Another good duck hunt at Goven’s

Today was our best day of duck hunting on this trip so far! We hunted the West shore of the back pond (closest to the canal) at Goven's. We placed 2 Widgeon in the South corner of the pond closest to the canal and hunted about 85 yards North/West of the decoys. At first legal shooting time, we had about 50 ducks on the water, but all were out of range. We watched them for about 30-45 minutes, and decided to scare them away in hopes they would fly back and provide us some shooting opportunities. Shortly after they flushed, a few came back and landed between us and the 2 decoys, so we decided that we should split up in order to cover 2x the amount of water. Dan offered to quickly move South, down the shore about 50 yards taking only his gun as to be able to get concealed and ready to shoot ASAP. That move proved to be critical to our success as he was able to knock down a limit over the next 90 minutes (a good mix of birds, with 3 GW Teal, 2 hen Gadwall, & 1 drake Gadwall), while only a few ducks came within range of Bill in our original spot.  Unfortunately, none of those turned into shooting opportunities for Bill for various reasons. Jackson was out of practice in dealing with the Mutt Hut (causing most of the 'various' reasons), but was otherwise perfect on all 6 of his retrieves which were marks and blinds varying between 25 and 75 yards on open water. Bill did get to finish off a couple of the ducks on the water with the cripple gun, which helped to expedite the retrieves by allowing Jackson to retrieve them rather than having to chase them.

Given our success there today, coupled with our lack of success elsewhere thus far, we are planning to hunt the same place tomorrow and hoping to apply what we learned today to increase our chances of getting even more in the bag. 

Winnie has claimed "her spot" in the apartment - the right end of the sectional couch. If she's not hunting or sleeping in Dan's bed (overnight hours), you can find her in "her spot".