All of the props were in place. The lights came up steadily. The stars of the show arrived on cue. It was the perfect scene.

//

When guide T.J. Christensen gave the command for me to fire, I almost expected him to cry out “Action!” rather than “Take ‘em!”

Either way, the urgency in his voice signaled my big entrance. Huddled deep in a 3-foot square box shrouded by leafy brush, I thrust my shoulders forward and held my head high to search the skies before me. There! A long, elegant duck with a handsome spear in tow veered deftly above the decoys as I scrambled to cover the bird with my bead.

Boom!

Behind it.

Boom!

Low. Before I could fire a final salvo, the sleek bull pintail disappeared into the glaring Texas sun.

I slumped backward, keenly aware I had messed up the shot — and not just at the duck.

Seconds later, as if to rub some of the San Antonio Bay saltwater on my wounded pride, one of the video camera operators announced, “I had that duck perfectly focused, and I was just waiting for it to fall.”

At that moment, Joe Coogan, the host of “Benelli on Assignment,” might have regretted his decision to have me shoot the first pintail of the morning. Still, he consoled me from his own wooden box two compartments over: “Hey, we all miss sometimes.”

True. In my defense, it was an unusual duck hunt. The ducks — pintails, wigeon and redheads — were quite familiar. But burrowing into low-grass islands while overlooking vast Gulf Coast shallows with jet-engine watercraft as our tender boat felt exotic to a Midwestern marsh rat like me.

To complicate matters, the blind where our guide and four hunters huddled was flanked on each end by a separate collection of bushes, placed there specifically to hide cameramen.

I didn’t have long to fret about blowing my chance at fame.

“Ducks,” Christensen announced.

Although our guide didn’t indicate the species, I surmised from the “peep-peep-pe-pe-peep” of the whistle in his mouth that cameras were about to roll tape on my second take at a pintail.

“Get ready Paul, these are yours,” Coogan coached.

“Coming on the right,” Christensen warned. “Better take ‘em.”

I rose quickly, much more sure of my footing after the previous drill. A pair of pintails zoomed past far to my right, flaring at an absolutely impossible angle for me to swing and fire. The ducks looped behind our island and raced into the cloudless blue.

“Cut!” I joked.

Christensen decided to rearrange the decoy spread, determined to loosen the plastic flock and create more landing areas closer to the blind.

“They’re flaring,” he declared. “We need to be hidden better. I’m going to rework the camera blinds.”

I was happy to deflect some of the blame for the group’s collective failure to kill a pintail early in the hunt. But truthfully, I had choked under the bright lights and pressure to perform on camera.

One More Chance
“Maybe we should all shoot at the next flock,” I suggested.

After all, my blindmates, Coogan, Tim Brandt of Federal Premium Ammunition and Kyle Wintersteen of the National Rifle Association all toted shotguns adept at pulling ducks from the air.

“We’ll give you one more chance,” Coogan said. “But then we’re shooting. We need to get some ducks on video.”

“No pressure,” Wintersteen jabbed.

As the morning brightened, a few boats stirred across the flats — anglers probing back bays for redfish. I’m not sure whether the fishing pressure stirred ducks or if something else made the birds push away from the breakfast table, but pintail traffic picked up noticeably. A flock 35-strong zipped over so low, I could vividly pick out the white lines on the drakes’ necks.

I shuddered. Take 3.

“They’re coming around,” Christensen said nervously. “Get ready. There’s one way out in front. Get ‘em now!”

Realizing it had been duped, the bull sprig stood up in the air, vaulting for a hasty escape.

I locked in, concentrating on the dark eye and bluish bill of the regal bird. As soon as I unleashed a load of steel, the pintail careened toward the salt.

Christensen’s Labrador retriever lunged to fetch the bird as the cameras rolled. Dog work complete, Christensen quickly handed the gorgeous pintail to Coogan. In no time, I was engaged in a discussion about the beauty of the Bay, the striking plumage of the birds and the glory of hunting in such a storied waterfowl location. All of it, of course, happened while the cameras were trained on us.

Coogan spotted more pintails in the distance, so we curbed the conversation. “Let’s get back to hunting,” he said.

Red, Green and Sprig
We had ventured to Bay Flats Lodge in Seadrift, Texas, a week before Christmas to enjoy a few days of duck hunting while field-testing Benelli shotguns and Black Cloud shotshells.

The Texas Gulf Coast is an important wintering area for pintails, wigeon and redheads.

Drawn to the shallow flats by abundant, nutrient-rich wigeon grass, the ducks concentrate in large feeding flocks. Upward of 75 pintails winged past one morning, and seemingly 60 or more of them were drakes. By mid-December, the adult drakes are dressed in feathers fitting of a stroll down a Hollywood red carpet.

Similarly, wigeon drakes are regaled in brilliant green eye patches capped with stark-white brims by this point on the waterfowling calendar. Each morning as we awaited legal shooting time, “whoo-we-whoo” echoed enchantingly across the water.

And oh, the redhe
ads. I have thrilled a hundred times at the rush of diving duck wings on Wisconsin lakes. Every time a battalion of redheads runs my decoy string, I count myself among the most fortunate of men. When the Texas sky darkened from east to west with approaching redheads on the second morning, I gazed skyward, mesmerized. Two-thousand, 3,000, maybe twice that. I discovered in Texas, that in hand, a mature drake’s fluffed crimson head surrounds its golden eye spectacularly.

I’ll make no apologies for my love affair with diving ducks. If anything, my trip to Texas proved divers can become wary of decoys and be tough to shoot. Attempting to entice such large flocks of ducks — especially after they have been hunted for several weeks — will test the most skilled hunters among us.

Quality Over Quantity
After I collected my pintail, Wintersteen and Brandt each pulled down sprig. The flight, and the filming of falling fowl, was picking up nicely.

We had no sooner settled back into our boxes after another quick video recap session when a wedge of redheads banked hard out front.

“Coming in from the right,” Christensen informed.

All four guns blazed at the streaking ducks. I doubled up on a drake with Wintersteen, and our TV host pinwheeled the dandy redhead at the front of the parade.

“Three down! All right!” Coogan declared.

A flock of shovelers surprised us, but Wintersteen snapped into action and folded a young spoony drake while we watched. A lone drake redhead tried to join our fakes, and Brandt added the bird to our colorful collection.

Coogan, who had missed a chance at a bull sprig minutes earlier, redeemed himself with a twisting overhead shot at a drake wigeon — our ninth duck of the morning.

As much as all of wanted to keep hunting, the camera crew was itching to film close-ups and interviews.

“We’re not duck hunting, we’re making television,” one of them reminded us.Christensen summoned the jet boat, and soon, Bay Flats owner, Capt. Chris Martin, arrived to help retrieve the decoys and load gear. As Wintersteen and I took photos, I couldn’t help but admire the quality of the ducks we had killed.

I’ve certainly had hunts with more birds, but I cannot remember a prettier lineup of ducks. Coogan and I noted that sentiment on camera. “It was a trophy duck hunt,” the host told viewers.

Unknowingly, Coogan’s words foreshadowed the next morning’s adventure.

Taxidermy Birds
The next day, we set up on a different mud flat where our guides had watched a mass of ducks feed the previous afternoon. The guides had constructed a shooting blind complete with bench seats, as well as special camera blinds, just hours before we arrived to hunt.

The weather mirrored the previous day: no clouds, light wind, 50 degrees at daybreak.

Brandt was up first for a pintail. After passing on a difficult flock that wouldn’t commit all of the way into range, the ammo man got his chance. He selected a long-bodied bull from the winging bunch, and the dog seemed happy for a quicker start to his workday.

Coogan declared it my turn next for a sprig. As far as I was concerned, my hunt was already in the bonus round. The best pintail of my life already resided in a freezer back at the lodge.

I watched intently as 25 drake pintails — if there was a hen in the flock, I didn’t see it — knotted up out front and cruised over the decoys. Too high, just barely.

I’m not sure just where the flock went because two seconds later, Christensen implored me to shoot. I stood to find a bull pintail hovering at 25 yards in front of the blind. Wintersteen, in his exuberance, jumped to his feet and fired out of turn. He missed, but I didn’t.

“Paul, wait until you see this one,” Coogan crowed as the Lab bounded back to the blind.

“It’s gorgeous.”

Christensen handed me the largest pintail I have ever seen. It dwarfed the duck I had killed the day before. The sprig — a double-feather plume — was so long that it curled.

“Wow!” Coogan drooled. “Are you going to mount that?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

Wintersteen sheepishly apologized and then congratulated me. We laughed and smiled about it. Honestly, at that point, I didn’t care if I killed another duck the rest of the trip.

Going into the season, a mounter bull sprig was atop my bucket list. I had killed two.

Check.

A trio of redheads graced the spread. We folded all three in as many shots. The camera captured the footage, and our spirits soared. Wintersteen knocked down a pintail, amidst good-natured harassment for trying earlier to steal mine. A pair of wigeon found our fakes appealing, but liked it less when Coogan and I stood and fired. The drake was every bit as spectacular as the bull sprig I had killed. It, too, went to a taxidermy studio.

Another drake wigeon decoyed while the camera guys were moving around, so it flared at 45 yards.

Normally, I wouldn’t have tried the shot, but we were testing ammunition. My first shot knocked the duck from the sky, and the dog brought back our final bird of the morning.

Like the day before, we had nine ducks. Again, quality was key. We had shot five ducks worthy of mounting. Just as important, the video crew seemed pleased with the action.

Jetting Home
On the way back to the lodge, Martin diverted course to show the power of airboats and give us a tour of the back marshes. Rosy spoonbills, herons and several species of long-billed shorebirds hang on the mud flats for winter.

Out of necessity, airboats are the preferred method of marine travel. Outboards and V-bottoms wouldn’t work for duck hunters there. In many places, the water is a few inches deep for hundreds of yards.

Our transportation fit perfectly with the rest of the Gulf Coast hunt. Jet engines took us out to coastal island sets where cameras followed our every move as we shot brilliantly made-up ducks.

For a couple of days, I was part of an actor’s entourage — riding the coattails of a TV star. Still, expensive boats and the glamour of a video production not withstanding, the pintails, wigeon and redheads remain the true stars of the Texas Gulf.

Paul Wait is editor of Wildfowl.

If You Go
During our hunt, redheads, pintails and wigeon were the mo
st abundant ducks. However, green-winged teal, gadwalls and bluebills are commonly taken. Bay Flats Lodge of Seadrift, Texas, offers full-service guided waterfowl hunts and fishing trips. Visit bayflatslodge.com for more information.