Grace & Ducks: Beneath the Southern Cross

I've done some dumb things in my life, but this had the potential to achieve megastupid status. At noon on a late-January Friday, I'd told my boss, who happens to be the editor of this magazine, that I was feeling lousy and going home, and that I hoped I could still hop a plane the following day for a long-anticipated duck hunt in Mexico.

I very seldom get sick, but that evening I shook so badly I could barely make myself understood during a phone call to find out if there was any Plan B for our hunt. Could I come a day or two later? If you've ever tried to bring a firearm into Mexico, you know the answer: It was fly to McAllen, Texas, at noon the next day, as the arrangements for our seven-man contingent called for, or lie in my sickbed and dream of what might have been.

The doc's diagnosis: urinary infection. "No way," she said, "are you flying anywhere tomorrow." I popped pills all night, and the next morning felt marginally better. My wife's advice: "Don't even think about it! You want to end up in a Mexican hospital?" When I began packing, our two younger children voiced the kind of wise-butt comments you might expect from 18- and 20-year-olds. Even the dog looked askance at me. But what's the use of being Irish if you can't be inflexible and headstrong once in a while?

Frankly, I don't remember much about the next 36 hours. But the morning after that is vivid: In the predawn inkiness, a small flotilla of 18-foot outboards rumbles down the Rio Soto la Marina to the Mexican section of the Laguna Madre, a huge embayment that runs hundreds of miles south from Corpus Christi well into Mexico. As we turn south into the Laguna, the star-blazing sky gives me my first-ever glimpse of the Southern Cross, a constellation not visible in most of the States. The bottommost of the four bright stars that form the extremities of a Latin cross sits atop the black horizon. Maybe it's that I'm feeling grateful for the healing that's now going on in my aging carcass, or looking for a good omen, but I strongly sense that the next few days will be unforgettable.

I am privileged, this first morning, to be under the personal tutelage of Cavi del Rio, owner of the comfortable hunting and fishing lodge, La Marina del Rio, that will be our home for an all-too-brief time. Both Cavi and his lodge are class acts. A resident of Reynosa, just south of the Texas border, he went to high school in Virginia (my home state) and has a geology degree from the University of Houston. The riches he mines today, though, are the abundant wildlife resources near the tiny town of La Pesca.

Once the decoys are deployed and the boat hidden, Cavi and I settle into a thatched plat-form blind 100 yards from the narrow line of mangrove islets separating the Laguna from the open Gulf of Mexico.

It is going to be a bluebird day, but that's not what begins to buzz our hide as the wide sky starts to redden. Rafts of redheads and platoons of pin-tails trade back and forth, and Cavi's calling pulls in squad after squad of the big ducks so coveted by waterfowlers all along the Eastern Fly way. Here they seem as com-mon as coots.

My scatter-E gun this morning is Winoc Chester's new Super X2 I" in 12-gauge, a test gun borrowed from NRA's ° Tech Department, and o it's a sweetheart-or at J least it is once the barrel 3 (and I) heat up after a 0 couple of clean misses. Stuffed with Federal's new Tungsten-Polymer loads, it lines 'em up and brings 'em down with authority, provid-ed I do my part. My host keeps apologizing for the slow action, but you coulda fooled me: Los patos rain down with wonderful regularity. In fact, we exercise the option of taking only pintail drakes, heading back up the Laguna with a full bag of them, plus a single hen, as is allowed under the very liber-al Mexican limit.

On this and every other morning of our hunt, it was hard to keep eyes on the skies because so much was going on down on the water. An incredible variety of bird life was there for the watching-curlews, roseate spoon-bills, marsh birds of every description. And phalanxes of both white and brown pel-icans. Rafts of those big-beaked birds camped on the water above huge schools of baitfish, rising in great, flapping waves to relocate over the movable feast. The sounds of their feeding and lumbering takeoffs and land-ings reminded me of hog-slopping time on the farm.

We human crit-ters were fed and watered in a far classier manner. Upon our return to the dock each morning, for example, the lodge's general facto-tum, Arturo Casillas, would stroll down to greet us with a tray of margar-itas. Just one, mind you, to properly prepare the taste buds for lunch and the rest of the body for the mandato-ry siesta that fol-lowed. This is the way man was meant to live, I thought!

Afternoons were up for grabs-fishing (snook, speck-led trout, others), quail hunt-ing, photography, doves. To me, doves are delightful quar-ry-lots of shooting, open ter-rain, birds darting about against the sky-and they are wonderful humility-builders. A small bunch of us, each accompanied by a local guide or "bird boy," as these young guys called themselves, spread out along two sides of a big, recently cut cornfield.

The humility lesson began a little earlier than I had anticipated when the first brace of birds whistled past and I shot the front off my gun! Apparently I had not screwed the magazine tube cap on tightly when I'd cleaned the gun at home, and it and the spring and plastic spacer flew off into the corn.

My bird guy,Junior, and Federal's Bill Stevens helped me locate the pieces and get it back in working order, and I sheep-ishly began to watch the skies again. Action was fast and sporty, and we each brought the makings of one good-sized family dinner back to camp.

Well, maybe "camp" isn't the right word. Each evening we would gather at the bar and on the comfort-able couches in the lodge's great room to sip sundown-ers and talk guns, loads, and game critters of every description.

My second scattergun, Benelli's new Nova pump, was taken apart and scruti-nized by guys who really know their guns. I was to use it the next morning, and would find it just the sweetest-shooting pump I'd ever aimed upward in anger.

Before we sat down to a super meal of paella, a mixed seafood dish, I made sure the magazine cap was screwed on tightly! That evening after dinner, Stevens and Mike Larsen, his colleague at Federal, updated our group with descriptions of the company's latest offerings, with emphasis on the new tungsten-polymer shotshells.

They emphasized the loads' density and downrange deliv-ery, both very impressive for a non-toxic shotshell that can be safely fired even in classic older guns. And the tech-talk made a whole lot more sense the next morning on the Laguna, easily the single best day of waterfbwling I've ever experienced.

It began well before first light with a bumpy ride along miles of farm roads to a
field remarkable only for the amount and size of the cow patties it held. Donning waders by flashlight and then dodging the mounded deposits, we followed Arturo's lead along a cow path to the east side of a large inland pond, and strung out in head-high brush in shallow water along that shore. One caveat: If you come here, don't bring your best waders, and be advised that, new or not, you might not be bringing them home. Much of the vegetation here has thorns or sharp edges that can make a sieve out of the best pair of boots.

This pond-probably 30 acres in size-was an unbe-lievable magnet for seemingly every duck in that part of Mexico. Our setup was per-fect: Even after sunup, the tall trees behind us kept us in shade, and the birds would pitch in over the trees, cup their wings, and run our gauntlet. And they really wanted in-calling was mini-mal. Redheads and pintails, wigeon and teal (even some cinnamons), buffleheads and gadwalls and others poured in to that place. Our guns would roar a dozen times, but two minutes later another bunch would dive-bomb our hides.

I shot as well with the Benelli pump as I ever have, and learned anew just how much lead-er, tungsten-poly-mer-a duck can absorb. Like all alternative non-toxics,
Tungsten-Polymer shells are expensive, but slap the ducks out of the sky with authority. That smooth-shucking Nova did its thing, and all was well with the
world.

Well, almost everything. If defunct ducks lay on the water too long, they would begin to bounce like fishing bobbers as the tortugas (turtles) found them and started to feed. It's a good thing the water was shallow and our bird guys observant. If I had to capture our Mexican odyssey in a single word, it would have to be "graceful."

There seemed always time enough for every activity- frantic rushing around to gather gear and "mount up" was minimal. That tone was set by Cavi del Rio and all of his crew. We visitors were treated with deference and respect. Our rooms in a Spanish-style building across a palm-studded plaza from the main lodge were large, comfort-able, and, blessedly, lacking TV and phone. The wind in the palms and the lapping of the river on the shore 30 yards from our win-dows were entertain-ment enough.

When it came time for dinner, we gringos would stroll from the great room to a large, beautifully worked, tile-and-wood table and seat ourselves in ornate, high-backed chairs. Fresh fish, steaks, and Mexican spe-cialties were served until we could eat no more.

Cavi is a pretty graceful guy in his own right. After dinner, in his soft-spoken way, he would outline plans for the next morning as he held the squirmy presence of 1 half year old Cynthia in his lap. In her bright red dress, she looked for all the world like a dark-eyed Hummel figurine. But Cavi has another side, too. If you visit, ask him to tell you the story of his efforts to decimate the hordes of land crabs that skuttle around his docks. Oh, and if you come here and want to avoid the hassle of bringing guns across the border, he'll loan you a Beretta.

My hat's off, too, to our "bird guys" Monaco and Junior and Mellow Manuel and Loco Jesus (who got his monicker because he ran our 40-hp outboard boat under the dictum, "High Speed is the Only Speed" even when the water was only three inches deep).

Residents of the tiny towns nearby and poor as the proverbial church mice, they were nonetheless friendly and open and quick to smile, and yet they didn't laugh even when I shot a gallereta (coot) one morning. Bill Stevens said it was good to eat, but somehow it didn't lie in state very well between a redhead and a pintail.

As I look back on it now, that dumb decision to get out of the sickbed and head south was born in the stars. For an unforgettable wing-shooting experience, look southward, gringo.