The 2011 Sea Duck Tournament

I pity those who have never intentionally hunted mergansers.

The omens were all there for a spectacular weekend of shooting. The wildlife was alive. When we arrived at the river, dolphins were chasing mullet near the dock and through the manatees that fed on floating seaweed. A flock of bluebills milled around in the channel, diving for mussels or something. A flock of wood ducks flew in right before dark.

I sensed a great victory for my team and let everyone know so.

Alas, the 2011 Sea Duck Tournament ended early. Cole, PJ, and Rumph smoked the field with an impressive 15-Duck Display Saturday morning. They didn’t even bother to hunt Sunday. Sawyer and Mitch pulled 1 Saturday and 5 Sunday, not bad for their first event. Travis, Chase and I – the alleged pros of the tourney - splashed one red-breasted merganser late Saturday morning and slept through the 20 degree cold of Sunday, content with humiliating defeat and warm beds.

We hunted the outer islands around St. Martin’s Key off the mouth of the Little Homosassa River. Cole’s and Sawyer’s teams reported the mergies decoyed rather well, unusual for them. Using a mixture of bluebill and puddle duck dekes, combined with a floating bluebill MOJO decoy, Cole said 90% of the ducks they shot had their feet down to land in their spread. Sawyer commented a similar response. 100% of our ducks did – but again, we only shot one.

My team messed up. I had been doing quite a bit of research over the last year about hunting divers. Our decoys were in such shallow water, they practically perched on oyster clumps. Cole and Sawyer hunted deeper water. The theory in the literature and observing their success and remembering my own history with the sport, the divers like to be in water where they can...get ready for it...dive! But Travis had seen a pile of ducks in this spot the night before.

Some of it's strategy; with the tides and vastness of open water, some of it’s a crapshoot, and I was but a lowly deckhand on T's vessel.

PJ popped a trophy hooded merganser that is on its way to the taxidermist. Sawyer – a duck hunting novice – is already discussing what waders and decoys to buy. Another victim of the Duck Hunting Disease.

You want to know about the merganser I shot? Well, OK. After all, it’s not always a numbers game. They can have their silly victory. For me, it’s about trophy hunting these magnificent mergansers. I look for The One that fits the description of a perfect hunt.

Facing the hurricane force gales, and gazing beyond the circling of bull shark fins, I spotted one lone merganser flying in the distance. More like, he was jet-screaming in the distance. Though he didn’t touch water, he still pushed a wake. I contemplated on how to get his attention.

Through my vast knowledge of interspecies waterfowl communication, I knew he wouldn’t respond to a mallard chuckle. Thinking quickly, I pulled a shotgun shell from my bandolier and pried it open with my teeth. I tossed the steel number 2’s high and out into the decoys. The plunking pellets sounded like a school of piddling pilchards, a merganser treat.

The wise old bird changed his course and approached the spread. As he was about to land, those wings - those backpedaling, pterodactyl wings - blew the MOJO into the brine and sprayed a fine salt mist into my face, like the lashing of water from an airboat engine. Wiping my eyes with my right hand and firing from my left shoulder, the mighty bird was felled. I waded quietly through the bull sharks and retrieved my prize.

One day the rest of those guys will learn a thing or two from me. Until then, they’ll have to just be content with high-volume shooting and a year’s worth of bragging rights.

I’m sure they’ll be fine with that...

2009 Sea Duck Tournament

After a year hiatus, the Sea Duck Tournament resumes this weekend. A taste of 2009's event. Posted February 2009.

That old maxim, “don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” is as true for ducks as poultry. After morning one, our team was up six birds to none – a commanding lead - in the 2nd Annual Sea Duck tournament. Obviously with a name like that, this is no sanctioned, sponsored event, rather a group of friends who turned an end of the season Homosassa River duck hunt into a yearly competition for winning or losing twenty bucks.

The rules are simple - one point per duck taken while hunting over decoys or in a blind only, agreed upon to discourage other nefarious, and often illegal, manners of cheating, that none of us would ever consider doing unless being thoroughly embarrassed at the time.

Though I’ve never been paid, my team won the previous year, and after Saturday morning, a repeat title seemed inevitable. Hmm, probably shouldn’t have talked so much trash.

We hunt mergansers - red-breasted and hooded - although from time to time vague recounts detailing flocks of pintail, oldsquaw, and harlequin ducks creep into otherwise civil, honest hunting discussions. Granted, the ol’ mergies don’t attract much love from the waterfowl faithful; they don’t decoy well or respond to calls worth a hoot, are not the highest of table fare, and are uglier than butt. However, they are plentiful, with large flocks swarming from the open waters of the Gulf into the river shortly after daybreak. Even without employing any of the above common duck hunting tactics, the sheer volume of birds is enough to expect an exciting morning.

None the less, successfully filling your bag limit of five is a crap shoot; there’s an awful lot of water for fowl to travel and feed, not to mention places for hunters to set up. Pinpointing a reliable ambush is daunting. Adding to this degree of difficulty is the nature of these waters. Oyster bars jut far out of the seas on a winter low, but hide frighteningly shallow during the highs – in short, it’s treacherous navigation, and there are just some areas you can’t go with a standard outboard.

The targets themselves are tougher than old shoes, especially the red-breasted species that breeds farther north and winters farther south than the other American mergansers. This translates into some serious muscle and very thick down to poke through, asking a lot from wimpy steel loads. A number of birds will brush off a volley of long distance shots and keep on trucking, no worse for the wear, and still more well-hit birds will tumble to the water requiring a quick follow-up shot, or a long slog through the flats to chase them down, which more often than not results in them paddling or flying away. They just aren’t impressed with cheap steel.

So, we’d done well putting six on Merganser Mound, the non-descript oyster shell island where we’d set up shop. We’d tossed out four bags of fakes, bluebills mostly, and a Baby Mojo mallard hen hoping the flashing white wings - which do mimic those of a ganzer scooting off the water - would bring a few into close range. (I do realize that four bags of dekes are but a pittance in comparison to the numbers serious open water duck hunters incorporate in their spreads.)

This approach failed. The birds did not decoy; luckily though, we’d tapped into a diver duck superflyway of sorts. Soon after first light, a low-flying, high-speed flock of hoodies whizzed by without a trigger pull. Alerted, we were ready for the next group. After an hour and a half, after the smoke cleared, the hulls quit ejecting, and the echoing of shotgun blasts ceased freight-training across the Nature Coast, five red-breasted and one hoodie hen rested on the oysters.

We’d heard the other team shoot and only assumed they’d matched our production. Personally, I was disappointed. There were some shooters on that other team, and when you have the number of birds in range like we’d had that morning, six ducks didn’t seem like a whole lot.

Didn’t seem like a whole lot until we returned to the dock and discovered they’d laid a goose egg. All their shots were too far for a reasonable chance at a kill. And a bunch of other excuses. For a while I thought it was a gag. Maybe they’d wait til later to fess up and open a cooler, hoping to embarrass us in the midst of our victorious war whooping. With these boys you never can tell. But no, nothing, nada.

And it’s true, there maaayyyyyy have been a little too much strut in our step after this, doling out professional advice and insults. Too much glide in our stride as we hunted and got skunked ourselves that afternoon in this charming, mucky place I call Misery Pit, joking about smoking those other guys in the morning. Too much bounce in our pounce (OK, these are getting lame) that evening offering to let the other team hunt with us by Merganser Mound instead of whatever crappy location they’d discovered, no matter that they’d closed their deficit to four after bringing in two birds.

As Sunday morning unfolded, we clearly heard our lead, and our chances at a repeat title, evaporate. The ducks, so plentiful the morning before, simply changed course on us. We watched them spill into the Little River, veering far past Merganser Mound, right to the other team. Our few opportunities at saving this tourney flew on the fringes of in-range, safe from the steel. The Hunting Gods simply won’t allow boasting, even in an event this crude.

Rounding up the decoys, some variation of the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief set in.

Denial: “There’s no way THOSE guys killed too many birds; we may still win”

Anger: “I bet that rattling Mojo spooked the ducks away”

Bargaining: “Let’s just give it a little longer, don’t unload the shotguns yet”

Depression: “I can’t believe we’re gonna have this rubbed in our faces for the next year”

Acceptance: “Oh well, I think there’s some bourbon left at the house”

Actually, that last one may be part Depression as well. The final score, 9-6.

Not the end to duck season I’d hoped, but as always, a fun company and good times.

Besides, we’ll re-capture the title at Sea Duck Tournament ’10. I’m sure it’s not too early to guarantee victory.

Dumb Ducks

I’ve been accused of being awfully whiny this hunting season. Things just haven’t gone well thanks to one obstacle or another. Some plans were scrapped and others didn’t go to plan. But it has been pointed out to me that, yes, I’ve been able to get away with regularity, and I did kill a few deer and hogs and quail. Which is all true. I am thankful.

The ducks, though. Honestly, I didn’t spend as much time on it as I’d hoped, and offseason's bar stool plans hit the reality wall a few times. If I have to choose between deer and waterfowl, which I do, deer win every time. It’s terribly difficult to do a combo bowhunt in Pasco County with a ringneck adventure to Toho in one day.

But a few of the opportunities I did have went to pot thanks to weather and other circumstances I have no control over. Cole and I hunted Toho in early January a couple times, but it was freezing cold, the lake had been severely pressured, and the ducks stayed rafted up in the open water far from any concealable vegetation. Had a blast, learned a bit, but no shots were fired.

I enjoy – really, thoroughly enjoy – splashing sea ducks, sawbills, mergansers, whatever you want to call them off Homosassa. A couple days before New Years, Nick and I popped a few. Hunted there this last weekend and didn’t pull the trigger on any in-range birds. Did try to blast some speck of a duck out of the stratosphere Sunday morning in pure desperation.

For whatever reason, there just weren’t as many birds off the Nature Coast this year. No telling how the record cold weather of a few weeks back influenced them. The full moon last weekend pulled a lot of water in on the morning high tides. And it’s rained buckets this winter. My guess is those birds that were present flew to the back bays and creeks protected by the oysters and limestone bars. In years past, there hasn’t been as much water and the ducks are forced to the open bays and accessible side creeks. So, lots of water + fewer birds = limited chances.

Oh well. I prefer to put a lid on this season with some positive thoughts.

1. I have two brand new boxes of shells for next season. With the price of ammo increasing, I’ll save some cash next year.

2. I have a new duck gun, a very stylish Browning BPS in 3 ½ magnum, that promises to be a favorite in the safe, supposing I shake the albatross-like bad luck it has inflicted on me since I acquired it. And not having pulled the trigger, my shoulder doesn’t ache from the mammoth recoil of these loads.

3. I was loaded up with new, good-looking decoys for Christmas that did a great job reeling in cormorants, egrets and sea gulls last weekend.

4. I have a cult of successful duck hunting friends who are more than happy to regale me with tales of their triumphs, and from whom I am able to hunt vicariously through.

5. I did kill the first two ducks I shot at this season, though these incidents occurred almost a month-and-a-half apart.

6. I have almost 9 ½ months before next season starts to forget this season existed.

Hope everyone else had an exciting duck season. Time to look forward to turkey.