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.
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