Soloing and Full of Fulvous

{This post is out of sequence -
I'm finally finishing it some weeks
late.}

Jim got bold and tried for a solo walk on
at the local WMA.  It was his first time
hunting without me.  We got him all
fixed up the night before and he was
up and gone by 1:30.  He ended up
8th in line and got a spot in one of
the good wading impoundments.  He
partied up with Pepi from the UWF
list.

They would have had a real long
walk down the levee to get to
their draw, but Pepi had a kayak
and they were able to easily cross
a canal and then wade a short bit
into the impoundment.

Jim was a bit nervous hunting with
someone he didn't know and only
managed a couple teal.  Pepi got
several birds and a black-bellied
whistling duck.  He had to leave
and get to work.  Once totally on
his own, Jim got two more teal.
Considering that only one bird
decoyed, they did pretty good.

Pepi had glowing things to say
about Jim later in an email.  That
makes this old, fat guy proud.

The next Saturday, Jim volunteered to
get in the walk in line early and spend the
night.  It was so crowded that he was
the 7th car in line by 4PM in the
afternoon.  By midnight, there were
18 cars.  When Eddie came passing out
tickets, we ended up in the reservoir.  We
partied up with Dan P. and returned
the favor (he'd let me on his draw
earlier in the season). 

Joe R. gave me some good guidence
but I didn't quite find his spot.  Still,
we had a good day of teal, ringers,
wood duck, and fulvous.  Jim's nice,
drake woody floated away somewhat
at an angle to the wind.  It seemed
strange, but we couldn't figure out why
until we picked up and found that
a turtle had gnawed the butt off the
duck.  Since it didn't ruin any of the
meat, we were cool.

It was an okay day.


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