Taming the Junkyard Dog
A Cornfield Mallard Hunt in North Dakota

“We gotta do it,” I said, sliding a stack of magnum Canada goose decoys into the back of the Suburban. “We gotta talk to him.”

Terry Strand picked a stray feeder head off the ground and tossed it after the shells.  “You can talk to him,” he snarled.  “That guy’s meaner ‘n a junkyard dog, and he hates hunters.”

We’d been setting up in a half-picked cornfield every morning for a week, arriving well before first light to put out two dozen Canada goose and 10 dozen duck decoys. 

Every day was the same: At first light we’d hear distant quacks of incoming ducks.  We’d call until our cheeks knotted up, but by the time the sun breached the eastern hills the ducks would be funneling into a field across the road, a field owned by the junkyard dog.

“I don’t know what’s over there,” Terry said as we watched hundreds of mallards tumble from the sky, “but whatever it is, the ducks sure like it.”

“Only one way to find out,” I said.

“I don’t let anyone hunt my land,” the dark-eyed man growled as he brushed past, leaving us standing on his doorstep.  “We’ve had some problems with hunters.  No need to ask again.”

“I thought that went pretty well,” I said as we pulled out of the driveway.

“Yeah, at least he didn’t shoot us,” Terry agreed.

On our next trip I noticed an old aluminum fishing boat parked next to the shed and some rods and reels leaning the garage wall.

“Do you like to fish?” I asked the farmer’s wife when she came to the door.

“My husband and son get out once in a while,” the woman said, “but they never catch much.  We love eating fish.”

“I have some walleye in my freezer,” I told her.  “Maybe I’ll drop some off next time we’re out this way.”

A couple days later we did, and that night I got a call from the junkyard dog saying it would be OK if we hunted his land, “just this once.”

We drove out the following afternoon, and what we found was a little low spot in the corn that had been flooded by a late-summer rain.  It was surrounded by 40 acres of irrigated corn and lots of duck poop.

We tossed half a dozen mallard decoys into the middle of the tiny wetland and concealed ourselves between the head-high rows of stalks to wait for the evening feed. 

That first afternoon we killed a limit of ducks that included one blue-winged teal, one hen mallard and the rest drake mallards, and were out of the field before the big bunch left the river. 

The junkyard dog was a little less ferocious when we stopped by to thank him for a great hunt.  “If you want to come back in the morning, I guess that would be OK.”

Birds were plopping into the water at first light the next day, but we didn’t shoot until the sun was high enough to pick drakes.  It took only 15 minutes to collect a limit of plump, fully plumed greenheads.  We were picked up and gone before the bulk of the birds arrived.

We hunted that field twice a week the rest of the season, and only failed to fill out once.  And the junkyard dog?  Eventually he asked if he could tag along, and after the hunt he invited us to join him for a breakfast of bacon, eggs, pancakes and homemade bread with chokecherry, rhubarb and June-berry jams.

By the time we left, we were laughing and joking like long-lost friends. 

The corn was eventually picked, the little pond froze tight and snow drifted across the field, but we hunted there right up to the last day of the season in December.

The temperature was pushing zero that morning, and only a handful of ducks visited our decoys.  I fired just once, taking a long poke at a big drake that circled at the outer limits of my range and disappeared over the hill.

As we were picking up, the junkyard dog drove into the field with a thermos of fresh coffee.  After he filled our cups, he reached in the back of his pickup and produced my greenhead.

“I was driving back from town when I saw this big greenhead fall out of the sky and I figured you guys must be out here.”

The drake now hangs on my wall right next to the big hen I took on our first trip. They serve as constant reminders of the year a junkyard dog turned into man’s best friend.

‘I thought that went pretty well,’ I said as we pulled out of the driveway.

‘Yeah, at least he didn’t shoot us,’ Terry agreed.