Lucy Killed The Blog

It has been almost a year since my last post. Seems like it is harder and harder to find the time these days. Here are a bunch of pictures from this duck season. I can say without hesitation this was the best Virginia duck season I have ever had. We limited out twice this season at our marsh and that has not happened in my lifetime.

 

Mase Dog lookin tough. We killed our limit this day. We had a mix of Mallards, Blacks, Gadwall, and Teal

 Uncle Kelly, Mase, and Greg with the all the birds from Friday evening and Sat morning.

 Beautiful drake black duck from first afternoon hunt with H-dog. We had a slow afternoon but we finished it off with two black ducks that decoyed perfectly. H killed his first black duck that morning. He is getting it mounted.

 H and I had one hell of a morning. We killed our limit of ducks and geese. We couldn't shoot straight the day before, but tightened up on this morning and the birds were cooperating.

 

This was Dad and I from early in the season. We had a great shoot from #3 and Dex did a great job as usual. The old man is at about half speed and he can't get around in the mud very well but he still gets it done.

 

Beautiful sunrise on the last day of the season. The river was frozen solid and we got skunked. Only saw a handful of ducks after Taylor and I walked out on the ice and cut a hole with a chain saw.

 Making goose sausage

Vlad, Billy, The Don, and I got together and cranked out a bunch of wood duck boxes

 Mase and I got out on the water the Friday before Curtis's wedding

 Went on deer drive with some friends from work

Uncle Kelly shot this banded hen mallard. She was from Quebec and was hatched in 2010. This is the first federal band we have taken at the marsh in a long time.

 Solid Mallard swat in somerset. Doc is looking good

JaCurtis love fest 2013

Now it is time for Turkey Season!

"The Don" strikes at the Brick Yard

We have hunted the brickyard every Saturday of the season besides the week I went to SC, and every time we have hunted from about an hour before sunrise till noon which until this weekend was the legal shooting limit. Every day we have had a lot of action and multiple close encounters. On opening day we had a long beard come in silent behind us, the second week of the season we got a bird hot at about 11am and had him come to about 80 yards and hang up, and last weekend we had 3 gobblers talking to us and one came in to about ten steps but would not show us anything but his head. Needless to say we had a blast on every one of these hunts, but the thought of the season coming to an end with out putting one of these gobblers on the ground was starting to haunt us. Fortunately, The Don stepped up and hammered this bird at about 40 yds.

When we were walking into our spot we bumped three different birds off the roost, and it was starting to feel like a bust. About 45 minutes after we set up,I watched three birds come off the roost about 400 yds away on the opposite side of the bowl we were hunting. Earlier in the season we had seen birds work from the bowl into the corner of the field we were set up in. We only heard one bird gobble and he was not on the property we were hunting. I called sparingly, and the birds from the bowl slowly worked their way into our field. It ended up being two jakes and one long beard. As they were working their way towards us a hen came off the roost and flew into the field with them when they were about 100 yds away. I thought for sure that she would take them away from us and the hunt would be over, but fortunately she broke off on her own our three birds did not pay her any attention. These birds got to about 50 yds and the long beard hung up and sent the two jakes in to about 20 steps to check us out. They seemed concerned and started putting softly, but never completely bugged out. The Don was set up to be the gunner and he made us sweat it out. I probably would have pulled the trigger at 50 but the bird worked a little closer and The Don dropped the hammer. It was his first bird ever, and it was a nice once. He was definitely a three year old bird and he had inch long spurs and a 9.5 inch paint brush. Redemption is sweet! Time to let the brick yard rest.

Power Line Revenge

Went down to visit my buddy Ragsdale in South Carolina again and once again he delivered the goods. This bird started gobbling early and often which helped us set up within about 75 yards of him without getting busted. He almost gobbled himself hoarse in the tree, but as soon as he flew down he was on a rope and he got it in the face at about quarter to seven. It was about as text book as it gets. I am disappointed the footage is so lousy. I was really hoping the audio on the gopro would pick up his gobbling because he had to gobble at least 157 times before he flew down.

This bird had a double beard with the main beard at 12 inches and the second at 6.5 inches. He also had 1 1/8inch spurs. He is the biggest bird I have ever killed and ties for the longest beard ever shot on the property, and Rags and crew kill A LOT of turkeys.

2012-2013 Duck Season

  This season was the toughest that I have had in a long time. Even though it was colder than last year we did not have any ducks or geese show up until after Christmas. We can normally count on killing geese but this year they seemed to stay in the fields and not move to the creek until later in the day.

 This was the take on the last day of the season. This was 4 guns and we hunted till almost 3pm. We had to break a whole in the ice and we ended up fighting the ice all day. We also had some gapers show up 30 minutes after shooting time that pretty much made it impossible to kill anything until they left. Dad and I should have limited out but neither of us were shooting straight except for on this one mallard that I sky busted. I got a go pro for x-mas and I am trying to figure out how to get good footage. I need some tips from my buddy Will James with the Gar Hole Crew.

 

Lil Kelly and I hunted the second to last weekend of the season and had a decent hunt. We hunted #3 with a south wind that was steady. We spent half the day scouting a spot further up the creek. Check out the wing feathers on that spec black duck. 

I ran down to SC to team up with Huston, Ragsdale, and Fairy and the Ragsdale's treated us to two spectacular hunts. The first morning we hunted the impoundment closest to the house and limited out quickly on wood ducks. As you can see H-dog did more whiskey killing than he did duck killing. The picture below is from our Sunday morning hunt. We had approximately 15 guns and we all limited out on ring necks.

Bob, Uncle Kelly, Dad, and I all hunted the first weekend in January and it was really slow. It was a bluebird day and we managed to scrape out 1 greenhead, 1 black duck, and one goo.

Mase and I joined Uncle Kelly and Greg on their post x-mas hunt and managed to scrape a few out in mediocre conditions. Mase and I spent more time fighting motors than we did hunting. The birds we killed decoyed perfectly.

 

On opening day Vlad, Gordon, and I managed to smack 4 geese all of which did it right. It was bluebird and we barely saw any ducks. 

I hunted a handful of other times with Oakey and the Kings but the results were pretty mediocre and I have no pics to share. We did pretty well at the Kings. We had a group of ten geese do it and they all died. I think Will has dome decent footage of that, he will have up on his blog. Here is some footage of two geese going down. Notice all I have to do is point my gun at them and they fold. If I had pulled the trigger Carrington's ear's would still be ringing.

Spring 2012

Time to do some quick catching up. I had a pretty solid spring. H-dog and I started off turkey season by making our annual pilgrimage down to South Carolina to hunt with out buddy Ragsdale. As usual we had a bunch of great hunts culminating in these two birds. Ragsdale pretty much serves them up on a platter. H-dog and I did everything we could to mess it up, but still we both got a bird. There were almost too many birds around this year!! Rags and his dad are doing a bunch of predator management this year and I am excited to see how it affects the population.

 

My friend Steve Mclean invited me to one his honey holes the second to last weekend of the season, and he shot this bird about 20 minutes after we sat down. This place was loaded with birds, and we were really lucky to get this bird because we bumped 3 off the roost and we were late getting to our spot. We never got a good picture of the bird in the woods, and Steve had to rush off to a meeting so Dex and I decided to show off his bird for him. He was a HOSS. 10.5 " beard and 1 inch spurs.

After Steve took this bird it was still so early we decided to hang this bird in a tree and try to set up on another. It only took about another 30 minutes before this big female coyote came running right to Steve. We think she was smelling that turkey, and Steve laid the smack down on her. These things are hell on turkeys so we were pumped to get it out of the population.

Mase and I headed to the Jackson River to try to get an elusive mountain turkey. We got worked by the birds in the morning, but had a stellar afternoon on the river. These are just two of the nice fish we caught. There was a great caddis hatch coming off and we caught a lot of fish sipping in the flats. I caught the fish in this pic on a double bunny before the bugs started coming off.

My friend Chris Smythers is a pro bass fisherman and he took me out on the Potomac and we wore the fish out.

Caught this thug on a crank bait in the weeds.

 This is one of the first fish we boated and Chris got him on top water.

That my friends is a Potomac River Snake Head and they are fowl!! This thing has teeth going all the way down its throat. I dropped it shortly after this pic and Chris and I were both dancing around in the boat like a couple of teenage girls trying not to get bit.