Canoe Gets Hunters Close To Ducks

When the theater of the mind conjures up scenes of river canoeing, hunting ducks may not be part of the feature.

Floating and duck hunting don’t seem to go together, sort of like ice cream and barbecue sauce.

But take a canoe, a shotgun and a boat-load of brush, and you’ve got the main ingredients of fl oat-hunt for mallards.

Float hunting got a quick mention during our duck-season preview two weeks ago. That got our cinema of the brain going back a couple of decades to revisit that fi rst fl oat hunt for ducks here in our corner of the Ozarks. This day of Thanksgiving might be a fitting time to relive that maiden hunt by canoe, an unusual, but eff ective, way to ruft e some feathers during duck season.

We were deep into fall and I was beholding the beauty of another big fl athead catfish that my friend, Norten Dablemont, had caught on his trotline out on Beaver Lake. Norten was the fishing-est guy I’d ever met, and he was on a mission to catch enough catfish for a big fi sh fry at the Rogers American Legion post.

Just for grins, I mentioned that some pals and I were doing some duck hunting out on the lake. It was all new to me, this pursuit of ducks. I told Norten how much I liked it.

Norten was a man of the lake for sure, but streams were his true love. Rivers of the Ozarks and Ouachitas were his turf for fi shing, but not so much for hunting.

“Tell you what,” Norten said. “We’ll meet next Friday over on the Illinois River and I’ll show you some duck hunting.”

We set up a meeting place east of Siloam Springs. I was there a half-hour early on Friday.

Norten showed up with his waders, square-stern aluminum canoe and a pickup load of branches, briers and vines. We set the canoe on shore, fi lled it with brush and headed downstream.

The idea was to camouflage the canoe so it looked like a log jam or brush pile fl oating downstream in the event wecame upon a flock of ducks.

If the plan worked out, we’d be in shotgun range when the ducks fi gured out the jig was up. The birds would bolt for the sky and a shot would send one cartwheeling into the creek.

To keep things safe, only the hunter in front shoots in this fl oat-hunting game.

Norten didn’t even bring a shotgun. All he cared to do was paddle and let me do the shooting. He did bring a fishing rod to lob a spinner bait now and then.

We were having the time of our lives. I never let on to Norten that I thought we were crazy to hunt this way.

I scanned the river with binoculars. Six mallards loafed in a pool about a hundred yards downstream.

Norten and I quit fl apping our jaws. He eased the canoe a little to the left.

Slowly, the distance shrank between hunter and ducks.

I thought, hey, this could really work.

We were 30 yards away when four mallard drakes and two hens jumped for the sky. I picked out a greenhead and felt the kick of the 12-gauge. The mallard folded and splashed down in the river a foot from the gravel bank.

Whoops and high-fi ves followed while we admired my fi rst fl oat-hunt mallard.

I told Norten it was his turn and offered him my gun. He wouldn’t have any part of it.

I bagged one more mallard before we reached our takeout near Siloam Springs.

Float-hunting was a new way to hunt ducks. We enjoyed a few more river hunts before Norten went back to his catfishing and I returned to the lake for the rest of duck season.

Don’t know if I’ll ever fi ll a canoe with brush again, but those float hunting trips with Norten were pleasant times indeed.

FLIP PUTTHOFF IS OUTDOORS EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA.

FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER WWW.TWITTER.COM/NWAFLIP.