A few weeks ago, I went on a duck-hunting trip at the Triple D Ranch in Emile, Ala. This is my absolute favorite place to go for outdoor sports.The fishing is fantastic in the five bass lakes and one crappie lake, and the hunting is super, ranging from dove, fox squirrel and rabbit to ducks, deer and turkey.
In short, this place has it all.
Dee Dial, the owner, called me a few weeks ago and said he had quite a few ducks in some of his lakes. If I knew of anyone who might like to hunt them, they should come on down.
The week before, he said, a group of hunters got six different kinds of ducks, and there were more ducks now than there were then.
It is rare to find so many different kinds of ducks in one place. I haven’t hunted ducks in several years, so I decided to give it a try. I called William Davis, and he said he and his son (Will) would love to go.
As luck would have it, the weather turned sour the day before the hunt.
Temperatures were forecast for 34 degrees at sunrise, with wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour. No good for hunting.
Well, we went anyway, and actually had a really good hunt. There were ten hunters around one lake, and five around the smaller lake we were on.
At daybreak, the ducks came in, despite the freezing wind.
By 8:30 a.m., the 15 hunters had taken 46 ducks, including mallards, blue bills, gadwalls, mergansers, redheads, pintails, widgeons and wood ducks. I have never seen such a variety of ducks.
The only real problem? The hunt lasted only a few hours.
Teenager Will Davis had a great time hunting, but he wasn’t ready to head home just yet. We needed to go fishing for a while, he said, and then he would be ready to call it a day.
We had brought some light fishing tackle along just in case, but we would have to fish from the bank.
We decided to try the crappie lake, but, honestly, with the wind blowing so hard we could hardly stand up, I really didn’t have much hope of catching anything.
Triple D Ranch is a pay-to-hunt-and-fish ranch, but the have the lowest prices of any place I have ever visited. The bass lakes are all “catch-and-release,” but the crappie lake has to have fish removed on a regular basis.
Will quickly figured out how to catch the giant crappie on jig, and in a short time we had 32 crappie weighing 59 pounds, four ounces.
That’s right. Almost a two-pound average. The heaviest string of crappie I have ever caught, enough to fill two five-gallon buckets to the top.
The lake is about nine acres, and stocked well enough with shad to make the crappie grow fast and big. Dee and Vicki Dial, the owners, offer many great hunting and fishing combination packages. They also have overnight accommodations.
Last spring, I got my first wild turkey gobbler on a ‘Turkey Hunt-Bass Fishing’ combo trip. If your spare time is limited, you may want to give them a call.
I’m sure they can put together a trip you will never forget.
