Wisconsin's Little Puddle of Dreams

The Best Duck Hunt of My Life

After a slow opening afternoon of Duck hunting in the Eldorado Marsh just outside of Fond du Lac Wi, we were driving home, when I noticed a small water puddle out in the middle of a Plowed field. I told Big Bill and his son, let’s check it out, we walked down the fence line (I already had permission to hunt this property) about 400 yards in and came upon a Little Puddle that was created from the recent rains. It was approximately 20’ long x 10’ wide and about 2’ deep in the middle.

There were still a few corn stalks in the middle of it and a small patch of grass nearby, the field had been plowed recently.

I told Big Bill, let’s try this spot in the morning. He agreed.

I picked Bill and his son up early that morning and made sure we had everything we needed. Plastic to lay on and burlap sacks to cover us up, hip boots and of course Guns, ammo and decoys.

We set out well before Sunrise and trogged through the Field to this little Puddle, After setting the decoy spread (6), we picked our spot to lay in between the Plowed rows, laid down our plastic, covered up with the burlap and waited for Sunrise.

As it was getting a little lighter we heard a tremendous amount of flying birds just above us and heard them landing in the puddle, I started to get Chills trying to picture what was coming in. This kept going on for another 10 minutes or so and when the sun Came up, it was the best sight I have ever seen, 30-40 mallards in the puddle along with a few Canadian Honkers.

Flocks of Mallards were still flying around us and coming in. I whispered to Bill to get ready, and told him this was going to be the Quickest Hunt we would ever have to fill our quota.

As the 7th or 8th flock turned to start towards our decoys, I said “Get Em”.

We Jumped up and took our shots; we filled our quota in 3 shots each. The puddle erupted and approximately 100 or so Mallards and the Geese Jumped up and took off, But while they were leaving more flocks were still coming in to this Little Puddle. Even as we retrieved our Green Heads from the puddle, more were trying to land.
I still get chills every time I remember this story and someday hope it will happen again.

It pays to look around the areas you hunt in, you never know where that Little Puddle is going to be, and it Will Pay off BIG.

If this would have happened back in the days of no Point system, we could have filled our freezers up and mounted a flock of Green Heads to hang in our dens.

For the next few years, we quit hunting the marsh and only hunted Farm fields in search of Little Puddles. We found quite a few, but never as good as that day of Hunting in the Plowed rows of the Little Puddle of dreams.

© 2009 G.L .Burns Iron Cloud Ranch