Youth Waterfowl season found “The Men” and I hunkered down in a favorite slough of mine situated in a Waterfowl Production Area near Detroit Lakes. The WPA was formerly my grandparent’s farmland.
Friday afternoon, we picked up “The Men” – our 4th and 7th graders – from school and drove the 2 1/2 hours to DL. After dropping the kids, my lovely wife, and the pooch off at our friend’s house, I met up with my father to walk into the slough to do a little last-minute scouting.
To our dismay, the water levels were very low…the flooded timber we’d intended to hunt was a freakish moonscape of driftwood stumps. Dad and I put together a couple of quick blinds around 2 stumps that were closest to the water line and then hiked the 1/2 mile back to the road. It was cool having my dad reminisce about the time when he was 8 or 9 years old and his dad hunted that slough with this brothers. “I did nothing but carry ducks from the slough to the farmhouse all morning,” he recalled. “At lunch time, the men walked up to the farm for lunch and then told the women that they were headed back to shoot more ducks,” he added. Grandma had other ideas. They’d shot 135 ducks that morning and she wasn’t about to clean anymore.
I digress.
Saturday morning we hit the slough extra early – public land and all, we didn’t want someone else to snag our spot. We were hunting with my buddy and his daughter (her first year as well).
Decoys set, the birds were flying at the start of shooting time. Mostly teal, but some mallards and woodies as well. All told, my 10 year old shot his first bird (mallard drake) and my 12 year old shot a mallard hen and a blue wing teal.
It was a spectacular hunt. My buddy and I agreed that we’ll be doing more duck hunting this year. We haven’t hunted birds in 5 or 6 years. We further agreed that we won’t be hunting ourselves – rather, we’ll be bringing the kids & dogs out and we can just enjoy facilitating the experience for them.
