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.
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.