First Duck Hunt

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wanderinwalker

wanderinwalker

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First off, I don't know whether this belongs down in The Hunt or up here, but either way...

I think I have a new addiction! I had a blast out duck hunting with my friend today. We put up about 10-12 birds in 3 hours of hunting. Mixed ducks, a few grouse and a merganser. My friend took the merganser after I passed the shot (he has told me how he doesn't feel mergansers are the best eating in the world). I missed a grouse only a few minutes later and he missed a woodie shortly thereafter.

Still, what a rush! I wish I could say I had proven to myself the effectiveness of 20-ga Hevi-Shot, but I haven't. (The miss under the grouse was #4 steel... No fault of the ammo, just operator error.) But my (family's) yellow lab had better watch his behavior, otherwise I may have to find somebody to help me train him into working for a living. And a pair of waders is on the list for next fall. I passed a shot on a black duck because it was heading upstream and I had no clue where my "retriever" was (oh yeah, and it was 50+ yards off too... ;) ).

Sorry for the garbled rumblings everybody, just had to share my experiences. I'm stoked and the marsh/beaver ponds just up the road from me are going to get a little noisy this weekend!
 
:D

<Whistle> hey HSMITH , rest of you folks - ya think the "fever" done struck another poor soul?

Some things folks never understand, using a buttstock to break ice to wade in, having your moustache literally break , having a icy wet Lab retrieve a duck - then shake off the water all over you, the sting of a spent hull from a fellow shooter's gun, finding that damn bar ditch - again ,and the icy cold water rushing in over the top of hip boots/ chest waders - again, the heart rate as the greenheads "come back around" and the sound of " take 'em boys"....
 
Glad you had a good time. I had a somewhat less than acceptable outcome from my first waterfowling experience this past Sunday.

For those interested in a good laugh and a couple lessons, here's the tale...

Sunday was going to be the day. I'd scoped out some public land earlier in the week, and it looked good -- a shallow channel full of water and marsh-grass on the banks. When I scouted it, I could see numerous areas mashed down from where hunters had spent time during the past week.

My biggest problem was that I couldn't find anyone to go with me. One hunting buddy's wife had given birth to their third child on Wednesday, and he wasn't about to go out hunting right after she got home. I mean, it's not like we're talking pheasants or anything. ;) :D A few other folks were either unavailable, or spending the morning 15' off the ground looking for Bambi.

Undeterred, I decided to go it alone. So, I spent Saturday night rigging up decoys and checking gear. At 3:30 AM I awoke (barely), got dressed, made some coffee, tossed the semi-useless dog into the truck and drove north. A little before 5:00 AM, we arrived at the public hunting grounds. After getting rid of some of the previously consumed coffee, I put on my neoprene waders, shouldered a bag of dekes, picked up my shotgun and whistled for the dog. After about 500m of walking, we found the spot I'd picked and went down to the water's edge.

The moon wasn't full, but there was still plenty of ambient light to see what I was doing. I grabbed a couple of decoys and started to put them out. While doing this, I noticed that the mud at the water's edge was REALLY soft.

At this point I should mention that the major trait that makes my dog semi-useless is that he doesn't retrieve reliably. He'll normally find birds OK, but he's somewhat lacking in the "bring 'em back" dept. And, since I started hunting with him when he was already 8 years old, I'm not about to go through the forced retrieve training you would with a pup. He's good enough most of the time, but expecting him to perform a water retrieve reliably wasn't a reasonable expectation. So, my backup plan was to simply wade over and pick up anything he didn't get.

Did I mention the mud was really soft? After a few decoys were in the water, I decided I'd just test and see how deep it really was. I took one (ONE) very tentative step off the bank. My leg immediately sank into mud deep enough to pull me off balance. I didn't fall over, but I did have to swing the other leg into the water to stay upright. Enough fly fishing experience caused me to make sure that I was facing towards the bank when I did this.

I was now about a foot from the bank, with my legs burried in muck and water up to within a few inches of the top of the waders. I tentatively moved one foot to see if I could manuever, but it only sank deeper. Abandoning any dignity or hope of staying clean(ish) I pitched my upper body into the mud of the bank and started clawing my way out... mostly in vain. I couldn't quite reach the marsh grass, and the mud was too soupy to offer a grip. After a minute or so, I called the dog over and grabbed his collar, which gave me enough purchase to be able to get up a few inches and grab some marsh grass. Seconds later I was free.

Recognizing that an ignoble death has long been one of my greatest fears, I decided to fight this battle another day. We retrieved the decoys, hiked back to the truck and drove home. My gear was clean and I was in the shower just about the time legal shooting could begin.

I'm now in the market for a wide-bottomed camo canoe. :D

I wish I could have given you a gear review, but the Benelli Montefeltro (I actually left that early in the morning so that my wife wouldn't notice I'd taken her gun) stayed in the case the whole time, and the Hevi-shot never left the box.
 
Steve - The dog may have gotten a little upgrade after Sunday. Maybe I'll start calling him "Slightly Useless Dog" or something. As far as retrieving me goes... from the look on his face, I think he was convinced I was just trying to pull him in with me. I have no doubt that if he started to go in, he would have gnawed off my arm to save himself.

It is all about the hunt - if you get game it is a bonus.
Click to expand...

How about:

It is all about the hunt - if you don't drown it is a bonus.

or

It is all about not drowning - hunting is a bonus.
 
Thanks to all for posting. Brings back memories.

First duck was a mallard, after missing all the teal in MD. Never went after ducks with Pop, we took some over geese decoys.

A friend had a little 1/4 acre stock pond, just big enough to attract migrating ducks. A couple ancient dekes and a call completed our tackle. We oft crept down to the pond and jumpshot a mallard or two. Sometimes we took them out of the pond with a crab net.

I've met the psuedoquicksand mud TR mentions. Nasty stuff.
 
Be careful, some guys can do it once without ill effects but if you go again you might be hopelessly hooked. Duckhunting is more addictive than crack by my estimation. I went ONE time and spent several hundred dollars on gear to go again the next day.

Our opener was this past weekend, not a lot of ducks harvested and lots of hunters but it was still almost a spiritual experience. I did bag the most amazing drake woodie that I have ever seen in person or in pictures. When he is taxidermied I'll have to post pics.
 
Be careful, some guys can do it once without ill effects but if you go again you might be hopelessly hooked. Duckhunting is more addictive than crack by my estimation. I went ONE time and spent several hundred dollars on gear to go again the next day.
Click to expand...

Ah, therein lies the problem. If my brother and I clean out the basement of the office very quickly this afternoon, I may get to go cruise with Leif and the kayak again tomorrow afternoon. Plus, there is a promising marsh just 5 minutes WALK up the road (maybe trail is the better term) from my house.

TR,

Sorry to hear about your experience, but glad you came out okay and the dog is upgraded! Those bottoms are very, very treacherous things. Be careful.

Honestly, I think the problem with training my dog will be to train him to not hard mouth everything and stay out of the water when there aren't any downed birds. I like to think of Bullet as "the dogfish" for a reason!
 
Wanderinwalker - In the end, all was well. I figure anything I can learn from is good. If nothing else, I still got to spend some time outside with my dog, which isn't a bad thing at all. :)

This weekend, I plan to get out at least once. If I can get my hands on the canoe I want, then I'll revisit the spot of last weekend's festivities. If not, then I've got another area scouted that may let me pass-shoot some over dry land. If the latter, then I'll probably take one of my kids with for some company.
 
I used to hunt an area with several swamps seperated by narrow strips of land, The best hunting was a fresh swamp behind a couple of older deeper swamps about 1/2 mile from the road. in order to get to it we only had about a 10 wide strip of land that was safe to walk through. We would start (about 3:00pm) by fighting through thick alders and popple to find this narrow strip then bust the real thick stuff for about twenty yards when it opened up into a small woodlot, from there it was a simple 15min walk to our swamp.

The walk in was worth it because we had a sweet honey hole were ducks would drop out of the sky right on top of you. We would limit out with mallards and woodies.No dogs no decoys you just leaned up against a tree with hip boots on and waited for the ducks. shots were less than 25 yards with lead #6s. the walk out was hell though because it would be dark by time we got through the woodlot and trying to find our narrow strip of land between two deep nasty old swamps was diffacult even with a flashlight, by the time we made it to the car it would be pitch black out and I'd be dead tired.

This was done in my crazy youth when I thought duck hunting was the best thing going. But on my first trip we flushed a grouse and on latter trips we noticed more grouse .It didn't take me long to figure out the grouse hunting between the swamps was as good or better than the duck hunting. I grouse hunted this area for over 10 years, most with my german shorthair and we had great times.
 
I have spent many happy mornings walking Hot Creek with my black lab jump shooting ducks. Old Miss Bones is dead now but I have new little white lab bitch puppy named Chukar and I cant wait to take her duck hunting. I really want to take her chukar hunting, nothing should make a dog "birdy" like the birds calling her name.
 
Update!

More hunting this morning. At sun-up I found myself with my friend Leif watching flights of geese come off of a resevoir. We saw about 100 birds in lan hour. Way cool, no shooting though, we were too far downriver.

After doing my morning errands and getting another box of Hevi-Shot, I took the yellow lab up the brook below my house. What fun! We jumped a couple of mallards (missed, notice a pattern? :( ), something with a dark body and a red head I couldn't identify (looked like a small turkey buzzard but it came off of the water, about mallard size and took off like a mallard too, not a diver) and MUD (guess) put something up I am guessing was a grouse.

Wish list is now at about a case of Hevi-Shot, some waders, a handful of dekes and a couple of calls. Addicted!

BTW, great to read all of the other stories. Look at all of the fun my peer group is missing out on. (FWIW, I'm 20 going on 4...)
 
Sounds like a nice day!

I went out again this morning, this time with a canoe and no dog. Could have used the dog for company, but I wanted to do a test-run without him first. With the canoe, it was much easier to manuever, and I only had a very short portage from the car to the start of the channel.

Saw tons of birds, but none in range. If cranes were legal I'd have had a limit within minutes... no matter how large the limit was. Had some Canadian geese come through just out of range, and some mallards a little later, but couldn't coax 'em down low enough.

I did startle a woodcock, which flew past me within arms reach, and then did a 360 across the channel. It would have been a piece of cake shot, but I wasn't too interested in hitting a woodcock with #2 Hevi-shot (as expensive as those shells are, I'd like to have something to eat).

One of the day's highlights was watching some critter (otter, I think) cruising around checking out my decoys.

There was a heck of a lot of shooting going on a few hundred meters west of my position, so I'm planning on heading out again in the morning and seeing if I can get a better spot. I'll probably bring the dog... so I've got someone to talk to.
 
Welcome to the club. I hope your boy wasn't hunting for ducks in the picture above...a little too much blaze orange:D
 
duckslayer - Fear not! That was from a father and son pheasant hunt from last season. If the weather is halfway decent this weekend, he'll probably come out with me to sit in a duck blind for a morning.
 
The coldest I ever get on a hunt is sitting in a duck blind in Louisiana or Arkansas!

That said, while not so high-brow, rabbit hunting is just about as exciting (while not being as cold). I enjoy both, and very regularly have a goose on the table at least once a season.

Ash
 
Ash, are you talking about recently, or backin the past, that you got so cold? I can remember having to break ice on the lakes and sloughs here in Texas about ten years ago. As of late, it has been fairly warm, until the last few days of the season in January. Good thermal underwear, and fleece or wool middle layers, covered by a rain-proof outer layer have kept me pretty warm. Stay away from anything cotton.
 
About 6 years ago, I got dunked in a rice paddy when the fellow I was riding with on a 4-wheeler drove it off into a ditch (both ditch and paddy were under water). My waders filled completely up! About 4 years ago I got pretty cold, lost complete sensation in my toes. It hasn't been so bad in the last few years. Our location is about 15 minutes or so South of Vidalia, Louisiana. The other location, which I haven't used as much, is just over the line in Southeastern Arkansas.

Ash
 
Yeah, getting dunked is no fun. I fell over once, my waders filled up, and I have a very difficult time standing back up because of all the weight of the water. Then they invented neoprenes! Those are sooooooo much better!
 
It's much more exciting than sitting in a tree stand, hoping a buck wanders into your field of view. When you rise up on a flight of ducks (or geese), I notice I can fire off three rounds (3 inch) without ever feeling the recoil. If it's been a good morning (or if it's been a bad one because I couldn't hit worth a crap and had to fire twice at every bird), the only way I know it is to look at my bruised shoulder!

Ash
 
First Duck!!

Yeah! Bagged it the hard way though, a drake mallard with 20-gauge steel from about 35 yards. (In the future I probably won't take that shot, but now I know.) Had to hit it again in the water when I found it. Unfortunately it had enough life left to get to the opposite bank before I finished it. I tried the fishing pole and lure but failed after several attempts. So I went skinny dipping. Brrr..... Plus I got a great reception at home when I came strolling in with a dead bird.

Now I am in need of recipes. :) Some tell me it is unfit to eat, others tell me it is pretty good (same people who tell me not to shoot mergansers actually). One suggestion was to wrap it in bacon. This actually sounds really good. (Oh yeah, owing to a lack of time before work the bird ended up just breasted out and in the freezer. The meat is actually pretty clean, only a few holes in it.)

And lastly, waders have gained about 15 positions of priority, along with a syntheitic-stocked 12-ga 870 and a dog trainer! If I can find a way to cook it that I really like, this could become an expensive habit...
 
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