November 30 (Ducks) Hunters: Morning: Myself, Jose, and Elliot. Afternoon: Myself, Jose, Bryan, and Bob.
Temps around 30 and rising. Not what we want this time of year. Sunny with periods of cooling lake fog.
Waterfowl Activity: Most ducks I've seen in a few years. Did not see a single goose.
Took my first trip to hunt the fields around the cooling lake. Unfortunately with the warm weather and rain what I was hoping was a three day weekend of hunting will likely be just Friday
So for the first trip to Braidwood, we had a few kinks to work out. I forgot that this time of year the draw time was 6:00 and not 6:30. Fortunately Jose didn't so when I showed up 5 minutes after the draw, I was able to just jump in with him and Elliot. But since we were the only 3 there, it didn't really matter.
The pit we took is the furthest from the club house. A good 20 minute drive. We drove separately because Elliot had to leave around 11AM. About 5 minutes away he calls and asks if we got the key to the pit
Jose drops me and all the stuff off and returns to the clubhouse to get the key.
When he gets back to the clubhouse, our names have been erased from the sign in shack, new names put up and the key to our pit is gone
Bryan and Bob showed up after we left thinking the draw time was 6:30, seeing nobody and the key still hanging, assumed we had hunted the day before and forgot to erase our names.
Jose gets a hold of them, sorts out the mess. Meantime Elliot and I are at the pit seeing a few birds, which is rare to see ducks that early. Sort out the circus, get all set.
About every hour we'd have a nice flock of mallards come by. Usually sneaking getting in closer than we'd have liked because of lack of focus and too much talking. Most flocks worked, but just wouldn't fully commit. Better shooters would have killed a few more ducks, but we got 3 mallards before Elliot had to leave.
Bob and Bryan asked if they could hop over when Elliot left which they did. They were seeing nothing in their field. Things continued pretty much the same. Nice big flocks of mallards putting on a good show, but never fully committing. Poor shooting not putting down what we should have. We ended up with only 2 more mallards, but we did have a great show. Some of the flocks worked for a longgggg time before leaving the seen.
Too much calling was the problem I think. While they would come back to the come back call, we needed to lay off. We did that with the last couple flocks and they seemed to come in much better. One group we called the shot too seen. From down in the pit they looked good, but when we stood to shoot it was clear we screwed up and didn't drop any out of big flock. It was a great day of hunting with great guys. Numbers should have been better, but other than that
And right now it is pouring down rain which will turn the fields to a muddy disaster which is why I'm typing this and not hunting.