Post your Harvest (WARNING: may be graphic)

[HeavyH]

Just before Christmas, my hunting buddy and I had an incredible day shooting.  We both limited on big ducks.  Here's my bounty... 2 "Suzies", 4 drake mallards, and one drake pintail.  Perfect conditions for a great shoot.  We started late this day, and found everyone packing out by 10am.  As we were putting on our waders in the parking lot, two disgusted guys came trudging up and said "you can have pond 3, we just left there and didn't see a duck".  Pond 3 is one of the best spots in this public hunting area, so we gladly scrambled out there and set up.  4 hours later, Tim and I had both limited.  If those guys only knew....





Here's a shot taken out of our blind.  Our decoys were totally covered with snow and we took turns between flights wading around knocking the snow off.  Didn't really seem to matter though.  One "toot" on the duck call and any ducks in the area would flock into our spread.  We call this place the "hoover" pond now.

[ASAdog]

I don't know; something about duck and geese hunters used to live me wondering: "Why would a sane person sit in muck on the edge of water or row out into the middle of water and then pray for bad weather to push the birds down?" 

I've been an upland game bird hunter for some time and love it, but when the weather turns nasty I look for a warm and dry spot to wait it out.

Maybe you can convince me I've been missing out on something? Maybe it's just "A bad day hunting is better than a good day working around the house" type of thing? 

BTW, congrats on what appears to be a successful hunt. 

In Pursuit,

[HeavyH]

Here's how I think about it: We're gonna get the bad weather here in the PNW, that is certain.  It is really nice to actually hope for nasty weather for recreational purposes.  It makes the winter go by really quickly.  Imagine sitting stationary in a 25 degree snow storm with about 8 inches of cold gooey muck surrounding your boots.  You look over at your hunting buddy, who is sittiing there like "Hatchet Jack" (from Jeremiah Johnson).  You have a soaking wet wiggling mass of black labrador retriever rubbing all all over you, doing his best to pursuade you for just one more bite of that sandwich.  The coffee is long gone, (dog tipped over your thermos and cup as a kamakazi flight of teal bombarded you a while ago).  You have on at least 8 inches of waders, shirts, long underwear, more shirts, coats, etc, so relieving what coffee you did get down is all but out of the question (ill let you think on that one... ) As you sit there in your misery, you realize it's not the elements that are making you miserable. Its the fact that next week, a warm front is coming in, and they are expecting warmer weather and blue sky.  I love days like this.  I live for them.  If the wind would only blow a little harder...

[ASAdog]

Imagine sitting stationary in a 25 degree snow storm with about 8 inches of cold gooey muck surrounding your boots.  You look over at your hunting buddy, who is sittiing there like "Hatchet Jack" (from Jeremiah Johnson).  You have a soaking wet wiggling mass of black labrador retriever rubbing all all over you, doing his best to pursuade you for just one more bite of that sandwich.  The coffee is long gone, (dog tipped over your thermos and cup as a kamakazi flight of teal bombarded you a while ago).  You have on at least 8 inches of waders, shirts, long underwear, more shirts, coats, etc, so relieving what coffee you did get down is all but out of the question (ill let you think on that one... ) … I love days like this.  I live for them.  If the wind would only blow a little harder...

(Emphasis added by ASAdog)

LOL! Yep, what I thought “Why would a sane person…”.

Just joking, I’m sure I would probably enjoy if I tried it. 

And again, congrats.

Peace,

[LuckyI3]

We got three quail and two ring necks week after Christmas but I did not take any photo's  still had some snow on the ground but it was warming up and the rain moved in

[Ghosth]

Well I've had just about as many bluebird days that were good as foul ones.

To me it was all about the challenge of fooling the birds, not about the weather.
Best single hunting day of my life was in November, sloughs had 1/4 to 1/2 an inch of ice on all but the biggest sloughs.

We broke ice in the canoe for at least 400 yards to hit open water.
Set up in a cattail island that had a small lee pocket of open water. Dropped in the decoys and started calling.
Clear and cold, with just a few high cirrus clouds, and a stiff north breeze cold enough to freeze hot coffee in minutes.

We had some action off & on most through the afternoon, bluebills and wistling ducks, a few teal. Then just before sunset we looked up and saw an amazing sight.

It looked like god had dumped a 987234657000000 gallon can of leaves up about 5000 feet up.

Then we realised that those leaves falling down were ducks, that it was a huge flock of Canadian Mallards.
More ducks than I had ever seen in my life, more ducks than I'd ever DREAMED about. Impossible to count, but it
looked to be roughly a half mile across and just thick. We had about 2 minutes of the wildest shooting in my life,
 limited out twice.  Cleaned and stashed the second limit in a Muskrat house to be picked up the next day. My Black lab
bluebell wore herself out breaking ice retrieving ducks. For every one she brought back there was 2 more down. I didn't have to say a word, just take the incoming duck and out she would go again. So eventually we packed up and headed out and my buddy
nudged me in the ribs, and motioned up.

Above us was yet another flock of I don't know, maybe 20,000 ducks, maybe 40,000 who knows. Behind that flock was another, behind that was another, and at the horizon were at least 3 more.  It felt like we were looking at every flipping duck on the N American continent. So we took a good long look at the setting sun and a sky full of ducks and headed home happy.

How many ducks? No idea, but the memory of it shines in my soul to this very day.
A good friend, a great lab, and God dumping a million ducks in our lap.

[HeavyH]

I had a day like that one time Ghosth.  We still refer to that as the "Duck Tornado" day.  They were trying to land in a freshly cut corn field.  We didn't have to hunker down or anything.  Just stand there and shoot.  Like you said, the dog didn't know which bird to retrieve.  She's be on a line to get one and 3 more would fall around her. I'm not sure... but I think we may have exceeded the bag limit that day......    

Its funny about our weather here.  Bluebird days don't seem to produce for us, well, for me personally anyway.  I watch the shows on TV and it seems that they are always hunting and doing well on blue sky days, especially in the central flyway.  Maybe its something to do with all the big water we have here.  On bluebird days, you can see thousands and thousands of ducks rafted up on the bay.  They lift off just about the time you get back to the truck at the end of the day.  We go anyway on bluebird days, but only because killing ducks is really a small part of the whole thing. 

[Ghosth]

Interesting, when I lived for a couple of years up at Warroad on Lake of the Woods it was similar to what your describing.

Ducks would sit out on the water until late afternoon. Then fly in and pretty much strip a cornfield bare, then back out to raft up on the water.

Seems to be a large body of open water thing. Where here on the plains there is no where they can sit on water that someone won't roust them out of by 8:00. Including the municipal Sewage lagoons for the small towns around the area.