All Work and No Play

Had a long day of TSI in store for us over the weekend.  Managed to get some heavy thinning done of an acre or more throughout the course of the day.  Kicked up a family group of 6 does on our way in right where we have been dropping a lot of trees earlier in the month.

The best/worst part of the whole day was that waterfowl were EVERYWHERE all day!  The sky was full of canada geese and a few big groups of snows on our way down to the farm in the morning as the sun was rising.  Once we got close to our property we started seeing ducks everywhere as well.  Found a couple picked bean fields that were full of mallards with some canadas and specks mixed in as well.  Wish we could have been set up in some layouts shooting some geese and watching the ducks funnel in, but the hard work will hopefully pay off next year.  The ducks seemed to provide some encouragement as we were working the chainsaws in our green-tree reservoir by flying over the timber all day.  Can't wait for next season already!

The pictures don't do justice for the amount of ducks and geese using the fields.  For as many there were in the air, there were several times as many sitting in the field.  Flight after flight of ducks continued to funnel in from all directions as we watched.

2010 Duck Season

The 2010 season has come to a close and looking back we had a very successful season.  It was an interesting year, as they all seem to be, in the fact we didn't see the numbers of ducks that we typically do, but the overall success and number of birds we killed was probably higher than average.  I made a goal for myself at the beginning of the season that I would always have the camera with me and document every hunt...well, I failed miserably but I was still able to get a few pictures throughout the season.

To start things off, the most memorable hunt of the year was probably the first one of the year for me...it also happened to be the first duck hunt ever for Jenny and Riley, our 13 month old yellow lab at the time.  They both got spoiled, as I was limited out in about an hour.  Jenny didn't know what to expect going in, but she truly enjoyed it and that ended up being the first of several hunts of the season that she sat in the blind or the flooded timber with me.  Riley made his first of many retrieves of the season that day.  I had worked him with mallards in the past, but he was caught off guard on his second retrieve when the greenhead was still alive.  It was quite the comical sight seeing him growl, bark, get scared of, and try to play with the crippled duck all at the same time.  After getting a few more retrieves under his belt that issue has since resolved itself thankfully, and I was extremely impressed with how he improved each hunt throughout the year.

The highlight of the year for Riley was on his last hunt of the season...we were hunting a friends pond and had a cripple make its way into the thick grass on the opposite bank.  I sent him out on a blind and he responded perfectly to a couple of hand signals I gave him to get him in the area we thought the cripple was.  He quickly came up with the greenhead and brought him back to the blind through the ice.

We left the newly diked timber dry this year in an effort to get some more work done, but we had some excellent hunts in our other two timber holes.  Unfortunately I failed to get any of those hunts on camera or video, but am looking forward to doing so next season.  To me, nothing beats having a big group of mallards funnel into a small timber opening...talk about up close and personal!

We had a few different first timers hunt our property this year and I think they are all hooked on the sport now.  Most notably, Ryan, who is a die hard deer hunter and gives me flack every year for us flooding all of the property for ducks.  We got set up late and had to leave the blind early to do some TSI work, but we managed to get a handful of ducks and Ryan got to see first hand what it's like to have a group of 250 mallards funneling into your spread.

Here's a few other pictures we took throughout the season.  Hopefully I'll do a better job next season of getting some in-hunt action photos of the birds, dogs, and hunters working in the heat of the moment.  Stay tuned, as we have some big improvement plans lined up for this off-season.  If everything goes as planned and the weather cooperates, next year should be one for the books (hopefully I didn't just jinx us by saying that)!