The wind fell, and then rose again in sequences, tickling the sun-bathed stubble of prairie wheat. Bud Grant, of former pro football coach fame, rested alongside his black lab just a few feet away trading wisdoms about ducks with me for lack of anything better to do. Few men can match Grant's passion for waterfowl, and even fewer can match his ability to pessimistically pontificate when things aren't going according to plan.

This afternoon wasn't going according to plan. Six of us had limited out (one bird each) on lesser Canadas in the early hours of the morning, Bud's dog even caught one that landed in the decoys and didn't want to leave. Sometimes things just go that well. But then we'd decided to split up and try for ducks in the afternoon.

Bud and I hunted this field on the outfitter's word that it should be a good place to kill mallards, but after two hours, we hadn't seen a duck and neither of our moods was improving.

"You know," Bud interrupted the silence, "If you want to shoot ducks, you've got to be where they want to be."

I liked the phrase. "Be where they want to be." Of course, in the years since then I've heard it numerous times, but it's never had the same ring as when Bud said it. But was it absolutely true?

I thought it was true, until last year when circumstance threw mud on the glowing golden rule.

Birds, Birds And No Birds
We were hunting North Dakota, my friends Boris Popov, Bill Buckley and me, not far from the Canadian border, on fields we've had fair results on over the years. My farmer friend told me to waste no time getting to his place because his barley fields were covered up with mallards, especially in the evening, but mornings too. We arrived at dark-thirty, primed and ready.

We set up on the mile-long, mile-wide barley field with a spread that's come to work well for us on ducks, hiding ourselves in a blob of dark goose decoys while deploying a separate spread of field ducks in a side-wind fashion to bring the birds past us rather than into or over us.

When dawn began to creep across the field we were just moving the trailer out but ducks were already working the air over the barley. As they wheeled over the field, other flocks joined in until they could be heard ripping the air on every turn. The circled us, and circled some more, and a few singles and doubles left the mass to float our way. We held off. This was just the start of something good, we all agreed.

But things didn't get better, they got weirder.

Several hundred ducks settled in a low corner of a field, and we could see what was coming Soon the hoards lost altitude and joined the grounded mass, and flock after new flock that came from the direction of their river roosts dove into the security of the big group on the ground. A small group of latecomers, perhaps eight, descended on our setup and we dropped a couple of birds, sending the mass into the air, but only briefly before settling back down. Four snow geese made an uncharacteristic error in judgment, quietly sneaking in from behind us, but Bill made two of them pay for their mistake as they tried to sideslip away from the decoys. We dropped another pintail and passed on several hen pintails and hen mallards. Evening would be better, we told ourselves. We'd simply be where they want to be.

So, after a picking up the rig and finding a remote gas station that actually cooked a fresh hamburger (made to order) we whiled away the mid day, awaiting our chance to make things right.

By early afternoon we were set up in duck central, the very spot in the barley field the ducks had chosen that morning. Arriving early and relaxing in our layout blinds, we actually had a snowy owl cross the decoy spread, which had to be a heavenly sign.

The first flock numbered about 100 birds, and they set their wings at great height and began a pinion-ripping descent toward our spread. But with 200 yards yet to drop, the leaders aborted their free fall, pumping their wings to gain altitude as they crossed too high to consider shooting. Then they beat their way out of the field entirely, heading across a road and dumping into a kitty-corner section of land a mile away. This was wrong.