Shooting
From a mile or so off, the rising ducks looked like smoke from a grassfire. And pres-ently they started to come over, high and low, in knots of four and five and tens and scores, in waves and droves. It was entrancing in the purest sense of the word, and at times I was too overwhelmed to shoot.
We were on an island no larger than a two-car garage, my bird boy and I, in the midst of the vast marshes of the Rio Parana. It could have been on the moon for all I knew-the better part of an hour upriver from the little town of Esquina, up this tributary and that, through backwaters and sloughs, until the only directions I could identify with any certainty were up and down. Grass on every side, horizon to horizon, and not a tree anywhere in sight. Had my kind-hearted guide, Tata, chosen to head back to town without me, my bones would be there still.
And that might be no bad thing. This was in Argentina in the 1980s, a country I have come to love dearly and a time I wish I could visit again. I don't suppose there are any fewer ducks, unless perhaps the rice farmers have stepped up their practice of poisoning them by the thousands. I learned later in the day that the birds I saw in the sky were but a fraction of what ducks were there. It was late May, and about half of them were still coming out of the annual molt and thus flightless. The whole thing, as I thought about it later, was enough to turn even a casual duck hunter gooey.
I've talked with some guys who've shot in Egypt as well as Argentina, and they tell me there might be even more ducks in the Nile Basin. I've never been there, so I can't say first-hand, but if it's true, those would be numbers much too large to fit into my little head. All I can say is that I shot seven species of ducks in Argentina, not one of which I'd ever seen before. Ducks that live under the Southern Cross apparently tend to stay south of the Equator.
On that trip I was shooting a skeet gun, my beloved Marocchi Contrast over/ under, and possibly the worst cartridges I've ever been forced to use. That a hunter is not allowed to import cartridges into most European or South American countries is just a fact you have to live with. Those little abortions were made somewhere in South America, though I don't know where. They bore no head stamp as a clue, and the shell bodies showed nothing but the number 5. I got a shower of confetti every time I pulled the trigger, as if they were wadded with old newspaper, and any duck beyond about 40 yards just flew on, even when I knew it was solidly hit.
After a few of those, I kept my shots to 30 yards or less and was not unhappy with the results. But I wondered just what manner of crap I was shooting, so during a brief lull in the flights I cut open a shell and poured the pellets in-to my hand. Ugly. I couldn't see a truly round pellet anywhere and, judging just by eye, it appeared that someone had dumped No. 4s and No. 6s together, stirred them up and called them No. 5s. Another impromptu and highly unscientific test suggested that antimony was an element not yet discovered in the Southern Hemisphere. I can say that in the many times I've been back to South America since, the shells have ranged from quite good to excellent.
And this is a good thing. No gamebird deserves to be shot with junk, certainly not ducks.
That experience confirmed one thing I already knew and reinforced something that I've believed for a long time. You don't need much choke, if any, but you do need top-quality cartridges. I've shot a lot of ducks with that skeet gun using lead and a variety of nontoxic compounds, and I've never felt undergunned. It has Tula-type chokes, a concept developed by the Russians for Olympic competition. There's a wee bit of constriction a few inches back, but the muzzles are actually larger than the bore diameter. I don't fully understand the physics, but being able to put as many as eight pellets into the breast of a teal at 30 yards is pretty compelling evidence that it works.
The notion that wildfowling has to be a long-range exercise started a long time ago, in the days when ammunition was woefully inefficient, and came of age during the 1920s and '30s, when horrible droughts almost wiped out waterfowl in North America. Add to that the experience of World War II, which demonstrated the advantages of sheer firepower, and it's no wonder three generations of hunt-ers invest so much faith in technology. Problem is, technology is only worth what you can do with it.
I don't hunt in order to get angry. Quite the contrary. But few things can wind me up tighter than spending five or 10 minutes sweet-talking some ducks into coming down to have a look at what's set up for them, and then have some oaf in the next blind start blazing away while they're still a hundred yards out and 80 yards up. The polite term for this is "sky-busting." I can think of several others, but none likely to get published in a dignified magazine.
I know without even looking that yonder dipstick has a high-tech, ultra-full-choked autoloader stuffed with super-duper, whomp-'em-up magnums and thus believes that merely pointing skyward and pulling the trigger is all he needs to do.
If you need a demonstration of just how irrelevant owl's-butt chokes and monster loads really are, hunt in green timber. That's the most exciting, enchanting form of duck hunting I've ever found. The birds fly virtually into your lap, and you'll spend a lot more time bird watching than actually shooting. Do it a few times and you'll begin to think that even your skeet gun is over-choked.
But you still need good cartridges. That isn't to say they need to be little sticks of dynamite, only that they should be efficient. The requirement of nontoxic shot has changed the face of wildfowl shooting in this country. This isn't the time to question whether lead shot is the dreadful scourge it's cracked up to be. I'm not convinced that it is, either biologically or environmentally, but we are legally proscribed from using it, so there's an end. Iron is the easiest and cheapest to make but the least efficient ballistically. It's hard enough and can be made wonderfully round, but an iron pellet has a sectional density roughly that of a roll of toilet paper. Lacking mass, it has to travel somewhere near Mach 1 in order to transfer enough kinetic energy. It'll kill ducks, but it can be hard on older guns, and with sufficient launch velocity, it's hard on shooters, too. Iron is my last choice when I'm required to shoot nontoxic shot.
Mercifully, we have some alternatives. Bismuth is wonderful, but it's practically unavailable for now. The various tungsten compounds are superb; I'm especially fond of Federal's tungsten-polymer. Hevi-Shot seems remarkable, but I haven't fired enough of it in hunting conditions to really form an opinion.
Iron shot has spawned some bizarre inventions, like the 31/2" 12-gauge cartridge. The length is simply to accommodate a sufficient number of iron pellets to achieve a decent density in the pattern, but I can only guess at the shotstring. Iron doesn't deform in a gun bore, so the stringing might be shorter than I think. Even so, the cartridge doesn't make any great sense in external ballistics. Better to use a 10-gauge, and beyond that perhaps it's time to reevaluate the ban of the 8-bore. But don't hold your breath 'til that happens.
If memory serves, I've shot ducks with every form of gun except a bolt-action. Form doesn't really matter, except for convenience. I don't care much for auto-loaders, mainly because I've never shot one that didn't ultimately jam at the wrong moment. Side-by-sides and over/ unders can be awkward in the cramped confines of a blind. Given my druthers, I prefer a pump to anything else. It's easy to load, will digest any ammunition and, if I can remember to shuck the slide at the right time, is almost as quick as a gun with two barrels and two triggers. I'm fortunate to have a pair of the best ever made: my father's Model 31 Remington and a 1942-vintage Winchester Model 12 that my uncle gave me. You couldn't ask for pump-actions silkier or more reliable. Treat them to a periodic strip-and-clean by a gunsmith who understands the mechanics, and you won't find better friends.
The cardinal precepts of duck hunting are few but inviolable. If you're not where the birds want to be, you're screwed no matter what you do. You don't have to be camouflaged down to your underwear, but you do have to be still. When they're coming toward you, don't blow your call. And they're always flying faster than you think, so don't be afraid to swing way out in front.
Once in a while you get lucky. Sometime in the late 1980s or early '90s, the lower Missouri River flooded so gently that it didn't breach the levees; water simply rose and overflowed. This flooded acre upon acre of bottomland fields-mostly corn and some soybeans-to a depth of about two feet. The puddle ducks liked it. So did my hunting partner and I. I could lash my canoe to my car, pick Joey up in town, and we could be on the water in about a half-hour. The canoe fit perfectly between the cornrows. From two or three rows in, we didn't need decoys, calls or any other truck, only the ability to sit still and shoot when the time was right. It got right every day we went there. And because the levees were intact, the water stayed behind when the river receded. I don't know how many ducks we killed, only that I won't see anything quite like it again in my lifetime. 'Sokay, though, once was enough.
I was not born a duck hunter. My father was a quail hunter, and as the twig is bent... But I have shot ducks from Alaska to Manitoba to the Maritimes to Scotland to Hungary, from northern Minnesota to Mexico to Argentina, so I guess I'm a duck hunter after all.
I know for sure that I've loved every minute of it, shivering cold or wet or sweltering hot. There's just something about being where the ducks are-something that always brings to mind an image from Wordsworth, something that connects the landscape with the quiet of the sky.
We were on an island no larger than a two-car garage, my bird boy and I, in the midst of the vast marshes of the Rio Parana. It could have been on the moon for all I knew-the better part of an hour upriver from the little town of Esquina, up this tributary and that, through backwaters and sloughs, until the only directions I could identify with any certainty were up and down. Grass on every side, horizon to horizon, and not a tree anywhere in sight. Had my kind-hearted guide, Tata, chosen to head back to town without me, my bones would be there still.
And that might be no bad thing. This was in Argentina in the 1980s, a country I have come to love dearly and a time I wish I could visit again. I don't suppose there are any fewer ducks, unless perhaps the rice farmers have stepped up their practice of poisoning them by the thousands. I learned later in the day that the birds I saw in the sky were but a fraction of what ducks were there. It was late May, and about half of them were still coming out of the annual molt and thus flightless. The whole thing, as I thought about it later, was enough to turn even a casual duck hunter gooey.
I've talked with some guys who've shot in Egypt as well as Argentina, and they tell me there might be even more ducks in the Nile Basin. I've never been there, so I can't say first-hand, but if it's true, those would be numbers much too large to fit into my little head. All I can say is that I shot seven species of ducks in Argentina, not one of which I'd ever seen before. Ducks that live under the Southern Cross apparently tend to stay south of the Equator.
On that trip I was shooting a skeet gun, my beloved Marocchi Contrast over/ under, and possibly the worst cartridges I've ever been forced to use. That a hunter is not allowed to import cartridges into most European or South American countries is just a fact you have to live with. Those little abortions were made somewhere in South America, though I don't know where. They bore no head stamp as a clue, and the shell bodies showed nothing but the number 5. I got a shower of confetti every time I pulled the trigger, as if they were wadded with old newspaper, and any duck beyond about 40 yards just flew on, even when I knew it was solidly hit.
After a few of those, I kept my shots to 30 yards or less and was not unhappy with the results. But I wondered just what manner of crap I was shooting, so during a brief lull in the flights I cut open a shell and poured the pellets in-to my hand. Ugly. I couldn't see a truly round pellet anywhere and, judging just by eye, it appeared that someone had dumped No. 4s and No. 6s together, stirred them up and called them No. 5s. Another impromptu and highly unscientific test suggested that antimony was an element not yet discovered in the Southern Hemisphere. I can say that in the many times I've been back to South America since, the shells have ranged from quite good to excellent.
And this is a good thing. No gamebird deserves to be shot with junk, certainly not ducks.
That experience confirmed one thing I already knew and reinforced something that I've believed for a long time. You don't need much choke, if any, but you do need top-quality cartridges. I've shot a lot of ducks with that skeet gun using lead and a variety of nontoxic compounds, and I've never felt undergunned. It has Tula-type chokes, a concept developed by the Russians for Olympic competition. There's a wee bit of constriction a few inches back, but the muzzles are actually larger than the bore diameter. I don't fully understand the physics, but being able to put as many as eight pellets into the breast of a teal at 30 yards is pretty compelling evidence that it works.
The notion that wildfowling has to be a long-range exercise started a long time ago, in the days when ammunition was woefully inefficient, and came of age during the 1920s and '30s, when horrible droughts almost wiped out waterfowl in North America. Add to that the experience of World War II, which demonstrated the advantages of sheer firepower, and it's no wonder three generations of hunt-ers invest so much faith in technology. Problem is, technology is only worth what you can do with it.
I don't hunt in order to get angry. Quite the contrary. But few things can wind me up tighter than spending five or 10 minutes sweet-talking some ducks into coming down to have a look at what's set up for them, and then have some oaf in the next blind start blazing away while they're still a hundred yards out and 80 yards up. The polite term for this is "sky-busting." I can think of several others, but none likely to get published in a dignified magazine.
I know without even looking that yonder dipstick has a high-tech, ultra-full-choked autoloader stuffed with super-duper, whomp-'em-up magnums and thus believes that merely pointing skyward and pulling the trigger is all he needs to do.
If you need a demonstration of just how irrelevant owl's-butt chokes and monster loads really are, hunt in green timber. That's the most exciting, enchanting form of duck hunting I've ever found. The birds fly virtually into your lap, and you'll spend a lot more time bird watching than actually shooting. Do it a few times and you'll begin to think that even your skeet gun is over-choked.
But you still need good cartridges. That isn't to say they need to be little sticks of dynamite, only that they should be efficient. The requirement of nontoxic shot has changed the face of wildfowl shooting in this country. This isn't the time to question whether lead shot is the dreadful scourge it's cracked up to be. I'm not convinced that it is, either biologically or environmentally, but we are legally proscribed from using it, so there's an end. Iron is the easiest and cheapest to make but the least efficient ballistically. It's hard enough and can be made wonderfully round, but an iron pellet has a sectional density roughly that of a roll of toilet paper. Lacking mass, it has to travel somewhere near Mach 1 in order to transfer enough kinetic energy. It'll kill ducks, but it can be hard on older guns, and with sufficient launch velocity, it's hard on shooters, too. Iron is my last choice when I'm required to shoot nontoxic shot.
Mercifully, we have some alternatives. Bismuth is wonderful, but it's practically unavailable for now. The various tungsten compounds are superb; I'm especially fond of Federal's tungsten-polymer. Hevi-Shot seems remarkable, but I haven't fired enough of it in hunting conditions to really form an opinion.
Iron shot has spawned some bizarre inventions, like the 31/2" 12-gauge cartridge. The length is simply to accommodate a sufficient number of iron pellets to achieve a decent density in the pattern, but I can only guess at the shotstring. Iron doesn't deform in a gun bore, so the stringing might be shorter than I think. Even so, the cartridge doesn't make any great sense in external ballistics. Better to use a 10-gauge, and beyond that perhaps it's time to reevaluate the ban of the 8-bore. But don't hold your breath 'til that happens.
If memory serves, I've shot ducks with every form of gun except a bolt-action. Form doesn't really matter, except for convenience. I don't care much for auto-loaders, mainly because I've never shot one that didn't ultimately jam at the wrong moment. Side-by-sides and over/ unders can be awkward in the cramped confines of a blind. Given my druthers, I prefer a pump to anything else. It's easy to load, will digest any ammunition and, if I can remember to shuck the slide at the right time, is almost as quick as a gun with two barrels and two triggers. I'm fortunate to have a pair of the best ever made: my father's Model 31 Remington and a 1942-vintage Winchester Model 12 that my uncle gave me. You couldn't ask for pump-actions silkier or more reliable. Treat them to a periodic strip-and-clean by a gunsmith who understands the mechanics, and you won't find better friends.
The cardinal precepts of duck hunting are few but inviolable. If you're not where the birds want to be, you're screwed no matter what you do. You don't have to be camouflaged down to your underwear, but you do have to be still. When they're coming toward you, don't blow your call. And they're always flying faster than you think, so don't be afraid to swing way out in front.
Once in a while you get lucky. Sometime in the late 1980s or early '90s, the lower Missouri River flooded so gently that it didn't breach the levees; water simply rose and overflowed. This flooded acre upon acre of bottomland fields-mostly corn and some soybeans-to a depth of about two feet. The puddle ducks liked it. So did my hunting partner and I. I could lash my canoe to my car, pick Joey up in town, and we could be on the water in about a half-hour. The canoe fit perfectly between the cornrows. From two or three rows in, we didn't need decoys, calls or any other truck, only the ability to sit still and shoot when the time was right. It got right every day we went there. And because the levees were intact, the water stayed behind when the river receded. I don't know how many ducks we killed, only that I won't see anything quite like it again in my lifetime. 'Sokay, though, once was enough.
I was not born a duck hunter. My father was a quail hunter, and as the twig is bent... But I have shot ducks from Alaska to Manitoba to the Maritimes to Scotland to Hungary, from northern Minnesota to Mexico to Argentina, so I guess I'm a duck hunter after all.
I know for sure that I've loved every minute of it, shivering cold or wet or sweltering hot. There's just something about being where the ducks are-something that always brings to mind an image from Wordsworth, something that connects the landscape with the quiet of the sky.
- By: Michael McIntosh
