I’ll prefice this by saying that the duck shooting was bad, but the overall experience was totally cool.
I set up on about a 30 acre backwater slough this morning. Right slough, wrong place. Played the wind
perfectly, but they still wanted the other side.
Anyhow, at shooting time, i had a pair of mallards land just outside the dekes. I stood up to get them off the water, and missed badly on the drake (my only shot of the morning).
After that commotion, about 20 mallards get up that were about 100 yards down the shoreline and take off for parts unknown. Kicking myself in the rear, I sit back down. Out of the corner of my eye, I see something swimming parallel to shore, coming right at me. I figured it was a muskrat, however it turned out to be a very curious Mink! It got up out of the water, stood on its back legs, and checked me out for about a minute. Then something caught its attention, and he scurried around after whatever was in the grass. After that was over, he came about 10 yards away from me again, stood up, and checked me out a second time. This time, he didn’t like what he saw, and took off.
25 minutes after this, I hear all kinds of commotion behind me in the trees. I turn around to see a flock of these: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Pileated_Woodpecker_dtl.html
If you’ve ever seen them, they are nearly as big as a Crow, and loud as he&&!!.
After this commotion, I now have deer behind me on the other side of the train tracks. Nothing is flying, so I do a crawl up the embankment to the tracks, and see a little 6 pointer chasing 2 does around. Pretty cool.
That noise goes on forever, and now I’m back focused on the ducks. I’m looking out over the slough, and see something VERY large and brown swimming across the water. I get my binoculars out, and it is a BIG buck! A 9 pointer, out over the ears. I’ve been around the scoring of bucks for a few years, and I’m pretty certain it was in the upper 130’s. It is swimming straight across the slough towards my decoys and me !!
As it crosses, it basically makes a b line towards my dekes and my blind. It exits the water about 25 yards from me, and goes into the brush only to go beserk rubbing and snorting in there.
As this is going on, I turn to the sky again, and now I have 6 Cans checking my spread out hard. 1 circle, 2 circles, then 3. On the 3rd circle, they are out about 35 yards, but I get greedy. I want them to come in 1 more time, but they end up coasting out beyond my decoys and landing. I put the glasses on them – 2 bulls and 4 hens.
I’m now running behind, and have to get out of there. Thus, I stand to stretch, only to have that buck start snorting and wheezing at me!! I had completely forgot about the buck (if you can believe that). It snorts for about 30 seconds, then runs down the tracks about a 100 yards and keeps on snorting.
Finally, it meandered off, and I picked up my dekes.
And as Murphy’s Law would have it, I had Mallards all over me during the time I was picking up the dekes. No lie!! Hardly any flight beyond the first 10 minutes, and then I have to see them, basically laughing at me while wrapping them up.
It was a morning I will remember and cherish the rest of my life.
Very neat to see!