Mine seem to have lost the fire somewhere around 17 .
My oldest girl was a duck hunting fool until her Sr yr of High school . She had a knack however of only shooting restricted species .
We went out to an old haunt on what turned out to be a duck day supreme . We had shot 5 green heads and a couple of gadwall and were headed for the truck ,in a getting heavier and colder fog that was maybe 15 ft off the ground so you could a half mile straight out but at 40 yd there were no tree tops , and this swarm of green wing teal come by us in the typical whoosh way that they do . I guess they were trying to get above the fog and trees . So I say to her be ready there will be more bir.......
I didn't even get it all out and she was mounted an swinging, bam,s H U k it y shuck, bam ,thud, splash...... A pair of canvas backs . 1sawed of at the neck base and 1 with about 25 hits and 80 broken bones . I'm just glad the the headless quacker didn't set his wings they were doing about 60 , he'd have hit about 150 yds out . It was a beautiful double , the dog worked just like she was supposed to.
The youngest boy went with me and the 2 oldest we had about 80 snow deks out on the beach all around the blinds , all 4 honkers set on the edge right , and about 40 ducks on the left set in double row "J" . Kind of a shallow point near the river mouth on Walker Lake . We look out and there's a flight that we assumed were snows but only about 25 birds . I get on the call and they just locked up and straight down the chute ............ Black feet and no tips ..... I'm all "SWANS!!!!!!" Probably about 67x and just in time as lil' miss Canvas back was already shouldered . I start to wave them off and catch just a glimpse of about 80 ducks breaking out of the river channel . I got on the duck call.......... Honker calls are busting out of both side ...... Sure enough there's a flight of honkers about 2 miles out . By any standard this is weird at best . With 3 calls going ,all playing different tunes , the swans set in about 20 yd past the Honker deks half the flight of ducks are right on us and I open up on the ducks with the youngest boy . We got 2 down and tucked back in and got on the Honker calls and the swans although startled just swam down the bank a ways . By some miracle the honkers found the deks and made a big wide circle dropping 4-5 of the 20 or so out . I figured why not their young and tender and limited tagets means more hits right ? I call it the oldest boy dropped 2 clouds in the next county , Ms Canvas drops the only cackler for 100 miles and the youngest is next to me click ,shuck,click,shuck,click,shuck.......
The dog knows that somebody shot and is on the birds ,Ms Canvas is doing her happy dance , the oldest is head hung and I'm looking at the youngest boy and he looks like Don Knott's in the shakiest gun in the west when his 60 Colts falls all apart. He's got the duck fever and the shakes huffing like a freight train and all I can do is laugh . He was juiced up past speech . I guess he just wasn't a wait for it ,sneak up on em' type. Glory days !
In the rush of the ducks, he had shot 3 and forgotten to reload .
I miss it but the kids are grown and have kids too young to go , so pretty soon I'll have grands to take if I can get them in the same state with me.
