FEATHERS ‘N FINS

It’s no secret that the black duck has long been the favorite of Northeast waterfowlers. So it was that on the grand old gunning grounds stretching from Maine’s Merrymeeting Bay to North Carolina’s Currituck Flats, rigs of black duck decoys were set with consummate diligence.

Because of the “black’s” innate wariness, today’s duck hunters still echo the sentiments of old-timers when they say: “I’d rather fool a bunch of black ducks than anything else with webbed feet.” To that I say, Amen.

But, friend, I have to admit to an addiction to “whistler” (common goldenye) shooting. Perhaps it’s because the best of it comes in the late season – what we call “coastal gunning” – when frozen lakes and ponds force the formally attired ducks to saltwater bays and tidal bores.

Granted, there are a few flocks of the swift-winged fowl around in the early season, but for my money, warm-weather whistler shooting can be compared with kissing your sister.

Some people will think I’ve sheared a pin, but I prefer to rig my “white birds” when chalkings of snow are falling from a slate-gray sky. I like blind dates on ice-embroidered marshes, and rockweeded flats glazed with slush. Give me a fresh nor’easter that spits sleet into the face of a stale sun and a breeze doing its best to become a worrying wind.

Show me a retriever scanning the horizon with the intentness of a spider watching its web and the thickening snow dissolving the distant shores. Give me the odors of mud and saltmarsh mixed with the aromas of spruce and pine, a seal’s obvious disappointment after stalking the decoys, and the steamy breath of coffee swirling from the throat of a thermos. Then let me hear the vibrant whistling of wings and feel the nudge from my hunting partner who nods toward the left. Below the treeline a pair of drakes are winging straight at us.

On set wings, now, tilting and rocking in the breeze – you’ve seen them – they scale toward the decoys. You see their feet dropping…. almost…. but now they lift and wing past, one slightly ahead of the other, displaying dramatic black-and-white plumage.

Because your partner is on your right, he swings on the lead duck, you track the second one. It requires some practice, but two hunters coordinating their shooting according to their positions and the approach of ducks eliminates the tendency to shoot at the lead bird.

Both birds fold and drop in a flurry of feathers as the belching reports are lost in the smothering snow. Already your retriever is charging through mud and slush. Now he climbs onto a slab of ice and plunges into the gray wind-ruffled water. He ignores the duck floating with its feet up and churns toward the wing-tipped whistler. You’re about to witness a duel between a determined dog and a swimming-and-diving duck.

That’s whistler shooting, and if it doesn’t appeal to you, I’ll take your share.

A handsome duck, the drake whistler, with its golden eyes glowing from a glossy iridescent-green head accented by prominent white cheek patches. His “black-tie-and-tails” appearance is highlighted by bright yellow legs and feet. Although less dramatic in her dress, the hen is stylishly attractive in her cinnamon-brown head dress, white scarf, and cape of gunmetal gray.

Unlike most diving ducks, whistlers sit high on the water. Nervous and active, they tend to fly frequently. Usually their flight is swift, direct, and is announced, as you know, by the whistling wing beats, which for some reason, ring clearest when the ducks are coursing the cold windy heights.

Whistlers are one of the most widely distributed of our North American waterfowl. Like wood ducks, they nest in trees, often utilizing the excavations of pileated woodpeckers. There, again, is an indication of how finely the fabric of nature is woven.

You may know that the upper reaches of the Penobscot River are productive gunning grounds for the waterfowler who enjoys whistler shooting. The only drawback, however, is that the season in the North Zone closes about the time the ducks are ricking up in good shape.

I can’t complain, though; the shooting that the late Owen Osborne and I enjoyed on the river during the ’60s and ’70s – before the introduction of zonal regulations – was more than a man deserved in one lifetime. From mid-November until the season closed in mid-December, we often had to break ice to get to a blind and back, but those memories will never melt.

During the last week of duck hunting in the North Zone, Fred Kircheis, a research fisheries biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and I took a whack at the whistlers. We were a day behind a wind-blasted spell of cold weather that cut through this neck of the woods, and the lake’s rocky shores glistened with frozen spray.

A northwest wind ruffled the water as winged darts flew against the dawn sky. Between casting hopeful glances at a raft of Canada geese occupying a cove at the head of the lake and trying to mind the store, so to speak, we managed to bag several whistlers by midmorning. It was a memorable end to this year’s “freshwater gunning.”

Now it’s time to set a course for the coast. And on a morning when snow clouds are forcing the whistlers into low-altitude flight, I’ll forsake the dark decoys in favor of those wearing white. That reminds me of another reason I like whistler shooting – you don’t have to be as diligent about brushing snow off those “white birds.”