The final countdown

Wildfowling is every bit as much about the wildness as it is about the fowl. For me, the first weeks of the season — before bird numbers swell with the migrant arrivals and the weather obligingly disintegrates — have always been about a welcome return to the raw, windswept places that remain etched in your memory long after you retreat to the comforts of home.

Here on the Atlantic coastline of County Kerry, we are endowed with many such wild places and, by the last week of August, I was longing to reconnect with them. Storms Ellen and Francis had blown through, bringing with them a sense that summer was categorically over and, as 1 September loomed closer, my thoughts turned to duck.

“I patched the waterproofs and counted down