We slipped out this morning at 3:30am leaving my wife and Jr’s girlfriend asleep at the house as we headed for the marsh. A scouting trip last night to a new area revealed a huge group of birds holding in a tidal marsh littered with grass islands. The majority of the birds were green winged teal and canvasbacks but there were gadwall, wigeon, and pintails scattered throughout. The tide would be low and incoming at daylight with light winds and overcast skies. Rain was forecasted for 1pm so we decided we wouldn’t be too picky in hopes that we could get a limit and get out before it started.
This was going to be a lazy hunt. We took one of my Hobies and a pirogue. The grass islands were plenty tall enough to hide in and we found one near the center of the open water. There were four other groups that ended up in the same area as us. We played a little flashlight tag with a couple boats but managed to hold our spot which was on the downwind side so we wouldn’t have any issues with them shooting our swing birds. The teal were fast and furious at daylight. Groups of 50-100 were buzzing all around us and coming in from every direction. We picked off a few here and a few there as long as no big ducks were in the air. Suddenly a huge wave of canvasbacks crossed the levee to the West headed in our direction. The flock stretched 200yds wide and must have been 250 birds or so. They were coming across us just 20yds over our heads. I picked out a drake and folded him clean with a single shot. Then it was Matthew’s turn to start putting on a shooting clinic. Bird after bird fell. A double on canvasback drakes followed by a few more teal. I headed out to pick up some of the downed birds and while I was away Jr dropped a drake wigeon. By the time I got back into our hide he was done with his limit. I needed three more to finish us out. I took the lead spot while Matthew sat in the Hobie “lounge chair” and took some pics and video of me shooting. Another drake teal, drake wigeon, and drake canvasback came in short order. Suddenly we were done. We finished our 14 bird limit by 9:30am.
We picked everything up, had a little photo shoot over on a hard levee, and then headed back to the truck while watching swarms of birds flying everywhere around us. Had we not already limited out we could have killed our limits of bluebills, canvasbacks, golden eye, buffleheads, and ruddy ducks while pedaling home. The ducks were definitely not in short supply this morning. What a way to start off the first hunt of Matthew’s month long hunting vacation out here with us on the West Coast! Tomorrow we are headed to Clear Lake to prefish for a bass tournament that I have on Sunday but we’ll be back out after the ducks on Saturday. We are taking the whole family and our little Boykin for her second hunt. Should be a lot of fun if the teal cooperate!
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