The Day of Days.

I cant tell you either how annoying my alarm was, or what the tone sounded like on opening morning, as, like all the years before it, I was awake well before it went off.

After checking my watch every five seconds, telling myself it would make time go faster, at the requiquired time, I stood up and flicked on the lounge light in Matts house. Just like everywhere, his house becomes our house over weekend. With three young children, and a VERY understanding wife, it really is a home away from home.

We had a quick brekefast, knowing that we had all the ofortts of home in the hides. We shoot the same place everyyear, so chairs, tables, bbqs and gas cookers are all ready down there waiting for us. I do a lot of hard yards hunting, wading through chest deep water for god knows how long, slogging it out through mud, and getting drenched laying in sodden fields...this hunt is not one of them, and its nice to start the year with a comfortable hunt, with some good mates to celebrate the new season.

6:45am, and the shooting can legally start. At 6:45am + one second, we were into it.

There had been about 100 birds living on what remained of the pond, so we new they would be coming in right on day light. We were on the board nice and early, and some good shooting durring the first hour. Terry took to it like a duck to water. It wasnt long before he was doing everything by instinct, and he had bagged himself a few birds durring the first part of the morning.

Where the day changed however, was that we then had excellent shooting over the next three hours.

All those birds that had left as the water dropped, came back. And they brought their friends. As other ponds and paddocks were shot up, these birds took to the skys. Whether ot was because they had lived here happily earlier in the year, or because we still had some water, if they saw the pond, or heard our callers, more often than not, they came in. We shoot with a large crew of guys on opening morning, and its over to me to do the majority of the calling, but also to ''call the shot''. It is a daunting task, knowing that of you call it to early or two late, birds may get through, or some guys might miss out on a perfect shot. Its task that I love!

All in all, we had one or two mishaps where the guns were a bit quick before the call, but generally it worked really well.

We had set the decoys for the Paradise shelducks up on the mud, and they were decoying really well up onto the mud flats, but try as we might, we knew it was going to be a wasted effort to get the mallards to commit off the water, which in some places was near on 70 meters from the hides, with the far bank well over 100 meters away.

So with this in mind, and after a few parries had started landing in the middle of the pond, escaping when we shot others that decoyed, I headed round to the far corner, out of the line of shooting from the hides, in the hopes of bagging some mallards and any parries that may have escaped the main set of hides.

It couldn't have worked out any better.

I ended up getting some great Mallard shooting, calling in singles, pairs and the odd bigger group. I do this every year, as while its nice shooting in a big group, I love it when I get to target mallards by my own. I know what I hit, and what I miss - which can be embarrassing as EVERYONE is watching! I had a few other guys join me throughout the morning, and that allowed us to take areal toll on the escaping parries, then once things quietened off, we headed back round to have lunch with the boys. We hunted all day Saturday, then settled in for a whiskey to celebrate the day, catch up with the other boys around the country, then turn in, ready to do it all again tomorrow!

them half of Sunday, with Paul joining us late in the piece.

The night before Christmas...

Its hard to explain what the Duck season means to me. In short, where others may describe something great in their lives as being ''like Christmas'', I would say something different.

Keeping all that in mind, it was very hard for me to accept that in just over a week, now that the season had finally arrived, I would be leaving New Zealand. With this mind, I packed up the 4WD with as much gear as I could fit in it, picked up Rich, and away we went!

Was I any less excited?

Of course not!

Packing the 4WD ready for a big opening weekend!

This years season was not shaping up well. A massive draught had drained a lot of not just my ponds, but everyone's. Our traditional opening morning pond, while having water, was very low. So low, that the hides were 50-60 meters from the waters edge.

There had been a good number of ducks around earlier in the year, but as the pond lost more water, it lost more ducks. Matt, who owns the farm the pond is on, and a good friend of mine, wasn't expecting great results, but as always, we would do our best.

Scott, another local landowner, friend and co-shooter, Matt and I had a brief chat beforehand. We all agreed that while the pond was low, it wasn't dry like so many other ponds in the region. We also knew that a good number of birds had called it home over the year to date. We decided that once the shooting started, and birds started being disturbed, maybe, just maybe, we would get lucky, and have some of our once resident birds, return home.

Duff with his make up on

Joining us for the hunt in our two hides, were Paul,  Bailie's dad - Terry (Duff), and Richard. Being that Bailie's old man had essentially been living with four woman for quite some time, and that I was about to head overseas, I thought it was time for Duff to join us on a lads weekend. He had some experience with firearms, but hadn't hunted duck before, so we all hoped he would enjoy the experience. I heard from Bailie that he was excited, but when she sent me a photo of him "practicing" to put on camo paint, I knew he would blend right in with us!


Rich on the other hand had hunted with me for years, since we first worked together while at university, for the New Zealand franchise store of Cabellas. Since then, no matter where he or I lived, we always found someway to meet up for a hunt or a fish.

A big crew of locals and other landowners made up the rest of the hides, many of whom had been shooting the area for years. Story's flowed the night before, some of which may have been true, before we tried to sleep, in preparation for what some people may say, was ''just like Christmas morning''.