Duck hunters in Louisiana (photo by Kenn Stearns)

I’m not a hunter but when I was offered the opportunity to shoot with my Canon instead of a shotgun it was game on. When water fowl are in flight I can’t tell a canvasback from a scaup, but the guide was amazing. Not only could he pick out a mallard from a bunch of pintails, but he could tell what they had for breakfast, where they spent their summer vacation, and the costume they wore for Halloween (who would have guessed wood ducks liked to dress up as Spider-Man?).

Think all ducks are created equal? Think again. Here’s just one of the rules from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries:

Daily bag limit for ducks is 6 and may include no more than 4 mallards (no more than 2 of which may be females), 1 pintail, 1 black duck, 3 wood ducks, 1 mottled duck, 2 scaup, 1 canvasback and 2 redheads. The daily bag limit on coots is 15. The daily bag limit for mergansers is 5; only 2 of which may be a hooded merganser. Merganser limits are in addition to the daily bag limit for ducks.The possession limit on ducks, coots and mergansers is twice the daily bag limit.

The days we went out were foggy so the duck airport must have been socked in because we didn’t see many winged creatures. But we did see the neighbors go by. You can see in the photo above they and them dogs were a cheerful, colorful lot. Y’all come back now, hear?