2011 Chesapeake Bay Duck Hunt

[Coulter]

I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I did last year, and I have come to realize that my hunting partner is a worse picture taker than I am. But, here are a few pics to check out anyway.

This is Gene's Chesapeake Bay Retriever bring the first of the two brant I doubled on during the day two hunt. We had a flock of three decoy perfectly. I dropped the first and Gene dropped the second. Even though the third bird was right next to his I swung on it and dropped it before he had a chance. He just looked at me like  "You didn't even give me a chance to shoot at it". I just smiled and said I got bored.



Here is Gene with the days "hero shot". We both limited out on Surf Scoters with 4 apiece. I limited on brant and Gene bagged 1 brant, 1 Canada goose and a really nice baldpate.



Here is a better shot of the scoter I shot that is heading off to the taxidermist....



This is where we hunted on day three. We set up here 3 hours after low tide in a really narrow gut. There wasn't a lot of wiggle room to get the boat in there, but we managed. We both bagged our limit of black ducks (1 each) as well as 3 green wing teal apiece. I also bagged another brant earlier in the morning as we set up on a shoal right at the inlet. If we looked off the starboard side of the boat we were looking into the Atlantic.

View from the boat...



And this is the gut we wiggled the boat into...



You can't get to this spot on a low tide. High tide brought plenty more water in and there was no trouble getting back to the launch. Well, minus the shoal he drove up on when he tried to take a short cut. We both left our sneakboats at home this time and opted to hunt right out of his boat blind. That worked out really well, but I still love the sneakboats. We are planning to do two, maybe three trips next year and will be taking the sneaks down on at least one of the trips. There is soooo much area to explore down there. I don't think you could cover it all in one season even if you lived there. So that was the trip for the year. Sorry I didn't get more good pics. I am kicking myself for that now.

Steve

[FinsnFur]

I think you got plenty of pics But what I cant figure out is, when did you go on this trip/hunt?
It looks like the 4th of July. The water is running, everyone's in their sweatshirts. I'm drilling holes in the Mississippi River to drop in a fishing jig

By the way, thanks for putting up the pics

[HaMeR]

I got bored he says!!! 

Purdy good pics Steve.    Nice looking birds. Heck I aint heard of some of those. Thanks for taking us along. 


Now you just need to get down to the LBL. 

[Coulter]

Just went three days last week Jim. There was some ice, but not enough to keep the birds away. It was certainly cold though. Windchill was 16 on day one. Not really that cold for up here, but when your sitting still in a boat all day it tends to get a bit nippy. We have nothing but hard water up here in PA too. The guys are out ice fishing now.

I know Glen...LBL - I'd love to make it down. I'm not sure its gonna happen this year either. It was all I could do to swing the duck hunt. I was supposed to make two trips down this year, but had to cancel on the first. Too many oddities costing money on the home front. Washer crapped the bed,, had to put in new windows, storm door got blown off its hinges, etc. Keep after me for next year and we'll see what happens.

Steve

[pitw]

  Steve is a tough cookie  .  Sitting in a boat at them temperatures proves it to me .  Nice herd of birds there and I ain't heard of some either .

[HaMeR]

   Hang in there Steve. I had some life things almost get in the way here too. Had to re-roof part of the house & I replaced a couple hundred running feet of 1x8 before I could re-shingle.    We're lucky someone didn't fall thru last winter shoveling all that snow off onto the neighbors yard.