My second week of vacation time for the year, ran through the Thanksgiving weekend, so after stuffing my gut on Sunday at my daughters and Son in Laws place, and spending some quality grandpa time with my little Leo(10.5 months old).
I struck off to my usual hunting haunts east of the big E on holiday Monday.
Sadly Rugersingle wouldn’t be tagging along this time as he had a far more pressing issue to resolve .
I promptly booked into my lodgings, dollied off the cargo trailer, and went for an evening scouting drive. I was not disappointed as I found no fewer than 6 possible shoots developing, one right in an old family friends back yard (wife’s family friend) this was a full on mix bag shoot, whites, greys, and ducks. I caught the landowner on his way back from their final field of combining, and a quick chat was had with these explicit orders from him “kill ‘em all” we were set! A bit more driving found a second shoot of primarily greys and ducks, and the landowner was located and permission was granted. Like that, the second shoot was locked down.
I rang up member Predator and we agreed on a meeting place for the morning shoot and he got up early and drove on out to meet me. We set up in the dark and the birds came and we collectively shoot like crap, but still managed 10 geese and 8 ducks. But what a show it was, the air was filled with birds and the visiting with Predator was awesome.
Our second field was spotted after the morning shoot and it was agreed we would hunt this one in the afternoon, so we waited through the next morning, where I further spotted the field, and we set up on it that afternoon. The birds came and our shooting was much better bagging 15 grey geese(no we can’t count!) and 8 more ducks. The weather was splendid, and the company was superb.
Alas Predator couldn’t make it back out the rest of the week, and after numerous calls I couldn’t drum up anyone willing to come out for a shoot, so I set up a half mile south of shoot number 1, and targeted mallards for the most part.
A few speckle bellies looped right into the decoys early so, four of those came to the bag. Then came the pintails, in droves, lots of them landing in the spread, and one even brushing into one of the rotating wing decoys. Finally the mallards arrived, and they’d come into the south side of the decoys and crab across the set up to the landing hole, this move put them straight out of the sun. Talk about frustrating, you couldn’t tell drake from hen, till they swung past you, so I’d peg a drake or two and do my darnedest to keep track of them on the loop around, but sometimes I messed up, and popped a hen. I ended up getting 4 drakes and 4 hens, and limited out by 5:45 that evening.
I then sat back and videoed a few groups of ducks who wouldn’t ya know it decoyed nearly perfectly!
It was a great time and so satisfying to have great interactions with landowners, and meet up and hunt with an old friend.
My East of Edmonton Bird Hunts.
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