"Blinging" in the New Year

**Ron Zega** · #1 01-23-2009, 03:58 PM

Date: January 1st, 2009

Location: New York

Sunrise/ Sunset: 7:14am / 4:54pm

Weather: Bitter Cold, light winds, snow

Temperature: Low 2 F / High 16 F

Wind: 5-7 mph from the Northwest

Equipment Used: GHG® Over-Size Series™ Full Body Mallards, GHG® Life-Size Mallards, GHG® Life-Size Blue-bills, GHG® Life-Size Ringnecks, GHG® Life-Size Pintails, GHG® Over-Size Black Ducks, GHG® Sleeper Black Ducks, GHG® No-Head Feeder Mallards, Avery® Floating Gun Case, Avery® Pro-Grade Blind Bag, Avery® DIY Lanyard, Avery® Field Caps, and Avery® Fleece Skull Caps.

Hunters: Rick Murphy, Kevin Murphy, Robert Vellucci, and Avery® Pro-Staffer Ron Zega

Journal Notes:
While many people were just making it home at 2:00 am after ringing in 2009, I was just warming up my truck, and getting ready to make my way out to western New York. It was New Year’s Day and Rick Murphy had invited me to join him, his father, and a mutual friend for a few days of hunting the late season in his neck of the woods.

The spread of GHG ® puddlers and divers was still set up from the previous day of hunting, so all we had to do in the morning was dust a little snow off the decoys and wait for sunrise. With temperatures in the single digits and a steady breeze in the morning, the bird activity was off to a slow start, but it didn’t take long for things to heat up. The first highlight of the morning was a flock of 60+ Redheads that decoyed into our rig at a devastatingly close 15 yards. Needless to say, after that volley, we all had our limit of 2 redheads each for the day.

The hunt was great from that point on and with some work we steadily decoyed singles and pairs of mallards for a good part of that morning. As the day went on, there was one lull in the action that was promptly broken by a suicidal drake mallard and before we had the chance to retrieve him, another flock of mallards did the same thing. Everyone went different directions to start picking up the birds from the last volley… and wouldn’t you know it, that single drake mallard that started it all was BANDED! The band was extremely worn and had us all guessing and making bets on the age of the band. Turns out it was banded in January 2004, making the band over 5 years old. After that excitement, we managed to scratch out a few big Canada geese to round out our bag for the day. It was a great day of hunting and a great day with some old friends. Thanks again for having me out Rick!