Duck Hunting with a Master

It had been two years since I’d had the privilege of sharing the marsh with the most duck-huntingest man I know, Pete Ottesen. Pete writes about all things outdoors for the Stockton Record, and he’d invited me down to the Grasslands in Merced County for a hunt. Needless to say I was excited: His club has been so well managed for so many decades that I could expect to shoot more than a brace of ducks, even on a poor day.

More than the prospect of a full strap was the prospect of hunting with a true master of more than 50 years’ experience. Pete’s years in the marsh have taught him that that teal will come readily to a policeman’s whistle, and that mallards at the end of the season are all-but uncallable. He knows exactly where to put decoys in whatever situation he’s in, and knows the proper way to rig them and store them after each hunt. Pete can identify a duck with only a slight glance, and while I hear them better (a half-century of shotgun blasts will do that to a man), he can shoot them better.

The morning was foggy, and not in a good way. High fog can lead to spectacular shoots, low fog leads to snap shots along the lines of, “Oh shit! There they are!” BANG! BANG! “Damn.” Still, we were hunting a stand-up blind elevated over the water level, which helped a lot once I got used to it. Green-winged teal were the bird of the day – hell, they are the bird of the region. More teal are shot in Merced County than any other county in California. They’re teeny, single-serving ducks, but most agree that they are among the tastiest birds in duckdom. Before long, we had a half-dozen on the strap.

During a lull I thought about Pete’s cabin at the club, festooned with several generations’ worth of paraphernelia: Antique decoys, mounted birds, old shotshell boxes, a bottle of Aalborg Akavit (Pete’s a Dane, after all), and row upon row of wonderful photos of hunts past. My favorite is his grandfather, smoking a pipe, holding a strap of mallards in one hand and a side-by-side in the other. He is of course wearing a jacket, hat and tie. Ah, the olden days. Such history in that little cabin…

Motion broke my reverie. “What are those?” I asked, nodding toward the trio of squatty ducks whizzing toward us.

“Ringnecks!” Pete hissed, and began chirping at them with his police whistle. “Talk to them!” So I began chuckling on my mallard call. The birds swooped in, and we dropped two of the three. When his dog Meegan brought them back, I was overjoyed. Another first for me! I’d never shot a ringneck duck before. They look like the scaup I’d been shooting at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area, but the bill was different. Pete said they taste different, too, and for the better. He gave me his, so I could share the pair with my girlfriend at later feast.

Soon afterwards, the fog lifted. Birds tend to do a lot of flying around right when the weather changes, so if you happen to be in the right spot, you can get yourself onto some great shooting. Sure enough, as the clouds parted, I spotted a group of ducks way above us. They were chirping. “Pintails! And wigeon!” Pete started chirping back, while I hit the chuckle pretty hard; for some reason pintails love the chuckle on a mallard call and these were no exception. Closer and closer they circled. Meegan the dog was getting antsy. Pete was getting antsy. “Shoot them!” he said.

“Not close enough,” I said. I use a 20-gauge shotgun and like my shots a little closer than these birds were. Pete was worried that they’d see something in our decoys they didn’t like and fly off before we could get them. But on they came! A trio of pintails and a pair of wigeon set their wings and began dropping into the decoys. “Take em!” Pete shouted, aiming for a pintail. I aimed for the wigeon closer to me. Two shots, and two birds dropped.

Meegan the Dog brought me my bird and I was astounded. It was the most beautiful drake wigeon I’d ever seen, and there was not a mark on him. At once I decided I’d go for another first: I am going to get this bird mounted, something I’ve never done before. That way I can remember him, and this very special hunt. Skol, Pete!