While the chicken is probably the easiest part of a Turducken to secure, I felt a little bad about raiding a neighbor's coop just to make a grotesque triple bird meat wad. So Oak and I opted to celebrate his 5th birthday by searching for ducks with the hopes of creating the more modest Turduck.
The destination was the Desert Wildlife Area near Moses Lake, not an original idea but I like the mixed bag opportunities. Right off the bat a beaver slapped his tail in the canal and Oak dove in to make the retrieve! This was a little more exotic than I was thinking for the freezer and I was grateful he came up empty.
We worked along the water until we hit Russian olives and Oak was tossing up quail left and right. The little buzz bombs are his favorite and I'm pretty sure its because he thinks he can scarf a few in the deep cover and pretend like he never found them. But Saturday was all about the ducks so blowing through a crate of ammo wasn't going to meet the minimum level of stealthiness.
Although I shouldn't have worried about it, just the sight of my blaze orange hat from across the prairie was enough to leave most of the large ponds conspicuously quiet by the time we arrived. A few of the smaller puddles still held ducks but I was so surprised each time that they received something closer to a two round salute than anything life threatening. With that initial taste of failure, we wrapped up the warmup stroll and hopped to the other side of the canal for the main event.
I had high hopes for the canal itself but I quickly gained a healthy respect for the quackers sense of hearing and sight. More often than not, they were airborne before I even spotted the water they were leaving.
We worked along the water until we hit Russian olives and Oak was tossing up quail left and right. The little buzz bombs are his favorite and I'm pretty sure its because he thinks he can scarf a few in the deep cover and pretend like he never found them. But Saturday was all about the ducks so blowing through a crate of ammo wasn't going to meet the minimum level of stealthiness.
Eventually we worked far enough from the roads to jump a whole flock in the marshes but I failed Oak and myself again. The first duck up fell back down but while the hound enthusiastically and cluelessly worked the grasses, the duck swam out of underneath him and made it around a bend. With over 50 ducks hiding in the hole until a few seconds before, the scents were too muddled for Oak to zero in on the one we sought. We both need a lot more work to become solid duck hunters. I guess all that time playing Duck Hunter on the Nintendo was not as productive as I had imagined...
The next couple hours gave me plenty of time to kick myself as we crossed into new ground where a few bad turns left us crawling along beaver tunnels. Well, Oak was still upright but I was not pleased.
My favorite sight from beaver land was this poor tree. I can't imagine the origin of the feud but its clearly a very personal battle for some angry beaver who decided death wasn't good enough, only sawdust will do.
Emerging from the woods and regaining an upright posture felt great but it was even better to see the hound put on his bird face and pin the nose to the ground. He eventually worked up a rooster and I made an excellent retrieve to vanquish that hint of skunk on the wind.
From there we just needed to take a quick cut through the trees between two lakes and we could start working back towards the car. Turns out I should have been grateful to the beavers for their trail maintenance. When Oak was forced to start crawling, the cursing left the loop in my head and escaped into the peaceful wilderness. I tried the charging bull approach but that just left me tangled in the spines of the olives and about 5 feet from where I started. My tracking app thought we were having a picnic but that 350 feet took over half an hour and unraveled most of my shirt. A few more roosters would call from the marshes but I was too beat to do more than wave Oak into their general direction as we meandered back.
The plan was to return on Sunday, wiser and quieter, but when Oak jumped out of the kennel at the motel he fell right on his face. In his excitement he had run right through a sprained ankle in the second hour of the day and racked up another 20+ miles... At the time I thought he had a burr in his paw but couldn't find it. I was proud of his drive and stubbornness but a little worried I had done permanent damage. So he went on injured reserve duty of icing and treats so he could be ready for a post Thanksgiving rematch. In fact he is laying below the chair and groaning right now but not from pain, just the disappointment that I spend time writing about hunting instead of getting out there again.
Happy Thanksgiving!!