I thought I would post some pictures of my “bucket list” hunt (although, I don’t care for that term).
Since my son graduated college, I’m trying to do one big hunt every year with him. The first one was in eastern Alberta, about 10 miles from Saskatchewan. I always wanted to hunt ducks/geese in Canada, so I thought we would start with this one. I drove with my dog. My son had the luxury of flying from Charlotte, NC to Edmonton, where I picked him up on day 2 of my drive. Another 2 ˝ hour drive got us there.
We hunted with an acquaintance from the dog training world. He has been going there for about 7+ years and has permission to hunt on several farms, and a lot of decoys!
Although the word was – this isn’t a good year, we were thrilled with the number of birds. Thousands of Snows. We didn’t target them because he didn’t have the spread to put out for those. Outfitters will put out hundreds of socks and decoys for snows. However, my son got 2 and I got 1 as they came over for a look at us.
We hunted 4 days and it was great. Limited 3 out of 4 days. I wanted to target geese but my son was happy with ducks. Funny thing, this was his first duck hunt ever. After getting a pretty quick limit the first day, with wave after wave of ducks around us, I told him he might as well hang up his shotgun because it doesn’t get any better than this! He started out his duck hunting career with a grand-slam homerun. Can you imagine having this as your first duck hunt?
We’ll hunt somewhere else next time, but this was a great start.
The hunting ended and I dropped him off at the Edmonton airport as I started my 2 day drive home. Absolutely beautiful drive both ways. I took a northern route going and a more southern detour on the way home. I wanted to see Banff.
On the way home while having dinner at a local pub, I met a man that was in town for his son’s high school hockey team’s tournament. He has great knowledge of some areas south of Calgary. We’ll keep in touch!
Drove 2,300+ miles. About $180 in licenses. Not much problem at the Canadian border. Although the border agent told me I couldn’t take my shotguns into Canada if I wasn’t with an outfitter! I said “isn’t that just big game hunting?”. He said “that could be”! I had a small heart attack…
Coming back into the USA, the agent asked if I had tags for the ducks I was bringing back! Again, I said “isn’t that just big game?”. Funny after the fact.
Carl
