ARKANSAS SPORTSMAN

Sunrise frames duck hunting in new light

— Human hands cannot duplicate this light, nor can a camera.

No paint that ever graced the brushes of Monet or Matisse came close.

It’s a heavenly light, a gift from above that electrifies the gray landscape of a southeast Arkansas winter.

It starts as an orange wash across a clear eastern sky, slowly driving away the black and blue of dawn as the sun nears the horizon. Then, without warning, it shrouds the west in a thick veil of rich, pink light. It saturates the air, growing more and more intense with each minute.

It is the color of pure passion, the perfect backdrop for that which sportsmen in this part of the world hold dearest.

I’m standing waist-deep in the black water of a buckbrush reservoir. To my right are two hunting buddies clad head to toe in camouflage and wearing sunglasses. They glow pink amid the brush, and the effect is stunning. Then I cast my eyes skyward toward the mallards winging overhead. Their breasts and the undersides of their wings positively glow. You can tell the drakes by their chestnut breastplates, but when they cross a certain latitude, they cross the light at a place where the rays light up their green heads like neon.

I am tempted to raise my camera, but I resist. I don’t want to corrupt this moment and, besides, I know I can’t take a photo that would do it justice. It would merely show ducks in flight. At best, I might get a glint of that light. Seeing it with naked eyes is sublime.

I’m enjoying this spectacle with some good friends. There’s Scotty Caroom and his son Ely, Gary Heathcott, Sam Hilburn and his son Scott Hilburn, and Sheffield Nelson. We’re spread across a small archipelago of buckbrush islands in a ragged line. Scott Hilburn and Nelson anchor the far end. Next are the Carooms, who are together, and then Heathcott. Sam Hilburn is next, and I’m on the other side of the brush from him. Next is Matthew Green, with Jimmy Green on the far end.

I’ve enjoyed some epic pre-Christmas hunts, but this one had all the makings of greatness. Clouds of mallards boiled out of the brush as we motored to the hunting hole, and they practically covered us in the minutes before legal shooting time. Then, well, they didn’t exactly get scarce, but their numbers diminished considerably when it counted. I shot one mallard drake that splashed down close enough to splash me, but most of the shooting, such as it was, occurred at the other end.

Most of the ducks came from the south and east. We were at the west end seldom even saw those approaching from the east, and those that approached from the south always veered east. I heard a flock of pintails, and only saw them as they scattered over the hole like a skyburst from a Fourth of July mortar. Everyone else saw them late, too, and reacted too slowly. They escaped without losing a feather.

Three ducks swooped in on Heathcott. Two were mallards, but one was a longsprigged bull pintail. He painted it out of the sky with his Beretta XTrema and gave himself a beautiful Christmas present that he said was destined for his wall.

As usual, vast flocks of geese rose from the nearby fields and winged lazily overhead. Most were too high to shoot, but there are always a few that mess up and fly too low. Such was the case with six specklebellies that trilled happily as they passed overhead at a leisurely pace. I put my front bead on the lead goose, pulled slowly ahead and squeezed the trigger when I was about 10 feet in front of it. Its head jerked backward as it reeled from the impact. It rolled out of the formation, and though it was not able to stay aloft, it tried to compensate with wing speed. It continued to accelerate all the way to the water, where it crashed into the brush like a bomb.

When the sun f inally climbed over the horizon, it was merciless. Sam Hilburn’s field of view was limited to the south, and mine was limited to the north and west. Whenever we glanced east, sunspots temporarily blinded us.

That was perfectly fine with me, because the west was all lit up in that superb pink light. A lot of mallards flew over that quadrant. They were too high to shoot, but they were some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

Sports, Pages 30 on 12/23/2012

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