Christmas Morning Memories by Jim Long

• By: ScottieP
• On: 03/08/2010 13:47:27
• In: In The Field
• Comments: 2

On my way to church on a Sunday, I saw some ducks on a pond behind my church. One of the ducks particularly caught my eye, as it had a Mallard head and a darker body with a white chest. I immediately stopped and videotaped him for a few seconds. Every time I looked at the pond I would see him.  After a month of watching him, I noticed that he just disappeared.  Then, about one year later, I had seen him again, only this time it was on a small stream, about a mile closer to where I hunt, again, he was there for about a month and then disappeared.  This past summer, he appeared again, but this time on a creek on MY hunting grounds and had a hen and another drake with him.   On Christmas Morning, I work up my son to go hunting at 4:30am, and he decided he just didn't want to go.  We decided to go out that afternoon to our blind and put out some decoys.  We ended up putting out about a 1/2 dozen FA Brand Mallard Decoys and 2 dozen Real Geese Silhouettes.  At about 4:10 PM, about 25 ducks came off of that pond and swung way out to our left and headed away from us. We made a few comeback calls on our double reed Susquehanna Custom Calls and a few of them broke off and headed right to the decoys.  Needless to say...the rest is history.  We ended up shooting all three of the birds that we had been seeing for the last three years. I shot a male and female and my son Jeff shot the other male with this Christmas Day, we had removed this mixed breed from the gene pool.