For the moment, however, it appears that I am doing my part for conservation, at least as it pertains to ducks. From Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, Ragnar Wesstrom motored our small group through a maze of rocky channels to Trout Rock Lodge, a cluster of small log structures on a pinnacle in the North Arm of Great Slave Lake. We loaded an aluminum skiff with decoys tethered to 5-pound rocks, and threaded another labyrinth of channels and bays along the North Arm's shore. Hunting Great Slave Lake in the early season is a matter of parries and thrusts, hunting for a couple of hours here and there as we ferret out the birds' movements. Diving ducks such as scaup are typically active all day, so we hop from sloughs to ledges to island points where we hunker down in blinds made of stacked boulders.