The Zen of Wingshooting

All live in the moment when ducks are over decoys

By Kyle Wintersteen

My dog (and yours, I imagine) has this remarkable, downright enviable ability to live life strictly in the moment. He can fall into a deep, leg-twitching slumber, but should I gently sweep the back door open, he’ll blast outside like a football team through a breakaway banner. He has no concept of past regrets or future worries, and no concern whether his present circumstances align with what he feels they could or should be.

His days are neither good nor bad; there’s no passage of time in his world at all. He just knows that he’s a dog, he loves being a dog, and he’s happy, happy, happy with the situation at hand.

Oh, to be so blessed. Imagine letting go of every major worry—the financial, the familial, the big ones—through a dog’s mindset of living “in the now.” Zero oxygen would be afforded to all those pesky anxieties around hypothetical catastrophes occurring in a future that exists only in our minds.

And that, dear reader, is why swinging a shotgun barrel ahead of a drake mallard’s emerald green head feels like your soul’s been set free. Fear and anger and worry do not exist here—in the precious millionths of a second when ducks are over decoys and time stands still and you wish you could live forever.

Your mind is clear and clean, and the sensation is bliss. It’s nirvana. It is, a Buddhist might suggest, “zen”—a state of mindfulness that seeks to enjoy just being, rather than pursuing some other pleasure, vice, or objective. I tend to concur with that.

No, I am not endorsing eastern religion. And please don’t dare accuse me of suggesting that the Buddha could’ve reached enlightenment more quickly if he’d taken a blunderbuss to some Mandarin ducks. That’d be wrong. But I do contend that, as dyed-in-the-waders duck hunters, we know a thing or two about zen, and we don’t need a peace garden, a yoga mat, or to transcend anything but a path to the marsh to find it. Where there are decoys, good friends, a loyal retriever, and the anticipation of wingshooting, there are no thoughts of “I sure wish” this or “if only” that. You’re fully alive in those moments and, if you stopped to consider it, a duck hunt is perhaps the only place you’ll ever be—both physically and mentally—without desiring to be anywhere else.

In many instances, particularly when the pre-dawn is cold and clear and sparkling, the zen of it all commences from the moment the first decoy is pitched. Perhaps you hold dear some traditions in this regard. A quick prayer for safety and of gratitude, maybe. Or a glance at the constellation Orion and rumination on the thousands of years in which the hunter’s instinct to kill and eat has added meaning to the human experience. Thoughts of conflict or strife melt into the ether as your center is found.

Then you hear it: The roar of wings ripping the air with impossible precision; the low chuckle of mallards exchanging pleasantries overhead; the unseen splash of a bird settling somewhere in the distance.

There they are. Mallards arc around the treetops and grab the air for deceleration in glorious committal, their aerobatics creating a stunning visual bouquet of shimmering green heads, deep burgundy breasts, and wings of flashing white.

Here we go. You rise to shoot. Your focus, your heart, your senses are strictly in the present, delighting in the unequalled, exquisite zen that is ducks over decoys.

Kyle Wintersteen is the editor of Delta Waterfowl magazine.