Another Season in the Books

           Well another season has come and gone. A combination of drought, lack of water, and very few storms up north to push down migrating birds, the season was more difficult than those in recent memories. Although quantity of birds was certainly down, it was nonethless a great season. Some of the highlights of the season include some stellar Benelli retrieves, taking a friend out on his first hunt that he shot a banded pintail on, hunting with Grandpa Jack on a regular basis, and a very fun early goose hunt out of state, just to mention a few. Below are a few photos to put the icing on the cake of a great season.


The 2nd and 3rd birds from the right were the first cinammon teal I've ever shot. They are beautiful birds, I wish I had an extra couple hundred bucks floating around, they'd make a great mount!















Pintails have a 2 bird limit a person each day in Utah. My grandpa and I shot these 4 stud drakes out of the first flock at about 9:00 AM. We sat there for 4 more hours and never shot again and watched flock after flock of pintals land in the decoys.

 

Mid November we found a sweet little pot hole that the ducks were using pretty heavily. I have a friend that hadn't been out duck hunting in 10+ years. We finally hooked up one Saturday morning and everything fell into place. The first freeze had come the night before locking up some of the sheetwater and concentrating the ducks. It turned out to be the best duck shoot I had this season.

 

I've really been wanting to shoot another banded duck to get one mounted. My last 2 I shoot I never though of getting them mounted, and in hindsight I wish I would have. I've never shot a banded pintail before and was feeling it in my bones all season. The flights of migrators were moving in and we were consistently shooting limits of pintails. As luck would have it, a single drake pintail cupped in hard and low right over the decoys. He came in on the side my friend was shooting so he stood up and folded the drake pintail. It landed in some thick phragmite behind us so we didn't retrieve it until right before we left. Sure enough, Benelli found it and brought it back with some nice bandage to go with it. I was glad Cade was able to fill the band void for the season!

We finished with 3 limits of ducks that day and all got back in time for some Aggie football. Just the way a Saturday in November should be.

Then the cold weather hit... Everything froze up pretty solid and pretty quick. Most my spots got froze out almost overnight and the pooch and I spent a lot of cold hunts waiting for stuff to fly. December was pretty brutal, I didn't do too well. The top left screen on my programmer consistenly read in the negatives, it was cold!





















We had one last hunt that we went out in style with. It just happened to be Benelli's 2nd birthday and the last Saturday of the season. It was freezing cold again, I was tempted to not take Benelli but I knew she wouldn't forgive me if I did that. I was glad I didn't leave her. There wasn't anywhere to hide her by us so she had to hide on the other side of the dike where she couldn't actually see the decoys or water where the ducks would fall. For all her retrieves they were "blind", meaning she had to follow hand signals to make the retrieves. She retrieved her 300th bird of the season on video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1jTB9C7JgM

We ended up with 3 limits of ducks to end the season, it was a great way to go out.

 

Benelli feels the same way I do about the season being over.....

 

Let the countdown to October begin!