A friend, Dave, and I decided to go over to the basin for opening weekend. We usually wait till a little later in the season but hadn't tried early for quite a few years so we said what the hell. We has low expectations for success and wondered how crowded it would be.
I decided to hunt a pond that produced some fair hunting at times last year and we walked in at twilight to find it dry! It was a spot that dfw artificially fills with water from a nearby creek and apparently they didn't get around to it! Needless to say we weren't real pleased. We walked back to the truck and watched a few flocks fly over the area, but the action looked like it was slowing quickly when we left which was only about 20 min. after shooting hrs.
We decided to drive around and look for some quail or ducks to jumpshoot and our opening day woes soon turned around. All the irrigation canals that seem to be dry when i'm there later in the year were full and we stumbled into an area that had quite a few ducks and mostly mallards!
Some small ditches we could stop and glass down from the roads and spot and stalk ducks. There was a big canal we just walked and glassed down as we turned corners.
I was amazed at how well this worked for us...often getting 3 or 4 birds a stalk and in one of the bunches there was a small goose we managed to get,before we knew it we were limited with all mallards and we ended up adding another goose later in the day.
Opening day success looked like this!
Gotta love the dog....were done hunting and he's sill scouring the skies for more ducks lol.
The next morning we decided to try putting a few decoys out on the edge of the canal and see if there was any movement. We jumped a bunch downing 3 and then set out dekes. Nothing moving except a few teal so we jumpshot the rest of the day limiting again with a mixed bag of 2 scaup, 2 teal, 2 spoonies including my first drake shoveler and 8 mallards.
On the way home we saw a flock of geese along the Columbia we made a stalk on. We knocked down 3 killing one and had 2 swimmers. We were only able to get a killshot on one of them and the third swam way out. My dog, Spanky , went out after the geese but wouldn't retrieve them. They were greaters and I guess he was intimidated by the size. One of the geese floated up on a point were we could get it but the other was out about 50 yds. and wasn't getting closer. I couldn't believe it as i kept throwing rocks at the goose and spanky would go out and swim around it ,bark and growl at it. I look back to see dave stripped down to his skivvies and ready to swim out to get the goose! After a couple more failed attempts by the dog he peter pans it head first into the river......I couldn't believe it! WHERE THE HELL WAS MY CAMERA!!! Damn! That would have been a hillarious pic. , Dave swimming out as Spanky swims back past him looking at him when he goes by.
The best jumpshooting I've ever expierenced with 28 ducks and 4 geese for the weekend!
The geese (spanky really doesn't deserve to be in this)
Dave found some jewelry
The drake shoveler (not a great pic and not in full plummage )
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