January 7th, 2017
I had been watching this front develop with high hopes. Hunting had been slow with little weather to move any birds around. We had ducks here, but they just seemed to be sitting all day. I called my buddy and told him that this one could end up giving us 2 days of decent hunting if it panned out.
As the forecast strengthened from a maybe to almost a sure thing, I began to get rattled over where I needed to be and what I needed to target. Big water was out of the question as the National Weather Service called for sustained winds of 24 and gusts of 33mph. With freezing rain/snowy slush also a factor,
I spent most of the day before tortured by where I was going to hunt.
My partner texted me every other hour "make up your mind."
When I did, it came as a surprise to him, but this little tiny piece of water had delivered in the past, and for some reason my mind just kept going back to it. It was well secluded out of the weather over the tree lines and put us in a decent flight path to maybe decoy a few ducks.
When we arrived at the ramp the next morning it was sleeting sideways and the winds howled from southwest.
There were already 5 trucks at this ramp and another 2 coming behind us. We hurried along and motored down the slough towards my hole. I sighed relief when I turned the corner and saw no lights.
We set out the decoys and waited for daylight in the sideways rain.
It rained, and rained, and sleeted, and rained, and other than a few wood ducks we didn't see much flying.
But at about 8:45, my buddy spotted about 25 birds seemingly heading our way. We tucked into our blind and hit the calls. They immediately locked up and were on us before we knew it.
The birds split when we stood to fire, with 3 gadwall, a black, and a pair of mallards swinging to my side. I lined up on the black and folded him, turning toward the mallards, the hen was the closest, so she got the steel. My buddy had 2 gadwall laid out on his side.
"6 more and we can go to Waffle House", I joked as I went to collect the ducks.
A half hour later a single drake gadwall flipped into the spread and my buddy folded him. Before he could get back to our hide, another 5 gadwalls were gliding above us. We both beeped at them, begging them to light in our little pocket. 3 circles and they committed.
We stood to shoot and when the smoke cleared 3 lay dead and the 4th crippled. I gave chase and caught just before she dove into some weeds.
"4 more and we get to eat."
We sat for another hour before seeing another group. As we discussed packing it in, a pair of gadwall appeared way up, gliding above us. It took them 7 passes to get right in the 30mph winds, and when they finally did it, my partner folded his and mine climbed for the sky, as I stood there with a dumbfounded look and an empty gun.
Weather was just getting worse, and I was already high off the drake black, so we called it a day.
As we packed up our stuff my buddy was tossing the birds back to me to store in the back of the boat as I always do. When he tossed the hen, she hit the boat seat and a band appeared from under her feathers.
A scotch double on a drake black duck and a banded hen mallard. That day was a good day to be a duck hunter in South Carolina.
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Last edited by BOGSTER; 02-15-2017 at 11:50 AM.
Be proactive about improving public waterfowl habitat in South Carolina. It's not going to happen by itself, and our help is needed. We have the potential to winter thousands of waterfowl on public grounds if we fight for it.
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