Wildfowling With A Wily Old Bird

George Reiger is America's foremost littoralist. Over the past 18 years he has produced 12 books of bluff, no-nonsense prose, most of which have dealt with the outdoor traditions and environmental hazards of life along America's coastlines.

Now comes The Wildfowler's Quest (Nick Lyons Books, $24.95), an evocative pastiche of Reiger's 40-year passion for waterfowl hunting. As packed with fact, lore and hard-nosed opinion as are his earlier books, Quest nonetheless conjures up the many moods of the duck marsh: the ripped-silk sound of bluebill wings through the dank fogs of dawn; the rich reek of tidal mud flats with geese gabbling high overhead; the thrill of a "Scotch Double" (when two ducks fall to a shotgun charge aimed at only one) and the joy of a double Scotch at hunt's end.

Most of the book is about wildfowling in the U.S., but Reiger also recounts hunting experiences—some ludicrous, some verging on the celestial—from his trips to foreign parts. "Hunting south of the border," he writes, "reminds me of George Orwell's observation that 'on the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.' Bribes are paid at the beginning, middle, and end of some trips, almost reflexively." Not until the end of his second Mexican hunting trip was Reiger able to locate a copy of the Mexican wildfowling regulations "and determine how many laws I'd broken in the meanwhile." He had broken plenty, from inadvertent "dusking" (i.e., shooting at sunset, after the legal closing hour) to killing ducks in a Yucatan waterfowl refuge, which he had done at his guide's insistence. "You pays your money and you takes your choice," he says, making it quite clear that his choice would be to stay legal. On the other hand, "I enjoy Mayan guides who whistle to their birds and say '�Adios, patos!' whenever you miss."

Still, for "the wingshooting trip of a lifetime," Reiger recommends the Esquel Valley of Argentina. Here Reiger came across none of the wink-at-the-law shooting practices or kill-for-a-big-body-count ethos so prevalent in other parts of the waterfowling world. Read the Esquel passage for Reiger's view of how wildfowling must be conducted if it is to have a future.

"Solitary hunting," Reiger concludes, "suits anyone who needs religion in his life but not congregations. The vaulting sky over a marsh is higher than the tallest cathedral. The marsh is grander than the greatest temple. The day dawns just for you and the ducks. It is a soul-wrenching experience—a lesson of mortality amid an infinitude of life." Amen to that.