Jake William
Member
I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe christmas and newyear! I also hope you've had a even better duck season...
I don't post often on this site compared to the others I frequent, but enjoy reading all of your stories. Carl from Alabama, Greg in New Jersey just to name a couple. So I figured I'd share my latest hunt with you guys...
This past weekend a couple buddies of mine who live in south florida and I decided to try our luck at a famous waterfowl management area down in their neck of the woods. I was granted permission to bring my pup on his first (second outing) hunting trip since I had other people to shoot, and me to focus on my pup.
hope you enjoy!
The aggravating combination of noises I was half way hearing, happened to be my 0100 alarm going off. As painful as this surreal sound was, the thought of missing the hunt of a lifetime was even more painful. A little trick I've conditioned myself to use over the years on various outdoor escapades. I consider that the chance I may miss a non-typical 14 point whitetail, or a flock of double banded pintails dropping in my spread are some dramatic examples I tease myself into thinking I may miss if I happen to sleep in instead.
I wake my four legged companion up, gather the last minute gear, fill my thermos up, and out the door we go! My adventure starts with a 2 hour drive further south on the interstate with a mild misty rain and high winds. As most others, my favorite kind of "ducky weather". Fast forward a couple hours I finally pull into the popular road that hosts so many other waterfowlers crazy enough to wait in line at this time of day... Theres two lines at these "duck farms", one for permits holders who have the luxury of relaxing and planning their future hunt of security. Then there's the line I pull into, with about 12 vehicles already waiting... all at a chance in what the regulars coin the "lotto". Its literally a "pull a name out of a hat" kind of selection, which entitles you to a hunt or not...
I shut the truck off, check on my pup, and notice my compadre's have yet to arrive. No big deal, I venture down to the clipboard and grab number 8 on the list... As I enjoy some coffee I wait for my friends to arrive while both lines continue to fill, and fill, lights upon lights trickle down the road... I notice a couple of faces approaching and we quickly get all checked in and await the draws. The first two numbers get pulled and we start strategizing our all too well "plan B". "Number eight!" My one buddy to the right slapped my back and yelled "that's us!". All the thoughts of plan B quickly were forgotten back where we were standing. The remaining spots on the marsh weren't looking good, we took our combined intel and selected a spot one guy limited out well on last season later in the year.
We arrived at our parking spot and starting off loading the gear, boat, guns, bags, the typical. We don our waders and I load the pup into the boat. We start push poling our way through the reeds and find the trail most have been using for our block. We start easing up a wall of cattails until it dead ends and notice a light to our left in the adjacent cell. We realize this guy is set up on the small wall of cattails and we decide to move to our other corner. As we start planning our spread, we notice a second hunter on the northern wall of the cattails, both indicators of a not so good hunt to be... but, we're optimistic and I'm just happy to have my pup in tow.
We start throwing the blocks out and set up a nice long line of ringers, gadwalls, just a couple pintails, teal, and of course our main force of soldiers... coots! I stay with the boat so I can work the dog and my buddies spread out along the cattail wall. My pup starts to realize the day is waking up and he quiets down and starts to focus on the egrets, ibis's, and coots fluttering through the marsh. The water in front of us starts to reflect a dark blue as the sun barely creeps over the horizon behind us. The first shots ring out in the surrounding cells, and the hunt is on. A small flock of teal not ten yards above our heads goes flying right in line with the cattail wall we are standing in. No feasible shot available so we just grin and shake our heads... The two groups who surrounded us start ringing shots off, that's when we started to notice the soon to be issue... one cripple is clipped in their cell and sails into ours, not landing 10 yards from one of our decoys, not 5 minutes later another is clipped and tumbles into the reeds behind us... As disgusted as we are, its nothing new unfortunately at places like this.
Just as I start to get my doubts, I beautiful stud of a drake ringer plops right next to a couple decoys 15 yards in front of me. I stand up and give it a couple hollars while my furry companion jumps up from sleeping. The drake gets 10 yards further out just above the water, BOOM! I drop him, give raider the command, and he's off. He paddles to the first line of decoys and gets confused for whatever reason (I train him with a few decoys in the water) and starts to turn to me, I give him the back command and he drives further out and connects with our prize. As he swims back I just get overwhelmed with emotions, its my pups first, real retrieve! I had a rough start with training him and was certain I was far from him being able to hunt. He comes back to the boat and I praise him for a few minutes while he enjoys his trophy while posing.
I take the bird and get him set up for the next shot. Not 5 minutes later a hen shoveler comes flying low to my left and starts the rapid climb out of our spread, my buddy fires a couple shots with no avail. I put the bead on her nose and squeezed the 870 off, BAM! The spoony drops hard about 35 yards out and my boy lets a soft whine out, he made his mark and I released him. WOOSH! through the water and decoys he goes, makes the grab and paddles back to our little home in the reeds. I pull him up and start smiling, he starts shivering some from the cold water (yes, it actually got below 70 for once).
Unfortunatly after that, our hunt got worst as for birds... My buddy on the left had 3, but my buddy on the right had none... We made a "fourth quarter" decision to move the blocks away from those cattails where the sky busters were and try a pinch point to our left about 50 yards...
A couple hours passed with birds high and moving, but nothing close at all to our cell. I'm sitting there throwing some bumpers with the pup keeping him in the game mentally and battling the slow "boredom" that's getting to him. As we're taking a break, my buddy to the left yells "Jake!" with instinct I shouldered my gun just to catch a bullet of a blue wing swinging through the funnel I was sitting in, BAM! I drop her 25 yards out and raider makes his mark with ease, I release him and he is able to run through the shallow bottoms.
About a 30 minutes later we deicide to close the hunt out with 10 birds between the 3 of us. Not a great hunt, but it was the best hunt for me all year! I loved watching my dog work for the first time, and was super proud of him. I'm far from a pro trainer, heck even a okay trainer. But it was nice to see even with all the screw ups, I was able to get this far. Its a lot of work, but has been the most rewarding thing for me to see in my duck hunting memories.
I don't post often on this site compared to the others I frequent, but enjoy reading all of your stories. Carl from Alabama, Greg in New Jersey just to name a couple. So I figured I'd share my latest hunt with you guys...
This past weekend a couple buddies of mine who live in south florida and I decided to try our luck at a famous waterfowl management area down in their neck of the woods. I was granted permission to bring my pup on his first (second outing) hunting trip since I had other people to shoot, and me to focus on my pup.
hope you enjoy!
The aggravating combination of noises I was half way hearing, happened to be my 0100 alarm going off. As painful as this surreal sound was, the thought of missing the hunt of a lifetime was even more painful. A little trick I've conditioned myself to use over the years on various outdoor escapades. I consider that the chance I may miss a non-typical 14 point whitetail, or a flock of double banded pintails dropping in my spread are some dramatic examples I tease myself into thinking I may miss if I happen to sleep in instead.
I wake my four legged companion up, gather the last minute gear, fill my thermos up, and out the door we go! My adventure starts with a 2 hour drive further south on the interstate with a mild misty rain and high winds. As most others, my favorite kind of "ducky weather". Fast forward a couple hours I finally pull into the popular road that hosts so many other waterfowlers crazy enough to wait in line at this time of day... Theres two lines at these "duck farms", one for permits holders who have the luxury of relaxing and planning their future hunt of security. Then there's the line I pull into, with about 12 vehicles already waiting... all at a chance in what the regulars coin the "lotto". Its literally a "pull a name out of a hat" kind of selection, which entitles you to a hunt or not...
I shut the truck off, check on my pup, and notice my compadre's have yet to arrive. No big deal, I venture down to the clipboard and grab number 8 on the list... As I enjoy some coffee I wait for my friends to arrive while both lines continue to fill, and fill, lights upon lights trickle down the road... I notice a couple of faces approaching and we quickly get all checked in and await the draws. The first two numbers get pulled and we start strategizing our all too well "plan B". "Number eight!" My one buddy to the right slapped my back and yelled "that's us!". All the thoughts of plan B quickly were forgotten back where we were standing. The remaining spots on the marsh weren't looking good, we took our combined intel and selected a spot one guy limited out well on last season later in the year.
We arrived at our parking spot and starting off loading the gear, boat, guns, bags, the typical. We don our waders and I load the pup into the boat. We start push poling our way through the reeds and find the trail most have been using for our block. We start easing up a wall of cattails until it dead ends and notice a light to our left in the adjacent cell. We realize this guy is set up on the small wall of cattails and we decide to move to our other corner. As we start planning our spread, we notice a second hunter on the northern wall of the cattails, both indicators of a not so good hunt to be... but, we're optimistic and I'm just happy to have my pup in tow.
We start throwing the blocks out and set up a nice long line of ringers, gadwalls, just a couple pintails, teal, and of course our main force of soldiers... coots! I stay with the boat so I can work the dog and my buddies spread out along the cattail wall. My pup starts to realize the day is waking up and he quiets down and starts to focus on the egrets, ibis's, and coots fluttering through the marsh. The water in front of us starts to reflect a dark blue as the sun barely creeps over the horizon behind us. The first shots ring out in the surrounding cells, and the hunt is on. A small flock of teal not ten yards above our heads goes flying right in line with the cattail wall we are standing in. No feasible shot available so we just grin and shake our heads... The two groups who surrounded us start ringing shots off, that's when we started to notice the soon to be issue... one cripple is clipped in their cell and sails into ours, not landing 10 yards from one of our decoys, not 5 minutes later another is clipped and tumbles into the reeds behind us... As disgusted as we are, its nothing new unfortunately at places like this.
Just as I start to get my doubts, I beautiful stud of a drake ringer plops right next to a couple decoys 15 yards in front of me. I stand up and give it a couple hollars while my furry companion jumps up from sleeping. The drake gets 10 yards further out just above the water, BOOM! I drop him, give raider the command, and he's off. He paddles to the first line of decoys and gets confused for whatever reason (I train him with a few decoys in the water) and starts to turn to me, I give him the back command and he drives further out and connects with our prize. As he swims back I just get overwhelmed with emotions, its my pups first, real retrieve! I had a rough start with training him and was certain I was far from him being able to hunt. He comes back to the boat and I praise him for a few minutes while he enjoys his trophy while posing.
I take the bird and get him set up for the next shot. Not 5 minutes later a hen shoveler comes flying low to my left and starts the rapid climb out of our spread, my buddy fires a couple shots with no avail. I put the bead on her nose and squeezed the 870 off, BAM! The spoony drops hard about 35 yards out and my boy lets a soft whine out, he made his mark and I released him. WOOSH! through the water and decoys he goes, makes the grab and paddles back to our little home in the reeds. I pull him up and start smiling, he starts shivering some from the cold water (yes, it actually got below 70 for once).
Unfortunatly after that, our hunt got worst as for birds... My buddy on the left had 3, but my buddy on the right had none... We made a "fourth quarter" decision to move the blocks away from those cattails where the sky busters were and try a pinch point to our left about 50 yards...
A couple hours passed with birds high and moving, but nothing close at all to our cell. I'm sitting there throwing some bumpers with the pup keeping him in the game mentally and battling the slow "boredom" that's getting to him. As we're taking a break, my buddy to the left yells "Jake!" with instinct I shouldered my gun just to catch a bullet of a blue wing swinging through the funnel I was sitting in, BAM! I drop her 25 yards out and raider makes his mark with ease, I release him and he is able to run through the shallow bottoms.
About a 30 minutes later we deicide to close the hunt out with 10 birds between the 3 of us. Not a great hunt, but it was the best hunt for me all year! I loved watching my dog work for the first time, and was super proud of him. I'm far from a pro trainer, heck even a okay trainer. But it was nice to see even with all the screw ups, I was able to get this far. Its a lot of work, but has been the most rewarding thing for me to see in my duck hunting memories.
