Fox Collectors

I snuck out for a couple hours Saturday morning and was lucky to get 2 black ducks and Woodie. I sure am having fun with my 10 ga. Charles Daly.

WOW!!! Nice Job! Dont see Black Ducks that often? Were the with a group of greenheads?

Actually, each one was a "single".

Great job Jeff.

Very nice Jeff! - 2 'Phantoms' and a nice Woodie to add some color to the bag! Kevin

Single Black Duck like that "wind blown ace of spades" at the end of Nash's 1955 story in Outdoor Life, "Magnum Opus."

Nice Jeff, sounds and looks like you and that Daly are getting a workout. Thanks for letting me handle your cool Daly while at the Northeast.

Plenty of geese and a just few quackers are starting to drop in hereabouts.

frank

Researcher wrote:Single Black Duck like that "wind blown ace of spades" at the end of Nash's 1955 story in Outdoor Life, "Magnum Opus."

"Wind blown ace of spades" I like that. I went out for 2 hours this morning, but all I got was a pretty sunrise

I dug out the magazine and found I out my memory was off a bit. It was "gale-pushed ace of spades" --

Jeff,
Nice job, I have my "feelers" out for flight birds. Cash had one real nice woodcock point today, the bird held, and I missed twice:) He had 2 more points where the birds ran, never saw them. We went out for 45 minutes. I am looking forward to this weekend. My cousin lives on the north side of munuscong bay just west of the st. mary's river. I used to walk about 1/2 mile down the 2 track to a duck hunting lodge that was on the bay also. I think I was 13 or 14, man those are good memories.

Dave, thanks for that little snippet from the Outdoor Life. I'll have to remember "gale pushed ace of spades". Kevin, do people also refer to black ducks as phantoms?

Jeff S wrote:Dave, thanks for that little snippet from the Outdoor Life. I'll have to remember "gale pushed ace of spades". Kevin, do people also refer to black ducks as phantoms?

No Jeff, but it's an apt description in my book - they seem to materialize out of nowhere, particularly on cloudy days. Conversely, hereabouts in the Delmarva, some of the best Blackduck shooting is had on bitter cold, windy but bright sunshiney days. There is no warier duck. If you have one circle, come in, and actually decoy you know everything about your hide and rig is right.

Years ago I once made 5 of my own cork-bodied Blackduck decoys, To test them, I put them far to the right of our mixed rig of other ducks & Canada goose decoys. Late in the morning, a pair of Blacks came down the creek, circled 3 times, and pitched into my little group of 5. I was so elated and excited that I never even brought my gun up; I jumped up in the blind, took my hat off, waved at them and hollered, "Ya better watch out next time!" Definitely one of the highlights of my 52 years of waterfowling! Kevin

I shot 2 Black Ducks when I was a teenager in Minnesota. Very unusual back then.
Jim
PS - One of my "bucket list" hunts is a Black Duck hunt in eastern Canada where Keven (Sporrns) goes!