Crosshairy
Well-Known Member
I hunted a half-full oxbow off the Hatchie this morning on my deer club. If you've read some of my other posts, you'll know that I'm not a very experienced duck hunter. This morning was my first time going out totally solo.
I picked a spot that I could access with a short walk, which was the only good decision of the day. I had a spinning wing decoy, a mesh bag with roughly a dozen decoys, and a jerk string rig to set out. I toted all this stuff in somewhat overloaded, but I tried to avoid the hassle of using my deer cart...might go with it next time.
I got to the bank and stepped forward to start setting out the decoys. After my second step, my leg disappeared up to my upper thigh in the mud. I was pulling til I nearly passed out on my waders trying to get free, and spent about 10 minutes wallowing in the mud trying to get back up to firmer ground. By the time I got up, I was behind schedule.
The water was too shallow to really get my jerk string rig set up that well...it was just too hard to get the decoys out far enough for what I was doing. On top of all that, my new fancy remote-controlled spinning wing decoy didn't want to turn on...I left the stupid remote at home (at least I didn't lose it). I finally "reset" it to manual mode at the end of the hunt, after that did me no good.
In a nutshell, no ducks even flew overhead after first light (when I wasn't even done setting out decoys). I drug up after less than 2 hours and went scouting for deer spots instead. I will sleep hard tonight!
I picked a spot that I could access with a short walk, which was the only good decision of the day. I had a spinning wing decoy, a mesh bag with roughly a dozen decoys, and a jerk string rig to set out. I toted all this stuff in somewhat overloaded, but I tried to avoid the hassle of using my deer cart...might go with it next time.
I got to the bank and stepped forward to start setting out the decoys. After my second step, my leg disappeared up to my upper thigh in the mud. I was pulling til I nearly passed out on my waders trying to get free, and spent about 10 minutes wallowing in the mud trying to get back up to firmer ground. By the time I got up, I was behind schedule.
The water was too shallow to really get my jerk string rig set up that well...it was just too hard to get the decoys out far enough for what I was doing. On top of all that, my new fancy remote-controlled spinning wing decoy didn't want to turn on...I left the stupid remote at home (at least I didn't lose it). I finally "reset" it to manual mode at the end of the hunt, after that did me no good.
In a nutshell, no ducks even flew overhead after first light (when I wasn't even done setting out decoys). I drug up after less than 2 hours and went scouting for deer spots instead. I will sleep hard tonight!
