Back when I was a kid in the late 70's early 80's, My dad would take us hunting on bayou Katorche (spelling?) off of the mermentau river. Just about all of the hunting was done as pass shooting, because very rarely could you get something to decoy in. Most of the birds were en route to the nearby rice fields. My dad ended up making some tree blinds about 50-60' up in the trees in the flight pattern to even up the odds a bit. I remember being there many hours while they built these things. Used railroad spikes to climb the tree and pretty much make like a lil tree house in the top of the trees. He ended up building Himself one,and my 2 brothers each theirs,and also helped a couple of buddies build one too. Well, I was too young to hunt in the sky scraper blinds,so me and my mom would sit in the boat below and we were the retrievers. If my dad would knock down a cripple, my mom would crank up the boat and we would go pick it up. I remember one morning my dad knocked down a female mallard, me and mom crank up and go pick it up. We get back to our lil hiding spot,and I see the ducks legs move a little. My mom reaches down and picks it up. when she picks it up, it gives a lil quack. Then the ducks head kinda pops up. So, then my mom puts the duck in her lap spreads its wings open to show me the pretty colors on the wings. As soon as she lets the wings go, the duck makes another quack. We both thought it was funny,so she kept doing it,and every time she would, it would quack again. She then started acting like it was dancing in her lap along with the wing quacks, until suddenly it had enough and jumped out my moms lap and started flying down the bayou. She began hollering at my Dad to shoot it, by the time he saw it, it was almost out of range. He knocked it down, and then asked us, Where did that come from? My mom says, out of my lap. It was still not all the way dead when we picked it up the second time, but this time mom rang its neck. Supper had almost gotten away. I look back at those times now, and realize how crazy that was,but it sure was some fun times growing up. I never did get to hunt out of those blinds, by the time I was old enough we had stopped hunting in that area.
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