Quack, Quack Boom!
I read through most of the big game, don't want to walk around all day and pack heavy things posts and think you all need to consider duck hunting. I love it. Here is a typical duck hunt for me.
Drive to the boat ramp, put the boat in and run out about 6 miles to one of many spots, set up a dozen or so decoys, hide the boat, wait for the sun to come up and start blasting. The dog retrieves the game to hand, stack um up until we are limited out or tired of waiting, load up the boat and run back in.
It is much less work than the walking thing.
It is much more shooting than the big game.
Cleaning is easy.
Makes great jerky
Season stretches from October to January
Get to be with my dog
Any other duck hunters out there?
;D ;D
Hi,Duck and goose season opens this saturday,looking forward to a great shoot as there are all kinds of birds around. DonT
Yep, I use to be. would still do it in the right company.
My experiences were a little more Spartan. We hunted in the mangrove swamps (salt water) of Hutchinson Island east of Ft. Pierce, Fla. arriving an hour before daylight in 30-35 degree weather, wearing chest waders and many warm clothes, a loaded shot vest and a 12 guage. We pushed ourselves across a 30 foot wide ditch in a john boat where we got out on the other side, sinking to our thighs in silt and mud with water up to our belly buttons. Then we walked (slogged) through the mud, trying to avoid deep holes and looking for an opening in the 20' canopy that would provide an opportunity at a shot. If we were lucky, we found an opening fifty to one hundred feet square where we stood til the sun came up. At first light the Blue Winged and Green Winged Teal (Dove sized Greyhounds of the Sky) came flying across the opening at 60+ mph. A motor reflex identification and snap shot as they passed would bag an experienced hunter perhaps one duck from each 6 shots expended. Someone new to the sport generally went home duckless and with a sore shoulder.
Slogging through the mud to find and retrieve your duck made for strong legs and good wind.
This would go on all day with a slight lull at noon. That's when you ate the sandwich you had shoved in your wader pocket.
Also in the air were Merganzers (a fish eating duck) that you didn't want to shoot. A Hooded Merganzer made a good trophy but we would rather see them flying in the swamp. On rare occassions, maybe once a year, there would be a Mallard or Wood Duck. We hesitated to shoot them as well because it ran our points up too quickly and could end our hunt before we were ready..
Just before sundown, we would slog back to the boat and take turns going back across the ditch, returning home where we dressed the ducks, using paraffin, and prepared them for our duck supper that night. By 11:00 pm we were trying to get to bed for enough rest to get up at 3:30 or 4 am the next day for another shoot.
I've made a head-on shot of a Green Winged Teal and had it hit me full speed in the chest. It was all I could do to keep my feet and it left me gasping for air. It's the wettest, coldest, warmest, most miserable good time I've ever had.
The area is built up in Condominiums and apartments now. Hunting is a thing of the past and I doubt there is any fishing allowed in what free water exists in the swamp. Most of the accesses have been chained.
Duck Identification Link (http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/tools/duckdist/duckdist.htm) (X This 2nd link is just for fun while it lasts X) (http://www.nealcreekpaum.com)
Yea, I hear they call that progress. Too bad, to many of us, the one step forward sure seems like a big step in the wrong direction. :-[
I use to be a very ardent duck hunter during the 1960's and early 70,s. Hunted over large decoy sets. Great sport, especially when the northern flights are coming across the big lake.
I shot my 3" magnum model 12 Winchester so much one day that it broke a blood vessel in my arm and had to go to the doctor. Had to shoot left handed for awhile.
I still have a a number of duck and goose decoys, but have been selling them off as antiques over the years. Many were hand made of wood and cork.
Much development around the lakes and wetlands followed by various ordinances controlling the hunting has caused me to quit as you have mentioned.
I found Steelhead fishing to be compatible with me. Never cared to eat duck, but I used to go with family when I was younger out on Sauve Island mostly. You guys from Oregon should know where that is.
I know it, but don't hunt it much. Since it is practically in downtown Portland, it gets a huge amount of pressure. I would hunt the privet clubs if I had the money. Lewis and Clark made camp on Sauvie Island and reported that there were some many birds that they couldn't sleep at night.
I hunt as much as possible down on the lower Columbia, just above Astoria. Not near the pressure and a larger area to hunt.
To me, there just isn't anything more exciting than duck hunting when the birds are flying.
One of those Clatskine hunters eh.... I know a few. I'll bet thats getting more crowded.
Down here you have to pay $600 to $1000 a year for a hole in a rice field. To get on the exclusive clubs you need $300,000 for the initiation fee then yearly dues. I know one club like this were you can only hunt from shooting time to 9:30am three days a week twenty gauge only. Needless to say if it takes you that long to limit you must be a bad shot.
A large percentage of California's rice fields are owned by duck clubs. The farmers lease for crops. Rice fields are worth about a $1000 an acre, wetlands for duck hunting are worth $5000. Speculators are buying rice fields and turning them into wetlands.
I do a bit of that.
(https://forestryforum.com/board/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww3.sympatico.ca%2Fkvn.rob%2FJessie4.JPG&hash=0bae46b1a4f68ce354d262071fafe293da4dfdfe)
I hunted duck in Minnesota for many years. I rarely used a boat but many do. My buddy and I would get up at 3:00 a.m. for the DanG near 2 hour drive to Reno (a boggy area in the backwaters of the Mississippi River) which is just before you hit the Iowa border. We'd get there at 5:00 a.m. and it's still dark. Put on our chest waders and get our gear and walk out along the dike. At a certain telephone pole we'd cut into the woods. Have you ever been in a forest at night. It's really dark in there. We'd walk for about 20 minutes to get to our hunting spot. You really had to know your landmarks and sometimes you'd get into a bog and sink up to your keester in organic slim. We did a lot of hunting at a beaver dam and only use 1/2 dozen decoys. Early in the season we get woodys that were local ducks and a few local mallards and teal. When the cold drove the northern ducks out of Canada, we'd get some of them too. They were always big and fat. Many good memories sitting in freezing weather, having to break the ice to set up the decoys. Sometimes sitting in a snowstorm. But we've also been out there when it was warm and the skeeters were really bad. I recently had to give up duck hunting because of my arthritis. But my son still goes. :)
Going to try it for the first time this year. If the three guys I'm going with went in the same boat, it would look like a small battleship behind the blind.
Any of you guys use a 10 gauge into the duck cloud and let the guys with weeny 12 gauge shotguns pick off the cripples? Going to try that next year with a 10ga BPS.
JB
10 guages were outlawed when I was growing up, do they allow them now? As to shooting into the "duck cloud" that is the best way there is to miss a duck. Even when you are confronted with a head-on or trailing shot of a flight, pick one.
Ten guages are legal in Mo for turkey. I don't know about ducks or geese. They light on our ponds and creeks on their way south. I've never really hunted them, but it's no trick to sneak up on them, flush and shoot them. As far as I'm concerned it's no sport and they aren't worth eating. No one around here hunts them.
I've got a couple of old ten gage BP guns that I've used for turkey a little. They don't come close to a modern 12 gage much less a 3 in Magnum. Now a modern 10 ga. thats something else but a 20 gage is plenty for turkey if you hit them in the head at 20 yards.
I shot one along the creek one fall. It was a mile or so to the house so I decided to leave it and come back in the pickup. My son came back with me and brought his little .22, he was abour 6 or 7. Along the way we came across my brother and a friend of his who were heading for the fishing hole. They got in the back of the pickup for a lift. When we got about 300 yards from where wh hid the turkey, I told my son I was going to stop suddenly and when I did for him to get out and shoot at the old dead Sycamore on down the road (private farm road). The two in the back hollered "What was that?" We acted like we couldn't believe they didn't see the turkeys. They couldn't believe it when they found a dead turkey at the foot of the tree-----after they thought about it for a while, they didn't believe it.
Noble
In Wisconsin anything bigger than 10 gauge is illegal for any hunting. "Shooting" into a cloud of ducks is a joke with my hunting friends as a way of saying to each other that a 10 is a cannon for a shotgun. People here used to be able to shoot an 8 gauge shotgun. The people that made a living on bird hunting used to shoot the 8 into the cloud and use a 12 to pick-off the cripples.
Jeffrey
Oh-h-h--h--h--h---h---h--- :D :D
After lead was outlawed, the 10 gauges made a comeback. People were looking to recover the killing power that went away with lead. The other development was the 3 ½" 12 gauge load. Steel just doesn't pack the punch that lead did.
As to sport, you should try hitting fast flying teal. Trying to hit a mosquito at 90 MPH isn't a walk in the park. Or for that mater blue bills with a 40 MPH tail wind.
Rob,
I didn't intend to imply that duck hunting isn't good sport, Just sneaking up on them over a pond bank. They are easy to hit while taking off or circling back to land. I'm sure that prepared right they are good to eat, but the methods of preparing game birds that I am used to doesn't work with duck. Or, maybe I just don't like duck. I've tried it and goose a few times and just didn't care for it. Now Quail----that's a different story.
Noble
Makes awsome Jerkey! 8)
I don't like it just baked.
Mary and I took a vacation out in the southwest one winter a couple of years back. Stopped along the way at a Best Western motel in Pratt, Kansas. We were a little shocked at the sign on the bathroom door strictly forbidding the cleaning of ducks and geese in the bathtub. It sure looked curious to us as all we'd seen was flatland for 200 miles.
On checkout, Mary asked why the sign. They explained there were a lot of lakes around there that attracted ducks, geese and duck and geese hunters in the fall winter months. It was becoming a real problem cleaning the rooms after the hunters cleaned their take. :o
I saw a line on the inside back cover of an Outdoor Life Magizine years ago that stuck with me. This guy wrote humorus articles (and may still). He was describing a goose hunt he had been on where they were flyin high and fast. He said he had a 10 gauge and the geese were so high......that he led that lead goose farther than most people would walk for a free Christmas turkey..... :D
Noble, I am of the same opinion about eatin duck but my grandad used to bait those ponds with a little wheat and have sack fulls to give all the neighbors. Grandma skinned the mallards, and put them in one of those cooking bags with onion, celery, carrots, potatoes, and a gravy mix. It wasn't bad.
I cut the meat into small pieces, soak it in salt water in the fridge over night, change the salt water and put em back in the cooler for a day or two then rinse.
Do them up in bake and shake, get the grease hot, deep fry the pieces fast (only a minute or two to get the blood out) and serve with plumb sauce.
We need a drooly smilely.
Don`t bite down on any shot, it hurts!
I have duck hunted with a BPS 10. I bought this gun mainly for goose hunting and it has a 30" barrel on it. Its a little to top heavy for duck hunting out of a blind. If I had a shorter barrel I would use it more often. I guess for now I will have to stick with my little 3 1/2" 12 guage. :) :)
Blue Bill Ducks areThreatened in Michigan
There are only half as many blue bill ducks, also known as scaup, in North America as there were two decades ago, and that has Michigan scientists and environmentalists worried. Losing half of something is of much concern.
Scientists say that the ducks may be dying after eating zebra mussels, clam-like creatures that were accidently introduced into the Great Lakes in the mid-1980s.
Scientists suspect mussels are poisoning the ducks. Zebra mussels filter water and any toxins, bacteria and other impurities in the water stay in the mussels. Blue bills gorge themselves on the little orange-and-black clams.
If you want quackers you need to come to Eastern Arkansas. Every morning and night the skys are black with them going to the fields to eat rice. Geese are so bad that there just about open season on them and they turn the fields white and it looks like it snowed. I have hooked their feet under the matt clips at the car wash and blasted away. Now there is a sign at the car wash now.
ARKANSAWYER
:DThe more I picture that,the funnier it gets.
What does the sign say, No plucking Arkies allowed?
"No plucking - goose or duckling"
"If caught, your goose will be cooked"
I tried to wash the bay down but the DanG feathers went every where. We need new pillows this year so I guess I will have to hand pluck. 20+ birds is a bit of plucking in one sitting.
ARKANSAWYER
We had a good opener, 21 ducks between 4 of us. Would have done better had our shooting been better. As for eating them, I prefer to cut the breasts out and make jerky. It comes out better than beef jerky, very lean.
We get a decent number of bluebills later in the season and they make for some fantastic shooting, but are almost inedible. They feed almost exclusively on small clams and taste so fishy that even a strong jerky recipe still leaves a strong fishy after taste in your mouth. So we have all but stopped hunting them. I have been told that the best way to deal with them is to cook them like fish, in a chowder... but I have not tried that yet.
:-X