Girl Hunter Part 19

"Ah terrible!" the boy replies, rapidly setting up his boat to back into the water. "Five, four, one and seven," he says, listing their kill for the past week. We let them go ahead; we can see in their eyes that they need to do it.

Once in the water, I slip down into our pirogue and sit on a netted pile of duck decoys. Peter's golden Lab Marly jumps in after me and we slink into the shallow waters of the marsh, kicking up black mud with our propeller engine as we move farther away from land.

"Seven sounds like a lot to me," I say to Peter, watching the boys disappear into the bayou.

"For some people, if you haven't bagged your limit, then it's a bad hunt," he says. "Not everyone is as enlightened as we are," he chuckles.

More than anything, it is the thought of a crisply roasted duck that wakes Peter at three a.m. on a Sat.u.r.day morning. It is the thought of the sweet and salty tang of thinly sliced duck prosciutto that makes those early dark mornings worthwhile. A true academic at heart, he will study and research for hours how best to treat his kill; he will experiment in earnest and tell you all about his findings. He is a walking encyclopedia of well-researched thoughts and conclusions. He is the kind of person you want to be hunting with when your ultimate destination is the dinner table.

Bayou Terra Buff that we propel through is a naturally occurring swampy inlet that was once solid earth. The name came about because there were once many bison here, on the rare, firmer ground that could support such large animals. Now it has a shallow layer of water that moves like black hills of oil behind us, as smooth and uniform as mercury, with only a sliver of a moon to reflect on its motion.

On Bayou Terra Buff, it all seems a bit like an alternative world: water higher than earth, pelicans rising diagonally in a rope of pearls in the tall smartweed ahead. We are at sea level, higher than the city of New Orleans in the distance. As our boat sends ripples through the marsh, speckled coot, looking like a cross between seagulls and ducks, begin to walk on water in groups, their thick legs a blur of frenzied motion.

Peter banks the pirogue into the mud and I step out in my waders. I try to keep from sinking deeper and deeper into the marsh, which dances the line between stable ground and quicksand. Marly dives in, too, as Peter throws plastic duck decoys into the water, one by one, where they bob, peering down at their flawless reflections in the pink morning water. These decoys will hopefully signal to the real ducks that there is food here and they should come pay a visit.

There is a whole upside-down world in the reflection, even prettier than the one swimming right side up. The sky is a spectrum of color that repeats itself from up high to deep in the water, while the leafy green vegetation called floatant quakes, lights up green and incandescent on the surface.

The killdeer and snipe begin to streak low just where the upside-down world becomes right side up, and a single great blue heron lifts and beats its enormous paper wings.

So much of hunting is waiting. It is that waiting that makes the fleeting, action-packed moments so thrilling. Those uncomfortable moments among the elements, those feelings of despair, the slight adrenaline flush that comes and goes in an instant, are what make hunting feel like hunting. It is when the discomfort no longer feels like discomfort, as you learn to adapt and become more integrated with your surroundings, that you begin to feel like a hunter. As we wait, the cold pushes us to hunch down on a stool to store warmth. I can see my breath in the cottony air as the ducks come in waves, high in the sky and far in the distance; sometimes they flirt with our decoys, but never close enough. There are green-winged teal and blue-winged teal and a cinnamon teal from time to time. Once there is even a pintail. Their silhouettes against the quiet panorama are impressive. There is nothing but glowing violet sky and water and the green incandescent floatant, simmering above the sh.o.r.eline.

In southern Louisiana, there are two predominant species of ducks-teal and gadwall. There are some pintails, too. The mallards spend their time in Arkansas, unless it is very cold, then they are forced south. The first ducks to arrive from Canada are blue-winged teal. They begin their journey in the middle of August. They are the first to migrate and the last to go back, which means they are especially averse to cold. In some areas in the South, there is a special early season to hunt them.

The federal government gives each state a window to set a sixty-day duck-hunting period. It is often scheduled in two segments, with a break between. In years when the duck populations become too low, there is a forty-five day season, though it has been over a decade since that has happened.

What determines duck populations more than anything are the conditions in Canada, and in North and South Dakota, called the pothole region, because the landscape is full of gouges-1- and 2-acre holes. These potholes are determined by the rainfall in Canada and the Dakotas. The more rain and snow, the more potholes that provide good nesting and breeding grounds, and the better the duck population. When there are fewer potholes, the ducks are more concentrated, which means in turn that the population is more vulnerable to predators, which means the ducks have a lower rate of nesting success.

In dry years, the potholes begin to fill in, and farmers that have been farming around them can suddenly farm across them. When this happens, the nesting grounds, with their good, tall, gra.s.s cover, disappear.

Blended into the marshland that connects with Bayou Leary, Peter lets out a hail call, the mating call of a female, then he lets out a feed call. "That's our signal to the other hunters that we aren't seeing anything," Peter laughs, letting the sentence die. There is an art to calling ducks-the high-pitched preep-preep of the male teal; the soft, rasping kreep of the male mallard. In true scholarly fashion, Peter listens to duck-calling CDs in his car as he drives.

After the calls, the tinkle of dripping water is the only sound as we hover behind our blind of straw gra.s.s, fastened to two poles to break up our silhouettes. This is a meager attempt to compete against one of the duck's strongest senses-their sight. They can detect our slightest movement from high in the sky.

The ducks fly by in different patterns, depending on their breed; the lead at the point trades off from time to time, once it tires of being a windbreak for the others. The wind is helpful to the duck hunter. When it is very windy, the ducks don't want to expend their energy being out in open water, so they come into the marsh. On windless days, they go out far from the hunter's shotgun, where no one will bother them.

The Commish, who is Peter's second cousin, once put it to me very simply while sitting in a deer stand. "Every animal wakes up every morning thinking about one thing," he said. "Survival. What they're going to eat. So that dictates their movements."

That instinct dictates their daily movements and also their migratory patterns. "If everything freezes up here, then they can't get to the food, so they'll go a little farther south," he said. "They'll follow the freeze line. This is my theory, but I think there are certain ducks imprinted to certain areas; there are ducks that will only migrate to Chicot County. But then, there's a bigger concentration that are just coming as far south as they have to. Mallards usually show up in numbers in Arkansas at the end of December, when it freezes up in Missouri."

The truth is, we don't really know why ducks or any animals do what they do. And that is a beautiful thing. People make a career out of trying to understand the behaviors and patterns of nature. The best outdoorsmen will tell you that it is endlessly satisfying to them-the great mystery of nature and animal behavior.

Peeling clementines and watching the glow of the marsh and the occasional darting cloud of birds, Peter and I sit and talk about what is endlessly satisfying to us-the place in the world where the outdoors and food collide. You will often hear such phrases as "a gaggle of geese" or "a brace of duck"-Peter refers to coot as a "pate of coot" because their livers and gizzards are so big. They aren't really in the duck family and are virtually impossible to pluck, with hairlike fibers in the skin, but their livers are luscious. "Canvasback are the best eating duck," Peter declares, feeding Marly a piece of clementine. We talk about how to make New Orleans duck taste better, because it has a fishier taste than ducks do in Arkansas.

The beauty of cooking wild animals is that it doesn't just start with you and the cutting board; it is the whole cycle of life that you have to consider: What did this duck eat? And what did the thing it ate, eat? All of this affects how it tastes, how you prepare it, and what exactly you eat from it and with it. Maybe the duck is brined to remove the fishiness from the skin; maybe the skin is removed and the meat cured in salt. At the very least, it is always eaten rare.

The water hyacinth are flourishing in our patch of shaky ground. This means that the salt water that drifts in hasn't overrun the plant life this year. One of Peter's other pa.s.sions is environmental law, and while we talk about duck terrines and pates, he also talks about the erosion of the land he calls home. He says that the levees prevent the silt from rebuilding the erosion. He talks about the bodies of water as if they are his children, of the arteries named Delacroix and Reggio; and the mouth of the Mississippi named Venice; and the series of bays that interconnect; and Lake Bourne, the lake that released the huge wall of water, like a tidal wave, onto New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. "Katrina punctuated a lot of environmental problems that were already here," he says.

Just then, three ducks fly low toward our decoys, and we both spring up from the blind, clementine peels flying from our laps and shots ringing into the air. All three of the ducks drop from the sky and make a dent in the water, sending up a splash with their limp bodies. Marly begins a running dive toward them paddling with gusto. She brings them back one by one, small and wet, in the soft pink padding of her jowls. Then just as quickly things are quiet again, and we sit and wait, clementines once again in our laps. Yes, it is beginning to feel like hunting.

By ten o'clock we have collected four green-winged teal. It is not enough for a terrine or a pate or a confit or a large dinner party. So we decide to hunt coot. Coot are considered by many to be a "garbage" bird, not quite duck status. But they have hearty legs nice for a confit, and their gizzards are large enough to fill a terrine with ease. We drive the pirogue through the shallow water, past decoys and litter stranded in the marsh, past fishermen casting. The coot are on the move, tapping their feet against the surface of the water and letting up a splash. Hunting coot that are walking in shallow water turns out to be just as difficult as shooting a duck high in the sky. But in the end we have enough bird for some experimental cooking.

We pluck on the dock, and the pelicans sit and observe us, their necks bent in S-shaped curves, inquiring about some fish sc.r.a.ps. But all we have are duck feathers, which fly up and out onto the water, flickering green and purple. Ducks are easiest to pluck when they are freshly killed, and some ducks give their feathers up more easily than others. It is a commitment to pluck one, but the duck you pluck will taste so much better than the one you don't.

So will the food you eat for lunch after a morning hunt like this. In New Orleans, that is often a potato that has been sitting in a boiling pot of sh.e.l.lfish with whole vegetables, lemons, peppers, and whole cloves of garlic, soaking it all into its pores until steaming and ripe to eat. That is what we drive toward, through the tired towns of Saint Bernard Parish, the littered streets, the roads anch.o.r.ed into Cypress Swamp, and the waist-high line of gray on the buildings-the scar of Katrina.

We pa.s.s it all, en route to ripe boiled potatoes and po'boys, antic.i.p.ating the duck preparation, and perhaps once more the girl with two scarlet nails, and the man with shiny-ta.s.seled shoes. In New Orleans it is all part of the same beautiful, rambling meal.

Apple Roast Gadwall

Serves 4 I don't usually roast wild ducks whole because the legs can be muscular and are best braised, and the breast meat is always best rare. But sometimes, a roasted whole bird is called for, because there is nothing more picturesque at the dinner table. The bird to use is one that has fed more in grain fields, and less on fish. So in addition to considering the size of the duck (smaller is usually more tender), consider where it was harvested. And if you aren't sure, cut off a piece of the skin and render the fat to determine whether it is fishy. This will signal whether it is worth keeping the skin on and roasting the duck whole. And as with any whole roasted bird, it is best to brine it first. Be sure to save the carca.s.s for duck stock (see page 212)!

1 (2-pound) gadwall, brined (page 219)

1 apple, cored and sliced

2 sprigs fresh rosemary

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt and pepper

Vermouth or white wine (optional), for deglazing

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour (optional), for gravy

1 cup duck stock (page 212) (optional), for gravy

1. Preheat the oven to 450F. Inspect the duck to see if there are any remaining pinfeathers; if so, remove them. Rinse the duck with water. Thoroughly pat dry with paper towels. Lightly stuff the duck with the sprigs of rosemary and the apple slices.

2. Slather the duck inside and out with the olive oil. Generously sprinkle all sides of the duck with salt and pepper. Lay, breast up, on a roast rack in a roasting pan. Place on the middle rack of the oven. Immediately lower the heat to 425F. Roast for 30 minutes (see Note), or until the internal temperature reads 135F on an instant thermometer. The juices will run red, and the meat will be quite red. You want the meat to be rare, not raw. The more the meat is cooked beyond the rare stage, the more gamey it will taste.

3. Remove the duck from the oven and place it on a separate plate or cutting board, breast side down, to rest for 10 to 15 minutes. Cover it with tinfoil while it rests.

4. If there are any juices left in the bottom of the roasting pan, place the pan on a stove-top burner and deglaze with vermouth or white wine, sc.r.a.ping up any brown bits on the bottom of the roasting pan. Let simmer for about 2 minutes, then spoon it over the carved duck before serving. If you want to make the deglazed juices into a full gravy, whisk in 1 tablespoon of flour until it bubbles, 1 minute, then add 1 cup of duck stock and let it reduce to the desired consistency.

Note: The cooking time will vary, depending on the size and variety of duck. Teal, for example, will only require about 15 minutes. See the temperature guide on page 238.

Duck Ca.s.soulet

Serves 6 to 8 My favorite thing about this dish is that the meal is cooked and served in the same skillet. It is a baked stew of sorts, in the French style, and makes use of all of the duck parts. The recipe suggests duck leg confit, but the gizzards, hearts, and other offal can be confited and used here as well. Be sure not to add much if any salt to this recipe, as the confit already has plenty of salt from the cure.

1 head garlic

6 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups cipollini or pearl onions

Salt and pepper

1/2 cup diced bacon

1 cup diced shallots

2 heaping cups kale that has been cut into bite-size pieces

4 cups duck stock (page 212)

1 1/2 cups cooked white cannellini beans, or 1 (15-ounce) can, drained and rinsed

3 cups duck confit, leg and skin pulled from bone (page 136)