Duck Hunting

I have to catch up on the last couple weeks again.  We've been gone all weekend so I haven't had time to write.  Last weekend, we got out both days to duck hunt.  We didn't get ourselves out of bed, so we ended up going later in the morning.  It was overcast and cool, but decent.  It rained only a little bit.  We went out to the farther blind and it has a tarp for a top so it kept off most of the rain.  We picked up another camo burlap because Jeremy left the one we had on another blind a few weeks before.  It turned out well, because we rescued the first one, so then had two to hide ourselves.  I can't recall all of the scenes that played out, but we got four birds Saturday and another four Sunday.  We ended up sitting out there from about 11 or noon until dark(7pm) at which point, we packed up and canoed back to the car, unloaded, then drove a 1/2 hour home.  Jeremy did some of the duck up Saturday in his venison stew he makes and we had some good old WI beer bread.  We ended up with a really nice male hooded merganser which he decided to keep to mount.  He's mad at himself because we got two more female mergansers that were really nice, but he didn't keep either to mount.  Otherwise, we would have had a nice pair.  He got one male mallard and the rest were green teal.  The woodies(wood duck), blue teal and some of the mallards are probably gone already.  We see geese, but I think they prefer the bigger Ottawa river to the swamp we're at.  Enjoy the pictures.  I got quite a few so am trying to pick out the best ones.  I must have deleted the other pictures I got from opening day because I can't seem to find them and somehow I never got them copied to the computer.

The blind Jeremy and Riley rebuilt - on the river by where we park

Trying to hide behind some grasses

The male hooded merganser

ops - Hayde got caught in one of the decoys so dragged it along behind her

Jeremy had to help Hayde out.  Two landed in the decoys that he got, then as Hayde went to retrieve those, he got another one on the other side of the blind.  She went for the first one, swam to the second, pushed it, then left it, dropped the first then went to the third.  She had to go back and retrace, but got all three in the end.

We'd sometimes get long waiting periods(hour) between birds flying so we had to keep ourselves busy and on the ball.  Usually when we'd get up, they'd end up flying over.  Jeremy's just practicing here.



 

I realized I wanted a camo hat and neckgaiter so Friday evening I made myself a hat and yesterday I made myself a neckgaiter.  I got to wear my camo hat yesterday when we went out and it was really nice.  It was cooler than last weekend and it rained a bit.  We ended up getting up at 5am and got there by 6:30, unloaded and got to the blind just after shooting time.  I was trying to prepare myself for another full day out there and it was supposed to rain all day(which it did).  But, there were other hunters out there and the clouds were low so the birds were flying.  Jeremy was the first to shoot, and stirred up several flocks.  Then the other hunters shot and stirred up some more.  We missed many, but it was exciting to see all the birds fly.  Severl flocks landed out past the grass out front and some even landed on our side, but to the left of us - still to far to shoot.  We even had a few land or almost land in our decoys.  We had luck on our side and before very long, Jeremy had two teals.  We waited a bit and more flew by and he got some more.  I think we had our daily limit of 6 within an hour and a half!  That's an all-time record!  We were heading home!  Hayde was sad and didn't understand why were were packing up.  She didn't want to budge from the bench she sat on.  By 10:30am we had packed up, canoed back(flushed many more flocks), loaded the car, stopped at a friends to see if he was home, but he wasn't, got home, Jeremy cleaned the bird and I had given Hayde a bath.  What a morning.  Thankfully we finished up early cause it started to rain and didn't stop shortly after.

 

Too bad, we didn't get out today.  Jeremy's at his possession limit so we ended up not going.  Besides, it's ended up raining all day again.  We did up a nice dinner last night too.  We made pheasant with a white wine cheese sauce with sauted mushrooms over fettuccine.  Here's a few more pictures.

My camo hat and neck gaiter

Jeremy's sporting beard and mustache.  He found some wax to try to train it.



Last but not least, we're working on planning our trip back to Wisconsin.  Jeremy'll go to the cabin for deer hunting and it looks like I'll get to go with since my parents have decided they could wait a week to head out to Denver to see my sister so I won't go back to an empty house.