The NY Finale with a little bling

**Mike Bard** · #1 02-07-2008, 04:43 PM

Date: January 26-27, 2008

Location: New York

Sunrise: 7:10 am/5:04 pm

Weather: Sunny to Partly cloudy w/ short period of snow showers

Temperature: Upper 20’s into the 30s

Wind: Varied

Equipment Used: Greenhead Gear® OS Black Ducks, Mallards and Bufflehead Decoys, Greenhead Gear® LS Canada Floaters, Avery® Guide’s Bag, Avery® Pit Bag, Avery® Finisher Blinds, Avery® Neo Tubs, Avery® Fleece Calling Gloves, Avery® Fleece Hand Muff, Avery® DIY Lanyards, Avery® Field Caps, and Avery® Fleece Skull Caps.

Hunters: Mike Dieck, Rick Murphy and Avery® Pro-Staffer Mike Bard

Journal Notes:

With the New York duck season’s conclusion being Sunday, January 27, I again made plans to head back to NY’s, Long Island zone, with my friend Mike Dieck. I also invited my good friend, Rick Murphy, along for the hunt, as he had never had a chance to hunt the salt marsh before and we had been talking about it all season.

Friday, January 25th arrived and the weather was looking good for our hunt. I headed over to meet up with Rick after work and we then made the five hour drive to Long Island. The drive was pretty uneventful and we discussed the weekend plan and I tried to prepare Rick for what to expect from the salt marsh. We arrive at Mike’s house late and after getting things unloaded, immediately settled down for the night.

Saturday’s wake up came quickly and we loaded up the boat and headed for the launch. Upon out arrival there were already several boats in the parking lot, so we knew that the hunting pressure would be high today. The tide was incoming and high tide was predicted to be around 11 am. We made it out to our first spot for the morning and set up a very small black duck spread. Through the first hour we saw few ducks, but a lot of duck hunters moving in and around the area, so we pulled the decoys and moved down several hundred yards where we had seen a few black ducks pitch in earlier. Our second set up had similar results as our first, so after another hour, we were frustrated and decided to again move, so that once the tide turned, we’d hopefully be in a better position. For our third try, we set up on the point of a channel where we had been successful in previous hunts. Again we set out our GHG® black ducks, but decided to toss out our GHG® goose floaters and bufflehead as well, as this point had previously produced some good brant hunting.

Hiding in the salt marsh with Finisher and Neotub

Before we were back in our blinds, we had black ducks trying to get into our spread. It was amazing to watch singles and pairs come low over the marsh and pitch right into the hole. It only took a few minutes to have our limit of black ducks. The tide had started to turn, so we knew it wouldn’t be long until the brant started to move, so we stayed put.
Small groups of bufflehead began to skirt the edge of our spread, while we wait on the brant. A few bufflehead made the mistake of coming too close and paid the price with each of us taking one.

It was close to noon when the brant started to move into the feeding areas for their mid-day meal. Several smaller groups of brant visited our nine GHG® goose floaters giving us great feet down, in the blocks, opportunities. We finished up our limits of brant quickly and then waited to see if the ducks would fly in the afternoon. With the afternoon a bust, we packed it in for the day and headed to White Castle for some Sliders.

Saturday’s Hero Shot

Sunday morning, the last day of the season here in New York, we headed out to the same area of marsh and had decided to focus our efforts on puddle ducks, mainly blacks. We spread out, with Rick and I together and then Mike about 50 yards away hunting over two very small spreads. Another friend of mine, Terry Connors was also hunting the area about 250 yards from us over three of his personal hand carved black ducks.

The morning started off with a short snow flurry and we heard Terry shoot. Seconds later I get a call on my cell phone from Terry, explaining that he just took a banded black duck. After a quick congrats, I was back searching the sky for ducks, but there were few moving. The snow stopped and the sun came out, but the only ducks we were seeing move were those kicked up by duck hunters who had enough and were headed back in. We continued to stick it out and had a few blacks land between our two spreads, then finally a pair of gadwall decoyed and Rick and I were able to take them. Shortly after that, we finally had a black duck decoy in nicely and Rick too it out. Once our short flurry of ducks ended it was back to enjoying the sunny blue skies.

Mid-afternoon, we decided to call it quits on the puddle ducks and head back towards the launch to hit one last spot that we always see a lot of brant around. Mike dropped us off there to see what Rick and I could do. The brant were already flying and as soon as the decoys were out and we were hidden, they started to work the decoys. We had anywhere from singles to flocks of fifty work over the decoys. I took my limit quickly and Rick needed just one more to complete our season, when a group dumped right in and Rick took out the lead bird. Upon picking it up, we were excited to find a band to end the season on. We’ve had a great year here in New York and Rick’s band was a great way to end it.

Rick sporting his banded brant and the rest of our two man bag from Sunday