Let's start with the fun. Waterfowl was not too bad actually. I just didn't do a lot of it. There were no birds around most of the time, so no reason to go. Which contributed to a lot more days of worse than unsuccessful days archery hunting.
I went out 6 days in early goose season. I had some fun fishing. Didn't get any geese, but the one day my wife went along we saw geese and had some in range that I should have called the shot on, but thought they were landing in the decoys.
Regular duck season I went out just 7 times. 4 times with my wife where we saw birds and had a good time, but no shooting and the other 3 times I actually got birds every time.
Late season goose, I didn't go a single time. My late season goose club, I believe got 2 geese in January. A good day can be over 100.
Took a trip to Maine. Hunting was OK the first 2 days and pretty much a bust the last day. Being very generous on the use of pretty much as the 3 of us got a pair of hen hooded mergansers. Overall a fun trip, but not even close to what we were paying for.
Species - My harvest / Total group harvest including my harvest
Canada Geese - 1/3
Bufflehead 0/4
Common Eider 0/1 * All 3 of us shot it. So it doesn't count as my first.
Common Goldeneye 0/1
Hooded Merganser 1/2
Mallards 3/5
Old squaw 2/12
Red-breasted Merganser 2 / 5 - my first drake and hen
Woodduck 2/3
TotalDucks - 10/23
Went out 1 day for pheasants with a female Chicago police officer and her 3 german shorthair pointers. I had hoped to get her out for her 1st goose hunt, but no go. She was very nice and I hope I've found someone that I can get out pheasant hunting with in the future.
The funny. Since goose hunting in late January was a bust. I took my shotgun for a walk while I did some deer scouting in the fresh snow. I happened upon a trio of fox squirrels on the ground. My first chance for a triple on squirrels. They saw me when I saw them. The first goes scurrying on the ground straight away from me. I pull up on him and just as I squeeze the trigger, he makes a hard right and I shoot where he was. The other two head up the big oaks for the tree tops. One is going straight up and I swing through him and he ducks around the back side of the tree after the bang with no apparent harm done. This prompts the third to make a break across the branches. The only fairly tough shot. I swing through him as he skips across the branches and one more loud bang to no effect. 0 for 3.
I saw 5 squirrels. The first was a huge fox squirrel that when he first bolted on the ground, his big red tail, I thought it was a fox not a fox squirrel and caused me to hesitate and not get a shot. I also saw one very small squirrel, most like the protected red squirrels that live in that area.Now for the big bad part of the season. Archery hunting. I went out at least 23 times archery hunting. I say at least because after awhile I was so discouraged I forgot to log my hunts and went back later and tried to fix that.
Out of those 23 times I spent in one of my archery stands I saw exactly 1 deer and not much else either. I got drawn by the DNR and asked to log all the critters I saw while archery hunting. Most days I saw nothing. In total, I saw 6 squirrels and 1 cat. No turkeys, no raccoons, no opossums, no foxes, almost nothing interesting at all. I logged 5 other deer that I saw walking in or out. 6 deer and only 1 in my stand over 23 times out
And that one deer I did see, a nice buck that I shot and lost. Was I in the wrong spot? Nope, other people hunted many of my same stands and saw deer. In the case of the one stand, a lot of deer. I had my cameras out. Most stands there were deer using the area on days I was not there. In one case, I was getting ready to head out archery hunting and my wife asked if we could go duck hunting. Of course. I'm always glad to take her, but when I pulled the trail cam on the stand I was going to hunt, three buck came in about a half hour before the end of shooting time and milled around out in front of it. It went like that or worse all season.The funny part was it was so frustrating I became almost schizophrenic when it came to hunting. I expected that I would get a deer while I expected to see nothing. I was excited to go out and felt like I got kicked in the balls after I spent 4 hours in the stand without even seeing a freaking squirrel. But what did I do the end of January, I went scouting for deer. Next years going to be the year. I got 3 new spots to consider for next fall. It can't get here soon enough. OK, this year, I need a break, but give me another month and then it won't be able to get here soon enough.
