Waterfowl & Prairie Mud
North Dakota
Assorted notes & photographs from the Prairie Pothole Region.
October 2020
How underestimated this landscape must be. It is plain and wild and flat everywhere but the horizon. There is cattle and birds, local hospitality and hard work - it is indisputably, the middle of nowhere. And yet how often the middle of nowhere is exactly where I choose to be in this moment and will continue to be in the years ahead.
October 2019
Compared to the dry, warm climate of the past two or so years, it had rained almost six inches in the days prior to our arrival and the prairie was once again speckled with flooded ponds, slews and water pockets. As cold winds blew in from the north and northwest, both bird and hunter took revery in the opportunistic landscape this year had provided. For the local farmer preparing for harvest, the unexpectedly wet weather was more so a thorn than a blessing. The rich black soil in the crop fields turned to tar under heavy rains; supposedly bending the frame of a combine, or so we heard from the next town over, as it was dislodged from the sticky mud - a financial disaster.
Our focus was on a location just southwest of town; each morning, sliding out into the field (tail-end first). We experimented setting the decoys on various ridges surrounding a small pocket of water in the center of the partially harvested corn field. Tucking into the water’s edge or posting a couple rows deep in the standing stalks, we watched the skies come alive with waves of migrant-filled clouds. Most responded to our calls and ploy but occasionally flew high, goal oriented - 'big water' was our suspicion. Our successes dropped in steady amounts of mallard, pintail, and gadwall. Blue and green wing teal slipped in over the ridges almost completely unseen, as teal tend to do, until their buoyant bellies hit the water with an easy splash.
Snug in the padded arms of plushy wormwood (Artemisia biennis), legs stretched long with heavy boots of thick mud, I lay back into my jacket and patiently wait as the commuters take to their morning routine like clockwork. Tew-tew-tew from the pair of Greater Yellowlegs that fly over our backs from the north, chuckles from a pheasant the next ridge over, gentle chatter from the Sharp Tailed Grouse who makes her way down the stubble rows looking for breakfast.
The Sedge Wren chucks as it moves from one side of the slew to the other and a small group of deer quietly graze along the corn wall. A Harrier Hen soars over the fence line, over our decoys and hovers just overhead long enough to inspect the camouflaged bundle in the brush. On the fifth day, it down-poured leaving all of us soaked to the core. The upside was the post-rain entertainment as a brigade of winnowing Wilson’s Snipe abruptly landed just feet from us and cartoonishly began probing the soft mud for worms.
“As to mysticism, it was in the awe I felt for the ducks and geese, the journeys they took, the hazards they faced, the sheer beauty of them. I’d find myself reduced, as a presence in the universe, in the same way one does when looking at stars.”
Vance Bourjaily | Early American Waterfowling [1770’s-1930]