I really dont take anytime for duck hunting anymore... I mean we hit it every weekend and every day Im off, its not that i dont do it all I can. But I dont burn any vacation for it. If its right, like a biblical thaw hunt, I might skip a day of work for it. But 9 days in a row, been years since Ive done that. We maybe hunt 23-25 days a year now, not like I used to get 45-50 days a season in. Once I got into training dogs so much, and running hunt tests, I spend all my vacation time on that. The Grand is our twice a year international event, and I spend both weeks of vacation running it. heck Im hosting the spring Grand this year, been working on it for 2.5 years. Yes I need to do something with my writing. At this point in my life, Im looking at anything to get out of the car business. I hate cars. Ive had several chances to go pro training dogs, but never could because of insurance concearns, and working for someone else is still working for someone else. With my wifes recent sucess in her career, we actually have good insurance thru her work for a change... but my credit is shot from medical bills and no way could we get out of our house to move out of the city to be able to keep enough dogs to make a living at it... so for the time being, Im still headed to dealership every day. Maybe I will sharpen a pencil after i get this Grand behind me.
This past weekend was biblical. We froze up the weekend before, a migration is a mirical when your on the reciving end, its a bitch if your on the loosing end. Sunday before we busted ice and set up to hunt, to watch 100k birds fly over our head headed south. They didnt go far, but they sure left. We where froze all week, and knew the thaw would be awesome. Weeks before my brother and I both had friends make plans to come up and hunt the 3 day weekend with us (I was off last friday). My 4 wheeler is torn up, where the axle goes into the differintal blew up... so i had plans to get a buddies rhino to bust ice. He hunts with us, and the plans got even better when he was going to go over early friday and bust ice for me, so I could hunt when I got there at noon. welp, he got sick, so i had to go to his doctors office to get his trailer and rhino. Managed to damn near knock myself out digging thru decoy bags for speck heads, as they where frozen and I was pulling them up off the ground. One of them had a 5 foot metal bar laying in/beside it. It came up and hit my jam, about 1.5 inch below my eye. I couldnt see from the impact, and it took me 5 minutes to walk inside... by that time I was covered in blood. washed my face, found out my eye was ok, eye socket ok, jaw most likely not broken, time to stop the bleeding... my bud happened to be a doctor so i got him to come in and see if I had to have stiches... you need stiches. hell man, i know that. Do i have to have stiches or can you stop the bleeding? I got a first aid kit, you got a doctorate, let me see what ya got. Anyway, 10 minutes later i had some rigged up sutures and we're headed to arkansas. 3 hours of breaking ice, lots of ducks flying overhead. get in the pit, and within 5 minutes 5 mallards are out front, flying 10 foot over the snow and ice cover turn row. With that white background, they just looked, well, wonderful. I watched them fight the south wind for what seemed like 5 minutes. Only 1 greenhead in the bunch seemed werid, and honestly I let them get past us before I said shoot... that stark contrast of bird with week old refroze snow behind it just did me in. So I raise up and kill the greenhead, hes on my side. my partners kill another duck... which they claimed was a greenhead too. No, I killed the greenhead. No we did. So my young dr friend has retreiver duty being as he works out and I havent been to the gym since I was 0, and sure enough 2 greenheads. But there was only one in the flight, and we watched these ducks for several minutes. Mine had a greenhead but a hen body... a he she duck. Great trophy almost as good as the shiner I had when I took my face mask off! we never killed another duck. Thats how it bes, but we had to get the ice open, so we could hunt sat. friday night I cooked mallard fillets soaked in grape jelly and worshisire sauce, widgeon and pintail fillets in itlian dressing and tjs very first speck he killed for the crew. cajun shrimp, a sausage plate, salad and wild rice where also present. a bunch of hungry hunters, a bunch of silly kids, and a bunch of candian whiskey the kind of company I prefer to keep these days. Sat, it was on from jump street. Scattered birds early, but by 9 the pintails where back. A west wind is a pintal wind at our pit, and the wind shifted sw same time the pins flew. 500 at a time they came by and worked... it was awesome. Many times we had 50-60 pins in range at one time, and they suffered heavy casulties. Before I got hungry good we had 9 big bulls on the strap shooting only nice bulls with nice sprigs. So nice of the feds to realize 2 a day pin limits only make sense... you cant kill them every day but when you can kill them you can kill a bunch, the added pins made for a really nice bunch of duck meat. Killed a double on sprigs, only the 2nd or 3rd time Ive ever done that. But it wasnt as memorable as watching them fly, literally bumping into each other clumsily to end their graceful plumment. By the time I brought lunch out, the wind shifted due south and the mallards rode it back. Not everyone is blessed with the kind of hunting where they can choose to only shoot drakes. Not everyone is blessed with hunting where you can choose to only shoot big drake (magnum greenheads I call em). And certainly most people have never been blessed with so many ducks working at one time you decide to not shoot and watch the show. At least 5x we didnt shoot.. it was too much of a show. The first time i wont say it was a choice, because I was honestly out of breath from watching the sight of it all. I swear the sun is brighter on a south wind when its melting ice. In days of old, it was common to not shoot because the birds where so thick... maybe not common but it happened. its been 8 or 9 years since Ive done it. So the first bunch I wont say was a choice. I'll just say I didnt have any motivation to end what I was watching. Id describe it, but it wont do it justice, so i'll just say its the feeling you get when you first hold your child, when you relize you love a woman, or your dad tells you your a man. its happiness and wonder, but at the same time a feeling of how did I get so lucky to be here. It was the first time tj had been in that situation, and being 13 and blood thristy as he should be, I really expected some flack from him. He didnt. He realized how cool we thought it was, wheter he did or not. The next times we chose not to shoot, to just watch. And the duck Gods having already smiled on us, as often as not when we didn't shoot into the bunches of 500 mallards at a time, 90 seconds after they left a big group would peel off and come right back at us to show us they couldnt be talked out of leaving. The ducks fell, and fell and fell. At the end of the day, our desescion not to shoot into the big groups resulted in us finished up a few shy of a 7 man limit. Nobody cared there werent a couple more ducks in that pile.... it was a big enough pile for anyone. The one you got away is the fishing story... the ones you let get by is a hunting story. sunday was a good day. it would have been a great day any other time, but anything after saturday was bound to be anti climatic. I hate it for sunday, I mean it didnt do anything wrong. And years later, we'll just remember saturday... and maybe my he she duck.. and maybe my black eye.... and the sausage. travis
