Well, I headed back east about 2 weeks ago, so that my new daughter could spend christmas with her grand parents. I had high hopes of layout shooting divers on the great lakes and river systems, as i grew up hunting divers. Well, the day after I flew in a HUGE Front came through, and lets just say, i thought my chances of shooting any birds had come to end.
The area we hunt most, Got 3.5 feet of snow in 2 days. They declared a state of emergency and were airlfiting people off the highways. it was -19 when i stepped off the plane. By weeks end every hole with water had 6 inches of ice, and every field had at least a few feet of snow. The only birds around were on the detroit river where the currents are fast and furious and very deep.. (its much like the fraser). Literally thousand of redheads, cans and mallards rafted up with no chance to get to them. The next week well out with boys wallowing in my sorrows, a friend of a friend mentioned he had built an airboat and if there was any open water out there that was huntable (less then 10 feet deep) he could probably get us there. So we made a date for today...
And well, it was insane. 30km north east wind, -14 C. The conditions were unexplanable and well the pics show some of it you really had to be there. A 16 foot jon boat with 3 guys full of our gear and dekes, in 2-4 foot iceflows and jams to get out to the only small hole in the water. Took us close to an hour to get ot our spot and we jumped close to 500 ducks off the hole and unfortuenaly only got to hunt it for 2 hours before we had to get the hell outta there as the wind had changed and the flows were wiping out our dekes. Still managed 6 birds. 3 redheads, 2 cans, 1 mallard. Its supposed to warm up over the next week, and we may have another shot at those birds that got me into duck hunting in the first place.
Some pics from the day.
all the birds we jumped on the way out
Our ride for the day
Pulling dekes before they get smoked by a huge ice flow
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. Those Canvasbacks are sure pretty, I saw about 12 of them on private land here in the Cowichan Valley last year while goose hunting. 