Our yearly trip to Saskatchewan has come and gone. Thanks again to all of our Canadian neighbors to the north for the incredible hospitality. This year our crew of 6 split into 2 groups with 3 driving and 3 flying into Saskatchewan. The 3 of us who drove pulled our new decoy trailer along with 2 blacks, 1 chocolate, and an ole yeller dawg. One of our crew purchased an '05 diesel Chevy for the journey hoping to gain some mileage over a gas vehicle. We quickly learned that it didn't matter and diesel was running over 3 bucks a gallon as soon as we hit Illinois and went to 3.30 a gallon once we hit I29. Of course it was well over a dollar a litre in Saskatchewan with the CDN Dollar on par with the USD.
On the trip up we started losing power somewhere in Missouri. We pulled her over and found that the oil reservoir was all but DRY. We put 4 quarts in and made it another 100 miles before we started losing power again. We made the call to pull into the nearest Chevy dealership and wait the 3 hours until they opened. About 45 minutes before daylight 2 women come power walking through the parking lot. RCH rolled down the window and asked if they knew what time the dealership usually opened. Half expecting them to scream and run at strangers in the dark, we were surprised when they came over and gave us as much information as they could. We thanked them and went back to semi-sleep as dawn arrived. An hour or so later a car pulled up and it was one of the Missouri women with 3 fried egg sammiches, 3 bottles of water, and an invitation to come use her facilities if we were in need. Ahh country people. You just gotta love em. Long story short, we had a bad filter and a filter replacement and oil change later we were back on the road.
29 was pretty much duckless until we hit South Dakota. The birds were there as usual and we got to see plenty of mallards to fire us up for the long haul across North Dakota which looked to be pretty dry across 94 and 52. The Southeast portion seemed to have the most birds we saw there. Entering Canada at 3am left us with little choice but to cross at Portal. A border crossing that we have avoided like the plague in the past. The horror stories of Portal Border Agents all but putting on the rubber gloves and giving you an ass cavity search have kept us heading West to smaller less used crossings for years. With great trepidation I rolled up to Portal and got ready to unload the entire trailer, all our bags, and generally get reamed. 10 minutes later we were on our way. They never even looked at our truck, trailer, guns, dogs, nada. Easiest crossing of all time. Last friends of mine that tried it were detained for 11 hours. You know who has been living right.
As we traveled across Saskatchewan we noticed that one thing was missing. WATER! There was zero water in the potholes, lakes, or sloughs. We kept traveling north to the area we usually hunt and found a few ponds with water but not a lot of ducks. A day's scouting had us on 2 concentrations of mallards. One about 3,000 birds using a pea field we have permission to hunt and the other about 1,000 birds bouncing back and forth with a wad of snow geese. We elected to hunt the peafield birds and went by the farmer's house to see if his son wanted to go with us. We had taken his son last year and he had a blast so we were happy to offer to take him again. It turned out that the son had a friend from Alberta over deer hunting and they both wanted to go. They went and raked up a huge bed of peas for us and we brushed blinds and they made pea nests for themselves for the following morning. We got set up early on that frosty morning and were treated to the clearest skies imaginable. The constellations were literally in your face as we knew wads of mallards would soon be too.
As dawn broke we saw the outlines of ducks and heard the whistling of wings as the early birds flocked to the field. At shooting time we had already watched as several droves of mallards landed in our decoys. At the appointed minute we began calling and working easy ducks to the spread. 60 minutes later we had 8 limits of mallards and pintails on the ground. It doesn't get any easier than that but I knew we were in a bind with only 2 groups of ducks in the area and we had just whacked 64 ducks out of one of them.
No sooner than we had gotten settled in the weather began to moderate. The 14 day forecast was telling us to prepare for warm weather the entire trip but we have heard that before. (14 days later we SAW that they knew what they were talking about for once) We chased the birds around for a few more days finding one other concentration also with geese and managed to limit but it was an all day affair to get it done.
We went from a 60 minute "Royal Massacre" as one of the Canadians remarked to a 10 hour field hunt to fill our 6 limits with a few geese kickers in the space of 4 days. I knew that we were not "on them" but met some resistance from some of the crew who were a bit scary at the thought of leaving an area we know so well. I protested that you are either on them or you aren't and we weren't. Furthermore the potholes were not going to magically fill and the weather wasn't going to push us any new ducks period. We dicked around another day and I started packing the trailer. When the fact that the trailer and decoys were going north to the ducks, everyone fell into line and north we went. Way the hell north.
We put 3,000 miles on the truck in Saskatchewan alone hitting all the well known areas and several that rarely see a duck hunter. We got on the water and soon were on the ducks trying to stay away from the areas you read about. Finally we got into the sandhill cranes thick and I knew we were where the birds were. The ducks didn't dissappoint but several crews from Minnesota did so we killed a limit and pushed off again. Following the water we hit on a totally crazy area that if you had told me was in Saskatchewan, I would have called you daffy. We found flooded timber surrounded by grainfields. At first we thought hmm lookit that pothole, it has trees in it. Then we realized that it had 5 ACRES of trees in it. Down the road we found another with a 15 acre stand of flooded timber. The further we went the more we saw. Oh, did I mention that said timber was FULL of greenheads? Thousands upon thousands. Some had tall timber only while others had thick timber with buckbrush centers. All had ducks.
For a few old boys from South Carolina we had found heaven on earth. Each time we would ease up on some of those flooded trees, it brought back memories of Fork Swamp in the 80's and 90's as mallards took to the sky. Yeah, we got em. RCH and Nutz got on one hunt by themselves where they limited on greenheads in the timber just like we were doing here when we were their age. They were proud as peacocks and rightfully so. Is there anything better?
The area was a gold mine. My old man found a "refuge" one morning scouting and told us that he was on more ducks than he had ever seen in Saskatchewan. We set up in a peafield that afternoon next to his refuge and saw that he wasn't kidding. There were so many mallards that we killed 14 greenheads and 3 pintails in the 10 minutes it took the boys to hide the trucks. We had several draws on 10,000 plus birds with ducks walking and feeding all around in our decoys most of the hunt. A conservative estimate would put the number of ducks that flew over our spread and the refuge at 100,000+. There be ducks this year boys. We may not see them here but they will be SOMEWHERE you can rest assured.
All in all it was another great trip to a fabulous country. I can't give enough thanks to our neighbors to the north. They are truly wonderful people who have managed to keep hunting lands open for everybody. If you ever get the chance to travel go to Alberta, Saskatchewan, or Manitoba and see it for yourself. It is what we once were. The people, the wild lands, and the bountiful game.
A few pics...
This, we understand
Shagging Cripples
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Originally Posted by trentsmith
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