SpinnerMan 2024-2025 Log

[SpinnerMan]

Date: December 14

Hunters: Myself

Time: Afternoon

Location: MU #19

Weather Conditions: 30's with wind 10's E. Overcast at start to a slow but steady rain for the last hour.

Waterfowl Activity: Started flying right after I finished setting up around 1PM and were still flying at sunset. Saw thousands of ducks. Mostly high flying, but enough played to have a lot of fun.

Dark conditions, it was hard to tell the boys from the girls. I thought I dropped a drake then hit the hen. Drake regained his wits and flew off. Then I had 3 hens work as pretty as can be. I almost gave them a pass, but they hung around too long. Near the end I had three work beautiful. Just wasn't 100% sure if any were drakes, but they put on a great show.

Wonderful show today. What I traveled back up to Illinois for.

Birds By Species: 2 mallard

Lagniappe: It was absolutely pouring on the way home. The fields are going to be a muddy mess. Not sure if slogging through the mud tomorrow is the best idea for my knee.

[Duck Engr]

Sweet! Glad you have some ducks to play with this year!

[Rick]

"Not sure if slogging through the mud tomorrow is the best idea for my knee."

Now waiting to see if good judgement or bird lust prevails. Not easy to resist a fresh sheet water day...

[SpinnerMan]

"Not sure if slogging through the mud tomorrow is the best idea for my knee."

Now waiting to see if good judgement or bird lust prevails. Not easy to resist a fresh sheet water day...

Sheet water doesn't help us up here. In fact, it could send a lot of the birds back north. Cold and snow is what we really want. Cold is good enough for decent numbers of ducks at the cooling lake.

I have decided to let good judgment prevail. The knee was a little unhappy when I got up this morning. Nothing worse than after a good session of physical therapy, but enough that I'm not going to put it through the stress of slogging through the mud.

My legs were actually very sore when I first got up. Instead of leaning on the wall of the pit looking for birds. I was on my feet moving around as the birds were passing non-stop for about 3.5 hours. It's been a little over a month since I got out of the brace after knee surgery. I'm still feeling the effects of doing almost nothing for about 2 months.

I think I've done a pretty good job of pacing myself, doing what I can, but not doing anything to set me back.

We get some cold later this week, so I'll be out next weekend. I like hunting alone with each pit usually only getting a couple shooting opportunities on a few birds. If we went from thousands of ducks to 10's of thousands like we often see, then I'd want to hunt with a full complement in the pit. Next weekend I'll probably buddy up just so I don't have to work as hard and try to get out both days. Monday I head back to Florida. Duck season is over. I'll be back in January hoping for some good late season goose hunts.

[Deltaman]

Congrats Ed

[SpinnerMan]

Date: January 12

Hunters: Myself & Nick

Time: Morning to afternoon

Location: MU #11

Weather Conditions: ~30 with wind 10's SW. Snowing moderately until about 11. Got 2-3" of new snow.

Waterfowl Activity: Ducks and more ducks, shame duck season is over. Good numbers of geese too just not many passed within a mile of us.

First time hunting with Nick. He grew up hunting ducks on the Mississippi, but hadn't been out in about 15 years. I was happy to get him his first waterfowl in about 15 years. I told him if we get a single it was all his.

I got one to work beautiful. About 25 yards out looking like it was going to land I called the shot. The goose got to the ground before he got on it. It landed with my decoys. First he said he didn't want to shoot my decoys. I told him decoys get shot. Then he said he didn't want to shoot it on the ground. So we yelled at it, banged on the pit, and were halfway out of the blind. Goose looked confused but didn't really move. Finally I picked up my gun and said either you shoot it or I am. He shot it

Birds By Species: 1 Canada Goose

Lagniappe: We definitely got those so-called "chamber of commerce" geese. We quit less than 5 minutes too soon. I had just unloaded my gun, was putting my flag away and Nick says there's some low behind us. I peek over the back. First good looking flock of the day. I grab some shells and give Nick my gun to load. Start calling and they come right to us swing around down wind looking like they are coming into land. Probably about 60 yards out. Unfortunately we had uncovered the pit. Got that reaction you never want to get when they noticed the big black hole in the middle of the bright white field. They flared off and flew over to the next field and landed

[Rick]

"Y'all come back."

[SpinnerMan]

Date: January 14

Hunters: Myself

Time: Morning

Location: MU #21

Weather Conditions: ~15 F and snowing on the drive. Snow stopped before shooting time. Strong wind WSW shifting NW sustained ~20 with gusts probably in the 30's. Which meant a relentless blowing snow. Cloudy transitioning to mostly sunny.

Waterfowl Activity: Nothing until ~11 then one big flock of around 50 got up and went right to the blind about a mile away and closer to the lake and got shot up. One other flock flew out high right after that. Not a single duck either.

Maybe I should have took it as a hint. The lock on the pit was frozen. The wind was too much for my lighter to stay lit. So I took my two hand warmers. Turned them on high. Put them on either side of the lock, wrapped them snugly in my cold weather mask. Then went and sat in the truck for 15 minutes. That turned out to be enough and I got it open.

Around 9 o'clock, the wind shifted and there was a big sustained gusts, maybe 40. I hunkered down in the pit. Next thing I hear decoys sliding over the roof of the pit. It literally blew over about half my decoys. I've had a few decoys blow over before, but not about 25 out of the 50 decoys I had out. Set everything back up and reoriented all the rest so they were facing in the new wind direction and hopefully wouldn't blow over again. Only had 1 go down after that.

Birds By Species: DNS

Curse: Relentless blowing snow and in blind that has lids that don't seal well. Shoveled about 3" of snow out of the blind 3 or 4 times. I and everything with me got soaked as the heater melted the snow blowing around in the pit. Also, there were just two groups and me hunting this morning. The one group limited out early. The second group jumped over in their pit and limited out and was back in the clubhouse when I got back to sign out. They did this in the blind I hunted Sunday and we got 1.

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[Deltaman]

Now THAT is wanting it!!!!!
Bummer on the lack of activity in your spot, and watching them go to another hunt is frustrating, but at least there was some birds. Glad you didn't take a spill since you are still on the recuperation bus, and doing a solo trip in that badass weather......sheeeeeeeit Liked your frozen lock fix I thought you were gonna say that you peed on it

[SpinnerMan]

Glad you didn't take a spill since you are still on the recuperation bus

Don't really have to worry about reinjury at this point. Just working on rebuilding the strength mostly at this point. Most things I don't notice it any more. Going up and especially down stairs I can tell I'm not back to 100%, but I'm getting there.

doing a solo trip in that badass weather......sheeeeeeeit

Normally I look to buddy up for late geese, but I had to call it early today to go to work. I just planned to go myself so I wasn't hunting with guys I never hunted with before and then bailing on them early. As it turned out they were all done before me.

Other than the relentless blowing snow, this is pretty typical late season goose hunting. I think the coldest I've been out is about -15 F. High's in the single digits is not uncommon. We don't want it above freezing at all.

We have pretty much perfect conditions where we hunt right now. The reason we don't have 30 people hunting on a Tuesday and mostly limiting out is because there is almost no snow north of us. This is the weather we want for late goose. We just need Wisconsin and northern Illinois covered in snow. Half of Wisconsin has no snow on the ground and the other half less than an inch. Same for northern Illinois. Until they get snow, there's not a lot of geese, so you have to get lucky on which way they go.

[PorkChop]

Been a long time since I hunted out of a pit! Glad you got out!!

[SpinnerMan]

Date: January 25 & 26 (Squirrels)

Hunters: Myself

Time: Afternoon

Location: JTA 5S

Weather Conditions: A bit too windy Saturday, beautiful Sunday.

Small game Activity: Squirrels were pretty active both days especially Sunday. Even saw a couple bunnies Sunday. Saw a few deer Saturday and a bunch in the fields Sunday.

By Species: 1 squirrel Saturday & 3 squirrels Sunday

Curse: Made the most of poor goose hunting

LOL: Sunday I parked. It's across the street from a park. I had to pee, but there were people running their dogs so I hustled up the trail. Once far enough into the woods, I did what I had to do. Just as I got down to business a squirrel came running down a downed tree. Nearly got my first critter with my pants down Put the one gun away. Took a few more steps down the trail and got the squirrel with the other.

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[Deltaman]

Glad to see that your squirrel scouting paid dividends, and they look fat! Love eating them (and rabbits), but dammit man, better be wearing gloves when you clean them, or you're gonna wear that smell for a few days

[SpinnerMan]

they look fat!

The one I shot Saturday was surprisingly small. But the ones I got Sunday were big squirrels, especially the two males.

[Rick]

they look fat!

The one I shot Saturday was surprisingly small. But the ones I got Sunday were big squirrels, especially the two males.

Par-boilers.

[SpinnerMan]

they look fat!

The one I shot Saturday was surprisingly small. But the ones I got Sunday were big squirrels, especially the two males.

Par-boilers.

Pressure cooker. Does a great job with tough ones. I use it for my goose leg quarters as well. Quickest way to get it fall of the bones done and breakdown all those tendons.

All the meat is stripped off the bones. I'll probably sauté it up with just a little butter and salt and pepper for dinner this evening.

[Duck Engr]

Been many a critter shot while a hunter had their britches unbuttoned relieving himself.

[SpinnerMan]

Date: November 4

Hunters: Myself, Jeff, John, Mike

Time: Morning

Location: Saginaw Bay

Weather Conditions: 50's, wind 15+, rain, lots of rain, wave about 1 because we couldn't get on the main lake.

Waterfowl Activity: Lots of bluebills, but they have been hunted hard

Curses: Same as yesterday. 50's and a south wind isn't bring new birds

Got a little more shooting today and actually hit a few

Birds By Species: 7 bluebill, 2 old squaw

Photo Ops:

Just laying out in the rain.

Worst duck ID ever. I blame it in the rain.

I got my wing report. I didn't report individual results because I thought I had hit a bonus bluebill. Turns out I didn't shoot any bluebills. Two greater scaup and an immature hen common scoter.

Looking back at the picture of the soaked ducks. It's clearly a scoter. I think I can tell the difference between greater and lesser scaup.

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[Rick]

Look just like wet ducks to me.