Canada Duck Report

[Captain Jay Kavanagh]

Well, I finally have enough time to write up a report from Maybelle, Dan and Jay's trip north of the border.

We departed Deltaville bout midnight Friday, arriving in Petersfield Manitoba bout noon on Sunday. Pretty uneventful drive, highlights include, Big Ten football on the radio, actual Wisconsin Cheese, Bluesmobile sighting on Lower Wacker Dr in Chicago.

We scouted Sunday eve with our host Paul Pearce (one of my Dad's poker buddies) and his Canadian Buddy Norm.

The people are Canadians, the Geese are Canadas, very important to remember that.

It had been raining hard, the wet feilds and roads limited our hunting opportunities and the birds seemed scarce. Paul did manage to find a couple of big flocks of honkers in his buddy Gerald's fields, and fourtunately Gerald let us use his Four-wheeler to pull the goose trailer out to the spot, the truck would have definately got hung up and torn the field up.

Monday in Gerald's field we got set up good and early, Gerald joined us for the hunt. We had some decent action with a couple, three flocks of honkers joining us, it was alot of fun, maybelle almost got hit by a goose out attempting a retrieve, she was unable to fetch geese in the field. Ruddy however was awesome (Paul's 5 yo Chesapeake)

After scouting Monday afternoon we decided to try Herold's place just about a mile from where we hunted, we saw some geese headed that way and we saw some ducks around a little low place in the field that held water and some uncut wheat.

We set up there Tuesday and had good duck action in the little pond, Maybelle got a little action there with a couple of retreives on mallards, but overall we shot pretty poorly. I am not a very good shot really, and even worse laying down in the field, I have never shot from that position and I scared alot and connected with very few. It was a cool hunt, but we never got the geese to commit to us there.

Herold also loaned us his four-wheeler to pull the trailer into the field

Here are some pics from Herold's field

Maybelle


Our Spread, we layed out around the big full bodies


Shot of the pot hole the ducks were commin in to, uncut wheat all around it


We scouted every evening, but the birds were kind of hard to locate, Paul said they had a tremendous week the week before we came, but with the rain the birds staged a little further south. The rain really limited our options in the fields. Paul has been hunting up there for about ten years and knows about everybody and has persmission to hunt about 15,000 acres of land around there, the soggy roads and fields limited our options, and the birds seemed scarce.

So Plan B - Netley Marsh.

We stayed with a couple great Manitobans that Paul had met a couple of years prior, they put us up in their Guest House, it was great and I want to personally thank Sandy, Gordon and Grady (the golden retriever) for putting us up and were most accomidating hosts.

Their house was right on Netley creek just a quick boat ride down to the marsh, Paul has a couple of Jon Boats so that is what we did the rest of the week, we still scouted the fields every eve, but ended up in the marsh every day.

We had good shoots in the marsh and killed Greenwing teal, Mallards, ring necks, goldeneyes. I really dug Netley marsh, great habitat 6' tall cattails to hide in, it was great.

The huntin in the marsh was not hot and heavy but we did have some ok shooting. Overall I was a little disapointed in the action, but we got to see some new country and had a great time.

some Netley pics...

Marsh spread


Paul and Ruddy


Ruddy on the job


Maybelle gets in on the action


Maybelle on guard, she learned to guard things from all her Chesapeake buddies


Chief Ramsjonboat waits for action


Lappy time in the marsh


Good day in Netley Marsh: Dan, Paul, Norm, Ruddy and Maybelle


Besides bringing home way too many shells, it was a great trip, I cannot say enough about "friendly Manitoba" we met alot of great people around the Manitoba Delta, Paul and Norm put in alot of effort to put us on the birds, Sandy and Gordon were great hosts, and opened up their lovely home to us like family. All of the landowners were more than accomidating trying to put us on the birds too.

So look out, we did not do a very good job of stopping the invading air force.

[Dave Sikorski]

Shhhhh....don't spread the word

Manitoba is an amazing place for sure. It seems like the weather has been a little warm up there and I'd imagine it slowed the migration, or left some holes.

Shooting from your back is definitely something that takes some getting used to. I definitely should have shot way more ducks in the fields on my trip, but sitting up really gives the ducks the split second they need to get up and out.

How long was your drive? What was gas a liter up there?

-D

[#1Gaffman]

great report jay. I am going to make a trip up there one of these years.

Only 24 hours till opening day...

[Capt. Terry]

Cool Report Jay, I have 5 friends that drove up there from the Fenwick Island are two weeks ago and hunted 6 days. They said it was about a 34 hour drive with stops of course for food and the dogs. They killed 112 ducks, 1 speckle belly and 11 canadian geese. They said that they really had to work hard to kill that much. They told me that it has been an extremely dry year up there so the pot holes that are normally holding water and birds lack the both now. They said they had to hunt the large reserves that actually looked lie overgrown pot holes due to lack of rain and water. Glad to hear that you had a great trip..

[Anders]

Nice, I'll get there one day..