For duck hunters, opening day of dove season was the salad.
The appetizer will be served at sunrise Saturday when the early teal season opens statewide. It runs Sept. 15-30, and the daily limit is six teal. Bluewing, greenwing and cinnamon teal are legal, but bluewings comprise the overwhelming majority of the teal in Arkansas in September.
Early teal season is an acquired taste, and it is quite unlike any other kind of duck hunting you'll ever do.
The weather is usually very warm and balmy. Sometimes it is very hot. Mosquitos are out, as are cottonmouths. To avoid snakebite, many hunters leave their dogs at home.
You generally hunt in shorts and T-shirt, sitting among reeds or cattails on a marsh seat or a milk crate.
One of the most miserable days of my life was the 2005 early teal season opener on Lake Dardanelle with Alan Thomas and Jerry Cannerday of Russellville. We wore our winter waders, but the temperature reached the mid 90s. Al's waders were fleece-lined, so he roasted.
I got so hot that I waded out onto a mud flat, lay in the water with my head on a log and took a sweaty nap. Al and Cannerday left me in the water and went to town to get a pizza and cold drinks, which they graciously brought back to the hunting hole.
Thereafter we hunted in shorts until several years ago, when something in the water made us itch so bad that we scratched our legs to tatters. Now I wear thin fly fishing waders.
Any shallow water habitat attracts teal. Lake Dardanelle, which has an abundance of mud flats, tule marshes and shallow sand flats, is my favorite place to hunt. It hosts a lot of teal, and there are plenty of places to hunt them.
Teal have an uncanny sense of timing. Without fail, a flock cartwheels into a hole about 15-20 minutes before legal shooting time, or sunrise.
Determine legal sunrise for the part of the state where you hunt on the Game and Fish Commission's smartphone app, and don't shoot before that time. Jumping the gun will earn you an expensive citation, and at open expanses like those along the Arkansas River, wildlife officers can easily pinpoint violators.
So, you're hunkered down among cattails watching a flock of bluewings putter around in the water. Your eyes are glued to your wristwatch (yes, some of us still wear them), but your heart knows it's pointless because the birds will leave without provocation about 2-3 minutes before legal shooting time. Bet on it.
There'll be more, usually. They swoop in with a whooshing sound that sounds like a small jet. Sometimes they land, but more often they buzz a hole once or twice before landing out of range. Pick out a bird and give it a generous lead because teal fly very fast. Even at close range it's easy to shoot behind them.
When you fold a teal, especially if it's the lead bird, other teal often follow it to the water. If you're nimble with a followup shot, you can often get a double and even a triple if you're really fast.
Other ducks are in the area, and they often fly with teal. Be certain that the bird you're about to shoot isn't a wood duck, pintail, gadwall, wigeon, redhead or mallard. All duck plumage is drab in September, but you can easily identify blue wing teal by the powder blue epaulets on the leading edges of their wings. They flash like strobes, and they are unmistakable.
As with all waterfowl, you must use federally approved non-toxic shot to hunt early season teal. This can be steel, bismuth, Hevi-Shot or tungsten matrix. Whatever you use in the regular duck season works for teal. I use the cheap Federal blue box No. 2 steel in 3-inch cartridges because of the long shots we often take on the river.
As a bonus, you might even get a chance to bag some resident Canada geese. The early Canada goose season runs Sept. 1-30, and the daily limit is five.
On the Arkansas River, Canada geese roost in sheltered water, and they fly to fields to feed an hour or so after sunrise. If you're in the right spot, like on a main river point, you might get a chance to take a bird or two out of a low-flying flock. Improve your chances by taking a goose call.
Sports on 09/09/2018