For the first time in years, I got my busy dad to come down and hunt with me – after all, he was the man who passed on his love for fishing and hunting to myself. We had a great time and saw a lot of birds…

12/27 – Captain Scott and I took my dad out for our first morning adventure. It was slick calm with zero wind, 60+ degrees and sunny as heck. Not great conditions, let me say…..but we ended up slaying the seaducks.

With scott and my dad being lefties, i got to be on the left side of the boat – and where we were hunting, the birds usually come from the left…but with it as calm as it was, they all were coming from the right today….and scott and my dad turned the day into a shooting gallery. I didnt really care about shooting and only fired my gun 3 times today – my dad shot 30 rounds and scott 25. From the first few minutes on the scoters were coming through heavy and both shooters were on fire – I was retreiving birds left and right. Before 10am, we had 8 dead scoters and a bufflehead. It was a mixed bag of blacks and three immature drake surfs. In addition to the seaducks, an itchy trigger finger blew a shot at 6 bluewings and we blew a wide open opportunity at a pair of pintail that came in right at 11am. Shucks!

(pictures coming soon)

12/28 – This morning it was very warm again (60+) but we had some wind and it stormed all morning – the downpour and hail delayed our departure but we managed to get the spread set right at shooting light. Five minutes later – 30 bluebills lit in the spread. This was the theme all day until after 11am – we had groups of bluebills that were anywhere from 10-30 birds coming straight into the decoys all day – every 5-10 minutes another group would come in. In all honesty we had shots at over 500 BBs this morning. Had a group of 150+ come out of the stratosphere and literally land on our heads before flairing. Man that will make your heart stop!!!

We were also buzed by three pairs of pintails, a pair of big ducks i could not identify (they were in the sun), a half-dozen scoters and about 200 mergansers. In addition, my father officially joined the “red mist club” today – but i will spare the details. It was easily the worst admission to the club i’ve ever seen.

While this may want to make you believe that there are tons of BBs down at the coast – tis not true. I am not seeing huge numbers yet – we just have a honey hole that tends to produce very well early on – even if there are only a few birds in the area. BB hunting is just like puddler hunting – it’s all “location location, location.”