The front end of my kayak draped in camo netting and our decoys
I bought a kayak this summer and had really been enjoying it, so when a friend invited me to go wood duck hunting using our kayaks I jumped at the chance. Any endeavor which has you in the great outdoors to watch the light come up in the sky is exciting to my way of thinking. Throw in being out on the water and wingshooting, and I'm in! It was my first wood duck hunt, so I was pretty excited to say the least.
We were at the lake well before first light on the first day of the early southern zone season (mid October). The small Pa. Fish Commission lake in the Laurel Highlands once was full of flooded trees at one end. Over time the trees died and rotted off at the water level with the stumps remaining just below the lake's surface. This makes paddling in the dark somewhat of an adventure. Get going a little too fast and you could run your bow up on one of the stumps and tip over - dumping you, your gun, and all of your gear into the "drink".
As we paddled into our selected spot in the shallows of the lake, I was startled to hear someone whistle from the shore to let us know that spot was already taken! We changed direction and were heading along the shore line when we found ourselves among someone else's decoys. Backtracking a little bit we decided we had better get set up before it got light, so staked out a claim of our own between the other 2 parties.
I had visions of the old cartoon where a lone duck is winging peacefully across the dawn sky when all of a sudden hunters pop up everywhere and open up on him. Fortunately, that was not the case. When dawn arrived we could not see anyone else, though we could occasionally hear them call. Their calling was not convincing enough to fool me, so I can't imagine it helped their case much with the ducks.
Being a wood duck rookie, I expected that birds would come in high, cup their wings and drop into the decoys, so I pulled in behind a tree that had fallen into the lake to achieve a little better "hide". This proved to be a poor choice because soon a group of "woodies" came speeding in about 2 feet above the lake's surface. Since we had hurriedly dropped our decoys in he dark, we didn't have a hole in the spread for the ducks to drop into, so they joined it at the right end, putting the fallen snag between me and them. By the time that I saw them they were right in front of me with the snag complicating my view in the still dim light. I pulled up my shotgun and fully expected they would flare and give me a shot opportunity but, to my amazement, they landed! Momentarily befuddled by this development, I quickly determined to flush them and try to get a shot as they took off, but before I did anything they sped out keeping the snag between me and them. I fired a shot just as I lost sight of my target duck against the hill on the other side of the lake. There was no splash. My partner said "You may have just "opened" the season! I guess that's possible. I might have fired the first shot of the region's 2011 duck season. Maybe. One thing is certain. I missed!
After a while the wind really kicked up and the lake became very choppy so we decided to round up our decoys and go have some lunch. The wind only increased as the day progressed, and when we returned there were whitecaps on the lake. Hardly ideal kayak conditions, so we called it quits.
I definitely "bobbled" my first kayak wood duck hunt, but look forward to doing it again next year
