Dig out my head lamp and go out and gas and start generator to make coffee and shine light on gear preparation. Gen set cranks right up and soon the smell of coffee fills the garage.
All of my gear, although laid out carefully to dry is still damp from Saturday's hunt. Pack it all up anyway.
Get to the hole and the drive down to the put in is a mud slide. We join the slide. Gear loading goes uneventfully other than the question become where are me and my hunting bud gonna sit. We don't know what to do with ourselves, this is one of the few hunts where his 7 year old hasn't gone. Things are way too quiet.
Ease out in the hole and start putting out decoys. The 10mph wind is more like 20 mph. Decoys pull out of bag as one big tangled wad. After cussing, picking and pulling, I get all decoys detangled. Oh, did I mention that my head light died during the detangling. Finally all decoys are out and we put up our hide.
In the meantime, it seems others have heard about our hole, because here comes not one, not two but three boats our way. We flash them off. One begins to set up at the end of my decoy string. I stood up and informed them that they were welcome to come join me for coffee, but if they set up at the end of my decoy string, I was gonna shoot a big ole hole in the side of their boat and laugh while they sank. They got the idea and moved off.
At daylight, only cormorants were flying. We were worried. Then a single tries to land with the wind into the backside of the spread. He joins the bag. Then another does almost the exact same thing, same result. Three come of out nowhere and two get to leave. Made me feel REAL OLD! Really didn't see the birds we saw Saturday. In fact only one group of 6 birds decoyed at once, the rest were single, doubles and triples, but when we pull out of our hide at 7:30 to pick up birds, we have 5 a piece in the boat with none lost.
Pulled back in the hide and went to leak the lizard ... yep, here he comes. Traded gun for fun and lights out on that rude son of a gun. Limit down. Ben adds his last in a few minutes. We piddled and watched to see if anything else came in, then picked up the decoys. Remember now, we slid down the hill to the put in and now we had to go back up. Took three attempts with the last one starting at about 45 mph at the bottom. Real tricky because I had to take a hard right at the top. The boat and truck gets covered in mud. We hit a little local restaurant for breakfast and a carwash to clean the boat.
Get back to my farm and lo and behold, Ben spots three geese harassing us. Out come the guns and down go three fat turd cutters. Old cracker, Drew's cash eating lab, jumps in and retrieves all three turd cutters to finish the morning.
Unload, spread gear for final dry and in the office by 12:30.
Not a bad day for 2 old farts.
