Hunkered down, we peeked over the gunnel at a pair of drake canvasbacks locked on the decoys. Bucking a stiff wind, the two ducks seemed to take forever to get within range, but when they did my buddies were ready. They simultaneously arose and shot. Each dropped a bird.
My friends looked in admiration at the sleek, white ducks cradled in their hands. Water rolled off the drakes’ velvety feathers as the coastal rain showed no remorse.
“I’m having this one mounted,” said Scott Turner, shotshell product line manager for HEVI-Shot and Federal, with a smile. It was our best canvasback drake of the day ... and our last.
We motored to another spot on the lake, where we filled mixed bag limits of other diving ducks. Then we headed home, as the next day we were hunting puddle ducks in the valley.
Earlier in the week other buddies and I had shot limits of mallards as they spilled into our decoys in a tiny creek. Before that, we had thousands of cacklers funneling into our spread in a green ryegrass field. And the Saturday prior, we had hammered puddle ducks on a nearby river. So goes the life of dedicated waterfowlers in the Pacific Northwest this time of year.
FOWL ALL FALL … AND WINTER
I grew up along the banks of Oregon’s McKenzie River, hunting
