Date: 1/1/18 Mon
Time: morning
Location: Mudhole
Cloud Cover: partly to heavy and back
Wind Direction and Velocity: Screaming out of the NNE
Temperature: mid 20s
Moon phase: full
Special Notes: Was supposed to take a young grandson and his dad, but they chose not to fight the weather. Wish the boy had gotten to see so many ducks work, but glad he wasn't there being discouraged by the wind.
Waterfowl Activity: The first day of such fronts are often poor, but we had some nice bunches of teal and a few woodies in the pond early on and mostly high flights of big ducks periodically all morning.
Waterfowl Responsiveness: Little ducks didn't matter, as I'd not let them be shot in my decoys and were out of range before a gun went off when flushed. Big ducks often broke from way the hey up, to include a couple BIG bunches of pintails, and many worked pretty as possible to front and center, but they, too, were usually too quick getting out for my man. Ran the pee out of the Alan Stanley call all morning without a freezing issue, perhaps because I kept it out of the wind in an uninsulated jacket pocket
Hunters: 1 Clyde was sick, so I took his hunter, Dusty, a super nice big old boy from MS on his first duck hunt of the year.
Guns:Malfunctions: Dusty's magazine wouldn't take two shells until I dug out some 2 3/4" shells for him, and I had a likely frozen dog water related "Benelli click" when I really wished I wouldn't have.
Dog(s): Marsh worked his buns off on chipped birds sailed way over the iced up flotant behind the blind by the wind.
Special Equipment: SOS
Curses: It was not a day for Dusty to be out there. We were soon hunting him standing up, and even that wasn't enough to get him in the game on landing birds, much less those pushing off the big guy standing in the blind.
Kudos: Nice guy still had a big time, and it was a grand day to be alive in the marsh.
Birds By Species: 6 mallards, 2 pintails and 2 shovellers and 1 pintail
decoy (shot as a Scotch triple when the spoons lit in front of pintails I was working while hissing "Let those go! Let those go!")
Photo Ops: Even though I ferried Marsh across the deep water to his floatant searches, he didn't seem too thrilled by how things were going:
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Lagniappe: Though we saw plenty of ducks on our end, the three blinds hunted to our east all got to see an "unbroken fifteen minute flight of mallards". A modern day "grand passage," if you will. (But Issac and his girl friend, who hunts more than most men, were the only ones to fill on mallards plus a pair of pins. Other parties had as tough of a time in the wind as mine or worse. Anyway, it's pretty exciting to think of that many new mallards being around for at least a few days.
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