Out in the Swamp

Yesterday morning Zach, Mike and I got up at 4:00 a.m. to go out in the swamp and hurt some ducks with Jonathan. We arrived at the agreed-upon location around 5:30 a.m. and, after a fairly long walk along the levy, met up with Jonathan who had been waiting since 4:00. We claimed a nice little patch of logs and reeds which had been engineered to work as a blind, and after adding some additional camouflage and setting out our decoys, we sat back to wait for shooting time.


Since I'm only back for a week it wasn't worthwhile for me to purchase a license, so I didn't go along to hunt. I was their driver and photographer, joking that I shot more than they did and got better results...probably because I was using a Canon instead of a shotgun! :)

Jonathan did some "live-tweeting" from the blind.


The guys had a few opportunities throughout the morning, and Jonathan and Mike came away with a hen Mallard each.




As the sun came up the action died down quite a bit. We kept going on the calls and occasionally would make some of the smaller flocks interested, but they wouldn't get close enough.


We had a really great time together, as these shots demonstrate.