Taylor and Okis swan hunts

After we got my swan Friday night we finally slept in Saturday morning. It was wonderful! We told Taylor we would take him out Saturday afternoon to get him a swan. We had no idea if it would be any good but we figured what the heck and went to the same spot. His mom had text me that afternoon and said I will trade you Kennedy for Taylor. You guys take him hunting and I will take Miss K to lunch and to the ward Christmas party. Kennedy was super excited about that and so was Taylor! 

When we got out there the ducks were flying pretty good. We ended up missing 3. Chris got one. Rue was all over retrieving it. Shes got it figured out and just loves it. 

 She sits and watches out the boat for ducks flying. One flew over head us and Chris says theres one! She jumped her front paws on my lap and puts her head sky high to try and see the birds.

 We had swans start flying over us. None wanted to come and land in our decoys. Again we had hunters to the south east of us and ones to the west of us. We had a few decent flocks fly over and circle us several times. Then we had a BIG group come across. 4 peeled out and circled us probably 10 times just not close enough to shoot and landed by the guys to the west of us. After a few minutes all but 1 took off. The one swan sat there for a while. It started to pick up and take off and I started calling it. It liked my call better than the boys and was responding to it. It was flying low and DIRECTLY at me. Taylor was just off to my right. Its almost at us now and starts to veer off towards the left. Chris yells shoot it and Taylor jumps up and dumps it with one shot. Rue was out of the boat and on the swan before you could blink.

He shot a nice juvenille swan

After he shot his the skies FILLED with swans! We had them coming in like crazy. All you could hear was their constant calling. These are all different groups we took picts of that were actually a lot closer than they appear. We got some on video too of huge flocks coming in

 If you look to the right of the pict all those black dots are swans

That next morning we were going to take another group out swan hunting but they werent able to go til that night. Chris, me, Kennedy, Hunter and Todd all went out to the same area for the duck hunt. It started looking promising. Todd shot two ducks to start off with. Both cinnamon teal

 and that was about it. It stopped after that. A bunch of swans were still flying. Miss K had brought her duck call and had been practicing in the truck on the way out. Nothing was coming in so we let her try and call in some. 

 We headed back in by 9. It was starting to snow. Kennedy and I went home and took a 3 hour nap. Chris, Todd, Hunter, Taylor, Mike and Grace left at 1 for an afternoon swan hunt. Kennedy and I stayed behind because there wasnt enough room. They were out there less than an hour when they had two swans down!

Grace and Mike and their nice birds