Jewelry!!!

[SCswampCAT]

How did I miss this. Damn.

[dhall1693]

DHall, sweet bird and the jewelry to boot! Have you gotten any word back on the band and age of the bird? Does anyone know when the last "Jack Miner" band was placed or if the foundation is continuing to band birds?

Yes, Monday November 7th, 2005 talked to the foundation. Should have certificates within a few weeks they said.

[Woodiewacker82]

DHall, sweet bird and the jewelry to boot! Have you gotten any word back on the band and age of the bird? Does anyone know when the last "Jack Miner" band was placed or if the foundation is continuing to band birds?

From what I understand they are still banding them.


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[Big Timber]

That is truly incredible. Not only the fact of the Miner banded black duck drake, but the fact he made that trip so many times.

Not long after I started duck hunting, I think it was around '99 or 2000, I had hunted lake James up here in NC and only seen about 10 ducks total that morning about a week before season went out. For those who don't know, it is the first lake on the Catawba chain as it comes out of the mountains. On our way home I decided to put in the Catawba below the dam and scout around for a while. My friend and I rode about 10 miles of river and saw 3 wood ducks and a pair of mallards. I will never forget these 2 days. I had a go devil, so I decided to go up John's river which I guessed I had a better chance at seeing muskie swimming around than any ducks. This river is too shallow for most outboards and super clear water and a sand bottom. Not what you call good duck ground but it runs through a few corn field bottoms a long way up from the Catawba. I don't mind telling where I was because I don't think it will ever happen again and I don't hunt NC any more in favor of trips west. We ran up and as we got to the bottoms, we started jumping mallards in every bend. Lots of them. If I had to guess, there were probably 2-3 thousand birds using that stretch of river that nobody ever would think to hunt. It was around 1:00pm. We finally stopped in a bend while still jumping ducks and threw out about 10 decoys. 10 minutes later we had a draw come in and killed 2 greenheads each. I told my friend lets not blow them out and come back tomorrow with some more buddies. The next morning we killed almost 30 birds, mostly mallards with a couple of blacks. 2 greenheads had Miner bands which we didn't even know what they were at the time. I was not fortunate enough to get one of the bands. At that time, the foundation website put a dot on the US map everywhere a band was recovered the year before. There was a dot on the map from the same area from the year before. I believe that whole flock probably came through the sanctuary and was migrating the same route from year to year. Those ducks were dry feeding those corn fields then dumping over into the river which is about the size of the Cache in Arkansas. I went back for many years trying to find those ducks and never saw another duck in that stretch of river. I would give anything to be able to have that time back again. That group of ducks in such a small stretch of river rivals anything I have seen in Arkansas.

Congratulation on a great trophy!

[skrimp]

Welcome to the club! Mine was a greenhead though so not as rare as yours.

[skrimp]

Nice mottled!

I see what you did there....