It was an eventful day right from the start. I had gone to bed last night at 7:00pm as I was feeling a bit under the weather and wanted to get rested up for the morning hunt. The alarm went off at 4:45am but I didn't crawl out of bed until 5:15am. I had told field Marshall that I would meet him at his place between 5:30 - 6:00am, I loaded up the truck, grabbed the dog, and drove by braille in the fog and met up with the boys at 6:10am.
We had 3 different breeds of Retrievers with us today, "Marshall" the Chesapeake, "Bill" the Golden, and "Duffy" the Labrador retriever. Talk about testing your patience first thing in the morning with 3 dogs running and plowing through the decoys and blinds as your trying to set up before legal time comes around. At least they burned off some of the restless energy before they had to settle into the blind and wait for birds.
We didn't have to wait long when legal time came around, the ducks were fast and furious falling in the front, to the back, and on the sides. Dogs running everywhere.Marshall figured he'd try and save some time and beat the other dogs to the birds by going through the wall of the blind, but he found out the hard way that the Camo netting is worst then a fish net and it took me a good minute or so to untangle him once he finally stopped flailing around like a fish out of water and getting more tangled. It was decided that after a couple of episodes that we had to rebuild the blind that it would be easier to just leave the dog outside the blind where he could lay there and watch the birds and see where they were falling.
The ducks didn't mind the fog but the geese were another story, we had flock after flock of cacklers but they would just circle out of range but not commit to the decoys. We did have one flock that gave us a small opportunity and Duck Buster managed to cut one out of the flock. Most of the time they would come in silent and you wouldn't see them until they had already passed. We did manage to scratch 6 geese and 16 ducks. Field Marshal made a nice double on ducks, and Duck Buster made a nice triple on a flock of large Canada's, all 3 dogs ran out and had a grab at a goose.
As we were pulling out the fog finally lifted and the geese started to move. Always seems to be the way, you're out there picking up the decoys and the birds start to come in. That's they way it goes I guess, awesome day with some great friends. Now to the plucking.
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Buddi doing what she does best!
Originally Posted by Dano
