Get Ducks or Die Trying

Originally Posted at Good Hunt.

I’m not sure if I should blame Obama or Phil Robertson for the difficulty in finding duck hunting ammunition this year. Last year – almost to the day – I moaned about the shortage of waterfowl rounds in local stores, begging them to stock up for 2013-14. I said then not to blame Obama, but the beginning of 2013 witnessed an ammo grab unlike anything we’d witnessed since the ’90′s. Folks were literally snatching whatever they could off of shelves as panic spread that the President was going to restrict firearm ownership, a threat no one should have taken too seriously, in hindsight, since he actually put VP Biden in charge of the duty.

So while my plea may have been heard, it’s possible there was little retailers could do as manufacturers simply could not keep up with the demand. While the factories have been churning out the goods as fast as possible, supplies stretched pretty thin into this season. Even the big online stores were bare come mid-December. Unless a 10-gauge was your idea of a teal gun, options were slim.

All of this has coincided with an upturn in duck hunter numbers. I’d have to see Duck Stamp sales to be certain, but there’s been a palpable increase in people banging away at birds this year. Three years ago I argued that the popularity of duck hunting was about to explode. It wasn’t my best post – I mean, I quote Britney Spears; who does this? – but my theory has largely been correct, and that was without anticipating the arrival of Duck Dynasty, a phenomenon unlike any other to hit the hunting world, Swamp People included.

Assuming you’ve not been in a coma over the last 18 months, I’ll go ahead and skip over the rise and potential fall of that show, but will say that you’d think a major corporation like Wal-Mart could help out actual sportsmen and stock their shelves with whatever steel shot they could get their hands on given the program’s popularity and, presumably, studying hunting market trends. The Robertsons are so featured in your local Wally-World, it’s entirely conceivable that they constitute a branch of the Walton Family Tree. For Rudolph’s sake, cashiers wore Santa hats with duck bills on them throughout the holidays…but try finding a box of 12-gauge #4 steel anywhere in a Central Florida store location. The irony is not lost on me.

But some people have had them stockpiled – there’s been a lot of blasting this year on public waters.

My first inkling that we might be in trouble was for the September Teal STA draws in late-summer. These used to be a cinch to pull. When our group produced one permit out of a dozen of us applying, we surmised something was up. But, hey, it’s hot September in South Florida and online applications are easy to fill out. When rubber hits the road and skeeters, surely more than a few folks would pull up lame and leave available spots open for the few walk-in hunters willing to sacrifice a pint of blood and sweat for four teal.

Fast forward to Harris and I sprinting down a line of two dozen vehicles all there to register for a teaspoon of open spots. We entered our names at the last second and watched those openings fill with fellows sporting the Uncle Si beards and DD shirts. A whole horde of luckless hunters wheeled back home in the dark that morning.

It’s also possible I’m suffering the early onset of post-traumatic stress disorder after a hunt down at STA 1-W a few weekends ago. We got surrounded – as in we would have been the bulls-eye on a dart board – by other hunters taking it to the plug on ducks near and high, but mostly high. Anything slower than a teal had no chance of making it to us within AA-Gun range. I watched a hen shoveler tightly circle far overhead several times and had hopes she’d decoy. She finally circled too far and went totally vertical amid the shower of steel coming off the barrels of a group who was incapable of docking the duck calls in their shirt pockets and whose shot rained on us every time they pulled the trigger. They had pulled such shenanigans all morning. The shoveler was the lucky one.

But the STA’s have become well-known over the last five years as word has spread about their productivity. What really caught me off-guard has been the hunter activity along the West Coast this fall. What was once a lonely, often unproductive, game of merganser and diver hunting for those crazy enough to brave the salt spray, extreme tides and oyster bars has become a little crowded. Not, of course, by public lake standards, but never have I seen so many frond blinds on the tips of mangrove islands. And twice this year we’ve been cut off by newbies wailing on mallard calls hoping to turn passing mergies. Fun times.

This is all a double-edged sword. It’s wonderful that so many people have taken up this sport. Allies are being recruited even as we duel for the same hunting spots and curse over skyblasting. I don’t watch Duck Dynasty nor purchase their shirts, hats, band-aids, or board games, but I will confess to being overjoyed to see young people at ramps and check-in stations so intrigued with that crew that they’re willing to plunge into a duck blind on a cold morning, Jack.

For our group, the increase in hunters has caused us to spread out and try new places this year with a great deal of success, I might add. The duck hunting bubble will burst for a number of people as they spread their wings into other outdoor pursuits. For our group, not much slows us down when it comes to ducks. Except, of course, a lack of shotgun shells.

Early Teal Season at STA 5 - Kayaking for Ducks

Never figured I’d find much use for a kayak. The vessels are popular with skinny-water anglers and eco-tourists in the state, but I don’t fish the flats much anymore, and I’ve smelled enough cormorant and pelican poop in my day to kill my desire to rise early in the morning and paddle through secluded mangrove islands to ooh and ahh at manatees and shorebirds. So I was surprised by my excitement when I procured a kayak for my first duck hunting adventure this year. Let me explain.

Over the last couple years, my buddies and I have been hunting the STA’s in South Florida. Properly, they are Stormwater Treatment Areas, large, shallow impounds of water south of Lake Okeechobee filled with flotillas of invasive hydrilla, pods of hyacinth, and cattail islands designed to filter nutrient runoff from the surrounding sugar cane fields before it reaches the Everglades and pollutes the River of Grass. With over 52,000 acres – and more being planned - of man-made, vegetation-choked wetlands, they are premier waterfowl destinations for those lucky enough to draw a permit.

The thing is, South Florida is an alien locale. The ground pulsates with biting insects. Bizarre, foreign fish, with nightmarish names like snakeheads and clown knifefish, crowd the waters. Snakes that have no place in modern epochs are spreading throughout the region to the point the Good Ol’ Alligator can’t even control them. Oh yeah, the alligators, some the size that they could easily leap out of the water and take down a great blue heron like a river trout snatches a mayfly. Then there’s Miami. South of Lake O is a weird, wild place which makes hunting here an adventure.

My first trip two years ago was a complete off-the-cuff, why-the-hell-not journey. Knowing the water wasn’t too deep, we brazenly decided to wade into this miasma clad with waders. In the heat and humidity of a September morning, there had been talk of slipping in without the oppressive Neoprene, but these are essentially retention ponds; no telling the flesh-eating bacterium that lurks in the weeds. And though there have been no reported cases thus far, I’d be worried about a Candiru attack. Just saying. We shot a couple of teal, but to retrieve them meant slogging through thousands of pounds of hydrilla that would curtain around your waist until movement wasn’t even a thought anymore and you'd want to give up, much like a poor soul dying of thirst in the desert. I’m quite certain that even if you trekked more than 100 yards in this stuff, a tentacle of ‘drill would eventually reach up around your neck to pull you down for keeps. And I suppose it isn’t too late to announce that motorized crafts were/are prohibited. Not like it’d matter to the sheets of man-eating hydrilla; that gunk would tear the unit off, drag it a half-mile across the bottom before spitting it back out like that swamp whale regurgitated R2-D2 in Empire Strikes Back. You get the point - it's tough stuff to navigate.

We toyed with a john boat on a subsequent hunt – too heavy – and inflatable rafts – too light and flimsy – before toting down kayaks which proved to be the proper conveyance for this work. In large thanks to this craft, we were able to reach a distant cattail island and fill a three-man limit of ducks on STA 3/4 last December. It proved to be my most memorable moment with a kayak since I told my wife at the Homosassa River a few years ago, “No, I don’t want to kayak down the Homosassa River.”

So duck hunting the STA’s fueled my torrid tolerance-affair with the kayak and sparked the search for one of my own or to borrow, “borrow” being the key thought. The wonderful thing about kayaks is they are easy to find. You can go to just about any sporting goods store and crank out a few hundred dollars for one. But, if you play your cards right and nose around, you can probably locate someone who’ll let you take one off their hands for a reasonable amount. Or for free. Kayaks are about like treadmills; everyone thinks they are a great idea at first, but then the will to use them vanishes. So they sit around hoarding space in the garage, breeding spiders and contempt for wasting money on personal fitness.

The neighbor had been storing a pair under the deck of my in-laws home in Homosassa for the length of my relationship with Carolyn and prior. In those years, I don't ever recall them ever seeing daylight. Had I not drummed up the courage to ask if I could use one, I'm quite certain they wouldn't have floated in anything other than floodwater for years to come. It didn’t take any serious pleading to gain permission for its use. “Paint the thing for all I care,” he told me. I didn’t go that far, though I may one day if it stays too long in my possession. But since it was silver, some form of camo was needed. A 15-ft bolt of camo burlap from Wal-Mart was plenty sufficient for concealment purposes. After hosing off the years of negligence and insect dwellings, I just had to wait for the calendar.

So the time came last Sunday. I had drawn an afternoon tag for STA 5 – my first trip to this particular string of ponds. It was the early September season which is notoriously spotty for duck action in the afternoons. Furthermore, in order for them to honor our permits we had to check in between 12:30 and 1:00 or risk placement in a lottery for walk-ins…which didn’t matter since there were two other trucks there, and no one came in behind us. It felt like we had the place to ourselves, though one hillbilly smart mouth at the check-in station was forced to comment on Drew’s bright orange kayak. “Boy, you ain’t gonna kill ducks out of that, der, der, der, dah der.” Ignoring Cletus and his clear assessment that we were slackjaw rookies ourselves, we blindly picked a couple spots off the map, and set out for the hunt.

We surveyed our locale, picking out teal amongst the moorhen and coots stationed in the impoundment. After deciding on a patch of cover that would conceal the four of us, we unloaded the kayaks and packed them with the essentials. I’d like to tell you I slipped on in there in the slick, Navy Seal style. The truth is, I’m not in peak physical condition. The “essentials” felt a lot less so after 75 yards. With the thick aquatic vegetation, it was like paddling through cold oatmeal though still a far better deal than poling a heavy-bottom aluminum boat. But that was just me. The other guys about had their kayaks on a plane. The slow, fat kid in the bunch, I arrived as they were pitching dekes in calf-deep water.

Assuming the depth was the same where I stopped to set up, I hopped out of the kayak and plunged to my chin whiskers in a death portal, that noxious water flooding into my waders. Luckily my boots hit hard bottom – or the back of a very large, very patient gator – and clamored into shallower water before the hydrilla sensed my struggle and enveloped over my head to commence sucking out bodily fluids.

I had a very real problem at this point. I could stay in the soaked waders and let my body heat excite the parasites and bacteria into a feeding frenzy or strip to my board shorts to wade to the island where we were to hole up. Oh, that slimy bottom was disgusting, even to my horse-hoof feet. My legs itch as I write this, and what I can only guess was dysentery subsided yesterday.

The kayak became a life raft. No way was I standing bare-skinned in that water for the next four hours that we’d wait for sundown or our limit. I slid the ‘yak into the grasses and sat with my feet propped in the cattails until I learned fire ants thrive in semi-submerged vegetation far from dry land. To relieve this pain, I soaked them in the water until noticing small minnows picking at my skin - South Florida. After this I elected to keep all body parts inside the ride, sitting Indian style in the raft, which made shots at passing birds rather awkward. But at least I felt safe. 

 

It turned out to be a banner hunt. We shot one bird shy of our limit of blue-wing teal, many sweeping right past my bare, welted legs and into the walls of steel fired by the crew. I retrieved my decoys and fallen birds from the dry embrace of the kayak and stroked it back towards the truck. With a successful outing under our belt, I barely remember the paddle back.

According to the game warden, we did better than the others hunting that afternoon, certainly better than Cletus and whatever plywood and palm frond contraption he surely captained. So if you ever find yourself hunting an STA or any number of places in Florida that forbids motorized vessels, consider using a kayak. Can't say they are for comfort or style, but they'll get you where you need to go.

The Thanksgiving Toho Hunt

I know what I was thankful for Thursday morning – no one was videotaping our shoot. The first four ducks – a pair of ringnecks and a pair of bluewing teal – splashed in proper fashion. After that it got a little dicey.

Actually, it got dicey for Travis earlier. He pulled up on the aforementioned teal and realized he didn’t have a round in the chamber. I collected the double. That was my last speck of professionalism for a while. A wood duck – and I’d like to say he “dodged,” but that wouldn’t be accurate – escaped a three-round salvo from the Browning 3 ½. A mottled duck lazily floated by without even a click of the safety. Can’t explain that one. And numerous ringers passed right on by no rougher for the wear.

I’d peeled through ¾ of a box of Black Clouds in less than 30 minutes. For four ducks. (Head shaking)

Blaming the choke, I swapped out to a full to tag the higher flying ringers. This didn’t matter in the least. I went to switch again when a pair rushed in from the east. I managed to dump one on one shot and felt the sweet kiss of vindication, if only for a moment.

Travis and I were hunting Lake Toho in Central Florida Thanksgiving morning. This is a popular public water duck destination. Fortunately it wasn’t’ too crowded. I guess other hunters wanted to wake up and spend time with family or something. We did have to wave off one boat who thought he was going to set up on our decoy spread, I guess. We suggested he move one bay down. I’m not sure what those guys were shooting, but it sounded like they were lighting off quarter sticks back there.

We planted a Baby Mojo in the ground and surrounded it with a variety of decoys that represented the waterfowl in the area. In the open water we tossed a couple dozen ringer decoys. Closer to the weeds we threw out 5 or 6 wood ducks, four mallards hens, and a smattering of teal. It looked real good.

After pitching the dekes, Travis parked the boat amid a patch of tall lake grass. He had previously clipped palm fronds, and we lined the gunnels of the boat with the broad, waxy fans for concealment, a pretty common tactic in these parts. We called it quits around 9:30 when the action finally slackened.

It worked well. I’m proud to say every duck we did bag decoyed to our spread. Our limitations were strictly bound to pass shooting efforts. In all, we ended up with 9 ducks, not too shabby.

The duck hunting has been fairly slow, from what I understand. It’s been warm for this time of year. The large clouds of ringers that are typical here haven’t settled in yet. The teal are sporadic. I’m sure Opening Day took its toll on a fair number of the resident mottled and wood ducks.

It’s a pretty place, that Lake Toho, though not as remote as Okeechobee. You watch planes lift off and land on a constant basis from Orlando International. Bass fishermen whip their outboards through the channels at high rates of speed, and the din of airboats is near ceaseless. In the horizon, four or five hot air balloons floated up and away. Lots going on around Orlando.

Still with all these people, there was one lone witness to my poor outing. And he couldn’t say much either. We were the real turkeys this Thanksgiving.

Florida's Early Duck Season - STA 3/4

Travis and I had arrived at STA 3/4 just before the 5 am mark when the ranger would start handing unused tags to the throngs of hopefuls lined up with their pickups and canoes at the gates. Since I had drawn a tag for the opening morning of Early Duck season, we were able to ride the VIP line past the huddled masses yearning to duck hunt. A young FWC officer took our information and thrust a map in my hand and asked which spot we would like to hunt. Not knowing anything about the property, I chose Spot 35 since it was the furthest from the majority of the crowds and had easy water access. I asked the female biologist present if there were any teal in the area. She said there were a few...plus ducks you can’t pop this time of year.

Probably noticing our lack of vessel, Lady Biologist warned that water levels were higher than in years gone by. But, we pressed on to Spot 35 gauging the advances of the thunderstorm towards the south. We had no clue what we were doing. We had no canoe, no kayak, no skiff, no kid’s floatie tube, nothing but our waders and determination to avoid being eaten by alligators.

Travis was the first in the waders, and we scoured the cattail-infested banks of the levee for an entrance into the water. T cautiously stepped a few feet into the reeds and began sinking up to his nipples.

“This ain’t gonna work. And I don’t want to be chewed on by a gator.”

I was adamant about staying. The STA’s are popular draws and well-known duck Meccas. I needed to know how things would shake out come daylight. This had turned into an advanced recon scouting trip. Travis agreed to wait out daylight. Official shooting time started 6:42, more than an hour-and-a-half away. We figured we’d just lean back and catch a snooze to fight back that 3:30 wake-up time.

Travis was well into snoring when I heard another truck pull into Spot 34 behind us. They banged and crashed about as the Sandman was about to waylay me. The last thing I heard them say was, “I wonder where these guys went, east or west?” And I fell asleep.

Located in western Palm Beach County and covering nearly 17,000 acres, STA 3/4 is the largest constructed wetland in the world. STA’s (Stormwater Treatment Areas) are manmade marshes designed to trap phosphorus and other excess nutrients from reaching the Everglades (click here for the details). Standing in the middle of the property, all you see for miles are aquatic grasses, cattails, hydrilla and various other plantlife. The avian population – to speak nothing of waterfowl – is quite amazing. Purple gallinules feed along the levees. Doves are everywhere, and raptors sit on perches lording over this unique part of the world. (And, yes, hundreds of gators!)

The hunting program is a co-op between FWC and the South Florida Water Management District. Tags are issued by a random drawing several weeks in advance of the start of the waterfowl seasons. To ensure this opportunity is maxed out, successful applicants must check in and pick their spots before 5 am or risk losing out to walk-in’s.

This was the first season I applied. I had never hunted Early Duck, and Travis and I already had designs to hunt Lake Okeechobee. When I found I was selected for the opening Saturday morning, we agreed to make the trip from Moore Haven then return to Lake O in the evening to fill out our bag or scout.

I did my research, of course. I knew we probably needed a water-based conveyance of some manner. No motors – trolling or otherwise – are allowed here, so Travis’ duck boat was out. I could not secure a canoe of any kind, plus I am typically too lazy to paddle, it is hot, and I figured the two of us could come up with something easier. I polled several veteran STA hunters who agreed, yes, a canoe is probably the best, but the water levels are so low that one could slog across it in a pair of waders.

And that plan was out. As mentioned at the beginning, Lady Biologist warned us of the high water, and it appeared we’d be returning home with nothing more than knowledge of the area - a learning experience, so to speak.

As shooting light neared and the thunderstorm that had been cracking lightning all morning long dissipated, T and I both awoke from our slumber and rolled down the windows. The crew who had come up behind us had clearly paddled across the east marsh leaving a visible trail through the hydrilla. The guys in front of us worked their canoe maybe fifty yards from their truck and were now walking in knee-deep water through the western marsh setting up decoys and settling in for the shoot.

I was concerned. I didn’t want to blow anyone’s hunt by gawking in the truck at passing birds; these boys to the west were pretty close. And cranking up and leaving would disturb the whole property as I’d have to drive back through it all. But Travis noticed something I didn’t – those guys were walking in knee-deep water. The toughest part is just getting through the layer of muck around the cattails; it gets shallower as you walk out.

Not convinced, I resigned myself to sitting in the truck for the next couple hours until my conscience would let us leave. Then we turned and saw the teal appearing out of the black, pouring by the dozens into the eastern marsh.

Travis and I were out of the Dodge in seconds, grabbing our shotguns and shells and scurrying to the bank and into the cattails like children running away from their parents towards the beach with their sandcastle buckets and shovels. He was right. The water along the edges was chest deep, but once you got through that, it only came up to the waist.

The shooting started soon after. The boys to the west shot first and the guys to the east fired a salvo that dumped a couple birds that buzzed them. Travis waded out to a finger of weeds, and I held tight in the reeds near the levee shore, eye open for moccassins or our new-found serpent, the python. Within moments, a pair of blue wings blew past T, and he dumped the first one, and I tagged the second. She would have skipped like a stone across the water had it not been for the hydrilla. Teal sure move fast.

The morning slowed down, as it often does, but we could still hear the shooting around us that kept birds flying. One group to the south was slaying them. You’d hear shots, swing around to look and see little black dots fall from the sky. I had a single come from that direction, and he fell into the weeds behind me.

As the morning wore on, I understood the purpose of the canoes. Birds that were coming into range flared off at the cluster of trucks behind me. Also, we were in such a hurry we forgot the decoys in the truck. Three teal doesn’t sound like a whole lot for this effort, but I assure you it was, especially for how half-cocked it all went down. Watching the teal dip and dive, the mottled ducks quack their way by, and the whistling ducks flocked over in hordes...it was enough to fire up even the most casual waterfowl enthusiast.

Around 8:30, we made the call to return to the truck and head back to Lake O. At the check out station was Lady Biologist shoving cotton swabs up the rectums of teal the party in front of us had tagged - a strange activity for a Saturday morning. That crew had their limit. When it was our ducks’ turn for defilement, Lady Biologist explained she had to test for avian flu. I asked that she notify me if I am in sudden need of inoculation.

We reported what species of ducks we’d seen. She told us that the winter time is when it gets awesome. In addition to teal, other migratory ducks such as pintail, wigeon, and redheads are popular temporary residents. I may have to look into this.

Next time, I’m certainly bringing that canoe.

If You Go

A management area permit is needed. One member of our party who wasn’t me didn’t know this – and I forgot to tell him – and was mercifully let off with a warning since we were under our bag.

The law of the land requires you to pick up all shotgun shell cases. And they do check to see if you have them.

Arrive early if you have a tag. Arrive a lot earlier if you don’t.

Bring a camera. A more unique place to hunt, you will be hard pressed to find.