Waterfowling in Classic Style
“Seven at 11 o’clock,” I whispered. “They’re headed right for us.”
My son John tensed and hunched lower behind the foliage of the water blind. So did I. Seconds passed slowly as adrenaline seeped through our systems.
A group of ducks swung to our right to adjust to the wind direction, then cupped their wings to descend. They were about 20 yards away and just over our decoys when I hissed, “Take ’em.”
The Waterfowling Tradition
I’ve been an avid waterfowler for well over 50 years, ever since my earliest days at my Pennsylvania birthplace near Presque Isle Bay on Lake Erie. When I moved to Maryland many years ago, it was only natural to embrace the Eastern Shore and its long tradition of duck and goose hunting.
I also submerged myself in the wealth of literature describing the heydays of waterfowling when the Chesapeake was choked with widgeon grass, eel grass, wild rice and the hundreds of thousands of migratory birds that stopped to feed on their way to southern wintering grounds.
Over the years, we harvested some fine ducks and geese from the Shore and had some great hunting experiences. We also saw that the migratory bird populations were a mere shadow of their former numbers. Our sporting activities were really homage to the bygone days of water fowling rather than anything close to the original experience. That was lost to the ages.
Then last winter a long-time sporting friend told me of a place that was perhaps as close to those days as would ever again be encountered. It was the Pampas of Argentina, a giant plain of grass and agricultural fields interspersed with countless lagoons, small lakes and wetlands. It also was sparsely populated — except for waterfowl.
On to the Pampas
April and May is early winter in Argentina, and the ducks are in full migratory plumage and movement. They are not the glamorous canvasbacks, mallards and redheads of the old Tidewater. But there are vast numbers of American widgeon and cinnamon teal as well as South American species such as yellow-billed pintail, white-cheeked pintail, Chiloe widgeon, speckle-head teal, rosy-bill pochards and black-bellied whistlers, among others.
Arising each day at 5am and after a quick breakfast, our party of five would shoot ducks until 10am or so. The limits were generous, but we were under a strict allowance of just 100 shells per gun. In the afternoons, we would drive out to the edge of vast millet and sorghum fields and pass-shoot mourning doves from the endless waves of those birds heading for their evening roosts.
The experience was as close as we would ever come to reliving the glory days of birding on the Bay.