Sean, Amanda and Rick

I sat down in my usual opening day spot on the river about a half hour before the season opened and looked down at Xena. I noticed how much gray she had on her face. She was eleven years old now but still had the heart of a two year old. I just couldn’t leave her behind this year. Her hearing isn’t that good and she definitely has her own way of doing things, but she can still retrieve. She was changing.

I’ve been hunting this river for over thirty years and as I watched a flock of eight wood ducks meandering around the dead logs in the river I realized I was changing too. Early in my duck hunts I wanted to limit out. Every time I hunted I thought of ways to get the limit. Some years it was three ducks, some years six and even back in the point system days I tried to shoot as many ducks as I could. I’d pass up mallards and concentrate on teal or bluebills to fill my limit with as many ducks as possible. Now it seems my idea of a quality hunt has changed.

I do like eating waterfowl but that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to drop as many as the law would allow. It too was a sense of accomplishment, a challenge, or ego. I’m not sure why but that’s what it was like.

Many factors make up the quality of a hunt. Weather, local habitat conditions, game sightings as well as whom you’re hunting with. Hunting certain species is also a factor. Some trips are just so much fun that the actual harvest is a bonus but the real fun is the experience. I’ve been bear and duck hunting in Canada and felt lucky just to be able to be there and if I harvested a bear or some ducks than that would be the icing on the cake so to speak. Than again I’ve also been sitting in my duck blind in the freezing rain thinking to myself, "I better shoot at least one duck". In that case the harvest is the good part of the hunt.

I’m sitting on the river and decide that this year I will only shoot drake’s and will only take the for sure shot to give Xena an easy retrieve and also to quit early and visit with my Dad, Uncle and son Sean and his girlfriend Amanda that were hunting up river spread out in strategically on the river. If I get a couple ducks fine, if I don’t well that’s fine too.

I passed up several juvenile drakes and hens when about an hour after opening a big drake woody flew in but never left. The old girl made a nice retrieve. Just than my son called me on our two way radio and told me his girlfriend Amanda had just shot her first duck, a blue wing teal. The pothole they where hunting was really producing as Sean had already shot a green winged teal and two drake wood ducks.

From behind me I heard a rush of air go over my head and could almost feel the breeze of a flock of small brown ducks nearly clipping the trees as they landed some ten yards in front of me. They looked at me and immediately flushed straight away. I picked out a duck on the left and swung threw firing the lethal #4’s. The duck splashed and I sent the dog, thinking it was a green winged teal but I was suspicious. Xena brought back a hen wood duck. The entire flock was juveniles and hens.

Disappointed I had shot a hen I decided to take a slow stalk down river. Xena healed properly in the non-slip retriever fashion she had been taught. As I approached the familiar spot I nearly always kicked a duck or two from, the bird exploded from the shore as we nearly stepped on the duck, quick point and shoot and it was over. This time, although I questioned myself until the dog completed the retrieve, it was a green winged teal.

The limit is six ducks but I decided three was enough and I would go see how everyone else was doing. I stopped and talked to my Dad than my uncle and finally to Sean and his girlfriend as I walked the river back. They were in the process of packing up and heading back to the truck to get lunch and more shells (that’s another story).

I met them at the truck and put the old girl in her crate on a nice soft carpet. We also had Xena’s six year old daughter with who had picked up all of Sean and Amanda’s ducks earlier.

We walked out to another area than back down the river to our evening spot. I decided to leave a half hour before closing to check on Xena and bust a beer. Sean said "Dad you leaving already". Yes I replied I’ve had a good quality hunt. We met at the truck and took pictures and talked like we do every year on opening day. This is one of those hunts where the game harvested is just a bonus.

We did shoot fourteen ducks between us, but the quality of this hunt was the people we were with.

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