Soon I will be
hunting with teammates again!
I finally had a
whole day off to hunt without having to go to work afterwards, and I had been
paying attention while we were out on Friday.
I wanted to hunt that channel, it had been a nice open spot with good
cover and no ice, the guys there had had great shooting all day. The weather hadn’t changed, still cold, clear
and calm.
Otis and I showed
up earlier than normal so we could be the first to the channel at Killarney, 3
airboats were already unloaded. We made
our way out with almost no ice in the shallows.
No ice until we hit the channel, which was frozen solid close to an inch
thick. We continued on and started
passing greenies running on the ice next to us, a good omen if I’ve ever seen
one. We busted some holes and put out
our floaters and a couple full bodies.
We settled in and
heard the airboats banging away a good ten minutes before legal shooting time,
we waited. The first mallard came in and
I shotten and missed. He was headed
right for our small hole in the ice, which was only about fifty feet away. Otis shotten and missed a few minutes later,
we settled in with some wild turkey and decided to shoot better for the rest of
the day.
The next bird in
was a solo greenie about 5 feet off the deck and ready to land, Otis took him
with a single shot. A few minutes later
he missed a hen pintail which decided to fly a little too close to me, my first
pintail! We were booth feeling pretty
good when a flock of seven or eight greenies committed to the little hole in
the ice. There was much shooting and
they were so close, I managed to drop one with my last shot. One came so close to the blind in its panic
that I could have hit it with a swing from my gun. While happy, both of us were a little curious
how we missed so much so close.
It slowed down
for a little while until a single greenie broke off from a flight and swung
through the spread. On his second pass
it seemed that he wasn’t going to stay, so I shot. This might have been luck but he dropped with
a thud in the middle of the channel, Peat had to sit this one out with the thin
ice. After another hour and a half of
watching birds fly by uninterested we picked up and moved.
I had seen a lot
of birds moving into the north end of the lake, which I had never been into. A few hundred birds left when we arrived, we
tossed out a small spread and hunkered down.
A few minutes later two shovelers landed on the edge of our range and
then swam to within ten yards of us.
Otis jump shot one and just knocked some feathers off, I took a shot too
and broke his wing. This was looking too
much like an NR scenario. I shot a few
more times but he was a small target and kept diving. I waded after him and was trying to move
quickly while he was under water.
Apparently I am able to swim with a loaded shotgun because that’s what I
was doing after tripping over a submerged log and ending up in five feet of
water. Otis waited to see if I came up
before laughing at me. I looked back at
the bird and he had stopped moving, Peat went and got him while we loaded up
the boat.
On the return
trip we spotted an injured merganser which Otis took and Peat did his first
deepwater retrieve to and from the boat.
I was actually warming back up even though I was soaked from head to
toe. After pulling the boat and packing
up we watched a bunch of mallards land next to the walk in dike spot. We snuck in and got within fifteen feet of
the flock. I told Otis to take his time,
shoulder his gun and pick one bird. I
started moving through the bushes so we weren’t shooting on top of each other.
I was surprised when
they jumped, I ended up firing through a small leafless tree without even
getting my gun properly shouldered. When
the smoke cleared I had an empty gun and no birds, while Otis on the other hand
had a nice fat green headed mallard that he only needed one shot for. It was a great way to end the day, we had two
new spots to add to the list and a stack of birds to clean.
I peeled off the
40lbs of clothing at the car and we went home to clean everything and have some
duck bites.
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