AvianQuest Elite Refuge
Member
Registered: Mar
2000 Location: Houston, Texas Posts: 11841 |
Ok, back
again for a bit...
The pictures I posted was from our
group on the Friday hunt. We killed 65 and by agreement of all
present, stopped at 9:00 AM to let the geese have it so we
would hunt another group in the same field Saturday. As soon
as we had the decoys picked up and were leaving the field, the
geese started piling in.
I had a bad case of the
Mega-Flu but unlike a lesser man, hunted anyway and was
feeling better after the first hunt....not well, but better
because it's hard to feel bad after a hunt like
that.
Friday night the Heavens opened and 4" of rain
and lots of lightning set in. By morning it had stopped and
had started cooling off with a stiff north wind. Oxbow, Duck
Lorange and myself headed out to Seadrift with 'tween_fly_ways
and his son following for a bay hunt.
It was a rough run across Espiritu
Santo Bay (Holy Spirit) and we had spitting rain and 30
knot cold north winds all morning. Despite what should have
been great waterfowling conditions, the clouds of pintails
that had been there Friday saw the heavy rain as signal to
move inland to the rice fields. But we did have 8 beautiful
pintail drakes come in and only inches from landing, we each
popped ours and the guide took a 4th one. The longest sprig
was a double 5". It was about at that point that I declared
myself well. We also got a drake redhead. Meanwhile
'tween_fly_ways and his son got their two pintail drakes and a
redhead as well.
Bay Prairie set us up with three
guides and their "skinny water" Shoalwater boats even though we hunted in
two parties. The 3rd guide set up at one of the other 32
blinds that they built in this public hunting area so that in
case he started drawing a lot of birds, we could move to that
blind with the decoys already set up. It's really a first
class set up with the guides talking to each other by radio to
give reports and they are all equipped with GPS so they can
run through all the maze of islands and channels at night.
As for the food......typical great Bay Prairie food
and they always cook a great variety and twice as much as the
group can consume. Now the cook out Friday night was something
else as well, with fried alligator, tamales, antelope, deer,
all kinks of sausages, and on and on...
Unfortunately
(fortunately?) the good folks at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service confiscated the whale and seal meat that Duck Lorange
tried to bring us.
As for the 350+ bird body count, it
would have been a lot higher if the Mississippi boys had the
killing instinct going. They did slip off and kill some farm
raised Chukar….but I’m not counting them.
__________________ "Some men see things as they
are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and
ask why not."
- George Bernard
Shaw
Let's roll...
Last edited by
AvianQuest on 12-14-2003 at 12:25 PM
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