This year's season opened pretty bleak on the Garwood prairie as the teal migration was late and both of our ponds were dry. I wasn't that worried about my own hunting, but I had 14 disabled hunters coming in 2 weeks that I wanted to put on some good spots. We were scheduled to have 5 women (one from Wisconsin) and a blind hunter who was coming from North Dakota!
Another thing we needed was about 50 ducks to cook for our dinner party that we put on to open the event. For the first time ever, I was going to have to ask some friends to help me reach that quota.
Luckily, we got just enough rain on the middle weekend to put water in our ponds and a north wind to push some birds down so we could get to work.
During the week, I hunted almost every day, with my dad and a buddy of mine, oh and my little chocolate Tille. We saw the migration arrive and settle out over the prairie. You don't know how relieved I was to just to see some ducks & water.
On the Friday morning before everybody was set to arrive, I busted this guy with my 3rd shot before he got away. We all know how effective those 3rd shots are. Wounded, he went down in the woods behind us. It's the first band I've seen with a www address on it. I've always been pretty lucky when it comes to banded ducks.
Our group hunt this year was the best yet. A couple of friends from Houston, Tom & Shaun Swonke, built 4 zero gravity rigs for some of our hunters who have trouble holding and swinging a shotgun. We picked up a great new location to hunt and a generous landowner who likes what we're doing. And we had 5 new hunters that were going on their first ever duck hunt.
We had some outstanding hunts guys, even though we got soaked both mornings. We had a lot of volunteers too who we wouldn't have been able to do without. Our blind guy killed 8 ducks, about 5 on the wing. I personally witnessed 2 of those. That was the morning we killed 62 in about 45 minutes though. A couple of hunters got rained out, but everyone who stayed both days all had at least one good shoot. This year we pulled it off under $500. Enjoy the pics...
[img]http://i496.photobucket.com/albums/rr326/wheelz99/groupken.jpg[/img]
