Josh "Rooney" Dickerson and @michaelkotzum
After quite a few frustrating weeks of hunting here in Oklahoma we finally got into the mallards this morning. I took my usual route yesterday morning scouting the birds and seeing how the extremely cold temps had effected the bird movement and the smaller waters. Some of the bigger ponds were still open, and of course the rivers, but all the shallow waters and sloughs were locked up tight with ice. I knew by experience where the birds would be so I headed to my favorite lookout point on the Arkansas River. As I started scanning the shores on the other side with my small binoculars I could see quite a few birds tucked up tight along the shore. You see, in this area, we have thousands of cormorants (better known as water turkeys to the locals) that use the same waterways as the geese and ducks and I wanted to make sure these were ducks. My binoculars weren’t quite strong enough to make out what the birds were but after some examination I noticed they were standing up in the water and flapping their wings. I knew then that the birds I was looking at were mallards…thousands of mallards!!! At that point I made a phone call to Michael and told him to be at my house by 5am the next morning. But, for my regular hunting partner Tommy, all I have to do is send him a text with a time and he’ll be there. Every time. No explanation needed.
Michael was sitting in my driveway at 4:30am this morning when I woke up. I’m guessing he was just a little excited. This is the first time he’s hunted with us. We got the boat hooked up, checked everything out, loaded the dog, guns, gear, and all the warm clothing we could find (it was 9 degrees this morning). This is no time to be messing around, we had to be very careful. We got to the launch and found about 20 foot of shore ice. It was thin enough to launch the boat but I was nervous. After a cold 10 minute boat ride, we were at our spot trashing up the boat and putting out 5 dozen decoys. Just about time we got situated, we had our first pair of ducks coming into the decoys. I took one shot and dropped a widgeon. It was the beginning of a good day. Even with the roto duck not working properly, the mallards were very responsive to the calls and decoys. Most of the birds were skirting our decoys a little forcing longer shots but we were dropping birds out of every small flock. Cody, my retriever, was having a hard time seeing the downed birds with the fog that was lingering over the river. About 10am, we had about 6 birds in the boat and 4 on the water as well as a decoy that had floated away from us. Tommy and I had to take the boat out and make the retrieves ourselves. After that, Tommy cooked up a mean breakfast even though our eggs had frozen solid. After breakfast, we had a couple more flocks of “new” birds come in and we had our limit.
We ended up with 12 drake mallards, 3 hen mallards and 3 widgeon by noon. It was an awesome hunt…FINALLY!! Michael had a great time and Tommy is ready for more tomorrow. Cody also did very well for the conditions and he will sleep well tonight. There were still new birds working us while we were picking up so we will be right back in the same area tomorrow morning. More reports coming soon….
Josh “Rooney” Dickerson