Well, my buddy and I spent about 3 hours at the duck farm today. There weren't tons of birds there today, but there was enough for steady shooting. We spent most of the time sitting inside one of the large barns behind a blind we made out of bales of hay. Our blind faced a large opening in the barn and just outside, 15 yards from our blind, were 3 large grain feeders. The birds would come in and land at the feeders in pairs or small groups and we'd nail em, or try to, as soon as they landed.
I let my buddy do 90% of the shooting since he doesn't really get to shoot his airgun all that much and he rarely gets a chance to shoot at the duck farm. He did quite a bit of shooting, but his lack of practice was showing and he wasn't hitting to many birds, however he did manage to kill almost 1/2 of the birds in the pic.
After taking our blind apart and putting all the hay bales back where we got them we decided to take a walk around the farm and see if we could find any targets of opportunity. We took a couple of shots, long shots, at some pigeons but we both missed clean. I did manage to hit a pigeon that I snuck up on while it roosted on the roof of one of the barns, but I couldn't retrieve him. Even though he was mortally hit he managed to get airborne and headed towards a large swampy area. As I watched him steadily lose altitude and start his death glide I realized he was going to strike the ground on the other side of the swamp, which is exactly what happened. OH well, lost my lunch :(
While we were walking around the farm we saw 4 large woodchucks out having lunch, but they saw us first. We also saw at least 1/2 a dozen new freshly dug woodchuck dens in a small wooded area that borders an open field on the farm. I plan on heading back there soon with my GAMO 1250 .22 and do some serious woodchuck hunting. Matter of fact today the UPS guy dropped off the new pop up camo hunting blind I ordered from DNR Sports. I practiced setting it up, and folding it up, in the backyard and have it down pat now. The folding instructions were hard to figure out, but once I figured it out the folding operation is now a snap.
I bought the pop up blind to use at the duck farm. There are a lot of grain feeders that are right out in the open and the birds use them all day long. Problem is there's no cover anyway within range of the feeders. I figured the pop up blind would solve the problem. Can't wait to use it. I was gonna get a small one, but then I figured why not get one big enough to use for bowhunting and duck hunting as well. DNR had a great price so I got it. The thing is amazing,,, you just let go of it and it unfolds itself and just pops into shape. Folding it (now that I understand the directions) takes about 10 seconds. It fits in a backpack with shoulder straps and it's very light. Can't wait to set it up and give it a try at the duck farm.
Before heading home for the day we stopped in to say hello to the owners of the farm. We visited for a little while, gave him some little thank you gifts that we brought for him and his brother and decided to call it a day. Before we left the owner took us to the back of the processing plant and gave each of us a case of boned duck breasts. They are so good on the bar-b-q :)
Well, I've typed half a novel here, sorry, so I'll end and just post the pics of the days kill.
Jeff
