Monday morning we got an early start, left the house by four o’clock, and arrived at the field fifteen minutes later. Anticipations were high but now it was time for the work to begin. After finding the X in the field, four people went to work making the blinds disappear. We dug in about 8-10 inches deep and filled the stubble straps with the waste from the pea field. Meanwhile, two of us were working to the best of our abilities to make the decoys come to life.
We set out nearly 200 full body honker decoys and around 200 snow goose sillosocks. We finished getting ready and parked the trucks with no time to spare before we could start shooting. As Nick and my dad parked the trucks the ducks started to filter in. The wind was picking up from the northwest and the drizzle was coming down harder. The weather was setting in. The guys and Nelli got back from the trucks and it was go-time. The ducks worked perfectly and it didn’t take long to rack up a good pile of mallards and pintails. As the sun came up and illuminated the sky behind the dark clouds we started to hear the geese coming from the roost. For the next three or four hours it was complete mayhem. By nine o’clock we had our six man – eight bird limits of ducks and dark geese on the ground and a good pile of snows, with a bonus piece of jewelry on a juvenile goose (Ross’.) We continued to put more snows feet down into the dekes thanks to the weather but our shell boxes were stressed. For quite a while we were only taking one shot per person into each flock. The birds decoyed incredible and most shots were twenty yards or less. When the morning was said and done we were soaked, Nelli was wore out, and the smiles were ear to ear as we looked at our morning’s harvest. I think it took a while for it to set in what had just happened and as I write this five days later, I’m still not sure I completely believe what I saw that morning. We ended the morning with 15 white fronts, 33 Canada geese, 86 snow geese, 34 mallards, 13 pintails, and 1 shoveler for a grand total of 182 birds. This was the morning that every hardcore waterfowler dreams of, and it was our reality. Not just because of the sheer numbers, but because we were able to shoot numbers of a variety of species that were in our face, with six guys that appreciated the show that nature put on.
|
