Today's Hunt: The results are in!

Oh man, what a nice windy morning. I leave the house at 3:30 a.m. and the wind is out of the south at around 8 m.p.h. and its about 50 degrees. I get to the lake about 4:40 and the gate is closed and I have to wait until 5:00 a.m. for the park ranger to unlock it. I sit in my truck and close my eyes and dream about the hunt. I know I will limit out today, I can just feel it.

The park ranger shows up about 5:10 a.m. and greets me with a smile. We exchange New Year wishes and I'm off to unload the boat. I power up the ole trolling motor and speed my way to the blind. As I approach the blind I can hear ducks calling and flying all round me. I cant see them of course because I have about 2 hours until sunrise but I can hear them laughing at me.

I had planned on throwing out 6-8 dekes but decided on going with the following: 5 mallards, 3 teal, 3 bluebills and 2 wigeon. Lucky 13, that will bring in the ducks I just know it! I finish up and hide everything and sit down and wait.

45 minutes until sunrise, man I can't wait I load my shotgun while I listen to the ducks. They are quacking and chuckling all around me. Oh what joy!

7:38 a.m. is sunrise its 7:05, the wind stop blowing, its dead still on the water and I don't see any ducks yet! Bummer, its shooting time and they should be flying by anytime now.

7:45 a.m. and I have seen ducks flying but they are giving me a wide arc, what gives? Why are they doing that? They are not playing by the rules. No matter how little or much I call at them they don't even give me a glance.

8:00 a.m. I can't take it ANYMORE! I get out of the boat and move the dekes out a little farther out from me and go back to get the Mojo and set it up. I turn the Mojo on and get back in the blind.

8:03 a.m. 2 Gadwalls come into the spread. DUCKS! I cant believe my eyes! One shot.................. Naturally I miss, how can I miss? I'm such an idiot! I guess shortening the string on my dekes didn't help after all wait a second, is that Gadwall slowing down? nah, I think its going to land with the other one to the north in the middle of the lake.

8:45 a.m. The wind has kicked back up it blowing about 15-20 m.p. h. Nothing has come by since the Gadwalls. I will give it another 15 minutes and then I think I will use the last couple hours scouting the lake.

9:00 a.m. Still nothing, time to do something. I gather up everything and explore a channel that runs behind my blind. I heard ducks playing around back there before sunrise. I discover a beaver damn that has blocked up the entire channel. A huge hole of water surrounded by cat tails lays before me. I make a mental note to try that the next time I come out to hunt.

9:15 a.m. I make my way to the north end of the lake where the lake damn is there is a channel that runs way back to the northeast. I male it out of the slew that my blind is and start navigating the timber that riddles the lake. To my surprise I find a crippled Gadwall. Could this be the one I had shot at earlier? It is in the area of the lake that I saw the Gadwalls go down in. It tried to fly off with the other Gadwalls that where with it but couldn't get off the water so it starts diving on me. I follow it for about 30 minutes before I finally trap it on the bank and put it down. I guess I was wrong about the string on the dekes.

10:00 a.m. I get into the channel and set up and try for another hour. Nothing flies anywhere near me so I pick up and head back to the truck.

10:30 a.m. I load the boat and head back home. On the way home my cell rings and I answer it. I can't believe what I am hearing! GEESE! Hundreds of GEESE honking at me! Suddenly there is a voice I recognize, its my wife and she is laughing and saying "can you hear that!". I tell her yes I can and ask her where she is at. "I'm at the zoo with Hunter, Hunter saw the geese and said you would like to hear them too." I laugh and tell her it was nice of them to think of me.

hmmmmmmmm conclusion: Next hunt will be at the zoo!

Plans for the morning hunt

If the morning weather holds up I may have a good hunt. The wind is going to be out of the south at about 12 m.p.h. and my blind set on the southeast side of the lake. That means I should have good shots at decoying ducks. Now for the decoying part well........... many may be having the same problem as me, DUCKS ARE NOT DECOYING! I am no duck guru by any means so I am going to have to rely on old fashioned luck tomorrow. I am going to try a new strategy and see if it might give me a better chance.

The other day I was driving down I-40 and noticed a farm pond with cattle drinking from it. Now I know this isn't very exciting, but I also noticed about a dozen or so ducks puddling around the water about 20 feet from the cows!! I began to ponder in the dark recess of my insane duck hunting portion of my brain, what if I could design a blind that was a big lifesized plastic cow?!!!! I maybe on to something here I think I will call my invention the Trojan Cow 5000.

back to tomorrow, I plan on setting out only 6 to 8 dekes. I don't know if this will be any different than the 3 dozen or so that I normally throw out, but I need to try something different. I am also going to leave the Mojo deke in the blind with me and see if that might help as well. I know the ducks must be used to large spreads and my normal spread is not very large as some. Ill give it a try and see if my luck will change.

I will report after the hunt tomorrow.

Decoys and decoy string

Why do I have 8 feet of decoy string on my decoys when I hunt water that is only knee deep?

I think I will cut that down to 3 feet of string. Every time I go to pick up my dekes (that's decoys for all you non-duck hunters out there) I wind up about 15 miles of string. I think that shortening the string to 3 feet will make me happier about myself and improve my hunting skills.

I Duck hunt. Duck hunting is what I pretend to do at least actually its more like shooting and bird watching combined. I shoot and then watch the birds fly away.

Getting an early start on a new year

Well I've decided to start my New Year's Resolution a little early this year. I decided to start a hunting log and talk about my miserable shooting skills.

Last night I drive out to Ft. Cobb, Oklahoma to camp with my brother-n-laws and my nephew and get a little duck hunting in this morning. I get there and find the camp empty so I throw my sleeping bag in the tent and decide to take a little nap. It was about 3 p.m and there where not any ducks flying so I kick back in a chair and wait my relatives return. about 4:30 pm I was awaken by the most god awful duck calling that I have ever heard. I unpack my gun and pull on my waders and approach the decoy spread. My relatives had not returned but a group of hunters had set up about 75 yards from our spread. I watched as they continued to call if you can call it that at every duck cruising by at 11,000 ft. I sat there laughing on the inside as these guys scared of every duck with in a 75 mile radius. The relatives returned and after we settled camp we went into town to get some supper. Later we laughed and joked as we drifted off to sleep. The next morning I woke up freezing about 4 a.m. I decided to just get up and get moving.

Tom, my brother-n-law got up at the same time because his dog, Gigi was crying and needed to be let out of her kennel. With it being so early and hours before sunrise we decided to build a fire. We sat back and talked about our hopes for the hunt to come. Gigi must have been hungry and went for an early breakfast. She passed up her bowl of dogfood and instead went out for breakfast, dining on more tasty things in the woods. Upon finding something very appetizing to a dog she wanted to share the experience with us and promptly came back to the fire to let us know she found a great place to eat. I inquired about the smell and we both looked at Gigi and she had the biggest grin I have ever seen on a dog.

Well about 30 minutes before sunrise, Tom got in his boat with the rather aromaic Gigi and headed to a decoy spread that was about 500 yards to the east. Robert (my other brother-n-law) and Clint (my nephew) slowly crawled out of the frozen cave of our tent.

The hunt was slow as we watched ducks flying high and those that acted like they wanted to commit to our spread would almost glide into range and suddenly a shotgun blast would send them flying to the moon. I managed to get one drake mallard on a long shot that downed the bird about 1000 yards away on the bank west of us. Coco (Clint's Lab) wanted to retrieve it but the drake just was too far away and Coco is still young. I got the boat and took Coco with me and headed towards the bank. I saw the drake laying next to a fallen log on the shore and thought it was dead. Coco didn't see it, I tried to get her on a mark and told her to go find it. Coco exploded from the boat and went to shore and went in the opposite direction with her nose to the ground. I gave her a minute or so but she vanished into the woods and went to retrieve my duck myself. When I was almost 10 feet from the duck it jumped up and waddled into the woods I couldn't get into the brush and yelled for Coco, she came and I got her pointed in the right direction. Coco found it and after some coaxing was able to bring it to me. Major kudos to her because she is young and not used to retrieving for me.

Tom got a hen mallard at the spread he hunted and that was the extent of our hunt.

Ducks seem very reluctant to decoy in for some reason this season. Calling them seems to be about as effective as standing on the bank in the open waving at them like a mad man. Perhaps they are more mature ducks or they just don't want to be where we set up this year. The same spot has produced numerous amounts of ducks on several hunting trips. Perhaps ducks know this place as the "Lake of Death" and avoid it at all cost.

I plan on going to a spot closer to home Friday morning and trying my luck there as well. I will add info here when I get back.