Trip Recap & Thoughts

As of 2:45pm on Thursday, we are between KC and St. Louis with an expected ETA at Dan’s house around 3am. Christopher and I will get a few hours sleep, then finish our portion of the trip back home to Atglen.

Overall thoughts, in no particular order:

- ​Although 125,000 ducks is a lot to be present on a 14,000 acre property, we saw only a small fraction of that number & most of those were high flyers that were not huntable. 

- We had a good time; this being the first trip for Dan, Christopher, & me together. We’re already talking about how to work around his collegiate academic & baseball schedules to go somewhere again next fall/winter.

- Based on how the trip went, we think Dad will be happy with his decision to not come along this year. With every day being a very early wake up (3:30a was the norm), cold / ice most every day, & long walks (.5 -.75 mile walk each way daily), he likely would not have enjoyed much of it.

- Hunting pressure here is insane, with some days having 200-300 hunters on this property, all competing for locations and birds. 

- The inability (as a visiting hunter) to scout effectively made the best areas worthless to us (as we experienced on Wednesday).

- Overall we shot 13 ducks & 2 snow geese. Admittedly, we could / should have shot better & we did start taking more marginal shots as opportunities became more scarce.

- Moose was good for the whole trip. He could have been a little better with basic obedience, but didn’t do anything that caused any problems. He retrieved all the birds he should have, with only 1 wounded bird escaping all week; & that one wasn’t his fault (it was a Houdini duck that also escaped my vision, so I couldn’t help him). He dove head & shoulders under water a couple times going after wounded birds & grabbing a couple that as they tried to get away.

-We found that after we put a towel or a pad in his mutt hut, he was a lot more comfortable & appropriately stayed in there. 

-We learned that my boat is not safe for 3 people & their gear (it’s too small). I also see that although it is a low profile craft, it’s not really made to be a mud/shallow water boat. It functioned in that environment, but was not optimal.

- If we would ever come back to Missouri, it would not be to 4 Rivers. Someplace that would have a draw system to hunt fixed blind sites would be ok, but the draw system used at 4Rivers isn’t helpful to us. Also, the walk-in areas at 4Rivers were mostly very large expanses of shallow water with very sparce vegetation &/or willow trees that didn’t look like it would make for good hunting.

- We timed the migration very well this year, but the weather was quite cold and caused some difficulties each day.