While still in High School, a younger friend kept bugging my best friend and I to take him duck hunting. He'd only hunted big game to that point and wanted to see what hunting waterfowl was all about. We finally agreed and hatched a plan "to mess with him."
With the boat and decoys loaded early morning, we headed toward one of the local lakes, early enough to get across the lake and set up by shooting light. On the drive to the lake we were giving him tips on what to do...a good time to "hatch the plan."
We told him that at night the ducks come off the lake and roost in the brush and trees surrounding the lake shore and that the person busting the brush often times has some great initial shooting as the birds are busted out of the brush.
We reached our destination, set out the decoys, with his help of course and told him to sneak back into the brush and on our signal start running through the brush to spook the birds out.
Upon our signal he did as was told, with my buddy and I laughing our a$#%s off in the blind. After about 5 minutes or so, he walked out of the brush and told us there didn't seem to be any ducks in the brush. Of course he saw us laughing and knew he'd been pranked. After calling us a few choice names, he climbed into the blind with us and I don't think we shot a bird that day. It also was his last time duck hunting, as far as I know.
