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Outdoors

A good day with a better ending

By DAVID A. BROWN
Published January 21, 2006

It was almost the end of beautiful though anticlimactic day. Three duck hunters - two armed with shotguns, one with a camera - stood waiting for something special, something we almost missed.

Camouflaged to blend with natural greens and browns, we hid behind a stand of young red mangroves on the edge of a marsh island. Cabbage palm fronds bolstered our makeshift blind.

Mike Locklear watched the left flank, and Victor Edwards of Homosassa eyed the right. Sandwiched in the middle, I and Edwards' chocolate lab Jake tried to stay still and out of the way.

The air was cool, and a windless afternoon had left the water and foliage around us motionless. The moon, nearly full, was brilliant.

A beautiful evening, to be sure, but it wasn't what we needed for duck hunting.

Locklear prefers to reach his blind about an hour before sunset. The afternoon duck action can start any time after that, depending on the weather.

"In all the duck hunting I've done, unless you have bad weather, [the action] is always at dawn and dusk," Locklear said. "You'll have half an hour to shoot.

"But it's nice being out here when the clouds start turning different colors."

Hunters know damp, cold and windy weather increases their odds of shooting a limit.

Poor weather blows birds from the exposed water of outer bays toward their shoreline roosting areas, where hunters hide.

We had no such luck. The only shootable species we saw were several hundred yards out of shotgun range.

Convinced his day was over, Locklear stepped out from the blind and headed for the boat on the other side of the island. He was within 5 feet of the mangroves when he saw what he had been looking for.

"There they are," Edwards said.

About 50 ducks, mostly redheads, flapped across our decoys.

Shooting from an exposed position is usually unthinkable to stealthy duck hunters. These birds are good at avoiding danger and can spot hunters from 100 yards by the end of the season.

But Locklear spun, raised his pump-action 12-gauge and shot a pair. We barely had time for words when a second wave of ducks, at least as thick as the first, flew by. They were followed by a third group.

A few more small groups flew over the decoys. Then a loner ran through Edwards' line of fire and was dropped 10 feet to the ground.

The long, slow ride back to the dock gave us time to reflect on the trip.

The trip started with fishing, not hunting. We had puttered down a creek leading to the mangrove bay where we would hunt, and Locklear shut down the motor and drifted to the middle of the creek's mouth. I could see grass blades on the bottom for most of the trip, and a 6-foot hole held the promise of speckled trout.

At the launch ramp Locklear had said he often uses a fishing rod to snag and retrieve fallen birds when hunting without a dog. This time, the rod had a soft-plastic jerkbait rigged on a red worm hook.

Before picking us up, Locklear had caught a limit of trout in the area. And after several unsuccessful casts - "If we don't get one in a couple of minutes, we're out of here," he said - he hooked another spunky trout that was feeding near the dropoff.

We then made our way to the blind, changing our focus from the creatures swimming beneath the surface to those that flew above it.

Guide Mike Locklear can be reached at (352) 628-4207. Duck season ends January 29.

[Last modified January 21, 2006, 01:33:17]