Day 4.1 Oregon Chapter Part I

What a morning. It was everything it was supposed to be and more. Before you all start worrying about your precious duck totals, let me tell you y'all safe, for what I experienced today was better than slaying. Cold this morning I tell ya, my fingers are still tingling with frost bite. Arrive at the Old New Spot this morning at about 6:15, remember it ain't no Sauvies no need to get there early and wait in line. Pull up to the "new" parking area, got the whole place to myself. Put a few shells in the gun just in case the cougar is awake and waiting for me. Hike out with our good pal TJ, break out to the water and experience what Bob did a few weeks ago, a hundred geese jump and scare the crap out of me, a sound that will ring in my head for a long time. I drop some blocks, water is perfect up but still able to walk out a good ways due to the new sandbar. Smoke and a drink to start the day, hunker down in some grass, 10 minutes to the bell. I'm checking out the blocks and notice that there is a little diver duck swimming around the blocks happy and content, kind of reminded me of the submarine duck in Idaho. So I had that going for me, then 3 mallards join the party swimming down the shore line and float on in. My 9 blocks are now 13 and very realistic. Actually with a little wind from the east 3 of my blocks were swimming in unison and looked very realistic. Then it started. It sounded like jet planes flying over my head and all around me. Set after set of mallards and pintails flying in and out of my spread at mac speed. This is what we always dreamed of the Old New Spot to be. No shots were taken just a little to far out and they seemed a little weary. I started to count in my head the number of sets and ducks I saw so I may report to my comrades just what a spectacle it was, but I could not keep up.

The cold weather from the north is doing it's job, pushing many ducks. Some time passes it's quite, then it happens a Mass Migration. Severe weather will occasionally trigger a mass migration of waterfowl also known as a Grand Passage. In early November 1995, millions of migrating ducks and geese jammed radar systems and grounded flights in Omaha, Nebraska, and Kansas City, Missouri, following a severe blizzard in the Prairie Pothole Region to the north. As Larry Reid recently wrote in WF Mag "The waterfowl term "Grand Passage" had been credited to internationally know waterfowl biologist Frank Bellrose. According to Bellrose, each fall, usually in November, a mass migration of waterfowl occurred during a 3 day period. He concluded that the Grand Passage was based on three factors: advancing winter weather, food availability and the birds' physical status." And then it happened. About 200 mallards came from the northwest at a very high altitude, and suddenly flew through my spread. It was an amazing sight, but proved to be only

an appetizer for what I would witness for the next hour. Throughout the next hour bunches of mallards and pintails, numbering from 50-200, continuously coming in, flying around me, landing and jumping, jumping and landing, just not around me. They would fly into those small ponds on the other side, and just over the trees towards the Columbia. In all the years I've hunted, I had never seen this many ducks. I sat there flabbergasted unable to pull my trigger or even get my gun off my lap. I could only imagine the look on my face. When I did take a shot it was undirected. I could have just kept pulling my trigger like Warren taught me and ducks would have rained from the sky. But I could not even do that. When it was over I was exhausted. Time to wade my way across and try to find this mass of ducks. I bring may bag of shells and leave everything else and head to the other side. Being stealth was almost impossible, the combination of my frozen waders and frozen grasses around the small ponds. But I think even if I do scare them up there are so many that some would have to fly my way. Nothing! Where the hell did they all go? I am stymied. Hundreds of ducks gone. I make it back and settle in for the rest of the morning. During the next hour and half a few stragglers, I'm cold, time to pack it up. It wasn't the usual pack up when you see a greenie fly over or into your spread, no I look down to the Old Spot and jumping and landing are mucho patos.