Morning tide flight.

[anser2]

Normal service has resumed ( I hope )

 

After the first day my season has not really got under way. A mixture of warm weather, few winds , a nasty fall and my increasingly bad shooting have all discouraged me from doing much shooting. From day one this season my shooting has been so say the least very bad and I cant sort out why. The more I thought about the worse my shooting became. I had a bad fall two months ago and it still hurts badly at times ( though not when shooting ) , the doctors have also put me on a new drug which I suspect may be part of the problem too. I even thought about taking shooting lessons , but the last couple of times I did that , but they only made my shooting worse. Even switching to my 2 3\4 inch pigeon gun and Tungsten was no help. My last two flights at mallard resulted in a dozen shots ( some quite easy ) for nothing in the bag. I decided to buy a new gun , but that fell through at the last moment, the guy who was going to sell it to me disappeared. I suspect he sold it to someone else.

 

Yesterday after doing the wildfowl counts on a local reserve I had a look down on the marsh. The main creek was full of duck, wigeon in the main , but also plenty of mallard and teal. This was too good a chance to miss in what has so far been a pretty poor season. A quick glance at the time tables showed high tide at 6 am though strangely the BBC tide table showed 6.50. And pretty big one too plus the weather men promised fog, so the morning flight was on so it was out again with the semi\auto. I had not put the clocks forward so needless to say I was up an hour early. Still better early than late especially with the thick fog this morning.

 

The light was just starting to show when I pulled in at the back of the marsh , but I did not have far to walk and reached my creek in plenty of time. I tipped out the sack of decoys and soon swung out the first motherline lead well out into the water. As I chucked to decoys out they had little movement suggesting the tide had peaked. I lobbed out the next line and turning to pick up a decoy to clip on and found them drifting away. The water was after all still rising , but strangely still little flow in the creek. Soon got the second line of decoys out and settled down to see what the dawn would bring. For a long time nothing, the tide stopped rising an hour later , but the fog closed in tighter. The first birds to move were the gulls, arrow like lines fading into the fog with a faint sigh of wings . Then a low mutter, ugg uggg. Greylags! A pair flew past me twenty five yards off, A gift , but I just sped them on there way. My shots disturbed a dozen teal from inland, they passed a little high , but right overhead and again my shot had no effect. Here we go again I thought another flight of misses.

 

Apart from more gulls and a few curlews there was nothing else to see for the next hour , though a small party of pinks passed by unseen in the fog. The tide was dropping fast before any more duck appeared. A single teal came out of the now thinning fog coming right for me just a yard above the water. It turned passing up a side creek 45 yards off , but to my surprise she crumpled , skipping across the water like a spinning stone before coming to rest. Meg my black lab eyes almost popped out of her head while I made her wait for the retrieve and then she was off with a great splash in the creek and soon had the bird to hand with a look of almost disbelieving that at last master had hit something. Hardly had she settled in the hide when a second single teal cupped her wings and dived into the decoys. Again a single shot had her splashing into the water. This was a bit more like it I thought to myself. Ten minuets later it was a single wigeon that came in on cupped wings and the third duck was down for Meg to retrieve. This bird was well out across the water so it took a little time for Meg to retrieve it. Of course four or five single teal and a trio of wigeon passed in easy range before she had the bird back on the bank. By now the tide was falling fast and the small spit of salting I was shooting on had wide side creeks on both side so it was impossible to walk along the bank to follow a downed bird. By the time the dog has retrieved one bird any others were likely to be a hundred yards further down the creek. So one bird at a time has always been my rule unless the ducks fall very close in or on the bank.

 

As the fog thined to a mist a few skiens of pinks started to come in off the sea. This spot has never been much good for the pinks as even in wild weather they are always much too high as they were this morning.But the mist made them seen much larger than they were as their breasts caught the first rays of the morning sun.

 

A big party of teal came down the middle of the main creek , with a pair of outriders coming overhead again giving Meg yet another long swim. For the next hour both teal and wigeon poured into the decoys , mainly singletons and small bunches. Then there was the pair of mallard who appeared 20 yards away as I returned to my hide. Simple shots they made , but for some reason one shell had not fed up into the chamber and the chance was lost. Some duck I got , others I missed , but as a whole I was happy with my shooting for once. There was a little spell at the end of the flight when I had a couple of double misses , but also a little jam too. I rather muffed one wigeon. She came in nicely into the decoys, my first shot clipped her and the second hit her hard. She flew off up the main creek and when almost out of sight upped and crashed into the water only to come drifting past shortly after. And there was a nice little bunch of teal that landed in the decoys. As they jumped I took a neat right and left out of them as they crossed the near bank , but both birds were only winged. Meg had a hell of a hunt to find the first one in some thick spartina , but alas there was no sign of the second bird. Some nice packs of wigeon started to arrive , but by now I had enough duck for one flight . Soon quite a big flock gathered and by the time we were walking off the marsh several hundred had gathered on the creek. It was tempting to stay , but by getting off without disturbing the big flock there was a good chance of a second flight later in the week.

 

I had hoped by now to have my new black lab Pip working , but she is too much too immature as yet. Even basic training is hard work with her and even though one day she retrieves perfectly the next she picks up the dummy and runs off with it wanting to play games with you. She is a 2 year old lab , but still with a mental age of 6 months. It will be next season before I will be able to make something of her ( if ever ). So old Meg is having to shoulder all the work. Not that she has had much of that so far this season. I thought she would be exhausted by the ten retrieves she had this morning , but not a bit of it. She even found the energy to chase a rat on the sea wall while I was drinking a cup of coffee back at the car. She is sound asleep as I write this piece and I expect she will be stiff tonight , but I think she had as much fun as I did with 5 wigeon and 5 teal in the bag.

Edited October 31, 2016 by anser2

[Ttfjlc]

A lovely story, sounds like a flight to remember, always enjoy reading about the dog work as well, well done.

[marsh man]

Excellent post and nice to know normal service is resumed ...... for the time being at least.

 

We are now two months into the season and I cannot remember one as slow as this one , I have just got back from taking the dogs for a walk up the estuary and it is like a late summers day , warm , still and not hardly a cloud in the sky . plenty of duck on there but very little movement , still there you go , things can only get better from now on , or do I mean should get better from now on . .

[anser2]

Hoping to be down your way again marshman in a few weeks and praying for a bit of wild weather. Its time I downed a pink or two!

[marsh man]

Hoping to be down your way again marshman in a few weeks and praying for a bit of wild weather. Its time I downed a pink or two!

At the moment answer2 we have got a lot more geese than duck around the area but due to the dry weather and the cattle still on the marshes I haven't heard of many being bagged , also the landowner who farm most of the arable land that the two local clubs shoot on don't want any goose decoying on growing crops and with the beet harvest in full swing the geese are here one day and somewhere else the next .

 

Friday we were game shooting ( on the estate next to where your pub was ) and there were 100s of Pinks going on some old spud land , with no crop going in for a while they are left alone to feed in peace and the last year or two they have stayed and roosted around the Waveney Valley instead of going back to the reserve , so I don't think it will be to long before they start penetrating a bit deeper into Suffolk.

[flippermaj]

Thanks for another good post and glad to see you and the dog out on a successful trip.

 

Still think you need to get rid of the semi though !!!!

[kippylawkid]

Another great read.

Keep the faith with your shooting, we all have dips in form.

[Penelope]

A good read as usual R.