6 replies to this topic

[Jeff]

Well, my Washington trip has finally arrived.Leaving tomorrow morning at o'dark thirty to drive to Eastern Washington with my hunting buddies. Fourteen and a half hours later, we'll be hunting out of Cashmere, WA; just East of the Wenatchee National Forest, and the Cascades. We will be hunting with a friend of a friend that I have taken hunting a few times who has lived out in Washington his whole life. A great guy, a future lawyer of our 2nd amendment (Berkeley School of Law - it sounds like he might be the only conservative there, ha!).The plan is divers, divers and more divers on the Wenatchee and Columbia rivers, with hopefully some field hunting for mallards and possibly some goose action if we have time to hit the right spots. (And we haven't taken our limits, of course.)We will have three days of hunting starting on Saturday. Five day trip in total. My hope for the trip is to get some mountable birds, and to get my first Canvasback and Redhead.Anyway, I'll do my best to take lots of pictures. Should be a once in a lifetime hunting experience according to my "guide." At worst, it'll be better than California.This is what I have to look forward to, with a little bit of snow.  3.jpg   21.33K   8 downloads

[Braz]

Good luck buddy, and we look forward to the story and pictures when you return. Drive carefully, as the weather is suppose to be bad! Carry a survival pack in the truck.

[CA Desert Dog]

Incredible. That looks absolutely beautiful. Have a great time and a safe trip Jeff.

[Jeff]

Thanks guys. I've got all the pass information, websites, phone numbers in my phone at the ready (really hope I get service all the way up there) and an equipped vehicle. Got the portable DVD player ready too, we'll need it.

[Jeff]

Well, the trip was a success. Mostly. Day one we hunted a 3 man wooden blind about 20 minutes outside of city limits in Cashmere. Beautiful decoy spread and beautiful scenery, but that does not always provide ducks. This day of hunting yielded only one duck. An immature Goldeneye that I shot. Things weren't looking great, so we went scouting to find rafts of birds scattered on the river. We found a spot about 45 minutes further up river that our "guide" hadn't hunted all year and is usually an early season producer...also, a possible Canada hot spot. This was where we were going to setup the next day.On day two we brought the full body Honker floaters and about a dozen Honker feeders for the field behind us. Threw out our largest spread of about 50 divers and wigeon and settled in to wait. Things were slow for the first hour. Then boom, I got my first Hooded Merg. Just shy of fully mature, unfortunately. Then capow, capow, a few bufflehead. Then a few wigeon for my buddy's, then a nice drake Goldeneye, then the biggest and prettiest drake mallard I've ever seen to date. This thing had close to a 1" white neck band and three and a half curls on his tail. Then another Goldeneye and a pair of Buffs, and another beautiful drake Hoodie for my buddy. At about 10:15 we hear what we really are looking forward to: Honks. Our "guide" gets on his horn while all 4 of us and a dog try to settle down and get hidden under the trees that line the bank of the Columbia. The geese are coming right for us, so I get on my Canada horn to convince them. They are convinced..until 15 yards from being shot. One of my buds gets too excited and raises his gun to get a bead early. The dog sees this and jumps the gun a bit...the birds all flare, had to have been 60 of them. And we watched them all fly off. It was Sunday and in Washington you can only hunt geese on Sat/Sun/Wed, so that was our last chance at a Washington honker, since we were leaving on Tuesday. I think we ended the morning with only about 12 birds between the three of us, but we were all shooting well and all had birds. We decided to go into town for some food, then decide on an afternoon shoot.We drove back down river after eating some gas station fried burritos and saw a promising spot to setup. It was down the rocky embankment separating the highway from the river. We asked the landowner permission to access the land in an effort to make carrying the dekes easier, instead of walking all the way down the rocks with decoys, to which the landowner of course said "yes." (It's becoming more and more evident that we aren't in CA anymore.) The afternoon was slow for the first two hours or so. Then my buddy blasts a VERY long distance wigeon. An amazing shot. Then a diver shows...it's a Ringer and I flatten him. Then it slowed again. All of a sudden, not 6" off the water there's a Goldeneye coming straight into the decoys. I call him out and blast him. Dog goes out to get him, and here comes another one, full speed into the dekes. Another dead bird. Then two more try to land on top of the dogs head, we get them to flare up high and shoot 'em both. Then a pair come to meet their demise. Then two Bluebills go down. We couldn't reload fast enough. I was shaking, it was very exciting. We ended up with 21 ducks that day...not quite a limit, but some of the most fun we've had in awhile.We went out to the bar that night and a had a couple celebratory beers. Note to all, Irish Death in the evening is still Irish Death in the morning. We did some internet scouting when we got home to try and find a point close to where we had setup the afternoon before, so that we could get the dekes out a little bit further for the next day. But we decided it was going to be an afternoon shoot and we were going to setup at a more local spot in the morning for mallards.That's what we did. We setup in this nice little dabbler pond just outside of the city. Very pretty scene. Problem is, it starting snowing. And I mean SNOWING. White-out conditions. Snow flakes the size of small animals, that kind of thing. We only killed about 5 ducks that morning. So we went to Denny's. Still in our waders. I could only imagine the comments we'd have received had we been in California.Anyway, on to our last afternoon shoot...We found a point about 100 yards down river from our previous days afternoon shoot, and once again asked the landowner permission to cut through his property. His reply: "Yes, sure, and feel free to park in my driveway." I love this state.So off the point we threw out about 25 magnum diver dekes and a mix of about 30 standard wigeon, and divers. The spread looked good, but the day didn't quite produce like the day before. We got another handful of wigeon that couldn't resist the far corner of our setup, but the divers never showed.All in all, the trip was fun. Not a ton of birds like we had anticipated, but the scenery made up for it. I've got pics but haven't loaded them to photobucket yet. I will edit this soon with those pics, maybe tonight if I have time.

[CRITTRGITTR]

Very cool post Jeff, and great detailed story. I felt like I was sittin in the blind next to you. I'm still tryin to get my first hoodie. I have a few jump shootin areas near my house where they frequent. There is always plenty of hens but the drakes are ever so elusive. Divers are fun because they decoy so well it's usually all or nothin with them. I just recieved my 6 GHG goldeneye dekes and dozen GHG buffies yesterday can't wait to get out and shoot em up. It's to bad about the honkers, I can just imagine the adrenaline rush watchin a bunch of birds committin to the spread. Glad you guys had a good trip. Bryan

[Jeff]

Very beautiful scenery.______________________________Setting decoys at the first blind.  1.jpg   10.85K   23 downloadsMy view from the first blind of the trip  2.jpg   14.67K   24 downloadsPart of our honker spread where all of the birds flared. The rest of the feeder/standing decoys were about 40 yards behind the camera in a field.  3.jpg   22.3K   25 downloadsMy first hoodie (not quite mature, $&*#)  4.jpg   36.96K   25 downloadsView from the blind on the second to last day where the birds dropped like bombs.  5.jpg   19.95K   26 downloadsSome dead ducks  6.jpg   18.97K   24 downloadsFrom the blind on the final morning  7.jpg   15.17K   27 downloads  8.jpg   16.09K   24 downloads