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| Gunner with a hen mallard |
Sometimes in Ohio it is difficult to find water that is open, as in, not frozen! When this happens, we resort to hunting the rivers and fields. (...unless we can walk on the ice!)
On this particular hunt, we were close to Lake Erie. The Great Lake is shallow, but does provide open water for much of the season. However, sometimes it gets so windy that the waves make hunting extremely treacherous! This day there were 30 mph bone chilling winds out of the north. There were divers out on the lake, but the puddle ducks were not as fond of rough water.
We chose a cornfield to hunt close to Sandusky Bay. We received good "intel" from fellow hunters that there were thousands to ducks in the area. We chose a field not based on scouting or tips of any kind. It was simply a field that belonged to someone we knew. We were just real lucky. As a matter a fact the farmer said, "Go ahead and hunt but I haven't seen a bird in quite a while."
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| This crippled mojo was no deterrent to the puddle ducks on this hunt! |
We were well dressed but the wind felt like stinging needles on the exposed skin around my face mask. We thought this would be a quite profitable day to goose hunt so we loaded the field with nearly 100 goose shells and silhouettes. We did hedge our bet with 6 mojo duck decoys. Setting up mojos in the cold is tough business! I made the mistake of taking off one of my gloves to plug a motor to the mojo battery. Wow, not for long! I forgot how much fun windchill was! I could hardly move my hand. I was smart enough to bring a few hand warmers, and dumb enough to need them! At least I have that going for me! (which is nice!)
The mojos came in handy. We did not see a goose, but thousands of ducks! We saw flock after flock of big ducks flying high around the fields. Occasionally a flock would drop down and circle. It was awesome to see. The cloud of ducks flying across the sky would turn and descend. The turn usually started wide like a semi truck trying to turn on a city street. The turn then began to tighten. The turn became a spiral, tighter and tighter until it a tornado of ducks had developed in little more than a minute. Oh what a sight! It is even more awesome when YOU are at the vortex of the tornado!
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| Gunner with a black/mallard hybrid |
Gunner and his father, Hunter, were busy that day. The three of us hunters shot 14 birds, all mallards and blacks. The dogs had a field day tracking down fallen birds! It was quite entertaining to watch Gunner with all of those ducks around. He sat still very well, but his head was on a swivel like a linebacker expecting a crack back block! He did not know what to make of all the birds. At one point in particular he looked at me as if to say, "Well are you going to shoot or what!" Sometimes I believe that Gunner thinks I am a little slow mentally! I have to admit, it was quite awe inspiring to behold so many of God's beautiful creatures flying so acrobatically together. I probably should have shot earlier a couple of times, but like my two human companions, I did not want to ruin the moment. Who needs "open water" when you can have a hunt like this one!
