Founders Tour: Day 5

The afternoon before day 5 we cooked up lots of delicious duck.  I learned how to make confit from Fred G and we tried a double batch of Duck chilli from a DU recipe I found on line.  Food was everywhere and we feasted on the famous Vodka Sauce from 3DD that my friend had brought all the way from home.  (quick note, he packaged the frozen sauce inside foil wrapping covered with plastic and then bound with tape.  It looked like something out of an episode of Bordertown Cops.  Not surprisingly it got searched and sampled by the T.S.A.)  The cabin smelled like the best place in the world to be, which of course it is, complete with the best slayers in the Pacific Northwest. I think I still have enough chilli in the freezer to last until next season.

Rather than waking up early and taking a 40 min boat ride in the pitch blackness we slept in and made our way to Round Lake after the sun rose.  Remember that Round Lake is the place where all the old-timers say you shoot your limit every day.  Rocky and I had scouted there and built a blind earlier in the season but never having been there for hunting we were cautiously optimistic.  Taking the boat out during the day is much less daunting but still has its share of tension.  Last time there it ran out of gas on the way back and, even though I had plenty of gas this time, rowing back from that far out was not on my list of things I wanted to do.   The St Joe river winds its way out along the banks of Round Lake on the right and another body of water on the left. It’s a beautiful ride along tree and long-grass shores complete with deer and the occasional moose.  Nice.  When we got to the hunting spot the water was down far enough to take the prebuilt blind out of play so we improvised at a new spot not far from the original.  Fred G threw out a perfect looking spread of blocks and I built a small blind in a tangle of trees with views downriver on the left and over the lake to our right.  We were set, and looking good.

 

Another thing the old-timers say is that clear skies and calm weather make for poor duck hunting.  They are right. High flyers were the order of the day and all the highball calling in the world did nothing to bring them down.  We did our best to enjoy the sunshine and new surroundings but in the end decided to pull up and try another spot on the way back to the truck.  That spot too was unproductive, and it was getting late so we motored back to the put-in as the sun retreated over the mountains.  Another day with not much in the way of slaying but large in scenic beauty.  The magic of the first days perfect conditions and many ducks was giving way to the more typical H7HT results but even without greenies we still managed to have a great day with still more hunting to come.

GBCH