The Waiting Game

A lesson on population decline, being patient, and finding value in the ordinary

He danced on the edge of range for what felt like hours, sticking close to the land while showing no interest in his lying kinfolk scattered all around the blind. A duck of lesser wit and fortitude wouldn’t have thought twice about falling in line. But he was no teal or shoveler, he was a mottled duck, and by this brisk November morning on the Gulf Coast, he had seen everything but the wind blow. He may have even seen that, by now. 

When he broke from his usual route - one that he must’ve followed every day of the season to that point - my partner Aaron had enough of his discerning ways.

“Try him,” he said before sending him flaring up on the first shot. 

I brought my Super X3 to my cheek and squeezed the trigger. He folded some 50 yards from the blind, landing in the mouth of a little marsh pond. There was a brief silence before a round of congratulations were in order. 

Mottled duck numbers have fallen so sharply that their season will be closed for the first 15 days on Louisiana’s 2023-2024 duck season. Photo by Ryne Berthelot

It’s not often that coastal hunters can add a mottled duck to the bag after Louisiana’s first split, but their elusive nature and general rarity haven’t earned them the idolization that their close cousin, the black duck, relishes in the Atlantic Flyway. There’s no old-time prose singing the praises of a mott, no stories from Van Campen Heilner, Bert Claflin and Ray Camp on their experiences chasing them as they did the black duck. 

There was an article published by the Orlando Sentinel about the peril the Florida subspecies of mottled ducks faced from cross-breeding with feral mallards. Now, some 20 years later, the Texas population - which constitutes a different subspecies and consists of the motts in Louisiana, as well - faces a 15-day closure in Louisiana for the 2023-2024 season, a telling-but-depressing sign of their dwindling numbers. 

I picked up that drake from the front of the boat, and was immediately met with the steely iridescent flash of his secondary feathers, accompanied by the bright orange feet that he shared with the mallards and black ducks that he resembled so closely. A wall hanger by all accounts, save for a small patch of feathers missing on his rear, he was the pride of my season.

Most motts wisen up by the time he was harvested, shortly before Thanksgiving. He was the last opportunity I received for the season from a mottled duck, as most of them came nowhere near shooting range. Hell, even the bluewings that spent the entire season wintering in the marsh were too smart to be fooled by decoys come January.

That wariness that leaves mottled ducks an after thought, or a bonus bird, for some hunters is the same reason they should be cherished and respected as a testament to a waterfowler’s prowess. It’s not small feat to bag mottled ducks throughout the season, with hunters often times having to change techniques and hunting methods to focus on them if they so choose. Those methods often force hunters into tight potholes, unfit for the teal and shovelers that have made up the majority of bags in south Louisiana over the last decade. The prospect of gadwall is still possible, especially in birds that have wisened up to the lay of the land, but gunning for mottled ducks is largely a lesson in quality over quantity, and it’s a lesson that doesn’t typically jibe with a duck hunter.

Mottled ducks test the hunter’s patience in ways other birds won’t. They’ll frolic around a duck blind from the minutes before shooting light, until the final shell is unloaded and put back in the box, not once coming close enough for a shot. They’ll turn tail on the prettiest tune from the most expensive mallard call money can afford. Then, when you’ve had enough, a pair will be stationed at every turn of the canal on the boat ride back to the launch, a final reminder that you can’t quite master the art of waterfowling without paying respect to the mottled duck.