Got to go hunting this morning was kind of slow as the weather was bluebird but it beat the heck out of working. I love to hunt ducks, geese not as much. Has a lot to do with the 2 bird limit for geese. 2 shots and the day is over kinda sucks. So, some of the guys that were supposed to come didn't and I ended up in the blind with only one other guy. He is retired and waterfowl hunts as a way of life. So we have to drive past the blind to park and there are several ducks in the decoys already, that is a good sign. Of course they left when we walked back to the blind. The owner was hunting in a blind across the lake from us and a couple of day hunters were across at an angle. About 1/4 mile between us all. So shooting light gets there and we are seeing a few ducks moving around but nothing really close. There is a flock of bluebills out on the lake and some ruddy ducks too, plus the coots that are always there. A group of teal buzzes by at 80 yards and then buzzes by the day hunters at about the same distance and they unload on them and don't touch a feather. A couple of geese are disturbed by the shooting and fly behind us about 80 yards and set down on another lake a couple hundred yards to the north. About 15 minutes later they start making all kinds of noise and then they are 40 yards out headed into the decoys. It was perfect, they wanted to be there and when I shot the first one my buddy dropped the other. That put the rest of the ducks on the lake into the air. Got into the boat and rowed out to my buddies goose. He hollered at me, the one with the leg band is mine. When I pull his goose out of the water, sure as sh!t it has a leg band. I told him and he was laughing saying my goose had a band too. Get to my goose and sure enough another band. So we hooted and hollered about it a little and then got back to hunting. A flock of big ducks gives us the fly by and heads across the lake to the owner but fly wide and turn toward the day hunters, they flew by them and then once they were past the guys opened up on them and knocked down 3 and 1 sails back toward the owner. They spend the next 15 minutes chasing wounded ducks around and get 3 of them. The 4th ended up in front of the owners blind 10 minutes later and gets finished off. Everything is getting back to normal and the geese start coming in from the east where there is a golf course. There were several different flocks about 200 birds total and they start working both our set and the owners. Part of the flock keeps going and ends up over the day hunters in the blind. They are at least 150 yards high and these numbnuts open up on them and all the other geese head out. Pretty soon the owners boat starts up and he is heading across the lake toward the day hunters. He gets there and lays into them. He was pissed and we could hear him clearly from 1/4 mile away reading them the riot act for shooting at high birds, apparently not their first time doing so. So he is going ballistic and throws them out and when they pick up their stuff to go, he really went apeshat. The 3 ducks they had killed were all Canvasbacks, 2 guys and the limit is 1 per, plus the one he had finished for them was also a can. He went through the roof. It is his place and they are shooting over the limit. Needless to say the Game Warden got called, but he was busy so a State trooper got sent instead. Now the trooper doesn't know game laws but he has us there to ID the birds and the GW on the phone to tell him what to do until he gets there. So 2 guys get cuffed, guns seized and a ride to the lockup. They are screwed, guns gone, big fines in the future. It was quite the morning, but like I said beat the heck out of working.

wow, that is a LONG paragrah.

That is one interesting hunting story.

And you are 100% correct, it beats the heck out of a days work.

Well, I tried to do it all as one sentence but figured that would be annoying.

Buttholes like that should be banned from hunting for a year, the try again. If they cant get it right then 5 year ban.
Jim

i'd skip work to watch that scenario unfold even i didn't get to shoot. sounds somewhat entertaining to say the least.

i am a big duck hunter and i know the frustration of having idiots sky blasting ducks... but honestly i would not have called the game warden on them. i think that it is kinda deuchy of the owner considering you said this wasnt the first time these guys sky blasted. The owner should have not allowed them to come back after the first time they if he had such a big problem with them doin that. just my opinion. bad judgment on both parties part

It wasn't the blasting it was the over limit part. It is his club and they put it at risk, if the state got wind of it they could rescind his license to run the club.

i guess stuff works a little differently down here... the owner probly should use a little more discression when allowing hunters to join when it puts his licence and hunting club on the line. i know on occasion when we have a group of hunters who shoot over the limit accidently on a big group of birds (such as pintail) we usually call the other guides and tell them we will tradem ducks so that it all evens out in the end. Not all things have to end with the police... accidents happen. But like i said i really have no clue about the past situation so im pretty ignorant

Hey - someone snapped a picture of you out there duck hunting!

Yep.