Final MN Duck Shoot of 2010

Logan and I arrived at the cabin around 10:45 PM after I had to work late on Friday afternoon. I woke up Saturday morning to pouring rain and an under the weather Logan. This meant Logan and I would be sleeping in and taking the morning shoot off. After waking up around 9 AM we drove into town to scout for birds and hopefully catch up with a pheasant or two. By the time we returned to the cabin we had seen very little duck and goose activity and no pheasants. So far we had a great start to the weekends hunt!

Around noon we walked down to the North Slough to see if the wood ducks where still holding up in the flooded brush. We did jump a few Woodie’s, but nothing like two weeks ago. One flush presented a shot and we had our first duck of the weekend.
Before heading out for the evening hunt Logan and I added another Pigeon to bag. Nothing makes the boy happier than seeing a pigeon go poof!

By 4 PM we where setup in Logan’s Honey Hole for the evenings shoot. Joe Salato from Wingwavers Decoy Co. and his lab Buck joined Logan and I for the evening hunt. We had a Northeast wind at 5-10 mph and rain. It continued to rain off and on all afternoon with a couple down pours mixed in for good measure. We setup on the north end of the slough about 30 yards east of our location on weekend #2. We had action consistently all evening long but the divers would not make the final commitment to the blocks. We finally had a small group commit and two drake Ringbills took a death bath. We ended up taking three more Ringbills the rest of the evening. The story of the night was the lack of puddle ducks and the divers not making the last commitment to the blocks.

The highlight of the evening was Joe calling in three greater canada geese from well across the field. He managed to turn the three birds and bring them right into the spread locked up and feet down. The geese broke off to my side of the spread and I was only able to bring down one bird after pumping 3 loads into that tough SOB. Watching those geese lock up and drop right into the slough was one of the prettiest sights from this fall.
It continued to rain all evening and the following morning. Logan still wasn’t feeling well and our gear was soaked, so we slept in for the 2nd day. On the way home we hunted pheasants just east of Glenwood, MN. We had a couple birds put the slip on us but we finally caught up with a rooster on the back side of a deep ditch the butted up to a cut corn field. Some school boy shooting cost me a double but it was nice to get into a pheasant again. That most likely put an end to our 2010 waterfowl season. With some cold weather moving in this week hopefully the MN whitetails will be moving around and looking to hold some arrows.