Bootlipkiller wrote:3legged_lab wrote:@ bootlip that eagle head is a really nice mount. I would not hesitate for one second to pay a premium taxidermist if I ever got one.
And to give an idea to the midwesterners how rare they are in this flyway, a couple seasons ago I took a pic of a flock of ± 4000 snows - 1 blue was in the flock.
I wish I had some great story about how we got it but I don't.
There is a spot me and my buddy Doug and I shoot Spoonies would take Doug's boat and if things were perfect you could murder the geese. So we head out in the afternoon, get to the spot and the fog rolls in. Thick nasty tule fog and you can maybe see 50 yds. All the sudden ISS and I see this dark goose break thru the fog and we let him have it. He cartwheels down to the opposite creek bank. At this point we both think we have killed a speck and we take the boat over to retrieve it. ISS leaves the boat first and I follow behind him. After a short search I hear "oh sh!t, dude"!!! It's a f'n blue. We get back to the boat and Doug say "who killed it?" ISS looks at me and says I don't know. I look at him and say the same. I told him to take it he told me to take it, after a while of trying to get the other to take it. Finally I agreed to take it because ISS said he couldn't spend the money to get it mounted at the time.
And that's the story of the California blue. No decoys no calling just pass shooting like a redneck.
The second season that we were allowed our late hunt (the first year we were allowed to shoot snows along with the specks) I heard a second hand story about a kid who was pass shooting birds in the parking lot of the potatoe shed he worked at. The "speck" he thought he shot turned out to be a blue. He asked a guy he knew that used to bird hunt (the guy who told me the story) to help him ID it, it didn't have the 'black grin patch', but did have warts on the bill. Oh, and it was banded.
Turns out the damn rookie shot an eagle head Ross with a band. I read somewhere that that bird, not counting the band, is statistically the rarest waterfowl you can legally take in the United States. Don't know if that's true, but it sounds good.
