“Pintails, Pintails, Pintails.”

Ed`s brother in law Christie Hall came down to hunt with us as often as he could.  Now if Christie or one of his sons, Robert and Jerry, walked into a building automatically they were the three tallest men there.

He was a great and funny friend.  He would tell nonstop jokes all day and never repeat one.

Christie had a bad habit of leaning over the camo on front of our blind.  Did I mention he wore big gold framed shiny glasses and he always wanted to see the ducks work.  Not to mention his shiny frames spooked ducks, big time.We would replace the cane and he would mash it down, next trip.

He had never been to the back water with us and this one trip he wanted to go with us.  The river was high and we put in at the bottom of the hill going into the bottom above Hickman. We were there well before daylight. 

I motored to one of my two favorite spots.  It lay right next to the river. It was an island a hundred yard wide and six feet above water at the highest.  It was all that stood between us and the river.  We could see tow boats go by and they seemed to be on land they were riding so high.

This was the first year for Kentucky to use a point system and pintails were the lowest point duck at 1 point I believe.  That day the bottom was full of ducks and pintails must have outnumbered the others five hundred to one.  I mean they were in all directions and their wings were whistling.  That is why some call them whistler ducks.  The pintail hen is the only duck that I think is as pretty as a canvasback hen.  Most people like the colorful males better but if you look at the subtle brown hues in the females it makes a much prettier bird.

We had two rolls of wire with cane worked into it for cover and we carried one huge roll of loose cane.  I never understood why others did not stick limbs and or cane around the boat for a few feet out to break the outline of the blind.  A boat with camo still looks like a boat unless something breaks the outlines.  It is not laziness because by its nature duck hunting is not for the lazy.  I really believe it is the desire to get down to hunting.  Doc T and I always had to stay on Ed to spend more time fixing the camo.

We had a day.  A limit of ducks which being all low point was several and a couple of geese.

Heading to the bank I just happened to look up the bottom and saw what looked like hunters blinding up.  Surely not this late, so I motored over that way.  It was three hunters who had broken their starter rope and had paddled where they could and got in the water and pushed where it was shallow.  COLD water that was.  We tossed them a rope and pulled them the half mile to the trucks.

Once there I had to ask them, with one or two hundred feet of decoy line they could not fabricate a new starter rope? The answer, “We did not think of that.”  Well doh!