re: Maurapas wma

For the younger members on this board (I'm 48, so Ima say "young" is 33 and below), do this please.

Close your eyes. Picture pulling your truck off I 10, right around the st james / St. John line, close to garyville canal. It's about 5:30 am, early December, 1982. In the back of your truck are two pirogues. You untie yours, throw a sack of 20 decoys into it, and grab your Browning sweet 16, with those lead, red, Winchester shells, #6s, check your neck for your duck calls, put on your hip boots, and ease that loaded pirogue off of "the swamp bank", which is the side of I 10. Your buddy does the same with his pirogue, save the decoys. Since yAll are 16, yAll likely forgot the flash light, but it doesn't matter much. It's a clear night, and you know all your going to do is paddle or pole far enough away from I 10 such that you can't hear the cars, or see their lights. Eyes still closed?

Initially, you have no choice on where to paddle. You just go where the terrain lets you, as the first 40 or 50 yards are brushy, viney, and have little blobs of land here and there. Your buddy follows right along. Eventually though, you clear that brush, and you find yourself in the midst of this huge cypress and tupelo swamp. The water is clear as gin, and there's nothing floating on it, except maybe a little duck seed, the occasional cypress or Tupelo ball, and maybe a few of those really small, bitter pecAns. You're hearing the constant din of crying nutrias, an occasional owl hoot, and a woody cry or two. As the roar of cars gets quieter, the nutrias get louder. You run several off their log, and sometimes it scares the shite out of you.

You're continually scanning the heavens while paddling, and also looking in front of you, in search of two converging features ....a "hole" in the sky, illuminated by all those stars- the bigger the better - and an "island", which isn't really an island. It's more of a groups of cypress trees that are old, big, and close enough such that they provide a good place to sit on a bucket that you likely forgot, or stand. The "island" needs to be on the edge of the hole. Keep them closed......

You pitch those 20 plugs into the middle of that hole, and tie a jerk string around two, running those strings back to the island. You don't worry about making a "j" with the plugs, as field and stream suggested. They are just out there. About 6:00, the decoys are out, the jerk strings are tested, and they do in fact make a nice ripple, which you HAVE to have. The wind never makes it down there.

You check your call by hitting about 5 good notes, and that's followed by the sound of the unscrewing of that magazine cap, and that pencil being jiggled out of the magazine. Then, the same sound 4 times over......super x's being rammed into a magazine, the racking of a shell, and then a fifth sound identical to the first 4. Safeties are checked - you hear that "click clock" - a cup of coffee from a Stanley thermos with no cup goes into an old, swamp rinsed cup that you grabbed from your truck, and you're now ready.

first, it's woodies. And lots of them. And you don't even care, or even look too hard. Those are 70 point ducks, and you can't kill but two. Sometimes, you watch the dispelling of the myth that woodies won't decoy, as a pair or two actually sail into the plugs and lite.

So, you wait, and wonder if this is the day "it ends", but eventually, you hear it, just as you've heard it a hundred times before. Sometimes it comes as a chuckle, and sometimes it's about 4 notes of a distant hen, but nonetheless, you hear it. You perk up, look to where there used to be a big, unimpaired group of stars, and see that flash of white. A jerk or two on the string, and a few quick chop chops, and suddenly, you realize your "frozen"......not moving.......but just listening w-every ounce of your body. What was a whistle turns into a rumble, and 12 fat shapes appear from that not as dark sky. Two Brownings bark 7 times together, and the cursing of your buddies accuracy puts an exclamation point on the fact that there are only 3 dead ducks on the water.

Then, you do it again, and again. A few times, you disregard the point system, justifying by the fact that you fell in last time, and didn't kill a limit. Or the girl down the street let you sneak into her window last Friday night, so you were owed last Saturday's limit.

I didn't know the name of that swamp growing up. I only knew the my buddy - from reserve, and didn't even like to hunt that much - had a grandfather that was a founding member of garyville hunting club, on who's leased land that story happened so many times. We had permission from "gagoo", as he was known. No one even duck hunted in there, except another older member affectionately called "MFer", for his liberal use of the term. All true Cajuns have a nickname, and that was his. The whole crew there chased a small heard of deer around all year long. Killing 10 was a good year. I wasn't a native. I was merely a Metairie transplant to La Place, with very deep north louisiana duck hunting roots, that stumbled upon what I believe was the finest mallard hunting in the world, circa 1980's, and until the salvania got a hold of that place.

Guess you can open your eyes now. I'm in continuing Ed all day today. Thanks for letting me share. If I never live to see it again, I saw it for about 5 years. It was beautiful. And may God damn the giant savania to hell.