Duck Season Wrap Up
No 58 days goes by quite as fast as duck season does. We’ve got 2 more days to look forward to in the late split but the regular season is over across Michigan. This was a strange year in that we got no real weather the entire season. I never broke any ice or dealt with things really freezing up while hunting. However 2 days after the season is over and we have temps in the high teens and I’ve seen a Migration down the Lake Michigan shoreline that is just incredible. I wish I was able to somehow make people comprehend what I saw this morning.
I have mixed feelings about this years season. The first half was a lot of slow hunting although we were really around some birds a few times. It just never really worked out to get them where we could add them to the game strap. Hutch was doing well on the retrieves he was getting and he always has fun whether there are birds or no birds. Wood ducks, mallards, geese, and green wing teal made up for all the species harvested. Usually that transitions to a lot of divers on the back half of the season. This year it went to strictly mallards and geese. I’m not going to complain too much because those are 2 of the best birds to eat and goose breasts really add up. Not to mention it is really enjoyable watching Hutch retrieve big honkers.
5 really good hunts in November/December made up for all the mediocre October days. Hutch was on all but one of those. He stayed home due to a cut on his chin he somehow got on one of the other hunts. I got to see him make some really great retrieves the last week of the season and that always makes me happy.
The best part about this year was getting to take Mabel out for her first time. She kept asking to go and we found the right afternoon in October. Would we kill any ducks? Probably not. But we were going to have a good time. I picked up some snacks/Jimmy Johns and picked her up from daycare. She may only be 4 but she’s very comfortable in a boat and the War Eagle is a nice steady craft to take your first duck hunt in. While I’d much rather be hiding way back in the junk invisible to the ducks we would be enjoying the comfort of the boat blind on this trip.
One shot opportunity is all I was really hoping for as that would for sure be some excitement. I truly wasn’t sure how the shooting was going to be received even with her earmuffs on. But it didn’t take long to find out. As we boated into the spot I had watched a goose swim into the arrowheads right where we were going. I didn’t think much of it as certainly it would just keep going or fly off. However this must have been the sacrificial Canada goose because upon arrival he was still there (he wasn’t a cripple either). We got all shut down and stopped, earmuffs went on, a scramble to find the gun and get it out of the case. It swam out and we collected our first bird of the night.
We had some fun throwing decoys and snacking for a while. Then the really unexpected happened, we were covered up in decoying wood ducks. I could pick my shots and it didn’t take too long to collect 3 wood ducks. It was an awful lot of excitement as often the birds would work the decoys once and we would have to make sure those earmuffs were on good. Then one or 2 would break off the main group after a pass or 2 and I would shoot one. There was a lot of exciting “dad you got that one”. It would have been a good hunt for anyone but it was very special it happened on this day. It could not have gone any better and it is truly amazing how sometimes things just have a way of working out. Going to have to get her some waders next year because she was fascinated with walking around in the water.
Other observations from this season are the absolute lack of west side divers. I’m not talking about sea ducks but regular diver ducks. I never killed a singe one and you can usually count on some while we are mallard hunting in some unique spots. We never killed a single waterfowl that we weren’t expecting this year. Whatever the scout said is what we would see. No surprises, no oddballs, no migration? I don’t really know the answer but I do know we get passed over by a crap ton of birds that roll in at dark and roll out at first light. I know their flight path and sometimes the numbers are into the multiple thousands.
Regardless I still had a great time this season. I hunted with a lot of great people this year and the fun of that is a big part of waterfowling. I’m very lucky in that I have quite a few people I trust and enjoy hunting with. Having a good time and sharing the experience with others is definitely more fun that sitting in a lonely tree waiting on some deer you gave a name based on trail cam pictures. I do need to do some deer hunting and get a couple in the freezer now that duck season is over. Hopefully there will be some more to report on that soon.