Went to the Pitt marsh early this morning with two of my friends. None of us had hunted waterfowls, and my friends were both bow hunters for the past. So we only had a 20" trench gun 12ga which is my bear defence gun only.We all thought that was crazy but gonna see how a 20" shottie would do, but our advantage is that one of us has a canoe. Yahoo!
So we got there around 6:30 in the rain. My friend said that the rain was gonna deter a lot hunters today. Well obviously that wasn't the case. Right after we got there, two more cars showed up, and one had a canoe on its top too. Everybody was laughing in the dark, yeah, today was gonna be a fun day!
We headed to the centre of the marsh land in our boat. I was sitting right in the middle with my gun, and friends were paddling. We didn't have any idea where we were gonna head to until we heard the first gun shot when the first light broke in. Damn it, we got to be faster! So we just made turn onto the first water entrance. We heard the ducks far away and really couldn't see any of them. So I said I'm gonna shoot anything I see and could shoot.
Not long there came a flock of coots on the water. None of us had any idea how the birds were spooked in this area. So Jamie and Marshal started darting the boat towards the coots. I guess the coots were still not totally awake and shocked to see our canoe charging towards them. When I saw the distance narrowed to about 30 metre, I pumped my gun, Jamie got down to the bottom of the canoe with Marshal keeping paddling. The coots started taking off. As soon as they were in the air, I rapidly let 3 shots out by pumping the gun like nuts. Two dropped. What a start of the day!
After we got three coots, the birds started being spooked and figuring out how to deal with us. They wouldn't let us get within 50 yards. So we decided to avoid the open waters and get into smaller and windier channels. So we were still able to get another two. However, the shots obviously didn't look as powerful as we thought if we shot at the birds above 30 metres. At first we thought it might be because of the distance. But after we lost two beautiful ducks even after they were definitely hit by the pellets at about 30 to 35 yards, we figured there was something wrong with our shot sizes. We used #4 and #5. One duck was hit by the pellets, and all of us saw the shock he took. For a second we all thought he's gonna drop as his wings stopped moving for a second, but he managed to regain his strength and slided into bush 60 metre away where we had no way to get in to find him.
So we finally came back home with 5 coots, and that wrapped up our day. I think next time we'll bring #2 and #3 shots to clean the house. My friend sare already budgeting for a 28" barrel for the next trip.
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... ouch.
Re: First time out for waterfowl
Originally Posted by Firebird
..... clueless