I started the 2020-21 duck season with a well-defined mission to kill South Carolina Solo Species #25 and I thought I was off to a good start. A pair of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks that I found during the teal season had bred and I re-found them with their progeny the day before the November opener. I was afraid that Tropical Storm Eta had put them on an early trough to their winter homes in Florida but their seven babies must have not have been ready to make the trip. I set-up on these birds with my single BBWD decoy and a BBWD call made for me by a guy in Florida who regularly kills limits of these long-legged tree ducks. He told me that decoys aren't necessary but I made it more for the final photos than actually hunting anyway. The call, he said, was the key. I called but the nine tree ducks simply ignored me leaving me without an opening morning shot. I went back Sunday morning and never saw them.

Dealing with disappointment is one of the lessons I have learned from chasing the duck hunter's slam entirely within the state of South Carolina. Resiliency is another. Reaching the 32 ducks species really wasn’t the goal anyway. I hunt solo so I don’t have anyone to challenge me on my choice of hunting spots or how I call or how I decoy or when I go. Rather than just killing the same gadwall over and over again I needed a catalyst to force me out of my warm, comfortable box and become a more complete duck hunter. Deciding to try to kill all 32 duck species hunting solo and in SC was that catalyst.

This catalyst has worked perfectly. It has changed, much for the better I think, the way I approach duck hunting. More importantly, it has renewed the fascination for all things duck and really made me feel like a kid again. I’ve learned a lot of new water and techniques over the past 8 seasons. I’ve built and painted decoys for the species I was after.

One particular decoy began life as a Herter’s 63 foam black duck. I bought it from Overton's as a sample back in the 1980’s and body-wrapped it with Tanglefree line. The first time I used it the plastic line pulled off the paint and a layer of Styrofoam so I threw it under the house and forgot it. At some point during the quest I remembered that decoy and burlapped it and painted it like an old squaw hen. Prior to last season the hen’s companion was a Flambeau pintail that I rescued from the river and painted into a old squaw drake but, as everyone knows, Flambeau decoys actually repel paint so I had it retired and replaced with some “store bought” foam-filled GHG long-tailed ducks. Whenever I’m in coastal waters I put out my homemade hen and at least three other old squaw decoys off to themselves and closest to deep water. I did the same thing on Tuesday morning and, amazingly, it actually worked. Honesty compels me to admit that it’s worked before but my shooting was the reason that I didn’t book old squaw until November 24, 2020.

For most of the species in my quest, my usually suspect shooting has been pretty good. I doubled, dead-in-the-air, on my first black scoters (#20), rolled the first surf scoter I ever saw (#21), and dropped a super fine white-winged drake (#22). I missed the rarest of SC ducks on my list, a common eider, twice but she re-decoyed and allowed me to fix my mistake (#23). The common goldeneye (#24) was a clean kill. But, as the beat up decoy will attest, I knotted up a long-tailed duck that was hovering just over her head only to have the bird right itself and fly off as I was trying to get my boat off of an oyster mound. Minutes later I totally missed a decoying pair that included a really long-tailed drake. The decoy was there when I talked to a half dozen other guys that had an old squaw in their boat while hunting the same water I had just been on. One of these guys thought he had what he called a “harli-queen” duck.

Tuesday was my turn to get the albatross from around my neck and make a shot on what I knew was an old squaw. The single immature, drake I think, almost flew past my spread when it noticed the ball of long-tailed decoys. The best I can describe it was a 180 degree corkscrew landing attempt. I don’t mind water swatting a bird but they’re bigger when they’re in the air. Things happened so quick that it was more of a reaction that any deliberate effort on my part but it worked. The bird hit and dove almost in one motion but I was ready when it came up. This time I made the retrieve too and booked South Carolina Duck Species #25…finally.





So what’s left…
Doable: Black-bellied Whistling Duck
Takes Some Luck: Common Merganser, King Eider
Lottery Odds: Cinnamon Teal, Fulvous Whistling Duck
Impossible: Barrow’s Goldeneye
Illegal: Harlequin Duck

My motivational poster as it now stands: