FUBAR day at the shore

quane

quane

Active member
Well yesterday was a day to remember/forget....
Put in at low tide and took my time to get to my hunting spot. Weather was expected to be rainy but not super stormy.

Put my 5 Doz dekes out and got setup.

During the course of the day the following happened:
1. 3.5" of rain
2. Ran through an old crab pot, got it wrapped around my prop. Shallow water so I could anchor and get out of boat to fix (lucky!)
3. Frame member on boat blind folded up while I was getting in/out of boat to unwrap crab pot.
4. had to pump out boat (see #1 above) - while pumping my drain tube popped out the back and into the swamp. Had to get out of the boat to retreive the tube.
5. Made a long shot on a drake Bufflehead, but only broke its wing. my 11-87 broke on the first shot, so no way to go out and retreive/swat it...lost that bird.
6. Raining so hard on the way home (dark by now) I couldn't see the channel markers and GPS was not working. First time the GPS had bad reception due to rain...had to hang for a while till squall passed.
7. Boat would only make 7mph with all the water in it...
8. Got back to the ramp and winch strap snapped while winching boat back on trailer.. had to McGyver the strap back together.

Ended up with 4 birds, so I can't wait to go back out!
11-87 is at the 'smith getting repaired, so I'm back to my Browning for the next week or so.

Anybody else have a FUBAR hunt this season?


'
 
I guess the old addage "When it rains it pours" is a fitting quote for this post. Sorry to hear about that. I didn't go out yesterday because of the weather. Just too much rain for me. I did get out today with Jim Donofrio and we had a pretty good shoot. Lots of work for the dogs. His dog Pearl is an amazing retriever. I will think of a "good bad day" to reply about. Better luck next hunt Quane..................Kevin
 
Still waiting on this years FUBAR day, always something to look forward to each season. Sounds like you got a good one out of the way!

Best wishes,
Gene
 
4 birds ? Sounds like a successful hunt.

Got that one out of the way, you're good for at least 4 years.
 
FUBAR would pretty much sum up my whole season. Freeze up = sweet mercy.

Welcome to the club! With a little (good) luck, you'll only be an occaisional member.

NR!
 
Glad you made it back safely. We all court diaster when we go out on the water in winter weather. I bet we all have at least one fubar (or cluster f___)story. Let's hope you can catch Murphy looking the other way the rest of the season.

I prescribe a copious amount of brown liquor taken by mouth and a big warm fire to drink it next to. Next time it's raining cats and dogs let the cats and dogs have it.

Caution is the byword,
Harry
 
6. Raining so hard on the way home (dark by now) I couldn't see the channel markers and GPS was not working. First time the GPS had bad reception due to rain...had to hang for a while till squall passed.
Click to expand...

Sounds like that was a good day to put behind you. We've all had one or some of those days. They build character.

On the GPS front, try this.

I also had my new GPS loose all the satellites yesterday in a very rainy, windy and rough day on the salt. The model I have has an internal antenna and a port for an external antenna. I called Garmin and they told me to check for corrosion in the external antenna port. Its only 6 months old and this was only the 3rd day on the salt, so I doubted corrosion was going to be the issue. I checked the port and there was no corrosion just water. I blew it out and then shot in some WD-40 and it worked fine. Apparently the salt water was enough to have it ground out and think that an external antenna was attached. I am now searching for a waterproof cap to put over the port to keep this from happening again.
 
Oh yeah. The ultimate FUBAR I'm ashamed to admit this one. My opening weekend was the weekend after the opener, and I hunt a very remote place that is 5 1/2 hrs from home and it's 1 1/2 hrs by boat from the nearest launch. It's on one of Louisiana's barrier islands. We have a floating camp down there, we go for the weekend. Of course I have a checklist which I triple check before I finally leave the launch, if I forget anything I'm screwed. I got down there that Friday evening and one of the guys relates he forgot his duck stamp; I'm about to laugh at him when I realise I forgot mine. It's almost dark and I have trouble finding the way even during the day and there's a small craft advisory for Saturday and Sunday, the winds were howling that whole weekend I couldn't make it back into town to get a duck stamp; we were lucky to have the wind lie down enough to cross the bay that Sunday afternoon to go back home. I had to skip hunting and with the winds, fishing was almost impossible ( did manage to catch a couple.) I didn't have "Duck Stamp" on my checklist. It's there now.

Ed.
 
We have to have the duck stamp affixed to our licenses. If not, I'm sure I would have been ticketed by now. I was always the little boy who didn't bring a pencil to school.

Merry Christmas,
Harry
 
Hey all,
Sounds like everyone is having a pretty good time so far - no big troubles.
Harry - sage advice about warming up! I sat for about a half hour at the ramp in my truck and smoked a short cigar after getting back. Had a good drink after getting home.
Was glad to get a mix of ducks - Black, Buffy and widgeon.
We deep fried the ducks and a couple of geese this weekend in peanut oil - that even made the snow geese taste good!

Brad - I will try that with the antenna - my zip-loc waterproofing has worked OK up to this hunt, but nothing came home dry. I didn't like circling the bouy for 15 min until reception improved.

Ed - I have done something similar - left my license in my other coat...Dang!

Since my 11-87 is in the shop, I am a little leary about goin out with my Browning O/U, as I'll be shooting 1 oz. steel loads for it. I can shoot it well, so may just have to shorten my "don't shoot" distance a little.

Anyone else like 1 oz. loads?
 
This was 13 years ago:
Backed down the ramp at 4:00 am one morning, got out of the truck to let the boat off the trailer. My arm bumped the door, hitting the door lock and door enough that it slammed shut before I could react.

So, here I am, 2 miles from the nearest living soul, at 4:00 am, at the bottom of a very long steep boat ramp, trailer in the water, truck is running and the TRUCK DOORS ARE LOCKED! And this is before cell phones were common, so no option to call the wife and get her to bring the spare keys (like my ex would have done that at 4:00 am anyway).

Anyway, I have a slider window in the back of the truck & figure they can just replace the slider portion if I break it. I screw with it for a few minutes to see if I can force it to slide & then just say f'it and break theh slider out. Take the boat off the trailer, reach in unlock the door, hop in, park the truck, broken window & all, and go hunting.
Got to work later that morning & start calling around to find out how much to replace just the sliding portion of the back windshield. Find out really quick that it doesnt work that way & I have to drop $200.00 on a whole new back windshield. But hey, not all bad, I did kill a couple of woodie that morning!
 
I went through a very similar thing with the slider on my truck. It would've been cheaper to break a side window. I now carry a spare key in my wallet, and another screwed to the inside of the fender well, where you have to really look to even know it's there. Don't use a phillips head screw, a flat bit is fairly easy to improvise. I've used the wallet key a couple of times in my life, the fender key never, but I know someday the wallet will be locked in with the keys.
 
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