Some of you may remember I posted a few pics of the duck pond we created at home after an 'inert land fill' project, shot it 4 times last year, had one really good night where we shot 27 from 90-100 fighting in that night. I had only shot it once this year (bonfire night, 7 ducks) I've been increadably busy the past few weeks installing a wood chip burning biomass heating system to the three houses and milking parlour on the farm. Ducks have been getting fed every day with 2-3 10ltr buckets of barley along the margins every morning, as the pond is 300m from my house, at the back of the cow sheds, I've been watching the ducks flight in from the East, high over the mature trees on the steep wood that the pond is tucked on the west side of, fed by a spring. The ducks (all wild) come in high, swing round in the wind a come in from anywhere from the south corner, across the field to the west or over the farm to the north...all in the same flight. The one fault this pond has is if the wind is too strong, the ducks struggle to approach the pond, if it's heavy rain and a big wind, the ducks tend to stay out on splashes!!!
Friday seen the biomass boiler being finished, turned on and commissioned...at last!!! By coincidence, I'd invited two good friends to come over and flight the pond, one an extremely compedent rifleman/deerstalker with limited shotgun experience, the other a top clay shot (AAA) who's a very fine game shot...I was a little nervous that things would go well, especially after me telling them the ducks were clearing up 3 10ltr buckets of barley each night!!!
3pm and my novice guest is already there...
"Your early, 4.30 they start coming in!!!"
"Aye, I might have got a puncture...I want to see how many ducks it takes to eat 3 buckets of barley!!!"
Oh sh*t, pressure is on now!!!
4pm, my other guest arrives, bang on time for his coffee..quick mug and off we set, 10 mins later, we are in place, AAA on his own, me with the novice, 4.25...perfect...then the wind just picked up and started gusting HARD, TOO HARD!!!
4.30, bang on time, two ducks, dropping straight into the pond, skimming the trees, from the east!?!? Never seen them land from the east. Also never watched then in a North-West gale either...BOOM BOOM...splash splach...oh good, we've got decoys now my novice laughs
The first 10 mins was slow but steady, EVERY duck came in the same route as the first pair, not many escaped. Then 15 mins of squal...big, wet , windy squal with no ducks. Then, as fast as it started, it stopped, sky cleared and the ducks started again. My novice was getting his shots off at a lot of 'dead in the air ducks' 1/2 a second after either myself of AAA shot them, he kept laughing and saying,
"That was an assist..."
AAA poleaxes a duck first barrel, wounds the second barrel second, I finish it off to the shout of,
"Teamwork" another pair come in a few minutes later, stereo BOOM BOOM as AAA shoots the lower and I shoot the higher, both stone dead, both at exactly the same moment..."Teamwork" cries out again!!!
Stopped shooting at 5.10, a slower night than I had planned, I'd estimate the flight to be only about 50% of what had came in the previous nights that week, about 50 ducks total, never the less a new 'record' bag from the pond, 26 picked that night, another 3 in the morning and a buzzard eating a teal (I'm counting that!!!) so 30 total 'picked' 23 mallard, 4 teal and 3 wigeon (I've never even seen a wigeon at my farm before, let alone shot one, but I did hear them whistling all week!!!)
AAA was happy, (I hope) novice was over the moon and I enjoyed my night...downside was I had to milk the cows straight after!!!
All for some barley and a little effort...
Friday seen the biomass boiler being finished, turned on and commissioned...at last!!! By coincidence, I'd invited two good friends to come over and flight the pond, one an extremely compedent rifleman/deerstalker with limited shotgun experience, the other a top clay shot (AAA) who's a very fine game shot...I was a little nervous that things would go well, especially after me telling them the ducks were clearing up 3 10ltr buckets of barley each night!!!
3pm and my novice guest is already there...
"Your early, 4.30 they start coming in!!!"
"Aye, I might have got a puncture...I want to see how many ducks it takes to eat 3 buckets of barley!!!"
Oh sh*t, pressure is on now!!!
4pm, my other guest arrives, bang on time for his coffee..quick mug and off we set, 10 mins later, we are in place, AAA on his own, me with the novice, 4.25...perfect...then the wind just picked up and started gusting HARD, TOO HARD!!!
4.30, bang on time, two ducks, dropping straight into the pond, skimming the trees, from the east!?!? Never seen them land from the east. Also never watched then in a North-West gale either...BOOM BOOM...splash splach...oh good, we've got decoys now my novice laughs
The first 10 mins was slow but steady, EVERY duck came in the same route as the first pair, not many escaped. Then 15 mins of squal...big, wet , windy squal with no ducks. Then, as fast as it started, it stopped, sky cleared and the ducks started again. My novice was getting his shots off at a lot of 'dead in the air ducks' 1/2 a second after either myself of AAA shot them, he kept laughing and saying,
"That was an assist..."
AAA poleaxes a duck first barrel, wounds the second barrel second, I finish it off to the shout of,
"Teamwork" another pair come in a few minutes later, stereo BOOM BOOM as AAA shoots the lower and I shoot the higher, both stone dead, both at exactly the same moment..."Teamwork" cries out again!!!
Stopped shooting at 5.10, a slower night than I had planned, I'd estimate the flight to be only about 50% of what had came in the previous nights that week, about 50 ducks total, never the less a new 'record' bag from the pond, 26 picked that night, another 3 in the morning and a buzzard eating a teal (I'm counting that!!!) so 30 total 'picked'
23 mallard, 4 teal and 3 wigeon (I've never even seen a wigeon at my farm before, let alone shot one, but I did hear them whistling all week!!!)AAA was happy, (I hope) novice was over the moon and I enjoyed my night...downside was I had to milk the cows straight after!!!
All for some barley and a little effort...
