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View Full Version : Another couple of days watefowling in BC



Ian F.
11-05-2007, 05:13 PM
As we stroll through life we build memories all the time, some more memorable then others, this weekend was one of those more memorable times. I took someone new out one day, went hunting with a good friend the next and thought for a good while we would be performing a rescue on a couple of other hunters.

Sunday morning I met Michel at the parking lot to see if we could fool the snow geese, so far our attempts have been low on the success side. Reports said it may be windy, but until I turn the very last corner for the launch all seemed fine. The wind was up and onshore, so we’d have to try the bottom. Underway we fought some reasonable waves and just kept it slow and steady, part way out another boat passed us, yeah we where thinking the same. Waves got higher, we got slower and decided to pull in to the first legal place to hunt and try a pass shoot for ducks. The other boat passed us and I lost sight of it, but not thought. After if got brighter we found it with our binos, tied up to a piling, just sitting there. It sat there for 45min to hour and the occupants looked fine. I figured after the tide flooded in a bit and things hopefully got safer (waves were at least 5 feet crest to trough) I’d go see if they needed help. Before my need to go out they untied and appeared to be under power, it looked like they may have had motor issues but I’m not sure. I know without ever meeting them that they put the value of a few snowgeese above their own safety, and maybe lives, never a good choice, never!

The ducks where flying really well, but fast, really fast as the wind was in the 40-60 km range it made for some very interesting shooting! The tide was down and we where hunkered in a cut safe and sound and just hunted by siting in another cut. In a bizarre way it reminded my of the trenches from WWI, mud, lots and lots of mud!

http://server3.uploadit.org/files/ianrfeir-meintrench.jpg

We just had out some mallard silhouettes when a pair of snows came out of nowhere, they were on Michels side and if I shot I would have muzzle blasted him really bad. He shot, I coached and together (that’s me sneakily stealing credit) he brought one down first shot, second and third only brought feathers from the other one, but a good start!

http://server2.uploadit.org/files/ianrfeir-MDbirdinhand.jpg

I don’t remember who brought down the first duck, but I do remember watching it in the water. The tide was flooding in, the wind and waves the same direction and the bird was going out against all of it! Michel figured back eddies, me just perplexed. A short boat ride and back it came, Oh almost forgot, 3 outing with the new 20hp Yamaha 4stroke, I’m in love! but that’s another story!

http://server2.uploadit.org/files/ianrfeir-mewithbird.jpg

We decide this spot was good enough for geese, lots of poop around so we put out the land part of the rig. The water was “too rough to feed ya” let alone put some floaters out. In case you don’t know is reference is to Gordon Lightfoots “The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” which really registers with me having worked on superior, in November,
5 miles from where she went down. Michel had made up 40 sillys to go with my 30 something and a dozen shells, all in all we had a pretty good looking rig!

http://server2.uploadit.org/files/ianrfeir-mdrigginout.jpg

Ian F.
11-05-2007, 05:14 PM
The ducks where flying well, but not so much the geese and well it was definitely one of those days where a scoop shovel and a barn door came to mind. I dumped a sailor mallard and after letting it sit for a bit to hopefully die, I went looking. Well if you have never tromped around a tidal marsh at low, you have yet to experience torture! Hummocks up to 3 feet high, ditches full of mud, hard or soft, water, grass or any combination there of! Just when you think you are fine walking on top, shlop, flopp down you go all twisted up in the grass and the mud. This continues the whole look for the bird, must have spent 30 minutes in search with no success, damn lost bird! Make my way back exhausted!

http://server2.uploadit.org/files/ianrfeir-horay.jpg

Time goes by a few more displays of shooting prowess gone bad, and Michel adds another goose to the bag (a really nice shot too, with #3’s!).
Now I have to tell you a little about Michel, he’s a slightly quiet very friendly man who happily joins my on my misadventures. No matter how much food I bring, he always has more and it’s always homemade and very tastey! He’s spent his life chasing big game and is somewhat new to waterfowling and in a way he’s apprenticing with me as I did with my dad, even though Michel is a grandfather. He’s always early, never complains and always carries his share. Basically what someone want’s in a partner.
I’d just gotten back from ½ and hour or more of shlop, flopp, shlopp flop and was exhausted. My knew which I had surgery on a few years ago was killing me and I was simply exhausted. Some birds worked in and I hit one, not as hard as I would like either (see early note about shooting prowess) and it sailed off and splooched in a mud pan. CRAP! Last thing I wanted to do was another death march through the hummocks. Can’t remember if I complained or not, or Michel just saw how pooched I was. He says that hell go look for it! I said there’s no need, you’ve walked as much as I have today, my bird, my error, my cross to bare, but he insisted and off he went, and a ½ hr or so later back he came with a nice mallard, just how do you thank someone like this?

The tide work in to the point where we had to pick up the spread and call it a day, we brought home some ducks, some snows and of course some good memories, and thank good no memories of plucking fools from the water.

http://server3.uploadit.org/files/ianrfeir-MDpickinup.jpg

Guess my fingers feel like writing today, cause that’s just the second part of my adventures!

Saturday was one of those BC days, wet, really wet, Forrest Gump wet! If you are a wet coaster you know what I mean, I’ve hunted and lived all over Canada, but the west coast has it’s own wet. Not cold driving wet, but tolerable all day soaking wet that you just sit in like some feature in a oriental water garden and hope the ducks want to come pay you viist. Yes, Saturday was one of those BC wet days!

http://server3.uploadit.org/files/ianrfeir-brianinthewet.jpg

I agreed to take out Brian for his first duck hunt, something I feel an obligation for as I think we all need to help those starting out at least get on the easier path, whether they follow it is there choice. Brian is a very pleasant friendly 25 year old teacher doing on call work till he gets his first contract. A place I know well as my wife has been, and is once again in the same boat.

We met up a Pitt Marsh and loaded his gear into my rig and got underway. I tried out a spot I’ve been wanting to shoot all season and it didn’t disappoint. The bag for me was mainly gadwalls with a drake buffy that came in just like station 8 that I couldn’t resist. The birds flew early and after some discussion with Brian we’d get them however we could. He admitted that he was brand new to wingshooting too, that’s right, not even cans or clays! Lets hope the birds cooperate!

A pair of gaddies came early and sat down, I tried to get Brian on one and I think he shot at one, not a decoy but between nerves, newness and the wet (did I mention it was wet out?) the bird flew off un harmed. I passed up many shots trying to get birds for Brian but it was one of those days when the birds just don’t work and you know the best you are going to get is a look. Hard enough if you are an experience wingshot, I felt for Brian and remembered when I was in those shoes of his 25 years ago….man I’m getting old.

Later in the morning a pair of buffies came in and landed in the dekes, they were all Brians his first shot didn’t connect, but got them up, his second did and he stoned a hen buffy in the air! I could easily see he was bitten by the bug, and bitten really bad. I had done my job, not getting the bird but passing the torch.

http://server2.uploadit.org/files/ianrfeir-brian.jpg

Remember your first bird? I do, a single black duck in an Ontario beaver pond with my Dad. I ended up swimming to get it and if that water was cold I don’t remember one bit! I do remember the smile on my dads face when he knew he’d done his job passing on the bug.

Very best,

Ian

P.S. I think I know how to thank someone like Michel, you write a note like this.

dave
11-05-2007, 05:35 PM
Wow, sounds like a great weekend. Thanks for letting us in on the adventures.

MichelD
11-05-2007, 06:40 PM
Jeez. I’m blushing.

Ian’s a great hunting partner too, if the credits are being passed around. Always willing, even eager to share his knowledge and experience. Got me into skeet shooting (though you couldn’t prove it yesterday) to try to improve my wing shooting, always full of advice and suggestions and fun to be around.

He lent me some silhouette patterns for some decoys I made and I brought them in the house in a kind of a plastic folder of silhouette material with “Sillies” written on it.

“Why does that package say sillies on it?” my wife asked.

“Oh, that’s just Ian,” I replied.

We agree on safety issues too, so neither of us is the kind of guy that’ll knowingly pull a bonehead move or dare the other to take a chance. We’ve got families that are waiting for to come back home.


I know I claim to be a writer, after all that’s what I do for a living, but I think Ian’s account is better than anything I could cook up. He put in details I didn’t think to mention, like the guys in the other boat. When they passed us, I thought for a moment they were going to flip right over they were bouncing the bow so high in the waves.

That said; here’s my version of events.

I met up with Ian at the Wellington Point boat launch at 07:00 Sunday morning as agreed, and after squaring away things in the boat, including my 40 new home-made snow goose silhouette decoys, we motored away from the launch just before daybreak.

We’d both noticed as we arrived at the launch that the wind was stiffer than we expected. The flag at SM products looked like it was trying to tear off the flagpole. We knew it was going to be windy, but this was impressive.

Ian’s new Honda four-stroke outboards hummed like an electric sewing machine, it was so quiet. Once we got out into the channel we realized just how windy it was going to be, as Ian had to idle across the river until we got into the lee of Westham Island and then he could give it a bit more gas.

Once we got into more open water however, it started to get pretty lumpy with the Westerly wind bumping up against the last of the ebb. My shotgun case was soaked from the splashes over the bow, as was my daypack, in which I had packed my camera for a change, not in a plastic bag. Duhhh.

When I opened it later the case was wet but the camera was okay.


Ian spotted a convenient looking cranny on the shore of Westham Island and tucked the bow of the boat in there. It was perfect actually, a ditch just deep enough for the bow of the boat, with marsh-grass-covered hummocks on both sides. We secured the boat there and set out a bunch of duck silhouette decoys, all of Ian’s snows, 32 silhouettes and some full bodies and my 40 silhouettes, then we took Ian’s folding hunting chairs and set them in an adjacent ditch, with barely the tops of our bodies showing. Perfect set up.

There were ducks flying around along the shore before we pulled in, but we didn’t realize just how many ducks were around until Ian fired off a shot at a single that surprised us as soon as we got settled in and what seemed like hundreds rose from all directions within 100 yards of us from the ditches and hummocks.

Then it was quiet for amount then “There’s some! Are you loaded?” Ian said, and for once I was, and not only that, I had my earplugs in. I have to have earplugs in when I’m shooting or the tinnitus in my left ear gets worse.

Sure enough, coming right over towards us from upstream were three snows at a shootable height. I swung on the last one, and I can't even remember, if I hit it on the first or second shot but it dropped in the marsh.

Shortly after that Ian dropped a duck in the river and even though the tide was coming in, the back eddy along the shore swept it out to sea in the rising waves. We watched it for a while than Ian took off in the boat to retrieve it. The waves were getting pretty high, and it looked pretty dicey when he got in the trough, but he managed to pick it up.

We’d noticed a couple other guys head even further out than us and moor to two pilings further out and for a while we thought they might be in trouble, but as the wind and waves came up, they quit and motored in, much to our relief.

“I thought I might have to go out and get them,” Ian said.

There weren’t that many snows flying that morning, not like the previous Saturday when we were on the opposite side of the island. And those that were flying were high. Way high.

Over the morning the tide slowly came in and we were able to easily pull the boat up into the ditch, securing it to shore with a good solid little anchor Ian has.

I managed to drop a teal and Ian several mallards. One dropped down nearly 100 yards away and he took off to retrieve it, coming back sore and out of breath.

“I must have fallen down 30 times out there,” he said. At a first glance it looks almost flat, but once you get walking in and among the hummocks there at the mouth of the river, you discover it’s ditches, humps, grass on top of uneven ground, all kinds of man traps.

The rest of the morning was quite eventful, and lucrative, particularly for the manufacturers of Kent Faststeel ™ shot shells.
At one point a very lucky mallard drake flew over right overhead from behind and we both emptied our guns at it, and missed.

‘I thought that was one dead bird,” I said.

“Me too,” Ian said.

It was like that a lot on Sunday.

We’d be comfortably seated facing one way when suddenly we’d get dive bombed from a duck or ducks approaching from the rear. If we looked over our shoulder one way, a duck would fly from the other side. I never did get another duck, but by the end of the morning Ian had two mallard drakes, a pintail and a widgeon in the bag.

He shot at one hen mallard and it kept flying, then landed about 100 metres away, so we memorized the spot and later on as we’d noticed other ducks landing there I decided to wander over and have a look.

I was out in the open in a muddy flat when a single snow came right over me, and I managed to knock it down with my second shot but it dropped in the water.

I saw Ian watching it and he motioned and yelled that he was going to get it.

Halfway to where I expected to find the hen mallard, I spotted it and finished it with a swat load I’d been saving.

I left it on a hummock and went and had a look farther ahead at a washed up log and stump. I sat on the stump and noticed passing birds didn’t even notice me on it. Dressed in camo if you sit still, that’s all you need for a blind. Play stump root. I made a mental note to try the spot again.

By mid-day the tide had come in, and the slop out on the water had died down though the wind was still puffing pretty good so we packed up and headed in.

It was a little easier going in with the wind, but there were still a few splashes over the bow.

All in all, it was a good day; we learned a lot, kept the shotgun shell makers in business and even managed to bring a few birds home.

That’s what it’s all about isn’t it?

Dano
11-05-2007, 09:06 PM
Great stories and pictures guys. I've never shot a snow goose, great picture!
Glad I was at the marsh sunday though, those windy days on the river can be dangerous and the marsh rarely gets a whitecap.
Might get wednesday off, I'll take some pictures (sunday I forgot the camera....).
Dan

rishu_pepper
11-05-2007, 10:39 PM
That pic of me all masked-up isn't too appealing is it? :eek:

You've all heard of my side of the story so I won't repeat too much of it here (see it here: http://www.huntingbc.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=16487 ).

How true it is, though, I'll never forget my first duck, the buffy, just as I won't forget my first grouse earlier this season. And I won't soon forget the cleanup job afterwards either!

And bit by the bug I have been. In fact, today I couldn't keep myself inside being such a nice day out, so I dragged all my stuff to B-Bay's 104 St. Not a lot of ducks, did have a Canada fly right over me (I was too surprised to get a shot off).

I learned a few lessons today:
- how to ID seagulls (hey, you gotta learn some time :biggrin:)
- be prepared at ANYTIME (re: lost goose, easier said than done)
- how far out should I set up
- how terrible the traffic is at 4:30-5:30 :mad:

Like my mentor Ian says, it's all about trial and error. Frustrations will come, but it's all part of the learning experience. I'm still trying to figure out things like tides, time of day, etc., but hey I had a good time out today, and that's the important part. Bagging something is just a bonus.

Perhaps one day I'll be the one to pass the torch to someone else. Heck, my dad's already all fired up after hearing all my adventures. I think I'm closed to getting him hooked, maybe next season, maybe :smile:

Cheers,
Brian

Sasquatch
11-05-2007, 11:49 PM
Thanks for the story and the pics guys. Sounds like you had a great time.

Buck
11-06-2007, 01:34 AM
Wow now that was a hunting report.You got to love the comraderie of an interesting day in the field.

308BAR
11-06-2007, 09:24 AM
Awsome write up! Ian I applaud you for your willingness to pass the torch and appreciate your 4 part write up on the 101s of waterfowl hunting. I look forward to my first hunt as well. Thanks for sharing.

Tanya
11-12-2007, 07:21 AM
Thanks for sharin', sounds like a great time.