- Details
- Category: Waterfowl
- Published: Sunday, 30 November 2014 13:55
- Written by Greg
River Ducks
A cold snap hit just before before Thanksgiving, which provided the perfect opportunity to get out and hit the rivers for some jump shooting. The youngest of the boys were up for a snowy hike, so we headed out. It wasn't long until we spotted a couple of ducks paddling along just around a bend in the river 150 yards away.
Woodie chasing a duck that was diving on him Woodie successfully retrieving the diving greenhead
Snow conditions were perfect which made for a silent stalk. We crept along the river bank until we were within 20 yards of where we had originally spotted the ducks. I poked my head up over the bank and could see a lone drake mallard swimming up stream. Not knowing where the other duck was, I decided to ground pound the greenhead where it swan. Boom! Instantly the river errupted...out of no where ducks were lifting off everywhere in front of me. I took aim, boom, 2 drakes dropped. I swung my barrel to the left and was immediately on anothe drake, boom, another greenhead dropped. Then much to my surprise, several geese jumped up from the cover of the river bank 15 yards away. Unfortunately I was out of shotgun shells in my gun and couldn't easily reload, so almost as a memorial to the moment I drew a bead on a big Canada goose and squeezed the trigger...click.
Had our position been just a little bit different, we would have spotted the closest waterfowl of the day and I would have had my first river goose/geese. However, I'm not complaining, another half mile down the river we jumped another flock of mallards and I finished with a nice limit of greenhead river ducks!
