November 2022 RECAP
The November season is in the books. It was a genuinely, quintessential November season. Not always spectacular, but also not without its merits.
November is, at its best, a duck hunting fanatic’s ‘shake-out’ cruise. Boots, boats and motors, dogs, thermoses, field glasses, guns and bullets, duck calls and rain gear all get tracked down and tried out. Blinds built and brushed; dogs get tastes of fresh wild feathers. What still works? What’s broken? What leaks? Oh yeah. And we shoot some fowl while we’re at it.
Thirty, or so trips yield 179 fowl. Seems about right. 6 birds per trip, average. Each good outing with over 10 birds taken, balance by a different day where you get skunked. The rest of the days fall somewhere in between.
Good news is most fowl harvested are healthy (albeit, not totally plumed for taxidermy purposes), pretty puddle ducks. And gunning pressure is much lighter than usual so the ducks that do fly, decoy that much better.
I have one day where it is just me, and my dog Irie. Winds are due north howling at a steady 40/45, gusts up to 60. Saw about 3000 pintail, in small groups trade from Pea Island refuge to my south, fly over my head and continue to the Bodie Island refuge to my north. Groups of 10-35 all morning trade over and by. Due to the poor execution on my part, it takes 5 shooting opportunities to finally harvest my daily limit of one drake ‘pin’. Second shots at any group wasted as the distance of your target increases by 50/60 yards in the time it takes to flex your trigger finger twice. Finally score my prized drake pintail when I let a single bird decoy all the way in: hovering at a near standstill in the 40 mph winds, twenty yards out and t eye level! Oh yeah…
I also down a hen mallard and me and the dog manage to find it a 200 yards across and into the needle grass marsh. Oh. And all the while, not another hunter in sight or within ear shot.
This hunt really exemplifies what a November hunt might entail. I only manage to log 2 ducks in an entire morning. More hunters than you think would consider it a so-so hunt… But they were good ducks. And good shots. And good retrieves. And good visuals. And my outboard started right up and ran like a champ. And my boots didn’t leak and the gun goes off when I squeeze the trigger. Rather, I consider all that to be pure November gold!
We only have a couple handfuls of dates left to book. If you want to gun with us this season you really need to call sooner than later.
We are wishing the world the peace and joys that peoples of this planet can achieve. Let’s try harder…
Vic,
Ellen and the crew
