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Here's part two of my saga
This past week my goal was to hunt every day since it was my last week home and the girlfriend wasn't around because her college started early. We had plans to hunt our favorite honey hole twice before South zone closed and try to hit the bay and load up on some buffies, and also try to get some long tails we saw on one of our scouting missions. We also have been watching a pond that had ring necks and what appeared to be a pair of golden eye but I couldn't get a pos id with my terrible binoculars that we wanted to hunt as well. So we knew we had ringers, squaws, pintails, and possibly some golden eyes around, and I only ever shot a long tail of that groups so we wanted to try to get some of our first birds.
We ended up hunting Mon, Tues, half *** afternoon hunt/scout mission wed, and Thurs. We did pretty well though. In our three actual hunts during the week my brother and I got 8 different species of waterfowl...mallard, black, pintail, wood duck, gwt, bufflehead, brant, and Canada goose. I think it is awesome to be able to get out on public land and get such a variety of birds, see tons flying, and not have anyone around to compete with. Maybe living in NJ isn't too terrible haha.
Our Monday hunt we kicked up about a hundred geese from the spot of the river we were hunting but they never came back. Had a lot of pintails, mallards and blacks pouring in ten minutes before shooting time when were still trying to get hidden in the open marsh. Couldn't get any shots at pintails but did finish the morn with 8 ducks...4 mallards 2 blacks 1 woodie 1 gwt. We decided to hit that spot one last time on Thursday and our goal was to get our first pintails.
Tues we hit the bay to try to load up on bufflehead. We started on the pond we hunt puddle ducks on and it was dead first thing in the morn. We packed up fairly early since we didn't see and big ducks flying and wanted to get on some buffle head. Of course tons of black ducks started flying once we were walking to the boat. IM not sure but maybe they were flying later after sunrise due to the moon? I saw one land at the end of the little island we were on and walked down there....up jumped the black duck like a pheasant from the marsh grass and I managed to drop him even though the bird scared the crap outa me. the rest of our hunt didn't go as well as planned either since the buffleheads didn't like my boat and the blind I made for it in the middle of the channel...they don't seem to care about it if it's on the edge of the bank but in to open water they all would skirt around it just out of range. We ended the morning with a buffie, black and three brant.
Wed we set up in a mallard spot in the afternoon and watched a doz. fly over up high. We knew we wouldn't be seeing many more and if we did they would be doing to same thing most likely since the feeding spot we set up at was frozen they didn't want to come down. We went and watched the pond we saw ring necks at to find a guy there with the two biggest goose decoys I ever saw set up. So we decided to watch our spot we hunted Monday and saw a few guys there sky blasting away. We saw enough shenanigans for the day so we packed it in and hoped the birds wouldn't be too messed up for Thursday.
We got up extra early Thursday so we wouldn't have to worry about other people. Of course nobody ended up hunting the area and we had to wait an hour and half for the tide to go down and take some ice with it so we could set up. Boy was it worth it though.
As soon as we got set up and covered well we only had to wait a minute before they started pouring in. It was awesome having so many ducks practically sitting on us. It was a little nerve racking watching beautiful pintails ten yards away on the marsh for ten minutes before shooting time. We managed though haha. My brother got his sprig first and ran out in the kayak to get it right away. While he was getting his pintail I dropped a black duck and then a minute later had a nice pintail come right in and I dropped him on the marsh as well. I felt like I was watching DUTV seeing so many birds fly all day constantly. It was such an incredible morning. We had pintails working the dekes all morning and the black ducks were dumping in like they knew we already had our limit for them.
Once the sun was up the geese decided to wake up and come out for a visit as well. I dropped one from the first group as they passed since I didn't think they were gunna hook in but even after I shot they swung back around and came straight into us so we knocked down two more. My brother had to paddle the kayak after the first one I shot a couple hundred yards but it was a good thing he got to the bird because it was toting some bling. One of the geese somehow swam to the bank climbed up onto the marsh and walked up into the woods without us seeing it. There was a blood trail we followed like we were deer hunting but it stopped after a while and an hour of looking found nothing. I was pretty upset. We ended the morning with 4 geese in hand and 6 ducks.
The spot has so many birds but it's the hardest place I have ever hunted so far….muddy as heck, almost no cover, and a good deal of tide draw that makes the marsh go from flooded to empty in a few hours. All the hard work and cursing was worth it though. we had a really good season for still not knowing a whole heck of a lot as this is my third season in the bag but we absorb as much as we can from each hunt and build upon it….plus we have a great time just getting out there.
I hope everyone else had fun this year and to those that are still hunting stay safe and good luck…now here are some pictures from my last day:
This past week my goal was to hunt every day since it was my last week home and the girlfriend wasn't around because her college started early. We had plans to hunt our favorite honey hole twice before South zone closed and try to hit the bay and load up on some buffies, and also try to get some long tails we saw on one of our scouting missions. We also have been watching a pond that had ring necks and what appeared to be a pair of golden eye but I couldn't get a pos id with my terrible binoculars that we wanted to hunt as well. So we knew we had ringers, squaws, pintails, and possibly some golden eyes around, and I only ever shot a long tail of that groups so we wanted to try to get some of our first birds.
We ended up hunting Mon, Tues, half *** afternoon hunt/scout mission wed, and Thurs. We did pretty well though. In our three actual hunts during the week my brother and I got 8 different species of waterfowl...mallard, black, pintail, wood duck, gwt, bufflehead, brant, and Canada goose. I think it is awesome to be able to get out on public land and get such a variety of birds, see tons flying, and not have anyone around to compete with. Maybe living in NJ isn't too terrible haha.
Our Monday hunt we kicked up about a hundred geese from the spot of the river we were hunting but they never came back. Had a lot of pintails, mallards and blacks pouring in ten minutes before shooting time when were still trying to get hidden in the open marsh. Couldn't get any shots at pintails but did finish the morn with 8 ducks...4 mallards 2 blacks 1 woodie 1 gwt. We decided to hit that spot one last time on Thursday and our goal was to get our first pintails.
Tues we hit the bay to try to load up on bufflehead. We started on the pond we hunt puddle ducks on and it was dead first thing in the morn. We packed up fairly early since we didn't see and big ducks flying and wanted to get on some buffle head. Of course tons of black ducks started flying once we were walking to the boat. IM not sure but maybe they were flying later after sunrise due to the moon? I saw one land at the end of the little island we were on and walked down there....up jumped the black duck like a pheasant from the marsh grass and I managed to drop him even though the bird scared the crap outa me. the rest of our hunt didn't go as well as planned either since the buffleheads didn't like my boat and the blind I made for it in the middle of the channel...they don't seem to care about it if it's on the edge of the bank but in to open water they all would skirt around it just out of range. We ended the morning with a buffie, black and three brant.
Wed we set up in a mallard spot in the afternoon and watched a doz. fly over up high. We knew we wouldn't be seeing many more and if we did they would be doing to same thing most likely since the feeding spot we set up at was frozen they didn't want to come down. We went and watched the pond we saw ring necks at to find a guy there with the two biggest goose decoys I ever saw set up. So we decided to watch our spot we hunted Monday and saw a few guys there sky blasting away. We saw enough shenanigans for the day so we packed it in and hoped the birds wouldn't be too messed up for Thursday.
We got up extra early Thursday so we wouldn't have to worry about other people. Of course nobody ended up hunting the area and we had to wait an hour and half for the tide to go down and take some ice with it so we could set up. Boy was it worth it though.
As soon as we got set up and covered well we only had to wait a minute before they started pouring in. It was awesome having so many ducks practically sitting on us. It was a little nerve racking watching beautiful pintails ten yards away on the marsh for ten minutes before shooting time. We managed though haha. My brother got his sprig first and ran out in the kayak to get it right away. While he was getting his pintail I dropped a black duck and then a minute later had a nice pintail come right in and I dropped him on the marsh as well. I felt like I was watching DUTV seeing so many birds fly all day constantly. It was such an incredible morning. We had pintails working the dekes all morning and the black ducks were dumping in like they knew we already had our limit for them.
Once the sun was up the geese decided to wake up and come out for a visit as well. I dropped one from the first group as they passed since I didn't think they were gunna hook in but even after I shot they swung back around and came straight into us so we knocked down two more. My brother had to paddle the kayak after the first one I shot a couple hundred yards but it was a good thing he got to the bird because it was toting some bling. One of the geese somehow swam to the bank climbed up onto the marsh and walked up into the woods without us seeing it. There was a blood trail we followed like we were deer hunting but it stopped after a while and an hour of looking found nothing. I was pretty upset. We ended the morning with 4 geese in hand and 6 ducks.
The spot has so many birds but it's the hardest place I have ever hunted so far….muddy as heck, almost no cover, and a good deal of tide draw that makes the marsh go from flooded to empty in a few hours. All the hard work and cursing was worth it though. we had a really good season for still not knowing a whole heck of a lot as this is my third season in the bag but we absorb as much as we can from each hunt and build upon it….plus we have a great time just getting out there.
I hope everyone else had fun this year and to those that are still hunting stay safe and good luck…now here are some pictures from my last day:
