Fall is Flying By

Nothing goes by faster than fall. Throw in a couple big fishing tournaments in October and I’ve spent the rest of fall feeling behind and unprepared. Waterfowl season has just flown by and I’m panicking knowing I can’t hunt the last couple weekends (which are usually the best ones in west Michigan). I guess some time off work will be in order to make up for it! Just writing this blog is making me wonder where the hell the time went?

However, there are lots of positives, this will be the last fall with a child under 1 at home. That makes things way more complicated as far as planning when to go and how long to be gone. The 3 girls can definitely be a handful but Amanda makes it look easy and I’m thankful whenever I get to go. The fishing definitely made it harder to get the other girls out for some squirrel hunting and duck hunting. It felt like a weight was lifted off me as soon as I was able to get them out. The weather window can be pretty small for those kind of activities especially with duck season starting a week later this year (which was awesome). I am very much looking forward to when we can get in on the September youth waterfowl hunt but we are a few years from being ready for that. There’s also the added pressure of making sure Hutch man can get some work in especially now that he is on his 7th waterfowl season. It is crazy to me how fast that time has flown by. We’ve had quite a few seasons now where he just knows what to do and hasn’t show signs of slowing down anytime soon. We haven’t had any epic hunts this year like last season but there have been some quality ones and a couple of just him and I. Mabel also got to hunt with him for the first time this season and she enjoyed watching him take some swims.

A couple other observations with waterfowl season. The weather has not been great, we had a whole lot of warmth then a polar freeze over the last week or so. That freeze up really improved things because it forced ducks to move down. However despite all of the complaining we hear about the weather not being right…we are a fly through state. This year again I observed massive migrations taking place but those ducks aren’t stopping here. Some are just flying on down the coast while others are stopping and resting at night only to be tornadoing up, up, and away at first light the next morning. It’s not pressure bumping them out in the darkness. They just don’t have a reason to stay here and I think a lot of that boils down to habitat. Especially on the lakeshore there just aren’t places that really hold big numbers of them or many open water feeding opportunities that vegetation eating divers seem to prefer. We’ve got plenty of long tails when the weather allows you to get to them, a variety of everything else, and some mallards with PHD’s in survival (I’m strictly speaking public water we have locally within 20 minutes of home). There are definitely days where there are opportunities to use the conditions against the mallards and do well. But overwhelmingly they are smart and know how to get to places where they are safe. I definitely learned a few things about the local mallards this year and the impacts the lower water levels had on everything. The problem is there usually isn’t enough to go around or options to hide for more than one person. I do enjoy solo hunts from time to time but it isn’t something I want to do all season even if I am more successful doing it that way. The other problem is some of those places aren’t conducive for taking a dog and while I really like skin on mallard breasts. I have a hard time wanting to go shoot mallards without Hutch. The best is yet to come though and while I know I haven’t used this year’s season up to its full potential it has still been a lot of fun.

I’ve got the same feeling about deer hunting this year. Bow season was basically a wash this year. I missed the first 2 weeks with out of town fishing tournaments then had periods of hot weather and south winds. Hot weather is no good for processing and south winds are difficult to hunt in at my location. Throw in some medical time off for a couple weeks where I couldn’t even shoot my bow and archery season was basically over. Also I’d just much rather hunt waterfowl!

I did sneak a bow hunt in and get out for opening day. it was good to be back out again even without any scouting or much movement being seen during bow season by my dad. If I can get back to the east side a few days ahead of time next year I’m going to really put some effort into killing a deer on opening morning instead of trying to sneak in some bow hunts. If I’m going to be efficient with my time that is when to do it and I’ve never shot one on opening morning. I know this is difficult for the “big buck hunters” to understand but I truly don’t care if it’s a small buck, big buck, or doe. The less time I can spend trying to harvest 3 deer the better. I want to enjoy the experience, appreciate the animal, stack up some meat, and get back to duck hunting. At least we are on the back side of deer season now so all the whining about people shooting small bucks, people shooting small bucks and then not appreciating them, and the most hardcore bow hunters whining about how November 15th is going to ruin everything is over. Everyone has different motivations, time availability, and some deer hunters have a hard time understanding that. I think it’s great that some guys really put their time and effort into hunting mature bucks but that is a level I don’t have any interest in getting to. Not here, not out of state, not on the moon if it was the best place to hunt big bucks. I will always hope we get to make individual choices about what we harvest in Michigan and I don’t care what that is as long as the animal is appreciated. Enough about deer hunting for now but hopefully there will be some success in gun season 2.0 or late antlerless for me.

That’s about all I’ve got for now, I’ve got some scheming to do to try and get some successful hunts in over Thanksgiving. Scouting reports are good but the weather is changing. It’s hard to leave the ducks we have now on the west side but we are going to have a good time regardless.