Since the prospect of too much wind postponed our Kansas upland hunt, Tom and I were on board to help our lease members install our two goose pits last Sunday. We arrived out in northeastern Colorado with his father-in-law Dick for an early shoot from our creek blind. It turned out to be a morning of few opportunities. We picked up the decoys, a mallard and a green-winged teal in time to join our crew to assemble the blinds before the backhoe and truck arrived. With the blinds dug in and everyone else heading home, Tom, Dick, and I decided to give the pond a try for the last two hours of the day. Before Tom could get back from hiding the truck, Iris had already retrieved four ducks from two flocks. It just continued from there—ducks decoying without hesitation in the late afternoon sun. By the time the action ended about twenty minutes before sunset, Iris had delivered nine gadwalls and two drake mallards. What an unexpectedly satisfying hunt.

 In no particular order, except for the first on the list, these are books that are related to my own art that I have especially enjoyed and that have greatly inspired me. My illustrator uncle and role model Eldridge King gave me the Gene Byrne book when I was just a kid. It had more to do with my becoming an artist than any other single book.

A Complete Guide to Drawing, Illustrating, Cartooning & Painting, Gene Byrne

Winslow Homer books (There are several.)

The Art of Ogden M. Pleissner, Peter Bergh

Sporting Art of Frank W. Benson, Faith Andrews Bedford

The Art of Aiden Lassell Ripley, Stephen O’Brien, Jr.

Francis Lee Jaques-Artist of the Wilderness World, Florence Page Jaques

The Animal Art of Bob Kuhn, Bob Kuhn

Ala Prima, Richard Schmid

Starting with Watercolor, Rowland Hilder

Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting, John F. Carlson

Animal Painting and Anatomy, W. Frank Calderon

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards

An Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists, Ellenberger, Baum, Dittrich (revised edition)

The Practice & Science of Drawing, Harold Speed

Oil Painting Techniques & Materials, Harold Speed

A Picture Gallery, Tom Lea

Some hunts you seem to just be paying your dues and then there are mornings like last Sunday. The flights of ducks to our pond beginning at first light were incredible. For over an hour there was never a moment we didn’t have birds working. We’d look each other and say, “Can you believe this?” We passed up many makeable shots waiting for those classic wings-cupped, feet-down, right-over-the-decoys chances. Except for two mallard drakes and a pair of green-winged teal, the rest of our bag were gadwalls. Our Labs were in their glory. After we limited, field dressed our ducks, and had lunch there was plenty of time to scout the pasture creek where we flushed at least two dozen mallards sitting right in front of our blind and more up and down the water there. Mental notes were made for later in the season when the pond is frozen.

A footnote: A friend had scouted the pond the evening before and reported a few hundred ducks on the water. When we arrived in the pre-dawn to set out the decoys, there were no ducks. My guess is that at dusk, the birds moved to one or more of the large reservoirs to roost and were coming back at dawn to feed.