Wife goes “home” to central Texas to see her grandparents who raised her, I take a truck full of gear.

Her step-grandpa built a pond when he was in high school over 3 months (been told the story 18 times in 18 years, he turns 90 next week). When full it holds about 30 acres of water. It’s his brother’s now, but I get to hunt it, pretty much exclusively.

Last year my boy was 12 and hit his first bird. He did a little better this year. 5 am wake up calls 3 days in a row with no complaints.

Mixed bag of wigeon, gadwall, pintail, ringneck, and teal on the big pond Wednesday and Friday.

Thursday only saw 3 hooded mergansers on a mud hole 1/3 acre pond. It’s small but in years past I’ve shot mixed bag limits on it of mallards, teal, woodies, and ringnecks. Nothing flying there this week though.

His first of the year



Only 2nd wigeon I’ve even seen



Hidden in plain sight…Avery 5 panel blind with some weeds seemed to work. Even had a couple swim up to us after landing 100 yards away.



Mornings strapload





Cool bird, I guess they’ve got that going for them?


Thought this made a cool pic



Stacking them up

Very cool!

Excellent!!!! Great pics also....

Fantastic! Wow, what a clear blue day you had too

Great old fashioned Christmas. Right from Ruark.

What a great set-up, and congrats to the young man on his first birds!

Don't forget to give that little pond a rest, you don't want to scare them away for good.

Now you've gone and done it. Turned him into a waterfowler.

He'll loose millions of dollars and lots of women because of you Dad.

Good job.

Looks like fun for sure.

Thanks for the kind words. My boy doesn’t get too excited about anything, so it’s fun to see him perk up and defend himself when talking about his birds I had to shoot (I didn’t though).


We only hunt for the few days around Christmas there. This year was 1 morning on the 30 acre water, 1 morning on the mud hole 1/3 of an acre, and then 1 morning on the big water before coming home.

It is nice to be on some kind of flight path where birds are moving all morning long. The pond back home was always pretty much birds at first light, then nothing.

Some pretty birds. Never seen a widgeon in person