When Charles Allen, owner of Alaska Expedition Co., told me that he had high-speed duck hunting, I was in. Duck hunting is a blast when they come zooming in at Mach V.
If you’ve never hunted over a good set-up, you have to try it out. It’s cool to have a good layout of decoys in front of you and someone who can really call. I don’t get to hunt ducks much anymore. It seems I’m always swamped with some other type of hunting, so I was excited to go.
The first morning they told me the weather had been too nice, so we might not have much shooting. However, if we got some bad weather, it would get the ducks moving south and they’d flock into our area. For hunters that morning, it would be Ken and I, with Jordan as our guide. There wasn’t a lot flying, but I got to drop five ducks with four shots, which is better than my norm.
That afternoon, my partner, Ron Spomer, flew in, so we decided to duck hunt the next morning. It was a little cooler and it rained a hair, but still, no big amount of ducks were flying. But the next day, my shooting went downhill fast. So of course Ron thought I was stretching it in my tales from the day before.
This morning, Ken hunted in another blind in hopes that we’d push them back and forth. Jordan dumped us off and went over to meet up with Ken and call for him. Jordan had barely gotten out of sight when I dropped a duck across the creek. It wasn’t 2 feet deep, so I jumped out of the blind and ran over to get it.
Our blind was on a little dry hump and the edge of the creek was grassy. As I waded into the creek, there was a sudden 3-foot drop off. I face-planted into a pile of floating weeds. My toes were hung on the higher ground and my face was in the floating weeds, and it was tough to get up. Water was trying to seep in the top of my waders. Cold mountain water. My Mossberg was already under my chest in the water so I stuck the butt down, hit the bottom and pushed up.
I wasn’t but 10-15 feet behind the blind, but supposedly Ron missed it all, which is hard to believe because he films everything. If this dunking shows up on a YouTube in the near-future, it’s going to strain our friendship.
Well, I finally got upright, poured water out of the barrel, opened the action, made sure there were no obstructions in the barrel and kept hunting. I think the 5 gallons of cold mountain water poured down the front of my waders adversely affected my shooting. That’s my excuse.
We shot a few ducks but they weren’t flying too hot and heavy, and it was now time to focus on moose and brown bear hunting. Of course later that week, while setting on the river bank bear hunting, I bet 40 ducks flew right over my head. Arrgggh!
Well, it was fun to be able to duck hunt in Alaska for a few days in some cool country.
Click here for a recipe for delicious bacon-wrapped duck poppers: http://www.idahostatejournal.com/outdoors/xtreme_idaho/how-to-make-bacon-wrapped-duck-poppers/article_432b9ec9-f0ae-55f6-bf21-45b7a25b0bf1.html
Gear:
For this hunt, I wanted to select the best gear since it’d be in some unforgiving country. Here’s the gear I used:
- Mossberg Pro Series Waterfowler 930
- Federal Black Cloud ammo
- Simms waders & wading boots
- Simms wading pants & rain coat
- Sure Shot calls
- Trumpeter Swan decoy. The ducks like feeding in the holes that the swans dig out.
P.S.: Note to self. Next time remember to use the belt that comes with the waders that keeps water from coming in if you tip over!
Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.
