Dawn Till Dusk

Central Minnesota:
Well this is my first post and i hope you all enjoy what i am writing.
Well last night one of my hunting buddies gave me a call and asked if i wanted to do a little duck hunting in the morning and the obvious answer was a big "Yes". So 4:00 a.m. rolls around and i wake up have a few cups of coffee to wake up a little, check the weather and make sure its all the same as it was when i went to bed 5 hours earlier, and it was, got the truck loaded up and i was on my way. About 10 minutes into the drive I look into the rear view and what do i see? The red and blues of a local sheriffs car so i pull over and we go over the usual routine license and registration and all was in order. Turns out my speedometer is a few miles off of what its supposed to be and i had been speeding. The sheriff let me off with a written warning and i was on my way again.
I get to the meeting spot before the 30 minute drive and i see we are one man short. I asked where he was and it turns out he bailed on us the night before. So we were down to 3 of the original 4. We get out the the boat landing unload the canoes and we were on our journey in less then 15 minutes. After a 10 minute canoe ride we get to the "Hot Spot". We set out the decoys and wait for shooting time. The lighter it got the more hunters we end up seeing, there were 5 different groups on the side of the lake we were on alone. So we decide to try it out since we set out about 8 dozen decoys. We were spread out by quite a bit so there was no chance of people getting mad about anything.
There was quite a bit of birds flying around so we figured it would be a good day. About 45 minutes after we get set up the first bird of the day drops right into the decoys, no calling was needed, this bird was committed and i thought "Yes I'm gonna get the first bird of the day". Wrong, i stood up took aim and shot. I missed! I also missed with my second shot and that lucky duck got to live another day. There was a ton of shooting around us and we got a good deal of shooting in also. At about 11:00 we had 10 birds on the ground and things were looking pretty good, until we saw the conservation officer coming over to us. We all unloaded our guns and got out our licenses before they got there to get things rolling quicker. We were all legal and everything checked out. A bit of small talk and we were informed that we were the only ones with any birds on the ground out of all the people he checked. That made us feel pretty good. We kept hunting until about 12:30 and all decided to pack up for the day and head home. We ended up with 16 ducks in total, 2 short of our three man limit.
We get back home and clean the ducks they take their limits and i take the remaining four. I start heading home and get a phone call to go do some more hunting on another lake. I decided i might as well try to get my limit filled and back onto the water i went. When we were setting up decoys we had a hen Mallard locked up into our decoys until she saw us sitting in the middle of the spread, flared, and flew away. We sat around for about and hour and all of a sudden a big Drake Mallard was heading straight for us flew about 15 yards from us and then we folded him. That was the only bird of the afternoon. We loaded up and went back to the landing, loaded the boat on the trailer, and we were done for the day.
One of the most "eventful" days of hunting for me by far. Just goes to show you even if the day starts off bad it can always turn out to be a great day. And to me, every day i can hunt is a great day.

"Great weather for a duck" doesn't always mean lots of ducks!

Wisconsin
Friday morning (10/29) we set out on one of our favorite little Polk County rivers. Could not have asked for a better morning weather wise for huntin ducks. Slight mist, a little breeze, and cloudy! The only thing is it was a little warm. (54 degrees at shootin light). But all in all, not too bad!
Our hopes were pretty high as we had been seeing a few northern birds around and this spot has been pretty good to us this year. And it usually gets better and better as the fall goes on. But for some reason this morning wasn't meant to be. First, we show up and are ready to set out and my brother realizes he had left his gun at home! I know, How do you forget your gun? It happens to the best of us! So Steven and I set up and I have to hand it to my bro, he made it back and out to us by ten min after shootin light. As far as the duck numbers... We seen approx 15 divers cruise by us about 5 minutes in to the morning and they kept goin. Sat there til 9:30 and only seen one more duck! Oh well. A day huntin is better than doin anything else.

But not all was lost... Doin some road scouting, we found a new spot. It looked very promising as it was holding approx 200 birds (ducks & geese) when we stopped to ask permission. The landowner was extremely happy to have someone come hunt the birds. So stay tuned for updates!

Turkeys in My Yard Again!

Urgh! Too bad the bow wasn't ready to go today!

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Rainy Day Down South (Arkansas)

Had another rain filled day in the south. Filling up the rivers and bottomlands. Not seeing many ducks around yet. Seeing a few specks milling around. Still have close to a month to go before season comes in. Im ready to try this new gun I bought (Wincheser SX2). Gauge is ready to go. Dont kill em all up north guys. Send some our way.


Jay

Couple of photos from the weekend

Mark, Shane and Ryan "Junkie"

Plenty of Ducks (in the refuge)

SW Wisconsin
After a unproductive Saturday morning, but lots of migration, one would have thought that things would turn around Sunday. Contrare– I think it was worse. Had a good set-up in the "birthday blind", but only fired twice just to let that high flying Mallard know we were there. Watched a crippled goose take refuge in a neighboring bay, so spent a half hour working Maverick around the area to see if he could find it. No luck. After packing it in I took to straightening out the garage, keeping an ear to the west to listen for shooting, and the other on the Packers game. (found an aweful nice goose flute, Ry?) Heard a lot more action coming from the east!

We'll keep an eye to the sky, and hope to see my nephews in a few weeks for another junkie hunt!

Matt

WEEKEND REVIEW (SW Wisconsin)

And there he is, the great King. What a good dog he was through the SW Wisconsin trip. He got to spend time playing with his girlfriend Gypsy on the trip. He made every retrieve I sent him on. He did great on most of the redirects and blind retrieves, and all of this with injury and sickness. By the last day he was so tired I think that he was happy to get home to recover.
On Sunday I was going to take him out for a short morning hunt but my kids were up so many times over the night that I got almost no sleep. Between that and the rain, I decided to sleep in and run errands but I had a friend wake me up to tell me he was hunting were I wanted to go and had 6 ducks in 20 minutes. Just figures!
All and all it was tough coming home because even though we didn't do so well the last 2 days, it was a great trip. Many ducks, not a single goose. Lots of stories, one memorable experience of a sinking boat, and great home cooked meals. A huge thanks to Matt, Penny and Maggie for the great hospitality, awesome home cooked food, and great dancing with the tap shoes. Keep it up Maggie! With lots of practice you will get the timing down and one day when you make it pro I will take my daughters to come see you perform! Looking forward for the November hunt if we can get it worked out!