Delta Beach is the ideal base for waterfowling in Manitoba. It is located less than 90 minutes drive from Winnipeg airport and is right on the famous Delta Marshes. Apart from the wetlands of the marshes themselves, there are many excellent fowling opportunities on the shores of Lake Manitoba and there is a wealth of farmland which attracts hundreds of thousands of snow geese.

A few hundred yards from the Wielicki cottage was the entrance to the West Marsh which is located just across the road from the wildfowl sanctuary surrounding the world-renowned Delta Waterfowl Research Station. Each time we shot this marsh we would take the quad bike (what the Americans call a "four-wheeler") through a mile of dense reed beds to reach the edge of open water. From there, canoes were used to ferry guns and decoys out to the North Point. In situations like this no hides are required as the phragmytes and cat-tails give adequate cover if one is well camouflaged. The Americans and Canadians are, of course, experts at camouflage - in addition to camouflaged jackets, trousers, hats and gloves, even their chest waders are in camouflage neoprene! The favoured pattern is Mossy Oak "Shadow Grass" and I have subsequently found that this is an ideal camouflage pattern for wildfowling in Britain.

Especially if there is a strong north wind, the North Point of the West Marsh can be an excellent place to draw all sorts of ducks into the decoy spread. One morning towards the end of our first week at Delta the weather changed overnight and everything was frozen solid by dawn. David and his father opted to break ice to get a canoe to the North Point but Tony and I, being less confident at canoeing, decided to remain on the shore at the end of the four-wheeler trail. Needless to say, we chittered with cold and fired hardly a shot while David and his Dad both shot limits of mallard drakes.

One morning during our second year at Delta we rose long before dawn, took the four-wheeler through the reed beds, canoed over to the North Point, spread out a few dozen decoys and got into position. Tony then remembered that it was his wedding anniversary and that, with the 6 hour time difference between Manitoba and the UK, he should be phoning his wife that morning before she left home for work. So David's Dad had to canoe Tony back ashore, drive him back to the cottage in the four-wheeler and let him use the phone. By the time that they got back to the marsh, it had been my day for limiting-out on drake mallards.

This practice of being very selective about what one shoots is a fun way of spinning out a limit. There was one day that David, his friend Hank and I drove up to the west shore of Lake Manitoba and then canoed another mile or so from the road-end to a reed-fringed section of shoreline just over the "sea wall" from a DU marsh. I say "sea wall" because Lake Manitoba covers an area about half the size of Scotland and it is easy to imagine that it is an inland sea. We put out a few dozen dabbling duck decoys close to the shore, a few dozen divers a little farther out and, just for good measure, some goose decoys a few yards farther away.

All day long there were ducks of many species - mallard, teal, American wigeon, greater and lesser scaup, pintail, shoveler, redhead, canvasback, goldeneye, bufflehead, etc. - dropping in to the decoy spread. To avoid shooting our limits in the first hour, we decided that only one of us would shoot at each flight of ducks that came in and that we would shoot only drake mallard or canvasback. Anyone shooting a hen of those two species, or either sex of any other variety of duck, would miss their next turn. Games like this certainly hone one's wildfowl identification skills!

Concepts such as bag limits and time limits may seem anathema to the British fowler but they do help to moderate the sport and North American waterfowlers seem to accept them quite readily. There was one day when the time limit thing was really frustrating, however. In 1997 the first two weeks in October had a rule that limited goose shooting to the mornings. Having decoyed geese at dawn on some corn stubbles, without a great deal of success, we decided to hunt ducks in the afternoon at Dinwiddie Marsh, a small marsh about 10 miles from Delta. There was a gale blowing from the south-west and the geese returning to feed on the fields after their mid-day siesta were struggling against the wind. Their flightline passed right over Dinwiddie Marsh and it is no exaggeration to say that, for 3 hours, there was a constant stream of snow geese over our positions - none of them more than 30 yards high. We must have had several thousand geese within range of our guns that afternoon  but we daren't pull a trigger.

There was a similar experience that year on a harvested pea field. We had seen tens of thousands of ducks spiralling down to feed on this field - one of those rare occasions when the fowl literally do "blacken the sky". We sought permission from the farmer to shoot there the following afternoon and, not only was permission granted, but we were advised that there were two pit-blinds dug in the centre of the field. Next day we went out after lunch and set a decoy spread around the pits and waited for the ducks to come. Well, let me tell you, there may have been 20,000 - 30,000 ducks wanting to come into that field but they were very decoy-shy and our shooting was pretty sporadic. Then, after a couple of hours, the Canada geese started to move off the lake and several parties of them pitched right amongst our decoys without hesitation. Of course, by then, it was past noon and we couldn't shoot them.

All in all, the Delta Marsh area of Manitoba is a fantastic place to go duck and goose hunting. No two years were the same but the hospitality was always first class. Tony Wielicki always kept us entertained with his incredible sense of  humour. Darla and Garry Sanderson were typical of the Manitoba farming community who made us so very welcome on their farmland. Joyce, Joe and Suzanne fed us huge breakfasts, at any time of the day, at their great little restaurant. They also sold hunting permits!

At Home in Scotland

South Carolina, 1995

Cumberland Marsh, Saskatchewan, 1999