October 19, 2007 - Blue Bird Day in the Rainwater Basin

The day started off just like all of my duck hunting excursions. Got out of bed early and loaded up all of the gear and the dog and headed out to the marsh. I did not scout this marsh as I had already hunted it once this season, just on a different section, and I have never been there when it didn't have birds, so I figured that I would at least see a few flocks around. Well, this was a costly mistake because the last time I hunted it, was about 6 inches rain ago. There was plenty of cover around the edges of the marsh when I first hunted it, however after 6+ inches of rain within the two days prior to my next hunt, the water level had risen about 3 or 4 feet considering nearly every piece of land that is close drains into this marsh. This left me trying to find cover for myself and the dog in grass that was about 3 inches tall. For those of you who duck hunt, you know this is not the ideal place to be trying to hide from the wary eyes of ducks.

After looking around the whole marsh, I saw it wasn't any better anywhere else, so I decided I would just set up and lay still and see what happened. I figured out that this wasn't too bad of a plan when shooting time rolled around and I had teal screaming by me within a few feet. Within the first few minutes, I had one blue-wing teal down and had Remington turned loose on the retrieve. Once he got back, we didn't have anything close for the next 2 hours. As this is a fairly large marsh, the ducks were loving the now completely flooded weeds about 200 yards out in the middle of the marsh. I determined that my luck wasn't going to get much better, so I started picking up decoys.

It never ceases to fail that once you start picking up the decoys, the birds just have to check out what is going on. I started to get a few flocks closer and closer and they ducks started responding to the calls after all morning of ignoring them. I had 3 flocks of pintails lined up one after another come close and decided that they didn't want to commit, but then a small flock of teal swooped in under them right at me. I dropped my second blue-wing teal of the day and turned Rem loose. After a few hours of watching ducks fly all over the place and not get close to us, he was more than happy to take after a downed teal.

I decided that since they were starting to work a little better, we would give it a little longer and see what happened. Well, not much did. I whiffed on a green-wing teal drake and hen that gave me a perfect shot for a double, except I forgot you have to actually shoot the ducks, not the air! After that, I started picking up the rest of the decoys and had a pair of drake gadwalls swing in just outside of the decoys and I was able to drop one. It wasn't a clean kill and he started to swim towards the weeds and cover out in the middle, but Rem was able to swim him down before he made it, so we added him to the bag for the day and finished picking up. All in all, it wasn't a bad day in less than ideal conditions. Besides, one can't complain too much because a day in the marsh is always better than a day at work.

Pictures soon to come!!

C. Dill