Alternate Use for a Drift Boat?

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Hope you have a day filled with family, friends and turkey ahead of you!

The picture is from two days ago, when Chuck Degray and I decided to get out on the Connecticut River again, but this time for a different purpose … waterfowl hunting.

Now, it was quite a process getting ready for this adventure –

1. NH Waterfowl Hunting License;

2. Federal Duck Stamp;

3. Steel Shot No.4’s;

4. Camo clothing, and other cold weather gear.

5. Getting well acquainted with the rules regarding bag limits for different ducks and geese – confusing at times.

Once all that was set, Chuck was a nice guy and shoveled out the drift boat after the foot of snow that we received Sunday night through Monday!

To say that we had less than great expectations would be a massive understatement – it was 28 degrees, with a healthy north wind to send us on our way downriver, and there wasn’t much promise of ducks and geese actually still being around after all of the recent winter weather.

In short, we would have been happy just to see a duck, never mind actually getting a chance to shoot at one. This, plus our general lack of knowledge about waterfowl, their daily habits, and most importantly, how to hunt them – yes we were way behind the curve when it came to ducks.

But … there was hope … just as we were launching the drift boat on its wintry journey, we spotted several ducks upstream of the launch hurriedly swimming upriver. We watched them scurry away, but this sight alone strengthened our resolve to go on.

These ducks were hooded mergansers, or diving ducks as the duck hunting community calls them, and while they are not highly sought after for the dinner table (they pretty much subsist on small fish), they can still be hunted (daily limit is two).

Puddle ducks (mallards, wood ducks) are more prized for dining purposes. Unfortunately, the woodies are early migrators, and have long since left the north country, but maybe there would be a mallard or two still around.

Chuck slowly rowed us down the Connecticut, with our drift boat resembling something more like a Navy gun boat than the trout catching vessel that it normally is. Voyaging down the river at this time of year has its own draw and special beauty – the scenery is stark, but memories of spectacular hatches, welcoming pools and some of the fish that reside there came flooding back on the journey.

But it was ducks that we were looking for on this day, and Chuck spotted a group of them maybe a hundred yards ahead of us after a little while on the water. Something resembling a cautious stalk ensued, as we tried to drift within range of them to hopefully make them agitated enough to fly. Much to our dismay, our quarry just kept swimming on ahead of us, out of range as you might expect, and it never seemed like we would get in gun range of them.

These ducks, all nine of them, were also hooded mergansers, and they seemed very happy to let us get tantalizingly close, but just not too close … until they took flight for some reason. We have no idea why, but they flew back upriver (into the wind) at us, and one of them was down in the river at my crossing shot from 30 feet. Our landing net, normally reserved for taking trout, came in handy that day.

Beautiful in its own way and perfectly adapted to this near winter environment (water repellant feathers and a thick layer of fat allow these ducks to live here in some tough conditions), it was somewhat of a miracle to be holding the first waterfowl ever taken from our drift boat.

Our maiden voyage duck hunting was a success. Unfortunately, that was the bulk of our action on our two hour drift downriver. We did encounter a couple of large common mergansers later on, but we never saw any mallards or geese – perhaps next week.

Thankfully, we were only out for two hours as my feet wouldn’t have been able to take much more. Breathable waders, even in a drift boat, are not preferred when it’s 28 degrees. In the meantime, I have been researching recipes to make this duck palatable – looks like some kind of marinade will be involved.