Water Fowling with my Son

As a young boy I remember some of my first duck hunting trips were with a friend whose older brother had a dozen decoys. At age fourteen we would catch a ride from his mother out to his grandma's house. From there it was a mile walk down to a farm pond were we would set the decoys and wait for the occasional visitor to the pond to drop in and feed. We never had anyone show us how to shoot at moving birds, so if the ducks didn't land on the water we came home empty handed.

I had a chance this Saturday to take one of my twin boys out hunting with me, and the two of us had a chance to shoot at ducks. He had gone out twice before but the hunting was poor. After some of the success I've had this year he wanted to come out with me, and I readily agreed. We set our decoys out on the water and as the sun came up, the ducks started to slowly move. We had a duck come into the decoys early that provided him his first duck in his life. About a half hour later he downed his second duck, I sat there and thought at fourteen I would have been so excited to have two ducks in one day. As the morning wore on the wind picked up so we moved to a different spot on the river.

A lot of ducks for hunting with someone who had never harvested one before

Once we settled into the new spot had about an hour left, so we put out two decoys in the small pond and took a seat and waited. It wasn't long before a flock came by and he dropped #3, shortly after #4 went down, followed by #5. At this point I had stopped giving him all the easy shots and put him on a level playing field with me, birds came in I called the shot and we let it fly. As we were about to leave a flock landed down river from us, I told him we would wait and see if they came up river toward us, after about ten minutes something spooked them and up the river the came I told my son to shoot. He fired one shot at the lead bird and it and the bird directly behind it crumpled and hit the water. Wow! What a way to end the day a double on a single shot and a limit of birds to boot. He is off to a great start in water fowling, and I look forward to many more days hunting with my son.



My Son and Me

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