Today was our first day of putting the boat in the water (after trailering it out here every year, but not using it for several years). The flooding is so extensive that all the boat ramps are inaccessible, so the only way to launch a boat is to drive down a gravel road until the road is swamped, jackknife the trailer off the road, then push the boat off the trailer into the flooded area. Because of this, we were not comfortable navigating unknown terrain in the dark that is normally dry land. This lead us to the decision to wait until first light to launch the boat. It is another blustery day, with temps at 16 degrees & wind at 10-15mph. Battling ice on our gear is beginning to get a little annoying. Check out the ice that formed on the bill of the mallard decoy Dan is holding below... The good news is that temps are forecasted to rise a few degrees tomorrow & for the remainder of the week - getting up to the low 40's Th-Sat.
We ended up being set up and ready to hunt around 8:15 in a flooded field off of the Babcock Access Road. Even though it is normally dry land, the water depths were still 4 to 8 feet! We had 2 ducks drop into the decoys just as we finished setting them & 2 more circled to land while we were getting our guns uncased & readying ourselves to hunt. After that, we had 1 Bluewing teal visit us. Dan made sure that it was a short visit, with a simple but effective shot. Jax was a good boy all am (sitting in the boat) & made short work of that easy retrieve. We wrapped up our hunt at 9:55 in order to give us time to get ourselves to the hotel with ample time to change clothes, grab something to eat, and get out for some pheasant hunting this afternoon.
We are planning to search for phez this afternoon at one of the properties suggested to us by the local PF President.
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