Good week

Have you ever had one of those days by which all others are measured?
Well that's how I started out my week. I went to the river on Tues. and had a great day. I brought home all I shot at minus one duck. Both the ducks and goose worked great. With just a quack or a honk, and they were setting their wings and looking for a place to land.The day started out warm and turned cold with 30 mph gusts.
It was however one of the best days I have had this year.





















I was supposed to hunt a field on Wed. but the wind was going to be blowing really bad. So I did a 180, grabbed my 20 gauge and headed for Huntington Res. for some pheasant.
I got down there pretty early and started hunting. I was only about 10 min into the hunt and I saw my first pheasant. Now I'm not going to mislead you, I tried for the ground pound.
I was denied, apparently there was too much weedage between the pheasant and myself. The shot spooked the bird and he took off, I nailed him to the ground with my second shot.
So there I was 10 min in and already had 1/2 my limit. I thought, "this is going to be easy".
Wrong, I saw 2 other birds and even heard one cackling in the morning, but I couldn't put my hands on another one. I did shoot a rabbit really dead.
So that's where I ended my day one rabbit and a pheasant. I did realize 2 things-
1. I'm no spring chicken anymore, and all the times I've heard ,"I'm too old to do that" I can relate. I used to be able to run up mountains while carrying all my gear and guns only to be stopped by darkness.
Wed. I had to slow down cause I got a cramp on the inside of my right leg. When that went away I got the same thing on my left leg. Thank goodness they didn't cramp in unison or I would still be in the woods unable to move.
The 2nd is I need to lose 1 or 30 pounds, and all this walking, hunting fun stuff would be alot more fun.

Day off number 3 or as normal people call it "Thursday".
I made it to the field I was going to hunt on Wed. and brought a friend from work. This was the first time I used the truck to haul all my stuff to the field, and let me tell ya it was packed. Next time I'll get a pic of the truck with all the gear in it.
Well I've been watching this field for a while and even though there was never a ton of birds on it, there were always birds on it. The only thing I didn't really know was what time they came in.
So we waited and waited and waited, there was very little even flying so we waited,did I mention we waited? Well we did, and it finally paid off with a flock of 25 or so birds coming in. They circled at least 3 times before committing to come in to land. The bad news is they wanted to land too far to the right. We had a house down the road on the right so I wanted to try to not shoot that way. I don't think we could've hit it but no sense tempting fate, so when they got close enough I gave the word and feathers flew. I unleashed my first shot on the goose the farthest left of the 15 or so birds to my right. I did hit him but he didn't go down, so I swung on the 5 or so birds to my left and dropped one. My buddy was able to connect on his second shot and there we were with geese on the ground. I got up and walked over to where my first goose was loosing altitude to see if I could find him. I couldn't find him so hopefully he's either dead or alive and not wounded somewhere.
We stayed for a wee bit longer, and just when I started checking the insides of my eyelids for cracks, he speaks up and says he's ready to pack it in. I didn't protest cause I really didn't think we would get anymore takers.



















He's really gotta get a hat.

Happy Thanksgiving

Well just got done pluckin' my Turkey and put it in the oven. Now that I have some time before the next basting I'll get'cha up to date on the hunting thing.
I went to the river on Tues. morn and got a goose. I missed the second one that was with him.
The geese were acting really weird. I had a flock of 20-25 come in but they landed short, so I got up and shooed them away. While I was tryin' to get them to come back I noticed 2 more setting down. They short stopped me, so I let them swim in a ways and took one of them.



















On Wed. I went to Loon Lake, had alot of early activity. Even though I had a couple chances I only managed to get one duck. That one I'm not sure what it is, but if I had to name it I would call it a black duck cross.





















Any way had a good couple of days hunting. I'm going to try and get out in the morning. The crappy thing is with shotgun deer season going on I can't get into alot of my fields to hunt. Oh well, I'm going to go out and do some scouting for tomorrow, hopefully I'll find someplace with a duck tornado. So til next time take care and have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.

What I did on my Vacation

When I got back to work on Friday I was asked what I did on my vacation. The answer I had was "I hunted", every day sometimes twice a day. Yep I hunted ducks in the morning and deer in the afternoon. The cold weather kinda slacked off and the ducks were not pouring in like they had been. I hunted alot of water sets and a couple land sets.

These two hunts came off of a couple water hunts. I got a lesser scaup (bluebill) and a couple mallards

I was invited up to my buddy weed's pond to shoot some geese. He also invited a another buddy of ours by the name of fasteddie. Even though the company was great, the goose shoot was not lets say "hot". We managed 2 divers, a mallard, and a lone goose. We hunted the pond the second to last day of my vacation.

I told weed we needed to shoot my deer property before my vacation was over. We set up a hunt for the next morning. We shot our limit of geese within a hour or so.
I shot my 2 geese from the first flock that came over, weed whiffed on his. I got the I-Kam rolling, and on the next flock weed got his 2 here's the video:







So that was the waterfowl section of my vacation.

The whitetail section didn't fare as well. Even though I saw deer almost every time I went out I wasn't able to get a shot. As is the bane of the deer hunter I had deer pass right under the deer stand that I was not in. The deer that did pass under my stand were small so I passed on them. I should've learned a couple years ago that when I pass on deer I don't get a deer. Oh well even though my bow season is over I still have a chance with muzzleloader season in Dec.

So until next week, keep your groups tight and your eye on the prize.

ducks and bucks

Since duck season has started and I have yet to bag my buck. I'm burning the hunting candle at both ends.
In the morning I've been going duck hunting and in the evening I've been deer hunting.
The duck hunting has been goin' kinda slow.
I worked last weekend which was opener, they (other duck hunters) must have shot the heck out of 'em. During early goose I was seeing lets say 100 ducks a day and now I'm lucky to see 15. I have been out a couple times and the ducks have not come back yet. I have been lucky enough to bag a few.




This is my first duck this year. I whiffed on my second duck. I would've been just as effective to take 3 shells and throw them at the second duck.

















This is the second day and the only duck I got to shoot at.







Now as for the deer, I saw Mr. Big Jr. on Tuesday night. He's a high tined 8 point that I would not think twice about taking. He came out with 10 minutes left to shoot and never made it over to me. All I could do was watch him, which was pretty cool.

It seems the coyotes have come back again this year. I have been seeing 3, but last week I had 7 in front of me, so it looks like I'll be putting in some sniper duty this year. I wasn't going to hunt yotes this year cause they aren't worth anything, but to keep my deer population up I'll bury a couple.

Bow season has begun

I didn't make it out the first couple days of season due to work. I have been out 2 days and have seen quite a few deer. The first morning I saw 9 deer I passed on 2 yearling button bucks. The second morning I saw 4, two of which I could have shot 2. I got video of both the deer and just as a sneak peak I'll put the button buck on here.
I have seen 3 shooters and hope I can seal the deal by fri morning.


I have tried and tried to get the time right, I still haven't been able to get it done.