Being a younger Waterfowler, I truly enjoy reading old time stories and tales of hunts and days long since past. It inspires me to continue getting up at ridiculous hours of the morning, lugging gear, setting decoys in the dark, and keeping the stigma that waterfowlers are a little nutty. Obviously Waterfowling has come some ways since the days of woodland blob camo, 2-3/4 chambers and junkyard spreads. All of which was before my time, but none the less, still put our finely feather cohorts on the ground, and shows no-one did it like the Good Ol’ Boys, doing more with less.
Here in Southern Pennsylvania, near the Mason Dixon line, we mostly bust honkers. One of the best days we had this season didn’t start as a promising one. We set up in one of our four fields that morning across from the last weekends hunt. This field was higher than your average silage cut and I truly think helped to blend us in that day. In any event it was a warmer than usual day, especially for January. It should have been in the 30’s and with a crisp winter wind. Instead it was in the upper 40’s and pretty damp, but still cloudy. There was a strong front pushing down from the north and I was hoping it would force some new birds into the area. We set up in the dark as we always did and our spread was about 7 dozen, full bodies, stakes, and shells in a loose horseshoe pattern. Once we were setup and settled in I was ready to bust some birds. Armed with my Tim Grounds Half-breed call, Mick Lacy Chinook call, my new Browning BPS 12 gauge Pump, and also my new Foiles Sport Utility Layout I was ready to rock and roll. Let me tell you something folks if you’re hunting fields and need to be mobile, the Final Approach layouts are a grand slam; I can’t imagine hunting without it now.
For some reason this morning the birds that had been in our area for the past few weeks must have left or were staying put. From first light to 10:00 a.m. we didn’t see or hear a thing, and I’m thinking this is gonna be a worthless day. At this time the crew was growling too, they’re convinced we should have hunted farther north up in the Dutch Country, assuming that we had hunted out our stay with the local birds. But to my surprise as I was dozing of in my assassins’ coffin, which I’m beginning to wonder if they are maybe a little too comfortable, I heard that “heeerrroonnnk”. When I looked up here came two birds right on top of us looking for their group. So we hunkered down, purred and clucked a little and they textbooked right on in and we smoked ‘em. I no sooner got back to my blind from the retrieve when I saw more birds on the horizon than I have seen in the entire time I’ve been hunting in PA. That bad morning just shaped up right nice. My buddies enthusiastically got those flags going and we had a freight train coming our way in no time. I still couldn’t believe all those birds were in the sky this far down in PA. But as I had hoped that front had shoved a great deal of birds down to us. From that point on we dropped birds on the hour all day. One thing that was strange was that we never did get a large group to decoy and commit. Out of every group that flew over only a few would break up and come in while the rest moved on. Some circled like buzzards for what seemed like forever. One group we thought had busted us were flagged and called back from 200 plus yards. So to state the obvious, we limited out that day with six guys, and we saw and worked every scenario possible that day. To date it was the most fun and memorable days I’ve had hunting birds. A day I can only hope my children will experience when their time comes. We saw, and I say this with confidence, thousands of birds that day and have yet to see a day like that since.
To sum it all up, I definitely stick every hunt out now, regardless of the conditions. Normally if nothing would happen up ‘til noon we might have packed up, but that day changed that mindset completely. When you’re hunting, anything goes and that’s why I love hunting, and hope it continues long into the future.