Welp – it’s a wrap. …and here’s to hoping that the 08-09 season is much, much better!

The year started off ON FIRE with a great 2nd split and a fantastic opening week. But, it ended up being a frustrating year, in the least – this year we had more cold weather than the past 3 seasons combined…and we never seemed to get a large push of birds until the last few days of the season.

However, that didn’t stop Captain Scott and myself from putting our folks on birds. We just had to work a lot harder this year and I say – THANK GOD FOR THE LAYOUT BOATS! That’s one reason why folks hire us – because we have so much at our disposal and we will do what it takes to put you on the birds. All you have to do is hit ’em! 😉

But seriously, without having our mobile blinds and layout boats…this year would have been a near bust.

Regardless, we managed to set a new record with black ducks and we had a good push of gadwall all season. The seaducks were predominantly rafted offshore but with the layouts – we were able to put our folks on good seaduck shooting in just about any weather. Also, in the mix were some giant rafts of hard-to-fool redheads and many, many buffleheads of which I know at least 8 people sent prime drakes to the taxidermist man.

I also want to thank many of my clients for giving the layout boats a try – we had a few folks who would not have considered hunting in such a fashion…but left wide eyed and amazed not only at the comfort of our boats but the incredible sight of birds decoying with 10 yards, mere inches off the surface of the water. If that’s not great hunting – I don’t know what is!

A few pics from the year…. I still have more to download (my camera froze mid-season) if I can recover them. I’ll also upload Captain Scott’s photos soon.

Tim and crews bag from a post-xmas hunt….and, I think I should also add that it would have been nice if we could have added 3 or so blackducks, 4 or so more gaddies, a couple sprigs, more bluewings and a couple pairs of wigeon. But, you know – sometimes they’re hard to hit at 30 yards. 8) Y’all know I love ya!

[b]A few BULL Black Ducks…[/b]

[b]LAYOUTS![/b]

Lil guy here (the handsome black) is near 11 years old and rode around with me all day – diving off my bow and retrieving boats for the layout. What a great dog

A few from an extremely breezy seaduck season hunt – we lost several dead birds and cripple in the chop. TOUGH conditions – but good shoot with nice mounters in the mix.