Friday: A Little Bit of Hunting, Some Scouting, & Getting Ready for the Week

Well, we killed as many ducks this morning as you would expect to kill when hunting a brand new place without the ability to do any scouting beforehand... We picked a spot that looked like it could work & threw out some decoys. After 2.5 hours we called it quits. We did see a decent amount of ducks & even had a couple in range, but nothing that presented a good shot. Dan managed to get 1 shot, but came up empty, as it wasn't a high-quality shot...

We then did some scouting, meeting with the Manager of the Hawkeye WMA to get some tips for the remainder of the week. He was very nice & provided some solid info. We also were finally able to connect with 2 WCOs with whom I'd been playing phone tag this week. They both provided decent info, but the general idea is that pheasant hunting nearby is going to be tough because of the flooding. We may end up driving a little more than originally planned each day to get to some areas with better chances for pheasants. To that end, I was also able to talk with the President of the local PF Chapter, who was extremely helpful. He confirmed that several places we were considering are holding birds & also told us which places to stay away-from, so we don't waste our time!

We were thinking to do a quick evening duck hunt in some flooded corn, but by the time we got the boat & truck unpacked & got our hotel suite situated (our suite is sweet, BTW...) it was too late to go. We had a nice dinner at the local Pizza Ranch & are now getting our gear ready for tomorrow. We (Dan & I) are hunting ducks with guide Lynn Buswell tomorrow & Sunday am in an effort to get a jumpstart on some local knowledge. We will come back to the hotel to get Dad & grab lunch each day, then the 3 of us will go after some pheasants in the afternoon.

Jax went out with us today (in hopes of getting him a couple "training" ducks, but all he got was an opportunity to sit and watch the sky), so Mag will have the ducking duties tomorrow. Winnie & Jax will hunt pheasants tomorrow afternoon. Weather forecast for 6am tomorrow is 17 degrees with 10 mph wind - so it's going to be chilly! Dad & Winnie will be happily curled-up under the covers!

As info, for anyone who checked our itinerary that was posted yesterday, we were slightly off schedule on our planning & arrival time. We pulled into the hotel 3 minutes ahead of schedule...