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It was the perfect day for a little duck hunting. The fall skies were overcast and gray. The leaves on the trees were bursting with colors and the smell of fall filled the air. We had spent the morning hunting a lake with minimal success so for the afternoon, we decided to head back into the woods to check some small potholes.
Jay was navigating. He lived in the area, and we used his house as a base of operations. Josh drove the truck down what could loosely be called a two-track. I rode shotgun, although not literally, and kept an eye peeled for birds. We were high on a ridge bouncing down the overgrown logging trail as we came upon a small pond that held one solitary duck.
“Bufflehead,” Jay shouted.
“Are you sure,” Josh asked.
“Yeah, that is a bufflehead,” Jay repeated.
“Dibs,” I chimed in, knowing that would touch off an argument.
“Sheesh, Dibs… Listen to this guy,” Jay blurted.
“Get your fat butt down there and shoot it then,” Josh taunted.
With that, we set up a plan. The pond was roughly 200 yards long and maybe 50 yards wide. The one end had begun to succeed into forest and was grown over with thick marshy bog, but that end offered the best ambush for a jump shot. I would head into the bog, Josh would angle in from the side and Jay would take the truck down a little further and come from the opposite end. We figured the thick woods on either side would make the bird jump to either end and with little cover for Jay, I was in position “A.”
As we approached using the utmost in stealth, the inevitable happened. Josh tripped over a log, causing me to blurt out a laugh. Jay heard us and yelled from his end of the pond to shut up. The bird jumped and flew right at Jay, who expertly shouldered his Benelli and expertly missed with three shots. But his shots did cause the bird to turn and fly back to the other end, where Josh proceeded to miss with his three shots. I lifted my Mossberg and snapped off two quick shots before the final one actually connected and the bird was mine.
For his expert ability in falling, I made Josh pull bird dog and go into the bog after my duck. He might claim that he did so for the sake of actually finding the duck while there was still daylight, but I beg to differ.
As we rode back toward Jay’s house, I was extremely proud of my duck. I had never before seen a bufflehead while hunting. Jay repeatedly told us of how he had never seen a bufflehead in the area. Neither of them had seen one while hunting either. My pride grew by leaps and bounds because not only did I get the first buff any of us had seen while hunting, but they both had missed too.
As we got back to Jay’s, we looked over at a small pond that connects to a larger lake that the house sits on. There by the shore were roughly 25 bufflehead. Josh and I both looked at Jay.
“What? I have never seen a single one here before, I swear!”
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