Finally getting some weather

Last week we saw a little change in the mild winter.... RAIN or threats of rain all week. The warm weather continued but we did get out and bring the goose count down by 5.

This is the third time we have hit this field, and the first time we took anything off of it. It was an all day set but we finally were able to put some meat on the ground. By the way for those of you math wizards out there, we got 1 more after the pick was taken.
Next was my Christmas goose, on Christmas of course.

That pretty much summed it up for last week.
This week it rained all day Mon. and I was feeling a little sick so I stayed home. Tues I hit the water for geese with no luck, as a matter of fact I only saw one goose all day.
Wednesday I went to a property that has been holding a dozen geese or so and set up in the wee hours hoping to get 1 or 2. Well the morning flight came and went rather uneventfully so now I was in it for the long haul. As the day went on I had walked to the treeline to shall I say, "relieve myself" and stretch my legs. After the business was done I heard some geese, I looked out at my spread and in came 2 honkers that landed 5 feet from my layout blind. So after some deliberation I decided to make a slow walk to the geese and see how close I could get before they flew.

Apparently I could get close enough to put both of them in the dirt. So now all I have left is one goose so I was more determined to stay and try for the third. I put the 2 geese in the woods where I had just been and since I hadn't prepared to stay all day, I had to call Sarah to find out when sunset was. After she told me, I started walking out to get some more sleep ready for some geese. I noticed a flock of 6 geese starting out onto the far side of the field. I was close enough to get to my blind and get it closed before the geese were within the kill ring. I popped up and dropped my last goose for my limit of 3. I didn't have to call, I didn't get any video and everything was muddy, I didn't even get another band, but I did get my geese.
From zero to Hero in 17 minutes.

 Thursday I went and sat in a tree for 5 hours only to watch the squirrels, and woodpeckers. The good news is the October weather has finally arrived.  : )

warm--- non-eventful--- sad week

I had a pretty rough week this week....
For starters it was really warm only going into the upper 30's lower 40's at night. Went out and sat for some deer on Tues. evening. Didn't see any deer but did enjoy watching all the squirrels. Went out for some duck hunting this morning and didn't see a duck.
The caper for the week was I finally got a freezer full of fur, so I packed all the bodies in the car and headed to the furrier, only to arrive and see a "Closed- No Russian market" sign on the door. Now, this guy has been in business since he was a teenager and he's around my age now. So I gave him a call to find out what happened. Apparently he had to close because the Russians aren't buying furs; he still has all the pelts from last year and most of the pelts from 2 years ago. He also said this will probably be the way it is for the next couple of years to five years.
So today I pulled all my traps for the year and will not reset next week. I did find a buyer in the area but will probably only make pennies on the dollar for the coon and muskrat I have. It's really sad and has me pretty tore up over the whole deal, even though there's nothing I can do about it.
This was going to be the year my trapping broke even, even though I invested another $200 in it. Now I have all my traps pulled and drying in the shed waiting to be packed away until the fur market makes a come back.... if it ever does.

Last week was pretty dry

Well I've been putting off writing this entry because it's so very depressing.
Monday Sean and I went to Huntington for the pheasant clean up. I have never seen so much orange on property that I did on Monday. That being said they mostly had dogs and were all working the gravy cover leaving us to push the bare bones of the property. You know.... the kinda crap that while your pushing it your singin' to yourself... "and they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles and they ran through the bushes where the rabbits wouldn't go." It's a song you can google it.
Anyway, we made it to midday and only kicked out 2 bunnies when my com padre yells out, "I see one" I yell back, "Shoot it". The only thing I didn't realize was he was only 3 feet from this poor hen. Enough said or should I finish???? Ok, he pureed that pheasant with the only recognizable part being the part that should've been gone.... the head.
Tues. hit the water for ducks. Zippo
Wednesday I got permission for a field that had at least a hundred ducks dumping in it around and after shooting time. Well we set up in the wee hours of the morning and we were greeted with a fog that hung on until at least after noon. Strike one. When it finally cleared up we had some (2) ducks fly by and a flock of geese land a couple hundred yards from us in the same field that we Sean had to go scare away. Strike two. And finally into the magic half hour before sunset..... nothing. We did get a great show of ducks while we were picking up though. Strike three. They came in right on time like they had watches and knew what time we had to be done.

Happy Thanksgiving

Well as you can probably see I am not hunting today, I have too much to do. I have to pull my traps, pluck my turkey and cook it, and take care of some other stuff around the house before going back to work tomorrow.
So we'll get right into it, in the past 3 days I have been able to put a one day limit of mallards into the fridge. Even though that may sound good let me tell ya it's been pretty slow. The snow last week brought some new birds in but by the time I got to them they had been shot up pretty good.
That being said the last couple days have been beautiful, dare I say we could've used a little more wind.
Well lets get to the pics.

day 2 with a bonus muskrat

4 mallards and not one band..... come to think of it I haven't shot a band in a couple weeks...... how long do I have to wait?

Last week and this week in 1 page or less

Last week nothing good happened not alot of ducks or geese around yet and the ones that are, are pretty stale.
This week Mon- nothing
                  Tues- nothing
Wednesday finally had some geese in a field so I got a hold of my minion and off we went for an evening hunt. We got set up around 2ish and the way we had to shoot this field is not the way I like to shoot a field. We had to set up with the wind in our face from the left, so when the geese came in they wanted to land passing over my right shoulder. We had to set up this way because of the way the field is situated. It's close to a road and there are some houses around so I only had one way to set up and still stay on the X. It took one flock to come in for me to realize that I needed to have my full choke tube in; the next flock I dropped my 3 birds. One of mine almost landed on Sean; it was pretty funny, I did have to chastise him for letting the goose blood get all over the blind he was in.
 My minion was having a little trouble hitting his target, he would've been better off ramping up to his full choke but he left his other choke tubes at his house. OOOPPPSSS
So nothing was really passing close enough for Sean to get a shot at. Then we had a group of 4 geese land at 55 yards from us in front of the far group of decoys. The time was quickly creeping up on us it was getting close to sunset which was at 5:21, so I watched the birds on the ground and kept an eye out for birds flying hoping to get him a shot at some flying birds. Well once it turned 5:19 we had been discussing what he needed to do and that was....slowly open his blind, slowly sit up, jump out of his blind with his gun and run straight at the group on the ground hoping to cover enough ground to get a shot at one of the geese. I said he needed to go if he was going to go, so he jumped up, ran at the geese and when I could see he was in shooting range I started yelling "shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot". The wind was so strong he couldn't hear me but as I watched, the geese started to take off and he shot; one goose down; he shot again; two geese down; the third shot was a whiff but he managed to go "Rambo" on em'- his words-- and bring 2 geese home.

Today I sat until 10 and shot 1 duck; only saw 4 and only had 2 come in...only saw a dozen geese over a mile away. 
However I did get a muskrat in one of my traps.

So as of right now I'm sitting at 3 muskrat and 2 coons that I've trapped. : ) but I have to get a small 22 to use on my trap line : (
Sorry so short but have to get ready to work tomorrow and would like to spend some time with Sarah. I've got some good video of our field hunt but haven't had time to edit it yet but when I do, I'll post it.