Welcome to Outdoor Savages! We are a small group of friends that enjoys nothing more than to spend our free time in the outdoors. Here are the first hand accounts of our adventures. Enjoy!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Ghost Town

   I have been wanting to pull off a diver hunt in the sound for the past few days.  I have been seeing a good amount around so i wanted to get in on some fast shooting action.  I got the boat and was at the ramp at 130pm.  I went out and set up my decoys: 16 Blue Bill, 6 Buffle Heads, and 2 Mergs.  When i was complete with my rig i got a phone call from my buddy who got out of work and wanted to go out.  So i took the 5 minute ride to a dock and picked him up.  On the way back out to the hunting grounds i noticed  a big wad of Buffle Heads in my decoys.  They jumped ship as we approached them and we were ready for some fun shooting.  Lots of gunning was not the case.  We had a lone Old Squaw buzz our decoys and my buddy didn't get a shot at it.  Finally at 10 of 4 i noticed a duck flying solo headed in our direction.  I told my buddy Mike to get ready because he is headed our way.  The duck closed the half mile distance in about 3 seconds and before i knew it he was in our decoys flapping his wings to set down.  I drew my Mossberg 835 and dropped him 4 feet off the surface of the water.  I knew this was a duck that i have not shot before so when i got up to it i saw a bright Blue Bill.  Wow!  A Blue Bill.  The whole thing was text book.  He was attempting to set down right in the landing zone i so carefully created when i hammered him.  That was it for the afternoon.  Compared to yesterday when i saw a ton of divers it was a Ghost Town today; however, i feel that it was a great hunt.  Today was 50 degrees with a light wind and my buddy and i had a bunch of laughs with out winter coats.  I can't wait to cook this one!

   Judging by the photo of the wing can someone tell me if this is a Greater or Less Scaup.

3 comments:

  1. Great report and glad to see you are getting into some ducks. it's locked up in my neck of the woods so time to do some recon on new areas and possibly hitting the shoreline.

    Thanks for sharing.

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  2. passinthru, i would check any rivers that are ice free. In your part of the state there is a lot more corn and grain fields they will want to hang on to.

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  3. Shot a lesser back in 2003 and have only seen one since in Maine (2006), if you look at the wings you will see the white runs only halfway to the tip which suggests that your duck is a lesser scaup.

    Here's a site that is fairly useful, I've linked it straight to the bluebills...
    http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/duckdist/scaup.htm

    If I'm wrong, then I apologize in advance.

    DEDH

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