Venice Yellowfins

Felt great to shift gears after 5 months of steady wingshooting.  Needed some diversity in the freezer, too. Unseasonably perfect February fishing conditions were enjoyed - plenty of sunshine, 2 ft seas.  Typical  for this time of year, there were hundreds of other boats occupying the square-mile area above the "Midnight Lump".  The Lump is the top of a large salt dome located offshore, about 50 miles southwest of Venice, Louisiana.  It is legendary for great bluewater fishing: the combination of shallower waters (depth ranges between 200 and 250 ft.) and large schools of bait fish swept along in current makes for magnificent fishing.  It is a major feeding site for some of the largest yellowfin tuna found in the Gulf of Mexico.

We again fished with Capt. Darryl Couvillon, Reel Peace Charters.  Have heard Capt Couvillon's ancestors were among the first to settle around the Venice area.  They certainly know their fishing.  Live mullets tossed into the chum slick.  The largest fish of the day, a yellow fin tuna, weighed a modest 164 pounds. It had the heart of a true fighter: stripped off line for several minutes, but I quickly earned most of it back.  Right about the time I had regained a little over half of the spool, the fish got its second wind.  It then became an earnest battle. Of inches.  Pound for pound, tuna are among the mightiest fighters in the Gulf, diving deep to gain leverage instead of dancing across the water and quickly giving it up. Gaffed him a little over 2 hours after the hook set. One good yellowfin was all it took.

Ramsey Russell, GetDucks.com

Boys’ Spring Snow

Back in the early to mid-1970's, when I was nearer to the single-digit age my sons are now, snow geese were just those noisy, stratospheric little V-formations we kids watched while waiting for the carpool to come pick us up on cold mornings in Mississippi's delta. Times sure have changed since then.

None of the local men I knew back in those days hunted them.   Everyone hunted ducks and the few migrating honkers that occasionally ventured that far south. A burgeoning, mid-continental snow goose population, ever-fattened by the increased agricultural landscape that has evolved since the 1970s now threatens the existence of their breeding grounds, the fragile Arctic tundra.

Hunters have been called on to reduce this population well into the spring months, long after traditional waterfowl seasons have closed.  It's created a great opportunity to hunt this marvelous creature, to spend more time at hunting camp, to further train retrievers in a live hunting environment.  It's also a great time for Dads to spend more time with their young hunters.

Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com

Maybe More

Last hunt of the season.  Public land, too.  We need go about 3/4 mile deep into the primevial hardwood forest in the pitch black dark of night, well ahead of other possible hunters.  Across: an undulating, Mississippi delta topography, wading waist deep cypress sloughs-deeper if you find a hole, and much colder if you stumble on the wrong submerged obstacle.

Crossing: oak-studded ridges to yet another brake.  Listening to the winter woods awaken: a beaver slapping his tail on the water just around the bend, raucously vocal barred owls sounding off their mating season, a few ducks flushing blindly out of our way, a buck's antlers clashing brush as he departs the thicket.

Decoys deployed, we wait.  Watching: silouettes of a few ducks trading, the stars fading, a pair of bluebirds feeding on mistletoe, two black labs exhaling frosty plumes of steam as they also search the brightening sky intently.

Then: a whir of wings, a splash of water as a pair of wood ducks land a few feet away, another pair darting through the tall snags.  Finally: shooting time arrives and a single shot fells the lone greenhead that came in hell-bent on landing in the small hole enshrouded with buck brush.

Other ducks trickle in.  The rest is history.  It beat a day at the office, or anywhere else for that matter, by 3/4 mile.  Maybe more.

Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com

Hunting Atlantic Eiders and Brant

New England Sea Duck Hunting.  We contacted the Captain in July, checked our calendars and made the necessary travel arrangements, never dreaming it'd be an unseasonably warm 80 degrees in Mississippi while we were hunting near Cape Cod for eiders. The rain and unseasonable warm Massachusetts weather wasn't ideal for eiders, but all things considered it was probably better than blustery single-digit temps, gale force nor-easterly winds and ice-encased everything more common to the area in mid-January. At least for a couple duck hunters from the Deep South.

Little Acorns

My youngest son Duncan, 6 years old, killed his first duck, a handsome drake wood duck. The first duck lit ten yardd in front of the boys. Forrest, the big brother, gave Duncan the opportunity to shoot. He wasn't able to get on it good, but Forrest folded him clean as he retreated from the beaver pond. The second duck to land...stayed with a single .410 shot. We'll find him a good home on the mantle too! Forrest managed his wood duck limit in two great shots. Except for the dog shaking off, we managed to get everyone in and out of the swamp without getting wet. It seems easier said than accomplished. In recalling the duck hunt to proud grandparents, Duncan described "sitting on a log in a swamp freezing half to death but killing ducks".  Further proof yet that acorns don't fall far from the tree.

Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com

A New Tradition

Nothing tops what was the beginning of a new Thanksgiving tradition for our family: duck camp.  It began one morning in October when, completely out of nowhere and to my utter surprise, my wife announced after fourteen years that she'd like to go duck hunting during the pending season. She clarified further: I don't really want to duck hunt; I just want to see what it's all about since it's such a big part of y'alls life. I gladly obliged.

With the exceptions of photographs and detailed hunting stories, which I can only suppose she listens to less than intently, her exposure to waterfowling consists entirely of hunting programs that are occasionally viewed at home. She later commented that she really had no idea that ducks actually got so close - boys, those little green-winged devils that came in at daylight were right in her face - or that Delta could possibly be as still and quiet (because like a good retriever, she remained intently focused during the entire hunt). First hunt for the girls. Forrest killed his first greenhead and his first full limit of ducks.  It was Duncan's first rice field hunt, and he killed his first green-winged teal (several) and first shoveler. The first morning was easy. We hunted a pit blind that is easily accessed by a wide, hard-packed rice field levee. You could practically roll a wheel chair to the blind. The second morning was also memorable, but more so for the walk in than for the numerous waterfowl we enjoyed. The hunt required an easy quarter-mile walk down a grassed turnrow, and then about a quarter miles walk across a shallow-flooded bean field. With a standard amount of gumbo mud beneath the water.

The strategy for keeping the children dry on the walk to the blind was simple: I'd walk ahead with the boys, put them and equipment in the blind and return to help the girls. When I got to the blind, the youngest son said, Mom is yelling to you, Dad.  I stop and listened carefully. I could hear the shouts but couldn't quite make it out above the wind.  I asked what she was saying. He replied, you told me not to say those words! Turns out, her first experience with real gumbo mud - wearing waders a full size too big - made for difficult walking while assisting a 4 year-old little girl. In th pitch black darkness. Dad to the rescue. Everyone remained safe, happy, dry the entire weekend. The ducks cooperated wonderfully. I was truly and most humbly thankful.

Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com

Hunt Report: Argentina and Uruguay

Never thought I'd say it, let alone admit it, but I shot out while hosting groups of guests. Wore down to a nub. My trigger finger anyways.

One of the best trips ever.  Volume doves and ducks. A perdiz hunt or two mixed in for good measure.  Travelled 15,600 airmiles, through a dozen connections, 3 foreign countries, several estancias in Argentina and Uruguay. Highlights: seven hunters averaged 43.5 patos per man per hunt. On 3 memorable hunts, clients averaged well over 50% hits with 5 boxes each of shotshells. Five hunters averaged 328 dove per hunt; two hunters, with an increased tolerance to 20-gauge recoil, shot over half the 5-hunt take. Shot over 74% one morning in a hunt I'll never forget. It's like: you've had plenty but "ain't no" way you're passing up the opportunity. I'm sure there are some that will disagree. And yet I hurt more from laughing and from eating than from shooting.

Favorites: steaks 3 inches thick, cooked medium rare and preceded by platters of blood sausage, goat, beef and pork; Maltagliati alla Bolognese or Pappardelle with Mushrooms (cream, dried mushrooms, chanterelles, mushrooms and portobellos); dove enchiladas, dove breasts over cous cous and, believe it or not, chocolate. Red wines - Tannats, Malbecs, Carbernets, Merlots.  Two glasses at lunch, perfect for pre-siesta; more following the afternoon hunt, during dinner and into the night. Watching tango in a smokey bar room located downtown Buenos Aires, a city of 17 million souls in which the dance originated; rheas trotting across the pastures dotted with palm trees, muskrats scurrying across the headlights on the way to the rice field, southern screamers (birds, not tango dancers) topping every palm tree in the fading moments of daylight, shooting stars as seen where the nearest streetlight is 20, maybe 30 kilometers distant; the fluted murmer of corscoroba swans before dusk, the shrill screams of lapwings at dawn.

Long, twisting, turning columns of doves for as far as the eye can see, the sounds a million doves roosted in the thorny scrub a short distance below your position, hawks and eagles swooping down, foxes bolting across the field, beating bird boys to the easy meals of dove that gunfire means. Typical Uruguay duck hunting set up: 1/10- to 1/2-acre of water, a sack of decoys.

Moved about half the decoys one afternoon and the rosy-bills responded perfectly. They locked up, sailed dead into the gap in front of the right-most gun, hung a 90 degree and came the next gun and then, finally, me. The teal passed between the blinds and the decoys, running the same firing line. It was all she wrote; the guide struggled under the weight of the strap on the way back to the truck.

The morning with an old college professor I've shared a blind with for nearly 15 years (heck yeah I got an A in that class), and I hunted a pothole in a rice field I'd hunted the first day when the ducks had streaked in from the east: we stood across the pond facing the blood-red easterly sky and were shot out of shells, 100 each, before the sun had quite made it fully above the horizon. I was the best hunt we've ever shared. Actually, I ran out a few minutes before he did.  I offered encouragement during his few remaining shots (sort of like a catcher talking trash to a batter).

Five ringed teal darting over the blind from outta nowhere, the young doctor and I shot 5 for five in a very brief, 20-yard distance of opportunity. It was one of those rare instances that, miraculously, neither hunter shot at the same bird.

The left-handed banker and myself, right handed, situated in separate dove blinds such that one particular flight path perfectly suited both of our "perfect shooting angles". We laughed and cussed, tried to beat the other to the punch, fell our birds onto the other's stand. One client shot his first-ever 30 doves the first morning (in about 15 boxes of shells), and finished his last hunt with exactly 1000 doves (and a much improved shooting average).

There's that groove you fall into when it's just clicking real fast and you find yourself instinctively, intuitively, searching the incoming flight first for that 2 (or maybe even 3)-for-1 shot - when one or two birds start sliding past a slower one - before moving through the remaining birds and taking it to the plug, handing off the unloaded for the loaded gun, and picking up that arc of swing where you last ended.  Repeat. Definitely repeat.


Ramsey Russell's GetDucks.com