Saturday Hunting

We hunted this morning at the Holmquist WPA. This is a large lake, but we saw several hundred birds yesterday tucked against the shoreline (getting out of the wind) & figured that they'd be there again today, since the wind direction was the same. We got some shooting from start time (6:45a) until around 9. It was a good morning for hunting, with temps around 30 with 15+ mph wind and very overcast skies. If we had shot better, it would have been more successful all the way around... As it turned out, we came home with 2 birds (1 Shoveler & 1 GW Teal). Bill shot those 2 birds on 3 shots (but claimed 0 ducks on the other 12 shells he expended!). Dan went 0 ducks on 7 shots on the morning: wounding 1 bird which quickly dove & resurfaced much too far to do anything about. Overall, we figure that we should have killed 7 or 8 birds. Dad was not feeling well this am, so he stayed at the house to try to get some rest & ensure that he's good to go for the remainder of the trip.
We left the decoys in the water (it's nice to be in a place you don't really have to worry about your stuff getting stolen...) & grabbed a quick lunch back at the house, returning with hopes of more action in the afternoon. That was not to be.
Upon returning & sitting there over an hour with nothing moving, we packed-up & moved to another spot a few miles away that has been holding birds. We flushed a hundred or more walking in, but none came back. Dan did shoot 1 Bluebill there, so the afternoon wasn't a total washout. At 5:15, we packed it up and headed home.  Jax made easy work of the retrieves today, but did have an issue of coming out of his hut in the morning (aka breaking) - so we did a little training when bird movement slowed down. He's sleeping soundly & I'm hoping he has enough stamina to last for all 8 hunting days of the trip! Below is a picture of him resting his head on a snow-covered rock this morning. Sometimes I question his decisions...
We're hunting tomorrow am at the same place we went yesterday afternoon. There were lots of birds there the 2x we drove by it today, so hopes are high. The short term forecast looks good, but temps will fall hard starting tomorrow night (Mon/Tue low teens overnight) - so we need to find some spots to hunt that won't be iced over. That will be our job for tomorrow afternoon...