Anybody jacked up about huntin' ducks?

[One Track]

Damn. I can't get it out of my mind. I'm jonesin' bad!

What does the Farmer's Almanac say about this year's weather? I'm hoping WA and OR freeze over next week!

C'mon!

[Enfuego]

Im super pumped. Ali just left for the Kern opener.

[BluefinCurly]

I'm ready!

[sdbrewer]

I'm contemplating a 10 hour drive to Sacramento (from San Diego) for a Sunday draw on a little-know public refuge. I'd say I'm pumped and a little crazy. The drive up won't be the problem, it's getting back that will be the

[One Track]

Yah, that's a haul. Make it last. Shoot bulls.

[sdbrewer]

Yep. It's a haul but when it comes together it can be awesome. This is a write up from January of '07 about one of my trips to Sac. It's a long read but since we're on a "fired up" thread, maybe it will help:

Last Saturday, I hunted LDC on the #1 reservation with Dad. We took a blind that is a LONG walk from the parking lot (about 1.5 miles I’ve been told). The moon was full and we had a pleasant walk out with our headlamps off for much of the time. The path winds through trees along a creek for much of the way. We heard an big old owl hooting at us and twice an animal jumped into the creek as we passed and made a very loud splash. I think it may have been a beaver slapping its tale on the water as it went in but really don’t know for sure. The noise was loud enough and close enough to give me a little start both times.

The blind is a three man pit blind on an island with the long axis oriented east-west. The closed zone was to the north. There were stands of tulles on the east and west ends of the island but the north and south sides were completely devoid of cover. You are required to hunt from the blind and concealment was the biggest problem that day. The pit blind was basically in the middle of a mud circle 30 to 40 feet in diameter. Although there was some cover around the blind that past hunters had left, it was in pretty poor shape and mashed down into the mud. I gathered up some more cover and did my best to conceal the blind. My Dad brought along a GHG “harvester pack” of a dozen FB mallards in various poses that he purchased for the trip. That really saved the day as we set them on the edge of the water and put the resters and sleepers up closer to the blind. I believe those decoys went a long way toward helping us get our birds. The pond has quite a bit of open water around the blind then goes to some kind of low cover that sticks up only a couple of feet above the water. Cocklebur and something else. I was kind of surprised that there weren’t more tulles around.

I started out with most of the spread (about three dozen floaters consisting of a dozen mallards and about four to six each of spooneys, teal, gadwall, sprig and widgeon) to the south, east and west of the blind hoping to look like part of the closed zone and figuring that if the birds were decoy shy, they would flair over the blind rather than in front of it. I put only the mallards out in front of the blind on the east and west sides leaving a large open pond to the north directly in front of the blind.

As first light came, there were a lot of birds in the air but nothing worked in particularly well. The birds weren’t responding all that well to my calling. We also were holding off at first light knowing that we had all day and not wanting to take a hen pin early by mistake. As it got lighter, it became clear that the birds were flaring off of the mud island we were on. The birds were locking up 100+ yds away and coming right in but when they got to about 50 yds or so, they would veer off. Not a violent flair, just a sideways slide out of range. Of course, some did come it to 40 or 30 yds and we eventually were seduced into taking those shots. After a while (and too many shots), I got out and moved some of the spread further north but still leaving a large opening in front of the blind. I also moved the full bodies around on the island making them more visible and several of them quite a bit closer to the blind (“all is well, there is nothing to fear here, all is calm, don’t be afraid little ducky; come, sit and rest a while”). That move got a higher percentage of the birds in to the 30 to 40 yard zone but still didn’t produce really good close decoying shots. Dad and I were not shooting particularly well at that range and, being a little slow on the uptake (and perhaps a little lazy at the time) we found ourselves pretty much out of shells by about 9 a.m. (shoot time was at 7). To be honest, I really didn’t feel like I had my duck mojo working particularly well at the start of the day. I’m not really sure what was going on but the bottom line was we went through fifty rounds and had only two gadwall to show for it. Given that we had the #1 reservation, I was frankly a little worried (perhaps the pressure was getting to me). Anyway, we took the long walk back to the truck, made some sandwiches, got some more shells and took it all back out to the blind.

We could see lots of birds dumping in to the cover in the closed zone in front of us. I reworked the spread again, moving more decoys up to the front of the blind and some actually quite far away (maybe 40 or 50 yds up in front on the edge of the cover that formed the closed zone). I think I ended up with just a pair of spooneys behind the blind where the spread started out and everything else off to the sides and in front, still leaving a large opening right in front of the blind. Once we got settled back in, it was clear that the last move made a big difference. We started getting nice 20 yd shots and I quickly dropped two birds (a gadwall and a drake mallard) each with only one shot. My mojo was back (thank goodness). My Dad shot at the mallard and I’m sure he missed but he claimed the bird anyway. I just smiled and said OK. So the gadwalls started working beautifully and we dropped several of them. I was shooting just drakes but my Dad was a little less discriminating. In a bit, we had a big bull sprig work in beautifully.

Now, the bull sprig has been my proverbial “white wale” for quite some time. I think they are absolutely beautiful and they taste great. There are tons of them down at Wister and folks shoot them quite regularly. Despite several years of hunting, I was yet to shoot a completely uncontested, no questions asked bull sprig of my own. I’ve had countless opportunities and something has always gone wrong. Usually, I miss. They seem to have a certain energy when I shoot at them that causes my pattern to simply fly right by them without so much as a shiver from the bird. Last season, I was hunting with my friend Rey when we got a very nice, close shot on a beautiful sprig. Rey shot first and missed, I shot and the bird went down (I was already well into my quest for a bull sprig at this point). I was stoked. I thought the white whale was finally dead. That’s when Rey starts celebrating. “Why are you so happy?” I ask. “Didn’t you see that shot?” he replies “I plugged him.” Apparently, Rey took a second shot at the same time I took my first. I knew I hit that bird, but apparently he thought he did as well. Since Rey was a good friend who had not been hunting as long as I had, I (somewhat) happily let him claim the bird. The quest has continued since then.

The quest ended at LDC. This guy worked in beautifully and I dropped him dead in a single shot. Gorgeous bird in full color with a nice long tail. The white wale is officially dead and sprig no longer hold any power over me.

The day went on and I was amazed at how consistent the birds were. There were very, very few times that there weren’t birds in the air that were potentially workable. Despite being absolutely starving, it took me nearly an hour to eat my first sandwich because I kept having to put it down to call or shoot (working a mallard hen call with a dry mouth is all but impossible). A speck that was clearly crippled flew into our pond and landed about 60 or 70 yards from the blind in cover. It came in from the closed zone and no one came looking for it during the ten or fifteen minutes that I waited (to be honest, I had a hidden motive for waiting – with the birds dumping into the closed zone 75 to 100 yards in front of us, they were pulling a lot of birds off of our spread; I figured that the speck gave me a perfect excuse to walk over there and get the birds up and out of there leaving us as the only show in town at least for a little while; accordingly, I was waiting for the right time). Specks are tasty and without any speck decoys and being only a marginal speck caller (and that’s being generous), I had no qualms about eventually hopping out of the blind and going to see if I could collect him. I walked over to where he landed and he went thrashing away deeper into the closed zone. Not wanting to go running all over the closed zone, I shot him in the back of the head at about fifteen yards or so. It was a little gruesome but it sure did the trick. He was young and I’m sure he’ll be tasty.

Despite the fact that the gadwall, spoonies and sprig were working very nicely, the mallards still were not consistently buying the program. By this time, it was getting to be about 3 p.m. Shoot time ended at about 5. We were down to perhaps ten shells between the two of us and the roundtrip to the car takes 30 to 40 minutes. My Dad had his sprig and we could probably have finished our limits on gadwall with the shells we had left. I decided, however, that I had shot enough gadwall and wanted to see what I could do to get the mallards to work in (not arrogance, I just like a challenge). I could turn them with my call but they generally wouldn’t work in past a marginal shot. The wind had really slowed and I thought my jerk cord might be just the ticket. It was, however, hopelessly tangled. I developed my action plan; go get another 25 shells from the car (that should be plenty for both of us as we both only had a few birds to go to finish out our limit), get the jerk cord working and see if I couldn’t shoot a couple of mallards to finish off the day. I made the long walk (I walked a total of nine miles that day, three of them pulling the cart), got back and went to work on the jerk cord. Got it sorted out and stretched it out in front of the blind on the east edge of the large landing zone and hooked up two mallards. I left the weights on hoping that they might stir up some mud when I moved them. The jerk cord I use is based on four or five feet of surgical tubing so the decoys have a good 10 or 15 feet of “swimming” motion.

Shortly after I got back in the blind, we had a group of specks fly over at about thirty yards. I shot at the one with the most bars and he went right down. Mmmmmmmm, two specks! After collecting him, the mallards really started working and we managed to get a pair to come right over at about twenty yards. I dropped the drake. After collecting him, we had some more birds work in but many of them were pintails. The light was beginning to change and fade and I was dog tired (we didn’t have a dog so I collected all of the birds throughout the day as well as doing the trip to the car twice). Accordingly, I was a little worried that I might make a mistake and shoot a pintail or some other stupid move. The bottom line is that both my Dad and I decided we had done enough damage for one day and we packed it in with about a half hour left to go. I ended up with three gadwall, a bull sprig (yay!), a drake mallard and two specks. My dad had exactly the same birds except no geese. The packing up and hauling the cart back was brutal but we made it eventually. I slept very well that night.

[Rubberhook2]

I am on my way to Kern taking my son on his first duck hunt. We drew number 9...

[el Toro]

It's big game season people. What's a duck?

[zigzag]

Lets do Argentina are better yet pichilla club Cullican Mx Its nothing to shoot 25 to 50 ducks a day.Thats a limit.Snow Geese bring your 22 they are way up there.If you ever do Argentina your spoiled for life.i use to live in Grass Valley and a good friend of mine ran the Richvale Gun Club Sac valley.We had the best spots the best every thing and nothing compares to Cullucan MX and Argentina are the Shit guys .Little pricey but doable on a budget.By the way no deeks required only ammo amd two guns .

[Fresh One]

Your new handle is One Crack cause your addicted!!!

I'm getting excited. Let's hope we get some good Barrett numbers.

[Jeff B.]

Originally Posted by sdbrewer

I'm contemplating a 10 hour drive to Sacramento (from San Diego) for a Sunday draw on a little-know public refuge. I'd say I'm pumped and a little crazy. The drive up won't be the problem, it's getting back that will be the

Stone Lakes? Yolo Bypass?

[Shocktower]

Originally Posted by sdbrewer

Yep. It's a haul but when it comes together it can be awesome. This is a write up from January of '07 about one of my trips to Sac. It's a long read but since we're on a "fired up" thread, maybe it will help:

Last Saturday, I hunted LDC on the #1 reservation with Dad. We took a blind that is a LONG walk from the parking lot (about 1.5 miles I’ve been told). The moon was full and we had a pleasant walk out with our headlamps off for much of the time. The path winds through trees along a creek for much of the way. We heard an big old owl hooting at us and twice an animal jumped into the creek as we passed and made a very loud splash. I think it may have been a beaver slapping its tale on the water as it went in but really don’t know for sure. The noise was loud enough and close enough to give me a little start both times.

The blind is a three man pit blind on an island with the long axis oriented east-west. The closed zone was to the north. There were stands of tulles on the east and west ends of the island but the north and south sides were completely devoid of cover. You are required to hunt from the blind and concealment was the biggest problem that day. The pit blind was basically in the middle of a mud circle 30 to 40 feet in diameter. Although there was some cover around the blind that past hunters had left, it was in pretty poor shape and mashed down into the mud. I gathered up some more cover and did my best to conceal the blind. My Dad brought along a GHG “harvester pack” of a dozen FB mallards in various poses that he purchased for the trip. That really saved the day as we set them on the edge of the water and put the resters and sleepers up closer to the blind. I believe those decoys went a long way toward helping us get our birds. The pond has quite a bit of open water around the blind then goes to some kind of low cover that sticks up only a couple of feet above the water. Cocklebur and something else. I was kind of surprised that there weren’t more tulles around.

I started out with most of the spread (about three dozen floaters consisting of a dozen mallards and about four to six each of spooneys, teal, gadwall, sprig and widgeon) to the south, east and west of the blind hoping to look like part of the closed zone and figuring that if the birds were decoy shy, they would flair over the blind rather than in front of it. I put only the mallards out in front of the blind on the east and west sides leaving a large open pond to the north directly in front of the blind.

As first light came, there were a lot of birds in the air but nothing worked in particularly well. The birds weren’t responding all that well to my calling. We also were holding off at first light knowing that we had all day and not wanting to take a hen pin early by mistake. As it got lighter, it became clear that the birds were flaring off of the mud island we were on. The birds were locking up 100+ yds away and coming right in but when they got to about 50 yds or so, they would veer off. Not a violent flair, just a sideways slide out of range. Of course, some did come it to 40 or 30 yds and we eventually were seduced into taking those shots. After a while (and too many shots), I got out and moved some of the spread further north but still leaving a large opening in front of the blind. I also moved the full bodies around on the island making them more visible and several of them quite a bit closer to the blind (“all is well, there is nothing to fear here, all is calm, don’t be afraid little ducky; come, sit and rest a while”). That move got a higher percentage of the birds in to the 30 to 40 yard zone but still didn’t produce really good close decoying shots. Dad and I were not shooting particularly well at that range and, being a little slow on the uptake (and perhaps a little lazy at the time) we found ourselves pretty much out of shells by about 9 a.m. (shoot time was at 7). To be honest, I really didn’t feel like I had my duck mojo working particularly well at the start of the day. I’m not really sure what was going on but the bottom line was we went through fifty rounds and had only two gadwall to show for it. Given that we had the #1 reservation, I was frankly a little worried (perhaps the pressure was getting to me). Anyway, we took the long walk back to the truck, made some sandwiches, got some more shells and took it all back out to the blind.

We could see lots of birds dumping in to the cover in the closed zone in front of us. I reworked the spread again, moving more decoys up to the front of the blind and some actually quite far away (maybe 40 or 50 yds up in front on the edge of the cover that formed the closed zone). I think I ended up with just a pair of spooneys behind the blind where the spread started out and everything else off to the sides and in front, still leaving a large opening right in front of the blind. Once we got settled back in, it was clear that the last move made a big difference. We started getting nice 20 yd shots and I quickly dropped two birds (a gadwall and a drake mallard) each with only one shot. My mojo was back (thank goodness). My Dad shot at the mallard and I’m sure he missed but he claimed the bird anyway. I just smiled and said OK. So the gadwalls started working beautifully and we dropped several of them. I was shooting just drakes but my Dad was a little less discriminating. In a bit, we had a big bull sprig work in beautifully.

Now, the bull sprig has been my proverbial “white wale” for quite some time. I think they are absolutely beautiful and they taste great. There are tons of them down at Wister and folks shoot them quite regularly. Despite several years of hunting, I was yet to shoot a completely uncontested, no questions asked bull sprig of my own. I’ve had countless opportunities and something has always gone wrong. Usually, I miss. They seem to have a certain energy when I shoot at them that causes my pattern to simply fly right by them without so much as a shiver from the bird. Last season, I was hunting with my friend Rey when we got a very nice, close shot on a beautiful sprig. Rey shot first and missed, I shot and the bird went down (I was already well into my quest for a bull sprig at this point). I was stoked. I thought the white whale was finally dead. That’s when Rey starts celebrating. “Why are you so happy?” I ask. “Didn’t you see that shot?” he replies “I plugged him.” Apparently, Rey took a second shot at the same time I took my first. I knew I hit that bird, but apparently he thought he did as well. Since Rey was a good friend who had not been hunting as long as I had, I (somewhat) happily let him claim the bird. The quest has continued since then.

The quest ended at LDC. This guy worked in beautifully and I dropped him dead in a single shot. Gorgeous bird in full color with a nice long tail. The white wale is officially dead and sprig no longer hold any power over me.

The day went on and I was amazed at how consistent the birds were. There were very, very few times that there weren’t birds in the air that were potentially workable. Despite being absolutely starving, it took me nearly an hour to eat my first sandwich because I kept having to put it down to call or shoot (working a mallard hen call with a dry mouth is all but impossible). A speck that was clearly crippled flew into our pond and landed about 60 or 70 yards from the blind in cover. It came in from the closed zone and no one came looking for it during the ten or fifteen minutes that I waited (to be honest, I had a hidden motive for waiting – with the birds dumping into the closed zone 75 to 100 yards in front of us, they were pulling a lot of birds off of our spread; I figured that the speck gave me a perfect excuse to walk over there and get the birds up and out of there leaving us as the only show in town at least for a little while; accordingly, I was waiting for the right time). Specks are tasty and without any speck decoys and being only a marginal speck caller (and that’s being generous), I had no qualms about eventually hopping out of the blind and going to see if I could collect him. I walked over to where he landed and he went thrashing away deeper into the closed zone. Not wanting to go running all over the closed zone, I shot him in the back of the head at about fifteen yards or so. It was a little gruesome but it sure did the trick. He was young and I’m sure he’ll be tasty.

Despite the fact that the gadwall, spoonies and sprig were working very nicely, the mallards still were not consistently buying the program. By this time, it was getting to be about 3 p.m. Shoot time ended at about 5. We were down to perhaps ten shells between the two of us and the roundtrip to the car takes 30 to 40 minutes. My Dad had his sprig and we could probably have finished our limits on gadwall with the shells we had left. I decided, however, that I had shot enough gadwall and wanted to see what I could do to get the mallards to work in (not arrogance, I just like a challenge). I could turn them with my call but they generally wouldn’t work in past a marginal shot. The wind had really slowed and I thought my jerk cord might be just the ticket. It was, however, hopelessly tangled. I developed my action plan; go get another 25 shells from the car (that should be plenty for both of us as we both only had a few birds to go to finish out our limit), get the jerk cord working and see if I couldn’t shoot a couple of mallards to finish off the day. I made the long walk (I walked a total of nine miles that day, three of them pulling the cart), got back and went to work on the jerk cord. Got it sorted out and stretched it out in front of the blind on the east edge of the large landing zone and hooked up two mallards. I left the weights on hoping that they might stir up some mud when I moved them. The jerk cord I use is based on four or five feet of surgical tubing so the decoys have a good 10 or 15 feet of “swimming” motion.

Shortly after I got back in the blind, we had a group of specks fly over at about thirty yards. I shot at the one with the most bars and he went right down. Mmmmmmmm, two specks! After collecting him, the mallards really started working and we managed to get a pair to come right over at about twenty yards. I dropped the drake. After collecting him, we had some more birds work in but many of them were pintails. The light was beginning to change and fade and I was dog tired (we didn’t have a dog so I collected all of the birds throughout the day as well as doing the trip to the car twice). Accordingly, I was a little worried that I might make a mistake and shoot a pintail or some other stupid move. The bottom line is that both my Dad and I decided we had done enough damage for one day and we packed it in with about a half hour left to go. I ended up with three gadwall, a bull sprig (yay!), a drake mallard and two specks. My dad had exactly the same birds except no geese. The packing up and hauling the cart back was brutal but we made it eventually. I slept very well that night.

Fucking AAAA dude I could not read al of what you wrote ,I saw Geese today ,I wanna eat them