Last Duck Hunt of the Year

So today the last Wednesday of duck hunting I want to try and duplicate my success from limiting out last Wednesday.

I drop Maddy off at daycare and run a few errands. When I get home I do a few of the things on my honey do list. I call my wife and see if she wants to get off of work early and go hunting with me, but she was to busy at work and not feeling the best.

I get dressed get the Remi loaded up in the truck and head off the to runway to see if I can't find some ducks.

Since it had snowed a ton this past week I brought my snow shoes but decided not to use them because I knew I was going to be crossing creeks and I didn't want to take them off and put them back on every time I crossed one.

So Remi my German Wire Haired Pointing Griffon and I started walking to the first place to jump some ducks. We walked for what seemed to be forever and when  I turned around to look how far we had walked it seemed I could still hit the truck with a rock. The snow was deep and I was regretting not wearing my show shoes already.

We get to the trees before the creek and we circle around so the duck don't see us getting into position. I start walking on my knees which means the snow is waist deep. Remi is tucked in tight at a close heal. We get to the berm and as I slowly peak over the berm all I see was four teal feeding on the far bank.  So I slowly back  off and I look up the channel where I can see a few mallards and some more teal. The blind we use when we decoy was about 4 yards in front of my. While I was hidden in some small trees, for me to be able to make it into the blind so I could get close enough for a shot I would be exposed for about 6-8 feet where the ducks would be able to see me. So I get as low in the snow as I can and start to slowly crawl into the blind. All of a sudden the teal I saw first saw saw me and flew. I figured the gig was up so I stood up and ran into the blind. Lucky me the mallards just sat there and looked at me. Needless to say that was a mistake on their part. I took aim and dumped a Mallard Drake and a Teal on my first shot.  As all the ducks took flight I missed everything on my second shot and then dropped a big mallard hen with my third shot.

After Remi brought all the ducks back to shore I saw that the green head I shot was one of the biggest if not the biggest green head I have ever shot, it was huge.

For the rest of the day the hunting was slow, I did manage to shoot a golden eye. Since I was tired from walking in the deep snow I decided to call it a day at four ducks and started the walk back to the truck. I was definitely jealous of all those guys hunting ducks down in the deserts who didn't have to deal with all this snow.



The ducks don't look as good after a night of hanging in a burlap and get a chance to freeze through



This year had a lot of great memories and some good hunting. It's time to clean and hang up the duck gun for the year and time to start dreaming of next years hunts.