The Last Hunt Of The Season For The Dynamic Duo!

[DEADBIRD]

After the last two individual hunts, Jarrett and I decided to give the season one last whirl together.  This was going to be the worst weather conditions of the weekend but we had to try.  The temperatures started out in the middle 30's when we left the house this morning at 4:45AM.  As we drove north the air temperature dropped into the 20"s and the wind was beginning to build. The weatherman said that the high would be during the daylight hours at around 32 degrees and that the winds would be steady at 20 MPH from the northwest with gusts over 40 MPH.  This put the windchill into the single digets.
Now I am one of the safest duckhunters in the world and I don't push my limits when it comes to safety. So you would thick that I was crazy to get on the lake. I researched some old maps to find a way to get to our hunting area without crossing the mile long expanse of the lake during these bruttle conditions.  I remembered seeing a road that lead into our vicinity while turkey hunting last year and I found it.  With the lake so high, and the road had to just run into the backwaters that we were hunting and it did. We launched the boat at dawn and motored the 16 foot duck boat about 5 minutes to a area of flooded grass and willows I scouted yesterday.
The wind was howling but we had the calmest patch of flooded grass in a two mile radius.  Soon enough the mallards began to fly. We started hunting by 7:30 AM and I killed my last bird of a limit by 10AM.  We had large groups of ducks working our spread but the wind would really mess up their approach and we would lose them to the wicked wind of the west.  It took us alittle longer to get our birds this morning but that was okay.  There wasn't another hunter in our area all morning so we knew that the birds wouldn't feel to much pressure. Jarrett finally got two birds and we called in quits due to the severe cold and wind.  Moisture was freezing on contact with the surface of everything.  In fact it was so cold that Shelby my lab couldn't wait to get into the boat.  Two days of season left but today was the last for the dynamic duo......................................!

[DEADBIRD]

UPDATE:  Since this last hunt the weather up north dropped more snow and we got a huge push of birds for the last couple of days of the Missouri season.:D