Four beauties gunned from the timber.

Then it happened. A large group of green-winged Teal rocketed by just above the trees, barreling toward the sanctuary. They resembled a huge swarm of bees. Rusty hailed them with a shift in tone and sound, but they had already made up their minds and were instantly gone twisting and turning over the trees. We talked around the hole about how none of us had ever seen such a large group of teal in flooded timber.

This discussion was still going on when Rusty announced, “Here they come again.” Sure enough the teal evidently had only landed briefly in the sanctuary and were airborne again buzzing open areas in full force. The group diagonally buzzed the Doughnut hole. They had the afterburners on and there was only enough time to watch as they disappeared through the trees.

Again, the teal roared back and were already on short final into the hole. It was so sudden and beautiful no one fired a shot. Instead of heading back out into the timber the teal rose just above the trees and once again set up in the flight pattern. Rusty whispered, “They’re coming back, this time be ready.”

I quickly pre-focused my camera on a tree top limb exactly at the beginning of the main entry point of the glide path into the hole hoping to be lucky enough to capture an image or two of this barreling beehive.

Within seconds the viewfinder was full of teal, wings vertical to the ground, turning the corner in unison. Instantly the camera locked on and I ripped off a couple of eight frames per second bursts. Literally, our hole was filled with cupped wing, feet down teal in every possible configuration of landing positions possible. The beauty and excitement of the scene was enough to overwhelm even the most insensitive and hardhearted person.

Then, the real shooting began. Eight Green Wing teal were downed with only one a hen. We had done high percentage shooting in the midst of a high-speed situation. Later, my images showed 92 teal in every kind of landing position imaginable dropping into our hole. The significance of it all didn’t completely dawn on us until later when we reviewed the pictures. Conclusion
Yes, we’d enjoyed a premier flooded timber hunt with almost a limit of big, fat, rice-fed mallards.

But the day was about much more. Witnessing over one hundred aerial acrobats rocketing into our flooded timber hole and the shots that followed will forever be etched in our minds. Yes, it was a Timber Teal day.