Jumpshooting takes on many forms

As a kid growing up, I read all the outdoor literature I could beg, borrow, or steal. I became a huge fan of those great and famous outdoor writers of the past whose like we shall never see again.

I fantasized on a regular basis that I might one day fish like A.J. McLane, shoot like Jack O’Connor, and become as adept a woodsman and camper as Ted Trueblood. Today, even at age 56, I must admit to still having these wishful thoughts from time to time.

Years ago, when I read Corey Ford’s duck hunting prose for the first time, my youthful desire to become a waterfowler knew no bounds. I was particularly intrigued by a technique termed “jumpshooting.”

Jumpshooting, I came to learn, involves wading, floating, or walking quietly in wet, ducky locations, eyes peeled and trusty shotgun at the ready.

Stealthily, one approaches an unsuspecting mallard, pintail, or shoveler and startles the bird into sudden, surprised, in-range flight. Subsequently, the jumpshooter, with lightning-quick reflexes and a fine-tuned shooter’s instinct, smoothly and deftly mounts his firearm, swings on the duck, and drops it cleanly with a well-placed load of pellets.

Acting upon these instructions somewhere around the age of 10 or 11, I soon learned my reflexes were not at all lightning quick.

Neither were my instincts fine tuned nor my gun-mounting smooth and deft. I was, not then, nor have I ever been since, much of a jumpshooter.

Unless, of course, I am allowed to count my adroitness at jumpshooting in some of its other forms, which I’ve discovered piecemeal through the years and found far removed from the standard description of the time-honored technique. At these, I have no peer.

To wit:

Jumping into a pit blind in predawn darkness and discovering a coiled water moccasin lying in wait on the scrap-plywood floor. This, friends, gives jumpshooting a whole new meaning.

It also led me to develop a brand new technique I like to call an “unjump,” in which one halts his downward descent in mid air and jumps upward and backward out of the hole, without his feet ever touching bottom, simultaneously firing three shotgun blasts in rapid succession.

Then there is the jumpshooting that involves accidentally setting fire to a tidal-marsh platform blind and launching oneself into the cold air to plummet earthward 15 feet before coming into sudden contact with three feet of low-tide muck saturated with keen-edged oyster shells.

The body weight of the jumpshooter determines the depth to which he sinks and the relative length of time it takes him to become unstuck. Not to mention the severity of the shell lacerations and the time it takes to lose two pints of A-positive.

Jumpshooting can also involve a large Chesapeake Bay retriever’s jumping exuberantly, without command, from a canoe that is already rocking from magnum-shotshell recoil.

Remember old prissy-pants, lacy-hatted Isaac Newton? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, for every unexpectedly leaping pooch there is one capsized canoe. And for every capsized canoe there is one wet, foul-mouthed waterfowler with a lost shotgun.

Closely related to jumpshooting is a phenomenon called “jumpmissing.” I have much experience with jumpmissing and, at the risk of seeming boastful, must frankly state that I am very good at it.

Jumpmissing is simple. Just miss four or five easy shots in a row, then jump up and down like a fit-flinging 4-year-old while vocalizing at the top of your lungs.

Jumpmissing is seldom seen by observers, but often clearly heard. Those curses and screams you hear reverberating through the swamp on opening day of duck season indicate one or more of your waterfowling brethren is jumpmissing.

Finally, I must mention a jumpshooting technique that invariably occurs the morning after an evening meal of Cletus Monroe’s camp stew.

The “jump” here involves a frenzied leap from boat or blind followed by a mad dash in search of an out-of-the-way marshland “facility.”

Without fail, said leap takes place the moment a large flock decides to pitch into the decoy spread.

This method, combined with the inevitable bout of jumpmissing, is enough to make even the most intrepid waterfowler quit and take up (heaven forbid) golf!

Email Bob Kornegay at