At Least We Got To See a Lot of Ducks...

We decided to wake up an extra 30 minutes early to ensure that no other hunters got to our planned spot before us. This turned out to be a good idea, as there was another truck that pulled in to the parking area as we were already setting our decoys. We had no trouble getting to our spot and getting set up off a nice point where we saw several hundred mallards and many pintails yesterday afternoon. 30 minutes before sunrise (at the beginning of legal shooting time), there were unquestionably more than 1000 birds flying all around us, over the lake, and landing on the lake.  The video below gives a brief look at it, although it doesn't nearly do it justice... That is when the positive aspects of the day ended.


Although these birds were so close that it was really fun to watch the spectacle of all of them flying, none were willing to land within shooting range (which is 25 yards for Bill and 35 yards for Dan). Watching all of these ducks land out in the middle of the water makes us believe that they are local birds and know enough to avoid the shoreline. It's warm enough that very few migrants are here yet. One of the pictures shows all the ducks on the water, but just out of range.

We did manage to shoot three ducks and recover 2 of them. These were pass shooting opportunities at birds that just happened to be flying by the point we were sitting on.

The unrecovered bird was a hen redhead (I think), the second was a Bufflehead Dan shot, and the 3rd was a hen Canvasback that I shot and Dan claims he also hit. :)  Jackson broke on the first bird of the day (which was the redhead that was lightly hit & far enough away that my experience told me would be futile to send any retriever after: a diver duck in open water that was still very much alive and strong). After this first bird faux pas, he was good from there on out. His two retrieves were both simple, single marks of under 50 yards.