Safe And Sound

Well, I made it home, safe and sound. There really was no worry about that at any point during my trip, but everyone says they're happy I returned in one piece.

The trip was wonderful and I wish I could have stayed for the rest of the week! After a 3:40 am wake-up call, an hour drive to the Suamico landing, and a little less than an hour worth of motoring across the lake in the dark and setting up decoys, we had our success.

The first bird of the morning was a bufflehead. It landed about 4 minutes of sitting in the boat. PDR's gun went click (dud shell) and mine went bang (after it cleared the decoys). Very pretty bird!

The next bird that thought our decoy spread would be a great place to visit was a common merganser (a.k.a. Lawndart, a.k.a. McFish Sandwich, a.k.a. Walleye of the Sky). I'll admit it was tough to id this bird as it was flying, but PDR let him have it in no time flat.

If you've been following the progress of my decoy that I'm carving you're halfway familiar with the next duck to join us in the boat... The greater scaup (a.k.a. bluebill). VERY pretty bird... It was great to see one in hand before I start painting on the decoy. The greater and lesser are tough to tell apart but through wing and head color variations, we could tell that one was a greater. Sounds like he'll be joining the collection on PDR's wall.

After all this shooting, my body just couldn't take it anymore... The afternoon constitutional was coming early whether I liked it or not... Being 300 yards from shore beached up in a tiny boat on a sand bar, there wasn't much cover for a man to hide in. Not being all that worried about being spotted and the fact that it was just time to go, I did my business on the sand bar. PDR told me while I was doing it he was going to shoot a duck. Ha ha ha. Pretty funny. He grabbed his gun and pulled up as to accentuate his point and by golly, a duck came whipping through the decoys while I was all hunched over bare-assed to the world! He missed however, but the bird will always live in infamy as "The Turd Bird".

After a few hours of sitting we noticed that some of the decoys were no longer floating in the water but were instead beached... We also noticed our boat had become slightly beached as well. Not good news. We heaved on the boat and eventually we got it back into the water and decided it was time to move the decoys... We moved about 75 yards down the sand bar what it was marginally deeper and reset. Not long after we placed the final decoy and we were about to get in the boat, a Barrow's Goldeneye landed with the goldeneyes in our spread. We shot the bird, but it dove in the water and popped its head up about 100 yards away... A pursuit in the boat continued half the way to Sturgeon Bay, but we couldn't find it after it dove for the final time. Yet another pretty bird and one that isn't all that common.

The final duck of the day was a common goldeneye. We shot the duck and it went down. PDR piled in the boat to go and get it and low and behold after flopping around a little on the water, it ran across the surface and flew away. Apparently the thing was just playing opossum... Sometimes thats just how it goes.

All in all, it was a great day out on the bay. A great time spent with a great friend. I was going to post a photo of us but the fact is, he had to play hookie in order to go out for the day and I just don't want to cause any trouble for him!

And in case you were wondering, the photos are all from Ducks.org, Ducks Unlimited's home page. Drop by and donate to a great cause if you have the time!