This year was supposed to be one of the best for duck hunting in years, and I was looking forward to it. We had had several good days, but one day in December really stood out as the best day of duck hunting I have ever had.
One of my duck hunting partners, Aaron met me at the duck pond at 4:00 am. We had to get there early because it is public and in order to get a good spot you have to be there early. We had met a couple of other hunters out there during the year, and they showed up about the same time we did. We decided that we could all hunt the same spot and have a good time. We walked down to the pond and Cory and Jim, the other two guys, helped us set up all the decoys. We then built up a bigger blind and opened the coffee thermos and waited for shooting light. Just before shooting light we could start seeing ducks flying around. Lots of wood ducks and widgeon and green winged teal were circling around. We drank the rest of our coffee and loaded the guns. We looked at our watches and saw that it was shooting light. We only had to wait about 30 seconds when a flock of widgeon came in to our whistles. We jumped up and opened fire. Jake, my golden retriever went out and made the three retrieves. Next some mallards came in. I ended up shooting a hen from the flock and Aaron got a drake. My hen was banded which was the first duck that I've ever shot that was banded. Flock after flock came into our decoys and I guess its a good thing that none of us are real good shooters because we all would of been done by 9:00 am. Cory did a nice double on woodies, bagging a drake and hen. We ended up with mallards, green wing teal, woodies, widgeon, pintails, and one golden eye,(nice shot Aaron.) During the day, Jake kept wanting to go up into the blackberry bushes behind us but I kept telling him to come back to the blind. We only needed two more birds for all of us to have a limit. Jake snuck up into the briars and I could hear him rustling around up there. After about a minute, he came out with a mallard drake that had been shot in the wing some other day and it was hiding up there. I guess I should never doubt my dogs nose! We got our last duck a little after that and called it a day. Now, if I can just teach the dog to clean all these ducks.