A Saskatchewan holiday Duck hunting the ‘gentlemen’s way’
By ROSS MCLAUGHLIN
The sun was coming up over the hill in the Qu’Appelle Lake
Valley. We were leisurely drinking fresh coffee on the front porch of my friend’s cottage. Is that what you call duck hunting in Saskatchewan? Yes! It did feel kind of strange not sitting in the blind in the wee hours
of the morning so we could see the birds; but when I thought about it, it really didn’t feel so bad. No four in the morning, stumbling around in the dark trying not to wake the rest of the household. No getting in the truck and pulling the boat to the lake, putting out lots of decoys, adjusting them when it turns light enough, and waiting in the dark. This was a whole lot more relaxed. We got up early enough to
see the sunrise with a cup of hot coffee, and started thinking about which pothole we should drive to after eating breakfast at the ESSO station in Indianhead. We would then head off with two dogs and three shooters down a gravel quarter-section road. We’d go to one of the hundreds of potholes to which the ducks would be coming after feeding in the grain fields. Actually, any pothole would do, as most had ducks in them. A farmer showed us a great spot and said to go and hunt anywhere
on his property, just not in the fields that had not been cut yet, and that was very few. He had 16 sections so there was no lack of land or potholes. We sat in the cattails on the edge of the road between two
large potholes, shooting at ducks flying between, having lots of opportunities to drop birds and giving the dogs some good workouts. Then it was lunch time and time to change potholes. We drove one section over and into a whole field of pot holes (five
or six) and it was time to do a little sneak-and-peak. Sure enough, there they were; and with a quick yell, up they flew. Lo and behold, some did fall, and the dogs were sent to do their job,
18 BOUNDER MAGAZINE
www.bounder.ca
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