Saturday was the best day I've had in the last two seasons. Booker and I got a bit of a late start. Nonetheless, once we were set up and before I could even get sat down and arranged three mallards tried to land on us. They flared off with a hail mary attempt following them once I could get to the gun. It was fairly chilly, around 20F, causing a bit of mist off the river and hoar frost on the brush, dog, and me:
When I used to do a lot of winter fishing, I could pretty well tell the temperature by how quickly I lost feeling in my fingers while rigging up. If I could get three knots tied without losing sensation, it was around thirty. Mid-to-low twenties, I'd lose feeling about done with a second knot. Low twenties to high teens, right around finishing the first knot. Below that, I couldn't get an improved clinch finished before my finger tips went numb. Saturday wasn't bad, but these drops on the gun are ice from Booker shaking water out of his coat (while standing next to me, rather than down the bank a bit, of course):
Lots of snow geese were flying over, temptingly low in some cases. I hadn't thrown any goose loads in, though, so we contented ourselves to watch them. Most of the geese were up high, anyway:
Not that many ducks were flying early on, but then a pair of mallards circled twice and dropped in to the decoys. When they were twenty feet off the water, I stood up, dropped one, then the other. I'd hoped to have a double retrieve for the dog, just to see how he handled the situation, but I was too slow on the birds and the second one dropped in the brush behind us. Booker didn't see the fall so I had to call him back there after the first bird and have him hunt up the second.
Later on in the morning, around nine o'clock, groups of a half dozen to a dozen mallards were working up and down the river. I was in the right place, this time, as even when the birds were fairly high up they'd turn and come parachuting down. It is amazing how quickly they can lose altitude when they want to get down somewhere.
Just about the biggest thrill in waterfowl hunting over decoys comes when birds see your decoy spread and then start working into it. The birds will frequently make at least one circle, even when they come in without hesitation, and the combination of a close range encounter with them and the tension imparted by the potential for a last-minute error which will send them off makes for a thrilling experience. On Saturday, the birds were trying to land in the area I had set aside for that purpose, but were making their last circle right into the bank I was sitting on, meaning I was face-to-face with the ducks at some fifteen yards. The whole thing, from spotting the birds to having them come down right on top of you, is just too much fun.
We did lose one bird. I was slow getting on him and getting on the gun and, despite two hits, he set his wings and crossed the river into the woods on the far side. Getting back there required finding a spot we could cross the main river channel, which required going downstream a couple of hundred yards and then pushing across a pretty good current of rib-deep water. It's always a good idea to remember to lift up your hunting jacket when you do that, otherwise your shells can freeze together in the pockets. In any event, we worked up to about the right place and then searched the woods and riverside drain well up and down without finding the bird. I've lost four birds now in seven seasons. Some loss is inevitable, but I think shooting steel makes it a bit worse. A couple of times I've hit birds only to have them set their winds and coast for a couple of hundred yards. Those that land in the river or where I could find them were inevitably stone dead by the time I got to them and frequently had good hits that penetrated well. The hard pellets just seem to penetrate, though, rather than imparting all of their kinetic energy into knocking the bird down. So, counting the lost bird we had our limit of five mallards and called it a productive day.
After Saturday's great hunt, we headed back out to the river on Sunday feeling fairly optimistic. Sunday morning was warmer by four or five degrees, meaning no mist off the river and no ice on the Chessie. It was also a bit cloudy, as we had a little front coming in. I set up about seventy-five yards down the river from Saturday's location, hoping that a wide, dry channel downriver from the bend we were on would make the decoys visible for a longer distance. Once set up, Booker and I sat down in the streamside brush and watched snow geese, then several large flocks of pintails, head respectively down and up the river at high altitude. Then, pretty much nothing happened for the next few hours. Quite a few birds went by, but they weren't that interested in the set-up and gave us no more than a cursory glance or two. If not for a suicidal drake wigeon, we'd have gone home duck-less.
We did have a few opportunities, but managed to blow them in various ways. We had three mallards come bombing in shortly after shooting light, only to flare when I turned and looked directly at them, as unaware of their presence as they were of mine until that moment.
At another point, three drake pintails circled us, then decelerated some thirty feet over the decoys. Pintail numbers are down and the limit is one bird per day. For that matter, I've passed on pintails for the last seven years. In this case, I was going to make an exception; however, a pair of mallards was also circling to come in. I held off on the sprigs to see if I couldn't get the drake mallard- some small greedy part of me thinking "if the pintails land, shoot the mallard then try to swing over and pick up one of the pintails and end the season with a really nice double"- only to see the pintails decide to head off down the river and the mallards follow.
Booker did his part, as he broke for the first time this season as three more mallards circled in quite low and mostly behind us. On their last pass, some twenty feet high and preparatory to swinging around to our front and into the decoys, Booker charged after them, crashing through the willows and dead grass and sending them frantically winging off. Then we had words.
At the last, with no birds flying, we walked down river a half mile or so, putting up a couple of bunches of ducks tucked into various pockets on our way. Clearly, the problem wasn't a matter of the birds not seeking to land in the river, but rather with my choice of location or set up. On our way back to pick up the decoys, a lone duck came flying down the river at low altitude. I've found that, often enough when you see a duck a couple of hundred yards distant if you take a knee and hunker down a bit, they will fly right over you even though you are in the open. In this instance, I called Booker to me and made him sit right at my side, then got down myself. The bird flew some twenty yards off to the side and once I saw the white wing patches and white forehead patch of a drake wigeon I went ahead and took him. That duck has added his part to the cassoulet I put together yesterday afternoon and plan on enjoying over the course of this next week. A bit of success from the red gods to finish off a very fun season and grace a frustrating day with a high note.
I'm really not sure what the differences between Saturday and Sunday were, as the decoy arrangements were similar and only a short distance apart in similar sorts of water. Something, weather, the overall look of the thing, something, was different and not to the birds liking. Of course, trying to figure all that stuff out is what keeps quite a few of us out there hunting and fishing. Hope everyone else's season has been as much fun as ours.
