Don't call it a comeback?

It's been a while, a lot has happened since my last post. Peat, our dear friend and retriever of many would be NRs passed suddenly, leaving a large hole in our hunting presence.  Junebug moved into position as new dog, second best retriever, and all around good girl.  I changed jobs, which led to a sharp decline in hunting days for 2018/19. My "mud boat" was sold and I moved into a kayak, which I then sold in order to get a larger kayak to fit the second best retriever. But now it's time to bring back the blog, at least for one post. We'll see if it sticks.

Junebug- New dog. 

Opening day came and went a while back, but no one could be bothered to go duck hunting. Otis was in town for a few days and decided we should give it a try to see if we still enjoyed it. So, I headed out and did a bit of scouting and found lots of little birds scattered around the normal spots, and one swampy zone that had mallards spread out in small numbers, with more birds circling.

Since Bob D has decided not to hunt this year, it was an easy ask to borrow the back up kayak. Otis and I headed out in the dark to try this spot that we've only hunted once before. Junebug had to stay at home for this one, as there was absolutely no where for her to stand outside the boat. At first it was brushy, and the boats were heavy. Then it was muddy, and the boats were heavy. Then it was still muddy, and finally we could paddle. We had to hop out and drag our boats through some of the smelliest mud I've been in to date. The whole time we were kicking up mallards, and I began to think that all of the birds that left would be leaving for good.  The grass was short from what we could see, except in places with almost no open water. So we decided to set up next to a 15x20 open puddle, with our blocks only inches from us. It was dark and finding a good spot was impossible with every step being a workout. Things look further away in the dark, but in this case it was easy to reach an arm out and adjust the spread. We hid the boats in another tuft of tall grass and settled into our hole with water up around our waists.

Open water, nice. 

We were concerned about the boot sucking knee deep mud and and weeds being a great place to rack up NRs, but we decided we would only shoot up close. As shooting time hit, so did the birds. Otis and I each got one in the first few minutes, and then all hell broke loose. There were so many opportunities that we stopped shooting and just watched at times. A literal duck tornado descended on us, with greenies landing everywhere around us. I decided to just let Otis shoot, and sat back to enjoy the swirling ducks, the sound of feathers cutting the air, and feet splashing. When half of the tornado was down, Otis started shooting. It was pure chaos. Birds were flying within in inches of our heads at times. We wanted to get our birds, but there were too many opportunities. We each kept holding back expecting the other to shoot, which lead to neither of us taking some excellent opportunities.

After about 30 minutes, I had three birds to locate and Otis had two. The first one I went for was the only one I had concerns about finding. A hen mallard was laying feet up, and she had a band on her leg. The next one was a fat greenie, also where expected. But the third, a greenie I thought, was no where to be found. Otis and I each looked for a while, and finally after working up a massive amount of sweat, I had to take a break. Otis brought back a hen mallard that had sailed behind us, and another that dropped 15' in front of the blind. This was my first NR in two years, and I was pretty bummed.

After the initial 45 minutes, the action slowed to a crawl. We didn't want to take anything remotely long, we missed opportunities because we were talking, and the grass the made up our blind wasn't really thick enough to hide us anymore. We had a turd in punchbowl theme to our spread, and everything smelled in line with the theme. We stayed at it until 9:30, when I scooped up a bonus widgeon that had been flirting with our spread for a while.  That was a nice cap to the day, so we decided to look for my NR again before we started dragging our boats around to clean up. As we left the tiny bit of open water where our blocks were floating, Otis looked back and told me to stop. At my knees was the missing bird, a hen widgeon who's brown feathers had her blending perfectly with the churned up mud and weeds.

Wings are collected and cleaned for a USGS study. I'm hoping to fill a lot of these envelopes this year. 

We finished packing up and headed back home, all birds accounted for thanks to "expert" marksmanship and sticktoitiveness.  On the way out we dragged out boats past a big open piece of water with tall grass butting up against it, an ideal place to set up next time. The band, well no one filed the paper work for the band yet, so I'd guess it was banded locally this year. Junebug is primed and we'll be heading out solo soon, somewhere with plenty of place for long walks on the beach.

Only the smartest birds get caught and banded.