NY Hunting Down Cancer Hunt

**Mike Bard** · #1 12-17-2008, 03:50 PM

DATE: November 15, 2008

LOCATION: New York

SUNRISE:

WEATHER: Partly Cloudy

TEMPERATURE: 16 – 24 degrees

WIND: WSW 7-15 mph

EQUIPMENT USED: Greenhead Gear® LS Canada Goose Floaters, Greenhead Gear® OS Mallard Decoys, Greenhead Gear® LS Mallard Decoys, Greenhead Gear® LS Widgeon Decoys, Greenhead Gear® OS Black Duck Decoys, Greenhead Gear® OS Blue Bill Decoys, Greenhead Gear® OS Redhead Decoys, Greenhead Gear® OS Canvasback Decoys, Greenhead Gear® OS Goldeneye Decoys, Greenhead Gear® OS Bufflehead Decoys, Greenhead Gear® LS Ringneck Decoys, Greenhead Gear® Stretchee Cords, Avery® Floating Pit Bag, Avery® Guide Bag, Avery® Game Hog Straps, Avery® Floating Gun Cases, Avery® DIY Call Lanyards, Avery® Fleece Neck Gaiters, Avery® Fleece Turtleheads, Avery® Fleece Beanies, Avery® Fleece Caller’s Gloves and Avery® Field Staff Caps.

HUNTERS: Sam Woods Jr., Same Woods Sr., Kevin Kees, Len Kees, Rick Murphy Jody Dennison, Frank Clifton, and Avery® Pro-Staffers Ron Zega and Mike Bard

JOURNAL NOTES:
This year was the first ‘Hunting Down Cancer’ Hunt that I had the pleasure of hosting here in New York. The hunt was initially set up as a two man layout hunt and before the auction even started, Sam Woods Jr. was emailed me about bringing along his father and his hunting partner, Kevin’s father, as they were determined to win the hunt and wanted to experience layout hunting with their fathers. I agreed, as I thought the idea of having fathers and sons along on the hunt would be great. Sam and crew then followed through and won the auction.

In early October the planning continued. I knew that with four guests, they’d have some down time waiting their turn in the layout boat, so I asked a few of my friends to come along and set up a second spread using my boat blind. Frank, Jody, Rick and Ron all agreed to come along and help out with the hunt. The dates were then set and the plan was to hunt up in Northern NY. As we got into November, the birds were starting to show up, but we hadn’t had a really good cold front to push a large volume of birds down and then it happened… not a cold front, but an arctic blast that put NY under sub-freezing temps for a week prior to the hunt. The entire area we planned to hunt froze over 48 hours prior to the hunt, so we had to quickly revise the plans that had been set for over a month.

The night before Sam and his crew were set to leave Pittsburgh, PA to make the drive north; we worked out a new plan that had us hunting in Western NY, where there was open water, so we had to cancel old motel reservations and make new reservations and the NY based crew had a lot of scouting to do. On the short notice, Frank came through with the best option having found good numbers of mallards mixed in with some geese and even some divers.

The morning of the hunt arrived and we hauled both the boat blind rig and the layout rig out to Western NY to meet our guests from Pittsburgh. It was cold… really cold with the temps in the teens. We met up just before 5 am, introduced ourselves and headed to the launch.

Launching and set up went smoothly and we had everyone ready to hunt at legal shooting time. It didn’t take long to have birds hit both our shoreline spread and the layout boat spread. Our guests quickly realized that those divers are moving fast and like to sneak in low on the water. Despite the challenging shooting from the layout boat and not having as many opportunities, as I would have liked them to have, everyone was having a good time and as guys rotated through the boat blind there was plenty of shooting there.

We hunted into the early afternoon, when we decided to call it a day and do some scouting for the next day’s hunt. I was very impressed with our guests… they with stood some very cold conditions laying in the layout boat and they know how to have a good time hunting.

I will say that this was the best layout hunt turned puddle duck hunt I’ve even been apart of.

I’d like to say thank you to Sam Jr. and Sr., Kevin and Len for the donation to HDC and for being such great guests. As well as to my friends who helped pull this off, when we were dealt with all the cold and ice. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the Pittsburgh crew back up again next year to try it again.

Sam Woods, Sr. and Jr. sporting the black and mallard they had just taken.

Kevin and Len Kees await more mallards to fly.

The layout

Run the line

The crew