Wake Early and Be Ready to Shoot Fast -- It's Wood Duck Season

Nothing tastes better than acorn-fattened wood ducks, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has upped the daily allowable limit from two to three. Wood duck season opens Thursday in Virginia, nine days later in Maryland. (By James M. Thresher -- The Washington Post)
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Before I pack the truck and head to Winchester for opening day next week with my old pal Jim Clay, who retired this year from schoolteaching and can now devote every waking minute to hunting and fishing, I'm planning a little remedial eye-sharpening so I don't embarrass myself and come back empty-handed.

For most waterfowlers, remedial eye-sharpening means a day at the skeet range blasting clay birds to powder. I've got a simpler, quieter, cheaper way, taught to me years ago by the greatest fly-fisherman in these parts, the venerable Lefty Kreh.

Kreh, now in his 80s and holding up just fine, is a master of nonlinear thinking and imaginative solutions. He determined long ago that the primary reason people don't hit a moving target with a shotgun pellet stream is not that they're shooting behind or in front, as most people think, but that they're shooting too high or, less likely, too low.

The solution to that lies in shouldering the gun in the precise same way every time, so the eyes train straight down the barrel, on plane with the target. If the butt of the gun is mounted too low, the shot goes high; if the butt's too high, the shot is low.

It's a dilemma solved easiest by repetition, Kreh reasoned, but who can stand the cost, physical toll and ear damage of shooting a shotgun hundreds of times a day to make the mounting procedure automatic?

Lefty's solution comes in the form of cheap Daisy BB gun and a film can. Toss the film can in the back yard, then shoot at it 100-200 times a day until the process of shouldering the gun and sighting down the barrel is as natural and ingrained as snapping your fingers. The beauty of BBs is you can see them in flight and correct accordingly.

There's one other variable every shotgunner needs to address -- eye dominance. We all have a dominant eye, generally it matches the dominant hand. But if you're like me, right-handed but left-eye dominant, you have a problem.

How to determine eye dominance? Make a baseball-size circle with two hands and hold it out at arm's length. Now focus with both eyes open through the circle onto a target on a far wall -- picture, clock, whatever. Now close one eye and see if the target is in the center. Whichever eye centers the target is your dominant eye.

If you're right-eyed and right-handed or lefty-lefty, no problem. If otherwise, you have to squint or close the dominant eye to force the other one to take over control.

And there you have it: Lefty and Angus's guide to shotgunning, no charge. As for a good wood duck spot -- find your own!