods. The trail I knew without light but I flicked on my light for good measure. About 75 yards, slanting down and across the hill, I came to the place I would set up. I could see from the little light the sky was offering, that the water was whipped and churned. If there was any ice, it would be in the shallow end to my right. Drake and I would be setting up near the dam to the left where the high bank behind me would offer the slightest resistance to the icy wind. It wasn’t my usual place to set up but in this weather, it was about the only place that facilitated a decent duck hunt. I plopped 3 decoys to my right side and 5 on the left. That would be more than enough on a morning like this. Immediately I realized one of the dekes on the left had been tossed too far and its weight wasn’t touching the bottom well enough. The drift was on and I knew it would have to be retrieved from the other side of the pond. In the dark, it was out of sight in no time. “This is crazy,” I thought. “What fool does this?” The rational dude that lives in my head had showed up. This was not the time or place for him. The duck hunter threatened to shove him into the water. “I do! And, I love it!” exclaimed my duck-hunter personality. “Yeah, what he said,” my regular ole Tim side agreed. Mr. Rational Thinker had been outvoted and sat down. Drake and I nestled down into a blown-down treetop that had been there for years. There was no real escaping the wind blowing down the hill from behind us but it was nice to be down behind the big tree trunk and huge limbs. We could see the whole lower end of the pond from up on the hill like that and we could pretend it was warmer than any other God-forsaken, wind-blown spot on that pond. We hunkered down together and the dog actually seemed like he snuggled close to me. I didn’t need the stool so I sat on the ground partially hidden by the limbs. I checked the watch and had 20 minutes until shooting light. That was a long, cold 20 minutes.
Mr. Burns had it right. The cold wind blew hard and steady and would occasionally make sure you had everything tied down well. As the sun began to lighten the skies with a pale, blueish hue, the clouds skimmed overhead seemingly just above the treetops. I knew shooting light was upon me when the first few wood ducks skirted the far edge of the pond and made an emergency landing to my right at the shallow end, well out of range. The surface was covered in tiny whitecaps as they swam toward the high bank I sat on that was more protected from the wind. I knew I didn’t want those live ducks sitting down there. There’s no real competition for my plastic fakes bobbing on this choppy water like real ducks swimming about at the other end of the pond. I could see the incredible colors of the drakes as they followed the little brown hen as she sought cover. A tiny volley of sleet lit up the water’s surface and pelted me in the back. I heard it tapping my canvas hooded jacket. It was a reminder of just how incredible it was to be here at a moment like this. Weather like this, for millennia, has chased human folk into their shelters, to warm themselves by a fire and peer out from their protection. It is a waterfowler’s dreamland. It was idyllic to watch them swim along and feel the wind and sleet on my back. A moment in time reserved for nature shared with a human crazy enough to be there. Reality snapped me back from my nostalgia. I would likely never get a shot at those three so, I stood up and waved my hands frantically. They were up and into the wind and over the far side tree tops with little effort. It was poetry in motion as they rose in formation, banked into the gusts, and were gone in a second.
Moments later my peripheral alarms went off and to my left, a pair of ducks appeared from behind me. With a tailwind of twenty miles per hour, they were way out of reach in the blink of an eye. I hit my mallard call with a loud hail call and the two responded by turning hard right and paralleled the opposite bank about 75 yards downwind. I waited a few seconds and called again. They turned into the wind and set their wings for a moment. Their flight seemed labored as they acted like they wanted to check out our little spot. I sat still and peered out from under the oilskin bill of my wool cap. My senses were peeked as were the attentions of my trusty hunting partner. His eyes were locked on the birds as they came straight at us but in slow motion. It was a strange feeling for me. They usually get into range much quicker but the winds were buffeting their efforts with fury. My mind wandered. Was I hidden well enough for this kind of lengthy exposure to their discriminating eyes? Would one of us move too soon? Drake whined and I knew he was feeling the tension too. “Psssst,” I whispered to him, which doubled for “sit and quiet” in our terms. The intensity built as I tried to gauge their slowed approach. I had not done much windy wing-shooting and therefore had little experience to draw from. How close should I let them get? My decision turned out to be a poor one. As I stood and shouldered my old Winchester pump 12, they made a simple change in their ailerons and were off with the swiftness of an F-16 fighter. I shot anyway, while my brain was starting to laugh at the rest of my body for following through with such folly. The dog just stared at me that empty stare when I shoot and there’s nothing to retrieve. “Well Drake, that was educational,” I answered.
An hour went by and I saw a few ducks and heard some geese but it was proving to be less than productive and the cold was making its way into every crack in my cold-weather gear. Drake shivered a little and I knew we weren’t going to last out here very much longer unless we had some adrenaline boosters pretty soon. I was still amazed at the beauty of the weather and the water and nature and how it all intertwined. We were visited by a few little brown winter wrens as they hopped about looking for a morsel seemingly unfettered by the gale-force blows. I lost another decoy to the wind and now two sat against the bank opposite of us. I thought about retrieving them but put it off. A lonely doe came out of the woods near the dam on the other side of the pond. She appeared to have been pushed from her bed as she looked around as if to say, “Where do I go now?” She wasn’t there to eat or drink, she stood out in the open for a moment and then ducked her head and crept back into the thick forest. The sleet had been on and off and there were tiny little balls of ice lying in the upturned leaves around me. I leaned back against the tree limb that crossed behind me and Drake stood up to shake and settled back down into his warmed earth bed. I reached out to pet him, “I know, this kind of stinks. Doesn’t it buddy?” He just looked at me with that normal “where you go, I go” look of approval. I raised my Rich’N’Tone Mallard call and let a few calls ring out into the air. The sound didn’t echo like normal it just sort of drifted away and snuffed itself out into the wind.
They were on us before we knew they existed. The call must have been perfectly timed by accident. The pair of mallards came over the tree tops behind and to the right of us and somehow we heard the whistling of pin feathers as they set their wings and lowered their landing gear. I could see the bright orange feet of the drake and the green from his head seemed to glow with its own illumination. Even the muddled colors of the hen stood out against the grey-brown matted hues of the winter-time woods. Silver and white belly feathers of the drake streaked across right to left and arched downward toward my 6 deceptive decoys as they bobbed precariously on the surface. I heard Drake’s whine to make sure I was seeing what he was seeing. I was already on the rise.
The 12 gauge barked and the first load of steel number 3s were on their way. That fraction of a second it takes to know whether or not you connected was welcomed with a puff of feathers as the drake began its sideways cartwheeling. It’s always incredible to me after the shooting is over and you’re bragging on your victories, how fast our brains can process and make decisions. I would usually have taken the conservative approach and held up on the hen. Today, after braving this wind and cold, after the limited number of opportunities, and an hour or so of watching the water toss the decoys around, the hen was up for picking. I racked the second round without even removing the gun from my shoulder and before poor Susie even knew what was happening, she joined her partner in the water. She lay dead in the decoys and the drake lay upside down kicking his red legs for a moment longer. I stood there for a moment making sure I wasn’t going to have to shoot again. Drake was on his feet waiting for the command and I had to take a second to congratulate myself on a two-shot double from a resting, sitting-to-standing takedown. I have heard duck hunting in GA described as hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer madness. This was that.
The wind immediately began to make Drake’s job more difficult for him. The two ducks, floating on the surface, were being removed from the decoy spread rapidly. They had come to rest within 15 yards of the bank. By the time I snapped out of my moment of revelry, they were at 20 and moving away. “Drake!” I commanded and he bolted down the bank and into the water. That’s how I gave him the command to fetch because we had several dogs in the yard at a time. The command “fetch” would be chaotic. Their name shouted, is a very specific command for them. He hit the water with a little splash and was off chasing the closest of the two, the hen. The wind had the little pond so choppy I am sure he was constantly losing sight as she dipped and rose on the waves. Tiny white caps blew over the back of his head as he swam with all his might to catch her. He was almost to the other side of the pond when he finally caught up with the drifting bird. A quick grab and repetition took over as he made the 180, turning back into the wind and waves for his return. I knew that was not going to be an easy thing. His face immediately disappeared into the first little wave and he came out on my side of the swell without the bird in his mouth and shaking his head violently.
My heart jumped a little and I thought, “Lord, he’s gonna drown coming back this way!” He spun around to regain his grip on the duck and that took just long enough for me to think of a solution for him. I blew his whistle hard and long. Without the duck in his mouth, he turned toward me to find out why Daddy was signaling him. I yelled to the top of my lungs, over the wind, “Leave it!” I could see the bewilderment on his face. He turned to search for the lost bird again and I hit the whistle once more. His head snapped around to look at me and I raised my arm straight over my head and yelled, “Back! Leave it! Back!” He reluctantly left the bird lying in the water beside him and turned towards the opposite shore. In an instant, he spotted the white breast of the drake mallard floating a few yards beyond him and he headed to pick it up. We would have practiced this routine to get the dog to retrieve a wounded bird first. In this case, I was hoping the drake would make it to the bank before my Drake could catch up to it. It did. By the time Drake caught up with him, he was being held still in the rushes on the opposite bank, about 70 yards away. He got out of the pond, shook off the extra water, trotted over, and plucked the big mallard from the surface. He looked back at me and at the pond and clearly pontificated the return swim. I could see the wheels turning. I hit the whistle and he looked over and up at me, awaiting my command. I threw my left hand out hard and yelled, “Over!” and I saw the lights come on. He could run the bank. This was something we discouraged as a puppy in training but hard times call for different measures. He gladly took advantage of the longer trek and ran all the way back bouncing the duck along in his mouth.
After hand-delivering the first one, Drake stared into my eyes, anticipating my next request. He would have been fine to make the swim again but 70 more yards of the turbulent water was more than I would ask. I pointed him down the bank, back towards the dam, and cast him away, “Drake!” He jetted off down through the woods and hit the corner of the dam turning right like a mad NASCAR driver going the wrong way. Sprinting along the top of the dam his muscles flared as he weaved through the grass and made the 70-yard dash in seconds. He leaned hard into his right turn at the next corner and down the opposite bank he went. I had thought I would have to guide him to the bird but he seemingly understood his assignment thoroughly.
The bird lay 3 feet from the bank, still in the water, caught in the grass. I could barely make out the brown lump of her back as the waves pushed against her. Drake was at 3/4 speed as he passed her position. I reached for my whistle to give him the stop command but the better part of his genetics took over. Her scent caught his nostrils as he blew past her, even in all that wind. He whirled around and began testing the air for the familiar aroma. He stepped into the water and with his chin on the surface he homed in on his target. I just watched and let him work. What an incredible creation. Over 100 million olfactory glands went into overdrive, sending signals to a brain that weeded through all the different smells. Mud, cow manure, fish, grass, rotting vegetation, water, and probably hundreds of other smells I cannot begin to imagine were having to be sorted through as his colorless vision had difficulty picking out the shape of the mottled brown feathers that lay somewhere in all that grass. His head swung back and forth as he pinpointed the location of that familiar fragrance.
The sound caught me off guard as the three little black and white blobs came in from my right side. Little fighter jets with the wind streaming through their tail feathers buzzed across the decoy spread at Mach 3. Ringers. All three drakes turned at the dam and swung high over the top of Drake who stopped his search and looked up. They swung to the far right and dropped in low over the water, their acrobatics more reminiscent of a wild roller coaster ride than incoming ducks. Their approach gave me a wide birth to make a safe shot and I plucked one from the group on the far right side. I pumped the expended shell from the gun only to realize I had never reloaded from the surprise visit of the two mallards. I watched the other two fly off unscathed but one of the birds flip-flopped on the water after splashing down just to the right side of my decoys. Drake stood watching the entire thing unfold and then graciously reached in and picked up the hen mallard from the water and began to trot his way back towards the dam.
By the time he returned with the hen the little ring-necked duck was well over halfway across the lake. I lined him up and showed it to him. “Dead bird,” I informed him. I thought I would give him the option. I backed him up a little and waited for him to look up at me with that “what now?” look. I didn’t give him a direction or a cast. I just said quietly, “Fetch it up.” He looked at the bird. He looked back at me and took a couple of steps towards the dam. He stopped and looked at me again as if to ask, “Is this what you want?” “Fetch it up,” I answered.
He bolted away towards the corner of the lake and made his right turn again at full speed. I could see him glancing out at the duck every so often to make sure he kept his bearings. The second right turn left him about 35 yards to go and the duck lay in the water still 15 or so yards from the bank, moving steadily in the wind. He didn’t want to wait. He hit the water to swim the last 15 yards into the wind and waves. It was a bit of a battle but he had figured out how to lift his head and keep it above the battering waves. He snatched the bird with efficiency and turned back to shore. Once again, trotting his way around the dam he delivered the beautiful black, silver, and white bird with perfection.
It lay soft and plump in my gloved, yet fridged hand. His feathers seemed flawlessly white although he had just been floating in a red-stained Georgia cow pond. The black was as black as the white was white. Incredibly artistic contrast with dazzling mixes of gray and silver. The velvety black bill splashed with a white blaze was the perfect final touch to God’s beautiful creation. Mixed with the much larger Mallards it was the ideal trio of waterfowl for a day. I slipped his foot into the lanyard from which the two Mallards already hung and smiled as I inspected them there together. Drake watched me with intrigue. His tail wagged slowly as we stood there for a moment gazing at the three ducks.
I reached to pet him and tell him how flawless his retrieves were. His eyelashes and brows were frozen. Ice coated his whiskers. The water on top of his head glistened as I realized his entire coat was layered in ice. I raked my gloved hand over his head, down his neck, and across his back. The ice splintered and fell away from his thick yellow-red coat. I brushed off the ice around the lower part of his neck and chest. Just like that, he was dry. His coat had expelled the water and it had frozen. I shook my head in amazement. I had almost forgotten about how cold it was. Almost. My hands burned with the cold and suddenly I was aware of the sensation of cold on my face. “Wow, it is cold out here, Drake,” I informed him. He looked at me as if to say, “You think it’s cold? You should try my job out sometime!” Instead, he jumped around a little bit and wagged his tail clearly, wanting more.
“Buddy, Daddy’s getting up the decoys. That’s enough. Let’s go see if Mrs. Bruce has some fresh milk!”