I did not know that duck hunting in the Skagit flats required a boat due to the huge tidal flow that goes in and out through a myriad array of channels. Tree stumps dot the channels, victims of the brackish water. 

Together, with my buddy Cliff Goodman, we motored across a great body of salt water stopping at a huge stump where he let me off and headed out looking for a stump for himself.

We couldn’t afford a real Duck Blind. The stump was our best bet to conceal ourselves. 

     Overhead a million Mallards and Teal were darkening the sky. How could anybody fail to limit out even on his first trip with a shotgun he’d never fired; not even once. I envisioned a barrel of ducks on the kitchen counter.

    I had hoped grampa's 12-gauge shotgun would be more reliable than my aim but with a million birds up there who could miss?

    What I did not know was that the tidal waters we putt-putted over, while looking for a comfy stump, concealed an unpleasant surprise about three feet deep.

     Hunting season starts officially at noon on opening day but nobody waits for an official gun to go off. All hell breaks loose at ten to twelve. A hundred guns cut loose. The duck-filled blue sky was almost lily white five minutes later. Shooting wildly upwards, I never got a chance to aim. After a few minutes the ducks had fled the coop.

I had used a box of shells and I could see one tiny Teal floating on the tidewater about 100 yards away... dead...just one.

      I grabbed my gun and mesh onion bag with my peanut  butter samich and walked over to my trophy duck. I had barely moved fifteen feet when I stepped into one of those invisible channels that brings the tidewater into duck heaven. My boots instantly filled to my belt buckle with icy salt water. My sandwiches were not edible. So all I could  do was climb up on another stump and wait in my frozen state. But not before I grabbed my trophy. I clambered back up on a stump dying from the cold, waiting for the coroner to come and pick me up. I was miserable but proud.

After an eternity my buddy finally showed. I crawled off my snag and prayed for a fast trip to a warm fire. 

    I marched in the back door of our house in Salmon Creek grinning and dancing with my prize. 

     My sweet wife greeted me with a grim look at what I had presented her for our Sunday dinner. I hurried down to the basement where I prepared my fist-sized meal. I had heard that if you dipped your duck into a bucket of soap suds the feathers would just peel off easily. That’s not  true! 

     I spent an hour plucking that Sunday dinner. Teal is a color and the name of the bird. With each feather I discovered it was covered with little blue dots made by the beebees in the shotgun shell. I guess I tatooed him good.

     I cleaned out his gizzard, cut off his head and took him upstairs where I handed him to my favorite cook. 

     She looked more grim as she took the little pimpled former flyer from me, cuddled him tenderly in a paper towel and walked over to the step-on garbage can where she summarily dropped him
 in.

    I thought I heard a short incantation but I may have imagined it. Apparently duck was not intended to be on the menu that night or any night thereafter.

How was I supposed to know she couldn’t hurt a flea?... or a duck!

Jerry Robinson is our publisher. You can reach him at publisher@robinsonnews.com