The Last Hurrah

Big Jonny with an early morning honker outside of Rearden. We thought we'd nailed the scout and were tucked in for the rest of the honks when they promptly flew southwest a couple miles and dumped in another field. Lesson learned: scouting two days early is too early! We didn't get skunked though!

Greg and I were looking for options when a cold snap swept through and turned all the water to solid ice. Greg knew about this little spring creek in a secret location (if I told you, I'd have to kill you, or you'd have to buy me a lot of beer) and when we arrived and slogged through a half mile of knee deep snow we found this happy bubbling little creek loaded with green vegetation! It was -15 degrees when we arrived and the high that day was 2 degrees. We stayed sun-up to sun-down and had a helluva hunt! Nothing but brutally cold, heroic good times

The snipe were flying up and down the creek all day and I managed to put a couple beauties in the bag.

All greenheads and my first drake pintail! Tucker was an absolute trooper. He sat all day long in that blind with his balls on the snow and ice without a single wimper. Thats my boy!

This was a great late season hunt north of Moses Lake again. We got greedy and chased mallards first thing that morning before setting up on the habitually late-arriving geese. We watched as a thousand mallards flew over us, some working our dekes, most just flying over. I somehow managed to kill the only mallard that morning, but what a sight!

After picking up and high-tailing it back to the goose field we were shocked to find the geese on an early morning program. What could we do? We busted them out and proceeded to set up and hope for the best. We finished one goose short of a four man limit and I killed my first triple with a double gun! Good times!