Shooting Times & Country Magazine
A flight that will never be forgotten
Mike Swan heads to the marsh for an outing to remember — and not just for the duck
If you cannot enjoy a blank flight, you should not go wildfowling, especially in early September before the bulk of the migrants have arrived. It’s not so long ago that I failed to get a shot until the fifth trip of the season, so my hopes were not that high on 8 September in southwest Wales; my first trip this season.
My mate Mad Tom and I spied from a vantage point in the village, and were encouraged to see six teal lift from the marsh edge and fly 100 yards or so before pitching into a creek. With luck they were joining some others, but whatever, there were some ducks about. Our plan was to sit on a stony spit that juts out to the marsh front and watch what happened over the last hour of the flood. This should give us a clue about where to go as we followed the tide out in time for dusk and the hope of a shot at evening flight.
We did not really expect any chances from the stones, but there were bushes to hide behind and I set out half a dozen wigeon decoys on the edge of the tide, just in case something would be daft enough to give us a look. I tucked in, turning my back on an approaching squall, just in time to get settled before the rain came. We were then treated to a series of heavy showers from the west, with the sun breaking through between them to create some wonderful rainbows. Maybe there would be a pot of gold at the end of one?
After the first squall when the sun came out, I began to spot a tern or two glinting in the sunshine as they quartered over the water and periodically lifted before folding their wings to dive. This did not turn into the sort of bait ball and feeding frenzy that makes dramatic television, but at one point there were close to 100 of them in view, scattered across the river, while the whole picture drifted steadily along with the flood.
Meanwhile, we had also started to see a few teal, mostly just ones and twos passing uptide, and well out, but swinging into the marsh in the general area where we intended to end up at evening flight. Then came a moment of pure joy as a party of 35 pintail came into view from the east, flying about 100 yards high right overhead and on down the estuary. By late September I would expect to see a few pintail, but these were well ahead of schedule, and the fact that they were way out of shot mattered not a scrap.
Mob of teal
A little later, as the tide started to spill out of the marsh-front creeks and spread across the saltings, things began to get exciting. We spotted a mob of 20 or so teal skimming over the marsh straight towards us. As we hunkered down deeper into our
bushes, they started to swing out to pass by, then spotted the decoys and swung back towards us, passing tantalisingly close but just too far out. Five minutes later came another group, and then a third, but always just too far out.
At last, a group of three did the decent thing and decided to give us a closer look, with Tom knocking out a neat right-and-left with his first two shots of the season. As the third bird rocketed away, I did the usual and missed both barrels — well somebody has to. With the two dead birds drifting quickly upriver on the tide, there was no time to lose and Bramble was sent on her way to fetch them.
Over the next 20 minutes the basic pattern repeated, with perhaps half a dozen more lots of between 10 and 25 passing low and just too wide for another shot, before the tide began to ebb slowly away and the tap turned off. It was now time to sit quietly with a cup of tea and watch the world go by until sunset, when we could hopefully venture out into the marsh with a chance of hiding from approaching birds after the water had drained from the shallow creeks.
As we relaxed, a reverse flight started to develop, with first a party of pintail about 40-strong and then several lots of teal passing by out over the tide, both high and wide. There was a single cock wigeon too, with
“Tom knocked out a neat right-and-left with his first two shots of the season”
his big white wing patches glinting in the sun. The squalls had now blown through and the wind died down to something near a mirror calm, with the steam rising almost vertically from the factory chimneys on the other side of the estuary. With no noise of even little waves breaking, sounds began to carry across the water from the far side, and we could hear the distant murmur of greylags and Canadas; I wondered if they might flight across to our side in the dusk.
After our tea break I gathered in the decoys, and we set off out into the marsh, skirting off inland around
a deeper creek that was just a bit too wide to jump. When we had gone a couple of hundred yards, we spotted a dozen ducks heading straight for us along the tide edge. With no creeks to jump into, there was nothing for it but to drop to our knees and pretend to be lumps in the marsh. Needless to say, the birds rumbled us, and a dozen pintail flared and swung out over the water when they were still well beyond range. Another four parties followed, but with nowhere better to hide, and the light still strong, we were spotted and avoided by each lot.
Double report
As the tide dropped a little more, we found a shallow creek each to hide in; Tom about 30 yards uptide of me so that Bramble and I were well placed to retrieve any bird of his that might fall on the water. At the same time, a light north-west breeze sprang up, drowning out the sounds of geese from the far side. Here we waited and watched as the ebb gathered pace, spotting a party of five mallard drifting down towards us. Sometimes they would turn to face the current and hold position for a while, and then they would turn and swim with it. As I watched them pass opposite me, I was awakened from my reverie by a double report from Tom’s gun, followed by a mighty splash as a big fat drake mallard hit the water. I turned in time to see another 10 or so flaring away out of reach.
Deciding that, with Tom to intercept them, I was unlikely to get a shot from that direction, I turned to look west, and watched for birds out of the sunset, while periodically glancing over my shoulder just in case. Doing so, I noticed the full moon rising and appearing through a break in the clouds. With light like this we could probably see to shoot all night, but in truth we were unlikely to see much movement after normal evening flight time.
As I turned back to the west, a single mallard that Tom had clearly not seen roared past over the tide edge and was soon gone into the gloom. A few moments later, another caught me napping, nearly knocking my hat off as it flipped over my left shoulder from the direction of the moon. I cursed, reflecting that in my youth I would probably have been quicker, and got a shot off, not least because I would have heard it earlier. Noise-induced hearing loss due to not wearing hearing protection when shooting does not help ageing wildfowlers.
With no further action over the next 10 minutes, and the western glow all but gone, the call of sustenance began to beckon, so we headed for home, to be greeted by the sad news of the death of HM The Queen. With that news to link it to, what was already a memorable flight will now never be forgotten. Rest in peace, Ma’am.
“There was nothing for it but to drop to our knees and pretend to be lumps in the marsh”