Icy water, Icy Legs!!

**Ron Zega** · #1 12-16-2008, 08:36 PM

Date: December 7th, 2008

Location: New York

Sunrise/ Sunset: 7:17am / 4:27pm

Weather: Bitter Cold, overcast, Windy!!

Temperature: Low 20’s F

Wind: Sustained 20-30mph, gusting to 50mph from the West

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, Jeff Ferns, and Avery® Pro-Staffer Ron Zega

Journal Notes:
Hunting the same exact spot two days in a row is not usually the greatest idea, but with limited options, a forecast that keeps most sane people inside for the day, and plenty of birds around, we decided to give it another shot. The forecast was predicting 20-30 mph winds gusting up to 60 mph and a high temperature in the teens for this particular Sunday, with scattered snow showers…Translation: The birds are going to fly and they are going to be looking for somewhere calm to sit when they get back from feeding.

That’s where we came in… we let most of the birds leave the water on their own and gently pushed the rest of them out as we made our way in there and got ourselves set up. It turned out to be “one of those days” meaning, one of those days where it seems like you can’t do anything wrong, when it seems like your duck call has magical powers, and you just have birds in your face all day long.

Time flew by, ducks and geese were piling up on the shoreline, Murphy’s “Coot” made some especially noteworthy retrieves, and before we knew it, everyone had their 4 mallards and 1 Black duck. Everyone except Arliss, who was the only one left, in the group that could shoot a black duck. We were still seeing a lot of birds moving around, but they were all mallards, no blacks. We decided to give it another half an hour and pack it up around 2:30, black duck or not. At 2:28 a single black duck coasted over the spread, and Arliss folded him up with a single shot fired from his Benelli M1. Time stopped for a second, as we all were looking at this belly up duck floating in the decoys kicking its legs towards the sky, and something catching a bit of sunlight and shining with every kick. Turns out, it was a 100$ reward banded mallard X black duck hybrid that came from Quebec and was banded in 2006… How’s that for the last duck of the day?