Monday, October 23, 2006

The opening of duck season!

**WARNING!! Photos of duck carnage following!!**


The trip started off being a long one. SR didn't get home from work till after 11:00 on Fri. night. So I wasn't on the road untill quarter after. I had an hour long drive to my uncles house. Didn't get to sleep till around 1:30. Let me tell you something. 3:00 AM comes aroung pretty quick!

We drove to the refuge we were to hunt and got all signed in. Let me tell you. I love having a reservation! We walked to the blind, set out our decoys, and still had 45 minutes to drink coffee and watch the sun come up before it was shoot time. We even had time to watch the shooting stars. We saw about 7 in 30 minutes. Not like going on in the sweatline where your rushing to get all your gear out before shooting time. As is usual on opening day some bozzo was shooting 5 minutes before legal time. When legal time hit though My uncle and I had 2 mallards locked in on us. My uncle got up and shot first. Missed. I shot second and stoned my bird. As I am climbing out of the blind my uncle says hold still. We have 2 more birds locked on our decoys. My uncle misses again. I hit my target. My uncle gets out and goes after the first bird. I go after the second. I look for about 20 minutes and can't find it. So I go back to the blind and wait for the sun to come up some more. It was simply amazing. For the first 2 hours of the morning the skies were just full of birds. We missed quite a few opportunities on teal. Those birds are fast as hell. We passed on all the spoonies we saw. Opening morning is NOT the day to be slumming on spoon bills. My uncle downed 2 birds for himself as well. After the flight died down we both got out of the blind to look for my lost bird. We searched for over an hour. Could not even find feathers where it hit the ground. The thing that got me was that it was on dry land. No tules around at all.

We ended the hunt around 11:00 and drove back to my uncles house. I talked to my aunt for a little bit and drove home. SR and I went shopping for youngest son's birthday presents.

That folks is how my wonderful weekend went. I get to do it all over again next weekend. I'm going to go hunt next weekend in the Sacramento valley for their opener as well. Can't wait.

Without further ado here is the carnage photos along with a few others from the day.


Well I WAS going to post photos but Blogger once again is being a bitch and won't let me upload any pics. So they will have to wait for another time.

6 comments:

Lori said...

I opened your blog and it looks just like mine! I guess good minds think alike. : )

Sir Dirty Joke said...

damn blogger! try www.photobucket.com for image uploading etc.

FTN said...

I was soooo hoping for some good ole fashioned duck carnage today.

Anonymous said...

Can't wait to see your pictures. I have lots of dead pheasant pics from last weekend myself.

Get a dog!!!

ArtfulDodger said...

Duck season! Oh man, talk about a let down... where's the duck carnage? Glad you had a good time.

Confused Husband said...

lori Thanks!

dirty joke sir Thanks for the address. I'll have to give that a try next time Blogger pisses me off.

ftn Well you don't need to wait no more. I got them up and ready for viewing. Sorry to have dissapointed you.

lbp So where's those pheasant pics? We've still got 3 more weekends before we can hunt them here. Can't wait though. I got me some private land to hunt and am working on 2 more pieces of land. One is 900 acres of corn. The other is 1600 acres of alfalfa, corn, safflower, and asparugus.

I want a dog so badly! But the 700 price tag is a bit more than I can afford at the moment. Not to count the training fees as well.

Mr. H Sorry. Don't hunt wabbits.

Art It was a good time. Can't wait to do it again this weekend.
CH