Duck hunt with the boy
Went out on a short duck hunt yesterday with my Son and even with the squirly kid tucked away in my mummy blind with Hana, I managed to down a Cinnamon teal and a wigeon, missed a crap load of birds but we had a blast for being out there foronly about 2 hours.
Hana is becoming a amazing retriever with making 100% retrieves on winged and wounded birds. She will dive down all the way down to where there is only the tip of her tail sticking out of the water to get a diving duck. Best duck dog I have ever had.
Hana is becoming a amazing retriever with making 100% retrieves on winged and wounded birds. She will dive down all the way down to where there is only the tip of her tail sticking out of the water to get a diving duck. Best duck dog I have ever had.
Comments
I almost got him a little .22 for Christmas but Mom said "over my dead body" soooo maybe next year.
You're more than welcome to get my 23 month old a .22 but I think Mommy would want to use it more :P
Next month I get to teach the kids about the local wild animals and take animal skins, antlers, skulls, stuffed animals, and bird feathers.
I recently went there in uniform and a Police car with my K9 handler buddy. The kids had a blast waching the Malenois work.He's there Mon-fri 7am to about 4pm so he gets to do a lot of learning and its a really friendly place.
Secondly, I love your son's shirt.
Thirdly, there are very few things in the world that make me want to have children. That photo is one of those things. Glad you got to shoot some birds and it sounds like Hana's really making a super good dog.
Do you find waterfowling to be ridiculously expensive to get into? I'd have to get a new gun chambered for 3 1/2" shells, calls, decoys, a dog or a boat, a blind, new camo, non-toxic shot, and that's just to start! I would love to give it a try, but it's almost unapproachably expensive.
Lot of the equipment I have I purchased on sale, used, or given by people I know. I usually spend about $300 or so a year now on duck equipment like ammo and more decoys. Start out simple and slowly build up your gear, it took my 16 years to build up my trash pile. Once you get into duck hunting though, its addicting. I'm amazed at watching a flock of green heads make a hard bank turn to your spread after giving a few high ball calls. Or watching a dozen teal do zig-zags in mid air nearly colliding into each other to land in the open spot you made in your pread of decoys.
My wife always reminds me that my hobbies are the number one expense... I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to tell her that I have to buy new rotar housings for my RX-7 race car and the machining costs for the new WRX motor going into my daily driver.
One of the reason to set out so many decoy is to creat a super flock of resting/feeding birds. Lot of times in wide open areas this will attract ducks flying really high. It shows the ducks that food is abundant in the area. But it doesn't always work like that. I have hd days where 6 decoys worked better then 2 dozen.
There is also a art form in decoy placement. You can just throw decoys out all over the place. You have to break them up here and there to creat a landing zone. Now some of my decoys are old and I dont use them much any more. Every year around september me and sme of my duck hunting buddies will hae a decoy painting party (lots of decoy paint, beer, steaks, and photos of different ducks).
With the late seasn I usually use about 2 dozen decoys (wigeon, teal, pintail, shouvlers, and a few mallard) and about a dozen and a half of goose decoys.
So I guess Hana didn't feast on those ducks!
Ah thanks for the decoy lesson. Sounds complicated.
Ah thanks for the decoy lesson. Sounds complicated.
Soon, very soon I will move the village up north. Just waiting to see if I can get a job with a agencie up that way.
The suckiest thing is...we're kind of thinking of moving back to OC when it comes time to buy a house haha. (2-3 years)
I usually hunt locally in the SD mountains or areas in central/norcal. Soon I maybe going over to Dave's for a turkey hunt!
Maybe I should move down there and attend your son's day care huh?? LOL.. I really want to learn Japanese...but I'm not a book learner I need to learn by speaking it.