Hunkering Down...Montana Style

smalls

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I moved to Montana in 2005 (seems crazy I've been here for over 3 years), and in the time since I've experienced very little that compares to the winter weather I grew up with in North Dakota. I consider myself a fairly "hardy" person, but in the spirit of full disclosure... the weather yesterday was brutal, not just cold but windy with driving snow that pelted your eyes and made it hard to see.

Many of the birds I hunt are in areas where urban encroachment is threatening traditional feeding grounds and access is getting more and more difficult. There is a field mere miles from my house that has held a pile of birds for several weeks. Seeing as I've been busy with work, big-game, and holiday travels for the last two months, I hadn't even bothered to try and get permission. When a pair of friends walked up to the house of the farmer on Friday, the first words out of the landowner's mouth were, "I'm so #@4-#@$ sick of hunters knocking on my doors..." before he realized that one of the guys asking permission had graduated from high school with him. After being told "no" six times during the conversation, the pair finally pried permission from the farmer although not without restrictions. He didn't want us driving into the field so we'd have to hump out all of the decoys on foot.

There is a group of five other guys that I've hunted with for the last 3 waterfowl seasons and although I don't generally hunting with big groups of guys, the banter and ribbing that we give eachother is usually a bigger highlight than the hunt itself. Even with the six of setting up blinds and decoys, a process that usually takes us between 45 minutes and an hour, it took us about 2.5 hours to pack in set up and get the game carts out of the field. With the work of setting up and the anticipation of a great hunt, the bitterness of the cold didn't immediately set in.

With 20 minutes to shooting light, ducks were swarming out decoys like mosquitoes. A mallard actually walked up to the footbag on one of the blinds and started feeding on the grain stubble that we'd used as a disguise. As usually happens once we were legal to start shooting the duck traffic nearly stopped. The flocks that did show up we're committing suicide as the subzero temps had made them very, very hungry. At 9 am we had only 10 birds on the ground with many missed opportunities, some due to faultering equipment and some due to waiting for the guy next to you to sit up and shoot while he's doing the same...all the while no one sits up and shoots and the ducks leave wondering "what the heck was that". The most aggregious example is a group of three ducks that came in on the opposite side of the blinds, two drake mallards and a beautiful drake widgeon (which I have a large desire to shoot and mount), two guys at the end of the blinds sat up, mounted their guns but never pulled the trigger....arg.

As mentioned, we had some mechanical difficulties throughout the morning...a testemant to the fact that nearly nothing is designed to work properly in subzero temps. Several guns became single shots, including a Browning, a Benelli SBE and a Stoeger whose firing pin froze. Fortunately my Beretta performed flawlessly. In addition to the guns, we had calls freeze up, batteries go dead (unfortunately I missed some great shots with the camera due to this), and a game cart break. The human body also isn't meant for that weather either with the shortest stints of gloveless hands causing pain, eyelashes freezing together and the impossibility of having enough hose to get through your clothes and relieving yourself.

At 10 am, I thought a majority of the birds were going to be content riding the storm on their roosts out as we'd seen a fraction of the ducks that had been using the field and not a single goose. Finally we broke down and started walking back to the trucks in shifts to sit and warm up (the thermometer read -6 at that time). It was windy, snowing and cold. While the first group of guys was warming up, a few groups of ducks started to show up. Not wanting to be left out they ran back to the blinds between flocks. The birds were now coming in large flocks and working perfectly into our setup. Ducks were falling by the eights and tens and in a matter of fifteen minutes we'd gone from 10 birds on the ground to a six-man limit of 42.

We sat there subjecting ourselves to the elements for a few more hours waiting for the geese to fly but decided we'd had enough for one day around noon. The following pic is the only one we got for the day...obviously I am the good looking one :D

MIscFishingpics023.jpg

This "poser hero shot" sponsored by Grabber Mycoal handwarmers, Jack Links beef jerky and Charmin toilet paper.
 
Great stuff smalls. My best mallard days seem to have been under similar conditions. If that's what it takes, so be it.

Waterfowlers are some of the most dedicated, hardy, crazy, determined, ......... guys I know. At least if they want good waterfowling in Montana.

Congrats to you and your pals.
 
Ollin Magnetic Digiscoping Systems

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