Daryl Bauer, Fisheries Outreach Program Manager
We have ice! I have seen or heard reports from all over Nebraska about anglers getting on the ice and catching fish! Yes, it is about time!
No, I have not pulled a fish through an ice hole, yet. Soon, very soon!
That does not mean I have not been “out”. There is always something to do in Nebraska’s great outdoors and I love doing a lot of them. Going to deviate from my usual Nebraska fish and fishing blog content and tell you about a recent adventure doing something else. . . .
I own exactly thirteen duck decoys. Yes, I have done some waterfowl hunting over the years, have had some success, but am far from a hardcore waterfowl hunter. On the other hand, I have a son-in-law who is a duck killer! Had an opportunity recently to get “out west” and spend some time in a blind with him, my daughter and son. We had an outstanding hunt!
The weather was relatively nice the day before our hunt. Went back to being relatively warm the day after we were done. Unfortunately, we were stuck with hunting two and a half days in brutal cold, below zero temps. and windchills. That made the hunting, especially the harvesting, a challenge. Our biggest trial was just staying warm!
Spent hours looking at this view:
We even added a live decoy to the spread:
The swan flew right in and landed, and then it stayed. It was either the least frightened swan I have ever seen, or perhaps something was not right with it. It would not leave.
Second day the skies cleared. That made it much easier to watch the geese fly by:
Believe me, my son and son-in-law called their hearts out:
Maybe we just needed to flag a little harder?
Much of the time was spent hunkered down in the blind just trying to stay warm. We could not have done it without a heater:
By the way, there is nothing better than hot, homemade breakfast sandwiches over the blind heater! Fortunately, our blind came fully stocked with a hot sauce bar:
Admittedly, with the conditions, it was hours of nothing happening. Just trying to stay warm. We did have just a sliver of open water beside the blind and once in a while, when least expected, a duck or three would show up. My son-in-law was usually the only one paying attention:
Last morning, the old man finally got off a couple of shots:
Yes, under the circumstances, pretty proud of that one duck. However, there is a lot more to that photo. Let me explain: Of course the dogs, Sveta and Marishka (Marishka does not like to pose for pictures).
The shotgun has a long history. I suspect it shot ducks and geese in the area we were hunting years before. Cork Thorton owned the gun. It was then traded/sold to my Uncle Ivan. My uncle gave it to my Dad. When Dad passed, my daughter got it. She has a new Browning since then, so I reached into the gun cabinet and pulled out that ole Winchester. Even in the cold, it worked flawlessly. I even hit something with it!
The decoy is one of the thirteen that I own. My daughter crawled into the back of my pickup the last morning of our hunt to make sure we had at least one of those decoys in our modest spread.
There were a lot of memories recalled and made on our hunt. That photo represents a few of them.
It was darned cold, the hunting was slow, but there was no place I would have rather been.
There are some more stories to tell, but I will finish with just one more, a strange one. . . .
As we were standing around saying our goodbyes, I looked off to the east and here came one lone goose. It was flying low, straight towards us. Never made a sound, not a single “hrrrr-ronk”. It just silently flew right over us, not 20 yards up, the only goose close enough to shoot at the whole weekend. We decided with that, it was time to head home, an appropriate ending.