2024 Waterfowl Season Thread...Here We Go!!
- Thread starter the spank
- Start date
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
Well that is it for my 2024 season. I was hoping to get another hunt or two in before switching over to deer and moose for the November rifle season but the job I was to start Dec 1 got moved up a month so Nov 1 it is.
I had a great season and closed it out today by bringing both Judge Parker and Sir Ithaca of York along for the final hunt.
Judge Parker handed down stiff sentences to 8 Canadas this morning and Sir Ithaca of York sent three greenheads to the gallows. Doc Bismuth of course delivered the coup-de-grace in all the sentences.
Both the judge and Ithaca of York have been properly pampered upon arriving home with both receiving royal servicing before retiring for a long winters rest until spring snow goose season.
I had a great season and closed it out today by bringing both Judge Parker and Sir Ithaca of York along for the final hunt.
Judge Parker handed down stiff sentences to 8 Canadas this morning and Sir Ithaca of York sent three greenheads to the gallows. Doc Bismuth of course delivered the coup-de-grace in all the sentences.
Both the judge and Ithaca of York have been properly pampered upon arriving home with both receiving royal servicing before retiring for a long winters rest until spring snow goose season.
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
I don't live in Lloyd any longer. I moved in May...Somehow I missed those beautiful side by sides too.
Damn it Spank.
Offer still stand? Checking flights to Lloyd
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
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leveractionjunkie
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Kamloops, BC
How’d you make out gdawg? Looks like you had some weather to stir them up which is nice.
Are you hunting in BC?
Are you hunting in BC?
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
I'm fortunate enough, no let me correct that. I purposefully moved to a target rich environment as my main priority although certain individuals who don't "get it" I lie to and say I moved here for the work.
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
So I have to say I am feeling alot like a rock star, not in the way that I'm famous or I'm #### hot but in the way that I just keep doing another show after announcing I have just completed my final show.
I am known as being a man of my word and don't want to be called a liar because I fully intended that sunday was to be my final waterfowl hunt of the 2024 season but a higher power or something intervened and on our way home monday via a different route after setting up a treestand in our moose & deer hunting area we passed a barley field that had about 20 of it's 150+ acres completely black in ducks they were so thick.
It took Ben a bit of arm bending(OUCH!) but I finally gave into the idea of just one more hunt so with that we set about acquiring permission to hunt the owners field.
There was a large bin yard, buildings, equipment, house etc. directly across the road and I noticed someone was hooking a tractor to a wagon. We drove into the yard, introduced ourselves and asked if the field across the road was his and if so could we hunt the ducks there in the morning?
We received a very friendly "go ahead" and that was it, though I had an appointment 40 mins from home at 11:30 am the next morning the field was only 25 minutes drive to my appointment so there was no turning back.
A chance to get in another hunt for the biggest feed of ducks we'd seen all fall? A chance to refinish the season with a greenheads only shoot? Heck ya! Count me in!
I just had to be sure to be finished by 10:30 or so to make my appointment so I hoped the ducks would co-operate early and make that happen and they did!
We had noticed a bunch of bales in the field and the ducks were within a few feet of one of the bales so I made a pin drop on google map so we could drive to the spot in the dark and use the bale as a backdrop to set the blind up against in the morning to break our outline.
Fast forward to 06:55 and we pull into the field and drive to the pin drop and the bale, all the bales are gone! The farmer had picked them up after we had left the farm yard. Well that explains the wagon he was hooking up to! Now what? We had lost our best available hide. Or had we?
We drove around surveying the field in the pre-dawn dark and discovered a few yards from the pin drop a long winding dried out drainage ditch that led to a dried out slough that in the dry past summer or two it had been worked over and seeded but was rough ground not given to growing crop well full of volunteer peas and canola.
We set up my two solo blinds which were heavily grassed in that rough patch close to the pin drop and while I cut a bunch of the volunteer peas and canola and added them to the grass coverings on the blinds to hopefully make them disappear or at least blend in and not stand out Ben set out 5 dozen duck silhouette decoys and a lucky duck decoy. I added my two lucky ducks to the spread, then set up an action camera overlooking the spread and settled into the blind when the birds started working our way.
The first few flocks kept working the far outside edge of the spread on the tail end of the decoy spread so we quickly tweaked our spread. Ben moved the outside tail decoys into the head of the spread and I moved my two lucky duck decoys closer to the centre and inside edge of the spread and altered the directions they faced so all three spinners were slightly different direction and appearing like multiple birds settling into the spread the way you see groups of ducks do when there is no wind which we had lost with the dawn of day breaking.
Well that did it. We were literally covered up in ducks for the next 30 minutes and we took turns shooting. In the overcast skies it was hard to pick out colours, to separate drakes from hens but with such a target rich environment we exercised paitience and care and picked away at a bird here and a bird there.
Within minutes of our first shots we were limited out with our count of nice greenheads and ducks continued to pour in as we went about packing up, taking pictures, retrieving the trucks to load the gear. It was INSANE the number of mallards and pintails descending on the field.
As much as it pains me to quit at a time when we are covered up in new birds and nobody else is out hunting I can say with 100% certainty that this is my FINAL FINAL hunt for the season but Ben is headed back in the morning solo to give the greenheads another go. Lucky b _ _ _ _ _d!
And to add we were done early enough that we had plenty of time to head to a local restaurant for breakfast on route to my appointment which I arrived to with plenty of time to spare.
I am known as being a man of my word and don't want to be called a liar because I fully intended that sunday was to be my final waterfowl hunt of the 2024 season but a higher power or something intervened and on our way home monday via a different route after setting up a treestand in our moose & deer hunting area we passed a barley field that had about 20 of it's 150+ acres completely black in ducks they were so thick.
It took Ben a bit of arm bending(OUCH!) but I finally gave into the idea of just one more hunt so with that we set about acquiring permission to hunt the owners field.
There was a large bin yard, buildings, equipment, house etc. directly across the road and I noticed someone was hooking a tractor to a wagon. We drove into the yard, introduced ourselves and asked if the field across the road was his and if so could we hunt the ducks there in the morning?
We received a very friendly "go ahead" and that was it, though I had an appointment 40 mins from home at 11:30 am the next morning the field was only 25 minutes drive to my appointment so there was no turning back.
A chance to get in another hunt for the biggest feed of ducks we'd seen all fall? A chance to refinish the season with a greenheads only shoot? Heck ya! Count me in!
I just had to be sure to be finished by 10:30 or so to make my appointment so I hoped the ducks would co-operate early and make that happen and they did!
We had noticed a bunch of bales in the field and the ducks were within a few feet of one of the bales so I made a pin drop on google map so we could drive to the spot in the dark and use the bale as a backdrop to set the blind up against in the morning to break our outline.
Fast forward to 06:55 and we pull into the field and drive to the pin drop and the bale, all the bales are gone! The farmer had picked them up after we had left the farm yard. Well that explains the wagon he was hooking up to! Now what? We had lost our best available hide. Or had we?
We drove around surveying the field in the pre-dawn dark and discovered a few yards from the pin drop a long winding dried out drainage ditch that led to a dried out slough that in the dry past summer or two it had been worked over and seeded but was rough ground not given to growing crop well full of volunteer peas and canola.
We set up my two solo blinds which were heavily grassed in that rough patch close to the pin drop and while I cut a bunch of the volunteer peas and canola and added them to the grass coverings on the blinds to hopefully make them disappear or at least blend in and not stand out Ben set out 5 dozen duck silhouette decoys and a lucky duck decoy. I added my two lucky ducks to the spread, then set up an action camera overlooking the spread and settled into the blind when the birds started working our way.
The first few flocks kept working the far outside edge of the spread on the tail end of the decoy spread so we quickly tweaked our spread. Ben moved the outside tail decoys into the head of the spread and I moved my two lucky duck decoys closer to the centre and inside edge of the spread and altered the directions they faced so all three spinners were slightly different direction and appearing like multiple birds settling into the spread the way you see groups of ducks do when there is no wind which we had lost with the dawn of day breaking.
Well that did it. We were literally covered up in ducks for the next 30 minutes and we took turns shooting. In the overcast skies it was hard to pick out colours, to separate drakes from hens but with such a target rich environment we exercised paitience and care and picked away at a bird here and a bird there.
Within minutes of our first shots we were limited out with our count of nice greenheads and ducks continued to pour in as we went about packing up, taking pictures, retrieving the trucks to load the gear. It was INSANE the number of mallards and pintails descending on the field.
As much as it pains me to quit at a time when we are covered up in new birds and nobody else is out hunting I can say with 100% certainty that this is my FINAL FINAL hunt for the season but Ben is headed back in the morning solo to give the greenheads another go. Lucky b _ _ _ _ _d!
And to add we were done early enough that we had plenty of time to head to a local restaurant for breakfast on route to my appointment which I arrived to with plenty of time to spare.
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Very nice limit of greenheads.
The ducks haven't shown up in numbers yet in the Fraser Valley.
Add the fact that we have had a lot of rain and there is water everywhere.
The ducks are not concentrated anywhere in my area.
November will tell the tale.
The ducks haven't shown up in numbers yet in the Fraser Valley.
Add the fact that we have had a lot of rain and there is water everywhere.
The ducks are not concentrated anywhere in my area.
November will tell the tale.
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
I'm sure they will be there any day. Small to medium size waters are starting to freeze over. Once the big waters freeze birds will be gone. Good luck with your season!
