Long Island NY Brant Hunt

**Erik Nilsson** · #1 01-22-2009, 05:26 PM

Date: Jan 17th 2009

Location: Long Island, NY

Sunrise: 7:15 a.m.

Weather: Clear to partly cloudy, Ice

Temperature: Low 7* High 15*

Wind: 8-15 mph WSW
Equipment Used: GHG® Life-Sized Canada Goose Floaters, GHG® Over-Sized Black Ducks, GHG® Life-Sized Wigeon, GHG® Life-Sized Mallards, GHG® Over-Sized Buffleheads, GHG® Life-Sized Pintails, GHG® Life-Sized Gadwall, Avery® Finisher Blinds, Avery® Fleece Callers Gloves, Avery® Fleece Skull Caps and Avery® Neoprene Hand Warmers

Hunters: Avery® Pro-Staffer Mike Bard, Avery® Pro-Staffer David Rearick and Avery® Pro-Staffer Erik Nilsson

Dogs: None

Journal Notes:
During our waterfowl season, I was fortunate to experience many different opportunities with friends and new places to hunt. There was one hunt and bird species that I never had the opportunity to try and that was a brant hunt. We talked about it through out the season and when Mike and Dave approached me about the idea to go to New York, I was excited to be able to go. Dave and I prepped my boat a few days before making sure that everything was in good working order and loaded my truck with decoys and the gear we would need for the hunt. Leaving home Friday evening for the 8 hour trip to Long Island with boat in tow, it was -2 degrees and when we arrived to our hotel it wasn't much warmer. Dave and I met up with Mike and after a short meet and greet we settled in to plan out the next day.
Local reports indicated birds had moved out some due to the weather caused by the Alberta clipper system, but that didn't dampen our hopes of getting out. From our hotel we had a moderate drive to get to where we wanted to go, which included navigating around NYC. That was sort of a challenge because there you can not go through tunnels and also trailers are not allowed on parkways, so our routes had to divert around these. A couple of minor route changes and we arrived to the boat launch the only crew there. We unloaded the gear from the truck to the boat and shortly everything ready to launch. With the long travel and such bitter cold temps I prepared for the hunt by taking an extra battery for my mud motor for I figured that the cold motor would be a challenge to start and I was right. We drained one battery and switched out to the fresh back up. Not only the motor was difficult to start, but the throttle cable had frozen, so we had another challenge to over come. We unpacked the buddy heaters and began working on getting things warmed up and the throttle cable thawed out. After some time, I was able to get the motor to fire up and we let it warm up good before heading out.

While at the launch, a truck pulled up with a couple of local duck hunters Mike knew and they also were planning to go out, so we teamed up with them to head out and find some open water. As we navigated through channels it was low tide and from the cold a lot of water was freezing up. We broke ice most of the way only to find that the tide had started to stack ice to a point where we had to stop progress and navigate back to find a different spot off the main channel where the constant flow of the tide kept the water, ice free. After a moderate ride, finally both boats came to a spot that was free and clear. The other group went farther up the channel for they were not targeting brant, but informed us that we were in a good spot for them. We had seen a fair amount of brant on the way in and they were trading back and forth, so my hopes were good for my first. We went about setting up the decoys, grassing the finishers and settled in for the days hunt.

It wasn't long when we had a pair of brant come in and Mike and Dave let me do the shooting to give me the opportunity at my first. Taking both birds I had accomplished what I came for. Both birds were young birds and I was looking for a nice one for the wall. As the day went on, I waited for the one that I wanted. I took one later on, which was a full adult and a great looking bird to finish up my limit. As Dave and Mike worked on getting their brant, we had some wigeon come in and soon we had three staying with us. Bluebills traded in and out and we saw ruddy ducks, longtails, mallards, blacks, shovelers, red brested, common mergansers and a few mute swans swam around in the decoys checking out the spread during the day.

It was cool to see all the different birds and watching the tide come in and out during the day made the day interesting. Keeping an eye on the boat, I checked to make sure we didn't get it too close to the shore because dropping from high to low tide could leave you high and dry if you’re not careful. These were all new experiences for me. Some minor obstacles to get around, but hey sometimes you have to step up, if you want to be successful. We finished up with a nice mixed bag of birds including my first brant and wigeon. Mike shot a beauty of a drake wigeon and Dave finished up his limit of brant and gave the mergansers a good PA greeting.

Traveling in and out of NYC, the traffic was moderate I guess, but heavy for someone new to the area especially with a boat in tow. On the way home, New Jersey near the Poconos was getting a good snow and made the travel tricky, but most of the way back we had good roads. We got into some more snow covered roads later on, but I will take snowy roads over NYC traffic any day.

Pic of GHG® Life-Sized wigeon decoy

Pic of one of the swans who came to visit us

Pic of Mikes trophy wigeon

Pic of my brant

The Hero