Fall is by far my favorite season. The blistering heat of summer dies off, and the crisp air is perfect for hoodies and bonfires. Hockey season starts and most hunting seasons roll around. I look forward to duck hunting all year, and there is nothing more refreshing than watching the sun rise over a spread of decoys on opening morning. Unfortunately, many popular spots are well hunted out during later season, and you have to find fresh locations to set up.
Thanks to one of my hunting buddy’s religious scouting, we found a honey hole late season last year that had never been hunted due to its inaccessibility. Our hunting group is always up for a challenge, so we showed up at 4:00 AM to find a way in. We wanted to set up on a stock dam that was flooded for 100 yards all around it. The problem was that several deep ditches and dense cattail clusters in the way. Donning my headlight, I waded into the chest deep water and began clearing a path with a machete for our kayaks to get through. When the ditch got too deep, I would lay on the kayak and my friends would give it a boost through the cleared path. I then got off and shoved the kayak back to them. Holding onto a rope, I would pull them back across once they jumped on. Repeating this process three times, we finally were able to break through the reeds and wade to the island. It took us nearly three hours to just get out to the island, and we thought the hunt was blown because we didn’t get our spread set up until well past shooting light! Our hard work was not in vain, though, because we had one of our most successful hunts all season. We shot our 8-man limit of 48 ducks in two hours, and did not regret a second of the work we had to put in to get there.
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