Waterfowlers have lost hope this season, so Alan Thomas and I took it upon ourselves to make duck hunting great again Dec. 17 at Lake Dardanelle.
It's been a long while since I've hunted with Al, so I was thrilled to be his wingman again in his well-traveled Waco flatbottom.
We wanted to shoot a limit of canvasbacks, which are plentiful on the Arkansas River right now. I found a bunch a week ago Thursday, but reaching that area is a stealth operation. When Al suggested making the foray in kayaks, I balked.
"That's a long way from a ramp, Al, and our 'yaks aren't rigged for lights. Sounds like a good way to get killed."
He suggested another spot on the north side of the lake where "cans" have been seen sporadically this year. It's near a spot where we killed a mixed bag of mallards, pintails, teal, wigeon, gadwalls and bluebills several years ago, so that was more acceptable.
A thick fog enveloped the River Valley when we left the ramp at 5:45 a.m. Al knows this part of the lake well, but he took a compass reading anyway.
"As long as we keep the moon in front of us, we'll be OK," he said.
We cleared the boat ramp inlet and idled into a secondary channel. We illuminated a red buoy with a spotlight, but searched in vain for its green partner. We zigzagged slowly until a land mass appeared.
"That's what I'm looking for," Al said. "When we get around the point, it's only about five minutes to the hole."
We failed to notice that the moon had gotten behind us. We rounded the point and were astonished to arrive back at the mouth of the boat ramp inlet.
I was perplexed, and Al was momentarily unnerved.
"It doesn't matter how well you know the place, it can happen," he said.
We regrouped. It was merely a matter of following the bank of the correct island. Five minutes later, we found our spot. We covered the boat with fresh burlap and shoved the bow into a thick grove of cattails.
The fog was thick in the warm air, and the air was still.
"I'm not throwing out any decoys if there's no wind," Al said. "If they come in here, that's great. If they don't, we'll go find some."
That's our usual routine, so we kicked back, shared a thermos of coffee and chatted.
We talked about our plans for spring turkey season and strategized on hunting turkeys in Kansas and maybe Oklahoma.
"And, you know what's happening April 23," Al prompted.
"Uhhh, no."
"Tom Petty and Joe Walsh! Verizon Arena! Get ya some!"
There it was, the opening pitch for our customary musical argument.
"I think I've seen my last classic rock act, Al," I said dismissively. "I took my daughter to see Steely Dan at Verizon, and that was enough for me."
"Well, Steely Dan isn't exactly known for its live show," Al said defensively.
"They were fine," I said. "I couldn't hear the music because of the creaking from all the artificial hips and knees."
Al almost inhaled his coffee.
"Dude, Steely Dan doesn't attract the same crowd," he retorted.
"You got that right. If it weren't for Amy, I would have been the youngest person in the joint. It was like being at the Lawrence Welk show."
I channeled my best Lawrence Welk.
"Little Tommy Petty is a'going to play 'a'Runnin Down a Dreammm, while a'Zissy and a'Bobby danze for you.' "
It got deathly quiet for a second.
"Man, I'm gonna slap you," Al said.
"This is no place for divisiveness, Al. We must unite to make duck hunting great again. You just watch. This is gonna be our best hunt ever. It'll be 'yuuuge!' "
"Yuuuge! Epic!" Al said. "We're not going to drain the swamp. We're going to build more swamps. And fill them with ducks!
"Fill the Swamp! Fill the Swamp!" we chanted.
"We're going to see so many ducks, so many ducks," I said. "There will never be a more spectacular hunt than this one! We're going to win so much, today. So much. We're going to shoot so much that we're gonna get tired of shooting. Nobody will shoot more than we will!"
For a minute it looked like we would. A drake mallard arrived a few minutes after legal shooting light, but we both missed. And then it was over. That hole was finished.
After 35 minutes, Al went for a walk. I heard three shots, and he soon returned with a pair of mallard drakes.
"There's a little backwater on the other side of this spit," Al said. "I popped through the brush, and a greentop jumped up. I got him, and a Susie [hen] and another greentop got up. I let the Susie go and shot the drake."
Hunters were shooting all around us, so we stowed the burlap and motored off in search of better fortunes. We found it in a series of sidewater pools that snaked among a group of islands.
We crept within shooting range of a pair of gadwalls. I bagged the drake and Al got the hen. As luck would have it, the gunfire flushed about 20 mallards that were hidden among the tules deeper in the hole. We consoled ourselves by reassuring each other that the gaddies would have flushed and sprung the mallards before we could get close enough.
We separated, and I crept slowly through tules and lily pads on the inshore side of an island. A mallard drake flushed like a pheasant and gave me a clear broadside, but my hammer fell on a dud shell. It was, for the record, a 3-inch, 12-gauge Fiocchi Speed Steel. By the time I chambered another shell and got back on the bird, it was out of range.
I sweated in my warm layers, and my thighs burned from laboring through the mud, grass, lily pad stems and grass.
A gadwall drake flushed from the reeds. It was probably at the edge of my effective range when it jumped, and it was even farther when I snapped the gun to my shoulder, but I'd worked too hard to get that close. I led the duck about 6 feet and fired a prayer.
The duck shuddered and flew about 200 yards before it fell stone dead. That shell, for the record, was a 3-inch No. 4 Winchester DryLock.
It fell in shallow water over a sandbar. It was a long trudge, but I was never more proud to retrieve a duck.
Back at the ramp, a group of hunters had just trailered their boat. They asked us, in the cautious, probing manner of a boat ramp query, if we'd done any good.
"We made duck hunting great again!" I said grandly. "It was yuge!"
"Yuge! Epic!" Al said. louder. "We drained the swamp of ducks!"
The others was momentarily taken aback, but they quickly erupted in raucous laughter. The exchange of information thenceforth was rowdy, friendly and free.
Sports on 12/25/2016