MONROE -- After I wasted a morning struggling for words to describe last Friday's duck hunt in Lee County, Mike Romine of Mabelvale said it best.
"That's the best duck hunt I've ever been on," he said.
It occurred at a place called Piney Creek Ducks, Inc., a private club owned by Wiley Meacham of Monroe and Don Thompson of Little Rock. The Piney Creek area is an undeveloped part of Meacham's farm that's managed especially for green timber duck hunting. It is the only large tract of woods remaining in that general area, so it attracts ducks like a beacon. Meacham and Thompson only hunt the woods in the mornings, so the entire place is basically a giant rest area for mallards.
Meacham and Thompson invited me to hunt there in 2012 with the late Billy Peel, a colorful character who coached American Legion baseball in Little Rock for more than 40 years.
Mr. Billy loved to argue about anything and everything. He'd drawn a map to the property, but he failed to include a legend. We sat at an intersection in downtown Humnoke bickering over which way to go. Mr. Billy insisted that we continued south, which made no sense. I finally oriented the map so that the roads lined up with what was before our faces.
Mr. Billy grudgingly conceded that I might be right. I did what he would have done had the outcome been reversed. I gloated mercilessly. I made him so mad that he wouldn't speak to me until we reached the safety of Thompson's cabin.
That was the last time Billy ever hunted. He didn't, actually. A duck hunter to the innermost fibers of his soul, he stood against a tree and watched the mallards pour through the trees one last time before he left this earthly realm the following summer. I don't believe he even loaded his gun.
That hunt, for all it entailed, was one of the best I ever experienced, but the one Friday with Romine might have been better.
We arrived at Thompson's cabin late Thanksgiving night. This was a feat that required a small bit of subterfuge. I asked Miss Laura earlier in the week if she objected to me duck hunting Friday. I omitted the small detail about having to leave on Thanksgiving night.
This was not received with good humor, but she'd already signed off on the deal in principle. Romine had performed similar gymnastics with his beloved Miss Joanie.
At the cabin, I told Thompson I had forgotten my duck calls.
"Everywhere I go, somebody else always calls so I'm out of the habit of bringing them," I said.
"Good," Thompson said.
"I see you remember how I sounded last time," I replied.
At 4:30 a.m., Thompson's cabin came alive. The Keurig caffeine machine churned out our fuel as we squirmed into our waders. A short drive took us to the boat landing where we met Wiley Meacham and Steve Meacham.
Wiley hasn't been feeling well lately with a bunged up thumb and the effects of ignoring a related infection for too long, but duck hunting rallied him. He clutched three expensive looking cigars in one hand and clenched another with his teeth as he held court in front of the boats.
"You owe my 'card table' an apology," Wiley said. "I'll have you know that's a $600 table."
He referred to a long table that sits permanently in the water at his favorite duck hole, the one with the recliner and lounging chairs in the water. It is the centerpiece of a woodland kitchen where breakfast is often prepared after a hunt. Indeed, the table has a weatherproof, impact-proof iron frame, quite unlike the foldaway card tables for which I mistook it in an article I wrote about this place two years ago.
Wooden benches surround the hole. The areas around the benches are graveled. Your feet don't touch mud unless you walk into the landing area.
Also at this hole and at others are wooden cabinets affixed to trees. Inside are bottles of blackberry brandy and apricot brandy. After a successful hunt, the fellows share a celebratory nip -- and only a nip -- from small plastic cups.
The ducks arrived a bit before shooting time. The flocks were mostly mallards mixed with a few gadwalls. Greenwinged teal were abundant, too, but nobody shot at them.
Romine took a station at the south end of the hole. With the north wind, the ducks landed right in his face. He shot several, he said, in self-defense. Romine joked that he only brought eight shells. That's about all he took to get his limit. I got a limit with nine shots, and we were done by 7 a.m.
As good as that hole was, another one that Steve Meacham and Thompson call "Fireball" attracted a lot more ducks that day. It is named for an empty bottle of Fireball cinnamon whisky that hangs from a tree.
When the shooting was finished, I stood in Romine's spot and photographed ducks coming into the hole. The flock that Steve Meacham originally called in numbered about 25 mallards. They did the grand ballet that they always do when checking out a landing spot. More and more mallards joined them until there were more than 100. When they finally committed to land, they looked like a west Texas dust devil swirling through the trees over and around me.
Several drakes landed about six feet away. I love their expression when they finally notice a human in their midst. It's the "this was a really bad idea" expression.
They left as quickly as they came, beating themselves silly against branches in their haste to escape.
I've had some epic hunts, but for pure greentree hunting, I had to agree with Romine.
This might have been the best ever.
Sports on 12/07/2014