Been feeling awful the last few days with a terrible head cold, and just needed to get out and get some fresh air. I threw my gun, decoy bag, and faithful retriever Fraser into the truck and headed out for a morning shoot. I arrived, and set up my decoy spread, all the while sneezing and sniffling. Dozens of birds began circling before legal shooting light, and it wasn't long before I forgot I was sick.
Over the past five years or so, I've really made an effort to only harvest drakes when waterfowl hunting. I had read somewhere that for every mallard hen you shoot, you remove 30 new ducks from the future population? now wether that is true or not, I'm not sure? but what cold it hurt? Don't get me wrong there is the odd misidentification at first or last light! But today when the first pair of mallards came in at just the right speed, height, and direction, I took the 2 shots and got a double!! They also landed in area of the slough that was reasonable for Fraser to make double retrieves. The icing on the cake, was that the mallard hen was wearing some "bling"! I shoot a lot of ducks every year, but don't harvest many banded ones, so this was cool. I will mail in the numbers, and find out when, and where it was born.
Some people think that hunters are ''blood thirsty monsters'' that just want to kill, but don't realize that we are some of the biggest conservationists! I sat for the next hour and watched a beaver, muskrat, great blue heron, red tailed hawk, some unidentified falcon, and numerous birds.
Oh..... and I passed on at least 10 other shootable ducks, just because.
I love being outdoors and enjoying what others only see on the discovery channel!!
For the fisherman that follow my blog, you'll be interested that I also saw at least a dozen fish rise in the slough to eat whatever was hatching! I guess I should throw a dry fly setup in my decoy bag;)
Anyways, off to take a tylenol cold and flu!!
