Me and my hunting partner Eric set out with my two man sculler yesterday on a local lake. Due to the high water levels we quickly found out the birds were in some super thick cover within some of the islands on the lake. Theres no way I could scull through hydrilla and logs and all sorts of thick cover. We only found one small group of cans on the open water and they busted before we could even unload the scull. We finally decided it would work better to sneak into the upwind side of the islands and put stalks on the ducks with our feet instead of a boat. It worked very well! The first group we snuck up to was three cinnimon teal drakes and a pair of mottled ducks! The cinnimons were not in full color yet so we left them alone in hopes they stick around. We jumped them and got the mottles. Next island we found a very large flock of black belly whistlers sitting smack dab in the middle of the swamp on the island. It was knee deep water with little clusters of cattails spread around in it. We were very fortunate that we could keep those cattails between us and the ducks and got to within about 30 yards of them, they flushed and it was on, we ended up with six of them! Not bad for two guys jump shooting I guess. While we were getting them picked up a lone ringneck drake decided he wanted to come over and see what was going on. All in all, this was a wonderfull time despite not using the scull boat. We really didnt have much of a choice on how to hunt other than like this. At any rate I took some pictures, my favorite being one of us coming across the lake with the scull loaded in the go-devil. I love the ribs on the inside of the boat and how they look in the pic. Hope you enjoyed the recap,
John Ven Huizen
NICE mess of tree ducks. I sure hope I can get into some tree ducks this year. Do you by chance have another picture of the drake mottled duck? One that shows more of his face and a closer look at his body?
Al, We have actually put a mexican duck side by side to one of our mottles, about the only differance is a bit of white on the wing feathers. We dont have Mexican ducks usually in my area, we have to drive a bit to get them. Dani, Here is a little bit better pic of that duck, also I shot another mottled drake the day before about 40 miles from where I shot this one. Its very interesting to see the color differances in them. From what I understand, Texas mottles are a bit darker than there Florida cousins. That last one I shot had a much darker head and body and was way bigger in overall size. Sorry for the shotty pics, This is the last year for this camera. And thank you all for the kind words on the hunt, I realize some people look down on sneek hunting ducks but to me its no differant than sculling.
John
Mottled from Weds. shot in saltwater
Mottled from Thurs. shot in freshwater
Oh yeah, I shoot quite a few mottled ducks but this last one is going to the taxidermist, he was a pig
No problem, we went out to the spot yesterday and decoy hunted. We had a great hunt. We didnt get set up till about ten minutes after lst. While setting deeks we had a nice group of blackbellies go right over about twenty feet up. Guess we should have been quicker. We did shoot a nice mature single later in the morning. I shot my first cinnimon teal drake also. He was pretty ratty. We had about 5 other cinnies buzz through but after seeing the shape of the first one we decided to let them be for a few more weeks. Eric shot gadwall with some sort of color mutation, it had a black ring on its neck and light brown cheeks. Cool bird. Heres the haul from yesterday. How was yall's opener?
John
