As many awoke excitedly on Christmas to open their presents, I woke up bright and early excited to head out for my first duck hunt.
With no holiday plans until the afternoon, my brother and I seized the opportunity to get out and see if we could shoot some ducks. I’d been interested in duck hunting for awhile so I couldn’t wait to learn more about it.
Duck hunting is my brother’s favorite and he has his go-to spots around where he lives. But since we were both home for Christmas, it was all new territory neither of us knew. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife website has a great “GoHunt” feature that shows public land for different types of hunting. I put in our location and found a couple of areas for duck hunting.
We headed out as the sun was rising and drove to a large lake outside of town. We figured there wouldn’t be many other hunters out since it was Christmas morning, but boy were we wrong! Several cars were parked along the road and we heard gunshots ring out almost immediately after stepping out of the car.
This area seemed to be along a migratory route as several flocks of ducks flew overhead and quacking echoed throughout the sky. The only problem was they were too high to shoot. As we walked along a small stream, my brother taught me about jump-shooting. Unfortunately, we saw no ducks to actually jump-shoot.
Country Huntress 