For me, waterfowl hunting has become the pursuit of perfect moments. When a mallard drake banks so hard to your call that you see his full speculum on both wings. When a honker pair hits the decoys hissing ready for a fight. When you come up and out of a blind and fold a hovering drake pintail with a giant stinger. On New Year's Eve, I experienced a very personal perfect moment in the field.

On November 21st, I found myself with a little free time in the afternoon. As an extremely part-time photographer, it's always exciting to have a few minutes to shoot some photos in good light. I grabbed my Canon DSLR and headed to a spot near Albany, OR that always holds a bunch of ducks. On arrival, I found a greenhead with a band on his right leg. It took a while and quite a few photos, but I eventually was able to read the entirety of his nine-digit band code. Right after I snapped the last shutter on him, he took flight and flew straight West until he was out of sight. I headed back to the house to download photos and enter his band data. ‘Mr. 2257-33103’ was banded near Palmer, Alaska this summer as an adult. I have photographed and digiscoped many neck collars on geese and on swans (which are three to four digits and easy to record) in addition to a few hawk and pelican wing tags. This was the first band report I had ever entered for a duck where I was able to check the “Saw or photographed federal band while bird was free” and “Alive Released/Left on bird” boxes on the form.

Fast forward to the last day of 2022. Three good friends and I decided we would run some traffic on ducks and geese on a big sheet water pond. This piece of water had a whopping total of 10 ducks on it the day before, but many were trading around the area on any given day. We agreed to pool our decoys together and put out a large spread. We knew we would get a sure crack at the 10 ducks living there, but hopefully pull some of the tall dots in the sky ducks and geese if we saw any. The hunt went exceptionally well in the morning, with the big spread and super aggressive calling doing a number on anything that came within eyesight or earshot of us. By late morning we already had a few limits of mallards and a handful of cackling geese.

The action had slowed a bit toward the afternoon and I was half asleep in my blind when I heard Brad say “Mike, that’s on your side, you shoot it”. I looked over my right shoulder and tipped the bill of my hat up. Out the crack of the layout blind doors, I see a single drake mallard bombing in. I quickly twisted myself into a better position and let him back-wing over the decoys for a bit before coming up and sending him to mallard heaven. On the walk out to retrieve the bird, I saw the band on his right leg. I have been blessed to shoot many bands through the years and it's always fun to get a random one, but I played it cool and didn’t say anything till I dropped the duck next to Brad’s blind. After the high fives and the celebration simmered, Brad held the duck up and inspected the band. I jokingly said, “I wonder if it’s that Alaskan mallard I got the photo of. We better check.” I pulled my phone out and read the code from the certificate out loud. Astonished, Brad handed me the duck and said, “It’s him”.

I still am trying to process the chances of me photographing this duck only to shoot it over a month later in a highly pressured hunting area, after extreme weather changes, and many miles from where I first saw him. I have set up many specific birds I've found while scouting and taken them the next day in the same spot, but this was easily the most personal experience I have had with an individual bird. It looks like I’m going to have to come out of taxidermy retirement for myself one last time as this band isn’t going to get pinched onto the lanyard.

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The Band

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