Ducks Down!

 Went out on my first hunt of the young duck season.  Despite reports that there are no birds I knew that they were out there, because I'd seen teal, wood ducks, and pintails while scouting.

ONE MALLARD DRAKE, AND A MALE AND FEMALE BW TEAL

I walked in pulling our ag-waggon full of gear well before dawn.  I needed a good head start.  I got to my spot and set up in a great location.  I was using 2 blue bills, 4 mallards (one of them a vibrating mojo), 3 bluewing teal, and one Canada goose.  I was all set about half an hour before shooting time.

20 min before shooting time, a male wood duck lands in my spread and hangs out about 15 minutes.  He was less than ten yards from me and never saw me.  Eventually he decided that these other ducks were rude and flew off.  10 min before shooting time, a fight of bluewing teal came through,  two peeled off and landed.  They flew off a few minutes later when the flight came back through and they rejoined them.  Right at shooting time, two more bluewing teal came in.  

Two shots, two dead birds.  The second shot was a difficult one too!  I thought "it's going to be a great duck season if I'm shooting this well!"  It would take six more shots to bag my next duck.

As the sun cam up I had to move.  My position was in the sun, and I knew I would stick out like a sore thumb out there.  While moving to the opposite side of my spread, two mallards came through and saw me.  They were darn close by the time I saw them, so they were probably decoying, but then saw a Sasquatch moving around and thought better of it. 

Once in my new location a flight of red heads came in.  They were crazy!  There may have been more than 20 birds in that group!  I didn't hit one of them, and they were over the decoys, the farthest of which were at about 20yds.  My excuse is that they looked like a giant bait ball in the air.  They were swirling about and I couldn't pick out just one.  About ten minuets later a flight of 3 or 4 mallards came in.  I scored a drake.

I waited for the 9 - 9:30 surge, but didn't see anything, except a lone teal that sneaked into my spread and then swam out, and 2 merganzer hens that landed in my decoys and hung out for about 15 minutes.

There were pretty good numbers of ducks moving around for a weekday, and every one of them I saw decoyed.  I was happy with everything but my shooting.

It took me a while to get back up the hill with all of my gear, but I felt great afterwards.

I breasted out the birds and froze the meat.  I thinking stroganoff or duck friand.