This weekend I got the boy out for another trip to the marsh on Sat. a.m.. We set up on a cattail island that had seen lots of action the week before. Put out 48 dekes and some Ureaduck Attack Mallards and settled in for what I thought would be a barn burner. Didn't work that way. The ducks did not like or want to be near the island that day. Not that they were flaring -- they weren't even coming close. An hour into the hunt we only had one goose in the boat. The birds were piling into a nearby back-bay so I made the snap decision to pull a dozen dekes from the rig and set up back there. We moved up about a hundred birds and then tossed out the decoys and tried to get some cover.
Aidan was having a rough time of it. He hadn't fired a shot yet that morning and even in the bay he was slow to get on birds. The gadwall and bluewings started coming back in and he managed to scratch a few down -- I got my eight and another goose. At the end he was getting quite frustrated and several times close flocks were coming by and he hadn't fired a shot. I asked in exasperation why he wasn't shooting. He then FINALLY told me that his hands were so cold he couldn't pull the trigger. My hands are like furnaces -- I used to trap muskrat and beaver under the ice without gloves. He apparently got Mom's circulation and it never occurred to me that he'd need gloves in above zero weather. The poor kid was frozen to the core and hadn't complained all morning (in the first pic you can see his hands frozen into little red claws). I took his gun and let him put his hands inside his waders to get some circulation back and then I let him smack a couple on the water so as to not discourage him too much. We pulled the rig and went home.
Poacher was an idiot. He has lost something fundamental. Anything related to what he has done in the past seems to be gone. He'd swim off in the wrong direction and ignore birds that I could see were only 6 inches in the reeds. He retrieved all but the last bird but there was a lot of frustration involved on both our parts.
I know that "bad" hunt is a stretch here. We got 13 ducks (9 gads, 3 BWT, and a mallard) and 2 geese -- but numbers don't equal satisfaction all the time.
Decided to try and improve upon the boy's experience the next morning. We went to a different lake that is about 3 miles long and 100 yds wide. A pass shooting lake. Set up on a spit that had the birds flying straight down the pipe all day. We had 3 layers of socks, the jacket liner, neoprene gloves, long underwear, heat packs in every pocket -- the works. The kid might have died from heat exhaustion but he wasn't going to be cold.
It started off good and bad. Aidan's first shot folded a big mallard on the wing it smashed into the water. Poacher ruined it by taking the bird and swimming to shore 20 yds away and crunching the bird beyond edibility.
Benched him.
Tied him into the boat and left him to yelp and whimper while we shot from the reeds nearby. Lots of birds and Aidan got to shoot a lot. He went through 47 shells and managed to take down his first limit. I shot most of my birds while he was trying to load the single shot. Realized a 20 gauge is not close to the ideal duck gun and I held off shooting so that I could clean up his cripples. A big improvement from the day before though. He was comfortable and connecting on the nice fat straight on shots. He even nailed 3 coots that winged by -- after he promised to eat them.
Nice mixed bag of 16 ducks (4 blue bill, 3 mallards, 2 BWT, 2 gadwall, 2 redheads, 1 canvasback, 1 ruddy duck, 1 spoonie,) and 3 coots.
"Bad" hunt/"Good" hunt.
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