After a little over a week since the start of the season I finally got to go out.
My cousin and I headed up to Flagstaff to try and grab some birds off of Marshell Lake. We arrived right at 0400hrs and since we have never shot there did some quick scouting to find a good spot. Ended up laying down in a spot that you could tell folks with layout blinds had been. We did this cause we didn't have any marsh seats and the grass wasn't tall enough to stand in. So lay down and cover up with grass we did.
With decoys tossed out we waited for light. Got buzzed by a nice big group of Teal off the bat. Started calling and got the turned around for a second pass but they came around just outta range. Called some more but they were having none of that. Had a few more groups come in but no shots were available. Then a group of four Mallards came along. My cousin and started calling. Going off of what each other was doing we got the birds dancing. He'd hit a 3-5 note I hit the Drake call. He'd hit a feed then while I rolled a couple 3-5 note calls. I was awesome to see the birds go and come back for about 8 minutes till they decided to play it safe and leave. After that we only had a three or four birds show up and then nothing after 0800. So we packed it in.
We both left the marsh feeling like we had a great hunt even without birds on the stringer. We learned that our calling was effective but still needs some tuning. By having birds come in or come back but not commit we learned we are just missing one more piece to the puzzle. Whether that's better decoy placement or just better decoys. Maybe better concealment on our part. Maybe add that jerk string to our set-up. Or hell it might have been that one note in our calling that the birds didn't like. Overall we learned a lot and had a great time.
My cousin and I headed up to Flagstaff to try and grab some birds off of Marshell Lake. We arrived right at 0400hrs and since we have never shot there did some quick scouting to find a good spot. Ended up laying down in a spot that you could tell folks with layout blinds had been. We did this cause we didn't have any marsh seats and the grass wasn't tall enough to stand in. So lay down and cover up with grass we did.
With decoys tossed out we waited for light. Got buzzed by a nice big group of Teal off the bat. Started calling and got the turned around for a second pass but they came around just outta range. Called some more but they were having none of that. Had a few more groups come in but no shots were available. Then a group of four Mallards came along. My cousin and started calling. Going off of what each other was doing we got the birds dancing. He'd hit a 3-5 note I hit the Drake call. He'd hit a feed then while I rolled a couple 3-5 note calls. I was awesome to see the birds go and come back for about 8 minutes till they decided to play it safe and leave. After that we only had a three or four birds show up and then nothing after 0800. So we packed it in.
We both left the marsh feeling like we had a great hunt even without birds on the stringer. We learned that our calling was effective but still needs some tuning. By having birds come in or come back but not commit we learned we are just missing one more piece to the puzzle. Whether that's better decoy placement or just better decoys. Maybe better concealment on our part. Maybe add that jerk string to our set-up. Or hell it might have been that one note in our calling that the birds didn't like. Overall we learned a lot and had a great time.