Rainy Sunday Ducks

This morning, we hunted a medium size pond just off the main road (ND Rt 200), on the West edge of Mercer, ND. Weather was 38 and light rain most of the morning. For some reason, (maybe the 38 & rain?) Dad decided to hang with Winnie at the hotel through the morning. 

While there were a lot of birds around us, we had limited shooting opportunities. The birds here just appear to be pretty educated (probably older birds due to the low nesting success this summer as caused by the drought here) and are very weary of decoys - to the point they are sometimes obviously avoiding the decoys. This has us strategizing to possibly do some unorthodox things in the upcoming days - maybe hunt without decoys, maybe set up decoys 75 yards from where we set up, maybe use only 1 or 2 decoys...

We did kill 3 ducks (2 GW Teal & 1 hen Mallard). Dan got 1 teal, I got 1, & we both hit the mallard. We had a couple other (marginal) shooting chances, so we possibly could have scratched-out a couple more if our shooting was near perfect. We had a good time & Jax again did a great job. Retrieves were pretty easy - 2, 25 yard marks and 1, 50 yard blind that was straight & simple. What he excelled at was sitting still and quiet for the 30 min prior to legal shooting time while 20-30 ducks landed near us & swam around near us. It would have been very easy for him to move, whine, bark, etc. out of excitement and scare everything away.

His behavior reminds me to not take for granted all the little things that go well every day. Another of those little things was the way Dan carefully handed me a couple shotgun shells while we were sitting in our spots (mud/water just under our feet). It was a simple thing that he did without us talking about it, but I could tell that he made very sure I had a good grip on them before he let go - to make sure they didn't fall into the mud. Little things, but they make a difference & add up to a really good trip!

With the rain we got, we decided to wait until tomorrow to hunt the spot that Joe told us about last night. If it stops raining, we'll hunt Sharp-tails/Pheasants where we were yesterday. If it doesn't stop raining, we'll spend the evening relaxing at the hotel. Either way, I'm giving Jackson the evening off to rest and make sure he stays sharp for the next couple days.