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| Duck Hunting at Lyerla Lake Farm. Left Joe Perkins, Jeff Slaughter, Keith Slaughter, Tim Bond and Shelby Byrd |
Over the years I had several preconceived notions regarding
duck hunting. It seemed to follow one
basic thought, 4 am in a boat on a frozen lake or river. Over the last 12
months I’ve got my feet wet to the basics.
And yes I literally got my feet wet but that’s story for a different
time. Our adopted family in Kentucky are
about as big into waterfowl hunting as it gets.
These guys sit around in the deer stand and day dream about opening day
of Duck Season. I’m sitting on the couch
looking at fresh pictures off the game cameras and they are finely tuning duck
calls. It’s not that deer hunting does
not interest the guys but it’s more like a burning passion for the winged
creatures. It’s a love hate relationship
that you can only understand when you’ve watched a buddy fluent in the language
of the duck blow on a call for 5 minutes.
It’s a fine art and you can spend the rest of your life watching videos
and reading books on mastering the technique of luring weary birds to your
spread. The caller might start off with
a “Greeting Call” and then move on to the “Feed Call” and if neither work they
may fall back to a “Come Back Call”. The
Come Back is more times than not followed by a few explicit words that may or
may not be directed at the ducks as they fade from vision.
I will take this time to document one of my favorite
experiences from duck hunting this past year.
A friend invited several of us on a trip to Southern Illinois to the
middle of the Mississippi river flyway for a waterfowl experience. By this time I’d been duck hunting on Lake
Barkley in Western Kentucky a few times with brothers Jeff and Keith Slaughter
and looked forward to the experience. We
would be going on a weekend hunt with Greg Kline on the Lyerla Lake Farm.
We struck out from South Alabama on a seven hour drive to
meet up with friends in Western Kentucky.
From Kentucky we headed North West and three hours later arrived at our
destination. The hunting farm is a half
a mile and a busy train track away from the Mississippi River. It’s a beautiful farm that supports many
different styles of hunting: flooded corn fields and flooded timber represent
the basic theme with some dry cut fields offering plenty of variety. The farm is located on the edge of its name
sake Lyerla Lake and just outside a wildlife refuge. McClure,
Illinois is the nearest town to the farm and is very small. We found great accommodations across the
river in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
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| Mississippi River Frozen at Cape Girardeau, Missiuri |
Our first hunt we went unguided to a beautiful pit that
backed up to a small lake. The setup was
in the middle of a large cornfield, and directly in front of the pit and out a
couple hundred yards was the large and beautiful Lyerla Lake. The Kentucky brothers donned hip waders and
immediately changed the setup of the pond to allow a proper flight/landing area
for incoming ducks. This was something I
never considered, it’s common knowledge among experienced hunters to move the
decoys to accommodate wind direction.
You want to create a space for the approaching birds to zero in on and
feel safe when gliding in for a landing.
15 short minutes later and the sounds of duck calls were echoing through
the large tank pit. These tanks are dug
into the ground and work perfectly for an epic hunting setup.
Jeff and Keith worked several groups of ducks coming out of
the big lake. Some would tilt their
wings and shift direction a little to get a better look but seemed to have
other ideas. We saw deer running across
the fields and other animals feeding along.
Several more ducks buzzed us but not in range. Tim spotted ducks in the distance and the
guys fell in with calling and apparently made quite the impression on a group
of Gadwalls. Two birds peeled off the
rest of the group and made a fatal approach to the spread of decoys floating on
the small lake. When the sun finally
dropped below the horizon we made our way back to the rustic barn with 6 dead
gadwalls and a diver duck. We dropped
every bird we could bring in range.
Greg had some fine pork steaks hot off the Traeger Grill and
some spicy river bottom baked beans paired nicely with a fresh slice of white
bread. I’ve tried emulating the meal a
few times over the summer but have not got the same flavor yet.
I don’t have much experience to draw from but here are a few
observations I took note of from the hunting base camp. This particular camp was housed in a huge and
I really mean huge old barn. The open
area when entering the barn offered a great area to park trucks out of the
elements. Nothing like changing boots in
a graveled dry area. The site offered a
drying/hot room for leaving wet gear to dry overnight. And it had all the other needed
accommodations for a great experience.
The large barn had quite a history and was once the home to a horse made
famous in western TV shows.
Day two was a guided hunt and we setup in the dry pit. This pit is located in the middle of a rather
large cut bean field. We saw thousands
of ducks flying high over leaving the wildlife area shortly after dawn. The morning started a little slow but was
very enjoyable. It’s an experience
watching high flying flocks of snow geese heading south. Groups of speckle bellies flying high
overhead would offer a distraction as the guys pulled out several different
types of calls trying to get their attention.
Shortly before lunch the skies cleared a little and the sun
peeked through the clouds. With the sun
came the ducks. We dropped a couple of
mallards and things started to pick up.
We dined in the blind on pizza graciously provided by Greg and no one
stayed sitting long for lunch. The ducks
were flying and we all looked towards the sky.
We ended the day with eleven mallards and I’d started understanding the
draw to this sport. My good friend Joe
warned me duck hunting was a consuming habit.
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| Restocking the blind with stalks |
Day 3 goes down as my best experience of the trip. We trekked into the field before daylight and
the pit setup was astounding. It filled
the bill on exactly what I would expect a world class setup to look like. Picture a flooded corn field with a long
narrow pond stretching in front of the blind.
Dean was our guide on this hunt and with him was a top of the line bird
dog. The dog’s name was Chief and he was
of the Chesapeake Bay retriever breed best I could tell. Chief was a
well-educated and good mannered dog. If
my dog could read I’m sure he would bite me for saying this but it was my first
real experience hunting with a high caliber retriever.
I guess I never really gave it much thought on how a dog
would find a down duck in a lake or flooded corn field full of scent from other
kills and duck activity. But it’s
amazing to watch. Dean would give him
the signal to retrieve the bird and off the dog would go. Dean would blow the whistle and the dog would
stop and look back at him for a hand signal for direction. Motion to the right and the back and the dog
would run to the right and further back from the blind. When he got closer Dean would blow the
whistle again and redirect. We kept
Chief busy all day and brought back our limit of ducks in several different
varieties.
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| Shelby Byrd |
As I reflect on the last year and the experience I can say
it is a must try hunting experience. I’d
also have to say don’t expect me to be selling my deer gear anytime soon. I think both Duck and Deer hunting offer a
great complement to each other. Duck
hunting is more of a time to fellowship with friends and share stories while in
the blind. Whitetail deer hunting is a
time to disconnect and get away from it all.
But I’m planning to head back North in a few weeks to attend the annual Kentucky
Duck Blind draw and maybe try our luck at few Teal if time permits.
