2011 Duck Hunting

I have been duck hunting in the past, but never was really serious about the sport. I would go maybe 8 times a year, but this year I wanted to do a lot more duck hunting. I bought 2 1/2 dozen decoys and Texas-rigged them. Since I knew I would most likely do most of my duck hunting alone and on foot, I decided to get unweighted keels. Turned out to be a good idea because on a few hunts I walked miles with my decoys, hunting bag, and gun on my shoulder.

The decoys I decided to buy were Acadmey’s Game Winner brand. While they chip and the paint isn’t the most realistic, they do their jobs. I got 12 pintail, 12 green wing teal and 6 redheads, along with weights and crimps for about $150. A lot of the hunting I did was in mangroves or blinds on an open flat.

On the whole, we had a pretty warm winter, but did have a few really cold days. This year yielded tons of redheads and scaup, as well as a few pintail, bufflehead, teal and even a merganser. My father-in-law came down from Austin for a couple weeks and we went hunting quite a bit together, Adam would join when he could.

One of our most memorable hunts was near Shamrock Cove. It was Adam, Paul and myself in the blind, and the weather was really warm this day, but there was a cold front coming that night. We finished that day with a 3 man limit, birds were coming from all directions. Sometimes birds would come in from one side and wrap around the blind and cup from the opposite direction. On a few of these flights we would take birds on their first pass and the ones who survived would come around again. Finished the day with 12 widgeon, 4 redheads and 2 pintail.

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