NC’s early season is always circled on our family’s calendar
I literally cannot wait for October to get here. Yeah, I know, most people who love being outdoors do, because summer’s heat is behind us, and there are plenty of things to do that involve a gun or a rod. I love catching speckled trout and bass and crappie, but it’s something else altogether that cranks my engine.
It’s the four days early in the month that have become very special around our place: North Carolina’s early duck season, set this year for Oct. 7-10. Lots of guys circle certain days on the calender: opening day of seasons like dove, deer, squirrel and rabbit. I circle all of early duck season. I will not miss it.
This will be the fifth year that we’ve carried Buckshot, the world’s greatest black Lab — hey, it’s my story; I’m sticking to it — to a little wood duck hole deep in the woods in Yadkin County. There aren’t a whole lot of ducks around, but it seems like a fair amount of them use this little pond, especially if acorns are dropping from the oak trees that surround it.
We usually hunt at least two of the four mornings, getting out way before sunrise and letting the world wake up around us. Right as legal shooting time arrives, so do the wood ducks, coming in fast as fighter jets, low to the water. If we’re extremely lucky — it’s still dark — we see or hear them in time to get a shot or two off before they pitch in with a splash.
And at least once every October, Buckshot makes some kind of great retrieve. He found one duck last opening day that a buddy shot at the crack of dawn; we heard the bird hit the dark water more than we saw him. It must have paddled to the end of a tree lap and hid in the leafy branches, a good 20 yards from where it fell, but Buckshot found him in good order.
One year, a crippled woody tried to lose Buckshot in the limbs at the top of an oak that had fallen in the pond. He waited until it came around on the other side, climbed upon the trunk and was waiting when the duck re-appeared. Surprise!
Buckshot’s year-old yellow Lab puppy, Boone, might join us this year. After all, it’s a few days that have become a family tradition — dogs and all.
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