Weekend Goose and Duck Hunt

What better way to spend the last weekend of October than to spend it on the water with my son and friend Chuck Parr. We hit it hard on Friday evening, after taking the day off work. We wnet to Lake Ponemah for an evening hunt. We made it out to the small island and I set up the blind while the boys put the decoys out.


After we got everything ready, we were talking instead of paying attention and a nice drake mallard buzzed by our blind, we all watched and pointed! That was it until almost last light, when a flight of geese came across the tree tops and Michael was hammering the goose calls. There was a family group that broke off and flew our way! Then the steel started flying! Chuck dropped one of them! This was his first goose. That was it for the evening.


Saturday morning we headed to Seven Lakes State Park to do a morning hunt. We went to the Island to setup and get going. I worked on the blind again as the two decoy pros began to set the spread up. It was pretty cool watching those two go to work in the pre dawn darkness. They knew just where to put the decoys out, and it wasn't long until daylight broke and the shooting started. We had two mallards buzz by just out of range. We kept our eyes peeled and it wasn't long until they came back into the spread. We had to jump them off the water to get them going. Mikey took the drake and Chuck took the hen. I put the gun mounted camera on it today to try and capture some video of some shooting. We threw a lot of steel, but we couldn't take any more ducks or geese but we did get some great footage of the shooting and missing.



Sunday morning we had the opportunity to get back out for a couple of good hours of hunting before church began. We motored our way back over to the island again in the darkness of the morning. The boys began their task of setting out the nearly six dozen decoys in their proper place. That in and of itself is a chore that just amazes me how long it takes. After an hour and a half of placing the decoys, they were finished and they found me asleep in the duck blind! Hey you catch a nap when you can! This morning shooting light was at 7:29am and we loaded up promptly. Within a couple of minutes we had a small group of four or five ducks coming in to our right. The cupped up and started to land. Mikey jumps up and yells take'em! The shooting commenced and we dropped one! Another one glided to the left and plopped over by the near shore. Mikey had taken the one that dropped in front of us, so he rushed out to grab it off the water. When he returned he showed us a beautiful drake Widgeon! It was truly a magnificent bird! As we sat in the blind commenting on how great the bird looked, he decided that he would get it mounted! A while later in the morning we had another small group of ducks fly by at about 30 to 40 yards out. We again poured the steel to the air! I took careful aim at one of the ducks flying off and pulled the trigger, and down it went. It was a hen black duck, my first duck of the year! I had to take the boat out to get this one since it was too far out to retrieve, I got out about half way to the bird and a flight of about 50 ducks broke over the near shore tree line! I couldn't believe it! I knew that I had screwed up BIG TIME! The guys called, with no luck. The birds flew by out of range! They razzed me pretty good when I got back to the blind. That was about it for the day.



We saw a couple of good flights of geese and actually got some shots off, but we didn't drop any more birds that day. We even made it to church on time that morning, just as they were begining to start the service. Our pastor looked at Mikey and me (the wife and three other kids were up north) and said, "You were out on the water this morning weren't you?" We just smiled and said yeah!!! He looked at both of us and said good job!!!! He understands, he is a hunter and fisherman also!