Big sky country

GEDDINGS

The open sky stretches from the eastern horizon to the western. A thin line of scrappy, small trees cling to the side of a nearby embankment behind us. In the west, the distant pineland seems to hug the curve of the Earth. To the south, a few small cypress stand like lonely sentinels in this vast marshland.

Clouds fill the heavens above. Low on the horizon to the east, the sky is beginning to show some color. The water here is about knee deep, and the bottom is soft. The sweet smell of pluff mud fills the still air. A thick stand of tall reeds surround this small patch of open water. We are waiting for the light to come.

We hear them streak overhead, just above the top of the reeds, and softly splash into the water. We hear the peeps and squeaky little quacks. Daylight is coming, but we cannot see them yet.

I pull out my phone, look at the time, and tell Clayton, "legal time in 10 minutes." We hear wood ducks squealing in the distance. The teal continue to streak over the marsh from every direction. We are starting to see them now, as little dark rockets, jetting by and landing in the open water, out beyond our decoys. We waited.

When I look again it is 6:53 am. I tell Clayton, "legal shooting time." I've been sitting on a marsh stool, facing the southwest. Now I stand up and look over my shoulder to the east. There is a beautiful orange and yellow sunrise with a silhouetted tree line on the nearby dike.

The big sky seems to fill with ducks. We could hear the wind tear, as they streaked by from every direction. I didn't know which way to turn. The light was not good yet, and they were hard to see. Clayton took the first shot, and the blast put up all the little ducks that had landed around us.

We were hunting on the Samworth Wildlife Management Area in Georgetown County. It is a lottery draw hunt managed by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. Samworth is a 1,588-acre property with about 1,300 acres of wetland impoundments. It is situated about 15 miles above Winyah Bay at the confluence of the Great Pee Dee and the Wacamaw River.

The original property, known as Dirleton Plantation, was a gift to the state from Thomas G. Samworth, who had purchased the land in 1945. Additional land was added by state acquisitions and North American Wetlands Conservation Act grants. The grounds are shrouded in giant, moss-covered live oak trees. The three-story plantation house has 23 rooms and serves now as headquarters and offices for SCDNR staff.

The impoundments are managed for waterfowl and are closed to the public from Nov. 1 to Feb. 8 due to hunting-related activities.

Our hunt was on a recent mild winter day, and that was a good thing. After taking a couple of shots at some ducks flying straight over my head, I lost my balance and fell backwards into the marshy soup of mud and reeds. I put my right arm out to stop my fall but still managed to get some very cold water down my waders.

I'm going to blame that distraction on my bad shooting results, but I did manage to get my own personal limit, which included a beautiful blue-wing teal drake.

I don't know what Clayton can blame for his poor shooting results, but there did seem to be a later consensus from the other hunters that the speedy little teal made very difficult targets.

We had some mallards look over our impoundment, but I had left my calls on the seat of the truck, and we had to watch as they just drifted away and settled in another area. We saw an eagle floating through the limitless sky, flocks of shorebirds wheeling over the big marsh, egrets, ibis and storks.

The clouds cleared to a brilliant blue sky and a beautiful day. We had a good hunt in a very special and different place; it was big sky country.

Reach Dan Geddings at cdgeddings@gmail.com.