The Evening Flight

When you are hunting puddleducks, you can find places where a late afternoon hunt can be spectacular. I have hunted many an afternoon on Hermit Island. About an hour before quitting time the Mallards, Wood Ducks and Teal head for Blackbird Basin and you can have some great times.

I can remember back in the 80's when we used to hunt the Goose Creek Impoundment quite a bit. Shooting was always red hot the first hour. Sky-busting was also at it's zenith, unfortunately. Later in the morning things would even out, most of the skunk hunters would head for Sally's and you could enjoy good steady shooting. But in the afternoon, the Pintails would decoy like I've never seen them. Many times you could go out on the open water and shoot divers and seaducks till noon, and then have plenty of time to get a limit of Pintails on the Impoundment. Even when they shortened the shooting hours, 1200-1300 was as good as it gets for the Pintails.

Diver shooting in the afternoon has been fairly weak over the years for me. Until about 10 years ago. When we moved further down the New River we started getting fantastic late afternoon Bluebill shoots. Our blind at Rhodes Point faces East, so in the late afternoon the sun is going down over your right shoulder and the lower it gets on the horizon, the more spectacular the birds look. The patch of white on the hens' faces looks so big. The bright blue of the bills and those bright yellow eyes look big as quarters. That soft, setting sun, the wind laying down as it frequently does towards sundown, and the Bluebills coming in flocks of 10-1000 makes for about the finest duck shooting I've seen in my life. When the wind dies down and the waves quit breaking on the shore, the sound of the wind in 50 Bluebill wings, when they turn on your blocks, is fantastic. The birds are looking for someplace quiet and peaceful to spend the evening and once they start heading into the bay just south of us, there seems to be no stopping them.

Kelly shot a video one evening and in 10 minutes of video we had 10,000 birds on film. We actually watched it in super slow motion and tried our best to count the birds. They were all passing within 25-75 yards or our blind. One of the most amazing things you'll ever see.

When we would finish shooting and get out in the River to start taking in decoys, the birds wouldn't stop. Flock after flock still landing in our ever shrinking spread. They would be between us on the water. Between us and the blind, between us and the dog. Unbelievable.

There were slow days on the River when I sat in the blind from 0600 till 1630 and never fired a shot. Then in the last 30 minutes you would truly have your gun barrel too hot to touch. Knowing that an evening like that was coming our way made the long days in the blind easy to handle. Nap, snack, nap, snack, shoot an occasional stray duck, and bide your time till the Evening Flight.