Willy Trolove: Wily old ducks safe from the male hunting instinct

It's the same every year. The end of June rolls around and my friend Charlie realises that the duck-shooting season is about to pass him by. He hasn't held his annual shoot, so he rings his city friends and asks them out to the country for the weekend.

"You've got to come duck-shooting," he says, with a tone that implies you're not a real bloke if you turn him down.

And so we reply with an enthusiastic yes. We might be city slickers, used to comfort, plasma TVs and throw cushions, but we grew up in the country, or like to see ourselves as hardy types who love being out in the weather, stomping through the mud and catching 11 varieties of hypothermia. What's more, we're men, and in every male breast beats the ancient heart of a hunter.

I used to love duck-shooting. When I was a boy I walked five steps behind the men with guns, and two steps behind a young labrador nominally under my control. The labrador was too excited to be much use. His tongue lolled at full extension. His breath fogged the winter air. His panting was audible in the next valley.

And when I was older, I hid by ponds in the winter evenings, heard the whistling of the mallards' wings, saw the silhouettes of fat drakes seeking a night's refuge, and tried to shoot them from the sky.

When I shot well, a duck would stall in flight as if slugged with a plank and tumble into the water, and the same labrador - older and more useful now - would leap in to fetch it. In a great paddling arc, he'd seize the dead bird in his mouth and return to the shore. He'd leap from the pond, a giant and loyal beaver, and lay the duck at my feet, his wet body squirming with joy.

But that seems an age ago now. I have lived too long away from the farm. A decade of the Discovery Channel has changed me. Now I am not so keen on shooting ducks.

I still love the day out - the guns, the dogs, the wet socks - and when the ducks fly past, the adrenalin still kicks in, the hunter's instincts still take hold, the lifetime of experience still makes shooting ducks seem as natural as the sunrise.

But later, I regret it. I look at the broken bodies and the wings that will never fly again, and my doubting mind asks questions of my hunter's heart.

Fortunately, when it comes to duck-shooting at Charlie's place, I don't need to find many answers, because we seldom get any ducks.

It's not that there aren't any around, it's just that we have trouble shooting them.

You might think this is due to the ineptness of the hunters, but it's not. It's only partly due to the ineptness of the hunters. It's mostly due to the cunning of our prey.

Any mug can shoot a mallard at the start of the season in May. The birds are young and careless and most of them haven't learnt that the dark shapes in the rushes are their mortal enemies.

But by the end of the season it's a different game. The careless ducks have been felled by the hunter's guns and those that are left are older, wiser and versed in every trick of avian evasion.

Before landing on a pond the ducks examine its approaches for anything unusual. They circle at some height and send down a pair of shrewd old ducks on a dummy run to lure any hunters from their hides.

These wily veterans, scarred by the near-misses of many seasons, approach the pond as if landing but, at the very last moment, pull out, jinking and swerving and seemingly breaking every rule of flight.

Only after several such feints do they land and, when they are sure that all is safe, call down their airborne brethren.

Once the flock is settled on the water, the mallards either hang out with paradise ducks, their geese-like cousins who have early warning systems that can detect even the most cunning hunter, or they post sentry ducks on the banks of the pond to keep an unblinking watch for would-be assassins.

And even though we know these tactics, they are devilishly effective. A typical day at Charlie's place involves a lot of shots fired and nothing much to show for it.

So this Saturday, the last of the season, I'm off to Charlie's for his annual duck-shoot. And despite my doubting mind, I'm very much looking forward to it - because I know that, with a bit of luck, we'll shoot just as many ducks as we usually do ...