Freezer Duck

On a recent trip back to my boyhood home, I found my parents were busy cleaning out the freezer. In the bottom were a few ducks and other animals once destined for preservation by taxidermy. At this point, I didn’t have the interest in some of them that I once did, but one duck caught my eye. It was a red head duck.

At once, like a flood gate opening, a thousand memories flooded into my mind. This duck was shot by my cousin’s husband Dick Mans.

Red head ducks are not common north Iowa occupants of the average hunters’ game bag. They are deep water diving ducks that most duck hunters never get the opportunity to shoot.

Dick on the other hand, lived beside Lake Erie and there was big water and the opportunity to shoot diving ducks.

It’s a specialized hunt. Decoys are strung together in lines and laid parallel to each other in a pattern with an anchor at each end. This simplifies the process of laying them out and picking them up.

The spread is then placed in open water, far from any cover that might conceal a hunter or any other predator.

Now then, how do you hunt such a spread? You sit upwind a couple hundred yards in a big boat and wait. If you observe ducks landing in the decoys, then its time to start the hunt. A sneak boat is employed.

This is a boat, as its name implies, designed to allow you to sneak up on the birds. It sits very low in the water, has a motor on the back and in the front, a low little canvas wall to hide behind. The whole affair is painted the approximate color of dirty fall lake water. If everything goes right (meaning the ducks aren’t too spooky) you can motor into the decoy spread and approach the duck(s) and shoot them. You are also supposed to paddle or drift your way the last little bit into the decoys; you can’t shoot while using the motor.

Anyway, this experience, which I once participated in with Dick all came flooding back when I held that duck.

It had sat forgotten in the bottom of the freezer now for a number of years. Another poignant fact also remained, I would never do that hunt again as shortly after this duck was shot, Dick died of a brain tumor.

I plan on mounting that forgotten duck this winter, one that will not only remind me of a hunt, but now a fond memory of a family member passed on.