Guy I work with shot an old squaw on Wednesday.
(Gonna make this long so yall can get the FULL effect of my experience today
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As for my hunt today, we (JMMyers and myself) had a great plan. Most, if not all of the small water is locked up right now with ice. And the larger lakes have all but a few open spots. Unfortunately I do not have time durign the week to scout my spots as they are far away. But, I scoped this place out last year, and hunted it earlier this year and managed a few woodies. It's a large creek and the spot where we set up this morning is a little back water. We had to haul all our gear about a mile through the snow to get there this morning, which sucked. Once we got there, the hole was iced over with about 2+ inches of ice, so we set to breaking it away. We got there early planning to break some, so it ALMOST worked out perfect. We broke the ice up and sent it down the stream, and had our dekes out just as shooting light came about. As we were sitting there brushing in our spots and distributing ammo, Jimmy looks at me and says I heard a bird just land in our set. I never heard it, but I tossed him a shell and said go kill it. So, he put a stalk on, and the drake mallard jumps up, but Jimmy never gets a shot because he had a bush/shrub/tree in front of him. Regardless, a very promising start to the morning.... saw 2 birds flying away from us off in the distance about 2 minutes later.... then that was it.... nothing... nadda, zilch, zip.... Anyways, the dekes kept locking up in ice, so we took turns loosening em up. (Why not, right? Not like we were seeing any birds!!!) So, about 8:30/9:00 rolls around, and it's my turn to wrestle up some ice. And I tell you what, I was kickin' that ice's butt!!!! Freakin kickin it, and pushin it, and just goin' to TOWN son! I get to the edge of the hole where it starts to turn into swamp (read mud, THICK mud!) , and there are still a few larger chunks of ice in the mix as well. I step with my left foot, and sink into muck about 3/4 of the way to my knee. It throws me off balance so I go to steady myself with my right foot, but there is a big a$$ chunk of ice that has different plans. I catch my ankle on the floe, just as my balance is reaching tipping point, and I am done. With my right hand firmly grasped around the receiver of my shotgun, I proceed to thrust it a foot under a nasty mix of mud, water and ice, mimicking the same motion with my gloved and empty left hand. I emit a string of colorful language as I am forced to drive my gun deeper into the mire as my only option outside of just laying my entire body into the muck and take what seems like an eternity to resurrect myself from the suck of the goo. I eventually got up, with both gloves soaked. The minute that gun hit the air, every bit of water and mud instantly turned to ice, including all that was lodged in the barrel. I couldn't even work the pump to unchamber the rounds, nor could I eject the rounds from the tube magazine. Needless to say, our hunt (oh, our miserable hunt!) was ended abruptly, as I had already gotten my back-up gloves wet, and there was no way for me to even THINK about firing my weapon. Had it not been for the fact that I was wet and without gloves, I probably would have toughed it out for Jimmy, but that, combined with absolutely no waterfowl movement (we saw nothing in the distance, and there was not even a goose fart to be heard!) we made the decision to pack up and make the return mile-long trek out of the snow.
I really did think this would come together this morning. The creek is just off one of those large lakes with a few open spots. In fact, we even drove past and there were tons of ducks in them. They just weren't flying over our spot. I think that if this had been my first duck hunt, it would have probably also been my last. But, it wasn't, so it's not. I won't be going out tomorrow (I need the rest) and I will be deer hunting next weekend, so I will be ending my duck season (at least in the north zone) with a cold, muddy, icy and wet fizzle as opposed to a big bang (or any freakin' bang for that matter, sheesh!!!!)
