Bay hunt

Went out with the Ruffling Feathers guys and ran a small spread for the bay, 38 hand carved blocks. Pintails were scarce, we had one group almost fully commit but got our red. The second I slapped the trigger on the hen was when we all realized it was a hen and Brandon said HEN! But the trigger was already slapped. I later claimed to shoot it for study purposes

Nice.

Were all the deeks yours?

Cool! We are going with Brandon tomorrow, I'm looking foward to it. Beautiful dekes as always Dave

36 of them were mine two were from other carvers, one guy is on this forum we carved a teal each together one day and swapped the unpainted birds, so he carved it and I painted it.

The other decoy is from New York, a guy who carves masters every year and then molds a large bay spread -- basically plastic coated, foam filled birds. I told him I could never do that because I'd just see my mistakes x 100 he said he does too so at the end of the season he sells off his rig for the materials to start over with new masters. The decoy I have of his ended up in my hands after being a traveling decoy for a year and getting hunted and signed by several carvers.

That's awesome, congrats on a great hunt.

Excellent hunt sir. Your blocks are awesome!

I feel like the lessons I have taught in regard to hens is lost?

Looks like a fun hunt

Sweet. Love watching redheads work, they fly in perfect formation.

We had the surprise pleasure of getting to hunt with Brandon and Dave was there with his decoys! This was our first coastal hunt and I had a blast, think I'm hooked. I snapped a few pictures but with the declining light and the fact that choosing between pictures and hunting can be difficult they aren't the greatest.

The spread


One of my favorites of Dave's


Redhead Deke


Can Deke


A few drakes and a good luck spoonie


And a nice sunset

Definetly a pleasure hunting with you guys. Had fun!

Definetly a great treat to hunt over your dekes Dave!

Hey I see my teal decoy in there! I'm sorry I missed out on that trip! Next year I'll bring my 3 dz hand carved blocks along!

I had a great time too, it was nice to meet y'all. When Brandon said we were hunting with another forum member, a taxidermist, I was stoked! Those divers move fast huh?


I went on a very short snipe hunt before we met at the ramp, I realized I only had 40 minutes to put on my waders and try to flush some. About 20 minutes into it I thought, nah, there's none here and then I flushed one right after I almost gave up and went back to the truck. By the time shooting was over my shirt pockets were already full of snipe so I found a use for that little velcro "rod holder" strap on the fishing shirt I've never actually used before:




This morning I had the pleasure of hunting with Wal1809 and a coworker and coworker's dad. We shot a BIG DADDY pintail that is bagged up for a mount. I mean we've all seen the occasional bird with a longer sprig, his sprig wasn't real long or anything, a good average size for a mature sprig, but the bird itself was HUGE. Not a normal pintail size at all. You know how sleek and feminine shaped they are. This is a picture of his head next to a normal size (not the huge, palm sized head with a massive crown bird-- the 1 in 30 we see, but a good one) redhead... his head was bigger. And it didn't photograph right but had the nice purples, yellows, and greens in the brown too.



We had a little slower hunt this morning due to not one breath of wind and no real fishing/hunting traffic on a Monday morning, but we had a good time. Had a raft of pintails in front of us and we kept hearing pintails and trying to figure out where they were flying until we realized it was them rafted up in front of us instead of divers. After the hunt we did a little scouting and jumped a few large pockets of birds as we meandered through the mangroves in Wayne's boat.



I was goofing around with the birds and the chain link and Wayne said jump in there, it'll make a picture. City birds. East side, yo.



I had to head back to town after the morning hunt to return to work Tuesday but Wayne was gonna stay down another day or two and try to hammer on the birds. I heard he did pretty good tonight.

Dave Dave Dave. We got in the redheads. One hunter limited before I parked the boat. We tried to estimate but as best we could get was over 3000 birds in the decoys in a 3 hour hunt. It was steady 50 to 100 birds the whole time we were there. It was as good a show as I have seen in quite some some time. I am glad we squeezed in a hunt.

We had a great time hunting with Brandon for sure. Dave, you are a brave man snipe hunting down there, there were so many "snipe-like" shorebirds by the time I would positively ID them they'd probably be gone lol!

I almost met Wal1809 and didn't even know it till later, that was my FIL that talked to you at the ramp while I was parking. Glad y'all had some good hunts.

ARGHHHHH!!!!

I am so glad you got to see the show!

I feel like the lessons I have taught in regard to hens is lost?

Looks like a fun hunt

I was going to go to Canada and have an egg stomping party but just decided to take Dave hunting.