Wings Over Argentina
Sporting Classics (Jan-Feb 1992)
By Robert L. McKinney
Imagine the American West as it must have been 80 years ago.
Now throw in blood-thirsty piranha, 50-pound ostrick-like birds that graze like cattle, clouds of doves, and more ducks than you ever imagined possible. Welcome to Argentina!
“Pato! Pato!” my birdboy, Yondi,whispered excitedly from just behind my right elbow.
My eyes followed his pointing finger toward a flock of silver teal at two o’clock high and speeding in our direction.
Media
Don Terrell stood in green wheat shoots ten yards from a wall of thatch grass growing along the fence. Behind it guinea fowl were rattling like castanets as a half-dozen field hands drove them, whacking corn stalks and singing out the Zulu equivalent of “shoo birds, git up there” the way we did in south Dakota 40 years ago.
“Here comes a bunch…” Don Terrell said as he ducked into our simple blind of rebar stakes and camouflage netting. “…from the southwest.” I leaned forward on my five-gallon bucket, peeked over the edge of the ragged material and could just make out plump, dark forms dropping back below the four strand wire to resume their skimming flight over the muddy, harvested sunflower field, Don whispered to alert Lee and Nick in the next blind over. Their heads were already down.
An African safari offers the opportunity to hunt and/or photograph a variety of species for less than the price of an Alaskan brown bear hunt.
You don’t often hear about Argentina’s flushing birds. They are overshadowed by an all-you-can-shoot smorgasbord of doves, pigeons and geese, plus goodly numbers of parti-colored ducks. These are what lure hunters to South America, me included. The exciting perdiz, however, will lure me back again.
