I was barely into my teens when I began waterfowl hunting. What started out as another outdoor pastime soon grew into a regular habit, and once able to drive myself around, it escalated to addictive levels.

Now, nearly 40 years later, I’ve traveled throughout the United States and Canada gunning for geese and ducks and I’m still just as enthralled, mystified, and challenged by these wary waterfowl as I was as a rookie.

Over the years I’ve gunned some truly remote, backwoods waterways and fields from an assortment of blinds and hideaways, some specious and luxurious, others confining, time-worn, and broken down. But if someone had suggested I’d be duck hunting a mud puddle from beneath a pile of wet, withering potato tops, I’d have pronounced them nuttier than a fruitcake.

Yet, there I was, stretched out in my layout blind in the middle of a dug potato field that was more mud and muck than solid dirt. Nearby lay Bill Norsworthy, a longtime friend and gunning buddy, and Gabby, his German wirehair that resembles a steel wool pad with legs but one of the most perseverant and persistent waterfowl retrievers I’ve ever had the pleasure to hunt with.

Once in place our trio became invisible thanks to camo cloth and collected piles of deteriorating potato tops we had gathered and positioned around our hiding places to resemble unobtrusive mounds of earth. Twenty yards in front of our ground blind in a bowl-shaped depression at midfield sets a huge opaque brown mud puddle formed by recent prolonged and profuse rainstorms.

As unlikely a duck pond as this 45- by 60-foot cocoa-colored pool might seem, near flood conditions on local rivers and streams have sent resident waterfowl scattering and searching for temporary resting and feeding sites. Despite the myriad of area lakes and farm ponds, ducks seldom feed where they roost, so each morning and afternoon they wing away from their home water in search of a food field. If there just happens to be a waterhole, regardless of how temporary or murky, all the better for feeding and floating with feathered friends.

This particular basin sat far from roads and residences with only one washboard field road for access and no chance of being seen from passing vehicles on distant highways. It was just sheer luck and coincidence that allowed me to locate this duck haven. Here’s what led to the discovery.

Out scouting

It has always been my contention that most successful hunts are due to proper scouting, so I often spend an hour or so after dawn or before dusk driving about and glassing fields, waterways, and skylines for feeding or flying ducks and geese. Occasionally, there’s the added bonus of pinpointing the favorite stomping ground of a few deer and moose that might be beneficial on future big game outings.

I was heading toward home a bit disgruntled after a fairly unproductive late-morning scouting trip having located only one small group of feeding geese and half a dozen mallards on a small brush-shrouded farm pond. Off in the distance I spotted motion in the sky and had just focused on a small group of ducks when they suddenly disappeared into the horizon.

As it happened I was just driving past a man-made reservoir that is only about three miles from my house, so I pulled onto a side road and got out my binoculars to have a look. Most local hunters shun the lagoon since it’s part of a waste treatment system for a wood plant and also because it abounds with semi-submerged stumps and deadwood that makes any boat or canoe travel difficult. Waterfowl hold no such aversions, and today, like most others, the surface was polka-dotted with hundreds of ducks and geese. While I scanned the waterway, another dozen or so ducks took flight heading in the same direction as the first bunch I’d spotted, and just as suddenly they blended into a tree line about a quarter-mile away and disappeared.

Quickly driving to another secondary road that intersected the birds’ preferred flight path, I pulled onto the grassy road apron and grabbed the binoculars. Every few minutes, ducks left the lagoon in groups of two to 20. As one small flight winged overhead, I watched closely and saw them set their wings and quickly spiral from view. Another flock soon followed suit, which really puzzled me since I knew there was no pond in the area the ducks were landing, and I was pretty sure there were no feeding fields either. Curiosity got the best of me, and I went exploring and finally located a narrow, rutted field road almost overgrown by a hedgerow.

Bumping along over hill and dale and around bushes crowding the wheel ruts, I idled forward scanning the sky when suddenly, at the top of the knoll, the gravel and grass road opened into a long narrow potato field on the bottom of the hill. I stomped on the brakes and sat in awe watching a giant mud puddle 200 yards away that was wing to wing and bill to butt filled with more than 150 ducks. As if that weren’t enough, about 75 Canada geese foraged and fed on the far edge of the coffee-colored pool. I slowly backed out of sight, turned around, and raced for home to call another duck hunting addict. When Bill Norsworthy answered, I got right to the point, “Grab your gun, load the dog, and bring lots of shells, I found the mother lode of ducks.” And that’s how just over an hour later the three of us were all camoed up beside a huge mud puddle.

Great gunning

Upon arriving back at the hidden waterhole, our trio found that the geese and most of the ducks had returned to the roost pond for a bit of afternoon R & R. Still, more than 50 ducks took flight as I drove closer to the puddle, and we knew the bulk of the birds should return around dusk for a late-day snack. About 150 yards of boot-grabbing, balance-testing muck and mire separated the field road from the basin of dirty water. Gabby frolicked and bounded across the muddy field with little effort while Bill and I huffed and puffed like steam engines for two trips hauling our layout blinds, decoys, guns, and gear.

I went to hide the truck behind a distant hedgerow while Bill threw out a dozen L.L. Bean cork mallard and black duck decoys, set up the spinning-wing Mojo Mallard, and gathered potato tops to conceal our ground blinds.

Thirty minutes after arriving, we were laid out, locked and loaded, and anxiously scanning the sky toward the reservoir for incoming flights. Imagine our surprise when five ringneck ducks flashed past with full afterburners on about 10 feet over the water – from the opposite direction. New game plan: Bill looks one direction, I watch the other, and Gabby is to whine at the first inkling of feathered fowl.

It worked! Our ringneck quintet made another flyby, but Bill saw them coming, alerted me, and immediately shot the lead duck, which actually skipped twice along the water surface before bouncing onto dry ground. I managed a two-shot parlay on the rear-end Charlie of the group and Gabby took off to execute her forte. Two birds in the first five minutes and the best was yet to come.

About a dozen ducks showed up on the horizon and when Bill started our mechanical mallard’s wings spinning, the group honed in on our setup as if on a string. Their buttonhook approach took them right in front of Bill’s blind, and as the first four birds dropped their landing gears and backpedaled, he popped up and scored a clean black duck and drake mallard double.

Two of the rear echelon made their escape flight past me. I tumbled a mallard on the first shot and scared the second duck into the next time zone. It wasn’t 10 minutes and a trio of mallards made a flyby, two Suzies and a drake, and when our spinning-wing decoy started and I gave a couple of feeding chuckles on the call, they tried to land. I cartwheeled the big greenhead and ignored the females, and Gabby sent brown water and mud flying to make the retrieve.

We heard the geese before we spotted them. Seven wide-winged Canadas bearing down on our puddle pond, and us without a single goose decoy. We both called nonetheless, but with no companions visible on the ground, the honkers kept circling and looking for the source of the calling. On the fourth swing by, two geese glided closer than before but still farther away than I liked, at about 40 yards.

Figuring the birds were not going to make another circle and that they were the only ones taking the chances, we sat up and opened up. When the noise died down and the smoke cleared, there were two geese on the ground. Less than half an hour later we had limited out on ducks and quickly picked up to allow other birds to settle in and get comfortable. We’d be back.

It was Saturday, two days later, before our work schedules allowed another visit to our secluded waterfowl waterhole, but the fact no other vehicle tracks were in the mud was evidence the birds hadn’t been disturbed. To our astonishment, the puddle had shrunk to half its original size, yet we still pushed a bunch of birds off the water when we arrived. By Monday, our private pond would be nothing but a mud bowl if there was no more rain, but that was beyond our control.

Although it didn’t seem likely, our afternoon outing was even better than the premiere hunt. Bill and I each took a limit of ducks from the first four groups that winged past and in less time than it took to walk in, set up, pick up, and walk out, we were done. As predicted, our mud puddle dried up and so did the flow of waterfowl, but Bill and I both learned a good lesson. Now when other duck gunners complain about all the rain and wonder aloud where all the birds are, we just grin and tell them we’re going to hunt the closest mud puddle. Sound crazy? Don’t knock it ’til you try it!

Outdoor feature writer Bill Graves can be reached via e-mail at bgravesoutdoors@ainop.com