2026 Waterfowl Thread

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We had a good shoot Tuesday evening….. my son put on a clinic, Whodathunkit, the sub 30 yr old can get up in a layout blind faster than guys twice his age or in my case a bit more than twice……

I took out my Ithaca 37 featherweight 12ga for this one, zero problems folding large honkers with 2-3/4” 2’s(screw in IM choke)
 
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We had a good shoot Tuesday evening….. my son put on a clinic, Whodathunkit, the sub 30 yr old can get up in a layout blind faster than guys twice his age or in my case a bit more than twice……

I took out my Ithaca 37 featherweight 12ga for this one, zero problems folding large honkers with 2-3/4” 2’s(screw in IM choke)
wow the angle make those geese monstruous and the guys lean ... great to see some good hunting.
 
Meet Wild For Fowl Magazine's Miss September.
Miss September WFF likes wearing camoflogue long johns while curling up on the couch under a warm blanket on a cold night, short walks on the beach in rubber boots & sitting around a bon fire toasting marshmallows.
She loves wild animals right next to the mashed potatoes and carrots and prays each night before bed for world peace and early retirement.
She enjoys hunting, fishing, trapshooting and washing dishes in hot soapy water which she finds relaxing but sorry boys you'll have to find your own Miss September, this one is spoken for.

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First Snow Geese With Bo-3.0

While sitting in the blind a few days ago admiring my freshly restored HE Super Fox and ecstatic to be fortunate enough to own and use such a piece of waterfowling history I had time to think about Nash Buckingham's Bo-Whoop and what nickname I could give to my Super.
Since Nash had two Bo-Whoop's I couldn't call mine Bo-Whoop II so I thought what should a third be called and I decided on Bo-3.0(three point oh!)
I put 12 rounds down Bo-3.0's pipes that morning knocking down 10 geese, 4 Lesser Canada's and 6 Snows collecting 9. One hit the ground, bounced and started flopping around doing the funky chicken and when I took my eyes off it to reload ole Bo-3.O the goose was back up and in the air and out of range before I could slip a round in the chamber to dispatch the bird.
Oh well we have so many coyotes and birds of prey it likely didn't last until the next day.
Here are a few pics and a brief video link to see Bo-3.O in action...hopefully the video link works for you.


https://1drv.ms/v/c/4e57c4d8dcc7f813/IQ ... k?e=DQicBf

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We took our two man limit of Greenheads this morning running our Fox guns. My buddy had his 8 down before I could barely get my gun loaded, yes I am that old and slow nowadays :LOL:. J/K of course but he had his 8 down quick and with only one missed shot! He was shooting far better than I was today. Today was one of those days when my gun and I were not very sympatico! 😣
But I managed through patience and passing up and/or missing a few good opportunities due to my not being able to pick up colours until it was too late to finally finish a limit though honestly I could care less if I had shot the last few to finish the morning. I was happy to have gotten a couple with my old Fox and we watched as hundreds of waterfowl of several species worked our spread continuously with barely 30 seconds between birds before we packed up 3 hours after we had each settled into our solo blinds. Of course Wildwings had to sit and suffer through the pain of watching my pitiful yet comical performance wielding the big Fox. Kudos to his patience! ;)


Pictured on right and on top is my buddies 1911 AH Fox Sterlingworth "pin gun" and on left and bottom my 1923 AH Fox HE Super Fox. The call laying next to my gun is a handcrafted call gifted to me by Cowtown Bill and has been on every duck hunt since with sincere thanks and appreciation.

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We took our two man limit of Greenheads this morning running our Fox guns. My buddy had his 8 down before I could barely get my gun loaded, yes I am that old and slow nowadays :LOL:. J/K of course but he had his 8 down quick and with only one missed shot! He was shooting far better than I was today. Today was one of those days when my gun and I were not very sympatico! 😣
But I managed through patience and passing up and/or missing a few good opportunities due to my not being able to pick up colours until it was too late to finally finish a limit though honestly I could care less if I had shot the last few to finish the morning. I was happy to have gotten a couple with my old Fox and we watched as hundreds of waterfowl of several species worked our spread continuously with barely 30 seconds between birds before we packed up 3 hours after we had each settled into our solo blinds. Of course Wildwings had to sit and suffer through the pain of watching my pitiful yet comical performance wielding the big Fox. Kudos to his patience! ;)


Pictured on right and on top is my buddies 1911 AH Fox Sterlingworth "pin gun" and on left and bottom my 1923 AH Fox HE Super Fox. The call laying next to my gun is a handcrafted call gifted to me by Cowtown Bill and has been on every duck hunt since with sincere thanks and appreciation.

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Great hunt, great pics and fine double guns. Doesn't get much better. Getting all greenheads is a rare accomplishment this early n the season. I'm colour blind and picking out greenheads ain't so easy.
Glad you like the mallard call---you use it well just like you handle double guns.
 
I think we are starting to see the last push of birds arriving here. We are getting into the REALLY BIG honkers now and the tiny young of the year ducks we usually start getting near the end of our waterfowl hunting. Next full moon will either bring in the final birds or push out what we have with no replacements!
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Love it! Hey, send some of those birds south. Congrats on the great shoot!
 
The last two days of my buddy Rick's annual visit have been stellar to say the least. We had a two man duck hunt that was incredible. I opted to shoot my vintage Ithaca NID4E 16ga for the duck hunt which I hadn't done since my hunt with Cowtown Bill. The gun is a real sweetheart to shoot! epic duck hunt with us limited out before the sun ever cleared the horizon. I tried to convince my 76 year old buddy to wait until there was good light to be able to pick out the colours of the drakes shining in the sun and shoot drakes only but he claimed he can't tell them apart in flight. I think the truth is a combination of lack of patience patience and getting too excited. :LOL:
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Yesterday was noting short of insane to say the least. I received permission to hunt a field about 5000 Snows and a couple thousand ducks were hitting the past few days. Well with only a light breeze and clear skies forecast I figured we'd look at a lot of Snow Geese ignoring us but we'd have a barn burner of a duck hunt. I could not have been more wrong.
Snow geese and ducks started arriving in small flocks and settling in behind the blinds on the water behind us 20 minutes before legal shooting time. My poor old pal Rick was going insane counting the minutes to start time. Start time came and went uneventfully but about 10 minutes after legal time things heated up and I mean heated up!
We could barely reload quick enough at times and at one point I accidentally touched my barrel and it was SO HOT I could not believe I did not burn my fingers!! :oops:
Aside from the 5000 Snows roosted 1 mile south the skies filled to the north with wave after wave after wave of new arriving Snows almost entirely made up of Juvies!
In less than 45 minutes we had knocked down 84 Snows and our two man limit of ducks. We lost one wounded Snow I went to recover that jumped and flew when I was about 10 yards from it and I'd left my gun in the blind and it flew off and disappeared on the horizon. We had another I could not reach that had landed in the water behind us and died a few minutes later. I could not reach it as the water was over the top of my rubber boots. My hip waders which I always keep in my truck had been removed and left at home to make room for a tote bin full of Clone decoys and a 6 pack of full body goose decoys. I recovered the three other geese that had come down wounded and died in the water behind us. It will be a day neither of us will soon forget with 82 Snows and 16 ducks taken.

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The last pics show the MASSIVE full body decoy spread we deployed of 20 Snows, a pair of Specks and a pair of Canada's placed around a 4 pack of Clones with a Lucky Duck out front for the ducks to focus on.

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I set up a pair of 4K action cameras on every hunt and will have some amazing footage to splice together when I find time that I will post at a later date.
 
My holidays are winding down and I predict the migration through our area soon will be too to judge by the birds heavy feeding behaviour the past two days. Heading to a small pea field in the morning to give her a go for an all drakes duck shoot and after that who knows? If the birds stick maybe another hunt before the week is out and I'm back to work. Todays hunt was another incredible show. We finished our morning with 51 Snows(1 of which was scooped up by an Eagle before we could get to it) , 1 Canada, 3 Mallards and 4 Widgeon.

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