The First Bird Outing of Fall 2012....

With all the foul weather we've had lately, it has been ugly to even think of getting out in the boat and going much of anywhere. Hearing tales of blowing gale winds, three foot rollers and pounding whitecaps on the river tends to do that. But, there are only so many days in September...that extraordinary time of Fall here in the bush, and you better use 'em...

And so, because of that "time's wasting" mentality, when John asked if I was going bird hunting with him and Forde and I said no....I started reconsidering. And it wasn't long until I was pulling on raingear and giving John a call back. We would be going to Gathonajuk (spelling is guaranteed to be WRONG) island, up river about 20 miles. This was the scene of last year's crazy bird hunt, and so, needless to say, I was excited. The ride even turned out to be nicer than I thought it would be, considering what it looked like outside. So, before too long, we pulled the boat up on shore of the island and started down the trail. This time there wasn't the deafening roar of wings as hundreds of birds took off like last year, however. In fact, a lot was different from last year. We quickly found out that the trail wasn't much of a trail at all - it was now a pond. Although we could see healthy groups of birds swimming right where we wanted to be, it was unreachable without at least hip waders - maybe chesties. So we went to the right and set up on the next likely looking mud pocket.

John started setting up the spread of dekes while I began attaching weights to those who needed 'em.


The action was pretty good as far as seeing birds....unfortunately the ones we saw were usually going somewhere else to land :). We did get a few in close enough though...but the strong winds also took some of them away from us when they fell out too far for Monk to get to.

Forde got some steel in to more than a couple, on his first 'official' bird outing.


On one volley where the ducks came in nicely, John and Forde each took one as I held my fire. The result was Monk grabbing John's duck, and then running down the beach to get Forde's, that he had chased down and..uhm...'anchored'. This is the action shot of the retrieval of the pair:


Towards the end of the evening, Two mallards came in, locked up, and dropped down right in front of us. Both birds were quickly put to bed. Monk brought the second one in as John waited with the first:


A shot of me heading back to the boat with the night's bag of five ducks. (Our collective bag, not 'my' bag....)


And finally, a shot of Forde, holding up a gaggle of ducks, and grinning as a cold-blooded killer should.