MAINELY OUTDOORS
The small five-acre, reed-lined pond couldn’t really be classified as remote since it’s situated only half a mile from a paved road. Our trio of camo-clad hunters parked our pickup alongside a rutted field road and wrestled a 16-foot canoe from the roof rack. While other Aroostook sportsmen concentrated on the first week of deer season, the last week of moose hunting or grouse gunning, we hoped for a fast and furious duck hunt.
After donning hip boots, we packed three shotguns, a dozen decoys, and our blind bags full of shells, calls and other waterfowl gear into the boat among the paddles, life vests and anchor. Two of us manhandled the sleek, heavily gear-burdened canoe along a rough woods path through brush and between trees. The third team member carried our bulky, unique and somewhat fragile secret weapon. After 75 yards of zigging, zagging and stumbling around roots, rocks, and blowdowns, we reached a head-high curtain of cattails at water’s edge.
All the hunting gear was off loaded except decoys, and while two of us shrugged into floatation vests our secret waterfowling weapon was gently placed onto the canoe. Dragging our craft through the thick rushes into the water we manned the paddles and began to set out our fake flock of mallards, black ducks and teal. Three separate groups were placed on weighted tethers along a 60-yard stretch of shoreline and the light breeze moved them along the surface like live birds.
At the mid-point of our decoy spread an extendable six-foot metal pole was forced into the putty-like mud bottom, and a life size drake mallard with feet down and wings spread was placed on top of the stand. Hovering about two feet above the water the colorful duck really stood out — especially when I toggled a switch on a small remote control in my pocket and the wings began to spin! White on one side and black on the other, when in motion the Mojo mallard truly simulated a live landing duck.
Motion decoys used to consist of floating birds with a long string running to a blind on shore where a hunter could pull the jerk-line to move the attached decoy and make ripples to also move other decoys nearby. Then there was a floating duck with a battery-driven propeller and remote control that swam about like the old model ships. These were expensive and needed both hands to manipulate the controls from shore. Currently there are a dozen battery-controlled ducks and geese that provide realistic movement to any decoy setup and last all day, but the Mojo models seem to have proven most effective. A handful of states even passed regulations prohibiting their use because the fake winged wonders proved too effective, I’m happy to say Maine is not one of them.
Once back onshore the canoe was beached and hidden with reeds and brush and each of us took up shooting stations about 25 yards apart along the decoy spread. We hunkered among the cattails and bushes, scatterguns loaded, calls hanging from neck lanyards and scanned the sky for approaching ducks. We had two hours of legal hunting time left before dusk, the perfect period when birds return from feeding to rest on their nightly roost ponds.
Less than 15 minutes passed when a flight of eight ducks appeared on the horizon heading our way. Now the trick was to get them over the decoys and within range. I started the spinning wing decoy and the other two guys began blowing a greeting call. The birds winged over the far shoreline, buttonhooked around into the wind and set their wings. When the fireworks stopped a black duck, hen mallard and two greenheads stayed behind, floating among the dekes.
Over the next hour a few singles, some doubles and several small flocks succumbed to our “come-hither” calling, and our spinning wing decoy helped seal the deal with its realistic motion. At sunset our trio tallied a dozen ducks, mostly mallards, but one male wood duck and a green-wing teal added color and variety. As we paddled out to pick up and repack decoys and our pole sitting, fake flying Mojo mallard, the most amazing event of the outing began.
As the stars and moon began to appear overhead in the evening gloom, so did every duck in Aroostook County — or so it seemed. Flock after flock of waterfowl, some groups of 50 birds or more, ascended en mass on our little waterhole. They tumbled in so close over our canoe we truly could have hit them with a paddle, their set wings ripping the air like a cloth tearing. Some landed within feet of the canoe, realized their mistake, nosily taking wing again to circle and land a few yards away.
Even as we hauled the canoe back uphill through the woods to the truck, we could hear the ducks continue to fly in, land, and quack contentedly as they settled in for the night on their roost pond. Satisfying as our hunt was, and the success of our new motion decoy, the dusk onslaught of waterfowl will be the true memory of our trip. There are more ducks throughout “The Crown of Maine” this fall than I’ve seen in the last decade, visit a waterway near you and make a few memories of your own.
