Doing it the hard way

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Doing it the hard way

Postby Throbbin Rods » Tue Nov 28, 2017 9:36 pm

Took Saturday off from the deer to go duck hunting with young gun Andy at "The Secret Float", his first time there. Got there about 7:30 and unloaded the canoe, put guns ammo and PFD's in and headed out with me in back paddling and Andy in front with the gun ready. First corner we turned there was a pair of mallards and he killed the drake first shot at about 20 yards and I thought he killed the hen second shot. After over an hour and a half of searching we decided the hen had either run off through the tall grass or grabbed the bottom and was holding on. A little further on a group of 4 got up a corner away and Andy missed. I paddled slowly and steadily up stream for another 3 hours and other than small flocks passing high overhead there was no activity. At the furthest reaches of the float we sat for a minute and admired the solitude, quiet and lack of signs of other people. We then switched seats and Andy paddled me back downstream through a now duck-less float. We passed our origination point and headed into the lower stretch. As we rounded the next to last corner I spied 6 or 8 ducks swimming back and forth about 75 yards away on the right. I signaled Andy and he quietly paddled me around the last corner and as we were floating around the corner with my main focus on the right about 40-50 mallards launched from the left 30 yards away. Taken by surprise, I sat up, mounted the trusty Beneli and hastily picked out a bird. As the drake I had chosen passed directly in front of my gun muzzle I pulled the trigger once, twice, a third time. Bang! Bang! ...Bang. Not a feather was touched! I was expecting floating dead ducks...
Andy later thanked me for taking him to such an awesome place and told me that he was beginning a hunting/fishing logbook to enjoy the memories and someday share them with his children. He said The Secret Float was going in the first chapter. I think my secret place is in good hands when I can no longer paddle in there with Ben and Andy watching over it and enjoying it the way I do.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

George Orwell
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Re: Doing it the hard way

Postby Rick » Wed Nov 29, 2017 4:48 am

Nice trip. Was a time when I did a lot of float-tripping for ducks, and I miss it. Loved passing through the plane of stealth into becoming an apparently benign part of the stream more than the shooting and was too selfish to let my partners ever take the stern and risk breaking the spell with an errant paddle stroke.
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Re: Doing it the hard way

Postby Deltaman » Wed Nov 29, 2017 9:16 am

Not cutting a feather on a sure thing.......... is what keeps us going back! The "one that got away" was probably was passing through your mind as you laid down to sleep............ know it would've been for me.
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure, that just ain't so"
Mark Twain
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