Sometimes, hunting tidal creek marshes becomes more about fighting the terrain than it does shooting ducks. My earliest memory of losing a fight to the marsh came when I was only ten years old. I nearly drowned in a bottomless tidal pool, and if it hadn’t been for my dad plucking by my coat hood, it would’ve been my last hunt ever. Then, there was that time in high school when the current swept away my favorite pair of mallard decoys. They became the first of nearly a dozen lost to the tides. Then, a few years later, I suffered my most humiliating loss.

I will never forget it; I dropped a drake mallard, belly up, on a slick, wide mudflat right along the river bank. Sparing no time to think, I trudged out there to retrieve it and sunk in pluff mud up to my chest. In no time, I was unable to move, and the tide was coming up quick. My buddy had to toss me the bowline of his boat in a desperate rescue attempt. He revved his engine so hard that the water churned into cloudy chocolate milk. I held on for dear life as my legs and boots popped free. As I slid on my belly across the mud like a salt marsh penguin, I promised I’d never make that mistake again.