More Duck...

Got off work yesterday and me and Morgan hightailed it to the Big Slough for an evening duck hut. We got two ducks each.

This is a shot looking up the of the Big Slough in the Davey Crockett National Forest Wilderness Area. About 4:30 Wood Ducks started flying everywhere. If you can picture about 25 coming in for a landing right at the camera, wings cupped feet down you will know what I saw. I picked out the lead one and fired and two hit the water dead.

Here's those two and one of the best duck guns ever made. It's my dads old Model 12 Winchester, and I can't remember if it's and early 50s or early 60s vintage. They stopped making them in the late 60s and they are collectors items now. I am proud to hunt with this gun and I think about my dad every time I knock a duck down with it. He knocked many a duck down right along this same area.

I don't think Winchester is even in operation anymore. I own 4 of their shot guns and Morgan owns one. Nothing fancy good utility guns, they get the job done.

Hunting ducks like this in the bottom is definitely old school. It's walk in, takes 40 minutes at least to get to the spot pictured and that's following a trail that's getting fainter and fainter. Getting these boys was not easy. That's a deep slough, even with waders and the low water right now it's chest deep or better. I ended up crossing two sloughs, each one on a fallen log, which was slick from the 9 different kinds of forest animals that had crawled out there and pooped before I could retrieve the ducks. Took 20 or thirty minutes and I though they were going to drift with the current down to an even deeper looking place.

On the way out we picked up a lost guy. He was a little spooked. He unloaded his gun before he got in the car, He said, " I'm not walking around out here unarmed." We took him to his buddies. I don't know what he was scared of, after I shot my ducks I unloaded my gun because I was finished and walked 40 minutes back to the truck in the dusky dark evening woods.

I also saw two deer, one a doe was 20 yards from me, jumped up and trotted off to about 40 yards and went back to feeding. I watched awhile and started walking, flushing her and one I could not identify across the trail in front of me about 50 yards away.