View attachment sams limitsmall.jpg
Edited to add this picture--not great, but a kid's first limit of ducks deserves a public photo.
I took my young friend Sam out on Merrymeeting Bay this morning. He had a frustrating day last Saturday in our North zone youth day--not many ducks, and the few we saw didn't decoy well. He made up for it today.
He must have been pretty eager to go. The power was out at his house when I picked him up, but he was up and ready to go at 3:30 even without an alarm clock.
We were on the water about 4 am, spent over an hour grassing the boat up, and were set up just in time for legal shooting at 5:58. I think Sam dropped the first bird at 5:59--he had two down almost immediately. It was like a scene from Hitchcock's "The Birds" while we were looking for the two downed birds. Blue wing teal everywhere.
After we collected the first birds and sat back down, Sam just had too many targets. There were a lot of birds around, and we were on the X.
Sam got a little distracted--there were a lot of misses, and the shells began to run low. When things slowed down, we talked a bit about picking targets--and about making each shot count before we ran out of shells. Sam dropped 4 more birds in the next half hour or so out of the second big flight of the morning, and he had limited out by about 7:30.
Four blue wing teal, a green wing, and a nice drake wood duck. We also had a pair of drake pintails buzz the decoys--that's pretty rare out here.
He got to show the birds off to a bunch of adult hunters, as my friend Dave has pretty much turned his house and dock into a duck camp for the fall and several of his extended hunting fraternity were over this morning to bring down their boats and grass them up.
It was quite a morning, and made up for a couple of slow days when I've taken him out.
I'm hoping those birds stick around for the adult opener next week.
Edited to add this picture--not great, but a kid's first limit of ducks deserves a public photo.
I took my young friend Sam out on Merrymeeting Bay this morning. He had a frustrating day last Saturday in our North zone youth day--not many ducks, and the few we saw didn't decoy well. He made up for it today.
He must have been pretty eager to go. The power was out at his house when I picked him up, but he was up and ready to go at 3:30 even without an alarm clock.
We were on the water about 4 am, spent over an hour grassing the boat up, and were set up just in time for legal shooting at 5:58. I think Sam dropped the first bird at 5:59--he had two down almost immediately. It was like a scene from Hitchcock's "The Birds" while we were looking for the two downed birds. Blue wing teal everywhere.
After we collected the first birds and sat back down, Sam just had too many targets. There were a lot of birds around, and we were on the X.
Sam got a little distracted--there were a lot of misses, and the shells began to run low. When things slowed down, we talked a bit about picking targets--and about making each shot count before we ran out of shells. Sam dropped 4 more birds in the next half hour or so out of the second big flight of the morning, and he had limited out by about 7:30.
Four blue wing teal, a green wing, and a nice drake wood duck. We also had a pair of drake pintails buzz the decoys--that's pretty rare out here.
He got to show the birds off to a bunch of adult hunters, as my friend Dave has pretty much turned his house and dock into a duck camp for the fall and several of his extended hunting fraternity were over this morning to bring down their boats and grass them up.
It was quite a morning, and made up for a couple of slow days when I've taken him out.
I'm hoping those birds stick around for the adult opener next week.
Last edited:
