North Dakota 2012 Recap (pic HEAVY)

[jagermeister]

We made it back to Ohio on Saturday morning, and I'm just now getting caught up on sleep and husband duties around the house. lol To say this trip was epic would be a gross understatement! What a blast!

My group (7 of us) met up in Clyde last Friday, and started heading west around 4:30 p.m. We drove all through the night, stopping only for fuel and occassionally food too. I believe the trip out there was about 17 hours. We stayed at a farmer's house near the southern border of North Dakota. He has a basement apartment that he rents out to a few groups each year. It turned out to be a great place to stay for the week... Plenty comfortable, fully-functional yet not too nice so we were afraid of getting things dirty, and a place to clean/store birds. Best of all, the farmer was very willing to help us get on the birds. The first day, he drove me around to show me all the properties we'd have access to... 1000's of acres, all within a few miles of the house. It was sweet.

The first morning (Sunday), we set up in a cut corn field adjacent to a large slough on some WPA ground. The afternoon before I watched quite a few ducks and geese flying over it.

We ended up getting 13 or 14 birds that morning... including a snow and 3 beautiful bull wigeons.

My buddy Zak with one of the wigeon...

While hunting that field, we watched a ton of mallards pour into the slough just to the north of us, so the next morning that's where we headed. Unfortunately, the birds didn't cooperate very well. They seemed to be unusually-wise to the decoys, and we had a rough time finishing birds. We did however scratch out 6 or 8 mallards that morning. Not bad, but we were still figuring things out...

Gunther. He made a LOT of retrieves this past week. What a great dog...

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[jagermeister]

That afternoon, we decided that we needed to put some rubber to the pavement and do some serious scouting to find the "X." We covered a lot of ground, roughly 150 miles or so, only to discover that the best spots were within 3 miles of the house we were staying at.

Quite a few of these out there...

And quite a few of these too!...

Finally, toward the end of our scouting trip, we hit the motherload...

[video=youtube;-J6JdE195bs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J6JdE195bs&feature=plcp[/video]

Yep, those were all mallards. :smiley_bril:


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[Longdraw]

Keep'em coming!!!!!!!!!

 

[jagermeister]

The snow geese were also out of this world. I've never seen so many in my life...

[video=youtube;Q-LqrACbjTE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-LqrACbjTE&feature=plcp[/video]

 

[jagermeister]

And some more...

[video=youtube;-lNvMffEpPQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lNvMffEpPQ&feature=plcp[/video]

 

[Carpn]

Awesome stuff man .

 

[jagermeister]

Anyhow, back to the field full of mallards...

We decided that the afternoon would be the best time to hit the field, so we slept in and headed out around noon-thirty. This field was bordering a loafing slough, just across the road from the field we hunted a couple days before. This one was nice though because we could drive right out to our setup.

We had the blinds brushed-in really well...

During this hunt, we experienced some major highs and lows. For the first 4 hours, we didn't have a single duck give us a look. We watched as hundreds and hundreds dropped into the slough to our south. For 4 hours we laid there thinking we were going to get skunked. Then, with only 40 minutes of shooting light left, all hell broke loose!

Normally, one would prefer small groups of ducks to pour into your field spread, so as to increase the shooting opportunities. On this hunt, yea... that wasn't happening. lol The first flock came across that slough and absolutely poured right into our laps. There were 150+ birds, tornadoing down on us. At one point, I could have reached out of my blind and grabbed a hen mallard by the throat. If you've never experienced anything like this, you are seriously missing something incredible. The deafening sound of the gliding wings and hen greeting quacks, and relentless mallard chattering, is something that I will never forget.

In the last 40 minutes of shooting light, 4 flocks showed up... and not a one had less than 150 birds in it. I'd guess the biggest flock had close to 300 ducks dropping in on top of us. 4 vollies, 5 guys, and we packed up with 17 mallards to our credit. It was an unbelievable hunt... Certainly one of the highlights of the trip, and of my waterfowling career.

My buddy being a wise-ass... literally... lmao

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[Fluteman]

Great so far Jim, keep it coming!

 

[jagermeister]

Just to add a little icing on the cake of that awesome field hunt, I came up with a new use for trail cameras. I had the idea to take along my Bushnell TC and set it up behind the blinds on a tripod, with the hopes of capturing some extra moments of the hunt.

I had no idea it would work so well...

Getting set up...

Messing around during the lull. It was so windy, we were throwing corn cobs up into the wind like boomerangs...

Birds were flying... better hurry back to the blinds!

Damn this sun! I can't see shit!

And finally, the good stuff...

I was so pumped when I saw these pics on the laptop. I couldn't believe it worked just like I had hoped it would. Those are some shots that only a separate cameraman can capture...


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[jagermeister]

We decided to do another afternoon hunt the next day, so that freed up some pheasant hunting time in the morning. I've never really done much pheasant hunting, so I didn't really know what to expect. But man was it fun! We flushed a lot of birds out there. Out of one cattail patch alone I'd say we had 30 flushes or so. But the thing is, those wild birds are incredibly smart! They rarely hold long enough for a dog to point solid. They flush way out in front of you, and if you don't have blockers set up you are wasting your time! We didn't get very many, only half a dozen or so, but it was still a great change of pace for us all.

One hell of a rub that I found in a fencerow. I tell you what, those North Dakota deer are HUGE! The one night I saw what appeared to be 3 cows running across a corn field... Then I put up the binos and realized they were deer! The body size of their deer out there is unreal.

My buddy Jake with an awesome rooster. Check out those hooks!

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[bowhunter1023]

I'll check this out in depth tomorrow, but I like what I see so far! :smiley_clap: I'm jealous as hell of the trip as it may be in my top 2-3 dream hunts. You'll have to come back and chase turkeys with me so you can sell me on the trip first hand!

 

[Mike]

So freaking cool! Thanks for posting. I especially like the trail cam pics!

 

[jagermeister]

After the pheasant hunt, we headed to the same property as the afternoon before... only, this time, we were setting up for a water/field combo hunt, in hopes of shooting birds a little bit earlier.

View from the blinds...

This hunt turned out awesome as well. The birds were working perfectly into our spread by 1 o'clock. We did have a little bit of a lull around 3, but it picked back up toward the end. Some of the ducks wanted to finish in the water directly in front, whereas a lot of the other mallards wanted into the corn behind us. This worked out great because, obviously the water shots were right in front and, the ducks working the corn were straight up over our heads.

We scratched out 20 mallards on this hunt.

Doesn't get much better than this in big sky country...

My view while picking up decoys...

Awesome group hero shot...

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[jagermeister]

A random pile of ducks... lol

What do we do with all the duck meat you might ask? Well, we actually ate a lot of it while on the trip. We ate duck 2 or 3 nights and also made a few batches of duck jerky. One of the guys from the other group staying with us was pretty impressed by our duck cleaning operation. We all hunt together a lot, so we've developed a really efficient system for breasting out birds. 2 guys peel the skin back and pass them down, while me and my buddy Zak cut out the breasts and throw them into a bowl. We were cleaning the other group's birds for them as well. One night we timed it... We breasted out 30 ducks and 1 pheasant in 8 minutes 20 seconds. lol

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On the second to last day, we set up another water/corn combo hunt at the same place. This turned out to be a poor decision. I think we only got 4 or 5 ducks on this hunt. I think we shot the spot out much quicker than we anticipated.

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[jagermeister]

On the final morning, we joined forces with the other group staying at the house. They had located a couple tiny sloughs in between a roost pothole and a food source, which was perfect for a morning hunt. The other group was actually my boss and few of his buddies. I joined up with them for the last hoorah of the trip. Our two groups were hunting only a few hundred yards apart, though.

We had just a small decoy spread, maybe a dozen or so mallards with 2 mojos, facing into a stiff northeast headwind on the calm side of the slough. It began to snow, and then soon after it began to rain ducks! lol They were pouring into our spread just perfectly. I had to coax a few groups in with aggressive calling, but for the most part they were all pretty receptive to the subtle stuff. We truly ended the trip on a great note. In our slough (5 of us hunting) we shot 21 ducks, consisting of mallards, 2 drake pinnies, a drake redhead, and 3 shovelers. We also had a group of lesser canada geese come in low over the horizon. I gave them some subtle clucks and moans and they stayed low until they were right over top of us. We managed to get 3 of them. If you've never shot a lesser, they're pretty cool... They look just like a regular canada goose, only they're about the size of a large mallard duck. So our group got 24 birds that morning, and the other group got 15. 39 ducks/geese total on the last hunt of the trip was pretty damn awesome!

The slough we were hunting, looking from the downwind side...

Me and my buddy Steve...

Group shot back at the house. It was raining and unfortunately the camera lens kept getting wet. Oh well...

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Thanks for taking the time to look through all of this. I couldn't wait to share it with you guys. This was without a doubt one of the best hunting trips I've ever been on. For a waterfowl hunter especially, I don't think it gets much better. We timed the migration absolutely perfectly, IMO. And best of all, it was all self-guided and cheap! With gas, food, licenses, the whole nine yards... each guy spent about $630. Not bad for the trip of a lifetime!

I can't wait to go back!

Totals for the week... My group (7 guys) shot 85 birds and the other group (4 guys) shot around 40 or so. Not too shabby!

 

[Dannmann801]

Well JB I gotta say, I'm not a waterfowler but that was an awesome writeup and pics!
Glad to hear you did so well, sounds like a perfect trip.
Loved those sunset pics!
And this pic was just the epitome of coolness -

 

[dante322]

Dude!!!.....

Thats so freakin cool!...

I say it again, Why do you guys do this shit to me?!
Do I have the funds to start a new hobby like waterfowling!?
NO!
But am I getting really, really close to trying it!?....



....YEAH!!!


Congrats on what sounds like a great trip Jim.

 

[dante322]

http://www.theohiooutdoors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=11256&d=1352765391&thumb=1

yeah, i like that one too. Its like mack daddy duck killa

 

[hickslawns]

Not my thing, but looked like a great time JB. Loved the sunset pictures. Loved the trail camera idea and looks like it worked out very well. Glad you had an amazing trip!

 

[brock ratcliff]

Great write up JB. Looks like a great time for sure!