thanxgiving day success!

[Black Plague]

well my wife, dad and 2 younger brothers went out early on Thanksgiving day ...left at 4:29 AM and it was wicked foggy, which meant it was relatively slow going...didn't bring the GPS so we had to go off of a compass and no map with just a mental picture of what it looks like on Google earth and rough estimate as to the heading we should take...fortunately we were only about 800 yards off and found our spot pretty quickly, considering ourselves lucky that nobody beat us to the spot.  Well, we got all the dekes out and got set up with about 2 minutes before shooting time, still really foggy but you could see the outline of a duck at about 100 yards but not much after that. .... I love hunting in the fog, calling seems to be pretty key, because the birds just seemed to hear us and say to themselves "oh there's a party going on down there, well I should at least see who is there..." birds of all species were plentiful and I even shot 2 species that I have never shot before one was a Canvasback Drake and the other was an old squaw (we got 2 of each)   so I was pretty stoked about that and what made it even better was that this was my wife's second year out and last year she only got to go out twice and neither day was very good ...but this time she made some great shots and got her limit, she shot one gorgeous drake bufflehead that my dad and I thought about having mounted for her, but she kinda shot him a lot    by 10:30 we had almost filled our 5 man limit but needed to get going to help mom out with the big dinner so I think we ended with 32 ducks or so.... all in all a pretty great day, 2 new species for me and a great time with the family....    also I should add that while on the coast oldsquaw may be pretty common, but over here on the east side, they are a lot more rare...  here's a few pics....     

[carpsniperg2]

Lots of great birds

[vandeman17]

whack em and stack em. Nice work

[Huntboy]

Sweet, nice shooting.

[upwind]

Cool i like hunting foggy days also .Because you never know until they are right on you,

[Black Plague]

yeah it was pretty hot and heavy for  while ...we went back out on friday in the crazy wind but the bird numbers were way way down, must have left the area cuz we only got 5 birds....it was so lame that i put on some orange and walked around til i jumped a rooster after 9 hens ...that flew up into a tree (weirdo) so, that was a death wish for him... still better than a poke in the eye and fun to get out, but a little disapointing...my guess is that someone down south was getting a really good shoot ....we did however blow it big time on a flock of 20 mallards that came into our spread all of a sudden ...its hard to pay attention that long after not seeing anything for an hour or so 

[Black Plague]

so....any prospects for this weekend?   

[vandeman17]

supposed to be sunny and cold over here on the eastside so maybe that means some of the bigger water will freeze up again and push them to where I am at....