Opening day of duck season is a little hectic to say the least. A barrage of ”Do I have this? Did I get those? and Don’t forget that!” run through your mind the night before and the morning of the big day. It’s the first day that most of your gear gets used again since the previous season and along with that comes a long list of to-do’s and don’t forgets. I, for one, have a routine I go through the night before the season begins and every night for that matter. This routine includes a mental list of all the gear I’ll need (calls, bullets, drinks, snacks, camera, binos, license, etc). Accomplishing all these tasks while experiencing the excitement that opening day brings can make things difficult at times.
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| The castle. |
Opening weekend at the 12 is a busy one. Typically, all the members are there and in the morning, it can sound like a herd of buffalo going through the house. The shuffling of feet, gun cases being zipped and flatulence from the fried food the night before make it impossible to sleep after 4 a.m. Speaking of mornings at the 12, we have four coffee pots in the kitchen for our coffee drinkers. And let me tell you, when that timer goes off, it truly is like a swarm of bees drawn to honey. Men packed in the kitchen, shoulder to shoulder, filling those thermoses. It’s a sight to see.
Because the Island can only hunt six people, four of us headed there while the other six hunted the 148 field. When we hunt the Island, I drive the 4-wheeler from the house to the field. The 4-wheeler pulls the wagon and dad follows behind driving Blackie (Blackie is the official vehicle of the Tennessee 12). This particular morning, the fog was as thick as I have ever seen. Visibility was maybe twelve yards and it was absolutely brutal. I had to follow the levee the pit was in just to see where I was going. But we finally made it and the hunt was on.
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| The 4-wheeler & wagon. |
As shooting time (always thirty minutes before sunrise) approached, we could hear ducks and geese all around us. The sound was deafening. They never got up as they could not see us coming due to the dense fog. My hope was that the fog would lift as the morning progressed. This never happened; there was no wind and the fog was going to hang with us all morning. It was like a white blanket around us all day. I remember getting a headache from staring into the white oblivion. At most, I could see thirty yards from the pit. We could hear ducks chattering overhead and the Specklebelly geese sounding off on the ground to the west. Green-winged Teal would come racing through the fog and be out of sight in a matter of seconds only to be sitting in the decoys before we knew it. The morning started off slow as I knew the conditions were not in our favor. But, as a hunter, you must accept those things you cannot control. This is what we were dealt and we had to adjust accordingly. All things considered, we still managed to shoot ducks and geese at point blank range.
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| The fog. |
It was about 8 a.m. or so and we were sitting in the twenty-foot pit when I hear a double cluck greeting call from a speckbelly (aka White-fronted Goose) coming down the levee from the east. I knew they were close, danger close. They appeared out of the fog like B-51 bombers behind us at twenty-five yards. There were five of them flying in a single line formation. I yelled “Behind us!” and the four of us emptied our guns throwing as much flack at them as we could. When the last shot was fired, there were five geese on the water. No cripples, just dead; hevi-metal 3.5 #2‘s at their finest.This just goes to show how close the birds were that morning.
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| Brian & the snow. |
Meanwhile, the 148 field which is about one and a half miles to our northwest was absolutely hammering them. They shot and shot all morning. It sounded like a mini fire fight going on. I said to dad, “They must be covered up over there!” We could hear their six man volley followed by water shots with ease. They had their limits by 10 a.m. At about 10:30 or so, we decided to pick up and head to the house with the visibility still at about forty-five yards. We walked out with 24 ducks and geese. Not a bad day considering the fog from hell.
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| Opening Day 2010-2011 |
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