Our first day out with our Louisiana brothers turned out to be a blast. Not as productive as we wanted, in terms of harvest, but I am not too sure they noticed – or cared. These guys are a lot like us – just happy to be out doing what they love. And doing it in a new place, new quarry, new chase, just adds to the mystique of fowling. We really wanted to get them on some geese, some up close and personal interaction with the big Canadas that are using our areas. We had the morning set aside to try and get this done, but they just didn’t really fly. Compared to the day before, where we at least saw decent traffic, today they just never really moved in our area. An unfortunate end to the prospects of some big honks for these guys, but they understand what we all know – that’s why they call it hunting and not killing.
The monotony of a slow goose morning was broken by a 5-pack of Gaddies that had apparently followed these boys all the way up from Louisiana. These were taken in fantastic fashion, and in an excellent display of shooting. Skunk averted, morning somewhat saved. Although I do think these guys would gladly show back up on a day like this for the breakfast that Nick cooked alone, even knowing not a fowl would show its feather. I don’t know many who wouldn’t…
The afternoon setup was a completely different focus – all mallards in a pit blind an hour-and-a-half south of Kansas City. A surprise to me, these fellows shoot very few mallards in the areas they hunt in Louisiana. So getting to work some green heads would be another very nice bonus along with the Canadas from the day before. And flooded corn out of a pit blind that’s had two ice eaters rolling all week is, indeed, a pretty sexy proposition for any wildfowler.
We made our run, grabbed some barbecue for the road, and got setup where recent evenings have found nice numbers of afternoon/evening mallards coming in to dine and roost.
While, again, we did not load up limits, we had a pretty good time and worked some nice groups, filling a couple straps with green.
Our typically crazy Kansas weather – which has made birds tough for us to pattern and figure out, would win out over bag limits this weekend. And even kill our plans to hunt Sunday (single digit temps with 20-30 mph nw winds) – but I’ve no doubt these guys had just as good a time as we did getting out, doing something a bit different… and enjoying some success at it. We hope to have them back again next year, and look forward to seeing them this spring and summer for some redfish and trout action down there way. I can’t wait to take those pics and write about it – because I know for sure, whether we catch anything or not, spending time in the boat with these guys is going to be one heck-of-a good time.
