Last day for us.

[reeltime]

Had a decent shoot this morning. Until the ice came in and clogged us up. No good birds but good birds to save for off season training. Had a drake white wing scoter walk away after ziva did a retrieve on it and that 1 got away I had 5 in possession but shot 6 so I was done. Got them wrapped good and in the freezer. Then hit the ice and got a bucket of perch.

It was a tough season weather wise and bird numbers...was worse on the body,,, went through the ice 1 day, got some bad leg bruises over that one. Then the next day I dropped a drake bluebill on the ice and ended up taking a hard spill when my feet went out from under me and ended up landing hard on my right shoulder. Spent that night with icy hot and advil and more advil before the next days hunt....not sure what I did to my shoulder but it's still pretty sore and quite bruised. Time to clean up gear, sort decoys, clean out the boat, and recover from the season.

This sight made my heart stop for a few seconds.

Luckily it was blood from the buffie.

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[Lawdwaz]

I'm sooooo clueless when it comes to those big water ducks.  I guess I should say congrats????????

[reeltime]

not sure Law, :-)    the buffleheads, old squaws, and scoters are not here all summer and rarely here before the late split season.  the old squaws are the bats of the waterfowl world they zig and zag and zip and dive, alot of fun gunning but hard to hit and not good table fare but make great training birds as they are small, strong scented birds so they work excellent for blind scent retrieve training. 

scoters are a big sea duck. bold as a bull but extremely hard to kill, we never saw them here in any numbers until about 8 years ago now we see them in small numbers each year, I had my eye on a pair of surf scoters that were here the week before season, never heard of them being shot but would not be surprised if the person that shot them just thought they were the more common white wings. they are  not bad when mixed in with other ducks and geese and processed into summer sausage.

im sure you know what mergansers are, being a fisherman while we don't specifically target them generally we do shoot them, when they congregate in large numbers they can put a serious hurting on our baitfish and 2 year classes of perch, sunnys, gills, and bass. again another non edible bird but good for training.

 

[Lawdwaz]

Thanks for the tutorial!

[The_Real_TCIII]

Cool scoters! Those are always in our dekes just before shooting time, then we don't see them again


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[BigVal]

How do those scoters taste? 

[reeltime]

they are strong if done straight from the bird.  i know someone that made a bunch of them into corned scoter and they tasted just like corned beef.   we are going to try all the ducks and geese into summer sausage .