Beaver Moon

A stolen duck hunt from a beaver-lodge blind

Until today, Jack had assumed the slough could not be properly hunted. It was public water and had a mile or more of cattail fingers and cuts, plenty of birds and easy access, yet he'd seen another hunter there only once. He'd tried hunting there on more than one occasion. Several times he'd hunted the steep bank that made for deep water and longer decoy lines, and he'd shot a few divers and mallards there. But the cattails along the far edge of the slough had hidden where the birds really wanted to be-particularly the mallards, returning from their early morning grain.

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