Gonna warm up tomorrow and it will rain and be in the 60’s for the next week. Normally I wouldn’t hunt my pond back to back but the mallards follow the freeze line. Bucks are rutting but I could care less about deer. My goal was to kill a good buck and duck hunt putting Pearl on plenty birds.
Went to Blake’s camp he has a giant brake behind him that’s private but we could shoot them from his land. Blake shot a double w one bird about 40 yards and another 20 further. He said I don’t think pearl can get the second one. I gave him that look and said I will have both on hand shortly. The heavy buck brush won’t let your dog do a good line and gets out of sight to give hand signals. Sent her on “back” and had to blow my whistle a few times and had a pretty drake in hand. Sent her back again and couple more commands and there was two drakes in hand. He was very impressed. We left and ate Mexican food in town. I said you know the difference of a good duck dog “meat dog” and a hunt tested champion? He said what, I said w a champion you get all your birds back, even very difficult blind retrieves.
this picture is the first 20 yards off the bank. It’s probably the thickest brake w buck brush that I ever seen.
this morning we dropped a mallard out past the pond about 80 yards on the ag field. I told Blake, that birds fucked. Sent her back because it was a blind retrieve, which all of them were, one correction and she chased it down on the field and returned to hand. She knocked it out the park, which didn’t surprise me but it was exciting to watch it all happen.
We also had two doe come past the pond then three doe an hour later. We joked about bringing a rifle. I told him we could’ve been like Phil Robertson and rolled a couple while filling limits.