Despite the Don's admonition not to do so, I made the executive decision that he, Special Fred, Meredith, & I would head South in search of open water on the Thursday re-opening. Since we were en route to public spaces, we decided to leave J-town at 2:00 a.m. -- that's right, TWO IN THE MORNING. Doing so ensured that we'd be first in line to get our honey hole, and we left town in the wee hours with high expectations.
Unfortunately, our camping excursion remained private less than one hour, as company showed up by 3:45 a.m. What started as a party of four quickly turned to a party of eight, including two lads from South Carolina. Being Gentlemen, we welcomed them and ensured that there would be no hard feelings regarding their tagging along.
Fortunately, they didn't screw us up. By "didn't screw us up," what I mean is that there were no birds to be found, i.e., it sucked. Furthermore, we found that what sucks doesn't suck anymore with eight people than it does with four people. Sucks is as sucks does, and we finally left empty-handed at 9:30.
Demoralized, we returned to the farm for an afternoon skunk saver. At first, we gave them 30 minutes of our attention on the Lost 20. However, when that didn't happen, we shifted to the Home Field, and boy howdy, were we glad we did.
Seeing our first decent groups of mallards for the season, we promptly cut seven out of the first flock. And then another two out of the next flock, and then another three out of the next flock, etc. Just that quickly, we doubled our mallard count for the season. When the smoke cleared, our pile included 12 Mallards, 12 Shovelers, 2 Pins, 4 Greenwings, and 1 Mystery Bird. 31 for the day!!!
We set two records yesterday:
1. We have now actually surpassed the most ducks we have EVER killed in the Home Field in an entire season. Our previous high was in the 130's, and we have now killed 170, and in 10 days of hunting.
2. We have now actually surpassed the highest number of Northern Shovelers we have ever killed in a single season (ouch!).
Total for the day: 31 birds.
Total for Regular Season: 170
Combined Teal & Regular for 2009: 230
Birds Per Day: 17.00
106 Shovelers (Arrrrrrrrgh!)
21 Specks
22 Mallards
9 Green Wing
3 Gadwall
5 Pintails
1 Blue Wing
1 Wigeon
1 Red Head
1 Snow
