Pretty Much Everything You Need to Know
First, go now--the first week in November-- to the Hackberry Rod and Gun Club in Hackberry, Louisiana. You’ll get up at 4 a.m., have breakfast, meet your guide and his Labrador Retriever, ride in his pickup truck to a ditch bank a half-hour away from the hunting camp, get in a 16-foot gunboat powered by a Go-Devil outboard motor--a contraption designed to run in shallow-water and mud and grass.
That’s why the ducks are there, for the grasses in the miles of marshes. A Go-Devil sticks out the back of the boat like no other motor you’ve ever seen, and makes an uncommon amount of noise. It’s a fun ride to your blind--a wooden platform specially-covered by marsh reeds. There you’ll put your shotgun shells, maybe a thermos of coffee and a snack. You’ll sit on a bench and wait for the sunrise and the arrival of the ducks, which you hope will come to the decoys already riding on the water in front of the blind.