My dream was the dream of every North American duck hunter: Gun the prairie potholes, that sprawling 276,000-square-mile Holy Grail of duck country. When the last glaciers retreated from North America, they scoured out countless depressions in the Dakotas, northern Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, northern Montana, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba. Those primeval gouges are now multitudes of potholes, sloughs, and prairie marshes scattered across the landscape. And during fall migration, these prairie potholes are covered with ducks.

Myth holds that hunters can show up in prairie pothole country and leave behind the cares of access, crowded marshes, and paltry flocks. Every farm, this legend insists, is pocked with ponds, and every pond is black with ducks. In recent years, however, I'd started to hear other tales-"that parts of the prairie pothole region were getting crowded. That no trespassing signs were becoming a familiar sight. Between myself and Lee Davis, a college pal and fellow waterfowling maniac, we had 60 years of East Coast ducking experience. But could we show up on the Saskatchewan prairies, find water, find birds, find farmers, gain permission, and finally put it all together in front of a shotgun bead?