A day of firsts

Samantha shot her first duck!

I shot my first banded duck!
Here is Martin and Samantha with the days birds.

We ended up with a couple gadwalls, ringnecks, a golden eye, and a greenhead. We won't talk about the birds that we "should've" had.

I was telling Martin that I am going to start saving my pennies and get either a Benelli Super Black Eagle II or the Beretta Extrema II. He let me shoot his gun (a Benelli) so I could put a few shells through one in the field. Well... I think I will be getting the Benelli if it brings me the kind of luck Martins did. The first duck I shot was banded!! That's a pretty good sign if you ask me.

On a side note Guage is having a really good year. He has retreived 53 ducks to date, and I didn't even hunt him until after Thanksgiving.

New Calls

One of my good friends Rene made these calls for me a while ago, and I finally picked them up on Thanksgiving. They are good looking calls! I don't know if I will be able to take them in the field because they look so good.

Duck Hunting

Saturday we went out and had a great shoot in the morning. The big storm rolled through and the first hour of shooting was a barrel melter. I think that we had 9 or 10 ducks by the time it slowed down. I was not in the boat much because I was out chasing ducks with Guage. I ended up with 2 green wing teal, a drake widgeon, and a gadwall. I think at the end of the day we ended up with 16 ducks between four of us.

The picture below (which didn't turn out very good) is from today. Justin and I went for a walk and I was hoping to find a little more open water than we did. We ended up jumping two gadwalls and a teal, and then a drake ringneck. The ringneck was in a little bit of open water and he was crippled and not going anywhere fast, so I finished him off. The ringneck is in the freezer as part of my growing collection of birds I would like to mount.

This was the day after Thanksgiving hunt. It was Guages first "real" hunt. I have had him out jump shooting earlier this year, but this was the first hunt.

This is Carson's first duck, and a very good looking drake widgeon. It is one the of the best looking drake widgeon's I have seen.

This is Guage coming back from his first retrieve. We had some issues with the decoys (I need to work on that), but once I lined him up on the duck, he was good to go.

We ended up staying all day and shot 11 ducks. Guage retrieved 9 of them. I think being out all day got him a little tired.

This was a really good photo opportunity, and I like the way it turned out.
This was at the end of the day.

Here are some pictures of Guage and my waterfowl season so far this year.

Guage retreiving

Saturday we went and threw some bumpers for Guage. One of my good friends picked up a littermate of Guages so we went to the park and threw bumpers for a little while. These are going to be some excellent dogs. Yesterday we went over to the park and he was retreiving the bumper from as far as I could throw it, as long as I kept it low enough for him to see it!! I am excited about the progress he is making.

Puppy Today

Today I threw a little teal dummy. Before work I threw the dummy several times and he did awesome bringing it back. Then after work I was working in the yard and had him out with my German Shorthair Pointer. It was fun to see them interact because the puppy would try and get my shorthair to play with him, but my shorthair ignored him like you would your annoying little brother. He is also starting to get the hang of sitting...as well as a puppy can. The other good news is one of my good friends is going to be getting one of his litter mates.

I got a puppy on Friday evening. I am pretty excited and have a lot of work ahead of me. He has made some pretty good retrieves. It doesn't take much to wear him out. I will let him run around while I am working in the yard and he will run around for 20 minutes sleep for 20 minutes.

Ducklings

The canal next to our place has 3 hen mallards and 28 ducklings. I hope they survive the neighborhood cats!

Dakota Decoys

I am pretty excited to be selling and running Dakota Decoys in my spread this year. Pretty sweet looking decoys.