Clinging to a lichen-spackled knuckle of Northwest Territories granite, I wedge my left boot into a crack in the rock and test the hold. The ducks are wheeling around a ridge of stone and aspen so quickly that there's little time to swing the gun. I need another few feet of landscape before the scaup, scoters, and common goldeneyes - "whistlers" to the Dene natives - streak out of range.

It's a crazy duck blind, but this is crazy duck hunting. I feel as though I should be glassing Dall sheep, not gunning for waterfowl. From my makeshift rock blind on a channel, water slices through an archipelago of islands cloaked with spruce, their cliffs reflected in deep water. A mile away, white haystacks pile up where wind-driven waves explode over the reefs of Great Slave Lake. A dozen decoys float between me and my two hunting companions. They're all it takes to draw the attention of ducks that have never seen a plastic bird.