PDA

View Full Version : Opening Day on the Island.



Marc
11-05-2003, 12:40 AM
My faithful hunting companion Nash(yellow lab) and I found a hot spot for hunting duck while scouting on Vancouver Island. I had it all set up in my mind that opening day I’d go out and have my limit by lunch. Well things don’t always work out as planed.

It all started on the evening of the 10th October 2003. I had to drive to Victoria to pick up my order of gunpowder and primers to load my shells for the following day. My wife and I decided to stop for a bite to eat before we headed back to Duncan. We didn’t get home until around 8:00pm. I went into my loading room and proceeded to get my shell press ready to go. I didn’t get finished loading my shells until 11:30pm that night.

The alarm went off at 5:00am on Saturday the 11th of October and I decided it wasn’t necessary to get up that early and set the alarm to do a late morning hunt. I had packed all my decoys, and hunting equipment into the boat and hung half dozen calls around my neck like any seasoned duck hunter does. I did the usual checks on them for tone and volume and when my wife started to yell at me from the bedroom for using them in the house I knew they were working fine :lol: .

I got at the boat launch around 9:00am. I launched my boat with all my gear in tow. On the way to where I was going hunting I met up with a boat with two hunters and their labs that were calling it a day. I was thinking to myself, this must be a great place to hunt if they’re done already. I get to where I want to set up my canoe as a layout blind and proceed to place my decoys. I must have pushed up a couple dozen green heads in the process. Then it all started to happen.

There were 4 other hunters who had placed themselves about 150 yards away from myself. There were two of them on the shore with a blind made in the bank. There was two more about 50 yards of the other two on a sand bar hiding behind an old stump. This is when my day went from good to bad. I don’t mind a little competition in the marsh and I’m usually happy to see other hunters out and about, but that all changed in a span of two hours. These guys were obviously new to the sport of duck hunting and hadn’t done a day of skeet shooting in their lives. These guys were shooting at anything that came within 100 yards of them and I’m not exaggerating. 8O These guys must have fired somewhere in the area of 30 shells and never scratched a bird. There were lots of birds but none flying within a shooting distance after these sky busters were finished. I finally got fed up and packed it in and headed back home.

Marc
11-29-2003, 11:21 PM
Hmm...no other duck hunters on this site from the Island? I guess that makes it better for me then :D I saw a bunch of widgeon and mallards feeding in a field today. Not to mention I saw a big flock of geese migrating through. I'm going tohave to find some farmers fields to hunt in for next fall.

MRBucks
12-04-2003, 11:35 PM
Marc, tough luck, all set up next to some skybusters. What a drag, I bet your dog was even PO'ed that he didn't see any action. :(

Where you hunting in the salt-chuck, river, or lake :?:

Marc
12-05-2003, 06:55 PM
Where you hunting in the salt-chuck, river, or lake

Hey Mrbucks I was hunting on a salt water marsh in Cowichan Bay. I'm seriously thinking of trying it again after this weekend.(last chance for deer for me this weekend) Most duck hunters are open day duck hunters. They go a couple of times and that's it. So hopefully the birds are there not being disturbed and fatening up :D Time will tell I guess. I'll be sure to post up if I get something.

Marc.

bullcoon
12-12-2003, 09:06 AM
marc l used to hunt them in port alberni ,get up at the crack of crow fart,get set up and when they would fly in you could see them glow when they opened their beaks,easy to get then,no seriuosly when l found out that port alberni water fowl had the highest concentration of pcb's and such in their liver found anywhere l gave it up,there was an article wrote up in one of the outdoor magazines and havent gone since,the pulp mills have cleaned up their effluents quite a bit know so everything has probably change l dont really know but something to think about when eating those things out of waters found around mills?

leftcoast
12-12-2003, 09:27 PM
Hey Marc, I tried duck hunting with a shotgun once. Was when I was guiding up around Lac La Hache. We filled up the moose tags early and the hunters gave me and my partner 1000 rounds of shot shells and a couple of shotguns. Went and hid in the bush on this lake and fired a lot of shots and neve hit nothing. I was blue all down my side the next day. Did everything wrong I guess.

My buddy here he hunts ducks alot right next to me on private property.
He always brings me a few. One day I am gonna get him to teach me how to hit them suckers. I have shot a few squirrels running up trees with a .22 and figured a shotgun would be a snap.

=keith=

Marc
12-13-2003, 09:37 AM
The best way to learn how to shoot ducks is spend a lot of time at the skeet clubs. Start by shooting basic skeet, and then trap. Once you manage to hit 75% of them in a round then move on to sporting clays. This will give you the same type of shots taken during actual hunting situations. According to a ducks unlimited study there is on average 4 million ducks per year that are crippled and never retrieved. :cry: We as hunters need to be more responsible and hone our shooting skills to try and lessen crippled birds. Even the person who goes to the skeet field religiously will cripple a bird once in a while but less often then someone who doesn't practice. I also use a hunting dog, which finds 98% of the birds I cripple but that don’t make it right. I still spend time shooting skeet when ever possible. I am a firm believer of hunting dogs for ducks and geese especially with steel shot. I retrieved a duck with my dog that I shot and had flown 200 yards into some grass. When the dog found the duck it was still alive and I had to ring its neck. When I got home that night and plucked it, it had been hit with 9 pellets of # 2 steel at 40 yards. Steel shot just doesn’t have the killing power of lead. People also have to learn what out of range is. I've seen guys trying to shoot ducks at over 100 yards. If you cant see there eyes dont shoot! :x

Marc.

Marc
12-17-2003, 11:27 PM
Hey Leftcoast, I just read this post over again and it sounds like I was tearing into you. If that’s the way you took it I’m sorry that’s not what I meant. What I was trying to say is all hunters in general not one individual have to do our best to try and prevent the crippling of birds or game. I guess I should have posted that differently in another post.

My apologise,

Marc.

BCHunter
12-18-2003, 11:36 PM
I'm going out this weekend for Geese.....

Marc
12-19-2003, 12:00 AM
let me know how you make out BCHunter! I love hunting Geese but I havent found a spot to hunt them yet on the Island.

Marc.

Schutzen
01-03-2005, 12:59 AM
Well Marc I see nothing has changed in Cow bay! We used to get the same only prolly 20+ skybusters all over the area. Usually just us with our deke's and calls watching guys shoot at birds up to 200 yds up with no gear or means to retrieve even. So we gave it up after a few yrs and found quieter places.
The other thing about Cow bay then was we found after a few weeks the birds got real gunshy and very few would come into call/decoy.