Non-Retrieves

This is a long overdue post.  As you may know I won the coveted title of Expert for 2013, however I won another thing that I am not proud of, most non-retrieves.  The polls showed me tied up with Bob last year, but I never accounted for closing day.

It was right at first light and I was hunting on the river with Peat, all of the traffic I had seen in the last week was moving up and down the river so that's where I went.  A pair of buffel head dropped in on my decoys and set their wings, well within shooting distance.  I pulled up and shot, the bird dropped and then dove, he came up across the river and then dove again, we spent a lot of the morning and part of the afternoon looking for that bird.  It was right at first light and of course I spent most of the morning fly trying to locate him.  After a long look I came back to a quiet sky and low hopes for the last day of the season.

The day ended up panning out well with a couple more birds right before I packed it in for the season, but I brought my tally of lost birds to 5 for the season.  I put in a lot of hiking this year looking for those birds, Peat put in a lot of swimming.  Some were bad choices due to a lack of experience(opening day), some were because I took shoots that I knew better than to take, and two were due to birds diving and never coming up.  Peat brought in several hard retrieves that no doubt saved a few more from being on that list, and Bob chased one down in the boat for me.

I spent around 25 days hunting last season and everyday was full of lessons.  I learned a lot from each of those birds and I like to think that I won't make those same mistakes again..  We agreed that whomever had the most NRs last season would send in a donation to DU for $2 per bird for the collective total.  I sent that check today and hopefully it will be my last check for that reason.