Central District Duck Opener

[the spank]

Six of us took to the field saturday morning with the hopes of smashing a few ducks down. We had scouted the past few evenings before and had located a small flock of mallards working a grain field bordering a small tag alder flooded river system. Within a couple days the flock had grown to around 250-300 ducks mixing with the 300 geese that had been using the field all week. As nobody else was allowed to use the spot we let it sit all week waiting for Chad to be able to join us after the work week was out. Friday saw us hit a different grain field with Chad along and we collected 41 honkers for the 5 of us. Not bad for the last day of the early goose season. Saturday we went after the ducks, the birds were using the river for water on a bend in the river that came right up to the edge of the grain field so we elected to put our blinds down low on the edge of the field along the river and set a few goose decoys out as well. Although we would be a few hundred yards off the "X" and in the lowest spot in the field we figured the ducks would be easy to draw in at water's edge and maybe with a little coaxing we could put a few geese in the bag as well. It worked out very well and we had a TON of birds work us. The locals out hunting all around had every bird for miles moving and we never had more than 3-4 minutes without birds passing us or working us from daybreak until we packed it in at 10:30 am. We sure could have shot much better, myself included. We lost 1 mallard that went down in some heavy flooded tag alder and the two dogs kept coming up empty handed after a lot of searching. Chad went back later that afternoon with his dog Reed, and sure enough he located the bird along with another we had somehow missed as well. So in all we ended with 34 ducks, 2 shy of a 6 man limit and 18 honkers. Not a bad start. A few pics.....