Well welcome back to my occasional blog. Still not sure if anyone reads them anymore, but perhaps this is just for me, my journal. But if you are a tri-annual subscriber, thanks for tuning in.
Let's start at Easton, the Waterfowl Festival. So I showed up on Tuesday night to set up on Wednesday and Thursday in the parking lot of the G&D Auction. Now, the auction wasn't until Thursday, so I pretty much refused to set up in a parking lot in rural Maryland 2 days before. Yes, people at decoy shows are a little (I should put this nicely, because many of them are family and friends) no not crazy, they have FOMO. That's right, they are just like the millennials, they have Fear of Missing Out. They are afraid that they are going to miss the bird of a lifetime, so they always show up a day early. This is how a weekend show starts on a Tuesday, which means you have to show up Monday to be there in the morning! Crazy right. Well not all of us can take off a whole week to do such a thing, some of us have to work. I still left Tuesday morning, which seemed a bit excessive. I arrive Wednesday am, and it is raining and of course, "I should have been there yesterday..." But the rain cleared up, some people showed up, and I made a few sales. Thursday had nicer weather and I managed to sell everything that I brought by the end of the day. It was more of a slow burn than a crazy rush, and I must say in the end it was most enjoyable. I spent the rest of the weekend at the show, had some great meals, drinks and hangout time at what must be my 25th Waterfowl Festival.
Duck hunting. I live in Charlottesville but all of my hunting is done back on the Shore (VA). My friend Brian and I bought a trailer and filled it with plastic goose decoys. We set up a couple times with no luck. We now have the means for the gear, but not the time to do the real scouting. We did a New Years Eve morning hunt at Island Neck (McNair homestead). I had low expectations, since it hadn't been cold and we hadn't seen many ducks. My buddy Parke really wanted to sit in the blind and trade stories and take his young lab out for her first hunt. Expectations were low, but it was going to be the boys morning out, ducks or not. There is nothing like low expectations to have a few ducks make a good hunt. We had a pair of mallards circle three times and then pitch perfectly into Ian McNair decoys and then select the drake. A while later a single black duck did two passes and the result was the same. We missed out on a group of 8 mallards who passed us by, but by late December most of our birds in the area are pretty wise. It was a perfect bayside morning with great friends and excellent shooting. And Parke's dog performed most excellently.
West Coast. I had been looking forward to this trip for a while. Colin and Steve have a client on the west coast who invited is to go hunting. I love the east coast, but the hunting out west is like the good old days. Of course I was not going to miss this one. We were to hunt in Eastern Washington at a nice lodge. Keeping an eye on the weather, it was going to be cold, very cold. The night before expectations were lowered, because pretty much everything within a few hundred miles was frozen except the Columbia River so most of the birds moved south in search of food. However we did have access to a small patch of open water that was fed by a warm spring. When we went in that morning we flushed out thousands of Mallards. Thousands. Again, most of the birds had moved south. So aside from being -2 degrees conditions were perfect. The mallards came in mostly small groups and pitched in perfectly. We picked out drakes and all had limits by mid morning. The next morning was more of the same, but a few less birds, but we still managed to get limits for a good sized group by mid day. Luckily the wind was light, but it was still really cold. There was plenty of snow that froze a couple of firing pins, toes were freezing but we had a nice warm lodge and hot food and cold drink to retreat to. We spent the last day in a snow blind which was essentially a long rectangle built with white foam blocks. It is supposed to work very well, where with us it worked kinda well. Our guides found us the right spot, and we got a few birds early. We had thousands of birds working our area, just flock after flock, but there was something that was throwing them off. We still managed to get 14 birds, everything from big honkers to little cacklers that are not much bigger than a black duck. It was definitely an excellent and memorable trip.
From there Colin and Steve went back to Boston and I headed to Las Vegas. I hadn't been in at least five years, and wow has it continued to expand. I was there for the Shot Show. It is the biggest hunting and shooting trade show in the world. Crazy big, way too big. I heard that there were 25 miles of aisles. So you really can't see it all. Brian and I went for our wader endeavor and perhaps a little bit of food, drink and fun at the blackjack tables. We didn't see the whole show by a long shot, but I did pick out a lot of grown up toys that I would like.
After my whirlwind week I am back in VA to get my internal clock back in synch and get geared up for SEWE (Southeastern Wildlife Expo) in Charleston SC in Mid-February. I'll be working the Copley phones at the American Theater on King St. Then down to the Audubon Gallery for our Annual Show there at 190 King St.
And the biggest news of this winter is... Becca is expecting in June!
