Duck, Pheasant, swing and a miss

Monday the weather dude called for rain and snow in that order. When the rain hit Sunday evening I thought it would keep going into Monday however, the weatherman had it right for a change and I awoke to 3 inches of snow with a side of slop below that. I got to the ramp well before sunrise, motored out to the spot of the day and set up my decoys. I heard the sounds of restless waterfowl through the snowstorm across the lake from me. I thought this should be a good day the birds should be moving in and out all day with this snow. Well, the birds I heard moved out in the snow like a thief in the night. I never saw them which at this point of the day I was beginning to realize seeing birds was going to be the hard part. The snow was falling in huge flakes and I had to clean decoys every 15 minutes or so.

 I took this pic after I got back from knocking all the snow off them, I would get up and tip the top of the boat open and the snow was so thick it didn't fall off.
Until....
The snow stopped and the clouds parted long enough for this lonesome guy to come in. I did have a shot at another mallard but after the shot, I swung to get on the hen. She was quickly retreating and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the drake get up and make a clean getaway.

  So day one ended with a wet crotch,(I think my waders are leaking more than previously assessed) and one mallard, which is still better than a shutout with a wet crotch.
At the end of day 1 with no word from Jake, I decided to take a day off of waterfowl and get into some cleanup pheasant. I got to the check station around 8am and got the lowdown on how they were running the clean up now, it has been a long time since I was at Mongo for clean up. Anyway, while I was talking to the DNR guy another hunter walked in and signed up and asked about a youth hunt. I was already outside going to my car when I noticed a dog box in the other hunters truck and no one in the passenger seat. So I turned around and asked him if he was hunting alone, he said, "yes". I said, "do you have a dog?" he said, "yes," I asked him if he wanted some company while assuring him he didn't have to feel obligated to say yes. He said, "sure" so he filled out his check-in card, I filled out mine, I told him I would follow him and thanked him profusely for allowing me to tag along.
So we get to his spot and he lets the dog out and as I'm getting ready I introduce myself and thank him again for allowing me to hunt with them. Well, it wasn't too long and we found ourselves following a super little English Setter named "Sonny" but he didn't answer to that while he was working. I didn't find out his name until the day was almost over because through the course of the day that dog had many names and none of them were Sonny or derogatory. He worked his butt off all day to get us our limits of pheasant. Just a super well behaved little pheasant finding machine. The first 2 came out my side I hit both but couldn't find either. We moved on and it didn't take too long and Sonny had a point. The bird flushed and fell to earth after a couple of shots, and as pheasants do started running. I caught up to it in a fence row and while I was waiting for Robert to get into position the bird just fell over dead. We got another point and flush that bird just dropped. So we decided to push the row that I shot the first 2 birds out of. Well, as we were walking down the row I spotted the first pheasant I shot. So I let Robert know, I picked it up and we moved on to another spot thankful to have found 1 of 2.
So now we only needed one more bird for Robert and we would be done. As we started the sorghum field I was noticing all the pheasant tracks and it wasn't too far in when we got a point. Robert went in for the flush but the dog didn't hold and slowly crept forward. I said, "that birds running", sure enough, a couple feet from the first point came another. Robert moved in again and this time the bird flushed with Sonny nipping at his tail feathers. Robert gave the bird a couple milliseconds then let the lead loose, then came the feathers. After checking the bird and seeing that he wasn't gutted, we high fived, walked back to the vehicles took the hero pic and agreed we should do this again. I told him I will for sure give him a call next year.

Thanks again to Robert and Sonny I had a great time

 

 

 I finally called Jake to see if he was still alive, he said he was beat up pretty bad from work last week. He offered the farm pond shoot for Wednesday, I accepted and we decided on a time to meet at his house at 6am. Well, he said the birds were there Monday and if it's open should be there today. We pulled into the field and saw hard water where the pond was, so the work started. We got out and started busting ice to open a hole. Now instead of a slam dunk duck hunt, it went to holy crap I hope they come back today. The pluses were that they were there Monday and there was duck crap on the ice. So they have been there since there was ice but it had probably closed since then. We stayed 'til 11:30 or so but never fired a shot, we picked up the decoys and headed for the barn to warm up.
All in all, still had a super week, brought home some birds and had a good time with friends.