|
FINAL DUCK DAYS OF THE
SEASON
By: Ron Wilson
February 9, 2206.... Well another
waterfowl season has come and gone and while last year I was eating cake
and shooting mallards this year I got to eat a lot of crow while looking
at empty skies on many of the days!
The
great waterfowl season that was predicted was a bust as the weather was
so nice that the majority of birds just stayed up north in Oregon and
Washington where they had plenty of water, feed and sun shiny weather
to frolic in.
 This year I hunted lakes, rivers and
private hunting clubs for waterfowl and chased the birds where the
hunting was the best.
Limits at the lakes were rare, plenty
of mallards but no teal, pintail or other puddle ducks. Once the river
flooded, there were a couple weeks worth of good hunting before
the birds stopped migrating and the river receded back into its banks.
The grasslands at the end of the
season were hot for a few days, but by the end of the season most of the
birds had moved on and the rest of migrating birds never showed up.
I have some great hunting partners
that know what they're doing. They love to get the ducks into the decoys
with wings spread and legs dropped before they shoot them. The joy of
hunting them is getting the birds to react to the call and the
decoy spread and the game is to put an X on the water and get the ducks
to lit right where we want them to.
To us shooting a duck is
the end result of the waterfowl game. To get the bird to come into the
decoy spread right where we want them to is where the excitement in waterfowl
hunting is.
One of my more memorably waterfowl
hunts this year was with my son and grandson on a private pay to play
hunting club near Los Banos. The reason is that blood is
thicker than friendship and just being with my son and
 grandson in
the outdoors is a memorable event even if
we don’t kill game. But its even more memorable when you do get into
them.
I would keep trying to get the
birds to decoy in right where we could harvest a bunch of them at once but
usually someone off in the distance would shoot and the birds would
leave. But when we could get them in, the shooting was awesome. We got mallards, sprig, teal, gads, widgeon, geese and even an old spoonie or two. The grasslands is good for potluck shooting as you never
know what you are going to get to come into the decoy spread.
All we can do now is
wish for next years waterfowl season to hurry up and get here and for
the weather to bring us more ducks further down south so that we can get
into some of the great waterfowling like the Washington and Oregon
hunters had this year. |
