Cold Morning in the Duck Blind

In This Post we chronicled how we built our duck blind this year and envisioned ducks falling from the sky and eventually ending up in our freezer for making duck gumbo.  The season, to this point, was a bust.  We had heard from other hunters that there just weren't many ducks this year and some weekends we had other things going and weren't able to get out to the blind.

With the season down to the final weekend, Benjamin said, "Let's give it one last shot, Dad."  And so we did.  We woke up at 5:20, put on camouflage, and loaded up our guns and hit the road.  It was dark and we had a 30 minute drive ahead of us to make it to Oberlin.  We were racing the sun as we had to be in the blind before sunrise so as not to scare off the ducks that may be already in the pond.
We stopped off first by the shop and grabbed a couple of five gallon buckets to sit on.

We parked the car and walked to the blind.  It was cold and the frozen, frosty ground crunched as we walked.  We made it before sunrise and took a seat scanning the horizon, looking for ducks and watching God paint a masterpiece on the canvas that was the Eastern sky.

The Hunter

Our blind was a good blind and we were hidden from sight.  We were able to peer out at the pond and see the decoys.  Benjamin took his glove off his trigger finger hand and waited.

Decoys on the pond

As we scanned the skies, we saw a nice sunrise and as we shifted on our buckets trying to stay warm, we looked overhead and saw a large group of ducks flying overhead, but they were high - too high, and flying with purpose somewhere, just not to our blind.

The Creator's Canvas

We waited and waited and waited and soon the sun had fully risen over the horizon with not a duck in sight.  Benjamin noticed 3 empty shotgun shells on the ground in our blind and said, "Someone must have shot some ducks in our blind, Dad."  But I told him that I had talked to my buddy, Gary, and he had come out to the blind on a previous weekend and like us, didn't see many ducks.  He told me that finally, he looked over and saw a coyote walking on the road.  He emptied his 12 gauge, but the coyote was too far away.

Finally, we decided to head back home.  As we walked back in the daylight, we were able to see that it was indeed cold.  There was a thin layer of ice on the pond.

Ice on the Duck Pond

There was also frost on the weeds on the ground on our way back to the car.

We drove back home, duckless and a little disappointed, but we had a good time just getting out and being in the great outdoors and having some 'guy time.'  We'll look forward to next duck hunting season.  There's always next year.  At least we have some squirrels and doves that Benjamin has tucked away in the freezer.  Next year we'll get the ducks...