The first morning of the season. Pre-dawn set-up, cold water, and the sound of wings in the dark. A firsthand account of opening morning.
3:45am
The alarm is unnecessary — you have been awake since 2:30. Coffee in a thermos, waders pulled on over thermal base layers in the dark car park, decoys into a bag that suddenly seems to weigh twice what it did at home. The walk in is 800 metres across flooded paddock. You do it by feel and by the light of a head torch pointed at your feet to avoid alerting ducks resting on the water.
Setting Up
Decoys in a J-pattern, landing zone clear on the downwind side. Spinning wing decoy deployed 15 metres from the hide. The reedbed provides cover. By 5:15am everything is in place and there is forty minutes until legal shooting light. You sit in cold water to your waist and listen.
The First Flight
Grey teal first — small, fast, locked in almost before you can process what you are seeing. They work the decoys twice and on the second pass three drop into the landing zone. The shots in the dark-grey pre-dawn are satisfying in a way that is difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced it.
Pacific black duck arrive in pairs and small groups from 6am. By 8:30am we have taken a modest mixed bag of grey teal and blacks, well within the bag limit, with one bird taken cleanly at about 35 metres that I am still pleased about.
The Pack-Up
Collecting decoys in waders in shallow water, carrying a bag of birds back across the paddock, breaking down the hide. This is not glamorous. It is also completely satisfying in the way that earned things are.
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