Today I hunted with my favorite hunter on my favorite hunt of the season – the North Carolina youth waterfowl day. As usual – Tye was my ace.
Now, I think very highly of Tye’s shooting ability and he will smoke a bufflehead or scoter going at Mach-10 with a 40 knot tail-wind better than most adults.
Today however – he wanted puddlers. However, it was slick calm, 65 degrees without a cloud in the sky.
First bird was a cupped gaddie at 30 yds…then a a single black at 30 yds…a pair of wigeon at 25 yds and then another single drake gaddie that decoyed in so pretty i will remember it for the rest of my life. They also all flew away real pretty too 😉
Tye just could not connect on these slow moving puddlers and was pretty upset with himself…so we decided to try a little jump shooting.
My swamps were loaded. The first pond brought up probably 8 blacks that left us way too surprised for a good shot. So – we went too another. After an epic stalk, we jumped 2 drake wigeon at 40 yds and i had him hold his shot…and after 20 more yds of painfully army-crawling, we brought up 6 big blacks at less than 20 yds. Tye connected on his 2nd shot – and down came one of the most awesome blacks I’ve ever seen. Not only is it the biggest black I’ve seen – it’s also a hybrid. It’s going straight to his wall – and I couldn’t be any prouder.
