Northwest Connecticut- End Game

Last day for my season was on Friday the 22nd. My hunting partner Joe and I set up on the mouth of the Connecticut River on the East Lyme side with a mostly diver spread. We arrived fairly early and heard a lot of mallards and blacks chattering as we threw the dekes out.
About 15 minutes before legal shooting time, flights of mallards began to take off right over the top of the blind. I estimate about 50 to 60 ducks went over, well within shooting range. If they had held off another 10 minutes, we could have possibly done something. The rest of the day was pretty lackluster. Only had 1 drake goldeneye into the spread which took off at mach 10 as soon as I got the gun up. Not many ducks in the air for the rest of the day other than a couple of red breasted mergs. Did see a bunch of brant hanging out just off shore about a ½ mile away.
We picked up about noon and paddled back to the launch. A couple of other groups of hunters were returning at the same time as us and reported the same activity as we had. No ducks. Note to self: don’t put the big boat away as the boys sea duck hunting around the islands have been putting the smackdown on the scoters and old squaw.
And that pretty much sums up the season for us. There was never any real migration around here at all. I only had 1 day where I scraped up a limit on mallards. I did find a couple of new spots to hunt that have potential for next season. I was also introduced into the addictive activity of layout hunting which I plan on doing a lot more of. Well, the decoys are put away and the guns are clean. Time to dust off the turkey calls and practice up for the spring season and spend some time at the fly tying desk.
And another waterfowl season is in the books.

Terry Mahoney

A Large woman is warming up her voice...

There's still some time to hunt before the end of the season here in Connecticut. Where I'm located up in the northern part of the state, we have until January 9th to hunt ducks and geese. Most of the lakes and ponds have iced over but some opportunities remain in the rivers. I'm seeing some buffies and ringnecks around with the ever present mergs. In the southern part of the state the season remains open until January 23rd. I'll usually head down to the mouth of the Connecticut River to target divers, brant and geese. We always see good numbers of blacks and mallards there in the late season. Sea duck hunting is open till the 23rd. I'm seeing decent reports of old squaw and scoters in Long Island Sound around the Norwalk Islands.

The state is split into 3 sections for geese. The AP Unit(atlantic population) covers the northwest corner. The season for geese closes on the 9th. The NAP-H Unit(north atlantic population) covers the eastern part of the state. The season in this section closes on the 14th. The AFRP Unit(atlantic flyway resident population) covers the southwestern part. The season closes on February 15th. We don't see a whole lot of Snow Geese around here but we get a few flocks that stray over this way. The season for snows has various opening dates in the north and south zones and both close on March 10th.

So there's still alot of time left to get a fix around here before the fat lady sings. I hope to get out a few more times before it ends. Happy New Year to all.

Terry Mahoney

Duck Junkies Prostaff

12/28/2009 Hunting the Burbs

Went out on a layout goose hunt with my nephew and Junkie fan Nate and my friends Joe and Mark within a stones throw of Hartford, CT. We don't do much field hunting around here and this spot in particular proved to be an excellent one. We put out a small spread, 10 full bodies and a dozen shells and since Joe and I were the only ones with layout blinds, we had to improvise to conceal the other two which worked out really well after tweaking it a little.
Basically what we did was lay down a small 4' x 8' brown tarp. I had a couple of folding seats for the deck of my boat (just a pad that folds up and locks in position), covered them up with camo burlap and some vegetation that we scraped up from around the area. Instant poor man's layout blind.
The first couple of groups that came in flared. After covering up more of the blinds, the groups came in without a clue something was up. First a group of about 1o birds that came in with the landing gear down, one quick shot later and Nate dropped his first goose ever. Overall we saw about 200 birds throughout the day. Our calling was spot on but our shooting was a different story (skeet range here I come). Only glitch of the day (besides our shooting) was a couple of crow/goose hunters skybusting.

Terry Mahoney
NW Connecticut
Duck Junkies.com Prostaff