Trying new things

Made an attempt to turn the Aquapod into a pile of rocks. Worked for these guys:

I have some other ideas now....

Catching up a bit

Well, haven't made a post for a few days so I thought I'd catch up a bit.  I had a nice little hunt with Sarah about a week ago. This is probably the last one at that refuge for this year, unless it warms way up again. It's been pretty cold here, and it doesn't look like it's gonna be getting better anytime soon, so that means the ponds will be frozen. No problem, we'll just move to the bigger water.

I did move to some bigger water last Friday and had a pretty good shoot.The big surprise was a drake white winged scoter. It's the first one I've ever seen around these parts. In fact, nobody I know has ever seen one around here.

Saturday, I did some scull boat hunting with John Hayden. He was the oarsman, and I was the gunner, and we really got into some good shooting. Sculling is where you are in a long, VERY low profile boat. You are laying down in the boat and are propelled by an oar that sticks out of the back of the transom. You slowly sneak up on ducks you've spotted with binoculars, and when you get close enough, you sit up and attempt to shoot them. It worked out a lot better for us than it did for the ducks. We snuck up on a flock of sleeping mallards and I killed 4 of them with 3 shots to finish my limit. Way cool. Here's a picture of John with the birds on the front of the scull boat.

And that's pretty much been it. Right now I'm trying to make my Aquapod marsh boat look like a pile of rocks so I can go set decoys on a lake about 20 miles from here. I'll post pictures of that when I'm done.

Hunted with Sarah yesterday

We hit the refuge yesterday for a great time and a few birds. Flipping wind was blowing 30 mph, and the birds just didn't want to decoy in that. We had a great time laughing at each other though, and we did manage a few birds. Sarah took off at about non, and I hung around for the rest of the day HOPING birds would start to fly around...but they never did. I should have left with her.


At one point Sarah searched the horizon, but didn't see any ducks. Hmm, I wonder where they were hiding?

Here's the happy camper with some tasty birds:

Not a lot of birds, but a whole lot of fun.

Hunting with friends

Had a great weekend hunting ducks with a couple of friends from Modesto. Saturday was a bit cold, and we had to break ice off the pond several times. We did get to see a very nice sunrise though.

   
At first light there were birds all over us. We got a few right off the bat, and then, like a light switch being turned off, all the birds disappeared. About 10:30AM they started filtering into our pond and we did very well. We ended up with our limits of ducks...21 total...and one lone honker.

No, we didn't kill the birds with the axe, it was there to help us break the ice. Today was MUCH slower and we only killed six ducks total.

All in all, we had a great time sharing a couple hunts and all kinds of stories. I'm gonna sleep good tonight.

My Okie cup insulator/holder

So, I had a little project the other day that required the use of that flexible insulation and I had some left over. Not wanting to waste anything, and, always looking for some kind of silly little project, I decided to use some of it to make an insulator pouch for my coffee cup. The cup I have says it's insulated, but it sure doesn't keep coffee hot for long, and any help I could give it would be good. I cut some of the insulating material and sized it to wrap around the cup. Then I cut a flat, round bottom. Then I grabbed the camo duct tape and went to work wrapping things together. This is what I came up with:

      
Now, that was all well and good, and it did help the length of time the coffee stayed hot, but I needed something more. I needed some way to be able to use this contraption in the blind when I was duck hunting. That was going to require the construction of a cup holder/hanger. Since I hunt in different kinds of blinds it would have to be "adjustable" to hang on various things such as the side of a metal blind, or on a tree limb, or other various hides. I had already gone down the Okified road with the camo duct tape...why not continue along that path? I looked around the shop and found the two things I needed to do just that: bailing wire and grey duct tape: the staples of modern construction. 


First I formed my masterpiece:

Then I carefully covered it with the finest protective material known to mankind:

It was now ready to hang on most any shaped item. But, I knew there was something missing: a top cover for the cup. Without the top cover I would lose too much heat, thereby prematurely cooling off my coffee. I'm not gettin' any younger, and it's harder ever year to haul that coffee out to the blind, so I want it hot for as long as is humanly possible.So, I kept working and developed a top cover attached to the cup holder with...what else...decoy anchor cord:

And now for the moment you've all been waiting for...the completed project:

Yeah, go ahead and laugh all you want, but it works! I used this thing in the blind Saturday and it not only hung where I could get to it, and was still out of the way, it also tripled the amount of time my coffee stayed hot. 


Remember folks: you saw it here first!

Well what do you know, it's time to start blogging again! It;s been a year since I did anything with this blog and I think it's about time I gave it another shot. I've been visiting other blogs from time to time, just haven't put any time into this. I'm not sure why really, I just kind of got away from it. I got more into Facebook and such, but it's much easier to tell a complete story here. Maybe I'll just try and concentrate on this a bit. Instead of going back over the entire year, I believe I'll just put up a few pictures of what I've been doing lately...duck hunting. Hey, there's really nothing better than sitting in the sow and wind while trying to murder a few of God's creatures anyway. This first picture is of a nice strap of birds I get earlier this year. Some good eats here.

This next one is a lousy picture of my first hunt of the year. I got an invite to hunt opening day at a refuge about 10 miles from me. There's no way I could pass that one up. We went to a pond I thought would shoot lights out, but it was a lot slower than I'd anticipated. I killed a limit of birds, but it took until 5:02 PM...much longer than I thought it would. 

Last week I hunted with Pete Morel. We got a few, but they just didn't want to fly that day. I did get this picture of Pete's dog bringing back a mallard I shot though.

I've hunted a couple times with Tim, shown in the next picture. He's a fella I met on an internet duck hunting site. Nice guy, and good to hunt with. This is a picture from about a week ago from a hunt here locally. I got my limit of 7 ducks, and Tim THOUGHT he had a limit of 7 ducks when we picked everything up. However, upon counting the ducks on the strap, we discovered he only had 6. Moral of the story is count te birds before you pick up the gear.

Last Wednesday I had a good hunt with my dog Hannah. I was trying for nothing but big ducks, but, I ended up with 2 little guys. I HAD to leave by noon, so at 11:30 I opened up the acceptable ducks to include teal so I could finish off my limit. That's OK, they taste good too.

I have been able to get out with te daughter a couple times as well. A week ago Saturday we got to hunt in a storm. It was cold and spitting snow, and the ducks were very cooperative. At one point we had a small flock of 6 whitefront geese come over the pond. I grabbed the spec call (spec is hunterspeak for whitefront) and started in on them. They circled about 3 times and came right over the blind at 30 yards up. I called the shot and we both got a goose. It was Sarah's first ever! Here goal this year was to get a goose and she has no achieved that. Awesome! Here she is with our 14 ducks and 2 geese.

So, there you have it...you are caught up on what's been going on lately. Maybe tomorrow I'll show you the highly technical cup insulator/cup holder I made: you'll be amazed. ;-)