SpinnerMan 2019-2020 Logs

[Duck Engr]

Sweet!

[SpinnerMan]

Date: January 27 (Day late)

Hunters: Myself

Time: Afternoon

Location: Migrators Hunt Club Pit 4

Weather Conditions: Clouds with a low foggy layer down to about 200 yards with steady west wind and temps just above freezing

Waterfowl Activity: Heard duck chattering over head most of the time. Low goose numbers.

Birds By Species: DNS

We had a little snow last week which was enough to push some birds down. Unfortunately, the warmer temps had been eating away at it pretty good. I had went down to Florida to spend the week with my wife. It actually hit the upper 30's one night. Arctic for down there. Which lead me to take advantage of the cold weather.

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But while I was off looking at manatees seeking refuge from the cold in warm water discharges, my buddies were shooting a few geese. They had decent hunting, but not great hunting. The club a good day would be 50+ geese. I'm not sure but they may have got close to 30 one day and about a dozen on Saturday.

Sunday morning I flew back from Florida. When I landed at O'hare at 9AM, most of the ground was not snow covered On the ride to my house there were quite a few geese in the area. This might sound good, but it's not. I'm in the north zone and the season closed 2 weeks ago or I would have hunted close to home. Birds here means they are not at the cooling lake. When I got to the clubhouse near the cooling lake around 11:15, there was still snow in most fields, but not a lot. I didn't see a single goose on the drive. All fields were closed to driving. Without time to drive around, I had to pick an open field and hope the field was still snow covered and not a mile walk through the mud to get to it.

When I got to 4, the field was definitely muddy, but still had snow on most of it and I was happy with how it looked when I started. Got set up and in the pit. Wasn't long, I had ducks flying over chattering. It was nice to be out and hearing and sometimes seeing waterfowl. The low foggy layer kept me from seeing most of the ducks, but they were making a lot of noise flying around. I could hear geese off in the distance from time to time. Did a ton of calling to no avail.

After a few hours, the sun started peaking through and the low fog layer burned off. Finally got to see a few geese that I'd been hearing and see more of the ducks flying around. Only real excitement was around 3:30 a flock of about 50 geese about 100 yards up are heading straight at me. I could see them coming from a long way and from a direction that usually means they are heading your way on purpose. They passed straight over top without skipping a wing beat. I thought for sure they were looking and I could at least get somebody a little interested.

Thinking back, I'm not sure I've ever killed a goose on a day when I'm losing the snow. This was pretty much snow covered, but you can see by late in the day it's turning to just mud.

It was nice to be out and enjoy the bird watching. In addition to the ducks, I had a northern harrier hunting the ditch line the entire afternoon that was interesting to watch.

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