Tiny mallard

[anser2]

I was out on the saltmarsh this morning when in the first glimmer of dawn light 4 duck ( thought were mallard ) came over me low, battling the wind.  I dropped one with my first shot , but missed with the second as they flared in the wind. My dog quickly found the duck , but as she brought it back I was convinced it was no mallard, gadwall female perhaps, but no it was a mallard hardly weighing in at a pound. It was tiny and no bigger than a wigeon,  a small wigeon at that. Later in full daylight I looked at closely , it was a very late hatched bird still showing signs of down on the cheast. I would guess it was less than 10 weeks old. Feeling a little guilty it was stowed away with a second normal sized mallard in my bag shot shortly afterwards.  Only once before have I ever shot such a small mallard and that was a Dutch decoy duck, a domestic ornimental mallard, again shot in poor light back in the 1970s.

This mornings gale produced a great goose flight and i have never been so close to so many  low pinks without getting a shot. Perhaps 20 skeins passed me all within 70-100 yards on both sides and only 10 yards up and I never had a shot at them. Worst when I packed up and put the gun into its case a single low pink apeared overhead and as i watched it fly off something made me turn around and only a few feet away a drake mallard flared out of the creek and of course the gun was still in its case. It was just not my morning for luck!

Edited December 8, 2017 by anser2

[marsh man]

Morning answer2..... No doubt you have had several mornings like it in the past and I am sure there could well be one or two more in the future , it can also go the other way with the odd skein about and a few duck moving from a to b , but each lot make a bee line to where you are laying in wait and you can end up with a heavy bag when you least expect it, that is what I meant in my previous thread about luck can work both ways .

As for small Mallard, old Walter Musset who used to look after the Fritton decoy once told me the small duck he caught were foreigners that had just came over here , I am not so sure about that as you can get small and large in just about any species and not all of them travel overseas.

I have had Pinks hardly the size of a good Mallard and on the other hand , had some that were the size of small Greylag , having said that the Mallard I have had lately have been in superb condition .

[figgy]

Earlier in the season I shot three mallard but thought they were Gadwalls in the dark dusk light and all were smaller than normal hen mallard . Think they were still quite young. This season I saw more late broods than any other year. Unlucky with the Geese Anser2 better luck next time.