Saturday, October 22, 2005

Mallards in your face Hunted ducks in a North Dakota wheatfield this morning with Bill Cooksey, Rick Frisch, Mike Faw, Andy Tweed and Steve Pitt. Faw is from Iowa, Frisch from Fargo, the others from Tennessee. Bill and Rick work for Avery Outdoors, which supplied some new and prototype gear for us to field test, and believe me it worked! We set out about 50 magnum Avery mallard field decoys, a few Canadas and a couple dozen snows and hunted out of layout blinds. The decoys are lifelike oversize hard-shells, with an ingenious cone molded into the back on the inside of the hollow body. You set these dekes on an L-shaped stake that lets it wobble and rotate, something like a bobble-head toy. In the steady 20-mph west wind, those dekes bobbled and wobbled realistically, creating the effect of constant movement in our spread. We shot several mallards that came in in small groups, then a large flock came in and just hung over us and the decoys, some of them just 20 feet in front of us. Bill, who was calling the shots, let them hang there for our viewing pleasure. When they finally left, I asked "What was all that about?" "Wasn't that beautiful to watch?" he asked. It was in fact, one of the most remarkable things I have seen in years of duck hunting. Bill had these ducks right where we wanted them for a minute or two before they slipped out of range. Died I mention that Bill won tghe Grand American Duck Calling Championship last year? After that show, we were all business. As birds came in in small flocks, pairs and a single or two, we shot for three hours, with a few minutes of down time while we ran out to collect our birds. We saw several flocks of snows and blues and managed to call one in. We dropped six from that group before they climbed out of range. We ended up with those 6 blue geese and 32 ducks -- mostly mallards, a few teal, one gadwall and one widgeon. We picked up the decoys at about 11:00 and headed back to camp, where we took some photos and cleaned the birds. Some were destined for tonight's dinner, the rest we packaged and froze. After lunch and a couple hours of college football, we headed out to scout fields for tomorrow's hunt and stopped at several grain bins to give the local pigeons some exercise. We'll clean them tomorrow for pigeon pie when we dress the morning's ducks. Dinner tonight was grilled duck and goose breast. We filleted the breasts on a couple Fillet King fillet boards, then Andy wrapped them in bacon and put them in a marinade while we went pigeon shooting. Later, we grilled them outside and they were absolutely delicious. Tomorrow night, we'll roast a half-dozen mallards for dinner. Bed time already! Man, this is a tough life! Later... 10:46:42 PM    comment []

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