Digging a Duck Pond

For the past year and a half, my friends and I have wanted to dig a pond. We don’t just want to dig a normal pond in someone’s front yard though; we want to dig a duck hunting pond. We have been dreaming about having our own place to hunt ducks on. This dream almost came true last weekend and may happen this coming weekend.

I live in a rural area just north of Columbus. Around my house I am surrounded by fields. There are two big fields right behind my house that lead all the way back to a woods. Those fields and the woods are owned by my Grandma. This is perfect for us because it means we have a place to dig our pond. All the way back where the field meets the woods is a very wet area, we want to dig our pond right there.

This area is mostly in the field but it extends into the woods some. This makes it perfect for a duck pond. We want to dig the pond into the field some and there is a small problem with that. We don’t want to dig up any of the field and remove area that could have been farmed. Our plan is to just dig where the field floods so much that it doesn’t get planted anyway and in the woods.

There were two keys to digging the pond the first was getting permission to dig the pond on my grandmas property and the second was getting permission to use my aunt and uncles bulldozer. About 8 months ago I was sitting in my Grandmas kitchen just talking to her and I managed to change the topic to digging a pond. She didn’t seem like she wanted a pond but she didn’t care. She said as long as my dad was ok with it then she wouldn’t care. My dad is the oldest child in the family and he makes most of the decisions for the family. My dad was ok with the idea, maybe even a little excited about the idea. The next part was getting the bulldozer. I had been trying to get my dad to ask for us to use it since my aunt and uncle really like him but my dad never got around to it. About two weeks ago I asked my cousin, Brad. He is in charge of my aunt and uncles farm, he didn’t care but he said I have to ask his parents since they are the ones that own it. I told my dad that we had Brad’s approval, and the next day he asked my aunt and uncle and they didn’t care. So now we have a bulldozer and a place to dig.

Since we had everything we needed we decided to dig the pond last weekend. The only problem is that in order to dig it has to be dry. The area we are going to dig gets very wet and holds lots of water. This will make it very hard to find a time to dig. Last week it was dry all week so we thought we were going to get to dig but then it started pouring down all of Friday and this completely ruined our plans. Our plans now are to dig whenever we get a dry weekend. Hopefully it’s soon though because duck season will be over in a couple months and we would like to dig it before the season ends.

Hunting Season 2009-2010

I am going to post and continually update everything I/we shoot this year. I'm going to include the date, how many many we shot, who was hunting and pictures when I can.

09/02/2009. 1 Goose. Evan, Cory, Tim
10/17/2009. 6 Wood Ducks (3 drakes, 3 Hens). Evan, Cory, Tim
10/18/2009. 1 Wood Duck (Drake). Evan, Cory
10/22/2009. 1 Wood Duck (Hen). Evan, Cory, Tim
10/24/2009. 8 Geese. Evan, Cory, Tim, Mike
10/25/2009. 4 Geese. Evan, Cory, Tim, Mike, Dave
10/31/2009. 2 Geese. Evan, Tim
12/12/2009. 1 Mallard Duck (Hen). Evan, Cory, Tim
12/13/2009. 6 Mallard Ducks (5 Drakes, 1 Hen), 2 Black Ducks (1 Drake, 1 Hen). Evan, Cory, Tim
12/14/2009. 2 Mallard Ducks (2 Drakes). Evan, Cory, Tim, Mike
12/19/2009. 2 Geese, 1 Mallard Duck (Drake). Evan, Cory, Mike, Garrett
12/20/2009. 1 Mallard Duck (Drake). Evan, Cory, Mike, Garrett
12/21/2009. 1 Mallard Duck (Drake). Evan, Cory, Garrett
12/26/2009. 1 Mallard Duck (Hen). Cory, Garrett
12/27/2009. 1 Goose, 3 Mallard Ducks (3 Drakes). Evan, Cory, Mike, Garrett, Dave
01/01/2010. 12 Geese, 4 Mallard Ducks (3 Drakes, 1 Hen), 3 Black Ducks (2 Drakes 1, Hen). Evan, Cory, Mike, Tim, Garrett, Bob
01/02/2010. 9 Geese. Evan, Cory, Mike, Tim, Bob (Mike, Neck Band/Leg Band)
01/08/2010. 6 Geese. Evan, Cory, Tim
01/09/2010. 6 Geese. Evan, Cory, Garrett
01/16/2010. 7 Geese, 1 Black Duck (Drake). Evan, Cory, Tim, Mike (Evan, Neck Band/Leg Band)
01/17/2010. 6 Geese. Evan, Cory, Tim, Mike, Garrett, Ben
01/21/2010. 8 Geese. Evan, Cory, Tim, Garrett
01/22/2010. 3 Geese, 1 Mallard Duck (Drake). Evan, Cory, Mike, Garrett
01/23/2010. 17 Geese, 1 Mallard Duck (Drake). Evan, Cory, Mike, Tim, Ben, Josh, Chris (Mike, Neck Band/Leg Band)
01/24/2010. 8 Geese. Evan, Cory, Tim, Ben, Josh (Josh, Leg Band. Tim, Leg Band)

The First Hunt of the Season

If you read my last blog you would know that last weekend was the start of goose and duck season in Ohio. I’ve been looking forward to the start of the season ever since the last season ended. Goose and duck season has been what I live for ever since I began hunt geese and ducks.

My friend, Cory, and I had been thinking about where we would hunt on opening day for a while. Where we live we do most of our waterfowl hunting on corn fields. Our problem is that none of the corn fields had been combined yet. Earlier in the year we had gone to a flooded marsh about 30 minutes from our houses to try and hunt teal. We didn’t shoot any teal but we saw that the marsh had lots of potential for some good hunting. Now that duck season was about to start and we had no fields to hunt on we decided to try hunting on the marsh for opening day. Cory and our friend Tim went to the marsh last Thursday to do some scouting for our hunt. Cory told me that they saw over 200 woods ducks and they found a really good spot for us to hunt. The marsh was our best option for opening day.

Our plans for the morning were that Cory would pick me up at 3:15 A.M. and we would meet Tim at Waffle House for breakfast. I was surprised that we needed to get up this early to go hunting but I love to hunt so I was ok with it. I decided that I would just pull an all-nighter and stay up all night getting ready. That night I went to my sister’s house with my girlfriend to see her new puppy. I didn’t get home from there until 1:00 A.M. so I had two hours to make sure I was ready for the hunt. There was a lot to do in two hours, I had to get my Mojo duck ready, get all my clothes together, and get everything else I needed for hunting. As soon as I got home I got the Mojo ready, it needed a new battery and I needed to extend the pole on it so that it would stand out of the waste high water. After that I began getting together all my clothes I would need. It was going to be around 40 degrees in the morning and it would only be worse standing in water that is waste high. I put lots of clothes on including two pairs of socks, long under wear, jeans, sweat pants, under armor cold gear shirt, and a winter coat on top of that. By the time I got all my clothes on and all of my stuff put into a back pack it was 3:00 A.M., and Cory was on his way.

Cory picked me up and we headed to a Waffle House about 15 minutes from my house, but on the way to the marsh. Tim was supposed to meet us there but he showed up 20 minutes late. We were trying to get to the marsh by about 4:15 but we didn’t end up getting there until about 4:45. We weren’t very worried about being late though cause there was only one other group of hunters there so we knew we could get our spot. We put on our waders, put everything on our backs and headed out into the marsh. Our spot was only a couple hundred yards away so it wasn’t too bad of a walk. We had a little trouble finding the spot in the dark but we found it eventually. It was only 5:00 A.M. so we decided to sit on a nearby island and wait. Shooting time wasn’t until 7:17 so we had awhile to wait. We all sat down and relaxed and just listened to the noises of the woods. It was an amazing feeling just sitting out in the woods so early in the morning. There were no clouds at the time so we could see the stars, and there were wood ducks all around us in the trees. Every minute you would hear another wood duck call out into the marsh. Wood ducks have a weird way of calling. It’s not a quack like a mallard it’s more of a whistle. Sitting in the woods though just listening to them whistle was very serene. Every once in awhile we would hear a couple hunters moving around in the water, not too far away. We even heard a few ducks flying around in the dark and landing on the water.

At 6:00 A.M. Tim and I decided we would go set up the MOJO duck. The floating decoys were already setup so this was the last thing needed to get setup. We waded into the water and found a good spot off to the side to set it up. We tested it and everything was running well so we were happy. Then really close by we heard a couple hunters move in and setup really close to us. They were so loud that they were scaring off a bunch of the roosted ducks around us. This made Tim and I very mad because the hunters came in so late and scared off ducks we could have shot. By the time we were done being mad and setting up the MOJO it was almost shooting time. Tim and I went and got our guns and went back into the marsh with Cory to wait. We each got a spot a few yards away from each other and stood there in waste high water waiting.
Around 7:00 A.M. we started hearing a few ducks flying out of the roost but some clouds had rolled in and this was going to push the ducks wake up time a little later. As soon as shooting time started we had a duck fly in and land on our setup but none of us shot because it was too dark to really see and we were just so surprised that it came and landed. That duck flew away and right after that the other hunters in the area began shooting. It was crazy how much shooting was going on. Every 50 yards there was another group of hunters shooting. It was different than we expected. Instead of having the ducks try and land in front of us it was more like we were just shooting them as they fly by. If we knew this was how it would happen I think we would have been more prepared and shot some more ducks because the first few ducks that flew we didn’t shoot at. We saw lots of ducks and Cory ended up shooting 4 of them and I shot 2. Tim is a bad shot and he didn’t hit any. It was hard to find the ducks after we shot them though because they could swim away a little before they died and they under growth was very thick. We eventually found all of our ducks and quit hunting. I shot a beautiful drake and a hen, while Cory shot 2 small drakes and 2 hens. We packed up all of our stuff and headed out. I would say we had a pretty successful first morning.

Hunting Creates a Friendship

Above Garrett, below Cory

Saturday was the start of waterfowl season for us hunters in Ohio. I’ve only been waterfowl hunting for the past 4 years but in those 4 years it has easily become my most favorite type of hunting. Ever since I was little I loved to turkey hunt but now goose and duck season is what I look forward to all year long. The reason I just recently started waterfowl hunting is because my dad and my grandpa never did. The only reason I started was because my cousin, Garrett, who is like a brother to me, hunted geese with his best friend. The first time I went goose hunting it was the day after Christmas and it was cold and raining. It was just terrible weather and surprisingly we never saw one goose. It was a horrible hunt, but I didn’t give up on waterfowl hunting. I still thought it could be fun and it would give me a chance to spend more time with Garrett. I had no idea that it would become my most favorite thing to do.

That first year I went goose hunting I only went two times. I was in high school and I was pretty busy most of the time. I didn’t know at the time how thrilling it is. The next year I became a full time hunter. I was cut from the basketball team and that would leave me with all the time in the world to just hunt. At first I only went hunting when Garrett would go. I didn’t know the hunting guys very well and I wasn’t very close friends with Garrett’s best friend, Cory. I hunted a lot that second year though and I really started to like goose hunting. We didn’t see very many ducks so we mostly just hunted geese, but it was still amazingly fun. Over that hunting season I started to become good friends with all the guys we hunted with. They would make fun of me for looking like Matt Damon and we would all laugh. We even recorded one of our hunts that year and in the recording I am introduced as a special guest hunter, Matt Damon. After most our hunts we would go to a local diner and get breakfast. This was when a lot of our bonding really happened. This year was also the same year that my cousin would graduate and go off to college somewhere. I knew this and realized that it would be weird hunting geese without him, but this turned out to be good for me.

The next year rolled around and goose season was going to start. I knew I wanted to hunt geese all the time, everyday if I could. I also knew that the only person I would be able to hunt with was Cory because everyone else was busy and Garrett was 2 ½ hours away at college. Cory and I have a common bond; we are die hard hunters, more than anyone else that we hunt with. This bond is why I knew that we would be hunting a lot together for a long time to come. Cory had all the decoys to hunt geese with and I had the property to hunt them on so we started hunting together, just me and him. That year he drove home from college everyday to go hunting. It was a 45 minute drive for him but because he had someone to hunt with it was worth it. We had a great season; we killed tons of geese and even lots of ducks. Because we were hunting almost every day together we became pretty good friends. I even think that we have become best friends. I hang out with Cory for more than just hunting now. I believe that our friendship is completely due to hunting. It’s funny how the need for someone to just go hunt with has created a great friendship.