tim atkinson
New member
Saturday
Sunday
Heavy
Sunday
Heavy
This weekend in Southern Iowa
- Thread starter tim atkinson
- Start date
tim atkinson
New member
Turning some into sausage and the rest went a wonderful asian family who had a great big plucking party. I don't mind giving a few away especially when they eat every part. It doesn't hurt either that they feed me at their Asian steakhouse as well.
tim atkinson
New member
It was a couple of fun days. Saturday morning we set out a spread of roughly 700 socks. We had a couple hundred TNT's but we were unable to drive into the field due to some snow melt so we opted to leave those in the van. It was a long walk in the muddy field bringing it all out especially with a strong 25-30 mile an hour wind in our face. But after three or four trips we got all the gear out and set. The roost we were hunting by was holding probably 3-4k and we were a mile or so off. I would guess that half of them came out all at once and worked us over. We held off a little too long and they swept beside us and set down a quarter mile away, we couldn't get them to close that last ten or fifteen yards to give us a thirty yard look. Hindsight is 20\20 and we should have taken a whack at them but its always tough on that first flock when they look so interested. After that first chunk went and landed the rest of the birds came out on a line and went in with the rest of them. At this point we had our doubts but we stuck with it and shortly after they all made their way to feed they all pulled up and wouldn't you know it they came over to give us another look...mistake. Thanks to some poor shooting when they came over us we knocked down 3 as they swept by and then they decided to come right back over...bigger mistake. We knocked out six more on their second pass. As we picked up those birds four more came over to check out the action and only two of those made it back to the roost. The next two hours was spent watching thousands of ducks pour into our spread. Sprigs, mallards, woodies, widgeon, green wings and blue wings kept pouring in and gave us quite a show. We packed up and spent the afternoon scouting for Sunday.
Sunday came and we had another buddy show up and with him came his Kawasaki mule which was a wonderful change from the previous day as all the dekes made it out to the hilltop with ease. We set up all the dekes and had roughly 900 out plus a few motion birds. We had a roost a couple miles off with about 10k on it but wouldn't you know someone snuck in and busted them at first light. Discouraging to say the least but we made the best of it. All day long we consistently worked birds probably every twenty to thirty minutes. These birds were wary and it was again too late before we realized that forty yards was probably the best we were going to see out of the big flocks. What made the day so great were the singles and doubles that would drop from the heavens and decoy just perfectly. We didn't get the tornados that one hopes for when hunting snows but the consistent action and shooting we had all day made up for it. At one point we were working a group of a couple hundred down from the heavens and we noticed a couple of eagles messing around in the field a half mile in front of us. Nobody gave the eagles a thought once we had birds over head but out of the corner of my I noticed something booking in at about two feet. As I turned to look a blue came zipping in between my blind and the my buddies only five feet away. I could have reached out and grabbed him as he went by about two feet off the ground but instead I turned and dropped him right behind us. My buddies all pooped up from their blinds to say whos shooting and at what. For a moment they thought I was losing it and shooting at one of those eagles because none of them saw this goose come in. They were surprised as I ran twenty yards behind us and picked up this great looking "eagle head" blue. It was quite the spectacle as I can only imagine that bird was running from those eagles and probably thought he had made it to the safety of the group...wrong. We ended with 21 on sunday and had a great day of shooting and a fantastic weekend.
Tim
Sunday came and we had another buddy show up and with him came his Kawasaki mule which was a wonderful change from the previous day as all the dekes made it out to the hilltop with ease. We set up all the dekes and had roughly 900 out plus a few motion birds. We had a roost a couple miles off with about 10k on it but wouldn't you know someone snuck in and busted them at first light. Discouraging to say the least but we made the best of it. All day long we consistently worked birds probably every twenty to thirty minutes. These birds were wary and it was again too late before we realized that forty yards was probably the best we were going to see out of the big flocks. What made the day so great were the singles and doubles that would drop from the heavens and decoy just perfectly. We didn't get the tornados that one hopes for when hunting snows but the consistent action and shooting we had all day made up for it. At one point we were working a group of a couple hundred down from the heavens and we noticed a couple of eagles messing around in the field a half mile in front of us. Nobody gave the eagles a thought once we had birds over head but out of the corner of my I noticed something booking in at about two feet. As I turned to look a blue came zipping in between my blind and the my buddies only five feet away. I could have reached out and grabbed him as he went by about two feet off the ground but instead I turned and dropped him right behind us. My buddies all pooped up from their blinds to say whos shooting and at what. For a moment they thought I was losing it and shooting at one of those eagles because none of them saw this goose come in. They were surprised as I ran twenty yards behind us and picked up this great looking "eagle head" blue. It was quite the spectacle as I can only imagine that bird was running from those eagles and probably thought he had made it to the safety of the group...wrong. We ended with 21 on sunday and had a great day of shooting and a fantastic weekend.
Tim