Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The King is Mine

After 35 years on duck hunting The King is finally mine. I went and hunted in a floating blind 2 weeks ago with the sole purpose of acquiring a Canvasback for my waterfowl of North America taxidermy collection. The day started out getting stuck for an hour behind an accident on Hwy 12. That coupled with a full moon, no weather and the wrong tide had expectations low. The 7 mile boat ride to my friends blind took a long time as the boat had a prop with an altered pitch due to running in the sand a week earlier. The morning was slow but a few birds were harvested just not the Canvasback I desired. We were to quit at noon as my friend needed to work that evening. At 11:55 a flock of birds came shooting by and were misidentified as Northern Pintail. We realized they were Cans and with a few grunts on the diver call they banked and proceeded across the front of the decoy spread. Shots rang out and my taxidermy Canvasback was on the water. A perfect retrieve by my friends dog "The Demon" and "The King" was in hand.

The King

Friday, January 8, 2010

Busy, Busy, Busy

I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted. Spending much time enjoying my favorite passion (duck hunting) while still trying to do Christmas, volunteer fire department, family time, work around the house, the work that pays the bills, as well as putting time in the garden. Right now everything in the garden has been harvested except the garlic, the sugar snap peas (still can't believe they survived the freeze uncovered), some lettuce and kale, and the carrots I left to grom until late february. Other than those things I'm taking a garden break. Growing a full time winter garden seems more like work that stress relieving fun. I'm looking forward though to the early spring garden and another round of cool weather broccolli, cauliflower, radishes, lettuce, and carrots. Then it will be back to tomatoes and my summer favorites. I'm considering branching out the blog to include more of the self subsistence items such as my hunting tales as well. Maybe a garden post and a hunting or fishing post each week. My hunting season has went well. I've had to really work for the birds as it's been a wierd season but it's still been successful. I'll try to get some pictures of the garden area up next week. Hope everyone had a great Christmas, Holiday season etc.