At this time of the year my peaceful pursuit of photos is often punctuated with the sound of shotgun blasts as I walk along the trails parallel to the water at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge—it is duck hunting season. As you might suspect, duck hunting is not permitted on the territory of the wildlife refuge itself, but there is a series of duck blinds not far from the shore.
Some hunters simply take their boats and occupy the blinds, while others take the additional step of putting out duck decoys. In previous years I was fooled into taking photos of the decoys, thinking they were real ducks, but my decoy identification skills seem to have improved.
Here are a couple of photos of one of the blinds to give you an idea of what they look out and how close they are to the shore. I took the final shot of a group of hunters as they slowly motored by me. I don’t know the hunting rules, but I don’t think that they can hunt from a moving boat.
I am not against hunting per se, but I am definitely a bit edgy when I hear shots fired not far from where I am walking and will definitely welcome the eventual end of the hunting season.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
I agree with you! It is A little unsettling to hear the gunshots. When I was at Blackwater NWR last weekend it seemed that it was a continual sound in the distance. But after a while you seemed to tune it out. There are huge farms around Blackwater plus other state lands so here it was deer & duck hunters I believe. I would rather “shoot” with a camera.
What a flash blind! Wish I owned it along with a little rowboat, I could happily spend hours there NOT shooting! In NZ a blind or hide is usually referred to as a maimai.
I much prefer the camera shooting than the guns. I think the ducks would agree. I like the composition and brown monotones in that last shot.
Thanks, Eliza. I agree with you about the camera versus guns point. 🙂