Saturday, November 30, 2013

Idaho 11-24-13

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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