Freeze Up!

**Ron Zega** · #1 12-15-2008, 04:36 PM

Date: December 6th, 2008

Location: New York

Sunrise/ Sunset: 7:16am / 4:29pm

Weather: Cold, overcast

Temperature: 20’s

Wind: SW at 3-5

Equipment Used: GHG® FFD Lesser Actives, GHG® L/S Canada Floaters, GHG® Pro-Grade Over-size Canada Goose Shells, GHG® Over-Size Series™ Full Body Mallards, GHG® Life-Size Mallards, GHG® Life-Sized Pintails, GHG® Over-Size Black Ducks, GHG® Sleeper Black Ducks, GHG® No-Head Feeder Mallards, Avery® Floating Gun Case, Avery® 6 Slot Decoy Bags, Avery® Pro-grade Blind Bag, Avery® DIY Lanyard, Avery® Power Flag, Avery® Field Caps, Avery® Fleece Skull Caps.

Hunters: Arliss Reed, Robert Vellucci, Rick Murphy, Brandon Ferns, and Avery® Pro-Staffer Ron Zega

Journal Notes:

The weekend was not off to a good start… Everyone’s work schedule prevented any of us from being able to scout ahead of time for this weekend’s hunt. The recent weather had concentrated all of the remaining birds on the little bit of open water that was still available to them. Arliss and I drove around until midnight on Friday night trying to find a boat launch that we could somehow launch Rick’s boat from, however - no such luck.

We had a last minute team meeting on Friday night and decided that our time would be better spent scouting first thing on Saturday morning, instead of hunting, so we could figure out exactly what these birds were doing during the day. Saturday morning came and the frigid weather kept the birds on their roost all morning long. We came to a group consensus and decided that we would launch canoes and try and get between the roost, and the field we thought the birds were going to and hope for the best.

Well it turns out that we could not have hoped for much better… No sooner did we throw out the last decoy and the mallards finally start flying… and decoying. We had a steady flight of birds from that point on until it was time to pick up for the day. It was a little tough working some of the call shy mallards to start with, but as it got closer to the evening, they worked in better. We ended the day with everyone getting their 4 mallards and even added a few bonus geese to the bag and a day that looked pretty dismal to start with turned out to be a great hunt after all.